Obscure | Obscurantism

[odideph]

NAME: Obscure ELEMENT: Darkness COST: 2 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: For 4 turns, your enemy can't see any status about target creature or permanent. Can target untargetable.	NAME: Obscurantism ELEMENT: Darkness COST: 1 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: For 5 turns, your enemy can't see any status about target creature, permanent, or player. Can target untargetable.

ART: odideph IDEA: odideph NOTES: What does "can't see any status" mean exactly?: Your enemy only sees the picture and name of the target: 1) If it's a creature, he doesn't see or hear its HP, ATK, momentum/adrenaline/immaterial/frozen/gravity pull statuses. As long as the creature doesn't die, he has no idea if it even attacks, if anything is damaging it, etc... 2) If it's a permanent, he can't find out if it's immaterial without targeting it with something. More importantly, he doesn't know how many charges remain on a Bone Wall for example. 3) If the target is a player (refered to as "Obscured player" from here on), the enemy player: -can't see or hear the inflicting of Purify/Poison/Shard of Sacrifice statuses (however if for example you cast Deadly Poison, he still sees you play that card) on the Obscured player, -sees the amount of HP of the Obscured player as "???/???", and the colored bars that represents HP (green) and the damage taken next turn (yellow) both disappear. -If Obscurantism is on the enemy player, he still sees his hand so he can play, but if casted on yourself, the enemy doesn't see the backs of the cards in your hands, instead he sees a dark "?", which means he doesn't know how many cards you have in your hand. -The enemy also sees the amount of quanta of the Obscured player as "??" (in every element). Why can it target untargetable things?: The spell doesn't do anything to the target, it effects your enemy, making him unable to see the target clearly. You can hide immaterial things with Cloak, that's basically the same idea. Example uses: -Obscuring 3 Voodoo Dolls, then using 3 Rage Potions on 1 of them. You enemy now has to guess which one he must thunderbolt; -Obscuring yourself so the enemy doesn't know when you have the quanta to play Fractal/Miracle/Skyblitz or an Instosis-like combo; -On a SoSac user, making it hard for him to estimate if he can survive the 48(40) HP cost; -On all of your creatures before using Overdrive/Butterfly Effect/Mitosis on one of them; -On a creature you are about to mutate with Fallen Druid, making the enemy unable to know what stats and ability it will have; -In a stall deck with Stone Skins, to prevent the enemy from knowing how much you can heal, and how much HP you even have currently; -Before casting Quintessence on one of your fragile creatures, so the enemy doesn't know which one won't die from his Rain of Fire; -Before using random spells, like Chaos Power. If the enemy tries to kill a CP'ed creature, he has no idea how much damage he must deal to it; -etc. Counters to this card: -CC, PC, and such things can still affect obscured entities, it doesn't protect them. -Math and logical thinking: the enemy can try to keep track of what's happening by paying extra attention to what you play, how many turns have passed etc. Alternatively, not paying attention at all negates the time-consuming effect of trying to keep track. - Sanctuary makes it impossible to cast Obscure directly on a player who owns a Sanctuary. Other obscured things would still be obscured for him. This card would counter: - Precognition: the "see enemy cards" part. SERIES:

Pictures of the same situation:
A) with some things Obscured (1 player, 1 stack of permanents, and 1 creature)
B) without Obscure:

Obscured

Spoiler for "Normal":

Spoiler for "Old versions":

[OdinVanguard]

Interesting card, but its too expensive for the effect. Cloak is a much better deal in many ways as it stands now.
Also, why is upped more expensive than unupped? There doesn't seem to be any additional benefit.

[odideph]

Interesting card, but its too expensive for the effect. Cloak is a much better deal in many ways as it stands now.
Also, why is upped more expensive than unupped? There doesn't seem to be any additional benefit.

Hmm yeah i've most likely overpriced it. The upped version can target players, which is a huge improvement. It's hard to heal/miracle/sosac in time when you don't even know how much HP you have exactly (and in a similar way, hard to unleash your burst at the right time to finish off the enemy).

[Zam888]

Interesting card, but its too expensive for the effect. Cloak is a much better deal in many ways as it stands now.
Also, why is upped more expensive than unupped? There doesn't seem to be any additional benefit.

Hmm yeah i've most likely overpriced it. The upped version can target players, which is a huge improvement. It's hard to heal/miracle/sosac in time when you don't even know how much HP you have exactly (and in a similar way, hard to unleash your burst at the right time to finish off the enemy).

To me, it sounds a little too situational to justify a 9 cost...maybe 6 or 7? But then again, the uses for player targeting that you mentioned are critical moments, normally late into a game, so perhaps the 9 is reasonable.

[OdinVanguard]

Given the effect is temporary, single target, and doesn't really offer protection, just makes things harder to analyze, I'd say a pretty low casting cost is in order. Maybe 2 or 3 .

Alternatively, this may make a very nice eternal spell
(see the thread in design theory: Eternal Spells)
E.g. Make it an eternal spell, drop it to one or 2 turn length and give it a 1 or 2 cost.
...Probably need to add a discard effect as well if there is room.

As an eternal spell this would be very cool I think.

Lastly, there should be some way to dispel the effect... maybe just have it be dispelled like invisible? If this is an eternal, that could be the discard effect.

You could word it as:
"Eternal: Retained after casting
Hide status of target card in play for 2 turns or until this card is discarded."
There should be enough room to add "or player" in the upped version as well.
Just put that it can target immaterials / untargetables in the Notes.

[odideph]

Given the effect is temporary, single target, and doesn't really offer protection, just makes things harder to analyze, I'd say a pretty low casting cost is in order. Maybe 2 or 3 .

Alternatively, this may make a very nice eternal spell [...]

Oh right, eternal spells are an interesting concept, and when designing this card i was initially making the effect permanent. Then i asked myself what the counter should be, since everything is supposed to have a counter (even Platinum arena decks!................they lose HP every day :/).

So instead of complicating things i made it last 5 turns, which is pretty long. But yeah i wanted to make the enemy feel like he's taking random decisions because he can't see sh*t. That effect is currently not really obtained because the enemy will lose correct sight of up to 6 things only, but in the making i realized how powerful it could be on the players themselves, poison counters, growing creatures, etc.

Making it Eternal, with a low-ish duration and a low cost, could allow the initially desired effect, that's right.
I'd like some more opinions on this.

[AnonymousRevival]

What I find obscure about this is that you use obscure as the card name, which is obscure.

Obscure means 'vague' or 'not clear'. It does not amplify the 'hiding' or 'shadowy' effect.

[Zam888]

What I find obscure about this is that you use obscure as the card name, which is obscure.

I see what you did there

However, Merriam-Webster does define it as "shrouded in or hidden by darkness"

[AnonymousRevival]

Noooooo! Dictionary.com, why have you failed me?

[odideph]

I was expecting that one  any thoughts on the balance and such things though?

[choongmyoung]

Just keep the cost 4 for the upped one.
9 is huuuuuuge, huuuuuge quanta.
Currently, except for dragon and nymph, there's very few cards absorbing 9+ quanta.
Obscurantism is not worth it.

[odideph]

Just keep the cost 4 for the upped one.
[...]

I guess costs likes 2 (4 upped) should be fine then, because the upped one is alot more powerful than the unupped one, because of player targeting. Unupped cost is similar to Silence, Reverse Time, and upped cost is around Cloak and some shields, should be a good basis?