Sewers Under Kasprah – Ideas, Mechanics, & Themes

My next Magic set I began running with shortly after finishing Ruin of Seffala—that is, shortly after finishing the last card over a year ago.

Ruin of Seffala was meant to be a serious set that I thought I could be proud of. I would say the mishmash of tribal themes was a bit disjointed, and the mechanics were nonbos, such as the original idea of Toughlink (when the creature dies, you gain life equal to its toughness) being completely negated by Wither (as a creature that dies from -1/-1 counters has a Toughness of zero when it dies).

So, having learned that I was bad at "serious" sets, I thought I'd take a break and make something funny.

Since every videogame has a requisite sewer level, I decided to make a sewer-themed Magic set. After hemming and hawing over made up plane (or perhaps city) names, I have settled on Sewers Under Kasprah, or SUK.

Being a sewer theme, I wanted to come up with mechanics that were hilariously named, even if they were seriously designed. I kind of went for a top-down design, coming up with possible mechanic names first that would match a sewer (or rather plumbing) theme, and then tried to come up with mechanics that sounded like they fit the name.

So I'll start by showing off the five major new mechanics I designed. Each mechanic can be found in three colors, but I follow neither wedges nor shards; however, it does all balance out so each color gets exactly three new mechanics. I worked hard to theme them nice!

Naya, the aggro colors, get BACKUP.

Click to embiggen. Lots of cards this post!

Backup is fairly simple: it's kind of a triggered, moveable Vigilance. Whenever a creature with Backup attacks, you can untap it or any other attacking creature you like. Since the ability goes on the stack (unlike Vigilance), there is an opportunity to react to the trigger.

Since I have my own pseudo-Vigilance, I tried to not use too much real Vigilance. There are a few cases so far, but these are more used like bonuses, such as with Purgers' Bloodhounds here, so that you don't have to 'spend' your Backup trigger on the creature you're attacking with itself. Instances of Backup stack, as you can see with Shrieking Slug, which by itself has two instances of Backup.

Abzan, the colors of life and death, get DRAIN.

Drain is a well-known mechanic that only has this as an unofficial name, so I codified it here. Drain is another simple keyword that can be activated or triggered. When an instance of Drain X occurs, each opponent loses X life and you gain X life. We've seen this ability a million times in Black, and I decided the other colors of lifegain could use them as well. Here are a bunch of options, where you can have it tacked on to an Instant or Sorcery, as an activated ability, or as a triggered ability.

Temur, my favorite colors, get BURST, my favorite mechanic (which will likely always be the case).

Burst is more of a reminder word for an ETB effect. Burst always begin with "When this permanent enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice a land. If you do...", and then you get some bonus. I figured Temur would be great for this mechanic: Green is the color of putting extra lands into play; red is the color of short-term gain and high-risk, high-reward; and blue is the color of card draw, so you're likely to hit your land drops. Each instance of Burst always gives a fun different bonus, and depending on your strategy, you may not want to load up on them, or you may decide not to activate the bonus, since it is not mandatory.

Esper, the control colors, get PLUNGE.

Plunge is a keyword ability that kind of mixes and matches what blue and black do best, while inverting the fairness inherent to white. Plunge has you exiling the top card of your opponent's library (a slow mill plan if you wish), and you get to Scry X, where X is the converted mana cost of the exiled card. If you exile a land, bummer, and if you exile your opponent's eight-mana bomb, you get to really stack your deck.

Grixis, the colors of card advantage, get FLUSH.

Grixis has a very simple mechanic, that mixes the card advantage of red and blue with the graveyard shenanigans of black. You simply pay the Flush cost, exile the flushed card out of your graveyard, and you get to draw a card. The Flush cost usually scales, so the greater the CMC of the card, the smaller the Flush cost. Quite frankly, with its simplicity, I'm surprised there is not another mechanic already just like it (at least not that I could find).

With all of these three-color mechanics designed, I set to work making four-color clans. These are rarely 'tribes' because it's not so much a creature or class tribal set, but just in terms of story, there are five four-color factions.

Above the sewers, in Kasprah, there are gangs duking it out in a post-apocalyptic Seffala-meets-Kaladesh hellscape.

Below the sewers, we have the Survivors. Survivors are primarily intelligent creatures that have gone down into the sewers to escape the war-torn city above and try to live on slime. Survivors are most Homunculi, Mutants, and Orggs. These Survivors are mostly strangely-bred creatures that were raised to do the bidding of one faction or another above, but got away. Survivors make up the 'Artifice' slice of the color pie, meaning White, Blue, Black, and Red. They utilize the new mechanics of Plunge and Flush.

Heading down into the sewers to clean them out are the Purgers, mostly Humans and Dwarfs that form what might be thought of as the police state or armed forces of Kasprah. Their task is to clean out the nuisances of all living creatures in the sewers. I like to picture them as having flamethrowers. They take up the Aggressive colors of White, Black, Red, and Green, and use Backup and Drain as their mechanics.

The Scavengers are primarily Horrors that live in the sewers, feasting both on the flesh and the psyche of all the enter. Scavengers can be all manner of creatures that would naturally swim in the muck, including Merfolk, Cephalids, Fungi, Homarids, Leeches, Moles, Naga, Ooze, and Rats. Since they feast so well and live like kings in their watery domain, they take up the Growth portion of the color pie: White, Blue, Black, and Green. Their mechanics are Drain and Plunge.

The Beasts (the generic term here, not the creature type) make up the less-than-intelligent creatures that live in the sewers. More beef than brains, these creatures are big boys that chomp their prey to pieces. They can be Crocodiles, Basilisks, Jellyfish, Crabs, Fish, Krakens, Octopi, Frogs, Lizards, Slugs, Snakes, and Squids. I love variety in my beasties. They make up the Altruism slice of the pie (for lack of a better word, since they're generally too dumb for morals), with White, Blue, Red, and Green. Their mechanics are Backup and Burst.

Lastly, we have the Rebels. Above all, these are the guys the Purgers are really going after. The Rebels are the gangs that are going to war above, and use the sewers as ways to get around the city undetected. They've got the waterways mapped out, and even know how to lay traps for their foes. Rebels are mostly monstrous humanoid types, like Giants, Ogres, Orcs, Cyclopi, Minotaurs, and Gremlins. In their quest for destruction and anarchy, they make up the Chaos slice of the pie: Blue, Black, Red and Green. Rebels get the mechanics of Flush and Burst.

Perhaps for story purposes I'll add watermarks to each clan, if I can either find or create good-looking watermarks.

After coming up with all of these mechanics, themes, stories, factions, etc., I blew through a slew of interesting ideas for commons and uncommons, and a few rare and mythics, but I started to slow down and get stuck. Then, out of boredom, I kind of created two-color subthemes for variety, so that there was more focus and differentiation between two colors that might belong in the same wedge or shard. And this is where I'm at: I'm currently experimenting with putting small spins on the overarching themes, like having Blue/Black have a greater emphasis on Mill, and Red/White have a lot of equipment. With Seffala, I stopped myself from making extra cards as soon as I hit the limit, but now I'm experimenting, and I hope to generate far more cards than necessary, and start to cut them back when I have too many (perhaps save some ideas for a sequel). All of the sample cards above have the possibility of being cut or reworked.

But, so far, I am much happier with this effort than my first; though it started off with silly plumbing-themed mechanics, it quickly grew into a serious set with interesting characters. Now I just hope it plays better...

Ruin of Seffala – The Hermit Cycle, and Post-Mortem

This cycle is a collection of hermits. Each card is a rare creature that costs only one colored mana, is an 0/2, and has two activated abilities that only require tapping the hermit (sometimes removing counters as well), and the two activated abilities synergize with each other.

The very last cards. Shed a tear and click to embiggen.

The Crag Hermit builds up Boulder counters over time, then unleashes the counters in the form of direct creature damage. It also utilizes the Jeskai Followthrough mechanic.

The Green Thumb Hermit creates defenders and ramps based on the number of defenders you control. This works for the G/W token strategy, and for Green's defender strategy, and for Green's more typical ramp strategy. I considered at first having the Green Thumb Hermit make the normal Moss Wall defender tokens with Toughlink, but that seemed like it would be overpowered (not like I knew what overpowered really was in this set when I made it, considering the other broken and unbalanced things I've done).

The Sickly Hermit has the bonus of Wither, the Jund mechanic, but that might at first seem useless on an 0/2. But the first ability lets you tutor for Parasite Auras and immediately attach them to the Sickly Hermit, so if you get one with a P/T boost like Engorged Parasite, you can attack with it and the Wither will come into effect (another reason I should have had all Parasites give +1/+1). Then the Sickly Hermit can pass off its sickness (Parasites) onto other creatures. And since it doesn't say you have to enchant one of your own creatures, you can summon up a removal Parasite like Slothful Symbiont and pass it back to an opponent's creature. Watch out for the Parasites that can destroy or lock down your own Sickly Hermit!

Scheming Hermit allows you to do the classic Blue abilities: Scry and Bounce (actually, in this case, Tuck). Each time you Scry, it fuels your ability to Tuck a bigger thing away.

Mentoring Hermit creates Shaman tokens and gains life based on how many Shamans you have, synergizing with the G/W tokens strategy, W/U Shaman tribal, and all of White's lifegain strategies.

And that's it, I believe. That's every card for Ruin of Seffala.

I learned a lot from designing this set. Firstly, I learned that I need to play Magic a lot more before jumping into the design space with it, but this does not just apply to Magic. I have a bad habit of wanting to design games in genres I have little experience in, like text adventures previously, or tabletop RPGs. I need to do a better job playing and studying those genres before thinking "oh, I can do this, I have a fun idea." With Magic, I began making this set before really getting back into it, and I can already tell my next Magic set, even with all its new faults, is leaps and bounds above this one, because I understand simple balance issues and have a better grasp on all kinds of interactions and play styles.

I also learned I should concentrate my efforts on what I enjoy. I was trying to work on my art skills one card at a time as I posted this set, but it just became so tiresome and dejecting with how long it took, even if I was improving my art skills and getting faster (or taking more time to get things right). I want making the art to be a fun experience, and I hoped it would help when it came to things like FissureVerse where I was always searching for art and asking permission to use it, a long, dejecting process in itself. When I took a long break from this blog and finally came back to it, eschewing the art, I was able to make blog posts so much more quickly, and felt more accomplished.

I think my next set is going to be posted with blank white art space, so that a player who wants to print-and-play can then customize their cards with their own art.

I also learned I need to work harder on this blog. With the huge gap in time from the early posts of Seffala last April until now, I felt bad that I'd let the blog languish, without even working on other projects besides Seffala. I was working on non-game projects, like moving and novel-writing, but I had hoped to keep up with this blog, too. If I spent less time relaxing after work, playing games, etc., and more time working on projects that I could post, I would feel more accomplishment. The nature of game development is that it takes a long time and something like two posts a week means you get lots of very little progress to report (e.g. Latchkey). I want to have more substantial posts, quality posts, but I also want to keep the kind of momentum I just had this month. The problem is here, all of my work was front-loaded a couple years ago when I designed the set, and these posts are pretty easy write-ups in comparison. My New Year's resolution to post a level a month kind of fell apart quickly. I was designing a DOOM level, I liked it on paper, and I started to make it in Doom Builder, but then it got boring pretty fast, and I lost track of it after a few sessions while Seffala got posted and filled me with accomplishment. I had hoped Monthathons would be useful to keep me in check and keep me going, but I think I need even closer goals, more immediate goals. So I'm going to have to consider what works best for me. Maybe the solution is quality over quantity, or the reverse, or somehow I manage to do both. Perhaps this blog works only as a hub for completed projects, or I have spurts like this where I plow ahead with a billion posts in a row, followed by dead air for a while.

Well, I guess that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I've got some projects to work on.