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Some cards still have import issues. If you see any cards with odd errors or issues, feel free to edit and resolve them, or comment to bring it up if you're unsure how to fix it.

Yeh I'll definitely do a wording/import error sweep over the weekend.

I've gone through pretty much every card and fixed as much as I could, including a couple templating things and cards with unrenamed Aetherstudy.

I have not, however, applied automated mechanic reminder text. Many creature types are also still in the "card type" field, and only some card have had name replacement with ~ applied.

I've started adding all the mechanics and applying them to the designs so we can easily track everything via the mechanics page.

on 11 Nov 2015 by ancestral-just-visiting:

I updated the wordings on some of the mechanics. (This is mostly less important, but I figured they were easy fixes, so I went ahead and made the changes.)

AEther Canister Updated wording to reflect cards, such as Mindwhip Sliver and Eldrazi spells like Eldrazi Skyspawner. Basically, if you're putting a token onto the battlefield with a text ability, you have to break it up.

AEtherstudy and Battle-Forged Changed from "less" to "fewer," as counters are easily discrete, countable, tangible objects. We will need to update the wording again though, as cards like Lavaborn Muse and Scars dual lands always state "# or fewer" instead of "fewer than". Additionally, number words should be used here also to denote the number of counters (i.e. one, two, three, four…) but with the templating the way it’s probably not much of a concern at the moment.

Essence This was a but trickier to find the right templating, but cards that talk about spending mana typically refer to it after the spell was cast. Examples include Nix and a cycle from Eventide, like Batwing Brume.

Question about envision: is there going to be much other exiling in the set? If not, why specify a pile at all and not just look at your exiled cards in general? That also opens up fun out-of-set interactions for Constructed.

dude1818: That doesn't work, as some envision cards bring things back from your exile pile, which is not allowed. We could avoid such designs, of course, but then its flavor is a bit hard to decipher.

Yeah, the idea is to include several things like a Ponder variant (Envision 3, then put a card from your vision pile into your hand), a Beast Hunt variant, that kind of thing. Doing those with any old exiled cards would be somewhat naughty.

Some proposed cards, like my Forge Brute and the rest of its cycle, could work with any exiled cards, it's true. It does make the mechanic far less parasitic at a stroke, which is definitely nice.

I'm making a duel deck to print and playtest the UW consul faction, the justice, connection, Aether Canisters and Advancement mechanics.

You can find the visual spoiler here.

I've now printed out the duel deck and will have playtest data ready in the next few days.

Ok I'm adding lots of playtest feedback now from the first 2 days of playtesting. About 8 games vs a variety of limited and casual constructed decks..

A first draft of a list of races in Kaladesh:

HUMANOID: Humans Naga Garuda (Avens) Vanara (Monkey people - could be monkey-style Goblins?) Spirits (Preta, 'hungry' ghosts that suffer extremely and are violent, and Bhuta, ghosts of the departed) Rakshasa (Cat-demons)

ANIMAL RACES: Tiger Lion Elephant Rhinoceros Gaur (Bison) Water buffalo "The Big Four" snakes: Cobra, Krait, Daboia, Saw-scaled viper) Monkeys (Langur, Macaque) Snow leopard Crocodile Deer (Sangai, Thamin, Sambar, Chital) Peafowl

Note: Could we have more humanoid races based on some of the most iconic animals of India? (Tiger people? Elephant people?)

ICONICS: Apsara * (Beauty, poise, dance - Angel facsimile?) Sphinx (Why not?) Asura * (Demons that represent ignoble aspects of the human nature - ambitious, proud, but NOT necessarily evil or tempters) Dragon (Why not?) Hydra (Makes sense)

Footnote: Kaladesh doesn't appear to be a Hindu mythology inspired plane - it seems to just be inspired by India's aesthetics and environments. (Similar to how Innistrad is inspired by Germanic stuff, but doesn't use German mythology.) This is fine for the humanoids and animals, but it could prove problematic for concepts like Asuras and Apsaras, which are religious, and furthermore, we wouldn't have the room to devote to exploring Hindu mythology in an interesting and respectful manner, I feel.

I dunno about Apsara's, but Asura is already well-used (eitehr as a concept or as a name) in pop culture. They were in DnD (as a sort of angel, oddly enough) and Asuramon is a digimon. You already got one explicitly named race of demons anyway, though, so maybe you can just do as Tarkir did and decree that "true demon" share asura-like features (i.e. four arms) but not call them so.

There already IS an elephant race: the Loxodons. Tiger people would just be the local type of the leonin (there were tiger leonins on Alara). I'd be wary of having a cat race and a cat demon race, though.

Agreed on all points, Circeus. It doesn't help that Kaladesh already has weird horned tiger things.

I think Loxodons could be a solid fit, with a new name. And yeah, as I said, Asuras aren't quite demonic - many of them are actually good in a way, or redeemed.

Thoughts on this potential list of archetypes?:

­{w}{u}: Eyes in the skies

­{u}{b}: Research Control.

­{b}{r}: Renown Aggro

­{r}{g}: Revolution

­{g}{w}: Tokens Matter

­{w}{b}: Justice

­{u}{r}: Thopters/Artifacts matter

­{b}{g}: Sacrifice Matters

­{r}{w}: Revolution aggro

­{g}{u}: Canister ramp

Just finished a playtest of a UG Duel Deck crafted based on Revolution, Canisters, Cipher, and Thopters.

Will be adding comments to related cards shortly

Reuben, feel free to contradict my posts :P

Fileset and decklist used here

Just added a BR Renown deck for playtesting as well. Emphasis on Renown, Cipher, Revolutions (a cansiter or two for kicks).

Unfortunately, I won't be able to playtest until this time next week at the earlierst.

MSE File located here

Here's Reuben's guide for generating your own Cockatrice files

Just finished my first playtest file. It includes playtest cards for Renown, Revolution, Canisters, Thopters, Crew, and Justice. The other cards are Reprints labeled with asterisks. There are one or two non-Reprint non-mechanic cards.

It's a rough draft set-wise, but the cards are all intended to be solid designs.

Here you are. It's also bundled with an updated Tesla art file. And here is the playtest file for Cockatrice, with all the new Tesla cards from this set file.

After recent playtesting, canisters are now being changed from sorcery speed to "your turn" activations.

I have moved nearly 150 cards from the card file into a Tesla card dump. These are cards that are using mechanics we are no longer interested in.

I have also updated the mechanics page accordingly.

I've now removed Crew and formed it into a vertical cycle

I've now removed Envision

After discussions with Inanimate and CasualR we will be replacing Decipher with Consolidate once we have enough designs.

So please make more Consolidate designs.

The big design block I am having right now is that the two mechanics aren't very comparable. With Cipher, the original intent was to be a mechanic that synergizes with Thopters in a slightly slower way. The tempo deck pay off rather than pure aggro rush.

Consolidate doesn't mechanically make sense in Red or Black, which were two of the colors that cipher was in (Being UBrg, oddly roughly in order as well). Red doesn't care about life totals and just wants to burn face. Black uses life as a resource, as such, just treats it like a number to be used in exchange for power.

Consolidate makes a lot of sense in White which doesn't want harm to come to anyone, green which has adopted fogs, and blue, which wants nothing more than to sit and wait and not do anything.

This leaves our colors with the current mechanics:

Mechanics in italics I am uncertain of their final placements


Major: Justice, Consolidate, Revolution

Minor: Thopters, Renown, Revolution


Major: Canister, Consolidate, Thopter

Minor: Justice, Revolution


Major: Renown, Justice

Minor: Revolution, Canister


Major: Revolution, Renown

Minor: Thopters, Canisters


Major: Revolution, Canisters, Consolidate

Minor: Renown

Is this split fine for our purposes?

The big question that a lot of people have come to different conclusions really should be as follows:

"Without Cipher or Consolidate in the set, how fast is our limited environment? Is it too fast or too slow?"

I'm curious to hear what your opinions are.

Personally, here's how I'm thinking about the mechanics:

Progress - Renown, Revolution, Canister, Thopter

Rebellion - Revolution, Renown

Tyranny - Justice, Consolidate

I think that's a fair split. We have 6 mechanics - including the two tokens, which I strongly feel should be counted as a mechanic, complexity-wise - so we're about on average with current modern design principles. However, I feel less is more when it comes to mechanics, so if it's at all possible to cut any of these, then let's go for it.

I'm not entirely happy with Consolidate yet. I don't consider that a lock for the final set. I'm gonna keep thinking about noncreature progress on my own. I encourage everyone to do the same.

Consolidate isn't working as well (though maybe we can still save it.) also we no longer have a kicker mechanic or other mana sink.

Thus I'm looking for some alternate proposals for a spell mechanic: Options currently include: Kicker Overload Replicate

It needs to be simple is the main requirement. I'm gonna design some kicker cards in the meantime.

Possible rename for Research:

Iterate, Iteration

Slight tweak to how Research works. Previously, the wording suggested that if you took control of the spell, you could shuffle someone else's card into your library. This should not be the case.

­{g}{w} is now "token matters" due to citizen tribal not really working due to Revolution.

Current TO DO list:

Create cards representing story moments

Create common artifacts

Fill in the Set skeleton

Create a {r}{w} Legendary creature

Create a Rare card to finish the vertical cycle of Patrol Vehicle and Pressgang Airship

Create more uncommon and rare justice cards

Here is the current (experimental) mechanics breakdown at common:

­{w}: 2 Justice, 2 Revolution, 1 Thopter, 1 Research

­{u}: 2 Justice, 1 Thopter, 1 Canister, 2 Research

­{b}: 2 Justice, 2 Aggro, 1 Revolution, 1 Research

­{r}: 2 Aggro, 2 Revolution, 1 Thopter, 1 Research

­{g}: 1 Aggro, 2 Revolution, 2 Canisters, 1 Research

Artifact: 1 Canister, 1 Justice, 1 Revolution, 11 other Artifacts

We're still testing out specific numbers, but our goal is to have around 6 token producing cards at common, given past precedence. Currently we are at 7.

Each color currently 'leads' in a mechanic. White in Justice, blue in Research, black in Renown, red in Revolution, and green in Canisters.

Currently we are testing alternative mechanics to Renown, since - as some have noted - it overlaps to a troubling degree with Revolution.

The current lead contenders are Bolster, Dash / Jury-Rig (http://goblinartisans.blogspot.com/2016/02/ccdd-022516jury-rig.html), and the following new mechanic:

Martyr — When this creature dies while attacking, EFFECT.

I encourage you all to try out designs for each of these three possibilities. Ideally we'd want a mechanic that fits into the current colors that Renown does - major black and red, minor green - but we can juggle the set to fit the needs if we find a mechanic that works in different colors. Also ideally, the mechanic would synergize well with the other mechanics and themes of the set.

Any thoughts on Raid as an alternative? It would make sense with our current flavoring.

Ah, Raid could definitely work. Simple and effective, and we can try it in a new color - green. Let's make some test designs for it!

my main criticism of raid is that it feels pretty narrow. but maybe there's things you can do with it that i haven't thought of

I've implemented an interesting change to Research. It's a bit off-the-wall, but I'm confident it'll fix some of the issues I've been having with it. Instead of shuffling into your library at large, it only shuffles into the top six cards of your library.

I'm pretty sure that's unprecedented in Magic, but luckily, it's reminder text. :)

Thanks to Tommy for the idea.

keflexxx: Yes, it is a bit narrow, but it does its job and it does it well. Narrow mechanics are like precision tools. :)

agreed, but when it's a returning mechanic you generally want a good reason to be bringing it back. a lot of the time that reason is "there's design space we haven't explored"

keflexxx, another major reason is "it fits the needs of the set perfectly". I'm not saying Raid does, but it might!

True, there are also "similar but not quite" ways it could fit in as well.

Bounty - When this creature enters the battlefield, if a creature you control dealt combat damage to a player this turn, .

'Suped up' Raid if Raid doesn't cut it. Both make sense flavorfully. This one is a bit "top of head" though.

Raid fits since the theme of bandits and outlaws raiding things makes sense.

For the second playtest file coming up, I'm considering altering numbers for Justice and Revolution. Specifically, rather than a 3-2-2 split for them both, I'm considering an even 2-2-2 across the board. How does this sound to everyone?

For now, I'm gonna move ahead with it, but if I get a lot of feedback telling me this is a bad idea - or if playtesting shows it doesn't work - we can head back to previous numbers.

I think it'll probably be fine, as Revolution and Justice aren't as linear as Allies or Slivers are.

Sounds ok. Also note we can have an artifact creature for either mechanic, allowing us to do 2-2-2-1 if we want.

Yes, definitely. I think an artifact for both is probably fine.

Well, it's finally 'done'! I've filled in the set skeleton as best I can. Even the 'empty' slots have suggestions, but they're not able to be slotted in because they use new mechanics.

All my suggestions are not final, and are completely up to debate and open for feedback - many of them won't be perfect, or even good, but at least they're a start! I just figured making attempts at every card might encourage some more feedback and give Tesla some new life.

For the purposes of my proposal, I chose Raid as the aggressive mechanic, as it has room for noncreature spells as well as creatures. The other options - Jury-Rig, Dash, and Bolster - are still possibilities!

One big suggestion I've made is a new attempt at the research mechanic. See Initial Hypothesis for an example of what it looks like.

Lastly, I do plan on putting up an article tomorrow on the main site discussing the process of filling in the skeleton, highlighting some of the big changes and suggestions.

Also, in researching, I found that a nice name for the 'Tigrala' could be 'Shirnara', where 'Shir' is tiger and 'Nara' is people. The 'Vanara', an actual mythological people of India, are named the same way - monkey people.

Wizards used that naming convention in Kamigawa: the Kitsune-bito, the Nezumi-bito, and the Orochi-bito are fox people, rat people, and sneople (snake people), respectively.

Ah, interesting. In the cards, though, they're just called 'Orochi' or 'Nezumi'. So maybe we could get away with just 'Shir'?

I'd guess it was shorthanded for space reasons, which Shirnara doesn't need. I also think Shirnara just sounds better than Shir.

I don't know if there is a better place for comments about mechanics. For Research I am noticing that the example cards have a high research cost to get a bigger effect and shuffle it back in. Have we considered doing the opposite? Shuffle it back when you do the small cheap version (While the technology is being researched) and then when you have enough mana you cast it one last time for the big effect.

Pros: When you cast it for the cheap cost you don't feel like you are loosing the chance for the big version because you will draw it again. Feels like repetition leads to progress.

Cons: (the Evoke problem) How do we present the mechanic that people will see the cheaper cost at the right time? How do we get people to not mana screw themselves?

I don't know if that fits with what people learned about research, but I like the idea, it feels more like you're actually researching it, and it's fun to have some hope to build up to the big effect. I am worried about repeated shuffling and repeated effects seeming stale though.

Jackal: This is a good idea, and one I was considering - and still am considering, obviously.

I thought of it because I've been trying to find ways to encourage people to cast their Kicker spells for their normal mana cost, that way we don't get problems like sets have had historically with Kicker, where they hold back cards they can cast because they want to get full value out of them. Hence, shuffling it back in when you don't cast it for its Research cost makes sense, right?

But, it also disincentivizes casting it for its Research cost, and muddles the wording a bit. In addition, it leads to a lot more shuffling in the format, which we were hoping to avoid. Shuffling into the top six cards mitigates this - that's a lot faster and easier than shuffling your library - but it's still non-negligible downtime.

Okay, so we can have them always shuffle back into your library, right? That solves the first issue, but not the wording issue, or the last issue. In fact, it makes the last one worse, as it never stops.

Besides, the idea behind Research - as it's named - is that when you commit to 'researching' it, you get it as a recurring tool. But if you don't dedicate resources to 'researching' it, you can only get it as a one-off fluke. Still, flavor can easily be changed.

And, lastly, the original intent of the designer who proposed it was to add a universal small bonus to kicking. That's why it didn't come up that we could flip it. Not saying that justifies not flipping it, just explaining why such an obvious solution isn't something we pursued.

Anyway, the big issue with Research is the amount of shuffling and the fact it doesn't actually address the big issues that Kicker mechanics have (that players hesitate to cast them for their normal cost even if they REALLY should.) That's why I suggested Research ALT, as seen on Initial Hypothesis and friends - it was my attempt at making a Kicker mechanic that doesn't 'punish' you for casting it normally, but instead still gives you the chance to Kick it at a later date.

PS: This is a good place to talk about mechanics. We also had the forums, but those ended up redundant once we all realized how nice these discussion areas are. :)

If the discussion on cardset comments gets too busy, you can always create non-skeleton cards for individual topics.

I was thinking that the small version would be small enough that in the late game you would not even be tempted to want to draw and cast it again.
Instead of shuffling did you try just putting it in your library just beneath the top 3 cards? Not as elegant or exciting but faster. I don't like that ResearchALT feels too close to flashback. You are using DFC and an extra zone to make Increasing Devotion. I wish there was something else that it could do from exile. From the flavor it seems like drawing another card with the same name should matter, but I don't know if that is mechanically a good place. What do you think about the back side being an aura or something? IDK maybe bringing a rare cycle to lower rarities is interesting enough and not a place to add more complexity.

Research ALT can do more than just multiply (though it generally does just that at common), it can indeed change card types, or change effects radically to represent flavor shifts. At common - and with my initial designs - I kept it extremely simple, but we could certainly see some crazy changes at higher rarities, as you suggested! I just figured we didn't need to do anything super crazy at common.

Indeed, even though it's "just" the Increasing cycle at common, it does it with a lot more flavor, and a lot easier to read (in my opinion). I would say that, overall, it might even be less complex, since it just gives you a 'new' card, rather than having to parse a conditional in the text, you know?

And the stuff it lets us do at higher rarities is very exciting. I think the flavor-wins and design space at higher rarities might be worth the complexity.


I did consider Research putting it 'just beneath' the top 3 cards, but I felt that the random variation of shuffling might create more exciting tension and anticipation.

How about research as pseudo-morph variant?

Research 1U (You may exile this card from your hand face-down for {3} You may cast this face-down card from exile by paying its research cost)

The cost might want to be {2} as opposed to {3}

That sound similar to some of the ideas for Prepare I tried out on my Code Geass set. It's really hard to make both sides worth doing. One way I did it was by having some sorceries like Prepare for Ambush that are much more interesting when cast as instants which my keyword lets you do (at the cost of needing a turn to set up, which was for flavour reasons).

If both players have Justice creatures and I break my own law are my opponent's abilities supposed to trigger? That doesn't seem right to me. I would expect all laws to be "It is against the law for an opponent to..."

Great point, Jackal. And indeed, all Justice creatures currently have that wording.

What do people think about a second common blue research card? I think it should be something that brings the game to an end if you cast it a few times (not counterspell) and something that you might feel pressured to cast early (not mill). We could make one that makes thopter tokens but we already have a lot of tokens. We could make one about unblockable, but then we should probably change the white one. I am making a bounce mill combo but that is getting too complicated for common.

I'd propose looking further into Research ALT. For ease of vocab, let's call it "Blueprint". What if something like Lightning Insight, Pride of Craftmanship, or Surveillance Measures?

A WUBRG frontside "event" inspires an artifact (or bigger colored spell) related backside invention. We could potentially use this for some of the flavor hits of top-down DFCs that ISD/SOI do so well.

Inspire would be a better word to fit that flavour, but Inspried is already an ability word.

Additionally, to fit that flavour, I would probably change the names to something more descriptive of an event.

Eg. Galvanic Experiment // Gilded Battery, Tinker with Time // Advanced Warship, Materials Research // Combat Vest

I propose two uncommon cycles of the new research alt; one an ally cycle going in wubrg order like Forgotten Idea, the other an enemy cycle going in reverse wubrg order, like Galvanic Accident

Are we going to try emulate the logistical concerns of printing lots of DFC, or are we designing for an imaginary world with better printers?

I would think the latter

We have spells(instants and sorceries) that develop into artifacts, spells that develop into bigger spells, and spells with research. This has lead to a lot of cycles. I think that if we want all 3 of those things we should do more to divide them up by color.

I was thinking that Green is more likely to make bigger spells than it is to invent an artifact that repeats a smaller effect, but then the opposite side of that, if this is an "artifact set" maybe having spells that grow into artifacts is Green's way of fitting into the set while other colors have other ways to care about artifacts (similar to how awaken was more White because landfall was more Green).

I like developing into artifacts as green's way of caring is possibly a good idea.

Personally, I don't much care for old research.

Also I just changed the name of Research ALT to Develop so that's nice

Thank you, continuumg. I was meaning to get around to that but wasn't sure if everyone liked the name.

Jackal, we wouldn't have both research and Develop in the set. The intent is that one of the two will fill the mana-sink slot.

Hi all, let's try to shoot for some more raid designs. I'd like some more redundancy. Specifically, how about we try more noncreature raid? Could be useful to fill in spell slots.

Raid sorceries, coming right up

When you remove things can you put in a comment about what you are removing and why and also update the slot notes in the skeleton that are holding slots for a mechanic that we are no longer using?

Does the UB archetype still care about expensive instants and sorceries? Does counting instants and sorceries in your grave feel like Progress? Can we/should we have it in black?

Another idea is make the White Justice cards more aggressive and make some more controlling Blue Justice cards.

Black can care a bit about artifacts. Do we want a second archetype in the "Artifacts Matter" space?

Are we pretending Skulk is evergreen? If not is should either be removed from Naga Drowner or added to a few more cards.

I am pretending skulk is evergreen in my personal sets. It's such a nice mechanic

@Doombringer Again, please put in a comment when you are removing cards. You removed part of a cycle, are you saying that you don't think it should be a cycle? Are you saying that part of the cycle should be better? If so can you explain what is not good enough about what you removed? I want to make cards that fit the vision of the set, but that requires a bit of communication.

Sorry. I've been discussing with Inanimate that all the Develop cards don't justify its own mechanic in Tesla for a number of reasons including complexity/narrow design space etc.

I'm not against DFC's that are instant/sorceries but we decided not at common and not keyworded. If we really want we can have 1 or 2 Giestblast type cards at common.

Thus I've been removing all cards that are using old mechanics no longer being considered such as Bolster/Develop etc.

Note if any are particularly good feel free to re-add them unkeyworded.

Ah, those weren't supposed to be moved yet, Jackal. We were discussing what to do about Develop, but I feel it's a good mechanic with serious potential, and I'm hoping that we can find a way to lessen complexity (I don't agree with Doombringer that it has narrow design space, myself)

While we were discussing unkeywording it, which I think is probably a solid idea (if we do it Startled Awake style), I do want to try to make it work.

Current design targets for experimentation / testing out:

Develop at common, as simple as possible.

Raid at common, as interesting as possible.

Overload/Replicate at common, as different from Ravnica as possible.

Do note that while Overload has the potential for 'universal' effects (ones that do not specify a controller), these aren't going to feel good for players. There's a reason RTR avoided them. While we can have one or two at higher rarities, avoid them at common, please.

Personally, I feel we should try making develop always become an artifact, to set a baseline for the mechanic, like how in the original Innistrad all DFCs were creatures on each side. I don't recall if this issue has been discussed yet.

Additionally, how were we thinking of distributing overload/replicate amongst the colours?

EDIT - If we like Develop into Artifacts, we may want to consider reducing the number of regular artifacts.

Agreed, continuumg. It's a good way to sneak more artifacts into the set without warping the color distribution as much as normal - much like Magic Origins did it. Personally, that's always been a large part of the 'feel' of a non-Mirrodin artifact set for me... the idea that artifacts are built and produced rather than natural. Representing this through 'created' artifacts, like tokens and Develop, that are paired with colored cards... that seems perfect to me.

Anyway. For Overload and Replicate, that's up for discussion. I'd say that they'd be fine as five-color, with a slight emphasis in a color pair.

I reworded Develop so you can't cast it's back face unless the spell was exiled on resolution.

Well looks like WOTC has stolen everything :P

Even the whole Revolt and Aether bits :P

I was actually considering asking if we wanted to push that to a second set and focus more on the artifacts yesterday.

Our current storyline is more a Revolt -> Skynet War

I wasn't aware there was a second set planned.

We weren't planning on making it, but for the purposes of design it's useful to know what's coming up 'next'.

Updated design goal, considering the recent announcement:

Produce as many 'home-run' commons as we can for each mechanic featured at common: Raid, Justice, Revolution, and Thopters and Canisters.

This means:

  • Experimenting more with Raid

  • Producing elegant and simple Justice commons, and finding fun laws

  • Finding the right keywords and bodies for Revolution commons

  • Finding effects and bodies that synergize well with Thopters and Canisters

Here is the current mechanics breakdown at common:



­{b}: 2 Justice, 2 Raid, 1 Revolution

­{r}: 2 Raid, 2 Revolution, 1 Thopter

­{g}: 1 Raid, 2 Revolution, 2 Canisters

Artifact: 1 Canister, 1 Justice, 11 other Artifacts


We are looking to cut down on Revolution, to bring us down to 4 DFCs at common. I've taken the liberty of removing Revolution from artifacts, but this means we have to focus it into a single archetype by removing either {w}, {r}, or {g} from it as well. Personally, I find that {r}{g} is the more flavorful archetype for Revolution, but {w}{r} the one that produces the most interesting commons. Yet, at the same time, {w}{g} is the one most sorely in need of an archetype...

What do you all think?

I think revolt makes the most sense in {r}/{w} personally

Could {g}/{w} be some sort of tribal? Eg: Citizen Tribal or Human Tribal?

Updated Archetypes:

­{w}{u}: Fliers (when a flier etbs)

­{u}{b}: 2-power Rogues

­{b}{r}: Treason-Sac

­{r}{g}: Raid

­{g}{w}: +1/+1 Counters

­{w}{b}: Justice

­{u}{r}: Thopters/Artifacts matter

­{b}{g}: Sacrifice Matters

­{r}{w}: Revolution

­{g}{u}: Canister ramp

I suggest making Raid more common in green than in black btw

If we had the back side of DFCs have the Rebel creature type, then we could add creatures that are Rebels without Revolution in Green and make GW Rebel tribal.

I would probably toss a few more rebels without revolution in the other colours as well. The main problem being that green is the colour where having straight rebels makes the least sense.

This would probably incentivize those who drafted rebel tribal to activate revolution more often, even though they don't get as much of a payoff from it than those who drafted Revolution.

Of course, Citizen tribal is also interesting, in that it disincentivizes players to activate revolution, even though their creatures would improve.

I also like Revolution in RW. However, if we moved it to GW, then RW could be Rebel tribal. If, of course, that is something we're amenable to trying.

I like RW Revolution, GW Rebel. I think it makes sense for a green character to always resist the industrial government while a red character is happy to live as a citizen until something causes them to choose to revolt. Green is more likely to strengthen the movement as a whole while Red is more likely to convince individuals to join. In the end I think there is't much of a flavor difference between revolt and rebel tribal so I am fine with making the decision based on which one plays better.

On that note, I'd like it if the front face of all Rebel DFCs had the creature type citizen. We could then replace all references to "creatures with revolution" to "citizen creatures"

This would help if we decided to make some higher rarity DFC rebels without revolution. (A legendary creature with an alternate revolution trigger, perhaps) and in general might give us opportunities for a few more interactions.

As discussed on (((Ruthless Mercenary))) and other early revolutionary cards the Rebel creature type cramps the typeline, narrows the flavor, and has previous mechanical baggage.

"I don't like that as it potentially restricts our ability to do flavorful cards that change during the revolution but may not necessarily be rebels directly.

  • Doombringer

Has this come up?

Actually; it would probably be more flavourful for cards with revolution that were not actually rebels to not be affected by certain tribal effects. Not all revolution back faces need to be rebels, but if we had some, primarily in white; and some single faced rebel cards, primarily in green and secondarily in red, then I think we could end up with an interesting GW archetype that plays both differently than, and well with, the colour pairs it overlaps with.

More importantly, I think it would be fun.

It did come up with a bunch of designs that have mostly been cut for space. (((Conveyor Worker))) is the main one I recall, but that still ignores that rebels have previous mechanical baggage without lots of gain.

But is that actually problematic? There isn't a format where this would really cause issues. There are only a handful of Rebels in modern, and Rebels are too slow to matter in older formats. Also I was kind of thinking it might be fun to have a throwback legend with the Rebel ability.

And do you feel that a Tribal archetype that synergies with Revolution isn't gainful? Do you think it wouldn't be an improvement over any other possibility we have come up with?

Additionally, even had the other designs not been cut, I'm not saying we should make all the revolution cards rebels, but all the cards that represent a rebel have the creature type rebel. This includes many of the Raid cards and most of the Revolution back faces, but if there are cards that come up as not flavour fully rebelling, we can simply leave off the creature type. Or, if it seems to be a card the GW archetype wants, reflavour the card.

Regardless, I'd like to hear what the general opinion is among the others.

I think it's fine to use the rebel creature type on appropriately flavored cards, as does MaRo. In fact, I think there's a chance they'll even be in Aether Revolt (it's in the name and everything).

I also wanted to use the type 'Rebel' on the back-side myself - it's way easier to refer to for the purposes of effects, and I liked the idea of Rebel tribal too - but it does cramp the type-line mightily, unfortunately.

I don't think the 'flavorful limitations' are a problem. While we have cards like Conveyor Worker and a few others in the file, most all of them can be rebels, and I don't think we'd be losing much flavor by just changing Conveyor Worker to a non-mechanic DFC, for example.

For our main 6 token producing commons I propose that we have ­{u} thopter and {r} thopter for the {u}{r} thopter deck ­{u} canister and {g} canister for the {u}{g} canister ramp deck ­{b} canister and another {u} canister for the {u}{b} canister deck

Does anyone have a problem with this list being 1/2 blue or 2/3 canisters? I think we can make small flying artifact creatures without needing them to be tokens which is something that can't be said about canisters. It does mean that Red might need to carry more of the Artifact Matters weight because blue can produce so many artifacts.

What if UB had a defender or high toughness matters theme? Does building a bunch of walls and slowly draining life feel like "Progress"? Can we make it not boring?

The reason we were avoiding black Canisters is that, mechanically, Canisters really don't work outside of {u}{g}. Untapping permanents is just a very big stretch in any other color, you know?

Also, do note that every archetype doesn't have to feel perfectly in-line with specifically "progress". A part of using Kaladesh as our setting was that it gives us more notes to hit. In this case, archetypes should just feel right on Kaladesh. So a better question is, "Does 'toughness-matters' fit Kaladesh?" Personally, I was hoping we could find a way to do a more rogue-ish feel for {u}{b}, but if we can't find an archetype like that, then toughness-matters could certainly work. It would feel very derivative of KTK, though.

How about "Low power matters"?

We could use skulk, saboteur effects, and find ways to let UB hose other creatures for being bigger.

Hm, I think that could work. It would synergize very well with Thopters, too. We could have a Raid Bombardment variant as well, perhaps.

I would still like to have Rebel on the back face of all Revolutionaries, for the mechanical ease of referring to them.

Okay. So who actually wants Citizens and who wants Rebels?

Doombringer - Citizens

Inanimate -

Jackal - Something Non-tribal

Dude1818 -

I'm partial to the idea of an archetype that disincentivizes playing artifacts

Anyone else been active lately?

I dislike citizen but I guess I don't love rebel either. So far the tribal cards I am seeing are pretty generic "things get big if you have lots of my tribe" Does anyone have some ideas for cards that really feel like citizen tribal or rebel tribal?

What if we forget tribal and just give them a bit of "have lots of creatures" and maybe some "have a creature with a +1/+1 counter" or maybe some "control a creature with an aura or equipment attached to it"?

Auras matter might be an okay subtheme. We don't really have much support for that though, do we?

I agree that the tribal cards so far haven't really wowed me.

Perhaps an archetype with bonuses for NOT controlling an artifact?

I kinda agree we don't need yet more parasitic mechanics in Tesla as Citizen as a creature type doesn't appear much in modern magic. I want to keep using Citizen as a creature type but not have it be GW's archetype or our tribal focus for the set

I think we need some sort of tribal, every block does to some extent. Rogue Tribal in {u}/{b} could be fun. Thoughts?

We do still need a {g}/{w} archetype.

I like rogues, but I already feel so attached to weaklings :(

I know how you feel about weaklings. We spent so long without a good UB archetype and now there are 2. I was trying to think of a way they both fit, like how KTK has {w}{b}{r} raid and {w}{b} warriors, but I think that worked because it was a 3 color set. Would it be bad to have a few rouge lords at higher rarity and then have a weakling archetype that is mostly made of rogues? We could even go as far as having effects like "Whenever you attack with a rogue or a creature with power 2 or less ..." so that a rogue of any size gets to sneak around like it is small but I suspect that is too many words to feel elegant.

We could move revolution {g}{w} and give {r}{w} equipment matters.

Weaklings for draft with a legendary rogue lord sounds fun. I'd be up for GW revolution RW equipment.

I especially like RW equipment just so UR artifacts would have some overlap on the red side with another archetype

I think Rogues, as a tribe, could be a nice subtheme but don't need to be a major theme. For {u}{b}, we can keep 'Weaklings' and just have most (or all) Rogues be Weaklings. There could be a build-around Rogue lord at uncommon or rare. I am of the opinion that tribal is good for casual, but is one of those pendulum factors - it's not needed in vast numbers in every set.

We could also do tribal Thopters in {u}{r}, like what was done in Origins, rather than making them broadly 'artifacts'.

I like the suggestion of {r}{w} Equipment matters. I think {r}{g} Revolution makes more flavorful sense than {g}{w} Revolution, but if we can't find anything else for {g}{w}, then that works.

It just feels very, very wrong not to have red rebels. Rebellion is like, the number one red thing!

How about "becoming tapped matters" for GW? Plays well with GU canisters and RW revolution, not to mention Raid, and just attacking and stuff.

I personally think {g} just doesn't work as well either flavor or mechanically well as {w} for revolt. White likes lots of smaller creatures and fit into the sense of justice etc.

­{r}{g} works really nicely for Raid, allowing us to showcase the mechanic is a new color.

­{g}{w} could work with +1/+1 counters even though its not exactly an original archetype, we at least know it works. This could cross over with green raid creatures that gain or grant counters upon triggering raid.

I agree that Revolution should be RW and Raid RG.

I'm pretty confident in "becoming tapped matters" as an option for GW. Designs similar to Llorwyn's Merfolk would synergize quite well with the archetypes overlapping with GW.

I don't think that GW has a large variety of good repeatable effects that I would want to be able to tap for but then I started thinking how much fun it would be to have little mana dorks that also got +1/+1 counters and gained me a life every time I used them. Maybe those three effects are enough to carry the bulk of the archetype. It does mean we will have a lot less vigilance in this set.

You don't need that many commons to bear out an archetype: The very popular W/B lifegain deck in triple BFZ relied only on two actual commons that triggered off lifegain.

Out of curiosity; how does everyone feel about the justice mechanic?

I don't care for Justice. It is flavorful but we are going to need work to keep the complexity low and keep it fun for both players.

Maybe we should brainstorm some alternatives

Oppress - {cost}, Untap a tapped creature an opponent controls: Do something. (maybe that scales with the untapped creature's power)

Target player gets an oppression counter (Spells you cast with CMC less than the number of Oppression counters you have cost {1} more to cast)


Target player gets an oppression counter (Spells you cast cost {1} more to cast for each oppression counter you have beyond its CMC.)

Detain? (Although I dislike detain)

Suppress target creature (Put a suppression counter on that creature. If it would become untapped, remove a suppression counter from it instead.)

Suppress target creature (Put a suppression counter on that creature. It can't attack or block unless its controller pays {1} for each suppression counter on it.)

Increasing the cost of spells doesn't feel right. I would prefer to be able to see the effect when they matter.

I sort of like the one that prevents untapping but I think we want to avoid a new type of counters on creatures if we can.

If we are still aiming for it to be WB then it should probably have some life loss or sacrifice.

Target player gets an oppression counter.(At the beginning of that players upkeep, that player must sacrifice a creature to remove this counter or tap an untapped permanent he or she controls.)

Maybe WB could have more effects like House Arrest, where they tap Thopters.

Personally I like Investigate, but I'm not sure if we want the additional tokens.

Target player gets an oppression counter. (At the beginning of a player's upkeep, for each oppression counter they have, they may pay {1} or tap an untapped creature they control. If they don't, they lose 1 life.)

Target player gets an oppression counter. (At the beginning of their upkeep, for each oppression counter they have, they may sacrifice a creature. If they do, remove that counter. Otherwise that player loses 1 life) - Don't think this feels white enough.

Oppress target player (That player gets an emblem with "At the beginning of your upkeep you may pay {1} or tap an untapped creature you control. If you don't, you lose 1 life.")

Oppress target player (That player may pay {1} or tap an untapped creature they control. Otherwise that player loses 1 life.)

2 life?

The version with "taps a creature or loses 2 life" is amazing in how quintessentially W/B (or at least multicolor) it is. What I mean is that no single color actually combines both these elements (life drain, and tapping creatures) within their color identity. I think it's great.

"That player must sacrifice a creature or tap all creatures he or she controls" This is a bigger effect that we can't make repeatable or multiple times on a single spell. I like that it feels more powerful once your opponent has several creatures out but then feels weak again when your opponent has a full army.


­{w}\{u} Flyers (Aggro)

­{u}/{b} Weaklings (Control)

­{b}/{r} Raid (Aggro) Midrange?

­{r}/{g} Raid (Aggro)

­{g}/{w} Tapdance (Control) Disruptive Aggro?

­{w}/{b} Oppress (Disruptive Aggro)

­{u}/{r} Thopters/Artifacts (???)

­{b}/{g} Sacrifice (Control?)

­{r}/{w} Revolution (Midrange)

­{g}/{u} Canisters (Ramp)

Justice when shown to the public is the best received mechanic, it still the most commented/liked post on my tumblr and the 2nd most upvotes I've received on reddit. I would be very hesitant to remove it.

Interesting. I don't dislike it, but I would rather see it somewhere it could play a larger role in.

I was thinking about our need for a good mana sink mechanic. How about a kicker variant that just produces a thopter token?

I moved all the commons with mechanics unsupported in their colour to the dump.

That mechanic's been proposed a few times, continuumg, but the problem is finding fitting colors for it.

Green doesn't really get flying or artifact tokens, and black doesn't really either. So it'd only fit in white, blue, and red. Which isn't really where we want our mana-sink mechanic to be.

Also, Justice is a fine mechanic, and it's definitely the fan-favorite so far. The problem is that it has zero-interactivity with the rest of the set's mechanics, that it's high complexity, and that it takes a lot of time and resources to find good laws for it.

Right now, I agree that I'm hesitant to remove it, since it's going over so well. But just because the mechanic is well-liked doesn't mean that Tesla is the right place for it.

I will always encourage you guys to seek out every option possible and to question every decision made. I like the look of Oppress, but this is a set with Thopters -and- Canisters, so it's rarely going to do anything significant, no? However, it's an interesting start.

"Target opponent sacrifices a creature or taps all creatures he or she controls" is closer, but still not so interesting with Thopters as sacrifice fodder.

That player taps an untapped creature they control or sacrifices a tapped creature.?

This one feels very white if you use it sparingly, and very black when you do it constantly.

That's a lot better. It's still going to tap often, but not always, especially against an aggressive player.

I'm concerned that players will be afraid to tap their creatures if they think their opponent might oppress them forcing them to sacrifice before they can untap. The difference between tap and sacrifice seems too big. It feels like conditional removal instead of an actual choice for the opponent. It doesn't help that the tap is most effective if you can do it before they attack (Which only works if it is on an instant) but casting it directly after they declare the attack is better in every way.

I was thinking this version would be mostly at sorcery speed.

If they attacked with everything, they can sacrifice their weakest creature. If they left some blockers, they can just lose a blocker of their choice for the turn. If you draft this heavily, your opponent may well have some canisters or tapping matters creatures.

I just had a zany idea for the Justice complexity problem. Instead of triggers at the start of a turn to see if any number of laws were broken, followed by an arbitrary bonus for you, how about simple, regular triggers that happen immediately upon the law being broken, and produce the same effect

Common Example 2w

It's against the law to attack with more than one creature. (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)


Uncommon Example W

It's against the law to sacrifice a creature. (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)

Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.


Rare Example 3WB

It's against the law to cast a spell if you have already cast a spell this turn. (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)

Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, draw a card and lose 1 life.

Spells cost {1} less to cast.


EDIT Notes -

Notice that the life drain doesn't stack; If an opponent breaks a law, you always just drain them once. For every law they break, you drain them once.

The rare example dips into the idea that it might be interesting to incentivize your opponents to break certain laws. If spells cast {1} less, you save {2} mana when you cast two of them. Of course, the fact that it also provides you card advantage somewhat negates that and is something to be careful to avoid.

EDIT2 - If we want it to be available to colours other than WB, we'd want to iterate on this a bit more.

EDIT3 - Another thing I like about this variant, is that it frees up more complexity for the laws, rather than the punishments, which I feel is the primarily interesting aspect of the whole mechanic.

EDIT4 - It has been suggested that if we want laws to still work in blue, producing a Thopter might be an interesting alternative to draining life. In fact, that would synergize both with the WU Thopter and UB weakling archetypes

A somewhat less elegant variant that's kinda fun.

Sacrificing a creature is a level 1 offence. (When an opponent sacrifices a creature, they lose 1 life and you gain 1 life.)

Attacking with three of more creatures is a level 2 offence. (Whenever an opponent does so, they lose 2 life and you gain 2 life.)

Whenever an opponent commits an offence...

Whenever an opponent commits a level 2 or higher offence... an offence of level 2 or higher?..

I really like that commons can just make a law and let the rules of the game dispense the default punishment. Some players might miss that if you play 2 of the same card you have 2 identical laws that will both be broken resulting in 2 life drain but that's probably fine. I don't think you need "level 2 offence".

The offence level was just for fun. I don't really expect it to go anywhere.

I do like the simplicity offered by your suggestion, continuumg, but I'd prefer a more universal punishment, unless we want to just cut {u} from the picture entirely and make Justice a {w}{b} mechanic.

One problem I fear about this version is that it isn't clear whether laws stack or not. I'm pretty sure they do; that if I have two of the same law, they lose 2 life and I gain 2 life when they break it.

I do like how, for higher rarities, we can just add extra effects. That's nice.

I would cut blue, personally. None of blue's archetypes support it.

To simplify the stacking problem, it could be worded thusly:

(Whenever an opponent breaks one or more of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)

If it ends up weak in this form, we can always just raise it to 2 life.

I think "one or more" makes things more confusing unless we go back to checking the whole turn at once or we are very careful about what kinds of laws we make. Players shouldn't have to think about whether their block breaks 2 laws at once or breaks one law immediately and then another when the blocking creature deals damage (for example). I also think it is nice if 2 common justice creatures with the same law are not directly non-synergistic.

The simpler version sounds attractive to me (although I don't know for sure it will work out).

If I'm reading it correctly if you allow common stacking, you could make the remind text "(Whenever an opponent breaks this law, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)"?

And for uncommon and rare law cards with extra abilities, you could either choose "whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws" or "at the start of your upkeep, if an opponent broke one of your laws since..." whichever plays better (although probably not both).

@Jackal - I guess I can agree with that

I'm pretty sure the wording from the examples on my original post will prove to be the best execution.

I'm just going to go ahead and re-highlight the WB justice variant until it's got feedback from Doombringer.

Another variant that relies on triggers, but is more similar to the original mechanic could grant a crime counter to an opponents when they break your law, and then have activated abilities that cost crime counters. This allows for colours other than WB.

Aura police WU

It's against the law to cast an Enchantment spell (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player gets a crime counter.)

­{u}, Remove two crime counters from an opponent: Return an enchantment that player controls to its owner'a hand.

This is a bit less elegant however.

Yeah, I don't really like this one.

Any chance that we can give the counters a default ability so that the simple commons don't have to define their own enforcement? Are we okay with all three colors being able to "Target creature can't attack or block this turn."?

For limited, I don't love the idea of hoarding counters early game and hoping to draw your bomb that gives you a much better way to spend them.

Putting counters on players probably eats up the same complexity space as tokens which we don't have much of after canisters and thopters.

It might be simpler if you gained a justice counter rather than the opponent.

OTOH, is there any flavour that could tie an opponent breaking the law to giving you a cannister, like a fine or something? That might be hard to balance, but would tie together two themes nicely and simplify justice a lot.

I don't think we want the WB deck making a bunch of canisters but thopters makes flavorful sense. "The government assigns more thopters to monitor this district when the cops report more law breaking" It is something that all three colors can do and it can go in a control deck but can also lead to end game.
There is just the big problem of both power and complexity of repeated token making at common.

What if law breaking put a +1/+1 counter on the thing that made that law? Then higher rarity can have additional triggers and/or ways to spend +1/+1 counters from your creatures.

I'm pretty sure the most elegant approach is the WB only life draining law variant. I don't really like the whole counter concept.

It might work to have law-breaking produce Thopters if we really want blue laws; but again, I prefer the life drain version.

I do not like justice counters, that's just adding back the complexity we were trying to lose.

I like the life-drain far better. It means we can't put any justice in blue, but that's fine, as it's more of a win-con on its own so it wouldn't need as much support across multiple colors to 'work'.

Currently, I still think what we have now is fine, but the drain-variant is definitely enticing if playtesting reveals that Justice is too much fo the set.

Just to be clear; canisters aren't in black anymore, right?

Correct. We only had room for a few, so they're in {u}{g} with a grandfather clause artifact.

Can we have some attempts at common and uncommon 2 or less power matters cards? I like the idea but see very few cards that support the theme.

When that was the UR theme in Rise of the Eldrazi, they had fewer cards to support the archetype. 2 at common and a 1/7 creature that swapped its stats when it attacked at uncommon. Otherwise, it just had a greater number of 2 power creatures than normal.

Those cards were all in red. In blue, there were, again, more 2 power creatures than normal, and a couple spells that rewarded you for having a larger number of creatures.

Doombringer makes a point. There is no genuine card to reward you for the UB weakling deck. Raid Bombardment is an actual reward. I'm not sure Craftier Pathmage qualifies when a UB fliers deck looks easier and more efficient to draft. Plus you've got Gluttonous Asura as the one black card referring to power, and if that is not sending some SERIOUSlY mixed signals, I dunno what does.

Put another way, I don't see any card or even card combinations in UB (that's in the skeleton anyway) that tells me "this is a thing you want to do in U/B".

I think common needs at least Kalastria Healer for weaklings or some other effect that triggers when a weakling ETBs (i.e. make Craftier Pathmage "When a weakling ETB, target creature can't be blocked this turn", or even "creatures you don't control get -1/-0 UEOT"). A Mogis's Marauder style card that gives all weaklings haste and something else (deathtouch?) UEOT also sounds like a good idea.

We have a black Raid Bombardment in the cards - (((Not Raid Bombardment))), amusingly enough - but we should try finding a good and safe common that isn't as narrow as that.

The Asura was a typo. My bad.

Additionally, many of the designs haven't made it into the skeleton yet. We should do a sweep of the skeleton and card list and get rid of anything that no longer fits. We should probably also write up a plan for the number of cards necessary for each archetype at each rarity.

just make the cards for now, putting them in the skeleton is for when they are a little more polished in my mind.

I would like us to make a decision about Justice. Is there any aspect that people need more time to experiment with? Personally I like the lifedrain version, or any version that can make simple cards. I think that a mechanic should either have a defined trigger (like landfall) or a defined effect (like bolster). If we want to the "web of laws" feel, then having a common trigger doesn't work for us. I like life drain for that effect because it is small enough to happen more than once a turn without being oppressive, it doesn't matter when in the turn it is triggered, and it can bring the game closer to an end while still being useful on the defensive. When evolve was first created in Great Designer Search 2 it went through some iterations where different colors had different triggers and effects and the further it got the more it was brought together into a single effect.

I agree. I like producing thopters. It fits nicely in Kaladesh and lets us make some blue laws. But the life drain is a nice, simple choice as well.

I like that they can be used offensivly or defensively but I think that would result in having too many thopters unless we pull back in red, especially considering that these would all be repeated token makers and not one shot. Even eldrazi scions/spawn were only in 3 colors each and there were only a few repeated makers at higher rarities. We could experiment with trying to make one shot laws that only check the current/previous turn, but I don't think that is a good idea.

Thopters are a no-go, I'm afraid. We simply don't have the room at common to support that many tokens, and repeated token makers like that cannot be common.

Life-drain is okay, but it does remove blue from the equation. That's not horribly problematic, though.

However, I already made my opinion clear; I think Justice, as it stands, feels acceptable enough. Rather than theorycraft about it being too complicated or unwieldy, we need to playtest it and have it experienced by some newer or lower-skill players, to see if it truly is too complicated or unwieldy for the set.

Therefore, the decision - for now - is that we move forward with the original version of Justice. It appeals to a lot of players and it doesn't have any glaring issues beyond a possible complexity problem. If in playtesting it's revealed to be too problematic, or if it takes too much of our resources to find good designs for it, then we can move forward with the life-drain version. If that doesn't work, we can experiment with other versions, or entire other mechanics that capture a feeling of 'oppressive government'.

Also note that the current justice is know to have a very positive perception which is important for a set.

I do like the extort style justice as a backup if the current justice proves not worth the complexity cost.

We need to set aside the alternate mechanics until we have playtested with these ones or we are not going to make the deadline.

Current draft of the common justice laws:

It is against the law for an opponent to control three or more creatures

It is against the law for an opponent to cast no spells during his or her turn.

It is against the law for an opponent to block.

I like the first law's mirroring of Revolution.

The last one seems pretty aggressive, although I suppose no more so than a regular upkeep trigger.

Were we planning on restricting each law to a specific color in common?

EDIT - Color restricting laws would probably make it too difficult to force the opponent's hand, wouldn't it.

I don't understand the flavour of the second law. Wouldn't it make more sense to make it be against the law to cast two or more spells in a turn?

The flavor of the second law is 'keeping secrets and staying in the shadows is illegal'. Both cards that trigger on that law are the most invasive / creepy of the bunch - Mage Inquisitor and Mindleak Agent.

I could see two or more spells - that'd be fine too, I think - but 'no spells' produces better gameplay and encourages people to keep playing the game, rather than have to hold back cards.

I would be more interested in trying to make common justice of the same color have the same penalty for breaking the laws not have the same law.

That's an interesting idea, Jackal, but might not look great to players.

I'm finding Justice is growing on me with these three laws. It's just upkeep triggers we can push a little bit.

I don't, however, like how the first law gives the opponent little time to comply. How about "Its against the law for an opponent to control three or more creatures during his or her end step"?

"At end of turn" could work, maybe?

Thoughts on these as the common justice cards?


I think that both of the "control three or more creatures." would be better as "control three or more untapped creatures at the beginning of his or her end step." if there is enough space for it. We could even have the white one care about untapped creatures and the black one care about tapped ones so that they can combo together better. I don't know how helpful it is to have 2 identical laws when that is the only thing that the cards share.

I like them all. I'm just going to propose a slight templating tweak to the blue one on that card's comments.

I feel the three or more should be worded "It's against the law for an opponent to control three or more creatures during his or her end step."

Jackel Identical laws are what allows justice to appear at common. More laws at common is unlikely to be an option.

Continuumg: why do you think the extra text would be worth it?

I don't like the way the current wording grants the opponent little choice. It makes them feel bad. If you wait to see whether they control three or more creatures at the end of their turn, then they can at least feel like they had the opportunity to avoid breaking the law. (Regardless of whether they actually want to. They'd have to be pretty desperate to sac a bunch of creatures to avoid breaking a law, but I guess it might be worth it if the Justice player had enough triggers available.)

Is having identical laws with different effect significantly simpler than different laws with identical effects?

Ideally, in draft against a WB justice deck, what percentage of the time do we want the opponent to give up on trying to avoid breaking laws and just accept that they will trigger every turn?

@continuumg I feel you kinda answered my reasoning yourself, ". They'd have to be pretty desperate to sac a bunch of creatures to avoid breaking a law", they can still do this to not break the law the next turn. It also makes the text significantly wordier.

Finally I'd rather the laws be easier to break than never appearing and thus justice decks being full of crappy vanillas.

@Jackel Yes, different effects on the same laws are much simpler as the law is where the complexity comes from (unless the justice trigger has board complexity, which we are avoiding.) Think of it like something like landfall where the effects are super varied but the condition is always the same, thus making it very simple.

Even in a limited WB justice focused deck I think the times the laws trigger will be lower than you expect. Though this will be part of further playtesting.

@Doombringer Do the notes you added to the skeleton reflect what is currently in the skeleton, or your thoughts on what should be in the skeleton?

The skeleton change was just a minor fix to the the number of each mechanic in each color, which was out of date when I checked with Inanimate. If its anything major I'll usually leave a message here.

As for what should be in the skeleton, polished cards that fit the archetypes, curves and restrictions on tokens/mechanics etc.

Usually I do a skype or IM session with inanimate to go over large chunks of it at a time.

Note we are now using the wording of Premature Burial to reduce the comprehension complexity of the justice triggers.

Eg: Justice — At the beginning of your upkeep, if an opponent broke the law since your last turn began, [EFFECT]

Since your last upkeep?

Nice selection. Some needed fixes:

As to the art:

  • Stamp Out looks far too much like a creature spell. The disconnect is too strong with the card name for the flavor text to fix it. Something showing the person being judged, if possible, would be far better.
  • Fugitive Freelancer: I know it's probably not possible even half the time, but if at all, cards that put thopters into play should show some sort of artifact in the art. Mostly, though, she looks like a wizard, not an artificer
  • Take Down has a similar problem to Stamp Out, but more easily solved. Surely we could put a fight scene of some sort on it?
  • Naga Drowner: if this keeps the art framed this way, name needs to become plural.
  • Voice of the populace has the wrong vibe. We want "leader", not "noblewoman" (which is a pretty bad flavor fumble IMO).

Good notes on the Flavortext, however with the art I agree some of it can be improved but there often isn't a perfect solution, especially for a set that is returning to a plane.

Looking critically at the {b}{g} archetype, it seems we've overstuffed it, surprisingly. I think we got a bit overzealous in making it work.

Looking to BFZ for inspiration, the life-gain archetype in {w}{b} is similar - it's a very narrow A/B archetype - yet it shows up in surprisingly small amounts at common.

It has four "A" cards - Courier Griffin, Stone Haven Medic, Tandem Tactics, Kalastria Healer - and two "B" cards - Kalastria Nightwatch and Nirkana Assassin.

Note that the "B" cards really aren't that fantastic. This means they'll float their way to the dedicated life-gain deck - which is good, as it's a narrow A/B archetype. They mostly serve as significers that, if you draft life-gain, you might be rewarded at higher rarities, with cards like Bloodbond Vampire, Defiant Bloodlord, Malakir Familiar, Serene Steward.

You'll also note that the color distribution of the A cards is almost entirely opposite to the color distribution of the B cards. That's intentional; it helps players realize that the life-gain archetype is the {w}{b} archetype, without needing a {w}{b} multi-color card.

Anyway, this does pose an interesting question for the set. {g} has the most obvious A cards - Pioneer Researcher and Prepare a Hideout - so we could make it into the 'A' color. Alongside Soylent Feed and Living Autopsy or Canister Addict, this means we'd be good for A cards. Then {b} would be the 'B' color, with the payoff rewards.

Unfortunately, our current payoff cards in {b} are creature-sacrifice centric - (((AEther Corruption))) and Overworked Prole. We probably want to shift Mutated Man into {b}, and then find one more design for {b}. Disciple of the Vault could be a fun and exciting card to reprint, and since black doesn't get Canisters or Thopters, it could be safer than you'd think.

Oooh, Disciple of the Vault would definitely look exciting. Maybe a version that only looked at your own artifacts would be better here, though.

Could someone go through the Justice cards and make sure them are using "It's" rather than "It is"?

Also what do people think about "if an opponent broke one of your laws" instead of the current "if an opponent broke the law" to make them multiplayer friendly, is this worth the extra words?

I had the wordiness issue solved in my version: just move the "opponent" part to the law instead of the trigger: "It's illegal for an opponent to..."

So, we have a number of +1/+1 counter effects tacked on to cards, but there really doesn't seem to be a real reason for them other than to be an on color effect. Is there some way we can make the counters more exciting or more relevant?

Traditionally, there's one mechanic that has +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters as part of it in at least every bloc, if not every set (the rule is a little more complex, but SOI's pretty much te first exception since Ravnica), so maybe Raid or Justice could have +1/+1 counters as the basic, most common effect (as they did with allies in original Zendikar)?

I've forgotten why canisters use "during your turn" instead of "anytime you could cast a sorcery"

So you can use them more like mana sources on your turn without being screwed over in edge cases.

That said, I don't think I've seen that actually interaction come up, but it's been a while since I've playtested.

It comes up if you're trying to cast lots of combat tricks, but that doesn't happen often. When it does happen though, it'll be important to not frustrate the players.

I know this concept has gone so far off the rails since I originally proposed it that I can't pretend to much of a voice, but I'd like to put forth some thoughts about it.

THe mechanics seem to have been pidgeonholed FAR to much. The only mechanic that is in more than 2 colors at common is Justice, and it's a faction mechanic. Revolution and Recharge are supposed to be major flavor elements in the set, and they have both been forced into color pairs, severely limiting the possibilities of cross-archetype synergies. The small crossing of themes greatly deepens deck options. WG was so good in SOI because the main theme was human, yet it had fairly little support, but so many other things to dip into: delirium, equipment-matters, green werewolves... we currently have no ways of efficiently doing that because of the way our themes were distributed.

To me it seems clear that Revolution and Recharge need to be spread a little more. Revolution should never have been cut from green (especially in light of the {w/g} "tap me" draft archetype), and there should be at least one recharge common in each color. Furthermore, if artifacts are going to be as significant feature of the set it makes no sense for them be a feature in only one archetype (currently {u/r})

Here's an attempted summary of archetypes based off what is currently in the skeleton:

Well-defined concepts

  • {w/u}: Fliers. With unusually high amount of support, even.
  • {u/b}: Weaklings
  • {u/r}: Artifacts/thopters
  • {w/r}: Revolution
  • {g/b}: Sacrifice

Well defined in concept, slightly less in execution

  • {w/b}: Justice. Flavor win, though how the deck wins is not entirely clear yet to me.
  • {u/g}: Canisters.
  • {w/g}: Tapdance. People seem to think this is a poor idea, but it's really an "aggro attack trigger" with some extra bonuses in combination with stuff like Revolution. Maybe the Canisters could become "tap or untap" to boost it and {u/g} some more?

Less well defined

  • {b/r}: "Aggro Raid", but since the black raid card (Sky Pirate 2.0) will be sought by all black players, there's not much to the black half of it IMO. Black seems very high on the aggression
  • {g/r}: More raid?

There's also some weird stuff like Ostracized Visionary and Outlands Abomination that seem like they were designed for completely different themes than those of the set.


  • Put a green revolution common card back in the skeleton.
  • Put a common canister card in each of white, black and red.
  • Add a common tapper of some sort in green or blue to boost up the value of canisters. Maybe a tapper, but some variant of the Loam Dryad effect would be a good fit to cross-seed with {w/g} tapdance or a 4-color canister theme.
  • Shift raid into primarily {r/g}, possibly with mostly bigger cards, especially for green. This also ensures that Raid results in significantly different cards than those in KTK (Maybe e.g. a big green fatty that ETB unless you attacked this turn, cross-seed with UG?)
  • Shift red and black into an artifacts-in-graveyard archetype, that sacrifice artifacts for profit and recursion (I'm thinking effects like Moriok Salvager, Salvage Slasher, Gnathosaur, Scrapyard Salvo...).
  • Since back is probably not such an agressive deck anymore, either for the set itself or in general, reduce the amount of commons where the power is 2 or more higher than toughness (Black gets these just a little more than white, but at different mana points).

@Circeus The highlighted archetype comment above is the current list of archetypes, the "Limited Archetype" tab is out of date and I'm not sure who wrote it.

For example {r}{g} is already the primary raid color.

I like the idea of a BR artifacts in grave archetype, but so much of our artifact count is in tokens

The skeleton REALLY needs to be updated to be more useful. It would be a whole lot more useful if cards where organized by CMC. Currently it's a complete mess.

Lets have a discussion about {b}{r}. I like it being a disruptive aggressive gameplan with some suicidal tendencies (paying life, sacrificing lands) and some raid. I think that {b}{g} has a slower deck that will sacrifice blocking creatures for value while {b}{r} can play some of the same cards but is more likely to loose the creatures by running them into blockers.

I'm happy to update the skeleton over the weekend.

Also note that {b}{r} is not required or planned to be raid, especially considering its adjacent archetypes suit it better to control.

Can you explain your reason about the adjacent archetypes?

I'm not familiar with {b}{r} control. Can you give an example of a set that did it right?

Red usually isn't the color for control in draft, especially when paired with Black. The only exception I can find is RoE where all aggro was changed to support the major set goal of letting people get giant creatures. I don't see anything about our setting or design goals that leads us to red control.



"In Limited, both have a similar strategy of playing a mana curve of creatures while using their spells to remove blockers, often finishing off the game with damage directly at the opponent." Both of these quotes sound like what I would consider disruptive aggro. Maybe my terminology is off. Can you give an example of a set that has {b}{r} strategy similar to what you had in mind or can you make a couple rough drafts of some cards that you would consider key players in what you are going for?

I'm pretty sure BR in this set is well positioned to fit either role. The real questions are which fits more flavorfully on Kaladesh, and what do we want more of.

Circeus, the problem is that we simply didn't have the space. We can only have 4 DFCs at common, so we went the Werewolf route and had them all in two colors to be able to have a reasonable archetype; and we can only have around 7 tokens in the set that affect the board, so we had to divide them up as best we could.

We've been considering pushing that last rule a bit, and trying to stretch for more tokens in the set - heck, I think we've already stretched to 8 - so we could certainly try to find more room in black, for example. But the problem is that Canisters are simply out of the color pie for every other color. White can't ramp; and black and red can't untap creatures.

We can stretch the color pie a bit, sure, but that's one major reason we cut down to just {u}{g}. Besides, as long as they have a presence in draft, I'm confident it'll feel like Kaladesh revolves around the concepts.

For now, let's try stretching the tokens to about 10. That gives us 2 more designs. I'd like to see some proposals over where those cards should go. Perhaps we add back in a black canister and a white Thopter. That way, every color gets a feeling of being involved in the artifice of Kaladesh, or at least using it to their advantage.

Unfortunately, we can't stretch DFCs in this way. But I'm okay with the revolution of Kaladesh not being a universal concept - in the second set, perhaps it spreads out further, but in the first it should be more of a niche movement, no?

I agree with a lot of Inanimate's comment above, also I was pushing for {r}/{b} control but after a furtherlook at the skeleton and chatting with Inanimate I think maybe a {r}/{b} Act of Treason core set style archetype could work well making use of {g}/{b}'s sacrifice outlets.

­{g}/{w} should probably shift to something more simple since it's giving us so much trouble. Let's try it as +1/+1 counters right now - which works with progress, Raid, and a few cards in both colors - and is much easier to design and develop.

Tapdancing is cute and interesting, but is taking too much development time away from more important elements.

Moved a lot of old designs to the dump with Inanimate's permission and done a bit of cleanup of the set skeleton.

Mana curves in the skeleton will often be handled after in MSE2 anyway so while I'll do my best to keep it clean its not worth breaking up the positions of certain cycles etc.

Can we make a decision about skulk? I don't have a strong opinion but last time I asked people seemed to like it. I do think that if we remove it, then the {u}{b} deck wants a small unblockable common and a higher rarity card that gives all small creatures some evasion.

My bigger problem with recent changes is that we can't really have an archetype that is power 2 or less if there is an entire counter archetype of Destroy/Steal power 3 or less. Sure, we can do it, but it just feels so bad.

Skulk isn't going to be evergreen, so if we keep it in the set, it becomes our second returning keyword (which I'd be fine with).

That is an excellent point, CasualR. That isn't intended to be an archetype as a whole (the archetype is just '{r}/{b} Sacrifice' as usual), but we can certainly make it seem like it targets another archetype less. Perhaps we should adjust the common to just steal anything, but cost a bit more?

Templating question: Should recharge template like most action words without a line break (scry, bolster, populate) or like investigate (Expose Evil, Root Out)?

Recharge is currently planned to be templated like Investigate.

We need to adjust the black common creatures to make room for a common. Any suggestions on what creature or creatures to adjust, cut, or fuse together?

Just fixed a bunch of missing rarities.

The FNM promos have revealed the wording for tokens will be changing to a vocabulary word, 'create'. I'm gonna go through the file and fix the wording for what token producers we have.

I have so many edits to do on Ersatz now.

The recent playtesting showcased that the off color ability creatures where not pulling there weight. Thus I've now changed them to off-color invokers to allow the effects to be more powerful and give more ramp targets for canisters.

Each may still need tuning etc, so feel free to comment

(((Settlement Invoker))) (((Garuda Invoker))) (((Naga Invoker))) (((Tigrala Invoker))) (((Vanara Invoker)))

"I don't like this" isn't as helpful as "I don't like X about this because Y." If you don't help us understand your concern, we can only ignore it.

W Uncommon probably wants a flyer bigger than a thopter. I'm thinking one of the revolution ones (we currently have no flying revolution in the skeleton) It probably wouldn't hurt to have a W Uncommon creature with clear synergy in the WG deck. The deck isn't hurting for options but there isn't an obvious signpost there.

Ok me and Inanimate are gonna try and use the tesla discord chat a lot more as us using a lot of PM's was making everything less transparent. Currently I have the card file and I'm trying to now sych the outdated skeleton of the multiverse with the latest commons and uncommons for the next playtest. Meanwhile I'm taking the best rares suggestions and starting to add them to the card file for the next playtest As ideally we would like to have another playtest in the next week or so.

Join us on the custommagic discord though note that me and inanimate do read all comments on the multiverse if you prefer posting here.

Recently did some moredrafts and playtesting

See the card file HERE



Did you really playtest (((Bolster the Districts))) as a {1}{w} instant?!

@Circeus Yeh, was meant to be a sorcery. Didn't turn out too bad though as the +1/+1 counter deck isn't one of the mot pushed of the archetypes

I'm about to go on holiday for a month, please continue to leave comments here on cards, for example I have 2 uncommon artifact slots and a few mythic slots that need filling.

New version is up on Planesculptors


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