Gnome Builder
4/11/07
BACK NEXT
Discuss in the Conquest thread!
“Sorry you lost your arm. Here’s a teapot” – Unused flavor text for the previewed rare in today’s article, cut due to space constraints.
With blue, white and black all covered and both enchantments and creatures paired up, we’re left with 2 colors and 2 permanent types left to review. Lands already had a bit of a preview and we’ll get into greater detail with them on Friday when I preview green. Today’s article is going to detail the artifact color – red.
Like black’s creature interaction, red has a lot of neat relationships with artifacts that I was eager to exploit. It’s most obvious one is how the color likes to destroy them. But not only that, it likes to destroy its own artifacts as well. I took the idea and pushed it to a natural conclusion. Conquest Red will have a lot of spells that require you destroy an artifact for the effect, but it won’t care who controls the artifact in question. I also used this concept and made artifact creatures that have a crash and burn flavor to them.
These sorts of artifacts are very red in flavor. So Mr, Blood Pet 2.0 here sacrifices for red mana. Red creatures in the set will interact with playing artifacts, destroying them, equipping them, etc. They will also have a crash and burn flavor, but more in the style of kids breaking their toys. Overloader is an example of this interaction. Take note that it lets you destroy your opponent’s artifacts just as easily as your own.
In order to capitalize on this theme I realized that I would need to include a lot of common artifacts in Conquest, otherwise red wouldn’t play right. And the artifacts that are most likely to be common are mana fixers, artifact creatures and equipment. That last one also has the benefit of its own subtype and with Wake already in the set, equipment’s a natural fit with Conquest. So a majority of the common artifacts are Equipment. I particularly like the flavor of this and the “kid’s breaking their toys” idea.
I couldn’t make an ungodly amount of artifacts though. How else could I strengthen this color focus? I could make more artifact lands (there are a few) or I could make colored artifacts, which is what I did, sort of. Conquest introduces a new keyword, Mechanize, that provides spells with an alternate casting cost. This cost can only be paid using mana from artifact sources and if the spell is a permanent it will come into play as an artifact in addition to its types.
This mechanic offers two distinct benefits. First it makes artifacts matter for another reason because they can reduce the cost of your spells. And when a creature comes into play as an artifact because of mechanize, it provides another target for you to destroy for an effect. Now nothing says mechanize is a red-only ability, in effect far from it. But by introducing it in red to start, it really establishes the theme I focused upon. With that in mind – look at today’s rare
If this card could be any color, what color would YOU have made it? This is just a philosophical question, but it’s one I had with myself during development. I wrote up the pros and cons for all colors and in the end felt red was a very good candidate. You really want it in a color that can use it, but not break it. A color that won’t curve out at four mana creatures. A color where the creatures will cost 1, 2, 3 or 5+. And you also want to pick a color where it fits flavorfully (so green is out.) I also knocked out blue because I don’t want to give it a means to play cheap creatures. Anyway, because red remains a strong choice, I ultimately put the card in the set.
Join me on Friday for the last preview article and then early next week when the whole spoiler will be available to view and read. Also, be sue to check out the third part of Wamyc's review article and Discuss in the Conquest thread!