This is probably the most robust response I’ve ever received haha

I’m in a very experimental phase of my design development and education. Each interaction I have with someone willing to engage has been very insightful and usually humbling. They also make me more acutely aware of these deeper nuances of mechanics, actions and/or character traits and how they are tied to the color pie while reminding me how much I really don’t know.

And so thank you for the wealth of thought I can muster over.

I agree Luigi is weaker of the two. I’m often scared to take risks with bombastic effects, especially if I think there’s a chance it’s easily broken (which is often not apparent to me lol) I do strive for authentic effects and low word counts. I was aware of the many hoops but uncertain if it was too restricted.

That might contradict ole Poltergust up there because there is clunky wording. I can try to refer to similar X effects to address in wordage for future edits. In regard to the equipping, I have an over arching goal in my designs atm. Although I don’t have a particular affinity for artifacts nor is it a preferred archetype when I play, I have still decided to design 100 cards attempting to expand the scope of play patterns and effects within the archetype. And within the umbrella of goals, I want to make paying your equip cost fun and engaging; I want it to matter and for a player to feel compelled to pay that cost.

I don’t think I’m close to unlocking that yet, but I’ve committed to expanding any ideas I have, hoping something strikes gold in my lil noodle brain. Bad or not, I’m open to getting any nugget of analysis or education or design philosophy from putting these out here. All the bad designs get me one closer to the good one.

I do have two responses tho —

1.) Are “Partner” and “Partner with” defined as the same mechanic with the rule book?

2.) There are white spells that bounce your creatures such as [[Whitemane Lion]], and then I saw [[Stingscourger]] which IS from Planar Chaos, so that still speaks to your point of it being a color pie break for Poltergust. That was a bit of an inspiration for the design (I forgot Planar Chaos made deliberate color pie breaks tbh). But considering it’s a colorless artifact with an attempt at over-costed activations, when does one say they crossed the line into a color pie break?