• June 3rd, 2009
  • Unified Attacks

Hi Chaotic fans, this week we’re bringing you not one, not two, but three Forged Unity preview articles! Today I’ll show you some new Attack cards from the set and discuss a bit about card cycles.

Let’s first start off with some history since it’ll be relevant as we go on. I started working here at TC Digital in February 2007 as the Organized Play Manager before Chaotic was even released. When I joined the company Dawn of Perim was almost complete with about a month of final tweaking left. I can still remember that first week getting to look at all of the cool card designs that would make up the first set of Chaotic. Over the next few months I became more familiar with the game and design team when I wasn’t working on Organized Play initiatives. During this time Zenith of the Hive was designed and completed and I was only able to observe its development.

At the beginning of the Silent Sands development process, David Baumgartner joined the company as the Lead Games Designer and invited me to help design and develop the set. I was stoked! It was the first time I had ever been able to work on a TCG set before. The experience was amazing, and I am proud to say that two of my designs made it into the set, Kalt and Enre-hep. Over the course of the next year I helped out on M’arrillian Invasion: Beyond the Doors, Rise of the Oligarch, and Turn of the Tide. At the start of the Forged Unity design process, Organized Play and TCDOP.com began picking up steam and I was no longer able to help with the game design and development. While I miss the days of designing and playtesting new cards to always push the envelope of Chaotic design, I am extremely excited about Forged Unity and the direction the Game Design Team took it.

While I didn’t end up working on this set, I was privy to its development throughout the process and from the very beginning I was excited about the new Attack card cycles. What is a card cycle you ask? It is a series of cards of the same type that share similar mechanics but with slight variations on each. Card cycles show up across all card types and help to tie the themes and mechanics of a set together. A great example of an Attack card cycle is the Incinerase cycle, which also includes Hurlicane, Sunder Ground, and Liquescent Swirl. I’ve always been fond of card cycles and Attacks are probably my favorite. Today I’ll show you cards from two different Attack card cycles, one pure and one indirect.  

     

Both Interthink and Heartsync are from a pure Attack card cycle, meaning that the cycle has almost perfect symmetry, outside of the final effect. All cards in this cycle are 3 build cost Rares, have 15 base damage, are non-elemental, and contain a Stat Check [Discipline] 75 for a unique ability. This cycle takes a different approach than some previous 3 build cost Attacks. It gives up some of the damage potential in exchange for excellent abilities. In general you’ll be giving up about 15 damage for these Attacks, but these potentially game changing abilities should make up the difference nicely.

Interthink allows you to place a Mugic Counter on any Creature in play as long as your engaged Creature has at least 75 Wisdom. This ability fits perfectly in the Wisdom section of the current Chaotic Color Pie as Wisdom is the discipline most associated with Mugic Counter movement, generation, and manipulation which can be seen in older cards like Castle Pillar. Interthink will not only allow you to increase the total Mugic count of your army, it can even be comboed with cards that trigger off a Creature gaining a Mugic counter such as Najarin, Fluidmorphers Foe or Grand Hall of Muge’s Summit. Try adding Interthink to an army if you’re looking for a repetitive way to gain extra counters or if your Creatures don’t start with enough naturally.

Heartsync is the Courage version of this Attack card cycle, allowing you to burn the topdecking hopes and dreams of your foes. If your engaged Creature has at least 75 Courage, you’ll get to preview and mess with your opponent’s attack deck! Playing Heartsync is always a slight risk, because you could be staring at two weak Attack cards, one of which will be placed on the bottom of the deck and potentially speeding up your opponent’s critical Attack cards to the top of the deck, but there are inherent upsides if the two cards are on the opposite ends of the harmful spectrum. Besides having one of my favorite pieces of Attack card art in the set (go Skithia!), I have a special appreciation for Heartsync’s ability. Way back in Silent Sands design I proposed a new mechanic that was similar in nature but was never used. It’s always good to see your ideas used eventually, even if they just inspired a different idea.

One of the design goals we had with Chaotic in the M’arrillian Invasion block is to encourage people to play with higher build cost attacks. During the Dawn of Perim Metagame, the card designs were such that it was most optimal to play what the Codemasters and I like to call 6-8-6 Attack deck builds. These builds featured 6 0-point Attacks, 8 1-point Attacks, and 6 2-point Attacks which sought to maximize both total damage and damage spikes. To put it simply, there just weren’t enough 3+ build cost Attacks that were worth playing if you were trying to optimize. Cycles such as the Interthink cycle above or the Flaming Coals cycle are good examples of where we tried to achieve this goal in 2 slightly separate ways. There is however the unfortunate side effect of making a small number of old cards obsolete by introducing these new cards, but we feel the game and play experience are better for it.

Game Design is a tricky process; something I quickly learned is that one of the biggest challenges the team faces with each set is to design and develop cards that are new and exciting but don’t always make old cards obsolete. While this must happen over time as I just discussed, it can’t happen too frequently or on a wide scale. One of the best ways this can be accomplished is to design cards that are twists on older mechanics or cards that can be used in conjunction with or instead of old cards without making them obsolete. The indirect Attack card cycle I’m gonna show you today will explore this type of card design.

     

Indirect cycles can sometimes be tricky to spot because they are not as symmetrical as their pure cycle comrades. An indirect cycle will usually share a common theme or themes, but will have more varying attributes between the cards in the cycle. The Sirocco cycle cards are rare, single element, and an elemental effect of the same element (besides Fire Ring, discussed below). 

Sirocco is a great addition to the Air attack arsenal. It can fit in almost any Air deck, and I expect to see it popping up in Warbeast and Mipedian decks soon after its release. Ravita Flower, Nexus Fuse, Warriors of Owayki, Orb of Foresight, the list goes on and on. There are numerous Battlegear that beg to be face up outside of combat and this attack can help get you there quicker. When I first learned to play Chaotic I was frustrated by the fact that Mugician’s Lyre, and a few other cards, were really only useful on a front line fighter since they didn’t start the game face up and back in Dawn of Perim there wasn’t a good way to flip them up without getting the equipped Creature into combat. There has since been numerous cards across multiple types that solve this problem, but adding to that suite of tools can always bring out new and exciting decks, especially when you don’t have to pay a resource for the effect as you do with most of the others.

Fire Ring is a potentially devastating attack with 10 Fire damage at 0 build cost, but it has a nasty drawback which deals 10 damage to your creature as well when played. Fire Ring is a great example of a new card design that can be used in conjunction with or instead of older cards without making those old cards obsolete. These types of designs look to offer players choices when building and playing their decks. For example, Fire Ring and Incinerase are both 0-point attacks with 10 Fire damage and a drawback. Each card has its own advantages and disadvantages which are strong in their own right. These cards can exist in the Metagame together because of these differences, offering players more choices yet not making one of them obsolete. Just be careful when playing Fire Ring, cards like Rhyme of the Reckless, Fighter’s Fanfare, and Melody of Mirage are increasingly painful when they are used against you playing this card. Melody of Mirage will not take away the triggered damage that you’ll be taking from Fire Ring’s ability, only the damage you’ll be dealing, ouch!

As you can see indirect card cycles can have a wide range of flexibility, but that’s what makes them work. The Sirocco cycle has 2 0-point and 2 1-point cards ranging in damage from 0-10 (printed), and one doesn’t even have the element trigger for its ability. So what’s the reason for the removed trigger on Fire Ring? To make the drawback even worse, so that if you lose Fire, you’ll still get hit with the 10 damage! This flexibility allows us to continually design and develop new and exciting cards for you to enjoy!

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these new and exciting Attacks from Forged Unity! Join us at a Pre-Release event on June 13th or 14th to play with the cards before they’re released! I am super excited for the Pre-Release because I have not had a chance to play with Forged Unity cards yet, and while I can’t play in an event since I’ll be running the San Diego Pre-Release event, you can bet I’ll be joining the other Codemasters for some Forged Unity Sealed Deck games at the office over the next few weeks!

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