Kicker: a preemptive request

wereotter

Kicker, a mechanic in the upcoming Dominaria set, works that you have the option to pay additional mana when casting a spell to get stronger or additional effects.

On it’s face, I expect this will be handled not entirely unlike Awaken from the Zendikar block. This brings up my biggest complaint with that set. There was no way to tell the card not to bank additional mana from cascades if you knew in advance you didn’t want the land creatures, for example if you already had three creatures in play.

Assuming kicker operates mechanically similar in Puzzle Quest to awaken, please consider an option in-hand to activate/deactivate kicker so cascades can have the best effect. 

Mainloop25

Good idea! 

andrewvanmarle

I agree. The same would have been nice for the awaken effect, but wanting the devs to retroactively change that too is probably wishing for to much....

babar3355

Seems like a suggestion that would have been more effective months ago.  I doubt they will be adjusting any mechanics at this juncture.

FindingHeart8

I approve of this

IM_CARLOS

Id would be an good option to ask for every spell if you want to play im or not. That's the big difference between days undoing and behold from beyond. Or at least make it optional for nodes with objective like 'cast x or less s something'. I sometimes accidentally cascade and lost because of "good" draw + ramp or just because I didn't switched of everything after an empty lay claim. 

wereotter

IM_CARLOS said:

Id would be an good option to ask for every spell if you want to play im or not. That's the big difference between days undoing and behold from beyond. Or at least make it optional for nodes with objective like 'cast x or less s something'. I sometimes accidentally cascade and lost because of "good" draw + ramp or just because I didn't switched of everything after an empty lay claim. 

Definitely something I'd like as well, but this doesn't help if I have a spell with kicker I don't want to kick, but it still soaks up a bunch of mana from a cascade anyway. That again assumes that kicker will function the same as awaken.

babar3355 said:

Seems like a suggestion that would have been more effective months ago.  I doubt they will be adjusting any mechanics at this juncture.

This is true, unfortunately I didn't know kicker was going to be a set mechanic several months ago, and didn't piece the two together until much more recently as they apply in Puzzle Quest.

Lars

Additional modes of casting cards should have been implemented from the start. Magic is full of effects which allow you to cast cards in multiple ways; Awaken and Cycling would probably both have been better if implemented like that; Kicker, as well.... Bestow, Buyback, Cycling, Dash, Entwine, Evoke, Forecast, Kicker, Multikicker, Miracle, Morph, Overload, Replicate... there are also Split cards (maybe with Fuse), pitch cards like Force of Will and Contagion, and probably more. More keywords are introduced to the game with every new block.

Kinesia

Hmmm...

Ok, so to deal with cascades the full and proper way you can't many _any_ assumptions and can't have an overall "default" since perhaps you want to kick one spell but not the other...

So really, ON DRAW, you need to be asked "Do you intend to kick this or not?" (or whatever the other effect might be) and you can overwrite it later perhaps if your plans change, but that initial decision allows dealing with cascades and draw.

It does slow things down though, but maybe that's a good thing.

wereotter

I was thinking there’d be a default of on for kicker, but if you tapped the kicker icon on the spell in hand, it would turn it off. Being asked every draw is a bit much, and outside drawing cards due to a match from things like Sphinx’s Revelation, Locust God, and Farm//Market, you’ll have the opportunity to do so before making any matches. 

Mburn7

wereotter said:

I was thinking there’d be a default of on for kicker, but if you tapped the kicker icon on the spell in hand, it would turn it off. Being asked every draw is a bit much, and outside drawing cards due to a match from things like Sphinx’s Revelation, Locust God, and Farm//Market, you’ll have the opportunity to do so before making any matches. 

I agree, it should be exactly like Awaken, but with the option to not fill the extra bar.  Anything more is just asking for trouble

[Deleted User]

+1 agree

bk1234

Big like. 

Skiglass6

I always thought that it should ask when the card is cast if you wanted the use the card in the awaken form. If you choose not to, the extra mana should dump into the hand like a gem match and allow cards that get filled this way to be played during that casting phase. And similarly, if you had some extra mana on the card but not enough for awaken that mana should be dumpped down if the card is cast.