M13 Envision Returning Mechanic

It's Friday and this is the fifth M13 article in as many days. I wasn't expecting to update this frequently, but as long as we're making progress at this pace, I don't intend to slow us down arbitrarily. While I won't be posting Saturday or Sunday, I do have some fun homework for everyone interested. It involves actual card design.

Before I get to the details of that, let me catch you up on where we are with our list of possible mechanics. We had tons of great discussion yesterday and were able to narrow the list considerably. I did make a pretty bone-headed move with the list yesterday because I only included the items that got no specific attention from the original list, meaning that some of the big items got completely left out. Kind of a gaping omission on my part. Sorry about that.

The omitted items were legendary, morph, clash and multicolor. Legendary is an option for inclusion in the set, but it's the not the returning mechanic because it has no keyword and can't occur at common. Morph, like flip, split and hybrid is too special/important, too different and too complex for a core set. Multicolor, like legendary isn't keyworded, but it's actually so visually apparent and so beloved I would still consider it as the featured mechanic for a core set. That said, I think we've agreed it's a bad fit for a set meant to lead into a multicolored set (Rav 2). Clash is still an option. I love how it fits with the 13 theme and I love that it adds both variance and card-selection, but that it was considered a failure to some extent is obviously a pretty big damper. Can anyone locate the article(s) where that's explained?

So, our current list of possibilities is: The Ogre Savant Ability or The Kird Ape Ability or Sunburst, Exalted or New Bushido, Rebound, Clash, Prowl, Gating, Battle Cry, Kicker, Persist, Allies. I suspect the items in bold are more likely to pay off than the rest, but not enough to remove the others from the list.

Now for everyone's assignment. For each mechanic you have faith in, design up to one card that will demonstrate how that mechanic would look in M13 and why it's worthy of beating out all the other contenders. With that card, write something short (6 lines or less) that describes the impact that mechanic will have on the gameplay of the set and the design of the rest of the cards. Please only share one card for each mechanic, but you can submit for any number of mechanics. Alternately or in addition, you may design one support card that doesn't have the keyword but does work well with in some way.

Post your stuff in the Wiki on the appropriate page and please be sure to sign your work. I'll be doing a few too. Since the Wiki is a living thing, feel free to replace or edit your own submission before, say, COB Monday EST. I'll post and review the most relevant submissions here Monday evening and hopefully we can come to an initial decision on our returning mechanic by mid-week next week.

Mr. Spalding had to bow out of doing the black analysis because of time restraints. I'm glad that he'll still be able to contribute via the comments and this is exactly the reason I decided to keep the team fluid. As enthusiastic as we may be, the fact this isn't our day job means other priorities may usurp this one from time to time. No big deal. Who else wants to claim the black analysis?