Hello and welcome back to Magic Project: Omega!

Now that we are beginning to get into the nitty gritty, what I wanted to do was start working on some Common creatures for each color, starting with white.

As a start I wanted to have four Common creatures that exemplified the theme of each archetype and one that could serve as a general purpose creature.

When I was working on them I realized that they came across as pretty strong, which is intended for the set, but I do realize that there may be some tweaks to get them a bit more balanced. I would rather have cards that are very strong and tune them down then have cards that are too weak and them overcompensate by making them broken.

The mana cost and creature types for the most part are subject to change.

Design Approach

When looking to design some Common creatures, I looked through cards from Alpha to see if there were some callbacks to other cards that I could make.

As it turns out, there were ways I could definitely make callbacks to the cards in Alpha while maintaining the archetypes that I have set up, which for white include Defenders, +1/+1 Counters, Knights, and Go Wide Aggro.

There was an easy reference I could make for the Defender Common, while also giving it access to an ability that isn’t often in white that shouldn’t break the color pie while also only affecting one creature.

The Common for the +1/+1 Counters plays into giving creatures +1/+1 counters when it enters while also giving a temporary ability until end of turn to creatures that have +1/+1 counters. I think that I could make it affect only one creature with +1/+1 counters, but like I said I can tune that down later.

Looking at the Knight Common doesn’t immediately seem like it has much synergy with the archetype, but what I wanted to do was have a way to make Knights much more frightening when they get stronger. However, based on how I worded the Uncommon signpost creature for white and black, I do need to change the wording to make it actually work.

The Go Wide Aggro Common was easy to make, and also provided a nice reference to a creature that is often associated with Alpha in white. It also helps that it can be a late game mana sink to make itself stronger.

When it came to the last Common white creature, I wanted to reference a cycle of cards that existed in Alpha in white. While I originally wanted to make a direct reference to that cycle of cards, I decided to instead bring it down to a more modern version of the effect while still being powerful in its own right.

Cards

Here are the cards that I ended up with!

Some interesting first steps that I do think are solid starting points that I can improve as necessary.

Benalish Paladin’s ability definitely warrants me to change the Uncommon Signpost for Knights, Chaos Knight, to read hexproof from black and white instead of protection in order for there to be synergy, but that comes with the territory.

I think Savannah Pride as a Common can work, especially since it is a 1/1 if you play it on turn one, only getting bigger if there are more and more creatures or you can dump mana into it.

Originally I had Ward Mage give protection from all colors and colorless, but thinking about how that is an incredibly strong effect for Common, I decided hexproof is a better substitute, especially since it can still allow you to cast some combat tricks, which further emphasizes that Chaos Knight should be changed to hexproof instead of protection.

Unicorn Rider seems fairly balanced to me, though the number of counters it gives out and the ability to give you creatures you control with +1/+1 counters can change if necessary.

Of the five, Holy Blacksmith is the cleanest design of them all and doesn’t seem to be too abusable while still providing a strong effect for the archetype, in my opinion.

There are some solid building blocks, but as with anything it can be improved, and I do appreciate any feedback you guys have!

Next time we visit Magic Project: Omega we’ll be taking a look at five Common blue creatures and have them work into the archetypes.

Next week will be the Magic Super Cube talking about The Dark, so be ready for that!

See you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual