Tesla: Common Cause

Last week I announced that we would be preparing to playtest Tesla. There will be opportunities to play all next week, so if you’re interested make sure to fill in your availability here.

For the time being, let's figure out what we're testing with.

We’ve determined the progress mechanics we want to try in this first go, but cards can’t be played in isolation. Therefore we’ll be following standard design practice and doing an all common playtest, and that means filling out the 101 common slots for a large expansion. There’s a lot going on in your average set, so if you haven’t already (or could use a refresher), I’d highly recommend reading Mark Rosewater’s article on filling a design skeleton.

But there’s no need to worry about all those details right now if you don’t want to. All you need to do is look through the mechanics we’ve decided to try and start designing commons for Tesla. Those could be cards with the proposed mechanics, cards that synergize with them, or unrelated cards you’d expect to see at common in this set.

And yes, if you missed the boat last week, you’re still free to submit a progress mechanic for the playtest, just make sure to also add some supporting designs since other readers won’t have as much time to cover those bases. For now let’s take a look at what we already have:

As your thoughts come in, I’ll be compiling cards into a file which we’ll use via LackeyTCG. Please give me an email address so that I can get you the relevant files and info to use the client, or email me directly at julesdrobinsATgmailDOTcom.

I realize that’s all pretty open-ended, and a blank canvas can be intimidating, so I’m going to let you in on a secret: despite their enormous differences, Magic sets share a lot of underlying structure. For instance, green gets a Naturalize variant at common in large expansions. In Scars of Mirrodin it got Sylvok Replica to complement the artifact theme and in Theros there was Fade Into Antiquity to answer the gods, but there’s always something. So if you want inspiration for commons, take a gander through the Magic 2015's and think about how you might twist any of those for use in Tesla. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.