[Study]When do Instakill cards become okay?

[ZephyrPhantom]

"Instakill" by Knight-Curator Zblader, ft.  two guys I don't know and art by andretimpa (genre sci-fi)

Over the years that EtG has existed, the concept of 'forbidden' mechanics has been hotly debated, though often without clear boundaries. One of these mechanics is the condition of Instakill, i.e. the ability for a something to immediately kill a creature without caring about its HP.

In spite of that, EtG does indeed have a way to instantly kill creatures by combining and . Beyond that, cards like Antimatter and combos like SoW Reflect can arguably do better than killing a creature - instead, they turn the creature into a healing/self-damage outlet.

So here's question to all designers out there: under what conditions do you think an instant-kill card in EtG is acceptable?

[iDaire]

Instakill cards need to have a drawback in order to become acceptable, and the drawback should be thematic to the card itself.
For example, Holy Flash is a largely damaging card, but because it's only instakill towards darkness creatures, because is an element designed to be both pacifistic and the bane of darkness. So, Holy Flash doesn't count as CC if the creature it targeted isn't .

[Espithel]

A thing to remember is that most removal in elements can be reworded to sound like conditional instant kills without changing its mechanics -  They'll kill something if a condition is met.

Lighting basically reads "Kill target creature if it has 5 or less HP. If not, reduce its HP by 5."
Gravity pull, when used offensively, reads "Kill target creature. Some of your creatures will not attack this turn."
RT reads "Temporarily kill target creature until your opponent pays quanta equal to its cost. Your opponent skips their next draw."
And flash reads "Kill target or creature."

[ZephyrPhantom]

Instakill cards need to have a drawback in order to become acceptable, and the drawback should be thematic to the card itself.
For example, Holy Flash is a largely damaging card, but because it's only instakill towards darkness creatures, because is an element designed to be both pacifistic and the bane of darkness. So, Holy Flash doesn't count as CC if the creature it targeted isn't .

And flash reads "Kill target or creature."

Flash doesn't kill every Darkness/Death creature, though, and as far as I can tell, conditions are only deemed 'acceptable' because the community has agreed they should be that way. For example, what's the problem with a card like this?

Sadness Spear | Sorrowful Spear
12   | 10
Spell
Kill target creature.

It's more expensive than Antimatter but has virtually the same function of making a single creature on the field "worthless", just slightly more extreme.

Additionally, what's the difference between a card like that and

Unlimited Fire Works | Unlimited Blaze Works
12 | 10
Target enemy creature takes 50 damage.

No regular creature in EtG will survive a card like this without Immaterial, so what stops it from being made? Like Holy Light, it doesn't truly "kill", but instead deals damage.

Furthermore, compare games like MtG, which are very willing to put instant kills, both conditional and unconditional, in their meta, and rarely if ever have a problem with the existence of such cards. Do instant kill cards really have a different meta effect here?

[Higurashi]

In card games, unconditionally powerful effects like instakill, instawin or immortality tend to have the drawback that is the most relevant to the game in question. Needing two cards is a fairly common way to put an instakill option in a card game. Other card games often let you trade creatures for creatures as they attack each other, and in those games the current card or power advantage (known sometimes as tempo or turn advantage) is usually the most important thing to have on your side.

Elements has tempo, but it's not as noticeable due to no trading creatures and due to Fractal being broken. The best way to make the presence of tempo much more obvious is to play combo decks. You do nothing or very little until you draw your combo. For an Immo deck, doing nothing is disastrous. For a Fractal deck, it's absolutely fine. If you do draw a potent combo, it gives you a tempo swing and suddenly you're ahead.

Freeze+Shockwave effectively puts you behind by requiring two cards for one. The game gives us one option that is much better in terms of card value, and that's Squid+Shockwaves. Single-target instakill remains weak in Elements because it lets you play a lot of creatures -and- it lets you play as many untargetable creatures as you could ever need.

Other acceptable options for instakill would involve losing card or tempo advantage, such as discarding the top card in your deck. A lot of options can be manipulated into being pointless, such as discarding from hand (discarding a superfluous pillar) or absorbing all quanta (playing it early won't affect you negatively at all in a mono). Discarding one card from the entire deck wouldn't work either because it doesn't affect the current state. There are some weird ways to make some options work, but they seem really arbitrary and can probably be circumvented (such as requiring several quanta types for absorbing).

Edit: For an example from a different game, instakill cards in Hearthstone are usually just really expensive, which puts you behind on tempo because of its limited resource system (mana) and low amount of creatures in a game where they can trade,  though Execute is an exception in that it's well used and too easy to enable. Tempo is everything in Hearthstone.

[AD TienzuStorm]

I think that, for simplicity, we should define instakill as being able to kill a creature with no regards to HP. Like, instakill should not have a limit on the amount of HP the opposing creature has. For example, I'd classify Otyugh and Maxwell's Demon as instakills (albeit conditional) since there's not an HP amount that creatures can reach to prevent getting killed by them (not considering the fact that there's a stat limit for obvious reasons).

Actually, every instakill is conditional. That's what's acceptable about them: their conditions are balanced enough so that they're not OP.

- Maxwell's Demon requires the creature to have a higher attack, which is difficult to raise on its own (with SoW and Rage Pot being the only for sure attack boosts that don't also raise HP the same amount)
- Otyugh requires the creature have less HP than it and has a somewhat not really effective deterrent in Poisonous
- Freeze+Shockwave requires at least a duo and is restricted to only six instakills at max

And I think there's another, but I'm too lazy to go searching. But I believe I've made my point.

[Espithel]

Also note that elements has less things that need killing per deck as opposed to Magic - you always run more creatures with magic.

Magic gets it cheaper, perhaps, because you need more of it. Elements does not.

[Ginyu]

An important point to note is that Elements, unlike other card games, doesn't give HP a high value. If you meet a Colossal Dragon, you don't think "Oh damn, I have to collect 3 Lightnings to bring it down", you just let it alive and are fine.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, a high-defense monster could block you for several turns, as you couldn't attack your opponent directly before you killed it (except some monsters with special abilities). Insta-kill cards were usually restricted or banned in tournaments. In Elements, you don't have to kill any monster. Just ask yourself: How often do you see creatures like Stone or Colossal Dragon (AI3 doesn't count)? Using more insta-kill mechanics would nerf HP even more. That's why I don't think we need it.

[OldTrees]

Any ultimate kill(a kill that has no defense) puts a ceiling on creature durability for any and all creatures subject to that ultimate kill. It is always ok BUT it has an irrevocable impact on existing and future creature design. So it should not be added without careful thought about the consequence.

Consider MtG:
The cheapest example of Instant Kill is Terror/Doom Blade/etc/etc which is a 2CMC spell that destroys 1 creature that it can target.
However there are many ways to avoid targeting (Protection being the strongest quality since it also prevents damage, enchantment, equipment, and blocking).
The next example is Wrath of God which is a 4CMC spell that destroys all creatures without targeting.
However that does nothing to Indestructible creatures.
Ah, but non targeting, non "damaging", non "destroy" lethal effects still exist like an AoE of -X|-X or an AoE of "exile".

Notice what happened. MtG added an ultimate attack and regretted it. So they added a defense. But then they needed a way around that ultimate defense. And then a way around that offense. Etc Etc. While this does create a nice layered complexity it also hints to "Nothing can be OP if it dies to Doomblade" since any attempt merely reads "Opponent taps 2 swamps and discards Doom Blade"*. So we need to realize that the moment we add instant kill, creatures will be capped in value by the cost to the opponent for them to use the instant kill.

*Note: This has impacted the MtG metagame in a quite significant way. It has made it so that WotC feels fine printing cards that are vastly OP compared to their peers but still die to Doom Blade. So 2 cards an order of magnitude apart in value might be given the same cost merely because Doom Blade exists.

[eljoemo]

I personally don't feel strongly about insta-kills which can't be prevented. For example, you can increase your creature's HP to avoid Maxwell's Demon, Otyugh, Holy Light etc. You can prevent those from happening. There was a card from this last Brawl (by Frozen maybe??) which killed creatures with an even / odd quanta cost, something which can't be changed or prevent (except quint, but that prevents everything).

That said, Freeze + Shockwave can't be prevented and I think that's okay. So I guess with enough restrictions or a combo, it can be good, just not too many restrictions to make it redundant.

[iDaire]

I believe in balance.
All cards in any card game like this should have a counter to them. If the instakill card itself has no drawback, then another card outside of that instakill card should have a balance. For example, lets say I made a card:
7  - Wrath (Kill any non-darkness, non-death creature). Then there should be a card like this:
5  - Enlightenment (Protect all creatures on the field from receiving damage equal to or more than their current health).
Something like that anyways. All cards need some way for the enemy to protect themselves against it. Otherwise, the card is unfair if it has a large impact on the game. Instakill cards have the ability to shut down strategies and prevent the opponent from winning, so without a valid counter, it's considered overpowered.

[ZephyrPhantom]

Any ultimate kill(a kill that has no defense) puts a ceiling on creature durability for any and all creatures subject to that ultimate kill. It is always ok BUT it has an irrevocable impact on existing and future creature design. So it should not be added without careful thought about the consequence.

Consider MtG:
The cheapest example of Instant Kill is Terror/Doom Blade/etc/etc which is a 2CMC spell that destroys 1 creature that it can target.
However there are many ways to avoid targeting (Protection being the strongest quality since it also prevents damage, enchantment, equipment, and blocking).
The next example is Wrath of God which is a 4CMC spell that destroys all creatures without targeting.
However that does nothing to Indestructible creatures.
Ah, but non targeting, non "damaging", non "destroy" lethal effects still exist like an AoE of -X|-X or an AoE of "exile".

Notice what happened. MtG added an ultimate attack and regretted it. So they added a defense. But then they needed a way around that ultimate defense. And then a way around that offense. Etc Etc. While this does create a nice layered complexity it also hints to "Nothing can be OP if it dies to Doomblade" since any attempt merely reads "Opponent taps 2 swamps and discards Doom Blade"*. So we need to realize that the moment we add instant kill, creatures will be capped in value by the cost to the opponent for them to use the instant kill.

*Note: This has impacted the MtG metagame in a quite significant way. It has made it so that WotC feels fine printing cards that are vastly OP compared to their peers but still die to Doom Blade. So 2 cards an order of magnitude apart in value might be given the same cost merely because Doom Blade exists.

If I remember correctly, Wizards plans to increase the base costs of those kinds of cards by 1 (DB-style cards costing 3, Wrath-style cards costing 5), as well as using more -X/-X and other control-style effects at lower CMCs. Is instant kill designing controllable if developers do not hold onto the belief it is absolutely necessary for the game?