August Preview: Charge Shot, Incidents, MoF Characters
Added 2024-08-26 21:31:11 +0000 UTChttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F5vsC4X8Kg
What is “card advantage?” Is it something you can eat?
Card advantage is a concept that was developed in the early days of competitive Magic the Gathering as a way to abstract the exchanges of resources that happen throughout the game. In most card games, one of the most limited resources available to a player are cards in hand. In general, you consume cards from your hand to perform actions or to gain some sort of on-board advantage, such as items in Danmaku!! or creatures in Magic. When you run out of cards, you're stuck doing nothing. Thus, if you can draw more cards than your opponent, you can gain an advantage by sheer volume of action.
This is especially true in a game like Danmaku!!, which does not have a separate resource system for playing cards, and the only limiting factor in most cases is your limited usage of certain types of actions, such as your danmaku limit and spell card limit. Whenever you play a Grimoire, you effectively gain a 1 card advantage over your opponent, as you spent 1 card to get access to 2 cards.
With this very simplified framework, let's look at some of the basic actions in Danmaku!!.
Charge Shot
As one of the cheapest and most common effects, attacking a player generally costs a single danmaku card. If your opponent spends a card to avoid the attack, then you and that opponent end up with a net equal card advantage.
Because of Danmaku!!'s comeback mechanic, life is a resource that translates directly into cards. Each life you lose lets you draw an extra card. That means that gaining life, such as by playing 1UP effectively gives you a 2 card advantage, as it is a future card you will draw and another danmaku card that your opponent must spend in order to bring you down again.
Having established this framework, we can look at a card that has gone through some of the most changes through Danmaku!!'s history, and for good reason as it's the most common card in the deck, forming the backbone on which the rest of the game is built. I'm talking of course about Shoot, or as it's rebranded in Big Box, Charge Shot.
In the beta version of Danmaku!!, Shoot was even simpler. It merely let a player attack another player in range. For the release version of Danmaku!!, we added the additional functionality that a player can discard cards to extend the range of Shoot. This was because players could find themselves in a situation where they simply could not attack a player they wanted to attack and we wanted to give them an out without completely trivializing the range/distance mechanic.
As we got further into designing Danmaku!! after Lunatic Extra came out, we had many more ways to do rangeless attacks, and this 1-to-1 card to range tradeoff felt increasingly bad, which is why we changed it to a much cleaner template in the version 1.1 release of the cards. Now, players could spend a single card to gain an infinite range. Would this be busted? It turns out, no. The card advantage loss of spending 2 cards to make a single attack is enough to make it an action of last resort. Further, if your opponent avoids the attacks, it's effectively a 2-for-1.
We evaluated this tradeoff again for Big Box. Is the cost of 2 cards too much for the payoff of attacking an opponent outside of range? Players could still be in the situation where they couldn't attack a player because they only have a single card left in hand and thus can't discard a card for the rangeless attack offered by Shoot.
Unlike past versions, Charge Shot doesn't cost 2 cards to make a rangeless attack. Instead, it gives your opponent a card if you choose to use the bottom mode. In a 1-v-1 scenario, this is the same amount of relative card advantage between the attacker and the opponent. You spent a single card, but your opponent went up a card.
However, while older versions of Shoot resulted in fewer total game actions and less interaction, Charge Shot now generates more overall interaction. The player attacking gets to do so without having to throw away cards, and the player being attacked gets more actions as well, including possibly drawing into a dodge card that can be played right away to avoid the attack. Then, when multiplayer and politics and hand size enters the equation, we find that Charge Shot is going to be a much more overall interesting card than Shoot's much less-utilized second mode.
Cirno: Ace Attorney - Turnabout Incident
Today’s update also brings important changes to the game surrounding incidents.
We’ve reduced the number of Major Incidents from 10 to 8 and have several new incident art pieces.
Black Market and Hyakki Yagyou are now Ongoing Incidents. As an Ongoing Incident Hyakki Yagyou needed some revision. Now you can join the pandemonium or make a blood sacrifice for card draw and end it. Spooky!
Turnabout is a theme change from Seasonal Flux. Turnabout’s previous card had been cut, so now it graces this shake-things-up incident.
Bullet Heaven was previously Barroom Brawl. This bullet barrage at twilight is a gorgeous piece.
Kimo-Dameshi is Kappa Games re-themed. The mechanics of the card were good, but we wanted something that actually happens in Touhou history. Imperishable Night’s Extra Stage has a Test of Courage that takes place in the story, so now we’ve made that our incident.
Saving the best for last, check out the glorious Reitaisai art by Gina. As Team 9 already knows, this piece is also the cover art for Danmaku!! Big Box. When you receive your copy of the game this is what will greet you! Previously Perfect Possession, this incident allows you to get way more than 2 characters.
We kept getting reports that games were seeing a huge number of incidents and we were initially very confused. It turns out players would manifest new incidents with Master Plan type effects and not resolve any incidents. This reduced the uniqueness of incidents like Urban Legend Outbreak and World of Doors, created a lot of extra processing, and just really bogged games down. So we’ve dramatically cut down on the number of ways players can manifest extra incidents. Incidents are once again a thing that mostly happens to players.
Demon Book is the sole remaining way to manifest extra incidents since it’s the “look for trouble” card. We’ve also added a 3rd option of sacrificing life for card advantage, as if you’re not playing with MoBS it reads “Manifest a new incident.”
Master Plan lost the ability to manifest incidents, trading it for extra deck manipulation.
Summer Subtype’s Season Release is now a rangeless Twin Shot.
Mountain of Faith
Aki Minoriko brings abundance to your Danmaku!! table. This harvest goddess is the only character who just gets an additional draw with her Ability. With her abundance of cards, she can also gift cards to her allies. Her Spell Card is even a Party!
Whereas Minoriko brings abundance, Kagiyama Hina removes misfortune from your table. Joining team Trash Pandas along with Nazrin and Suika, she picks up cards that get discarded from others’ hands (but not cards that were exchanged, because that's a fair and agreed transfer of wealth according to Chimata). We moved her previous Ability to her Spell Card, and if they don’t accept your kind offer you can strap them to the wheel and break them.
Oh! Kawashiro Nitori has also been picked for the Trash Pandas! Respecced as an Item master, she gains a bonus just for having an item now, and if she loses an item, she recycles it for draw power. This removes her overlap with Futo and provides a little bit of a buff. Her Spell Card, Exteeending Aaarm reaches out and grabs a new (to her) item. We’re gonna clean the rivers of Gensokyo!
Inubashiri Momiji just couldn’t stay away from Danmaku!!. This wolf tengu comes with a shield and can sniff out danger. Her bite is definitely worse than her bark, with a Spell Card that attacks twice or gives her a kickback, she can run all night.
Kochiya Sanae is almost unchanged from her Danmaku!! 1.0 form. The Miracle Fruit now brings bounty if no malice (danmaku) is found.
Yasaka Kanako only gets some wording updates from her 1.0 version. This goddess keeps up with the modern world.
Moriya Suwako loses her advantage on flips Ability. It’s been moved to another character with the power of good luck. That’s fine, she was always A Lot. Her card quality passive has been modified to only happen once per round but be more powerful.
Full Changelog:
Testing a new version of Charged Shot. Instead of requiring 2 cards to get rangeless attack, it lets the target you're attacking draw a card.
Changed Subtype wording from "If you do..." to "When you do..."
Demon Book changed to choose one modal. Now has a third option to lose 1 life and draw an additional card
Graze formatting changed to a single card instead of a split card.
Graze changed to instead of discarding in order to play on another player's behalf, you must discard a card after playing it, thus allowing you to play it on another player's behalf if it is the only card left in your hand.
Added reminder text to Hellfire Torch (after they draw)
Master Plan no longer manifests new incidents directly. Added option to shuffle a discard pile into a deck
Summer Subtype no longer resolves or manifests a new incident. Now lets you twin shot
Supernatural border wording updated to match other flip effects
Applied new art to cards
Changed the timing on Sabotage to explicitly happen at certain steps instead of "whenever a player would draw a card."
Changed Uchide's Mallet to pass at end of turn. No longer requires destroying an item to pass it to someone else.
Changed Major Incident reminder text
Updated art when final art is available
Fixed artist credits on many pieces
Renamed Barroom Brawl to Bullet Heaven (name pending). Used art from MoBS cover
Renamed Seasonal Flux to Turnabout. Used existing art
Renamed Perfect Possession to Reitaisai. Used art from Big Box cover
Kappa Games becomes Kimo-dameshi
Suwako loses the flipping card reflip passive
Suwako's passive gets reworked so that she gets to draw 2 additional cards but then discards 2 cards. This effectively serves to recreate her passive but it's better since she gets to pick the best cards to keep
Hina reworked, new Ability and old Ability became a Spell Card
Nitori reworked, removed Kappa EMP for Exteeeeending Aaaarm
Added backup case to Sanae's Miracle Fruit
Updated wording on characters to Big Box standards
