The Prophecies Begin {{Community Fan Project}}

Thanks for catching that. The simplest way I could think of to get around that is just to drop the combat clause to make it less clunky and go off of destroy instead. Buffs general use - nerfs against Double Strike.


(There's no point in exiling face down if you're taking from the opponent's hand except for EDH. The free casting there makes it seem busted, but reasonably you should always be able to get something with a lesser cost than the current point on the mana curve unless you're winning already anyway).

Also need to update that preview OP anyway since I forgot Onewhisker's not promoted to second-in-command until later in the series, so his title's wrong.



For Tamiyo acting as an audience vessel, I'm still not opposed to the idea. In terms of story, she can be justified sitting there in the afterlife sub-plane watching the forest and documenting how the animals of this world form language and society. Since we don't have B/U or B/G as colors outside of Tigerstar B/U/G splashing it, she'd probably fit best as a low CMC mono-blue walker, so that she doesn't change the game too much whenever she enters. We can iron out the effects later, but this might put some of the effects at scrying and spirit token creation. I'm not sure on the number of walkers the set should have, but I have an idea for a mono-black walker, so we can make a mono-red walker and a G/W walker to give every faction 2 capable walkers, or just keeping the count low and making a G/R one.

Also, what host would you recommend for uploading the MSE file to, so anyone can help work on it if they want to?

might want to also set up a discord or a google doc or some other sort of centralized communication mechanism more convenient and versatile than just this thread? but that's up to you of course

(After work I'll probably get a doc set up, since this is going to get cumbersome fast)



I kinda figured it would need to be from the moment that it settled on having a 3/3/2/2 split.




It's weird, but it's valid. The effects there were made to combine Arrest and Debt of Loyalty. In terms of niche usage, I decided to go with an effect that transfers control that way even if the creature had a static effect, it wouldn't benefit the opponent (unlike pacify or arrest) or, best-case-scenario, give you some way to steal a creature's static bonus in a white way.

moorland marauder's a bit too efficient on the removal side for my tastes, would prefer it at 1W

It's a 2/1, so without anthem effect it's either Righteous Blow (if your opponent has no 0 power tokens) or a Savannah Lion for 1 more. This is probably the only type of design space where we could get away with having the ambush be less than the total mana cost. Would it be better to bump it up to uncommon?

tamiyo's arrival being a white Diabolic Tutor is a break in white, the color of least effective card advantage

It's not really advantage, though, since everyone else draws a card. I can think of a few places where I'd hate to have this card in hand unlike a Diabolic Tutor. Since effects like Dictate of Kruphix allow for cheap draw as long as it's shared, though, I'll go ahead and shift it over to blue and bump it up.

virtue of forgiveness is one of those where the base effect is so weak that it could honestly include a cantrip at that cost no problem

Lol that fits with the flavor too much for me to pass up. I trimmed the flavor text to only be the last line and added that on my local.

you could honestly just let the player cast Cunning Answers directly and cut the "pay 1UU, cast without paying mana cost" middle man. also the hoop you gotta jump through is real narrow for a counterspell, something with an already quite narrow opportunity window, so I don't think this'd get cast from the grave a lot. maybe if it were a draw spell that'd change

Draw and countermagic are two difficult things to balance, so I'd rather not make it a combination of both, and we do need a hard counter in the set so it's going to need to be a counterspell. The card itself was a last minute one whenever I trimmed some of the obvious crapshoot designs (template experiments, keyword variants, etc), but I did consider making it free altogether. Making it free basically makes the card read "Exile this card from your graveyard: target spell you control can't be countered," which, while doable seemed a bit teetering on the power of a (bulk) rare.

Let's flesh this out a little bit more before changing anything on it.

riverclan sentinel could be uncommon, it'd be a feelbad to open as a rare with its current power level

It was an uncommon, but then I started to question the repeated removal and changed it recently.

re: all the "trespassing creatures you control have "nonkeyword ability"" stuff a lot of it'd be cleaner as, to give an example from Scouting Missions "whenever a trespassing creature you control deals combat damage to a player, draw a card"

Trespass adds in a characteristic to the creature during combat. While you're right about me really needing to get my crap together and standardize a few wordings, especially for things like combat damage triggers that could just go off of a triggered ability, I really don't like the idea of having it be limited only to combat damage since this drastically limits the design space we have (See: Tall Shadow, which would let players activate its ability at any time).

lol that a creature named Fishercat is a SomeType

Lol looks like I missed updating a placeholder.

why does Tamiyo make white Illusions[/div][/b]

She makes illusions because spirits didn't seem to make sense (that's weak, but that's honestly the only reason why I opted for that type).

The big thing about Tamiyo's Arrival and Tamiyo's Observations being common were that they introduced the first few entries for the log of that world, with her investigating why the supernatural of this world would appear to have a tangible effect on the wildlife, and why the wildlife appears more civilized than on other planes.

Whenever you brought up the idea of having her vessel the audience, I typed up a word document outlining all of the entries that her role might have encompassed, leading to the scope for all that we need for exposition. That way, when telling the actual events of the books, we didn't need to put in a bunch of lines like "Tigerstar (formally Tigerpaw)" or the like whenever about 30 or so cards give more than enough explanation. Maybe 30's too much - we can always compress it down a bit.

For her actual place in the story, I didn't have time to make a card with this for the flavor text: “StarClan has been kind enough to allow me to visit their realm to study both it and the clans.” Tamiyo's a giant, walking rabbit, and most of the prophecies StarClan gave the clans arose from a sunset witnessed by a magical immortal badger and hairless cat.

mapleshade being 1BB and having "target creature gets -3/-3 until eot" as a +0 is Entirely Too Good

Don't know why I bumped that up from -2/-2 (if that's still too good, then we can always put it at -2/-1).

The set doesn't really need two 2B "trespassing creatures get +1/+1" creatures, imo.

How about be bump the basic one down to 1B (or get extra silly and make it a 0/1 B)?

thunderpath skirmisher is weeeeeeeeeeeeeeak

Lol let's make it a common. It's weak, but it's silly, and that's all I wanted for it.

yellowfang's banishment keying off monocolor-lands-matters is weird given the heavy gold presence in the set

It is, and I wanted to revise this one, since when tossing around ideas for ShadowClan before posting the first thread I considered a land-matters subtheme.

battle for sunningrocks is very not red. red doesn't force sac and it sure doesn't hate on greatest power. I'd shift this over to black or maybe even white

How about "Target creature you control with the greatest power fights the creature you don't control with the greatest power"?

battle for the moorlands is one of those where it looks really cool at first blush but it's also a real headache to actually resolve, and that's without damage triggers. it's a quirky rare to be sure though, and I like those

Lol I'm 99.99999% probably not going to budge on this card's effect. It's a big, splashy, hilariously stupid card with the same cost as Possibility Storm and Brawl. It's there to wipe 1-on-1 boards and reward you for Lifelink (ThunderClan and WindClan win the battle, but I didn't want the card itself to splash into W for no reason on its ability, especially since that would limit it from play in U/R for no reason), and completely throw a monkey wrench into EDH games for hilariously silly results because EDH is for hilarious plays.

briar patcher being common would clog up theoretical limited games mad quick

Good point. Let's start with bumping it down to making 1 token. Do you think any other changes would be needed?

desperate relinquishment should be at rare if only for the complexity, and also because having to give your opponent gas just to be able to push impending death one turn further is a feelbad

It would be a feelbad rare. Like, if I got this at a prerelease as one of my rares, I would be pissed the entire time. The card has one niche where it would be justifiable for that power: punish players who swing out without much thought.

I assume sunningrocks relaxation is meant to be until end of turn

Yeah, I missed that.

for more immediate and varied feedback there's the unofficial mse discord right here

I'll give it a look later. Right now I'm at work.

Doing this on mobile. I'll make a doc when I get back on my PC

-Yeah, only reason for Brokenstar not having or lording Trespass that is that the effect was starting to get wordy. I wanted it yo go off of the Trespass trigger that way it gave the option of stealing and using a combat trick on that attack if the opponent doesn't want to be risk losing it.
-I'll double check it when I get back to see if I remembered to update it. It should be an instant uncommon. If it isn't, I'll change that.
-Given that the flavor of artifacts in this set are things like berries, the original goal was to have it be creatures raiding and stealing supplies. I guess having them come in and steal a wormcoil is kinda silly, so how about we change it to "Creatures you control have skulk and can't be blocked by tokens."?
-Jake makes his controller's creatures not block. W/R can control attackers and blockers in combat, so the ability fits. Jake himself is a tamed housecat that explores the forest before the start of the main series, so the aspect of living in society while expressing freedom translates to those colors, and in the books he accompanies Talltail on his journey out of WindClan, and convinces Pinestar of ThunderClan to leave the forest. Both seemed like they'd be suited for indirectly making creatures fo AWOL on defense while making them able to still attack.
-Fair enough. I'll change Onewhisker to be worded that.
-It's not powerful enough to be a legendary creature, nor is it one character that commands a faction. Calling it "Dog Pack" seems a bit too generic (and jarring given that it would put a generic pack of dogs at super-murderfuck-trample for MSE common, and yes I'm aware that's even with a set that has a domestic cat at 5/5), so it seemed more appropriate to just name what it was.
-Wanted to ask for second thoughts on what the P/T should be.
-It's whatever it says on the card. If it changed from the preview, I think I did that so that it didn't make the revised Starblessed a headache to interact with. EDIT: I just looked up how it interacts now that I'm back on PC with access to the comprehensive rules. Turn's out that's kind of redundant, so I just made it "cannot be sacrificed."
-Okay, let's make it a G 1/1 with W: Lifelink until end of turn
-Counterpoint: it's on the attack trigger, and scrying isn't exclusive to blue if the effect also has something to do with damage/protection. How about we bump it down to 2 and add a static buff?
-We have a wedge, a shard, and ally color, and an enemy color, so if we put one style between ally or enemy color at common, I'm worried that would show too much favoritism for drafting depending on which we do. If we go common mana fixing, maybe the best would be either a filter like Shimmering Grotto, or a five-color.
-All of the Special cards aren't included, they're there for exploring some space. Adding in Thunder, Tall Shadow, and Wind Runner means having all of the mythics be legendary creatures, and asks that we complete the cycle for founding leaders, which means a fifth faction for SkyClan. I'm fine with having Scourge and the Pack be off-both since they don't have a dedicated subtheme to them, and SkyClan's Revival can be played with RiverClan and ThunderClan cards splashed together
-SkyClan's Revival there is the epitome of the "Cats are our humans" of this set, it's there to be an anthem effect, but it doesn't make any sense for it to give a car or birds a boon.
-I just checked gatherer. Turns out blue can omni-tutor with CMC restriction, or with opponent's choice to let you draw instead. I'll do some brainstorming for a CMC restriction later if you don't propose anything.
-Not going to comment on the change for Tall Shadow's ability wording since you're right, and the wording is shorter. For it being forced, though, it does have a steep cost and requirement. Let's iron this out a bit, since I think that transferring this to a nonlegend would make a good mythic for the set.
--2/-1 seems appropriate, then. It's Weakness, so the P/T reduction isn't uncommon. It doesn't really do enough to justify it being a -X or -1 ability, though.
-I'll check if we have a simplest form Trespass yet. If we don't, I'll change it to that.
-For Desperate Relinquishment, Lore reason: Flavor text event. Bluefur gave up her children to prevent Thistleclaw from becoming deputy and leader of ThunderClan. This came back to haunt her after Fireheart and Graystripe investigated RiverClan's testimony for the murder of Oakheart, to prove Tigerclaw killed Redtail at the battoe between RiverClan and ThunderClan for Sunningrocks. Later, when her secret of abandoned half-clan kittens came to light, this helped fuel her downward, senile spiral after Tigerclaw's coup.
Gameplay reason: I wanted a fog effect that wasn't tied to green mana for cost, and going colorless seemed too expensive for a fog effect. Giving the opponent another creature is a steep cost, but the spell is free, and I'm a huge fan of cards that help hold you out for one turn. How about this, we make the tokens given 2 1/1s, but we make it create them at the beginning of that opponents next upkeep, and bump it up to rare? That way, it can still save the player for one turn in a close game, but it heavily punishes recklessly playing it?

This last week has been utter crap, but here's some updates for the Dropbox file.

A few things to note:

• Since I stated the purpose of the Special rarity cards being "want to include in a possible sequel set, but not here," I'm not going to be as fervent in cleaning them up before uploading for now.
• I added, like, a boatload of new cards, and found names for some of the artists. Also found a few pics that aren't garbo, so I put them in cards as well. Despite this, I didn't update the art folder on there. Also I'm going back on the whole "not including Tigerstar and Sasha" stuff since there's a few black cards we can get from that, but I went ahead and got all we need from there.
  
• There is mention of a Graystripe planeswalker. There will not be a Graystripe planeswalker in this set - let's cap it at 3 for now.
  
• Observant is starting to run into some roadblocks for uncommon since a lot of its main strength is that it gives creatures a way to repeat effects.
• Let's make some draw spells and countermagic
• Some of the themes are starting to take shape
• Speaking of themes, Trespass was fucked. Completely, utterly fucked. I don't think it's going to work. I'm starting to realize how parasitic it was, and on top of that, it doesn't interact with any of the other clans in a meaningful way besides 'get hosed by this ability.' I don't think it's going to work.
• Thus, Trespass now reads "When a creature you control attacks and isn't blocked, it gets +1/+1 and is trespassing until end of combat." This way it has synergy with other creatures with some other forms of evasion while keeping a lot of the same design elements I wanted to go for. Note that it now stacks if you have two trespass creatures on the field, and we're not limited to putting it on creatures.
• Because of this change being relatively recent, I haven't had time to go update every single card that can grant trespass to just have it on the source. I'll update these later.
  

Edit: Yes, I know Haunting Plight could be knocked down some mana, and please ignore the art for Blessings to Lead, I can't find where to remove images on a card.