Hello and welcome to Magic Project: Omega!

Today we are going to clarify a couple of things and talking about signpost Uncommons.

One thing I wanted to say that I completely forgot to mention was the size of the set. Since I’m not including any basic lands in the set, the size of the set is going to be smaller than what ABU originally was.

The full set is going to consist of 270 cards; 90 Commons, 100 Uncommons, 60 Rares, and 20 Mythic Rares.

The reason why is because while it would be fun to design a super massive set, 270 cards seems tenable for a solo designer/developer, especially for biweekly project.

Another thing I want to mention is that cards will change over time. I figure that the tenth blog of this project is when I will post any card updates. It can range from effects, mana cost, and card types.

I want to be able to update as I go on to help make the set better, especially after feedback from you all.

Since that is now clear, today we are going to be taking a look at some allied color signpost Uncommons.

Signpost Uncommons?

Yes. While ABU wasn’t intended to be drafted as we know it (and from what I can tell isn’t that fun of a draft), current sets for Magic are intended to be drafted.

While it does add in an additional bit of design challenges, it also helps give some direction to how I want to design cards.

I debated on whether or not to include multicolor cards, since the very concept of multicolor cards wasn’t introduced until Legends, I ultimately decided on adding multicolor cards because if this theoretical set were to be drafted, it’s better to have multicolor cards to help the draft.

What came next was trying to decide what each color pair did and how to design cards that would incentivize running those cards. I also have them all a blanket 1XY to make things simple, but that will probably change in the future.

I’ll discuss the allied pairs, the archetypes I’m planning to build for them, and the signpost Uncommons themselves.

White/Blue: Defenders Matter

When looking at the cards in ABU, one thing I did notice was that white and blue had a few Walls, and white even has Animate Wall in order to have your Walls able to attack.

I decided to play on that and make a card that makes your defenders better and incentivizes you to play defenders to draw cards. There will be ways to make your defenders to attack, but those will come with other cards.

I didn’t want to add it to this card, mostly because I didn’t want to overpack it with so many abilities.

Blue/Black: Control

Since white and blue is going on a defenders matter strategy, I wanted blue and black to take up the control slot in the set.

I wanted a card that had a Counterspell stapled to it, but having it just be a counter spell was sort of dull. Then I remembered that Frozen Shade was in ABU and that gave another dimension for the card.

So not only does it counter any spell by paying a blue, black and tap, but you get to also put a +1/+1 counter on it. I may add vigilance later, but I think that would make it too strong, at least in this current iteration.

Black/Red: Sacrifice Aggro

While some archetypes are going to be new, some are going to tread familiar ground.

Black and red tend to err on a sacrifice theme in many current sets, and I think that it is a solid base to build something out of.

I wanted something that made a bunch of tokens when you sacrifice a creature, which is why the number of tokens made is determined by power. This card can also sacrifice itself to make some tokens if necessary.

Red/Green: Big Mana Creatures

Speaking of aggro, looking at red and green in ABU, there are quite a few big creatures, so being able to get big creatures out on board is going to be the plan.

Having a mana dork with haste is something that does happen on occasion and can be pretty strong. To promote casting more creatures, using that mana to cast creatures gives it haste.

I didn’t want to restrict it to just being creatures, because another archetype in the set will have synergies with using a lot of mana, so I wanted the option to be open.

Green/White: +1/+1 Counters

If we want another familiar draft archetype, I wanted to have a dedicated counters strategy to be made available, and green and white seemed like it was the ideal choice.

Instead of getting counters on your creatures, I wanted something that gave benefits to creatures you controlled with +1/+1 counters.

This also benefits you if you are playing a much more aggressive strategy by giving your creatures evasion and untapping them to block on the crack back.

In Conclusion

I do think that these signpost Uncommons came out well, though the mana cost and a few keyword abilities may need some tweaks.

Like I said earlier, if you have any suggestions on improving the cards then please leave a comment, I am open to critiques and suggestions!

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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