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CardName: Airbending Cost: Type: Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Discussion of airbending mechanics Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Avatar: The Last Airbender None

Airbending
 
 
Discussion of airbending mechanics
Updated on 29 Apr 2015 by Jack V

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2015-04-28 10:35:46: Jack V created the card Airbending

There are plenty of W/u effects appropriate for airbending, I've already made some of them.

But I was thinking about, what's the overall experience I want to create? And that's a bit nebulous. But I think something like, resilient but non-confrontational: airbenders rarely attack head-on, they go round and past, and evade attacks. I'm not sure how to turn that into magic terms, but I think, a tempo-ish approach, but over a longer period.

Like, decks which aren't quick, but keeps chipping away at the opponent, and lets the opponent amass an overwhelming weight of potential attack which they never quite bring to bear.

That suggests, small aggressive creatures, but rather than doubling-down on early damage, have evasive creatures, and creatures which can tap opponents creatures, and even give temporary answers to opponents bombs. And ways to keep in the game and keep sneaking damage through: creatures that return to your hand instead of dying, small dollops of life-gain or damage prevention, attacks that work once or twice even against a large opposing board.

The feel I'm going for is, the opponent crying "I had her on the ropes the whole game, I had out three legends and plansewalkers and I was sure I was going to win, but she just kept putting me off and eventually whittled me down to zero." Like, the opponent should be ahead on cards and be able to play big threats, but you should keep eking out a tempo advantage even as the game goes long.

Now I need to see if I can translate that into card designs.

Dmanage reflection would probably be a good choice for some finishing cards. Zaheer killed a guy by suffocation so perhaps something about stasis celling out bombs would also work. If you want to stick with smaller creatures for play I would try and just use Wu things that already exist and make them triggered upon damage. Something like "whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player destroy target artifact" in white

Looks like you're aiming for value. Cards like Into the Roil and Giant Caterpillar. The bonus shouldn't be much, but it should be enough to push you just out of reach, even though pound for pound the individual cards you're playing look weaker.

The trick is to make the value deck play tempo, instead of control. Or at least tempo-control. That seems doable, though. As long as the value you spread around tends to hurt the opponent, you should be in good condition (think cards like Undermine or Coral Barrier.)

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