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Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2
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For example, if I enchant an Art with an Aura that grants it abilities (e.g. vigilance) and it dies, then the inspired creature will also have vigilance, but it is hard to memorize it. This seems to be worse with instants and sorceries (or abilities :P).
To be fair, chaining Inspirations together isn't that awful, since the creatures are around to remind players of the abilities.
I couldn't playtest Breath yet because three at once was already time consuming, but a priori there are more issues coming with it than the three other mechanics. Namely, having creatures that are not creatures in great quantity in the set is going to cause gameplay issues, like filling the set with too many Vehicles would. Also, evergrowing creatures would probably be a problem at common. Maybe it's fun but I don't doubt we would need to tweak it a lot to make it work.
@LyndonF
No, don't worry, if you exile a card with Inspiration that got additional abilities from equipments, auras or even instans/sorceries/abilities, it doesn't stick to the creature when it changes zone thanks to rules 400.7: "An object that moves from one zone to another becomes a new object with no memory of, or relation to, its previous
existence". Only what's really written on the card will be passed to the inspired creature.
#themoreyouknow
Actually yes, it may be a more appropriate wording ^^
@everyone
Here's an article I stumbled upon, it's about Hearthstone and it talks about an interesting aspect of game design I've never really heard about in Magic contents: polarity, a.k.a. how much your game is close to a game of rock/paper/scissors.
https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/meta-polarity-and-its-impact-on-hearthstone/
Here's my personal ranking based on the feeling I got while playing them:
#1: Masterwork
So far, this has been the mechanic that was the most fun to play for me. It has a unique gameplay, it has a strong mechanical flavour (the fact of physically putting something on the cards and then moving it around really makes you feel like you're crowning the new King xD), it's simple to understand and play, it still has depths, it has plenty of combo potential, it doesn't have the A/B mechanic issue since all cards work on their own, it starts to do its thing on turn 1, and it's compatible with all possible kinds of strategies which makes it easy to design for in large quantities. Also, we can make a cool reminder token to pass around like a little crown, for the visual novelty aspect. I felt it had very little downsides, so it's possible it was because I made decks 100% dedicated to playtest it and one of the downsides could be that it's too difficult to move the "Crown" when 99% of your cards are not dedicated to the mechanic. I still think we could find a solution for this if it happened.
#2: Inspiration
Second most fun mechanic for me, when you get it going you can do some very crazy and satisfying combos. It's the mechanic that feels the most like the "Artistic" mechanic out of the three for me. Still, it takes more time to develop on the board, it can be frustrating when you can't get your Art creatures to die in time, and losing inspired creatures is obviously a major set back every time. So it wasn't rare during playtests to have games when I wouldn't get to inspire a single creature, or it wouldn't matter a single time in the game. I think it's more complicated to design for in this current state. One of the solution actually could be to make it an activated ability, add a cost to it instead of the death trigger.
#3: Vivify
This was both the most difficult mechanic to play with and to design for. It's very powerful and I think it's the mechanic that won most of the time against the others. It's also the best mechanic at representing flavourfully Art coming to life, and putting your instant/sorcery onto the battlefield felt exactly like it should have. But it's also the mechanic that felt the most like it was doing nothing in the early game. It has a controlling gameplay where it takes its beating in the early game and then takes over in the late game. It made creating synergies between cards difficult because the mechanic was only doing its thing in the late game so most A/B designs ("When an Art creature enters the battlefield under your control, EFFECT" etc.) felt useless a good portion of the game. On top of that, interesting design space is limited as you easily design frustrating cards that you don't want to play without their Vivify costs, or that feels like the two halves of the cards are not linked in any way. Maybe it's possible to make it a flashy mechanic like Aftermath, Legendary sorceries, or DFC lands that only appear at higher rarities. But I don't think casting your spell without the Vivify cost is going to appeal a lot of people, especially if we focus on the flashy designs. Maybe we could take inspiration from Ixalan's DFC lands: make a few flashy enchantments (or artifacts), then at some point you can pay to get the creature half enter the battlefield. But I feel that what we need with the Living Art mechanic is something that appears in big volumes, more importantly at common. It's the most important flavour trope in the set, we need it to be visible.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/journey-to-the-stars
I just wanted to mention I started to add the playtest decks to Untap.in for playtest purpose!
The first one is the Masterwork deck (40 cards) : Deck Hash [41ef7hf]
7 Island
7 Mountain
4 Highland Lake
1 Tornado of Fire
1 The Ball of Fire
1 Tale Embellishment
1 Spying Virtuoso
1 Museum Guardian
1 Misty Painting
1 Masked Mural
1 Informative Storyteller
1 Gigantic Statue
1 Frenetic Scribbles
1 Forging Jeweler
1 Flowing Dance
1 Flood of Beauty
1 Fascinating Stories
1 Exalting Pianist
1 Enthralling Mural
1 Draconic Fresco
1 Dance of Bolts
1 Burn the Ugliness
1 Ballet of the Pyromancer
1 Artistic Jump
1 Artistic Surge
If the deck hash doesn't work, you should be able to find the cards by looking for the set code RZT-PT (RZT = Rezatta, PT = Playtest). I even added playtest names and illustrations so it's not too boring to look at
Link to the site: https://untap.in/
I don't know about you, but when I think of the renaissance, I think of swashbuckling. Could the fourth mechanic possibly chapter the flavor of that?
Swashbuckling is a possibility, but we would need to show that we can make it feel like Renaissance. It really only evoke pirates to me, but I had to google what it meant so... xD I'd be curious to know if anyone else strongly associates sword fights with Renaissance? So far we've mostly explore the idea of progress, which is going to be a strong contender for that slot as well ^^
I agree with you that progress should defiantly be the central theme.
Maybe the theme of swashbuckling shouldn’t be represented with a mechanic, but perhaps on a few cards to evoke the feel of the Three Musketeers and such.
We had many different versions but it will ultimately depend on how the third mechanic (Art Coming To Life) plays mechanically as they have to complete each other. This means we're free to do whatever we want as the fourth mechanic, as long as it helps the Renaissance theme and synergises with the rest of the mechanics. Also, as Tigersol mentioned, not all themes have to be keyworded (and simply can't) we can still make cards without having named mechanics for certain themes.
As an example, here are a couple versions of Discover we discuss, it's a mechanic meant to show progress during Renaissance:
1) Discover an OBJECT card (Exile cards from the top of your library until you exile the fifth or an OBJECT card. Put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.)
2) This creatures discovers [DESIGNATED CARD, USUALLY TOP OF YOUR LIBRARY]. (Exile it. Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, put a card it discovered from exile into your hand.)
It's possible to sprinkle card selection without a dedicated mechanic though, especially since Scry has become evergreen. Dominaria for instance had no such mechanic ^^ But yes, it definitely would be an upsides if the mechanic smoothed out card draw, as no other mechanic does that so far.
Okay, I see your point.
Earlier in the thread you mentioned that the next two mechanics had to be one permanent based mechanic and one spell based mechanic. As Masterwork is permanent based, should the next mechanic be spell based?
This is not mandatory, because psylian life and Elated already work on all types of cards. Also Masterwork is not yet locked in, but it would technically work on some nonpermanent spells as well ^^ It would be more important if we locked in a creature-only based mechanic like Inspiration for instance. So, like the card filtering aspect, it would be an upsides but if you find a cool mechanic that doesn't fit in this category it's still fine. Since Vivify has issues, I'd say the most important aspect of the fourth mechanic should be that it acts as a mana sink for the mana produced by psylian life.
Kicker is a simple mechanic that would fit that description.
It's not very flavourful though, which is a real downsides for a top-down set. But a kicker-like mechanic would be ideal yes ^^
Deck Hash [429g0je] - If you can't find it you still have the list under the set code RZT-PT:
6 Island
7 Mountain
4 Highland Lake
1 Watercolour Horse
1 Vibrant Fireball
1 Tribute-To-War Statue
1 The Cloud Bulls
1 Symphony of Water
1 Symphony of Fire
1 Sudden Inspiration
1 Sonata Prestissima
1 Sfumato Portrait
1 Prolific Writer
1 Outraged Bard
1 Inspiration Seeker
1 High-Ceiling Mosaic
1 Frenetic Perfectionist
1 Fiery Ballet
1 Fervent Craftor
1 Escape Reality
1 Dramatic Violonist
1 Dance of Dawn
1 Bright Sunset
1 Bird Mosaic
1 Artistic Arrow
1 Art Exposition