Suvnica Week 17 Review: No Mercy (Ruthless Designs)

Today we'll be taking a look at the submissions for our second guild keyword challenge: Ruthless for the Radkar.

Designing Suvnica, Week 17: Alpha Dog Days

The test deck we'll be pairing off our Illustrate test deck against will showcase this mechanic:

Suvnica Week 16 Review: Show Your Work (Illustrate Designs)

Illustrate was one of my favorite Suiroza mechanics to come out of this project so far. It does present us with a lot of problems, not all of which I'm convinced are surmountable, but I think of the exemplar family of mechanic designs, it had the most going for it - it was unique, memorable, fit nicely in both the {W}{U} color pie and Suiroza's creative vision.

However, it doesn't mesh too well with NWO (both in terms of mechanical and board complexity), it is very hard to create interesting cards that are useful as an aura that don't become bah-roken once they're global bonuses, and finally, the mechanic sits on auras, with all the baggage that comes with it - two-for-one removal, dead cards if you don't have an enchantable creature, etc.

Designing Suvnica, Week 16(b): An Offer You Can't Refuse

While the designs for Illustrate are coming in, being evaluated, and put into a test deck, we might as well get the ball rolling on giving the Suiroza a test deck to fight against. There weren't nearly as many Radkar keyword submissions, so I think we'll try to narrow this list down to just three final keywords to test.

Designing Suvnica, Week 16: Teaching By Example

After looking over all the feedback in the thread, I've settled on the final four mechanics that we're going to be initially designing for in Suiroza. The first we're going to be designing for is Exemplification.

Designing Suvnica, Week 15: More Equal than Others

Time for us to start narrowing down the final mechanics we'll be playtesting with. I was originally going to host this part of the proceedings over on the guild's profile page, but I think I'll just throw the final candidates for playtesting there and have the conversation and arguments on a separate page instead.

Mechanical Engineering: The Next Stages of Suvnica

A typical Fall-realease large expansion set has 249 cards. Excluding basic lands, the entirety of the Return to Ravnica block had 654 unique cards. Since we started Suvnica a few months ago, we have created (and in a few cases, pre-printed) 845 cards. Now that we've wrapped up the last of our guild keyword submissions, it's probably a good time to take a look at where we're at and where we'll be going.

Suvnica Week 14 Review, Part 2: Peacemaker (Sorba Keywords)

Our last set of reviews covers the vigilante guild. There were a number of really cool keywords thrown out there for this one. Here's some of the ways we can protect those that can't protect themselves.

Suvnica Week 14 Review, Part 1: Living in the Future (Kismi Keywords)

Kismi proved to be one of the more challenging guilds to design keywords for. Because so much of their identity is tied up in predicting the future, and because translating that into game mechanics leads to either very cumbersome rules text or unfun methods of playing, it was tricky to find a keyword that hit that sweet spot of fun, grokable, flavorful, NWO-friendly rules. Still, we came up with a number of really strong efforts here. Let's see what everyone had to say about our fortune-tellers.

Suvnica Week 13 Review, Part 2: Colorblind (Guild Artifact Cycles)

Here's a secret - Ravnica's cycle of guild artifacts is directly responsible for Suvnica even being a thing. Most of them were pretty bad, but I still think that they were some of the funner designs to come out of a set practically overflowing with fun designs. There were a few different things that inspired me to pitch this project, but a WAC around the time of Dragon's Maze got my hopes up that they would revisit the cycle in DGM (they didn't). I kept struggling to make a Simic artifact, and while I kept coming up with good designs (I thought) none of them felt like they made sense in Simic creatively. This in turn got me thinking about guilds with different philosophical focuses, and now here we are 750 card designs later. More rambling later. For now, here's the designs you guys came up with for the Suvnican analogue to that cycle:

Suvnica Week 13 Review, Part 1: Thug Story (Radkar Keyword)

Terrorists, grifters, and thugs, the Radkar thrive at the intersection of Power and Chaos. Let's see what kind of keywords everyone came up with for them.

Suvnica Week 12 Review, Part 2: The Last Horizons I Can See Are Now Resigned to Memory (Rimid Keywords)

The Rimid are vampires that feed off of memories instead of blood. You all came up with some cool ways of representing that through keyword mechanics. Here are some potential guild keywords for the Rimid.

Suvnica Week 12 Review, Part 1: And the Champion Is... (Sahleen Keywords)

I've fallen pretty behind on reviewing cards, and I'm sorry for that. The Sahleen/Rimid challenge ran several weeks ago already. I'm going to try to catch up on my backlog over the course of this week. First up are the Sahleen, which inspired a pretty cool collection of keywords.

Designing Suvnica, Week 14: Present Tense

Here we are -- the last week of keyword design challenges. I'll probably be taking a week or two off after this to figure out where we're going next with Suvnica (and to catch up on card reviews -- I know I'm a few weeks behind). Let's wrap up this stage and dive into Kismi and Sorba.

Suvnica Guild Profile: The Sorba

(This is part of a series of documents that are meant to provide snapshots of each of the guilds. These documents will probably be updated with some regularity. They are meant to provide a starting reference point when developing new cards and ideas for the guilds.)

{R}{W} The Sorba

The Sorba have spent the better part of the life of the guildpact kicking themselves for having ever agreed to it in the first place. The initial founders were a group that honestly believed that, as a theoretically neutral governing instrument, it would be a force of great social justice. After the compact was made, the Sorba quickly came to realize that the same factions that attempted to take advantage of the disenfranchised and weak would continue to do so, regardless of the pact.

Suvnica Guild Profile: The Kismi

(This is part of a series of documents that are meant to provide snapshots of each of the guilds. These documents will probably be updated with some regularity. They are meant to provide a starting reference point when developing new cards and ideas for the guilds.)

{G}{U} The Kismi

Fate has a very prominent role on Suvnica, and no group is more immersed in tapping into the signals fate broadcasts and interpreting them than the Kismi.

Suvnica Week 11 Review: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Guilds are great and all, but even multicolor sets need some monocolor love. Let's see what guild-neutral cycles you guys came up with.

Designing Suvnica, Week 13: Gangster's Paradise

Theros previews are right around the corner. I'm hoping to wrap up this stage of Suvnica design right around the time that the RtR block starts fading into the background. With that in mind, this week we're rolling right along with another guild keyword, as well as another cycle challenge.

Suvnica Guild Profile: The Radkar

(This is part of a series of documents that are meant to provide snapshots of each of the guilds. These documents will probably be updated with some regularity. They are meant to provide a starting reference point when developing new cards and ideas for the guilds.)

{B}{R} The Radkar

The Radkar take the perspective that if a power vacuum exists, someone is going to fill it, and that someone might as well be them. They are shameless opportunists, with little guiding philosophy beyond making sure that the guildpact works for them and not the other way around.

Designing Suvnica, Week 12: Bottom Feeders and the Ascended

Alright guys. We're halfway done with our first round of mechanics solicitations. This week we'll be throwing two more guilds into the ring. In the meantime, because last week's challenge went up late, I'll leave it open a few more days before reviewing the non-guild cycles.