Dastardly Designs #3: Mechanicfest Destiny

Card Design Features

SwaggyMcSwagglepants

8 June 2018

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Hello, and welcome back to Dastardly Designs! My name is Swaggy, and I’m back with a whole new batch of cards for the Third Challenge in the Great Designer Search 3! If you’re curious about my designs for previous challenges, there’s a link for to read the previous article at the bottom of all my previous Dastardly Designs.

The third challenge (which can be found here) provided a very simple challenge: design your own mechanic. A mechanic is an ability put on a card. Examples of familiar mechanics include flying, trample, and prowess.

1. You are going to design a brand-new keyword mechanic or ability word.
2. You will have to name it and figure out its rules text and reminder text. Note it's more important that our judges can understand what it's supposed to do than its templating be 100% technically accurate.
3. You will have to design three commons, two uncommons, two rares, and one mythic rare.
4. You must use at least three colors.
5. No more than two of your cards may be multicolored.
6. Assume all the cards you are designing are in the same Standard-legal expansion.
7. Other than your new mechanic, you may use only evergreen mechanics.

When beginning this challenge, I first tried to think of random words to build a mechanic around. Now obviously thinking of random words isn’t really a conventional way to build a mechanic. But when you find a name that really ignites your designer brain, whether it be hardy, pillage, or anything in between, it makes the process much easier and more sensical (at least for me – card design isn’t an exact science, do what makes you design cool cards).

The first mechanic I stumbled on was idolize. Idolize reads like this:

Idolize (when this creature enters the battlefield, if you control another creature that has the greatest power, this creature gains an idol counter)

The concept behind this mechanic was that it would be oriented around , either for the Nayans on Alara or the Sun Empire on Ixalan. Since they both revered big, strong creatures, this mechanic would reward them for having the biggest creature out. When a creature got an idol counter, it would gain an addition bonus. For example, a 2/2 for might gain lifelink if it had an idol counter on it.

The reason I didn’t choose this mechanic honestly was just me not thinking hard enough. See, when I was designing idolize, I originally wanted it to reward the player who had the greatest-powered creature at any given time. But when I was thinking about this mechanic, I couldn’t coherently think of a way to make that ability play out on a card. The best I could think of was

Idolize (if you control the creature with the greatest power, you become the idol).

But if the mechanic is around worshipping the beasts of Naya or the dinosaurs of Ixalan, why is the player the idol? Does the idol need a separate status card like The City’s Blessing or The Monarch? All these questions made me design different mechanics rather than try to answer them.

Of course, in hindsight, this mechanic is easy to word. Let’s go back to that with lifelink. Here’s how the card should read:

Pteron Devotee

Creature – Human Warrior

Idolize - CARDNAME gains lifelink if you control the creature with the greatest power.

2/2

This wording literally hit me as I was writing this article…

Anyways, onto the next mechanic!

Repeat X (when this creature enters the battlefield, if you paid its repeat cost, any triggered abilities this creature triggers when entering the battlefield trigger an additional time).

Repeat, at first glance looks like a cool mechanic. You can pay an extra cost and get two enters the battlefield abilities! Who doesn’t like that?

However, there’s one obvious, glaring problem with this mechanic. Let me illustrate with another white common:

Sergeant-at-Legs

Creature – Human Soldier

Repeat

When Sergeant-at-Legs enters the battlefield, create a 1/1 Soldier creature token

2/3

Is anybody else seeing what I’m seeing here? This mechanic is just strictly worse kicker. I mean, it’s no coincidence I named this Sergeant-at-Legs to compare to Sergeant-at-Arms (obviously there’s a slight distinction between these cards since Sergeant-at-Legs enters with a soldier if you don’t pay the repeat cost, but you catch the drift). If you put a kicker cost on Sergeant-at-Legs instead of a repeat cost and added the required text, you’d have the exact same card. And designing a strictly worse version of a mechanic (especially a mechanic that was featured in the last major set!) is no way to show your skill as a designer.

That leaves me with my final mechanic which I designed my 8 cards on this week: conquest.

Conquest simply reads you get an expansion counter. Now you may be asking what an expansion counter is. And I’m so glad you asked!

An expansion counter is a combination between energy (in that it’s an additional resource that can be gained) and ascend (in that it’s a mechanic around having a certain status and that status granting additional bonuses to cards). When designing these cards, I thought around them from the standpoint of a Limited format. In this Limited format, you play cards that let you gain expansion counters over the course of the game. Some cards in this set want you to have a certain amount of expansion counters so they can gain bonuses. Other cards give you a bonus for gaining expansion counters. And some cards want you to spend expansion counters to get an effect. Overall, it’s just another in game resource to use.

There is one problem that this mechanic suffers from – it’s parasitic. Parasitic mechanics are mechanics that aren’t very backwards compatible in Magic. For example, energy only works when surrounded by the other energy cards in the Kaladesh block. If you want to build an energy commander deck, you must build the bulk of it out of Kaladesh block cards because that’s the only block that deals and interacts with energy.

Conquest isn’t quite as bad as energy, but it’s still quite parasitic. There are plenty of cards (like Solemnity) and mechanics (like proliferate) that can interact with conquest counters.

Before I write about all my designs, I wanted to give a quick briefing on the flavor of this mechanic. When I thought of connecting this mechanic to a world, I didn’t know what plane is based around several nations attempting to conquer each other’s realms. Ixalan seemed like the closest fit, but even that’s not quite what that plane is about – Ixalan is 4 tribes attempting to gain control of Orazca, not nations fighting other nations for the towns and land they stand on. Therefore, since I didn’t have a plane to put this mechanic on, I decided to invent a new one: Erovran

The name Erovran is derived from the Swedish word erövring, which means conquest. This would be the Norse mythology plane, filled with Vikings, frost giants, elves, and other races incorporated in Norse mythology. Erovran is a plane full of hundreds of separate landmasses, ranging from wide continents to series of atolls. And every nation (not tribe – I’d rather have each tribe be defined by a color combination such as the guilds of Ravnica rather than a tribal subtype to avoid being like Ixalan) is constantly fighting, pillaging, and claiming villages from the other territories. Each of these nations would likely have their own mechanic, and conquest would be a mechanic that glued the entire set together (like how ascend and explore appeared on cards from all tribes in Ixalan compared to raid only being on pirate cards).

Maybe a future series would be designing Erovran? Let me know if your interested in the comments.

However, that’s been enough background on the designs – let’s get into them!

Tide Turner

Creature – Elemental Shaman

Conquest - when CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you get two expansion counters. Then return target creature with toughness less than or equal to the number of expansion counters you have to your opponent’s hand.

In quite a few recent sets, there’s always a blue common for around that bounces an opponent’s creature, like Academy Journeymage, Deadeye Rig-Hauler, and Separatist Voidmage. Having a familiar blue common design that rewards playing with the conquest mechanic but is also playable without other conquest cards shows off all the good design elements to make a good card.

Unconquered Territory

Sorcery (Common)

Conquest ** - you get an expansion counter**

Search your library for a basic land card and put it onto the battlefield tapped. Shuffle your library

Like Tide Turner, Unconquered Territory is another common based off past commons. Most sets have a three mana Rampant Growth with some bonus pertaining to a set – Map the Wastes having bolster, Natural Connection being an instant to trigger landfall at instant speed, Grow from the Ashes having kicker – and this card is no different. Again, another simple card that introduces the mechanic.

Rowdy Raider

Creature – Human Viking (Common)

Conquest - you get an expansion counter

CARDNAME gets +1/+0 and menace if you have 3 or more expansion counters

2/2

Rowdy Raider isn’t a very exciting card without its expansion counter ability. I mean, we’ve seen plenty of Falkenrath Reavers and Defiant Khenras do little to nothing in Limited. However, this card ends up being an efficient 2 drop as the game goes later and you have 3 or more conquest counters. Like the other two commons, Rowdy Raider is a simple card that shows the incentive behind building a conquest deck. I also think it’s important to show that every card in this set cannot always get a bonus by itself. For example, Thriving Rhino could always get a +1/+1 counter and Aether Swooper could always make a servo. While that increases the value of those cards and allows them to fit into any deck with some value, I want to specifically show that there are conquest cards that need you to play other conquest cards to make them good. Personally, I think Bristling Hydra would’ve been much more balanced if it only produced one or two energy when it entered the battlefield so you didn’t consistently have to 2-for-1 every time you tried to kill it. And learning from Kaladesh’s mistakes, I think showing that all the conquest cards don’t quickly self-reward themselves, even for a minor effect, gives reason to build a conquest deck and shows that I did learn this lesson and applied it.

Shifty Diplomat

Creature – Human Advisor (Uncommon)

Conquest - when CARDNAME enters the battlefield, each opponent loses an expansion counter and you get an expansion counter

1/2

You see, when you made the agreement signing over the Bjarlad atoll to us, you never specified whether the exchanged farmland needed to be arable…

When talking about energy from Kaladesh, one of the biggest complaints was that there was no way for players to interact with their opponent’s energy. This card flavorfully displays that players can interact with the opponent’s expansion counters and rewards the player for playing with their own expansion counters. This card could easily remove 2 and you gain 2 and cost an additional mana, or maybe be a 2/2 or a 1/1 with this current effect. It would all depend on how the set turns out. But at this mana cost, I think this card is reasonably balanced, although I’m not 100% I’m correct.

Raze the Land

Enchantment (Uncommon)

, lose an expansion counter: You draw a card and lose 1 life

This card might need another line of text to make it uncommon power level, maybe like exile two cards from your graveyard: you get an expansion counter or Discard a card: You gain 2 life and get an expansion counter. or maybe even At the beginning of each end step, if a creature died this turn, you get an expansion counter. But this card already seems pretty powerful, and considering card draw is one of, if not the most powerful mechanic in Magic, having Raze the Land having another bonus to help fuel itself seems unnecessary.

Enlist the Village

Enchantment (Rare)

Conquest - whenever one or more nontoken creatures you control deals combat damage to a player, you get an expansion counter

Whenever you get an expansion counter, create a 1/1 White Soldier creature token for each expansion counter you have

You, young man! Come here. You fight for us now

There’s some interesting things to note about this design in particular – this card easily becomes unbalanced if you don’t include the nontoken rider in the conquest trigger. Making loads of tokens then swinging with those tokens to get that many plus one token to block with is just silly.

In a deck without conquest, this card is serviceable but not overwhelmingly powerful. If you can consistently attack a player, getting a token the first time then two the second and such is solid. However, if you can play Enlist the Village with three expansion counters out and then hit a player, getting 3 tokens the first time and then 4 seems really good! In addition, if you just play a card with conquest, it produces a bunch of Soldiers anyways! The power level difference between this card in a conquest deck and a deck without conquest might warrant a change of text in the second line to be a different amount, such as create a 1/1 white Soldier creature token for each conquest counter you gained this turn, but I like Enlist the Village as it is.

Punish the Traitors

Sorcery (Rare)

Choose any amount of modes. Pay 2 expansion counters for each mode chosen beyond the first.

• CARDNAME deals 3 damage to each creature

• Target player discards two cards

• Return target creature card from any graveyard to the battlefield under your control

• Target creature you control gets +2/+0 and gains haste until end of turn

This card is pretty mediocre without expansion counters. It’s certainly playable, but it’s like an overcosted charm and would likely be used as a Zombify in any Constructed deck playing this card. However, once you pay 2 expansion counters, you really start cooking. First you kill their board of a lot of tiny creatures, which clears up blockers and dumps creatures into their graveyard. Next, you can force them to pitch two cards, and one of those cards might just be a big creature. Then, you take the best creature in any player’s graveyard and bring it back. And finally, you can attack with it straight away! Depending on if a deck only needed a mode or two at once, you can build a deck with generating that certain amount of expansion counters in mind. For example, if you only really needed to Zombify a creature and give it haste, you don’t have to play with a lot of expansion counter cards so you can fill your deck with a bunch of other good cards to pair with Punish the Traitors. However, if you want to take full advantage of Punish the Traitors, you can build a conquest deck that can generate six counters by Turn 6 and get full value from it.

Sporespread Elemental

Creature – Elemental

Conquest - whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you get an expansion counter

If you control 3 or more expansion counters, lands you control become 2/2 Elemental creatures with indestructible and haste

3/4

You know, we’ve searched for lots of archipelagos in the past. But I never imagined that one day the archipelagos would search for us.

From a Limited standpoint, this card is a gigantic beating. Getting a whole bunch of 2/2s out of nowhere is pretty ridiculous and hard to beat in Limited. However, in past Limited formats, there have definitely been mythics that are just stone cold ridiculous in sets previous – Lyra Dawnbringer, Rekindling Phoenix, Vona, Butcher of Magan, The Scarab God… I could go on. The point is, there are always a couple straight ridiculous mythics in every set because, well, they’re mythics! That’s what they’re supposed to be! Additionally, this card, like Lyra and Vona, has one big weakness – it dies to removal! Everybody plays removal in their Limited decks, and if your opponent holds their removal because they know you have this ridiculous bomb, they can certainly beat it!

When thinking about this card in a deck without conquest, I think it actually holds its own pretty well. If you played it in a ramp deck that could get more than one land drop in a turn, Sporespread Elemental doesn’t need many conquest cards to support it. After casting it maybe on Turn 6 so you can make a land drop and get a counter, then next turn playing a land and maybe casting oh, I don’t know, an Unconquered Territory (previous design reference!) you can get you lands fired up and ready to rumble!

You might notice that these lands have two standout keywords: indestructible and haste. These two mechanics were mostly added not to improve the cards, but to prevent weird rules interactions. Indestructible was added so if your opponent follows up your Sporespread Elemental with a Fumigate, all your lands don’t die. You can still get pretty blown out by a Terminus effect or a Settle the Wreckage, but I’m pretty sure the Future Future League could point this out and make sure R&D doesn’t print any Standard-worthy Wrath of Gods that exile or tuck your lands.

The lands gain haste just so when you play a land from your hand, if you want to tap it for mana, you can. Since the land would be a creature and would be summoning sick, it couldn’t tap for mana. Therefore, by giving all your lands haste, the players who don’t understand this interaction, such as people just introduced to the game or who only play casually, don’t constantly break the rules whenever they play this card.

Overall, I actually think I performed very well on this challenge. I think this mechanic is better than at least two of the mechanics that the contestants provided (I’ll let you guys figure them out) and might possibly by one of the top mechanics displayed in that week. Conquest did a lot of things right in my opinion by being a mechanic that could do a wide variety of things such as being a resource you could gain and spend, a resource that could be interacted by both players, and a resource that incentivizes deckbuilders to build deck with lots of conquest cards.

There are two minor problems with conquest overall. The first I’ve already discussed – it’s parasitic. I attempted to show that there are certainly playable conquest cards without needing to throw a bunch of conquest enablers like Unconquered Territory in a deck and that there were cards that rewarded you much more for building a conquest deck. I’m pretty sure I executed it well enough that I wouldn’t be too harshly dinged overall for having a parasitic mechanic, but it’s certainly one of conquest’s downsides.

The other problem about conquest is, well, conquest itself. Conquest doesn’t need to be named conquest. Everything would be so much cleaner if all instances of the word conquest were removed from my designs and the mechanic was just known as expansion counters. I don’t know if the judges would notice or care, or if they would make a big point of this and end up marking conquest lower. To me, it just seems like a formatting problem and if this mechanic was actually going to print, I think the word conquest wouldn’t show up.

Well, that’s all I have this week! If you have any questions or want to talk to me about any of these cards or design in general, you can comment down below or hit me up @Dustydeckbox on Twitter. Join me next week as I match some card descriptions to some art (that I’ll hopefully learn to link before next week!)

Happy Tapping!