Fiercefang Sergeant (common)
{4}{B}{B}
Creature - Rat Soldier
Intimidate
Warborne (CARDNAME costs {1} less to cast for each creature that attacked this turn.)
Watermark: Legion
3/3
Melius Recruit (common)
{1}{W}
Creature - Human Soldier
Veteran 1 (Whenever this creature deals combat damage for the first time, put a +1/+1 counter on it after combat.)
Watermark: Sanctum
1/3
Corpse Catapult (uncommon)
{2}
Artifact
{2}, exile a creature card from your graveyard, {T}: CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target player.
Watermark: Legion
Hospice Captain (common)
{2}{G}
Creature - Elf Cleric
Unite - Whenever another Elf or Cleric creature enters the battlefield under your control, you gain 2 life.
Watermark: Sanctum
2/2
Warborne would be easier to track if it counted tapped creatures instead of attacks, but I can't decide whether allowing things to be blocked and killed would make it more fun or less. I guess that's what playtesting's for!
ReplyDeleteVeteran seems like fun, but it has the potential to lead to some snowball-y gameplay when you have a combat trick.
Yeah, I don't love the memory issues either. However, this version of Warborne encourages attacking even when some of your creatures won't survive the battle, which I strongly like. Also, "I'm gonna attack with three guys and then cast him for {1}{B}{B}" feels more right to me than "I'm gonna attack and see how expensive he is after combat."
DeleteHow can Veteran snowball? It only ever happens once.
It's way less snowball-y than if it were repeatable, to be sure, it's just that a successful combat trick is generally already trading up. This heightens the highs (making the trick yet better) and lowers the lows (your creatures are overpriced when you can't force survival). By no means a death knell, just something to watch closely in playtesting.
DeleteThere's also the middle ground where a combat trick doesn't need to be as successful to trigger Veteran. For example, I have a 1/1 with Veteran 2, I can chump some fatty with it and cast a damage prevention spell. Normally this would be a lousy play, but Veteran makes it much better.
DeleteMy first reaction was that Warborne is a win-more mechanic, that doesn't help you at all when you're on defense, but Battlecry and Battalion are clearly in the same boat, so that can't be a deal-breaker.
DeleteBloodthirst is also worth a comparison, since both reward you with an unusually efficient creature for attacking. One for getting through at all, the other for attacking regardless of outcome.
This mechanic wants to reward kamikaze play, and to do that, we'll need rares that are totally worth sacrificing a creature to get out one turn earlier, and probably also creatures that are particularly inexpensive to sacrifice.
And creatures that create creature tokens when attacking, à la brimaz and hero of bladehold.
DeleteYes, the Legion has plenty of warm bodies to throw at their enemies. (Couldn't call them "The Horde" or "The Swarm" because Blizzard steals all the best names...)
DeleteDoes Warborne count creatures that attacked this turn, or creatures that are still on the battlefield?
ReplyDeleteVeteran means "for the first time ever", not "for the first time this turn", right? Should this be templated like Monstrous with "if it isn't a Veteran"?
Warborne is intended to count all creatures that attacked that turn, no matter where they went.
DeleteYes, Veteran is a "once ever" event. I'm not sure what the best template is.
Maybe "At EOYT, if ~ attacked and has no +1/+1 counters on it, put a +1/+1 counter on it."
DeleteI like Veteran but I think Melius Recruit is too good. It's a half-price Great Hart unless your opponent casts a three-power blocker by turn 2.
DeleteI agree with Jay on this. It would probably be better as a 1/2 or cost 2W.
DeleteAs for the Veteran, I do prefer the monstrus templating:
"Whenever this creature deals combat damage, if it is not a veteran, put a +1/+1 counter on it and it becomes a veteran"
Another option with Veteran wording is "whenever this deals combat damage for the first time in a game, put a +1/+1 counter on it at end of combat"
DeleteI get the impression from this set that single large creatures on the Sanctum side won't always be enough to shut down the Legion, so I'm not worried about Melius Recruit being too big. I'm picturing a lot of deathtouch, creatures with death triggers, Fatal Blow, token making, and of course cheap Warborne creatures to let you stay aggressive past a Sanctum defense.
Frilled Oculus was an important blocker in Gatecrash, but even a 3/5 for two mana wasn't always enough to stem the tide of Boros aggression. I see cards like Melius Recruit playing a similar role here.
Veteran has a lot of potential and I think warrants some iteration.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure watermarks are pulling their weight in this set. I don't think it's enough for watermarks to simply identify factions; we have art and flavor text for that. The Ravnica watermarks made the structure of the original Ravnica block more clear so people wouldn't just see a collection of random gold cards; the Scars of Mirrodin watermarks illustrated how the balance of the war shifted over the course of the block. Other sets with clear factions (Alara, Innistrad) didn't have watermarks; I don't think most sets should.
I disagree. A set that's about the clash of two major armies-- armies that presumably have flags-- is the perfect place for watermarks.
DeleteIf watermarks were appropriate in Scars of Mirrodin, how could they not be here? My question is what does this set's war offer that Scars' war didn't?
DeleteWatermarks were brilliant in the Scars war not because there were multiple sides to a conflict - every set in recent memory has had a central conflict. They were brilliant because:
Deletea) the Mirrans and the Phyrexians are both classic factions in Magic, creating immediate emotional investment
b) they showed the shifting tide of the war, including a clear winner
c) they allowed the scope of the war to change independently of the color pie (for example, there were no red or white Phyrexians in the Scars of Mirrodin set)
d) they allowed factions to be tied to mechanics rather than colors
e) they allowed Phyrexia to exist as an entity defined by its otherness - cards had a Mirran mark by default unless they earned a Phyrexian mark through a series of objective criteria
Does Sanctuary do any of these things? If so, I'm not seeing it. Remember that two GDS2 candidates were criticized by R&D for not providing good enough justifications for watermarks.
You expect "the shifting tide of war" or "factions tied to mechanics" to be visible from four cards with zero explanatory text? It seems like I've failed to make clear what "A Set in Four Cards" is meant to be.
DeleteMy goal in this series is to communicate as much as possible about a set in four designs with only card names and mechanics. These cards are intended to raise more questions than they answer, and give the reader hints about what other cards might look like. They are not meant to be a microcosm that makes perfect sense all by itself.
I'm working with a three-inch square of a larger canvas. If you see a toe without a foot, please imagine the foot instead of telling me that floating toes don't belong in a painting.
Never stopped Dali.
Delete"A set in four cards" suggests to me that the four cards should demonstrate what the set is about. In your four cards I don't see the need for watermarks.
DeleteDo these four cards prove to you that the set should not have watermarks, regardless of what the other two hundred cards in the set are?
Delete"The shifting tides of war" will indeed feature prominently in Sanctuary, given that it is a block about siege warfare between two military factions.
DeleteSaid factions will indeed be "tied to mechanics rather than colors".
Neither of those facts are portrayed in the four cards, and that's fine with me. There are already five colors and only four cards; I'm not likely to spend two cards on one color. And the change in watermark proportions over the course of a block is, of course, impossible to portray with four cards from one set.
But both of these could be reasonably inferred as reasons that I might have chosen to include watermarks.
The one note I'd add to this discussion is that, from just the four cards visible, I inferred that black and red (the traditional "horde" colours) were the Legion, and white and green (those with the strongest association with Sanctuaries and holiness and similar) were the Sanctum. I think the four cards would have communicated a bit more about the set had they somehow broken away from those associations.
DeleteThis might have been an occasion to break the normally-sensible rule that when doing a SIFC, you don't duplicate a colour.
GW vs. BR was indeed my intention.
DeleteWhich color would you have duplicated?
I love the flavour of corpse catapult.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me feel I am playing Magic: the Gathering in the world of Warcraft 3...
ReplyDeleteI like the mechanics proposed, although if it is a large set, veteran does not pull enough weight.
Warcraft 3 was, in fact, exactly what I was aiming for!
DeleteThen kuddos! Good job :)
DeleteI also prefer the "is a veteran" templating.
ReplyDeleteHospice Captain intrigues me. The watermarks suggest that there will be a plane-wide conflict between two mega-factions, Legion (Aggro/fast) and Sanctuary (Control/slow). The "Unite" ability word suggests that tribal will be a major (sub)theme of the set. However, on the Sanctuary side, we see a creature that's neither an Elf nor a Cleric. Doesn't that suggest that the mega-faction Sanctuary is actually a large smattering of *dis*united factions?
Good observations. Yes, it does; I'm aiming for the "diverse alliance" trope, with tribal as the glue that gives players the incentive to play a Soldier deck or Elf deck within Sanctum. With only two factions, you don't really want there to be one dominant "Sanctum deck".
DeleteThe only further observation I have is that, upon seeing these four cards, my first thought was: Wow, I really like Veteran. That's a great, simple, combat-relevant mechanic that would lead to interesting play.
ReplyDelete