#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. :)

Art of Archfrenemies: Basic Lands

With all the careful decisions that go into creating a Cube in order to craft a certain experience, there are cards that aren't listed that your players are also going to encounter: Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest. Due to the nature of Cubes, most Cubes are pre-sleeved, which requires pre-sleeving and providing the basic lands that would used for your players' eventual draft decks. Why not also put some thought into which lands your players are going to use?

Land's Beginning

If you don't know what Archfrenemies is, visit the Archfrenemies page for more info.

For Archfrenemies, I didn't want to just throw in the full-art Unstable lands, as beautiful as they are. Cubes can be products of intense labors of love, which is surely a fitting place to use some of the most precious of selections of basic lands. However, as my approach to Archfrenemies is to maximize its themes, this meant looking toward basic lands across the board.

Because Archfrenemies features enemy color pairings, I wanted that to show up in the art. Show me Plains with lots of black. Give me Islands with red hues. I want to see Swamps going green. And so on.

On another hand, I also wanted to, if possible, have basic land art with sneaky references to the mechanical themes of Archfrenemies. What land screams "Archenemy?" And what evokes any of extort, surge, morbid, battalion, or graft?

Lastly, because each color has two different enemy colors to form two different enemy color pairings, I had to make a choice. Do I choose a Forest with blue colors or an Island with blue colors? I decided to do both. This meant picking two pieces of art for each basic land and including multiple copies of lands for each of these arts. This way, players that like doing so can at least have a bit of aesthetics choice - and we can all enjoy twice as much art!

Plains

Plains by Florian de Gesincourt

This Plains shows a lot of darkness, especially with the contrasting lighting of the ground in the foreground. Since extort is the white-black mechanic, it benefits archenemies the most - so fitting that this Plains depicts a structure that could be interpreted to be a looming archenemy fortress.

Plains by Mark Poole

The sun is setting on this Plains, which gives that red coloring that evokes the Boros theme present in Archfrenemies. Dusk means darkness drawing near for the team-based battalion players, symbolism of what little time left our heroes have before one or both of the two Thanoses fulfill a grim destiny.

Island

Island by Lucas Graciano

Red water (read: blood) from Hour of Devastation is one way to ensure there are red hues present in an Island. Also, things aren't looking good for this Island of what might be a blue-red player, who might be using surge, a mechanic that benefits most when played as part of a team. Mwahahaha.

An important note about using basic land art from the Amonkhet block: as Archfrenemies doesn't have anything to do with Nicol Bolas, and given that Archenemy: Nicol Bolas is an existing product, I wanted to be sure to veer away from any imagery that gives players any sense that there's Nicol present in this format. Thus, basic land art with strong depiction of Bolas horns need not apply.

Island by Kev Walker

One thing I scanned for while looking through basic land art was how sharp were the hues of the enemy pairing color I could find. This Island was chosen because it was one of the best ones to show off "GREEN" in the art. That is all.

NOTE: Mark Poole's green-covered Alpha Island is suredly very green. However, since I wanted to ensure all my basic lands have the modern card frame and are black-bordered, this meant there were no eligible printings using that art. Besides, Mark Poole art already shows up in TWO other slots for basic land art!

Swamp

Swamp by Jung Park

For the green-hinted Swamp, I wanted to find one with both a cemetery to give that wink toward morbid. While some locales depicted in Swamps can be argued to be cemeteries without headstones present in it, these real-world-relatable grave monuments really do great work at communicating visually, "Hey, there's death here." Unfortunately, this is the greenest Swamp I could find meeting this need, of which the green is difficult to see, especially at card size.

Swamp by Jonas De Ro

Thanks, Dominaria! While the Plains I chose gives that sense of "Hey, this might be where the bad guy is," this Swamp definitely communicates, "OKAY, THIS IS DEFINITELY WHERE THE BAD GUY LIVES." Also, the coloring of that light is white, for the most part!

Mountain

Mountain by Karl Kopinski

This is the white-hinted Mountain. Take a close look at the dark-colored mountainous terrain. You'll notice there are people standing on it. How many people? Three. And how many are on a team in Archfrenemies and is the required number for triggering battalion? That's right - three. This is the perfect Archfrenemies Mountain.

BONUS: This is also the sole Mountain used for the Tuktuk the Explorer Commander deck since there was a requirement to only include cards with art depicting a torch. ...one of these three people is holding up an arm with an orange glow emanating from it. Torch!

Mountain by Titus Lunter

(Sorry for the low-res pic! Hard to find high-res images of sets that haven't been released, yet.)

So, I had a different Mountain in mind for the red-blue-ish one. Until Battlebond released the image of its Mountain. This was perfect for two reason: 

1) It's very clearly Battlebond, a set that can be identified with the term "teammate," which is what's going on with Archfrenemies with the surge mechanic mentioning "teammate."

2) That oozing lava coming out of these mountainous territory can be said to be surging out of them. Eh? Yeah? 'kay, that's all.

With Battlebond releasing June 8th and Card Kingdom's super-fast shipping - I should be able to get my updated Mountains in time before bringing the Archfrenemies Cube to GP Vegas!

Forest

Forest by Mark Poole

A second Mark Poole art used in the basic lands! For this one, the blue sky means "the sky's the limit" in terms of how far you can grow/reach - for graft! And that sky is quite blue.

Forest by James Paick

Boy, for a Forest, there's very little green going on in this art.

I knew that spooky/gloomy Forests from either of the Innistrad blocks was going to be the likely choice. Some of them had glimmers of life in the form of a stream or hopefully-colored leaves.

Nah, we needed darkness and none of that bright, happy stuff. Like, those are branches without leaves, and who knows how long of a fall it is if you trip over those logs into the misty area?

Ten out of Ten, Basically

And that's it for basic land art! Thanks for reading my thoughts on why I picked the ones I did. But maybe you have some better suggestions for basic lands! Give me a tweet (@bradleyrose) if so.

Below are all of the cards, when viewed together, in card form: