Zeffrikommons, Part 1: Common Red Creatures

Here on GA, we tend to put a lot of focus on designing individual cards and mechanics. This is great for the feedback we provide and encourage, and I think that it's a great set of development tools for all of us, especially those of us planning on competing in the next GDS. In fact, the types of designs we spend most of our time on here pushes the skills MaRo & Co. were looking at when selecting the finalists for GDS2. After the essays and the test, we had to design 10 cards that would be used to showcase a set during the course of a preview week. The emphasis was on designing one card to fill one slot that appealed to a particular type of player/reader.



But the very first round of GDS2 tested an entirely different set of skills. Knowing how to show off an array of splashy designs for a set of single slots isn't the only thing R&D wants to see. The first test was to design all the commons (18) for one color of your set. This is a very important skill for all designers to know and work on, and one that doesn't get a tremendous amount of time in the spotlight here. Making a large batch of cards with similar parameters is a very different beast.

I've been radio-silent for a little while due to a combination of work and home stuff keeping me very very busy, but even though I haven't been posting I have been working on building the commons for Zeffrikar. So far I've sketched out my ideas for red and green, and most of white. Today I'll be going through the red creature ideas I've written out for Zeffrikar, and provide some running commentary about my design process along the way. This is far from the only way to design commons, but it's the way that I do it.

As I'm working on this, I'll probably make some edits to my pages, and I'm sure that the comments here will generate several new ideas as well.

This is where I start. I find it hard to focus on creative stuff while using a laptop, so I go old school with pen and paper.

Before anything else, I write out all the block's keyword mechanics and any mechanical focuses I suspect I'll be using. Here's the block keywords and rules text written out:

• Moonburst (This enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each colorless mana spent to cast it.)
• Ghostfire -- Whenever your cast a colorless spell, [effect].
• [Excavate] When ~ ETB, excavate N (to excavate N, put an excavation counter on each of N target lands you control that don't have an excavation counter on them) // Whenever you excavate, [effect].
• Trap
• Landfall
• Quest (Enchantment) - Whenever [cause], sacrifice ~ and [effect] (slightly different from original quests)
• Bravado N (Whenever this creature blocks, becomes blocked by, or fights another creature, it gets +N/+N until EoT)
• Milldrazi N (Whenever ~ attacks, defending player puts the top N cards of her library into her graveyard.)
• Eldrazi Spawn (not a keyword - shorthand for "put an 0/1 colorless eldrazi spawn creature token otb with "sac: add 1 to your mana pool")
• Equipment matters
• DFC
• Colorless matters

Some quick notes here before we move on. These are all the mechanics I have so far that I'll be testing out for the set, at least for common. I will probably add more later as I carve out some more draft archetypes (I've only figured out about half so far). Although most of these appear in Red, not all of them do (like milldrazi). I still list them at the top because while I'm making a red common, I might think of a good blue or black one too.

Also, there's no reason to start making a large batch of commons unless you've already figured out 4+ keywords you can use at common that you want to playtest. Most of your common design is going to be riffing on the keywords and unnamed set mechanics in some way.

The next thing I do is go to gatherer, filter for standard red commons (excluding monocolor), and write down all the standard veins of design space that red commons mine:

• Haste
• Trample
• First/Double Strike
• Menace
• Prowess
• Fight
• Direct Damage
• Target creature(s) can't block ueot
• red looting
• threaten
• Destroy land/artifact
• tokens
• firebreathing
• +X/+0

If you look at that little circled note and attempt to decipher my handwriting (don't do that), you'll see that just literally writing down recurring effects from gatherer opened up an interesting design question: What color or combination of colors gets "destroy target colorless permanent?" It's a very narrow design space, but one that can be explored in Zeffrikar. My gut reaction is to say red (of course my gut reaction is to say red - duh), the color that already destroys your usual colorless permanents like lands and artifacts, and has a history with colorless maters abilities. Is it a color pie bend or a break to allow red to outright destroy creatures and enchantments if they fit this narrow parameter?

In any case, that effect is probably uncommon, and not a creature, so we're shelving that discussion for the time being.

Onto the list!

• ~ is colorless
• 1: ~ becomes colorless until eot
• ~ can only be blocked by colorless creatures (maybe U instead of R)

1) Normally I hate posting cards that aren't rendered, even if it's without art, but for the sake of converting my quick notes into a typed list for this piece, I'm just copying directly from my list. I'll throw in a few renders here and there, but most of these are shorthand text.

2) At this stage, I'm only looking to draft rules text. I'm not trying to cost the card, assign p/t, or name it. Once I have my large pool of commons to pick from, I'll start fitting these proto-cards into a design skeleton, at which point I'll cost them and give them stats. For now though, I'm just coming up with as many ideas for common rules text as I can.

3) Regarding these three in particular, Red used to be the color of becoming colorless. It hasn't been an ability R&D has messed with in something like 15 years, so I don't know if it's still Red or not. For my purposes, it strikes me as a red and blue kind of thing in a set that cares about it, so that's where these cards will reside. The UR draft archetype is tentatively "colorless matters," so these are some of the first cards I came up with.

4) The first two would never exist in the same set in the same color, but at this point I'm putting as many variations of similar cards down on paper as I can. When I get to the design skeleton, I'll figure out which pulls more weight in the context of the rest of the set.

• Moonburst, menace
• Moonburst, trample 3RR 3/1

1) Let's start digging into the process a little more. Once I have pretty much all the mechanical space available to me listed out, I start glancing over it. I'm starting with creatures, with a goal of making 20 or so common creatures. Of all the colors, red is the one I have the best sense for Zeffrikar's draft archetypes (RW equipment matters, RU colorless matters, and RG eldrazi ramp), so that gives me a good sense of what I'm going to want to stress in the commons.

2) As an aside, I've settled on non-colorless Eldrazi being Primary RG, Secondary in U and possibly B.

3) Back to the commons. I know colorless is something that will matter in this set, especially in red, so I came up with red cards that feed that space. Once I had a few of those, I moved onto the first mechanic, Moonburst, which at least at this stage is exclusively a creature mechanic. I want moonburst in red, but I want the swingier versions of it in green and colorless, so I only made a few of these here. It's possible and likely that I'll want an uncommon red card with the mechanic, but I'm not up to that yet.

• As long as you control a colorless creature, ~ gets +2/+0 and has haste (or variations)

Back to colorless matters. "As long as you control a colorless creature..." could be a half (URG) or full horizontal cycle. Threshold checkers like that make for good commons.

• Ghostfire -- Whenever you cast a colorless spell, ~ gains first strike until eot.
• Ghostfire -- Menace until eot
• Ghostfire -- fights target creature
• Ghostfire -- red loot
• Ghostfire -- target can't block until eot

Since red is going to have both colorless matters and equipment matters, ghostfire should have its highest volume here. I made a bunch, literally just going down the list of standard red effects and writing down whatever seemed like it would be interesting. I suspect only two or three commons will be available here, but when I'm filling out the skeleton, I can pick the ones serving it the most.

• Ghostfire -- Threaten or direct damage (uncommon)

If I'm listing out variations for an ability, and I have a good sense for a design that belongs at a higher rarity, I'll write it down and note that it's uncommon. I don't count it towards my goal of at least 20 creatures, but I won't forget about it down the line either.

• When ~ dies, eldrazi spawn (vert. cycle)

Spawn are going to be important for red, but more important for green, so I'm putting in a common enabler here and noting I want a vertical cycle out of it. When I'm filling out the design skeleton, the number of spawn it makes can easily shift, so I'm just leaving it blank for now.

• Bravado/Haste 1/1
• Bravado/Trample 5/2
• Bravado 3/3 (uncommon version with double strike)

Bravado has been changed to be less conditional (it used to only trigger off of interaction with something bigger than it). It's updated Bushido now, and that makes for some better commons. For now I'm leaving it as Bravado N, which serves the needs of this set more, but it could just naturally grant +1/+1 and skip the variable. I don't know the value of the variable at this point, so I'm leaving it blank until its time to put it on the skeleton.

• Etb target creature is colorless until eot
• etb destroy target nonbasic land

When doing your common creatures for a design skeleton, make sure you do some french vanillas and virtual vanillas. You're also going to want to do a cycle of actual vanillas. I'm saving the discussion of french and virtual vanillas for when I'm actually doing the skeleton. Virtual vanillas for our purposes are going to be the etb effects. Each color should have a few of these ready to slip into the design skeleton. I'm not yet sure how much relevance turning a creature already on the battlefield colorless will have yet, but it might, so it will stay in for the time being. Destroying a nonbasic will probably make a big difference in Zeffrikar.

There are a thousand different etb effects you can do, but at this stage I'm trying to use them to poke at the mechanical areas the set wants to emphasize.

• ETB Excavate 1. Whenever you excavate, target creature can't block until eot.
• Whenever you excavate, target creature gains haste until eot.

I wanted to give myself some excavate commons to playtest (if I'm ever able to playtest this thing). I'm currently putting excavate in all five colors, although more emphasized in green and black, which is where landfall is pushing.

• 1/1 when equipped, transform // 2/2 first strike as long as equipped

DFCs do a fantastic job of selling adventure. Common DFCs can be somewhat tricky, especially when you don't have a unifying mechanic for transformation like the werewolves in Innistrad did. 

• Whenever you excavate, transform // 0/8 wall

Aside from adventure, DFCs are going to want to counter larger eldrazi (similar to level up in Rise).

• Prowess (probably Unc.)
• */1 Haste, sac at eot, * = number of mountains you control (Unc.)

Prowess is secondary in red, so it could be common or uncommon. I'm pushing it to uncommon for now so I can pair it with something interesting (it doesn't really have much direct interaction with any of my sets abilities (other than traps))

The last card hits on the "lands matter" that Zeffrikar wants. It's not played up in red, so I'm putting it at uncommon. Blue and White will probably also see a single "Plains/Islands" matter card at uncommon.

***

And that's it! I now have twenty red common creatures to pick and choose from when I'm going through the design skeleton. That doesn't even include the vanilla and french vanillas I'm going to make sure to have. Since I'll only need 10-11 to fill the needs of a design skeleton, I'm really able to figure out which of these designs is best serving the needs of the set overall, rather than trying to design to fit each individual slot as I'm building the skeleton.

Let me know what you think. Critique and suggestions are welcome, and if you have specific questions about my process or commons in general, I'll do my best to answer. I'll be following this up soon with the common red noncreatures, and going through the rest of my notes.

-Zeff