Demon Souls Themed Set Help please.
Custom Cards forum
Posted on Oct. 13, 2015, 12:43 a.m. by khachuchrianz
Hi everyone! I saw some of the feedback that all of you have been giving and was really impressed and well...I'm hoping i can get the same feed back from you all on some of my mechanics and even get some ideas and suggestions. So lets get started!
Sustain-(Whenever you cast a creature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.)
Reanimate(X)-(You may cast this card from your graveyard by discarding a card and paying X.)
Renew(X)-(If a creature died this turn, you may cast this card from the graveyard for its renew cost.)(This is one I'm not entirely fond of but it works ok.)
Perish(1B)-(If a creature entered a graveyard from anywhere this turn, you may play this card anytime you could cast an instant for its Perish cost.)
Invade(X)4- (Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay X and exile it with four time counters on it. Whenever a creature you control dies, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost. It has haste.)
Purge- (To purge 1, look at the top card of your library, then you may put that card into your graveyard.)
So that's them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If you have any ideas on fixing some of these let me know! If you played demon souls there is a lot of death and recursion so that's my aim. A constant state of death and life. Re-dying.
dersohndesgreifen says... #3
Maybe the renew-mechanic costs everytime more, makes the creature weaker or you lose life for each time it's been renewed. Some sort of Skullbriar, the Walking Grave effect with renew-counter for tracking the renew-number.
Don't know if it fits into Demon Souls, only played Darks Souls so far.
October 13, 2015 8:56 a.m.
dersohndesgreifen says... #4
I forgot: Really nice idea of bringing Demon Souls to Magic.
October 13, 2015 9 a.m.
MadMansPurity says... #5
I think stacking on the Renew cast would make a lot of people veer from the mechanic dersohndesgreifen. Look at it from this view, if the creature has Renew then it must already be semi worth casting and therefore have a decent CMC. The cost would begin to outweigh the benefits. But if the Renew cost always stayed the same but with rising -1/-1 counters or losing X+ life would balance it out enough to see play but also be useful enough that casting the card in question would possibly even change the game on a dime. Can you give an example of what the Renew card would look like? :3
October 13, 2015 9:05 a.m.
khachuchrianz says... #6
@MadMansPurity- Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it! Now to more important things. First I should explain that Demon Souls is a video game. As I reread my post I realized the easy confusion that could be made. So the set is based off the game not literally demon souls. So that was my fault :). Second your idea for Sustain is neat but as I plan this to be a three block set, I don't want to use -1/-1 counters and +1/+1 counters in the same set. (I think it will lead to confusion) In the second set I plan to use Undying and possibly Unearth as mechanics, although I could use Unearth and not Undying to remove the +1/+1 counters and solve the problem but Undying has always been one of my favorite mechanics and I think fits the theme very well.-Invade is a theme from the game as well. (I know as i tell you this you had no idea what i meant) In your sense your thinking literally invade which isn't to far from the actual idea now that i think about it. But in the sense of the game its when another player joins your world to kill you and to get their life back. Thats why im using the suspend mechanic, as a way to show you that the creature is coming for you. Even in the game you can see when someone else is about to invade your game but you don't know where they spawned from so it adds suspense in my mind.-Purge is the idea of scry but for the graveyard. As a lot of the mechanics deal with the graveyard purge is a way to get the engine going in the set. Like scry was for theros is Purge is for Demon Souls.
@dersohndesgreifen- What did you have in mind? Seems possible but not sure how the tracking would work and thats been the issue i am running into.
thats a sample of it. I do see and think that this can become backbreaking and need a way to stifle it from being abused.
Looking forward to any suggestions!
October 13, 2015 8:54 p.m.
Do not know much about Demon's Soles (I guess he has sore feet), but will try to help anyways. General feeling of all mechanics is a resounding meh, fine if unexciting. There is very loose connections between mechanics, no ties between mechanic and flavor (as far as I can tell just based on names), and a few of these are grossly overpowered and/or will lead to unfun gameplay. Onto the specifics:
Sustain - (Whenever you cast a creature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.) - Very weak. We already have landfall which does everything Sustain does much better. It has very limited combos with other mechanics. My suggestion is to scrap and replace it with something better.
Reanimate(X)-(You may cast this card from your graveyard by discarding a card and paying X.). Retrace already exists on cards like Flame Jab. By flavor, it can go only on creatures, which is limiting. Very powerful in Limited, leading to boardstalls. Scrapping recommended.
Renew(X)- (If a creature died this turn, you may cast this card from the graveyard for its renew cost.) - You must really enjoy super pronlonged games that clog the ground, 'cause that is how you get those. 2 of these is infinite chumping. This is incredibly powerful and will either have to be too overcosted to be playable or have to scrapped. I side with the latter.
Perish(1B)-(If a creature entered a graveyard from anywhere this turn, you may play this card anytime you could cast an instant for its Perish cost.). Not easy to grok; there is already Recover, which is quite decent; has the same problem as the last mechanic, especially when combined with it; 2 of these means infinite chumping. To the chopping block!
Invade(X)4 - (Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay X and exile it with four time counters on it. Whenever a creature you control dies, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost. It has haste.) - So, creature death suspend. Every single mechanic has something to do with the graveyard except this one, which is bad. Change "exile it" to "discard it" and you are good to go!
Purge - (To purge 1, look at the top card of your library, then you may put that card into your graveyard.) - This may seem innocent but you never want to make a mechanic that puts cards from your library to your graveyard. You will not get it right. Instead:
Purge X - Target player exiles X cards from his or her graveyard.
With 5 graveyard based mechanics, you need SOME kind of safety net or you need to have 10 different Tormod's Crypt in the set.
Overall results: 4 scrapped, 2 reworded. Overall, feed me lore of the game and I will produce something more balanced.
MadMansPurity says... #2
Well in MtG demons are a sign of power at any costs. Making deals with demons grants great power but comes with a price and this "price" should be reflected in your mechanics. I really like the Sustain but it needs to read
Sustain - Whenever you cast a creature spell this creature gets +1/+1 until the end of turn, if no creature spells were cast this turn put a -1/-1 counter on this creature.
Invade is simply Suspend with a facelift and not much else. I would flavor it for weaker creatures, demons familiars and the like that would be used as an invading force to soften the enemies. I'll create a creature as an example...
~~~ Fearless Trooper - B
Creature - Goblin Spirit
Invade 2 - When this creature enters the battlefield, if you control a Demon creature you may put two tokens of this creature onto the battlefield. They gain Haste. Sacrifice these tokens at the beginning of the next end step.
1/2 ~~~
Its not the greatest example but it shows the flavor of invading the board and softening your enemies defense.
The idea of Purge is great but like you said you are going for very themed mechanics so this mechanic can show the constant recursion. Something like...
~~~ Unholy Seance - 1BB
Instant
Reveal the top five cards of your deck. Choose one creature card revealed this way and put it into your graveyard. If the creatures power is 5 or greater, you may return target creature in your graveyard to the battlefield. ~~~
This shows a creature being sacrificed to purge out an already dead creature from the grave for a second shot.
Well there are some suggestions mate. Hope it helped
October 13, 2015 6:23 a.m.