The Tesla project was initially envisioned as a stand-alone large expansion that would try to adhere to all of the design principles and policies that Wizards of the Coast R&D applies in making actual Standard-legal sets. But that was years ago back when we got sets like Rise of the Eldrazi.With the new two-block paradigm, all Standard-legal sets will be part of a two set block. Even if we're only doing design for the large set of Tesla block, an essential piece of the process is looking at a larger block plan.
Ready, Set, Stop
A major piece of block planning is progression. We're not going to get into the nitty-gritty of how mechanics will shift going into a theoretical second set of Tesla block: we don't know enough about where the first set is headed yet to lock that in. But we do know that Tesla block is about progress, and that means that now more than ever, the second set has to feel like a definitive step beyond the first.
Something important is happening to the world of Tesla. Maybe its the overthrow of the oppressive factory owners, or the creation of some equivalent to the atomic bomb, or the development of artificial intelligence. Whatever the case (and the exact creative spin isn't important just yet), it's going to change the tone of play.
Tesla is supposed to feel like improvement and anticipation of change. Or something like that. Propose a shift in tone from something in that vein for Tesla block's large set to something related but distinct for its small set. We're just looking for the big picture here. For example: Tesla could shift from excited anticipation (like a kid on Christmas eve) to tense anticipation (like the audience of a horror movie).
Tesla's second set must be codenamed Edison.
ReplyDeleteA fitting name indeed!
DeleteI doubt they last more than about 3 years with "all Standard-legal sets will be part of a two set block." Mark has even teased that that rule is made to be broken (though don't ask me for a source!).
ReplyDeleteThe golden age of machinery taken too far, leading to a disaster of some sort.
ReplyDeleteCould have themes of Nuclear war or climate change. Having the progression and hubris be the planes downfall could be rather satisfying.
Maybe a good place to break out the ruincast mechanic:
Ancestral Waste U
Sorcery (U)
Ruincast 3 (You may turn three of your basic lands into Dune lands with “T: Add 1 to your mana pool.” as you cast this spell.)
Draw a card, if you ruincast Ancestral Waste, you may draw three cards instead.
If there's any place to use colorless-mana-matters, it's got to be Edison, right?
DeleteInteresting mechanic.
DeleteI do agree that, if we're going to explore "colorless-mana matters", then Edison would be a fantastic place to do it. I wrote some other reasons why in my comment below.
I'm still not convinced that colorless-mana-matters is worthwhile to pursue in any expansion, but I do agree that it matches up better with some of these visions for Edison than anywhere else I've considered it.
DeleteWhatever the mechanical implementation, Reuben's thematic vision is certainly worthy of exploration.
Ruincast + colorless-mana-matters would feel like recklessly devouring nature and overdeveloping it.
DeleteWhile I'm not sure how fun it is, it seems much better than supporting colorless-mana-matters with artifact mana and colorless land and have games hinge on whether you drew your City land or not,
In casual play, I guess you could turn the land upside down to make it a City, and since you usually put all your lands together, you can avoid mistaking it for morph.
"Improvement through Technology" turns into "Eugenics & The Corrupted Pursuit of Perfection"
ReplyDeleteIn the second set, Tesla turns out to be Phyrexia before Phyrexia was Phyrexia. How's THAT for a twist?
I had the same thought. Would be pretty creepy.
DeleteYeah. Part I: The height of the Thran civilization. Part II; The rise of Phyrexia.
DeleteThis would be pretty interesting!
DeleteOoh, consider my Vorthosian sensibilities titillated.
DeleteExciting/creepy/tingly possibility!
DeleteTesla' Mood: This imbalance of tech and magic can't last.
ReplyDeleteThe plane's leylines of mana are throttled and choked by centuries of factories and mining and wilderness clearing. Magic has been co-opted by technology. Magic is still a part of daily life, but has a whisper of importance compared to how things used to be. There are forces acting to reset the balance. Some want to destroy the plane's technology to restore the past, others fight to keep things status quo, and others want to find a way for magic and technology to co-exist.
Edison's Mood: Balance has been restored, but not in a way anyone expected!
All the groups acting in Tesla are shocked when the sytem is righted and balance is restored. Who will figure out the rules of this new order and adapt, and who will be unable to cope? Plus, how will groups that up to now have been plotting at cross purposes get along?
I like this. A "happy ending", but not for anyone in society.
DeleteNovel notion. I like the idea of everyone's tuffles being overshadowed by the world they thought they'd mastered.
DeleteIt could be like Shadowrun, except rather than Cyberpunk meets Swords&Sorcery, it would be Steampunk meets Swords&Sorcery?
DeleteThis seems like a difficult question to answer without having ever seen a two-set block in the new paradigm.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I'm not looking for anything definitive here, but it seemed foolhardy to charge ahead without considering where the path leads.
DeleteIt seems like answering new questions without necessarily having a precedence is exactly what WotC does.
DeleteIf we only ever emulate WotC, we'll never have anything to offer them. Remember they were approaching this change with the same parameters and information just a year or so ago. We lose nothing from trying to decide where to go, and choosing a path they didn't.
DeleteJudging just by the 'feel' of Tesla so far, I think the obvious direction - and the one that almost everyone in the comments has followed - is the following:
ReplyDeleteSet 1, "Tesla": There is a big discovery coming soon. Everyone can feel it - change is upon us. A new age will dawn. (This is the 'anticipation', the 'looking to the future', the feeling of 'discovery' and 'breakthrough'...)
Set 2 - "Edison" - The world has changed. What we have discovered has revolutionized our society - perhaps not for the better. The consequences of our actions will be felt in full shortly, and hopefully we will survive the price we paid. (The classic science fiction tale of "man meddling in the affairs of God" - the cost of discovery is too great for society to bear.)
Now, Set 2 doesn't have to be a "bad ending" - it just has to be a significant change. Often this is, at the very least, a "troubling end" for our current society, but possibly holds a promise of a "bright future" for the society that comes after. Though of course, 'we have become Death, destroyer of worlds' style science-endings is not gonna end well for nobody.
Phyrexia and Nuclear War stories, as proposed in the comments, are the "we have gone too far" style story.
The Balance Restored and Utopian Society stories would be more along the lines of "everything is different now, and it scares me, but it isn't necessarily bad".
Now, what is the 'experience' of "Edison"?
DeleteIt's a feeling of change, of revolution, of the very nature of the world being fundamentally altered. The rules have been changed, the name of the game is brand new, etc.
This helps us see why "Phyrexia" and "colorless-mana matters" naturally come up - Phyrexia was an environment founded upon 'changing the status quo', bending and breaking the color pie to create a sense of 'invasion' and 'violation'. Those kinds of severe changes are great at representing 'everything is different now'.
Likewise, colorless-mana matters - a la Eldrazi - is something that Magic rarely deals with - and actively caring about colorless-mana would be brand new, and create the feeling of a 'sixth color' that is the very pinnacle of cultivating the experience of "Magic like you've never seen it before".
What are some other things we could do to represent a "revolution" of Magic, to cultivate a feeling of "an unexplored frontier" and "a new age"?
I mostly agree with an important distinction:
DeleteFeeling like we're on the cusp of an unknown technological break-through doesn't seem like it can carry a large set.
I'd much rather see Tesla be "We just invented the Industrial Revoluation and now everything's awesome…" focusing on how the world is suddenly a new place that everyone's adapting to. The plane is seeing unprecedented wealth and the middle class is born. Everything's great and our future is bright. Except for a few hints to the contrary…
And then Edison hits with the hard reality that comes with the willful ignorance of so much change and of consuming so many natural resources so quickly. Barons of industry have so much power, they now rule the land, crushing the poor and the righteous underfoot to maintain their power at all costs. Maybe some of them even anticipated the newly imperiled world; banked on it.
Good points Jay. I think you're right that we can't do a whole large set without the cool thing having happened yet.
DeleteSo here'd be my pitch. Tesla introduces our five colors as Companies, all interacting with technology in a much larger way than normal, but stuck in its ways. With a higher concentration of artifacts, we'd want to encourage the first set to really incentivise monocolor play. Think artifacts with colored activations like the Decoys or Shards from Mirrodin. It would also introduce Combine and Transform cards with colored cards able to combine with artifacts to build larger Bots.
ReplyDeleteEdison would shake this up by introducing the Start-Ups, innovators who are mixing colors of Magic. Their cards can Combine with cards of other colors in ways that challenge the established power structure.
I feel like if we want to capture the feeling of "challenging the established power structure", the design should be a bit more innovative than just "dual-color cards", if you see what I mean?
DeleteI do like your way of thinking about it thought - Companies and Start-Ups. That might be useful for theorycrafting.
I think Inanimate's got the right of it.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI still think that the "combine and transform" Voltron set aspect is pretty novel. I think that companies can give some guidance for the flavor of the Monopolies
DeleteApple - White
Google - Blue
Microsoft - Black
Amazon - Red
Facebook - Green
I so don't want to get into an argument about which giant companies are what color. Or if you can even have a giant company that isn't black or partly black.
Delete(seconded)
DeleteI just don't know that we could incentivize mono-colored play/ideology better than Theros, or really in a comparable way – "devotion to a god in a pantheon" seems a lot easier to build around and get into than, say, "devotion to a firm in an oligopoly".
Riffing off of what Wobbles said, The first set could have a mono-color matters theme (a pure monocolor set would be boring since there are only 5 color configurations for decks, but if splashing a second color can be made to be important, then a main color/auxiliary color setup can produce many more archetypes than a normal 2-color environment).
ReplyDeleteThen the second set could have a colorless matters theme with Reuben's Ruincast. It would mesh well with the first set while adding an interesting twist.
So, the mono-colored Company States have developed the world too much, and now some sentient machines have risen to take over, turning the whole plane into a nightmarish industrial plant landscape?
I like the visions of Tesla that are about building lots of cool things. Mechanics like mecha/combine, modular, component, geared, and level up provide that feeling of the players advancing in-game. I especially like the ones that allows players to combine together different cards/components to assemble their own combinations, such as mecha/combine, shoulders of giants, geared, coordinate, and accessible.
ReplyDeleteSo if there's a twist coming in Edison, I feel it should be directly prompted by the construction going on in Tesla. Something that someone is building in Tesla, and preferably something that the players build when playing Tesla decks, runs away out of control and becomes a huge threat that Edison needs to respond to.
A mechanic I had planned for my steampunk set was that in set 2, one particular faction unleashed some huge mechanical titans, and so the other factions defend themselves by building devices that are either self-improving or can themselves produce tokens. What could go wrong, right? So set 3 is obviously about the world being under threat by the swarm of self-improving self-reproducing machines. That's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, where the peril in Edison is directly caused by something which one character or faction built in Tesla, now running out of control.
Mecha/combine hits this potential spot rather nicely. As well as letting players assemble their own combinations, it's also quite natural that if you have a bunch of groups assembling huge mechanical warriors, especially if any of the mecha have independence of action rather than just being suits for pilots, that some of those huge mecha could easily go out of control and be the threat for the next set.
I'm not saying mecha has to play this role, certainly; just giving it as an example that could fit nicely.