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CardName: Path of Blossoms Cost: 3W Type: Sorcery Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Clan--Choose Mortal or Kami. (Choose Mortal or Kami. For the rest of the game, you must make the same choice when you Clan.) Mortal--Gain 7 life. Destroy up to one target artifact or enchantment. Kami--Create three 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Name That Card Uncommon

Path of Blossoms
{3}{w}
 
 U 
Sorcery
Clan--Choose Mortal or Kami. (Choose Mortal or Kami. For the rest of the game, you must make the same choice when you Clan.)
Mortal--Gain 7 life. Destroy up to one target artifact or enchantment.
Kami--Create three 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens.
Updated on 21 Mar 2021 by jmgariepy

History: [-]

2021-03-13 06:49:32: jmgariepy created the card Path of Blossoms

Okay, that probably requires some explanation. We not only need the name for this card, but the keyword, and also the name of the two choices. Since this card was confusing enough, I chose Elf Soldier for the creature types.

How this works: When you cast the spell, it asks you to make a modal choice. Whatever you choose is what you're going to choose for the rest of the game. So, for example, the choices might be "creatures" or "life", and if I chose creatures, each time I cast NTC #061, I would have to keep choosing creatures. But this card presumes there are also a number of cards in this set with the same mechanic. Casting a card with this mechanic would force me to make a choice and stick with that choice with all of those cards.

But clearly "creatures" or "life" are two boring, lazy names. You'll probably want something better (especially since the other cards probably won't split with those two mechanics, specifically.) And the keyword mechanic also needs a name... just mentioning that again, because it's easy to miss.

Oh... and what's this card's name?

Hmmm. My mind leaps to promising yourself to a particular cause (here, brute force creatures or crumble-like spells). Promise is a weak word. Devote is too close to devotion which is taken. Dedicate.

And while we could dedicate to the cause (Physical / Mystical) ... which... writing it out like that isn't as bad as I thought it would be? I was going to say you should put god names in there. And think of an appropriate pantheon. But actually? Keeping it to concepts makes it a lot more expandable and re-usable.

Card name... Now that is harder. Obviously, dedicate should be in the name. Luckily the only thin already in that namespace is Dedicated Martyr. I think the best way to square the circle of this wanting to have two completely different names is to just sidestep it. The artwork should be some kind of ceremony, and we'll reference the name of the ceremony in the card name. Obscure ceremonies... oh. Or not. Oh dear. the pun is horrible and yet must be made. Votive Dedication

Ooh, interesting. Like "khans or dragons" but (potentially) for sorceries/instants. I wonder how that would work out, if people would usually end up targeting one mode, or if people would make decks that can go in on two different strategies depending what they get.

I thought about what world might have a resonant two-sided choice. Well, ok, actually I was brainstorming what the opposite of "three elves" might be, but in retrospect, that was a good question I should have asked first :)

­Path of Blossoms
­Clan -- Choose Mortal or Kami

Straight from Kamigawa which was a beautiful (although fiddly) set. I imagined it might be a cycle of "Path of X", although it's probably more important to get the affiliation in one or two colours so there's more chance of the cards overlapping.

I realised too late I'd tweaked the template slightly in not choosing a verb as the keyword. I assume that amount of retemplating is allowed. If not, the most Japanese word for "choosing a clan" is probably "dedicate" and Vitenka already thought of that one :) OK, maybe that is better, but it's too late now :)

While googling japenese words for "war", I learned the japanese name Kami War might have been "Kamiren" which I considered as the choice. Although having a keyword that can be reused for a different faction choice in a new set would be cool.

And I learned that some rumours suggest that MTG might be having an uncoming cyberpunk set set in the future of Kamigawa, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. Or maybe someone else just registered that domain name.

Wild. Considering the events of Kamigawa took place thousands of years in the past compared to the current Magic storyline (Tetsuo Umezawa is the descendant of Toshiro Umezawa) I could definitely see them returning to Kamigawa and giving it a scifi makeover. It would do an excellent job rehabilitating the domain, too. A lot of people like Kamigawa for flavor reasons, but hate on the mechanics/power level. You need to shake it up quite a bit to get the general audience excited to 'go back'.

Oh, and yes, changing the template to fit your name is fine by me. I've altered the occasional card after the fact to better fit the winning names. This is just does that pre-emptively.

Exactly. Someone was saying in Conversation about the difficult of sequels, but I thought that was an excellent idea in that it built directly on the things that were awesome about the original set, but also made the new set about some significant addition, not just more of the same.

And for that matter, I hope that it's set in an actual interesting plane, rather than set in a moment of upheaval that destroys the setting forever :) That was interesting in Scars of Mirrodin because it stood out, but I think MTG sets too many sets in "the world is falling apart/converging/being devoured" and "a big climax" IS the way you sell a book but is NOT the way you sell a set.

­Oh, and yes, changing the template to fit your name is fine by me.

Thanks! I was pretty sure I understood what you thought. But in life in general I tend to second guess myself rather often about whether I'm interpreting instructions too loosely or too strictly :)

It's a pity that words like "Resolve" and "Devotion" already have meanings in Magic!

Captain's Divergence
Diverge - Presence or Distance.

I'm thinking the cycle would all be [Someone's] Divergence, and the "Presence" options would generally put something onto the battlefield or increase your creatures' strength, while the "Distance" options would generally be some kind of removal or control.

Except actually, if I can make another entry, I think I prefer tying this to a specific setting:

Trial of Duty
Allegiance - Mirrodin or Phyrexia

The Elf Soldiers might need to become Cat Soldiers or some such.

Ooh, allegiance is a good word for a two faction set. Clan would have been better in a multi faction set like Ravnica.

I think something like this mechanic would be really interesting in Ravnica, but not exactly this: it pretty much would have to refer to the guilds, and rewarding you for focusing on a guild rather than just a three colour deck would be good, but making non overlapping allegiance cards blank is probably too much. Also, how would you choose the colours? I guess in a four guild set you could have the cards in the overlap colours. Or have split cards where one half is a guild allegiance card in that guilds colours and the other is another guild.

I still find it really hard to decide who to vote for!

I also considered a submission based on numerology, like 3s vs 7s, which had the advantage of not always tying the same mode to the same faction or strategy, but I didn't think of anything that worked well.

2021-03-21 11:21:03: jmgariepy edited Path of Blossoms

This one was a rather close one. Ultimately, Jack picked it up. Though, I swapped what Mortal and Kami do, since there aren't any good 1/1 white mortal creature tokens in Kamigawa. Human Samurai tokens could be cool, but I'd expect them to have Bushido. I figured it just made sense for the Kami to make spirits, and have the mortals destroying artifacts and enchantments.

See everybody in (((NTC #062)))!

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