One thousand years after the Seven Days of Fire, an apocalyptic war which destroyed modern human civilization and the world's ecology, the earth is covered by the Sea of Corruption, a vast forest of fungi and plants that give off poisonous miasma and is inhabited by large deadly insects. Life in this world is most difficult for humans, but humans are still fighting over the small portions of inhabitable lands left to them around the edges of the Sea of Corruption. A war is about to break out between the Kingdom of Torumekia and the Dorok Empire, and Nausicaä, the princess of a small country, The Valley of Wind, now has to leave the Valley to join the Torumekian army, which is about to invade the Dorok Empire.
70 commons (11 per color, 10 multi colored, 5 artifact)
60 uncommons (8 per color, 10 multi colored, 10 nonbasic lands)
40 rares (6 per color, 10 multi colored)
10 mythics
White:The Nations of the Periphery
Red:The Torumekian Empire
Black:The Dorok Principalities
Green:The Insects of the Sea of Corruption
Blue:The Tribal subjects of the Dorok Empire
My main goal for the set is for it to play well as a draftable "cube" (1 of each rare/mythic, 2 of each uncommon, 4 of each common). So think limited.
Okay, you’ve asked about Conquer so let’s talk about it.
First, it does break the color pie. There’s no way around this. Red doesn’t get to tap things like this. The color pie is the core of what makes the game work on two levels. First, it creates a reason to play more than one color by separating the mechanics into different colors. Second, it gives each color a unique identity which provides an emotional hook for the color. Breaking the color pie on a single rare card is bad enough, but doing it on a whole core mechanic is exponentially worse. This alone means the design could never be printed in an actual set.
The argument that red gets land destruction, and this is a weaker version of that, doesn’t work. You might as well say that black should get bounce (and creature tapping) because it’s a weaker version of creature destruction.
As for the flavor… You can justify any mechanic being in any color with flavor, so I’m not surprised you found a justification. Flavor doesn’t excuse mechanical breaks, no matter how much it might want to.
Second, it’s our job as designers to create an enjoyable experience for players. Conquest doesn’t do this You can clearly see the concerns about this, and you’ve preemptively sought to respond to them, but you can’t get around the fact that you’ve taken possibly the least fun aspect of magic – mana screw – and systematized it onto a whole mechanic. Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, these aren’t fun cards to play against.
The argument that, “players don’t enjoy losing in the first place” doesn’t matter here. Players get more frustrated when a creature spell is countered than when it hits the table and is immediately killed by a terminate. Logically, this makes no sense but it doesn’t matter. Emotionally, it feels awful. Additionally, good gameplay is about making interesting and enjoyable decisions. Not having mana available means you don’t have any decisions to make whatsoever. There’s a reason casual playgroups often ban land destruction and draw-go control or similar. They don’t enjoy playing against those strategies. You’ve systematized it here.
In general, mechanics that fundamentally break the color pie and ensure the least fun parts of magic happen more often… Don’t do very well.
Thanks for commennting! It seems that I indeed anticipated most of your critique, good to know I am not totally out of touch :0
However I believe you are exagerating my color pie stretching ways. I also do not agree that there is an argument for any mechanic to belong to any color, hypberbole much?
You would not typically associate exiling cards with red would you? However I'm sure this affect was viewed as fitting under the umbrella of land destruction, because for all practical game purposes that's what it is,a temporary, conditional, weaker version of land destruction. So it is with tapping and untappping, do you really think something so basic to magic rule is limited to certain colors only? Red already has cards that tap or untap, "betrayal cards" Obviously there are tons of these babies. Do they untap permanents? Technically yeah, they do. Only in order to explain a unique affect in a senisble manner though. Conquer would not be so different. Tapping lands is design space rarely touched by magic, green and blue untap lands, only a few colorless affects have ever tapped them. It's perfectly within the realm of reason to give tapping lands to the red part of the color pie.
The unfun part of your critisism however. Yeah that one's a doozy. My main goal for this set was to make it true to the source material. Conquer has acctually already gone through a few mutations all attempting to capture what it is the Torumekians do, namely invade others. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make this set both fun and flavorfully accurate, however there could come a time where I settle down more on one side of the leager than the other. Lol things might work out if the other colors are fun enough, the Torumekians can be the hated jerk color. Only playtesting will tell for sure.
Again thanks for commenting, it takes admirable poise to be able to take in another person's work and deconstruct it in an intelligent manner.
Peace
(note I obviously failed to address the fact that there are many affects that can tap "permanents' which of course includes lands)
Glad to help however I can. It’s also great to see you’ve done your research. Let’s dig in.
Color Pie
1) The color pie has shifted since the Oddyssey block. Faceless Butcher is another example in that cycle, but that effect has shifted into white’s color pie and is no longer within black’s domain. Additionally, exiling a land temporarily is much closer to temporary land destruction than tapping one and no color had staked a firm claim on exiling lands temporarily the way other colors have firm claims on tapping. Additionally, Wizards has indeed made cards that break the color pie before. These are considered mistakes, not precedents. So the example of Petravark doesn’t work as a precedent on several levels.
2) You mention “weaker version of land destruction”. That doesn’t matter for the purposes of mechanical identity. You can make a weak land destruction card by overcosting it or similar, but changing it to tapping lands is a different mechanic. Black doesn’t get Mystic Restraints just because it’s a weaker version of removal. This argument doesn’t fly.
3) Untapping permanents (and in this case creatures) is the opposite of tapping them. You might as well argue that green should get land destruction because green gets land acceleration. Additionally, red gets the untap element as a convenience aspect to make its betrayal cards work. And your example is stretched even further, because these are creatures – not lands. You should shift your analogy to arguing that green should get creature removal because it gets land creation (which is the opposite of land destruction and land destruction isn’t THAT different than creature destruction… right? Same argument as saying red should get to tap lands because it can untap creatures when it’s also doing something else). And yes, permanent types do matter a LOT. This is why red gets to destroy artifacts but not enchantments. Mark Rosewater has repeatedly insisted that red can’t destroy enchantments and he has a personal hatred of Chaos Warp because it lets red do so – breaking the color pie.
Tapping lands simply isn’t in red’s color pie. The fact that you’ve been forced to stretch your justifcations to “red had a card a while ago that temporarily exiled a land in a cycle with another creature that violated the modern color pie” and, “red has cards that untap creatures in a highly specific context” in order to try justifying tapping lands… That’s a really good sign that the mechanic isn’t in red’s color pie after all. If you want to try the mechanic, give it a shot in blue. Gigadrowse is a thing.
At this point, you could easily convince me otherwise by asking Mark Rosewater on his tumbler blog “Blogatog” whether red can tap an opponent’s lands at common (or, really, any other rarity but your mechanic also needs to work at common). Also, finding a rush of great examples of red tapping lands from more recent sets would be good. But without specific precedent or a higher authority, moving an established blue mechanic into red definitely breaks the color pie. This *can* be acceptable, the color pie does change (rituals moving into red from black, for example – and putting creatures/spells on top of libraries moved from blue to white to blue again) – but that only happens extraordinarily infrequently and usually for essential gameplay reasons that are larger than a single set.
Which is a great lead-in to the gameplay discussion.
Gameplay
Matching flavor to gameplay is absolutely essential, and working with fixed source material is one of the most difficult design challenges you can tackle. This is why Wizards no longer does prexesiting source material. Kamigawa was an attempt to faithfully depict real world Japanese mythology, which ended up forcing them into making a lot of design and development choices that resulted in bad gameplay. While Kamigawa has a passionate cult following, the overall reception was extremely poor. It took until Innistrad before they were confident enough to try top-down design on a block-level again, and even then they made the smart decision to make a world inspired by gothic horror but not fixed to it, so they could make mechanics that felt right but tweak the world and setting when necessary to fit their mechanics if there was a tiny mismatch. Flavor is much more flexible than gameplay.
You can cheat a little though. It’s essential you capture the essence of what your source material feels like, so people feel connected to the material itself. You don’t need direct representation. For example, the phyrexians are famous for invading worlds and taking them over, putting the creatures through a process called “compleation” (intentional spelling) and turning those creatures into phyrexians. However, when Mark Rosewater was leading Scars of Mirrodin, he didn’t try to give the phyrexians a specific mechanic that gains control of other permanents (bad gameplay), he worked to evoke the feeling of the phyrexian’s touch being terrifying. In the magicverse, that’s because they’ll start corrupting you. In gameplay, -1/-1 and poison counters worked just fine. It still felt like they were a disease, which is what they are. This is a much more effective tactic to bringing their lore to life than trying to specifically represent their “take over other people” shtick as a mechanic. And take a look at werewolves from Innistrad! They transform by the light of the moon, not how many spells are cast, but the spellcasting element gave a great aspect of interactivity to trying to get the werewolves to flip, great tension about not knowing when they’d flip and no need to track things like night-day cycles (originally, the team did try out a card that told you when it was day and when it was night).
I’d recommend trying to figure out the essence of what it feels like to fight the Torumekians, and what it feels like to lead them. Try to represent that feeling, rather than the literal idea of taking over another’s territory (which tapping lands doesn’t even represent that well).
Wow Stairc this is a great response. I imagine I'll be refering to it for awhile. I've definitely come to the right place!
Anyways there are really only two things I'd like to add right now.
"Untapping permanents (and in this case creatures) is the opposite of tapping them. You might as well argue that green should get land destruction because green gets land acceleration."
I was not trying to make this argument.
"Additionally, red gets the untap element as a convenience aspect to make its betrayal cards work."
I was attempting to make this argument. My previous itteration of Conquer did not tap lands at all, rather it sought to temporarily disable them as described by different wording more along the lines of temporary exile. However I found that wording to be too texty and complicated. For me the current wording was the easist and simplist way to word the affect I sought to convey.
A few thoughts concerning the unfun angle.
First off, players are not going to be making highly dedicated Conquer decks. I do not want these cards to be used for constructed play, only limited and casual. As you can see only 2 of 7 common red creatures have Conquer, in draft you won't be able to spam this strategy. Red players will suplemement their attack with Conquer giving them a pace advantage, they won't be locking the other player out with it.
I also think there may be a subtle difference between Conquer and most other mana screw affects. Much in the way magic players seem to enjoy death via dragon over being countered, might there be an advantage to the esthetic of being "invaded"? Sure it will still be frustrating at times, but if you see can see a Conquer creature coming, and you let its damage get through, it still feels like something is happening gameplay wise. It's not as if they are just destroying all of your lands instantaneously. Perhaps this subtle difference does indeed exist, yet is still not enough to overcome the frustrations.
Another potential salve, would be emphasize multiplayer gameplay in my Nausicaa set, something I had already been leaning towards. The Conquer mechanic in a multiplayer enviornment is less gamebreaking, it can be used to impede the frontrunning player. Likewise the Conquer player would be "checked" by the fact that they have multiple opponents.
None of these reasonings push Conquer from unfun to exciting, but they could serve to temper the drawbacks.
I love all that you had to say about the flavor of magic not needing to be so technical. I agree there must be other ways to express the Torumekians if I can try harder to think outside of the box. It most definitely has to be an aggressive attacking mechanic...I'll spend some time back at the drawing board with an open mind.
Wow Stairc this is a great response. I imagine I'll be refering to it for awhile. I've definitely come to the right place!
Glad I can be helpful.
You've got a few more specific points here, so I'll focus on the biggest ones.
1) I understand that you're trying to argue that the mechanic *kinda* works in red and that red desperately needs it here, so you're justifying the bleed that way. However, in reality the mechanic doesn't work at all in red's portion of the color pie. Red manipulates emotions and smashes stuff (only stuff that can be smashed, it doesn't get to destroy enchantments because magic like that can't be smashed the way artifacts or lands can). Red gets Blind with Anger effects because red is emotion at the core of its philosophy and is heavily associated with anger and fury. It doesn't get to temporarily deplete your mana bonds with your lands.
Additionally, the reason that so few cards in magic tap lands is not because it's an untouched aspect of the color pie - it's because doing so isn't fun and they try not to make cards that aren't fun. For example, the following card is well within black's color pie but is not going to be printed.
Tormenting Visions - B
Sorcery
Target player reveals his or her hand. You choose a card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.
The real card here is Thoughtseize of course. The reason that nonland is specified isn't because black can't force the opponent to discard lands, it's because doing so creates mana screw and mana screw isn't fun. This is also why black doesn't cause random discard either (certainly not at low mana costs). Random discard can hit lands too.
Tapping lands is absolutely in blue's color pie Early Frost, Mana Short, Mistbind Clique and so on. Just like blue can bounce any permanent, but is often restricted to "nonland" bounce, the restriction exists because it isn't fun.
2) For gameplay, Conquer exists the the unhappy medium between unfun for the person using it OR unfun for the person being affected by it. Either the mechanic is screwing with the opponent's mana, ruining their fun, or it's not doing much of anything and feels lame to the person using it. Even when it's locking opponents' lands down, you don't know if you're preventing them from playing something good (unless there are obviously a ton of lands out, then you know for sure that it's probably a meaningless tap) - so it never feels truly great. It just feels absolutely awful to play against, and/or pretty meaningless to play with. This is a really bad place for a mechanic to be.
It sounds like the faction in question that you're trying to represent have a lot of things that make them cool. I'd definitely recommend heading back to the drawing board and coming up with an aggressive attacking mechanic. Maybe something that triggers off dealing combat damage to the opponent, since that would definitely feel like they got past the enemy's defenses. Bloodthirst might be a great fit, as might the Slith mechanic, Raid from Mardu is a recent and really cool addition and so on. There are also a ton of other options. Try to replicate the FEEL of these guys, and make them feel exciting and aggressive to play with. I'm looking forward to your next designs.
EDIT - I asked Mark Rosewater if the ability is in red's color pie, and he confirmed that it's in blue.
Hey so I'm at the point where I've scrapped Conquer because I agree mana screw isn't fun.
I think the tapping lands color pie debate has been interesting but at the same time stupid. Like I said in my last comment, I orgininally implemented Conquer in ways other than tapping, but they all took too many words to explain and/or over complicated the game. Exiling, putting conquer tokens on the lands, etc etc. The latest version used tapping because it was easy to understand, and kept the board simple. In other words because of convinience, the same reasoning behind untapping on the betray cards.
"Red manipulates emotions and smashes stuff (only stuff that can be smashed, it doesn't get to destroy enchantments because magic like that can't be smashed the way artifacts or lands can). Red gets Blind with Anger effects because red is emotion at the core of its philosophy and is heavily associated with anger and fury. It doesn't get to temporarily deplete your mana bonds with your lands."
Not that I still needed any convincing, but I particularily enjoyed these points. It's good to withdraw from the technicalities of word restrictions and remember what the colors emotions are, because even if destroying lands and tapping lands aren't too different gameplay wise, subtle flavor differences make the colors what they are.
Hey so I'm at the point where I've scrapped Conquer because I agree mana screw isn't fun
Cool. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.
It's good to withdraw from the technicalities of word restrictions and remember what the colors emotions are, because even if destroying lands and tapping lands aren't too different gameplay wise, subtle flavor differences make the colors what they are.
Absolutely. The color pie is the soul of the game, and the aesthetics of dividing its abilities among the colors in particular ways - even when it seems arbitrary (like green hating flying and not getting good flying creatures despite many things flying in nature) - are exactly as you say. They give the colors their identity. I've been hired to redesign the card base of another tcg that put all its abilities in every color based on flavor reasons - and the end result was that each color confused players and lacked a sense of identity. You say it perfectly here. It reminds me of the regrets the MTG designers have over not more strongly differentiating between artifacts and enchantments. The current policy which they're trying to follow is that enchantments (excepting auras of course) do global things like Glorious Anthem effects while arifacts do not. This means Akroma's Memorial should be an enchantment, and that an enchantment would never get a tap ability (the one from future sight isn't intended to be something that's actually done, just something they could do).
Want to talk about Faith now, or would you like to come back with some more ideas for the red mechanic? I'd recommend coming back with at least 3 different ones. Takes pressure off making one perfect, and it's more fun.
Maraud - If a creature you control dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn, [benefit].
Salt the Wound - 1R
Sorcery
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player.
Maraud - If a creature you control dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn, deal 4 damage to target creature or player instead.
Aggressive Dude - 3R
Creature
Maraud - If a creature you control dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn, marauding Nightmare enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter and gets first strike.
3/3
Part Raid, part Bloodlust, all awesome (hopefully)
I really like your keyword, Conquer, and think it could be fixed rather than scrapped completely. Stairc had two legitimate criticisms of the mechanic: 1) that is was over-powered (unfun) and 2) that it was outside of red’s part of the color pie. Let’s see if we can find a solution to each.
What if the text was changed to: Conquer (Whenever one or more creatures you control with Conquer deal combat damage to a player, [effect]). I don’t think WotC uses this template on any current cards with the saboteur ability but I don’t see why that should stop you. This would prevent the situation of locking down your opponent as the Conquer ability would only fire once each attack. I think flavor-wise it makes more sense too.
Even with this wording I think there could be some power concerns, let’s address those later.
The second concern from Stairc is that tapping land is not part of red’s color pie, and I agree. What if instead of tapping the land we stole the land. After all we are “conquering” it. My first thought was, “(…to a player, Untap target land and gain control of it until end of turn)”. This threaten-like template solves the color pie issue as red certainly is allowed to steal, but doesn’t really do what you want it to do in terms of a resource denial to the opponent. Then I thought, “(...to a player, gain control of target land until the end of your next turn)”. Again, this solves the color issue and it denies your opponent a single resource for one turn. It also gives the benefit of an extra mana (the turn you use the opponent will tap it in response) on the following turn. Similarly to above, this wording makes the feeling of "conquering" much more complete. This gives us a new text of:
Conquer (Whenever one or more creatures you control with Conquer deal combat damage to a player, gain control of target land until the end of your next turn).
I still think the ability is too powerful to be tacked onto a grizzly bear (2/2 or 2/1 for 2), but I think it is fine being on a grey ogre (2/2 for 3). If you really wanted to put it on a bear like in your Torumekian Infantry you’d need to include a drawback. Something like “Whenever you tap a land for mana that you do not own, sacrifice Torumekian Infantry”, which would create good tension.
Just my 2 cents on your mechanic – I enjoyed reviewing your cards so far.
First off Stairc, It seems I glossed over that insight into how MTG is drawing the line between Artifacts and enchantments. I love hearing about this sort of thing! Enchantments shouldn't be activated right? They just are.
Maraud definitely makes sense. It's harder to trigger than Raid, which might be a problem. I might be more interested in a version of Maraud for creatures that triggers an ability whenever one or more Permanents/creatures you control deals combat damage to a player. That way a player won't feel the regret that comes with laying down a creature with a Maraud that fails to trigger.
So:
Maraud - Whenever one or more creatures you control deals combat damage to a player, [benefit].
I believe I could still have instant/sorcery versions of Maraud that read the same as your Salt the Wound example. Landfall worked that way.
There are a lot of subtleties to the differences between enchantments and artifacts, mainly because such differences are trying to be worked into the game retroactively after years of bleed. I can go over the basics, but it's best to let Mark Rosewater speak for himself. Here are two links to the transcripts of both relevant podcasts - enchantments and artifacts.
Maraud definitely makes sense. It's harder to trigger than Raid, which might be a problem. I might be more interested in a version of Maraud for creatures that triggers an ability whenever one or more Permanents/creatures you control deals combat damage to a player. That way a player won't feel the regret that comes with laying down a creature with a Maraud that fails to trigger.
So:
Maraud - Whenever one or more creatures you control deals combat damage to a player, [benefit].
I believe I could still have instant/sorcery versions of Maraud that read the same as your Salt the Wound example. Landfall worked that way.
That version is more complicated, because it makes you have to remember the card cares about the specific trigger when you're not looking at it. The advantage to Raid is that you're looking at the card while it checks for the criteria, whereas a landfall templating requires you to remember that some of your creatures care about lands entering the field. This ups complexity. It is NOT a dealbreaker by any means, zendikar was awesome, but it's worth noting.
It is, however, much harder to develop for. A simple binary trigger is easy to balance. It's either on or off. A "whenever you do a thing" trigger might go off any number of times. It's difficult to say how strong it'll be.
So, Maraud version 1 makes your life a bit easier and your players' lives a bit easier. However, that doesn't mean it's better. It's possible that your version leads to much more fun gameplay. If you like the general idea of the mechanic, try making up cards of both versions and playing with them. See which feels more fun.
Hello MagicDawg, sorry for the long lost response.
I've a fan of rts games and war strategy in general, and I've long wondered if there could be a magic ability that involved taking other player's lands. So when I decided to make a conquer mechanic for this set, I wanted to dabble in that area.
Temporary stealing of lands crossed my mind, and indeed fixes the color pie issue, however it always seemed questionable due to power and complication.
Your version is quite brilliant. As you say you would not steal more than one land from your opponent, and all that was needed was make a small change in the wording. Nice!
I wonder if the ability would be fun. It's still mana screw (not fun), just to a lesser extent, while the reward is just mana ramp.
One of the abilites I've tested out since I last checked in on this post was a version read
"Conquer - Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, add R to your mana pool",
and another
"Plunder - Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player you get a plunder counter with "Sacrifice add R to your mana pool".
In both cases I was focused on blessing the Red player with ramp rather than mana screwing the opponent. I believe it's something that fits in with the red color pie, Red has had odd ramp here and there (Generator Servant recently), why not ramp that triggers on combat? However I'm really not sure how fun it is. When I playtested the ability (albeit with commons only), it didn't seem to matter often enough. In constructed I'm sure one could more carefully plan for efficient use of the extra mana, but in limited it was meh.
Still both you and Stairc have presented intresting solutions to my problem and seemingly with ease. I really appreciate it. The only negative is this is taking me too long and now I have more potential solutions to weigh good problem to have!
I most recently have been trying out the already MTG existent "red vampire ability". I believe Stairc may have already suggested as much. I was hesitant, both because I'm sort of sick of +1/+1 counters (I have a Kresh the Bloodbraided EDH deck) and because I wanted to think of something new. If I stick with it I may also change the name to Plunder, or another yet to be identified name.
Plunder - Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
I also liked the idea that the counters could be removed to add R to your mana pool, but that might be better left for a rare enchantment or something.
Aside from Conquer, there have been other changes to Red, I've also spent allot of time on Green and White, hopefully I can post them up here pretty soon! Blue and Faith are on the backburner for now.
The red vampire ability is awesome here. There's also no shame in being simple. In fact, it's harder to design exciting simple cards and the reward is that they play better.
UPDATED:I've gone a long time without working on this project, however after making some recent tweaks I've decide to post the monocolored commons in full. I also deleted all of the old cards along with any commentary I provied with it, hopefully that doesn't cause any confusion. At the bottom of my post you can click to see all the commons divided by color and into land/creature/noncreature groupings. Peace!!
So did some playtests. Swarm is way overpowered. The ability to stack your creatures removes them from burn removal range, you can enchant a creature the moment the swarm creature enters the battlefield, essentially granting haste. On Ohmu it's devistating. Much like split cards, the flexibility to use Swarm as a well costed creature, or a pumping aura, and the ability to move freely between the two?? It's too strong.
For now I'm going to try out the "aurochs ability"
"whenever this creature attacks it gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each other attacking Insect."
70 commons (11 per color, 10 multi colored, 5 artifact)
60 uncommons (8 per color, 10 multi colored, 10 nonbasic lands)
40 rares (6 per color, 10 multi colored)
10 mythics
White:The Nations of the Periphery
Red:The Torumekian Empire
Black:The Dorok Principalities
Green:The Insects of the Sea of Corruption
Blue:The Tribal subjects of the Dorok Empire
My main goal for the set is for it to play well as a draftable "cube" (1 of each rare/mythic, 2 of each uncommon, 4 of each common). So think limited.
Link to full set preview: http://imgur.com/a/Oz730
First, it does break the color pie. There’s no way around this. Red doesn’t get to tap things like this. The color pie is the core of what makes the game work on two levels. First, it creates a reason to play more than one color by separating the mechanics into different colors. Second, it gives each color a unique identity which provides an emotional hook for the color. Breaking the color pie on a single rare card is bad enough, but doing it on a whole core mechanic is exponentially worse. This alone means the design could never be printed in an actual set.
The argument that red gets land destruction, and this is a weaker version of that, doesn’t work. You might as well say that black should get bounce (and creature tapping) because it’s a weaker version of creature destruction.
As for the flavor… You can justify any mechanic being in any color with flavor, so I’m not surprised you found a justification. Flavor doesn’t excuse mechanical breaks, no matter how much it might want to.
Second, it’s our job as designers to create an enjoyable experience for players. Conquest doesn’t do this You can clearly see the concerns about this, and you’ve preemptively sought to respond to them, but you can’t get around the fact that you’ve taken possibly the least fun aspect of magic – mana screw – and systematized it onto a whole mechanic. Tangle Wire, Winter Orb, these aren’t fun cards to play against.
The argument that, “players don’t enjoy losing in the first place” doesn’t matter here. Players get more frustrated when a creature spell is countered than when it hits the table and is immediately killed by a terminate. Logically, this makes no sense but it doesn’t matter. Emotionally, it feels awful. Additionally, good gameplay is about making interesting and enjoyable decisions. Not having mana available means you don’t have any decisions to make whatsoever. There’s a reason casual playgroups often ban land destruction and draw-go control or similar. They don’t enjoy playing against those strategies. You’ve systematized it here.
In general, mechanics that fundamentally break the color pie and ensure the least fun parts of magic happen more often… Don’t do very well.
Remaking Magic - A Podcast for those that love MTG and Game Design
The Dungeon Master's Guide - A Podcast for those that love RPGs and Game Design
Sig-Heroes of the Plane
However I believe you are exagerating my color pie stretching ways. I also do not agree that there is an argument for any mechanic to belong to any color, hypberbole much?
You would not typically associate exiling cards with red would you? However I'm sure this affect was viewed as fitting under the umbrella of land destruction, because for all practical game purposes that's what it is,a temporary, conditional, weaker version of land destruction. So it is with tapping and untappping, do you really think something so basic to magic rule is limited to certain colors only? Red already has cards that tap or untap, "betrayal cards" Obviously there are tons of these babies. Do they untap permanents? Technically yeah, they do. Only in order to explain a unique affect in a senisble manner though. Conquer would not be so different. Tapping lands is design space rarely touched by magic, green and blue untap lands, only a few colorless affects have ever tapped them. It's perfectly within the realm of reason to give tapping lands to the red part of the color pie.
The unfun part of your critisism however. Yeah that one's a doozy. My main goal for this set was to make it true to the source material. Conquer has acctually already gone through a few mutations all attempting to capture what it is the Torumekians do, namely invade others. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make this set both fun and flavorfully accurate, however there could come a time where I settle down more on one side of the leager than the other. Lol things might work out if the other colors are fun enough, the Torumekians can be the hated jerk color. Only playtesting will tell for sure.
Again thanks for commenting, it takes admirable poise to be able to take in another person's work and deconstruct it in an intelligent manner.
Peace
(note I obviously failed to address the fact that there are many affects that can tap "permanents' which of course includes lands)
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Color Pie
1) The color pie has shifted since the Oddyssey block. Faceless Butcher is another example in that cycle, but that effect has shifted into white’s color pie and is no longer within black’s domain. Additionally, exiling a land temporarily is much closer to temporary land destruction than tapping one and no color had staked a firm claim on exiling lands temporarily the way other colors have firm claims on tapping. Additionally, Wizards has indeed made cards that break the color pie before. These are considered mistakes, not precedents. So the example of Petravark doesn’t work as a precedent on several levels.
2) You mention “weaker version of land destruction”. That doesn’t matter for the purposes of mechanical identity. You can make a weak land destruction card by overcosting it or similar, but changing it to tapping lands is a different mechanic. Black doesn’t get Mystic Restraints just because it’s a weaker version of removal. This argument doesn’t fly.
3) Untapping permanents (and in this case creatures) is the opposite of tapping them. You might as well argue that green should get land destruction because green gets land acceleration. Additionally, red gets the untap element as a convenience aspect to make its betrayal cards work. And your example is stretched even further, because these are creatures – not lands. You should shift your analogy to arguing that green should get creature removal because it gets land creation (which is the opposite of land destruction and land destruction isn’t THAT different than creature destruction… right? Same argument as saying red should get to tap lands because it can untap creatures when it’s also doing something else). And yes, permanent types do matter a LOT. This is why red gets to destroy artifacts but not enchantments. Mark Rosewater has repeatedly insisted that red can’t destroy enchantments and he has a personal hatred of Chaos Warp because it lets red do so – breaking the color pie.
Tapping lands simply isn’t in red’s color pie. The fact that you’ve been forced to stretch your justifcations to “red had a card a while ago that temporarily exiled a land in a cycle with another creature that violated the modern color pie” and, “red has cards that untap creatures in a highly specific context” in order to try justifying tapping lands… That’s a really good sign that the mechanic isn’t in red’s color pie after all. If you want to try the mechanic, give it a shot in blue. Gigadrowse is a thing.
At this point, you could easily convince me otherwise by asking Mark Rosewater on his tumbler blog “Blogatog” whether red can tap an opponent’s lands at common (or, really, any other rarity but your mechanic also needs to work at common). Also, finding a rush of great examples of red tapping lands from more recent sets would be good. But without specific precedent or a higher authority, moving an established blue mechanic into red definitely breaks the color pie. This *can* be acceptable, the color pie does change (rituals moving into red from black, for example – and putting creatures/spells on top of libraries moved from blue to white to blue again) – but that only happens extraordinarily infrequently and usually for essential gameplay reasons that are larger than a single set.
Which is a great lead-in to the gameplay discussion.
Gameplay
Matching flavor to gameplay is absolutely essential, and working with fixed source material is one of the most difficult design challenges you can tackle. This is why Wizards no longer does prexesiting source material. Kamigawa was an attempt to faithfully depict real world Japanese mythology, which ended up forcing them into making a lot of design and development choices that resulted in bad gameplay. While Kamigawa has a passionate cult following, the overall reception was extremely poor. It took until Innistrad before they were confident enough to try top-down design on a block-level again, and even then they made the smart decision to make a world inspired by gothic horror but not fixed to it, so they could make mechanics that felt right but tweak the world and setting when necessary to fit their mechanics if there was a tiny mismatch. Flavor is much more flexible than gameplay.
You can cheat a little though. It’s essential you capture the essence of what your source material feels like, so people feel connected to the material itself. You don’t need direct representation. For example, the phyrexians are famous for invading worlds and taking them over, putting the creatures through a process called “compleation” (intentional spelling) and turning those creatures into phyrexians. However, when Mark Rosewater was leading Scars of Mirrodin, he didn’t try to give the phyrexians a specific mechanic that gains control of other permanents (bad gameplay), he worked to evoke the feeling of the phyrexian’s touch being terrifying. In the magicverse, that’s because they’ll start corrupting you. In gameplay, -1/-1 and poison counters worked just fine. It still felt like they were a disease, which is what they are. This is a much more effective tactic to bringing their lore to life than trying to specifically represent their “take over other people” shtick as a mechanic. And take a look at werewolves from Innistrad! They transform by the light of the moon, not how many spells are cast, but the spellcasting element gave a great aspect of interactivity to trying to get the werewolves to flip, great tension about not knowing when they’d flip and no need to track things like night-day cycles (originally, the team did try out a card that told you when it was day and when it was night).
I’d recommend trying to figure out the essence of what it feels like to fight the Torumekians, and what it feels like to lead them. Try to represent that feeling, rather than the literal idea of taking over another’s territory (which tapping lands doesn’t even represent that well).
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Anyways there are really only two things I'd like to add right now.
"Untapping permanents (and in this case creatures) is the opposite of tapping them. You might as well argue that green should get land destruction because green gets land acceleration."
I was not trying to make this argument.
"Additionally, red gets the untap element as a convenience aspect to make its betrayal cards work."
I was attempting to make this argument. My previous itteration of Conquer did not tap lands at all, rather it sought to temporarily disable them as described by different wording more along the lines of temporary exile. However I found that wording to be too texty and complicated. For me the current wording was the easist and simplist way to word the affect I sought to convey.
A few thoughts concerning the unfun angle.
First off, players are not going to be making highly dedicated Conquer decks. I do not want these cards to be used for constructed play, only limited and casual. As you can see only 2 of 7 common red creatures have Conquer, in draft you won't be able to spam this strategy. Red players will suplemement their attack with Conquer giving them a pace advantage, they won't be locking the other player out with it.
I also think there may be a subtle difference between Conquer and most other mana screw affects. Much in the way magic players seem to enjoy death via dragon over being countered, might there be an advantage to the esthetic of being "invaded"? Sure it will still be frustrating at times, but if you see can see a Conquer creature coming, and you let its damage get through, it still feels like something is happening gameplay wise. It's not as if they are just destroying all of your lands instantaneously. Perhaps this subtle difference does indeed exist, yet is still not enough to overcome the frustrations.
Another potential salve, would be emphasize multiplayer gameplay in my Nausicaa set, something I had already been leaning towards. The Conquer mechanic in a multiplayer enviornment is less gamebreaking, it can be used to impede the frontrunning player. Likewise the Conquer player would be "checked" by the fact that they have multiple opponents.
None of these reasonings push Conquer from unfun to exciting, but they could serve to temper the drawbacks.
I love all that you had to say about the flavor of magic not needing to be so technical. I agree there must be other ways to express the Torumekians if I can try harder to think outside of the box. It most definitely has to be an aggressive attacking mechanic...I'll spend some time back at the drawing board with an open mind.
Glad I can be helpful.
You've got a few more specific points here, so I'll focus on the biggest ones.
1) I understand that you're trying to argue that the mechanic *kinda* works in red and that red desperately needs it here, so you're justifying the bleed that way. However, in reality the mechanic doesn't work at all in red's portion of the color pie. Red manipulates emotions and smashes stuff (only stuff that can be smashed, it doesn't get to destroy enchantments because magic like that can't be smashed the way artifacts or lands can). Red gets Blind with Anger effects because red is emotion at the core of its philosophy and is heavily associated with anger and fury. It doesn't get to temporarily deplete your mana bonds with your lands.
Additionally, the reason that so few cards in magic tap lands is not because it's an untouched aspect of the color pie - it's because doing so isn't fun and they try not to make cards that aren't fun. For example, the following card is well within black's color pie but is not going to be printed.
Tormenting Visions - B
Sorcery
Target player reveals his or her hand. You choose a card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.
The real card here is Thoughtseize of course. The reason that nonland is specified isn't because black can't force the opponent to discard lands, it's because doing so creates mana screw and mana screw isn't fun. This is also why black doesn't cause random discard either (certainly not at low mana costs). Random discard can hit lands too.
Tapping lands is absolutely in blue's color pie Early Frost, Mana Short, Mistbind Clique and so on. Just like blue can bounce any permanent, but is often restricted to "nonland" bounce, the restriction exists because it isn't fun.
2) For gameplay, Conquer exists the the unhappy medium between unfun for the person using it OR unfun for the person being affected by it. Either the mechanic is screwing with the opponent's mana, ruining their fun, or it's not doing much of anything and feels lame to the person using it. Even when it's locking opponents' lands down, you don't know if you're preventing them from playing something good (unless there are obviously a ton of lands out, then you know for sure that it's probably a meaningless tap) - so it never feels truly great. It just feels absolutely awful to play against, and/or pretty meaningless to play with. This is a really bad place for a mechanic to be.
It sounds like the faction in question that you're trying to represent have a lot of things that make them cool. I'd definitely recommend heading back to the drawing board and coming up with an aggressive attacking mechanic. Maybe something that triggers off dealing combat damage to the opponent, since that would definitely feel like they got past the enemy's defenses. Bloodthirst might be a great fit, as might the Slith mechanic, Raid from Mardu is a recent and really cool addition and so on. There are also a ton of other options. Try to replicate the FEEL of these guys, and make them feel exciting and aggressive to play with. I'm looking forward to your next designs.
EDIT - I asked Mark Rosewater if the ability is in red's color pie, and he confirmed that it's in blue.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/100384476683/a-friend-is-arguing-that-tapping-lands-is-in-reds
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I think the tapping lands color pie debate has been interesting but at the same time stupid. Like I said in my last comment, I orgininally implemented Conquer in ways other than tapping, but they all took too many words to explain and/or over complicated the game. Exiling, putting conquer tokens on the lands, etc etc. The latest version used tapping because it was easy to understand, and kept the board simple. In other words because of convinience, the same reasoning behind untapping on the betray cards.
"Red manipulates emotions and smashes stuff (only stuff that can be smashed, it doesn't get to destroy enchantments because magic like that can't be smashed the way artifacts or lands can). Red gets Blind with Anger effects because red is emotion at the core of its philosophy and is heavily associated with anger and fury. It doesn't get to temporarily deplete your mana bonds with your lands."
Not that I still needed any convincing, but I particularily enjoyed these points. It's good to withdraw from the technicalities of word restrictions and remember what the colors emotions are, because even if destroying lands and tapping lands aren't too different gameplay wise, subtle flavor differences make the colors what they are.
Cool. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.
Absolutely. The color pie is the soul of the game, and the aesthetics of dividing its abilities among the colors in particular ways - even when it seems arbitrary (like green hating flying and not getting good flying creatures despite many things flying in nature) - are exactly as you say. They give the colors their identity. I've been hired to redesign the card base of another tcg that put all its abilities in every color based on flavor reasons - and the end result was that each color confused players and lacked a sense of identity. You say it perfectly here. It reminds me of the regrets the MTG designers have over not more strongly differentiating between artifacts and enchantments. The current policy which they're trying to follow is that enchantments (excepting auras of course) do global things like Glorious Anthem effects while arifacts do not. This means Akroma's Memorial should be an enchantment, and that an enchantment would never get a tap ability (the one from future sight isn't intended to be something that's actually done, just something they could do).
Want to talk about Faith now, or would you like to come back with some more ideas for the red mechanic? I'd recommend coming back with at least 3 different ones. Takes pressure off making one perfect, and it's more fun.
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Working on some Red abilities though
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Maraud - If a creature you control dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn, [benefit].
Salt the Wound - 1R
Sorcery
Deal 3 damage to target creature or player.
Maraud - If a creature you control dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn, deal 4 damage to target creature or player instead.
Aggressive Dude - 3R
Creature
Maraud - If a creature you control dealt combat damage to an opponent this turn, marauding Nightmare enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter and gets first strike.
3/3
Part Raid, part Bloodlust, all awesome (hopefully)
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I really like your keyword, Conquer, and think it could be fixed rather than scrapped completely. Stairc had two legitimate criticisms of the mechanic: 1) that is was over-powered (unfun) and 2) that it was outside of red’s part of the color pie. Let’s see if we can find a solution to each.
What if the text was changed to: Conquer (Whenever one or more creatures you control with Conquer deal combat damage to a player, [effect]). I don’t think WotC uses this template on any current cards with the saboteur ability but I don’t see why that should stop you. This would prevent the situation of locking down your opponent as the Conquer ability would only fire once each attack. I think flavor-wise it makes more sense too.
Even with this wording I think there could be some power concerns, let’s address those later.
The second concern from Stairc is that tapping land is not part of red’s color pie, and I agree. What if instead of tapping the land we stole the land. After all we are “conquering” it. My first thought was, “(…to a player, Untap target land and gain control of it until end of turn)”. This threaten-like template solves the color pie issue as red certainly is allowed to steal, but doesn’t really do what you want it to do in terms of a resource denial to the opponent. Then I thought, “(...to a player, gain control of target land until the end of your next turn)”. Again, this solves the color issue and it denies your opponent a single resource for one turn. It also gives the benefit of an extra mana (the turn you use the opponent will tap it in response) on the following turn. Similarly to above, this wording makes the feeling of "conquering" much more complete. This gives us a new text of:
Conquer (Whenever one or more creatures you control with Conquer deal combat damage to a player, gain control of target land until the end of your next turn).
I still think the ability is too powerful to be tacked onto a grizzly bear (2/2 or 2/1 for 2), but I think it is fine being on a grey ogre (2/2 for 3). If you really wanted to put it on a bear like in your Torumekian Infantry you’d need to include a drawback. Something like “Whenever you tap a land for mana that you do not own, sacrifice Torumekian Infantry”, which would create good tension.
Just my 2 cents on your mechanic – I enjoyed reviewing your cards so far.
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So:
Maraud - Whenever one or more creatures you control deals combat damage to a player, [benefit].
I believe I could still have instant/sorcery versions of Maraud that read the same as your Salt the Wound example. Landfall worked that way.
There are a lot of subtleties to the differences between enchantments and artifacts, mainly because such differences are trying to be worked into the game retroactively after years of bleed. I can go over the basics, but it's best to let Mark Rosewater speak for himself. Here are two links to the transcripts of both relevant podcasts - enchantments and artifacts.
http://dtwtranscripts.blogspot.com/2014/05/12513-episode-18-artifacts.html
http://dtwtranscripts.blogspot.com/2013/12/11272013-episode-75-enchantments.html
You can also find both episodes in their original audio just with a google search for each.
That version is more complicated, because it makes you have to remember the card cares about the specific trigger when you're not looking at it. The advantage to Raid is that you're looking at the card while it checks for the criteria, whereas a landfall templating requires you to remember that some of your creatures care about lands entering the field. This ups complexity. It is NOT a dealbreaker by any means, zendikar was awesome, but it's worth noting.
It is, however, much harder to develop for. A simple binary trigger is easy to balance. It's either on or off. A "whenever you do a thing" trigger might go off any number of times. It's difficult to say how strong it'll be.
So, Maraud version 1 makes your life a bit easier and your players' lives a bit easier. However, that doesn't mean it's better. It's possible that your version leads to much more fun gameplay. If you like the general idea of the mechanic, try making up cards of both versions and playing with them. See which feels more fun.
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I've a fan of rts games and war strategy in general, and I've long wondered if there could be a magic ability that involved taking other player's lands. So when I decided to make a conquer mechanic for this set, I wanted to dabble in that area.
Temporary stealing of lands crossed my mind, and indeed fixes the color pie issue, however it always seemed questionable due to power and complication.
Your version is quite brilliant. As you say you would not steal more than one land from your opponent, and all that was needed was make a small change in the wording. Nice!
I wonder if the ability would be fun. It's still mana screw (not fun), just to a lesser extent, while the reward is just mana ramp.
One of the abilites I've tested out since I last checked in on this post was a version read
"Conquer - Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, add R to your mana pool",
and another
"Plunder - Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player you get a plunder counter with "Sacrifice add R to your mana pool".
In both cases I was focused on blessing the Red player with ramp rather than mana screwing the opponent. I believe it's something that fits in with the red color pie, Red has had odd ramp here and there (Generator Servant recently), why not ramp that triggers on combat? However I'm really not sure how fun it is. When I playtested the ability (albeit with commons only), it didn't seem to matter often enough. In constructed I'm sure one could more carefully plan for efficient use of the extra mana, but in limited it was meh.
Still both you and Stairc have presented intresting solutions to my problem and seemingly with ease. I really appreciate it. The only negative is this is taking me too long and now I have more potential solutions to weigh good problem to have!
Plunder - Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
I also liked the idea that the counters could be removed to add R to your mana pool, but that might be better left for a rare enchantment or something.
Aside from Conquer, there have been other changes to Red, I've also spent allot of time on Green and White, hopefully I can post them up here pretty soon! Blue and Faith are on the backburner for now.
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For now I'm going to try out the "aurochs ability"
"whenever this creature attacks it gets +1/+0 until end of turn for each other attacking Insect."
Decks:
Modern
RGWBU Amulet Bloom
G Infect
Screw other formats.