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Any thoughts of the ??? Mana Effect from Face Down entities?

I like the whole idea, now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the bug post.

Yeah, I like it. I think something like Magic would have been best, but eh.

I haven't actually played with it yet (I'm at work now) but it's only a partial solution to the problem--it prevents me from knowing what the facedown card is (to an extent--I have an upper limit on mana cost if I've been taking notes) but it still makes me get out a pencil and paper to count mana, which is, in my considered opinion, lame.

Counting mana isn't going to do you much if any good. You won't know the mana he starts with. All you know is how much -additional- mana he could -possibly have- at a maximum and that's only if the face down is free. All you can do is add the amount he's generating and subract what he's playing - it isn't going to be worth it.

Once he plays a second face down or a face down effect you might as well give up trying.

As for the magic solution, it's pretty much impossible to make them all cost the same and keep them unique and varied as well as hving them different colors.

Well, Magic has you play face-downs all for 1, and they all have a flip cost.

Yeah, but they don't work that way here. Some of the cards have an affect while they're face down (which is completely fine in a DIGITAL ccg since you can't lie about what card you have).

Something like warpwell might remain face down for the ENTIRE game.

Just for informational accuracy, in Magic, cards are played face down for 3, not 1, unless you have certain cards in play, but that's not really important in this topic.

Back to the topic, I haven't been paying attension to this so I would like to know, If all the face down cards are revealed, is the mana also revealed at that point. (Show how much me knowing my opponent's mana affects my game.)

What Kaktus suggests would be good if it's not in place already.
Would it be possible to give cards like Eikre and any other cards with a similar ability a constant ability of resetting the ? mana of the particular color, seeing as it kinda gives it away anyway? Some informationally themed cards could also then reset the ?s for a color(s) of the opponent.

btw, not tested out the new system yet, so just ignore me if I'm talking complete rubbish here...

webrunner Wrote:Counting mana isn't going to do you much if any good. You won't know the mana he starts with. All you know is how much -additional- mana he could -possibly have- at a maximum and that's only if the face down is free. All you can do is add the amount he's generating and subract what he's playing - it isn't going to be worth it.

Two points:
1) That initial amount can only vary so much, particularly if my opponent only had, say, 1/3/1 or 2/3/0 or whatever before playing the facedown card. (Of course, under this system the game will try to conceal from me what they had beforehand, so I'll need to be taking notes, mental or otherwise, should I wish to possess this information. Admittedly that part probably wouldn't be too hard to fix--just list mana as the amount they had beforehand + ?.)
2) Even given this initial uncertainty, I still care deeply about how much mana my opponent has in many situations--not only for things like Aeon Weapon and Feedback but also situations like "they just played Shadey Prime, so they must have had at least that much grey mana...if I kill it now will the second life trigger?"

webrunner Wrote:As for the magic solution, it's pretty much impossible to make them all cost the same and keep them unique and varied as well as hving them different colors.

Hence masa's suggestion of having a few different common mana amounts, which would presumably require considerable rebalancing, though I think it would be the ideal solution in a more perfect world where free time was plentiful.

Dav1000 Wrote:
webrunner Wrote:As for the magic solution, it's pretty much impossible to make them all cost the same and keep them unique and varied as well as hving them different colors.
Hence masa's suggestion of having a few different common mana amounts, which would presumably require considerable rebalancing, though I think it would be the ideal solution in a more perfect world where free time was plentiful.

If you're suggesting that we take that route, now would be the time to do it, because we already require considerable rebalancing.

Also, in M:tG, all face down monsters are abilityless and 2/2 prior to being flipped. A similar concept in CMC wouldn't be at all good I reckon. And the lack of colorless mana would ruin things too.

Oh, and attempting to use a spell/ability with a certain mana cost could reveal that the player has at least that much mana, if it currently shows it as X+?, and X is less than that cost.

Again, ignore where irrelevant.

There wouldn't be a way to have, say, the pirate crusier and the pirate fighter to be the same cost and still retain the flavor.

It'd be extremly hard to keep track of what could be possible. I'd have to have seperate mana totals and stuff and right now it's just "hidden" or "not hidden".

If you dont have a face down card in play (ie, it's now face up) it'll reveal yes.

ive never used a facedown card but i have an idea about face downs how about mana cost zero but when it dies you have to pay for it then and if you cant pay you lose

webrunner Wrote:There wouldn't be a way to have, say, the pirate crusier and the pirate fighter to be the same cost and still retain the flavor.

I certainly haven't seen the whole set yet, so I'm not sure exactly how many facedown cards there are and at what costs/colors, but if, for example, we decide facedown is primarily a grey ability then we basically have 2 color combinations, so we could have, say, 3 "levels" of mana cost for each with 2-3 cards in each for a total of 12-18 cards, with 2-3 possibilities for any individual facedown card played. Depending on how different those cards are in abilities and stats that could be more than enough to be strategically interesting. Again, it may be too late in the process to do this, but at least in theory I think it's quite possible, and it's my preferred solution.

webrunner Wrote:It'd be extremly hard to keep track of what could be possible. I'd have to have seperate mana totals and stuff and right now it's just "hidden" or "not hidden".

Which brings me back to my pencil and paper worry.

countspatula Wrote:ive never used a facedown card but i have an idea about face downs how about mana cost zero but when it dies you have to pay for it then and if you cant pay you lose

I would like to say (with no intent to be personally insulting) that this is a horrible idea. Potential coding difficulties aside, think about a deck constructed entirely of whatever the biggest facedown monster is. Turn 1: play 5 of them. Turn 2: kill.

make them unique i dunno thought it was good idea....

Dav1000 Wrote:
webrunner Wrote:There wouldn't be a way to have, say, the pirate crusier and the pirate fighter to be the same cost and still retain the flavor.
I certainly haven't seen the whole set yet, so I'm not sure exactly how many facedown cards there are and at what costs/colors, but if, for example, we decide facedown is primarily a grey ability then we basically have 2 color combinations, so we could have, say, 3 "levels" of mana cost for each with 2-3 cards in each for a total of 12-18 cards, with 2-3 possibilities for any individual facedown card played. Depending on how different those cards are in abilities and stats that could be more than enough to be strategically interesting. Again, it may be too late in the process to do this, but at least in theory I think it's quite possible, and it's my preferred solution.

Right now face down monsters run the entire gamut of cards and there's ones on all three colors, PLUS there are cards that turn -any- card into Face Down.

Dav1000 Wrote:
webrunner Wrote:It'd be extremly hard to keep track of what could be possible. I'd have to have seperate mana totals and stuff and right now it's just "hidden" or "not hidden".
Which brings me back to my pencil and paper worry.

I might be able to swing it so that it shows the person's theoretical maximum, but it still won't be accurate (Warpwell, for instance, is a face down generator)

So long as we know to manually adjust for those kinds of things ourselves, having most of the working done would be really handy.

Oh, also, if we're keeping this kind of system, then face down entities are more powerful than they were previously, hiding your mana as well as itself. I think that should be considered as an extra bonus when balancing.

Is it only playing a face down card that hides the mana, and not using another method (Holiday present or flipping an existing card)?

If you have a face down card in play your mana is hidden.

webrunner Wrote:Right now face down monsters run the entire gamut of cards and there's ones on all three colors, PLUS there are cards that turn -any- card into Face Down.

If losing the Invisible Paint effect was the price for making facedown cards especially awesome I'd pay it gladly, really. But alright, to return to my example (is there a good way for someone who doesn't speak csc to find a list of, say, all the facedown cards by the way?) let's have facedown cards in all three color combinations. Even providing three cost levels each, that still only bumps us up to 18-27 cards, which seems quite reasonable for a cool new mechanic. Or even at 4 cost levels, 24-36, which I think gets a tad high at the upper limit, but it's not really a big deal if some cost levels only have 2 choices, particularly if they're interestingly different. It's hard for me to provide more concrete examples without more detailed knowledge of the cards in question, I admit, but it seems doable.

webrunner Wrote:I might be able to swing it so that it shows the person's theoretical maximum, but it still won't be accurate (Warpwell, for instance, is a face down generator)

That would, as the saying goes, be something.

if we do it in brackets you'd still know a) what color the monster is and b) how powerful the monster is, roughly. If you see a face down go and the guy loses 15 mana you know you're in for a world of hurt, rightg?