Homebrew set advice

I'm working on a custom set in a garden-like plane with some touches of European folklore. Birds terrorize the skies, insect hiveminds machinate endlessly, and lawn gnomes combat invading fairies. I wanted to evoke the feeling of discovering mysteries hiding just under your nose, like turning over rocks to find pill bugs as a kid. However, my current mechanic, Wonder, isn't as fun as I'd hoped and requires too much set up. There's either too many wondered cards or too few and constructing a deck (from the commons I shat out) to make use of it is a nightmare.
It basically creates a new zone for what in a lot of cases could just be the top of a player's library.

So, Veeky Forums, what are some mechanics you might use to achieve the desired effect? Beyond that, just tell me what you think of the set and what could be added! I've got all the commons done, so I'll bump with those for a while to show what it's all about.

Thanks in advance!

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Why not just have Surprise work off of when the card is revealed from your library (or maybe even just anywhere) and then have more than normal amounts of cards that reveal cards from the top of your library for whatever reason?

These are a cycle (along with green man in the OP) that reveal cards for the chance of an effect. They originally wondered the top card of your library on ETB as well, but that was just too wordy.

That's the direction I'm thinking of going. Maybe a scry/fatesteal-like effect that reveals? I do like Surprise quite a bit.

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I like this classic fairy tail kind of atmosphere for a set. All of these cards are kind of low cost though, any bigger cost, mighty cards you got here OP? How about other types of spells? Seems like enchantments with surprise would be pretty rad.

I've only got a couple enchantments, and none with Surprise. I should work on that! So far I've just filled in the commons of a set skeleton I found.

Posting some higher cost stuff

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I imagine the sorcery cards and enchantments with surprise being like tricks and such performed by the gnomes and all that.

Strangely, it ended up being the bird mechanic in the first draft. Something like a surprise mind control would be a total flavor win!

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maybe something like this? I've never designed cards before, so ,I have no idea if this is decent or not, but, this is just an Idea.

You should explain what wonder cards are in some cards, at least the most basic ones. Something like, when you wonder cards, exile the wondered cards face down in any order, you may look at those cards at any time.
Also add ways for players to interact with them. An artifact or enchantment that sends exiled cards to the graveyard for instance.

Yeah, an X spell with surprise would be a good add. Maybe make it drain life?

Is it worth making so much infrastructure? Could wonder be fun with it?

I think the issue here is you've just forced every single deck to run 4 of mysterious bauble.

Yeah, a big problem is red's monopoly on revealing cards.

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Maybe something like this

Sure, seems nice.

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Yeah, parasitic mechanics aren't great. You could just have things be revealed from top of deck, then eith put on the bottom or top? So scry that reveals. Then triggers like suprise, or the thing doing the check trigger. Stuff like the spider can just be shuffled back into your deck instead of wondered.

>target player
>this turn

There are reasons cards like skred and harnessed lightning can only hit creatures.
That's gotta be higher rarity or make it only count the three revealed cards.

Yeah, I think has it right with parasitism being a problem. I think you might be able to make it work either with some kind of shenanigan'd morph (pay this cost, make it morph but into into a creature) or make it basically morph-into-exile (Where you pay the cost to exile it face down and can look at it exiled, and then pay its Wonder cost to return it from exile.)
If the second one is the case, you'd have to make sure to still keep things in exile mostly untouchable though. Revealing Wondered' cards works fine, but you should have very little ability to get cards out of exile. Stuff like Pull From Eternity is fine, and maybe one high-costed pull back to your hand card, but the exile should still stay as a whole a means to also get rid of cards.

I really like your plane though, it's very nice and whimsical.

Thanks, user!