FE Redux

Author: WUBRG_Nich Current version: Version 2 Last change: 2022-06-14 02:49:31 Stage: Finished

FE REDUX A Custom Magic Set Inspired by Fallen Empires Design by Nicholas Grayson

Last updated: 13JUN22

Before making FE REDUX, I identified three core concepts in Fallen Empires that I considered essential. These concepts are what make Fallen Empires feel like Fallen Empires. If my FE REDUX set was going to feel like a spiritual successor, it needed to keep these three pillars in mind from the start:

1.) Flavor Driven – The stories that informs Fallen Empire are very clean. Internal struggles within five empires lead to the destruction of each empire. That idea must remain, along with the smaller stories that intertwine the empires.

2.) Tribal – Fallen Empires is considered the first “creature type matters” set. There actually aren’t that many tribal cards, but based on the perception, I should capture that theme.

3.) Counters – Fallen Empires had fourteen different types of counters, many of which only appeared on a single card. Having so many different types of counters isn’t something modern design would do. On the plus side, I will have a mostly untapped mechanical space to mine for card designs.

Fallen Empires is a 187 card set, but only has 102 unique card designs. This is due to multiple versions of each common appearing in the set. Each color has 7 common designs and 24 printed cards. * 3 of those designs had 4 cards with different arts and flavor texts. * 4 of those designs had 3 cards with different arts and flavor texts.

I wanted to make FE REDUX using only the original Fallen Empires art. And I wanted to use as much of its original flavor text as possible.

With so many of the set’s art assets being variations of the same design concept, it would be tricky to make cards with clear mechanical differences.

This is also true of similar flavor texts, although that’s not as hard to work around.

There’s an unequal distribution of creature types in Fallen Empires, making a Tribal component difficult for FE REDUX.

Relying on the art of Fallen Empires means reconciling the small numbers of Dwarves, Elves, Homarids, and Merfolk with the overabundance of Humans, Orcs, Thallids, and Thrulls.

With much of the art being creature-focused, it would be hard to equalize tribes just by reducing the overall number of creature cards in the set.

I decided to constrain my design in a number of ways:

  • I avoided mechanical tropes like “newer” evergreen keywords (deathtouch, lifelink, hexproof), enter the battlefield effects, modal spells, planeswalkers, etc.

  • I included some modern design elements like “old” unnamed evergreen keywords (defender, reach, vigilance), race/class creature types, reminder text, “creating” tokens, “exiling” permanents, etc.

  • I skipped older mechanics and color pie concepts that aren’t used anymore. No banding, protection, regeneration, “bury” effects, blue ping effects, etc. I didn’t include any flying. This is a spiritual carry over from Fallen Empires, but also practical, as only two arts show flying. There are other evasion mechanics.

Flavor Driven – I made a lot of top down designs in FE REDUX. For example, black cards in Fallen Empires reference thrull breeders, a thrull rebellion, and the fall of the Ebon Hand. In FE REDUX I made black cards that let you play out those moments and not just read about them.

Similarly there are cards for the six Sarpadian Empire volumes, cards depicting the food shortages that drove the elves to grow thallids, and a card depicting the fall of each empire.

I added flavor text to the dwarven empire. Because their empire was lost and little was known of it, I chose to showcases how long they were under siege before they fell, and how tough they were as reflected by the length of time they withstood these sieges.

I added archons to the top of Icatia’s hierarchy, as a manifestation of the justice and militarism of that empire. The king’s champion isn’t just a man, but a supernatural judge. This is a little different to how archons are depicted in later Magic sets.

Tribal – I continued tribal design techniques and went with two-color tribes in FE REDUX. Since the art elements of Fallen Empires rely so heavily on a mono-color identity for each empire, I couldn’t easily use tribal races. The Vodalian Empire is mono-blue Merfolk. It wouldn’t work to split Vodalia between two colors. So I used class for my tribal component. This way there could be Soldiers in two colors, but they didn’t have to both be part of the same empire. There are five classes in FE REDUX:

  • Soldiers are in white and blue.
  • Clerics are in white and black.
  • Barbarians are in blue and red.
  • Minions are in black and green.
  • Warriors are in red and green.

The other five color pairs have dual-class crossover:

  • Barbarian Minion are in blue and black.
  • Barbarian Cleric are in black and red.
  • Soldier Warrior are in green and white.
  • Warrior Cleric are in red and white.
  • Soldier Minion are in green and blue.

There’s a 10-card cycle of lords for the races in the set for players who don’t want to just build around class.

There are spells that let you choose a creature type so players can build their own tribal interactions.

Counters – I included a strong counter theme in FE REDUX, doing several things you could never do in a modern design. The abundance of counters makes the set feel more like a boardgame then tradiational Magic, but this whole set is about playing the “what if” game and trying something very different. As a result, almost every cards deals with counters in some way.

FE REDUX has counters that grant keywords. If a creature has a counter on it with the same name as a keyword, it grants the creature that keyword. For example, a goblin with a HASTE counter on it has haste.

Life counters and death counters trigger abilities but are not named keywords. When a creature dies, it counts the number of these kinds of counters on it for different scaling effect.

Dirge is a keyword in FE REDUX that has a death trigger that counts any kind of counter on the creature, not just a subset with a particular name.

Necrogenesis and Sporogenesis are two keywords in the set that mix and match counters for similar effects. One of them builds counters to make a single scalable sized creature token, and the other builds counters to make a scalable number of 1/1 tokens.

There are two power/toughness modifying counters, but they aren’t +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters. These power/toughness changing counters are named power counter and toughness counter. They give a +1 pip to either power or toughness, as named.

A cycle of four power/toughness setting counters change a creature’s base power/toughness. Most effects that make these counters will first remove any other base power/toughness counters from the creature.

There are a total of 17 counters in FE REDUX which can be batched together into a four main mechanical concepts. All of them have reminder text when used, except when they are used in a keyword, like with necrogenesis and sporogenesis.

Power counters and toughness counters do not have reminder text.

KEYWORD GRANTING COUNTERS

  • Cowardice counter – Grants a creature the new cowardice keyword.

  • Defender counter – Grants a creature the defender keyword.

  • Dirge counter – Grants a creature the new dirge keyword.

  • First strike counter – Grants a creature the first strike keyword.

  • Haste counter – Grants a creature the haste keyword.

  • Shroud counter – Grants a creature the shroud keyword.

  • Trample counter – Grants a creature the trample keyword.

  • Vigilance counter – Grants a creature the vigilance keyword.

BASE POWER / TOUGHNESS SETTING SIZE COUNTERS

  • Small size counter – Sets a creature’s base p/t to 0/1.

  • Medium size counter – Sets a creature’s base p/t to 3/3.

  • Large size counter – Sets a creature’s base p/t to 5/5.

  • Enormous size counter – Sets a creature’s base p/t to 7/7.

POWER / TOUGHNESS MODIFYING COUNTERS

*Power counter– Gives a creature +1/+0. Also used for necrogenesis and sporogenesis keywords.

  • Toughness counter – Gives a creature +0/+1. Also used for necrogenesis and sporogenesis keywords.

  • DEATH TRIGGER COUNTERS

  • Life counter – Count the life counters on a creature when it dies. Its controller gains that much life. Also used for sporogenesis keyword.

  • Death counter – Count the death counters on a creature when it dies. Each player except its controller lose that much life. Also used for necrogenesis keyword.

OTHER

  • Tide counter – No mechanical effects. Used for high tide and low tide keywords.

7 NEW KEYWORDS

  • Cowardice – This is a reflection of the defender keyword. Creatures with cowardice can’t block.

  • Dirge – When a creature with dirge dies, you can put one of each of its kinds of counters on another creature you control in its tribe.

  • High tide – This is a keyword that cycles through you drawing an extra card and discarding a card, tracked over four turns with tide counters. High tide starts at the card draw part of that cycle.

  • Low Tide – This is a keyword that cycles through you drawing an extra card and discarding a card, tracked over four turns with tide counters. Low tide starts at the discard a card part of that cycle.

  • Necrogenesis – Build up death counters, power counters and toughness counters to make a / Thrull creature token that’s as big as the number of counters you built up. You will lose life when the token is created.

  • Sporogenesis – Build up life counters, power counters, and toughness counters to make a number of 1/1 Fungus creature tokens equal to the number of counters you built up. You will gain life when the tokens are created.

Cowardice (This creature can’t block.)

  • FE REDUX features red 2/2 Orc creature tokens with cowardice.

  • Some creatures enter the battlefield with a cowardice counter on them, but would be able to block later if the counter is removed.

  • There’s a rare in FE REDUX that lets you Flametongue Kavu every time it gets into combat, with damage based on the number of creatures you control with cowardice.

Dirge (When this creature dies, for each kind of counter on it, you may put a counter of that kind on another creature you control that shares a creature type with this creature.)

  • Dirge looks for the kinds of counters on the creature, not the total number of counters on it. Only one of each kind of counter will be given out.

  • Multiple instances of dirge will trigger separately.

  • Dirge is printed as a keyword on some creatures, and other creatures enter the battlefield with a dirge counter on them which grants them the keyword.

  • You can choose to not put a counter of a kind on one of your creatures. You can spread the counters out among many creatures as long as they all share a tribe with the dead creature. You can put all the craetures on a single creature.

High tide (This enters the battlefield with four tide counters on it. After your draw step, remove a counter from it. Whenever its fourth tide counter is removed, draw a card. Whenever its second tide counter is removed, discard a card. Whenever its last tide counter is removed, put four of them on it.)

  • The draw, discard, and “reload tide” abilities will trigger whenever the designated numbered counter is removed, not just during your post-draw main phase.

  • Cards with high tide are costed like slow-cantrips, since you will draw a card the turn after you cast them.

  • After you cast a creature with high tide it will be several turns before you need to discard a card. By that time, the creature may no longer be on the battlefield.

  • There are effects in red that like to “eat” counters. Use them to cycle through high tide quickly, especially if you can remove the second tide counter when you have no cards in hand.

Low tide (This enters the battlefield with two tide counters on it. After your draw step, remove a counter from it. Whenever its second tide counter is removed, discard a card. Whenever its last tide counter is removed, put four of them on it. Whenever its fourth tide counter is removed, draw a card.)

  • Low tide works exactly like high tide except the permanent starts with two tide counters on it instead of four.

  • Creatures with low tide are bigger than normal to account for the discard you will be forced to make the turn after you cast them.

  • Plan ahead which card you will discard to get around low tide’s drawback.

  • There are cards in blue, and black that reward you for discarding a card. Try them with low tide creatures.

Necrogenesis (After your draw step, put a kind of counter on this from among death, power, and toughness. Whenever it has one of each, remove them all. You lose that much life and create a black Thrull Minion creature token with power and toughness each equal to the number of counters removed this way.)

  • The “create a token” ability will trigger whenever the permanent has one of each kind of counter on it, not just during your post-draw main phase.

  • These death counters behave like other death counters in the set even though the reminder text doesn’t spell it out. When a creature dies, each player except its controller loses 1 life for each death counter on it.

  • Once a creature with necrogenesis has at least one death counter, one power counter, and one toughness counter on it, you must remove them all and make a token. The total number of counters removed are counted to determine the token’s p/t, which most often will be 3/3. You will lose life equal to the total number of counters removed, which most likely will be 3 life.

Sporogenesis (After your draw step, put a kind of counter on this from among life, power, and toughness. Whenever it has one of each, remove them all. For each power counter or toughness counter removed this way, you gain 1 life and create a 1/1 green Fungus Minion creature token.)

  • The “create tokens” ability triggers whenever the permanent has one of each kind of counter on it, not just during your post-draw main phase.

  • These life counters behave like other life counters in the set even though the reminder text doesn’t spell it out. When a creature dies, its controller gains 1 life for each life counter on it.

  • Once a creature with sporogenesis has at least one life counter, one power counter, and one toughness counter on it, you must remove them all and make tokens. Only power counters and toughness counters are counted to determine the number of tokens you make, which most often will be two 1/1s. You will gain life equal to the number of tokens created, which most often will be 2 life.

Version 2

Date: 2022-06-14 02:49:31

Change log:

FE REDUX Version 1

Date: 2019-03-22 01:00:43

This is the first version of FE Redux published on PlaneSculptors.net.