The surviving sets are:
The sets we're cutting are:
- Muraganda. The initial pitch for Muraganda was extremely strong, but it didn't excite the readership enough. We only received one pitch for it in the second round, so it received an early retirement.
- Mondombre. This world was much more popular in the second round, but none of the pitches really moved it beyond the same dungeon-crawling tropes demonstrated in the original. We felt that it had shown less capacity for growth than other worlds, so it also had to go.
- Seas of Higaro. This was a tough one to cut, because people came up with some very fine designs for this set. Ultimately, however, none of them successfully evoked the feeling of "Pirate World", which spelled doom for a top-down set.
Thanks to everyone who submitted pitches! There were far more good designs than we can publish on this blog (although they're all up on the wiki, due to Chah's tireless efforts) and we're extremely grateful for the work you put in.
We chose to specifically promote one pitch for most of the surviving sets. Sephorgia got two which were both highly rated and took the set in rather different directions. However, anyone who's excited about a particular world should consider reading all the pitches for that world, because many of them contained viable ideas for future pitches.
The round three challenge will go up in a few days. In the meantime, it's never to soon too brainstorm ideas for your favorite set, either here or on the wiki.
As the judge who was fighting most to keep Seas of Higaro, I will clarify that I did see potential in the pirate-y mechanics submitted (they inspired two CCDDs after all), but was in the minority.
ReplyDeleteThe argument that sealed its fate was that every Magic set needs a twist and that Seas had never gotten that twist, it was still just high seas / pirates. While I can imagine several twists that could have saved it (Discovery of the New World / Collapse of Atlantis / Surface Dwellers vs Underwater Civilization), there's no point crying over spilled milk. We still have five excellent worlds to mess with and we/I/you can always come back to Pirate World later.
Jay, I didn't mean that every set needs a twist. I do think a Pirate World requires a special twist or a special invention to feel like a Magic set and to make the game play feel like it's taking place at sea.
DeleteWhy does pirate/nautical/Caribbean world need a twist and Egyptian world doesn't? I'm not so much disagreeing, as really curious about the underlying reasoning.
DeleteMore ideas I liked from pitches that weren't selected:
ReplyDeleteSausagecookie's use of Voyage and a dangerous but interesting masochism sub-theme in black.
Pasteur's use of "When ~ becomes tapped, target creature gains lifelink until end of turn." in combination with Voyage/Rally.
Ben's Ambush 1R (You may cast this for its ambush cost if a creature blocked this turn.) which is basically the opposite of Bloodthirst and not in a bad way.
Evan's Spawn:
Lizard Nest 2G
Enchantment - Encounter
At the beginning of combat on your turn, spawn two 1/1 green Lizard creature tokens. (To spawn a creature token, put it onto the battlefield tapped and attacking. At end of combat, if all creatures created spawned by this permanent died, sacrifice this permanent. Otherwise, exile those creatures.)
Jacob's Dungeon land subtype.
I'm thankful for Evan's effort toward Mondombre. And I assume Jacob's Dungeon subtype was meant for Mondombre as well. Not sure on Ambush, though. Whatever the case may be, thanks folks!
Delete