Seeding Mechanics

In the previous post, I showed how poorly I planned the "seeding" of my mechanics throughout the set. To resolve this problem, I did some Gathering and came up with the following list of "card counts by mechanic" from a few sets:

Bushido (CHK 17/291)
Splice (CHK 15/291)
Arcane (CHK 53/291) (It's actually 68 but I subtracted the number of Splice cards)
Soulshift (CHK 12/291)
Flip cards (CHK 10/291)

Morph (ONS 47/335)
Cycling (ONS 31/335)
"creature type" (ONS 34/335)
Zombie (ONS 25/335)
Soldier (ONS 24/335)
Cleric (ONS 30/335)
Goblin (ONS 23/335)
Elf (ONS 20/335)
Beast (ONS 36/335)

Threshold (OD 44/335)
Flashback (OD 30/335)
Discard (OD 47/335)
Sacrifice (OD 61/335)


Summarizing and percent-izing:
Morph 14%
Cycling 9%
"creature type" 10%
Zombie or Elf or Goblin or etc ~7%
Threshold 13%
Flashback 9%

(I think the CHK counts are so low because a ton of space in that set went to Legend stuff, but it would be a little more time consuming to come up with useful numbers there. In any case, I'm ignoring them as a result.)

I've come up with the following guidelines for myself:

1. Most of the cards that have or cause a particular mechanic will be in common; say 60%
2. Most of the cards the punish or leverage a mechanic will be in uncommon; say 25%
3. Any cards that push the envelope on power level and/or are relatively complex will be in rare; say 15%

And here is my order of importance for the mechanics in my set.

1. Resonate
2. Tokens
3. "CMC matters" (CMC = Converted Mana Cost)
4. Debris (lands as a resource beyond mana generation...)
5. Mindfly (if this is revealed from the top of your library...)
6. +1/+1 Counters

Putting the above together with the fact that I want a 289-card set, I've come up with the following roadmap for "seeding" mechanics:



...And off we go!!!