#mtgsetdevlog

[goqmir]

Here's a big ref sheet for the Vinyllids from Marenrow! there's a lotta text on this one but it's fun to describe all the facets of the pretty pooltoy race in my worldbuilt city :D this goes into a bit of detail about the vinyllids, clothes they wear, their origins and anatomy, and offers a front and back view of the vinyllids so anyone who wants to create a vinyllid of their own can easily see the body of one!

I'm very happy with this ref! it'll allow me to draw the art for vinyllids easily and puts a lot of the concepts i've had floating around in my head to paper :3 yayayay !!

[goqmir]

so for Marenrow: City of Secrets (my custom magic set), wren and i have made all of the two-color signpost draft uncommons except two (18 total!). the final two to make are for the white/blue draft archetype, and have proven themselves the most difficult to make, because the archetype is such a novel idea. id like to explain the archetype and how it would work in this post, and maybe anybody that is so inclined could think of and share ideas for the cards or tell me their opinion on the archetype itself :)

so the red/blue and white/blue color pairs are "working together" in my set; they are two separate groups of scientists and wealthy nobles/politicians respectively, and the scientists control the nobles (the red/blue group is in charge of the white/blue group, in essence). the theme of the red/blue group in Marenrow is flipping coins for value, and so i think it would be cool for the white/blue group, their followers, to flip coins too.

so, the white/blue group's archetype is "flipping coins to determine two related outcomes on their cards", or what in my head i refer to as "coin control". this means that every white/blue instant and sorcery has "flip a coin" before its text, and could do one of two different things based on the outcome. furthermore, white/blue creatures would have "when this enters the battlefield, flip a coin" and would do different things based on the outcome too. for permanents, it doesnt necessarily have to be an enter-the-battlefield thing, and could instead be on like, attack triggers, card draw, maybe two different static abilities and only one is activated at all times based on the initial flip, stuff like that.

the idea here is that for the two modes, one is usually interaction, and the other is usually value. or to generalize further, when you win the flip, it should harm your opponents, and when you lose the flip, it should help you. the idea here is that both modes are good, and this creates a novel form of card compaction; every card is both an interaction piece and a value piece, but you cant control which half you get. the random nature will be hopefully offset by the cards being generally strong, so either way you get good solid results when you cast the card most of the time.

this differs from the red/blue archetype, because red/blue will flip coins more often, will care more about winning flips rather than getting value from win or lose, and notably has cards with triggered abilities that trigger when coins are flipped or when coin flips are won, which specifically wont be the case for white/blue. white/blue does not care about the coin flips themselves, it just uses them as pure card compaction, while red/blue's entire thing is cards that trigger when coins are flipped.

heres the main question: is this a good idea? does this sound like a fun, interesting, and novel archetype of deck to play? furthermore, is this too similar to the red/blue archetype? are they not unique enough? id love some opinions on this. the answer is obviously "make some cards and try it out" but like. vibes alone, does this sound interesting, fun, and valuable enough to make cards for, or should i change it somehow, or scrap it altogether for a different concept?

furthermore, id love if anyone shared any ideas they might have for cards if theyre so inclined! the cards would be templated something like "flip a coin. if you won, [interact with you opponent]. if you lost, [do value (make tokens, gain life, draw cards, untap permanents, etc etc etc)]." to make the cards fun and cohesive, the cards should probably have related abilities for each mode, ie "if you won, tap two permanents an opponent controls" and "if you lost, untap two permanents you control" yknow something in that flavor and vibe. im blanking a little on ideas for cards, so if anyone is so inclined to share their thoughts, id love to hear it! most suggestions for the set have made it into the current product or future plans in one way or another, so its very worthwhile :)

thank you for reading my big long ramble teehee im glad to finally have put a lot of these thoughts into words

[goqmir]

here at tumblr goqmir we want to push the boundaries of magic the gathering sets. and that includes a blue/red coin flipping archetype whose main creature type is pooltoys

[goqmir]

The symbols for the five factions of Marenrow! from left to right, the Etenshi Utopia, Farnettle Reef, Indau Doctrine, Symar Underground, and Zaikan Delegation. each faction is comprised of two individual color pair groups working together, and the faction symbols are used as watermarks for each two-color card in my custom Magic set Marenrow: City of Secrets!

[goqmir]

in Marenrow, you may come across a shoddy junkyard clubhouse refuge or two with a pugnacious motley crew waiting inside, many with mechanical devil horns embedded in their heads. not to worry! those are just the Vindicar Fiends, a cantankerous group of ne'er-do-well outcasts who love to hang out, get paid, and make mechanical devices out of junk and scrap. here's a peek at the signpost draft uncommons in the red/black Vindicar color pair archetype in Marenrow: City of Secrets. They love to make artifact tokens, especially ones with different names to trigger the new ability word Fiends' Hoard!

Thank you to @bittenrabbit, @ratking-usurper, @wolfgirlguts, and @fencepostmagpie for contributing to the design of the black/red archetype, and @devilcat3d for co-creating the cards and so much more behind-the-scenes work!

[goqmir]

here at goqmir labs, we are creating a set that cares about rad counters in blue/green. its follower color pair, green/red, therefore cares about removing rad counters from yourself for profit :3 (among other kinds of counters). check out these awesome irradiated green/red draft signposts <3

(cards as always heavily contributed to by my co-creater @devilcat3d)

[goqmir]

hey mtg besties... what if i told u the archetype for black/green in my custom magic set was doing interesting and fun things with soulbond :3333 pretty hard to believe huh......

(as always, this card was contributed to heavily by my co-creator @devilcat3d)

[goqmir]

just realized that regardless of whether it makes sense in the world or not i just kind of dont wanna draw humans! so theyre just not gonna be in the set. like yeah the furries are very humanoid which kind of raises some questions about why humans arent there when the furries all have humanoid characteristics. and like yeah any planeswalkers that visit are gonna stick out like a sore thumb. but the thing is if i have to make a Daring Trickster Rogue and hes just some guy instead of a fox i think id lose it. maybe humans are here but theyre just so rare (or far away) that we dont see them. whatever. its furry world

[goqmir]

as a follow-up to this post i made a while back, here's some of the preliminary alpha version cards for the white/blue Welthane "coin control" archetype in Marenrow: City of Secrets, my custom Magic set! The idea behind the archetype is casting spells which have two different effects, making the cards have valuable effect compaction, but it's a 50/50 chance (based on a coin flip!) which effect you get. The white/blue group, the Welthane, are meant to be a group of people who are subordinate to the blue/red group, the Midnu; as the Midnu's archetype in the set is caring about flipping coins (specifically containing the lines "whenever you flip a coin" and "whenever you win a coin flip" on them), we decided that the Welthane archetype should also flip coins, just for a radically different purpose! :D

The wording on Journeyman Morphmage might sound a bit odd, but my co-creator @devilcat3d and I decided that one of the best ways to allow white/blue to synergize with itself and the spells that it wants to cast without stepping into the blue/red archetype of caring about when coins are flipped is to instead care about when spells flip coins on cast! Rather than amass value by having triggered abilities care about coin flips in general, the white and blue archetype will trigger abilities when cards that flip coins are cast, which will likely lead into many interesting and unique ways to recur or reuse coin flip spells! Imrir here, the Welthane guard-sphinx, will likely be one of the only uses of Rebound in the set as a way to power-up and synergize the white/blue archetype.

I'd love to know your opinions on the cards so far! The original post about the white/blue color pair archetype had a large number of responses, many of whom were very interested in the development of the cards, so I'd love to know how you all feel about these so far :) A few days ago I was feeling fairly uncertain about the white/blue Welthane archetype, but after the work Wren and I put in today I feel like the color pair is on much firmer footing ^w^

[goqmir]

one of the last things i wanna kind of solidify about the mtg custom set setting before i start on any cards are the creature types being used here and which are associated with what color pair group. ive talked before about wanting artifact creature pooltoys (name pending) associated with the red/blue artifacty artificer group but that kind of leaves a lot of creature types open. ive been thinking of making them all animals like its furry world too but its kinda hard to commit to that. i think ill incorporate yoshis in the set too (maybe literally making the creature type "Yoshi") but i might not put them in any one particular color pair or group and just kind of let them fade into the background maybe. i think it would be fun to have Birds be a common creature type in the blue/green radiation counter archetype group as like, plague doctors and radiation engineers, with their mutated red/green test subjects probably using the Mutant and Beast creature types.

if anyone is so inclined, are there any creature types youd like to see represented in a set in furry world? what about if its a less pure furry world (that could have some humans, merfolk, devils, etc)? im not really sure what exactly to do here and im more taking shots in the dark.

[goqmir]

here's a gallery of each of the signpost draft uncommons for Marenrow: City of Secrets! each color pair has an in-set name and archetype. each color pair has access to two uncommons that are intended to be stronger than most uncommons and prod a limited player into drafting that color pair. each pair gets a legendary creature and a nonlegendary spell!

organized by color, the archetypes are as follows:

Midnu (blue/red) coin flipping! flip coins to make value, and win flips to turn the tides of battle.

to see more (there are many more!) keep reading below the cut :)

Welthane (white/blue) coin control! by compacting cards to have both interaction and value modes, they are twice as efficient! but watch out, the mode is selected by a coin flip!

Calypere (green/blue) radiation counters! mill your opponents and damage them for each nonland card milled, destroying them on two fronts.

Pyrzai (red/green) counter removal! feed counters on permanents you control or yourself to Catharsis abilities for value.

Rendaia (black/green) graveyard soulbond! pair creatures together to buff them, but reap even more rewards when their partner dies to make your creatures powerful threats.

Darkata (blue/black) milling spells! whenever an instant or sorcery is put into a graveyard, you will generate little portions of value! mill, sling spells, and discard to win the game little by little.

Yutaxa (white/black) crime! interact with your opponents' stuff to make your own permanents happy! control the game's pace and drain down your opponents.

Learyu (green/white) enchantment token aggro! use the new Wisp tokens to build and board and attack down with it quickly before an opponent can build up theirs.

Atrynn (red/white) squad! pay heavily into squad costs using treasures to build a powerful army.

and finally, Vindicar (black/red) artifact tokens! use the Fiends' Hoard ability to pay off having many artifact tokens of the same name, then sacrifice them for valuable momentum.

[goqmir]

wren and i spent so much of the day today coming up with the 15 group names for the custom mtg set and i think theyre really good and amazing!!! the last thing to solidify is what theyll be called other than groups-- they cant be guilds like ravnica's, or clans or anything. theres 5 three-color main groups, which each contain two subgroups, a "leader" subgroup that controls a "follower" subgroup. im not sure if these 3 groups (main, leader, follower) all need different descriptor names (like guild) or what. much to think about as i drift off to sleep. if anyone has any ideas lemme know <3

[goqmir]

i've had this draft archetypes poster made up for my custom Magic set Marenrow: City of Secrets a while, but mh3's archetypes being announced reminded me of it so i figured it would be fun to post :D all of this is somewhat subject to change but these are the general idea for the draft archetypes and what each color pair will be doing in the set!

you can kind of see the "color pairs working together in groups of two" vibe here a bit more clearly too! each row of the poster represents one of the five factions, with the leader (or "corpus") groups on the left, and the follower (or "partisan") groups on the right. each of the corpus color pairs are enemy colors, and each is meant to have a more simple and pure mechanic, while the partisan groups are allied colors whose mechanics are meant to be more derivative of their corpus's.

[goqmir]

here is the very first mythic rare ever created for Marenrow: City of Secrets! fitting that it's the Midnu, the namesake grand machine that the squeaky pooltoy-inspired Vinyllids are creating! they are artificers, researchers, and inventors that run the Servants of the Midnu, the blue and red color pair group in Marenrow. their opaque machinations lead them to developing this great mechanism, but even many of them do not know what it will do when it is finally turned on; they just know it will change the city of Marenrow forever.

as always, huge credit to @devilcat3d for helping me design this card bottom to top!

[goqmir]

im making a ref sheet for the Marenrow vinyllids! :3 it looks pretty good so far, i have a fullbody front and back so far, and i just finished an outfit for the generic midnu vinyllid with a lab coat and an artificer's hand :D im probably gonna make a vinyllid rogue with a cloak next and maybe a third example outfit too? plus im gonna show off just a bit of the inner endoskeleton and pocket in their tail, and write a bit of notes on how they work, how theyre created, etc :3 its gonna be really cool and its turning out great so far! anyone can use the awesome ref to make their vinyllid Marenrow-sona teehee

[goqmir]

i had a really fucking good name for a vinyllid (in-universe pooltoy) character in Marenrow today but i FORGOT IT!!! i think it was like. five letters long and kinda corny but in a cute and charming way. like it had something to do with pooltoys or science but i dont remember how. anyway dammit i wish i remembered it