[Workshop Wednesday] Tragedy

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! It's Workshop Wednesday, which means we're going behind the scenes on custom Magic designs. This week, it's the Tragedy mechanic!

    Tragedy is an alternate-cost mechanic that appears on instants and sorceries, allowing them to be cast when they're put into the graveyard from your library. That most often means mill, but it also triggers off of effects like Dark Bargain and Gifts Ungiven.

    Tragedy is inspired by Miracle, a similar mechanic from Avacyn Restored that allowed you to cast a spell for a much lower cost if it was the first card you drew in a turn. Interestingly, cards can break their normal timing restrictions when cast with Miracle. The same loophole is intended for Tragedy (and technically, I think it has to work that way to work at all, but don't quote me on that).

    Tragedy has some strange balancing concerns. On the one hand, it essentially allows you to draw cards by allowing you to cast cards that aren't in your hand. On the other hand, they have a severe setup cost-- unless you build around it, you're not going to trigger Tragedy very often. In a way, they act like Flashback cards, but only when you mill them.

    In my mind, there are two ways to implement this mechanic. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but it could be... a Sultai faction mechanic. How many of those have I made at this point? To be fair, it would also work in any of the Sultai color pairs, but the flavor feels like it belongs in black.

    Alternately, it could work in an environment where mill/self-mill is a core theme. For example, a set with Surveil and Explore would be able to justify it mechanically. It would also work with some sort of self-mill artifact token, but it would probably have to do more than just mill you. (And yes, it works with Dredge, but maybe a little too well.)

    At its introduction, Miracle appeared on 4 uncommons, 4 rares, and 3 mythics. Even for a small set, that's a reeeally low ASFA. Meanwhile, Dark Ascension-- another small set in the same block-- featured 6 commons, 8 uncommons, and 6 rares with flashback. In a standard large set, I could see Tragedy having 5-7 commons, 6-8 uncommons, and a few rares. I imagine Tragedy being closer to the former, but appearing on commons and garnering a slightly higher ASFAN for it.

    Even though Tragedy only goes on instants and sorceries, it can still produce creature tokens to affect the board. It could also just, you know, go on creatures, but I feel like it's important for mechanics to have identities. Tragedy is an instant/sorcery mechanic. It could be something else, but it's not.

    

    There are plenty of ways to make interesting and powerful designs with this mechanic, but Play Design would have a field day with it. Free spells and free cards can become problematic faster than you can say "Companion." I feel like it would take a lot of fine tuning to avoid issues in Constructed, but I feel like it could be worthwhile.

    That's all for this week! What do you think of the Tragedy mechanic? What would you design with it? What's your favorite "Looks like dredge has a new toy" mechanics? Let us know below or over on the sub here!

    This Friday, we're continuing our series on Festival of Urbestia by debuting not one, but two new mechanics, so stay tuned! If you missed it, we started the Integration Stage last week. If you weren't feeling it before, things have changed, so maybe give it another shot. Next week, we've got a Monday Musing coming up on resource systems in game design, so check it out if you're interested!

See you soon!