It’s interesting to compare kicker and flashback because I think flashback feels better to the player than kicker despite their similarities. It feels good to flashback a card because it pays you for doing what you already want to do: you play a card and then later you get to play it again. Flashback essentially draws you that card again. In contrast, kicker’s bonus is all up front. It offers modality which is good, but there’s an intrinsic bad feeling to a mechanic that creates the fear of missing out. Whenever you play a kicker card without using the kicker cost, it feels like you’re missing out on something despite the fact that the modality of kicker is better than no modality.
I don't consider it as fear-instilling as much as it just forces you to choose ahead of time. That's not necessarily bad design, just creating a decision point that might impact your early or late game.
@@RegularsarikasMaRo often tells a classic anecdote from the playtesting room in which a 2/2 for 2 had a higher win-rate than the same card with an additional “Kicker: etb with some +1/+1 counters”. His explanation was that player psychology leads them to attempt to maximize the card (paraphrasing, go read blogatog), and that led them to decline the non-kicker option.
Flashback removes the actual decision point being made with kicker because (so long as your graveyard isn't removed) you always have the option to flashback no matter what.
When talking about kicker, I pretty much always go back to MaRo's Kavu Titan story. The basic story is that he was lent a deck to play in an Invasion playtest and went 4-0, not knowing the Grizzly Bears in his deck were supposed to be proxies for Kavu Titan. In the next playtest he went 2-2, which he attributes to holding onto the Kavu Titans to play with kicker.
I think Kicker (and all the variants) are such a trap mechanic. The smart play will often be, like you hinted at, to play the unkicked version. But psychologically it just really sucks to give up the "awesome" version of the card. It's the "eat your vegetables" of MtG. It's deeply unexciting but very necessary. I feel only a subset of very competitive players actually enjoy casting a card without the kicker. I am not that person. I'm a scrub. Whenever I look at a card with kicker during deckbuilding process, for mana curve analysis, I basically assume that I'll always play the card kicked because it's so deeply unsatisfying to me, to cast it base.
@@paulszki Kicker isn't so much a trap mechanic as it is a skill-testing one, and the same can be said for cycling. The need to decide whether to use the smaller effect now (Playing a spell without the kicker or cycling a card) or holding out for the larger effect appeals to the kind of player who enjoys attempting to play as optimally as possible and reflecting on the decisions they made in a game they just played.
@@connorb33Honestly, I feel like you added nothing to what I already said and just phrased it differently and it's a bit weird. You don't like the word "trap" and instead use skill-check ... but it's the same idea? Unskilled/scrubby players fall into the trap of "full kicker power if I just get to X mana!" while skilled players don't. Why are you splitting hairs here? You also said "the kind of player wo enjoys playing optimally" and I said "competitive players enjoy casting a card without kicker" - Again, hair is being split. Like... why did you basically just say the same thing as me but act like I somehow misunderstood ... my own thoughts? I'm a bit annoyed by this.
@@paulszki the different phrasing changes the overall message. They're saying that they think kicker is a well-designed mechanic for the very same reasons that you think it isn't.
@@jimshotfirst4887I don't think I said anywhere that Kicker ISN'T a well-designed mechanic. I feel like words are being put into my mouth. All I said was basically that I'm a scrub and that I find casting cards unkicked unexciting. I'm fully aware what the mechanic does and that there are players who enjoy that the nuanced play of a 2/2 vanilla bear for 2 mana in the right situation. Basically the enjoyment of casting the unkicked version comes from feeling smart because you went against your intuition/smooth brain desire by playing a "weak" version of card and did the "correct play". I understand this perfectly and I'm not judging it at all. Honestly, where did I give the impression that I think kicker is a bad mechanic?
It is insane to me that they said "everything is kicker and cycling" when anyone who plays the game knows that cycling is just Kicker 1, discard this card: draw a card. Everything is Kicker or HORSEMANSHIP.
We will talk about horsemanship when we talk about keywords. Our point is, kicker is investing in the same strategy more and cycling is pivoting your strategy.
Great video and you make great points, its just the phrase "Everything is Kicker or Horsemanship" is as common as like "reading the card. . . "so its funny to me that yall came so close then changed it last second. Sidenote, would you consider modal spells or split cards similar to cycling like how you touched on MDFCs? They both are a choice of what you use them for but they're usually relatively similar effects, so instead of choosing a land or a spell its a spell to gain momentum or a spell to stop an opponents momentum (usually)
I get that you're joking, but if you want to be pedantic about it: Kicker means "You may pay an additional [cost] as you cast this spell." So no, you can't actually word cycling as kicker, because kicker means you're still playing the card (you can cast Counterspell on any kicked card) whereas cycling doesn't cast the spell (you can't cast Counterspell on a cycle).
@lightworker2956 The problem here is that in the discussion in the video itself kicker is referred to as additional or alternate costs. Flashback was cited as an example of a mechanic that is just "kicker in the graveyard" which by your rules here wouldn't fly. The way to look at cycling such that it's equivalent to kicker is that the base cost is a small cost and discard the card to draw a card, or you pay more to play the card instead, for most cycling cards. In other words, they're boiling kicker down to: any mechanic where you can take one game piece and play it at a lower cost for one effect or higher cost[s] for bigger effect[s].
There are 2 ways of designing kicker that completaly change how you evaluate a card. 1 - You can have a card that is good WITHOUT kicker, and overcosted with the kicker. So you usually play it without paying the kicker cost. But ocasionally, later in the game when you have excess mana, you might decide to pay the kicker just to get a little extra. 2 - You can have a card that is weak WITHOUT kicker, but good with the kicker. So you usually wait to play it with kicker to get the full effect, but ocasionally you might play it sub-optimally if you're desperate. I think the first way is better. Because in the second case, you always feel bad for "wasting" the card without the kicker.
Good point! Im not sure I would view it as good or bad, just different. In the case where you are forced to play the kicker spell early you would likely feel smart for pivoting from your normal heuristic of waiting to play it.
@@distractionmakers MOST players feel bad. They feel like they are forced to "waste" a card in a sub optimally way. How It FEELS to play a card is Just as important as the math balance behind it. And so, desiginig a card that often makes players feel bad using It is not a good game design.
@@OrdemDoGraveto Every card in the game has at least somewhat commonly occurring scenarios where they will feel bad to use. Black lotus feels bad to use when you top deck it in vintage cube with no spells to cast. Card have variance, players can misplay, and that is going to feel bad sometimes. It's important to have bad times in a game sometimes, because it makes the times you play or draw well more rewarding. Plus, it's not like kicker cards with bad frontsides always feel bad to cast: Sometimes, getting out a play on curve, even if it is overcosted, can feel amazing.
@@lukaro7074 Thats not the same. Having a card that is situational (and every card is to some extend) is completaly diferent then having a card you can where you can use It in two way, and one of those ways feels like your are wasting the card potential. Of course thats a common problem. New players often feel bad to spend a burn spell in a target with less health then the spells damage. But I firmly believe its better to avoid those types of designs in a game as much as posible.
@@OrdemDoGraveto See, that's the thing. They aren't completely different: They just seem completely different if you don't think about it enough. The example you used of a burn spell is actually a great one to illustrate my point: Burn spells generally serve two purposes, removing creatures and hitting face. Removing a creature is, in most decks, the more powerful use of a burn spell, yet the game will allow you to shoot face at any time if your opponent doesn't have any creatures for you to remove. Shooting face can sometimes feel like you're "wasting" the spell, but it's a decision the game allows you to make, for good reason. What you have to realize is that decisions between "do I play this now, or do I play it at some other time for a potentially greater reward" are a huge part of the skill element of mtg.
In the same way that players value mana because they have that visceral memory of being colourscrewed, I appreciate cycling on circumstantial cards because many players have a similar memory about having a "dead card" in their hand that they would happily pay two mana for just to be able to trade it for a shot at anything else in their deck. When you're comparing Nature's Claim against Wilt, the former's raw efficiency makes it a much more competitive card, but the cycling on the latter makes it easier for casual players to put in their decks (and makes for a more appealing limited/cube draft pick).
The way FaB handles the "players want to play their cards" problem is interesting to me. In most games where your cards are resources, the cards become resources permanently. You play them as resources knowing they can never be used again. In FaB, they are pitched into a stack off to the side, then at the end of your turn that pitch stack goes back into your deck. Knowing that you'll be able to use the cards later really softens the blow of not being able to play them immediately and adds a layer of strategy & skill where you can effectively plan out your late game through what you pitch.
We must keep pushing the FaB agenda brother. It makes so many interesting choices that are worth looking into, from the core systems to cards that are hits/misses/busted.
Flashback is a much better keyword because it's not an additional cost. Flashback could be more or less than the original mana cost. Kicker is always more. Flashback gives value to putting cards into your graveyard. Kicker requires it to be cast from hand. I think nothing summarises how much better Flashback is as a keyword than Echo of Eons. For 6 mana, it's not a good card. But for 3 mana, it's Timetwister from the graveyard. Flashback means that the card is enabled by Lion's Eye Diamond, Entomb, Surveil, and any other mechanic that puts cards into the graveyard. Kicker is useless text if a card is in the graveyard.
About ciclying and mana cycling: Situational cards work well with cycle. Those cards that normally would be in the side board. So If they arent useful right now, you can pay mana to replace It for something that Will probably bê better. As for mana that can be cycled, they are awsome. You need mana, but If you have too much mana, you can have something else. Invertedly, cards that can be cycled for mana are a way of correcting a situation If you are mana screwed. But ideally you would prefer to play then as regular cards. Otherwise, why put then in the deck instead of a mana... Of course, ignoring degeneate combos...
Actually Majority of spells that have land cycling on them are super overcosted things that don't even have an okay effect. The best ones are middling big vanilla or french vanilla beaters, Lorien Revealed and that one that basic land cycles but doesn't say cycling and makes a bunch of beasts. That latter one is pretty much the only land cycler that is actually decent as a spell on it's own. So, no, ideally you use them as land cyclers and pray that you don't get in a situation where you hope the spell will be good. Which is actually kinda bizarre. I don't know why they decided the land cyclers need to be this way. Not sure why it would be too op to actually have a good card also be a hand smoother if you really need it.
@@tonysmith9905 Oh, yeah. I wasn't clear in my comment as I wrotte it in a rush. What I meant is that the IDEAL WAY TO DESIGN a cycling card is that. Niche cards that are situanionally good, but otherwise you better pay to replace it with something more useful. That's what Hearthstone did with the "tradable" cards, for example.
Kicker is such a strange choice for a name, specially for the mentioned "intuitiveness" when teaching the game. Augmenting the Strength/Effects of a Spell could be better described as Boost, Potentiate, Amplify or such.. Anyway, interesting you didn't mention Multi-Kicker. For me, these 2 are two different ways to do the same mechanic. Kicker usually adds a different effect to a card, while Multi-Kicker allows to get MORE of that spell if you put more resources onto it.. which makes more sense to me (flavor-wise)! Making Multi-Kicker the "Kicker" of mechanics in my brain. And as a gigantic Kamigawa fan, I would LOVE for you to cover the "parasitic" mechanics introduced there.. Specifically "Splice onto Arcane"! Which is inherently rich in Flavor, a bit more complex, and an alternate way to add a different effect to a Card (Kicking) without actually printing Kicker onto Cards. I love it, and I'm sad that it hasn't replaced that evergreen Mechanic. I understand the limitations around it, but not even exploring it outright? Feels like a waste. (Over the years, I lost respect for Mark Rosewater and would for MtG to move away from him.. but it is hard to know exactly what was a Company's mandate, versus his input on the game)
As far as MARO is concerned, no designer is going to be perfect. But I don’t think we can forget the amazing impact he’s had on the game. Ravnica, Innistrad, and many others. If I was to critique one thing, I think it might be his philosophy of letting the game go where the players take it. In principle I agree, but the health of the game should come first.
I find it fascinating that games like Magic and Duel Masters set up a sort of “flawed system” in terms of feelings evoked for a casual audience and offers ways to remedy them in designs of mechanics; and these mechanics is where the people find genius in. Duel Masters was mentioned and I recall there were effects that let you bounce cards in your mana zone back to hand as a “drawback”. Competitive players would use cards with this effect in decks where the mana curve would cap out at 4 to be able to play the 4 mana cards for mana early, then pick them up later on once you had the mana to cast them. The Mana evolution mechanic is another take on what you play as mana early matter later on, where you would be able to play undercosted creatures that used a specific creature type card in the mana zone as the “base” of the evolution. Made it so in deck construction and in play sequencing there would be more incentive for even casual players to use their shiny cool cards as mana if it meant they were trying to enable yet another shines cool card that cared about the mana zone so the end result would be an “Aha” feeling rather than a forced hand. You guys mentioned the importance of some “on-rails” for games to have for the Artifact episodes; to reduce decision points for the base game to have an easier accessibility. Im starting to realize that the base game having this design (for accessibility) while individual cards providing more decision points is a key part of making a game that drives long time player interest. Instead of making a game that tries to be perfect at base, make it a puzzle for the player to solve and slowly feed them more and more game pieces to solve it.
Interestingly, there is also a small clique of mechanics that are the opposite of Kicker -- all flavor, no substance. Like "Haunt", which is a pretty weak and uninteresting mechanic. Judging by myself, however, the feeling of disappointment over both ends of this spectrum differ (even if we assume the same quantitative degree of disappointment, the quality is different): whereas with no-flavor mechanics like Kicker I feel "it's simply lame", while with all-flavor-no-substance things like Haunt, I feel a bit "robbed/betrayed" that they couldn't come up with something better, or in lieu of that (since it's very hard to come up with a good mechanic), at least make the individual instances of the Haunt mechanic in action way stronger, so it feels consequential.
I have to agree with Mark Rosewater here. Kicker and cycling really are the best. They do add decision points and complexity to the game and generally smooth out some of the frustration of having uneven mana. In the terms you use, they replace the variance that feels kind of bad with a variance that feels good. They're only as flavorless or flavorful as the main premise of the game already is. When you're paying a kicker cost you're drawing on more mana or different mana to make a spell or creature more powerful. When you're cycling you're having something pass by or go away to help you start something else (Amonkhet took this a step further and gave cycling a graveyard theme.)
Cycling is fun because in the most powerful formats, it's used for no reason other than to reduce the number of cards in your deck. In vintage and legacy, the Doomsday combo deck wants to remove its entire library to win with Thassa's Oracle, which requires close to an empty library to give an automatic win. Cycling reduces the number of cards in your library, therefore it is good. The additional text on the card is entirely irrelevant. You only care that it cycles.
In Commander I have found Cycling to be useful enabling a deck to have a critical mass of relevant effects while also providing to look for others. In the higher variance environment ditching your second gun looking for ammo can be crucial, or vice versa tossing some ammo to look for a gun. This is very important for decks that are trying to start a 3 part engine/combo because youre more able to dig without running cards that are just digging cards. You have a card that fits 1/3rd of your plan and if not can try to get another part.
Seeing WotC starting to group certain things for Outlaws of Thunder Junction, I'm curious what the game would be like if they did away with Kicker as a keyword ability and used it instead as a blanket concept for any re-flavoured Kicker keyword. Part of me would love how broken "kicker matters" cards would be. Also, tutoring is just targetted Cycling. The math checks out.
Calling everything kicker is also useless. You’re just warping the game states to fit this example. You could just as easily say that everything is a spell
"Everything is kicker and horsemanship" is just an old MTG phrase/joke. Flashback is just delayed kicker. Buyback is just infinite kicker. Cycling is just draw kicker. Bargain is just sac kicker. X spells are just multikicker. If there's an alternate way or cost to cast, it's just ____ kicker.
My issue with Kicker is the worry that it becomes countered if you invest that extra bit into it. Splice into Arcane sees a similar issue and functions similarly to Kicker in concentrating mana into a single powerful spell. Flashback can be similarly countered, but it usually requires two counters to fully counter it. Even still, Flashback has a little more flexibility as you can pitch them for discard or mill and they'll still be live in the grave. Cycling is great for being nearly uncounterable draw and the counters to activated abilities generally wouldn't waste that extra mana to stop a Cycling. I like Surge mechanically though a majority of the cards printed weren't worth the investment, but there are a couple gems in the pool. I wish Raid got development leaning towards cards like Admiral's Orders where they can be battle techniques for reduced costs. Alternatively, spells doing more in combat while you're on the aggression would be cool. Like a instant burn spell that gives your creature first strike or trample if you've attacked this turn.
That would actually be a really cool kicker affect, ensuring a powerful spell can't be countered. Something like 5 mana to do X, kicker 2 or bargain a creature or something to add uncounterable. Only see two cards with both kicker and uncounterable, but that's just on the base spell.
Seen a few videos now, all focused on ccg design. I used to play one called Duel of Summoners, also known as Mabinogi Duel. Since the game is long defunct, I suppose there's no reason to talk about it, but the interesting part of that game was the 'deck' you built, was your starting hand. I'm just wondering how necessary the deck is to card games, since a lot of the deck building and strategy is ironing out the rng of card draws (mana curves, Yu-Gi-Oh's archetypes and tutoring, etc). But with no deck, it means you play your strategy the same way every game, not as much improvisation. It wasn't a good nor balanced game by the way. Mono colored decks were straight up unplayable due to the game's resource system.
All mechanics are parasitic. All of them benefit when combined with other specific mechanics, card types and deck building elements. Buyback needs a good amount of mana with as few competing mana sinks as possible. Equipment / equip needs creatures. Individual energy cards are self sustaining but they're obviously a lot better with other energy cards. Parasitism is a spectrum but the distinction between parasitic, non-parasitic, linear, narrow as these defined categories is mostly meaningless beyond a sort of philosophical thought experiment. It's only relevant from a design perspective and from that view there are more useful ways to think about and categorize different mechanics and game elements. Magic set design is rarely rigid categories. It's often not even that useful to look at things on a spectrum. It's more useful to look at things as points on a flow chart. There is only so much time in the day to dissect abstract nuance where you'll inevitably have to rely on assumptions largely based on things outside the game. It's better to take simple game elements and concepts and begin experimenting and making an actual mechanical framework with them because in this space, you can always take things apart. It's less about what's right or wrong and more about what's useful and not useful. When you design mechanics, you want to focus on how much design space each of those mechanics allows for and what those spaces look like next to one another - the flow chart. This will help guide the construction of your limited archetypes. You also need to do things like balance synergy which starts with recognizing what you want out of a mechanic and want you don't want. You don't want hegemony but you also don't want isolation. Balance is the core of design. Rosewater isn't that great at talking about this stuff. He's been the head of the biggest TCG for decades so he has a lot of interesting things to say but that doesn't mean it's always useful. He's very philosophical, psychological and very wedded to procedure which, let's be honest, pales in comparison to scientific thinking when it comes to delivering results in any technical, bottom up design space. We are in an era that is in many ways defined by this recognition. Rosewater is very much an institutional guy who reminds me of an econ person going on about supply side economics. That stuff's gone the way of the dinosaurs in terms of credibility. We're in a new age of understanding and experimental development that ditches rigid adherence to vague categorization attempts and presumptive formulas. Don't climb someone else's tower, piece together your own mosaic.
"Lois would you listen to me? Extort is extort. Kicker could be anything! It could even be extort!" But in all seriousness, Rosewater was mostly correct when he said that kicker wasn't even really a mechanic, it was moreso an entire game design concept. Any additional or alternate cost could be recontextualized as kicker. If anything could be kicker, kicker itself becomes fairly meaningless. "You may pay an alternate or additional cost, which could be almost anything, to get an alternate or additional effect, which can also be almost anything" is bad for both theming and gameplay conveyance/clarity. Divvying up kicker-like mechanics based on minutiea is good practice. Are you paying more mana of the same colour, or an additional colour? Are you paying more mana or an additional resource? Are you paying a resource in addition to or instead of the base mana cost? Does this amplify the basic effect or does this provide a new effect? Dividing mechanics up based on these questions helps give the block/set/gameplay environment more of an identity and helps players immediately "get" what's going on. If your mechanics are more constrained, it also means minor deviations from it are more meaningful. Imagine if they released a mythic ninja, and instead of mana its ninjutsu cost required you to pitch cards from your hand. This feels like a cool and unique bend if all other ninjutsu costs are mana. This gets lost in the shuffle in ninjutsu costs are all non-standard across the board anyway. Another thing that occasionally happens with kicker-like mechanics is that, often, one of the two modes (almost always the non-kicker mode) is markedly worse than the other mode. There will inevitably be situations where playing the card without kicking it is the correct play, but typically that's 1) because the opponent forced your hand and you had to to not immediately lose and 2) feels like a non-standard game over or loss to the player anyway because they lost access to the good version of the card. I occassionally play Magic but my big game is LoR. LoR has a few kicker-like mechanics, but one of the big defining features of a lot of them is that instead of paying an additional or alternate resource you have, you need to meet a condition on board your opponent can attempt to disrupt or the gamestate can prohibit. "Get an additional effect if you've dealt damage to the enemy player this turn". "Get an additional effect if this is/isn't the first card you've played this game". Etc.
As a Yugioh player I find this discussion of flavor fascinating because we don’t have keyworded effects. It actually annoys me when mechanics are similar but need different keywords for minor mechanical or flavor reasons. The difference between For Mirrordin and Living Weapon or Morph being turned into Disguise just to add ward 2 feels like a waste when the keyword will only ever exist in one set. It also requires an entirely new set of draft chaff to be created just to give normal interactions but tailored to that keyword. Functionally all effects boil down to either card advantage, resource advantage, or manipulating the game state. Card advantage effects include summoning, tutoring, recursion, and removal (including floodgates). Gamestate manipulation includes life management, scrying, shuffling, and other information based actions. Resource management is tied the efficiency of mana production.
5:27 different flavors of kicker are better narratively and for pure flavor's sake I suppose but, gameplay wise it's unnecessarily insular when overload and cleave don't work with kicker support cards like Hallar, the Firefletcher. So we have 20 different versions of kicker by another name and none of them can work with each other's keyword specific supports. I wish they were all just named kicker.
Kicker could have been called Empower, where the spellcasting player (The player being a mage in a game of Magic) is putting in additional mana for additional power. Probably would have sold the mechanic more.
I get what you're saying about discarding a big cool card feeling bad, but what I love about cycling is it allows for big, dumb, janky cards to actually be playable, since they don't get stuck in your hand when you need a fast answer. So while it may be more of a feels bad for brand new players, I think it adds a lot for those of intermediate skill/experience that still care about "doing cool stuff", and not just winning. It also allows a them to print an effect and still have the card be playable, without pushing the stats or mana cost super hard just to let it compete with other low commitment cards. Shark Typhoon is the perfect example for me. The fact that it cycles is the only reason that it sees play and something like Arcane Bombardment or Thousand Year Storm doesn't. Yes, in powerful formats like modern and legacy, most cycling cards are only ever cycled and not played, but that's not the case in standard, or even pioneer. I think such old formats with so much complexity and such massive card pools are nearly impossible to design for, as pretty much none of those decks even play by the normal rules of magic.
what kinda failure rate is acceptable for a hand, is it like 5-10% I get screwed and never make my 3rd land drop, or is it more if I make that 3rd land drop I win 85-90% of my games?
It so dumb that new players aren't encouraged to play limited. Constructed is way too boring and complicated for new players. Limited is so much more approachable and is so much better of a teaching tool for core mechanics
As a filthy casual I can attest that I built a wheel deck in EDH and hated it cause I didn't wanna discard my stuff even though I knew I was getting better stuff
What happened to the videos about tutor spells? I went to look them up but I can't find them. Meant to watch them awhile ago but never got around to it
We took them down because ultimately they were a discussion framed in a way that doesn’t suit the channel. We want to discuss things from a design perspective and not from a strategy perspective. Those video crept too far into strategy. We will probably do a new tutor video in the future that is focusing on the design aspects.
Also I was reminded of this because of a KS alert, but did either of you see the "Flawed TCG"? Go look it up. It's mechanic is so insane I had to purchase a copy just to prove in the future it existed. (I still regret not getting any Hecatomb.)
When talking about landcycling, you mentioned that the main strength of them vs MTDF lands is the deck thinning. I would beg to differ, the main strength in my opinion is that the cycler still exists as a secondary game object, for things like delve or reanimate.
@distractionmakers the percentage points you gain from thinning 1 land from your deck are so marginal that it isn't worth considering. Lorien revealed delves for murktide, troll gets reanimated, these are the things that make them better than if they were an MDFC, the others see next to no play, since they are not as good at doing the things mentioned above. Additionally, due to the existence of dual lands, they can fetch any colours if you've constructed your deck correctly, whereas the mdfc spell lands are only 1 colour, and are therefore far less flexible.
Interesting the riddle of "first 'any card' resource system." I think you may be right on "cards from hand" but long before that, there was the Star Wars CCG - which actually used the deck itself as the resource in a fun and clever little system. (which also meant as you drew, you could end up cutting down how much you can spend)
Was really fun to hear this referencing Rosewater's top 10. Was just listening to that, kinda freaky. The "modality" framing is a really fun lens to apply to our game "Mori Carta" where we split every card but you only play one at a time. Hadn't thought about it as a form of kicker. There are cards that your opponent can sacrifice something to change the effect of (an "either or" card) which is kinda like a kicker in reverse and also similar to the way we implement enemy cards.
Yeah it sucks to cycle a card even if it's right to do so. Cycling a land away in the late game to find a spell feels a lot better. The front of the card does feel like the main function of the card, even if the card might be cycled more than played. I will say that thinning a deck of one land is basically a non-factor in the vast majority of cases in competitive play. It's a minor bonus if you needed to land-cycle in the first place, but should almost never factor into the decision of whether to land-cycle vs play a card. Removing 1 card is just too little of an effect. It's similarly usually bad to crack a fetch to thin a deck because in most cases 1 life is worth more than thinning 1 card.
Except it's never just 1 land. You got fetches, ramp and land cyclers that all compound upon one another. By the time you get to the point that you think trying to thin the deck more might be a good idea it wouldn't be unheard of to say you've already pulled 5 lands from the deck. And who the heck is cracking a fetch to only thin the deck? That's just a bonus on making sure you have perfect mana. Sure, fetches might contribute to your death over the course of a game, but usually it's about 3 maybe 4 life. Unless you're going against an aggro or burn deck it probably won't be the actual cause of your loss.
@@tonysmith9905 I'm talking about the situation where you might crack a fetch to only thin a deck and saying that's I think it's usually wrong to do so in that spot. If you've drawn all the lands you need and maybe cracked 3 fetches already, should you crack a 4th just for the thinning? I'd say that no you shouldn't
@@EYPriest Then you'd be wrong. You said yourself in that situation you made that you've already got all the mana you need, so fetching to thin is actually super important so you don't draw a dead card. You wanna thin so that you keep drawing gas. 1 life doesn't matter as much as drawing dead and losing your tempo. That will kill you faster. In all the formats that fetches are legal in you can't afford a turn off no matter what deck you're playing. And you could sit here and make hypotheticals all day long and keep adding "oh but there's this caveat I forgot to add to the scenario". But at the end of the day every one cracks their fetches not caring about the life unless in a specific match up, thinning only being an after thought.
@@tonysmith9905 Yeah I understand the logic of deck thinning and I disagree that's it's correct to do so. I agree that's it's very common to see people value thinning over life, but I think it's a common mistake and that you will find that the strongest players generally do care about their life more than they care about the thinning. I understand that others will have different opinions of course.
Kicker is so weird. It feels like a modern mechanic rather than an old one. "Oh we want every card to do everything. I know, slap kicker (2): do something completely unrelated. Bam we're the best". I think Eternal (which is just digital MTG tbh) does it strictly better precisely because it's made with digital in mind. The mechanic is called Spellcraft, it's attached to creatures and it goes like "Spellcraft X: spell". You spend X extra mana on top of the creature's cost, and the creature casts Spell (which are instants/sorceries). This makes more sense thematically, as the creature itself is doing something by spending extra resources, and by being digital you just get a reminder of what the spell does by hovering over the creature. It's fundamentally kicker as what the creature does and what the spell does don't really have anything to do with each other but somehow it feels way less "random"
I feel like the part about cycling that makes it a bit easier to get over in mtg than some other games is just the importance of cantrips. Like Opt is a bangin card that your already running, so would you run a slightly worse opt that is also another card.
Although i did come from yugioh, where stuff like Upstart Goblin was banned even though its just a card that says "Cycle: Your opponent gains 1k life". I think cycle is exceptionally for cards like lands or utility, with my example of a card I have played purely due to cycling being Wilt.
The only disadvantage to kicker is that the modality of kicker is an illusion 95% of the time so the bonus of having the flexiability only really matters 1/20 times (which is still technically 5% better, but still). You really only use it for its base effect or its kicker in most situations. The flavor argument is for micro brains that like keyword accretion rather than a concise ruleset. Its also important to allow players to see under the hood so experienced people know what to look for in good cards. Wizards needs to stop pulling keywords out of their ass and use the tools that already exist creatively, that is all.
@@distractionmakers Its not about flavor, its clarity, they have reprinted what is essentially kicker with a new keyword like a dozen times now, its hollow and adds unneccessary complexity when the rules should stay as accessable as possible. Accretion is a very real thing and it has to be carefully managed.
While I agree that there are too many "just kicker" effects, some are actually useful in my opinion. Like cleave is a bad one right, since it's just kicker but it also makes the text box ugly. But I think something like overload is good because it actually gives someone useful information quickly. If someone asks you what a card does and you say "2 damage to a creature, also you can overload it for 6" that tells them everything they need to know (if they already know overload of course) without you having to explain what kicking it actually does (and kicking it could do nearly anything).
It’s interesting to compare kicker and flashback because I think flashback feels better to the player than kicker despite their similarities. It feels good to flashback a card because it pays you for doing what you already want to do: you play a card and then later you get to play it again. Flashback essentially draws you that card again. In contrast, kicker’s bonus is all up front. It offers modality which is good, but there’s an intrinsic bad feeling to a mechanic that creates the fear of missing out. Whenever you play a kicker card without using the kicker cost, it feels like you’re missing out on something despite the fact that the modality of kicker is better than no modality.
I don't consider it as fear-instilling as much as it just forces you to choose ahead of time. That's not necessarily bad design, just creating a decision point that might impact your early or late game.
Great point! Flashback is so good.
@@RegularsarikasMaRo often tells a classic anecdote from the playtesting room in which a 2/2 for 2 had a higher win-rate than the same card with an additional “Kicker: etb with some +1/+1 counters”. His explanation was that player psychology leads them to attempt to maximize the card (paraphrasing, go read blogatog), and that led them to decline the non-kicker option.
Flashback is card advantage because you get the same effect twice from one card.
Flashback removes the actual decision point being made with kicker because (so long as your graveyard isn't removed) you always have the option to flashback no matter what.
Commenting before watching, but: Ah, yes, the old wisdom of "all mechanics are either Horsemanship or Kicker".
Hahaha oh horsemanship 😆
When talking about kicker, I pretty much always go back to MaRo's Kavu Titan story. The basic story is that he was lent a deck to play in an Invasion playtest and went 4-0, not knowing the Grizzly Bears in his deck were supposed to be proxies for Kavu Titan. In the next playtest he went 2-2, which he attributes to holding onto the Kavu Titans to play with kicker.
I think Kicker (and all the variants) are such a trap mechanic. The smart play will often be, like you hinted at, to play the unkicked version. But psychologically it just really sucks to give up the "awesome" version of the card. It's the "eat your vegetables" of MtG. It's deeply unexciting but very necessary. I feel only a subset of very competitive players actually enjoy casting a card without the kicker.
I am not that person. I'm a scrub. Whenever I look at a card with kicker during deckbuilding process, for mana curve analysis, I basically assume that I'll always play the card kicked because it's so deeply unsatisfying to me, to cast it base.
@@paulszki Kicker isn't so much a trap mechanic as it is a skill-testing one, and the same can be said for cycling. The need to decide whether to use the smaller effect now (Playing a spell without the kicker or cycling a card) or holding out for the larger effect appeals to the kind of player who enjoys attempting to play as optimally as possible and reflecting on the decisions they made in a game they just played.
@@connorb33Honestly, I feel like you added nothing to what I already said and just phrased it differently and it's a bit weird.
You don't like the word "trap" and instead use skill-check ... but it's the same idea? Unskilled/scrubby players fall into the trap of "full kicker power if I just get to X mana!" while skilled players don't. Why are you splitting hairs here?
You also said "the kind of player wo enjoys playing optimally" and I said "competitive players enjoy casting a card without kicker" - Again, hair is being split.
Like... why did you basically just say the same thing as me but act like I somehow misunderstood ... my own thoughts? I'm a bit annoyed by this.
@@paulszki the different phrasing changes the overall message. They're saying that they think kicker is a well-designed mechanic for the very same reasons that you think it isn't.
@@jimshotfirst4887I don't think I said anywhere that Kicker ISN'T a well-designed mechanic. I feel like words are being put into my mouth. All I said was basically that I'm a scrub and that I find casting cards unkicked unexciting.
I'm fully aware what the mechanic does and that there are players who enjoy that the nuanced play of a 2/2 vanilla bear for 2 mana in the right situation.
Basically the enjoyment of casting the unkicked version comes from feeling smart because you went against your intuition/smooth brain desire by playing a "weak" version of card and did the "correct play". I understand this perfectly and I'm not judging it at all.
Honestly, where did I give the impression that I think kicker is a bad mechanic?
It is insane to me that they said "everything is kicker and cycling" when anyone who plays the game knows that cycling is just Kicker 1, discard this card: draw a card. Everything is Kicker or HORSEMANSHIP.
We will talk about horsemanship when we talk about keywords. Our point is, kicker is investing in the same strategy more and cycling is pivoting your strategy.
Great video and you make great points, its just the phrase "Everything is Kicker or Horsemanship" is as common as like "reading the card. . . "so its funny to me that yall came so close then changed it last second.
Sidenote, would you consider modal spells or split cards similar to cycling like how you touched on MDFCs? They both are a choice of what you use them for but they're usually relatively similar effects, so instead of choosing a land or a spell its a spell to gain momentum or a spell to stop an opponents momentum (usually)
I get that you're joking, but if you want to be pedantic about it: Kicker means "You may pay an additional [cost] as you cast this spell." So no, you can't actually word cycling as kicker, because kicker means you're still playing the card (you can cast Counterspell on any kicked card) whereas cycling doesn't cast the spell (you can't cast Counterspell on a cycle).
@lightworker2956
The problem here is that in the discussion in the video itself kicker is referred to as additional or alternate costs. Flashback was cited as an example of a mechanic that is just "kicker in the graveyard" which by your rules here wouldn't fly.
The way to look at cycling such that it's equivalent to kicker is that the base cost is a small cost and discard the card to draw a card, or you pay more to play the card instead, for most cycling cards.
In other words, they're boiling kicker down to: any mechanic where you can take one game piece and play it at a lower cost for one effect or higher cost[s] for bigger effect[s].
There are 2 ways of designing kicker that completaly change how you evaluate a card.
1 - You can have a card that is good WITHOUT kicker, and overcosted with the kicker. So you usually play it without paying the kicker cost. But ocasionally, later in the game when you have excess mana, you might decide to pay the kicker just to get a little extra.
2 - You can have a card that is weak WITHOUT kicker, but good with the kicker. So you usually wait to play it with kicker to get the full effect, but ocasionally you might play it sub-optimally if you're desperate.
I think the first way is better. Because in the second case, you always feel bad for "wasting" the card without the kicker.
Good point! Im not sure I would view it as good or bad, just different. In the case where you are forced to play the kicker spell early you would likely feel smart for pivoting from your normal heuristic of waiting to play it.
@@distractionmakers MOST players feel bad. They feel like they are forced to "waste" a card in a sub optimally way.
How It FEELS to play a card is Just as important as the math balance behind it. And so, desiginig a card that often makes players feel bad using It is not a good game design.
@@OrdemDoGraveto Every card in the game has at least somewhat commonly occurring scenarios where they will feel bad to use. Black lotus feels bad to use when you top deck it in vintage cube with no spells to cast. Card have variance, players can misplay, and that is going to feel bad sometimes. It's important to have bad times in a game sometimes, because it makes the times you play or draw well more rewarding. Plus, it's not like kicker cards with bad frontsides always feel bad to cast: Sometimes, getting out a play on curve, even if it is overcosted, can feel amazing.
@@lukaro7074 Thats not the same. Having a card that is situational (and every card is to some extend) is completaly diferent then having a card you can where you can use It in two way, and one of those ways feels like your are wasting the card potential.
Of course thats a common problem. New players often feel bad to spend a burn spell in a target with less health then the spells damage.
But I firmly believe its better to avoid those types of designs in a game as much as posible.
@@OrdemDoGraveto See, that's the thing. They aren't completely different: They just seem completely different if you don't think about it enough. The example you used of a burn spell is actually a great one to illustrate my point:
Burn spells generally serve two purposes, removing creatures and hitting face. Removing a creature is, in most decks, the more powerful use of a burn spell, yet the game will allow you to shoot face at any time if your opponent doesn't have any creatures for you to remove. Shooting face can sometimes feel like you're "wasting" the spell, but it's a decision the game allows you to make, for good reason.
What you have to realize is that decisions between "do I play this now, or do I play it at some other time for a potentially greater reward" are a huge part of the skill element of mtg.
In the same way that players value mana because they have that visceral memory of being colourscrewed, I appreciate cycling on circumstantial cards because many players have a similar memory about having a "dead card" in their hand that they would happily pay two mana for just to be able to trade it for a shot at anything else in their deck.
When you're comparing Nature's Claim against Wilt, the former's raw efficiency makes it a much more competitive card, but the cycling on the latter makes it easier for casual players to put in their decks (and makes for a more appealing limited/cube draft pick).
The way FaB handles the "players want to play their cards" problem is interesting to me. In most games where your cards are resources, the cards become resources permanently. You play them as resources knowing they can never be used again. In FaB, they are pitched into a stack off to the side, then at the end of your turn that pitch stack goes back into your deck. Knowing that you'll be able to use the cards later really softens the blow of not being able to play them immediately and adds a layer of strategy & skill where you can effectively plan out your late game through what you pitch.
We must keep pushing the FaB agenda brother. It makes so many interesting choices that are worth looking into, from the core systems to cards that are hits/misses/busted.
Flashback is a much better keyword because it's not an additional cost. Flashback could be more or less than the original mana cost. Kicker is always more. Flashback gives value to putting cards into your graveyard. Kicker requires it to be cast from hand. I think nothing summarises how much better Flashback is as a keyword than Echo of Eons. For 6 mana, it's not a good card. But for 3 mana, it's Timetwister from the graveyard. Flashback means that the card is enabled by Lion's Eye Diamond, Entomb, Surveil, and any other mechanic that puts cards into the graveyard. Kicker is useless text if a card is in the graveyard.
For sure. Flashback is probably the best mechanic for this reason and that it is much more flavorful.
About ciclying and mana cycling:
Situational cards work well with cycle. Those cards that normally would be in the side board. So If they arent useful right now, you can pay mana to replace It for something that Will probably bê better.
As for mana that can be cycled, they are awsome. You need mana, but If you have too much mana, you can have something else.
Invertedly, cards that can be cycled for mana are a way of correcting a situation If you are mana screwed. But ideally you would prefer to play then as regular cards. Otherwise, why put then in the deck instead of a mana... Of course, ignoring degeneate combos...
Actually
Majority of spells that have land cycling on them are super overcosted things that don't even have an okay effect. The best ones are middling big vanilla or french vanilla beaters, Lorien Revealed and that one that basic land cycles but doesn't say cycling and makes a bunch of beasts. That latter one is pretty much the only land cycler that is actually decent as a spell on it's own.
So, no, ideally you use them as land cyclers and pray that you don't get in a situation where you hope the spell will be good. Which is actually kinda bizarre. I don't know why they decided the land cyclers need to be this way. Not sure why it would be too op to actually have a good card also be a hand smoother if you really need it.
@@tonysmith9905 Oh, yeah. I wasn't clear in my comment as I wrotte it in a rush.
What I meant is that the IDEAL WAY TO DESIGN a cycling card is that. Niche cards that are situanionally good, but otherwise you better pay to replace it with something more useful.
That's what Hearthstone did with the "tradable" cards, for example.
Kicker is such a strange choice for a name, specially for the mentioned "intuitiveness" when teaching the game.
Augmenting the Strength/Effects of a Spell could be better described as Boost, Potentiate, Amplify or such.. Anyway, interesting you didn't mention Multi-Kicker. For me, these 2 are two different ways to do the same mechanic. Kicker usually adds a different effect to a card, while Multi-Kicker allows to get MORE of that spell if you put more resources onto it.. which makes more sense to me (flavor-wise)! Making Multi-Kicker the "Kicker" of mechanics in my brain.
And as a gigantic Kamigawa fan, I would LOVE for you to cover the "parasitic" mechanics introduced there.. Specifically "Splice onto Arcane"!
Which is inherently rich in Flavor, a bit more complex, and an alternate way to add a different effect to a Card (Kicking) without actually printing Kicker onto Cards. I love it, and I'm sad that it hasn't replaced that evergreen Mechanic. I understand the limitations around it, but not even exploring it outright? Feels like a waste.
(Over the years, I lost respect for Mark Rosewater and would for MtG to move away from him.. but it is hard to know exactly what was a Company's mandate, versus his input on the game)
Very narrow mechanics is a good idea for a topic for sure and Splice into Arcane seems like the perfect to start!
As far as MARO is concerned, no designer is going to be perfect. But I don’t think we can forget the amazing impact he’s had on the game. Ravnica, Innistrad, and many others. If I was to critique one thing, I think it might be his philosophy of letting the game go where the players take it. In principle I agree, but the health of the game should come first.
@@distractionmakers Hear hear!
I think the name Kicker might come from the phrase: "and here's the kicker!", something that puts it over the top.
I find it fascinating that games like Magic and Duel Masters set up a sort of “flawed system” in terms of feelings evoked for a casual audience and offers ways to remedy them in designs of mechanics; and these mechanics is where the people find genius in. Duel Masters was mentioned and I recall there were effects that let you bounce cards in your mana zone back to hand as a “drawback”. Competitive players would use cards with this effect in decks where the mana curve would cap out at 4 to be able to play the 4 mana cards for mana early, then pick them up later on once you had the mana to cast them. The Mana evolution mechanic is another take on what you play as mana early matter later on, where you would be able to play undercosted creatures that used a specific creature type card in the mana zone as the “base” of the evolution. Made it so in deck construction and in play sequencing there would be more incentive for even casual players to use their shiny cool cards as mana if it meant they were trying to enable yet another shines cool card that cared about the mana zone so the end result would be an “Aha” feeling rather than a forced hand.
You guys mentioned the importance of some “on-rails” for games to have for the Artifact episodes; to reduce decision points for the base game to have an easier accessibility. Im starting to realize that the base game having this design (for accessibility) while individual cards providing more decision points is a key part of making a game that drives long time player interest. Instead of making a game that tries to be perfect at base, make it a puzzle for the player to solve and slowly feed them more and more game pieces to solve it.
Interestingly, there is also a small clique of mechanics that are the opposite of Kicker -- all flavor, no substance. Like "Haunt", which is a pretty weak and uninteresting mechanic. Judging by myself, however, the feeling of disappointment over both ends of this spectrum differ (even if we assume the same quantitative degree of disappointment, the quality is different): whereas with no-flavor mechanics like Kicker I feel "it's simply lame", while with all-flavor-no-substance things like Haunt, I feel a bit "robbed/betrayed" that they couldn't come up with something better, or in lieu of that (since it's very hard to come up with a good mechanic), at least make the individual instances of the Haunt mechanic in action way stronger, so it feels consequential.
That’s a great point. We will be talking more about mechanical flavor in the near future. Haunt would be a good one for the list.
I have to agree with Mark Rosewater here. Kicker and cycling really are the best. They do add decision points and complexity to the game and generally smooth out some of the frustration of having uneven mana. In the terms you use, they replace the variance that feels kind of bad with a variance that feels good. They're only as flavorless or flavorful as the main premise of the game already is. When you're paying a kicker cost you're drawing on more mana or different mana to make a spell or creature more powerful. When you're cycling you're having something pass by or go away to help you start something else (Amonkhet took this a step further and gave cycling a graveyard theme.)
the term "here's the kicker" or "the real kicker is" is where kicker comes from.
"an extra clause in a contract." being the formal defenition
The legal name is an escalator clause.
You got THIS close to realizing tutoring is just cycling without the variance
Tutoring is still boring
Cycling as a mechanic is so funny because it genuinely feels like giving up on a card that you were sure would be good.
Cycling is fun because in the most powerful formats, it's used for no reason other than to reduce the number of cards in your deck. In vintage and legacy, the Doomsday combo deck wants to remove its entire library to win with Thassa's Oracle, which requires close to an empty library to give an automatic win. Cycling reduces the number of cards in your library, therefore it is good. The additional text on the card is entirely irrelevant. You only care that it cycles.
In Commander I have found Cycling to be useful enabling a deck to have a critical mass of relevant effects while also providing to look for others. In the higher variance environment ditching your second gun looking for ammo can be crucial, or vice versa tossing some ammo to look for a gun. This is very important for decks that are trying to start a 3 part engine/combo because youre more able to dig without running cards that are just digging cards. You have a card that fits 1/3rd of your plan and if not can try to get another part.
Seeing WotC starting to group certain things for Outlaws of Thunder Junction, I'm curious what the game would be like if they did away with Kicker as a keyword ability and used it instead as a blanket concept for any re-flavoured Kicker keyword. Part of me would love how broken "kicker matters" cards would be. Also, tutoring is just targetted Cycling. The math checks out.
Saying kicker is flavorless is wild. Kicker is just putting more power (mana) into the spell
Calling everything kicker is also useless. You’re just warping the game states to fit this example. You could just as easily say that everything is a spell
"Everything is kicker and horsemanship" is just an old MTG phrase/joke. Flashback is just delayed kicker. Buyback is just infinite kicker. Cycling is just draw kicker. Bargain is just sac kicker. X spells are just multikicker. If there's an alternate way or cost to cast, it's just ____ kicker.
My issue with Kicker is the worry that it becomes countered if you invest that extra bit into it. Splice into Arcane sees a similar issue and functions similarly to Kicker in concentrating mana into a single powerful spell.
Flashback can be similarly countered, but it usually requires two counters to fully counter it. Even still, Flashback has a little more flexibility as you can pitch them for discard or mill and they'll still be live in the grave.
Cycling is great for being nearly uncounterable draw and the counters to activated abilities generally wouldn't waste that extra mana to stop a Cycling.
I like Surge mechanically though a majority of the cards printed weren't worth the investment, but there are a couple gems in the pool.
I wish Raid got development leaning towards cards like Admiral's Orders where they can be battle techniques for reduced costs. Alternatively, spells doing more in combat while you're on the aggression would be cool. Like a instant burn spell that gives your creature first strike or trample if you've attacked this turn.
That would actually be a really cool kicker affect, ensuring a powerful spell can't be countered. Something like 5 mana to do X, kicker 2 or bargain a creature or something to add uncounterable. Only see two cards with both kicker and uncounterable, but that's just on the base spell.
Seen a few videos now, all focused on ccg design. I used to play one called Duel of Summoners, also known as Mabinogi Duel. Since the game is long defunct, I suppose there's no reason to talk about it, but the interesting part of that game was the 'deck' you built, was your starting hand. I'm just wondering how necessary the deck is to card games, since a lot of the deck building and strategy is ironing out the rng of card draws (mana curves, Yu-Gi-Oh's archetypes and tutoring, etc). But with no deck, it means you play your strategy the same way every game, not as much improvisation.
It wasn't a good nor balanced game by the way. Mono colored decks were straight up unplayable due to the game's resource system.
All mechanics are parasitic. All of them benefit when combined with other specific mechanics, card types and deck building elements. Buyback needs a good amount of mana with as few competing mana sinks as possible. Equipment / equip needs creatures. Individual energy cards are self sustaining but they're obviously a lot better with other energy cards.
Parasitism is a spectrum but the distinction between parasitic, non-parasitic, linear, narrow as these defined categories is mostly meaningless beyond a sort of philosophical thought experiment. It's only relevant from a design perspective and from that view there are more useful ways to think about and categorize different mechanics and game elements. Magic set design is rarely rigid categories. It's often not even that useful to look at things on a spectrum. It's more useful to look at things as points on a flow chart. There is only so much time in the day to dissect abstract nuance where you'll inevitably have to rely on assumptions largely based on things outside the game. It's better to take simple game elements and concepts and begin experimenting and making an actual mechanical framework with them because in this space, you can always take things apart. It's less about what's right or wrong and more about what's useful and not useful.
When you design mechanics, you want to focus on how much design space each of those mechanics allows for and what those spaces look like next to one another - the flow chart. This will help guide the construction of your limited archetypes. You also need to do things like balance synergy which starts with recognizing what you want out of a mechanic and want you don't want. You don't want hegemony but you also don't want isolation. Balance is the core of design.
Rosewater isn't that great at talking about this stuff. He's been the head of the biggest TCG for decades so he has a lot of interesting things to say but that doesn't mean it's always useful. He's very philosophical, psychological and very wedded to procedure which, let's be honest, pales in comparison to scientific thinking when it comes to delivering results in any technical, bottom up design space. We are in an era that is in many ways defined by this recognition. Rosewater is very much an institutional guy who reminds me of an econ person going on about supply side economics. That stuff's gone the way of the dinosaurs in terms of credibility. We're in a new age of understanding and experimental development that ditches rigid adherence to vague categorization attempts and presumptive formulas. Don't climb someone else's tower, piece together your own mosaic.
"Lois would you listen to me? Extort is extort. Kicker could be anything! It could even be extort!"
But in all seriousness, Rosewater was mostly correct when he said that kicker wasn't even really a mechanic, it was moreso an entire game design concept. Any additional or alternate cost could be recontextualized as kicker. If anything could be kicker, kicker itself becomes fairly meaningless. "You may pay an alternate or additional cost, which could be almost anything, to get an alternate or additional effect, which can also be almost anything" is bad for both theming and gameplay conveyance/clarity.
Divvying up kicker-like mechanics based on minutiea is good practice. Are you paying more mana of the same colour, or an additional colour? Are you paying more mana or an additional resource? Are you paying a resource in addition to or instead of the base mana cost? Does this amplify the basic effect or does this provide a new effect? Dividing mechanics up based on these questions helps give the block/set/gameplay environment more of an identity and helps players immediately "get" what's going on. If your mechanics are more constrained, it also means minor deviations from it are more meaningful. Imagine if they released a mythic ninja, and instead of mana its ninjutsu cost required you to pitch cards from your hand. This feels like a cool and unique bend if all other ninjutsu costs are mana. This gets lost in the shuffle in ninjutsu costs are all non-standard across the board anyway.
Another thing that occasionally happens with kicker-like mechanics is that, often, one of the two modes (almost always the non-kicker mode) is markedly worse than the other mode. There will inevitably be situations where playing the card without kicking it is the correct play, but typically that's 1) because the opponent forced your hand and you had to to not immediately lose and 2) feels like a non-standard game over or loss to the player anyway because they lost access to the good version of the card.
I occassionally play Magic but my big game is LoR. LoR has a few kicker-like mechanics, but one of the big defining features of a lot of them is that instead of paying an additional or alternate resource you have, you need to meet a condition on board your opponent can attempt to disrupt or the gamestate can prohibit. "Get an additional effect if you've dealt damage to the enemy player this turn". "Get an additional effect if this is/isn't the first card you've played this game". Etc.
As a Yugioh player I find this discussion of flavor fascinating because we don’t have keyworded effects. It actually annoys me when mechanics are similar but need different keywords for minor mechanical or flavor reasons. The difference between For Mirrordin and Living Weapon or Morph being turned into Disguise just to add ward 2 feels like a waste when the keyword will only ever exist in one set. It also requires an entirely new set of draft chaff to be created just to give normal interactions but tailored to that keyword.
Functionally all effects boil down to either card advantage, resource advantage, or manipulating the game state. Card advantage effects include summoning, tutoring, recursion, and removal (including floodgates). Gamestate manipulation includes life management, scrying, shuffling, and other information based actions. Resource management is tied the efficiency of mana production.
5:27 different flavors of kicker are better narratively and for pure flavor's sake I suppose but, gameplay wise it's unnecessarily insular when overload and cleave don't work with kicker support cards like Hallar, the Firefletcher. So we have 20 different versions of kicker by another name and none of them can work with each other's keyword specific supports. I wish they were all just named kicker.
Kicker could have been called Empower, where the spellcasting player (The player being a mage in a game of Magic) is putting in additional mana for additional power. Probably would have sold the mechanic more.
I get what you're saying about discarding a big cool card feeling bad, but what I love about cycling is it allows for big, dumb, janky cards to actually be playable, since they don't get stuck in your hand when you need a fast answer. So while it may be more of a feels bad for brand new players, I think it adds a lot for those of intermediate skill/experience that still care about "doing cool stuff", and not just winning. It also allows a them to print an effect and still have the card be playable, without pushing the stats or mana cost super hard just to let it compete with other low commitment cards.
Shark Typhoon is the perfect example for me. The fact that it cycles is the only reason that it sees play and something like Arcane Bombardment or Thousand Year Storm doesn't. Yes, in powerful formats like modern and legacy, most cycling cards are only ever cycled and not played, but that's not the case in standard, or even pioneer. I think such old formats with so much complexity and such massive card pools are nearly impossible to design for, as pretty much none of those decks even play by the normal rules of magic.
what kinda failure rate is acceptable for a hand, is it like 5-10% I get screwed and never make my 3rd land drop, or is it more if I make that 3rd land drop I win 85-90% of my games?
Type cycling is really good. It's like a form of tutoring.
It so dumb that new players aren't encouraged to play limited.
Constructed is way too boring and complicated for new players. Limited is so much more approachable and is so much better of a teaching tool for core mechanics
As a filthy casual I can attest that I built a wheel deck in EDH and hated it cause I didn't wanna discard my stuff even though I knew I was getting better stuff
This is going to be a classic!
I just never liked kicker or cycling because of their lack of flavor imo
Here I am just finished with GDC for the day, getting more mechanical talk on TH-cam than at the actual conference...
Haha aw man, I wish we were there! Maybe next year.
I love overload, like a 2 mana spell for spot removal and a overcosted Boardwipe
What happened to the videos about tutor spells? I went to look them up but I can't find them. Meant to watch them awhile ago but never got around to it
We took them down because ultimately they were a discussion framed in a way that doesn’t suit the channel. We want to discuss things from a design perspective and not from a strategy perspective. Those video crept too far into strategy. We will probably do a new tutor video in the future that is focusing on the design aspects.
Also I was reminded of this because of a KS alert, but did either of you see the "Flawed TCG"?
Go look it up. It's mechanic is so insane I had to purchase a copy just to prove in the future it existed. (I still regret not getting any Hecatomb.)
cycling lands is very much a thing in standard
When talking about landcycling, you mentioned that the main strength of them vs MTDF lands is the deck thinning. I would beg to differ, the main strength in my opinion is that the cycler still exists as a secondary game object, for things like delve or reanimate.
Why not both? 😄
@distractionmakers the percentage points you gain from thinning 1 land from your deck are so marginal that it isn't worth considering. Lorien revealed delves for murktide, troll gets reanimated, these are the things that make them better than if they were an MDFC, the others see next to no play, since they are not as good at doing the things mentioned above. Additionally, due to the existence of dual lands, they can fetch any colours if you've constructed your deck correctly, whereas the mdfc spell lands are only 1 colour, and are therefore far less flexible.
Interesting the riddle of "first 'any card' resource system." I think you may be right on "cards from hand" but long before that, there was the Star Wars CCG - which actually used the deck itself as the resource in a fun and clever little system. (which also meant as you drew, you could end up cutting down how much you can spend)
This discussion made me realize Kicker can often be bad "Lenticular Design" (see Maro's article with that title).
One of my favorite design jokes is the Resounding X cycle, where Kicker is wearing a Cycling suit.
Was really fun to hear this referencing Rosewater's top 10. Was just listening to that, kinda freaky.
The "modality" framing is a really fun lens to apply to our game "Mori Carta" where we split every card but you only play one at a time. Hadn't thought about it as a form of kicker. There are cards that your opponent can sacrifice something to change the effect of (an "either or" card) which is kinda like a kicker in reverse and also similar to the way we implement enemy cards.
Morph is basically flashback
Yeah it sucks to cycle a card even if it's right to do so. Cycling a land away in the late game to find a spell feels a lot better. The front of the card does feel like the main function of the card, even if the card might be cycled more than played.
I will say that thinning a deck of one land is basically a non-factor in the vast majority of cases in competitive play. It's a minor bonus if you needed to land-cycle in the first place, but should almost never factor into the decision of whether to land-cycle vs play a card. Removing 1 card is just too little of an effect. It's similarly usually bad to crack a fetch to thin a deck because in most cases 1 life is worth more than thinning 1 card.
Except it's never just 1 land. You got fetches, ramp and land cyclers that all compound upon one another. By the time you get to the point that you think trying to thin the deck more might be a good idea it wouldn't be unheard of to say you've already pulled 5 lands from the deck.
And who the heck is cracking a fetch to only thin the deck? That's just a bonus on making sure you have perfect mana. Sure, fetches might contribute to your death over the course of a game, but usually it's about 3 maybe 4 life. Unless you're going against an aggro or burn deck it probably won't be the actual cause of your loss.
@@tonysmith9905 I'm talking about the situation where you might crack a fetch to only thin a deck and saying that's I think it's usually wrong to do so in that spot. If you've drawn all the lands you need and maybe cracked 3 fetches already, should you crack a 4th just for the thinning? I'd say that no you shouldn't
@@EYPriest Then you'd be wrong. You said yourself in that situation you made that you've already got all the mana you need, so fetching to thin is actually super important so you don't draw a dead card. You wanna thin so that you keep drawing gas. 1 life doesn't matter as much as drawing dead and losing your tempo. That will kill you faster. In all the formats that fetches are legal in you can't afford a turn off no matter what deck you're playing.
And you could sit here and make hypotheticals all day long and keep adding "oh but there's this caveat I forgot to add to the scenario". But at the end of the day every one cracks their fetches not caring about the life unless in a specific match up, thinning only being an after thought.
@@tonysmith9905 Yeah I understand the logic of deck thinning and I disagree that's it's correct to do so. I agree that's it's very common to see people value thinning over life, but I think it's a common mistake and that you will find that the strongest players generally do care about their life more than they care about the thinning. I understand that others will have different opinions of course.
Kicker is so weird. It feels like a modern mechanic rather than an old one. "Oh we want every card to do everything. I know, slap kicker (2): do something completely unrelated. Bam we're the best".
I think Eternal (which is just digital MTG tbh) does it strictly better precisely because it's made with digital in mind. The mechanic is called Spellcraft, it's attached to creatures and it goes like "Spellcraft X: spell". You spend X extra mana on top of the creature's cost, and the creature casts Spell (which are instants/sorceries). This makes more sense thematically, as the creature itself is doing something by spending extra resources, and by being digital you just get a reminder of what the spell does by hovering over the creature. It's fundamentally kicker as what the creature does and what the spell does don't really have anything to do with each other but somehow it feels way less "random"
I feel like the part about cycling that makes it a bit easier to get over in mtg than some other games is just the importance of cantrips.
Like Opt is a bangin card that your already running, so would you run a slightly worse opt that is also another card.
Although i did come from yugioh, where stuff like Upstart Goblin was banned even though its just a card that says "Cycle: Your opponent gains 1k life".
I think cycle is exceptionally for cards like lands or utility, with my example of a card I have played purely due to cycling being Wilt.
An entire mechanic built loosely around the idiom: "and here's the kicker" while completely misunderstanding the meaning of it...
The only disadvantage to kicker is that the modality of kicker is an illusion 95% of the time so the bonus of having the flexiability only really matters 1/20 times (which is still technically 5% better, but still). You really only use it for its base effect or its kicker in most situations. The flavor argument is for micro brains that like keyword accretion rather than a concise ruleset. Its also important to allow players to see under the hood so experienced people know what to look for in good cards.
Wizards needs to stop pulling keywords out of their ass and use the tools that already exist creatively, that is all.
Hmm I see what you’re saying, but mechanics can be both flavorful and efficient. Flashback is a great example.
@@distractionmakers Its not about flavor, its clarity, they have reprinted what is essentially kicker with a new keyword like a dozen times now, its hollow and adds unneccessary complexity when the rules should stay as accessable as possible. Accretion is a very real thing and it has to be carefully managed.
While I agree that there are too many "just kicker" effects, some are actually useful in my opinion. Like cleave is a bad one right, since it's just kicker but it also makes the text box ugly. But I think something like overload is good because it actually gives someone useful information quickly. If someone asks you what a card does and you say "2 damage to a creature, also you can overload it for 6" that tells them everything they need to know (if they already know overload of course) without you having to explain what kicking it actually does (and kicking it could do nearly anything).