Cephalids, Xirn and U/B Identity in Overgrowth

So I was very, very disappointed that cephalids not only didn't appear in Dominaria at all, they aren't so much as referenced in flavor text or even in the story. It's not even clear if their kingdom still exists (and Mark Rosewater was typically cagey about when asked). There's still merfolk, but we don't know of their rivals are still around.

So for our participatory version of GDS3's tribal challenge over at Goblin Artisans I picked them to try to iterate a concept of how I actually want cephalids to play in Overgrowth. I technically picked "octopus" as my tribe. I'm taking a page from the way Wizards of the Coasts deals with avens and khenra from Amonkhet and referring to them by their animal roots rather than their race. Octopuses are a recognized creature type. Cephalids are not.

I am actually pretty happy with how the exercise turned out. And while I don't intend them to be played as a "tribe" in Overgrowth like the challenge required, the exercise helped me figure out the goal for U/B gameplay. It draws on black and blue's shared interest in manipulating cards outside the battlefield and playing cards from places other than the hand. And even from playing opponent's spells. We're not going with the Amonkhet/Innistrad creature recursion method. But rather, reusing sorceries and instants or using your opponents' spells.

So here's my new "signpost" creature for blue-black.

In the tribal version, the damage scaled based on octopuses in your graveyard (I kept the desperate, disease-afflicted identity of them for this exercise). In this case, I want to go with a mini-drain. I may want to tweak the numbers based on testing. Since the concept behind gameplay is so control oriented, they need a way to gain life.

Speaking of control:

So if you cast Xirn's Rebuke and copy a spell and you have Blightcoast Reaver out, it will trigger the Reaver's life drain.

Figuring out what I want for the cephalids' playstyle also meant rethinking Xirn as a planeswalker:

Part of me thinks that +1 is too powerful, but have you seen Teferi?

(Edit: Just realized his ultimate needs to be able to use any color mana to cast the spells in order to work properly.)

Black's version of board-clearing in this set is also tied to the cephalids:

I need to be careful about black sacrifice outlets in the set. I currently don't have any. I'm sure there will be some, but I need to make sure they can't be triggered multiple times in a turn.

There's also going to be some design tension here between U/B and B/R. These guys want to reuse spells in graveyards. R/B wants to exile cards from graveyards to trigger effects. I don't want to pull black in too many directions because that can cause problems in limited. I think that's what's happening with red in Dominaria. Too many different play dynamics based on what color you pair it with and the creatures just don't synergize well. So red ends up being one of the weaker colors in limited formats.

Rethinking Reave

Over at Goblin Artisans we're all invited to do our own entries for the Great Designer Challenge 3. For the challenge to create a new mechanic, I brought in Reave, but I changed the way it worked. For that challenge, rather than being a graveyard version of Revolt, it was a passive ability on the card that triggered when it left the graveyard.

An example:

If anything, I made Reave even more parasitic, and I knew that. I made this variation with the idea that it would be part of a set with a graveyard manipulation theme. In this case, I conceived the mechanic as part of a return to Amonkhet.

But Overgrowth is not a set with a theme of graveyard manipulation, and so the mechanic needs to be much more accessible. I was still feeling that the version that I've been fiddling with here is still too parasitic to function, especially in a limited setting. So instead of it just being something to check, it's something you can trigger when casting. My current version of Reave for this set looks like this:

What about this instead?

Essentially Reave becomes a variant of Kicker, giving you the opportunity to pay the cost as part of the spell.

Note how I've worded the damage boost so that it doesn't say "If you've paid the Reave cost." That's deliberate. So you can pay the Reave cost on one spell during your turn and then all spells you cast that turn that check for the graveyard-exit condition will get the bonus. This means recursion to your hand or battlefield will also work. It also means that you can create combo dynamics--other spells and abilities that remove cards from your graveyard that aren't specifically Reave costs will trigger the second ability.

So my dragon for the set currently looks like this:

But it could instead just be this:

Fundamentally, it operates the exact same way. I'm just taking the ability word away because it's no longer necessary. Reave is now a type of additional cost action, not an ability word. I think this is both a more elegant presentation and also a way to manifest it at common more easily.

I have two templates here, though, one that allows for land cards to trigger it, and one that excludes them. I'm not really sure which one I want to use. I'd have to playtest. My natural inclination is to exclude lands, because that tends to be the habit in card design (lands aren't spells and they have no casting costs and it can be a gameplay problem to exile/destroy/discard them). But I'm not sure it's relevant in this context.

Freeblade Rapier and Unstoppable

Another pass on trying to come up with wording for an ability that's essentially rendering a creature "stunproof":

I'm not sure really whether we really need an "unstoppable" keyword and even what the actual value of the ability is. If this set has detain, clearly it's going to be good against white and blue. There will be red effects that prevent blocking. And there will be black and red creatures that cannot block, so you could even use it on them to block with (though I'm not sure why you would). The wording here also overrules defender, so I could even make a strong defender creature or two it could interact with.

Self-Directed Evolution and Learning Curve

I had an idea for blue-green in the Overgrowth set that turns the concept of the Simic Combine on its head. In Ravnica, the Simic were focused on nurturing and manipulating the evolution of creatures and beasts and such. Green's growth combined with blue's perfectionism.

There's a fairly well-known growth trope concept of the hidden tropical paradise where life evolves on its own in unusual ways because it's isolated away from the rest of the world. I thought that would fit very well on Guthreham. Visualize a severely overgrown wild part of the plane that's so intense with wildlife that even elves stay away. There the creatures and beasts are growing and evolving on their own. And they're getting smarter ... and even gaining sentience.

They call this part of Guthreham "The Untended Cradle," and the humanoid races really have no idea what's even going on there. A deep, jungle-like region with rivers and mountains and caverns that people avoid entirely.

Mechanically, mutate would obviously play a role in creatures that "fit" here, but I also wanted to figure out ways to make it feel like the beasts themselves play a role in their own growth and evolution. They fight and get smarter ... or they die.

A couple of card concepts.

Still kind of thinking about the design space. Blue and Green is such a weird combo. They're the two colors that I think are the furthest apart mechanically. I have this idea in my head of beast creature being able to communicate with each other telepathically and essentially a hidden "society" in the wilds the two-legged races are completely unaware exists. But I am not quite sure how to represent it.

Partnered Animal Common Cycle

So I was thinking about how to represent Overgrowth's abundance in common, small animals that don't use the mutate mechanic. The world's overgrowth is represented not just with creatures growing out of size, but also with fecundity,

I thought about the idea of bringing in the populate mechanic, but I'm already bringing in detain. So I though about a very simple common space where you play a creature, and its partner shows up on your next turn.

I'm not really sure about the mana costs and size on these guys, but I know I want them all to be common and played early.

The idea of partnered snakes seems a little weird (I initially had them as cats), but I'm warming to the idea of a black/green vermin theme and I want both these creatures to fit in. There is also going to be a white/blue bird lord, though I'm still figuring out ideas of how I want him/her to play.

Tremor Racer and Acres Watchhound

I'm not sure on the rules templating on these two mirrored cards.

I think the ogre is easier to understand and subject to the rules than the hound. Obviously it's immune to pacifism effects. But the question here is, does tapping it down so it cannot be declared as an attacker an "effect"? Should it be?

The hound is even more complicated. Not only is it immune to pacifism effects itself, but does this mean it can block creatures with menace or flying or with the green creature ability prohibiting small blockers? Should it?

There is some interesting space for a creature that cannot be stopped from attacking and a creature that can block anything, but it's difficult to write clearly.

Fulmer Iterating

So fiddled around a bit more with Fulmer and raised his stakes a little bit, but also his impact.

So let's kind of go over my intent a bit.

-2: This is essentially Fulmer cackling with glee and giving the player permission to raise hell by preventing opponents from protecting themselves (with the exception of counterspells). The power technically does nothing on its own, but assumes that the player has a hand full of nasty spells and/or some aggressive creatures. Note that it lasts until your next turn. And it also includes you and your creatures, though this is typically not a problem for Rakdos. Black does have access to life gain, though, so something the player needs to keep in mind with building around Fulmer.

-3: So, I'm not entirely sure about the timing of loyalty and turning planeswalkers into creatures. There's a reason Gideon never minuses to transform. I realized that if Fulmer remains a planeswalker, he dies immediately if you activate this ability with 3 loyalty. So I took out the clause that he remains a planeswalker. I'm not sure if that fixes this problem. And now with this iteration I've made the change permanent. Fulmer becomes a demon if you use this power and is no longer a planeswalker. If you use this ability first, he's a demon creature with two loyalty counters, LOL. Not sure about rules issues, but with his ultimate, it seems like it's actually okay to do this. Obviously if he leaves the battlefield he becomes Planeswalker Fulmer again.

-5: I've changed the emblem to make it a very expensive life trigger and no longer requires casting him. Technically this means you can summon him, kill him by activating his ultimate, then summon him right back to the battlefield and use one of his other abilities. He's balanced around the idea of him returning to the battlefield repeatedly, so I don't think this is a balance problem, but he'd have to be tested quite a bit.