Should Forge Have Bad Cards? - Part 2

People seem to really enjoy this topic, so I thought that there should be a sequel. One person commented that Mark Rosewater (big-shot Wizard guy) wrote a very good article about this subject, When Cards Go Bad. One of his explanations is that "Magic is a game of discovery." Cards that you thought were bad can be very good in the right deck.

I think that Forge should have less powerful cards so you can enjoy the really powerful ones. Mark Rosewater says, "Ancestral Recall is only very good unless we print a card that lets you draw 4 cards for U". If you never used less powerful cards, you would have no idea that such-and-such card was really powerful.

I love so called "bad cards" because they provide variety. In quest mode I have enjoyed using a variety of mediocre cards because those were the best cards that you had at the time. In the right deck a "bad card" magically transforms itself into a pretty decent card.

Shimmering Barrier is a good example of a fairly weak card, "1W, 1/3 defender, first strike, and cycling 2". This type of card was very good in my last quest deck because I had some flyers and he helped me jam up the ground attackers. Inner-Chamber Guard seems weak at first glance, "1W, 0/2, bushido 2 (When this blocks or becomes blocked, it gets +2/+2 until end of turn"). I half-heartedly threw this guy into my deck but he is an awesome 2/4 blocker that only costs 2 mana, wow.

Samurai Enforces is a little generic looking, "4WW, 4/4, bushido 2" but he works very good as a finisher. Patrol Signaler is a little 1/1 that has an untap ability, " 1W, Untap: Put a 1/1 white Kithkin Soldier creature token into play". Creating tokens for only 1W is very cheap and when the computer's deck was slow, this little guy dominated the field by generating a ton of chump blockers. Icatian Priest is a 1/1 that costs W and has a nice pump ability, "1WW: Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn" which dominates the game in the later turns.

And the list of crappy cards could go on and on. I remember thinking how bad Tarmogoyf was when Future Sight was first printed but he turned on to be a pro-tour winner in the right deck. Forge has Tarmogoyf, so go and have yourself some fun. :+]

What is a Card?

What is a card is a complicated question. In real life a card is a physical object. In Forge a card is a class, a piece of code. At first the card object started out simple. It had the basic methods: getName(), getManaCost(), getOwner(), getController() and getAttack(), getDefense(). But as Forge grew the card class grew as well. Now the card class has two pages of variables and around 200 methods. (I’m not saying that the Card class is too big, I’m just saying that it is big.)

The Card class keeps track of lots of information such as “is this card tapped”, “does this creature have summoning sickness”, and “which keywords does this creature have”. The Card class also keeps track of other obscure data like “who dealt damage to me”, “is this card uncastable”, “did this creature attack or block this turn”, “is this a morphed creature”, “should this card be sacrificed at end of turn” and “how much damage does this card deal damage during the upkeep”.

Other convential Card attributes include keywords and Forge implements a whole number of Magic keywords such as flying, haste, wither and as well as other “internal keywords” that correspond to spells and abilities, which makes it much easier to add cards like Shock and Ancestral Recall. Forge’s “interal keyword” system has gotten very sophisticated and implements such cards as Blossoming Wreath. A full list of keywords can be found on the forum here.

Blossoming Wreath
G
Instant
no text
spGainLife:X:You gain life equal to the number of creature cards in your graveyard.:Blossoming Wreath - player gains X life
SVar:X:Count$TypeInYourYard.Creature

In real life Magic if a card creates or copies a card, a token is created. In Forge the same thing happens except that a token has special properties like it cannot go to the graveyard or be bounced to your hand. One of the first “extra” methods that I ever added to the card class was setToken(boolean) and isToken() which simply answers the question, “Is this card a token?”.

The first card that created tokens was probably Future Sight’s Llanowar Mentor. An odd thing happened when I used its ability. A token was created but I was surprised to see that the token had the picture for Llanowar Elves. The second token maker I coded was Raise the Alarm which makes two 1/1 tokens for 1W. And the third card was probably the awesome, fan-favorite Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.

WOW, I just realized the Forge now has 11 cards with unearth. (1R: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. It gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step or if it would leave the battlefield. Unearth only as a sorcery.)

You can see the full Java source code for the Card class here.

p.s.
Technically the methods getAttack() and getDefense() should be named getPower() and getToughness but I like the terms attack and defense better.

p.p.s.
In case you don’t understand, the words “object” and “class” they just mean “lines of Java source code”.

Rise of the Eldrazi

The official visual spoiler for Rise of the Eldrazi is out

Wizards Visual Spoiler

Wizard articles you might have to read:

Creatures On Another Level - talks about the new "level up" creatures.

On the Rise - Mark Rosewater talks about the set design.
-part 1
-part 2
-part 3

Below is taken from Wizard's Rise of the Eldrazi product page:

But unknown to the plane's denizens, there's a sinister reason for Zendikar's danger: for millennia, the plane has served as a prison for the Eldrazi, astral monstrosities native to the Blind Eternities. Now, the perils facing adventurers on the plane of Zendikar have taken an even deadlier turn. The Eldrazi have been released.

Hailing from the Blind Eternities, the space between planes, the Eldrazi have transcended the colors of mana as we know them. As a result, the Eldrazi progenitors themselves and those closest to them are colorless. But don't let the mana cost fool you—these Eldrazi are not artifacts.

Each of the colossal Eldrazi spawns its own "brood lineage." The three brood lineages are composed of Eldrazi Drones and other subordinate beings, each reflecting the image of its progenitor. The smaller Eldrazi Drones that are aligned with colored mana and many of these drones, as well as some spells, produce Eldrazi Spawn creature tokens. These 0/1 colorless creatures can be sacrificed to add one colorless mana to your mana pool—perfect for casting those enormous Eldrazi.

The Rise of the Eldrazi set also marks the debut of colorless instants and sorceries. Like their Eldrazi creators, these versatile spells can be put into almost any deck.

This and That

I don't have anything specific to talk about so I downloaded Forge's source code. I'm just going to talk about various things that catch my attention.

Door to Nothingness is an interesting card that lets you win for only 10 mana, what a deal! I had no idea how it was coded since Forge doesn't have specific way to make one player win (or lose) a game. As it turns out the implementation was very simple, the losing player's life was set to 0, voila.

I didn't know Forge had Goblin Charbelcher. It is an odd card that rewards decks that use fewer lands or you can rearrange your deck with cards like Sensei's Divining Top.

I remember coding Erratic Explosion a long time ago and that card always makes me laugh because it is very, well... erratic.

The deck editor "filter" option takes up a hefty 700 lines of code. I find it very useful, so I don't really care how many lines it takes but I do get curious. The guy who coded the filter option used CloudGarden's Jigloo SWT/Swing GUI Builder (www.cloudgarden.com). I don't know anything about Jigloo but I'm going to check it out.

Some parts of Forge have been rewritten and improved like the way Forge's stores decks. All decks are now stored in separate deck files which is great. Originally I crammed all of the decks into one single file which has its pros and cons but generally it makes it harder to download new decks.

The biggest improvements have been the user interface. People sent me code that resizes the card images in order to display them on the battlefield. The "removed", "grave" and "flashback" zones can easily be viewed just by clicking on them, which is a nice little feature. New high quality scans of Magic cards can be downloaded so can satisfy you inner Vorthos and drool over the fantastic card art. Other huge improvements include X spells like Blaze and adding a mana pool for cards like Dark Ritual.

Since I'm not slogging through the source code everyday, I forget how big Forge's source code actually is and how much new stuff that has been added. When I stopped working on Forge it didn't have any aura's (creature enchantments) but now there are 55. Dennis, Rob, and the other guys on the forums have added many great features and cards to Forge.

And I didn't know Forge had Force of Will, which is insanely powerful.

It seems weird to thank you for downloading Forge and reading this blog but thanks anyways. Forge was literally started in a garage on a whim. Much of the framework that I wrote has changed. I didn't think it would ever become this successful. I personally think Forge is insanely fun (and replayable).

Thanks to the guys on the forums for the great updates and thank you for downloading this kid's dream. (OK, I'm a big kid but I'm still a kid a heart.) And of course thanks to Wizards and Richard Garfield for creating a game that is so enjoyable. Even 5 and 10 year old cards are still fun which is quite an accomplishment.

p.s.
Not all of Garfield's games are as good as Magic but he is a very talented game designer.

Should Forge Have Bad Cards?

When I first started working on Forge I thought that it shouldn't have any "bad cards" because no one would use them. But after thinking about it, I decided that Forge should have every Magic card that it could support.

I thought that I could easily classify cards as good and bad but the lines get fuzzy very quickly. Sometimes a mediocre card might be good in a tribal deck or maybe that card is pretty good in one of Forge's "limited modes" like sealed, draft, or quest. If you are using all of the cards you probably wouldn't include many 3 mana creatures that are only 2/2 but they make up the backbone of most limited decks.

Winding Wurm is a good example. He is a 6/6 creature that costs 4G but also has an echo cost of 4G. (Echo means that you have to play 4G again on your next turn, so the total cost is 8GG.) Back in the day this card might have been used in a constructed deck but without trample he is a little weak. I happen to get him during a quest and he was amazing. Even though he didn't have any other abilities, he was a one man Godzilla. Winding Wurm is mediocre is some formats and exceptional in others.

This is also a good example of why I don't think Forge is costing Wizards any money. Most of the cards in Forge are not in print. Also, Forge enables players to use fascinating cards from Magic's long history like Winding Wurm, Ali from Cairo, and Skullclamp.

p.s.
I wanted to write an April Fool's column like, "Wizards is going to buy Forge" or "I got hired by Wizards" but I didn't want to be too stupid.