Tesla: 5 Ways to Position the Mecha Mechanic

We are still trying to figure out how to position the Mecha mechanic for our Tesla set. (To see what the Mecha mechanic is, click here.)

Should building a Mecha be risky? Should it be safe? Should it happen very often, or should it be a rare occurence? Should it be merely strong, or game-endingly powerful? Should Mecha Parts be abundant in the set, or should they only be a small portion of the set?

Some combinations of answers will not make sense; for example, if Mechas are a small portion of the set, they probably can't join up very often. (Although it's interesting to think, "What if they could? How would it work?")

Here are some configurations that can make sense.

• The All-in Aura Style
• The Totem Armor Style
• The Banding Style
• The Crown of Empires Style
• The Scavenge Style

The All-In Aura Style
This is the style where you can use your Mecha as an Aura to boost another Mecha. Much like an Aura, you get 2-for-1ed when your creature is destroyed. This is the first style we discussed.

It can be used to create a high-risk, high-reward type of gameplay. It's possible to make the joined Mecha very large since it's balance by the risk factor.

I personally don't think that type of swingy game balance is fun, though. Rise of the Eldrazi encouraged players to go big, but part of why it worked was because it didn't put the player at risk for doing so. The Levelers and Invokers did great things in the late game, but posed no opportunity cost for inclusion in your deck. The Umbras protected you from 2-for-1s. The Eldrazis often Annihilated something while dying to a Smite or Daggerback Basilisk.

The Totem Armor Style
This is the second style we discussed, where the Mechas are like Auras, but when the Mecha is destroyed, you can return one half of it to your hand. This protects you from 2-for-1s, much like the Umbras in Rise of the Eldrazi.

We can still have enormous Mechas that have Eldrazi-style sizes, but they will be balanced by a high transformation cost. For example, maybe there are Bodies that turn into an 8/8 or larger size, but they cost {8} or more to activate their Combine ability.

There are a variety of conditions we can set for determining which half of a destroyed Mecha is returned to your hand:
- The controller chooses.
- An opponent chooses.
- The dice chooses.
- The active player chooses.

This style facilitates rebuilding a Mecha after it's destroyed. We can try to create a type of back-and-forth game play where Mechas are built, destroyed, and then rebuilt with a different combination of parts. Depending on the condition that we choose for returning a part to hand, we can allow removal spells to handle problematic parts while still protecting the Mecha player from getting 2-for-1-ed.

This kind of Parts-destruction and recombination potentially creates a fun style of games. But we haven't been able to test it enough to judge it yet. In the games we tested this, Mechas were destroyed only 1-2 times so far.

The Banding Style
The Mechas can be like creatures with Banding. You can join them up on any turn where you feel that their abilities are better combined rather than used separately. If the situation changes and you want to utilize them separately again, you can disband them easily by paying mana.

For example, imagine that you have a 2/3 Head with deathtouch and a 3/2 Body with first strike. On some turns, you might want to combine them to get an 5/4 Mecha with first strike and deathtouch. (5/4 is the Body's stats with +2/+2 bonus.) It's invincible in combat, but it can only attack OR block, not both. On other turns, you can leave back the 2/3 Deathtouch Head for blocking while attacking with the 3/2 first striking Body. In some cases, you might want to attack with both separately, or block with both separately. You can join and disband them as needed.

With this style, the ability to disband the joined Mecha can serve as protection from 2-for-1 blowouts. The focus is on figuring out which formation/mode you want each turn, and it's not so much about making a giant Eldrazi.

The following style is a sub-category of the Banding style:

You can have the Head attack in the air while the Body plays defense. (Maybe the opponent has a Daggerback Basilisk on the ground so you don't want to combine them.) Or, you might decide it's better to combine them and attack.

With this example, all of the Heads are aircraft that fold up into robot torsos when they combine. They each have flying and one other ability, and they lose the flying aspect when they join. The Bodies are all colorless defenders (because they have no mana crystal/control unit guiding them), and they gain the ability to attack when they join.

This setup gives both the Heads and Bodies useful things to do while waiting for a partner to join up with. It's also easy to strike a balance where they are late picks in draft (so that they make it around the draft table to the Mecha drafter) but are not useless. Creatures with flying can be weak but useful, and Defenders can be given big enough sizes to be useful without turning into high picks.

The Crown of Empires Style
All of the styles so far require that the set has plenty of Mecha parts in each pack so that they can actually transform. Another path is to make Mechas a very fringe draft theme that is only occasionally accomplished. It's similar to trying to assemble a combo with Crown of Empires, except it's a little easier. Maybe Bogbrew Witch is a good comparison.

It can be part of a larger theme where you're trying to assemble a combo out of artifacts. Mechas are just one of things you can assemble in the set.

One example is a mechanic for hooking up multiple artifacts. Jay, Jules and others have posted some versions of this already.

So if you attach this to an artifact creature, you can gain 2 life on each turn that it attacks. If you've played with Sun Droplet or Vampire Nighthawk, you know what effect 2 life per turn can have on a game.

You can combo it with something like this:

Based on how you wire them up, you can draw a card every turn for {2} without paying life, or you can draw 2 cards per turn for 3 life and {4}. It lets you make Rude Goldberg combos like the Station cycle in Fifth Dawn did, except it will happen often and will happen in Limited.

There can be cards to help these combos happen.

A cycle of cards like this can help you build a combo to let you adapt to the board state at hand. These cards can help Mecha cards, while also having uses for other strategies as well.

There can be a theme of searching for cards:

This would fit into a postapocalyptic world where you are salvaging remains of lost technology to piece together a contraption. Innistrad was a Tribal Graveyard set of sorts; Tesla can be an Artifact Graveyard set.

With cards like the above, you try to fill up your grave a bit (with help from Scavenging run), then cast it when you think you have enough scrap in your grave to keep the factory running for a while. Another version of Feed the Machine:

The Scavenge Style
This is a style where you combine a Head and a Body from the grave. The mechanic could require that both parts are in the grave. Another possible version requires one part on the battlefield and one part in the graveyard as scrap. It's similar to the Scavenge mechanic in Return to Ravnica.

If the combined Mecha is destroyed, both parts die, but you aren't blown out because you didn't invest 2 cards from hand in it.

I've tested this style a little with Jay and Jules.

It certainly makes the mechanic a little more resilient. With the All-in Aura style and the Umbra style, you often don't want to put your Parts in combat because they might die before they combine, and this solves that problem. But with this Scavenge style, the opposite problem happens; your opponent never wants to block your Part or attack into it. It didn't feel right to me.

It might be possible to make this mechanic more balanced by attaching a high transformation cost to it, similar to Scavenge. (It could cost anywhere from {6} to {8}, for example.) People blocked and traded with Drudge Beetles all the time.

Alternately, we could set a hoop that you must jump through to combine your live Part with a scrapped Part. For example, maybe you can only combine the parts if the live part dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn.

One awkward factor is the question of what happens when you have a living Head and Body. It seems fair to allow two living pieces to combine, but in this style they're not protected from 2-for-1s (because you're not risking a 2-for-1 when you dig a part from the grave) so when you combine two parts from the battlefield, you might get blown out. But it's weird game play that you have to wait around for the parts to be destroyed before joining them up safely.

Another awkward factor is what happens when the joined Mecha dies. If the Parts go back into the graveyard, they will be available for recombination again. That's probably too easy. It would be best if the Part that was reanimated gets exiled, but that would be difficult to keep track of. The most realistic option so far is that both halves get exiled upon death.

This style might sound good on paper, but I haven't experienced good game play from it so far. It might be worth it to keep experimenting with, though.


Thank you for reading. I would love to know what you think about each style of balancing Mechas, which one you prefer, and what other styles exist.