Suvnica Week 14 Review, Part 1: Living in the Future (Kismi Keywords)

Kismi proved to be one of the more challenging guilds to design keywords for. Because so much of their identity is tied up in predicting the future, and because translating that into game mechanics leads to either very cumbersome rules text or unfun methods of playing, it was tricky to find a keyword that hit that sweet spot of fun, grokable, flavorful, NWO-friendly rules. Still, we came up with a number of really strong efforts here. Let's see what everyone had to say about our fortune-tellers.

Circeus' Cognition

Circeus originally had a very similar mechanic as a potential Rimid Mechanic, and decided to adapt it for the Kismi. This tweak (I renamed it since cognizance already existed in the card file) lets you dig for additional copies of the card on casting. It's a cool mechanic, but it's not really limited-viable. Not every guild keyword has to be a bomb in limited, but trying to cobble together a cognition deck is either going to require very early dedication to the task or frustrate players stuck with one copy of all of the commons. I'm also nervous about the potential for incredibly repetitive gameplay in constructed, but that's something that could be determined with some testing.

Jules' Prescient

Jules offered a mechanic that lets you scry for 1 each upkeep. He also made the clever decision to pair the keyword (at least at higher rarities) with rules text that rewards you for digging for a particular type of card. Scry naturally wants to be more in {U} than any other color, so I appreciate that the designs submitted were all {G}. Also, as I've mentioned, Kismi just really wants scry as their mechanic. This is a way to take that mechanic and still make it feel new. Bravo.

Jules also came up with a number of other keywords experimenting in a similar design space.

Foretell was submitted as a keyword, but I'm not really sure that replacement effects make sense as keywords in general. I can't think of precedent for keywording one (though I'm probably missing something obvious), and there's no appreciable benefit of having multiple cards with foretell. It's probably better off as a one-and-done mechanic. Jay Treat also pointed out that this will let you look for lands more efficiently than other types of cards, but that's not a terrible thing to allow into a green-aligned guild.

Predict lets you call a number of spells that will be cast between one of your end-of-turns until the next. This may be the spikiest mechanic I've ever seen. It's very controlling, either encouraging your opponent to not cast anything or to empty their hand prematurely to push you over the edge. There are some memory issues, particularly when multiple predicting creatures show up. I think this one may also be better as a single creature or enchantment and not necessarily as a keyword mechanic. But then again:

we might be able to squeeze a dozen or so fun designs out of this.

Fated is another predicting mechanic, this time guessing how many of your opponent's creatures are going to block. Again, it's highly controlling and manipulative, either pushing or discouraging blocks. And again, I think it's much better on a single card than as a guild mechanic.

hubatish's mod to the mechanic gives a broader range of triggers and rewards, which opens up design space, but just compounds the complexity of an already fairly complex mechanic. hubatish suggested that commons can be more grokable triggers/rewards, like with Meditating Spider, but I think that this would just confuse and infuriate too many players.

Pasteur's Divine

So, as I mentioned re: Prescient above, I don't know that replacement effects make sense as keyworded abilities since they don't work (or at least don't work intuitively) in multiples, making Divine decks trickier to build. Regardless, Divine asks you to predict whether your next draw will be land or not. I'm not sure that's the best trigger for the counters for a few reasons. It gets super mathy, with players constantly counting cards and trying to memorize the exact breakdown of their decks. This can lead to some very tedious gameplay, as well as some feel-bad moments - another example of Maro's "you can make the player do something, but if it's not fun, you've failed as a designer" rule. Also, I really wish it was a once-per-turn deal, only triggering at your first draw of the turn instead of for each - I feel like this is going to be real easy to abuse otherwise. Pasteur made a couple of alternative designs to the above cards based on the critique that you only get to replace any given card draw once, which I'm not going to rerender here. He also pointed out that given the limits on the replacement effect, threshold-style cards (divine creatures that turn "on" with the addition of a single fate counter, with no appreciable benefit from more than one counter, like Omen Glider) may make more sense than ones you want multiple fate counters on.

Jay Treat's Oracle

Oracle is an action word that lets you look at a specific card some variable depth into your library. It would likely frequently be paired with abilities that reward you for having this knowledge. The problem I have with thisis that either you need a great memory when dealing with this ability on multiple cards, or you need a pen and paper and about ten or twelve extra minutes each game, or you're going to forget and guess wrong and have a tremendous feel-bad moment.

Jay Treat's Insight

I wish I had a little more insight into the purpose of this keyword (bahdum bum pshh). I'm not sure if the owner of the exiled cards is allowed to look at them or choose, or if it's really hidden information, and I missed the window to ask Jay what his intent was since I'm lagging on these reviews by a few weeks. If the intent is the latter, then this is really just a delayed extra draw at the cost of some self milling - not exactly the most exciting keyword. If you get to ultimately choose what that last card is, I wish there was a way to keep the delay without mucking about with self-milling.

lpaulsen's Foresighted

lpaulsen wrote this out before seeing Jules' prescient ability. They're super similar, each representing a vision of the immediate future and an opportunity to reject that vision. I like them both, but I'm not a fan of the decision here to use the rejected futures (the cards sent to the graveyard) as a resource. That doesn't feel especially {G}{U} to me, and seems like it would be much more at home with the Rimid somehow. However, aside from the flavor disconnect from the guild, these are some solid designs on their own and would be great in a more Odyssey-block setting.

lpaulsen's Prophesy

I like this take on prophesy - look at the future, and possibly take advantage of it earlier. It's a nice mechanic, and makes sense on-theme. My only critique, and Jay Treat pointed this out as well, is that R&D just started putting this ability on {R} cards to expand their share of the color pie mechanics (interestingly, put in {R} as a direct result of feedback from players tuning in to Blogatog). Given that this is something they want to be pushing in {R} as a new mechanical area, I'm not sure how well it would fly in our {G}{U} guild. That said, Martial Glory and Giant Growth demonstrate that a mechanic firmly in one color's slice of the pie can show up on multicolored cards that don't even involve that color.