Look who's back! (OTJ Spoiler Card)

Magic:PQ Support Team
Magic:PQ Support Team ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
edited 29 April 2024, 22:59 in MtGPQ General Discussion

It's been 27 years.. but time probably passes differently when you're a bad boss warlock. Well, a phased out bad boss warlock.
But with his prison back to this reality, Kaervek is once again ready to ride. What will you hire him to do?

Oh, but you wanted to know how to commit a crime? Sure!

Crime

Crime is an Evergreen that provides buffs to cards if the player has the Crime Emblem. When a player casts a spell with crime, that player's planeswalker will gain a Crime emblem if they don't have one. When casting new spells with crime, additional effects will occur if the player has a Crime Emblem. Some spells can remove the Crime emblem. If this happens, the player must play a new spell with crime to acquire the emblem again and guarantee the buffs of these spells.

Crime emblem and Evergreen hint:

“When a card with Crime enters the battlefield, you commit a Crime (If your planeswalker doesn't have a Crime Emblem, it gains a Crime Emblem). While you have a Crime Emblem, perform this card’s associated Crime effect.”

Card example

“Spell
Crime
Deals 3 damage to target creature.

If you committed a Crime — Destroy that Creature Instead.”

Comments

  • AoMadness
    AoMadness Posts: 103 Tile Toppler

    @Janosik said:
    What's with these incredibly narrow mechanics you like to design?

    Collect Evidence was the same; you took a mechanic from paper, that had synergy with an enormous amount of cards, and you made it incredibly narrow, hugely limiting the opportunities of play

    https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/1032892/#Comment_1032892

    @Janosik said:
    Gotta tell ya, I really don't like the look of the Evidence mechanic. In order to create Evidence, you're going to have to play with cards in your deck which both a) create Simple tokens, and b) are good enough to to play with. That's actually a pretty small subset of cards.

    In contrast, paper MTG's Evidence mechanic requires you to exile cards from your graveyard which have a mana cost. That is a really, really, big subset of cards... almost all of them, in fact. I don't see any reason this design could not have been more closely modified from paper.

    The Evidence mechanic looks really limiting, and it could have been really expansive, but you chose to make it parasitic. Creating a long list of other tokens it's parasitic with is not a great solution... the subset of good cards the mechanic works with is still small, plus, we now have another layer of complexity added to supports, which are already subdivided into too many types.

    And now you're doing it with Crime! Crime in paper MTG triggers "Whenever you cast a spell or activate an ability that targets an opponent, or their stuff". So there's not synergy there with every card in the game, like there was with Collect Evidence, but there's still an enormous amount of compatibility with cards from MTGPQ's past and cards yet be be printed. And instead you've limited the synergy to a handful of cards that exist only in the current set.

    Please, please, for the health of the game, try and design cards that play well with other cards.

    You have to relise puzzle quest is designed to be a simpler entry point into magic the gathering and the way the game is built there is a lot of limitations to how mechanics and cards can be added to the game. Collect evidence for example has a ton of synergy in game with older cards because they reworked certain token supports to be simple supports, so any card in pq that makes a simple token offers a lot of synergy. Crime also looks to have a bit of synergy with cards that require you to cast X amount of spells, so you build a crime deck based on spells you'll have multiple in your deck thus having ways to combine with cast X spells effects

  • Sarah
    Sarah Posts: 160 Tile Toppler
    edited 30 April 2024, 14:25

    Thanks for doing the maths on that @Janosik it’s helpful to see it spelled out so clearly.

    It’s unsurprising that there are so very few casual players left in the game since the only players who can collect enough cards to build workable decks around restrictive mechanics are whales & tryhards.

    I honestly don’t even bother with new mechanics since it’s so unlikely I’ll ever get to actually use them.*

    * This is actually the big reason I ask for older events to be block restricted. I’d enjoy trying to use these cards now that I have a few AND ALSO why I’d like to see targeted crafting.

  • AoMadness
    AoMadness Posts: 103 Tile Toppler

    @Janosik said:

    @AoMadness said:
    You have to realise puzzle quest is designed to be a simpler entry point into magic the gathering and the way the game is built there is a lot of limitations to how mechanics and cards can be added to the game. Collect evidence for example has a ton of synergy in game with older cards because they reworked certain token supports to be simple supports, so any card in pq that makes a simple token offers a lot of synergy. Crime also looks to have a bit of synergy with cards that require you to cast X amount of spells, so you build a crime deck based on spells you'll have multiple in your deck thus having ways to combine with cast X spells effects

    Ok! I have spare time today, so lets break down this "ton of symmetry" that Collect Evidence has with older cards.

    Simple tokens currently include 6 subtypes:

    • Treasure

    I'm going to be really generous and put 7 cards in the 'even slightly playable' category:
    Depths of Desire
    Captain Lannery Storm
    Spell Swindle
    Storm the Vault
    Fabrication Foundry
    Curse of Opulence
    Dihada, Binder of Wills

    Here's all the other treasure cards. I very much doubt anybody wants to play with any of these. (Webcore probably have stats they can check, in fact!). I think it's worth listing all of these to dispel the idea that there are dozens of treasure cards worth playing with; clearly there are not.

    Wily Goblin, Goldhound, Brass's Bounty, Mimic, Traitorous Greed, Pirate's Prize, Glittering Stockpile, Dead Man's Chest, Black Market Tycoon, Big Score, Minimus Containment, Jetmir's Fixer, Courier's Briefcase, Xorn, Heartless Pillage, Corsair Captain, Wanted Scoundrels, Skullport Merchant, Prying Blade, Gadrak the Crown-Scourge, Dire Fleet Hoarder, Buried Treasure, Stimulus Package, Smothering Tithe, Professional Face-Breaker, Contract Killing, Prosperous Pirate, Treasure Map, Ruthless Knave, Rapacious Dragon, Revel in Riches, Magda, Goldspan Dragon, Deadeye Plunderer

    You can disagree with me that there are only 7 playable treasure cards that have synergy with Collect Evidence, but I doubt you'll be able to justify a claim that there's as many as 14.

    I guarantee you that the number of players out there building Collect Evidence decks with cards like Wily Goblin or Deadeye Plunderer is absolutely dwarfed by the number of players who wish they could delete these bad cards from their inventory to make it faster to search through and build decks.

    I'm not doing the full breakdown of cards for each other subtype, but you get the gist. Literally nobody is playing with most blood cards like Sanguine Statuette or Restless Bloodseeker, or most food cards like Candy Trail or Bog Naughty.

    Let's move on

    • Gold

    Some good cards here... sadly only 6 of them
    Dack Fayden
    Hit the Motherlode
    Sword of Dungeons and Dragons
    Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
    Bonehoard Dracosaur
    Old Gnawbone
    Again, I'm being generous, I'd never play with a couple of these cards. I think it's fair, again, to double this number, and say that there aren't 12 gold cards worth playing with.

    • Blood

    This only exists is one set. I count 2 cards that are any good here, Olivia and Sigarda's Imprisonment, and I didn't even know until today that Sigarda's Imprisonment had the blood mechanic, even tho I see it played a lot.

    • Map

    Again, this exists in one set, and again, I count two 'playable' cards, Get Lost and Kellan, Daring Traveler. And I think we all lost interest in playing Get Lost when we found out that the second time you cast, it destroys one of the map tokens created from the first time you cast it.

    • Food

    Shattergang Brothers
    Taste of Death
    Bake into a Pie
    Turn into a Pumpkin
    4 cards... I'm only really including those 2x9 cost removal spells because I'd sometimes play them when the set was in Standard

    • Clue

    I save this one to last as it's the largest category! Not least because of the 10 Cluelands in MKM:

    Elegant Parlor / Raucous Theatre / Thundering Falls / Commercial District / Hedge Maze / Lush Portico / Shadowy Backstreet / Undercity Sewers / Underground Mortuary / Meticulous Archive

    And more than that!
    Eye of Duskmantle
    Follow the Bodies
    Torch the Witness
    Cryptex
    No Witnesses
    Fateful Absence / Humble the Brute / Declaration in Stone
    Tamiyo's Journal
    Trail of Evidence

    A whopping 20 cards! Again, I think that's quite generous.

    So let's add up those numbers and see how many playable cards have synergy with Collect Evidence

    7+6+2+2+4+20 = 41

    Lets be extra generous and double that number to 81.

    Searching the cards for all cards except alt art cards, that gives us a total number of existing cards as 7469 (unless I've forgotten something?)

    So a very, very generous estimate of the % of cards that have synergy with Collect Evidence is 1%

    Now that's not a terrible number. We certainly wouldn't want every card in the game creating simple tokens.

    But let's remember what we're doing here: we're comparing the MTGPQ Collect Evidence mechanic with the one in paper MTG. Here's the text of a card from paper with Collect Evidence:

    To collect Evidence X, you exile cards with total mana cost X or more from your graveyard.

    Now... unless I'm forgetting something, doesn't every card in MTGPQ have a mana cost?

    So your pool of cards in MTGPQ to build with synergy with Collect Evidence is 1% of the card pool (and I think it's much lower than that!) and your pool of cards in paper is 100% of the card pool.

    I do not see how this is 'a ton of synergy'. Collect Evidence in paper has a ton of synergy with a huge number of cards, both past, present, and future. In MTPGQ it has synergy with a tiny subset.

    @AoMadness said:
    You have to relise puzzle quest is designed to be a simpler entry point into magic the gathering

    Is that 12 word definition of the Collect Evidence mechanic from paper, which could easily have been ported over to MTGPQ, really too complicated for our game?

    This is actually a helpful breakdown there is a few cards I use in that list to combine with collect evidence and iv been playing for 4yrs as a free player and I see these mechanics that are introduced in a new set are designed to be played with the new set and some combos with older cards, but even with that in mind having around 1% card base is still enough to play around with seeing as there is a ton of mechanics in this game that are unplayable, and on top of that webcore is the 3rd developer on this game since its release in 2015 so there is some limitations to how much webcore can go back and fix or edit to work with newer sets. Having clue work with simple tokens is the easiest option as the 1% pool that makes them can make enough of them to make collect evidence work and fun.

    Know as I stated this game is an entry point it's not built to be a 1:1 scale of magic if it did the game would be different and more complicated that's why they take mechanics and find new ways to make it work in game. Yes they could easily have it as exile X cards from graveyard with X base mana as the game has tons of ways to put cards in graveyard but a lot of grave dumping cards are coulr locked and not all collect evidence cards may have a Pw that has acces to the dump into grave type effects. Thus by making it based on simple tokens it opens the game to more combo ideas and more playability. When you look at mechanics and such you also need to remember puzzle quest is way more restrictive then paper. In paper you can make Any couler combo deck in puzzle quest you can only make coulr combo decks based on available planeswalker coulrs so sometimes mechanics need to be tweaked or watered down to reflect these restrictions

  • madwren
    madwren Posts: 2,259 Chairperson of the Boards

    I am also not a fan of narrow mechanics. There are many of them that are almost instantly relegated to the uncompetitive trash heap. I was hoping Webcore would have a different design philosophy.

  • khurram
    khurram Posts: 1,090 Chairperson of the Boards

    I have not felt compelled or interested in playing the collect mechanic even once because of how limited it is. And the next set is upon us. I'm afraid crime will be the same

    Saying that collect evidence is good because there are even worse mechanics is not saying much.

  • khurram
    khurram Posts: 1,090 Chairperson of the Boards

    Regardless, I'm looking forward to the remaining spoilers and the set. Those MP supports are looking pretty sick. Lets see if there are any other potentially meta warping cards.

  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,673 Chairperson of the Boards

    A lot of the mechanics in MTGPQ are superfluous. The main problem is the mechanics are only playable if you have the MP or Mythic cards the rest of the rarities are simply so underwhelming that the cards utilising the mechanic are irrelevant.

    I recall the energize mechanic. When the set dropped I didn’t have enough cards to make it work, but when I got the “lightning runner” I could suddenly see the strength of energize. Sadly, that was after energized had been relegated to legacy, so it was overpowered by the cream of legacy pool.

    I understand that MTGPQ is only a minimalistic version of MTG but that is not an excuse for hiding the mechanics behind the rarity trap. So I agree with @Janosik that it would be better if there were more synergy between the mechanics and the existing cards.

  • AoMadness
    AoMadness Posts: 103 Tile Toppler

    @Tremayne said:
    A lot of the mechanics in MTGPQ are superfluous. The main problem is the mechanics are only playable if you have the MP or Mythic cards the rest of the rarities are simply so underwhelming that the cards utilising the mechanic are irrelevant.

    I recall the energize mechanic. When the set dropped I didn’t have enough cards to make it work, but when I got the “lightning runner” I could suddenly see the strength of energize. Sadly, that was after energized had been relegated to legacy, so it was overpowered by the cream of legacy pool.

    I understand that MTGPQ is only a minimalistic version of MTG but that is not an excuse for hiding the mechanics behind the rarity trap. So I agree with @Janosik that it would be better if there were more synergy between the mechanics and the existing cards.

    I'm sorry but i have to slightly disagree here my collection is missing tons of mythics/masterpieces and I always do a lot of rare type builds around new mechanics with great success. Yes there's a few cards that are stronger with the new effects and that's reflective of there rarity but it dosnt mean non mythic-masterpieces are weak with new mechanics.

  • Fireguy
    Fireguy Posts: 69 Match Maker

    Webcore, you're doing great! This card and mechanic looks well designed! Not every card or mechanic will be amazing. There needs to be a varying degree of power to each card and mechanic. Sure, read and ponder over all the above comments, suggestions and data but in the end, keep doing what you're doing Webcore. The majority of the player base is fully supportive of you.

  • Tremayne
    Tremayne Posts: 1,673 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited 1 May 2024, 22:08

    @AoMadness - I will not disagree that one or two mechanics work without key mythic+ cards but to claim many works fine with rare only is not true in my view.

    @Fireguy - good point, I can’t say that the crime mechanic is a failure - yet. I will have to try it out first, but I sure think that @Janosik has made a powerful documentation of his point about the crime mechanic is tied to a low number of cards.

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