I always thought Code Geass was an anime that'd make a good Magic cardset, because it has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, lots of factions and conflicts, and a range of different themes. I'm rewatching the series at the moment and noting down ideas for how the cardset might work.
Comments from anyone watching are very welcome! Particularly if you've seen the series and have any ideas for how you think certain things should work as Magic effects, but also even if you haven't.
:D
I'd really like to be progressing Clockwork Wings and the second and third sets in its block. I do know the full block structure and the plot of sets 2 and 3. But I'm somewhat stuck there pending playtesting (which is pending me either writing Multiverse drafting and playing support [which is itself pending lots of RoundTuits and a couple of other more urgent Multiverse fixes], or finding a time when I can persuade RL friends to play more custom Magic without my feeling horribly self-indulgent). I don't want to just proceed to design set 2 when one of the key evolving mechanics might need to be cut from set 1.
Soo... in the meantime, my creative urges appear to be heading in this direction instead :)
Code Geass is awesome though. I once wrote about how it's seventeen kinds of awesome, and I still stand by that :)
The set needs some mechanical themes. At the moment my ideas for Geass (Geass to Betray) and Knightmares (Glasgow RPI-11) are rather generic, nothing that would lead to unusual gameplay. So I need to find something more unusual and interesting to serve as a hook.
Geass itself certainly could be that, based on how powerful it is in the series, if I find a more interesting mechanical implementation than just a restriction that looks like a drawback.
One possibility for making the set feel different is that the creature cards, being humans, could almost all be 2/2 or smaller, with only a very few exceptions (mainly Kallen and Suzaku). That'd make Mecha, serving the role of equipment, very important for winning a combat, which is true to the series.
I'm also thinking I want the combat step to be emphasised and to be where a lot of tactical play comes through. This sounds like it wants a higher-than-usual number of instants, particularly combat tricks of assorted kinds, and/or mechanics that play up the role of instants as battlefield tactics, such as "bluff for instants".
If most creatures are similar in size then that'd also increase the effectiveness of combat tricks.
Stepping back for a moment: It's clear that this is a top-down set. I'm wanting to achieve a gameplay experience that evokes Code Geass. In the same way that the experience of playing Innistrad led to feeling afraid, and the experience of playing Theros led to feeling triumphant, I want the experience of playing Code Geass to feel like you're a master strategist, making plans, predicting your opponents' moves, and perhaps thinking on your feet, to come out ahead.
Is that actually possible? I don't see why not...
That's the motivation for things like the "bluff for instants" mechanic above.
I want the experience of playing Code Geass to feel like you're a master strategist, making plans, predicting your opponents' moves, and perhaps thinking on your feet, to come out ahead.
Doesn't sound like Code Geass to me; but does sound like a good magic set concept :)
(Code Geass always felt like "Complete douchebag goes on a fantasy fulfillment power trip. EVENTUALLY enough bad things happen to him, and everyone cheers.")
Oh, I'm interested how differently the series came across to different people. Maybe "mastermind" is how the main character WANTED to think of himself, whether or not you think he succeeded?
FWIW, I was thinking how to capture a "mastermind" feel, and wondered about a sort of morph-suspend, something like:
Plan (: Exile this facedown from your hand. Until the end of your next turn you may turn it face up and cast it for . If you don't, return it to your graveyard.)
That's obviously not quite right as is, but the idea is spells you can cast a turn in advance, that are very useful if you predict the board state correctly, but not so much otherwise. However, I'm not quite sure how to make that work: I don't want the memory issue of "cast it within a turn", and it would be nice if it could usually apply to cheap spells, but then it's hard to make it worth casting if you include the "morph" cost. Another possibility would be to exile them under a creature, to be set off when that creature does... something.
Very interesting proposal! Let me riff on it a bit.
So one problem with that version of Plan is that if the opponent goes "You know what, you've got a Plan, I'm just not going to block" then the cards are lost. Could easily tweak it to put them back into your hand, but then why bother planning? Discounts, I suppose, but... it's a bit fiddly.
Hmm... Maybe some sorceries could have the ability to use them during combat if you prepare them?
> Planning (: Exile this sorcery facedown from your hand. Until end of turn, you may cast it for any time you could cast an instant. If you don't, return it to your hand. Plan only as a sorcery.)
Perhaps that doesn't really make enough difference.
> Set in Motion (: Exile this card facedown from your hand with two time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. While it has exactly one time counter on it, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. Set in Motion only during your precombat main phase.)
Unpleasantly wordy, for the same reason as suspend. But it allows you to set up big turns where you get to attack with one instant Set in Motion and mana up for another. If you don't cast the card before it ticks down to 0, it's lost, but still not visible.
The key to making this work would be to have multiple SiM cards in each of three categories: 1) combat tricks to make blocking dangerous, 2) saboteur effects to make not blocking dangerous, and 3) defensive tricks like untap effects to make the return attack dangerous.
In order to maintain the colour pie, most SiM cards would have things like "If you control a Forest, untap target creature"... hmm... any enemy colour hybrid cycle? "If you control a Forest or an Island, untap target creature and it gets +1/+1 UEOT"... . "If you control a Mountain or a Plains, target creature gets +1/+1 and first strike UEOT" (or Fire at Will)... (wb) lifelink, (bg) deathtouch or regenerate, (ru)... doesn't have creature combat keywords but could have saboteur effects like a powerful loot.
Set in Motion did turn out to be just too wordy. So another take on a similar idea, based on Jack's comment about exiling cards attached to creatures:
Manoeuvre (R) ((2): Choose target creature and exile this card face down. While that creature is attacking [/in combat?] you may cast this card from exile for its manoeuvre cost. [Manoeuvre only as a sorcery.])
Still has the issue that the spells need to be expensive for the discount to be worth it. I could avoid that by making the spells free if you manoeuvre them first, and use "If you control an Island" wordings.
Also allows you to set up a combat trick like first strike and then just keep it in reserve until the opponent makes an unfavourable block, even several turns later.
You could tie it to the colour of the creature (or maybe even the mana cost of the creature), with an upfront cost, but that would remove a lot of the surprise.
I agree, I don't want to have the colour known upfront, because the mechanic will only work if there are several possibilities for what the face-down card might be, and in particular whether it's something that's good in combat, good if unblocked, or good on defence (not that my Manoeuvre wording above allows that third option).
Cantripping... is a nice thing to do, but I'd have thought getting your combat tricks for free is enough of a draw on its own - why would the cantrip be needed / helpful?
I've been trying to think about this. It almost feels like I'm being pulled in two different directions.
Large non-combat-trick spells like Wrath-of-God feel like they want something like the original mastermind (if it could be templated), something like "Mastermind 2-3 -- 1W (Exile this face down. At the beginning of your upkeep put a time counter on it. If it has 2 or 3 time counters on it, you may cast it for its mastermind cost)" I'm not sure if that could work, but that feels like the sort of thing which feels like you're planning several moves in advance. And the discount is reward enough. And can't easily be tied to combat. (And I agree that wording is till too complicated, it only works if it can be simpler than suspend which is hard to express.)
Whereas many combat tricks want to be cheap enough that a cost discount can't easily help (unless you accept them completely for free), but would benefit from being tied to creatures in combat.
But obviously you don't want two different mechanics, because that reduces the "guess what they have" space. I'm not sure this speculation actually helps, but I hope maybe laying out what seems like a good goal may produce more good suggestions. Whether there's any way of combining the two directions -- eg. all spells have a mastermind-like text, but some combat tricks have non-mana costs like "tap a red creature you control" or "cast for free if a creature you control is blocked"??
The cantrip makes the "Use as a hidden trick" more viable, making it able to be less aggressively costed to activate relative to the normal use; was my idea.
Ha! Thank you, Link. I've had a pretty exhausted year or two, and I've still not got that much energy, but I do want to do more development on this set.
Did a couple of playtests last night. Specific card notes will go on specific cards. Overall notes:
People had fun. The guy who hadn't seen the set before at all said the mechanics were interesting.
Prepare is still great. People set up plans and walk into each other's traps. Thumbs up.
The Geass density of the decks was deliberately a bit higher (4, 8, 11 in the three 60-card decks), and it was definitely relevant this time how Geasses grant protection from other Geasses. Neil pre-emptively gave his creature a Geass of Ruthlessness to protect against Geass to Betray and Geass of Desertion, which was very sensible and clever. It's a fairly simple rider that can be added to lots of common staple effects to add interesting gameplay subtleties. Broadly thumbs up.
The exception is that the Auras and the instants/sorceries work somewhat differently from each other, and that leads to confusion. The issue was discussed over here and probably does need solving.
Overthrow, my candidate for the main Black Knights mechanic, was quite hard to trigger. Especially since it's obvious on the table when an overthrow effect is going to trigger, and people will generally chump block rather than let it happen. The contrast with Khans of Tarkir's raid effects (Mardu Hordechief, Mardu Heart-Piercer etc) is notable: almost all raid effects are hidden in the hand until they trigger (Bloodsoaked Champion being the only exception). I was aware that I couldn't let Rebel Strategist through or I'd be taking another attack afterwards. More thought or development required.
Decadence went down fairly well. Neil found it interesting, sometimes worth paying, sometimes not. There are problems with a few specific cards like Resources Misdirector but the overall feel was about what I want. Broadly thumbs up.
Initial skeleton, very closely based on Throne of Eldraine, tweaked for my needs:
W: 18 c, 12 u, 8 r, 2 m
A: 6 c, 5 u, 4 r
L: 5 c, 5 r
WU: 1 u, 1 r
WB: 1 u, 1 m
W/B: 1 u
(Throne has 10 gold rares+mythics and 10 gold uncommons as I do, but it has slightly more colourless artifacts than I'm expecting this set will. And of course like all Wizards sets, the numbers are frustratingly inconsistent, even down at uncommon: WUB have 10 uncommons and RG have 11.)
I've made an initial attempt at matching my current designs to the skeleton. Unsurprisingly, I'm fairly short on large creatures. I also need more uncommon creatures, revolt cards (creature and noncreature), combat tricks in red and green, uncommon coloured equipment, rare raid cards, and to work out what I'm doing with colourless cards (artifacts and land).
Not super related to magic, but I just finished watching this show. It was outstandingly excellent, probably the best anime I've watched so far (I'm not a huge anime fan, so I haven't seen very many yet).
No spoilers, but the ending literally had me in tears. That's the fourth time in my life that I've ever cried at television. Absolutely incredible writing.
Sorry, I've been looking for somewhere to gush on this show for a while haha.
I looked through some of the set, and I really like the direction you took for this. It certainly feels very faithful to both magic and the source, which I know for certain is hard to do.
Thank you! :D
It is my favourite anime, out of maybe 90 or 100 that I've seen. As I mentioned above, I once wrote about how it's seventeen kinds of awesome, and I still stand by that :)
As you'll have seen, I've been doing a slow steady trickle of development on the set. I'm noticing how a lot of the cards look somewhat unimpressive by modern standards, which is an interesting way to observe power creep of printed Wizards sets over the years since I designed a lot of this set. I'm trying to make tweaks to address that where possible, but in some cases it's not easy.
Well,it's a good set; and always nice to see a mecha ccg (since the battletech ccg was...not a success). Lelouch; however; was, is and shall always remain, a douche.
Post your comments on Code Geass here! If your comments are on a small number of specific cards, they may
be better added to those cards. This is for comments on the set as a
whole.
I always thought Code Geass was an anime that'd make a good Magic cardset, because it has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, lots of factions and conflicts, and a range of different themes. I'm rewatching the series at the moment and noting down ideas for how the cardset might work.
Comments from anyone watching are very welcome! Particularly if you've seen the series and have any ideas for how you think certain things should work as Magic effects, but also even if you haven't.
Ooh, a new cardset by Alex. I'm excited! Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about Code Geass, so I can't really help you there.
:D
I'd really like to be progressing Clockwork Wings and the second and third sets in its block. I do know the full block structure and the plot of sets 2 and 3. But I'm somewhat stuck there pending playtesting (which is pending me either writing Multiverse drafting and playing support [which is itself pending lots of RoundTuits and a couple of other more urgent Multiverse fixes], or finding a time when I can persuade RL friends to play more custom Magic without my feeling horribly self-indulgent). I don't want to just proceed to design set 2 when one of the key evolving mechanics might need to be cut from set 1.
Soo... in the meantime, my creative urges appear to be heading in this direction instead :)
Code Geass is awesome though. I once wrote about how it's seventeen kinds of awesome, and I still stand by that :)
The set needs some mechanical themes. At the moment my ideas for Geass (Geass to Betray) and Knightmares (Glasgow RPI-11) are rather generic, nothing that would lead to unusual gameplay. So I need to find something more unusual and interesting to serve as a hook.
Geass itself certainly could be that, based on how powerful it is in the series, if I find a more interesting mechanical implementation than just a restriction that looks like a drawback.
One possibility for making the set feel different is that the creature cards, being humans, could almost all be 2/2 or smaller, with only a very few exceptions (mainly Kallen and Suzaku). That'd make Mecha, serving the role of equipment, very important for winning a combat, which is true to the series.
I'm also thinking I want the combat step to be emphasised and to be where a lot of tactical play comes through. This sounds like it wants a higher-than-usual number of instants, particularly combat tricks of assorted kinds, and/or mechanics that play up the role of instants as battlefield tactics, such as "bluff for instants". If most creatures are similar in size then that'd also increase the effectiveness of combat tricks.
Stepping back for a moment: It's clear that this is a top-down set. I'm wanting to achieve a gameplay experience that evokes Code Geass. In the same way that the experience of playing Innistrad led to feeling afraid, and the experience of playing Theros led to feeling triumphant, I want the experience of playing Code Geass to feel like you're a master strategist, making plans, predicting your opponents' moves, and perhaps thinking on your feet, to come out ahead.
Is that actually possible? I don't see why not...
That's the motivation for things like the "bluff for instants" mechanic above.
I want the experience of playing Code Geass to feel like you're a master strategist, making plans, predicting your opponents' moves, and perhaps thinking on your feet, to come out ahead.
This sounds good to me!
Doesn't sound like Code Geass to me; but does sound like a good magic set concept :)
(Code Geass always felt like "Complete douchebag goes on a fantasy fulfillment power trip. EVENTUALLY enough bad things happen to him, and everyone cheers.")
Oh, I'm interested how differently the series came across to different people. Maybe "mastermind" is how the main character WANTED to think of himself, whether or not you think he succeeded?
FWIW, I was thinking how to capture a "mastermind" feel, and wondered about a sort of morph-suspend, something like:
Plan
(
: Exile this facedown from your hand. Until the end of your next turn you may turn it face up and cast it for 
. If you don't, return it to your graveyard.)
That's obviously not quite right as is, but the idea is spells you can cast a turn in advance, that are very useful if you predict the board state correctly, but not so much otherwise. However, I'm not quite sure how to make that work: I don't want the memory issue of "cast it within a turn", and it would be nice if it could usually apply to cheap spells, but then it's hard to make it worth casting if you include the "morph" cost. Another possibility would be to exile them under a creature, to be set off when that creature does... something.
Very interesting proposal! Let me riff on it a bit.
So one problem with that version of Plan is that if the opponent goes "You know what, you've got a Plan, I'm just not going to block" then the cards are lost. Could easily tweak it to put them back into your hand, but then why bother planning? Discounts, I suppose, but... it's a bit fiddly.
Hmm... Maybe some sorceries could have the ability to use them during combat if you prepare them?
> Planning
(
: Exile this sorcery facedown from your hand. Until end of turn, you may cast it for 
any time you could cast an instant. If you don't, return it to your hand. Plan only as a sorcery.)
Perhaps that doesn't really make enough difference.
Another riff on Jack's "Plan" above:
> Set in Motion (
: Exile this card facedown from your hand with two time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. While it has exactly one time counter on it, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. Set in Motion only during your precombat main phase.)
Unpleasantly wordy, for the same reason as suspend. But it allows you to set up big turns where you get to attack with one instant Set in Motion and mana up for another. If you don't cast the card before it ticks down to 0, it's lost, but still not visible.
The key to making this work would be to have multiple SiM cards in each of three categories: 1) combat tricks to make blocking dangerous, 2) saboteur effects to make not blocking dangerous, and 3) defensive tricks like untap effects to make the return attack dangerous.
In order to maintain the colour pie, most SiM cards would have things like "If you control a Forest, untap target creature"... hmm... any enemy colour hybrid cycle? "If you control a Forest or an Island, untap target creature and it gets +1/+1 UEOT"... . "If you control a Mountain or a Plains, target creature gets +1/+1 and first strike UEOT" (or Fire at Will)... (wb) lifelink, (bg) deathtouch or regenerate, (ru)... doesn't have creature combat keywords but could have saboteur effects like a powerful loot.
Set in Motion did turn out to be just too wordy. So another take on a similar idea, based on Jack's comment about exiling cards attached to creatures:
Manoeuvre (R) ((2): Choose target creature and exile this card face down. While that creature is attacking [/in combat?] you may cast this card from exile for its manoeuvre cost. [Manoeuvre only as a sorcery.])
Still has the issue that the spells need to be expensive for the discount to be worth it. I could avoid that by making the spells free if you manoeuvre them first, and use "If you control an Island" wordings.
Also allows you to set up a combat trick like first strike and then just keep it in reserve until the opponent makes an unfavourable block, even several turns later.
How about cantripping when you tuck them in?
You could tie it to the colour of the creature (or maybe even the mana cost of the creature), with an upfront cost, but that would remove a lot of the surprise.
I agree, I don't want to have the colour known upfront, because the mechanic will only work if there are several possibilities for what the face-down card might be, and in particular whether it's something that's good in combat, good if unblocked, or good on defence (not that my Manoeuvre wording above allows that third option).
Cantripping... is a nice thing to do, but I'd have thought getting your combat tricks for free is enough of a draw on its own - why would the cantrip be needed / helpful?
I've been trying to think about this. It almost feels like I'm being pulled in two different directions.
Large non-combat-trick spells like Wrath-of-God feel like they want something like the original mastermind (if it could be templated), something like "Mastermind 2-3 -- 1W (Exile this face down. At the beginning of your upkeep put a time counter on it. If it has 2 or 3 time counters on it, you may cast it for its mastermind cost)" I'm not sure if that could work, but that feels like the sort of thing which feels like you're planning several moves in advance. And the discount is reward enough. And can't easily be tied to combat. (And I agree that wording is till too complicated, it only works if it can be simpler than suspend which is hard to express.)
Whereas many combat tricks want to be cheap enough that a cost discount can't easily help (unless you accept them completely for free), but would benefit from being tied to creatures in combat.
But obviously you don't want two different mechanics, because that reduces the "guess what they have" space. I'm not sure this speculation actually helps, but I hope maybe laying out what seems like a good goal may produce more good suggestions. Whether there's any way of combining the two directions -- eg. all spells have a mastermind-like text, but some combat tricks have non-mana costs like "tap a red creature you control" or "cast for free if a creature you control is blocked"??
The cantrip makes the "Use as a hidden trick" more viable, making it able to be less aggressively costed to activate relative to the normal use; was my idea.
It's good to see you back around, Alex.
Ha! Thank you, Link. I've had a pretty exhausted year or two, and I've still not got that much energy, but I do want to do more development on this set.
Did a couple of playtests last night. Specific card notes will go on specific cards. Overall notes:
Initial skeleton, very closely based on Throne of Eldraine, tweaked for my needs:
W: 18 c, 12 u, 8 r, 2 m
A: 6 c, 5 u, 4 r
L: 5 c, 5 r
WU: 1 u, 1 r
WB: 1 u, 1 m
W/B: 1 u
(Throne has 10 gold rares+mythics and 10 gold uncommons as I do, but it has slightly more colourless artifacts than I'm expecting this set will. And of course like all Wizards sets, the numbers are frustratingly inconsistent, even down at uncommon: WUB have 10 uncommons and RG have 11.)
I've made an initial attempt at matching my current designs to the skeleton. Unsurprisingly, I'm fairly short on large creatures. I also need more uncommon creatures, revolt cards (creature and noncreature), combat tricks in red and green, uncommon coloured equipment, rare raid cards, and to work out what I'm doing with colourless cards (artifacts and land).
Not super related to magic, but I just finished watching this show. It was outstandingly excellent, probably the best anime I've watched so far (I'm not a huge anime fan, so I haven't seen very many yet).
No spoilers, but the ending literally had me in tears. That's the fourth time in my life that I've ever cried at television. Absolutely incredible writing.
Sorry, I've been looking for somewhere to gush on this show for a while haha.
I looked through some of the set, and I really like the direction you took for this. It certainly feels very faithful to both magic and the source, which I know for certain is hard to do.
Well done Alex, and All Hail Lelouch!
Thank you! :D
It is my favourite anime, out of maybe 90 or 100 that I've seen. As I mentioned above, I once wrote about how it's seventeen kinds of awesome, and I still stand by that :)
As you'll have seen, I've been doing a slow steady trickle of development on the set. I'm noticing how a lot of the cards look somewhat unimpressive by modern standards, which is an interesting way to observe power creep of printed Wizards sets over the years since I designed a lot of this set. I'm trying to make tweaks to address that where possible, but in some cases it's not easy.
Well,it's a good set; and always nice to see a mecha ccg (since the battletech ccg was...not a success). Lelouch; however; was, is and shall always remain, a douche.
Post your comments on Code Geass here!
If your comments are on a small number of specific cards, they may be better added to those cards. This is for comments on the set as a whole.