Cool Card Design of the Day4/9/2015 - I punked out. I wanted to pair a unique cost to this cycling variant, something that fit the twist mechanically, or that gave the keyword a sense of flavor (something cycling desperately lacks), or at least some cost that we've not seen on cycling. Take a look and we'll talk options.
My purpose was to design a smoothing mechanic that lets you defer high-cost or conditional cards until later in the game, in preference for something playable now. That's why we're putting it on the bottom of the library instead of discarding it. Biking will feel better to casual players, and it also creates a legitimate chance of getting the card later in the game if you can draw it long or shuffle even once.
I went with a variable cost just like cycling because it's so flexible and so short. Spending mana is also the most natural cost in the game. Another interesting option would be life payments. If cards all cost 2 life to bike, they wouldn't slow players down at all. Like Street Wraith (but, you know, a set full of different Street Wraiths), players would instead be challenged to think ahead and/or risk their life total that getting a fresh card now will help you to win before the life you lost biking costs you the game.
The other option I was pretty enamored with:
Tucking also doesn't distract from your board development, but instead of costing you life—which is more palatable to aggro decks than other kinds—it actually helps get you closer to re-drawing your big spell. It does make you more vulnerable to decking, and I considered putting the cards you remove on the bottom too, underneath the card you tuck, but that read strangely and also gets weird when you only have one card in your library before the tuck. I'd love to test this out and see how it plays, but I didn't offer it as the default because it's textier and more complex. It's not terribly complex, but we generally want our common smoothing mechanic to be dead simple.
What do you think?
PS, I did not have as much trouble finding art of goblins on bikes as you might expect.
Love the fact that exiling from the top of your library makes the card on the bottom just that much closer (:
ReplyDeleteShouldn't bicycling get you two cards? (: Be tough to cost that fairly (not to mention tricycling)
Heh. I looked for a way to make "Tuck this and another card from your hand: Draw two cards" work but it requires a substantial payment. At least {3} or 4+ life.
DeleteI've had laying around for some time cards that put themselves into your deck some number from the top, either when you cast/cycle them or whatever.
DeleteAxe you Later! 5R
Sorcery
~ deals 5 damage to target player.
Tricycling 3 (Draw a card, then put ~ into your deck immediately below the top two cards.)
I've been thinking about this as an option for Tesla that, like you said, allows you to postpone high-costing ("accomplishment") cards and smooth your draws without the "pitch your important cards" aspect of cycling. From reading over MaRo's plethora of articles on cycling, it seems like this was one of the earliest versions developed by Richard Garfield, though I haven't seen any reasons other than "we had design space left in cycling qua cycling" that prevented it from seeing print.
ReplyDeleteI would put forward "advance" as a tentative, open-ended keyword for biking. We can play up a flavorful connection to the word - that you're putting off a project til later, but getting a small benefit ahead of time - but it's also generic enough for other interpretations later.
What if we used Unexpectedly Absent's technology to make it even more likely that you draw the card again?
ReplyDeleteBiking 2 (2, put this card under the top [however many makes sense from a development perspective] cards of your library: Draw a card)
This seems like an interesting possibility for Tesla. I especially like how it technically puts it towards the 'late-game', but the problem is, the bottom of your library is the VERY late game. That's pretty much the same thing as discarding it most of the time.
ReplyDeleteTricycling, suggested by Tommy, and Biking, suggested by R Stech, I like a lot more. They seem a lot more doable to me, since they're going to 'come back' a lot faster. We'd probably want to stay between two and six cards, since one card under is too soon, and more than six is too hard to count.
Doing that would also, super helpfully, support the theme of "looking ahead to the future"!
"Put this N cards from the top of your deck" does bring the card back sooner. I'm not convinced that's more fun. Do we want a player to tricycle the same card three times during the course of the game? Do we like the library manipulation involved in tricycling 3+ cards across 1-3 turns? Do we like the mechanic feeling worse when players use Evolving Wilds, instead of making the player feel clever?
DeleteThese are all good points, Jay - my problem, though, is that putting it on the bottom just feels too distant...
DeleteIs there another way to achieve this same idea, without the shuffling problem? I immediately think of the following:
Advance ({2}, Exile this card from your hand: Draw a card. If you would draw a card, and this card was advanced, instead you may return this card to your hand. Otherwise, draw that card.)
Now, I'm not saying that idea is actually good, simple, or doable. But it's just the idea that immediately came to mind. :P
Here's another idea along the same lines
Set Aside ({2}, Exile this card from your hand: Draw a card. You may cast this card from exile if it was set aside if you pay {2} more to cast it.)
In this case, it doesn't replace a draw, so it doesn't use the weird wording. But at the same time, replacing a draw kept it a little balanced, so...
I think anyone who has even a fiber of Spike in them realizes that "put on bottom of your deck" == "gone forever" for all practical purposes, even with shuffling.
DeleteLightning Shrieker's ability is trinket text.
Even with shuffling? That card literally becomes as likely to draw as every other card in your deck.
DeleteTrue, but the likelyhood you'll draw a particular card is very low. Most of the cards you draw you draw in your opening hand. Most games last 7-9 turns (less in constructed). So in limited, "as likely to draw as any other" is about 4% a turn for however many turns are left, after you somehow shuffle.
DeleteThat adds up to not much. That said, the shuffle clause is great text to excite a new player because it is so easy to imagine casting it over and over again (like the Beacon's).
How many times have you played a whole Swiss draft and never drawn that one awesome card you were excited to get in 7 games?
My initial reaction to tucking is that it would be way too good in combo decks. Play 12ish lands plus 4 each of 9-10 tuck spells (any spell in any color is fine) and your 2-3 combo pieces. The exiling part makes it a little dangerous, but you're practically guaranteed to have a close-to-perfect hand after you spend 5 minutes digging through your library on turn 0. It miiight be possible to develop tuck by increasing the number of cards it exiles, but I suspect that would ruin the mechanic's appeal in casual and Limited decks without decreasing the brokenness very much.
ReplyDeleteI had mentally read Tucking 2 to mean the mana cost was 2. I agree it can't cost 0.
DeleteSounds like a huge gamble. Maybe you automatically win 20% of the time and automatically lose the rest?
DeleteRegardless, a player could easily spend 5 minutes doing this and that's unacceptable.
DeleteImpulse (Discard this card: Exile the top card of your library. You may play it this turn.)
ReplyDeleteToo obvious?
No such thing. Does anyone get it besides red?
DeleteNobody gets "draw a card" besides blue either, but they all get it on cycling. The same COULD apply here, although I don't know if it should, this mechanic is more associated with red than card drawing is with blue.
DeleteEverybody gets "draw a card."
DeleteNow that you mention it, though, cycling is exactly red's rummaging ability for a specific card.
Though amusingly it predates red rummaging by rather more than a decade :)
Delete