Goody Bag

[Ephraim]

Goody Bag

Artifact

, , Sacrifice Goody Bag: In turn order, starting with you, each player chooses and performs one of the following effects that has not yet been chosen until each effect has been chosen -- You gain 4 life.  Draw a card.  Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.  Goody Bag deals 3 damage to target creature.  Put two +1/+1 counters on target creature.  Add to your mana pool.

***

Disclaimer:  The templating on the preceding card is wretched and the text is possibly too long.

This is a splashy, Timmy (and maybe Johnny) oriented card that I wanted to try out.  It is an artifact that intrudes on every colour's slice of the pie, but also distributes the violation evenly among the players (at least for a 2, 3, or 6 player game.)  The current name is temporary, but it clearly conveys the spirit of what this card is trying to do.  In every sense, I want this card to make the game a little more fun for everybody playing.

***

Current Wording:

Goody Bag

Artifact

, , Sacrifice Goody Bag: Choose one -- You gain 4 life; or draw a card; or return a creature card of your choice from your graveyard to your hand; or Goody Bag deals 3 damage to a creature of your choice; or put  a +1/+1 counter on a creature of your choice; or add to your mana pool.  In turn order, each player chooses one that has not yet been chosen.

[Anusien]

Any particular reason why you start?  It makes the rules much more awful.  You could make it much more simple by following a sort of Eureka format:

Goody Bag - 2
Artifact
3, T, Sacrifice Goody Bag: Each player chooses an effect that has not already been chosen until all effects have been chosen --  Gain 4 life.  Draw a card.  Return a creature of your choice from the graveyard to your hand.  Goody Bag deals 3 damage to target creature.  Put two +1/+1 counters on the creature of your choice.  Add to your mana pool.

My concerns with the way this works:
Can we put a target on the abilities?  I removed it because it seems like you'd have to choose all targets when you put the ability on the stack, and since you're not the only one making decisions, that's actually infeasible.
SBEs aren't checked until the end of the ability resolving?  So you could Bolt my creature and I could counter him up?
The different abilities need to be seperated by more than just a period.  I'm not sure what other options there are.  Does the "X, or Y, or Z." work?

Edit in bold

[Mindstab_Thrull]

Last I remember, in a multiplayer game you start with the person who's playing the spell/ability/whatnot and go around clockwise. So is that little bit about the order actually necessary?

3,T, Sacrifice ~: Each player chooses an effect that has not already been chosen -- gain 4 life; draw a card; return a creature of your choice from the graveyard to its owner's hand; ~ deals 3 damage to target creature; put two +1/+1 counters on target creature; or add 2 to your mana pool.

Choices are separated by semicolons (see [card]Fever Charm[/card], etc), incidentally.

[dandan]

I think it would be cute if some of the options got more powerful if they picked later.

For example:

Gain 2 life for each card drawn this turn
Draw a card for each +1/+1 counter put on a creature this turn
Add X to your mana pool for each life gained this turn
Put X +1/+1 counters on target creature,
Deals 1+X damage to target creature or player
Return X target creatures from the graveyard to their owners' hands
etc

where X is the number of players who have chosen so far

The trick would be balancing the first choice so it is worth playing Goodie Bag but getting last choice could be an advantage. I think getting mana would probably result in mana burn which is out of flavour for the goodie bag. You could make the choice optional for players I guess.

[Anusien]

I think it would be cute if some of the options got more powerful if they picked later.

For example:

Gain 2 life for each card drawn this turn
Draw a card for each +1/+1 counter put on a creature this turn
Add X to your mana pool for each life gained this turn
Put X +1/+1 counters on target creature,
Deals 1+X damage to target creature or player
Return X target creatures from the graveyard to their owners' hands
etc

where X is the number of players who have chosen so far

The trick would be balancing the first choice so it is worth playing Goodie Bag but getting last choice could be an advantage. I think getting mana would probably result in mana burn which is out of flavour for the goodie bag. You could make the choice optional for players I guess.

Cute, but the wording is too complicated already

[Ephraim]

I have changed the templating so that it's a little bit more rigorous and a little bit shorter.  I'm not exactly positive how much text can fit on a card, but I think I'm still past the upper limit a little bit (I use Grim Reminder as a benchmark.) One solution would be to find more concise effects.  Please note, I changed targetted effects to "of your choice" effects so that way they don't have to target upon announcement.

Finally, I made one small rules change -- the "green" effect places only one +1/+1 counter now.  I realized that two +1/+1 counters is slightly more than a one-mana effect.

[Matt]

If you wanted to shorten it, you could give up the idea that it should have one ability for each color, and just pick the 3 best ones.

OR

Make a cycle of 3-color creatures with these abilities, like this:

Totally Not Merieke Ri Berit
{W}{B}
2/2
, sacrifice ~this~: Choose one -- You gain 4 life; or draw a card; or return a creature card of your choice from your graveyard to your hand. In turn order, each player chooses one that has not yet been chosen.

[Ephraim]

My biggest concern with having an odd number of effects is that each activation is clearly in your favour then, since you get two effects and your opponents gets just one.  I might do three effects if it starts with the opponent, but then I don't think anybody would play these.  In fact, in the original design, I ended up adding the "artifact" ability (Add to your mana pool) just to make sure that this was a little bit more equitable.  That's important because the entire point of this card was always to turn the game into a party for everybody.  I appreciate the suggestions, but in this case, the spirit of the card is more important to me than the mechanism.

[Mindstab_Thrull]

Hmm.. how about..

'Target player other than you chooses one -- {list options}. In turn order from that player, repeat this process for each player until all options have been taken. The same option can't be chosen twice.'

Best I can think of off right now to get it to go properly right now.

[Mindstab_Thrull]

OK.. after having talked to LeeSharpe and Eli-Woap over on EFnet, this is what was suggested:

3,T: Choose an option that has yet to be chosen during the resolution of this ability among: Gain 4 life; draw a card; return a creature card in your graveyard to your hand; deal 3 damage to a creature of your choice; or put two +1/+1 counters on a creature of your choice.  Then, the player who goes after you in turn order gains control of this ability.  Repeat this process until all options have been chosen.

The actual wording comes courtesy of Lee, and it seems to be the best way to handle it. Eli suggested making it non-modal so it will behave more appropriately (according to the rules), and Lee took that and went with it. What do you think?

[Marco]

Would "Deck of Many Things" be a good name for this?

[Joblin Velder]

That might be a bit too D&D.