Less powerful, more strategic cards!

[Pantheon]

Topic is kind of misleading, but it's hard to express in few words.

What i am talking about is the tendency of people here to immediately assume a card sucks unless it's useful in a vaccuum. As Elements is expanded upon, you're gonna have a much more diverse card pool, and more room for sub optimal cards. I'm not talking about cards that always suck, but cards that, given a specific situation (specific enemy, specific board situation, specific deck) becomes very useful or enables you to do things differently. Cards that, in essence, are some times useless, but if you build and play for it, can make interesting decks or situations that aren't availible otherwise.

Some examples below. Bear in mind that these are not concrete cards, simply examples of how these types of cards can open up huge ammounts of gameplay options and strategies:

Symmetrical effects - Stuff that affect each player equally, but if you are ahead/behind, it affects you way more. Very situational, and you'll have to play strategically.

• Spell: "Kill pillars from the player with the most pillars, until both have the same ammount. When cast, depletes your quanta pool." This could be used in a low-pillar deck to compete with for instance, rainbow decks without supernova. It can also be a very powerful card if you are having a bad draw, or it can combo with the nymph that lets you sacrifice your own towers.
• Spell: "Equalize life totals." That means, if one player has 180 life, and the other has 20, then both end up with 100 life. It's a very powerful card in some situations, especially if you can predict your opponent so you use it when you are about to die. In other situations it can be nearly useless. If your opponent plays this, it's not the end of the world either, you can suddenly dump a lot of damage to kill them before they suspect it, for instance.
• Permanent: "Every time a creature deals damage, that creature's owner gets half of that damage in life." A very powerful card if played in the right deck, especially if you play in a metagame(metagame: The "environment" which includes what decks and cards are powerful) with lots of fast aggro decks, and you have a slight bit of creature control. Also rewards even attack values over odd.

Trading resources for others - This is, in my opinion, the one thing that will open up lots of new and creative decks and strategies, if executed properly. These cards will, in bulk (as a one shot spell) or over time (triggered once/more each turn like rustler) trade one resource for another. Resources being: Cards in hand, cards in deck, quanta, pillars, creatures, life, permanents.

• Permanent: "Destroy one of your own creatures: gain life equal to it's damage + health. Can be used multiple times per turn" Not only is this a great way to get rid of useless creatures like malignent cells and lobotomized creatures and free up space, but it can also pave the way for much more creature oriented control decks than what we see today.
• Permanent: "Lose n life, put a n/n creature into play and put a counter on this. n is the number of counters on this" Like boneyard and ffq, a creature generator. Unlike ffq which has all the vulnerability of a creature, and unlike boneyard which effectively just trades creatures for creatures, this can churn out increasingly powerful creatures at the cost of your own safety. Combos very well with the one above that lets you sacrifice creatures, and with feral bond. If you play against it, aggressive decks are very good: Don't let them keep their life for making creatures.
• Creature: "Discard a card: Deal n damage to a creature or player, where n is the quantum cost of that card" - lets you throw useless/redundant cards and wreak some havoc, also freeing up your hand for drawing spells.
• Spell: "Remove the top half of your deck from the game. Put a n/n creature into play where n is the number of cards removed" - Amazing in an aggro deck, but only in small numbers, as it becomes progressively weaker. Very susceptible to reverse time etc. Can cost low quanta and still not be playable in control, because it might remove essential cards.
• Spell: "Pay n life, where n is the number of cards originally in your deck. Restore your deck to it's full status, like at the start of the game." Face it: We really need more than one way to keep from decking out - forcing people to play way too many cards or to HAVE to play time to get access to Eternety is very restrictive in deckbuilding. Also, this will give some much needed redundancy - say you lost that one card that can help you win. Now you can at least hold on and try, instead of giving up instantly.

Those were some ideas of mine. I hope i got the point across. In this thread, i would like to discuss the usefulness and viability of different types of symmetrical effects and resource trading - and maybe other ideas that fill the same purpose. It is my belief that these kinds of cards will not be emphasized heavily enough with the democratic card addition system we are currently running, because for many people it sucks to have to lose something to get something in return - but that is an essential concept of strategy that i feel this game currently lacks. Feel free to put forth some specific card ideas, but not for validation but discussion around the general idea. Please keep specific card critisizm elsewhere.

[Kael Hate]

I agree for more strategic cards.
Don't really agree with most of your suggested cards tho.
Often these sort of cards are extremely powerful when one side can setup the card. Imagine if I could cast your Pillar balancing card when I had 0 pillars. The opponent would be decimated and the card is supposed to hurt both players but you have suffered nothing.

[Pantheon]

I agree for more strategic cards.
Don't really agree with most of your suggested cards tho.
Often these sort of cards are extremely powerful when one side can setup the card. Imagine if I could cast your Pillar balancing card when I had 0 pillars. The opponent would be decimated and the card is supposed to hurt both players but you have suffered nothing.

Yeah and that's the whole point of cards like these. If you build your entire deck around that card going off with 0 pillars, it's powerful, but your deck is dedicated to it so you had to sacrifice a lot of power in other areas, like permanent/creature control, heavy damage, shields, et cetera.

Any ideas of your own?

[Kurohami]

A pillarless golem rush don't really suffer much of what you listed.

[howardron485]

Topic might be a bit off, but what i am talking about is the tendency of people here to immediately assume a card sucks unless it's useful in a vaccuum. As Elements is expanded upon, you're gonna have a much more diverse card pool, and more room for sub optimal cards. I'm not talking about cards that always suck, but cards that, given a specific situation (specific enemy, specific board situation, specific deck) becomes very useful or enables you to do things differently. Cards that, in essence, are some times useless, but if you build and play for it, can make interesting decks or situations that aren't availible otherwise.

Agreed. We need more themed decks that have strategies built-in than general cards that are good alone.

Spell: "Equalize life totals." That means, if one player has 180 life, and the other has 20, then both end up with 100 life. It's a very powerful card in some situations, especially if you can predict your opponent so you use it when you are about to die. In other situations it can be nearly useless. If your opponent plays this, it's not the end of the world either, you can suddenly dump a lot of damage to kill them before they suspect it, for instance.

I personally disagree with this. The whole point of a strategy game is to gain advantage, and that is often gained through persistent effort. Having cards that "equalize" the game reduces the amount of skill needed from players and draws out a game longer than it should be.

Trading resources for others - This is, in my opinion, the one thing that will open up lots of new and creative decks and strategies, if executed properly. These cards will, in bulk (as a one shot spell) or over time (triggered once/more each turn like rustler) trade one resource for another. Resources being: Cards in hand, cards in deck, quanta, pillars, creatures, life, permanents.

I completely agree with these ideas here. Seeing conversion decks would be quite interesting.

[Tea is good]

the sacrifice top half of deck thing might be OP. You could have a 60 card deck and just sacrifice 29/30 cards first turn to make a 30 or 29 damage creature. Or You could have multiple Eternities and reverse multiple cards into your deck (people have done this for a screen shot competition). Once you had a certain amount, you could summon a 60/60 megacreature and quint/momentum it.

[johannhowitzer]

I too am big on symmetric effects.

[Pantheon]

A pillarless golem rush don't really suffer much of what you listed.

It would of course, cost quite a bit of quanta. Say something like 8-10 of a single color. Would be hard for that deck unless it was fire or earth.

But like i said: Let's not delve into individual card discussion. It's the general design principle i want to discuss.

[Pantheon]

the sacrifice top half of deck thing might be OP. You could have a 60 card deck and just sacrifice 29/30 cards first turn to make a 30 or 29 damage creature. Or You could have multiple Eternities and reverse multiple cards into your deck (people have done this for a screen shot competition). Once you had a certain amount, you could summon a 60/60 megacreature and quint/momentum it.

Yep, the first situation might be overpowered. Second would not. I won't delve into why, but i'll say this: Please don't go into specific cards that are OP/UP. I wanted to discuss the principle in general.

[Kael Hate]

the sacrifice top half of deck thing might be OP. You could have a 60 card deck and just sacrifice 29/30 cards first turn to make a 30 or 29 damage creature. Or You could have multiple Eternities and reverse multiple cards into your deck (people have done this for a screen shot competition). Once you had a certain amount, you could summon a 60/60 megacreature and quint/momentum it.

Yep, the first situation might be overpowered. Second would not. I won't delve into why, but i'll say this: Please don't go into specific cards that are OP/UP. I wanted to discuss the principle in general.

People who understand Strategic resources already know how this works. People who don't understand don't have the experience to grasp the full aspects in theory. Yarning about it wont have as much affect as showing off an idea and explaining how it works. Why don't you put some ideas in the card section and explain how said ideas are better for the game?