Conversation: Recent Activity
Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-05-03 02:41:00)
Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-05-03 02:41:00)
With Monstrosity, I was mostly talking about a standard fixed number. You're right, though, it probably won't be 1.
As for Heroic... that isn't a top down mechanic, as far as I can tell. Granting a bonus whenever your creature gets targeted doesn't scream 'Heroism' to me. It actually screams the opposite to me... it's a very selfish ability word for a creature to have. Sure, the end result is generally 'and the creature acts like a Hero' (I presume), but the flavor's still off. The creature should be doing something heroic to trigger heroic.
Heroic seems fine, but feels out of place. It feels like an excuse to enchant creatures, but it wouldn't be in the set if this wasn't an enchantment set. I get the flavor, but it falls flat when you tip over the cardboard set up.
Isn't that the point of a top-down design? Even seemingly good mechanics may feel out of place in any given set.
Yet it still feels heroic besides the auras interaction. In the past similar abilities were usually drawbacks or granted piddly effects. This time they turned it around and made them grant momentous benefits.
At least it's not yet another combat focused mechanic. You have to play with instants, sorceries and auras to the get most out of it. Not to mention, the effects are wildly different for each hero. Some give out +1/+1 counters and trample to your troops, some turn lands into creatures. We can only hope there are more cool heroes to come.
It will look more natural when a common grants 'Monstrosity 1'.
That doesn't seem monstrous at all. 3/3 becomes 4/4 or 4/4 becomes 5/5. So what? yawn We actually have 4/5 turn into 7/8 and 6/6 into 10/10. Now that's monstrous! It resembles those RPG bosses that transform into a badder form.
Ravnica was bottom up design. Theros is top down. While it's possible to make top down design simple, you're more likely to make something complicated while trying to replicate the flavor you were hoping to achieve.
I think the real question is "How come Innistrad wasn't all that complicated (you know... except for DFCs)?" For such a flavorful set, they sure mined a lot of standard Magic. I blame Flashback.
By the by, I'm really digging a lot of Theros keywords. Bestow is great... people have been messing with that space for years, so I'm happy to see Wizards get a solid take on Licids. Scry is a no-brainer in Greek mythos, and is an excellent vanilla mechanic. Devotion is Chroma, but it sounds 10x cooler... you want to show your devotion.
Monstrosity is kind of odd. I like the flavor of turning things into monsters, but I think the preview card is the wrong card to preview its ability. It will look more natural when a common grants 'Monstrosity 1'. To be honest, if I was development, I would have rejected the mechanic for not being fun enough, and asked design to go back and tinker with it some more... +1/+1 counters... that's a really bad way to track monstrosity. One of these days, we'll sacrifice the token creature slot for something neat... like a token Monstrocity enchant creature card in every pack.
Heroic seems fine, but feels out of place. It feels like an excuse to enchant creatures, but it wouldn't be in the set if this wasn't an enchantment set. I get the flavor, but it falls flat when you tip over the cardboard set up.
I don't know, Devotion just seems like you have to keep track of a bunch of extra stuff (Chroma had the same issue). And Bestow has some crazy rules attached to it. And Monstrous requires some bookkeeping, although not much. I'm not gonna talk about Thassa either, cuz yeah she's got some stuff going on.
But, I'm not saying I don't like any of these, I really like all of them. And these are all rare, so yeah they can be more complex. It's just pleasantly surprising to me after the relatively simple mechanics of Ravnica.
I just meant Thassa in particular, I suppose. She's doing so many things at once that aren't really related to each other at all.
How so? Devotion's just a restricted Chroma. At least now we know all the mechanics:
- Bestow
- Scry
- Devotion
- Monstrosity
- Heroic
Yes, if the spoiler on MtG Salvation is to be believed, the Gods are very complex cards.
This set is blowing my mind. The complexity of some of these cards is pretty surprising too.
So now that Bestow and Devotion are spoiled, what do we think?
I'm very interested in how they flavored the Enchantment "supertype" treatment.
First spoilers are out. Any thoughts?
Thank you!
"Wizards' current philosophy where they prefer all-upside mechanics to usually-upside-but-symmetrical"
Yes, this was a deliberate change to emphasise the usual use of terrains, but I'd been mulling it over long enough I'd forgotten it was one of the things I changed.
"allow it to be any player rather than saying they have to be played on opponents"
Yeah, I don't mean you can't play it on yourself, just that the normal use is to play a terrain on an opponent.
Although, oops, I think I had that the wrong way round, it could either be "play on yourself, creatures attacking you need to attack through a terrain attached to you" or "play on opponent, creatures attacking you need to attack through terrain attached to their controller" and the first makes a lot more sense.
I agree some kind of requirement like that is best built into the card type - it makes it easier to make the cards relevant.
Yeah. I wasn't sure, but I decided that was the interesting thing about terrains so I should focus on it. Alternatively, "bad" terrains can all individually say "at least one creature must attack in ~", but that's liable to be clunky.
"I think the idea of terrains with abilities like flying"
Point taken. It seems weird that flying doesn't help you avoid terrains, but maybe it's not worth worrying about.
"It's a strange division of choices."
Yeah, I think it makes sense conceptually but is hard to describe.
"Attacker chooses" is a lot more natural, but the trouble with that is that playing more terrains is bad, if it means the opponent's creatures can avoid your biggest terrains. If you get a mildly useful terrain on turn one, say "creature gets -1/-0" then you have to decide "should I play it now? but later on, my opponent's 5/5 flier can just attack through this and ignore my 'destroy attacking creature' terrain' if I draw it". That can be good, but it's a problem if there's a shiny new card type, but playing it is a mistake.
Maybe that just won't come up that much, but I'm not sure.
I also considered having terrains have an activation cost, so each turn defending player explicitly "turns on" the terrains they want to use each turn. That works very well in terms of groking how to use it (the reminder text can say something like "2R: at least one attacking creature must attack in ~" as an incidental way to specify it's mandatory), and gives development a knob to tweak, but tends to make the terrain design and play cluttered.
I also considered allowing terrains to "stack", so if you have a super-awesome terrain and a mediocre terrain, you can either combine them to obstruct your opponent's best creature, or use them separately to blunt two of your opponent's creatures. (The card frame can helpfully hint how you should use it.)
But those two ideas were definitely more complicated.
Hmm. Some of these rules are a little different to how I thought terrains worked in previous design challenges. In particular, I thought they were all symmetrical before, rather than attached to a player. Admittedly it allows a lot more interesting effects if only one player can get the effects, and it's rather more friendly with Wizards' current philosophy where they prefer all-upside mechanics to usually-upside-but-symmetrical as seen on Slivers and other lords. So I guess that makes sense. I'd certainly think it makes sense that when you cast a terrain spell you announce a player who it'll be attached to, and presumably terrain spells target; but allow it to be any player rather than saying they have to be played on opponents.
I also thought any number of creatures could attack through a given terrain, rather than just one, and creatures weren't forced to use terrains unless they say so like Inconvenient Marsh. Your rule 3 makes sense though. I agree some kind of requirement like that is best built into the card type - it makes it easier to make the cards relevant.
I think the idea of terrains with abilities like flying (your rule 5) is very confusing and best avoided.
Your rule 4 seems odd. It's a strange division of choices. I'd've thought it'd make most sense for the attacker to be able to choose any combination of terrains to attack through (obviously modified by any explicit requirements/restrictions that specific terrains might state), and any blocking creatures are deemed to be blocking in the terrain the attacker is in. Then terrains could say "Creatures attacking in ~ have +1/+1" or "Creatures blocking in ~ have +1/+1"; the former is nice for the attacking player, obviously, but the latter gives the attacker some choice which of their creatures has to suffer this penalty (and it'd be natural to put evasive creatures in here if you have any).
Simple examples:
You have a terrain which says "attacking creatures in this get -1/-0". I have two creatures. I can attack with both, one attacking in the terrain, or attack with one in the terrain.
As before, but one of my creatures flies. I can attack with the flier only (it wouldn't attack in the terrain but it could if I wanted), or attack with both creatures, either in the terrain. (Oops, I think this contradicts what I said earlier, I'm not sure I have the evasion rules right.)
You have two terrains, and I have one attacking creature. You choose which terrain is used.
You have three terrains and I have two attacking creatures. You choose which two terrains are used, but I choose which creature attacks in which terrain.
An idea kicked around in several iterations in Design Challenge was terrains, or battlefields. For instance, see:
Battlefields
Terrains
I've been thinking about which aspects of the idea I like the most.
I want to make the next design challenge to design a terrain, but first I want to work out some basic principles.
Currently my assumptions are:
I will use the name Terrain (assuming Camruth doesn't mind), even if the concept changes.
Terrains are primarily interesting when attacking creatures need to go through one, but attacking player chooses which. Because that's easy to understand, but isn't easy to specify concisely in the rules text of a card of an existing type.
Specifically, I'm considering the rules that:
I think that allows several simple common effects to be terrains: eg. instead of pacifism, have a terrain which prevents all damage.
Open questions.
Do those rules work well enough for a design challenge to say "design a terrain card"? What holes in the concept are there?
Divert (You may have damage that would be dealt to this creature be dealt to you instead.)
Hydra X (X additional creatures are needed to block this creature.)
Passage (: Target creature can't block this creature this turn.)
Crawl (This creature can be blocked by tapped creatures and can't be blocked by untapped creatures.)
Well, now that I'm watching the Magic panel, it seems everyone is saying it "Thare-os," so I don't know what's right.
I'm interested in the fact that there seem to be blue, red, and green "walled cities," but no white or black. EDIT: Wait, maybe it's white, red, and green cities. The first city sounded blue when they described it, but apparently its inhabitants worship Heliod.
Huh; I assumed Theros was pronounced as in 'heh', or 'feather'. Ah well, silly ancient greeks and their own language; pronouncing their own words wrongly :)
I didn't know this, but google says it's an existing greek word that meant "summer", in the bible and everything, and occasionally used to be used as a boy's name. I don't know if the connection is deliberate, but given the greek theme I assume it is.
So presumably the correct pronunciation is whatever the greek pronunciation would be, and wizards are right if they matched that, and wrong if not.
Someone on blogatog said "Theros is pronounced like hero correct? So Theer-os not There-os, and is it os as in ostrich or os as in comatose?" So I pronounced it wrong when I first saw it. But when someone said it had a double e, I thought it was supposed to be like "three-ros" which seemed obviously wrong. But that's in my accent; these vowel sounds are one of the things where there's three or four worldwide, but British English conflates two, and American English conflates a different two, and you only find out when you hear a pun from the other side of the atlantic :)
Oh, come on. If they wanted a long 'e' sound, they should have written 'ee'. We don't exactly go around calling the Greek Demigod 'Heercules' after all.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to Theros in the P2theM podcast. Marvel and DC announcements from Comic Con trumped Magic: the Gathering. :s
Apparently Theros is pronounced "Theeros," and I've been saying it wrong. Oops.
The art so far is all very impressive.
Oh wow, that generally sounds awesome. I hope that heros, gods and monsters works as well as it sounds and isn't gimicky, but I have reasonable faith that it will. I also really love the greek flavour, enchantment theme, centaurs and minotaurs!
@Link That was revealed at PAX Aus, live-tweeted here.
@jmg You're quite welcome.
Where did you find that gem about centaurs and satyrs?
You know, Dude, you're doing me an excellent service by rounding up all this information for my Power to the Meeple podcast on Monday. So thank you for that. :)
(I should probably mention that all this info will be old news by the time 2 weeks pass and the podcast hits. But I've always assumed the majority of our audience is casual enough to not really notice.)
New: elves are replaced by centaurs and satyrs as green's common creatures.
Link, you're correct about the specialty cards. The Hero cards come in the prerelease packs. I've also updated my first post with Thassa's art. Nyx, the home of the gods, is the night sky, so the nw frame is flavorfully relevant as well. The god mechanic might be grandeur, so the frame might show that they have the ability. It's also interesting how Elspeth is the Hercules analog.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/55998229408/so-now-what-can-you-tell-us-about-theros