M13 Trajectories: Bond Questions in Progress

In Goblin Artisan's virtual M13 set, we have been using a keyworded version of the Kird Ape ability as the returning mechanic, calling it Bond. As we gained more feedback from people who looked over the set file for us, it seems that for some people the mechanic just isn't doing much. This is how we've been attempting to adapt the set.

The Kird Ape mechanic is similar to a multicolor cost, except that it is more tolerant to color screw. Just like multicolor, you can get a better creature than you usually get for the cost because of the extra color commitment. But if you don't have the extra color right away, you can at least cast the card without the bonus and hope to draw the land later.

One problem with this mechanic is that there is no visceral experience attached to the card. It's more like a costing mechanic and it's not about something that you get to do or something that rewards you for a hoop you jump through.

It's interesting to think what makes up a visceral experience. Imagine testing a landfall creature, and measuring the emotional reactions of the player using some nodes hooked to the player's brain. The machine plots a chart of the player's mental reactions. Imagine that every time that player plays a land, there's a little spike in that player's visceral reactions. Now my creature gets +2/+2! Now I get to attack! The same kind of spike could probably occur with a coin-flip spell. When you're about to see the coin land, there's a climb representing anticipation, then whether you win or you lose, there's a big emotional reaction of some kind. Now, I hate coin flipping as a mechanic, but I'm just saying here that at least these create some kind of emotional reaction. It doesn't have to be about adrenaline, though. Perhaps the way you feel good about having a choice, such as with Scry, could also count. With that image in mind, does Bond create an emotional or visceral reaction?

One of the comments that I've heard about Bond is that it feels good to have the bonus. I don't experience it in that way, but different players can perceive things very differently. Perhaps some players find it very enjoyable to control a Kird Ape and a Forest, a feel that the Forest is constantly emitting a +1/+2 boost for your Kird Ape. Those players are basking in the feeling you get when you receive some in-game bonus, and they must be enjoying it all the time the cards are there on the board. I'm trying to imagine how it feels for some other players — it might be similar to when you're wearing a new jacket that you've just bought and really like. You look down, you notice you're still wearing it, and you feel happy all the time.

I don't experience it that way, though. I experience the mechanic as a kind of cost, a color requirement that lets you have a creature that's undercosted by 1. Imagine having a Common vanilla 4/4 creature for 3G. I like that card. Now, imagine having a 3G 1/1 creature that has "this enters the battlefield with three +1/+1 counters on it." It has no extra abilities like a Triskelion. For the sake of example, let's say there are no other cards that interact with or feed off of +1/+1 counters in the set.

Do I like the card on the right? Sure, I get a 4/4 for 3G. Do I experience any visceral reaction while it's in play? No. There is no sensation of receiving a bonus; I don't look at the card while it's in play and feel "Yes! It's constantly getting +3/+3! I love the bonus!" It's not that I don't prefer the bonus as much as other players do, it's that I feel nothing for the bonus: I don't like the boost, I don't dislike the boost, and I don't feel so-so about the boost. It just doesn't register as any kind of thing. This must have something to do with it being unconditional, because I do enjoy my counters on a Gorehorn Minotaurs. But when it's like this, it feels like a textier way to say "this is a 4/4 for 3G" and there is no "bonus" of any kind to feel anything about.

So, when I play a Hillside Charger in a Green-Red deck, where I always expect it to have a Mountain by the time I cast it, I feel the same as if I had played a Streetbreaker Wurm. I like the efficiency and stats. I like the protection from color screw. At the same time I don't experience any sensation of receiving a bonus while it's in play.

Of course, creating a visceral experience isn't the only reason to do a mechanic. I was originally attracted to how this mechanic might make the process of choosing your colors in draft and building your sealed pool intriguing. That probably shouldn't be the main reason for a mechanic, but it is a plus. 

Some mechanics like cycling just exist to make the set function better. One mechanic that could have been used as the returning mechanic is Landcycling cards such as Chartooth Cougar or Basic Landcycling cards such as Gleam of Resistance. Arguably, it's an emotionally neutral mechanic and you might not feel anything while cycling a card, but it would be still be worthy as a kind of backbone structure of the set that allows you to play more colors, which is fun.

It might actually make more sense if Basic Landcycling was the returning keyword for our set and the Kird Ape mechanic was used without being keyworded. Of course, that would bring up questions such as whether that style of multicolor play belongs in a core set or not, whether Landcycling is resonant enough, and whether you would want to devote a whole chunk of a core set to enablers like Landcycling and another whole chunk of the set to rewards for it like Kird Ape. But at least it's worth mentioning it as an example that some mechanics can be a backbone mechanic that supports the set in the background without being charged with visceral feelings.

So a mechanic doesn't absolutely have to be visceral-charged. However, when I imagine players having a choice of playing any set, I just feel that they would want to play a set where the card's ability more or less invokes an emotional or visceral response rather than just strategic considerations. This is especially important when the mechanic in question is the only set mechanic (such as the returning mechanic in a core set).

When determining how "visceral" a mechanic is, the way we use the mechanic matters because the same mechanic can be experienced in different ways depending on the cards that it goes on and the the environment surrounding it. For example, I mentioned cycling as a more or less emotionally invisible card, but there is nothing emotionally neutral about a Resounding Thunder or Resounding Roar.

I described above how a 4-drop 4/4 feels the same as a 4-drop 1/1 that enters the battlefield with three +1/+1 counters to me. But there are times where such a thing does feel like a bonus and produces an emotional reaction. For example, if I used Travel Preparations to put counters on the creature myself, then I feel happy the whole time those boosted creatures are on the battlefield. If I jump through a hoop and get a Gorehorn Minotaurs Bloodthirsted, I see the +1/+1 counters every time I look down and feel happy about it all the time they are in play.

In terms of Bond, one of the cases I do feel something about the bonus is if I cast a Kird Ape on turn 1, then watch it as it grows on turn 2. It actually does change, and it grows past a state where it's vulnerable to 1-point burn spells, so I do feel something about it at that moment.

Another is when it grows in steps, such as Matca Rioters. For some reason, when it keeps growing and you don't know how large it will get to grow in any given game, it does feel like a bonus. Plus it does take work and effort to get it big, unlike something you expect to be automatically be turned on like the Hillside Charger above, and that counts towards how you perceive it.

Yet another example is Harbor Serpent, where you see the Islands you need for big attack gradually accumulating, like a ticking time bomb.

And finally, if your deck intends to turn on a Bond creature with a splashed land, it can make the moment of drawing the splashed land feel very special.

Since the beginning, we've been discussing that splashing should be encouraged since it creates a moment when your creatures "turn on," but we have also been conscious of how we have to encourage splashing without encouraging heavy multicolor as in Shards of Alara or Ravnica. New players are just learning how to attack and cast spells, and they should not be required to know how to build a complex mana base in order to win.

Some of the early designs in our files looked like this:

This is meant to create a moment where the creature "turns on" — namely, when you play this on turn 2 and play an Island on turn 3. More importantly, it encourages you to play heavily in your main color of White (as the WW cost hopefully communicates) while also encouraging you to play at least a few Islands, as a splash if not your main color. It may not always come out on turn 2, but a 2/3 flyer is fine on turn 4 in Limited. It's no more harsh on players than a Armored Warhorse or a Chapel Geist. The harshest thing for beginners is if the card makes it optimal for players to play 3 colors evenly, because you would have to make difficult mana choices that beginners can't handle. Cards like this make sure that heavy multicolor isn't optimal in the environment.

However, we were given the advice that this mechanic is going to be about multicolor no matter how we approach it, and the same card that encourages multicolor should not also be telling players to focus on their main colors. (By none other than the awesome designer Gregory Marques).

I could not understand this comment, but it has stuck in this our group as a guideline. To me, it doesn't feel as if the same card that is encouraging multicolor is also pulling you in the other direction, it feels like it's encouraging you to play heavy white and at least a little of blue. That's exactly what the costs on the card state. Maybe some R&D testing in the past has proven this wrong already in terms of player psychology. I would really like to know.

If these commons were multicolor cards like in Ravnica, then yes it would mathematically lead to 3+ color play, even if each card only has 2 colors on it, due to the difficulty of picking up enough playables when you limit your picks to a particular 2-color pair. But these cards are playable on their own without the bonus, precisely because they have good stats thanks to the heavy color cost. Perhaps it is deemed wrong to give players too many options on a card (such as the option to splash an Island for this Pegasus instead of playing it as an Armored Warhorse), of which only some of them will be utilized in any given build.

Anyways, the ideas behind that comment have been a learning experience for me and while I'm still not fully sure whether they apply to the card above or not, I've tried to apply those lessons in other cards I design.

• Evaluate cards based on what it looks like it's telling the player to do, not what the card makes it strategically correct to do.
• Let players play their spells.

But before that, at around the same stage as I proposed the Pegasus card above, I proposed land cards like these to support cards like the Pegasus:

The reason I made these cards was that Bond can create a visceral experience if it "turns on" at some point in the game rather than always being on. Splash lands are fickle; sometimes you get a splash land you only have 2 copies of right in your opening hand, but sometimes you splash 4 lands and don't draw any during the game. I wanted to create a "turn-on" moment in every game more or less regularly, and make sure it mostly happens in the mid to late game. These cards build up to that moment like a Harbor Serpent.

These cards reinforce the style of focusing on your main colors while still splashing lands, a style that a beginner can play. It creates an effect on the game that if you really want to splash some lands, you really have to focus on your main colors. It requires triple lands of the same type; if you dedicate your deck to an even split of 2 colors (say, 8-9 lands of each color), you can get a splash land both consistently and without risk, but you get it around the turn that you can cast a Kindercatch. If you play more colors, you get the splash lands much later, probably too late.

There are two problems with these lands: these would either have to be common, or replace the basic land slot in boosters at a particular frequency such as one out of every two packs. I would love to do something like that, but it's probably too funky to do in a core set.

Secondly, even skilled, experienced players can look at these and not interpret them as lands intended for 2-color + splash decks; I've received comments concerned that they would enable Shards of Alara style decks.

Perhaps if there is some future fan expansion set that features playing 4 colors, where you focus on 2 main colors early and get 2 splash colors later, these would go well in that set, replacing the basic land slot in boosters. For some reason, I feel that it could be particularly applicable if the designer of the set happens to have the initials B.R.

More recently, though, we've been trying to make Bond more of a visceral experience using other, more conventional means.

This card below by Jules was really liked by the team. It helped us settle in the current direction of Bond. In Magic, there are many cards that say "Do A. If you satisfy condition, also do B instead" such as Brimstone Volley. However, those cards just don't feel like core set cards. Core set is where you lay down the basics rather than show complex versions where different effects are layered on top of each other. Vaportrail Imp is great because it feels like a core card despite having two modes.

However, this card also shows the limitation of Bond, where you have a vanilla creature turning into a French vanilla creature. There seems to be surprisingly narrow space for a French Vanilla card that feels powerful without being broken. Unlike an activated ability, where you can tweak the activation cost or size of the effect, a French Vanilla creature can only be tweaked by changing the power or toughness by increments of 1. We keep getting sizes similar to multicolor Vanilla and French Vanilla cards we've seen before such as Streetbreaker Wurm or Esper Comerants. It's easier to make a card that feels special without being broken if it has some activated ability, triggered ability, or some combination of keywords.

In the files, there was another card, Rishadan Airship, which made this card feel not so special. Another card, a 3B 2/2 Vampire with flying and lifelink, also made the Imp feel less special (at least in my opinion) and was an example of how it's easier to make cards that look good without stepping over the line if it can have multiple keywords.

So, I tried merging the vampire with the imp, which is the version of the card that we are testing now:

This follows the style of many popular multicolor cards — you get a combination of abilities from both colors that combine really well. We can't do this on all of our Bond cards because it won't feel like a core set, but the idea of a flying, bloodsucking vampire is so resonant and such a basic part of fantasy that I hope that it carries this particular card through. So far it's been liked.

We've been testing changing Mountain Bond's +2/+0 bonus to haste.

A Vulshok Berserker has always been respectable, so I expect the 4/2 version to be quite scary. It feels good to attack the opponent by surprise, and for the opponent it produces a feeling of tension.

We haven't agreed over this haste change yet, but I believe that crashing in with a high power creature gives you a visceral experience that is different from getting a creature that is undercosted by 1. It's about something that you get to do. You get to catch the opponent by surprise.

There have been arguments that haste only matters on the turn that you cast the creature, and that you don't get the bonus afterwards. Also, if you draw the Mountain too late, you don't get to benefit from haste afterwards. In terms of actual game play though, haste more than offsets not having an effect on later turns and would really help a 4/2 sneak past random 2-drop bears in the opponent's deck, or help a 6/4 outrace a tempo flyer deck.

I described how some players might bask in the feeling of getting a constant bonus through cards like Hillside Charger (the one without haste), while to other people it is like the hypothecial 1/1 that enters the battlefield with +1/+1 counters; playing the unhasted Hillside Charger in your deck feels about the same as playing a Streetbreaker Wurm. The stats are good so you like it, but there's no sense of basking in a continual bonus. While haste only matters for one turn, for those players there is no sense of "before it had a keyword, but now it doesn't matter." Not all cards can please all players, but the hasted versions will give those players an exciting moment when they attack that the other Bond cards won't give them. An additional advantage is that these versions don't resemble previous multicolor cards. (Although Pouncing Kavu, an uncommon, comes close.)

The next two cards were made as a result of the difficulty of finding a White keyword for a Bond bonus:

The white keywords of vigilance, lifelink, and first strike were difficult to work with since if you push the power level of common cards with these abilities in core set Limited, they tend to strain the environment. Because of that, these creatures ended up very tame. There is discussion of giving the Green card Reach, and making the Blue one a 3U 2/4, which would make these much better, but while being useful they are not very exciting for many players.

When I proposed changing Mountain Bond's +2/+0 bonus to haste, I also had to assign another color to use a size bonus as opposed to a keyword bonus so that Green's +1/+2 bonus would not be the sole exception. Cards that form a cycle don't want a singleton exception; if it's not going to be a rule that all Bond bonuses grant a keyword as a bonus, there has to be two or more exceptions to show it's not a rule.

I proposed these variants, hoping they would inspire archetypes such as a "WG mana ramp and defense deck" or a "UW control deck."

Although I hope these are useful, they are also not exciting. Writing this article, I came up with two newer versions that do feel like you get to make something happen that is registered on a visceral level.

Another change we've been testing is having more land destruction. If a splash land can be interacted with, or if Bond can turn off and then turn on again within the same game, the effect can be perceived more as a bonus with a real condition.

This might sound radical, since land destruction is deemed unfun and we want to let players play their spells. I certainly did not want a 3-drop land destruction spell like Stone Rain. However, for the test we are trying out various land destruction spells that cost around 5, but nevertheless can still be main decked. Into the Maw of Hell is not an unfun card, and although we don't want that exact card for thematic reasons (it's not a horror set), something like it can be used to occasionally turn off Bond. Bond feels more like a real bonus when it's not automatically attained or sustained. Also, for some people (like me) the only moment Bond has any emotional content is the moment it turns on, so if a splash land is destroyed, the moment it next turns on would be dramatic. This may be too theoretical, but that's what we're trying to find out with testing.

The current test file contains Acidic Slime over the previous Bramblecrush because the Slime is more main-deckable. Some designs for a Black spell and a Red spell that destroy land was added. Finally, a creature that turns lands into Swamps was also added.

These are clunky enough that they probably won't inspire a dedicated land destruction deck, but in order to make sure they have enough good targets, the exploratory test file has some enchant land cards with repeatable effects that are intended to be powerful in Limited. We already had some cards that mess with lands in a clumsy manner in the file, such as Goblin Gardener or Vedalken Plotter, but they were just not seeing much play in playtests. We didn't want to make them more efficient because that would be harsh to normal mana development. So here is a cycle that intends to make those cards playable in the environment:

Currently, the White one is very underpowered, and probably the Green one as well. These have high costs because I wanted them to affect Limited in the late game, but perhaps some of them should cost less. Anyways, if they were brought to a level where you usually play one if you have it, I could see the existence of these cards making Vedalken Plotter a very good card, and while Goblin Gardener would still be more comical than scary, you could actually run one in your deck and players would hesitate before blocking or attacking into it. The tools that have a chance to interact with Bond would get played.

Early Magic sets have also had land-enchanting Auras such as Goblin Shrine that represent buildings on a piece of land. The uncommon Auras above also represent buildings, each representing a planeswalker's abode on a particular land. They are meant to double as a way to help an aggro-vs-control setup exist in the set. Some of these are meant to help an aggro deck keep attacking even when the control deck has started to stall the board.

During testing, one match turned into a battle over control of a land enchanted with Jace's Spy Base, with a lot of back-and-forth play revolving around the land. This is promising, but it remains to be seen how much influence this has on the environment, and how often the land destruction spells will be used to turn off Bond, in a way that's overall good.

Concern has been expressed (by Jules Robins, actually) that these Auras don't have anything to do with the lands they enchant. They work the same way regardless of what they enchant. The only land Aura we currently have that cares about what it enchants is Fertile Ground. Here's another possible set of cards that isn't in the file that might work:

I find it difficult to come up with more variations of land Auras that have some mechanical connection between what land they enchant and the effect they produce while trying to stay resonant. In the meantime, if these can't provide a certain power level, they will not have the impact that they were created for, but there's very little wriggling space to achieve that. For example, if the Dryad's Portal gave a P/T boost, it won't be a Dryad's Portal anymore. It was all I could do to give it a vigilance bonus so as to have a semblance of playability in a fatty deck that manipulates lands with Mirage effects.

Personally, I am tempted to take the flavor association of "A land-enchanting Aura is a building" and the mechanical significance of "It can be destroyed by land destruction, bounce, and enchantment destruction, so it can be given a powerful effect accordingly," and just run with it, without requiring a connection between the land and the effect.

However, Jules has suggested that a Black card with "Enchant Island" can be used as another form of Pseudo-multicolor that we can use alongside Bond in our set. He also suggested that the last one (Temple of the Blue Cult) could be the basis of a cycle.

Of course, players won't know about these land interactions when they start drafting the set. The Bond cards have to be appealing and make sense on their own. I hope cards like the haste Wurm, lifelink Vampire, or other Bond cards will be appealing enough to get players through the door. Once they do though, this land interaction could give them a deeper experience if we can balance it to a level where players can meaningfully interact with the lands that trigger the Bond ability. One thing I feel missing is that there aren't enough enablers for splashing.

Finally, I would like to conclude that my opinion is that despite all of these potential improvements, off-color landfall is a very strong contender and probably what we should have been doing.

This mechanic can be used for cards with varied abilities (not just French vanilla) and there's more room to assign appealing sizes and abilities than with a Vanilla that turns into a French vanilla. They lead to 2-color play rather than rampant 3-color. They might create less memory issues than Bond, at least for the opponent. The strongest point is that every time you play a matching land type, it makes something happen, something you can experience. The problem is that it's not strictly a returning mechanic, but rather an evolution of one. It depends on which restrictions we think are important as an experimental fan set.

The biggest problem of course is that the deadline is 2 weeks away. The land destruction/land Aura theme is very experimental so we may ditch it if it doesn't do its job, but at least the newer Bond creature variants I've mentioned above have a shot at being as good as new off-color landfall designs we can come up in 2 weeks, and they have the advantage of feeling more Core set. But I will be working with the other members to get a testable version of this up this week, and if it turns out to be insanely more fun than Bond, then the final week would be spent on an equally insane round of polishing and tuning.