Tesla: Archetype for the Taking & Playtesting Plans

Hello again, everyone! Last time, we discussed the recent announcement of an official Kaladesh set, and what that means for us. This week, we're going to discuss potential archetypes, as well as some plans for playtesting in the future.

Currently in Tesla, we have the following rough draft of archetypes:

{W}{U}: Flying
{U}{B}: ???
{B}{R}: Raid
{R}{G}: ???
{G}{W}: ???
{W}{B}: Justice
{U}{R}: Artifacts, Mostly Thopters
{B}{G}: Sacrificing Permanents
{R}{W}: Revolution
{G}{U}: Canisters

Some recent changes - such as cutting down the Revolution commons to only {R}{W}, removing Research from the set, and trimming the number of tokens in the set - means that we've lost out on a few of our archetypes. We have some compelling competitors in the line-up for each slot, but first, I'd like to discuss historical archetypes for these color combinations.

For Tesla, our goal is to have each archetype reflect the set as a whole. This means that the archetypes have to reflect the flavor, experience, or mechanical themes of the set. We can see those clearly in most of the archetypes. Justice, Sacrifice each represent the oppression of the Consul; Raid and Revolution represent social progress and rebellion; Canisters and Artifacts and Flying are artifice and optimism for the future. For the archetypes that haven't been filled-in yet, we can use this goal as our basis, but we can also look to the past for inspiration. Historically, each of these color pairs has been archetype-cast, with a narrow set of styles. While we want to push the envelope and change them up a bit, using a previous archetype as a springboard is useful.

Shadowmage Infiltrator by Tomasz Jedruszek

{U}{B} is most commonly control. It often cares about the graveyard, mills cards, and/or utilizes small evasive creatures to sneak through damage past clogged boards. In this set, we've decided to use a controlling small evasive creatures archetype, with an interesting angle - we're focusing on '2 power or less matters'. This synergizes with Thopters, and captures the feeling of an oppressed , but rebellious, underclass quite nicely.

Zendikar Incarnate by Lucas Graciano

{R}{G} is nearly always midrange, filled with powerful creatures, and burn spells to clear the board for those beaters to get through and, well, beat. It often has ramping elements. Right now, the most popular suggestion seems to be {R}{G} midrange Raid, using Canisters for its ramp. However, we could also pursue the flavor of 'natural mages' in hiding on Kaladesh, which could reward you for casting large creatures and spending lots of mana in a variety of ways - perhaps an unkeyworded Quintessence, for example.

Enduring Scalelord by Clint Cearley

Lastly, {G}{W} is nearly always tokens - 'go wide' - or +1/+1 counters. The way this manifests varies, but these are the two biggest elements that the colors share, and it's their greatest strength when paired together, so it only makes sense. Occasionally, {G}{W} has a life-gain theme. This is where Tesla could diverge the most - one suggestion is that {G}{W} could care about tapped creatures (or creatures being tapped), since Canisters are a big part of green, and Revolution a big part of white. We could do this like Trance from Dreamscape, or like the Merfolk from Lorwyn, such as Judge of Currents.

What archetype ideas do you have? Any favorites from the past you feel we could use as precedence?  Any in the list you find unsatisfactory? If you have any suggestions, head on over to the Multiverse file and put in a proposal and some designs for your idea.

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Lastly, a brief aside - playtesting! We're moving onto the stage where we need to just play with the set as much as possible, and record as much feedback and reception as we can. This means we need your help!

The plan is that we're going to have playtesting as many days and times of the week as possible. This is going to be done mostly through WebDrafter for drafts and Sealed, then using Cockatrice loaded with the custom set for playtesting the sets. The files will be ready in a bit, once we've locked down our archetypes.

Once we get those ready, the plan is to organize as many events as possible. I'll of course be leading many of these events, but I'd like for volunteers as well, to cover days when I can't be present, or times! For example, I'm in Pacific Time Zone, so I can't lead events when asleep, naturally. So people on the other side of the globe will need their own organizer.

If you're willing to be an organizer for playtesting events - which basically just means sending the set files to those who don't have them, helping them set them up, arranging matches, and so on - just e-mail me (inanimate100 at gmail dot com), or send me a message through Twitter, where I'm @InanimateGames, with what times and days you're willing to organize.

Once I've gotten a good line-up of organizers and the files ready, we'll start a playtesting schedule, with drop-in events. (Though RSVP would be nice!)

In addition, we need to arrange more playtesting with people who aren't dedicated players. This means a lot more physical playtesting, generally, with friends of yours who are more casual players, or - ideally - have never played MTG before. We'll discuss physical playtesting and playtesting with new players soon.

Until next time, have a great week!