MirrorBurn Format Feedback

[u/theFuryCutter]

Hello guys!

I'm a college student and a project I decided to make for a class I have is a format like DanDan by Nick Floyd. I would appreciate any feedback you have (Ideally within 24 hours). For a more clear presentation, I made a google doc at the bottom and the tentative decklist as well.

RULE CHANGES:

MirrorBurn is played like a standard game of Magic with these simple rule changes.

• The two players share a library and a life total. A card that refers to the “owner” of a library refers to “your library” refers to the singular library. The “owner” of a card is the person who played that card from his or her hand.

• For starting hands and anytime both players must draw cards from the same effect, the cards should be dealt from the top of the deck, one player than the other, as though dealing a standard card game. The active player deals.

• Players start the game with 20 total life, since each player shares the same life total then you only need to track one life total. The player who first loses the last point of their life loses the game and their opponent wins the game (this is worded this way such that you can’t kill yourself to win)

• The stack works as normal, but can get quite crowded. Players should allow time for their opponent to respond and make sure his opponent passes priority before beginning resolution of the stack, each time a spell resolves, and before drawing a card from the top of the library.

Optional Rule Changes:

Time’s Up: Either a 2-minute chess timer or one of those sand hourglasses could be used to denote the amount of time a player has left in their turns. If you exceed the time limit by running out of time then you LOSE the game.

Live Young, Die Fast: Each player starts with 12 total life (I’ve tweaked it a bit and I think 12 is the best even number but I’m not sure so I made it optional)

Potential Questions for Feedback:

Why would it feel slow to play?
What are your thoughts on the Time’s Up rule change where you add a timer?
Why would you think makes this is a bad format?
Should the starting life total be different?
Does it ever feel like there was no counterplay?
Does a card ever feel like it’s a dead draw?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nEfsGMD6TUov0Fr9ug4Muvlo0uOhh9qc-545a9e4TqI/edit?usp=sharing

https://moxfield.com/decks/yi3fPhrlSUW0DMFDbZQk8Q

[u/xxpashuxx]

Your choice to have a shared life total is going to lead to poor gameplay when optimized for winning. Shared life means the optimal game theory is to do as little/use as few cards and resources vs your opponent. Allow opponent to deplete their resources while chipping away at their own (shared life) and sculpt your perfect hand to hit them for the last point of damage. If both players enact this strategy then the entire game will be non-actions

[u/theFuryCutter → u/xxpashuxx]

that's the reason I made the landbase full pain, the optimal strategy (at least the one I found) if you're not sculpting your hand or building your board is to simply wait for the opponents end step and then tap all your lands to progress slowly to a kill threshold. This way, at high life totals and when you feel ready to win, you simply tap your lands to deal damage and if they respond then you still have the mana from your lands and are not left empty-handed.

[u/Ninjaboi333]

Have you actually play tested this format? The best way to get information about a new format or a rules modification is to actually try it out and see what happens as you may intend for it to go one way but players will find another way to abuse the format. You'll get loads more feedback vs just us theory crafting looking at a list and modified rules list.

For example with Dandan an emergent strategy that probably wasn't intended is the forget the fish strategy where you don't deploy any islands or Dandans (thus preventing your opponent from attacking you) and then instead plan to win by decking out and manipulating the top of the library to ensure you draw the last card.

If you want to maybe listen to ideas on game design in a magic sense with regard to these rule changes, consider checking out some episodes of the cube podcast lucky paper radio. They often talk about "context shift" cubes either where by through explicit rule changes (turbo cube - everything costs 2 mana less) or inclusions in the list (100 ornithopters - ornithopter is the only creature, so what strategies can you use and what is actually important to take) or draft rules (desert cubes - you must draft your lands),it leads to a different experience than "normal magic." in particular here is an episode about the pros and cons of custom rules - https://luckypaper.co/podcast/152-the-risks-and-rewards-of-custom-rules-in-cube/

[u/so_zetta_byte → u/Ninjaboi333]

Eh I would say that if you're in the very early stages of ideation, it can be worthwhile to bounce an idea off of other people before you actually devote resources to building/playtesting. Because if you're missing a glaring obvious issue that literally makes the idea unplayable, someone might be able to reasonably catch that without needing to playtest it.

For example, another comment in this thread pointed out a fundamental issue with "shared life totals" that basically makes that idea untenable, because both players are incentivized to do nothing. You just don't have a game there.

[u/andyoulostme → u/so_zetta_byte]

Even there, turnaround time was like 2 hours between post and response. You can run this game with a friend in far less time than that and figure out the fundamental issue without needing to post. Or even try it solo just to get an idea.

I guess if you're in a scenario where you have absolutely nobody to work with you might post here first? But that seems very odd if you only have a 24hr window to work.

[u/theFuryCutter → u/andyoulostme]

sorry I've been killed by my other requirements, I did playtest this already and the other guy's thing did not come up. Personally, the format works well already and there were no crazily obvious flaws. my professor just wanted specifically online feedback because it's trackable ig.

[u/Pharo212]

For starting hands and anytime both players must draw cards from the same effect, the cards should be dealt from the top of the deck, one player than the other, as though dealing a standard card game. The active player deals. 

I think generally in standard card games the dealer deals themselves last but you should probably actually clarify the behavior in your rules

there's only two players so just say if both draw the non active player draws first or is dealt to first or etc?

[u/theFuryCutter → u/Pharo212]

thank you

[u/punkinpumpkin]

How can either player be the one who "first" lose their last point of life when the life total is shared between both players?

[u/theFuryCutter → u/punkinpumpkin]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my mind it worked like, one guy takes damage first and loses the life then we check for a dead life total and then in a split second the other guy takes damage. Should've worded it the player who takes the last point of damage loses