JumpSTARt: Battle Royale — Devlog #05: Rhoda
JumpSTARt: Battle Royale is a star-format Jumpstart product for Magic: The Gathering. This blog post is part of a series chronicling its development.
Previous devlogs:
Devlog #00: Kickoff
Devlog #01: Packet Skeleton
Devlog #02: Drafting
Devlog #03: Star-Format-Friendly Mechanics
Devlog #04: “Event” Cards
After five preparatory devlogs, we’re finally jumping into the first JumpSTARt: Battle Royale packet: Rhoda!
Here’s the packet, and design notes are below.
In the previous devlog, Rhoda was assigned multiple voting cards. This was because I thought it’d be cute for one packet among the twenty to care about voting, given all the voting cards that will be present among the packets.
The best color for “voting matters” was white (using two creatures that give you additional votes). From the packets with a white color identity, Rhoda was the best fit for shoehorning this subtheme into.
However, when designing today’s packet, there just wasn’t enough space to fit: voting cards, cards that care about voting, tap effects, and cards that care about tapped creatures. So, I cut the “voting matters” subtheme from Rhoda.
After cutting the voting subtheme, that meant I could swap around the “multiplayer event” card slot (discussed in the previous devlog). I stole Regna’s Sanction from Sylvia (Sylvia will be getting Council’s Judgment).
With losing Council’s Judgment, Rhoda no longer had a way to deal with any nonland permanent, so Topple the Statue was a nice overlap of artifact destruction and a tapping effect for the packet theme. Dawnbringer Cleric complements with optional enchantment destruction.
Arena is a cool, quirky include where it causes tapping along with forcing a fight. It isn’t counted among the packet’s 9 land slots (so, there is 1 Vivid Meadow, 8 Plains, and 1 Arena), since it doesn’t produce mana!
Gideon’s Avenger provides a redundancy in terms of a big reward for caring about creatures getting tapped. There are six cards that cause tapping, and both Rhoda & Gideon’s Avenger reap the benefits. There’s also Take Vengeance as a bonus reward against tapped creatures.
Reminder: every packet needs at least two Warriors and at least one artifact. Runed Servitor helping everyone draw cards is fine, as most players drawing cards are on your team. Additionally, any juicy creatures opponents get can be tapped down.
Yosei and Regna’s Sanction help you close out a game. There’s a lack of combat tricks because all the tap effects means buffing your creatures is less frequently a matter of life or death.
