Design Challenge 1-1: VOTING OVER!

[Espithel]

Congratulations to the following designers in this challenge!

1st: Andretimpa (+3 Points)
2nd: MeowMeowCat (+2 Points)
3rd: Submachine (+1 Points)

Results have been added to the Monthly Leaderboard. Stay tuned for more exciting challenges!

Link to the monthly leaderboard. This is what voting's for.


This week's goal was to Design a card that uses a new status effect! Let's see how our entrants have managed!

As a reminder: Vote in any way you deem fit, as long as you can justify it. You are encouraged to discuss the cards on this thread.
If you want to vote based on the best status effect, ignoring the card, then that's fine.
If you want to ignore the design limitations entirely, and just vote on the best card, that's also fine.
If you want to vote on yourself, you're a scumbag, but that's fine. (It's probably recommended you do. We can't stop you.)

Remember to look at the score table for the amount of points people will be given!
We're at 7, which means 3 points for first, 2 for second, 1 for third!

Spoiler for Score Table:

Amount of people	Points given/scored
3	1 point for first.
4-6	2 points for first, 1 point for second.
7-8	3 points for first, 2 second, 1 third.
9-11	4 points for first, 3 second, 2 third, 1 fourth.
12-13	5 for first, 4 2nd, 3 3rd, 2 4th, 1 5th.
14-16	6 for first, 5 2nd, 4 3rd, 3 4th, 2 5th, 1 6th.

And to remind you how many votes you get, we use the same system as crucible. We're at 7 entries, which means 2 votes!
(Due to self-voting, this may be too little. Feel free to complain if you feel that's the case.)

0-2 - No voting allowed.
3-6 - 1 vote
7-12 - 2 votes
13-17 - 3 votes
18-25 - 4 votes
26-32 - 5 votes
33+ - 6 votes


Reminder on the rules:

Spoiler for The challenge, with rules.:

Your job is to make a card that has a new status effect in it.

Statuses are abilities that are icons, usually found on spells. These include freeze, delay, quintessence, QuintSoW, adrenaline, gravity pull, poison, and purify.
Note that Imminent to Singularity, Silence, and Sanctified (Found on nova, silence and sanctuary) are also statuses, even though they go on the player.
Flooding can be counted as a status, but some people won't accept this.
You can treat statuses as a form of passive ability that are received from another card, whilst passives are on the card they're on.

You are allowed to represent your new status in any single way. Here are the most common ways:
The standard way is a spell that gives it, like gravity pull.
A creature that enters play with it, like charger.
An ability from a permanent or creature, such as anubis.
Of course, you may deviate from this and have a fancier way of representing this status. All you have to do is make a card with a new status effect, and explain what the status effect is.

As for cornerstone cases:
Momentum, which can be lobotomised, is a status. Sapphire charger has an ability that gives it the status momentum.
Seraph's ability grants a status for one turn.

You can make cards that are controversially statuses, such as flooding. If your card doesn't feel like a status, however, people won't vote for it, so bear that in mind.

Please submit your ideas in this thread - whether you make a separate thread for your card idea is up to you. To get things running on schedule, this challenge will have a slightly shorter duration than other challenges, but after that expect our challenges to start and update themselves each Sunday.

We are in the Voting Phase! There's a polyamorous toad on your neck. Good luck!

Link to the submission thread!

Spoiler for 1. Necromancer (Ghaladh):

NAME: Necromancer ELEMENT: Death COST: 3 TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 0 | 3 TEXT: : Reanimate the last killed opponent's creature. The reanimated creature will suffer 0|-2 each turn	NAME: Necromancer ELEMENT: Death COST: 3 TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 0 | 3 TEXT: : Reanimate the last killed creature. The reanimated creature will suffer 0|-2 each turn

ART: - IDEA: Ghaladh NOTES: "Reanimated" is the new status. A reanimated creature, as the card says, will suffer a penalty of 0|-2 each turn. Once its health reaches 0 or less it will die again. Eventually the "reanimated" status can be erased by some spell (yet to be created) SERIES:

Spoiler for 2. Probable Survival (Opsinis):

NAME: Probable Survival ELEMENT: Life COST: 4 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Apply Probable Survival to target creature. Lasts three turns. Cannot stack.	NAME: Probable Survival ELEMENT: Life COST: 3 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Apply Probable Survival to target creature. Lasts three turns. Cannot stack.

ART: IDEA: Opsinis NOTES: Probable Survival: Target creature's ATK is antimattered every turn and is doubled every other turn. Lasts three turns. What that means: creature's ATK is 6 then Probable Survival is played on that creature. Turn 1 ATK is -6, turn 2 ATK is -12, turn 3 ATK is 12. SERIES: Weekly Challenge #1

Spoiler for 3. Witch's Breath (MeowMeowCat):

NAME: Witch's Breath ELEMENT: Death COST: 3 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Applies "Sick" to a target creature. Sick:  Halves the creature's ATK.	NAME: Witch's Plague ELEMENT: Death COST: 5 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Applies "Sick" to all enemy creatures. Sick:  Halves the creature's ATK.

ART: N/A IDEA: MeowMeowCat NOTES: Round down if applicable. Sick is removable by Purify and Lobotomize. SERIES: Weekly Challenge - CIA

Spoiler for 4. Phase Shifter (Treldon):

NAME: Phase shifter ELEMENT: Aether COST: 4 TYPE: Spell TEXT: Applies Phased status to target: Becomes untargetable, but soaks up all spell damage owner would receive	NAME: Phase shifter ELEMENT: Aether COST: 3 TYPE: Spell TEXT: Applies Phased status to target: Becomes untargetable, but soaks up all spell damage owner would receive

ART: IDEA: Treldon NOTES: Anti-spell version of Gravity Pull, with the added benefit/disadvantage of making the creature immortal (CC resistant, but no buffing it either) SERIES: Weekly Challenge - CIA

Spoiler for 5. Beserker Rage (Andretimpa):

NAME: Berserker Rage ELEMENT: Fire COST: 5 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target creature receives the berserker status	NAME: Berserker Rage ELEMENT: Fire COST: 3 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target creature receives the berserker status

ART: IDEA: andretimpa NOTES: When a creature has the berserker status, instead of attacking the opposing player it attacks a random opposing creature. If there are no creatures it attacks both its owner and the opposing player. The status can be removed by freezing the target. SERIES: lel

Spoiler for 6. Decaying Zombie (Dragonsdemesne):

NAME: Decaying Zombie ELEMENT: Death COST: 5 TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 7 | 6 TEXT: Undead Crumbling: This creature gets -1/-1 permanently at end of owner's turn.	NAME: Rotting Zombie ELEMENT: Death COST: 5 TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 9 | 8 TEXT: Undead Crumbling: This creature gets -1/-1 permanently at end of owner's turn.

ART: IDEA: NOTES: SERIES:

The new status effect is 'crumbling'.  I put it on a creature, but it could just as easily be added as a spell, similar to aflatoxin, or as a shield on-hit effect, like skull shield, fire shield, or thorn carapace, or even as a weapon ability like owl's eye.  (I made a creature before I read all of the rules where it said most statuses are created by spells, but I think this is appropriate; don't vote for it if it isn't :p)  It's not quite the same as poison, since it also decreases attack.

Playing purify on a crumbling creature will remove the crumbling ability, and allow the creature to regain hp as normal.  However, lost attack cannot be regained by purify, since purify has nothing to do with attack.  Crumbling can also be lobotomized, but will not restore any lost attack/hp, though it can be regained by other things like heal or purify.  (not holy light, since it's a death creature and takes 10 damage instead!)

Adrenaline will cause the creature to crumble multiple times per turn, using the same mathematical table that a steam machine with adrenaline does to determine the number of crumbles and attacks per turn.

Frozen/delayed crumbling creatures still crumble as normal.

Any other neglected cases/oddball interactions will be clarified/edited if pointed out.

-thanks to frozengaia for showing where to upload the image; took me a few tries but I finally figured it out!

Spoiler for 7. Wisp (Submachine):

The status effect I'm about to introduce is called Blindness.

NAME: Wisp ELEMENT: Light COST: 3 TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 3 | 3 TEXT: : Flash All creatures on the opposite field get +15% miss rate. Removes invisibility.	NAME: Wisp ELEMENT: Light COST: 3 TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 5 | 2 TEXT: : Flash All creatures on the opposite field get +15% miss rate. Removes invisibility.

NOTES: The opposing creatures get blinded by light, making their attacks miss. The blinded creatures get the Blindness status effect, which is similar to immaterial's , wisdom's and adrenaline's status effects, but it shows a symbol instead. Blindness can stack up to 100 on the same creature. A creature with 100 Blindness will no longer be able to hit the opponent, even if it's antimattered. Immaterial creatures can be blinded too. Blindness cannot be lobotomized, but it transfers to a new creature if Parallel Universe, Mutation or Deja Vu was used.

[mwaetht]

Witch's Breath seems utterly useless. Not the upped version, that's perfectly acceptable, but using a spell to decrease a single creature's attack by a usually-small amount just isn't useful enough. Compare to Antimatter, for example.

Phase Shifter really shouldn't be in Aether; it overlaps too heavily with Quintessence. If it protected your other creatures from spell damage too it might be a more useful mechanic.

I'm not sure what 'permanently' refers to in Crumbling Zombie; all attack decreases are permanent anyways, so at first I thought the card was referring to decreasing the creature's max HP, but the notes indicate that heal and purify and such still work. Could we please get a clarification?

[Solaris]

Witch's Breath seems utterly useless. Not the upped version, that's perfectly acceptable, but using a spell to decrease a single creature's attack by a usually-small amount just isn't useful enough. Compare to Antimatter, for example.

...The point is to use it on a strong creature, such as a dragon or a shrieker, highly buffed Spirit or Golem, to cut down on their effectiveness. You're not going to want to use it on, say, a Horned Frog. No, that's not an effective use. That's like saying Lightning is useless because you used it on a Titan. Also, Witch's Breath costs 3 quanta, Antimatter costs 8. Pretty big difference between them IMO.

[OldTrees]

Witch's Breath seems utterly useless. Not the upped version, that's perfectly acceptable, but using a spell to decrease a single creature's attack by a usually-small amount just isn't useful enough. Compare to Antimatter, for example.

While the spell itself is rather weak(roughly 2/3rds* the cost of Antimatter for 1/4th the effect when fallaciously assuming linear benefit) but the Status Effect itself has some nice potential if deployed in other ways(A creature with a "sickness" activated ability could be used much easier than Purple Nymph and with the right balance would be a nice 50% damage reduction that would stack with a Dusk Shield or a DR shield)

*Yes, around 2/3rds the total cost. I am not talking about just the quanta cost.


Likewise I really like the Beserker status effect genre even if I don't like the Berserker Rage card. While it should have a bigger impact than Warden, it outperforms reasonable limits. It has a lot of potential to work with which will make the design tweaking process take longer. I would look into reducing the expected CC damage per turn.


I am curious to see what MeowMeowCat and Andretimpa do with these ideas.



Submachine's status effect surprised me. I don't want to say it is a status effect for a different game, because that would be wrong. However it does seem to rely on EtG moving to a more complicated status system before it will feel at home. So something to remember when thinking about EtG's future.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Going to be critiquing these cards based on two points : the status effect in a vacuum, and the card it was "mounted" on.

Reanimated feels awkward at first, but the more I look at it, the more I think it'd be interesting to see a small series of cards designed around reanimation even if it's a tad klunky. It'd need the right ideas to be implemented on, but Necromancer is a good first example to me.

Probable Survival feels complex to the point the card doesn't feel like it explains everything that it should about the status. Given that the card is a generic "inflict status spell", that doesn't seem like a good thing.

To quite frank, Sick feels very plain and weak to me design-wise, though I think this perceived weakness is due to the fact it was mounted on a "generic inflict status spell" in the form of Witch's Breath.  The status itself doesn't exactly pop, but if treated with a lot of care I think it could be one of those simple mechanics that looks a lot better on slightly complex ideas; as is, treads the line between "full of potential" and "too boring/redundant with a straight-up effect" to me.

Phase feels like the right balance between simple and complex. It actually fills an interesting sort of niche in the meta, but I'm uncertain if it could be implemented across multiple cards like Purify could or like Gravity Pull currently has been. Promising, needs to be handled with care if developed across multiple ideas.

I honestly adore the idea of Berserker, but the ability to repeatedly attack enemy creatures needs to have some kind of cap on it somehow to prevent it from getting too out of hand, in my opinion - perhaps a berserk creature should still have a chance to hit the opponent even if there are enemy creatures? The spell itself is fairly plain but if this one is done right I can see it going places in multiple elements. Solid concept.

Crumbled feels like the weakest status here in terms of quality, IMHO; it's only a few steps away from being Poison, right down to the fact that it can be cured with Purify. The creature it's mounted on feels decent, to the point where I feel like it would've actually been better as an ability instead

Blindness is a cool idea, but I'm worried about the lack of a counter to it and the fact the idea it was introduced on clearly encourages spamming it up to 100% "miss rate". If the miss cap was limited to 75% or something like that, I'd probably be more willing to get behind it, but as it currently is, this feels like it could be nastier than some of the best defenses in the game if exploited right/designed wrong (Fractal Wisp = nasty business). Needs a bit more hammering out IMHO, because as is it doesn't feel like there was enough attention given to how exploitable this card could be.

Spoiler for My overall ranking, most appealing to least appealing:

Berserk (Voted) - Most potential of the effects here, iMHO.
Phase (Voted) - probably the most foolproof submission, which beats having potential but being unwieldy in my book.
Blindness - Has potential, but seems too easy to make OP.
Sick - Also has potential, but will need some careful handling to be expanded upon.
Reanimate - Klunky, but if you get past that, could be more and more interesting.
Probable Survival - Too complex.
Crumbled - Too similar to Poison.

[Submachine]

If the miss cap was limited to 75% or something like that, I'd probably be more willing to get behind it, but as it currently is, this feels like it could be nastier than some of the best defenses in the game if exploited right/designed wrong (Fractal Wisp = nasty business). Needs a bit more hammering out IMHO, because as is it doesn't feel like there was enough attention given to how exploitable this card could be.

Thank you for the critique, though i have to point out that when you said there wasn't enough attention given to the card, it was not accurate.
You see, i reused one of my older ideas and took all the feedback and suggestion i got at the time and implemented to this new card to balance it out. Strategies like Fracta-Flash were considered and there was a cap limit at some point. Removing it was my mistake, as i compared it to Purple Nymph, which renders 1 creature per turn more than useless on the opponent's field, but i didn't do the complete math. So all in all, i did pay attention, i just took the wrong measures.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Congratulations to the following designers in this challenge!

1st: Andretimpa (+3 Points)
2nd: MeowMeowCat (+2 Points)
3rd: Submachine (+1 Points)

Results have been added to the Monthly Leaderboard, and this topic will be archived under the Exhibition Hall in the next 24 hours. Stay tuned for more exciting challenges!