MTG

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19505056

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19468902

Why isn't grievous wound a curse despite mechanically being identical to a curse? It feels like a sorcery with flash, and as someone who has tried to make curses as a deck work, not being able to use this in those decks feels really bad.

Otherwise, high five whoever decided to do Meathook Massacre 2 they deserve five raises.

Maro: "The card started as part of a mechanic, called injury, that we didn't use in the set, so I think we saw it through that lens (as an injury rather than a curse). The card changed as the mechanic went away until its current version. I don't know whether or not they talked about it being a Curse in set design, but I do know there was a conscious attempt to keep Duskmourn separate from Innistrad, so that might have had a role."

A shower thought which applies not specifically to MTG, as it would obviously be a different game.

What problem does this idea try to solve?

Balancing. It is hard to balance every card during design phase (or even impossible, as can be shown), which results in some overpowered cards which make the game less fair.

How?

Supply and demand. A card which is played often (by many players, in many games) has it's mana cost increased slightly. A card which is played rarely becomes cheaper.

Implications

This is probably not feasible with most mana costs sitting in the 1-digit-range. We can't make a 2-cost card "slightly" cheaper. So we would either need a mana system which works with decimals (e.g. 3.1415 CMC), or raise the integer system to a higher plateau (e.g. 314 CMC)

It's also only contemplable in digital versions, where a server can monitor every card drop, and adjust costs accordingly.

A big drawback is that your deck's costs can change over night (or even between consecutive games), forcing players to edit their decks more frequently. A partial solution could be a notification system, and/or scheduling the recalculations to a slower frequency, like once per week or once per month.

A big advantage is that we now have an impartial Big Brother watching the balancing. Humans can err, crowds and echo chambers even more so. When people complain about an imbalanced card, is their cause justified or is it just a small but loud minority? Monitoring the cold hard data seems like a better way, and automated problem solving likewise.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Do you know another TCG which applies something similar?

Matt Tabak:

Okay, I’m my defense, the House is scary and it was hard to focus, but unfortunately there’s something in the #MTGDuskmourn mechanics article that needs to be corrected. Let’s talk copies of Rooms. If you copy a Room spell on the stack, you get the same choice as the…

original spell. The same door unlocks, and the token’s “When you unlock this door” ability will trigger (if it has one). If you create a token that’s a copy of a Room on the battlefield, the new token has both doors locked. Same if something enters as a copy of a Room.

It gets more complex if a permanent already on the battlefield becomes a copy of a Room. In that case, consider whether the original permanent’s left/right doors were already unlocked. In most cases, this means it was a Room. If so, those doors will be unlocked on the new Room.

If something that was never a Room becomes a copy of a Room, both doors will be locked. As always, you can open a locked door as a sorcery by paying that door’s mana cost. #WotCstaff

The shorthand in the mechanics article has been deleted, and we’ll leave the details for the Release Notes. Sorry about that. Back to the previews!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19344432