As a rule, the top down portion deals with flavor - so it is here: If black can destroy land while green can generate it, there is a fundamental narrative relationship between the two. So, to flesh out the associations of your colors/classes, identify these axis of design space and separate the positive and negative portions. Or maybe you find a reason not to cash in on free story telling. This leads to another point of how blue can draw you cards but also draw the opponent cards. There should always be archetypes to support both strategies, in this example cards that punish drawing or mill. Well, that's the design space at least.
Feels like it maps more cleanly onto rush/economy given the way it invests in its mana accelerants (ral and ruby) before storming off. The way it generates its additional cards and mana does feel very rush but the fact that its interested in generating them in the first place in founded in its economy. It definitely doesn't want anything to do with the defense pillar though.
As a note for old Pokémon strategy, the format didn't avoid evolutions and big attacks because of anything to do with efficiency. The main core decks (Haymaker, Rain Dance, Do The Wave, Stall) existed how they do because of how prominent Energy Removal was in the format. The powerful Basics could attack for a single energy, Blastoise could place any number of energies on, and Stall didn't need energy. Do The Wave is a special case in which the power of possibly knocking out an opponent in one hit was worth the risk of lasting a turn with an energy on your Pokémon. At a baseline, this shows how important the resource system is to the viability of different strategies in a given game.
There's two topics I am perpetually stuck on as a designer and I absolutely love your guys' conversations and analysis. Would you two consider talking more about CG resource systems, probably the most important system in card games, and/or archetype vs flexible deck building design?
With the past 5 years of power creep, majority of magic decks are now economy decks or at least high economy, or strong enough to outrush economy. Feels bad
Do you have a cube or played a cube? In some ways cube is like creating a unique game inside the mtg engine .. and I recently kept track in my vintage and timeless games for me and my opponents and on average you spend 5 mana and
I second the view for some cube discussion. Most of us will never get to design a whole card game, but anyone can build a cube. I would love to hear your thoughts on the particular design challenges of designing a play environment using only preexisting game pieces.
This was alluded to, but it's worth emphasizing that Mono Black Waste Not in Pioneer is a fantastic example of a "pure" defense strategy. Not only does it do The Defense Strategy Thing, it's SUPER weak to economy strategies like Mono Green Ramp and Izzet Phoenix.
I remember Pokemon, my insane strategy was a lot of draw and energy removal. It worked remarkably well. The insane linchpin, though, was Dark Dragonair when that became a thing: it was a tutor, like you said. Got me Poliwrath and Dragonair to add more energy removal on top of trainer cards.
@@ForrestImel nice thx! I can recommend this one on early yu gi oh meta, eventhough I dont play it, I found it very interesting ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZP61wUYPs_M.html
@@ax0r I actually thought I also pasted that video but the comment must've not gone through, I've watched that video like 3 times now haha. Super fascinating.
You answered my last video request with this video! Requesting another: Infinite Combos. You've talked about them before, but I wonder if they are always bad game design. An infinite combo you can get off in the first three turns of a game that is supposed to last 6+ turns does seem problematic. But if that infinite combo comes together in alignment with when a game would normally end... Doesn't that just give the player a good feeling I-successfully-built-the-engine experience without truly compromising their opponent's experience? If not a video, would appreciate your take in text! :)
There's exactly one scenario where choosing Draw may be correct, and it's a Draw-Go Control mirror. In all other scenarios, Play is the correct choice because the large early board advantage you gain from being the first player to spend their mana each turn makes the singular extra card from being on the Draw inconsequential. That card doesn't matter unless you're trying to get maximum value from every single card in your deck over the course of the game, which is what a draw-go control mirror is
So we all know about lands and magics resource system that limits deck construction, but what are other interesting ways deck construction has been limited. I think the canadian Highlander format does something very interesting with its points based system and I heard Yu-Gi-Oh limits deck construction by having archetypes / cards that only specifically work with other specific cards, idk id love to hear more about yall guy's experience with that (or even ideas)
Yugioh is balanced around opportunity cost. For example there's a card called rescue ace impulse which sees some play as a generic hand trap, yugioh's equivalent to free spells. As a generic option it lets you basically get a draw 2 discard one by using itself while giving a bit of board presence. Deck run the one summon target it can get out at quick speed and its other effect on the field just generally doesn't come up. In the rescue ace deck itself you have 5 options it can summon, and due to your primary win condition being in that engine is has good value on the field itself and can act as an extender to break boards better. Also there's another target for the turn 1 interactions that has a more flexible trigger to activate and a slightly bigger pay off for rescue ace. You also avoid impulse being dead as often because it has to retrieve from deck if its ran as a generic option and you draw the target with it you have 2 cards dead, but if its in the archtype you can still use impulse and the value generation targets all summon them selves from the hand.
