Targetable Removal (One Reinforcement vs. the Whole Stack)

wickedwitch74

This post came out of the "Blue Needs a Nerf" discussion.

If we look at traditional Paper Magic and the color pie, Green (and white, to a lesser degree) has always had the ability to "Go Wide" in it's creature strategies. Anyone who has played Paper MTG has died to a legion of elves, pumped out of their minds.

As an aside, in this universe "Each Creature Gets +1/+1" means something. I'll come back to this later.

Control decks (Blue, I'm looking mostly at you), have always had the ability to control and manipulate the board by disabling, unsummoning, or stealing threats. This can work wonders when your opponent has only a few threats, and the battlefield is manageable.

But when your opponent goes wide, Blue has trouble handling this.

When we look at MtG:PQ, we see an effort on the development team to take paper cards, and convert them into a version that translates to our game. In many respects, I have been impressed by their creativity, while maintaining the spirit of the paper card.

Where this falls down, however, is in the design of the MtG:PQ battlefield. The game limits the number of creature slots you are able to have in play. Paper Magic doesn't have this restriction, and the difference impacts play in a big way.

Firstly, this has a direct effect on our deckbuilding strategies. Creature-heavy strategies are difficult to employ, because excess creatures just sit in your hand, unplayable.

Secondly, and this is very important, control decks have been given a serious advantage.

The control deck only has to worry about three creature threats.

The game allows the player to "reinforce" his creatures by repeated casting, but they are still limited by the three creature slot battlefield.

And while it's nice to have a reinforced creature, one single "Unsummon" will remove the entire stack. Often, due to the hand size restriction, the unsummoned creature stack is destroyed entirely!

This, in my opinion, is a mistake, and makes removal/control spells far too powerful, while neutering creature-heavy strategies.

I believe the correct way to address this is to:

Unsummon/Destroy one reinforcement instead of the whole stack.

Sweepers (River's Rebuke, Hour of Devastation, etc...) would still work as they currently do.

Each reinforcement would have to be treated separately for damage, and pumping purposes. Those +1/+1 counters that were once useless, now become a lot nastier when each reinforcement receives the boost. 

This would dramatically change battlefield interaction, lessen the impact of control magic, and work within the confines of the current design.

What does the community think about this proposal?

Mburn7

I think that you just made White and Green the most broken colors.

Removal only removing 1 reinforcement makes Red removal pretty much useless, and limits good Black removal options to just a few sweepers.

Blue would be pretty balanced, though, so that would work great!

Stormcrow

I like this as a potential solution to the power of bounce spells, but it would weaken Black as a color a bit too much IMO. I could see maybe having two tiers of Black kill spells - cheap ones that kill off one creature or reinforcement, and more expensive ones that kill the whole stack - and two tiers of Blue bounce spells, cheap ones that unsummon one creature or reinforcement, and blue ones that move the creature/stack to the top of the library (as they work currently).

Red removal working off of damage/toughness would make for a nice alternative; while blue would be particularly vulnerable to big stacks of small token creatures (can't move them to library, bouncing to hand only gets rid of one reinforcement), Red spells with some appropriate tweaking of the numbers could be made a cost-effective way to handle big stacks of small tokens.

I do have some concern that this would seriously beef up the effectiveness of disabling a stack of creatures by comparison, though. White would definitely end up as the strongest color.

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arNero

I very likely get your idea wrong, but I am wary of this idea.

Oh sure, against tokens (barring huge cases like Sandwurm tokens), this idea of kill/burn spell affecting a single reinforcement at a time is kind of ok, but once we see those fat Resplendent Angels, Slimefoot, whatever-else-huge bastards, being able to remove just a single reinforcement can break the game since, I dunno if it's Hibernum's fault or D3Go, they've made a LOT of incredibly powerful creatures, and the nature of RNG means there's always the possibility you may run into such nasty creatures in MASSIVE stack of reinforcement early in the game when you may not have your Plague Wind ready.

The current system of creature removal admittedly is annoying since it makes playing creatures incredibly risky (and that's before factoring steals), but problem is, the game currently has been way flooded with creatures (and a few supports, but I'll refrain from talkig further) that is pretty much "Kill me RIGHT THIS EXACT SECOND or DIE". If a removal spell removes only piece by piece of reinforcements, too many of this "Must kill" creatures will instantly win the game within two or three turns they show up.

There's also the complication when you include things like Hixus. Disable the entire stack? Or disable only one reinforcement, leaving the creature pretty much unaffected by such blocking methods? (to be frank, I hate Hixus, but eh). There's also another inherent problem: With paper Magic, almost every creature can block other creatures without evasions, whereas here, only specific creatures can block at ALL, before factoring in some things needed for them to block trickier creatures, in other words, you are already short on methods to remove creatures.

Your idea is not wrong, I admit, but considering the base upon which this game is built, I don't think that idea is going to work well, if at all implementable unless the entire game system is changed.

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arNero

starfall said:

arNero said:

the game currently has been way flooded with creatures (and a few supports, but I'll refrain from talkig further) that is pretty much "Kill me RIGHT THIS EXACT SECOND or DIE".

Can I ask exactly what creatures you're talking about?

Aside from the fact that I admit "Right this exact second" is a hyperbole, do I frankly need to specify? Olivia which gives Lifelink to the entire army if her owner has cards? Decimator of Provinces that buffs the entire army? Gaea's Revenge and its 16 Atk? Verix whose support is also "Kill me now or die"? Etali and his "I steal your Gaea's Revenge"?

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wereotter

This would be an interesting change, though I'd want it to have rigorous plays testing before it would get implemented. I do think it would make certain cards more playable than they currently are. People tend not to play cards like Star of Extinction , Tragic Arrogance, Kaya's Wrath.... and it would make Languish a much more powerful spell if reworded properly (Each creature gets -6/-6 until the end of turn and an additional-6/-6 for each of its reinforcements)

People tend to view sweepers as a liability since targeted removal's ability to destroy a creature and strip off all its reinforcements is so much stronger, yet wrath effects are the answer to decks that go wide.

starfall said:

I can see a way around this problem, though. Paper MTG has an ability which is not keyworded, but which appears on many cards... you could call it 'phantom'.

"If this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it"

e.g.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=205017 

This is the illusion ability, it's somewhat common on illusion type creatures. Labyrinth Guardian has it in PQ as do the illusion tokens created by Jace, Cunning Castaway. Typically it's blue's way of getting out creatures that are bigger than it would normally have, and usually for less mana. Phantasmal Bear, for example, is a 2/2 for 1 mana which is pretty big, so they give it that sac text if it's targeted by anyone. So your Olivias and your Pigs should destroy the creature if they attempt to buff it, in my opinion.

tfg76

I think they should remove the notion of "creature reinforcements" altogether. I understand why they only have three creature slots - it's to make the mobile game manageable in terms of UI. 

I think you can treat each creature separately, but still evaluate all effects on a creature-by-creature basis somehow. 

Panneo

Removing only a reinforce seems way to weak. What about buffs in the creature, they would only be removed with the real creature while in paper the player with the removal spell would always target the buffed one first.

The improving of one creature by playing more of them is a core meachanic in MTGPQ, changing it would effect the game way to deep with unpredictable consequences.

As an alternative, creatures could be bufft a little by keeping the reinforcments when bounced or destroyed. Therefore a bounced creature could be played again with all reinforcments (single mana cost) when bounced on the hand or by resurrection, a little bit like with Squee. That would also hit blue much more than black.

About the bounce equals destroy by full hand question, maybe the player can decide the card to discard.