General Otherworldly Magic Effects

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Let's say there were a cube with new colors, say, uh..

Purple
Cyan
Orange
Brown (Lime?)
Silver

(colors and arrangement up for discussion)

What would be some simple, yet fresh ways you would approach effects like counterspells, burn, etc.
How can we give new colors identities that feel new and unique?


(these are somewhat garbage by the way)

C, Instant
As an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, reveal a card from your hand.
Counter target spell that shares a type with the revealed card.


C, Instant
Return target card from your graveyard to your hand. At the end of the turn, discard a card.


Could there be burn spells that do something weird? Deal damage to creatures in the form of -1/-0 counters?


C, Instant
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X, where X is the number of untapped lands you control.



{1}C, Creature, 2/1
{T}, sacrifice CARDNAME: search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield.

Creature
Mechanic - When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, search your library for two basic land cards and exile them. When CARDNAME dies, put the exiled cards into your hand.

Creature
When Cardname enters the battlefield, you may pay X life. If you do, search your library for X land cards and exile them.
{T}: Put a land card exiled this way onto the battlefield.
(? put them into the graveyard instead of exile?)



{1}C, Instant
As an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, reveal X cards from your hand.
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X.


C, Creature, Revealing Rootwalla, 1/1
Radness {0} (When this card is revealed to an opponent, you may pay it for its Radness cost)
{1}C: Revealing Rootwalla gets +2/+2 until EOT.


{2}C, Trivination, Sorcery
Draw three cards. Each opponent draw a card.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Trivination has me thinking. What if the colors were driven by some weird identity.
Like, part of this color's identity could be "some for you, more for me".


{1}C, Instant
Cardname deals 5 damage to target creature you don't control, and 2 damage to target creature you do control.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I think you need to allocate existing core concepts (like mana acceleration, discard, draw, enchantment removal, direct damage, etc) in a new way, with maybe some overarching concepts to frame those mechanics. Mechanics (like radness) are a way to shape those core concepts into fresh cards, but complex mechanics should imho not be the driving force behind a color identity.

Purple is about time magic. Mana acceleration, delay tactics (time counters?), fast travel (haste and flash?).
Cyan is about military magic. Aggressive small creatures, buffs, protective spells, tactical nukes, creature and artifact removal, extensive use of artifacts.
Orange is the new Black.
Brown/Lime is about mind magic. Drawing cards, counterspells, stealing stuff.
Silver is the color of obscurity and secrets. Drawing cards (in a different way?), extensive use of enchantments, bluffing mechanics.

Stuff like that maybe?

PS. I love, love, love Trivination :D
 
You could rotate the existing color pie by half a step:
Pink - Peace (from G/W)
Cyan - Law (from U/W)
Purple - Cunning (from U/B)
Orange - Ruthlessness (from R/B)
Brown - Vitality (from R/G)
Or something like that.
 
i actually fucked around with this a little bit and it turns out theres an MSE template file with some extra stuff
HM1NXNq.png

the snow stuff has its own border and everything so despite its history in magic it could be usable as its own color
iDG1MeM.jpg
 

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Does anyone else sometimes feel like 5 is too many? In cube we keep choosing a different color to rag on every year, wondering why it doesn't have anything interesting to do and what we can do with it. Maybe we should just go down to 4. Just throwing it out there.
 
Perhaps we shouldn't use any colors, and define decks and strategies by creating a ton of tribal and synergistic interactions with creatures and spell types. We could even eliminate the mana resource part of the game and just add a specific value to each creature or spell so the ones with "no cost" are weaker than the costly ones but some small ones go good with the big ones and reward you for using the very obvious synergy between them. We could even make this a real thing if we find a good artist on deviantart to do some anime-fantasy style art for us.

This is a completely original idea.
 

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, it's very similar to what's there in Hearthstone. With five years' worth of expansions, WOW TCG went a bit further near the end by enabling hybrid cards - spells that could be played by two or more classes - and dual classes. I hope they eventually go down that route with Hearthstone, to increase the deck diversity.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Hearthstone misses one important feature the tcg had though. Besides classes (and thus class-specific cards) you also choose a horde, an alliance, or a neutral hero, and each creature also belongs to one of these three factions. Horde can only play horde and neutral creatures, alliance can only play alliance and neutral, and neutral can only play neutral, but neutral heroes are commonly stronger than horde and alliance heroes to make up for that. I still have some casual decks lying around, very neat. Oh, and you had multiple heroes per class. I hope they do that in Hearthstone as well in the future, so you can build around different concepts in the same class.
 
i actually fucked around with this a little bit and it turns out theres an MSE template file with some extra stuff
HM1NXNq.png

the snow stuff has its own border and everything so despite its history in magic it could be usable as its own color

Omg I call all designs pertaining to the camel hahahhahahahahaha!
Okay I totally missed this thread, I'll start thinking about colour balance dynamics and see if I can find that old thread with the 10 land types on salvation
Mana_Symbols_Collection.png
 
Perhaps we shouldn't use any colors, and define decks and strategies by creating a ton of tribal and synergistic interactions with creatures and spell types. We could even eliminate the mana resource part of the game and just add a specific value to each creature or spell so the ones with "no cost" are weaker than the costly ones but some small ones go good with the big ones and reward you for using the very obvious synergy between them. We could even make this a real thing if we find a good artist on deviantart to do some anime-fantasy style art for us.

This is a completely original idea.
Are you describing Epic
 
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