[Community Project] Implementing Field Manipulation series into Cygnia

[ZephyrPhantom]

While hostile movement of creatures is one of the concerning effects(highlighted by flooding comments), I am more worried about hostile terrain effects(which would bypass Cloak, Quint, Immaterial, Divine Shield, and sometimes Burrow).

Hostile terrain effects always should have a workaround of some sort IMHO - for example, Flooding does not restrict the first five creatures slots and thus is able to be played around. I would avoid hostile terrain effects that cover the whole field, given that; it seems being able to play around hostile terrain would be a good skill-based weakness for such cards to have.

Adding more "punish targeting" cards in with this set would not fix the issue of a card tax since the solution card is in this set. Discouraging not using such a card would still be a card tax(double negative intended and not equivalent to "encouraging using").

Having an answer to the problem is better than no answer IMHO; also, as I said above, the design for cards like Flooding does allow players to play around them in some form. You did mention avoiding designs that were unfair to a "default creature" is an option and I think this should be followed up on though paying attention to possible balance measures like the Flooding one mentioned above.

And yeah, from the looks of things, the current PF development will ultimately be much more strict about how cards retroactively affect sets than MtG has ever been. Time will tell if the strictness will be worth it.

(Also, out of respect for Zanz's work and due to the fact that OEtG already exists I will likely try to keep Cygnia on the "EtG with card ideas" route.)

[OdinVanguard]

I personally think it is better to go with adding cards that can provide mobility rather than reworking existing creature abilities to allow for movement. At least at the offset.
The exception to that, would be if this were done in the context of adding new effects that modify existing mechanics.
Some examples,
-adding a card that allows creatures to move to new slots when burrowing / unburrowing
-something that forces creatures to move into the slot opposed slot of any enemy creature that they target.
-A spell or buff that allows a creature to evade targeting by moving to an adjacent unuoccupied slot, which would mean an empty slot to its left or right must be available for the evasion to trigger.
--Could make both an amusing alternative and nerf for SoFr

As for the 'central card' idea, I mainly posted the two cards as examples. My main point is that it would be good to make sure that every element has some form of access to movement / positioning mechanics. A splashable card is a great way to start, but there should definitely be plenty of other options as well.
This is actually a great way to help further define elemental themes, in terms of how they go about affecting the field.
E.g. gravity could be focused on pushing / pulling, air could use movement for dodging, entropy could have fun with shuffling / randomizing creature positions, etc.

[OldTrees]

While hostile movement of creatures is one of the concerning effects(highlighted by flooding comments), I am more worried about hostile terrain effects(which would bypass Cloak, Quint, Immaterial, Divine Shield, and sometimes Burrow).

Hostile terrain effects always should have a workaround of some sort IMHO - for example, Flooding does not restrict the first five creatures slots and thus is able to be played around. I would avoid hostile terrain effects that cover the whole field, given that; it seems being able to play around hostile terrain would be a good skill-based weakness for such cards to have.

Placing the potential for a workaround in the hostile effect rather than in creatures effected is one of our 2 options in this area. This does cut out a lot of design space. For example, "Target tile and adjacent tiles becomes a Bog" would not be allowed since it does not contain a workaround. However there are positives to not changing existing creatures so this is a valid choice, provided we consciously make the choice.

Adding more "punish targeting" cards in with this set would not fix the issue of a card tax since the solution card is in this set. Discouraging not using such a card would still be a card tax(double negative intended and not equivalent to "encouraging using").

Having an answer to the problem is better than no answer IMHO; also, as I said above, the design for cards like Flooding does allow players to play around them in some form. You did mention avoiding designs that were unfair to a "default creature" is an option and I think this should be followed up on though paying attention to possible balance measures like the Flooding one mentioned above.

Clarification: I did was not say adding "punish targeting" cards was a solution, I was describing how/why it would an example of a card tax(since the "solution" card to the problem of "decks need to include some of these new cards" was one of these new cards).

However you correctly repeat how restricting our designs for hostile field manipulation is one of our 2 valid/good design options.

And yeah, from the looks of things, the current PF development will ultimately be much more strict about how cards retroactively affect sets than MtG has ever been. Time will tell if the strictness will be worth it.

(Also, out of respect for Zanz's work and due to the fact that OEtG already exists I will likely try to keep Cygnia on the "EtG with card ideas" route.)

It sounds like you are strongly for option A over B while I am only slightly for option B over A. Unless a 3rd person voices their opinion, we should default to option A(the restrict hostile effects rather than change existing cards option).

I personally think it is better to go with adding cards that can provide mobility rather than reworking existing creature abilities to allow for movement. At least at the offset.

Adding cards that can provide mobility will happen either way(they are one of the main ideas of this set). Those cards are only tangentially related to the current fork in that their existence situationally weakens hostile field control effects(they have no impact on the general strength of those cards).

[OldTrees]

*Bump

Ok so now we need to start talking about the general areas we will need to design in.

Some I can think of:
Creatures with Auras(aka making clumped units stronger)
AoE CC(aka making clumping weaker)
Terrain effects(Hostile nerfed until acceptable against existing cards/decks. Beneficial terrain too.) to encourage mobile creatures
Mobile creatures/Cards that move creatures.

[ZephyrPhantom]

*Bump

Ok so now we need to start talking about the general areas we will need to design in.

Some I can think of:
Creatures with Auras(aka making clumped units stronger)
AoE CC(aka making clumping weaker)
Terrain effects(Hostile nerfed until acceptable against existing cards/decks. Beneficial terrain too.) to encourage mobile creatures
Mobile creatures/Cards that move creatures.

I think this is a good set to start with for now: the first two groups encourage mobility in different forms while acting as counters to each other.

We should probably have some general movement cards made before anything else comes into play, e.g.:

Foreseen Evasion 2 | 1
Move target creature to a slot of your choice.
Draw a card.

[AD TienzuStorm]

Foreseen Evasion 2 | 1
Move target creature to a slot of your choice.
Draw a card.

Having these kinds of cards will be good, but I think it might be best to keep cards like the one you've made out of Time, simply because it steps on the toes of Precognition, and it will likely overshadow Precognition in many cases once this is a series and FM becomes prevalent.

[ZephyrPhantom]

I was actually a bit worried that giving card draw to elements out of would be too much, but given the existence of SoBr, I'll revert it to my original design:

Swift Maneuver 2 | 1
Move target creature to a slot of your choice.
Draw a card.

[Espithel]

How are you going to solve the targeting issue?

Move target creature to target slot. That's a double target and not something I believe is possible.

I propose this:

Reposition 1
Move target creature or permanent five slots backward. Draw a card.
|
Move target creature or permanent five slots forward. Draw a card.

[OldTrees]

Any single use creature movement would have to be balanced against multiple use creature movement. Here are 2 examples:
Creature activated ability: " : Move to target adjacent tile" (cost quantity and element not chosen)
Permanent activated ability: " : Move target creature to an adjacent tile" (cost quantity and element not chosen)

As such, I don't think a single use creature movement would be worth much deck space.

[ZephyrPhantom]

How are you going to solve the targeting issue?

Move target creature to target slot. That's a double target and not something I believe is possible.

I propose this:

Reposition 1
Move target creature or permanent five slots backward. Draw a card.
|
Move target creature or permanent five slots forward. Draw a card.

Not possible in EtG. Cygnia has less coding restrictions. I think double targeting should be considered as a valid option until serprex or fippe debunk it.

[Fippe94]

It's obviously not impossible, but I think it's pretty tricky and you need to rewrite some of the game logic (not completely sure though, serprex knows better).

Also: creature and permanent order in Cygnia are (at the moment) different than in Elements. So either you need to take this into account when making these cards, or you need to recode the placement. (The order is simply: Start at the top-left corner, fill the field left-to-right, top-to-bottom)

[andretimpa]

This should be simple to make in Cygnia. I still have problems understanding how this is problematic in EtG unless the whole code looks like spaghetti.