Hello, Nation! When I started receiving results from the Core Set Challenge, I realized that we had some things to discuss. On several occasions, I’ve built core sets. This was the first time that I not only built a set, but also looked at a lot of different sets from a lot of different people. As I noticed trends, I realized that I wanted an article that looked at design of a core set from a community perspective. What do we keep, what do we toss, and what do we value?

Today, I want to do just that. These are the things that we have in common. There are a variety of principles I’ve noticed, and I want to discuss them at length. I think it will be interesting to see how these might be similar to things we see on the Mothership and how they are different.

Principle #1 – We Really Love Merfolk

For a long time, Merfolk were removed from the game, and that was not popular with a lot of fans. Ever since their reintroduction, they’ve become Blue’s tribal race again. Let me tell you: Everyone loves them. Forget Illusions and Wizards and anything else. Virtually every set designer increased the number of Merfolk in the set and included pro-Merfolk tribal lords. Even in one set that had Lord of the Unreal as a rare, a Merfolk lord was right next to him. There is something resonant about Merfolk. They are our Goblins, our Zombies, and our Elves. We don’t care if they have fin feet or if they normally wouldn’t make sense. We just love ’em!

Principle #2 – We Really Love History

I had told everyone that I would be evaluating the sets based on how likely their cards would fit as a core set selection in terms of flavor, abilities, and so forth. There is no way Man-o'-War would be reprinted over AEther Adept. Where’s the flavor? How does a Jellyfish bounce something? I can understand how the pain and tendrils might tap something, but bounce it? Despite this, many people chose to include the Jellyfish anyway. People loved the resonant card from ye olde days so much that they often ignored the rules and put it in. Our love for old stuff from yonder breaks any boundary that might involve rules. This is probably why there was so much hate after dropping Grizzly Bears for Runeclaw Bear. (I didn’t like it either; Green doesn’t magically change and improve on nature; it accepts nature . . . and forces others to at claw-point!) Anyway, we love the stuff from way back, and we want to always enjoy versions of it. (By the by, other than Shoe and Scott, not one person went back to Grizzly Bears except me. Everyone else just chucked them away altogether and moved to Cylian Elf. Runeclaw Bear was removed by everyone save one).

Principle #3 – We Embrace New Things Very Quickly

I expected a lot of old cards in these sets. That was not the case. While we saw some older cards, virtually every set had several cards from Scars of Mirrodin block and Innistrad. There were cards like Rebuke, Prey Upon, Demonmail Hauberk, Psychosis Crawler, Traitorous Blood, and more all running around. I included recent cards like Spire Monitor, Memoricide, Fortress Crab, and Diregraf Ghoul. We all embraced the new. One of the interesting results from this challenge is just how much these sets looked like old cards and new cards all beside each other. It didn’t appear that anyone had a bias for a particular era. And while Principle #2 is that we really love history and embrace it, we also love new things and embrace them, too. I think that keeping hold of cards like Giant Spider, Grizzly Bears, and Man-o'-War enable us to move to the new greats much more easily.

Principle #4 – We Love Commander Cards

Virtually every set included at least one card from the Commander set. One person even included an entire cycle of cards from that set. I really feel that Chaos Warp is a perfect rare for Red, so I tossed it in my set. We saw cards like Acorn Catapult, Avatar of Slaughter, Tribute to the Wild and Syphon Flesh running around. I’m not sure if these inclusions were done because we loved seeing these cards or because we didn’t like seeing them printed outside of normal pack distribution. What matters is that the vast majority of us want to see them in print normally.

Principle #5 – Diregraf Ghoul is the New Sexy

No card from the last three years was included as much as Diregraf Ghoul. Like Commander cards, the vast majority of entrants chose to include Diregraf Ghoul in their sets (including me). A few bumped it down to common, but we really love it. It’s powerful, and its disability is barely one at all in any aggro deck. One person tossed in Carnophage instead, and I wondered if he thought Diregraf Ghoul might be too powerful. No matter—we want Diregraf Ghoul to be the new standard of Black Zombie aggression. Apparently, the other new sexy is Bramblecrush. A few joined me in being Acidic Slime holdouts, and one even slid back into Desert Twister. The rest embraced the new sexy of Bramblecrush.

Principle #6 – Lucky Charms are Sucky Charms

We need to talk about this one for a bit. How many entrants included all five of the lucky charms? Just one! For those who are unaware, the lucky charms refer to the cards in the original set that activated for 1 mana and gave 1 life when someone cast a spell of a color—like Crystal Rod. They were in core sets for forever, and then replaced with the better versions that gave you 1 life for free. They’ve been controversial because they suck in Limited and are rarely played in Constructed. People rightfully have asked time and again why we are seeing these same five sucktastic cards in our uncommon slots. The answer has been that they are skill-testers. New players latch onto these cards because they think they are good. Then the players realize they are not and removed them from decks. It helps them to become better players.

Let’s assume that WotC’s answer is right. The lucky charms are great skill-testers. We’ll accept this claim without argument and also claim that skill-testers should be in the core set without controversy. Here’s the problem: in a core set, space is tight. You have one common colorless card, and it’s almost always something to fix mana. At rare, you have thirteen colorless cards in M12. Your five nonbasic lands for land sorting take away a bunch of those spots. At uncommon, we have fifteen spots. That means we have twenty-three slots left after nonbasics. If you take away five for the lucky charms cycle, you have just eighteen cards for everything else. That includes creatures at uncommon for Drafts, valuable cards like Icy Manipulator, Millstone, and Coat of Arms, Equipment, and more. It’s very tough to fit everything you need. Trust me. After building three core sets over the years, I know how difficult finding space in the colorless section can be.

Since space is at such a premium, including the lucky charms seems to really disadvantage the core sets. What many of us did was replace lucky charms with similar cards. I used Jeweled Torque as an uncommon in my set, which freed up four slots. Another used Paradise Plume. These are very similar to the lucky charms, but they allow you to choose the color. They can play the role without taking up a lot of space.

Perhaps other skill-testers could replace them. I think Spellbook is a similar skill-tester. New players love it and want to acquire some for their decks, then later realize that it’s not good and pull them out. Several entrants included Spellbook in their uncommons (and I included it along with Jeweled Torque for two skill-testers, and then had three slots created.) Another good option would be something like Fountain of Youth or Braidwood Cup. It looks enticing to newer players, and then you play it and take it out later. They are skill-testers in a similar way to the lucky charms, and yet these cards can replace the charms wholesale.

Something needs to be done. The lucky charms really appear to be a sacred cow that needs to be slain. Most of us have all done core sets without them, and I think the sets are better for it. Just shock the system and move on.

Principle #7 – Koth Beats Chandra

There are precisely four mono-Red planeswalkers out there. Chandra is three of them, and Koth is one. Here are the numbers on Koth versus Chandra: Six chose Koth, two went with Chandra, the Firebrand, and one for Chandra Ablaze. (Some didn’t have any planeswalkers at mythic). Chandra is the mega-loser of Planeswalkerdom. As someone who chose Koth, let me say that the original Chandra is too weak, Chandra Ablaze is too specific, and Chandra, the Firebrand is fine, but underwhelming when compared to Koth. Koth is a sexy Planeswalker-man.

Principle #8 – Portal Is Beloved

The sheer number of cards from Portal, Portal 2, Portal: Three Kingdoms, and Starter that found a way into these sets despite never being reprinted before was astonishing. We had guys like Cruel Tutor, Cloud Dragon, Borrowing 100,000 Arrows, Champion Lancer, Salvage, and Ravaging Horde. Some appeared multiple times, like Fire Imp, Temple Acolyte, and Hunting Cheetah. I don’t want to do the math, but there were all sorts of cards from all sorts of people that sprung up. That’s the sort of thing you’d expect me to do, and yes, Hunting Cheetah was an uncommon in my core set, Jungle Lion was a common, and I made False Summoning my Remove Soul/Essence Scatter because I like its name best. Both of the others sound like removal. Anyway, my point stands—people adore Portal sets, and want it continued to be mined for reprints. Due to the scarcity of cards from them, I couldn’t agree more.

Principle #9 – Hold the French, More Vanilla Please

One of the concerns I had before doing this was that too many people wouldn’t have vanilla and French vanilla cards like most sets have. Luckily, that was not the case for French vanilla creatures, but I felt there weren’t enough purely vanilla creatures. Some people made sure to include guys like Mass of Ghouls, Craw Wurm, Cylian Elf and Kraken Hatchling. I’m not sure a lot of folks out there understand just how important vanilla creatures are. I ran with Blade of the Sixth Pride, Shatterskull Giant, Siege Mastodon, Grizzly Bears, Mass of Ghouls, Coral Merfolk, and Fortress Crab so that I’d have at least one in each color at common. They really are important. However, everybody had a ton of French vanilla creatures, which are creatures with just keywords and nothing else—such as Stomper Cub and Gloomhunter.

Principle #10 – Cards I Didn’t Expect

There were a lot of cool cards I didn’t expect that were quite common. I included the Dread, Guile, Hostility, Purity, Vigor cycle because I thought they were perfect and interesting. I was surprised when I saw that so many others thought similarly. I think they could receive an upgrade to up to mythic without any issue. I totally missed the awesomeness of Spiketail Drakeling. A lot of people caught that, but I totally blanked. I didn’t expect Berserk and Fatal Frenzy to be chosen as often as they were, but that’s cool. Total surprise came from witnessing Pox with multiple entries. These were all very good entries chosen many times that blew me away.

Principle #11 – Cards I Did Expect

There were some cards I included that I was really expecting to see. For example, I had Natural Order as a rare. It’s just the most perfect Green tutor. It’s beloved, it’s a card that would really increase your marketability score, it’s not reserved because it was reprinted in Portal long ago, and it wouldn’t be overly broken. I was also really hoping for Sower of Temptation. It’s another very powerful card that would really sell a set and yet not be so powerful that it would warp the environment. Finally, I was expecting a ton of people to throw Congregate into their sets—like I did at uncommon. Where were my dozens of Congregates? (Shoe was the only one with it.) Of course, this would never impact someone’s score. That would be based solely on the consistency of his set and how it stood against my metrics. I would never punish a person for not including a pet card of mine. I just thought it odd that cards that I thought would be included in large numbers were largely absent.

Principle #12 – Too Many Casting Cost Errors

The biggest issue I saw with sets was conflicting casting costs. For example, I have Rampant Growth and Borderland Ranger as my land searching at common. M11 has Cultivate, and therefore drops to the 2-casting-cost Sylvan Ranger as common land searching. I mentioned that I liked Flux at uncommon in a set that had Inspiration at common. You might think Inspiration is worse than Divination, but in the context of Flux being in the set, I liked it. Counterspells work similarly; I’d sometimes see all of the counters with the same cost. It was unusual that I saw the casting costs working well within a set. That’s okay; it’s an advanced metric. I made that mistake with my first core set, too. For my second set a few years later, my friends and I made decks out of just that set and played them against each other. That really showed me what worked and what didn’t. Everybody had great sets, and most just needed a little tweaking here and there. Of the groups, rares and mythics were the best, and uncommons in the middle, with commons needing the most tweaking across the board. Since there are so many (twenty of each color), there’s real temptation to include cards that don’t work, have a ten-and-ten creature-to-spell ratio rather than twelve-and-eight, include things that are too complex, or have the casting cost issue. It’s easy to select eight or nine cards that represent your color without too many issues. Doing that with twenty cards that require more research is very difficult.

Principle #13 – Change Is Necessary

It was fun to see what cards were included for standard abilities. For example, virtually every core set has a reanimation spell at uncommon for Black. Would I see Zombify? (Yes). Animate Dead? (Yes) Rise from the Grave? (Many times). I did not have one in my uncommon—I ran out of space—so I tossed Beacon of Unrest in at rare. (I really wanted Vampiric Embrace in as an uncommon to pair with Serra's Embrace on the other side, and with both Serra Angel and Sengir Vampire in as uncommons, it was just too cool for school. Plus, it allowed me to not have Holy Strength and Unholy Strength, or their analogues, at common). You don’t need Mind Rot, but you need something. What would be included? What’s your flying hoser? What’s your Black tutor? What’s your common bounce spell? What’s your Giant Growth? What’s your uncommon Green Regrowth ability? This was fun to see!

Principle #14 – Cycles Are Problems

Early in making my own core set, I tried out an uncommon set of Auras that came back to the hand after dying. Everything worked except the Black one. I couldn’t use Fear (from Sleeper's Guile), so I pulled everything in order to avoid any issues. Later on, I had put in Serra Avatar and wanted Avatar of Woe in my set. I decided that an Avatar cycle at rare or mythic would be really interesting. I settled on these five: Serra Avatar, Avatar of Will, Avatar of Fury, Essence of the Wild, and Sanguine Praetor. When I came back to my set a few weeks later, I noticed how jarring this looked. Sure, most were fine, but it really seemed that I was wedded to this idea. Avatar of Fury fought with Dragons for cool flying, firebreathing guys. I’d rather have a Dragon, so I yanked it for Avatar of Slaughter. It didn’t take long for that to come out, too. Essence of the Wild’s ability was probably a bit too much in a core set. The Avatar of Will was adequate, but there were better choices. I had moved to Cycling by this time, so I slid into Scion of Darkness, and then pulled out all of the other Avatars except for Serra Avatar. If I hadn’t given my set some time off, I would have called it done with this weak cycle at the higher rarities.

I think this was an issue with a lot of entries. People had this great idea for including a cycle, and yet one color or two would rock entries that just didn’t suit the core set idea. They tried so hard to shoehorn in a cycle that their sets were weakened by it—not strengthened. It’s like we all had blinders on. I had my Avatar cycle, and others had their precious babies as well. We were bound and determined to figure out a way to make it work. This is among the biggest issues I experienced with my set, and it seems that the experience repeats itself over and over again. I still want an Avatar cycle in my set. Let me tell you, letting go is hard.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you those thoughts from the challenge. One more thanks to those who worked hard to submit sets. Next week, we’ll check in on the 100 Combo Decks in 20 Weeks project and look at the first ten decks.

See you next week,

Abe Sargent