I am sorry but I am suprised that no one wants to consider for a moment that maybe Wizards might change the not compeltely randomized deck rule if there was upside. (as an aside the deck is still randomized it is just you have some information as to what is coming up in the deck - we have already seen Wizard basically give you information for free - well for two life or a blue mana - see galaxian probe) I am not sure that giving you AND YOUR OPPONENT information is that damaging especially where there would be a limited number of cards.
I just find it incredible that people will not for one moment challange whether it might be worth it to depart from a core principle that was int he past. I am not saying that they would ultimately do that but people keep answering with - it would be cheating or randomization is neccessary.
It is not cheating if they are specifically allowed in the rules. If they go the route of letting it in (i.e. not reuqire sleeving). Saying it is cheating is not answering the fundamental question. Is it ok to let you knoww here certain cards are in your library. It may not be but saying it is cheating is a cop out answer. Maybe it is ok that cards like ponder etc are better especially if the double sided cards are all green? I don't know but your answer doesn;t address the main point.
And there is no reason why you could not require sleeving at tournaments? I am not sure why you couldn;t
As for the two card idea - it might be that for sure. That would be the easiest way to do it if not two sided.
but here's why i don;t think so.
1) no need for the little nook mark on the card
2) no need for the a and b on the card
3) no ability to have anything other than a vanilla trasnformation without lots of token types
4) Not nearly as splashy (this was a teaser given for a reason)
5) not as grookable for new players...the idea of marking etc really only matters for tournaments... casual and at home players are not going to care and neither will limited players.
I think we have double sided cards folks - the more you think about it the more it seems to me to be what is going on here
Re: Counting symbols. I think it might be too much to keep in your head. But it might not be. I would have to play and see... it might be more organic than you think. Maybe you only check on the beggining of your turn... have a little token that can be flipped night or day. Might be easier than one thinks.
Again I would have to play it but I think that would be my first approach as a game designer if i was seriously going to have a night and day theme. I think it needs to be controllable in some way. Otherwise it really isn;t that much fun.
Ok so if that is true... the shuffling thing.... is it a deal breaker?
Maybe it is... but rather than just point out the negatives I think you have to think of the positives.
Having dual sided cards (although not too many - you don;t want to get rid of all branding) does free up a lot of options and does let you do alot of mechanically cool things. If you mandated sleeving in tournaments you also clear up a lot of problems. It is true you have to unsleeve - but that is not that big a deal (much less so then shuffling alot). I don;t know the idea of a two sided card really intrigues me for a lot of reasons.
Maybe the way to tell nigth and day is by counting the number of night and day symbols in play. The most wins.... makes a neat subgame...as well as making you care about something...like a battle over whether to keep the state night or day. Might be a bit of counting but maybe not. Maybe certain lands have night and day symbols to help.
Just ideas.... I think the battle over nigth and day is neat. If you have things that benefit in the day you want to keep it day... the other side may want to pull it into the night.
Rather than just accept that it would not work think about what the consequences would be...even if they weren't sleeved.
The only downside is it gives you information...is that bad. Maybe... I don;t know, but it seems like everyone is just assuming that the badness would be too much to offset the goodness of freeing up design space. If you required sleeves in tournaments the only downside is that in limited there would be slightly more information available to you if you played werewolves. Is that a bad thing? I don;t know again but I wouldn;t dismiss it out of hand.
Ok - We all know the problems with a two sided card... marking and all that.
But lets think like Maro... what is the most elegant way to do werewolves that change states. Obviously a two sided card. I bet they were sitting around one day trying to decide how to do werewolves and someone said it would be easier if we didn;t have to worry about the backs of cards being the same. And maro said that is it. Rather than fight the fact that werewolves need to be double sided to work lets deal with that problem... we will simply mandate sleeves for constructed or WE DON'T CARE IF YOU KNOW THEY ARE COMING. What is the problem with that? It is just as much information for the other person... if anything it pushes the envelope on perfect information. You get to know a little bit more than you did before.... but only if you play werewolves and only when the opponent knows so too - not a problem for limited. Gives you more information if you need to draw a land and have this sitting on top of your deck etc. Also no one is stopping you from playing with sleeves if you want.
I think it has to be a double sided card.... it is the solution that makes the most sense - opens up design space. People will love it mechanically.
Once you challange the idea that we have to have card backs all the same and really think about it - maybe we don't really need to have card backs all the same... or we can mandate sleeves if we think that we do in some environments.
Illustration in the middle - two different states. Could be interesting for Garruk the corrupted. 2 on one side with a condition to flip (maybe removing of loyalty counters...)
Seems like an interesting way to get five abilities without access to all of them which fits flavour wise.
The nice thing is that people in limited (draft) will think they suck and I will sit picking these up at 8-15 picks and start replacing my basic lands... thank you very much!
What people are missing (I did not read everything but) is that the border posts are not lands... and therefore do not count as the land resriction of putting one land into play a turn.
So.... if you treat them as a land (in your head for land counts) but not as a land for the purposes of putting one into play.... you are left with essentially tap lands (which are lsightly more vulnerable but also can be played with a cost along with a land).
This is not just true on the first turn. Imagine turn three you are waiting for a land. You draw boarder post. You tap mana put it into play tapped returning your land and then replay your land and have your normal two mana available.
I think it is only worse than a tap land if you do not have a basic land or it gets killed because it is an artifact (or I guess there is some penalty for multicolour or you do not treat it as a land in your count and are therefore land heavy...).
THe right way to think of these are as lands not as artifacts... Plus they are lands that let you circumvent the one land a turn rule for a mana cost. i.e. turn three no plays lay this and a land and accelerate.
I am very suprised no one has picked up on the idea of a new type of mana - Gold mana - fits in nicely with the gold coins that were given. GOld mana could be paid by any colour... THink of it as a hybrid of all five colours...just cleaner...
Gold mana could be payable by any colour of mana...would allow one drops etc... and clears up alot of the templating we discussed with ghostfire... it is the most elegant way to make something coloured without requiring a specific colour in its cost - anything paid with gold is all colours.
Also... lets you give any colour a toolbox ... give every colour a bear at 1 + gold... every colour artifact hate at 2 + Gold... maybe -
Interesting and allows great design space.... It was the first diea that poped into my mind.... and therefore in a multicolour set it would be the obvious answer to the problem of all multicolour but what about one drops...
I think that this is what they will do....
The most interesting question is whether we get a new land (lets say a rainbow) that produces GOld mana.... now wait - doesn;t every land produce gold mana - yes it would... so how about a land that comes into play untapped and produces 2 gold mana - gold mana could only pay gold mana costs - maybe couldn;t be used to pay colourless... anyways... it is a thought...
ANd very unexplored design space...
I think Rosewater would be all over this - adding an extra mana inside the contraints of the game would be very intriguing.... and making it different than colourless mana would be very interesting...
As an aside - could also do 5 different types of mana - shard mana - Bant, Esper, Jund, Naya and Grixis - and only payable with those colours...
Ok - so here is what I think... we know all multi-colour.
That means - no one drops without hybrid... and I do not think hybrid.... what would be a very cool hook for the set... especially an all multicolour set....
NEW MANA - lets say Gold or Purple....
Now Gold mana would be payable by any land...this would allow one drops.... but... how is that different than just 1
Well first, it allows the card to be gold and it would be coloured and is a much cleaner way than ghostfire templating....
Could we have a new basic type land.... I think we could - lets say a cave (or better yet a waterfall/rainbow). Produces gold mana.... but wait isn't that strictly worse than a basic land (which also produces gold mana).... Yes... so it would have to do something else... What if it also cycled mana.... Interesting then....
Gold mana is the natural progression from hybrid mana - it is essentially a hybrid of all the colours.... What would that let you do... 1(gold).... 2/2 creature - gives every colour a bear.... lets you give every colour a toolbox maybe but at an increased cost.
Anyways, gold mana allows for very interesting design space which is new... I think this has to be what is going to go on in this block.
I just find it incredible that people will not for one moment challange whether it might be worth it to depart from a core principle that was int he past. I am not saying that they would ultimately do that but people keep answering with - it would be cheating or randomization is neccessary.
And there is no reason why you could not require sleeving at tournaments? I am not sure why you couldn;t
but here's why i don;t think so.
1) no need for the little nook mark on the card
2) no need for the a and b on the card
3) no ability to have anything other than a vanilla trasnformation without lots of token types
4) Not nearly as splashy (this was a teaser given for a reason)
5) not as grookable for new players...the idea of marking etc really only matters for tournaments... casual and at home players are not going to care and neither will limited players.
I think we have double sided cards folks - the more you think about it the more it seems to me to be what is going on here
Again I would have to play it but I think that would be my first approach as a game designer if i was seriously going to have a night and day theme. I think it needs to be controllable in some way. Otherwise it really isn;t that much fun.
Maybe it is... but rather than just point out the negatives I think you have to think of the positives.
Having dual sided cards (although not too many - you don;t want to get rid of all branding) does free up a lot of options and does let you do alot of mechanically cool things. If you mandated sleeving in tournaments you also clear up a lot of problems. It is true you have to unsleeve - but that is not that big a deal (much less so then shuffling alot). I don;t know the idea of a two sided card really intrigues me for a lot of reasons.
Just ideas.... I think the battle over nigth and day is neat. If you have things that benefit in the day you want to keep it day... the other side may want to pull it into the night.
What if they were legal? What would that do.
Rather than just accept that it would not work think about what the consequences would be...even if they weren't sleeved.
The only downside is it gives you information...is that bad. Maybe... I don;t know, but it seems like everyone is just assuming that the badness would be too much to offset the goodness of freeing up design space. If you required sleeves in tournaments the only downside is that in limited there would be slightly more information available to you if you played werewolves. Is that a bad thing? I don;t know again but I wouldn;t dismiss it out of hand.
But lets think like Maro... what is the most elegant way to do werewolves that change states. Obviously a two sided card. I bet they were sitting around one day trying to decide how to do werewolves and someone said it would be easier if we didn;t have to worry about the backs of cards being the same. And maro said that is it. Rather than fight the fact that werewolves need to be double sided to work lets deal with that problem... we will simply mandate sleeves for constructed or WE DON'T CARE IF YOU KNOW THEY ARE COMING. What is the problem with that? It is just as much information for the other person... if anything it pushes the envelope on perfect information. You get to know a little bit more than you did before.... but only if you play werewolves and only when the opponent knows so too - not a problem for limited. Gives you more information if you need to draw a land and have this sitting on top of your deck etc. Also no one is stopping you from playing with sleeves if you want.
I think it has to be a double sided card.... it is the solution that makes the most sense - opens up design space. People will love it mechanically.
Once you challange the idea that we have to have card backs all the same and really think about it - maybe we don't really need to have card backs all the same... or we can mandate sleeves if we think that we do in some environments.
Illustration in the middle - two different states. Could be interesting for Garruk the corrupted. 2 on one side with a condition to flip (maybe removing of loyalty counters...)
Seems like an interesting way to get five abilities without access to all of them which fits flavour wise.
Just sayin
I think the other two have the other watermark
So.... if you treat them as a land (in your head for land counts) but not as a land for the purposes of putting one into play.... you are left with essentially tap lands (which are lsightly more vulnerable but also can be played with a cost along with a land).
This is not just true on the first turn. Imagine turn three you are waiting for a land. You draw boarder post. You tap mana put it into play tapped returning your land and then replay your land and have your normal two mana available.
I think it is only worse than a tap land if you do not have a basic land or it gets killed because it is an artifact (or I guess there is some penalty for multicolour or you do not treat it as a land in your count and are therefore land heavy...).
THe right way to think of these are as lands not as artifacts... Plus they are lands that let you circumvent the one land a turn rule for a mana cost. i.e. turn three no plays lay this and a land and accelerate.
That is my view
Artifact destruction was a bad example... but what about things that can be spread among all five colours....i.e. one drops...
The problem for me is differentiating gold from colourless... when the two are substantially similar....
Which then leads to possibly only shard mana... or three colour hybrids...but it is not as splashy as gold mana...
Gold mana could be payable by any colour of mana...would allow one drops etc... and clears up alot of the templating we discussed with ghostfire... it is the most elegant way to make something coloured without requiring a specific colour in its cost - anything paid with gold is all colours.
Also... lets you give any colour a toolbox ... give every colour a bear at 1 + gold... every colour artifact hate at 2 + Gold... maybe -
Interesting and allows great design space.... It was the first diea that poped into my mind.... and therefore in a multicolour set it would be the obvious answer to the problem of all multicolour but what about one drops...
I think that this is what they will do....
The most interesting question is whether we get a new land (lets say a rainbow) that produces GOld mana.... now wait - doesn;t every land produce gold mana - yes it would... so how about a land that comes into play untapped and produces 2 gold mana - gold mana could only pay gold mana costs - maybe couldn;t be used to pay colourless... anyways... it is a thought...
ANd very unexplored design space...
I think Rosewater would be all over this - adding an extra mana inside the contraints of the game would be very intriguing.... and making it different than colourless mana would be very interesting...
As an aside - could also do 5 different types of mana - shard mana - Bant, Esper, Jund, Naya and Grixis - and only payable with those colours...
ANyways just a thought...
That means - no one drops without hybrid... and I do not think hybrid.... what would be a very cool hook for the set... especially an all multicolour set....
NEW MANA - lets say Gold or Purple....
Now Gold mana would be payable by any land...this would allow one drops.... but... how is that different than just 1
Well first, it allows the card to be gold and it would be coloured and is a much cleaner way than ghostfire templating....
Could we have a new basic type land.... I think we could - lets say a cave (or better yet a waterfall/rainbow). Produces gold mana.... but wait isn't that strictly worse than a basic land (which also produces gold mana).... Yes... so it would have to do something else... What if it also cycled mana.... Interesting then....
Gold mana is the natural progression from hybrid mana - it is essentially a hybrid of all the colours.... What would that let you do... 1(gold).... 2/2 creature - gives every colour a bear.... lets you give every colour a toolbox maybe but at an increased cost.
Anyways, gold mana allows for very interesting design space which is new... I think this has to be what is going to go on in this block.
VERY INTERESTING