NaGaDeMon #05: Nonred Faction Mechanic

Art by Svetlin Velinov

Red's aggressive. What are the aspects of this aggression?

• Red attacks with creatures early
• Red uses up its cards quickly
• Red trades away resources helpful for the long-term in favor of a short-term advantage

What are the factors that lead into each of these aggressive aspects?

• Red's creatures are cheap and efficient to cast
• Red's creatures tend to have higher power than toughness
• Red's spells don't incentivize you to wait to cast them later
• Red's benefits involve sacrificing permanent resources

What are the symptoms of these factors?

• Red's creatures tend to be sideways
• Red's lands tend to be sideways
• Red's hands tend to be empty
• Red's number of permanents can possibly lessen rather than grow as turns pass

Taking the above into consideration, I've come up with some qualities for a nonred faction to focus on:

• Having untapped creatures
• Having a bigger hand
• Having a number of permanents that always increases as turns pass

How do I have untapped creatures?

• Not attacking (ew)
• Always getting new creatures (ooh, this means growing permanents)
• Vigilance
• Having high toughness creatures but with low power

How do I have a bigger hand?

• Not casting spells (ew)
• Cantrips and draw spells (but red does cantrips and card filtering)

How do I always have the number of permanents increase as turns pass?

• Don't sacrifice (hmm, black does this, though)
• Always be playing stuff that hits the board and never the graveyard (but blue, though)
• Don't get your stuff killed, yo (hexproof, not getting into trades in combat)

Lastly, there's a quirky thing I discovered:

The word "counter" appears the least on common red cards in all of Magic.

Obviously, blue has the most number of cards with "counter" in the text. Green plays with +1/+1 counter growth a lot. And white and black are somewhere around "more than red."

Having a mechanic that cares about "counter" in the text encourages players to play with cards that grow their creatures and counters answers to their creatures. However, this also reminds me of the counter theme that is in Commander 2016, but a little spin on it.

For both the fact that caring about a word in text is potentially confusing (overload handles this pretty well by only referring to its own text) for what counts and what doesn't (for example, does "Can't be countered." count?); and that counters as a nonred theme has already been done, I'm leaning toward something that is more novel for nonred.

In Ixalan, there is no red common card that has toughness greater than its power. Yet, every other color has toughness greater than its power. I think that this bodes well for that direction. 

Let's try some mechanics designs:

• At end of turn, if you control more untapped creatures than tapped creatures, EFFECT
• As long as CARDNAME is attacking and you control more untapped creatures than tapped creatures, EFFECT
• Whenever you cast a creature spell with toughness greater than its power, EFFECT
• Whenever a creature with toughness greater than its power enters the battlefield under your control, EFFECT
• As long as you control a creature with toughness greater than its power, EFFECT
• Whenever you attack with a creature with toughness greater than its power, EFFECT
• Reveal from your hand a creature card with toughness greater than its power: EFFECT
• Counterplay - Whenever you play a card with "counter" in its text, EFFECT
• Countercast - Whenever you cast a spell with "counter" in its text, EFFECT
• Countermove - As long as you've played a card this turn with "counter" in its text, EFFECT
• Clean counter - Whenever a card with "counter" in its text is put into a graveyard, EFFECT
• Countermeasure - At end of turn, if you played a card with "counter" in its text, EFFECT

Let's try some card designs:

NONBO REPRINT:

The above Ally is the only one that has greater toughness than its power that also doesn't have a name that mentions a word that is specific to Zendikar. It also has flying, which the nongreen faction cares about. Alas, this is a black Ally, of which the nonblack faction, caring about Allies, could not use. And, thus, to encourage four-color (instead of five-color) play, this can't be used.

Anyway...

ACTUAL SYNERGISTIC ENVOY REPRINT:

Synergizes with the nongreen faction and doesn't call out a specific place. Shout out to Pillarfield Ox, though. The hero we needed, not the hero we deserved.
...wait, speaking of hero...

Anyway... let's do new designs:

Tough Centaur
2G

Creature - Centaur Warrior

Tough 'n' Rumble (Whenever another creature with toughness greater than its power enters the battlefield under your control, this creature gets a +1/+1 counter)

2/3

Tough Soldier

3W

Creature - Human Soldier

Toughen Up - Whenever another creature with toughness greater than its power enters the battlefield under your control, this creature gains vigilance until end of turn.

2/4

Card Count

2U

Draw three cards, then discard two cards unless you discard a card with "counter" in its text.

Untapped Potential

BB

You draw two cards, then you lose 2 life unless the number of untapped creatures you control is more than the number of tapped creatures you control.

...lots of exploring of card designs that still needs to be done, but I'm loving the toughness greater than power thing. Gonna need to find the most enticing and grokkable effect. In the meantime, consider this red card that is the antithesis of what this nonred faction might possibly shape up to be.

NaGaDeMon #04: Nonblack Faction Mechanic

One way to be able to easily tie together cards broadly is via the card type line. When looking for a nonblack mechanic, I first thought of a team of creatures working together. The first iteration of this was a D&D-style party where you needed a Cleric, Warrior, Rogue, & Wizard. That was turning out to be a bit more convoluted and/or pulling the focus away on trying to achieve four colors. If creature type were to be referenced, it should be a single type and something evocative of everything black isn't.

Enter allies. Black is selfish and works for its own best interests. Those who work as a cog as part of a greater machine for the better of the whole; whether it's your family or community, or whether it's the right or logical thing to do; this is what black doesn't do.

...interestingly, in Avacyn Restored, black was isolated to itself while the other colors got access to a mechanic focusing on working together: soulbond.

If I were to pursue the allies route, I would be making zero black ally creature cards to ensure those that want to play with allies only go to four colors. And I'd be introducing a new style of ally mechanic, like how Cohort was introduced to join the Rally type of ally mechanical gameplay.

New ally mechanic tentatively called "Alliance."

For soulbond, I'd have to see what space there is left to explore and how to further evolve soulbond beyond the level it's at now as of Avacyn Restored.

For example, Flowering Lumberknot and Joint Assault are the only two cards that interact with the soulbond mechanic that don't have soulbond themselves (interestingly, Joint Assault doesn't care about whether a paired creature is paired with a soulbond creature while Flowering Lumberknot cares about whether the pairing is with a soulbond creature).

Could there be a soulleech? Mindbond? Bodybond? Tripling instead of pairing? Pairing a pair? Pairing with not just any creature but with another soulbond creature?

Remember: caring is pairing.

I still have my work cut out for me for the nonblack faction, but let's dig into some designs anyway:

Allies mechanics

• Alliance - For each color among allies you control, EFFECT.
• Alliance - This creature gets +N/+N as long as it and another Ally is attacking or blocking.
• Alliance - EFFECT X, where X is the number of allies you control.
• Alliance - As long as the last creature to enter the battlefield under your control is an Ally, EFFECT
• Alliance (Your Allies can help cast this spell. Each Ally you tap after you’re done activating mana abilities pays for 1 or one mana of that creature's color)
• Alliance 2 (As this creature enters the battlefield, you may reveal an Ally card from your hand. If you do, this creature enters the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters.)
• Alliance (As this creature enters the battlefield, if the last creature to enter the battlefield under your control is an Ally, you get an alliance counter. Otherwise, you lose all alliance counters. Then, this creature enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each alliance counter you have.)

White Ally

1W

Creature - Human Warrior Ally

Alliance (As this creature enters the battlefield, if the last creature to enter the battlefield under your control is an Ally, you get an alliance counter. Otherwise, you lose all alliance counters. Then, this creature enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each alliance counter you have.)

2/2

Four-um

2U

Sorcery

Alliance - Draw a card for each color among allies you control, then discard a card.

Pair of Shocks

R

Instant
CARDNAME deals 2 damage to target creature or player. As long as you control a paired creature, CARDNAME deals 4 damage to that creature or player instead.

Bear Hug

1G

Instant

Alliance (Your Allies can help cast this spell. Each Ally you tap after you’re done activating mana abilities pays for 1 or one mana of that creature's color)

Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.