Enigma ability

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mosskirin
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Post by mosskirin » 4 years ago

In terms of how this ability works, it's pretty straightforward, but wording it concisely, and fitting it in the text box, is tripping me up.

So basically, I want to have cards with "Enigma," that exile the top three cards of your library face down as they enter the battlefield, except their controller can look at them. The exiled cards are basically used as a key for small buffs/abilities, and there are three depending on type (Land, Creature, or Nonland/Noncreature), kind of like Waste Not.

So it provides a secret component, where your opponent knows what extra abilities the card could possibly have, but not exactly what they do have.

For example:

Many-Masked Dryad
2G
Creature - Dryad (U)
As Many-Masked Dryad enters the battlefield, exile the top three cards of your library face down. You may look at these cards.
Turn a card exiled face down by Many-Masked Dryad face up: If a land card, it gains +1/+1 until end of turn. If a creature card, it gets trample until end of turn. If a noncreature, nonland card, it gets hexproof until end of turn.
2/2

As a keyword, I'm wondering if I could template it like this:

Many-Masked Dryad
2G
Creature - Dryad (U)
Enigma (As this card enters the battlefield, exile the top three cards of your library face down. You may look at those cards. It has "Turn a card exiled face down by it face up: Apply the effects below per type of the exiled card.")
Land: It gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Creature: It gets Trample until end of turn.
Noncreature, Nonland: It gets Hexproof until end of turn.
2/2

Maybe uncommons could be just Land/Nonland with reminder text, and rares could have all three types with no reminder text?
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barbecube
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Post by barbecube » 4 years ago

Have you tried rendering these in mtg.design or MSE? I worry that the mechanic is too texty.
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Krishnath
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Post by Krishnath » 4 years ago

I just checked it in MSE, it's a little long, but as long as the granted abilities aren't longer than those of the Dryad above, it should be fine. Remember, on rares and mythics the reminder text isn't usually necessary. The reminder text takes up roughly half the text box.
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spacemonaut
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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

Your second case is theoretically possible but isn't supported by current Magic templating conventions. The second case also winds up with a net increase in wordage: your first case is 68 words and 357 characters; your second is 71 words and 372 characters.

Be careful with ambiguous "it"s. In either templating approach, the "it"s you're using are grammatically referring to the card you revealed, not Many-Masked Dryad. You'll see explore uses "this creature" when it's time to refer back to the exploring creature.

I'd keep it as two separate ability lines: one ETB ability and one activated ability. Whichever way you dice things up though, you're looking at an ability that's 2-3 lines wordier than Explore, and that's going to limit the actual payoff you can get out of all the words you're spending. By payoff here I mean the actual useful changes: the card getting +1/+1 or trample or hexproof is payoff, but everything before that is wording investment to eventually get there.

Can I suggest taking a simpler surprise approach that's also going to be easier to balance and reduce variance? Just care about one card type:
Enigma (As this creature enters the battlefield, exile the top three cards of your library face down. You may look at them any time.)
G, Put a land card exiled by Many-Masked Dryad into its owner's graveyard: Many-Masked Dryad gets +1/+1 and gains trample until end of turn.
No creature or otherwise types cared about. Everyone's got lands, so if we stick with lands we get more room to work along the theme with this mechanic. The opponent still has no idea how much Many-Masked Dryad is capable of, and has to assume there's 1-2 land cards exiled (but it could be 0 or 3), and you leave yourself with far more room to actually express payoff for all the work.

The cost is because "shields down" moments are good and useful for the opponent: free abilities are difficult to work with and balance. It could also be . Putting the card into the graveyard costs some wordage (it's about 1 word longer) but keeps the enigma space the card occupies clean with only face-down card present, and gives people something to hook into in case they happen to be running lands-in-graveyard-matters.

Length comparison:
Put a land card exiled by Many-Masked Dryad into its owner's graveyard:
Turn a face-down card exiled by Many-Masked Dryad face-up:

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spacemonaut
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Post by spacemonaut » 4 years ago

Actually on second thought putting into graveyard is shorter in the case we only care about one card type. I counted the wrong way:
Put a land card exiled by Many-Masked Dryad into its owner's graveyard:
Turn a face-down card exiled by Many-Masked Dryad face-up: If it's a land card,
But I'm also wondering if we're allowed to say that first line. If it's face-down (i.e. has no characteristics including types) but will be face-up in its destination zone, are we allowed to reference that card's front-face characteristics? If we can't do that, we have to use the second form anyway.

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