Thursday, March 27, 2014

Mega Man Magic - Spoiler 17

As uninspiring as the previous spoiler was, hopefully this one will be that exciting. For today's spoilers, we'll be looking at the Wily bosses from Mega Man 2, up to and including Wily himself. That do it for you, you son of a bitch?


I'm absolutely crazy about the flavor of this card. If you remember the battle, you hop from block to block until you get to the spot of your battle, as the dragon knocks the previous blocks into oblivion. And your final battle spot has, you guessed it, 3 blocks. A 9/9 flyer is pretty overpowered, but all of these creatures are going to be pretty overpowered. I'm comfortable with creating Eldrazi-ish guys. And he still dies to removal.


Again, I feel good about the flavor of this card. The "creature" isn't so much one creature but ten smaller ones, working together. I initially wanted to make the card get stronger as you remove charge counters, but the wording got messy. I like it well enough as it is. I was about 50/50 on giving it flying, but black usually has a boss rare or mythic flyer, and I didn't really have anything else to work with on that, so it goes here.


I'm not sure whether I got this guy settled in properly on a power level, but I erred on the side of flavor. The token generation feels okay on a power level, and I guess an 11/11 trample for 8 mana in green is okay. Might be a little strong in combination, but so be it. The flavor is there.


The Boobeam trap was a card I had a lot of trouble putting together. In the end, it didn't really feel like a creature, so it's an artifact. Entering the battlefield tapped and the "doesn't untap" effect are flavor plays on the charge time of the shot in the battle. The final effect refers to the fact that you absolutely MUST use the Crash Bomber to defeat the boss. Obviously you can't be so specific in Magic, but it works.


The next "boss" in the game is the rematch with the eight robot masters from earlier in the game. I decided to take a different approach here, though. I think most sets should have some alternate win condition (Battle of Wits, Door to Nothingness, etc), and it fit well with the imagery in the scene, so I went with it. Another homage to the number eight in there, for kicks, and because it makes sense.


Augmented Wily Machine has a lot going on. A 4/4 flyer for 6 colorless mana is already really strong. I like that the additional stuff could be nothing, but could also be a way for an artifact-heavy deck to really hammer an opponent. It's also how I justify having a 4/4 flyer at 6 colorless mana.


I wish Alien had a better name, but that's the guy's name in the game. I can't get too far away from that. So, once again, for the flavor behind things. The ability for Alien to counter spells that target it was a way to acknowledge that, in Mega Man 2, it could only be harmed by Bubble Lead. So, the idea is that it's a very difficult creature to get rid of. Then, when you defeat Alien in the game (spoiler alert!), you find that it's not an alien, and is in fact a hologram controlled by Dr. Wily. So, the 2/2 "Human" token you see above.

That's it for this round. It was a long one, with a lot of flavor. Hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back next week.

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