Rezatta — VISION DESIGN PHASE

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Comments

  • "life matters" is looking harder and harder to implement in a satisfying way.
  • I mean fetches and refuge lands would be crazy good in draft and add excitement and value to the set. "If you lost life this turn" seems a lot less fun than other life change mechanics because it is a lot harder to do than the other ones for sorcery speed spells.
  • edited June 2018
    @Faiths_Guide
    Yeah, they have very little time to prepare their entries, so we sometimes see mistakes that look surprising a posteriori in this contest ^^ I still think a life-matters mechanic was a good idea to present in the GDS, there's a surprising amount of interesting untapped design. But they just failed to demonstrate they understood the potential traps of those mechanics (which makes it interesting for us as well.)

    @brcien
    That's an interesting question. They do allow you to pay life when needed, being one way of playing into the life-matters theme, but they also have their share of issues:

    1) Making you lose life makes them anti-synergistic with psylian life. If we want lands that cause life swings, a priori I'd try lands that gain you life or hurt your opponent first. Maybe heal your opponent ("Enters the battlefield tapped unless you have target opponent gain 1 psylian life.")

    2) WOTC is very reticent to print dual lands that are what the set cares about. For instance, they tried enchantment-lands in Theros and removed them because the opportunity cost was just too low, they were surprisingly overpowered in the right deck. Obviously, that's the same reason why the artifact-lands got banned in Modern. I don't think the "enchantment-lands / artifact-lands in an enchantment word / artifact world" totally translate into the "fetch lands in a life-matters world" paradigm, but I would still be careful with them.

    3) Fetch lands are really strong cards. I don't think they would be super problematic as long as we don't put dual lands with basic land types in the same set, but they're really flashy and could pull away the focus slightly off the new exciting designs. I'd rather put the excitment somewhere else than reprints, especially for a custom set which goal is not to actually sell packs.

    @Scott_Anderson
    It's a theme that has never been done before by an official set, so it's a bit harder that graveyard set, tribal set, artifact set, or multicolour set because we don't have that much guidance ^^ But I'm pretty confident it's possible to make something clean, we must not be afraid to reiterate until we're fully satisfied. I'd like to finish the GDS3 lessons with one or two last posts and then discuss where we can improve Rezatta's designs based on those lessons. I think the implementation of the life-matters them will be a big part of the discusion :)
  • I think we should try it in play testing. Can you imagine how sweet a set with fetches and phyrexian life would be?
  • @brcien
    We'll they actually make a nonbo, if you have psylian life then you feel bad for cracking your fetchland :/
  • But you're playing a fetchland. I think it is something worth testing. So what are we supposed to be doing to be moving forward?
  • @brcien
    Well, now that the dust of GDS3 is settling down there's probably going to be some discussions about the heart of the set. I want to make a last batch of GDS3 lessons before talking more deeply about this, but I think we'll need to really ask the question "How is playing Rezatta supposed to feel, what emotion are we trying to give to the players?"

    So, one of the things you could do right now is try to propose an answer to that question, and design a few concept cards that illustrate your idea.

    Here are two examples:
    a. Kaladesh wants to make you feel like an inventor. This means that the set should be about choices, allowing you to combine cards in your own way like you were building a small engine, which is helped by the Energy mechanic. It should feel more combo-y than normal and be filled with more weird Johnny artifacts than average.

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    b. Amonkhet wants you to get a sense of ruthlessness. Mechanics like Cycling, Embalm and Aftermath makes you feel that ending in the graveyard in something to beg for, not something to fear. You're incentivized to put -1/-1 counters on your own stuff, exert your own creatures, or sacrifice them like you would use pawns in a chess game.

    imageimageimage

    Don't hesitate to propose even new mechanics ideas. It's one of the things I'd like to talk about once I've finished the GDS3 Lessons series: refocusing the mechanics a little towards that vision of how the set should feel.
  • How about pay psylian life to fetch?
  • edited June 2018
    May I suggest?

    Blue's emotion is sadness. A way to use that offensively is to inflict sadness and despair. Therefore I think there should be a higher than normal number of blue cards that say "tap target [PERMANENT OR PERMANENTS]. It/they do not untap during their controller's next untap step.

    In fact, perhaps there should be a blue functional reprint of Kismet.

    In fact, perhaps there should be a functional reprint of Gaseous Form.

    In fact, perhaps this would be the set where Stasis makes a return.
  • @shadow123
    That's an interesting idea, though dual lands should be accessible to every deck, not just decks playing psylian life. So maybe a one-of design? Something along those lines:

    CARDNAME
    Land
    T: Add C.
    Pay 2 psylian life, sacrifice CARDNAME: Search your library for a plains, island, swamp, mountain or forest card, reveal it, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.

    @Scott_Anderson
    Just to clarify, the question above is more going to be how the set as a whole is going to feel, not just any specific colour.
    That said, we still can chat about specific colours' feel. Right now sadness is black's emotion, blue is more about fear, but we're probably going to have this discussion again soon when we rediscuss the feel of the set. You're raising an interesting question on how to intepret sadness: do you feel it yourself, or do you inflict it to others? We have to weight both possibilities, especially their mechanical implications and the cohesiveness with how other colours work. I think the emphasis on freezing is an interesting mechanical idea. It could work with Fears just as well, and does synergize well with the "don't touch me" mechanic we were discussing for Blue (though this is one of the things we'll need to talk about again later, because it does encourage bad play patterns.)
  • I'm am 100% against reprinting the fetch lands. They will eat up at least five of the rare slots. In addition, Tarkir/BFZ standard was incredibly boring, with everyone playing multicolor goodstuff and half the time spent shuffling thanks to fetchlands. It results in a boring standard environment, and a power creep that's honestly absurd.
  • edited June 2018
    This may seem kinda silly, but how about bringing back a cycle of Grove of the Burnwillows lands? It might be OP, but it could synergize with a life-matters theme...?
    And about how Rezatta is supposed to feel: Rezatta should make you feel like an artist, making interesting and beautiful works. So I believe Rezatta should have some wacky combo Johnny and Timmy cards. But part of art is also bringing joy to others, so rather than an incentive to grind out your opponents, it has a sort of group-hug theme as well. Maybe in contrast to Amonkhet’s cruelty theme, the creatures reward you for keeping them alive.
    Just some wacky ideas. What do you think?
  • Hm. I made that mistake but I don’t know... should black be fear and blue be sadness?
  • I agree with @TezzeretOfCarmot21 about design philosophy. It should be an extremely fun, joyful set. Group hug maybe is too far? I think if you had a group hug set in standard, almost none of the cards would be played in standard. So I think we could make a big list of cards people love or cards people have fun playing with/against and see what makes that happen.
  • I don't know if you're accepting any card entries at the moment, but I made this one as a quick concept and I must say I really like it in every aspect.

    https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/the-grand-conductor
  • @Sylux
    A little too strong IMO.
  • true, but i do like the concept
  • maybe tweak it a bit, and make the arts 1/1s(compose 1)
  • @Sylux
    The spirit of the set is there but the card strongly suggest at an artifact theme which this set doesn't do and has a little too many abilities without really tying them flavourfully. (Also, Historic is not an evergreen keyword so we can't reference it directly.) Basically, it's a cool design but I think the best use of this card would be to separate its components in 3 different cards, unless we find a really good flavour to tie those abilities together ^^
  • maybe instead of a historic trigger a "fear" trigger
  • @sylux We really shouldn't be using a dominaria mechanic in this set.
  • I think we’re nearly to the point where we need to start making our commons and uncommons. We have people proposing a lot of rare ideas, and I’m not sure that’ll do. We’ve only got about thirty rare slots. I get that making more complex rare cards is fun, but I think we gotta take a step back and focus on the core of the set.
  • I have a ton of commons ideas. However, the Psylian Life is still out of my grasp
  • edited June 2018
    Proposing any idea is fine at the moment, from commons to mythic, but beware that at this stage the concepts can't be included in the file because it's going to be built from commons to higher rarities. That means it's more likely that a rare won't find a slot if you design for a specific archetype in mind and it turns out that archetype is not in the set once we settle on our commons and uncommons.

    With that in mind, cards showcasing the design space of our set mechanics have a higher chance of ending in the file later, under one form or another, and exciting cards that are cool in a vacuum independently of what the set is about always have some reserved slots for them, though not many ^^

    We're definitely going to start filling the common skeleton with cards, but before I'd like to have that quick conversation on how we should focus the set mechanically. This is important because it may shake the mechanics a little, and I wouldn't want us to start designing our first commons while we're on the verge of having a couple of mechanics switching.

    In the meantime, maybe a cool thing would be to design playtest decks around some of the mechanics? This way we can playtest them in parallel of building the actual file ^^
  • Is it too late to join? This seems like a fun thing to get involved with. I would love to join as I Just Wanna Make Cards. I have a few fun ideas for a few commons and uncommons already. I could also help with the playtest decks as well if needed.
  • @pakashara
    You're more than welcome to join in (any way you please)!
  • Shadow123 make the cant be blocked on blue
  • Here is an idea for a red burn spell that makes use of the art tokens before they are sacrificed. I'm still a little iffy on the name though.


    Burning Ideas

    RRR

    Instant

    As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice any number of art creatures.

    Burning Ideas deals X damage to any target where X is the total power of the creatures sacrificed with Burning Ideas.
  • edited June 2018
    @pakashara
    Don't worry about things like names for now, as long as we're at the concept stage it's unlikely that a card ends up in the card file unchanged anyways because of all the constraints the other cards are putting on it. :)

    It's definitely an interesting build-around, it could potentially one-shot your opponent but since the Art tokens from Compose are ephemeral it would require to make them all in one turn THEN cast this card. I can't tell if this card is good or not which is usually a good sign, it's definitely tickling my Johnny side a bit.
    If we decide it's worth it, we have to be aware of it whenever we make a card that makes Art though. Especially things like regular creatures with the Art subtypes, and big Compose cards.
    If it's too restrictive, one option we could consider is making it an enchantment that Compose on a repeatable trigger, and sacrifice for the ability you just designed.

    Anyways, it's quite original, I'd love to playtest it! =)
This discussion has been closed.