• Blue has way too many 1-mana spells. 6 of the 9 cards in the set that cost are instants or sorceries, and of those, 3 are cantrips. There's also another 1-mana cantrip in Black in Mindshivers. • There are seven common black cards that cost • Black only has two common 2-drops • Black only has three 4-drops, two of which are Horde beneath the Ice and Winterplague Wendigo, which are way too similar • Between Living Bonfire, Sandpit Wurm, and Sunfury Haint, Red has too many big bois at common. • Outside of common, however, only one of red's cards costs more than 4. • Green, on the other hand, has a ton of common 1-drops, but not a single common that costs 6 or more. • More than half of our uncommon artifacts are medium-cost equipment • 1/4th of our common artifacts are Grey Ogres
Card Type Distributions (Common in Parenthesis)
White
Creatures – 22 (10) Spells without Engrave – 10 (5) Spells with Engrave – 1 NCP – 7 (3)
(NCP stands for noncreature permanent. So, enchantments, usually, but also planeswalkers.)
Blue
Creatures – 20 (6) Spells without Engrave – 11 (9) Spells with Engrave – 4 (1) NCP – 4 (3)
Black
Creatures – 20 (10) Spells without Engrave – 13 (6) Spells with Engrave – 0 NCP – 7 (2)
Red
Creatures – 22 (10) Spells without Engrave – 7 (4) Spells with Engrave – 3 (1) NCP – 8 (3)
Green
Creatures – 24 (9) Spells without Engrave – 7 (3) Spells with Engrave – 0 NCP – 8 (6)
Colorless
Creatures – 12 (11) Noncreatures – 10 (1)
Multicolor
Creatures – 2 Spells without Engrave – 1 Spells with Engrave – 0 NCP – 1
Issues
• Glyph of the Guardian is the only white card with engrave. This may be fine, but given how every single other engrave card in the set is in U/R (besides Control Bug which should probably be cut for simplicity's sake anyway, so that they're all on spells), it's weird that the engrave cost is when it's in the color you'd be most inclined to splash in any sort of engrave-y deck. • If Control Bug and Glyph of the Guardian were to be cut, there'd only be seven cards with engrave left in the set, with only Written in Steel and Insult to Injury at common. • Again, there are way too many 1-CMC instants/sorceries. Five of them are blue commons, and another three are black commons. Even with an incredible amount of support in these two colors for an "instant" deck, which was supposed to be in U/R anyway, this is still probably too many. • Black only has one rare instant/sorcery. This may be fine. • Black and red could probably each use one fewer creature at common. • If you count spells with engrave as creatures, red has the most creatures by far. • Of the 8 spells with engrave, 7 are instants. Raid the Ruins is the only Sorcery, and should thus probably be bumped up to being an instant, perhaps at the cost of a color intensity increase. • Green's creature:noncreature ratio is only 50% at common, which is one card less than white's, red's, or even black's in common. At uncommon, however, this ratio is 8:3, making their overall creature:noncreature percentage even higher than white's. So perhaps some of the uncommon creatures should be swapped in rarity with some noncreature commons, or color-shifted into White, since MaRo is always talking about how Green should have bigger creatures than White does, but not as many. • There are no uncommon green noncreature enchantments. This may also be fine, but it's supposed to be the secondary enchantment color behind white. • Druid's Heirloom is the only common artifact that's not a creature.
Creatures (usually as a sacrifice cost, or in graveyards) – 7 Spells – 2 Artifacts – 1 Enchantments – 1 Lands – 0 (unless you count Plague of Locusts, which I categorized as caring about creatures because it creates tokens) Mastery – 2
None really, except I'm not sure Cheapshot Enthusiast and Icy Whisper belong in black. It's ironic that I should think this, as I fought adamantly for their inclusion when they were argued as being out-of-color when i designed them four years ago. But it does seem pretty gimmicky to put them in Black, when there are no other cards in the color that care about spells, and when the former would fit so well into Red and the ladder so well into Blue. You wouldn't even need to change the names. Also, Barren Manifest is a weird card that I feel doesn't belong in the set, and if it stays it definitely shouldn't be an enchantment. That wasn't on the original card; I made that change myself later. But we already have Quiet Factory and The Manufactory as man-lands, and probably don't need a third. I don't feel like Written into History really fits into the set, either, as its interests are at odds with the rest of the set.
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14139 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
THoughts: good reprints are fun to find, but 17 is indeed too many. We need more cards by this TPmanW guy.
We have so dang many 1 drops. I feel like most sets only have a single one mana blue cantrip. Black needs common 2 drops and red needs 1 drops. Sandspit wurm mentions CMC. Isn't that usually automatic cause for being uncommon+? If we only want 1 big boi at common in red, it'll probably be the haint. You know what? Red's distribution is just really messed up. We need to nail it down to a set skeleton.
We need to make a firm decision on whether white gets engrave and either add or subtract engrave cards. Engrave in general is just in a bad place. 1 drop cull incoming.
Not really sure how Written Into History conflicts with the set goals. There is not enough mastery.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
It's the only card in the set that mentions planeswalkers by name, which feels a little whack considering the heavy focus on all the other card types. Of course, with the recent change to make all planeswalkers legendary, it won't need to say that anymore, so it may not be a big deal. But it's also a bit too similar to Unwoven Spellstuff, as they are both 2-mana enchantments that become copies of something. Then again, if we were to cut one of them, I'd rather it be Unwoven Spellstuff, because I'm a little bitter that we don't have a mythic Stasis variant named Starstill, and that would be the easiest one to get rid of to make room for it, as Glacinorak is a vitally important character in the set's lore, and Chronicler Sphinx is arguably the most iconic card in the set.
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14139 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
Unwoven Spellstuff is super weird with being an enchantment that taps and all. I'm ok with Unwritten History mentioning walkers. Although it could just be legendary stuff now. Actually, another change involving walkers occured since Starstill 1.0- they're targetted differently now and are mentioned on cards that target them.
We should do popularity polls to see which cards we should avoid messing with. See what our set's "pillars" are.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
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