Thoughts on the new mechanics and potential issues.

andrewvanmarle

Reading the prerelease notes i started wondering how some of the mechanics might actually work in the game:

I don't see big issues cropping up with Pilot and ninjitsu other than them seeming to be lacklustre.

but the other two seem to have issues. Now don't jump on me immediatly, I might be wrong but I'll be interpreting these mechanics in the way that previous mechanics have worked.

Reconfigure/Reconfigured: This one seems to have the biggest problem attached to it: to be able to reinforce that token creature you need to keep your third token slot open. If you don't you'll only apply the buff on the first creature.
now that in itself is allready quite limiting, but it gets worse: “When you cast a creature, if you control 3 creatures, replace this one ” 

This means that if you have three creatures in play (lets call m A, B and token) that if you want to reinforce creature A by casting another A you are going to have to destroy Token to "make space" .   We've had this with werewolf creatures (or was it the spirit ones?) that wouldn't stack if you had 3 on the board.

possible solution? loosen the restriction a little so the tokens and creatures in play bypass the creature count whenreinforcing.



Channel: suffers from the problem that other charged mana cards have (think of stored mana and the one that created land tokens. You can't stop charging the card past the channel limit and if you then use the ability you lose all that mana. In the end it'll be better spent to just play the card normally.

possible solution? either a pop up asking if you want to keep charing the card or have the card move the superfluous mana (when using the channel ability) to the next available card in hand.


Anyway, i hope I'm wrong.....

Edit:

Ninjitsu: After another look at the cards I have a really tough time figuring out why one would use that ability: while it doesn't cost mana, it does cost turns. for ninjitsu 6 a minimum of 2 turns of attacking with 3 creatures up to 6 turns with one.  and then you lose that creature (back to hand) so your net gain is at best equal and at worst negative.

essentially you're paying with time and a creature. Aren't ninja's supposed to be quick?

Stormcrow

possible solution? loosen the restriction a little so the tokens and creatures in play bypass the creature count whenreinforcing.

I suspect it already does this - generally reinforcing a creature and casting a (new) creature seem to have almost nothing to do with each other, code-wise.

The other problem with ninjitsu, besides being incredibly slow (incredibly slow!) is that it's another reinforcements-unfriendly mechanic, just like Unearth from the black PMA set is. To make ninjitsu even worse, it only triggers off of attacks by small creatures, which are the ones you're most likely to want to have a big stack of reinforcements on, but if you replace a stack of creatures with a ninjitsu creature, poof, stack's gone for no benefit. An easy way to fix this and improve the ninjitsu mechanic in general would be to make the ninja come into play with the same number of reinforcements as the creature you're bouncing had.

Channel is definitely a bit clunky, but rather than being barraged with constant popups, I would suggest they could just make it so that if the card is disabled in your hand, it can't gain mana past its Channel value. None of the Channel cards have flash, so you wouldn't normally disable them if you actually want to cast them.

andrewvanmarle

Stormcrow said:

 An easy way to fix this and improve the ninjitsu mechanic in general would be to make the ninja come into play with the same number of reinforcements as the creature you're bouncing had.

Channel is definitely a bit clunky, but rather than being barraged with constant popups, I would suggest they could just make it so that if the card is disabled in your hand, it can't gain mana past its Channel value. None of the Channel cards have flash, so you wouldn't normally disable them if you actually want to cast them.

I like both ideas!
for now I'm foregoing on the ninjitsu thing for sure!

Asylamb

I think a better implementation of Ninjutsu would have what they made for Zareth San, the Trickster in ZNR, whose first ability is essentially a Rogue-jutsu. And Rogues are the same tribe in NEO as Ninjas.
The only difference would be not giving Ninjas Haste by default but only if they ETB'd through Ninjutsu (like it's conditioned now).