Gaian creatures

[snowdrop]

In response to a Q on irc about what combat stats the Gaian would have.

* Gaians are kind of what white is in MtG, they just use the appearance of Green in MtG (plus parts of blue appearance, because of merfolk)

* In faction concept mindmap in wiki they have some attributes associated with them. Bare in mind that the mindmap is very very sketchy and not done. In the end it's supposed to map out 5 very different factions that have somewhat asymetrical relations.
o Numbers in the mind map range from 1 to 5, where 1 is low/bad and 5 high/very good.
o From that we can see that in general they're not a very offensive faction.
o They lean towards defense. However, this is just what you would conclude from looking at all the Gaian creatures in the world. It is not necessarily true on individual levels.

* Numbers in MtG are as low as possible. I think we should do the same and just take the scale itself. I see no reason to inflate it further: Its all about the relations between the variables anyways.

* In contrast to MtG I think that the creatures that are ability less should be rare, and that most creatures would have one ability.

* So, maybe a 1/1 + 1 ability costs 1 Gold, while a 1/1 without ability is free (it would still have to be placed on RP, however, it would not block/occupy the RP, thus another card could also be put on it? Hrm...) I'm not really sure about this, and wouldn't mind doing more conventional either. My worry is just that abilityless creatures are very boring and bring little beyond power / cannon fodder to the game. (But, they could ofc be enchanted, equipped etc...so I guess I'm partially wrong)

* In general, Gaians are not about raw power. They only have a very very few heavy creatures, some mid, and plenty of small. Gaians strength is more in numbers and in events / magic(?), and their creatures abilities when they're combined.

[pennomi]

* Numbers in MtG are as low as possible. I think we should do the same and just take the scale itself. I see no reason to inflate it further: Its all about the relations between the variables anyways.

I agree. I hate it when games have stats like 2000 ATK / 4000 DEF. Honestly, it couldn't have been 2/4?

* In contrast to MtG I think that the creatures that are ability less should be rare, and that most creatures would have one ability.

That makes a lot of sense, especially since this is a free CCG. Most people wouldn't use a unit with no abilities unless it really was that much better than average.

* So, maybe a 1/1 + 1 ability costs 1 Gold, while a 1/1 without ability is free (it would still have to be placed on RP, however, it would not block/occupy the RP, thus another card could also be put on it? Hrm...) I'm not really sure about this, and wouldn't mind doing more conventional either. My worry is just that abilityless creatures are very boring and bring little beyond power / cannon fodder to the game. (But, they could ofc be enchanted, equipped etc...so I guess I'm partially wrong)

We probably shouldn't make abilityless 1/1 creatures available. They could still be summoned using spells and events, at any rate. I also think this especially applies to the Gaians, since they have magic as such a large part of their culture.
Thanks for clarifying this. I'll get to work on a basic unit cardlist.

[TorbenBeta]

Small numbers are always good and we should only use whole numbers like 1,2,3... instead of 1.1,1.2, 2.4... as it is easier to remember and do the maths.

* In contrast to MtG I think that the creatures that are ability less should be rare, and that most creatures would have one ability.

I support it and would only like to add that it should be rephrased and that some without abilities are good. But do you guys mean passive or active abilities?

1/1 no abilities: should cost at least 1g, or we could have a zerg rush with 1-5 creatures into play in one turn, if they are all free. But I do not agree with Pennomi, that there should be no 1/1 no ability should be unplayable, they should be playable and if it's only to gain threshold.
Torben

[pennomi]

I support it and would only like to add that it should be rephrased and that some without abilities are good. But do you guys mean passive or active abilities?

1/1 no abilities: should cost at least 1g, or we could have a zerg rush with 1-5 creatures into play in one turn, if they are all free. But I do not agree with Pennomi, that there should be no 1/1 no ability should be unplayable, they should be playable and if it's only to gain threshold.
Torben

Assuming we are going by snowdrop's pricing scheme ("1/1 + 1 ability costs 1 Gold"), I think the reason I would say that there should be no 1/1 with no ability is simply this: Which unit would you rather have in your deck?

1 Gold: 1/1, no ability
or
1 Gold: 1/1, one ability

Since we are the developers, we can simply give all 1/1 creatures an ability just to keep things more interesting. You'll still be able to gain the threshold with cheap creatures with abilities.

[snowdrop]

Most people wouldn't use a unit with no abilities unless it really was that much better than average.

Well, I'm not sure about that: There are plenty of ability-less 1/1:s in MtG that are really good to use. They're good because:

a) They would(?) cost 1 less to put into play than the equivalent that has an ability, which would cost 2 Gold in that case.

b) Cheap block / Easy & fast to put into play

c) Can easily be equipped, enchanted etc and become larger, and still no real biggie if they happen to
die since cost has been low. The modular nature of how spells and equipment can be combined makes it easy to adapt it to the table, in contrast to a 2/3 that with 1 ability that costs 3 or even 4.

My suggestion is not to explicitly exclude/forbid the abilityless 1/1:s. It's to simply see to it that each faction only has a maximum of ONE abilityless 1/1 (if even that, since some factions are more biased towards bigger creatures than others). There seems to be no need at all, logically, to create 2 different Gaian creatures that both are 1/1:s and without abilities. That would just be a huge waste of our art resources and brings nothing to the game beyond perhaps flavour.

Question is how we are to price the abilityless 1/1:s. Should they cost 1, or should they cost 0? If zero, how exactly does that work with the RP:s? I haven't got a good answer yet, really.

And why would they cost zero instead of 1? Are they really that useless? I'm not sure, even if I initially thought so, they don't seem to be. Then there's also the problem that TorbenBeta mentions with the all-out-rush. (Then again, is that even possible if only 4 copies of one card are allowed in a deck? Then you would have to draw all four o your 1/1 abilityless 0 cost creatures in your opening hand, which is 7 cards. The probability for that to ever happen with a 60 card deck is(?)
((4÷57)×(3÷56)×(2÷55)×(1÷54)) x 100 = 0,0003% With other words, and if my math is correct in the above, it will almost never ever happen. Btw, somebody that actually knows any math, please feel free to verify this..)

Maybe introducing the zero-costs abilityless 1/1:s is more of a restrictions really or opening a can of worms? In any case, the zero cost something must be solved if we're to actually have cards that cost zero gold in the game. And I think we want that possibility, especially since they can have abilities (negative) that balance them out fine in the end anyway.

Wrapped up: 1/1:s with zero abilities, if they exist (and why not?) should probably cost 1. Or..? Alternative is still to let them cost zero instead, but there we are again: How are zero-cards played?

[pennomi]

My suggestion is not to explicitly exclude/forbid the abilityless 1/1:s. It's to simply see to it that each faction only has a maximum of ONE abilityless 1/1 (if even that, since some factions are more biased towards bigger creatures than others). There seems to be no need at all, logically, to create 2 different Gaian creatures that both are 1/1:s and without abilities. That would just be a huge waste of our art resources and brings nothing to the game beyond perhaps flavour.

Agreed. It would be foolish of us to limit our own options by creating rules about which cards we can or can't make. Also, like you said, it's a waste to have 2 identical cards with different art. There's really no room for that in WTactics.

Question is how we are to price the abilityless 1/1:s. Should they cost 1, or should they cost 0? If zero, how exactly does that work with the RP:s? I haven't got a good answer yet, really.

And why would they cost zero instead of 1? Are they really that useless? I'm not sure, even if I initially thought so, they don't seem to be. Then there's also the problem that TorbenBeta mentions with the all-out-rush. (Then again, is that even possible if only 4 copies of one card are allowed in a deck? Then you would have to draw all four o your 1/1 abilityless 0 cost creatures in your opening hand, which is 7 cards. The probability for that to ever happen with a 60 card deck is(?)
((4÷57)×(3÷56)×(2÷55)×(1÷54)) x 100 = 0,0003% With other words, and if my math is correct in the above, it will almost never ever happen. Btw, somebody that actually knows any math, please feel free to verify this..)

Your math is correct . I'm not convinced that they should cost 0. But that would give them a great tactical advantage, to the point that they might become a very popular type of card. I do not think that a deck would have an unfair advantage if it included a maximum of 4 free 1/1s. I can see people potentially abusing it with 4 free 1/1 cards from each faction.

Maybe introducing the zero-costs abilityless 1/1:s is more of a restrictions really or opening a can of worms? In any case, the zero cost something must be solved if we're to actually have cards that cost zero gold in the game. And I think we want that possibility, especially since they can have abilities (negative) that balance them out fine in the end anyway.

Wrapped up: 1/1:s with zero abilities, if they exist (and why not?) should probably cost 1. Or..? Alternative is still to let them cost zero instead, but there we are again: How are zero-cards played?

There's a couple of potential solutions I can think of, not all equal in merit, but here goes:
*0 gold cards are played as normal on "imaginary" RPs
*Adjust all cards to have a minimum of 1 Gold cost.
*Limit the play of free cards to 1 per turn (Basically, there always exists ONE (no more no less) RP that can play a 0 cost card).

I actually really like that last one. Free cards still have an advantage - they don't use any resources. However, only one free card can be used per turn, since there's only one "Resource Pile" (I guess it's not much of a pile, is it?) with size 0. There wouldn't be any chance of a rush by free cards, either.

[TorbenBeta]

After reading the posts, I think that 1/1 0g no ability could be usable.
But only if we put some "stoppers" into the ORC:
No more than 1 or 2 of them per faction, maybe exclude Red Banner as their speciality lies into fast game play and numbers?

*Limit the play of free cards to 1 per turn (Basically, there always exists ONE (no more no less) RP that can play a 0 cost card).

Yeah, but then there is a small problem. If an equipment/magic... with 0g is played, does it occupy the 0 RP? And would the card not block a RP, which would render your point "

Free cards still have an advantage - they don't use any resources

moot.
A solution would be to let the player have infinite 0g RP's or really let them only play 1 0g card per turn.
Torben

[pennomi]

Yeah, but then there is a small problem. If an equipment/magic... with 0g is played, does it occupy the 0 RP? And would the card not block a RP, which would render your point "

Free cards still have an advantage - they don't use any resources

moot.
A solution would be to let the player have infinite 0g RP's or really let them only play 1 0g card per turn.

Ah, yes, I feel a little bit stupid that I forgot about free spells and equipment. I was only thinking about limiting the number of free creatures that go into play. I suppose, like you said, that we can just limit the number of free creatures to 1 or 2 per faction. Of course, how this affects balance will not be known until we do some playtesting. So for now, I say that we leave free creatures available, then only if playtesting shows they can be abused, will we fix it.

Oh, and possible second thought about the size 0 RP. It's possible that spells or equipment could have "no gold cost" which would be different than "0 gold cost." A "0 gold cost" requires the 0 RP, while the "no gold cost" doesn't affect RPs at all. So that might preserve balance between a single 0 RP and free spells/events.

[TorbenBeta]

Oh, and possible second thought about the size 0 RP. It's possible that spells or equipment could have "no gold cost" which would be different than "0 gold cost." A "0 gold cost" requires the 0 RP, while the "no gold cost" doesn't affect RPs at all. So that might preserve balance between a single 0 RP and free spells/events.

This could be a good idea to differentiate between 0g and no g cards. But let us first see how it plays out in live games.

[Ravenchild]

Well, I'm not sure about that: There are plenty of ability-less 1/1:s in MtG that are really good to use. They're good because:

a) They would(?) cost 1 less to put into play than the equivalent that has an ability, which would cost 2 Gold in that case.

That's absolutely not my experience. There are a lot of cool elf creatures that are 1/1, cost one forest and have a useful ability. MTG Search.