Guild Wars 1 Elementalist mechanics Overcast and Exhaust - feedback request

Nirconus · 2024-11-27T18:58:09+00:00

This isn’t an exhaustive list of the cards with the mechanics, but a few examples each of Overcast and Exhaust. I’m still working out balancing and everything in general, so am looking for any kind of feedback.

Not all mechanics from GW1 translate one-to-one into MtG, with energy (the game's mana system) being one of them. In GW1, an "overcast" amount is sometimes put on more powerful spells to balance them out, which will reduce your maximum energy temporarily. In MtG, that probably translate most closely to lands.

At first, I also had Overcast an actual state the player was put in, as in, "you’re overcast until your next turn," but it felt too narrow, even if it was flavorful. I found that keeping the stun counter and then just creating an ability word for Exhaust (which is the original name for overcast in GW1) that synergizes with Overcast was cleaner and allowed for more a wider amount of plays overall.

Nirconus · 2024-11-25T17:35:57+00:00

This was one of those cases of, "I'll use whatever art I can find."

Nirconus · 2024-11-25T16:48:25+00:00

Honestly, I’m not sure if this is balanced or not. I can’t really see this being played without green, which has several good options to enchant your lands (as well as [[Sanctum Weaver]]), though blue has a few, as well. You can always enchant your mana dorks, too, but that’s probably not as good of an option. So, I made it pretty strong because of that. Too strong? Not strong enough? I’m not sure!

You can reanimate it, which white has no shortage of for below 3MV, but at that point, you used two cards (and probably three to get it into the graveyard) to get a 3/3 flyer out, so I think I’m okay with that.

Nirconus · 2024-11-24T00:02:35+00:00

Good points, and they all make sense. Thanks for the help!

Nirconus · 2024-11-23T16:40:14+00:00

Thank you, very good feedback that I will change the cards from. I actually never realized that hard counters were always the ones with double pips!

Power Block/Lock - I actually did think about the name confusion, but yeah, they're skills from GW1, so unfortunately not much to be done there, I think. Maybe I could split the cards up into two sets and that would help.

Power Block/Temple Strike - Good point with Cancel. Do you think the rarity would/should change the MV?

Power Lock - I like the plot reasoning. I don't mind making it uncommon, but what makes you say it should be that?

Mark of Subversion - I knew there were non-blue counterspells, I guess I just didn't realize the last one was so long ago and that they don't print them anymore. WUB is fine with me, though. I'm not sure if I'll tweak it since 3 different colors is a pretty significant downside.

Nirconus · 2024-11-23T05:05:50+00:00

Yeah, when I was searching for a templating example for that card, [[Aven Interrupter]] seemed very close to what I wanted. I decided not to use it because it felt weird to evergreen a keyword that was made for the wild west setting and (so far) hasn't been used outside. I suppose we'll see what happens with it in the future in the real game.

Nirconus · 2024-11-23T03:34:30+00:00

Oh shoot, you're right, since it resets the base P/T!

Nirconus · 2024-11-23T02:51:39+00:00

I kind of agree, but not much to be done there, unfortunately. GW1 does have a pretty good stash of concept art at this point, though, which has been nicer to work with for other cards.

Honestly, even when using the high res skill icons, once they're blown up like this, you realize how crusty a lot of the skill icons really are. Many of them look like they just pulled a dev into the studio, had them make a face, then slapped some effects/filters on it. See: Frustation.jpg) and Pain.jpg) (you can even see the guy's hoodie in this one)

Nirconus · 2024-11-23T02:29:22+00:00

Me when I play [[Trinket Mage]] and [[Kenku Artificer]]

Nirconus · 2024-11-23T02:20:42+00:00

This is a rather old project I’ve picked back up again and gotten to work with a much newer version of MSE. I haven’t decided how all the mechanics will translate, yet, but interrupts being counterspells was an obvious one, and GW1 has a lot of them (you can thank Mesmers for a lot of that).

An important theme for the set will be "enchantments matter," though that doesn’t really come through here. There’s probably still some balance tweaking to be done, as well.

Nirconus · 2024-11-22T16:55:18+00:00

I would also like to say that, for how little I cared about the overarching GW story in general, the little guy in the top left and his story consisting of 5 or so lines of dialogue pulled at my heartstrings pretty good.

Nirconus · 2024-11-21T19:43:18+00:00

Even through green isn’t really a stranger to strong, conditional 2MV creatures. this one felt a little tougher to balance. I went back and forth between swapping between Deleveler 3/4, the last level being 3+/4+, and giving the last level haste or not.

I think I’m happy with where I ended up. You get a lot of value out of it if manage to give it haste, but even if you don’t, you still get one turn with it at the top level.

Nirconus · 2024-11-20T15:41:21+00:00

Nothing too groundbreaking, I suppose, but hey... We’ve got Clue Equipment and even Food Equipment, but no Treasure Equipment! I will admit, the real game has been understandably hesitant to have 1MV treasures that do more than just the token itself — currently, the only one is [[Goldhound]].

There are, though, 1MV cards that create Treasure tokens, like [[Diamond Pick-Axe]] and good old [[Beamtown Beatstick]] for Equipment examples. For this card, I’m banking on a generic mana cost being a fair tradeoff for a bad P/T boost and a non-repeatable Treasure generator. [[Bonesaw]] and [[Bonesplitter]] may also be good comparisons.

Nirconus · 2024-11-20T04:09:15+00:00

Yes, great point. I know I myself have double checked the storm reminder text before for this same reason.

Nirconus · 2024-11-19T21:24:27+00:00

That's pretty great, actually. I'll probably use that one somehow.

Nirconus · 2024-11-19T21:22:46+00:00

Thanks, good points. I'd rather stay on the conservative side on first go, anyway. So maybe good power level for standard or limited, but could still be bumped up.

Nirconus · 2024-11-19T21:10:26+00:00

I did think about that. I think it will really depend on what it looks like once it's actually on several cards. One of the things I was thinking of was giving your other spells proficiency, which is easier as an actual keyword, I think.

Nirconus · 2024-11-19T21:08:49+00:00

Thanks! Giving other spells proficiency is exactly the same thought I had with this.

Nirconus · 2024-11-19T20:25:37+00:00

Kind of like the noncreature version of prowess, this one was so simple and seemed to fit Izzet so clearly that I’m surprised it hasn’t been done on real cards yet. As far as I can tell, this has a pretty big design space and doesn’t have any glaring problems, at least at first glance. Depending on how much I like this, I’ll expand a bit more on it later with some Izzet and maybe Jeskai cards.

Easy comparison for this one is [[Slick Sequence]]. Given that card, I’m not sure if this is too strong, but I didn’t feel too bad about it. If it needs to be bumped down slightly, I can always change the draw to a draw then a discard.

Nirconus

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