[Kaldheim] Black Commons

[Occo]

Hey all! I'm currently in the process of filling out the commons for my top-down Norse set, Kaldheim. I've already gotten a lot of feedback on white and blue (not that I'd mind more eye on those), but am just now finishing up on my ones for B. There's 19 in total, and I'd love any and all feedback on the designs or flavor.

The set's main thread can be found here, and a full visual spoiler for what's complete so far here.
The images on Planesculptors have a slight error when it comes to Relentless Draugr, though the text version and one in the imgur album above are correct.

Black Commons (19/19)

Show

Hide

Album with up-to-date renders.

Changelog

Show

Hide

Affliction of Komla
Enchantment — Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets -1/-1 and has "At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life."

Avenged Ravens 2B
Creature — Bird (C)
Flying
When Avenged Ravens dies, if it was dealt damage this turn, you may put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
2/2

Dutiful Return 3B
Sorcery (C)
Return up to two target creature cards from your graveyard to your hand.

Dwarven Rager 1B
Creature — Dwarf Berserker (C)
Dwarven Rager can't block.
Glory (When this creature dies, if it was dealt damage this turn, return it to the battlefield transformed.)
2/2
//
Relentless Draugr
Creature — Zombie Dwarf (C)
Relentless Draugr can't block.
3/3

Fenran Vanguard
Creature — Wolf (C)
Menace
Sacrifice Fenran Vanguard: Target opponent loses 1 life.
1/1

Frantic Glee 1B
Instant (C)
Target creature gets +3/+0 and gains lifelink until end of turn.

Frenzied Raiders 1B
Creature — Human Berserker (C)
Raid — When Frenzied Raiders enters the battlefield, if you attacked with a creature this turn, you draw a card and you lose 1 life.
2/1

Frostwind Fletcher 2B
Creature — Human Archer (C)
When Frostwind Fletcher enters the battlefield, target creature an opponent controls gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
2/3

Ill Omen 1B
Instant (C)
Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
Create a Rune token. (It's an artifact with ", Sacrifice this artifact: Scry 1.")

Munigg's Favor
Enchantment — Aura (C)
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature gets +1/+0.
When enchanted creature dies, if it was dealt damage this turn, return it to the battlefield under your control.

Murder 1BB
Instant (C)
Destroy target creature.

Northern Ambusher 1B
Creature — Human Berserker (C)
Flash (You may cast this spell any time you could cast an instant.)
When Northern Ambusher dies, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
2/1

Parting Whispers
Sorcery (C)
Target player sacrifices a creature, then gains life equal to its toughness.

Raven's Omen 2B
Sorcery (C)
Target player draws two cards and loses 2 life.
Create a Rune token. (It's an artifact with ", Sacrifice this artifact: Scry 1.")

Rotbile Shaman 4B
Creature — Zombie Ogre Shaman (C)
When Rotbile Shaman enters the battlefield, target opponent loses 3 life.
4/4

Savage Draugr 3B
Creature — Zombie (C)
Raid — Savage Draugr enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it if you attacked with a creature this turn.
4/2

Sea's Plunder BB
Sorcery (C)
Target player discards a card.
Raid — If you attacked with a creature this turn, that player discards two cards instead.

Sturmslang Captain 2B
Creature — Human Warrior (C)
Whenever Sturmslang Captain becomes tapped, each opponent loses 1 life.
3/2

Sturmslang Warship 2B
Artifact — Vehicle (C)
Menace
Crew 2 (Tap any number of creatures you control with total power 2 or greater: This Vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.)
4/4

[folding_music]

Love that Glory mechanic :3 is that gonna appear in all the mardu colours? all these commons seem reasonable draft picks and all very terse, so well done!

are Komla and Munigg your takes on various norse deities? I love those old myths, brutal as they are, I'd be interested to see how you portray em!

[Occo]

Glory's 5c! So far, every color's got a common creature with it, and there's likely going to be some more cycles at higher rarities.

Names are still a little placeholder-y, but that's about right. Hopefully I'll get to expand on them more once I get around to doing more flavor texts, and I'll be sure to share my worlbuilding doc over on the set's main page once I have a bit more written for it.

Glad no issues really stood out!

[Ryder]

Actually @bravelion83 and I are like 5 months in development of a Viking set. It's bottom-up. We already have a great world and story to tell, and have just started Commons. We also have Runes, Raid and Ships We even considered to actually make Kaldheim happen like what you're doing now, but decided against it, not to have Wizards basically invalidate our world. We'll come here when we're 100% done and satisfied with our work.

For your version, it is hard to judge without context. Commons are there to sell the set's flavor. What is your Kaldheim really about?

About the mechanics. I like your take on the Rune tokens, but what if you didn't sacrifice them?

[bravelion83]

I confirm everything @Ryder has said.
@Ryder: While I was very open about my own personal project, I was actively trying to be cryptic when mentioning our project, I did it a lot of times if you read my comments of the last few months. Here you just fully expose it. Oh well, at least you haven't said its name. It's hard to say whether it's top-down or bottom-up, there are elements of both. Anyway, I would have waited some more time (until we need playtesters probably), but now the news of it is out into the public world. No problem, the news had to go public someday.

[void_nothing]

Parallel design happens to us all.

You know what's funny? Over in Collaborative Create-a-Booster, the current set has Runes as artifacts that sac to scry 1 as a block mechanic. The only difference is the Ulgrotha Runes don't have a mana cost to the ability.

And now, I'm excited for TWO Viking sets from proven designers!

[Ryder]

@bravelion83 Sorry if I went out too brazenly. But since the time of our first playtest is rapidly approaching, some foreshadowing isn't necessarily that bad, eh?

[bravelion83]

@Ryder no problem, as I've said, the news had to come out for the first playtest, which as you (hopefully rightly) say is near. It's true that you didn't give out the big selling points, like mechanics, flavor, story, etc... Oh well, what's done is done now. Now let's not say anything more about it until we're ready for playtesting.

TWO Viking sets from proven designers!

@void_nothing Thanks for calling me a proven designer. A person with a very low self-esteem like me needs these injections of trust sometimes. Often actually. I can only hope the work I and Ryder are doing lives up to your expectations. It's totally our intent to make a serious thing, as good as we can. There are no deadlines set in stone right now, so I don't know when we'll say more about it. And don't expect it (the set with its related things) to come out too soon. We're not ready to let it out tomorrow!

[SecretInfiltrator]

I feel a raid card, at least at common, should be an acceptable card without raid and just be pushed a bit over curve by raid. I feel Sea's Plunder doesn't pass that test. Too much of a swing between playing the card with and without raid.

[M00NSIDIAN]

I feel a raid card, at least at common, should be an acceptable card without raid and just be pushed a bit over curve by raid. I feel Sea's Plunder doesn't pass that test. Too much of a swing between playing the card with and without raid.

This and Affliction of Komla strike me as the two most problematic cards here, mostly because Affliction is something you don't want to be that easily stacked for limited. In a situation like that, it can be really, really obnoxious with no way of removing it aside from letting the creature die. To my knowledge, the cheapest card that causes that bleed-out effect costs two mana (that being Festering Wound, which is over twenty years old now and really shouldn't be used as a good metric). The primary thing that makes this less of an issue is that defensive options are not that numerous in the set, from what's been shown. This isn't really going to spit us out a Guardian Lions or a wall to leave a creature that's been stacked with afflictions to crash into uselessly as the other player just waits to bleed out.

Sea's Plunder doesn't seem that bad at first glance, since I was originally comparing it to Wrench Mind, but there's no way to escape discarding two cards once the raid trigger has gone off (and artifacts were pretty easy to come by in Mirrodin, obviously). A raid-buffed discard spell is not necessarily a bad idea, but this might be too efficient. Maybe 2B for a Mind Rot that upgrades to Stupor with the raid trigger? Maybe even all the way to discarding both cards at random.

But hey! Most of the rest of these are pretty solid. There certainly seems to be a running theme of getting a decent amount of value in terms of tiny stuff from a lot of these (e.g. the archer, aforementioned Affliction).