Gameplay change chapter 2: loyalty

Morphis

Chapter 2: loyalty gain.

For most planeswalkers the loyalty skills are important.
They can do stuff on their own(kill, produce creatures) or help in playing cards(mana gain, fetch) or a various amount of stuff.

The system is nice but could use some tweaks.

One of the things I see it that the difference between a colored gem match and a loyalty gem match is too small.
You get only 2 more loyalty where most loyalty skills cost fairly high amount of loyalty.
Also matching loyalty in itself gives only 3 loyalty where most skills cost is much higher and by matching loyalty you basically stop developing your hand.

What my suggestion?
Make all planeswalker gain one loyalty each turn BUT not gain any loyalty from colored gem match.
Reduce (as a general rule to be balanced after) the loyalty needed by planeswalker skills by 33%.

What does this achieve?

- ⁃matching loyalty is more important cause 3 loyalty is way more valuable when all skills cost less and you can only gain 1 loyalty each turn outside of that.

- Random huge cascades can fill your hand but won't fill your loyalty bar too.

- Ramping/gem distruction planeswalkers/decks do not gain stupidly high amount of loyalty. They just gain mana(and occasional loyalty from cascades into planeswalker symbols).

Please discuss and vote if you like this

Foznertep

Actually, what I'd like to see most concerning Loyalty are cards that do anything with it. It should be more of a game mechanic in itself.

MTG_Mage

Good idea. Gaining tons of loyalty from cascades has been something I thought about needing a fix for a while. Making ramp type planeswalkers have higher loyalty costs higher is one way of fixing this (such as all green PWs, and especially Koth since he gets lots of matches for low loyalty from his 1st ability which refills his bar) but this idea will be good for everyone.

I too would like to see cards with loyalty mechanics since mtgpq cards are reimagined from their paper counterparts so they can do anything with them.

Blorbleflorp

NO THANK YOU I do not want lily to destroy my hand on turn 4, not one bit, sir.

Morphis

Blorbleflorp wrote:

NO THANK YOU I do not want lily to destroy my hand on turn 4, not one bit, sir.

*scratches head*
I don't know what you are referring to.

if you mean "she will be able to use her first skill on turn 4" well that's not a problem.
The problem with lily is when she cascades in like 12 loyalty total and starts spamming the discard basically each turn.
You know this change prevents this kind stuff from happening....

alextfish

I like being able to think "Hmm, I need 3 loyalty to use that ability next turn. No loyalty gems to match, and I want to play this card as well anyway. But... aha, if I match that blue triple, that'll cascade to get me that red match, which will get me that white one. Three matches this turn makes the 3 loyalty I need."

Foznertep

Sure, but how about a card that interacts with loyalty in any different way? There's so much more possible than ramping.