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Renaissance Set — Creative Design
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These are my ideas for discover:
"Discover a [THING] (Reveal the top three cards of your library. You may put a [THING] card from among them in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.)
--> Let us care about what we discover. E.g:
Discover a creature. You gain life equal to its toughness.
Discover a land. If it's a forest, you may put it onto the battlefield tapped.
Discover an instant or sorcery. Spells with that name cost 2 less to cast until end of turn."
I don't know what to say about this. I like it, but we would have to play test a lot. I mean, my first thought was way underpowered, the second was overpowered.
"Discover (Look at the top card of your library. You may put that card in your hand and lose 2 life. Otherwise, put it in your graveyard and you gain 2 life.)
--> Helps the life-matters mechanic."
Okay, this looks so fun! But, because of one little deck in modern, "cough cough *dredge*", this is a no no.
Discover (Draw a card, you may exile it. If you do, you gain 1 life then repeat this process unless you exiled three cards this way.)
--> Helps the life-matters mechanic in a more refined way. Let us care about the cards you decide to exile, though it's a little weird to exile the cards you care about instead of drawing them.
This looks fun, it really takes the chances. Do you want this okay card now, or will the exile it in hope of finding another? Absolutely awesome. My one problem is that it's too powerful. I mean, this creates soooo much extra life and card advantage. Maybe just on one card using this ability. Not, not as a mechanic.
Also, this is my idea for Discover...
Explore (When this creature enters the battlefield look at the top card of your library. If it is a land card but it onto the battlefield tapped, otherwise but it into your hand.)
About the first Discover: Yes, we'll definitely need to playtest every mechanic at some point ^^ But I think the power level will depend more on how easy the cards let you Discover. Thankfully, this version has a lot of knobs to balance it.
About the second Discover: Ixalan's Explore does send cards to the graveyard as well, Dredge doesn't mean we can't mill one card ever again
About the third Discover: Yes, it's true it's probably a bit too strong. I'll keep it in mind for a fun green spell maybe.
About Explore, it's elegant and I like it in a vaccum, but some aspects may need to be twitched a little to fit the set better in my opinion:
- Putting an additional land onto the battlefield seems too strong to be repeated.
- The focus on the lands could avoid the mechanic bursting in too many directions but restricts the flavour a lot (notably, it doesn't work with inventors).
- It's not as important but Ixalan is already having a mechanic called Explore so we would need a replacement name x)
@everyone
While we search how to bring more mechanical uniqueness to the set, I'm exploring how to make the Virtuoso tokens look more original. Don't hesitate to propose ideas and concept tokens. Here for instance, I'm trying Unglued-like tokens with Art literally coming out of the tokens, pushing the text out of its way:
I'm looking for ideas on how the Art could interact with the frame. I'm currently considering:
- Art eating/grasping part of the frame elements.
- Everything placed in circles.
- Card borders and frames looking like a golden painting frame.
Sorry, sorry, you know the mechanics of Ixalan??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely, I was just giving that theme of Death as an example to show a cycle. Maybe instead you could do a cycle of Creation, where you go through the steps to show how art is made? Like spark/idea, planning, painting/sculpting/etc., bringing it to life, or something along those lines. Just throwing ideas out there.
Outburst (mana cost less than regular cost): If you cast this card for its Outburst cost, you may cast it as though it had flash. Exile it at the end of your next endstep.
Something along those lines that evokes the feelings inherent in artistic expression.
EDIT: I didn't realize we had a potential mechanic named "Outburst" so just pretend that's another word lol
I do like the sound of that mechanic. Perhaps we call it "outpour?" Like an outpouring of emotions?
Ooo that's good. Obviously nothing is set in stone, I just liked the idea of flashing a card and then exiling it. I felt like it embodied that emotional upheaval many people can experience.
On a different note, I made this as a possible idea for a card that fits the art theme, life-matters theme, and emotion sub-theme.
The idea is that the card's cost is essentially your life loss, and the flavor is that this is your emotional response to it.
Basically, it's way to early to think about the alternate borders/frames until we know what the general card effects are in addition to the sub-types.
In addition, the edges of the cards have a mandatory edging for tournament legality. Unless you sleeve the cards. But it also affects drafting protocols.
Outpour is an interesting name as well, but I don't see this word often enough to know in what context people usually use it. I'll let you native speakers decide on this x) All I can say is that Outburst talks to me more with my limited english vocabulary ^^
The mechanic you proposed is clashing a bit with Virtuoso which also creates a creature that you exile at the end of turn basically
About Duel of Passion, yes the emotional response is already the spirit of the Outburst mechanic ^^ Basically if we follow the previous Outburst mechanic it becomes something like this:
Duel of Passion - Unco
3WWB
Outburst — If you gained and/or lost 3 or more life this turn, CARDNAME costs 2 less to cast.
Exile target creature. Its controller loses life equal to its toughness and you gain that much life.
@modnation675
We need to think about the alternate borders/frames earlier than WOTC would because we can't do an actual alternate border/frame on the cards, we have to use what MTGCardsmith let us do. This considerably reduces the things we can do. Basically, we can:
- Make noncreature cards have power and toughness.
- Add additional framing inside the artbox itself.
- Use normal-looking cards in weird ways (double-faced cards, faced-down cards.)
- Use weird tokens.
- Use a reminder card that you put on players or permanents to signify something unusual is happening here (Experience counters, Manifest, Monarch...)
It would be cool to find something new and exciting to do with these restrictions, because it really helps brand the set in people's minds.
Maybe what we really need in the the Outburst slot is a mechanic that actually creates life swings instead of caring about them? While it's fairly easy to lose life in this game, we could really use a life gain mechanic. Something like Extort, or life-gaining Phyrexian mana?
*Whew* there's a lot to address here XD
On Discover: I definitely support "Discover [something] (Look at the top three cards of your library. You may reveal a [something] card and put it into your hand. Put the rest of the cards on the bottom of your library in any order." I think that it conveys the flavor of discovery/exploration very well, and the other two Discovers proposed have a life-matters basis, and while that is the theme, we already have several life-matters mechanics floating around. We don't need another.
On the awe factor: There were two main proposals for this: 1) Images coming out of the borders on Art tokens, and 2) another version of Discover where there are cards outside of the game that players can "Discover" and use. I much prefer the first option, for two reasons. First, it is a great representation of the "art coming to life" theme, and second, the other option is impractical. Okay, I'm not saying that having to photoshop every Art token isn't difficult, but the memory and complexity issues with the discover thing are HUGE.
On Outburst/Outpour: I agree with @ningyounk: I prefer Outburst to Outpour. However, there are now two mechanics competing for the name: Outburst #1 (If you gained or lost 3 or more life this turn, [effect]) and Outburst #2 [cost, less than normal cost] (If you cast this spell for its Outburst cost, it gains flash. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.) Both of these mechanics convey the intended theme of emotions very well, both are balanced and practical, and both tie in perfectly to the set. Let's compare:
- Outburst #1: This mechanic shows emotional outbursts through traumatic/life changing (pun intended) events. It is a life-matters mechanic, and is very good to have in a match to make your opponent(s) scared of attacking you because you might use an Outburst ability. It also makes life gain, which seems powerful but is actually impractical in a match, actually be worth playing.
- Outburst #2: This mechanic shows emotional outbursts in a much more straightforward fashion. It gives you a sorcery effect at instant speed, or a flash blocker, that disappears at the end of the turn. It demonstrates the emotional upheaval that this set is all about.
Now, just to get some more ideas out there.... Enlightenment! An iconic theme of the Renaissance. I have two proposals:
1. Cards could have, "If this creature is enlightened, __________." or, "Target creature becomes enlightened." or, "{trigger}: Target creature becomes enlightened."
2. Each of these cards has a different way of becoming enlightened, sort of like renown. For example: "When you draw a card that isn't the first card you've drawn this turn, if CARDNAME isn't enlightened, it becomes enlightened." or "When CARDNAME takes two or more damage, if it isn't enlightened, it becomes enlightened." Then, there are effects such as "If CARDNAME is enlightened, it gets +1/+1 and has first strike." or "When CARDNAME becomes enlightened, draw a card."
We do need an additional life gain mechanic I think, it's easy to lose life but much more difficult to gain some. We could have Outburst + a mechanic that's not about life gain but incidentally gain some, but as I mentioned earlier maybe it's better to cut off Outburst completely (see reasons above). Also as I mentioned, I think the second Outburst competes too much with Virtuoso's design space, we probably can't do both.
On enlightenment, I do like the name a lot! But the mechanic has to do something specific. It cannot carry no mechanical baggage other than a name. Either it's because it triggers always the same way, or it always gives the same reward but we would need the mechanic to mean something by itself.
@everyone
Conceptual thought of the day for a potential life gain mechanic: a second type of life. For instance "You gain 2 phyrexian life." (I'm not suggesting to bring the phyrexians in here, it's just an example of how a cool name would sound.) That life can then be traded for something, but if you're dealt damage you lose that life before your normal one. This has some issues (I'm having trouble conveying it is still part of your life total for instance) but I found the idea fun and that is something mechanically original we can do without alternate card frames.
Renewed (x)(When this card enters the battlefield, you gain x life and put x Thought Counters on this card)
Pay X life and remove X Thought counters from this card: Do a thing
It's weird to say this, but I could see this being in every color. If it only gained life, then it would probably only be white and maybe green, but the fact that you are using that for something else, as a life matters thing, seems to me the life gain is only a precursor to the actual effect which you have to equalize yourself to actually use.
On enlightenment, you're right that it would be better if there was a universal trigger or a universal reward, like Renown, but I feel like flavor-wise, everybody reaches enlightenment in a different way, so a universal trigger is out. As for a universal reward... I guess it could be something like "Draw a card," but I like the idea of each card doing something different. But if we do decide to settle on a universal reward, it should have something to do with scrying/drawing cards.
On a different kind of life: haha, this is just like temporary hit points in D&D. However, I'm not sure that it's viable. There's really no difference between getting "phyrexian" life and just gaining normal life.
That said, I think Renewed goes through unecessary loops to do what it does. Especially the counter, whenever possible it's better to avoid putting different kind of counters on creatures so we don't mix them with +1/+1 counters. Here you can get rid of them by being bolder: Renewed N (When this creature enters the battlefield, you gain N [new type of life].) Pay N [new type of life]: EFFECT.
My first impression about this is that it's very parasitic as an A/B mechanic, and it feels a lot like Energy. But it's also simple enough that it could actually have more potential that I currently give it credit for.
@MagicChess I don't know temporary hit points, how does it play? Yeah, I'm not sure if it has any real mechanical potential, but here's an illustration of the concept:
P.S: I just put a random name, Psy is another greek letter as a nod to the Phi letter used by Phyrexians
In D&D, when you take damage, you lose temporary hit points before normal hit points. They're granted by a spell, and wear off after the spell ends. It seems you've taken that part out, which I think improved psylian life greatly.
Five mechanics is actually a lot! It really depends on the complexity of them, five complex mechanics is too much, five simple mechanics could be fine. We shouldn't aim at adding mechanics we don't really need.
Once we've settled on the mechanics that are the most important for the set (living art + exploration/invention + life/emotions), let's just start discussing archetypes. From there we'll see what the set needs as additional mechanics depending on the archetypes that need the most help
Recall that I used "mechanics" in the loosest sense of the word; in this case I was referring to not only keywords but also things like -1/-1 counters, energy counters, etc. The awe factor, if it isn't something like the art coming out of the frame, would also be within these parameters.