Anydria Storage: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity
Mechanics | Thoughts About the Plane | Cycle and Key Card Options

CardName: Silent Watcher Cost: W Type: Creature - Human Monk Pow/Tgh: 1/1 Rules Text: Meditate {3} ({3}: You may open or close your gate. Meditate only as a sorcery.) As long as your portal is open, Silent Watcher gets +1/+2. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Anydria Storage Common

Silent Watcher
{w}
 
 C 
Creature – Human Monk
Meditate {3} ({3}: You may open or close your gate. Meditate only as a sorcery.)
As long as your portal is open, Silent Watcher gets +1/+2.
1/1
Updated on 01 Nov 2019 by Link

Code:

History: [-]

2015-06-04 17:50:13: Link created and commented on the card Silent Watcher

I originally envisioned Meditate creatures having something like the level up card frame, with the two distinct states separated into boxes by the the Meditate keyword and reminder text. That's a bit hard to represent on Multiverse, though.

Ooh, I like it. I wonder, could it work similarly if "open the gate" was just until EOT? That wouldn't have the "switch back and forth" nature, but it would have fewer memory issues and still reward you for being able to activate it for multiple creatures at the same time.

Hmm. The idea is that your gate is either open or closed — it's a condition of the player, not of his or her spells and permanents. I think packs would include "gate" tokens similar to poison counters and morph "tokens," which could flip between an open and closed state to help with the memory problem.
It's also my intent that there would be spells and creatures who want the gate closed, or who have equally viable options in either state, depending on the situation. That way there's a reason to want to close your gate. Having it last UEOT might be interesting, though.

Yeah, I think remembering "open or closed" for yourself is fairly easy, especially if you have a physical reminder, it's much more workable than many similar mechanics (homarids, werewolves, etc). But if you didn't have to remember at all that would be even better.

It's also which works better mechanically. Is the idea that your gate starts off closed? Or starts off neither open nor closed? Either way, I suspect there'd be pressure to fill your deck with "good when open" cards or "good when closed" cards and aim to just open it once and ignore the possibility of choosing. On the other hand, if there were effects produced when you switch, or cards that benefit from from switching state (like the 4/1 1/4 or a card that charges up in one mode and spends the charge in the other mode) it could make worthwhile tradeoffs.

The default state of a player's gate is closed. You start every game with a closed gate.

2016-01-27 21:27:06: Link edited Silent Watcher:

Previously +1/+1— didn't seem like enough. But is +2/+2 too much?

See Enlightened Rebuke, Explosion of Chakra, Chakra Flow, Chakra Master, and Chakra Overflow for cards that reference this mechanic but don't use it.

2016-05-12 03:59:52: jameschanlee edited Silent Watcher

Link: I added a mechanic called "gate" in the mechanics page and edited this card to use it with no reminder text. [ gate() ] . It now appears in the mechanics page You can change the other cards. Just a nifty hack I saw to group similarly themed cards together.

Good idea.

sweet card

i wonder how this works within a set, feels like it could have similar issues to infect in draft. but that's a problem that might be solvable through card context

Most cards with meditate are self-enabling, though, and unlike infect, there's no reason to avoid mixing them with cards without meditate.

Meditate is now limited to sorcery speed, both as a flavor concession and to bring down the power level of things that trigger off of it.

Yeah fair enough, I said this after reading all the spells in a row which might have given me a false impression

Ah. Were meditate to appear in a set, the number of cards that interacted with gates without having meditate would be minimal.

I think the simplest setup would be to be "open gate = good but costs mana or resources", "closed gate = bad". More of this guy and less Seeping Wolf. Similar to how the decision to make Overload a pure positive thing - don;t want to make players puzzle over the costs and benefits of opening or closing their gate.

depends what you're looking for; some players would enjoy the complexity. but i agree that it likely wouldn't be suitable for a typical wotc set

I don't like how that makes it pointless to close your gate.

Mm. At that point, why even give closing the gate as an option? Better to just have it give you an emblem that says your gate is open.

That's not at all the direction I want to go with the mechanic.

yeah i prefer it as-is, makes all those spells a whole lot neater

Yep, I also like the mechanic as is. What I meant was that cleanest implementation at common is the "gate open = good" scenario, coupled with closing your gate as a "kicker" of sorts. Spend mana to open your gate, then burst it out when needed. Otherwise, this would introduce board complexity.

I love the cards, I just don't think cards Burning-Heart Meditant and Seeping Wolf should be common. (I understand the intent, that their closed ability is more useful at the start of the game, but still)

  • Meditate ({3}: Open or close your gate.)
  • Common: [Good thing] if your gate is open, instead [better thing]
  • Common creature: [good thing] as long as your gate is open.
  • Common: Whenever your gate opens, [good thing].
  • Common: [Good thing]. Burst - You may close your gate. if you do, instead [Better thing].
  • Common: Burst - [Trigger] you may close your gate. If you do, [Good thing]

again, depends what you're looking for. what you're suggesting makes sense for an NWO set, but why should that be considered the universal ideal? only makes sense if you are also a profit-maximising entity like WotC

Because gameplay is better with NWO in general.

i don't think that hypothesis has been tested

I'm under the impression that it has been tested extensively by Wizards.

Making an open gate universally good at common makes sense.

2016-05-13 17:23:36: Link edited Silent Watcher:

From +2/+2 to +1/+2

I think gameplay with newer players, or players with reduced tolerance for complex game states, is definitely better with NWO applicable at common. The contrapositive was effectively tested by the Lorwyn/Morningtide block, which set up fascinating board states which I loved but apparently drove many players away from the prerelease before it ended.

For sets explicitly targeted at expert players (such as many Multiverse sets, or I suppose the Modern Masters sets), it's fine to have all sorts of complex stuff at common.

I'm considering this for a revised version of Anydria (though it's funnily and confusingly similar to gate, as seen on Mistborn Fey, so one of the mechanics would need a name or terminology change).

2017-09-25 03:27:03: Link moved the card Silent Watcher from Cards With No Home into Anydria Storage
2019-11-01 16:23:33: Link edited Silent Watcher

Add your comments:


(formatting help)
Enter mana symbols like this: {2}{U}{U/R}{PR}, {T} becomes {2}{u}{u/r}{pr}, {t}
You can use Markdown such as _italic_, **bold**, ## headings ##
Link to [[[Official Magic card]]] or (((Card in Multiverse)))
Include [[image of official card]] or ((image or mockup of card in Multiverse))
Make hyperlinks like this: [text to show](destination url)
What is this card's power? Runeclaw Bear
(Signed-in users don't get captchas and can edit their comments)