My magic set -- color balance
Jul. 19th, 2010 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThere were a lot of comments on individual cards in the comments in: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/650390.html, most of which I intend to incorporate (but haven't done yet).
This probably won't make any sense to anyone not into magic or game design, but, in response to alextfish's comment, I'm looking at the colour balance of the set. Typically, there ideally would be a completely symmetric mix of cards with each colour. For the recent 250 card sets, there have been 100 commons, with the same number of each colour, plus (I think?) an equal number of multicolored cards of each of the five combinations of allied colours, or ten combinations of all colours, plus approximately the same number of colourless cards and non-color-aligned lands if any, and five (or 0 or 10) lands that produce a specific colour (or pair of colours) of mana.
In sets with multicolour, this has varied a little. In Ravnica, the big set had four of the ten guilds represented, so the colour balance wasn't exact. In Lorwyn, there were ten prevalent creature types, each of which came in one, two, or three colours, so sometimes the colour balance represented that more than the traditional colours. In Time Spiral, they did lots of weird stuff. In several sets there (apparently) have been a couple of stand-alone three-colour legends not part of any cycle.
So, we can tweak it, but only for a good reason. Currently there are 15-25 commons of each colour, which was close enough for me to feel satisfied at the time, but would definitely be nicer if the numbers were evened out. I felt it natural that there were more green commons (due to nature theme) and more blue uncommons and rares (due to reclusive magician theme) but that doesn't quite work out: it would probably give the feel of the world better if there were equal numbers of cards, but more green nature ones and more blue magician-related ones.
The problem is, I introduced a number of hybrid two-colour cards (wherever they happened to feel appropriate), and some weird cycles. There are cycles of G-and-one-other (eye beasts), G-or-one-other-not-blue and not-green-not-blue (squirrels), BR-RG-GW-WU-U2-B2 (uncommon equipment), and UG-UB-UW-UR-U2 (magicians).
This is almost certainly overcomplicated. I think I can treat the cycles separately from the other cards, and decide if I want to keep all those cycles, or if they ought to be simplified to traditional two-colour cycles, or counted as "normal" hybrid cards, and counted into whatever scheme I use to counting the non-cycle cards.
For the non-cycle cards (or all cards if I decide not to treat the cycles specially), I have to decide if I should (a) equalize the number of each hybrid combination, at least at common rarity or (b) decide a rough equivalent between number-of-hybrid-cards and number-of-mono-colour-cards, and equalize the colours on that basis, and not worry if they're one or two off so long as they're obviously meant to be the same.
It's probably superior to make the hybrid cards into cycles, as even though that means adding some more and/or cutting some existing ones, it would give a very pleasing symmetry and would probably improve the play of the set. But I may simply decide the benefit isn't worth it.
I think I've talked myself into a decision, except for whether to perpetuate the weird cycles
This probably won't make any sense to anyone not into magic or game design, but, in response to alextfish's comment, I'm looking at the colour balance of the set. Typically, there ideally would be a completely symmetric mix of cards with each colour. For the recent 250 card sets, there have been 100 commons, with the same number of each colour, plus (I think?) an equal number of multicolored cards of each of the five combinations of allied colours, or ten combinations of all colours, plus approximately the same number of colourless cards and non-color-aligned lands if any, and five (or 0 or 10) lands that produce a specific colour (or pair of colours) of mana.
In sets with multicolour, this has varied a little. In Ravnica, the big set had four of the ten guilds represented, so the colour balance wasn't exact. In Lorwyn, there were ten prevalent creature types, each of which came in one, two, or three colours, so sometimes the colour balance represented that more than the traditional colours. In Time Spiral, they did lots of weird stuff. In several sets there (apparently) have been a couple of stand-alone three-colour legends not part of any cycle.
So, we can tweak it, but only for a good reason. Currently there are 15-25 commons of each colour, which was close enough for me to feel satisfied at the time, but would definitely be nicer if the numbers were evened out. I felt it natural that there were more green commons (due to nature theme) and more blue uncommons and rares (due to reclusive magician theme) but that doesn't quite work out: it would probably give the feel of the world better if there were equal numbers of cards, but more green nature ones and more blue magician-related ones.
The problem is, I introduced a number of hybrid two-colour cards (wherever they happened to feel appropriate), and some weird cycles. There are cycles of G-and-one-other (eye beasts), G-or-one-other-not-blue and not-green-not-blue (squirrels), BR-RG-GW-WU-U2-B2 (uncommon equipment), and UG-UB-UW-UR-U2 (magicians).
This is almost certainly overcomplicated. I think I can treat the cycles separately from the other cards, and decide if I want to keep all those cycles, or if they ought to be simplified to traditional two-colour cycles, or counted as "normal" hybrid cards, and counted into whatever scheme I use to counting the non-cycle cards.
For the non-cycle cards (or all cards if I decide not to treat the cycles specially), I have to decide if I should (a) equalize the number of each hybrid combination, at least at common rarity or (b) decide a rough equivalent between number-of-hybrid-cards and number-of-mono-colour-cards, and equalize the colours on that basis, and not worry if they're one or two off so long as they're obviously meant to be the same.
It's probably superior to make the hybrid cards into cycles, as even though that means adding some more and/or cutting some existing ones, it would give a very pleasing symmetry and would probably improve the play of the set. But I may simply decide the benefit isn't worth it.
I think I've talked myself into a decision, except for whether to perpetuate the weird cycles