Touhou II: Story of an Eastern Thread

[Cogwheel]

Woah. That's far more of a response than I expected.

Colour me interested. It's been a while since I played Magic, and this looks like the perfect excuse to remedy that.

Yaaaay. Though I imagine being out of the game for a while means you'll be playing Limited?

Looking at the previews, I absolutely looooove Hina's design. Spin, Hina, spin! Same goes for Kogasa and Remi. Now, for some minor text nitpicking and various comments:

Oh, thanks. And I see you've played Shadowmoor, at least, if you recognize that. Remi is... well, she originally cost four hybrid black/red mana. That was pretty clearly broken. I don't like the card much myself and won't until post-playtesting, if only because the lockdown potential really scares me. Ah well.

Spoiler

Show

Mokou's first ability needs some templating (should be "it deals" instead of "deal", unless you really want the source of the damage to be the player, and I don't even know if that's possible!).

Entirely possible. Not the intent, though, and I'll fix that immediately (though not the gallery, mucking about with that is a pain, just the actual in-set version). Thanks for catching that.

Shou's tap ability doesn't need to specify that you gain life, since Lifelink covers that. Unless the idea was to gain that life twice, of course.

Yeah, that's the intent. This is why the joke that started around her ("my name is Shou, but you can call me Lightning Helix") is not entirely accurate.

I've always seen Tewi's second ability starting with the words "Choose one:", dunno if this has changed recently. Still, it's just standard templating and it should work fine as is.

But I did put that there- wait, why isn't it there?

Bluh. Fixing.

Yuyuko's ability probably needs "...under your control" at the end.

Maybe for clarification's sake, yeah. Technically, the "under your control" bit is implied unless otherwise stated in cases like this, but it can't hurt.

What does Suika's and Yuugi's Drunken 3 do?

That's the main mechanic for oni in this set. Intoxication counters. Most creatures, if they have one, can't block. Creatures with Drunken can, and get +X/+X per counter, where X is the number next to Drunken. Most have 1 or 2, while Suika and Yuugi have 3.

I, uh... I did mention that this is largely a tribal set, right? That's a thing it is.

It's kind of funny how Aya and Hatate would work wonderfully well together in a deck. Throw in a Pandemonium-like effect and... *drools*

Actually, that's because Aya, Hatate and Momiji are basically the big three cards (along with Daitengu Loremaster, a non-legendary) for the tengu tribe. Which are split into red Wolf Youkai and blue Bird Youkai, though Aya covers both colours. Their primary mechanic (with a bit of bouncing/mucking about with topdecks) is hand size. Yours and the opponent's.

I guess they're pretty Kamigawa, only hopefully not useless.

If Nue's "discard a card" is part of the Morph cost, it should appear before the reminder text.

Thanks. Fixing.

Lol Sanae+Giant Catfish deck. Johnny senses tingling hard.

Also the part where she makes Suwako and Kanako work together without stretching your manabase horribly. Intentional, as is her taking the only colour they share. In Constructed, you might be able to drop turn 1 Elves/BoP, turn 2 Minoriko, turn 3 Sanae, turn 4 Progenitus. She does make Avatar tribal vaguely playable in casual matches, at least.

Seriously looking forward to seeing the whole set. A few cards look darn overpowered at first sight, but I guess it will all more-or-less balance itself when seeing the whole picture.

Or it'll be a horrible trainwreck!

But hey, this is why we playtest.

In the meantime, while I appreciate the desire to show off cool art, it would be preferable to use the regular card layout on most cards over the full-art one. It makes the text really hard to read on a lot of cards, especially ones with brightly-colored art (it also takes away a bit of the 'special' feel of the layout frame, but that's minor).

This is by request. And only for previews. I'm well aware of the problem and also the fact that some art needs to be moved around on the card a bit (borders on Komachi, hideous Devour reminder text on Flandre, I'm looking at you). The final version will be available in both full art and translucent frame (see: Eldrazi) varieties for cards with art. And it will still stand out, I reckon, simply because many cards don't even have art at all.

Also the expansion symbol is ugly and this means I don't have to show it until it's fixed- oh wait the incident cycle. Neeeever mind.

-I really like the choice of the Avatar creature type for gods and related creatures.
-Introducing the Youkai type doesn't seem fully necessary since there's already the Spirit type, which also got used in Kamigawa. If the concern is that Spirit should be used for dead ghosts specifically, the MtG conception of the Elemental type is probably closer to what Youkai are in Japanese folklore proper. That said, this isn't a big issue.

Thanks. Avatar seemed like the only good fit, really. As for Youkai... I understand the concern, and I wasn't entirely comfortable myself. I can't use Spirit because that's for ghosts, and a tribe in itself. Elemental seems a mite too western and also inappropriate in some cases (say, Satori). Also, there are some limited Youkai-hosers in the human cards and such. Maybe some things that benefit them eventually too, aside from being excluded from Eternal Night. If nothing else, it's probably harmless.

The one person who seriously told me to make a Miko type just for Sanae/Reimu, on the other hand... which reminds me, I'm a bit surprised that no one minds Reimu's type being Shaman.

Cogwheel, gimme a poke if you want help finding art for anything.

Thank you. As Volatar said, anything that isn't legendary or a handful of spells lacks art. A lot of this may never find art. I admit, it's not currently as much of a priority as getting this to a playable state. The "art for everything that can have it" bit will wait. As will full completion on flavour text, I imagine (by which I mean putting it on all cards that should have it, not just most).

Thanks for the offer, though. The best way to do it, I reckon, is to just find art for anything that lacks it, if you want to, and suggest it to me once the set's out and you can see the card list as a whole.


A few last things for everyone: This is a tribal set. A bunch of legends don't support it but this is definitely what the generic creatures and a bunch of noncreatures do. The easiest way to explain it is tossing Lorwyn and Kamigawa into a blender, at least in some respects.

Second, I can start posting generics if anyone just wants raw stats right now or something. Third, have a pair of not-on-the-gallery-yet previews.