Blood Shield | Blood Aegis

[OdinVanguard]

NAME: Blood Shield ELEMENT: Darkness COST: 4 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: TEXT: Shield: Reduce damage by N. Mark a card in a random hand when struck. N=number of marked cards in both hands.	NAME: Blood Aegis ELEMENT: Darkness COST: 3 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: TEXT: Shield: Reduce damage by N. Mark a card in a random hand when struck. N=number of marked cards in both hands.

ART: OdinVanguard, created using Hexagon and Bryce7 IDEA: OdinVanguard NOTES: "Secrets and misdirection rule the day today" "Take refuge in shadow of your secrets today. Sometimes silence is the best defense." Another exploration in the possibilities for card marking mechanics. In this case, a shield that grows in power each time it is struck by marking cards in players' hands. Here 'struck' means that an attack deals damage to the owner of the shield. I.e. the shield only gains strength when an attack gets through. Ideally, the damage reduction should update dynamically. E.g. If your opponent had 5 4|4 creatures in play and you and your opponent had a total of at least 5 cards in your hands combined, then the 1st creature deals 4 damage, then the second deals 3, then 2, then 1, and the last creature would deal 0. The card to be marked gets picked randomly from among all unmarked cards in either hand. As discussed in the other cards in this series, players cannot see the marks directly and the marks have no effect outside of card that interact with them, so the only way a player would know if they played a marked card or not would be through observing carefully. The nightmare synergy is very much intentional, as is the pairing with the previous weapon card,Psychic Battle Blade, which would effectively penalize the opponent playing marked cards from their hand. SERIES: Marked Card Mechanic Series

[kaempfer13]

This is actually insanely powerful even on its own. At the cost of never playing 7 cards until you win you can stack 7 dmg reduction with relative ease, which can be good enough to replace dims in otks that dont mind the drawback all that much. As you noted it works well with nightmare making it a great asset to all kinds of darkdoms, it also works well in a stall with vagger and siphon life providing inelement healing as well which help you recover from the early dmg intake. N grows pretty quickly (unless the shield already does its job), so even though many marked cards will be played right after the marking, you should reach a sizeable dmg reduction fairly quickly (I think after 10 hits you can reasonably assume at least 4 DR which is better than diamonds). Dynamic updating makes the card even stronger than it already is, especially with no way to play cards between the creatures attacks.

Also i want marked cards to be marked (it's in the name!) so that players can see what cards are affected, a glow or a symbol like for momentum, adrenaline etc. will do.

[OdinVanguard]

This is actually insanely powerful even on its own. At the cost of never playing 7 cards until you win you can stack 7 dmg reduction with relative ease, which can be good enough to replace dims in otks that dont mind the drawback all that much. As you noted it works well with nightmare making it a great asset to all kinds of darkdoms, it also works well in a stall with vagger and siphon life providing inelement healing as well which help you recover from the early dmg intake. N grows pretty quickly (unless the shield already does its job), so even though many marked cards will be played right after the marking, you should reach a sizeable dmg reduction fairly quickly (I think after 10 hits you can reasonably assume at least 4 DR which is better than diamonds). Dynamic updating makes the card even stronger than it already is, especially with no way to play cards between the creatures attacks.

Also i want marked cards to be marked (it's in the name!) so that players can see what cards are affected, a glow or a symbol like for momentum, adrenaline etc. will do.

Hmm... I may actually need to raise the cost on this I think...
The one benefit is that it does have to let through at least a few hits to grow, so venomous creatures will see a nice strategic boost.

Since you mention diamond shield,

I think I may need to raise the cost to 5 or 6 at least. Some feedback would be useful on this since I'm not sure how to weight the disadvantage of retaining cards versus the advantage of gaining higher DR.

Lastly, I am torn on having marked cards glow or not... Having it invisible can be useful for adding an element of mind games and bluffing to the game. It also makes it harder for the opponent to get around marked effects by avoiding the use of marked cards... I do see the merit of adding a glow like you suggest though...
I think it might be worthwhile to open a design idea thread on the topic.