Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2

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  • what are these cards?
  • @kandra127
    Playtest cards meant to get an idea of how a mechanic feels (they're NOT part of the actual set). I added them on the website Untap.in so everyone can playtest them ^^
  • Although I really like the overall set, the Multiverse already has a renaissance plane: Fiora, although the theme isn't stressed very much. https://magic.wizards.com/en/story/planes/fiora
  • @KJMartin
    Yeap, Fiora technically has Renaissance flavour to it as well but it's only a loose background thing, I wouldn't say it's inspired by Renaissance and certainly wouldn't call it a Renaissance set. It's like the Indian theme used as a loose background for Kaladesh, I certainly wouldn't call it in Indian-inspired set.

    We have to keep the comparison with Fiora in mind but I think there's largely enough room left by Fiora on the Renaissance tropes to let Rezatta feel different enough. I'm actually more concerned about Rezatta which inventor's feel could create parallels with the artist's feel.

    If you think about it, most fantasy worlds are always happening somewhere between Middle Age and Renaissance ;) But you can have two very different planes in the same time setting. A good example would be Kaladesh and Bablovia for instance, whose premise are similar enough that they pushed back Unstable, even though in the end they felt completely different.

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  • edited November 2018
    @ningyounk
    Yeah, I thought the theme was unique enough, due its focus on art - a theme hardly addressed in Fiora :)

    (I also personally like vivify the most out of the possible mechanics)
  • Question, @ningyounk. For red... is fire going to maintain being an apparent thing? I've found some painted looking art with fire in it I've used for cards, and though I can't find who made them, if I could they'd fit well into the set I think.
  • @Shadow29870
    That sounds great, can we see them? :)
  • edited November 2018
    Sure! Ehm... I'm unsure if they're even connected, and I only have two but here they are! The fact they have a painted aesthetic makes me feel they fit, making them useful for 'art' cards, things artist might paint. Maybe as a result of visiting other planes for inspiration...

    (I woulda put just them here but, I'm unsure how. So... here's the cards I made em into, not for Rezzeta, but it lets yah see the art)

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  • The upper art I don't know off hand but could probably find. The lower art is JasonTN
  • edited November 2018
    We need to make sure this doesn’t become too much like kaladesh. I still like the direction its going in though! Creativity was one of the centers themes of Kaladesh.

  • edited November 2018
    Ok, the Vivify playtest deck gave me a bit of trouble to upload because of the double-sided cards (I had to upload them as split cards unfortunately) but it's finally on Untap.in:

    Vivify Playtest deck V2 - Deck Hash [41d189b]

    7 Island
    7 Mountain
    4 Highland Lake
    1 Dancer of the Pyrer
    1 Soothing Lullaby
    1 Siren Sculptor
    1 Old-School Musician
    1 Magistral Sculptor
    1 Godmother of Art
    1 Fascinating Novel
    1 Enthralling Sonata
    1 Dancing Statues
    1 Dance of Tides
    1 Colourful Portrait
    1 Burning Moves
    1 Breathtaking Recital
    1 Apprentice Writer
    1 Apprentice Harpist
    1 Apprentice Guitarist
    1 Writing Teacher
    1 Vivid Landscape
    1 Tortuous Waltz
    1 Thoughtless Scribbles
    1 Symmetrical Mosaic
    1 Swift violonist
  • Are there any Planeswalkers in the set?
  • @pjbear2005
    We're going to aim for a number of planeswalkers close to what we find in recent standard sets outside core sets (so 2-3 planeswalkers, balanced colour wise). We know we want a Da Vinci planeswalker (strong candidate for Blue since... well, Da Vinci) and there have been some talk for an appearance of Vraska because she has a lot of supporters on this forum and we want Gorgons on Rezatta (because they make statues, so they can be flavoured as sculptors which fits the art theme.)
  • edited November 2018
    For those who don't have an account on Untap.in, here's a summary of all the playtesting cards I've put on there.

    To play those decks, use 1 copy of each card, add 4 Highland Lakes and an even amount of islands and mountains until you have 40 cards.

    Those cards are NOT part of the card file of Rezatta.
    They're just playtesting cards meant to choose among three options which one will we use to depict art coming to life on Rezatta. As such, I didn't spent loads of time refining them so feel free to adjust, add or remove any card for playtesting yourself.

    There are three decks. As I mentioned, each one propose one mechanic meant to depict Art coming to life, and we have to choose a winner out of all three:

    MECANIC #1 — Vivify

    Vivify {cost} (If you cast this spell for {cost}, put it onto the battlefield transformed as it resolves.)


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    MECANIC #2 — Inspiration

    Inspiration (When this dies, exile it inspiring target creature you control. That creature has all its other abilities.)


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    MECANIC #3 — Masterwork

    Masterwork ([When this enters the battlefield,] choose an Art you control. It becomes your only Masterwork.)


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  • I like Vivify most, but probably just because I like flip cards.
  • Masterork is cool too
  • Maybe tonight does anyone want to untap tonight?
  • @kandra127
    My personal take so far is that :

    1) While Vivify is a fun idea on paper, it feels weird because you usually want the opposite (the creature as default and the effect for the kicker cost.) But it's really the best flavourfully at showing the Art literally coming to life.

    2) Inspiration is really fun and can feel quite "artistic" but it's hard to make it work with the death trigger. I think if we went for it we would need to either reconsider the trigger or make sure the last mechanic has a sacrifice cost built into it.

    3) Masterwork feels just as fun and artistic as Inspiration but it's easier to pull off and offers more interesting design space. It's my personal favourite so far.

    @brcien
    I live in France so it's always difficult for me to playtest with people outside Europe because of time differences unfortunately (I'm something like +6 to +8h from U.S.A.)
  • Inspiration would be good in a black green deck with lid of sacrifice outlets, but yeah, wouldn't do much in other colored decks, and for me, the art dying doesn't make since to me, wouldn't the art inspire someone only if it was still there? Maybe like an activated ability or something?
  • @01101
    Flavourfully, I think it would be possible to make Inspiration work with a death trigger because it could represent art becoming famous, therefore inspiring future generations. My problem with it is purely mechanical, it works parasitically even though it doesn't look like it on paper. You're just really dependant on sacrifice outlets if you want to enable your deck early enough.
    An activated ability could be a solution, yes. Especially since we have a mechanic that produces mana (psylian life) which means we need to implement a mana sink at some point.

    I just think Masterwork does the same thing but better. One of the downsides of Inspiration is that it makes the board quite complicated. The fact that you physically pile the cards on top of each other like auras help considerably but it's still a challenge to remember what each creature does when you start inspiring different creatures. The beauty with Masterwork is how it alleviates this complexity by allowing only one permanent at a time to combo off. But otherwise they work the same, the art/artist relationship is just reversed a little: "Inpiration" on Art = "Your Masterwork has BONUS" on Artists and "As long as this creature is inspired, it has BONUS" on Artist = "As long as this is your Masterwork, it has BONUS" on Art.
  • Overall, I think Masterwork is the best option to go with. It's flavor packed, not overtly complicated, and is somewhat reminiscent of emblem effects while still being interactable.
  • Maybe Inspiration has a death trigger is alluding to the fact that creators and artists only become famous after they died
  • I'd have to rank masterwork as highest, though a pinch set specific mechanic-wise. the other two... I'm a bit undecided. If Inspiration, an amazing ability I'd say, stayed, it could see much more use in B/R/G I think. Vivify... I love it. It may be a tad strange, but if you balance out both sides, it would be fantastic. It'd add lots of spice to the game in terms of choices to make and forcing discard users to recognize a card has multi-utility.
  • edited November 2018
    Personally, I think that Masterwork is the coolest of the three mechanics as they stand. It's a lot more difficult to master than it first appears- a really interesting cerebral challenge for players.
  • edited November 2018
    I'm probably biased, but I'm still most partial to the vivify and artist designs of the cards linked above.

    I can't deny that masterwork is cool in its uniqueness though.
  • @Undead

    I agree, it's my favorite too, I made a deck with the cards on Untap
  • edited November 2018
    @Faiths_Guide
    I like Vivify too, simply I think it would shine most as a mechanic like aftermath, legendary sorceries, sagas, or DFC lands: a couple cycles at higher rarity and that's it. It's good at proposing exciting designs but, as you can only have a few noncreature spells and high-costed creature spells in a deck, I don't think it's a good "bread-and-butter" mechanic that goes well at common.

    So the question is mostly "what kind of mechanic do we want in that slot?" As art is our single most important trope for the set, I think it's important that we keep this mechanic at common and press it as much as we can, which makes Vivify not very suiting, I believe.

    But that's a personal point of view, do other people feel differently?
  • @ningyounk
    I think the role you're putting Vivify in might be more suited to Masterwork. Masterwork seems more like a 'couple cycles at higher rarity' mechanic than Vivify.

    While I think it's limiting, we might consider making Vivify "If you cast this spell for [cost], it enters the battlefield as a [creature description]" to make it more workable at common.
This discussion has been closed.