It ended up leading to me thinking about a group of miniatures in Malifaux I refuse to call a faction.
Gremlins.
I started off, with a flurry of tweets about the concept of "Looting".
I will refer back to this in part 2 of the card draw blog, but I started thinking deeper into design comparisons, including thematics.
For the people that don't understand me:
To quote Magic: The Gathering R&D
"Looting": This is drawing some number of cards, although usually one, and then discarding a number of equal to what you drew. Looting almost always goes to the graveyard.
Looting can represent a whole host of things, filling a filtering magical powers, it this form at least, it is organised.
The purest form of "Looting" is "Rush of Magic" seen on Lilith, Primordial Magic and Shang.
Originally in "Surge" from my favourite the Arcanists was also "Looting", though we got an upgrade in m2e.
Also to me, Malifaux has "double looting" as 1 soulstone ability you can use at the beginning of the turn.
In Magic the other common variant of looting is:
"Looting": Red has its own form of looting, what R&D calls "red looting" and many players call "rummaging", where it discards before it draws. Every once in a while, these cards are templated such that you can draw cards, and gain card advantage, on an empty hand.
"Red Looting" or "Rummaging", this tends to show a lot more chaotic feel.
Imagine you are sorting through a shelf of books, you can only fit three in your backpack, you've already picked up three, they're in your arms and you pick up a new one, you look at your pile and decide if this new book is the one you want to keep, you then either put the worse of the three back, or put the new one back if it isn't better.
The Red version, as I said is Chaotic, you're packing these books into your bag as you're off to study somewhere, but you're going NOW. You don't have time to waste, you know there has got to be a couple of books that are better than pieces of crap in your arms, you fling that rubbish away, grab aimlessly at the shelf.
Maybe you did get something better, but you were hasty, did you just grab a pop-up book instead?
The last bit of "Rummaging", where is templated to take advantage of an empty hand, simply encourages the reckless style of flinging your cards away left, right and centre. As quick as possible.
Now Malifaux has some "Red Looting"
Lynch has "Mulligan", you discard 3 cards, to draw 3 new ones, this however, thematically represents gambling. Lynch Personified. Like gambling, it can be a "safe bet" ditching those ones and twos, you know you can't do much worse.
Sometimes though, you'll ditch moderates, you need to dig to that Red Joker to finish the job.
Almost like frantically rummaging for it...
Perdita also has "Hero's Gamble" , a card with Gamble in the name, she takes the ultimate "risk", discarding all her cards to replace with new ones.
Now let's bring it back to Gremlins.
How do these psychopaths and, well simply morons, have such organisational skills or "cunning" to organise the top of your deck?
Why don't Gremlins like their Green skinned Magical equivalents have "Red Looting" instead?
Maybe that is the joke, some of these Gremlins are smarter than it first seems.
All I know is "looting" works, it is in several card based games and I enjoy seeing it in different forms in Malifaux.
**BONUS** If you play Magic, compare the card Brainstorm to Merris LaCroix current "Gremlin Cunning" and think about it. It makes me laugh. **BONUS**
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