OFFICIAL HEARTHSTONE THREAD

[Chris Taylor]

Okay so I'm clearly hopping on this train way late, but I finally dipped my toe in and tried some arena (3-3 both times, sadface)

And yeah, we were totally right. Divine Shield would be sweet for magic, and I think it's doable, but I think silence could make a cool idea as well:

Here's Ironbeak Owl and Spellbreaker:

 

[GenericZero]

Okay so I'm clearly hopping on this train way late, but I finally dipped my toe in and tried some arena (3-3 both times, sadface)

And yeah, we were totally right. Divine Shield would be sweet for magic, and I think it's doable, but I think silence could make a cool idea as well:

Here's Ironbeak Owl and Spellbreaker:

The whole "becomes human" aspect seems weird. Also, interactions with tokens in MtG makes this work a lot differently. If there was a way we could word it so they basically said "Put a counter on target creature. That creature becomes vanilla as fuck". Then we'd have it down.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The whole "becomes human" aspect seems weird. Also, interactions with tokens in MtG makes this work a lot differently. If there was a way we could word it so they basically said "Put a counter on target creature. That creature becomes vanilla as fuck". Then we'd have it down.

And that's how it'll play in practice, but the gamey rules wording will go like this I think.

Maybe the token should become a spirit instead? Or a colorless...something?

 

[GenericZero]

And that's how it'll play in practice, but the gamey rules wording will go like this I think.

Maybe the token should become a spirit instead? Or a colorless...something?

The issue is that it becomes a token. This leads to dumb interactions like using some bounce effect to make what was supposed to just be a silence become creature removal. If we stick with the token, a spirit seems ideal over a human. But preferably, we replace the token with a counter or something.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The issue is that it becomes a token. This leads to dumb interactions like using some bounce effect to make what was supposed to just be a silence become creature removal. If we stick with the token, a spirit seems ideal over a human. But preferably, we replace the token with a counter or something.

I'm perfectly okay with a stealth buff to Man-'o-War. It's kinda an incentive actually

I'm not sure my green section needs another 4 drop, but I'll probably be trying out two of the ironbeak owl guy in my next update.

 

[GenericZero]

I'm beginning to wonder how many ideas from hearthstone can be translated into MtG custom cube stuff...

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm beginning to wonder how many ideas from hearthstone can be translated into MtG custom cube stuff...

Probably about 80% of it. A lot of the game is just a little boring though.

I think the closest parallel for taunt is vigilence, (it really is a product of it's environment), and so many of the creatures are vanilla/almost vanilla.

Illusionary Mask kinda does stealth. Though stealth really should mask what creature got played, not just give it shroud until it attacks.

Weapons are okay, but they usually end up being either burn spells or vendetta with rebound.

Divine Shield actually looks sweet, though the best card for magic (the beat that gives another creature divine shield, can't remember his name) would be a bit hard to implement.

 

[Eric Chan]

In WOW TCG - the game that Hearthstone borrowed about 90% of its ruleset from - creatures can actually tap. (Err, exhaust.) This let them print minions with the keyword protect, which mimicked the tanking ability from the MMO. Creatures with protect can tap themselves to "block" a targeted attack - that is, if you wanted to make a run at an annoying 2/1 with your 3/3, the defending player could tap their 1/6 with protect to step in the way. It made for better gameplay, because using protect was tactical, instead of the automatic, all-encompassing meat shield capability that taunt grants. But all that's to say is that the original tanking ability wasn't concepted as anything resembling vigilance - after all, if you exhaust to attack, you can't protect later.

Curiously, stealth in Hearthstone was originally called elusive in WOW TCG - referring to minions that can't be attacked. Meanwhile, stealth in WOW TCG meant that a minion couldn't be protected against. None of these concepts really translate over to magic, because the combat system of 1-on-1 targeted attacks is fundamentally different from the all-to-the-face, one-attack-phase system we know and love.

Weapons are merely "okay" because Hearthstone doesn't bother with modeling the rest of the equipment setup. WOW TCG let you strap on helmets, shields, gauntlets, suits of armor - the works, all of which helped to prevent incoming damage. This let you beef up your hero to the point where it became feasible to "solo" other decks, with the assistance of only a very large axe. It's kind of a shame that people only know weapons to be the equivalent of Char now.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I don't know what happened, but I'm hooked again (for the time being at least). That expansion is pretty cool

 

[Onderzeeboot]

There are some pretty cool ideas that can be ported over to Magic in this game, but the problem is that some of the cooler cards are definitely gold. Unlike Hearthstone, Magic does have a color philosophy to respect.

Silence, for example, would be primary in white and secondary in green in my opinion, because not only does it remove abilities, it also removes buffs. I would implement this as follows:

Ironbeak Owl
Creature - Bird
When Ironbeak Owl enters the battlefield, silence target creature. (That creature loses all abilities, then destroy all aura's and equipment attached to that creature.)

Druid of the Grove
Creature - Centaur Druid
When Druid of the Grove enters the battlefield, choose one - Silence target creature; or Druid of the Grove deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
2/4

Divine shield obviously is white only, under normal circumstances.

Argent Squire
Creature - Human Soldier
Divine shield (This creature enters the battlefield with a shield counter on it. The first time damage would be dealt to this creature each game, remove all shield counters from it instead.)
1/1

Some cards need some tweaking to make them work in MtG land...

Argent Commander
Creature - Human Soldier
Divine shield, haste, provoke
4/2

Deathrattle would be an awesome ability word.

Loot Hoarder
Creature - Human Wizard
Deathrattle - When Loot Hoarder dies, you may draw a card.
2/1

Haunted Creeper
Creature - Spider
Reach
Deathrattle - When Haunted Creeper dies, put two 1/1 black Spider creature tokens with reach onto the battlefield.
1/2

So, off to sleep, I'm sure I'll come up with more in the morning

Worgen Infiltrator
Creature - Wolf Assassin
Stealth (This creature has hexproof as long as it hasn't dealt combat damage this game.)
2/1

Windfury Harpy
Creature - Harpy Warrior
Windfury (Whenever this creature attacks for the first time each turn, untap it. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase. This creature must attack in that combat phase, and no other creatures can attack in that combat phase.)
4/5

Amani Berserker
Creature - Troll Warrior
Enrage 3 (Damage isn't removed from this creature during the cleanup step. As long as it is damaged, it gets +3/+0.)
2/3

Raging Worgen
Creature - Wolf Warrior
Enrage 1
When this creature is damaged for the first time, untap it and it gains windfury.
3/3

I imagine weapons being implemented as equipment with power and durability counters (equal to value in toughness field). When a weapon enters the battlefield, sacrifice the currently armed weapon, then attach the new weapon to its controller when it enters the battlefield. A player can attack as though it were a creature with power equal to the Weapon's power while it is armed. Whenever a player attacks, remove a durability counter from the Weapon at end of combat. When a weapon has no durability counters remaining, sacrifice it.

Fiery Waraxe
Artifact - Weapon
3/2

Edit n:

SI-7 Agent
Creature - Human Assassin
Combo - When SI-7 Agent enters the battlefield, if you played another spell this turn, it deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
3/3

Lava Burst
Sorcery
Overload 2 (When this spell resolves, tap two lands you control. Those lands don't untap during your next untap step.)
Lava Burst deals 5 damage to target creature or player.

I think I might have kinda figured out taunt?

Fen Creeper
Creature - Plant Elemental
Taunt (When this creature blocks, lethal damage must be assigned to it before damage can be assigned to creatures without taunt blocking the same creature.)
3/6

 

[Calvin Chan]

While some of these mechanics are interesting with mtg, there's a reason WoTC chose a completely different direction for WoWTcg (and hearthstone).
The biggest reason most of these work in HS is that it doesn't require the player to keep track of damage and p/t changing effects (especially for silence). I would probably stop playing if i had to keep track of excess lands that don't untap, creatures that have/lost stealth, divine shield, silenced creatures, +1/+1 counters, -1/-1 counters, etc. And since the gameplay is intrinsically different, directly implementing the abilities and costs is difficult.

As for your ported cards, the curve in HS is quite different from that of mtg, so the power level of some of these is questionable (i assume weapons are very strong in mtg).
Otherwise I just think it's not necessary to add new keywords to some of these, the closest thing to divine shield is probably the phantom mechanic.
The rules change is probably simple as a takes -1/-1 counters as damage, and a 'as long as there's a -1/-1 counter on this' ability. (or some -0/-1 counters). I think windfury is extremely awkward (possibly unbalanced). And to be completely honest, you need to blocking something pretty big for that taunt effect to be relevant.

As you could probably tell from your design there are already a lot of overlap between the games, so I wouldn't do anything excessive.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I don't think it's quite that bad, but yes, not every mechanic should be ported over and the mana costs should be adjusted to reflect the difference in curve (low drops have to be stronger in hearthstone because you are guaranteed to hit the mana for your haymakers). It was an exercise to see if I could Magic-ify Hearthstone's mechanics, and to a large degree I think I succeeded.

Of these, I think overload, divine shield and combo are the most interesting. Overload shouldn't be to hard to keep track of, there's lots of cards in Magic that tap + skip next untap already (Frost Titan for example). Divine Shield works very different from the Phantom mechanic imo, as it is one time only, the creature doesn't shrink after damage, and it can't interact with proliferate, because the replacement effect removes all counters. Combo is just a very nice way of extracting value from cards by playing them off curve, plus a way to make rituals better in limited.

 

[Calvin Chan]

I apologize if i came off harsh, I just really wanted to emphasize the differences between the games (especially combat) and how that affects your card design and design space that has already been explored by Wizards.
For example, while argent squire is fine in HS, it is fairly bad by mtg standards (usually a double chump) since damage disappears. That leads to concern of how good does the creature need to be for the shield to be relevant, but not overpowered, and at what cost.
I do like combo a lot, it can probably be implemented fairly easily (worded like landfall).

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah porting all the mechanics is certainly overkill, but there's some real gems here.

Combo, Divine Shield, Silence, Freeze (Basically detain, but it's on more cards here), Stealth (Kinda), Overload (Echo on spells? Could be interesting)

Hell, you could even do something like arcane missiles:


Sorcery
Choose target creature. Flip 3 coins. Deal 1 damage to that creature for each heads, and 1 damage to that creature's controller for each tails.

It should probably be 4 coins, but hey.

I know arcane missiles is random across their side, but you usually play it with one target in play anyways,

 

[Eric Chan]

Silence seems like a really cool mechanic, actually, especially Onderzeeboot's implementation of it. I mean, they're still printing cards like Turn to Frog in this modern age that wipe away creature abilities. So aside from memory issues, I think there's a case to be made for it.

 

[Diakonov]

If something's text is changing for more than a turn, it would be best to have something permanently representing that change. Like a "silence counter." I know they didn't follow this philosophy in the early days (Magical Hack, etc) but I think it's standard procedure now.

Secrets are very cool and could easily be done in Magic.

Artifact - Weapon

(Weapon rule would function like Enchant World, only on one player)

(Power in lower right corner)

Durability X (comes into play with x durability counters, sac after last is removed)

Tap, remove a durability counter: Deal damage equal to this weapon's power to target creature or player. If it is a creature, that creatures deals damage equal to its power to you.

EDIT: for the record, I do realize that direct ports of Hearthstone weapons would be utterly busted in Magic. Really it's probably not worth trying to convert any mechanics that deal with combat since it's so different (Divine Shield is fine).