New Concept ~ Unit ~

**houshasen** · 04-08-2012, 01:35 AM

Just make sure everyone understands, I love Shadow Era. It is awesome as it is and there are tons of new cards that can be added to make the game more deep, but having said so I just love to think (and even more is see) total new game mechanics introduced in the game.

Resource, Field are two concept I proposed in the past and continues to push the idea despite the chance of they actually seeing the actual implementation in Shadow Era is less than the chance me winning lottery.

So just like the other two, this time suddenly I came up with a concept called "Unit".

What is Unit?

A few creatures working together to make up a Unit. Given the relative small sizes of ally typically on the board at once instance in Shadow Era, I propose 3 allies

Why Unit?

Introduce new play and strategy. Unlike Aldon

affecting all creatures, this is more like affecting couple other creatures; hence, limited affect but can make those a bit stronger.

What can unit do?

Essentially think them as military unit, or sports team, subsection in company, speciality clinic in medicine. An unit work together to produce result, and by forming unit/team you gain something that individuals could not have done so.

In other games the concept is sometimes seen partly by using creature's race, affiliation etc. For instance, "all vampire's gain 1 attack" and other creature stating "all vampires gain 1 health" resulting in conceptual creation of vampire units. This is supposedly called "*Intentional Synergy."

Definition of intentional synergy vs. accidental synergy per Nachochez see here.

Why not simple "intentional synergy" as in other games?
I am almost certain that we will see such in the future as we already see that limited creatures having like "undead, wulven" subtypes; however, only very few currently have such. There is no affiliation concept in Shadow Era cards. So using race/affiliation based linking at this point for existing card is simply not possible.

How to implement this on Shadow Era?
Thanks to Unruler pointing out that my initial concept being too complex for Shadow Era, I have changed this to comply more with existing Shadow Era.

First, I am defining a few keyword specific for unit abilities.

Keywords

Team Attack
- When a union leader attacks, all union ally attacks at once to the selected target. The total damage will be the sum of the all attacking allies. The counter will not occur until all damages are inflicted on the target first. The counter damage will be received by union leader.

Team Defense
- When any of the union member is damaged, divide damage by the number of the union members and all union member will receive the same damage.

Unit X
- Select X friendly ally at the time of casting of unit leader. The unit is now defined with these selected allies and this ally itself.

Unit Member
- All allies within the specified unit including unit leader.

Unit Leader
- Ally possessing ability to create unit i.e. Unit X ability.

Example cards

Image Source: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&se...ptain#/d1uzbhe

Image Source: http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=shin...set=0#/d20masz

Image Source: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&se...ptain#/d4tj5id

Image Source: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&se...rlord#/d3bw04a

NOTE: Brand new Magic Set cards actually has revealed new concept called "SOULBOUND", which is essentially what this is but I did not see their cards when I came up with this idea.

Some combo here example here.

Ectypist with Kristoffer

and Aldon

. Wow devastating.

**Unruler** · 04-08-2012, 03:15 AM

Interesting idea, but way too complicated for SE.

They should just release more combo-oriented allies.

**houshasen** · 04-08-2012, 03:42 AM

Yeah. As I write I sort of realized that....

Maybe I should make a card itself define all the ability of the specific unit i.e. formation is fixed to card sort of thing so it is self contained... I'll think about the alternative.

**Unruler** · 04-08-2012, 03:56 AM

Originally Posted by houshasen

Yeah. As I write I sort of realized that....

Maybe I should make a card itself define all the ability of the specific unit i.e. formation is fixed to card sort of thing so it is self contained... I'll think about the alternative.

What you can make is design a card that would give specific ability to other ally for a price. I think this would be more appropriate.

Or, which will be more useful, grant ability upon summon, for example:

Rutgard The Eloquent
5cc human 3/5 ally.

When Rutgard The Eloquent is summoned, all your other allies that are on board gain haste.

You have to stab 'em, NAOW!

**houshasen** · 04-08-2012, 01:28 PM

Made changes. I believe they are more like current cards in Shadow Era.. hopefully.

**Flycheung** · 04-08-2012, 01:48 PM

Given by your example, I suppose the Unit is formed during summon and, allies selected to be a team can no longer be another team. Else it'll be a big headache for digital and physical game.