I've seen versions of this many times before. The +1/+1 counter version has the most interesting tension with activated abilities that include counter removal as a cost. It might be wise to put an upper limit on the ability:
Experience X (Whenever this attacks or blocks, put a +1/+1 counter on it at end of combat if it has less than X +1/+1 counters on it.)
This is what I was going to suggest, although it definitely feels a little rough around the edges and jumbled. But if you don't put an upper bound on it, I think it really limits the kind of creatures you can put it on, as an evasion creature can just run away with the game (in limited, at least).
You could just base it on a single +1/+1 counter. It would be more intuitive to play but you lose some design space.
You may want to consider not keywording it so you leave space for other triggers to put counters on things. I feel like getting counters from attacking and blocking doesn't really mesh well with the flavor of a Utopia - I'd think creatures would more likely get experience from doing other things.
Regardless, I like some variation of the +1/+1 counter method over either of the other options.
But the submission as a whole sets me at ease. As a whole, it was pretty simple. Far more simple than most submissions...
...But I think I was riding on something that felt pretty simple, so if simple is a plus, I think I might have made top15.
I feel the same way. I hope that they give at least some indication of "how far" we got when they send out the emails. Honestly, I could see putting "made it to the top 15 of the GDS2" on a resume if I was applying to a game company.
So, just food for thought, I figured I'd toss this out since I haven't heard anyone else mention it:
For #6 (the flash question), I choose d) Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.
Why? Because a creature with JUST flash and a fog effect is anti-synergistic. The only reason to play a creature with flash if it doesn't have an ETB ability is to make a surprise blocker. While it's true that a creature with a fog can block anything with impunity, it just feels off. You'll note that Haze Frog prevents damage OTHER creatures deal, which feels cooler and more synergistic.
(For what it's worth, I did pass the MC test. I wouldn't be surprised if I did get this one wrong, but just thought I would throw it out there.)
Flavor: You had me at Otterfolk. On a more serious note, it's a little vague. I get a good sense of the world but I feel like it needs more of a catalyst to drive it's storyline through the entire block. I'dve liked to see some kind of "flashpoint" that kicks the conflict into high gear.
Mechanics Blurb: Enchantment creature isn't necessarily a knock against you, but it makes me nervous. Attaching creatures and lands to things intrigues me, but also concerns me. I like the general theme, but the devil is in the details. Let's see.
Evenki: The +2 seems a bit busy and perhaps a bit powerful for being +2. I like what you're doing with the rest and the inherent synergies there.
Midwinter: Wait, what? The main ability is really wordy and kind of confusing. Does it really need to work from the graveyard? I'd rather have him just have a way to return from the graveyard instead of having to add all these qualifying clauses. I like the idea, but the execution needs work.
Antsiferov: Interesting. Feels a little too dense. I don't know that the dragon also needs to gain indestructibility, and first strike probably isn't necessary either. Seems weird to be able to attach enemy creatures to yours, but I suppose that's the idea of "master." I have mixed feelings. The flavor is a hit but the card could use some tweaks.
Cossacks: I see what you're aiming for, the "flicker" effect feels out of place. I'd find another way to make the "roving" connection. More importantly, I'm not sure that you need to keyword Conquest. I don't think you want semi-permanent land stealing to be that big of a theme as it's pretty unfun. I really have a hard time imagining Conquest 2 or higher being any kind of fair.
Singer: Neat. I don't think you need to grant shroud to attached lands. Other than that, this is pretty cool. Great flavor.
Clearances: Hm, s'okay. Seems like one of those cards that's either really bad or really good.
Ridge: Strong. Doesn't necessarily feel like a good fit for the set, though.
Entertainer: Pretty cool. Might want to let the copy have haste, though.
Fetish: Ancestors fetish? Is that like granny porn? As for the card, it's all right. I might want to give the equipment some base effect before it gets counters in order to make the equipped card a threat worthy of killing.
Novokogysk: I think the restriction might be a bit too heavy. It already has a substantial mana cost and recurring life cost. The fact that it's a total blank if you don't have A LOT more lands than the other guy hurts it a lot. And if you do have 4 or more lands, especially through Conquest, then I think you pretty much have the game won already.
Overall: Some great flavor connections on these cards, but a few of your designs are overcomplicated or just plain unfun. I'd reconsider conquest altogether, personally. Master and Earthbind have some interesting possibilities and I think you executed the mechanic pretty well considering how awkward it could've been. You might be able to clean it up a bit more, though.
A couple of the cards are misses for me, but this is a really cool submission. Ultimately, it seems like this guy might be better suited for creative than design, which is less a knock on his design skills and more praise for his creativity.
Hm, good catch on the Sentry. Hopefully WotC also makes the flavor connection of what the card is trying to do. As for the noncreature clause... I'm honestly not sure. It was someone else's submission and I just didn't think to change it.
Is there a standard counter type for putting counters on Enchantments? Or is that something that really just isn't done?
Thanks for taking a crack, person3412. Just wanted to add a few notes:
RE: Death Sentence. You may be right. I kept it as a keyword because I wanted to keep space open for cards that said, "whenever you play a card for it's leverage cost, ~effect~." Thought I could probably just have cards that say, "Whenever you play a card for less than it's mana cost" and that would be more far-reaching.
RE: Ivysnap: This was more meant to be indicative of a greater subtheme of green and sometimes black "using" -1/-1 counters to benefits a la Quillspike.
RE: Sentry: Was put in the Spike spot because he hurts Planeswalkers (though perhaps not enough?).
RE: Mimeophage: Hm, I might've flubbed here. Personally, I miss the days when multicolor cards were more "organic" and just appeared where it made sense for them to appear, instead of being a set-defining theme. Consider this my petition to go back to the old ways.
RE: The land and salvage in general: Yeah, I deeply regret that. First of all, Salvage is much more interesting on spells, it's hard to design lands around it. My original incarnation was a bit smoother but I ended up changing it last minute. It turned into a better mechanic but it made working it with lands almost impossible. What I should have done was make it come into play as normal, produce 1 colorless when tapped, and salvage for a green. As it is, I don't think it's rare but you're right that it's not common either.
RE: Keywords: I don't really count ability words as keywords. I kept them because I thought they provided a nice theme/flavor link. Was probably a misstep; I should've at least dropped Command as an ability word. That said I don't think 5 is totally wild-crazy out of line. Ravnica had 5 (counting hybrid).
I know I'm not really part of the community proper here, but I was hoping I could get some of that wonderfully brutal feedback. I didn't get a lot of "big picture" feedback during the course of the challenge, so I'd love to get some opinions.
I missed:
#19 - completely forgetting about the creature-targetted Black spells that deal damage to gain life. I chose E, none of the above.
#24 - this one tripped a lot of people up. I choose Spirit Link. Part of Timmy's deal is that he likes big effects - Mindslicer is both a big creature and a big effect, so I ruled him out.
#34 - I chose C, but looking back, I don't know why.
The first one looks familiar... like a white healer-type creature.
The dessicated-looking tree creatures look like Shanodin Dryads, (original art) I think.
Last one is likely a Wheel of Fortune variant with Suspend.
I don't think that's necessary, if I understand the rules correctly. Correctly me if i'm wrong, but when you play a spell, you have priority again until you pass, at which point everyone gets to respond to everything you played. Therefore, if you play a normal spell, and then playa spell with split second, they never have a chance to respond to either one.
I'm afraid you're wrong. As soon as the Split Second spell resovles, the stack only has your other spell on it, and it can be responded to at normal.
Actually you're wrong; the reason other games don't do it the same way is because Magic has already stolen the best way. Lands serve a very important game function, and are not fundamentally flawed - bad play is fundamentally flawed. Lands are a fundamental part of the game, and are a major part of deckbuilding. Mana balance is key to this game. Universally, those who whine about manascrew are those who don't understand the theory of the game of Magic. Land balances the game, it balances the decks, it balances the strategies. It makes things work correctly.
They are a holy grail; they are essential to the game of magic. There is a reason they are called basic lands. One of the major reasons other games are not as good as Magic is because they can't use Magic's land system.
Maybe in dream land, decks with good mana bases never get screwed. I've been playing a lot of Magnivore lately - a deck with 24 lands (+2 Karoos) and a healthy amount of card drawing. I've still lost a handful of games to mana screw (sometimes, mulligans to 5) and mana flood.
The assertion that players who complain about mana screw are bad players who don't understand the game is arrogant at best. Mana screw happens, no matter how well you've built your deck, sometimes it just happens, as does mana flood.
Magic is a fantastic game, but that doesn't mean that it does everything perfectly. To not think about changing something because "that's the way it is" is close-minded. You spat out alot of rather meaningless hyperbole about how lands "make the game work", but you didn't actually make any points.
It is a policy of R&D not to print lands strictly better than basic lands, and since the inception of this policy this has been the case. The closest to strictly better were the kamigawa lands, and they still had the drawback off being legendary, so most decks only ran 1 copy per.
And the reason there are 301 cards is that there are 121 commons, 80 uncommons, and 80 rares, plus the normal 20 basics. This has been confirmed.
I know it's always been the case, and I know it's a radical idea, that's why I titled the topic as such. But I point back to my original post, where I quoted MaRo. All these references against the theory refer to a time before crazy MaRo was at the helm of design.
Those who believe that basic lands are some sort of holy grail have apparently never played a game where you can't lose to mana flood/screw. Lands are fundamentally flawed - absolutely required in the early game, and often useless in the late game. Fixing those problems would be good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Mana screw, despite its problems, is neccesary to the health of the game. Theres a reason why basic lands exist and cards cost varying amounts of colored mana. Eliminating the system would make all cards playable in any deck.
As far as set size being 301, thats 5 less cards, but there are 20 basic land.
Ah, right. D'oh! Colored mana does present an issue, given that most "play any card as a resource" games have a generic resource, no colors or other restrictions. Still, it would be nice to be able to have cards that, in the early game, you could play as lands in a pinch, or lands that weren't dead cards in the late game. And I think you could do that without fundamentally breaking the game.
The card I theorized above is different from most man-lands (excepting Stalking Stones), however - it doesn't require a consistent mana investment to maintain the creature, and unlike even Stalking Stones, you can continue to use the land for mana while attacking with your random guy.
But it doesn't have to be creatures, what about this:
Scrying Pool
Land - Island
(T: Add U to your mana pool.)
Scrying Pool comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2U, Remove a charge counter from Scrying Pool: Draw a card.
Yes, it's strictly better than basic island, but to truly evolve the game, it might require that kind of shake-up.
I'm not sure how exactly this ties in to the 301/422 debate or the purple expansion symbol debate, but every since I saw 301, I've been thinking. 301 is exactly 5 cards less than previous base sets. Yes, maybe it has to do with the rarity shift... but maybe there's something more. What 5-card cycle appears in every single base set? Basic lands. Stay with me here...
Now take this quote from MaRo's "State of Design Article:"
Quote from "MaRo" »
One of the joys of Magic design is finding new ideas that break conventions of old. And note that I don't mean breaking them for the sake of breaking them. What I'm talking about is finding design space that, on purpose and for a good reason, explores areas that were previously considered off limits. This is dangerous territory as forbidden areas are usually forbidden for a reason, but Magic design demands an explorer mentality. You have to be willing to venture into areas that have little dragons written on the edge of the map.
Now, I've been recently following the development of the World of Warcraft TCG, and one of the designers made a statement that really struck a chord with me. I'll paraphrase here: "WoW is a next generation cardgame, so obviously we can't have issues like 'mana screw.'" That rings pretty true. Modern CCGs shy away from Magic's resource model.
Magic is a great game, but that doesn't mean it's design is perfect from the get-go. In the WoW TCG, you can play any card face-down as a "land," but some cards, called quests, have an simple, one-time use effect aside from producing "mana." The most basic one essentially reads: "Pay 3: Draw a card." So once per game, when you have three free mana, you can draw a card. The quest is then flipped over and just becomes a basic "land" again.
I have a hard time figuring out how they'd do it without either being really wordy of making some big rules changes, but imagine those principles applied to Magic: Spells that you could play as lands, or lands that had one-time use effects like drawing a card or something. No more losses to mana issues and some extra depth to the game. Maybe I'm dreaming, but a lot of other games are doing resource models better than Magic, and I certainly don't want to see my favorite game become obsolete.
Peace,
Kultcher
EDIT: These lands could look like this:
Bear Cave
Land - Forest
(T: Add G to your mana pool.)
Bear Cave comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2G, Remove a charge counter from Bear Cave: Put a 2/2 Green Bear token into play under your control.
Forest Bears - 1G
Creature - Bear
At the beginning of your main phase, you may put Forest Bears into play as a Forest land (it is not a creature). If you do, you can't play lands this turn.
2/1
They'd perhaps be able to use the an underlay of the mana symbol under the latter, like what they did with guild symbols in Ravnica block.
This is what I was going to suggest, although it definitely feels a little rough around the edges and jumbled. But if you don't put an upper bound on it, I think it really limits the kind of creatures you can put it on, as an evasion creature can just run away with the game (in limited, at least).
You could just base it on a single +1/+1 counter. It would be more intuitive to play but you lose some design space.
You may want to consider not keywording it so you leave space for other triggers to put counters on things. I feel like getting counters from attacking and blocking doesn't really mesh well with the flavor of a Utopia - I'd think creatures would more likely get experience from doing other things.
Regardless, I like some variation of the +1/+1 counter method over either of the other options.
I feel the same way. I hope that they give at least some indication of "how far" we got when they send out the emails. Honestly, I could see putting "made it to the top 15 of the GDS2" on a resume if I was applying to a game company.
For #6 (the flash question), I choose d) Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt this turn.
Why? Because a creature with JUST flash and a fog effect is anti-synergistic. The only reason to play a creature with flash if it doesn't have an ETB ability is to make a surprise blocker. While it's true that a creature with a fog can block anything with impunity, it just feels off. You'll note that Haze Frog prevents damage OTHER creatures deal, which feels cooler and more synergistic.
(For what it's worth, I did pass the MC test. I wouldn't be surprised if I did get this one wrong, but just thought I would throw it out there.)
Flavor: You had me at Otterfolk. On a more serious note, it's a little vague. I get a good sense of the world but I feel like it needs more of a catalyst to drive it's storyline through the entire block. I'dve liked to see some kind of "flashpoint" that kicks the conflict into high gear.
Mechanics Blurb: Enchantment creature isn't necessarily a knock against you, but it makes me nervous. Attaching creatures and lands to things intrigues me, but also concerns me. I like the general theme, but the devil is in the details. Let's see.
Evenki: The +2 seems a bit busy and perhaps a bit powerful for being +2. I like what you're doing with the rest and the inherent synergies there.
Midwinter: Wait, what? The main ability is really wordy and kind of confusing. Does it really need to work from the graveyard? I'd rather have him just have a way to return from the graveyard instead of having to add all these qualifying clauses. I like the idea, but the execution needs work.
Antsiferov: Interesting. Feels a little too dense. I don't know that the dragon also needs to gain indestructibility, and first strike probably isn't necessary either. Seems weird to be able to attach enemy creatures to yours, but I suppose that's the idea of "master." I have mixed feelings. The flavor is a hit but the card could use some tweaks.
Cossacks: I see what you're aiming for, the "flicker" effect feels out of place. I'd find another way to make the "roving" connection. More importantly, I'm not sure that you need to keyword Conquest. I don't think you want semi-permanent land stealing to be that big of a theme as it's pretty unfun. I really have a hard time imagining Conquest 2 or higher being any kind of fair.
Singer: Neat. I don't think you need to grant shroud to attached lands. Other than that, this is pretty cool. Great flavor.
Clearances: Hm, s'okay. Seems like one of those cards that's either really bad or really good.
Ridge: Strong. Doesn't necessarily feel like a good fit for the set, though.
Entertainer: Pretty cool. Might want to let the copy have haste, though.
Fetish: Ancestors fetish? Is that like granny porn? As for the card, it's all right. I might want to give the equipment some base effect before it gets counters in order to make the equipped card a threat worthy of killing.
Novokogysk: I think the restriction might be a bit too heavy. It already has a substantial mana cost and recurring life cost. The fact that it's a total blank if you don't have A LOT more lands than the other guy hurts it a lot. And if you do have 4 or more lands, especially through Conquest, then I think you pretty much have the game won already.
Overall: Some great flavor connections on these cards, but a few of your designs are overcomplicated or just plain unfun. I'd reconsider conquest altogether, personally. Master and Earthbind have some interesting possibilities and I think you executed the mechanic pretty well considering how awkward it could've been. You might be able to clean it up a bit more, though.
A couple of the cards are misses for me, but this is a really cool submission. Ultimately, it seems like this guy might be better suited for creative than design, which is less a knock on his design skills and more praise for his creativity.
Is there a standard counter type for putting counters on Enchantments? Or is that something that really just isn't done?
RE: Death Sentence. You may be right. I kept it as a keyword because I wanted to keep space open for cards that said, "whenever you play a card for it's leverage cost, ~effect~." Thought I could probably just have cards that say, "Whenever you play a card for less than it's mana cost" and that would be more far-reaching.
RE: Ivysnap: This was more meant to be indicative of a greater subtheme of green and sometimes black "using" -1/-1 counters to benefits a la Quillspike.
RE: Sentry: Was put in the Spike spot because he hurts Planeswalkers (though perhaps not enough?).
RE: Mimeophage: Hm, I might've flubbed here. Personally, I miss the days when multicolor cards were more "organic" and just appeared where it made sense for them to appear, instead of being a set-defining theme. Consider this my petition to go back to the old ways.
RE: The land and salvage in general: Yeah, I deeply regret that. First of all, Salvage is much more interesting on spells, it's hard to design lands around it. My original incarnation was a bit smoother but I ended up changing it last minute. It turned into a better mechanic but it made working it with lands almost impossible. What I should have done was make it come into play as normal, produce 1 colorless when tapped, and salvage for a green. As it is, I don't think it's rare but you're right that it's not common either.
RE: Keywords: I don't really count ability words as keywords. I kept them because I thought they provided a nice theme/flavor link. Was probably a misstep; I should've at least dropped Command as an ability word. That said I don't think 5 is totally wild-crazy out of line. Ravnica had 5 (counting hybrid).
Thanks again!
I know I'm not really part of the community proper here, but I was hoping I could get some of that wonderfully brutal feedback. I didn't get a lot of "big picture" feedback during the course of the challenge, so I'd love to get some opinions.
Here's my submission.
EDIT: Holy what? I thought I only had like 5 posts on this board...
I missed:
#19 - completely forgetting about the creature-targetted Black spells that deal damage to gain life. I chose E, none of the above.
#24 - this one tripped a lot of people up. I choose Spirit Link. Part of Timmy's deal is that he likes big effects - Mindslicer is both a big creature and a big effect, so I ruled him out.
#34 - I chose C, but looking back, I don't know why.
The dessicated-looking tree creatures look like Shanodin Dryads, (original art) I think.
Last one is likely a Wheel of Fortune variant with Suspend.
I'm afraid you're wrong. As soon as the Split Second spell resovles, the stack only has your other spell on it, and it can be responded to at normal.
Maybe in dream land, decks with good mana bases never get screwed. I've been playing a lot of Magnivore lately - a deck with 24 lands (+2 Karoos) and a healthy amount of card drawing. I've still lost a handful of games to mana screw (sometimes, mulligans to 5) and mana flood.
The assertion that players who complain about mana screw are bad players who don't understand the game is arrogant at best. Mana screw happens, no matter how well you've built your deck, sometimes it just happens, as does mana flood.
Magic is a fantastic game, but that doesn't mean that it does everything perfectly. To not think about changing something because "that's the way it is" is close-minded. You spat out alot of rather meaningless hyperbole about how lands "make the game work", but you didn't actually make any points.
I know it's always been the case, and I know it's a radical idea, that's why I titled the topic as such. But I point back to my original post, where I quoted MaRo. All these references against the theory refer to a time before crazy MaRo was at the helm of design.
Those who believe that basic lands are some sort of holy grail have apparently never played a game where you can't lose to mana flood/screw. Lands are fundamentally flawed - absolutely required in the early game, and often useless in the late game. Fixing those problems would be good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Ah, right. D'oh! Colored mana does present an issue, given that most "play any card as a resource" games have a generic resource, no colors or other restrictions. Still, it would be nice to be able to have cards that, in the early game, you could play as lands in a pinch, or lands that weren't dead cards in the late game. And I think you could do that without fundamentally breaking the game.
The card I theorized above is different from most man-lands (excepting Stalking Stones), however - it doesn't require a consistent mana investment to maintain the creature, and unlike even Stalking Stones, you can continue to use the land for mana while attacking with your random guy.
But it doesn't have to be creatures, what about this:
Scrying Pool
Land - Island
(T: Add U to your mana pool.)
Scrying Pool comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2U, Remove a charge counter from Scrying Pool: Draw a card.
Yes, it's strictly better than basic island, but to truly evolve the game, it might require that kind of shake-up.
Now take this quote from MaRo's "State of Design Article:"
Now, I've been recently following the development of the World of Warcraft TCG, and one of the designers made a statement that really struck a chord with me. I'll paraphrase here: "WoW is a next generation cardgame, so obviously we can't have issues like 'mana screw.'" That rings pretty true. Modern CCGs shy away from Magic's resource model.
Magic is a great game, but that doesn't mean it's design is perfect from the get-go. In the WoW TCG, you can play any card face-down as a "land," but some cards, called quests, have an simple, one-time use effect aside from producing "mana." The most basic one essentially reads: "Pay 3: Draw a card." So once per game, when you have three free mana, you can draw a card. The quest is then flipped over and just becomes a basic "land" again.
I have a hard time figuring out how they'd do it without either being really wordy of making some big rules changes, but imagine those principles applied to Magic: Spells that you could play as lands, or lands that had one-time use effects like drawing a card or something. No more losses to mana issues and some extra depth to the game. Maybe I'm dreaming, but a lot of other games are doing resource models better than Magic, and I certainly don't want to see my favorite game become obsolete.
Peace,
Kultcher
EDIT: These lands could look like this:
Bear Cave
Land - Forest
(T: Add G to your mana pool.)
Bear Cave comes into play with a charge counter on it.
2G, Remove a charge counter from Bear Cave: Put a 2/2 Green Bear token into play under your control.
Forest Bears - 1G
Creature - Bear
At the beginning of your main phase, you may put Forest Bears into play as a Forest land (it is not a creature). If you do, you can't play lands this turn.
2/1
They'd perhaps be able to use the an underlay of the mana symbol under the latter, like what they did with guild symbols in Ravnica block.