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Recent updates to Tesla Project: (Generated at 2025-05-16 12:04:47)
At 2B Black can easily get 3/2 or 3/3 with drawback recently it has started getting 3B 3/3 with upside.
I like it where it is but if someone wants to make a different french vanilla feel free.
@Jackal - I guess I can agree with that
I'm pretty sure the wording from the examples on my original post will prove to be the best execution.
The simpler version sounds attractive to me (although I don't know for sure it will work out).
If I'm reading it correctly if you allow common stacking, you could make the remind text "(Whenever an opponent breaks this law, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)"?
And for uncommon and rare law cards with extra abilities, you could either choose "whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws" or "at the start of your upkeep, if an opponent broke one of your laws since..." whichever plays better (although probably not both).
I think "one or more" makes things more confusing unless we go back to checking the whole turn at once or we are very careful about what kinds of laws we make. Players shouldn't have to think about whether their block breaks 2 laws at once or breaks one law immediately and then another when the blocking creature deals damage (for example). I also think it is nice if 2 common justice creatures with the same law are not directly non-synergistic.
I would cut blue, personally. None of blue's archetypes support it.
To simplify the stacking problem, it could be worded thusly:
(Whenever an opponent breaks one or more of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)
If it ends up weak in this form, we can always just raise it to 2 life.
I do like the simplicity offered by your suggestion, continuumg, but I'd prefer a more universal punishment, unless we want to just cut
from the picture entirely and make Justice a 
mechanic.
One problem I fear about this version is that it isn't clear whether laws stack or not. I'm pretty sure they do; that if I have two of the same law, they lose 2 life and I gain 2 life when they break it.
I do like how, for higher rarities, we can just add extra effects. That's nice.
The offence level was just for fun. I don't really expect it to go anywhere.
I really like that commons can just make a law and let the rules of the game dispense the default punishment. Some players might miss that if you play 2 of the same card you have 2 identical laws that will both be broken resulting in 2 life drain but that's probably fine. I don't think you need "level 2 offence".
A somewhat less elegant variant that's kinda fun.
Sacrificing a creature is a level 1 offence. (When an opponent sacrifices a creature, they lose 1 life and you gain 1 life.)
Attacking with three of more creatures is a level 2 offence. (Whenever an opponent does so, they lose 2 life and you gain 2 life.)
Whenever an opponent commits an offence...
Whenever an opponent commits a level 2 or higher offence... an offence of level 2 or higher?..
I just had a zany idea for the Justice complexity problem. Instead of triggers at the start of a turn to see if any number of laws were broken, followed by an arbitrary bonus for you, how about simple, regular triggers that happen immediately upon the law being broken, and produce the same effect
Common Example 2w
It's against the law to attack with more than one creature. (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)
3/2
Uncommon Example W
It's against the law to sacrifice a creature. (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)
Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
1/2
Rare Example 3WB
It's against the law to cast a spell if you have already cast a spell this turn. (Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, that player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.)
Whenever an opponent breaks one of your laws, draw a card and lose 1 life.
Spells cost
less to cast.
4/4
EDIT Notes -
Notice that the life drain doesn't stack; If an opponent breaks a law, you always just drain them once. For every law they break, you drain them once.
The rare example dips into the idea that it might be interesting to incentivize your opponents to break certain laws. If spells cast
less, you save
mana when you cast two of them. Of course, the fact that it also provides you card advantage somewhat negates that and is something to be careful to avoid.
EDIT2 - If we want it to be available to colours other than WB, we'd want to iterate on this a bit more.
EDIT3 - Another thing I like about this variant, is that it frees up more complexity for the laws, rather than the punishments, which I feel is the primarily interesting aspect of the whole mechanic.
EDIT4 - It has been suggested that if we want laws to still work in blue, producing a Thopter might be an interesting alternative to draining life. In fact, that would synergize both with the WU Thopter and UB weakling archetypes
If they attacked with everything, they can sacrifice their weakest creature. If they left some blockers, they can just lose a blocker of their choice for the turn. If you draft this heavily, your opponent may well have some canisters or tapping matters creatures.
I was thinking this version would be mostly at sorcery speed.
I'm concerned that players will be afraid to tap their creatures if they think their opponent might oppress them forcing them to sacrifice before they can untap. The difference between tap and sacrifice seems too big. It feels like conditional removal instead of an actual choice for the opponent. It doesn't help that the tap is most effective if you can do it before they attack (Which only works if it is on an instant) but casting it directly after they declare the attack is better in every way.
That's a lot better. It's still going to tap often, but not always, especially against an aggressive player.
That player taps an untapped creature they control or sacrifices a tapped creature.?
This one feels very white if you use it sparingly, and very black when you do it constantly.
Also, Justice is a fine mechanic, and it's definitely the fan-favorite so far. The problem is that it has zero-interactivity with the rest of the set's mechanics, that it's high complexity, and that it takes a lot of time and resources to find good laws for it.
Right now, I agree that I'm hesitant to remove it, since it's going over so well. But just because the mechanic is well-liked doesn't mean that Tesla is the right place for it.
I will always encourage you guys to seek out every option possible and to question every decision made. I like the look of Oppress, but this is a set with Thopters -and- Canisters, so it's rarely going to do anything significant, no? However, it's an interesting start.
"Target opponent sacrifices a creature or taps all creatures he or she controls" is closer, but still not so interesting with Thopters as sacrifice fodder.
That mechanic's been proposed a few times, continuumg, but the problem is finding fitting colors for it.
Green doesn't really get flying or artifact tokens, and black doesn't really either. So it'd only fit in white, blue, and red. Which isn't really where we want our mana-sink mechanic to be.
I moved all the commons with mechanics unsupported in their colour to the dump.