Designing Suvnica, Week 6: The Exiled (Worldbuilding)

Listen, child.
This wasn't always home. A few seasons ago, we didn't even know this place existed. If we had, we wouldn't have cared.

The place where we lived, it was incredible. I can’t even explain it to you. You don’t have the context to even understand what it would be I was describing. Buildings that were ten times the size of our shelters were commonplace. The gardens, beautifully manicured and flourishing with blooms that humble the imagination. And the cathedrals… I was never particularly invested in the Syndicate, neither figuratively nor literally, but standing in the shadow of one of the cathedrals never failed to halt my breath for a moment.

Designing Suvnica, Week 5: Blood on the Streets, Oil in the Heart

Happy Memorial Day to all those who celebrate it! Throw a burger on the grill and grab a soda from the fridge, cause we're wrapping up the first wave of Suvnica design this week. Let's take a look at Rakdos and Simic.

Suvnica Week 4 Review, Part 3: Here It Goes Again (Cycles)

A tremendous amount of what made Ravnica so interesting was its implementation of cycles and how it developed them over the course of three sets. The cycles on RtR were a little less noteworthy, since they were spread out across two sets (less room to change them) and the sets they were in were much smaller (set sizes were reduced around the time of Shards). A major part of the Suvnica project is going to be looking into old cycles and redesigning them to match our new visions of the guilds, as well as creating other cycles from scratch. This was our first stab at the latter category - here's what we came up with.

Suvnica Week 4 Review, Part 2: Learn and Burn (Izzet)

Moving right along, let's look at some of the visions we thought up for {U}{R}.

Suvnica Week 4 Review, Part 1: Mother Nature's Son (Selesnya)

Alright. The Week 4 submissions are locked in. Let's check out some of the possible directions we could take the Suvnican GW guild.

Suvnica Week 3 Review, Part 3: Giants of Flesh and Steel (Guild Legends)

And so we finally get to the heart of the Week 3 review. Guild champions and leaders are really able to help drive home what the guild is all about. Let's check out the submissions.

Suvnica Week 3 Review, Part 2: Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (Golgari)

The Azorius review is up, so let's dive into Golgari. There was a broad range of submissions here, and it led to some interesting designs.

Suvnica Week 3 Review, Part 1: We Don't Need No Education (Azorius)

Doing this week slightly out of order. The design challenge for week 4 has already been posted. In the meantime, let's see what you guys had to say about bureaucracy, scholarship, and inevitably boring games of magic.

Designing Suvnica, Week 4: Lessons Learned

You guys are seriously prolific designers. Week 3 doubled the size of the Suvnica card file, moving from 70 to 144 cards. 74 cards is a lot to process and review. I'm in the middle of writing up the card reviews, but it may be a little while longer before they're ready. In the meantime, I wanted to get this week's challenge posted so we can try to double the size of the card file again. Exponential growth FTW!

Designing Suvnica, Week 3: Birth, School, Work, Death

(5/16 Update: Something went kahblewy when I tried to check in on the blog from my phone this evening, and this page reverted to a very old draft. I'm reconstructing it from my RSS feed, and I'm hoping that the comments and the post stayed intact. If you see that your comment was lost, please repost.)
Alright. Four guilds down, six to go. Before we talk this week's guilds though, I wanted to start discussing something that came up in last week's design challenge.

So far, everyone has been pretty good about designing across different rarities. Out of the 70 cards sitting in the Suvnica file on my computer so far, we have about 25 commons, another 25 uncommons, 16 rares and 4 mythics. While a few of the submitted commons should probably be bumped up to uncommon, by and large everyone has been doing a phenomenal job with them.

Suvnica, Week 2 Review, Part 2: Looking Out for the Little Guys (Boros)

While the Dimir creative visions all played into a similar theme — knowledge at any cost — with some variation, the Boros designs had a little more range. Let's see what we came up with.

Suvnica Week 2 Review, Part 1: No Matter What it Costs (Dimir)

Last Monday's Suvnica article was a little lengthy. It was suggested that I break up the review and the challenge, so that's what I'm doing. Let's take a look at what everyone had to say about Dimir.

Designing Suvnica, Week 2: Urban Sprawl

(6/10: This post originally incorporated the design reviews from Week 1 for Gruul (now located here) and Orzhov (now located here). I moved them when making the Suvnica design index for easier navigation and uniformity. Some of the comments below may refer to the design reviews.)