Hm, a colourless Twiddle. That's free during combat. Interesting. I like it.

It gave me a legitimate place to try a zero-cost Feint, with a card that won't adversely affect the outcome of that combat scenario. It's too late to tap a potential blocker, but you can still pop it to set up one of your own.

Hmm. True... but only during your attack, so it's not possible to surprise an opponent after they've declared attackers. I think I misread feint and thought you could do it before blockers... This might lead to a number of "I wish it worked differently" moments, then.

Could this be better served as a noncreature artifact? Maybe as a Cyclopean Snare variant?

It looks good (and pleasantly simple), but the flavor of feint feels weakened by tying it to things that aren't explicitly related to deceptive combat tactics. For every (((Extricate))) you have an Into the Wilderness that's really distorting the power of the word, leading to thoughts of "A-ha! You thought I was going to invade your city! Alas, instead I have taken a left turn and am current enjoying the benefits of my coal and lumber enterprise over yonder."

Flavor doesn't make or break a design at this stage, but it can lead to more resonant constructions.

RE: Feint text - According to the Ninjutsu text (Higure, the Still Wind), "unblocked attacking creature" can be shortened to "unblocked attacker".

Rotoskate's ability aside, I made it a creature simply to help supplement the creature count among the commons. Things seemed thin, so there it was.

As far as the flavor of Feint goes...

I get that it can be weird for a creature to make you think he's coming for you, and then he veers off and gathers some wood. I'm not exactly sure how to resolve that disconnect beyond perhaps simply finding a better name for the ability. I think the ability itself is a good one that encourages rich combat scenarios and blocking decisions, and we did a hell of a job yesterday debugging it. The last thing I want to do is drop it for flavor reasons.

My initial intent was to create the sense that you were using a creature to sneak a spell past the opposing line. Some of that still works, but even there, it has flavor issues. Many of the red and green "characters" in the story are motivated by finding answers and the truth behind mysterious recent events. To play to deception isn't necessarily their first inclination, and yet the ability really benefits a tempo game the most, something that red and green do well.

So, yeah, it's something that Dan and I have discussed before, and that we usually win up setting aside to allow us to focus on filling in other pieces of the puzzle.

You put in some awesome work on fixing the mechanics of it; if you've got any thoughts on resolving the aesthetics, I'm all ears.

Personally, I think the ability and its name are excellent, as it does a great job of providing substantial meaning in context while still being broadly applicable to any card type or set flavor. I would desperately fight a creative move away from "Feint", especially since it's also a very concise word.

At the moment, of your 10 Feint cards, I would consider the following to be successful in flavor and execution:

(((Garrotte))) (((Extricate))) (((Firebomb))) (((Pendarvian Bloodhounds)))

Each cleanly conveys a tactical maneuver or the summoning of a creature type that has some logical connection to the battlefield/sleuthing. (((Ruinous Riot))) loses points on name, as the effect in the world you've built seems more like it'd be industrial sabotage, or something to that effect.

In the next tier you have:

­Mossback Gargantula (((Volunteer Lancers))) ­Rotoskate ­Waves of Madness

These represent iffy flavor and/or functions that might not live up to expectations, like how Alex points out that Rotoskate can't immediately impact the combat it appears in. Feint might be better suited to combining with Virtual Vanillas, something like a blue wizards that lets you look at your opponent's hand on ETB, rather than just putting it on miscellaneous limited beef like the Mossback. Even though Feint started out as a cost-reduction mechanism and surprise! device, designs like Mossback are actually only taking advantage of the cost-reduction.

In the last tier you have Into the Wilderness. The flavor is just off, and ramping mid-combat is somewhat impractical as it requires you to stop and shuffle a bunch right before the damage step.

It seems to me that a lot of these issues might be solved with surface adjustments. I feel Ike if we changed "Into the Wilderness" into "Claim Jump" or "Stake Territory" (something that evokes a more aggressive taking of resources), it wouldn't look so out-of-place.

I'll scan through and see what I can do...

And by the way, all this feedback and collaboration is great. Thank you!

Right, it's definitely more about applying the proper veneer than anything else. For instance, Volunteer Lancers doesn't strike the appropriate tone to my ears, but a little polish and...

Debronian Deserter
­
Creature - Human Rebel
First Strike
Feint
3/1

That tells a significantly more resonant story that connects with the mechanical identity. Of course, it's probably not appropriate to introduce off-color feints in the first set, but I thought it would demonstrate the point.

But be aware that with Into the Wilderness most of the logical naming shifts will read more like Annex or Shifting Borders. And without Landfall (or an equivalent), I really don't see a good reason to insert that sort of effect as a combat-trick.

Some of this is going to sound stupidly obvious, but bear with me.

Into The Wilderness serves what I feel is a notable role in the set. There's not a ton of color fixing or true land acceleration (the Way Stations don't really accelerate). ItW grabs two land at once and delivers them untapped, not quite the way Harrow does, but similar. The trade-off is that without a land sacrifice (Harrow), the cost needs to be higher. Feint allows the spell to be played a few turns earlier for a short stutter in your attack tempo.

Within the set I've got nine different "factions", or mechanically/thematically linked groups (not unlike a more densely packed Ravnica). The green/red overlap is — admittedly the weakest theme of the bunch — a swarm/aggro tempo game. ItW was designed to fuel this one specific faction better than others. Mechanically, the group really, REALLY wants this card; it kicks the whole faction into overdrive in ways the other groups just can't match.

So in the long run, I feel like it's more important to find a way to make this particular card work than many of the others. I could rework nearly all of the others to make them more "combat relevant", but this one just needs to exist for the sake of the faction.

If you perceive a dire weakness in this faction, it feels like you've tried to correct it as conservatively as possible and added feint as a reassuring gesture. If the group needs Rampant Growth, why not give them Rampant Growth? (Or better yet instant-speed rampant growth for !)

Because I'm not looking to fix my mana if I have both my colors, and the untapped clause really doesn't matter that often, though maybe it does assuming a particular density in 2 drops. Yet if I'm supposed to be swarm/aggro, why am I removing my attackers from combat in order to get a late game mana advantage?

All that said, I'm not the one playtesting, so I'm really just trying to present a different perspective and hope that it helps you.