After a couple of weeks sorting out the voting, we’re
finally decided on a thematic heart for Tesla. Tesla is going to be about
progress and all that entails.
We need feelings of unbounded potential, losing the way
things have always been, disconnect between promise and reality,
disenfranchisement of those who can’t adapt, and a million more. Some of these
feelings will end up being evoked by a single card, and some won’t make the cut
at all, but a select few are going to form the basis for our major mechanics.
Those will undoubtedly undergo a lot of iteration, but there’s nothing to stop
us from beginning to figure out what notes we want to hit. So let’s start with
an obvious one.
Exploitation
People with grand visions know that they require more
resources than one normally has on hand. The additional resources are being
used for other things, and achieving what you set forth to do requires
sacrificing those other priorities. Maybe that’s using up the bounties of the
natural world, maybe it’s locking in workers with inadequate pay, or maybe it’s
harnessing beings of great power against their wills. Whatever the case, we
want to hit that feeling out of the park.
Given that this idea is so central to our theme, we’ve
already come up with a number of ways to approach it. Let’s take a look:
Stepping on the Little Guy
Our first slew of options is all about the more powerful exploiting the less powerful, often literally.
More often than not these mechanics also end up hitting on class dynamics because not everyone gets exploited. Mechanically speaking, there's some worry about snowball potential because these mechanics tend to get stronger the further you are ahead. That's far from a death knell, but if we go this route we'll want to make sure to build in extra comeback potential elsewhere.
No Pain, No Gain
But that's not the only way to carelessly expend your creatures. We can achieve a more sadistic feel through mechanics that want your minions hurt or killed.
These mechanics often have the potential to feel bad because players like keeping their creatures intact, but properly executed they do wonders for getting the player into a mindset where they view cards as expendable. My inclination is to pursue mechanics like Bloodcraft and Venture that feel risky but don't read like they entail bad things.
Creatures are far from the only option for exploitation, but we haven't pursued others as heavily.
Lands and libraries are plenty exploitable, but we could just as easily look to hands or graveyards. Despite the huge number of mechanics in this post, we're only skimming the surface of the sea of possible exploitation mechanics. What more awaits us in the depths?
Chip in with your top pick for hitting this thematic note. Do we already have a mechanic you love, or would you rather come up with something new? Next week we'll pick a few frontrunners to keep in mind as we pursue other mechanics for Tesla.
Very unorganized thoughts:
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to comment on these mechanics because they seem to be sending the set in incredibly different directions. We have a colorless matters/morph mechanics (subsume), an exile matters mechanics (Progress), combat/graveyard matter mechanics (occult, venture, bloodcraft, Dominance 2)... I think having at least one mechanics that involves highest power is a good idea. Chain of command feels like a more palatable version of both Naya's 5-power matters and the various versions of Leadership I worked on for Suvnica.
An obvious problem is that "exploitation" brings to mind sacrificing (Dominance 2.0, occult, mana engine), which is notoriously spike friendly. Having morbid or maybe gravestorm as a returning mechanic could help compensate that problem. Another option is using -1/-1 counters as a cost of some sort to carry over the idea that progress has a cost.
Yeah, the mechanical disparity certainly makes it tough to compare them directly, but at the end of the day we're going to have to do some of that. We can't have a set with fifteen different ways to convey exploitation.
DeleteI agree with most of what you've laid out here, though Gravestorm is likely undevelopable like its cousin.
Ideally, we want to find at least one mechanic that appeals to Spike, at least one to Timmy, and at least one to Johnny. The more those mechanics play together, the better.
DeleteA pass through the proposed mechanics:
ReplyDeleteDestined Superior dominance-- The fact that this requires *not* curving out makes it seem like the opposite of progress. It isn't self-limiting like its close cousin evolve is, and it isn't as flavorful either. Not a fan.
Master Blueprint dominance-- I like this version of dominance much better. It hits the right notes metagame-wise, being mostly dead in control decks and encouraging big creatures. The Triumph designs from Avacyn Restored show that it's a fruitful mechanical area. Timmy will like it a lot, and it has sweet synergies with Mecha.
Soul-Fueled Juggernaut dominance-- I like how this lets players turn their less-useful Elvish Mystics and Rakdos Cacklers into relevant late-game spells. The implementation shown is way too weak, but that's nothing against the mechanic in general. The main risk here is of being too narrow / grindy / Spiky. Flavor is excellent.
Chain of command-- Anything that works like exalted will get my attention and interest, but I don't think this mechanic quite has what it takes. Aside from the (probably inherent) templating awkwardness, I'd question the interest of the Voltron-y gameplay this would generate. Also, there aren't all that many things to do with it. After we grant all the keywords, a some stat bonuses (?!- already a bit confusing), and a few attack/damage triggers at higher rarities, what's left? Tap or sacrifice abilities feel bad when they're on your biggest creature.
Hierarchy-- Once we lose the parameter, this mechanic shows some promise. It's a lot like S.F.J. dominance, except that it wants you to keep your Arbor Elves around rather than sacking them. It only goes on creatures and makes P/T boosts play weirdly, though, which are disadvantages when compared with M.B. dominance. Flavor is good.
Bloodcraft-- Mechanically this seems totally fine; basically a harder-to-trigger Morbid. But I have no idea what kind of flavor it's trying to convey, let alone what it's doing in a steampunk world or how it relates to a theme of "progress".
DeleteOccult-- Morbid variant, or Delve / Gravestorm hybrid. It can never feel *too* bad-- either you keep your creature, or you get to cast your spell. But it's very Spiky and mathy, and cost-reduction mechanics are extremely hard to develop. Assuming we want to go along this kind of route, I think we can do better.
Venture-- Better... like this! Sorry to toot my own horn, but I'd argue that this is significantly better than Occult because it gives you complete control over how much the cost gets reduced. Although this may require playtesting to verify, I think it will do a good job of encouraging recklessness without feeling as grim as the previous two mechanics do. Also, I'd argue that it resonates very well with steampunk flavor: united effort, reckless progress, adventures, and so on.
Mana Engine: Damage as a cost is a very neat idea with clear mechanical value and excellent steampunk resonance, but it's super Spiky and is likely to require quite a bit of rules-hacking. ("Pay 2 damage"?! "Tap an untapped creature you control" is clunky enough already.) While I'd very much like to make this work, it would be much better as a subtheme than as a major mechanic.
Subsume: If we have morph or something similar in the set, then sure. Otherwise, way too confusing. Also, what's the flavor supposed to be?
Progress-- I generally dislike mechanics that require two separate "moving parts" to work. Progress doesn't do nearly enough in terms of gameplay or flavor to convince me that it belongs in the set despite this.
Eruption-- Reminds me of retrace, except that it's automatic card advantage and doesn't cost extra mana. My guess is that sacrificing the land is a better way to go. Even then, this feels like it would require us to warp the world around it to make the flavor and gameplay make sense.
My vote at this time is for Venture, but I could be persuaded to support M.B. Dominance or perhaps Hierarchy.
Thanks for the thorough thoughts. I generally feel similarly, but I'm a bit more wary of "mechanics only a spike could love" in high volume. That said, if there was ever a place to do one, an exploitation mechanic might just be it.
DeleteOn Bloodcraft and Subsume, if the mechanics feel enough like exploiting something, I'm sure we can work out some flavor. For instance, subsume could represent some new technology that uses souls as a fuel source, leaving the batteries as mindless husks.
I'm not seeing "progress" in any of these. Progress is a sea change. Progress is a revolution. Progress is "out with the old, in with the new." Progress is the inexorable tide of time eroding the things of the past. Many of these designs make for interesting gameplay, but none of these are evoking those emotions.
ReplyDeleteWhy not progress *through* transcendence, a fusion of the two themes we debated last week? I'm still a wild fan of "+1/+1 counters turn creatures into artifacts" as a major theme - it suggests both a replacement of the old with the new as well as a natural superiority of new things over old things.
This post's mechanics are specifically about exploitation fueling progress. I think a fair number of them-- the dominate variants, certainly-- do convey a sense of progress. And I think the word "progress" tends to be associated with incremental improvement, rather than with revolution as you suggest.
DeleteYes, many of these mechanics embody exploitation, but exploitation is a different theme than progress. If the set's theme is progress, we need to figure out how to nail progress first, and then figure out how we want to support that.
DeleteWe'll hit on aspects of progress (and likely more emblematic ones), but the set's theme is broader than any one mechanic. Look at Innistrad. You don't have a "horror mechanic," you have a transformation mechanic, a death mechanic, extra surprise due to the increased amount of flash. The point of our set theme is not to point to a card and say, "hey, progress!" It's to make the games as a whole feel that way to the players.
Delete+1/+1 counter artifacts are certainly on the table when we get to "Improvement" down the road.
I wasn't suggesting that there should be a single "progress mechanic," just that we should explore the idea of progress before we explore ancillary supporting concepts like exploitation and self-sacrifice.
DeleteInnistrad's unifying theme was a sense of dread and fear.
DeleteTransformation mechanic made you fear what was on the other side of the card. You were afraid to face the transformation.
Vampire "slith" mechanic made you afraid to let a vampire through unblocked, as you were afraid if they grew too big you couldn't stop them.
Morbid made you afraid to kill your opponents creatures on their turn, for a fear that you would enable a stronger play.
flashback made you fearful to cause your opponent to mill or discard, for a fear that you would be improving their card advantage.
Every mechanic in innistrad instilled a feeling of fear and dread into the players, and in my opinion that is what made the set perfect.
If we want our overall theme for the players to be "Progress" then all of the mechanics in the set should make the player feel like they are steadily improving / progressing toward their goal of victory.
Also I was sad to see this mechanic by Jay lacking from the post, as it was my favorite thus far and definitely think it is something we should consider:
Progressive Bolt R
Instant
Progress 1 (When you cast this spell, you gain one progress counter)
Deal 2 damage to target. If you have 5 or more progress counters, deal 4 damage instead.
It sounds like we'll get to the theme of Progress distinct from Exploitation in another post. Here's an idea I've had to somewhat combine those themes: using your creatures to build towards a lofty goal
DeletePerfect Machine 4
Artifact (U)
Tap an untapped creature you control: Put a charge counter on ~. Activate this ability as a sorcery.
10,T: Draw a card. This ability costs 1 less to activate for each charge counter on ~.
"The parts, on the other hand..."
Ant, thank you for laying it all out like that. I'd never really considered Innistrad from that vantage point before, and it's helping me reconsider how Tesla design out to be run.
DeleteWow, yes indeed. That is a rather striking layout of the emotional impact of Innistrad's mechanics, and a perspective I hadn't considered. Some of them are a bit stretched (flashback - how often would you even bother to try to mill the opponent in a typical set anyway?), but it's a compelling "big-picture" view to bear in mind.
DeleteI'd say flashback is more about things returning from the graveyard to cause more suffering.
DeleteIs Tesla a top-down set or a bottom-up set?
ReplyDeleteIf we're top-down, I think we need to pick a more concrete creative direction before knowing what mechanics fit. Innistrad was not just "horror", but "Hollywood gothic horror with vampires and werewolves and stuff".
If we're bottom-up, we need to find the mechanical heart before we can tell which of these mechanics would be most appropriate for evoking the feeling of progress.
I agree we want to figure out what angle we're attacking this from. I will suggest that top-down and bottom-up are not the only perspectives. Those names suggest so, but they're merely labels.
DeleteWe could look at game design as
mechanics-first
theme-first
audience-first
experience-first
and probably others.
I think we should approach this design as THEME / FEELING first. What feeling(s) do we want to evoke in the players?
DeleteWe should answer questions like:
What does it mean to be on the plane of Tesla? what sets it apart from every other plane in the multiverse? Is it that Tesla creates an environment obsessed with progressing toward some goal of perfection? Is it that people on Tesla are obsessed with reaching the pinnacle of possibility by any means necessary?
I like to think of Tesla as a gritty, soot covered industrial plane driven by the desire for industrial progress. Here are some rough ideas:
Gorem, the City Forge where humans and dwarves run a massive weapons and armor forge / factory is nestled within the Cragor Mountains.
Thalseem: A clockwork island off the Misrean coast. Here Gnome Architects are hard at work perfecting their clockwork creations powered by steam produced by "elementium cores" At the heart of the great island, a Colossal Fire elemental has been bound and imprisoned inside of a gigantic boiler. Factory workers pump in sea water from outside to dump on the rampaging elemental, creating steam to power the facility.
The wilds of Tesla. In the untamed wilds of tesla lie civilizations of trolls. These "savages" are constantly being raded by the "greater races" fo the plane, forced into slave labor in the most dangerous parts of Teslian factories. These trolls are ideal workers due to their regeneration powers (as the working environments in the Tesla factories are dangerous).
Wait, what are we discussing? The lead designer has already told us that we're designing to a theme, and that the theme is Progress.
Deletetrue lol. well then that looks to be our answer. our direction is to design mechanics that evoke a feeling of progress.
Deletesorry Jules! >_<
What I'm saying is that the theme of progress isn't specific enough for judging which mechanics are most appropriate. Both Zendikar and New Phyrexia are arguably progress-themed sets. I'd feel more capable of giving feedback on mechanical directions if we had some specific flavor nailed down, even if it's just the words "industrialized cities" or "magitek armies".
DeleteMechanics and flavor both affect each other, and I think nailing down too much flavor too early risks backing ourselves into a corner. Steampunk plus progress is plenty to go on for now, and if we find a good mechanic we'll have enough wiggle room to fit the flavor to it. Theros is an example of how not to do this-- Maro had an early concept based on sleeping/dreams that ended up distracting a lot from the top-down aspects and needing to get toned down.
DeleteSure, I agree with that. I just wasn't aware that even "steampunk" had been decided on.
DeleteHow is Zendikar progress-themed?
DeleteExploration and progress go hand in hand. Quests are clearly about making progress towards a goal. Allies are about recruiting the right people to build a powerful party. Landfall is about exploring the world and getting goodies for doing so.
DeleteFor such a broad definition of progress, we could equate literally any world and any mechanic as progress. Innistrad is about "progress" because humans become werewolves, and because killing a monster brings it back bigger.
DeleteThe progress this set is about is the progress of civilization. Of civil and technological advances meant to improve society.
But quests are very progress-y.
DeleteWe might even want to bring them back for Tesla.
Hmm. I was looking at quests too literally. We could certainly do something like quests or ordeals that feels like a scientific discovery or invention.
DeleteThe truth of the matter is that we can't exactly do bottom-up or top-down; I want to remain true to the Tesla we voted on and that means we already have preestablished flavor and mechanics. Tesla will involve more advanced technology than we're used to and Tesla will have a mechanical focus on artifacts. With that in mind, I felt we had two options:
Delete1. Muddle through and hope to arrive at something interesting.
2. Rather than following flavor or mechanics to a theme, pick the theme now that will necessitate what we already have.
Obviously I opted for the latter, but you're right that all of this would have been well served by some discussion. Anyway, in my mind our starting point is "We want playing with this set to feel like the process of technological/scientific/societal progress, with all it's wonder and follies. That involves a creative vision that complements those themes and mechanics that elicit thematic emotions from the players."
Something like quests or ordeals is definitely a good place to look for feelings of progress.
DeleteThanks, Jules, that clarifies things.
DeleteJules's comment here is useful, but I'm still a bit confused by starting with the exploitation focus. While an exploitation mechanic would certainly fit, I'd have thought looking for mechanics more directly connected to "technological/scientific/societal progress" first would make more sense. I guess you've jumped straight from "technological/scientific/societal progress, with all its wonder and follies" to "some of those follies are in the form of exploitation: let's look at exploitation mechanics", but that seems a slightly odd choice to me.
DeleteThat's fair, I probably jumped the gun a bit there. Just because I can't imagine doing that theme in an artifact-centric set without exploitation themes doesn't mean we couldn't end up doing just that.
DeleteI still think the current version of Dominate is promising. You don't have to throw off your curve to maximize it if you're playing cards like Knight Watch / Goblin Rally / Voidwielder. If needed though, we could rework Dominate to a (wordy) ETB ability: Dominate (This enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each creature with power less than this you tap while casting this spell). I also like Bloodcraft and Venture, even in small proportions I think they can affect gameplay in novel ways.
ReplyDeleteLand, too, is ripe for exploitation in the name of progress:
Power Plant 1
Artifact
Upgrade a Land (When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile a Land until this leaves the battlefield)
T: add 2 to your mana pool.
Volcanic Forge 5
Artifact
Upgrade a Mountain (When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile a Mountain until this leaves the battlefield)
T: add RRR to your mana pool. ~ deals 1 damage to target creature.
So this is basically a fixed "Champion" for lands (and maybe artifacts)? Count me interested!
DeleteAlso:
DeleteDominate (This enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter for each creature you control with less power than it.)
Personally, I'd rather have the version that makes me feel better about drawing my smaller creatures later and makes playing more small creatures smarter.
Not sure either versions screams exploitation per se.
Upgrade is neat. I think I like more than frack, which was my first land-exploitation idea:
DeleteMagma Cannon {3}{R}
Instant (cmn)
Frack—This spell costs {R} to cast if you sacrifice a land.
CARDNAME deals 4 damage to target creature.
Rouge Elephant {3}{G}{G}
Creature-Elephant (cmn)
Frack—This spell costs {G}{G} to cast if you sacrifice a land.
4/4
Note that "sacrifice a land" could be "discard a land card" and that would play fairly differently.
Even better than putting this ability on spells, we could simply reprint the Dwarven Ruins, Irrigation Ditch, or Sandstone Needle cycles.
What if Tesla was all about Resource exploitation?
DeleteSome themes / Ideas:
Abusing the land to gain extra resources like strip mining, fracking, drilling, etc.
Red Ritual 1R
Sorcery
Add RRR to your mana pool.
Discard a land card as an additional cost to add RRRRR instead.
Abusing the population to get ahead like slave labor, or working overtime:
Troll Slave 1G
Creature - Troll Shaman
T: add G to your mana pool.
Overtime 1G (You may pay 1G to untap this, if you do, it gets a -1/-1 counter)
2/2
Hunting animals to extinction for their resources:
Harvest Blubber 1BB
Sorcery
Sacrifice a creature, add B to your mana pool equal to its toughness.
actually overtime probably shouldnt have a cost? and if it does, a "mana elf" is a bad use of overtime lol
DeleteI like me a Devoted Druid.
DeleteWould a set that loves burning resources demand Threshold or Delve? Would such a set be too Spike-oriented?
delve would be fun and would work well with mine
DeleteI do agree that we would be dancing around a "Spiky" set similar to odyssey. We would have to be cautious of that and make sure we didnt create an environment where the correct play was to ditch your hand to a discard outlet or something similar. One way to do that is to not have any pitch effects and limmit the environment so that the only way to fill your graveyard was by playing spells, having permanents get destroyed and by self mill. (al la mine)
DeleteI like Overtime, another option is to let you untap it on your opponent's turns for a cost. I'm not sure how deep that mechanic would wind up being though.
DeleteOverworked Researcher 2U
Creature
T: draw a card, then discard a card.
Overtime 1U (At the beginning of each other player's upkeep, you may pay 1U to untap this.)
1/1
I kinda like Upgrade. Upgrading natural lands into more useful forms is basically the foundation of technological civilization, after all.
DeleteJames' version of Overtime is a bit less versatile, but I like it a lot better because it avoids a ton of board complexity. That said, we still have to make sure there are enough {T} abilities that don't affect the board to make it work at common.
DeleteAs for Frack and Upgrade, I'm not yet convinced there's a good place for this family of mechanic. Frack is going to make even experienced players mana screw themselves, and while Upgrade solves that problem, it's ended up in an awkward spot as a result. If all the Upgrade cards produce mana, why bother exiling a land rather than just make them produce on less mana? In theory the cards could key off the exiled land, but there's really not much to differentiate. That's why equipment are in every set, but I don't believe we'll ever see Fortify in another booster product.
True, Upgrade on Lands in practice is little different than an aura like Wild Growth. Forcing it to matter with land-counting spells or landfall doesn't seem worth it. But I do think an updated Champion does have progress potential:
DeleteCyborg 4
Artifact Creature
Upgrade a non-artifact creature (When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile a non-artifact creature you control until this leaves the battlefield)
5/5
Different flavor:
Dual-Blaster Mech 5
Artifact Creature
Crew -- Two creatures (When this enters the battlefield, sacrifice it unless you exile two creatures you control until this leaves the battlefield)
~ can't be blocked except by two or more creatures
7/7
I too like the first Dominate. Building up +1/+1 counters also works like a form of progress. Something like "When you cast this spell, you gain one progress counter" and then stuff about the amount of them you have is very parasitic design.
ReplyDeleteI was messing around with this setting myself and used the first Dominate (big creatures encouraging small creatures), Aspire aka "As long as you control a creature with power greater than ~, some bonus" (small creatures encouraging big creatures), and played into some "power matters" and "combat matters" themes with a focus on equipment, and the Venture/what I designed previously as Warcast/now named Overthrow mechanic going on rebels and those who want to overthrow the ascended ones. Dominate also led to me including a small Defender/wall subtheme.
In that design I was exploring, white wanted to make an army, Overthrow with it and "share the love" (as a power-sharing faction), blue was a villain color that suppressed low power creatures and kept the secrets of transcendence to itself, black wanted to make Dominate monsters and feed its small creatures to larger ones once they were no longer useful, red wanted to make a lot of small Aspire guys, use Overthrow, and then use tricks like fire-breathing or power boosting spells for one huge turn of attacking to turn them all on. Green just wanted to make huge creatures (with or without Dominate) and support them with smaller ones that had tricky abilities. I'm not sure how relevant any of this is to the direction we're going now but it's interesting to think about.
At the very least it's useful to see examples of ways to enable those mechanics, and who knows, maybe some of that work will end up making it into Tesla as well.
DeleteMine is the lovechild of Progress and Frack (and since those were both my brain children, it's horribly in-bred):
ReplyDeleteArrow Tremor {R}
Instant (cmn)
Mine (When ~ ETB, you may sacrifice a land.)
CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target creature, plus one additional damage for each land card in your graveyard.
Earthcracker Oliphant {3}{G}{G}
Artifact Creature-Elephant (cmn)
Mine (When ~ ETB, you may sacrifice a land.)
~ gets +1/+1 for each land card in your graveyard.
3/3
The upside over frack is that doing it multiple times is helpful rather than just detrimental. The upside over progress is that you don't need counters to track the game state. I really like the flavor, that you're racing toward bigger and bigger profits all while pushing yourself closer to the edge of environmental catastrophe.
There's only one big downside, but it's a whopper: Encouraging players to land-screw themselves is crazy dangerous territory.
What if Mine was self mill instead.
DeleteArrow Tremor {R}
Instant (cmn)
Mine 3 (When ~ ETB, put the top 3 cards of your library into your graveyard.)
CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target creature, plus one additional damage for each land card in your graveyard.
My only problem with that suggestion is how much obviously better it is than mine in every way. love it
DeleteI like mill-mining a lot, especially how over-mining your deck can cause you to run out of resources and lose.
DeleteWhat if we pushed Mine a little further and let it me a smoothing mechanic as well?
DeleteLava Tremor {R}
Instant (cmn)
Mine 5 (When ~ ETB, reveal top 5 cards of your library. You may put a land card revealed this way on top of your library and the rest into your graveyard.)
CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target creature, plus one additional damage for each land card in your graveyard.
Is that too conflicting? might be confusing for new players.
Go the other way:
DeleteMine 5 (When ~ ETB, reveal the top 5 cards of your library. You may put a nonland card revealed this way on top of your library. Put the rest into your graveyard.)
This is what I was going for with my version of progress (whenever this attacks, exile the top card of your library), but certainly milling is more backward-compatible. It does read like a bizarre downside mechanic at first glance, although so does Strive so I'm not too worried.
DeleteSelf-mill can read as a big downside, but I think the filtering version can alleviate some of that. We could certainly do a fixed number (though I think 5 is too much), but I'd like to try it this way:
DeleteMine (Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card. Put one of those cards on top of your library and the rest into your graveyard.)
Was thinking similarly. I think mine stopped on a non-land, and yours is miles better. I actually really want to try this regardless of set or support.
DeleteYeah, I really like a couple of these iterations of "Mine". Either self-grind with a little smoothing, or just pure self-mill for about 3 along with counting something in your graveyard, both seem great.
DeleteCreature Exploitation
ReplyDelete(This isn't new to Tesla, but seems relevant to this conversation)
Humming Mine {3}
Artifact {unc}
At the beginning of your upkeep, each player draws a card for each creature employed by CARDNAME.
Employ (Tap an untapped creature you control: You may choose not to untap it. Employ only as a sorcery.)
Juggernaut Suit {3}
Artifact Creature-Vehicle {unc}
~ can't attack or block unless it has an employee.
Employ (Tap an untapped creature you control: You may choose not to untap it. Employ only as a sorcery.)
5/5
What's secretly happening here, is that we make the player exploit her cheapest creatures, because she has a natural incentive to employ her worst creatures and keep her best ones active.
Interesting idea.
DeleteWonder if there's any good design space in specialized employee creatures. Like...
Loyal Worker W
Creature - Human Citizen
At the beginning of your upkeep, you gain 1 life as long as Loyal Worker is employed.
1/1
This sort of mechanic has excellent strategic depth, but I'm a bit wary of robbing creatures of their uniqueness by using them all equally as resources. It's certainly not as bad an offender as Devour, but I'd keep my eye on it.
DeleteExploring the mine mechanic further, building up lands in the graveyard is an interesting way to create a feeling of "progress" as well.
ReplyDeleteSo for each card with mine that you play (or any self mill card) you will be building up a small number of lands in your yard, progressing toward more powerful spells.
Mine for Gold 3U
Sorcery
Mine 3
Draw a card for each land in your graveyard.
Mine for Coal 3R
Sorcery
Mine 3
Add R to your mana pool for each land in your graveyard.
Mine for Oil 3B
Sorcery
Mine 3
target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn where X is equal to number of lands in your yard.
etc.
also terramorphic expanse and the fetch lands would fit really nicely with Mine.
Similar to how Trolls make great factory workers, you know who make great miners? (other than goblins who could be funny and blow themselves up)
DeleteAnimated undead!
The mindless undead are perfect miners, really. slow and steady progress forever.
There could be a mine run by a corrupt necromancer who has humans work in the mine until they die on the job, then he just animates their corpses so that they can keep on working long after they are dead.
If we're careful with the effects that scale based on your dead lands, you could even do
DeleteMine (Choose a number higher than 0. Put that many cards from the top of your library into your graveyard)
so that players can push their luck when they really need a bigger effect.
But I suppose they'll just choose a high number once early and 1 the rest of the game. Twas a thought.
If we're not trying to overSpikify the set, I would steer away from Mine.
DeleteBeing milled is already a thing that LSPs inherently feel bad about. How much worse is a self-milling mechanic that has a fail state of "this card does absolutely nothing"?
I expect we'd want many of the mine cards—and most of the common mine cards—to do something regardless, probably just using a threshold.
DeleteBut you're quite right that self-mill as a set theme is not attractive to new players. Presumably safe in the quantity seen in Innistrad and not much more.
Somewhat relevant:
DeleteYhidrin Scavenger 2R
Creature - Viashino Artificer (C)
When Yhidrin Scavenger enters the battlefield, excavate 2. (Reveal the top two cards of your library. Put up to one artifact card revealed in this way into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.)
2/2
Excavate is very cool as well. I think we really don't want many self mill cards that don't look like they're doing something else good. Innistrad got away with as much as it did because most of those cards can also mill your opponent and that's what LSPs generally assumed they were for.
DeleteI don't like Dominate, because once you start triggering it, it keeps triggering forever. That seems hard to develop.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteDominate is worse than "whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on this" and I actually don't think that ability would be that tricky to develop. Ivy Lane Denizen is a 3G 2/3 that lets you put a counter on any creature, but only triggers on Green creatures. Juniper Order Ranger is an 3GW 2/4 that gets a counter on itself and the entering creature. Dominate reads powerful to me, but I think it's actually fair.
DeleteI'm still dubious. Getting repeated +1/+1 counters at common should be hard to do. Consider Allies, Evolve, Vampire/Slith, and Heroic; all of them have more challenging hoops to jump through than playing a smaller guy. That feels closer to Landfall on the active incidental reward spectrum.
DeleteI like Dominate much better as an ability word: "Whenever a creature with lower power ETB under your control, [effect]." Then it actually continues to matter how big your Dominate guy is.
Tangentially, the fact that it encourages out-of-sequence plays is a bit odd. You can't live the Cloudfin Raptor -> Shambleshark -> Crocanura dream. Is it going to be better to hold your early drops back to fuel later Dominate triggers? If so, Spikey.
Using Dominate as an ability word to trigger other effects actually sounds like the way to go. I like the flavor of the dominating creature conscripting new smaller ones to create some effect. It's a lot easier to make a variety of designs that way too.
DeleteTo work well with Dominate, there are lots of ways to make low-power, high impact cards with higher converted mana costs. Token making spells and small expensive creatures with ETB effects are the most obvious. Making you re-evaluate the creature sizes on your curve is a neat spin for a couple Limited archetypes.
Switching from counters to effects also means that the dominating creature doesn't just automatically dominate everything because of what it dominated earlier, which seems like better flavor and more interesting gameplay.
DeleteI thought I'd seen the 'effect' version before: on the "Tesla: Mechanical Engineering" post where it was called Overlord. I do like how the 'effect' version rewards loading auras/equipment on the Dominator.
DeleteRocket Manufacturer 2R
Creature - Ogre
Exploit - Whenever a creature with less power than ~ enters the battlefiled under your control, you may have ~ deal 1 damage to target creature.
2/2
Yeah, there's something to be said for the simplicity of Dominate, but the ability word version is likely where we'll end up if we go down this route.
DeleteInitially Dominance seemed pretty cool to me, and then I got to thinking about opening hands. Say you have Treetop Scout, Runeclaw Bear, and a 3/3 Beast with dominate for 2G. What do you do? If you play the curve, you get no bonus for dominate. If you wait and play the dominate beast first, you wind up with a 5/5 on turn 5, which is solid, but then you were vulnerable your first two turns. Neither decision feels like you're getting all the mileage you could out of your cards.
ReplyDeleteEvolve is great because it gives you a bonus for something you want to do anyway (hit your curve.) Dominate encourages you to pass up the opportunity to play spells, which isn't fun even when it's the right decision.
I totally agree. Dominance 2.0 and Hierarchy are much better in this regard, since they reward you for curving out-- basically evolve in reverse, since the reward goes on the big creature rather than the little creature. That seems like a much more reasonable place for progress/exploitation to be.
DeleteIf you build the set properly, Dominance can reward you for curving out i.e if your opening hand is Coral Merfolk, 3/2 Dominate for 2G, Ambassador Oak, and Voidwielder. I agree that there is some tension there, but that's also true with Bestow cards from Theros block (do I play this 2/1 for 2 or wait and try to bestow it for 5 and get value?). Obviously you don't want a whole set of tension cards, but some isn't a bad thing. It also rewards you for horrible topdecks, turning those late-game 1/1 dorks into +1/+1 counters for your other creatures.
DeleteWe could certainly warp the set around making Dominate work on curve, but we can't do that for every mechanic. It basically comes down to how much it contributes to the set, the bar has to be pretty high to warrant eschewing so many of our normally beefier creature slots.
DeleteVenture doesn't seem to be getting much traction-- in this context, at least-- so I'm changing my support to the "Dominance" ability word, Hierarchy, and/or any other viable alternative to the evolve-style "Dominant". My reasoning:
ReplyDelete(1) I favor something that encourages players to curve out naturally. Other power-matters mechanics do this reasonably well, but Dominant does not. Suggestions to the contrary appear to entail serious warping of the Limited environment.
(2) I favor something that naturally captures the flavor of exploitative *progress*. Ability-worded "dominance" and Hierarchy both emphasize the *state* of having higher power and the "ha ha, I'm more advanced than you" attitude that can drive our conflict. Evolve-style dominant's use of an enters-the-battlefield trigger feels much less exploitative and is more like the opposite of progress, since the small creature is entering the battlefield after the big one.
(3) I favor something easy to track and Timmy-friendly. Hierarchy and dominance both give you a clear goal ("be bigger!") that lines up well with what Timmy wants to do. Dominant asks players to plan ahead, do math, and make trade-offs along very Spiky lines. We've already seen plenty of that in Tesla mechanic proposals, and I don't think it's very appropriate here.
(4) I favor something that synergizes meaningfully with the Mecha mechanic (in whatever form it might take). Ability-word dominance and hierarchy both do that, giving you incentives to assemble or break up Mechas respectively. Evolve-style dominance doesn't do either, since it only cares about creatures entering the battlefield.
Hierarchy is clunky, and Dominance "ability-word" at least in the card presented above also warps the limited environment (screws over blue and tokens/"go wide" decks mostly). Dominate as reverse-evolve *does* curve out if you construct the set properly. If anything, Hierarchy is more of a "boosted by friends" feel. The Dominance ability-word has the right flavour but it encourages messing with your opponent (stick a 1/1 then bounce everything they play to keep your Dominance spells online) rather than building your own board to be big. Reverse-evolve dominance may not be perfect, or even right for the set, but I prefer it over these alternatives.
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