MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2
This discussion has been closed.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
Playtest cards meant to get an idea of how a mechanic feels (they're NOT part of the actual set). I added them on the website Untap.in so everyone can playtest them ^^
Yeap, Fiora technically has Renaissance flavour to it as well but it's only a loose background thing, I wouldn't say it's inspired by Renaissance and certainly wouldn't call it a Renaissance set. It's like the Indian theme used as a loose background for Kaladesh, I certainly wouldn't call it in Indian-inspired set.
We have to keep the comparison with Fiora in mind but I think there's largely enough room left by Fiora on the Renaissance tropes to let Rezatta feel different enough. I'm actually more concerned about Rezatta which inventor's feel could create parallels with the artist's feel.
If you think about it, most fantasy worlds are always happening somewhere between Middle Age and Renaissance
Yeah, I thought the theme was unique enough, due its focus on art - a theme hardly addressed in Fiora
(I also personally like vivify the most out of the possible mechanics)
That sounds great, can we see them?
(I woulda put just them here but, I'm unsure how. So... here's the cards I made em into, not for Rezzeta, but it lets yah see the art)
Vivify Playtest deck V2 - Deck Hash [41d189b]
7 Island
7 Mountain
4 Highland Lake
1 Dancer of the Pyrer
1 Soothing Lullaby
1 Siren Sculptor
1 Old-School Musician
1 Magistral Sculptor
1 Godmother of Art
1 Fascinating Novel
1 Enthralling Sonata
1 Dancing Statues
1 Dance of Tides
1 Colourful Portrait
1 Burning Moves
1 Breathtaking Recital
1 Apprentice Writer
1 Apprentice Harpist
1 Apprentice Guitarist
1 Writing Teacher
1 Vivid Landscape
1 Tortuous Waltz
1 Thoughtless Scribbles
1 Symmetrical Mosaic
1 Swift violonist
We're going to aim for a number of planeswalkers close to what we find in recent standard sets outside core sets (so 2-3 planeswalkers, balanced colour wise). We know we want a Da Vinci planeswalker (strong candidate for Blue since... well, Da Vinci) and there have been some talk for an appearance of Vraska because she has a lot of supporters on this forum and we want Gorgons on Rezatta (because they make statues, so they can be flavoured as sculptors which fits the art theme.)
To play those decks, use 1 copy of each card, add 4 Highland Lakes and an even amount of islands and mountains until you have 40 cards.
Those cards are NOT part of the card file of Rezatta.
They're just playtesting cards meant to choose among three options which one will we use to depict art coming to life on Rezatta. As such, I didn't spent loads of time refining them so feel free to adjust, add or remove any card for playtesting yourself.
There are three decks. As I mentioned, each one propose one mechanic meant to depict Art coming to life, and we have to choose a winner out of all three:
MECANIC #1 — Vivify
Vivify {cost} (If you cast this spell for {cost}, put it onto the battlefield transformed as it resolves.)
MECANIC #2 — Inspiration
Inspiration (When this dies, exile it inspiring target creature you control. That creature has all its other abilities.)
MECANIC #3 — Masterwork
Masterwork ([When this enters the battlefield,] choose an Art you control. It becomes your only Masterwork.)
My personal take so far is that :
1) While Vivify is a fun idea on paper, it feels weird because you usually want the opposite (the creature as default and the effect for the kicker cost.) But it's really the best flavourfully at showing the Art literally coming to life.
2) Inspiration is really fun and can feel quite "artistic" but it's hard to make it work with the death trigger. I think if we went for it we would need to either reconsider the trigger or make sure the last mechanic has a sacrifice cost built into it.
3) Masterwork feels just as fun and artistic as Inspiration but it's easier to pull off and offers more interesting design space. It's my personal favourite so far.
@brcien
I live in France so it's always difficult for me to playtest with people outside Europe because of time differences unfortunately (I'm something like +6 to +8h from U.S.A.)
Flavourfully, I think it would be possible to make Inspiration work with a death trigger because it could represent art becoming famous, therefore inspiring future generations. My problem with it is purely mechanical, it works parasitically even though it doesn't look like it on paper. You're just really dependant on sacrifice outlets if you want to enable your deck early enough.
An activated ability could be a solution, yes. Especially since we have a mechanic that produces mana (psylian life) which means we need to implement a mana sink at some point.
I just think Masterwork does the same thing but better. One of the downsides of Inspiration is that it makes the board quite complicated. The fact that you physically pile the cards on top of each other like auras help considerably but it's still a challenge to remember what each creature does when you start inspiring different creatures. The beauty with Masterwork is how it alleviates this complexity by allowing only one permanent at a time to combo off. But otherwise they work the same, the art/artist relationship is just reversed a little: "Inpiration" on Art = "Your Masterwork has BONUS" on Artists and "As long as this creature is inspired, it has BONUS" on Artist = "As long as this is your Masterwork, it has BONUS" on Art.
I can't deny that masterwork is cool in its uniqueness though.
I agree, it's my favorite too, I made a deck with the cards on Untap
I like Vivify too, simply I think it would shine most as a mechanic like aftermath, legendary sorceries, sagas, or DFC lands: a couple cycles at higher rarity and that's it. It's good at proposing exciting designs but, as you can only have a few noncreature spells and high-costed creature spells in a deck, I don't think it's a good "bread-and-butter" mechanic that goes well at common.
So the question is mostly "what kind of mechanic do we want in that slot?" As art is our single most important trope for the set, I think it's important that we keep this mechanic at common and press it as much as we can, which makes Vivify not very suiting, I believe.
But that's a personal point of view, do other people feel differently?
I think the role you're putting Vivify in might be more suited to Masterwork. Masterwork seems more like a 'couple cycles at higher rarity' mechanic than Vivify.
While I think it's limiting, we might consider making Vivify "If you cast this spell for [cost], it enters the battlefield as a [creature description]" to make it more workable at common.