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| Mechanics | Skeleton | Common Breakdown Ref | All commons for playtesting |
Recent updates to Community Set: (Generated at 2025-12-19 14:34:24)
Wirewood Savage was actually my initial inspiration. I don't really know, to be honest. It's a very simple action, but, like Crusade, Wizards seems to prefer the enchantress ability to be on rare.
Unlike the enchantress ability, though, this only draws cards off of sub-types, like the Wirewood Savage. Puresteel Paladin has an extra ability... that would infer that the ability, itself, is not rare...
Seems good to me. The fact that it has a slight tweak to something people recognize would make it work well. I do feel bad for the person who equips this by tapping his 4 lands, then realizing he won't be able to use it because he only had 4 lands. But not by much.
Yeah, I did. I think initial reaction on the second pass was my reaction on the first pass ("We can't go about making the new cards cost nothing!"), but when you remove the Stoneforge Mystic side, it looks more reasonable.
That's my thought, too, Alex.
That's exactly what it is.
I tried out the "evoking other creatures" mechanic on Gorgon Slaver, but it's very wordy. If there is a cleaner implementation of it, I think it would be very nice. However, I was contemplating the word "chain," and I came up with two mechanics. The first one I don't like, but I figured I'd toss it out there anyway.
Chain (As you cast this spell, you may cast another creature spell with converted mana cost less than this spell. If you do, that spell costs
less to cast.} (See Gorgon Hierarch.)
As you can see, it has too much potential to be broken, and it doesn't quite fit the slave flavor other than that creatures are dragging other creatures with them.
My second thought came from actually chaining creatures to each other.
Chain (You may have this creature enter the battlefield chained to target creature. If you do, that creature gets +1/+1. When that creature dies, sacrifice this creature.) (See Chained Satyr.)
All of the mechanics that I think of have a lot of words, which makes me sad. I wish I could come up with a good way to convey a sense of bondage and slavery.
Right now black is struggling with two things, correct? It needs to find a way to care, in a black way, about fortifications. It also needs to find a way to represent slavery in a way that doesn't depend on sacrifice or token creation. Finally, it needs to incorporate these ideas into black's normal skeleton slots. At the very least, black always has some sort of creature removal, and some sort of discard. It also has a beneficial aura of some sort, and of course, tries to represent its various keywords.
Ha. Heavy Arbalest in fortification form. Seems reasonable at first glance.
Perhaps a handful of mechanical subthemes could suffice for black. Fortifications as one; sacrifice as another; a few implementations of slavery as another. The monster hunters in Innistrad didn't have a mechanical theme in common, but they had a lot of individual cards that fitted the flavour in different ways. Fiend Hunter, Slayer of the Wicked and Elite Inquisitor don't have much in common mechanically, but they're all pretty close to the same flavour.
I'm not sure this is common. Puresteel Paladin and almost all the Enchantresses you refer to are rare.
Brainstorming fortification ideas.
Did you mean Kor Outfitter? This is basically him, but for fortifications.
I'll look into this tomorrow, but right now I'm exhausted.
Added (((Monument Builder))) (which, after thinking about it, realized this ability was used at common before), and Middle-Management sans Benefits to fill out our two "Likes-Fortifications" slots in black. That part is easy. The rest of black is hard. I really need some input over here, everyone. Without it, I'm just going to start adding things to the skeleton that people will probably disagree with, and then we'll have to go back later and change it.
Looking for common Likes-Fortification abilities. The Enchantress ability seems fine here. Black drawing cards like this might require some squinting, but I'm okay with it, if there's no protest.
It occurred to me that (((Monument Builder))) was just the Outfitter en-Kor ability. Technically, that wasn't the sort of ability that appeared in common when Equipment was first showcased... but as I brainstorm for good common fortification helpers, I have to admit that it is a bit trickier than good common equipment helpers. That's because Equipment equips to creatures. You can just give the creature +1/+1 and first strike. Fortifications fortify lands. There's a lot less you can do with a land on a creature card, and even less when you consider that 1). You don't want to use up an ability that could have appeared on the Fortification instead, and 2). Black doesn't really play with lands like green does. It's not impossible... but I can understand why we'd jump straight to skipping some costs for a common ability.
Also, removed sacrifice ability and replaced with ETB, and switched from 1/2 to 2/1. Just making the card appealing to play with.
I mostly agree with the rule of five, but I wonder if we're close enough to what Esper did in Alara block to work. It talked about artifacts and featured artifacts as if it was a mechanic... but really, there wasn't much that interacted with artifacts. A smattering of cards. Is our smattering of cards that interact with fortifications enough to pull an Esper?
@Alex: Normally, it's fine. But I literally smashed the backspace key in an attempt to delete some seven-letter word, and my Google CR-48 is designed to do nothing but process Google Chrome fast. Within less than a second, I was rocketed back 7 pages, and for some reason or another, Chrome didn't think it was necessary to save the info. You would think it still would... maybe it's something they'll rectify it in future updates. CR-48s are still kind of new... they've got a few kinks to work out still. One of which is that I wish I could open a damn zip file. Seriously.
@jmg: Wow, does your browser not remember form entries when clicking Back/Forward? I thought all modern browsers did that (unless the pages are using fiddly Ajaxy/DHTML bits which Multiverse doesn't).
In some sets it'd be fine for a colour (or even all colours) not to have a specific mechanical identity. But I think the Rule of Five applies: if we have mechanical identities for the other four colours, black may look pretty odd without one. Flavour will go a long way, but if there's not much synergy with other black cards, it will look odd.
I agree that Fortifications, while an interesting subtheme, should not be more than that.
It is very aggravating when you type out 5 paragraphs and your work is wiped away by an out of field application of the 'backspace' button. sigh. I will try to remain patient while retyping everything.
Link's original idea for this color probably won't work any more. "If you sacrificed a creature this turn" is too much like Morbid (and, in hindsight, Morbid is probably a better application of this mindspace). That's not Link's fault... we just got unlucky with Innistrad. The funny thing is that by the time we get done completing this set, most players will probably have forgotten about Morbid. I'll leave the question to the designers how much of the 'sacrificing for fun and profit' they want to see, but I'm sure we aren't leading with it.
We also tossed around playing with Minion tokens... either tapping them or sacrificing them. Going too far down this path also seems like a bad idea to me... though, this time the problem is our own set. Green is supposed to be very focused on growth in this set, but only has so much space to dedicate to making token creatures. If black out-grows green, it's going to feel a little weird. Maybe I'm getting too analytical on this... after all, green also seems to be more on a control-through-infection kick... and maybe black can out produce green. Again, I can be swayed.
I am rather certain that people can agree on the Fortification sub-theme... but it's going to need to stay a sub-theme. This is for the same reason that equipment is sometimes a sub-theme in white... sometimes you won't draw any equipment, and your game will crash and burn because of it. We're also going to need some different 'likes fortifications' cards. I like Link's ideas, but they're clearly in the Uncommon department... since they aim to forego costs. The point should be to showcase the Fortifications, not abuse them. That's going to make players play with one fortification - the biggest one they got.
So... that doesn't leave us with a major mechanic for mono-Black, unless you count flavor. Can you count flavor? Would it be wrong to give black a mild Fortification theme, and flavor a master/slave interaction of creatures constantly building fortifications without giving them a unifying mechanical identity? I'm not sold that we need a major mechanic to sell black, since the flavor is strong. This is not to say that I wouldn't welcome ideas... Link's tinkering with a mechanic that represents chains on Gorgon Slaver, for example, looks like it could go somewhere, even if it's not where Link wanted to go with it. Does anybody else have any ideas that scream "Slavery!" without using cards in a similar vein to Ritual of the Machine or cards that require a sacrifice? Something with a Classical Greek or Egyptian flavor, perhaps?
Okay, time to roll up our sleeves and figure out what Black wants out of this set. Besides Link's original list of baddies, we have these cards in the file as well:
I added Rootsnapping Kudzu to the skeleton and am walking away from Green for now. I'm a bit more certain that we know what we want to see come out of this color. I'll have to ask for some non-creature spells later when we respond to what the other colors are doing.