The Gaming Den

Posted: **Fri Mar 15, 2019 5:18 pm**

angelfromanotherpin wrote:The thing that gets me is that Anytime has functionally become a keyword. Putting it on the type line is inconsistent with where all the other keywords go.

I disagree. Anytime affects whether a card can be played at all, rather than doing a thing once the card is in play or even taking effect. Printing it as a keyword in the card text is gibberish because you normally have to play a card before your opponent reads the text.

-Username17

Posted: **Fri Mar 15, 2019 6:50 pm**

FrankTrollman wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:The thing that gets me is that Anytime has functionally become a keyword. Putting it on the type line is inconsistent with where all the other keywords go.
I disagree. Anytime affects whether a card can be played at all, rather than doing a thing once the card is in play or even taking effect. Printing it as a keyword in the card text is gibberish because you normally have to play a card before your opponent reads the text.

-Username17

But if your opponent can't see the card in your hand, it doesn't matter that they don't see the text until you play it. Whether it is printed below the picture with type or printed in the text block doesn't matter. Magic puts the rule keywords before any fluff description.

I like 'flash' for spells that can be cast anytime. Just putting Flash on 'sorceries' to make them instants, and putting Flash on creatures to make them 'Anytime' seems fine to me.

Posted: **Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:42 pm**

You could ever-so-slightly alleviate the first-player advantage by having a keyword/card type that can only be played on the *opponent's* turn. Since the player who does not go first gets more of those sooner. Of course the first player is still ahead in resources/laying land, etc. so this doesn't help with first player advantage without careful card design.

A cost 3 card which can only be played on the opponent's turn is still something player 1 can play before player 2.

A non-basic source that comes into play tapped, and can only be played out of turn at a point when the opponent has more sources in play than you inverts the mana curve advantage if player 2 starts with it in hand.

Posted: **Fri Mar 15, 2019 11:35 pm**

FrankTrollman (Edited) wrote: [*] Flash Unique - Creature Vampire Noble

So Creatures and Waifu are different, but are they mechanically different? So Creature is just a keyword like Human or Elf or whatever, right?

This is obvious and boring. Mechanical features:
[*] (Implicit) Waifu/Creature
[*] Flash
[*] Unique
[*] Limited (if you decide you need it)
[*] Site
[*] Edge
[*] State
Using the Shadowfist names for resources/enchantments/auras, go before the "-" and whatever keywords go after. Done.

So, Life has elf maidens, barbarian girls, and spirit girls; some may overlap between these three.

Obviously

Is technically french.

https://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=character&charid=96006 wrote: Waifu 2 users have this character as their waifu.
Trash Your waifu is 9% trash.

I want to know their methodology here.

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:59 am**

Josh wrote:A cost 3 card which can only be played on the opponent's turn is still something player 1 can play before player 2.

Precisely. The first player to play a third land is the first player to have 3 lands on their own turn and also the first player to have 3 lands on their opponent's turn.

If you want to make cards that help the player who is behind on lands, there is a template for that. The Knight of the White Orchid triggers if your opponent has three lands - and the second player to get to 3 lands is the first player to have the option of playing a card when their opponent has 3 lands.

--

Flash is a goddamn terrible word, because it implies a level of speed that these cards do not have. They are the same speed as non-Flash cards, they can just be played at different times.

DRPraetor wrote:So Creature is just a keyword like Human or Elf or whatever, right?

No? Creatures have summoning sickness and hit points and can be declared as attackers and blockers. They have real mechanical differences that are distinct from what Assets do while in play.

It's not just a keyword that determines whether spells with targeting restrictions can target them.

-Username17

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:11 am**

Wait, so is Princess Mononoke a:
(Implicitly Waifu) - Human Canid Berserker
or a
Creature - Human Canid Berserker?
or a
(Implicitly Asset) - Human Canid Berserker?

I wasn't asking if Creatures were different than Assets; I was asking if Creatures were different from Waifu; e.g., does


Commons	Cost	Type(s)
Royal Eagle	R	Creature - Bird
Spawn of Krevory	R	Creature - Vampire Minion
Unobtrusive Servant	R	Human Minion

The "Unobtrusive Servant" have summoning sickness and hit points and can be declared as an attacker or blocker, or she an "Asset" instead?


Commons	Cost	Type(s)
Palace Guard	1R	Human Guard

It seems weird to me that the Palace Guard can't block, if that was the intent. I assume she's a Waifu because she lacks the Creature tag?

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:18 am**

I think I just left some creature tags off some of the creatures. It's not intended to be a final draft.

-Username17

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:42 am**

Ah, gotcha. I don't like the word "Creature" because a good half of your deck is going to be girls in maid costumes; but "Summon" and "Unit" and so forth aren't great either. You can dodge the question by making summons the "implicit type" that cards have if not otherwise specified.

Anyway,

Frank wrote:LAW
Law's two lanes are Nerd Girls and Soldier Girls. Broadly speaking, the Nerd Girls belong to the classes of: Scholar, Artisan, Wizard, and Scientist; while the Soldier Girls belong to the classes of: Guard, Scout, Knight, and Soldier. Law has very few girls that are high-cost creatures, but has access to various war engines and war beasts. The biggest things are the Iron Dragon and the Sky Galleon. You also get Dwarves. Animals are mostly Dogs and Horses (including Pegasi and shit) but also Elephants and particularly lawful bugs: Ants, Bees, and Spiders.

The Myrmidon is a cute a girl with a spear, she gets the same tribal as the Ants.

She needs a shield.

Taiwanese train mascots are moe, they wear uniforms, at least one is an engineer.

She makes the trains run on time.

And Queen's Blade has a hypersexualized dwarf girl.
https://queensblade.fandom.com/wiki/Ymir

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:10 am**

I realize that we're about fifty steps behind commissioning art for the project, but since dwarf girls came up: if the gimmick that makes this game stand out from Magic is supposed to be cute girls doing cute things (and that is the kind of gimmick that could actually serve to hook people into the game long enough to notice the advantages of jettisoning Magic's legacy code), then that's something that needs to be reflected in every piece of artwork. Paying to commission art that makes your game look indistinguishable from Magic just doesn't make sense when you could be paying the same amount of money for a piece of art that you can use as advertising and which the target audience for Moe: the Gathering is more likely to want to collect just for the art. So, your ants either need to be cute girls or have cute girls riding them or feeding them or something.

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:15 am**

Super mechanized units can be giantesses wearing tank and battleship accessories

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 6:15 am**

War machines with moe crew is a pretty popular anime premise lately.

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 11:28 am**

OgreBattle wrote:Super mechanized units can be giantesses wearing tank and battleship accessories

Do you even Ryusei bro?

Pure robot girls can be cute too!

For those of you who don't get the joke, Ryusei's a super robot wars original character that despite being often surrounded by women with bouncing breasts can only get aroused for giant robots with female curves.

Anyway there should definitely be giant mecha golem girls somewhere.

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:30 pm**

maglag wrote:Anyway there should definitely be giant mecha golem girls somewhere.

Giant cutesy statutes of "Justice" or other anthropomorphised concepts?

While I'm sure there's cute versions of the Statue of Liberty, and various versions that walk around and fight things, not seen both at once yet. Undoubtedly there are somewhere, though.

Posted: **Sat Mar 16, 2019 11:34 pm**

I am not committed to a specific card name for Creatures. I think there needs to be one, because Creatures are the most different from being a card that just sits in play and does what its text box says it does. Technically, Assets don't really need a card type because they just sit in play and do what their text box says - but I still think they should have a card type because the difference between an Asset that sits in play and keeps doing its thing and a Spell that does its thing once and then goes away is reasonably critical and either of those have equal claim on being the "default" card type.

But I broadly agree that "Creature" isn't a great word when most of your Creature cards are school girls with giant swords. But equally, I don't really like "Character" because some of the Creatures are clouds of mosquitoes or robot ants.

Probably the ideal here is to have the creature cards get some term of art such as "vassals" or "pawns" and work that into the story somehow. In Force of Will they are called "Resonators" which is a bit esoteric, and in Shadowverse they are called "Followers" which seems pretty OK.

DrPraetor wrote:

Frank wrote:LIFE
Life's two people tracks are Wild Girls and Spirit Girls. The Wild Girls come in the following classes: Warrior, Berserker, Scout, Shaman, and Druid; the Spirit Girls are basically all just Spirits or Fairies, but they are conceptually Nymphs, Oreads, Dryads, Genius Loci and such. There's a parade of bears, deer, unicorns, and walking trees as you might expect in the animal department. There are also Elves. The biggest things are the Forest Dragon and the Force of Nature.

Commons Cost Type(s)
Wolf G Creature - Canid
Grove Acolyte G Elf Minion
Woodsman G Human Scout
Garland of Flowers G Charm
Rite of Spring G Ritual
Maenads 1G Human Berserker
Dryad 1G Creature - Elf Spirit
Daughter of Mistletoe 1G Human Druid
Sword Dancer 1G Elf Warrior
Howl 1G Spell - Canid
Forest Troll 2G Creature - Spirit
Daughter of the Wolf 2G Human Canid Berserker
Rite of Autumn 2G Ritual
Saxifrage 2G Charm
Sloth of Bears 2G Ritual - Creature Bear
Lifebringer 3G Elf Druid
Grove Guardian 3G Creature - Spirit
Rangers 2GG Elf Scout
Entangle 3G Spell
Thorns 3G Ritual
Warg 4G Human Bear Berserker
Velvet Paw 4G Spell
Vily 4GG Creature - Spirit Berserker
Remorseless Fang 5G Ritual

Nature gets more tribals on their cards and more cards that care about tribals. Do we really want Berserker and Warrior to be different things?

Berserker and Warrior would want to be different things, because you got various rampaging bloodthirsty giants and stuff that are Berserkers but not specifically Warriors and lots of tribal warrior types who are Warriors and not Berserkers. You can even have some Chaos Warriors that are both Berserkers and Warriors.

In any case, that life list kind of underlines how hard it is to get the lists down enough to fit everything. Ideally we'd want a few Fairies, and none of them made it to that list. Doesn't have to be a lot of Fairies, but some Sprites and a Sidhe or something in there would be plenty enough to establish it as a core Life creature concept.

-Username17

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:43 am**

My concern is, how does a proliferation of tribals affect deck design?

You kinda want a deck to have both Wolves and Bears in it, which is a losing proposition if they have different tribal bonuses, or if Wolves get tribal bonuses you care about while Bears don't and are just more quality.

Of course this is all very abstract considering you can drive synergy bonuses by giving one particular bear and one particular wolf the same keyword ability that drives on charms or whatever.

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 4:47 am**

I hate to bring back up the discussion from two pages back, but I feel the issue of card rarity wasn't resolved satisfactorily.

(Well, my satisfaction)

Either the value of more than two* rarities wasn't explained sufficiently (I accept this possibility), or I still feel it's a waste of card design.

My position is that a booster pack should contain X Commons (number TBD) and exactly one Rare. No Secret Rares or Mythic Rares or Uncommons or that.

*And obviously, as this is 2019, you should be able to order a copy of any card online. Need three of some Rare? Go ahead! Give it a special symbol so it isn't confused with "true" Rares, but it should be mechanically identical.

(This separates the collector's market from those who only play. Something being useful in Constructed shouldn't mean that it takes a boatload of cash to get.)

But moving on...

DrPraetor wrote:You kinda want a deck to have both Wolves and Bears in it, which is a losing proposition if they have different tribal bonuses, or if Wolves get tribal bonuses you care about while Bears don't and are just more quality.

A (possibly unsatisfying) solution is to simply divide the Creature category into Machines, Animals, and People. Bears and Wolves both fall into Animals, and you use cards that key off that keyword.

This gives way to Beastmaster decks that focus on the Animals of <Colors in deck>, and whatever cards that support them.

----

And finally a mechanics spitball...

Magic's Commander format has its Commander Zone; Yu-Gi-Oh! has its Extra Deck.

(I'm sure that comparison just annoyed a lot of people...)

Will this have something again like either of those? If so, which should it be more like?

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 9:53 am**

DrPraetor wrote: You kinda want a deck to have both Wolves and Bears in it, which is a losing proposition if they have different tribal bonuses, or if Wolves get tribal bonuses you care about while Bears don't and are just more quality.

Fire Emblem Heroes has an interesting approach to that problem in that besides there being abilities that reward you for having multiple units of the same type (leading to builds nicknamed like horse emblem and dragon emblem), they also have the "tactics" abilities that grant you big bonus only if you have units of different types.

Like:

Tactician maid.
-If you have at least two girls of different types in the field, grant all your other girls +X attack.

Optional: disable the tactician bonus for your units if you have more than 2 in the field of the same type, which leads to tactical decisions like deciding to hold back in dropping too much creatures of the same type at the same time.

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 1:32 pm**

NoDot wrote:I hate to bring back up the discussion from two pages back, but I feel the issue of card rarity wasn't resolved satisfactorily.

(Well, my satisfaction)

Either the value of more than two* rarities wasn't explained sufficiently (I accept this possibility), or I still feel it's a waste of card design.

There's an explanation, but I've changed my mind and I agree with you. You really only want 2 rarity levels.

It's a waste of design in draft. Maybe there are some cards that you want to show up once with low variance, but I doubt it.

Suppose you've got:
130 commons (20 * 6 + 10)
65 uncommons (10 * 6 + 5)
260 rares (40 * 6 + 20)
and you get 7 + 1 + 1 per pack.

Well, in a draft, if you get E(each common) = 3, you've got E(each uncommon)~=4/7 and E(each rare)~=1/14 and you may or may not have 1 of them, either way.

However, you will get a complete suite of 3 of any given uncommon in 195 packs, but a complete suite of 3 of any given rare in *780* packs.

So the purpose of uncommons is to make collecting a set of 3 (for use in constructed deck) easier, thus lowering the gating.

But I think it is an exercise doomed to failure, because each constructed deck will require a suite of 3 of *some* rare to be competitive, which means you need to have opened 780 packs to get there. So instead, I think it's better to go something like:

165 commons (25 * 6 + 15)
295 rares (45 * 6 + 25)
and get 7 + 2 per pack.

That means you get, on average, 3 of each rare in about 450 packs, which is still a lot but far fewer than you needed in the original release of MtG, for example.

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 3:40 pm**

I regard the argument in favor of Uncommons to be an absolute slam dunk. The middling rarity is a massive boon for both Limited and Constructed. An Uncommon is usually available in Limited is easily acquired for Constructed - but it's essentially never in sufficient quantities to take over a Draft and it doesn't crowd out chase rares from packs for Constructed.

Consider three actual White Uncommons in Dominaria:

Seal Away
Serra Angel
Dauntless Bodyguard

Seal Away is a highly efficient Constructed quality removal spell. If it was Common, it would make Limited games very frustrating because White Control would drown you in highly efficient removal. If it was Rare, it would be a Chase Rare and drive the cost of Constructed up significantly. Serra Angel is a Midrange bomb in Limited and if it were Common then Midrange decks would crush you in angel flights. In Constructed, it's hot garbage - a card that's not actually good enough to justify a slot in a Constructed deck. If that were Rare, it would be very frustrating to open packs that had Serra Angels in them as the Rare over cards that Midrange White decks actually wanted to play. And Dauntless Bodyguard is a highly efficient Aggro card in any format. If it was Common, White Aggro decks would be too efficient and people wouldn't be able to live long enough to play big dumb creatures at all. In Constructed, Aggro is a necessary archetype and those efficient Aggro creatures need to be available and pushing them up to Rare would be severely exclusionary.

TL;DR: Constructed Archetype Staples that would be distortionate in Limited at Common and Limited Bombs that aren't good enough for Constructed should be Uncommon. Since that describes a lot of cards, the Uncommon rarity needs to exist.

-Username17

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 4:33 pm**

Let's phrase it this way: does rare need to exist? Why not just have common and uncommon, and that way you avoid flooding draft with the uncommons, but don't gate constructed too severely?

(longer version)

If a deck with 4 Seal Away and 1... let's say History of Benalia is competitive in Constructive, then fine, you want Seal Away to be Uncommon and History of Benalia can be rare.

But if you have any chase rares at all, then in order to get 3 of any chase rare you end up with a massive surplus of every uncommon. Once you've opened enough packs to get 3 of any particular rare, you've opened enough packs to get 3 of every rare, so the benefit of having anything at uncommon is pretty marginal.

This is highly inobvious if you start with the current economy in MtG singles cards, where uncommons are very cheap and the good rares are very expensive. But if you fix the value as a function of the number of rares you get in a pack, it's follows that combining uncommon and rare into one group means you need fewer packs to get 3 of each chase rare, which means the price of each chase rare goes down.

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 4:36 pm**

DrPraetor wrote:My concern is, how does a proliferation of tribals affect deck design?

Decks run on a continuum between Card Quality and Synergy. The best Wolf card may or may not be better than the best Bear card; but I find it extremely likely that the best Wolf card is going to be better than the fourth best Bear card. It means that the choice to cut Wolves for Bears necessarily means reducing overall card quality in order to chase Bear synergies.

NoDot wrote:Magic's Commander format has its Commander Zone; Yu-Gi-Oh! has its Extra Deck.

(I'm sure that comparison just annoyed a lot of people...)

Will this have something again like either of those? If so, which should it be more like?

I quite like the Conspiracies from Conspiracy and feel that that sort of thing is a profitable place for card design. Choosing an Asset that appears in play before the game starts is a thing that I think could really help to create some decks that play really different. Which of course means that people need a way to pay for that sort of thing.

-Username17

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 5:01 pm**

The creature category can be called...

Ally, Summon, Striker, Forward, Servant, Unit, Piece, Pawn

Do mana generating land equivalents and assets need to be different typings?

I feel you need immense resources to be a tcg so a living card game sort of direction would be more plausible

That term Is copyright by FFG though so what’s a better term for that

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 6:02 pm**

I think the more generic the Creature-replacement term the better. I'm just using 'Being' as a placeholder.

Posted: **Sun Mar 17, 2019 10:07 pm**

OB wrote:I feel you need immense resources to be a tcg so a living card game sort of direction would be more plausible

The needs of a complete deckbuilder and a TCG are pretty different as it comes to card set contents. The most obvious point is the "sixth best 2-cost Red Card." In a TCG, such a card has real purpose in Draft because due to card rarities and people competitively drafting the best cards, players will often "settle" for suboptimal cards because getting an appropriate cost curve is more important than playing only optimal cards and you can't get enough optimal cards anyway.

In a complete set deckbuilder, this is simply not the case. Everyone has the same card access, so people will make decks out of the best cards. A 2-cost Red Card will only see any play anywhere under any circumstances if there is a deck that would rather have it than one of the other options. A card which is simply "not as good" is not "Draft Chaff" because there isn't any Draft!

-Username17

Posted: **Mon Mar 18, 2019 12:05 am**

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I think the more generic the Creature-replacement term the better. I'm just using 'Being' as a placeholder.

When I first saw those, I thought you'd drawn them.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f9/98/61 ... 2f23da.jpg

Anyway, I like your design aesthetic, although those quotes need work. I don't like "Being" because it shows up as "beings with", "this being", etc., which scan very clunky. Agent? They could be agents?

Agent - Bird
Well, that's not ideal. "Agents with flying" scans okay, though.
Agent - Vampire Minion
"this agent inflicted" both scan fine.
Agent - Human Minion
"This agent can't" both scan fine.

"Follower" would also work? Shorter is better. What is a word that describes both a clumsy science girl and a swarm of giant bees? That's remarkably tough.

Oh, instead of Flash or Anytime, how about "Flex"? One thing about card types and keywords: shorter is better, because it makes the cards easier to read. So the regex would be:

Code: Select all

Flex? Unique? &#91;Asset | Charm | Agent | Base | Rite&#93; - &#91;Keywords&#93;*

Oh, what was the difference going to be between Rituals and Spells? Were spells just anytime Rituals or were Rituals assets or...?

The Gaming Den

Moe to sexy girls 'color' wheel