Hello all, and sorry for the missed Sprite Art Saturday yesterday. A huge winter storm hit my area yesterday, so I haven’t been able to be on my computer much at all. I’ve got my eye on a big piece to finish for next week’s Sprite Art Saturday to make up for it, though!
Today on Unsolicited Design Sunday, I wanted to take a look at an idea that was submitted to Mark Rosewater’s excellent blog–a battle that can be your commander. Mark raises an excellent question. What would the flavor for a battle commander be? Commanders are legendary creatures that lead an army, while the battles we’ve seen (sieges) are broad scale conflicts that end with the victor claiming control of a tactical advantage, be that a combatant, weapon, or spell. The overlap seems to lie in the siege flipping into the legendary creature, so let’s start there.
One thing several users pointed out that if the legendary creature could transform into the siege, the card wouldn’t need another line of text to say it could be your commander. The flavor there is that the creature’s death or capture sparks the battle, and then, by winning the battle, they return in full force. It brings to mind a god for the creature type, since gods are known for their regenerative power. Maybe an Amonkheti god, newly born during the Phyrexian war from among the reborn population of the plane?
This starts to build up a mechanical identity as well. To be a battle commander, we want to target a Temur (RUG) color identity, since those colors were the most connected with battles during MOM limited and so have the most non-battle cards that work with battles in that set. It’s possible we’ll also see more RG or UG support for transformed cards in limited environments even without battles. If we see a non-Temur color identity for battles matter, I may revisit this idea. (All colors have access to battles, of course, but I suspect they’ll have more synergy in certain colors like enchantments in GW(B), instants and sorceries in RU, equipment in WR, and planeswalkers in WUR.) As an Amonkheti god, our siege commander will fit one of two archetypes: indestructible, with a keyword ability, a restriction on attacking and blocking, and a related activated ability, or no keywords, a synergistic activated and triggered ability, and the ability to return to hand.
For today’s design, I’d like to keep it more similar to the original Amonkhet god cycle, rather than Bolas’ corrupted gods. That means we have to start with indestructibility, plus a keyword ability. I like flying as the keyword ability. It’s simple, elegant, and reasonably in-pie for Temur, and it helps flip your battles. The restriction on attacking and blocking seems fairly obvious–our god can only attack battles. (Preventing it from blocking feels unnecessary and wordy. I’d revisit that if non-siege battles were released.) Since that’s a huge downside, above-rate stats are certainly in order. Lastly, our activated ability will turn the god into a siege.
When the siege version enters the battlefield, we’ll want it to have an ability that’s worth the cost of losing our god temporarily, something that adds to the board even after the siege is gone. Perhaps the god’s followers join the fight as tokens, with a variation on afflict that affects battles? Since Temur is more about going tall than going wide in general, perhaps an army token could be a good way to capture that idea in one large token dripping with Amonkheti flavor. I’m envisioning something like a 3/3 red army creature token with “When this creature becomes blocked, it deals 2 damage to any battle it is attacking.” That’s an effect that’s probably worth somewhere in the vicinity of 4 mana. We could add a temporary boost to tokens to the transform ability to give the activation a little more oomph.
Looking at the mana values of battles at the moment, there’s an odd lull at 3, which was a pretty common mv in the original Amonkhet god cycle. A 3 mana 5/4 seems reasonably in order, considering it can only attack battles. Rounding out the design with some flavor, I like the idea of an aven-like god like Kefnet considering he flies–maybe a falcon, evocative of the Egyptian god Horus. Looking into historical names of Horus, I find Heru-pa-khered translated as Horus the Younger, so our young upstart god will be named Khered.
And there’s my first take on a siege commander! See you next week!