Cool Card Design of the Day1/14/2014 - Suspend is a neat mechanic. Trading mana for time is really interesting and many of the best suspend cards really play that choice up, and even add suspense to what will happen when/if they resolve.
Trouble is, writing out what's relatively easy to describe results in a whole lot of awkward rules text. That we need counters to track our progress isn't exactly a bonus, either. If you simplify it to suspend 1, you can clean it up a lot. Here are three different executions that started from that idea.
Incant is the straight path. The only functional difference between it and Suspend 1 (as seen on Rift Bolt, for example), is that you can't mess with the time counters in exile via Jhoira's Timebug and similar trouble makers NWO shudders about.
(You could also look at this as rebound for a spell you don't get the first time, but I don't see how that perspective is useful.)
Predict is like echo, where you split the cost of the spell over two turns, except in this case, you don't get to enjoy the benefits until you've finished paying.
I couldn't help but wonder how much difference it would make if you exiled the spell face-down…
The result is sort of a morph for spells. You know that I've put a down-payment on something I can't take back, but you can't be sure what it is until it resolves next turn.
As long as we're messing with spells that work like morph, we'd be remiss not to go a step further in that direction by removing the original suspend-1 idea:
Any of this could theoretically make the cut, but Magic only has room for one of them. (Well, maybe both incant and sow, separated by a few years). I like predict the least. Incant is the most straight-forward, but not nearly as interesting as scry. What do you think?
(Note that predict specifies the cost to start and finish predicting, and that they must match, while ritual and sow always cost {3} to exile. You might also note that some deals are better, nearly equal, or worse than the mana cost of the card; that depends on the opportunity cost involved of committing to playing the card next turn or not, and how much your opponent can prepare for the result.)
Could we split the difference between Ritual and Sow so that you can pay the second half at the beginning of any upkeep?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely an option.
DeleteI've also designed the mechanic you call Sow, and I think it has a lot of potential. Other than that, I think Predict is the best of these. You meant to say that it was like Echo, right?
ReplyDeleteI did mean echo, thanks.
DeleteI like Incant a lot. It's the simplest approach and also the most elegant. This post also made me realize - I don't think we've seen a straight-up cost reduction mechanic in quite some time.
ReplyDeleteSow is my favorite. It maintains the most hidden information.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Sow definitely has something there. I love the idea of a "morph spell".
DeleteOne thing that I do not like: morph creatures could still be interacted with when they were face down. (I could bolt one if you were tapped out) But the exiled face down spell really can not be touched by the opponent (you are casting it from exile so its still able to be countered, but still...)
What sort of environment do you imagine Sow being implemented in?
DeleteDuring GDS2, I had proposed a keyword called Archive (I think) to Shawn that was:
Archive COST (COST: Exile this card face down under target creature you control. When that creature dies, you may cast this card without paying its mana cost.)
In some sense it covers similar territory, as this was intended as a complement to Shawn's Blight mechanic, such that you were essentially using the entropic effect of Blight to make Archive something like Suspend 1.
But I don't really see an appropriate context for Sow as demonstrated. In a multicolor format with really bad mana fixing such that you simply want to offset intensive color costs? Or in a format with tons of hand disruption, necessitating you to take on the extra cost of Sow in order to protect your spells?
I think of it as rather similar to Traps from Zendikar. I could see it in a city-themed set with lots of political machinations under the name of "plot" or something like that. (It's a shame they used "scheme" for Archenemy...)
DeleteWhile you would definitely want to maximize synergy with Sow in whatever set uses it, I'm not proposing it to solve any problems. It lets you cast spells sooner than you would if you paid for them all at once, and it lets you use excess early mana to free up mana later.
DeleteI like the idea of Archive as a means to keep a morph-like spell accessible until it's cast. Instead of getting to cast if for free when the creature dies, you have the option to cast is at reduced cost as long as the creature stays on the battlefield.
Deleteanimus COST (3: Exile this spell face down paired with target unpaired creature. As long as it's paired, you may cast this spell for its animus cost.)
DeleteThere is something here. But I'm not sure what. Very intriguing.
ReplyDeleteMy Johnny side wants you to be able to cast Sow cards from exile no matter how they got there.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I like Sow, though I sense the rules about what exiled cards players are allowed to look at might need some fiddling to make this work.
I think Sowing probably wants to be done as a Sorcery, since otherwise it pushes everything towards Draw-Go, which I think will destroy a lot of the tension that having a lot of cards Sowed face-down would create.
Something I tried hard to push with Incant was preserving the timing of the spell type. I forgot to think about that for the other three keywords entirely, and you're right: They all want to be exiled at sorcery speed.
DeleteI definitely hope Spellmorph of some form happens at some point. It's an interesting question which mechanic is better out of Sow and, let's say, "Spellmorph 2W (You may cast this face-down as a 2/2 creature spell for {3}. At any time you may pay its spellmorph cost to turn it face up and cast it without paying its mana cost.)" On the one hand, 2/2 creatures are a lot more board-impacting and interactable-with. On the other hand, maybe a mechanic might like to be able to just be a spell mechanic without having to affect what the most common P/T seen on Limited battlefields is, and so on.
ReplyDeleteI think they are sort of stuck, with regards to morph, because 3 mana 2/2s are awful now. It is going to take very careful development to make that tolerable.
ReplyDeleteSpellmorph makes this problem even worse: I "waste" turn 3 playing a 2/2, and my reward is that on a later turn I can make my board even worse to get a spell effect. That just doesn't fit well into the tempo of modern limited, and I think it would take a lot of gymnastics to make an environment where it would work.
Random Idea: NewMorph, it is morph, but you can pay one extra mana for a +1/+1 counter.