Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.

1. It's kind of hard to find appropriate post-damage effects for red and white! If you look at (common) triggered abilities in those colors, a lot of times it's stat boosts, granting combat keywords, tapping creatures, or "target creature can't block this turn." While there are some cases where Waylay might be triggered by noncombat damage and produce value with combat abilities, most Waylay triggers are probably coming from combat itself.
2. The payoffs for Waylay (cards with a Waylay ability) generally need to be played before the enablers (haste, flash, etc.), with some exceptions. That means that the overall distribution of creatures with Waylay has to be pretty low in the mana curve, especially if the average RW deck doesn't want to play many expensive creatures at all. At common, you definitely feel this crunch on the design space.

Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.

Following up the last worldbuilding post developing our RW faction, we have a custom mechanic for red and white - Waylay. It's inspired by quick ambushes, surprising your opponent, and will primarily play in a more aggressive deck. However, there are defensive / controlling applications as well, and these will likely play a minor role in non-RW decks that end up with some red or white Waylay cards. The mechanic is a template for a certain type of triggered ability, and will appear on cards with the following text:

Waylay — Whenever a creature you control deals damage, if that creature entered the battlefield this turn, [some effect].

Let's look at some nuances of this mechanic and some card designs to support it.

Basic Idea

Generally in Magic, a creature doesn't deal damage on the turn you play it. Most creatures have to wait a turn to attack, and usually you aren't playing them on your opponent's turn (when they could deal damage on defense). So this mechanic needs some combination of aggressive creatures, surprise defenders, and other tricks.

Clarifying Triggers (for Rules Nerds)

Notably, Waylay doesn't specify combat damage; things like fight effects, direct "burn" damage abilities, etc. still work. However, the ability is still limited to one trigger per "damage dealt" event. All these events produce a single trigger:

• An attacking creature is double-blocked and deals damage to two blocking creatures
• An attacker with trample deals damage to both a blocker and its controller
• A creature ability "deals 1 damage to target creature and 1 damage to its controller"
• A creature ability "deals 1 damage to each opponent"

The only typical situation where a creature would get multiple triggers from one action is attacking with double strike. If a creature deals damage on both the first strike damage step and the main combat damage step, and it entered the battlefield this turn, then it produces two Waylay triggers.

Enablers

Waylay is a payoff mechanic: it looks for the player to meet a certain condition, then provides a (beneficial) effect when they do. Generally, and especially at common (the lowest rarity / power level for cards), the majority of cards with Waylay payoff should not help the player trigger Waylay. This means that design (and deckbuilding) require a balance of both payoff cards and enablers that help trigger the payoff. Here's some different enablers:

Haste

I showed this card previously, and it was designed with Waylay in mind. Haste will be centered in red and will pull a deck towards aggressive and proactive Waylay strategies.

Flash

On the white side, Flash is a more reactive / defensive mechanic, enabling Waylay triggers on surprise blocks during an opponent's attack. There's a little bit of tension here for the RW player though: getting the Waylay triggers from a Flash blocker, usually losing the creature, has to be weighed against keeping that creature around to attack in a likely-aggressive deck.

Noncombat Damage

This sort of effect is a good way to get some extra triggers without flooding the set with Flash and Haste creatures, though you've got to be careful. Versatile ping effects like this should be pretty sparse at common, since they can get card advantage by removing an X/1 or finishing off a creature after combat. The design above might be too strong in this context (though it has appeared at common before). If it feels overpowering, we'd probably swap this creature for a 2/1 that deals 1 damage to each opponent instead.

Instant-Speed Tokens

This is effectively Flash by another name, and will play similarly in terms of defensive focus and evaluating a trade + Waylay trigger versus keeping the creature. Like with the ping effects, this should be pretty sparse, but a couple of these effects will support Waylay a bit more.

Creature-Based "Burn"

This type of spell can be sort of be evaluated as bad direct damage. It's much less consistent than a "deal 3 damage" spell, and on some boards where the opponent has a large enough blocker, it might do nothing. But with Waylay triggers in play, you can at least guarantee some value from throwing a 3-1 to its death, even if this would otherwise be a dead card.

Blink

I don't have a blink card designed yet, but one trickier source for Waylay triggers would be blinking a creature at instant speed, then using it to block or giving it Haste. I'm not sure how much blink support the set will have, but it would be a way to get a little more white support for Waylay and diversify Waylay interactions.

Off-Color Solutions

There are some ways to broaden Waylay support a bit with cards not in RW. This card has above-rate stats but has a drawback of damaging its controller. The way it's worded, you'll almost always take a hit the turn you play it (unless you can give it Haste). But if you have Waylay payoffs on the board, that first-turn hit could be a net benefit; good for Waylay, and a good tonal / flavor win for a black card in general.

Similarly in green, fight / "bite" spells that have a creature deal damage to another don't care about summoning sickness, and could be timed for Waylay value

Also, our previous custom mechanic, Vitrify, grants Haste to animated lands. This means it can also work with Waylay, though only if you animate the land you just played this turn and then attack with it. That's fairly restrictive and not necessarily how you want to use your Vitrify creatures, but it's an option if you have both Vitrify and Waylay in the deck.

What's Next

The WU and BW color pairs are still very open for this set, so it's possible that Waylay (likely the more defensive / controlling flavor) will get broader support there. I think mechanics often feel a little stronger in a set if there are 2-3 archetypes that engage with them differently, as opposed to only applying to a single archetype.

But before that, I think working out black's themes and worldbuilding is my next task. I think the existential and political ramifications of the corrupting ooze that represents black so far are going to be important to the setting overall, so we should get some more firm answers there.

Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.

I've referred to this mechanical theme a few times, so I thought I ought to just make a post about it. "Gravefall" is the unofficial name I'm using for triggered abilities of permanents with the form,

Whenever a land is put into your battlefield from anywhere, [positive effect].

The name "gravefall" is of course a reference to landfall, but for the graveyard. This type of ability has precedent among official cards, but only on a few cards scattered through Magic history. Thematically, gravefall represents the spreading swamp corrupting the western half of our region map from WWN worldbuilding.

Gravefall serves as a fairly general payoff mechanic, but needs other events to enable it. The primary enabler will be self-mill, where gravefall gives incremental value to supplement bigger plays like reanimating a big creature. But there are secondary synergies with discard effects (including loot/rummage) and Vitrify. A few sacrifice-theme cards might allow a player to sacrifice lands as a tertiary enabler (though this is obviously a narrow design space).

Having a lot of flexibility around gravefall effects also helps cards with the mechanic tie into other archetypes and do double duty. A gravefall trigger that gains life (as shown above) ties into a lifegain theme, one that adds +1/+1 counters works with a counters theme, etc.

One limitation of this mechanic is that the payoff per trigger needs to be relatively small on most cards. "Draw a card" would cause a "mill three cards" effect to draw 1-2 cards on average in limited, which is very strong in a deck dedicated to self-mill. This could mean the the design space for gravefall as written ends up being too small, but there are a couple of tools to address that:

1. Change the text to "Whenever one or more land cards..." This wouldn't effect triggers from a single land hitting the yard, but would mean that multiple lands being milled would still only trigger once.
2. Limit gravefall abilities to trigger once per turn. This could be done piecemeal per-card, and with either the as-written gravefall language or the modification above. This kind of language always feels a little clunky to me, though, and kills a value player's dreams.

The reason I've avoided either of these is that green/black is thematically invested in swarms and rolling over your opponents with inexorable value engines. The experience of "now I get to do an action a lot of times" is a big part of the joy of green/black to me, so I'm holding onto that until broader design challenges or playtesting convince me otherwise.

Short and sweet post this time, primarily just committing some thoughts on the mechanic (and showing off my shiny new card template, if I'm being honest).

Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.

Following my prior attempt to design this mechanic and the worldbuilding that inspired me to continue, Vitrify is a keyword action that animates lands as 1/1 creatures. These creatures are of the "Ashborn" type, which are animate porcelain beings made with the bones of a dead god. As a word, "vitrify" means "to make glassy," and represents the difference between porcelain and other ceramic types.

The rules text for Vitrify is:

• "Vitrify" means "Put a +1/+1 counter on target noncreature land you control. It becomes a 0/0 Ashborn creature with haste and 'When this creature dies, return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner’s control.' It’s still a land."

Below the fold, let's break down that ability piece by piece.

Design Breakdown

Put a +1/+1 counter on target noncreature land you control. It becomes a 0/0 Ashborn creature [...]

There's a couple key design moves here. First, I'm incorporating a takeaway from Mark Rosewater's "storm scale" mechanic postmortem for the Awaken mechanic: players have trouble remembering which lands are animated, but counters help with that. So we know we need a counter of some sort, and I've chosen to go with +1/+1 because it's very familiar and interacts with a lot of other cards and mechanics. If we end up with a +1/+1 counter theme in an adjacent color pair, this will help Vitrify cards do double duty.

The other thing happening here is to restricting Vitrify targets to noncreature lands, i.e. lands that haven't been Vitrified already. This is a divergence from Awaken, forcing players to go wide rather than build up a single land with repeated Vitrify triggers. This might not survive playtesting, but it's a gesture to the "army" feel that's important in green/white.

[...] with haste [...]

This is taken from Awaken also, mostly to make for smoother play experiences. Once a land is animated, it can't tap for mana if it has summoning sickness. There's the possibility that a player animates the land they played this turn and then gets screwed for that mana. Haste sidesteps the issue, while also providing some overlap with an aggro/speed-matters theme in red/white (more on that in a later post).

[...] and 'When this creature dies, return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner’s control.' [...]

This is similar to one of the rejected mechanics from my last post, but here granted as an ability rather than a counter with special rules. Having things hit the graveyard is nice, both in supporting a planned green/black theme and in terms of fully resetting the permanent (clearing counters, auras, etc). I was originally worried about how this would interact with sacrifice effects, but on reflection de-animating a land is probably pretty close in value to losing a 1/1 token, which is often the going rate for limited sac effects. It does put some design pressure to avoid powerful self-sacrifice abilities on lands, though.

The other notable design impact of granting the ability this way is that players have to remember to do it. This set won't be played on Arena or MTGO where granted abilities can be rendered on the card. However, if we make sure that all land animation in the set uses Vitrify (or at least grants the return-to-battlefield ability), then players should have an easier time remembering that animated lands always come back. And since losing a land is a big deal most of the time, players should be incentivized to keep track of their triggers.

[...] It’s still a land.

Personally, I prefer "in addition to its other types" earlier in the rules text, but this is both more concise and in plainer language. A lot of official land animation reminder text uses this sentence, so I've followed suit.

And that's Vitrify! The first complex custom mechanic I've designed for this project. I think it'll take some work to tune the power level appropriately, and I expect some iteration in the rules text and the way other cards interact with the mechanic. But for now, I'm pleased to have a design that feels both workable and fresh!

Originally posted on Cohost, archived in October 2024.

Today I tried to design a mechanic for green/white around turning lots of lands into creatures (semi-)permanently. It didn't really work.

The Goals

The benefit of "animating" lots of lands, from a design perspective, is to: 1. Help support a "go-wide" theme that rewards lots of creatures 2. Create interesting decision points (you can't usually use a land to cast a spell and attack with it in the same turn) 3. Overlap with a likely self-mill theme in green/black with cards that care about lands in the graveyard or help you replay them

This would also feel very new compared to other Magic designs, which often animate lands temporarily or make animate effects larger but more rare.

Attempt 1 - Wide Awaken

A previous Magic set, Battle For Zendikar, used a mechanic called Awaken that animated lands permanently. It tended to make medium or large creatures, and it was always a one-time effect for the late game, all different from my aim. But it's good precedent, so the first version of the mechanic I considered was based on Awaken:

Put a +1/+1 counter on target noncreature land you control. It becomes a 0/0 creature in addition to its other types.

This would have a keyword associated with it, and could be added as a rider on spells or as a creature ability. The issue is, if the goal of the mechanic is to do this a lot, eventually most of your lands would be creatures. That makes the green/white player really vulnerable to removal, and it basically forecloses printing board-wipe effects that destroy all creatures.

Attempt 2 - Field-Shields

Earlier this year, Magic got a new mechanic, shield counters, which serve as a reimplementation of classic rules bugbear Regenerate. If lands dying and leaving a player without mana is the big issue of Attempt 1, maybe something that leaves the land behind would solve the problem. We could introduce a new "Enki" counter to handle our animation, with the following rule:

A land with an Enki counter is a 1/1 creature in addition to its other types. If a creature with an Enki counter would be destroyed, instead remove an Enki counter and all damage from it.

It's important to remove the damage, since damage stays on permanents until end of turn, even if they stop being creatures. Removing the damage prevents the unintuitive case where re-animating the land after combat would have it immediately die from this damage.

I'm still not pleased with this result. Primarily, the need to remove damage, something players usually aren't tracking too closely after combat, adds complexity. Adding new complexity is a big ask for a new counter with special rules, at least without the authority of an official Magic release. Finally, part of the motivation for the mechanic was to see lands hit the graveyard, and this prevents that entirely.

Attempt 3 - Gravebounce

There is a modulation of Attempt 2 that would avoid some of its drawbacks. Unintuitively, "being destroyed" and "dying" are different events in Magic, with the latter involving the card actually going to the graveyard. We could modify our Enki counter rule to take advantage of this:

A land with an Enki counter is a 1/1 creature in addition to its other types. When a creature with an Enki counter dies, return it to the battlefield tapped under its owner's control.

This sort of works. In the process of going to the graveyard the land will lose its counter naturally, so it won't be animated on return. Landfall is very unlikely to show up in the set, so the land re-entering the battlefield is not a major impact.

However, I think this design would warp sacrifice effects entirely. A land that sacrifices itself like Evolving Wilds would need to be balanced for potential infinite recursion. Creature sacrifice effects would need to be weak enough for loops of animate -> sac -> repeat to be reasonable. You could add an intervening "if it wasn't sacrificed" clause into the rules, but then the mechanic just starts to feel clunky. And since all of this is still dependent on a new counter with special rules, there's very little room for clunk.

Reflections

It's not too surprising that it's hard to make "turn all your land into creatures" viable. After all, one of the biggest downsides of animating lands is the increased vulnerability to removal or combat. Sometimes trying to design something fresh leads you to a lot of reasons it hasn't been designed yet. I still kind of like the idea thematically and mechanically, and I'll probably toy with other designs if I think of them; feel free to drop a comment if you've got a way to make it work!