#pokemonmtg

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Finally got around to updating the color-pair archetypes photo! Ground and Rock swapped colors, and Steel has moved a little bit into Red, but remains mostly Artifacty colorless.

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Public access to the set

Hey everybody! So, after lots of work figuring out how to do this, I think I finally found a way to publicly host the set file. It’s at https://nofile.io/f/FYomYzedy5C/Pokemon+Set.zip.

That zip file contains the XML and image files needed for Cockatrice, as well as the Magic Set Editor file for the set itself, and the set icon (if that’s even needed). Here’s the how-to for importing a custom set into Cockatrice: https://github.com/Cockatrice/Cockatrice/wiki/Custom-Cards-&-Set

You can also go to http://www.planesculptors.net/set/pokemon-cube to see the set in its entirety.

@youknowwhatscrewyou, apologies for the delay, but here you go!

[pokemonmtgcube]

Tribeless Spells Post #5: Just for Instants. Many of the instants and sorceries in the cube have flashback, both to be more valuable in a limited and for flavor, because in Pokemon most moves are used repeatedly. For the most part these represent Pokemon moves, but a few like Sturdy represent a temporary ability.

Wake-Up Slap is mostly a removal spell, but I love that in a pinch it can be used to slap a tapped creature awake to attack or block. Mimic is one of my favorite spells because it’s so simple, and I am surprised there isn’t an existing card that does it.

Quash and Power Trick are simple combat spells, but much less effective once the opponent knows they’re, so if the mana is available and the card is still in the graveyard they’ll probably be much more cautious in combat. Smokescreen, Detect, and Protect are a cycles of Fogs, with the last two somewhat classic Fog effects, but Smokescreen is a reference to Darkness, and in true Black form, it only protects you and nothing else.

EDIT: I missed Sucker Punch! I’m not sure how, but I have now added it to the proper post. I love the flavor, and while it isn’t exactly a Black effect, I added it to the cost to make a reference to the Dark type of the original move, as well as to provide the Ghost archetype with a way to “block” even when their creatures can’t.

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Tribeless Spells Post #8: Stone and Sorcery. Our last batch of cards for the whole cube! Next week will be pretty minor, I’m going to make a sort of “information gathering” post or two about a major change I’ve been considering, and try to collect feedback. I may end up making a strawpoll or something after explaining the pros and cons, so we will see. Thanks again to everyone who’s been looking at these, I really appreciate it! Have a good weekend!

Frisk and Thief both affected artifacts on the battlefield before, but I realized that once an artifact resolves, Black usually can’t affect it in current Magic. So I came up with these versions instead, which I like much more. Frisk has a kind of built-in cycling effect that makes it either a narrower Duress or a Gitaxian Probe as consolation. Thief is basically a specific Praetor’s Grasp, inspired by Thada Adel.

Perish Song is the cube’s Wrath of God effect, and the only way to get rid some of the creatures with Shroud, or that can’t take noncombat damage. It was originally White, but between the art and the effect, Orzhov felt like the way to go. Plus the Ghost archetype doesn’t have as many creatures as others, so it relies on spells and tokens a lot, and has death triggers which this spell can take advantage of.

This last cycle shows that I should have called this “Tribeless Spell Week” because you don’t cast Lands, but it’s not too bad. Plus I believe each of these were covered during their tribe’s week except Safari Zone. Or they would have, except I changed the types!! So these were first an homage to Gen 1 locations. During Water week I noted that it didn’t feel fair for what was then the Seafoam Islands to make a Water creature in the mono-Blue archetype, and I was on to something when I changed it to Dratini.

So I actually looked at what color-pairs would want these lands, and the balance was way off. So where I have ended up now is changing each of the cards to an important location in a game (two gen I, two gen III, and one gen V) and now I’ve covered the color pairs equally. I still have an homage to Gen 1, with Power Plant creating a Pikachu! I finally found a way to get the most iconic Pokemon into the cube without making an unevolved card.

Lastly, Safari Zone! This is kind of a mini-game where you go “hunt” for a creature, and in true Safari Zone fashion, a lot of the time it will get away from you. But with enough persistence and time, eventually you can catch one!

[pokemonmtgcube]

Tribeless Spells Post #7: What is the Sorcery? Last day of the week! And a bit of post overload as I play catch up. 4 in one day! Just like the instants, most of the sorceries have flashback for both function and flavor. Rather then always cost-upgrade them like the instants, since the sorceries are more limited in their usability, the Flashback costs either flip color at same cost, or cost up by 2 in the same color. Detailed descriptions under the cut!

As you should certainly know by now, the cube includes tons of references to real Magic cards and Lingering Spirits is one of the most direct. Lingering Souls is a very strong Magic card, so I did cost up the flashback a little bit to try to balance it (and to match the others), but I think the fact these tokens can’t usually blocks balances it enough. Haze is in here to “eliminate all stat changes” like in the games, and taking off +1/+1 counters is one of Black’s cube themes. Blue has plenty of “messing with counters” effects, so the flashback makes sense, and fitting together in Psychic is perfect.

So here is, in my opinion, the biggest color-pie break I made: A Red spell that can destroy enchantments. Now to be fair, this is a very Red way to do it. Smashing an equipment on it however, is squarely in current Red’s color pie so no worries there, although destroying a Mega Equipment is a very strong effect. You smack the creature so hard it knocks the enchanting effect right off of it. Hex isn’t one of my favorites, and while I like the effect fine, I could see replacing the card once Ultra Sun/Moon give me new effects to create.

Rapid Spin is supposed to do the same thing it does in the games, get rid of any Spikes effects currently cursing you. But, since Spikes effects are only 4 cards in 720, we needed a way to make the effect a little more relevant, so it also spins all the negative auras off your Pokemon. Still, this isn’t a huge portion of the card effects, so I gave it a rare instance of Cycling, just so it isn’t a dead card in hand.

Magnitude was originally Earthquake, but that’s already a Magic card name, and as Earthquake it did a static 4 damage. While thinking of how I could change the name, I came across the fact that Magnitude did random damage, and how do we often represent scaling effects in Magic? With X mana! So the light bulb went off, and now Magnitude is one of my favorite interpretations of a Pokemon effect. Plus you get to name your X value by saying “Magnitude 6!” and shaking the table, so that’s fun. Also I like to call the flashback damage the aftershocks.

Focus Energy is pretty simple, it lets your Pokemon “critical hit” for double damage, but the opponent knows it is coming, since they saw your creature “use Focus Energy” before its next attack. Flatter/Swagger are just a color-shifted Traitorous Instinct and scaled-up Mark of Mutiny. We haven’t seen Threaten effects in Black before, but I think it makes sense due to the betrayal flavor, gaining control effect, and haste being in Black’s color pie.

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The Ground-Rock proposal.

So this post is about something I’ve been considering for awhile, a huge change to the cube: trading two types’ color associations. This would affect every card with a reference to either type, which is a pretty huge number. Rock is currently Red-Black, Rakdos; and Ground is Green-White, Selesnya. I originally chose these color pairs because Rock seemed more offensive, and Ground more defensive. There are a few flavor and mechanical breaks with the way this is handled currently, though, as detailed below.

Groudon is the primary Legendary Ground creature, but it must be Red for both Ruby flavor and its Fire boosting effect. For this reason, it never goes in a Ground deck. Also, Magnitude is great as a Red X spell which deals damage to each creature without flying. In the games, this is a Ground attack, but since the cube currently has Ground as a Green-White archetype, the spell can’t be tribal and just has to be a tribeless Red spell.

Next is the Flying issue. Green can damage and destroy flying creatures, while Red more often damages any creature or “all creatures without flying.” In the Pokemon games, Ground attacks can’t damage Flying Pokemon, and Rock attacks are super effective. If lined up directly with the games, the Cube should have Rock in Green and Ground in Red. Also, Brock is a protagonist to most people but currently in the Black-aligned tribe, while Giovanni is an antagonist in every sense, yet currently in the White-aligned tribe. As Giovanni is a criminal, and all about amassing power, a swap of these two character’s colors would make sense.

While those are compelling reasons to make the switch, there are a few problems in the cube, the reasons I haven’t committed to the change yet. Torterra currently is a mono-Green creature with GW activation, in a cycle with a mono-Red creature with RG activation (Infernape), and a mono-Blue creature (Empoleon) with 1U activation. After the change, it would have to be either Gruul or Golgari, so this would be awkward balance.

Sandstorm could no longer deal damage as a Green/White enchantment, so the flavor would likely change to either -1/-1 counters (very powerful on a shroud enchantment) or +1/+1 counters on the protected types, also fairly strong and a little weaker in flavor. Why is the Sandstorm strengthening the natives more and more?

Finally, this change would cause Regirock to mess up its own cycle the most of all. Currently, Regirock in RB, Regice in UW, Registeel in Colorless and Regigigas in Green make a perfect cycle. With this change, the cycle would be UW, GW, G, and C. Registeel could accommodate the changes a little, by becoming R as Steel has some affinity there, but then we’d still have a double overlap in W even if Regigigas the giant natural land-shaper changed to mono-Black.

So as you can see, neither situation is perfect and a lot of pros and cons have to be weighed. What I’d like here is a discussion, if possible, of feedback on this idea. Does anyone have ideas of another way to do this, or feel strongly about the change or remaining the same? I have created a Strawpoll for this if people would like to simply click rather than type an answer here: https://strawpoll.com/facw4g21.

[pokemonmtgcube]

Steel Post #3: Electrum (A Silver-Gold Alloy). Today we hit the last of the color Steel creatures (4 more colorless coming tomorrow), all gold! And 5 of them are Legendary. A lot of these have higher-than-average converted mana costs, but luckily Steel has an affinity for artifacts. So while drafting, Steel decks often take other tribes mana rocks for artifact synergy and as a kind of hate-pick option, to accelerate paying for their high costs. And as usual, Metal Coat and Steel Gym help Steel play a 5-color deck smoothly if those types of cards are chosen.

Escavalier and Scizor have been Gruul from the very beginning, because they just felt Gruul. This clashed with Bug’s Simic coloring, and at the time Steel denoted no colors, so I didn’t know what to do. Finally I decided that Steel would have a Red tint for some creatures, and that has worked out since. Escavalier’s design recently changed for the first time, but Scizor has gone through many versions. I knew I wanted Scizor to have Double Strike, because Double Hit is one of its classic abilities, and at one point it gained +1/+0 and trample for attacking. Since it has “Metal” in the ability name, I thought it might be a good opportunity for a tribal effect, and here we are.

Escavalier’s ability was classic black, the Sengir Vampire effect under the name Fell Stinger plus first strike. This effect is perfect flavor for what Fell Stinger does, but brought up two Magic problems. First Strike is common on creatures with lances, but Escavalier has incredibly low speed, so that felt wrong. Next, Fell Stinger’s effect is purely Black, and I couldn’t justify making a Bug-Steel creature Black. So I moved Fell Stinger to Drapion, which has been a mostly strong fit (Drapion isn’t actually Bug like the move, but it doesn’t fit anywhere else.)

So what this started actually ended up in a cascade of other changes, to maintain the balance. Without Fell Stinger or First Strike, I was free to move Escavalier to Izzet like I wanted, for balance between it and Scizor. Then I had to move an Izzet creature to Gruul to take its place, so I moved Volcarona over (Green uses -1/-1 and +1/+1 counters more than red, so that felt fine too). Then for Escavalier’s ability, I stole Omastar’s Shell Armor which was already same color and felt like good flavor. Now I had to make up an effect for Spike Cannon to use on Omastar, and I like where it landed, which you will see next week!

Aegislash and Magearna used to both be Orzhov, but Magearna got changed to Red after I made the “Steel likes Red best” change, and then the Black made no sense. To match this, the top ability was changed to only creatures you control, and it gives “Soul Heart” are more protective connotation than the morbid “stealing souls of enemies” flavor from Black. I also think Red makes more sense for her color palette.

Jirachi and Solgaleo were just explained a few weeks ago, so I will skip since they had no changes. Cobalion was changed to Gruul in place of Terrakion, who is now Golgari. I had no musketeers in that color pair before, which was a little crazy since their Sacred Sword ability gets so much better in a deck that creates -1/-1 counters on its own. But Cobalion had its hexproof changed to Vigilance, both for balance reasons and because it matches the art perfectly.

Lastly, Dialga. This one hasn’t changed in awhile, but its ability lined right up with my decision to align steel with Red. Palkia is a Water Dragon, so I just picked Red as the opposite before, but it really lines up nicely now. As a 7 drop, I think the power level is okay for that effect, but testing will tell if that is correct or not.

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Items Post #3: Pokeball Fever! This post is basically just three cycles, so it has fairly short explanations. While I was designing Pokeballs for this cube I was thinking how to translate “capture wild Pokemon” and “store and release owned Pokemon” into Magic terms. At this point, almost all items had dual modes, so I figured I would have an ability for each. Tutoring seemed logical, using your item to “catch” a creature you don’t have, then I thought about throwing your Pokeball out to release the creature. What would that look like in Magic? I decided on an almost Aether Vial-y effect, putting the creature into play.

For the first cycle, Pokeball through Master Ball, it could be any type of creature, with certain limitations. Pokeballs aren’t as good at catching more powerful Pokemon as Ultra Balls, as we all know. So I decided to limit based on converted mana cost, representing the scaling up of each item. Then to top it off, the Master Ball could get anything. Since this is Magic though, it had to be balanced, so you still have to pay the cost. You get around paying the “1 over” for throwing the creature into play, and you’re basically giving your creature flash and ignoring the colored costs.

For the second cycle, I started out by caring about creature types. I quickly realized I would either be unable to cover all 18 types equally, or have a very awkward fit across 6 cards. Instead, I decided to use the colors as a basis. This was to cover a few difficult parts of the cube. If I’m playing Blue-White Ice and I draft the Green-White Abomasnow, how can I play it? The Mana Rocks, Gyms and Town Map are all intended to cover this area, but the PokeBalls help here too. By playing the creature regardless of its other colors, you can use your creatures even if you don’t have the colored mana for them yet. But, since it’s only one card in your deck and only one use when you play it, you can’t rely on it so much that you just draft every good card that happens to share a color.

Finally, the Snag Ball. My only reference to the Pokemon Colosseum games, and the odd Ball of the group. Rather than care about any of your cards, this item just borrows an opponent’s living creature, or steals one of their fainted ones! I thought it was a little too far to search your opponent’s hand or library for creatures like a reverse Master Ball, so I went in a more off-cycle direction, and I like where it landed.