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Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2
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Hmmmm, it almost sound like you just want to skip the concept altogether then. Our set is giving us an optimal environment to have the bigger alternate costs and get options from our cards but you aren't finding it enjoyable even still.
You're never going to be able to "always" get the interesting creature, unless you compromise somewhere.
Vivify (You may cast this card transformed.)
I based the wording on morph. Now you are truly having to pick between one side and the other, and limiting yourself to a single cost, which becomes more tricky for the card designer and the player. I still believe that Vivify, or similar, is a better way to go when naming the mechanic regardless because it is much less "set exclusive" and less likely to suffer the same fate as Bushido or Ninjutsu.
I still think that the alternate cost and combining the affects of instant/sorcery and creature is more interesting and would provide less difficult more fun choices, but the decision is up to you ^^
-_-
You are worrying about a hypothetical situation in which enchantments are given the subtype art, yet I haven't seen a single example of this. Also, I believe that occasional breaks in the color pie are okay, as long as they are limiting, a tiny bit weaker, and have some rules that still fit the color pie. I believe my card fits those categories, except for maybe the second one. First off, it only can affect enchantments that have the subtype art. That is SUPERBLY limiting and inhibits black from being able to destroy most enchantments. Also, as you said previously, the card causes an edict effect for each opponent, and I bet you know which color has the titular card. However, I realize that the card only affecting opponents might make it a bit strong for a common, so I think making it affect all players instead would balance it out. It's also a lot more flavorful that way.
All in all, I find the "Breaks the color pie" argument because it has weak proof within its loud claims. After all, WOTC is willing to break the color pie occasionally, so I see no problem with it (in moderation)
No! I don't want to skip the concept altogether, I think it's important that we continue exploring the "Spells into Creatures" road, on the contrary ^^ And the goal for me is not to make decisions alone, I really want us to find a mechanic that everyone will agree is fun and fitting for the set.
On the naming of the mechanic, there are two options that are pretty well-defined:
1) We manage to find a mechanic that specifically ties to Art (like your "if you control an artist" version). Then, we get to give it a very flavourful name like "Living Art".
2) We create a broader mechanic that could theoreticaly be re-used in other settings (like the latest "If you cast this for COST, put it onto the battlefield transformed as it resolves"). Then, we give it a more re-usable name like Vivify or Animate.
Mechanically, the mechanic is simply causing more issues than I anticipated. We can either iterate on the mechanic again to prevent those issues, or we can discuss how to circumvent them design wise. As MaRo said, if your first playtest with a mechanic has 99% cards be awful and 1% be awesome, it could actually be very promising for the mechanic, just explore the 1% and see if you can make lemonade out of those lemons.
Right now, based on the difficulties I had, here's what I'll try to do with the next playtest deck of that mechanic:
- Focus on 3-mana and lower Artists to fill in the creature gap early game.
- Try to make more lower-costed Living Art spells
- Make the Artists care about casting the Art spell more than the creature itself, focus on a spell tribal more than a creature tribal
- Tie the less interesting creatures to the spells you want to use early, and the potential finishers to the big spells.
For instance, I believe:
2U
Sorcery - Art
Draw two cards.
Living Art 4UU
//
Creature - Art
0/0
CARDNAME gets +1/+1 for each card in your hand.
Should actually be:
4U
Sorcery - Art
Draw three cards.
Living Art 5UU
//
Creature - Art
0/0
Flying
CARDNAME gets +1/+1 for each card in your hand.
___
@MonkeyPirate2002
Sorry, my previous answer may have not been clear enough. I'm not saying the card can't be in the set because there's a possibility that the mechanic ends up on noncreature enchantments. I'm just saying we have to monitor if the mechanic does or not. My point was it's a cool card but we can only use it if the mechanic we choose is not compatible with noncreature enchantments (or if it ends up a "spells to creatures" mechanic, obviously.)
Regarding the colour pie break, those restrictions are here for a reason. When WOTC creates a break, it serves a bigger role, usually it's a cycle supporting the main set theme like Green flying dragons. In this set, a blue spell gaining you psylian life for instance could be considered. But you need a very specific, very good reasons, and no other way to do what you're trying to do. If you accidentally create a colour pie break, you can't go "Well, I have a small colour pie break quota for my set, as WOTC does it occasionally."
Anyways, this is a very theoretical discussion because we can't say for now if an answer card is fitting the set, as we don't even know what the threats look like ^^ We'll design this kind of cards much later in design, so we're just talking hypothetically here.
How about this:
Sculptor’s Kit
WW (rare)
Artifact
Masterwork
2W, Tap: Target noncreature art you control with breath breathes. If that art is your is your masterwork, it also gets +2/+2 and gains first strike and lifelink until end of turn.
———
Also, would it be okay for Tendrils of Corruption to be printed even if there are a few enchantment arts (like 5 out of the entire set)?
Great, let's explore some more.
On Sculptor's Kit: There's a little confusion here. We're currently trying to find a mechanic that represents Art coming to life. We have all those concepts (Vivify, Breath, Masterwork, Living Art,...) but they're actually competing for the same mechanic slot. This means we will have only one in the set so a card can't have two at the same time.
On Tendrils of Corruption: Sure, any black creature removal is fair game. Black can totally kill creatures even if they're enchantments. It just cannot kill enchantments that are not creatures.
How about this for Tendrils of Corruption:
Each player sacrifices a creature or nonenchantment art they control.
That could be fun! ^^ But what theme could fit the set? Something that could still synergize a little preferentially, since they won't be actual cards (opening a fake fetch lands is not really exciting, but drafting a fake Griselbrand could actually be quite fun since you can make something out of it in a deck). I'm also unsure if it will be possible to include Masterpieces in online drafts.
8-mana and higher?
Multicoloured spells?
Masterpieces: Custom cards, with some of the most favourites cards from Mtgcardsmith? I did something along those lines for fun a while ago: http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/3267/edit-cardsmiths-masterpieces-invocation-most-favoured/p2 Sadly the site I used to host the images died halfway through but the links should still work.
The way I see it, these are merely asthetic cards that won’t be incorporated into online draft (unless you can find a way). What I’m thinking is they’re existing cards with no mechanical tie but rather a flavorful one (think invocations but with less clutter in the card frame) and they use already existing real cards with gorgeous art. The flavorful tie is, well, masterpieces, art represented through existing (plus a reprinted Rare/mythic cycle from within the set) cards that represent the greatest works of the characters in the set!
I see, it couldn't hurt to make them just for fun, but what would be the theme tying them together? How do you choose which one to remake?
@Undead
What was your thinking exactly when you chose to make it care about activated abilities only? I need to understand better what happened behind the scene ^^ At common, if we use "all other abilities" instead, we would have access to things like "Flying + Living Art" for instance.
There could be creatures that care about being inspired. Artists that gain a bonus for being inspired by other cards. That in turn might even mean some vanilla Living Art could be feasible (if a bit silly.)
Yeah I don't know about the vanilla Living Art XD But I like the idea of creatures caring about being inspired. They could as well be Artist creatures actually. I need to make a playtest deck for that too. I'm gonna need a loooooot of small papers, it's the third one I'm building this week xD
Maybe I should take a vacation and come visit you, it sounds like you're putting in a lot of effort!
Well, to be honest, it's because I have long experiments with a lot of time spent waiting at work recently, and I'm stuck all day in a room where I cannot access internet for health reasons, so I only have a pen and some paper to entertain myself. This is when I usually start creating some cards xD
@Lujikul
Do you have some in mind? If you tell me "iconic illustration" I'm thinking Baleful Strix, Bitterblossom, a lot of angels (Twilight Sheperd, Angel of Serra, Baneslayer Angel, Basandra Battle Seraph,...), Aminatou the Fateshifter, Die Young, Elesh Norn Grand Cenobite, Skeletal Grimace,...
I’ll work on putting together some mock-up masterpieces to show you.
Good for you, keep creating
Oh! I love that idea! Maybe their artworks are all by our DaVinci, as particularly inspiring beings he recreated in his works?
Absolutely beautiful! ^^ It's a cool and interesting design mechanically as well ^^
However, it is far too powerful and would need to be "pulled back" a bit.
Anyways, I took some time to playtest the different mechanics we talked about for the living art or Rezatta. I boiled them down to three mechanics, you can find the playtest decks here: LINK. I'm going to do a quick review of each of them, to help us choose one mechanic over the others. Note that I gave them different names for convenience, but we'll find the best name once we settle on the mechanic for good.
I — VIVIFY
Vivify {cost} (If you cast this spell for {cost}, put it onto the battlefield transformed as it resolves.)
N.B: This goes on double-faced cards that are instants/sorceries on the front side, and Art creature on the back side.
1) How does it play?
Vivify is mostly a Ramp mechanic with a touch of instant/sorceries-matter theme available as well. Because of its kicker-like nature, it really shines during the late game. It can be difficult to make it synergize with other cards though because your Art-matters cards will do very little during the first turns.
2) What was fun during playtest?
To really take the best out of the design space of Vivify, we're looking for a couple things:
- Vivify costs must be as low as possible so the mechanic actually gets to be played.
- The creature side must synergise with the spell side in some way.
- Strong creatures shouldn't be put on spells you want to play too early, because it feels bad to give up on a finisher for a Divination or a Rampant Growth.
For the Artist creatures, what was especially fun was:
- When they help paying your Vivify costs quicker.
- When they had a triggered effect if you cast an instant/sorcery but had a more powerful effect if you paid the Vivify cost.
- Strong tribal lords were cool, though weaker lords that some tribes are very happy with don't work here because you likely won't have an Art creature onto the battlefield before turn 4.
3) What could be improved if we focus on this mechanic?
The synergy was hard to get because Vivify is something that happen late in the game, so having a bunch of cards that did nothing during the first 4 to 5 turns of the game often felt awkward. There are ways to care about instants/sorceries in general but they also have this A/B problem when you sometimes draw only one half of your deck and the synergy fails to happen.
My suggestion if we focus on this mechanic is that we do it in a restricted but flashy way, a bit like Aftermath. Instead of trying to make an Art deck happen, we drop the support cards altogether and make only a few cycles at higher rarity that are really impactful by themselves.
II — INSPIRATION
Inspiration (When this dies, exile it inspiring target creature you control. It has all abilities of cards inspiring it except Inspiration.)
1) How does it play?
Vivify is a midrange mechanic that tends towards more agressive gameplay and plays well with sacrifice. It has a distinct "Do-It-Yourself" combo feel. The cards synergise well between each other and with cards that get bonuses when they're inspired.
2) What was fun during playtest?
The fun part is trying to combo evasion effects with stats boosting effects on the same creature. It's very easy to make interesting cards with less than one line of text as it plays wonderfully with most evergreen keywords and staple effects like firebreathing, curiosity, stalking, etc...
Artist creatures that got bonuses when they were inspired allowed for some really fun combos between abilities.
3) What could be improved if we focus on this mechanic?
Getting your creatures to die can be a little difficult. Because of this, the mechanic tends to start doing things a little late in the game unless you have a sacrifice outlet.
The creatures that care about being inspired are quite parasitic, there may be a way to make them care about any card attached to them, including equipments and auras.
III — MASTERWORK
Masterwork (When this enters the battlefield, choose an Art you control. It becomes your only Masterwork.) — On permanents.
Masterwork (Choose an Art you control. It becomes your only Masterwork.) — On instant and sorceries.
1) How does it play?
Masterwork doesn't have a specific play style as it can work in any type of deck, but it does require permanents. It has a ressource management feel to it as you choose when to switch from one Masterwork to the other. Synergies come from the junction between cards getting bonuses from being the Masterwork and cards that give bonuses to your Masterwork.
2) What was fun during playtest?
The choice aspect plays a big part in the fun of the mechanic. Being able to change Masterwork regularly depending on the situation is really important to not make it feel linear.
You can create interesting combos of abilities by mixing cards that care about being the Masterwork and cards that boost your Masterwork.
3) What could be improved if we focus on this mechanic?
The cards are self-sufficient and can work fine even if they are the only Masterwork cards in your deck, but the real fun is when you go back and forth between different Masterworks. Maybe the switch should not happen when you cast spells but be more flexible so you can switch Masterwork as a triggered or activated ability, that way it happens often enough even if your deck is not full of Masterwork cards.
Maybe the Art restriction is not necessary as cards that give boosts to your Masterwork could work great with other non-Art permanents as well.