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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 3, 2018 0:48:52 GMT
 © www.cooltext.com © Ekaterina Burmak
"Fear not, friend. Your kind is always welcome here."
Set 1 of the Ghariv block
Cards: 249
Development & Design: marioware2
Announcement Date: April 2, 2018
Anticipated Release Date: June 2, 2018
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Post by gamma3 on Apr 4, 2018 3:17:18 GMT
Ooh, anticipated release not too long before my bday! Can't wait to see what you've got!
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 4, 2018 22:44:48 GMT
A Reading From The Good Book of God
Beginnings 1:30
| 1 | Once, there was a darkness. | | 2 | This darkness spread across the land, consuming all. None could resist its clutches. | | 3 | And this darkness - it was never satisfied. | | 4 | It longed for the souls of those too young to fear it. It hungered for the flesh of man. | | 5 | It came and it took what it wanted. And what did man do? | | 6 | Man hid. | | 7 | Man cowered in the brightest corners of the world, climbing closer and closer to the sun. | | 8 | Most were found and taken by this darkness. Few reached the sun, and burned. | | 9 | Until the high and holy JORAH did appear. And he did say: | | 10 | "This darkness is strong. But we are not a godless people. | | 11 | "Our God is a forgiving one. And we who have stayed pure of soul will yet see that the world has a place for us." | | 12 | And those pure of soul rejoiced, for JORAH had brought hope to a hopeless world. | | 13 | Where the darkness had reigned supreme, there was now a faint light. And good men fought for their lives, and the best men earned their keep in JORAH's flock. | | 14 | And they did travel the world to find the best men. And they did find the best men, and they eventually did find too a place for them. | | 15 | It came to be known as Ghariv. It was the sacred city; the city touched by God; the city blessed by JORAH. | | 16 | The city where darkness dared not go. | | 17 | And go darkness did try. It was not without a struggle that the gates of Ghariv closed to the world. But with the power of God and with the grace of the high and holy JORAH the gates did close and the walls did rise and the people did rejoice, for they had resisted and they had survived. | | 18 | And their knees did bend, and their voices did unite in praising JORAH's name. And he did say: | | 19 | "Rise, people. For your bowing today is fruitless. | | 20 | "I have spoken to God, and he demands your penance. And of this you shall be thankful, for without his aid we surely would all have perished long ago. | | 21 | "And thus our days shall be devoted to Them, shall be entrusted to Them, and shall be fulfilled by Their righteousness." | | 22 | And it was so - the people of Ghariv did heed God's word, as spoken by JORAH, and they did listen and those who obeyed were untouched by the darkness. | | 23 | And those who did not obey found that their souls were marked, that their every moves were watched by something clawing at their walls, scratching at their doors. | | 24 | And though the darkness did not come for them, it made itself known to them, and they lived and died in fear and sadness from it. | | 25 | And JORAH's flock did see this, and they did caution themselves of it, and they did not become the Demons that their brothers and sisters became. | | 26 | And then the Demons were gone. | | 27 | And in their place stood graves of Demons past, watched over by the Ladies and Lords who had surrendered their souls to God long ago. | | 28 | The Ladies and Lords praised God, and they praised JORAH. | | 29 | And by JORAH's decree, all were safe. | | 30 | And the darkness was feared no more. |
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Post by shiftyhomunculus on Apr 4, 2018 22:49:54 GMT
I'm all in on authentically-written holy texts. Praise Vectron Jorah!
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 5, 2018 18:40:43 GMT
The people of this world had no God until Jorah (blessed be his name). He speaks to them through God and as far as they are concerned this is the only God they've ever known.
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Post by voltaic-qui on Apr 5, 2018 20:45:01 GMT
What if I don't want to praise Jorah? What if I want to praise Vectron instead??
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Post by Lady Mapi on Apr 6, 2018 5:52:28 GMT
What if I don't want to praise Jorah? What if I want to praise Vectron instead?? By Vectron's earlobes, don't you realize that Vectron is just an aspect of the High Holy JORAH? |
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 10, 2018 0:17:26 GMT
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Post by Daij_Djan on Apr 10, 2018 0:34:01 GMT
That was an awesome read!
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Post by gamma3 on Apr 10, 2018 0:34:06 GMT
Helluva mindmelter there, nicely done
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Post by voltaic-qui on Apr 10, 2018 0:46:17 GMT
This some Dollhouse shit right here
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tarvoc
1/1 Squirrel
Posts: 56
Color Alignment: Blue
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Post by tarvoc on Apr 10, 2018 16:57:41 GMT
I wonder if "the Darkness" is even actually real, and if it really is what Jorah claims it is.
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HonchkrowDavid
1/1 Squirrel
Try your best! And if that isn't working, try someone else's best!
Posts: 90 
Formerly Known As: ThisisSakon
Favorite Card: Elesh Norn
Favorite Set: Innistrad bby
Color Alignment: White, Black
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Post by HonchkrowDavid on Apr 10, 2018 17:56:26 GMT
the real Darkness was the friends we made along the way
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tarvoc
1/1 Squirrel
Posts: 56
Color Alignment: Blue
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Post by tarvoc on Apr 10, 2018 19:46:45 GMT
the real Darkness was the friends we made along the way Wow, that's deep. And probably also true in this case.  |
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Post by Neottolemo on Apr 10, 2018 19:54:33 GMT
This some Dollhouse shit right here Haven't seen Dollhouse but this story piece reminded me of Silence in the Library from Dr Who a lot. The Dr. Moon "And then you forgot"/"And then you remembered" matches pretty well Jorah's bell ringing/"What do you remember?" routine. Also, other than the story being great (it's probably going to be better than the Dr Who one because I'm fairly sure Mario won't ruin it with the ending) I wanted to say I really love the preview art for this set. Fits really well with the font, the set name, the tagline, and the story so far, too. |
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 13, 2018 21:42:19 GMT
Mechanics of GharivGhariv has five mechanics, including four new mechanics and one returning mechanic from a previous MSE set. SuppressThe members of the clergy are the most respected individuals in Ghariv, and they plan to keep it that way. Suppress represents their refusal to even listen to discordant opinions. If it isn't their way, it's no way. RepriseReprise returns thanks to Korakhos, representing the ancestral spirit of magic in Ghariv. Jorah has banned the practice of new magicks, leaving two options: rely on the magic taught by your forefathers, or practice the arcane in secrecy. In reprise we see the intersection of the two. AdaptiveAs Jorah cleanses the outside world, its many creatures are left with a simple, harrowing choice: adapt or die. Adaptive creatures are ready to change their patterns on a whim, whether to protect themselves from an incoming threat or to catch weaker, unsuspecting prey. AssimilateThe Grimwood is dark and full of horrors, and with these horrors come creatures that mutate beyond evolution before your very eyes. These creatures assimilate others by sapping their vitality straight from the corpse, becoming a horrific amalgamation of the two. InfluenceLast but not least, let's talk Influence. To gain respect from the crown (or in this case, mitre), you must gain influence in the city of Ghariv. To do so, make yourself an ally of the powerful clerics and advisors who maintain order in the city, and do their bidding. With enough bravado, soon you'll be within the good graces of Jorah, the High and Holy himself! |
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herziquerzi
2/2 Zombie
barely even real
Posts: 126
Set Hub: The HQ Set Hub
Favorite Card: Icatian Crier
Favorite Set: Shadows Over Innistrad
Color Alignment: Green
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Post by herziquerzi on Apr 13, 2018 23:22:37 GMT
Why doesn't Bite the Dust just assimilate the card? The whole destroy song and dance doesn't do anything because if the card is indestructible, there's nothing stopping it from being assimilated anyway.
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 13, 2018 23:24:00 GMT
herziquerzi so that you can still use it as a removal spell even if you don't have a creature or planeswalker to assimilate the target.
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Post by voltaic-qui on Apr 14, 2018 2:17:24 GMT
> trample and deathtouch on a  hybrid ISHYGDDT Anyway I don't quite know how I feel about any of these mechanics. Influence counters are experience counters from the looks of it (and you know how I feel about those). Adaptive is giving me major infect vibes (in the sense that doubling every instant/sorcery buff could get problematic) and assimilate seems very swingy. There is a nice interaction between reprise and adaptive I guess, and nice tension between suppress and assimilate. Oh, and you have two cases of cards here where they should straight-up exile (Soultender and Bite the Dust) instead of destroying, imo. |
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HonchkrowDavid
1/1 Squirrel
Try your best! And if that isn't working, try someone else's best!
Posts: 90
Formerly Known As: ThisisSakon
Favorite Card: Elesh Norn
Favorite Set: Innistrad bby
Color Alignment: White, Black
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Post by HonchkrowDavid on Apr 14, 2018 2:26:51 GMT
Please tell me there's a way to interact with Influence counters voltaic-qui has summed up my thoughts on the mechanics pretty nicely too. I like Suppress but it's the only stand out one |
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 16, 2018 2:06:03 GMT
Let's talk shop.
The driving force behind most of these mechanics (3/5) is interacting with abilities/text boxes and making cards do more or less than they inherently do. That's the stem of suppress and assimilate, which as jacqui pointed out have a lot of tension between the two. It's also where Reprise was added - I needed a noncreature mechanic and adding abilities to spells mechanically played nicely alongside assimilate while allowing for some flexibility flavorfully. Some notes on individual mechanics:
Assimilate: The design space I stayed in was largely assimilating cards from your own graveyard to get a sort of build-your-own-monster feel. There are a lot of interesting creatures to assimilate into your monster, and the ways in which to do it don't tend to waste value. It's not an outstandingly flashy mechanic on the surface but it was built to play well, not look good.
Adaptive: This is the only mechanic I'm uncertain of, since as jacqui pointed out it does have a sort of Infect-like gameplay in doubling pump spells. I considered changing it to Adaptive N (get +N/+N when targeted by an instant or sorcery), although that's fundamentally less interesting than this, so I've been willing to give this a shot until I discover otherwise, rather than the other way around.
Influence: These function like experience counters, yes. There are no ways to interact with them. Flavorfully influence is supposed to represent literally you gaining influence with the Golden Raven clerics who run the city of Ghariv. Your influence ticks up one piece at a time, and every card that grants influence uses influence and vice versa. If there were a better way to indicate this, I'd use it, but I just don't think there is. I know I'm treading some odd water between Ascend and experience, but the effects should be a lot less crippling than experience effects are (which I, too, despise) and the mechanical functionality has to feel better than Ascend.
Edit: And jacq you're probably right about the exile vs. destroy. I didn't like the "exile until ~ leaves the battlefield/exile it instead" wording, but at least Bite the Dust is just oversight.
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HonchkrowDavid
1/1 Squirrel
Try your best! And if that isn't working, try someone else's best!
Posts: 90
Formerly Known As: ThisisSakon
Favorite Card: Elesh Norn
Favorite Set: Innistrad bby
Color Alignment: White, Black
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Post by HonchkrowDavid on Apr 16, 2018 4:03:24 GMT
Influence: These function like experience counters, yes. There are no ways to interact with them. I mean, Energy Counters. You just made energy counters. The counters infamously known for being a terrible design because opponents can't interact with them. You should probably have ways for your opponents to interact with energy counters or just not include them tbh. "Counter the thing before it makes the bad stuff" isn't really a solid gameplan for a few colors. |
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Apr 16, 2018 4:26:03 GMT
I think you're oversimplifying it -- energy counters are flavorfully different, and occupy very different design space. Clearly I couldn't just also make these energy counters or they'd play really strangely with existing mechanics. Imagine this as more of a sliding meter and not counters. Those are just the way in which the meter is represented.
What makes you think that energy counters are infamously bad design? WotC considers them one of their greatest successes in recent years, and as far as I'm aware many people agree.
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Post by voltaic-qui on Apr 16, 2018 4:42:36 GMT
What makes you think that energy counters are infamously bad design? WotC considers them one of their greatest successes in recent years, and as far as I'm aware many people agree. I think the "oh you can't interact with energy counters, how awful" argument is pretty dumb-- it's a resource like mana. No, the real problem with energy counters is they were 1) incredibly parasitic, and to a far lesser extent, 2) inadvertently very powerful across a wide swath of colors and strategies. This is definitely a parasitic mechanic, although it doesn't seem to exist outside of  by the looks of it. |
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Jun 20, 2018 18:42:32 GMT
 Limited Archetypes, anyone? I'll start with enemy colors because why not?
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impspiritguide
2/2 Zombie
Favorite Color: Brown
Posts: 129
Set Hub: http://magicseteditor.boards.net/thread/256/pokemon-thread
Formerly Known As: Imp Elemental Spirit Guide
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Post by impspiritguide on Jun 20, 2018 23:23:12 GMT
Instead of putting the influence counters on the player you could put them on the permanents themselves (and still count all influence counters). If you have non-permanents that provide influence counters simply make them target permanent and place the counter. This makes better sense to me from a flavor standpoint (not only a play standpoint where-in I agree with everyone else) as when someone exiles Jorah you should no longer have access to the influence that he provides.
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Post by voltaic-qui on Jun 22, 2018 16:04:34 GMT
Instead of putting the influence counters on the player you could put them on the permanents themselves (and still count all influence counters). If you have non-permanents that provide influence counters simply make them target permanent and place the counter. This makes better sense to me from a flavor standpoint (not only a play standpoint where-in I agree with everyone else) as when someone exiles Jorah you should no longer have access to the influence that he provides. Problem with this is that 1) there are instants and sorceries that generate influence counters as well iirc 2) it turns the mechanic into "tribal for creatures with counters on them," which is less novel and plays worse 3) it doesn't address the issue of parasitism that is my real concern with influence I love Prophet's Ramblings, incidentally |
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Post by Jéské Couriano on Jun 22, 2018 18:03:35 GMT
My concern with Influence as a mechanic is that, since there's no way to lose them, Proliferate shenanigans ( Inexorable Tide, Contagion Engine, Viral Drake, et al.) have the potential to turn them into a nightmare. All you'd need is one means of getting one on you, and then just proliferate your way to 20-30+ influence. |
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Post by CanterburyEgg on Jun 22, 2018 21:18:58 GMT
What I don't understand is why everyone is inherently so worried about the concept of a counter that you can't remove, given that we've seen them multiple times already. Granted, Energy has its issues (largely with incidental energy gain a la Rogue Refiner) but it's universally liked by the M:tG community. Poison counters are generally liked as well, the main issue with infect decisively NOT being the counters that you can't interact with. There are certainly some influence cards that can spiral out of control, but that's the same with any sort of that strategy. The design space on influence is more limited than other mechanics, sure, but that doesn't mean it's not there - it just means it's something to be careful about. There's a reason my influence-makers are almost all one-shots, and the ones that aren't are very fragile (save for JORAH, God bless his soul). Clearly most people don't like influence. That's fine. It may be a miss popularity-wise (although I'd wager in practice it would be a lot more interesting than any of you are giving it credit for), but the line is blurring between it being unpopular and inherently broken. And to that last point, well - I just don't think it is. |
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impspiritguide
2/2 Zombie
Favorite Color: Brown
Posts: 129
Set Hub: http://magicseteditor.boards.net/thread/256/pokemon-thread
Formerly Known As: Imp Elemental Spirit Guide
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Post by impspiritguide on Jun 23, 2018 13:59:29 GMT
Canterbury Egg, Personally I don't want you to get rid of the mechanic, you like it and that is enough. I want to help you make it workable. And given my background I am very cautious about saying a mechanic is broken and this as it is presented so far is most definitely not.
The problem with everything we are talking about (except maybe infect which is after my time) is that they goldfish in play and aren't interactive. And as for poison counters having had a tier 4 Marsh Viper deck that was amongst the decks my casual group didn't like me to play, I can attest that this is a problem. Nobody likes playing any game where they are completely locked out of a single aspect of play. Almost everyone I know has at some time or another played against the flying deck when it wasn't fun because they couldn't do anything about it. To that end you need some way to interact with the mechanic on both sides of the board. The reason that most of the time poison counters aren't considered problematic is they arrive on creatures that are destroyable and blockable before the mechanic comes into play (my Marsh Viper deck was more of a control deck in order to allow them through, they just provided a 2-3 turn clock with the other cards once they were in play). If you gave the other player ways to either reduce the Influence mechanic or block it before it takes effect then this would be enough. Something along the lines of subterfuge style cards that reduces the Influence of the other player, cards that allow you to steal influence counters from another player, or permanents that in some fashion either stop their production by other permanents or (he says cautiously) even cards that stop their production entirely. The point of a duel is to create a conversation in conflict between two players. Make your mechanic part a conversation. EDIT: Card thoughts after original post {"Card Ideas"}   Bear In mind I've always like Wrath of God and it seems that given the communities other responses they wouldn't mind board wipers, and I know Influence was but Book of Revelations justs feels  to me (shrug). I apologize for the wording in advance, these are just brainstormings. And I am guessing that suppress can stop comes into play abilities but I am no longer as up on the rules as I once was. Woohoo, I new I'd just forgotten what it was called. Interaction with Poison Counters: Leeches |
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"When in doubt, do a common." 
Limited Archetypes, anyone? I'll start with enemy colors because why not?
