E3CDC - Winds of Fate

[Gaff]

NAME: Winds of Fate ELEMENT: Air COST: 2 TYPE: Creature ABILITY: Draw a card when this card is played. ART BY: Provided by Contest IDEA BY: Gaff	NAME: Winds of Fate ELEMENT: Air COST: 2 TYPE: Creature ABILITY: When this creature dies the card is replaced at the back of the owner's deck. ART BY: Provided by Contest IDEA BY: Gaff

Q: What theme did you choose and why?
A: Currently elements has only one way of preventing decking out, which is to use eternity to repeatedly reverse time a card. This means that a large number of false god decks need eternity and time quanta to fuel it. My aim here is to provide some more options for deck construction against false gods. I've tried to make the cards varied rather than just eternity clones with different colours.

Q: Does elements need to have more deckout prevention options?
A: Well I'm neutral on this, since anti-deckout play seems a bit cheesy and can get very dull. However it seems odd that there's only one element that can do it, it should either be several or none in my opinion. It's up to the designers but I've tried to make the cards generically useful as well as being a way of preventing deckout.

Q: Why did you make this card?
A: Unupgraded, this card is basically a combination of spark and precognition. This is basically a free draw making it attractive to fast decks, but still does a little bit of damage. When upgraded the card recycles itself, which means that decking out is no longer a problem but actually slightly attractive - as long as you have the quanta to fund it. I chose air since there aren't many good low cost air creatures, well there's damselfly but that's pretty weak.

Q: Is it balanced?
A: Well as a recyclable damage card it's essentially a quanta sink and air already has this in the form of dive but then one of the interesting aspects of air is balancing quantum generation. The combination of precognition and damage might be a bit OP in speed decks, hard to say without testing it.

Q: Does it require new game mechanics?
A: Placing a card at the back of your deck is a new game mechanic, but I don't think it would be too tricky to implement.

SERIES: [/color][/b] Card 1/3 submitted to 'Epic 3 Card Design Challenge' (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,6012.msg69427#msg69427)

[Wisemage]

So for 2 Air you get a permanent deck out card that can never be stopped (upgraded) AND it deals 4 damage per turn?

Thats ridiculously over powered.

[Gaff]

So for 2 Air you get a permanent deck out card that can never be stopped (upgraded) AND it deals 4 damage per turn?

Thats ridiculously over powered.

I'm not convinced it's that unbalanced. I know it looks good but, but remember It costs you 2 air per turn since the creature has 0 hp (like a spark) so dies at the end of the turn.

Early in the game this is a fairly significant drain on your quanta - compare it to a minor phoenix or giant frog which cost 2 quanta but will continue to do damage 'for free' on the next turn. Later on in the game this might seem like a good deal, but again 4 damage per turn isn't that big and it costs you quanta to maintain it. Compare this to growth which does 2 damage per turn but accumulates every turn, by the time you've had 3 turns of growth you're doing more damage than this card does.

It is however better than eternity which could be a problem. Maybe if the cost of the upgraded version were increased to 3 it would be more balanced?

Here is a neat-o comparison table:

	Eternity	Winds of Fate
Cost per turn to prevent deckout	3	3 (proposed)
Damage per turn	4 (always)	4 (only if you pay the quanta)
Initial cost	5	0
Utility	Can rewind opponents cards	None
Vulnerable to	Destroy	None

Is Winds of Fate better? Probably. Is it rediculously overpowered? I wouldn't say so.

[yaladilae]

You overlook 1 thing

Its not ridiculously overpower, but still very overpower

Because for a weapon there is only 1 slot, and only 1 in play. This, as long as you have the mana (when you draw your whole deck, you have mostly 10 pillars), you can spam it, while you can control the card left in your deck... (advanced FG strategy...)

There is 1 artifact protection is this game vs many ways of permenant destrution... and wind of fate dont need creature control.......

And it cost 2, not 3..... (or did i miss something), make the cost 5, and the damage 1|0

[Wisemage]

Except you arent using this early game, you use it late game. 

This also eliminates the Eternity last card problem.  And 2 air once you get tot he point where you need to prevent deck out is nothing, since a rainbow has 10+ quantum towers at this time.

I would definitely be adding this to my rainbow (on top of eternity, cause it cvan rewind enemy monsters)

[Gaff]

And it cost 2, not 3..... (or did i miss something), make the cost 5, and the damage 1|0

I'm proposing raising it to 3 based on feedback. If you make it cost 5 or drop the damage to 1|0 then it become a specialist tool for preventing deckouts and I wanted it to be a generally useful card.

As a pure damage dealing mechanism it seems reasonably balanced, 4 damage for 3 quanta every turn is nowhere near as good as growth / ablaze / devour / etc but is a reasonable boost early on in a speed deck plus a good way of sinking quanta.

As a deck-out prevention mechanism it's better than eternity, but then like wisemage says many people would keep eternity anyhow since it brings more utility, cards are tight in 30 card anti-FG decks and I suspect in the end if you had eternity you wouldn't bring this card.

Currently there's only only one way to prevent deck-out (which I think is a bit lame) so we don't have comparison / discussion as to what a reasonable cost to prevent deckout should be. As it stands if you want to make a 30 card anti-FG deck then you have to pack eternity, which means you must be time or rainbow in order to power it. With this as an option you can be more flexible which should bring more variety to anti-FG decks which, in my opinion, would be a good thing.

[ManOfManySpoons]

Has anyone considered giving it 1 HP?  You could make the attack 2 (3 upgraded) and make the play cost something like 3 .  Now, it's a renewable deck out but it requires an additional condition that you be able to kill it.  It's still better than Eternity, since it has no initial casting cost and doesn't require you to protect it (in fact, it would be a devious move if somehow your opponent had a spare Quintessence to play on it!).  But now there's at least the parallel that you have to use something that could hurt your opponent (creature control/rewind) on yourself. 

[Avenger]

Yeah, the auto death is just too useful to have an anti-deckout too and a renewable (i mean, permanent) bone wall/graveyard/vulture fodder.
With 1 hp, it is fun, especially against firewallers