NaGaDeMon #06 — Revision

Previous NaGaDeMon 2019 Devlogs:
#01 — Scope
#02 — Tribal
#03 — Archetypes
#04 — Reprints
#05 — Finishing
Lesson number one: fighting against human nature is a losing battle
The very first lesson that Mark Rosewater teaches of his “Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons.” It’s relevant to this Core Set project right now.
There’s a lot to explain, but I’ll skip doing that. I’ll instead announce the changes I’m making to the Core Set along with a short explanation:
Ral Zarek will no longer be monoblue in the set.
This is a result from the feedback I got on Twitter and the Beacon of Creation Discord server. The very essence of Ral Zarek’s color identity can’t be stripped down to either blue or red. Ral must be blue-red or not in the set at all.
Ral’s still in the set and still the face planeswalker. Which means…
The five Planeswalkers in the set will each be two colors.
A way to spice up Core Sets is making little tweaks. Core Set 2019 and Core Set 2020 did this with three-color mythic legendary creatures. Before that, Bolas and Garruk existed as multicolor Planeswalkers in their respective Core Sets.
The Planeswalker lineup is different now.
White-Black: Kaya
Blue-Red: Ral
Black-Green: Vraska
Red-White: Nahiri
Green-Blue: Kiora
I didn’t necessarily need the Planeswalkers to be enemy color pairings. It just worked out that the characters I prioritized highest for featuring fell into these identities.
The mythic legendary creature cycle is two colors each now.
With monocolor planeswalkers, it was “more OK” to do three-or-more-colors cards. Now that I have two-color Planeswalkers, I don’t believe in four-color commanders for this set anymore.
Luckily, there is still room for Core Set innovation with a cycle of two-color legendary creatures.
These will be the white-blue, blue-black, black-red, red-green, and green-white.
Each color pair Limited archetype matching one of the set’s Planeswalker’s color identity will match that character’s gameplay style.
This means blue-red will feel like Ral Zarek’s kind of magic. For example, blue-red won’t focus on artifacts like Saheeli does. The same will be true for the rest of the planeswalkers.
The ally-color color pair Limited archetypes will focus on finding synergistic strategies with the enemy-color pairs.
Now that red is back on the table for representing Ral Zarek…
Lightning Bolt will be reprinted in the set.


