Gidgetimer Relic of Progenitus most-certainly does draw 4 cards in a turn, as shown below:

Card 1: The Ketramose trigger that is created from its first tap ability that states ”Target player exiles a card from their graveyard”.

Card 2: The Ketramose trigger that is created from paying the cost from the second ability, which exiles relic, aka ”, Exile this artifact“.

Card 3: The Ketramose trigger that is created from that second ability actually resolving - ”Exile all graveyards.”

Card 4: the last 3 words of Relics second ability resolving, which reads ”Draw a card”.

Sliverguy420 I had already made my position on the topic very clear in my very first post - that is, that effects have different ceilings for power and that "multi-colored cards can be more powerful" is NOT the same as "multi-colored cards will be more powerful".

On the specific question the OP asked of "Why are some mono-colored cards more powerful than are multi-colored cards that are very similar?", in my mind there are only 3 potential answers for that. One, what I have just mentioned above. Two, powercreep of design between years. Three, design mistakes.

^ We know all three of these things exist between cards, because for points One and Three Mark Rosewater specifically discusses them at various times on his blog. For powercreep, we know that design philosophies change over time, and that the power-limits Wotc is willing to allow for effects usually gets stronger over time... there's sooo many examples of this i'm not sure how you could argue otherwise.

To address your latest comments specifically:

• "you can't objectively quantify and measure powercreep, so arguing an imaginary line in the sand for how many years makes a comparison valid or not is arbitrary and subjective." - ignoring it is also deliberate and willful ignorance. We don't have to quantify powercreep to know that it exists, and that it has an impact on card design and power. Ignoring it entirely seems super counterproductive. Magic has changed untold in 18 years. Heck, it's changed by a huge amount in just 5 years. We don't have to "draw lines in the sand" to acknowledge that comparing 2 cards from 2 different time periods comes with its own set of difficulties.

• " my comments were no more counterproductive than you or plakjekaas nitpicking the year and the powercreep." - hard disagree. I will agree that my comments directed towards you weren't remotely productive, but neither of our comments towards eachother have been. My initial post gives a pretty well-thought-out answer to the OPs question. From scrolling through your comments on this thread, I don't see a single one that tries to answer the OPs actual question in any meaningful way.

• "you wanna tell someone to "stay on topic", then tell that to plakjekaas. if he's allowed to give a nonanswer to op's question by bringing that up, i'm allowed to refute it." - I'm not here to defend plakjekaas, but at least they've made an attempt at answering the OPs question. In any case, i'm not sure why you're dragging them into the conversation when we're talking to eachother. I have no intention of slandering someone that i'm not directly addressing, and i'd hope you'd be able to show them the same respect.

My “making a stink” was from other including some pretty well-thought out responses to the OPs question, and your responses largely feeling extremely combative and counterproductive. Unfortunately my own nature is to push against that rhetoric when I see it, for better-or-worse.

I also think 8 years is too big a gap to fairly compare those other cards you mentioned.

The powercreep response to the OPs question is an entirely valid one in a lot if cases, as comparing cards from entirely different design-eras doesn’t yield much use.

The comment which you supposedly “debunked” has the very relevant point of ”What OP's describing is powercreep, and it's not restricted by colors.”, which far more easily illustrates the difference in power between these two specific cards, moreso than any of your rebuttals. The comparison between them is disingenuous because they were printed 18 years apart and at completely different rarities. I’m suprised you think those two very-big factors still somehow makes this a fair comparison

The OPs exact question is ”Why are some mono-colored cards more powerful than are multi-colored cards that are very similar?”. If we’re trying to be helpful and on-topic, our responses should be aiming to provide some kind if answer/insight into that.

Sliverguy420 you also understand that synonym-words aren’t always identical, right? The very definition for synonym states the words can be “nearly the same”…, so using this metric to prove a point doesn’t seem practical.

In any case, we’re clearly both just beating our heads against brick-walls here, so there’s no need for us to keep rattling on with these semantics.

On the Aurelia's Fury vs Rolling Thunder, it’s an extreme case of comparison - AF has two additional effects which aren’t even mentioned on RT, as well as being Instant instead of Sorcery, and Mythic rarity instead of Uncommon (the rarity alone could easily explain the vast difference in card complexity/power). I would say however that its a fine comparison, but fails in that it deviates entirely from the OPs initial question, which was asking why some mono-coloured cards have stronger effects than their multicoloured counterparts. Providing an example to the opposite does nothing towards answering the OPs initial question

I just googled “same vs identical”, and google provided this exact response:

”While "same" and "identical" often seem interchangeable, "identical" implies a more precise and absolute likeness, while "same" can be used in a broader sense to describe things that are alike, but not necessarily in every detail.”

The OP upvotes a lot of comments - including the one I just posted prior. I wouldn’t suggest that adds any weight to your argument here.

In any case, plakjekaas is entirely correct that this is a complete derailment of the OPs thread. You know the points others are making and choosing to off-road this thread in semantics.

Yes of course they will. Nothing is preventing these triggers from triggering

I think you’re going to have a hard time convincing anyone else that these cards aren’t showcasing ”the sane effect but with different levels of power”, with the effect clearly being ”counter a spell and have the spells owner mill some cards”.

I think what you’re trying to express is that the cards aren’t identical, which feels like a mute-point. I’m sure if a poll were done the community would be overwhelmingly in favour of agreeing these cards have the same effect. Functionally these cards do the same thing, with one just doing that thing slightly stronger.

Sliverguy420 the term ”strictly better” has a very specific definition, which is incorrect to use here. The fact that Triskelion has any uses/applications over Ballista means this comparison simply isn’t true.

Again, i’m not debating that Ballista isn’t almost always the stronger card, i’m simply calling out that the term ”strictly better” is an incorrect statement here.

^ on that vein though, if you are trying to build a deck with Triskelion, you probably want to be including a bunch of effects that play to its benefit - i.e. reanimation spells and flicker effects (otherwise, there’s no real point to running it over the beforementioned card).

Sliverguy420 it’s not ”strictly better” at all. For 6 mana Triskelion is a 4/4, while Ballista is only a 3/3. If you flicker Triskelion you get all its counters back, so can play better into those shenanigans (flickering Ballista will just kill it).

Yes, Ballista is the better card 99% of the time - but these cards still function very differently and it is disingenuous to say one is ”strictly better” than the other, when they behave quite differently.

At a glance, you’re running a bunch of spells that destroy things instead of exile them, which feels wrong to begin with.

You’re also missing lots of obvious cards that work amazingly with Ketramose, like Relic of Progenitus which draws you 4 cards in a single turn.

magwaaf wotc themselves have said that’s the case

My suggestion would be to start by focusing on what elements of your game you want to be the main-drawcards to your game - i.e. what aspects/interactions of the game will be entirely unique (for mtg, its the stack & their combat phase).

Once you have your unique aspects defined, you want to make sure those parts of the game play as-fun as possible - they’re going to be the things that draw people to your game over somebody else's. You also probably want to ensure the other aspects of the game that fall outside of this umbrella do things that tie-in or directly-interact with your unique aspects in a way that feels natural and fun.

A good approach is to think of an “elevator pitch” - that is, if you had only 2 sentences to describe your game, what description are you giving that differentiates over the other 100s of card games out there? Once you know your elevator-pitch, it becomes a lot easier to build/design your game around something coherent, fun, and unique.

I would also second that there are a BUNCH of card games out there that play nothing like mtg. Generally if a tcg resembles mtg at all it’s a slight if laziness on the developer. I’ve created a few card games myself, and none of them have any semblance to existing tcgs.

The only commonality tcg games tend to have is players having decks, and there being a “draw a card” phase at some point during each players turn.

Initial thoughts:

• both having 30 card decks and allowing a max of 5 copies of a card are going to lead to matchups playing out almost identically a lot of the time, and quickly lead to the game feeling stale/solved/boring. The best games, imo, are ones that maximise player agency/skill while also maximising variance in gameplay.

• you’re saying you want this to be a game distinctly different from Mtg, but a lot of what you’re describing feels very similar to how mtg plays, just with a slightly different turn structure.

• you haven’t listed how combat happens… having this very different from mtg combat would be the easiest way to make it feel distinct imo.

• you haven’t detailed what gold and mana are for, and why we’re tracking these two different resources.

• it’s probably worth detailing building more, as so far these appear to be the only feature unique from mtg you’ve mentioned.

• what is the purpose of heroes? Can they be attacked? Can they attack? What’s their purpose?

jethstriker ah I see. You’ll see from the OPs full description/commentary that they were asking something a bit more elaborate though

jethstriker what question are you answering? You’ve given reasons to justify printing stronger multicoloured cards - but that’s not what this thread is asking at all

I believe you’ve misunderstood Wotcs statement - saying that ”multi-colored cards can be more powerful” is NOT the same as saying ”multi-colored cards will be more powerful”.

There is no requirement for Wotc to ensure that every multicoloured card is stronger than every monocoloured card. The Wotc statement is simply saying that multicoloured cards have a higher ceiling of power for what they can do. Most cards don’t even approach the ceiling of a cards limitations (and for the health of Mtgs future, they generally shouldn’t), indeed the ones you’ve listed above are quite low in power.