Ulreon (The plane of wars)

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Venedrex
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Post by Venedrex » 3 years ago

Hey guys!

This is where I'll be posting info on my first custom set. I've been working on it off and off for a good while now, but there is still a ton of work to do. My goal is to give an overview of the set, and if everyone here is willing, solicit some much needed feedback about the design and direction of it.

Overview:

Ulreon is my take on a set where the main theme revolves around massive armies and the factions fielding these troops. My plan for the set is to break it down into the three color wedges that we all know and love, but flavored to match this plane. For instance, will be the High Elves. This set is inspired by the idea of a planeswalker not in charge of a ragtag band of creatures, but of a tremendous host of soldiers.

Mechanics:

To aid in this, there are three (and a half) mechanics that are meant to assist players in gameplay, while conveying the flavor of the world.
These mechanics are as follows:

1. Training. Training is an ability word that denotes a specific method your creatures possess for gaining keyword counters. The flavor represents an experienced creature passing on their skills to a fresh recruit/weaker creature. An example of training can be found on the card below: (Please note, the exact costs and effects will likely change for balance reasons.)

High Elf Gryphonmaster
Creature - Elf Soldier
Flying (R)
Training, : Tap up to four untapped creatures you control with converted mana cost 4 or less. Put a flying counter on each creature tapped this way. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
4/5

Upon receiving feedback about the problems with training, I have decided to table training as a mechanic for the set. Instead, I think I will make a new mechanic to represent tactics or some other aspect of large armies to fill the spot formerly occupied by training.

2. Inscription. Inscription is a keyword ability that involves exiling a card from your hand, which then allows the player to cast a spell for a different cost, usually less than the card's original casting cost. The flavor represents the ancient and powerful magic of the High Elves and Undead that is inscribed into a spell as it is cast. Just like kicker, if a spell's inscription cost was paid, you may word it as: "If this spell was inscribed..." An example of this can be found on the card below:

Reckless Study
Instant (U)
As an additional cost to cast this spell, discard a card.
Draw two cards.
Inscription (You may cast this spell for its inscription cost by exiling a card from your hand.)

3. Deploy and Formation. Thanks to the contributions of people on this forum, this mechanic has started to take shape. Deploy and Formation always come bundled together and can be seen here:
Deploy -- Create a 1/1 green Elf Soldier creature token with formation.
Formation Whenever this creature attacks or blocks, each other creature you control with formation that is able to attack or block does so as well.

The flavor of these mechanics is meant to represent sending out your army of troops, and the organization that prevents individual soldiers from going rouge and fighting on their own. The reason for this mechanic was to hopefully allow for more tokens to be produced compared to the average set and preventing games of limited from dragging on due to an abundance of chump blockers that could severely hinder big creatures without trample. An example of this can be found on the card below:

Dwarf Company
Creature - Dwarf Soldier (U)
Deploy — When Dwarf Company enters the battlefield, create three 1/1 red Dwarf Soldier tokens with formation.
: Up to two target creatures you control get +2/+0 until end of turn.
2/2

4. ??? This one will most likely be a returning mechanic, but I am still debating which one to bring back for this set. Biggest contender for this right now is Renown.

Upon further reflection, and in light of training being out, I am strongly leaning towards Heroic or Raid for this spot. Battalion could work, but I suspect it would compete for the same space as formation, and Raid may clash the tendency of deploy being an etb in most cases. This leads me to tentatively consider Heroic to be the leading mechanic for this area.

Factions:

The main factions of the set will be
: The Humans
: The High Elves
: The Undead
The Dwarves
The Wood Elves

Each faction will likely have a theme, such as artifacts for the dwarves, instants and sorceries for the high elves, and so on.

Conclusion:
As you can see, the project is still in its infancy, but the concept is there and at this point, my main focus is to start nailing down draft archetypes, the final mechanics, and identities of the factions. Thanks for reading, and any feedback or criticism would be most welcome.
Last edited by Venedrex 3 years ago, edited 3 times in total.
Epicurean, EDH without Universes Beyond.

http://nxs.wf/np748831

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Lorn Asbord Schutta
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Post by Lorn Asbord Schutta » 3 years ago

Congratulations on the start!
Onto mechanics:

Training strikes me as similiar to outlast from Tarkir. While the outlast gave +1/+1 counters, many of "outlast-ers" gave also keywords to your creatures with +1/+1 counters with a static ability. Training is also similiar in how it requires to tap at sorcery speed, but due to requirement of other creatures this is even more pronounced. While outlast was not a bad or weak ability, many players shied from it, percieving it as too slow and demanding in cost. This is something that should be kept in mind.

Inscription will be, as I suspect from the faction wheel, mostly in blue? As a - mostly - cost reduction mechanic it probably should be given to more reactive then proactive spells, because even the card advantage loss from exiling a card from hand may be outweighed by enough tempo advantage.

Deploy and formation were discussed elsewhere. A thing of note is that due to abudance of tokens in set, effects with sacrifice in costs become much stronger. Also, combining many tokens from deploy and keywords giving of training the set starts to be big in terms of information tracking. And because I think no one had played Ikoria in paper it is hard to predict if such complexity is handable in limited environment.

Renown to represent military leaders gaining notoriety would be a good flavour fit, but in terms of mechanical side it also wants some +1/+1 counters synergy from something else in set in my opinion. But both Renown from Origins and similiary one-shot monstrosity from Theros menaged themselves on their own, so maybe my opinion on subject is wrong.
However, multicolor heavy sets need a reasonable fixing avaible across the colors. Treasures will work - they may represent spoils of battle - or either cycling - as Ikoria shows - or basic landcycling - based on Alara - or even Onslaught [type]cycling.

In terms of faction themes it might be a good idea to make them synergistic between shared color pairs, in example Red and Blue for both elven factions, to ease the process of having reasonable draft archetypes. Also there are two things to consider: first, to properly represent huge armies, there need to be a critical mass of bodies. Deploy deals somehow with this problem and training gives payoff for many bodies, but if the themes of factions will compete for place too much with previous two mechanics, the flavour of the set might fall short. The second thing to think of is if there are ways to blend faction themes into combat, because it only fits the "plane of wars". So instead of High Elves being just spellslinger, make them about combat tricks. And so on.

Well, I hope this is useful. Good luck!

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Venedrex
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Post by Venedrex » 3 years ago

@Lorn Asbord Schutta
Thank you for the well thought out and detailed reply, I really appreciate it.

1. You make an excellent point about the similarity between Outlast and Training, I started playing long after Tarkir, and while I was dimly aware of Outlast's existence, I failed to realize just how similar it was, especially with the granting of keyword abilities. I think that, for the reasons you mentioned, it's probably best to to either redo training or come up with something else instead. This is something I completely overlooked, so thank you for mentioning it.

In fact, getting rid of Training due to its plagiaristic nature (and other problems) could very well end up helping the set in another way as well. As you know, I was looking at bringing back Renown as the returning mechanic for the set, partly for the flavor, but also due to it being one of the few non-ability word mechanics that I thought would be a good fit for the set.

With training off the table, it opens up room for a second ability word mechanic. I think Raid or Battalion could be strong contenders in this space, as they both drive home the focus of the set on combat. Additionally, going with something like Raid could go a long way towards reducing set complexity, as it is one of the easiest mechanics to track in the game, and would replace the complexity of the keyword counters.

However, Raid is usually an etb trigger on most creatures, and deploy might compete for that space. This leads me to think that Heroic might be an interesting fit for the set.

It keeps some of the flavor that Renown had, it would go hand in hand with what you mentioned about making the High Elf theme of spellcasting being about combat tricks, as it would be primarily found in and maybe as well, to counterbalance inscription being in . Heck, it even reminds players that individual creatures can be valuable too, since they will likely be somewhat overshadowed by the main focus being armies. Sorry for the crazy sounding word vomit, I'm kind of of feeling like the guy with the strings right now lol. I'm gonna go make some test cards with Heroic to see how they might look, and if they feel good in the set as it stands so far.

2. I like the idea of putting it on reactive spells, it fits the mechanic and, like you say, is a good way to break even on exiling a card, which is definitely a steep cost. I already have a prototype inscription counterspell and a bounce to library spell as well.

3. Mana fixing is certainly another key element, the set will need it for sure. Treasures sound good to me, especially due to the presence of dwarves in the set.

4. 100% agree with the faction overlap, one thought I had would be to make the izzet draft archetype instants and sorceries (as is tradition lol), and have that tie in with both elf factions, as that could represent how the elves are powerful magic users, compared to humans, which, while having magic, are probably the least magical faction in general.

Again, thank you for the help, it was incredibly useful.
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