Cool Card Design of the Day10/9/2012 - Wobbles has been polling Twitter for interesting ideas about possible keywords for Gatecrash. It sounds like he's actually designing his own version of the set, Fakecrash, and we're looking forward to him writing about it here on Goblin Artisans. In the meantime, I wanted to share an idea he inspired me to generate for the Simic keyword.
I originally proposed Mutate, an action keyword you could put in attack or ETB triggers, or even on an activated ability. Here's it's reminder text: Draw a card. You may put an aura with converted mana cost less than or equal to CARDNAME's onto the battlefield attached to it. What I wanted was Cascade for Auras, but that's madness so I went with Explore for Auras. Auras do a good job of showing a change in something so I was proposing that the Simic guild would have a bunch of mutation-themed auras as well as creature with this ability to put them on.
That sucked.
But I still really like the idea of using "mutate" for my keyword. The Simic are all about upgrading life with science, cybernetics aren't an option and graft was already used. I'd love for one creature to be the blueprint for how you modify the next creature, but we can't use creature-auras because you won't be able to tell whether a creature card on the table is an actual creature or just an aura enchanting one. So I decided to use Evoke as my model.
I don't love that a mutation wears off at the end of the turn, but I really like that you just grant the target creature all of the printed characteristics that make sense. Mutate reads worse than Evoke, but we can offset that by costing each half a bit more aggressively. It's also a bit wordy, which limits what we can do below rare, but considering how complex the ability is, we don't want to get too fancy anyhow.
Simic Hostling shows one of the ways Simic cards that don't sport the keyword still support it. This is a parasitic card, in that you have to play it in a deck with Mutate cards to get full effect out of it, but it's also a 2/3 for three which makes it Limited playable on its own.
I've been assuming you're with me so far. Just in case, let me give an example. I could cast Mutagenic Grizzly as a creature on turn two, then use Mutagenic Cloudray's ability to give it +1/+1 and flying until EOT later. I could cast Simic Hostling on turn three and then mutate it with the Coraloid later to save it from a removal spell (and/or combat damage since it would be 3/7 that turn after the +0/+3 boost and the +1/+1 counter). I think you're also starting to see the biggest problem with this mechanic. More on that after I show you where my twisted mind went next.
I'm pretty sure the templating is wrong, but what I was going for is that—like the Hostling—you can use another card to mutate one of these for its effect, but you also get that effect when use use one of these to mutate another creature. If I use the Bouncer to mutate the Acolyte, I'll get to draw a card and Unsummon.
Even if you ignore how complicated some of the cards are on their own, even the "simple" ones can be pretty tricky to think about once you actually start combining them. Mutating the Research with the Slime gives you a 4/2 unblockable creature and a card, but Mutating the Bouncer with the Slime gives you 3/3 unblockable creature and a bounce, while mutating the Acolyte with it gives you a 5/3 unblockable and a card. There's a lot of thinking involved and it grows exponentially as your board state grows.
You'd think that would stop me? This is for science, people!
I'm a monster, I know. It's okay, you can't kill me—All the transmogractive DNA coursing through my veins has made me invincible. I'll eat you all! And whatever tiny value your corpses hold shall make me all the stronger! Bwahaha. BWA HA HA! BWAAA HAA HAA HAA HAA HAAAAA!!!
First, let me get this out of the way. I am a sucker for multipurpose card mechanics. Kicker, Evoke, Scavenge, Cycling, you name it: I love cards that give me a lot of options while they're in my hand. And I think you're onto something here.
ReplyDeleteI see a few problems with mutate, though:
1) First and foremost, it's really, *really* complicated. Power, toughness, creature types, color, *and* abilities? That's a lot for players to have to take in. There will be moments at the kitchen table where a player feels dumb because he made his creature blue and now their opponent's guy with protection from blue is going to kill it, or when a player accidentally makes her opponent's Heedless One bigger by bringing another Elf onto the battlefield for a turn. This is additional complexity without a lot of room for additional gameplay. I would pick *either* power/toughness *or* abilities, and I think the choice for which has the most design space is obvious.
2) Most casual players (read: "most players") have absolutely no idea what an "ability" is. This means that you probably want Mutate to be an ability word, not a keyword. Try this:
Mutagenic Cloudray
U
Creature - Mutant Fish
Flying
Mutate - 1U, Discard CARDNAME: Target creature gains flying until end of turn.
1/1
3) I would avoid cards that have mutate *and* an ability that triggers on mutation on the same card. It's really unintuitive that the creature *gains* the mutate trigger, but by then it's too late for the mutate trigger to actually fire. It also creates a bit too much confusion for players than I think is good: if I have two such cards in my hand, do I play them both as creatures, both as instants, or use one to mutate the other for its trigger? There's a great deal of options there, and I'm not sure how many of them are really interesting ones. Every one of those cards I looked at and thought "what am I supposed to do with this?"
One of the reason I've enjoyed using twitter for my polling is that basically all abilities need to clock in around 100 characters anyway. That said, it's an easy fix to get mutate there:
DeleteMutate X (X, Discard this card: Target creature becomes a copy of this creature until end of turn.)
The ability might want "Mutate only as a sorcery", because it would make a sets combat math terribly difficult otherwise. Of course, you've also got to really combat the obvious card disadvantage of such an ability, since trading a creature for a combat trick is usually wrong.
If we wanted to salvage this idea, it would need to be simplified immensely. Duncan's is tempting because it looks so simple, but copy effects are never as simple as they seem (still much simpler than the craziness I posted). Evan's is as simple as it gets, and that's quite often the right answer.
DeleteAll three executions offer a temporary boost in place of a permanent one, and so are forced to offer a big discount to make it worthwhile. At the end of the day, though, we're telling players to discard their creatures rather than cast them and that's not going to feel fun for most.
I'm really eager to see what R&D cooked up, particularly since it's MaRo's favorite mechanic of the block.
Maybe instead of discarding the creature card, we make mutate an ETB ability: "When Mutagenic Cloudray ETB, target creature gains flying until EOT." But that just seems so plain (and certainly isn't a keyword).
DeleteGraft was pretty good, wasn't it?
DeleteI am absolutely astonished you didn't make a Giant Growth variant out of this.
ReplyDeleteMutagenic Grizzly?
DeleteOh, hold on a second. For some reason I've been reading this mechanic as an overwrite of the stats.
DeleteMy two main problems with this mechanic are:
ReplyDelete1 — This mechanic is a lot like Reinforce, which wasn't popular because you had to discard your cool cards to get the effect, but even more limited as it can only go on creatures. Also, for a lot of players, discarding your cards isn't fun at all. This was a failure of Madness and Channel. Evoke gets away with it because you can play it without the Evoke and still get the triggered effect. Cycling is the best of these mechanics because you'll only ever want to cycle something you don't want.
2 — Even with the obviously simpler wording of, "Target creature becomes a copy of this", I doubt this would work under new world order. Populate only allows you to copy one token, and tokens are at best, french vanilla (at common, you get things like Tuktuk and Vraska at rare). A format with Mutate means every creature on the battlefield can become almost any other creature at instant speed. I can't see that being fun.
I love the idea of an keyword called "mutate", but I really don't think this is it.
I also can't help but feel that "mutate" is red/green not green/blue. Mutation is an unguided biological process after all. But then, I feel Polymorph should be red. It makes no sense as a blue card.
I agree with everything (as seen above) except the color argument. There's nothing random about this mutation; it's being induced quite intentionally and that requires both knowledge and planning.
DeleteMutagenic Cloudray U
ReplyDeleteCreature - Mutant Fish
Flying
Mutate - 1U, Discard a card: target permanent becomes a copy of ~.
1/1
Mutate (as you have it) seems kind of similar to "Scavenge from your hand" and Reinforce, right? But I guess it ending at EOT balances out granting more abilities than just +1/+1 counters.
Which makes me think that I'd like to see something like:
Niceguy Flier 3W
Human Knight
Flying
Reinforce 2 - 2W
When you reinforce ~, that creature gains flying until end of turn.
2/2
You could even have do something like the Sojourners!:
Goblin Backup 1R
Creature - Goblin Warrior
When you reinforce with ~ or it enters the battlefield, put a 1/1 red Goblin token onto the battlefield.
Reinforce 1 - 1R
1/1
I expect "when you reinforce with ~" would be the text in lieu of cycling's "when you cycle ~", just to parse more clearly. Then again, none of this has much of anything to do with Simic!
As first posited by Evan, this form of Mutate really just wants to be Channel (See: Arashi, the Sky Asunder), which I believe was actually an appreciated ability that just kinda got buried beneath all the hatred for Kamigawa block.
ReplyDeleteA lot of really awesome concepts here, in the post and comments. But if a guild's creatures take up a large portion of that guild's available combat tricks, what do you do for noncreature spells?
"Basic Experiment" U
DeleteInstant
Draw a card.
"Really cool flavor text, seriously like awesome Simic flavor text."
"Rampant Growth" 1G
Sorcery
Search your library for a basic land card and put that card onto the battlefield tapped. Then shuffle your library.
"Check out this awesome new Simic art! Wait, am I still around?" - Momir Vig
"Temporal Spring" 1UG
Sorcery
Put target permanent on top of its owner's library.
"Simic bioartificers and evolutioneers are ruthless in their pursuit of new ideas and innovation."
If Mutate weren't a terrible idea for other reasons, I would plan to shift most sorcery/instant card slots to creatures for this guild.
DeleteMy main complication with the ability is that it wasn't until you started explaining the interactions with the Simic Hostling that I realised that the ability wasn't supposed to mean (target creature becomes a copy of) because that's how it reads to me.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that a player can use the discarded card like an aura to remember the bonuses for the turn is neat though
I'm starting to think most readers read it that way.
DeleteJust to clarify: My intention was that you were /adding/ all of these characteristics rather than replacing them. That failure of communication is on me.
And as long I'm clarifying, I'm not defending this mechanic. I'm pointing out all the issues it has and enjoying the conversation about what else could be done.
If we stick with Mutate in some form I'd definitely argue for stripping it down. I certainly don't think sticking Cytoshapes at common is likely to work out, but spelling out what abilities to grant should be simple enough. The question then is whether the hand is the best source, maybe fusing creatures on the battlefield will work better...Then again, maybe it just feels like they're eating each other, which isn't exactly Simic.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I'm not convinced that the aura issue is as difficult to solve as you think it is. Testing for his 4-colors matter set Bradley Rose and I adapted Chah's lurk mechanic to read like this:
Gustwing 3U
Creature-Horror (C)
Affix 1U (1U: Exile Gustwing from your hand affixed to target creature you control. When a creature Gustwing is affixed to dies, put Gustwing onto the battlefield.)
Gustwing and the creature it’s affixed to have flying.
2/2
The bottom positioning of the relevant text allowed the card to be placed beneath the creature it affected with only the important part showing, clearly showing that it's not on the battlefield. This version may work better at sorcery speed, but in general I'm unconvinced it merits the extra text.
As for the version Bradley recently shared on Twitter:
({Cost}, exile this card from your hand: Add this card's abilities to target creature. When that creature leaves the battlefield, return this card to it's owner's hand.)
I'm concerned about returning to hand because of Rancor-like repetitive gameplay that's much more widespread.
Regardless, there's an issue of of getting players to use a clear method for marking the 'auras'. I'm thinking something like the Evoke frames MaRo showed off here (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr299) might be best.
The problem I see with mechanics like this one is that it's coming on the heels of Soulbond. Granted, I could affix multiple creatures to a single creature, but for most purposes giving a creature +!/+1 and flying isn't that different than pairing it with a Wingcrafter.
DeleteWhat's worse is that they even look the same. Two creatures hanging out on the battlefield together. Of course, with Soulbond that's exactly what they are. With affix, it's more visually confusing because you likely have a creature that's exiled sitting on the battlefield next to a creature that actually exists.
Yeah, Soulbond took a chunk of possibility away from the Simic.
DeleteJules, it touches me that the 4-color set is completely forgotten, and I appreciate that you went out of your way to repost what I shared on Twitter.
DeleteI wanted to clarify: Yes, I made sure to exile it so that the creature could be placed under the creature gaining new abilities. I put in the option of returning that card to your hand after the creature leaves the battlefield due to the card disadvantage problem with Auras. It also perhaps might encourage to NOT use the ability and instead cast them as creatures.
Using Lurk's "put onto the battlefield" clause for when the creature being Simic-d does solve this problem, though. Just swings the pendulum of advantage from disadvantage to GOOD advantage.
Lastly, I agree with Wobbles' concern for the impression of feeling like Soulbond when there is a creature exiled another creature - looks like they're being paired.
But I would argue that Mutate does the same thing, even if it's just for the turn. You'd have to have that reminder card there, especially when there's multiple mutations in one turn.
Also, if you go ahead with Mutate as is, I recommend exiling the creature from your hand instead of discarding it so that players can do what they naturally do for remembering what a creature gained from Mutating.
Just to be clear, the Simic mechanic I'm playing with for my Fakecrash has very little in common with any of the mechanic proposed here.
DeleteI think that the Simic mechanic should give players the satisfaction of building your own monster, and getting these abilities only one turn would not achieve that feel (although some cool combos could form).
ReplyDeleteI think mixing two monsters somehow is the right feel for genetic experimenting, more so than using Auras.
I hate that this execution is a temporary effect and I agree that using your hand as the source isn't ideal. Using the graveyard feels wrong though, because it encroaches on Golgari's territory.
ReplyDeleteWe could use the top of the library, but that's pretty transient too. Maybe...
Mutate (When ~ ETB, look at the top card of your library. You may exile it face-up. Creatures with mutate have the abilities of the last card exiled by a mutate ability.)
It's like your experimenting. What if I gave all my test subjects these gils? Nah, that wasn't great, how about these wings? All your mutants are looking at the same exiled card, so that simplifies things a bit, and you don't have to do the math of adding P/Ts.
One of the strengths of this version is also it's biggest problem. Your mutants gain the ability of ANY card exiled, which means they're open-ended instead of parasitic but it also means you could give them mana abilities of lands or abilities that were balanced for certain permanents like Mindslaver, Korlash, Magus of the Disk or Phyrexian Devourer.
I doubt you could print an effect like that. Which means we're forced to limit it and make it parasitic:
Simic Researcher 1U
1/1 Vedalken Wizard
T: Experiment (Look at the top card of your library. You may exile it face-up.)
Mutant Cloudray U
1/1 Mutant Fish
Flying
As long as ~ is exiled by an experiment, mutants you control have flying.
Mutant Cloudray U
1/1 Mutant Fish
When ~ ETB, experiment.
As long as ~ is exiled by an experiment, mutants you control have flying.
There's potential, but I feel like it's a lot of work for Bad Slivers.
One play advantage experiment has over Slivers is that your boosts are basically permanent since your opponent won't be messing with your exile zone. The same advantage is a design problem, because it limits interactivity. You sure as hell would never want a Mutant that grants hexproof.
DeleteI'm still compelled to design further...
Simic Research 2U
Sorcery
Experiment.
Draw a card.
Experiment.
Mutant Wurm 3GG
4/4 Mutant Wurm
Trample
As long as ~ is exiled by an experiment, mutants you control have trample.
Even though experimenting costs you no card advantage, it still has the problem that you're not getting to /cast/ the creatures you experiment on. Hmm...
Simic Healing Pool
Land
T: Add 1 to your mana pool.
As long as ~ is exiled by an experiment, mutants you control have 1G: Regenerate this creature.
Glands of the Baloth 2G
Aura
Enchanted creature gets +3/+3.
As long as ~ is exiled by an experiment, mutants you control get +1/+1.
Adrenal Response U
Instant
Return target creature to its owner's hand.
As long as ~ is exiled by an experiment, mutant cards in your hand have flash.
There's potential here. My first instinct is that it feels similar to Miracle in that you're disappointed to see cards that should be experiment targets show up in your opening hand.
DeleteIt also seems extremely hard to balance (if a card has CMC 8, should it have an awesome experiment effect that could be randomly uncovered on turn 2?) Come to think of it, that's another problem with miracles...
I think all possible experiments would be balanced by rarity and not mana cost. Hopefully the fact that each card is playable on its own means actually drawing it is also nice, even if it's not what you might have preferred.
DeleteThis is beyond parasitic. This is two new categories of cards, each of which is parasitic off the other. You could end up with a limited pool of 8 "Experiment" cards and no "When mutated" cards, or vice versa. It'd be like the problems of populate+token-makers, but far worse because it can't key off all of Magic's token-making history and also because this version would be very confusing if the same card said both "T: Experiment" and "When ~ is exiled by an experiment" (because players with imperfect understanding would expect that to mean "T: Exile ~ and experiment" or some such).
DeleteExperiment is still a smoothing mechanic on its own and all of the cards with an exile clause work fine without being exiled.
DeletePlaying the part of rules manager here, experiment more or less has to be done parasitically because letting any two cards grant abilities would lead to thinks like Lhurgoyf + Tarmogoyf that prevented the Mimeoplasm from gaining both sets of abilities.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I see no reason to make it more parasitic than it needs to be, why not make the keyword: (As long as ~ is exiled, creatures you control gain its abilities) since that's the exciting part. The actual exiling can just be a rider on a bunch of cards, and this way it will work with other guilds' creatures. The balancing for big abilities could be making them cost mana a la Gust Skimmer or Furnace Celebration.
On the varios Lurk evolutions, I think it plays very differently from Soulbond when drawn in multiples, but given the presence of 5 mechanics that may not be happening much here.
I wish I could've left off the "exiled by an experiment" rider and just used "exiled," but that seems pretty busted with spells that exile as a cost: Demonic Consultation, Spoils of the Vault, Chrome Mox, Crumbling Sanctuary, Gloom Surgeon, Leveler, Mirror of Fate, Paradigm Shift, etc.
DeleteI guess that's only relevant to the Eternal formats where getting an arbitrary number of minor Emblems for free is still relatively fair?
Using the top of the library does feel like experimenting and research. It could allow you to chose a card from the top cards of your library.
ReplyDeleteExperiment (When this enters the battlefield, look at the top 3 cards of your library, exile a creature card from those cards, and put the remaining cards on the bottom of your library in any order. This creature has all abilities of the exiled creature card.)
This is too long, and it allows you to cheat out an ability that's only balanced in the late-game, so it won't work, but something like it might be possible.
Nice! We could do Experiment N, but I'm guessing a static number will prove ideal (and 3 is a massively credible candidate).
DeleteI don't know how to keep this so open-ended (short of restricting the CMC of the card you can exile—which seems fiddly, especially if we've already got another number in there).
Maaaybe we can use experiment as a cost...
Experimental Growth G
Instant
Look at the top three cards of your library, exile one and put the rest back on top in any order.
Target creature gets +X/+X until EOT where X is the CMC of the exiled card.
Mutant Cloudray U
1/1 Fish
Flying
As long as ~ is exiled, creatures you control have flying.
Experimental Cure 1G
DeleteSorcery
Look at the top three cards of your library, exile one and put the rest back on top in any order.
Gain X life where X is the CMC of the exiled card.
Experimental Research 1UU
Sorcery
Look at the top three cards of your library, exile one and put the rest back on top in any order.
Draw two cards.
Regression Testing U
Instant
Look at the top three cards of your library, exile one and put the rest back on top in any order.
You may return a creature with CMC X- to it's owner's hand, where X is the CMC of the exiled card.
I like putting them on the bottom better, that way you don't get awkward choices like choosing no effect so that you don't have to draw a land. On the other hand, I have seen plenty of players upset when Auger of Bolas sends their good creatures to the bottom...
DeleteHmm, when you send them to the bottom, you have no reason but to choose either the most expensive (to optimize your effect) or the one with the exile-wonder ability. When you put them on top, you have to choose between being able to cast them or exile them. The latter is more interesting, but the former will feel bad less often.
DeleteThere are a number of problems as discussed elsewhere on the thread. But I'm startled that nobody's mentioned one factor making the cards in the post needlessly complex: their power and toughness are different. Why wouldn't you just give them all P=T? A 2/3 with a +1/+1 counter and a 0/3 mutated is a lot more fiddly to calculate than a 2/2 with a +1/+1 counter and a 2/2 mutated.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a perfect place to remove undue complication by keeping P and T lined up. In the same way that Wizards removed undue complication from Replicate by keeping the replicate cost always equal to the mana cost.
(Of course, the mechanic is still too complicated for the other reasons mentioned on this thread, but I don't have much to add to those discussions :) )
Completely true. I kept the first two simple with a 1/1 and 2/2 but as I spiraled into mad scientist mode all sense fell away.
Delete