Psychic Battle Blade | Psychic War Sword

[OdinVanguard]

NAME: Psychic Battle Blade ELEMENT: Aether COST: 2 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: 2+*|2 (if flown) TEXT: Weapon: Deals 2 spell-damage Raise damage by 3 each time a marked card is played. 1 : Mark 2 cards in your deck.	NAME: Psychic War Sword ELEMENT: Aether COST: 3 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: 4+*|4 (if flown) TEXT: Weapon: Deals 4 spell-damage Raise damage by 2 each time a marked card is played. 1 : Mark 2 cards in each deck.

ART: OdinVanguard, created using Hexagon, Bryce7, and GIMP IDEA: OdinVanguard NOTES: "Today the world will seem just out of reach" "The benefits of your patience and planning may seem intangible at first, but will soon pay off with time." Marking a card is a mechanic idea that allows players to gain delayed or trap like effects. The mark itself is not visible to players and does nothing in and of itself except to serve as a trigger for abilities that react to mark cards. In this case, this weapon gains power each time a marked card is played. The card(s) that is marked is chosen at random. Note that this weapon deals spell damage instead of physical damage (like psion or SoW effects) Asymptotically, the mark interaction would by akin to a triple strength neurotoxin, although it is much easier to counter by destroying the weapon or using a reflective shield. Finally, since this mechanic is intended to be used by several different cards, it may be possible to counter it by using other cards that interact with marked cards. SERIES: Marked Card Mechanic Series

[OdinVanguard]

Updated after a closer examination of cost efficiency.

Table shows turns since the first turn this card is played.
The assumptions being that this is the only thing marking cards, and that the player uses its ability every turn.
The columns starting with 'E_' represent expected values. E.g. the average you would expect over many games.
I.e. E_Trigger is the expected value for the number of times the ability would trigger after a given number of turns after being played.

With multiple copies of this in play, the damage can ramp quite quickly. The upper limit maximum of course is +3 per turn / +4 per turn for unupped / upped respectively. Which puts the upped in line with a steam machine in terms of damage ramp in the case of having both decks with all cards marked.

(For anyone interested, I generated the table using Jupyter notebook with an R kernel and the dplyr package)

[CactusKing]

Does it also trigger if the opponent plays a marked card?

[OdinVanguard]

Yes, this will trigger no matter who owns the marked card.
Though, as far as the mark mechanic is concerned, some cards or effects could certainly be worded to only trigger if a particular player owns the marked card.

[Aves]

When you are marking cards, are you marking specific copies or entire types?

[Hyroen]

I'm noting a slight inconsistency between card and notes. Does it gain power when a marked card is drawn or when played?

Also, in either case I'm thinking a marked card should be represented in some way.

[OdinVanguard]

I'm noting a slight inconsistency between card and notes. Does it gain power when a marked card is drawn or when played?

Also, in either case I'm thinking a marked card should be represented in some way.

Notes are wrong, should read 'played' as in the card.

When you are marking cards, are you marking specific copies or entire types?

It just marks one copy of a card.
I actually didn't think about having it mark entire types. That could certainly be useful for this card, though it may warrant a cost boost since that could mark up to 6 cards at once (more if a pillar or pendulum gets picked).
That could actually make this card a nice capstone for the series perhaps. It works well for weapons since players typically only have a few copies in a deck and including more copies provides less benefit than for other card types.