Set Spotlight – Hyperpop – Beacon of Creation

Kayiu hosts a look at color-blasted, music-infused future set Hyperpop! Creators platypeople and IgnitedxSoul give you a comprehensive look starting with abandoned mechanics, then talking through the featured keywords, into themes, and finally some Revolution constructed shots.

The set and one of it’s mechanics Amp it up started from a Discord prompt:

Amp it up evolved a bit from there, we’ll dive more into that later.

The crew then talked through some mechanics they tried in development. One is Crossfade, a bit of a kicker for using extra colors:

Kayiu compared this to Wu Xing as well:

Another mechanic named Quantize was tried, a relative of Suspend 1 and Foretell. The name was killed but a rare cycle of it remains:

Leading into the main mechanics for the set, the group talks about “action batches”, thematically grouped game actions. Secrets of the River Cities by Zangy paved the way with committing crimes:

Amp it up, which cares about double spell and attacking with three creatures, is Hyperpop’s action batch. The team had fun designing cards that maximized when you hit both parts of the batch:

Ignited’s favorite Amp it up card is Android Stunner, which gives you a ton of payoff for amping:

Platy loves Xeon, BPM Savant and Kayiu mentions Electrostatic Pummeler brought up as a canon comp:

Next up is Drop, a bonus for holding back on creatures for a turn. Malicious Mech and Morasha Mosh Lord showcase the comeback potential of the mechanic:

Finally, the splashy mechanic of the set is prismatic mana. This mechanic requires you to spend extra colors of mana but gives you flexibility on exactly which ones:

The mechanic’s seed started with Agentbla but the Hyperpop team mixed in color cards as a way to focus its potential. A favorite aspect of prismatic mana is how it creates cards that look like color pie breaks but since all the missing colors contribute to an effect, it’s still safe:

Platy was just a little bummed out that Ittri’s potential was sniped by Void Rend. Ittri Procession along with Spectral Reclamation also highlight the potential of prismatic mana to rein in power level:

Beyond the named mechanics are an array of mechanical themes: scry density, elemental tribal, artifact matters, aristocrats, having differently named lands, caring about untapped lands

platy especially highlights how caring about scry can create almost “loops” where you filter through a deck and find all the right cards, triggering nice effects all the while.

Ignited is a big fan of the sultai synergy. The power of Drop allows slower control decks, and opened up the possibility of Cancel and Quench variants to shine:

Moving into flavor… platy emphasized having to conceptualize how magic (lower case) is filtered through the tropes of a plane… Theros is prayer. In Aenyr, art is magic. They settled on Hyperpop’s magic being from “light and sound”.

The uncommon lands highlight the soundveins, the source of mana of the plane. There’s a conflict between an evil corp and harvesting veins and the elementals who live in the veins.

Moving onto the characters in the set, the emphasized the three planeswalkers. Starting with Sarasa (native to Brimst?) and who is looking to heal a damaged world seed from Rakoa.

Also present is Glitch from Lovesong (look forward to its sequel Animus Vox!)

Nekaru is also beloved, and the art for it is all made by Kez Laczin. “this set wouldn’t exist without them”

(lunch edit notes)

found 3d-ist art and turned them into light vein harnessing machines

ignited brings up importance of reviewing playtest replays together with platy

Hyperpop is now in Revolution, the famous rotating Custom Magic format. Platy is most excited about trilands finally coming to the format.

Ignited highlights JJ Mack, Trendsetter and kayiu brings up that combining it with the “cast spells cost 4 or greater” theme from a previous Rev set and a card like Lightning Axe could form a fun constructed deck.