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Mechanic Monday: Out of Mana is On Fire

Well a TTRPG Tuesday didn’t happen last week.  So, I’m back with another Mechanic Monday! And I’m going to keep Out of Mana going, but with a twist: Instead of fitting an existing MtG mechanic into boardgameworld, I’m going the other direction: I’ve made up an MtG mechanic! Now, the more perfect inversion would have been if I’d taken a non-MtG boardgame mechanic and adapted it to MtG, but actually this one’s entirely made up (insofar as any idea is original any more etc etc).  Sue me!

Inflamed Counters

An inflamed counter grants +1/-1 to to the creature it’s on; the effects of multiple inflamed counters are cumulative.  When a creature with inflamed counters deals damage to another creature, that creature gains an inflamed counter.

Short, simple, to the point.  Very thematically fitting for Red, in fact I now realize that +1/-1 is the Flowstone modifier; could also work as -1/-1 if I wanted to distinguish it further.  As is fitting for MtG, it’s not too convoluted in and of itself, the kind of effect that could start out as the ability of a sorcery/instant/creature, before eventually becoming keyworded.  By itself, it changes the combat equation, but I also think that other colours could interact with it in fun ways.  Weak but tough creatures looking to be inflamed for green, or creatures that gain toughness in response to catching fire.  Blue cheaply “dousing” inflamed counters or profiting off of the total number of inflamed counters in play.  Black spells that can exacerbate or mass-bestow inflamed counters.  White spells sacrificing inflamed creatures for life gain.  And of course, the off-the-board stuff I always like: token manipulation/movement, artifacts that siphon off inflamed counters, cards that can spend inflamed counters, cards with special effects if they’re inflamed x (have x inflamed counters on them), global enchantments that inflame everything or affect all inflamed tokens, etc.  Yeah, that’s the good shit.

Well, that’s all for today’s Reverse Out of Mana.  Til tomorrow, which WILL be a TTRPG Tuesday, because I’m going to write it now!

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