Weekend Art Challenge Review 030813—Goddess Mechanic

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

Edward's Amnesty is modular enough that it could appear in any set with twobrid mana. This Second Sunrise variant is harder to combo with since it only returns creatures, and while that limitation does make this printable at uncommon, it's still a potential bomb if you can set up combat just right.

The twobrid certainly isn't necessary for the card to work, but it does allow it to be cast for 2W or 4 which means that non-white players could surprise you by playing Amnesty. It also means the players who analyze every possible play will have more cards to think about. That's true of all twobrid cards with no strictly-colored requirement. Is that lenticular design? Hmm.

I feel like I've seen this effect before, but can't find anything like it Gatherer. Probably one of us (maybe metaghost) has shared the idea before. In any case, I like the name and I think it fits the art and world (provided our mecha are equipment). Abandon Arms can be cast for WW, 2W or 4 and I can imagine a player being happy to pay any of those costs when his opponent has several good pieces of equipment. Unless there's a common twobrid Naturalize, this could easily prove too strong a hoser if equipment is a major theme of Ekkremes.

Take that, contraptions! We don't yet know what contraptions do (though we've got a few ideas), so it's unclear how effective this narrow Kismet will be. Narrow seems to be a good use of twobrid: What I mean is that putting a universally helpful effect on a card with a twobrid cost will have players fighting over it across colors, but effects that are only useful in some situations—or better yet, in some decks—are more likely to make it to the players who can use them best.

This is a pretty sweet card regardless of the set it goes in. I'd be curious to see if 1W is too cheap while Final Battle is common, but it might be tricky enough to really capitalize on that it's fine here. The name is epic, though potentially misleading, but I like how the art fits the card. Nothing particularly Ekkremes here, other than the great image of giant robots fighting each other to total exhaustion.

Desolation Giants is pretty awesome. Aesthetically, I might avoid colorless mana costs higher than 5 on sunburst cards and square numbers would make it easier to track this unit's strength, but the possibility of an 8/9 for seven mana is indeed impressive (and one very good reason we should consider Ekkremes as the battlecruiser set). I do wonder if this card would be an artifact if not for the art.

There's a lot going on here. First, you can cast Instant Infantry for 2RW, 4R, 4W or 6. Next, it creates three different things. It's also slightly jarring that the name says instant but the typeline says sorcery. George has definitely done a good job hinting at other things in the set: Not only are there parts (presumably for assembling contraptions or something), but also Assembly-Workers ala Mishra's Factory and Urza's Factory and also a non-Assembly worker. Even so, I'd like to see a bit more focus.

Magnum Vorader could be mono-green (and probably should be), but another use for twobrid that I'd overlooked is a form of multicolor, and I think George might have something there. This can be cast for RG, 2R, 2G or 4 which seems solid in a red or green deck, playable in a non-red, non-green deck provided it has lots of small creatures, and particularly good in a red and green deck.

"No disassemble!" I would absolutely call this card "Short Circuit" in playtesting.

At first blush, Manatech Sabotage looks like artifact removal, but it also grants the disassembled artifact the ability to be reassembled (and fairly cheaply). I reckon being 'disassembled' doesn't actually mean anything on a card without assemble, so that was a requirement. I'm guessing Nich made the cost low to make this card versatile: You can either use it to mess with your opponent's creatures/artifacts (as he chooses), or to decrease the assembly cost of one of your big contraptions with an otherwise much higher assemble cost.

I'd rather reward players for doing something than not doing something, and I'd rather allow more archetypes to exist than fewer, but I have to say that Primal is very interesting. You can build your deck around it and it's easy to track.

I'm glad Mass Malfunction is mono-white and not twobrid because this card feels very white.

Artifact auras? You mean equipment? Wait, they come from outer space? Iiinteresting.

What if each pack came with a machine part card that has no magic back. You can't put it into your deck, but you can fetch it and attach it to artifacts on the battlefield to augment them. You can only fetch the machine parts you opened in Limited. In Constructed, you'd either set a parts pool size (5 cards? 10?) or else require that parts take up slots in your sideboard. I'm not sure I'd make them artifact auras necessarily, but if we're ever going to literally assemble actual contraptions, part cards from outside your deck may prove integral.

Haha. Green sure does hate artifacts. Paying half for Blood Feud with the requirement that both parties are automata seems about right. Niggling point, but we need the word 'another' in there or else you can make any artifact creature deal twice its power in damage to itself.

I asked Ben to push his original design (which gave +1/+1 instead of +3/+0) and metaghost shared concern that it makes Reckless Charge sad. I, for one, don't have much pity for bullies. Imagine how Unnatural Speed feels. I'd also argue Pillaged Mechsuit isn't that much better than Reckless Charge: The former costs between RRRR and 8 in order to let two creatures attack hard the turn they ETB. Reckless Charge only costs 2RR. Granted, Mechsuit's power bonus doesn't go away and every other equipment that grants that much power has been uncommon. Even at uncommon, I like Mechsuit and would definitely play it in most Limited decks with mountains in them.

I'm hoping this is blatantly literal enough that I don't have to describe the concept. I like that Moment of Respite feels better than Regenerate, even though getting that +1/+1 counter may not be worth missing your creature for the turn. Even more, I like that there are tricky plays like using it just for the counter on a creature that isn't tapped, or to prevent an opposing creature from untapping for a turn. This is no more Ekkremes than the other modular designs, nor does it hint at other parts of the set.

James' submission came in late (and fails the must-have-color requirement), but I hadn't pushed the images yet and this Scrap ability is worth discussing, so here it is. Maybe parts have no characteristics other than being artifact permanents named 'parts' or maybe every time you put a part token OTB, you get to choose one from outside the game and they all have different abilities. When you assemble them into a contraption, you get the sum of those parts. James wasn't pushing for any particular use, just hinting at possibilities. What other possibilities do you see?

Powersuit Freedomfighter is a 5/5 vigilant common for 7W at worst, and a 9/9 (!) at best. The idea of adding giant robot mecha to Ekkremes hasn't been approved yet, but if it is, I don't see we can classify it as anything other than a battlecruiser mechanic. I will say that even at eight mana, making a creature this big vigilant terrifies me. The typeline is a little weird too, but otherwise the Timmy in me really wants to see this happen.

Simple, relevant to the set (without being truly parasitic) and evocative of the art. Great common design, R Stech.

This is about as clean a Board design as you can get. Even so, I'd leave off the flavor text to keep the text size up. The only thing that bothers me about this implementation is that I can have one creature aboard the Armorguard attacking, another blocking, and another tapping for an effect. While the vigilance on this particular card means you can generally attack and block with all the boarded creatures, that won't be true of vehicles that don't grant vigilance.

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2/W was by far the most common mana symbol among the designs. Not sure what that means, if anything, but I find these trends interesting. I don't care one way or another, but I'm curious: How many of you finish your design before reading the other submissions and how many take the other designs into consideration?

It was nice to see a few hints toward assembly, toward operate, and really helpful to see more implementations of twobrid. I still feel like 2/C 2/C 2/C needs to be uncommon or higher and that any combination of twobrid and non-twobrid mana looks a little awkward (even if it proves necessary).

What else can we take away from this challenge?