General Game Design - Threats vs Removal

[Suicufnoc]

Was gonna make a little comment in the other thread, but it's totally unrelated, so I decided to make a new thread. Most of this is pretty obvious stuff, I'm really just spelling it out so it can be dissected.

Read this theory in a comment on that Chapin article:
"permanents must cost more than spells."

What he meant was:
Removal should cost less than what it removes.
(edit: that't not what he meant, I was thinking of another comment. oh well)


So I've been thinking about that.

Accepted facts (for now)
Threats and removal should be balanced.

Inherent Advantages in favor of threats:
can win the game
played proactively, doesn't depend as much on the opponent to do something first.

Inherent Advantages in favor of removal:
none. pure removal can't win games. given these two seemingly equivalent cards:

Threat - cost 2
4/3
(we're assuming this is a fair, playable card)

Removal - cost 2
Sorcery Speed
kill creature with cost 2 or less

The reactive removal spell is probably much worse than the proactive threat. There are probably some reasons I'm wrong about this, though. hmm:
1. we get to decide what we kill. maybe some 2 drops are bad against our deck, and some are problems.
2. I think that's basically it

Potential Advantages in favor of removal (some of these can be applied to threats as well:
Lower cost
Higher flexibility, kill 2+ types of threats
X cost (scale to size or cost of threat)
additional benefit (hit players, draw, etc......)

So this spell:

Removal - cost 1
Sorcery Speed
kill creature with cost 2 or less.

Is almost surely not worse than the 2 drop threat, though it very well may be too good. Totally depends on the rest of the game design. Is killing creatures even worthwhile? If its worth playing them, its probably worth killing them, but I'm not sure that's necessarily true.

Simple Scenario
In a game made up of unblockable vanilla creatures, the player who curves out the best wins (say turn 5). In this case, removal that costs the same or more than a creature is absolutely not worth playing.

Now we add a 6 drop bomb (6 mana - win the game). Every garbage removal spell is suddenly playable, as even killing their one drop for 5 mana on turn 5 will get us to turn 6.

Okay, that was boring

Equal Mana investment removal, but flexible - cost X
Sorcery Speed
kill creature with cost X

As is, this pretty much better than any threat possible in the game, but I wonder if every deck would play it?

This is probably safe:
flexible removal - cost X
Sorcery Speed
kill creature with cost X-1

Obviously these are all pretty boring card designs, but I think its worth test playing all kinds of plain removal spells like this just to learn what appropriate rates are for things, whether or not they're actually kept in the game.

 

[japahn]

This is probably safe:
flexible removal - cost X
Sorcery Speed
kill creature with cost X-1

I think there's a lot to learn from this exercise, but Magic is quite complicated and I don't know how to craft a mathematical framework for even simple cases. For example, can you solve a format that has only:


(consider lands can make any color)

 

[Tzenmoroth]

I actually designed a card for a custom cube that was XB sorcery, kill something with cmc <= mana spent. I feel like its actually pretty fair because you have to have as much mana as them (bad vs ramp), its not a perfect answer to anything that generates immediate value or value on death. Its a terrible answer to any token making card. This card probably varies from great to terrible depending on the environment. This is probably why balancing removal feels so hard. When designing a cube, I almost feel like I need to figure out the threats based on the archetypes, then figure out the removal suite to match, granted its not that simple since the two often blend together.

 

[sigh]

I think the crux of it is definitely that removal is intrinsic. You can't just decide on it in a vacuum, removal choice determines the creatures that work best in the format, those creatures determine the decks that are best, that determines which removal is most needed, which-

Some other things that seem important:

• how many wraths/how good are the wraths? Wraths ease the load on a decks spot removal suite (by being potentially >1 for 1's)
• How many etbs? This I think is most critical in determining how cheap removal has to be. If your average creature has a two mana spell attached, then your removal should probably be 2 mana cheaper than the creature, on average, else using removal is almost guaranteed to lose you some ground and be not ideal. Especially if the etb is a 2 for 1, like FTK
• How well do creatures interact in combat? If you have lively creature combat with lots of trading, sacking, etc., you may not need as many/as efficient of removal, as the creature combat will be dealing with much of the chaff already.

For me, one of the important dials to get a handle on first is the wraths. They really define how empty boards are throughout the games, and that can help focus how many/how good spot removal needs to be.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I think removal tends to be a source of tempo advantage (in terms of mana spent) or card advantage (e.g. 2 for 1s).

They come at the cost of being situational. There are no wrong questions but there are wrong answers.

 

[Suicufnoc]

I think removal tends to be a source of tempo advantage (in terms of mana spent) or card advantage (e.g. 2 for 1s).

They come at the cost of being situational. There are no wrong questions but there are wrong answers.

Not situation removal spell - cost X
kill thing or counter spell with cost X
Cycling 0

More seriously, what makes one removal spell for fun than another? I mean on a simple level, doom blade is fun for you and unfun for the guy with the 8 drop that dies, but the example spell above is probably just not much fun for anyone, I think

 

[Jason Waddell]

Not situation removal spell - cost X
kill thing or counter spell with cost X
Cycling 0

More seriously, what makes one removal spell for fun than another? I mean on a simple level, doom blade is fun for you and unfun for the guy with the 8 drop that dies, but the example spell above is probably just not much fun for anyone, I think

I know you're joking, but it does point to something that should be said. For almost all cards, the on-board body is only part of that card's value. Only with vanilla (or nearly vanilla) creatures does this trade evenly in terms of net resources gained / lost.

Probably the most fun removal spells are simple, efficient, and have some play to them. The Hearthstone card Eviscerate comes to mind. Very clean, but sometimes you have to plan around its potential use in the early game by holding back spells, or wasting a coin / other thing that may have better use elsewhere.

 

[RavebornMuse]

Not situation removal spell - cost X
kill thing or counter spell with cost X
Cycling 0

More seriously, what makes one removal spell for fun than another? I mean on a simple level, doom blade is fun for you and unfun for the guy with the 8 drop that dies, but the example spell above is probably just not much fun for anyone, I think

Maybe I'm missing the point of the thread here, but I don't know that removal should be considered within the context of being "fun", but rather, it should at the minimum not be anti-fun. So in the theoretical Dragon Format, nobody's going to enjoy a Doom Blade / Path to Exile removal suite when the goal is to stick 5+ cmc beaters and start the game there. This is the extreme end of the pendulum; no one here (to my knowledge) even curates a Dragon Format. But it's the simplest example and we can work down from there.

For my list, my goal is generally that removal should keep pace with threats, but that there has to be a reasonable cost-benefit analysis applied to creatures over 4 mana (the point where removal is likely to be cheaper than the thing it is removing).

Functionally, that means if it has an ETB, it's fine if it falls to a stiff breeze (Darkblast your Angel of Invention) because you're up a fair bit if it doesn't. If it doesn't have an ETB, it should require either the expenditure of premium removal (Cast Out, Saltblast) or thoughtful effort to clear. This makes something like Murder of Crows a worthwhile investment of 5 mana, as it can only be cleanly removed by 2 non-sweeper spells in red (Flame Slash and Collective Defiance, two cheap-but-premium removal spells), but could be labored out of the sky with Firebolt and a Molten Vortex trigger if you didn't draft, or have already used, red's cleaner answers. Alternatively, you could pop something like Sever the Bloodline in black, which costs near enough to the threat to not feel too bad for either player, and which can be flashed back later.

I'm not necessarily holding up my format as an ideal to work towards (and I'm still tuning it, it's by no means perfect even by my eyes!), but I think it's important to contextualize the idea here that your removal suite can match your threats without necessarily pivoting to either extreme of the Doom Blade-Disembowel spectrum, and that I think "fun" should only be considered within the context of avoiding anti-fun.

 

[sigh]

Analyzing your top end seems like another important step in determining what you need to do with your removal suite, great point RBM. It has to be reasonable to maindeck and cast your expensive creatures. If they are just getting consistently KO'ed by efficient removal before they can get proper value, what's the point?

For instance, I have several mid- and top-end creatures that don't ETB, they either have an activated ability, attack trigger, etc. To that end, I've pushed more of my removal into sorcery speed. That doesn't guarantee that the creature gets to attack or use it's ability, but it puts more opportunity cost into killing it (taking up mana on the Villain's main phase), which eases the tempo loss somewhat. On the flip side, this does make creatures with ETB's slightly better, because this slight tempo loss on Villain's part is now compounded against the ETB value.

 

[vennythekid]

Patrick Sullivan had a nice rant on the topic few weeks ago or so, when he was discussing the newly spoiled Ravenous Chupacabra.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/215979455?t=7h29m54s

It hits on this topic very nicely. The Chapin article is behind StarCityGame's premium paywall, but I'm sure its insightful too.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

If you want to read that article you can find it in this thread

 

[vennythekid]

If you want to read that article you can find it in this thread

LOL I hadn't read though that thread yet

 

[wahoopride]

In my opinion, perhaps the paradigm being presented in this thread is not the best. Or at the very least, it is not the ONLY way to think about removal. For instance, the way I tend to think about it in the format I am trying to curate is that removal should, most of the time, be a "net-win" in a vacuum for the person casting the removal. My removal is at a relative premium. I have about 50 cards dedicated to removal, most of which are flexible in some way (some version of "destroy target non-land permanent", Abrade, etc). My cube is supposed to be 540 cards (its about 560). This means on average a drafter is going to get about 4 pieces of removal (~9% of 45 cards). Assuming these all make his/her deck, that means each deck will have about 4 pieces of removal. I would say most 40 card decks will have more than 4 threats.

My point to illustrate here is that it is not always "I removed this card, did I do it efficiently?" (did I pay less for my removal than he did for his threat) but more the realization that your opponent is always going to have more threats than you have answers for. If that was not the case, more (most? all?) games would end in someone getting decked. So the better question is "I know I am going to use my removal, and I know my opponent is going to have more targets than I have removal for, so what is the best time/target for my removal that will help me get to my win-con before he gets to his?". I do not not if I am explaining this well, but my point being that if everyone has access to the same removal pool and same threats, then just because you used a 3 cost removal spell to kill his 5 cost creature does not mean it was a good play for you. If he then turns around and uses his 3 cost removal to 2 for 1 you, killing a 4 cost and a 5 cost card, then he is doing better, obviously. The "in a vacuum" efficiency of a single card for card trade (i.e. removal for threat) is not really relevant.

So should you use your 2 cost removal to remove his 3 cost threat now? Or should you wait 2 more turns and use it on his 6 cost threat? Is it worth trading the two turns that his 3 cost threat will be hurting you for a more efficient chance at using your removal? Or maybe your opponent will walk into a 2 for 1 in the meantime?

I'm not sure if this is making any sense. But what I like to do is increase decision density and complexity as much as possible to raise the "removal skill ceiling" as high as possible. I do this by trying to make my removal as flexible as possible (e.g. kill any non-land permanent vs kill just a creature) as well as make it usable at the most variety of times (by making it instant speed for example). This means the person has more targets they have to choose from and more time to choose when to do it (with the added benefit that all removal become main-deckable). That way, a "better player" has the opportunity to increase their chance of winning by performing better threat assessment. If there is a powerful enchantment on the board and a powerful creature, and all you have is creature removal, the decision is made for you. But what if you have Anguished Unmaking in your hand? Then it takes some skill to evaluate when to use it!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So should you use your 2 cost removal to remove his 3 cost threat now? Or should you wait 2 more turns and use it on his 6 cost threat?

I realize that there are some issues with the basic framing of the question, however, if the game is 1 vs 1 where the 6 drop infromation is unknown, or a known unknown, the question comes down to mana efficiency, and is quite easy.

If the turn becomes more mana efficient if I fire off the removal spell against the 3cc threat, I fire it off. If I have an alternate way to spend my mana as efficiently, or more efficiently, on that turn, I do so, and save the removal spell.

In a multi-player game, thats more of a choice, but you would generally want to save the removal. Those games tend to last longer, so you have more room to be mana turn inefficient without it losing you the game.

 

[wahoopride]

I realize that there are some issues with the basic framing of the question, however, if the game is 1 vs 1 where the 6 drop infromation is unknown, or a known unknown, the question comes down to mana efficiency, and is quite easy.

If the turn becomes more mana efficient if I fire off the removal spell against the 3cc threat, I fire it off. If I have an alternate way to spend my mana as efficiently, or more efficiently, on that turn, I do so, and save the removal spell.

In a multi-player game, thats more of a choice, but you would generally want to save the removal. Those games tend to last longer, so you have more room to be mana turn inefficient without it losing you the game.

I don't know. Maybe I am bad at magic or something. But I can think of plenty of instances where using my removal might be efficient from the standpoint of "Did I spend less on my removal spell than he did on his permanent" or "did I use my mana as efficiently as possible this turn" but where I still would not want to use it. I feel like MTG would be a very silly game if it was that simple.

I think there are just so many more factors to consider when deploying removal, especially when it is at a premium.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Generally speaking, in today's game you slant towards using your mana as efficiently as possible in a turn. This is because the game has become more tempo and threat focused, and you may not have time to cast your removal spell, even if you hold onto it. This becomes more and more true, the more expensive your removal is priced. Once you hit 3cc or more, sequencing removal in a turn becomes less and less of a luxury, and more something you should do when you have the window to do so.

Years ago, when the game was slower, while being more card advantage and answer focused, holding answers to hit the highest impact threat was something you really wanted to do. Those decks were either threat light and answer heavy by strategic posture (control), or just forced into that position by the awkwardness of the creatures available.

Though the truth is, I wasn't sure I fully understood your position, and was hoping that by picking out the hypothetical you presented, I could get you to try to re-articulate it.

 

[wahoopride]

Generally speaking, in today's game you slant towards using your mana as efficiently as possible in a turn. This is because the game has become more tempo and threat focused, and you may not have time to cast your removal spell, even if you hold onto it.

I do not think I know nearly as much about MTG as a whole about you so I will certainly defer to you on this kind of analysis. However, is not the whole point of cube that we are not confined to the design decisions that have been made for MTG as a whole? If "yesterdays" game was different surely that means the cards are available to curate a cube environment that mimics that type of game play. I am not sure if I have succeeded in creating an environment where there are more decision to be made then simply "what is the most efficient use of my mana right now" but it is certainly what I am going for.

This is because the game has become more tempo and threat focused, and you may not have time to cast your removal spell, even if you hold onto it. This becomes more and more true, the more expensive your removal is priced. Once you hit 3cc or more, sequencing removal in a turn becomes less and less of a luxury, and more something you should do when you have the window to do so.

Years ago, when the game was slower, while being more card advantage and answer focused, holding answers to hit the highest impact threat was something you really wanted to do. Those decks were either threat light and answer heavy by strategic posture (control), or just forced into that position by the awkwardness of the creatures available.

I think this is more or less the point I was trying to make--that such an environment could exist. And in such an environment, especially where removal is at a premium, you do not necessarily have to perfectly balance the efficiency of threats and removal. Because even though using a 2CC removal spell in a vacuum may be efficient, it may be a bad play if you used it to kill a threat that could easily be dealt with a different way and instead should have saved your removal for a different, eventual threat.

Though the truth is, I wasn't sure I fully understood your position, and was hoping that by picking out the hypothetical you presented, I could get you to try to re-articulate it.

Yeah I'm sure I did a bad job explaining it. Perhaps it has become more clear with the last few posts, but I can add to it-

1) You mentioned the "unknown" issue with threats. I would say cube is kind of one of the situations where threats are a little more "known". As someone is playing their deck, you should have an idea of what threats exist in the cube of the certain color or theme a person's deck is exhibiting. Especially if you are playing a bo3 or something. I think planning ahead and knowing "hey this guy is playing some type of golgari graveyard shenanigans deck, I should probably save my exile for genesis because that is his win con" is a reasonable move to make. So blowing your removal on a vanilla 4/2 or something that may be attacking you is not a great move, especially if all you need to do is get a Savannah Lions out there to shut it down (even if that card isn't in your hand atm).

2) That sort of leads me to my next point that you have to use your life as a resource. A 4/2 starting to attack you still gives you 5 turns to answer. Part of this is evaluating who the beat down is. If they are the beat down, your goal is just to get board stability. Sometimes this may mean trading life for time. Maybe the person is about to cast a 4 mana creature. Should you use your mana leak to stop it? That would be efficient for you, after all. But maybe his 3/4 is not really an issue for you and you can let him drop it and hit you a few times and what you should really be worried about is his overrun. Trade that 6-9 damage that creature may do to you to get board stability.

I don't know. I just feel like there are lots of calculations and risks in using your removal. I've played games where my opponent gets out braids, cabal minion and I could easily remove it but I choose to save my removal and in the end my opponent has to sac braids because I managed to get out bitterblossom. Good thing I held my removal, too, because a few turns later he drops pontiff of blight. Either would have been efficient use of removal, but I think the better play sometimes is to hold it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I don't know. I just feel like there are lots of calculations and risks in using your removal.

Ok, I think thats the critical thing than. I'll try to articulate this, and if its unfair correct me.

Basically, you want to use design elements to make the decision as to when or when not to use removal more meaninful.

That seems to me pretty fair, and there is a lot of depth to that discussion, as well as knobs to turn. In the example I pulled out and dissected, if we're working from a realty where my removal density is scarce than that decision would probably be more complicated, and I would have to take into effect which threat I am more likely to lose to, the one present on the board, or the known unknowns.

That could probably go in a couple different directions depending on how my format is built. For example, if my formats threats are poor sources of pressure, than I could afford to wait and be more selective in my targets. Or maybe I reduce the density of removal (or perhaps quality) to make the format more tempo or pressure focused, and shift the focus more towards combat tricks.

I did notice looking at your list that the density seems a bit low for the cube size, so I could see a greater % of removal light decks forming part of the metagame. I don't know if thats good or bad, just that its a thing.

 

[wahoopride]

Ok, I think thats the critical thing than. I'll try to articulate this, and if its unfair correct me.

Basically, you want to use design elements to make the decision as to when or when not to use removal more meaninful.

That seems to me pretty fair, and there is a lot of depth to that discussion, as well as knobs to turn. In the example I pulled out and dissected, if we're working from a realty where my removal density is scarce than that decision would probably be more complicated, and I would have to take into effect which threat I am more likely to lose to, the one present on the board, or the known unknowns.

That could probably go in a couple different directions depending on how my format is built. For example, if my formats threats are poor sources of pressure, than I could afford to wait and be more selective in my targets. Or maybe I reduce the density of removal (or perhaps quality) to make the format more tempo or pressure focused, and shift the focus more towards combat tricks.

I did notice looking at your list that the density seems a bit low for the cube size, so I could see a greater % of removal light decks forming part of the metagame. I don't know if thats good or bad, just that its a thing.

Yeah I used to have much heavier removal but it felt kind of stupid because it was just games of resolving creatures, getting the removed before they could do anything, over and over. And eventually someone either ran out of gas or rand out of removal and they would just win.

I also observed something that has been discussed quite a bit on this forum that it meant any creature that did not have an ETB effect stabled to it just sucked. Which made design not very fun because there are so many cool creatures that you need to have last for like, you know, more than a turn. So I went through a process of toning down the removal and limiting creatures with good ETB effects. It has made games more fun and a bit slower. Also added to the design space.

In general, as a mentioned before, I also try to keep my removal as flexible (able to target as much stuff as possible) as possible and also instant speed most of the time (so it can be cast at different times) to add complexity to the removal decision.

All this being said, I do not know that I have achieved the environment that I am attempting to describe. My imagination is often a lot stronger than my ability to actually design