Milling for 53

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Oathbreaker Squirrels

“Squirrel!”

The wise word of a Pixar dog. But also a nickname some friends greeted me with during high school. I fashioned the moniker proudly as it represented my favorite part of Magic: playing my Squirrel deck.

...Then I gave my deck to a local kid, left for college, and haven’t played a Squirrel deck since.

Until now.

Flashback to the Future

“Oh man. I have been ready for this moment since forever. Come on, friends! Let's go grief the universe!”
—Squirrel Girl, Marvel Rising: Part 3

"Back in my day," when I went by "Deranged_One" (Deranged Hermit shoutout!) online, kitchen table decks were different. Sixty-card decks and playing four copies of cards. (Okay, so decks then were also different from when Magic first began. Magic always be changin'.)

Nowadays, Commander reigns in casual play with 100-card singleton. This makes filling out a deck with the already-meager number of Squirrel cards difficult. So the forest rodents have been hibernating in the shoe boxes since.
But two Squirrel-deck-impacting events happened this year:

1) Modern Horizons printed Deep Forest Hermit

2) Oathbreaker surged in popularity

Another card added to the Squirrel pool and a breakout sixty-card casual format?

Wrangle the Squirrels! It's time for an Oathbreaker Squirrels deck tech.

Squirrel-Powered Scheme

"I'm sorry. You're just...it's hard to take a swearing squirrel seriously."
—Guy Gardner to B'dg, Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion: Part 1

Illustrated by Even Amundsen

Before diving deep into the nest, here's an Oathbreaker deck list to squirrel away

(Cards in the command zone, land, and multipurpose sections state what roles they play in parentheses for other sections they normally would fall under):

Command Zone (2)
Garruk Wildspeaker (Ramp Later, Squirrel Synergy)
Chatter of the Squirrel (Squirrel Strategy)

Land (24)
12 Snow-Covered Forest
Lotus Field (Ramp Later)
Myriad Landscape (Ramp Later)
Temple of the False God (Ramp Later)
Arch of Orazca (Card Draw)
Mosswort Bridge (Card Draw)
Blast Zone (Removal)
Mystifying Maze (Removal ...ish)
Pendelhaven (Squirrel Protection)
Swarmyard (Squirrel Protection)
Yavimaya Hollow (Squirrel Protection)

Deserted Temple (Squirrel Synergy)
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood (Squirrel Synergy)

Multipurpose (4)
Arbor Elf (Ramp Early, Squirrel Synergy)
Rime Tender (Ramp Early, Squirrel Synergy)
Vivien Reid (Card Draw, Removal, Squirrel Synergy)
Voyaging Satyr (Ramp Early, Squirrel Synergy)

Ramp Early (7)

Into the North
Nature's Lore
Rampant Growth
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Three Visits
Utopia Sprawl
Wild Growth

(Arbor Elf)
(Rime Tender)
(Voyaging Satyr)

Ramp Later (5)
Cultivate
Harrow
Kodama's Reach
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Skyshroud Claim

(Garruk Wildspeaker)
(Lotus Field)
(Myriad Landscape)
(Temple of the False God)

Card Draw (2)
Praetor's Counsel
Sylvan Library

(Arch of Orazca)
(Mosswort Bridge)
(Vivien Reid)

Tutors (5)
Chord of Calling
Finale of Devastation
Green Sun's Zenith
Sylvan Tutor
Worldly Tutor

Removal (3)
Creeping Corrosion
Song of the Dryads
Whirlwind

(Blast Zone)
(Mystifying Maze ...kinda)
(Vivien Reid)

Squirrel Protection (1)
Heroic Intervention

(Pendelhaven)
(Swarmyard)
(Yavimaya Hollow)

Squirrel Strategy (5)
Deep Forest Hermit
Deranged Hermit
Nut Collector
Squirrel Nest
Squirrel Wrangler

(Chatter of the Squirrel)

Squirrel Synergy (2)
Parallel Lives
Doubling Season

(Garruk Wildspeaker)
(Vivien Reid)
(Deserted Temple)
(Oran-Rief, the Vastwood)

Squirrelspeaker

“Squeaky, uh, squeak squeaker ...squeakin’.—Kronk, The Emperor’s New Groove

Choosing an oathbreaker and signature spell combination for Squirrels, I asked myself, “How do I want to win?” Generating infinite Squirrel tokens using Earthcraft and Squirrel Nest? That’s not my Squirrel-y style. I instead want to overrun my opponents with (a reasonable number of) Squirrel tokens swinging sideways.

Luckily, Garruk Wildspeaker’s ultimate is exactly the effect of Overrun. Additionally, his +1 loyalty ability synergizes with Squirrel Nest and helps cast key mana-intensive spells.

There’s a problem, though. Garruk’s +1 ability is so good that he quickly becomes targeted by other players. His first ability doesn’t provide a way to protect himself from attackers. The second one creates Beast tokens, but that runs counter to Squirrels and lowers loyalty. This is where the signature spell comes into play.

There are only two sorceries (and zero instants) in Magic that create Squirrel tokens. One of them is Chatter of the Squirrel and costs one mana. When you curve into a Garruk hitting the table, you can immediately untap two lands. Then you have enough to cast Chatter of the Squirrel, creating a blocker for Garruk!

A Chatter of the Squirrel signature spell both plays defense for a Garruk oathbreaker and advances your Squirrel strategy.

Gameplays with Squirrels

“It’s me manifesto. All of us hermits have one.”
—Mr. Plays With Squirrels, Boy Meets World Season 7 Episode 16

When building a Squirrel deck, I had some decisions to make. To make sure my games end up within the Squirrel-y spirit, I followed these rules:

No “technically a Squirrel” creatures. I'm looking at you, changelings. Modern Horizons' Birthing Boughs looks mighty tempting with its ability to repeatedly churn out tokens. But even though the game rules recognizes changelings as Squirrels, the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed spirit isn't there. The only non-Squirrel creatures to play in this deck are ones promoting the Squirrel strategy.

No silver-bordered Squirrel cards. Look, I don't want anyone to have to make accommodations on behalf of my furry friends. I want to bring a totally-serious legal Oathbreaker deck to the table with those Narset Windfall decks. Chittering doom, while not in silver-bordered form, shall come for my opponents through sick deck builds and gameplay. With that said, I'm totally OK with playing against your silver-bordered decks. I mean, *gestures to Squirrel deck*

No winning via means other than Squirrel attacks. As mentioned earlier, I don't want to combo out with Earthcraft and Squirrel Nest. But the same goes for any other cards that'd steer the gameplay away from the goal. Strong synergies are fine as long as I'm sending green tokens into the red zone. And by green tokens, I mean they can't be Saprolings. No matter how much of callback Thelonite Hermit is.

No stealing the spotlight from Squirrels. There are cards that totally help the Squirrel strategy but cause a weird behavior to happen. Specifically, some cards that refer to creature type. For example, Heirloom Blade can help your Hermits and friends-of-Squirrels find each other. But the card would bring attention to "Elf" and "Druid" for its effect. I only want to keep saying, "Squirrels" over and over!

So this does mean one thing for Garruk Wildspeaker. While some oaths break, one line must never be crossed: never create a 3/3 green Beast creature token. Even if it's a matter of life or death (in an Oathbreaker game - not real life). Because betraying the Squirrel cause is the real loss.

Form of the Squirrel

“You see that sheen on the fur? The glint in their eyes? Top quality. These are the real deal.”

—Squirrel Dealer

Illustrated by Bram Sels

Here's a breakdown of categories of cards found in the Squirrel deck and what role they serve:

Ramp

The best cards for your Squirrel strategy are on the higher end of the mana curve. Due to this, the early turns are devoted to ramping up quickly.

Of the different ways to ramp, the most synergistic ones involve untapping, enchanting, or fetching lands. This means no mana rocks or mana dorks that simply add mana to your mana pool. Garruk and other untappers love targeting enchanted lands. Extra lands fetched from the deck are eventually re-used for a Squirrel Wrangler endgame.

Tutors

I’m normally against including tutors in my decks for the sake of experiencing gameplay variety. However, there are too few powerful Squirrel cards to fill out a deck with. If no tutors are used, the variance can result in a lackluster chittering presence. Employing tutors helps opponents experience the excitement of being trampled by forest rodents.

Card Draw

Because many of the nonlands are ramp spells or other supporting cards, card draw is less effective. Card draw is still good to have, but it’s best on multi-purpose and/or synergistic cards.

For example, Arch of Orazca fills out a land slot yet synergizes with Hermits. Sylvan Library was already powerful, but even better with shuffling from tutors and ramp.

Lastly, Praetor’s Counsel is the best kind of “card draw” for this deck. It’s a late-game card, which is when your key cards might be in the graveyard. Casting this will refresh your hand with virtual redundancies in your Squirrel strategy.

Removal and Squirrel Protection

Heroic Intervention helps keep your Squirrels alive while Swarmyard and Yavimaya Hollow pitch to do what they can as well. As for removal...

All these Squirrels yet none of them can block a single flier?

WHIRLWIND THE BOARD.

Opponents have all these artifacts, yet you don’t have any in your deck?

CORROSION THE BOARD.

Lastly, Vivien Reid and Song of the Dryads are great targeted removal for any problematic opposition.

Squirrel Cards and Synergizes-with-Squirrels Cards

Not all Squirrel cards are up to snuff. Each of Deep Forest Hermit and Deranged Hermit create a powerful board state. Conversely, Squirrel Mob is conditional upon two things to be great: gaining trample and already having lots of Squirrels. Even though there's already slim pickings for Squirrel cards, the tutors and deck-thinning ramp help create consistency.

For synergy, Parallel Lives and Doubling Season really beef up your Squirrel production. And as soon as Squirrel Nest enters the battlefield, Garruk and friends can untap that enchanted land.

Squirrel Strategy

One fateful night, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, they rose.

—Chittering Doom

Many decks need a game plan. Even Squirrels. It's how you'll ensure you'll have a board state that makes you cackle maniacally. The first few turns will be crucial for your endgame.

Here's how it should go:

Turn One and Turn Two

There's a high number of ramp cards in the deck that cost either one or two mana. It’s crucial to cast one of these during the first or second turn of the game. This is to support a turn-three Garruk.

Turn Three

Cast Garruk and untap two lands with his +1 ability. From here, if you need to protect Garruk, you can cast Chatter of the Squirrel. Bonus if the remaining untapped land is a Swarmyard or Pendelhaven to help dissuade attackers.

Turn Four and Beyond

By now, you’ll have access to six or more mana. Enough to cast a Hermit, Nut Collector, Parallel Lives, Doubling Season, Vivien Reid, etc. You can also start casting more-expensive ramp to build out your Squirrel Wrangler endgame.

Killer Plays

There’s a couple of powerful plays to look out for:
1) Turn Two Garruk

There's a slim chance you can cast a second-turn Garruk:

Turn one:

Play a Pendelhaven or Snow-Covered Forest
Cast an Arbor Elf.

Turn two:

Play a second land, a Pendelhaven or Snow-Covered Forest
Cast a Wild Growth or Utopia Sprawl on an untapped Forest
With Arbor Elf and the enchanted Forest, add four mana to your mana pool.
Cast Garruk

From here, still on your second turn, you’re able to +1 Garruk to untap both lands. That’ll give you three more mana to cast a heavier ramp spell, Sylvan Library, etc. What a start!
2) Hermit of Devastation

Look out for when you might be able to reach twelve mana for casting Finale of Devastation. Even with an empty board, you’re able to turn the game around or end it. Once you cast Finale with X as 10, find a Hermit. You’ll end up with at least five creatures that are at least 11/11 tramplers with haste!

Acorn-y Punchline

"Until then, may you play your next squirrel with a grin on your face."
—Mark Rosewater, "Squirrel of My Dreams"

That's all I got for today. Thanks for reading!

The games of Oathbreaker facilitating a return to playing a deck of Squirrels brought me nostalgic joy. Whether it's your first time or rejoining the furry friends, I hope the Squirrels also make your table smile.

Let me know if this article moves or inspires you to play with Squirrels: I'm @bradleyrose on Twitter! If you end up heading over to CardKingdom.com to buy some Squirrel cards, could you do me a favor? Leave a comment saying it was 'cause you read this article!

Until next time, may the defeat of your opponents be aptly described by Squirrel Wrangler’s flavor text.

Friday, November 2, 2018

Drafting Pokemon #04: Top Percentage

"Drafting Pokemon" is the blog post series chronicling the design of a Pokemon drafting card game. It was first started as a National Game Design Month project during November 2016. It wasn't completed. November 2018's #NaGaDeMon is a revival of this project.

Pokemon Gold/Silver

Pokemon's got a lot of variance in its core handheld game series, during battle. Every attack has a percentage chance for landing a hit. Many, if not most, moves are 100% chance of hitting (ignoring the very, very small chance of randomly missing just for kicks, even for 100%-chance-of-hit moves). And then all moves have a chance to land a critical hit. That's not all - some moves have a chance to inflict a condition upon hit, whether it's poison or paralysis, etc. Luckily, a computer game can handle all these calculations for you to make for an well-managed variance-fest.

For the Pokemon drafting card game, since it's a physical tabletop game that requires manual dextrous manipulation of game pieces, having so many aspects that are randomized isn't exactly a boon. For example, there are moves that land a hit only 85% of the time. To simulate this percentage exactly, you'd most likely need to roll 2D10.

Let us consider one of the most dooziest of moves to randomize for, manually - Fire Fang. Fire Fang is a move that has a 95% chance to hit, 10% chance of causing burn, and 10% chance of flinching the opponent. Simulating these stats exactly might then look like you're rolling four ten-sided dice. A cumbersome resolution for a chosen move.

Rather than try to match the video game exactly, I propose capturing the spirit of these percentages - have the chances be accurate relative to one another. It should be that one of he hardest things to do is to freeze a pokemon. And so on.

And with going for the "relative to one another" angle, that means a mapping of the video game percentages can be done to whatever dice with a number of sides you choose. But what dice to go with?

D4 - weird, but the least number of sides
D6 - familiar, comfortable, but still more sides than four
D8 - different, yet more flexibility
D10 - allows for the closest and most elegant matching of percentage chance to the video game - yet has many sides, which is diminishing returns when it comes to dice face real estate

...and we're just about out of time for this blog post. But the goal is:
1) Have percentages be relative to one another, instead of mirroring the video games
2) Have the manual rolling of dice be as pleasant as can be

Together, this should make fo a more fun physical card game experience than otherwise

Pokemon I Choose You!

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Drafting Pokemon #03: Revive

Pokemon Origins

Two years is how often U.S. political elections occur. It's also how long it's been since I wrote an update about the Pokemon drafting card game project. Not coincidentally, the voting topic is related to this project dying off - the results of the last election had me feeling scared and super depressed, killing my enthusiasm for finishing the project.

It's November again, which means another National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon, for short) challenge. Similar in purpose to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), participating in a NaGaDeMon means your goal is to design at least a game prototype and playtest it at least once with the motive of having the satisfaction of having completed a game design project.

Last year, I chose a Magic: The Gathering direction to tackle the design challenges for my four-colors-matters passion project. I also didn't complete this project, with this update being my latest one.

This year, I'm returning to the Pokemon drafting card game project.

Restate

Pokemon Origins

Some card games incorporate a style of gameplay called "drafting." This means you're looking at a stack of card choices and choosing a smaller subset, usually one, from the choices and then passing along the rest of the cards to a neighboring player while your other player is doing the same, passing their cards to you. Then you'll get to see new choices - and all the ones your neighbor decided to pass up. Tabletop games that employ drafting are 7 Wonders and Sushi Go. Also, one of Magic: The Gathering's most popular game formats is booster pack draft.

There is a Pokemon Trading Card Game - which plays differently from the Pokemon video games. Where this drafting project differs from the Pokemon TCG is that the gameplay aims to emulate the video games' battle system while also incorporating the drafting style during beginning part of a game session. You draft your pokemon and moves and then you build your team in much the same manner as the video games. Then y'all battle, where it'll feel like you're playing the handheld games.

Recap

Pokemon Origins

Where we last left off, the types of cards you would draft would include the pokemon themselves as well as their moves. Currently, I'm rethinking whether or not I want to leave out held items as a draftable card type. At this point, it's still up in the air.

Speaking of rethinking - in the first update of this series, I stated my goal was to do the original 151 pokemon only. The reasoning included only having pokemon folks are familiar with. With the audience I might be playtesting this game with, this is definitely not a concern. Another reason for limiting to 151 was to make clear which monsters to expect in a given card pool - I think this can be handled well if I include monsters outside of the 151.

Here's why I'm stating the above of rethinking: not including dark or steel in the first iteration was bold in that there would be admittedly an uphill climb in battling psychic pokemon. Psychic's weaknesses are bug and ghost, and those are either in low supply or super weak.

And now fairy type is a thing! I'd rather not exclude now-three pokemon types and instead include those types and the appropriate pokemon of those types to help contribute toward a well-rounded, balanced, and fair draft environment, no matter what types you choose to play with.

Redo

Pokemon Origins

One development of this project that didn't get chronicled from about a couple years ago - I did a draft of just the pokemon themselves, with my best friends.

It was using nearly-blank white notecards - only the names of pokemon were written down. There were randomized packs of these notecards, for three draft rounds for three of us. We each had to choose pokemon with the goal of forming a diverse team and to prioritize pursuing achieving evolutionary lines (for example, drafting both a Seel and a Dewgong).

The experiment showed that it was realistic to be able to obtain the full evolutionary line of pokemon. That it was possible to have that as a reasonable thing you can count on happening.

And that's where I'm at now. Next, I'll be fulfilling a years-long promise to figure out then write about how this drafting card game will approach the problem of dealing with percentage chance that is present in the pokemon video games.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

#Moxtober 31: Slice

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)

Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"
Day 16: "angular"
Day 17: "swollen"
Day 18: "bottle"
Day 19: "scorched"
Day 20: "breakable"
Day 21: "drain"
Day 22: "expensive"
Day 23: "muddy"
Day 24: "chop"
Day 25: "prickly"
Day 26: "stretch"
Day 27: "thunder"
Day 28: "gift"
Day 29: "double"
Day 30: "jolt"

Today's prompt is: "slice"

#Moxtober 30: Jolt

Monday, October 29, 2018

#Moxtober 29: Double

Looks kinda crazy, eh? Here's what each keyword says:

Double (When you have exiled two cards with double, one card with toil, and one card with trouble; meld and cast them.)

Toil (When you have exiled two cards with double, one card with toil, and one card with trouble; meld and cast them.)

Trouble (When you have exiled two cards with double, one card with toil, and one card with trouble; meld and cast them.)

They all say the same thing! But, it means you're gonna have to cast two cards to essentially say "Double, double, toil & trouble" <-- the words that a witch says when brewing something.

So, the idea here is that each card that has "double", "toil", or "trouble" is 1/4th of a giant spell, when melded (transformed and pieced together). The design of the backside should be modular enough to be able to fit with any other parts. I'm skipping drawing out how this looks like. Let's pretend it works. ;)

But it would encourage creative piecing together of "ingredients" to form whatever giant spell would result with a successful "double, double, toil & trouble" meld!

#Moxtober 28: Gift

You can give yourself a gift (treat yo self) or someone on your team a gift. But nobody knows what it is until you open it. And then you gotta use it right away before the turn ends. A tension of "when should I reveal this?" A different execution of red's "impulsive draw."