Evolution of Magery

>Evolution of Magery
As readers who have followed this project may know, the magery spells of Magery Online have undergone drastic changes.

I began with the thought that magery spells should not be able to be cast without a creature with magery of the appropriate level. I soon realized that dead cards in hand are close to worthless. Adding a cycling ability became attractive. Starting with cycling 2 and down to cycling 1, it just wasn't worth it. Because if you did not have a creature with the appropriate magery level, the cycling ability became the only decision, not a choice, which is why cycling cards so atractive in the first place. To choose to either play what you have to exchange for a random card from your library. When the card in hand does nothing, you must cycle.

I thought about cycling 0 for a while, and while that would work theoretically, theoretically it could too easily be abused (pointed out by Gerorne). Players could fill an entire deck of cycling 0 cards with only a handful that actually do something, and in theory those select cards could win you the game. In essence creating a first turn win, always win, scenario.

Enter "Library Cycle." The idea here was to have a cycling ability for free which would take out the combo possibilities. Players could cycle a card with "Library Cycle 1" by removing the top card of their library from the game--I knew it didn't work the first time I test it. What would happen was during a player's first and second turn, they would be scrambling to drop a mage, any mage. In those first two turns the magery spells are still worthless. In those two turns, every magery spell was automatically cycled. It turned into unnecessary stalling of the game, wasted repetetive movement of discarding, removing from the game, and drawing, over and over and over. In thoery it worked fine. In practice it was too cumbersome and took away from the fun of the game.

After that, I made the changes and magery spells are exactly as they are now. I think it works. Do you?

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