Hello and welcome back to Magic Project: Omega!

We are continuing our journey into the Common creatures in each color by looking at the Common creatures in blue.

Like with white, I wanted to have four Common creatures that exemplified the main archetype of each color combination, and the fifth one to serve a general purpose.

The thing about blue is that in ABU a lot of blue cards are incredibly strong or incredibly weak, so the difficulty was finding the nice inbetween of strong enough for the set overall, but not busted to be a problem.

As with before, mana costs and creature types are very much subject to change.

Design Approach

As I did with white, I looked at the blue cards from Alpha to see what references I could make, direct or indirect, while also looking for ways to make some solid blue creatures. The archetypes for blue being Defender, Control, Spellslinging, and Big Mana Spells.

The difficulty comes in that blue’s creature pool in Alpha was not very ideal, with the better creatures being creatures like Lord of Atlantis where a Merfolk typal strategy could be used as a minor theme for the future. Otherwise, a lot of early blue creatures either are bad or don’t follow blue’s color identity anymore.

While I could justify having creatures have off color abilities in the name of being thematic to referencing Alpha, I think that referencing some of the spells would be a better way to go about it than the creatures, at least for the Common creatures.

The Common for Defender was pretty easy, especially since I could make a reference to water as a theme in blue overall while also hinting at a Merfolk subtheme later on.

The Common for Control sort of bleeds into some of the other Common creatures, so in order to make it unique amongst its counter parts I decided to give it some additional card draw.

The Common for Spellslinging also has a bit of bleed into Control, but cares more about you casting spells and it playing more into you being aggressive with it in a very blue sort of way.

The Common for Big Mana Spells is big reference to a card from Alpha that also happens to be a Merfolk that further cements the idea of having a Merfolk typal subtheme, which may have me work on a little more of a typal theme for each of the colors in the future.

The last Common is another obvious reference to a card that debuted in Alpha, and is a decently balanced version of the card it is referencing that it should be fine to include without too much trouble.

Cards

Here are the cards I ended up with!

I think a solid enough start, but there is definitely room for improvement. A lot of what the cards do fall into “generic blue things” and there is a lot of crossover in archetypes rather than helping to define an archetype in a lot of them.

Reef Wall is the card I think stands out as the most interesting design wise out of the five because it can prove to be a formidable blocker against aggressive decks because it lets you draw and discard.

Banisher Mage is a Unsummon on a creature and I think will probably change to better define it as the Control Common rather than a solid blue creature that can bounce a creature. I think the draw if you bounce something you control is interesting, but there are ways I think I can improve.

Feedback Wizard is a fun idea for a creature that uses something blue can do in tap other creatures and incentivizes you to play more instants and sorceries to not only tap creatures but trigger prowess to get itself bigger, another solid design in my opinion.

Geyser Enchanter I’m a little more iffy on being Common creature, more so because that much card draw on a Common is pretty strong. Not only that, but it also gets stronger the more you have in hand tends to be in Uncommon at minimum. There are ways I can make an Big Mana Spells at Uncommon, maybe a mana dork for instants and sorceries? This is most likely going to change, at the very least rarities in the future.

Countercaster is a nod to Counterspell, and I think one that can is pretty much what I wanted in terms of power level for the set. Something that is strong, but not broken. You get to have Counterspell on a creature, but the creature is weak and can only do it once per turn. Granted multiples make it more difficult, but that’s why the heavy blue mana cost for the card and its effects.

Definitely not as confident as I was in the white Commons I made, but I do think that there are nuggets of what I want and with some tweaks I think that these cards can be improved upon.

When we get to Magic Project: Omega in two weeks, we will be looking at the five Common black creatures and work them into the set.

See you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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