PuppyChow's Spell Card Ideas

[PuppyChow]

Maybe killing off the creature is too much, now that you mention it. How about changes the element of the creature and does five damage if its dark.

Eclipse: +3/+2. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Improved Core: +0/+2 for Fire, +2/+0 for Earth, -1/-1 for Life, and costs more. Doesn't seem that broken to me.

Flood - The idea is that it could be a great card situationally (against mono-fire), but otherwise would most likely not help at all. It would be like protect artifact in god farming decks. Sure, it would help against seism, but against all other decks it would do practically nothing, and may even help the opponent.

Forest fire - The idea is to be a mass deflagration of life cards. I worded it wrong in my post; it was supposed to have the same effect for everyone.

Darken/Angelify - I'll take out the auto kill.

Quantum Shift WOULD only hurt Rainbow decks severely. I just don't think you understand its effect.

Let's say I have a Rainbow deck, middle-end game. I have 10+ quantum in every single element, and am thinking I'll win. Then the opponent plays Quantum Shift. A random element is chosen from a pool of all the elements I have, in this case lets say Dark gets chosen. ALL of my quantum are transferred to dark, so I now have 120+ Dark quantum and 0 other quantum.

Now let's say I have a dual deck, Air-Life. I'm running an FFQ deck and have all the queens I need out. I have 2 life quantum and 30 air quantum, and need more life to make more fireflies. Luckily for me, my opponent is stupid and plays Quantum Shift. A random element is chosen from the elements I have (so either Life or Air). Life gets chosen. All the quantum gets changed to life quantum, so I now have 32 life quantum and 0 air quantum.

Now let's say I have a mono deck, Fire, with 40 quantum. The opponent plays Quantum Shift, and it chooses the only element I have some in, fire (duh). Since I only have fire and all quantum I have are made in to fire, it has no effect. I still have 40 fire quantum.

[PuppyChow]

And early game, mark change WOULD hurt Rainbow decks by forcing them out of time quantum. Thus they have trouble drawing more cards with hourglasses and playing sundials.

[Kumlekar]

I don't think you under stand my issue with those cards.  Instant kills against specific colors make mono decks unplayable.  All these cards do is force people to play Aether or Rainbow even more; not somethign you want to do.  Hard counters, i.e. something that is only effective against a specific stragety, but beats that strategy 100% of the time, are not a good idea in terms of game balance.  Soft counters, cards that counter types of cards found in most or all decks (steal, rain of fire, deflag, and owls eye are some examples) should be encouraged.  Curently this game has only one card that could be considered a hard counter (maxwell's demon), lets not increase that number.

Imagine playing a fire deck against a deck with six floods.  How do you win? Its still possible, but it takes an incredible amount of luck. Basically you would have to win before they have mana to play the card.  Fire doesn't have the delay tactics to survive that.  Same with playing a life deck against forest fire. 

Eclipse is +2/+1 I thought.  Anways, my problem with the card isn't the bonuses, its the penalty for life.  That automatically kills any rustlers or forest spirits played.  Green isn't as effected by the -1/-0 as some elements, but that is also a major penalty.

Darken and Angelify are fine with the changes you've made, and the multiple effects are excellent.  (angelify might still be a little overpowered just because of how weak dark creatures are, but its at least at a concieveably balanced point)

You're right, I have no idea what quantum shift is supposed to do.  You need to rephrase the effect. I understand the concept now, but the card needs to say "... a single element that they already have quantums of."  Currently it is extremely vague.

[Scaredgirl]

They're not exactly any more difficult to code than the hero cards are. Almost all the hero cards have a new ability, just like these spell cards do. That's what makes them interesting.

First of all, I don't know what Hero cards you have been looking at but the ones I designed, almost all of them use cards/abilities already in the game. But lets not argue about that anymore because it seems pointless.

Now let's take your Flood as an example. Here is what it does:

- All opponents creatures get one damage done.
- However, if an opponent's creature is fire, it is immediately destroyed
- opponent's water creatures gain +3/+4.

You don't find that complicated? Compare it to cards already in the game, like Rain of Fire or Thunderstorm. See what I mean?

I don't think any card should do 3 different things at the same time, and most of your cards do. The more complicated they are, the less change there is that they would be made a reality.

[PuppyChow]

And I'm arguing that complicated is not a bad thing . Let's take a look at Vampire Lord, one of the best hero cards.

-Target loses two hp and two attack.
-Vampire Lord gains same amount.
-If target dies, a minor vampire is created on your side.

Counting them, you have five cards with two effects, one card with three, and six cards with one.
I have six with one, five with two, and three with three.

I used the same criteria with mine as I did with yours.

[Evil Hamster]

Quantum Shift WOULD only hurt Rainbow decks severely. I just don't think you understand its effect.

Let's say I have a Rainbow deck, middle-end game. I have 10+ quantum in every single element, and am thinking I'll win. Then the opponent plays Quantum Shift. A random element is chosen from a pool of all the elements I have, in this case lets say Dark gets chosen. ALL of my quantum are transferred to dark, so I now have 120+ Dark quantum and 0 other quantum.

Now let's say I have a dual deck, Air-Life. I'm running an FFQ deck and have all the queens I need out. I have 2 life quantum and 30 air quantum, and need more life to make more fireflies. Luckily for me, my opponent is stupid and plays Quantum Shift. A random element is chosen from the elements I have (so either Life or Air). Life gets chosen. All the quantum gets changed to life quantum, so I now have 32 life quantum and 0 air quantum.

Now let's say I have a mono deck, Fire, with 40 quantum. The opponent plays Quantum Shift, and it chooses the only element I have some in, fire (duh). Since I only have fire and all quantum I have are made in to fire, it has no effect. I still have 40 fire quantum.

Quantum shift would only delay a rainbow one turn. Mid-end game rainbow will have most likely have enough towers to regain enough quantums to keep playing after one turn.

And early game, mark change WOULD hurt Rainbow decks by forcing them out of time quantum. Thus they have trouble drawing more cards with hourglasses and playing sundials.

Might slow rainbow down slightly, but the mark is generally unimportant for rainbow. Change to chaos would make it easier to play supernova, gravity easier to fuel otyughs, air easier to play firefly queens and fuel eagle eyes, life would guarantee easier to make fireflys then mutate them with elves, etc.

I tend to run low on life/air/gravity in my rainbow decks. Never time. You'd have to change the mark on or before turn 4 to have any real effect and even then would only slow down extra card drawing a couple turns at most until I have enough towers out. It would be an annoyance more than a hinderance- which means it is a balanced idea 

[Scaredgirl]

And I'm arguing that complicated is not a bad thing . Let's take a look at Vampire Lord, one of the best hero cards.

-Target loses two hp and two attack.
-Vampire Lord gains same amount.
-If target dies, a minor vampire is created on your side.

Counting them, you have five cards with two effects, one card with three, and six cards with one.
I have six with one, five with two, and three with three.

I used the same criteria with mine as I did with yours.

You do understand the difference between ACTIVE and PASSIVE abilities, right? Only 3 of my Hero card ideas have 2 different things happening with an active ability, and those 2 things are logical and very easy to understand.

Vampire Lord could easily be reworded to:

-Drains 2/2 from target.
-If target dies, a minor vampire is created on your side.

See? Only 2 things happen.

Many of those your cards ideas (like Flood)  have active abilities with multiple parts like:

- A happens
- If B, then C happens
- If D, then E happens

You see there are all these conditional abilities. "If target is Life, he dies", " But if target has green pants, he gets 1 poison", etc. You might think that they make the game more complex and interesting, but actually they limit deck building because they are conditional.

But you can do whatever you want, I'm just giving my opinions.

[PuppyChow]

I used the if clauses to incorporate a creatures' element more. If you can think of better ways, go ahead . The main point of the cards is to just make the element of a card matter.

And my argument would be that my cards only have one active ability. Granted, they have multiple parts, but as long as they don't go crazy and start using clauses like "If the target is wearing green pants" like you said, I don't see a problem with it. Sorry.

Would a different effect for every element be too much? Yes. Would a different effect for three different elements be too much? In my mind, no.

What made games like Yu-gi-oh so successful (just an example. I used to play it >_>) was that they were complicated without getting TOO complicated. Then the creators of it started adding too many new things, and it dropped out of favor.

Simplicity = Bad.
TOO Complicated = Bad.
Happy Medium = Good.

Right now, I'd say Elements is in the simplicity stage, if only because of its youth. There aren't enough cards for many different combinations of usable decks; most good decks are either mono-dark, mono-fire, or rainbow. There are also features of cards that could be used better (their element).

And I've noticed you just pick and choose what to respond to  . I know I'm practically writing essays, but still...

[Scaredgirl]

I used the if clauses to incorporate a creatures' element more. If you can think of better ways, go ahead . The main point of the cards is to just make the element of a card matter.

And my argument would be that my cards only have one active ability. Granted, they have multiple parts, but as long as they don't go crazy and start using clauses like "If the target is wearing green pants" like you said, I don't see a problem with it. Sorry.

Would a different effect for every element be too much? Yes. Would a different effect for three different elements be too much? In my mind, no.

What made games like Yu-gi-oh so successful (just an example. I used to play it >_>) was that they were complicated without getting TOO complicated. Then the creators of it started adding too many new things, and it dropped out of favor.

Simplicity = Bad.
TOO Complicated = Bad.
Happy Medium = Good.

Right now, I'd say Elements is in the simplicity stage, if only because of its youth. There aren't enough cards for many different combinations of usable decks; most good decks are either mono-dark, mono-fire, or rainbow. There are also features of cards that could be used better (their element).

And I've noticed you just pick and choose what to respond to  . I know I'm practically writing essays, but still...

Sorry, I write tons of posts and PM's every day and have no time to respond to everything everyone says. I have to pick the comments I disagree with most.

You asked "Would a different effect for three different elements be too much?". My answer is YES. yours is no, so I will move on...

I will say one more thing. Good CCG's are based on having TONS of relatively simple cards that you can use to build all kinds of interesting combinations, and it's these card combinations that make the game complex, not some single cards that try to do everything.

[PuppyChow]

I guess we'll just agree to disagree  8)

[Kumlekar]

Lets just say that ScaredGirl would hate Last Stand in MTG.