I was thinking we would need something like Fight, but I think you make a good point. I think Clash is the sort of thing we could re-purpose here.

I keep coming back to clash but then I keep butting up against the fact that... well... people hated it the first time around.

I worry that with other luck cards already things might be too luck based as-is. How could we use clash in a way that wasn't really frustrating?

In my experience, the trick to using things like clash, coin-flips, or other luck-based elements well is to eliminate the downside. In other words, winning a clash or a flip should add an effect, rather than merely cause it. The people who hated the original coin flip cards often hated them because a loss of the flip meant either no effect or a negative one.

So, for a gunfight card, maybe you want it to work like Fight does, then clash. If you win the clash, prevent the damage to your creature, or something like that...

I think the most prevalent reason people didn't like clash is because of the block clash was in. It was a tribal block, a CRAZY tribal block, so all those clash cards weren't... actually functional. They didn't DO anything for the block, but here, I feel like it really has a chance to contribute. Plus, in fairness, I'm pretty sure that most people didn't get that you could send the revealed card to the bottom of the deck.
I dunno, we're facing a convoke problem... and I despise convoke because all of those are overpriced garbage, but it was successful enough to come back.

Essentially, we have to look at the balance between effect and cost and potential bonus, which I don't think will be too difficult so long as we consider what effects we want.
@Raven: I had considered that exact card for an example. Though we'd have to add the clash first so that it triggered right.

Also, I actually already have something for mana fixing, but I'm going to have to dig them up. They are someone in YMTC so I'll be back in a while....

@Barinellos: That would be an inability to read on my part. Sorry about that.

@Clash: Hmm... Yeah, I wasn't too fond of the mechanic myself. It does, however, fit the bill from a flavor standpoint. What if, instead of from the top of the deck, you revealed a random card from your hand? We'd have to rename the mechanic, of course, but at least you have some control over it...?

List of potential returning mechanics:

Proliferate
Clash
Dethrone
Detain
Extort
Cycling?
Morbid
...Unearth?
Kinship

@TheGreatandTerribleLordLuna: Your voice humbles me. Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep that in mind in the future. O_O

Cycling, Morbid, Unearth don't quite feel right, but part of that is just the fact that cycling doesn't have a flavor at all.
Kinship REALLY doesn't belong outside a heavy tribal commitment.*
Extort comes with a serious problem, and that is the mana tied to it. We'd have to do a derivative to make it workable outside /
Detain might have a little feature, but I don't know to what extent, still it feels like it could have some legs.
Dethrone just doesn't sound right. I like the mechanic, but in a wild west setting, "throne" is kind of a weird word.
I'm not entirely sold on Proliferate either, but that might be because it just feels tainted.

*Speaking of which, that earlier post about the creature type cares cards:
Nighstalker cares about having a demon.

I think we want to be careful with "cares about another creature type" or we'll fall into the trap of the kamigawa ogres/demons. Having a cycle (or two) would be fun though.

Yeah, I'm pretty much just seeing these as sort of our "paragons" for uncommon.
Just a little cycle, though I think we should probably look carefully. The minotaurs caring about beasts are a little off the reservation, for example, but I really like the rattler and the idea of the vash works too.

.... I feel sad now that centaurs can't care about horses.

Saw this on the active threads list and thought I'd point you to a some Jakcards that were made for the booster pack game. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=287&hilit=Booster+pack+Jakkard&start=60#p18812
For our brainstorming we brought back detain in and made fight play a prominent role in . Guns and clash were discussed but we never really came to any consensus there. We also combined the expansion vs nature and rulers vs opressed into a unified Freedom vs Justice theme with playing whatever side suits them at the moment.

Ah HA! Found it:


Then a potential ability for Lady Luck's (Alessa's) design:
[+] Each player reveals the top card of his or her library. You may put all those cards on the bottom of their owner's library.

Nice to see this happening. I think it belongs more in the YMtC forum, though.

I think that if you want to create a summer set, before making any cards, you should have a vision in mind. What format is this set intended for? What do you want to be the main mechanical and flavor themes of the set? You have a good flavor hook here in "Wild West set," but there doesn't seem to be much consensus about anything beyond that. In particular, you say that this is a "summer set," but is it meant to be multiplayer or one-on-one? Draft, sealed or preconstructed product? Is there any game-changing element, like Archenemy schemes or Planechase planes? If you just make cool cards, I think the project will end up incohesive and unfinished.

I think it might have been a little hasty to reprint Highway Robber and Tavern Swindler without knowing anything about the rest of the set. I could easily rattle off 200 cards that could be reprinted in a Wild West setting, but I don't think that would make a fun play environment.

If you're serious about making a set like this, I think you should take inspiration from Starstill, the Set Like No Other, a community-created set that's going on in YMtC right now. We decided the mechanics that we were going for very early on, hammered down the basic outline of what was happening in each color, and then held periodic contests to slowly fill up the set skeleton with cards. This, I think, is the best way to get a community set done from start to finish.

Yeah, some of this mechanics wrangling feels a little premature to me when we haven't figured out what the core weirdness of this set is.

I'm assuming we do want some sort of game-changing element, and while designing individual cards is fun and can help inform what that game changing element should be, I think we should definitely be focusing more on figuring out what that element is, and if we can't come up with anything maybe turning this into a pitch contest for YMTC. (Which might be kinda fun to do anyway actually.)

I have an idea for the core weirdness which would be pretty, well, weird.

I think this is the perfect place to reintroduce ante.

After all, so much of Jakkard is about gambling, be it the literal sort -- a crooked card game in a boomtown saloon -- or the more figurative sort -- striking out Wasteward to seek your fortune. It's about taking risks in pursuit of big rewards.

Ante seems like it would be perfect for that.

We could push the concept in some new, different directions. Maybe you can ante by drawing fewer cards, or starting with less life, in addition to or in place of the traditional sort of ante. We could have cards that let you swipe cards out of the kitty, or put more cards in to get an in-game advantage, and so on.

It seems like it could be very flavorful, and since nobody is at risk of losing real cards, it sidesteps the thing which makes ante so problematic in the paper game.

Just one possible idea, anyway.

To build on your idea without getting into "This could never really be done" land, we could have a new Command Zone card type (like Conspiracies) with its own mechanic to represent a wager without gambling. For instance

Outthink the Foxes
Gamble
Your starting hand size is 5
Wager - You may begin the game with a card of your choice from your library face down under Outthink the Foxes. If you have seven or more cards in your hand, you may look at and cast that card.

The basic template of a gamble is that you play with some handicap, but if you achieve a secondary goal you get access to a card you selected before the game, essentially guaranteeing you your bomb or key spell. There could be non-wager Gambles, too (as conspiracies without Hidden Agenda), which would offer a boost of a different sort if you manage to overcome the weak start.

Bringing back Ante could be a perfect excuse to reprint two cards that have already appeared in M:EM stories: Timmerian Fiends and Amulet of Quoz

My concern with these ideas is that things could get very swingy, particularly if we also include stuff with Luck Counters and Leyline abilities. How do we mitigate that? Maybe just by not having more than say two cycles and maybe two or three other cards with these sorts of abilities, and stuff like Grandeur that mitigates other luck problems?

Also, would there be some way we could tie this into the Counters mechanical theme?

I think ante is an interesting idea, but it's meaningless if we aren't playing for real cards. A more general gambling mechanic might be cool though.

What if every player started with some number of chips that they could spend to bluff and make gambles to affect the game state? Effectively creating a poker minigame within the framework of a Magic game?

That would be a nice side benefit. Hadn't thought of that.



I actually like Grandeur a lot for this set, since I suspect we'd want to have a lot of legendary cards.

The swingy-ness is a concern. I think partly we'd have to limit some of the wilder cycles, and I think we'd also want some "you're too lucky" hate just to keep things in check a little bit. Not totally sure what form that would take, admittedly.



I think we could potentially have cards which allow you to spend your various counters like poker chips.

* * *

@ Tevish - I think the Gambles are a super-cool idea. I think that ante could be a form of Gamble, which would be a way to tie those together. And I think we could have rewards beyond just a tutor effect. For example, you could gamble by giving up turns in order to get more turns later, or gamble your starting life total to try to get some more of another resource. I think there are so many possibilities there.

* * *



I like that a ton, too. That could also work with Tevish's gamble framework. Say that your gamble to start with a 6-card hand gives you some number of chips to begin with, for example.

I love the idea of cards which you'd spend chips on. Like a counterspell that your opponent could fizzle by spending chips, or things along those lines.

And I think that chips and counters could potentially interact, like I noted above. Maybe you can spend chips to add counters to cards, for example.

Expanding the gambles in response to OL and discussion. Changing "Wager" to the chip mechanic

"Gamble" Card type: Begin the game in the command zone. Do not count towards your minimum deck size.
Wager is an ability word indicating a Gamble begins play with bet counters. Many gambles remove bet counters as a cost, but remove them from ANY gamble you own, so effectively you have a pool of counters to fuel all your Gamble needs. Not every gamble has Wager much as not every conspiracy had Hidden Agenda.

Outthink the Foxes
Gamble [U]
Your starting hand size is 5
You may begin the game with a card of your choice from your library face down under Outthink the Foxes. If you have seven or more cards in your hand, you may look at and cast that card.

Live on the Edge
Gamble [R]
At the beginning of your upkeep, put the top card of your library into your graveyard.
As long as your library has 10 or fewer cards in it, you don't lose the game for having 0 or less life.

Double Down
Gamble [R]
As the game begins, draw an additional hand of seven cards. Before taking mulligans, an opponent looks at your hands and chooses one of them. Shuffle the rest into your library.
Wager - At the beginning of your first upkeep, put 3-X bet counters on Double Down, where X is the number of times you took a mulligan.
Remove a bet counter from a Gamble in your Command zone: draw a card

Two Bullet Raise
Gamble [U]
Creatures you control have a base toughness 2 lower than normal or a base toughness of 1, whichever is greater.
Wager - At the beginning of your first upkeep, put 5 bet counters on Two Bullet Raise.
Remove a bet counter from a Gamble in your Command zone: Two Bullet Raise deals 1 damage to target creature.

Verkell Collection
Gamble [C]
Your minimum deck size is increased by 3.
Wager - At the beginning of your first upkeep, put 5 bet counters on Verkell Collection
Remove a bet counter from a Gamble in your Command zone: Each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life. Activate this ability only once each turn, whenever you could cast a sorcery.

Fist Full of Glittergold
Gamble [C]
Wager - At the beginning of your first upkeep, put 4 bet counters on Fist Full of Glittergold.

(Design Note: Fist Full of Glittergold has no drawback or ability, it's just a source of bet counters for your other gambles.)