Hello reddit! [[The Chain Veil]] was the most interesting Pioneer Masters card I worked on implementing for MTG Arena, so I'm happy to preview it for you.
Both of the abilities involved some new-to-Arena mechanics. The triggered ability involved me teaching our "activate" verb handling about how to behave in a condition phrase - here, to look throughout the history of ability activations for this turn for a loyalty ability's activation whose source was, at the time of activation, a planeswalker. Lots of testing around this for "what about other abilities on planeswalkers?" "What about permanents that weren't planeswalkers but had loyalty abilities, but are planeswalkers now that it's the end step?" And many more in that ilk.
The activated ability is certainly the more fun one. But it's interestingly very different from similar extra-activation abilities like [[Oath of Teferi]] and [[Urza, Planeswalker]]. In particular, each activation of The Chain Veil gives a specific-to-that-activation permission to reuse a planeswalker. In fact, if you use that permission as your first activation of a planeswalker this turn, you've also "used up" one of the normal activations (as those rules just care about how many times you've activated a loyalty ability on that permanent this turn, regardless of whether there was a special permission involved). Of course, I also had to change the normal pruning rule that stops you from activating loyalty abilities too much to make an exception for actions that have a special permission like that of The Chain Veil.
There was also an interesting gramatical challenge for this ability, as "For each planeswalker you control" sounds like it should be iterating over the planeswalkers you currently control, but rather this is a single permission that applies to "the rules of the game" rather than to the individual planeswalkers - basically every time you get priority, this permission looks at the current planeswalkers you control and compares them to the permanents you've already "used up" this permission for. Lots of type-changing testing around this ability, too! While I was working on this, I also cleaned up our "n times this turn" syntax to be open to arbitrary number words.
I hope this card is a lot of fun to play with. Superfriends unite! #wotc_staff
Now they need to print a planeswalker with an "if this is the second time this ability has resolved this turn..." Ability just to cause an annoying and possibly confusing edge case with the Chain Veil's "as though none of its abilities has been activated this turn" clause.
By my understanding of MTG's usage of "as though", The Chain Veil wouldn't interact interestingly with that. The Chain Veil just affects whether you're permitted to activate the ability, not whether that activation actually counts as the first time it was activated this turn. Similar weirdness exists around "as though it were mana of any color." #wotc_staff
to look throughout the history of ability activations for this turn
Apologies if I'm wrong, but isn't it more intuitive to do this check during ability's activation (to check if it's used by a permanent that is currently a planeswalker) instead of going through the entire turn's history?
Could be reasonable. A complication is that the activations count even before The Chain Veil enters the battlefield. And added to that, we prefer not to load the code for abilities that aren't currently in the game - if you were to get The Chain Veil from some sort of conjuration effect, we want those old activations to count even if The Chain Veil's code wasn't in the game at time of activation. #wotc_staff
There was also an interesting gramatical challenge for this ability, as "For each planeswalker you control" sounds like it should be iterating over the planeswalkers you currently control, but rather this is a single permission that applies to "the rules of the game" rather than to the individual planeswalkers - basically every time you get priority, this permission looks at the current planeswalkers you control and compares them to the permanents you've already "used up" this permission for.
I really don't get why it is like this, like for me that first working sounds much more intuitive to the wording. Why are you like this mtg rules?
I too was confused, but it is consistent with other effects in the game like "Creatures your opponents control can't block this turn." That also doesn't care about the state of objects as that ability resolves, but rather what is around when the opponents try to block. I do think the "for each" wording adds to the confusion here, but admittedly the desired effect is hard to word. #wotc_staff
So with [[Oath of Teferi]], that means you can triple activate planeswalker abiliters with this right?
Yes, assuming you use The Chain Veil's permission last (which Arena enables easily). #wotc_staff