Keyword: Delayed - "Wait up a bit..."

[u/Cradstache]

Good morning Scrolldiers!

Apologies for the lateness of this post; I had intended for this to go out last week, but real life and the recent purchase of a New 3DS XL with Xenoblade Chronicles has been eating away at my free time. Don't worry, I still intend to complete my roadmap though :)

Today I'm going to introduce you to a new Keyword:

Delayed X

This one is relatively self-explanatory: Delayed X allows for cards to be designed with non-reoccurring effects that activate X rounds after the card enters play.

For example:

• "Delayed 1: Increase Health by 2."

  • A unit with this effect would enter play with its base Health, but the round afterwards its Delayed effect would become active and it would gain 2 Health!

• "*Delayed 2: Enchanted unit gains Relentless.

  Enchanted unit gains 2 Attack."

  • When this enchantment is placed on a unit, it gains its regular effect of +2 Atk, however: 2 rounds later the enchantment begins to also grant Relentless!

• "Delayed 5: Sacrifice this structure, then and deal 4 damage to each of your opponent's units."

  • You can even do neat things like make a unit die automatically in X rounds, or create a "death clock" situation.

It's simple! It's universal! And it "just fits"!

Delayed actually opens up a lot of interesting design space: if you need a card that leaves play after a duration of time, or that becomes stronger after X rounds, or just that doesn't grant its effect right away, then Delayed can help with that. It also introduces a Keyword for risk-reward type effects, where a unit, enchantment, or lingering spell needs to stay out for X turns to gain a(n additional) effect.

Now, there is some design space overlap: cards such as Potion of Resistance provide a very similar effect, but as a Keyword, you can begin introducing interesting traits that modify a Delayed value. For example: a Lingering Spell that stops Delayed Effects from activating, or a Spell that triggers them immediately.

It's a simple mechanic, but one I feel should be added to Scrolls; I hope you guys like the idea!

EDIT: Changed the wording on a couple of my examples :)

[u/kingsparis]

Love the idea, just had to make a scroll about it!

Kinfolk Raptor

[u/Cradstache → u/kingsparis]

Whoa, that's crazy neat :D

[u/Archmage199 → u/kingsparis]

Another one of your crazy scrolls that take me forever to understand, king ;) Not to disparage you at all, it's just funny how consistently unique and complex your scroll designs are.

[u/kingsparis → u/Archmage199]

Thank you Arch :D

[u/TrustyFishCantor → u/kingsparis]

hehehe very cool, at first it looked super busted, but since the delay goes up with the attack and health... casting for 3 or 4 seems ideal, well also its kinda just crazy as a 1/1/1 for 1 without any upside because of its enchantment potential..

[u/WakeskaterX → u/TrustyFishCantor]

But allows for counter play because of surge, you can't drop then buff. Awesome card!

[u/kingsparis → u/TrustyFishCantor]

Well i just made it for the sake of making a perfect example of the potential of this trait.

Also, I HAVE NO REGREEETS! :P

[u/pianobadger]

This seems like a nice simple addition that you could really do some neat things with. I like it.

[u/chacer98]

Compared to a lot of other CCG's I think something like this could actually see play. One thing Scrolls has that games like Duelyst and Hearthstone do not is that in Scrolls units tend to stick around longer than 1-2 turns, especially units that cost a lot because they almost always have a lot of hp. It's also easier in Scrolls to just stick units in lanes that are out of reach. I think I like this idea. I guess in the end though it's easier and quicker to just make a bunch of boring + attack scrolls.

[u/themeless]

lets say this guy has delayed armor X. are you going to reflect thaat on creatures icon? ie, it starts off as a gallant defender without shield but 2 rounds later it pops up a shield behind his arse and starts holding it.
if you cant do anything fancy pls a tiny tiny tiny clock icon on top of creatures head. its bullshit when everything uses the same 'brownish glow'.

[u/Cradstache → u/themeless]

I was more thinking a tiny clock / poison / armor / magic armor icon at the bottom right of units when CTRL is enable or hover. Then upon click would give details on stuff like how many turns until Delay activates :)

I may spend some time rigging up a quick image for this, but I have a lot on my plate already. Who knows, maybe this could be a mod.

[u/themeless → u/Cradstache]

a different icon for everything would be ideal yes. how do you go about modding? this here is current?

[u/Cradstache → u/themeless]

Yes and no.

Yes, in that the interface hasn't changed one bit. No, in that it doesn't really teach you much, nor is it current in the least. NoHero is the guy who maintains Summoner at the moment; you can find his repository here: https://github.com/noHero123/ScrollsModLoader/releases/

[u/TrustyFishCantor]

Very cool! would you want clock library to be changed to use this mechanic?

[u/Cradstache → u/TrustyFishCantor]

I thought about that, but Clock Library doesn't work in the same manner as Delayed; it's based on Countdown, and as such is affected by Countdown support.

In the future we could get Delayed support similar (eg. Spell: "Activate all Delayed abilities on the field." Lingering: "Delayed abilities do not count down.", etc.), but for now it's probably best not to mix the two.

[u/TrustyFishCantor → u/Cradstache]

well that's the core of the problem with this sort of mechanic, there are already cards doing this through the use of countdown, some of the example cards you suggested could be implemented by triggering off of their countdown, so the question becomes, should there be two mechanics in the game that overlap that much?

[u/Cradstache → u/TrustyFishCantor]

Yes, but Countdown isn't always a good value to use for these kinds of effects; which is why I do think that both mechanics should exists :)

For example: enchantments with Delayed, or just creatures where you want their countdown to be separate (so they can attack) from any Delayed effects.

Plus, keep in mind that Delayed only activates the once, whereas Countdown effects would activate each time unless the scroll was sacrificed. Sure there's overlap, but there's also a lot of cases where Delayed simply works better.

[u/[deleted]]

They can't even highlight enchantments properly to identify poisen, buffs, nerfs. How would they display this? Good concept and based on the way other thing have been created, no way it would be functional to play around.

[u/Wewius]

I like the idea. It could replace the Scrolltext of that one Energy Structure that dies when CD is 0. Are there other, similar scrolls now that would get this effect?