Cool Card Design of the Day8/11/2016 - Strain is a variation of evoke I hit on while working on motivated.You can get an effect, or a creature, or pay more for both. (Where with evoke you get an effect or pay more to get a creature too.)
It's sort of coincidence that all the strain costs are two mana. The trick with costing these is that the base mana cost is what you're paying to get the creature or the effect, so it has to be appropriate for each, while the strain cost plus the base mana cost is what you pay for both together. For small-medium creatures, most creatures and effects are going to be worth a bit more than a card, but the combined cost gets us into discount territory, hence strain costing 2.
To prove it's not a requirement, here are some cards where the strain cost isn't 2:
But it was hard work to find those. 2 is a shockingly natural place for the strain cost. Which is an argument for settling on that price and making it a keyword:
You could put strain on any permanent:
(Though I wouldn't really recommend it on lands.)
Demonstrating Jack's suggestion:
Oh, that could be a nice sweet spot in flexibility. It gives you some flexibility, but you still only really want to play the cards if you want the effect.
ReplyDeleteI think I would go with keywording, but writing "Strain 2", so like echo it can be changed in future for whatever reason. Or even changed to a non-mana cost.
Costs us 1 character. Definitely better. Good call.
DeleteThis is basically a split card with Fuse, where one half is a creature and the other half is a spell.
ReplyDeleteI am really hopeful that we will some day get split cards where half of the card is a permanent (like in Split Card Cubes). This would obviously be incredibly clunky, but you can make it much more elegant by printing a full size copy of the permanent version on the back side of the card.
As to your version, I really like it. The act of playing a game is really about making choices, choosing between different lines. This doesn't mean that more choices are always better, but it means that cards that produce interesting choices between lines of play are to be valued.
In this case, the choice between "would you like a creature or a spell" is rarely interesting. If they have an enchantment that is valuable, you're going to choose the Disenchant over the bear. If they don't, you're going to choose the bear.
But, this mechanic adds an additional layer, a choice of whether you want the creature AND the spell, for more mana of course. This is nearly always a very interesting sequencing puzzle in the opening turns of a game. So at least from a game design fundamentals point of view, this gets my thumbs up.
The land one adds unnecessary tension. If you choose to sacrifice the land, you end up behind on land drops. If you don't, you've spent a turn not casting a spell. Really the only good option is to pay the mana, and even that isn't really a good third turn option.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me feel like building a deck where all of my cards gives me multiple options, sometimes letting me choose multiple. However, I probably don't have the cards for it.
DeleteThe templating is super-confusing. As I read it, you get the strain effect regardless if you sacrifice it or pay the cost. It doesn't specify what "straining" is.
ReplyDeleteYou have interpreted correctly. If you pay the mana or the creature, you have strained.
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