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Here's a set idea I've been considering: Underground plane. There is no surface, due to some ancient cataclysm or something. Most of the world is in darkness, and the native creatures have evolved to get around without conventional optics. Spellcasting and mana have also adapted to the lightless environment. But before I flesh out the world, I want to make sure the mechanics work, so here's what I had in mind.

Mechanic 1: Colorblind

Colorblind (You may cast this spell for its colorblind cost. If you do, it's colorless.)

Colorblind is an alternate casting cost that's always paid for with colourless mana. If you cast a spell for its colorblind cost, it's colourless while it's on the stack, and if it's a permanent, it remains a colourless permanent. As soon as a colorblind permanent changes zones, it resumes its normal colours.

Examples Show

The goal with this mechanic is to establish a theme of colour vs colourless matters, while putting a twist on limited by giving every deck access to certain effects outside their colours, albeit at significant markup. Also, when you're facing down an opponent with open mana, you never know what they might play, which I think plays into the "pitch-dark" flavour of the set.

My main concern is memory issues - how hard will it be to remember what creatures are actually colourless? I considered the ability putting a counter on permanents, simply as a marker, but that brings its own problems (like length of wording). Colour pie breaking is less of an issue, since artifacts can already perform most functions of coloured spells.

Colorblind will be seen in all colours, on both creature and noncreature spells.


Mechanic 2: Tunneling

Tunneling (This creature can't be blocked except by tapped creatures.)

Tunneling creatures can be blocked by tapped creatures, and only tapped creatures. Not much to clarify here.

Examples Show

A pretty simple evasive mechanic that should lead to some interesting gameplay decisions. To block a tunneler, you might have to swing with something you'd prefer to leave on defense for their non-tunnelers. On the other hand, small tunnelers will have a harder time getting in when you're on the back foot, so it's not an all-upside mechanic (and I'll probably cost it neutrally). Creatures with tap abilities effectively have tunneler-reach, so they'll serve a special purpose this set.

Tunneling will be primary in green and secondary in black and red.


Mechanic 3: Convoke

Convoke hits both the notes I want the set to hit - it cares about the colour of your creatures (giving colorblindness significance), and it taps creatures (giving players tunneler-blockers). My main concern is whether I can swing it flavourfully - it definitely works in green and white, but I want to spread it to all colours if possible.

I'd love to hear anyone's opinions on these ideas, on the set idea as a whole, and particularly on colorblind which I think is the riskiest mechanic.

Nov 18, 2012 -- 4:17AM, Jessica_Morgan wrote:

My only concern with tunneling is that you might want to put something in the reminder text telling folks that tapped creatures can now block - just only creatures with Tunneling.

That's a good point. I can't think of a concise, elegant way to word it though. Perhaps

Tunneling (This creature can be blocked by tapped creatures, and only tapped creatures.)

or

Tunneling (Tapped creatures can block this creature. Untapped creatures can't.)

Nov 18, 2012 -- 4:18AM, cats_and_me wrote:

Your first mechanic reminds of cards like Tower Above + Flame Javelin , and sometimes getting creatures that are colorless doesn't seem important enough to deserve a keyword, especially because of the memory issued and because the keyword probably doesn't provide enough design space..

mana was my original idea for colourless-cast spells, and in fact my inspiration for the set. However, after making a few cards, it was clear that it would look very ugly all over the set at common. Since it's strange-looking, it probably requires reminder text anyway, so it doesn't save me space. It's also much less flexible than colorblind - see creatures like the 2/3 for that gets first strike if you paid . You can't really do that with .

That said, memory issues are a concern. I think the mechanic's value will be determined by how cards interact with it (and coloured/colourless permanents in general) - on its own it's just an alternate cost.

Your second mechanic is rather unintuitive and makes for complicated board states where you have to put lots of thoughts into everything to prevent doing mistakes..

The point of the mechanic was to inject some strategy and consideration into an arena (choosing attackers) which is normally pretty cut-and-dry. I don't plan to have a huge amount of tunnelers, but I think the occasional conditionally-evasive creature complicating the board state can be a good thing - like maybe 1 or 2 tunnelers might show up in a given limited deck. I'll have to playtest a bit.

You should expand your third mechanic so that being convoked matters and convoking matters, give spells abilities that activate when they're convoked and give creatures triggered abilities that activate when they're convoking something..

I will definitely try and plumb the depths of convoke's design space.

Nov 18, 2012 -- 4:38AM, Zokorad wrote:

imo Convoke just fit in GW becuase of TOken theme and can easily be expanded.

I agree, there's lots of room to play with convoke in other colours, mechanically. Doing it flavourfully, though, might be harder. Though maybe not. Hmmm...

Sling Scoria
Instant (C)
~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Convoke

...I like it


Thanks for the feedbag!

That works well at uncommon+, but unfortunately not at common. It's just too complex. At common, even just having everywhere is pretty ugly.

Also, this version has only two effective ways to cast it: in a non-red deck as a 4/5 for , or in a mono-red deck as a 2/3 first strike for . Using any combination of red and nonred mana makes it useless.

It does bring to mind another, earlier version of colorblind:

Colorblind (You may pay rather than pay this spell's mana cost. If you do, it enters the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter.)

This had problems of its own - it was very poor on smaller creatures, it needed a different templating for noncreature spells, and it was too constrictive in terms of alternate costing.