Fetid Imp

shteev · February 2016

Hand up anyone who thinks Fetid Imp need more than 1 power?

I mean, I get it, I really do, it has deathtouch, so it doesn't NEED any more than 1 power, right? Right??

Well, yes it does. The primary use of creatures is to kill your opponent, and 1 point of damage a turn isn't going to cut it when he has 80+ life. Paper MTG grew out of this business years ago, check this bad boy out:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=394533

Deathtouch *is still relevant* on a cheap 3/3 creature. There are large creatures in the game that a creature this cheap wouldn't normally be able to kill, and now he can, PLUS he still deals a decent amount of damage to your opponent when unblocked. There are plenty of Deathtouch creatures in MTG with 1 power, but you'll notice none of them get played in tournament level decks. And Paper MTG doesn't even have the limit of 3 creatures that Magic Puzzle Quest does!! I can't afford to take up 1/3 of my table space for a creature which deals approximately no damage to my opponent!!

The_Leftist · February 2016

I agree. He needs more attack, or a different combination of effects in order to make him worthy of being played. As it stands, there are many other cards you can play instead and still get the desired effect. Who needs a 1/8 deathtouch when you can instead use a creature with higher power and unholy hunger to destroy anything you want?

If they were going to keep him at 1 attack, perhaps give him permanent deathtouch and berserk so he has more of a role on the battlefield. With berserk, he would die quickly, but could effectively replace 1 or more unholy hunger spells depending on the power of the opponents creatures. I would be more likely to play him if I knew his low attack was going to be worth it because he was essentially gauranteed to kill at least one opponent creature.

XehutL · March 2016

I think trap 5 instead of activate 3 might be more interesting. It would allow activation the turn it comes into play (1st defense).

IMO the activating is still too random anyway. I stopped using it because of that..

Hibernum_JC · March 2016

The logic behind Fetid Imp was that it is a pretty cheap creature that needs conditions to happen to have a major power gain.

Just as a notice, I used to have him at 5 activated instead of 3 in an older internal build and that was MUCH too powerful as it was able to be activated every single turn. 3 is a nice sweet spot where it's not a guaranteed activation but you should be able to activate it more often than not.

As it is right now, it seems to be fine.

Unknown · March 2016

I think activation in general needs to look at.

When you can clear them they are exceedingly powerful, but when you can't ... they get stuck. Sometimes for the whole game, as they sink to the bottom.

I would highly recommend having a system where activation tiles were less numerous, but were re-randomized every turn.

This should prevent huge megacascades (esp with high counts like Disciple of the Ring), while also prevent something from just being useless after a few turns. It should also space out the activations over time.

shteev · March 2016

I think what bugs me most about Fetid Imp is that the dev team obviously looked at their blue creatures and decided to bump up their power and toughness to make them more relevant in combat, even though dealing damage is clearly not the primary use of these cards:

Sigiled Starfish bumped from 0/3 to 3/5
Jhessian Thief bumped from 1/3 to 3/5
Mizzium Meddler bumped from 1/4 to 4/7 (and don't even get me started on Mizzium Meddler).

Fetid Imp? Meh, give him 80 turns and he can kill Jace. That's fast enough.

Hibernum_JC · March 2016

pandabear wrote:

I think activation in general needs to look at.

When you can clear them they are exceedingly powerful, but when you can't ... they get stuck. Sometimes for the whole game, as they sink to the bottom.

I would highly recommend having a system where activation tiles were less numerous, but were re-randomized every turn.

This should prevent huge megacascades (esp with high counts like Disciple of the Ring), while also prevent something from just being useless after a few turns. It should also space out the activations over time.

This is actually an interesting idea, and it's worth looking at. I might do some tests to see if it has unintended consequences, but otherwise I agree that they can be a bit inconsistent. That's the reason why some abilities have high amounts of them - this way we can ensure that players will activate them a lot more consistently.

The only real downside I can see (thinking about it for 2 seconds here!) is that it kind of defeats the "plan and attack" gameplay pattern that slowly emerges when playing - you can always try to work it so you can activate it on your next turn by making strategic matches that might not be the most beneficial mana-wise but can give you a big benefit with the activated abilities.

loroku · March 2016

Hibernum_JC wrote:

The only real downside I can see (thinking about it for 2 seconds here!) is that it kind of defeats the "plan and attack" gameplay pattern that slowly emerges when playing - you can always try to work it so you can activate it on your next turn by making strategic matches that might not be the most beneficial mana-wise but can give you a big benefit with the activated abilities.

You may be overestimating the value of that kind of gameplay. Having played MPQ for years and seeing even the light amount of board shake that already exists in this game, I can tell you that planning 2 moves ahead is nearly always a waste of time. At this point I've even gotten pretty good at predicting the AI's exact patterns (start at the top left, for example) but even doing that you never know what's going to drop and randomly clear a row at any moment. And once you start throwing in cards like Volcanic Rambler or Demolish, there's really no point.

Then again, maybe I'm just bad at strategy.

But in my opinion the "strategic" loss of going for bad matches in order to get a good payoff in more than 1 additional turn is something I would almost never do. It's much more effective to simply get good matches and get your plan to work than to confound the enemy's plan.

In other words, I like panda's idea.

EDUSAN · March 2016

I dislike the activation mechanic too

i would change thse kind of cards to guarantee an effect and leave the rest to activation. But not to all of them, some cards have a nice activate gem BONUS but some other cards need that activation to do anything.
For example:

Liliana's 2nd skill is COMPLETELY useless if you cant proc the gems you are given and a complete waste of 12 precious mana.
Give me 2 gems that activate but when i use the skill do 1 proc just because of using the skill, or at least a lesser one (2 damage to everyone and 1 to me instead of 3)

A card like honored hierarch: make 2 gems be possible to activate, but at the beginning of your turn give you 2 guaranteed mana maybe?

Some cards, to me feel ok EVEN if i cant proc their activation everytime. Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen for example. Its a 5/6 for 14 ( in comparison to skysnare spider 6/6 for 12) im paying 2 extra mana for 1 less damage and a chance of a nice proc which is not absolutely necessary to happen

in the case of fetid ip it could have deathouch and berserker UNTIL it kills a creature and then needed to activate a gem to do it again, or something like that

to wrap it up, activating can be really frustrating and useless

nexus13 · March 2016

I agree that Fetid Imp should have a guaranteed activation available. Something like drain 2 of your mana to activate its ability. That option could be a button that appears on the card when you touch it to expand it.

Fetid Imp

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