• In a few sentences, what is the premise of Churches of Vaurfell?

"Churches of Vaurfell is a tricolor faction set based around the mechanical concept of using a mixed group of shards and wedges. Each faction is a church centered around worshiping a different concept or deity, but the focus is very much on the churches and their congregants rather than on the deities or objects of worship."

• What inspired you to begin creating Churches of Vaurfell?

"Churches of Vaurfell began as a submission to Season 3 of MSE's Survivor. We were tasked with rarity-shifting some canon cards of our choice, and I ended up trying to downshift Baneslayer Angel to uncommon (among some other cards). I had been trying to keep a consistent flavor through-line in the submission, so every card in it ended up with some churchy flavor. I ended up liking the flavor enough that I wanted to continue exploring similar themes. It was the submission that got me booted from the competition that year, though 😅"

• Where would you say Churches of Vaurfell is in the development process?

"Commons and Arcuns are complete in the rough, meaning I've designed, arted, and flavored them, but have yet to playtest. I'm currently working on the rest of the uncommons. But all 100+ commons and all 10 arcuns are rendered and have been shared on the set's channel! Archetypes and mechanics are all worked out as well."

• What led you to a mixed shard-wedge design, and how do you balance designing for your splits?

"I really wanted to do a tricolor set, but I felt uninspired by just shards or just wedges--both had been pretty thoroughly and pretty recently explored in both custom and canon by some very talented folks, and neither felt quite right for what I wanted to do. So I decided to experiment. I tallied up the number of times each individual color shows up in shards, and did the same for wedges. Then I moved stuff around until I had some mixed groups with the same even distributions of individual colors (there are actually a few workable batches apart from the five I ended up choosing). From there, I ended up doing a weird hybrid of top-down and bottom-up design--I knew I wanted to explore religious themes, but at that point had none of the specific Churches worked out. I also had my five tricolor groups, but no mechanics yet. So I thought about what things I knew I for *sure* wanted to do and built mechanics up from there. The mechanics, in turn, informed the flavor of their associated factions, and Vaurfell started to take shape. It's undergone a *ton* of changes since then, but that same initial process informed those changes as well."

• How did you go about creating the various religions and sects of Vaurfell, and how do you incorporate their tenets into your design process?

"So I guess I kinda addressed this in number 4, but I'll give a specific example here. Ostelgia, the "Grixis" faction, worships the night sky (the Moon, Stars, and the Void Between). Its members include scholars, academics, astronomers/astrolaters, and wizards. Among them are humans, Moonfolk, werewolves, and wolf-riders. All of these flavor decisions were based on the mechanical vision I had for the faction: Grixis enchantments with Constellation as their dedicated mechanic, but used similarly to how the Jeskai used prowess--low cmc, aggressive/tempo-driven strategies, and evasive bodies. The bulk of their flavor was built around answering the question "What would a church faction with constellation as its associated mechanic look like?""

• What is your favorite card in Churches of Vaurfell?

"Ooh, that's tough. I'd have to go with Waning Moon Lunarius. I love aggro and tempo, and I kinda designed Ostelgia to cater to those tastes specifically, so I have a soft spot for the faction in general. Plus, a subsect of wolf-riding magical knights is just cool as heck."

• Would you like to give any special thanks to anyone for their help?

"So many people! The hosts of Survivor, for accidentally helping to inspire the concept in the first place. Everyone who visits the set channel and helps me work out which of my wacky ideas are good wacky versus bad wacky. My channel neighbor, StasisBot, who always hypes the set up. Hizack, who I've been bouncing ideas off of (good and bad) long before Vaurfell. And you folks, too, for taking an interest in the project. I'm flattered!"