General What are your favorite mechanics that merge Cool Things with Winning Things?

[landofMordor]

I was thinking today about why I like these cards so much:


I realized it's because they make players feel smart and cool in the same way that other A+B synergies do (Winding Constrictor or Merfolk of the Pearl Trident to name a couple), but their requirement in deckbuilding/draft is simply "make decisions that align with generally optimal Magic strategy".*

In this case, in order to maximize the payoff of the two "double-spell-matters" cards, the pilot could draft a good mana curve, draft fixing lands to cast their spells on time, and maximize their mana usage such that they can double-spell. But double-spelling, mana efficiency, and mana curves are already some of the best heuristics for winning at Limited!*

What are some of your favorite designs, mechanics, and abilities which create "synergy payoffs" for things Magic players should already be doing in the first place**? Discuss below!

---

* For sake of a mutually intelligible discussion, it's probably best to restrict ourselves to the kinds of Magic strategy that might get discussed in Next Level Deckbuilding, Limited Resources, or another similarly universal resource. Riptiders are great at cultivating formats where general wisdom doesn't always hold, but discussing those nuances across different contexts may be intractable.
** Context: My playgroup is made up of a rotating clientele of varying skill levels, and my format is fast/powerful enough that these handholds go a long way in helping unskilled players make good decisions and come away from drafts happier.

 

[landofMordor]

Here's some more of my favorites:

> Lurrus of the Dream-Den pays off players who are paying attention to their mana curve
> Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse pays off players who play cantrips to shave on land count and increase consistency (the Miracle mechanic does this, too, but I find it to be higher-variance in an unappealing way)
> the Landfall mechanic incentivizes players to make better mulligan and sequencing decisions (this one is incredibly subtle, which I love!)

 

[blacksmithy]

You already mentioned most of mine!
I also like…
“play multicolored spells” on Hero of P1, Niv, and General Ferrous;
Delirium/Goyf/Delve as a reward for taking many game actions quickly;
stuff with flash and instant speed activated abilities (CLUESSSSS) to reward holding up counter/doom blade mana

 

[landofMordor]

You already mentioned most of mine!
I also like…
“play multicolored spells” on Hero of P1, Niv, and General Ferrous;
Delirium/Goyf/Delve as a reward for taking many game actions quickly;
stuff with flash and instant speed activated abilities (CLUESSSSS) to reward holding up counter/doom blade mana

General Ferrous is my new best friend. Love that ability (and ofc, it works at its best in fixing-dense, gold-dense formats)

Delirium and Delve play this "synergy" role especially well in the draft/deckbuilding phase of the game, which is nice.

And on the subject of Clues, a friend and I tried Hard Evidence yesterday, initially being like "i'm not sure if this is good enough" and by the end being like "oh yeah this card slapped; it's a total heater"

 

[blacksmithy]

respect the craaaaaab

 

[sigh]

That last paragraph is putting the squeeze on. I have no familiarity with what any of the "mainstream" MTG resources talk about. But going off of what I perceive as "playing the game gud",

Etc. Landcycling in general is a huge boon to "consistency", "sequencing", "fixing" and the like.

 

[blacksmithy]

basic

That last paragraph is putting the squeeze on. I have no familiarity with what any of the "mainstream" MTG resources talk about.

Cliff’s Notes for limited:
-don’t leave unspent mana on the table
-don’t mulligan
-don’t draft a bunch of stuff that doesn’t affect the board
-do draft a bunch of stuff that can get into play early and get you ahead

there’s probably other stuff i forget

 

[landofMordor]

That last paragraph is putting the squeeze on. I have no familiarity with what any of the "mainstream" MTG resources talk about. But going off of what I perceive as "playing the game gud",

Etc. Landcycling in general is a huge boon to "consistency", "sequencing", "fixing" and the like.

lol really i was speaking to the fact that we're all capable of building cubes where Winding Constrictor's synergy yields more win% than things that Magic cares about more generally, like curving out, mana efficiency, etc. No worries.

Your example of Cycling is extremely apt. The modality of the spell helps fit into many places in the curve (helps mana efficiency), and landcycling in particular helps the consistency of one's deck. Interestingly, though, Cycling isn't an "A+B synergy deck" unless one has payoffs like Drake Haven, Delve, or Delirium.

And I guess that's what makes Delve/Delirium/Threshold good in my book, is that they ask players to put modal, cheap cards into their deck. Drake Haven is a bridge too far for me personally, since my players tend to trigger the Haven as many times as possible without regard for whether it's strategically correct to just play a big Angel instead

To @blacksmithy 's point about keeping most hands, Once Upon a Time excels at turning bad hands into auto-keeps, and this is another class of cards that, while they don't provide "synergy" per se, do streamline one specific aspect of the Magic game engine's randomness.

 

[Chriskool]

Magecraft. As alluded to in other posts, casting multiple spells is sweet. I hope everyone gets to experience the delight that is Replicate with an incremental Magecraft trigger.

Instant (or flash) spells. Interacting outside of main phases is sweet (especially when it isn't same boring Terminate effect).



Entombing. Tutoring to the graveyard for effect is sweet. Bonus points when it's not just some huge creature to reanimate.



Untapping creatures. Assembling two-plus-card combos on a frail creature is sweet ... unless it is infinite Splinter Twinish. That's just rude stuff! Sometimes even pseudo-vigilance is sweet.

I implore everyone in lower-power environments to see a dentist after indulging in the above.

 

[japahn]

While I agree the "double spell" synergies are a mechanic that feels good, I have an alternative explanation.

I wouldn't go as far as saying they encourage building and drafting optimally for win rate, but they definitely encourage drafting cheap cards.

- Cheap cards have higher agency, because their sequencing is more flexible and they are less prone to clunky mana.
- Double spell encourages players to skip lines that are normally the optimal one and be mana efficient in other ways. Sequencing is usually about advancing your position as much as possible in your turn, but Clarion Spirit says "hey, if you don't play that 1 drop on T1, I could reward you with a token". That makes sequencing decisions more ambiguous.
- Double spell works well with mana sinks, like equip costs, boast
- Drafting around double spell feels more creative than A+B mechanics. This feeling of discovery of a deck instead of implementing one that was designed by the cube designer favors these synergies.

Ultimately, I think I like these cards not because decks drafted around them tend to be stronger but because they tend to feel more active, because the experience is open (not railroaded) and because they turn lines of play in ways that only storm does. The feeling of controlling the pace of your development is powerful.

--------

Another mechanic that is similar in these aspects is equipment, particularly cheap equipment.



- Choosing when and what to equip is often an interesting choice framed in a simple way.
- Equipment synergizes with creatures, particularly cheap ones. Most is colorless, so what to combine it with is quite open.
- Equipment acts as late game resilience for aggro decks, turning bad topdecks into legitimate threats.
Edit:
- Equipment alters the value of resources. All creatures go up in value in a flat proportion, though it has to be spaced out over a number of turns.
- Equipment lets you control the tempo of your development. Do you equip to remove profitable blocks and go for blood or do you develop wider? It's a short term damage vs long term width decision. Small board vs large board voting. Do you keep attacking with only the equipped creatures or do you go for an alpha strike? Long term value vs short term pressure.

--------

What do you think of Chapin's Next Level series by the way? I've looked at it a number of times but never pulled the trigger to buy it.

 

[blacksmithy]

one thing i’d note is that cheap spells are better than expensive spells, based on non rotating constructed
EDIT: hit post by mistake, but that’s my explanation for why double spell is a good archetype in high power cubes. high power = cheap mana costs = easier to double spell.

also i can’t believe i forgot magecraft, what a killer build around. i am so thankful that strixhaven finally pulled it into all five colors

 

[sigh]

I wonder how much of that is intrinsic to "the best way to win a game of mtg", and how much is just because WotC has a long history of making mistakes with cheap spells.

 

[blacksmithy]

I wonder how much of that is intrinsic to "the best way to win a game of mtg", and how much is just because WotC has a long history of making mistakes with cheap spells.

both!
editing to be less glib: the two phenomena feed into each other, and additionally, i believe wizards intentionally drives development of cheap cards to tend towards greater competitive viability than more expensive cards. it just makes sense, why would you want a tournament where everyone just land passes until the mid game? you want people to start playing turn one.

 

[landofMordor]

I wonder how much of that is intrinsic to "the best way to win a game of mtg", and how much is just because WotC has a long history of making mistakes with cheap spells.

Mostly this is because spending X mana on 1 card typically provides less rate than spending X mana on 2 cards. Spending 2 mana on 2 Shocks gets more damage out than spending 2 mana on 1 Lightning Strike. Spending 4 mana on 2 Tarmogoyfs gives more stats than buying one Nullhide Ferox with that 4 mana. 2 mana for 2 Preordains sees more cards than any UU draw spell possibly could. And so forth. (@blacksmithy did a good job of explaining this, too.)

Double spell encourages players to skip lines that are normally the optimal one and be mana efficient in other ways. Sequencing is usually about advancing your position as much as possible in your turn, but Clarion Spirit says "hey, if you don't play that 1 drop on T1, I could reward you with a token". That makes sequencing decisions more ambiguous.

The same could be said for any synergy, I think. Winding Constrictor says, "hey you should use Basri Ket's +1 this turn" even if the -2 is more strategically correct. To say nothing of a card like Cemetery Reaper, who says "hey you should draft and maindeck a lot of mediocre Zombies" it's a spectrum for sure, but in general I think the synergies of double-spell cards are closer to good Magic strategy than not.

I like your example of Equipment along these lines, too.

And, the Next Level series is solidly okay out of 10. I learned some excellent things, but at the same time I had to put up with a lot of mediocre editing and a lot of "he" pronouns to refer to "all Magic players".

 

[sigh]

Spending 2 mana on 2 Shocks gets more damage out than spending 2 mana on 1 Lightning Strike. Spending 4 mana on 2 Tarmogoyfs gives more stats than buying one Nullhide Ferox with that 4 mana.

That just points right back to the original question, because Tarmogoyf is almost always ludicrously above curve in the formats where it's legal, and arguably a mistake in design. I would play Nullhide Ferox over Grizzly Bears, for instance.

And two shocks is indeed more damage than one Lightning strike, but also twice the cards, which is an important tension in deckbuilding too. There are only up to four shocks in a deck, and it doesn't draw you a card when you use it. To kill a three toughness creature is 2-for-1-ing yourself with Shocks but an even trade with the Strike. That parallel can be extended to higher damage amounts with things like Exquisite Firecraft or stoke the flames, which can kill something as big as two shocks can for half the card investment.

Shock was in the same standard as the original Lighting Strike, and as far as I can remember Lightning Strike saw quite a bit more play than Shock did.

 

[japahn]

Mostly this is because spending X mana on 1 card typically provides less rate than spending X mana on 2 cards. Spending 2 mana on 2 Shocks gets more damage out than spending 2 mana on 1 Lightning Strike. Spending 4 mana on 2 Tarmogoyfs gives more stats than buying one Nullhide Ferox with that 4 mana. 2 mana for 2 Preordains sees more cards than any UU draw spell possibly could. And so forth. (@blacksmithy did a good job of explaining this, too.)

This points at a tempo-bottlenecked environment, where card advantage is secondary. Yes, all contemporary constructed environments tend to be like that, and in particular modern and legacy. Not all contemporary limited environments are like that, though.

The same could be said for any synergy, I think. Winding Constrictor says, "hey you should use Basri Ket's +1 this turn" even if the -2 is more strategically correct. To say nothing of a card like Cemetery Reaper, who says "hey you should draft and maindeck a lot of mediocre Zombies" it's a spectrum for sure, but in general I think the synergies of double-spell cards are closer to good Magic strategy than not.

I didn't mean that the double spell deck suggests you to take a suboptimal line. I meant that it flips the lines that are suboptimal into being optimal, which is a good thing. Other synergies generally don't do that in gameplay, though they do during drafting.

And, the Next Level series is solidly okay out of 10. I learned some excellent things, but at the same time I had to put up with a lot of mediocre editing and a lot of "he" pronouns to refer to "all Magic players".

Guess I'll read it anyways because there's nothing else. Been putting this off for 10 years...

 

[blacksmithy]

That just points right back to the original question, because Tarmogoyf is almost always ludicrously above curve in the formats where it's legal, and arguably a mistake in design. I would play Nullhide Ferox over Grizzly Bears, for instance.

it’s very cool that there is room in the cube world for cubes where tarmogoyf is a ludicrously pushed design mistake and fir cubes where tarmogoyf is a good standard beater at almost exactly the correct power level for the environment.

 

[landofMordor]

This points at a tempo-bottlenecked environment, where card advantage is secondary. Yes, all contemporary constructed environments tend to be like that, and in particular modern and legacy. Not all contemporary limited environments are like that, though.


I didn't mean that the double spell deck suggests you to take a suboptimal line. I meant that it flips the lines that are suboptimal into being optimal, which is a good thing. Other synergies generally don't do that in gameplay, though they do during drafting.


Guess I'll read it anyways because there's nothing else. Been putting this off for 10 years...

Yep, my format is absolutely tempo-bottlenecked (and this is why I don't tend to experience what @sigh mentions in my format -- instead, people deploy their cheap cards, reload through snowballing permanents like Uro or Liliana, and then do it again). This paradigm, where cheap spells make other cheap spells better, is one of my favorite ways to play Magic (and I also love the sequences where the stars align and i just dismantle my opponent's defenses to smash out a turn 4 win).

It's funny that you value turning optimal plays into suboptimal ones, because I value Berserker precisely because it encourages optimal drafting/deckbuilding/gameplay. Again, in my tempo-forward format, everybody has enough 1-drops so that they don't need to make suboptimal decisions in order to trigger these.

Thanks for the thoughts!

 

[ravnic]

It's funny, but as a designer AND player, I've always been more intrigued by cards and mechanics that make you wanna do usually suboptimal things. And it goes beyond just preferring zombies about better non-zombies because I might have picked up a Cemetery Reaper.



Discarding cards from my hand is bad, right? Hey wait, does this mean this two-drop is bad? And what about this weird madness mechanic?



You'll lose when you mill yourself, don't you? ... don't you?



I'm even one of the few players who LOVES drawbacks. They just immediately make me think, how I could turn them into an advantage. Something like these is just igniting my thoughts:



I even liked the hellbent mechanic from Dissension, and it's a big part of Rakdos' identity in my ravnica cube.



I'd even go as far and say, that cards that make people want to do things, that are correct under normal circumstances anyway, sounds kinda boring. At least not explicitly tempting. Because it will be correct to use your mana every turn and run a low curve anyway in 90% (or more) of situations, so I don't need Clarion Spirit to make it correct. I'd rather increase the variance in what the correct play is to make things more challenging and interesting, and have games play out differently.

 

[landofMordor]

It's funny, but as a designer AND player, I've always been more intrigued by cards and mechanics that make you wanna do usually suboptimal things.

**good examples**

I'm glad those things are things you enjoy about the game! My inner Johnny also loves this kind of stuff. But as a designer, I'm explicitly looking for cards which help unskilled players learn solid gameplay fundamentals ("play your lands", "don't first-main your instants", "build a mana curve") just by following the synergies of their cards.

I know Riptiders can provide many, many excellent counterexamples of mechanics that make for fun & divergent choices, but for now I am merely hoping to harness RTL's exhaustive expertise on Magic's mechanics to answer the stated question. I was trying to be cogent in the OP, so I didn't state this quite as clearly as I could have -- sorry about that! I've edited OP to reflect this.

I'd even go as far and say, that cards that make people want to do things, that are correct under normal circumstances anyway, sounds kinda boring. At least not explicitly tempting. Because it will be correct to use your mana every turn and run a low curve anyway in 90% (or more) of situations, so I don't need Clarion Spirit to make it correct. I'd rather increase the variance in what the correct play is to make things more challenging and interesting, and have games play out differently.

I appreciate that skilled players like yourself may find this trivial, but again, my situation is very different.

Since my playgroup is essentially a medium-sized LGS's casual EDH regulars, my players are those who do, in fact, need this kind of incentive, and who (quite frankly, and with all the love towards their casual engagement with the game) aren't skilled enough to ever realize that Clarion Spirit is harnessing their low-win-percentage EDH impulses (like "every deck needs card draw, ramp, and an EDHREC-approved Synergy") to make them better at 1v1.

I really do love your examples, though, and they've reminded me of several other mechanics, most notably Bloodthirst and Raid (on an ETB). I love that these remind players to keep their mana open during combat.

 

[blacksmithy]

raid is such a good teaching mechanic, shame it’s on like exactly one decent card

 

[ravnic]

@landofMordor

Hey, your playgroups happiness is always the biggest goal, including yourself, but not above others. And when your idea of building mechanics like these into your cube helps them to have more fun, that's upside only. I didn't meant to come of as offensive in my post and I totally think you're a skilled enough designer to know what you aredoing and why.

However, I think everyone here (surely including myself) has been in the situation where you've implemented an idea into your cube, which even could've been a good idea, but then you realize that there is also a downside to it. I just wanted to show, that approaching things from a very different side might be a better idea for some designers/playgroups. And since many others might read these threads, I thought it would be good to have one post with a contradicting point of view. I didn't plan to further argue against you or anything, now that I made one post showing that a very different approach can also be the right call for someone.

Of course it's also a matter of personal taste. I for one feel like the noobies among my players do well enough without me trying to teach them correct plays via mechanics, but it could also be that my low power level is more forgiving.

...

HOWEVER, someone could argue that sweet mechanics like flashback and it's variants do both. They promote a counterintuitive thing (milling yourself or even discarding cards from your hand) but also teach players important lessons about magic (use your graveyard as a resource, value 2-for-1s...).

 

[landofMordor]

@ravnic

Sure, no worries. I appreciate your clarification. And yes, it’s good to see all sides of a design choice including downsides and alternatives, so thank you for providing that!

 

[LadyMapi]

I think "downside" mechanics like Hellbent also serve a very important teaching purpose. A lot of new players are, quite frankly, afraid of milling themselves/discarding cards/losing life. Giving them opportunities to do so and feel good about it helps address those fears.

That's actually one of the reasons I like the RG "lands in your graveyard" archetype from MH1:

Obvious Payoffs:


Less Obvious Payoffs:


Picture this: you're new-ish to Magic, and you see this weird card called Scalding Tarn in a pack. Now, you're not sure how good that card is... but you picked up Ore-Scale Guardian earlier, because it's a BIG DRAGON. And, hey, Scalding Tarn adds a land card to your graveyard, making your dragon cheaper! Everything's coming up Millhouse!

 

[landofMordor]

Interesting points, @LadyMapi .

Your life payment example is a great one -- it enables a fetch/shock manabase, it leads to treating life-as-resource, and it's a part of powerful cards like Sign in Blood or Gitaxian Probe. So it's an important skill to learn. But does that mean Font of Agonies or Spell Snuff are cards that teach this skill in a useful way? I don't think so, although I struggle to articulate why -- perhaps it's because these cards teach players that having the low life total is what matters, where it's really that life is a resource to be spent that matters. They incentivize as if the synergy is the only thing which makes the game action good, rather than the other way 'round.

So, counter to my prior example, Kird Ape combined with Steppe Lynx and Wild Nacatl may be enough to teach players to fetch/shock for what the game action gets you, not what the game action is. Delve might teach players to freecast GitProbe more often. Powerful snowballing creatures like Luminarch Aspirant may teach players that their board presence often matters more than their life total.

I think the same goes for targeting oneself with Thought Scour, discarding to Collective Brutality or the Evoke elementals, or whatever. Rather than playing Hellbent cards to teach players that being empty-handed is good, I'd like to play Delve or Escape cards to teach them that being empty-handed enables the things they should already be doing.

I don't know -- I'm clearly undermining my original argument for Clarion Spirit, which pays off the game action of double-spelling in and of itself.

Or maybe I'm convincing myself that really this is just a looooong spectrum of incentive structure and synergy. Synergy is really nothing more than incentive, and the issue is whether a given "incentive" aligns with what is strategically correct for a given environment. In my cube, the incentive structure closely aligns to what's good in Constructed Magic, but I'm realizing that there's not much fundamentally different about that contrived format vs. an equally contrived format like Eldrazi Domain, despite a very different end result. (The sole difference is epistemological: we all have access to the same knowledge about Constructed, but our knowledge about our cubes is unique and somewhat inscrutable to outsiders.)