CCDD 061818—GDS3 Slick

Cool Card Design of the Day
For the mechanic challenge in GDS3, I built and tested a number of mechanics. Slick was the last of my top choices. Ryan was lamenting hexproof on Twitter today, so it's time to share this one.

Slick is part evasion mechanic, part hexproof, all better than it looks.

It's no problem to pay {1} to block one slick creature or even two, when you've already got a creature to block with and nothing better to do with your mana, but often that mana is being used up to play those blockers.

Slick Apprentice and Rainforest Ranger don't look like much on paper, but they're effectively Slither Blade and Phantom Warrior for several turns in most games, and they have the distinct advantage that any spells your opponent might try to remove them with cost {1} more. Again, that may not sound like a lot, but in a world where Murder's not good enough compared to Go for the Throat, it's plenty.

Commons will mostly be limited to slick 1, with infrequent exceptions for over-costed or simply expensive spells.

At uncommon, we start seeing slick 2 more.

Here are three cards that grant slick. No set would have more than one. We can only grant slick at sorcery speed because it would confuse players when your creature gains slick after it's been blocked or targeted.

Can we put slick on non-creatures? I'd want to do user testing to see how that reads. It works, in that half the ability is relevant on anything, but is too confusing to make something that can't attack unblockable? We could, of course, treat slick differently on noncreatures and write only the hexproof part in the reminder text (but that wasn't helpful on Slickness).

Being able to grant slick 2 to anything is quite strong, but it's still no Whispersilk Cloak.

Slick began life as Attuned, similar to Elderwood Scion's ability. In that model, Coy Fiend was even better than Triton Fortune Hunter (long before Theros was announced). The two abilities don't combo as closely now, but cost reduction was problematic both for developmental reasons and because it felt bad when you didn't have spells to target your attuned creatures with. Where Coy Fiend had been an armored engine card, now it's an armored aggressor, and it's still very strong.

Tyrant of the Jungle is a touch more straight-forward, following in a line of snakes that draw cards.

What kind of weirdness can affect by caring about Slick? Why not get the mana your opponent spends?

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Why do I think Slick is a good mechanic, given that we already have hexproof and unblockable and can put them together whenever we like?

Remember Invisible Stalker? That card was problematic. We are desperately in need of limited forms of hexproof. We've recently seen "hexproof from black" and "hexproof until this deals damage" and I dig those, but even those conditional variants are all-on against certain decks or in certain situations. Frost Titan and Kopala, Warden of Waves demonstrate an alternative that is strong and relevant without being hope-crushingly absolute.

Pairing that pay-to-target ability with pay-to-block isn't required to serve that goal, but it serves another goal (we're always looking for different kinds of evasion to interact along) while delivering a thematically complete package. I think Creative will find a better name than 'slick' but regardless of what they choose, it's intuitive that these creatures are tricky to get a handle on.

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A final note about this mechanic. Slick is the good kind of rhystic. Some of you are asking what's rhystic, and some are asking what could be good about rhystic.

Rhystic was a mechanic from Prophecy that's like an inverse-kicker. Rather than reward you for paying extra mana when you cast your spell, rhystic cards rewarded you for your opponent not paying extra mana when you cast your spell. They were not popular because they weren't fun. You simply wouldn't use your rhystic cards while your opponent had the mana open to pay for them, and that encouraged players to pass the turn without spending all their mana. It was a mechanic that drew games long, discouraged playing your cards, and felt awful when the thing it talked about happened.

Slick also requires your opponent to pay mana, but there's never a question regarding when or if they'll need to. I can make an informed decision whether to leave my mana opponent for your slick creature or to spend it to do my thing. You know whether I've left mana open before you attack or cast your aura. And rather than offering a one-time response window, I can always pay to deal with your slick creature later. Slick generates play rather than squelching it.

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I didn't submit Slick for GDS3 because it's not terribly novel. I think it could drop into a set going out the door next month with little fuss; It's hard to make an intuitive, thematic, and relevant mechanic, and I'm proud of that, but the competition was pushing hard for innovation, and so refined evolution wasn't cutting it.

Design a Slick card in the comments.