Ok this forum seems slightly less dead than the old ymtc at the moment. I guess I can do my card making stuff here.


The basic idea that first helped me to make a wedge set was thinking about an inverted color wheel - so instead of WUBRG it would be WBGUR. This makes it easier to see that the "Junk" wedge is allies (or at least adjacent) with the "Bug" wedge even though junk is black centric and bug is green centric (and black and green are enemy colors). It also means that you can think about color pairs. For example, the nature of RW is fighting, so both the "American" and "Aristocrats" wedge will probably have fighting in them. It helps to see that there must be enemy color cards like RW at common, but ally color cards like RG at uncommon since they only fit in one wedge.


Here are the primary limited strategies and mechanics for each wedge (these haven't changed since I last worked on this)

BGW - control - Dodge (If an attacking creature would deal combat damage to this creature, you may have that damage dealt to you instead)

GUB - card advantage dredge - Reincarnate (cost) = (cost), exile this creature card from your graveyard: Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a creature card that costs less. Put that onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.

URG - ramp - Energize (cost) = (cost), exile this card from your hand energizing a land you control: That land gains "Whenever you tap this land for mana, add one mana of any of the exiled card's colors to your mana pool." Energize only as a sorcery.

RWU - aggro - Ready (Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay its mana cost and exile it. It gains "You may cast this card from exile without paying its mana cost")

WBR - aggro - Zeal - Whenever this creature dies while attacking, (effect)


Each wedge will have a secondary limited strategy. Whatever the allied color uncommon card for that wedge is will give an indication of the secondary strategy. For example the GUB wedge will have mill as a second strategy so there will be a UB creature that can only mill the opponent.


The technical details of the set, to keep work, ink and paper to a minimum while still making it playable and giving every card a chance to get played (noticing that custom sets tend to get played less than real ones) -

A booster pack has 10 commons and 4 uncommons. The uncommon rarity is a catch all including cards that would normally be rare or mythic, but for this reason most of them can't be overpowered.

The set has 67 commons and 40 uncommons. Three copies of each common (minus one card to make it an even 200) plus two copies of each uncommon will be printed. This is enough for 20 booster packs, so four people can play 5-pack sealed, or five people can play 4-pack 30-card sealed.

The above rule means that individual uncommons are not that much less common than commons - however, your chances of getting duplicates of the same uncommon are about the same as in normal Magic because once you have one there's only one left in the whole pool. It should allow the set to have a roughly similar feel to playing Sealed with a real set while only needing fourteen A4 pages to print out.

I'll update this post with cards as I design and later scratch them.


3br
Creature (U)
Whenever an opponent draws a card, put a +1/+1 counter on ~.
3/3


3gw
Instant (U)
Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. Those creatures get +1/+1 until end of turn.


Bird Nest - w
Enchantment
3w: Put a 1/1 white Bird creature token with flying onto the battlefield.


Two-Headed Leviathan - 6uu
Creature (U)
~ enters the battlefield with four +1/+1 counters on it.
Remove four +1/+1 counters from ~: Counter target spell.
One head in the ocean, one head in the clouds.
4/4


2g
Enchantment
Creatures you control have trample.
Energize 3


r
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+0 and has haste.
Ready


3r
Sorcery
Add rwu to your mana pool.
Ready


Painful Genesis - Xbbg
Sorcery (U)
Target player loses X life. Put X 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens onto the battlefield.


b
Creature
Zeal - When ~ dies while attacking, return it to the battlefield.
1/1


Derpy Flamingos - 2rg
Creature - Bird (U)
When ~ enters the battlefield, flip a coin. If you win the flip, put target land of an opponent's choice he or she controls on top of its owner's library.
3/1


3ur
Creature
~ can't be blocked except by two or more creatures.
1: Switch ~'s power and toughness until end of turn.
1/5


4rr
Creature (U)
As ~ enters the battlefield, choose a color at random.
~ has protection from the chosen color.
6/4

Don't you have a contest to grade or something?

Also, I like the unnamed 3gw instant.

Thanks, I like that one too.

I've added a few extra cards to the list.

I accept not only feedback but also card suggestions. If you have designed a card that you think would fit well into this set or you want to try your hand at making something with one of the above mechanics, and you don't mind sharing it, I'll see if there's a place for it in here.

Like the look of the ready mechanic. Paying for your spells ahead of time is always fun. I take it that the ready cost always the casting cost?

Yes it is always the same cost, and if the card is an instant then you can Ready (and cast from the ready state) at instant speed, while if not an instant (or Flash) then you ready and cast at sorcery speed. If the card has costs that aren't mana, you pay them when you cast from the ready state, not when you ready it.

Here is a weird ready spell I was going to add to the file


Exit Strategy - 5rwu
Instant
Flip a coin. If you win the flip, the game ends as a draw.
Ready
When all else fails, run away.

That's hilarious. Potentially annoying but hilarious.
I guess Ready can be used for all sorts of situational effects that need to be cast at instant speed, but require too much mana to leave open. That and removal you can play early without wasting on weenies, while still leaving mana open for big plays. Very combo-able, sounds fun.

Yeah I was kind of worried about making it too good with storm, especially that "ritual" above (3r sorcery - add rwu to your mana pool) but that's an effect I really wanted to make, I'm surprised there have been so few mana storage cards like Iceberg.

Ready was the last ability I designed for this set when it turned out that assembling contraptions as the RWU wedge ability was not working. There are still some issues I have with it though. For example, I thought about making a ready Panic Attack, but since you only cast panic on the turn you want to win, why would you care about having mana open that turn (unless you want to also cast a burn spell perhaps).

I like zeal and dodge, though I don't know about the latter's name.

I dislike this mechanic. I get why it's White and Green, but I can't see how taking damage for your team is Black. That said, if you changed this to "you lose that much life instead", I can understand making it work. I'm guessing deathtouch and lifelink will also be prevelant in this colour combo.

While I can appreciate the ability in Green and Black, I have a hard time with this fitting in with Blue's game plan - but only because it interacts through the graveyard. Also, getting smaller and smaller creatures every time you use this (assuming it was a dedicated Reincarnation deck) is not grokkable, and yet still leaves a wide door open for degenerate combo-decks in Legacy and Modern (just like Dredge does now). For some reason, I'd like to see this mechanic stitch together the pieces of previously killed creatures, going into the mad-scientist concept of blue rather than the polymorph effects of blue. Skaab Ruinator seems like a good place to start looking.

Can you really design an entire wedge based on this mechanic? It doesn’t seem to have nearly the same depth as the other mechanics you’ve listed. I’d suggest making this an Ability Word mechanic like Heroic, and having Energize do lots of different kinds of things! It’s a delayed “imprint”, which is cool – so why constrain it to just adding mana to land? Energize can function like extra Aura spells, without being auras.

Needs some kind of counter to help distinguish an exiled Ready card from an exiled Energize or Reincarnate card. Otherwise, it’s a neat little effect, and makes sense in RWU, as those are the three colours with the most instants – which this keyword wants to be on so much more than others.

Bleh. Players are so used to getting bonuses now when creatures just die, do we need an ability that only checks if they died while attacking? Also, how often will newer players get tripped up that when their creature is killed after combat damage is done during the end of combat step (when their creature is still considered attacking), they still get the effect? You’re on the right track that you need another combat-based mechanic, but I don’t think this is what you’re looking for.

I suppose you could boost its relevance somewhat with a suite of powerful soft counters. I agree with your feelings on the ritual. The real danger is that it provides such a large boost- cost is largely irrelevant since you aren't paying it the same turn you get the ritual mana. I'd feel better about it if it didn't boost you three turns worth of mana. Of course to lower the mana it gives and still let it enable the RWU wedge you could change it to just or 2 mana in any combination of RWU.

Hey Yarium thanks for the detailed critique. I'm gonna attempt to respectfully defend my set.

One thing to note is that wedge mechanics are chosen not only for the flavor of the three colors but also for the kind of gameplay you want that wedge to have. You can see a similar thing in Alara where neither Exalted nor Unearth is particularly blue.

You can understand dodge being black if you think of it as, some creature tries to attack you, your "defending" creature just lets it hit you, but then stabs it in the back in the meantime. You are correct that this wedge will have the most lifegain.

Reincarnate is in the three colors of the dredge deck from innistrad, the mimeoplasm commander deck and even the original dredge deck from ravnica/tsp. I think that it makes sense in blue since blue is the color of Polymorph and Pongify effects. Since you have to get the creature in your graveyard and pay the reincarnate cost (which could be higher than the creature's original cost) and then if you want to continue the chain you need a way to sacrifice the new creature, then I don't think that it will be broken in any format. Do you think it would be better if it could reveal until you find a creature of equal or lower cost (instead of only lower)? Or do you think that it should be Reincarnate (number) - (cost) so you can reveal until you find a creature with cost less or equal to the number? Here is an example to explain the latter possibility

Enlightened human - g
creature
1/1
Reincarnate 7 - 5gg
If this guy is in your graveyard you can pay seven mana and exile it to 'cascade' into your first creature costing seven or less

With energize, what do you mean it's a delayed imprint? There is no delay, it's just that it imprints itself onto other cards rather than imprinting other cards on to it (similar to how Cipher-encode works). It's nice to have some simpler mechanics, this one just lets you focus on casting huge fat creatures and if you don't have enough mana then you can use them as ramp spells to help you cast other fat creatures sooner. It's like how Cycling itself is not a cool ability but it does appear on some really cool cards. Being able to energize as an aura onto creatures instead of lands would be a bit too similar to bestow and wouldn't help with the problem of not being able to cast your giants, but if this was a whole block rather than a set then maybe that's the direction that Energize could evolve into.

With Ready, I considered using a counter. Getting it confused with energize cards shouldn't be a problem since you would place them under your lands like auras, but yeah maybe you need two different exile zones to help you remember. It would be pretty powerful on instants since wasting mana is one of the key problems of the draw go decks, but it has a similar problem to flashback instants that the opponent might forget that you've readied one and not play around it. I'll just have to be careful with effects and costs, but there will be some ready instants.

If Zeal cared about the creature dying for any reason then it would be a completely different mechanic, since creatures are much more likely to die to sweepers or when chump blocking than when attacking. It's meant to encourage an unusual playstyle of attacking into certain death that players wouldn't normally do. I don't understand what you mean by players getting tripped up. Zeal is a positive effect, so why would your opponent kill it for you during the end of combat step? If you have a sacrifice outlet, you can sac it after combat damage to get the effect, but that's taking advantage of your own ability so if new players see the opponent doing that they might think it's weird but they'll learn something new about the game. Or do you mean new players won't understand that it triggers during the combat damage step? It pretty much works the same as Kithkin Mourncaller and I don't recall that card being a problem.

TPW I think the ritual is okay since a storm deck doesn't want to have to have four mana on the turn before it's going to win. Storm decks don't want Thran Dynamo. Originally I think CL suggested it should be 4 for 4 or 3 for 3 but I had to make this underpowered version to avoid exactly what you said.

Agreed, Unearth isn't really blue, and that is good example. That said, it's just nice when you can have mechanics that do fully match. Even though Unearth was in the blue/black/red shard, it also had the fewest instances of the mechanic. I would disagree with you on Exalted though - having a single evasive attacker while sitting behind a wall of creatures is a very blue thing to do, and the weight given to blue in Exalted (higher than green, lower than white) helps with where it fits. That said, Exalted is a pretty colour-neutral mechanic overall. It's important to note here that not every shard had a keyword! Esper had no keyword mechanic, but WAS made unique through the coloured artifact creatures. So if you're not sold on your own mechanic, but still want that wedge to use those themes, then there's likely another way ;-)

------

Don't worry about dodge. An easy template change to "lose life" will make it work, and will bring it in line with black's effects of "If something would happen, pay life instead".

------

Yeah, I catch the Polymorph part of the mechanic - I just don't like it . Then again, that's the important job of design; trying to figure out what someone will or won't inherently like.

What I meant by my previous post was that it’s not fun to Reincarnate “down”. Cascade was an exception, as you got to cast a free spell off another spell, and players LOVE free! However, you can see just how much risk design was willing to take by only putting the mechanic into Conflux. They knew that the risk of only casting “down” would lead to lots of disappointing moments of “oh, I cascaded into my useless Raging Goblin”. They didn’t want that to happen, but it’s hard to craft a mechanic that gave free+random and have it give somewhat consistent levels of emotional payoff. Reincarnate currently runs almost this exact same risk.

At the same time, just because you hit cards of lower cost doesn’t mean the mechanic will be hard to break. The best Cascade cards in Modern and Legacy are the lowest costing ones (and Bloodbraid Elf, because it = value), because they can “search” their deck to cast specific cards by simply having no others at that 1 or 2 casting cost. Oddly enough, Reincarnate, like Cascade, becomes less and less powerful and consistent the higher the cost of things that it’s on. This means a high cost Reincarnate card can have a lower Reincarnate cost

So you can see the problem, yes? For older formats, the mechanic might be too powerful, but for regular formats, it’s too inconsistent.

That said, since it’s not a real set, you don’t need to worry about how it interacts with older formats – but pretending that it was, this would be a potential issue.

What if instead Reincarnate had a low cost, but allowed the card to replace a creature spell cast? EXAMPLE:

Tenistis Servant
Creature – Snake Shaman {C}
Deathtouch, Reach
Reincarnate (Whenever you cast a creature spell, if Tenistis Servant is in your graveyard, you may pay . If you do, switch that spell for Tenistis Servant.)
2/1

In this idea, the creature is literally brought back from the grave! The trick is that you’ll still need to cast creature spells, and pay THAT creature spell’s cost as well – but by having a stocked graveyard, you’ll be able to turn any creature spell cast into the card that you need. A 2/1 Deathtouch creature with Reach can kill a big 4-toughness flier that your 4/3 creature in hand can’t answer.

------

For Energize, I was saying that Imprint tends to happens when you cast the spell/enters the battlefield. It’s a one-time choice. Energize doesn’t have to be a one-time choice, but rather can “energize” a card at any time – even 10 turns after a card’s been on the battlefield. In that sense, it’s “delayed”. Hence, delayed Imprint

My suggestion is just to open it up a bit earlier, since you’ll have lots of cards in the set, and having a quarter of all the wedge’s cards just ramp you is a little dull. Putting the ramp-option on the fatties makes a lot of sense, but opening it up could allow your little guys to energize with utility options, making the fatties you do cast more powerful.

------

When I say “ready wants to be on instants”, it’s because that’s what players want. If a card furthers your board state, then having it with a Ready action will only matter if you’re trying to combo. If a card detracts from your opponent’s board state, then, like Seal of Doom, it can make sense to telegraph the move try to sit on the card for later. Come to think of it, Ready is pretty much “Seal of CARDNAME”, except that a readied spell can still only be cast at its usual timing restrictions.

I would still strongly suggest putting a counter on readied cards. It visually signifies that the card is ready to be cast. Energize won’t matter, as players will naturally put the card under the other card just as they do with auras and haunt, etc, but the current wording for Reincarnate will result in multiple cards in exile. If the wording for Reincarnate is switched to my example, this won’t be a problem – but even still, a counter would be nice if you plan on having any “exile target creature” effects in the set, or even just for when interacting with other Magic sets.

------

Gotcha on Zeal, and I totally understand that. But what I meant was that there are many players (often newbies) that won’t understand that a creature is still considered attacking, even after it’s dealt damage. You can open the mechanic up with “If this creature dies during the combat phase”, and can continue to craft the preferred environment with a healthy dosage of “attacks each turn if able” and “can’t block” phrases.

When I read your reply I had to go back and double check that I'd written Energize right. I had, it says "exile this card from your hand". It's an easy thing to miss. So it's not delayed, you either cast it as a spell/permanent and never energize it, or you energize it from your hand.

Your suggestion on reincarnate would need a name since the new creature you're casting (the 4/3 in this case) never even gets to have one life before it comes back as something else. Yours is basically Retrace and it is a cool mechanic, but does not give card advantage and could lead to repetitive gameplay. You are right about one thing, that a lot of people will not like reincarnate. They won't see it as "free" because they have to pay mana to get a random creature. However, Spikes will love it because the second creature is free in the sense that it does not cost a card - this is your basic two for one.
As for the Legacy / Modern thing, let's imagine a grizzly bears with reincarnate 1g. Let's say you only have a single one drop creature in your deck, so whenever you reincarnate the bear you are guaranteed to get that card. I have two questions. Firstly, what one drop creature is so powerful that being able to tutor for it consistently is broken? Secondly, are you sure there's not an easier way to get it out than getting the bear into your graveyard somehow and then paying two mana? Off the top of my head Legacy has Worldly Tutor and Living Wish, Modern has Chord of Calling.

There are a few situations where ready is relevant even in the sort of deck that is just trying to get as much stuff on the board as soon as possible. You mentioned one good one, removal, and yeah ready is a lot like Seals. One of my favorite things to do in tsp standard was to suspend a Rift Bolt to discourage my opponent from playing a creature the next turn. But there are also things like auras, especially ones that grant haste or that protect a creature from being killed. In fact I think the whole mechanic may have been inspired by Primal Visitation.

In Alara there were two shards that had neither an abilityword nor a keyword, Esper and Naya. Esper wasn't so much that the artifacts were colored as it was about things that rewarded you for having artifacts in your deck, similarly Naya was about things that rewarded you for having 5+ power creatures in your deck. I could go that direction with one of my wedges if I had a clear idea about what I wanted it to do that couldn't be represented with a written mechanic. Dodge is one candidate for change since it can lead to board stalls (hopefully people playing that shard realize that they need to put finishers in their decks). Ready is another in case I can't think of enough cards to put it on, but this set is not too big and it seems to have polled well on this forum so it should be able to stay. It actually helped me to realize that the RWU shard wanted to be aggro/tempo rather than midrange since it's all about being mana efficient. I am totally happy with the other three (zeal, energize, reincarnate) and would probably only change them after actually playtesting the set and seeing for myself that they don't work.

I’m actually laughing that we’re both agreeing about Energize, but both still talking about it. I meant “delayed” as in “you can choose to wait” rather than Magic’s terminology of “delayed trigger/action”.

As for Reincarnate, I don’t really want to discuss my design, as it’s your set. You’re free to the design if you wish, but I posted it to try to show other variations.

Since this is a casual set, meant for the mental exercise or just for the casual table, I wouldn’t worry about what I was saying for “easily breakable”. However, for the purpose of mental exercise, let me point out a 1-mana creature that had a big impact; Disciple of the Vault. He was generally seen as a “so what” card, until Flash-Hulk, where he was a crucial combo piece. I don’t know of any 1-cost creatures that will break the format on their own, I just know that searching for a specific card and putting it directly onto the battlefield is a powerful tool that, giving the right combination, will be very powerful (though not necessarily broken).

However, if you don’t think people will like Reincarnate, why use it?

I’ll try to help here by breaking down the “fun parts” of the mechanic:

1. Getting something “for free”. When you get to use one card to get another, there’s a mental upshot of “free” even though the ability isn’t free. This is great and probably what I like most about the mechanic. I think my mechanic is the worst here, it’s so NOT free, since you switch the cards, and the player won’t feel rewarded for it.
2. Getting something specific. This is what Spikes and Johnnies love – the chance to feel smart. When your only 2cmc cards are all Deathtouch or “enters the battlefield, do something” effects, you’ll love being rewarded for your cleverness, you smart kid you.
3. Use a resource you normally don’t have. The KFC-effect. Something is good, but only when there isn’t much of it. Since it’s not common to use the graveyard as a resource, it’s fun when something occasionally lets you do so.

What isn’t fun:

1. Getting something unknown for something known. Want to know something weird about new players? They don’t understand why “draw 2, then discard 2” is so much better than “draw 1”. Heck, show a new player Opportunity and Rumbling Baloth, and ask them which they’d rather have, and many will pick the Baloth. Why? Because they’d rather have something known than something unknown, even if something unknown is better for you. They won’t get that having a 2/2 with reach for 3 mana common that then gets a 1/1 with deathtouch 1 mana uncommon is often better than playing a card 3/2 with lifelink. It’s the “what if” factor… “what if I use the ability and get something useless”? Thankfully, I think the “free” bonus from before heavily outweighs this. Players don’t mind getting something random when it’s “free”.
2. Getting something lesser when you spend more. The current wording for Reincarnate demands a high cost, similar to Flashback’s high cost (1 mana for the first time, 5 mana for the second). Players don’t feel as “wow!” when they spend even more resources for even less effect.

Overall, I think the mechanic can get by as it is, but I think the mechanic needs work. Brainstorm 5 very similar mechanics, and you’ll probably find something that might work better.

Oh, and I think you’re bang-on with Ready being in RWU! They really want to be tempo/agro, and saving things up for explosive turns is great.

OK, I get what you're saying about energize now. The land itself can be on the battlefield as an ordinary land, and then later on gets "imprinted" by the energize card.

So let's say that I was going to open it up a bit more, what would the mechanic do? Here is the most open interpretation of the mechanic

Energize (cost) = (cost): Exile this card from your hand energizing target permanent

Then any other text like "If this is energizing a land, it has whenever you tap this for mana add 1 extra mana to your pool" would go on the card.

But you could put any text that could go on an aura, onto the card. It's basically just another way of doing split cards. The problem is that it becomes too open so that people don't really "feel" what the mechanic is trying to do if one card can energize as a Fertile Ground and another as an Unholy Strength.

I'm not sure what the middle ground between too narrow and too wide would be.


Disciple of the Vault is not broken on its own in Legacy. The reason Flash hulk is so powerful is because it can simultaneously search up multiple disciples and multiple zero mana 0/0 creatures.

What's the difference between searching to the battlefield and searching into play? It's just that you don't have to pay the costs. So if you're searching for stuff that doesn't cost very much, there's not much of a difference. Imperial Recruiter can search for dotv and then you can play one black and he's in play. Creatures usually don't have costs other than paying mana - any drawbacks they have are on enters the battlefield abilities. I can only think of three exceptions, Dryad Arbor, Talara's Battalion, and Skaab Ruinator.

I didn't say no one will like it, I said not everyone will like it. As Maro always tries to tell us it's better to have something that some people will love than something no one will hate.

Thanks for doing the breakdown about the pros and cons of this mechanic. Yeah it is possible to mitigate the "getting something lesser" by making sure that you only put cards in your deck that you would actually want to cascade into - in constructed we sometimes only used three drops and above. Also, not all cards need to have a high reincarnate cost - there can be a few where the "front" side is underpowered so the "back" can be stronger like with scavenge they had Zanikev Locust and Slitherhead, while with flashback they had Traitor's Clutch etc.

OK brainstorm time

What is the key feature that must remain consistent - I reckon it's using the graveyard as a resource, and that you can exploit it either by playing naturally and just happening to get CA, or by deliberately filling your grave with looters etc. The random aspect of reincarnate is also nice, but not necessary.

- Reprint Flashback in gub
- Reprint Unearth in gub
- Reprint Scavenge in gub
- Something like scavenge but some other bonus than +1/+1 counters - gain some life? draw a card? make a token creature (then I can still call it reincarnate)?
- Reincarnate but you can cascade into a creature of any cost
- Reincarnate but you can cascade into a creature of the same or lower cost
- Reincarnate (number) - (cost)
- Abilityword - You may cast this card from your graveyard as long as (condition)... inspired by Gravecrawler
- At the beginning of your upkeep, if this card and three or more other creature cards are in your graveyard, exile this card, then return a creature card at random from your graveyard to your hand.

Some additional brainstorm:

- Return the card to the top of the deck? 3 cards from the top of your deck (lol, "and it was said, at the start of the 3rd turn, I will rise again" #blashpemy )?
- Switch card in graveyard with card in hand?
- Caring about the order of the graveyard? (must have 3 creatures above it to be returned to hand?)
- Keep same, but put the card "hit" into the player's hand rather than directly onto the battlefield?

I think Unearth is actually the best choice for the job, and fits in with the wonderfully creepy vibe I always get from blue-black-green. You get a second, though temporary, use out of your creatures. It's also a mechanic that I think has a lot of life left in it.

I considered the return to top of deck / third from the top, which is nice for creatures that die and you want them back, but it's not very good with the other approaches to getting things in your bin. Why would you want to discard / mill something just to put it back on top again?

I don't want to bring back graveyard order. It's an obsolete mechanic for a reason.

Putting the hit in the hand still works flavorfully and lets the activation cost less. Then there's no reason to specify what converted mana cost of creature you can hit. But then every reincarnate card does the exact same thing, and has the problem that it's less exciting to reincarnate into a huge dragon that you can't cast than some boring creature that you can. On the other hand, if your deck is heavy on reincarnate and you have a discard outlet, you could make some cool chains to eventually tutor for the card you want.

Unearth is a cool mechanic, but I got a few issues with it. Firstly, it's mostly an aggressive mechanic which is not what I want for this wedge. It usually doesn't give card advantage. Second, it doesn't feel right to leave red out of a mechanic that uses haste. Third, there's only two ways you can really go with it and both have been done. Either the creature doesn't have abilities, so it's got an aggressive body and cheap unearth cost and the idea is to try and unearth as many guys as you can in one turn for a big alpha strike. Or the creature does have abilities (there are a few ways of doing it - comes into play, tap, leaves play, on combat damage) and it acts the same as a sorcery with flashback. There are definitely more cards with unearth that could be made, but I don't know how innovative they would be.


After thinking about game balance a bit I think I would at the very least change reincarnate to be able to hit the same or lower cost rather than only lower. If the front side is slightly behind the curve (like a 2/2 for 2b) then the reincarnate cost can be equal to the casting cost, considering that picking up a random 2-3 drop later in the game isn't as good as getting it on curve anyway. Being a bit behind will make this more of a control than midrange wedge and making the back side more powerful will reward people who try the unusual ways to get cards into the bin rather than trying to trade in combat.

OK so we've got the secondary strategy for BGW (token swarm), WBR (midrange), and URG (random griefing - okay that's not really a strategy).
Here's GUB's "ally color" creature showing off its secondary strategy, mill

1ub
Creature (U)
Flying, haste
When ~ deals combat damage to an opponent, that player puts the top four cards of their library into their graveyard.
1/1

RWU's secondary strategy is "noncreature spells matter" - this combines instant / sorcery mechanics with artifacts and enchantments. It's flavored that noncreature spells are weapons / tools.

Armory of Awesome - 2wu
Enchantment (U)
Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, tap target creature an opponent controls and it doesn't untap during its controllers next untap step.

This also means this color combination would like noncreature spells that make creature tokens, eg

Display of Power - rw
Sorcery
~ deals 2 damage to target player and you gain 2 life. Then if you have more life than that player, put a 2/2 white creature token onto the battlefield.

Is this guy overpowered or underpowered, will his existence frustrate too many people who want to and don't want to use it at the same time?

Insomnisaur - bg
Creature - Lizard (U)
Reach
When ~ enters the battlefield, skip your next turn.
5/3


Bonus card - who didn't love the new "mechanic" on Rain of Thorns when it was spoiled?

Systematic Chaos - 3rw
Sorcery
Choose one or more - Destroy target artifact; destroy target enchantment; and/or ~ deals damage to each player equal to the number of cards in his or her hand.


Fibonacci Wurm - 7g
Creature - Wurm (C)
When ~ enters the battlefield, you gain 13 life.
Energize 3
5/2