#Moxtober 20: Breakable

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"
Day 16: "angular"
Day 17: "swollen"
Day 18: "bottle"
Day 19: "scorched"

Today's prompt is: "breakable"

So, the "breakable" made me think of vases. And then I thought of glass and creatures like Glass Golem who have very high power yet low toughness - glass cannons.

My first iterations of referencing a "glass cannon" was to either reference 1-toughness creatures or creatures with 1-toughness AND more power than toughness. Since 1/1 tokens triggered the former and the latter ended up being weirdly worded, I then ended up at focusing on having the power being at least twice as much as the toughness. That felt very "glass cannon-y".

Besides, that means Glass Golem can get in on the fun and not just Lightning Elemental and other 1-toughness peers. It'd be a shame if a high power creature that FEELS like a glass cannon was foiled by having a measly one-more-toughness.

Now, the card I designed to demonstrate the mechanic I designed around "glass cannon" creatures isn't the most simplest card example. Sorry about that. I ended up with this card because I was trying to think of what you want to do with glass cannons - attack, of course! And then I got hooked on getting the wording exactly right so that you can cast this during your precombat main phase and still have this effect work for those glass cannons that just arrived to the battlefield (see the card World at War for similar templating, to ensure rebound works with this type of effect).

Anyway, compare this with raid. This mechanic functions similarly to raid in that you just need to meet the quality it asks for, but glass cannonade is more restrictive than raid. Thus, I wanted to add a bit more flexibility by throwing in entering the battlefield. Another reason for this is that "glass cannon" creatures tend to die more often and may not be around to trigger your glass cannonade triggers.

I love combining the term "glass cannon" with "cannonade" to make "glass cannonade". A cannonade is continuous firing of a cannon. The mechanic encourages you to swing sideways. And if they die, that's fine, because you're also encouraged to keep up casting more. Kinda like reloading the cannons so you can keep "firing."

#Moxtober 19: Scorched

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"
Day 16: "angular"
Day 17: "swollen"
Day 18: "bottle"

Today's prompt is: "scorched"

"scorched" made me think of "scorched earth policy". That made me think of sacrificing your own resources for a tactical advantage. So an ability word that turns on when such a thing occurs. This is similar to morbid caring about anything dying.

I originally wanted to make this care about any player discarding a card or sacrificing a creature, and that may be the better route here, but I'm not quite sure. I decided to stick with the more focused one, only caring about your own self, in case the Limited environment meant players being too scared to pay a discard or sacrifice cost to avoid triggering an opponent's arsonous spell to be better.

I also wanted to name this "Scorch", but it turns out I already used up the name for a different Moxtober submission! (Day 15, "weak", mechanic of "weaken")

Set Fire seems appropriate instead - not that the name matters much in this evaluation. ^_^;

#Moxtober 18: Bottle

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"
Day 16: "angular"
Day 17: "swollen"

Today's prompt is: "bottle"

"Bottle" made me think of "message in a bottle." That resulted in the bottled pack mechanic. Here's how it works:

This is a mechanic made for a set designed for drafting, just like how there are effects that only matter when drafted in a Conspiracy set. Here's how the set and this mechanic works:

Imagine this is Ixalan: The Drafting. Or some other pirate world supplemental set. And there's a "message in a bottle" mechanic. What's that mean? Here's the PACK LOGISTICS of it and HOW IT WORKS.

PACK LOGISTICS
In every box of this set, there are 36 packs, just like with Conspiracy. In every pack, there's a token card. On one of the sides of the tokens is an image of a bottle with a number clearly printed on it. At the beginning of the draft, for everyone's first pack, the players reveal their bottle with number. Whoever has the highest number places a booster pack (recommended from this same set) underneath their bottle card (everyone else sets their token cards aside as is normal in drafts).

HOW IT WORKS
Once a player has a booster pack and bottle token in front of them, they are considered to have a "bottled pack." When you are drafting while having a bottled pack, you may choose to swap the pack you're looking at for the pack in the bottle by placing your pack into that bottle (underneath the bottle token) and retrieving the pack that was under it for you to draft from. You may only do this once per pick.

Once players all pass their packs to the left (or right), the bottle is passed in the opposite direction. That neighboring player now has the bottle and has the same actions as you did.

If a pack is unopened in the bottle, once you swap, you may open up the pack.

Lastly, when a new draft round starts, all the cards in the bottle are removed from the draft face down. And then a new pack is placed under it. The control of the bottle still remains on the player who ended up with it for the second and third rounds, but the direction of the bottle changes just as the direction of the packs passing changes, so that the bottle is always in the opposite direction of where the cards are being passed.

You can even try this mechanic out at home - just need to randomly determine who ends up with a bottle first, use whatever packs you got as normal for a draft. You just won't have any cards that are "bottle matters" like the one designed for today. :)

#Moxtober 17: Swollen

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"
Day 16: "angular"

Today's prompt is: "swollen"

"Swollen" made me think of a creature that's ballooned up. In this case, it's an ooze that consumed a person and then is that much bigger and deadlier to deal with.

Ingest can take various forms, like "Ingest Equipment" or "Ingest Aura". Whatever kind of permanent.

Much like how destroying the big bad monster that's swallowed up a hero can free the hero, so too do ingested creatures return to the battlefield.

While I wanted this Ooze to be more blue and green, the temporary banishment felt more white, while the power and toughness boost is definitely green.

I imagine large fish can swallow up things. Krakens can ingest lands or perhaps any kind of permanent. Some wily creature can perhaps even consume a planeswalker rather than any kind of permanent.

#Moxtober 16: Angular

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"

Today's prompt is: "angular"

The angular prompt made me think of tapping and untapping, due to tapped and untapped permanents together making "angles."

This is like devotion. Instead of devotion checking for mana symbols in mana costs of permanents you control, skill set checks for these tap or untap symbols in nonland (important to avoid all those lands) permanents you control. I imagine this number not being very high in a Limited environment - though, some permanents exist out there with tons of tap abilities.

A potential point of confusion is if someone sees the tap symbol in reminder text of haste or other types of reminder text and think that it would count for this ability. It wouldn't count since reminder text is invisible to rules text. The fact that I have to point this out doesn't bode well for folks NOT being confused. Any suggestions for this?

I followed the templating that overload has, which replaces "text' instead of saying "rules text." And even if someone put "rules text", there would probably still be Magic players wondering whether reminder text counts as rules text (and not even know the difference).

I chose "skill set" since having an activated ability that uses the tap symbol as a cost feels like you're applying a skill of focus on an effect.

#Moxtober 15: Weak

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"

Today's prompt is: "weak"

This is basically "wither lite."

A reminder that this mechanic can appear on both creatures and noncreatures (just like wither). The idea is that sometimes you can hurt something so bad that it would never be the same again after recovering.

Nice and simple this time.

#Moxtober 14: Clock

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"


Today's prompt is: "clock"

Okay, so the day die. It's a D4! There are four phases of day: dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight. These can be represented as 1, 2, 3 & 4, respectively. Dawn and noon are equal to daytime while dusk and midnight are equal to nighttime. The specially-created day die would have sun and moon symbols.

In a two player game, the day advances at the start of every turn of the player that started the day-tracking. In a three-player game, this changes, as there are odd turns.

The reason why the day advances at the start of every second turn instead of every turn is because I wanted to ensure players can experience every one of the four parts of day. Otherwise, while each player can still experience daytime and nighttime, they'd miss half of the parts of the day.

Initially, I was writing out reminder text that didn't require referencing a day die, but the reminder text became too wordy otherwise. Also, my initial inclination for wording this reminder text was to write "every other turn," but I figured that could be confused for the day advancing during every/each other player's turn instead of there being skipped turns for day advancement.

In whatever set this mechanic appears in, the commons would only care about daytime or nighttime. Uncommons and higher rarities can care about more specific parts of day, like midnight.