[FUR Friday] Integration Stage, Pt II: Debuting Vicious and Commerce

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a world of beastfolk, we're kicking of the Integration stage by introducing two new mechanics. We're going to discuss what left and why, and then we'll talk about Vicious and Commerce.

Funeral for a Friend

    First up, we have to say goodbye to a mechanic. Suit Up, originally Craft, was a keyword action that allowed the player to create one of two equipment tokens. One granted +1/+1, the other +0/+2, and both had equip 2. The idea was that the tokens would have different arts, allowing you to customize your creatures aesthetically and mechanically. 

    There are three problems with Suit Up. First, the tracking can be a pain-- when you have the tokens, it's fine, but if you don't, you're trying to remember which penny is a Claw and which is a Pelt. On online clients, it can be hard to tell at a glance which is which when they're stacked. The math also got to be tricky when there were multiple on the board.

    The second problem is functional. Because it sticks around, equipment can lead to repetitive gameplay. I kill your big creature, the equipment fall off, you re-equip, and I'm in the same position I was before. This is compounded with Pelts, which could create board stalls with high-toughness creatures, and even if you break the stall, your opponent can turtle up again without losing any value.

    The third problem is flavor. While a fur-suiting mechanic seems like a dead ringer, there's something off about the idea of animals... dressing as other animals. The aesthetic was meant to be more like ceremonial tribal costumes, but getting away from the flavor of costumes also subtracts from the impact of the mechanic.

The Conflict

    If we're not using Suit Up, we have a hole in our mechanics. An artifact-token-shaped hole that informed a significant portion of the set's structure. What could replace it?

    After last week's shift, I've been thinking in terms of factions. The set's conflict is Nature versus Civilization. We have treasures and an artifacts-matter theme that makes sense for the Civilization side, so whatever replaces Suit Up will need to represent the Nature side.

    So we need something to do with artifacts that represents Nature. In this context, Nature is less about the natural world and more about the "true" nature of beasts-- their instincts, their way of life, and their struggle for survival.

    I guess you could say... it's in their blood.

Vicious

    Blood turned out to be the answer. Blood represents feral nature, and instinct. It's also an artifact token, which fits the bill for what we're going for.

    Vicious is meant to help distinguish Blood in Urbestia from Blood in Innistrad: Crimson Vow. In Vow, Blood was connected to Vampires as a way to make them feel like Vampires-- sexy, dark, mysterious. Here, it's a little more straightforward-- it's about violence and ferocity.

    In the past, MaRo has talked about the limitations of Blood. While Every color can technically rummage, it's still a red thing. The team focused on letting Red create Blood and letting Black use it for effects. (Every color could make blood, but most got only one card at common that could do so.)

    In keeping with that philosophy, Vicious appears in Red and Green. Green card draw cares about creatures, so this felt like a fair way to let Green make Blood. It also limits the amount of Blood that you can make to keep it from breaking the color pie. If you have multiple instances of Vicious that would trigger at the same time, you can still stack the triggers and sacrifice the tokens one at a time, but having to do it all at once feels like a good compromise.

    A quick side note, Vicious triggers whenever the creature deals combat damage, not just to players. Every time a creature with Vicious attacks or blocks, you're going to make a token unless you have one already.

    This card also shows off ability counters. Those are in the set now too! Self-expression is a core tenet of FUR, and Suit Up facilitated that by allowing you to customize your creatures. Ability counters feel like a cleaner way to do that, both flavorfully and mechanically.

Commerce

    On the other side of the spectrum, we have the Civilization mechanic. Commerce is an ability word that goes on permanents and marks effects that trigger whenever an artifact enters the battlefield under your control. If you read the Vision Design Handoff Document, you'll recognize it as relicfall, the unkeyworded mechanic that tied Treasure and Suit Up together into one neat package. It appears in White and Blue, with maybe just a little splash in Black. 

    While it may seem counterintuitive for the two opposing faction mechanics to play so well together, this synergy actually informs part of the new worldbuilding. Because Black is the midpoint between the two poles, it needed to be able to tie into both. Flavorfully, this takes place in the Black Market.

    If you've ever seen Beastars, you have an idea of what this looks like already. It's hard to form a society when people are constantly eating each other, so that kind of behavior is generally banned in anthropomorphic fiction. Like most banned things, though, that won't stop you if you've got the right connections.

    That's pretty much all there is to say about this one. It's landfall, or constellation, or spellcraft, but for artifacts. It's one of those "How has Wizards not done this already?" mechanics, and hopefully it will stay that way for another year. 

    

    That's all for this week! What do you think of our new mechanics? Are you sad or glad to see Suit Up go? Let  us know in the comments or over on the subreddit here.

    Coming up, Monday's article is all about resource systems in games-- different types, how they function, and how to balance them. On Friday, we're touching up our archetypes to reflect the new mechanics. Until then, check out Wednesday's Workshop article for another cool custom mechanic-- Tragedy, an evil version of Miracle-- or the last Monday Musing on making a game in one hour!

See you soon!