Imgur album of the cards here: http://imgur.com/a/bBnFj
Tappedout link to the rest of the deck here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/hesed/
Making Hesed was challenging. She had a unique way of pushing against boundaries and wanted to care about specific things that are potentially nonfun. The key was to use the discard and sacrifice in a proactive way. Yes there was some splash to the opponent, but most of it is using cards in hand or lands as a way to fuel your own effects. The deck is untuned and probably needs to be de-powered after play testing. One of my goals for building the decks is to not overlap nonland cards. The lands are going to need to overlap to support 4 color.
I also decided while working on Hesed that there should be a structure to the cards that made sense. I hit upon:
3 4 color cards
4 3 color cards
6 2 color cards
Then there'll be 2 cards that are shared between all the decks to help fixing. This brings the total number of new cards up to 67, which is quite high for this type of product. My current thinking to reduce the overall number of cards in the product is to cut the Mandate cycle and replace it with another mana fixing card. That would reduce the number of overall new card to 63. While still a bit high, its much closer to reality.
Onto the cards themselves:
Hesed's current form was born out of a desire to retain the anti-draw technology without having to break the ascetic similarities of the cycle. All of the Nephilim have a trigger and an active that play into each other. Hesed's trigger is padded by her active. Her active also makes her into a Loam type deck which plays into the direction of the card that I wanted, which is an Earthmother vibe. The number of lands might be adjusted since three is a high number, but I like three mana for three lands.
Krometh was made as a way to reward the high land count of the deck. I'm still trying to reconcile the two Xes in his text box. The rest of the card feels like a way to make many large threats with one card. The other thing I'm somewhat reticent about is the heavy cost. 5 mana for a 1/1 is not the best rate. I'm considering restructuring him to be more like Mana-gorger hydra and start as a 1/1 and scale while in play. Of course he wants to be scaling with mana. This is all speculation and the card could be fine as is; this is a situation where play testing is important.
Earthmother's Mandate is likely getting cut. I can't find a wording for the mandates that I like.
I like the way Netzach's abilities all tie in together. More than once I've gotten feedback that people didn't understand him having lifelink, only to put the pieces together. I like that people have that, 'ohhhhhh I get it' moment. As a general he would be interesting to build around, and as a member of Hesed's deck he is a solid support card.
Suphlatus is very aggressive. It was changed to make more sense on the ability and the trigger was changed to be 'your graveyard' as opposed to 'a graveyard'. While I don't think the power of getting counters from any yard was too high, it incentivized mass land destruction a bit more than I would like. While that's still fine with her, not benefiting off of the opponents' lands means that you can probably convert all of your lands to counters with her first ability if you want and is less likely to lead to abusive deck building. I do like that she's low cost aggro in Jund though, which has so many cards in this style that never get played in EDH.
Might of Naya came under fire for not being white. While I don't think the card is overly white, the Butcher Orgg ability could appear in white, and the Terravore ability is pretty close to Knight of the Reliquary. I think I'm happy having the card be a bit undercosted and not pushing the color issue by adding something like first strike.
Oasis Drinker was the most well received card by miles. I agreed that it should have trample, and the tokens it would work best with are a bit of a minor theme in the deck. The deck will get some more token making cards on the second pass, I was mostly saving them for Ein'Sof since I'm trying not to repeat cards. Honestly though, the deck doesn't even need tokens for this monster to be very scary.
Sylvan Monk exists because turning lands into creatures feels like token making a lot of the time, it was an effect that I hadn't used elsewhere, and it fit the idea of lands being significantly more expendable than usual. The cost and suspend number need to be ironed out since they play off each other significantly.
Spiritual Retribution is a token maker that fits the rest of the deck. Its possible it'll need a mana cost on the trigger since its pretty damn strong as is.
Nether Demon requires no comment.
Loam-Tiller is a very strong card, but giving everyone an extra land play is a powerful drawback. I also like that he functions as a mana dork. I think maybe the second ability should target so its easier to mess with. 2 mana is low, but I think it works out for your opponents enough where you still have to be careful with it.
Emissary of Nature might become limited to once a turn, but I think the mana cost is a sufficient limiter and stops you from just immediately killing all the artifacts. The card is quite strong though and might have to cost 5 overall.
Essence Blast is a weird one. I like it, but I also think that making a card cost more on its madness works in the opposite direction than usual. Perhaps this one gets changed to Flashback.
The deck itself wants to shift into having more token support. That will probably happen after the first round of play testing points out which cards are too strong for a preconstructed deck. I'll be putting up Ein'Sof's deck shortly.
Cheers!
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