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Recent updates to Frontier World: (Generated at 2024-05-19 14:59:29)
I want another theme, to pad out magic techno wild west world into a set. I semi-arbitrarily picked "hidden artificer genius resents intrusion onto 'her' planet and subverts the colony."
But that's not especially vivid.
Suggestions sought. Both for "augmented wild animal" artifact creature monsters at common, and "fake colonist" artifact creatures at uncommon and rare. And for alternative ideas -- what else could be on the world providing a natural opposition to gunfighters?
"All lead singers and bass players have to work harder"?
Yeah, but I don't know if it's interesting to have a two-tier hierarchy where FS beats non-FS and QD beats FS. It feels like it would rarely come up, it'd be hard to flavour-justify the different between FS and QD, and it'd make things confusing when it did come up. Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I'm not sure "firstest strike" is actually that interesting as a mechanic (I like "treble strike" though :)).
Oh, ew. I was just thinking: "When ~ blocks or is blocked, it deals ~ damage to that creature"
Ooh, hm, maybe there is a mechanic here. Maybe "Quickdraw X. (Before combat damage, you may pay X. It deals combat damage before creatures with less quickdraw.)"
Non-quickdraw would count as quickdraw 0. We could make first strike count as quickdraw 1 (or quickdraw max), although if we had quickdraw I'd drop first strike for this set.
I think that mechanic's a mess, but maybe there's something like it that would work. Thanks all!
You could keyword "Firstest strike" with it?
Though a set with a lot of that would be painful.
Re: Quickdraw.
Wow, that's a really good fit. I don't think I want to change the standard keywords, but it pains me not to use that. (First strike creatures definitely have that flavour, even if not in mechanic name.)
Oh yeah, this has turned into lash out. I guess that was inevitable.
I didn't like lash out much, but I think that's partly the art, and partly the perception that the bonus isn't a reward but just a random gift, I hope a showdown version may be better. I really liked searing blaze even when it was hard to get it to work.
I think this will keep changing for the moment. Ideally it would be an effect (a.) not the same as lash out (b.) in clear "effect and a little bit more on top" mode (c.) not as boring as just "player burn and more player burn".
I meant to suggest dropping it to 2 mana but this new version goes quite nicely.
Ans, as an aside, First Strike -> Quickdraw as a new keyword name??????
Good point. If it's nonland than 0 CMC are good trumps, and 1 are pretty good. I'm not sold, but I think that's the best version so far.
I also wondered about some scissors/paper/stone system where some colours beat others, or similar, so there's no unique best, but I couldn't think of anything I liked.
I think that is the sensible approach. Comparisons to clash are going to be unavoidable, so it's probably pretty natural that this is where Lash Out ended up. I certainly think you don't want to go down to 2 damage for 3 mana base version, as that's really horrible.
The low-cost-but-nonland version sounds pretty good. You can use it to cycle lands; it's great to cycle one-drops that are good early game but not late game, or that are otherwise conditional. And that could also lend itself to having an occasional -cost card in the set... and perhaps even a Motivational Piker :) :P
OK, lets try that out and see how it looks. May be too wordy. Need to make sure it's not too similar to other burn spells (red should have one good burn spell, one ok burn spell, and some weak burn spells, covering a range of amounts of damage).
Thank you. Hm. Maybe. I think I want the damage to be enough to matter, so I'd rather increase the cost if I need to. But the variance can't be too high.
In fact, come to think of it, this could be "? damage to target creature. If you win, also ? damage to its controller". That's a little more complicated, but feels reasonably much like "a bonus on the effect it's always nice to have".
OK, not quite the flavour I wanted, but I think that's pretty good. Using that for now.
Would people guess that the mechanic on desperado was "intimidate"?
3 mana for 6 damage 50% of the time is way cheap for a common. Maybe 2 and 4?
Heck following on cmeister2's idea why not just call it Desperado ?
@jmg. Thank you. Yeah, that's actually a very good idea.
My reservations are a) is it too much work to decide "should I showdown the card I want to win with, or the card I want to cycle"?.
And b) Will there be too many draws with 1 and 2 cmc and land cards? (Or if you exclude land cards, that makes the cycling problem worse?) I'm not sure, but I worry it feels less awesome when you can play a minimum-CMC cost and be assured of not losing, even if not assured of winning.
But I think that does address the problems with the current version, so let me see if I can synthesise them.
Thank you, that looks good.
Ooh, good idea, thank you.
Desperate?
Swarm of Rustmites ?
Green has developed biological nanotech & rustmites are microscopic insects that can get inside tech & basically eat it from the inside out. Of course Rustmites is just what they are known as by the other colours.
Reckless
Angry
Wild
Rash
Just a few possibilities
Hmm. I think this plays well, but I think you're right... If this is the showdown mechanic, then some showdown decks will just pack an expensive useless card so that they can keep revealing it. I mean, with Go for Your Guns! alone, that Progenitus in your hand will mean an automatic 3 damage for . 4x Go for Your Guns!, 4x other showdown card, 2x Progenitus, just to lock Showdown victories? Sure, why not.
This isn't what everyone will do, granted. Some people don't play the game with that mindset... but it is the sort of interaction that, once people know about it, or see it in action, makes them stigmatize the entire mechanic. Kind of like how Hypergenesis is still a fun card, but all anyone can think about when they see it is how broken it is with cascade.
I've got a counter-intuitive answer for you, though, I don't know if you'll like it: Change highest casting cost to lowest casting cost (possibly non-land), then loot the cards. Actually, you can just write "Each player discards a card, then draws a card. If you discarded a non-land card with the lowest converted mana cost of all cards discarded in this manner..."
With that method, you keep your stress, the showdown card goes away, maintaining mystery, and you get to ask yourself whether it's worth it to discard your good cheap card, your not very useful 3 cost card, or just pitch a land into the mill. It's also trickier for the opponent who didn't come with a showdown deck. Ideally, they want to hold 1cc cards to foil the showdown... but they have no idea if you have a showdown card in your hand right now. With a 7cc bomb, they don't mind revealing it and holding onto it, because what else were they supposed to do with it? Nobody wants to hold onto Elite Vanguard to maybe prevent 3 damage to the head, though. You know... unless they're at 3... That's a great griefing moment.
Plus it isn't as flavor unintuitive as it sounds. Instead of knocking people away with the big gun in your hand, the showdown player will rattle through a chain of small cost cards, showing off his 'speed'. If you do go this route, I'd suggest pushing the value of your low cost cards (by using high activation costs on cheap cards, for example).