Using some stolen Imperiosaur templating, I decided that instead of caring about producing extra mana, what if our spells cared that it specifically came from something other than land mana. In the context of Ixalan, we end up with treasure tokens, but it's certainly not limited to that.
On rare-scaled effects, it might be problematic in formats like commander, where there are a lot of mana rocks and such, so I made sure that the mana requirement was colored. I'm not sure how much depth (or fun) there is to this particular mechanic, but I'd be interested in exploring it to find out.
Neat. I think you've got two mechanics here.
ReplyDelete1—Kicking a spell by spending only mana of its color to cast it.
I feel like I messed with that at some point, but I can't remember. This seems like a strong way to reward mono-color play.
2—Caring about a mana's source.
Back in GDS2, I made the mistake of trying to care about mana produced by specific creatures types (the set used the tribal card type, another mistake), but I just recently tried out "creature mana" and "artifact mana" and that might work. "Nonland sources" isn't as flavorful but might be necessary to make the numbers work.
On the topic of 2, I've been tinkering with a similar mechanic, and was considering making it a CCDD! Mine was "Invest (If mana from a nonbasic source was spent to cast this spell, it's invested, and enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter.)"
DeleteNote that mine works with all nonland sources, as well as nonbasic lands. That part has been confusing, though; most people just read it as working with nonbasic lands. :/
That last clause would only exist on creatures, naturally. It could appear on spells too.
I think that the key to Spoils is in caring about nonland sources more than caring about monocolor. Just "if mana from a nonland source was spent to cast this" is already very interesting!
I see what you're saying there. Honestly, the monocolor is mostly there to keep it from being abused with Sol Rings, but if there are Sol Rings in play, the format is already busted anyway.
DeleteI updated my card examples for a templating idea I just had.
ReplyDeleteFor kicker ability words like Spoils above (i.e. Spell Mastery) where the input is a lot of what should be reminder text but isn't, and the output is generally just "this but bigger/more", what if the actual effect that mattered was put in bold typeface to make it easier to spot? Thoughts?
I like this idea a lot! My big worry is that it looks like it distracts from the initial unboosted effect. Also, bolded text (weirdly) doesn't actually 'pop' that well with Magic's textbox font. Perhaps it needs a different treatment. But, the core idea of emphasizing the output over the input is great.
DeleteI've been considering Mark Rosewater's discussion on how ability words haven't been performing well, and on how batching has been an attempt at solving it. It makes me wonder if the power of batching isn't in the idea of grouping things thematically, but instead lies in addressing the problem you've recognized: that our ability words drown out outputs with repetitive inputs.
E.g., imagine "As long as you're delirious, Moorland Drifter has flying. (You're delirious if there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard.)
This is very similar to how ability words began, with Threshold, but remade to work with modern Magic conventions. It'd make the replacement effect clearer without needing to bold it, hopefully, since it shunts the reminder text to be after the effect, rather than before.
I like this use of bolding to call out relevant text. I have no idea whether that's better or bolding keywords to help them stand out.
Delete"As long as you're delirious" seems like it has potential. Would love to test that.
That's a fun hole to dive down. I imagine many ability words could be reformatted as a status.
DeleteIt was part of the larger comment I made but scrapped because it was too long, but pirates weren't meant to care about anything but the artifact-ness of treasures. The UB pirate subtheme was "treasure" per se, but artifacts. There wasn't a a whole ton of cards that cared about artifacts because A) it isn't a very modular theme and B) treasures are generally decent by themselves, but it was there, and it was the purpose of treasures. Treasures used technology that I tie pretty close to Kaladesh as a trick enable artifact matters when your set has a lot of other things going on or when you want enable artifact matters only as a subtheme and can't afford to many colorless cards, starting with Origins, where it made colored cards that were also artifacts while on the field by virtue of coming with a free artifact. I know it wasn't the point of this article, but I can't say that I think Ixalan would have been improved if it had been less broad in having more of its "greedy pirates that want treasure" by making things that only particularly care about the qualities of treasure tokens.
ReplyDeleteI'd say one thing about this mechanic is that it's very, very hard to flavor, and it feels weird to have an entire named mechanic about just caring about such a weird flavor thing as nonland mana sources. What does that mean, exactly?
I like the overall idea, and on the post about your playing with monocolor mechanics, there was a similar looking mechanic where your cards got more "intense" the more focused on a color you were based on how much fo a single color you spent on it. Maybe you can play around in that flavor space to give this mechanic a little more resonance. I'm still not entirely sure if the mechanic is broad enough to be supported in a set, though.
On the other hand, I REALLY like the idea of your delirious templating. It's actually quite similar to the city's blessing, only you wouldn't need the marker since delirium isn't intended to be a permanent status.
I would speculate that pirates got artifacts-matter because the set had treasure, and not the other way around, but I agree that sub-theme felt poorly supported.
DeleteIt's also a fair point that it's harder to justify Pirates caring about where your mana comes from.
DeleteI may be recalling wrong, but I could have sworn they showed a whiteboard of potential pirate there's in Ixalan and the article talked about artifacts being their theme, and treasures were a way to enable it that was synergistic with other needs (dinosaurs were mana hungry and set wanted some fixing). If not, there's also that they weren't just meant to have synergy with treasures, but vehicles and equipment as well, which is another reason why the theme was the larger "artifacts" rather than a subset-- of course pirates care about equipment and ships too.
DeleteI don't necessarily agree the theme was "poorly supported" I'm not convinced it needed that much support really. It was just a small piece of the set, there to play into another facet of what people probably expected of pirates: ships, tools, and treasure.
In other words, I think they said pirates should have treasure, and decided what treasure should do based on the sets needs.
DeleteYeah I feel like pirates kind of served as fixing and ramp but that makes it feel like they don't belong in a deck together.
DeleteOne of the things that ended up on the cutting floor of my piece was how the pirate treasures were really, really good in limited for letting you splash any bomb you got your hands on and so blue/black was really good in that environment. But then that got back to the "That's not exactly a tribe, is it?" question.
DeleteThere's a lot of different kind of set concepts I think "Spoils" can go into, but it cannot be tossed into just anything. And I'm not sure it can go in to every color.
The tribe is more just caring about artifacts, since the facrt of pirates UB was trying to capture was being covetous. But treasures opened up a lot of fun things in general, pirates as a theme or tribe just cared about one aspect of then from a mechanical standpoint. There's not a ton of clues or signposts to the theme, and is more reflective in being a "greedy" control deck that tries to get away with playing the biggest and best and st. I don't know if that's an angle they were going for, but maybe.
DeleteI think something Ixalan doesn't get enough credit for is how all it's pieces add up to a subtly synergistic mix, mostly because it's first format was so fast, small synergies didn't get to crop up. Treasures filled so many roles throughout the block, it's amazing to me how elegant they were.
Yeah, I agree. They asked "What should pirates have? Treasure" and figured out what treasure did and added the artifacts-matter to synergize with treasure, ships, and cutlasses.
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