Cool Card Design of the DaySince yesterday's CCDD turned out not to be new, here are two. These both explore double-tribal.
But first, let's briefly explore some good and bad tribal designs.
Ixalan's tribal was too insular. That's been established, compared, explored, and recognized. Regardless, there are stronger and weaker tribal designs within it. Merfolk Mistbinder is weak because it neither supports the +1/+1 counter sub-theme of Ixalan's merfolk, nor presents a new one. It's not awful, though, because it's green-blue. Making a powerful merfolk tribal card like this something mono-blue decks can't play creates a relevant choice for merfolk players. Deeproot Elite is an even better design, partly because it's mono-green and that gives players a choice between running it a GU deck or a G deck (and yes, it's relevant that green is not the dominant color for this tribe), but more because it specifically rewards you for hitting the table with merfolk bodies. That matters in the immediate sense because Ixalan also features cards that create merfolk tokens, but it matters in the bigger picture because there are other ways to trigger it. Ghostly Flicker, Séance, Ghostway, and even Immortal Servitude all interact with Deeproot Elite in a way Mistbinder can't. Jade Bearer and Jade Guardian aren't as attractive as Merfolk Mistbinder to the player already committed to a green-blue deck, but they do a better job incentivizing them to build a merfolk deck different from yours or mine.
The reason that's so important—and the reason I'm mentioning it before showing off double-tribal—is that the Mistbinders of the world do not contribute as well to the long-term health of the game. Sub-themes do. When all the merfolk are the same color and play into the same strategy, Legacy decks become more and more the same, which is boring both for their pilots and their opponents. When there's a question between remaining mono-blue or splashing green, that adds some life. And Mistbinder is progress, for that reason. But when there are multiple viable strategies the merfolk player can pursue (WU tap/untap merfolk, UB merfolk mill, GU merfolk counters/tokens), the archetype gains diversity, and the format gets new life. In 20 years, we want players to be asking, "which (of the many possible) merfolk decks are you playing?"Another way to do that is to create a link between two tribes that makes it reasonable to play Ab, AB, and Ba, instead of just A or B. Hence double-tribal:
Orcs and goblins have a weird history of working together in D&D, so let's explore that. Hobgoblin Warlord offers one reward to the orc player, and a different one to the goblin player, with the promise of synergy between them for orc+goblin player.
Master Illusionist all by itself gives you a pair of 2/2s for four mana. If you're playing a bunch of illusions, Master makes them all bigger and they all make Master harder to target. If you're playing a bunch of Wizards, they all make your free Illusion bigger and all benefit from its hexproof-y-ness. And if you're playing a bunch of each, rawr.
What do you think of double-tribal?
Master Illusionist is a very texty card, but I absolutely love the flavor behind it. I'm very interested in trying to clean that up to best capture the concept!
ReplyDeleteDo it.
DeleteHexproof 1 is currently pretty wordy.
I'm not sure I ever got an answer, and if I did I'm sorry for missing it-- but I've said before I think double tribal cards feel very hamfisted generally speaking, and that I believe intertribe syn ray is better achieved through overlapping mechanical themes. Again, compare Merfolk caring about counters in Ixalan. All decks don't mind counters, so any deck can use something like Jungle Delver. Thats why Ixalan had very Ravnica like mechanical identities. Simple and interchangeable. Is there a reason thats not enough? How much intertribe synergy is enough?
ReplyDeleteI don't think double tribal is any more hamfisted than tribal, but I agree that tribal is somewhat hamfisted compared to mechanical synergies. Check out this piece from 2016. I'd love to see more tribal and cross-tribal synergy via shared mechanics and archetypes. I think that's better than naming a tribe, but it's definitely not the only way and doesn't invalidate the old way.
DeleteJungle Delver doesn't really interact with the rest of your deck. There are some merfolk cards that reward you for having creatures with counters on them, but otherwise that card's a loner. I don't understand your comparison to Ravnica at all. The biggest problem with Ixalan tribes were how interchangeable they weren't. If you were going to draft merfolk, every non-merfolk creature in your deck was a liability.
The comparison to Ravnica is the ideal to what kind of mechanical themes something like Ixalan or another dedicated tribal set should have in my opinion. The idea being that your factions should have mechanics that overlap even if the factions don't match, just in the case of Ixalan the faction is their tribe.
DeleteWhat I mean is, we know the Merfolk had a +1/+1 counter subtheme in Ixalan. say for example there's a Merfolk that says " When ~ etbs, put a +1/+1 counter on a merfolk you control" and "Whenever a creature you control with a +1/+1 counter on it deals combat damage to a player, draw a card." And most merfolk generally involve doing something with counters, but imagine a common blue Raid pirate card that gets a counter when it etbs. If I got that common, wouldn't you play it in the deck with that merfolk? Playing counters and making your creatures bigger makes them better to attack with, and then when you do you get your pirate that also gets a counter for the merfolk that care about counters. That's the kind of thing I imagine.
I did counts on this last time tribal came up but I forget now, but there really isn't that much caring about tribes at common in Ixalan. I believe there was only one vampires matter card in each of the vampire's colors for example. There was more than normal but I feel like it's overstated quite often. I feel like the problem is mostly that people knew it was a tribal set and felt like they had to draft just their tribe and if they didn't get one they failed. I would say the perception to similar to how Lorwyn was widely recieved as a being "on rails" even though it had cards that were very explicit about telling you to try and mix tribes sometimes.
My critique is more through a limited lens, and I just now realized you're designing more for constructed with these, so take it with a grain of salt:
ReplyDeleteI think any card that needs to explicitly call out two different tribes is going to be a somewhat texty card. I'm wondering if the better way to bridge to two tribes is to have all tribes care about a certain different quality (damage and Dinosaurs, counters and merfolk, attacking and pirates, lifegain and vampires). You'd then create a creature from the other tribe that cares about that odd quality to bridge the gap (a dino that gains life, a pirate that damages your own creature, a merfolk that's unblockable, a vampire that adds counters to your creatures). It would muddy the tribes a bit, but I think that's what we want. Not explicitly calling out other tribes would also allow the tribes to stay as distinct factions.
As for the individual cards, Hobgoblin Warlord seems fun and has cool synergy. Having 'goblin' in its name and not being a goblin would be confusing for a lot of people, and I don't imagine we'd ever get a Goblin Orc (outside of changling) so I'd feel a bit let down I couldn't maximize the value of the card. It also screams 'orcs and goblins are working together in this set' so I'd be curious what the world looks like and why we'd have two tribes in a single faction how the tribes can overlap elsewhere.
It feels like I have to read Master Illusionist a few times to really get what it's doing. I'm sure I'll be doing lots of counting at many points during the game which might not be particularly fun.
Both of these are rare and thus wouldn't really help the drafting problem called out in Ixalan.
Kithkin Greatheart is a great example of a simple cross-tribal card, the likes of which could have helped Ixalan. I agree that a non-merfolk that adds or rewards counters (etc) is another great angle.
DeleteHobgoblin Warlord probably wants to be an Orc and a Goblin, yeah.
Master Illusionist is doing too much. Agreed.
My only note is that I also support making Hobgoblin Warlord both of the creature types that he supports. I think it makes it feel more natural (less ham-fisted) and less A+B. Although in this particular card design that leads to stack shenanigans in the same way that Hero of Bladehold does, which I think is generally worth staying away from.
DeleteOh! I love your analysis, I think that's spot on.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about double tribal cards. I agree with all the logic for why they're useful for giving more options. But it seemed like Lorwyn tried to do a lot of this and I always felt cheated that whatever I did I couldn't get the benefit of all my cards (because some needed as many elves as possible, and some needed giants). It feels like being open-ended outside the tribe in some other way such as a mechanic theme would make players happier even though it's exactly the same mechanically. But it might only be me who feels like that.
I do agree, the Orc/Goblin one works pretty well, because there's a lot of history of Orcs with Goblin minions. When the flavour works it helps a lot. I would like to see more dual tribal decks, there's so much potential for variation there, but I'm not sure of the best way of getting there.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to make a card that's only great with an army of one type in the same set as one that's only great when you've got the other type, at least not below rare.
DeleteI wonder, does something that says if you have a non-matching creature, get a bonus work? Does that feel too weird in a see where most things care about matching? Something like
ReplyDeleteHangry Raptor {2}{R}
Creature - Dinosaur
~ has haste as long as you control a non-Dinosaur creature.
3/2
The feeling of not getting the most out of your elf unless its in a giant deck seems like a relevant concern to me, but on the other hand in practice something like this should be easier to use even if you drafted a dinosaur deck.
Hangry Raptor reads to me like a dino I put in my mostly-not-dinos deck, rather than a card for my dinos+elves deck, even though it works about the same. I like the concept and can imagine that working in the right context.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI guess my thought process was more "how do I make a dino that explicitly wants to be played in non-dinosaur decks" rather than "how do I make a dinosaur that plays well in a pirate deck" for example. I'm not sure which is better.
DeleteI mostly just think it's a little too strange to see basically anti-tribal in a tribal based set. the logic is that it explicitly gets bonus function with everything but dinosaurs, allowing maximum flexibility, but you may just play a vanilla 3/2 in your dinosaur deck in limited. But something like "Vampire that gains menace if you control a pirate" or something feels like it makes more sense in context even if I think it's less flexible and maybe more forced.
To your Ravnica point, a dinosaur that benefits from you having creatures with +1/+1 counters would help it play well with merfolk, without naming any tribes.
DeleteI like the idea for tribes to pair up. I think the problem is that anything that cares about multiple tribes is going to increase tracking complexity significantly. This bordered on where Lorwyn went wrong. Certainly straight lords are quite boring and add to the insularity of tribes. I think that how insular tribes are in their colors is bad for the game. Magic is it's own thing, but one of the hallmarks of fantasy rpgs is that races appear in multiple different cultures. High elves, wood elves, dark elves, etc. I like the initiative to include different colors and themes for the notable races to give them longevity. The combinatorics of pairing tribes as the basis of a set you probably be untenable, but having some number of these cards as a splash in a tribal set the way they used hybrid in ravnica might be a way to give people more options of combining tribes in constructed.
ReplyDelete