Note that giving a card escalate doesn't actually do anything. The magic of the keyword lies in the rules text "choose one or more". The keyword itself is basically just a drawback to make the cards play in an interesting way.
And yes, a lot of the potential effects i could do have the problem of overlapping significantly with "tap target creature". They are also in general more complicated which is why I prefer tapping as an effect.
Gaining life is awkward for two reasons. First it overlaps with tapping creatures. Second it doesn't push the game to its conclusion. In general, its a bad idea to have a high asfan of life gain effects.
All the 'give a creature a keyword' gadget designs have the issue of being pretty large color pie violations. They also tend to overlap strategically with existing gadgets.
Oh yes, doh. Anything with card draw is too strong; destroying graveyards has no reason to be in the set... colour filtering? Untapping one of your creatures might be too good; maybe vigilance as a half-way, but that's pretty colour-mapped.
Looking at cheap sacrifice artifacts; most of the colourless ones are pretty old. +1/+1, maybe UEOT maybe counter? Kinda annoying to have a lot of those floating around. Gain 2 life?
And yes, adding is heling escalate, I was thinking just plain "sacrifice: escalate target" might be interesting; since it would allow selection of a second mode on a card which doesn't itself have escalate.
", Sacrifice ~: Target Gadget you control becomes a 1/1 Servo artifact creature."? That's a lot more text than the really cool three short abilities you have already right now.
When in doubt, maybe three effects are enough. Maybe a rather specific keyword e. g. "Target creature gains haste". No, that would automatically turn Ringwatcher Eagle into Raging Goblin for white. :/ Flying UEOT? Overlaps with what you can achieve with tapping.
It currently doesn't have an identity, then. Because the effect is "One of four thing" that's too wide to be an identity. And you don't have a single identifiable trigger (other than 'be an artificer' which you say isn't the identity?) so that doesn't help. It leave the mechanic feel like you have to work out what it is every time. Which isn't a great feeling.
I don't have a good suggestions for a fourth ability. Let's see what else you have in the set... how about sacrifice to escalate?
2018-07-04 05:28:39:
Nodle
edited a mechanic in Vryn
Personally; I think this is an interesting expansion. But it would be hard to balance.
Certainly such small effects are permitted rewards for any colour doing "this sets mechanic". though that mechanic being just 'on ETB' feels a bit odd; I guess it's artificer tribal really.
But getting the CHOICE of four(ish) mechanics is much stronger. And would need a lot of attention to balance, since it could easily be '3 terrible things and one that you always take' (i.e. "draw a card").
Maybe to make it more obviously a tribal; it could be "If you control another artificer.."?
Honestly, I'm probably just going to scrap the mechanic unless I can come up with more balanced effects anyway. Thanks for input though.
2018-07-03 03:14:26:
Nodle
commented on the cardset Vryn
Adding the mana cost was a potential revision that I've since reverted. I agree with most of your critiques. The most awkward effect is the waistcoat. The communicator could easily be switched to looting to fit the standard template. Honestly, this mechanic has been kind of a pain. Which means I'm back to square one trying to find a reasonable "spy" mechanic
2018-07-03 01:43:09:
Nodle
edited a mechanic in Vryn
1 , Sacrifice Mage-Ring Synchronizer : Add C to your mana pool.
That's silly. You invest a mana and sacrifice a token to get back your mana?
I think your Gadgets also suffer from the change in restrictions. In essence they want to be
> , Sacrifice ~: <effect>
But in addition to the above example of creating a single mana for the investment of more than one mana being silly you have two of your Gadgets (50% of all Gadgets) be exceptions to this simple formula...
1 , Sacrifice Hairpin Communicator, discard a card : Draw a card
Look! The cost includes also to discard a card on this one Gadget and none of the others. I'd move the discard to the effect to reduce overall consistency of the Gadgets. There are two ways to do this. Alternatively you could simply replace looting/rumaging with scry 1.
1 , Sacrifice Padded Waistcoat : Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
Look! On this one Gadget and no other I'm restricted to sorcery speed. No simple solution comes to mind since sorcery speed would certainly appear sensible here.
Could this use Wolf of Shepherd's Meadow tech instead of tokens? I would imagine that the token slot or a common slot gets replaced with a dedicated "Gadget" slot - an artifact card with no means to be played that you put into your sideboard and just use rather than a token.
Heck, you could make it castable for an unattractive cost, but just being a Gadget means it's more desirable outside the game, where it is easily "provisioned" - and you can get away with not having the effect in the reminder text no matter how many different "Gadgets" you want to put out.
Alternatively a hybrid with Create tech/Master of the Hunt tech, so you can use a single Gadget to create multiple tokens.
How about this:
> When ~ enters the battlefield, provision a Gadget. (Reveal a Gadget card you own from outside the game. Create a token copy of it.)
It's not a free choice from four options, but if you cared you could probably find all four of them - or more.
There's a fine line for you to tread though. You want gadgets to be good enough that people will play them. But make them too good, and you end up with the dreaded mirrodin colourless blob of doom.
You can always cast spells during combat, even if no attackers are declared. Note that if no attackers are declared, the declare blockers step and combat damage steps are skipped, however the declare attackers step and the combat phase is never just skipped. (unless specified by an effect of a card of course) Players would be able to have priority during the beginning of combat step at the very least to take advantage of the ability.
To be honest, I'd think a reminder that mana drains outside of combat may be a more necessary reminder text. But I get the problem. One is players not knowing how the card works. The other is a rules quirk that many players don't know.
Oh, hey, here's something I don't know off the top of my head. Can you cast spells in combat if you don't attack with any creatures? Is there still a gap before combat opens and creatures are potentially assigned as attackers? Because I'm pretty sure that if no attackers are declared, the combat step immediately closes with no chance to respond... but again, I'm not sure. I'm sure the MTGO players know, though.
I think Maniac is somewhat of a failure when it comes to these kinds of alternative win-cons as getting rid of your library is a bit to easy.
On the other hand, while I relatively little personal experience with the card, Biovisionary I see as something that encourages enthralling and novel gameplay.
I agree that there's very little you can actually do with this Query card. You can 'solve' the card with a single gatherer search as far as I know. That limiting factor is so great that it could be argued that the card is more of a Spike card since it comes to optimizing those particular cards to achieve the effect, even if it's a combo deck.
It's not really a Johnny card though. There's a very specific thing you have to do, so there's no creativity in solving. Even something like Laboratory Maniac, which in practice has very few unique decks, has many different ways of potentially building a deck to run out of cards. This, it's just too narrow
This is just a johnny card. Its cost can be balanced however it needs to be. Frankly, I'm not concerned about any 3 card combos breaking modern, regardless of how cheap the pieces are, especially when some of the individual pieces are this do-nothing.
Note that giving a card escalate doesn't actually do anything. The magic of the keyword lies in the rules text "choose one or more". The keyword itself is basically just a drawback to make the cards play in an interesting way.
And yes, a lot of the potential effects i could do have the problem of overlapping significantly with "tap target creature". They are also in general more complicated which is why I prefer tapping as an effect.
Gaining life is awkward for two reasons. First it overlaps with tapping creatures. Second it doesn't push the game to its conclusion. In general, its a bad idea to have a high asfan of life gain effects.
All the 'give a creature a keyword' gadget designs have the issue of being pretty large color pie violations. They also tend to overlap strategically with existing gadgets.
Oh yes, doh. Anything with card draw is too strong; destroying graveyards has no reason to be in the set... colour filtering? Untapping one of your creatures might be too good; maybe vigilance as a half-way, but that's pretty colour-mapped.
Looking at cheap sacrifice artifacts; most of the colourless ones are pretty old. +1/+1, maybe UEOT maybe counter? Kinda annoying to have a lot of those floating around. Gain 2 life?
> Target creature cannot attack might be a fourth.
With "Tap target creature" already in, I don't see that being used.
Target creature cannot attack might be a fourth.
And yes, adding is heling escalate, I was thinking just plain "sacrifice: escalate target" might be interesting; since it would allow selection of a second mode on a card which doesn't itself have escalate.
Doesn't producing mana already help to escalate?
", Sacrifice ~: Target Gadget you control becomes a 1/1 Servo artifact creature."? That's a lot more text than the really cool three short abilities you have already right now.
When in doubt, maybe three effects are enough. Maybe a rather specific keyword e. g. "Target creature gains haste". No, that would automatically turn Ringwatcher Eagle into Raging Goblin for white. :/ Flying UEOT? Overlaps with what you can achieve with tapping.
It currently doesn't have an identity, then. Because the effect is "One of four thing" that's too wide to be an identity. And you don't have a single identifiable trigger (other than 'be an artificer' which you say isn't the identity?) so that doesn't help. It leave the mechanic feel like you have to work out what it is every time. Which isn't a great feeling.
I don't have a good suggestions for a fourth ability. Let's see what else you have in the set... how about sacrifice to escalate?
The effects have been deliberately chosen to be good in different points of the game which encourages players to use more than one gadget type.
Provision is not in any way artificer tribal. It is just a new potential mechanic which fits my chosen mechanical and flavor themes.
I'm still working on finalizing my list of effects. At the moment, I'm testing the following three effects.
I'm open to hearing ideas for potential fourth effects.
Sorcery -> Instant
Personally; I think this is an interesting expansion. But it would be hard to balance.
Certainly such small effects are permitted rewards for any colour doing "this sets mechanic". though that mechanic being just 'on ETB' feels a bit odd; I guess it's artificer tribal really.
But getting the CHOICE of four(ish) mechanics is much stronger. And would need a lot of attention to balance, since it could easily be '3 terrible things and one that you always take' (i.e. "draw a card").
Maybe to make it more obviously a tribal; it could be "If you control another artificer.."?
Honestly, I'm probably just going to scrap the mechanic unless I can come up with more balanced effects anyway. Thanks for input though.
Adding the mana cost was a potential revision that I've since reverted. I agree with most of your critiques. The most awkward effect is the waistcoat. The communicator could easily be switched to looting to fit the standard template. Honestly, this mechanic has been kind of a pain. Which means I'm back to square one trying to find a reasonable "spy" mechanic
So, just in case you keep "provision" as it is...
That's silly. You invest a mana and sacrifice a token to get back your mana?
I think your Gadgets also suffer from the change in restrictions. In essence they want to be
> , Sacrifice ~: <effect>
But in addition to the above example of creating a single mana for the investment of more than one mana being silly you have two of your Gadgets (50% of all Gadgets) be exceptions to this simple formula...
Look! The cost includes also to discard a card on this one Gadget and none of the others. I'd move the discard to the effect to reduce overall consistency of the Gadgets. There are two ways to do this. Alternatively you could simply replace looting/rumaging with scry 1.
Look! On this one Gadget and no other I'm restricted to sorcery speed. No simple solution comes to mind since sorcery speed would certainly appear sensible here.
Could this use Wolf of Shepherd's Meadow tech instead of tokens? I would imagine that the token slot or a common slot gets replaced with a dedicated "Gadget" slot - an artifact card with no means to be played that you put into your sideboard and just use rather than a token.
Heck, you could make it castable for an unattractive cost, but just being a Gadget means it's more desirable outside the game, where it is easily "provisioned" - and you can get away with not having the effect in the reminder text no matter how many different "Gadgets" you want to put out.
Alternatively a hybrid with Create tech/Master of the Hunt tech, so you can use a single Gadget to create multiple tokens.
How about this:
> When ~ enters the battlefield, provision a Gadget. (Reveal a Gadget card you own from outside the game. Create a token copy of it.)
It's not a free choice from four options, but if you cared you could probably find all four of them - or more.
Fair enough; it's your set.
There's a fine line for you to tread though. You want gadgets to be good enough that people will play them. But make them too good, and you end up with the dreaded mirrodin colourless blob of doom.
You can always cast spells during combat, even if no attackers are declared. Note that if no attackers are declared, the declare blockers step and combat damage steps are skipped, however the declare attackers step and the combat phase is never just skipped. (unless specified by an effect of a card of course) Players would be able to have priority during the beginning of combat step at the very least to take advantage of the ability.
To be honest, I'd think a reminder that mana drains outside of combat may be a more necessary reminder text. But I get the problem. One is players not knowing how the card works. The other is a rules quirk that many players don't know.
Oh, hey, here's something I don't know off the top of my head. Can you cast spells in combat if you don't attack with any creatures? Is there still a gap before combat opens and creatures are potentially assigned as attackers? Because I'm pretty sure that if no attackers are declared, the combat step immediately closes with no chance to respond... but again, I'm not sure. I'm sure the MTGO players know, though.
Art needs to be cropped to center image
I think Maniac is somewhat of a failure when it comes to these kinds of alternative win-cons as getting rid of your library is a bit to easy.
On the other hand, while I relatively little personal experience with the card, Biovisionary I see as something that encourages enthralling and novel gameplay.
I agree that there's very little you can actually do with this Query card. You can 'solve' the card with a single gatherer search as far as I know. That limiting factor is so great that it could be argued that the card is more of a Spike card since it comes to optimizing those particular cards to achieve the effect, even if it's a combo deck.
It's not really a Johnny card though. There's a very specific thing you have to do, so there's no creativity in solving. Even something like Laboratory Maniac, which in practice has very few unique decks, has many different ways of potentially building a deck to run out of cards. This, it's just too narrow
Huh. I had to check Rule 303.4 to see if two auras enchanting each other was even legal. But I guess it is. Weird.
This is just a johnny card. Its cost can be balanced however it needs to be. Frankly, I'm not concerned about any 3 card combos breaking modern, regardless of how cheap the pieces are, especially when some of the individual pieces are this do-nothing.
Yeah, this seems a bit too easy. For example, Essence Leak + this + Aura Graft. Some controllish deck with Confiscate and Simic Guildmage perhaps could be better.
The flavor is interesting, but I doubt the same can be said about the gameplay loops this encourages.