My Own Set and Mechanics
Challenges and Articles forum
Posted on Oct. 18, 2012, 12:43 p.m. by Absinthman
Hi everybody. This is rather a long post, but I hope it will be interesting enough to keep your attention.
I'm a big fan of creating custom cards and maybe even a bigger fan of creating custom mechanics (keyworded abilities) for the game. I'm currently working on a custom set of mine and I thought that I would share a glimpse of what I currently have in mind. Please, feel free to comment, evaluate, contemplate, disregard, ignore or hate.
First of all, let me tell you that neither of the two abilities that I'm introducing here is brand new. Both are actually inspired by cards with similar effects. The first one is called Donate (based on its namesake Donate card form Urza's Destiny). The ability simply allows you to cast a spell for an alternate cost, so that it doesn't enter the game under your control, but under your opponent's control. Naturally, the ability can't exist all by itself, and must be combined with something else to make sense. You'll find more information in the examples below. Please note that those examples only serve to show possible options for the ability. They may be under/overpowered or elsewise broken but that's not the point here. The point is to show how the ability works and what can be done with it.
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| Note: This is a familiar concept of an overpowered card that has a drawback. Thanks to the Donate ability, you're now able to bestow its drawback on your opponent (if you think you can deal prevent the 4/4 flyer from killing you). | Note: An example of a card that you may either use to hinder you own attacks in exchange for life and card draw, or hinder your opponent's attacks (saving you from losing maybe), while giving him or her the opportunity to gain life and cards. | |
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| Note: Boring while played regularly, but allows you to give your opponent a creature for free while forcing him to sacrifice some other, probably better creature. | Note: Another example of giving your opponent a free creature and gaining something else for it. | |
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| Note: Make your own weenie stronger or reduce your opponent's weenie to dust. | Note: Get an early fatty but suffer the drawback, or give your opponent a fatty and let him deal with the consequences. |
The second ability is not an ability, strictly speaking. It's more like a pair of keywords that label abilities that could be written on cards without them, but since they are to be one of the dominant mechanics, I felt that labeling them with keywords was appropriate. Those keywords are Chronic and Anachronic, and the only thing in general that can be said about them, is that Chronic ability is somehow associated with your turn, while Anachronic is related to when it's not your turn (the details of this connection are always described on the card itself). The inspiration for this one came from cards like Angry Mob and Wildwood Geist . Again, I've included examples for you to get better idea.
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| Note: Pretty straightforward. The abilities alternate based on whose turn it is. | Note: Same principle as with previous card, only this time it's an aura. | |
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| Note: Another example of an enchantment with alternating effects, this time on global level. | Note: This is a concept that I came to like pretty much. We're all used to play card drawing instants at end of opponent's turn. Now this gives you one more reason to consider playing it during your own turn. This example also is to make it clear that a card does not necessarily need to have both Chronic and Anachronic effects. | |
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| Note: This card sets an example of a "comes into play" effect that varies depending on whose turn it is, in contrast to the above Quicksilver Knight whose abilities just switch between turns. | Note: This is an example of a card with two possible abilities. Which one of them is active is decided based on whose turn it was when it entered the battlefield. | |
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| Note: Another example of a card that only has one of the introduced effects which adds more power to it when played at the right time. | Note: The last example presents a card with two activated abilities with restricted use based on whose turn it currently is. |
As a final step, I've decided to try and make a few cards that would utilize both of my new mechanics. Although I don't actually think it is a good idea, since I was unable to make those cards look quite reasonable. Though I think it would be an interesting concept because if you donate a card with Chronic and Anachronic, the effects of that card would be reversed as opposed to the normal behavior of that card (because your opponent would be the controller of that card, the Chronic ability would be active during your turns, while the Anachronic ability would be in effect during your opponent's turns. Please explore the examples below, but as I've said, I haven't been able to come up with something that would be worth playing regularly and worth donating at the same time.
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| Note: The combination of the two mechanics here allows you to choose whether you'd rather have a new 4/4 dragon each turn while periodically getting blasted for some amount of damage by your opponent. | Note: This lets you choose to either sacrifice more life per turn than your opponent, but inflict the pain of discarding a card each turn on him or her, or sacrifice cards in your hand to send your opponent's life total down the drain. |
This is all I've got for you, friends. Thank you very much for your attention. I understand this post is long, but I hope you've managed to read through all of it. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this, so I'm looking forward to your comments and remarks.
Yours truly,
Absinthman.
P.S.: I apologize for any language mistakes. English is not my native language. Thank you.
Absinthman says... #2
Hi guys, I though it would take a bit longer to come up with something else, but I already have an alternative version of former Enrage. I've changed the name to Rage (to make the distinction between the former and the latter easier) and changed it to a pretty straigthforward and streamlined, kinda aggressive ability. I must say I like it, but please don't let this affect your opinions. Please take a look at following examples (I use the same card names and images over and over again, I hope it isn't confusing):
Again, these sample cards are here to show how the mechanic works, they may be overpowered, that's not the point right now. As you can see, I've used the phrase "...enrage this by..." in its wording to allow for other state based abilities to be written on a card and active only while it's enraged. I like this concept quite a lot. Why should a creature only get a bonus to power and toughness when it can also benefit from other stuff. Not to mention that effects active while a creature is enraged can also be negative to compensate for overly powerful base stats.
While creating this, I also thought of making the bonus affect only the creature's power, and not its toughness. But then I thought that enraged beings tend to withstand, so I extended the bonus to toughness as well.
I also thought about removing the number so that creatures with Rage would always enter the battlefield with no more than one counter, making the ability only one-time, but that seemed too limiting.
I don't know whether anybody else besides Epochalyptik and http404error still keeps an eye on this thread, but in any case, thanks to all of you guys.
December 16, 2012 11:53 a.m.
Absinthman says... #3
I've now realized that the wording seen on the pictures above doesn't clearly say that the "enraged" state ends at end of turn together with the +2/+2 bonus. So the correct wording of this ability is as follows:
Rage X (This enters the battlefield with X rage counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may remove a rage counter from this. If you do, this becomes enraged and gets +2/+2 until end of turn.)
December 16, 2012 4:32 p.m.
Absinthman says... #5
Ouch! I indeed forgot this time. Thanks for the reminder.
December 16, 2012 5:12 p.m.
http404error says... #6
I like the new Rage. There are a lot of interesting interplays, although there is a lot of information to keep track of. As well, it opens up a lot of design space (recharging rage especially). I would give some serious thought to potentially changing the ability timing to a different speed (sorcery or instant), stacking rages, and raging on opponents' turns. Rage seems out of flavor for white and blue, but could be adapted to white with a name change.
December 16, 2012 5:16 p.m.
Absinthman says... #7
@http404error: Thank you for the comment. It's nice to know that I'm on the right track once again. I'll now respond to each of your suggestions in order.
1. Why upkeep: I also though about making it sorcery-like or instant-like, but few things dissuaded me from it. First, in that case, the wording of the ability would be somewhat weird I think. It would have to be something like (This enters the battlefield with a rage counter on it and has "Remove a rage counter from this: This becomes enraged and gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Activate this ability only as a sorcery.). Second, being able to enrage a creature during combat phase or an opponents turn, or even to stack it several times seemed too overpowered to me, but that might only be my misguided feeling.
2. About a lot of information to keep track of: This is also my personal opinion but I don't feel that there is much more information to be aware of than in case of RtR's Detain ability. I've seen many situations where players forgot what was detained or that detain lasted through their turns until the beginning of the detainer's next turn.
3. About colors and flavor of Rage: The thing you're pointing out about Rage being unsuitable for white and blue is completely correct. However, it's exacly what I intended. Being considered as a second mechanic to accompany Donate (which as squire1 suggested earlier in this thread is kinda blueish), I've decided to distribute these two abilities among colors, making Donate blue, white and partially black, and making Rage green, red and also partially black.
I'd like to hear more information on your proposed changes (different timing and stacking). Do you think it wouldn't make the ability broken? Thank you.
December 16, 2012 5:47 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #8
I agree that only being able to make the decision at the beginning of your upkeep is much too limiting. To free it up a bit while also avoiding overpowering the mechanic, I would try either "Whenever this creature attacks, you may..." or "Whenever this creature attacks or blocks, you may..."
December 17, 2012 11:32 a.m.
Absinthman says... #9
@Rhadamanthus: I honestly must give myself a facepalm. Your solution is so simple and elegant. How did I not think of this myself, is a mistery to me. I think I'll use your version as final. So, just to conclude this, here is the final wording. Please notify me, if anything seems to be non-compliant with common wording pattern.
Rage X (This creature enters the battlefield with X rage counters on it. Whenever this creature attacks or blocks, you may remove a rage counter from it. If you do, it becomes enraged until end of turn. Enraged creatures get +2/+2.)
Thanks for invaluable help!
December 17, 2012 12:30 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #10
I'm glad I could help.
The reminder text as you have it could be misinterpreted as making each enraged creature pump all enraged creatures. I suggest "If you do, it gets +2/+2 and becomes enraged until end of turn". I know that you want the +2/+2 to be part of being enraged, but to get that you might have to have nested reminder text, i.e. "If you do, it becomes enraged until end of turn (enraged creatures get +2/+2 as long as they're enraged)."
How crucial is it for the design of your set to have cards that can care about whether a creature has the "enraged" status?
December 17, 2012 2:02 p.m.
Absinthman says... #11
It is indeed confusing, but having a nested reminder text is something I'd like to avoid. I've thought about how to incorporate it, but nothing seems to be just right. I'll change it according to your suggestion. After all, whether it's written separately or as a part of being enraged is not really going to change the functionality, it's only going to spoil the flavor a little bit. But the creature still becomes enraged no matter what.
To answer your question about how much being enraged will be important in the set, I've decided to show a few examples of possible effects related to the enraged state that I just made few minutes ago.
December 17, 2012 4:13 p.m.
These mechanics and the cards you've chosen to implement them on are well-designed, seemingly balanced, and most importantly, interesting. I'd love to play with cards with these abilities.
I do agree that chronic/anachronic could share a keyword ability with the text saying "as long as it is your turn x, else y", but I don't think you have to change the name of the ability. You are using the word Chronic appropriately, and unless you think another word would fit your ability better in terms of mechanics or flavor, I would keep it.
The donate mechanic is really great. I hope WotC developers see this thread.
December 18, 2012 10:44 a.m.
Absinthman says... #13
@themlsna: Hello and thank you for your kind comment. I don't know if you've read through the comments present here (there are 4 pages of them now), but Chronic / Anachronic was later fired from the set for being rather too complex. There are also new abilities presented in the comments, namely Linger, which I consider to include in the next set of this block (should it ever be created),and Rage (though it still needs some refining as far as its proper wording is concerned) which will accompany Donate in the set I'm creating now.
About Wizards implementing Donate, I don't think it will happen. In fact, let me share a story with you guys. It really is a true story, I've not made it up, though it may seem like a boast.
Sometime around Onslaught block (2002/2003), I was doing the same thing that I'm doing now. Creating mechanics. In fact, Donate that you see here has the exact same wording as had back then. Yes, it really was originally created in 2003. I decided that I would send it to Wizards as a suggestion together with another mechanic that I created back then and which is actually more important for this story. It was called Extend and had following wording:
Extend [number] (When you play this card, you may reduce its mana cost by up to [number] colorless mana. If you do, remove it from the game instead of resolving it and put that many extend counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove an extend counter from this card. When the last is removed, put it onto the stack.)
Rings a bell? I think it should. I sent these two abilities to Wizards hoping for some response, but none came. Soon I stopped caring and also stopped playing magic for some time. Then, around 2006/2007, I decided to take a look at MTG's development over that time and wanted to see what new mechanics Wizards came up with. You can imagine my surprise, when I saw Suspend. My first reaction was "Those backstabbing *** stole my mechanic! (and of course improved it, so that it could actually work)" Naturally, I can't be sure that this was really the case. I could have just thought about the same thing as the developers. But of course, 17-year-old me, wasn't really inclined towards that possibility (even my 27-year-old me still isn't). I don't want any credits or anything, I've sent them the mechanic just like that, so it was their decision what to do with it. But a simple "Thank you, we will look into it" kind of e-mail would have sufficed. To conclude this... Since they have never until now released Donate, I doubt they liked it in the first place. :-)
Make now mistake, I hold no grudge agains Wizards. But if anybody from Wizards, sees this thread, please tell me whether you used my idea, or came up with it by yourselves? I just wanna know. :-D
December 18, 2012 3:45 p.m.
http404error says... #14
I would change Gratitude to the static ability "~ gets +2/+2 and is enraged as long as you control a permanent you don't own." It also shouldn't be a 2/2 for 1R. Exidian Gatekeeper could also have a static ability, although it's confusing that it gets +2/+2 and is NOT enraged.
I also liked it better when Enraged status gave +2/+2 by definition, as it made the mechanic infinitely less parasitic (meaning it works with other sets). The ability wording takes lower priority to good gameplay - there will always be a way to make it work the way you want.
If you hit F2 in MSE, you can use the legend short name to reduce text cluttering for Selavali.
Think about the cool awesome Rage commons! Rage Bear! Really Raging Goblin! Rage is very conducive to common design, although you probably shouldn't put anything other than Rage 1 on commons. The enraged status is indeed comparable to Detain, but it also changes combat math and adds counters to track.
December 18, 2012 4:03 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #15
Because of potential issues with Intellectual Property claims, WotC purposefully doesn't respond to emails with unsolicited card and mechanic designs, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of them are deleted without being completely read. I happened to listen very recently to a podcast by Mark Rosewater telling the stories of various set design projects, and he said Suspend was originally designed for Saviors of Kamigawa (I found an article where he talks about it some more; apparently it was one of the ideas tried out for the spells that eventually got Epic). It didn't fit in the set, and was held for later use, finally appearing in Time Spiral.
Based on how the design team works about 2 years ahead of the release schedule, this actually puts the design of Suspend near the end of your 2002/2003 range of when you remember submitting your email, but I seriously doubt they stole your idea. It's just a coincidence of parallel design that happens all the time among good designers who know how to come up with good ideas that haven't been done before.
December 18, 2012 4:36 p.m.
Absinthman says... #16
@http404error: Thanks for insights. I don't really mean these example cards to be in the set. I just wanted to present what came into my mind. But thank you for comments on these cards anyway. I'd also like to make +2/+2 part of being enraged, so do you think that nested reminder text is ok? Or can you think of any other way to phrase it? Actually, I seem to have a problem with nested reminder text in MSE. It doesn't understand that the brackets are inside the text and the closing bracket of the nested text breaks the italics font, like this: (This creature enters ... becomes enraged until end of turn. (Creatures get +2/+2 as long as they're enraged.).)
Also thanks for the hint about legend names. Actually, F2 did nothing, so I searched the net a bit and found out that typing "@" instead of "~" will do the trick.
December 18, 2012 4:46 p.m.
It wasn't until after I made my post that I read through the rest of the comments. I think it's a shame you scrapped chronic/anachonic, as I found it to be more interesting, original and flavorful than many of the subsequent abilities that were introduced.
I will say that you have a definite talent for MtG design. What would have been, in my opinion, a boring mechanic (Rage,) was totally opened up by the cards that make use of the "enraged" state.
December 18, 2012 4:48 p.m.
Absinthman says... #18
@Rhadamanthus: Wow, thanks for the info. I didn't know that. I can finally put my mind at peace. And big thanks for the compliment, whether intended or not. :-))
December 18, 2012 4:53 p.m.
Absinthman says... #19
@themlsna: Well, right now, no mechanic gets totally scraped, I think. Maybe it's better to say that Chronic/Anachronic has been put on hold. I still like it, but will not use it for the time being. The fact is, I get a lot of ideas lately. Some of them I discard ten minutes later, some of them next day, some I even forget during the day and later regret not having taken some notes. I also would like to make something similar to Unstable or Destabilize that I posted earlier because I'm looking for something red-blue (Linger being kinda black-white in my opinion even bearing some resemblance to Haunt). But I have to think about it some more to make it more relevant. And thanks for the compliment on my work. It means a lot to know that I'm not doing it totally wrong. Maybe I should apply as a designer to Wizards, hehe.
Epochalyptik says... #1
In my first comment, I accidentally classified enrage's damage as an optional cost. I'm not wholly sure whether it's a cost or not (I would think not, as there is no payment or sacrifice), so I went with a more general term in my edit.
It's not necessarily a bad thing if a mechanic resembles something else. As long as it's fun and applicable in some way, it should be considered.
December 15, 2012 5:17 p.m.