Cards & Effects: Stackable or non-stackable?

[ARTHANASIOS]

I make this thread in order to discuss in general if the community prefers stackable cards & effects or non-stackable ones.

Stackable: Cards & effects which are more powerful if played or used more than once.

Non-stackable: Cards & effects which have the same power no matter how many times are played or used.

Discuss...
 

[TheManuz]

I totally prefer stackable effects for the simple reason because i hate putting multiple copies of a card in a deck and having the first useful and the other five useless.
For this reason i hate Hope and Morning Star and Reflecting Shield. You put 2 in your deck and never draw them, you put 6 in your deck and always draw them and they worth nothing (except for the first one). There is no way to balance this, i find it disappointing.

[OldTrees]

While I too prefer stackable effects (when done right*) I have to disagree with TheMAnuz on this:

You put 2 in your deck and never draw them, you put 6 in your deck and always draw them and they worth nothing (except for the first one). There is no way to balance this.

Cards like this are usually balanced by taking the expected amount of dead draws and converting that into a casting cost reduction. Hence the reason that any conversion from non-stackable to stackable comes with a rebalancing nerf.


*Stackable effects are done right when no quantity has an advantage over the others (if players are rational) or the smaller numbers have a slight advantage (if players are biased to 6 of out of laziness).

[ARTHANASIOS]

1) They 'encourage' more creative deckbuilding by excluding common deck designs. I am not sure if this effect is desirable.
(we both agree it is not ideal since ideally people would sometimes be building decks that mimic non-stackability with stackable cards)
2) When a card is changed it gets rebalanced. Therefore non-stackable cards are rebalanced if they become stackable. This results in the same balance distribution as normal for the designer in question (Zanz). Please tell me if there is any part of this that is confusing because the propagation of this critique is a problem.
3) Even 6 times? I find that doubtful but you are making the claim so I suspect to be proven wrong.

I will also jump over to that thread.

Bringing the discussion here too.

1) I found that effect desirable, because common deck designs when used everytime and repeatingly become predictable and "boring" I dare to say. Using uncommon deck designs are more exciting to deckbuilders who are called to reach the limits of their skills and intelligence. However, I am not sure what you mean with "common deck designs" here, so I am not 100% sure I agree/disagree with you.

2) It has to be rebalanced for sure and because of this I would never be pissed of by a balanced stackable effect. However, if you include a stackable card once in your deck you are going to get 1x of your card cost, but if you include it 6 times you are going to harvest a benefit larget than 6x times of your card cost. On the other hand, in a non-stackable effect you always get what you have paid for.
 Tell me, why do I include my stackable card once in a deck and have only a small advantage while having it 6 times gives a super large one? Isn't this bad for deck design too? If non-stackable effects are not effective if included 6 times in a deck, doesn't the same happened for stackable effects where it is not effective if icluded just once in a deck?

3) Yes! Golden Hourglassed are useful even if included 6 times in a 60-card stall. Multiple shields are useful when you encounter PC and the more PC you encounter the more useful your multiple copies of shields are. Also, if you wish to outstall 30-card rush decks, you may play a permanent-only and/or spell-only deck which are slightly fatter than 30-card decks which need 6 copies of an important non-stackable permanent (shields, weapons, Flooding etc.) in order to ensure you will draw one early and you can replace it if the need arises.

[OldTrees]

1) I found that effect desirable, because common deck designs when used everytime and repeatingly become predictable and "boring" I dare to say. Using uncommon deck designs are more exciting to deckbuilders who are called to reach the limits of their skills and intelligence. However, I am not sure what you mean with "common deck designs" here, so I am not 100% sure I agree/disagree with you.

2) It has to be rebalanced for sure and because of this I would never be pissed of by a balanced stackable effect. However, if you include a stackable card once in your deck you are going to get 1x of your card cost, but if you include it 6 times you are going to harvest a benefit larget than 6x times of your card cost. On the other hand, in a non-stackable effect you always get what you have paid for.
 Tell me, why do I include my stackable card once in a deck and have only a small advantage while having it 6 times gives a super large one? Isn't this bad for deck design too? If non-stackable effects are not effective if included 6 times in a deck, doesn't the same happened for stackable effects where it is not effective if icluded just once in a deck?

3) Yes! Golden Hourglassed are useful even if included 6 times in a 60-card stall. Multiple shields are useful when you encounter PC and the more PC you encounter the more useful your multiple copies of shields are. Also, if you wish to outstall 30-card rush decks, you may play a permanent-only and/or spell-only deck which are slightly fatter than 30-card decks which need 6 copies of an important non-stackable permanent (shields, weapons, Flooding etc.) in order to ensure you will draw one early and you can replace it if the need arises.

1) It is easy to throw 4-6 copies of a stackable card into a deck. This is what I meant by common deck designs. Making a card non-stackable encourages decks with 1-3 copies by removing the option for the 4-6 copy decks. So rather than having mostly 4-6 decks with a few 1-3 decks you have all 1-3 decks.

2) You are conflating stackable with synergistic. Dimension Shield is an example of a card where 6 copies are better than 6x the benefit of 1 copy. However this is not the only model of stackable cards. Cards are still stackable if 6 copies are only as good as 3x the benefit of the 1st copy. Ideally designed and with rational players the benefit per card would be equal thus 6 copies is as good as 6 unique cards.

3)Golden Hourglass is a stackable card. Are shields (besides Dim) used in sets of 6? (I only have seen 3) However first turn Weapon is a good example of a 6 of.

[Anarook]

I always prefer to design non-stackable.
Case 1: Stackable cards often have an issue with being underpowered in singular copies and are dependent upon having more than one present at a time
or
Case 2: Are strong enough on their own that having multiple copies stacking has minimal effect, but it's important enough to have 1 copy active that you have multiple copies.

In either case they force you to put multiple copies of themselves in your deck and become dead cards at some point.
Case 1: I didn't draw any until it was too late; drew 1 or 2 but needed more and never drew them; drew them all at the beginning, but suffered because I didn't draw other cards that I needed.
Case 2: Drew one early - kept drawing them - didn't need the others and suffered because I couldn't draw other cards; draw one late - needed it a long time ago - useless now.

Case 2 is usually preferable because they're often close enough to non-stackable permanents to be effective.

All that said - a properly designed stacking card can be fantastic - problem is finding a good balance in usability,
IMO a well designed stackable card tends to work at optimum when there are 2 or 3 of it in play.

[ARTHANASIOS]

Just to clear something; we are discussing stackable here as a mechanic. In other words, Dims are NOT considered stackable here because there is not a mechanic that buffs each previous copy or synergizes with it. The effect of a Dim just fades out and you play another one (like Cloak or Wings). SoFre is stackable because its % is increased with each additional SoFre played. Empathic Bond can be considered stackable because healing per creature is increased with each copy. About Hourglass I am not sure.
As a community, we are wrongly considering 30 cards as the perfect deck size, which is wrong and biased (the truth is there is no perfect deck size, since the amount of strategies tend to be infinite). Every card can be used 6 times in 2 ocassions:
1) Restricted gameplay, where certain cards & strategies are allowed (eg. Weekly Tournies).
2) Konwledge of your opponent's deck, where the appropriate cards are going to be used (eg. Oracle's False God).

In unrestricted gameplay, honestly speaking, there are a few OP cards & synergies which overshadow everything else, especially some of the Shards. Balancing here has nothing to do with stackable or non-stackable effects; it has to do with cost & effectiveness.

Finally, I like the fact some cards are usually included 1-3 times in a 'typical' 30-card deck. They serve their role just fine...

[Hyroen]

I think it definitely depends on the type of card. Also, I think any card, at least depending on the deck should be useful in multiple copies.

Cards should also be able to distinguish in their text if they stack or not, despite the fact that the game itself doesn't do a very good job of this either.

[Demonite]

actually don't care. since every card is as good as it is...

[charles_xavier]

I like Purify & Poison as they are: stackable. But I would love to have them imposed a limit, like no more than -10 from poisoning per turn.

[Acsabi44]

A non- stackable card is bad design as in drawing more than 1 is unfun.

On the other hand it encourages clever deckbuilding because the game rewards using the correct amount in your deck (as opposed to "as many as I can fit" which is the case with stackable effects). In this regard an unstackable card is a good design. (it encoureages experimentation and rewards doing so, and it also rewards skill)

A stackable card with a marginal or situational effect (like purify) also rewards clever deckbuilding (since at a certain number, additional copies will offer too littlie value they become redundant), but cards like Nightfall (the card which made Allcaps create this topic in the first place) are hardly marginal and never redundant.