General The Art and Science of Giving Choices

japahn

japahn

Many qualities of the Penny Pincher cube, considered the gold standard in low power, come down to gameplay agency: sequencing decisions with bouncelands, cantrips and cycling for smoothing and low CMC.

I feel like in these forums we’ve been significantly more focused on the drafting agency than on gameplay agency, and although people here often bring it up (by other names), I think many cubes could benefit from giving it a name and thinking more about the concept. Mine certainly could.

Part 1: http://cubecobra.com/content/article/6090e6e2a92ae8104cffc78f
Part 2: http://cubecobra.com/content/article/609dcaf8028ce9104b067ac3
 
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blacksmithy

that was a great series! this gives me words for the vague feelings i’ve had in my current cube that drove design principles like “no Thoughtseize” and “no infinite combo.” really good concepts to keep in mind during design and testing
 
japahn

japahn

blacksmithy said:
that was a great series! this gives me words for the vague feelings i’ve had in my current cube that drove design principles like “no Thoughtseize” and “no infinite combo.” really good concepts to keep in mind during design and testing
Click to expand...

Yeah, what surprised me the most was how everything clicked and fell into place when I started looking at things from a player agency perspective.

The cube community (me being a part of it) was so involved in the false dichotomy of evaluating cards by power vs evaluation cards by synergy that we didn't look at the dimension that ties it all together and makes games be games. To be fair, many people did consider agency and called it other terms (like "depth": https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/elegance-in-cube-card-selection.1302/#post-57550), but it never really stuck as a value.
 
ravnic

ravnic

@japahn, I'd like to ask for your opinion, regarding agency of positive auras. Would you say a card like this is high or low on agency, or somewhere in the middle?



One could argue that you have to pick the right creature and the right moment to enchant it (to not get blown out). But it feels like these cards just turn a creature into a Baneslayer Angel (of course lets assume power level where Cloak is a good card). If they can't handle it, game might be over soon. If they do so immediately or even after one swing, the card disadvantage and tempo loss are brutal.

I'm just going trough my cards to evaluate them by agency and I can't really make a judgment here for Cloak and Elephant Guide.
 
japahn

japahn

I think they tend to be low-agency for the caster, but some factors may swing them up to being high-agency.

Let's think of Armadillo Cloak. In situations in which you are under pressure and have to drop it to gain life and save yourself... well, you have to do it, regardless of how risky it is.

But there's a lot of nuance with the environment, particularly with the speed:

- Heroic deck in an environment with sorcery speed removal: Low agency. It's just too good to put it on Fabled Hero, even if it dies next turn you got in effectively 10 points of lifelink damage.
- WG Aggro T3: High agency. Turn 3, you are getting some damage in, and you can opt to play a 2-drop or Armadillo Cloak. Depending on the opponent's deck and signals, you may want to take the risk and put it on Watchwolf. Or you should just cast the 2-drop, hedge against removal and draw it out of your opponent's hand.
- UGw Midrange in a slow environment: High agency. You are again trying to find a good window to cast it. You might sandbag it until you have a Dive Down, Snakeskin Veil, or Counterspell. From an empty board, you can flash in something EOT then untap and go for the Cloak for a surprise Baneslayer. Cloak gives you decisions of risk of CA loss vs tempo.
- UGw Midrange in a fast environment: Low agency. You can't afford to make a low tempo play, so your best bet is to go for it.

From the opponent's PoV, it's low-agency, since you always want to kill the enchanted creature. But that depends a bit on power level and density of removal. The presence of auras in an environment might make saving removal and keeping mana up at the right times a good idea. It's only a valid decision though if 1. The density of removal isn't high enough that you have to pick targets; 2. The power level is low enough that a threat only becomes "worthy" of removal after getting enchanted with Cloak.

So generally, I believe Armadillo Cloak is low-agency both for you and for the opponent. It may become high agency, though, in very slow formats.



Most good Auras have a bunch of power built-in to make up for the risk, and that's why I like equipment and Runes. They fix this problem, still giving the choice to decide what to equip/enchant and when, with less of a cliff in power between the scenarios of removal/no removal. The game is less about them and more about other choices/risks as well.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Oh, hey, Afternoon Delight got mentioned! Yay!

You left out one of the more interesting kind of high-agency cards in your articles:



In each case, you're turning some collection of cards (your library, your graveyard, and your sideboard, respectively) into a toolbox. They also help turn low agency cards into high agency cards — Armadillo Cloak by itself is low agency, but Armadillo Cloak in a deck built around Heliod's Pilgrim isn't.
 
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