General Custom Cards: The Lab

[Onderzeeboot]

On the other hand, if someone across you is gathering basic lands like crazy in a hypothetical constructed format where this is legal, you bet you're sweating whether they get there and whether they have this in hand I think I like the "At the beginning of your next upkeep, you win the game" variant. It's the weakest of the bunch, but it's not meant to be the strongest option in the format, and it has that "on shit, I've got one turn until I'm dead" thing that Door to Nothingness has (because most would drop it only if they can activate it next turn), but it's much harder to cast because of Primal. I think it's in a good spot there.

I do like the idea of a WUBRG Primal enchantment with a unique ability, but I'll have to think on that one.

Rename your set Dyed Dawn

I should probably name it From Dusk till Dawn

 

[Tzenmoroth]

I have a totally random question. Does anyone know why WotC stopped, or at least didn't continue, printing split-guild cards like Naya Hushblade. I've just been thinking about how 2-3 mana gold cards are so narrow but a card that can be played in 2/10 guilds wouldn't be nearly as bad. Is it just complexity? or is there some weirdness/unintuitiveness that makes it too hard to understand?

 

[psly4mne]

I think it's the difficulty of remembering which decks can use the card. If there was a card costing you would have a hard time remembering that U/B and G/B decks can use it but not G/U. Whereas with a card like Tasigur it's easy because (1) the frame is black and (2) the normal and hybrid costs are separated on the card.

 

[Velrun]

Onde
I guess if the set is only meant to be played in Constructed. However a new issue arrise then. A 5-colored Primal card is parasitic. Or you could say Primal is parasitic in 4-5 color decks because only your set supports 5-color Basics. People cannot brew a 5-colored deck with only Basic lands unless there is a reason to do so.

Your set offers those reasons but only your set. It would work in a limited draft format but not in constructed.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Onde
I guess if the set is only meant to be played in Constructed. However a new issue arrise then. A 5-colored Primal card is parasitic. Or you could say Primal is parasitic in 4-5 color decks because only your set supports 5-color Basics. People cannot brew a 5-colored deck with only Basic lands unless there is a reason to do so.

Your set offers those reasons but only your set. It would work in a limited draft format but not in constructed.

To that I say, you've got to start somewhere! Besides, Affinity is a thing in modern, despite the mechanic showing up in only one block. Poison is a thing, despite being very linear and only showing up in one block. And so on, and so on. Playing the basic lands to support my cards doesn't prevent you from playing other cards in the format. See, 5-color basics overlaps nicely with 5-color in general. As long as the payoffs for running a mana base with basics are big enough, some number of decks will convert to being a 5 color basics strategy, adopting whatever Primal cars are best (for their deck), and filling the deck out with other cards that happen to be good in the colors they run.

 

[Velrun]

I don't think that logic holds water but I could be wrong.

Primal is parasitic. Or at least close to it. Affinity and Infect are also parasitic but they survive because they are broken. Wizards have admitted their fault. Just like I do not think we should design our cubes from a Power max list because that would be constructing a cube from Wizards' biggest mistakes, we should also not design our sets with Wizards' biggest mistakes as inspiration. This is my opinion.

You do not see a 5-colored deck suddenly start including 10 Basic lands in their deck besides Fetches, Filters, Checks and Shock. This is just not doable. But a 3-colored Primal card is actually playable in the right green-focused deck.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

My initial idea was for the mythic "you win the game" card to be the only >2 colors primal cards. The other primal cards are slated to be CC (in all colors) and CD (maybe CCDD or CCD, not in all color pairs) cards. I was actually contemplating skewing the set to include slightly more green cards than those of other colors, because green works so well with both themes.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I will say I'm not huge on the idea of encouraging people playing with just basics.
Nonbasics are good for magic, just like scry and cantrips. Why reward people for variance increases?
Even if you're encouraging monocolor, you're specifically shutting down possability. Goblin Chainwhirler really looks like it encourages mono red, but it's part of a jund deck in standard right now with status statue

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Yeah, I get that, and it's a good argument. The reasoning behind Primal is to diversify the metagame in this custom environment these people created. There's some incredibly strong fixing available in the format, and it leads to a lot of multicolor decks. Their last Grand Prix had, in the t8, one monocolor deck, one two-color deck, five three-color decks, and one seemingly mono-Artifacts deck with mostly colorless cards, but three colors still between the main board and the sideboard. Mono red is viable because of all the Lava Spikes people are so fond of designing, but other than that Prismatic should hopefully shake things up a bit. Yes, it's a restrictive mechanic, but as they say, restriction breeds creativity. The mechanic isn't meant to strengthen the already very, very viable three-color decks, it's meant to open up new options. Will it succeed in that? Who knows! We're probably never going to find out, but I'm having fun thinking it up and if I get to finish the set, I'm sure I'm going to draft the heck out of it! And then, if I like how it plays (I should probably get some constructed matches in...) maybe, I can find the time to play in one of those skirmishes, submit the set, get it accepted, and watch it shake up the metagame? Yeah, that's probably a pipe dream, but a fun thought anyway

 

[Velrun]

Well okay if you want Primal as a tool to help shake up the meta and skew it a little more towards Basic land builds, then you need to cut the dead flesh. You cannot make a WWUUBBRRGG spell that can only be cast by Basics if you want your set to matter.

If you are looking to shake the meta towards mono then you also cannot waste set slots on a 5-colored spell.

Moving on
Primal is a downside so it needs to give the cards a buff. Like the 3-drops from Dominaria but better.

Another angle could be to let Primal only feature on activated abilities which means a card can be cast like normal but have a Primal activated ability as a mana sink. In this way it doesn't look like you are forcing mono Basics down people's throats.

In this way you also get the benefit of cutting the awkward wording 'to pay for the colored part of..'

What do you think?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Well okay if you want Primal as a tool to help shake up the meta and skew it a little more towards Basic land builds, then you need to cut the dead flesh. You cannot make a WWUUBBRRGG spell that can only be cast by Basics if you want your set to matter.

If you are looking to shake the meta towards mono then you also cannot waste set slots on a 5-colored spell.

I disagree, in my opinion it's perfectly fine to devote a single slot in the set to the big 5 color Primal spell. I myself like the card a lot, both from a flavor perspective as well as from a constructed possibilities point of view, so I guess I'm the target demographic for this kind of mythic. I'm very aware not every player shares that interest, we need only to look at your comments on Dyed Dawn to be reminded of that, but not every card has to, or indeed can, be for every player. Regardless how we feel about the individual viability of Dyed Dawn, in the context of a whole set, devoting a single slot to enable someone to chase the dream is not problematic. In fact, I personally like sets designed that way. There's no dead flesh there to cut in my opinion.

Moving on
Primal is a downside so it needs to give the cards a buff. Like the 3-drops from Dominaria but better.

Agreed. You could probably make those CCC cards uncommon if they also had Primal. In fact, where CC Primal cards might see play in two-color decks, I think CCC Primal cards are pretty much destined for mono-color decks only. That cost might be a bit too restrictive. That does put CCDD Primal costs into perspective as well though, it's likely those are too restrictive as well. This is a good thing to playtest.

Another angle could be to let Primal only feature on activated abilities which means a card can be cast like normal but have a Primal activated ability as a mana sink. In this way it doesn't look like you are forcing mono Basics down people's throats.

I think mentally you still feel you need the basics for those card to do anything relevant. Putting it on mana costs also makes the mechanic more flexible. Plus, you still need (a different, more wordy) reminder text. I don't think restricting it to activated abilities only is going to help the mechanic.

In this way you also get the benefit of cutting the awkward wording 'to pay for the colored part of..'

What do you think?

I originally used the Imperiosaur wording, but then I thought, if they get to at least pay for the colorless part of the spell with any mana, that makes it a bit less restrictive. The wording is a bit more awkward, but the gameplay may a bit better for it, because you don't need to run basic lands exclusively. Of course the change is irrelevant if there's no colorless mana in the casting cost, but Dyed Dawn isn't the only Primal card in the set

It could very well be that I'm way off on this mechanic, both you and Chris haven't been positive about Primal, so that's certainly something to keep in mind while testing the set.

 

[Velrun]

The suggestion about cutting the awkward part of the wording was not for cards with Primal as you have designed them for now. They where for the activation ability only.

The WWUUBBRRGG will not be a fun build-around card. It will sadly just sit in the hand and never be cast. You will eventually decide that running an extra land makes better sense than running an uncastable card. Sadly.

It is important to make the flashy huge spells possible to cast. Otherwise there is no need for them and all cards should fill a role or serve a purpose.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The WWUUBBRRGG will not be a fun build-around card. It will sadly just sit in the hand and never be cast. You will eventually decide that running an extra land makes better sense than running an uncastable card. Sadly.

Yeah, I think this is where we have different opinions on how useful the card is. But that's okay. One thing I will do for certain, if ever I finish this set, is to make a five color deck that aims to control the board while ramping up to Dyed Dawn. If it isn't viable at all, I can always replace it, if it does get there sometimes, that's great! If it's way too consistent, I also get to cut it

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Though I'm relatively content with Primal at the moment, I feel I can't ignore the less than enthusiastic feedback, so I've been brainstorming some different ideas.

Design goals:

• I'm looking for a keyword or ability word that rewards players for playing less greedy mana bases.
• The set is intended for the MSEM2 format (ignoring, for now, that I'm not even eligible to submit a set), which currently features a lot of three-color decks in tournaments, often topping out at exactly 3 basic lands.
• This keyword is meant to diversify deckbuilding options, making mono- and two-color decks more attractive.
• The keyword should not restrict people to play only mono-color decks, but cards with the keyword should be considerably less good in the currently tier 1 three-color decks that are stuffed to the brim with nonbasic mana fixing.

That said (and ignoring the names of the different keywords, I just named them differently so they could be told apart), how would you rank these keywords/ability words with those design goals in mind?



Ok, that's it for now...

 

[Velrun]

Purecast!
AKA kicker for Basic lands.

Primal is fine but I like it third best.
Affinity is too swingy. It is either useless or very good.
Basic is also fine and works like Primal except it is even more tough to cast it. If you want to stick with the keyword being attached to casting cost then Primal functions better.
Monofuel and empower is a no from me. Fuel is very spikey early game and Empower is massively time-consuming.

My opinions

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Purecast!
AKA kicker for Basic lands.

Primal is fine but I like it third best.
Affinity is too swingy. It is either useless or very good.
Basic is also fine and works like Primal except it is even more tough to cast it. If you want to stick with the keyword being attached to casting cost then Primal functions better.
Monofuel and empower is a no from me. Fuel is very spikey early game and Empower is massively time-consuming.

My opinions

Thanks! I think Basic is better than Primal on cheap cards, because you don't need to put CC casting costs into place, making them easier to splash, but it's waaaay harsher than Primal on more expensive cards (e.g. Imperiosaur). I actually wish they would finally bring back Affinity, because it's a cool cost reduction mechanic. Just, affinity for artifacts is inherently problematic because artifacts themselves are colorless, so you get a snowball effect on artifacts that have themselves affinity for artifacts. Mostly though, artifact lands were a *colossal* mistake. They basically printed five Sol Rings at common. Anyway, I think that affinity for basic lands shouldn't be a problem. You can, normally, only play one land per turn, which performs as a nice safeguard on how quick you can lower the mana cost of cards with affinity for basic lands. We actually saw this with Spire Golem and consorts in peasant/pauper, where they are cute cards (Spire Golem saw play in mono blue control at some point in our meta) but never overpowered, even when cast for 0 mana! Still, I think you correctly identified the most flexible mechanic. You can scale the cards so that they're at least useful when you don't have enough basic lands lying around, and great when you do. Plus, you can add unrelated effects to a card, much like with Raid.

 

[Aston]

Purecast is my favourite, followed by Affinity for Basics and Primal/Basic. I don't really like Monofuel. Empower I find hard to work out how good it will be in practice, but my instinct is that it's too swingy, in that it's either not much of an extra cost or you can't even cast the card.

I'm surprised Velrun thinks Affinity is swingy, I'd say it's the opposite in that it's very scaleable.

 

[Velrun]

Swingy might be the wrong word. That sometimes happen to me since I am not native English speaking.

Affinity has historically been either a little too cheap or too expensive. I fear the same here, is what I meant.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I do actually have reviews for like 3 separate sets but theres no wifi at work so I've been slow in posting them

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Ok, some more Purecast (now renamed to Primal, as predicted) designs, showing off some different options this keyword enables.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Is warding flames supposed to be a creature? It needs either to lose the P/T or gain the type creature to work

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Is warding flames supposed to be a creature? It needs either to lose the P/T or gain the type creature to work

Oh, yeah. It was a creature, but then I turned it into an enchantment and forgot to remove the P/T... Oops!

 

[Chris Taylor]

Next up on the Custom Set Reviews (Completly Sober this time):
Carpe Arcanum
This set was strange: 90 cards, 100% rares. I'm not sure if that's an intentional choice or just an unfinished design (probably the latter), but I'll post the cool stuff anyways. Rare's about where I like the power level of my cube anyhow.


I'm not sure I want a mechanic to reward you this hard for curving out, or even if this creature is the right place to put it, but this certainly gets my "protect the queen" gears churning. Kinda like evolve, but not tied to a card type. Probably a net positive change I think.


A neat split card of fork/creature. The rate's pretty poor on both, so I'm not 100% on it, but the idea is there.


Archeomancer has always felt a bit weak for me, and I think the addition of flash does a lot to make me like the card.


Not a huge fan of the League artwork, but this is a cool idea. You can pay life to get some pretty sweet effects, but you always have to pay some amount of life. That's black as hell right there.


This one is cool: It's basically hero's downfall with huge upside, but most of the creatures in this set grow, and cmc is hardly reflective of current power level. I don't think I'd run it unless I could replicate that downside, but I kinda love the idea.


Another mechanic of the set, Conjure is basically evoke VIA flashback. Partly I'm just interested here because creature flashback has always been of the firebolt variant, where you use it later for value. That's fine, and it has its place, but I'm interested in exploring the roar of the wurm style where discarding it for value is the main draw.
As this is, I think the ETB probably doesn't need to be this strong. This could be terror and I'd be happy.


Probably just too strong to be interesting, but having to attack and lose lands to kill things is interesting tension. Plus you can kinda mark a 7 toughness creature with "Can't block ~" if you want.


This cadence card is much cooler I don't know if it's actually good or not, but this would be about where I'd start testing the mechanic.


Funny we should be talking about P/T on things that aren't creatures
I don't know if this is a more or less intuitive way to do manlands, but it's a different one.


And this is the weird "deffinitly custom magic" thing about this set: Every bit of rules text mentions "libraries", and the plural is really really weird at first read.
There's a rare cycle of these, and each affects 5 cards. If there's not going to be any other cards with this mechanic, I'd see if we could move the reminder text on other cards mentioning your library onto these cards instead, just for ripple effect.
As it is, this card is pretty sweet and pretty green. It's a draw 5, but with a pretty hefty asterisk on it, since you don't get your choice of what to play, and they all have to be permanents for it to work. Plus if you get stuck with a spell on top, you're bricked on the other 4 cards until you can shuffle one of your libraries. (See how weird this sounds?)
I think the way this works is the cards just sit there, not in exile but unable to be played if the enchantment ever goes away, which is probably wrong. If you play the enchantment again you get a whole new library of 5 under it since it's a new object, so maybe this needs polish.

 

[Chris Taylor]

There's a lot of words on this card, but they add up to a fun little minigame that draws you a bajillion cards, so I'm kinda in.
Even feels pretty UG. Hard to do for a card this out there.


Maybe these aren't the right numbers, but the idea here is solid.


Okay, this is so cool
TRIPLE BLOOD ARTIST TRIGGERS!!!


Goblin Welder, Voltaic Key, Koira's Follower, Glint Hawk, or just a ton of mana. Love the concept here

 

[Chris Taylor]

Next up:
Aftermath
This one's a bit more like ice ace, both in theme and power level. A lot of the cards here seem deliberatly make weaker, with the usual exploitable angles patched out.

An interesting idea. But again, the coolest thing you could do with this isn't allowed. Maybe that's for the best, but even a disenchant here can throw off your whole plan.


Reprise is this sets graveyard mechanic, which is kind of cool until you parse out that it's just flashback that requires you to cast an instant or sorcery to turn it on. I didn't see a ton with this mechanic that wasn't basic stuff like this, but I'm sure there's something here that could excite me.


This card kinda surprised me. At first I thought that a 5/3 body was too small for something like this, but the more I thought about it the more I thought that if this is seeing play at all, it's probably going infinite somehow, so maybe a smaller body doesn't matter. Say for Eg you've got 4 copies of Cackling Counterpart in your deck you have 25 power once this ETBs and a bunch of gas in your graveyard if one of them survives.
Probably a sweet cube card though, which is why we're here afterall.


Kinda surprised this effect hasn't been done yet. Maybe there's memory issues or something.


You know, if you're going to make vanishing a theme of your set, you might as well put it on cards that actually deserve the effect.
This is actually cool and powerful, but (provided your target isn't emrakul) it does have a real downside. If my drafters felt strongly about it, I could see myself swapping out control magic for this, and I do love the art.


This is a sweet grinding engine, though I kinda wish it didn't interfere with the general value cards that play well with this naturally occur. Great with bone shredder, but a nombo with Kitchen Finks? That's still interesting.


If ice age was actually made today, is this what necropotence would look like?


Again, just like Temporary Treason, I like vanishing on things that deserve it. 90% of the time the mechanic is just bunk, but there's usually 2-3 cool things worth doing.


This feels a bit "my first design"-y, but hey it's a decent magic card and it overlaps with some common themes. Points where it's due.


I'm not sure how much mana mirari's wake is supposed to cost and be good thesedays, so I welcome the attempt, since it's an effect I love. That sacrifice ability is just baffling though. How many people are going to get that those lands won't produce 4 total like they were a second ago?