The DCC Discussion Thread

[bravelion83]

It's thread posting time, or at least it would be if I were still the host today (July 3rd). Who's hosting July? @void_nothing @Rithaniel

EDIT - Ok, now I see the thread up. It's void_nothing. Disregard this post.

[RattingRots]

Conspiracy Theorist 1UU
Creature — Cephalid Rogue (R)
When Conspiracy Theorist enters the battlefield or attacks, it connives. (Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.)
When Conspiracy Theorist dies, draw a card for each +1/+1 counter on it.
"I knew they wanted me dead! I was right! I tell you, they want all of us dead! I'm just the first!"
—Aloisio, last words
1/1

"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
And what difference does that make?"

[bravelion83]

An explanation of the pattern and cycle(s) that I've used for my submissions in the last fifteen days. I think @Rithaniel in particular will like to read this. Originally, this was in my submission post for today but then I realized it was too long for being in the daily thread and anyway it fit better here.

Explanation of the pattern/cycle

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Today's is the last card in a series of fifteen consecutive days where my own submissions followed a pattern according to their colors. I was inspired to do so by Rithaniel's submissions, where he plays a lot with color combinations and the concept he himself has called color "asymmetry", which by now has entered my own inner Magic technical vocabulary. It's very easy to see whether a card is color symmetric or not: check the colors in the color wheel, which you can find on the back of any Magic card if you don't know it by heart, and note the axis of symmetry of the shape defined by the card's color identity. Is what you care about on that axis of symmetry or anyway symmetric in respect to that axis? If yes, then you've got a symmetric card. If not, you've got an asymmetric one. Examples:

A Mardu card centered in W is symmetric. For example, a mono-W card with a BR activated ability.

A Mardu card centered in R is asymmetric. For example, a mono-R card with a WB activated ability.

A Mardu card centered in RB goes back to be symmetric. For example, a RB (Rakdos) card with a W activated ability.


It also works with four colors. Let's say I have a world with four-colored factions (I do and it's called Kolyfar). If I want to make a card for the non-W faction, there are several options:

A BR card with a GU activated ability is symmetric. Both the pair of B with R and that of U with G are symmetric in respect to the axis of symmetry defined by the whole four-colored color identity (the vertical red line in these images).

If I move one of the center colors, I can make the card asymmetric. For example, I can move B to U:

A UR card with a BG activated ability is asymmetric. If I also move the other center color I can go back to symmetry. Say I'm moving R to G:

A GU card with a RB activated ability is again symmetric. I can also exploit the axis to separate the colors:

A RG card with a UB activated ability is again asymmetric. I can also use this reasoning with three-color groups within that four-colored color identity:

A Temur-colored card with a mono-B activated ability is also asymmetric, as would be a Jund-colored card with a U activated ability, and so on... @Rithaniel This is how I've understood it, let me know if any of the above is wrong.


I am embracing this concept which I had never thought of before Rithaniel came up with it. I really, really like it. He's totally right that so much of real Magic is symmetrical that there is a whole lot of unexplored space in color asymmetry. So I wanted to play with it too (and I will keep doing it). The day I came up with this idea I had posted this card, with the only intention of making a single asymmetric card: Mardu Flesheater - August 3rd.

It's a red card with white and black on it. I wanted to do another asymmetric card without red for the following day as I had already used red as the previous day's main color. So I had the idea of taking R out of the color wheel and see what remained. It was a square:

For those who can't see images, it's something like this:
W---U
| ---- |
G----B

I could get all the three-color combinations that didn't contain R from that square by taking away one color and then going clockwise on that square:
If I take away W, I get Sultai.
If I take away U, I get Abzan.
If I take away B, I get Bant.
If I take away G, I get Esper.

Then I took these four three-color combos and decided the base color such that the resulting card was asymmetric. I decided to start with the Sultai one (the first one in the list above) and center it in the color that came first in the square (U). I started going around along the square one step at a time starting at U, with the convention that the first one listed was the center color:
UBG = Sultai centered in U
BGW = Abzan centered in B (symmetric)
GWU = Bant centered in G
WUB = Esper centered in W

The we go back to UBG, so I moved the center color to be the second one:
UBG = Sultai centered in B
BGW = Abzan centered in G
GWU = Bant centered in W (symmetric)
WUB = Esper centered in U (symmetric)

And then again making the third color the center:
UBG = Sultai centered in G (symmetric)
BGW = Abzan centered in W
GWU = Bant centered in U
WUB = Esper centered in B

I wanted this cycle to focus on asymmetry, so I took away the symmetric combos, which I noted above, and made cards in the order that I wrote here. In fact, if I copy here what remains when you take away the symmetric combos in the same order that I have just generated them with the "algorithm" above, if you want to call it like that, this is what you get:

UBG = Sultai centered in U
GWU = Bant centered in G
WUB = Esper centered in W
UBG = Sultai centered in B
BGW = Abzan centered in G
BGW = Abzan centered in W
GWU = Bant centered in U
WUB = Esper centered in B

It's a sequence of eight asymmetric cards in a specific order, and I followed exactly this sequence every day. But then I thought going eight days in a row with no red at all wasn't the best thing, so instead of every day, I made it every other day, with the intention to just make monored cards in between, and I did so for the first red card. It was meant to be just a monored card in between two consecutive steps of the sequence. But then it dawned on me: those red cards could be a cycle too. So I took the original color wheel, the one with all five colors, and I started with R going clockwise, pairing R with each other color it meets. The intent was to make a monored card with the other color in its rules text:
RG = R with G in the text box
RW = R with W in the text box
RU = R with U in the text box
RB = R with B in the text box

And so I intertwined the two cycles, and my plan for the following two weeks or so became this:

UBG = Sultai centered in U
mono-R (it had already happened)
GWU = Bant centered in G
RG = R with G in the text box
WUB = Esper centered in W
RW = R with W in the text box
UBG = Sultai centered in B
RU = R with U in the text box
BGW = Abzan centered in G
RB = R with B in the text box
BGW = Abzan centered in W
Random mono-R card
GWU = Bant centered in U
Random mono-R card
WUB = Esper centered in B

Then I made the first of the two random R cards at the end a colored artifact to make it different from the rest, and that's how we get to the final sequence that I actually did use in my submissions from the last two weeks or so:

UBG = Sultai centered in U (Hungry Shark - August 4th)
mono-R (Rageful Substitution - August 5th)
GWU = Bant centered in G (Questing Monkey - August 6th)
RG = R with G in the text box (Goblin Hitman - August 7th)
WUB = Esper centered in W (Thopter Fleethead - August 8th)
RW = R with W in the text box (Khenra Undertaker - August 9th)
UBG = Sultai centered in B (Darkwood Exploration - August 10th)
RU = R with U in the text box (Nostalgic Thoughts - August 11th)
BGW = Abzan centered in G (Steadfast Ash - August 12th)
RB = R with B in the text box (Banquet of Blood - August 13th)
BGW = Abzan centered in W (Unstable Field - August 14th)
mono-R colored artifact (Hot Firestone - August 15th)
GWU = Bant centered in U (Mutatooze - August 16th)
mono-R non-artifact (Leonin Firstmate - August 17th)
WUB = Esper centered in B (Macabre Tactics - August 18th)

And that's exactly what I did. You can check it for yourself if you go back and look each day's own thread. Today's the final one, so I thought I could tell the whole story. Tomorrow another cycle will begin.

[Rithaniel]

It's very easy to see whether a card is color symmetric or not: check the colors in the color wheel, which you can find on the back of any Magic card if you don't know it by heart, and note the axis of symmetry of the shape defined by the card's color identity. Is what you care about on that axis of symmetry or anyway symmetric in respect to that axis? If yes, then you've got a symmetric card. If not, you've got an asymmetric one.

This is probably the best explanation for asymmetry I've seen. It takes into account all possible color identities and gives you a well defined answer each time.

I love the cycle, by the way. I actually went back through and noticed that I voted for each card in the cycle so far, excluding Unstable Field (and that one is simply because of an oversight: the player can just put X=0 and the idea falls apart. Also, it generally favors X being lower rather than higher). All the designs were clever.

Also, yeah, I love the unusual mana costs. I think the game is robust enough that it can handle the more unusual color distributions. It makes me wonder about making custom card cubes to test out how difficult it would be to effectively utilize something that costs . I feel that maybe WotC would avoid it because it might be too complex for a run-of-the-mill player to understand, but I'm of the opinion that a run-of-the-mill player would be excited to see such a wild and new mana cost. There's so much that can be done within the system, but which has hardly been touched.

I look forward to the next cycle, by the way. If it's a rival to this one, I'm sure it'll be good.

[bravelion83]

It's very easy to see whether a card is color symmetric or not: check the colors in the color wheel, which you can find on the back of any Magic card if you don't know it by heart, and note the axis of symmetry of the shape defined by the card's color identity. Is what you care about on that axis of symmetry or anyway symmetric in respect to that axis? If yes, then you've got a symmetric card. If not, you've got an asymmetric one.

This is probably the best explanation for asymmetry I've seen. It takes into account all possible color identities and gives you a well defined answer each time.

I'll take this as a yes, I've got everything right, including the four-colored case. Thanks for the confirmation. During that MCC of yours about color combinations, this was the way I always used to see asymmetry, now I've just said it out loud. I think the reason why this explanation works so well is because it's visual. You literally SEE it with your own eyes, rather than getting there by only mental reasoning. I always see this also in my own work as a teacher: the concepts best explained are the ones that have a clear way of being visualized. We as human beings essentially need to see things to, as Maro would say, grok them.

I love the cycle, by the way. I actually went back through and noticed that I voted for each card in the cycle so far, excluding Unstable Field (and that one is simply because of an oversight: the player can just put X=0 and the idea falls apart. Also, it generally favors X being lower rather than higher). All the designs were clever.

Yes, I can confirm it was absolutely an oversight. I just didn't think about what would happen if you chose X = 0. Unstable Field should absolutely include "X can't be zero." as its own first ability. Anyway, thanks for the nice words.

I think the game is robust enough that it can handle the more unusual color distributions.

The game as a logical system can absolutely handle all of them right now as it is, that's not the problem. The problem is which ones the average player can handle, not a logical system. This is where things like intuitiveness and elegance come in. Obviously it's not by chance that they tend to always use the same color distributions, as they are the more intuitive and those that the average player, which is not a machine executing a program, can best understand. If you take out the human component and imagine Magic being played by computers, then huge veins of viable design space would open up, and not just with color combinations. But the average player is a human being, with a mental load and all the rest of what makes us human. They also don't understand the rules really well, let alone advanced strategy concepts, the card design process, and the theory behind how Magic is created. Here we are all enfranchised players, and we too often forget that we are NOT "the average player". We haven't been the average player for quite some time by now probably. At least, that's true for me, but I think it also applies to the majority of people here.

It makes me wonder about making custom card cubes to test out how difficult it would be to effectively utilize something that costs .

If you ever do that, I'd be very interested to hear whatever you find out.

I feel that maybe WotC would avoid it because it might be too complex for a run-of-the-mill player to understand,

They would never do it for real, no way, and exactly for that reason.

but I'm of the opinion that a run-of-the-mill player would be excited to see such a wild and new mana cost.

As a first impression and just by looking at it, definitely yes. The problem is when they go to actually play with the card. That's when they don't just need to be excited by the cost, but they must understand how it works. If they can't, it would be like looking at a nice picture to them. Yes, it's nice and exciting to look at, but there is nothing more you can do with it, especially playing it as it was supposed to be played.

There's so much that can be done within the system, but which has hardly been touched.

So true. And again, not just in color combinations.

I look forward to the next cycle, by the way. If it's a rival to this one, I'm sure it'll be good.

No, it's much simpler. I think after two or three cards the pattern will be evident. But it's just a breather. I rediscovered an old cycle of mine that I had planned fully and that contains THIRTY cards. I had to make a table to plan it, filling it as I go as I designed the cards. I used it for only four cards and then stopped, I can't even remember why or if there was a reason why I stopped. 26 cards are left from that cycle, and I think I will proceed to complete it after this simpler breather, maybe intertwining it with other things as I did here. We'll see. In the meantime, the next ten days are already planned and I've already designed all the cards. One thing I can tell you for sure: you all will see me playing with this concept (color asymmetry) a lot more than I used to do from now on. I think I've just fallen in love with it during that MCC month of yours, and not because I won that month if I recall correctly, but because I saw all the potential behind this relatively simple idea. So credit goes to you, as do my own thanks for having introduced this concept and being its real "father", as far as I know. Thank you.

[Rithaniel]

The problem is which ones the average player can handle, not a logical system. This is where things like intuitiveness and elegance come in. Obviously it's not by chance that they tend to always use the same color distributions, as they are the more intuitive and those that the average player, which is not a machine executing a program, can best understand. If you take out the human component and imagine Magic being played by computers, then huge veins of viable design space would open up, and not just with color combinations. But the average player is a human being, with a mental load and all the rest of what makes us human. They also don't understand the rules really well, let alone advanced strategy concepts, the card design process, and the theory behind how Magic is created. Here we are all enfranchised players, and we too often forget that we are NOT "the average player". We haven't been the average player for quite some time by now probably. At least, that's true for me, but I think it also applies to the majority of people here.

See, I don't know for sure. Like, if you draw it and try to cast it, all it takes is going through three symbols and matching mana to the symbols. Like, if the card asks the player for , they can just check for a green mana, then a white or black mana, and then a black or red mana. If they don't have what they need at a particular step, they can't cast it. The only trickiness is if they have a lot of dual lands, but, even then, it's just a matter of allotting the lands to produce the mana that is needed.

The difficulty that the card would create is in the question of "how many lands of what kind do you put into your deck?" But that's actually an advantage of hybrid mana that I feel hasn't been fully utilized yet. Since you don't need both colors of mana to cast a hybrid mana, it becomes easier for the player to build their decks. A player could play the card in a deck, or in a deck that splashes , or in a deck that splashes . The mana cost is still difficult to necessarily get, but there are many ways to get it.

So credit goes to you, as do my own thanks for having introduced this concept and being its real "father", as far as I know.

Oh, I'm sure it's a thing that WotC has known about for a while. But thank you. I greatly appreciate the kind words.

[bravelion83]

The Murder Mystery set's premise sounds amazing!

Broken Mosaic 2
Artifact Enchantment - Clue Shard (Common)
2, Sacrifice Broken Mosaic: Draw a card.
2, Sacrifice three Shards: Scry 3, then draw three cards. Create a Place Evidence artifact token. (You may pay 4 and sacrifice a Place, Weapon and Suspect Evidences during your turn to make an opponent lose the game.)

HM: netn10 (I usually don't vote for cards with speculative mechanics for future sets, but I have to say that I really like what you did here with the Evidence tokens.)

@bravelion83: Thanks, I might even build a full custom set around it. Seems like I'm onto a flavor gold mine.

@netn10 Yeah, I agree. I don't know if it's enough for a full set, but it's certainly worth a try. If WOE is built around Role tokens, maybe you could be able indeed to build a set around Evidence tokens. I would advise you to wait until after Murders at Karlov Manor to do it though. Who knows, maybe they could actually do something like that, and if they do then what are you going to do with your idea?

I know because I went through exactly this while working privately on a custom set with another user of this forum (I won't name them here as I don't know whether they would like to be named) that was built around Vikings and Nordic mythology. We worked on it for several months and then guess what happened? Kaldheim was announced. They were actually doing a Viking/Nordic mythology set and plane, for real. Yes, we could have made our set different from Kaldheim, and what we working on was actually different enough to potentially exist alongside Kaldheim, but in the end we decided to just shelve it.

If you build a custom set around Evidence tokens, something similar could happen to you with Karlov Manor in just two sets. Karlov Manor should be released in either late January or early February next year, which is only a few months away. You can wait just a few months and then, if they go in a different direction, build your set then.

That's what I would do, but of course if you feel differently and want to do it right now anyway, then I won't stop it. By the way, this is exactly why I usually don't vote for cards with speculative mechanics for future sets. Who knows, maybe that card or something similar will be a real card in the near future. And if that happens, it will become a real card, not a custom card anymore. Anyway, whatever you choose to do, I'd like to see more of your designs around that idea.

[netn10]

The Murder Mystery set's premise sounds amazing!

Broken Mosaic 2
Artifact Enchantment - Clue Shard (Common)
2, Sacrifice Broken Mosaic: Draw a card.
2, Sacrifice three Shards: Scry 3, then draw three cards. Create a Place Evidence artifact token. (You may pay 4 and sacrifice a Place, Weapon and Suspect Evidences during your turn to make an opponent lose the game.)

HM: netn10 (I usually don't vote for cards with speculative mechanics for future sets, but I have to say that I really like what you did here with the Evidence tokens.)

@bravelion83: Thanks, I might even build a full custom set around it. Seems like I'm onto a flavor gold mine.

@netn10 Yeah, I agree. I don't know if it's enough for a full set, but it's certainly worth a try. If WOE is built around Role tokens, maybe you could be able indeed to build a set around Evidence tokens. I would advise you to wait until after Murders at Karlov Manor to do it though. Who knows, maybe they could actually do something like that, and if they do then what are you going to do with your idea?

I know because I went through exactly this while working privately on a custom set with another user of this forum (I won't name them here as I don't know whether they would like to be named) that was built around Vikings and Nordic mythology. We worked on it for several months and then guess what happened? Kaldheim was announced. They were actually doing a Viking/Nordic mythology set and plane, for real. Yes, we could have made our set different from Kaldheim, and what we working on was actually different enough to potentially exist alongside Kaldheim, but in the end we decided to just shelve it.

If you build a custom set around Evidence tokens, something similar could happen to you with Karlov Manor in just two sets. Karlov Manor should be released in either late January or early February next year, which is only a few months away. You can wait just a few months and then, if they go in a different direction, build your set then.

That's what I would do, but of course if you feel differently and want to do it right now anyway, then I won't stop it. By the way, this is exactly why I usually don't vote for cards with speculative mechanics for future sets. Who knows, maybe that card or something similar will be a real card in the near future. And if that happens, it will become a real card, not a custom card anymore. Anyway, whatever you choose to do, I'd like to see more of your designs around that idea.

I think I remember a custom set about Norse mythology, maybe it was even on Planesculptors. I'm not surprised that WotC has eventually done one themselves, as the concept is ripe for designs.

I'll wait for Karlov Manor to see their take on the mystery, clue-esque genre, and I'll also be shocked if they have something similar to Evidence tokens. My prediction is that "Weapon, Suspect, Place" is a bit too on the nose (the concept is taken straight from the game Clue, after all), but I would love to be surprised. Perhaps another "clue-gathering, and then deducting a suspect" mechanic is in order; everything is possible, and I'm excited!

[bravelion83]

I think I remember a custom set about Norse mythology, maybe it was even on Planesculptors.

Then it's not ours, it must be somebody else's custom set. We were working on it on a private Discord server and the design documents hosted on my own Google Drive and only shared between the two of us, not public. We never reached the point of making the results of our work public. I still have the files, but they on my own local hard drive and in that private Google Drive folder, which is still there. I think we only mentioned that we were working on a set about Norse mythology a couple times years ago. I can't even remember if those few mentions were on Salvation or here on Nexus in the early days of this site. If you haven't read those few posts, then you couldn't be aware that we were working on such a set, and I don't think the person I was working with has posted any of our work, at least as far as I know. I'm recycling part of that set in a custom plane in my own big table that I mention often, but I've never even talked about that plane before now, it's not among my one custom ones that all of you might have heard about on this forum or in the flavor text of some cards I posted in the DCC. You're only learning of this now because I've mentioned it. I don't know how you could have even know the details of that custom set/plane/story if I hadn't mentioned it here now.

[bravelion83]

void_nothing, netn10

Mirrorbreak 1WW
Sorcery (U)
Exile target creature. Each player may pay 2. Whoever does so creates a token that's a copy of the exiled creature.

@wizyard You posted this in yesterday's thread three hours after I posted today's one. Did you mean to post this in today's thread? This is not like I missed your card while posting today's thread, as if that were the case you would have posted at maximum a few minutes after I posted today's thread, not three hours. As it's not me missing a post by a short time, I'm not editing today's standings to include your votes and I won't put this card up for vote today now, but I heartly invite you to make this same post in today's thread.

[bravelion83]

On the topic of nitpicks -- my name is still at the bottom of the scoreboard, despite having more points than the person above me

@CunningGabe It's not a nitpick, you're absolutely right and it's my fault. Now it's fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Rithaniel]

HM: Rithaniel - The card is named Lavasoul Summoner, that's good. Then I read the text and go like: "Lavalanche deals X damage... Wait, what? Lavalanche? That's a real card! The name has changed!"

Ah, the dangers of copy & paste.

Lavalanche and Drastic Revelation are the spells that this spellshaper, shapes.

[CunningGabe]

On the topic of nitpicks -- my name is still at the bottom of the scoreboard, despite having more points than the person above me

@CunningGabe It's not a nitpick, you're absolutely right and it's my fault. Now it's fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

No worries! Thanks for fixing it.

[Rithaniel]

(Thanks! I think the "Squadron Hawk" mechanic should be explored more )

Yeah, I kinda pulled away from the mechanic for a while, because I mainly just played EDH, where it isn't a mechanic that makes any sense. However, I've still always thought that it was a cool idea.

[bravelion83]

Mother of Mischiefs 3UB
Creature — Faerie Rogue (R)
Flying
When Mother of Mischiefs enters the battlefield and at the beginning of your upkeep, create a 1/1 blue and black Faerie Rogue creature token with menace.
{R/W}{R/W}, T: Mother of Mischiefs deals damage to any target equal to the number of creatures with flying you control.
2/5

Votes: bravelion83 (although there seems to be a proofreading error here)

Your comment made me go back and reread the card in my original MSE file. Yeah, the tokens are supposed to also have flying, not just menace. It should have been "...with flying and menace", also because the idea behind this card was exactly that its own tokens counted for the RW hybrid ability, so they have to fly, and the lack of flying is indeed just an oversight. I guess that's what you were referring to as the "proofreading error". I've fixed it in the MSE file but it's too late to fix it here. My bad. At least my card won the day anyway.

[Rithaniel]

although personally I don't think this needs to be 3 color, and I might be in the minority here of not being a huge fan of having lots of 3+ color cards

Oh yeah, it doesn't "need" to be three colors, at all. But making something multicolored when it doesn't strictly need to be multicolored is something that I'm entirely fine with. It can even be used as a balancing mechanic, allowing cards to be stronger because they require more strain to be put on the mana base.

Also, as an aside: I really enjoy 4-color cards. They are fun to design.

[RattingRots]

Personally, I just think if I saw that card I would be really excited about different ways I could synergize with it, but then I'd go "oh I guess I can't do those because you probably can't make it work with this red card or that blue card."

[RattingRots]

Votes: void_nothing, CunningGabe

WotC have opened my appetite for French vanilla sorceries with the recent UB stuff.

Maelstorm WUUBRG
Sorcery (Mythic)
Storm
Cascade when copy as well as cast
The five shards are always in turmoil, changing and evolving - always under The Progeny's watch.

Was the intention to have to blue in the cost? Just curious.

[netn10]

Votes: void_nothing, CunningGabe

WotC have opened my appetite for French vanilla sorceries with the recent UB stuff.

Maelstorm WUUBRG
Sorcery (Mythic)
Storm
Cascade when copy as well as cast
The five shards are always in turmoil, changing and evolving - always under The Progeny's watch.

Was the intention to have to blue in the cost? Just curious.

Yes, I want to explore "5 colors with one color more than the others", and this card, to me at least, feels like "this can be 5 colors but also mono blue".

[RattingRots]

Shell Whisperer
Creature - Elf Scout U
When Shell Whisperer enters the battlefield, search your library for a Turtle creature card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle.
Turtle spells you cast cost less to cast.
2/2

Never noticed until now that tortoise isn't a separate creature type.

[Rithaniel]

Never noticed until now that tortoise isn't a separate creature type.

Lol, yeah, sometimes I wish they had more finely defined creature types. Like owl and crane instead of just "bird." Then again, it would also make random tribal cards like this less viable (as unviable as they already are).

[Raptorchan]

@void_nothing: Just in case, I believe I received 6 points last day, not 8.

[void_nothing]

Well, you got six votes - but the bonus points for winning the day means 8 points.

[Raptorchan]

Never knew about this, but thanks I guess

[Rithaniel]

Never knew about this, but thanks I guess

What this tells us is that you've never counted votes until today. :]