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CardName: Positional Gambit Cost: 1G Type: Sorcery Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library. *Gambit* -- You may choose target creature you control. When that creature dies during combat this turn, search your library for another basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Code Geass Common

Positional Gambit
{1}{g}
 
 C 
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.
Gambit — You may choose target creature you control. When that creature dies during combat this turn, search your library for another basic land card, put that card onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.
Updated on 20 Feb 2021 by Alex

Code: CG11

Active?: true

History: [-]

2014-09-08 11:36:06: Alex created and commented on the card Positional Gambit

In the cycle with Material Gambit, Informational Gambit, Recovery Gambit, Aggressive Gambit.

Bleh, landsearch wording is really annoyingly wordy.

(Obsoleting Rampant Growth is not a step to take lightly, but it seems about the only plausible spot for this if I want it to be a mana-ramp spell. I guess Sakura-Tribe Elder was already basically strictly better than Rampant Growth, so there's that.)

This may need to say "up to one target creature you control" or similar. As it is you can't ramp with this on turn 2, which is a big drawback.

2017-01-12 16:38:49: Alex edited Positional Gambit:

adding "you may"

Keyword it? Explore for a tapped basic land. Gambit - Explore for another one.

And yeah; this is NICE mana ramp. It's kinda a shame the gambit is almost never going to pay off. I guess sometimes you'll want that 9th land?

Yeah, there's any number of keywords that could be done. For some reason Wizards haven't yet. Unfortunately keywording it this set wouldn't help much since keywords have to have reminder text the set they're introduced.

(Bizarrely, named actions as on Learned Fireball would help. But... no.)

This card would certainly be a red flag for wordiness, but I think it is actually OK at common because the comprehension complexity is very low, especially because the Gambit mechanic is identical across the cycle.

I'm not sure if this makes sense, but could Gambit be "You may choose target creature you control. When that creature dies during combat this turn you may cast ~ from your graveyard without paying its mana cost"? (Probably as keyword reminder text, but possible just as text.)

Avoiding repeating the effect, which might make it easier to parse if not shorter. Does that spoil any of the cycle?

I also wonder about "When you cast this, choose target creature" as a separate trigger, instead of "may choose target creature". But that's probably not simpler.

OTOH, does it need to be a particular creature, would it be too strong if it was any creature, or "any green creature"?

Hmm. I certainly originally imagined the Gambit cycle as being "I risk this piece - do you take it?". But I suppose it could also work as "I put some number of my pieces at risk - do you take any of them?" As you say, that's a different discussion to the issue of wordiness on this specific card.

Jumping off of Jack's idea, and Vitenka's frustration... I think it would be kind of cool if the card worked like this:

"Search your library for a basic land card and put it on the battlefield tapped. You may gambit a creature this turn.
Gambit -- If a creature gambited this turn dies while attacking, you may cast ~ from your graveyard without paying its mana cost. Then exile it."

This way, even if you probably won't get Positional Gambit to go off on round 2, you can set it up to go off any time a creature is gambited with a future gambit card. I also changed "dies during combat" to "dies while attacking" since it would be a very rare situation for this to go off while blocking... best to not confuse players. I also figured you wouldn't want people to get around the gambit by Lightning Bolting their Wall of Spears that was Gambited as soon as combat opened.

I like this way. It fills in a lot of holes. It's also got two down-sides:

1.) It's explosive when multiple gambits are queued up. And/or it may make the attacking creature almost impossible to block. There are positives to this as well... but it may not be the type of effect you are going for.

2.) Positional Gambit, as it is written right now, can be tossed into any deck with at least some attacking creatures. It's rather modular. My version of the mechanic really encourages you to play with a lot of cards with Gambit. If linear mechanics aren't your thing, then maybe this isn't the right idea.

I should probably point out that you could add a mana cost to the Gambit ability to cut down on the explosiveness. A single {g} goes a long way...

The Gambit mechanic was certainly intended to act as pseudo-unblockable-sorta, to tie in with the set's saboteur effects. So that much is deliberate.

I am coming to like Jack's idea of simply "Whenever a creature you control dies [during combat / when attacking] this turn". It removes an entire line of text. It powers up the gambits, a bit, making them more like Falter than Artful Dodge, but that's not much of a problem. It gets jmg's "explosiveness" if you cast multiple gambits - but again, the opponent just very likely chooses not to block in that case. And, crucially, it lets you cast this without any targets if you want to.

On the other hand, it matches the flavour of a gambit a bit less well. Which is a big downside to that approach.

2021-02-20 13:06:35: Alex edited Positional Gambit:

art

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