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Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2
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I don't think elated and cycling should be restricted to two colours. Elated supports too many archetypes to have it be constricted and cycling generally smooths out every colour.
I can help with your set if you like.
Here when I say "focused in a colour" I'm mostly talking about where we'd find the payoff. Like cycling on Amonket, it was in every colour but it was focused in blue/black only.
Oh, okay, I get it now. Thank for clarifying.
Awesome illustration, we'll definitely use that thanks
___
Random idea I got today for the fourth mechanic slot, while I was trying to explore different design space that didn't necessarily involve card filtering. It's still a bit raw but it's simple and has some synergy with all three other mechanics. It also could be flavoured as either a research breakthrough or rebirth I think. Maybe it could lead us somewhere:
It's a mana sink for psylian life, it helps you trigger Elated/Thrills by hitting your opponent for 3 or more damage, especially when combined with evasion abilities, and it creates a big creature you may want to make into your Masterwork. For flavouring, maybe it could make the creature a certain type on top of changing its stats?
Any thoughts?
@Lujikul ok
If you have something additional to say after posting a comment, I would recommend editing the first comment to avoid thread clogging.
I like the simplicity and usefulness. I'd suggest a change (that unfortunately complicates it a bit).
[COST]: Eureka! N ({t}: Create a 1/1 Art creature token. Its base power and toughness becomes N/N until end of turn.)
This helps to insert more "Art" into the set and makes the mechanic a little more unique. It probably still needs sorcery only restrictions...
Wouldn't your version at least need to have the correct timing phrase with respect to sorcery speed even though it's longer?
Eureka! Is interesting and has a lot of possible design space, but doesn't fit with what the set is lacking. I believe a card draw enabler mechanic is more desirable than a one off power boost mechanic for breaking up a mid range deck in a life gain heavy set.
Two things I will lay here are:
Is there a way we could do Psylian life that makes it implicit to playing in the game?
Something like:
Pyslian (While you control this card, life you gain is Psylian life. You may pay two Psylian life to add one mana of any color. Lose Psylian life before regular life)
That way you could print life gain cards that would likely be Psylian life, but won't make for wonky curves on their own, and you could print cards that gain nonpsylian life. I think you could do this but still print cards that specifically talk about Psylian life.
If you do Eureka, some of the places you could go would be
(1)(W)
Creature
(W)(W):Eureka! 3
CARD NAME has lifelink while its power is three or more.
2/2
(1)(W)(R)
Creature
While you have 25 or more life, this card gains "(2)(W)(R): Eureka! 7"
2/2
Also, just felt like making a card.
I favorited your card
I guess this is the case where we have to start differentiating normal life from psylian life. This easily could be read as "When Ecliptic Medea enters the battlefield, 3 of your Psylian life becomes Psylian life."
Solid card! Since psylian lifelink is not a mechanic (yet....), it should probably read, "Whenever Ecliptic Medea deals combat damage, you gain that much Psylian life."
The ETB ability is interesting. It might be better worded as, "When Ecliptic Medea enters the battlefield, you lose three life and gain three Psylian life" for clarity, HOWEVER that would trigger Elated, while the original wording would not (I think?). Additionally, it might shift the card's color identity away from white a little bit.
Btw maybe we can make some draft signpost uncommons? E.g. WBG Psylian Life because it seems this is the one that's least likely to change.
"White black life loss/gain"
3WB 4/4
{1}: this creature gains flying until end of turn.
At the beginning of each end step, you gain 1 life. If you paid life this turn, you gain 1 psylian life instead.
The {1} there is a mana sink so the player has a chance to pay life.
"White green lifegain / group hug"
1GW 1/4
When this creature enters the battlefield, each player may gain 3 life. Then you gain 1 psylian life for each player that gained life this turn.
See Centaur Healer and Centaur Peacemaker.
"Black green pay life / group hurt"
2BG Sorcery
All creatures get -X/-X until end of turn, where X is the amount of life you lost this turn.
Turns out there aren't many board wipes that are both black and green. I didn't add any additional cost to make you pay life or it'll become a slightly worse Toxic Deluge.
Sadly I can't promise to lock the name of a card, any illustration could be used on any card and we already have enough restrictions that we can't afford to lock cards and names this early. If we have a good card and this illustration would fit it perfectly, I'd rather seize the opportunity regardless of whether the name Devil's Fiddle works for this design. But we can try to tend towards it ^^
— About Alessandra Coppola:
It's gorgeous, I'll definitely have a look into her work, thanks for the tip!
@Faiths_Guide — About the Eureka! variations:
I have a couple issues with the token version:
- Because the token doesn't have haste, it's mostly a defensive ability. The main goal of the original mechanic was to encourage attacking and therefore you opponent losing life which would trigger Elated/Thrills.
- I do agree it would need sorcery speed restriction, otherwise it's basically a combat trick sitting on the battlefield which is something we should try to avoid as much as possible at common. But that lessen the usefulness of the token even more.
- I'm not sure we should double up on the Art-related mechanics. It's really supposed to be one theme of the set but I'm afraid we send the message it's an Art set if we have multiple mechanics on it. A priori, I'd rather have the flavour be about Renaissance, progress, or another good Renaissance trope like humanism.
For the correct timing phrase, do you mean "Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery"? I don't know, that's 11 words instead of 5, and all reminder texts are using the short version (Outlast, Unearth, Equip,...) though they use the actual name of the mechanic instead of "Activate", like "Outlast only as a sorcery."
@Tigersol — About Eureka!
Yes, someting with +1/+1 counters could also do it ^^ It's just that it's been explored a lot more than transormation, so I can't find something simple that hasn't been done before. One of the upsides of the transformation is that you don't need to prevent repeatability for instance, which makes it shorter.
@brcien — About mechanics in general:
It's important that the mechanics synergize with each other, you can see how successful Dominaria was by focusing on Historic as the glue of the set. Here, our glue is Elated/Thrills and cycling is not synergizing with other mechanics in the set. It made sense in Amonkhet because of the graveyard theme, it was actually the discard part which was synergistic. Cycling is always useful but we can have card filtering without a dedicating keyword (also, we have Scry.) The idea behind Eureka! is that it incentivises attacking, and therefore your opponent losing life. In that, it does synergise with Elated/Thrills, especially on creatures with evasion. You need to trigger Elated/Thrills for the turn? You pay the Eureka! cost of your 1/1 flyier and suddendly it's a 3/3 flyier, ready for the job. That was kind of the spirit.
It's important that players don't get too much psylian life at a time or the mechanic will be broken. If I play a one-drop with "Your life is psylian life", I can immediatly play a 9-drop after that. So that's not an option xD Also, the fun with psylian life is that you have to protect your life total much more fiercely that you'd do otherwise. Fun story, I actually started from the Monarch mechanic to get to psylian life, because I liked that play pattern ^^ If all your life was psylian life, you'd lose that mini-game of protecting your life total at all cost.
@brcien @MonkeyPirate2002 @MagicChess @LyndonF — About transforming regular life into psylian life:
So, we basically have two options:
1) 3 of your life becomes psylian life.
2) You lose 3 life and you gain 3 psylian life.
The first one is shorter but I think that's the only thing it has going for it. It's confusing because that's different from how "Your life total becomes N" works, which actually makes you gain/lose life. On top of this, the second version has synergy with Elated/Thrills. Also, it creates an occasion to teach players the rule of "Whenever a source makes you lose life, its controller chooses which type of life you lose first". We could lengthen the reminder text specifically for this kind of cards, for instance "You choose which type of life you lose first. Pay 2 psylian life: Add a mana of any color".
@LyndonF — About the gold uncommon signposts:
Yes, we could start exploring a little some archetypes that are especially likely to stick. This will create a frame when we're looking for the rest of the archetypes. For what you propose:
WHITE/BLACK: I agree the life gain/loss archetype would be a good fit, but we have to consider if this is a straight up Elated/Thrills archetype? I feel we should keep a spot for Red in the archetype that's specifically directed towards Elated/Thrills, because it's the only colour that could care strongly about life loss but is also a bad fit for psylian life. So if it's not an Elated/Thrills archetype, how do we make it different? Maybe it's a psylian life matters archetype specifically?
About the card itself, I feel it's a little weak for a gold signpost. For instance, you don't need to put an activation cost on flying, players can pay psylian life whenever they want even if they have no use for the mana, it's like tapping a land when you don't have anything to play. It's a very Spike-y move xD
WHITE/GREEN: I like the group hug archetype. I don't know how difficult it will be to implement in limited but it has a very optimistic feel to it. I made some research on this and I think we have a shot at making it work. The card is a good enabler, though we would have to save a slot for a "each player gains N life" at common because there aren't that many Group hug effects that can go at common. So we'd probably want a pay-off in the gold slot instead, something like "whenever an opponent gains life or draw a card, bonus".
BLACK/GREEN: I'm not sold on green in a group hurt archetype, what effects could hurt players directly in monogreen? Typically, this card feels monoblack and rare to me (with a rider to lose life, just making it instant speed for instance). I think that's basically Rakdos territory, with the suicidal style of play. Maybe we could even borrow some flavour to Rakdos, and have the suicidal aggro archetype be Black/Red flavoured after artists?
Overall, we also need each archetype to feel different, those three archetypes don't have to be all about life gain/loss, we'll need to find different ways of using our mechanics, and have archetypes that appeal to all kinds of players. For instance, psylian life in green could enable a ramp archetype in combination with another colour (traditionally blue or red.)
Oh, I didn't remember that they used the shorter version in the reminder texts.
Yes, the token would need haste.
Maybe we should scrap my suggestion XD
Cool idea!
Small note: artists don't become Masterpieces; arts do. A quick change should fix it
personally I'd prefer it if it were written simply as "Eureka N" rather than "Eureka! N", but maybe that's just me.
I'll try to make a playtest deck around it with a bit of every other mechanic to show how I think it synergises with each of them in some way. Also we could use a simple mechanic to compensate for psylian life.
Right now I'm finishing the last round of the Great Cardsmith Designer Search which is horribly difficult, I'm getting back into the mechanics right after that x)
About the name, maybe a name in relation with the concept of Renaissance as in Rebirth could be more useful to the set if we can't find such a name for psylian life.
Has an Art Horror ever been made before?