2014 official cards & decks & functions from ipad

[thefiremind]

OK, now it works.

On an unrelated note, I have great news for the Izzet fans: DotP2014 natively supports replicate!

[Persee]

My Twinblade Slasher thanks you

[thefiremind]

Bad news: DotP2014 still forces usage of colorless mana when available and still can't understand that the mana produced by a land shouldn't be considered available for an activated ability on the same land (the AVAILABILITY trick used in the previous DotP games still works for this matter).

Good news: DotP2014 can correctly show double in the card costs.

EDIT: I lost so much time on this that I'm going to write what I learned here, hoping to be helpful to other modders.
Maybe someone already understood that replacement_effect="1" is the new internal="1". But it's not so easy. If you need to ask a query inside your ability, replacement_effect="1" gives strange results (anything that should happen after the query just doesn't happen). You need to use replacement_query="1" instead.
Why does the official Blightsteel Colossus have both? Because developers sometimes are dumb. No query there, so replacement_effect would have been enough (but I guess that replacement_effect wins over replacement_query if both are used).

EDIT 2: I just discovered a bug: if you copy a spell that deals damage "divided as you choose" (i.e. Flames of the Firebrand) you can't choose more different targets than the original spell. The last target will take all the remaining damage.

[gorem2k]

EDIT 2: I just discovered a bug: if you copy a spell that deals damage "divided as you choose" (i.e. Flames of the Firebrand) you can't choose more different targets than the original spell. The last target will take all the remaining damage.

Did DotP 2013 had this bug ? I mean, this is outrageous !!

thanks for the info, I will skip any "copy spell" decks.

[thefiremind]

Did DotP 2013 had this bug ? I mean, this is outrageous !!

I think I never tried on DotP2013... what I know is that on DotP2013 the "divided as you choose" spells were targetting the same target more than once when more than 1 damage was assigned to it (causing some triggers that care for targetting to trigger more than once). Since the way those spells are handled has been revamped on DotP2014, I guess the old bug has been fixed, but they introduced a new one.
EDIT: It seems it's not a bug:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=376727

The copies are put on the stack with the same number of targets as the original spell.

and we can trust a DCI level 2 judge.

EDIT 2: Bad news: I just made a test with a deck full of Glistener Elf and Plague Stinger and let the AI use it. In a mirror match, the AI blocked my infect creatures almost all the times, which seemed promising. But when I used another deck and intentionally waited before playing creatures, the AI didn't attack for a lot of turns. Then I started playing creatures and attacking, and the AI made its first attack with its infect creatures only when it was at 8 life. Still dumb, but I'd like to know how it got convinced to attack that time.
EDIT 3: The only missing test: I used the test infect deck and let the AI use another one. Again, the AI blocked my infect creatures whenever it could. So, the AI is still a bit dumb when deciding whether to attack or not with infect creatures, but in the other scenarios it's fair enough.

[gorem2k]

Suppose opp has :

a 2/5 , a 5/1 and a 4/4 creature,
I cast Flames of the Firebrand + Twincast,
I target 1 damage to each of these creatures,

Will the copy deal 3 damage to the last target I chose? (like what you said in EDIT2)
-or-
Will the copy deal 1 damage to each of these creatures again? (like the rule)

sorry for asking this, but this should make it clear to me.

[thefiremind]

None of those. In your example, you'll probably be forced to have 3 different targets for the copy, no matter which ones, but I'm not sure because I haven't tried your example. What I know is that if you choose only 2 targets for the original spell, then you'll have to choose only 2 targets for the copy as well.

EDIT: I'm not sure if this will be useful to someone else, anyway, I was trying to find a way to code suspend in DotP2014 without using an activated ability, and I discovered that overriding SPELL_PLAYED or ZONECHANGE_CONSIDERED from ZONE_HAND to ZONE_STACK freezes the game. So, no luck there: if I want to remake the suspend deck I'll still need to code it as an activated ability.

EDIT 2: I just discovered that proliferate="-11" works for registering a "bad" counter.

[Xander9009]

Did you get suspend working?

[thefiremind]

Did you get suspend working?

I actually... "suspended" the work on it because I'm afraid that Jhoira will have the same problem as Sedris, the Traitor King (unable to reference other resource_id's of the original card from a granted ability).

[NEMESiS]

Did DotP 2013 had this bug ? I mean, this is outrageous !!

I think I never tried on DotP2013... what I know is that on DotP2013 the "divided as you choose" spells were targetting the same target more than once when more than 1 damage was assigned to it (causing some triggers that care for targetting to trigger more than once). Since the way those spells are handled has been revamped on DotP2014, I guess the old bug has been fixed, but they introduced a new one.
EDIT: It seems it's not a bug:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=376727

The copies are put on the stack with the same number of targets as the original spell.

and we can trust a DCI level 2 judge.

I think that is specific to the Ink-Treader Nephilim since "if that spell targets only Ink-Treader Nephilim, copy the spell for each other creature that spell could target." This is with the scenario in which poster stated that Electrolyze specifically only targets the Ink-Treader Nephilim. Gatherer says different for both Twincast and Reverberate:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=290289

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=191322

The copy will have the same targets as the spell it's copying unless you choose new ones. You may change any number of the targets, including all of them or none of them. If, for one of the targets, you can't choose a new legal target, then it remains unchanged (even if the current target is illegal).

[RiiakShiNal]

I think that is specific to the Ink-Treader Nephilim since "if that spell targets only Ink-Treader Nephilim, copy the spell for each other creature that spell could target." This is with the scenario in which poster stated that Electrolyze specifically only targets the Ink-Treader Nephilim. Gatherer says different for both Twincast and Reverberate:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=290289

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=191322

The copy will have the same targets as the spell it's copying unless you choose new ones. You may change any number of the targets, including all of them or none of them. If, for one of the targets, you can't choose a new legal target, then it remains unchanged (even if the current target is illegal).

Actually, that says you can change the existing targets, it doesn't say you can change the number of targets. If a spell has 4 targets (out of a possible 6) and I use Reverberate or Twincast then I can choose for the copy 4 targets (not 1, 2, 3, 5, or 6).

The ruling says I can change any number of targets it does not state that I can add or remove targets. This is further evidenced in the ruling by:

If, for one of the targets, you can't choose a new legal target, then it remains unchanged (even if the current target is illegal).

I doesn't state that the target is removed, just that it remains unchanged.

[thefiremind]

Talking about Ink-Treader Nephilim, did anyone try to approach Ink-Treader Nephilim or Precursor Golem in DotP2014? Maybe I missed it, but I can't find any way to do what the TestFilter function did in DotP2013 (that is, check if a spell can target an object).

EDIT: I just found a funny bug: CONSIDERED_FOR_CAST also counts lands when it needs to decide whether a card is affordable or not. I tried with my Lodestone Golem but I think it's the same for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: I had only 1 land, the opponent had 2 Lodestone Golem on the battlefield, and I couldn't play other lands! The workaround is easy, just remember to always add

Code: Select all

TriggerObject():GetCardType():Test(CARD_TYPE_LAND) == false

to the CONSIDERED_FOR_CAST conditions when you are increasing costs.

EDIT 2: I finally understood the difference between GetEffectX() and GetPaidX(). The first can only retrieve the payment of the ability it's used in, or the payment of the whole spell. The second probably remembers the last payment made to the card, no matter what it was for. If you try to code Verdeloth the Ancient using kicker (and not multikicker ) you'll see that GetEffectX() doesn't contain the payment, while EffectSource():GetPaidX() does.

EDIT 3: Good news: DotP2014 correctly takes summoning sickness into account for costs.

EDIT 4: I just discovered the answer to a question I had for quite some time: why does Goblin Shortcutter give the "can't block" badge while creatures that can't block by themselves do not have it? It seems that the game decides when to add those badges by looking at the duration of the effect. Try to code a clone effect that lasts until end of turn, and you'll see the "temporary control" badge appear: it's obviously a glitch, but it gives a good hint about what counts for those badges to appear automatically.

EDIT 5: The "min" tag that you see in the MODE_SELECT block of Cryptic Command is actually useless: if you try to code a "Choose one or both" spell by setting min="1" max="2", the AI will be able to use the spell correctly, but human players won't see the "Confirm" button appear when selecting only 1 mode. So, "Choose one or both" spells must still be coded with 3 choices, one of them being "Do both".

[thefiremind]

I think it's better to add a post here rather than opening a new topic, so that the miscellaneous information about DotP2014 coding discoveries stays all in one place.

I just discovered 2 things about cards from the expansion:

1. The ignore_timing="1" tag can be put on an alternate cost and it will make the card playable for that cost as though it had flash. Qasali Ambusher would be impossible to code properly without that.
2. The developers invented something to make the exalted triggers less annoying:

   Code: Select all

   <STACK_EQUIVALENCE keyword="exalted" />

   this block warns the game that the ability should be stacked together with the other abilities on the stack that specify the same keyword, so that they resolve all at once. I don't know if we can specify custom keywords.

[gorem2k]

1. about STACK_EQUIVALENCE, Mirror-Sigil Sergeant use it as well with keyword="MirrorSigil".
   
2. Phantom Nishoba is using proliferate="10".
   
3. Fertile Imagination use <AI_MODIFIERS always_use="1" />
   I don't know exactly what this is doing.
   
4. Heartless Hidetsugu use math.floor which maybe would work for calculating damage (integer?) for cards like Pyromancer's Gauntlet.
   
5. Remand is using target:CounterSpell( (ZONE_HAND) ) didn't know we could insert a ZONE_ in CounterSpell()

am still examining the E14 cards. will update whenever I find something new to me.

[RiiakShiNal]

I don't remember which card but I found one that was using proliferate="10" .

This would be Phantom Nishoba and it is using it for +1/+1 counters. All other cards in the expansion that specify the proliferate attribute use 11.

Hearless Hidetsugu use math.floor which maybe would work for calculating damage (integer?) for cards like Pyromancer's Gauntlet.

math.floor() is also used in Endless Ranks of the Dead (original game), though that's not really anything new as the math object is part of Lua and we've had access to it even in previous games.

Lua Math Reference Link