Wednesday, February 7, 2018

CCDD 020718 - Infraction and Fine

That GDS3 design challenge looks like an absurd amount of fun. I've been contemplating how I would have tackled it, and one of the first designs I came up with ended up being this griefer enchantment.




I started it as a common that gained you life, but it wasn't much better and/or interesting than the Lucky Charms. I decided that the crime/punishment could reflect jailtime instead of a fine, and ended up here. It could have just defaulted to creature spells, or any type of spells for that matter, but I wanted the card to both set the law and punish its violation.

15 comments:

  1. Howdy! Not related to this card, but I have a couple questions. First, what program do you use for making card mock ups?

    Also, I've only been following for a short amount of time (I stumbled on it when cramming for GDS3) but what can I do to get involved? Just hop in discussions and the weekly challenges? If I was interested in posting some content at some point, how would I do that? I've had some design topics I've wanted to discuss in depth for awhile now.

    Thanks a lot!

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    1. Hey Tom! Welcome to GA. The program we typically use is called Magic Set Editor. It's kind of finicky to get to work, and as far as I know doesn't work on Macs, but here's the link to it: http://msetemps.sourceforge.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?&t=144

      As far as involvement, we try to post something every weekday, and have a design challenge that runs over the weekend. Posting designs in the comments, and offering feedback and critique of other people's designs is the best place to start.

      If you ever want to pitch some content, shoot one of us an email. I can be reached at zefferal at gmail.

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    2. Thanks! I'll probably just lay low and comment for now, but I do have some thoughts for things to discuss when I'm more established.

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    3. Some projects here have also used http://www.magicmultiverse.net/. The renders aren't as high quality but having it all online is nice.

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  2. Slightly awkward that if I name creature and you cast a creature, I can't tap that creature.

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    1. Ah, see, I almost chimed in earlier saying that that’s the only reason this isn’t fundamentally broken. A Kismet that taps down incoming creatures for two turns instead of one seems remarkably unfun, especially for black or red decks that have no means to get out from under it.

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    2. It is awkward. I considered having people name a noncreature permanent type, but that ruins it for limited and puts it in sideboard only category for constructed.

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    3. Càn it be worded to trigger on resolution? Then it could tap the creature that enters.

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  3. I'm going to acknowledge here a persistent weakness in my grasp of a particular rule in the hopes of finally ending my own confusion: Because the detain is triggered by "cast" rather than resolving, does this mean the effect happens regardless of whether the spell resolves?

    An explanation for the answer is appreciated. It has been haunting me in my journey into design and reading the base rules for Magic has not helped at all.

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    1. Yes, it happens regardless of if the spell resolves. The short version is that the trigger is on the act of casting the spell: nothing about the trigger is looking for the spell to still be there when the trigger resolves. It's much like how a comes into play ability triggers regardless of if the creature is still in play when it resolves. I hope that helps!

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    2. Thanks. If there had been an essay question about changing a Magic rule in GDS3, this was the one I was thinking of writing about because it's so unintuitive, but I (amusingly) could not confidentially nail down for myself how the rule truly worked, even knowing how it effected Emrakul, et cetera.

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    3. Way back in the day there was a concept of "successfully casting" a spell, where the trigger would only happen if the spell wasn't countered. That fortunately went away.

      Most of the time, cards care more about things entering the battlefield to produce a triggered effect, but I wanted you to have the option to name instants or sorceries with this card, so it had to be a cast trigger.

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    4. There was a part of me that felt like, because blue is positioned to both detain a creature and also counter the spell that triggers it, that this is too powerful. But remembering the GDS3 question that control decks need a way to win quickly once they get the field locked down, I think this card actually helps with that goal.

      One design concern I see though is that in the event you're going to want to pick a card type other than creature, you're probably going to be playing against a deck not using very many creatures, so I'm not sure how effective that might be. That dynamic might be best against control mirrors where they have a small number of creatures as their victory conditions.

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  5. Should it be "that opponent" for the second instance of "an opponent?" It feels a bit strange you can 'fine' a different player than the one casting the spell.

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