The DCC Discussion Thread

[wizyard]

yeah that works fine, the reveal was my main concern

[bravelion83]

I think bravelion83 has yet another month in the bag. Void would have to score 9 more points than Leo today in order to steal it.

I wouldn't say "yet another"... It would be my fourth DCC win EVER and the first since 2022. I started playing in the DCC in 2015 and then took a break from the contest once but it was back when we were still on Salvation, here on MTGNexus I've participated continuously since the very beginning of the site except for the one single month that I've been in the hospital. I have only three victories in the DCC, one on Salvation (and tied, not even by myself) and two here, ever. An average of less than one win per year. I'm probably one of the people who has won this contest the least if you take into account a good six or seven years of overall constant playing. This is a very difficulty contest for me, I love it (I wouldn't host it otherwise), but it's very hard, for sure harder than the MCC to me. I've been very excited for this since I realized I was on top. I didn't even realize it as it happened! Only a few days later, which now is a few days ago, when I was looking at the cards up for voting and my eyes fell on the scoreboard, I went like: "Wait a minute! Am I winning this?" Well, apparently I am!

[folding_music]

i'm having trouble voting for the four-colour faction cards and feel like I've never understood the appeal of them; i'd love to understand the point! Definitely enjoying bravelion's lore updates but the actual cards are a bit scattershot, especially in charm form where there isn't enough deliberate omission of the fifth colour to feel distinct from rainbow magic. this isn't a challenge to change my mind or whatever (don't post the change my mind guy please x3) I'm just interested in the reasons creators have for attempting FCF designs! thanks for any replies on this

edit: i might just be an annoying fan of more old-school, highly mono-colour and/or artifact-based sets - Ice Age, Mirage, Masques, Tempest, skip a few, Darksteel & Amonkhet among my faves - who never took to alara, khans, capenna, a distinctly basic land-based player in the final analysis

[Rithaniel]

I can't necessarily speak for anyone else, but I always perceived WotC's approach towards certain regions of design as unnecessarily self-limiting. For example, there have been far more shard-colored factions than wedge-colored factions, and the first time they did wedge-colored factions (I don't count Apocalypse), they only really did it for one set before doing two sets of ally-colored factions, with only a few sprinkles of three-color-adjacent cards, like Soulfire Grand Master. But, even beyond things that they don't explore thoroughly enough, there are things that they just don't explore at all. For example, there is no mono-black card with a white-blue-black color identity, and while there isn't a reason that designs in that color space have to exist, the fact that they don't is astonishing, to me. There's just so much that could exist in the game, but which doesn't.

Four-color cards are a perfect example of this. Until recently, four-color cards were avoided as if there were something wrong with making them. Personally, I have never been persuaded by commentary on four-color cards that they are difficult to design, or that they "have to justify missing the color they are missing." As far as I'm concerned, a four-color card doesn't have to justify its existence any more than a two-color card does. The fact that we get four-colored cards so very rarely is uncool on the part of the game designers. This comes down to an idea that "four-colored cards are just cool in general," but that's a subset of the thought "cards with unusual color combinations are cool in general." (I made a cycle of "Dictum" sorceries, that had mana costs like . That's the kind of 'cool' I'm talking about.)

Sometimes I'll design a card with the mechanics in mind first, and then, when I'm trying to pick out a color, I find that the mechanics could be pulled from a total of four colors. So, I ask myself "why not just use all four colors?"

[bravelion83]

Maybe the assumption of every custom card designer having their own four-color faction plane was a bit exaggerating on my part, but I know for sure that I'm not the only one. In my opinion, it's obvious design space: we have sets about literally all other color combinations: two-color ally and enemy multiple times (Ravnica all ten, Dragons of Tarkir ally, Strixhaven enemy), three-color arcs (Shards of Alara and New Capenna) and wedges (Khans of Tarkir and Ikoria), and even a five-color set (Conflux). There is something missing there, and I believe it can be done. Once I was much more reticent to make four-colored cards, but seeing Rithaniel's frequent explorations of that design space convinced me I could also push more in that direction, and I've started doing so. If you go back to look at my card designs from several years ago you will rarely find a four-color card if at all, now I do them from time to time and I have a four-color faction plane in my big table, what I'm presenting you in this days: Kolyfar. I often say that I love the irony in my real name: it literally means "brave lion" (from where my username) but as a person I'm not brave at all. Rithaniel's brave explorations of the color pie are the key factor that also made me willing to be braver, at least in that. The plane of Kolyfar probably wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for them. As for the appeal of four-color design, Rithaniel himself just said what I would have said so I won't repeat it here, just check out the post right above this one.

A LOT of thought went into the Revelry cycle, way more than my usual DCC submissions. As I see it, the crux of four-color design is avoiding the five-color soup problem. In Kolyfar, I've tried to face it by making the factions primary in the center ally two-colored pair, with the external enemy colors being secondary support. I use traditional gold for the center ally pair to force you to play those colors as the core colors of the factions, and hybrid mana of either of those two colors and its other ally to make the faction four-colored while not forcing you to play as much of the secondary colors as it's required of the main center ones. Spree is a perfect mechanic for such a set in my opinion, in fact I've already made a note in my table to potentially bring it back in Kolyfar, because, together with the approach to the colors I've just explained, it allows you to play the card in multiple ways even if you don't have all four colors. In addition to that, I will add disincentives or straight-out prohibitions for you from playing the fifth color, still with the intent of avoiding the five-color soup problem, but that's another matter.

Each of the Revelry cards has this structure (let's call the colors MNOP):
Mana cost: one hybrid mana of the center colors (N/O). I want you to stay in at least one of the center colors but the meat of the card is not here but in the modes.
Spree
+ 2 — An ability that plays into the mechanical theme of the faction and that interacts with all other modes on the card, possibly in different ways depending on which other mode(s) you choose.
+ one hybrid mana of the left secondary colors (M/N) — An ability that the center color N can do but not the other center color O, and that N's other ally M can also do. This ability possibly has high synergy with the generic first mode.
+ two mana in traditional gold in the center colors (NO) — An ability that's worth of three colored mana of the center colors, so often high value as if you only choose this mode the card is essentially two-colored and the total cost in this case will be N{N/O}O like the cycle in Strixhaven, but that also has synergy with all the other modes possibly and also with the mechanical theme of the four-color faction.
+ one hybrid mana of the right secondary colors (O/P) — An ability that the center color O can do but not the other center color N, and that O's other ally P can also do. This ability possibly has high synergy with the generic first mode.

Finding the abilities wasn't easy but I believe I managed it. You'll see the two missing factions tomorrow and in three days, but I already have the cards designed and ready to be posted. But if you don't like this cycle or four-color design in general, no problem! Just don't vote for the card. I've already won last month, and that's more than enough to me for now seeing how difficult of a contest the DCC is to me. This month I've willingly chosen a more experimental route, and it's not like every card I will design from now on will be four-colored! But one thing is true: four-color combinations are no longer to me the taboo they once were, and again, I owe a lot of my change in attitude to Rithaniel.