And finally… the green.

Green is about growth, so our green is about exploration. These would be the vikings who went west into Iceland, Greenland, and even North America in search of new places to settle.

Although, in reality, it wasn’t restlessness alone that forced these people to move, but often other circumstances. However, since this is fantasy, we can take the more romantic approach.

Eirik the Green
Legendary Creature – Human Scout 3/3, 1GG
Vigilance
T: Search your library for a basic land card, reveal it and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library afterwards.
Grandeur — Discard another card named Eirik the Green: You may play an extra land this turn. Use this ability only during your own turn.

Again, the name will change at some point, but we’re going with this for now.

I like the interplay of these two abilities. Actually three. Vigilance + tapping ability is an old standby, but it works. Its usually more of a white thing, but vigilance seems to be secondary or tertiary in green (its seen about once per set, if even that), so it can get its share of the fun… at least in a mythic rare. Attacking, then finding a land and playing it on turn four seems pretty good to me. Of course, the Grandeur ability does have a huge variance, as you might have played all your lands by the time Eirik is online.

Eirik is a illegimate son of a famous king. Cast out of his own country due to his brothers, the current king, fears of usurpers, which are quite warranted in this day and age, Eirik has been moving around for a very long time. Bad luck seems to follow him. Whenever he has settled down, some calamity (fights with neighbors, bad weather, destroyed crops, disease among animals) forces him to move, although some say he uses any excuse to get back on the road.

Never mind his bad luck, Eirik has stretched the limits of the known world. He has found several islands, which have soon become inhabited by others, and some places people tried to settle but failed.

Eirik takes his poor fortunes in a stride, thinking this is the natural way of things. He just keeps pushing on. To him, this is a survival situation and he would much rather be on the open seas, finding new lands, then coping with the politics of his brothers court, although he is sometimes funded by members of the court behind his brother’s back, when he lacks the funds himself.

There are many stories about Eirik, some true, some not, but in either case, he is quite famous, even if he really doesn’t want to be.

On to the red.

Red is the color of emotion and recklessness. I guess. Well, poorly put, but I need to distinguish them from the other colors, so red is the color of the berserkers and other warriors, but also the color of the skald (the troubadours of the norse).

Because I really do need to distinguish red from other colors, I’m largely going with the skald approach, because I can do something different that way. Well, I’m using pretty standard abilities, but the flavor is different. Canut is worse in combat than any of the other legendary creatures, which goes somewhat against reds usual role, but I like him.

Continue reading →

And on to the black…

Black is the color of ambition and amorality. They are the central color in our set. They are the ones out for personal gain. They are probably the least flashy of the vikings, but they are everywhere. Since sacrifices are mainly a black thing, black is probably also the color of priests.

Our legendary creature for black is…

Dark Thyra
Legendary Creature – Human Shaman 1/5, 1BB
Deathtouch
Whenever an opponent sacrifices a creature, draw a card.
Grandeur -— Discard another card named Dark Thyra: Each opponent sacrifices a creature.

Obviously, since this is black, the draw is not a “may”, so if an opponent manages to pull off the wrong combo, you are screwed. But, hey that’s black for you. Otherwise, this is very build-around creature. The set probably needs an edict and maybe a [scryfall]Fleshbag Marauder[/scryfall] of some sort to make this gal usable in this environment. I want people to want to put her in their decks when they get her P1P1.

Continue reading →

Earlier this week, I talked about white in this set, now (going in the color pie order), its blue’s turn.

Blue is the color of rationality and planning. The blue vikings are therefore the traders. These were the vikings who formed trading posts all over Europe, some of which are still major cities today.

Without further ado, here’s the leader of this faction of our vikings.

Arnulf, Merchant Prince
Legendary Creature – Human Advisor 2/3, 1UU
Tap a blue creature you control: Draw a card, then discard a card
Grandeur -— Discard another card named Arnulf, Merchant Prince: Exchange control of two target permanents of the same type.

Of course most blue players will hate a card which requires the use of creatures… and more would be better. Blasphemy! … and I hear you. I feel you. I know how painful it is to rely on creatures when spells should suffice. Sometimes its hard to be blue. (Well, you can always play Legacy…) Maybe I should drop the color requirement from the activated ability to make this less of a blue creature.

His ability is not as out of the left field as Signy’s, but its very powerful. He makes it easy to move past cards you won’t need in the late game, or just find the cards that work best in the situation you happen to be in. I’d like to come up with something more unique… We’ll see.

At first I thought the Grandeur ability should be drawing cards, but then that might give early advantage which might be too much if its anything more than simple cycling. This current version at least won’t bring huge early game advantages if the opponent is playing fair. If your opponent somehow drops a [scryfall]Griselbrand[/scryfall] on turn two, it should be fair game to steal as well. Also, since creatures that fall under the control of another player are dropped out of combat, this can become a way to slow down your opponent, which is something blue definitely wants. This is also an ability you can definitely build around. If your creatures are [scryfall]Snapcaster Mage[/scryfall]s, [scryfall]Augur of Bolas[/scryfall]’s and [scryfall]Omenspeaker[/scryfall]s, you probably won’t be unhappy to exchange them for something like [scryfall]Kalonian Tusker[/scryfall].

Blue is a problematic color in one sense: I wanted to give each of these leaders a keyword ability, but blue only has flying, hexproof, flash, and islandwalk. None of those felt right.

Okay, so who is this guy?

Arnulf is quite opportunistic, just like all the other Vikings, but rather than relying on his axe, he goes where the others are not going due to too much risk in raiding.

Arnulf would like to travel more, but currently he is more or less forced to remain in his trading post (more like a town these days, including a stockade and many services for travellers) so that his multitude of contacts can come to him to trade.

Arnulf is not that interested in the wealth itself. Actually, he leads a pretty spartan life with heating being the only luxury he allows himself. His palace is very luxurious, but that’s just for show. Instead, he has been accumulating books, which he buys of off other vikings, who are often raiding monasteries to get them.

In his talks with Dark Thyra (to whom will get to later), Arnulf has learned about the oncoming end of the world. This is one of the reasons he has been building his base. He has plenty of artisans he feels he might need when the time comes. Everyone will be needing weapons and armor. Arnulf will be ready to provide them.

Arnulf often rubs people the wrong way, but he has a way of rationalizing trades. He never cheats anyone and does his best to see that anyone trading with him will feel they were right to trade with him. On the other hand, anyone cheating him will be fed to the fish being raised in the fjord he lives next to.

On my vacation, I managed to read one of the books I bought on the subject of vikings: Jonathan Clements’ A Brief History of the Vikings, which also presented a question on the cover: “The last pagans or the first modern Europeans?”. It didn’t actually answer the question, which leads me to believe it was just something added by the marketing to exploit the success of some other book with a similarly emotive taglines.

It didn’t really change how I view Vikings, but it did include a lot of interesting information. It did enforce my belief that I’m going in the right direction.

Earlier, I talked about how the colors would be represented in the set

White is the color of organization and community. So, our white vikings are the ones who went out and conquered nations. Historically, the vikings who went out and conquered large tracks of the Britain would have been white.

Continue reading →

So, I took part in Grand Prix Valencia last weekend. My first GP, actually. I went 5-4 and I’m pretty happy with that. It was a sealed/draft event with sealed on Saturday and draft on Sunday. Obviously I didn’t make Sunday. Anyway, I’ve now played Theros sealed quite a bit by my usual standards. Three times live and twice on MTGO. Granted, that’s not that much overall, but I have some insight into the format.

What I like is that its very complicated. To make the heroic abilities worthwhile, the set needs plenty of tricks and it has those. Quite a few of them actually. I’m not very good at chess as I don’t play enough, but its basically a game about making the board as complicated as you can handle and then you wish your opponents can’t handle the same amount of complexity you can. Theros limited feels the same way. Obviously there’s the added lack of information not present in chess, bringing a whole different level of intelligence and counterintelligence into the game, although only the best players generally utilize counterintelligence (like Kenji).

Based on this experience, I wanted my set to bring something new to combat. I decided to mess with the rules a bit. To do that, I needed to find a place where the rules hadn’t been messed with. That place is damage order assignment. For those of you who don’t know the exact rules, here’s the gist of it: When blockers have been assigned, if there are more than one blockers (or in some cases blocked), the controller of the creature decides the order in which his creature assigns damage. After that, when the actual damage is assigned, the controller needs to assign enough damage to each creature to kill it before moving on to the next creature and assigning damage.
Continue reading →

One of those things I find interesting in Viking society, was the Althing. This is probably a romanticized version of what actually happened. It was (actually still existing in a different form) a meeting of all the men in the land, who would come together to a large field and settle all the things that needed to be settled. This would include all sorts of legal disputes and define the law more or less democratically, but it was also the biggest social happening around. Everyone would come. Whole families were camped out there to have fun while the men debated issues (and probably got drunk).

Several interesting concepts here, like Lawrock, which will obviously receive its own card at some point, but right now I’m just thinking of the Althing itself. What should that be like as a card? I want it to be a land, since this is supposed to be a land set. I’m thinking, a land that can produce any color of mana.

In any case, the card should produce one colorless mana. It just makes lands that much more useful and takes away some of the variance of the land, especially since I’m going to limit its use otherwise, like lands of this sort should be limited. Here, I have two ideas. One which would work gameplay-wise, one which is more flavorful.

The gameplay version would require you to tap a creature as part of the activation cost to produce the mana. This is sometimes better than [scryfall]Shimmering Grotto[/scryfall], but generally probably worse. Actually, it might be very good in the early game, if you take this into account in your deck. I’d probably gladly use my [scryfall]Judge’s Familiar[/scryfall] to produce mana this way in the early game.

The more flavorful version would return to your hand after you tap it for any color of mana. This is more flavorful, because the assembly would disperse after its business was done. It would only exist part of the time. From a gameplay point of view, this would mean the land is pretty bad in the early game, as it eats the land drops you need so desperately, but later on in the game, when you probably don’t hit your land drops with the same frequency, you might be happy with it.

On the other hand, it could even save players who miss land drops in the early game. Just return the card to your hand and play it again. This isn’t true ramp, but it can save you.

Probably I’ll include both in the set, but the latter gets to be the Althing or at least the site of the Althing. Maybe the other card can be a common and the place where the local Thing is held.