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Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2026-04-26 18:35:38)
The cantrip version invites comparison with Aquitect's Will and Spreading Seas. So it would probably need to be 2 mana.
I do like the principle of having each flood card at a different CMC as a first stab, although it's fine if dev deviates from that a bit.
use the mechanic flood target land. (Put a flood counter on it. It's an Island in addition to its types.)
add type "Creature"
This seems a very nice reprint for the set. (Serpent of the Endless Sea)
2/2 for
is Rootwater Commando. I quite like CU01 Serpent of the Endless Sea as is. I think we only want two islandwalkers at common, so I think we need to change one of this, CU01 Serpent of the Endless Sea or Serpent of the Endless Sea.
(Incidentally, the links that Jack and I are using are created by typing
(((-CU01))).)2/2 with an ability for
is okay. It's not happened at common before as far as I recall, but it's long-established to be OK at uncommon and higher. So I'd say this is fine. It is the natural transform of Rootwater Commando.
I think Enlighten is good, but my idea for the Flying Bears was to have 2-power flyers at CMC2. At that point, the power level is high enough that it's hard to justify having any very good ability, and I was assuming the flying bears would be French vanilla.
I think this card is fine as it is. But most of the cycle shouldn't be CMC2. The power level here may be a bit high: this is basically Agent of Masks, who was startlingly expensive for what she did. This might be better on a 3 or 4 CMC card.
Well things just come together don't they.
:D Thank you one and all!
We also need a
common for that cycle.
Wild drake would be reasonable, but this should probably be sized and costed in conjunction with CU01 Serpent of the Endless Sea; one should probably be 2/2 (or slightly smaller) and one bigger than that. And then decide do they both have islandwalk, or does one have something else?
Maybe 2/2 for 2u? Still not Phantom Warrior but often better than Wind Drake.
Oh, sorry, I mean, any new mechanic typically goes through a "come up with an idea, try some cards, discover which bit is really good, revamp mechanic to focus on that bit" cycle (unless it's really simple). I like our current suggestions :)
Because of the natural evolution of our ideas as we explore them and consider new ones, or because you don't like the current mechanics?
One possibility would be to find a good wording for "a land that's become an island" or something and use that, then it works with other basic-land-changing spells, but doesn't work with people who just play islands. Another would be to make all of these cards even heavier blue, so they can't be splashed as answers, only played by other blue decks.
"when envisioning the mechanic, I saw huge Sea Serpents attacking"
Yeah, I agree that's what's fun, but I think the problem arose because it's hard to make the flooding relevant without penalising spells, and I'm not sure what conception of the mechanic is best.
For flavour, I imagined the infiltrator would have to surface as some point, too far from land to be vulnerable to ground creatures, but enough to be vulnerable to flyers. But we definitely don't need to do it that way.
jmg: I think it was very helpful for flood to see some example designs, and expect the discussion to be split between those (simply because it's easier to have a conversation in short pieces), and I'd like to see some for other colours, however, I still expect mechanics to be heavily revamped, presumably still discussed on the relevant color page.
You're right, we probably do do that. However, I think it's a fair question if the
flood enabler should be competitive (to help the archetype) or not (so it's not snapped up by non-flood players).
Note that would not be quite the same as sea's claim: we decided it should probably make lands islands as well, so it doesn't do mana denial, but it better at fixing your own lands.
Edit: OTOH, no, you're right. I'm not at all sure whether a
"flood targent land" will be playbale, but we should probably try that version (or possibly a cantrip) first because it's the simplest and it should be playable here if anywhere, and add stuff to it if it doesn't seem interesting enough by itself. My concern is that if you want to play this on turn one, you'll have to devote a lot of cards in your deck to spells that only do something else. If our creatures end up reading "UU. 2/2. Islandwalk. As an additional cost to discard this, discard a card." they wouldn't look as good.
jmg, camruth: good points imho
I don't like repetitive gameplay, either. A missing phrase from "Toolbox: the Mechanic" was "Exile this card". But the mechanic was already too bloated, and I didn't want to bog it down with rules. That doesn't kill the repetitiveness, I know, but it does stop the "I just cast these two spells back and forth until you are dead" sort of response that Buyback offers.
But for all the 'R&D hates repetitive mechanics', they do printed them often enough. Transmute, Retrace, Recover and Splice into Arcane are all repetitive in their own way. The problem is that while, in theory, every game is its own unique and flavorful play experience, many players want their decks to consistently do the same thing over and over again. That's why we're allowed to play 4x a card, instead of singleton. It's more a matter of making the repetition fun.
On the subject of Enlighten, though, Camruth may have a good point. I think Wizards may have gone a little overboard with the +2/+2 thing, but it certainly made it easy to grasp... and it only happened at common.
So we want enlighten to function similar to landfall in that it has the same overall trigger but can have different effects ?
If we do, I think we should follow Landfall's example and have Enlighten on creatures do the same thing on all creatures, a different thing on enchantments (though what the enchantments themselves do can vary widely, it would just be what Enlighten does that would have to be the same), etc
OK, I haven't kept up on whats going on here as well as I should so please forgive my ignorance.
Fair enough, I probably haven't kept up with the discussions on this set as well as I should - just too much going on right now.
Avoiding making things too parasitic is good.
Ah, but R&D doesn't like repetitive gameplay. Still, I could go for either version of Enlighten, and I'd be open to something toolboxy, though perhaps not exactly what you've suggested.
I really don't like the idea of changing island references to "flooded land," because it makes flood incredibly parasitic. Also, while "Flooded land" makes logical sense, there's no way to unflood a land. The flood counter is just a reminder, like on Sensei Golden-Tail. I don't have a problem with removing this card. It's really the only "silver bullet" card, so I don't have a problem with it staying, either. One of the original ideas for blue was a sort of creepy sea creature vibe, but that isn't really coming through right now.