(I'm really new here, please let me know if this is the wrong place for this post.)
What if someone with Pokemon cards was playing against someone with Magic cards, each person following the rules of their own game?
It's been a while (read: years) since I've played the Pokemon TGC, and I was really casual (like, "Don't worry about energy cards, just spam your best attack" casual), so hopefully someone who's more well-versed in the rules could help me with this, but I think it could be fairly balanced without too many changes to either game. Pokemon cards are much more powerful, so they would have to be reduced. Let's say, divide everything by 10? Trainer cards could count as enchantments/sorcery, depending on their effect.
What do you guys think? Would either side have a definite advantage, and how could we solve it?
I'm sure they've improved the game some since I last played, but even the more restrictive formats(modified or whatever they called it) had really powerful cards in them.
It wasn't that rare for people to lose because they drew almost their whole deck and couldn't finish the game off in 4-5 turns.
How often do you go through 50 cards in a game of magic?
For a few years it was like the wild west. There wasn't acceleration like most of the power, but there were sick tutors and card drawing that were more powerful than ancestral recall that every deck played 4 of.
They'd just need to kill 6 creatures and they'd win. Would you have to have a defending 'creature', and 'benched' creatures?
If we assume each player is playing under their own set of rules, then you'd be using the standard Magic defensive rules: 20 life, and you can block attacks, but don't have to.
Presumably the interaction would be they choose an attack, which sets their power for the turn, and then you choose whether to block that attack or not. In turn, you'd choose which creatures to attack with, and those creatures would deal damage to whatever active creature your opponent has out, as if the active was blocking. Damage stays on their creatures, but not on yours, in accordance with the rules of the game each set of cards are from. Not sure if the active would be dealing damage back, since under the Pokemon rules the active falls under, creatures being attacked don't deal damage back.
I think it's reasonable to assume we'd be using each other's win conditions, since in Magic you generally "win" by having all your opponents lose, barring stuff like Epic Struggle. I guess we could have them also draw a prize whenever they kill a creature and win when they draw 6 prizes, since that falls under their rules.
Seems a little unbalanced since Magic creatures are generally pretty small in comparison (the average Pokemon creature is at least a 1/4), but when you realize that they can only attack with one creature at a time (meaning they're probably never getting over 5-6 damage a turn) and Wrath of God is instant victory for the Magic player (since under Pokemon rules, if you have no basics on the field you lose, but Magic has no such rule), it seems pretty fair. It leaves Magic with only the mill and "opponent has no basics" ways to win though, barring "you win"/"they lose" shenanigans.
I'm not sure it'd be possible to balance the game though: on one hand Pokemon has energy removal to take out lands and can thus stall the Magic player fairly easily, on the other hand Magic can take out creatures for 1 mana (Swords to Plowshares and Condemn have no drawback when your opponent doesn't have a life total, and Path to Exile will generally take out a basic and 2-3 energy in exchange for them getting one energy).
I think a properly built Magic deck would be superior under these rules, depending on how much energy removal they actually pack. If they were able to Oak/Bill they could probably win fairly easily just by drawing into every energy removal spell and chipping away with something weak, but if you start playing with the similarly broken cards on Magic's side (Lotus, Pearl, Wrath, anyone?) you can probably beat even that, since you only need your mana sources to stick around for that one turn.
If you actually want to play TCGs versus each other, the best one is Magic vs. WoW TCG. You just adjust it a little but for the most part the rules for each game stay (damage on WoW creatures stick, Magic wears off at end of turn, with Magic you attack the WoW hero directly and they choose to block, the WoW player can attack your creatures individually, etc.) It actually came out relatively balanced because of the fact that damage for WoW creatures stays -- it makes their creatures more efficient to negate that drawback.
I think for Pokemon vs Magic you'd have to change quite a bit for it to work.
Pokemon (at least when I played) had almost no disruption, and definitely nothing like a counterspell. I imagine combodecks would be essentially autowins in the matchup.
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Well, most pokemon attacks do 20+ damage anyway, so I don't think magic can win.
Yeah thats what i was thinking, youd need a few removal spells then lay down a darksteel myr and laugh at how they cant attack you, or go all bling out and turn 1 land, black lotus into a moat and laugh at their non flying creatures (until they play a flying type pokemon)
They'd just need to kill 6 creatures and they'd win. Would you have to have a defending 'creature', and 'benched' creatures?
On the other hand you would only have to kill 6 pokemon or run an indestructible guy out there and the game is yours. Wrath of God would be well, godly. And even if you dont count benched creatures then Terror is still > Charizard.
I recall an early Duelist Magazine (~1996) where they tried this with MTG and a bunch of other TCG's squaring off with each other, and I think MTG was able to win due to relatively diverse mechanics, larger card pool, and familiarity with the players.
The real question is if a Magic deck could beat a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck in an unrestricted degenerate combo-off.
Pretty sure that comes down to the coin flip. I'd be running Vintage Academy or High Tide to win turn 1. I'm sure there's a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck that wins turn one too... so coin flip it is!
Well, most pokemon attacks do 20+ damage anyway, so I don't think magic can win.
Sorry, probably should have mentioned that you'd likely also be using OP's suggestion to divide everything in Pokemon by 10, since it seems pretty clear that's just a scaling difference. After that, you're looking at a slightly higher stream of damage from the Pokemon curve than you would from the average Magic deck (I know there are 1-energy attacks that do 20 damage, 2-energy ones that do 30, 4-energy ones that do 50, etc), but this is probably mitigated by the fact that Pokemon can't attack with multiple creatures, and of course the tempo gains and often massive card advantage you get off of any removal.
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On the other hand you would only have to kill 6 pokemon or run an indestructible guy out there and the game is yours. Wrath of God would be well, godly. And even if you dont count benched creatures then Terror is still > Charizard.
Isn't the rule that you win when you draw all your prizes a rule of Pokemon, and thus not a way for a Magic player to win? Heck, Magic doesn't even set aside prize cards to draw. I guess you could play some obscure 6-card ante variant, but under Magic rules the ante isn't touched until the game is over anyway (barring all the ante-affecting cards).
Pretty sure that comes down to the coin flip. I'd be running Vintage Academy or High Tide to win turn 1. I'm sure there's a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck that wins turn one too... so coin flip it is!
I can't believe I'm posting this but yep there is.
Exodia, if you draw all five pieces of him you actually win on turn 0.
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There's no proof she's being chased
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Isn't the rule that you win when you draw all your prizes a rule of Pokemon, and thus not a way for a Magic player to win? Heck, Magic doesn't even set aside prize cards to draw. I guess you could play some obscure 6-card ante variant, but under Magic rules the ante isn't touched until the game is over anyway (barring all the ante-affecting cards).
No idea, I dont know much about the Pokemon rules. But I imagine the MTG card pool is diverse enough that you could rig something up that imitates the situation you describe. Maybe stuff like Mirror of FateJeweled Bird or Ring of Ma'ruf.
The only TCG I've found that would be a close match with Magic is the Harry potter TCG that was around a few years ago. It has a system like the mana system to where you need lessons in order to play cards.
It would be really hard to marry the rules of the games. Magic cards reference creature types and zones that don't exist in pokemon, and vice versa. The game also has different win conditions.
Yeah. 0 cost, one-sided Wheel of Fortune. Worth about 50 cents. Might be one of the reasons I have trouble imagining myself ever shelling out for power 9.
Also, who cares about even drawing your deck when you can overkill the Magic player's 20 life without the need for any resources. Tarmogoyf what?
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Yeah. 0 cost, one-sided Wheel of Fortune. Worth about 50 cents. Might be one of the reasons I have trouble imagining myself ever shelling out for power 9.
Hasn't that been banned though? I mean, if we're going by those standards, you could just play 4 Black Lotus in your deck, and infinite-Grapeshot them out T1.
Also, who cares about even drawing your deck when you can overkill the Magic player's 20 life without the need for any resources. Tarmogoyf what?
It seems pretty obvious that you'd need to scale damage-HP correctly before you really start having any sort of interesting game. Dividing Pokemon's damage by 10 seems like the simple solution. Just because they use different scales for their damage doesn't mean there's no way to make them compatible.
If you actually want to play TCGs versus each other, the best one is Magic vs. WoW TCG. You just adjust it a little but for the most part the rules for each game stay (damage on WoW creatures stick, Magic wears off at end of turn, with Magic you attack the WoW hero directly and they choose to block, the WoW player can attack your creatures individually, etc.) It actually came out relatively balanced because of the fact that damage for WoW creatures stays -- it makes their creatures more efficient to negate that drawback.
That is a fantastic idea, I love it. Thank you for sharing.
***
I think it's important to note that we aren't looking to make a balanced combination of games, merely a compatible one.
Before we consider scaling, we ought to consider how to make a two-way mapping from one game to the other. While non-interactive gameplay shouldn't cause much of a fuss, there are many different ways in which Magic and Pokemon players interact with their opponents, and so there would have to be a long list of what is equivalent to what and how to convert from one rule set to the other. The main problem I see is that each game seems to have win conditions that aren't analogous to each other, but that's possible to fix.
It's an interesting problem. I'll have to ponder on the matter.
I'm a competitive Pokemon player, and this would be pretty much impossible without serious rules changes to both games that would render them nearly unrecognizable. =[
Pretty sure that comes down to the coin flip. I'd be running Vintage Academy or High Tide to win turn 1. I'm sure there's a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck that wins turn one too... so coin flip it is!
There are plenty of OTK decks, and a few FTK decks as well. (I doubt any tournament Yu-Gi-Oh deck falls outside one of those categories.) I remember one time my opponent comboed off with Executioner Makyura turn 1 using multiple Wheel of Fortune and Temple Bell style effects plus a little mill, and when it came to be my first turn, I had 5 cards in my hand and no deck.
Hasn't that been banned though? I mean, if we're going by those standards, you could just play 4 Black Lotus in your deck, and infinite-Grapeshot them out T1.
They were never banned.
They're just in unlimited; Pokemon's eternal format.
I won't argue Magic is the more broken game though, even if it takes some lucky hands. ;P
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
What if someone with Pokemon cards was playing against someone with Magic cards, each person following the rules of their own game?
It's been a while (read: years) since I've played the Pokemon TGC, and I was really casual (like, "Don't worry about energy cards, just spam your best attack" casual), so hopefully someone who's more well-versed in the rules could help me with this, but I think it could be fairly balanced without too many changes to either game. Pokemon cards are much more powerful, so they would have to be reduced. Let's say, divide everything by 10? Trainer cards could count as enchantments/sorcery, depending on their effect.
What do you guys think? Would either side have a definite advantage, and how could we solve it?
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but in all honesty I think MTG would need a huge banlist prior to this lol And errata IE Creature changed to pokemon etc
It wasn't that rare for people to lose because they drew almost their whole deck and couldn't finish the game off in 4-5 turns.
How often do you go through 50 cards in a game of magic?
For a few years it was like the wild west. There wasn't acceleration like most of the power, but there were sick tutors and card drawing that were more powerful than ancestral recall that every deck played 4 of.
If we assume each player is playing under their own set of rules, then you'd be using the standard Magic defensive rules: 20 life, and you can block attacks, but don't have to.
Presumably the interaction would be they choose an attack, which sets their power for the turn, and then you choose whether to block that attack or not. In turn, you'd choose which creatures to attack with, and those creatures would deal damage to whatever active creature your opponent has out, as if the active was blocking. Damage stays on their creatures, but not on yours, in accordance with the rules of the game each set of cards are from. Not sure if the active would be dealing damage back, since under the Pokemon rules the active falls under, creatures being attacked don't deal damage back.
I think it's reasonable to assume we'd be using each other's win conditions, since in Magic you generally "win" by having all your opponents lose, barring stuff like Epic Struggle. I guess we could have them also draw a prize whenever they kill a creature and win when they draw 6 prizes, since that falls under their rules.
Seems a little unbalanced since Magic creatures are generally pretty small in comparison (the average Pokemon creature is at least a 1/4), but when you realize that they can only attack with one creature at a time (meaning they're probably never getting over 5-6 damage a turn) and Wrath of God is instant victory for the Magic player (since under Pokemon rules, if you have no basics on the field you lose, but Magic has no such rule), it seems pretty fair. It leaves Magic with only the mill and "opponent has no basics" ways to win though, barring "you win"/"they lose" shenanigans.
I'm not sure it'd be possible to balance the game though: on one hand Pokemon has energy removal to take out lands and can thus stall the Magic player fairly easily, on the other hand Magic can take out creatures for 1 mana (Swords to Plowshares and Condemn have no drawback when your opponent doesn't have a life total, and Path to Exile will generally take out a basic and 2-3 energy in exchange for them getting one energy).
I think a properly built Magic deck would be superior under these rules, depending on how much energy removal they actually pack. If they were able to Oak/Bill they could probably win fairly easily just by drawing into every energy removal spell and chipping away with something weak, but if you start playing with the similarly broken cards on Magic's side (Lotus, Pearl, Wrath, anyone?) you can probably beat even that, since you only need your mana sources to stick around for that one turn.
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I think for Pokemon vs Magic you'd have to change quite a bit for it to work.
Yeah thats what i was thinking, youd need a few removal spells then lay down a darksteel myr and laugh at how they cant attack you, or go all bling out and turn 1 land, black lotus into a moat and laugh at their non flying creatures (until they play a flying type pokemon)
On the other hand you would only have to kill 6 pokemon or run an indestructible guy out there and the game is yours. Wrath of God would be well, godly. And even if you dont count benched creatures then Terror is still > Charizard.
I recall an early Duelist Magazine (~1996) where they tried this with MTG and a bunch of other TCG's squaring off with each other, and I think MTG was able to win due to relatively diverse mechanics, larger card pool, and familiarity with the players.
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Pretty sure that comes down to the coin flip. I'd be running Vintage Academy or High Tide to win turn 1. I'm sure there's a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck that wins turn one too... so coin flip it is!
Sorry, probably should have mentioned that you'd likely also be using OP's suggestion to divide everything in Pokemon by 10, since it seems pretty clear that's just a scaling difference. After that, you're looking at a slightly higher stream of damage from the Pokemon curve than you would from the average Magic deck (I know there are 1-energy attacks that do 20 damage, 2-energy ones that do 30, 4-energy ones that do 50, etc), but this is probably mitigated by the fact that Pokemon can't attack with multiple creatures, and of course the tempo gains and often massive card advantage you get off of any removal.
Isn't the rule that you win when you draw all your prizes a rule of Pokemon, and thus not a way for a Magic player to win? Heck, Magic doesn't even set aside prize cards to draw. I guess you could play some obscure 6-card ante variant, but under Magic rules the ante isn't touched until the game is over anyway (barring all the ante-affecting cards).
Legacy:
Type 2 Metagame Analysis. For those of you who keep wondering what's the best right now.
I can't believe I'm posting this but yep there is.
Exodia, if you draw all five pieces of him you actually win on turn 0.
There's no proof she's being chased
by ninja squirrels either. - Dr. Wilson
No idea, I dont know much about the Pokemon rules. But I imagine the MTG card pool is diverse enough that you could rig something up that imitates the situation you describe. Maybe stuff like Mirror of Fate Jeweled Bird or Ring of Ma'ruf.
Does Hex end a game of pokemon?
Ancestral Recall, eat your heart out.
Yeah. 0 cost, one-sided Wheel of Fortune. Worth about 50 cents. Might be one of the reasons I have trouble imagining myself ever shelling out for power 9.
Also, who cares about even drawing your deck when you can overkill the Magic player's 20 life without the need for any resources. Tarmogoyf what?
"OH GOD MY BRAIN IS EXPLOADING AT HOW BAD THE ART IS ON MY OWN CARD"
-A friend's first impression of Ancestral Recall
10/10, I tapped.
Hasn't that been banned though? I mean, if we're going by those standards, you could just play 4 Black Lotus in your deck, and infinite-Grapeshot them out T1.
It seems pretty obvious that you'd need to scale damage-HP correctly before you really start having any sort of interesting game. Dividing Pokemon's damage by 10 seems like the simple solution. Just because they use different scales for their damage doesn't mean there's no way to make them compatible.
Legacy:
Type 2 Metagame Analysis. For those of you who keep wondering what's the best right now.
That is a fantastic idea, I love it. Thank you for sharing.
***
I think it's important to note that we aren't looking to make a balanced combination of games, merely a compatible one.
Before we consider scaling, we ought to consider how to make a two-way mapping from one game to the other. While non-interactive gameplay shouldn't cause much of a fuss, there are many different ways in which Magic and Pokemon players interact with their opponents, and so there would have to be a long list of what is equivalent to what and how to convert from one rule set to the other. The main problem I see is that each game seems to have win conditions that aren't analogous to each other, but that's possible to fix.
It's an interesting problem. I'll have to ponder on the matter.
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They were never banned.
They're just in unlimited; Pokemon's eternal format.
I won't argue Magic is the more broken game though, even if it takes some lucky hands. ;P
"OH GOD MY BRAIN IS EXPLOADING AT HOW BAD THE ART IS ON MY OWN CARD"
-A friend's first impression of Ancestral Recall
10/10, I tapped.