Talk:Counter/@comment-5214176-20161215152517/@comment-24699797-20161217215932

So, when you get into this, it changes from a discussion on what are the rules and how do they work, into a game design and balance discussion.

In the case of Giant Fiend Sword, Kuromuramasa, this design is being used as tool to tune the balance of the card. If you consider that the card is about a release block old in a game which is subject to some amount of power creep, it still has quite absurd numbers for the cost of equipping it and swinging with it just once - these numbers do not belong on a weapon which reads effectively reads "Pay 1 Gauge and 1 life to swing for almost half your opponent's Life, pay one more to do so for each subsequent turn, AND the card can also function as a moderate-to-good wallbreaker."

The fact that your opponent may unconditionally nullify its attack is an additional balance lever, which turns the card into its own high risk-reward minigame. By using it, you make the decision to run the risk of getting your attack nullified with no chance of responding and still suffering what is effectively the card's maintenance cost, in exchange for having really good numbers in your weapon slot, which for most decks is not a typical place to have really good numbers. And even when nullified, there's still the advantage of applying pressure with your weapon in a World that typically doesn't do that.

While I don't play Katana World and I've never really noticed this card, I personally think this is a really fun design. It's certainly a design which exists in other games, but the execution of it by putting this in the Katana World card pool which doesn't expect "I have big weapon, smash!" is really nice. Kudos to whoever at Bushiroad R&D conceptualised the card.

So what might at a glance appear to be a strange game design decision - because it means less things are happening at once and it looks like an unneceassary nerf to a whole category of cards in the game - is actually a very clever and important balancing tool, which allows for additional tuning and more thoughtful, paced player interactions in what is otherwise a fast-paced game. It makes the game simpler to understand, adds depth, and possibly most importantly does not limit the design space by allowing the game to be even faster than it already is. The functional space of "effects which trigger upon fulfilling a condition, and which can interrupt chains" is actually occupied by Continuous effects, which can do exactly that like in the case of Dragon Return System's revival effect; it's not as if this function is missing from the game's design, but it's very rarely used, because mistake in balancing a card like this could potentially cause design space limitations and other issues futher down the line.