I want another theme, to pad out magic techno wild west world into a set. I semi-arbitrarily picked "hidden artificer genius resents intrusion onto 'her' planet and subverts the colony."

But that's not especially vivid.

Suggestions sought. Both for "augmented wild animal" artifact creature monsters at common, and "fake colonist" artifact creatures at uncommon and rare. And for alternative ideas -- what else could be on the world providing a natural opposition to gunfighters?

ooh I like the "fake colonists" idea, kinda reminds me of the briefly seen "Space World" section of the setting for the movie Westworld, absolutely brilliant movie for its time! Screenshot of Yul Brenner cowboy with face dislodged for one of the fakes!!!!!

... wait; that's a real comment? I thought the spambots had gotten cleverer again, but started advertising old movies, for a minute, there :)

Anyhow. Nice flavour. For combining the 'augmented' and 'fake' idea; how about artifact-sand (or some other name) that as long as the plane wasn't disturbed, basically had nothing to do - but now it's got all KINDA of ideas to copy. Mechanically; Lots of morph effects, lots of copying types and abilities. Maybe bring back modular?

Oh yay, thank you. In fact, yes, I hadn't really thought of the enemies being specific gunfighters but now you say it, that's obvious and a lot more interesting source of ideas. Yul Brenner is exactly right.

@Vitenka: Ooh, yeah, I like that too. Thank you. Not sure about the mechanical implementation, but I think something like that is going in.

I'd maybe like a mechanic which could go on common artifact creatures to represent infiltrating/subverting/converting/damaging the colonists.

Maybe just have artifact creatures which affect ranchers, soldiers, rhinos, insects, etc?

Maybe have the " this costs 1 colourless mana" symbol?

Maybe have colourless spells to represent the lack of coloured magic on the world?

The Gunslinger. Weaponized cyborg-soldier terrorizing as small Western town.