See Alley Scoundrel. Changes to revolution cards to reduce complexity.

There seems to be a problem I am seeing where renown and revolution seem to be taking up much of the same space. There are a lot of cards on file that have a parallel version of that card with either ability. Highway Thug being this cards renown twin.

Yes, CasualR, I noticed the same problem. The issue is that there's only so many evergreen keywords to go around, and renown and revolution both play nicely with french vanillas.

I have a solution in mind. I'm going to be looking into expanding Renown design space at common. We already saw the uber-basic Renown cards in Origins - perhaps we can find some more common Renown bodies that are more interesting.

Additionally, Renown creatures can be otherwise-vanilla - such as Viashino Bandit - and still play super well. I think Revolution creatures are more in need of the keywords, to portray improvement, so they'll take those.

Sound good?

I don't think that is the issue at all. I think the issue we are having is not the evergreen issue, but the more fundamental issue that Revolution and Renown are effectively the same, particularly at lower rarities.

Whenever a creature with Renown becomes renowned, it increases it's power and toughness by 1 or 2 and occasionally gains an ability.

whenever a creature with Revolution revolts, it increases its power and toughness by 1 or 2 and occasionally gains an ability.

This will be a very consequential critique from the outside looking in our little pet project.

It's the same, and this worries me. Sure the triggers are different, but they just seem way too similar from a high level.

I think making the revolutionaries more drastic changed (in abilities not stats) would be the solution to this potential problem.

Especially things like gaining an activated ability or something.

Hmmm. In some world where the back side of a card is always visible from the front, that'd make sense, though even then it'd add complexity at common. But one of the big problems with DFCs is that the back side isn't visible from the front, which makes adding abilities a real problem. My go-to example is "tell me without looking what extra ability Kruin Outlaw gains", though the more I use that example the less effective it gets!

It's better if the added ability is foreshadowed by something on the front side.

CasualR: This is a good critique. The reason I'm okay with both in the set, currently, is that they 'evolve' very differently. One from combat, one from sitting back. The set is about progress, so to me, it feels acceptable to have two creature mechanics that represent progress through different means but in similar fashions.

I agree that revolution gaining more profound changes and renown simpler ones would be nice. And if I had to pick one for the set, I think revolution does more for Tesla than Renown does. Nonetheless, I'd like to see if both can make it in.

In the playtests we did, they were both fun, and played very differently in a satisfying manner.