[FUR Friday] Integration, Pt IV: Uncommons

    Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a world of beastfolk, we're continuing Integration design with a new set skeleton-- this time with uncommons! Because the world of Urbestia has changed so much during this stage, this set skeleton is going to look very different from the last one that was shared.

    You can find the new set skeleton here. The rest of this article will be explaining the changes that have taken place, but stick around until the end for an important announcement.

 

Out with the Old

    We've already talked Crafting to death, but it bears repeating here. The Equipment-token mechanic has been removed from the set skeleton, but a minor equipment-matters theme has remained. There are common Equipment in white, red, and colorless, with Equipment-matters support at uncommon. This archetype is pretty slim, with the hope that players will mostly ignore it so that one player can occasionally scoop up the under-drafted pieces they need to make it work.

    The Redwall cycle, five one-mana 1/1's that care about creatures with power 1 or less, have also left the scene. This cycle served two purposes-- to synergize with low-power Crafters, and to evoke Brian Jacques' Redwall series. Crafting is gone, and I don't think Redwall is known widely enough among Magic players to carry the cycle.

    The Setpiece cycle, five colored Artifact Walls, are the final piece to exit stage left. These existed to give the Redwall cycle a little more support and to support the festival/convention setting. The Festival is no longer the main setting for the set (or at least, not the only one), so it doesn't do enough for the set to earn its keep. Some parts of the original cycle will continue to exist in the colors that care about artifacts, but now it's split up between common and uncommon.

 

In with the New

    With the changes above, the new mechanics have more room to breath. Commerce (Whenever an artifact enters the battlefield under your control, [Effect]) started as an unnamed blue mechanic referred to as Relicfall in previous set skeletons. It has since claimed its place among the named mechanics, and it has spread to white and black.

    The other new mechanic is Vicious (Whenever this creature deals combat damage, if you control no Blood, create a Blood token). While Commerce replaced Crafting in blue, Vicious does the job in red while also tying into green. Vicious and Commerce have similar numbers at common (4 and 5 cards respectively) to achieve an ASFAN of about 0.4. You need 4 cards in a Limited deck to have a 50% chance of drawing one in your opening hand, so this ASFAN puts about 10 in a draft pool to allow two players to draft each archetype with a little bit of wiggle room.

    We also have a new cycle! There are five callback cards at common to help communicate the idea of the set. Glory Seeker, Storm Crow, Black Cat, Goblin Piker, and Grizzly Bears appear as beastfolk at common. Savannah Lions has only ever been printed at common in Master sets, and red doesn't really have a well-known common animal, which threw things off a little bit. The former, at least, will be making a showing at uncommon.

In Other News

    Making a game is more than just designing. It's also playtesting and iterating. You can design seven ways to Sunday, but the only way to know what works is to actually try it out.

    That being said, Urbestia has not been receiving the playtesting it needs. The Vision stage wants playtests every two to three weeks, and Integration wants a playtest every week. Between my schedule and the general difficulty of finding playtesters, this just isn't feasible.

    While the goal up to this point has been to produce this set in the same time frame that Wizards would, we have to face reality sometime. Wizards has resources that I simply do not. With that in mind, FUR is going to take a lot longer than a year to make.

    Full disclosure-- this probably won't come as a surprise-- this blog has been my first foray into making content for a wider audience. It's been hard to balance with the rest of my life. There have been times that I've neglected my job and my own well-being to get article out on time. And there have been times that I've put out articles that I knew were subpar so that I could fulfill my IRL obligations.

    It means a lot to me that you all have stuck with me this far. I'm not going to give up-- not on FUR, not on TwistedSpoon Studio, and not on those of you who have been with me since the start. But I hope you'll understand that I need more time.

    To that end, FUR is going on hiatus. I need to take a break to keep from burning out and to make it the best that it can be. 

    In addition, Monday Musings are cancelled indefinitely. There may be one-off Musings-- like a set analysis when New Carpenna drops-- but otherwise, that column simply has not been cohesive or a good match for this blog's core audience in general. Workshop Wednesdays will become a weekly feature, and they'll be getting more love than they have lately.

Come and Gone

    That's all for this week. Thank you for continuing to support me, and I promise things will get back to normal eventually. In the meantime, your feedback is more important now than ever-- what's working? What's not? What do you want to see?

    For updates about what's happening and how things are changing, you can follow this blog at r/TwistedSpoonStudio or by clicking the Subscribe button in the sidebar. Workshop Wednesdays will still be posted to r/CustomMagic per usual.

    See you soon!