You Make the Set 5

[Thomas David Baker]

We are doing this in our Multiverse app:

http://mv.bluebones.net/

(Old shared Google spreadsheet for this is here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag7TtjWsLhYkdHBBUHF4RG... )

Channel Fireball just did Top 8 Mechanics:

* Retrace

* Dredge

* Landfall (not for attacking like Steppe Lynx - Grazing Gladehart and Roil Elemental style)

* Scry

* Flashback

* Kicker

* Flying

* Cycling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiNNg5aj-xo

I wonder if we could use that, or some of that, as the basis of You Make the Set 5.  I know that some of you were keen on Landfall.

Not sure when we would play it out but some time in late May probably?

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Tom - is there an easy way to pull keywords out?

Would be nice to have a count of flyers, portent, flashback, etc...

I know MSE has a list of all Magic keywords in it, perhaps you can rip that to use as a lookup?

PS. we should call it "Bakerverse"

[Paul Hodgson]

also, sort order is removed if you pop open a comment window and then go back into the main list

[Simon O'Keeffe]

So just a few thoughts around creative:

1. Placenames - Would make sense if the towers themselves had names, I think Kieran and I have kind of come up with some place names for the lands containing the towers:

White - Anara (still the best one)

Blue - Deepwater (in my head the blue tower is half submerged, wonder if we bring merfolk back for blue?)

Black - Dalgath (not sure about this one)

Red - Tyroshi (I think I subconsciously ripped this straight from Game of Thrones)

Green - Ursir (city of the bears)

2.Regarding images, I'm happy to take some of that on, but I guess we might playtest these first with just simple printouts? Is it going to be easy to export out of the multiverse back into MSE to mockup the cards?

3. Creature types - I guess they are not actually relevant for our set, but I'm a little uncomfortable with all the Bears, especially outside of green. If only because I've made over a hundred bear cards for other sets, and belive me, I'm running out of images!

Humans are running rampant across all colours, which I guess is kind of expected. Do we want to establish a stronger Goblin theme in red, and maybe merfolk in blue? What should the other anthropomorphic creature type be for white?

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

I did have a butchers and there are lots of bears currently, there are a lot of other cards that interact with them, the other creature types are getting a bit of a bum deal right now.

 

So should there be some more cards relating to these "towers"?

[Paul Hodgson]

Blue tower - the entrance to Rapture in Bioshock is perfect for this

Black - what's the flavour of B in this set? I'm not really seeing a theme.

Creatures - needs to be pared down a bit suggest:

W - Human, Bird (Aven?), something, something else

R - Goblin, Dwarf, Giant, Minotaur?

G - Centaur rather than Bear?, Beast, Human, something else

U - Merfolk, Elemental (water based lorwyn flamekin?), Human, something else

B - Human, Horror, ??? at a loss really

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Reposting Tom's one page on theme from the previous thread:

The Wizards of the Red Tower have a giant store of crumbling books left by an earlier generation.  They are immensely powerful but not always comprehensible to the lesser mages of today.  They have a tendency to race through the books, tearing out the ruined or incomprehensible pages, to get to powerful spells they can use today.

The Wizards of the Blue Tower speak of a time when their forebears could see far into the future.  Now they can only see a few moments ahead, although even this can be a powerful ability.  Their leader is a one-eyed mage who it is said gave his other eye in order to see the moment of his own death.

The White Tower has forbidden all Wizardry and erased all records of their magical tradition.  Instead the priests who dwell there practice the dual arts of healing and war.

The Black Tower has descended into madness.  Their is no longer a discernible power structure there as Necromancers practice their dark arts and Zombies shamble through its hallways.  The tower itself collapsed inwards during a magical experiment and is now partially underground.

The druids of the Great Forest lay claim to the tradition of the Green Tower.  The Tower itself has not been seen for centuries and its location is lost to memory.  The druids maintain that it can only be found in a secret grove at the heart of the Great Forest by those with an extreme kinship with the forest.

A continent once ruled by five Towers of Wizardry.  The White, Blue, Black, Red and Green Towers ruled, performing impossible magical feats.  Too much magical force threatened the stability of the plane and many wizards went mad and much knowledge was lost.  Now the remnants of the magical traditions dwell in the huge towers avoiding the madness of the outside world and plotting against one another.

[Kieran Symington]

Black has a few Zombies, and Demon is always good.

White Spirits make sense.

Anthropomorphic Turtles are always great.

Quite like Centaurs for green. Shame there aren't enough Frogs to do them again!

[Paul Hodgson]

Sounds we need a cycle of lands for the towers, and legends for the masters

Master of the Black Tower BBBB

Human Spirit

When you cast ~ discard your hand, all non-land cards gain Madness (pay x life) where x is their CMC.

Shadow

4/1 

Black Tower

Legendary Land - R

ETB Tapped

Tap for BB, does 1 damage to you

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Regarding black, I kind of expected a lot of Tom's Cycling, Delve, Unearth zombies from the last set to make an appearance, and black was kind of going to be about the graveyard. I guess we have done without cycling (which is fine), and I seem to have the only unearth cards. Maybe we stretch the red "goes to graveyard from anywhere" theme into black a little?

[Paul Hodgson]

hmm, how about madness creatures with unearth?

Skelington 1B

Madness 0

Unearth B

1/1 

Big Skelington 2BB

Madness 1B

Unearth BB

3/3

[Thomas David Baker]

One thing I want to add is that rares are fun to design but not at all fun to play (against).  Build-around-me rares that do something weird are welcome.  Megabombs are not.  Note: I am as guilty as anyone at designing meagbombs ... but let's just cut them all mercilessly?

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

couldn't agree more, I have trouble designing the uncommons to be fair, trying to get the power level right is always a bit of an issue

Thomas David Baker said:

One thing I want to add is that rares are fun to design but not at all fun to play (against).  Build-around-me rares that do something weird are welcome.  Megabombs are not.  Note: I am as guilty as anyone at designing meagbombs ... but let's just cut them all mercilessly?