Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Sorcery
6/0 Pale Green EE - TC
"Place on your magician to set it aside:  Protect your hand and deck from opponents, and your magicians cannot be ignored.  Each upkeep, you may reveal an evil card from deck, underdeck it, and return deck without shuffling."
II Chronicles 33:6

Just trying out something different here.  Not sure if this is underpowered or broken.  Thoughts?

nice really like the numbers (great defensive toss) would run this with divination for setting up reveal bottom really like it!! very well powered! gives ot offenses running magicians a way to protect their hand and deck! which as far as i know most ways are nt based. thanks!!

I would remove the deck-setting component myself, because having a John Promo effect to be able to see literally everything in my deck in the order it will come, but go beyond that and let you choose whether to shuffle (the 'may' is transitive and the reveal has an inherent search since it comes from anywhere in deck), plus setting the bottom of deck, this could probably go if you keep anything else.

I could reword it so that it reveals an evil card, shuffles remaining deck, and then underdecks the revealed card.  That way, the only card you know is the last one.  I think I'd like that, although shuffling each upkeep would take time.

Also, I would say to do that because right now this stops a Naz or Ring played later from being able to counter it (since the protection of deck is in place already).  Therefore, the only real ways to turn this off are neutralized (and you can play your own Naz with impunity).

It actually doesn't counter Hez Ring, since Hez Ring targets the player, not the deck. 

Also, don't forget that it costs you an EC (a magician) for it to work.  That's a decent cost, probably to make it underpowered in T1.  Obviously, in T2 is where this concept could quickly become overpowered.  Appreciate the feedback.  Let's see if Polarius has any comments 

Also, splash this with demons, and each turn, baring naz, you can get a demon from your deck, it seems fairly powerful for a one character loss. You could possibly make it 2 magicians, with numbers greater than 4/*.

It's quite powerful. I don't know about overpowered... In T1 at least. In T2 it might be a bit much. I think making it shuffle the deck would be a bit better. And some way to limit it in T2

In order for this to be used to its maximum effect, it requires that you have drawn Gates of Hell and have not needed to use it to extend a battle yet...

Demons are not the only defense that thrive on setting the bottom of deck, magicians have plenty of ways of their own to retrieve that card.  GoH is not needed to make the most of this card.

However, as mentioned before, it is the combination of all of those great abilities that makes it OP.  It needs to be pared back to be balanced.

You do indeed need GoH for maximum effect. While Magicians also interact with the bottom of deck, Invoking Terror accomplishes the same thing as the strongest part of this card, decreasing its relative power compared to use with demons, and you do not need to be attacked to get the from gatesing a demon. I was already operating on his desire to de-John the card, which is now reflected in the original post. Perhaps it could lose the hand protection and still be playable, but I see a niche powerful (but not overpowered) card in T1. I don't play T2 and don't know how good Magicians/Demons are, so if that's where the complaints are coming from I just caution that any weaker (except perhaps the hand protection) and it is unplayable in T1.

I disagree. EC was the best expansion ever, in large part because almost every single card in it was playable at the highest level.

I agree with Redoubter about not every card being playable at the highest level in every category, it may be good for the set in question, but is bad for the game as a whole. Let me explain why (a lot of this is based on Mark Rosewater's articles for MtG).

In any set (I'm using the word 'set' as the mathematical term rather than a set like the Early Church) of cards in a Trading Card Game, some of them will be better than others for a given category, and therefore if the set is sufficiently large that means that some cards won't be playable at the highest levels, because if you play with them your deck won't be as good (or more accurately it needs to have the better cards for it to be competitive). So what will happen if you try to make every card in every set playable in every category? You'll end up always having to make sure that your expansions are at least as powerful as the previous ones, which will lead to power ramping, which I'll admit isn't always a bad thing (it can be really important to get the game to the power level you want) but if that's continued for too long it can make the game degenerate.

So if we only make some of the cards good for any particular category competitive? We make other cards useful in other categories, Redemption has several categories that it can make cards for, T1 and T2 are obvious, the various multiplayers and Booster Draft and Sealed deck. And of course we can make fun cards that won't necessarily be in Nationals winning decks, I for one love trying to make "unplayable" cards do cool things.

Finally I don't think every card in the Early Church is going to be playable at the highest level... although I'm not as familiar with it as I'd like to be due to being jobless for most of the past year.