Crash Test Magic — Help Build a Set for the GDS2
The Robot Viking entry into Magic’s Great Designer Search 2 passed muster, so we’re on to the second round (it’s not quite as exciting as it sounds). The third round requires that entrants create their own Magic set, based on a new world that will bring the card designs to life. We’ve got an interesting start, but the collaborative effort needs some help.
It seems that the first round of the contest was meant to screen out those not willing to crank out 2,500 words or more about Magic on a deadline, since pretty much anyone who entered on time made it through (I’ll post my essay answers in a minute). The second round is a multiple choice test which will be administered tomorrow. I’m not rating my chances at passing terribly high, but the whole set design thing is a hell of a lot of fun in any case. We started working on a set weeks ago, using the Star Counters mechanic. There are some great card ideas in that post, if you scroll down to the comments.
This past weekend, my brother and I refined the idea of the world and came up with some new card designs. First, Star Counters are now Fate Counters. The world the set is based on is at war. It’s a terrible, brutal, gritty war played out on bloody battlefields, fought by soldiers with swords and axes. The military theme is vital to the set. Each army is one color, so the military themed cards will all be mono-colored (and heavily so — red cards will have RR and RRR frequently in the casting costs, for instance). The war will be decided by the actions of brilliant and terrible men and women, humans, elves, dwarves…boots on the ground.
Or will it? The as-yet-unnamed world has long been beset by cosmic forces beyond the understanding of even the most insightful general. The alignments of stars and planets, the ebb and flow of cosmic energies…these things have always had a powerful effect on the denizens of WORLDNAME. That’s where the Fate Counters mechanic comes in. The cards that deal with this aspect of the world will have a greater tendency to be multicolored (the set will use hybrid mana instead of gold cards for the most part, which will make it easier to incorporate those cards into decks using the monocolored military cards).
Click for full size.
So the overriding theme is an age-old one: freewill vs. fate.
We’ve got some great ideas for Fate cards already, but we wanted to dig into the military part of the story. To begin with, I wanted to come up with a cycle of rare generals, powerful cards whose abilities reflected not only the ideals of their colors, but also the theme of warfare. The result is a set of 6 casting cost legendary creatures somewhat inspired by M11′s titans. They’re missing the enters the battlefield effects, but have “when CARDNAME attacks” effects that I hope are fun and innovative. For now, they all have generic placeholder names.
First up is General Black, whom you can see up top. As a wraith, he inspires fear in his enemies. When he leads an assault, even his strongest foes quail and hesitate, and weaker ones are destroyed outright.
Next we’ve got General Red, above. It was tough to come up with an ability that was different than just doing some burn damage, like Inferno Titan. One option I considered is creating goblin tokens, or fetching goblins from the library. The idea is that he’s not a goblin, but he uses them as troops, and either inspires or intimidates them into fighting far beyond their natural abilities.
Clickity click.
General Blue is my favorite. It might the most powerful of the generals. I imagined him as a follower of Sun Tzu’s tenet that knowing your enemy is the key to winning at war. Military intelligence is easily represented by just drawing cards, but that’s been done in blue many times before. I think this mega-scry ability is pretty awesome. I won’t hide it, I’m pretty proud of this one.
General White presents the first instance of needing some help. My first conception is the one that puts +1/+1 tokens on some of your creatures. The idea is a veteran warrior devoted to training his troops, drilling them until they are highly skilled.
Clllllllllllllllllllllllick.
Joe suggested that the white general make bird tokens. I tweaked it to make them enter the battlefield tapped and attacking, since I just like the way that feels. He attacks and bird soldiers come out of the sky to aid him. We don’t have a clear concept of how this general would thematically accomplish such a thing, but it’s a really cool effect. Which version do you prefer, and what kind of character might the bird general be?
Finally, we have General Green. I’m really stumped with this one. Joe suggested “guerrilla warfare” as a theme. There’s great imagery there of the experienced hunter who takes on the mantle of leadership and trains his troops to stalk through the trees and jungles like green ninjas. Every mechanic I come up with seems horribly broken, though. I really need help with this one — a green general whose ability is innovative, fits green, and reflects the military theme. Help me, Vikings!
We’ve got some other cool card ideas to show off soon as well. Even if the whole GDS2 thing goes nowhere, creating our own hypothetical Magic set is just fun.
October 12th, 2010 7:29 PM
The white and blue generals’ abilities could be weakened (if they are too powerful) by adding an “other than CARDNAME” clause. So the white “training” general couldn’t buff himself, and blue wouldn’t count himself toward the X.
October 13th, 2010 1:10 AM
I think at Blue General’s cost he’s a bit under powered. Mega scry is good, but I’m not sure if it’s that good since blue will have less creatures than the rest of the world.
As for Guerilla Green I got this
(some number) Creatures you control gain land walk of a chosen type until end of turn. (for balence issues I would suggest making the landwalk declared when it enters play)
2/4
or, and this is going to be wierd
X creatures gain First Strike where X is the number of forests you control.
6/4
First strike is way out of green’s color pie, but I think it captures the guerrilla’s strike hard and fast mentality, with the forest tie in bringing the terrain use, home field advatge to the front. Firsty strike could be replaced with a more Green keyword, but it fits guerrillaness more. I’m going to be thinking about this for a while. Landwalk green is weaker on power for balence, and to represent his hunterness, while still tough enough to take some lightning and keep running. Are the rumors true about the changes to damage in 2011? Does it really wear off at end of phase? If so then 4 is probably all he needs.
ok, did more thinking on Green, and Shroud instead of First strike. I like the first strike flavor, but Shroud also has the hiding in the shadows untouchable flavor to it. It is also very green.
On white, I’d pick the +1/+1 counter guy over the bird token one. Without a clearer grasp of the races involved I’d suggest Spirits instead of birds to imply that White might be ‘in’ with The Fates. However, since these are the iconic generals of the armies of freewill, I’d go with White’s Communal aid aspect and +1/+1s.
October 13th, 2010 12:30 PM
“When General Green is in play, all creatures that enter the battlefield from its owner’s hand are played face down until they attack, defend, cast an ability or tap.”
October 13th, 2010 1:16 PM
Cool card, the downside is that we can’t bring back Morph.
October 13th, 2010 1:44 PM
Hm. It’s not morph though, it’s a whole other way to use face down cards. That’s pretty interesting. There are some logistical problems with it (what is it when it’s face down? what if an opponent tries to do something to it?). But not insurmountable ones.
ggodo, I think you’re underestimating megascry. Even if X is just 1, always knowing what your opponent draws is nice. Get it to 3 or 4 and you can seriously screw up your opponent’s draws for the next couple of turns.
I kind of like the idea of the green general giving first strike. It’s not green’s part of the pie, but sometimes you can break those rules for certain rares, and this one might be worth it.
I’m considering revamping black and white so that all the general’s abilities are based on the number of attacking creatures. That would nudge us toward the flying token version of white. “When General White attacks, put a 1/1 flying dude into play tapped and attacking for each attacking creature other than General White.” Too much? And what if black’s -2/-2 happened equal to the number of attacking creatures? That might actually make him weaker, since it’s tough to get more than three attackers together.
I just like the emphasis on massive armies that the “number of attackers” element brings. That makes them not just about combat, but larger scale warfare. I also think I might make all the generals have triple colored costs. So, 3GGG instead of 4GG. Fits the overall plan for the set better.
October 13th, 2010 1:51 PM
“Shroud
When General Green is in play, all creatures that enter the battlefield from its owner’s hand are played face down until they attack, defend, cast an ability or tap. Until they are revealed, these face down creatures are 1/1 green creatures with shroud.”
Not sure on the wording, but I added in a little bit. Obviously, General Green himself will have shroud, too.
October 13th, 2010 2:47 PM
Conceptually, that card is awesome. You’ve ironed out a bunch of problems. Now I’m not trying to be a naysayer, just approaching this like a lead designer and trying to find other potential problems. So now, the issue is this: I play a green creature from my hand, face down. How much mana do I pay? The actual casting cost? How does my opponent know what that cost is? Once several creatures have been played, it would become very difficult to remember which face down creature had what cost paid for it, and so you’d have a hard time rectifying any mistakes (or outright cheating).
I can think of one possible solution, but it makes the card even more complicated. “When Gen. Green is in play, green creatures may be played from your hand for free, face down. Face down creatures are 1/1 green creatures with Shroud. Whenever a face down creature would attack, block or use an activated ability, turn it face up and pay the actual casting cost. If you cannot, sacrifice it.”
We may be digging a hole of complexity here.
October 13th, 2010 3:16 PM
Hey, what about, “When General Green is attacking, all green creature cards in your hand have Flash.” ?
October 13th, 2010 3:39 PM
That flash thing works, too. Maybe throw in an enchantment that reduces casting cost of green creatures by 1 colorless mana.
October 13th, 2010 4:07 PM
I’d rather have Flash. The problem with face down creatures is that by the rules any face down card on the battlefield is a 2/2 morph. That’s just how it is. To do facedown creatures that are anything other than morphs means reworking a large chunk of the rules in order to have a mechanic that is effectively Morph. I’d rather just give it Morph, but like a morph cost of 0 with a trigger effect than any of the other facedown suggestions. The cult of MaGo says hi.
Giving Green guys flash would be nice if you could play them tapped and attacking, otherwise it is no better than playing the card in you main phase. The problem is that’s getting very White, and very similar to the white general. It’s probably not the best idea to make two similar flashy rares. I like either the Landwalk or Shroud, Landwalk for flavor and because it’s not a common ability, and Shroud because it forces your opponent into some unfortunate situations of combat tricks before combat. This green guy is tricky because Green’s main themes don’t translate well into army wide buffs. White buffs help everyone, green buffs make one big thing.
We could also go the other direction with green and give them an emphasis on fewer bigger creatures. Something like attacks alone triggers or attacks with one other and make those few guys serious badasses.
October 13th, 2010 4:22 PM
Really good food for thought, guys. I took the multiple choice part of the test earlier today. Let’s just say I don’t think we’ll have to worry too much about what actual Magic R&D will think of our designs.
I do think the face down cards open a can of worms. I wish they hadn’t ruined that part of the design space with Morph.
Do you guys have any ideas for a world name or set name?
I’ve also been trying to come up with a military based mechanic. Even with that at least giving it some direction, I’m coming up blank. I should go read some military sites or old war stories for ideas.
October 13th, 2010 6:45 PM
Hey Ed, I really like the military theme. After I read this post initially I had a lot of thoughts about that, though my general lack of familiarity with magic might mean that i’m barking up the wrong tree . . .
Anyhow, hese guys are generals right? make them generals. give them all a command rating which is the number of troops they can command. since these are the uber generals it should be pretty high. Then the general can add troops (maybe with keyword ‘troop’ or ‘soldier’) to his command and they all attack as a group. so if the general has 5 2/2′s in his command, he is attacking with a 10/10. Not sure if the general’s attack ability should be added or if its just the troops. If his ability were added, then it should probably be toned down.
You could also add a type of trample ability except instead of attacking the player/wizard overlord, the armies attack enemy lands. The army that attacks sacrifices one of its troops to garrison an enemy land. The enemy land is discarded and the victor gets to draw until he gets a land, then reshuffle. The land goes into play immediately.
The creatures in the deck would be ‘units’ like the Althyrian Lancers or the Grey Legions of Kalamdia. Then there would also be token soldiers that could be raised by a mechanic where the player taps lands to generate troops (essentially conscription). Some lands might be capital cities or fortresses that give special bonuses to the army style combat, like a fortress may have to be assaulted seferal ttimes before it falls or the capital city might generate its own defenders or help with conscription
And there might be cards that allow for the assassination of a general. Plus there should be several different leaders for each color, maybe three tiers. Common captains, exceptional captains and the great captains. Their names/ranks/titles would be different depending on the color for flavor Like Gwerhog the Overlord of the Great Horde for the red high general etc.,
October 13th, 2010 6:46 PM
Also, what about ‘Ambush’ for the green first strike?
October 13th, 2010 6:47 PM
Well, for the military mechanics, I think getting Ryk involved could help. He’s slightly newer to MTG than I am, but that might work in our favor.
What if we give General Green:
“Untap General Green during each other player’s untap step.
Tap: All green creature cards in your hand have Flash and Haste.”
Flash and Haste is very red though, so I dunno.
October 13th, 2010 6:49 PM
Ryk’s suggestions on Generals make them a lot more like Planeswalkers, which could be good.
October 13th, 2010 9:33 PM
Ryk’s suggestion on Generals is Banding.
That didn’t work the first time.
No offense, Ryk, I’m just trying to be the devil’s advocate this thread.
This would make for an awesome game on it’s own though. something kinda like L5R but not quite. The problem is it’s breaking the hell out of magic to fit it in. I feel like making this game should be the next Robot Viking thought exorcise.
October 13th, 2010 9:43 PM
@gavin, Flash and Haste provide no benefit to each other. Any time a creature can be played with Flash on your turn provides almost negligible benefits to playing it in you main phase aside from odd exploitative glitches. Flash is used mainly on opponent’s turns where creatures can’t attack and do not need haste. It’s cool, but if you have Flash creatures you’ll play them on you opponent’s turn then attack, and if you have Haste creatures you’ll play them on your turn to attack. Either way ends up in the same state. Haste is probably less helpful than Flash, either would be good as a static ability, neither are useful as an attack trigger. Hastey creatures can’t attack because attacks have been declared, and flash creatures can’t attack for the same reason.
October 13th, 2010 10:07 PM
See, this is why it’s awesome to have Ryk help on these things. He’s not constrained by prior knowledge of what Magic can and can’t do. I wouldn’t have thought along those lines because, like ggodo, I though to myself, “That’s too much like Banding, and they had to get rid of Banding.”
But it’s a really cool idea if it can be massaged into a working form. So here’s a thought:
“White Soldiers you control can attack or block as a single creature with power equal to their combined power and toughness equal to their combined toughness. They remain separate creatures for targeting purposes and may be destroyed individually by non-combat effects and damage.”
We’re somewhat constrained by the three main rarities of Magic. Commons would be basic soldiers. Uncommons would be specialized units or higher ranking units. Rares would be top commanders. The generals should probably really be mythics.
The destroying a land via garrison idea is really interesting, especially because Joe and I were talking about a large cycle of creatures that do something when you sacrifice them. Black creatures can be sacced to make a 2/2 zombie token creature. Red creatures could be sacced to destroy land (land destruction is too far outside of White’s color pie to put it there). Sacrificing creatures in general is usually in black part of the pie, but if this is all about warfare, then spreading it across the colors is actually pretty cool. You know, we’re teaching kids a little lesson that way, haha.
October 13th, 2010 10:49 PM
One mechanic I’d tinkered with in the past was the idea of lands as territory being fought over. Straight up land destruction is generally a bit unfair, but possibly something that exhiles a land whenever it damages an opponant, but gives them all back when it dies, so you don’t have crazy tempo swings from land death.
October 14th, 2010 12:01 AM
no worries ggodo.
I was just looking at the banding rules on the magic wiki and i’m not clear what the failure was. did banding only apply for certain colors? were the banded stacks too powerful? too tough to destroy? was it the damage sharing? as i understand how that works, if you attacked wit a banded 1/1 and 4/4, and were blocked by a 5/5 you could assign all the damage to the 1/1. essentially taking out a 5/5 on the cheap. Maybe i’m wrong about the damage assignment.
There could be a lot of cards that affect an opponent’s armies like ‘the harvest is in’ or ‘desertion’ causing some or all of the token troops to return to their homes the ‘harvest is in one could be avoided but at the cost of a land (no revenuie from the unreaped wheat); or ‘Recalled by Parliment’ tapping the general so that he is tapped before an attack etc. presumably these would be of value for all the colors so they would be grey i guess.
the generals could be uncommon – command 1-2 units, rare command 2-3 units, mythics command 4-6 units. different generals having different ratings and different auxiliary powers like the mega scry. perhaps they have combat strength of their own, but can’t use teh ability when commanding troops.
October 14th, 2010 12:04 AM
the sacrificing creatures got me thinking too Ed. amybe you could have a card that has a cost of sacrificing token troops, essentially to train up to an elite legion or something.
October 14th, 2010 1:48 AM
Imperial Instructor
WW2
Uncommon
Creature – Human Soldier
2: Put a 1/1 white soldier token onto the battlefield.
Sacrifice 3 soldiers: Put a 3/3 soldier token with First Strike onto the battlefield.
2/3
October 14th, 2010 1:52 AM
You could even scale it up, add another ability.
Sacrifice 5 soldiers: Put a 4/4 soldier token with first strike and vigilance otb.
That makes for an interesting decision. Sac 3 now, or wait and hope they survive long enough to get to 5? And he can sac himself to get there if necessary. Makes for some great chump blocking plays too.
October 14th, 2010 2:13 AM
After spending a lot of time with Banding in the comp rules, it looks like it should be ok to use, with the exception that it is an existing ability and outside of the competition. “Bands With Other” is the ability that did nothing until a few months ago when they finally fixed it. Large numbers of creatures with banding would be full of win in my book.
Especially since there’s only 41 total cards printed with it and one is silver bordered.
October 14th, 2010 9:03 AM
Yeah, my brain muddled the haste rule (was thinking it allowed you to attack right away).
October 14th, 2010 2:57 PM
It’s official, I did not make the cut for round 3. So now we can do whatever we want!
They haven’t published all the answers yet, but I believe I may have missed the cut by 1 or 2 questions.
October 14th, 2010 6:44 PM
Aw, sorry to hear you didn’t make it, Ed.
I really like the idea of the green general doing the “guerilla warfare” tactic with the psuedo-morphs, and it’s not like there isn’t precedent already with the (admittedly old and heavily errata’ed) Illusionary Mask. An alternate way to represent this might be to simply shift the white general’s bird making ability. Again, this has some precedent in Nacatl War-Pride.
Your Imperial Instructor seems pretty nuts, since instant speed token generation for cheap and colorless is pretty powerful. With something like Training Ground, it becomes 3: put a 3/3 first striker into play at instant speed.
Also, it’s not likely to be terribly relevant, but Oblivion Stone also uses “fate counters”, albeit in a very specific manner.
October 14th, 2010 6:54 PM
zizhuo – thanks for pointing those out. Nacatl War Pride is a nice precedent. Another try at General Green, then, much simpler: “Whenever General Green attacks, put a 1/1 green token creature with forestwalk into play tapped and attacking for each attacking creature other than General Green.”
That takes away the bird tokens from General White. We also can’t use his +1/+1 counter version, because you can’t mix counters in a set. So now White needs a new general.
We can just reprint Oblivion Stone in this set! I forgot about that card, but why not?
Good points on the Instructor. Any ideas on how to balance it?
October 14th, 2010 7:12 PM
Colored activation costs – reinforce the “one color per army” theme
Limitations on activation time – sorcery speed, most likely, giving it a tension not unlike levelers
Heavier activation costs in general – like the “conscription” sac a land ideas above
edit: how does one auto-card? I’m assuming it’s some tags, but I think I missed that instructional video…
October 14th, 2010 7:24 PM
Oh, it’s “card” in square brackets before the cardname, “/card” in square brackets after it.
October 14th, 2010 8:27 PM
HA! That Illusionary Mask is exactly it. Exactly what I had in mind. Not sure if I should be proud or humbled that I wasn’t the first to think of it.
October 15th, 2010 3:11 AM
>>Gavin
If anything, it means that you’re in the same frame of mind as the early magic design team when doing top-down sort of stuff.
April 28th, 2011 3:16 AM
Hey everyone! I think this is awesome and intriguing. Some friends and I have been doing something similar with a set of cards much more like unhinged cards. I don’t know what all of the rules are for making a set of cards like these, but if someone could help explain to me the easiest method for designing the cards I would appreciate it. I have a basic knowledge of photoshop, I was wondering if anyone has some blank images that would make it easier. I’m sure there are tricks to it. I also don’t know what text style they used or where I can download it. I would have tried to contact Ed directly instead of posting this long rant here, but the FAQ link for your email doesn’t work and I couldn’t find any other way to contact you through a personal message.
- TLDR -
-Can I still help with this project
-How do I make cards that look customized how I want them (or where can I get blank images to photoshop them)
-What text style do these cards use (where can I download it)
-How do I PM people on this site? (The FAQ email links don’t work with google chrome)
Thanks! (I can also be contacted at Brimstone22@hotmail.com)
April 28th, 2011 11:09 AM
Hi Brimstone, thanks for joining us! All your card frame and text issues are solved by one simple program: Magic Set Editor.
http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/
It’s a brilliant piece of work that makes creating custom cards incredibly easy.
Obviously, we haven’t done a ton of work on this set lately, but I have a file of cards and set themes, maybe I’ll make that today’s post and we can get back to work on this. Regarding PMing, there’s no PMing enabled on Robot Viking, so communicating via comments is your best bet. Not sure why the email links weren’t working for you, but if you look at the link, the address is visible there.
Welcome to Robot Viking!
April 28th, 2011 2:57 PM
Unnamed Artifact Creature 2U
Artifact Creature 0/1
UU: Regenerate Unnamed Artifact Creature
All creatures able to block Unnamed Artifact Creature do so.
Overpowered?
April 28th, 2011 3:19 PM
Not vastly overpowered, it’s a cool card. Needs slight adjustment. Colored artifacts have generally been grouped in sets where they’re a “big thing.” Also, the Lure effect is traditionally green. It could just be a green creature. GGG casting cost, GG regen. Or it could be a colorless artifact with a green activation, in which case the casting cost might need to be 4.
[Edit - I actually like the Lure ability in blue. It makes sense, so I could see shifting the pie a little to keep this blue.]
April 28th, 2011 3:51 PM
Yeah, I thought Lure was mostly green.
Out of curiosity, what happens if you attack with two creatures with Lure?
April 28th, 2011 3:55 PM
You know, I don’t know off the top of my head, and the Oracle rulings don’t say. My assumption: defender has to assign all creatures to block one or the other Lured creature, but gets to pick who blocks what. The logic being that creatures that block one are not able to block the other, thus satisfying the condition.
April 28th, 2011 4:06 PM
Makes sense.
What if our Green General, who will now be affectionately named “Cobra Commander” had the following ability:
GT: Put a 1/1 Green Snake Creature token with Haste and “All creatures must block this creature if able” on the battlefield.
April 28th, 2011 4:11 PM
Whoa, that can be amazing, a neat and simple solution to the green general problem. See, we make it like the alternate white general. So:
Whenever Cobra Commander attacks, put a 1/1 green snake token creature into play tapped and attacking. It has, “All creatures able to block this must do so.”
That might actually be too good. Might have to add, “sacrifice a creature” for balance.
April 28th, 2011 4:29 PM
You could give it a mana cost and a limitation.
Whenever Cobra Commander attacks it gains:
GG: Put a 1/1 green snake token creature into play tapped and attacking. It has, “All creatures able to block this must do so.” This ability may only be activated once per turn.
Or, make it only activated X per turn, where X is the number of attacking non-token creatures.
April 28th, 2011 4:35 PM
Then it starts to get really wordy, and I’d like to keep it parallel to the other generals (who don’t have activation costs). I like the sacrifice for now, it adds some balance and is fun thematically (one of your soldiers sacrifices himself to become a snake that is going to get curbstomped by the enemy). If we ever get around to testing this set, we can adjust from there.
April 28th, 2011 4:41 PM
Sacrifice works for me. Just presenting options.
April 28th, 2011 4:41 PM
Word.
April 28th, 2011 4:58 PM
You know I was just thinking about the activation cost thing for generals, and it makes sense with the theme, if the activation is for them attacking with an army (under the banding concept). After all, it takes a lot of supplies to field an army, and supplies come from the lands that you control.
So maybe a dual action, the general is uber bad ass and can attack on his own, or he pays an activation cost to attack with his army . . . That doesn’t even have to be with banding maybe he musters his army by the attack like alternate white . . . that’s very feudal.
April 28th, 2011 5:13 PM
Well, we could reduce the actual casting cost of the generals a bit if their “attack” abilities have costs. That has the advantage of getting them on the field sooner.
April 28th, 2011 5:14 PM
So the templating would be, “Whenever this attacks, you may pay BLAH. If you do, COOL STUFF happens.”
April 28th, 2011 5:19 PM
If we do that, I’d be in favor of allowing you to put them on the field for free if you start with them in your hand. We’d have to tweak their power/toughness though. Maybe even make it equal to the number of basic lands of a corresponding type under its owner’s control.
April 28th, 2011 5:24 PM
I do like the Leyline ability of playing it for free if in opening hand. My only worry is that we rip off the current block too much, because it was a war-themed block and New Phyrexia has “starts with this for free” dudes also.
Can we innovate something? Maybe tie it to the “Supply” mechanic? Like this, “If you have four forests in your hand, you may reveal them and cast this without paying the mana cost.” Then you might get it T1, but might also have to build your hand to accomplish it.
Or something else?
April 28th, 2011 5:25 PM
I like that. No general is going to serve an army without resources. Revealing forests in that way shows that you have the resources to build an army around them.