Thursday, September 13, 2018

CCDD 091318—Exploit Weakness

Cool Card Design of the Day
Discard lives in an awkward spot where it can't be too focused or too efficient. When we can pair it with another small effect it a way that feels mechanically or thematically organic, that helps us justify that little bit of extra cost.

I suspect I designed this originally top-down from the art, but I think this exercise is more interesting. As this design stands, it's pretty clean and flavorful, but still a bit weaker than I'd like.

The +2/+0 would be more relevant if it were an instant, but that's a no-no for discard.

I'm tempted to tie the bonus to the card discarded, but that quickly becomes uncommon in complexity and I'm not shooting for this design to be uncommon in power level.

At one-mana, +2/+0 feels a bit generous but +1/+0 feels irrelevant. At three-mana it all just seems clunky, even if the boost doubles.

Tacking menace on there could work.

How would you tweak this common?

12 comments:

  1. I like this design. Adding versatility to discard effect targeted for limited is something I would like to see.

    I would imagine for templating reasons the P/T bonus should be coupled with a may ("you may have target creature get ..." Just my instinct. I'm curious whether this is the case or not.

    I wonder if adding a +1/-1 to the discard effect may be something to worth trying out. Ideally a -1/+1 could be used to constrain card power concerns, but that effect would feel more blue than black to me. There's also a slight increase in complexity, but these style of effects have been shown on commons (ie. dead weight, boon of emrakul)

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    1. "Up to one target creature" seems likely here.

      I like the +1/-1 idea. I'd toyed with -1/-1 and disliked how bad that feels when you can, but +1/-1 is useful on your creatures as well as theirs.

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  2. I think +2/+0 and an additional effect is fine for a single black mana. Compare with Supernatural Stamina, Boon of Erebos and Virulent Swipe (although the most recent is the strictly worse Abnormal Endurance). That said, discarding a card is probably more powerful than regeneration and pseudo-regeneration, so two mana seems more appropriate. That said again, the way this is worded you can't make them discard if there are no creatures on the battlefield, so I would still say that 1 mana is doable.

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    1. On average, I'd say making the opponent choose a card to discard is weaker than regenerating a creature (because the latter saves you mana as well as a card), so I think you're right that this could cost 1.

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  3. One possible tweak to this card is a modification of Abnormal Endurance.

    Wicked Screech - B
    Instant
    Until end of turn, target creature gets +2/+0 and gains "When this creature dies, each opponent discards a card."

    I think this is a fairly safe version of instant-speed discard. It's fairly similar to the Abnormal Endurance, but punishes the opponent in a different way (which is usually less bad, because it's less of a tempo swing).

    This version also ties the two effects together better, without letting one outshine the other. I don't like the prospects of not being able to Exploit Weakness if there's no creature. No, you can't use this card without a creature either, but the card doesn't taunt you with the "target opponent discards a card" in quite the same way when you can't cast it.

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    1. Yeah, that looks good. I was thinking "target player discards a card. If they do, target creature you control gets..." but that doesn't fix the targetting problem.

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    2. Sage, I like this very much. Great design!

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    3. The timing on this discard is fine: we just don't want to make a player discard the card they drew before they can cast it.

      I'm not a huge fan of "when this dies" instants because they propose one kind of gameplay but deliver another. "When this dies" is interesting on a sorcery, because it impacts attacks+blocks, but on an instant you just play it on a creature that's already marked for death. But if we made this a sorcery, the defender can just choose to take the damage and that's not quite worth the card. I'm sure there's a fabulous solution.

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  4. Recently R&D has been using sorcery-speed deathtouch as an "evasion" effect more, e.g. Soulblade Corrupter and Bitterblade Warrior. I could see that being useful here as an alternative to menace, though it does create more confusion about how the card's supposed to be used.

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  5. I think turning the discard into an attack trigger of the creature would really tie it together. Adding menace like you suggest would help your creature survive that new rider.

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    1. Until end of turn, target creature gets +2/+0 and gains "When this creature attacks, defending opponent discards a card".

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    2. It's interesting how that version makes attacking with a creature a cost to the discard. The flavor is even stronger, though. I think this is a strong path.

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