How to do Werewolf mechanics better in MTG

[OgreBattle]

Tom LaPille was (somewhat) recently moved over to D&D from the Magic development team. He played it as a move because he loved D&D, but the general consensus in the circles I frequent saw it as more of a last chance, both because there were a bunch of people that disagreed with his design/dev decisions, and also for the fact that he wrote articles that angrily belittled the very audience he was attempting to attract.

For example. (tl;dr: He's butthurt that people didn't like a particular type of card and spent his entire weekly column accusing players of being Wrong and not actually playing the game.)

I've never used werewolves or seen them played (I just play casually with friends) though, only play casually with friends and most think flip cards are an awkward mechanic.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I hear Huntmaster of the Fells (the Mythic Rare Werewolf) is pretty good.

I think that the big problem with most werewolves is that they're creatures that don't get you value the turn you play them, and don't win you the game on their own.

[NineInchNall]

Yeah, there were some that were good, like the Huntmaster, but the best wolfies were in Avacyn Restored. Stuff like Wolfir Silverheart. Woof. Rather powerful in a GW aggro deck.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Another problem Werewolves have is that their concept doesn't fit with Magic in a way that a card representing the whole Werewolf character works. If the Werewolf form is good, players just shoot the squishy human form first.

So, maybe you make half the werewolf a card.

SUDDNELY, A WEREWOLF! {2}{R}
Creature -- Werewolf Rare
Trample, haste
Champion a creature (or something like that)
At the beginning of each end step, return CARDNAME to its owner's hand.
5/5

[OgreBattle]

Another problem Werewolves have is that their concept doesn't fit with Magic in a way that a card representing the whole Werewolf character works. If the Werewolf form is good, players just shoot the squishy human form first.

So, maybe you make half the werewolf a card.

SUDDNELY, A WEREWOLF! {2}{R}
Creature -- Werewolf Rare
Trample, haste
Champion a creature (or something like that)
At the beginning of each end step, return CARDNAME to its owner's hand.
5/5

I wouldn't mind Pokemon TCG mechanics in an edition of MTG

[Prak]

WotC keeps trying to figure out a way to make one card represent two. Morph, Flip cards, split cards, transform, etc.

Split spells work ok and have a lot of cachet, people seem to like them.

Morph was interesting, but lets be honest, it showed up because of YuGiOh--it may have been in development for some time before YGO hit our shores, but they pushed it when they did because YGO.

Transform cards.... ok, I've never played with transform cards. But they basically require check cards to take the place of the card in your deck (you can get around this with sleeves, but...) They seem like a pain, even if they can do cool things.

Flip cards, or whatever those "when this thing happens, [stage 1 of this card] becomes [stage 2 of this card], rotate it 180 degrees" cards were called were cool, but the Leveling mechanic did the same thing much better.

Lapille's article was... ill advised. I think he's right that the specific claims players made were all ill informed, and he was correct in his claim that the players hadn't played because he was talking about a period of time in which the cards had been revealed, but not released (ok, someone could proxy them, but generally...), and he said they had not played with *those* cards.
He was still being an asshat.

Honestly, I hope he can bring some good to D&D. But he's probably already on the chopping block if he's being sent there.

[Username17]

A Magic card is frankly not all that large, and it doesn't have a lot of wasted space. You literally can't add anything more to the card without sacrificing text size, art size, or border size. All three of those things serve an actual purpose in the aesthetics and/or usability of the card, so any of those choices is basically bad. Having cards that turn 180 degrees to be a different card is obvious, but they end up looking cramped and unwieldy:



Cards that flip over front to back is an obvious way to get twice as much space on the card, but all the backs on all the cards need to be exactly the same. That is not fucking negotiable, see the crashing and burning of Jyhad.

Basically, if you wanted to do werewolves, you need to do a single art piece that shows someone transforming into a werewolf or looking into a mirror and seeing their Moon Moon face or whatever and give them a conditional bonus to their asskicking.

Now that being said, the whole transformation mechanic being based on whether a player cast zero or two spells in the last turn is pretty painfully uninteresting. You can load up on Instants that you can cast on your opponent's turn to avoid turning your werewolves into humans, but that's not a particularly interesting game choice. There's not a lot of synergy there, and it's almost completely metagame.

-Username17

[Prak]

Yeah, and that was pretty much the least bad way of working mechanics they came up with.

Innistrad had a number of choices I find questionable. Werewolves should have just had something like the level mechanic, the blue and white spirit tribe should probably have been something else...

[Ravengm]

The only werewolf that actually ended up being played in Standard while werewolves were there was Huntmaster, and that was because it was good both outside of a werewolf deck, and without transforming.

The biggest problem with the werewolf mechanic was how it triggered. Werewolves is very solidly a G/R aggro deck, which means you want to constantly be playing threats in order to pressure your opponent into exhausting resources trying to deal with your shit until you overwhelm them. This means you need to be playing cards all the time. Which means you're probably dropping a new dude every turn. Which means things aren't transforming on your turn. Which means your creatures suck, because they're only actually efficient once they transform.

So, you have to rely on your opponent to actively not try to keep your dudes from transforming, which isn't going to happen if they can manage to do anything about it. Against the different types of decks:

• Control is going to deal with your creatures, because that's what the deck is built to do. They have both utility spells to use on their turn, and removal for your dudes. You're not going to force very many transformations, and even if you do, it'll probably end up eating a Doom Blade or similar anyway.
  Combo incorporates elements of control in order to make its gameplan happen, though the amount is less. However, they have a game-winning combo that they will eventually pull off, because you're probably running slim-to-no disruption in an aggro deck. This is a race, and since they're running a bunch of cards to support/dig for the combo, they're probably playing something most turns.
  Non-Werewolf Aggro plays pretty much the same as you, except their creatures are better before yours transform. They win the fights until someone effectively skips their turn by not playing anything.

So basically, people who tried making Werewolf tribal decks ended up running 4 Moonmist and relying on either that or skipping a turn by not playing anything to turn their creatures into things that were better than crappy. Both are suboptimal gameplans, and it turned out to be better to just run traditional aggro since you have to jump through less hoops to make it work like it should.

The fact that the cards are double-faced was born out of necessity, because if you print everything on one side, you get really awkward design/readability decisions, like this:

It works, though it's just a ton of text crammed into a small space. These particular images were a fan mock-up of how to use the transform mechanic without using both the front and back of the card.

Basically, you can't print what they wanted on one side of the card, because it ruins the aesthetics and the established readability of cards. It opened up some design space by allowing them to print essentially double the amount of text that they normally could on a card, but there were a ton of fiddly things wrong with the design (e.g. in drafts, transform cards were visible to all players, which kind of kills the hidden information part of drafting).

[JonSetanta]

I enjoy making cards with Magic Set Editor.

Some ideas I pursued were exactly this, the flip card mechanic alternatives.

Kamigawa cards were a reasonable solution, but I also made a series of enchantments that you just slap on a creature to make it a werewolf.

[Prak]

I'm pretty sure that Kamigawa was such a marketing disaster that they will never again do anything they tried out in Kamigawa, including rotation cards.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Their official reason for not doing flip cards again is because there's just so little space. DFCs are their attempt to address that problem.

They also brought back Spirit tribal.

[Mistborn]

I'm pretty sure that Kamigawa was such a marketing disaster that they will never again do anything they tried out in Kamigawa, including rotation cards.

Which is a shame because I think Splice could have been a top tier mechanic if they pushed it further.

Speaking of questionable decisions from wizards it's kind of irritating how wizards keeps kicking combo players in the junk. Standard hasn't had a competitive combo deck in years and Wizards keeps killing combo decks in modern.

[Prak]

I liked Splice, and I think they could bring it back, but Kamigawa, apparently, tested abysmally. Besides that, they made a block which plays really well with itself, and not so well with other blocks. I think some mechanics are definitely salvageable (the first instance of the Bushido mechanic appears on Chub Toad. It's not errata'd to have Bushido because their internal style guide says that only Samurai can have the keyword Bushido). Splice is "a 4 on the Storm Scale*" because Arcane was a one off. There's no reason they can't bring back the entire idea of Splice and Arcane which had literally no connection between words and the set flavour, except that they're leery to create new card subtypes these days.

*The scale of how likely they are to reuse a mechanic, from 1 (very likely) to 3 (no way in hell).

[OgreBattle]

I'm pretty sure that Kamigawa was such a marketing disaster that they will never again do anything they tried out in Kamigawa, including rotation cards.

I was expecting "Ninjas Ninjas Ninjas!!" from their fantasy Japan setting, instead it was rampaging samurai* and strangely weak mechanics.


*That didn't look cool either. It's like their effort to make them look 'authentic' just made them boring, even though real world samurai armor is cool with demon masks and horns and stuff.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I was expecting "Ninjas Ninjas Ninjas!!" from their fantasy Japan setting, instead it was rampaging samurai and strangely weak mechanics.

Because they based it on their studies of Japanese mythology, not pop culture.

[Prak]

And that's why it was poorly received, I think. They said "Well, Japan's big right now, let's do a fantasy japan set," and for some reason they completely missed the fact that it was Japan's vaguely ethnicist graphic novels that were big, not Japanese myth.

[OgreBattle]

Because they based it on their studies of Japanese mythology not pop culture.

and rat tits



because

I get the feeling that whoever lead the direction of Kamigawa was a 'Japan studies major' that really hates weeaboos or something.

And that's why it was poorly received, I think. They said "Well, Japan's big right now, let's do a fantasy japan set," and for some reason they completely missed the fact that it was Japan's vaguely ethnicist graphic novels that were big, not Japanese myth.

When I worked at the Smithsonian, kids went to the Asian art gallery because they played Japanese games or read manga or watched Anime, it was a lot of fun showing them "Here's Hokusai's painting of a wartortle" or "Here's the nine tailed fox, like in Naruto n' Inuyasha". Japanese pop culture's a great introduction to Asian mythology.

Kamigawa's quest for 'authenticity' just created a setting devoid of the charm the actual mythology has:

The taste of Kamigawa

[RadiantPhoenix]

And that's why it was poorly received, I think. They said "Well, Japan's big right now, let's do a fantasy japan set," and for some reason they completely missed the fact that it was Japan's vaguely ethnicist graphic novels that were big, not Japanese myth.

Based on some articles from a month or two ago about Theros, that seems similar to their conclusion.

[Username17]

I actually really liked the Ninjitsu mechanic. That was the most fun thing in forever. But there weren't enough Ninjas. Even now there are only 10 ninjas. And all of them are Black or Blue or Black and Blue. Fuck that.

Mostly Kamigawa wanted me to pay six mana for a 2/2 with Fear. I honestly don't understand why designers thought I would want to play cards from a set whose mantra was "all creatures considerably below the expectations of the Jedi Curve." That makes no sense to me. I don't necessarily expect to get a Shivan Dragon every time I spend six mana, but I do expect to get at least a Craw Wurm. That's not actually negotiable.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Because card advantage. The creature in question returns a creature card (with certain limitations) from your graveyard to your hand when it dies.

It does good work in my Spirit horde deck (which uses common spirits instead of some kind of token, because tokens are boring). In fact, in that deck, it's probably better than the Craw Wurm version, because it reliably gets through, which is pretty useful when the deck is throwing down Triumph of the Hordes.

That being said, I agree with the feeling -- the creature just doesn't feel good.

[Username17]

I am willing to spend Four Mana for a 2/2 that comes with card advantage. And I want that card advantage up front. I especially do not want to have the card advantage wait for the creature to die when its main other power is that it is difficult to block.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

I had fun with my blue Ninja deck, I started making up more ninja themed cards. Generating a new ninja is as simple as taking an iconic color sorcery effect and sticking the "deals combat damage to a player" trigger.

Shock Ninja 2R

Ninjutsu R
Whenenver Shock Ninja deals combat damage to a player, deal 2 damage to the player or a creature under their control.
1/1

Elvish Ninja 2G

Ninjutsu GG
4/1

White Ninja 2W

Ninjutsu W
Lifelink
2/2

Frost Ninja 2U

Ninjutsu UU
"Whenenver Frost Fist Shinobi deals combat damage to a player, tap target creature that player controls. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap phase"
1/2

And then more ninja enablers:

Ninja Trooper 2U
-Ninja

Ninjutsu 1U
Whenever Ninja Trooper deals combat damage to a player, put a creature token that's a copy of Ninja Trooper into play.
1/1

Shadow Image U

Shadow Image is unblockable
0/1

Shadow Master 2UU

Ninjutsu 1UU
Whenenver Shadow Master deals combat damage to a player, search your deck for a Shadow Image and put it into play tapped and attacking.
2/2

and Ninja tools

Koga Ninja Scroll 4
Legendary Artifact

Equipped creature has doublestrike

Whenever a ninja comes into play under your control, attach Koga Ninja Scroll to that Ninja.
Equip: 3

Giant Kite 0
Artifact Creature

Flying/Haste
"I don't see any ninjas, just a giant kite"
0/1

[Ravengm]

Splice is "a 4 on the Storm Scale*" because Arcane was a one off.

There was actually some interesting discussion about using "Splice onto Instant" or similar, which I think Rosewater confirmed as being a possibility. But that's just rumors running through my head from a while ago, so take it with a grain of salt.

[name_here]

The only werewolf that actually ended up being played in Standard while werewolves were there was Huntmaster, and that was because it was good both outside of a werewolf deck, and without transforming.

The biggest problem with the werewolf mechanic was how it triggered. Werewolves is very solidly a G/R aggro deck, which means you want to constantly be playing threats in order to pressure your opponent into exhausting resources trying to deal with your shit until you overwhelm them. This means you need to be playing cards all the time. Which means you're probably dropping a new dude every turn. Which means things aren't transforming on your turn. Which means your creatures suck, because they're only actually efficient once they transform.

So, you have to rely on your opponent to actively not try to keep your dudes from transforming, which isn't going to happen if they can manage to do anything about it.

Just from reading that article, I could have told them that. And they say that other people don't play enough magic? I mean, I've been out of the game for half a decade now, but I still remember that by the time you have enough mana on the table to afford that, people going a turn without using at least one spell is not a thing that happens.