Clockwork Wings: Mechanic ideas - artifacts
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I have four ideas for ways to represent the feel of steampunk artifacts:
- Artifacts and artifact creatures that have drawbacks of some kind, to capture the quirky, unreliable feel of that kind of machine.
- Connectors, the equivalent of Equipment / Fortifications for artifacts that attach to other artifacts. They have the Connect ability, and refer to "connected artifact".
- The power types [Steam], [Torque], [Chemical], [Radiation] and [Electrical]. These have great flavour, but they serve a definite mechanical role: they allow several artifacts to operate as parts of a machine, producing and consuming different resources for assorted wacky benefits.
- , of course, is the actual Contraption idea itself, as on Steamflogger Boss. The replacement effect makes it fairly tricky to come up with ideas that work within the rules, but I've got a few possibilities.
1 - Artifacts with drawbacks
Clunky machines that are useful but don't quite work properly are a key element of a steampunk setting. This could involve a range of things, such as "costs to untap" on Goblin Dirigible.
2 - Connectors
There are actually not too many things that can be done with these. The field is far less fertile than Equipment, because almost all Equipment either modify power and toughness, or interact with combat in some other way. Fortifications were a great idea for one card (Darksteel Garrison), but they have the same problem if you try to make twenty of them: what do they do?
My solution is the same idea as Darksteel Garrison: lots of "becomes-tapped" triggers. There's potentially room for most or all of:
Whenever connected artifact becomes tapped, you may pay 
. If you do, untap target nonartifact creature... ~ deals 2 damage to target creature... ...tap target creature... add to your mana pool... gain N life... put a +1/+1 counter on target creature... untap target artifact other than connected artifact... put a creature token onto the battlefield... target attacking creature gets +2/+1 ueot.
Then there can be a few Connectors that grant tap abilities: connected artifact has "
: Draw a card, then discard a card"... connected artifact has ", : This artifact deals 1 damage to target player."
And then obviously lots of artifacts with tap abilities.
These would certainly like to include some artifact lands. Those would make an excellent smoother to make Connectors more usable. Question is how to ensure enough of them are around. I'm not sure I want a cycle of power-producing lands and a cycle of artifact lands. Perhaps just one common artifact land and two or three uncommon ones.
This solution gives a bit of a mechanical theme to a lot of the artifacts in the set; interacts with hundreds of artifacts from Magic's past; is very modular to allow players to assemble whatever wacky machine they like (or out of whatever comes to hand). I think there isn't actually that much design space in Connectors, but this quite restricted implementation doesn't use up very much while still being quite flavourful and interesting to play.
(: Attach to target artifact you control. Connect only as a sorcery.)Whenever connected artifact becomes tapped or untapped, add
to your mana pool.
(: Attach to target artifact you control. Connect only as a sorcery.)Whenever connected artifact becomes tapped, you may pay
. If you do, untap target nonartifact creature. (: Attach to target artifact you control. Connect only as a sorcery.)Connected artifact has "
: Draw a card, then discard a card." (: Attach to target artifact you control. Connect only as a sorcery.)Whenever connected artifact becomes tapped, tap Calistronic Galvaniser. If you do, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.
(: Attach to target artifact you control. Connect only as a sorcery.)Whenever connected artifact becomes tapped, you may pay
. If you do, untap any number of target artifacts other than Temporal Stutterer or connected artifact.3 - Power - [Steam], [Torque], [Chemical], [Radiation] and [Electrical]
The different power types are like five more colours of mana, except they go in your power pool. This would let me do things like make the power pool empty at different times than the mana pool, or behave differently in other ways, but I probably want to make it behave similarly to the mana pool to increase intuitive comprehensibility. It’s basically five more mana types, to let the players plug lots of different artifacts together to transfer power between them and assemble random fun machines made of several artifacts to do something random... as another way of reaching the concept of a crazy machine cobbled together of lots of parts.
Thus I'm thinking most power-using and -producing cards won't be Connectors, except perhaps one cycle of five. I might save "crossover" cards like that for the second set, like the Mirrodin dev team saved imprint equipment like Spellbinder for the second set.
The powers are each affiliated with two enemy colours. Steam 
and Electrical 
are obvious. Chemical 
seems fairly natural if you think of the kind of chemicals that steampunk inventors use. Radiation 
includes beams of light as well as Irradiate-type flavour. Torque 
are the two "untap" colours which helps with the "spinning" feel, but the flavour is a bit tricky here.
: Add [Radiation] to your power pool.[Radiation]: Tap target creature.
: Add [Steam] to your power pool.[Steam]: Target creature gains flying until end of turn.
: Add [Electrical] to your power pool.[Electrical]: Draw a card, then discard a card at random.
: Add [Torque] to your power pool.[Torque]: Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
: Put a 1/1 black Thrull creature token onto the battlefield. Add [Chemical] to your power pool.
: Rodent-Run Automaton gets +2/+0 until end of turn. Add [Torque] to your power pool. (: Attach to target artifact you control. Connect only as a sorcery.)
[Torque] or
: Untap connected artifact. Add [Steam] to your power pool.: Add 
to your mana pool. Chargecoil Station deals 1 damage to you.
[Steam] or
: Chargecoil Station deals 1 damage to each opponent. Add [Electrical] to your power pool.
[Electrical] or
: The next 1 damage that would be dealt to equipped creature is dealt to target creature instead. Add [Radiation] to your power pool.4 - Contraptions
My two main original ideas for how "Assemble a Contraption" could work are:
, : Assemble a Contraption from two artifacts you control. (They become a single Contraption artifact with the total abilities, types, power and toughness of all component artifacts.)
This is obviously pretty wacky, and might be a step too crazy. The alternative is:
Assemble - , : Search your library for up to one Contraption card and put it onto the battlefield.