#but making a card to counter one specific mechanic is both weak and kinda mean
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Another fun coincidence, I just made a pair of kill spells for a weekly card design contest!
#asks#custom cards#Crash Test went through a few iterations#like “choose one or both” where the artifact mode had to target a vehicle#but making a card to counter one specific mechanic is both weak and kinda mean#also “lucky punch” seems to be a fairly common thing in japanese media#it's in yugioh pokemon and shin megami tensei#i looked around but couldn't find any reason why#also i don't know what kinds of names new capenna racoonfolk have#there's one named koko and that's all i could find#fuck it i think i'll just use koko#literally the only think known about him is that he's a riveteer and he punches things so it's perfect
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June Feature: New Block, New Ideas
Somewhere, out on the horizon, Set 11 is taking shape, principles of design being formed in some document, or perhaps in a set of prototype cards already making the rounds, or maybe even most of the way to the finished product by now. I don’t really know what the design and testing process actually looks like. But anyway, it’s coming, and that fact means that people like me can predict and recommend all that we like over what we’d like to see in it.
Most importantly, due to the recent changes in the game’s Block structure, it now seems entirely likely that Set 11 will be the start of a new Block. At the start of a new Block, the door is open to radical rethinks of the way that the game is played. We could potentially turn over new leaves for anything: for the feels and preferred archetypes of any of the colours, for the pace and structure of a typical match, or even for the broad idea of what each particular class of card even is. It’s a perfect time to open up our minds and rethink what a Mane Character should look like or be able to do. Because fundamental changes like that are exciting, and maybe open the door to new experiences none of us could have even dreamed of yet.
Now, all of that said, I’m not a professional game designer. So while I am going to be going over some new ideas for what I think we could see in Set 11, none of these should be taken with any authority. You don’t even have to like them. But I hope you at least think about them, and maybe come up with some of your own ideas of what you’d like to see from this game in the future.
Purple
I think that going through this process colour by colour is probably the easiest way to go, since so much of this game’s design is built around each colour’s identity and what it’s capable of doing. So, for no particular reason, let’s start with Purple. As mentioned in the most recent Meticulous Talks stream, about the turning of the set rotation in Core, when Odysseys Block rotates out Purple is going to lose a lot of its powerful Events and a good number of its good Friends too. Purple has been synonymous with control for pretty much all of this most recent Block, and at least right now it’s difficult to imagine how that might continue.
So I say, why should it? Let some other colour pick up the mantle of playing slow, and let’s instead dedicate some time to turning Purple into a fast colour. Defenders Block has already offered us some pieces of what that might look like, whether it be an aggro based on forcing single faceoffs with Immediate Events and forced movement, or one built on comboing cheap Events with a few discounts. Both mechanics are already well-within the colour’s established identity, so all that would really be required is to elaborate on them a bit. Give us a set with more cheap Events, probably a little more card advantage, and more worthwhile Friends like DoE Sunset Shimmer. It might take a couple of sets to develop things properly, true, but I also think that Purple could do with some time away from centre stage. Even just one set where it’s a bit of a B-tier colour, before it comes into its own later, kind of like how Yellow was in Defenders Block.
White
Again, following no particular order, the next colour in line is White. Historically, White has gone great in control because it has all of the recursion, and control decks love that. Historically, White has gone great in aggro because it has point acceleration, and it also has a fair few cards with efficient costs out of the hand. Far less often has White headlined either of those concepts, except for the rare successes piloted by madmen like Bugle. The colour has got a lot of great cards in it, and indeed some of them have been amazing explorations of design, and indeed have been among the most interesting cards in their sets. It almost feels wrong to say that we should have less of that moving forward, but that’s what I think I’d like to see.
What White really needs is a strong core, a sturdy foundation upon which to build real decks. As I’ve said above and will say below, other colours can do the heavy lifting of design experimentation in this Block. White already has a lot of cool and interesting cards, like Mistmane, or Song Spike, or even the strange Events like Cornered and Reliving History. It needs some bread and butter to start with though, and that begins with a good Mane. This is at the heart of what everyone always says about this colour, but it’s a big thing. You know what might be nice: something so dead simple that it’s interesting just for how vanilla it is. A Mane that’s confront-to-flip, and its Boosted side is 4 Power, no text. I’d be interested to know how that compares to everything else.
Or, if you really want to start something, take a cue from Mistmane and turn White into the mill colour. That would be nice too.
Yellow
Yellow is the success story of Defenders Block. Over the course of three sets, a colour that had spent years in a state of total irrelevance was resurrected to now sit poised to enjoy a dynasty of aggro dominance. It is indeed fair to say that the colour is losing basically nothing from the set rotation, and in the new metagame it’s going to keep on doing what it’s been doing.
Which means that I think now is a perfect opportunity to throw out the old playbook and try something new. Yellow aggro needs minimal attention to keep on keeping on. Instead, we have a few sets to experiment, and maybe lay the long-term groundwork for a Yellow control archetype. What is that going to look like? Personally, I think that Yellow should further explore minus-Power as a strategy. Now may finally be the time to implement -1 Power counters, and give them to Yellow as a way to augment its relatively weak form of removal. Or, we could take a cue from Distracted Lead Actress, and implement a suite of Yellow cards that care about the relative Power levels of things on the opponent’s side of the board.
Finally, with Appropriate Business Attire bringing in Persistent as a keyword that Yellow has an affinity for, we might see it get used more often across the colour. It’s a really powerful keyword, so it would obviously have to be used sparingly. But applied correctly it can be exactly the thing to take a card from good to great.
Blue
I should always preface any discussion of Blue with the disclaimer that it really isn’t my colour. I play around with it every so often in Limited and in the “wacky” constructed events, but in terms of serious play I’ve basically always avoided it. So surely anything I say about its future direction should be taken cautiously.
Blue, I think, is a colour that could use something new to hang its hat on. It spent Odysseys Block working hard on winning faceoffs, and in Defenders Block it was committed to movement-based synergy. Both wells are, I think, starting to run dry. (Although I was surely wrong about how much design space was in the movement area in the first place, so maybe there’s more there which I haven’t foreseen.) But personally, I would like to see the colour move in a different direction with the start of this new Block. I have no real preference whether that should be toward aggro or control, I just want to see something new.
One idea is to borrow Mentor from Magic, only instead to implement it as something like, “When you confront this card’s Problem, another character here gets …” something. On-confront triggers are very versatile and can work in all kinds of decks, so it wouldn’t push the colour in any particular direction. Plus the concept sounds generally within Blue’s wheelhouse, so I think it should work.
Another possibility is to bring back Teamwork, but done slightly differently. To wit, rather than a continuous modifier, make it an activated ability. Or, reduce it from affecting everyone to a specific target, chosen when the ability is activated. Both of these make it a bit harder to use the ability, which hopefully would allow more powerful text to get used on the cards.
Orange
Similar to White above, the elephant in the room that needs to be mentioned first is that Orange needs to have a nice foundation to work with, starting with a generically good Mane. As colour identities go, Orange might actually be the better choice to have the vanilla four Power Mane, come and think of it.
Yet I think that this colour has a lot of potential to move forward within the strategies that it’s currently exploring. So Orange for one probably doesn’t need a complete rethink as a colour. The discard synergy has run its course, I think, but instead we can keep focusing on the +1 Power counter aggro that started in Seaquestria. One possibility I’d like to see is a ‘Transcend’-type mechanic, where putting a certain amount of +1 Power counters on a card grants it access to more powerful text. This is somewhat similar to Bulk Biceps, Get Swole, but I’m thinking of something more dramatic. Again, if we’re willing to borrow from Magic, I’d prefer to physically swap out the card for a more advanced form. That probably can’t happen, though.
On the other side of the coin, now that Fumes is a thing, maybe Orange can go back to exhausting things as a form of control, only now it might actually work! And we can all just kinda’ whistle and pretend that Odysseys Block didn’t happen.
Pink
Similar to Purple at the start of this article, I think that the time might be nigh for Pink to spend some time skulking in the shadows and thinking about everything that it’s done. Similar to Blue, I also think that what Pink really needs is something new to focus itself around. Eccentric has finally been built into something worth using, and its removal suite has gotten into a pretty good spot. What the colour really needs is something new to make its own. And again, it’s okay if it takes a set or two to build itself up into that spot.
What I think could be great for the colour are effects like Snips and Snails up there. Effects that require retiring Friends as an additional cost. Party Hard from Equestrian Odysseys is another great example. Pink is the best colour right now for token generation, but it suffers from the fact that its tokens are literally just one-Power bodies with nothing else on them. Indeed, that makes Pink the perfect colour to have cards that require retiring Friends to achieve their fullest effects. And, at least from my perspective, I’d prefer effects like Party Hard to those like Snips and Snails. More Events or text like “As an additional cost to play this card you may retire any number of Friends. If you do, X happens for each one you retired.” Or something similar.
Now, obviously, doing something like this would be a really bad idea if Mane Six were still legal (or at least, that card’s existence would seriously constrict this design space). So I’d also just say that if we do go down this direction, we have to ban Mane Six as we start. I apologize if you’re sorry to see that card go, but it’s probably better that way.
Conclusion
All told, what I want to see with a new Block is some radical change. That could come from completely new mechanics in a few colours. It could come from rethinking fundamental concepts of what a Mane Character can be or do. It could come from experimenting with new ways to play cards and build decks. But now is a time for rebirth and renewal. I can hardly wait.
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Ramble about the Hisoka&Chikage dynamic (w/ spoilers for the two Winter Play Events and chapter 5) and more personal stuff under the cut
Either way the thing i found really cruel with the Chikage arc is that, Hisoka was already on top of my fav list, but since he was amnesic he wasn’t defined by much aside from “his amnesia most likely come from his trauma”, and learning that he has a guilt complex/is responsible for someone’s death and it’s likely that this death is what triggered the amnesia, and that’s it.
and i thought i was safe with that bc What Could Go Wrong meanwhile i could relate on being a Sleepy Bitch like Hisoka (hell i used to be able to sleep ANYWHERE before and often fell asleep in class or in a corner on trip, before anxiety indulced Insomnia started to kick my ass.) and i have memories issue, trauma babey, so like, My Kin Now:tm: (i have more reasons but that’s the funny short version)
but then the Winter Chapter ended with the April’s cliffhanger and the thing is that i was aware of Chikage’s cards and i knew of that one card from the “past self” set which was matching with Hisoka, so it was obvious that Chikage=April and that Chikage and Hisoka both were spies
and it fucked me up and from all the rookies’s build ups from the events it’s Chikage’s that fucked me up the most bc he specifically appears in Winter chapter, makes it clear he’s lurking on Hisoka LIKE THIS IS CHIKAGE’S FIRST APPEARANCE
IS WHEN TASUKU PICKS UP HISOKA AFTER HE COLLAPSES.. AND NOW WE KNOW IT WAS CHIKAGE’S ROLE..... HE LITTERALLY SLIDES ON SCREEN TO DECIDE TO TAKE ACTION ON HISOKA WHILE SEEING SOMEONE FILLING HIS ROLE OF CARETAKER OF HISOKA.....
And then Chikage leaves Hisoka flowers saying it “means a lot to him” to send those flowers and considering the whole Flower Language in the game it had to be on purpose so i checked up the flowers he sent Hisoka and i’m a crying mess
Second Winter Play:
(red pre chap 5, green post chap 5)
Third Winter Play:
and i’m a messssss because while the first one can have resentment in it it also showcase the specific grief Chikage denied himself to feel??? even the grief he felt FOR Hisoka. But the second one is so positive and hopeful like Chikage doesn’t WANT to turn on Hisoka like he planned and i’m a fucking disaster.
COUGHS anyway i got lost but, the thing is that, the fact the direction they took with the complex relationship between the three siblings is. The sort of sibling relationship i connect with because this is closer to what i can relate.
it is a similar reason why i’m fascinated with the Wales brothers in gbf, with the fact the youngest brother had to bear the burden of his older brother disappearing and his other brother going off rails and taking it out on him, before being torn by guilt and realizing he ought to make it up to his brother.
And if you boil down the Hisoka/Chikage/August storyline it’s the same thing happening, except Chikage specifically BLAMED Hisoka for August’s death, and Hisoka felt guilty and responsible and beared that burden.
And honestly i already connect much more with sibling dynamics when the youngest of the bunch is bearing the burden of their dynamic bc, mood.
But, as someone who had my eldest sister ran away from home when i was a kid and my other sister turning on me and pushing me away because, as she told me ways later, she badly lived the abandon and she knew i was closer to my eldest sister so she pushed me away in a form of jealousy AND the fact we were not allowed to talk about my runaway sister, we had to act like she never existed, and it was extremely frustrating so my sister shifted the blame on me
bc Chikage was always a bit jealous of how close Hisoka and August were and then when August died, with the inability to process his grief, he had to blame Hisoka.
And like, if the Wales Brothers’ dynamic punched me in the face, this was a suckerpunch because bro that hit, ways too close from home??? on a character i already kinda can project on?? (even though my behavior and coping mechanisms are closer to Azuma bc of the shared Abandon Issues and all but man it’s not like i had nothing on Hisoka yaknow?)
And, meanwhile, Hisoka and Chikage fixed their relationship. They opened up about their trauma, they cleared it up, they decided to heal together and getting better, and this is something that’s fucking me up a LOT because... it’s not something i can have? My sister and I shared our trauma but we’re still so distant and so caught in our parents’s bullshit that my sister KEEPS shifting the blame on me for anything going wrong with our family, especially lately with our dad.
It was something that made me irrationally emotional with the Wales bro already but here destroys me, the fantasy of /fixing/ it. The fantasy of, after this hardship, managing to realize they can rely on one another and be there through their trauma. And, for Hisoka and Chikage, this desire to rebuild their family, in a less toxic environment. It’s something i can’t have, and don’t even really /want/ because the relationship with my sister is too damaged and we’re too different as people, but the fantasy of it being a possibility somewhere makes me weak on my knees.
(+ tbh a3 is HEALING bc with the Wales bro, the youngest is still the most responsible one, he still has to carry this burden, he has so much on his shoulders, and it’s... heavy when you get to project a bit on his story. While Hisoka is, on the contrary, encouraged to rest in order to recover. He’s encouraged to keep sleeping, to do stuff he likes, to nurse himself back to health, and this is so HEALING to have to see the characters who’s trauma you relate to being told that they don’t have to just “carry on” but, that they can be safe to rest now. (likewise with Azuma who’s also encouraged to rest and take care and rely on others without being punished about pushing people away. Instead it’s his friends picking up how to read him to counter Azuma’s first instict that is to isolate himself, without lecturing him about how he shouldn’t do that.), a3′s way to tackle trauma and recovery is seriously getting to me SO BAD like, it’s really healing to me)
Adding to that that, independantly to it all, I genuinely adore Chikage, he’s fun, he’s sneaky, he’s an ass, but he cares so much, and everything is because he cares ways too much, he’s so damaged and was never allowed to have room to get better and now he does, and he built so much walls around himself, his lies are just that (i’ve seen someone call it gas//l//ighting and DEAR LORD learn the meaning of words he doesn’t do that AT ALL) he just lies to throw off people, he tells people right away that he lies, even when it would protect him to keep on the charade (see his lie to Sakyo to cover up when he kidnapped Izumi), they’re walls in order to keep people away, to keep them from asking about him, and like he says to Tsuzuru because there’s weakness to be exploited in the truth, which is a paranoia that is completely legit to have when he’s litterally an informant/hacker spy??
he’s completely different from my sister, which is ironic, but therefore i do not even manage to project this thing fully on him. Hell, i crush on Chikage. I have terrible taste but good lord he’s been appearing in my dreams every day lately what the fuck Chikage. (litterally my top 3 chara is just “1) Kin in regard to the lore, 2) Kin in the coping mechanism, 3) Crushing ways too hard on him, am a total simp”)
Also meanwhile the fact the whole ending is “we’re leaving the organization (which was their family), we have a found family now, but together” is peak fantasy for someone like me and i’m always crying over the Mankai Found Family, but just, going “screw the previous family”? but..... the two of them together? I’m a mess. Especially adding to the fact Hisoka got SO close to the Winter Troupe and with the course of the events it really shows how precious they became to one another, this found family remains so precious to Hisoka (hell he bothers Homare and Tasuku as much as he bothers Chikage dLKFJD) he just, wants Chikage to experience this happiness too instead of letting himself collapse under his trauma and i’m!!! aaaah!!
So yeah what i’m getting at is, that, I thought i would be safe from Hisoka’s arc, that i wouldn’t be this emotionally invested in it, i was already too emotionally invested in Azuma’s bc Azuma has my coping mechanisms, but instead the plot took me by the throat with the direct sibling dynamic i REALLY feel for, it hit WAYS too close from home, with a storyline i can HEAVILY empathize with, and feel pain for both Hisoka and Chikage because i get both sides so hard, and i HAD to fall for one of those morons.
I’ve been playing a3 for over a year, started playing when the EN server lautched, and i had been emotionally involved in all of it, a LOT, i’ve played it every day in over a year, i’m up to date with everything, i feel so much for it, but despite that i felt like i was keeping it mostly lowkey, like i wasnt /obsessed/
but this storyline ruined me. This storyline brought this lowkey obsession to highkey at full speed.
And all of that bc i genuinely loved Hisoka before those truthbombs, that those made me love him even more, that Chikage became SO loveable and has been living in my mind rentfree ever since, and that the dynamic they touch is both too close from home while also being unrealistic (as in how they fixed their dynamic), but in a “fantasy i love to indulge in” kind of unrealistic and it is destroying me.
so yeah, A3 good, i can’t get over how GOOD the writing is, but also that fucking wrecked me.
#i've been a mess for months now aaaaaa#ichatalks about a3#ichapersonal#(i'm talking about some of my family issues under the cut so DLKFJDLFK that's why the warning anyway)
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