General Vakeztan - A Riptide Lap-Set

[ravnic]

Wow, I couldn't see your cards before, that's some incredible art! You're the master of art finding, no doubt!

I know, I'm changing my mind a lot on this, I just wanna make sure we get it just right. Sorry, man. The reason I backed off from Oblastion (the cost reduction) to redemption as an ability word was, that I felt like making spells more powerful would feel cooler than making them cheaper. And I think you did a good job with creating some well balanced examples. I'm else where with my mind lately, which might be a reason some of my card example sketches are a bit off, I promise to think more when it comes to actual card suggestions.

I now leave it completely up to you (all) if we go with Oblation or Redemption, I like both, or if you wanna suggest something new.

One thing though, I feel like that artifact clause makes no sense flavorwise. Sure would be cool mechanically, but I'd say token making in Boros is enough overlap for these two.

 

[Velrun]

Yeah, I reckoned it was why ravnic went with oblation. The Kamigawa keyword follows the pattern "<creature type> offering", so the syntax is different, and was used on only five creatures, but we probably still shouldn't reuse the word. I just didn't feel like coming up with something else, and wanted to use something else than oblation to set it apart in the discussion

It doesn't really matter. It's like breaking singleton; You can do it and no one will care as long as you put it on your own shoulders to explain it to the players.

 

[ravnic]

How about the name Okatan Cult? They pray to Okat, the God of the burning Sky.

Also, if we have Thrulls as servants and sacrifice fodder, I'd like there to be Thrull tokens:

Ru'an, Okatan Ceremonial Master
Legendary Creature - Human Cleric (r)
When ~ enters the battlefield, create two tapped 2/1 black Thrull creature tokens.
, Sacrifice two other creatures: Return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.
1/1


Devoted Novice
Creature - Human Cleric (c)
, Sacrifice ~: Create a tapped 2/1 black Thrull creature token.
"Sometimes Okat wants a soul, but lets us keep it's shell" - Itnask
0/1


Faithful Enslaving
Instant (c)
Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn. When that creature dies this turn, create a tapped 2/1 black Thrull creature token.
The Guardians of Nipur count the Thrulls before a visiting Okatan Caravan is allowed to leave the City again.


The Thrulls make them even more flavorful I think.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I like Doctrine of Blood as the name of the religion this faction follows. I think it carries the sacrifice theme better than "God of the Burning Sky". I like Okat though, how about Okat, the Many-Veined? (Can we print Okat as a three-color indestructible mythic god that requires sacrifice?)

I like Thrull tokens, fantastic idea, Ru'an is basically my incarnation of the three color legendary from the previous page though. I think I liked that mechanic better on the faction legendary with haste and +1/+1 counters. I contemplated putting token creation on that card, but thought it was more interesting (and more on color) in the version I ended up with. If all is well, there should be plenty of fodder available through other cards in the color.

I also think Thrull tokens shouldn't be 2/1. Breeding Pit has them at 0/1, and Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder has them at 1/1. Since this is the sacrifice faction, we could probably get away with 0/1, which is a stat line that comes at little cost, but 1/1's are obviously better in other factions and thus have more cross-over appeal. I think your cards need only a little tweak here and there to fit that stat line.

Devoted Novice
Creature - Human (C)
When ~ dies, create a 1/1 black Thrull creature token.
1/1

Faithful Enslaving
Instant (C)
Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn. When that creature dies this turn, create a 1/1 black Thrull creature token.

Cross-over appeal from another faction:

Airborne Assault
Sorcery (C/U)
Create three 1/1 red Insect creature tokens with flying and haste. Sacrifice those tokens at end of combat.

Let's use that token somewhere else...

Broodmother
Creature - Insect (U/R)
Flying
At the beginning of combat on your turn, create a 1/1 red Insect creature token with flying and haste.
2/2

Should these be tokens to match up with The Locust God?

 

[vennythekid]

Many-veined is awkard sounding. I too am many-veined, and yet here I still wait to claim my unsung throne...
May I suggest Okat, God of the Crimson Sun? (Or Okat, the Crimson Sun) Their ritual could include sacrifice to the sun at its zenith, or some belief that the sun is actually made of blood

 

[ravnic]

Okat the Crimson Sun sounds awesome!

And to the tokens: Thrulls have rarely appeared as tokens and as cards they came in all sizes. I do agree that we want 1/1 tokens for that wedge, but I figured doing them in the main color as 1/1 white clerics would make most sense. Sacrificing only Thrulls would not feel ... sacrificial enough. It's also a pretty white way of thinking to sacrifice yourself for the greater good (as in calming their creepy god).

The 2/1's would just be secondary tokens. I could also see some Thrulls carrying weights for the Khunda Tribes, where the additional power would make them useful tools to tame beasts! Also, Wizards uses 2/1 tokens so rarely, I smell so much unused design space!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Good points all!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I can't really think of a good design right now for Okat himself, but this is some killer art by Pete Mohrbacher for the card.

Art link

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Lame flavor text included to for layout purposes. Is this too much? I like most of what this is, but the P/T and amount of damage could be tweaked. Hard to cast, hard to maintain, but hits like a truck when you supply it with enough fodder. That's the idea.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Ok, I set up a design skeleton for us to work on. Haven't filled in many details, just used the template I linked to in the document and put in five speculative gold slots (at the expense of a matching slot in a mono-colored section).

https://etherpad.net/p/Vakeztan

 

[ravnic]

That's cool man, I started something similar but was far too busy lately to get it done!

Okay, let's start with the commons I'd say, they're the backbone of limited, and this set is probably goind to be drafted mostly when we get there. I studied MaRo's skeleton article and a few executions of it in recent sets. I took the most from Khans, which maks sense as our role model, not because of wedges specifically, but because it is the most recent 3-color set and brought a really cool limited format to the table. Your numbers look good, I would only make marginal tweaks.

First, you set 18 commons for each color (90), I think that's too high. I would go with 16 or maybe even 15 if you want to expand the artifact section.

Then, you got one 3-colored common with cycling for each faction. I agree with this and I think, that could be enough actual gold cards for commons. We definitely don't need to go out of our way to make 3 color happen, having some good uncommons and rares. Khans also only has 5 common gold cards with morph, but a cycle of off-color activations.

Third, artifacts. You got 5, which could be enough actually, if we make one colored equipment in each color and two or three colorless? Not sure, Like I said, we could expand here to 10 (colorless) artifacts if do only 15 for each color.

Lastly, fixing. You got 6 lands here. I'm really fond we should go with a full cycle of 10 common dual lands. I know, you don't do this in your cube, and that works out great, but retail limited is different, and I think this would help largely with splashes and interesting oddball decks. See, lets take a common dual example: You are drafting a nice deck, then pack 3 you open a nice blue rare, some flying fattie or an interesting clone variant. Sure you wanna splash that. And it doesn't even have to be a bomb, maybe you're drafting , lacking of removal, like these colors often do, but the natural solutions black and red are both dry. But not . Also, 4 color or mabe even odd 5 color craziness. I want the format to be as diverse as possible, Innistrad level at least!

Another thing we have to think about is allied color stuff in general. I know, we two at least agreed not to, but then you suggested that dimir spell. And I'm thinking of that 10-card cycle of draft signalling gold umcommons wizards is having great succes with. What if we could do 15? 5 wedges and 10 for guilds? I mean not really completely different archetypes, but cards that tie together slightly different unique decks that can just happen in the format.

Back to . We have retrae here as the only overlapping mechanic. Then theres also cycle. Looting and graveyard stuff happens naturally ... How about making this color pair care about discard mainly with this one card (or something like this) as an anchor:

Flooded Bat Cave
Enchantment (u)
Whenever you discard a card, create a 1/1 black bat creature token with flying.

Here we got a perfectly fine Ghumata wedge card - or a reason for people to draft something that is a little of the track (we would give both colors a little bit more cycling maybe than others). We probably need really clever designs to make 5 uniue build-arounds that are still perfectly fine in their respective wedge, but that would follow after the commons are layed out anyway. I'm not a 100% sure yet myself, but wanna hear some opinions.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

If we're going by Khans of Tarkir's design skeleton, there will be no allied color cards. That's still the way to go, I think, but .i sometimes trip myself up when brainstorming cards. I definitely didn't mean to add a Dimir card to the set, sorry I think you're right about the mana fixing though!

Looking at Khans again, singling our , we have two enemy color activations at common, two uncommons (one for each faction including the color), one rare, and the common land.
For each faction, we have two commons (one three-color card and one mana fixing artifact), two uncommons, four rares, one mythic, and the uncommon fixing land.

I think we could easily tweak these numbers a bit, by shifting the enemy color activation commons to true gold cards (one for each faction), and shifting one of the three color rares to two color to end up at one two color rare for each faction again. I think we do want some mana fixing common artifacts, so we might need to increase the artifact section a bit as well, because we do need equipment for the equipment faction. I do think it's a good idea to include colored equipment to make sure some end up with those drafters.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I added an authors section at the top, so we can identify ourselves

 

[vennythekid]

Question: is this set meant to be drafted retail-style, or drafted as a 360/450 cube?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'ld say retail style. You could do something like ravnic's Ravnica Remastered, which runs one copy of the rares, three copies of the uncommons, and six copies of the commons, if you want to turn this into a cube. Or pregenerate a lot of boosters and pick only as many as you need to draft.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Do we want hybrid mana in the set? Like, a card is playable in 4 of the 5 factions. I think we've got to consider it at least. Like morph, hybrid would help keep cards castable, especially if we put them at a single hybrid mana.

 

[ravnic]

I had the idea of cards with hybrid mana activation cost. You know, instead of real gold cards, we could have more felxibility at common with a cycle of these.

Chinri Lurker
Creature - Insect Rogue (c)
When Chinri Lurker deals combat damage to a player, you may draw a card.
: Chinri Lurker gains trample until end of turn.
3/3

Nipur Skyguard
Creature - Human Soldier (c)
: Nipur Skyguard gains flying until end of turn.
2/1

Khunda Supplier
Creature - Beast (c)
, Exile Khunda Supplier from your graveyard: You gain 4 life.
4/4


What do you think? Anyway, I'd say we shoulds settle on these numbers for the commons for now:

14 actual each mono color
10 multicolor identity (5 3-colored with cycling)
11 colorless
10 fixing lands

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The hybrid activation is a sweet idea, I'm in!

Khans has 15 multicolor identity cards; five three-color cards with morph, and two enemy color activation cards per color (for a total of 10 additional cards). I think we should have 15 as well. Not sure we should do 10 hybrid activations, how about the second "cycle" at common follows the Messenger Falcon strategy?

Flexible Multicolor Common
Card Type (C)
Effect...

Oooh, what about guildmage variants for one of the uncommon slots?

Chinri "Guildmage"
Creature - Insect Wizard (U)
: Ability A
: Ability B
2/2

 

[ravnic]

I like the Factionmage design, I'm in!

On the commons: Don't you think 10 is enough? I don't know, but a lot of multicolor at common comes at a price of variability. I'd vote for more uncommon and/or rare gold slots instead.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Well, actually, the multicor commons I'm suggesting are more flexible than the Khans commons with off color activation costs, as they go into three of the five factions. They're practically monocolored in that regard, except that they build identity at the common level, which is the backbone of your set. I think it's a good opportunity to shape the set without burdening mana bases too much. With only 10 gold cards (well, five really, and five with flexible off color activations), you're going to notice that this is a set built around factions less well I feel. The only cards which go into one faction only at the common level will be the three color cycling cards, all other nonland cards (including your off color hybrid activation cards and my suggested X(Y/Z) mana cards) will be playable in at least three factions.

 

[ravnic]

Hm, you might be right ... But on the other hand, this set is not like Ravnica or even Alara, where (almost) every living being (and more) would be connected to oine of the factions. They are more cultures/ways of living in a deep world than factions, that can be seperated like with sports jerseys.

How about that, we start with 14 commons for each color (which is the least amount we'll need) and then fixing, artifacts and 10 gold cards and see after that, how we fill the last 10 slots?

But before that, I wanna get the mechanical identities (which go further than the keyword) andthe draft archetypes a little clearer. I will put this in the next big post, give me a few minitues ...

 

[ravnic]

I will now make a sketch with some theoretical card examples for all 5 wedges and the 2-color combinations to clarify, how they might distinguish in draft. Please critizise and improve, where you feel the need or just come up with further ideas. Also, don't focus on every card in a single card evaluation, I just post them, so it is easier to get an idea of what a drafter might look for and I might not balance everything perfectly

- it's aggro/midrange in a go-wide way, where you use cheap creatures and token producers, which then power strong sacrifice outlets. I don't care if we got with Redemption or Oblation, but we need a decision here!

Okat's Missionary
Creature - Cleric
Whenever a nontoken creature you control dies, create two 1/1 white cleric tokens.
2/2

Devoted Novice
Creature - Human Cleric (c)
, Sacrifice ~: Create a tapped 2/1 black Thrull creature token.
0/1


- a midrange deck where you use ramp and card draw to power out a lot of creatures. To combine the blue identity with the go-wide approach from the swarm mechanic, some cards care about creatures entering the battlefield.

Chinri Hatcher
Creature - Insect Scout (U)
Flying
Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card.
3/3

Insectile Informant
Creature - Insect Wizard (C)
Swarm
When ~ enters the battlefield, draw a card, then discard a card.
1/2



- it's on the beefier side of midrange, where you beat down the opponent with your larger creatures. Tame allows for beasts with ferocius upsides or higher stats. To match that, smaller creatures have P>T or triggered effects whenever they become tapped (or both). Power boosting spells/effects are more common than usual for this too.

Beast Overseer
Creature - Orc Warrior (U)
Vigilance
Whenever Beast Overseer becomes tapped, draw a card and gain 3 life.
3/3

Beast of the Graves

Creature - Beast (r)
Tame 4
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice another creature. If ~ is tamed, return target creature card from your graveyard to play instead.
4/6


- it's aggro/tempo. Smithing keyword cares about equipments, other cards could care more about artifacts in general. Creatures have evasion and other abilities, that work well with being pumped. Spells can give evasion or be useful in aggressive strategies like burn/bounce.

Whirler Elite
Creature - Viashino Soldier (u)
Double strike
Whenever ~ deals damage to an opponent, you may draw a card
2/2

Bonesplitting Veteran
Creature - Minotaur Soldier (u)
Smithing - Equipped creatures you control get +2/+0
2/3


- this one is control/midrange. It cares mostly about lands in your graveyard: counts, returns, sacrifices and obviously discards them, with retrace mostly. A lot of spells are reactive, more instants and creatures with flash than other archetypes. With some land based ramp, you power out big finishers.

Ghumata Loamstalker
Creature - Elf Scout (U)
~ can't be blocked.
Whenever ~ deals combat damage to an opponent, return up to one target land from your graveyard to your hand.
2/2


Watch the Fauna
Instant (c)
Look at the top three cards of your libarary. You may reveal a land card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom in any order.
Retrace.



Now to the enemy pairs, which are the hardest to match imo:

- pretty aggressive. You have the cheap guys from the Okata Cult and the P>T guys from the Khunda tribes, which bring "whenever becomes tapped" effects. These could becomes a more defined theme in this combination with some aggressive payoffs.

Orc Whiplasher
Creature - Orc Warrior (u)
First Strike
Whenever a creature you control becomes tapped, each player loses 1 life.
3/2

Teach to Kneel
Enchantment (u)
Tap two untapped creatures you control: Tap target creature.
Cycling


- it's more midrange. Since there will be pump and ramp together with the Tame ability, this combination is a midrangey pair that care specifically about the power of your guys or you having the highest powered creature.

Mightseeker
Creature - Human Shaman (u)
Whenever a creature with power 4 or greater enters the battlefield under your control, you may draw a card. if you do, ~ deals 1 damage to you.
2/2

Natural Selection
Enchantment (r)
At the begoinning of your upkeep, target creature with the highest power, fights target creature with the lowest power among creatures.


- a Ramp strategy seems like a natural fit between the lands theme and the Swarm mechanic. Generate a lot of mana and make efficient use of it. To further encourage this, we could add flexible mana sinks, X-spells and land untappers for example.

Flourishing Bond
Sorcery (u)
Scry 2, draw two cards. You may play two additional lands this turn.

Insectile Informant
Creature - Insect Wizard (C)
Swarm
When ~ enters the battlefield, draw a card, then discard a card.
1/2


- a classic tempo deck. Between the swarm mechanic and the equipment focus, we have a lot of cards that make it easier to attack, which means some cards with a raid-like effect encourage the tempo play style to get better effects. Burn/bounce/tappers help as well.

Invasion Leader
Creature - Insect Soldier (u)
Flying
At the beginning of your end step, you may Scry X, where X is the number of creatures you attacked with this turn.
2/2

Bring to the Ship
Instant (c)
Return target creature to it's owner's hand. If you attacked with a creature this turn, put it on top of it's owner's library instead.


- it's the overlap between the most aggressive wedge and there fore pretty aggressive too, the most aggressive color pairing actually, where the focus lays. Cheap, aggressive (and sometimes evasive) creatures backed up with burn and pump.

Maniac Follower
Creature - Viashino Berserker (u)
First srike
~ attacks each turn if able unles a creature died under your control this turn.
3/3

Devoted Novice
Creature - Human Cleric (c)
, Sacrifice ~: Create a tapped 2/1 black Thrull creature token.
0/1


Then, there should still be a possibility to draft more sublimal archetypes in the allied color pairs imo, wether we go for a single representing gold uncommon or not. Here some iodeas too:

- a tempo/midrange deck that ressembles one of the oldest draft archetypes in magic's history: Skies. With equipment and creatures that like attacking already in these colors, there will naturally be reasons to go for this classic archetype.

Watcher of the Horizon
Creature - Griffin (u)
Flying
When ~ enters the battlefield, draw a card for each creature with flying you control.
3/2

Chinri Prowler
Creature - Insect Soldier (c)
Swarm
Flying
2/1


- cares about discard. With retrace and additionally the highest as-fan of cycling in these two colors, it leads to a really controlish deck that rewards you for discarding things. Recursion/Looting help to add further shenanigans and allow this control deck to further search for answers.

Flooded Bat Cave
Enchantment (u)
Whenever you discard a card, create a 1/1 black bat creature token with flying.

Dig deeper

Instant (c)
Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
Whenever you discard a card, you may return ~ from your graveyard to your hand.
Cycling


- the one tribal deck. Orcs are in the Okat Cult, but not in white, and they are in the black-based Khunda Tribes and among the red-based Nipur-people. They play as an aggro/midrange deck with a focus on sacrifice and reckless plays.

Bloodbringer Orc
Creature - Orc Warrior (u)
Other Orc you control get +1/+0.
Whenever ~ or another Orc you control dies, ~ deals damage equal to that creature's power to target creature an opponent controls.
3/2

Battlefield Harvester
Creature - Orc Warrior (c)
Whenever an Orc you control becomes tapped, you may gain 1 life.
3/2


- here I'm strugglin a bit. With Pump being relevant in both colors and the swarm mechanic, this could maybe be some kind of pump archetype, where you power up your tramplers/doublestrikers to hit for massive chunks of damage. Also, with swarm, maybe cards that target a creature and all with the same name. Would be aggro. Not sure

...

- here I could see a midrange deck, that focusses on counters. With the tame ability as the only overlap, cards would care about creatures with (any kind of) counters on them, while creatures and spells come with or add +1/+1 counters. Low opportunity cost to intergrate this archetype.

Protector of Beasts
Creature - Leonin Shaman (u)
Other creatures you control have indestructable, as long as they have a counter on them.
3/2

Bond of Strength
Instant (c)
Put a +1/+1 counter on up to three target creatures.
Cycling

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Can we ditch the allied colored cards? We don't have that much space with everything that's going on, and I think it dilutes the identity we're trying to build. They're also harder to generate a unique identity for, since each allied color combination is only played in one of the five factions, and thus has to completely overlap with what that guild is doing, or at least synergies with it, or you'll get confused faces.

I think the ramp theme in needs attention, since retrace wants you to have cards in your hand, not in your graveyard. I'm thinking more Borderland Scout, less Rampant Growth. I think maybe should be the discard matters guild, since Sultai is about retrace, and Temur is about drawing cards, where draw & discard is a nice overlap.

Need sleep now...

 

[ravnic]

I wouldn't insist on them, but I still think they are a good idea.

Look, if we have a lot of monocolored and flexible stuff at common, we can probably easily allow for 40 uncommons with multicolored identity, maybe even more. Shards of Alara for example only had 4 actual monocolored cards for each color. And if we have that 40+ slots, we could take 5 wedge cards and take the enemy color from them (Like Alara did with Tidehollow Sculler, Swerve and friends, just that we can do better). They should work a 100% in a wedge deck, but can maybe show a little subtheme rather than a full-blown archetype. Also, we can make them extra flexible with cycling.

I tweaked them a little:

Cloudbreaker Griffin
Creature - Griffin (u)
Flying
: Return target creature with flying you control to it's owner's hand.
Cycling
3/2

This guy is a nice addition for Nipur as it carries equipment well as a flying, resolute threat. It also could work with blue etb guys from Chinri. And it's second ability works well with the cycling ability to cash it in when the body becomes obsolete. It does all that while encouraging a little fliers theme.


Flooded Bat Cave
Enchantment (u)
Whenever you discard a card, create a 1/1 black bat creature token with flying.
Cycling

It would be a perfectly fine Ghumata card with a green mana symbol on it, but since cycling is in all colors, it could not only work any 2/3/4/5-colored deck with enough discard action. Having cycling itself helps it to never be a do-nothing and makes the splash for it in for example a Chinri deck easier to take.


Bloodhunter
Creature - Orc Warrior (u)
Whenever ~ or another Orc you control dies, ~ deals 3 damage to target creature an opponent controls.
Cycling
3/2

It works well in the aggro/sacrifice mashup that we have in the Okatan wedge, even when you have no other orcs, which you probably have. But when you get it early, you could build around maybe, or if not, just end up in Okatan again. And since there will be also Orc in the black-centerd Khunda Tribes and the red-centered Nipur Guards, Orc tribal seems plausible enough.


Chinri Broodmaster
Creature - Insect Shaman (u)
Creature tokens you control have double strike.
Cycling
3/3

Again a card many chinri decks would play just as much if it had a blue symbol on it. The effect is narrow, but it allows for strong plays with the swarm mechanic and could also make for a cool splash in something like a -deck with many tokens. Also, Cycling makes the narrow effect unproblematic and the splash much easier. You could tweak it to give itself double strike maybe, which would work well with the many equipments in the set.


Beast Shepherd
Creature - Human Warrior (u)
Other creatures you control have hexproof as long as they have a counter on them.
Cycling
3/1

Another card that gets much better thanks to cycling. When you have counters on your creatures, it's great. If not, you can cash it in. Khunda-Tame decks love it while a slightly higher asfan of +1/+1 counter guys in these two colors can make for an easy subtheme at basically no opportunity cost.

The cool thing with these cards is, that none of them needs really specific support. Fliers and tokens and counters are always there in MtG sets, Orcs would've played a role anyway and with cycle and retrace there is enough support for bat cave as well. What do you guys think?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think we need a third person's input here, because I don't like the way Shards of Alara handled its uncommon gold slots. I don't think there's much to gain from an allied color card that goes into one guild only. If your goal is for drafters to move into a shard, you might as well print another three color card. If you want fetes to be able to draft a two color deck, with maybe a light splash, HC cards (with Jund Hackblade-like mana costs) are much more useful.