Vikings: A Division of Mechanics, Continued

Last week I talked about the mechanics I might use in the set, but the more important thing is how to have each color have a pretty balanced set of these keywords.

Now, generally not all mechanics are or need to be keyworded. Things such as milling are fine without needing a shortcut for them. There are many such mechanics. However, sometimes people want names for these things. It just makes them easier to talk about them and brings certain completion (see yesterday’s post).

Now, I’ve had time to think about the mechanics I talked about last week. I’m not sure about Landfall anymore. It might play a bit too much like another mechanic in the set, but hopefully that doesn’t happen. Omen is in, as is Berserker. Also, our version of Channel is in too. Lastly, I talked previously about searching in the set. I’m giving search depth a word as well. What I mean by this is that there will be a lot of searching in the set, but often only through certain number of cards on the top of your deck. See [scryfall]Aven Mindcensor[/scryfall] for an example. Also, see the same card for a potential problem with this mechanic. Lets call it foresight for now.

So, each color will have access to all these and each color will have at least one card of each. I just need to prioritize them to give each color a different feel. So, these priorities:

White Blue Black Red Green
Landfall 5 2 3 4 1
Channel 1 4 5 2 3
Omen 3 2 1 5 4
Berserker 4 5 2 1 3
Foresight 2 1 4 3 5

This is probably not exactly what it’ll look like in the end, but its a beginning. Blue is getting slightly more love than others and green is getting slightly less. Doesn’t really matter, as long as every color get roughly the same amount of love. Also, some mechanics will be more powerful, so they won’t get balanced out this way anyhow. The important thing is that all colors are roughly balanced out, but feel different.

What I’m not currently getting is the feeling of being combat-oriented, but I can help that by putting plenty of such effects on the Channel cards and the Omen cards. Or maybe just hope that the Berserker will carry this part of the set, although its probably going to be pretty red and black heavy. White and green need something as well. I’ll probably try to come up with something for them. Probably using +1/+1 counters, leaving red and black with the more temporary advantages. Maybe the typical Channel effect is giving +1/+1 counter.

Anyway, this seems to be finding its shape. Slowly, but that’s fine.

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