Yet another wedge faction! I might try something a bit different next week, but this is what you get for now.

Mmm, flavour

Today’s faction (let’s call them the Vanguard for now) is the one I had the clearest picture of where they’d fit into the set’s story from an early stage. While the other four factions come from the same general area, the Vanguard is originally from another region. On a mission to conquer new lands, they end up clashing with the other factions, and generally stirring up the mess that’ll be the story for this set/block. In general, I imagined them as a warlike faction, with relatively advanced tactics and equipment.

Naturally, I wanted a mechanic that would showcase this aspect of the faction. Most of my original ideas for a RWU mechanic either didn’t fit the flavour I was going for, or simply didn’t have enough interesting design space. I ended up finding what I was looking for among the future-shifted cards from Future Sight (and no, I didn’t assemble any contraptions): Fortify. Since this mechanic only appears on a single card, I imagine not everyone has seen it: it’s essentially just equipment for lands. This felt appropriate, since the Vanguard would likely establish outposts and the like. One issue still remained: the mechanic ended up being a bit too defensive, and I wanted something to offset that. Following the same themes as above, I felt that simply adding (colored) Equipment would be a simple way to address this.

Double take So, the Vanguard faction essentially has two mechanics. Do they both fit into each of the colours? Equipment is easy enough: red and white are the colours that care about equipment the most, and blue is the number one artifact colour. Fortifications are a bit harder: mechanically, the closest comparison would be to land enchantments. There are relatively few of these, and most recent ones belong to one of three categories: five color cycles, green ramp/fixing, and blue/black land hate. With green’s hate for artifacts, this is pretty much a wash. Flavourfully, defenders might be a bit closer. Here we find that white and blue are the top two colors, and red is essentially tied with green for third place. This, combined with the various defensive enchantments in these colors (such as Lightmine Field, Dissipation Field, and Circle of Flame), makes me think that this is indeed a good fit.

Fortifications – how do they work? To make Fortifications feel right, they need to be somehow different from plain enchantments. This is mainly done by caring about the state of the fortified land. As opposed to creatures, lands generally don’t do much more than become tapped or untapped, meaning there’s only so many options for ways to trigger/enable these fortifications. I also wanted to make the choice of where to put the fortification a bit more interesting. For one, having tap triggers that want to be used at different times means you probably want those fortifications on different lands. Fortifications that care about the land being untapped are also an option – you probably don’t want Sunblessed Gate on the same land as Molten Moat. Messing with how the land untaps can also be interesting:

… and my axe! (or, you know, sword) Making colored equipment is a bit tricky: between regular auras and colorless equipment, most mechanical space is already covered. Some of the existing ones are pretty much just auras (Behemoth Sledge vs. Unflinching Courage), and the line between colored and non-colored is definitely blurred (Not quite as similar, but Mask of Riddles vs. Mask of Memory). I ended up going for mostly combat-triggered, spell-like effects. The former differentiates it somewhat from most auras, while the latter has a decent amount of color-specific design space that doesn’t appear on most equipment cards. Cards like Sword of X and Y already work in this mechanical space, but those effects are clearly tied to specific colors.

Prepared for war Of course, other cards also care about fortifications and/or equipment. So far, there’s nothing really fancy about these cards; they’re just something to tie the faction together. This Townguard Recruit also shows that not everyone is opposed to being conquered. The civilian towns in the area were usually not in a good position to defend themselves against the Cult or other attackers, and many appreciate the protection offered by the Vanguard. To finish off, the obligatory rare: