Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Chah 05 Dec 2012 14:37

I don't think we should use the version of the Duel mechanic that requires discard. During the GDS2, Discard-Duel had the problem that it often caused people who won Duels to lose the game because they discarded high-impact cards. Mark Rosewater said he believes the mechanic is unsalvagable; we have to remember that's how bad the problem was.

It's been proposed that Madness can solve the problems of this mechanic, but I disagree.

First of all, how reliable is that as a solution? How many cards with Madness are going to be in people's decks? People will only occasionally have Madness cards to discard. We can't just accept that people will have bad experiences whenever they don't draw a Madness card to go with their Duel card.

Second of all, the Madness cards are going to be virtually stamped with "please discard me with top priority." I think that the beauty of Duel is that it turns all of your Magic cards into potential Dueling pieces, because every card has some converted mana cost value. Some people may disagree, but I personally think it sucks when there's a clear best card for discard and most of the cards in your hand are not real choices for discarding in the Duel. Duel is fun because you look at each card in your hand, contemplating which card is going to give you what chance of winning the Duel, and then make an actual choice. We should not be distracted with secondary goals like getting kicks out of combos (such as with Madness); the first priority should be to make Duel itself work as a strategic mini-game.

Thirdly, your opponent can discard cards with Madness to your Duel spell, and it would feel really bad when that happens. What I imagine will happen is that players will quickly decide they should only cast Duel spells when the opponent is tapped out, or when the caster of the Duel spell also has a Madness card of his/her own. I don't think that's ideal; people should just Duel whenever they feel like their cards can win the Duel.

Finally, I feel it's wrong to do any mechanic just for the sake of comboing with another mechanic. While it's best if the mechanics play well with each other, that's not enough; each mechanic should play at least decently on their own. Discard-Duel has a bad effect on game play on its own, while Madness is one of the worse mechanics in Magic IMO and has no real connection to the set theme apart from Duel interactions. We could just use a fixed Duel instead (Permanently-reveal Duel, unless a problem is discovered with that).

Last edited on 06 Dec 2012 06:59 by Chah Show more

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Jay Treat 08 Dec 2012 17:23

Mark wasn't impressed with the original version of Showdown, but he never said the mechanic was unsalvageable.
He did say "I strongly disliked the 'revealing cards matters' mechanical environment of your original set."

The big problem with Daniel's last version of Showdown was that it encouraged you to discard your biggest cards and even then didn't guarantee you'd get something for doing so. We have since updated Duel so that no card type is better than any other; all that matters is your ability to predict your opponent's choice and your willingness to counter it by discarding appropriately. While that discard is not a problem to be ignored, Duel plays very differently from Showdown and, having actually playtested it a couple times, I promise you that's it's better than you think.

I can't justify Madness on its own. You're right that it's a strange and weakly-flavorful mechanic that really can't stand on its own. Of course, it was never meant to stand on its own. But what it does to support Duel is really impressive. Not only does it alleviate the pain of discarding a spell card to help win a duel, it also adds an important axis of predictability to help you figure out what your opponent might discard. Instead of just being, "Is she going to discard a land to maximize the smoothing effect or will she discard a spell of some type to try and win the duel," you get to add "or will she discard one of the five madness cards in her colors? Two of the three common madness cards are instants, so maybe she's choosing an instant." Making it more likely players will discard nonland cards (and happier to do so) makes discarding an extra land a viable option—and that makes the whole experience much more productive for the game.

I'm not promising Duel+Madness is the way to go, but I am saying it would be madness not to test it and see for ourselves.

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Jay Treat 08 Dec 2012 17:30

I will add that Madness certainly isn't the only way to capitalize on Duel. Flashback would work, as would Kindle, Wonder, Threshold, Reform, and "Exile a [quality] card from your graveyard: Effect."

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Chah 08 Dec 2012 18:35

Maro didn't say revealing mechanics are bad. He was talking about the particular cards that Daniel made for the first challenge.

"I envisioned that as a very poor play environment filled with flavorless twitches, marginal upsides, and continually showing your opponent what you've got in your hand (possibly by showing the same card over and over)."

These don't apply to Permanently-reveal Duel. It has flavor (as much as any Duel mechanic), the upside isn't marginal, you can't show the same card over and over.

He does say:
"Add to that the confusion over what a "reveal" actually constitutes, and it was not an experience that would be enjoyable to players."
I think he's talking about reveal triggers like this:
"Revelation-Whenever Ace of Ants is revealed from your hand by a spell or ability you control, you may pay 1G. If you do, put X 1/1 green Insect creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is equal to the converted mana cost of the last spell you cast this turn."
It's not clear whether a spell that exiles a card from your hand constitutes as "revealing" that card. That doesn't apply to Permanently-Reveal Duel, but it's fair to ask how clear the wording is to players. I would say it's a little clearer than Soulbond, and just as worth it.

Last edited on 08 Dec 2012 18:56 by Chah Show more

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Chah 08 Dec 2012 18:44

Aaron Forsythe does say that one problem is that you have to discard strong cards and you don't even know that you'll win. However, the problem goes beyond that. He recounts:
"One of the developers played a match with your cards, discarded spells to win all the showdowns, and then lost the game because his opponent had more spells to cast than he did."
So it's not just "you might not win the duel even if you discard a strong card." You could win the showdowns and still lose the game.

This is what Maro said about the salvage-ability of Showdown.

"I have a very mixed opinion of showdown. The right-brain designer in me appreciates the artistry of the design. In fact, every time it would happen in the playtest, I always would say "Okay … draw." You've done an excellent job in creating a mechanic that captures the essence of gunslinging.

Then there's left-brain designer. He's realizes that what you've done is make a glorified clash. You allowed the player to have more control but you also allowed the chance for them to choose to card disadvantage themselves. (Yeah, "effective card disadvantage.") I really wanted to like this mechanic but playing it turned into "am I going to do what the card wants me to do or am I actually going to try and win the game?"

If you want to salvage this mechanic (and the right answer might be to find another way to capture the gunslinging feel you want), you are going to have to find a way to keep it from being a mechanic that punishes the guy who plays along."

So I guess he doesn't specifically say the discard version is unsalvageable. If you go with discard, you just need to find a discard version that doesn't punish you for trying to win duels. I haven't seen any such version so far, but if there is one, I'm fine with that.

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Chah 08 Dec 2012 18:49

I will add that Madness certainly isn't the only way to capitalize on Duel. Flashback would work, as would Kindle, Wonder, Threshold, Reform, and "Exile a [quality] card from your graveyard: Effect."

I explained why I don't think the presence of a combo-forming mechanic will help salvage Discard-Duel.

One of those reasons I mentioned was that Madness is a bad mechanic. That reason doesn't apply here because some of the mechanics you raised (like Flashback) are good mechanics.

However, all of the other reasons I mentioned still seem to apply unless you have any counterarguments to those points.

Last edited on 08 Dec 2012 18:51 by Chah Show more

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

JulesRobins 09 Dec 2012 20:25

When I was working with this on Gathering Magic Jay pointed me to the idea of having to match card types instead of hitting higher cmc.

"Duel an opponent. (Each player in the duel draws a card, then discards a card from his or her hand. You win if the discarded cards share a card type.)"

It's not a perfect solution, as it still encourages the discarding of some spells, but I'd like to test it before throwing it by the wayside. I think it's possible that it's correct to discard lands often enough that the "looting" doesn't decrease players' card quality on average. I'll also note that I think the "shooter" should be the one trying to get a match since the incentive to discard lands will likely lead to more matches than mismatches and the cards should favor their caster if they aren't going to be perfectly even.

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

elektriktoad 09 Dec 2012 21:03

Matching card types sounds like it could be a more interesting mini-game than CMC, but if this is going to be "Battlecruiser Magic 2.0," then I really think we should stay away from discarding cards in duels. The benefit of duels for this set is that since both players draw a card, both players can keep hitting land drops so that the monsters (Eldrazi/Wurms) can come out to play.

Re: Combining Discard-Duel with Madness

Chah 11 Dec 2012 04:24

Yes, and the other benefits are b) the high-cost creatures will get revealed before they hit play, leading to drama as well as strategic implications, and c) it will make high-cost creatures more main-deckable, because they have a purpose in the early game (winning duels).