NaGaDeMon #02 — Tribal

Bradley Rose
Nov 2 · 4 min read

Previous NaGaDeMon 2019 Devlogs:
#01 — Scope

You gotta start designing your sets at common. But to know what to design, you gotta know what your set themes and Limited archetype themes are. Additionally, the needs your designs are trying to meet may already be taken care of by existing cards. So you also gotta know what your reprints are!

At this point, for color pair Limited archetypes, there are many feasible directions to take. To help inform what to choose here, I look to other requirements I have for the set.

Requirement — Multicolor Mythic Legendary Creatures (That Aren’t Three-Color)

I’m a big fan of the multicolor mythic legendary creatures since they were introduced in Core Set 2019 and repeated in Core Set 2020. There was a change in color identities used between M19 and M20. I’m looking to repeat the pattern of multicolor mythic legendaries but with different color identities.

I immediately think “four colors!” …I know, I know — hear me out.

While it can be difficult to make Core Set-friendly four-color cards, I believe there’s a way to finesse a solution. (Yes, I know I have a reputation for loving four-color cards. And I’m not just doing this to prove a point. I really think bothering to do these can make for fun designs!)

I’m reminded of how Ethan Fleischer wrote about trying to solve creating four-color commanders. One of the attempted solutions involved monocolor commanders with activated mana symbols. This simple direction was thrown out due to flavor concepts not being strong enough to match the designs.

However, in a Core Set… such a set is all about resonance. The flavor is strong here! If we can come up with concepts that are super cool, the mechanics can fit accordingly.

Lastly, I loved that some of these Core Set 2020 creatures tied together a couple of the color pair archetypes. Kykar synergized with the flying theme and Yarok doubled specific triggered abilities. Omnath, in particular, cares about the Elementals tribe. I think creature types, especially with three-color archetypes present, are an easy and fun way to fulfill archetype-supporting card slots. Which means…

Requirement — Creature Type Mattering Among Archetypes But Executed Differently from Core Set 2020

Red-blue-green Elementals was sweet in Core Set 2020. Carrying over the creature type mattering to this set, I want to make sure to execute differently. Definitely no Elementals. But which types? And what colors?

One creative source I like to pull from at this point is looking to the planeswalkers I defined for this set: Kaya, Ral, Angrath, Koth, and Arlinn. Of these planeswalkers, two are from planes whose sets had strong tribal themes — and they are of those tribes themselves. Angrath with Pirates and Arlinn with Wolves & Werewolves.

Welp, what if two creature types mattered? And each of those types have historically each been in three colors each? And both these creature types’ three-color identities share two colors between them, making four colors collectively? And there’s a new mythic creature all about both of those types? Well… then you might have something like this:

Captain Awoooo is a placeholder name. If you have suggestions, lemme know. Or if you really want the name to stay as Captain Awoooo with four o’s, also lemme know. ;)

I’m imagining the other four mythic legendaries will follow suit with you needing to choose between two aspects, effectively functioning as three-color legendaries.

I’ve considered whether to add a clause for whether you have two or more opponents to allow you to choose both options. This can exciting for both two-headed giant at the theoretical prerelease as well as for deckbuilding options for Commander!

Here’s what I mean:

How do you feel about this second version? Currently, this excites me! It feels like you’ve got both tribes teaming up to take down multiple foes with this context! You can play Pirates or Werewolves, your teammate playing the other, and this card can be designed so that it benefits from both of you. :)

Because there are two creature types being cared about here at the mythic level, I’ll probably not want to call out Pirates and Werewolves specifically in the the color pair archetype signpost cards. Even if I choose to have UB Pirates and RG Werewolves as only 2 out of the 10, that’s still 20% of the draft strategies!

…I’ll perhaps decide it’s best to have the black-red signpost be something that benefits both Pirates and Werewolves somehow. We’ll see!

Lastly, I love that Werewolves naturally have an inner, dual-nature conflict. And Pirates are a bunch that tend to stick together in a “crew”. It feels like this Werewolf Pirate has this internal conflict of choosing whether to run with the wolfpack or sail the seas with the shipmates.

That’s it for now — may the tides and the moon dance in harmony.

Milling for 53

Magic: The Gathering game design

Bradley Rose

Written by

Magic: The Gathering and card game design.

Milling for 53

Magic: The Gathering game design

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