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Rezatta, the Renaissance plane — Vision Design Part 2
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The whole point of Masterwork is to propose lots of options to combine the "Your Masterwork has EFFECT" and "As long as this is your Masterwork, this has EFFECT" cards. Combo mechanics like that typically want to be in a large enough quantity, as soon as you have one card with Masterwork, you're emphasised to take more. Actually one of the main issue we would have to deal with if we chose Masterwork is how to make sure people can change their Masterwork often enough that it's fun. So I don't think it would work as a flashy higher-rarity-only mechanic, its very nature calls for quantity.
On the other hand, one of the main problems with the Vivify mechanic is that the support cards don't do anything for a large portion of the game because it's an end-game mechanic. Which is why I think it would work just fine as a flashy higher-rarity-only mechanic which doesn't need any kind of support and can focus on the most impactful designs only. But I don't think that's what the set needs for the Art mechanic.
Vivify support cards would definitely need to care about casting Art regardless of whether a creature enters or not.
Masterwork is really neat, but I feel that I might be impelled to just take one or two with permanent affects I like so that I don't have to choose between them. While vivify, with good early and late game options making it so versatile, would seem like strong picks even without much support. I feel the support would be more useful in a constructed format versus a draft unless there were a ton of Art cards.
I'm pretty sure we could make Vivify work at common if we really wanted to, yes, we already have examples of similar mechanics that were made at common like Evoke and Awaken.
I'm just not sure the form it would take would really fit the need of the set. If you look at both Evoke and Awaken:
1) Awaken: 6 commons, all of them having a cost of 5 or higher to get the creature.
2) Evoke: 10 commons, 3 of them with a cost of 3 or lower to get the creature, and it's usually sideboard effects like "exile a card from a graveyard".
My first problem with this is that Vivify offers two things: sorceries/instants and high-cost creatures. Both are something a deck want very little of. So, while it's entirely possible to sprinkle those Art cards in a deck, and make a few commons, it just doesn't call for a synergistic deck around Art cards in limited. That's really the lesson I got from playtesting those playtest decks: individual Vivify cards are cool but too many of them slow you down way too much and it doesn't work well with cards that care about it, they feel useless most of the time. If you look at Evoke and Awaken, the only support cards really were for Awaken in the form of land-creatures-matter cards and the set had a lot of other ways to create land creatures than Awaken.
My second problem is with how the cards would look like at common. The fun of the mechanic is when the back side synergises with the front side. At common, what works best really is vanilla creatures on the back side, french vanillas at most. I'd rather have the mechanic make tokens than go through the trouble of using DFC if the point is to make vanilla creatures. Which is why I think it would work best if the mechanic focused on the fun design space (which for space reason is going to be at higher rarity anyways). As this clever design space where front side and back side synergises meet is not that large, it would work great as a flashy mechanic à la Sagas. Once again I just don't think that's what the Art mechanic should be, because you won't be able to build a proper Art deck in limited.
That being said, those are not necessarily unsolvable problems. I just need to see there is a reasonable amount of design space with Vivify costs of 3 or less, to make the mechanic work at common, and to find a way of caring about Art that's not so parasitic that your Art-matter cards just sit there doing nothing most games. I personally tried and I don't think I succeeded, but if you have some idea how would you approach the design of this playtest deck?
It will depend strongly on what the third mechanic (living art) ends up doing, I'm starting with the scenario where we go on with Masterwork since it's the scenario where we have the fewest compatible mechanics to go with it.
As a reminder, here are the mechanics of the set in this scenario:
1) Psylian life (Pay 2 psylian life: Add a mana of any color.)
2) Elated — If at least 3 life were gained and/or lost this turn, EFFECT.
3) Masterwork (Target permanent you control becomes your only Masterwork.)
4) THE LAST MECHANIC I'M TALKING ABOUT NOW
In this scenario, here are a number of qualities we would like for the last mechanic. Note that they're not all mandatory, only directions that would be the most optimal but it's going to be hard to meet all criteria whatever we do:
1) The mechanic should be simple, as-in not introduce new game elements since we already have Psylian life and Masterwork in that space.
2) The mechanic should not make you track anything, its effect should be instantaneous. Psylian life makes you track your psylian life total, Elated makes you track life swings and Masterwork makes you track masterworks. That's already a lot (and a reasonable strike against using Masterwork actually.)
3) The mechanic should depict an important aspect of Renaissance. I'm going to explore design space around the idea of progress.
4) The mechanic should ideally not repeat the other types of keyword we already use (psylian life is a new game element, elated is an ability word, Masterwork works kind of like an action keyword and an evolutive static ability at the same time, so an activated ability or alternative cost for instance would be especially appreciated.)
4) The mechanic should ideally be a mana sink to synergise with Psylian life.
5) The mechanic should ideally make the opponent lose life to synergise with Elated in a different way than Psylian life does. More generally, anything that helps trigger Elated is appreciated.
6) The mechanic should ideally help improve card draw. All sets need card filtering, and while it's not mandatory (especially with Scry now evergreen) it's always greatly appreciated to have a mechanic like Surveil or Explore.
7) The mechanic should ideally help break board stalls. All sets need elements to help board stalls like evasion, and mechanics that encourage players to attack are always appreciated. Note that Elated already play in that space a little.
8) As all three other mechanics are quite short (though Psylian life cheats as it has a bunch of additional rules on a reminder token), we could allow ourselves a longer mechanic if needed (22-30 words), but short mechanics are always better, the gold standard being 12 or less words.
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Here's a first draft of a mechanic for that slot.
I'm thinking a mechanic that goes only on instant/sorceries to make sure they don't make you track anything. It has a big alternative cost that would represent finding a great idea. You know those kinds of cards like Vicious Rumors that add up plenty of little effects?
I'm thinking that but bigger and only bonus effects. If you pay the additional cost, you get systematically the same big reward that can have plenty of small synergies and have that "but wait, there's more" feel to them, like it's a big turn in the game to activate the mechanic.
I started with three effects with a 1 - 2 - 3 rhythm, to try to make it exciting:
Eureka! {cost} (If you cast this spell for {cost}, draw a card. Create a blue 2/2 Idea creature token. You gain 3 life.)
This way it both synergizes with Elated and enhances your draw.
There are probably a bunch of problems with it, I just wanted to start the conversation on this one
I'm just not sure of one thing, does it only convey a pleasant feeling or can it be more ambiguous?
**Readying used car salesman voice**
1) The mechanic should be simple, as-in not introduce new game elements since we already have Psylian life and Masterwork in that space.
MaRo claims that there are two types of negative complexity, board complexity and comprehension complexity. Cycling produces neither.
2) The mechanic should not make you track anything, its effect should be instantaneous. Psylian life makes you track your psylian life total, Elated makes you track life swings and Masterwork makes you track masterworks. That's already a lot (and a reasonable strike against using Masterwork actually.)
Cycling does not require you to track anything.
3) The mechanic should depict an important aspect of Renaissance. I'm going to explore design space around the idea of progress.
Cycling is an easy fit for a set about progress, and, if we flavor it right, 'cycling' through ideas.
4) The mechanic should ideally not repeat the other types of keyword we already use (psylian life is a new game element, elated is an ability word, Masterwork works kind of like an action keyword and an evolutive static ability at the same time, so an activated ability or alternative cost for instance would be especially appreciated.)
Cycling is an activated ability, so it checks out here.
4) The mechanic should ideally be a mana sink to synergise with Psylian life.
Larger creatures with cycling both serve as mana sinks and as ways to prevent mana screw.
5) The mechanic should ideally make the opponent lose life to synergise with Elated in a different way than Psylian life does. More generally, anything that helps trigger Elated is appreciated.
Cycling at uncommon and above can be tied to 'when cycled' effects that, especially in this set, could care about life.
6) The mechanic should ideally help improve card draw. All sets need card filtering, and while it's not mandatory (especially with Scry now evergreen) it's always greatly appreciated to have a mechanic like Surveil or Explore.
Check.
7) The mechanic should ideally help break board stalls. All sets need elements to help board stalls like evasion, and mechanics that encourage players to attack are always appreciated. Note that Elated already play in that space a little.
Cycling can easily be used to draw into spells and bombs that will draw the game to a close.
8) As all three other mechanics are quite short (though Psylian life cheats as it has a bunch of additional rules on a reminder token), we could allow ourselves a longer mechanic if needed (22-30 words), but short mechanics are always better, the gold standard being 12 or less words.
Cycling snugly fits into the platinum club of mechanics with twelve or less words.
Yes, I believe it's something we mentioned briefly a while ago ^^ At that time I wasn't super thrilled by the idea because I thought the set needed more novelty. Now the set is quite different and I'm liking the idea better as I think we actually could use something simpler.
What I especially like in the idea is that it's one of the rare sets where cycling would make sense from a flavour point of view which has always been its main weakness. We could indeed flavour it as a Research mechanic, or we could flavour it as the winter being replaced by spring which is another trope we've planned without exploring much yet.
What I'm less fan about is that it synergises a bit poorly with the set mechanical theme. Last time we had cycling, it was in Amonkhet which made sense mechanically because it helped bring stuff in the graveyard and was super synergistic with Innistrad 2 in the same standard.
I'd be interested in exploring Cycling and see if there's any design space that has not been used before that would make sense in this context. Notably, I'm thinking bigger cycling costs, to synergise better with psylian life as a mana sink. There's also the possibility of a cycling variant. For Amonkhet, they explored the idea of double-cycling: "Discard this card and another card: Draw two cards" because it would have gone really well with both Embalm/Eternalize and Aftermath, but they dropped the idea in the end. Maybe we could tailor a version of cycling closer to the need of our specific set? Preferentially something that creates life gain/loss.
For instance:
Psylian Cycling {cost} ({cost}, Pay 2 life, Discard this card: Draw a card, you gain 2 psylian life.)
I'm usually not a big fan of referencing other non-evergreen keywords in the reminder text of non-evergreen keywords, but in this case for this set I'm not a fan of having regular life gain cohabiting with psylian life gain ^^"
I think the next thing we really have to do is center in around a feeling that players experience when playing the set. For example in Innistrad you felt the horror and terror of the plane and in Theros you felt like a hero embarking a a great quest. For Rezatta, I have three main ideas for the central feel of the set, although we should find one to focus in on.
1. Discovery: Cards in the set are flavored as to discovery, and in game play, the players are insentient to be discovering new things and the game progresses.
2. Emotion: The cards feel emotive and the 'mood' of the game is constantly swinging. In order for this to happen I would suggest many cards with one spell effects, such as Inspired Charge (https://scryfall.com/card/gnt/13/inspired-charge), and creatures that have one turn spell effects put on them (https://scryfall.com/card/ddo/15/kinsbaile-skirmisher). This way the game plays out where players have 'busts of emotion' before relaxing a bit. If this was the feeling focus, a flicker theme would be interesting, as creatures with 'enters the battlefield' triggers could represent them and their emotions.
3. Art: The players take the roll of a character striving to become a great artist as they construct their great masterworks.
I believe the second option with deliver the most interesting game play, but that is just me.
I wouldn't call Psylian cycling complicated a priori, but maybe I'm misjudging how complex the concept of psylian life really is. Maybe it looks better in card form?
Yeap, the concept of emotional feel of the set is something very important we discussed a while ago ^^ We agree on the conclusion, the point is to try to create a set where emotions are exacerbated which should also translate into gameplay. Elated kind of comes from that idea that something should always happen, the life total should always go up or down some way or another but not stay still until one player suddendly one-shot the other in one big atttack. The idea of surprise is also very important and could lead us to themes like instant/flash-matter for instance ^^ The flicker idea is interesting, I'd like to see some examples of how we could use it to represent emotions maybe?
Here are some random tries at making Cycling or a variant of Cycling work within the Renaissance theme:
Flavoured as progress:
Flavoured as season cycles:
(I have to say I don't see a lot of flavour space in that one though, just making two cards was already a struggle.)
I'll try to come up with mechanical variants later ^^
I think that cycling would make a great mechanic for the set. The flavor works, and can easily be engineered to cover the discovery trope, as well as others, as ningyounk demonstrated (though maybe the season theme is a little limited). It also fulfills the discovery and emotion themes that Tigersol mentioned.
A basic idea as to how make flicker flavorfully work in this set.
The idea behind the Masterwork mechanic is that you choose a single card to be your Masterwork, and if a particular card is chosen, it gets an extra ability specified on that card. It's not a stackable effect where multiple cards affect your masterwork; instead it's a buff that a card gets as long as it's your masterwork.
Well both situations are possible, it's just different design space, and I think both are interesting (especially together). It's how I differentiated Art creatures from Artists:
Art creatures: As long as this is your masterwork, BONUS. (This allows us to control bigger bonuses, making sure they don't combine with anything.)
Artist creatures: Your Masterwork gets BONUS. (This allows combos, but also calls for smaller bonuses.)
This way you really get the potential when you have multiple artists and you choose an Art as your Masterwork. All Art and Artist cards have the Masterwork ability so you can change your Masterwork. The idea is that the cards push you to change your Masterwork regularly as the game go along, which is why you want different Art creatures to fit different situations ^^
It's something we'll definitely keep in mind during advanced playtesting (admitting we do go with Masterwork) now that you mentioned it. If it does feel bad we won't keep it. But for now it's important to test every possibility and see what works and what doesn't ^^ Thanks for the constructive feedback in any case, it's definitely a really good point!
Hey! Thanks for participating! =D
1) On the subject of the Vivify reminder text, it's a little different than actual rules text so the templating can be a little more loose, you can see an example of this templating with Awaken on Zendikar II for instance:
But you're right that "If you cast this spell for its MECHANIC cost" is the most common way of phrasing rules text, it's the kind of details we'll get back to if we decide to go further with that mechanic ^^
2) That rabbit tapestry is gorgeous and fits the theme of the set perfectly, thanks! Actually, I went to that artist's page and there's a lot of similar material, it would be enough for a whole cycle ^^
3) About Mosaic, it's something that's difficult to do properly in black border. The last attempt at it ended up in silver border:
That said, the Inspiration mechanic we explored is actually pretty close to mashing creatures together, and even Masterwork is pretty close to that same feel mechanically, though in a simpler way.