[Community Project] Implementing Field Manipulation series into Cygnia

[AD TienzuStorm]

Introduction
Welcome to the first community project (may be referred to as CP) for Elements Cygnia! This will be a group effort, and anybody can join in. However, it is highly suggested to already have some knowledge regarding card designing and balance. And without further ado, let's begin!

The subject for this project is Implementing Field Manipulation series into Cygnia.

Goals:
- Identify what field manipulation exactly is and which cards already in game fit the description
- Discuss/debate some exact details such as:
     - How many cards will be in this series (Will it be one for every element? Will some elements get two while others get zero? Would there be a total of twenty four and two for each element? How would we factor in elements that already have field manipulators?)
     - Will there be any "archtypes" (i.e. will some cards have almost identical effects but have different elements and themes? Or will every single card be completely new and novel?)
     - How should we decide how many creatures, spells, and permanents there will be (or how should we split them at least)
- Design a series that uses our definition of field manipulation and fills in the gap that Elements currently has in that area


I believe that should cover what this CP is about. If I have forgotten anything, please let me know (or any of the Card Curators).

Now, let's start off with the first goal:

Decide how many cards will be in this series and how we'll spread them among the twelve elements.

[Treldon]

Flooding definitely falls under this category, but of other cards I'm not sure.

Cloak does affect the field (1 side anyway).
Sundial does affect every creature in play.
Nightfall does affect all  and creatures on both sides.

These would be my first guesses for already existing (semi)Field Manipulation cards.

[AD TienzuStorm]

Flooding definitely falls under this category, but of other cards I'm not sure.

Cloak does affect the field (1 side anyway).
Sundial does affect every creature in play.
Nightfall does affect all  and creatures on both sides.

These would be my first guesses for already existing (semi)Field Manipulation cards.

Ah, that brings up the question of whether or not "realm" cards would fit under what we want to define field manipulation as.

I personally think not, since they affect all field slots the same, so positioning doesn't matter. But that's another thing to discuss: would this be better named as "field positioning" rather than "field manipulation"?

[ZephyrPhantom]

At the most basic level, Field Manipulation can be split into these groups:

A) Cards that alter slots on the field. (Flooding).
B) Cards that move creatures between slots. (none currently ingame)
C) Cards that change based on the current 'state' of a slot(s).

Cards from group B are generally harder to implement because they are reliant on cards from group A - as a result, group B cards usually have to have some kind of beneficial effect for moving creatures to a different slot. For example, Grappling Hook rewards moving creatures around by giving the moved creatures evasion. I'd also like to mention Acheron as an attempt to create an example from group C.

While we could include Eclipse and other mass-buff effects, I feel they stray too far from the original mechanic that we're trying to make more prominent here. To be honest, the current title might actually a bit of a misnomer - "Slot Manipulation" might actually be more fitting.

One other point I'd like to bring up - CI&A usually gets slot-altering cards for creatures but never gets slot altering cards for permanents. We should explore this at some point.

[EmeraldTiger]

I've done a few ideas that messes with the field or take location into account.

[ZephyrPhantom]

I've done a few ideas that messes with the field or take location into account.

Were you also the one who created/made art for that "Aflatoxin for permanents" idea? If yes to either that would be a pretty good example to link here.

[Espithel]

There's also spells and abilities that can specifically target a slot, even if it doesn't have anything in it.

Spoiler for Hidden:

[OldTrees]

(at work so I have to be brief)

While the goals listed in the OP are a great model for adding an independent series (like Nymphs/Shards/Weapons) into the game, I don't think step 1(looking at the past) is enough preparation for step 2(counting number of additions) for the kind of thing we are trying to add here.

I think we need to not only identify what field manipulation is(and related effects like creature movement that enable the addition of field manipulation) we also need to decide how far to go and when to stop.

For example: How can/will a vanilla photon move? Will it remain unable to move? Will it be allowed to move up a row(up left or up right)? Will it be allowed to move 1 tile any direction?


As for me field manipulation includes(but I am being brief so I might forget things):
Limited movement(up only seems best to me right now) for basic creatures which increased the design freedom for -> Mobile creatures

Effects with area-
Creatures with auras
Spells that hit areas(the smallest non trivial hexagon is good)
Terrain features(can be as small as a single hex or larger) which also imply things to mobile creatures
Formations(Probably by creatures with a guardian ability)

(at home)
Ok. Now I can go into more detail as to the reasoning.

Imagine we wanted to add cards that enabled creature movement and add cards that were balanced around creature movement. Not every deck would include the "move creature" cards. If we wanted to include hostile cards that were balanced around our opponent being able to move their creatures, then we need our opponent to be able to move their creatures. This means 1 of 3 things, either creature moving cards become a card tax, we can't use hostile cards that interact with creature movement, or we need creatures to have some form of movement already.

Basically this kind of project runs into an inverted form of the forced combo problem(the ___ tax problem) when trying to explore its possibility space. As a result we have to make decisions about how much to explore our possibility space(creating ___ tax problems to resolve) and how much of our possibility space to ignore(to avoid the kinds of resolutions necessary for those problems).

[Chapuz]

Excelent idea. Someone has to list the CIA threads with the proposed cards

[CleanOnion]

or we need creatures to have some form of movement already.

Smaller field manipulation concepts - eg "Move this creature one position to the left" - would be so negligible that a spell card to do this would surely just take up space in a deck. Having six "Move the target into an adjacent position" in your deck would be six spaces that you can't use for other cards - and they're so underpowered! And because field manipulation is so non-widespread (currently), chances are that having these cards as a defence strategy would be useless, because there would be so few decks to which field manipulation actually matters.

So what if instead, every creature has a base ability (or rather, the field has an ability) that each creature costs, say, 2 to move to an adjacent position? Or if we say that is the element in which most of the field-manipulation cards are, then it costs 2 . So rather than having cards to move, it's already built-in. Perhaps there would be cards to enable creatures to travel further per turn, or teleport, or things like that.

[AD TienzuStorm]

or we need creatures to have some form of movement already.

Smaller field manipulation concepts - eg "Move this creature one position to the left" - would be so negligible that a spell card to do this would surely just take up space in a deck. Having six "Move the target into an adjacent position" in your deck would be six spaces that you can't use for other cards - and they're so underpowered! And because field manipulation is so non-widespread, chances are that having these cards would be useless, because there would be so few decks to which field manipulation actually matters.

So what if instead, every creature has a base ability (or rather, the field has an ability) that each creature costs, say, 2 to move to an adjacent position? Or if we say that is the element in which most of the field-manipulation cards are, then it costs 2 . So rather than having cards to move, it's already built-in. Perhaps there would be cards to enable creatures to travel further per turn, or teleport, or things like that.

The entire purpose of this CP is to address that problem you mentioned. It was to solve the cycle of the CIA that goes like:

1. Card is irrelevant because there aren't enough relevant cards in game
2. Card doesn't get in game due to irrelevancy, meaning that there won't be any relevant cards anytime soon

Also, a card that was like "Move to an adjacent slot" as it's ability would be UP if it weren't for the nature of this CP. The point is to introduce many cards to make it not UP. Think like Vulture. Vulture would be a useless card if it weren't for cards that also surrounded death effects like Schrodinger's Cat, Boneyard, Bonewall, etc.

[CleanOnion]

But having a "Move one position" card still means that you can only move creatures six times per game, which might not be enough against decks with lots of FM-based CC. Having creatures/permanents with abilities that move other creatures would be an obvious solution, but FM-CC might necessitate adding movement cards into decks which have no defence against them, which could break that deck.

Having said that, it's very easy to poison and much harder to get rid of poison, and no one complains about that. So maybe it's not as much of a problem as I'm speculating.