The Races of Overgrowth: Cephalids

The cephalids of Guthreham are not quite like the ones of Dominaria. They are deep-sea, octopus-like humanoids, but they lack the xenophobia-driven conspiracies and predatory mindset of the Dominarian counterparts.

For Overgrowth I actually took inspiration for cephalids from octopuses themselves. Octopuses are known for being incredibly smart, but unlike pretty much every other intelligent race, they typically are not a communal or collective species. In the animal kingdom, pretty much every race that ranks high in intelligence--whether, humans, monkeys, parrots, dolphins, elephants, etc.--also favors communal living and child-rearing. Octopuses are very rare in that they do not.

So in Guthreham, cephalids are brilliantly smart creatures from birth with a natural adeptness with magic. And they're not raised or schooled in any conventional sense. Each cephalid, even as a young child, is expected to fend for him or herself and make their own way in the seas.

This would sound cruel for any other race, but their high early intelligence means that this is not some absurd death sentence. The young cephalids adapt and grow very quickly.

Culturally, this led to a very self-directed society that doesn't really have any sense of a "community." And while cephalids are not emotionless automatons, they are also not terribly empathetic creatures and don't easily grasp concepts that involve caring about what other people do. Their emotions are deeply personal, both in good and bad ways. They can feel fear when they're in danger and happiness when they succeed. But they don't feel grief over another cephalid's death or outrage over injustices (on the flip side they also don't envy over somebody else's accomplishments or feel greed for their belongings).

All of this very self-directed, inward-focused society matters because they remained out of the war between the humans and elves and the undead and demons entirely decades and decades ago, and they were generally oblivious to the developing overgrowth. Not completely unaware--they are intensely curious consumers of knowledge and history. But they didn't see a threat. And they were completely unprepared when the growth led to the spread of diseases, and the diseases pushed the afflicted to coastal regions, and then the afflictions got passed into the ecology of the sea.

Because cephalids are so self-directed, they have no concept of public health. They are not religious. They have no priests or healers. Since they have no emotional attachment to each other, they typically just accepted that cephalids get sick and die eventually. Even when it's them.

But the the overgrowth brought an alarming escalation of disease into the cephalids' ecology and they are dying now at a much more rapid rate. The diseases are affecting their brilliant minds, causing them to go crazy, which in turn makes them extremely dangerous to themselves and others, particularly the desperate and also sick communities of humans who have taken up refuge on the Blightcoast.

Cephalids are now increasingly realizing that they have to start thinking of themselves as a race and a community or they are going to die off entirely. They still might be too late.

Planeswalker Iterating (and Two New Ones!)

As I'm designing and editing and feeling the mechanics of the color combinations and how the story beats are flowing, I'm getting a better sense of both Xirn and Janell.

Here's the current incarnation of Xirn:

Now that I feel like I've nailed down the "learning from death" theme and scavenging style of gameplay for U/B in this set, I am really enjoying this iteration of Xirn. It is very attached to the concepts of the set, but it's not so parasitic that Xirn can't be a good U/B Johnny build-around planeswalker. His plus is intended to facilitate reave on your black cards. The play pattern here is that you dispose of your creatures this way and gain knowledge from exiling them. Then, when he grows strong enough, you recycle your spells.

I need to put together a "races of Guthreham" post on the cephalids, but I do want to make it clear that they're not black because they are evil or even naturally predatory. They have unfortunately become widely afflicted with diseases and corruption, requiring them to make some very harsh, very black choices to try to survive. Xirn himself is afflicted with disease, and he thought he was at death's door when his planeswalking skills sparked. Why this disease growing inside his body would make him aware that the plane is pregnant is an intriguing and relevant mystery.

Meanwhile, though I had initially planned for Janell to be W/G to reflect the ties between the humans and elves of the Arbor, her borderline obsession with believing she can "manage" Guthreham's growth and her refusal to recognize that the spread of disease and plagues are connected to this growth really pulls her away from green. The more I develop the set, the more she feels monowhite, and this will help make her an antagonist for the set--not necessarily evil, but obsessed with trying to make sure that whatever it is Guthreham is going to give birth to is pure and holy:

Her second skill is intended to "reset" mutate creatures and eliminate artifacts in tune with her concepts of managing beasts and eliminating the corrupting influences of the unnatural. Her emblem is designed so that it doesn't target anything, so it allows white to compete with mutate creatures while not itself triggering mutate abilities.

As I'm worldbuilding more, I'm coming to realize that the storyline is drawing me towards having planeswalker leader types among the elementals in the Deep Tangle and also perhaps among the tribal ogres.

Here's what I imagine to be either a dryad or a treefolk planeswalker

Her first power is intended to be used on mutate creatures. I gave her a mana-producing easy-to-get-to "ultimate" because this set doesn't really have any mana-ramping mechanics. I do worry that red-green might be a little too slow.

I have a red legend among the mage hermits in mind, but as I'm building, the hardy ogres seem more and more like a race that has some secret insight and strength to resist the nature of the overgrowth and survive. That got me thinking about a leader among the ogres with enough power to actually implement those harsh solutions to keep pestilence and overgrowth at bay.

Like Xirn, Skurn isn't evil per se (Oh god, I just realized their names rhymed. I'll have to change Skurn's). But he's a strong believer that the reave concept--disintegrating the dead and taking them completely out of the cycle of life and death--is the only way to keep the overgrowth at bay.

So the big question here is whether Iya and Skurn also realize that Guthreham is pregnant, and what are their attitudes about it?

Compelling ... or Just Weird?

So ... I made this thing in blue because I decided I wanted to try to get weird in blue, as you do:

So this crazy card started with the idea of allowing a player to clone a spell in a way that's different from forking or copying it as we typically see in blue and red. And it's a way to cast a spell in any graveyard in a mechanic that doesn't exile it (which itself is an odd choice because this set encourages exiling cards from graveyard).

I made that first part first, and then I realized that it also had to be castable without using that spell cloning ability. So this ended up turning into this weird modal spell where you can either replay a spell, or you can hang onto it and steal a creature.

So if it's not clear how it works: If you use the first part, Compelling Memory completely transforms into the targeted spell until the end of the turn (including casting cost and other features). So it loses the creature stealing text. Otherwise, you can just hard cast it for six mana to steal a creature.

This is one of those "I don't know" spells where I'm not sure it makes for a more interesting spell cloning mechanic that either simply instant-speed copying or flashback/jump-start mechanisms. And I'm not even sure it's right for this set (though since neither spell exiles, that means that you can use them to play reave kickers ... including potentially reave kickers on the graveyard spell you're cloning.)

The Races of Overgrowth: Human

Overgrowth isn't a tribal set, but as I'm designing, there's a definite connection between certain races and the mechanics of the set. So it's worth exploring the stories I'm trying to tell with these races and just see how everything relates together and whether it all feels coherent.

Guthreham is a human-focused plane, though as both the creatures and the diseases grow out of control, it is a question as to whether that's going to be the case in a hundred years or so.

Humans will appear primarily in white and blue, with some wizards in red to represent the hermits who have retreated to the Nightscrape Mountains. There may be some humans in black to represent the effects of the plagues on the living, but they might end up all being zombies instead. We'll just see how that goes.

There are two main centers of power for the humans remaining in Guthreham. There's The Arbor, the central pastoral W/G city where planeswalker priestess Janell oversees all. The human military force there is devoted to keeping the rampaging wilds from intruding into the human settlements within the scope of The Arbor. The Arbor is made up of eight groves called Acres, named after various species of trees that Janell planted decades ago to memorialize the rout of the forces of darkness. So there will be references to Elm Acres and Juniper Acres et cetera on some cards to indicate connections to The Arbor.

Janell's commandment for humanity to abandon urban places and let the wilds retake the cities caused some problems as The Arbor isn't large enough to house everybody. As the wild areas of Guthreham grew in size and in danger and as plagues started to infect more and more humans, people started getting crowded out of the mainland and pushed toward the coasts. Some enterprising people started building essentially houseboats to live off the coast, keeping them safe (well, slightly safer) from the various predators. People naturally began to gravitate together for safety to what eventually would become known as the Runetide Flotilla, a U/W community of ships off the western coast of the primary continent.

The flotilla has also become a home for many mages who have decided not to abandon Janell to the mountains the way the pyromages have. They're heavily involved with attempting to research the origins of the plane's uncontrollable growth and the dangers it presents. It's becoming increasingly clear that Janell is not willing to recognize that this growth is a threat, and they're not entirely sure what they're going to do about it.

Several mages have also been keeping tabs on the plague-crippled cephalids and are deeply concerned about their potential extinction and what that might mean for the future of the humans of the plane.

Because of the flavor of W/U being a coastal, ship-based community, I decided that gulls would be the birds for the set:

The flavor of humans in Guthreham is intended to be defensive, desperate, and potentially at risk. White and blue is intended to feel very control defensive, with evasive flyers plinking away for a hard-fought win. Even in red, the wizards will be powered by the use of the reave kicker, meaning that in order to deploy them to their best potential, you will need to be willing to make some sacrifices and get some cards into your graveyard:

Enemy Color Pair Uncommons

The more I build the set mechanically, the more it feels like this is an ally color set without a whole lot of interest in supporting enemy color pairs.

But I nevertheless want to make it possible to play these color pairs, and so I wanted to provide some uncommons that work with what's going to be available in those colors without actually forcing a mechanical playstyle. Here's where they stand in the latest iteration.

Choked Fen Nest hasn't changed. It's an interesting mix of tribal batching with a set mechanic that doesn't actually require a particular play style. Just draft these creatures and they all get a second life. That's it.

This does play well with green and white's emphasis on fecund, so there's a potential three-color deck here that can be drafted.

I simplified this card and am eliminating the R/U concept of rewarding scrying to the bottom. I don't think I can devote the card design space that it needs for this set. Red and blue have very, very little conceptual overlap in this set. So I just went way simple here as a way of helping red and blue players dig into their decks to get to needed spells. If nothing else, this card signals that there is no particular playstyle being pushed for anybody in blue and red.

The text on this one is awkward. Green and blue have access to mutate and fecund, both of which are triggered abilities. I didn't want to actually reference either of those keywords because I didn't want to send a message that G/U is the primary pair for those mechanics. Rather, I simply wanted to let G/U players focus simply on triggered abilities themselves. This also works on enter-the-battlefield triggers and death triggers. Blue will be getting some death triggers to work with the U/B mechanical concepts.

Sort of semi-tribal for white and black. White has the humans. Black has the zombies. If you draft the two colors, you can't actually help but to get these creature types, really. Black also has zombie tokens, so they'll be sacrificeable to protect more important creatures. And that's kind of what I want the flavor of W/B to be -- harsh sacrifices to stay alive in this plagued environment.

Like U/R, there really is not much connecting white and red, so I wanted to keep it in a space where it wasn't forcing some deep choices. White will have at least one spell (and possibly a creature ability) that does damage to attacking and blocking creatures in this set. So I think it works in a draft format. And note that the bonus is each turn, not just your own.

Overgrowth Removal Spells

I've noted Hyperscouring Flame in a few posts as this set's version of Shock, though it only hits creatures. That was one of the first red spells I iterated. So here's some more burn and removal spells I've been working on:

There's not a lot of "to the face" red burn options as yet. There's going to be some interesting tension with burn spells and the existence of the mutate mechanic. Any mutate creature targeted with a damage spell will get the +1/+1 counter before the spell revolves, meaning players will have to keep that in mind. They'll even get the +1/+1 even if the spell targeting it gets countered!

This one's intended for use against token creature-heavy decks (green/white/black). Though the nature of fecund means this isn't necessarily a board clear--many will have toughness higher than one. This may end up being a fairly weak card.

The rare red board clear for the set. There's also a rare red ogre with a reave enter-the-battlefield effect that does X damage to all non-flying creatures.

White is the anti-mutate color, so doing more damage to a creature with counters on it seems appropriate.

The Ashen Pox is the name of the disease (there are many plagues and diseases being unwittingly hosted by the various races) that's zombifying folks. Making a modal kill spell looks a little weird. But given the existence of reave in the set, I wanted it to be an option. I'm wondering if this is too expensive. I may cut it down to 2B.

Note that if you target a creature you control with mutate, it will get an extra counter.

New Ally Color Uncommon Signposts

More iterating! I'm really starting to get the feel for how I see each of the five allied color pairs playing out so, I've been doing some tweaking. Here's where the signature uncommon card for each of them looks at the moment with an explanation of what type of gameplay I'm trying to foster:

Green and red is the pairing intended to really play up mutate. Initially I had this elemental growing whenever your mutate creatures grow. But I think a better choice here at uncommon is to give it a targeted trigger to make sure you can mutate whenever you attack with this. It is possible to target itself, so if need be, it can attack as a 5/5 trampler. But I did want to make it possible to start turning other mutate creatures into bigger threats each turn.

Despite my intent to try to make green and white the color of collecting and spending +1/+1 counters from creatures for value, it doesn't really seem to be playing out right and gets stranger and stranger the more I try to template it, given that white does not have access to mutate. So with fecund primary in green and white, I had to come to terms that this set is putting them in a familiar go-wide space for green and white. What does make this a little different is that the nature of fecund means that your creature has to die before you get your tokens. So it encourages some early aggression and trades in this color combination.

I've remade the Corpse Kindler into this guy to more clearly emphasize red and black as the reave colors. Because it's not common, it can have repeated triggers and even some scaling. It clearly tells the player you can increase the threat level of this ogre by playing more spells that remove cards from your graveyard.

Blue and black remains the only color pairing where they don't share dominance over a mechanic, but I think that's okay. As I recently wrote about Dimir, the two are thematically connected, not necessarily mechanically. Blue will have graveyard spell recursion. Black will have reave. Both colors will have the ability to trigger this ability. I think I am going to pull mutate from black. It's not fitting properly, but both colors will have some access to fecund.

Initially I was going to have him suppress anything blocking or blocked by it, but that feels more like a member of the corps than a signature card for the suppress mechanic. Since the play concept I envision for them is for them to hold big creatures back while picking away with evasive creatures, rewarding that play pattern seems to be the right choice. (And yes, these are still people riding giant seagulls).

I think I'm not going to overly design for enemy pairings, but will make some useful multicolor uncommons for them if people want to give them a try. I think I do want to keep the vermin theme for green and black because it fits the nature of the set so well. Black and white will still represent zombie survivalism. Maybe I should go with tribal-type rewards for enemy pairings, since the ally colors are all about the set mechanics.