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CardName: Discussion: Showdown Cost: Type: Discussion Pow/Tgh: / Rules Text: Discussion on the best variant of the Showdown mechanic. Flavour Text: Set/Rarity: Frontier World None

Discussion: Showdown
 
Discussion
Discussion on the best variant of the Showdown mechanic.
Updated on 19 Sep 2012 by Jack V

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2012-09-17 14:34:58: Jack V created the card Discussion: Showdown

Discussion of the Showdown! mechanic

2012-09-17 14:37:09: Jack V edited Discussion: Showdown

The wild west theme absolutely needs a showdown mechanic, and I think this is reasonable. I want a really distinctive mechanic to add some pizazz to early playtests.

This is very similar to Daniel Williams' mechanic in GDS2.

There's a LOT of tweaks to make. Currently it's the simplest version where you just reveal the card.

I don't want it to be top of library as that's too random.

I'm concerned it's annoying if you keep the same card in hand and showdown with it repeatedly, but there's still the tension whether someone else will have drawn a higher one.

You don't discard the cards. I considered having the winner discard-then-draw so the next showdown would be fresh (and early on it would smooth out unplayable fatties), but decided to try the simpler version first.

Common showdown cards should be simple "Do this to one player. If you win, you do it a bit more." Higher-rarity cards can have more complicated "everyone showdown" and "if you win, X, if you lose, Y" effects or "if you draw, Z" effects.

I think the idea is sufficiently intuitive people will understand what's going on even if the reminder text isn't complete, which is exactly when keyword mechanics are useful.

What should happen if the opponent has no cards? It's not that common, but keeping a land card in hand doesn't help either. Either they just lose, or they reveal the top card of their library instead. But the reminder text for that may be long?

Random mechanics like this usually avoid giving creature pump/damage as the bonus, since it creates feel-bad moments where it's irrelevant or you have to gamble on it.

Currently the common cards are just "x, and twice x if you win", and I want to stick to "bonus if you win", but I could also do "x, and bonus y if you win" if I wanted.

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 {0}. 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).

@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.

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 {0}-cost card in the set... and perhaps even a Motivational Piker :) :P

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.

2012-09-19 14:07:02: Jack V edited Discussion: Showdown

Just have equipment/enchants/artifacts that can assist/hinder showdowns???

Wow, this was a long time ago. Just to say, I like jmg's suggestion (with or without land) more and more. I doubt I'll continue this set, but I'd like to see that form of showdown used somewhere.

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