Weekend Art Challenge Review 091914—Code Geass

Weekend Art Challenge Review
Here's the challenge we're reviewing today.

We've seen this mechanic before, but I like it for a rebel faction that depends on numbers, anonymity and hit-and-run tactics to score victories against a better equipped foe. Tempted to remove "without maneuver" to shorten the text and make it a bit more powerful, but I'm not sure that's as intuitive. Maneuver would play best in combination with token making, can't-block effects, and creatures built to survive attacks better. It also plays into the tactical gameplay Alex wants to feature.

We've also seen overthrow before and it's still a compelling mechanic. Amusingly, it also works best in combination with the same things maneuver works best with, though for very different reasons. Like raid, it encourages attacking and the reward usually comes after combat (but can also apply to combat tracks). It replaces the conditional-bonus of raid with cost reduction, which is generally less exciting despite being very strong in practice.

I quite like the story it tells on a rebel faction—The more people we see bravely striking out against our common oppressor, the more of us will join the cause.

Blade of the People features three power of first strike which is pretty unusual for a common and I've only seen it in Modern at less than {5} on the absurd Porcelain Legionnaire. Since we also have cost reduction, I'd expect Development to shift the numbers here.

Freedom Fighter will start the revolution for {7}. Maybe other rebels will start it for more or for less. All your rebels become battle-ready soldiers when the revolution starts. That's pretty cool.

In a vacuum, this card isn't worth it to the player or the publisher. Paying {7} for +0/+2 and one can't-block effect is a terrible deal. Of course the goal is to have a bunch of rebels and flip them all for some total benefit that's worth not just the mana investment, but also the opportunity cost you paid in getting all those rebels out there without trading them off in combat or dying while you built up. Hmm, that thought combined with overthrow's flavor makes me wonder if the revolution shouldn't require a mana payment, but instead a threshold of rebels owned or attacking.

The next question is whether the revolution needs double-faced cards. Freedom Fighter could be single-sided and have two abilities: "{7}: Revolt" and "When you revolt, ~'s base toughness becomes 3. Target creature can't block this turn." That's a little different because you can revolt multiple times, but I think that's worth considering.

Led by example triggers when you attack with a creature, but only if you're also attacking with another, meaner creature. At first it seems like the creature attacking with this ability is the one, y'know, leading by example (so much so that I originally 'corrected' the ability word to "lead by example") but the only way I can make sense of this is if it's the larger creature that's leading and the guys like Inspired Protector that are following that example. That's why it's "led by." I'd suggest "Follow the leader" or something that uses an active verb rather than passive.

So, we've got a bunch of guys that get better when they attack with a bigger thing. I can see rebels being inspired by a charismatic or passionate leader, but in terms of being at their best when fighting behind a bigger badder thing, I'd actually attribute that to the oppressor's soldiers more. Mechanically, this ability only turns on when you're attacking with multiple creatures; in that way it should play like battalion, though going taller rather than wider. Unusually, led by example actually gets worse if you buff the creature it's on. You can buff the big leader guy, but then you're putting all your eggs in one basket.

This mechanic could certainly be red-green.

Partisan Saboteur's overthrow rewards you for having fewer creatures than your opponent. Given that comeback mechanics are more relevant to pulling out games than win-more mechanics, and make better stories too, that's not a bad goal. We do need to be cautious about making the same mistake as the loner mechanic from Avacyn Restored; specifically, encouraging players to put themselves in a losing position for a reward that might not save them.

This particular execution is flawed because in addition to requiring you to be in an inferior board position, it requires you to attack from that position, and can still be negated if your opponent simply chooses not to block. You have to get them low enough on life they need to block, and have enough life you can afford to attack without losing on the swing-back, all despite having fewer creatures. That's a rare enough confluence that we shouldn't try to reward it with a named mechanic.

Now, if you replace "becomes blocked" with "blocks" then you've got a mechanic that rewards you for playing defensively when you're on the defense and can help you climb out of that whole. Whether we want to reward blocking and thus punish attacking is the concern that version brings up, but we're closer when the hoop lines up with what we want to be doing in that scenario anyhow.

I'm not personally feeling the theme here because rebels are usually most interesting when they're fighting a wealthy minority on behalf of a downtrodden majority, but I can see it being justified by the story if the rebels are a minority group lashing out against an overwhelming majority society.

On Rebel Recruiter, overthrow is an ability word that's a harder version of bloodthirst but offers a variety of effects in place of just making creatures bigger. It can also trigger multiple times. I'm all for exploring variants of bloodthirst and it's nice to see a version that could even appear on spells. By making the hoop smaller, players will have to alter their playstyle more to trigger overthrow, but the fact that you can try every turn means you won't be holding back creatures to get their ETB effect like we did with bloodthirst. Presumably, most of the effects we get for triggering this once will help us to trigger it again, which sounds different, but actually plays in similar ways as bloodthirst. Interesting.

I'm not as convinced this mechanic feels like overthrowing an oppressor, or particularly rebellious. In fact, I could more readily imagine the brittanians using this mechanic to punish rebels and keep the populace under their thumb.

Abet is a weird exalted. Trading the +0/+1 for trample is actually pretty neat, keeping the game moving toward your opponent dying and away from a repetitive game state. It's the part where we tap to target a creature before it attacks that strikes me as strange. We could just making "{T}: Target creature gets [violent]", though the ability to choose after blockers are declared would complicate combat math considerably. Respecting that, you could just make the ability sorcery speed. Or you could remove the {T} entirely and make it a triggered ability like exalted. It's worth observing that as nice as this ability is, using it is considerably worse than attacking with Raid Leader a good bit of the time. As I imagine good triggers, I can't help but end up at the simplest: battle cry.

The People's Sword has a different overthrow ability word: it gets a bonus for attacking alongside a similar creature. I like that a lot, though I have to wonder if it's worth making it an ability word so that we can give different keywords or trigger effects, versus just making a keyword that always grants +N/+N. Rares could still add extra triggers, "Whenever ~ overthrows, it gains double strike until EPT."

Not sure why we're using the word 'overthrow' again here. I'd expect something more like 'coordinate' or 'cooperate' or 'solidarity' or something. That's not terrible for a rebel faction; and I like how it could be re-used in core sets and the like.

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We didn't get a whole lot of submissions this week. Given the occasions I've seen you artisans rise to in the past, I doubt it was that the challenge was too hard. Perhaps some of us didn't feel much love for the set, or didn't feel like working within someone else's set. If you're just doing this for the fun of it, only you can decide what's fun for you and what's not. For those of you trying to hone your skills as a game designer, or even aiming to develop the skills that will be needed for your inevitable position in R&D, you missed a big opportunity by sitting this one out. Professional game design is all about making projects you don't otherwise care about better. That's what you get paid for. And even if you have no interest or expectation of ever being paid to make games, all game design benefits from community. Those who gave their time and energy to Alex have a reasonable expectation that others will want to help them out when they need extra input too, not because they're owed it, but because they have shown themselves to be committed to the community and worth supporting.

Once again, if you'd like to give Alex additional feedback about his set, feel free to do so on his project page at Multiverse..