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Collective Experience Reflection 4: Relax and Rethink

With the first three blogs written and seeing how people reacted to them, the weights have been dropped. Maybe there are still some tiny feelings of resentment, but I moved on. 

Recently, I did a podcast with Puapka and that was oof. I am a terrible speaker and listener since I am quite anti-social. I can’t come up with something to say in time as I “pause” often in everything I do, and I sometimes need others to speak multiple times for me to understand what they are saying. There is a “meta” in talking where one is able to form the thoughts of what to say while the other person is speaking, but I am purely trying to comprehend what they are saying while listening. 

This “failure” motivated me to think about potentially writing a few more reflections to wrap up everything I think about this “chaotic” game. The first three blogs were heavily on “Truth about Anon” and developing a “narrative” that flowed properly rather than taking a more “objective approach”, I wanted to write about “What I will do after Collective”, “should Collective ever exist”/”is Collective/games in general beneficial to humanity”, “Is Collective doomed to fail due to its concept”... 

In the end, after finishing this piece of personal 10 cards to highlight, I wrote a 12.5K words 18+ fan fic on Anonymouse and Pearly instead because Magneter made a joke. I lost all motivation and time to continue writing about the case study of the downfall of Collective. There were a lot of topics that I/we could have explored, but writing the fan fiction was far more fun than designing and submitting cards to the main game. 

That is a sign I suppose, that the Collective, the game itself aspect of Collective doesn’t pique my interest when I think about it anymore. Nevertheless, here were the 10 cards/tons of honorable mentions that I gave a shoutout to. 

Personal 10 Cards to Highlight

When I asked Puapka about the top 10 most iconic cards, the list she gave was very surprising, since I haven’t played with any of the cards she listed aside from knowing that Seele exists but I still don’t know how Seele works, 275 Ambers cost too much and I used to be allergic to reading. 

Both Sevas and Puapka listed cards that are “shiny”, with either unique build-around (Karma, Egolessness, Fusion Project), used to be incredibly broken until re-balanced (Lumbering Lichwing), cards that create big moments when popping off (Boltaxe Jotunn, Headless Huntress, Kadar, Sofus), or just the feeling that it is a very unique design (The Grimmer Brothers)

Personally, as a “doormat” without any financial freedom, I wasn’t able to spend any money on MtG. I played Mono Blue and Mono Red not because this is the style I want, but because it is the only style I could afford. This means that I rarely thought about how to win in a “fancy” matter but only thought about mastering the basics, the cards I highlight will be very different due to this. 

Cat with a Frying Pan

Cat with a Frying Pan is an extremely simple design, It is a 1 mana 1|1 that acts as a body and it has the ability to ping anything. In my 2 years of Collective, Cat with a Frying Pan was used as a filler in every type of deck imaginable due to it being the only card that can freely ping and creates a body at turn 1. It is often the top 5 cards in Popularity although decks that play this card often hover around a 50% win rate. It was always good without being too broken. 

Perhaps it is a combination of the “odd” looking art and the popularity, this card is like a parasite living in the brains of Collective players. Since turn 1 is so important in Collective, as it affects the way heroes gain EXP which creates a crazy snowball effect, having a turn 1 play killed by Pan Cat can often feel like the game is over. Cat with a Frying Pan dominated the way we think, design, and talked about the game. “Sniper needs 1 less HP for it to die to Pan Cat”, “This card needs 1 more HP to not die to Pan Cat”... 

Looking at the older messages, there were paragraphs of cries written by the community members. Masterpieces in design philosophy around this cat were written and the attempts to nerf were made multiple times, but Pan Cat stayed the same for 4 years. Always there when we need a filler. 

Moldable Gooze

Another 1 mana 1|1 Neutral card. For tribal decks heroes such as Lazaro, Baldwin, and Hawkins to gain EXP, the players must play a unit of their main tribe while controlling one with that tribe. Multiple factors contributed to the popularity of Moldable Gooze: It has the Shapeshift keyword, it cost 1 mana, and its entomb ability makes it versatile at all stages of the game. 

Collective is a very snowbally game. Without good turn 1 plays for tribe decks, this means that the hero level 2 token might come online one or two turns later and when it happens, the game can feel hopeless. This was especially true during the era when Bird Doctors, needed to control 2 or more units of that tribe at the end of the turn to gain 2 EXP and it was even harder back then to gain EXP. 

In my view for Standard gameplay, a unit-based deck needs at least 9-12 one-mana units to be good. My other view is that I think one mana units are “boring” to design, it has less room for expression and is less exciting to look at in general. After 5 years, we have 326 one-mana units, 489 two-mana units, and 502 three-mana units. Yet, the 326 is always much more important from a competitive point of view. 

Sentiments have been expressed saying that Moldable Gooze has “homogenized” the Tribal decks, as every deck is required to run them, but I believe Moldable Gooze is good. Unplayable tribal decks such as Baldwin Angels with only two 1-mana Angel cards in Standard became playable because of Gooze, the “imaginary” designer base can focus on designing tribal archetypes with fewer worries around trying to get a 1-mana card into the game. 

Moldable Gooze is like Flash in League of Legends, its status of being a must-ran card in tribe decks is similar to Flash being the most powerful summoner spell, but it “serves” the game well enough for it to never get touched. 

Forklift Renegade

A very enjoyable aspect of playing Collective Standard is finding the powerful cards that no one else is playing. Unlike in other games where I am playing decks created by Pros and Streamers, I feel more ownership when it comes to finding those underappreciated cards. I like Forklift Renegade because it was a card “buried” for a while, and then I found it. 

For Ashgerdy Aggro, Feowyn has always dominated. After an entire year of playing Feowyns, I became sick of it and gave myself a “No Feowyn Challenge” and that is when I found this card. I loved it because compared to the typical low-cost Ash cards, Forklift Renegade provided insurance against board wipes and removals. It had really good synergy with Ashgerdy’s new token being a 2|1 draw 1 and Ghost in the Code + Uploadtail makes it easier for the cost reduction effect to feel powerful. 

For the month of November, I was able to hit rank 1 with this generic Ashgerdy homebrew deck with Forklift Renegade. It was fun to play with a deck that isn’t copied and pasted from somewhere else for once. 

Ancient’s Claw

In Magic, there are Spike, Timmy, Johnny, and Vorthos. Maybe other people’s impression of me is that I am a “Spike” that cares about winning, but in reality, everyone is a lot more complicated than these simple player archetypes. 

The point is that I have an inner Timmy. One of the things I loved to do the most while deckbuilding is sort by cost, and go to the last page to look at all the most expensive cards and think about what decks can I build with them. Out of all the big and powerful units in Collective, only Ancient’s Claw was able to fill the niche for me. 

The deck I built with Ancient’s Claw was not the best at winning, but certainly one of the more fun decks I played with. Its synergy with Anticipated Revival, The Art of Replication, and The Firstmold can create oppressive scenarios that are very fun for me. Ancient Claw & The Firstmold combo is also one of the few ways to enable “The Great Performance”, I wish the reward was created in play though (with a bit of redesign of course) because this one is actually a hard condition compared to The Second Sunrise. 

Rose Court Courier

Pain was the archetype I played the most in Collective, as I felt that the deck involved a lot of interesting decisions to make and it was fun to watch the opponent burn down from the engines. 

I wanted to feature at least 1 card from the Pain archetype on this list and Rose Court Courier is the best one. For the Pain deck, I loved the consistency that it provided and the choices I have when it comes to which 1 mana card to bring into play. Sniper, Trete, and Fledgling all can provide different values depending on the board state. 

It was also one of the very few cards that can be run as an off-affinity card as it can bring in any two mana units into play when it cost 3. This enabled cool strategies such as off-affinity Chromablade Assassin or bringing Ushi-Oni Soulburner into play. 

I have thought about how to create a card that supports the Pain archetype for a long time while in Anon, it was difficult since it felt like any Pain designs in my head can easily break the game completely. Crimson Smuggler was my only indirect design that supported Pain that got in, and it synergized with Rose Court Courier the most, helping it fetch Two-Fanged Snake. 

Adventurer’s Call

Adventurer’s Call is a unique card where ~20 members of the community back in 2021 created their own 3 mana cost tokens together. It is in the name of this game itself, Collective: The Community Created Card Game believes in the power of collaboration. While there were Collective Robot Group, SFYACCCC, and other collaborative movements in Collective, Adventurer’s Call is the best example of that “Collaboration” from a design view, as most people in the community back then were in one card, together. 

Other card games have “rules” when it comes to designs and Adventurer’s Call breaks many of them: It is a card that is based on the real people in the community, it has 20 tokens tied into one card but those tokens cannot be generated anywhere else, far too many texts to read for one single card and it is so big that the preview can’t even show all the tokens possible. 

These “rules” were broken and at the same time, Adventurer’s Call was a fun card to play with mechanically as well. When I first got into the game, Adventurer’s Call was used in my Vriktik deck, and the RNG factor of which player token I get often created funny scenarios. While I thought that it was a strong card back then and advocated for nerfs, I would like to think that this card created a strong impression of Collective for me. 

I wish something similar could be created now that the game will die, but unlike the last time that the game was going to die, the community members have “died” in a sense as well this time. I could only look at this card and wish I played this game a year earlier. 

(Found out while writing that Sevas’s card is literally Sevas himself, always just assumed that it was some weird-looking green blob.)

Oni Soulburner

Over two years of playing this game, I have come to realize that one of my favorite aspects of Collective is its “Comedy” factor. Collective can be a very funny game with its wacky combos and wacky community interactions. 

When RiskyCB was playing against an AI in a match, that is when I saw him pulling off the Oni Soulburner combo. While he quickly gave up playing Collective a few days afterward, I used his forbidden knowledge to create a deck around these two pieces. 

The combo is simple, play an Oni Soulburner, somehow get three copies of it in play and blast the opponent with The First Aid, the opponent will gain 6 HP and proceed to lose 36 HP, resulting in an instant win. The difficult part is trying to maintain at least 3 Oni Soulburner alive without losing the game and trying to create copies of them. 

When Yasha was really broken, Sevas countered my Yasha deck with a Marie midrange deck and I thought I had no other decks that could beat his Marie deck, and that is when I pulled out the KM Oni Soulburner, a meme deck to complete the ultimate holy trinity triangle. 

Sands of Mir’aj 

This card essentially asks the question: Can you remove the tokens I create? If the opponent can easily remove them, the game is lost for you. If the opponent cannot, then the game is won for you. 

What makes this card iconic to me is the sheer strength of this card and the amount of time I played with and against this. It used to have incredible synergy with the old Ashgerdy level 2 Token, giving you more mana the next turn to create more copies of Mir’aj band members. After the Ashgerdy rework, Attune made it into the game, and that also helped with removing the downside of the default 1 mana cost to Sands of Mir’aj. 

When I think about this card, I think about the number of times when the card gets played, and then either I or the opponent just concedes. The emote music of Mir’aj plays is probably the most memorable sound effect in this game, a close competitor would be the effect that The Second Sunrise creates when the countdown condition is fulfilled. 

It is a card with very high highs and rarely low lows. Amir and Meira have incredible synergy and honestly, the other two are not bad either. It defined my Collective experience so much that I had to create a “No Feowyn Challenge” when deckbuilding for Ashgerdy Aggro. 

Medona Tarrae

Medona Tarrae is similar to Forklift Renegade for me, it was an underplayed and underappreciated card that I felt like I randomly found (although seems like both Bonk and Wujek played it before in their PM decks). If the opponent is playing a fast-tempo deck, then Medona Tarrae can feel underwhelming. But if they are not, then Medona Tarrae can get really scary with her task of “Gastar lo Impuestos” where there are turns I get 10+ mana on turn 7. She had the potential to be “broken” without being overpowered, and I liked that. 

She had a lot of versatility and choices, I occasionally did use “Invertir de Bosa” and “Calmar Disturbios”. I don’t speak Spanish at all and she always was spewing things passionately, I can’t understand what she is saying at all, but I liked her. 

Go to Wyoming

Yooooo any Go to Wyoming truthers in the chat? 

What stands out about Go to Wyoming has nothing to do with the card itself but the approach it decided to take. The majority of the player base simply posted their card designs to the subreddit and hoped the people playing Collective liked them. 

However, there is an exploit to this system. Collective is ultimately a popularity contest and it doesn’t have to be the current player base voting at all. One day, GoChris10 decide to combine both the power of memes and Collective together by using the strategy of “Crossposting”. Go to Wyoming is based on the joke that “Wyoming” doesn’t exist and Gokun used this Post to get people who don’t play Collective to vote on the card. 

To me, this was a very creative, funny, and cool strategy. People discussed the “validity” of such tactics but at the end of the day, it only happened once while I played this game and I can laugh and appreciate what has happened. No new players joined in but creating cards that can relate to the average Joe and get any eyes to this game at all, is a success to me. Idealistically, Collective should be an “easily accessible” game rather than a game for only a few. 

Though if there is one flaw about this card, is that I don’t understand about this card is why Gokun decided to create a card based on a place that doesn’t exist. 

This is my top 10 favorite/iconic cards to highlight from Collective. What are yours? 

Honorable Mentions: 

Attune - Overpowered and maybe shouldn’t exist as a concept, ran in every Mind deck. #1 in popularity ever since it was introduced into the core set. (I was dumb to vote it in)

Shayleen, Spellblade - When she goes off, her stats get crazy big. Shayleen Novice Buff deck was one of my favorite decks to play. 

Minty Marine - One of the most broken cards to never get nerfed, touched, or even talked about. Boardwide ATK Buff and Lifebond felt incredibly satisfying. 

Adventuring Novice - Fiora, but Collective. I remember breaking this card with Firestar and getting this nerfed before it even comes into the game, that is sort of an achievement. 

Summoning - The bread and butter of all my combo decks. I loved using it to fetch Ancient Claw, Titan of Eternity, and Oni Soulburner. 

Oni Headhunter - My favorite design in 2023. I love the flavor and that picking and choosing a target with strong summon ability feels satisfying. 

One-Winged Gorilla - It was an interesting design since it is a “temporary” action counterspell that can be interacted with. I ignored this card at first when building an Angel deck, but when monsterland played with it, they proved that this is one of the best Angel cards. It was a learning experience for me. 

Local Mist Fist Poster - The only card I ever updated (as Lovepon). I changed the cost of it from 1 to 0. I was both not a fan of the playstyle it created and loved playing with this card at the same time. 

When Cabbages Attack! - I like this card’s art a lot, the fact that it is like a “poster” is very cool to me, Carthyian is a unique realm. It was also mechanically a powerful card, Buluc stable (that the player base somehow decided to buff it). 

The Ghost in the Code - Classic. Classic mind 5-drop. Used in almost every mind deck with its Evasion and ability to refill the hand. 

Lizabo Strongarm - My favorite Lizabo card. It can both synergize with Pain and be an Anti-Action nuisance, a simple design that creates interesting choices for both players. 

Vaera’s Prison - One of the few cards in Collective that looks very cool to me. It was hard and annoying to deal with it as Aggro but I still like this card. 

The Firstmold - I loved Action Removals Only + High-Cost Unit + The Firstmold combos. It was always very fun seeing multiple big units getting pulled up. 

The Second Sunrise - When “playing a deck with Lizabos” is now a downside. This card was insane and should have gotten nerfed more on the body of the rewards itself. Would be balanced if other tribe decks gets the same type of treatment, but only Lizabos did. I also associate the Sunrise animation with the concede button. 

Pain Package - Sniper. Trete. Snake. Crimson Crook. Shouting out the gang. 

Yasha, Celestial Guide - Another controversial card. Infinite card advantage made with an assumption that playing with Feowyns is a downside (lol)

Cinna, Crimson Tear - When I was ranked 1 for May, I was able to get an emote for the game and the character that I liked the most was Cinna. 

Hit and Run - Clean design. I liked thinking about which 1 mana unit to pick. Dealing 2 is slightly too weak and Deal 3 can be too powerful, Hit and Run was a very nice in-between. 

Tempus, Timebender - I only started to appreciate this design when I was trying to make a unit with multiple Actives in my own anime cube. If only one Active can be used per round, it can “feel bad” since the other actives don’t seem that purposeful. With Tempus, all of the actives can be used multiple times per turn under a somewhat difficult condition. It looks well-balanced and it was well-balanced when I played with/against it as well. 

Random Chimp Event - I believe RiskyCB or monsterland managed to break this card in PM. But it is a funny card to both look at and play against and I liked it. 

Yoricho Champion - A powerful card in duelist decks, I had fun with it when playing the Akai Bushi and Adventuring Novice combos

Diligence - I always liked this card but turns out it wasn’t powerful and consistent enough. 

Panzer Faust - One of the “discovery” cards I found while trying the No Feowyn challenge. The 5 mana action created feels very satisfying. 

Fearmongerer - I spent a lot of time looking at the old card designs and Drallog was my favorite tribe (Partycrasher being my #2). I find the premise very unique. Featuring Fearmongerer since I found that one funny. 

Death of the Party - I love how monsterland spent all the effort trying to “trick” the players into voting in a 1 mana 3|3, but Spaceturtle managed to trick many people into voting this card in without realizing that it is, by default, a 3 mana 7|7 Duelist. 

Favorite Flavors: I don’t have much to say about them except that I like the “feel” that these cards give. I would provide an explanation for a few cards but not all of them. 

The Profligate Painter, Timeskip Magician, Starbound Artist 

Color Drain, Mr.Stare, Nine 

The Question Master, The Gathering Tree, Yearly Festival Day

Mountain King’s Domain

Rock Chucker - Rock Chuck Chuck Chuck. I loved the in-game emotes. 

Ozos - Probably the only card with a flavor text that had an impression on me, I read it and tell myself “Damn.” I think partly the reason behind this is how many times I had to read this card to know what it does but it grew on me over time.