Board 8 > Magic the Gathering: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have honestly been considering making a poc card game in unity that is similar to magic with a different mana system.

But I'm lazy

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I wish I had a Chariot in Arena, I feel like it'd be a lot of fun in my Volo deck even if that's not the optimal way to use it

If you want a game with a different mana system, then go play that.

Yeah, sometimes you get mana fucked, or flooded, but if you gave it a guaranteed mana ramp it wouldnt be the same game. There are so many strategies that would be turned on their head, and the variety of play would objectively go down.

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If only enough people moved to superior games Duelmasters and Kaijudo before Wizards mismanaged both of them into the ground.
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I remember liking one of the GBA Duel Masters games back in the day, but while the mana mechanic was cool I'm not sure the cards were as interesting which probably has something to do with the game not catching on

Also just the difficulty of launching a new card game at that time, basically everything that came out then died in a couple years at best

As long as EDH is around, MTG isn't going anywhere.

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Colegreen_c12 posted...

I have honestly been considering making a poc card game in unity that is similar to magic with a different mana system.

But I'm lazy

many smart people have attempted this!

if you're going to try to make "mtg without mana screw/flood" you're going to need to add randomness elsewhere. randomness is important to make the game feel different each time you play and to prevent the better player from winning 100% of the time. those things are required to reach that mysterious "fun" that keeps players coming back

but maybe mtg's randomness is a little too high. i'd be super interested to hear what you're thinking about. FFTCG lets you discard a card at any time to generate 2 mana, for example

i just think mtg's mana system allows mtg cards themselves to be super satisfying without being completely broken, and prevents formats from being quickly and perfectly solved into rock-paper-scissors

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What the games I referred to above do (or did...) is basically that every card in the game can be played as a land, as if it were an MDFC with a land on the back side. It prevents the issue of not drawing lands entirely and also leads to some pretty interesting decisions you have to make in the early turns of the game which are often boring in MTG. There's still a reasonable amount of variance in terms of what cards you draw and whether you get a good curve. (Also another mechanic specific to those games adds quite a bit which probably isn't worth getting into)

I think there's an MTG variant with this rule which I don't really like, but it felt better in Duelmasters and Kaijudo because the games were designed with this in mind.
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Magic just isn't built for that. Burn would be instant tier 0 if it could guarantee two lands every game.

Also could you choose what color the land was? That would kill the risk of playing multiple colors if your splash was always a land worst case.

It's just 25 years too late for that change

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Yeah I think Magic would be worse if it made that change retroactively, though that isn't because I think it's a better or worse system.

The land was the same color as the card itself, so if you played a green card as a land it would give green mana. Multicolored cards could give mana of any color on the card but also entered tapped. Running multiple colors was a bit easier and I'd say 3 colors was pretty much the norm, though it wasn't totally free.
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I don't have time to respond to wvery point atm so I'll give the basic gist.

I think stuff like hearthstone and shadow verse one mana a turn is the way to go. The places they fall flat are
-lack of interaction on opponents turn
-Class based system limits deck creativity

So my basic idea was:
-one colorless mana crystal a turn
-you can use cards to dye those crystals a color.
-mtgs system of instants/attack and defense

Some cards would be specialized for dying crystals and really cheap but any card can dye a crystal to one of its colors for x mana (prob 3 or 4).

I can go more in detail later if people are curious but I think this takes a lot of the best aspects of other games

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pyresword posted...

If only enough people moved to superior games Duelmasters and Kaijudo before Wizards mismanaged both of them into the ground.

GBA Duelmasters was kinda fun, I don't think I ever played in real life though.

I think Hearthstone's one mana per turn system isn't that bad, if it was colourless in Magic it wouldn't necessarily break the game I guess, but it really does change up a lot of what Magic is.

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Faeria has the best resource system of any card game I've played, but that's entirely due to the fact that it has a board to build on.

Flesh and Blood has a decent system in that pretty much every card can be "pitched" for some amount of resources to pay for your other cards/abilities. But it's also a drastically different game where you're drawing up to your hand size every turn.

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I have a little more time to expand now. Here's some more basic info

Deck/Hand Size
-Hand sizes would be smaller at the start due to not needing lands. I was thinking something like player 1 starts with 4, player 2 starts with 5. Shadowverse mulligan (You choose specific cards to mulligan and redraw). Neither player draws turn 1.
-Deck size would be 40 or 50. Max 3 copies of a card.
-Max hand size would probably default to 7

The idea of this is that without needing to play a land every turn you don't need as many starting cards, but this should also make it easier to get some good early cards while not too easy to get a specific card. It should make mulliganing more interesting as well as giving player 2 more of an advantage than just 1 extra card to try to even out the first-second player advantage. The large deck size should add a good deal of randomness to where it's not easy to pull a strong combo without some way to get through your deck quickly.

Mana Crystals
-You get 1 colorless crystal each turn up to 10
-Crystals can be dyed a color (or multiple colors) which makes it function like a colored land does (can be used to pay that color cost or colorless)
-There will be multiple ways to dye a land. The basics would be a 1 cost card that dyes a crystal one card, a cost card that dyes a land 2 colors and can be used as either, or saccing a card and 3 mana
-Some cards will be hybrids, similar to dual side cards in mtg. You can either play a card that is slightly weak for its mana cost or dye a crystal for 2 mana
-Ramp would look something like Cost 2Green - Dye 2 crystals Green. Or Cost 2Green - Create a spent Green Crystal

The basic idea here is that no matter what you can always do something on turn 3 if you have a very bad draw and way less dead in the water hands. For decks you have to make decisions on what kind of mana you want to run, how much you want to aim for and how to get there.

For example you may choose to run a slower deck with a colorless low cost cards to get you through the early game and rely entirely on saccing cards for 3 mana but have stronger cards in general. Or you could choose to rely on the 1 cost dye cards and try to get the early momentum with some strong early cards. Or go midrange and have some of the 2 cost dye cards and be very flexible. The idea is the mana base should reflect the kind of deck you want.

Card Strength
This is probably the thing that needs the most work but the basic idea is:
-Colorless cards are (almost) all creatures or cards that dye crystals
-A colorless cards has a standard statline for a mana value but for each dyed crystal it gets better
-As a rough example: 2colorless would be a 2/2. 1colorless1green would be a 2/3 and a 2green would be a 3/3 reach.
-Colors would be balanced differently, for example a more aggressive color (red) might see a bigger bump for stuff like 1red1colorless compared to other colors, but might be weaker for something like 3red1colorless vs something like a 3green1colorless
-There will be some really strong cards but with hefty requirements. Something like 8green2colorless win the game.
-Board wipes and such will be fairly expensive but still in the game

The idea here basically goes with the mana system. You choose how much of each color you want to get to ideally and help build your deck around that. For example you could do a colorless deck and get the early card advantage and early momentum by not wasting your early turns and cards on dying mana but then you'll be weaker later due to each card being weaker than the opponents colored card. Or do the opposite and give up some early pressure and get to 2-3 mana quickly and then try to control the board from there and regain the momentum and card advantage. Or somewhere in between.

Some mechanics
This is just some of the various ideas I have for mechanics that I think this system allows (plus just ideas in general) plus some stuff stolen from elsewhere
-Fading crystals: The ability to fade an opponents crystal so that it can only be used as colorless. Kind of a counter ramp/land destruction in mtg.
-Artifact/enchantment limit: Something like you can only have 5 artifacts at a time
-Curses: This would be something like: 2black - Give your opponents an artifact that cannot be sacrificed. The artifact reads: all cards and effects cost one more manaless mana to be played. 3 mana - exile this curse. (It would actually cost 4 due to it's own effect)
-Graveyard/exile and interactions still exist
-Card draw would still exist but generally be on the more expensive side
-Instants/counters would still exist
-A lot of other good mechanics from

Honestly the most important thing I would want to do is start it as a singleplayer rpg game (think pokemon tcg) so that I could balance the main systems well before any kind of multiplayer thing is released.

(I wish I was less lazy cause I think it would be fun to make something like this)

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VintageGin posted...

Faeria has the best resource system of any card game I've played, but that's entirely due to the fact that it has a board to build on.

when i first found out about faeria, i was super interested, but it was already dead- i was very sad. i've heard maybe it was resuscitated by being released on the switch (?)

its resource system seems similar to android: netrunner, which is the best card game i've ever played. time is the primary resource- each player has 3 or 4 "clicks" each turn with which they can do stuff like draw a card, gain money, install a program or hardware, "run" a server, etc etc

the randomness or variance factor of android: netrunner comes from the sheer volume of hidden information and mind games

VintageGin posted...

Flesh and Blood has a decent system in that pretty much every card can be "pitched" for some amount of resources to pay for your other cards/abilities. But it's also a drastically different game where you're drawing up to your hand size every turn.

i recommend checking out keyforge, at least as a study. you draw up to your hand size every turn, and have infinite mana of one color of your choice each turn. the randomness or variance factor of keyforge comes from the fact that your deck is forced to be 3 colors, so your hand might not align with what you most want

i mentioned before that FFTCG allows you to pitch cards to generate mana, so it seems to be a recurring trend

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banananor posted...

when i first found out about faeria, i was super interested, but it was already dead- i was very sad. i've heard maybe it was resuscitated by being released on the switch (?)

its resource system seems similar to android: netrunner, which is the best card game i've ever played. time is the primary resource- each player has 3 or 4 "clicks" each turn with which they can do stuff like draw a card, gain money, install a program or hardware, "run" a server, etc etc

the randomness or variance factor of android: netrunner comes from the sheer volume of hidden information and mind games

I doubt it's that much more popular since getting released on Switch. The issue with Faeria is game length-- while I enjoyed it, it's a fact that games take twice as long as other online card games due to the board.

Not sure I'd really compare Faeria to Netrunner though. Netrunner does have the feeling of building a board due to the fact that you can create servers and set up ICE in front of those servers, but clicks are static whereas in Faeria the amount of Faeria you can gather per turn is controlled by how many creatures you have at wells. The second resource, special land types, are something you can choose to place on the board at any time (once per turn), but doing so prevents you from developing your board with double normal lands or drawing an extra card.

i recommend checking out keyforge, at least as a study. you draw up to your hand size every turn, and have infinite mana of one color of your choice each turn. the randomness or variance factor of keyforge comes from the fact that your deck is forced to be 3 colors, so your hand might not align with what you most want

i mentioned before that FFTCG allows you to pitch cards to generate mana, so it seems to be a recurring trend

I tried Keyforge, and I'm not sure how I feel about the way it plays in terms of factions. Since you can only interact with cards of the chosen faction (on board and in hand) it always felt like I was just choosing the same faction over and over until I reached a tipping point in my hand.

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Colegreen_c12 posted...

I have a little more time to expand now. Here's some more basic info

start playtesting with paper cards! it could be a lot of fun. given how similar the proposal is to magic, you could even just start playtesting with magic cards you already own

as far as i can tell, you've proposed magic with one change, and the rest kind of follows naturally by designing around that change. you're replacing mana screw with a more mitigable color screw- you can circumvent it entirely if you're willing to run a 1-color deck

i think before designing a new game, you would enjoy playing a bunch of existing card games that are different from magic to varying amounts. it's certainly a lot faster than bumping into the same design issues yourself

While doing this, ask yourself- why are they fun? why are they not fun? how much randomness do they have? where do they put the randomness?

you don't need to buy them- the ones that aren't free you can play on open source platforms or with proxies

prismata
android: netrunner
keyforge
hearthstone
duelyst

vintagegin also mentioned faeria. maybe worth dropping $10 on?

https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/48855/top-collectible-games-spring-2021

maybe even stuff like arkham horror, artifact, age of sigmar: champions, infinity wars tcg, minion masters, stormbound, fftcg, etc. there are just so many.

something that already exists might be what you're looking for. i had my eyes opened to the wild world of board games in the mid 2010s and it's been a fun ride

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I have played prismata, netrtunner, hearthstone, duelyst, shadowverse, pokemon tcg, and various games inside games before (like gwent, the card games in trails of cold steel, final fantasy games etc).

I definitely enjoy trying the various games. Out of those I would say netrunner is probably my favirote non-symmetrical while mtg is my favorite symmetrical. I'm very much an iteration person though so I'd probably just design the game in unity, try it out and change it if it doesn't work.

banananor posted...

had my eyes opened to the wild world of board games in the mid 2010s and it's been a fun ride

I definitely know what you mean here, I have around 75 board games lol. (Admittedly most aren't pure card games).

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My favorite alternate resource systems in TCGs are Star Wars CCG and Lord of the Rings TCG, but they're both very different games than Magic and neither of their systems would really work for a Magic-like game.

In Star Wars, you play location cards that give 0-3 Force for each player. Each side can give a different number, and 1 or 2 were the most common. Each player plays one location at the start of the game, and each turn you activate Force by adding up all the Force icons for your side on both players' locations, and counting that many cards +1 off the top of your deck into a separate face-down Force Pile. You paid for things by spending Force, counting them off one at a time into a third Used Pile. At the end of your turn you could draw as much as you want out one by one out of your Force Pile, or leave as much as you want to save up for later turns. Once your turn was done, you recirculated your Used Pile under your deck.

In Lord of the Rings, each player's deck was half good guy cards that they played on their turn, and half bad guy cards that they played on other players' turns. When it's your turn you basically have unlimited resources. Play anything you want, adding counters to the Shadow pool to pay for it, there's no limit. Then you move to the next location and also add 1 for each character you have plus whatever number is on the location you move to (which is the opponents choice, generally speaking). Then the other players get to spend all those counters you added to pay for their bad guy stuff that you have to deal with. So you can spend all you want, but the more you spend the more your opponent gets to spend against you. At the end of every turn, both players can optionally discard 1 card and then draw up to their maximum hand size, which I believe was 8.

One big downside to both of these systems is that all resources are colorless, so there's nothing really keeping you from playing a deck of all the best stuff for the most part. Star Wars handled this by splitting the game into Light Side vs Dark Side, with 2 different card backs, so every card could only be used by one side although there were cards that got 2 versions, one for each side. A later spiritual successor game tried to solve this by adding a secondary resource called "support icons" to a certain locations, and each card required you to have 1-3 support icons for that card's faction in play to be able to play it.

In LotR this was really only a problem for the good guy side of each deck; your bad guy characters all got discarded at the end of the turn you played them so for consistency's sake most people only played a single faction of bad guys anyway. They handled it in later sets by making a lot of cards that only worked with characters from a certain faction, or that required you to have 1 or more characters from that faction in play. Given that you were limited to 9 characters total between in play and ones that had been killed (and most decks ran far fewer than that) requiring one or more to be of a certain faction was a big limiting factor, though a bit clunky as well. Certainly not as elegant as the basic resource mechanic.

I've seen a few cards spoiled out, when are we expecting to see the full set?

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Over the next week and a bit I guess.

Some interesting cards so far. The Dracula cards are kinda neat but I feel like Godzilla was the funner set of cards.

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All I've seen was the not-kicker kicker. Looks cool

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http://www.mythicspoiler.com/

Cleave is a neat mechanic for sure, an interesting twist on Kicker.

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Wedding Ring is hilarious. Definitely going into one of my commander decks.

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Also Cleave is a mechanic that I remember seeing on a bunch of custom magic cards. Always thought that it had reading complexity issues, but I guess not.

Then again, after mutate, I guess complexity is not that huge of a concern for Wizards.

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Sorin seems...really good. Being able to poop out a 2/3 flying lifelinker and still hang around is strong for 4 mana.

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VintageGin posted...

Wedding Ring is hilarious. Definitely going into one of my commander decks.

I love it

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Yes thank you Wizards of the Coast. Another extra turn spell is exactly what the people were asking for and is just what we need to fix the current standard meta.
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pyresword posted...

Yes thank you Wizards of the Coast. Another extra turn spell is exactly what the people were asking for and is just what we need to fix the current standard meta.

what is this?

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A tongue-in-cheek comment about this card

https://twitter.com/crokeyz/status/1454041681867718657
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pyresword posted...

A tongue-in-cheek comment about this card

https://twitter.com/crokeyz/status/1454041681867718657

god, red blue is going to be so awful

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To be fair, its ten mana to get the full effect

.still bad timing though

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10? isnt it just 7?

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This is pretty good

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It's 7 as far as I know--it's printed differently than Kicker even though it's functionally the same. I'm also a bit scared of the 3 mana version. It's a bit too risky on it's own, but the potential to play to do some really silly plays with--say--Goldspan Dragon seems good when it can still function as just Alrund's Epiphany without the birds if you aren't able to take the risk. You can also counter the lose the game effect with Overcharged Amalgam, though I'm not sure if there's a situation where that's actually meaningful or if it's just cute.

Not sure if this ever gets played over Alrund's Epiphany and it definitely can't be abused in the same way the current Izzet Turns lists are, but it still makes me nervous regardless.

Also yes the timing is is very bad.
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

This is pretty good

Wow I love everything about this card. The 1-mana mode is also potentially relevant for like Orzhov Magecraft, if that ever becomes a thing. (Obviously you're not running this in your deck intending to cast the 1-mana mode since there's 1 mana spells that actually do something, but yeah)
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It's a custom card, not real.

That said I think it's hilarious.

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Oh damn I was tricked. But yes I love it lol
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Yeah, 7 mana. I was confusing the templating with kicker. Thats definitely scary!

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Yeah, Im actually still scared of the 3 mana version. Theres enough good creatures with haste right now that you can easily just blow someone out out of nowhere if they ever tap out versus you.

Not to mention the ability to just play the 3 mana version with (multi) counterspell backup. There is so much abuse waiting there.

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That is a very good joke.

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The 3 mana version of extra turns could find a home in red aggro lists, maybe?

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New topic: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79734267

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Peace___Frog posted...

The 3 mana version of extra turns could find a home in red aggro lists, maybe?

Probably...on that note god I wonder if Izzet Phoenix in Historic wants this card.
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