Cool Card Design of the Day6/3/2015 - At some point in Tesla discussions, this reverse-devotion mechanic was mentioned off-hand. The new talk of a culture shift from Tesla to Edison got me thinking about it again.
In Tesla, colored permanents (and sometimes spells) care about your march of progress. Most permanents count toward it (usually CC-1) but if you play an artifact, it counts fully.
In Edison, we start to see artifacts that display march of progress themselves, having learned to stop being used by mortals, and seeking their independence.
Twobrid feels like a natural fit here—particularly with soulless*—but notice that I had to change the wording on march of progress to account for the eccentricity of twobrid (and we'd need to do that whether we used twobrid in the block or not). This reminder text is the same length and clearer, but requires players to know/learn the 'generic' cost terminology. Note that I also tweaked the reminder text for twobrid to clarify Worker of the Depths' generic cost instead of its CMC since that's what's relevant to this block (and they're identical as long as we don't mix twobrid with colored mana costs).
* Soulless has very narrow design space, since it can only exist on twobrid cards. It checks to see that you paid the maximum amount, but the reminder text can simply list that specific amount. It doesn't have to always be a +1/+1 counter, and that design choice would limit it further, but if it only lives on 10 cards, it might be wholly sufficient.
Is march of progress only colourless mana or are you rephrasing "converted mana cost"? I honestly don't know, from the templating, what my march of progress would be. :/
ReplyDeleteNeither. It's the generic mana component of the mana cost.
DeleteKine Intoner's is 2. The artifacts' are 3, 4, and 4, respectively.
Definitely needs work to clarify.
Agree, I read it and reread it and still wasn't sure what it meant.
DeleteWorker of the Depths is confusing. Do I get the counter if I pay BBBB? Do I get it if I pay 5 (with a Sphere of Resistance in play)?
ReplyDeleteWRT these mechanics, I'm not sure what, if any, impact reverse-devotion would have on players' deck construction choices the way that devotion did. Sure, you're getting rewarded for casting big things, but the big things should be the reward in themselves -- you don't need to be motivated to do so by playing cards that suck until you have big things to buff them. Reverse devotion doesn't even necessarily discourage monocolor because the twobrid cards push it.