#Meltober 06: Drooling

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I'll be designing a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.

Today's prompt is: "drooling"

Yes, hunger does function differently in multiplayer games versus 1-on-1 games, due to more end steps. That's because the feeling of "waiting" until your next turn is mirrored with the experience of a hungry creature.

The idea here is that a hungry creature needs sustenance and will wither away unless they eat ...in this case, eat someone else, whether alive or dead. Gross, I know. But, hey, I figure this would be a mechanic in black, red, and green. Jund. Another Jund mechanic? Devour. :)

The mechanic is wordy, and it's really odd to write hunger out to explain how it works when you give hunger to every creature instead of, say, writing it out for a 2/2 bear with hunger.

#Meltober 05: Chicken

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I'll be designing a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.

Today's prompt is: "chicken"

With a "chicken" prompt, I immediately thought of Unglued's iconic funny race creature type. I wanted to tie in some kind of mechanic for those creatures, but there are so few cards that are Chickens or make Chickens. Thus, I looked to what could be honorary chickens. So, any Birds that are resting on something are honorary chickens. :) And then you just make a batch term called "poultry pal" to group together anybody who supports the chicken lifestyle!

The flavor text is a reference to Poultrygeist's flavor text. :)

#Meltober 04: Spell

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I'll be designing a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.

Today's prompt is: "spell"

I'm a big fan of the Izzet's "overload" mechanic and individual cards that let you trade color words or basic land types into something else. The ability to "hack" a spell by replacing text has had me thinking about what other words are easily replaceable by other kinds of words and still read fine an accurately-templated Magic card?

As it turns out, this is really hard to do. I figured "enters the battlefield" might be safe, but there are a lot of templated sentences where replacing "enters the battlefield" with something else would still not work.

For example, changing "enters the battlefield" for "When CARDNAME enters the battlefield" to "becomes the target of a spell or ability" to make "When CARDNAME becomes the target of a spell or ability" totally works fine. But another card that says "CARDNAME enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter" would read as "CARDNAME becomes the target of a spell or ability with a +1/+1 counter" ...isn't templated correctly to make sense.

I settled upon playing around with keywords in the execution. No mess to deal with, but still - the sandbox possibilities are large. I definitely wanted you to be able to "hack" as wide of a net as possible, so I allowed you to be able to change text on either spells or permanents.

Because of memory issues, every spellhack card exiles itself. That way, it can then be tucked under whatever permanent is hacked to help with memory, like an Aura. There's precedent for this technique, how cards become "haunted" by the haunt mechanic, and the haunting cards are exiled to... well, conveniently be able to help you remember what's being haunted.

The flavor text is totally a reference to Lightning Greaves being changed into granting whatever is being equipped to have defender instead of haste.

#Meltober 03: Roasted

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I'll be designing a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.

Today's prompt is: "roasted"

What if Lightning Bolt could only target players if it was a killing blow? The same goes for planeswalkers and creatures. The idea of "roasting" something is that you gave enough firepower to completely destroy them.

Note that roasting a target won't work if the target is partially damaged, and you'd otherwise wouldn't be able to kill it. If a creature with 4 toughness was dealt 2 damage earlier, they still wouldn't be an eligible target by Burning Bolt because they have greater toughness than the three roast damage - while a Lightning Bolt would, of course, be able to finish off a partially-damaged 4-toughness creature.

While the reminder text focuses on brevity, hopefully it's clear that roast can only count toughness on creatures with toughness, loyalty on planeswalkers with loyalty, and life on players with life.

I'm not sure if the rules normally counts players with no loyalty counters or toughness to be "having no toughness means having less than three toughness." Whatever the case may be, you'd write roast comprehensive rules to accommodate accordingly.

#Meltober 02: Tranquil

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I'll be designing a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.

Today's prompt is "tranquil."

White and blue are very good at maintaining the peace. Blue can counter spells to keep them from resolving, both blue and white tap down creatures (and detain them, which makes maintaining the peace backwards-compatible with Return to Ravnica's Azorius mechanic), white can destroy attacking creatures without letting any damage end up getting dealt, and white can prevent or redirect damage (though, you'll need to avoid those white combat tricks that deal damage in order to maintain the peace).

I like the idea of a zealot of peace, someone who fanatically wants no trouble to be stirred up. :)

#Meltober 01: Poisonous

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I'll be designing a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.

Today's prompt is "poisonous."

Which is hilarious because that's already a keyworded mechanic! So, here's todays' non-poisonous-worded mechanic based on "poisonous:"

Alchemy is a parasitic mechanic - you'll get lots more potion counters the more alchemy cards you play. The idea is that there are various types of effects one can get from a potion - it'll just take the right alchemist expert to get the effect you want from any of the potions created from anybody with alchemy.

This example is the poisoner. :)