Card of the Day - Summoned to the Throne Room

In the second Story Spotlight of Frostmere, King Micah summons his most powerful friends to the throne room.

The Planeswalker Otto and the city's champion Karos arrive at the castle...

Continued from last Saturday.

When Otto arrives at the palace, Barlo Stanvik is waiting for him.

"I'm glad you could you come on such short notice," he says. "His Majesty will be so glad to see you after all this time."

"It's no problem, Barlo.  I'm glad to be here.  It's been way too long since we could catch up."

"I'm afraid there won't be much time for that.  I assume you know what's going on in Tersh. It's..."

"Yeah, yeah.  It's terrible.  On the other hand, it could be a lot worse. At least the deadies aren't attacking people, though."

Barlo frowned. "Please don't use the term 'deadies,' Otto.  It's uncouth."

"ppft." The planeswalker waves away the suggestion, "Where's Micah?"

"In the throne room. Karos is already here."

"Karos, huh?  I wonder why Micah would need us both."

"You can find out presently, sir.  Follow me."

------

In the throne room, King Micah sits deep in thought.  He is staring at a small piece of parchment in his hands.

"My Lord, Otto is here." said Barlo from the doorway.

Micah looks up, frowning.  "Thank you for coming, dear friend. I assume you know Karos?"

A man with short black hair and a long scar on the right side of his face nods to Otto. "We've met."

"Good.  I need you two to do something for me." He holds up the parchment. "I've received... interesting news. A man claims that he can help us relieve the curse that has befallen us, but he insists that we come to him." He frowns.

"Well, why aren't we on the road already?" Otto folds his arms.

"It's not that simple. This man, Tibalt, says he needs an item from our treasury to complete the spell. A very special item. Not one that I would give to just anyone."

"Ah, I see." Karos speaks up. "That's why we are here. You need your best to guard the item on its journey."

"Precisely. Marek's Keystone could be very dangerous in the wrong hands. It's up to you to make sure it is kept safe. Your destination is the Gargut Glacier. You leave at first light."

"How do we know this guy isn't up to something nefarious?" Otto raised an eyebrow.

"If he is, you will stop him. Our kingdom won't last if the dead keep on coming back. We have no other choice."

Card of the Day - Tersh, Crown City

Making duals legendary is a reasonable drawback.  This one has the added bonus of being snow, making it a pseudo-triland.

Card of the Day - Eternal Unrest

It's been a while since I did any real work on Frostmere, but now that Saturdays are full of flavor, I thought I would show off the Story Spotlight cards from that set.  Here is the beginning of the story of Frostmere:

In the secluded, frozen, peaceful plane of Frostmere, something has gone wrong. Those who have passed on just won't stay dead. Two days ago, the shambling forms of the previously living started coming home. They aren't bloodthirsty, but they are confused and easily angered. The dead who no longer have bodies wander through the streets of Tersh, the Crown City. Their wails are heard throughout the night, longing for the rest of their tortured souls.

King Micah looks out from his balcony, frowning. A day full of planning has left him weary. Half of the kingdom's soldiers needed to be deployed to Artoa, helping the people of the borderlands defend against the attacks of the wildlife. In such a small kingdom, half of the soldiers is only twenty men.

Suddenly, the King's advisor, Barlo speaks. He is standing in the doorway, hands folded.

"My Lord," he says, "a pigeon has arrived." 

Card of the Day - Great Snowy Owl

A lot of recent sets have had an uncommon cycle of multicolored cards, to kind of let you know how to draft that color pair. This is Frostmere's U/W entry. 

Card of the Day - Essence Harvest

Since Frostmere has the Espionage keyword, I wanted each color to have a way to use all the cards that are getting milled.  These cards are subpar as maindeck cards in a draft, but can possibly be quite useful if the opponent is playing an Espionage-heavy deck.

Essence Harvest, for example, gives you a ton of tokens if you've already been milled a bit.  It's also useful late in a game to break a board stall.

Card of the Day - Infernal Spawning/Besman Horde/Spill From the Rift/Tibalt, Patron of Pain

Today's cards are a vertical cycle. A vertical cycle is a subset of cards that do similar things with bigger or more powerful effects at higher rarites. You can see some examples here. The common and uncommon parts of the cycle may seem familiar to you, as they are similar to Dragon Fodder and Hordeling Outburst. The second set in the Frostmere block is called Hellfire, and devils play a large part in the set, mainly using 1/1 Devil tokens.

The rare part of the cycle gives tokens, but also damages you each turn.  This may seem like a drawback, but trust me. In this set, you will wish there were more things that could let you damage yourself.

The Mythic entry to the cycle is a familiar face to some. All of his abilites revolve around Devils. You can pop him right away to get 5 1/1s with no questions asked, or, if you have some other Devils around, wait and see if you can do some other cool things.

I am developing Frostmere and Hellfire together, so they will play nicely with one another while being very separate entities.

Card of the Day - Artoa Lordpine

Card of the Day - Unrelenting Malice

This card fills two roles in Frostmere.  The first thing it does is reward you for using the "Sacrifice a land" mini mechanic in the set.  The second is it punishes an opponent who is trying to mill you to death with espionage. 

Card of the Day - Song of the Elves

Each color in Frostmere has an uncommon enchantment.  Here's green's.  In other news; I've created the first draft of uncommons, but I have too many in the file, so I'm in the process of paring them down.  If you're one of my playtesters, they should be done by Tuesday evening.

Card of the Day - Winter Harbinger

Here's a simple uncommon that's going to be in the next round of playtests.  For the uncommons, my first playtest will have 8 of each color, as well as 1 of each color pair as a snow hybrid and 1 of each color pair as a non-snow hybrid.  The commons had each hybrid card be snow, but the uncommons are going to work a little differently, at least in the first round of testing.  There will also be 10 artifact/colorless cards and 10 lands at uncommon for a total of 80 uncommons.

Card of the Day - Bren, City of Trades

Rare lands in Frostmere.

Card of the Day - Sower of Bitter Tears

Devils really like to sacrifice lands in Frostmere.  Here's one that gets you a card for each sacrificed land.

Card of the Day - Frost Sapphire

I just finished the 2nd draft of my commons for Frostmere, and I'm going to include some uncommons in the next playtest. This is one of a cycle of mana rocks.  I'm trying them at one snow mana to see how they work.

Card of the Day - Feral Yeti

Affinity is strong.  In playtesting, this guy regularly came down on turn 4.  A 4/4 with haste is a little too strong in limited on turn 4.  I added a few more mana to his cost and one less toughness so he can be more easily taken care of.

Card of the Day - Earthen Might

This card was toned down a bit for power reasons.  +3/+3 on an aura is really hard to deal with.  We'll try it at +3/+1 and see if it works better.

Card of the Day - Shrieking Avalancher

This first version of this card only let you sacrifice one land per turn, but is otherwise not very interesting.  I wanted to make it a little more exciting, so I changed the activation to make it less powerful for each sacrifice, but allow for a strong risk/reward situation.

Card of the Day - Shrug Off

This is the original design of Shrug Off.  In playtesting, the card sat in hands waiting for the opportunity to be used.  Sadly for this card, a lot of the removal in Frostmere is enchantment based.  So I replaced it.

This card will do much better work in Frostmere, and luckily it was already in Odyssey, so I just grabbed the art from there.  I love it when other people have already designed the card I need.

Card of the Day - Infected Spearwall

So, I finally finished the first draft of the commons of Frsotmere, and I am in the process of playtesting with my wife and some friends.  I'll be updating the blog with some of the changes that were made.  Fisrst on the list was a small tweak to Infected Spearwall. It turns out a 1/5 wall with deathtouch is too good when the biggest common creatures have 4 power, so I lowered the mana cost and toughness by one each.

Card of the Day - Coldheart Kulota

I had my Frostmere cards in white borders originally because I was printing them at home and didn't want to water ink, but I remembered that I can go to Kinko's and print them pretty cheap.  Also, Affinity for Snow!  Yay!

Card of the Day - Mourning Sivr

Bradley Rose's plan to make a set has inspired me to finally get a whole set together instead of just individual cards.  The cards I post for a wile will be a part of Frostmere.  I'm finally getting it together.