"MR. THE DRAGON !"

The second expansion set to the My Little Pony Collectible Card Game comes out in just the next few weeks, so here we go: it's time for a wild roller coaster ride of relentless spoilers and juicy details all about MLP: CCG The Crystal Games! Are you excited? I'm excited!We're starting off our articles with a bang, debuting one of the new keywords in The Crystal Games, and this is a biggie: Teamwork! A pony with Teamwork sort of acts like a team captain, sharing their abilities with others. For example, if you have a Pegasus with Teamwork at a Problem with another Pegasus, BOTH Pegasi will have all the abilities printed on of the one with Teamwork!I'll let fellow MLP: CCG dev team member Amanda Craig take it from here, below the break...During the development of The Crystal Games, we considered many different ideas for new keywords to introduce to the game. In this article, we’ll look at new keyword coming with Crystal Games that gives you a whole new way to build card combos based on the traits of the characters in your deck.Have you ever read the game text on a card and thought, "That’s nice, but I wish I could use that text more than once per turn." Prior to the release of Crystal Games, the only way you can do that is to pack two or three copies of that card in your deck and hope to draw them and get them into play. The Teamwork keyword allows you to use the game text on some of your characters more than once per turn (if you do a little planning to pull it off).A card with the Teamwork keyword gives you this ability: "Your other Friends here that share a trait with this card also have its other printed abilities." And what does that mean?Well, let’s take a look at a new card with the Teamwork keyword, everypony’s favorite Equestria Games organizer, Ms. Harshwhinny.Her game text in addition to her Teamwork keyword is, "When you confront this card's Problem, you may exhaust this card and pay 1 action token to move an opposing character at this card's Problem home." Ms. Harshwhinny has the Earth Pony trait, so ALL Earth Ponies at the same Problem as Ms. Harshwhinny may also use this game text. Save up those action tokens, play a few Earth Ponies, and everypony’s going home!Here’s another new Teamwork card, Amethyst Star.Her game text, "Troublemakers here have -1 power," is shared amongst all Unicorn Friends at the same Problem with Amethyst Star. If you play Amethyst with a few of her Unicorn pals at a Problem where your opponent has been trying to block you with a high power Troublemaker, defeating that Troublemaker suddenly doesn’t seem so difficult!Two things to take note of with this new keyword. First, the Teamwork keyword itself does not get passed along to characters who share a trait with the card with Teamwork, only "its OTHER printed abilities." Second, that phrase "printed abilities" means that if you give a card with Teamwork an ability through another card, that ability does not get passed along. For example, if you play the Set 1 Resource Hard Hat on Amethyst Star, giving her the keyword "Stubborn," that Stubborn keyword is NOT passed along to your other Unicorns.We have lots of Teamwork cards with many different abilities coming for you in The Crystal Games. You’ll be going back to your Premiere and Canterlot Nights cards to make all-Earth Pony or all-Pegasus decks once you get your hooves on these new Teamwork cards!Thanks Amanda!Teamwork is good stuff, and it's just one of the new keywords in The Crystal Games. Plus, new keywords aren't the only card concepts debuting! Want to see more? There's more coming!Plus, be sure to join us for a Developer AMA Tweet Chat tomorrow at 7PM. Keep an eye on #mlpccg for that, and follow @MLP_CCG to keep up with daily spoilers of The Crystal Games!