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!

Rethinking Izzet: The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled...

Izzet Recommended Reading

• True Blue
• Seeing Red
• Creative Differences
• Designing for Izzet
• An In-depth Look At The Izze- Hey, Look At That!

So Izzet, eh? This color pairing has a high appeal for most would-be designers (and not just because Maro talks them up every chance he gets). You all know the drill. On Ravnica, Izzet is clearly a philosophically Blue guild with Red methods.

On Ravnica, we're looking for a guild that craves freedom and wants to achieve it through Blue means. I was tempted to turn this into an intellectual anarchist movement, but I've already done one school-based guild, and I think that's where I'm leaning with Selesnya too. Enough academics. Sure, Blue's default tool is superior knowledge, but that's not the only toy it gets to play with. Trickery is a big part of Blue's means (illusions, redirecting spells, etc.) What if this was the guild of the archetypal trickster, a la Coyote in Native American mythology, or Anansi from West African mythology.

Tricksters often use their wit to make a person averse to change see the futility of their stubbornness. They open people's eyes to alternative viewpoints not through direct statements of their opinions and beliefs, but by subtly nudging their target in a direction to reach the same conclusion on their own. Tezzi adherents want to show the world the futility of bureaucratic systems, of allowing individuals to be controlled and suppressed, but they do it not through the outright aggression of Red, but through the teachable moments of Blue.

Rethinking Selesnya: Hero's Journey

Selesnya Recommended Reading

• It's Not Easy Being Green
• The Great White Way
• Group Think
• Designing for Selesnya
• Digging Into the Conclave

Ravnican Selesnya is a philosophically very White guild, that occasionally dips its toes into Green's mechanics and tools. Their party line is all about unity and belonging to the group. It's essentially a cultish religion with druidic elements to it. The green elements to the guild don't really fall into the means/end archetype I've been trying to shoehorn each guild into (as with Boros, and we'll see again next week with Simic). Instead, Green informs the flavor and the actual mechanics, as opposed to the creative means and tools I generally look for.

In any case, for Suvnica, I'll be trying to craft a philosophically Green guild that uses White tools to achieve its goals. Having Green as the color driving the philosophy of a guild can be tricky, since Green isn't seeking to change the world in any way, instead desiring that everything be allowed to develop naturally and fulfill its own destiny. Using White's tools (community, structure, law) to achieve these ends, I think that we end up with a guild that, similar to my reimagining of Azorius, is fundamentally an Academy. Instead of seeking knowledge, this school/temple/monastery seeks to help its students and adherents ultimately understand their own destinies and assist them in realizing it. Mechanically, this is going to take the opposite approach from Ravnican Selesnya. Instead of amassing an army of anonymous creatures, this guild wants a few champions (selected by destiny) who receive support from the other creatures.

Making Rules and Breaking Rules

Normal rules for early-stage Suvnica apply: 

• Pick or create a new vision for the {G}{W} and {U}{R} color pairings
• Design some cards that illustrate the new vision
• No keywords 
• No cycles
• Well, almost no cycles. Last week we did legends. This week's bonus challenge is a little more involved.

BONUS CHALLENGE

Instead of riffing off of one of the classic (or Return to) Ravnica cycles, the challenge this week is to make one of your own. 

• Design two cards that are part of a ten card cycle appearing across the Suvnica block
• The cycle shouldn't too-closely resemble one we've already seen on Ravnica
• One should be from one of this week's pairings (Izzet or Selesnya)
• One should be from one of the previous week's challenges (Azorius, Boros, Dimir, Golgari, Gruul, Orzhov)
• This one should be from a vision of the chosen guild that haven't already designed for
• Make sure you tell me whose vision you're designing for
• I haven't posted the Azorius or Golgari reviews yet, so you can read up on the various visions in the comments here
• The cards should, as always, illustrate the creative vision that you chose to design for
• Tight cycles are better, but by no means mandatory

Here's my second card:

It, along with Rite of Absorption above are part of a cycle similar to the Burst cycle in Odyssey. I designed this one for Jules' torture-happy Dimir. 

That's it for me. Let's see what you guys got.

-zeff