Unfun or Unavoidable: Removal Cards
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Today, I'm tackling one of the most debated topics in pretty much every CCG/TCG community at some point - are removal cards unfun or what?
I'll explore the pros and cons of removal being present in games, its impact on gameplay, all using examples from your card game favourites like MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Marvel Snap, and Gwent.
Big thanks to HeroVoltsyTCG for allowing me the use of some of their footage, give them some love here: www.youtube.co...
Thanks for joining me! If you'd like to see more of my thoughts on card game design, I've got a playlist: • Why is Card Draw Overp...
Music:
Smoke Jacket Blues - TrackTribe
Little Samba - Quincas Moreira
Book Bag - E's Jammy Jams
Smooth & Cool - Nico Staf
Smokey's Lounge - TrackTribe
Stock graphic:
www.pexels.com... - Emily Wilkinson on Pexels.
![Cody Johnson - I'm Gonna Love You (with Carrie Underwood) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yy9PuYMU29g/mqdefault.jpg)
The Pokémon TCG has very little direct removal. The closest thing is probably Boss's orders (and some variants), which switches the active Pokémon of the opponent against one of their other ones - to either allow you to K.O. one of their support mons, to K.O. the vulnerable form of a later threat or to stall a bit by switching their attacker out and hoping they can't switch them back in. They also have some cards that limit the amount of pokémon on the bench, but every player chooses which one they want to keep. Plus some attacks directly K.O. the other mon, but that's using your combat phase. Some abilities can also K.O. a mon without the combat phase but that usually requires prior set up or several turns. In the early days there was energy removal which is basically land hate, so while you didn't remove the Pokémon, you made them sitting ducks that couldn't attack. Which lead to the meta heavily favoring basic Pokémon you could get into play quickly (or Wigglytuff, which could deal huge damage for little energy).
They also have removal for other card types, like stadiums or equipment, but those are low investment cards to begin with and of a more secondary nature, so people don't really mind those.
The thing is a good game mechanic or tactic ought be fun to use, but also and most important should be fun also fun to _have used against us_ . A games is much better when it's fun to _lose_ at. So you are always having fun, even if you are not winning. You go: _"Oh, dayum! haha, silly me! I see what you did! Let's play another one!"_ It's fun to lose when losing is on you. This happens in games with perfect information, like many board games such as chess, where falling for a clever move form your opponent is 100% on you for being unable to "compute" or see it coming. It never feels unfair or unearned.
This is an issue in card games, because you can't see or know what cards the players have in their hand. In CCGs you don't even know what they have _in their deck_ .
If a player can go _"Oh, no. Unbeknownst and unforeseeably to you, I had in my hand a gimmick that can cheaply and instantly cancel an expensive plan you've been building up for several turns. What? your deck has no in-built defense against this thing you didn't know I would be able to do? Well too bad."_ feels unearned, even if you know the type of card _exists_ .
Another design solution (besides them having an extra cost, like health) could be to just not make them "instants". If they were to be played on the matt and maybe they take a turn or so to activate, that automatically leads to a whole new world of possible counter-plays.
Of course maybe I'm just whining about something I personally don't like and I just don't know enough about card games.
No, I definitely think you're onto something, else I wouldn't be making a video on cards like this being unfun.
Fully agree on mechanics being supposed to be fun for both players, though I'd add that this doesn't necessarily mean AS fun, because that would leave very few on the table. Fun for one, palatable for the other I'll also take.
A game has to have ups and downs to be fun. Sure, we all would like to constantly stomp our opponent, but that will get boring after a time, and also it's just infuriating being on the receiving end. Removal helps give that back and forth to a game, and can create the most memorable moments like comebacks. We hate getting hit with removal because it stops our plans, but that's part of the fun in card games!
Removal is really fun...when you are using it! Great video, your writing and editing was on point. I've been doing some game design and the frustration of removal can help set the mood of a game: I can imagine it going well with a post-apocalyptical world where things are breaking a lot, or a game where the player are thieves and steal from each other...
The bad feeling is a powerful emotion and it can be used thematically.
Thanks a lot! I think I'm on the lower end of the satisfaction-from-playing-removal curve, personally. Always up for playing some permission/lockout though, so I can sympathize :D
The problem I see with removal spells specifically in MTG is that they always earn value with the only exception being a creature less deck. You are up against agro? Use it to stall. Against combo? Snipe their enablers. No matter if you are drawing it early or late it stays valuable whereas other cards highly fluctuate. There is a reason why every standard black deck plays a combination of the same 3 removal spells regardless of their deck type. So while in a single isolated game gaining medium to good value I see the problem in how they overall affect deckbuilding as there is simply no downside to having them unless you run into the odd creature less deck, though in case of MTG many removal cards target even up to three different card types
Yeah, MTG card types are not created equal, and especially creatures will be effect-delivery systems for all the strategies you've enumerated.
So creature removal is rarely going to be dead in hand.
Good video man. Let talk about low cost swarm/rush. And how a meta can warp itself around it
I've played amidst Piratestone for a bit. Definitely an interesting topic how aggro/low curve strategies are adopted at an even higher rate than winrates would indicate.
Personally, I've always preferred to play control decks. I just never enjoyed players being able to do to me as they please, so I started playing control decks to give me some control. Of course, granted thinking about it now, I'm actually taking control away from the opponent by doing so. Still, I found playing control decks are more engaging than creature-focused decks. Its why I quit spellweaver after they literally did everything they could think of to stop people playing anything other than weenie decks. This meant one by one they removed all the decks I enjoyed playing, which is why I quit. On a side note, this lead to the game dying because they were literally removing decks from the meta far faster than they were being added (they tried to avoid the set rotation thing the genre is infamous for).
That said, I do admit I've always hated counter spells. To me, they're overcosted for what they did. In MTG, they have similar costs to other removal spells, but they're far more versatile than any other removal. Most removal spells can only remove a specific type of card, such as creatures, enchantments, and artifacts. Counterspells could remove any of these, with the only caveat being that they had to to do so when the card was played.
Of course, this may be due to the meta when I played magic. The only time you saw counterspells was in blue-white control decks. There however was no reason to run blue other than for the counter spells. This meant any deck that ran counterspells, literally ran everyone that was type 2. This would often be 3 or 4 different cards, and since you can have 4 copies of each this meant 12 to 16 of the 60 cards in their deck was counterspells. Often times this would result in the infamous wall of counterspells, where everything you did was counterspelled. Essentially, they were stall decks that just straight made you unable to play the game. Even Statis decks I've seen aren't as hardcore as those counterspell decks were. It got really stupid in mirror matches, which resulted in the infamous counterspell war. Both players would just avoid playing anything at all until their hands filled up. This was because when they did play something, it would result in both players counterspelling each other's counterspells back and forth. Worse yet, since the player who played the initial card had to spend mana to do so, this meant they almost always lost the counterspell war. This put both players in a stand off as they both waited for the other to make the first move, and the one that did almost always lost.
I admit, counterspells can have their place, as long as they DON'T COMPRISE HALF OF THE PLAYER'S DECK. As long as you don't have a stall deck that just stops your opponent from playing at all, I'm fine with it. Though when I did play control decks, I avoided counterspells entirely. I played mono black control instead, partially because of my hatred of counterspells.
As for removal, as you said they're actually not that OP. I didn't win too many games with monoblack control, despite my deck being pretty much nothing but removal. In reality, the decks that tend to dominate every meta are the rush decks. In fact, you look at any ban that has happened in type 2/standard, it was always in response to a rush deck. FIrst it was Tolarian Academy (a deck that could literally win first turn like 1/4 games), then ravager affinity which like tolarian academy before it essentially got its entire deck list banned, and I think there was another after that. If you looked at the ban list back then, there was no removal cards that I can think of (other than maybe Balance), but instead it was cards that gave too much ramp or otherwise just let you get high-cost creatures out too fast. Re-animator decks seemed to be the biggest bane of the meta honestly.
I will also acknowledge that removal I guess does take control away from the opponent. Also, I found it annoying hearthstone. Looking back, all decks were essentially removal decks due to the way the combat system worked. It meant nothing could stay in play for more than 2 or 3 turns, which was quite annoying. There was also the common problem where you could easily fall into a loop that was nigh impossible to escape from. Let's imagine a scenario where players a and b have one creature out. Player a uses theirs to kill the one player b has, then plays another. Player b plays a new creature on their turn, but they cannot attack with it since it was just played. Player b then kills that creature, possibly losing the first one in the process, then plays another. Essentially, you fall into a cycle of your drops being killed every turn before you could accomplish anything with them, and this happened the overwhelming majority of games. It was also nigh impossible to escape from it, since your player could keep playing cards at the same pace you did. That game just had far too much removal in it. Literally every creature essentially had 'tap this creature to destroy target creature with toughness less than or equal to this card's power'. Imagine what that would do to MTG?
Removal in moderation is fine, but it can easily get excessive. One thing I think hearthstone did do right was the secrets thing. Yeah, it had counterspells, but it essentially gave you the power to chose what got counterspelled. Counterspells were obstacles you had to work around, they were engaging and required serious thought on your part. Your opponent also could only have at most 2 in their 30 card deck, which also helped. I also liked MTG battleground's mechanic where blue did technically have an infinite supply of counterspells, but they couldn't really be used against anything that cost less than 3 mana, and casting anything yourself gave your opponent a moment to cast something big without having to worry about getting counterspelled. Again, it was possible to work around it, so it didn't feel OP at all. So if you're going to add removal to your game, give the target player some engaging way to work around it. Let them chose what creature gets killed, let them chose which spell gets countered. GIVE THEM CONSENT. Don't give too much either, or someone's just going to be prevented from playing the game. As long as you follow those rules, removal is fine and can even be fun.
Great analysis on the psychological factors that go into experiencing removal. My problem isn't with the existence of removal, but how poorly balanced it is. The ability to NOPE a spell for one or two mana or kill any creature for anything less than five mana is ridiculous. It always sets the player emphasizing removal ahead, and emphasizes Not Playing the Game.
I know MTG is popular and most influencers will tout it for having a "robust meta," but I find that while the groundwork of MTG is a fun game, it is constantly ruined by either not being able to play the game or even winning by not allowing my opponent to play the game. Good thing we spent all that money buying cards and time putting a deck together just to not get to Do The Thing.
Removal with more limitations in scope and/or increase in cost would be far healthier and acceptable. "Okay, so you killed my big stompy, but it cost you almost everything else you have to do so, I can work with this" is so much better. Really, MTG SHOULD have implemented creature/spell denial for equivalent or even greater mana cost only. "Pay 2 + X mana, destroy any creature with X mana cost" would be horribly weak compared to what's been designed, but if no removal cards were better than that, it would make the game far more fun. Alternatively, differentiate between legendary & non-legendary creatures with kill cards. You could destroy any non-legendary for cheap costs, but legendaries would be immune as a whole, instead of only specific legendaries being impervious to spells / removal.
This is a conversation about this thats currently happening in Hearthstone. The current expansion has both cards that build big boards quickly and cards that wipe these boards for cheap.
One of the designers spoke in an interview of how they consider these "explosive board resets" to be a key pillar of modern hearthstone, but the reality for most players is that you can't expect to keep a card on board in the mid-late game for even a single turn.
It still provides a varied meta and there's still skill involved, but there's little space to enjoy having a card in play as it'll likely stick for a single turn at best.
@@GamesDeconstructed Thank you so much for the reply! Yikes, that sounds like an un-fun experience. At that point, why differentiate from churn-and-burn 1-use cards from the hand and cards in play?
Gem Blenders's creator made his TCG without removal because of his dislike of it.
Psychologically, experts say that loss avoidance is valued at a rate 1.5x that of gains.
I agree, i think removal is healthy for these kinds of games, but definitely can feel bad for players on the receiving end. Your justifications for the "invisible cost" is a very good way to look at it. Also shout outs to duel masters XD
Duel Masters rocked!
@GamesDeconstructed yes it does! The shields mechanic and mana mechanic were spot on in this game, wish it was still supported in America
lmao, the swords to plowshare was classic. I remember when I played it against my brother's goblin lacky he got all mad and said it was over powered to get an exile for one mana, and someone near us was like "its not over powered it's balanced, it gives you a free land!" (thinking he was talking about path to exile). My brother then responded "No it doesn't give me a land, it gives me ONE LIFE!!!".
Later on, when me and my brother were going to play together, as soon as he realized swords to plowshares was in my deck (i didn't even get a chance to play it) he just rage quit the game.
Yeah, I had the exact same reaction to removal as your brother, initially :D.
The second or third kitchen table deck I ever played against was monoblack Oops All Removal. It was traumatic for baby me :D
@@GamesDeconstructed hehehe, right xD The thing is tho, if I didn't have such a card in my deck, he'd just be able to go off with his lacky ability and I wouldn't have a good time. My deck just couldn't compete with the speed of his as it was midrange at the time. Original mono green midrange, but then I in splashed white just to have a chance surviving the early game.
Have you seen Duskwitch from Keyforge? Or low power creatures that the player playing them wants to destroy... Removal makes a lot more cards printable! Tbf Keyforge is a race where huge strong in power (hp and attack) creatures can be a lot less threatening than a small power creature with strong action, reap or fight effects. You can play those to force the opponent to use diferent house or let you get a lot of advantage! On play effect creatures are even more insane sometimes tbf
I've only played Keyforge a couple of times, can't really tell how good Duskwitch is :).
And you're absolutely right that creatures with immediate, on-play effects can be stronger than big beaters. Hearthstone had metas where having a strong, immediate effect was expected of all cards above 5-6 mana. Wasn't exactly due to removal, more to do with how tempo in hearthstone works, but yeah, 100% agreed.
@@GamesDeconstructed Duskwitch is a threat.. If the enemy does not deal with her, you can get a bunch of creatures and use them the same turn. If they get rid of her, they might be forced to chose a different house than they planned, gaining less ember/board presence ect in the process.
great video, you should make a video about legends of runeterra, they are commiing every card game sin dialed up to 11.
I'd have to play more of it, but thanks for the idea!
Your channel is a treasure trove
Thanks Max, I hope to keep it that way. At least in terms of the "valuable" part of the analogy, maybe leaving behind the "being hidden" part many treasure troves share :D
are you from Poland?
Yes. Accent gave me away? :)
@@GamesDeconstructed "wsiąść do pociągu" behind you. I actually was suprised cause your accent is really good.
@@aurealis2041 Haha, good catch.
When it comes to removal, the two most important aspects or questions are "how resource intensive is it to cast unconditional hard removal?" And "how strong is the cheapest conditional removal?".
In MtG, murder is 3 mana. This means that any creature more than 3 mana needs to generally have some sort of protection, some sort of immediate value, or provide some sort of tempo that causes immediately removing it 1 for 1 to be a tempo loss for the opponent. Alternatively, the conditional removal has to be strong enough that it's preferable to hard removal, giving creatures that trade unfavourably with hard removal breathing room.
The inverse, the "cheapest conditional removal" dictates the low end of what can be played. When lightningbolt is in standard, it makes any creature with 3 or less health but more than 1 mana very unfavourable. Cut Down also pushes out anything that costs more than Cut Down that dies to Cut Down.
Removal dictates what non removal is playable. To be viable, non removal has to either:
-not die to conditonal removal or trade favourably with hard removal
-be so strong if it isnt removed that it's okay to gamble on your opponent simply not having their removal
-having a critical mass of non removal threats where you can simply apply pressure and replace threats, because the opponent can't remove all of them
Runeterra i think did a great job handling removal because:
-not all answers to threats are removal
-rarely if ever is removal mana advantageous, card advantageous, and tempo advantageous all at once
-many cards can be threats, answers to threats, answers to enemy answers, or circumstantially a combination of the above
-decks and archetypes don't usually hinge on a single point of failure where if it gets removed you lose, so it's easier to play through removal
Ultimately in most TCGs whether or not you win or lose comes down to 3 things:
-you execute your gameplan and your opponent doesn't execute their gameplan
-you execute all of your gameplan before your opponent executes all of their gameplan
-you both execute your gameplan and your gameplan has higher value/ceiling
Removal is how you disrupt your opponent's gameplan. If you can't disrupt your Opponent's gameplan, all you're doing is playing past each other and who wins depends on draw luck, and who gets to their end state faster or has the better end state.
I think what you really want is for control decks to *not* just be a critical mass of removal where the back and forth is every game piece being immediately removed as it comes down.
Very well put. I wholeheartedly agree, though there's some added wrinkles to these general rules when we take ideas like timing/tempo or protection availability into account.
If a 3 mana hard removal spell is played, more expensive creatures that fold to it can be played to good effect, provided that:
The opponent is not very likely to draw it before the creature drops (say, only 1 copy of the removal spell is played in a 100 card singleton deck)
And the creature provides a fast enough clock that the opp is not likely to have time to draw the card.
Card game metas and their components actually get quite complex when we start examining relationships and heuristics. That's a major part of why I find card game analysis so interesting.
@GamesDeconstructed I LOVE TCGs, I'm working on one of my own with lessons learned from every one I played so I scour theory for all of them constantly. One thing I noticed is that removal, disruption, negation, and countering tends to be so good in most of them that combat is an afterthought despite the fact that all of the big TCGs have combat and pretty intricate rules for combat. So I want to design removal that's meant to be used in combination with not instead of combat.
Truly well written. The cost of denial must be at least equal to what's been denied, if not greater, to justify it.
You need some way to remove the opponent's stuff or it's just solitaire. I prefer when this can be done through combat, as in Hearthstone, with contribution from damage spells as well as hard removal. The presence of removal often means that cards have to be 'sticky' or provide immediate value to be viable. This can be built in to the game, if all creatures can attack when you summon them, for example.
Yeah, that's the goal.
Every competitive card game is somewhere in between "literally nothing you play sticks" and "whoever plays their cards first wins", and the beauty's in balancing between these two extremes. Having proactive cards (like creatures) also be interactive (like in HS) is a design choice I like personally.k
I think there's a feeling if inevitability that people dislike. There's no sense that you could've played a different card and have it not get removed. You have no agency other than having a counter spell ready.
Removal cards are fun to play, which is why all 5 colors in Magic have types of removal. And there are answers to removal if you designed your deck right.
Ahh my favorite game: Yu-Ji-Oh
Used up my hard Gs on the Gathering in the preceding section
It reminds me of how my grandparents used to say it lol.
wow you sure are good at reading a script while looking directly into the camera at the same time! ;)
in all seriousness; i love the card game design videos and am always glad when yugioh gets a mention. theyre interesting and help me develop my own game
True, I don't comment nearly enough for a subject I care about. The suggestion at the end to have a visible loss on the remover's part is design bible gold.
Interesting analysis, thank you! Gemwielders is not a TCG but I considered how to treat removal anyway. Meta is less of an issue with a deckbuilding game, even though I still have to keep in mind what types of decks would do well and make sure everything is balanced. I decided to not include hard removal, but introduced a few cards that make it harder for the opponent to execute their plans. For example there is Fungus, which can be attached to a permanent and make it so it's owner loses 1 life every time they use it. Or Sabotage taps it down for a turn and makes them lose power. I think this approach is a nice compromise between spoiling the opponent's plan altogether and having no way of hindering their gameplay or of interaction at all.
Yeah absolutely, there are other forms of negative interaction and slowing your opponent down than just removal. Good thing you're thinking about which methods fit your design best :)
I personally think removal is a problem when it can counter both a proactive and a reactive approach to the game. For example, in Marvel snap, if you have initiative on turn 6, you will get boardwiped from a Killmonger, but if the opponent has initiative, get ready to get obliterated by Alioth. Another example is from Legends of Runeterra. When facing Freljord with a deck that goes wide, if you develop (playing units before attacking) the opponent will board wipe you with an Avalanche before you get the chance to even attack, therefore you'll deal no damage to them, but if you attack immediately, you will still be punished by Mighty Ravine, a card that heals face undoing all the little damage your attack dealt and also board wiping you next turn. I think each faction/region/color in a card game should never have both of these forms of removal.
The Snap example is really cool, it shows a facet of removal use that really caught my interest lately. Interactions with tempo/timing.
Killmonger with and without initiative on turn 6 in SNAP are night and day, which I think adds an interesting consideration to when you use removal during s match.
@@GamesDeconstructed Appreciate your response to my comment. I also want to add that in Marvel Snap, balancing removal is even more difficult as there are not factions/colors and any card in the game can be played with any other card in the same deck.
Additionally, my personal favourite removals in card games are the ones that require a certain amount of set up. For example, removals that can only be played on damaged/stunned enemies or something like poison in Gwent where you basically have to mark an enemy before removing them. Developers should strive to do that more.
I feel any form of interaction is good for a card game, there will be problematic cards that need to be addressed and answered without bans. Ofc mtg has the stack and you can counter spells, is that removal or interaction cause it never hits the field? It just balances the game, I feel if someone doesn't play removal it'll cause prolly more unfun experiences. If no player has removal the game is stale, boards get clogged up less creative thinking and prolly comebacks, and ofc combo players will prolly destroy the opp. Ofc I am a competitive mtg player, and I play CEDH so 4 players so removal can be more political base. Ofc I have bias I moved away from kitchen table cause its slow and clunky.
I feel like that's the prevalent stance in most competitive card game playerbases. Not only due to the habituation effect I mention in the video, but because card games self-select for these playerbases. You're not going to fare well in CEDH if your day's ruined every time an opponent brings out permission/removal/wraths. The players with that sort of emotional response either move on from the hobby or stick to hyperlocal playgroups, so you're less likely to encounter them in the wild :).
Interestingly, there are some well balanced games that cater to this group within the board game sphere - some engine builders come to mind. They cause the same discussions about 'solitaire' and 'uninteractivity', but I think they could be looked upon for ideas of balancing levers that don't rely on player-driven threat assessment and reaction.
@@GamesDeconstructed Wraths are pretty uncommon in CEDH besides cyclonic rift. Ofc I'm trying to go optimized play groups now. Cause CEDH is clogged with blue black decks that win with thassa's Oracle (Which should be banned cause like 70% of cedh decks run that combo) Ofc yes I say damn when something of mine is removed but ofc I play graveyard, artifact, or stax decks so I have recursion or lockdown. I feel removal in multiplayer format causes more fun (remove the stax piece) It gets alot of conversation going of what the real threat is and people making deals to avoid removal. I have some decks heavy on interaction mainly my stax lists or even just a removal themed deck. In casual edh everything is slower, less solitaire like. The threats are creatures mainly or something that makes creatures attack step is the name of the game. Ofc when I play casual or try to, i handicap my decks to a budget but all are still solitaire in a way (artifact decks mainly).
@@Abby_Affchen yeah, I don't play a lot of CEDH, but from what I've seen the removal window is a lot smaller - more instant speed wincons, and generally faster decks will do that. Causes me to treat removal more like a finite resource I have to ration whenever there's risk of someone winning. In casual Commander I tend to play it more liberally, based on intuition.
@@GamesDeconstructed Actually in CEDH, most people are as greedy as casual players. There is alot of windows for interaction mainly on the stack. Counterspells is what I mean but there are triggers to respond to so removal is great, stax though is where most heavy "control" is played cards to stop opponents plans like limit to spell casting, restriction to resources etc. Most games of cedh last till like turn 8 so 1 hr in almost a typical casual game. I ofc play non blue decks (too expensive to play blue) so my interaction is removal base not stack based. But its fairly easy to interact unless they play thassa's Oracle than GG cause theyre in blue and only are casting it cause they have backup interaction. Don't get me wrong I've lost on turn 1 before but its not really common. But besides that white is mainly the color where there is less window to react cause of all the stax pieces restricting your opponents and cards that literally say opponents cant do anything on your turn and most decks dont even run white with stax
@@Abby_Affchen sounds like I need to play some more CEDH soon then. Thanks for sharing your perspective!
That was awsome. Thanks!
What do designers do for players? That believe that shuffling a deck to play solitary is considered a negative interaction. Then, proceed to tell you staring at a wall is boring.
That’s the hard part of design, if you make a solitaire type of gameplay the fun for the one making the combo goes to 5 and the one losing to the combo is around -5 in general, but then you get a 0 level of fun in average.
That could also apply when you had a good board or great threat and the enemy clears or remove the big boy, but in this case at least you can apply your strategy in a way, therefore the fun meter could be 5 for the one removing and 0 to the one losing his board, the fact that you get to do your strategy raise the fun to neutral therefore you got an average of 2.5, but you have to be careful because people like winning and had to make sure everyone can win
Good video and I hope you enjoy playing my card game if/when you do play
Best of luck with your card game! :)
Good stuff