Inspired by Lumbering Giant

Fun variation on Everflowing Chalice. I wonder if it could gain charge counters when assembled, and tap for mana equal to number of charge counters? (Adding 1 somewhere to maintain current functionality.)

Hm. I wanted to make a variety of contraptions so I avoided making them all take multiple assemblings, but that would be a reasonable idea.

In fact, maybe lots of multiple assembling is fine; maybe some simple cards are on/off and others just get better, they both fit the flavour.

Adding counters is probably a reasonable idea to help with the memory issues, and it is rather flavourful (this thing is just a silly artifact until it's been infused with power / built).

So, "Assemble a Contraption" could mean "Put a charge/energy counter on target Contraption. It is assembled as long as it has a charge/energy counter on it". It's a little bit parasitic I guess.

I dunno; I don't like the idea of making that generic. I do like having THIS card say "When you assemble this, put a charge counter on it / :Add to your mana pool, you may remove a charge counter from this, if you do, add an additional to your mana pool." or something like that.

We also need more ways to assemble these things of course - which IS going to make them irritatingly "Can only use these with other cards from that block, and the odd steamflogger boss"

That last sentence is precisely what "parasitic" means in the context of Magic design. Cards that can only feed off things in their own block.

Clearly the solution is to make Contraptions and assembly something that gets used on a regular basis going forwards. Skyhunter Cub was parasitic when it was printed, but it's basically modular now.

The only non-parastic solution I could find was that all creatures inherently have the ability "T: assemble target contraption" and common contraptions have reminder text to that effect.

(It has to be a property of creatures to make Steamflogger's haste ability relevant to assembling, else contraptions could have "Tap an untapped creature: assemble this.")

That way, riggers typically have some ADDITIONAL ability that helps with assembling or constructs.

It's still not perfect because Steamflogger Boss says "If a Rigger you control would assemble a Contraption, it assembles two Contraptions instead." But if you have two Steamflogger Bosses, do your other riggers assemble two contraptions each, or three, or four?

And does that mean, assembling can't target?

It's very strange to have this extra rules text on creatures. Possibly more likely, we'd ignore the haste problem and have "tap an untapped creature you control", or accept that there's some parasiticity and have "T: Assemble a contraption" as creature ability most (but not all) riggers have.

I'm not sure of the best way of representing assembledness. If most contraptions start as artifacts and are assembled once, you could have a non-assembled mat (eg. like a poison token) to keep all your non-assembled contraptions on in a pile, and they become normal creatures afterwards.

If they mostly go from one active mode to a better one, there needs to be a counter or other visual reminder.

Either way repeatedly-assembleable contraptions need counters of some sort.

I should probably crosslink to ((C3113)) here ;)

Bad link?