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Mechanics | Introduction and General Invitation | Proxies for playtest | Design Challenge 2 | Colour-pair archetypes | Skeleton |
Recent updates to Code Geass: (Generated at 2024-05-03 19:33:11)
no need to be 1/1
possible mythic
need to change name and type to match this art/concept
aha, I had the art sitting around
Yeah, that's a good point about the stats
That's how eject works, yes. It makes them behave rather differently to regular equipment, but not exactly bad. It prioritises survival of the creature over survival of the equipment. It actually makes the Equipment a bit less threatening in Limited games; a simple Vulshok Morningstar can be an annoyingly powerful card in Limited, whereas one of these is likely to be destroyed when a combat is swung by a combat trick, or an opponent gang-blocks or whatever.
The biggest reason for this is because that's the way the Mecha in the Code Geass series work: the same character will lose a fight in one mech, get ejected while their mech explodes, and then come back a few episodes later in a bigger stronger mech. This in turn informs things like the design of the Guren Mk-II as discussed over there.
I have playtested the mecha with eject and it works pretty well. You still get to move the equipment around to the most tactically relevant creature, but they do play a bit more like Auras. Eject is a little bit like a drawback, which means the stats can be a bit more aggressive without wrecking Limited games: Vulshok Morningstar at common was too good, but I think this'll be fine.
So it's just totem armor for equipment? That seems counterproductive, since totem armor is meant to solve the card disadvantage problem of auras, but equipment don't have that
I think I do want a common Knightmare mecha in each colour. Definitely the most natural common Equipment for green, the colour of the traditionalist Japanese faction, is the Gekka, the prototype Knightmares used by the Four Holy Swords (Holy Sword Urabe and friends).
It doesn't quite feel right that this is only a tiny bit better than the Burai Type-10 and Glasgow RPI-11, but eh, that's a pretty minor flavour niggle. I could argue that the reach on this card represents the improved armament over the Glasgow/Burai.
Yeah, this one in particular I was thinking could actually be the few strike planes we saw early in the series (maybe even in the initial historical black-and-white intro).
Supercilious Trooper is not necessarily bad in control since it enables counter-attacks to gain life.
Imperious Guardians easily could changed to "up to that many target creatures don't untap during their controller's next untap step".
Those alternatives sound interesting fwiw, although I can't imagine it will enough to guess how they'd play
Yeah, that makes sense. Are there any conventional forces shown that could take the place? I guess not many survived as they were so futile against knightmares (and would take the focus of the set away from the knightmares).
One big idea would be to shift decadence to "At the beginning of each player's upkeep". That lets you get the pump, lifelink and taps from Smug Cavalier, Supercilious Trooper, Imperious Guardians during opponents' turns. But it also lets you double the amount of life you can gain from Benevolent Landowner, the amount of counters you get from Britannian Arms Dealer, and so on, which is not how those cards were intended.
I don't think I want to go as far as "At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep" because it's best if the card designs do at least allow you to use the pumps and suchlike aggressively.
It'd be nice if each card could allow you to use it once per turn cycle but either on your turn or on the opponent's turn. The problem is that mechanic is called "" but that doesn't work with the pumps.
Hmm. It turns out it's quite hard to design decadence cards that work for slowing down the enemy, control and bleeding. The effects that are common-suitable mostly want to be things that happen in your turn.
Of my designs so far, the ones that are useful in control:
Common: Benevolent Landowner, Unethical Researchers (not ), Agent of Decay
Uncommon: Britannian Torturer (which might need to move to rare anyway)
Rare: Britannian Arms Dealer, Expansionist Princess, Technophile Duke, Credit Squanderer, Cruel Princess, Ostentatious Prince (makes the others useful too)
Not useful in control:
C: Smug Cavalier, Egotistical Captain, Supercilious Trooper
U: Imperious Guardians, Resources Misdirector
So either I just accept that my current decadence design is looking more aggressive than controlling, or I look for ways to make this more of a controlling archetype.
Trying for an uncommon decadence discard creature. I fear this might have ended up as another rare though. Bala Ged Thief was rare, and this is easier to repeat than that.
White gets to zot big things unconditionally (Elspeth Conquers Death, Blade Banish, Skywhaler's Shot etc). Smaller things it only gets to zot temporarily (Glass Casket, Silkwrap, and many variations on Banishing Light/Banisher Priest).
I think a suitably mythic design for the great general Cornelia lets her do one of those while she's on the field and the other when she leaves.
let's give her some text.
Maybe in fact the thing to do is to just admit that black-white decks won't be able to play too many decadence cards (unless they get the Expansionist Princess). That's OK because the (Green-white archetype) is all about using various green ramp cards to help pay for decadence. Does mean I need to figure out what the white-black uncommon and archetype should be though.
standardise ability order: static, triggered, activated
In the "instant combat trick" skeleton slot. This is the weapon used by the Guren Mk-II, but it seems reasonable to have its own card.
Worse than Double Cleave, Temur Battle Rage, and Raking Claws; not actually been printed in this simplest version. See also Assault Strobe, Uncaged Fury, Armed // Dangerous.
standardise ability order: static, triggered, activated
You're not wrong. I have white fetching Plains on Expansionist Princess and I've been wondering about a black-mana-doubler like Crypt Ghast, but I could also have a Swamp-fetcher. Originally this card's design did just call out "Plains or Swamp cards" but that felt even stranger to me.
It is a problem with this design. Another problem with this design is the huuuuge amount of woooorrrds. So it might need killing and rethinking.
As for decadence overall - you're right that it's got a bit of a tension in having too much. I think it'll generally be quite hard to get so much that you literally can't pay it, so I think in a heavy decadence deck you just get cycles of a turn or two when you pay your decadence and get all the effects but don't get anything else, followed by a turn or two where you're not paying decadence, just playing creatures and other cards. That seems fine.
It is somewhat antilinear whilst also being somewhat linear, especially the way that most creatures with it only have decadence 1 so you want a bit more to really get the effects going.
As for how it plays? It's been some time since the decadence playtest I did so I don't remember it too clearly, but the notes here and here sound like it played fairly well.
I do want a few more common equipment, but I found with the FICG Equestria Girls set how important it was to keep the common creature count up, and equipment don't count for that (even though the equipment in this set effectively have totem armour). So no, these skeleton slots do need to be actual creatures.
And yes, I did wonder about making them have type Artifact Creature to show they need their hardware to be any good. But as you say, that's not the way Magic generally represents knights, sailors, and so on.
Oh, cool. Yeah, that's a really good idea, even though they're simple I really like the flavour of these. Now I'm wondering if they can be Knightmare type, to support the flavour, except that magic always types a rider+mount as the rider. Or if equipment could fulfil the "big semi vanilla common" slot, except that presumably the hole needs some regular creatures.
In the cycle of common nonequippable Squadrons as described on Strike Squadron.