[Suggest] Generic Monster Destruction [Finished]

Is voting over?

Vote: No change
The cards are fine. Obliteration can be particularly useful in some cases and is easily worth the increased cost. Of course, dark is going to be faster, since it's more Monster-Destruction oriented, as Nolder himself pointed out. The cards are totally balanced and I see no reason to make it easier to kill monsters when just the right amount of effort is used up for these.

(03-25-2009 12:05 AM)Enatai Wrote:  Is voting over?

Voting would have ended yesterday if it had been tallied the day before, but because nobody bothered to tally it, no, voting is still going on.

I think the question right now is whether Dark's generic monster destruction should be better than just being one speed rank higher than Grey's. I don't see how this emphasizes Dark's focus on monster destruction well enough, especially since Grey can get mana faster, so a 9 cards is easier to play than a 9 card.

Quote:sXeAndriex> So Dark and Grey can do the same thing (destruction in this instance), but dark just has an easier time of it.
webrunner> yeah

Currently, it's the opposite; Grey has an easier time of it than Dark.

I've never quite bought that grey has better generation. It has mana bucket.

It seems pretty blatant to me. Mana Bucket sacs for one more than the other two basic sources, and Neutral Charm sacs for one more than the other basic gens (which means in the late game, you can sac one to replace it for another to get a 1 profit, and you get an extra mana out of it if you need to sac in an emergency to be able to pay for something). Grey effects also sac better than Dark ones, and while Dark's monsters sac better than Grey's, the fragility of monsters means that you can't rely on being able to sac a monster for needed mana as well as you can rely on being able to sac an effect.

Dark and Light have other gens that sac for two. If mana is important, there's no reason people playing light or dark are affected by the fact that grey is better with basic gens.
Dark monsters vs. grey effects basically even out based on reasons you mentioned combined with the fact that effects are less plentiful than monsters in most decks (and also stall your mana production, as you lose a slot.)

Add in BoS, projector, mana furnace, and such, and I really don't see the big difference. I see mana bucket.

Yeah, but Dark's alternatives for extra mana either have drawbacks, or require a deck focused on using them. Grey gets it free.

The other stuff was there to point out the extras even out with grey's extras (manamancer, etc.) Not having a downside for the gens doesn't make it better at producing the mana, just that it's less damaging to do so. The only area where grey outstrips the other in mana production (without an equivalent, i.e. mon sac/effect sac) is with sources. So it has mana bucket.

If it's more damaging to produce the mana, then it's fair to say that grey is better at producing mana than dark, for the same reason we'd say a card is better than the same card + a drawback that doesn't affect the card's main purpose.
Grey and Dark pay the same cost for a monster destruction card, but a Dark has to either not be able to get that mana as easily as Grey does, or damage itself. I don't feel a difference of one speed makes this drawback fair, and it certainly doesn't make Dark clearly better than Grey at monster destruction.

We seem to be a bit confused. Let me see if I can clear this up.

My statement here "Not having a downside for the gens doesn't make it better at producing the mana" was referring to actual mana generation over time. They produce at the same rate of speed, not in the sense of "it's better at being a card which produces mana." That was mostly bad word usage on my part, as production and generation can mean multiple things.

As for generation by color, I was stating that I disbelieve grey is particularly faster. I was using generation as a short way of saying "speed of." It seems that, again, you were seeing it as "generating mana is better/less damaging/has less downsides for grey" while I intended "generating mana with grey is no faster, outside of buckets." I probably should have cleared this up earlier, but I was half believing you were thinking in terms of pure speed and half not paying much attention as I didn't care that much about the conversation.

On the quoted text (which I never read till now): Um, I never read it till now. None of my grey generation stuff had anything to do with that, it was more an idle comment of disbelief. However, just to make sure of something
My line there was "this is how it should be" not "this is how it is". I was rephrasing web's previous statements to ascertain whether or not I was correctly understanding him. I'm not sure if your grey comment was "I think you're mistaken" or "that's correct and the fact that it isn't so is why the balance needs to happen." Might as well chuck that out there. Y'know, since I'm clearing things up.

I quoted it for the latter reason; webrunner greed when you asked about whether Dark should be better at monster destruction, and I'm saying the change needs to happen because it currently isn't.

Since this is a Word of God thing, I think those voting for no change should be providing arguments as to why they feel Dark is already better than Grey at monster destruction, not just for monster destruction in general being fine as is.

(03-25-2009 01:43 AM)Ultros Wrote:  If it's more damaging to produce the mana, then it's fair to say that grey is better at producing mana than dark, for the same reason we'd say a card is better than the same card + a drawback that doesn't affect the card's main purpose.
Grey and Dark pay the same cost for a monster destruction card, but a Dark has to either not be able to get that mana as easily as Grey does, or damage itself. I don't feel a difference of one speed makes this drawback fair, and it certainly doesn't make Dark clearly better than Grey at monster destruction.

You say that as if damaging itself only puts dark on par with gray. If a dark deck chooses the suicidal route, it gets its mana many times faster than a normal gray deck. By sacrificing life and monsters, dark decks can get huge amounts of mana gray decks will never see without running almost exclusively Dark Elves. That's why Pirate Captain and Malsummoned Fairy are top tier cards, where as they'd be nowhere near as good if they cost any other color mana. Getting the 9-10 mana needed to play dark's destruction spells is a lot easier than getting the 9 mana for gray's, not to mention alternatives dark has at 5,6, and 7 mana that gray has trouble matching.

And I'll note that it's a very powerful speed. Arm Breaker/Dissipate make up a good majority of the counterspells I see played, because most of the more common game breaking spells are speed.

I'll grant you the point about suicidal decks, but I'd far prefer Dark's monster destruction to stand out over Grey's in most decks, not just ones specifically geared towards getting fast mana at all costs. I'd like the game to have more clearly defined colour identities; Dark's monster destruction should be unquestionably better than Grey's, in the same way that Light's effect destruction should be unquestionably worse than that of the other two colours.

I could see increasing their speeds by one rank, which is a decent sized boost in itself considering they're on the threshold of being counterable, but I don't like dropping their mana. Big monsters have too many problems as it is in this game, and making their one major weakness cheaper isn't helping.

That's a problem with big monsters, not destruction spells. As I mentioned earlier, we should be (and slowly are) dealing with that by boosting big monsters so that they're worth the risk of monster destruction. Correcting a fundamental part of the game such as colour identites shouldn't be avoided because it would slightly worsen a problem that we can fix anyway.

A very large number of the game's bigger monsters would be more balanced if we randomly tacked (Boss) onto them. Iirc, that's what boss was created for, big monsters who would be a lot more balanced if Dissolving Acid didn't blow them up for a quarter of what they cost. It was introduced in the Eternal thread I revived after a few people, myself included, complained how easy it was to kill eternals with Monster D that was balanced when used against monsters a third their cost.

(03-25-2009 03:50 AM)Ultros Wrote:  Dark's monster destruction should be unquestionably better than Grey's, in the same way that Light's effect destruction should be unquestionably worse than that of the other two colours.

I (or someone else, I guess) should ask how light fits into this at some point. It didn't seem important at the time.

Also, you're not British. It's color.

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(03-25-2009 04:01 AM)Nacho Wrote:  I could see increasing their speeds by one rank...

In case this becomes a solid position with ample support at a later date, I'll make note now that there is no way in hell I would vote for that.

Iirc, light's monster destruction, like its effect destruction, should be unquestionably worse than that of the other two colors. In practice though, MMW is of the best ways to get rid of monsters in the game, and Heroic Strike is a lot better than AL or Crush.

I agree that mmw and herioc strike are two of the best spells in the game( weak pt too).

If we really wanted to follow color identities, MMW would deal damage equal to attack -1 and Heroic Strike would be 9 mana, probably speed too.