Thursday, October 18, 2007

Discard That Card - MTG Forge Update

A new version of MTG Forge is out with 14 more cards, including some Lorwyn cards. Download it from here

For whatever reason the card Thoughtseize intrigued me so I decided to add it to MTG Forge. Thoughtseize is a Lorwyn card that follows Black’s variations on “choosing a card in your opponents hand and making him discard it.” Thoughtseize says, “Target player reveals his or her hand. You choose a nonland card from it. That player discards that card. You lose 2 life.” So for one black mana you get to make your opponent discard something good, that it is worth giving up 2 life. In my short playtesting with it I made my opponent discard a planeswalker that killed me in the previous game. That felt really satisfying seeing Garruk Wildspeaker in the graveyard.

Since I programmed Thoughtsneeze, I might as well add some cards with the same ability because I could just cut-and-paste most of the code. So I fired up Apprentice to look for cards and found that Distress was essential the same card; it only costs B more and doesn’t have any life loss. They say that old Magic cards don’t die, they just are reincarnated. It is intriguing to see a common remade as a rare but maybe it happens all the time.

Ok, back to discard, I also added Cranial Extraction, Coercion, and Distress. So black now has 4 more quality discard spells to add to his arsenal. And just a word of warning, the computer will always remove something good with Cranial Extraction so beware.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

your the man.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your cool program. It's the coolest stuff since Magic Shandalar.
I don't know if you care, but it would be nice to play instants during your opponents turn even it they play nothing during their turn. And Memnarch doesn't work (he triggers comes into play abilities and doesn't really steal cards).
Nevertheless Thank you!!! Perhaps I will have a look at the code.

Forge said...

Your the man. --Nice comment. And by the way, I am THE man, thanks.

"Thank you for your cool program. It's the coolest stuff since Magic Shandalar." --Thanks
Memnarch triggers "come into play" abilities since your play zone and the computers are different. I thought there were 2 play zones, I misunderstood the rules.

I just like the card Memnarch, even if he isn't really all that good. I added him just for the interest value.

I am slowly working on version 2.0. It has only one play area, so Memnarch will work as promised. MTG Forge 2.0 also has phase stops like Magic Online that are working, yeah!!! Protection is already working, but currently I only have around 10 cards programmed. I keep getting sidetracked by playing the current version of MTG Forge.

My source code is not well documented, but it does have a 15 page explanation in compile.htm That should at least get you up and running if you are interesting. MTG Forge is 100% Java, so you have to know that of course.