I'm bored Veeky Forums, so we're gonna do a thing based on a thread we had here a while back and make a MtG set and plane by piecing its themes and rough rules together one card at a time.
How this works is that we're gonna post cards until we have five of each color, five artifacts, five multicolors, and five lands. From those cards, we work out a rough mechanical idea for the plane and design some stuff for it. Using the cards posted, we'll figure out archetypes and mechanical synergies.
Last time we got an absolutely ancient, stubborn, volatile hellplane that could be compared to Zendikar's incredibly angry great great grandpa, and had such fun mechanical ideas as "BW boardwipe clerics" "UB Horror hand manipulation" and "This entire plane is manlands"
As a clarification though, post any card in all of MtG. I'll be keeping a running tally of the ones we use and updating it periodically. I'll also post the collected sheet we made in the previous thread of the last plane once I get the time to pour through my computer looking for it.
A long time ago I did some pen and paper gaming in a universe very similar to MTG, I have some realms here already, so there wouldn't be any card-posting.
Should I talk about this or no?
Anthony Torres
Let's start this right. With one of the cheesiest cards ever printed.
Sadly I wrote this so long ago I don't have anything more than one or two sentences about each, but I'll tell you about it.
Quetsoyostovo is a white/blue heavily glaciated realm mostly inhabited by minotaur eskimos, with very few cities or kingdoms to speak of. It is the oldest ice age plane in the universe, and the first, source of all other ice age worlds.
Micricrulain is a green/black plane that is mostly rain forests, and is an oddity among more traditional planes because it has no sun, and it is always night there, though there is light to see by since a large number of native plants produce their own light.
Incanrigan is a once almost completely defiled realm that was previously nearly mana-dead, it has been coming slowly back to life via a series of permanently open gates which let a small amount of mana in, it is a world of ruins and sparse population.
Nastirax is a black/red realm full of lava belching volcanos, wandering packs of undead numbering in the millions, dark skies full of smog and black clouds, and an eternal windy blizzard which just barely keeps the clouds clear enough that some very tough plants and animals do naturally live there, though it has no native civilization except the undead and demons.
Tanregsol was a blue/black realm, created by the planeswalkers to house their worst villains and their most deadly and uncontrollable creations, it is a world filled with abominations, shadow creatures, illusions, stormy salty seas, and black basalt prison mazes. It's seas are far deadlier than it's land.
So far in terms of actual planar we have powerful relics ala Grapeshot, weird shapeshifting spell-deer, and saws made of bone. I think that's a pretty cool place to start, since the relics imply some form of prior, more magicky civilization. Maybe the enchantment-shifting animals are from the fallout of that? The same goes for the shadow-bobcats. Maybe the work of some kind of mage-council gone horribly awry?
That's pretty interesting user. I quite like the idea of minotaur eskimos, planeswalker superjail, and a perpetual nighttime rainforest.
They were pretty cool. I think Quetsoyostovo had some humans or something in it too, I can't really remember. The superjail was actually hard to use really very much because the way it had been created, the basalt black mazes covered all land that was above and below water, so surface and seabed are completely covered in overgrown basalt-stone mazes. As you can imagine, it's rather insanity-inducingly hard to get out of, or into.
Cooper Young
Not all of them. Just this one. Horror philosophers perhaps?
Unrelated to the topic at hand but for a long fucking time Glowrider was my go-to "worthless rare-slot wasting piece of shit with an effect no one would ever want" card. Many jokes were made at its expense.
I'll go with putting Oracle of Dust as blue, since he's got the cost and if he's a solo eldrazi it should work fine. This is turning out rad as hell and I do quite like the idea of lone spatterings of eldrazi spawn, possibly due to made dragon mage projects.
Monogreen's already full. Otherwise I would've gone for Hooded Hydra instead of Molten.
Gavin Peterson
What if the the inhabitants fought off Eldrazi in the past, but it ended in a planewide catastrophe that causes ash to fall continuously, and cause blizzards?
...so the plane they had been consuming before this leech drew them away towards Zendikar? Perhaps he's thought of as a mythic hero for saving the world. Perhaps he left some spawn behind in the process.
>White 2/5 >Blue 4/5 >Black 2/5 Red 5/5 Green 5/5 >Multicolor 3/5 >Colorless 4/5 >Lands 4/5
>The first moon is called Illas, the Bright Moon, Greater of the Twins, called in the tongues of men the Good Moon. From it the were-kind revert to their better natures and ash shines in pale beauty. >The second we call Illos, the Skulking Moon, Lesser of the Twins, known in the tongues of men as the Bad Moon. In its light man becomes monster and shadows deepen, the gates of the underworld stretching thin.
You know what, I was skeptical but that sounds fucking awesome. Great blizzard-drifts of ash and snow, volcanic calderas and hot springs filled with hydras, great beasts living in the meltwater forests and mad wizards trying to survive any way they know how.
When the eldrazi left the plane a large ethereal gash was left in the sky, leaking immense amounts of mana into the plane. It could be the source of the ash blizzards and the things living around it have grown immensely powerful by absorbing the surrounding mana, like pic related and the aforementioned super hokori.
Along with horribly mutated wildlife, ash storms/blizzards and eldrazi-influenced things, the wizards experiments could still be wandering around in long abandoned laboratories and other ruins.
On this plane Circle of Protection: White's are very important, keeping the Hokori death storms at bay. Every traveller sets up a circle when they camp, just in case the storm senses them while resting.
It's not uncommon to find massive networks of tunnels dug under the snow and ash by Ronom Serpents. They're the biggest naturally occurring predator on the plane without the influence of the mana leak, though the ones that do live close enough to the rip in the sky can grow to gargantuan sizes.
Perhaps the/a local government has bizarre laws, the kind where it's easy to get someone to run afoul of...pretty much anything if someone desires and only really benefit those in charge. The worst penalty is to be exiled to the Great Ash Wastes. Prisoners are not executed, no. They are not that merciful.
The ash is willing to offer knowledge. For a price.
Tyler Allen
>The second we call Illos, the Skulking Moon, Lesser of the Twins, known in the tongues of men as the Bad Moon. In its light man becomes monster and shadows deepen, the gates of the underworld stretching thin.
Not a metaphor or florid prose, by the way. Scattered across the plane are ancient gates set in hillsides that, when the moons are right, sufficiently skilled wizards can pry open with the proper sacrifices.
The rotation of the moons seems to have a strange effect on the mana-touched creatures of the plane, causing almost a metamorphosis in them. No one is sure which of these forms is the true one but they are all equally deadly.
Would be better to change the name, though. Also. Of course demons stalk the plane under the light of the Skulking Moon. Though rare, they have been known to enslave entire settlements, turning them into their own personal armies, forced to obey their every whim.
I say we take all three of these ideas. They're all great.
Aaron Ortiz
These are all good.
Isaac Reyes
I agree that we take all three, but which one do we want on the sheet? I'm going to cobble together all of the cards so we have a nice visual reference.
Here was the one we made for the previous plane, colloquially known as Angryplane.
I guess Overseer is the most visually distinct? We already have one B Enchant Land, and one Bringer, right?
James Young
I'd say the Bringer of the Black Dawn as long as we don't forget about the cool gates scattered around.
Caleb Ward
What are you guys trying to do? This is not a new plane at all, this feels more like some Masters set.
Jason Morales
I do enjoy that "Land Enchantments" is apparently a Black theme in this world. Maybe fluff that as the B civilization(s) being the ones that actually set up permanent settlements, with pretty much everyone else being more nomadic (in the case of W dust-worshipping cultists) or not inclined to gather together in large groups (in the case of U/G mad wizards)?
Jayden Martin
It's a little of both. The idea is to basically take a bunch of existing cards and make a plane as well as a set. We look at the cards, figure out draft archetypes and make up lore, think up possible mechanics and plot, and generally just have fun.
Same, I always enjoy Black's land enchantments in general and its cool to see them show up more prominently.
Luke Thompson
I decided to go for Overseer, since we already have one Bringer and it'll show a bit more of the plane.
Now, I just realized something as I was putting this together: We're actually one artifact/colorless short! We could either make the Oracle of Dust colorless and put in makeshift mauler, or we could throw in another colorless. Maybe another eldrazi, maybe another artifact?
I count Bone Saw, Heavy Mattock, Razor Boomerang, All is Dust, Chalice of the Void?
Parker Wood
Alright, here's a nice visual reference for the plane so far. Let's find some of the mechanical synergies we've got in here that we could expand upon for an acutal set. We've got black having an enchantment theme especially with enchanted lands, White seems to have a self-sacrificing/boardwide effects idea, Blue is colorless and snow synergy, Red seems to be lots of chaos and storm, and Green is really big on creature tokens, maybe getting Populate as a thing?
Also I want to say that Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is an area where a massive amount of eldrazi were slain during the short time they were here, creating a massive killing field that has permanently stained the earth with the blood spilled there. Scavengers and Overseers of the Damned scour through it, hunting for corpses to raise and devour.
I finally found the archive of the previous time we did this, and with it a fantastic little bit of greentext. Angryplane had at one point had contact with the eldrazi. This was the result.
>"When a man eats something toxic, he vomits if he is lucky, or he dies if not. They came here once, a horde of scrabbling monsters and their colossal master, seeking to do as they will. They ate and drank their fill, killed as they pleased."
>"The little ones died first. Their larger siblings struggled on a bit longer. A few still remain in the feral wilds. What's one more horror more or less?"
>"The big one stayed for a time after its first meal. Then it simply... left."
>"Few noticed their arrival. None noticed their retreat."
>"We made houses from their bones."
Caleb Barnes
Radical.
B also maybe has a token subtheme going on? Bad Moon supports going wide, Overseer could potentially be just one of many sources of Zombie tokens, and Tourach's Gate implies Thrull tokens floating around as well. Splashing R also lets Overseer and Axelrod Gunnarson pair together to really punish opponents letting stuff die.
Red seems evenly split between Storm and Wizards on one side, and anti-spellcaster stuff on the other (Ash Zealot, Werewolves). The wizardy stuff I guess blends well with Thing in the Ice, and I guess Moonlace can support that by being cheap and by getting around circles of protection. Maybe the latter parts pair with Baloth Cage Trap for a R/G punisher archetype? Or maybe with Chalice of the Void and Circle(s) of Protection for a prison archetype of some sort?
Green also maybe has a sacrifice theme going? Brindle Boar sacs himself, Thragtusk and Bobcat minimize your losses when saccing them. Possibly paired with White's, because dual land.
G also has some weird blurring the line between creatures and lands theme, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.
Luis Jenkins
I think the creature/token/land blur could be a cool idea for green. Cards like pic related and lots of mechanics based around being able to switch cards into different states to avoid things. Dodge creature wraths by becoming an enchantment, dodge disenchants by becoming a creature, shit like that.
It kind of implies this idea that that nature that has survived has done so by being more than just a smattering of wildlife and plants. Instead the surviving forests are creatures as much as they are lands and as much as they are magic. The forests are alive in the truest sense.
Also, flavourwise that would all fit with Kraj being some wizard experiment to harness or manipulate that innate shapeshifting magic in the natural world.
Licid's could be proto-Kraj made by the biomancers! Perhaps the Overbeing is a manifestation of the natural ability to change and the biomancers are seeking to evolve past the harsh nature of the world by harnessing it for themeselves? In nature Myths survived and their magic allowed them to regrow and flourish in a world of ash and dust, but the biomancers seek to turn that natural ability to their own benefit. They seek to improve, where nature seeks to simply exist
On the other end of the mages, we have the BR crew who seek permanency and power. Instead of changing to suit their environment, they change their environment to suit them, channeling the light of Illos to fuel connections to the underworld and carving out fiefdoms with brutality and lost magic. They're the ones using the Chalice of the Void and other such artifacts.
Though the Chalice could fit equally well with the White ash/snow/dust elementals and maybe the ash god cults that follow them, which seem to have a theme of shutting down magic in general. The "Void" would be the great rift in the sky.
Nicholas Collins
I actually like that a lot better. Maybe there isn't really a real sun besides the Void? Like it's a big raw wound in the sky that emits light down, and the cycles of day and night are dependent on it being obscured by the Moons or by ash and snowstorms. The chalice also seems to fit mechanically better with the white cards, since they seem to favor symmetrical effects and staxy shutdown.
I was thinking about what the weapons and mattocks would go with, and I think they'd work best with the non-mages who are very much red but probably also white or maybe black. They hide in the underworld caverns, carving out their lives against the horrors of the world, the mad machinations of mages, the freezing and burning environs, and each other. With scavenged and reforged blades they fight and hunt and survive in the winter waste.
Ah, fair enough. I was going for Vesuvius, but that was the first to come to mind. Does anyone have some other suggestions? Maybe those volcanic glacier floods, Jokulhaups I think they're called?
Sebastian Garcia
Let's get some tits in here so that the set is at least worth looking at.
