General Alternative Resource Systems

[Jason Waddell]

Hearthstone
Players get an additional mana per turn.
Max 10 mana.
Consequences: Reliable X mana on Turn X. Quick. All cards can be cast with same mana.

Magic:
Max 1 land per turn.
Lands are cards in deck.
Consequences: Mana screw / flood. Cool land cards.

WOW TCG: (haven't actually played this one)

All cards can be played face down as 'lands'.
Consequences: Well, I tried it once with one of my prototypes and it was a big source of additional analysis paralysis. Not the most 'new player friendly'.

Faeria:
Fixed income (3 mana) per turn. Additional mana can be gathered from on-board wells.
Consequences: You don't have to 'tap out' every turn, as mana is retained. Board control links elegantly to economy.

Epic:
All cards cost 1 or 0. Players get 1 mana per turn.
Consequences: Not sure yet. Going to pick it up this weekend.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Oh wow, I played all five of these! I quite like the WoW TCG variant. It's true that it makes for some analysis paralysis, but no more than, say, Merfolk Looter does. Plus, you have Quest cards that are literally lands (with a one shot activated ability). You usually play around 16 quests in a 60 card deck, so the question of which card to turn into a land doesn't even come up every turn. The system is honestly elegant in my opinion, it all but eradicates both mana flood (theoretically it still can happen) and completely solves mana screw at the slight cost equivalent of a few Merfolk Looter activations.

Epic is pretty cool. Because you start at, effectively, maximum mana, it feels like you're playing Magic with a custom rule that lets you start with 8+ mana on the battlefield. The really powerful effects all cost a coin though, so you only ever get to cast one of these splashy cards per turn, preventing ridiculous runaway scenarios, even when a player has multiple 1 cost cards in hand. The other players can often match those by simply playing more cards. All in all it makes for quick, exciting, slightly swingy games, but because the games are relatively short and sweet (compared to an EDH match at least), I was never really bothered by the swinginess. Actually, the game could probably best be described as short and sweet EDH

 

[Suicufnoc]

The Epic TCG was fantastic. This new game, Idk. It looks like a dumbed down version of the old game. They got rid of the stack, counterspells, artifacts, and second main-phase sorceries. The creators insist its better, and mostly pretend the old game didn't ever exist.

You would expect card draw to be less powerful, but that wasn't really the case in Epic, as you'd often play several spells per turn cycle. (I believe you got 1 "mana" on your turn and the opponents? I forget...)

I can tell you the mana dork was pretty broken in epic. (T: make a mana, draw a card.)

Are we designing a card game or something!?

 

[Aston]

A big difference between Hearthstone and Magic is that in Hearthstone mana doesn't have any colour, and they get around the problem of people playing all the best cards by splitting them up into classes that can only use their own or neutral cards. I much prefer the Magic risk/reward system of whether adding colours to your deck to play more powerful cards is worth the risk of your mana not being able to support them, but this does come with the problem of less risky two colour decks just not drawing the right mix of lands.

This was in another thread but Eternal, which is very similar to Magic, separates the colour and amount of mana you have, so a Primal sigil, the equivalent of an Island, adds both one maximum power (mana) and one Primal influence. Influence isn't used up by casting a spell, so 1 Primal influence allows you to cast as many 1 Primal influence spells in a turn as you have the power for. It also allows cool design with cards that add influence or power but not both - there's a cycle of 2 mana 2/2 Strangers, which are like slivers, which add two different influence so you can splash all the Stranger cards that boost them up.

 

[Suicufnoc]

I quite like the eternal system, where mana is expended but colors aren't. But you still have to draw the right amount of lands, and you still have to draw the right fixing, and that kinda sucks.

I'm pretty much of the opinion that variance in competitive games is bad. Of course, without variance, every game between the same decks would be exactly the same. So variance that changes the game experience in a positive way is good.
so:
mana flood: bad
mana screw: bad
drawing all 5 drops when you have 2 mana: bad
drawing different spells, that you can cast: good.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The Epic TCG was fantastic. This new game, Idk. It looks like a dumbed down version of the old game. They got rid of the stack, counterspells, artifacts, and second main-phase sorceries. The creators insist its better, and mostly pretend the old game didn't ever exist.

I was able to play the game with casual gamers who payed anything remotely resembling a tcg or ccg, and they were able to grasp most of the rules in no time at all, so I definitely think the game benefited from that dumbing down in the sense that it's now more suited to bring to the average gaming table.

 

[Kirblinx]

FFTCG
Max 5 Backups (land)
Any card can be discarded for 2 mana of the cards colour
Have to pay to play Backups (max of 5 in play at once) can tap them for 1 mana of their colour

So most decks have a decent variety of backups they can play and the first turns consist of playing the backups to get repeatable sources of mana, there are some aggro decks that don't play any and just try to slam as many creatures on the board as possible on the first turn and hope to ride them to victory.

There is the colour restriction to make it so 6 colour good stuff isn't the most enticing option. Most decks are 1-2 colours. Some branch out to 3.

Also to compensate for this 'hand is a resource' you get to draw 2 cards a turn. This, with the 50 card deck construction and the fact that damage hits the library as well, means that drawing out is a very real possibility and means that board stalls can't last forever.

 

[Aston]

I was also going to mention Battle Box Magic, where you have a shared library you draw from with no lands, and a set aside pile of 5 basics and 5 ETB tapped duals that you can play one of each turn. It's like a cross between Magic and Hearthstone where you always get 1 land per turn, although sometimes tapped, and max out at 10, but you still have to be careful about sequencing land drops so you get your colours right - Ben Stark, who is one of the most visible Battle Box advocates, designs his box so that there's a lot of double and some triple colour casting cost cards - and working around your tapped land drops.

 

[astraedm]

Hex TCG has a system of Thresholds where a "land" card will give you a threshold for a color that will allow you to cast that color's spells and a "power", which is your mana. Dual "lands" let you choose a threshold usually. I thought it was quite an elegant solution, though it would be difficult to replicate in paper without an annoying counter of some kind as opposed to magic's lands-on-the-board configuration. It does allow for some cool designs though, like one mana spells that require three of a color's thresholds to cast, effectively locking them out until turn three but being very efficient once they're there, or creatures that give you thresholds but not "power", allowing them to fix your mana forever without ramping you.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Hex TCG has a cool system, but it still suffers from the same problems as MtG. Since the mana is still in your deck, you can still flood or get color screwed. Still a cool game though, if you enjoy Magic you probably will enjoy Hex as well. There's also a pretty massive single player campaign in a cool setting that's pretty fun to romp through.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I had this idea for a resource system, interested in hearing your opinions.

Each turn you get 2 actions. Preliminary list of actions:
- Draw a card.
- Gain an empty mana crystal (tapped land). Max once per turn. Max 10 mana crystals.
- Gain a temporary mana (is lost at the start of your turn)

This gives you some control over how you develop, and you have interesting questions about critical terms, tempo vs. long term mana development. Do you gain two temporary mana to make that board wipe this turn, or can you afford to make another play that gives you your long-term mana development.

Additionally, I thought there should be some "end-game" ability that costs two actions, because the current "empty deck" options kind of suck for the game I am working on. I was thinking something like:
- Pay 2 life: shuffle 2 random cards from your graveyard into your deck
- Pay 2 life: discover a card.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Hex TCG has a system of Thresholds where a "land" card will give you a threshold for a color that will allow you to cast that color's spells and a "power", which is your mana. Dual "lands" let you choose a threshold usually. I thought it was quite an elegant solution, though it would be difficult to replicate in paper without an annoying counter of some kind as opposed to magic's lands-on-the-board configuration. It does allow for some cool designs though, like one mana spells that require three of a color's thresholds to cast, effectively locking them out until turn three but being very efficient once they're there, or creatures that give you thresholds but not "power", allowing them to fix your mana forever without ramping you.

This sounds a lot like what Faeria does. In that game, there's an actual board that you can build hex tiles on. These hex tiles provide you a threshold. So you have 1-mana spells that require 5 "blue threshold" (or equivalent) to be cast. Makes for interesting deckbuilding and play constraints.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Are we designing a card game or something!?

I am attempting to. With forum help of course.

 

[Kirblinx]

I had this idea for a resource system, interested in hearing your opinions.

Each turn you get 2 actions. Preliminary list of actions:
- Draw a card.
- Gain an empty mana crystal (tapped land). Max once per turn. Max 10 mana crystals.
- Gain a temporary mana (is lost at the start of your turn)

This gives you some control over how you develop, and you have interesting questions about critical terms, tempo vs. long term mana development. Do you gain two temporary mana to make that board wipe this turn, or can you afford to make another play that gives you your long-term mana development.

Additionally, I thought there should be some "end-game" ability that costs two actions, because the current "empty deck" options kind of suck for the game I am working on. I was thinking something like:
- Pay 2 life: shuffle 2 random cards from your graveyard into your deck
- Pay 2 life: discover a card.

I feel like you wouldn't even need the temporary mana unless the game is lightning fast. Wouldn't the best course of action just be to choose 2 empty mana crystals for the first 2-3 turns then just start drawing 2 cards a turn from there onwards?

Also, wouldn't this only really matter for the first 4 turns? as from there, you should have enough refillable mana (unless I don't understand how the empty crystals work). Does your game handle people drawing 2 cards a turn in the mid-late game?

 

[Gozmit97]

This is highly similar to Netrunne, which gives you x-actions per turn (as a base), of which you can choose to draw and gain credits (basically money), as well as other things.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I feel like you wouldn't even need the temporary mana unless the game is lightning fast. Wouldn't the best course of action just be to choose 2 empty mana crystals for the first 2-3 turns then just start drawing 2 cards a turn from there onwards?

Also, wouldn't this only really matter for the first 4 turns? as from there, you should have enough refillable mana (unless I don't understand how the empty crystals work). Does your game handle people drawing 2 cards a turn in the mid-late game?

That would be the case, but I have the stipulation that you can only use the "get an empty mana crystal" action once a turn.

 

[Velrun]

I had this idea for a resource system, interested in hearing your opinions.

Each turn you get 2 actions. Preliminary list of actions:
- Draw a card.
- Gain an empty mana crystal (tapped land). Max once per turn. Max 10 mana crystals.
- Gain a temporary mana (is lost at the start of your turn)

This gives you some control over how you develop, and you have interesting questions about critical terms, tempo vs. long term mana development. Do you gain two temporary mana to make that board wipe this turn, or can you afford to make another play that gives you your long-term mana development.

Additionally, I thought there should be some "end-game" ability that costs two actions, because the current "empty deck" options kind of suck for the game I am working on. I was thinking something like:
- Pay 2 life: shuffle 2 random cards from your graveyard into your deck
- Pay 2 life: discover a card.

I would 100 % not like the random on shuffle because of the logistics.

Is your discover a card like HS’s where it’s ‘Pick 1 of 3’?

It is interesting but it feels very much like the same as what we already have in MTG except you can choose to draw an additional Lotus Petal each turn. And the late game would be different because people (who arrives at the late game almost simultaneously) can draw 2 cards each turn and ignore future mana.

Or will the decks simply not include lands? In that case the system would instead be very similiar to Hearthstone.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I would 100 % not like the random on shuffle because of the logistics.

Is your discover a card like HS’s where it’s ‘Pick 1 of 3’?

It is interesting but it feels very much like the same as what we already have in MTG except you can choose to draw an additional Lotus Petal each turn. And the late game would be different because people (who arrives at the late game almost simultaneously) can draw 2 cards each turn and ignore future mana.

Or will the decks simply not include lands? In that case the system would instead be very similiar to Hearthstone.

The basic structure of the game currently is that you start with a small fixed deck. You play a Best of 5 and Grid Draft between games to add cards to your deck. There are some things that carry over between games, and ways to trash friendly / enemy cards.

There would be no land cards.

Discover is a 'Pick 1 of 3' (from the pile of cards that you grid draft from).

 

[Jason Waddell]

People concerned about 2 free draws, would an alteration like this be appealing?

- (max once per turn) Draw a card.
- (max once per turn) Gain an empty mana crystal (tapped land). Max 10 mana crystals.
- Gain a temporary mana (is lost at the start of your turn)
- Pay _ mana (2? 4?): Draw a card

Something where the first draw is free, but the second cuts into your ability to play stuff that turn. Less elegant but maybe more functional.

 

[CaptnIrony]

I accidentally deleted my post and didn't feel like rewriting it yesterday, but, I too have come up with an alternate Mana system, based on Hearthstone.

The idea is that every turn, if you've not played a land, as a replacement for your land drop you could play/get a Wastes, tapped. I was wondering if it should be a token or not, but that is a minor detail. I've actually wanted to make a cube that plays with these rules, but this was before I even had my first cube list.

Here are the ramifications:
~ # of Lands in decks are almost halved. Once you have enough colored mana to cast your Cryptic Command, you don't need another land, as long as you're fine with casting one spell a turn.
~ Agro decks can have late game added to their deck without necessarily diluting the number of threats they have in the deck.
~ Control decks are going to make their land drops.
~ Decks that want to cast multiple spells per turn cycle will want more lands than those who don't, even if they have a lower average CMC.
~ There is now a difference in a Mono coloured deck between spells at the same CMC with different numbers of mana symbols.
~ Land destruction is not as back breaking, but is more useful in limiting colours, and feels less bad to draw on turn 6 (taking your opponent from two spells a turn cycle to one is valid).
~ X spells become trickier. I wasn't sure I liked the idea of giving red decks with X spells inevitability vs decks that didn't have counters or life gain. These can now be held forever at an increasing benefit.
~ There can now exist interesting decks with a vast number of different lands. You can make a 40 (or 60) colourless deck, with no lands. You can make a deck with 20+ lands if it wants to have only EtB untapped lands.
~ Sacrificing lands can now be more of a thing. In my cube idea, stuff like Goblin Trenches gave a weird possibility for late game plans.
~ This obviously affects Landfall, and cards like Braids, Cabal Minion, and cards that care specifically about colourless mana.
~ You might want to change the starting hand size/deck size.

I never explored it to the point where I made a list, but this will be a plan for the future.

I'd also like an alternate mulligan system. I think what is best for combo decks is probably what we'd want. If I were to reboot Magic, I'd make combos weaker (instant win should be really rare), more prevalent, and easier to assemble.

 

[Taamas]

In Hearthstone competitive decks, there are cards with costs 8 or 10. This is because they never fail a "land drop". In MTG, a cost of 6 is already quite high. The effects of never failing a land drop in MTG, even if it is with a tapped wastes at end of turn, could probably be much more impacting than you think.

 

[CaptnIrony]

In Hearthstone competitive decks, there are cards with costs 8 or 10. This is because they never fail a "land drop". In MTG, a cost of 6 is already quite high. The effects of never failing a land drop in MTG, even if it is with a tapped wastes at end of turn, could probably be much more impacting than you think.

At first I was thinking, "Naw, you trippin', this is fine." Then I remembered how 6 drops looked vs how they look now:


vs



Dang, you might be right.

 

[Taamas]

For me, every experiment and exploration of new ideas is welcome, and I'm not trying to stop you or anything like that, but just take into account that MTG card design very much takes into account that you will be missing land drops here and there.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Not running combo in my cube and playing games with my frienda basically let's me run the "mull until you get something playable" rule, which is one I like

 

[CaptnIrony]

For me, every experiment and exploration of new ideas is welcome, and I'm not trying to stop you or anything like that, but just take into account that MTG card design very much takes into account that you will be missing land drops here and there.

True, but you can still tailor your environment to make this less of a problem.

Not running combo in my cube and playing games with my frienda basically let's me run the "mull until you get something playable" rule, which is one I like

I like the hearthstone way/paris mulligan when you can keep parts and send others back. Seems miles ahead of the current one.