1mana monsters

Gildward Wrote:

Ultros Wrote:I have no suggestions for abilities, but I think one or two 1-mana creatures per colour should be left as vanilla, with their stats changed to reflect this. Too many vanilla 1/1s are boring

...?  O.k... um... either I can assume "vanilla 1/1" is a monster with no abilities and 1/1 stats or I can interpret it as having gotten off subject.  Aside from that, your first sentence says ~50% of the 1 costers should be vanilla and the second one says too many vanilla monsters are boring...

I meant vanilla 1-costers.  Sorry.  Okay, so two is pushing it, but I think one per colour is reasonable.

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Ultros Wrote:(continued)...but having none left would make things more confusing to newbies (several of the starter decks contain 1-mana creatures, and to somebody just learning the game, having too many options can be daunting).

Great reasoning for why we SHOULD do this.  I can't count the number of times I tell newbs to remove their 1-costers as they're all but useless and the mana can be better spent on at least a monster with a cost of 2.  And too many options of what?  These are minor abilities that explain themselves (except Kelar Citizen which does utilize entrenching), we're not talking about something like: "Destroy: random monster is Spiked, gains Quick Hit, and Block-dizzies" where there's a lot of game terminology.

Well, if we're balancing them, then we're trying to make it so people might not want to take the 1-costers out of decks.  What I meant about 'confusing to newbies' is that if somebody is just starting to learn the game, if almost every monster has an ability, then they will have a harder time grasping the basics of monster combat because the abilities will add another layer of complexity, giving them a second option before they have the hang of the first one.  Maybe this is somewhat overdoing it (I imagine it wouldn't be that hard for most new players), but it's worth considering.

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Ultros Wrote:Plus, we should have some easily-referenced baseline as to what a 1-mana creature's stats should look like before adding any abilities.

That's only in one colour, and I wouldn't call it vanilla (more because of the 3D sac than because of the ability).  I think it's important that each colour has a clear baseline for a balanced vanilla 1-mana creature, both to help define each colour, and to make it possible to compare other 1-mana creatures against it (so that we can decide, for instance, how much attack/life should be subtracted from the baseline in order to compensate for an ability.  I suppose this could be done by having a theoretical baseline for each colour, but I'd like them better as actual cards.


At any rate, (actually looking over the abilities now), the only one I don't agree with is Kelar Citizen. The ability looks like it would be better suited to a Light card, as it feels similar to Noble Sacrifice.