One thing that occurred to me while playing last night is that the
flying weapon/
animate weapon cards could actually be made much more interesting with the simple addition of making them targetted abilities.
Currently, playing these cards simply transforms your current weapon into a creature, but suppose that instead you were presented with a targetting reticle over the weapons currently in play. This would have two very important effects:
Firstly, you would be able to target your opponent's weapon rather than your own, which would be a great cunning way to destroy a weapon if you have no item destruction cards in hand, but do have an Otyugh in play (sort of like when people cleverly use gravity pull to attack an opponent's creature rather than to defend themself!)
...And secondly, it would mean that the card could not be played on a weapon which has been made immaterial (and is therefore protected from targetting). Currently, immaterial weapons simply lose that status when animated, but it would seem better if being immaterial actually disallowed the card being played on them in the first place, as it would with creatures.
Anyway, this also led me to think about another possibility for targetting effects, which would be to reword cards like
Fire Storm and
Plague so that they affect "the creatures of target player", rather than "the creatures of your opponent". Allowing these cards to target your own creatures might seem pointless, but there are several reasons one might want to do this.
For instance, you may have five 1/1 photons in play, and a graveyard producing 2/2 skeletons. Killing your own creatures by targetting yourself with a firestorm would be a clever way to upgrade them all to superior undead versions.
Another reason might be that you are on 95 HPs, and about to deal the fatal blow to your enemy, but have a
Jade Staff in hand, and want that weapon to strike the finishing blow rather than your creatures, in order to achieve a mastery award. Killing your own creatures would be a clever (if ruthless!) way to achieve that.
Just a few thoughts, anyway.
Ryan