Questions about creating cards

[Ric_Flair]

First, Mods, if this is not in the right place move it, shut it down, or whatever.

Anyway, Jacob and I were talking a while back about how much certain abilities should cost.  Stemming from that conversation, here are some issues I think it would interesting to think about.  The all relate to creating cards and princing cards so I figured this would be the place to post them.

How many cards would [card]Index[/card] have to let you re-arrange before the card would be tournament viable?  Five is clearly not enough.  Is 10?  What about 20?  What about your whole deck?  

If a card read: "Target opponent draws X cards" and that's all, how many cards would need to be drawn in order for the card to be playable in a Millstone type deck?  Clearly 50 is too many (after four turns it reads: "You Lose").  What if the card said something to the effect of "Target opponent draws all but the last five cards in his or her library?"  How much should that card cost?  I am assuming that it should be blue, but maybe I am wrong.

Can Wizard's realistically make a creature that is not a helper for mechanic (like Wild Mongrel or Psychatog) that is better than Nantuko Shade or Troll Ascetic?  That is, how much better can creatures with non-mechanic abilities get?  Are these creatures the end of the evolution of creatures?

With the release of Oxidize we saw the recosting of a basic card (spot artifact removal).  Are there any other basic removal abilities or other abilities that can be recosted without ruining the game?

Could they reprint any of the following cards without ruining Block or Standard?  

Firestorm (less dangerous without Madness or cheap mass card drawers)
Wasteland
Hypnotic Specter (without Dark Ritual of course)
Dissipate (it is possible, but what is keeping them from doing after Counterspell got the axe?)
Wall of Blossoms
Armageddon

Thanks for your guys (and gals, are there gals in this forum?) thoughts.

[Matt]

If Index search for 10 cards, it would be probably stronger than that Weatherlight card that cost 1U and had cumulative upkeep, so I think that's playable as a pseudo-Lim-Dul's Vault effect. Ten cards' worth of search would also be very, very strong in limited, where it would let you dig for a third of your library.

A card alreayd exists that lets your opponent draw 7 cards (Wheel and Deal) and that's not played in Mill decks. So it would have to be probably 10 cards or more - twenty would be ridiculously strong, though. So that effect I judge would take 10-15 to work, depending on how casual these hypothetical Millstone decks were.

Are there any other basic removal abilities or other abilities that can be recosted without ruining the game?

I think a non-random Hymn could be printed at {B}. I also think a straight-up "draw two cards" could be cost at {U} (in fact we have such a card in our master list), which would be a little less than Deep Anaylsis strength. DA was really good, so such a card would just be a solid choice.

Could they reprint any of the following cards without ruining Block or Standard?
Firestorm (less dangerous without Madness or cheap mass card drawers)
Wasteland
Hypnotic Specter (without Dark Ritual of course)
Dissipate (it is possible, but what is keeping them from doing after Counterspell got the axe?)
Wall of Blossoms
Armageddon

Absolutely. Every one of those cards would be fine to reprint, assuming you didn't reprint ALL of them. Cards like Hypnootic Specter are not at all threatening when you have decent, cheap removal and good creatures to face, and when it comes down on turn three. Wall of Blossoms would be a GREAT boon to the current Standard. There's no reason they couldn't redo Dissipate either. Firestorm is very poor without the steady source of card drawing past engines like Necro provided.

Wasteland is one of the cards that keeps degenerate decks in CHECK - the only problem with reprinting it is that you have to go easy on the land D while it's around. Which is basically the exact same issue as why Counterspell got the axe - the better you want counters to be, the fewer good ones you can have in a format. Same with Lightning Bolt, which is another card they could reprint - but they'd have to gut most of the rest of the burn from the format, to avoid any possibility of a SRB deck.

Armageddon is kind of a special card. If you don't remember, the reason they rotated it out was NOT for power reasons, but because it forced control decks to be blue or not exist at all, because decks like MBC and MWC just cannot survive a Geddon. Its very existence puts a constraint on the viable decktypes. It's a trade-off: if you want to allow Armageddon in the format, you have to accept that nonblue control decks will not exist. And the lack of nonblue control doesn't mean that the format is ruined; T2 survived and flourished for years and years without a nonblue dedicated control deck.

The contrapositive is also true of strongly pro-control cards like StP: you can have such strong removal in the format, but it means that big creature decks like the pre-Scourge OnBC decks and Reanimator cannot survive.

[Ephraim]

For starters, I think it's important to note that not every card is designed to be constructed tournament viable. Some cards are designed to affect limited, some are just for fun, and some are, as I understand it, quite intentionally bad. Furthermore, cards with similar abilities appear in different rarity levels.  From that perspective, there isn't a right cost for an ability.

For example, consider Nantuko Shade and Grimclaw Bats. Both pay a cost to get +1/+1, but Grimclaw Bats' cost is higher. That reflects the fact that Grimclaw Bats is a common, while Nantuko Shade is a rare.

Index might be playable in a draft. Rearranging the top 1/8 of my deck could be useful. Since it's very possible that I couldn't outright build a consistent deck, Index might help me impose some consistency.

As far as the "Target player draws X cards" issue, even 1 may be enough. Consider "Frozen Tides." It's a deck that's currently powerful in Peasant Magic. It's a High Tide based deck with a Brain Freeze kill. In order to force the kill immediately (largely to get around sideboard tech like Gaea's Blessing), it uses Words of Wisdom to force a draw before the Blessing resolves. So, the question shouldn't be "How many cards can the opponent be made to draw with a single spell?" That mentality results in creating a card to benefit a pre-designed deck. Instead, design a card with a less deck-oriented purpose. Explore a colour's position within the colour pie (including its interaction with its allies and its enemies), take advantage of seldom-used mechanics, create cycles of cards, or blend aspects of two other cards into a new card.

As far as the creature issue goes, they can print creature cards of any power level they like. However, I don't think that Nantuko Shade and Troll Ascetic are the be-all and end-all of creature power levels. For one, they're one-dimensional. They're strong in combat (and Troll Ascetic is pretty strong out of combat too, I suppose), but what you see is what you get. Creatures that interact with other cards become stronger as they've built into synergistic decks, though. Highway Robber + Oversold Cemetery will block your Shade or your Troll all day long and if that's all you've got, then I'll win.

Reprints? Wasteland would probably be okay. I think it's always healthy to force deck builders to strike a balance between better lands and safer lands. Hypnotic Specter wouldn't be too strong, but it would also renew the inferiority of the current options which are still good in themselves. Dissipate would be good to see again - it's a reasonably costed hard counter with a marginally better result. Let's just hope that Vex isn't the current state of the art of counter magic. I'm iffy about Wall of Blossoms. It seems like it can only help combo decks, which I'm typically loathe to do. Armageddon should never be reprinted. Ruination should. White having two board sweepers is irritating enough without it being able to sweep up lands, as well. Furthermore, Armageddon is, in my opinion, unhealthy for the game. Newbies tend to be Timmies. They're easy enough to beat without teaching them about mana curves with a 'Geddon. Be kind to the newbies and they'll help keep the game alive.

[Matt]

That mentality results in creating a card to benefit a pre-designed deck. Instead, design a card with a less deck-oriented purpose. Explore a colour's position within the colour pie (including its interaction with its allies and its enemies), take advantage of seldom-used mechanics, create cycles of cards, or blend aspects of two other cards into a new card.

I wish I'd written that, because I totally agree. It's really hard - virtually impossible - to rate a card outside of some sort of context. Taking one narrow aspect of the game and pushing it to its limit is what made all those cards I know for a fact that you, Tony, decry as too powerful - but at the time were considered perfectly fair, because there wasn't a ridiculously strong way to use them.

Consider LED, Tinker (after Jar's banning but pre-Mirrodin), Goblin Recruiter, Gush, Entomb, Goblin Lackey. I could go on and on. In fact, I will: Ancient Tomb, Voltaic Key, all of the Mirage tutors, Fork, Regrowth.

All of those cards languished for a long time and got little play, but later became 'broken' in the context of other cards they had the unfortunate luck to share a format with. The tutors, Fork, and Regrowth are perfectly fair...except when they retrive or reuse truly broken cards like Ancestral Recall and Balance and Will and Timetwister. Lackey was basically garbage until Onslaught showed up. Recruiter wasn't good for anything outside of casual Song of Blood decks until Ringleader and, later, Charbelcher abused the fuck out of the library-stacking mechanic. LED was near-useless outside of a peculiar interaction with a few severely broken cards until Odyssey block came along. Same with Entomb, though the gap between it and its enablers was very small. Voltaic Key is awfully weak without a Monolith-class artifact to untap, Tinker is no good in a format that has nothing worth Tinkering (all of the block formats from MAsques until Onslaught, for instance).

Anyway, the point of this is that just because some effect seems weak, that is no guarantee that future players won't look back and say "what were they thinking?" A lot of sub-par mechanics are considered sub-par only because Wizards' hasn't been willing to really crank their power level up.

[Aether]

So, the question shouldn't be "How many cards can the opponent be made to draw with a single spell?" Instead, design a card with a less deck-oriented purpose.

So true.

Back on topic:

Index - Making it reveal more card is one of the solution, but making it an instant looks like a better idea.  Library manipulation is more of a "end of your turn, I fix my future position a bit" trick and is not as efficient if you can only play it on your turn.  Would you play [card]Brainstorm[/card] if it was a sorcery?

Otherwise, 10 card seems good - any more and it will help combo decks too much.

"Target opponent draws X cards" - X would have to be a really large number (say, 40) for that to work.  Such a card is narrow and non-interactive, making this card not interesting to play with/against.  This type of card is also hard to balance. (See [card]Yawgmoth's Will[/card] and [card]Standardize[/card], for example)

The obvious card advantage it gives to your opponent makes balancing the card even harder.  The cards in your library is not as important a resource as, say, cards in your hand - this is also a reason [card]Demonic Consultation[/card] and [card]Arcslogger[/card] are used. To conclude, such a card is possible but is not likely to be popular - Wizards has printed [card]Wheel and Deal[/card], and you know how it fared.

Creature issue - Short and irresponsible answer: Of course it can *points to Kird Ape, Masticore and Morphling*

Longer (and probably still irresponsible) answer: That depends on your definition of "strong".  All four creatures you have mentioned on your question are very good in combat, but a single [card]Pacifism[/card] (Yes, the not-tournament-caliber Pacifism) will fix them well.

There are, on another hand, creatures that are modest in combat but good outside that - [card]Tradewind Rider[/card] and [card]Academy Rector[/card] are some examples.  Thus, "good" is in the eyes of beholders, and Nantuko shade or Troll Ascetic are certainly not the end of creatures' evolution.

Ability cost - Not that sure, but I believe [card]Twiddle[/card] should cost less than U (which is a reason I am glad to see [card]Dream`s Grip[/card] printed).

Reprint - Wasteland seems like a good idea, as is Firestorm (and how is Firestorm abusable anyway?  Even if you do get a lot of cards via Necropotence or other sources, you still need a lot of targets to make it work).  Dissipate is printable even with the current logic on counterspells.  No idea about Wall of Blossoms (though I am a bit biased towards the only tournament-playable wall in Magic history ), and Armageddon is a no-no.  Others have mentioned about its impact on the game, and I would like to add that such a card does not work with the colour wheel just like how direct damage is not blue's realm.

By the way, what is LED?

[Guardian]

Aether
LED = Lion's Eye Diamond

Lion's Eye Diamond
0
Artifact
Sacrifice ~this~,Discard your hand: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Play this ability only any time you could play an instant.

[Ric_Flair]

LED= Lion's Eye Diamond

More questions:

Is there any way to print a mechanic that can a) fix mana screw; b) fix mana flood; c) be "in color" in every color; and d) not be broken?  If there is, this leads to the next question: WHY HAVE THEY NOT DONE THAT YET?

Second, they have "tweaked" almost every card on the restricted list, some to great effect and other to great disappointment.  But they have not tweaked Library of Alexandria.  Why not?  Is there something inherent in the card that makes it either awful or broken with no in between?  I think there is, and I am pretty sure it had to do with the fact that it is a land, and thus cannot have a mana cost, but surely there is some way to work around this.  Maybe I am wrong.

Third, would this card be: a) good; b) good enough for Vintage; c) Restricted; or d) awful?

Half a Sol Ring, 1:
Artifact
Tap: Add 1 to your mana pool.

It seems like a simple card but it is really tricky.  If you had more than one in hand you could "chain" them out and have a huge jump in mana.  What do you guys think?

Fourth, is there any way to make a creature with a [card] Llanowar Sentinel[/card] ability and not have it be broken but still have it be tournament viable?  Also could this mechanic be used on creatures in other colors?  What about using it as a keyword mechanic on all types of cards?  I think it would have lots of strategic elements to it and it would interesting.  It would, however, run up against their disdain for shuffle effects (which seems to have been tossed out the window with fetchlands and the shuffle Myr in Mirrodin).

And now some responses:

Aether:

Creature issue - Short and irresponsible answer: Of course it can *points to Kird Ape, Masticore and Morphling*

I think it is pretty clear that Nantuko Shade is better than all of these creatures.  Kird Ape is very good.  Masticore, while still quite good, is very resource intensive and thus is not in the very top tier of creatures.  Finally, I think it is clear that Morphling was dramatically overrated because it was a good key in the lock that was Keeper.  Now that that lock has been shown to be defective it is pretty clear that Morphling was just in the right place at the right time.

Longer (and probably still irresponsible) answer: That depends on your definition of "strong". All four creatures you have mentioned on your question are very good in combat, but a single Pacifism (Yes, the not-tournament-caliber Pacifism) will fix them well.

[card]Troll Ascetic[/card] cannot be stopped by Pacifism.

There are, on another hand, creatures that are modest in combat but good outside that - Tradewind Rider and Academy Rector are some examples. Thus, "good" is in the eyes of beholders, and Nantuko shade or Troll Ascetic are certainly not the end of creatures' evolution.

I understand your point, and you are right.  My point, however, was slightly different.  Nantuko Shade, Troll Ascetic and the like represent "true" creatures.  Tradewind Rider and Academy Rector are really other kinds of cards "hidden" as creatures to make them weaker or more balanced.  They are what I call ability creatures.  There are mechanic creatures too like Tog, Exalted Angel, and Wild Mongrel.  But the class of creatures I referring to is that class of creatures that are not mechanic creatures, helpers for mechanics, or ability creatures, but creatures designed to attack and block.  So with that proviso, and an admission that sometimes the lines are less distinct than I make them out to seem, do Troll Ascetic and Nantuko Shade represent the end of the evolutionary line?  If not, how much better can creatures get?

Matt:

Anyway, the point of this is that just because some effect seems weak, that is no guarantee that future players won't look back and say "what were they thinking?" A lot of sub-par mechanics are considered sub-par only because Wizards' hasn't been willing to really crank their power level up.

I agree with this one hundred percent.  Look at cycling in UBC then in OnBC.  You are dead on with this one.

Lackey was basically garbage until Onslaught showed up.

This is not true.  There was an article when Lackey was released that called it the Red Llanowar Elf.  People saw this as a good creature right away and built Goblin decks around in that were good in Standard at the time.  It did, however, get MUCH better when Onslaught was released and was busted in half when Seige Gang was printed.

Armageddon is kind of a special card. If you don't remember, the reason they rotated it out was NOT for power reasons, but because it forced control decks to be blue or not exist at all, because decks like MBC and MWC just cannot survive a Geddon. Its very existence puts a constraint on the viable decktypes. It's a trade-off: if you want to allow Armageddon in the format, you have to accept that nonblue control decks will not exist. And the lack of nonblue control doesn't mean that the format is ruined; T2 survived and flourished for years and years without a nonblue dedicated control deck.

Ironically, this is not entirely true.  There were Prison decks, which we not classify as their own type, but which are clearly control decks that did not run blue and were successful in Standard when Armageddon was legal.  Furthermore Napster, Finkel's Nationals deck, was 100% a control deck and it had no blue and it was obviously successful when Armageddon was legal.  

I think, however, that you are right, but not for the right reason.  Armageddon forces out all "fair" nonblue control decks, and those nonblue control decks that survive are usually based on some flaw in the metagame or some broken card.  Napster was based on two broken cards: Will and Vamp Tutor.  

Ephraim:

Consider "Frozen Tides." It's a deck that's currently powerful in Peasant Magic. It's a High Tide based deck with a Brain Freeze kill. In order to force the kill immediately (largely to get around sideboard tech like Gaea's Blessing), it uses Words of Wisdom to force a draw before the Blessing resolves. So, the question shouldn't be "How many cards can the opponent be made to draw with a single spell?" That mentality results in creating a card to benefit a pre-designed deck.

First explain what the Frozen Tides deck does and what it looks like (a decklist).  I am unfamiliar with it.  It sounds cool though.  And second, you are right the "Target Opponet Draws X cards" card is designed for a specific deck, but that is how Wizards works now a days.  Maybe someone will tell them we don't like this ::sinister portent to future developments from me and Dr. Sylvan::

And everyone, this has been a great discussion, with incredibly thoughtful and thought provoking comments.  I especially enjoyed Matt's basic abilities costing lessons.  Thanks everyone.

[Jacob Orlove]

More questions:

Is there any way to print a mechanic that can a) fix mana screw; b) fix mana flood; c) be "in color" in every color; and d) not be broken?  If there is, this leads to the next question: WHY HAVE THEY NOT DONE THAT YET?

Second, they have "tweaked" almost every card on the restricted list, some to great effect and other to great disappointment.  But they have not tweaked Library of Alexandria.  Why not?  Is there something inherent in the card that makes it either awful or broken with no in between?  I think there is, and I am pretty sure it had to do with the fact that it is a land, and thus cannot have a mana cost, but surely there is some way to work around this.  Maybe I am wrong.

Third, would this card be: a) good; b) good enough for Vintage; c) Restricted; or d) awful?

Half a Sol Ring, 1:
Artifact
Tap: Add 1 to your mana pool.

It seems like a simple card but it is really tricky.  If you had more than one in hand you could "chain" them out and have a huge jump in mana.  What do you guys think?

Fourth, is there any way to make a creature with a [card]Llanowar Sentinel[/card] ability and not have it be broken but still have it be tournament viable?  Also could this mechanic be used on creatures in other colors?  What about using it as a keyword mechanic on all types of cards?  I think it would have lots of strategic elements to it and it would interesting.  It would, however, run up against their disdain for shuffle effects (which seems to have been tossed out the window with fetchlands and the shuffle Myr in Mirrodin).

For the mechanic to fix mana screw AND mana flood, you basically need cards that can be lands when you want them to be, but cards otherwise, so that you can have more lands in your deck (no mana screw), without drawing too many (no mana flood). Cycling lands are a good example, but they come into play tapped, which hurts. Landcyclers would have been GREAT if they hadn't all been 20 mana creatures. Look at how awesome those were in limited. Cheap landcyclers would be an amazing solution to these problems.

For a while, Richard Garfield considered LoA to be "the most broken card we ever made". It is the only reason Strip Mine even exists. It's probably possible to balance it, but it would have to tap for mana (because all lands do, nowadays), so the card drawing ability would have to be uber-weak.

That card would probably be good enough for budget decks, but it's hard to see workshop decks making room for more than one or two--for those decks, it's probably better than monolith and vault, but not better than any of the other artifact mana. For combo, it could be good, but it doesn't net you mana right away, which hurts storm a ton. It would be ridiculous in T2, though.

Llanowar Sentinel abilities are probably workable. Consider a 1/1 for G that also got you a copy for G. That's fairly costed, yet probably playable. I imagine there are ways to migrate it to other colors, although the flavor of the mechanic would have to be very strong to allow red, blue, or black creatures to cooperate like that. It would actually make a really good mechanic for white, though. Consider a 2/2 flyer for 1WW that chained for W. It's really good, but you need a ton of white mana to fully abuse it--and if you have a ton of white mana, you're already doing fine.

[jpmeyer]

Index is garbage.  The only way to make that sort of effect playable is make it combo-rific to the point where it's like a virtual Vampiric Tutor (or better!)

The problem with Wasteland comes from the fact that nowadays, non-basics have their disadvantages built-in so now they get penalized even more.

If the strength of removal stays where it is, it is probably possible to make creatures more powerful than Nantuko Shade and Troll Ascetic, since unless the cards are like able to end the game in a few turns when cast early on, they still will have to deal with removal on the level of Terror, Smother, and Wrath of God.

[Ephraim]

Ric, CmdrSam posted a rough edition of Frozen Tides (actually, closer to the Prosperous Tides build) in this thread:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14932&start=0

The deck operates by storming up, using High Tide and stuff like Frantid Search and Cloud of Fairies to generate a lot of mana (and to draw a lot of cards), then dropping one or more Brain Freezes and/or Prosperity to force the opponent to draw/mill their entire library.

Also, reading through your arguments concerning the quality of things like Tradewind Rider or Exalted Angel, the question seems not to be whether they can print better creatures, but whether they can print better combat creatures. On those grounds, I'd say the answer is probably no. Or rather, to reiterate, the answer is yes, but I don't think they should. For starters, I think that Blastoderm also deserves to be included in that list. As far as pure combat goes, it is a mighty beatstick with built-in protection. Not as strong of protection as the Troll, but it's a much better creature in other regards. If a creature is better than those for pure combat, I think it needs to come with a steep drawback, ala Phyrexian Negator.

[Matt]

I think when you kick out all the ability creatures and all the mechanic creatures you're looking so narrowly that it's become meaningless. There's lots of creatures that have both combat-readiness and a useful ability. Foremost among these being Werebear, but there's plenty of others, like Goblin Warchief (ability: cheapening! combat: 2/2 haste!).

LoA wouldn't be broken if the ability cost, like, four mana to use. It's be about on par with Whispers of the Muse. There's nothing inherently broken about tapping a land to draw a card; it's the "no cost whatsoever" part that makes it broken. Like how Ancestral isn't "broken," just undercosted (contrasted with something like Balance, which is a devastating effect at any cost).

In fact, you may consider Whispers of the Muse to be a twist on LoA, or both of them to be far-flung relatives of Jayemdae Tome. Possibly the closest thing to LoA is Ophidian: it says "tap to draw a card" unless some condition is met - no blockers, seven cards in hand, whatever. They haven't used the exact hand size requirements ever again, but to say that means they haven't tried new twists on LoA would be missing the forest for the trees.

Half-Ring would easily be Vintage-playable, and could easily ruin T2. It's a colorless elf with haste that can't easily be removed. It enables easy second-turn land destruction, and so on. Broken to all hell. As it happens, almost that exact card came up in this forum one time, and we rightly neutered or killed it (I forget which).

Is there any way to print a mechanic that can a) fix mana screw; b) fix mana flood; c) be "in color" in every color; and d) not be broken? If there is, this leads to the next question: WHY HAVE THEY NOT DONE THAT YET?

This reminds me of Mental Magic. Or like a Talisman crossed with Mind Stone. Speaking of which, Mind Stone ruled.

Fourth, is there any way to make a creature with a  Llanowar Sentinel ability and not have it be broken but still have it be tournament viable?

Well, Llanowar Sentinel itself came pretty damn close to being tournament-playable. Even Jacob's 1/1 for G with chain:G could easily be very good - reminiscient of Survivaling out a chain of Rootwallas.

There were Prison decks,

Okay, fine. The point stands, though, that you either were a control deck that could stop Geddon (i.e., ran counterspells) or a control deck that used Geddon. And anyway, it's not like prison decks were always happy to see a Geddon resolve.

I wasn't playing when Lackey was released, but I do know that the story of an older niche card turning out to be quite powerful in the right context is an oft-repeated one. Krovikan Horror was long thought to be a TERRIBLE card, because there was no way to easily make use of its ability. Buried Alive and a year later Survival of the Fittest turned that around, and Odyssey brought even more goodies like Zombie Infestation. Recruiter was the same way. Also, I read on mtg.com that R&D was considering reprinting Mulch, Song of Blood, and Morgue Thrull in Odyssey - but realized that those cards enabled threshold a little too easily, and yanked them. Even Tinker could have had this fate if it were printed in Mirage or Invasion or something that never had a lot of decent artifacts.