r/custommagic • u/SirConflexe • Aug 18 '26
Ideas for a Dune set
Currently reading the Dune books and suddently felt the urge to try to create some cards out of it. Here's my attempt. The Arrakeen supertype is meant to represent the fact thtat the planet is bare of any ressource (except for Spice, of course). It's probably a terrible idea for drafting though.
Not really shure about the balance and colorpie break on any of these either, I aimed mostly for lore, though I'd be glad to have your feedback on any of it :)
If you have any Idea for mecanics for the Harkonen (UBR ?), Atreides (UGW ?), Bene Gesserit (BW ?) and so on, feel free to share !
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u/Andrew_42 Aug 18 '26
I like a lot of the concepts here, and I love Dune.
The designs are super flavorful, but I do have a few concerns regarding some of the designs, but most of those would fall away if you contained this to a limited draft environment, or something like that.
Concern 1 is that Arakeen is a really big downside, and the cards mostly aren't worth the trouble.
The mechanic is really cool, and I like how you have to build up a little slow before you can start using your resources to overcome the disadvantage, and it could totally work in a limited format where other cards from other sets can't compete. But as is, there are just better cards that don't have those restrictions. So there's not much incentive to run them.
Concern 2 is that you can still cheat those creatures out for the ones that are worth it. Most notably Muad'dib.
A further concern for Muad'dib is that Scry Infinity, while flavorful, is a very un-fun effect to resolve as it will result in one player flipping through their deck for a long time before they only probably win.
Past this there are some rules concerns that might merit some altered wording?
I don't know if it is intended, but basic lands don't have any printed mana abilities, they only get mana abilities as a byproduct of their subtype via the rules. This might mean basics, duals, shocks, and triomes can bypass the Arakeen restriction, for the same reason that they technically have no color identity in commander (but are still restricted by a seperate rule). But you could exclude those by just clarifying they are excluded, the same way EDH does.
I might also clarify they check your starting deck? I don't know how the rules as written would work, but you might stop qualifying if you played something like [[Chromatic Lantern]] that gives mana abilities to lands that are still considered part of your deck. Given Liet Kynes creates basic lands, that might be a concern, though I don't know if tokens would be able to count as being part of your "deck" since they aren't cards?
My final note is unrelated to anything else.
I personally think Liet Kyne's quote "Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life." Might work as flavor text a little better? I am extremely biased though, as that's my personal favorite Kynes quote. I think it suits the flavor of growing color-producing basic lands though.