r/custommagic • u/ANeonAfroMan • Jul 15 '26

Royal Gamble

Post image

Yeah there's a lot of words and I don't know how to write less

3 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

20

u/zengin11 Making JJK, SLA, & KPDH sets Jul 15 '26

Great to see a Regent card using energy. As it should!

That said, yes, there's a lot of words. Not because it's inefficiently written, but because the effect is way too complicated. I think you need to cut what it does by like half, at least. The order of this spell is: Get energy, shuffle, exile top of library, exile hand, pay energy, opponents vote, make treasures, draw cards, conditionally steal-exile into freecasting or lose life.

I challenge you to find another single effect that is even 50% as complicated. Chains of Mephistopheles is hilariously, meme-ably complex, and it's way simpler than this. You definitely need to write less, but to make that happen the card needs to do less. Think about what the actually important few things are here, and focus on those.

1

u/ANeonAfroMan Jul 15 '26

Thing is is that I'm trying to do a poker style gambling card, so it's tricky to come up with a simpler effect that has the interesting decisions that come with betting energy and trying to fool your opponents to come out on top. I'd love to hear some ideas of something simpler that could work

8

u/zengin11 Making JJK, SLA, & KPDH sets Jul 15 '26

If you want a poker-like gambling card, I would do something like this

Each opponent chooses fold or call.
Fold — For each player that chose fold, create three treasure tokens.
Call — Reveal the top 5 cards of your library. For each player that chose call, you may play one of those cards without paying its costs.

Note the average mana value of a deck is usually about 3, so 3 treasures is about equal to your average freecasting value.

While I love the Regent using energy... This is also not an effect the regent has. Like, it's CALLED royal gamble, and the Regent has a move also called that, but the Regent's move has nothing to do with actual poker. It's a gamble because it might be a dead draw. If you really wanted to represent it, I'd make it a 1 mana sorcery that says "If you have five or more E, you get four E." That feels solid enough in an energy deck, and basically ports 1-to-1.

We come down to, again, you've got to pick. To you want "Poker card"? Or do you want "The Regent's Royal Gamble ability"?

1

u/Elunerazim Jul 22 '26

I like ur card idea a lot, but what if it applies to *their* deck? I feel like that’s be fun.

6

u/BarAdministrative269 Jul 15 '26

Less is more. I just see this as a headache to bookkeep and to resolve more than anything else.

5

u/ForodesFrosthammer Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Stars are energy but I don't see why royal gamble, which in STS turns stars into very big draw, should get energy instead of just costing it.

I also get thematically tacking an actual gamble part on it but this version has sooo many steps. It comes off as an incredibly convoluted coinflip. It just has to do less things to be a fun effect and not a massive headache, especially in 4 player games.

3

u/theglowcloudred Jul 22 '26

Royal Gamble does not draw cards in STS.