A Vigil for Vigilance

Matthew

There's been a lot of discussion about this ability on this forum, at different points in time. I think it's time to revisit it,  Currently, a creature with this ability is more of a liability than anything else (at least in my opinion). This is due to a number of factors. I think the biggest reason though is that a blocking creature in this game isn't really good for much else when you consider how blocking works. These creatures should be cheap and disposable. Ruin Rats is a perfect example (and it has a perfectly paired second ability!). Yeah, I know, it has Defender and not Vigilance. But that's not the point of my argument, so don't get caught up on that bit. The point is that the primary purpose for blockers is to help manage tempo, and when designing them, their cost and other abilities should take that primary purpose into account. It should be the foremost thing on the designer's mind when making a card like this. Because when you give a blocker an extra ability on top of it's being a blocker, you basically render that second ability useless if you don't take into account the fact that that blocker will probably live a much shorter-than-average life.

Rivals of Ixalan has 5 creatures with Vigilance, two of which (Zacama and Zetalpa) could very likely be some of the defining cards of the set, if Vigilance is reworked from its current form. Otherwise, they could end up like Gishath or Vona. I definitely would have bought Gishath, and might have considered Vona, if only Vigilance wasn't part of the equation for them.

So to wrap it up, a couple points.

First, what do you all think would be a good interpretation of Vigilance for PQ? I think it would be cool if it allowed you to choose when your creatures can block, as either an Evergreen ETB effect (i.e. "This creature blocks as though it has Defender") or something that happens each enemy turn or combat phase; something along those lines. That's probably just begging for a buggy implementation, but a guy can dream, right?

Second, to Brigby and Daiane, could you pass this thread to the development team please? We've got some very creative folks on these forums. I'm sure there's liable to be something that strikes the dev team's fancy while also keeping the player base engaged.

ZW2007-

For starters, I abhor vigilance in this game. All the blocking effects in this game are a gross distortion of what they are in paper but I think vigilance is the worst offender. Defender makes sense since in paper those cards can only block. Reach is mainly greens way of dealing with fliers, so again somewhat necessary. Vigilance on the other hand is supposed to be a nice buff. Your creature can attack but then it is also there to block, if you need it to. Most of the time you aren't just going to throw it away chump blocking things. Adding to that, it does the exact same thing as defender. The only difference between the two here is that defender gets first-creature-slot-priority over vigilance. There is no reason to have both abilities. So as Matthew said, it could really be reworked.

Matthew said:

 I think it would be cool if it allowed you to choose when your creatures can block, as either an Evergreen ETB effect (i.e. "This creature blocks as though it has Defender") or something that happens each enemy turn or combat phase; something along those lines. That's probably just begging for a buggy implementation, but a guy can dream, right?

I like this idea but aside from developing it and making it not buggy, they said they didn't want to have effects like that mid combat because it slows down the flow of the game. Making more decisions after a swap will definitely slow games down a lot more. Plus I can't see Greg using it well. It would just be a buff for players and stay the same for Greg who would always choose to block.

My interpretation of vigilance would be "This creature is immune to disable effects." It somewhat ties into where disable came from in the first place. Claustrophobia in paper taps a creature and doesn't let it untap during your untap step but if you can untap it some other way, Claustrophobia no longer effects a creature with Vigilance. It doesn't really mesh with the white said of disable effects but meh. It's still flavorful, I'd imagine a vigilant knight would be difficult to disable.

Also, I agree that some cards were already ruined by the current version of vigilance. Vona, Angel of Condemnation, and Djeru to name three recent ones. None of their effects are worth much of they will die before you can activate their abilities, or in Djeru's case before you take damage to prevent. If Vona and the angel were 12/12 or larger and capable of surviving combat more easily it would be one thing but Djeru is just ridiculously useless. Gishath suffered a similar fate but at least he has haste and can potentially get two or more shots at his ability before he dies. 

DBJones

I agree that vigilance needs reworking. I'm going to repeat what I suggested last time this came up, vigilance should be a toggle switch. Automatically, it works as it does now, if you click the vigilance shield during your turn (in hand or on battlefield) it switches between blocking and not. Putting a nice obvious X through the vigilance icon when blocking is disabled would be nice. This would give players both options, and make it closer to paper without slowing down battle execution.

Mburn7

ZW2007- said:

My interpretation of vigilance would be "This creature is immune to disable effects." It somewhat ties into where disable came from in the first place. Claustrophobia in paper taps a creature and doesn't let it untap during your untap step but if you can untap it some other way, Claustrophobia no longer effects a creature with Vigilance. It doesn't really mesh with the white said of disable effects but meh. It's still flavorful, I'd imagine a vigilant knight would be difficult to disable.

I really like this idea.  Its not overpowered, but it is definitely a nice bonus.
It also works with Amonkhet well (since vigilance was supposed to be a way around exert "disabling"), although it would work better if exert actually disabled your creature after triggering like it does in paper (but that's an argument for another day)

Back to the subject, I really like this idea.  Lets do it

andrewvanmarle

I agree, vigilance needs an update

madwren

Both vigilance and defender suffer due to the forced combat mechanism. Ridding the game of strategic combat decisions--such as if to block and who to block--was as terrible an idea as being unable to target supports.

Creatures with these abilities (let's just say "defenders"), because of their short shelf-life, should be cheap and mana-efficient.  Asking players to invest mana into a defender that immediately dies to a creature that a) is more powerful, and b) costs half as much, is the epitome of bad design.

The problem gets worse as the mana cost scales up. Every mana you invest in a creature that immediately will die is a bad decision. The only defenders that have been worth playing, traditionally, are those that have strong battlefield effects, or are large enough at their price point to survive multiple creatures and potentially trade 2- or 3-for-1. Heart of Kiran and Angel of Invention, for example. Or Avacyn, which doubled as a board wipe with her ETB ability.

I tend to think a card like Felidar Soverign is well-designed. It's cheap, has a useful ability, has decent size but not overpowered. 4/6 for 8. That's great.

Instead we get 1/3 defenders for 13 (Ixlalli's Diviner) or a 0/2 for 7 (Kinjalli's Caller), or 2/3 for 11 (Aven Windcaller), or a 6/6 for 22 (Angel of Condemnation).

Angel is particularly hilarious. Its ability is strong vs creatures. It needs creatures to be in play, therefore, yet there's only a small window for it to save itself from immediate death.

babar3355

1. I agree that the Vigilance mechanic is completely redundant and not reflective of what the ability does in paper.
2. If you ARE going to translate Vigilance in this manner, then Oktagon needs to understand enough about PQ to realize that Vigilance a terrible feature for a card that needs to stay on the board to be effective.  You don't HAVE to ruin a card in order to keep the exact same mechanics from paper to PQ... why not just leave Vigilance off?

I would be happy with any of the suggestions above.  Toggling Vigilance would make it EXTREMELY powerful. I think if you do that you should only be able to make that decision while it is in your hand. Once cast, it is permanently either blocking or not. Zach's suggestion is also a solid one that might be more feasible.

Enygma6

If we’re going to discuss Vigilance being overcosted in Ixalan, let’s not forget the elephant on the water: Dusk Legion Dreadnought.  The most expensive card in the game and a moderate blocker at best.  Being the only common/uncommon vehicle in the set, once KLD/AER rotates out, it will make Saheeli’s ultimate the only reason it likely ever sees play, and then only by players who haven’t been lucky enough to pull one of the rarer vehicles.

Bil

    I use to play with defender and vigilance creatures and i find it useful. I must admit i almost always use the same ones, metalwork colossus in particular and angel of invention to a smaller extent due to the color restriction. 
    I basically think it would be wise to remove the ability from the few creatures where it is counterproductive but not necesarily change the mechanic itself.
   
   Being able to chose if a vigilance creature will block or not seems an interesting way to deal with the sloppy design of some cards like vona or djeru but its not a good idea for card like gisath as it actually balances their power. 
     The few decent blockers in standard will rotate out with KLD/AER ... And Destruction spells are unequally distributed and aren't reliable for most colors (even red starts to suffer from it in ixalan).

    I would add that giving "immune to disable" instead of blocking ability could be a VERY BAD idea if we consider how powerful some of those cards are already and how worse it could potentially become ( gisath / djeru / hearth of kiran / angel  ... not blocking and imposible to disable ... is it really a good idea ?).

   Thats nothing more than a personal feeling though.

DBJones

For Gishath in particular, having berserker already means he won't get free hits against a Planeswalker, vigilance actually gives his ability extra chances to trigger. I don't think changing the way vigilance works would make him last that much longer, except against swarm tactics which don't tend to be very good in this game.

ZW2007-

In regards to creatures where the current form of Vigilance makes sense, change it to Reach or Defender instead.

Stormcrow

ZW2007- said:

In regards to creatures where the current form of Vigilance makes sense, change it to Reach or Defender instead.

^This. The best long-term option is also the most design work - look at every creature with vigilance, and replace it with some combination of: Defender, Reach, Berserk, "Immune to Disable", or just get rid of the ability and replace it with nothing, as appropriate for the power level and design of each particular card. And adjust the casting costs appropriately as well - it took Hibernum all the way until Kaladesh to finally learn to stop making Defender and Vigilance abilities that *increased* casting costs instead of lowering them, and now Oktagon is making the same mistake. (Or some kind of mistake, anyways....not sure even Hibernum in the early days would've come up with Dusk Legion Dreadnought.)

Sidenote: I've never gotten Djeru, but I always wanted to make a deck that ran Djeru and cast Skeleton Key on the enemy's creatures.

Nalthazar

Vigilance is an important mechanic in this game as it is a way to prevent damage to yourself with creatures. There are ways to make it so that your creatures that have Vigilance have a greater likelihood of staying around and so that they are increased utility. If you give the creature first strike as an example, it can effectively become a board wipe if you have a good enough creature out. I agree that there are cards that have Vigilance that are terrible cards, but the same is also true for Flying, Lifelink, Trample, etc. If you don't like Vigilance, that is fine, you don't have to and you are welcome to your own opinion, but the mechanic isn't unbalanced, and it provides additional utility. The only reason I think they would want to consider changing things like Vigilance, Defender, or Reach would be if you were able to assign blockers without the mechanic in the game in the first place, and honestly, given that it would require me to hit a confirm/cancel for each of my creatures for each opposing attacker, I would rather just have some creatures Vigilance/Defender/Reach and some without. It would make matches take a lot longer and would make them more tedious.

DBJones

It's true that vigilance can be useful. The issue is that several creatures have inherited vigilance from their paper ancestors without consideration of the differences between how vigilance works in this game compared to paper. Djeru is a very good example.

andrewvanmarle

Nalthazar said:

Vigilance is an important mechanic in this game as it is a way to prevent damage to yourself with creatures. There are ways to make it so that your creatures that have Vigilance have a greater likelihood of staying around and so that they are increased utility. If you give the creature first strike as an example, it can effectively become a board wipe if you have a good enough creature out. I agree that there are cards that have Vigilance that are terrible cards, but the same is also true for Flying, Lifelink, Trample, etc. If you don't like Vigilance, that is fine, you don't have to and you are welcome to your own opinion, but the mechanic isn't unbalanced, and it provides additional utility. The only reason I think they would want to consider changing things like Vigilance, Defender, or Reach would be if you were able to assign blockers without the mechanic in the game in the first place, and honestly, given that it would require me to hit a confirm/cancel for each of my creatures for each opposing attacker, I would rather just have some creatures Vigilance/Defender/Reach and some without. It would make matches take a lot longer and would make them more tedious.

the discussion is not about changing defender or reach, or even about taking away the blocking ability of every creature that has vigilance right now.

for instance: Djeru would become usefull if it didn't block  while angel of invention would go from vigilant to defender.

Mburn7

andrewvanmarle said:

the discussion is not about changing defender or reach, or even about taking away the blocking ability of every creature that has vigilance right now.

for instance: Djeru would become usefull if it didn't block  while angel of invention would go from vigilant to defender.

Random idea:  What if they made it so defender couldn't attack, and vigilance could?  Totally different kind of solution, but it would certainly make it more useful