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CardName: Librarian's Desk Cost: 1U Type: Construction Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Staff (As this arrives, create a worker and assign it to one of this card's action spaces. Assign each worker to a new space once per turn as a sorcery.) [A]: Scry 1. [A]: Untap target artifact. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Cards With No Home Common

Librarian's Desk
{1}{u}
 
 C 
Construction
Staff (As this arrives, create a worker and assign it to one of this card's action spaces. Assign each worker to a new space once per turn as a sorcery.)
[A]: Scry 1.
[A]: Untap target artifact.
Updated on 09 Sep 2022 by Link

History: [-]

2022-09-08 14:17:12: Link created and commented on the card Librarian's Desk

See Greenhouse. A revamp of staff.
• Worker's aren't counters, but a new game object that only exists on action spaces.
• When a permanent is destroyed, you lose all workers on its action spaces.
• Workers remain on an action space until assigned to another, empty action space. With this as your only construction, which has two action spaces, you could move your worker between the action spaces each turn, essentially activating each ability every other turn.
• Workers can be moved freely between constructions you control when assigning them.

I think the reminder text could do with mentioning "each worker may activate or re-assign once a turn as a sorcery" because right now it's not at all obvious that you can't assign-then-activate, or vice versa.

Kind of interesting to add meeples to magic; not really sure whether it's worth the complexity, but it's certainly interesting.

This seems like a lot of work for something that could easily be an artifact.

Would all workers be identical, or would there ever be variant workers, or would it be something like other permanents alter workers?

Vitenka: You're right, there does need to be some clarity here, because "assigning" and "activating" are the same thing. The only way to activate the action spaces, "[A]", is to assign a worker there.

Sorrow: All workers are identical to reduce complexity (lol).

I like the idea to tie workers to Constructions so they can't be hoarded outside the battlefield - it creates a natural way to manage them.

I wonder whether one could make it so Constructions can be attacked to "assassinate" staff - the new permanent type already comes with more rules that you want just committed to reminder text.


Why the restriction to assign initial workers to action spaces on the same card?

It seems to me you are mixing notations here in a way that is likely to cause confusion. To my understanding "assigning" is a special action and the abilities you currently write as "[A]:" are actualy triggered abilities that trigger on assigning the appropriate number of workers to that ability. The colon though is used for activated abilities - I suggest using another symbol (a dash, a right arrow etc.) if you keep these functioning as triggered abilities.

As I undestand it, you can trigger both of these abilities on the turn this first enters the battlefield - once for assigning "as this arrives" and once with the "once per turn as a sorcery" special action. Just checking whether that is intentional.

If that's unintentional, maybe fix the timing for "assignment" to beginning of the first main phase.


The thing that is throwing me off is the "every other turn" thing? You cannot assign workers to a task that has had an assignment the previous turn? Which essentially means that any card like this with only two assignment slots for a single worker becomes Bounty of the Luxa - and you don't even benefit from a second copy because that one is stuck in the same cycle.

I feel this seriously hinders design space e. g. a Construction with "[A]:" and "[A]lsqb;A]:" would not even be enough to work all the time by itself. You'd need another Construction (with its staff) or another "[A]:" ability to not lose half of your turns...

The more natural approach IMO would be to make it so the "assignment" action frees all action spaces and you assign each of them workers - even one used the previous turn, even with the same single worker you have.

Otherwise you might also end up with two workers on this as your last Construction and no ability to use "tasks" because the workers are blocking each other.

Shoot, I've been very unclear.

You can't assign workers to a space that already has a worker. A worker remains on a space until it is assigned to a new one, so with one Construction with two spaces and one worker, you could only use each space every other turn, because there would be only one space for the worker to move to each turn.

I don't have time right now, but I'll come back to this later.

Ah, so a worker must move; works on arrival; and can't 'move' to the place it already is (since that place is occupied).

Ok.. that... is way too much logic to fit in a reminder text. What's the benefit you're getting for that much complexity?

> "Shoot, I've been very unclear."

I don't think so. That's exactly as I understand it. But it is not as intuitive as you might think it is and it is logistically more complex.

If you get to take off all workers and assign them without regard to their previous positions that's really easy to track.

If you have to "move" them around and re-assign them individually you will have both those already moved this turn and those yet to move on your cards in parallel at some point - and you have to take care not to mix them up.

My position is that that's unnecessary work, because in the end the important thing should be that after a special action to assign workers every one of them is in an action space and that can be achieved both ways.

And note that the "You can't assign workers to a space that already has a worker."-thing despite creating all these tracking issues actually stops to matter tactically once you get multiple Constructions and workers out, because you'll be able to move them in (almost) circles and always get most of your abilities anyway.

So it all boils down to the question: Is it important to you that you cannot re-assign the same worker to the same spot or is it just a side-effect of the system you came up with? Because while I understand that your rules prevent this, I don't see yet why you'd prefer this as a designer.

Well, not being able to reassign a worker to the same spot limits power level and allows each individual ability to be stronger, but more importantly (at least in terms of my inspiration), that's just how worker placement games I've played works. I'm not making up a new mechanic for Magic; I'm transplanting a mechanic from another genre into Magic and preserving the normal functionality so that those familiar with the mechanic will already understand it.

Eh. Lots of worker placement games permit you to ride. Others have you scoop up all your workers each turn and replce them anew, again, letting you select the same abilities if you want. It's hardly a fixed requirement of the genre.

Powerlevel-wise: I'm not really sure it helps much. With n workrs, you can permanently occupy n-1 slots (and have to select one other slot). Which means you can't really have slots that assume they will only be occupied occasionally. Casting cost still works, of course.

Hmmm... I don't recall a game with worker placement that works lie that. I checked the most popular worker placement game and in Agricola workers "return home" after each round.

Notably in this case you also don't compete with other players for slots since you place workers only on your own permanents.

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