Otaria Forever (Ideas): Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Otaria Forever (Ideas): (Generated at 2025-05-01 14:26:47)
i'll drop the activation cost for now, you're right
obvious nod to the gustcloak cycle from onslaught
I'm a fan of blink effects, but I agree, this looks a bit nerfed at the moment. I'd like to see one of the three changes:
I think "Those creatures don't untap during that player's next untap step" would do well. It's slightly more powerful (it stops their Archivist untapping even if it hadn't got into combat at all) but it's following Tangle's precedent, and it's much simpler.
Mmm... I'm not so sure this is underpowered. I think this might be one of those cards that's better than it looks. Flicker is powerful when used properly/
I agree the card looks unexciting, and I probably wouldn't play it - but there's a niche for it, I think. Saying that though - that niche tends to hate paying 4 mana for things :)
No problem, I'm happy that I can be of help. I mean, you only get so far without communication and discussing cards and design themes/principles is what best shapes a good designer imo. Also, looking at cards and sets that are not your own brainchild gives you a different point of view and thus can be a valuable source of inspiration.
you're right that it's a very different mechanic, but i can see the benefit. i guess it just depends on how clearly i want to highlight the split between enablers and users. it's also possible that it would make the mechanic too narrow? like, now every card that has symbiosis has to also have abilities and maybe having a few french vanillas sprinkled through the set makes it work better
i'll keep it in mind, might make a few example cards and see how i like them. we're still in the early stages here, new ideas are always good. thanks!
as far as hand vs battlefield goes, i kind of just wanted a small creature that helped your land base as well as enabled growth counters to some extent; a nudge is just as good as a shove for now. at some point i'll be altering these cards with an eye towards making some more pushed than others, but for now i'm trying to emulate WotC as best I can and try for a flat power level. well, as flat as i can make a power level having had no prior design experience.
you could be onto something with the name. i think in my head because i derived the mechanic name from photosynthesis i've assumed a naturalistic slant that the players can't see. compound kind of has a similar problem though, in that compound suggests chemistry which is also not really where we want to go with this.
yeah this card could definitely do with getting a little push, just wary of recurring flickering (and like you said, stacking two of them could turn out to be a very good thing)
i'm guessing that white will have some cards that get beneficial effects when creatures leave/enter the battlefield given that flickering is going to be a drafting sub-theme for white, but i haven't decided what they are yet. could be as small as soul warden, could be better. we'll see, but that will likely dictate just how strong this card winds up becoming.
as an aside, thanks again for all the work you're putting into analysing these cards. really appreciate that there are people like yourself, alex & vitenka willing to dedicate the time to improving peoples' sets. i'm sure the upshot of it will be a better end product, which is awesome
agree with all your concerns, trust me they're on my radar. but power balance issues are something i'm planning on addressing later down the track (unless they're really glaring, like Krosan Explorer was). they really feel like the sort of thing that playtesting will solve, rather than me trying to solve it now with no real understanding of just how strong synthesis is within the confines of the set.
and WRT effects that buff tokens, i haven't really considered if that will be around or not but i wouldn't expect to see anything below rare that has that sort of effect.
I think as right now more than 1/3 of your cards enable Synthesis, some without costing extra mana, this is rather on the good side. I mean getting a Watchwolf distributed among three bodys for
and the condition that I do something that's basically the essence of what the set does, seems very powerful.
I'd look at Lingering Souls knowing how powerful it is and suggest 1WW with 2 tokens normally and 4 for synthesis, if you want to push the card. If not, I'd still say 2 or 3 tokens but for 2W OR 1 or 3 tokens for 1W.
Edit: Making the assumption here that tokens are at least somewhat useful in your set. If you go low on playable anthem effects, don't plan to have team-buffing at a higher powerlevel and won't build any good and fairly cheap equipment to go with the tokens you might as well be fine as it is.
Yeah I was a bit unclear there. The change to the mechanic would mainly allow for neat knot-turning for development. Right now you get effect + counter moving on death. With my change you could split that up if an effect would be too powerful otherwise so you have to choose betwen effect (obv with counter-removal as cost) OR counter moving on death.
Of course it would make a radically different mechanic that works in an entirely different designspace. This card just made me think "wow you could do so many things with counter-removal as a cost" basically.
Also, to clear that up, I startet writing the above comment before you made the "land goes to hand"-change, so I was still in the mode of coming up with a solution to the powerlevel and I thought you wanted the land to go to the battlefield immediately.
For the new mechanic names, I have to say I'm no native english speaker so I might not get the same interpretation of the name as you do, but I thought compound instead of synthesis sounded cool. It also has a more primal, natural (krosan) feeling to it while synthesis to me sounds rather artifical (simic-y or phyrexian).
This looks a bit over-cautious for my taste. I mean if the opponent has ETB effects - which there seem to be a lot of - you won't be able to use this offensively. For a safety valve against piling up too many counters on one creature I guess it would be too slow. Using it on your creatures on the other hand only makes sense on the ETB ones and not the big piled up ones. I don't think it's bad, just the combination of limited uses, 2CC cost, the tiny body in comparison and the sorcery speed limitation makes this look way too limited to be interesting. I'd give it a shot at a better power level just to see if it acutally needs to be nerfed this much.
By the way, I very much like the fact that with two of these you get unlimited uses of the ability. A slow but fun combo that might get interesting if your limited format gives it a chance. If the ability was at instant speed (probably only allowing creatures you control) and your ETB effects are worth it (train to value-town I say), this could even become a constructed viable strategy.
not opposed to changing symbiosis, just need a good reason for it. right now i'm pretty happy with the split between creatures that ETB with counters and enablers like symbiosis & tithe. not sure if you omitted a sentence there, because i couldn't actually see a reason for changing the mechanic. i did see a reason against it though!
and yeah, certainly not opposed to new names! agreed that it's going to cause a lot of headaches, but i needed names for now and these fit the flavour well. hopefully i'll find a more unique replacement for one of them
I would leave out the "almost" there, Vitenka.
Another suggestion though I don't know how much you're willing to change your keyword and how much that change is going to affect your set.
Anyway, how about changing Symbiosis so it is similar to Modular as on Arcbound Worker? This card would then enter with a growth counter and you could remove it (probably also pay
) to search out the land but then it couldn't pass on the counter of course. If you want the death trigger to get the counter onto another creature, you can't do the ramp.
Most obvious downside of that change would be that all cards with Synthesis would have to be re-evaluated because all Symbiosis cards would make them go live. Now that I'm writing it, you should probably change the name of one of those mechanics. Symbiosis/Synthesis seems like they would be way to easy to mix up.
i ummed & ahhed over that for quite a while, but decided that +1/+1 counters made costing things too difficult
good reasoning. making the easy fix here.
Let me help you with the wording once again here as it is not as easy to word as it might seem at first glance.
The card as it is would have to be "Prevent all damage that would be dealt by creatures target player controls this turn.". The second part is tricky since there is no precedent for it afaik. I would go for "Synthesis - If the damage a creature would have dealt is prevented this way, that creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step." though that might be too complicated/unintuitive to be common.
Vitenka's solution, as far as I understand it, would go like this: "Prevent all damage that would be dealt by creatures this turn. If the damage a creature would have dealt is prevented this way, that creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step." maybe the latter part can also be "Those creatures don't untap during their controller's next untap step" though I recon that wouldn't be clear enough. The Synthesis part would be a wordy mess here if you want to make it intuitive, by which I mean most ways to word it shortly would probably not make clear, that the untap effect still happens and it only changes whos creatures are affected. I suggest you go for "Synthesis - If a counter was placed on a permanent you control this turn, damage dealt by creatures you control can't be prevented this turn." That would have a nice situational upside against protection. Also if you push the card to playability the "Strangling Vines mirror match" wouldn't become as boring because one Strangling Vines "counters" another instead of just making it so nothing happens.
The only thing I'm not sure here is if "damage can't be prevented" is in green's slice of the color pie. Except for Whippoorwill, which doesn't seem like a good example, it's been exclusively red. Yet with 17 cards total I guess it's mostly untapped designspace.
Not sure about keywording tithe. (Especially because it's nothing like Tithe) - but it certainly fits the flavour.
Very nice combo of stuff on here too - holy strength, vigilance, and an ability to take advantage of it being untapped in main2.
It could be a grab-bag, but the flavour ties it all together. I like it.
Quite a bump over Sakura-Tribe Elder; which was already pretty darn good.
Ok, you can't use it for islands or swamps; but it's on ETB rather than sacrifice, and it's modular?
This is almost format definingly good.
Oooh, makes you wish the set was +1/+1 instead of growth counters, really.
thanks for the feedback guys.
alex you might be right about the rarity, just had it at common because fog is always at common. maybe i'll dial it back a bit to make it fit the rarity more.
i actually wanted the synthesis trigger to be difficult on this one for the reasons you mentioned (there will likely be uncommon instant counter manipulating/creation), but i'll work on addressing your criticisms.
really like your solution vitenka, seems like a good one.
Mmm, the set seems to have a LOT of counter placement; but it's motly in your own turn. Triggering in an opponents turn is by no means impossible; but will usually need a second instant.
I'd be more worried about the one-sided nature; it's a pretty nasty trade this will arrange, even without the no-untap part.
Maybe flip the two bits? Always no-untap (seems fair for 3, as tangle did it) and prevent all damage unless synthesis, in which case prevent one side damage?
I like Tangle a lot (and it was tournament playable in its day), but I'm not sure it's a good idea at common. I guess it might be quite hard to trigger the Synthesis so you might be okay.