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.

Ruin of Seffala – Crumbs

At the tail end of Seffala now, so it's the last of the leftovers to get through, and one more cycle (next post).

Stuff to click on.

A couple of Shamans (one of them a Shaman tribal payoff), a couple of Enchantments, a couple of untappers.

A card that lets you mill, a Mill build-around, and a Mill payoff.

Gluttonous Sugar Gliders is kind of a neat experiment I'd like to revisit. Brambleburst is a nice card that allows you to use it both offensively and defensively, though if I rewrote it I'd make it one line of text. Trance of Healing is an extra lifegain card for the go-wide decks, but also acts as a Toughlink payoff.

All pump spells/combat tricks. Desperate Strike allows you to get through for damage even in the fail case of losing your creature.

A whole mess of Witherkin. Elder Balder is getting up there in years, so it loses P/T as it fights. Rebellious Balder gets around the Wall decks.

Not much to say about these ones, since they're kind of the last dregs. One last cycle to cap off the set coming up, and then it'll be on to the next project.

Ruin of Seffala – Triple Color Mythics

The biggest players in Seffala are the Mythics, naturally. Each Mythic is usually triple color.

Lot o' text on Mythics. Click to embiggen.

The one exception is the Planeswalker, Springstep. I wanted to go for a colorless Planeswalker and see what it would do. Gnomes in Magic are typically colorless, so I decided that Springstep would be a gnomish inventor, trying in his own way to restore nature... unnaturally. Since he is a poor soul who gets his magical abilities from the land, and Seffala is being torn apart, he is fading out of existence. His abilities, unfortunately, a more Blue/Green than colorless. I had been watching too much Command Zone when I designed it, and they always stress how mana ramp and card draw are so important in designing a deck, so I figured they would be good abilities for a Planeswalker to have, especially one that goes in any deck. So the first ability is both mana ramp and card draw. The second ability protects Springstep, as a good Planeswalker should have. The third ability also comes from Command Zone's mantras, one of which is "What's one of the most broken things you can do in all of Magic? Cheating of mana costs."

Roc of Aegis is one of my favorite puns. Besides that, it's a fairly set-specific mechanic, but it nicely turns off Wither and all -1/-1 counter shenanigans your opponents may have going on. Being heavy white, you'l most likely choose Human as your creature type.

I'm nt sure at all where I got the idea for Apocalypse Pup; I think it was during the phase where I was making joke cards like Scourge of Slog Bog and needed to come up with the red Mythic in this cycle. The idea is that when a Djinn makes its own wish, it might want something as simple as a puppy, but it's going to create an all-powerful, destructive force instead, especially with the headspace the Djinni are in, what with being at war.

Chivaask is a brutal card that feeds on the misery of others. No matter how weak the other creatures get, it gets stronger, and it fuels the fire by giving everything Wither. Giving Chivaask -1/-1 counters only keeps it in balance, since it will get +1/+1 for each -1/-1 counter on itself. And it is here, finally, that we get the full cause of Seffala's ruin: Chivaask was birthed from the Slog Bog, creating Parasites as its minions along with it, and it is such a miserable creature that even Witherkin who naturally have Wither would run from it, causing the exodus from the swamps. This resulted in a chain reaction of all the tribes, who were once separate and at peace, to go to war by either defending their homeland or moving on to others. From this demon, all hell broke loose. You can see how the Roc of Aegis appeared to combat Chivaask's power directly.

However, Natalsong, The Antiphon, is also the enemy of Chivaask; it is a beast which has arisen from Mosswood, Mosswood made flesh. Wherever it goes, it heals, and spreads its moss to stop the onslaught spread by Chivaask. It works as both a Green/Black bomb, being that it loves Toughlink, but it can also be a Green/White bomb since it generates tokens. It also has an activated ability that directly counteracts Chivaask's synergies.

Elshaga is the most powerful of all the Djinni, and is basically a lockdown on a stick. You get it down, bounce everything, and then you get to bounce or counter everything else that comes down. Elshaga is basically saying "Y'all done goofed, Imma restart this world in my image."

Ruin of Seffala – Misc. Themes

Here are a few cards of each color that fill out some of the themes or subthemes of each.

Some day I want to make a Wendigo-themed deck.

A few more -1/-1 counter synergy cards. Rotting Wendigo doesn't have any way of putting a -1/-1 counter on it by itself, but you can do it yourself with something like Spot Plague, or Giera from earlier. I bet Heaving Slug needs rewording, since you don't attack creatures, but you know what I mean.

A few more Djinni in Red. I like the mechanic of Ferocious Dimmer, being that you can either over pay for the effect, or you can tap the creature for the effect. This allows you to squeeze out one last activation, or choose to use the ability on itself and not have to tap the card before attacks. Unbound Brighter is a fun modal ETB effect, because it lets your opponent choose, but likely all of the options hurt no matter what the state of the game is.

Also, I'd like a Unicorn/Pegasus theme sometime.

A few more lifegain cards for White. White doesn't often get discard abilities, so Trash Herbalist is a way to turn junk cards like extra lands into life. For Mated Unicorns, I expect there has to be a better way to word that.

If I had to do it all over, I'd skip Shamans and make 'Witch' be the subtype.

Extra miscellaneous Shaman in Blue. Not much to say about these, apart from Smokebomb Herbalist is a heck of a cheap counterspell.

Ok, this one is hardly a proper theme...

Green gets a bit of card advantage with these cards. Ripen, as a sorcery, means you likely would use this in a lifegain deck and will never use the first mode. I suppose I should make it Instant or reqord it. Tend the Garden is useful card selection, and all you have to do is what Green always wants to do: have a creature around. This is especially easy with all the Moss Wall tokens around.

Ruin of Seffala – The Gold Uncommons

Another nostalgic pseudo-memory I had of old Magic is that gold cards were particularly rare. It was amazing to see a card that wasn't one of the base five colors, just like artifacts. These days, I know there is a gold uncommon cycle in near every set that acts as a 'signpost' for each color pair, giving the draft archetype. Some of that I tried to capture here. In other cases, I struggled to come up with the draft archetype, or forgot about it alt/-1ogether while designing these cards. Each of these cards costs exactly two mana, and I tried working within that restriction, with varying success.

Fancy.

Frenetic Notions simply combines a loot with a rummage, which I think is cute, but if I was going to do it over again, I would make this a Djinn, since Blue/Red is the Djinni tribal colors.

Likewise, Dangerous Journey, while Witherkin-flavored, is not Witherkin Tribal. This card represents the Witherkin leaving their home of Slog Bog and journeying to the new terrain of the mountains and forests. In this case, I might like the flavor, but the mechanics don't hit the theme.

Countersong is the mechanics of Blue with the flavor of Green. Blue naturally provides the counterspell, while Green's theme of music in this set provides the flavor, with the bonus of the healing effect here. Ultimately, though, once more, it doesn't quite tell you what the archetype is (which is really nothing).

Grinding Parasite helps a lot more with the Blue/Black theme, which is Mill, and a sub-theme of Parasites (though that's more of a mono-Black take). Still, so far this is the closest we get to a true signpost uncommon. The problem here is the incredible amount of text on these Parasites. Oof!

With Faith in Flames, once more, I didn't have a tribal idea to work with, so I just combined what I thought of as the mechanics of White and Red together. I used a lot of the Magic wiki in designing cards, researching what each color does well and what each color pair does. Boros is aggro, so I just threw together red's direct damage and white's combat trickery. The flavor of the name is that when White Shamans come in contact with something unfamiliar (like Red) their faith is strongly tested.

Now we get to quite a few more proper signpost uncommons. Bewitcher is pure Shaman tribal, and includes the untap shenanigans the color pair is known for. We did it!

Provoking Balder is a Witherkin, as Black/Red should be. The flowstone activated ability is nice in that it allows you to pump up a Witherkin's damage if you know it's going to die anyway to tear down an opponent's creature with the Wither. Or, of course, you can pick off opponent's creatures since you can target any creature with the ability.

Unpoison Frog has the theme of Toughlink, which is the Golgari named mechanic of the set, and screwing around with -1/-1 counters, which is the unnamed mechanic for Abzan.

Survivor's Vigil combines the two Green/White themes of this set: life gain and tokens. The untap clause is there just for a bonus.

Occult Armor is mostly a Black card, in that -1/-1 counters are Black's wheelhouse, and Black is big on Voltron in this set. It just has a bit of the flavor of White to go with it. Oh, well. Can't win them all. How about 50%?

Ruin of Seffala – White & Green Removal

Click to see.

Burst of Ferocity is a simple fight spell that gives an enormous P/T boost, making sure whatever you target is almost certainly going to survive combat. And, if you just removed the only blocker, you can then swing in hard.

Pillory is a take on the Pacifism spells, but the creature must be untapped simply for funny flavor reasons—in a pillory, you're stuck standing up. However, since it includes the clause that the enchanted creature can't tap or be tapped, it turns off all activated abilities that require tapping, yet keep the activated abilities that don't.

Dutiful Constable is the Banisher Priest of the set, and, like other non-shaman humans, it fills out the flavor of the world of humans who decided not to join the Drove. The Dutiful Constable wants to maintain the order of the old world, whether the power structure is in place to enforce it or not.

The flavor of Crazed Moose Pack is that it is so rabid that if you want it to attack something outside of combat, it has to go crashing through the forest so hard it destroys the trees on its way.

Drover's Salvation is enchantment hate, but it's also enchantment love if you built your deck to have many enchantments and your opponent isn't playing any threatening ones.

Volanti Jinx is another enchantment hate card, while also being a Shaman tribal card to boot.

Restless Predator is the only card that untaps itself, a mechanic I'd like to revisit some time. (You can see, of course, that it can be locked in the Pillory and can't untap itself.)

I count Dizzying Canopy as a bit of a removal card, because the opponent might think they can freely attack with their fliers, like Shaman or Djinni, and then after attacks, you can play this and knock them all out of the sky so you can block and kill their creatures.

Ruin of Seffala – The Rare Legendary Cycle

Here are some of the big players in the world of Seffala. Each costs double color, each is legendary, and each is rare.

X, Y of the Z is a pretty long name. Text squish! Click to embiggen.

Hanne Volant has been mentioned a lot. She's the founder of the Drove/Volanti. Once the human farms and villages were destroyed by other warring tribes, she learned magic, created a post-apocalyptic religion, and taught her followers to fight back. Therefore, being a leader of her Shaman pack, she is a Shaman lord. She bestows upon them both a morality (P/T) boost, and the magic of healing (likely something she discovered in Mosswood).

While there is no leader of the Djinni quite like there is the Drove, there are still some notable Djinni with an awful lot of power. In this case, Sivan's magic is powerful enough to summon other Djinni to aid (and at a reduced cost for you).

Nettuun is the leader of the Nettlers, the primarily Red faction of the Witherkin that already moved once out of the swamps of Slog Bog, and will now move no further. His fortress is the Nettler Holdout, and his ferocity in battle is enough to give all who follow him his cunning (doublestrike). Therefore, while not the unquestionable leader of all Witherkin (and therefore not a lord), he does provide a great benefit to all who are on his side.

Giera has finally made an appearance, like Hanne Volant, after being in so much flavor text. Giera is a Witherkin who tried his best to learn from the Volantile, to become one, but, though Hanne might welcome anyone, the humans of the Drove did not like what they saw, and drove him away. He went back to his swamps to defend his homeland, and can now be found leading the Balder faction of Witherkin. He learned how to heal from the Drove (remove -1/-1 counters), but now he uses this knowledge in a backwards way, removing poisons from one creature only to inject another. Because he is so full of malice and is out to get his revenge, he cares less about his own tribe, so he is also not a lord, either. But since he learned the magic of the Drove, he has activated abilities instead.

Mosswood's Hold breaks the cycle of legendary creatures in favor of a legendary enchantment. Since Mosswood has no leader, no tribe, it has no humanoid creature at the helm. The forest of Mosswood itself is the magic, and it is out to bring peace and to heal the land. So all you get from the enchantment, instead of a significant creature, is another Moss Wall token. However, like the rest of the Defender theme of Mosswood, the enchantment turns off all kinds of combat keywords to ensure a more equal (or perhaps just more peaceful) playing field.