Cool Card Design of the Day 3/10/2016 - No time today to pretty up these designs. Made to alleviate the pain of mulliganing below six cards, some more directly/explicitly than others.
I'd love to say "oops, I designed strictly for Limited again" but the awkward truth is: Combo. Where these cards are relevant to a deck's strategy, they are more relevant to combo, because combo is more inclined to mulligan to what they need. Mulligan's Ritual is particularly dangerous because of how it slots into storm.
Yeah, for that reason I think Mulligan's Ritual is the worst card here. I mean, how many good rituals would Wizard's allow to be printed at a time?
If this were printed in a Grinning Ignus format, and it were set up not to be good in Modern, because Storm seems to have struck a delicate balance at the moment.
I guess this is interesting, but it feels quite blunt. It's a safety net for newer players who are afraid of mulligans, and outside of such decks, it's sometimes a useful upgrade to a card, but playable otherwise.
Personally, I'd aim for something that still helps in mulligans, but also works more often elsewhere. The bear and the life-gain are good at that.
The ones that say "mulliganed two times or more" are trickier to translate, since so many different bad things can happen after a mulligan to 5. Mana flood, or mana screw, you know?
Mulligans are more likely to lead to mana screw or color screw than flooding, but otherwise I agree. I made some designs blunt and some subtle so that we'd have a range of solutions to discuss.
The really tricky bit is offering consolation prizes that aren't so good players mulligan perfectly good hands just to enable them.
I was expecting "when CARDNAME ETBs, you may discard your hand and draw that many cards"...
I like the idea. I wonder about either finding designs that don't call out mulliganing explicitly (like the bear, which is also less underpowered late game), or ones that do (like Serum Powder but less so, eg. "if this is in your opening hand and you mulligan, you may instead mulligan all cards apart from this one").
Cool Card Design of the Day
I get that these make feel-bad moments less bad, but it's not clear to me what kind of deck wants to run them.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to say "oops, I designed strictly for Limited again" but the awkward truth is: Combo. Where these cards are relevant to a deck's strategy, they are more relevant to combo, because combo is more inclined to mulligan to what they need. Mulligan's Ritual is particularly dangerous because of how it slots into storm.
DeleteYeah, for that reason I think Mulligan's Ritual is the worst card here. I mean, how many good rituals would Wizard's allow to be printed at a time?
DeleteIf this were printed in a Grinning Ignus format, and it were set up not to be good in Modern, because Storm seems to have struck a delicate balance at the moment.
I guess this is interesting, but it feels quite blunt. It's a safety net for newer players who are afraid of mulligans, and outside of such decks, it's sometimes a useful upgrade to a card, but playable otherwise.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'd aim for something that still helps in mulligans, but also works more often elsewhere. The bear and the life-gain are good at that.
The ones that say "mulliganed two times or more" are trickier to translate, since so many different bad things can happen after a mulligan to 5. Mana flood, or mana screw, you know?
Mulligans are more likely to lead to mana screw or color screw than flooding, but otherwise I agree. I made some designs blunt and some subtle so that we'd have a range of solutions to discuss.
DeleteThe really tricky bit is offering consolation prizes that aren't so good players mulligan perfectly good hands just to enable them.
I was expecting "when CARDNAME ETBs, you may discard your hand and draw that many cards"...
ReplyDeleteI like the idea. I wonder about either finding designs that don't call out mulliganing explicitly (like the bear, which is also less underpowered late game), or ones that do (like Serum Powder but less so, eg. "if this is in your opening hand and you mulligan, you may instead mulligan all cards apart from this one").
I dig that idea, Jack.
Delete