I understand the argument that there should be punishment for trying to harm life's creatures, but if we're drawing on the real world, there are none. If you find a pond and smash a frog, nothing bad will happen to you. The other frogs in the pond won't attack. The same holds true for every creature in currently in the element of life, actually.
There are none if you're applying this example to Life's creatures based on if they were real creatures. But the problem is that they're not real creatures, they're creatures in a fantasy card game. Based on that factor alone, there's really no way for you to say how each creature can or can't behave because there's nothing defined to indicate how exactly they're supposed to behave. Case in point: Dragons do not exist in the real world therefore I can assume that they must behave in ways similar to various stories discussing them. Problem is that some stories indicate that Dragons are solitary creatures while others indicate that they're extremely defensive of each other and actually do feel the emotions I listed earlier when one of their own is killed. Also, I'm very interested to know exactly what Empathic Bond does if Life doesn't possess any kind of unification between its creatures to begin with.
Some sort of pride based mechanic would be cool. For instance: Bear. If a creature would die, all other bears get buffed. This won't work for 2 reasons:
1. It is unreasonable that you would get out multiple bears before the enemy kills it.
2. It is unreasonable that an enemy would kill your bear once you have multiple out.
If your bear is strong enough to survive CC (which currently requires 4-6 HP), than it's too slow to rush. And as life has no draw power, it is unlikely to get more than 2 bears out before the game is over.
At it's core, the card is flawed because it relies on your opponent's mistake, not your own good play.
I'm not exactly sure why being too slow to rush is a bad thing. Look at Life's card pool. Do the cards provided mean that rushing is the only thing Life is supposed to do? Not at all. I'm going to assume that if you're bothering to use this Bear card then you would surely also take Mitosis with you which means that the likelihood of getting out more than 2 bears before the game is over is much greater than you say.
So I've addressed problem 1 - more HP, less rush power, the card still works more than fine.
And 2 - That's the point. You have a single Bear producing more Bears using Mitosis, throw in a few Bonds as well, and suddenly the risk of killing off that Bear to stop more from appearing is terrifying.
And for that last part - that's why you also use the card to your own strategy rather than hoping the opponent kills it being your only win condition.
So how DOES life survive in the real world.
Life creatures don't protect each other. If a creature lights on fire, that's it, bye. If wolves attack a tribe of buffalo, the buffalo all run together, and the slow sick buffalo gets eaten. Yes, a mother will attack you if you threaten it's cubs, but I listed earlier why this method wouldn't be smart. Life /does/ survive because it generates more creatures that can be killed.
Yes, but there are also creatures that exist in the real world that demonstrate different behavior. For example, bees. Several species of bees are extremely defensive of their fellow workers and will pursue attackers until the threat has either left their territory or has more or less been removed entirely.
Again, the fact these creatures are in a sense not real means that deciding what behavior they exhibit will be inconclusive unless it is clearly established by zanz.
And you say, "that's what mitosis is". I won't take credit for designing mitosis. I did come up with bunnies, which ran off of a similar mechanic. The card was underpowered and it's probably a good idea it wasn't added, but there's a reason I made mitosis a creature's ability and not a spell. If you put mitosis on a creature, and every time you activated the ability you got another creature with mitosis, there would be durability and creature protection. More creatures than can be controlled. Right now, playing mitosis on a creature is basically condemning it.
The exact same can be said of Adrenaline as well, which is another reason why some form of creature protection would be well deserved. With all the methods used to condemn Life's creatures to death by CC, you'd think there'd be at least some way to prevent that...right?
You miss my point.
At current, the cheapest 6-HP creature in the game is hematite golem, which costs 4. Giving this creature an ability would mean it costs 5, at a minimum. If you plan on running mitosis bears, then the /second/ you drop mitosis on the first bear, they will kill it. You lose two cards, they lose at minimum two cards. No card advantage is lost or gained, but their deck is still functioning and yours isn't.
To counteract this, you play a second bear to try and dissuade them from killing your first one. But now you're talking 15 quanta (unupped) and three cards before your deck moves beyond being a rush. By the time you have all three of those, you've probably already lost.
And if you aren't going mitosis bears, than the card is just a dead card. Let's make it completely overpowered.
Bear:
7 life
4/6
If an allied creature would die, it attacks 4 times per turn.
You could either save up until you've got enough bears to dissuade them from killing anything, but if you do you'll get outrushed by a mile. Or you could ramp into spamming them, with the same ramp that isn't protected.
For bears to work, they'd have to be low enough cost that you can get them out /before/ you get your combo cards, they have to be durable enough that they don't just get killed, and they have to do enough damage that they're actually a threat. Even then there are problems. If it just gets flat damage, then the enemy will use global CC and tank your damage, and then whoops there goes your spammed creatures. If it gets damage based upon what was killed, you now need both bears /and/ expensive creatures, in which case they'll just kill your ramp and call it a day.
Here is my best attempt at balancing bear.
3 life:
2/6
Every time an allied creature dies, bears get +4/+0
It's still a bit too expensive to rush, a bit too strong for it's cost, and still doesn't stop the enemy from killing your one combo card and walking away. You play 1 mitosis, and in exchange for dealing with a 6/6, the enemy doesn't have to face your combo. It's a 6/6 for three! That's really powerful! But you can't get enough of them out soon enough to protect your card. And if you put mitosis on one, it loses the ability. AND it's still completely shut down by shields. You can't have it be your only damage and you can't use it to help your actual damage. Without any draw power, or durable ramp, it's a dead card.
So let's make Bear's base stats big enough that they're a threat without having something die.
5 life
6/6
Whenever a creature dies, bear gets +6/+0
At the start this card is already broken. It's a 6/6 for five. And a 12/6? No thank you. But it's still really hard to work that into a deck. Do you put mitosis on it? You'll need to get out a lot of bears in order to dissuade me from just killing it. Do you use it to cover your rustler? Because rustlers need to drop early, and this thing costs 5. Do you use it to protect your fractal'd frogs? 7 killed frogs translates to a 48/6 bear on the field. But now you're talking about getting fractal, and enough life for fractaled frogs, and a bear on the field. AND a single shield /still/ stops the deck. Even making the card horribly broken still leaves it inefficient. At best, it's a really broken vulture to put in a death/life deck, and we all know how viable death/life is right now.
In order for me to play the card, it'd need one of two things.
1) Be cheap enough to play before my rustler.
2) Be deadly enough to base my deck around
If it's cheap enough to protect my rustler, that's a 0-1 drop. I think you'll find it extraordinarily hard to justify a 0-1 drop 6 health creature with an ability that gives it damage. And if it doesn't have enough damage, they'll just kill the rustler.
If it's deadly enough to base my deck around, it has to be more efficient than cockatrice, which are currently life's durable damage. Cockatrice are a 4/4 for 3. Bears could be an 8/8 for 6, but that's still requiring 6 life quanta to drop this thing. Where are you getting that from? And the ability would still have to be strong enough to punish an enemy for hitting it, so now you're talking an 8/8 for 6 that gains more than 8 damage when it dies (can you say broken?), and even that requires at least two of these things in an element with no draw power. So do you put it in time/life stall? It'd be a strong mito/SoR stall, until the enemy uses any permanent control or quanta control and you just roll over and die again.
And
even if you balance this thing so it's cheap enough to deal the damage and comes out fast enough to have a lot and can be used to drop those cards you absolutely need first turn, it's still entirely based around an opponent's mistake. It's only effective protection if it comes out faster than what you're protecting, and does more damage than what you're protecting, and what you're protecting is more damage than their deck can take. There's no way to balance that.
This isn't even considering the problem that such a card, if effective protection, would probably be even more effective if in a cremation rainbow.
