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Rezatta — VISION DESIGN PHASE
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Alright, that could actually help us push in the right direction: What aspect of it do you think doesn't feel right?
- Is is because the "power = toughness" theme doesn't translate well the beauty theme to you?
- Is it because it's the Art creature having the same power and toughness that should matter?
- Is it because you don't like having a simple combat-relevant keyword on the Art creatures and would prefer something more elaborate, or at least designed for another kind of players?
- Is is more because you don't like the mechanic itself even if it was in another context or is it more because it doesn't match the expectations you have for an Art creature specifically?
It could be simple combat mechanic, but there are none that I know of that would really get the idea through besides the unstable artist matters cards.
Plus that's kind of a restrictive effect. It makes it to where you have to do legwork for your card to be good, but also makes it hard for your opponent to interact with it after you've gotten it unblockable.
My big problem with it is that the feel of it being art coming to life is very small. That feels more like a tricky acrobatic effect than something gaining life.
I agree that while 'equal p/t = beauty' would be an interesting and probably very effective theme to incorporate into our set about art, this particular mechanic is supposed to represent art coming to life, and so it should convey that sense very strongly, which is something that I don't feel this particular iteration does.
Of course, the most blatant way to showcase "art coming to life" would be to have the Art(s???) start as plain artifacts or enchantments, and become creatures under certain conditions. However, I think that casting them as creatures could be just as effective with the right mechanic (which I am racking my brain to try to come up with).
To implement the former, we tried Quintessence (page 16 bottom), which had a major flaw. Fixing it by tying it to emotions (which we had defined as life gain/loss), as ninyounk pointed out, made it exactly like our "lost or gained 3 or more life this turn" trigger.
I do, however, think it is worth keeping in our back pocket. Quintessence (CARDNAME is not a creature unless a player gained and/or lost three or more life this turn.)
So far your feedback seem to meet on the fact that the mechanic should really feel like Art coming to life, and that a random combat-relevant ability wouldn't meet your expectations. This certainly helps pushing in a specific direction ^^
@MagicChess
With the mix of Elated/Quintessence, we create two problems:
1) If we have a keyworded mechanic on Art creatures that say "This is not a creature unless at least 3 life were gained and/or lost this turn", we can't have a second mechanic that's an ability word saying "If at least 3 life were gained and/or lost this turn, EFFECT." We could choose to do only the first, but that's cutting a lot of interesting design space, or we could put the second on all Art creatures, but then we don't have a specific keyword to depict Art coming to life which would be giving up a strong flavour and mechanical opportunity.
2) Mechanically, this would likely play in a quite awkward way. What's interesting in the "Elated" trigger is that most decks can trigger it by attacking their opponent before casting the spell post-combat like a Raid card, which reduces the parasitic aspect of the mechanic. Here, getting a creature after your combat phase will usually accomplish nothing, so it makes the mechanic dependant on all the life gain/loss cards of the set.
I like the idea of noncreature object becoming an Art creature though. I think the kind of players who would enjoy playing an "Art creatures" archetype would be roughly the same people who enjoy artifact decks that animate artifacts (see the white/blue artifact deck in M19.) We could do Art creatures as artifacts I guess but it's not very original, I'd be more excited if we had a twist on it. Doing them as enchantment creates all sort of problems as the only common enchantments we have access to except on Enchantment worlds are Auras (and Auras unattach themselves when they become creatures.) This is partly where the try at animating instants/sorceries comes from ^^
On a side not, I'll be very busy until next tuesday which is why I'm a little less active for some days
So, maybe the keyword could turn up on creatures and be something like this:
Living Art (When this creature dies, create a token that's a copy of it except it's an enchantment).
It's kind of like the living art then inspires an artists rendition. So even when the creature dies, you get to keep all its activate abilities and suchlike.
1G "Life in Motion"
Creature - Art
Living Art (When this creature dies, create a token that's a copy of it except it's an enchantment.)
2G: Put a +1/+1 counter on Life in Motion.
G: Move a counter from Life in Motion to target creature.
2/2
Tears of an Angel
2BB
Sorcery - Art
Destroy target creature. You gain psylian life equal to its toughness.
Living Art 3 (If this spell would resolve, instead it enters the battlefield tapped as a 3/3 creature with "when this creature deals combat damage to a player, exile it, then cast it without paying its mana cost.")
It's a little bit wordy, but it's another way of repeating the effect without resorting to double-faced cards.
We could consider enchantments, but there are problems we would need to adress before going that road. How do we increase the as-fan of enchantments at common? The only reasonable way is enchantment-creatures. But it's not as easy as pushing the as-fan of artifact-creatures for a two-colour archetype, like in Dominaria or M19, because those are evergreen and have a purpose (they can be cast by any deck.) With enchantment-creatures, they're an actual mechanic that create expectations for players (just like you wouldn't put the creature type "Ally" in a world without caring about it mechanically). A two-colour archetype would be fine, but Art is the number one trope of our world building, we need it to appear in all colours. At that point, I'm afraid the set won't know what is its mechanical theme anymore.
For "Elated", the life threshold has to be thought carefully yes ^^ We have to find the balance between easy and hard. We definitely could consider Elated with a 2 life threshold instead, that just requires a little playtesting to see what feels best. I started at 3 because I was afraid that "If at least 2 life were gained and/or lost this turn" was weird and people would ask why it wasn't simply "If any player gained and/or lost life this turn". But that last one would likely play horribly because of cards that say "T: You gain 1 life." or "At the beginning of your upkeep, CARDNAME deals 1 damage to target opponent and you gain 1 life" that we kind of need in a life-matters set.
@Undead
That's a good persist/undying mechanic! It could work, but turning into enchantment creates the same issues as I was talking about with brcien above: it's something you'd only really see in an enchantment set, which this is not. Additionally, it creates a bit of memory issues, as it has no counter on it like persist/undying to tell you if it's its first or second life. There's also a really weird third issue: that would likely be a better "Renaisance/Rebirth" mechanic than an "Art-coming-to-life" mechanic in this specific set.
@LyndonF
I see what you're trying to do but it's very wordy and a little overcomplicated (there are something like four different effects in there). Maybe we just need Evoke actually? The name kind of works for Art, I'm just not a fan of how it looks (I said already it felt like the creature forgot its parachute before entering the battlefield more than the spell is taking creature form) and I'd rather have it work with spells synergies rather than creatures synergies (I.e. I'd rather have it trigger prowess than let you revive it with Meren.)
Living Art (When you cast this spell create an X/X Art creature token, where X is the number of spells you've cast this turn.)
"Tears of the Angel" 2B
Living Art (When you cast this spell create an X/X Art creature token, where X is the number of spells you've cast this turn.)
Target opponent loses X life and you gain X life, where X is the greatest power among creatures you control.
That's an interesting concept! It's quite original and pushes towards combo-y play patterns that would probably fit the style of an "Artist" player. It's not very synergistic with the rest of the set but it's not mandatory to have all the mechanics align with the main mechanical theme as long as it doesn't create nonbos with it and I don't think this does. A couple details I'd like to playtest for this idea: How much need does it create for low-mana cantrips in the set, how easy is it to create Art creatures that are more than 1/1s, and how much does it push the players to hold their cards in their hands when they should play them instead.
Anyways, it's a quite interesting one, I'll playtest it as soon as I have a little time ^^
@brcien
Not necessarily, we could consider have no named mechanic for them. But there are a few arguments in favour of going for one:
1) I doubt simply naming some tokens "Art" is going to meet the expectations of players who are drawn to the set for its Art theme if they don't have anything special to them. Think of the GDS3 challenge 1 about tribal for instance, nowadays if WOTC design a tribe, they make sure it has a unique mechanical identity. This means we need either a defining trait to those tokens (think the qwirky 3/2 colorless Eldrazi tokens of Eldritch Moon for instance), or a flavourful way to create them that reminds the player of creating Art. A keyword mechanic can make them unique (hence the attempt at a combat-relevant keyword) or create them in a unique way (hence the tries at different evoke-like keywords.)
2) Art is the very first trope for our Renaissance theme. It is very important. Having a named mechanic after it makes it one of the themes the players are immediatly exposed to. Naming a mechanic is a way of saying "This is important" to players. If we have "just" Art tokens or just regular creatures with the subtype Art, it becomes one of the secondary themes of the set. Like Saprolings on Dominaria for instance. I really think Living Art is immensely more important to Rezatta than Saprolings are to Dominaria, and having a dedicated mechanic is a strong way of showing that.
3) It would be such a missed opportunity. We have Art pieces coming to life. It's immensely flavourful. And it's obviously a well of possibilities mechanically for a game like MTG. We have access to a limited number of named mechanics in a set and we won't have many other golden occasions to make such a resonant mechanic that perfectly ties flavour with gameplay. It screams really hard "KEYWORD ME!" frankly xD
Sure, my previous comment may not emphasize this enough: keyword is one possibility and they have a lot of advantages, but they're not the only option. It's perfectly possible to create a compelling mechanical identity for a tribe without a keyworded mechanic ^^
When we see the tribes of Ixalan for instance, neither vampires nor merfolks have a new keyword associated to them but they have a clear mechanical identity (+1/+1 counters Go Tall with hexproof vs. lifegain Go Wide with lifelink). That said, you'll notice they gave a keyworded set mechanic to each of the two new flashy tribes (Enrage for Dinosaurs, Raid for Pirates) because it's such a powerful tool to convey important themes of your set.
So, we could have Art creatures being a mechanic by themselves, as long as we find them a strong recognizable identity. For instance, Eldrazis in Battle for Zendikar needed a mechanical identity that conveyed weirdness so they tried a lot of mechanical identities that didn't necessarily resolved around keywords: they tried to care about being odd/even, or throw 8-sided dies, and ended up caring about exile (ingest/processors) and colorlessness (devoid, which was almost not keyworded and MaRo still thinks it shouldn't have). Our end goal is to find that mechanical identity that will please the players' expectations for Living Art creatures. Keywords are just one very powerful tool to do so, but if we find a good mechanical identity that can't be keyworded it's still perfectly fine.
About your last thoughts on exciting mechanics, keep in mind that we have to keep novelty in check, as well as complexity. You wouldn't introduce for the first time double-faced cards, split cards, and Morph in the same set because they would compete with each others for players' attention. We want one very novel mechanic per set so we can press it like a lemon and really get all the juice out. Psylian life is that mechanic for us, it's a new type of life, it has never been done before. The rest of the mechanics can be clever, but they have to be a little tamer on novelty. We don't have room for triple-faced cards on top of psylian life x)
Note that visually, psylian life is not super challenging (though you have the reminder token that gives it bonus points.) This means that we could use a mechanic (keyworded or not) that really look unique even if it's mechanically tamer. Obviously, the Living Art theme sounds like the perfect candidate to create something visually challenging ^^
Otherwise, I think the tokens should be 0/0 and enter with +1/+1s. Those are alot easier to get the maleability that we've talked about wanting. This would mean you probably get one chubby token instead of several small ones.
Put and 0/0 {color of card} art token onto the battlefield with x +1/+1 counters.
There is a rationale behind not putting too many flashy stuff at the same time in the same set: you want to use each new idea to its full potential and having another new and flashy idea competing for space will reduce the interest for both ideas. It's more than the barrier-to-entry problem for new players, they had the same issues with the development of the first Modern Masters for instance. They crammed everything they wanted into the set, and then realized the mix of all the mechanics played horribly and was brain-melting even for WOTC themselves x)
That said, I understand where you come from. It's possible to have more than one flashy mechanic in the set, they just have to have to be flashy in different ways, and we have to keep track of the overall complexity/excitment level so we don't overdo it. For instance, Unstable was a supplemental product aimed at more enfranchized players and they had two really flashy mechanics + die rolls. While we're reproducing a real large set and not a supplemental set, our target is definitely more enfranchized players as well.
So let's follow your idea and try to push flashiness more than usual ^^ Notably, when people play custom MTG, they don't want regular MTG, they want something new and exciting. Still, we have to keep in mind that overdose of flashiness could happen, even in a custom MTG set, where there's so many new stuff going on that the players just give up trying to understand.
Do you have any specific mechanical area you'd like to push?
I'm not sure what you meant with the +1/+1 counters on tokens thing? In what context do you create them? If they're not tied to a mechanic, I'm not sure it's preferable to have "Create a 0/0 Art creature token. It enters the battlefield with N +1/+1 counter on it" rather than "Create a N/N Art creature token." The usefulness is debatable (it basically boils down to +1/+1 counter synergies) but the downsides is real: it's much more wordy, complicated, and you have to play with a bunch of tokens with +1/+1 counters on it instead of actual creatures with their stats written on them. One of the contestants in GDS3 challenge 1 did an Ooze tribal and got bad reviews precisely because, while some players like the fiddliness of tokens and counters, it makes the game really bad for players who just want to play MTG and see the creatures they're facing instead of doing all the book-keeping.
___________
Here's a try at a more flashy mechanic for Art creatures!
The idea comes from a GDS3 design (Trial 3 - Jay Treat - Design 7):
Bucket List (rare)
1UR
Enchantment
Whenever you cast a spell of a type showing on CARDNAME, put a counter over that type and draw a card. If all five types on CARDNAME have counters over them, sacrifice it and draw one more card.
[ ] artifact [ ] creature [ ] enchantment [ ] instant [ ] sorcery
It uses checkboxes, which we could reproduce on MTGCardsmith by using either the illustration box or counters. The idea is to use a flashy technology (checkboxes) to do something MTG does all the time. This way, its flashiness is more visual than mechanical (though the visual aspect allows to do things you couldn't have done before for memory reasons.) This complements psylian life which is flashy mechanically but not visually, helping to keep the flashiness element of the set in check.
Flavourfully, the idea would be to let you compose your own masterpiece of Art as you desire using the checkboxes. There are multiple ways to use checkboxes for that purpose. Here are a couple examples of very rough exploratory concepts:
— An Escalate version:
Living Art {COST} (Choose this creature's abilities as you cast it. For each ability you choose, put a NAME counter on it and pay {COST}.)
— A Saboteur version:
Living Art (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to an opponent, put a NAME counter on one of the following abilities. It gains that ability.)
— A Siege version:
Living Art (As this enters the battlefield, choose Light or Dark.)
The reasoning behind the tokens is twofold. Yes +1/+1 synergies let you interact with them and have more of a control over power and toughness, making them more customizable, but I'm also thinking about token numbers. The design space of 1/1 tokens is already extremely well covered. Obviously there are hundreds of cards that make other tokens, but 1/1s are more done. To make Art tokens a relevant part of the games they're in, go big feels more effective than go wide. But if you want tokens of different size to work with, you either have to have separate token cards to be printed for each one or one token card that can be any of them. You could do */*, but in games where there are dice sitting around, you'd mark that with dice anyway. That means they might as well be +1/+1 counters anyway since you can make playable cards relevant to them much easier than cards relevant to tokens.
Or do you guys disagree? Do you think 3 or 4 1/1 tokens feel more relevant than 1 3/3 token. Or would a different thread like @ningyounk sound more enticing than token mechanic?
I believe right now we're too much in the dark to choose between token mechanic, combat-relevant mechanic, evoke-like mechanic, or choice mechanic etc... We should probably explore all those options in parallel until we find one that feels right ^^ So don't hesitate to propose other mechanics, it's a step-by-step process, we have to isolate what works or not in each mechanic to take the better of each try and find the final solution ^^
It's the same for the token strategy: we have interesting options both for Go Wide strategies and for Go Tall strategies. The option we choose depend on how well it fits with other themes in the set. For now I'm less concerned by the question "how big would be Art tokens" than "what makes them unique". How are they different from Servo tokens or saproling tokens, or beast tokens, or Eldrazi tokens, etc? Do they do something Art-y? Do they care about somethign Art-y? Are they created in an Art-y way?
I'll make a summary of everything that has been proposed so far once I have more time (I have something important to prepare for Tuesday right now.) Maybe it would be a good idea and propose a little challenge to the rest of the community to see if they have ideas? It could open new design space we didn't think of and also let us evaluate what are people's expectations for Art. I'll try to cook a little contest ^^
What about making art care about being "created" with multiple colors? Is that to much of a strain on the set?
[ mono color instant or sorcery ]
Effect
If you spent multiple colors of mana to cast this, put it onto the battlefield face down as a 0/0 Art creature as it resolves. It enters with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to its converted mana cost.
Or something like that? I'll make an example in your contest.
I think it's an interesting idea on multiple aspects, with some other aspects I'm more hesitant about. In no specific order:
- I like that it clearly shows a creature coming out of something that is the antithesis of a creature (an instant/sorcery.)
- I think using this new technology of creating non-2/2 creatures out of face-down creatures is interesting and I believe there is potential in there for what we're looking to do. (For those unaware, it appeared recently in M19 on Tezzeret, Cruel Machinist.)
- I'm hesitant to use face-down creatures because they're not very interesting as vanilla creatures unless you can flip them. It's less fun but I'd rather use just creature tokens for vanilla creatures. If we use face-down cards, we really need to be able to flip them somehow.
- I'm a little worried that caring about colours of mana spent to cast a spell send a strong message that it's a colours-matters set, which it is not.
- On the other side, I like colours-matter as a subtheme. As a draft archetype for one combination of colours for instance. It goes well with the Art theme, we even explored it at the beginning of Exploratory design. We have to be aware that Aenyr, the custom Art set, was a multicoloured-matters set by the way.
- I like that caring about colours of mana spent happens at the moment where you cast it so you don't have to monitor the colours on permanents you have on top of remembering the life that players gained and/or lost. It does make you care about colours more than usual during deck building though.
- With 40 words as a reminer text, it's really long
This is shorter, yes?
If you spent multiple colors of mana to cast this, put it onto the battlefield face down as an X/X Art creature as it resolves. X is equal to its converted mana cost.
33 words?
If you spent multiple colors of mana to cast this, put it onto the battlefield transformed as it resolves.
It would force us to make "double sided" cards, but becomes simpler text and would allow further versatility without adding much complexity.
(It's also 19 words.)
It doesn't need to be keyworded but if we use it on multiple cards that's the sensible thing to do, not keywording it actually just forces the player to read it every time to makes sure there's not a variation hidden on one card.
33 words is on the higher end of the mechanic length spectrum but it's more reasonable yes ^^ Mechanically, as I was saying, I don't think the use of face-down creatures is justified over tokens unless we can flip them somehow.
The DFC version indeed resolves most problems. I'm just not sure caring about multicolour is the right choice in this situation though. The set needs a mana sink more than it needs a multicolour subtheme, maybe a kicker cost would fit better. But I like the fact that you get both the instant/sorcery and the creature in this version. It's a simple change over the version above I proposed but you can probably create interesting synergies between the instant/sorcery half and the creature half, and we haven't got a lot of those trans-types synergies with DFCs and Split cards yet. I believe there's something to dig for in this space, independantly on how they transform.
???
Vivify (If you control an Artist, put this spell onto the battlefield transformed as it resolves.)
On the psylian life version:
I agree it sounds too parasitic, I'd rather have you simply pay life as an additional cost to imbue the creature with your own life points for instance. It needs playtest but I believe that, like Energy, it would be better if cards that care specifically about psylian life produced some themselves. For instance:
Psylian Prison
W
Enchantment-Aura
Enchant: creature
ETB: You gain 3 psy
As long as you have psylian life, enchanted creature can't attack or block.
On the Artist restriction:
That's simple and very flavourful for sure!
I like that, unlike Legendary Sorceries, the card don't stay stuck in your hand if you don't have an artist since you still get the instant/sorcery part.
Obviously, the main drawback is the parasitism since Artist is not a supported type outside this set. Maybe we could use the batching technology to make artists a category of creatures? E.g: (Artificers, Wizards and Rogue creatures are artists.) Or (Artificers, creatures with power equal to their toughness, and creatures with activated abilities are artists.)
On another note, it feels weird to discuss this while the contest is ongoing, I wouldn't want to cut the grass under anyone's foot that was thinking of a submission to the contest xD How about we suspend the Living Art discussion for two weeks? We have basically the same stuff to do with the other mechanics to be figured out anyways.