Mass conversion and free cards

Tremayne

This is a detour from the Grist thread that probably needs its own thread.

@Janosik - made several arguments, but I think these two subjects are important to discuss in order to inspire the devs.

We have now had three developers who have all tried free cards and mass-conversion with the same issues every time. Omniscience showed clearly that free cards are dangerous, so Hibernium limited these cards, typically to something that required a match on the board.

Oktagon made the decision to go for half mana (sadly somewhat inconsistent, since stored mana wasn’t always included), as their preferred method.

I think that free cards should primarily be a result of matching gems on the board. Matching gems is sort of the main point of this game.

Next up is mass conversion: rishkars expertise was an extremely powerful converter, but it required that you timed the usage to when you had cards in hand. Such mass conversion is still (too?) powerful, but as opposed to Ghalta that just convert when hitting the board, spell converters are better, because it requires thoughtful play to use them (effectively).

Could mass conversion also be dependent upon matching gems? Maybe. As an example look at the seed mechanism which is (very) annoying since my opponent can benefit from my seed gems. But what if mass conversion was similar to the Aftermath mechanics where the aftermath effect is only triggered when I match my aftermath gem, ie. mass conversion only happens when I match my own mass converter gem. And like in the aftermath gem, if my opponent match my gem it does nothing except delay my ability to trigger the gem.

Finally mass conversion cards should most likely be limited in some way.
One idea could be only one mass conversion cards (of its name) can be cast per turn.
Another idea was that mass conversion cards are always exiled in order so they are more difficult to get back in hand.

Tremayne

I have edited my post significantly since upon reading it again a few things needed to be clarified.

Abracadavers

I agree that matching gems for free cards could be an interesting mechanic. I like free cards, however I haven't made up my mind on how bad for the game that they are. I do agree that we maybe have a few too many cards that give free cards in standard right now though.

I don't think that matching gems for conversion is a great idea. Cascades from conversion would hit other conversion gems and keep going. Conversion animations already take too long, we don't need conversion > cascade > conversion > cascade ... over and over again.

For the record, I am not against mass conversion. I just think that we need to keep the number of cards that do that in standard limited to 1 or 2 good ones at the most. Right now we have some that are done as part of Planeswalker abilities, but as for cards, we have Tempt with Discovery (any others?), but we also have Desert (both masterpieces), so I don't think it is a problem.

Tremayne

@Abracadavers - the discovery mechanic is great (IHO) because it gives you the option to choose which card (of a limited subset) that gets the half mana. Half mana is kind of safe because it is unlikely to run out of control.

I’m not sure what your point is regarding Desert. Desert (MP) is sort of a counter to mass conversion, but it does so many other things to the opponent board state.

You are correct that one mass conversion could trigger another and another. I was trying to address this with the section on limiting mass conversion. So if gems could say something like “convert X gems to [colour]. X is [something] up to [limit] (per turn).”

Abracadavers

@Tremayne - I agree that any of the cards that give half mana are fine. My point was that there are just too many cards that give full mana in standard. And you pretty much nailed my point on Desert - it is a counter to mass conversion. That plus the fact that we don't really have that many mass conversion cards in standard means that I don't really see mass conversion as a problem.