Community

So, I've run into something that bugs me in my top-down-hybrid-themed set (which I really should put off until after I've put the cap on the Eldangard project).  GREEN does not have a mechanic that fits its flavor!  I have a funny feeling like I've done this before, but I want to get some feedback to get over this creative block.  And hopefully at some point I can make this thread relate to actual card design.

So, the world of Sagathia is an enlightened world whose politics, economy and culture all revolve around their famed academies of learning.  Nowhere else in the multiverse will you find such a gathering of scholars, teachers and priceless books.  And the most prominent of these schools are five great universities each based on the philosophy of one of the five colors of magic.  The main story of the block is told through the experiences of the students at these schools, and includes cards representing teachers, lessons, scholarly experiments, research projects and so on, hopefully hitting all the tropes of the Magical School genre (Harry Potter being the obvious comparison).

Each school has its own unique keyword/mechanic that reflects its personality.  For instance the Blue school believes in the accumulation of as much knowledge as possible, with students magically augmenting their memories to store and organize even more facts inside their brains.  So blue gets a mechanic that cares about holding lots of cards in your hand.  Red values passion and creativity, and gets a twist on Storm that rewards you for casting lots of spells in a single turn.  White emphasizes a protective environment full of rules and rigorous testing, and gets an Aura-based mechanic (a bit of a loose connection but I think it works).  Black rewards ambition, prestige, and has a meritocratic system that allows only the truly talented to succeed, and it has a mechanic based on Birthing Pod as well as an overall converted-mana-cost theme.

But I can't quite figure out the character of the Green aligned school.  Right now it's got a Persist-like creature mechanic that lets you evade destruction, but even though I like it it doesn't really relate to the philosophy of the school itself.

So what would the color Green think about education?  Isn't this the main conflict between Blue and Green; the fact that one believes your potential can only be reached by expanding your mind and improving yourself, while the other believes your potential is an inborn part of you and you will become what you were born to be.  Really the whole world of Sagathia makes Green seem out of place, but turning them into "Gruul School" doesn't appeal to me.  So what does a Green school teach?  How does it treat its students, and what qualities is it trying to instill in them?  I'm at a loss.

If you think about it, there are some pretty solid similarities to Phyrexia. In Scars, green was about evolving toward perfection. I think you could take a similar ideaology. Maybe...

Adapt (When this creature dies, you may exile a card from an opponent's graveyard. Creatures you control have protection from cards the same name as cards exiled this way)

flavorfully I think Rio's got it. the main thing green needs in a school philosophy is the idea that they're helping you unlock what you already have. they're not teaching you to be something you're not, just to be everything you already are.

mechanically...

geeze I don't know.

 

I'd say that some kind of transformation mechanic would work best to show the improvement comming from the creatures themselves. I guess double-sided cards are right out though. Level up would be a little weird to constrain to just one color (but is awesome and must be revisited in a future set). Some kind of "threshold" mechanic might work- you hit a certain apropriately knowledge based trigger and then your creatures get a boost...

Yah that's all I got.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 6:57PM, TPmanW wrote:

I thought about something like that but it seems like a lot of bookeeping. Maybe counters would help? Even pull an unleash and just use +1/+1s perhaps?

Hmmm

Novice Pathfinder
Creature - Elf Scout
Experienced - Novice Pathfinder has nonbasic landwalk as long as it has a +1/+1 counter on it.
1/1

Wasn't something like this in one of the BCPs?  I'm already toying around with a +1/+1 counter theme just because I intentionally avoided using counters in the previous set.  But this might be a bit too parasitic.

The other thing that comes to mind is the Evolve mechanic from one of the latest Great Designer Search contestants, which gives a creature a +1/+1 counter whenever a creature with greater power enters the battlefield.  Sort of has a student-learning-from-others vibe maybe.

Apparently my thought processes keep retreading other people's keywords


I do like the more inward-focused approach for the Green school.  I guess something as broad as "learning" can have a lot of different applications.  The key thing I'd need to express then is that Green's teachers don't try to change their students or impose things upon them, they try to unlock the talent that's already there.