Post by jarcherstudios on Oct 7, 2019 9:36:28 GMT
So... a little while ago I got into a discussion at work about what's wrong with White in Commander. Because I am an entirely rational person, this naturally escalated into me creating a MtG set. I just got done putting the second draft together, and I would love to hear what you fine folks think of it.
{Lore}
Ardalos is a plane with powerful natural mana that flows from a central point - the Wellspring. Over the millennia this power has drawn a handful of planeswalkers to it, even through the powerful void storms that wreathe it.
Xikali was the first, a goblin from Ixalan. Xikali saw Ardalos as a place where his people could thrive and collected goblins from across the multiverse to live in its grand mountains.
Next Velyn Lar arrived, an elf born on Zendikar. She was able to harness the Wellspring, so similar to the Roil of her home, and channeled its power to create the lush Heartwood.
Chela Sai arrived next, a human fleeing desperate circumstances in Innistrad. She created a fortified monastery and sought to create a militant religious order to protect humans from the sorts of horrors they faced in her home plane.
Tulinor, a skilled artificer from Fiora, arrived with a grand idea. He suggested they create a utopia together, a Silver City they would rule as benevolent gods. With the power of the Wellspring and their own might, the planeswalkers created the glorious city of Sei Ardalos. They forged the violent void storms around the plane into an obdurate barrier to keep any interlopers from their walled garden of a world. They ruled the grand city together as the Four Archons, beginning a golden age for the plane.
The accounts of what came next are fragmentary at best. The event known in most of the multiverse as the Mending is called the Godfall in Ardalos. As the Archons' powers failed, the Silver City collapsed. The powerful wards surrounding the plane unraveled, tearing it free of the normal flow of time. The spells controlling the magic of the Wellspring failed, allowing its undammed energy to flow through Velyn Lar.
Without the power she had known since her spark ignited, Velyn Lar had no hope of controlling such power. It burned away her body and flowed into the Heartwood, binding them together into the Living Tide. The Tide began to gradually encroach on the plane around it, consuming everything in its path and turning it into warped creations of thorn and bough.
The dual cataclysm of the Godfall and the birth of the Tide push the civilized peoples of Ardalos farther back every year. Although the multiverse at large has known only decades since the Mending, in Ardalos is has been more than seven hundred years since the Godfall.
Xikali and his goblins retreated to Sunwash Vale, the deepest heart of their mountains. Tulinor lifted a segment of the city into the clouds and named it Sei Shara, the City of Mist. Chela Sai accepted a flood of refugees into her fortress monastery. It rapidly expanded into Sei Dalinor, the City of Martyrs.
The Four grew obsessed with reclaiming the immortality they lost in the Godfall. Chela Sai learned to drink the life of those who worshipped her, forging the zealous Order of the Carmine Dove and becoming the first vampire of Ardalos. Tulinor crafted the Eternal Throne, a mighty artifact that channels the power of Sei Shara to sustain his life. Xikali turned his scattered goblin tribes into a united cult of Dul, one of the native wild gods the Archons killed or sealed away during their conquest of the plane. Velyn Lar, as the heart of the Living Tide, pushes outward to consume the plane as food for the corrupted Heartwood.
But all hope is not lost. During the Godfall, the spark of a priest by the name of Grevan Ros ignited. He planeswalked to Amonkhet, learning much of necromancy there. Grevan spent forty years traveling the multiverse, accumulating knowledge until he could conquer death in his own way.
But Grevan did not seek eternal life only for himself. He returned to the ruins of the Silver City to resurrect all the souls lost in the Godfall. He forged a mighty spell known as the Hallowing, a field of death magic that protects the lower levels of the city from the Living Tide, and maintains his own settlement of recovered spirits known as Crypthallow.
The great crisis of Ardalos is not yet decided. The Living Tide may win in the end, consuming the plane and converting it into twisted mockeries of nature. Chela's Carmine Order may yet push back the Tide and reclaim Ardalos for civilization. Tulinor may build the City of Mist into a true successor to Sei Ardalos and claim dominion over the plane as the Archons once did. Xikali may succeed in resurrecting Dulu-Ikil and take the Four Thrones for himself. Grevan Ros may resurrect the ancient capital and expand Crypthallow to take its place, becoming the Prodigal Lord of all Ardalos. Only time and blood will tell.
Ardalos is a plane with powerful natural mana that flows from a central point - the Wellspring. Over the millennia this power has drawn a handful of planeswalkers to it, even through the powerful void storms that wreathe it.
Xikali was the first, a goblin from Ixalan. Xikali saw Ardalos as a place where his people could thrive and collected goblins from across the multiverse to live in its grand mountains.
Next Velyn Lar arrived, an elf born on Zendikar. She was able to harness the Wellspring, so similar to the Roil of her home, and channeled its power to create the lush Heartwood.
Chela Sai arrived next, a human fleeing desperate circumstances in Innistrad. She created a fortified monastery and sought to create a militant religious order to protect humans from the sorts of horrors they faced in her home plane.
Tulinor, a skilled artificer from Fiora, arrived with a grand idea. He suggested they create a utopia together, a Silver City they would rule as benevolent gods. With the power of the Wellspring and their own might, the planeswalkers created the glorious city of Sei Ardalos. They forged the violent void storms around the plane into an obdurate barrier to keep any interlopers from their walled garden of a world. They ruled the grand city together as the Four Archons, beginning a golden age for the plane.
The accounts of what came next are fragmentary at best. The event known in most of the multiverse as the Mending is called the Godfall in Ardalos. As the Archons' powers failed, the Silver City collapsed. The powerful wards surrounding the plane unraveled, tearing it free of the normal flow of time. The spells controlling the magic of the Wellspring failed, allowing its undammed energy to flow through Velyn Lar.
Without the power she had known since her spark ignited, Velyn Lar had no hope of controlling such power. It burned away her body and flowed into the Heartwood, binding them together into the Living Tide. The Tide began to gradually encroach on the plane around it, consuming everything in its path and turning it into warped creations of thorn and bough.
The dual cataclysm of the Godfall and the birth of the Tide push the civilized peoples of Ardalos farther back every year. Although the multiverse at large has known only decades since the Mending, in Ardalos is has been more than seven hundred years since the Godfall.
Xikali and his goblins retreated to Sunwash Vale, the deepest heart of their mountains. Tulinor lifted a segment of the city into the clouds and named it Sei Shara, the City of Mist. Chela Sai accepted a flood of refugees into her fortress monastery. It rapidly expanded into Sei Dalinor, the City of Martyrs.
The Four grew obsessed with reclaiming the immortality they lost in the Godfall. Chela Sai learned to drink the life of those who worshipped her, forging the zealous Order of the Carmine Dove and becoming the first vampire of Ardalos. Tulinor crafted the Eternal Throne, a mighty artifact that channels the power of Sei Shara to sustain his life. Xikali turned his scattered goblin tribes into a united cult of Dul, one of the native wild gods the Archons killed or sealed away during their conquest of the plane. Velyn Lar, as the heart of the Living Tide, pushes outward to consume the plane as food for the corrupted Heartwood.
But all hope is not lost. During the Godfall, the spark of a priest by the name of Grevan Ros ignited. He planeswalked to Amonkhet, learning much of necromancy there. Grevan spent forty years traveling the multiverse, accumulating knowledge until he could conquer death in his own way.
But Grevan did not seek eternal life only for himself. He returned to the ruins of the Silver City to resurrect all the souls lost in the Godfall. He forged a mighty spell known as the Hallowing, a field of death magic that protects the lower levels of the city from the Living Tide, and maintains his own settlement of recovered spirits known as Crypthallow.
The great crisis of Ardalos is not yet decided. The Living Tide may win in the end, consuming the plane and converting it into twisted mockeries of nature. Chela's Carmine Order may yet push back the Tide and reclaim Ardalos for civilization. Tulinor may build the City of Mist into a true successor to Sei Ardalos and claim dominion over the plane as the Archons once did. Xikali may succeed in resurrecting Dulu-Ikil and take the Four Thrones for himself. Grevan Ros may resurrect the ancient capital and expand Crypthallow to take its place, becoming the Prodigal Lord of all Ardalos. Only time and blood will tell.
{Design Objectives}
Return to the Color Pie: I feel like MtG has drifted away from this very important element somewhat, and I really admire recent shifts to correct it like colored artifacts and the Adamant mechanic in Eldraine. Several mechanics and subthemes in the set reinforce adherence to a one- or two-color strategy, letting the colors show their character a lot more effectively.
Land Focus: Lands don't get a heavy focus in many sets, and I felt like they needed some love. Bastions has forty nonbasic lands, and every color has ways to interact with land in interesting ways.
Enchantment Focus: Going hand in hand with my desire to return to the color pie, I feel like enchantments are a better fit than artifacts. I dislike the dominant place artifact meta has taken in wider formats, and I wanted to focus on their typically colored counterparts instead.
Alternate Tempo Mechanics: Rather than focus on mana costs, which tend to become almost trivial in wider formats, I created twenty cards that gradually tick up toward a more powerful transformed state. I feel like this creates a parallel track for developing the board state and also gives everyone short-term 'ticking clocks', which always makes for exciting moments.
Return to the Color Pie: I feel like MtG has drifted away from this very important element somewhat, and I really admire recent shifts to correct it like colored artifacts and the Adamant mechanic in Eldraine. Several mechanics and subthemes in the set reinforce adherence to a one- or two-color strategy, letting the colors show their character a lot more effectively.
Land Focus: Lands don't get a heavy focus in many sets, and I felt like they needed some love. Bastions has forty nonbasic lands, and every color has ways to interact with land in interesting ways.
Enchantment Focus: Going hand in hand with my desire to return to the color pie, I feel like enchantments are a better fit than artifacts. I dislike the dominant place artifact meta has taken in wider formats, and I wanted to focus on their typically colored counterparts instead.
Alternate Tempo Mechanics: Rather than focus on mana costs, which tend to become almost trivial in wider formats, I created twenty cards that gradually tick up toward a more powerful transformed state. I feel like this creates a parallel track for developing the board state and also gives everyone short-term 'ticking clocks', which always makes for exciting moments.
{Unique Mechanics}
I added at least one new keyword for each color and baked it heavily into the set, starting with the white keyword that started it all.
White: Martyr
Whenever a creature you control with Martyr takes damage you may pay 1 to draw a card. This addresses the biggest problem white has, which every other color has a way to deal with, in the most flavor-appropriate way I could think of.
Blue:Edifice
A new artifact subtype that attaches to a basic land when it enters. Whenever you tap the edifice or the land, the other connected card taps too. Basically, these are equipments that turn basic lands into bimodal nonbasics. This combines the tech of colored artifacts, blue's love of that card type, and the very blue minigame of leaving land untapped for effect.
Black: Materialize
Materialize lets you pay life and exile cards from your graveyard equal to a card's CMC to exile it and cast a copy. This lets you recur an ETB or dodge death from the battlefield or recur value from the graveyard. It's a different take on black's graveyard focus, using a full graveyard and life total to fuel recursive value rather than depending on mana and other cards.
Red: Terrify
Whenever you Terrify X, you can spend X red mana or X life to deal X damage to target player. This lets red aggro players accelerate to the late game with symmetrical damage, allowing their rush strategies to work in formats with higher life totals, and gives them something to spend their mana on in the mid- to late-game when they run out of gas.
Green: Corrupt, Animate
Corrupt puts an enchantment token on oppponents' lands that reads, "Whenever this land becomes tapped, it deals one damage to its controller". Naturally, plenty of cards have expanded effects based on your opponents' Corrupted lands. I also keyworded Animate as "Put a +1/+1 counter on target permanent. It's now a creature in addition to its other permanent types", allowing green cards to animate lands with a lot more granularity than the 3/3 Awaken keyword from Zendikar.
I added at least one new keyword for each color and baked it heavily into the set, starting with the white keyword that started it all.
White: Martyr
Whenever a creature you control with Martyr takes damage you may pay 1 to draw a card. This addresses the biggest problem white has, which every other color has a way to deal with, in the most flavor-appropriate way I could think of.
Blue:Edifice
A new artifact subtype that attaches to a basic land when it enters. Whenever you tap the edifice or the land, the other connected card taps too. Basically, these are equipments that turn basic lands into bimodal nonbasics. This combines the tech of colored artifacts, blue's love of that card type, and the very blue minigame of leaving land untapped for effect.
Black: Materialize
Materialize lets you pay life and exile cards from your graveyard equal to a card's CMC to exile it and cast a copy. This lets you recur an ETB or dodge death from the battlefield or recur value from the graveyard. It's a different take on black's graveyard focus, using a full graveyard and life total to fuel recursive value rather than depending on mana and other cards.
Red: Terrify
Whenever you Terrify X, you can spend X red mana or X life to deal X damage to target player. This lets red aggro players accelerate to the late game with symmetrical damage, allowing their rush strategies to work in formats with higher life totals, and gives them something to spend their mana on in the mid- to late-game when they run out of gas.
Green: Corrupt, Animate
Corrupt puts an enchantment token on oppponents' lands that reads, "Whenever this land becomes tapped, it deals one damage to its controller". Naturally, plenty of cards have expanded effects based on your opponents' Corrupted lands. I also keyworded Animate as "Put a +1/+1 counter on target permanent. It's now a creature in addition to its other permanent types", allowing green cards to animate lands with a lot more granularity than the 3/3 Awaken keyword from Zendikar.
Mana Sources
Seal Cycle: imgur.com/a/JQ2XRWA
- This is a cycle of colored one-mana mana rocks. They produce the same color they cost, so they can't fix, and they enter tapped, restricting their tempo, but they're cheap and they grant a minor ETB effect for immediate value.
Capitals: imgur.com/a/61vz05B
- A cycle of legendary lands representing each faction's capital, equivalent to the castles in Eldraine. They enter tapped unless you control three or more of the matching basic land, but they offer recurring value.
Colorless Utility Lands: imgur.com/a/N7ZXvho
- Ten assorted utility lands, giving you some interesting options at the cost of supplying the colors you need. A staple concept in nontraditional formats, I wanted to make sure this sort of card was available in Limited and Draft given the set's focus on interesting land tech.
Monofilter and Synergy Lands: imgur.com/a/WmPlsr4
- A set of five filter lands that produce two of one color but give a decent ETB and a set of lands that produce one colorless unless you have three or more matching basics, in which case they make two of one color as well. These are both designed to encourage play with a restricted color scope.
Additional Colored Utility Lands: imgur.com/a/q9nmz9Z
- Two utility lands that produce green but enter tapped, giving the color with the greatest land focus some utility in their wheelhouse, and three cantrip lands that let white players develop their basic Plains into more advanced versions that tap for white mana and an effect at the cost of some tempo. This also reinforces the 'basic lands matter' subtheme.
Basic Lands: imgur.com/a/R7kBJ3J
- Four full-art of each basic, partly because of the land focus and partly because... well, non-full-arts are just obsolete, in my opinion. Full-arts are the best.
Legendaries
Planeswalkers: imgur.com/a/8WRdBvF
- A monocolored planeswalker for each faction, representing the founding leader of that faction. Each heavily revolves around the unique mechanics of their color.
Two-color commanders: imgur.com/a/c6w6pE8
- One legendary creature for each color pair. Each is explicitly a member of one of the monocolored factions, but they stick to traditional design rather than incorporating that faction's unique mechanics.
Monocolor commanders: imgur.com/a/J6WZiQQ
- A solid selection of legendary creatures within each color, often using the unique mechanics of their faction. Includes a pair of partners and a Legendary Land that can be your commander, just...because. It makes sense in context.
Immortality cycle: imgur.com/a/SAoGfkg
- A cycle of legendary enchantments representing each planeswalker's attempt to conquer death. Each costs one colorless and three colored mana and gives you an in-color way to preserve your creatures.
Other Notable Categories
Expeditions: imgur.com/a/QkWQK6j
- Ten colorless enchantments that drop for 2 and transform into a very powerful artifact for 15. Each includes a unique way to gradually reduce the cost of transformation representing an ongoing effort.
Colorless artifacts: imgur.com/a/HfL0PWR
- Ten colorless artifacts to fill the basic necessary roles, including a new take on Grindclock and an addition to the canonical Sword cycle.
Transforming cards: imgur.com/a/22Scy0Q
- Eight more transforming cards (in addition to the two monocolored commanders) to round out the subtheme. I really love transforming cards as a storytelling mechanic - with a creature card you can create a character. With a transforming creature you can create a character arc. I mostly use these to tell the story of desperate measures, unending conflict, and worsening situations, because Ardalos is basically a mid-apocalypse setting.
Spark Cycle: imgur.com/a/J2KrLTN
- The other ten multicolored cards in the set, a cycle of ten two-mana uncommon instants and sorceries. Each one quotes the two-color commander in its flavor text, except in the case of nonsapient characters.
Other White
Common: imgur.com/a/a80xWsJ
Uncommon: imgur.com/a/pAJF73H
Rare/Mythic: imgur.com/a/1jp2ylF
- A mix of the sorts of things white does, with a good measure of Martyr mixed in to give them some card draw. Small creatures are mostly humans, bigger creatures tend to be Vampire Knights and Vampire Angels, representing the upper echelons of the Order and their corrupted avatars. The flavor text for white focuses on faith and dogma.
Other Blue
Common: imgur.com/a/6dgVvwe
Uncommon: imgur.com/a/CxjH255
Rare/Mythic: imgur.com/a/mzWtgo3
- Blue stuff with a focus on wizards, drakes, and illusions. Lots of instants and sorceries and things that like them. I did try to focus on putting traditional blue staples on the board rather than in your hand, giving players things like Sigil of Negation that spend information, vulnerability, and tempo for an extremely cheap and versatile counterspell. Edifices in general also make blue play more on the board but give them recursive versions of their favorite tricks. The flavor text for blue tends toward confidence in their ability and knowledge.
Other Black
Common: imgur.com/a/iuVu93b
Uncommon: imgur.com/a/VxppuqS
Rare/Mythic: imgur.com/a/cQTEzzj
- Lots of spirits and spirit synergy. Also a fair bit of Madness and a dollop of Surveil, which I deeply love and works to fill your graveyard for Materialize fuel. Includes the only reprint in the set, One With Nothing, because I think the amount of Madness and the nature of Materialize makes it quite a playable card. I also like Perilous Choice, which is pretty much black Opt. Black flavor text tends to be grim and philosophical.
Other Red
Common: imgur.com/a/p4448Xg
Uncommon: imgur.com/a/dVTIn17
Rare/Mythic: imgur.com/a/ly8z3HE
- Goblins, dragons, and a smattering of elementals. Red in this set is largely classic red rush and burn with the mechanics to extend it into wider formats, so this is mostly recognizable stuff with new twists. Includes four Rituals, which are enchantments that act like sorceries you get to cast twice. Red flavor text tends to be enthusiastic and more humorous than the other colors.
Other Green
Common: imgur.com/a/3Swb0vn
Uncommon: imgur.com/a/K68h5Kc
Rare/Mythic: imgur.com/a/zFFioH7
- Dorks, tricks, and very tall boys. Literally every creature is a Plant, for flavor reasons, with a handful of tribal cards. One unusual thing in here is a really strong line of land creature tribal to work with the Materialize nonsense. I know there's no hydra, I realized it late and I'm going to add one in the next draft. Green flavor text tends to be poetic descriptions of the crazy stuff the Living Tide is up to.