Set Design Pitch: Ekkremes

HV: This set pitch is by Jean-Sébastien Girard.  My comments are in blue.

What is the name of your set?
Ekkremes

What is the core concept of your set?
"A world without mana rediscovers magic."
Basically, the mana of Ekkremes undergoes massive ebbs and flows, with millennia during which magic is barely possible at all and considered a myth by the populace, to times where it magic is as accessible and well-understood as on any normal plane. We are visiting right as the plane is on cusp of such a change.

Common designs:

Set Design: On Your Mark...

Readers, you delivered! We received more than twice as many pitches as we needed. Jay, Daniel, metaghost, Chah, and I have spent the last few days narrowing our pool to a selection of eight compelling pitches for sets. In doing so, we've had to pass up some great designs. Furthermore, some of our chosen sets have great premises, but the submitted cards haven't yet lived up to their potential. That's where you come in!

The chosen pitches will be posted soon. (Within 24 hours, most likely.) Once they're up, you can decide which pitches you're most excited about, and brainstorm cards and mechanics for them. After a few days of discussion, I'll post the round two challenge.

Anyone (except for the blog authors, since we'll be judging them) can submit a round two challenge. The only restriction is that you may not submit a round two challenge for a set that you designed in round one. That's right: everyone except the original designer is allowed to submit a round two challenge for that set. Of course, the original designer is welcome to comment on their own pitch, and they can also submit a round two challenge for somebody else's set.

Please remember: this is not a design competition. We did not pick the eight sets with the best existing cards, or the eight sets whose authors demonstrated the best design skill. We picked a combination of eight sets that we thought had the potential to get our readership as a whole interested in designing them. We wanted every reader to find some pitch genuinely exciting, which meant avoiding some safer choices and trying out ideas that have major unsolved problems. Some of these will crash and burn, and some will soar like eagles. Which is which? It's up to you.

CCDD 102212—Thrashing Crabat

Cool Card Design of the Day
10/22/2012 - I made this card in September before Ravnica was fully spoiled. At the time, it was a black-green mutant horror, based purely on the art. Before sharing it I thought I'd update it as if it were going to be in this block, in which case I wanted it to fit in the future multicolor-matters deck alongside Lobber Crew and Pyroconvergence.

Set Design: Last-Minute Inspiration

There are less than two days left to submit pitches!  If you haven't come up with a set idea yet, now is the time to do it.  For your entertainment and edification, here are some suggestions for generating ideas from nothing.  

NB: the raw material generated by these ideas may, in fact, be terrible.  That's fine.  The goal is to exile your inner editor long enough to start with something.  Once the wretched first draft is down on paper, you can begin the process of refinement.  Starting with something already brilliant is a much less realistic goal.

Set Design: Get Your Pitches Ready!

There are only two days left to submit pitches for the upcoming set design project!  Here are some bottom-up mechanical themes to get your creative juices flowing.  Feel free to post your own excess ideas, either top-down or bottom-up, in the comments.  The more pitches we get, the higher quality of the sets we'll be able to select from!

Nich Grayson's Avacyn Restored Cards (Pt 3/3)

This is the final part of the card designs by Nich Grayson, where he designed cards he wished to see in Avacyn Restored. (The first part is here. The second part is here.) I hope it can inspire ideas and discussion!

Set Design: Submit Your Pitches!

The results from the survey are in, and the new project is going to be a set design!  And you, dear readers, are going to design the core concept of that set.  But first, some details:

The set will be standalone.  Block design is a significant challenge that I don't want to add to the already massive task of creating a set.

It'll be a large set.  Balancing a small standalone set for fun gameplay is something R&D has never managed.

There will be no fixed design team.  Anyone is welcome to contribute.  If you have friends who are interested in being part of the creation of a new set, please invite them to join in!

We'll finish when we finish.  The goals of the exercise are twofold: learn as much as possible about design, and produce as good a final product as possible.  We'll set intermediate deadlines along the way to help things keep moving.  But there won't be any time where we say, "Well, this is still not quite working, but we need to move on."

The fundamental vision for the set will come from one of you.  We're going to have a three round selection process to make sure that our set has the best possible underlying concept.  The first round will involve eight set ideas, which will then be narrowed to five, then three.