Poppy Meadow | Poppy Field

[PhantomFox]

NAME: Poppy Meadow ELEMENT: Life COST: 6 TYPE: Permanent  ATK|HP: N/A ABILITY: Drowsiness: Opponent's creatures may become sleepy for two turns.   Sleepy creatures attacks are halved and they cannot use abilities.	NAME: Poppy Field ELEMENT: Life COST: 5 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: N/A ABILITY: Drowsiness: Opponent's creatures may become sleepy for two turns.   Sleepy creatures attacks are halved and they cannot use abilities.

ART: http://www.bagguley.org.uk/images/poppy_field.jpg IDEA: PhantomFox NOTES: Basic creature control for Life.  25% chance per turn of creatures becoming sleepy.  Multiple copies do not stack percentages, but do add a separate check.  The combined chance with multiple copies in play: 1: 25%, 2: 44%, 3: 58%, 4: 68%, 5: 77%, 6: 82% SERIES: N/A

[Retribution]

What is the may here? What is the percentage chance, and does the chance happen per turn if the creature is awake?

[PhantomFox]

Knew I forgot something...

I'm going to say 50% for now, perhaps more to keep it in line with Permafrost Shield in terms of effectiveness. 

[Retribution]

Knew I forgot something...

I'm going to say 50% for now, perhaps more to keep it in line with Permafrost Shield in terms of effectiveness.

50% is a bit much.
Life is already a very strong element (more than water, in my opinion), and with this card you can already have a shield in play...

[Mastermind79]

I think this should be a shield so it won't be too OP, even though life already has shields. Also, rename Drowsiness into Smoke Opium.

[PhantomFox]

I don't think the drug reference would go over too well.  I can get away with a Wizard of Oz reference though.  Would 30% be more balanced?

[Retribution]

I suggest that the effect actually make abilities useable, but only with a 50% chance of success or something 

[PhantomFox]

All these numbers being tossed around is confusing me.  What level of effectiveness should I be aiming at?  Let's use Permafrost as a standard, since it does something similar.  Roughly, it's 33% to hit, and reduces attack to 0, and locks abilities for 3 turns for 7 quanta. 

After doing some math, 2 turns of ability lockdown with a 50% chance of activation is about equivalent to 33% chance at 3 turn lockdown.  So the field coverage is somewhat the same.  However, it only halves the attack instead of reducing it to zero as freezing effectively does. 

However, this is a permanent, not a shield, so multiples can be played to force multiple checks (since they don't stack additively) and drive the effective percentage higher.  If the chance for 1 is 50%, 2 is 75%, 3 is 88%, etc.
(If you're curious, the formula is 1- (X/100)^N where X is the chance for one copy, and N is the number of copies)

So the question is how effective should we make this compared to Permafrost Shield?  And how many copies is someone likely to have out at any one time?

[icecoldbro]

relly it would kill any creature it shouldnt be more then one copy at a time permafrost doesnt repeat itself more than once and perma isnt standard its one of the best after hope maybe

[Retribution]

Perhaps you should aim for something else here. You said this card is basic creature control for life, but it already has thorn carapace shield...

[PhantomFox]

relly it would kill any creature it shouldnt be more then one copy at a time permafrost doesnt repeat itself more than once and perma isnt standard its one of the best after hope maybe

Wut?  Hold on, let me translate...

Really, it would kill any creature.  It shouldn't be more then one copy at a time.  Permafrost doesn't repeat itself more than once and permafrost isn't standard.  It's one of the best after hope, maybe.

There we go.  But I don't see how this kills creatures.  In fact, this is a different TYPE of creature control.  As stated, this is a permanent, not a shield.  Now that I think about it, this should be part of the design.  I've run a few numbers which I'll get to momentarily.  This is also more defensive than Thorn Carapace, as it lowers attack and locks abilities.  Where Thorns go for slowish kills, Poppies go for lockdown. 

After discussing with some people, I'm dropping the percentage to 25%.  The design was shifted to having two out.  My math suggested 30%, but since it was pointed out that mono Life is strong already, I dropped it down to 25%.  They stack multiplicity, so the chance raises with each card as follows.
1: 25%, 2: 44%, 3: 58%, 4: 68%, 5: 77%, 6: 82%

You need three in play to surpass Permafrost shield in terms of the effect triggering, and even then they're not frozen (only 1/2 attack, not 0).  And this isn't including Permafrost's innate 2 damage reduction.  So overall, I think it's balanced now.

[Retribution]

In my opinion it should just be a one time stack card like nightfall/eclipse...