Sunday, December 31, 2017

Overgrowth Uncommon Ally Color Creatures

I'm not terribly in love with all of these, and I'm still feeling out where each color pairing is going as far as play styles. I think some of these might change a bit as I flesh out more cards.


This is an odd one because I kind of feel like the spurn ability is too weak for limited in this set, but I also feel like these guys might be too powerful in constructed? I chose not to mandate a small creature for this one (the typical white rule) due to the limitations on using the card to its fullest extent.


Ogres are going to be my red/black creatures for this set. I wanted a humanoid race generally sturdier than goblins and able to survive within the overgrowth itself. There's also a giant or two in the mix.


The bird type for this set will be gulls to reflect the coastal life of the blue/white flotilla folks. Thanks to the overgrowth, some grow large enough to ride. That's some terrible creature subtyping out there I need to figure out. This isn't a tribal set, but I want the card to be usable outside the set in tribal decks. The gullrider's ability is an attempt for me to push into that space of punishing an opponent's aggression in order to win without overly relying on the spurn mechanic.


I just discovered that cephalids are no longer a creature type, which kind of surprised me, and now I wonder if there will be any of them in the next Dominaria set. Or maybe they'll be creature typed "octopus" the way aven are typed as birds. Anyway, this plane has cephalids instead of merfolk, and they live much deeper down in the water and interact rarely (but usually peacefully) with land dwellers. The diseases caught them all very much by surprise. They will be in black and blue in the set. They are very analytical wizards and have no moral opposition to turning to necromancy, but it's all kind of new to most of them. Once Xirn realizes the source of the diseases, one wonders how long peace may last.


Green and red will have elementals and an emphasis on beasts and mutation. The elementals do not see the overgrowth as a problem and celebrate its rapid expansion.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Overgrowth Artifacts

This won't be an artifact-heavy set, but I do plan to use them to help splash reave a little bit. In a limited environment, I want to make sure somebody has enough access to reave to make it worthwhile even if they end up stuck in a different color instead of full red/black. And there's some graveyard recursion in the other three colors as well, so there's a colorless reward for recursion for those who are in neither red nor black.

The artifacts will also add to a bit of the story mystery. Deep in the bowels of Guthreham, there are artifacts of unknown provenance that seem to be in working condition. Janell has been focusing on destroying all signs of artifice in order to keep it from corrupting this world. So who is responsible for this creature here?


Janell would destroy this monstrosity. Xirn is going to investigate it. We'll see how that goes for him.


Overgrowth Enchantment Cycle

With the prominence of the mutate keyword in the set, I'm very wary about using the familiar creature aura boosts that tend to win games in limited formats. Combined with a creature with mutate, it's an extra +1/+1 for free. So I would need to lower the power of them, which makes them a bit disappointing when not used on a creature with mutate. So they're either too strong or too weak.

I will still have combat tricks at instant speed that will trigger mutate. But instead of aura boosts, I'm thinking of an enchantment cycle that grants merely a keyword mechanic at a cost. It's more flexible and you can boost a mutated creature each turn if you've got the mana for it. It's a grant of more flexibility in exchange for less strength than a typical aura. I am not sure about the costs or the rarity. I have them in uncommon because they're really not terribly useful in multiples.






I have a feeling they are overcosted. (Still. I actually dropped them all down from four to three mana to cast when making the mock-ups.)

The flavor of the cards refers to the massive amount of overgrowth making it difficult for people to communicate between distances. Essentially all the growth has caused Guthreham to devolve backwards from an early Renaissance society to a more distant, fragmented, and even shamanistic society.

A Plane Name, Some Planeswalkers, and the Stirrings of a Plot

So, welcome to the plane of Guthreham! Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? This is the name of the plane where Overgrowth takes place. I suppose if this were a real set it would be called "Guthreham." But I'm sticking with Overgrowth as a flavor reminder of the set's themes.

Guthreham's history was marked with typical MtG-esque wars between heroic and high-minded holy folk, angels, and knights and such versus powermongering demons, vampires and necromancers. You've heard it all before. Then something unexpected happened. An unassuming but passionate priestess named Janell "sparked" into her planeswalking powers. She tapped deep into the wild soul of the plane, organized the human, angelic, and elven societies of Gutherham, and they won the war. For good. Forever. They purged Guthreham of demons, vampires and powerful dark forces and brought about a new peace.

Janell started a new society worshipping the abundance and growth of life and a rejection of darkness and death. Some large cities in the plane were abandoned as incubators of corruption and greed. Instead, bucolic and pastoral communities dot Guthreham, though there are some remaining larger towns and ports. Among them is the Arbor, the seat of Janell's power and the home of the plane's green/white forces.

Life grew with abandon with Janell's influence and the support of her vast planeswalker magics. And then it began to speed up. Those abandoned cities were overwhelmed with plant and animal life over decades. Trees and plants grow exponentially faster than they do in other planes. Animals gestate and breed more quickly than they ever had before. Guthreham is so fecund that it is encroaching on communities and making it hard for people to find places to live safely.

And while Janell may have banished the darkest of dark forces, her obsession with growth and rejection of the end of the life cycle is incubating plagues and diseases, and ironically, undeath. Janell refuses to publicly acknowledge that her obsession is feeding this crisis. Instead she is devoted to trying to purge disease (and, unfortunately, disease-carriers) from Guthreham.


Janell is actually quite elderly and this background story has taken place over decades. I suppose technically she sparked prior to "The Mending," but let's just kind of work around that. She's very old and very experienced. She is very wary of artifacts and artificing and her society rejects it. She associates artifacts with dark powers and corruption, and she's not entirely wrong (She is aware of the existence of artificial planes and dreadful forces like the Phyrexians, though she hasn't revealed this info to the citizenry at all. They are not aware of other planes).

The spread of plagues and disease is starting to lead to new tensions and new possible conflicts. Coastal communities trying to rid themselves of disease had taken to dumping their dead and diseased out into the ocean or exiling them on small islands. The plagues then began to spread into the ocean and ocean life until it reached the deep-dwelling cepahlids. The cephalids on Guthreham tend to their underwater communities and led a fairly peaceful and isolated life away from the surface world. They traded with coastal communities and were focused on studying magic and deep ruins of old, long-gone sunken societies. They were completely ignored in all the previous warring and most have never even heard of Janell or the Arbor.

But their isolation did not protect them from the consequences of the overgrowth. The disease has spread to the cephalids, and many of them have become afflicted to a host of debilitating effects. They have had to turn to magic to try to research what is happening and desperately attempt to figure out a solution. They have begun turning to necromancy as an act of desperation (as have some human wizards as well).

One particularly skilled researcher named Xirn began developing symptoms of a pox of some sort. Rather than killing or disfiguring him, it remarkably sparked his planeswalking abilities.


Xirn's ascendancy to planeswalker status is new at the timing of this expansion, and he's still trying to learn (completely on his own) what it means.

But as he is exploring the deep underwater and hidden caverns of Guthreham with new, more powerful eyes, he is coming to some surprising realizations, ones that Janell already knows but has been concealing. Guthreham, the world, is alive, with a soul and hunger to grow. Janell has essentially been serving the plane's needs by demanding and fostering more life. The diseases and poxes and unlife that this has caused is just another type of growth, and Xirn's affliction has connected him to the plane's soul and leylines the way it has Janell.

And there's more, Xirn discovers. Guthreham is pregnant. Something is growing inside and has been for centuries. Something very, very powerful. It may well threaten the extinction of all of the cephalid race if Xirn does nothing. But fighting against the overgrowth will put him into conflict with one very powerful foe in Janell.

So there's the basic lore to start the ball rolling. Guthreham is a living plane, which is hardly a new concept--see Nissa and Zendikar. But what happens when a plane gets pregnant? What does it give birth to? And who's the Daddy?

Friday, December 29, 2017

Overgrowth Dual Land Cycle

In a set that revolves around uncontrollable abundant growth, land needs to mean something or there need to be mechanics that interact with land somehow.

My initial instinct was something Zendikarian-like, such as landfall. But I started thinking about it and rewards for playing land don't feel right. The concept of overgrowth means that in actuality, land is becoming less and less available and usable. The sentient races are being shoved off to the side, forced into the mountains and out to the sea. There are "ruins" that are actually only a couple of decades old, overgrown with plants and wildlife (or undead). 

So I thought about how I could incorporate the uncontrollable nature of growth into land use without turning to too much into the direction of actual land destruction, which is problematic design.

This is an allied color set (not tribal, but there are thematic links between allied colors and there will be multicolor spells), and so dual lands are called for. Here's an example of what I'm thinking.


So a dual land you can use immediately. But it's got a life span. It gets overgrown (I probably need to think of a better name then "decay" for the counters) and is no longer usable. And it punishes you when it crumbles, but if you're smart, you can plan for it. This will be the case for each of the dual lands.

Edited to add: I do worry that, design-wise, the penalty doesn't nearly account for the up-front benefits of getting this out on turn one. The countdown may need to be shorter.

Thursday, December 28, 2017

HotC Design Challenges, Week 3

Zach Barash at Hipsters of the Coast is hosting some design challenges there to sharpen the minds of anybody participating in the WotC design competition. I've been participating and figured I'd share my card creations that he requests for each challenge after the submission deadline has come and gone.

Here are the card design orders and my submissions for week three's challenge.

Card 1: Design a card that contains two existing keywords that have not yet been on a card together.



Bant-ish, deliberately kept simple for common. There was a blue exalted creature with shroud (for a cost) but hexproof and exalted have not appeared together.


Card 2: Design a card that contains an existing keyword action and an existing keyword.




(No, it's not a pic of a birdman, but I was using a creative commons search engine and my options were kind of limited)


Flying is the keyword and scry is the keyword action. This guy is intended for Amonkhet. The flavor is that even the cleric types attempt the trials.


Card 3: Suppose Dragons of Tarkir’s story went a little bit differently. Design a mythic rare enemy-colored Dragonlord.




I ended up in all Simic colors for this challenge. Wasn't intentional. Just sort of happened organically.


The concept for Karatson is that he was part of Atarka's brood, secretly plotted against her, and overthrew her in ambush attack with some allies and took over. I think that plays out well in how the card's mechanics operate. Creating a token clone may not seem like a mythic thing, but combined with flash and the fact that "Dragons of Tarkir" is a set full of some pretty large creatures, this can be quite the ambush in limited. 


Card 4: Design an uncommon creature that references or interacts with an existing planeswalker to appear in an upcoming Core Set.




Since it's meant for a Core Set, I kept the interactions fairly simple to understand but powerful enough for uncommon. Upon review, I think two counters is too much. Assuming you have a Nissa and use her as this card intends, the elemental will actually be 7/8 at the point it is able to attack. (Play it, then use Nissa's ability. Then your next turn, use Nissa's ability, then attack). Probably way too much. I should have just put one +1/+1 counter each activation.


Card 5: Design an uncommon guildmage for a new Ravnica set.




Since I was already in Simic, I figured why not? Also gave me a chance to kind of research the guilds because I was not playing Magic at all when the Ravinca sets came around. I deliberately decided to change the way the guildmage's abilities work specifically because this is a new set. Since the coordinator is blue/green, she can be tapped to help activate either ability. And her abilities can be triggered repeatedly even when she's tapped.

White Anti-Mutate Angel

Since the mutate mechanic is not terribly parasitic design, I wanted to also make sure that what I put within the set to counter mutate at higher rarities was also useful outside the confines of the set itself.

So here's the set's mythic angel:


She essentially resets all creature with mutate. If they have any counters, the counters are gone. If they've got auras, the auras are gone. And per white's balance mandate, the same will hold true for Rashma's owner.

Flavorwise, that Rashma isn't of the more vengeful style of angel is relevant. As I've noted, white is trying to find ways to manage this seemingly uncontrollable growth, not completely purge it. The set will have one of its big creature removal instants in white, flavored in such a way to suggest that it's a measure of last resort that they implement with regret.

Overgrowth Mandatory Reanimation Example

Uncontrollable unlife presents a little bit more of a design challenge than uncontrollable life. Yes, black plays with fire and takes risks with the player's own life, but lean too hard into that weakness in any one set and black can end up unplayable.

So I don't think I'm going to put mandatory graveyard reanimation in common. It's too powerful if there are no drawbacks, and when you put in drawbacks, it becomes too complex and difficult in common. Here's an uncommon zombie.


Clearly you don't want too many of these in your deck in a limited setting. I may have to adjust the damage it does to the controller downward, but I'd have to playtest.

The reason it reanimates during your upkeep is so that it can trigger reave abilities that turn. 

For common zombies or black creatures I'll do more simplistic things like force them to attack each turn or forbid blocking with them. I want to capture the feel that this is not the same kind of necromancy you see on other planes and the player is not in full control of this contagion any more than its in control of the mutations. And non-undead black creatures (like bats and rats) have access to mutate as well. 

Overgrowth Mechanic 3: Spurn

And now, things get complicated. Behold the spurn mechanic.

Spurn


Spurn is an ability that will appear solely on instants or permanents with flash. Spurn triggers when the spell is cast in response (on the stack) to an enemy's non-creature spell. In all cases spurn boosts what the spell does or adds additional effects. It's a reward for good timing when playing spells.

EDIT: Big templating error in the post and the card mock-up. Spurn only triggers off an opponent's non-creature spell. Important distinction. I've updated the blog post and the card mock-up.

Spurn will appear in green, blue, and white and represents how the civilized forces within these colors are trying to manage all the overgrowth. Even though green and white both see this abundance of life as a good thing (and refuse to recognize the disease effects) they nevertheless cannot ignore its potential for it getting out of control.

Spurn is inherently a defensive/punish kind of mechanic, so that's why it's in these colors, particularly blue and white. I'm not entirely sure if I'll keep it in green, given how prominent a role mutate will play in green, but there is a green/white faction within the set attempting to "manage" this growing mess, and spurn does fit in green.

Spurn's roots are messy and complicated and the wording of this ability still needs work. I believe the way I have it templated right now means that the spurn effect would still happen even if the spell itself is countered, which is not what I want. Spurn went through a series of names and iterations. Originally it was kind of like a mini "storm" effect, where the spell was more powerful for each other spell that was on the stack when it resolved. That proved to be absurdly complicated when the reality was in most cases it was probably going to trigger only once. So I decided to make it a simple either/or test.

Originally I had planned it for Grixis colors (blue, red, black) and it was called "retaliate," because of the trickery involved in casting it. But when I really started thinking about how the mechanic actually operated, it was about reacting and potentially punishing aggressive opponent behavior, and that felt more blue/white at the least. Also, I was really struggling with how to represents white's role in this set mechanically, and defensively attempting to keep things under control seems to fit well.

I expect experienced players will love this mechanic, but I worry it's too complicated to newer players. Do they understand it's referring to the stack? Do I need to reference the stack in the ability's text? Does that make it even more confusing if I did?

Overgrowth Mechanic 2: Reave

Next up we have Reave, one of the mechanics that helps demonstrate why I had to simplify mutate to self-trigger.

Reave


Reave is an ability that triggers when a card leaves a graveyard for any other destination. It can be exiled or returned to your hand, library, or the battlefield. It doesn't matter where it goes. It's like a variation on Revolt from the "Aether Revolt" set that cared about whether a permanent left the battlefield but didn't care where it went.

Reave will appear on red and black and probably artifacts (I'm still figuring out the role I want artifacts to play in this set. I do know that this won't be an artifact-heavy set). The flavor concept behind reave is that this overwhelming growth of life on this plane has created a corrupted closed cycle where death itself is not an end, and viruses and diseases create a morbid sort of unlife. There will be some graveyard recursion and graveyard use as a theme in the set, but it's not going to be as neat and clean as in a set like Amonkhet and not as controlled and representative of necromantic magic as in Innistrad sets. Like the mutate mechanic, how graveyard recursion manifests is going to have that same feeling that it's out of control, and I'm still brainstorming how that will play.

Reave in red represents a desperate attempt to try to "cure" this horrible closed-off, corrupted cycle by trying to purge things out of the system entirely. Imagine a world where the eldrazi were the heroes! In black it can be used as a weapon to try to take advantage of the system and gain power over it.

Reave will typically be used as a destructive force in order to fit that flavor, representing in the set one way the entities of this plane attempt to survive within this increasingly hostile environment.

Reave also clearly is a parasitic mechanic that will requires X number of other cards in the set that remove cards from the graveyard for other purposes, and there's going to be a balancing act here. This is why I decided to simplify mutate so that it was less complex and easier to trigger.

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Overgrowth Mechanic 1: Mutate

This is my most recently developed and the easiest to understand (this is related, and I'll explain after showing the card).

Mutate


Mutate is a simple-to-understand keyword mechanic on creatures. Whenever they're a target of a spell or ability, they get a +1/+1 counter. How mutate itself works is the same on each creature. But there are also creatures and spells that will care about mutate triggers.

Consider:


Mutate will appear in all colors except for white. White will have other ways to put +1/+1 counters on creatures, though. So this makes for a very counter-focused set. The idea here is that creatures will continue to grow and grow out of control as the game goes on. Note that it works for both your spells and your opponent's. If your opponent targets your creature with a removal spell, and you respond with some sort of protective instant, that's two counters.

My initial concept with mutate kind of reversed what you're seeing here. My initial idea was for a secondary ability to trigger whenever a +1/+1 counter was placed on a creature with mutate. Imagine, for example, a creature that let you search your library for a basic land every time you put a counter on it.

The problem, though, is that every new mechanic I had developed for this set was a triggered mechanic like that version of mutate in different ways. I was creating an extremely parasitic set where every mechanic's functioning required other cards to actually work. For that other mutate design I would also have to create a bunch of cards that would put counters on creatures. This version of mutate is triggered by the types of cards and effects that are naturally going to be in any set and in any game.

Mutate is naturally vulnerable to bounce/flicker effects and non-damage removal. White is anti-mutant and is known both for flicker abilities and non-damage removal of creatures when they get too large or aggressive.

Project: Overgrowth

The Jungle. Welcome to it!

"Overgrowth" is the working name for the big block expansion concept I've been hammering out for the past few months. It is very, very much in progress and even as I type this I'm trying to think about how and where the mechanics should fit and I still have some gaps in the conceptual phase.

The reason the set is called "Overgrowth" is because the brainstorm that led me to the set is a top-down concept of a plane's growth cycle becoming dangerously out of control. Nature and evolution going bonkers and the tropes that follow. It's not just about life unbound and being very sort of green-focused. It's the idea that the very life cycle itself is being threatened by too much abundance. It's not just causing growth of creatures and populations, but disease and the plagues that feed on them.

My initial idea is that the cause of this problem was a green/white planeswalker who was obsessed with purging the strongest black influences out of this (still unnamed) plane, and she succeeded. This would be a set with no vampires or demons. She wanted the abundance of life to rule, and she got her way, but in her obsession she has purposefully neglected the death part of the cycle of life. She rages against the plagues and diseases that have come with this overgrowing world, but refuses to consider the idea that she's the one responsible. Even without the most powerful of black forces, there are still undead and plagues as she resists even natural ends to the life cycle. Sentient races find themselves backed into corners as both dangerous wildlife and deadly diseases approach. There' s a blue/white contingent that has built a flotilla of ships to live off the coast. There are red hermits living up in the mountains trying to stay above the encroaching wilds.

I'm not entirely sure if that concept of the green-white planeswalker will remain. I'm having a hard time visualizing the nature of the conflicts of the set in terms of green-white as the adversary. So for now I'm going to focus on building mechanics I believe help illustrate the Overgrowth concept and then see where they take me. I have three mechanics that I have conceptually nailed down, but a lot more to think about.

Welcome to My "Magic: The Gathering Design" Blog

Hey!

My name's Scott, but I tend to use the handle of "Larcent" for gaming purposes, so I'll stick with that for this blog. I started playing "Magic: The Gathering" waaaaay back in the days when "The Dark" was the hot new set, but I was always a casual player (and already an adult in college at the time, which should give you a sense of my age).

I ended up quitting Magic around the time the Weatherlight and its crew came around. Not enough time and I had moved across the country to start my post-college career and had lost all my playing buddies.

I've slowly been sort of getting back into Magic as an observer on Twitch, which probably seems really, really strange. I've kind of moved beyond games as just a "player" and have grown more and more interested in how they tick. I've been following Magic again since the Return to Zendikar block and was playing "Magic Duels" casually online until Wizards of the Coast abandoned support for it. I do plan to get involved with "Magic Arena" and have applied to be a beta tester. But I've never been much of a "Magic Online" player. I just feel overwhelmed with the weight of the game's history with all the cards. I prefer to watch games and think about design elements.

This is me trying to build my own deck:

I had been sort of mentally brainstorming my own expansion design when WotC announced its new game designer search. I've entered and have been pushing myself to study and practice understanding and designing cards.

So I've started this blog to document my experimentation. I've been participating in the design challenges over at Hipsters of the Coast. I may end up posting some of my card submissions here just to kind of show my mindset and think about how I'm approaching stuff.

Blue is my bag and I'm naturally a "Johnny" player with a very strong "Melvin" influence as well. I was immediately attracted to blue when I first started playing, even though it's the hardest color to learn when you're new (and when I was new they still had "interrupts"!). My tendency to want to build combo-oriented cards will definitely show in this set I'm brainstorming.

But that's all for the next post!