Obscure | Obscurantism

[OldTrees]

I think it would work better as an eternal as far as the entire 'mind-game' type thing goes. However, it would be an absurd benefit for the other player to not see your health or his for any lengthy amount of time.

What do you mean?
I would still be able to calculate the damage I would be taking/dealing. I would be able to see/calculate the amount of healing. Same for Sanc, SoSac and Silence.

[BumbleSting]

I think it would work better as an eternal as far as the entire 'mind-game' type thing goes. However, it would be an absurd benefit for the other player to not see your health or his for any lengthy amount of time.

What do you mean?
I would still be able to calculate the damage I would be taking/dealing. I would be able to see/calculate the amount of healing. Same for Sanc, SoSac and Silence.

That's true, if you number crunch you can get around it, but really doing mental math is not much fun at all. So looking at it from that angle, you can either stress out about all the different variables and have a poor time, or give your opponent an advantage.

[Zam888]

I think it would work better as an eternal as far as the entire 'mind-game' type thing goes. However, it would be an absurd benefit for the other player to not see your health or his for any lengthy amount of time.

What do you mean?
I would still be able to calculate the damage I would be taking/dealing. I would be able to see/calculate the amount of healing. Same for Sanc, SoSac and Silence.

That's true, if you number crunch you can get around it, but really doing mental math is not much fun at all. So looking at it from that angle, you can either stress out about all the different variables and have a poor time, or give your opponent an advantage.

Addition isn't really that rigorous 

[BumbleSting]

I think it would work better as an eternal as far as the entire 'mind-game' type thing goes. However, it would be an absurd benefit for the other player to not see your health or his for any lengthy amount of time.

What do you mean?
I would still be able to calculate the damage I would be taking/dealing. I would be able to see/calculate the amount of healing. Same for Sanc, SoSac and Silence.

That's true, if you number crunch you can get around it, but really doing mental math is not much fun at all. So looking at it from that angle, you can either stress out about all the different variables and have a poor time, or give your opponent an advantage.

Addition isn't really that rigorous 

When I'm playing games on the internet, I'm far too lazy to do any math But seriously, you would have to account for adrenaline if that was in play, and there are all types of other damage modifiers. Also, if this card was played on other monsters, it would be nearly impossible.

[odideph]

I think it would work better as an eternal as far as the entire 'mind-game' type thing goes. However, it would be an absurd benefit for the other player to not see your health or his for any lengthy amount of time.

I think so too, but i have trouble figuring out a simple, intuitive way to make it still useful when you have >=2 of them in hand.
Eternal spells are supposed to be playable an unlimited amount of times per turn (quanta permitting), right?
If not, i could modify that into 1 time per turn per card, but i'd need extra space to explain all that. I have this rule that if the required card text is longer than the Card Builder's allowed space, i consider it too complicated and cut out some features.

About your 2nd statement, assuming you mean "drawback" instead of "benefit" (else i don't know what you meant), that would be the whole point of the card's mechanic, because too short amounts of obscured time are unlikely to make the enemy make bad decisions. He could just do some quick maths and reach accurate estimations, essentially negating the effect of the card.
I'd like to make it increasingly difficult for the enemy to keep track of what's going on, the more Obscures you play. Kind of like how it becomes impossible to control someone's permanents/creatures the more PA/Quints he casts.

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Just saw the comments posted in the meantime. As far as i'm concerned, i do the maths every turn when playing Elements, it really helps achieving victory to know if you can wait X more turns before playing SoSac/Skyblitz, how many cards your opponent is able to play if you stop your Sundial/Dim Shield/SoSac chain, how big can i let this Lava Golem grow before i must antimatter it, and such things. It can take fair amounts of time in PvP, FG and Arena fights.

This card is aimed specifically at PvP, (unless the AI can pretend making mistakes  ) and yeah it aims to make calculus too time-consuming or unaccurate to be worth it, among other things. I think it could bring some new interesting strategies to the metagame, by bringing this new form of control: there was QC, PC, CC, hand control, and Cloak was the only information control but limited to your field. This adds targeted information control over things you couldn't obscure before.

[BumbleSting]

I think it would work better as an eternal as far as the entire 'mind-game' type thing goes. However, it would be an absurd benefit for the other player to not see your health or his for any lengthy amount of time.

I think so too, but i have trouble figuring out a simple, intuitive way to make it still useful when you have >=2 of them in hand.
Eternal spells are supposed to be playable an unlimited amount of times per turn (quanta permitting), right?
If not, i could modify that into 1 time per turn per card, but i'd need extra space to explain all that. I have this rule that if the required card text is longer than the Card Builder's allowed space, i consider it too complicated and cut out some features.

About your 2nd statement, assuming you mean "drawback" insted of "benefit" (else i don't know what you meant), that would be the whole point of the card's mechanic, because too short amounts of obscured time are unlikely to make the enemy make bad decisions. He could just do some quick maths and reach accurate estimations, essentially negating the effect of the card.
I'd like to make it increasingly difficult for the enemy to keep track of what's going on, the more Obscures you play. Kind of like how it becomes impossible to control someone's permanents/creatures the more PA/Quints he casts.

=======

Just saw the comments posted in the meantime. As far as i'm concerned, i do the maths every turn when playing Elements, it really helps achieving victory to know if you can wait X more turns before playing SoSac/Skyblitz, how many cards your opponent is able to play if you stop your Sundial/Dim Shield/SoSac chain, how big can i let this Lava Golem grow before i must antimatter it, and such things. It can take fair amounts of time in PvP, FG and Arena fights.

This card is aimed specifically at PvP, (unless the AI can pretend making mistakes  ) and yeah it aims to make calculus too time-consuming or unaccurate to be worth it,a mong other things. I think it could bring some new interesting strategies to the metagame, by bringing this new form of control: there was QC, PC, CC, hand control, and Cloak was the only information control but limited to your field. This adds targeted information control over things you couldn't obscure before.

That's a good policy, nothing is more annoying in a card game than long card explanations that take a good minute to read. As to the entire math point, I do math too when playing in regards to when I can play cards and such, but I feel like having to add up all the other cards plus modifiers together and then subtracting your shield's reduction which is often varied based on how many cards your opponent has and then factoring in any other effects such as poison (which you wouldn't be able to see) would just be too much. I think this could work for AI, it would just mean every time the computer tried to call its health variable, there would be a few points of randomness.

[OldTrees]

Eternal spells are supposed to be playable an unlimited amount of times per turn (quanta permitting), right?

Yes.
The 1 turn per copy in hand Eternal spell version would be a neat design. (Bias: I am the OP of the Eternal Spells thread)
This would be roughly equivalent in cost to a 5 turn normal version.

[OdinVanguard]

There's also mutants to think about. If a mutant is obscured, you will have no idea what its capabilities actually are.

[OldTrees]

There's also mutants to think about. If a mutant is obscured, you will have no idea what its capabilities actually are.

Until the ability is used and it attacks (math required)

This card is really good at hiding information. I like it a lot. 

[odideph]

There's also mutants to think about. If a mutant is obscured, you will have no idea what its capabilities actually are.

Until the ability is used and it attacks (math required)

This card is really good at hiding information. I like it a lot. 

Yay!!

Spoiler for Hidden:

...I just had to do it x)

On-topic: i've made this new version (v1.2 so far) as an attempt to turn Obscure into an efficient Eternal card, based on the suggestion of said Idea Guru:

The 1 turn per copy in hand Eternal spell version would be a neat design.

Since that squishes the main mechanism over one line plus one word, i wonder if it's still intuitive enough. Other than that, does it look balanced?

[memimemi]

What are the counters to this card?  I would suggest that Holy Light, at least, should remove the effect - shining light into the shadows, revealing all.

I really like the concept behind this card; there are fewer things more satisfying than screwing with your opponent's head.

[odideph]

Yeah that would be fun 

As for Holy Light, i just so happens that theme-wise and cost-wise, it looks perfect. The problems would be targeting permanents, which Holy Light can't do, and the fact that you can re-obscure targets afterwards, if the Eternal version is the one that is retained.
I'll add it in a "counters" section, along with whatever else i can think of.