Posted on June 5th, 2020 / MARVEL Puzzle Quest
By Magic: Puzzle Quest Design Team at Oktagon
Shipwreck Dowser is a great option to be featured in Magic: Puzzle Quest, due to the simplicity of its rules and utility it provides. It’s also likely to see some play in two of the most popular and expressive Magic formats: Limited and Brawl/Commander. This is important as Magic: Puzzle Quest is a deck building game, with player expression at its heart, as much as a Match-3 game.
The mechanical differences between Magic and our Puzzle counterpart allow us to imbue the adapted card with one of the most significant of said differences: its mana system.
Cards in Magic: Puzzle Quest store mana (acquired from matching of gems in a board), in an amount that varies according to each Planeswalker’s mana affinity. As such, cards in Magic: Puzzle Quest have a higher cost that can be paid in installments.
As Shipwreck Dowser returns a card from the graveyard to the player’s hand, it also gives it mana as an additional effect. This makes the card more powerful and allows players to set up combos easier.
The Prowess mechanic in Magic: Puzzle Quest allows cards to get other bonuses (aside from the usual +1/+1). This varies according to the card’s rarity and intended role. It is also a very important aspect of our adaptations since the flexibility is required to balance the game as Planeswalkers’s (the player in Magic: PQ) health and abilities scale as the player progresses.
Having “Prowess 2” and the ability to “pay half a card’s cost” makes Shipwreck Dowser into an impactful card. It can help show MtG players the differences between Magic: Puzzle Quest and Tabletop MtG all while making the mobile version an interesting new experience of how to play their favorite card game.