The Great Code Ones

[sharp cove]

The Great Code Ones gain strength by infecting as many minions and spells with malware as possible. Each infected card adds to their botnet and provides them with greater and more terrible strength. Beware the code ones, lest you get pwned!

Key mechanic: Infect - A card affected by Infect gains the Infected keyword. This keyword does nothing on its own, but will be acted upon by numerous other archetypal effects

• Phishing Pole [Relic] - Once per turn, when you damage the opponent, Infect 1 random card in their hand
• Tchroedzhan [Minion/Common] (1/0/2) - Inanimate. Summoned to the opposing side of the board. Turn Start: Infect 1 of your minions randomly.
• Rhan'Sum Waer [Minion/Epic] (2/2/2) - Infected cards cost 1 more
• Behr Uutfoers [Minion/Common] (3/2/2) - Your minions have +1/+1 for each opposing location with infected cards (hand, board, deck, discard)
• Vvuhrm [Minion/Common] (2/1/4) - Infect every card added to a player's hand, except by the first draw of each turn
• Ahdwere [Minion/Rare] (2/3/2) - Infected cards have -1 attack and -1 damage
• Dehnailov Sirviz [Minion/Epic] (2/2/2) - Inanimate. When an infected card is summoned or played, its owner takes 1 damage for each of their Infected cards
• The Great Code Ones [Spell/Legendary] (10) - Choose and play a Great Code One:
• C2 Lou (10/10/10) - Played: Destroy all Infected cards
• Ron T3H Goth (10/10/10) - Played: Infected cards lose all abilities. Gain all keywords lost this way
• 6TH Annie - Played: Infect ALL cards

Here's the first pass of a fun idea I had today! The basic idea is to have really annoying low cost minions being very passively inhibitive to the opponent, all culminating in a massive, potentially game-winning play at 10 mana if you stall that far.

Originally, I considered Infected replacing card types, but upon pondering that it seemed like that was a little bit too stifling and un-fun so I reconsidered. Another fun change was Tchroedzhan, originally I considered having him swap sides on death (aka he'd keep swapping sides unless he was transformed or silenced). This has the consequence of creating infinites with Whip Guys and instead of implementing clumsy workarounds he was redesigned altogether.

Some other points I'll be seeking to address after reviewing the designs more:

• Are the effects disruptive enough to be playable, but not too disruptive as to ruin balance or fun?
• Does Dehnailov Sirviz need to be legendary? He represents a lot of damage, and is indeed much of the archetype's offensive backbone. Establishing two on board may be tough at Epic, but it provides massive racing power
• Should Dehnailov Sirviz inflict loss of life instead of damage, to prevent self-synergy with Phishing Pole?
• Should the rarity of Ahdwere be changed? Whereas Rhan'Sum Waer is a shoe-in for epic because of how it could lock someone out of the game at more copies, Ahdwere seems less devastating and therefore more permissible at 4 copies

[smoky slate]

unless i am wrong infect is just a keyword that does nothing by itself right?

[sharp cove]

Yep!

Just something to be acted upon by other effects

[smoky slate]

hmmm, i have read them once and so far the effects sound fine

but i can't shake the feeling that most of the cards are sooo senario specific

[sharp cove]

So the things that will be consistent, more or less, will be 1 card in hand getting Infected per turn from the relic

Trojan can be inconvenient or even impossible for many decks to remove quickly, so that represents some more reliable infection early game

from there, your big hopes are to really tax the daylights out of the impacted cards by making them weaker, more expensive, or both

[smoky slate]

can you explain the relic for me pls i am not 100% sure i understnad what it does

[sharp cove]

Sure; once per turn, if you deal damage to the opponent, one random card in their hand gets Infected

[smoky slate]

**when your Infected cards damage the opponent, **are your own cards infected somehow?

[sharp cove]

Ah I left something out, the archetypal cards are supposed to be infected hahaha

[smoky slate]

now that makes sense i was soo confused

[sharp cove]

Ok yeah that wording was a relic from when Infected was a type; I changed the relic to be more sensible

[smoky slate]

honestly overall they kinda feel a bit too "fair"

[sharp cove]

I definitely reined them back a lot because even one centimeter too strong and they'd be oppressive

[smoky slate]

it is a cool design, but you gotta draw good for it to work well

[smoky slate]

I can see that happening these are the types of cards once you buff, they start dominating the game

[sharp cove]

One important thing to note, besides trapsand the hand hate note, this would be one of the few ways to interact with cards the opponent hasn't played yet

So there's a lot of invisible power in the archetype

[smoky slate]

btw no spells?

[sharp cove]

The 10 mana one is a spell, that's the only one

[smoky slate]

oh thought that was a minion

[sharp cove]

The vague inspiration for the deck is a time-honored magic archetype that is mostly powered by 2 mana minions with varyingly oppressive effects

[smoky slate]

yeah, i think you told me about hatebear before

can you stack multiple infections?

[sharp cove]

You cannot, and already infected cards are not in the random pool for infection for effects which do so

[smoky slate]

does Dehnailov Sirviz count infected cards in hand?

[sharp cove]

and deck too, yeah

[smoky slate]

oh then, win con detected lol

[sharp cove]

(only way to infect cards in deck would be the Code One or making a clone of one I guess)

[smoky slate]

i think the one issue i see here is that the infection keyword in general does nearly nothing for spell heavy decks

also the deck seems to be very lacking in terms of in-archtype searching and resource generation

[sharp cove]

So yeah playing this my priorities would be:

• A single 1-drop that can start going face from the get-go to start infecting cards in hand
• As many copies of Ransomware as possible; getting one live on turn 2 can be a tremendous advantage
• If I don't expect them to deal with it in time, I can forego the 1-drop and stick a Denial of Service instead to start fueling the Infected cards engine

being neutral, card advantage and heavy hitters are intended to come from other sources, the archetype is definitely not intended to be fully self-supporting

[smoky slate]

ok. but yeah overall nice design

👍

also these are factionless?

[sharp cove]

yeah

[smoky slate]

oh, then that gives the deck soo much potential to be paired with anything you want

i initially only thought of it as a standalone strat and not as an engine

[tight fulcrum]

This is a really neat package. It all seems relatively straightforward. Just think the infecting of cards might be too slow and payoffs aren’t good enough.

Tchroedzhan - take 2 damage and infect a card every turn and most archetypes can’t deal with it easily or at all. This is the notable infect card that is needed to make everything work. The rest of the infect cards seem too slow - mainly because the opponent can just play out the infected cards as fast as you’re infecting them in most cases. Considering that cross blitz has a pretty low curve.

Dehnalilov - your slow burn, I’m thinking this is the most notable win-con card with only 2 in deck it might be hard to get there. And with slow generators you’re only dealing 1-2-ish damage from him. Does the played infected card count? I’d assume not.

RhanSum / Ahdwere - I don’t think these are notable downsides for your opponent for how much effort you’re putting into infecting cards.

Behr - +2/+2 if your opponent plays into this, and again I just don’t think you’re infecting cards fast enough to really do this.

The Great Code ones - could see the 6th Annie being the best here. But idk if 10 mana would be too late, but all of your cards now become very good. I don’t think you’re destroying that many cards with C2 Lou or gaining very many keywords with Ron.

I think you can run this in a control war/armor package with Dehnailov x2 and The Great Codes using Annie and that’d be an amazing win-con. 12 mana, play anything and die lol.

But ya I love the theme of the deck and if you had to play it straight with no other archetype help, I still think it sounds like a lot of fun! Sounds like a great enemy deck as well!

Also just so we’re clear I could be 100% wrong in this evaluation 😂 very hard to judge packages like this without testing them.

[sharp cove]

That indeed it is haha! Much rather start weak and boost than start too strong and oppressive

RE: Dehnailov, he's intended to count cards on board, hand, and deck, so at least in my head initially I figure, presuming you've kept up a bare minimum of 1 infected hand card per turn, he represents a pretty considerable amount of burn, that notably increases every turn, unless they get rid of those infected cards somehow (discard, death, etc)

RE: RhanSum, maybe I'm over-resepecting this, but this one, over all the others except Dehnailov, is exponentially more crippling with each copy. If someone stalls early and gets hit with a turn 2 RhanSum into turn 3/4 2x RhanSum, suddenly all their cards cost +3 mana and I was cautious to enable something like that. Maybe if it's too weak as is and too strong with a buff, a different inhibitive effect would be more appropriate

RE: Behr, I think this card is kinda boring and somewhat a relic of previous iterations on the idea. I wouldn't mind replacing or removing this one altogether

From y'all's feedback, I'm beginning to consider perhaps I've focused too much on the ceiling and neglected the floor. Seems like another relic or muscle card could help! There's the classic "give +1/+1 first time a card is infected each turn" or "deal X damage first time a card is infected each turn" , or perhaps a buildaround rare that has both an infection applier and also a debuff, so there's a self-synergizing hard mull target to kick things off.

Lots of good stuff to think about, look forward to reiterating tomorrow!

[sharp cove]

Pondered on this a bit this today, here's some updates:

Some minor minion adjustments, and a major rework of Behr, shifting a lot of midgame power budget to him while still requiring some meaningful investment in the otherwise-mediocre stat pressure of the archetype (aka not fully abusable with swarming). Huge amount of conditional stat gains, combined with the pre-existing taxing effects, hopefully provide a flavorful and elegant degree of punch

Tchroedzhan [Minion/Common] (2/2/2) - Tchroedzhan is summoned to the opposing side of the board. Turn Start: Infect 1 of your minions randomly (1/0/2) - Inanimate. Summoned to the opposing side of the board. Turn Start: Infect 1 of your minions randomly.
Behr Uutfoers [Minion/Rare] (2/2/2) - Played: Gain +1/+1 for each Infected minion in this column (3/2/2) - Your minions have +1/+1 for each opposing location with infected cards (hand, board, deck, discard)
Vvuhrm [Minion/Common] (2/2/2) (2/1/4) - Infect every card added to a player's hand, except by the first draw of each turn
Ahdwere [Minion/Rare] (2/2/2) (2/3/2) - Infected cards have -1 attack and -1 damage

The new gameplan is:
1 Establish early taxing effects
2 Stick Behr to reinforce the board, in a way that will cost a lot of resources to deal with
3 Capitalize on the opponent's expended resources and further taxing effects to either push for a midgame Behr kill or stall to a lategame Code Ones combo

[tight fulcrum]

ooo baby, this is super spicy.

[sharp cove]

Also a fun bit of flavor, I sorta pictured the infected effect visually altering the cards, mirroring the image or even doing the visual corruption you'd see in like a pokemon game with missingno:

[tight fulcrum]

The Tchroedzhan change is great, it's very playable now that you're not taking 2 off of it

[tight fulcrum]

that's a really cool idea