Tesla: Iteration Again

In our last few looks at Tesla we've been considering ways for players to construct new artifacts. But that question is just one piece of our larger goal of building a set around the theme of progress.

Back in our last playtest we were considering another mechanical expression of progress dubbed, well, Progress 2.0. Today I want to take another look at that and discuss some of its high points and pitfalls.

Progress 2.0 1.0

The original implementation hits us out of the gates with a couple of glaring problems. First off it faces some of the same developmental hurdles a devotion did: things that normally make cards weaker actually make them stronger with this mechanic. Make Henge Guardian's activation cost {5} and it could even become a playable for repeated triggers. But the problems get even more insidious than that. Take Homing Pigeon above. It's actually much, much better than if it were a 3/3. Why? Because instead of always being at least a 3/3, it's almost always at least a 3/5! It's almost trivially easy to get Progress 2.0 creatures to 3 power in short order.

But those issues pale in comparison to the other issue with the proposal. It'll never fly under New World Order. The mechanic avoids all of the usual pitfalls: it doesn't overly complicate the board, a Low Skill Player who reads it can tell you what the card does, and it's not all that long. The sticking point is in the second part. The card seems to make sense, but I have a sneaking suspicion that most players will actually have no idea how this interacts with activating Firebreathing for +4/+0 or even casting Awaken the Bear. We simply can't abide that, which leads us to a simple tweak (which I proposed after the playtest).

Iteration

This doesn't solve the development issue of the creatures growing large or looking deceptively weak with low starting power, but it does eliminate all of our problems with activated abilities by, well, eliminating the activated abilities. Honestly Iteration triggers plenty frequently as it is when compared to something like Battering Krasis.

Five months later that's still the best shot I've taken at this mechanic. I've noted the issues, so why are we still pursuing this? It hits our theme spot on and hard. You, the player, make progress by casting bigger spells. As a result, your creatures make progress by growing. And they all do it together up to a point. One creature starts bigger? The others catch up. You innovate (cast a more expensive spell)? It raises all ships. This plays out a lot like the way an idea or technology spreads through society.

Theming aside, Iteration feels good. Like Landfall, it rewards players for doing what they want to do. It pushes the game forward because players are encouraged to cast their spells and any instants they have are more likely to serve as combat tricks on their casters' turns because they'll have mana open. The mechanic creates new and interesting deckbuilding incentives, encouraging players to run their dragons. It helps eliminate board stalls by keeping the battlefield in flux.

So the question, as always, is how to capture the benefits while mitigating the problems. We can start creatures with naturally higher power, put a greater proportion of our most powerful spells at low mana costs, and keep removal levels a little bit higher than normal, but even better, we can take a step back. Who's to say this is the only approach we can take to this sort of mechanic?

Continued Evolution

It could just as easily be Evolve:

Or not appear on creatures at all:

Heck, it could even ramp up along a completely different axis:

My point is that we've still got a lot to explore before we resign ourselves to development struggles. How would you attack the problem of making it feel like the players and/or permanents are improving as the game goes on?