Cool Card Design of the Day8/27/2017 - It's always bothered me that cards like Clone give you the option not to copy something, as if you'd ever prefer to have a 0/0 with no abilities. Rather than worry about the rules implications of making that action mandatory, what if we try to make the choice relevant?
This is slightly conservative: A 4/4 hexproof for four is solid, but you'll usually choose anything bigger that's available to copy. You could certainly make a shapeshifter that's unique and appealing enough that you'd choose it over some larger targets. (Feel free to share one in the comments.) That line of thinking led me to this bonus card:
Which raises the point that with the exception of can-change-multiple-times style shapeshifters, we haven't really used creature copying outside of ETB triggers.
Having clone creatures with power and toughness seems like it might lead to confusing board states. */* Or 0/0 creatures avoid that ambiguity because that obviously isn't their power and toughness.
ReplyDeleteI might make the first card a modular spell that either creates a 4/4 token or a token copy of a creature. Or make the second so it can sacrifice to create a token copy. Token copies aren't perfect, but it reduces the memory burden in these cards.
That could explain why they've stuck to 0/0s for so long.
DeleteI'd want to playtest it to be sure, though, because it seems to me players stop looking at their clone's text as soon as it clones something else.
Interesting. Nice thought. I'd worry that people would expect the cloned version of What the Sea Becomes to still have hexproof, because that's the way many EDH-playable clones work. Phyrexian Metamorph is still an artifact, etc. Possibly a more complex effect than hexproof might help there, but possibly not.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit confused by your final sentence. "We haven't really used creature copying" except on one-shot or repeatable copy effects? What else is there?
There's a good handful of weird rare spells like Infinite Reflection, Mirrorweave, Essence of the Wild and so on that play with copying. Plenty of things that create temporary or permanent token copies. And in the camp of clone variants that modify the creature in some way, one of my favourites is Quicksilver Behemoth :)