Antechamber | Grand Antechamber

[OdinVanguard]

NAME: Antechamber ELEMENT: Other COST: 3 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: TEXT: A discarded card stores 1 ante per 3 quanta in its cost. 0 : Use stored ante to pay the casting cost of your next card.	NAME: Grand Antechamber ELEMENT: Other COST: 5 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: TEXT: A discarded card stores 1 ante per 2 quanta in its cost. 0 : Use stored ante to pay the casting cost of your next card.

ART: Original art link: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/772425 IDEA: OdinVanguard NOTES: "Today will be surprisingly mundane" "Take time to mull over discarded ideas and you may find inspiration for something greater" A novel attempt to make discard mechanics into a resource. Think of it as a grand hallway that old ideas pass through on their way to obscurity… And you get your pick of salvage Basically, every time a player (you or your opponent) discards a card, it adds counters onto this card. If multiple are in play, all of them get the counters. (Notes: cards with 0 cost still provide 1 ante each, rounding up is used when calculating ante provided) When you activate the card, the cost of the next card you play gets drained from the stored ante instead of from your quanta pool. If you have multiple copies in play and active, the ante gets drawn in the order that the chambers are activated in, so you can use multiple chambers to power a single large card. If a chamber is destroyed, any stored ante is lost. This card will likely need to be comboed with other cards that will enable you to cause discards (i.e. hourglass, nightmare, SoBr, Fractal, etc.) Yay mindgate and time-bows! SERIES:

[Aves]

I like it! It both synergizes with and acts as a (weak) counter to denial. I assume there would be some sort of counter on the card icon that would show how much is stored? Also, what do you think of making it stack?

[OdinVanguard]

Yes, there would be a number on it to indicate how much is stored.

I've been trying to think of a good way to make it stack, but it seems tricky as it stands here, but there is a definite advantage to having multiple in play since you can activate more than one at once to pay for large casting costs.

Any ideas on how to make it stack instead of just having individual copies?

[Aves]

A discarded card stores X ante per 3||2 quanta in its cost, X being the number of antechambers stacked? I'm not really sure where the difference between having this card stack itself and having multiple copies would/should differ beyond taking up multiple permanent slots.

[OdinVanguard]

A discarded card stores X ante per 3||2 quanta in its cost, X being the number of antechambers stacked? I'm not really sure where the difference between having this card stack itself and having multiple copies would/should differ beyond taking up multiple permanent slots.

With a single stack, you could only power a single card cost each turn.
With multiple copies you can power up to 1 card cost per copy.

The current idea is that 1 activation will funnel ante toward 1 card cost

E.g. if I had 3 antechambers with 3 ante each, I could cast 3 cockatrices in a single turn.
If I had a single stack with 9 ante, I could only cast 1 per turn.

If instead, 1 activation causes all ante to funnel toward costs until depleted then

If i have 3 antechambers I can control how much ante I use (i.e by how many antechambers I activate), so I could use some ante for my first card, cast a second normally, use more ante for a second card, cast a third normally and use the rest for a fourth card.

If i have a stack of 3 antechambers I would have no way to switch between paying costs normally and paying with ante.

This may seem like a fine point, but basically having multiple copies provides greater flexibility and control of ante usage while a single stack is more streamlined but provides less control and flexibility.

Which way seems best to you?... Or can you think of a way to get the best of both?

[Aves]

Admittedly, keeping versatility seems best. But having multiple antechambers while keeping them linked as one pool seems kind of counter intuitive. Perhaps making the ability reusable in the stack? The case of rustler sets a precedent for active quanta-generating abilities. But then you'd have to look at what PC would do to it.

[Fippe94]

It's not one pool, each antechamber has its own ante pool.

[Aves]

When you activate the card, the cost of the next card you play gets drained from the stored ante instead of from your quanta pool.

If you have multiple copies in play and active, the ante gets drawn in the order that the chambers are activated in, so you can use multiple chambers to power a single large card.

No, but they are linked and can be used together, effectively making it one pool (albeit one that you can target the components of)

[ChemMan13]

I like the card idea, can this pay for cards like fractal, miracle, and skyblitz without draining all of your aether, light, or air quanta? Could be abuse-able with the chance of allowing double fractals, or skyblitz (miracle too, but the second one is useless) but I dont have any suggestions on countering this at present time. Yeah for incouraging mindgates, I like using them and this card could combo quite nicely. On another note, can this card be used to activate abilities? (allow a 'mono' water steam machine deck for instance)

[OdinVanguard]

I like the card idea, can this pay for cards like fractal, miracle, and skyblitz without draining all of your aether, light, or air quanta? Could be abuse-able with the chance of allowing double fractals, or skyblitz (miracle too, but the second one is useless) but I dont have any suggestions on countering this at present time. Yeah for incouraging mindgates, I like using them and this card could combo quite nicely. On another note, can this card be used to activate abilities? (allow a 'mono' water steam machine deck for instance)

Cards like fractal and miracle seem to drain quanta as a card effect, not as part of the actual cost.
So using this, you could pay the cost of a fractal using ante, but it would still drain all of your ... of course if you have ante left in a second antechamber, you could then use that.

Keep in mind that ante is tricky to generate. You have to discard one of your cards or get the opponent to discard one of theirs.
In order to pay a given cost, you have to get 2 to 3 cards of the same cost discarded, or have multiple antechambers in play.

So, yes, you could pull off a double fractal with these, but setting that up is not trivial...

Spoiler for a blurb on multi-fractal:

Fractal allows a player to spam creatures en-mass.
Right now, fractal can only be played 1 time per turn since it drains all of the owner's aether.
A little math background: number of fractals vs total creatures produced -
Note that each fractal after the first will take up 1 creature worth of hand space
1 fractal -> 8 creatures
2 -> 8 + 7 = 15
3 -> 8 + 7 + 6 = 21
4 -> 23 (cap)

Summoning 23 creatures will take a lot of quanta… none of which can be aether so a duo is required at minimum unless the creature's cost is 0.
There are 2 of these: photon and spark.
23 upgraded sparks is 69 damage unupgraded or 115 upgraded
23 photons… is 23 damage, but can allow a near impenetrable Hope shield
Both cases are very powerful. The ball lightening OTK seems to be the nastiest…
So, to pull off a ball lightening OTK you need
-1 ball lightening
-3 fractals in hand
-A way to cast the extra fractals

So means to cast aside, we need 4 cards to pull off the OTK!
Then, you need a way to cast all 3 fractals, bearing in mind that you lose all after the first.

To do so with ante, you would need at least 2 chambers with 9 quanta each or 4 chambers with 5 quanta each

To get 2 chambers with 9 quanta requires:
-2 chambers
-discarding enough cards so that their total cost sums to 18 (upped) or 27 (unupped)

To get 4 chambers with 5 quanta requires:
-4 chambers
-discarding enough cards sl that their total cost sums to 10 (upped) or 15 (unupped)

A similar argument can be made for sky-blitz, but I'll leave that breakdown to someone else

[skyironsword]

Maybe make discarding GotP be negated by having this in play? You wouldn't even have to write it on the card, similar to how Purify cancels SoSac.

[CuCN]

Purify canceling SoSac is written on the Purify card.