Evening Out an Odd Couple; or, Melvin, Vorthos, Legendary, and YOU

I've been quiet for a while, mainly due to being busy for other reasons, but let's just jump right in the deep end. In his article this week, Mark Rosewater outlines the design issues with the legendary rule, but also asks an open question:

How can the Legend rule be better?

With a question like that, how can I resist attempting a little freelance game design?

He gives these problems and these criteria:

Problems:

• It's an All-Downside Mechanic
• It Creates Dead Draws
• It Leads to Unfun Game Play
• It Encourages People to Play Them as Answers

Criteria:

• "We want the supertype to refer to a card that is something unique. For creatures, that means that this is a specific humanoid or animal—a character."

• "The execution of the supertype has to make some logical sense storywise. Legendary is as much about flavor as it is mechanics, so anything we do mechanically has to make sense flavorwise. Sometimes we are willing to gloss over flavor to get better game play. This is not one of those cases."

• "The new rules for legendary have to make intuitive sense. When you explain the new rules, players need to feel that the explanation makes sense in that what it does feels like what it should do. I have spent numerous articles talking about the importance of mechanics feeling right. This is doubly so with the legendary supertype."

• "The new rules have to be easy to explain. Solutions that hit the first three criteria but would take several paragraphs to explain aren't going to work. The idea has to be straightforward and relatively simple."

Before I get to a couple ideas I've got, think about this: What does it mean to cast a creature? In general, a summoning doesn't mean that you are actually taking the creature from where it is and transplanting it on the battlefield; rather, you are summoning the essence of a creature. This can be seen in the webcomic "The Hunter and the Veil" where Garruk takes on the aspect of a beast he fights to use again in future battles. The question is, does this same process hold for legendary creatures too? And should it?

So for my prospective mechanics, in addition to the above criteria, I also want to know: "Does this tell us anything about how legendary creatures are summoned?"

You may be thinking, "That sounds like you're trying to hard to apply Vorthos to what is essentially a Melvin issue." And you are partially right. Obviously, good gameplay has to take precedent. But for something like legendary, flavor is as important as the mechanic itself. In fact, flavor is so tied in to the essential idea of being legendary that it's basically the only reason that we even want to have such a mechanic. Without flavor, there would be practically no reason to have legendary creatures.

Aside: But what about design space? What about cards that want to be limited to one copy in play? And my answer is that such design space is not good design space. You don't want to need a "safety valve" on your cards. The fun part of legends IS the flavor; using the legend rule as a meta-mechanic is fun about as far as Brothers Yamazaki (which itself is a very flavorful implementation), and doesn't actually have much interesting space past that.

So here we go: Can we achieve the perfect fabled harmony between Melvin and Vorthos? Well.... probably not. But it's good to take on challenge, especially an improbable one.

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Proposal 1: Reversal of Fortune

"As a legendary permanent comes into play, put each other permanent with the same name as that permanent into the graveyard the next time state-based triggers are checked."

What does this mean?

In this implementation, we're imagining the summoning of a legend to be pulling it (or its essence) from wherever it is (or from the Æther) to the battlefield in front of you. And since a legend's essence is unique (as opposed to random Grizzly Bear #251), if it's already on the battlefield, you yank it away and take it for yourself. Too bad for the mage across from you who thought Swordguy, the Swordfisted was working for him; he's bound to your will now.

Does this fit the criteria?

Yup! There's only ever one guy, and it's pretty intuitive: you cast it, you get it.

As rules and intuition go, it's basically the same as the original legend rule, but reversed. While that's not as intuitively obvious as the current ones, it's pretty well understood. For the corner case of a legend coming into play at the same time as another one, the easy carryover from the original rule is that both go to the graveyard, which seems reasonable.

Does this solve the problems?

It's an All-Downside Mechanic: Kind of... It's better than the original rule in that you can't get locked out of your legend when the other guy has it, and it's better than the current rule in that you get to keep your legend when you play it on top of your opponent's, but both of those are essentially trade-offs - in each of those cases, it's worse for your opponent.

It Creates Dead Draws: Ehh... It lets you replace your legend if he gets Arrested or infected, but that's only a very marginally less dead draw. Still, it's something? Right?

It Leads to Unfun Game Play: Fixed! Ish... It at least means that legends get to see more play in the case where both players have the legend. And there's the potential for some back-and-forth in multiples. Still, you can imagine how un-fun it is for your opponent to steal your awesome legend.

It Encourages People to Play Them as Answers: So not fixed. Well, can't "kinda-win" them all.

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Proposal B: Mana Clash

"If more than one legendary permanent with the same name are in play, each of those permanent' controllers bid mana for that permanent in APNAP order. Whoever bids the most mana pays that amount and each other permanent is put into its owner's graveyard as a state-based action."

What does this mean?

Like before, this implementation is about wresting control of a legend from your opponent. In this version though, doing so means you have to fight your opponent, putting up enough mana to break whatever magical bonds (or bonds of loyalty) are keeping the legend on his or her side.


Does this fit the criteria?

Check! It's essentially the same explanation as the above one. The only thing is... auctions. There aren't many auction cards, and there's good reason for that. Auctions are complicated. While they're basically intuitive they're still not too great to try to run. So it's got that against it. But it's still pretty interesting and flavorful, and maybe that's worth it.

Does this solve the problems?

It's an All-Downside Mechanic: Eh. It's probably marginally better since your opponent will have to pay extra, but it's still pretty much all downside.

It Creates Dead Draws: This is basically the same as above.

It Leads to Unfun Game Play: This is better! It gives both sides a fair shot at legends, whether you played it first or not.

It Encourages People to Play Them as Answers: Yes and no. It's no longer a perfect answer though, so it's definitely not as encouraged.

Aside: Proposal 1.5 and/or Æ: Spectral Shift

"As a legendary permanent comes into play under your control, if another permanent with the same name is in play, put each other permanent with that name into its owner's graveyard. Then put this permanent into the graveyard unless you pay 2."

This is kind of in between the previous two. Really, there's a whole spectrum of mechanics between Proposal 1's simply taking and Proposal B's bidding war. In addition to the flat fee, there's the Prophecy block's Rhystic "I get this unless you pay" or even Excise's "I'll pay X, match it or I get this."

All of these are very close, and some of them are pretty interesting, but they all fall in a pretty close range of the above in terms of meeting the criteria and solving the issues.

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Proposal iii: Command of Unsummoning

"If more than one legendary permanent with the same name is in play, put each of them into the command zone. As long as they are in the command zone, their owners may play them. If they do, put all other cards in the command zone with the same name into their owner's graveyard"

What does this mean?

The command zone! Okay, I can't resist new tech. Yes, yes, I can hear the sighs already. "But Chriiiiis," you whine. "The command zone is for Commander. Blah bloh froth and so on." But really, isn't this functionality at least a little bit close to how Commanders work right?

This one is less flavorfully fleshed out, but the flavorful _feel_ is there, at least mechanically. When you summon the second instance of a legend, they phase out (but not like that other "phasing out") and wait until some wizard is able to resummon them and tie them to this reality, resolving the... let's call it "quantum paradox."

Does this fit the criteria?

Yes. The only thing that might be tough is that it's a bit confusing, but it is definitely at least somewhat intuitive for Commander players. The going to the graveyard once one is played is also sort of patched in there, but to me, at least, it feels right.


Does this solve the problems?

It's an All-Downside Mechanic: No more than the current one is. I guess it's slightly better in that you get to possibly recast it later, but it's definitely still a downside at least as much as Echo, if not more.

It Creates Dead Draws: Still true.

It Leads to Unfun Game Play: Again, this is pretty close to the current rule, but with that loophole of recasting it. The problem is, if you have to cast your guy to stop theirs, but they just recast it on their turn, it's definitely going to suck.

It Encourages People to Play Them as Answers: Since it's not really a great answer, unless it's a really cheap legend, this is probably mitigated.

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Proposal Fish: Feedback

"If a legendary permanent would go to the graveyard from the battlefield, put each other legendary permanent with the same name as that permanent into its owner's graveyard."

What does this mean?

Credit where it's due, this one is a joint effort between me and my brother. The idea is mainly his, but I've refined it a little and kept it from getting... let's say, "a little complex."

This is meant to represent something entirely different from the others. Rather than summoning a unique being, we're pulling an instance of the legend "out of the timestream." And when you muck about in time, things have this tendency to go wrong. If anything were to happen to past-legend or future-legend, their timeline collapses - either past-legend never becomes future-legend, causing future-legend to never exist, or future-legend dies and past-legend dies when he becomes future-legend. Which, I guess, is now? Whenever now is? It's... not completely worked out, I admit.

Weird. Time. Shit.

Does this fit the criteria?

Sort of? Technically, the legend is unique, just from different points in time. And even if the flavor is convoluted, the mechanics of it are... basically intuitive. If you don't ask questions about the mechanism of time travel. Or why we are time travelling to begin with. Just go with it.

Does this solve the problems?

It's an All-Downside Mechanic: Sure. The downside is mitigated pretty strongly. Playing out your single legend has nearly no consequences and the possibility of losing your legend is low if you're careful.

It Creates Dead Draws: Mostly solved. While you might not want to lay down your second legend out of fear for getting 2-for-1'd, you can if you want to live on the edge.

It Leads to Unfun Game Play: If you get 2-for-1'd sure, but I'd call the gameplay fun, if not vastly different from anything before it.

It Encourages People to Play Them as Answers: Apart from complicated stuff like sacrificing your legend to kill theirs, people would not really be playing legends as answers to themselves.

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Obviously, it's not going to be easy to find a solution that fixes all the problems. Many of them are in conflict with each other and many are just fighting against the whole idea of the legendary supertype. But out of all of these, the one that I think strikes the most balance between simplicity, intuition, and gameplay is probably going to be something in Proposal 1.5/Æ , halfway between the auction and the control-switch. I feel that if the right cost could be determined, it would create interactivity that isn't too complex, and still "Feels Right (TM)."

So, can Melvin and Vorthos ever be friends? Bestest friends who adopt the poor, orphaned legendary mechanic and raise it as their own? I certainly hope so, and I'm looking forward to finding out.