Well to an extent it's the difference between Chroma and Devotion though, right -- Chroma is a series of bad cards without decks to complement them, and Devotion is a Real Deck in Standard. There's hardly a difference between their execution, save the Devotion cards are typically stronger than any of the Chroma junk, and it's also executed in a number of more (imho) interesting ways. I personally think the idea of proving devotion before the God cards 'manifest' as creatures is great - forget the Legacy playability of said effects, it's essentially the same dish with a better presentation.Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer
You're right to remind that 'everything is basically kicker' because the whole idea of spending more mana to do more things is kind of a repeated theme of the game, from individual mechanics to X spells to a card-by-card basis -- spendon a spell, it has a certain kind of possible effect; spend
So even if they manage to break totally from that and create something entirely unseen before, the execution is crucial and needs to be seen in its entirety. If the mechanic is a rebaked relic from prior times in Magic, it may have returned with a vengeance - it needs to be seen in its entirety. In either case, four cards in is still way too early to assess the set in earnest.
Isn't Khans bottom up though?
I'd be willing to bet that a plurality of Magic's mechanics are reducible either to a variant of kicker or a variant of channel.You're right to remind that 'everything is basically kicker' because the whole idea of spending more mana to do more things is kind of a repeated theme of the game, from individual mechanics to X spells to a card-by-card basis -- spend
I thought it was announced as that. I'm maybe wrong here, but does that mean that this time, they build the world and cards around the mechanics and not create mechanics and cards to fit the worlds theme? I'm seriously wondering if we even notice the difference in the end :/
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Yeah, pretty much.
There is the occasional Threshold that comes along and depends on a zone, but that's still IMHO an if/else: if (graveyard has 7 or more cards in it) { Mystic Enforcer is a motherfucker; }. And really, even Channel is tantamount to like a split card or whatever; the subtleties of abilities vs. spells aside, what are you doing exactly? You're paying a cost, putting a card in the graveyard, and seeing an effect. It's just an Instant. That it 'lives' on a Creature card is what makes it more like a split card than anything else; you are either casting the creature or using the ability as an Instant-speed effect, and just reversing the order of resolution and graveyarding the card doesn't make it so different from what we've always done with Instant spells.
The presence of "ability words" is at once helpful and harmful in tracking this stuff, because quite often the word itself does nothing, it's just a placeholder. Again looking at Threshold; what difference is there between a card that says
"This gets +3/+3 as long as seven or more cards are in your graveyard."
vs
"Threshold - This gets +3/+3 as long as seven or more cards are in your graveyard."
The word itself doesn't really *do* anything, at least not anymore; originally Threshold implied the "7 cards in the grave" bit, but no longer is that the case (thanks Oracle). Instead the word just reminds us that "hey, this card happens to have thematically fitting words that change its state in a particular way". The impetus to make the word cohesive and meaningful falls on creative at that point, right? To present that ability word in such a context that the execution of getting those 7 cards in the bin and the resultant effect have a unique and/or cohesive theme to them, and that helps power the block and define it as separate from the other blocks in the game. When they do it well, I don't think anyone cares that a given keyword/ability word is just another kicker. When they fuck it up though, everyone will quickly point out the emperor has no bloody clothes on.
Chroma - er devotion - is a version of that, right? Seems like plenty of those are on a sliding scale.
It seems like conditional, alternative, and modified casting costs are another big category.
There's a pile of combat related mechanics like evasion and flanking.
Hard to tell, I don't really read WotC's infotainment articles, moreover I don't even know what does the "bottock-up design" phrase mean.
Yep. Tsumi got it right.
So, do we already know the GBW clan leader?
- Kahns is bottom up set, Large/small/Large
- While Khans of Tarkir is a wedge set, the other sets of the block aren't.
- When the second set is released, it will be drafted Set2-KTK-KTK
- When the third set is released, it will be drafted Set3-Set3-Set2
I thought the bottock-up design meant that they design the world first, then make game mechanics that would fit in it.
I dont know, thats what Ive found. But well, typical WotC information policy.
Elsewhere I found:
Top down means they come up with the creative, flavour aspects of the set first, then design mechanics to resonate with the creative stuff. Bottom up means they come up with mechanics and then the flavour to explain the mechanics.
Top-down blocks:
Kamigawa (Japanese mythology)
Innistrad (Gothic horror)
Theros (Greek mythology)
Bottom-up blocks:
Lorwyn (Tribal)
Ravnica (Two-colour combinations)
Zendikar (Land set)
Yeah combat mechanics sort of have their own niche, don't they. Maybe I overstated the "kicker vs condition" thing, it takes a little too much abstraction to turn, like, first strike into an if/else, and it certainly isn't kicker, so.
To that end, it's a small wonder they'd focus more on battlefield presence than dorking around with spells and the stack. There's a whole host of silly creature abilities that haven't even been dreamed up yet! Slow strike, where your creature gets a bonus but deals its combat damage later than 'regular strike'. Or or or Flarnking, wherein the creature gives counters to dudes that block it, because they're just so silly! Maybe even Digging, as opposed to Flying; cuz they's under the ground and what not. And you have to have a creature that can also Dig to block it, and it's totally not a Shadow redux because if your opponent uses Earthquake it will deal 2x damage to your creatures that are using Dig. :( I HATE THAT
Tunneling. What you meant is called tunneling.
Dwarven Tunneler
Creature - Dwarf
~ can't be blocked by creatures
with flying.
Other Dwarf creatures you control get
+1/+1 and can't be blocked by creatures
with flying.
_______________________________ 2/2
You know, you're suggesting that in jest, but I actually think that's a pretty cool idea, to have a creature with the drawback of dealing damage second. Though you could probably just avoid "slow strike" by making it so that the creatures it blocks/is blocked by get first strike.
Last edited by Jander78; 08-26-2014 at 10:50 AM.
The only reason it's in jest is because they've apparently gone on record saying that slow strike won't ever happen. Largely because the rules that implement first strike and double strike are actually fairly more complex than they seem like they'd need to be -- mostly because the rules want to avoid 'fogging' a creature by toggling it through various damage steps. You can't, for example, cause a creature to gain first strike with the proper timing to avoid it dealing combat damage during either the first strike combat damage step or the regular damage step. So introducing slow strike/last strike just puts another layer of 'no you cannot do that' into the comp rules for each potential interaction with gaining or losing first strike/double strike/slow strike with various timing. (actually i feel like it's easier to just lock in the number of 'strike steps' at the head of the combat step and just make one rules to ignore individual 'changes to 'strike' abilities' at that point, but wtf do I know I'm not a rules guy)
Though I do think your particular implementation is something that's been done before. I think also this lets them pre-emptively avoid the off-chance of printing something with legitimate 'triple strike' :P there's your power creep right there. Sure I'll take three triggers of Jitte this combat, seems fair.
Last edited by Jander78; 08-26-2014 at 10:51 AM.
Just to clarify the notion of Top-Down and Bottom-up:
Top down: You have the flavor and design a cool card out of it (It's a stromg vampire: Let's make a 4/4 lifelink creature, that can change into a 2/2 flying bat!!)
Bottom-up: You have the mechanisms and the design and you come out with a cool flavor (We need a 2/2 first strike creature... ok, let's say this clan has some archers...)
There's a lot they could have done with Enchantments to attract attention in Legacy, though - we have a whole (fringe, at this point) deck built around them, and it would be pretty good if it had any sort of stack interaction. Making Banishing Light's ability an "As" rather than "when" ability would've solved one of Enchantress's biggest problems.
A Lifeforce/Deathgrip variant at GW, WW, or GG that cared about something other the color of the spells would've been snapped up immediately. Stony Silence is widely run in sideboards and never caused a problem in Standard. Rest in Peace is pretty good in Legacy.
The Buy-A-Box promo is actually moderately relevant:
Mystic Songclaw
Creature - Human Shaman
Tap: add,
or
to your mana pool.
Morph
When ~ is turned face-up, add
2/1
Damn shame Wizards shifts mana accelerants towards the 2 mana slot.
Best case scenario would be:
T1 Land, Mana dork (aka DRS)
T2 Land, Play this as Morph
T3 Land, unmorph this, tap this (4 mana) + another potential mana from a third land and the other mana dork each, resulting in 6 mana on T3.
The body seems alright since he can beat, but nothing too stellar.
He's 2 mana to play face up, and net 2 mana to play face down and flip. I'm not sure acceleration is an appropriate description.
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