If you have been active in our Discord, particularly our spoiler channel, you might have noticed some odd behavior from the creation team, specifically Gabe. He keeps repeating everything he says. It is quite peculiar, but I’m sure Gabe has his reasons.
I wrote an article back in December titled, ‘What Have I Learned?’ that had some fun cards and rules I have picked up throughout my journey on the design team. One of those cards was Falsehood Teacher. Here he is for a reminder.
Falsehood Teacher’s ability, which is a bit funky and confusing, used to be on a Daniel card in Times to Come. This quote is from the article: “Marcus’ brilliant mind came up with this wording from my original pitch, but the ability still felt a little clunky. And who knows, maybe something awesome came from this idea, but we did not want to repeat past mistakes and make clunky abilities that were extremely complicated.”
It’s weird that the word repeat is used in this sentence too. I ended up thinking about this ability a lot more. How could I simplify this ability to make it playable, while allowing the player to no longer make choices on “or” cards? It sounded amazing to me. A card that lets you draw or band (because that’s my thing) can now be a draw AND band, which everyone loves!
I do tend to pray about Redemption a lot during card design. I ask God for creativity, but that He is glorified through this game and relationships are created that personify Him. A little extra prayer and a little extra thinking helped me come up with a new idea. Something simple, yet beautiful, that could be applied to so many cards. Something simple, yet beautiful, that could be applied to so many cards. Hmm, that was odd.
Times to Come has had a lot of excitement so far. Maybe it was because playtesting was under tight wraps and little information was leaked. I have been eagerly awaiting the moment when we can start spoilers and I could release articles, especially this one! The ability I showed on Falsehood Teacher did indeed turn into something new. I remember lying in bed when the idea came to my mind and I was so excited about it. I immediately messaged Chris Fachman and asked for his thoughts and got the same answer as always, “Dude, that’s awesome!”. Thanks, Chris! I started putting together card abilities for my idea and wording it how I thought it would work. I came up with a definition for the ability. I came up with a definition for the ability. Ok, that’s getting old now. I pitched the idea to the team, and they LOVED it! I thought it was fitting to spoil this card for this article. I hope this clears everything.
Repeat!?!?! What the heck is that? The design team have been wanting to bring in something new to the game, while still maintaining simplicity and not forcing anything. Turn-over was shown at Nationals and it was pitched for this set, but it wasn’t fully fleshed out and lacked a clear definition and vision. Maybe we will see turn-over later, but when “repeat” came to me, it just fit. Everything about it works with what we are striving to do for the game while creating excitement and introducing new concepts. When discussing repeat, I originally had the word “time(s)” at the end of “repeat” to signify how often you got to repeat the ability. I LOVED tying in “time”. In my set introduction article found here, I talk about trying to manipulate phases of the game to show changing of time. Bringing in “time” after the word “repeat” just made sense and it brought everything together.
As excited as I am about this article and the repeat ability, it made sense to define repeat and show it to the community prior to Nationals. The team agreed to this, and Marcus was ready to go! If you are going to a Texas tournament or see Marcus at Nationals, PLEASE thank him for the amazing work he did on the ORDIR, REG, Rulebook, his near instantaneous responses to the onslaught of ruling questions in discord and for all his amazing work to make Times to Come a reality. Marcus provided this REG entry prior to me writing this article:
How to Play Repeat
- A repeat effect repeats previous abilities on a card some number of times.
- A repeat effect repeats all abilities that preceded it on the card, so the player can use the abilities multiple times.
- This includes repeating the same effect, or selecting different options when there is a choice between multiple effects.
- A repeat effect only activates once per activation of the special ability. Once all of the repetitions of the previous abilities have activated, the special ability moves past the repeat effect to any other abilities on the card.
- The number of repetitions a repeat effect performs is locked when the first repetition begins. If the number of repetitions is based on a variable or a condition, the status of that variable may change during the repetitions but will not increase or decrease the number to be performed.
- Repeat effects target all abilities in the same special ability that preceded the repeat effect.
- All repeat effects are instant.
Special Conditions
Each repeated ability activates 1 more time than the number of repetitions, since a repeat effect counts the repetitions after the initial activation and not the initial activation itself. So “repeat 3 times” results in 4 total activations – 1 initial activation and 3 repetitions.
Clarifications
The phrase “do this twice” is a repeat effect that means “repeat 1 time”.
Conclusion
“Repeat” is an exciting, new keyword that allows for a design space, usability, offers players new ways to play a card and think through scenarios, while creating new scenarios and can be applied to all sorts of different types of cards. This article is a short one, mostly because that last one was a doozy, and I am 3 days away from my wedding! I wanted to write this article for two reasons, the first reason to create even more hype for Times to Come and the second to help everyone understand “repeat” before it comes out. Here’s one last card before I sign off! Here’s one last card before I sign off! Sorry, I had to do that one more time.
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