MArcomage

I would like to discuss common quick and swift cards and how they effect meta-game. Note that I'm not focusing on current card balance, but rather I'm trying to focus on which way should the card development go in the future.

It's not a coincidence that we currently have only 6 common quick cards and no common swift cards. I decided to keep number of such cards at minimum, because I was aware of the imbalances it may cause. Now, I would like to make a more systematical approach. Such quick cards may not be overpowered as individual cards, but if we would have for example 30 quick common cards, I believe the meta game would be changed significantly. Imagine a deck that have all common cards with quick keyword. Currently, such imbalance is minimal, because we have only 6 of them. Also note that quick cards allows you to play "if not New" cards 1 round sooner.

If current system would be filled with new common quick (or swift) cards, all common cards with quick keyword in deck would be too good for not to have them. Any common card without the quick keyword would be at great disadvantage. It would really damage different approaches to deck building. Also the gameplay would be changed, since common cards would be only played as an add-on cards.

There are multiple ways how to remedy the situation:

1 - disallow existence of common quick and swift cards, rework the 6 existing common quick cards

2 - change the standard draw mechanism (currently it's one full draw per round) to a draw mechanism based on played card rarity (you can draw a card with only same or lower rarity as played card after quick and swift card)

3 - add limit to number of quick and swift cards can be played in a row (maybe based on card rarity?)

4 - some combination of 2 and 3?

Please let me know what you think, also any other solution you find is appreciated ;-)

I would recommend to add a limit of 10 common qick/swift cards per deck.

I think this issue should be resolved through gameplay and card adjustments, without modifying deck building rules.

I don't see why any of the options you mention are necessary. To me, the best solution is the simplest one: make each new quick common (or swift) card no better than the average common card. If they're balanced, it doesn't matter how many you can take. It's not like quick cards get better the more of them you have.

The reason quick commons were so problematic before was because they were just too powerful. The balance changes since then have done a pretty good job of fixing that (though militia is probably still a bit too good - and according to the statistics section, is very popular). Just make each new card balanced individually. If it's a common quick, make sure there's a cost to playing it (even if it's an indirect one, like Wind). Adding some contrived rule to address them seems confusing.

1 - Safe solution, though a card like Renewal isn't worth playing when it isn't quick. Also for other cards reworking them in a way they have the same purpose / value is gonna be tricky.

2 - Makes Militia loose it's purpose. (would need a rework, I feel) Other than that it works. Quite fair in the send you get a common for a common while having an additional move after it.

3 - Don't like it. Besides, does it really matter if a player plays 10 rounds spread over one turn or over 2?

Additional remark: Quick cards can be used to hide stock gain for cards like Anomaly sphere, which feels rather unfair.

Edit: Dindon makes a valid point. Make every Quicky balanced, and a full-common-quick deck would only be suited as a fun deck.

I kinda agree with DinDon. Now the common quick cards are all zero cost, that's what it makes them good: they are a free ticket to a better card.
I think that if we introduce some balanced swift/quick common there will be no problem.
E.g.: Burninator's blood sorceress suggestion seems good to me, but i will not put it in all my decks.

I have nothing to add that hasn't already been said, and I pretty much agree with Dindon. Keep each one balanced, and all is well. We're only going to have a problem if there are too many that are zero cost, even with side effects, such that you're continuously attempting to subtract additional resources that are already at zero while gaining something else.

I second Progressor's note about cleaning up the way resource gains and losses are reported while using Quick cards. I don't think it benefits the game at all to show in this manner that there was zero production. All it does is complicate the effects of reactionary cards.

In order to see what would happen if we had an ample supply of quick cards, I did a little analysis to decide how much it will cost to guarantee an uncommon draw each turn.

The result of my analysis is a quite simple equation; if every common card slot in your deck is a Quick card that costs X resources, you can expect to pay 2X resources every round in order to guarantee at least an uncommon draw. (See the bottom of this post for an explanation of how I arrived at this result.)

Currently, common quick cards cost a single resource and have an additional positive effect. I don't expect this to be the norm, but if we continued making Quick commons at this cost, the end result would be that you can guarantee at least an uncommon every single turn at the low price of only 2 resources per round. That is INSANE. No other deck could compete with this, in my opinion.

If we raised the cost to 2 resources per quick card (like Magic Portal), it would cost 4 resources per round. That's equivalent to staring with 1/2/2 facilities. That seems to me like a fair exchange to guarantee at least an uncommon draw each round.

If every single Quick common cost at least 2 resources (like Magic Portal), I think we could keep the metagame okay. There would be no need to add in more changes to keep common Quick cards fair.

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[CALCULATION IS BELOW - feel free to skip over this part]

If you're interested, here's how I arrived at the average resources paid per draw:

Every time you draw a common quick card, you can pay X resources to have a 32% chance of drawing an uncommon (29%+6%/2) instead. If you fail to draw an uncommon, you get to pay another X resources to have another 32% chance. For ease of calculation, let's assume it is 33% and not 32%; this rounding up will make the final result slightly low.

This makes a sum of infinite series: X(2/3)^1 + X(2/3)^2 +X(2/3)^3 + ...

In general, this geometric sum reduces to X/(1-2/3)=3X. (See the example at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_series for why this is so.)

But you don't always draw a common; you only draw commons 65% of the time. If you round this to 66%, then you will see that you only pay the cost of common quick cards 2/3 of the time. So even though the geometric sum has a limit at 3X, on average, you will only pay 3X(2/3) = 2X.

Therefore, if every common card slot in your deck is a Quick card with no other abilities, whatever the resource cost of that card is, you can expect to pay twice that much on average every round of the game in order to guarantee you always get at least an uncommon. If every common slot is Renewal, for example, you can expect to pay 2 gems every single round on average. (Unless you discard, of course.)

I know it's a bit of a radical idea, but we could make it so that you do not draw cards until the end of your turn, effectively limiting the number of cards playable in one round to 8. What d'you think?

Such a change would drastically affect cards that rely on other cards in hand to determine their overall effect, causing some positive and some negative changes. It would be a brand new balancing nightmare.

I prefer being able to see what you're drawing up until the last one. Otherwise, you might be inadvertently setting up a powerful play for your opponent ([url="http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=479"]Mirror golem[/url], [url="http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=409"]Dragon slayer[/url], [url="http://arcomage.netvor.sk/?location=Cards_details&card=510"]Master hunter[/url], any better-than-common Far sight effect, etc) that you could have prevented by seeing that you'd drawn it and either playing, discarding, or relocating the targeted card instead.

Well I admit I'm one of those who added quick commons when I ran out of commons I really wanted in the deck, as to use those as cycling in Magic: The Gathering. Just toss away your shitty cards at a price to hasten your search for the decks awesome cards.

I thought the reason swifts weren't allowed to be commons was for the resources, whereas commons cost res. I think it's possible to have quick cards as commons, but we might need to add a sacrifice with each card?

Militia is a really good card, but it could be changed to lower your wall by 5 or something. Cost 1 stock. Whtvr. I think we could have few common quick-cards, but have a severe cost. Not -1 res, but like -3 twr etc.

Myschly wrote:
Militia is a really good card, but it could be changed to lower your wall by 5 or something. Cost 1 stock. Whtvr. I think we could have few common quick-cards, but have a severe cost. Not -1 res, but like -3 twr etc.

Militia has seen a number of changes, but as I recall, the incarnation before last had stock -1. Then it was lessened to random resource -1 because stock -1 was deemed too harsh!

I read the opinions here, but I think the best solution would be to keep (and possibly increase) Quick commons but no Swift commons. Maybe we could turn most of them into 0-cost and cause production x(-1), so that it would be harder to play them just because you get a second chance. Instead people would play them for the tactical gain.

Swifts on the other hand could provide a normal extra round, but they would all be uncommon and rares and could possibly allow drawing of uncommon cards next round.

In short what I suggest is, only commons will be Quick cards and perhaps a few non-common 0-cost cards. They will give an extra round with negative production and will allow the drawing of a card of any rarity. Swift cards will only include non-common cards, and they will provide a normal extra round, but will only allow the drawing of Uncommon cards (so that the player's deck will have averagely the same strength as before), unless stated otherwise by Durable keyword (e.g. Lord of Time or Vampire Lord if we turn it from Quick to Swift)

You now have 6 worthless cards.

dindon wrote:
Militia has seen a number of changes, but as I recall, the incarnation before last had stock -1. Then it was lessened to random resource -1 because stock -1 was deemed too harsh!

I believe that change had to do with the 'no rare by common discard'-rule. I don't think it was too harsh.