Jack O' Lanterns - My First Custom Faction!
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reddit.comPosted Apr 7, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC
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reddit.comWow, great job, this looks really good! I’ve seen a few decks before that use a Day/Night mechanic but I think this is my favourite implementation. There are a couple notes I’d have:
- The Lil’ Spook being able to flip the Day/Night as a talent seems like it might make it too easy to flip multiple times per turn since it is a 4of minion. Flipping it on play, or only being able to flip once per minion, might make it more of a big play.
- Solar Eclipse is super cool, but I’m not sure how it would work for Ahead of the Carve if you have an extra action play afterwards. Play it on a minion and also on a base?
- I love the defensive/offensive flip, but I think it might be a little too much of the same ability between the 3of, the king minion, and the double feature all providing the same Day benefit. I love Gourdness Gracious which has a bit more variety to the Day benefit (a different take on defence) which gives it more flexibility in how to play.
- I might have been tempted to make the Day/Night card a double sided Titan, which is already a mechanic for a “global” 21st card
Overall though it looks solid and I don’t see anything too unbalanced, it looks like a lot of fun!
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Thanks so much, friend! That means a lot. I really like your suggestions.
I agree about having too much of the same effect during the day. Perhaps I could give the Double Feature “During the day, this minion gains ‘Talent: Play an extra action’” instead. Or something along those lines - this deck could definitely use extra plays.
I did originally have Lil Spook’s talent as a play-on effect actually - I found I didn’t have enough ways to change the time of day when I needed to. Thought about giving the 4 powered minions that Talent instead, and keeping the play-on effect of Lil Spook. Will probably need to play test more :)
For the Solar Eclipse and Ahead of the Carve interaction, my intention is to give players the option to choose - the text should reflect that so I will adjust it.
Really appreciate the feedback, thank you so much :)
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One thing I keep in mind is to try not to deprecate lower power minions with higher power minions - the “Sonus rule.” So for example giving the 4’s the ability to change Day/Night as a talent means you have limited use for the 2’s on play ability in that case. Or similarly, your current 5 removes the need for the Day ability of the 3of’s on the same base. It looks like this deck wants to be a swarm faction with lots of little minions that power up, without any extra minion plays because they can protect themselves on other players’ turns by keeping it Day. Perhaps it could be useful to lean into that a little by having some extra small minion plays during the Day or by powering up small minions at Night globally like one of your bases does... hard to say, there is a big design space here. The cards do look great though!
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Ahh so that’s the Sonus Rule. Gotcha, that makes sense. The design space for a mechanic like this is huge, I found I had a lot of ideas and it was tough to narrow down which cards to include. Thanks for the input and advice, this helps a lot. Especially for future faction creation!
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Oh one other thing I thought of reading it was Trick or Treat - I’m not a fan of these mandatory “immediately play” actions because there’s no way to verify if the other player did it correctly. Obviously everyone should be honest and not cheat, but even aside from that there’s always the possibility for a player just not reading it soon enough or understanding it before the game moves on.
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Wow, this looks awesome! Not much to add here that hasn't already been said. I would consider flipping the 4 of and 3 of, but the porch pumpkin would be 4 power pretty easily arguably being better than sentry, howler, pinkie, and the like. I would be weary of using talent play an extra action since that is an arch mage and would compare it to Ronan the Accuser as well at the 3 of slot. Changerbots got it with a price in the 2 of slot. Maybe if they didn't stack, it would work. You could add "You may only use one x's ability each turn" if you feel the extra action is still where you want to go with version 2. This is really well done and seems balanced upon a read through, good job!
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Coming from you, that’s a really nice compliment! Thank you :)
I do think there’s value in swapping the 4ofs and 3ofs, and then making the ability +1 instead of +2. I agree it would be unfair to make them objectively better than Howler and other similar minions. I’ve gone back and forth on it a couple times! I like that the 3of currently can benefit from “power 2 or less” abilities from other factions, and wanted the day/night switch to allow for some big plays.
Will definitely do some testing with swapping them! Appreciate the feedback, friend.
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Hmm do I smell a magic player hiding among us? This mechanic looks awfully familiar... It fits in SmashUp though and having minions that can power up on demand like that is powerful! I'd also like to see some cards that could help a partner faction interact with the day/night cycle, like maybe some play-on-minion cards that have to do with day and night? Just a suggestion to give it more synergy
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Oddly enough, not a Magic player! I showed a friend of mine who plays Magic this faction though and he said the same thing haha.
I agree with you - would be nice to have more ways for the partner faction to benefit! I like that there’s potentially three play-on-minion actions with the Double Feature and Ahead of the Carve, but maybe there could be more.
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It’s fine work for an original faction, and it’s great to mention the day/night card is an additional card (it’s reminiscent to me of unmatched decks). You found great art and made efforts for either puns or alliterations on the names. Just as advice, you may want to make the font smaller on say hollow to my little friend, it hides too much of the face of the picture.
I think a day/night mechanic is cool, though as others pointed out changing it so easily makes it much less interesting to play as, since you won’t really have to plan ahead and will basically get a free shot at switching to whatever you want whenever you need by leaving a little spook on an uninteresting base for the whole game. Actually, I would suggest keeping it as a 4-of but placing a small restriction with flipping from day to night, such as “if you played a minion here this turn” (it can count itself on the turn it is played, and has to be in a base you’re working towards afterwards.
Say hollow to my little friend’s day effect would overlap with Porch pumpkin and gigantic jack, I think it may be worth making a different action a double feature or have a different kind of protection (moved to deck or hand).
Gourdness Gracious is fine in the context that this is a custom deck, not necessarily something someone would pick up with their first game, but if it were official you wouldn’t want a special which makes the player who activates it lose, they have to be very familiar with how overpaying on a base is bad through multiple experiences.
Finally, Trick-or-Treat is a great idea in theory to have an effect whenever drawn, but I think in practice it would be better kept for a future custom. It’s good that the card will be a surprise to the opponent, but it’s bad that it will be a surprise for the Jack o Lantern player since he has no cards to place anything on top of his deck or recycle things from the discard, and it could pop into his hand at night when he was expecting two draws after spending a lot of units.
Power-level wise, the faction is weak (but still interesting to play). Since they don’t have extra minion plays, and on a good day can flip 4-6 power in play by switching from day to night, but they really they could use better antagonism in the turns they play their units. Lack of movement or of unit recycling means they can afford to have a bigger impact for the units they currently have. Solar eclipse isn’t that strong as a terminal action on you turn, because you don’t care about protection that much on your turn, they really could use a bigger payoff card like justice friends or Unity of the tribes. They have room to be refined in the turns while building up, if you give them no power counters don’t be afraid to add more options or raw output for terminal actions.
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This looks great! I’ve kind of hoped over the years that smash up would go with a holiday themed expansion, like Christmas, Halloween, St Patrick’s and Easter or something. This one looks like it would fit right in!
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I really like this idea! The thematics are a little off for me, but otherwise the execution is pretty fun! I kind of prefer the idea that Day and Night are switched at the start or end of the player's turn, since the idea of controlling when night comes is a little odd flavor wise. I think this would be easy to design around, perhaps mechanics that can cause daybreak or nightfall at certain points in other players' turns? Either way, love the execution and ideas here.
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Hey Smash Up Community!Presenting Jack O' Lanterns, my first custom faction. I've been playing Smash Up for about a year and now own every official faction - but I need more! I've taken a look at probably hundreds of other custom factions and there's a lot of talented people making them. Figured I'd teach myself some basic image editing and throw my hat in the ring.
Imgur Album Link: https://imgur.com/a/pidMYuq
This faction introduces a day/night mechanic to Smash Up. If it’s Day, the Jack O’ Lanterns are "less active" and instead focus on card draw and protection from movement or destruction. If it’s Night, however, look out - they antagonize their opponents and become more aggressive by gaining power and forcing discards.
The Day/Night card is a 21st card in the Jack O' Lanterns deck that remains out of the deck and out of play. It can't be flipped freely, but there are several cards in the deck that can flip it when you need to activate certain abilities or benefits. I debated making it possible to flip the card at the start of each of your turns, but I wanted to add some complexity to this faction, and justify making each Day/Night effect strong enough without *always* having an option to switch the time of day. Fairies have the "OR" mechanic, but always have a choice and their effects are weaker - I wanted Jack O' Lanterns to be a little different.
This faction loves setting up power plays by having low power minions with protection effects, and then switching to Night mode at the right moment to gain lots of power! Some natural partners I've found are Musketeers, Ancient Egyptians, and Knights of the Round Table.
I have an entire write up on some of the playtesting I've done and the changes I've made to each card, but don't want to bore anyone! There's always more playtesting to be done.Would love to hear your feedback, especially as this is my first go at something like this. I am currently working on playtesting a second faction and would love to hear some community comments on changes I could make or how I can improve.
As an aside, credit goes to the original artists for the card art. I don't have a list of arists, which is something I intend to keep track of going forward, but all I did was put the cards together, come up with the text, and make the template.
Thanks everyone!