xyz's PokeMTG Cube

[xyz]

...Do we really need another PokeMTG thread?!?!?

Yes. Of course we do.
However, this is slightly different. This is a complete cube I put together in late 2016--back in the days when I posted on these forums with more frequency. I played a ton of it 1v1 with my roommate at the time. But, outside of that I only played it once with another friend and once in an 8p pod. And for good reason. It's a rather complicated set, both intentionally and unintentionally. My roommate and I were the target audience, so it was ok that I designed the environment to be low curve with an overwhelming amount of options. However, there were also a lot of gratuitously complex designs. Some in the name of flavor and some because it was the first set I'd ever designed.

Fast forward to the present day after I've moved away. Cubing and posting on this forum has fallen off because I no longer have as regular a play group. But at least I still play enough to be hooked on updating my main cube and reading what you all have to say every new set! And then one day while lurking, I saw the two posts that reawakened my design itch. So here I am, ten months later, presenting the first draft of my pokemon cube redesign (alongside the original final version of the first design for comparison).

I'll begin by laying out as much of the initial methodology as I can recall. Original 151 only. An easy call. It's aesthetically simple and most familiar for the OGs. From there, I thought... Hey, wouldn't it be really elegant to literally only have the 151 Pokemon and nothing else? WotC did it with Legions... it's not that outrageous. How else would you elegantly choose what non-creatures to include??

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Getting the pictures into the posts proved to be too difficult with the 10 attachment limit. Instead, I've linked the PDFs with all the cards (both new and old) below the Table of Contents and left in the posts the placeholders I was using while doing this write up off of the forum. Reading the posts by cross referencing two separate files that are in different orders (from the posts; not from each other) seems miserable, but I don't know of a better solution. Can a mod let me embed more images for these posts or something?

(Please let me know about any spelling/grammar/general confusion issues you come across!)

Table of Contents​

Initial Design Framework
Color-Type Allocation
Rare Allocation

Spoiler: Guild Design (Don't look until you've read the Color-Type Allocation section!)

WU Ice
UB Rock
BR Ground
RG Fighting
GW Bug
WB Flying
BG Poison
GU Psychic
UR Electric
RW Dragon

For use in reading the Guild Designs:​

New Designs <--------------- CARD FILE HERE​

Old Designs

 

[xyz]

Initial Design Framework​

One thing WotC did to break up the monotony of only creatures was the Gempalm cycle---creatures that cycled to provide a spell-like effect. That sounded a lot like Pokemon using abilities to me! However, every "instant" drawing a card seemed like a lot of card flow. Furthermore, it would severely limit how powerful I could make cheap "instants" and force a lot of effects to cost 1-2 more than they would otherwise. Instead, I opted for a nerfed version: "scry"cling.

For a Pokemon flavor, I considered calling it "Helping Hand", but that seemed a bit clunky. I settled for "Assist" which is a little bit less resonant and accurate to Pokemon, but a lot easier to use as a mechanic name. (Example: "Whenever Squirtle assists, do X" or "Whenever you assist, do X" is easy to grok.) Unfortunately, two years later Battlebond came out and co-opted my mechanic name .

---

Retrospective: After playing with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, I wonder if I should have used the Channel mechanic or some reskinned derivative instead. The big upside is that on many cards it would save a lot of space.

Ex: Instead of

Assist <cost>
When <CARDNAME> assists, do x.​

it could be

Assist <cost>: Do x.

On the other hand, I specifically designed around the Assist mechanic, highlighting some different upsides. Ex:

When <CARDNAME> assists or etbs, do x.

Or the idea that triggered abilities are mostly "instants" that could be interacted with separately from activated abilities of Pokemon permanents.

---

Next order of business: How do I represent Pokemon evolution in MtG? Well, 2 years prior, they printed a mechanic for stacking creatures on top of each other. And it happened to be (and still might be?) my favorite set! (I really enjoy going tall.) Seemed like a perfect fit to me! I just had to tweak it a bit a bit in order to support putting the evolved form(s) on top and to prevent killing the base form in response (because it felt like that wouldn't make much sense).

This is what I came up with:

Evolves from <Pokemon> X (You may cast this card by exiling a creature named <Pokemon> and paying X. If you do, <CARDNAME> gains all abilities of the exiled creature, gains +X/+Y where X is the exiled creature card’s power and Y is its toughness, enters the battlefield with all counters that were on the exiled creature, and becomes evolved. When <CARDNAME> leaves the battlefield, if it wasn’t exiled, return <Pokemon> card to the battlefield.)

Along side this modified gameplay rule---both of which I provided to drafters on a rules insert:

Exiled permanents retain “memory” of previous evolutions. (This was the cleanest solution I could come up with for evolving Pokemon twice. Let me know if you come up with something more elegant. No need to get too clever, it’s a custom cube, so custom rules.)

That side note was directed towards drafters, but also applies to you all as well.

That rules text is eyeful and can be hard to understand at first, so I also provided this side note on the insert: Just staple them together. Like mutate four years later, it plays much better than it reads.

---

A comparison of Evolve vs Bestow/Mutate​

· Unlike Bestow and Mutate, there is no window of interaction with the permanent that started in play.
· Unlike Mutate, the new permanent triggers etbs. (No Bestow cards have etbs, but in theory they could.)
· Like Mutate, there is only one permanent you can target after the "stack" is in play.
· Like Bestow and unlike Mutate, you can get a creature back when the creature "on top" is destroyed.
· Unlike Bestow, the creature you get back etbs again.
· Unlike Bestow, the creature you get back will not retain any counters. (It's a new object, except that it remembers if it has evolved before.)

Those of you who have been analyzing this closely might be wondering: Wow isn't this incredibly strong? Bestow uses one layer of value assurance (getting your aura back as a creature) and mutate uses one layer of value assurance (on mutate triggers). But Evolve uses two+ layers of value assurance! You're getting your creature back and triple dipping etbs (Pokemon X etbs, Pokemon X+Y has and triggers X's etbs, and then when X+Y dies Pokemen X etbs again!)

Yes, you're right. But that's a feature, not a bug. I'm ok with providing a big reward when evolution requires two specific cards. And although you need two specific cards, we've found that it's not been too hard to put together. The Assist mechanic provides a lot of scrying to help out. Furthermore, I already needed to duplicate cards in order to get from 151 Pokemon to a full 360 cube. Multiples help the player find what they need in both draft and play. This proved to be another strong reason for only having the 151 Pokemom rather than diluting the pool with other cards. It all comes full circle.

But if all 360 cards are Pokemon... where does the fixing come from? I landed on letting everyone add an unlimited number of Evolving Wilds to their deck. I felt like it would give players enough flexibility to do a lot of different things, but with fair costs. Shuffles are also nice for assuring the player that even if they need to scry away their sweet evolution, they're not going to lose access to it forever. And as my roommate pointed out, the name is on point.

 

[xyz]

Color-Type Allocation​

Now for the fun part, where you at home can play along! Assigning colors to the various Pokemon types! The cool thing about OG Pokemon is that there are 15 types... which lines up perfectly with into 5 colors + 10 guild pairs. How would you divvy them up? (Normal, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Fighting, Poison, Ground, Flying, Psychic, Bug, Rock, Ghost, Dragon)

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My first thoughts:​

Fire = Red
Grass = Green
Water = Blue

Is there much more that needs to be said there?

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Normal = White

While not as clear cut as the first three, I don't know how to make a compelling argument for Normal to be any other color(s). It sounds wrong for it to be multicolor and White makes a lot more sense than Black.

---

And to get the last monocolor out of the way... which type fits mono Black the most?
I could see arguments for Poison, Psychic, and Ghost.

Many of the "devious" poison flavored cards in MTG are mono Black. But if we think of deathtouch as poison, we also find more "natural" flavored poisons in Green as well.

If we think of the Psychic type as aggressively attacking the mind, ie Duress or Mind Rot, Black is a good fit. If we consider it to be more analogous to telepathy or other forms of mind magic, Blue would also make a lot of sense.

Spirits in MTG are predominantly White, followed by Blue(!), and then Black. The color identity seems largely flavor based. Benevolent spirits are White. Neutral spirits are White and Blue. Malevolent spirits are Black. Conveniently for us, there is only one Ghost type in Gen 1, the Gengar line, and it definitely has a mischievous if not malevolent flavor to it. With there being only one Ghost pokemon, it would be a little weird to have it represent a whole guild pair.

Ghost = Black

---

The rest of the types are more of a puzzle. Here's where I started...

Electric: Red!, Blue~
Lightning in MTG is predominantly represented by Red, with the idea of storms being Blue(/Red).

Ice: Blue!, White~, Green??
The "snow" archetype was UG in Modern Horizons and UGB in Kaldheim, but "snow" doesn't really have any flavorful meaning. If ice is flavorfully about freezing things or locking them down, tapping is mechanically UW and prison decks feel UW as well.

Fighting: Green!, Red~, Red-White?
Interpreting it literally, the fight mechanic in MTG is primary Green and secondary Red. Flavorfully, the Warrior or Soldier faction has often been RW in MTG.

Poison: Black!, Green!
As analyzed before, this seems like the easy fit. White, Blue, and Red don't relate to Poison at all, flavorfully or mechanically.

Ground: Red!, Green!
MTG earthquakes are Red. Land is associated with Green. Earth elementals are Red and Green. Uh oh... we're starting to see overlap.

Flying: Blue!, White!, Black~, Red~
Primary in Blue first, then White. Secondary in Black and Red.

Psychic: Blue!, Black~, Green?
Flavorfully, I discussed the Blue and Black fit before. Mechanically, if we want to represent Psychic with flash, Green is secondary* there. (*At time I designed this. Since then, White and Black have also been promoted to secondary in flash.)

Bug: Green!, Black!, White?
Insects in MTG are basically all Green and Black. If we think of them as communal creatures, there's an argument for White as well.

Rock: Red~, Green??, Blue??
Red in MTG and not much else to go off of. It's vaguely Green in nature flavor, but not as strongly as the Ground type. It's vaguely Blue if you characterize rocks as artifacts?

Dragon: Red!, ???
MTG dragons are by far red and then evenly split in the other colors. Also has the Ghost phenomena where there's only one dragon in Gen 1.

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This isn't very straight forward, huh? There are several types that want to be the same guilds and the colors aren't being used evenly.

White: 1!, 1~, 2?
Blue: 3!, 1~, 1??
Black: 2!, 2~
Red: 3!, 3~
Green: 4!, 1?, 2??

Preferred guilds:

WU = Ice, Flying
UB = Psychic
BR = ?
RG = Fighting, Ground
GW = ?
WB = ?
BG = Poison, Bug
GU = ?
UR = Electric
RW = ?

Rock, Dragon = RX

We could say that Flying as BW makes a bit more sense than Ice as GU. And that Bug can sensibly be GW. That would put us at:

WU = Ice
UB = Psychic
BR = ?
RG = Fighting, Ground
GW = Bug
WB = Flying
BG = Poison
GU = ?
UR = Electric
RW = ?

Rock, Dragon = RX

With Rock and Dragon splitting RW and RB somehow? And then Ground is more UG than Fighting maybe?

Or move Fighting to RW and say that one of Rock or Dragon should be GU instead?

Or perhaps Psychic is GU and something else should be UB?

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My final solution:​

I decided to approach the problem from a mechanical perspective, starting with the most up in the air type: Rock. Rock Pokemon stand out by having the highest defense (Steel isn't in Gen 1 ), so red isn't the best fit. Instead, I slotted Rock into UB. With no Steel type, I deemed it passable to flavor the Rock creatures as artifacts, a familiar theme in UB that better justifies the guild choice.

That choice pushed Psychic from the more intuitive UB to GU, which ended up being more ideal mechanically and passes flavorfully as well. The "GU flash" archetype definition paints a clear picture that could be associated with Psychic Pokemon.

Now I was at:

WU = Ice
UB = Rock
BR = ?
RG = Fighting, Ground
GW = Bug
WB = Flying
BG = Poison
GU = Psychic
UR = Electric
RW = ?

Dragon = RX

Mechanically, RG being about big creatures fighting made sense and RG being about lands also made sense. The question became: Where else could Fighting and Ground fit? What if we interpreted Ground creatures as liking to rumble and making it hard for the opponent to find their footing? We could express that as a BR aggro leaning deck that uses menace and can't block effects to push through.

That left RW for Dragons. That seemed plausible enough---White is primary in flying and is a color of reverence, which sounds like a way one could approach dragons.

 

[xyz]

Rare Allocation​

At some point, I noticed that with 16 Stage 2 evolutions, 3 Legendary Birds, Mewtwo, and Mew I was close to having 24 Pokemon that would work well as rares. Or... we could go to 25 rares for an even two rares per guild and one rare per color. For the other four rares I went with Vaporeon, Jolteon, Flareon, and Ditto; a very aesthetic selection. Having rares implied having commons, uncommons, and therefore rarity based boosters. The downside was that one rare would be left out every draft, but that didn't seem like a dealbreaker. (Also it would push the cube to 361 cards, but whatever.)

Play along at home part 2! How would distribute those 25 Pokemon into the 20 guild slots and 5 monocolored slots?

Alakazam - Psychic
Articuno - Ice, Flying
Beedrill - Bug, Poison
Blastoise - Water
Butterfree - Bug, Flying
Charizard - Fire, Flying
Ditto - Normal
Dragonite - Dragon, Flying
Flareon - Fire
Gengar - Ghost, Poison
Golem - Rock, Ground
Jolteon - Electric
Machamp - Fighting
Mew - Psychic
Mewtwo - Psychic
Moltres - Fire, Flying
Nidoking - Poison, Ground
Nidoqueen - Poison, Ground
Pidgeot - Normal, Flying
Poliwrath - Water, Fighting
Vaporeon - Water
Venusaur - Grass, Poison
Victreebell - Grass, Poison
Vileplume - Grass, Posion
Zapdos - Electric, Flying

---

My first thoughts:​

Let's start with the obvious slam dunks. The ones that are the only or close to the only representatives of their type and could not possibly make ANY sense elsewhere.

W = Ditto
B = Gengar
R = Flareon

WU = Articuno
UB = Golem
RG = Machamp
WB = Pidgeot
UR = Jolteon
RW = Dragonite

Then, a second pass to sketch out where the rest of the Pokemon would fit...

U = Vaporeon / Blastoise
G = Venusaur / Victreebell / Vileplume

WU = ?
UB = ?
BR = Nidoking, Nidoqueen
RG = Poliwrath
GW = Butterfree, Beedrill
WB = ?
BG = Venusaur / Victreebell / Vileplume
GU = Alakazam / Mew / Mewtwo
UR = Zapdos
RW = Charizard / Moltres

Uh oh... there's overlap again! The Grass/Poison trio seems easy enough to resolve. One can be Green and the other two BG. One of the Water duo could be slotted to WU or UB which both need another representative. The Psychic trio is a little trickier, but it could make sense to move one to UB where we considered putting Psychic originally. But what to do about Charizard and Moltres? They're both clearly predominantly Fire. It would be a little jarring to slot one of them into WB, even if they're also Flying.

---

My final solution:​

I preferred Charizard in the last RW spot because it feels more like a dragon than Moltres. (Back in the day, some mistakenly thought it was a dragon if I recall correctly.)

With Flareon being Red and Jolteon being UR, it felt right to have Vaporeon be Blue. Both aesthetically as a mini cycle and functionally as a draft direction for UR. The latter being especially useful for UR because it doesn't have a stage 2 evolution as a capstone.

Where I'm at:

W = Ditto
U = Vaporeon
B = Gengar
R = Flareon
G = Venusaur / Victreebell / Vileplume

WU = Articuno, ?
UB = Golem, ?
BR = Nidoking, Nidoqueen
RG = Machamp, Poliwrath
GW = Butterfree, Beedrill
WB = Pidgeot, ?
BG = Venusaur / Victreebell / Vileplume
GU = Alakazam / Mew / Mewtwo
UR = Jolteon, Zapdos
RW = Dragonite, Charizard

Moltres ?
Blastoise ?

In the same spirit, I saw an angle for another mini cycle. Charizard is RW. Blastoise and UW were looking for pairings. What if I moved Venusaur to GW? Beedrill is also part poison, so it could seemlessly swap with Venusaur. This came with a fortuitous incidental benefit. If Butterfree and Beedrill had the same color indentity, it would be difficult to design for them. There's not much differenting them into separate uniquely inspired designs; they occupy too much of the same space. On the other hand, with different color identities, I was able to make use of mirrored designs to acknowledge that they're similar without them stepping on each other's toes.

For the same reason, I needed to break up Nidoqueen and Nidoking. UB needed another rare and Poliwrath feels way more Blue than RG, so I slid it over there and put Nidoqueen in RG. (Why not Nidoking? I forgot.) This also opened up a RB spot for Moltres. Red for Fire and Black for Flying. Perfect.

To finish off...
Vileplume felt more BG which left Victreebell at Green.
Mew felt most BW because it flies around??? And it feels like a whimsical being that just _is_ rather than being tied to an "element"??? Look. That's all I've got for you. Sometimes my creative process is beautiful, sometimes it's...whatever that was.

Final rare distribution:

W = Ditto
U = Vaporeon
B = Gengar
R = Flareon
G = Victreebell

WU = Articuno, Blastoise
UB = Golem, Poliwrath
BR = Nidoking, Moltres
RG = Machamp, Nidoqueen
GW = Butterfree, Venusaur
WB = Pidgeot, Mew
BG = Beedrill, Vileplume
GU = Alakazam, Mewtwo
UR = Jolteon, Zapdos
RW = Dragonite, Charizard

Next: A look at the design of each color pair, past and and present.

 

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WU Ice​

If ice is flavorfully about freezing things or locking them down, tapping is mechanically UW and prison decks feel UW as well.

This analysis foreshadowed my approaches--past and present--to this guild. Originally, I envisioned tapping + freezing to be the guild theme, intending for it to be used flexibly for both tempo aggression and lockdown control. But I didn't design for it well. I put in various kinds of tap and freeze effects, but there was no real payoff or overall cohesion to it.

Now, I've reworked the pair to be more of a "prison" control deck. Admittedly, it could be miserable to play against if I haven't balanced it well. Still, I believe the theme is worth designing around. There are enough knobs I can tune in order to get it to a good place and the alternative of a "regular" control deck is much worse.

Firstly, counterspells have proven to be devastating and borderline unfun in this format, since they are tempo positive two for ones against the marquee mechanic. In fact, I cut the two creature counterspells during this rework.

Secondly, I'm worried that hard removal in large quantities would be similarly unfun. (Especially since I have included no creature recursion in the cube, as it would be way too powerful.) The idea of a creature based cube is to have Pokemon on the board doing cool things! Interaction should be more focused on hampering them through less direct means (at least compared to a normal set).

Of course, I still included hard removal in the cube and that puts an upper bound on how annoying prison effects could be. They are all on creatures instead of artifacts and enchantments which require more narrow answers.

WU rares:​

Articuno

A prison card that's easy to plug and play, while nudging the drafter to look for effects that maximize its power and minimize its downside. In theory at least. It didn't come up a lot originally because it was overcosted for my environment. We'll see where it lands now.

Blastoise
Wartortle
Squirtle

New mechanic! During the update, I realized that with no recursion in the environment, there was room to use the graveyard as a resource. I added the cost of exiling cards from your graveyard to a few Assist and activated abilities. Then keyworded it in order to save space and give it a Pokemon flavor. Once it didn't take up so much space, it made sense to include the cost in a lot more places.

Tacking it on to cheap interactive "instants" allowed me to virtually increase their mana costs. You can't cast them as early, which allows players room to build up a little bit of a board. But at the same time, the real cost remains cheap enough to be competitive with the myriad of combat tricks and threats. Furthermore, it makes it harder for someone to stack their deck full of removal.

On activated abilities, the cost serves to gate against overly repetitive game play. In turn, this allows me to include more powerful abilities than before. I'm hoping the increased variety and decision making in activated abilities help to further push the Pokemon feel.

Back to the Blastoise evolution line... The major problem with the old version of it and a lot of the other 3 part lines was that the final evolution was not compelling as a stand alone card. On top of that, many of them are gold cards, which led them to be drafted much later than I think would be interesting. This line additionally had the problem that NONE of the stages were compelling.

For the rework, I wanted to maintain the line's identity of being an Aetherling style finisher. I'm not generally a fan of that type of card, but it might be needed for UW to close out games because it otherwise lacks the flyers it has in retail formats. Blastoise itself is not much different, but now has an aspirational quality to it. Wartortle does more of a thing now, but I'm still not sure if it is enticing enough on its own. It's hard to judge how much the small pieces are worth together. Squirtle should be a lot more useful. As we'll see in the UB section, three is the toughness breakpoint in this format, so a 0/4 is quite the formidable roadblock. In combination with the activated and assist abilities, it exemplifies the kind of pseudo removal I'm looking to push.

UW signpost uncommon + hybrid common​

Dewgong
Seel

I shifted around the numbers on Dewgong to make it more like an enchantment instead of a creature. As you'll see, I used the 0-1/1-2 stat ranges quite a bit for creatures whose abilities should be their main draw. Especially in this case, where the ability is good at slowing down offenses enough without the blocking functionality compounding it.

Seel follows one of my common Assist design templates: the "spell" ability is the creature's etb/ltb/becomes tapped/becomes untapped ability. I vaguely remember being hesitant to give Seel flash, as it would make the creature too similar to its Assist ability. Playing with it has changed my mind. We'll see if making the Assist cantrip differentiates them enough. I'm also a little concerned that having an Assist trigger above and below the Assist cost will make it easy to miss the one above. The original set had triggers only below for Assist only effects or only above for shared effects, never both.

Side note: Seel also untaps because it helps power White's general theme of creatures becoming tapped (flavored as resting or curling up as we'll see in the next section).

UW offcolor activation card​

This is a cycle of cards that will play fine in their main color, but incentivize the drafter to splash or go into the other color.

Lapras

The original set had a lot of payoffs for Assisting. As a whole, they were too powerful and pushed the incentives away from creatures on board too much. One goal of the update was to cut down on this. At the same time, I was looking to add more counterplay to the major +1/+1 counter theme in the set. And of course, UW was looking to solidify its new "prison" theme. The activated ability will need to be tuned a lot. I have no idea how well or poorly it will play.

UW split card​

Shellder
Cloyster

Here's our first example of a gratuitously complex design. What even is Cloyster by itself?? Such a ham-fisted attempt at creating a tapping payoff. I could have at least reversed the two triggers so that it reads more sensibly. Then, Shellder was all over the place in order to synergize with Cloyster. Put them together and yea that's just too many triggers and requires too much brainpower to work out what they do. The Assist ability was the cherry on top. It had no mechanical or flavorful through line with the rest of what's going on. I don't recall either of these cards ever seeing play.

Now they're so much simpler. Let's start with Shellder... Exert was released after my initial design and I love it for gating abilities in a similar vein to PP. The creature's ability might be more traditionally white, but in this context both UW and UB want this effect.

A white synergy:

Snorlax

Reworked to support themes better.

(More on the UB synergies later.)

The Assist on Shellder is pretty small, but I needed somewhere to put the white untap Assist effect after removing it elsewhere. It's a little awkward on a UW split card because it's more of an effect for a WB deck. (Black has a creatures becoming untapped theme that mirrors White.) But it didn't really fit on another card.

Cloyster is a bit of a cute designer joke. As an "instant", it's straight forward. But as a creature, the ability prevents it from attacking unless you find a different creature to offload the damage on to---effectively giving it defender. But if you find a way to tap it, such as evolving it from a Shellder, it functions as an Arbalest Elite.

Other cards that support the guild theme...​

Krabby
Kingler

Oh right, I ended up moving Lapras's Assist payoff over to Krabby. The point about Assist payoffs still stands though . This is a prime example of an ability that would be too obnoxious without a PP cost. Kingler, Seel, and Squirtle cantripping would have been too strong in the previous environment with Assist payoffs everywhere, but should be more appropriate now. We'll see if they're out of line in UR, which will remain an Assist based deck.

Lickitung

Not a UW specific card, but it's another example of soft removal and a card that plays well with Seel.

Horsea
Seadra

The Assist payoff that made me reconsider the role they were playing in the environment. Getting a +1/+1 counter or two on Seadra was a pretty brutal "Turbo-Fog"esque soft lock. I would like to keep this kind of effect for flavor, but may have to reconsider if the nerf is not enough.

 

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UB Rock​

The supporting cast for this guild was already solid. There was a cohesive theme of defense, artifacts, and sacrifice that just needed the marquee evolution lines to better support and incentivize it.

We'll start there to set up the context.

Omanyte
Omastar
Kabuto
Kabutops

Fossil (When this leaves the battlefield, create a 0/3 colorless Nautilus artifact creature token named Mysterious Fossil.)

This mirrored cycle didn't change much. Fossil is a new mechanic, but not a new idea. I pulled it out to save space and highlight the continuity. PP costs felt appropriate to add here. Kabuto's ability cost also changed to reflect how strong it can be and to line up with Black's creatures untapping/becoming untapped theme (flavored as waking up or retaliating, similar to inspired from Born of the Gods).

Omanyte crosses over to a WU lock deck too!

Aerodactyl

The last Fossil card, updated to use a PP variant. Looks very clean now!

Onix

New mechanics! Rocks are just my old pseudo Clue tokens reflavored a bit and using the named token idea from retail sets. Growth X stands for "This enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it." Nothing new; just pulling out common text to save space again.

Onix is an outlet that makes use of all the fossils left behind.

Golbat
Zubat

And Golbat is another outlet. Zubat follows my other common Assist design template: a pump "spell" that gives the creature's stats and abilities. Sometimes (like with Zubat) it's not all of the abilties, but it should always be enough to quickly internalize what the creature and "spell" do.

UB offcolor activation card​

Cubone
Marowak

Finally, a payoff for all the sacrifice you're doing. This evolution line is a little weird because it's the only one that falls into two different guild identities. This was a result of being a very top down design. Unfortuantely, it doesn't relate too well to the BR themes and is now potentially too strong. For all these reasons, some parts of this line might need to be reworked further. My first instinct would be to move the offcolor activation from Marowak onto another card, but we'll see.


And to tie it all together...

UB rares (+ signpost uncommon + hybrid common):​

Golem
Graveler
Geodude

Let's not even talk about the old designs. The only idea I kept was the Rock tokens. Now, the whole line stands alone better while representing the guild better as well.

Poliwrath
Poliwhirl
Poliwag

A mess of a top down design that was meant to work well with Rock tokens. Now, Poliwrath should more generally support the guild and in a more obvious way.

Poliwhirl used to be almost exclusively Assisted because card draw was very sparse in the environment and there were huge payoffs for Assisting. Furthermore, it was difficult to land an attack in the low curve environment. I hope that buffing the creature side and Poliwag will tip the balance a bit. More cantrips in the environment could help alleviate this as well.

Poliwag never saw play in the original iteration. Now that the graveyard matters more, I've repurposed it to be an enabler + payoff combo. I'll talk about mill more in the GU Psychic section.

UB split card​

Tentacool
Tentacruel

Like Shellder before, Tentacool doesn't fit cleanly into its guild archetype. The Assist half definitely works best in this guild with many expendable 0/3s, but the creature half synergizes with the BG poison -1/-1 counters archetype more, as we'll see later.

 

[xyz]

BR Ground​

What if we interpreted Ground creatures as liking to rumble and making it hard for the opponent to find their footing? We could express that as a BR aggro leaning deck that uses menace and can't block effects to push through.

This had the same problem my initial WU idea had---it identified a mechanic for the guild without defining a whole archetype or purpose to the deck. This was awkwardly compounded by Moltres largely invalidating the work of a lot of the other cards.

For instance...

old
Nidoking
Niorino
Nidoran

What's so exciting about Nidoking if Moltres just does it better?

So how do we fit the block disrupting theme into a greater purpose? Well, the reason to disrupt blocks is usually so you can connect with attacks. That's a goal of the game in itself, but can have other rewards attached to it. Of course I'm talking about "saboteur" effects, which WotC usually puts into Blue and Black. Shifting it to BR for this set seemed reasonable. Black in this original set already had some vague tap/untap stuff going on as part of the WB archetype. With the update, I defined Black's theme to be creatures untapping or becoming untapped. It's not quite the same as a sabotuer effect, but is enabled both by attacking and getting through and by White's tap effects.

Back to the new BR Rare...

Nidoking
Niorino
Nidoran

...and the RG mirrored card for context

Nidoqueen
Nidorina

(The Nidoran is shared.)

This was a tough design that I'm still not 100% sure about. There's a lot of factors to balance here. At the top level, I want the Nidos to be mirrored while still supporting their guild themes. One of the RG themes is creatures fighting, so it made sense to have a creature damage vs player damage trigger. The advantage needed to be big enough to matter, but not so big that there wasn't room to stack multiple over the course of a game. It's especially tricky because the two trigger coniditions might not happen at the same rate. I'm not even sure which will happen more. My favorite thing about the current solution is that the two Nidos work together. I'm open to other ideas though.

The Nidorines were never played before, so I changed them to be a bit to be more universally desirable. The +1/+1 counter lord has much more synergy in Green than in Black, but Nidorino is a better body, so they should be about even on balance.

Nidoran got a little boost to enable Nidoking and to generally give it relevance against all the 0/3s. Its Assist ability also functions to help aggro against the creature spam.

BR signpost uncommon + hybrid common​

Rhydon
Rhyhorn

Another payoff for connecting. The average toughness in this set is higher than average power, so I'm hoping this payoff is not too brutal. It should be fairer and allow the defender more decisions than the old version at least.

BR split card​

Arcanine
Growlithe

Another card that used to be invalidated by Moltres and became a saboteur effect. I like that this one doesn't result in you crushing both their life and board at the same time.

Power based removal plays an interesting role in this format with both +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters. At face value, Arcanine kills ~94% of all unevolved creatures (excluding creatures that enter with variable size). Of course, evolution and combat tricks mess up that math a lot. (I'm not doing the math for evolutions...too many combinations, too much work.) I like removal with counterplay to it.

Growlithe's original evolution synergy is another example of ugly design. If I'm using a trigger that cues off of half a creature's power, I should probably be rethinking it. The new design is still not perfectly straight forward, but at least you only have to think about it on etb. (It's worded so that they're separate triggers for Arcanine.) I do like that it streamlines the card towards an anti-counters identity.

Other "Saboteurs"​

Raichu
Pikachu

Raichu's old ability was a little too swingy and a lot out of place after newly defining the BR archetype space. The rework is more consistent with the new saboteur theme and also syngergizes with a new discard subtheme in Red (which we'll look at much later).


We've seen Kabuto's untap ability as an example of a Black creature functions in the same space as saboteur. Here's another one.

Gengar
Haunter
Gastly

Admitedly, Kabuto and this evolution line enable themselves by killing blockers, so they're not the best examples. But those will make more sense in the WB section.

The old Haunter triggered on tap, which is now in the White color pie, so it had to change. I wouldn't mind it triggering on untap, but I like the new ghost flavor a little more. Speaking of flavor, Gengar has Dream Eater and Gastly has Destiny Bond .

BR offcolor activation card​

Marowak
Cubone

Now that we've talked about the BR guild theme, you can see how Marowak doesn't particularly do anything for it. I suppose you could argue it sits back and makes blocks awkward for your opponent?


Here are some of the cards that are more directly block disruption:

Ponyta
Rapidash

Ponyta's another card that I changed to a cantrip after nerfing Assist payoffs. It changes the play patterns quite a bit. Now, instead of saving it to get a one for one, it feels much better to fire it off for damage against a Rock or Fossil token.

Like its spiritual successor, Reinforced Ronin, it has a (much more on the nose) mondo combo in the set. Because of the way evolve works, you can evolve into Rapidash and pick the up the Rapidash every turn. At the old -0/-2 effect, it was not overbearing. We'll see if upping it to -0/-3 is too much. I don't want to have to go back to the "half power" design! I also like that Rapidash on its own gains a lot more utility at the new mana value.

Diglett
Dugtrio

These are the most straight forward block disruption cards.

There are three more block disruption cards that will be introduced in three other guild sections.

 

[xyz]

RG Fighting​

I've already said a lot about the theme this guild, but originally it was more focused on evolving creatures. A sort of RG monsters archetype. This had the opposite problem to WU and BR---an overarching purpose, but not enough mechanical cohesion. I haven't added an overwhelming amount of cohesion, but the evolving theme is still there and it's open ended enough to not need much more support.

RG rares (+ signpost uncommon + hybrid common):​

Nidoqueen

For completeness, but we'll skip the discussion.

Machamp
Machoke
Machop

Old Machamp didn't have enough of a WOW factor. Old Machoke was too finicky and inelegant. Old Machop's Assist was largely a trap.

New Machamp is much more aspirational. New Machoke adopted old Machamp. The abilities are still good; they just made more sense on the uncommon. I love that the "new" ward mechanic can stack. It's been a useful tool to sprinkle onto this set that wants abilities that scale with power/counters/evolution status. New Machop is a much better enabler. I'm pretty sure Machop reduces its own evolution because you lock in the mana cost before exiling it as a cost, similar to Affinity cards with Lotus Petal? I costed it with that belief at least.

What are we casting with this cost reduction?

Ninetails
Vulpix

Ninetales has a lot of text going on, but a cohesive theme helps a lot. Mana = Damage. Vroom Vroom. Wither on Vulpix is definitely the designer chuckling to himself. Vulpix's old Assist was fine, but didn't have much synergy in the format. The new Assist gives you the opportunity to do a lot more. As we've seen with Tentacruel, there are ways to make use of -1/-1 counters on your own Pokemon. As we'll see later, there are also creatures that have effects upon being damaged.

Victreebell
Weepinbell
Bellsprout

PokePlant

The old line wasn't the worst, but I felt that a monocolored rare line should fit better into multiple guilds. I also wanted more colors to get access to card draw. Limiting it to non assist creatures feels more in the spirit of Green.

In RG, it doesn't really do anything special except be a large X spell. That's what I alluded to about the guild being a little open ended.

Now for some more RG focused cards...

RG split card​

Primeape
Mankey

Primeape's etb and assist changed a bit to support Nidoqueen. Then, Mankey changed to work better with Primeape. The old ability was more of a UR ability anyway (and was moved onto the UR split card accordingly). Primeape's wither burn spell trick moved to Vulpix.

RG offcolor activation card​

Jynx

Jynx used to mirror Mr. Mime, but rarely saw play. Now, it gives Green a little more interaction to compensate for me removing its best one (deservedly... details to come in the GW section).

 

[xyz]

GW Bug​

This has been a +1/+1 counter/go wide deck since the beginning. I've done some tuning, but for the most part things hit the mark pretty well the first time around.

GW rares​

Venusaur
Ivysaur
Bulbasaur

Mostly unchanged! Wow, so good! Except that in practice, these were the second attempts at this evolution line. I did a few rounds of reworking after playing the very initial version of the set, and these were a part of that.

Butterfree
Metapod
Caterpie

No mirrored evolution line spoiler this time. I'm going to leave you guessing.

Mostly unchanged! Butterfree needed the additional White pip because it was too strong on turn two with Bulbasaur. I added the exile clause on Metapod to provide resistance against PP costs. I buffed Caterpie to make it more exciting with Metapod. The current state might have been too strong in 2016, but MTG has come quite a ways since then. But even back then, Caterpie saw no play. My format was a bit too big for a 1/1 deathtouch. Since that probably hasn't changed, I could see Caterpie picking up an Assist ability? Or maybe its trigger could also exile a card?

GW signpost uncommon​

Scyther

This one didn't really NEED the buff, but I removed two defensive +1/+1 counter lords in this update and felt like I could use a new one elsewhere. I'm so much more excited for Ward compared to the two abilities I removed (remove counters to regen/give protection). It doesn't completely shut the opponent out and you don't need to continuously hold up mana for it. The only flaw is that some people may not initially realize that moving the counter in response to an ability doesn't do anything.

GW hybrid common​

Exeggcute
Exeggcutor

Mostly unchanged. Exeggcutor gained flash because it's a theme of psychic Pokemon. This card really needed the Growth "mechanic" + named token to clean it up. The idea is simple (instead of dying, +1/+1 counters fall off as little Exeggcutes), but the wording to execute it was way too much. It would have gotten a rework if not for the new tech.

GW offcolor activation​

Parasect
Paras

The "Eldrazi Spawn" making was a little too generic, so I moved the spirit of that ability over to Weepinbell. These new designs are a little more GW specific. It's a little ironic that GW is nominally the Bug guild, but cares more about Plants.

GW split card​

Hitmonchan

Another card that supports the RG archetype. It is a fighting Pokemon after all. (Notice how the old version really tried too hard to support the RG theme.) The Lure effect is very nice when going wide though. This is also another example of power/toughness based removal. In this case, it's better at taking out evolved or "modified" creatures.

Other GW counters cards​

Farfetch'd

Another new mechanic I co-opted. I thought it cute to represent its leek with a different kind of counter.

Tangela

I tried to differentiate and incentivize the creature side more. The Assist side was and will probably still be extremely good.

Meowth
Persian

Not sure of the balance on Meowth's Assist or Persian's activated ability. There's room to tweak both costs and effects.

Pinsir

Behold! The former best Green removal spell. It was way way way too good. Even when the environment was so low curve. This version is a lot narrower, which is nice for the counters deck that wants to be "creature" heavy and might not want as many dedicated interactive pieces.

The creature etb shouldn't be too broken because a lot of the Growth creatures start very small. This will limit them to picking off utility creatures and force the deck to lean on outsizing bigger threats (or using Hitmonchan).

 

[xyz]

WB Flying​

White's general theme of creatures becoming tapped (flavored as resting or curling up)

Black's creatures untapping/becoming untapped theme (flavored as waking up or retaliating, similar to inspired from Born of the Gods)

Black in this original set already had some vague tap/untap stuff going on as part of the WB archetype. With the update, I defined Black's theme to be creatures untapping or becoming untapped. It's not quite the same as a saboteur effect, but is enabled both by attacking and getting through and by White's tap effects.

The driving force for these themes was a desire to have the Flying guild do more than just kill the opponent with flyers. Mew's undisputable design encouraged the guild to be about activated abilities. Then it clicked that tapping creatures for activated abilities would be a reason not to attack with your air force. My roommate likened all the tapping and untapping as birds flapping.

WB rares (+ signpost uncommon + hybrid common)​

Mew

Mew is iconic for being able to learn every move. This was the only design.

Pidgeot
Pidgeotto
Pidgey

The old designs were just too confusing. Pidgeot still has a lot of text, but none of it matters after you play it. Like Victreebell, I like that it provides card draw to non Blue colors. And convoke is a nice touch for tapping your creatures.

Pidgeotto as an enabler makes a lot of sense to me, but I'm not sure how well it will play.

Pidgey's triggers switched up to be in line with my new color pie delineations. Now it's the embodiment of a Black psuedo saboteur card.

WB split card​

Spearow
Fearow

Spearow does in fact allow Mew to go infinite. Should it? Maaaybe not? The inifnite potential did exist before with different cards and it never came up. I'd rather err on the side of exciting than boring.

Spearow the creature is much more of a BR enabler. The Assist is a little out of color pie in traditional MTG, but I figured copying implies balance and equality, which seems in White's identity. At the very least, Ditto as a normal Pokemon needed to have a copy mechanic, so using it in other places didn't feel out of place. In this case, it's a call out to Mirror Move.

Fearow is a nice cross between a WB enabler and a WU lock piece.

Ditto

Buffed because it previously saw no play.

WB offcolor activation​

Sandshrew
Sandslash

Sandslash is the best example of the Black psuedo saboteur because it needs more help getting tapped. Either by using the White tap effects or the BR block disruption. Or by evolving it >_>. Incidently, the effect it provides is probably best in UB. Anything is better than the zero consideration it used to get. That old design was another mess in the name of flavor.

Sandslash and Sandshrew are Ground types that could have been designed to be more BR. Perhaps taking Marowak's offcolor activation to alleviate the quirk of that evolution line? I don't immediately know where I'd move the WB offcolor activation though, and the Defense Curl ability already makes sense on Sandshrew. All that and past me did a lot of careful color pie balancing, which I don't want to revisit.

Sandshrew also had too much draw as an "instant", which defeated the purpose of the offcolor activation design. I'm hoping its new synergy with Sandslash changes the balance there a bit. The update also added more -1/-1 removal, which could lower Sandshrew's demand.

Other tap enablers​

Rattata
Ratticate

A much improved representation of Ratticate's iconic Super Fang.

Jigglypuff
Wigglytuff

Unchanged. This was a slam dunk of a top down design. (Puts you to sleep and gets mad at you for sleeping.) Also a payoff.

Porygon

Adjusted the Assist to not be useless.

Persian

Already talked about this, but belongs here as well.

Other tap/untap payoffs​

Clefable
Clefairy

Exerted creatures like getting untapped sooner. Weak creatures with untap abilities need help getting tapped. Wow, such revelations.

Clefairy doesn't let you protect your voltron stack for free, but also allows you to disrupt an opponent's large counter pile.

Old Clefairy's Assist payoff was pretty obnoxious and had to go. I don't remember how much old Clefable's Assist payoff came up, but it's definitely busted as well.

New Clefairy's ability is traditionally red in MTG, but here it's top down Metronome (and I already have a banger RW offcolor activation card). Note that X can be zero. The clause is there to support Assists with X costs. This design is also why I decided to give White another heavy hitting Assist with Meowth.

Meowth

Also another payoff.

Doduo
Dodrio

Another source of +1/+1 counters removed from White. I find this new design extremely charming. You end up with three birds whether you evolve or normal cast Dodrio! (After it dies, you end up with four birds, but whatever.)

Chansey

More counters hate. I love everything about this card. A great Vorthos and Mel card. The existence of this card meant I had to be careful with making creatures as base 0/0s. The Pokemon that are still 0/0s either gain value on etb, have Assist as a way to play around it, and/or are functionally/flavorfully meant to die without it's counters. (Like Farfetch'd without its leek and Charmander without its fire.)

...and payoffs we've already seen, for reference.

Cloyster
Gengar
Lickitung
Kabuto

Sorta rewards???

Zubat
Poliwrath
Farfetch'd

 

[xyz]

BG Poison​

A -1/-1 counter and proliferate themed guild since the beginning. Largely the same as before, except for one new twist we'll see soon.

BG rares (+ signpost uncommon + hybrid common)​

Beedrill
Kakuna
Weedle

Were these what you expected?

Butterfree
Kakuna
Weedle

For reference

Not much to say here. Caterpie and Weedle are also tap/untap payoffs.

Vileplume
Gloom
Oddish

No changes! These have been great.

BG split card​

Venonat
Venomoth

Do you see the glaring problem I overlooked on the original design?
The guild needed a bit more to tie it together and Venonat didn't do anything before. Venomoth's another tap/untap payoff!

BG offcolor activation​

Arbok
Ekans

Ahhh, the new twist. Inspired by Fynn, the Fangbearer in Kaldheim. I'm excited by the gameplay this will open up. Unlike in retail, this environment has cards that can remove poison counters. I look forward to seeing how it affects the gameplay.

Chansey
Clefairy
Growlithe

Other -1/-1 cards​

Grimer
Muk

Grimer is another block disruption card and another anti-counter card. It's a little strange to read, but boils down to: pretend the -1/-1 counters on are +1/+1 counters. Muk is a callback to Toxic Gas from its PokemonTCG card.

Koffing
Weezing

The math on Weezing's original static ability was a little too awkward. It's been cleaned up and moved to Tentacruel. Now it does something more exciting and guild focused.

Tentacool
Tentacruel

In case you forgot.

Paras
Parasect

These get honorable mentions for being counters payoffs that could work here.

 

[xyz]

GU Psychic​

My original idea was for this guild to be Flash themed. All the Psychic Pokemon could evolve at instant speed and the Alakzam line would provide a payoff.

Alakazam
Kadabra
Abra

Just like with WU and RB, I had mechanic and not a fully fleshed out archetype.

The other half of the problem was...

Psyduck
Golduck

...that this evolution line dominated our games. There was little opportunity cost in playing a Peer Through Depths // win condition split card. And since the Peer targets all double as creatures, it was basically the best Impulse ever. AND we've already established that creature counterspells are backbreaking in this environment. As a result, every blue deck wanted to be a control deck that won by Assisting with Psyduck in play. We never really got to see what a flash control deck based on casting creatures could be.

Thus, I'm keeping the Alakazam line largely the same and just changing the environment around it.

Starting with...

Psyduck
Golduck

I decided to keep and adapt the milling win condition for the guild. It felt very in flavor for the Psychic type and especially Psyduck. Having the milling be capped by your own resources, should keep it in check. I'm keeping a very close eye on them though. Golduck has the potential to completely dominate games.

GU rare​

Mewtwo

This will be the only unchecked milling in the set. (Unless you include Poliwag's Psychic Spiral effect.) Originally, I had it costing GGUU, but I'm going to err on the side of caution with a lot the cards with Flash.

GU split card​

Mr. Mime

New PP tech is good here. Slightly worried that it will rarely be used as a creature.

GU offcolor activation card​

Starmie
Staryu

It costs UUUU before you get a card, but I'm still nervous about this one.

Creatures that evolve with Flash...​

Slowbro
Slowpoke

Never got to see how this performed, so I'm not changing it much.

Gyarados
Magikarp

I could see Magikarp being too strong? Hadn't seen play in the past.

Exeggcutor
Exeggcute

We saw these already.

One last GU adjacent line

Hypno
Drowzee

Drowzee's old Assist had the same problems Psyduck's old Assist did. The new one is subtle in this format where a lot of the creatures' base stats are deflated because of Growth.

 

[xyz]

UR Electric​

The only guild that will maintain a "spell" based playstyle. I have no idea how strong it will be. I nerfed Assist payoffs across the board, but I also added a lot cantrips. I also buffed a lot of UR cards towards a "storm-esque" playstyle.

UR rares​

Zapdos

I added reminder text on absorb because everyone asks.

Vaporeon
Flareon
Jolteon
Eevee

Vaporeon and Flareon are monocolored rares, but the cycle nudges the drafter towards playing UR. They don't really support the guild themes, but I love this cycle too much to change them. They're mostly generic good stuff for control, but perhaps Porygon's new Assist could push Flareon to fit with the guild themes a bit more. Although I reworked the Vileplume and Gengar lines to fit better in all guilds, I'm okay with these rares being a little more UR oriented because its the only guild without a three part evolution line. Which also lines up nicely with being a "spell" based guild.

Porygon

UR signpost uncommon + hybrid common​

Magneton
Magnemite

This one got a little nerf at least. There was just too much text and getting to damage them when making mana was the least necessary part. It got a consolation of having the other trigger be a ltb instead of dies trigger.

Modular seemed flavorfully acceptable and I wanted a little more cross pollination.

UR split card​

Seaking
Goldeen

Seaking acquired Mankey's old ability. I polarized it towards drawing more cards for the combo potential with Flareon and Clefable. Goldeen's Assist might need a PP cost.

UR offcolor activation card​

A mini Zapdos. Not very inspired, but the redundancy is nice because there are a couple cards that trigger on being damaged.

We've seen...

Pikachu
Raichu

...the other one is...

Voltorb
Electrode

A mana battery for the "spells". No idea how balanced it is. The "Whenever you assist" part is akin to Baral, Chief of Compliance and usually a Blue ability, but Birgi, God of Storytelling exists too. Based on these two, this effect should cost 2-3 mana. On the scale of Baral's second clause to Birgi's expanded ability + better stats + backside option, I'm not sure where Voltorb's second clause + Assist ability lies. I'm erring on pushed side as I do with all these cards, but I could see reining it later. There's a lot of of knobs to tune though. I could change the cost to RR. I could lower the toughness to mitigate the on dealt damage clause. I'd prefer not making it cost 3. I'm not sure what buffs I'd give it to compensate.

Electrode lost the cohesive identity in order to support mana battery Voltorb more (and flavorfully call out that it was the fastest Pokemon in Gen 1). I'm more okay with it in this case because the two modes overlapped too much and the creature was never used anyway.

 

[xyz]

RW Dragon​

That left RW for Dragons. That seemed plausible enough---White is primary in flying and is a color of reverence, which sounds like a way one could approach dragons.

My original mechanical interpretation of worshipping dragons was to have one big creature attacking while the others supported it. In other words, exalted. Or, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty's RW theme... which fell a little flat. (I think that it didn't pan out more because red was weak and the other colors were strong than because the theme itself was bad.) Unfortunately, I didn't execute the theme well either. I only had one card that granted Exalted and didn't come up with the pseudo exalted mechanic NEO had. Without explicit payoffs, it was hard to steer drafters away from a traditional RW aggro deck.

Refining the idea could have been fine, but I opted to shift the guild to a "Heroic" playstyle. That archetype has a similar end goal of building up a big powerful attacker, but achieves it with spells instead of creatures. This has the large benefit of causing red "spells" to be interesting to more than just the UR drafter.

RW rares​

Charizard
Charmeleon
Charmander

Old Charizard didn't show up much in our draft, but even if it did, I wouldn't expect it to be particularly exciting. The activated abilities on it and Charmeleon were pretty much flavor text. Technically they affect the game through threat of activation, but they don't actively inspire joy.

New Charizard and Charmeleon are... complete stabs in the dark. I have no idea if the balance will work.

RW signpost uncommon + hybrid common​

Dragonite
Dragonair
Dratini

These are less explicit heroic payoffs, but exist in a similar design space. At a surface level, self-protection, lifelink, and double strike are great qualities for your "hero" creature. And if you draw Dratini too late for it to be your hero, it supports your hero well with its Assist.

The deeper synergy is Dragonite being a spells payoff because Assist works like cycling! The discard focused Dragonite and Dragonair also tie in well with Charmander. Similarly, Charmeleon plays well with Dragonite.

RW split card​

Hitmonlee

Similar to Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee is more of a general good card than a purely guild support piece. It's not a heroic "spell", but it can still trigger Charmeleon or help push through early damage while developing the board and setting up for the big combo turn. It was mostly designed with RB in mind.

RW offcolor activation card​

Tauros

Another card that doesn't really support its guild perfectly. BUT THE FLAVOR HERE IS TOO GOOD. When I first designed it, I read the card to my roommate and he was easily able to guess what Pokemon it was.

Unfortunately, it saw no play in that original iteration. The extra Tithe Taker clause should make it more interesting as proactive protection for the big combo turn. Not to mention that the cheaper firebreathing should make it a much more dangerous threat.

The biggest concern is that it still won't be very appealing for the other white drafters. It doesn't have any synergies. That being said, not every card can be in high demand. It's a 360 card draft with no lands. More cards are going to be left in sideboards. But I'd like for it to be a good sideboard option against spell-based/interactive decks at least.

Other good heroes​

Persian
Dodrio + Doduo
Electrode

Spells targeting your heroes​

Buff spells​

Mankey
Shellder

Nidoran
Ponyta
Trample is important in a format with a lot of creatures and creature tokens.

Pikachu
A red way to get counters on creatures.

Exeggcute
Farfetch'd

Protection spells​

Clefairy
Kangaskhan

The repeatable protection on the old version wasn't oppressive, but also didn't have interesting play patterns. This new version should be interesting for more decks. It's great both for and against the heroic deck. It can have interesting applications in counters decks.

For now, there's no infinite combo with it. But it's something I'm considering. The format is probably powerful enough for it to make sense and a three permanent all sorcery combo is relatively fair. The big concern is that currently white and green don't have great ways of breaking it up. A free sacrifice outlet would also go against my other designs. Perhaps it would use a PP cost and be a pseudo infinite?

Miscellaneous​

Mamgar

Uhhhh this one didn't get included in any guild writeups. It doesn't support any guild's themes, but it still feel cohesive in the format because red has a decent amount of counters. Another hate piece also feels nice to have and a non evolution is the ideal place for it. It could change if I find an important design need.

 

[ravnic]

So, there is a lot of text, which shows how mich effort you put into this, but ... I want to see the cards! All I see are the names listed

 

[Taamas]

So, there is a lot of text, which shows how mich effort you put into this, but ... I want to see the cards! All I see are the names listed

They are linked at the end of the first post.

Thank you xyz for writing so thoroughly about mapping an existing world into an MTG cube! It's a very interesting experiment on constrained design.

 

[xyz]

Yoooooo thanks for the love yall!! I had resigned myself to never getting any responses because there's less of a "play along with the designer" factor than the other Pokemon cubes have. (And the too much text )

I'll update the first post to make the card file more obvious!