Keyword Challenge

Goes on an expedition: this/that creature joins an expedition on the battlefield or starts a new expedition.







Going on an expedition is a mechanic similar to venturing into the dungeon. It brings out a specific kind of card from out of play, and you go through sections of it to gain various relatively small benefits. With this kind of mechanic, the sheer variety of effects that could be found in a dungeon or in this case on an expedition, without being tied to any given theme or color, means that it might not to be wise to expect a specific interaction between the creature and the expedition other than in both existing. As such, in most cards outside of the expeditions themselves, the main variety would come from the various ways of triggering the expedition. That being said, there are some key differences between dungeons and expeditions.







The rules for expeditions are as follows:

• Creatures, not you, go on expeditions. They start an expedition when they bring a new expedition onto the battlefield. They join an expedition when they join one which is already on the battlefield. They are in an expedition so long as they've started or joined an expedition and both cards remain on the field. They leave an expedition when this expedition ends.
• The same way dungeons have rooms, expeditions have quests. However, while venturing into the dungeon progresses the dungeon to the next room, expeditions instead progress by completing the conditions in the current quest. When that condition is met, the expedition progresses to one of the next quests. When the last condition is met, the expedition ends.
• Unless a timeframe is mentioned (such as "this turn"), you start counting to meet the conditions of a quest only once you've started the quest. Thus the quests of each individual expedition are only active one at a time and are never simultaneously completed, though in some cases they might be completed immediately following the previous (such as if the condition is not an action but a state and you're already in that state by the time you start the quest).
• You can have any number of active expeditions, and any number of creatures on any given expedition, though you may only have one expedition with the same name on the battlefield, and each creature can only be in one expedition at a time.

I also think rather than using the dungeon template, expeditions might use their own template. I, however, lack the time or skills to make a whole new template, so... Yeah I make do with what I have.







Now, while many expeditions will function similarly to dungeons, being connected to specific creatures means that you can mention those creatures for effects. Creatures on a given expedition will be occasionally mentioned or even targeted for the conditions or benefits of the expedition. Also like dungeons, some expeditions will be simpler and more linear, while others will give you choice. Often benefits and conditions will play into one another to make it easier to meet conditions or otherwise more in line with the kind of plan you'd be going for if you're meeting those conditions anyway.








Despite what I mentioned earlier about the source of variety in the mechanic itself, there are other ways to interact with it, though they may at times have less to do with the keyword itself. One of the most clear ways is to send creatures that ordinarily wouldn't have the mechanic on expeditions themselves. Another is to mess with the rules for expeditions.

Discovering new locations is a part of travelling, right?

Mobilize: Until end of turn, this/that creature gets +1/+0 and can attack as though it didn’t have defender.



Mobilize is largely something which already exists in the form of letting creatures with defender attack as though they didn't have it. I felt adding the +1/+0 would help make this mechanic it's own thing rather than just a rewording (though keywording something has its own value), plus there is some intuition to it as many defender creatures have 0 power. So mobilizing your walls always turns them into something that can actually do something with that attack.


That being said, while largely meant for walls, it can also put big stuff into a position to attack where before they couldn't because defender was the tradeoff for their big body (which admittedly, can lower design space for defender creatures, but also opens some as they now have a bigger chance to be able to attack at some point). It also isn't necessarily only usable on defender creatures, since even others might benefit from the +1/+0 bonus.



Lastly, this mechanic has great synergy with effects that make a creature assign damage with toughness, as many defender creatures will have much higher toughness than power.