Which set are you pitching?
Frontier
What is the name of your pitch?
Land of the Lawless
What are the major mechanical themes in the set according to your vision?
Duels at high noon: duel (Each duelist draws a card, then discards a card. You win if the discarded cards share a card type.)
Gold rush: Prospect--Whenever ~ attacks, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card, then put all cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in any order. DO SOMETHING for each card revealed this way.
Slaughtered natives: Bloodline (When ~ dies, exile any number of creature cards from your graveyard and put that many 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens onto the battlefield.)
Banditry: "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player" triggers.
Present a booster pack (10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic rare) that shows off the set as well as possible. These cards need not be original designs; previous challenges and other people's ideas are fair game.
Bank Guard 2W
Creature - Human Soldier (C)
Whenever ~ blocks or becomes blocked by a creature, duel its controller. If you win, ~ gets +0/+3 until end of turn. (Each duelist draws a card, then discards a card. You win if the discarded cards share a card type.)
2/1
Duress B
Sorcery (C)
Target opponent reveals his or her hand. You choose a noncreature, nonland card from it. That player discards that card.
If you want to catch bandits, you can't be afraid to adopt their tactics.
Misappropriated Mount 5B
Creature - Wurm (C)
Bloodline (When ~ dies, exile any number of creature cards from your graveyard and put that many 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens onto the battlefield.)
"They may let you ride, but that doesn't mean they've accepted your rule." -Grufskir Longhorn
4/1
Mineshaft Collapse 4R
Sorcery (C)
Destroy target land. ~ deals 1 damage to each creature you don't control.
Dangerous? Of course its dangerous. Why did you think I hired you?
Juvenile Rattler G
Creature - Snake (C)
Deathtouch
The young ones are the deadliest. Once one bites, it's giving you every drop of venom it's got.
1/1
Glintveil Adept 2U
Creature - Human Wizard (C)
Prospect -- Whenever ~ attacks, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card, then put all cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in any order. Creatures the defending player controls get -1/-0 until end of turn for each card revealed this way.
2/2
Dodge a Bullet W
Instant (C)
Target creature you control gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Once you've seen what I've seen, you won't think the prayers are so silly anymore.
Return to Nature 2G
Instant (C)
Destroy target artifact or enchantment, then duel its controller. You gain life equal to its converted mana cost if you win. (Each duelist draws a card, then discards a card. You win if the discarded cards share a card type.)
Towns cover the places where our dead lie, but one day they too will crumble.
Eager Arrival 1R
Creature - Viashino Warrior (C)
Prospect -- Whenever ~ attacks, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card, then put all cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in any order. ~ gets +1/+0 for each card revealed this way.
1/1
Play the Odds 2U
Sorcery (C)
Look at the top six cards of target player's library. You may put any number of those cards into that player's graveyard.
Ain't it funny how one little weight in a die can make the weights of the world go away?
Vessel of Memory 4G
Creature - Minotaur Shaman (U)
Bloodline (When ~ dies, exile any number of creature cards from your graveyard and put that many 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens onto the battlefield.)
6G, Sacrifice ~: Draw a card for each creature you control.
3/3
Coach Robber 3R
Creature - Human Rogue (U)
Haste
Whenever ~ deals combat damage to a player, you may discard two cards. If you do, draw two cards.
If you didn't want your money taken, you should've bought horses that could outrun me.
2/2
Sharpened Spurs 2
Artifact - Equipment (U)
Equipped creature has haste and trample.
Equip 1
Trunsh's Seeker 1UU
Creature - Illusion (M)
Prospect -- Whenever ~ attacks, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card, then put all cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in any order. For each card revealed this way put a token copy of ~ onto the battlefield, tapped and attacking.
Nobody could tell Trunsh where to find great treasure, so she checked everywhere.
2/1
The judges had mixed opinions on this version of dueling. I find it difficult to evaluate how advantageous the effect is, which is not a priori bad, but it does make it less of a marketing tool. (After all, you don't always want to let your opponent loot.) Some of us worried that dueling seemed too arbitrary; if you don't have the right card type in hand, you can't win. I suspect that this sort of guessing game is ultimately frustrating, because it offers players little actual control over the outcome of their duels. Playtesting would probably be very illuminating.
Prospecting is a neat way to use the library as a random number generator. Are there enough common scalable effects to be worth the action word? Possibly, although it might lead to some awkward designs. The particular cards here make it repeatable at common, which I would avoid; too many subroutines would disrupt the flow of play. Maybe the common effects could look more like this:
Loxodon Medicine Keeper
4W
Creature - Elephant Shaman (C)
Prospect -- When ~ enters the battlefield, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card, then put all cards revealed this way on the bottom of your library in any order. For each card revealed this way, you gain 2 life.
3/4
It's still a bit wordy, though, for a rather minor effect. Chah suggested that it should actually put the land into your hand so that it feels more worthwhile. There's also a development concern about older formats where decks can play fewer lands.
Bloodline is not my favorite mechanic. It's a creature keyword, but it doesn't care which creature it's on. The fact that it takes creatures out of the graveyard is anti-synergetic with itself. I can see that it works nicely with looting and hence dueling, but I don't see enough design space for it to be worth the keyword. Also, the fact that Vessel of Memory requires rather detailed knowledge of the rules to use correctly is unfortunate.
There are lots of clever synergies in this pack, which I really appreciate. Sharpened Spurs lets you get in with your saboteur creatures. Mineshaft Collapse kills off your opponents' Spirit tokens. Play the Odds screws up their Prospecting and gives you a better shot at predicting the next Duel. And lots of these cards have excellent flavor as well. Jules wasn't just throwing a bunch of spells and mechanics together; this is a tiny slice of an actual set!
However, there wasn't any mechanic here that I thought would truly grab players. People need a clear and obvious reason to buy the set. While I think many of these mechanics would play well, there's an element of deckbuilding appeal and excitement that's not quite present.
This version of duel - a mechanic that takes a lot of time to execute, provides card selection to both players, is performed frequently, and has only a small effect on the board state - is very strongly reminiscent of clash, which I believe is one of the least popular mechanics of all time.
ReplyDeleteWe're not going to know which version of duel is best until we playtest. It's a good point that the benefit for successfully dueling needs to be proportional to the effort required.
DeleteI'm not content with the mechanics either. I'd been working on a completely different set of mechanics, but couldn't work out their problems, so I put this pitch together over a couple of hours as I quickly nailed down mechanics so that I could build a framework around them.
ReplyDeleteProspect doesn't have enough cards to be a real mechanic, and can't coexist with Duel because the games will become too chance based. On top of that, for the reasons noted, this implementation of Duel likely will prove frustrating.
The point about Bloodline playing the same on different creatures isn't quite accurate because how they'll die is different, but is certainly a downside. Perhaps it should instead key off of the creature's power. That said, while Vessel of Memory ostensibly requires rules knowledge, I imagine most people will assume its abilities work well with one another.
I've done a little bit more work on the setting since and ended up with a different setup, keeping Bloodline as "Conduit":
Tribe's Neigh W
Creature-Horse Cleric (C)
0/3
Conduit (When Chieftain’s Progeny dies, exile any number of creature cards from your graveyard and put that many 1/1 colorless Spirit creature tokens onto the battlefield.)
Snap Shovel 2R
Instant (C)
Destroy target artifact.
Prospect. (Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card, then put all cards revealed this way into your hand.)
Chinkril Cowlbearer 1BB
Creature-Scorpion Rogue (C)
Intimidate
Hold-Up (Whenever Chinkril Cowlbearer deals combat damage to a player, that player may discard a card. If they don’t, put a +1/+1 counter on Chinkril Cowlbearer.)
Conduit sounds like it belongs in Ekkremes. How about something like this?
DeleteBloodline (When ~ dies, look at the top 3 cards of your library. You may reveal a creature card that shares a creature type with ~ into your hand. Put the rest back on top or bottom in any order.)
I'm glad the new Prospect does something on its own, though this it's a pretty powerful baseline for a keyword. I imagine stapling Treasure Hunt to a card would increase its cost by 3 or at least 1C since it's strictly better than a cantrip.
Hold-Up is cute and probably worth putting on 2-4 cards, but not as a keyword.
This version of Prospect also plays well in Battlecruiser-Magic: Get Lots of Lands if the set goes in that direction. The effect could be made cheaper than a cantrip if you only put the revealed lands in your hand, and not the non-land:
DeleteProspector 2R
Creature - Dwarf
2/2
When ~ enters the battlefield, Prospect (to prospect, reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. Put all land cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library.)
If we went with getting all the lands, but not the nonland I'd want to leave the nonland on top. Otherwise it has the same feel-bad moment of losing your Dragon.
DeleteOne other note is that the Treasure Hunt version actually gives you more nonlands than lands. 1 nonland, and an average of 0.7 lands in a normal limited deck.
Good point. I was worried about 'stalling' on non-lands preventing you from profitably prospecting twice in a turn. A better way around that issue is probably to include a few cards that let you interact with the top of the deck, either by milling (merrow witsniper) or interacting with creatures on top of your deck (llanowar empath, call of the wild)
Delete@Jay: I think hold-up's a little bit broader than that. Innistrad's vampire/slith mechanic showed up on 6 cards (13 over the block), and Hold-Up is less punishing to stumbles, so should be able to support at least as many.
DeleteOn Bloodline 2.0: That solves a lot of mechanical issues, but I don't think it captures the "spirits of the dead" feeling as well as, say, Totem.
@James: That's an issue I hadn't considered, but honestly I think the prospect of getting nothing for your trouble the first time around is a bigger risk. Plain old cantrips would also solve the issue, but the library manipulation does more for the set.
The difference between Holdup and Sliths is that one is a griefer mechanic. Yes, holdup is actually less strong because it gives your opponent a choice, but it's not a choice most players will enjoy.
DeleteI'm not actually clear why we're going for a "spirits of the dead" feeling at all.
I was looking at that route because I think the natives in the Western genre encapsulate the sudden and unknowable, and nothing is more that way than death. Putting that faction in close association with death should add to the vibe.
DeleteHow about cascade?
DeleteIt scares me from a development perspective, but I've got to admit it's a good fit.
DeleteTo me, Conduit and Bloodline feel weird as keywords, because I might draw multiple cards with that keyword but I'll only get the army-making effect that I expect out of only one of those cards during a game. Somehow, when I draw some cards with a keyword, I want each of those cards to do the thing that the keyword makes me imagine it will do.
ReplyDeleteIt might feel better if the keyword was something that placed on the card that gets exiled from the grave. I've tried to come up with something that represents native american spirituality:
Totemic Hawk 3W
Creature - Bird Spirit
2/3
Flying
Animal totem 1W (1W, Exile this card from your graveyard inspiring a creature you control.)
Whenever a creature inspired by ~ attacks, you may have creatures you control gain flying until end of turn.
Totem is cool. I was expecting the prefix to be a characteristic that defined which creatures it could be exiled onto, but Totemic Hawk is a perfect example of why that would be lame. (Because giving birds flying is redundant.)
DeleteI agree totem is cool, making creatures into aura-like spirit animals. I'd rather it gave the benefit directly to the inspiree, rather than as a global effect:
DeleteTotemic Hawk 3W
Creature - Bird Spirit
2/3
Animal totem W (W, Exile this card from your graveyard inspiring a creature you control.)
~ and creatures it inspires have flying.
James makes a good point, but either way this mechanic seems like a great counterpoint to scavenge, hopefully with fewer costing issues.
DeleteAnother possibility for Prospect is a keyword I've been sitting on called Wish (from Dominion):
ReplyDeleteProspect (Name a card. Look at the top card of your library. If it's the named card, you may reveal it and put it into your hand.)
or
Prospect N (Name a card. Look at the top N cards of your library. You may reveal a card with that name and put it into your hand. Put the rest back on top in any order.)
I like this ability a lot in constructed decks, but I worry about feel-bad moments when you forget which removal spell you drafted.
DeleteRandom thoughts as I read through the entry:
ReplyDeleteThe lawless Frontier could really benefit from some sort of loot to fight over. What are these Bandits even trying to get? I see Bank Guard as a card name, but in Magic terms don't understand the struggle of the set.
Could some of things that happen be more homogenized? We have "Blocking or blocked" triggers and "Attack" triggers. And we have "Put cards onto the bottom of the library" effects and "Put cards into the graveyard" effects.
Dodge. A. Bullet! You can't just reference a bullet like that unless you plan on including guns in some way, artwise or flavorwise. From the looks of the entry it's going to be a Portal Second Age approach, where they are referenced only incidentally.
I was really hopein as I read it, that Return to Nature would have a Prospect trigger and gain you life equal to the cards revealed. The CMC will most often be pretty low anyway, but at least you always gain some life with Prospect. Maybe gaining 2-3 life off an expensive, marginal effect is not appealing.
Eager Arrival and Glintveil Adept (these names are really off theme for the setting, btw,) both underwhelm because the risk of whiffing on them makes attacking really unattractive. Many players will be too afraid of spectacular failure to ever risk them. I think creatures with prospect could benefit from low power high toughness. That way if you fail, you don't necessarily lose your creature. So players will feel better about taking the risk and attacking with them.
For what it's worth, I think Bloodline is okay. I would basicallty cost it for free on cards, but the incremental value is nice for Spike. The biggest problem with it in this entry, you don't do enough with it. Play the Odds fills your 'yard with free creatures to exile. But Vessel of Memory is really underwhelming. I have all these dinky 1/1's and when I finally getting a midsize creature, I have to sac it for its synergistic effect!? I would much prefer something like:
Vessel of Memory
Bloodline (Reminder text.)
When Vessel of Memory dies, you draw a card for each Spirit creature you control.
It's linear, but there's nothing wrong with calling out your intended interactions to properly support limited and deck construction.
Finally, I am getting really tired of attack triggers being so overused. So when I see Prospect tied to an attack trigger I have to wonder why? What's the flavor connection? It doesn't make any sense to me. Panning for land is approprietly Prospectery, but not the attack trigger. If we do this setting, I hope we can find a more natural and flavorful way to trigger Prospect. And then maybe the scalable effects will also feel less unpredictable and scary.
All good points, thanks for sharing them. The flavor certainly wasn't lined up as well as it could have been in my submission, and this implementation of Prospect probably just isn't going to work as a major mechanic regardless of trigger condition. There simply aren't many effects that can be done cleanly with an X without choosing X targets (which would be tricky, rules-wise).
DeleteAs for triggers in general, attack triggers are all over the place because it pushes the inertia of the game towards ending it. For prospect specifically, the riskiness may be too high, but it was intentional. Leaving your life behind to dig for riches is a huge risk and I was trying to evoke that in gameplay.
On Vessel of Memory: You're version's likely superior. I'd come to mine from the other angle (giving players a way to kill off their own bloodline creature), but something like Altar Reap would be a better method than an on-board trick.