OK, yeah, we can get rid of land in Mastery.

Cool, we're 25% of the way there!

@Shazzeh-

So I was thinking about Changelings and how they kind of tied Lorwyn together by fitting into every deck at once. Well, it just made me come up with the most awesome card!

Mercurial Mystic –
Creature – Shapeshifter Mystic (R)
: Mercurial Mystic becomes a land in addition to its other types until end of turn.
: Mercurial Mystic becomes an enchantment in addition to its other types until end of turn.
: Mercurial Mystic becomes an artifact in addition to its other types until end of turn.
1/2

I'm not sure I would spend mana every turn just to mess around with a weenie's card types. Also it's limited by the colours of your deck.
I could see a single artifact enchantment creature getting into the set. Either as a cool rare, or as a slightly overcosted common creature.
Blue can get a bunch of cards that change the types of other cards. A simple ": target creature gains or loses artifact/enchantment types" could help quite a bit.
I submitted a blue card before that was basically Mycosynth Lattice for multiple card types, but that wouldn't do much for limited.

Engrave misses the cards that care about instant/sorcery casting. Is there a way to make the engrave ability still "cast" the card, but cast it as the creature, or cast it into exile?

You cast it when the thing dies. We could make it work differently but I imagine it'd take more text and be a lot less intuitive.

Oh, yes, good point. If it triggered twice that would be excessive. Plus I guess it lets you fit in extra spells into a deck by having them double as creatures.

I resurrect the Mechanics thread to ask:

What exactly were we envisioning each color combination to be able to do in order to win the game?

A Magic set needs at least five playable archetypes. We need to come up with at least five decks that were repeatedly referred to as decks we would imagine people playing while we were designing, and do something to make those decks playable in this environment.

• We definitely talked a lot about a spell deck. We need to make that one even cooler. Maybe make Arcane Scrying send the rest of the cards to the graveyard instead of the library like TPzombieW thought? (We'd probably have to change it to four cards and up the mana cost to , though.)

• We didn't really talk about control, but that's apparently what the format we designed is swayed towards.

• I remember a lot talk about the impermanence-themed creatures deck. Like Viashino Sandscout. I think a card like Primal Forcemage that encourages us to play this type of deck, as well as perhaps a Ball Lightning type creature that doesn't require us to cast spells, and a general focus on haste, can push the aggro to a competitive place. (Maybe colorshift Mass of Bones to green so that can benefit off of its Keldon Marauder-type creatures. (In fact, a thought just occurred to me. What if we used Steinhauser's Surge/Blitz but solely in , to really drive home the Illpyre impermanence theme? Maybe even throw throw in a card like Primal Forcemage and a viashino tribal lord to take advantage of all the Surge and Viashino Sandscout effects?)

• The enchantments/mastery deck. This is definitely , but we never found a second color for it. Maybe instead of green it should be . Give 'em a really good WB weenie deck with lots of Zealous Persecution and stuff, while tripping out on mastery. Oh and more Soulless Sentinel type cards. Artifacts that like being played with enchantments, but don't require too many other artifacts to work. Why don't any artifacts besides Mox Opal and Soulless Sentinel have Mastery? Why don't we put Cloud Key on a 2/1 creature? So many things we could do to make this deck cooler.

• The pure artifacts deck. If this were , it would leave each color equally-represented across the five colors. I think we should move as many artifact-themed cards in to or to more severely put the artifact deck in the hands of the Consortium, and keep free to devote its biggest competitive contributions to the instant/sorcery deck.

If you need more evasion, you are free to use my evergreen replacements for intimidate and landwalk
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4195

I have also considered keywording the Madcap Skills ability. "Imposing N" means "this can't be blocked except by N or more creatures."

Those are really cool! Terrifying gives me a great idea for this set in particular:

Invisible—This creature can't be blocked except by artifacts or enchantments.

:
Pumping up Arcane Scrying could help. If the card fit in with a graveyard archetype too, that would be gravy.
We could also use another creature with a stackable effect that triggers off of instants/sorceries. We need this set's Kiln Fiend or maybe Gelectrode.

:
A Ball Lightning-type card is essential. Primal Forcemage reprint would go a long way too. Adding haste to a few critters would seal the deal. Mass of Bones works just as well in green as black, but helps this deck out too once we colourshift it. The green half of the impermanence deck could pull double duty supporting a graveyard deck.
I always wondered why Blitz died, and this is just the reason we need to bring it back.

:
I've always seen as the second main colour for mastery. Mostly because black doesn't really favour any one card type, but still...
White is #1 in mastery and loves artifacts and enchantments, while blue is all about artifacts and black likes enchantments. That makes the archetype enchantment-heavy mastery (enchantments are the hardest part of getting mastery after all so fitting that the enchantment colours make the best masters). gets a little bit of love as a splash in mastery decks.
We'll want another black enchantment creature or two. Also one or two black spells that care about enchantments, at least in some small way.
I agree with making the archetype a weenie deck. We'll need a white anthem enchantment, maybe a black mass-sacrifice outlet and a few combat tricks that hit multiple creatures.


What I discussed in white above might be just what we need for a WG archetpye. Either a few auras for voltroning big green beasties, or widespread buffs for a deck that goes wide. I'd wait to decide until we see what the rest of the format looks like.


I don't mind moving some artifacts-matter cards out of , but I'd keep one or two of the artifact sacrificers in red. Those help an instant/sorcery deck make use of the engrave cards, and while we're at it, they make a sort of third colour for the arctifact deck. I guess I just like having a backup colour for my colour pairs. I don't have any idea if that's a good idea or not.

Ooh, invisible sounds promising. Don't see a block-relevant evasion keyword too often. This would have a big impact on engrave too.

As a final thought, I was thinking about allies and how they kind of fit the set themes. They work as a sort of creatures-matter mechanic without being to obvious about it. They would be a great fit for the archetype too. I imagine just a few in Starstill (maybe one mirrored pair?) then they would show up in full force in Moonrise as everybody starts coming together for the common good.

I think we need ten archetypes for the sake of Limited. Here's my take:

: Artifact-centric weenies
: Artifact-centric control
: Sacrificing creatures
: Viashino Sandscout.dek
: Aura Voltron
: Reanimator
: Instant/sorcery storm
: Lands
: Enchantment aggro
: Dedicated mastery

: Mastery/Enchantments Deck
: Artifact Deck
: Control Wins
: Spell Deck
: Creature Graveyard Deck

Each color is represented once in each column, so we can also format this chart to align with what each color cares about primarily, secondarily, and tertiarily:

: Mastery/Enchantments Deck; Control Wins; Artifact Deck

: Artifact Deck; Spell Deck; Control Wins

: Control Wins; Creature Graveyard Deck; Mastery/Enchantments Deck

: Spell Deck; Artifact Deck; Creature Graveyard Deck

: Creature Graveyard Deck; Mastery/Enchantments Deck; Spell Deck

The only thing that looks weird here is having the Spell Deck be in green, but I think we can fix that by simply colorshifting a bunch of the creatures with instant/sorcery triggers into . Spellbound Serpent, for example, hardly even needs a name change to work in green. This makes a lot of sense, considering how we designed Resurgence of Strength.

Bear with me here, but we have a lot of cards that add mana to your mana pool. A possible way to make use of all those effects:

Incandescence —
Enchantment Creature — Angel Incarnation (R)
( can be paid with one mana from a nonland permanent.)
Flying
5/5

Speaking of mana from nonland permanents, did you know that Braid of Fire is the most popular red enchantment of all time (going by Gatherer ratings)?

Sunstone –
Artifact (R)
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a blaze counter on Sunstone, then add to your mana pool for each blaze counter on it.

Helps both the artifact deck and the spell deck.

Just some stray ideas:

Majesty of History –
Enchantment (U)
When Majesty of History enters the battlefield, put a Relic artifact token onto the battlefield and draw a card.
"It's amazing how time alone is enough to infuse an otherwise ordinary object with indescribable beauty."
—Aloise Hartley

Betwixt and Between
Enchantment Land (C)
Hexproof
: Add to your mana pool.
In a world where space stands still, it still manages to vibrate outside of time.


Gnome Tinker –
Creature – Gnome Artificer (U)
Flying
Damage caused by Gnome Tinker also causes you to add that much colorless mana to your mana pool. This mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as turns and phases end. Spend this mana only to cast artifact spells, activate abilities of artifacts, and pay engrave costs.
2/1

Colorshifted Sadistic Glee in .

Cloaking Device –
Artifact – Equipment (C)
Equipped creature has invisible.
Equip

Desert Storm –
Sorcery (R)
Creatures you control get +3/+0 and gain invisible until end of turn.

Sandcloak Haint –
Creature – Elemental Wraith (U)
Haste, invisible
2/2

Archetypes
Nailed down:
- spell storm
- Creature etb

Getting There:
- Enchantment Mastery - May contain or as well.
- Artifacts - May contain as well.
- Grindy weenie bleedy
- Graveyard Goyf

Needs work:
- Aura voltron
- Death triggers? Red token making ins/sorceries pull double duty in this and . Throw in some sac you own guys stuff and bam! done.
- Token rush maybe?
- Control of some sort.

I say some archetypes can be 2 colours, others 3. Just let it be hard to draft. It'll be our Innistrad.


PS. Does the haste wording on surge/blitz prevent it from going on noncreatures? Because I really want to see it go onto some enchantments to act as combat tricks.

Judging by the discussion in this thread, as well as the point I come to in Reimagining Black, I really think it would be a great idea to add Blitz into .


No, because suspend works on noncreatures too.

Bears repeating.
For ease we can make two of the colours in each strategy primary and one secondary. I edited the quote to show how I see the primary/secondary breaks should go.

So I'm noticing it's kind of arbitrary which creatures in our set are enchantment creatures and which aren't. I'm thinking it might make sense to give them a mechanic to give them a bolder identity. Apostle of Elori is the coolest card in the set; I think it would be a really interesting take on enchantment creatures to keyword that ability, borrowing wording from Theros's gods.

Elorean Prelate —
Enchantment Creature — Elemental Spirit (U)
Eternal (When this dies, if it's a creature, return it to the battlefield. It's no longer a creature.)
Creatures you control get +1/+1.
2/2

Then we'd have everything we need. Mastery for Artifacts and Enchantments; Engrave for Artifacts and Spells, and Eternal for Enchantments and Creatures. Since creatures and spells are important in every set, this connects all our card types in a very tightly-interwoven manner. In other words, instead of making artifacts and enchantments important thru virtue of their own card-type identity, you make them matter by making spells turn into them.