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Post by ellipsis on Apr 2, 2019 2:06:51 GMT
Introducing: "The expert-level core set"Set name: ZyriinSet code: ZYRDesign: …
Announcement: 4/1/19
Spoilers: 4/2/19—4/8/19
Release date: 4/9/19
Number of cards: 252 + 15Number of cards with my cringy flavor text: 159.60 - 1Number of reused un-mechanics: ≤ 4
What to expect from Zyriin:
- A herd of flying turtles ✓
- A Bear Ninja in a bigtext frame ✓
- The recurring nightmare of inheritance ✓
- A card that costs half your life to cast
- Indiana Jones, basically
- Other cards?
Spoilers!
{1. Did I mention it's black-border?} (See below for more spoilers: I haven't figured out how to transplant them up here yet.)
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 2, 2019 7:29:58 GMT
Spoiler #2Spoiler #1 above hints at some of the themes of the set, but I admit it's not particularly exciting. Perhaps a herd of flying turtles will help? {Righteous!} Sky-Turtle School is a textbook example of one of Zyriin's exciting new mechanics: Physis! Physis appears in all colors and goes on cards that would normally be prohibitively expensive or specialized to cast reliably, and gives you the option to instead play them as taplands (effectively). It's kinda like cycling, but with its own cool frame treatment! Now, I know some people will be worried that physis offers too much flexibility and threatens the mana system. At least in limited, this is unlikely, given its relatively low as-fan of 0.8. For constructed purposes, it's possible I'll need to up the cost of playing them as lands to , but manlands haven't proven to be problematic, so I suspect things should be fine. {Some rules clarifications regarding physis:} - Creature cards with physis are creatures everywhere except on the battlefield, when they have been played as lands. If one is not on the battlefield, is cast as a spell, or is put on the battlefield by some other means, it's a creature. (This is also true for copies of cards with physis—even if they're copied while they're lands, the copies will be creatures.)
- Even though it costs mana, playing a card with physis as a land is still playing a land like you're used to. Specifically, it's a special action that doesn't use the stack and can't be responded to, and you can only do so on your turn, when the card is in your hand, when the stack is empty, and when you have a land play remaining for the turn.
- A card with physis that is played as a land is colorless and no longer a creature. However, it retains its abilities (as well as its name, supertypes, subtypes, and mana cost). Some abilities like flying obviously are meaningless on a land; however, many cards with physis have static or activated abilities that continue to function when they're played as lands.
- Conversely, a card with physis that is cast as a creature is not a land and does not have the mana ability that comes with physis. (However, if a creature with physis is subsequently turned into a land, without its abilities being removed, physis will grant its mana ability to that card for as long it remains a land.)
- If a card with physis that has been played as a land is animated by some other effect, such as a Zendikon, the power and toughness values of that effect overwrite the card's printed power and toughness (and the same is true of other attributes). However, the card's abilities still apply. (For example, a Sky-Turtle School enchanted with a Crusher Zendikon would be a 4/2 red Beast land creature with flying, trample, and " Add ," and whenever it attacked it would create a token that's a normal Sky-Turtle School.)
- If, on the other hand, an effect turns a card with physis that has been played as a land into a creature without specifying power and toughness values, the card's printed values apply (and again the same is true of any other attribute beside color).
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 3, 2019 23:49:07 GMT
Spoiler #3
If creatures that can be played as lands aren't your thing, perhaps creatures that can also be played as creatures will be! {Let me explain} Introducing supplant! Supplant is a new mechanic, in all colors, in the same vein as Offering, Emerge, and Ninjutsu; but it takes a little from each and flexes on all of them with some silver-border spice courtesy of Mary O'Kill. Like the others, supplant is an activated ability that allows you to put creatures onto the battlefield at instant speed for a discount by "spending" another creature. However, because supplant doesn't see the new creature as a new game object, it has some neat interactions unique to it. It's as if this cocky fencer saw a fight, swooped in, tossed one of the combatants aside, and just took their place! (Rude, but a useful tactic.) For one, any counters, Auras, and Equipment "transfer" from the old creature to the new one, so rather than trading one creature for another and losing any previous investments, you're pretty much just getting a straight upgrade. However, this also applies to negative effects as well as active targets, which means supplant can't be used to blank removal as effectively as the above methods. On the other hand, supplant's timing grants it extra offensive utility, since you can use it to mess with your opponent's blocks after they're declared. Overall, supplant a mechanic that is unique in its flexibility, with many more nuances than just mentioned to discover, including, I'm sure, many I haven't yet noticed myself. Supplant does tend to speed up limited somewhat as it enables aggressive curves, but it has many defensive uses as well, and Zyriin makes full use of these to balance things out. {Some rules clarifications regarding supplant:} - Supplant is an activated ability. The cost of discarding the card and paying mana can't be responded to, but the effect of switching the cards can. If a supplant ability is countered, or one of the cards becomes invalid (for example, moves to a different zone), the switch doesn't occur and the discarded card remains in your graveyard (or wherever else it ended up).
- Activating a supplant ability triggers relevant abilities, like that of Megrim. These will resolve before the supplant ability; and in cases like Tamiyo, the Moon Sage's emblem, they will affect the discarded card, not the creature that is later switched into your graveyard.
- As an extension of the last point, the game doesn't "notice" the switch for most purposes. When the switch occurs, the cards immediately begin applying their attributes in their new zones, but the game sees the objects those cards represent to be perpetual: nothing is seen to have moved to a new zone. Rather, it's more like the objects simultaneously become copies of each other. Notably, this means that supplant neither causes the new creature to enter the battlefield, nor causes the old creature to die or "be put into a graveyard." (Sorry Progenitus, you're stuck.) However, the game does recognize supplanting as a discrete event: triggered abilities that reference supplanting will trigger once the supplant ability resolves and the creatures are successfully switched.
- The old creature's abilities stop applying, and the new creature's start applying, as soon as the switch occurs. However, effects that applied to that creature that weren't actually its abilities continue to apply. For example, if you supplant a Spark Elemental with an Arrogant Swordsman, you won't have to sacrifice the Arrogant Swordsman, since the sacrifice ability never has a chance to trigger; however, if you supplant a creature that was put onto the battlefield with Isareth the Awakener with an Arrogant Swordsman, you'll still exile the Arrogant Swordsman if it would leave the battlefield since that replacement effect was not one of the old creature's abilities. Further, delayed triggers from cards such as Aethermage's Touch will not be erased upon supplanting even though they're abilities of the old creature, since the ability continues to be granted to the same object represented by the new card. Careful attention to wording and probably a lot of referencing wonky cards from MTG's past will be necessary to sort out every weird interaction, but these should pop up infrequently.
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Post by ThatDamnPipsqueak on Apr 4, 2019 3:23:42 GMT
I like the mechanics shown so far, and the concept of an expert level core set is something that appeals to me.
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 5, 2019 4:44:21 GMT
Thank you for the kind words! I welcome any criticisms you might have as well. Spoiler #3You've seen creatures that can be played as creatures; now it's time for enchantments that can be played as enchantments! {That's the last time, I promise} Meet endow! Endow is another new mechanic that appears in all colors, and is sort of like Bestow, in that it offers an alternate cost to cast enchantments that results in them being Auras instead; but it's sort of not like Bestow, in that it's different in pretty much every other way—the most notable being that endowments don't "fall off" and begin acting on their own if the creature they're enchanting leaves the battlefield. This provides less long-term value, but endow is consequently a cost-reduction mechanic rather than a cost-expansion mechanic, which I personally think is much more exciting. When you cast an enchantment for its (usually cheaper) endow cost, it becomes an Aura, and its abilities stop applying to itself and are instead granted to the creature it enchants. Sometimes, this won't really matter if the enchantment just has static abilities. Other times, as with Divine Interference above, this makes a huge difference. If you have a Divine Interference out on its own, it basically lets you tap a creature for once each turn cycle. However, if that Divine Interference is endowed, you effectively have to tap one of your creatures as an additional cost. Remember that since you cast it as an Aura it's potential card disadvantage, and the steep discount for endow begins to make sense. Because endow takes most of the card slots that would normally go to Auras, there are a far greater number of notoriously resilient global enchantments running around in Zyriin limited than normal. This has been accounted for, and enchantment removal has a greater-than-normal as-fan to balance: including one card that even can use. {Some rules clarifications regarding endow:} - When a card with endow refers to "this permanent," it refers to the enchantment if it's standalone, or the creature it enchants if it's endowed. This means that if an enchantment with endow has a triggered ability that reads "when this permanent enters the battlefield or [other event]," the enters-the-battlefield half won't trigger if it's endowed, since "this permanent" is the enchanted creature, which is already on the battlefield.
{Extra Bonus Spoiler!} The observant among you will have noticed that the above post did not contain any of the promised spoilers from the OP. Well, not every enchantment in the set can be an endowment, so there are still plenty of regular old Auras to reinforce the set's creature focus: including today's promised spoiler!
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 5, 2019 18:39:13 GMT
I like the mechanics. I'm wary of the wording on Supplant but I do get where you're going with it, so it's probably okay for now. Physis is a cute way to remediate the pain of 7+ drops in limited. I don't like the way it's worded (I think it could easily become a basic land of a type, or Plains physis) because right now it looks like the {W} is part of the cost and not part of the resolution. Endow is VERY interesting and I think it's got some real potential, though I hate on principle enchantments that tap to activate effects as that's one of the mechanical differences between enchantments and artifacts in the first place. Looking forward to seeing what else you've got! P.S. also a big fan of embattled
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 5, 2019 23:42:58 GMT
Thanks for the feedback! I can see where you're coming from on physis…. My concerns with using land types instead of mana symbols is that (as I understand it) that would require extra reminder text for the cards to keep their abilities, and would lock cards down to producing one mana. (This, of course, is all you'd normally need, except there's a cycle to which I'm quite attached which has each member either an undercosted creature or a two-mana land at the expense of a significant drawback.) Does adding a dash like in the render below help disambiguate? {Example} I share your distaste for tapping enchantments, but I haven't been able to come up with any text-efficient alternatives. I'm open to suggestions though! Any chance you could be more specific about why you're wary of the wording on supplant? Certainly not everybody will be familiar with Mary O'Kill for reference, and it does present some weird corner cases, but I figure in practice the concept shouldn't be that difficult to explain or understand beyond "they instantaneously switch places." Or is there something else about it turning you off? And yes, I'm, ahem, "borrowing" embattled from Glacia, but with a different approach than that set took. Hopefully [whoever its creator was] won't mind too much…
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Post by voltaic-qui on Apr 6, 2019 15:03:31 GMT
I don't really see how this is a core set, or what an expert-level core set would imply.
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 6, 2019 17:10:59 GMT
That tagline is a little facetious. It mostly refers to the fact that I haven't set Zyriin anywhere in particular. There's no overarching flavor. For limited/MSEM purposes it also has a healthier handful of reprints than is perhaps normal for custom sets—around 20 I think. Despite this, it doesn't have arbitrary restrictions on complexity/new mechanics/other stuff aimed at new players.
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 12, 2019 4:55:43 GMT
So, it's way past preview season for this thing, but my term paper is still nowhere near finished, and it's likely I won't be able to finish spoilers until some time next week at the earliest However, to tide over anybody who's interested, here's the Planesculptor page. While I won't be able to add new spoilers, I can still make time to check and respond to feedback, so any comments or critiques are still welcomed!
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Post by voltaic-qui on Apr 13, 2019 3:21:26 GMT
So I'll be real here and say I have a lot of problems with this set.
1. The mechanics are bad. 1a. Embattled is hypothetically fine, but a dispiriting number of the cards that care about embattled stuff want you to tap them down as costs. I would rather attack with my equipped/enchanted/+1/+1 counter-ed guy than tap it down every turn to enable buyback loops. 1b. Speaking of - buyback is and has always been a shitty mechanic. 1c. Endow cards can be subdivided into a couple categories 1ci. Cards where they're just global enchantments but you get a discount if you cast them as Auras and tie them to a creature. 1cii. Cards that have tap abilities or grant tap abilities to the thing they're enchanting and then cue off CMC or something 1ciii. Cards that ""cleverly"" take advantage of how the enchantment ETBs but not the creature it's enchanting so you can get two triggers which would be """clever""" if there was any way to get rid of enchantments you control - this is kind of a headscratcher. 1civ. Amphibious Writ which is easily one of the top ten most confusing cards I've ever seen in my decade of looking at custom Magic sets. Anyway this mechanic is silly. Stretching literally every possible mechanical iteration out of a mechanic doesn't make it better, you know. 1d. Survive is probably the best of these mechanics but it's still kinda vague. It also has an unfortunate nonbo with all the "tap an embattled creature you control" cards, which would provide a non-combat way to tap them. 1e. And physis is just silly - cool in theory but the cards themselves are just bizarre. Especially the cycle of insane "T: Add MM" cards which have ""drawbacks"" (each player gets an Island, that's great). 1f. I don't think any of the cards with three of the mechanics at the same time are very good. 2. The reprints are bizarre and not very cohesive. 2a. You reprint a couple cards from custom sets, but they're picked seemingly at random and aren't super representative of their respective sets. E.g., of all the cards from Villains! The Musical you go with... a common equipment? Okay. 2b. You also have, like, colorshifted Cloudfin Raptor and Carnophage? Ok. Very confused. 2c. The power level of reprints is also wacky - you have Pestilence and Unholy Strength in the same set?? Ok. 3. The flavor is mostly "nondescript fantasy war" (except for the card that's a random TMNT reference???)
Anyway I like a couple individual cards, like the Spell Blast that's slightly better, and cool designs like Consumed by Slime, but for the most part these cards are wordy and not in ways that make me the expert-level player think "how fun."
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Post by ellipsis on Apr 13, 2019 5:21:53 GMT
Thank you for the honest feedback! It's clear you looked through the whole file even though you weren't enthused, and I appreciate you being so generous with your time. To address some of your concerns: In general: As of now I've only really been able to playtest against myself and infrequently with a recurring small group. When this changes and I acquire more perspective I have no doubt I'll be able to better apprehend any mistakes. 1a. I'm aware of this general principle but I'll admit I sort of forgot about it halfway through design. The problem I found with the lesser requirement of simply controlling an embattled creature was that it wasn't difficult enough to achieve to do anything interesting with. Looking back through the set and seeing how incidental embattled is, what I might do in the end is replace it with raid. 1b. This may very well be the case. I wasn't playing Magic when it was a thing, so I can't say I have much experience with it. Despite being on fifteen cards, it's fairly incidental; I can nix it without too much trouble. 1ci. I'm not sure how this is a problem. Who doesn't like discounts? And I think it makes flavorful sense that offloading some of the responsibility for a spell onto a minion makes it less demanding to cast. 1cii. Nor this. I understand the "enchantments shouldn't tap" argument, but my thinking is that they're differentiated enough from artifacts by a) flavor, and b) the fact they can become Auras. 1ciii. I think you missed the point here. While you can certainly try to get multiple triggers from these, the intention is simply to trade time for mana: if you play it as an enchantment, it's basically a sorcery; if you play it as an Aura, you get a discount but you don't get the effect immediately. I'd be curious to see if these are similarly confusing to other people as well. 1civ. Yeah, Amphibious Writ is a little bit of a text wall, and I don't think it's ever seen use as a creature which means you're probably right about it being inappropriately stretched. I'll change it to a regular old Aura. 1d. I'm assuming the charge of vagueness is directed at survive and not survival. I'll admit that it's not perfectly clear, but at the same time, I don't think it's really that much worse or even different than " becomes renowned," and I don't recall that causing much confusion in practice, so I'm inclined to leave it be. 1e. a) I'm not sure how you're qualifying bizarre, and b) I'm not sure why bizarre is necessarily bad. If I were to agree with you, I think the main source of dissonance is that "land" carries obvious connotations besides "mana producer," but I'm not sure how else I can efficiently keyword this. If the problem is indeed the odd flavor, I can make a more concerted effort to find believable land-creatures…. As far as "each player gets an Island" being underwhelming, I'd point you to this article on a spiritually similar card. 1f. The only card I'm seeing that has three mechanics at once is Viashino Crusher. It's not a great design, and I'll probably revisit it. However, the mechanics not being excellent all together counts against the cards that use them that way, not the mechanics themselves. 2. Again, not sure what you mean by bizarre. Nor do I see why reprints need to be cohesive. (Or even with what you want them to be cohesive: each other? the set as a whole? something else?) The reprints are there mostly to serve limited, and in my experience they do so rather well. 2a. Again, why reprints need to be representative of their sets is lost on me, as is any indication that such practice is standard outside Masters-type sets. In a sense, they were chosen randomly: I didn't search for story spotlights or cards that were iconic in their own sets, I searched for effects that would serve limited and picked what fit into my set. 2b. Since when is colorshifting unacceptable or confusing? Cloudfin Raptor in white makes total sense: flying is white, and so is having lots of creatures. Carnophage in red isn't as easy, but self-damage as a cost is solidly in red's pie. Look at Char, Goblin Artillery, Fireslinger, Firedrinker Satyr, Forge Devil, Madcap Experiment, etc. 2c. Once more, your premise is suspect. Why should every reprint be at the same or similar power level? Chord of Calling, Crucible of Fire, and Grindclock aren't exactly comparable, but all were reprinted at rare in M15. Pestilence is absolutely the better card in general, but Unspeakable Symbol fits the themes of the set, and is entirely different in its application. Why should the two be identical? 3. This is intentional, but I think your comment on it speaks to many of our disagreements. I get the idea you're a pretty solid Vorthos, in which case this very Melvin set isn't really aimed at you. I specifically chose not to include overarching flavor because I wanted to focus wholly on the mechanics and gameplay, and I'm not the first to do so. And if one card with a joke name upsets you that much, I really have no idea what to say. That ended up being much longer than I expected. TLDR: I agree with most of your assessments on individual cards, as well as the fact that buyback is probably ill-advised and that the tap an embattled creature cards are dissonant. Your vaguer critiques of elements being bizarre or regarding the lack of flavor I think point not to design flaws but to this set not being targeted at you. All else aside, thank you very much for taking the time to look through the set and offering your insight!
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