Report of Tesla Playtest #1 — Changes in the Mechas

On Tuesday, I managed to test-draft with James Bartolotti, hubatish, Jules, and myself. This isn't the first playtest for Tesla, but for convenience I would like to call it playtest #1.

Thank you for your Mecha design ideas. Your input was helpful in creating the test draft set. I could not incorporate all of the different ideas, especially since I only had time to finish the Commons. But any of the ideas are potentially seeds for future ideas. I would like to discuss them in the next few posts.

For this post, I would like to show the Mecha designs I adopted for the test. (The names have been slightly edited since the test and I've added art as well.)

The Mecha Parts



And I'm hoping the joined back side can look something like this:

(click on image to enlarge)

This is just a rough mockup. Each type of Head and Body would have different art on the back, reminiscent of how they look in the front. The art for the top half of a Mecha could be shaped as a tank turret, a plane cockpit, a humanoid torso, etc. The bottom half could be wheels, treads, rocket engines, insectoid legs, humanoid legs, etc. They connecting portion will be standardized so that the cards can connect with each other regardless of the combination.

If we go with this style, we will need a new card frame template on Magic Set Editor sometime in the future.

The idea for a vertical connection was proposed from an early stage, but I believe it was Nich Grayson's idea to put the joined text box on the right side.

Changes to the Mecha Mechanic
We tried some changes with the Mecha Mechanic for this draft. First of all, the mechanic on the front side reads:

Combine (At the beginning of your end step, if you control this Body and a Head, you may untap, transform, and join them as one card. It inherits any targeting, Auras, Equipment, and counters.)

It gives you the choice to combine a Body with a Head each turn rather than only trigger when a Part enters the battlefield. If you're not sure the opponent is holding removal, you don't have to transform it right away.

The choice to transform comes at the end of your turn, so that players don't have to worry about whether it has summoning sickness or not. (We will still need to add a clause defining the summoning sickness status of the joined cards, though.)

Most importantly, the back part has a new rule about how to handle the Mecha being destroyed, exiled, or bounced:

"If this would move to another zone, the player whose turn it is chooses which half moves there. Return the other half to its owner’s hand."

This negates the 2-for-1 factor, making it much less risky to play Mechas. This is based on a change that hubatish proposed:

"If this creature would move to another zone, instead move one half to that zone and return the other half to your hand."

hubatish explains: "This way we don't have to write "disconnect and transform" which might be confusing. It also gives a tempo boost for killing a mecha, but doesn't wreck the mecha player. Keeping the rare part and reusing might be part of the appeal as well - I don't think it's too strong."

I like how hubatish's version allows the Mecha player to rebuild the next Mecha quickly by recycling whichever half that he or she needs the most. The most fun games in testing so far were games where players got to build, destroy, and rebuild Mechas multiple times. In truth we've only had one such test game so far though, so the fact that this tweak supports that kind of rebuilding is a wonderful thing.

The one problem is that it allows you to recover a problematic Part over and over again. Allowing players to repeatedly play the same threat is usually not good game play.

Devin E. Green had suggested an earlier version of this, where the player who targeted the Mecha with removal gets to choose which part to destroy. "Each half of this mecha is targeted individually. If either half of this mecha would change zones, transform the other half." 

Devin explains, "Think about it, every Giant Robot movie has a point where the main mech gets damaged and has to fight on with just its reserve power!"

This version allows players to get rid of problematic parts with removal. If a lifelink Head is giving an aggro weenie player trouble, that player can use removal to perform a Head-shot, and the Body transforms back. It seems fitting for a Mecha battle to have this element of selective part-destruction attacks, and the choice-making this involved seems like great game play.

Unfortunately, Devin's version about targeting half of a card would probably lead to rules conundrums. It also doesn't define what happens when the Mecha dies during combat. I would want the person who took the action leading to the death of the Mecha to choose which part is destroyed, but it's hard for the rules to concisely define who was responsible for the Mecha's destruction, if you consider the large number of cases such as combat damage, wrath effects, or even proliferating a -1/-1 counter.

To combine the best of both of these two versions, I introduced the clause that the active player gets to choose which side becomes scrapped. To write it out again, it is: "If this would move to another zone, the player whose turn it is chooses which half moves there. Return the other half to its owner’s hand." I admit it is a weird and unintuitive clause, but I do think it leads to good game play.

I am hoping that this new version encourages proactive attacking. When you control a joined Mecha, you will be less afraid to send it into attack. Whether your Mecha dies to trading, a Smite, or a combat trick, you get to choose and salvage whichever part is more important. The opponent is also encouraged to attack. If you choose to hold back the Mecha for blocking, the opponent might attack into it and kill it with a combat trick, which will grant him or her the choice of which part to destroy.

Players will also be able to kill problematic parts with removal just like in Devin's version, because it's not hard to use removal on your turn. Overall, this rule should usually give the choice of what to destroy to the more proactive player who deserves to make that choice.

The problem with this fix is that the flavor is unclear. In that sense, it's similar to the Werewolf mechanic in Innistrad, where it's not completely clear what the number of spells cast in a turn signify. Admittedly though, the Werewolf mechanic's trigger still has a bit of subtle flavor to it while this mechanic has none.

However, some of the largest problems with the Mecha mechanic is its riskiness and swinginess. It would be extremely valuable if we can make the mechanic more stable and choice-oriented, so I believe the addition of a flavor-neutral clause is worth it.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to test it enough times during the draft test, but I hope to test this (as well as many other versions that were suggested) in further tests. Please let me know what you think of this version.

I will also be updating on what we learned from the draft, and the potential in other ideas that were submitted.