Cool Card Design of the Day4/20/2016 - I wanted to explore a mechanic like madness but without being an "A-B mechanic"—something that's only relevant when actively supported by another mechanic not already common to the game.
At first, Bitterness was just a flag: "If a card entered your GY this turn, this card is bitter." A kicker mechanic triggered by discard. Or mill. Or creatures dying. But keywords that do nothing on their own look dangerously strange. Was there some small bonus I could associate? I was working with sorcery-Shock. How about flash?
I went down that path long enough to find it's actually fairly promising. The main trick being finding effects that are good after combat because the only* game-inherent way to trigger bitterness is for your creatures to die in combat.
It works on every card type but instant and planeswalker.
I'm still torn on whether effects that check whether bitterness is turned on should refer to it directly or not. Probably depends on finding a better word for mechanic.
* It occurred to me only as I was writing this up that casting a sorcery or instant puts a card directly into your graveyard, so all these cards inherently have a sort of prowess. While that dampens the flavor, I expect it improves the gameplay significantly.
"If CARDNAME has flash" is a very unflavorful way to check the Bitterness condition, I feel. Is there a way better way to do it?
ReplyDeleteI'd honestly just avoid those conditions, and focus on the designs being more powerful/interesting at instant speed rather than sorcery speed. Because that actually has a far more rich vein of design space than I expected!
I like that this works with combat and instants and sorceries, as that means creature-centric decks (with combat tricks) work well with it, as do spell-centric decks.
Once we replace "bitterness" and "bitter" with better, creative-approved words, "If CARDNAME is bitter, [added effect]" should work fine.
DeleteMost likely, yeah. You'd want to go for a past tense, though - such as kicker->kicked.
DeleteI still think you could probably avoid such conditions for the most part and still end up with solid designs, as you did here. It'd be nice on one or two cards, but I doubt any commons would need it.
Although, having new players figure out instant>sorcery might be a bit tough if you don't give them a compelling reason to wait.
DeleteAll the cards above except Bitter Fruits demonstrate the value of instant speed.
DeleteEven Bitter Fruits is good, as (on the right board) it lets you hold up tricks and counterspells, and then draw if none are needed.
DeleteOh, it's excellent, I just don't expect new players to understand why.
DeleteI think the right way to do this is with an ability word.
ReplyDeleteCARDNAME deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
Bitterness-- If a card entered your graveyard from anywhere this turn, CARDNAME deals 3 damage to that creature or player instead.
I was thinking this was the better execution. You could even add the flash aspect.
DeleteBitterness, if a card was put into your graveyard from anywhere this turn, you may cast ~ as though it had flash and it deals 3 damage to target instead.
That gives us the option not to require flash, and thus to use it on instants too. Given that flash doesn't feel thematically tied to things going to your graveyard, that's most likely a net gain.
Delete