Recent Posts

31

Drawing Board / Re: Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« Last post by N.A. Larson on September 08, 2017, 08:52:36 pm »

Don't get me wrong: grid destruction, or "slicing", as I call it, is VERY important in TSSSF, for the very reasons you mention. The flip side, though, is that the grid is a resource, and blowing it up constantly will hinder gameplay. I've mentioned slice a few times before in these forums, but it's so important that I'm probably going to dedicate a whole design article to it.

I'm surprised to hear that you feel like you don't have enough slicers in your deck, seeing as how you have all the official cards, like Aria, Wild Fire, Jumpin' Jack, 4 Love Poisons, etc. Check out our card database to see if there are any fan cards that you would want to add to your deck (especially Mix Master Magic).

On the subject on grid size, I've noticed that in my games the grid gets nuked at around 20 Pony cards.

32

Conventions / Re: Nightmare Nights Dallas 2017

« Last post by N.A. Larson on September 08, 2017, 08:18:27 pm »

I will be both of those things!

Side Note: I'm still on the hunt for an original Queen Bee Sunset Shimmer card, so if you have one and you want to trade or sell it, maybe we can make a deal!

33

Showcase / Re: Magical Mares

« Last post by Lord LunaEquie is me on September 08, 2017, 06:55:36 pm »

I wouldn't doubt it, coming from you. All the cards I've seen from you have been top-notch quality (and I still adore the flavor text you gave me for the Shipwrecker CMC).

Off the top of my head, I know I did watch Sailor Moon as a child (which I think is the magical girl show for the West), but I can't remember anything about it, Madoka Magica, of which I've only seen the original show and none of the movies and remakes, Princess Tutu, and the smattering of magical girl spoof episodes from various anime like Tenchi Muyo or Excel Saga. I think that's actually about it. By the time I had easy access to anime (i.e. outside of the few that aired on Toonami and the like), I stopped having as much time to watch it, and tended to go for more widely-known or acclaimed titles like Spice & Wolf or Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

Wait, does PSG count?

34

Site Updates / Re: Design Article #4: Keywords and Their Applications

« Last post by Ithry on September 08, 2017, 06:47:06 pm »

These are likely oversights on Sweet Cream's part and either oversights or unfamiliarity with the game on the part of the Fan Pon cards. Considering the wide variety of mistakes and wordings in Fan Pon, I'm under the impression each card was designed by the creator of the character on the card, which would explain that. Now that we're posting articles on card anatomy and design, we're hoping those articles will lessen these kinds of issues in the future.

35

Drawing Board / Re: Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« Last post by Lord LunaEquie is me on September 08, 2017, 06:46:58 pm »

1) The reason Shipwrecker was its own card type was to get child characters into the game WITHOUT putting them in adult situations. The alternative is to age up the characters as with Tales of Ponyville University, or put them on non-character cards as with Cutie Mark Crusader: Matchmakers! If you're going to redo the Shipwreckers as Pony cards, the characters portrayed must be 18+.

That's fair. I was still thinking about it from a mechanical point of view because, perhaps surprisingly considering how we joke around in other games, my friends and I never seem to go blue when playing TSSSF. It might be best I drop this line of thinking, then.

2) You are correct: Copy, like all powers that doesn't say otherwise, activates on the grid (Style Guide 2.6.10), by which point it is useless to copy Replace. I once asked the same question of HPG: They said they kept getting asked if Copy could copy Replace, so that's why the text is there.

I actually had a suspicion that might be the case. Never underestimate the thickness of John Q. Public. I've dug into too many design documents to not suspect that clause was included because someone asked whether they could do that.

I'm still not a fan of this mechanic. It's just too easy to destroy the grid (think of much Cheerilee, who's power is activated the same way, gets recurred).

To be honest, the way my games tend to go, we usually need more grid-destruction options. For one thing, we rarely have a table large enough to support more than about a 5x5 grid (measured in ponies) before it starts getting really crowded. For another, Search powers are more useful when you've got more than five cards in the discard, and it can often be a while before we even get a single card in the discard from a replace effect. I like the constantly-cycling nature of the game, where things have much less permanency to them and are not as important to track as something like Munchkin.

36

Site Updates / Re: Design Article #4: Keywords and Their Applications

« Last post by Lord LunaEquie is me on September 08, 2017, 06:25:34 pm »

Which fan cards were you talking about with respect to keywords? If any happen to be mine, I can comment on those or speculate on others.

I don't think I own any cards you've designed as of yet (though if any show up at this year's Nightmare Nights I'm totally going to grab them). I dug through my collection to pick out a few examples, though this isn't the full extent of them:

Discord, Jelly Filled from I think the Fan Pon expansion (one of many that has no watermark and no set name on the card) has the Draconequus, Elder, and Villain keywords but not his name keyword for some reason. Similarly, I have a Princess Ember card from a... rated T for Teen expansion that has the Ember keyword (and somewhat surprisingly, no Princess keyword).

King "Kingsley" Sombra from the Fan Pon expansion has the King Sombra keyword where others, like King Sombra, Resurrected from the Alternate Universe expansion has the Sombra keyword (without the royalty). "Kingsley" also has the OC keyword and that bugs me a little.

Rock Breaker Pinkie from the Alternate Universe expansion doesn't have the Mane 6 keyword. All the other Mane 6 from that expansion do have the Mane 6 keyword.

Con Dorks from the Fan Pon expansion has Earth Pony and Unicorn as keywords, while the ability states it can count for either for all Goals, Ships, and Powers.

Connie from the Gem Ponies expansion has no keywords, even for her race which appears to be Griffin.

I can understand a lot of these are just basically "bugs not caught in development", but I'm kind of anal retentive and these things and it makes them seem kind of sloppy. Others, like the Con Dorks, seem innocent but unnecessary.

37

Drawing Board / Re: Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« Last post by N.A. Larson on September 08, 2017, 12:01:31 am »

1) The reason Shipwrecker was its own card type was to get child characters into the game WITHOUT putting them in adult situations. The alternative is to age up the characters as with Tales of Ponyville University, or put them on non-character cards as with Cutie Mark Crusader: Matchmakers! If you're going to redo the Shipwreckers as Pony cards, the characters portrayed must be 18+.

2) You are correct: Copy, like all powers that doesn't say otherwise, activates on the grid (Style Guide 2.6.10), by which point it is useless to copy Replace. I once asked the same question of HPG: They said they kept getting asked if Copy could copy Replace, so that's why the text is there.

3) Maybe Cheerilee's wording is more to your liking.

4) A valid concern. Also, Changelings could trigger this power if it's name-based.

I'm still not a fan of this mechanic. It's just too easy to destroy the grid (think of much Cheerilee, who's power is activated the same way, gets recurred).

38

Showcase / Re: Magical Mares

« Last post by Ithry on September 07, 2017, 10:40:48 pm »

Glad you like them! I'm a huge magical girl fan personally, and tried to cover most of the well known ones. Madoka's an extremely influential and popular show in the genre, so there is one Madoka card in the set as a Goal. I'm actually making a separate mini-pack just for Madoka, but you'll see that later. The naming schemes and mechanics are super great, trust me.

39

Showcase / Re: Magical Mares

« Last post by Lord LunaEquie is me on September 07, 2017, 10:24:21 pm »

I literally just saw those on Shipficbooru like an hour ago. These make me so happy even though I've never seen those specific anime. Maybe precisely because I've never seen them and still know about them: more recognizable as classics rather than some sort of pandering if they were, for instance, Madoka Magica.

I would comment about hoping for a specific magical girl, but I don't think I've seen a whole lot of magical girl anime and nothing comes immediately to mind.

40

Drawing Board / Workshopping Shipwrecker CMC into ponies.

« Last post by Lord LunaEquie is me on September 07, 2017, 10:16:54 pm »

So, I think that the Shipwrecker CMC that I had people help me put together last year might just work better as Pony cards rather than their own special card type that needs explaining, buuuuuuuut I think the current way I have it worded is unnecessarily clunky.

[Ability name] (Shipwreck): While this card is in your hand, you may discard this card to discard one Ship from the grid. If you use 3 Shipwrecker cards in the same turn, discard every card from the grid except the start card. This power cannot be copied.

I modeled the wording after the guide for Replace, but there's a few things I feel don't work. Firstly, is there any reason to keep the "cannot be copied" clause? I may have misunderstood how Copy works if this line is necessary, because I always thought the pony had to be on the grid for it to copy another card. Alternatively, if the copy ability is technically active while in your hand, would the Shipwreck ability be too powerful if it could be copied? (That last one might be something I should test.)

Secondly, wouldn't it be more elegant to say "Discard this card from your hand to X" without the "While this card is in your hand" clause? As long as "from your hand" is specified, that explicitly means you cannot use it from the grid, and it cuts out a lot of what seems to me unnecessary wording.

Lastly, the secondary ability of nuking the board if you play 3 of them probably needs to be slightly rephrased to refer to the Shipwreck ability rather than the Shipwrecker card names since that limits future Shipwrecker ponies to always need that title.