Matt saw mecha like the Gloucester Royal RPI-00/SC and the Guren Mk-II and said "These should just be Equipment with totem armour. Wizards' approach to this is to sacrifice realistic flavour for the same of gameplay."

I can't decide if I agree or not. On the one hand, they're very similar to Equipment. And they're not different enough in a way that leads to good gameplay, particularly. (The key difference is "leaves any other Knightmare", i.e. one creature can't pilot multiple Knightmares. Matt considers this an "Ooze in boots" problem, like when a Squadron Hawk attacks wielding three swords.)

Eject is literally a rename of totem armour with no other changes. I'm fine with that: occasionally mechanics get renamed, like chroma to devotion or fading to vanishing. So the problem isn't really with eject; I can keep it or leave it depending on what mechanic for mecha themselves I find.

What I'd most like would be to find a new, innovative approach to mecha whereby they can have interesting gameplay that's genuinely different to Equipment. But I haven't thought of anything for that yet. Some ideas were discussed over on Mecha.

Criteria for a good mecha mechanic:

• I think I'd prefer it if a mecha needs another creature to make it work. The series puts a lot of emphasis on how much difference a mecha pilot makes; there are basically no examples of independently moving robots in Code Geass.
  • (And as a pre-assumption, I'm assuming that human characters from the series will correspond to Human creatures in Magic terms.)
• I want a powerful creature in a mecha to be a lot more fearsome than that creature outside a mecha.
• I want it to be possible for mecha to get into combat and one to destroy another (with or without destroying the creature within). Magic's combat step definitely makes the most sense as an implementation of this.
• It's pretty natural for mecha to be Artifacts in Magic terms.

Given all that, something rather similar to equipment does seem pretty inevitable...

I didn't realise that they weren't equipment, from your existing cards. (Reading type lines is, it seems, hard.)

Renaming totem armour to eject covers the slight difference (equipped creature vs enchanted creature), so that's fine too. Though it does hit the bushido problem; it's a useful future mechanic, but 'eject' sounds only applicable to vehicles rather than, say, a magical shield.

And, frankly, I always did like the imagery of "My soldier wields his mecha, swinging it round his head and smashing you with it." (I also like "Hiding in a barrel, which is riding a horse, which is riding a horse")

One way to be different would be to have the mecha be even more complete protection; but also hampering the pilots ability to use their abilities: "When ~ ETBs choose a creature you control. That creature is exiled while ~ is in play."

Such mecha should usually have a sac clause, I guess.

Huh. Yeah, like Vitenka, I thought your existing implementation was basically right, I hadn't noticed they technically weren't equipment. Maybe Matt should be our honorary developer :)

A tweak to the rules to bring it into line might be, make them equip, but replace the "equip" ability with a "pilot" ability that contains all the rules baggage of both equip and eject. (Assuming all mecha have eject? Or are some supposed to be destroyed with their pilot along with them?)

I think that simply designing fairly strong mecha with an inbuilt eject is sufficiently different to normal equipment to be interesting.

In fact, now I think about it, I've really rarely seen a creature with two pieces of equipment, so "piloting two mecha" may not often a problem. I think Matt's right you shouldn't require that to be forbidden, but if the flavour of mecha is sufficiently different and you do go with a different equip ability, it might fit player's expectation better if you couldn't.

Not all mecha have eject, but almost all do. I'm certainly prepared to handwave away the exceptions if need be.

I like the idea of making them equipment with a Pilot ability containing the rules for eject as well. I tried mocking up rules text for it, but it basically looked exactly like the seven lines on Guren Mk-II.

Re "fairly strong mecha with an inbuilt eject is sufficiently different to normal equipment to be interesting"... I agree it's pretty different to normal equipment. I worry that it's not sufficiently different from Auras though!

­I agree it's pretty different to normal equipment. I worry that it's not sufficiently different from Auras though!

Oh yes, I see what you mean :) But my first thought is that an equip cost, being able to move it between creatures, all having "totem armour", looking different, and being a large part of the set, are enough to make it different, although I don't know for sure without having played it.