LibraryPlane: Mechanics

LibraryPlane: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity
Mechanics | Skeleton | Underpinning Theme | expensive stuff matters theme | About LibraryPlane

Atomistic Metaphysic: Whenever this permanent becomes the target of a spell or ability for the first time in a turn, untap target permanent. Used on 2 cards: Swarm of Monads, Reductionist Outlook

Here's a place where Determinism is a better fit than Atomism. I'm afraid I can't persuasively explain exactly how I take untapping to be connected flavour-wise to Atomism. I suspect this indicates that this connection is all in my head.

On the other hand, Atomism is often attached to very abstract causal theories (I'm thinking of Leibniz' Occasionalism with reference to his Monads. Of course this idea was deeply religious, but Schopenhauer reused it in a secular epistemological environment, so I figure I can too.) Tapping and untapping seems to me to be the most abstract characterization of causality available in Magic, and the designs in this set take this much as granted.

Solipsistic Metaphysic: Whenever this permanent becomes the target of a spell or ability for the first time in a turn, target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. Used on 1 cards: Somnambulist

This is the black version of the Metaphysic mechanic. The flavour behind that mechanic is a little weak: since spells and abilities are largely magical, and magic is miraculous in the sense of being irreducible to natural laws, then I take spells and abilities to transcend natural laws. So, they're metaphysical. It's a pretty big stretch.

As for solipsism, I thought this trigger matched the flavour fine. Sure solipsism is never incremental in the sense that a solipsist annexes the existence of another's life one by one. But this is close enough.

fateseal 1: To fateseal 1, its controller looks at the top card of an opponent's library, then he or she may put that card on the bottom of that library. Used on 0 cards:

It occurred to me that I wanted at least one library-oriented mechanic for this set, and it was easier to steal one than to make one myself. Now Scry is more fun than fateseal, but the set's library is supposed to be a spooky mind-manipulating library, so fateseal it is.

fateseal 2: To fateseal 2, look at the top two cards of an opponent's library, then put any number of them on the bottom of that player's library and the rest on top in any order. Used on 0 cards:

I don't really know how to use the parameter setting on the 'add mechanic' page, so I'm making a fateseal shortcut for each magnitude of the mechanic.




In card text or details pages, write the mechanic's code name (playtest name) between square brackets, like "[Crittercast]", "[Bushido 1]" or "[Delay 4 {2}{R}{R}]". It will be expanded to the mechanic's name plus reminder text, such as "Suspend 4 – {2}{r}{r}. (Rather than cast this spell from your hand,...)"
To expand a mechanic's name but not its reminder text, include parentheses at the end of the square brackets: "[Crittercast()]", "[Delay 9 {R}()]".