Annual Magic Set - now with more color
When Conflux came out, I thought "what wacky in-theme thing could I do that Wizards wouldn't dare?", to which the answer was "Hey, let's make every non-land card multicolor". I started work on that and had to push up the production schedule suddenly when the first thing they leaked... was an all-gold set. Sigh. The first couple cards spoiled had enough thematic similarities that I really had to push to the finish (Knight of New Alara is thematically similar to Primatic Anthem).
An all-gold set poses some interesting challenges. How do you do 1-drops? Hybrid would have been cheating. I figured out one way and will be interested to see how WotC does it. Making sure that I balanced the colors appropriately was far too overwhelming for the set editor I was using, and the last 30 cards were effectively a big hole-filling campaign.
As always, I lean more heavily on set mechanics and themes than a real set would - I can make a vanilla 3/1, or throw in a reprint (and I was sooo tempted to throw in Terminate), but what's the point? There's also a cycle of 4-color legends, just to... encourage... Wizards to do the same. I also wish I'd managed to throw in more cards that benefitted you if you controlled a permanent of the right color. I put in the enablers to support the ones in Conflux, then put in some reverse-enablers, then ran out of room. Oh well. That would be for Development to fix.
Big props to Eli Shiffrin and the rest of the gurus who helped fix some of the templating on these cards. Their ability to keep "gets", "has" and "gains" straight, and know the order keywords are supposed to appear is downright impressive.
Alara Rebirth
Time to hibernate for another year.
An all-gold set poses some interesting challenges. How do you do 1-drops? Hybrid would have been cheating. I figured out one way and will be interested to see how WotC does it. Making sure that I balanced the colors appropriately was far too overwhelming for the set editor I was using, and the last 30 cards were effectively a big hole-filling campaign.
As always, I lean more heavily on set mechanics and themes than a real set would - I can make a vanilla 3/1, or throw in a reprint (and I was sooo tempted to throw in Terminate), but what's the point? There's also a cycle of 4-color legends, just to... encourage... Wizards to do the same. I also wish I'd managed to throw in more cards that benefitted you if you controlled a permanent of the right color. I put in the enablers to support the ones in Conflux, then put in some reverse-enablers, then ran out of room. Oh well. That would be for Development to fix.
Big props to Eli Shiffrin and the rest of the gurus who helped fix some of the templating on these cards. Their ability to keep "gets", "has" and "gains" straight, and know the order keywords are supposed to appear is downright impressive.
Alara Rebirth
Time to hibernate for another year.