Once again, I'm really pleased with the number of responses this has garnered in a short time. It truly shows how active members are in the game and in the forum. I'm probably not going to be able to respond to every post made here, and will mostly ignore posts that clearly didn't read the entire OP (I'm looking at you, anyone who asks what it takes to qualify for this) Or people that have just said "Good idea". Onward to the intelligent counter arguments.
Elements the Game needs DragonballZ TCG's Tokuiwaza Mastery rules?
The Dragonball Z cardgame had this same idea. It was called Tokuiwaza and the benefit was that you had an accelerated power-up. Later they added cards called Masteries that which if you declared a Tokuiwaza then the Mastery would start in play and give you a benefit, usually to damage effects.
This sortof worked in DBZ because there was a large range of other cards to supplement the colour defined cards. Later when they rolled over into the GT environment they issue in that there was not enough cards within a single colour to make Tokuiwaza useful in any way but as the card stock increase the Masteries became Uber powerful and only in the rarest of circumstances did anyone play either of the 2 most powerful masteries.
Is it a good idea to replicate what happened there?
I think I'd be running Fire full time against everyone. You Kill me I hurt you, you don't kill my creatures they get you. My current fire grinder could probably near guarantee a turn 5 win against anyone with 100hp with this boost. For the 200 hp targets I still think i'm toast because I have no Quake protection and no creature protection and no healing to run a protracted engagement. Actually all of these ideas seemm to me to just improve the Low range decks and do nothing to help against Gods.
The reason rainbow is the solution against the false gods is because it can fill in all the gaps where a mono-deck is weak. Why not have these booster effects simulate the same and fill in the gaps where mono-types are weak. I would also set the benefit if you have no other elements to your mark so you can use generics to fill in healing and quanta production for the in-element out-element activated cards. Firefly Queen is pretty rubbish when you have nothing to generate life quanta.
Really great post Kael. First off, I've never played DBZ, so I don't know how much this idea is a rip off of Tokuiwaza. It sounds like the problem eventually became that there were colorless cards as well, and they were more valuable than having a completely mono deck. If that's the case, I'm not sure it applies to the way casting costs happen in Elements. If you're instead saying that it was more worth it to include the extra cards of other colors than to get the Tokuiwaza then I really feel like that's a balance issue with how powerful these Tokuiwaza were. If that's the case, I certainly don't want this to be so powerful that players start giving up on including other cards in their deck, I just want to make Mono a viable option to play.
To address your other point, that these abilities could cover up deficiencies present within the colors themselves. While from a purely metagame aspect, I accept that this would bring strength to the individual elements, I'm not sure I want to go that route. One of the primary reasons for me starting this was that I enjoyed the hard to quantify
feel of playing a mono deck. What I don't want to do is say "Mono fire doesn't have a strong defense, so give them a way to defend themselves." What I want is more like, fire has really strong offense, so make them offensive enough that they can win without a defense. While I'm not ready to argue whether or not fire is too powerful as presented, I've thought of numerous other ideas. One was "Whenever a player's creature is destroyed, player gains
equal to the casting cost of the creature." This would allow you to play creatures without them affecting the overall effectiveness of your firebolts. You would effectively
invest the quanta in a creature, but get it back when they die, making your firebolts and Fahrenheit more powerful. Another was that "Whenever a creature is destroyed (either player) deal damage equal to its attack to both players." This emulated the overly offensive nature of fire. I would consider either as an acceptable alternative to the ability as presented. I still don't think that the Other cards fit the spirit of the idea, since having 6 shards of gratitude and healing every turn doesn't fit the mood of most of the elements.
As a point in general, I wanted each of these ideas to allow each Element to win in its own unique way. To let Life win by out healing its opponent, to let Fire win by out damaging its opponent, to Let Earth win by out defending its opponent, etc. While exactly what an individual element does is sometimes harder to quantify I appreciate any ideas for tweaking the above abilities that keep them in the original spirit of the idea.
Moving on to some of the other posts here...
@Daneman Thank you. I agree that the
idea might be better. Also, in regard to
, one thing I've tried to prevent is making any abilities an element already has obsolete. I don't want the hourglass to become useless because you already have an ability that duplicates it.
@Amilir First of all, I don't appreciate having my ideas called "garbage". You're entitled to your opinion however, so I'll address it. I can't agree that the upgrading/grinding aspect of the game is broken. What one person calls grinding another calls replayability. What I'd like to see limited is the low number of decks available to grind FG. I think if all these abilities implemented meant there were an additional 12 ways to fight them, it would make things far less monotonous.
@yaladilae Your post is exactly what I was wanting. Other players posting their own list of ideas that might work better. Let's look at a few.
I'm really enjoying the currently proposed "Opponents creatures come into play with 1 poison counter." If that feels too powerful, I'd also like "
All creatures come into play with one poison counter." Which helps death more than the opponent, and really captures the self destructive nature of playing Death.
I'm not sure your idea is powerful enough. Late game, most gravity pull shields are dying in a single turn, and really increasing your creature control with Otyugh isn't as strong as everyone seems to think. Otys are currently so powerful because they can be played with other cards. You won't be able to Quint it, and they can each only eat 1 creature per turn. Meaning gravity is still really weak against
and
, or anyone with good creature control.
Balance issues would need to be sorted out later. As longer as we can agree that max hp captures the spirit of Earth, we can choose a number anywhere between 100 and 200hp as long as it matches the strength of other abilities. We may not yet agree that hp is the way to go. I also like the idea that Earth receives a constant -1 from all damage sources, as sitting behind a diamond shield at that point might be a viable way to win.
I wasn't proposing another empathy bond, you only got the 1 hp when the creature was played, which others have mentioned might be a little too weak. It would probably only mean 20-30 extra hp a game, depending on your opponent.
See above.
I actually don't think immunity would help enough against most decks. See previous posts about adding a freeze ability..
Considering late game creatures are dealing far more than 20hp per round, I still like that any healing affect happens when you reach 0hp. You'd still only be able to play 1 miracle a turn, and probably couldn't get one out your next turn, so there's a good chance the damage would still build up late game.
I like it. It originally felt too much like what I was giving fire, but let's see what others think.
I do think it's a bit weak. How about the effect is permanent? Opponents never see which creature is which, so if you play multiple creatures in one turn a human opponent has to guess, and the computer opponent treats them all the same?
I am starting to agree on overpowered TU and Fractal of dragons. What does everyone else think of
less required for casting of all cards?
@Icybraker You've almost defined balancing the ideas. I may not be familiar enough yet with the metagame to define which decks are already very powerful, and would appreciate the advice. As I've stated before, what I don't want is to simply cover up the shortcomings that certain Elements have, but I can agree that if Mono Aether is already very strong, it needs a small boost, and if Mono Water is weak it needs a large boost. All in all, you've presented a great idea. Maybe we shouldn't look at all the abilities equally. If Mono Gravity is already very strong, I'd be more inclined to weaken its power than because it is stronger than the one I presented for Air for instance.
@Amilir And again, I encourage you to find more constructive ways to contribute. I will still maintain that duo/trio/rainbow has strength in its versatility. While new cards would always be welcome, they usually enhance multi colored decks as greatly (If not greater due to certain card combinations) as they do their own element.
