Multiverse: Faith vs Science DD challenge: Comments

by Alex:

My first thought on seeing the title here: Yuck. It's annoying to see the dead horse idea that faith and science are opponents given more credence.

Anyway, do you have a link to the originating MTGS thread?

by Link:

I'm not saying that you can't find a worldview that allows for both, but "faith" and "science" are pretty opposed in several respects.
This certainly seems like a challenging concept for a duel deck. How can you represent these ideas within Magic? I feel like another word might be found for "science" that better fits into Magic's feel, like "logic."

by Doombringer:

You can find the relevant links below:

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/616742-duel-deck-design-challenge-stage-1

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/617265-duel-deck-design-challenge-stage-2

http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/3712583

by SecretInfiltrator:

You should form a consense on how pray will be worded since two of the cards already use it as a keyword action, while it is concepted as an activated keyword ability.

I personally wouldn't mind seeing it as a keyword action and have a Folk Medicine-inspired card that just says "Pray."

For testing purposes making it a keyword action seems preferable since it is more open-ended and can be easily reverted to its current form if the other uses (triggered abilities and spell abilities) turn out to be not worth it.

by Doombringer:

@SecretInfiltrator yeh this has come up multiple times in the last few hours so I'll probably discuss it with Dan in the next day or two. For now try searching out the design space of both variants and we can take a look at what is working best.

by Doombringer:

I'm seeing a lack of removal, ramp and other common effects. Lets design some of those.

by SecretInfiltrator:

Could "Whenever you pray" triggers become "Whenever you gain 3 or more life" triggers? I can't get over the parasitism of the original mechanic and the alternative wording also means praying only works if enough people come together for it.

Food for thought.

by Doombringer:

Ok so how is the Science deck going to be able to fight all these damn angels?

by Charlie Grant:

Burn, bounce, and a big dragon?

by CasualR:

While true, most of the burn is really small. Most of the angels are 4+. The only 4+ "burn" spells are currently Master Exploder and Turn to Coal. Even then, Master Exploder only works when re-engineering either Reconbobulator or Wurmcoil Prototype which are both competing for the exact same spot in the set.

Everything else is burn for 3 or less, which doesn't do enough.

This is a problem.

by Doombringer:

Yeh I was thinking maybe we need a card like Thunderbolt.

Also remember red now gets reach according to Skyraker Giant so that is another option.

by SecretInfiltrator:

I made Weigh Down to catch some of the Angels. Others can be burned with Turn to Coal. Maybe there should be another Aura that taps down a creature? Maybe a Sphinx to accompany the Dragon?

by Charlie Grant:

I created Tinstreet Brawl. Red gets fight and there isn't really any hexproof so it can kill anything.

by Doombringer:

Ok I've revamped the white set skeleton. I'll get onto the other colors later tonight. Lets see what you can make!

by SecretInfiltrator:

I'm really happy with the revamping so far. I'm looking forward to more.

by Doombringer:

Just letting you all know I've been on holiday and we are having technical issues recently with the podcast which is why there hasn't been an update of this recently.

by SecretInfiltrator:

We probably need some page that actually assembles the decks including the number of copies per card. It could be in the skeleton, but a distinct site might be best.

by Doombringer:

Secret Infiltraitor nearly all the cards are going to be singletons s that isn't much of an issue. Secondly this is on a slight pause until me and Dan resume our regular schedule

by SecretInfiltrator:

Doombringer, are you aware that you can change a keywords name independently of its playtest name? Going through all the cards for renaming re-engineer to tinker was not strictly necessary.

by DanF:

The name can affect the experience while playing. It's not necessary to change the name in many cases, but it's often helpful when you're trying to create a specific thematic feel. Doombringer decided to do it, and it'll make our testing a bit easier.

An extreme example is Devotion vs. Chroma. WOTC has credited the new thematic name with one of the reasons for the more positive playtest responses.

by dude1818:

No, but there's an easier way to do it on the website. I agree with what you're saying; Doombringer just did it the hard way.

by SecretInfiltrator:

First PLAYTEST results. The cards were already a few days old yesterday since the playtest was originally planned for the weekend, so a few results were not entirely up-to-date, but I could make some general observations:

Both decks have slight mana issues even with just one copy of every card in a card slot. I think there were already some cuts that are not represented in the decks I played, so more after today.
Tinker works, but plays entirely different on nonartifact creatures which sometimes - lacking the artifact in play - are simply "turned off"; not necessarily a bug, but we want to be certain to have artifacts at the cheap end of the spectrum.
More importantly: Tinkering is fun. You always seem to be able to do something even on a stalled board. You get to feel clever, so thematically this is a good sign.
Pray causes a strange transformation in the Faith deck once you reach the magical amount of seven mana: You want to pray, but you might also need to put down additional creatures to make pray better or defend. This cuts into the good feeling over finally being able to activate pray.
The Faith deck seems notbly more reliant to hit both colors twice to avoid being stuck with dead cards. Possibly too much.
The Science deck seems to handle Angels well with removal/Thopters, but the Thopters are ironically now pressuring the Faith deck a bit too efficiently early on.

The many different singletons result in a high variance, so some cards never showed up and some almost every game. I'll comment on individual cards that stood out.

by Doombringer:

Great job with taking the initiative to do your own playtest. Me and Dan will be playtesting this weekend and will add additional notes.

by SecretInfiltrator:

There has been an issue with the question whether the triggered abilities on creatures with pray trigger when the ability is activated or when it resolves. I suggest changing the wording from "Pray " to ": Pray." to remove any ambiguity.

A further benefit: The legendary creature alreay uses pray as a keyword action, so that's consistent then.

Note that making pray a keyword action does not mean I want to functionally change the cards from all being activated (excpet for the legendary creature).

On a similar issue I changed the reminder text for faith to

(If you reveal an Angel card as you cast this spell or if you control an Angel, you show faith.)

This no longer implies a triggered ability.

"Showing faith" is a play on revealing as well as moving away from the "having faith" wording which originally was confusing due to misleading wording used on some cards - currently faith is both a keyword and a state (achieved through the keyword).

by Doombringer:

Me and Dan were going to playtest last weekend but he is moving house so we'll probably have results later this week or next weekend.