Ressource System

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Ressource System

Post by Ravenchild » Sat Sep 04, 2010 20:10

The current Idea for the resource system has been presented by snowdrop at http://chaosrealm.net/wtactics/2010/08/ ... ce-system/. But the dice-model has several disadvantages which I agree with.

I've made my own thoughts and this is what I've come up with:
Each Player gets X gold each round, where X is equal to the control score of a player.
Well, that my sound a little radical, because if you start with 20 control (lives) you get 20 Gold in round one. That's pretty much, but it should be possible to adapt the card's costs to this system.

But now comes the more interesting part: You can delegate control points to your own units! Whenever your unit defeats an enemy, you may pay a certain amount of gold to transfer one of your control points to the unit and you still get money each round for the control point.
But what is this good for? Well, a unit with a control point should get a bonus. By default this should be a +1/+1 bonus but the rule text may specify other effects for a specific number of control points on a unit.

But that's not everything! Whenever the enemy manages to strike you (the player), the loss of control points is permanent. But your units recover every round and they do not lose the control points.

Maybe it is reasonable to have a limit of 20 control points, that a player himself can carry.
Further conditions, when such a transfer may be permissible may need to be further elaborated.

---

But how realistic is this? Let us define, what "control" really means. You have control because people respect you. Any king is nothing without a loyal followership.
Respect can be established with successful battles. It is therefore a very good idea to have veterans in your army who have made themselves famous. Therefore you, the king profit from the status of your warriors.

---

The most obvious way to mark a unit with a control point is with a token. But as control points are a fundamental part of the game, another alternative is available: Zones.
You just put all units with X control points in zone (X). These zones have no effect in the game itself. It is just a method to manage the different number of control points.

I know, this can still result in a lot of managing. An alternative would be to have at most one control point on each unit and you can use special cards to increase the value of one or several control points to a higher amount.

---
edit: I've had another thought: Maybe the player should only get 1 gold for each control point on his units and not for control points on the player himself.
Depending on how many 0 gold units are in the game, the following rule may need to be added:
Each player starts with 3 peasant units which are not good fighters but each produces one gold each round (even though one control point results in one gold piece, further effects may increase the amount of gold for a player independently of the number of control points).
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Re: Ressource System

Post by snowdrop » Sun Sep 05, 2010 10:57

Some random thoughts:
  1. Influence, is what I've chosen to call the "life"/control points in my own rules path of WT. (Not that it's important, but more to clarify and keep things consistent in the forum :) )
  2. Most CCG:s tend to build power, or, rather, to build up the game in the sense that higher tier cards can be played later in the game rather than sooner. In MtG for example, by playing turn 8 you would normally have at least 8 lands in play and can then "unlock" some features and cards/abilities that cost that much mana that have until that point been unavailable for you. What you suggest inverts that process: The deeper you go into the game (i.e. mid game, late game) the less resources you can get and the lower tier cards you can play. True? (This is btw also a part of the criticism I suggested against my own dice-based system).
  3. Keep track of these things with tokens is, even if I do agree that it is a natural thing to use them, extra player admin every turn. Actually, it almost seems as if MtG would have less resource admin than WT would if we'd use this system: There you 1) place a card as land 2) tap it when used 3) untap all cards every round, compared with: 1) pick tokens every turn 2) use/put back tokens every turn 3) re-distribute tokens every battle where you "won".
  4. Instead of making cards cost more to "eat enough resources" the influence (life/control points) should be lowered, in order to get a game using "lower numbers" and that is easier to count.
  5. Having a tight connection between your influence (life, i.e 20 when you start) and your resources/income means that you'll end up with a game where the distance between the leader and the other player(s) is getting bigger and bigger all the time: It makes the very first few turns of the game very critical, and the rest less so since the leader will almost be guaranteed to just widen the gap between him and the rest of the players, making it almost impossible to catch-up. Expressed differently: The person that has the most influence (life) should not necessarily be translated to that person getting the most gold - if that would be so, then you "double punish" the losing player, making it impossible for him/her to ever win the game.
  6. Don't worry about realism and how we can explain things - it's not a simulator ;) and we can always explain everything in a reasonable way to the players if we really want to. :)
  7. A smooth way to implement some parts of what you suggest is to let some/most cards actually generate a resource every turn, and just have that value pre-printed as a part of the cards stats. This is suggested, I think, in a good way by Jeck in the comments to the dice-text I recently wrote and that you link to in the above.
  8. http://chaosrealm.net/w/Xcho_Rules is an interesting system as well that has some combinations of your ideas - he manages to use resources as reinforcements if I remember it correctly.
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Re: Ressource System

Post by Ravenchild » Sun Sep 05, 2010 11:52

snowdrop wrote:Some random thoughts:
Influence, is what I've chosen to call the "life"/control points in my own rules path of WT. (Not that it's important, but more to clarify and keep things consistent in the forum :) )
I totally understand. But I suppose you also want to avoid taking names from MTG.
Most CCG:s tend to build power, or, rather, to build up the game in the sense that higher tier cards can be played later in the game rather than sooner. In MtG for example, by playing turn 8 you would normally have at least 8 lands in play and can then "unlock" some features and cards/abilities that cost that much mana that have until that point been unavailable for you. What you suggest inverts that process: The deeper you go into the game (i.e. mid game, late game) the less resources you can get and the lower tier cards you can play. True? (This is btw also a part of the criticism I suggested against my own dice-based system).
Not true. There will be cards that will increase your own influence and there may even be some more expensive cards that will put influence directly on your units.
Keep track of these things with tokens is, even if I do agree that it is a natural thing to use them, extra player admin every turn. Actually, it almost seems as if MtG would have less resource admin than WT would if we'd use this system: There you 1) place a card as land 2) tap it when used 3) untap all cards every round, compared with: 1) pick tokens every turn 2) use/put back tokens every turn 3) re-distribute tokens every battle where you "won".
That is why I've made the proposal to organize your cards in zones where all units with (X) influence are assembled in one zone on the table.
Besides you do not need to count your influence points each round. You can keep track of it with a dice(20 or 30 sides) and whenever you add influence to a unit or a unit with influence dies, you use the dice to mark this change.
Instead of making cards cost more to "eat enough resources" the influence (life/control points) should be lowered, in order to get a game using "lower numbers" and that is easier to count.
True.
Having a tight connection between your influence (life, i.e 20 when you start) and your resources/income means that you'll end up with a game where the distance between the leader and the other player(s) is getting bigger and bigger all the time: It makes the very first few turns of the game very critical, and the rest less so since the leader will almost be guaranteed to just widen the gap between him and the rest of the players, making it almost impossible to catch-up.
Probably correct. It is rather unconventional to have such a high income at the beginning and to connect the income to the number of lives. But we are trying new things with this game and this is an idea I've come up with. It's by no means perfect and still needs adjustments but a new concept should make things more interesting.

In my above post I also added an "edit" clause proposing that you should only get gold for influence on your units and that you should start with 3 peasants with no influence but who give you gold to start with. In fact, I like my "edit" of this idea even better than the first draft because it allows cheap units.

This is off topic but I like to say: I really like the threshold-concept as an additional "cost"-factor. This may even be further extended to require the player to have e.g. 2 rebels with one of them carrying an influence point.
Expressed differently: The person that has the most influence (life) should not necessarily be translated to that person getting the most gold - if that would be so, then you "double punish" the losing player, making it impossible for him/her to ever win the game.
I've thought about that as well. An ideal (or more interesting) concept would be that players who have lost most of their army & influence should be able to react more aggressively and thereby making the endgame more interesting with some possibilities of gaining power again.

As you have said elsewhere, you want WT to be more creature-centric. I think the concept of influence on units supports this idea. There should be enough cards for a player to gain influence for himself so that a transfer of an influence point is not a real sacrifice.

Besides I'd like to mention that I envision the transfer costs of influence as additional 3 gold for each level. So putting an influence counter on a new unit costs 3 gold. To put another on it costs 6 gold.
A smooth way to implement some parts of what you suggest is to let some/most cards actually generate a resource every turn, and just have that value pre-printed as a part of the cards stats. This is suggested, I think, in a good way by Jeck in the comments to the dice-text I recently wrote and that you link to in the above.
You mean with a paperclip? I like that idea in general. But we need to further define the rules to decide upon it.
http://chaosrealm.net/w/Xcho_Rules is an interesting system as well that has some combinations of your ideas - he manages to use resources as reinforcements if I remember it correctly.
Okay, I'll read that.
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Re: Ressource System

Post by snowdrop » Sun Sep 05, 2010 16:30

Ravenchild wrote: I totally understand. But I suppose you also want to avoid taking names from MTG.
To be honest, I don't care at all about being original (or, more correctly, to sound original) as it's not the goal with the project. There is however some good points for us wanting to avoid copying everything straight off from any given game. :)

I don't think "influence" is "taken" by MtG: The MtG score system uses "life", right? At least it did last time I played it, then again, that was before the plainswalker intro :oops:

(In any case, single words like "life" and so on can't and aren't copyrighted and free to use by anyone. Given the amount of words and terminology covered by MtG's over 10 000 cards and zillion rules it's virtually impossible to create a game that's in English and that doesn't overlap any one of them)
Most CCG:s tend to build power, or, rather, to build up the game in the sense that higher tier cards can be played later in the game rather than sooner. In MtG for example, by playing turn 8 you would normally have at least 8 lands in play and can then "unlock" some features and cards/abilities that cost that much mana that have until that point been unavailable for you. What you suggest inverts that process: The deeper you go into the game (i.e. mid game, late game) the less resources you can get and the lower tier cards you can play. True? (This is btw also a part of the criticism I suggested against my own dice-based system).
Not true. There will be cards that will increase your own influence and there may even be some more expensive cards that will put influence directly on your units.[/quote]

Could be my bad here, but if I understood you correctly, you (initially) suggest a system where a players resources ("gold" in WT terminology) is somehow equal to or otherwise closely connected to her influence (or Life, as it's called in MtG). Am I correct?

If I am, no matter what kind of cards that exist, the above problem will present itself: You will start out maxed out on resources, and as you lose life, you will get less and less resources. The later it is in the game, the "closer to 0" resources one of players would come. Incidentally, that player is also the one that is at the same time losing influence, making it impossible to get back on her feet. (If I didn't understand your original suggestion, please ignore this remark as it's useless then.)
That is why I've made the proposal to organize your cards in zones where all units with (X)
influence are assembled in one zone on the table.
Ah yes! My fault I ignore that:

It's somewhat unclear to me here - you want the players to divide the table, each her on half of it, into zones based on how much influence each creature generates?

If so, how would that actually look on a real table? Keep in mind the game already uses 3 zones: 2 fronts, that must at all time be easy to distinguish, and one Queue/resource zone. Now, if you add additional "sub-zones" within the two fronts, wouldn't it make the game layout even more complex and harder to get an overview of?

Also, how do you show that a creature has/generates x influence? By placing it in one of the zones above, or, by placing tokens on it, and then placing it in the zones above? Here my guess is the first,, But, if so, then for this system to really work you'd need to have pretty static zones and the zones would always have to be placed identically.

Besides you do not need to count your influence points each round. You can keep track of it with a dice(20 or 30 sides) and whenever you add influence to a unit or a unit with influence dies, you use the dice to mark this change.
True. I think my main objection was that the resource system seemed/seems to require more admin than the resource system of MtG, not less, nor on par with MtG. Now, I wouldn't know, as I still have some questions to straighten out on it.
Having a tight connection between your influence (life, i.e 20 when you start) and your resources/income means that you'll end up with a game where the distance between the leader and the other player(s) is getting bigger and bigger all the time: It makes the very first few turns of the game very critical, and the rest less so since the leader will almost be guaranteed to just widen the gap between him and the rest of the players, making it almost impossible to catch-up.
Probably correct. It is rather unconventional to have such a high income at the beginning and to connect the income to the number of lives. But we are trying new things with this game and this is an idea I've come up with. It's by no means perfect and still needs adjustments but a new concept should make things more interesting.
New concepts are always welcome. I am not opposed you or the public in general presenting them. On the contrary: They challenge both the one that suggested them and the already existing systems, hopefully leading to a fruitful discussion where ideas of all involved are born and stuff improved upon or thrown out of the window ;)

What disturbs me is not that the idea may be unconventional. Much related with WT will be unconventional for one or another reason, and that alone is neither good or bad really. I don't consider the word to be normative. What I worried about was that a system that has a declining resource-model as it's economical system is one that inverts the player expectations:

In a conventional CCG a player looks forward and expects to be able to perform more and more actions each new turn OR the same amount or lower amount of actions but more powerful ones. Why? Because each turn the limit (i.e. mana/lands) is growing. In your suggestion, if I understood it properly, the same can't be said. It seems as if it's almost the other way around. If it is, I believe the system would have a serious problem: Instead of becoming more and more fun and interesting, the game becomes more and more restricted with every turn that goes, if it's true that amount of gold is tightly knit together with amount of influence.
In my above post I also added an "edit" clause proposing that you should only get gold for influence on your units and that you should start with 3 peasants with no influence but who give you gold to start with. In fact, I like my "edit" of this idea even better than the first draft because it allows cheap units.
I share the notion that this one is better than the original one. :) Some questions that come to mind:

Does the player have any influence herself, ever? Or is the players influence always equal to the influence of her creatures in play?

How much influence can a single creature carry? How is that determined? (If this value is high, then suddenly all creatures will need rpg dices á la d20:s etc. If low, then the game will favour weenie decks more than huge creature decks?)

Also, does the player start with any influence? How is the game won? By lowering your opponents influence to 0, or by reaching 20 influence yourself? Or both?
This is off topic but I like to say: I really like the threshold-concept as an additional "cost"-factor. This may even be further extended to require the player to have e.g. 2 rebels with one of them carrying an influence point.
Thanks. The threshold is there to compensate for the fact that gold is the only currency in the game (on purpose). In other words, to balance the deck building & factions, just as coloured mana balances MtG:s meta-game.

And yeah, the possibility you mention is there in your suggested eco system, not to mention all eco-specific abilities one can make up that play along nicely with the chosen eco-system.


I've thought about that as well. An ideal (or more interesting) concept would be that players who have lost most of their army & influence should be able to react more aggressively and thereby making the endgame more interesting with some possibilities of gaining power again.
Agree on that. Maybe what you seek is something in the lines of Deciphers(?) lord of the rings, where the players actually give each other the same(?) amount of resources as they use themselves.

Besides I'd like to mention that I envision the transfer costs of influence as additional 3 gold for each level. So putting an influence counter on a new unit costs 3 gold. To put another on it costs 6 gold.
I thought the creature gained influence by defeating an opposing creature? (Killing an opponent that blocked it's attack.)


A smooth way to implement some parts of what you suggest is to let some/most cards actually generate a resource every turn, and just have that value pre-printed as a part of the cards stats. This is suggested, I think, in a good way by Jeck in the comments to the dice-text I recently wrote and that you link to in the above.
You mean with a paperclip? I like that idea in general. But we need to further define the rules to decide upon it.
No (although I do discuss and give visual examples of the paper-.clip model as well in one of the blog posts), I meant with just a single pre-printed value. Example: The creature "Venerable Nun" has a resource production of 2. I have her in my hand. I choose to lay her down in my resource row, just as a MtG player would lay down land. She is now producing 2 gold for me every turn. I could ofc also have chosen to put her into play as a normal creature - in which case she would have not produced any gold at all.
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Re: Ressource System

Post by Ravenchild » Mon Sep 06, 2010 21:37

snowdrop wrote: I don't think "influence" is "taken" by MtG: The MtG score system uses "life", right? At least it did last time I played it, then again, that was before the plainswalker intro :oops:
That's correct.
Not true. There will be cards that will increase your own influence and there may even be some more expensive cards that will put influence directly on your units.
Could be my bad here, but if I understood you correctly, you (initially) suggest a system where a players resources ("gold" in WT terminology) is somehow equal to or otherwise closely connected to her influence (or Life, as it's called in MtG). Am I correct?
That is correct. That was my initial proposal. But as you have pointed out, this approach has severe drawbacks.
It's somewhat unclear to me here - you want the players to divide the table, each her on half of it, into zones based on how much influence each creature generates?
That's one way of organizing the cards to keep admin low. Of course you could use tokens instead.
If so, how would that actually look on a real table? Keep in mind the game already uses 3 zones: 2 fronts, that must at all time be easy to distinguish, and one Queue/resource zone. Now, if you add additional "sub-zones" within the two fronts, wouldn't it make the game layout even more complex and harder to get an overview of?
It's something we definitely need to try out.
Also, how do you show that a creature has/generates x influence? By placing it in one of the zones above, or, by placing tokens on it, and then placing it in the zones above? Here my guess is the first,, But, if so, then for this system to really work you'd need to have pretty static zones and the zones would always have to be placed identically.
One can use pens or shoelaces as borders to the zones. You can easily move these borders whenever you need to. I don't think of the influence-zones as being very far apart but as pretty close to each other with a narrow mark between them.
True. I think my main objection was that the resource system seemed/seems to require more admin than the resource system of MtG, not less, nor on par with MtG. Now, I wouldn't know, as I still have some questions to straighten out on it.
True. The resource system in MTG is like counting with your fingers. You want X mana, you tab X lands. Simple.
To achieve something similar, one could have a meter/ruler with a token on it. At the begin of turn, you set the token on the point that is equal to your control+gold production. Whenever you use gold, move the token downwards.
I share the notion that this one is better than the original one. :) Some questions that come to mind:

Does the player have any influence herself, ever? Or is the players influence always equal to the influence of her creatures in play?
The player has an initial influence of (let's say) 20. He can transfer influence points to his units and thereby upgrade them and get more gold each round.
How much influence can a single creature carry? How is that determined? (If this value is high, then suddenly all creatures will need rpg dices á la d20:s etc. If low, then the game will favour weenie decks more than huge creature decks?)
I haven't thought of any restriction yet. The default rule for for an influence point is: The unit gets +1/+1
Mosts units will have specific rules for the influence points placed on them. But most of these rules will only match 1,2 or 3 influence points. Any further influence points on these units will give them just +1/+1.
However, some units may have an (X) rule so that any number of influence points matches this rule. For example: On you turn move X cards from your graveyard to your hand.
Also, does the player start with any influence? How is the game won? By lowering your opponents influence to 0, or by reaching 20 influence yourself? Or both?
The same as in MTG: Reduce the enemy's influence to 0. But I suppose you could also use other winning conditions for this model.
Agree on that. Maybe what you seek is something in the lines of Deciphers(?) lord of the rings, where the players actually give each other the same(?) amount of resources as they use themselves.
I haven't played that game. But I'm thinking more of something like letting the weaker player draw more cards and thereby making him react more versatile. But we can also try out the concept from LotR.
I thought the creature gained influence by defeating an opposing creature? (Killing an opponent that blocked it's attack.)
Correct. But you still need to pay for the upgrade. It does not matter, if the unit is the attacker or defender. Maybe even the use of magical abilities could count as a fight.
Example: The creature "Venerable Nun" has a resource production of 2. I have her in my hand. I choose to lay her down in my resource row, just as a MtG player would lay down land. She is now producing 2 gold for me every turn. I could ofc also have chosen to put her into play as a normal creature - in which case she would have not produced any gold at all.
Something like split cards? You can either play this card as a resource card or as a creature? Will this be a common motive?
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Re: Ressource System

Post by snowdrop » Thu Sep 09, 2010 16:48

One can use pens or shoelaces as borders to the zones. You can easily move these borders whenever you need to. I don't think of the influence-zones as being very far apart but as pretty close to each other with a narrow mark between them.
I'd agree if it was 1 or 2 of them involved, but several seems to make the table "crowded" and moving that stuff around, while easy, could be a problem. Then again, if it was a token that was the border (which imho should be enough for most people) I agree that moving it around seems easy. Now that I think of it, maybe movement won't be a problem since it won't happen often(?)
one could have a meter/ruler with a token on it. At the begin of turn, you set the token on the point that is equal to your control+gold production. Whenever you use gold, move the token downwards.
Using a meter system like that is interesting. What's more compelling is that WotC didn't use it: The most apparent reason would be that it would demand one meter for each colour of mana. Problem is that I don't know a single CCG that uses a meter bar like this.

Why is that? Maybe because it actually makes the game "harder" and more cumbersome to setup? It demands yet one component to be in place when you play. Smoothest solution and most portable is perhaps a d50 or whatever, but such stuff does indeed require you to visit a special store to get it. Not to mention that most people don't even know that anything beyond a d6 can be obtained in the first place.
The default rule for for an influence point is: The unit gets +1/+1
Mosts units will have specific rules for the influence points placed on them. But most of these rules will only match 1,2 or 3 influence points.
I would have done it differently: Instead of making the default state +1/+1 per influence point, I would only go with the specific rules, rules summed up by keywords with a prefix, marking they are an influence-based ability. Reason is +1/+1 is a very very balance disrupting feature of a card - if all/most cards have it, their original stats seem to play less of a role, and this also has implications on cards that boost creatures, such as events, magic, equipment etc.

I think it's a good call of you to limit it up to max 3 influence points in general.
I haven't played that game. But I'm thinking more of something like letting the weaker player draw more cards and thereby making him react more versatile. But we can also try out the concept from LotR.
Interesting idea. Question is if a player really becomes more versatile when having more cards in hand. In an apparent sense she does indeed become so - she has more options, greater space to move on so to speak. In another, true versatility would depend much on the deck building: Most decks have really only 1-2 ways to be played. A minority of the decks can use "multiple paths" and kick ass no matter which one of them that is selected. These decks do indeed make the player more versatile. The others not so much, they just make the player repeat stuff she probably already has done or initiate the start of such a sequence.

I haven't ever played with the LotR system myself, but my guess is you might like it. (Again, Deciphers LotR)
Something like split cards? You can either play this card as a resource card or as a creature? Will this be a common motive?
No, not split cards. At least not if split cards = 2 cards with unique names on one piece of paper. (MtG has a couple of them, at least in Kamigawa I think, a black rare rat, that "flipped" when it took too much damage or whatever it was that triggered it's flip)

The card could still be, and imho would preferably be, just a single card with a single name. It just has a variable printed on it that tells the player how much (if anything) resources the card would generate for the player each turn if it was not put into play as a creature, but put into play as a resource instead.
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Re: Ressource System

Post by Ravenchild » Sun Sep 12, 2010 15:49

snowdrop wrote:Now that I think of it, maybe movement [changing zone sizes on the table] won't be a problem since it won't happen often(?)
That's not easy to determine at this point of time. We need to play the game a couple of times to see if this causes trouble.
Using a meter system like that is interesting. What's more compelling is that WotC didn't use it: The most apparent reason would be that it would demand one meter for each colour of mana. Problem is that I don't know a single CCG that uses a meter bar like this.
The WT rules will probably not cover the way the players should keep track of their gold. The players are free to use any method they like. One more possibility is to take cards that are not part of the current game and use one card (face down) to represent one piece of gold.
The players then may use 2 stacks: One stack of cards for the gold spent this round and one stack to symbolize the remaining amount of gold.
The classical MtG-way is also possible: you tab the face-down gold cards.
We may as well print one piece of gold on the back of each card :mrgreen:
Not to mention that most people don't even know that anything beyond a d6 can be obtained in the first place.
Such things should be mentioned in the game manual in any case.

I would have done it differently: Instead of making the default state +1/+1 per influence point, I would only go with the specific rules, rules summed up by keywords with a prefix, marking they are an influence-based ability. Reason is +1/+1 is a very very balance disrupting feature of a card - if all/most cards have it, their original stats seem to play less of a role, and this also has implications on cards that boost creatures, such as events, magic, equipment etc.
Yet, we need a default rule. I don't think you want to invent specific rules for each card. And remember that each new influence transfer costs 3*level gold. If you upgrade a 2 influence unit (with specific rules for 1 and 2 inf. points) to a 3 influence unit, getting +1/+1 for 9 gold is really not a good deal.
I think it's a good call of you to limit it up to max 3 influence points in general.
As the transfer gets more expensive with each level, I don't think we need a limit.
No, not split cards. At least not if split cards = 2 cards with unique names on one piece of paper. (MtG has a couple of them, at least in Kamigawa I think, a black rare rat, that "flipped" when it took too much damage or whatever it was that triggered it's flip)
I couldn't find a rat with the traits you described, but you probably mean something like this:
http://magiccards.info/chk/en/131.html
Whereas I think of something like this:
http://magiccards.info/di/en/189.html
In the latter case you can decide which card you like to play.
The card could still be, and imho would preferably be, just a single card with a single name. It just has a variable printed on it that tells the player how much (if anything) resources the card would generate for the player each turn if it was not put into play as a creature, but put into play as a resource instead.
This pretty much reminds me of the most expensive card in MtG which produces very much mana very early and is therefore banned in tournaments ;)
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