Cool Card Design of the Day1/3/2017 - I love the way that Eager Construct smooths the game for everyone. The game needs smoothing, and making cards that smooth for everyone but are still worth playing (sometimes) helps make smoothing happen more. That said, fully symmetrical effects can feel a little bad when they help your opponent more than you; So can we make a card that can smooth for everyone that needs it, but clearly benefits its caster most?
On turn 4, Seedcaster gets you a free card (and likely a 5th or 6th land you didn't have) and is a 3/4 for four. If your opponent is hurting on land, they can get what they need to start casting their spells, but then you get a 4/5. On later turns, it only helps people who are legit hurting for lands, but still get a boost when it does.
That's a touch complicated, which is fine at uncommon, but what would a simpler version look like?
A common Seedcaster will fix more games. This one breaks the symmetry by only fetching Forests. You're guaranteed to have some in your deck, but your opponent might miss out. Do they side one in after game one? Or do people start splashing a single Forest in every deck just because of Seedcaster the way that people always play at least one of every basic they care about in formats with Path to Exile?
I can't imagine it's correct for an entire meta game to warp around a 2/4 for 4, but I think its less a problem and more of an awesome skill test; if you identify that it is correct to preemptively play a forest in your blue white deck for percentage points, kudos!
ReplyDeleteIf we're willing to create Forest land tokens, then the common Seedcaster becomes a lot more balanced and feel-good (while still benefiting the green player the most).
ReplyDeleteA weird tweak on this idea: "Each player may search *your* library for a basic Forest card"?
DeleteNo longer asymmetric, but I like how it subtly helps thin your deck.
DeleteWell, it's asymmetric if you can time it juuuust right in the late game or in a deck with three colours or many nonbasics :)
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