Today I'm exploring some alternatives to the keyword action scry. The idea is that sometimes custom sets want to use abilities similar to scry for mechanical or thematic reasons e. g. you might want to support your graveyard theme with an ability that puts some cards into the graveyard rather than on the bottom of the library, or you really want to use the term "dig" or "voyage" for your keyword and think it would be fitting for a scry variant.
I will assume that the ability is usually meant to replace scry for the set/block in a similar way infect/wither could replace deathtouch or undying/persist could (in the past) replace regeneration.
First of all there is a design rule that I want to lay down that help to judge a scry replacement's gameplay value. Trying to find a flavorful variant can lead to solutions that do not play well because they create situations players will want to avoid. By adhering to this practice a designer avoids one of the pitfalls of scry variants:
The mechanic must help to get rid of cards you do not want to see again.
What does this mean? The rule is about the worst case scenario for the player and how they can handle it as well as reusability.
Using the most straightforward examples I also call this the "Sage Owl/Augury Owl"-Rule since these two cards perfectly demonstrate the difference between adhering to the rule or not. The worst case for a scry variant generally would be hoping to get a certain set of cards and having none of them in the top N cards of your library. If you need a spell and Augury Owl reveals three lands, you can then put those on the bottom of your library and feel you have made progress towards getting your spell card even despite not finding one in the scried cards. With Sage Owl revealing four lands forces you to put these back now certain that the next four card draws will be hopeless.
In the worst case scenario you do not progress towards getting your spell and in addition now have a very fatalistic outlook for the next four turns.
The second problem becomes obvious when you have twice the same card in hand - scrying twice for the same number is usually a good deal. Either you have put cards on the bottom of your library and benefit again from scrying or you are already in the enviable position to have scried for the card you are searching for: a win-win situation for Augury Owl. Sage Owl does not fare so well.
There are ways to remedy such a situation as a player e. g. playing fetch lands that allow you to shuffle your library, but as a designer you shouldavoid the possibility of such situations if possible since they rely on other cards and those can be often unavailable e. g. due to a limited card pool or because the game just did not provide them this time. In general it is preferable to search a design that can stand on its own especially for something used on multiple cards like a keyword.
With that in mind here some variants:
Sift N. (Look at the top N cards of your library. Put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest back on top of your library in any order.)
Dig N. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard. Do this up to N times.)
Voyage. (Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. You may put a revealed card on top of your library. Put the rest on the bottom in any order.)
For reference:
Scry N. (Look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom of your library and the rest on top in any order.)
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On a related note I play with the idea to build mechanically on scry e. g.
Sylvan Seer
Creature - Elf Shaman
When ~ enters the battlefield, scry 4. You may reveal a land card scried this way and put it into your hand.
2/2
Sift N. (Look at the top N cards of your library. Put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest back on top of your library in any order.)
Dig N. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard. Do this up to N times.)
Voyage. (Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. Put a revealed card on top of your library and the rest on the bottom in any order.)
Seems I'm not the only one who thought of Sift as a prospective name for mill-Scry. Dig is basically mill up to X cards, and without the ability to rearrange cards like with Scry or Sift, Dig just isn't as interesting. Voyage is a more limited Scry with none of Scry's secrecy, so after the first impression it doesn't look as good either.
I think a more interesting variant would be Scrying from the bottom of your library, giving you an opportunity to put cards you want on top. Sifting from the bottom might be a little more popular though as you either put cards on top of your library or into your graveyard, generally two places where they're easier to access.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
What makes Dig interesting compared to Sift? It's literally Sift without the ability to see all N cards at once and the ability to rearrange the cards staying on top of your library.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I agree that in some cases making an effect purposefully less efficient or more restricted does yield more interesting results, like the wide variety of counterpsells and burn spells that are technically worse than Counterspell and Lightning Bolt. However, most cards do need to have a certain amount of strength in order to make playing them fun. The extra flexibility provided by Sift makes it read better as a mechanic.
That said, I'm not opposed to Dig-like effects appearing on the occasional card, like a Shovel artifact or a creature with a focus on digging specifically. I'm just doubtful about the appeal of keywording the mechanic. I do have an alternative:
Dig — [cost], T: Reveal the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard. Otherwise, [effect].
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Again, mechanics need a certain level of strength to be fun. "Sift Upgrade" is a case where you swing it too far in the other direction. Sift as is allows for a level of choice-making similar to Scry, with the added angle of deciding which cards go to the 'yard. There's enough decision making to make it fun and interesting. Dig is just "mill up to X" and "Sift Upgrade" is over-the-top.
To get the idea of what I'm talking about, compare Shock to Lightning Strike. Which one looks more fun to play?
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Most players would pick the 3 damage spell, because it looks stronger and in most cases it is. Giving an effect the right amount of oomph helps make it fun.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I never said anything of the sort. I said you have to give an effect the right amount of oomph to make it look fun. There's a reason we see more 3 damage burn spells than 2; when you're looking to deal raw damage, numbers matter. Lightning Strike has more punch to it than Shock, therefore is more exciting to play, hence all the Bolt variants we see.
That doesn't mean we never see 2 damage spells, just that most of them tend to add either a utility bonus like Magma Jet and Magma Spray or feature a potential damage upgrade like Burst Lightning and Galvanic Blast. And I'm not saying Shock is a worthless card; in a format like KTK, it would have been a beast against Morph decks. But in the vast majority of sets, which card will players sooner ask to get reprinted: Shock or Lightning Strike? Likwise, which mechanic would players sooner see on their card: Dig or Sift?
Sift looks more fun than Dig because it offers more flexibility and control, just as Scry looks more fun than Index. Dig is "mill up to X", neither exciting nor fun on its own, though I will acknowledge that certain cards could make use of it in an interesting way. I even offered an example of how to implement it above. I just feel as a mechanic it lacks that oomph that makes mechanics like Scry and Sift popular.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
That's not even close to the grand total of either Shock or Bolt variants.
A Gatherer search using "Text: DOES contain 2 damage; Color: DOES contain red; type: OR contains "Instant", OR contains "Sorcery"" yields 86 results.
A Gatherer search using "Text: DOES contain 3 damage; Color: DOES contain red; type: OR contains "Instant", OR contains "Sorcery"" yields 91 results.
And if we add "Text: DOES contain "creature or player"", we yield 34 Bolt variants and 33 Shock variants.
If we simplify it all down to instants or sorceries of any color that say either "2 damage" or "3 damage", "2 damage" yields 114 results and "3 damage", 116.
If we extend the range outside instants and sorceries (as otherwise Seal of Fire is not a valid example) and restrict the text to "deals 2 damage" or "deals 3 damage", then yes, Shock variants of that rather loose definition outnumbers Bolt variants 307 to 183. That's taking into account all the different permanents with damage-dealing abilities, which by sheer necessity of game balance have to tilt towards 2 as 2 is an easier number to balance than 3, particularly in the context of repeat damage effects.
We must remember that there is overlap between the two categories like in the case of Fiery Impulse.
I will acknowledge that I should have done some research before making my statement about Bolt variants being more popular than Shock variants, and presented numbers from that research as facts. But now we have data to work with.
And beyond the total of printed cards, there is also the fact that the card that says 3 damage tends to be more exciting than the card that says 2 damage. This is not to say Shock and its variants don't have a place in the game any more than Dig does not have a place alongside Sift and Scry. But when it comes to naming a major mechanic of a set, Sift is highly likely to fare far better than Dig.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I listed them all up. You are welcome to go check it yourself.
You wanted to discuess Lightning Strike vs. Shock because you find Lightning Strike a more interesting card than Shock. Your argument was we see variants of Lightning Strike much more often than variants of Shock. This is not true. The opposite is true.
I said Lightning Strike looks like a more fun and exciting card. This has the side effect of also making it more interesting, but as Maro likes to remind us, interesting =/= fun. He likes to explain the difference as "interesting" being mental stimulation and "fun" or "exciting" being emotional stimulation. Interesting makes us go "hmm..." while exciting makes us go "aw, yeah!"
But since we keep going back to the subject of interest, Sift is also a more interesting mechanic because it has more choices to make. With Dig 3, you mill zero, one, two, or three cards and that's it. With sift 3, you can choose to put any one or all of the Sifted cards into your graveyard, or simply rearrange the top cards of your library. Sift not only looks more fun to play (because it feels almost as sneaky as Scry, which can be a source of fun in its own right), it also has more flexibility, which in turn adds to its intellectual appeal.
Seal of Fire is a Shock variant because it costs 1 red and deals 2 damage to target creature or player. Exactly like Shock. It lacks Instant/Flash.
The same criteria was used on all the other cards. Just like Chain of Plasm is a Lightning Strike variant because they are exactly alike game-wise. It's a small downgrade but nothing significant.
The argument is false because the opposite is true.
I never said all the 2 and 3-damage spells had to be variants of Shock and Lightning Strike specifically. I was pointing out that you see more 3-damage spells than 2-damage, and used Lightning Strike and Shock as the most straightforward examples. My use of variant was regarding the damage output. 3 damage looks more exciting than 2 damage, plain and simple.
However, I will acknowledge that the verticality of 3 damage vs. 2 damage was not the best analogy for why Sift is a better named mechanic than Dig as the difference between Sift and Dig is one of function and flexibility instead of raw numerical strength. It would be more appropriate to compare Arc Lightning to Lightning Strike, though that comparison is more even as Lightning Strike has more flexible casting timing in contrast to Arc Lightning's damage distribution. Another apt comparison would be a burn spell that only hits a creature or only a player vs. one that can hit either a creature or a player.
However BlackTempleGuardian has a point when it comes to reprints of the exact same card. This was not our discussion though.
Many people think Mythic rare cards have to be stronger than Rare cards. Same goes for "This is more interesting because it's better."
BlackTempleGuardian's point is very important when considering modern design and development trends which leans towards having at least one 3-damage spell, not necessarily just a variant of Lightning Strike, in a given set or block. How many of those Shock variants were printed in recent history? How many are likely to be reprinted?
Mythic cards should be more exciting than Rare cards. Making them stronger on average aids that directive.
And yes, a card that is better is more interesting, to an extent. As I've been saying all along, an effect needs the right amount of strength to make it fun and appealing. Dig has too little and the earlier "Draw N, then Scry N" example would have too much. Sift is close to the right level, though it would have some Modern balance concerns thanks to Dredge and Delve.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Feel free to disagree, but to me this conversation is a bit pedantic. Depending on the nature of a particular format, there are merits to each Sift, Dig, Scry, Cycling, Investigate, and other smoothing mechanics. Some formats might want small amounts of smoothing that lead to a specific card and needs cards to end up in the graveyard; Dig is the obvious answer there. Other formats might want larger amounts of smoothing and a range of cards; Sift is better there. If you don't want your smoothing mechanic to influence graveyards, go with Scry. Etc etc. Having different ranges of smoothing mechanics is a GOOD THING, and that means that Sift and Dig both have their place when considering inclusion of a smoothing mechanic in a set of cards. If I'm misreading the discussion then ignore me.
Still doesn't resolve the Dig X = Sift 1 X times issue though. Sift is strictly the better mechanic because it possess the full functionality of Dig but also has other ways to use it.
There is actually a very simple solution to that: Don't use both at the same time.
The incorrect underlying assumption in this case is that two mechanics - one strictly better than the other - would be globally exclusive. Piar's reply is on the spot here and came before the post I just quoted.
The game can have both undying and persist, but you wouldn't want them in the same set - or cost them equally. Dig may at times be more interesting because you generally will NOT have the parameter be 1, but still have the same gameplay of "looking only a single turn ahead" that the many "scry cantrips" of Theros-block had. It seems like a bug from pure power level, but can be used as a feature when it comes to controlling the game flow and the impact of further copies.
Dig is an option - one I generally would choose less often, but not one I would never consider. Dig does have actual design issues (e. g. it probably takes longer to resolve/harder to evaluate than a strict sift N), but "mechanic B is just mechanic A with twist T" is not in itself an issue, but just a description of a mechanic relative to another. I think between kicker and multikicker and subvariants of additional/alternative costs, between replicate and strife and all other examples we have seen enough of this.
...archive the top card of your library. (Exile it. If you would draw a card, you may instead return an archived card you own to your hand.)
The main reason I don't mention this is its flexibility, actually. Archive is not only scry, just as exile (as an action) is not only a milling variant despite being one when applied to the top card(s) of the library.
I don't entirely dislike the mechanic, but acknowledge that it has the "dredge problem". Drawing a card for the turn should be an easy action and card draw replacement mechanics like this have the double issues of (a) adding mental effort to one of the easier more automatic steps and (b) removing variance when employed in big numbers. This plays into the same argument why I mention above that dig 3 might be better than sift 3 for a designer even if it is "strictly worse" from a player perspective: If you can accumulate multiple archived cards you can look "too far ahead" and create a less interesting game.
None of these make archive a bad mechanic. I tend to look at it favorably, but having played around with similar design space I have seen some of the pitfalls.
I think a more interesting variant would be Scrying from the bottom of your library, giving you an opportunity to put cards you want on top. Sifting from the bottom might be a little more popular though as you either put cards on top of your library or into your graveyard, generally two places where they're easier to access.
Scrying from the bottom of the library is a terrible mechanic. Since the bottom of the library usually doesn't change the quality of the cards you'll be able to look at will go down over the course of a game as you filter out the good cards and you don't have any natural way to go deeper like with drawing cards from the top of the library. You could combine it with shuffling, but making a mechanic that encourages designers to add more "loading screen" time to the game might actually be a point against it.
I actually consider "scry from the bottom" a perfect example of "simple yet terrible" - an obvious twist that apparently seems like a good idea but most definitly is not. I think it is fair to say it directly violates the "must get rid of cards you do not want to see again" design rule I propose in the first post. (Naturally the value of cards may change over the course of the game, so maybe you scry lands to the top during your first turns and later scry spells up but comparing this to the "always active" scry this runs out of usefulness more easily and more definitely.)
"Sift from the bottom" on the other hand with a build-in way to actually get rid of the scrap on the bottom of the library is an acceptable twist. I would probably consider it if it came with a good flavor hook. Would it play significantly different though? In a set without scry you generally know equally little about the top or bottom of your library and the few exceptions I can come up with generally seem like arguments in favor of directly digging from the top (since "getting rid" of a card you know is on top of your library but useless to you this game appears to me both emotionally and practically preferable to "delaying it a few turns" - I assume numbers would be so small that you generally expect to see the natural top again).
3 damage looks more exciting than 2 damage, plain and simple.
And 4 damage looks more exciting than 3 damage according to you. Same with 5 and 4 damage. The wheel goes on according to your theory. I, however, don't look at the power level of the card when I decide if the card is interesting or not. I look at what it does. And then the stats will give the card a deck slot or not.
And once again my argument is that an effect needs the right amount of oomph to look exciting. 3 damage has proven to be the sweet spot for cards = damage ratio; it packs enough of a punch to matter most of the time but not so much that it dominates the game (most of the time). 4 and 5 damage do indeed look more exciting, but come with a heavy cost, as they should. A spell that deals 5 damage to a player is potentially strong enough to defeat that player with just four copies, hency why the Lava Axes and Explosive Impacts cost so much. When it's creature-only, it gets to be a little cheaper but usually with some manner of drawback like Roast.
How many of those Shock variants were printed in recent history? How many are likely to be reprinted?
The most recent "Shock variant vs. Lightning Strike variant" is a Shock variant. It was reprinted Duel Decks: Zendikar vs. The Eldrazi in August 2015 and named Burst Lightning. Based on the last 20 years of Magic history, they are about equally likely to be reprinted in the future.
I won't deny that we'll always have 2-damage spells as useful utilities, but 3-damage spells will almost always look more exciting, thus design will always make sure to include at least one 3-damage spell in a given set, or a spell capable of dealing 3 or more damage like Burst Lightning or Galvanic Blast.
But now we're just prolonging the debate about burn spell verticality, which I earlier admitted was not the best analogy for why Sift is a better mechanic to keyword than Dig, because the difference lies in versatility, not verticality. We really need to drop this point because neither of us are going to agree on it and it's just taking up time and space.
Mythic cards should be more exciting than Rare cards. Making them stronger on average aids that directive.
You have never been more wrong about anything in your entire life. You must be new to Magic. When Wizards introduced the new Mythic rarity in 2009 they told us all exactly why and for what purpose. They wanted the cards to be equally rare but feel more oomph. Big Dragons, Planeswalkers, story characters. They also promised they would never be more powerful because this was NOT a fourth class of rarity. They promised the cards would never be more constructed worthy than rares on average. If you've misunderstood something here, then you are not alone with all the new guys. Most people see Mythic rare as a better rare but it's not. It's just bigger, looks more scary, feels more exciting and does something never seen before.
That's quite the drastic assumption you make there, and I would prefer we keep such personal statements out of this debate as they serve no purpose other than to aggravate and stultify. For future reference, I have been playing since February 2012, and I have read numerous articles on player demographics and card and mechanic design.
I remember Wizards specifically saying that Mythic Rare cards will not just be the strongest, highest-tier cards in a given set; they never said some wouldn't be. There is a relation between card strength and excitement level; the stronger you know your card is, the more likely you'll be excited to draw it. And making Mythics like Dragons and big spells splashy is supposed to be part of the point, no? The key is hitting the sweet spot which means not going too low or too high.
The game can have both undying and persist, but you wouldn't want them in the same set - or cost them equally. Dig may at times be more interesting because you generally will NOT have the parameter be 1, but still have the same gameplay of "looking only a single turn ahead" that the many "scry cantrips" of Theros-block had.
Exactly! Power lever has nothing to do with how interesting the card is. According to Manite's theory, Undying outclasses Persist in interesting-ness. This is plain wrong.
And once again you confuse "interesting" with "fun". Ask a player to look at the two mechanics side-by-side. What do you expect they'll say? On average, I would expect something like this:
Persist: My creature comes back smaller? Okay.
Undying: My creature comes back bigger? Cool!
Sure, a competitive Melira player will see value in Persist because they've learned advanced tactics including how to make use of the -1/-1 counter as a resource, or in this case how to sacrifice and reuse a creature time and again. But not every player is competitive. A lot of players are looking for excitement, and coming back bigger is more exciting than coming back smaller, not to mention scarier (which suited Innistrad's Horror theme). The only knock against Undying is that it's harder to develop than Persist, and that's compensated for by the fact that blocks with +1/+1 counters are far more frequent than blocks with -1/-1 counters.
You take virtually any set where you could include either Sift or Dig as your mechanic and Sift will be the better choice almost every time. You get all of Dig's milling utility plus extra flexibility at low complexity cost since players are already accustomed to Scry, and you get a similar flavor. What is appealing about Dig that will make a player want it as a mechanic over Sift?
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
You take virtually any set where you could include either Sift or Dig as your mechanic and Sift will be the better choice almost every time. You get all of Dig's milling utility plus extra flexibility at low complexity cost since players are already accustomed to Scry, and you get a similar flavor. What is appealing about Dig that will make a player want it as a mechanic over Sift?
As designers, our job is not to give players what they want but what they need. Sure as a player I'd want a card like:
Piar's Victory0
Instant (M)
Split second
If your name is Piar, you win the game.
But obviously as a designer you wouldn't give me that card. Obviously this is an absurdly hyperbolic example, but I could see crafting an environment where you'd give players access to "Put a 1/1 white Soldier token onto the battlefield. Dig 2." than the same with Sift. To be more concrete, Dig has more built-in tension/uncertainty than Sift does. If you're designing a set like Innistrad where your design goal is to create a sense of suspense, then Dig does that more effectively than Sift. That isn't to say that Dig is better to use than Sift - not at all - just that there are merits to using either depending on the goal you're designing toward.
Mythic cards should be more exciting than Rare cards. Making them stronger on average aids that directive.
You have never been more wrong about anything in your entire life. You must be new to Magic. When Wizards introduced the new Mythic rarity in 2009 they told us all exactly why and for what purpose. They wanted the cards to be equally rare but feel more oomph. Big Dragons, Planeswalkers, story characters. They also promised they would never be more powerful because this was NOT a fourth class of rarity. They promised the cards would never be more constructed worthy than rares on average. If you've misunderstood something here, then you are not alone with all the new guys. Most people see Mythic rare as a better rare but it's not. It's just bigger, looks more scary, feels more exciting and does something never seen before.
What you're talking about is exactly what Manite is talking about. Mythic rares should "feel more oomph" ie exciting. While they promised seven years ago that Mythic rares would just be a selection of more exciting rares, there's plenty of evidence that shows that Manite is correct. Mythic rares per capita are somewhat more likely to see constructed play than rares are. More importantly though, it's clear that Mythics have a higher floor on their power level than rares do. Bigger, more scary, more exciting and new are all things correlated with more powerful. Whether that's intentional or incidental on Wizard's part though, isn't for me to say.
The difference is elegance, aesthetics, and new players' comprehension. The first card could say Sift 1 then Sift 1 again which I imagine is what you're going for, but it's clearly more clunky and more of a mouthful than the second. That's the difference.
I do think it's really cool that such a fierce divide exists on such a slim margin of design. What makes it funny to me is that reflecting on how I'd use the mechanic of Sift/Dig, I'd probably use values of 1 on the vast majority of the effects that use it, similar to how scry was used in Theros. And at Sift/Dig 1, they're identical. I imagine a similar argument erupting over Scry, if Scry 1 had been the original vision to turn into a mechanic and Wizards' designers arguing over what Scry 2 should look like.
Obviously Wizards decided on Scry working more like Sift. One could argue that Wizards' wisdom indicates Sift to be the superior option. On the other hand, Scry already existing means we fill a different design gap a bit more efficiently by using Dig instead. And ultimately, the choice is up to whoever is designing with these in mind.
You take virtually any set where you could include either Sift or Dig as your mechanic and Sift will be the better choice almost every time. You get all of Dig's milling utility plus extra flexibility at low complexity cost since players are already accustomed to Scry, and you get a similar flavor. What is appealing about Dig that will make a player want it as a mechanic over Sift?
As designers, our job is not to give players what they want but what they need.
If that's true, then why even build a game at all? Players want a game, they need food. Should we be farmers instead?
I get that you can't give players too much cake, but you can let them have a little for the sake of enjoyment. Is Dig fun as a mechanic? And don't confuse "fun" with "interesting", because as we've hopefully established by now, those are not the same thing.
Piar's Victory0
Instant (M)
Split second
If your name is Piar, you win the game.
But obviously as a designer you wouldn't give me that card. Obviously this is an absurdly hyperbolic example, but I could see crafting an environment where you'd give players access to "Put a 1/1 white Soldier token onto the battlefield. Dig 2." than the same with Sift. To be more concrete, Dig has more built-in tension/uncertainty than Sift does. If you're designing a set like Innistrad where your design goal is to create a sense of suspense, then Dig does that more effectively than Sift. That isn't to say that Dig is better to use than Sift - not at all - just that there are merits to using either depending on the goal you're designing toward.
Hyperbolic examples contribute little. In Innistrad, the fear is supposed to be geared towards your opponent dreading what you're going to do next; Scry and Sift both do an excellent job of this as your opponent is left guessing what you're up to. If you leave the card on top, they know it's something you want, quite possibly the exact card they didn't want you to draw. If you put it on the bottom or in the graveyard, that just means you're closer to what you want, or you're purposefully putting stuff in your graveyard for Delirium or Reanimator shenanigans. And if we want to discuss mill as a suspense effect, an arbitrary number of milled cards can be just as effective, though mill is more effective at being scary when it's used on the opponent.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Exactly. One is not obviously better than the other.
Except one definitively is. There is no case where you would use Dig that you can't use Sift. There are, however uses of Sift that can't be replicated with Dig.
Q.E.D.
And that's why multikicker is a better mechanic than replicate - except that having a separate mechanic for a subset is often preferable if you want to use only this specific subset anyway and can transfer this decision to the player by the use of a different term. If you never want to use sift 2, then you can steer expectations in that direction by using a keyword that cannot do that.
You may or not be familiar with general design theory, but one important part revolves about affordances controlling and communicating them. Controlling involves restricting. Communicating involves communicating restrictions. That's why you make sure when designing e. g. a remote control for an appliance that there are no buttons on there for functions the appliance does not actually support.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Replicate serves a purpose that Multikicker in theory could do, but so far Replicate retains exclusivity in its functionality. What does Dig do that Sift does not, and why would you want to do that over what Sift does?
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
A more accurate corollary would be Channel pre-empting the existence of Bloodrush, or maybe using Kicker to implement Awaken. At this point though, if you can't acknowledge the perspective of both being valid in different circumstances, I don't really know what to say to continue a productive discussion.
I never said Dig wasn't a valid mechanic. We use it all the time in different "put the top card of your library into your graveyard, then do X" effects. I just feel it doesn't have the right amount of punch for a named set mechanic while Sift does (though Sift is dangerously close to Dredge/Delve levels of good).
Let's try a creative exercise: Design at least five cards that use Dig, at least one for each rarity, and write a pitch for the Dig mechanic. Let's see if we can make Dig appealing.
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Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I like the idea of exploring the merits of each in a more concrete manner. I'll be vomiting card concepts into this post for a bit, and I encourage others with ideas for how to implement dig to do the same. Obviously a solid proposal takes a bit of editing. After we explore dig we can do the same for sift and see what differences exist. I still contend that the cards surrounding the smoothing mechanic matter more than the cards with the smoothing mechanic on them for how the mechanic plays, but appeal is certainly a factor and it seems to be the main point of contention so let's focus on appeal.
Dwarf DeepminerW
Creature - Dwarf Rigger (C) T: Dig 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.) This card really emphasizes that dig only makes sense over scry in a set that cares about its graveyard.
1/1
Pit Grub3B
Creature - Dwarf Zombie (C)
When Pit Grub enters the battlefield, dig 2.
When Pit Grub dies, return another target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
2/2
Magma RuptureXR
Sorcery (U)
Dig X, then reveal the top card of your library. Magma Rupture deals damage to target creature equal to the revealed card's converted mana cost. This is the first design I can think of that really leverages the tension in the dig mechanic.
Vedalken Mind-delver2UU
Creature - Vedalken Wizard (R)
Whenever you cast a spell, dig X, where X is that spell's converted mana cost. Dig here is meaningfully different from sift, since if you keep a card on top with dig, you're done digging. With sift, you'd still be sifting the cards below the one(s) you keep.
1/4
Burrowing Wurm4GG
Creature - Wurm (M)
Trample
Whenever a land card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, regenerate Burrowing Wurm.
Whenever Burrowing Wurm attacks, dig 3.
7/3
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I will assume that the ability is usually meant to replace scry for the set/block in a similar way infect/wither could replace deathtouch or undying/persist could (in the past) replace regeneration.
First of all there is a design rule that I want to lay down that help to judge a scry replacement's gameplay value. Trying to find a flavorful variant can lead to solutions that do not play well because they create situations players will want to avoid. By adhering to this practice a designer avoids one of the pitfalls of scry variants:
Using the most straightforward examples I also call this the "Sage Owl/Augury Owl"-Rule since these two cards perfectly demonstrate the difference between adhering to the rule or not. The worst case for a scry variant generally would be hoping to get a certain set of cards and having none of them in the top N cards of your library. If you need a spell and Augury Owl reveals three lands, you can then put those on the bottom of your library and feel you have made progress towards getting your spell card even despite not finding one in the scried cards. With Sage Owl revealing four lands forces you to put these back now certain that the next four card draws will be hopeless.
In the worst case scenario you do not progress towards getting your spell and in addition now have a very fatalistic outlook for the next four turns.
The second problem becomes obvious when you have twice the same card in hand - scrying twice for the same number is usually a good deal. Either you have put cards on the bottom of your library and benefit again from scrying or you are already in the enviable position to have scried for the card you are searching for: a win-win situation for Augury Owl. Sage Owl does not fare so well.
There are ways to remedy such a situation as a player e. g. playing fetch lands that allow you to shuffle your library, but as a designer you shouldavoid the possibility of such situations if possible since they rely on other cards and those can be often unavailable e. g. due to a limited card pool or because the game just did not provide them this time. In general it is preferable to search a design that can stand on its own especially for something used on multiple cards like a keyword.
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On a related note I play with the idea to build mechanically on scry e. g.
Creature - Elf Shaman
When ~ enters the battlefield, scry 4. You may reveal a land card scried this way and put it into your hand.
2/2
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Thoughts and additions?
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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Seems I'm not the only one who thought of Sift as a prospective name for mill-Scry. Dig is basically mill up to X cards, and without the ability to rearrange cards like with Scry or Sift, Dig just isn't as interesting. Voyage is a more limited Scry with none of Scry's secrecy, so after the first impression it doesn't look as good either.
I think a more interesting variant would be Scrying from the bottom of your library, giving you an opportunity to put cards you want on top. Sifting from the bottom might be a little more popular though as you either put cards on top of your library or into your graveyard, generally two places where they're easier to access.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
I really dig Dig N.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
That said, I'm not opposed to Dig-like effects appearing on the occasional card, like a Shovel artifact or a creature with a focus on digging specifically. I'm just doubtful about the appeal of keywording the mechanic. I do have an alternative:
Dig — [cost], T: Reveal the top card of your library. You may put that card into your graveyard. Otherwise, [effect].
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
To get the idea of what I'm talking about, compare Shock to Lightning Strike. Which one looks more fun to play?
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Mindlink (When this creature deals damage, scry that many cards.)
That doesn't mean we never see 2 damage spells, just that most of them tend to add either a utility bonus like Magma Jet and Magma Spray or feature a potential damage upgrade like Burst Lightning and Galvanic Blast. And I'm not saying Shock is a worthless card; in a format like KTK, it would have been a beast against Morph decks. But in the vast majority of sets, which card will players sooner ask to get reprinted: Shock or Lightning Strike? Likwise, which mechanic would players sooner see on their card: Dig or Sift?
Sift looks more fun than Dig because it offers more flexibility and control, just as Scry looks more fun than Index. Dig is "mill up to X", neither exciting nor fun on its own, though I will acknowledge that certain cards could make use of it in an interesting way. I even offered an example of how to implement it above. I just feel as a mechanic it lacks that oomph that makes mechanics like Scry and Sift popular.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
A Gatherer search using "Text: DOES contain 3 damage; Color: DOES contain red; type: OR contains "Instant", OR contains "Sorcery"" yields 91 results.
And if we add "Text: DOES contain "creature or player"", we yield 34 Bolt variants and 33 Shock variants.
If we simplify it all down to instants or sorceries of any color that say either "2 damage" or "3 damage", "2 damage" yields 114 results and "3 damage", 116.
If we extend the range outside instants and sorceries (as otherwise Seal of Fire is not a valid example) and restrict the text to "deals 2 damage" or "deals 3 damage", then yes, Shock variants of that rather loose definition outnumbers Bolt variants 307 to 183. That's taking into account all the different permanents with damage-dealing abilities, which by sheer necessity of game balance have to tilt towards 2 as 2 is an easier number to balance than 3, particularly in the context of repeat damage effects.
We must remember that there is overlap between the two categories like in the case of Fiery Impulse.
I will acknowledge that I should have done some research before making my statement about Bolt variants being more popular than Shock variants, and presented numbers from that research as facts. But now we have data to work with.
And beyond the total of printed cards, there is also the fact that the card that says 3 damage tends to be more exciting than the card that says 2 damage. This is not to say Shock and its variants don't have a place in the game any more than Dig does not have a place alongside Sift and Scry. But when it comes to naming a major mechanic of a set, Sift is highly likely to fare far better than Dig.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
I said Lightning Strike looks like a more fun and exciting card. This has the side effect of also making it more interesting, but as Maro likes to remind us, interesting =/= fun. He likes to explain the difference as "interesting" being mental stimulation and "fun" or "exciting" being emotional stimulation. Interesting makes us go "hmm..." while exciting makes us go "aw, yeah!"
But since we keep going back to the subject of interest, Sift is also a more interesting mechanic because it has more choices to make. With Dig 3, you mill zero, one, two, or three cards and that's it. With sift 3, you can choose to put any one or all of the Sifted cards into your graveyard, or simply rearrange the top cards of your library. Sift not only looks more fun to play (because it feels almost as sneaky as Scry, which can be a source of fun in its own right), it also has more flexibility, which in turn adds to its intellectual appeal.
I never said all the 2 and 3-damage spells had to be variants of Shock and Lightning Strike specifically. I was pointing out that you see more 3-damage spells than 2-damage, and used Lightning Strike and Shock as the most straightforward examples. My use of variant was regarding the damage output. 3 damage looks more exciting than 2 damage, plain and simple.
However, I will acknowledge that the verticality of 3 damage vs. 2 damage was not the best analogy for why Sift is a better named mechanic than Dig as the difference between Sift and Dig is one of function and flexibility instead of raw numerical strength. It would be more appropriate to compare Arc Lightning to Lightning Strike, though that comparison is more even as Lightning Strike has more flexible casting timing in contrast to Arc Lightning's damage distribution. Another apt comparison would be a burn spell that only hits a creature or only a player vs. one that can hit either a creature or a player.
BlackTempleGuardian's point is very important when considering modern design and development trends which leans towards having at least one 3-damage spell, not necessarily just a variant of Lightning Strike, in a given set or block. How many of those Shock variants were printed in recent history? How many are likely to be reprinted?
Mythic cards should be more exciting than Rare cards. Making them stronger on average aids that directive.
And yes, a card that is better is more interesting, to an extent. As I've been saying all along, an effect needs the right amount of strength to make it fun and appealing. Dig has too little and the earlier "Draw N, then Scry N" example would have too much. Sift is close to the right level, though it would have some Modern balance concerns thanks to Dredge and Delve.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
There is actually a very simple solution to that: Don't use both at the same time.
The incorrect underlying assumption in this case is that two mechanics - one strictly better than the other - would be globally exclusive. Piar's reply is on the spot here and came before the post I just quoted.
The game can have both undying and persist, but you wouldn't want them in the same set - or cost them equally. Dig may at times be more interesting because you generally will NOT have the parameter be 1, but still have the same gameplay of "looking only a single turn ahead" that the many "scry cantrips" of Theros-block had. It seems like a bug from pure power level, but can be used as a feature when it comes to controlling the game flow and the impact of further copies.
Dig is an option - one I generally would choose less often, but not one I would never consider. Dig does have actual design issues (e. g. it probably takes longer to resolve/harder to evaluate than a strict sift N), but "mechanic B is just mechanic A with twist T" is not in itself an issue, but just a description of a mechanic relative to another. I think between kicker and multikicker and subvariants of additional/alternative costs, between replicate and strife and all other examples we have seen enough of this.
The main reason I don't mention this is its flexibility, actually. Archive is not only scry, just as exile (as an action) is not only a milling variant despite being one when applied to the top card(s) of the library.
I don't entirely dislike the mechanic, but acknowledge that it has the "dredge problem". Drawing a card for the turn should be an easy action and card draw replacement mechanics like this have the double issues of (a) adding mental effort to one of the easier more automatic steps and (b) removing variance when employed in big numbers. This plays into the same argument why I mention above that dig 3 might be better than sift 3 for a designer even if it is "strictly worse" from a player perspective: If you can accumulate multiple archived cards you can look "too far ahead" and create a less interesting game.
None of these make archive a bad mechanic. I tend to look at it favorably, but having played around with similar design space I have seen some of the pitfalls.
Scrying from the bottom of the library is a terrible mechanic. Since the bottom of the library usually doesn't change the quality of the cards you'll be able to look at will go down over the course of a game as you filter out the good cards and you don't have any natural way to go deeper like with drawing cards from the top of the library. You could combine it with shuffling, but making a mechanic that encourages designers to add more "loading screen" time to the game might actually be a point against it.
I actually consider "scry from the bottom" a perfect example of "simple yet terrible" - an obvious twist that apparently seems like a good idea but most definitly is not. I think it is fair to say it directly violates the "must get rid of cards you do not want to see again" design rule I propose in the first post.
(Naturally the value of cards may change over the course of the game, so maybe you scry lands to the top during your first turns and later scry spells up but comparing this to the "always active" scry this runs out of usefulness more easily and more definitely.)
"Sift from the bottom" on the other hand with a build-in way to actually get rid of the scrap on the bottom of the library is an acceptable twist. I would probably consider it if it came with a good flavor hook. Would it play significantly different though? In a set without scry you generally know equally little about the top or bottom of your library and the few exceptions I can come up with generally seem like arguments in favor of directly digging from the top (since "getting rid" of a card you know is on top of your library but useless to you this game appears to me both emotionally and practically preferable to "delaying it a few turns" - I assume numbers would be so small that you generally expect to see the natural top again).
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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And once again my argument is that an effect needs the right amount of oomph to look exciting. 3 damage has proven to be the sweet spot for cards = damage ratio; it packs enough of a punch to matter most of the time but not so much that it dominates the game (most of the time). 4 and 5 damage do indeed look more exciting, but come with a heavy cost, as they should. A spell that deals 5 damage to a player is potentially strong enough to defeat that player with just four copies, hency why the Lava Axes and Explosive Impacts cost so much. When it's creature-only, it gets to be a little cheaper but usually with some manner of drawback like Roast.
I won't deny that we'll always have 2-damage spells as useful utilities, but 3-damage spells will almost always look more exciting, thus design will always make sure to include at least one 3-damage spell in a given set, or a spell capable of dealing 3 or more damage like Burst Lightning or Galvanic Blast.
But now we're just prolonging the debate about burn spell verticality, which I earlier admitted was not the best analogy for why Sift is a better mechanic to keyword than Dig, because the difference lies in versatility, not verticality. We really need to drop this point because neither of us are going to agree on it and it's just taking up time and space.
That's quite the drastic assumption you make there, and I would prefer we keep such personal statements out of this debate as they serve no purpose other than to aggravate and stultify. For future reference, I have been playing since February 2012, and I have read numerous articles on player demographics and card and mechanic design.
I remember Wizards specifically saying that Mythic Rare cards will not just be the strongest, highest-tier cards in a given set; they never said some wouldn't be. There is a relation between card strength and excitement level; the stronger you know your card is, the more likely you'll be excited to draw it. And making Mythics like Dragons and big spells splashy is supposed to be part of the point, no? The key is hitting the sweet spot which means not going too low or too high.
And once again you confuse "interesting" with "fun". Ask a player to look at the two mechanics side-by-side. What do you expect they'll say? On average, I would expect something like this:
Persist: My creature comes back smaller? Okay.
Undying: My creature comes back bigger? Cool!
Sure, a competitive Melira player will see value in Persist because they've learned advanced tactics including how to make use of the -1/-1 counter as a resource, or in this case how to sacrifice and reuse a creature time and again. But not every player is competitive. A lot of players are looking for excitement, and coming back bigger is more exciting than coming back smaller, not to mention scarier (which suited Innistrad's Horror theme). The only knock against Undying is that it's harder to develop than Persist, and that's compensated for by the fact that blocks with +1/+1 counters are far more frequent than blocks with -1/-1 counters.
You take virtually any set where you could include either Sift or Dig as your mechanic and Sift will be the better choice almost every time. You get all of Dig's milling utility plus extra flexibility at low complexity cost since players are already accustomed to Scry, and you get a similar flavor. What is appealing about Dig that will make a player want it as a mechanic over Sift?
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Piar's Victory 0
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Split second
If your name is Piar, you win the game.
But obviously as a designer you wouldn't give me that card. Obviously this is an absurdly hyperbolic example, but I could see crafting an environment where you'd give players access to "Put a 1/1 white Soldier token onto the battlefield. Dig 2." than the same with Sift. To be more concrete, Dig has more built-in tension/uncertainty than Sift does. If you're designing a set like Innistrad where your design goal is to create a sense of suspense, then Dig does that more effectively than Sift. That isn't to say that Dig is better to use than Sift - not at all - just that there are merits to using either depending on the goal you're designing toward.
Dig has tension. It's mysterious, thought provoking, challenging. And from a design perspective, it seems easier to balance than Sift.
Obviously Wizards decided on Scry working more like Sift. One could argue that Wizards' wisdom indicates Sift to be the superior option. On the other hand, Scry already existing means we fill a different design gap a bit more efficiently by using Dig instead. And ultimately, the choice is up to whoever is designing with these in mind.
If that's true, then why even build a game at all? Players want a game, they need food. Should we be farmers instead?
I get that you can't give players too much cake, but you can let them have a little for the sake of enjoyment. Is Dig fun as a mechanic? And don't confuse "fun" with "interesting", because as we've hopefully established by now, those are not the same thing.
Hyperbolic examples contribute little. In Innistrad, the fear is supposed to be geared towards your opponent dreading what you're going to do next; Scry and Sift both do an excellent job of this as your opponent is left guessing what you're up to. If you leave the card on top, they know it's something you want, quite possibly the exact card they didn't want you to draw. If you put it on the bottom or in the graveyard, that just means you're closer to what you want, or you're purposefully putting stuff in your graveyard for Delirium or Reanimator shenanigans. And if we want to discuss mill as a suspense effect, an arbitrary number of milled cards can be just as effective, though mill is more effective at being scary when it's used on the opponent.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
And that's why multikicker is a better mechanic than replicate - except that having a separate mechanic for a subset is often preferable if you want to use only this specific subset anyway and can transfer this decision to the player by the use of a different term. If you never want to use sift 2, then you can steer expectations in that direction by using a keyword that cannot do that.
You may or not be familiar with general design theory, but one important part revolves about affordances controlling and communicating them. Controlling involves restricting. Communicating involves communicating restrictions. That's why you make sure when designing e. g. a remote control for an appliance that there are no buttons on there for functions the appliance does not actually support.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Let's try a creative exercise: Design at least five cards that use Dig, at least one for each rarity, and write a pitch for the Dig mechanic. Let's see if we can make Dig appealing.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Dwarf Deepminer W
Creature - Dwarf Rigger (C)
T: Dig 1. (Look at the top card of your library. You may put it into your graveyard.)
This card really emphasizes that dig only makes sense over scry in a set that cares about its graveyard.
1/1
Pit Grub 3B
Creature - Dwarf Zombie (C)
When Pit Grub enters the battlefield, dig 2.
When Pit Grub dies, return another target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
2/2
Magma Rupture XR
Sorcery (U)
Dig X, then reveal the top card of your library. Magma Rupture deals damage to target creature equal to the revealed card's converted mana cost.
This is the first design I can think of that really leverages the tension in the dig mechanic.
Vedalken Mind-delver 2UU
Creature - Vedalken Wizard (R)
Whenever you cast a spell, dig X, where X is that spell's converted mana cost.
Dig here is meaningfully different from sift, since if you keep a card on top with dig, you're done digging. With sift, you'd still be sifting the cards below the one(s) you keep.
1/4
Burrowing Wurm 4GG
Creature - Wurm (M)
Trample
Whenever a land card is put into your graveyard from anywhere, regenerate Burrowing Wurm.
Whenever Burrowing Wurm attacks, dig 3.
7/3