Aspect of the flower is pretty damn bonkers. Just saying.

Gilded Lotus is also a silly card however! At least for any ramp deck.

The flower is practically unknown in it's power anyway, so the people would have little idea of what aspects it holds. Only it has great power.

I could see the card itself being something like

Lotus of Moti Isle

Legendary Artifact

, Sacrifice a land : Add 3 mana of any colour to your mana pool.

Could be interesting.

Whoa let's not start doing this on this page. But anyways, sacrificing lands is not a good idea in any case, especially not for mana. And the lotus is supposed to restore peace I thought, not destroy the lands...

We can make it Legendary. Or reduce the mana cost to 2 or 3 and make the kicker allow you to sacrifice it to add three mana of any one color to your mana pool, more Black Lotus ish

Maltanis, I really like that idea, it looks fun to play, but FAMOUSWATERMELON has a point.

Guys, there's a design page for something...

Yeah, let's direct any "general" card design back to the original page. Keep these strictly towards the tribe mechanics and what not.

It is a tribe mechanics issue.The sooner there are fixed Mechanics for the tribes we can start thinking of the synergies. But if we don't test possible angles of play, we can't choose the keywords we want. Imagine that Explore and Fortification are selected has the mechanics and have zero synergy: the tribe becomes a chore to play and weaker than the rest, If we don't create mock-ups of possible cards we can't make that kind of decision.

Now imagine that we decide that Progress (I know that it is a kicker, but it avoids the "Kicker - Sacrifice an untapped land you control" line of text, and if we plan to have it on multiple cards, we may as well name it) is the way to go because Fortification enhances the lands you don't sacrifice and is heavily synergistic with it? We won't know until we think about possible applications of the cards.

It doesn't avoid that line of text maioflw]. If anything, this is much easier to use, as everyone knows what it is.

And the two separate keywords don't have to have synergy. Most likely they aren't even going to be in the same colours. One would be for the allied shard version and one is for the enemy shard version.

I get we want to test things, but currently we have NO testing environment.

I feel it's better to set up some ideas, make some cards, then if we find issues down along the line we can change things. This isn't a short term project, so if we suddenly decide we need to change things along the line there's no issue here.

I think we will have a better chance if we get things in place first. It's so hard to test with such a limited selection of content.

Oh man there is a lot of reading to be done here...with nearly 10 threads this sure is overwhelming...anyways

Maltanis Not sure exactly what should be added to the lore that you mention. IF you mean how they get aggressive in the second set...isn't this stuff about the first set for now? We will base the second set off the first one after all.

Land sacrifice is legitimately only really red and sometimes black, so I feel like it won't make much sense in colors. I think of land sacrifice as a drawback as "I will get rid of a land permanently, it's beyond "Pay R for this cost"" So I feel like if it's balanced well, it can be useful. Other issue is that Thanallids would love that mechanic more than the Lutrins would, due to the synergy they get. Graveyard recursion and also the zone movement.

Well, I don't like bringing back kicker. Then this would have kicker, fortify and explore. Are we going to do more than 2 keywords of the tribes?

The "Explore X" card is kinda bad. Paying 4 mana, to get a card type, which you already have in your hand? Pretty bad.

It could be something like: Look at the top 5 cards of your library, and put X cards into your hand, which share card type, etc......

Well.... I have no idea how this should be worded. But it should definetely be better in some way.... I think....

Each tribe is going to get 1 keyword mechanic per set.

I don't like kicker either, and sacrificing lands is out of the colour pie. It doesn't feel Lutrin either, they don't destroy the land, they build on it (hence fortification). Plus fortification + land saccing is a bad combination, and as has been said, the Thanallids will loooove the graveyard play, especially as this will be in green.

Wasn't it mentioned that each tribe could possibly get two mechanics? One returning and one new. Because we are doing only half of the guild colors, we could have double the keywords for each guild color after all.

I personally feel that explore should be a fixed amount. So rather than Explore X on all the cards where the Explore value changes, we just give them high numbers so it is possible to actually hit cards with the same name. Something like:

Otter Explorer -
Creature - Otter
When Otter Explorer attacks, Explore 4.
2/2

This way they are solid creatures as is, since this is a Grizzly Bears with an upside at the cost of more restrictive mana. However, helping people find their land drops will also allow people to pay these costs.

Now if we were doing this, then Explore the Horizons should be something like:

Explore the Horizons -
Sorcery
Look at the top X * 3 cards of your library, if one of them shares a card type with a card in your hand, you may reveal both cards and put the explored card into your hand. If you do, shuffle your library.

Alternatively, we could also try something like:

Explore the Horizons -
Sorcery
Explore 1, then shuffle your library. You may repeat this process up to X times.

I kind of do like that concept of having explore increase the number of creatures and lands in hand this way. Gives card advantage without doing generic card draw. I actually did have a mechanic for the Lutrins at first based on if the card was in your hand or not, like "If ~ is in your hand, creatures you control get +1/+1" but then I noticed that would make you never actually really play the creature...

We don't want too many mechanics, otherwise the limited structure will become overcomplicated. Simplicity is best at the end of the day, the complexity should come from the interactions.

lemmingllama - where does it mention Explore using X all the time? I think X is just being used as a placeholder, as costs can be defined later.

I like the idea for Explore the Horizons where you Explore 1. I'd price it more like , otherwise it seems a bit broken.

Well I guess secondary mechanic for each tribe would be introduced in the next set then. So we are not bringing back any mechanics then?

Yeah, one mechanic this set, one the next for each tribe.

We'll so far we have Soulbond coming back, and some suggestion for Flashback as well, which I quite like. It's not that we should be against bringing back mechanics, but we should try designing our own first before we just start using existing things. Fortify gets around this as it's a futuresight card.

Well I mean the Soulbond thing is neat and all but we shouldn't have it as a definite, being how the mechanic might be a bit odd to utilize in the way the air-fire lore has it. It probably is best to make the new mechanics for now anyways. Currently I'm liking the Explore stuff. I did have the mechanic of Living Land for Lutrins, but I could possibly have land creatures as just a universal thing for the colors. Maybe second set has the land coming to life as the demon's minions or the island has always been moving?

@Maltanis Currently there are two Explore cards, both of which have a variable X cost (one where you pay X, one where X is the amount of damage dealt). I'm just saying that selecting values on these might give people motivation to play otherwise weaker creatures on the vanilla test due to their higher explore numbers.

Also I think that one is my favourite out of the Explore the Horizon variants. I'd probably say to do it at , this way it's better costed. I'm looking at it somewhat like Genesis Wave but you can miss and you put the cards in your hand.

Ok, well move discussion on soulbond over to the Solas thread.

I really like Explore as well, it seems like we can do a lot with it and is providing an interesting kind of advantage.

The Demon animating lands in the 2nd set would be cool, we could do our own cycle of man lands to finish of the set, or a cycle finishing off what Dryad Arbor started.

@KalvinHobbez For the Living lands, I'd love to do a set of manlands or creature lands that are more peaceful, natural types for the first block, and then a more aggressive set that shows the desecration on the first set's creatures for the second block. Could be fun

These are only mock cards, nothing set in stone. I like the idea of combat damage defining the value, it's a nice concept, like you said, it means playing weaker creatures because of their abilities. The same works if we have it as a set number, but theirs no reason we can't do both. It's a pretty flexible mechanic.

Explore the Horizon sounds a lot like Seek the Horizon, so why not change the name? Even though I do like it.

seems good. Most likely a rare. The similarity to Genesis Wave is nice, but it's not stupidly broken!

I actually messed with Lutrin Living Lands a bit, using the rules wording of Dryad Arbor to make it a good mechanic like:

Living Land (This creature isn't a spell but it's affected by summoning sickness. Only one land may enter the battlefield during each of your turns and not during another players turn.)

Of course the main issue is with balance, as these land creatures are commonly free. Maybe have drawbacks like Transguild Promenade but it could be something fun to play around with.