Suvnica Week 8 Review, Part 2: Zhavi Guild Keywords

The Zhavi keywords spawned an interesting debate on counter types, but a lot of people played in other mechanical space. Let's see what everyone came up with:

Zefferal's Condemn

Aura suggested that we turn condemn into an action word and rename it hex, as that is easily more grockable.

Aura played around in territory I avoided. Simply hexing something doesn't mean anything on its own - hex counters don't have any inherent mechanical meaning. But the more cards that care about it, the more powerful and simple hex as an action word becomes. Unfortunately, I think this implementation makes it an even more parasitic mechanic. I tried to mitigate some of the pacifism by making sure that every card that condemned (or hexed) penalized hexed creatures in some way.

Aura also started playing with hex on non-creatures. I like this implementation a lot.

Aura made a ton of cool examples, which bolsters my belief that hex/condemn is a cool mechanic. The NWO/counter debate needs more discussion and fleshing out, but even if this (at least in this form) isn't worth the +1/+1 counter cost to the block as a whole, I'm sure that the condemn/hex mechanic can find a good home somewhere else.

Jay Treat also came up with a couple of non-permanents to support the Hex mechanic.

lpaulsen's Police

lpaulsen came up the Police ability word, playing up their role as enforcers of the guildpact. 

This mechanic creates a strong control element on discouraging attacks, something both Black and White have done in the past.

The biggest concern I have with the mechanic is that if you have two or three creatures with Police on the board, your opponent is really going to want to avoid attacking you. Completely discouraging attacks is something that the game is trying to stay away from, as it leads to board stall and generally unfun environments. Playtesting would tell us whether Police is a fun mechanic or one too frequently leads to bad board states.

I like the spell implementation, but it could easily work as entirely separate keyword.

Lobster667's Vindication

Vindication rewards you for playing up the assassination angle of the Zhavi. 

 

This is meant to cause a board wipe. I kind of wish it just said Damnation instead of having a sequence of triggers. First of all, it would be cleaner. It also makes a major difference on MTGO, where having sequential triggers can be a pain in the butt (see anything involving storm). It matters in corner cases of pro:black etc., but I don't think that should ruin an otherwise elegant design.

Jules came up with a similar mechanic, which plays more into white's revenge-based penalties.

It definitely moves us closer to White's territory, but it's much more narrow as a mechanic. It wants you to be more combat oriented, something that isn't necessarily in line with where the Zhavi want to be. I would like to playtest it to see how often it actually triggers.

Jay Treat's Dictate

Jay wanted to play up the guild's desire to maintain caste/guild boundaries by penalizing playing 3 colors. This captures the feel of that, but I'm skeptical that an entire mechanic that hoses multicolor play in a multicolor block is going to be fair and balanced. That said, if any guild is going to do it, it's going to be Zhavi (See Guardian and Enemy of the Guildpact from Dissension)

Jay raised a fair point that enforcement of guild boundaries is the major flavors point that is being pushed in all Zhavi descriptions, and if the mechanic can't capture that, then maybe we should be pushing some other aspect of the guild as their defining characteristic. I definitely hear the argument, but I think a number of mechanics offered have shown the desire to punish and control, without having to take the flavor characteristic as literally. 

The Cozen's Vendetta

...which would be a good name for a band. 

Vendetta punishes your opponent for hitting you, which has a very {W}{B} feel. It does this by reducing mana costs, which is significantly less {W}{B}. It could work, but that's not among their respective standard toolboxes, Rakdos 2.0 notwithstanding.

I really like this first example, whose life gain benefit is inversely proportional to its use as a comeback card. The loss of potential life gain doesn't matter when you can drop a 4/4 for 2 or 3 (especially since the life that you do gain back mitigates the damage that made the card cheaper in the first place)

My big concern is with the memory issues of tracking life lost over multiple turns. I think that kind of tracking really fights against NWO. As a modification, I came up with this bad example.

This gets rid of the memory issues by creating a triggered ability on getting hit. 

***

That's it for the first two keywords. The next design challenge will be posted soon.

-zeff