Eternal just previewed a new keyword from the impending 5th set: Renown. It has nothing to do with Magic's renown, because it's too busy being Magic's heroic.
Limiting renown triggers to once-only reduces the magical-christmas-land appeal that heroic had, but I think that trade-off is worth it because heroic led players to focus so much on one creature the result was sometimes degenerate or self-destructive; renown rewards you for doing the thing and then gently suggests you move on with your life.
I want to talk specifically about Oni Forgemaster here, because it does this particularly well. I love that the reward for playing a weapon on Forgemaster is getting another weapon you can use to renown another unit. I continue to applaud Dire Wolf's understanding of flow. And of course you can always double up on Forgemaster, or save the weapon for later, or even discard it to fuel something larger.
Aniyah looks sweet, and I made just the deck for her only yesterday. Notorious Scoundrel has fun flavor, but I have trouble imagining the deck that wants to play her (since Fire can't grant aegis to its units). Glacier Shaper is fun in some pretty obvious ways. Chunk Chunk is a touch busy with three unrelated abilities, but they fit on three lines so it's not the worst, and the idea of snowballing it to get a Snowfort is indeed adorable.
Players love making monsters and heroic/renown is a great way to reward them for doing so. Team Rabid Wombat forever!
Eternals distinction between which mechanics are single use per game and which are single use per play instance is incredibly confusing to me. There's really no indication if this resets like Infiltrate short of playing with it in some puzzle?
ReplyDeleteAll use-once abilities reset if they leave play and return. But they do make it hard to know that.
DeleteIs Hooru Envoy's ability single use? I don't get that at all from the card.
ReplyDeleteEnvoy's ability is not single-use.
DeleteUpdate having experienced the mechanic:
ReplyDeleteRenown is pretty sweet. For the same reason heroic is.
As executed, it's essentially two different mechanics. Cards like Hojan, Corwnbreaker want you to play the cheapest spells/weapons possible, while cards like Shingane Firebrand want the most expensive you can find. I still haven't determined whether that counts the cost of spellcraft or not.