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

https://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?

[Thomas David Baker]

Another question that is still open is "Is Wizards still a thing?"  We have a bunch of cards that reference Wizards and a bunch of cards that ARE Wizards, but is it pulling its weight?  Personally I really want it in because I want to first pick Conclave and play 3-color-Wizards and t4 Empty the Libraries for 4 or 6 Wizards and t5 bounce all of my opponent's permanents just once.  I also (obviously) don't want that to be easy to do.  I think that Wizards is just about there, doesn't have to feature in every draft, and is a cool minor theme that fits our flavor.  It may need a small additional push.  But if others think it is not pulling its weight we can discuss.

[Kieran Symington]

I don't think Wizards really deserves to be a theme. Only Conclave really cares about it, and that only really works when you're already winning from Empty the Libraries whilst literally doing nothing with no Wizards out. All the cards that reference Wizards seem to go last in the drafts or are picked because their normal abilities are decent. Trying to make Wizards work is going to end up taking up valuable slots (especially since the cards would need to be Uncommon or Rare) that would be better off building on the existing themes.

[Thomas David Baker]

OK I have the 10 Wizardly cards in my sights: http://mv.bluebones.net/search/?q=o%3Awizard

If one other person votes "no" to Wizards subtheme I will swing into action and reword/cut them as appropriate.

[Paul Hodgson]

yeah bin wizards, apart from Deepwater Grasper!

[Thomas David Baker]

Done!

[Thomas David Baker]

So looking at cards with Foresight and Portent it breaks down like this:

C/U/R

W: 0/0/0 --- 0/0/0

U: 2/1/1 --- 5/4/1

B: 1/2/1 --- 2/0/1

R: 1/0/0 --- 0/0/0

G 5/4/2 --- 5/0/0 (+ Cyclopes)

I think I would reduce the amount of enablers in G.  Probably split the Cyclopes into benefit-getters (Warriors) and enablers (Seers, Druids or Wizards)?  We also need to decide if G is getting Portent (as it has at common in spades) or not and if we want to increase the amount of Portent outside of U.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I think we want portent across all colours (except white). I think the format is better if you can build more viable archetypes across the colours. We don't really want the portent deck to just be U or U/B. Would be great to have portent viable in U/G and G/B too.

I actually kind of want portent cards in red too, but then maybe UR has too much pie.

[Kieran Symington]

Are we going to add more Lurking for Green? It's quite interesting as an alternative to Portent (easier to get a specific one but much harder to set up as there are no permanent ways to do it) but would move Green away from the Portent support it offers now.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Maybe just support it like mindstorm, as a vertical cycle with a single card in each rarity. Too much of it and I imagine we would have to warp too many cards to support it.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Okay it looks like we have a real glut of candidates at uncommon, one potential rogue solution I was thinking about last night would be to potentially have uncommons be unique rather than printing 2. of each, but each slot must be filled by fairly comparable cards. E.g.

Black

UB01 Creature, small, foresight - CORRUPT SEER & ABORTIONIST

UB02 creature, small - MIRROR GHOUL & GREAT TOWER BAT

UB03 creature, medium, graveyard - ENVIOUS GHAST & ROTTING MESSENGER

If we really want 2x copies of a card for archetype concerns then just fill the two slots with the same card. I know this breaks away from our original printing plan, but it might get us down to a playable set quicker. Once we have played with it a few times we will probably be able to decide that one particular card is better for teh slot.

[Thomas David Baker]

I think that's a great playtesting plan but I think we should still plan to cut to allow for multiple of an uncommon in a draft and separate them from rares.  But agree 100% the next playtesting plan should be to print all the uncommons we can't decide between and play with them.  Note that W is down to about 7 uncommons so it's only some colors (R, B) that have this problem.  We can play with 2 of each of the W uncommons.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

Okay great, so lets try and nail down the actual themes that need supporting for the colours where we have a glut of uncommons, and then try and cut down to max 2 cards for each slot.

Blue is currently the real problem as it is so creature heavy at uncommon, yet is supposed to be the spell colour. I don't mind cheating a little and making it 3 creatures / 3 spells for the slots if one of the creatures is "spell like". The other issue with blue is that it is the Portent colour, yet doesn't have many portent cards at uncommon!