I plan on supporting blue tempo decks in the format. This card is just meant to be a role player and push in that direction. It may be pushing too far. It will really depend on what spells are available, how fast the format is, how easy fliers are to block... and tons of other smaller factors. If the card is too strong in early tests, it will be replaced/modified.
Deceive was inspired by water servant type cards and is an attempt at creating a simpler variant of the ability for keywording. Further, Deceive is part of the plan of experimenting with large numbers of modal effects. Deceive creatures are ultimately just modal bodied creatures. The more I design with it the more boring my designs feel and the more limited the mechanic seems to be.
For now, I'm trying to push my way through the commons so that I can do a common playtest. When I do, I will see how deceive plays. If it plays poorly, I'll drop it and find something else to fill its slot. If it plays well, I'll keep it even though it feels a little boring.
Deceive and prowess don't feel like competing mechanics to me. The keywords do different things.
Oh, so you have separate development and design teams? Especially here, in this free-for-all showcase style of custom set creation, I don't see arbitrary divisions of design/development/devign reasonable. So are you gonna finish "design" and then proclaim to us that we may now proceed to comment on powerlevels? Lel.
If we gonna pick set creation apart, shouldn't "flavor sketching/painting" be its own phase as well?
We have had plenty of creatures with flying + prowess combo so that wouldn't be exactly enlightening: Jeskai Windscout and such. The most notable thing here is that it's really, really pushed for a common at that cost and yes - that isn't really related to the "design" of the card itself, just something to "note" in the case you weren't aware, not something you are "required" to immediately act upon. You could think it was "preemptively commented on" when you enter your "development phase" of set creation.
A few things. First, your suggestion isn't feasible. These cards need costs of some kind in order to tune them and play test with them. Omitting all costs would just mean I'd need to keep a private file with all of the actual cards which would make this website useless. Second, there are always other things to comment on. You could, for example, make recommendations on how the card could be flavored. You could, for example, point out that combining flying and prowess makes each less interesting as you get fewer opportunities for interactive combats where prowess shines.
There is always more to say about the design of cards. Developmental tuning always comes later.
Suggestion; if you want to avoid that kind of comment - omit the casting cost?
Absolutely nothing wrong with the combination of abilities. Blue can do both things; they mesh well. So the only thing to comment on is the relative power level.
In general, I would appreciate it if you restrict comments to design discussion and avoid development commentary. Unless something is particularly egregious, I'm talking ancestral recall levels of absurdity here, then I can fine tune the numbers after a playtest or at least, after I have the commons designed.
I'm aware that players will need the gadget tokens in order for the mechanic to work. I've already stated that this will not be a problem for me, though it would be a problem for WotC, which is a big part of the reason I'm testing the mechanic. I want to do things that are fun that WotC can't do.
I'm about 90% sure at the moment that 5 possible gadgets is going to be trimmed to 4 but I'm waiting to do a playtest before I make further changes to mechanics.
These cards aren't mini games, they are modal spells. And by making all the spells have the same modes, I'm hoping players will be able to more easily grapple with the complexity. We will see what happens in the first playtest. It is perfectly possible, even likely that I'm pushing too far, but I won't be sure until I do a playtest.
My first complaint is that if you run any gadget creating cards you need to have five token cards at hand - of which some are quite complex for token cards btw.
Speaking of complexity, this is like if fabricate went off the rails. This is crazy, man. I mean five possible things that are represented as tokens and you can accumulate.
I have made multiple cubes of complex custom cards and I can tell you that having a bunch of cards that are basically mini-games of their own is inevitably gonna bog down the gameplay a lot in the long run.
Cheez. This is the third time when I see this card on this site on a relative short time span: Wingdancer - and at common no less. In a deck with even a little bit dedication, its roughly equivalent to Wind Drake. How has nobody costed this at ?
I mean, it can happen - even at common, but it's really pushed so there should be a reason since it's quite likely to be a key player in limited. If that's something you specifically want, sure, go ahead.
Also, why would one bother with False Guest when this card is here? They surely help to form a "prowess smash" deck though.
I plan on supporting blue tempo decks in the format. This card is just meant to be a role player and push in that direction. It may be pushing too far. It will really depend on what spells are available, how fast the format is, how easy fliers are to block... and tons of other smaller factors. If the card is too strong in early tests, it will be replaced/modified.
Deceive was inspired by water servant type cards and is an attempt at creating a simpler variant of the ability for keywording. Further, Deceive is part of the plan of experimenting with large numbers of modal effects. Deceive creatures are ultimately just modal bodied creatures. The more I design with it the more boring my designs feel and the more limited the mechanic seems to be.
For now, I'm trying to push my way through the commons so that I can do a common playtest. When I do, I will see how deceive plays. If it plays poorly, I'll drop it and find something else to fill its slot. If it plays well, I'll keep it even though it feels a little boring.
Deceive and prowess don't feel like competing mechanics to me. The keywords do different things.
Better thematical execution and grammar than Throw the Key Away.
What's the goal of having deceive? What makes it a good mechanic to have aside prowess?
Making a pushed card is a design decision. "Make blue creatures stronger than in the avarage set" is a design decision.
It's a weird initial design since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the set's vision as far as I can tell.
Though with deceive in the set I could imagine blue caring about power - weird as that is.
@Nodle:
Oh, so you have separate development and design teams? Especially here, in this free-for-all showcase style of custom set creation, I don't see arbitrary divisions of design/development/devign reasonable. So are you gonna finish "design" and then proclaim to us that we may now proceed to comment on powerlevels? Lel.
If we gonna pick set creation apart, shouldn't "flavor sketching/painting" be its own phase as well?
We have had plenty of creatures with flying + prowess combo so that wouldn't be exactly enlightening: Jeskai Windscout and such. The most notable thing here is that it's really, really pushed for a common at that cost and yes - that isn't really related to the "design" of the card itself, just something to "note" in the case you weren't aware, not something you are "required" to immediately act upon. You could think it was "preemptively commented on" when you enter your "development phase" of set creation.
A few things. First, your suggestion isn't feasible. These cards need costs of some kind in order to tune them and play test with them. Omitting all costs would just mean I'd need to keep a private file with all of the actual cards which would make this website useless. Second, there are always other things to comment on. You could, for example, make recommendations on how the card could be flavored. You could, for example, point out that combining flying and prowess makes each less interesting as you get fewer opportunities for interactive combats where prowess shines.
There is always more to say about the design of cards. Developmental tuning always comes later.
Suggestion; if you want to avoid that kind of comment - omit the casting cost?
Absolutely nothing wrong with the combination of abilities. Blue can do both things; they mesh well. So the only thing to comment on is the relative power level.
In general, I would appreciate it if you restrict comments to design discussion and avoid development commentary. Unless something is particularly egregious, I'm talking ancestral recall levels of absurdity here, then I can fine tune the numbers after a playtest or at least, after I have the commons designed.
I'm aware that players will need the gadget tokens in order for the mechanic to work. I've already stated that this will not be a problem for me, though it would be a problem for WotC, which is a big part of the reason I'm testing the mechanic. I want to do things that are fun that WotC can't do.
I'm about 90% sure at the moment that 5 possible gadgets is going to be trimmed to 4 but I'm waiting to do a playtest before I make further changes to mechanics.
These cards aren't mini games, they are modal spells. And by making all the spells have the same modes, I'm hoping players will be able to more easily grapple with the complexity. We will see what happens in the first playtest. It is perfectly possible, even likely that I'm pushing too far, but I won't be sure until I do a playtest.
My first complaint is that if you run any gadget creating cards you need to have five token cards at hand - of which some are quite complex for token cards btw.
Speaking of complexity, this is like if fabricate went off the rails. This is crazy, man. I mean five possible things that are represented as tokens and you can accumulate.
I have made multiple cubes of complex custom cards and I can tell you that having a bunch of cards that are basically mini-games of their own is inevitably gonna bog down the gameplay a lot in the long run.
Cheez. This is the third time when I see this card on this site on a relative short time span: Wingdancer - and at common no less. In a deck with even a little bit dedication, its roughly equivalent to Wind Drake. How has nobody costed this at ?
I mean, it can happen - even at common, but it's really pushed so there should be a reason since it's quite likely to be a key player in limited. If that's something you specifically want, sure, go ahead.
Also, why would one bother with False Guest when this card is here? They surely help to form a "prowess smash" deck though.
todo: Flavor
flavor later
Changed name: "Aether" -> "Mage-Ring"
cleaned up the wording
NOTE : This is a reprint. Alley Evasion.