Colorless and Devoid Mechanics Make No Sense

Meto5000

In Vanilla MtG the keyword Devoid means that even though the card has a color identity (Blue, Green, etc) the card is treated as if it were colorless. In this game, Devoid only means that the card can be powered by Void Gems and there are a bunch of weird issues because of this.

One glaring error is that there are 51 Eldrazi cards in this game. Every single one of them has the Devoid keyword EXCEPT the colorless version. Why would colorless Eldrazi not benefit from Void Gems but colored (and therefore Devoid) Eldrazi do receive the benefit? D3GO/Hibernum developers clearly meant for Devoid to mean that the card should be treated as colorless but for some reason it never got implemented. (Proof here)

I'm not sure what the solution for this is. Clearly there are some cards like Dust Stalker that were clearly designed around the creature not being treated as colorless even though it has Devoid, but there are other examples of cards that seem to make more sense if all Devoid cards were treated as colorless. Take for example Skitterskin. There are 16 other Blue cards that are Devoid. It seems like this card was designed to take advantage of those Devoid creatures being treated as colorless. It's a mess.

JC, if you're still around - could you maybe comment on this? Would really love your feedback on this issue.

Hibernum_JC

Meto5000 wrote:

In Vanilla MtG the keyword Devoid means that even though the card has a color identity (Blue, Green, etc) the card is treated as if it were colorless. In this game, Devoid only means that the card can be powered by Void Gems and there are a bunch of weird issues because of this.

One glaring error is that there are 51 Eldrazi cards in this game. Every single one of them has the Devoid keyword EXCEPT the colorless version. Why would colorless Eldrazi not benefit from Void Gems but colored (and therefore Devoid) Eldrazi do receive the benefit? D3GO/Hibernum developers clearly meant for Devoid to mean that the card should be treated as colorless but for some reason it never got implemented. (Proof here)

I'm not sure what the solution for this is. Clearly there are some cards like Dust Stalker that were clearly designed around the creature not being treated as colorless even though it has Devoid, but there are other examples of cards that seem to make more sense if all Devoid cards were treated as colorless. Take for example Skitterskin. There are 16 other Blue cards that are Devoid. It seems like this card was designed to take advantage of those Devoid creatures being treated as colorless. It's a mess.

JC, if you're still around - could you maybe comment on this? Would really love your feedback on this issue.

It's something I'll look into. This wasn't originally our intention - we intended all the colorless combo stuff to work with colorless cards only and not specifically Devoid cards since we reworked the Devoid mechanic for our game (and we don't need to follow paper Magic 100% since it doesn't always make sense).

But as I said, it's something I'll look into.

EDHdad

I'd recommend making it so that void gems can power any colorless spell. It's pretty counter-intuitive that Scour from Existence can create void gems but can't be powered by void gems.

I agree that in paper Magic, the Devoid mechanic made very little sense, except for the fact that there are tons of cards in long-out of print sets which destroy blue cards, grant protection from red, search for green creatures, things like that.

Since you've been creating Legacy planeswalkers, it might be interesting down the road if there was a colorless planeswalker in Magic Puzzle Quest (Ugin the Spirit Dragon or Karn Liberated), which could use any colorless cards in its deck (including devoid cards). Even without such a planeswalker, the next set, Oath of the Gatewatch, has a very strong "colorless matters" theme. There should be an incentive of some sort to make a deck which uses nothing but colorless cards. Making it so that any colorless card can be powered with void gems would be very helpful for someone who wants to make a colorless deck.

Barrelrolla

Hibernum_JC wrote:

It's something I'll look into. This wasn't originally our intention - we intended all the colorless combo stuff to work with colorless cards only and not specifically Devoid cards since we reworked the Devoid mechanic for our game (and we don't need to follow paper Magic 100% since it doesn't always make sense).

But as I said, it's something I'll look into.

Well, if you don't have to follow paper Magic then don't. Change the spells' effects. Currently you decided "meh, we don't care about paper, let's not make them colorless", but you took their original effects which were made with the idea that they will be colorless. And what you get are broken cards that have almost no use. smh

Either make Devoid mean colorless or change the effects of the cards to affect Eldrazi, not Colorless, because that's the main idea behind this.

I'm not even gonna mention lore-wise...

khurram

Barrelrolla wrote:

Either make Devoid mean colorless or change the effects of the cards to affect Eldrazi, not Colorless, because that's the main idea behind this.

I'm not even gonna mention lore-wise...

Agreed. The point of devoid and eldrazi cards affecting colorless creatures should be to create synergy between other eldrazi cards. Right now it doesnt feel that way. Why would an eldrazi have more synergy with gold forged sentinel or chief of the foundary than with another eldrazi card that happens to be red even though its has devoid

Barrelrolla

I'm not gonna give up. We want change.