Wednesday, March 12, 2014

A Set in Four Cards: Milokraz







17 comments:

  1. Mechanics:

    Overthrow asks a lot. It seems to be a draft mechanic, which is good because it forces you to rely on your opponent's side of the battlefield, (not something most player's will want to do in Standard Constructed.) It asks that you track creature power each turn, plus the number you're checking is going to be different with every creature with Overthrow you control since they'll all (presumably) have different powers. Finally, it asks for there to be two creatures to award any sort of bonus, so it will not go off often. In order for me to buy into this design, I need to see the Vaado represented by some high power creatures. But both the wall-maker and the sleeper agent are small to midsize.

    Sleeper reminds me of what Maro said he learned from Odyssey design. Players will do whatever you tell them to do, even if it's unfun. The trick is to only ask them to do fun things. Casting a creature, and then spending mana to give it away is asking a lot. Ultimately, the triggered effect needs to be really game changing to make up for all the downside of this mechanic. Also, making it a creature keyword puts design in a tight box - you don't want to make it easy for the opponent to just suicide attack or chump block with the creature to get rid of it. So they should have high power and toughness. Actually, this makes it a great companion mechanic for Overthrow, if the opponent doesn't just block the overthrow creature with the sleeper creature.

    Detain is an okay fit for red, because of red's Panic effects. Cutting off activated abilities is debatable.

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    1. Sleeper is a very spikey mechanic, no doubt. That said, there's no requirement that you cast and give away the creature. And it is a great companion mechanic for overthrow.

      Detain is weird. Separated from RtR and the Azorius, it's definitely a white mechanic, and arguably blue (although blue accomplishes substantially the same thing most of the time just by twiddling), but I do think that whenever a guild mechanic is brought back, it should be in at least one new color. Red made the most sense to me because of it's panic effects, as you said. And detain on prison world is too good to pass up.

      Overthrow could be one creature with greater power, or more creatures than you, or a number of other flavorful implementations. Without doing any playtesting on the mechanic, that's what came to me.

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  2. Flavor:

    It seems like there are captors (the Vaado), captives (the Toketh), and freed captives who've returned to take down the system from the inside. I don't know why the Vaado are capturing people, but they are tormenting them, and are seemingly unstoppable. Names like the Vaado and the Toketh are a barrier to understanding the dynamic between both sides of this conflict. If instead they were named The System, and The Convicted, then we'd get immediately what the dynamic is. Also, giving them proper names suggests a possible caste system, but nothing else about the flavor suggests that. Why are the Toketh prisoners? And are they prisoners in an underground facility, a walled wasteland, and entire plane?

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    1. Excellent questions. I came up with a fairly fleshed out world before crafting four cards to represent it. Basically it's one of my rejected Suvnica planar concept ideas mashed up with the Hunger Games, piggybacking off the Prison World trope. I created a number of cards that showed off my concept more, but they didn't do as well in representing the mechanics I was considering, so I scrapped them and focused instead on those.

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  3. Individual Designs:

    Toketh Liberator seems okay except I don't know what to do with it. If I want to attack with it, my opponent needs two 4 power creatures. If either of them have a low toughness and it blocks, overthrow gets turned off for next time. If either has a high toughness, the first strike effect doesn't matter and it eats my Liberator.

    Why is Vaado Perimeter an enchantment rather than a Wall creature? Plus, it's weird to see a mythic spell that makes little defensive bodies. I don't know if WotC likes making these sorts of effects anymore. I wish it were more Avenger of Zendikar and less Spiny Starfish.

    After Vengeful Escapee gets donated my opponent will just put the -1/-1 counters on it until it dies. Why wouldn't they? After all, the creature cost them nothing and tied my mana up for at least one turn. I think Vengeful Escapee needs a bigger effect, like dealing 1 damage to each creature its controller controls, and gaining its owner that much life.

    Warden's Torment doesn't feel red and even the flavor could be for a Black card as easily as a red one. Not that I have a problem with red getting detain. Just that this doesn't feel like a red detain spell. I would buy it more as a red spell if the effect were "Detain target creature. NAME deals 1 damage to that creature."

    Overall there's a lot of fiddling around in these designs. In addition to tracking the power of my opponent's creature's power in pairs, I'm checking for permanents I control but don't own, whether any of permanents are detained, and the number of walls I control.

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    1. Vaado Perimeter: It began geared more towards multiplayer, creating the tokens at each players upkeep. Hence mythic. I scoped it back because I figure that it would exist in a cycle (more likely rare) that create the walls and give each other benefits. Wall lords if you will. In retrospect the bonus should be +1/+1 since walls need higher toughness.

      It's an enchantment instead of an artifact largely because I stole the idea from hunger games and wanted to break from the sci fi elements of the series and push into fantasy. I also conceived it as a cycle, and this block doesn't really need colored artifacts.

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    2. Please don't make a cycle of powerful wall lords. I don't want to see the Standard season where games regularly end by decking without any milling cards.

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    3. You know it's exactly what standard needs to draw in droves of new players right now.

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  4. Development:

    Overthrow has some complexity that could probably be stripped out for NWO and to broaden the design possibilities. It could just be "If an opponent controls a creature with power 4 or greater, EFFECT." This also helps it synergize with Sleeper better.

    If the set has a wall theme, consider changing Vaado Perimeter's second ability from "As long as you control four or more walls, wall creatures you control get +1/+0 and have deathtouch." to "Tap an untapped Wall you control: Target Wall creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn." That way giving all your Walls deathtouch isn't too format breaking.

    I think Sleeper would benefit from some anti chump-blocking clause, like "NAME can't block creatures its owner controls." Or if you go tribal "NAME can't block Inmates." Plus, Sleeper could be standardized to do a good thing for its owner, and a bad thing for its controller. This way players are incentivized to give them away as soon as they can afford it.

    Warden's Torment is such a blowout. As someone who remembers what Choking Tethers did to Onslaught Block, I would say it shouldn't be common unless there are significant reasons in the set's design.

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    1. My first reaction to Overthrow was also to drop to caring about a single creature. Giving it a static threshold that's the same across all instances is a good idea because it would simplify checking the static effects even further.

      I generally agree with most of Nich's analysis.

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    2. Just to be clear, here's what I would do with Vengeful Escapee:

      Vengeful Escapee (Uncommon)
      3BB
      Creature - Vampire Warrior
      4/2
      Sleeper agent (When this creature enters the battlefield, you may have target opponent gain control of it. It can't block creatures its owner controls.)
      At the beginning of your upkeep, Vengeful Escapee deals 1 damage to each creature you control and its owner gains that much life.

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    3. Overthrow - "Whenever ~ attacks, if defending player controls more creatures than you, *Effect*"
      or
      Overthrow - "Whenever ~ attacks, if defending player controls more creatures than are attacking that player, *Effect*"
      or
      Overthrow - "As long as one opponent has more creatures than you, *Bonus*"

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  5. I like the theme here. I can picture a jungle world with the man keeping down the fellow man. but I would like to see are a third faction, and some openings for some other groups of races. not every set has tribal but creatively saying "their are cat people who live here" is different than "oh and there was a cat mixed in with the captives"
    the captives are clearly an aggro strategy and the wardens are clearly control. but is there room for more than that? how does blue fit into this, or green? they can only be about walls. what do giant beasties on this world do? what are the iconic that are being used? characteristics?

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    1. I think this sounds like "I liked the free trial, I want more!"

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    2. That's how I read it too. If GDS3 follows a similar format as 2 (develop a set throughout the challenges) I think this is one of the sets that might be worth pursuing.

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  6. I don't get the utility of Vengeful Escapee. Why would I ever want to use that ability?

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    1. The prison set has walls and walls matter. Sometimes you need a man on the inside to get past them.

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