The Energy Mechanics - Failed Magic Designs
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- Опубликовано: 10 июл 2024
- Energy was a mechanic introduced back in Kaladesh block. This mechanic quickly proved to be exceptionally powerful, though fairly controversial in the community. Most people in the community look back on the mechanic with ire, so today, we’re going to explore exactly why this design failed. This is technically a failed Mtg mechanics video, but since the mechanic was actually very strong, we decided to change the name to reflect that fact.
Script and editing by Pumkinswift
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
How does Energy work?:(0:22)
Temur Energy:(1:08)
Aetherworks Marvel:(3:35)
Parasitism:(4:35)
Balance, Versatility, and Interactivity:(6:10)
How Energy "fixed" Charge counters:(9:38)
How to fix Energy:(11:10)
Conclusion:(12:56)
#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering
(Just a note, we have people who actually know the game very well making the scripts for this channel. As the owner of the channel (Theduellogs/hirumaredx) is a total newbie to the game.)
I started playing magic back in 2017 and kaladesh was my first set to play. I'm hoping energy gets a facelift one day.
I came in the set before. I feel you. Return to inistrad, wolves suck😑
Biiiiiiig mood. Kaladesh is the first set I played with, so now I try to find a way to make energy or vehicles work in basically every format I can manage 😅😅😅
@@KomradeKrisis1701 I'm biased towards vehicles and after kamigawa vehicles are pretty good, I find it funny that they made looter scooter 2.0 with reckoner bankbuster. But I'm just happy there's more selection in vehicle commanders other than boros.
I came in during revolt.
I love energy and i never had the chance to play with them
I think we're seeing Treasure tokens take some of the design space Energy (and Charge) once did. Albeit in the blunt, "just generate more Mana" way. It's a resource you can accumulate, that can be interacted with (they are Artifacts, after all), but in a way that doesn't make it easy to wipe out a ton of accumulated value (most cards remove single Artifacts at a time). Treasure also is very much NOT parasitic, as everything in the game works with Mana, and many effects work with tokens and Artifacts.
Obviously there's differences in how Treasure works versus Energy or Charge. And Treasure creates its own game-warping dynamic. But as an evergreen mechanic, Treasure functions well enough at what it's trying to do. And Wizards has been supporting it (some would argue too much).
One other problem you missed out that was a huge issue was readability. It was super difficult to read energy costs above 3 because they just put a clump of those symbols without numbers or breaks to identify. Less important than the other issues but still a major problem, especially considering the deck started before MTG Arena to help players keep track
At least some put reminder text for the number of counters, but they really should've made a universal numbering symbol similar to generic mana or done that consistently rather than just the first time on a card.
If they ever make a commander set around energy, I hope they design energy with the same lessons learned from treasures (extra resources are dangerous for balance and need to be scrutinized)
We actually have a house rule for energy counters in my play group. Energy counters exist in a "stockpile" that can be attacked like a planeswalker.
We play a lot of jank, bad, or just weird decks, so it was bound to happen eventually.
House rules >>>
That's really interesting actually. Kind of incentivizes you to cash in your energy ASAP, or at least hang back to defend the resource. Basically the energy deck needs to either become more aggressive (using all of its energy ASAP to build a big board) at the cost of being less versatile, or become less aggressive to continue being super versatile. Can't have their cake and eat it too, essentially.
@@sammysammyson yeah, that's what we realized very quickly when they brought the deck the first time. Most of the group are very new to magic, and I had a decent gap between khans of tarkir and the time unfinity came out, so none of us are really up to date on everything, but we learned VERY fast that energy needed to be checked. Also, day/night is very annoying when playing drunk magic
Shit, this is actually a really good idea. They could even make a token card like an aether tank to place your counters in with the subtitle "place energy counters here. Each damage dealt to the stockpile reduces that many energy counters. "
I like energy, or really I just liked Harnessed Lightning. Being able to save the excess damage from your removal spell to add it to your next copy is a neat play pattern.
It's my favorite broken mechanic after infect.
How about an infect creature that you can spend energy on to deal the opponent additional poison counters? 👹👹👹👹👹
This is another example of something that with more support could be used more often and actually be balanced if you add some counter-play. Nothing interacts with opposing Energy then make something that does. Anything that either removes or punishes counters on players can easily be made. In the Kaladesh story there were people stealing Energy which could be something really interesting as a counter-play option. Energy is something I would like to see again.
Maybe make a card that deals damage to you opponent equal to their energy
well the issue with this is you run into the "boring tech card" pitfall, where you're dooming yourself to a play experience where you either draw a tech card and win, or don't draw the tech card and lose. ironically, despite being literally interacting with the mechanic, it doesn't really make the mechanic more interactive. the only real ways to work around this are baking the interaction into the mechanic itself ("you can remove energy when damaging the opponent") or the *game* itself (this is probably infeasible for a new mechanic, but is effectively what the "print way more energy and cards that interact with it in different ways" suggestion boils down to)
I would actually like to see a tcg with this kind of mechanic in mind. It would keep the power creep arms race between removal and creatures in check. Looking over Magic's history, creatures eventually just became creatures with a spell card slapped on as an ETB ability. With all creatures becoming +1's anytime they etb makes removal of them feel bad unless that removal is much cheaper or somehow went +1 as well to achieve parity.
Removal has always been extremely cheap. THAT'S why creatures started getting more ETBs. You can still get advantage by playing removal spells, just not 2-mana ones.
Removeal is already like 2 or in some cases 1 mana how much cheaper can we make it.
Ah but we do have a fixed, non-parasitic version of Energy. It's called Treasures.
* Dragons and monkeys have entered the chat *
At least there are ways to interact with treasures.
@@mikebott6940 Yep. Treasures have plenty of cards that interact with them. While at the same time removing them doesn't punish that player as much as losing a permanent with lots of Charge counters. (Treasures either need to be removed individually, or in the rare "wipe all Artifacts" or similar cards). In this way, it definitely threads the needle between non-interactive and punishingly interactive.
I dont like this comparison. Generating energy to spend isnt inherently dangerous. Generating treasures is
@@freddiesimmons1394That's the point in OP's comment. It's a resource that you can stockpile and that can make for some interesting decisions on when to or not to use it. Treasures are just easier to interact with and as far from parasitic as possible (mana is a fundamental part of the game unless you're manaless dredge).
Now, I must say I wouldn't consider Treasures to be entirely "fixed" just because I think the support Treasures have gotten has been way too good (and also lame from a design standpoint). But that's an issue with design itself, not a fundamental issue with the mechanic, and wholly debatable.
Here's my take on how to make energy a better mechanic. Essentially, it would behave like charge counters in the way that they would not be player counters, but instead counters on permanents. To prevent energy from being completely shut down by removal, they would all have a common effect to transfer their counters to another "energy compatible" card upon death. This would be further supplanted with card by card variance, where most cards would have an upper cap of the amount of energy the can hold or transfer on death. This way you could have room for more interesting card designs, like an energy vault artifact that does nothing besides be a good target to hide energy in, and your opponent's would have a unique way to interact with it as every deck can remove permanents to a degree.
A mechanic that's essentially energy + modular would definitely be an interesting thing to tinker around with.
@KomradeKrisis1701 The Module trio from Kaladesh is great with Modular, so you might be onto something there.
A suggestion. Make a series covering different Planeswalkers and talk about their strongest/weakest and most iconic/different cards.
Like how even tho Ajani is often a Green/White good boi Ajani, Sleeper Agent could be seen as a bigger departure than Ajani Vengeant.
Sure, the latter is the only time Ajani has been a Boros Walker but Sleeper Agent is the only time Ajani has been a full on villain and that is his only card that directly plays around with Poison Counters.
Best/Worst videos seems to be doing well and it would be a way to dip your toe more in the
I think a cool idea to fix energy would be anti energy cards. Something like, “each player takes 3 damage for each energy counter they have.” On an instant. Not the best example since it can be responded to. But something like that that you can side against energy decks so everyone didn’t have to play energy.
They just need to downtune the cards
Or maybe even some cards that have an effect but also drains opponents energy
@@TheUltimateRey i think the best answer is indeed to be able to choose to deal damage to players in the form of energy loss
I think energy was so scary because of how easy it was to build with. So many cards are clear auto included in an energy deck, and the mechanic even covers everything other than enchantment removal afaik
I think an easy fix would just adding some cards which have the side effect of removing X energy from target opponent, like "When this creature enters the battlefield, draw one card and remove 3 energy from target opponent."
Or cards like "Choose one: • Remove 2 energy from target opponent • [some other effect]".
Or cards like "[X in mana costs] Counter target spell with mana value of X and remove X energy from its owner."
For a lower power commander meta i had used energy cards in a blink deck. The gained energy counters were used for things like Consulate surveilance and Aethertide whale to keep life points safe enough. After playing it for a while, i would say add "at the beginning of your upkeep lose one energy counter." similar to the rad counters.
I loved Syndicate in gwent and blue color in Spellweaver for their coin/energy mechanic that worked just like energy in MtG.
I find it quite interesting to see other cards with the energy mechanic. In my “Mishra, Eminent one” commander deck you play with one card that gives you energy counters (Gonti’s Aether Heart) because it allows you to take infinite extra turns with the commander and a card that can double your etb’s. Even without an etb doubler that card breaks the commander because it essentially says “take an extra turn after you cast an artifact”, an effect you’d normally see on broken custom cards.
I love these kind of mechanics-evaluation vids!
It would have been interesting to see cards that punish this kind of "resource stockpile" mechanics - a creature that gets +X/+X, where X is the amount of energy your opponent had, and perhaps gains trample if it's above a certain threshold? An enchantment that deals damage to an opponent whenever they gain energy? A small early game creature that makes them gain one less energy and gets a +1/+1 counter whenever they gain energy?
I think it would have been an interesting game design space to explore, like in the old days when there was more symmetry and thinking required - Shroud instead of Hexproof, mandatory ETBs, and so on.
I have a Roon of the Hidden Realm EDH energy deck that is so fun to play. I think that if the fixes you mentioned in the video were implemented, it could really help push the concept forward.
Another thought: What if you could convert charge counters to energy?
Also, someone else in the comments mentioned energy as a mana cost. I think that would be great. It would be another resource, like paying life to cast spells.
It’d be cool if colors played a role in energy. Black and green being able to “drain” or remove energy counters meanwhile red and blue being able to “surge” or add counters. White being a middle ground that could do either but not very well and less than both.
Once a year i discover a random channel made by you and the moment I hear your voice I think "this man is at it again"
You know what's crazy to me? That even as a player who knew nothing about Energy, its history, or any of its cards, it was still so easy to see what cards were stupid good!
When Amonkhet was added to Arena, it was so clear to see how strong these cards were in any draft or Cube that included them.
It's hard to imagine experienced WotC play testers not knowing how powerful these cards & decks involving them would be!
I'm not good at evaluating cards either, yet I was able to easily rack up wins in draft & cube draft just building energy synergy (cool rhyme) 😅
More lore videos would super cool. Bolas or Urza are pretty major characters and Phyrexia has had a claw in nearly every major event in the lore.
If you put energy counters on a battle like permenent that your opponents can deal damage to and cause it to loose counters.
Would it be a good way to fix them?
I would love to see more mutate and energy cards
In a commander set, i agree. Never in standard again please 😢
"And now I will mutate onto my Aethergeode Miner..."
My first time playing at a constructed event at a local hobby shop, I had a derpy little landfall deck I put together with just a bunch of cards I got from booster packs . My opponent had a energy based deck, never understood anything he was doing, just playing a ton of cards, activating triggers, and then telling me I was dead.
I have disliked energy ever since. I was young and likely any real deck would have done that, but the fact I had no idea what energy was made me hate that entire mechanic.
The biggest failure in Kaladesh Block is a flavor one. WotC missed a chance to make the aetherborn creatures unique by overlooking their lore as they did:
Aetherborn were byproducts of the Aether refinement, who had a really narrow lifespan and knew exactly how long would they live.
I think in some way food and clues are related to energy, more food than clues, but the idea of something spent to do things that is useable on its own but also interactable. With food is very interesting as the use of food for itself is not great but empowers other things.
The problem really wasnt energy. The problem is in fact that certain cards were too efficient. There were tons of cards that used energy that werent played because they werent efficient enough. Gonti's Aether heart is a great example. Massive resource gain potential with a very powerful pay off. Sees and saw no play because 6 mana artifact that didnt do anything as it entered would often mean you lost after casting.
Energy comeback on modern horizon
Could something like how mana works balance it? Not to the extreme but like at the end of your turn if you have energy lose 2 energy. I feel like that would help a bit.
I think one way to "fix" energy would be to make the mechanic put energy counters on nonland permanents, not players: "Gain X energy." means: "Distribute X energy counters amongst nonland permanents you control." and "Spend X energy." becomes "Remove X energy counters from permanents you control." This forces you to a) Play cards that grant energy only if you have a nonland permanent to distribute them onto. b) have the risk of getting that permanent removed before you have a place to spend the energy or be forced to spend the energy as a response on actions that you do not want to at the moment and c) give your opponent a way to target your energy storage and disrupt your gameplan.
Oh wait I think these were charge counters ...
Energy should have just been charge counters. Players being able to interact with the charge counters does make it weaker but it also hits the main problem of the energy mechanic: The fact that energy is uninteractable. It would have also been far less parasitic because there are many cards that care about counters on permanents in general and charge counters specifically as well as cards that interact with your opponent's counters (on top of permanents with counters on them being removeable).
Can we please get videos like this for the Yugioh and Pokemon channels? Looking at failed cards and archetypes is fun and all but it would be nice to have a look at yugioh card designs that failed not for being too weak, but being too strong (same for Pokemon TCG, though not sure what would fit in that category)
for pokemon it was the team galactic cards
I LOVE energy. Kaladesh is probably my Favorite block of all time. Aetherworks Marvel and Chandra, Torch of Defiance both being in my top 3 favorite cards ever.
So, I'd been dabbling with Energy in Commander. One Dimir deck with a light energy theme. And a Grixis deck which has Aetherworks Marvel and wants to kill with Electrostatic Pummeler. (In Standard that was a seperate R/G energy archetype) My Observations:
3 energy is roughly equal to 1 card.
Most energy payoffs are highly bounded. (There's only a few you can dump a lot of energy into at once.)
For Commander the engine cards that make energy for doing other things are important. Demon of Dark Schemes and Aetherworks Marvel are examples of this.
I actually came up with a solution to the energy mechanic, inspired by the recent Lord of the Ring set. Just like Amass creates an Army creature token to put the counters on, what if Energy created a Battery artifact token to put the energy counters on? Now, artifact interaction is also Energy interaction, and it's much easier to deal with.
Then it's just a treasure.
@@AT-il2ej how so?
Aether Revolt's job was to punish players for having X amount of energy, or use X amount of your opponent's energy for their card's effect, so that the mechanic would be kept in check. It did nothing of the sort, and therefore the mechanic failed. Mark Rosewater should definitely have known better.
i mean, Ather Revolt was supposed to be the anti-energy set, so that the mechanic was kept in check. I saw it coming, everybody saw it coming, except Wizards decided against common sense and didn't do that at all. And that'S why the mechanic failed.
Ah fun times. This does make me think WotC is overdue to create a "reverse proliferate" mecahnics, where you can drain counters off targets.
I really loved Sultai and Temur Dynavolt Control. I have my foil playset to this day
Not having any interaction with the mechanic beyond the mechanic itself seems to be a trend WotC does.
It seems to be the inherent issue with all the various Arcane effects they've made since Kamigawa.
The point at 11:30 is one I've tried to make a few times. Buuut it's really hard to get people to see past the immediate shifts in the game.
Aren't treasure tokens the latest stab at this sort of mechanic? Treasures are tokens that can be interacted with that grant mana. They only require their own specific cards to be generated and can then be used to fuel any other plays you want. They have their own complication of being an artifact that sacrifices itself but I guess it could be argued that the interactions that creates just make the mechanic more interesting than straight up mana batteries.
I liked the Energy system, it's annoying that there wasn't a legendary creature that could generate or spend energy. At the very least I could run an energy commander.
Honestly if the concept itself is the big issue maybe adding restrictions to the concept might be a good direction? Something like players can stockpile X amount of max energy for the game. Maybe a card that needs to be played and spent with energy to increase the maximum by Y.
Or maybe maximum amount of energy only increases due to some other critieria, turns maybe? Or simply a player can only gain Z amount of energy per turn, etc.
The one where the player loses energy if they take damage is interesting too. Maybe lose the same amount of energy as damage so stockpiling is riskier?
Energy is a mechanic that can change the way you play MtG, like with Planeswalkers.
In fact, Yu-Gi-Oh! changed its gameplay with every new summon mechanic.
I thought energy was fun, especially in Limited, but they just pushed a lot of the energy cards too much. They designed multiple cards as if adding energy meant nothing, just tacking it on to cards that would almost be good enough for Constructed even if they didn't add energy.
Looking at that 3/2 ETB Draw a Card creature... that's totally fine even without the two energy. I would play 3/2 draw a card in almost any limited format, as it's almost certainly going to trade off somehow.
@@51gunner Yup, exactly.
I like the energy mechanic as it is. Just print more of them.
Though, if you ask me for a fix, just make Aether burn your life at the end of your turm for each enery you have.
That makes storing large amounts of energy very risky.
Aetherburn.
I've got a fondness for energyz because it was the main theme of my favourite standard deck that I've built - Simic Leviathans
Maybe they could just make energy work like amass where it puts counters on a token permanent, and creates that permanent if you dont already have one. Just make it an artifact token with a catchy name and tweak its stats from there
I was thinking this too, but it would need some hefty balancing because of all the counter shenanigans out there. Would basically make doubling season an auto-include in energy decks.
Amazing!!!!
Maybe energy could work if you could remove them by doing damage. Using it as armor like hearthstone does could be an answer but it would be the same as giving heal for all colours, I think that losing energy counters while receiving damage, while they not block that damage, would be an interesting choice, it would make it risky to hoard the counters for future use and attacks would also mean reducing the opponent's resources
I feel cards could also interact with counters on players would be useful. A consistent way to cure yourself of Poison or removing Experience and Energy. And I don't mean just fixing this to a single card, I mean more as a splashable way in all colors to reign in Energy and Poison. That would make them more reasonable.
Also I can see videos thatfocus on certain creature types and see a general idea for how their tribal archtype could work. Like Goblins, Elves, and Merfolk for example.
They could introduce an entire new game mechanic where during your turn, you can pay X of any mana to remove X counters from another player of your choice but you cannot cast any spells before or after that counter removal until your next turn. Then they would be free to use counters on players for any kind of alternative resource they can imagine without it being too broken.
I honestly wanna know why they stopped printing madness cards. Favorite mechanic besides tribal!
Maybe some energy related creatures can lose you energy when they die. Or charge counters could be moved after removal but with 50% efficiency?
I want to see a revival of energy, I love the idea
I was around then and to add how good energy was, it dominated the format with such statistics, the only other deck in standard history that had similar prominence was blue/white Jace the mind sculpture decks back in Zendikar.
What them to make a enegery commander deck next time we go to kaladesh
Hey dude how about a "Lost in Translation" episode - like the mechanics or play styles that don't translate from formats like Commander to constructed?
Mono green Energy is brutal deck in historic format on arena thanks to a few of the alchemy cards that have been made
My problem with the mechanic is that it does absolutely nothing on its own. Other parasitic mechanics like venture into the dungeon at least have a small effect for the first use. If energy has some sort of base way to use it, It could be cool. But as it stands, if you pull an energy card and have no other energy synergies, that card is pretty useless.
Im still hoping for an Temur Energy Commander in the future
Love energy. Still rocking it on arena in 2023
What about an artifact like:
Flux Channeler - 2 - artifact
X, T: Remove up to X plus one energy counter to target player. Put on target artifact you control an amount of charge counters equal to the amount of energy counters removed this way. ((If that artifact is a creature, you may put +1/+1 counters on that creature instead of charge counters. -- __we may add this line of text to make this artifact actually useful and therefore playable.__ ))
Energy decks are just better treasure decks. Just like energy, treasure let's you stock pile a resource and pivot into other strategies. The ability to stockpile something in the game is actually a common theme. We see it with food and possibly gold as well.
Demon of Dark Schemes and Aetherworks Marvel are objectively the only playable cards outside of Kaladesh just because they have at least an easy condition to fill the energy and the pay out its worth the trouble. I play the later on my Shirei Commander just because i can get at worst 4 and on average 12 energy before my turn arrives and i cant say no to dig for free spells. But outside of those, the rest are just simply either too slow or the activated ability its not worth the trouble.
Ha energy counters is OP in my opinion I still use it in my tezzeret edh and I attain large amounts of energy very quickly and win the game with it a lot of the time
Prehaps energy should have a format of its own
5:06 Wait, you have to tap a creature to activate Outlast?
Shame, I loved using energy, and still pick up Kaladesh cards occasionally to use it.
1:51 soooo uhm no attune can only search up basics which for one green while giving you energy is really good to thin out your basics so you are more likely to draw what you want but it can not search for aether hub
Amazing. Every word you said was both absolutely correct, and utterly pointless. Attune wasn't used to search for Aether Hub, but for whichever basic lands you ran a single copy of to cast (insert goodstuff here), assuming you didn't have either energy-based mana fixer.
I'm debating building an energy commander deck, so I'd be in favor of wotc printing more energy cards
Madison Li from Fallout: 👀👀
“Heard you talkin shit”
To make it more confusing, they could create additional energy types 😂😂
Energy is pretty good with Madison Li
I have an extra turn deck that uses this mechanic but I don't understand very well it's a failed idea?
Like in any cardgame, a mechanic is only good if both you and your opponent is having fun with it. Energy might be fun for the person who is using it, but not fun for the people facing it.
I loved energy. yes it caused some problems in standard, but in other formats it felt lacking
Failed MTG designs: Universes Beyond
As a non-MTG Player: would it help, if Energy decayed (as in reduced by a certain maount) with every upkeep?
Not particularly. It would make the mechanic weaker, yes, but that's not really the problem. It wasn't horrifically strong, the problem with it was that it was a mechanic that couldn't interact with any other mechanics (besides proliferate, but proliferate interacts with near everything).
All it would do is cut away what made the mechanic fun to play, while not really addressing the flaws of the mechanic.
Not really because that would only fix the stock pilling issue but not the interaction or parasitism, plus it would be like a more jank version of the Fading ability. Fading says that you remove a fade counter of the card with it at the beggining of the upkeep and when there are none sacrifice it. And that ability has never being good (with a flew exceptions) even if you manage to put more counters on the permanent, favorful but bad.
It would make the individual build-around cards worse while not really affecting the "play all the energy goodstuff together" decks.
Why is herald of anafenza just chilling😂😂
I think energy would be a lot better if cards gave very little of it on cast, but had triggered abilities that gave more.
I agree. The issue is that many of the energy cards were too pushed. Having them produce as much energy as they did was useful for limited formats, but a real problem for constructed where you could get energy and use it so consistently and efficiently.
Hmm I wonder how well a card similar to The Magical Citadel of Endymion would work for the deck. I dont know what effects it could have beyond holding all of the energy counters you generate. And on your first turn you reveal it from your deck or hand and place it onto the field. Perhaps also having some way to peotect itself by paying energy.
How about using energy as an extra mana cost and maybe limit the creature types that can use them
The true mark of failure for energy was the clammy, necrotic hand of Mark Rosewater propping it up. His incessant glad-handing and obsequiousness has shielded him from the player base realizing that he is the grim reaper going door to door in that meme. If he is the architect behind an idea, it's probably bad. Whether it was bad because others stepped in to make it balanced or he was given free reign to juice his mechanic to trick players into validating his ego, either way it usually turns out shit. I'm glad energy caused such a shitstorm, because it means we're less likely to see him try to force it into another set down the road and gaslight everybody into feeling nostalgia over it. He once joked that the entire R&D team would need to get hit by a bus before they would entertain a controversial card in standard. After seeing what more than a decade of his strong directorial influence has done, I can say that I'm ready for the bus to clean house. I want #ManaDrainInStandard
PS: "Temur is the community name for-" No. Temur is the _corporate_ name for the wedge. The community name is "rug" because it is a monosyllabic word that communicates information within a previously established framework (ie: you don't need outside information about why this word is associated with these colors).
Looks like with Fallout coming to MtG energy is coming back too.
Energy counters were ridiculously cheap. It's uncounterable and non-expiring mana at no extra cost to the cards that generate it. At least treasure tokens can be interacted with. Every mana/energy produced by a card should have included an extra 2 in the mana cost.
Energy needs to come back
i think energy is coming back in lost caverns of ixalan
If energy gets used again it need more effects that steal counters from other players
I actually really liked energy!
As a filthy casual that runs pure artifact decks, I for one hope we get more energy artifacts.
I would like to see Energy as Mana Cost of a card 😆
I like this idea. I think that would help balance it out, actually. You'd really have to watch your resources much more closely and if the spell is countered, it would have a lot more of an impact.
The worst mechanics I have ever experienced in my opinion are Eminence, Partner, and Dice-rolling.
Eminence permanently rewards Commander players from turn zero just for picking the card, and has no interaction for opponents.
Partner lets you customize your command zone and colors, it's more like cherry-picking than being creative. (Not that some newer Commanders aren't being overloaded anyways)
Dice-rolling, mainly from the D&D sets, is just awful. I love tabletop D&D, but the last thing I want to do is slow the game and roll for random numbers when I'm playing Magic... how this mechanic got two sets is beyond me...
They should create the "fixed" version of energy called "synergy", with a similar-looking icon. 😂😂
I played the electrostatic pummeler deck and it was so good. It was also a cheap deck. Too bad they dropped the concept.
I just want a energy precon...