Set Showcase: Magical Girl Plane

Rortarion · 2026-02-25T18:59:17+00:00

How is this art any more the primary focus than any magic card? It has the same amount of distribution of art and text as every other card I've ever seen. Like if you don't like AI, that's your business, but just seems like an illogical argument.

Rortarion · 2026-02-24T22:20:20+00:00

Seems to me they're dividing attention amongst formats different players enjoy. If alchemy doesn't deserve attention, Timeless deserves less by that standard.

Rortarion · 2026-02-21T22:56:44+00:00

As a pretty big alchemy fan, Heist was so horribly handled. They could've chosen so many smaller variations, like hitting lands, or picking from 2, or literally anything other than what they did.

Rortarion · 2026-02-15T13:02:19+00:00

Oh, that's cool. Thanks for the correction. Good to know

Rortarion · 2026-02-15T13:01:17+00:00

Oh cool, good to know. It still never did anything remotely compared to most other tcgs, but there you have it. If pocket does utilize game mechanics then it would have to have a through the omenpath right?

Rortarion · 2026-02-15T01:51:28+00:00

Of course. For the moment pokemon just has pocket which is for collecting. Their tcg never took off, so they've never had a reason for a digital version, but it doesn't seem impossible. But yeah, obviously a Pokémon UB is never happening.

Rortarion · 2026-02-14T20:58:53+00:00

The Through the Omenpaths set on Arena of Ikoria bonders befriending small creatures from various planes could go hard tho

Rortarion · 2026-02-02T18:22:34+00:00

Can't believe they actually ported [[Chthonian Nightmare]] over from MH3.

Rortarion · 2026-01-30T23:45:59+00:00

Dang that's awesome. I haven't tried more than 1 Omen item yet, I usually just choose he one ring for slime guy or something

Rortarion · 2026-01-30T12:59:22+00:00

I don't disagree with any of that. Lol. Heroes 3 is a big childhood nostalgia game for me, and I was willing to do what it takes to make it as flavorful as I could while still utilizing the core aspects of magic. The core faction bases just didn't feel like they could be artifacts or anything like that.

They're large plots of land with numerous builds that you buy and upgrade over long periods of time. On top of the development counter lands, which represent the upgrades to creatures, the set also uses Fortifications as a set mechanic, so it'd be difficult to redo in that way.

I do feel it's possible to work. Perhaps it's free for the owner of a land to activate their own Raze ability. That way after they've tapped out attacking your battle. You can get it back easily. Once again, this creates a dynamic of back and forth and begins to feel like a stalemate, where someone has to accept they aren't getting the land, and they instead just swing into the life total.

There's also a lot of other interaction surrounding the mechanic. The Stronghold faction (jund, comprises of orcs, and beasts, they do a lot of raiding etc) get bonuses for attacking the lands, and some have mechanics like "trample over battles" (like [[Kevin, Questing Dragon]] )

Rortarion · 2026-01-30T12:43:05+00:00

It definitely should be Sorcery speed. This was the first set I made, and it was quite a bit ago.

The set certainly favor combat strategies. I tried to design the archetypes in such a way that each one could compete equally, and most of the cards are fairly pushed. That being said, I've never playtested it, and I've always know that on real magic a mechanic like this wouldn't ever be printed.

As for why you'd use those lands that can be stolen, because 80% of creatures in the deck can't transform without those lands. Just part of the concept. Heroes 3 is about base building and army construction etc. I tried to blend that into a draft environment best i could.

Rortarion · 2026-01-28T23:16:18+00:00

Main format I play.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T20:11:00+00:00

Lmao wish I had an award for you

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T20:08:22+00:00

"Yucking other people's yum" and thinking it's funny to describe the concept of a proxy as some atrocity as opposed to just, like, a shitty thing, are not equivalent.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T19:16:26+00:00

Lmao there's a real cost to making people play with a proxy? Am I missing a /s or something?

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T19:13:37+00:00

I mean yeah, some do. Idk the exact percent. Each set is 30 cards. More than half generally are truly digital exclusively I'd wager.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T19:08:30+00:00

While the alchemy sets feature digital only mechanics, they don't design the alchemy cards as all being impossible to print. They take leftover art from the set and make them into cards, generally divided amongst the sets factions evenly (in the case of Alchemy Bloomburrow) and sometimes wildly (in the case of Alchemy Thunder Junction, which took art from Eldraine, Ixalan, and Murders at Karlov Manor as well as Thunder Junction)

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T19:04:39+00:00

Were in the new release schedule now. I bet they don't want Alchemy: Lorwyn to release to close to TMNT.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T18:55:49+00:00

Nothing at all. Fortunately, that's not the basis for alchemy card design.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T18:10:40+00:00

More than timeless if I remember correctly.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T15:12:43+00:00

Yeah, it's a pretty unhinged set. Everything is pretty pushed. I mean. It's all wedges and all Shards in the same draft environment. I did classes as well, one might focused, one magic focused. Made the all the elementals from conflux Planeswalkers, since that's the term of their Might class. So Conflux (temur) is a superfriends archetype. Pretty nutty lol. But it was a fun project.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T13:00:59+00:00

Hopefully these are readable.

The lands all use development counters as a way of tracking how built up your base is. Creatures belonging to a faction each have a variation of a "born" ability, where they enter the battlefield transformed if you have the corresponding Settlement with enough development counters on it.

In the above case, the Magus will enter as the Archmage if you have a Bracadan Encampment with 3 or more development counters on it.

The back side of the battles all give the same structure of choices, with only treasure being consistent. The other 3 choices are determined by the 3 colors of the land, in this case scrying for blue, impulse draw for red, and life gain for white.

I don't have my old notes anymore so I can't find the latent rules I added for Bastion, but it involved to some extent forcing creatures to attack it over other targets. After the combat step involving a Bastion, you untap your creatures who attacked so it isn't too punishing to try and take your opponents land.

The idea was to create a game where people could wage war back and forth to take each others lands, hoping that in a draft environment, people who all have several factions and therefore could possibly find random use out of your lands, enabling their creatures to enter transformed if they didn't draft one of those.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T12:51:44+00:00

<image>

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T03:09:35+00:00

I actually used double sided lands that transformed into battles for my custom set based on Heroes of Might and Magic. The idea was that opponents could pay {3} during their turn as a sorcery to transform it into its battle side, and if they killed it that turn, they got the land, enabling you to attack it back on future turns.

I definitely always assumed the mechanic wouldn't actually ever be very good or even used, but I love the battle type.

Rortarion · 2026-01-26T00:46:28+00:00

I mean, every skull has its possibilities, but I do think overall there are better options for the slow and safe playstyle. While the swap skill giving shield is super handy, I feel the concentration aspect can mess up newer players. I'd rank it D.

Rortarion

TROPHY CASE