[OGUA] Guashan Outlaws

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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

I don't think I've been posting about Guashan here, although there might be a necroish thread in the Set subforum that can give you a peek at it; we're here today to talk about Guashan Outlaws, which is a kind of booster-fun miniset that lives inside it.

Guashan Outlaws are 108 creature cards that have their own set mechanics outside of Guashan's mechanical suite; they're inspired (very roughly) by the 108 Stars of Destiny in Outlaws of the Marsh. In the setting they represent the resistance that our hero, Nimshan, is building against the oppressive imperial rule of the Tyrant-King. It uses a customized frame that's based on the STXA-JP frame.

Here's the mechanic set:



Image
Brotherhood—(Action): As you draw a creature that shares a color with this, you may reveal it to trigger this ability.

Brotherhood is a generically-good trigger that's meant to give payoffs and generally push toward a more aggressive, less controlling game plan so it doesn't turn into a sort of weird creature based draw-go.


Image
Salvage: As another creature you control dies, you may move an Aura or Equipment from that creature to this or put a type of counter that creature had on this.

Salvage is intended to interface with Guashan's inherit, which is basically disturb but my dev cycle is slow and I made it first, as well as potential, which is a creature ability that allows critters to put +counters on themselves. It helps make these investments less vulnerable to removal.


Image
Burnout: Whenever you cast a sorcery spell, you may sacrifice this.

Burnout is meant to squeeze extra value out of chant (a rebound variant) and the base set's sorcery theme.


Image
Incense: Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.

Incense exists to push players toward a more aggressive game plan again, since it requires graveyard bodies to fuel it.


Image
Pump Up: A creature pumps up whenever it gains abilities or its power increases.

Pump Up once again interfaces with potential and inherit, but frames it in a different way.


So what I'm looking for here is mainly brainstorms on how to get the most juice out of these, and what kind of support you'd want to see on cards in their colors that don't actually have the set keywords.
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Post by OneAndOnly » 1 year ago

Odd that your card choice for Brotherhood depicts a woman.
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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

This is a great idea! I love The Water Margin and its adaptations and I think it'd be a great fit for Magic-ization.

Is Guashan what your Journey to the West set became?

I like notion of having five new mechanics that cohere with the main set themes. They're hard to evaluate in total isolation like this - the most problematic one is burnout, because imo it'd be hard to balance what a "worthwhile" effect is for a relatively restricted and costly triggered ability - and I look forward to seeing the card designs.
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

So I thought I made it clear, but just to reiterate, I'm not looking for changes to these mechanics except possibly improvements on reminder text wording. We are moving forward to building cards.

Re: the vagueness of pump up: I think you're confusing yourself. If, upon checking a creature's power, that value is higher than it was the last time, it has pumped up in that moment. That's all; we are only looking at the surface value of it, and how it got there is immaterial to the mechanic. So yes of course counter movements can trigger pump up. I'm unconcerned with the effects of zero-cost-activated equipment that doesn't exist in the set.



Yeah, Guashan is the Journey to the West thing; I've demoted the scripture journey to B-plot and the main plot is about the Guashan region itself rather than a trip outside it, which felt more appropriate and lets me actually concentrate the action where I care about it.

I'll throw in a couple of the designs I'm currently throwing around; it's early days yet so I don't have a huge amount of them.

Image Image Image Image Image Image Image
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Post by spacemonaut » 1 year ago

Brotherhood — I like this as an on-theme way to build WU aggro. White likes small creatures that can come out early, blue likes topdeck manipulation, they can get along well together with this mechanic.
Some enablers would be WU scrying, U surveil, and cards like Not Forgotten or Run Out of Town.

I will caution that since it's "shares a color", players will likely pick specifically W or specifically U for their core. When I played mono-blue devotion in Theros, I could play blue-white or blue-black cards too, but I wasn't going to play a nonblue card. You've similarly got a parasitic color mechanic that has its consistency maximized if I pick one core color.

Consider that if I'm playing brotherhood, I want to maximize my triggers. I will already only draw creatures at most 2/3 of the time, and I want to maximize the chance of all of those being useful. If I'm playing mainly blue, then playing only blue and white-blue creatures will do that. Any white creature I draw is a missed opportunity, so I just won't include any. If U is the stronger core, then mono-W brotherhood cards will just get ignored.

That seems a little undesirable, unless you want to encourage mono-color devotion building.

I suggest finding something to combo off that can exist in both colors. Tribe for example. Triggering off all creatures, maybe. Or going in another direction, encourage players to build around creatures and enchantments and pick a term that encompasses that too.



Salvage — is really nice and removes some of the two-for-one aspect that comes from Auras, and it feeds off sacrifices. I like that!

If you make Brotherhood care about creatures and enchantments, then mono U starts being the color of auras in this set.



Burnout — works well with Salvage and creates a pretty clear theme in black. Arm your stuff, then cast spells, sacrifice it and burn it out and let something else salvage the tools you gave it.

I'd also be tempted to add Instants here to help people cognize their gameplay. The base set has a BR sorcery theme. This can interact with both instants and sorceries while still allowing the deck to focus on sorceries.

Given Salvage and Burnout sharing a color, I would unironically add an equipment that says "At the beginning of your upkeep, equipped creature gains burnout and 'When this creature burns out, (something)'".



Incense — Flexible once-per-turn ability concept. It's nice. It requires several creature cards in your graveyard. I think it being in red-green means I'm going to be inclined to build red-green-black decks to dip into black's strong sacrifice outlet theme in this set. I recommend adding a black-green card that self-mills.



Pump up — Also a really nice effect. This creates a red-green-white theme of pumping up and lighting the censer, and using the casualties of battle to enable the next one. Make sure you add a card with a Censer ability that gives things +N/+N until end of turn.



Coming back to Brotherhood, I even more want to revise this mechanic. The parasitic nature of the color means it's a two-color theme that will make me build mainly mono-color decks. I mentioned Incense can build Jund, and Pump Up can build Naya, and likewise we can also see Grixis decks in here. But really, no three-color combo wants to use white or blue much in this set because white or blue will be busy being somewhat parasitic and exclusive to each other and you'll have a more limited card pool. Burnout decks get to benefit from all of the cards in their neighbouring colors; the same can't be said for Pump Up or Salvage.

Build WU around creatures and enchantments instead, and you'll build a significant "aura matters" theme in both pump up + brotherhood, and in brotherhood + salvage.

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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

spacemonaut wrote:
1 year ago
Coming back to Brotherhood, I even more want to revise this mechanic.
Right. I initially thought of it as "kinship but less parasitic" - the color forcing is probably less than ideal in this environment though. However... with enough multicolor costs, especially hybrid, I'm confident that issue can be mitigated, and I know you're now settled on using the mechanics as they are.

May I ask what the blue and green rarity symbols are?
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

Initially I was set on these, but I think the color issue of Brotherhood is a really persuasive argument to revisit that mechanic. I'd quite like it to stay in the same thematic space, and we've talked about the constraints on it — due to its neighbors in the miniset as well as inherit it naturally wants to care about enchantments, and because all outlaws cards are creatures it must go on creatures.

So at least for that one, some brainstorming might be required.

The rarity symbols Outlaws uses are just different-colored bc I want them to be, and because they're not exactly the same as normal-set rarity anyway; think of them as different degrees of masterpiece rarity. The pack format is, 1xR/M, 3xU, 3xFlex, 7xC + landslot, where flex slots are 1/8 Outlaws and 7/8 commons, and Outlaws themselves are available in three rarities that are marked in MSE as U R or M but the symbols are green, blue, and purple.
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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

Some ideas for changes from most to least extensive: Make brotherhood check for any permanent cards, not just creatures; make it "Brotherhood with [colors]" and have it check for specific colors - I guess always white and blue by default - instead of the colors of the creature it's on; drop the color requirement altogether and just make it a bonus for drawing and revealing creatures.
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

Another concern that was voiced to me was, it's maybe weird or awkward that there's three mechanics here that are triggered abilities that can just kinda happen any time, which maybe isn't ideal, so here are some alternatives:

Returning mechanics:

Constellation (Has the anytime trigger issue)
Modified (I don't love the flavor here, although I incidentally used the modified batch in the mainset to represent kungfu training.)

New mechanics:

Discipline—Keyword: Whenever this creature attacks, if it doesn't have one, put a {Keyword} counter on it.
This would feed into a system where we move counters around or spend them for effects, which...could be a lot of infrastructure for a mechanic that doesn't go on a lot of cards. Attack triggers have less mental weight than anytime triggers, so although this is a triggered mechanic I'm not as concerned about it.

I considered a variation of this that makes Aura tokens but I think the text length and token management called for in that variation are less likeable than the ability counter version. As it happens, since salvage and pump up can both work off counters instead, the tricolor synergies are intact there, so this option is pretty appealing to me.

Vandal X: As this enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice any number of enchantments. This creature enters the battlefield with (X times) that many +1/+1 counters on it.
Since the main set can produce a fairly high amount of enchantments, maybe we can use an enchantment payoff instead of something that creates them. This has an interesting 'nonbo' or maybe modal interaction with Salvage that I'm not sure about, but it's something to think about. The fit with pump up isn't as good unless the specific card designs are set up in the right way.

Lineage: Ability word. {Do a thing with X}, where X is the number of creatures you control that with Auras, Equipment, or counters.
A threshold variation of this one's also possible.
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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

Which mechanics are you looking to replace?
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

For the moment just Brotherhood. Lineage might be able to hold onto the name and just change crunch.
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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

Bear with me if this is too out-there, but I was thinking about a combination of vandal and discipline:

Powersink N - +1/+1, KEYWORD1, or KEYWORD2 (As this creature enters, you may sacrifice an enchantment. If you do, it enters the battlefield with your choice of N of the following counters.)

The Ivory-Helmed Archer WU
Creature - Human Archer (Masterpiece R)
Powersink 2 - +1/+1, vigilance, or hexproof (As this creature enters, you may sacrifice an enchantment. If you do, it enters the battlefield with your choice of two of the following counters: +1/+1, vigilance, or hexproof.)
1WU, T: The Ivory-Helmed Archer deals damage to target attacking or blocking creature equal to the number of enchantments you control plus the number of enchantment cards in your graveyard.
2/1

Another way to to it would be more of a devour-alike: No number parameter attached, sacrifice as many enchantments as you want, get one counter per sacrifice.
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

I thought about this a while and I love the modal counter options but I'm not as much into the enchantment sacrifice (because, while GUA does have a lot of enchantments, they're not all that disposable and it's not like Exploit where you probably can generate a lot of fodder easily if you built that way), so I'm thinking, maybe we jettison that bit but keep the exciting part:

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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

That might be your solution!
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

In personal communication, @spacemonaut suggested boast, and ...I don't see a downside to that one? Is there a reason to think otherwise?
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Post by void_nothing » 1 year ago

I like boast a lot personally, both for the flavor and the play patterns. It might come off as generic? But it absolutely fits the idea of heroic outlaws.
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

Taking some time to share a few designs for boast:
Image
The Silent Beacon 2W
Creature — Human Assassin (SR)
Boast — 3W: Remove all counters on target creature and exile all permanents attached to it. Each creature you control that's enchanted, equipped, or has a counter on it deals 1 damage to it.
2/3

The Unchimed Hour 1WU
Creature — Human Spirit Wizard (SM)
Ward—Exile a card from your hand.
Boast — X: Exile target instant or sorcery card with mana value X from your graveyard. It gains, "Whenever you remove a star counter from this, cast a copy of it without paying its mana cost," and, "Remove a star counter from this at the beginning of your upkeep." Put three star counters on it, then remove one.
2/4

The Hushing Wave 1UU
Creature — Human Warrior (SR)
Prowess
Boast — 2U: For each player, choose target creature that player controls or the top card of their library. Their owners manifest them.
2/2

The Wordless Message 3W
Creature — Elf Monk (SU)
First strike
Boast — 1W: Until end of turn, target creature loses all abilities and has base power and toughness 0/1.
3/2

The Muffled Silk 1WU
Creature — Human Advisor (SR)
Boast — WU: Tap or untap target creature and put a defender or shield counter on it.
2/3

The Unsung Name UU
Creature — Human Dragon Warrior (SU)
Flying
Boast — UU: Choose a power and a toughness. Until end of turn, creatures you control have protection from that power and from that toughness.
2/2
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

And here we have some designs for incense:
Image
The Buffalo Drover 1G
Creature — Human Scholar (SU)
Incense (Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.)
Whenever you light the censer, create a 2/2 green Ox creature with, "T: Add G."
1/2

The Fierce Old Man 2RG
Creature — Human Warrior (SU)
First strike; incense (Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.)
Whenever you light the censer, you mill until you mill a creature card. Put that card onto the battlefield and it gains haste. Sacrifice that creature at end of turn.
3/3

The Wanton Healer 2R
Creature — Human Alchemist (SU)
Incense (Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.)
Whenever you light the censer, target creature you control gets +3/+0 and gains haste until end of turn. When that creature or a creature it dealt damage to dies this turn, The Wanton Healer deals 3 damage to target opponent.
3/1

The Vagabond 2GG
Creature — Human Rogue (SR)
Incense (Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.)
Whenever you light the censer, for each color among cards exiled to light it, create a Treasure token.
2/2

The Molten Advocate RG
Creature — Human Monk (SM)
Incense (Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.)
Whenever you cast a spell, you mill 1.
Whenever you light the censer, creatures you control become Elementals until end of turn and they get +X/+0, where X is the greatest mana value among cards you exiled to light it.
1/1

The Masterless Blade 2R
Creature — Human Rogue (SR)
Prowess; incense (Exile three creature cards from your graveyard: Light the censer. Light it only once per turn.)
Whenever you light the censer, exile the top card of your library. You may cast it this turn. When you do, The Masterless Blade skirmishes with target creature. (After this phase, you have an additional combat phase. Only skirmishing creatures may participate. Untap them.)
3/2
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Post by barbecube » 1 year ago

Really, nothing objectionable in that set? Okay...

The next sixpack is for salvage.
Image
The Painted Tower 1U
Creature — Human Artisan (SU)
Salvage (As another creature you control dies, you may move an Aura or Equipment from that creature to this or put a type of counter that creature had on this.)
When The Painted Tower enters the battlefield, put a flying counter and a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
1/2

The Gossiping Bones UB
Creature — Elf Shaman (SU)
Salvage (As another creature you control dies, you may move an Aura or Equipment from that creature to this or put a type of counter that creature had on this.)
Whenever a creature you control salvages, scry 1 and you lose 1 life.
2/2

The Velvet Glove 2B
Creature — Human Alchemist (SU)
Lifelink; salvage (As another creature you control dies, you may move an Aura or Equipment from that creature to this or put a type of counter that creature had on this.)
When The Ripened Root dies, it deals damage equal to its power to target opponent.
2/2

The Naked Face 3U
Creature — Human Spirit Artisan (SR)
Salvage (As another creature you control dies, you may move an Aura or Equipment from that creature to this or put a type of counter that creature had on this.)
When The Naked Face enters the battlefield or whenever a creature you control salvages, you may have The Naked Face become a copy of target creature, except it gains salvage and this ability.
1/1

The Heaving Sea 1UB
Creature — Human Pirate (SM)
First strike, salvage
Whenever The Heaving Sea deals combat damage to a player, choose one—
• Gain control of target Aura or Equipment that player controls. You may attach it to target creature.
• Tap target creature and put a stun counter on it.
• Create a Treasure token.
2/3

The Velvet Glove 3B
Creature — Elf Warrior (SR)
Menace; salvage (As another creature you control dies, you may move an Aura or Equipment from that creature to this or put a type of counter that creature had on this.)
Whenever a creature The Velvet Glove dealt damage to this turn dies, target opponent may pay 3 life. If they don't, draw a card.
3/2
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