Velocimancer Games

Good late evening loyal listeners.  It’s another surprise late night installment of Out of Mana.  Happy Mechanic Monday! I actually bought myself a few booster packs of the latest set for my birthday yesterday.  However many years clean and I just grab the first needle I see, amazing.  But the theme of the set (Hogwarts but no money to TERFs) was on my radar months ago, and I always knew that if I was gonna come back, it would be for this.  And I really like the set! Witherbloom/Silverauill, obvs.  I should’ve gone for one of the blue schools, as blue fuckery offers the most control and therefore (in my limited, annoyed experience) the most (and most unfun) wins. Speaking of Strixhaven and its new mechanics, why don’t we get down to it? Reserve Powers In GREEM, players purchase buy and sell goods, as well as special player powers that let them define and accelerate their strategy.  Prior to the start of the game, players assemble a six-power reserve....

Just did a post yesterday, so let’s cut the chatter and get back on schedule with a Mechanic Monday. Whole Combinations of Pieces as Win Condition In GREEM, the board begins with a (randomized?) setup of neutral pieces, each of which can move along one axis - North-South, East-West, NE-SW, or NW-SE.  On their turn, a player can move either a piece or a stack.  In the first instance, the player can claim a neutral piece and move it in the direction that the piece allows.  If the piece lands on a neutral or friendly piece, stack the pieces - the new stack can move along any axis that any of its composite pieces could move along.  A player may also use their turn to move a stack, but may not move it onto or past an opposing piece or Stack, and may not move it onto a piece (or a stack containing a piece) that it already contains.  Once a player creates a stack with all four types of piece, the stack is removed from the board and added to the player’s scoring area....

Well, I ended up taking last week off for a move, and now it’s almost the end of the week after that, so let’s try and get something in shall we? I’ve been playing a fair bit of MtG:Arena, so I wanted to jot down some of what I’ve learned as a player, and make some associated notes for how those lessons can be applied to broader game design Let’s start broad - I’ve always said that MtG is essentially a game design sandbox.  A couple of specific goals, but myriad tools that can be used together in endless combinations to expand those goals and to create different types of engines for achieving them.  And I’ve come to realize that deckbuilding closely mirrors which rules go into a design.  As a youth, I had a very limited cardpool, and had seen very few games in play, so I knew very little about momentum, control, or engine building.  The deck du jour at the time was the premade Sliver deck and it showed off all that Magic and its colour pie were capable of - but all *...