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[RESULTS + FEEDBACK] Quick Challenge — Mechanics for the Strixhaven Colleges
Hello everyone! 
I have another quick challenge for you this week. Most faction sets such as Ravnica used to be designed with one keyworded mechanic to represent each faction. For instance, the latest instalment of the Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros and Simic guilds introduced us to the Afterlife, Jump-Start, Undergrowth, Mentor and Adapt mechanics respectively.
WOTC just released their new faction set Strixhaven but they took a different, more integrated, approach and didn't create a dedicated mechanic for each college — though they each got a recognisable mascot token. So here's the goal of this challenge: create a keyword mechanic for one of the Strixhaven colleges.
As a reminder, here are the five colleges of Strixhaven, you can learn more about them here: LINK.
Here are the detailed rules of the challenge:
Here is an example that would be considered a valid entry:
I will give a short feedback on every entry as usual, and the top 3 will be rewarded with some favourites:
Designing mechanics is one of the hardest parts of MTG design so take your time on this one
Good luck everyone!
I have another quick challenge for you this week. Most faction sets such as Ravnica used to be designed with one keyworded mechanic to represent each faction. For instance, the latest instalment of the Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros and Simic guilds introduced us to the Afterlife, Jump-Start, Undergrowth, Mentor and Adapt mechanics respectively.
WOTC just released their new faction set Strixhaven but they took a different, more integrated, approach and didn't create a dedicated mechanic for each college — though they each got a recognisable mascot token. So here's the goal of this challenge: create a keyword mechanic for one of the Strixhaven colleges.
As a reminder, here are the five colleges of Strixhaven, you can learn more about them here: LINK.
- Silverquill (WB) — College of Eloquence, they care about +1/+1 counters and flyiers
- Prismari (UR) — College of Elemental Arts, they care about big spells and artifacts
- Witherbloom (BG) — College of Essence Studies, they care about life gain and sacrifice
- Lorehold (RW) — College of Achaeomancy, they care about emptying graveyards and spirits
- Quandrix (GU) — College of Numeromancy, they care about +1/+1 counters and ramp
Here are the detailed rules of the challenge:
- You must create a card with a keyworded mechanic that you invented for one of the Strixhaven colleges. It can be a keyworded ability, an ability word, an action word, etc.
- The card and keywords must blend with the flavour and mechanical themes of the college you've chosen. If you design a BG mechanic for instance, it has to fit Witherbloom, not Golgari.
- Up to 5 entries per participant are allowed in total. You can post just one card for one college, five cards with one for each college, five cards for a single college, or everything in between.
- Old cards are allowed as long as they fit the criteria of the challenge.
- The deadline is at the end of next week on Sunday, May 16th.
Here is an example that would be considered a valid entry:
I will give a short feedback on every entry as usual, and the top 3 will be rewarded with some favourites:
- 1st place: 5 favourites of your choice
- 2nd place: 3 favourites of your choice
- 3rd place: 1 favourite of your choice
Designing mechanics is one of the hardest parts of MTG design so take your time on this one
Good luck everyone!
Comments
Spiritualize 3 (When this creature enters the battlefield, you may exile three creature cards from your graveyard. If you do, create a 3/3 red and white Spirit creature token with haste.)
Debate. (Each debating player simultaneously discards a card from their hand. The player that discarded the card with the highest mana value puts a +1/+1 counter on target creature.)
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/elemental-inspiration-1
Showcase reduces the cost of spells if you control no other non-land permanents. It represents Prismari students giving center stage to their favored creations. When there are no other permanents to distract the audience, their art can be fully appreciated.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/unfolding-ideas
Pattern - When you cast this spell, if you have cast a spell this turn with the same mana value as this spell, EFFECT.
This represents Quandrix studying the pattern found in nature.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/muck-auger
Genesis creates an effect whenever a creature token enters the battlefield under your control.
The mechanic is Retort btw
or, (If you want to be jokey.)
Inpest (Whenever CARDNAME deals combat damage to an opponent, create a 1/1 black and green Pest creature token with, “Whenever this creature dies, gain 1 life.”)
Another Idea
Rebirth (Whenever CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may sacrifice a creature. If you do, return target creature from your graveyard with mana value less then sacrificed creature to the battlefield.)
Rebirth might not be worded best as possible, but this is a basic concept.
There seems to be some nice concepts in there, don't forget to make full cards if you wish to enter those mechanics!
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/spiraling-dragonfire
Dazzling - If mana produced by a Treasure token was spent to cast this, [effect].
Counterpoint - If an opponent controls a spell, [effect]
Silverquil — Advise
Advise (Put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature you control. If you control no other creatures, instead create a 2/1 white and black Inkling creature token with flying.)
Silverquill was, for me, the school I had the hardest time concepting mechanics for, namely because I feel the school itself has the weakest mechanical identity in Strixhaven, being sort of divvied up between caring about +1/+1 counters and caring about tokens. While I toyed with some more flavorful top-down mechanics, I settled on advise as a way to bridge Silverquill's two themes and sort of do my own spin on a support-esque mechanic, one that wasn't dead if you had no other creatures in play.
Lorehold — Potency
Potency — If your life total has changed this turn, [effect].
The concept for potency stems from Witherbloom's face commander in C21, Willowdusk, Essence Seer, which cares about both gaining and losing life. I thought this would make an interesting and versatile concept for a mechanic that sets itself far enough apart from the Golgari guild, especially since BG effects more often than not tend to just devolve into "graveyard go brrrr." Tapping into Witherbloom's life manipulation abilities allows the school to maintain its own identity that sets it apart from other BG archetypes.
Quandrix — Biomass
(Your biomass is equal to the total power of creatures you control plus the total toughness of creatures you control.)
Big creatures is the name, and Quandrix has a lot of ways to get to big creatures. Biomass has synergy with fractals, and benefits from the player ramping to their topend, while also benefiting strategies that care about summoning an army of tokens (such as a more Witherbloom-centric pest strategy).
Prismari — Muse
Muse. (Create a tapped Treasure token. It is an artifact with "T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.")
Muse is primarily designed to be a "smoothing" mechanic for the Primsari. We saw a bit of this sort of effect with cards like Elemental Masterpiece, where you could "cycle" your big spells away to get treasure to cast your future big spells. However, I feel that the Prismari would've benefited from more "soft ramp" like that, especially since throwing away your big, flashy spells just to get more mana feels bad. Thus, muse is a mechanic to help prep for those later turns where you're going to be slamming a big spell down. The only small "quirk" to the mechanic is that the treasures enter tapped. This was done to prevent cards that muse from making back part of their cost instantly, which would have the potential create explosive chains of cards far too easily.
Lorehold — Memorialize
Memorialize [cost] ([cost], , Exile this card from your graveyard: Create a token that’s a copy of it, except it’s a colorless noncreature artifact with no mana cost. Memorialize only as a sorcery.)
Memorialize is the most top-down heavy mechanic of the bunch, drawing on the flavor of erecting a monument to the achievements of a great figure in the past. It provides a unique take on an embalm-style of mechanic, which plays well with lorehold's graveyard and exile themes. It also has the benefit of working well with the C21 Lorehold theme of artifacts. Of course, for this mechanic to exist, the set would also need to increase the amount of artifact destruction a bit to accommodate, but I believe the synergy with Lorehold's existing theme and the flavor of the mechanic justifies the alterations.
This took me a while, I didn't just want a simple exile or put a card from graveyard to hand/library effect so I thought of another way. I came up with having a maximum graveyard and to try and make it dynamic. The issue I had was trying to word it so it wasn't so... wordy but there was no way around it since there were no rules for a maximum graveyard and what to do when you do have one, so I had to cram it all in the reminder text.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/monument-smasher
Memorial - If you own four or more creature cards in exile, [effect].
Silverquill - Draft
Draft. (Exile a card from your hand, from your graveyard, or from the top of your library. Then put a draft counter on a card you own in exile and add it to your draft for as long as it has a draft counter.)
Witherbloom - Vitalized
Vitalized—As long as you have the highest life total among all players, [effect].
Quandrix - Functions
Enchantment type; [Trigger], put an input counter on CARDNAME, then [effect based on the number of input counters on CARDNAME].
Primari - Masterpiece
Masterpiece (Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you may exile it as it resolves. If you do, it becomes your masterpiece and you put all other masterpieces you own into your graveyard.)
Lorehold - Relive
Relive [object]. (Exile [object] from your graveyard and create a token that's a copy of it. The token is sacrificed when it enters the battlefield.)
I like how Excavate essentially says "you can't lose the game due to milling" but it's not a dedicated anti-mill hate card, it's just an incidental bonus to a card you'd play anyway. However, it's super abusable if you can mill your entire library because that means you can stack your entire library afterwards since the effect doesn't put cards randomly on the bottom of your library. Super creative direction to go in to put a limit on the size of your graveyard.
Sift sounds like a more appropriate name and captures the idea of separating what you recover from what you don't, which is reflective of the mechanic.
Dig ({t}, {u/r}{u/r}: Create a Treasure token. It's an artifact with "{t}, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.")Here are my mechanics (in order of creation):
Witherbloom
Cook
Cook (To cook a creature, gain life equal to its
Cookery was a part of Witherbloom, but I felt it could be bigger. Cook is designed around life gain. I originally was planning this to involve food tokens, but I came out with this. This is what was basically designed to be a stem of cookery archetypes. Cards could work on this mechanic to exploit the life gain synergy.
Quandrix
Multiply
Multiply {cost} ({cost}: Double this creature's power and thoughness until end of turn. Multiply only once each turn and only as a sorcery.)
This was a hard one. I wanted to involve big creatures and ramp, but all I could think of was subtle out-of-place mechanics involving doubling mana and +1/+1 counters. I thought about the concept of doubling, and then I looked at some Quandrix cards. I thought that doubling p/t would be very firm and, well, fun. It would be way OP if you could do it multiple times each turn, and just to even it out, you can only do it on your turn.
Prismari
Creative
Creative - If you cast a spell with mana value 5 or greater this turn, {effect}.
On the final day of the contest, I made yet another edit to this mechanic. This mechanic has a similar 'base' as raid. It can be used on any type of card, and can be used in very different ways. Prismari would have to enforce the 'expensive' theme a tad, and put in a bit more pricy spells for this to be a mechanic. This was dsigned as a subtle way to make cards better, and more worth their mana cost,just by casting an expensive spell. This is a late-game mech in most non-ramp decks.
Lorehold
Find
Find (To find, return up to one target Spirit, instant or sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand.)
This one was a monster to create, and in general, took me most time. I aimed it to be a supporting mechanic for cards like Thrilling Discovery, or, even better, Pillardrop Rescuer. The genesis of this mechanic is partly because of a card in my Lorehold deck, Returned Pastcaller. My personal opinion is that this fits in as a neat puzzle piece to go side-by-side with Lorehold's signature feel.
Silverquill
Elocution
Elocution (This creature gets +1/+1 for each +1/+1 counter on it.)I made this one last, since Silverquill is my least favourite college, and I was dreading the process. When I started, I had one thing in my mind: "+1/+1 counters". So I worked with that for a long, tedious 20, before creating something that makes +1/+1 counters better. If it were a mechanic, card designers would have to make cards like Exhilarating Elocution more expensive.
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Hope you like my entries!
Vitality drain (Pay 1 life: Put a blood counter on this creature.)https://www.mtgcardsmith.com/view/incisive-invocation
Admonish (Target creature gets +1/+1 or -1/-1 until end of turn for each +1/+1 counter on permanents you control.)