#oneiria

[welcometo--world]

Brielfly, to metropolitanwolf, who was the only one to respond to my last post, you were right, congrats! Although yeah, they were pretty big hits, so it’s not exactly like I was digging deep to find lost gems. To respond to your criticism, I totally agree, the rootwalla is now a 1/1 in my files.

Also, as long as I’m taking care of business, I’d like to say hello my new followers of late. Welcome aboard!

Moving onward, I wanted to close out Madness week (or week and a half? Golly it’s been hectic) with one of Oneiria block’s major characters.

Because really, how could I possibly hope to make a set about dreaming without the Nightmare Weaver themself?

As I’ve discussed before, Oneiria (the name of the plane on which this block takes place) has a mind of its own. In some ways, it’s more accurate to say it is a mind of its own. Ashiok, at least in my personal headcannons, is a traveler with some history. Sure we’re familiar with their time on Theros, but it’s been stated by Creative that Theros is neither Ashiok’s home plane nor the first place they walked to, they just liked it there because the dreams of Therans were particularly vibrant.

I posit that Oneiria is Ashiok’s home plane, and growing up there is the reason that Ashiok is so accustomed to the workings of the surreal. Because blue encompasses a search for perfection through knowledge, and black encompasses a search for absolute power regardless of morality, their color combo makes the perfect calculating rival, and Ashiok’s rival is their entire home plane. After years, perhaps eons, of honing their skills, Ashiok returns home to test their mettle against the largest living nightmare they know.

We’ve never had a planeswalker without a mana cost before, so I guess this makes the first? I’ve never seen one designed by any of the other creators I follow, so I’m sure there’s room for improvement. I like the flavorful idea that when they’re in their home turf, Ashiok can “return to their roots” and not interact with the game in a way that the player (as a non-Oneirian) would expect.

First ability is inspired (loosely) by Dire Undercurrents. If you’re playing tons of madness, it can read “Play target card for its madness cost, draw a card.” If you’re not it can work kind of like “exchange target card in opponent’s hand for one they want less.” Second ability provides fuel for the third ability and also fuels more Madness cards. I like that again, it isn’t completely insular because you don’t need more Madness to use it, the third ability allows you to get back your discarded cards. Third ability is a direct callback to the original Ashiok card, because I wanted to make sure it was thematically similar. Not 100% sure that that works, but I wanted it to be expanded beyond just creatures, and I knew that if I used the word “cast” and “upkeep” then it would make interactions with permanents and sorceries kinda weird, so I included flash. Text spills over a little bit but that’s MSE’s templating, can’t do much about it.

If you’ve got any feedback, I’ll happily receive it. Tomorrow we’ll move back into Quariem for a little while and see how the Arena fares.

EDIT: In case you were confused, I use “they” and “their” intentionally instead of “he/her” and “his/hers” both in my writing and in my card templating. This is not a grammatical error.

[welcometo--world]

In honor of Earth Day I feel it necessary to give land some love, and what better a way than Oneiria block’s dreamscapes?

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit this is not like, a normal design, but at least it should be balanced. Nine times out of ten, Dreamscapes are built around returning lands to your hand (because the ephemberal nature of dreaming means you forget the places you’ve been etcetc) and since I had already done a cycle of karoolands I thought I’d give a throwback to Lotus Vale.

Say you play this on turn one. You can tap it for two, and play a 2/2. Next turn it won’t untap. So you’ll be stuck with one land for turn two, bummer. Turn three, it’ll untap again, and if you hit your land drop, you’ll now have access to four mana. Turn four, you’ll be down to three mana again. It alternates, which makes it a little wonky and not always ideal, but if you’ll plan it right you’ll be able to use the boost. It also miracles! So you play a basic on turn one. Turn two, you draw the Vales, return the basic to your hand to cheat it in. Because that’s “putting it onto the battlefield” and not “playing” it, you can just replay that basic during your main phase, so you’ll have access to three mana this turn. After that it interacts the same way as the example above.

On average, it produces one mana of any color each turn, which is quite good, but much like the mind, it works best in short bursts. I’d say that that lack of consistency compensates for its ability to fix any color, but it could still be too strong.