Restart the "Weekly Featured Card" project?

[Bloodshadow]

Those of you who had been to the old forum and old wiki might remember that I once suggested something called the Weekly Featured Card. Wikipedia has daily featured articles, and many other wikis have weekly or monthly featured articles, so our wiki should have Featured Cards or something like that. We had Featured Cards for about five weeks, but the project was put on hold because SG decided to make a new wiki.

Right now, the new wiki is starting to look pretty good. If you ask me, I think it might be time to restart this Featured Card project.

How this is going to work:

Every week, there will be a Featured Card of a certain element on the wiki's main page, along with a detailed analysis of that card. The elements are cycled in this order: ; the Featured Card of the first week is Entropy, the next week is Death, etc.

On the Monday of each week, I will start a sticky poll with all cards in that week's element, excluding pillars. From Monday to Friday forum users will vote for which card they want to be featured.

On Saturday, voting ends, and the Featured Card is chosen. In the remaining two days of the week I will write a detailed analysis of the card (500+ words).

On the Monday of the next week, the Featured Card and its analysis will be put on display. I will start a poll about the next element in the cycle.

What do you guys think?

[Bloodshadow]

An example of a detailed card analysis:

Devourer | Pest



Devourer, one of the iconic creatures for Darkness. Its ability drains one quantum from your opponent, then gives you one . This creature is the foundation of quantum denial, a popular strategy that denies your opponent of his or her quanta, and thus stops him or her from playing any cards. Its ability to steal quanta from your opponent fits perfectly into Darkness's theme of stealth and exploit.

Stats wise, Devourer doesn't look too promising: a measly 2 HP with zero ATK. However, the Devourer only costs to summon, which means that you can often get one on the field on turn two or even turn one; the low summoning cost also means that you can simply splash a Mark of Darkness in your deck, and use your Mark to fuel the Devourers alone. The upgraded Pest has 4 HP, which means that it is strong enough to survive one Rain of Fire.

The Devourer is one of the few quanta-producing creatures in the game; and without a doubt, Devourer is the best quanta-producing creature in the game. Why? Because of quanta advantage. Devourer takes away one quantum from your opponent, and at the same time produces one Darkness quantum for yourself. The net quanta advantage is two, which exceeds all other quanta-producing creatures in the game. Unlike other quanta-producing creatures, the Devourer is not simply a "pillar"; with its denial capabilities, it is more useful than a pillar. What's more, with one single , you can render Devourer completely invulnerable, via its Burrow ability; no other quanta-producing creature is capable of this. Devourer has an ATK of zero, which means that it would not attack and trigger enemy shield effects; not even Fire Shield can take it down. Simply put, the Devourer is a very useful card for an extremely low cost.

A single Devourer by itself may not accomplish much, because 1 quantum loss from your opponent will usually not hurt him. However, everything is more powerful in greater numbers. If you have six Devourers in the field, all of them burrowed, then your opponent essentially has six of his pillars negated. And aside from its denial capabilities, Devourers can also serve as quanta acceleration, enabling you to gather Darkness quanta quicker.

The Devourer, while useful on its own, can be very formidable when used alongside these cards:

Fractal | Fractal
Fractal creates copies of the target creature in your hand until your hand is completely filled. You need to pay the quanta costs to summon those duplicated creatures, so creatures with low cost work best with Fractal. Looking at the cost of Devourer, you'll see that it is almost an ideal target for Fractal. After filling your hand with Devourers, you can play them quickly, generating more quanta for yourself and further denying your opponent. The truly frightening aspect of Fractal-Devourer denial is that you can have up to 23 Devourers on the field at the same time; in most cases, if you manage to pull off this combo, your opponent is almost guaranteed to be caught in a deadlock, all of his quanta absorbed away and not being able to play a single card for the rest of the game.

Drain Life | Siphon Life
In addition to denial, Devourers provide quanta acceleration. With six of them on the field and some Obsidian Pillars, you can gather very quickly; with Fractal-Devourer, the speed at which you generate is insane - you can easily reach 100 and far above. Drain Life is a very nice addition to a Fractal-Devourer deck, because its damage rely on the amount of you have. Near endgame, you can unleash four to six Drain Life in rapid succession, instantly destroying your opponent and even giving you a chance to fully heal yourself.

Earthquake | Quicksand
Earthquake is a very powerful Earth spell that instantly destroys three pillars your opponent controls. This spell is the other foundation card to quantum denial. If you have six Earthquakes in your deck, you can destroy up to 18 pillars your opponent has, which is more than most decks have; along with six Devourers, six more pillars belonging to your opponent are nullified. Your Earthquake can destroy your opponent's quanta source, while your Devourers slowly drain away what little quanta your opponent has remaining. What's more, using Earth in your deck allows you to burrow your Devourers, making them indestructible; it is almost like Devourer and Earthquake are designed to synergize with each other. Make an Earth deck with Mark of Darkness, and add a Titanium/Diamond Shield, some dragons, and maybe Basilisk Blood for stalling, and you've got a very solid deck.

Some other things about Devourer that you might want to know:

     Devourer is one of the only cards with two abilities, one active and one passive. Its active ability is Burrow, and the quanta-draining ability is passive, nameless and unique to Devourer. The passive ability cannot be removed, which makes Devourer that much more awesome.

     Devourer's quanta draining ability only works if your opponent actually has quanta. If your opponent has zero quanta, then Devourer will not produce for you because there are no quanta to absorb and convert.

     Burrowing halves a creature's ATK. If you buff Devourer with other cards such as Blessing or Chaos Power, then burrow it, its ATK will be halved like normal. However, if a Nightfall is on the field, it will give Devourer a +1 ATK bonus regardless of whether it's burrowed or not; same applies for Eclipse. Even if you burrow Devourer, play Eclipse, then unburrows it, its ATK would still be 2.

     Because Devourer's quanta-draining ability is passive, it will always retain that ability even if the Devourer is a mutant. For example, if a Devourer is a mutant with Destroy, it would still absorb one quantum per turn from your opponent. If you have a Devourer with an ability that costs 1 , it is literally the best mutant ever, because it can generate its own source of quanta for itself. Fun stuff, eh?

[icybraker]

Sounds like a good idea to me, except for one leg of the setup.

In the remaining two days of the week I will write a detailed analysis of the card (500+ words).

You don't have to do it. You can if you want to, but you can ask someone to do it, appoint someone to do it, or pull them from the Trial descrpitions.

[Bloodshadow]

Well... I prefer consistency. I'm the one who wrote the longest card analysis in the Challenge a Master trials. And I want to do something to contribute to the wiki; despite me being Wiki Editor, I haven't done much in the past months. So I think I should write the card analysis.

Of course, on Saturday and Sunday I'll post the parts of the analysis I have so far, and you guys can tell me things that I can add to it. It's not like I'm doing this alone

But... SG, can you add a "Featured Card" section in the wiki main page? Will that be a problem or not?

[Scaredgirl]

This is a great idea. We definitely need this on the Wiki front page (among with other things). I'd like it to look more like a "table of contents" than what it is now.

Might I suggest this do a big poll where you add all the cards that:
  A) don't have a description yet
  B) are unique enough to be interesting (meaning no Damselflies, Pillars etc.)

You could give everyone 5 votes and pick a winner every week, after which you delete that option from the poll. This would require some initial setup, but once ready, it would be easy to maintain.

Of course that's just a suggestion to make your job easier. You can do it however you prefer.

[jmizzle7]

I think the card analyses from the Master trials could be used for this purpose. All that needs to be done is to make sure that they all fit the same format/structure.

[Bloodshadow]

I think the card analyses from the Master trials could be used for this purpose. All that needs to be done is to make sure that they all fit the same format/structure.

That's exactly why I said I should write the analysis. In the trials, my analyses were the most detailed, and for consistency I should write the analysis for the Featured Cards. What's going to happen is that I'll post the "first draft" of the analysis in a thread, and you guys can say what changes can be made to the first draft to make it better. Then, after taking into account all the suggestions, I'll post a "final copy" that'll be put into the wiki.

@SG: The way we used to do this is circulating the elements every week. For example, the first week would be Entropy, the next week Death, etc. After 12 weeks when we go back to Entropy again, the previous featured card will be deleted from the options.

However, this does have a problem: What to do with the vanilla cards? For example, after an indefinite amount of time, eventually the only card left to feature for Earth would be Gnome Rider. Do we feature that card then? Although we probably won't have to worry about this until a long time after.

Tomorrow, do I start the first poll on Entropy? Are we ready for this yet?

[Scaredgirl]

@SG: The way we used to do this is circulating the elements every week. For example, the first week would be Entropy, the next week Death, etc. After 12 weeks when we go back to Entropy again, the previous featured card will be deleted from the options.

Yes, I know.

But what I'm saying is that you can list all the card by elements, and then just pick the top voted card of THAT element, not the overall most voted card.

This is better because you don't have to start 12 individual threads, one for each element.

[Bloodshadow]

SG, a poll with more than one hundred options would be overwhelming for many people.

All right, here's what I'll do: I'll start one single poll thread, called "Weekly Featured Card Poll - [element]". Each week, I'll change the [element] to the corresponding element of that week; then I'll remove the old poll from last week, and insert a new poll. That's possible, right?

And here are some things that you might need to do:

Move the wiki subforum to the top of the forum, otherwise no one will see it.

Give me moderator rights in the wiki subforum. It'll probably make my life easier.

[Kuroaitou]

Well... I prefer consistency. I'm the one who wrote the longest card analysis in the Challenge a Master trials.

Are you implying that all of the people who originally wrote strategies for their cards during the trials aren't of adequate length?  (looks over at some other master's cards)

If anything Bloodshadow, please try to ask some of the people who wrote strategies for their cards to extrapolate on some of the strategies/tips/synergies of the cards they wrote about, especially those who almost had 500+ words. I think it's unfair that people who actually did Part 2 of the second phase of the trials would have all of their analytical tips and strategies of the cards they chose to write about be completely erased and redone. I know that not all of us have perfect writing composition or editing skills, but please give some of the challengers some credit for the information they provided for certain cards of some elements, and edit it as necessary to make it consistent. 

It's a good idea though to have the 'featured' card project, nonetheless. ^^; I'd definitely be voting every week if it was placed as an important poll.

[jmizzle7]

Well... I prefer consistency. I'm the one who wrote the longest card analysis in the Challenge a Master trials.

Are you implying that all of the people who originally wrote strategies for their cards during the trials aren't of adequate length?  (looks over at some other master's cards)

^ I concur with Kuroaitou. Just because you wrote the longest analysis doesn't mean that yours is automatically the best. Scrapping others' efforts and doing it yourself just makes more work for yourself and doesn't reflect well on you. If you want to take what they wrote and make them all look similar to each other, I believe that would save you time and would keep all the work intact. Of course, if there is pretty much no content at all, then write some.

[Hobnob5000]

Quality, not quantity BS. Not saying that yours is indeed crap, but just because you wrote more, doesn't mean ours are inadequate length. You could take the Phase Two peoples' text, elaborate a little on it (Don't change the whole thing.) That way, it's a sort of community thing.