U/G Identity: Grow Smarter!

Red and green just both want to grow bigger and overrun everyone. But in the secretive evolutionary battles going on in the Untended Cradle if you want to grow, you've got to adapt and survive as well.

The blue-green identity won't have a big footprint in the set, but the focus is on creatures that evolve, not just grow.

It won't have a huge footprint because it's hard to do at common. It's a little too complex, and at common we mostly want french vanilla mutate and fecund creatures. Here's a common:

It doesn't have mutate. Instead it grows as it takes down the flyers it has evolved to feed on.

I haven't really brainstormed many rares yet. Here's a blue drake:

This is an ability you have to think before using. Obviously you can duplicate any combat trick. But if you want to play some high-risk evolution games, you can copy a low-level damage spell or some sort of tap or detain spell in order to trigger mutate.

I've already introduced the Acre Breaker, but I've iterated it a little bit. And I've bumped it from rare to mythic:

Instead of a signpost creature, I've redone Self-Directed Evolution as an aura:

Given that there's no humanoid races in the Untended Cradle, don't think too much about how this spell is getting cast in the first place. Or perhaps you should, and worry just a bit.

Fecund 2.0

I was not happy with the wording for my first version of fecund, which takes up so much reminder text that you can't realistically do much with it.

So I cleaned it up, and by doing so, kind of loosened it up into a weird Animal Kingdom/"Do it like they do on the Discovery Channel" kind of place.

Here's the new version:

So, yeah, we've got crossbreeding going on all over the place. You can make a token of one of your other fecund creatures or even one of your opponents'. They're animals. They're apparently not very choosy. Something in the water in Guthreham.

Some other simple commons:

So these are obviously very simple french vanillas in common. When you start making them more complex, you really have to be careful:

When I initially made this octopus, he drew you a card when he died. But then I realized that essentially made him a bomb, possibly bumping him up to rare. He would be the selected creature of every single fecund creature you played and you'd keep trying to make tokens of him. I don't think that makes him broken, but I didn't want blue to be the primary fecund color. It does make for an interesting identity with green, but it might compete with the black-green vermin theme.

R/G Revel in the Overgrowth

In the deep tangles of the overgrowth, far away from where people live, various nature denizens absolutely luxuriate in the wild growth of the plane of Guthreham and don't want to be restrained. Some of the sentient races like dryads can feel the growth and grasp the energy being pushed up from somewhere deep within the plane. But they don't know that the plane is "pregnant," and don't care. They just like the way nature reacts to it and the strength it grants them.

So red-green is all about embracing the mutate mechanic and becoming monstrous beaters. Not exactly an unfamiliar role of the two colors. Admittedly, I find this color pairing generally uninspiring, though I did end up liking how the dinosaurs worked out in Ixalan. The enrage mechanic had more gameplay to it than I recognized on paper.

So, some creatures designed for the R/G mutate archetype.

This is a mutate version of a riff on a fun thing to do with enrage in Ixalan. Yes you can use this to kill an X/1 or ping your opponent. But you can also ping one of your own creatures with mutate and even the lizard itself to give it a +1/+1 counter.

I almost absurdly put this as a common. Yeah ... no. I'm gonna have to be careful about granting unblockability in the set.

While iterating some cards for this I began realizing that green's "ramp" identity is very different in this set. It's not about getting out lands and mana-producing creatures to get out big beasts. It's about getting beasts out and then making them grow larger. So there may be a little more emphasis on enchantments and targeted/activated abilities and a little less on getting more lands out.

Now that I'm settling on pairing archetypes I'm also keeping in mind cards that can bridge between color pairings to be versatile in limited formats. The Bonfire Furiant works well in both the red/black reave decks, and if you use this ETB effect on a creature with mutate, it's quite effective. It will get the counter before the effect is resolved. So if you use the ability on the Warproot Dryad, she'll get the +1/+1 counter for being targeted, and then she'll get +2/+0 when the ability fully resolves, making her 4/2 until the end of the turn.

Also, I have no idea what the hell a "furiant" even is. I just wanted some weird angry word to represent a fire elemental.

And the signpost uncommon for Red-Green:

This is another one where I'm not sure about the strength level. Until I playtest it's hard to predict how frequently we can expect a creature to get a counter in a given game. I have a feeling this is probably going to be fine in limited, but I wonder about it in constructed.

U/R Race You to the Bottom

So after experimenting with a couple of cards that reward you for scrying cards to the bottom, I kind of ended up thinking about the idea that the wizards in both blue and red are the ones who understand that something is really wrong with Guthreham and all the growth and the ones who have isolated themselves (either up in Nightscrape Mountains or on the Runetide Flotilla) to research.

Thematically, I started thinking that this manipulation with scrying could be a neat little theme for a blue-red identity to mechanically represent the relentless push to find answers. It's tough to do anything new and interesting with the color combo because of its tendency to focus on spells over creatures (unless you go tribal with them).

So as I stared at it, I realized that technically Snap Spark could be mono-red. Red can scry, though typically it doesn't get as much as other colors. Since blue is primary in scry, I can sort of bend it by making sure they work best together.

Note the cost drop. I realized that when it was two mana it would likely feel very bad if you really needed both cards and didn't put either of them on the bottom. If I kept it red-blue, I'd probably bump it up to scry 3.

Cheap blue Opt substitute:

I worry this one also feels bad if you don't put both on the bottom and get the card draw. I could bump up the cost and have the player draw a card for each one they put on the bottom.

There are elemental shaman folks on the flotilla helping keep tabs on the environment so everyone stays safe:

Note the "leaves the battlefield" trigger instead of death. So they scry if they get blinked or bounced.

And my stab at an uncommon signpost creature for the duo:

Might possibly be too strong for uncommon. But Dominaria really raised the game for signpost uncommons.

Possible New Mechanic: Fecund

So I tossed out one of my partnered animal cycle templates for feedback over at Goblin Artisans and a couple responses suggested it would have memory issues (true) and would create removal pressure (also true) too soon. Another suggested using a counter that would be removed to create a second creature, which is a problem for a set with a heavy focus on +1/+1 counters. So that's out.

But both responses got me thinking about other ways to gatekeep making creature tokens. The more I design, the more I realize token creatures are a vital, central part of the set that need a mechanic. I didn't want to use populate, but I really needed a way to show quick reproduction. I keep using the word "fecund" and realized, "Hey, that could be a mechanic."

So a way of triggering creature token reproduction has been bouncing around in my head all day (While I'm supposed to be working, no less.) I have two versions so far.

Version One:

So the way it works, is when this enters the battlefield, if you control another snake, you get an additional copy of this creature. The token copy does not have fecund because this is an enter-the-battlefield effect and would therefore immediately go infinite.

An alternate possibility representing wild, magical cross-breeding is this one:

In this version, when Thistle Adder enters the battlefield, if you have any other creature with the fecund ability, you get another snake. The idea being that the Thistle Adder breeds with the other creature.

I think this second version is more interesting, thematically more resonant with the set's concept, and keeps it from drifting too tribal. It would go great with green-blue concepts of quick evolution I'm trying to brainstorm. On the other hand, it's a bit creepy (we are talking about interspecies sex here) and keeps it from being used on humanoid creatures (because we are talking about interspecies sex). That's maybe okay. There will be other spells that can make humanoid tokens.

I see this in being in green (snakes and spiders), white (hounds and birds) and blue (birds and perhaps some sea creatures). I'm thinking of keeping it very, very limited in red and black. Maybe just a couple of red lizards and only black rats. Even though the vermin theme in G/B loves this mechanic, black already has access to a lot of mutate and reave. Black is getting maybe too many things in this set.

Oh, Hey Look. It's Reave!

So I've been fretting all this time about whether Reave was just too parasitic to work in a set that wasn't heavily focused on graveyard shenanigans.

Today is the start of spoiler season for the new Core set, out in July. Check this out:

It's Reave! It's unkeyworded and not entirely exactly the same, but the central mechanical concept is there: Something is triggered when a card leaves your graveyard.

It's interesting that this is a rare. I wonder how much creature recursion is in the core set? There must be quite a bit if they're worried about people getting too many 1/1 flying bats that they've put this as a rare.

The Desecrated Tomb is similar to one of my concepts for Amonkhet-themed version I did for the Goblin Artisan GDS3 exercise. I visualized Temmet (the U/W embalm lord legend) returning as a W/B mummy leader. Whenever a card left your graveyard you'd get a 2/2 white zombie.

The Runetide Flotilla and Defensive U/W

While the green-white coalition is ensconced in the Arbor trying to keep the beasts and overgrowth at bay, those who lived off on the fringes of society ended up getting pushed further and further toward the coasts. With little room, some started building a flotilla of ships and rafts to live on to both stay away from all the animals and try to stay isolated from disease.

This over years ended up growing and growing in size and population until it became a small city of its own, now known as the Runetide Flotilla. This is how blue-white will be represented in the set.

The theme here is of a very defensive, reactive posture meant to keep big creatures at bay with the two colors' emphasis on control abilities. Then the win comes from its evasive flying creatures.

Nothing terribly pioneering in the ally's nature in this set. But that's okay--not every color in a Magic set gets to go bonkers.

Particular to this set is that these two colors will have an emphasis on really shutting down large creatures. It is intended to be strong against mutate-heavy decks, but vulnerable to other decks that go wider than it does (like the green-black vermin deck) and it will be probably more vulnerable to spells as it will be focused so heavily on controlling opposing creatures. (Though of course blue can always splash in some counters).

Some card concepts:

I kind of go back and forth as to whether this is common. Detain is much more powerful than tapping, but it's also conditional. I think this can be common. I want it to be common.

And yes, I know this is actually flavored for The Arbor. But you'll still be drafting this in White-Blue.

Note that with this enchant and with the the pikeman, targeting a creature with mutate will immediately give it a +1/+1 counter, so there's some interesting interactions. Every time the pikeman detains a creature with mutate, it will get a counter. If the pikeman leaves the battlefield, you might be in some deep trouble. Also maybe the pikeman should be 3/1?

A win-condition card for white. Note that creatures that have been detained or are otherwise unable to attack can still contribute to the angel's triggered ability. She's intended to help you stabilize if you're confronted with big beasts.

Very simple variation on blue unblockability.

I've tinkered with the bird lord, which is also the signpost uncommon for blue-white:

A bit of a wonky ability. I wanted to make it clear that this color combo is not about going tall, but rather taking the high route. I don't like the activation cost, but given that it's uncommon, it seems like it's necessary for a repeat trigger.