Face-down Mechanics

[EmeraldTiger]

How would this best fit, if at all, into ETG?

Similar method to MTG, Yugio or some other CCG?

Methods of turning face up:
cost
trigger
turn delay
targeting

Would we want the face-down form to occupy the creature or permanent area?
Would the face-down form be considered an Other card?
What kind of abilities would, turning a card face-up, could we create?

I would like to explore this further. Let us see what we can come up with.

Discuss.

[Captain Scibra]

I don't believe it fits EtG that well.  Playing cards face down to save hand space could be potentially OP, and completely disarm GotP abilities. Flip effects are better off as one-time abilities, in my opinion.  Also, for trap cards, that would require a whole new playing system, whereas we simply use triggers .  There are too many alternatives for any reason to implement such a mechanic.

[traceurling]

I feel like most useful part would be as trap cards, like Mana Parasite: "next creature to cast a spell is delayed for 4 turns" or Poison Trap: "next creature to be played has a poison counter placed on it" and just have them as a permanent where they are "face down" and they expire after one casting...of course these mechanics could work without facedown but it'd be more "trap like" and f with the meta

[Zaealix]

Seee...It's a neat thought, but the trouble is, if such a mechanic were to be introduced, it'd have to be part of a set or expansion-type patch...I dunno if it'd be worthwhile to try, to be honest.
Though it would be nice for precognition to have a point aside the extra draws

[traceurling]

Also there's the problem of not being able to confirm the enemy isn't hacking or glitchinf or anything...

[OdinVanguard]

A face down mechanic makes a great option for trap cards.

I think "invisibility removal" should be added to your list of proposed reveal triggers, since that would make a lot of sense as well.

I've been trying to get this mechanic going for use in trap like cards for a while now:



unupped image broken

[ZephyrPhantom]

Also there's the problem of not being able to confirm the enemy isn't hacking or glitchinf or anything...

As long an Interface Screw card is reasonably designed, (like Cloak) players will adapt to it over time. I see no problems with facedown cards as long as there's a visual 'indicator' that they're facedown (like Cloak 'shows' it's cloaked the whole field).
The problem with face-down cards is that you need a lot of them to actually confuse your opponent - having only a small group of cards that enter play facedown is a dead giveaway if your opponent can access the wiki or there's no way to 'mix' up cards in a situation (E.g. If there exist 3 different Entropy cards that can be played facedown I could plausibly mindgame, but if there's only one facedown mechanic card for each element it'll be easily figured out depending on the elements I use.) That means you need to either do one of two things in the game you introduce them in:

1) Make every card able to be played facedown somehow. (E.g. Yugioh gives players the option to play almost all 'summonable' monster cards facedown, which sidesteps the 'easy identification' problem)
2) Introduce a lot of cards that can enter play facedown as a mechanic/set/series. (E.g. MtG always tries to put a notable amount of 'Morph' (Play facedown) cards in any set that features the mechanic.)

ETG doesn't support 1), so you'd have to introduce a large series of these based on #2 (such a series doesn't have to cover all the elements - e.g. you could just introduce a series of ~6 Darkness cards that all have a 'play facedown' ability, which would still confuse the opponent when played since there's too many of them to figure it out easily. In fact, I'd prefer such a "focused-element series' for this mechanic because it makes the card less predictable and this mechanic wants less predictable plays to occur.).

[OdinVanguard]

One suggestion for the "needing a bunch of traps" issue...
A trap like this can solve the problem partly even if there are only a handful of traps at first:


Since it is fused, it will look just like a trap from whatever element is used for the fused quanta. That means, the opponent will never truly know if a given trap is the one for a particular element, or if it is one of these.

The only caveat there is that all traps would need to fall in a certain range of quanta costs for the deception to work right.

[dragonsdemesne]

MORPH -An MTG morph effect could work in theory, but only if enough cards were created to make it hard for the opponent to reliably know what was going on.  For example, if there is only one 2 hidden card, and the opponent plays an 'unknown' 2 costing card, well, gee, I wonder what they just played?  You could make all of them cost the same, either an in-element cost like 3 or 3 , or else have everything be an 'other' card and cost something like 5  , but having an other cost creates a host of other balance problems, unless the cards aren't particularly strong.  (see current other cards, shield, short sword, hammer, etc)  Given the rate of new cards, the only viable solution in the short term would be an across the board uniform other cost, which I don't like.

The Dragon's Demesne
Other Permanent
3 cost to play
8 : Flip this card up and discard it.  Place a random dragon into play on your side.

TRAP - A 'trap' mechanic.  This would have a few ways of implementing.  One could play it for 0 cost, and have it trigger on some given condition (creature dying, life gained, full hand, spell cast, etc) if a particular quanta cost can be played. For example, consider the following card:

Zanzarino's Revenge
Gravity Permanent
Cost = 0
When opponent kills one of your creatures, if you have at least 5 in your pool, lose 5 and this card is sacrificed.  Your opponent takes damage equal to that creature's hp.

It would still be obvious in a mono if this was the only gravity one, but if there were a couple of them, or you were playing more than one element, it could be harder to figure it out, although a good player could probably analyse deck strategy and still figure it out most of the time.

TARGETING: I'm imagining this working somewhat like the original wording of MTG's Illusionary Mask.  (not the BS errataed version)  Or perhaps MTG's Camouflage.  Imagine a card like this:

Camouflage (yes, plagiarism, I know...)
Life spell
3 cost
When Camouflage is cast, flip all your creatures facedown and shuffle them randomly on your field.  Reveal them only if targeted by a spell or effect.  New creatures played afterwards are played face up.

[OdinVanguard]

If there are a couple traps that use a fused cost, however, the opponent would not be able to discern if the trap just played was an "in element" trap or one of the fused cost traps. All they know is that 3 from a particular element vanished and there is a face down card.

So in theory, it would take only two or 3 fused cost cards and 1 in element cost card for each element.

Even then, not every element needs to get a trap since you could still make traps work for the ones that do since the opponent cant tell if a given trap is one of the fused traps or not.

Lastly, fused cost mechanics overcome a number of the balancing issues with cost, so that problem should be alleviated as well.

Another option (or one that can be used concurrently) is to provide a card that lets a player play any permanent they want face down.
With two or three of such a card, a player could make it virtually impossible for the opponent to discern what has been played

Spoiler for Examples:

For permanents only:


Or if we allow both creatures and permanents:

[Zaealix]

hrrrm...
'Fused' mechanic could be merged with the 'face-down' mechanic for ease of building, and then, we could introduce...maybe three or so creatures that all have the cloaking ability...
but an issue comes to mind-what does face-down as a mechanic DO, besides leave the opponent guessing as far as creatures go?
I mean, assume I've got an artic squid out and the quanta to feed it, and my opponent plays a face-down creature. why should I not just freeze-lock it, outside of there being heavier hitter on his field?
...They're going to need to be very damaging, or have an effect that makes them worth killng.
I'm thinking mix it up.
First off, the 'Fused mechanic to prevent quanta watching being a giveaway.
As for what kinds...A  creature that gives counts for two deaths when it dies (it's a trap!) another creature that does damage when killed, another variation that does spell damage when killed at the cost of weaker attack power than the one that does normal damage, and a few nasty variations, like one that applies poison, one that drains quanta and damages.
That sound good to you guys?

[eaglgenes101]

It's probably work something like Burrow, where there are 2 states to a card and a skill to switch between them.