I'm trying my hands at creating a draft format from the scratch, including the cards themselves.
I will try to update you guys through the design process in my mind and decisions both broad and small, like Maro does with his articles, but I'm one guy and this is gonna be a slow and long process so I'll upload some cards here once in a while as I suspect some of them will be good in cubes you guys make here.
A recent discussion in the Land of Mordor Cube updates revolved around designers abandoning their designs underexplored and trying to come up with new things with every new set. This inspired me to make a Modern-Horizons-esque set that tries to use some of those mechanics to create overlaying themes and a complex environment, hopefully with individually simple cards.
The themes I tried to utilize at first were Modified and Bargain as they each worked with a lot of different things, alongside the thing I fing particularly interesting (I really don't know the source of this fascination), Delirium
Map tokens were the first obvious glue, bridging all these themes. Blood Tokens also work with 2 of them, and I thought about introducing blood to Gruul (via the flavor of Innistrad's werewolves injuring people and seeking blood) to add some Gruul madness support that I find a lot of people here enjoy.
I then started to think about the colors, guilds and shards. I really liked the design of capenna in terms of the colors. each 3 color combination (shard) had its thing, but also each friendly color pair (guild) had its own theme, and themes from each guild worked with the themes of the two shards it was a part of, thus causing a lot of combinations that overlay and interact with each other. As an example, Brokers (WUG) had shield counters, while Obscura (WUB) had connive, so WU got the connecting theme (counters). Another: Obscura (WUB) had connive, while Maestros (UBR) had casualty, so UB got he graveyard theme as both the shards fill the graveyard.
Anyway, I first tried to think of having both Alara shards and Tarkir clans supported, alongside all 10 guilds, creating this beautiful web, but the more I thought about it, the more impossibly ambitious it looked, so I settled on the 5 shards + 5 guilds. I also figured I would give each Shard its own token, with Bargain being the 5 color-theme that utilizes these tokens. This also meant The whole format could have 5 tokens and avoid the mess a lot of cubers have to endure with every set adding to the countless number of weird tokens you have to keep around.
To choose between Khans or Shards (or any other combination that has each color represented in 2 of 5 guilds and 3 pf 5 trios, there are many possible arrangements) I already knew I wanted Jund to have the Blood tokens for madness and delirium purposes, also I made this, so how am I not putting that in the set? [inspired by a recent post featuring the playtest card Jund'em out]
Did I mention I have the same Obsession with Emerge that I have with Delirium?
I also had some ideas for Modified in Naya with a lot of things these colors can do to their creatures (I'm still not sure if I want Modified to be a shard theme or a 5-color theme), so I Decided to fully embrace the capenna and go for the shards and the 5 friendly guilds. Also now we have a general understanding of the Gruul guild: It has Blood, madness, delirium, and modified. Smash them with modified dudes, utilizing graveyard and discard synergies, or preferably, a combination of the two (Scavenge?).
In the next post I will go over the other color combinations and their tokens, also the website won't let me upload all the cards I want although I already compressed the images, so I'll have to upload them in another post.
I will try to update you guys through the design process in my mind and decisions both broad and small, like Maro does with his articles, but I'm one guy and this is gonna be a slow and long process so I'll upload some cards here once in a while as I suspect some of them will be good in cubes you guys make here.
A recent discussion in the Land of Mordor Cube updates revolved around designers abandoning their designs underexplored and trying to come up with new things with every new set. This inspired me to make a Modern-Horizons-esque set that tries to use some of those mechanics to create overlaying themes and a complex environment, hopefully with individually simple cards.
The themes I tried to utilize at first were Modified and Bargain as they each worked with a lot of different things, alongside the thing I fing particularly interesting (I really don't know the source of this fascination), Delirium
Map tokens were the first obvious glue, bridging all these themes. Blood Tokens also work with 2 of them, and I thought about introducing blood to Gruul (via the flavor of Innistrad's werewolves injuring people and seeking blood) to add some Gruul madness support that I find a lot of people here enjoy.
I then started to think about the colors, guilds and shards. I really liked the design of capenna in terms of the colors. each 3 color combination (shard) had its thing, but also each friendly color pair (guild) had its own theme, and themes from each guild worked with the themes of the two shards it was a part of, thus causing a lot of combinations that overlay and interact with each other. As an example, Brokers (WUG) had shield counters, while Obscura (WUB) had connive, so WU got the connecting theme (counters). Another: Obscura (WUB) had connive, while Maestros (UBR) had casualty, so UB got he graveyard theme as both the shards fill the graveyard.
Anyway, I first tried to think of having both Alara shards and Tarkir clans supported, alongside all 10 guilds, creating this beautiful web, but the more I thought about it, the more impossibly ambitious it looked, so I settled on the 5 shards + 5 guilds. I also figured I would give each Shard its own token, with Bargain being the 5 color-theme that utilizes these tokens. This also meant The whole format could have 5 tokens and avoid the mess a lot of cubers have to endure with every set adding to the countless number of weird tokens you have to keep around.
To choose between Khans or Shards (or any other combination that has each color represented in 2 of 5 guilds and 3 pf 5 trios, there are many possible arrangements) I already knew I wanted Jund to have the Blood tokens for madness and delirium purposes, also I made this, so how am I not putting that in the set? [inspired by a recent post featuring the playtest card Jund'em out]
Did I mention I have the same Obsession with Emerge that I have with Delirium?
I also had some ideas for Modified in Naya with a lot of things these colors can do to their creatures (I'm still not sure if I want Modified to be a shard theme or a 5-color theme), so I Decided to fully embrace the capenna and go for the shards and the 5 friendly guilds. Also now we have a general understanding of the Gruul guild: It has Blood, madness, delirium, and modified. Smash them with modified dudes, utilizing graveyard and discard synergies, or preferably, a combination of the two (Scavenge?).
In the next post I will go over the other color combinations and their tokens, also the website won't let me upload all the cards I want although I already compressed the images, so I'll have to upload them in another post.
