[Boost] Roast Chestnut

Squirm Wrote:So, uh. It seems like a good card. Kinda...

except it's not. I've tried using it, but it was always extremely not even mediocre.

It's essentially

Zero
Zero
Create effect
Maintenance DmanaLmana, 18 Life
Draw phase: Draw a card

which is kind of really shitty. Especially because of all the space in hand. I propose a boost. I dunno what kind of boost, but I propose a boost.

Squirm's thread


Compare Neirsted Stone, which draws one card each turn for a flat 5 mana. After 3 turns, Neirsted Stone has cost 5 mana to draw 3 cards, and Roast Chestnut has cost 3/3 and 54 life. After 5 turns, it's 5 mana vs 5/5 and 90 life.

I liked Squirm's idea to move the cost to the ability (free to play, 1/1/18 life to bounce and draw) and give it speed summon. Make it a more accessible, cheaper Mysterious Shop that won't fleet, but has a larger cost per card and can't deck your opponent.

Due to the self-bounce, it's going to make your max handsize virtually 7, though (though you could discard the chestnut, I suppose), which is going to be a bit annoying when trying to draw lots of cards in one turn a la shop.

If we're going to go the speed summon, 0 mana route, I'd go for something like this:

Zero
Zero

Roast Chestnut

Create Food

Speed Summon
End turn: Bounce. If
you can't, destroy this.
, 18 health: Draw
a card

Just to make using it infinitely less obnoxious. You can still "discard" the chestnut by keeping a full hand at the end of turn, though you can't play a 5th gen or whatever, so maybe that's less preferable. But you can at least activate it as many times in a row as you want with significantly less clicking.

Also, made it to be less click warry while still uncounterable. Activated card draw really shouldn't be anyway...

Paying 2 mana for 1 card is what you expect in CMC (or even less if you either run generators and have Remembrances, or don't run gens and instead go NPC+Landing). Paying life and an effect slot on top of this makes it really, really hard to justify using.

My guess is that this card is supposed to be card advantage for a rush deck, but 2 mana is generally worth more to rush than a card. A deck with a longer term plan would be much happier running either Eternal Snack Cake which generates health (albeit the card draw is slower), or the recently buffed Ivory Library (I really need to get around to making a deck to abuse that thing!), which at a minimum gives you two cards for a net cost of negative one mana.

I don't like Speed Summon - being able to use it arbitrarily many times in a single turn seems like asking for trouble, as well as being a more fundamental change to the card than is necessary. I think there is room in CMC for a card that trades life for more card advantage over several turns than your mana expenditure would suggest, but at present Roast Chestnut is failing at that task because the mana cost per card isn't actually efficient.

I suggest dropping the part of the cost and inching up the life expenditure to compensate.

1
Zero

Roast Chestnut

Create food

30 health, bounce self:
draw a card

(01-19-2013 03:42 PM)Norlaan Wrote:  

Zero
Zero

Roast Chestnut

Create Food

Speed Summon
End turn: Bounce. If
you can't, destroy this.
, 18 health: Draw
a card

So we're turning it into a better version of Lucky Charm? We already have a card that essentially does that. I think we should just reduce the life cost down to 10 and see how that goes.

I admit I didn't think of Lucky Charm, just making Nacho's suggestion less obnoxious. It's almost functionally identical to Nacho's, though, so my guess is he didn't think of Lucky Charm either.

I have no idea what I think about Crow's suggestion.

I don't like the idea of removing the light cost. The card is very dark/light, given that it's a card draw engine (light) and it uses life as a cost (dark).

(01-19-2013 06:25 PM)Norlaan Wrote:  I admit I didn't think of Lucky Charm, just making Nacho's suggestion less obnoxious. It's almost functionally identical to Nacho's, though, so my guess is he didn't think of Lucky Charm either.

He did not, though a high enough life cost could make it distinct from Lucky Charm and still balanced.

I agree with Bubbleman that changing the card's color isn't a good idea, but I still like Crow's idea of moving the mana cost to a life cost. I think it would be pretty balanced if it was free with a 40 life cost each use, since people mainly use it with Bakuga's Lab right now. You're not paying more life to reduce its cost, you're paying more life to avoid playing Bakuga's Lab.

Drawing cards at some extra cost or restriction is pretty common in dark as is - Dream Invader, Treat Elemental, Khrima's Address, Shadow Stalking, River Kappa, Crystal, and even a (conspicuously) straightforward option in the form of Sara.

I'm not opposed to the card being dark/light, it's just that there's no such thing as a 1/2 1/2 mana cost, and tying up an effect slot to spend 1/1 each turn to draw a card is just weak, health cost or no.

I suppose the card could be changed such that it, over two turns, draws two cards for plus whatever the appropriate amount of health would be. Doing this requires a much less aesthetically pleasing text box, though. Here's the best I could come up with:

11
Zero

Roast Chestnuts

Create Food

30 health, 1 counter:
If counter = 0 bounce self
and draw a card,
otherwise draw a card

2

Fair enough. I'm fine with 1D, 30 life then.

30's an awful lot. I'm wondering if 28 (i.e. +10) wouldn't be enough? Then again, stepped balancing and all that.

Given that Dream Invader is 30 life per card, and doesn't dizzy, I'd say 23 (+5) might be enough even if it just bounced every other turn. And I like the bouncing every other turn idea better than taking away the light cost. Though Dream Eater is a lot easier for the opponent to destroy.

(01-20-2013 03:06 AM)Norlaan Wrote:  30's an awful lot. I'm wondering if 28 (i.e. +10) wouldn't be enough? Then again, stepped balancing and all that.

Is there really a difference? If you think 30's too much, why not 25?

...Yes?

300/30 = 10 300/28 = 10.7

being the most obvious.

That only matters if every point of damage you take is from your own Roast Chestnut Jael.

I think we're all just stabbing in the dark here in terms of how much life cost would be needed. The current cost is IMO clearly a useless benchmark, as all we know is that it is too high for a card that might not even be good enough at 0 health cost. Any chance we could set up some sort of test to see how much value the card would in practice pump out?

(01-20-2013 04:41 PM)xX Crow Xx Wrote:  Any chance we could set up some sort of test to see how much value the card would in practice pump out?

Not that I can see.

30 life is not what your forefathers had in mind

My forefathers are dead- they don't get a say anymore.

Can we please not absolutely destroy this card with a 0/0 30-life activation cost? For Christ's sake someone earlier in this thread mentioned that the 1/1 cost is hardly anything - if anything we should be adjusting the life-penalty if we want to be boosting this. Have you ALL gone down the deep end?

Paying 30 health per card drawn sounds great!

Probably because it also sounds like Dream Invader.

(01-21-2013 01:43 PM)Gary Oak Wrote:  30 life is not what your forefathers had in mind