Weapon Slot | Weapon Slot, Dual Wield | Dual Wield

[Xenocidius]

NAME: Weapon Slot ELEMENT: Other COST: 2 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Add an extra weapon slot to your board	NAME: Weapon Slot ELEMENT: Other COST: 1 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Add an extra weapon slot to your board

ART: Art from Elements the Game IDEA: wizelsnarf - see here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,9277) NOTES: This picks the first available permanent slot and turns it into a weapon slot. If a weapon is played it goes into the weapon slot with the lowest number, or if none are free replaces the weapon in the lowest-numbered weapon slot. If Animate Weapon is used the same logic applies; it animates the first available slot. It will not affect your shield or mark slot. As you can see, this has some deadly combos with cards like Animate Weapon, including Fractal weapons. It allows you to have 13 weapons on your field at once without using Mindgate or Twin Universe. SERIES:

NAME: Dual Wield ELEMENT: Earth COST: 1 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Change your shield slot into a weapon slot	NAME: Dual Wield ELEMENT: Earth COST: 1 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Change your shield slot into a weapon slot

ART: wizelsnarf IDEA: wizelsnarf - see here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,9277) NOTES: This card was originally made by wizelsnarf quite a while ago. It inspired the Armory card Dual Shield | Dual Buckler (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,9282), but for some reason he never submitted it to the Crucible, and with him being inactive (and the idea being a year old), that's unlikely ever to happen. Now I resubmit it in the hope that this great idea will be recognised and hopefully make it into the game. Mechanic: Weapon slot becomes "Weapon 2". Shield slot becomes "Weapon 1". If both are blank a weapon goes to slot 1. If slot 1 is filled and a weapon is played, it goes to slot 2. Animate Weapon would first animate slot 1, and then if slot 1 was blank, animate slot 2. Similarly, if you play a third weapon it will go to the Weapon 1 if both slots are full. SERIES:

[karis]

i think it will be more interesting if 1 animate weapon card can animate both of them...   

[Xenocidius]

i think it will be more interesting if 1 animate weapon card can animate both of them...   

That would be interesting.

I'm also considering that a second playing of the card may turn the extra weapon slot back into a shield slot.

Thoughts on each of these ideas?

[johannhowitzer]

This, like the Armory counterpart, brings up the question of slot-targeting.  If you have two weapon slots or two shield slots, and neither is empty, the player will have to select a slot to replace.

Also, while the shield variant does bring added flexibility, the presence of Animate Weapon in the game makes this card redundant.  He may have inspired one of the Armory's better cards, but that is as far as wizelsnarf got - I can't see a way to make this card work.  I didn't know about his idea or the fact that he inspired Dual Shield, but Dual Shield has made me think of this very card before, and I dismissed it right away as impracticable.

The art's nice, though!

[Xenocidius]

This would automatically transform the first available slot into a weapon slot; that is, if there were two shield slots the original one (higher priority) would be transformed into a weapon slot. If there were two weapon slots it wouldn't work (like Animate Weapon when you have no weapon).

The presence of Animate Weapon does not make this card redundant. CC is much more common than PC, and if the above suggestion were implemented, the effectiveness of Animate Weapon could be doubled with this card (both weapons are animated at once), making a potential 14 weapons on your board possible without Twin Universe.

Here's another idea I've been tossing around:



This picks the first available permanent slot and turns it into a weapon slot. That way, it works similarly to Animate Weapon but also differently.

[johannhowitzer]

What I meant was: if you have two weapons equipped and you play a third, you would have to target a weapon slot to pick which to replace.  Since spell cards are the only cards that currently target, and enchanted weapon slots would need to be selectable, this would introduce a few new wrinkles to the coding side of things.

[Xenocidius]

You wouldn't target a slot, the game would automatically pick the first one, as I said.

[johannhowitzer]

In your first post you only mention the first two weapons played, never the scenario I described... but it sounds like you want the game to auto-target one of two filled weapon slots when a third is played; I advise against that, it's pretty arbitrary.

[Xenocidius]

Coding-wise, that's what it would do. First it would target the new weapon slot, then the old weapon slot.

I suppose a targeting system could be established; this would be especially warranted with the Weapon Slot idea I mentioned a few posts back. Although as you mentioned, it would be a bit of a coding issue.

A simple solution for the player: Don't play an extra weapon.

[johannhowitzer]

All potential snags should be explored on any given card idea - playing a third weapon is a snag, here.  I just went over something similar with SnoWeb about his Poisoned Dart card idea; he introduced a new type of player poison, and it was necessary to decide what would happen if Neurotoxin and Strychnine were applied to a player in succession.  Because despite the fact that it might not be a good idea ("don't play an extra weapon"), the possibility exists and must be dealt with.

The reason I would prefer to have a player select a slot on playing a third weapon is that the arbitrary nature of defaulting to one out of two slots for that situation is something we haven't seen before in Elements, and it reduces player control without a reason.  Other explicitly random effects, such as Mutation, are acceptable because the great advantages one could gain are offset by the potential lackluster effects (like lobotomizing a vanilla creature with Chaos Seed), and the random nature is spelled out on the card itself.

TL;DR - First and second weapons should land in empty slots in order, but a third really should be targeted to one of the filled slots.

(Part of the reason I am getting into all these backwaters is because we have a card in the Armory already which has exactly the same difficulty.)

[Xenocidius]

Coding-wise, for now it's pretty much a given that the slot would automatically be chosen. I'll add it to the notes.

Besides, a player will learn these little things and adapt to them.

Other explicitly random effects, such as Mutation, are acceptable because the great advantages one could gain are offset by the potential lackluster effects (like lobotomizing a vanilla creature with Chaos Seed), and the random nature is spelled out on the card itself.

Random? There's nothing random about it.

[johannhowitzer]

"Arbitrary" is related to "random."  The fact that a default slot is chosen is an arbitrary mechanic, based more on the current engine than what would work best in the game.