Hello and welcome back to Magic Project: Omega!

Sorry for the late post, real life does what real life does, but the show must go on!

Today we are going to be continuing on working on the Common instants and sorceries for each color, this time looking at blue.

Much like white, there were some interesting challenges that came about with how the cards came about, but I did have a bit of an easier time for a few reasons.

Let’s take a look!

Design Approach

Much like white, blue had no sorceries at Common in ABU, and even in Edge of Eternities there wasn’t any sorceries at Common, which really shocked me because blue is often associated with being an instant and sorcery color.

Despite that, much like white I decided to go with five instants and one sorcery at Common, though there is a bit of a cheeky workaround when we get to it.

Also like white, for the most part I decided that I would be going pretty neutral with how I designed the instants and sorceries, with a couple of nods to the archetypes of the set without being slavish to them as a whole.

When looking at ABU for reference, there were a lot of counter spells, including actual Counterspell, which also led to an interesting crossroads in how many counter spells do I include at Common.

I decided that I should do two, and the reason for that is because blue has been given a lot more tools to deal with things rather than pure counter magic over the years, and I wanted to give those other mechanics the spotlight.

I will say that there is a Counterspell counter part at Common, and it can potentially be pretty strong though I think I managed to keep it from being too broken.

As far as the other cards, I decided to also make reference to another card that debuted in ABU, one that has seen all sort of variations over the years that also happens to be the sorcery that has a bit of a cheeky way to cast it as an instant, and may even benefit you if you do decide to wait.

There are also references to enchantments that were in ABU that I don’t think would make clean references if they were made as enchantments for this set, but I do think having them as temporary effects is very interesting and can promote some interesting game play choices.

I was even able to include a combat trick amongst these cards, but its more of a removal spell that can be played during combat, but also has a bit of an interesting way that it can play with one of the archetypes in particular.

Cards

Here’s what I came up with!

While this also had some challenges, it wasn’t as difficult of a time as I had when making the white cards. It really helped that blue can play around with a few different things rather than mostly just combat tricks at Common like white has.

To start with Absorb Power, I was inspired by Power Sink to have a counter spell that relied on how much mana you put it, but also encouraged you to pay more mana to get more value from it. You can definitely pay 0 for X to discard two cards, which doesn’t exactly play well for any of the blue archetypes, but can potentially be used as a splash for three colored decks.

Siren’s Shriek was an interesting take on the original Siren’s Call because while the original was a complete combat hate card, this one is a combat punisher card that replaces the creatures with defenders. With the way the card is worded though, you can use this one yourself if you want to potentially get a lot of defenders in play for the Defender archetype of the set.

Swipe is an instant speed one turn version of Steal Artifact, nothing too crazy going on here. The reason I wanted this as a one turn thing rather than a complete control is that complete control would be something for the Rare or Mythic slots, which I only have so many of, and an Uncommon version of the effect would be too high of a mana cost for my liking.

Phantasmal Shift is in a very similar boat to Swipe in that it is a temporary version of Phantasmal Terrain in that it changes a land’s type for a turn. This can be used as a way to potentially shut off the Legendary Duals in the set as well as potentially make colors awkward for an opponent or help you fix yours for a turn as needed.

Counterform is one I am really happy with since it is a version of Counterspell, but it has the upside in letting you potentially cast an instant or sorcery from your hand. Hopefully it isn’t too strong for the set at Common, but I do think it rides the line of being strong for a Common.

Bounce was a fun card for me to make because one, there hasn’t been a card named Bounce and I wanted to have one named that, and two it was a take on Unsummon that could be used in the early game to bounce a creature at sorcery speed and draw a card, or in the mid to late game as a way to bounce a creature at instant speed and then draw three cards. A bit pushed potentially, but one that I think can serve well at Common.

While it wasn’t as hard to do as the white instants and sorceries, there were still some difficulties getting this done, but it did get done.

Next time we return to Magic Project: Omega, we will be talking about black instants and sorceries at Common, which should hopefully be a bit easier to work with.

Thank you for reading, see you all next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual