Custom Mechanic: Wage a Battle

ManInMaroon_948 · June 17

Hey! I'm working on a new mechanic right now!

Wage a Battle: Create a Confrontation battle token with starting defense 3 and "When this battle is defeated, its controller draws a card and puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature they control." As it enters, choose an opponent to protect it. You and others can attack it.

Image: https://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/uploads/editor/rz/na3itzlneg6e.png

I hope this can allow battles to become an aggressive and viable strategy to use against other decks! Maybe it'll make them more fun too.

Go check out my recent card using this mechanic! https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/pinpoint-picket-3?list=user

ONE LAST THING: Since I'm promoting this mechanic I support anyone who uses this mechanic on a card they make! If you post your card on here, I'll favourite that card AND THREE other cards of your choice. Four free favs for making one card. I hope that's a good deal lol.

Thanks!

12SidedGuy · June 20

Hey ManInMaroon! I really like this mechanic and will likely get brewing on a card that uses it tomorrow to explore the design space.

When I first read Pinpoint Picket, I was very confused because its reminder text does not include the card drawn and +1/+1 counter reward of defeating the battle. After seeing this post, it makes much more sense! Was this intentional to save space on the card?

When I make my card with this mechanic, I'll probably try my own spin on the rules text to see if I can make it any shorter/simpler to save space. Additionally, part of me wonders if the defense counters should be lowered or the reward improved. I was scrolling through the other battles and most of their flipped sides are quite powerful, even the ones with 3-4 defense counters. This makes me wonder if the reward for a Confrontation would need to be more / defeating one would need to be easier for it to be worth it.

Regardless, the mechanic is sweet and so is your decision to make a community post to explore it further. I'd be curious as to your thoughts on any of my analysis above if you have the time. Thanks!

Jadefire · June 21

I agree the power level of a Confrontation token needs to be ramped up. Four damage (possibly over multiple turns) is a lot ot give up to defeat that battle (to get some perspective, it's 20% of your opponent's life). And to just get one draw and a single +1/+1 counter off of it doesn't seem very worthwhile. You have to make Wage a Battle cards playable even if you only end up casting one of them. I'm going to try my hand at putting this ability on a card as well and we'll see how it goes.

Jadefire · June 21

https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/defiant-sandblade

I think I've covered all the necessary points in the updated reminder text for Wage a Battle. I was trying to balance the fact that Sieges do something on the front side and tend to give a bigger reward on the back side with the fact that Confrontations don't cost you a card to create. I think lowering the Confrontation's defense will incentivize attacking it if you potentially have to sacrifice a creature to earn the victory. I also upped the reward to buffing all your creatures to compensate for any combat losses. Finally, I tried to capitalize on the creature gaining the "waged a battle" status as a pseudo-benefit for the Confrontation not having any front side effect and to reward the player for building up an army of creatures that have waged battles.

12SidedGuy · June 21

Here is my entry into the fray!

Regarding balancing the mechanic, I feel that Jadefire's version is my favorite rendition. I originally had battles with four defense counters that rewarded the player with a card, treasure, and single +1/+1 counter, but that felt too weak to be justifiable on its own, so I changed my Confrontations to look like Jadefire's.

Regarding the actual rules text, I personally tried to shorten it as much as possible because I like having room to put as much stuff on my cards as possible, so I opted for this:

(Create a Confrontation token, a siege battle with starting defense 3. When defeated, draw a card and put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.)

The biggest difference is that this version does not care which creatures waged a battle, mostly because I feel the mechanic is already pretty complicated and doesn't gain too much interest from it, especially when the payoff for defeating a confrontation no longer cares which creature waged it. I also said "siege battle" in my rules text, which I feel implies the fact that you choose an opponent to protect it and that you and others can attack it because that is how siege battles work.

12SidedGuy · June 21

Also, to provide feedback on Jadefire's design, I quite like not only how you have balanced the mechanic (as I said above), but also the design overall. The evasive ability of the creature not only enables you to defeat battles, but also gives you continued rewards after that. The card is relatively simple but highlights the mechanic and explores it in a way I find interesting. Awesome!

ManInMaroon_948 · June 21

Lol, I'm glad my design got some feedback!

Let me explain my thought process when I made this mechanic. Maybe that'll explain my decisions lol

Wage a Battle: To Wage a Battle, (this creature) or chosen creatures wage a battle. You create a Confrontation battle token with four defense counters on it, then you choose an opponent to protect it. When it's defeated, that battle's controller draws a card and puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature that waged a battle this game.

1: Both of your cards are great examples of a type of card I may have planned to make in a future; a "wage a battle" creature that involves multiple creatures in a confrontation. An example of this, "When (this creature) enters, choose (X) other creatures you control. (This creature) and other creatures chosen this way wages a battle." This means you would create only one confrontation, but +1/+1 counters would be distributed among many different creatures that have waged a battle.

2: Confrontations give +1/+1 counters for every creature that waged a battle THIS GAME, not specifically the only one that waged the battle. For example, say I cast two Pinpoint Pickets, creating two confrontations, and in that same turn I defeat the two battles while the Pinpoint Pickets are on the battlefield. That means each confrontation would give BOTH Pinpoint Pickets a +1/+1 counter, meaning both Pinpoint Pickets become 3/3s.

3: I gave confrontations 4 defense because I didn't want it to be easy for them to be defeated. 3 defense makes them really easy to die to a lightning bolt, and that felt anticlimactic to me. I want more work to be put in into defeating these battle.

4: Yes, you don't even get a lot of value out of confrontations when you defeat them, just a card and some counters on one or two creatures. But the thing is, the power of confrontations is the relation between them and the creature. Like in 12SidedGuy's design, he had an additional trigger when you defeated a battle. It's the creatures that can make the effect stronger, and that's the trick for this design.

5: I was considering having the "put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control" effect when I started this design, but I thought making this mechanic only for "go wide" strategies is too one-dimensional. Again in (1), you can have multiple creatures wage one battle to replicate that effect. Like "When (this creature) enters, choose any number of creatures you control. Each of those creatures wage a battle."

6: As I was making Pinpoint Picket, I found it balanced because it provides late-game card draw on a 1 mana creature similar to Thraben Inspector. Plus, creatures you cast later on with "wage a battle" can still get the counters from the battle Pinpoint Picket waged.

...whew! Lol

@12SidedGuy @Jadefire you guys can tell me which 3 cards to favorite whenever you like

. I totally didn't mind you guys changing up this mechanic in your own way, I think that's cool! I mean if you guys want we can figure out a final product for this mechanic together! We're all strong cardsmiths and we can 100% come up with something solid for this. Thanks!

ManInMaroon_948 · June 21

Oh, also to add to that ig, I didn't add the "card draw and +1/+1 counter reward" to the rules text of the mechanic because I thought if the Confrontation had that ability on it, it would just "cover it". I will admit it should still be in there, I dunno how to put it in tho

I'm always creating super complex mechanics its becoming a problem, lol

Jadefire · June 21

Thanks for the feedback @12SidedGuy. I get the desire to shorten the reminder text, I like putting a variety of mechanics on the same card as well. The decision to make the battle token a Siege (named Confrontation?) is a good way to streamline it. Examples of Sieges already exist and the defending/attacking rules are given in the official MTG rules. It's conceivable that as more Sieges get printed, the way they play will become as intuitive and not in need of explanation as Planeswalkers are now. Becaues Sieges have only been see in March of the Machine so far, I thought it best to be explicit and follow the Siege reminder text as closely as possible. This also allows for the possibiity of the introduction of other battle subtypes that aren't protected by your opponent (Why else would they have been so quick to give a one-off new card type a subtype from the start?).

If the intention of the new reminder text was to make a Siege token named Confrontation, I would suggest wording the reminder text as: Create a Siege battle token named Confrontation with starting defense 3. I'm leaving out "colorless" for space considerations on Deathless Conqueror, despite that being a pretty important thing to define. I like the out-of-the-box thinking behind waging a battle as a death trigger and getting a replacement creature to go with the Confrontation. This could be quite good with a board sweeper, as you'll clear out all creatures and get both the battle and a way to defeat it, which then brings Deathless Conqueror back and buffs everything (if the effects are stacked correctly) to apply the hurt even more. Now that's a worthwhile investment of two turns' worth of attacks from the Zombie. For this to work, you really did have to make waging a battle a player action instead of a creature action (like Explore), which both opens some doors and closes others in terms of what you can do before and after it. I think we both went the same way as far as paring Wage a Battle with an evasion ability, lol.

Jadefire · June 21

I was just reminded why I chose to keep Confrontation as a disctinct battle subtype instead of making it a Siege. Rule 310.11b doesn't make sense with single-sided token battles. That's also why I kept the +1/+1 counter distribution and card drawing within the reminder text, so that it's an intrinsic ability of a Confrontation.

Jadefire · June 21

@ManInMaroon_948 thanks for your detailed explanation of your reasoning behind your design decisions. Some thought I had on your points:

1. & 2. Why wouln't someone just choose the maximum number of creatures to wage a battle all the time? Unless you specifically have ways to punish creatures that have waged a battle, you're only turning down potential +1/+1 counters by choosing any fewer. This seems functionally similar to putting a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control (not sure what kinds of numbers will appear next to Wage a Battle), unless you're playing a go wide strategy where your creature count will always exceed the number of creatures you can involve in a battle.

3. As 12SidedGuy mentioned with reference to current Sieges, the payoff of a Confrontation is quite low. Even with getting to distribute +1/+1 counters to more than one creature, giving up four points of damage and potentially risking a body on board to get them (which doesn't add back to your body count but only buffs your existing bodies, making them no more resilient to non-red spot removal), is quite a large ask. At least there's the card draw aspect to potentially get back some card advantage. I wouldn't worry about how Confrontations will play in an environment with Lightning Bolt, they probably wouldn't be. Confrontations are inherently anti-aggro because they're asking you to trade damage now for longer-term benefit and that's not what any fast format is about.

4. Yes, that would have to be the way to go, either that or taking advantage of a creature having waged a battle. This doesn't negate the risk involved in attacking that battle, so the payoff, wherever it lies, woud have to be sufficiently large. I can see that there's value in cards like Pinpoint Pickets as a setup card for other cards with battle bonuses. Not every card needs to be able to single-handedly create and defeat its own Confrontation easily, some can just be for support.

5. If putting a counter on each creature you control seems too vanilla, you can make the reward distributing a fixed number of +1/+1 counters among creatures you control. That way you can choose to go wide or go high if you don't have many creatures to take advantage of those counters. The concept of having either one creature or multiple creatures waging a battle create a single Confrontation might be confusing with the language of "Each of those creatures wage a battle."

6. It's so much easier to crack a Clue compared to defeating a 4 defense Confrontation (even on a completely empty board), it's not even a comparison. Thraben Inspector can help you draw out of a bad hand by turn 2 if you have the lands and the Clue can be cashed in for a card the same turn you create it with no more of a requirement than two mana. Confrontations are also no friend in a racing situation or when you're on the back foot and just trying to dig for your answer.

One other thing I noticed with the way the reminder text is worded for Confrontations is that defeating one will buff every creature that has waged a battle this game, including your opponent's. The controller of the battle will be the one putting those counters on, but those counts will go on everything. It's not a "may" and it's not "each creature they control." I'm fairly certain that wasn't the intention, but it's your mechanic. You get final say in how you want it to be.

Jadefire · June 21

Thanks for the favourites. Please go ahead and put them on any cards you like in this account: https://mtgcardsmith.com/user/jadefire_wsn/cards

ManInMaroon_948 · June 21

Thanks @Jadefire! Your insight really helped me.

I think I'm convinced that starting defense of 3 would benefit this mechanic.

Here's my new idea: Maybe Confrontations have "When this battle is defeated, draw a card.", and any further effects defeating the confrontation would have would be on the creature.

Maybe like this:

Pinpoint Picket
Mv: 1 Red
Creature

When Pinpoint Picket enters, it wages a battle. (You create a Confrontation with starting defense 3 and "When this battle is defeated, draw a card." As it enters, choose an opponent to protect it. You and others can attack it.)

Whenever you defeat a battle, put a +1/+1 counter on Pinpoint Picket.

This simplifies Confrontations so much more, and most of the power can lie in the creatures.

Gave out your favs btw : )

12SidedGuy · June 22

I've enjoyed reading all of the discussion so far and am going to try to respond to some of the points I find interesting or important.

First, regarding the debate between 3 or 4 defense counters, I'm glad we all seem to agree on 3. While I initially had the same concern of 3 feeling too easy or anticlimactic, as Jadefire has described quite well, it really isn't. The comparison to clues really puts into perspective to me how much of an investment it is to defeat one of these battles.

Regarding Jadefire's point about choosing to keep the more expanded reminder text, I see where you are coming from and frankly mostly chose to shorten it for space concerns. Given the newness of battles, I would think it ideal as well to more clearly explain them if space permits. Also, your suggestion to say "Create a Siege battle token named Confrontation with starting defense 3" seems very sound to me and I'll likely update Deathless Conqueror to include this.

There still seems to be an interesting debate about how much reward should be offered for defeating a battle. Regarding ManInMaroon's most recent post, I personally disagree with the proposed direction of the strength of Confrontations coming from the support of other cards. I feel that a mechanic like this should ideally "stand alone" as much as possible. If I play a card that wages a battle and my creatures with related battle pay-offs die, I don't want the existing battle to then become unjustifiable to defeat. This feels uninteresting and unrewarding as a player. I could see being very disappointed when my opponent kills my battle payoffs with removal. I could also see feeling obligated to protect my battle payoffs at all costs, avoiding putting them in combat, which overall feels restrictive. There is certainly a balance to strike, but for me, I think that allowing Confrontations to be more stand-alone powerful and cards that work with them being gravy is a better alternative to Confrontations being stand-alone mediocre and reliant on external support.

Overall, working with this mechanic has been a very interesting and fun exercise. I likely won't spend too much more time exploring it, but I hope I added to this discussion. I've certainly learned a lot from the discourse! I'm glad you made this post originally ManInMaroon, this kind of community conversation is super cool. Cheers!

Edit: Also, feel free to fav whatever you like!

Jadefire · June 22

Both sides have made some compelling points. I agree that tying the benefit of defeating a Confrontation too much to the creatures themselves could disincentivize putting them in the line of fire in order to get that victory in the first place. Presumably, the creatures that have waged a battle should be the first ones into the fray and shouldn't be so "precious" that we can't bear to lose them. Thus, the intrinsic value of a standalone Confrontation shouldn't dip below a minimum threshold (despite the havoc it may wreak on the available space in a card's textbox). However, there's definitely a place to tack on certain kinds of additional bonuses onto the creatures. The rework of Pinpoint Picket, if it's in the context of a Confrontation that also gives out +1/+1 counters, is a good example of this. It's battle defeat trigger only affects itself, so losing it in combat only means you're sacrificing a body that would've potentially grown larger to guarantee that all of your other creatures grow larger. Incidentally, I believe losing a creature with a battle defeat trigger in the same combat in which you defeat a battle will still result in that trigger going off, since combat damage happens simultaneously for everything and the creature will still be on the battlefield long enough to see that the battle has no more defense counters on it.

If you'll indulge my taking liberties with Wage a Battle one more time, I made another card with my version of the mechanic. I'll probalby make one more battle-adjacent card now that I'm on this train of thought that won't directly use Wage a Battle, but will definitely synergize with it.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/stalwart-liberator

ManInMaroon_948 · June 22

@12SidedGuy Thanks for your insight! Im typing this on my phone rn so I wont say so much lol, but I like the point you made. I’m realizing how high of a payoff this mechanic needs now. I think the end result for this mechanic (at least my version of it) will be very similar to what you and Jadefire had made it. But 3 defense counters if definitely the way to go, and so as putting counters on each creature you control. Go-wide was the main idea I had for this anyways, but I think I can still open doors for other archetypes too with this mechanic.

It’s been a pleasure discussing this mechanic with you! I’m glad you enjoyed this 😄

(I’ll give out your favs later today 😉)

ManInMaroon_948 · June 22

@Jadefire thanks for your feedback again! I think I'm ready for my final design of the mechanic, I'm currently updating it rn

also, do you want me to look through your profile and fav your cards again, or do you have specific ones you'd like me to fav : )

ManInMaroon_948 · June 22

ManInMaroon_948 · June 22

Jadefire · June 24

@ManInMaroon_948 Now that's what I'm talkin' about! Putting the reward on the battle itself as a triggered ability is a great alternate way to go about it. I didn't know there were more favourites, but if you insist, you can choose where they go.

As promised, going about battles in a different direction:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/ketroc-cerebral-tactician

Typical blue: stalls out the game, actually rewards you for not taking an aggressive approach to your battles, and allows you to craft your hand until you're ready to deal with the battles on your own terms and blow out your opponents from there.

ManInMaroon_948 · June 24

ManInMaroon_948 · June 24

@Jadefire this might be one of the coolest cards I've seen that synergizes with battles ever, lol. Also, thanks on your feedback for the final form of the mechanic!

(P.S, I just handed out six favs to your main account; Three for Stalwart Liberator and three for Ketroc. Enjoy!)

Jadefire · June 25

Thanks @ManInMaroon_948 for your comment. I appreciate the favourites.

ManInMaroon_948 · June 25

ManInMaroon_948 · July 4

Mantis172 · July 7

Trying to expand on Confrontation as a battle subtype I came up with this.

ManInMaroon_948 · July 17

Ooh, this is neat! I never really considers maybe having this mechanic apply to cards with the battle subtype too! I think that's really neat to have.

Please choose 3 card for me to favorite

(@Mantis172)