神河当時 - プレイテストのイラスト

昨日の記事の続きです。

So – Did We Like It? And Do We Now?
We did like the set okay back then, though we all agreed it appeared less eye-popping than Invasion or Mirrodin. We knew full well that not being able to see the artwork, flavor text, final card titles, and other aspects were keeping us from appreciating fully a set that was obviously based on flavor.

And I think (though I haven’t formally polled everyone in the group) that we like the set better now. The changes they made were definitely in the right direction. And they’ve set themselves up beautifully for the next two sets.

When it came time for the final survey, I was both enthusiastic and honest. Here are excerpts of my email to Elaine and the development team:

[Flippers are] winners…[they] range from solid to excellent. Even if it sucks to figure out how to do this with artwork and such, please keep them in! (I assume that there will be an innovative card face involved, e.g.card split into thirds. If that’s not the case, this may not be as cool as I think it is...but I’m optimistic!)…

[Legends are] the right note to hit for this set. You need to hit it MUCH harder…

[The dragons are] perhaps too good. Big effects when you "play from your hand" are easy to regulate – but graveyard-impact effects can happen in all sorts of cheap and easy ways. (Your new legend rule is one of them - two black dragons coming out at the same time from Patriarch’s Bidding is bad, bad news!) And Sneak Attack can put all five in, which may or may not be a problem for you - but I can guarantee it will rocket to the head of most multiplayer groups…

Flavor is incredibly important to multiplayer. We all knew that already; but our group learned that in spades with this experience…. It’s amazing how hard it is to follow the game when you can’t reference artwork…

I also gave Development four fairly aggressive recommendations involving legends. Bottom line, I felt Wizards had already done a great deal of cool stuff – and could do even more. (I still do.) I don’t know if they will adopt those recommendations or not before the block is done; so I won’t go into any further detail. But it was so cool having their ear on this!

As for the group as a whole, we had a fine idea to allow "splicing" to happen on any player’s arcane spells – what fun that would have been in multiplayer! – but of course, because splicing happens as you pay the cost of a spell, there’s no way for this practically to work. So they scrapped it, and rightly so. I continue to hold out hope that there’s a major mechanic or two out there that work fine in duels, but are even "more special" in multiplayer environments. And I have faith that as design and development find such mechanics, they’ll use them.

引用元
DOWN TO EARTH Posted in Serious Fun on October 19, 2004
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/serious-fun/down-earth-2004-10-19

テストプレイにおいて、神河はイマイチ魅力を感じにくかった、とのことです。

というのも、テスト段階では、イラストもフレイバーテキストもありません。これはどのセットのテストでも同じことですが、神河は初のトップダウンセットであり、フレイバー重視のセットです。イラストなどがなければ、肝心のフレイバーが半減するのは当然でしょう。

また、神河においては多人数戦もテストしています。人数が多ければ、カードが遠い場所に置かれることも珍しくありません。そうなると、文字だけでカードを把握するのは大変だったようです。

いずれも、神河ならではの状況と言えます。

なお、連繋を他のプレイヤーの呪文とも可能にするアイデアがあったようです。実際には没になりましたが。