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Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 29, 2021 16:34:37 GMT
Going live in 5
4
3, cue theme music
2
1
Hey everybody, welcome back, we're addicted to drugs! Kels' friendly chat techniques are certainly novel, and devastatingly brutal. Daij_Djan was forced to pull his own head off just last week, and none of us have seen foureyesisafish for days.
*Cell door opens*
What have you done with the rest of the panel, you monster!
Kels: They're fine, relatively speaking. At least for now. In fact, I've set up a communication portal in each of your rooms so you can continue with your amusing little "show". But don't take too long, planeswalkers fetch a...high price on the blood market. I have a buyer coming in a few hours. You all sit tight in your "luxury suites". *malicious laugh*
*Cell door slams shut, portal fizzles to life*
Daij_Djan, foureyesisafish, ZephyrPhantom, ArkiThe7th, dangerousdice, are you all ok? P-pardon me i-i-if-f-f-f I s-s-st-studd-d-d-der or sh-sh-shake, the bitch's got me hooked on s-s-some really powerful meth, and th-th-this is f-from someone who w-was on Ritalin in their youth!
G-g-gimme a sec. Keep it together, man! "How much w-w-wood could a w-woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood!"
Ok, I'll be good for another few hours. What're y'all on? ArkiThe7th, I know I saw them inject you with βk-2C-B and krokodil, which is just overkill if you ask me. Good thing our sparks keep us safe from the worst of the side-effects. Seriously though, what did she give you all? |
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foureyesisafish
7/7 Elemental
Posts: 388
Favorite Set: Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by foureyesisafish on Jul 29, 2021 16:56:51 GMT
I'm alive, I've just been dormant in a pit for a few weeks. Don't mind me.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 29, 2021 20:33:58 GMT
foureyesisafish: Snake pit? Other assorted creepy crawly pit? Or was it just you and your maddening isolation, and eventually Bob, the hallucination?
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ArkiThe7th
1/1 Squirrel
Any plant is edible if you’re not a coward.
Posts: 82
Favorite Card: Wee Dragonauts
Favorite Set: Pauper Masters (wait a second...)
Color Alignment: Blue, Red
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Post by ArkiThe7th on Jul 29, 2021 22:17:32 GMT
Ok, I'll be good for another few hours. What're y'all on? ArkiThe7th , I know I saw them inject you with βk-2C-B and krokodil, which is just overkill if you ask me. Good thing our sparks keep us safe from the worst of the side-effects. Seriously though, what did she give you all? Oh, don’t worry, it was just unicorn blood and Shivan Dragon urine. I’m all good. No side effects here. Quick question though: Since when did everyone grow hooves? *Falls over* |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jul 29, 2021 22:38:54 GMT
Hi everyone.. Sorry, but I'm still a bit dizzy.. No idea what she gave to me, but it felt like having my brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.. (kudos to you if you get the reference without looking it up  ) |
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foureyesisafish
7/7 Elemental
Posts: 388
Favorite Set: Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by foureyesisafish on Jul 29, 2021 22:39:34 GMT
foureyesisafish : Snake pit? Other assorted creepy crawly pit? Or was it just you and your maddening isolation, and eventually Bob, the hallucination? I've been dormant, bro. Did you seriously think I was awake? I've been asleep |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 29, 2021 23:13:30 GMT
foureyesisafish : Snake pit? Other assorted creepy crawly pit? Or was it just you and your maddening isolation, and eventually Bob, the hallucination? I've been dormant, bro. Did you seriously think I was awake? I've been asleep Well, is there anything in that pit with you now, aside from the teleportal and Bob? |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jul 30, 2021 0:15:02 GMT
My sincerest apologies. ZephyrPhantom is currently indisposed, so I will be taking their place for the foreseeable future. Please disregard any rotting corpses that may be relevant to this question.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 30, 2021 5:55:21 GMT
O...kaayyy. Creepy new rotting guy. dangerousdice, you still with us? |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jul 30, 2021 15:17:43 GMT
I've heard a weird cracking sound a while back, their microphone might be broken.. (dangerousdice hasn't been online these past ten days, so we might want to move on for now ) |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 30, 2021 16:05:01 GMT
Well alright then.
(We mustn't alert Kels to any of our plans to escape, so just act normally for an episode. I did some testing while they were dosing me, and she and her Minions seem to be suffering from the dreaded Gleemax-Spike Syndrome, rendering them incapable of comprehending any italicized text, so any secret communications you want to convey to the group should be italicized. In fact, best just to put it in parentheses, just to be on the safe side.)
Our first question comes from Daij_Djan: What do you think of the AFR mechanics - a.k.a. dice rolling, the dungeon, classes and using ability words to flavorfully showcase DnD spells and/or RP choices? |
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ArkiThe7th
1/1 Squirrel
Any plant is edible if you’re not a coward.
Posts: 82
Favorite Card: Wee Dragonauts
Favorite Set: Pauper Masters (wait a second...)
Color Alignment: Blue, Red
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Post by ArkiThe7th on Jul 31, 2021 5:24:22 GMT
I’d say I’m a big fan of the RP choices and flavor abilities. Any time that they’re able to fluidly combine mechanics and flavor is a win in my book. I’m also a big D&D fan, so it’s a nice intersection of some of my favorite games.
As for the mechanics…
Dice Rolling is implemented quite well, I think. There’s almost no cards that are useless with a bad roll, and most rolls are equivalent to flipping a coin: something Magic’s already used for decades. The d20s are nice way of creating even more of an obvious connection to D&D. Nothing else to say here, I’m a fan.
The Dungeons were cool, but almost felt like a mechanic made for Arena. A player needs 3 different unique token cards for basically any limited deck. I haven’t played physical magic in a long time (pandemic+quarantine) but I can imagine that a draft pod might have to share a couple dungeon cards amongst the players. Whereas in Arena, all the dungeons are right there and easy to keep track of. I won’t touch on the movement of focus from paper to digital magic, because I think we might talk more on it later this panel, but It’s just an observation I had.
Classes are also pretty neat. I keep gushing about this, but the flavor of the classes is really well done. I love how all of the card art for each of the classes includes the D&D symbol for the class. Can I also just talk about how much better looking these are than the original Zendikar levelers? Those cards were freaking ugly.
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jul 31, 2021 22:32:22 GMT
Hope you don't mind me responding to my own question already – but I do have some time to type right now and I don't think it matters in a negative way, so.. First of all: I have never played DnD myself – but I do play Pen&Paper (just with a different rulebook) and Baldur's Gate II is pretty much my favorite RPG game of all time – so I guess I'm kind of biased With that in mind, here we go: - Since this will be a quick one, I'll start with the last mechanic we were shown: The classes. I always loved Level Up, and these are Level Up enchantments – so I love classes as well
 - Next up the dice rolling. Yeah, that was an obvious one. As much as I'm not the biggest fan of adding additional random effects to Magic, there was no way we wouldn't get dices within this set. Apparently WotC even considered a Hedron-themed d8-mechanic at one point, so how could they end up passing this opportunity? I do like how they implemented the mechanic quite much though – also I think it was a wise choice to have all the main set cards using d20 exclusively, and then let the Commander product really push the limits much more.
- Next up are the ability words. Not gonna lie: When we were shown the first card using it, I really wasn't a big fan. But since then, the concept has really grown on me more and more – with the RP choices really winnig me over in the end. I don't think it's a concept WotC should start using on a regular basis still, but if we ever get a new DnD set in the future..
- And finally, we have the dungeon. I still have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it does make a lot of sence within this set – the flavor is just so cool. But it has quite a few flaws as well: It's quite obviously much more annoying to be played with in paper Magic, and it's insanely parasitic in nature. Also while all the choices involved make the mechanic quite complex on the one hand, having only three dungeons feels rather lackluster still – and I'm pretty sure it's safe to say we won't get any additional ones anytime soon.. If WotC ever revisits this mechanic, I also totally want a level 2 dungeon you can only venture into after completing at least one „normal“ one first. Oh and also the art (or rather the lack thereof): Dungeons really should have bee DFCs with fullart backsides.
Additionally, there is one interesting point The Command Zone brought up in one of their reviews: Between the main set and the Commander product, we got seven potential commanders featuring the dungeon – which is a whole lot for a single mechanic. Sure, we got 42 new commanders total, but still.. - I actually have another mechanic I want to at least mention though: the ZNR party mechanic. I'm amazed they didn't bring it back at all, like seriously. I guess they decided to instead use that top down design space on the class cards directly, but still. It's still weird to me to have a mechanic representing adventuring parties in the game but not used in a Pen&Paper flavored set..
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 1, 2021 6:19:56 GMT
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Aug 1, 2021 7:02:28 GMT
Sure, let's run with me being a corpse too.*KLANG* *CRASH* *CHOMP* I suppose that might start being the new normal around here if we're going to be working here for a while. Hope you love bone maggots.
Dice Rolling - To be honest, people in this little corner of the multiverse weren't exactly optimistic when one of the first major cards spoiled was Farideh, Devil's Chosen. While it probably looks like a serviceable commander there was a bit of grouching about how it was basically a more expensive Satyr Enchanter, and that WoTC was going to relegate a previously silver border mechanic to mostly bad cards to avoid dice rolling having an impact on most formats. Thankfully, with the printing of cards like Pixie Guide and Delina, Wild Mage this turned out not to be the case; while dice rolling may not make for the most powerful combos in Standard, it has plenty of potential worth brewing for.As ArkiThe7th noted, keeping a lot of dice cards akin to flipping a coin was a great way to sneak a lot of extra dice cards into the format without making them feel too absurd. It would've been very easy to make every dice card have 5-10 different outcomes or something more complicated, but instead WoTC took the level template format and reconfigured it nicely to make sure a dice roll's outcomes could be easily understood. The use of the | was particularly interesting; this corpse - I mean ZephyrPhantom did use |'s to separate outcomes similarly many years ago.
tl;dr: Sometimes simplicity can be spicy.Dungeons - I think the thing that really stuck out the most to me was how carefully WoTC tried to limit the mechanic - in any other set, Wandering Troubadour wouldn't be once a turn, for example. Kind of disagree that it's as parasitic as people say, honestly, because there are plenty of self-enabling cards like Nadaar, Selfless Paladin and Yuan-Ti Malison that link the action of venturing into the dungeon into something that's easy to do like attacking or playing a land, and unlike something like Infect, Dungeon effects are broad enough (token creation, scrying, burn) to be useful in a variety of contexts*. While there might be cards that are extremely parasitic (specifically, ones that care about completing a dungeon without being able to do so themselves), I think the mechanic on the whole plays nicer with the broad scope of Magic than something like Arcane did. Sure, it gets better if you run it in a Dungeon deck, but the same could be said for Energy and Food. In fact, given that an Acererak the Archlich + Aluren list was able to 5-0 a Legacy League, the better dungeon cards are probably more flexible than they look. (Go nuts, Ready Player One fans!) Classes - Eh, don't have much here. They're a neat combination of Level Up and Saga and an important flavorful part of the set (seems like a good chunk of this set was based on the Level Up template, really), but beyond using Barbarian Class for dice-rolls I haven't been particularly excited about any one. Ability Words/RP Choices - Bit unusual to see them diverge from same conventions keywords had in set design, but at the same time, if there was a set to throw in every reference in the literal book from, it'd be this one. I think it makes for a cleaner execution than say, Time Spiral's explicit reuse of every possible keyword it could use, since it essentially acts as some cute flavortext to get you more involved in playing the game. I actually have another mechanic I want to at least mention though: the ZNR party mechanic. I'm amazed they didn't bring it back at all, like seriously. I guess they decided to instead use that top down design space on the class cards directly, but still. It's still weird to me to have a mechanic representing adventuring parties in the game but not used in a Pen&Paper flavored set..
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 2, 2021 17:32:38 GMT
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foureyesisafish
7/7 Elemental
Posts: 388
Favorite Set: Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by foureyesisafish on Aug 2, 2021 20:55:31 GMT
I'll keep my comments brief. How they handled dice rolling is really neat, dungeons are neat but not quite my cup of tea, and I sort of like how they used ability words.
The real standout? Classes, which completely fixed the problems with Level Up. I would love to see this tech be used more in the future.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 2, 2021 23:44:07 GMT
Ok, then. Since we're continuing under the impression that dangerousdice has been horribly tortured to death (R.I.P., fren, I hardly knew ye, yet you will be missed), and in order to avoid repeating myself, I'ma hold off on answering this question until the next question, which comes from me:
It seems I'm starting to be seduced to the Dark Side. I spent all my free Draft/Sealed tokens for AFR building slow, durdly Control decks, always picking the combo of Arcane Investigator, Pixie Guide, and Wizard Class. So, my question is this: What is the one deck archetype you normally hate, yet also play in only one or two formats? |
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ArkiThe7th
1/1 Squirrel
Any plant is edible if you’re not a coward.
Posts: 82
Favorite Card: Wee Dragonauts
Favorite Set: Pauper Masters (wait a second...)
Color Alignment: Blue, Red
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Post by ArkiThe7th on Aug 4, 2021 0:45:10 GMT
There aren’t actually many archetypes I dislike. Control is obviously annoying, and a lot of combo decks make it feel like a single player game, but as long as it’s a well-balanced format as a whole, I don’t mind. There’s usually enough counter play for certain decks that they don’t bother me.
The one exception to that rule is blue/black control in Pauper. What frustrates me with this deck is not actually playing against it, but how boring of a deck it is. There’s so many interesting things you can do in Pauper that you can’t do in other formats. There’s such a wide selection of unique and interesting decks to play, it seems like a waste to just play control.
I understand the appeal though: it’s straightforward, consistent, and very powerful. I understand the appeal because I play the deck a lot. I can’t resist. It’s a lot of fun not play and I just can’t stop. Help me please.
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Aug 5, 2021 4:58:14 GMT
*ROAR*Oh, did they let the dragon out? Careful, I hear it's poisonous.Anyway... I would say Storm, but I actually like the idea of that - counting your spells preemptively is just kind of taxing especially after a long day of dabbling with this and that.*CRASH*Realistically, I don't think I play enough to really hate a deck in particular, but that might just be because the Planeswalkers I deal with on a regular basis love knuckling down and using decks that really test people's patience, and after a while you realize that if you're going to play Constructed with people that are passionate about the game and want to play the best they can even with jank, you're going to have to expect that sort of thing going in. Everything from Storm to Prison to getting hit with as many variations of Sea's Claim is possible if you leave the possibility open, and you kind of just have to adapt your deck to the local meta or accept that some decks won't do as well as others.
...that said, I imagine having a format as a power cap helps keep things civil. I can't imagine this working in EDH.As for this mysterious rotting pile of biomass, it's probably the same, but judging from the knowledge gleaned from their cranial cavity they're more likely to just run whatever interests them, so filing them under a really preferring a deck doesn't seem that plausible.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 6, 2021 15:37:27 GMT
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Post by Daij_Djan on Aug 6, 2021 18:34:50 GMT
Sorry, RL has kept me extremely busy this week - not only because it's been my son's first week at his new school I should be able to catch up over the weekend (as I have a few closing comments for the previous question still), but I don't really gave much new to offer for the current question - so if you don't want to wait feel free to skip me for now and I'll add my thoughts to the next topic |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 8, 2021 17:39:51 GMT
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 11, 2021 18:18:19 GMT
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foureyesisafish
7/7 Elemental
Posts: 388
Favorite Set: Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths
Color Alignment: Blue, Red, Green
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Post by foureyesisafish on Aug 11, 2021 18:28:30 GMT
i exist and I have no idea how to answer this as I don't really play that many formats.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Aug 13, 2021 0:17:03 GMT
i exist and I have no idea how to answer this as I don't really play that many formats. Well, now I just look like an idiot. Next time, please speak up and let us know you'll be skipping the question, ok?
Right. You all know me, and you all know the blazing hatred that I have for Control that burns with the fiery passion of more suns than there are in the omniverse, so imagine my surprise during Arena's AFR release when I spent all my Limited tokens building mono- Control decks, forcing them, even.
It seems I've been seduced to the dark side. The only saving grace is that either the deck itself isn't very good, or I'm just that shit at playing Control. I'd like to attribute it all to pilot error, but knowing my track record of consistently building decks of Tier-2 (I'm being extremely generous here) and below, it's most likely both.
This sort of thing only ever happens in Limited, and I have no idea why it even happens at all.
To answer the First Question, as you can see from A Wizard's Staff Has a Knob on the End, all of the new mechanics of AFR are being used, so let's go over my thoughts on them:
Dice rolling: I adore dice rolling. There's just something so satisfying in hearing and feeling the clicking of the dice, be it in your hand, or in another receptacle. I have fond memories of playing Yahtzee (not Ben Croshaw) and annoying my opponent almost to the point of quitting with my incessant and aggressive dice rolling in the provided cup. There's also something so fascinating, and equally satisfying, in relinquishing all control and relegating your fate to random chance. MaRo and others have talked at length about the evolution of dice rolling in Magic, and how it went from a loss chance at the low end, to the low end being the base effect, and only getting better from there, and this is absolutely the right approach. Plus, there's the Timmy excitement of the possibility of critting a nat 20 and getting that sweet, sweet uber-effect. Pixie Guides help with this immensely.
The Dungeon: I think I'm addicted to venturing into the dungeon, guys. I mean seriously, I think I might have a real problem. Sure, the individual rooms are all at best about a tenth to about 6/7th of a card, but you slap a Fly or two onto a Yuan-Ti Malison and exalt (i.e. attack alone with it) it, suddenly you're speedrunning through Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and all those fractional benefits start snowballing into real card advantage. I prolly start off with Tomb of Annihilation far more often than I should (it's usually my default first dungeon), but if you haven't noticed, Knob on the End is severely short on creatures, which means it's also severely short on defense, so The Atropal is a great way to hold off any ground assault. Yes, all the little micro-decisions involved can get a little fiddly, but that's part of their charm. I can't wait for them to start making additional dungeons.
Classes: I'm a Wizard, Hairy! I love the Class enchantments--
Ral: They're probably the only way we'll ever get any sort of class around here!
Speak for yourself, dear morsel. I have tickets to see Vide Cor Meum and Other Selections from La Vita Nuova this weekend. I hear the soloist is particularly delectable.[/font]
That's very nice and derivative, Jund, but you know we're celebrating my birthday this weekend, so it seems highly unlikely that you'll be engaging in any sort of mortophagy. And before you even bring it up, you're not Foul Ole Ron's Smell, I'm not Foul Ole Ron, and I'm insulted that you would make such a comparison!
If the unwashed, tattered scrap of discarded naugahyde bootsole fits...
Enough!
As I was saying, I love the Class enchantments, but I have a couple of slight problems with them, first as a whole, and second with Wizard Class in particular:
1) You remember the Grand Creature Type Update? God, has it really been almost 14 years ago now? Where does the time go? It's like Groucho said, "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana." Along with that, there was the implementation of the "race/class" system for original Mirrodin, whereby most creature types were broken down into what it is vs. what it does, exe: Goblin Cleric (never actually been done before; someone should get on that, hint hint), or Vedalken Berserker (same, but for different reasons; someone should still get on that, hint hint!), etc.
The new Class enchantment subtypes muddy the waters in the same way that "play" was McKinley Morganfield before they split the term into activate or trigger for abilities, cast for spells, battlefield for, well, you know, and play for land: when you say "wizard class", do you mean Wizard Class; the Wizard creature subtype, which is a class creature type; or is it even worse, and you mean the enchantment subtype of Class; or mebbe you're trying to do what I'm doing now, and explaining the difference between creature race subtypes and creature class subtypes? And woe betide you if you ever try to introduce a riff on changeling which focuses on only races or classes.
Teferi: Of course he's already done this years ago, with Jack-of-All-Trades (for classes) and Paragon (for races).
Ssh! Of course, this all is a problem for another day.
2) WHY DOES WIZARD CLASS DRAW CARDS BEFORE IT GIVES YOU THE BENEFIT FOR DRAWING CARDS?!?!! If I have the potential to get +1/+1 counters for drawing cards, I wanna get that bonus FIRST, then draw some extra cards! AND WHY THE FUCK IS LEVELING UP LIMITED TO SORCERY SPEED?! I'M PLAYING A CONTROL DECK, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH HAVING TO CONSTANTLY HOLD 3 MANA OPEN SLOWS ME DOWN?!
The Flavor Words: Well, since we're bringing back everybody, we may as well bring back errbody! Take it, Mel.
Thank you, Senpai. MaRo-san has said before that whenever he sees a card like Broken Wings, he knows that it's a purely hole-filling card from Development. The abilities have no mechanical connection, certainly no flavor connection, and no real reason to be on the same card as each other, save that there was only one slot available to spare for them. But, with a card like You Find a Cursed Idol, there's an actual Watsonian reason for such disjointed effects to share a card.
Hey Mel, there's something I've been meaning to ask you.
Yes?
The axis you represent is Vorthos vs. Mel, so where's Vorthos?
Do you want a Doylist or Watsonian answer?
Surprise me.
Doylist: You yourself handle the Vorthos aspect pretty well on your own. Plus, I and the rest of the Cacophony are all just aspects of your overall personality: Ral's your snarky, irreverent, impulsive asshole; Teferi's your rule-following, aloof, meticulous, slightly pompous pedant; Jund's your cultured side, your prosaic side, and your violent side, all rolled into one dangerous, and potentially explosive, package; I'm the one that appreciates how things are made; and Writers' Block is your massive amounts of procrastination and occasional inability to, shall we say, perform on demand, but the less said about Him, the better, lest we summon His Obstructiveness by our idle chatter. Is there overlap between us? Possibly, but we are how you made us.
Watsonian: If you're implying that since I represent, and am named for, only one side of the axis, that I can't appreciate things on my opposite end, I'm insulted. The entire axis has to do with card design as a whole, be it from the standpoint of mechanics and ground-up design on the extreme Mel side, to the flavor and top-down design of Vorthos' side, but it's all about how cards, sets, and blocks are designed, and that design is, and always has been, an analogue spectrum, not a purely digital, either/or decision. So, yes, I can, as a representation of your appreciation for ALL design, talk about a more Vorthos addition to the game than my name would imply.
This also leads me into my next point: I contend that the Flavor Words will actually make Design & Development's jobs easier, at least when it comes to card concepting. Look at Granny's Payback. The problem was, you could NEVER fix it in the flavor text, because either the rules text that needed explaining turned out to be too long to even allow flavor text on the card, or the required flavor text explanation would be so long, you couldn't fit all the rules text. Now that we have Flavor Words, we have ways of concepting abilities so that they all come together to create a greater whole, or even just explain some further bit of worldbuilding.
Thank you, Mel. Our next question comes from ZephyrPhantom : How do you feel about digital exclusive cards in Magic video games, and WotC's repeated use of them to try effects that would not be possible in paper? |
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ArkiThe7th
1/1 Squirrel
Any plant is edible if you’re not a coward.
Posts: 82
Favorite Card: Wee Dragonauts
Favorite Set: Pauper Masters (wait a second...)
Color Alignment: Blue, Red
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Post by ArkiThe7th on Aug 14, 2021 5:29:27 GMT
I don’t like the digital exclusive cards. Historic Horizons: Jumpstart or whatever it’s called is a bad idea. I think it ruins the integrity of Magic. I really really, really, really don’t think it’s a good idea to split Magic into two halves. Firstly, let’s look at the business side of this. I’m not saying I’m an expert, but I have a few observations that make me skeptical of WotC’s choice here. If there are formats that can only be played digitally, and a hypothetical player plays exclusively historic, but are interested in getting into paper historic, then you’ve alienated a portion of your player base from paper Magic. In other words, you’re losing money. Inversely, you’re also losing paper Magic players that would’ve been interested in trying out historic on Arena and spending money on it. Why would you release a digital exclusive product when you could change some of the cards and release the same product in paper, too? Hell, it would probably jumpstart (hehe) historic into paper Magic. You know what more different formats means, WotC? More money. I don’t understand why else WotC would make Horizons: Jumpstart Historic other than because they’re afraid of Hearthstone and the rise of digital TCGs. That’s a bad reason. Magic isn’t losing players to other TCGs, it’s losing players to really strange business choices (like this one) and the lowered support for LGSs. I just don’t understand why WotC seems so hell-bent on cutting ties with paper Magic! All of these recent choices make it seem like they want a future where outside of Arena, commander is the only format played, and that makes me worried. Don’t even get me started with LGSs. WotC has showed us in the past that it doesn’t want to support local games stores anymore, and that pisses me off. Distancing themselves from the game stores that basically singlehandedly got MTG to where it is now is really sketchy and underhanded. It’s understandable during the pandemic that they wouldn’t give as much support, but the pandemic’s slowing down and WotC is still distancing themselves. To me, Horizons: Historic Jumpstart seems to be the next step in cutting the ties. It appears that WotC wants to transition to prioritizing Arena over anything else. Now let’s talk about artificial rotation (yay). Basically, artificial rotation is the idea of printing new, power crept cards that instantly invalidate existing cards in an eternal format. It’s pretty much a cheap way to make money off of eternal formats. Guess what adding 800 new cards to historic does - it invalidates a crap ton of existing cards that players spent their wildcards on. Therefore, more people giving you money so that they can play competitively viable decks. WotC tested this out with Modern Horizons, and now they’re going all in with Jumpstart Horizons: Historic (they’re even adding Modern Horizons cards to historic). What artificial rotation does is essentially break the trust of your players. “Why should I pay all this money to get this one deck, when I know it’ll be completely useless when the next set comes around?” Arena also doesn’t let you buy singles or trade for cards. Sure, you’ve got wildcards, but you get those from packs, and you get packs from money. Finally, let’s put aside all of those concerns for a minute and look at what these cards actually do. Well… I’m looking at them, and I can’t tell what some of them do. As the Professor says, reading the card explains the card. I’m reading Davriel, I don’t know what he does. What are his offers? What are his conditions? What about Tome of the Infinite? You’re telling me I get a random card from the spellbook? What’s the spellbook contain? How do I know that I won’t get screwed over with bad luck when I play these cards? Magic is all about countering and anticipating your opponent. Even when you’re playing aggro, you can look at your opponent’s cards they have in play, and guess what they’re gonna do with them. I can’t predict what Davriel’s gonna do! It’s random! I can no longer look at a Magic card and know what it does. That doesn’t seem right to me. In conclusion, Magic is dead. (Just kidding, Magic is a really resilient game, we’ll get through this.) Those are my thoughts. I know they’re a lot, but I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment. Thanks for coming to “crabby person rants for a bit.” |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Aug 15, 2021 16:34:42 GMT
Sorry everyone – I probably shouldn't have drank the leftovers Kels had left me with.. (No seriously, sorry for my absence. Second vaccination shot really shot me down – if you don't mind the pun )Guess I'll have some catching up to do.. Dungeons - I think the thing that really stuck out the most to me was how carefully WoTC tried to limit the mechanic - in any other set, Wandering Troubadour wouldn't be once a turn, for example. Kind of disagree that it's as parasitic as people say, honestly, because there are plenty of self-enabling cards like Nadaar, Selfless Paladin and Yuan-Ti Malison that link the action of venturing into the dungeon into something that's easy to do like attacking or playing a land, and unlike something like Infect, Dungeon effects are broad enough (token creation, scrying, burn) to be useful in a variety of contexts*. While there might be cards that are extremely parasitic (specifically, ones that care about completing a dungeon without being able to do so themselves), I think the mechanic on the whole plays nicer with the broad scope of Magic than something like Arcane did. Sure, it gets better if you run it in a Dungeon deck, but the same could be said for Energy and Food. In fact, given that an Acererak the Archlich + Aluren list was able to 5-0 a Legacy League, the better dungeon cards are probably more flexible than they look. (Go nuts, Ready Player One fans!) Yeah, you're not completely wrong here – even though your last example pretty much is a nice combo example about replaying the same card over and over again which really doesn't say much about its mechanic in any capacity There for sure are more parasitic mechanics out there though – won't argue with that. Btw, everyone interested feel free to check out MaRo's podcast #856: Parasitism for his take on the matter It's been said before in other discussions like this one, but I think the big problem is that party inherently forces a set to be based on its four types: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard. If you look back at Zendikar Rising, almost every two-typed creature has one of these types. AFR on the other hand tries to cover a broader range of 'classes' including things like Bards, Warlocks, Rangers, Knights, Barbarians, and Druids, and it would be a lot harder to meaningfully give all these other types representation if there had to be a strict quota for four specific class types. That's a good point indeed. Supporting Party does require quite some set space.. Honestly, I don't have much to say about this one. As mentioned a while back, nowadays I pretty much only play Pauper with my family and Historic on MagicArena, also I don't really have any deck type I strictly hate – except maybe hardcore prison decks? In the past control (since I'm not really good at it) and combo (due to its repetative nature) decks have probably been my least played ones, so the fact that a monoblack control deck is part of your home meta is probably the closest thing to mention here MaRo-san has said before that whenever he sees a card like Broken Wings, he knows that it's a purely hole-filling card from Development. The abilities have no mechanical connection, certainly no flavor connection, and no real reason to be on the same card as each other, save that there was only one slot available to spare for them. But, with a card like You Find a Cursed Idol, there's an actual Watsonian reason for such disjointed effects to share a card. Good point! Our next question comes from ZephyrPhantom : How do you feel about digital exclusive cards in Magic video games, and WotC's repeated use of them to try effects that would not be possible in paper?Oh boy, here goes.. Let's start on a positive note and then move towards the issues step by step, shall we? First of all, I've heard many good things about the first Jumpstart, but as I missed it being on Arena last time, I'm actually quite happy to be able to play it this time around. Next up concerning digital only cards in general: Funny how this is being brought up by so many people now as if it were a new concept, when we have had at least nine of these since Arena started. Honestly, as much as I'm not the biggest fan, I don't mind them much. These are completely normal cards that could still see print in a normal set someday (more on that below), so they kind of remind me of Zilortha, Strength Incarnate – which technically doesn't exist as “normal” card either. But they at least could in the future – or at worst we can flat out create a proxy for them – so I don't mind them that much. Next, allow me a little sidetracking before tackling the big one: I don't think I like WotC introducing ~300 new cards into Historic though Jumpstart. For me, Historic started as a Modern-light (or technically speaking Pioneer-light – but I've never met anyone caring about that format, tbh) basically, a format that's supposed to grow steadily as new Standard releases come out. For a while now however, WotC has used additional means to introduce cards into the format (like the Mystical Archives or even how Pact of Negation was part of Amonkhet Remastered..) which today dominate the format. Sure, the power level of eternal formats is bound to rise over time – but those pushes really have been extreme, and I doubt this new one will be a small one either.. And finally, the use of effects flat out not possible in paper Magic.. I hate these, I hate them so much. When I saw the first of those cards, I nicknamed the set Jumpstart: Everything that's wrong with Hearthstone and for me that name hasn't changed (btw, if yu know where to look, you now know my RL name ). Honestly, effects like these are what pushed me away from Hearthstone when I gave it a try years ago, and I still hate them till this day. I dislike such effects in general, I dislike how these cards (compared to what I said above) could never be translated into paper Magic, and I hate effects like.. ..creating mono-blue Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolts (funny how that card is still banned in Historic otherwise).. Sure, if I don't want to, I don't have to play these cards myself – but my opponents will most likely do so anyway. And as mentioned previously, historic is kind of the only one format I play using Arena to start with – and I'm not sure I'll have fun continuing so in the future.. In conclusion, Magic is dead. (Just kidding, Magic is a really resilient game, we’ll get through this.) Well, not Magic in general – but I'm afraid for me Arena might be. And I'm not saying this raging, but rather on a really sad note. All I can hope for would be these cards being a flop, and I'm afraid they won't be one – as some do look powerful which is all that matters to some players while I know others simply do enjoy such effects (which is completely fine, btw) – which means I'm pretty sure we'll get even more of them in the future.. Btw, if you have the time for a probably better explained take (which I pretty much agree with) and haven't watched it already: |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Aug 15, 2021 20:36:18 GMT
Hope you are feeling better, Daij.Yeah, you're not completely wrong here – even though your last example pretty much is a nice combo example about replaying the same card over and over again which really doesn't say much about its mechanic in any capacity There for sure are more parasitic mechanics out there though – won't argue with that. Btw, everyone interested feel free to check out MaRo's podcast #856: Parasitism for his take on the matter   : Venture into the dungeon." instead, we'd just be having a discussion about how it fits in an infinite mana combo instead where we use some amount of cards to ignore the mana requirements entirely and Secret Door and Displacer Beast are set up to potentially be like that. We'd probably just be talking about something like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds + Freed From the Real instead, which is 4 mana + 2 cards as opposed to Aluren being 4 mana + 1 card.In fact, it's worth noting that of the Dungeon cards released in AFR for Standard 21 of them are repeatable , 11 of them only happen once , and 3 don't venture, but are either blatant draft chaff or build-around uncommons. WoTC presumably had some awareness going in on how this mechanic would be viewed, and strove to make it as self-enabling as possible (almost 2/3rds of the card pool, in fact) to cut down on how subsequently useless Dungeons might become post-rotation/outside of Draft.I think there's something to be said for cards being individually more/less parasitic than the mechanic they're based on, sure, but on paper, repeatably doing effects like "Scry 1/Deal 1 damage to any target/Create a 1/1 token/Lose 1 life/Gain 1 life" doesn't seem particularly damning. If you replaced every venture with "Scry 1", and "Complete the Dungeon" with "If you scried five times" (Or "deal 1 damage" and "if an opponent has 5 less life than their starting life total"), it starts to feel more like the point about how Tribal is technically parasitic but largely popular tribals aren't because Humans/Elves/etc... are common fantasy races. If anything, this seems to say to me that a big problem with how Dungeons affect the game from a purely Melvin/mechanical perspective is that they have to scale up to reward the player's inner Vorthos/flavor sensibilities of 'exploring' a dungeon. If a Dungeon was all about constantly picking between scrying 1 or pinging for 1, it would probably feel a lot less parasitic, but it would probably wouldn't be very marketable either - like sdfkjgh said, it's part of their charm.
Regarding the points about Historic in particular (even if that wasn't the question): You're supposed to be dead, you know.Can't be helped, my question's being hijacked in an interesting way. Pretend my corpse has a mouth or something. Next, allow me a little sidetracking before tackling the big one: I don't think I like WotC introducing ~300 new cards into Historic though Jumpstart. For me, Historic started as a Modern-light (or technically speaking Pioneer-light – but I've never met anyone caring about that format, tbh) basically, a format that's supposed to grow steadily as new Standard releases come out. For a while now however, WotC has used additional means to introduce cards into the format (like the Mystical Archives or even how Pact of Negation was part of Amonkhet Remastered..) which today dominate the format. Sure, the power level of eternal formats is bound to rise over time – but those pushes really have been extreme, and I doubt this new one will be a small one either.. Now let’s talk about artificial rotation (yay). Basically, artificial rotation is the idea of printing new, power crept cards that instantly invalidate existing cards in an eternal format. It’s pretty much a cheap way to make money off of eternal formats. Guess what adding 800 new cards to historic does - it invalidates a crap ton of existing cards that players spent their wildcards on. Therefore, more people giving you money so that they can play competitively viable decks. WotC tested this out with Modern Horizons, and now they’re going all in with Jumpstart Horizons: Historic (they’re even adding Modern Horizons cards to historic). What artificial rotation does is essentially break the trust of your players. “Why should I pay all this money to get this one deck, when I know it’ll be completely useless when the next set comes around?” Arena also doesn’t let you buy singles or trade for cards. Sure, you’ve got wildcards, but you get those from packs, and you get packs from money. When Historic released, I felt it was a good opportunity to do one of two things: 1) Introduce cards like Astral Slide (or perhaps Astral Drift now) that were iconic in old Standard formats, but don't really 'fit' into the big formats now either by not being legal (Modern and below) or too weak (Legacy and up). 2) Essentially act as Arena's version of Pioneer, and perhaps become Pioneer itself if WoTC could motivate itself to add all the cards. For me the awkward point was Brainstorm (and how MTG Arena Twitter even tried to briefly tease it from Arena's onset despite the obvious disparity in power level). How useful it is without the various card manipulation tricks of Legacy is debatable, but from my understanding it was still good enough on its own to make the majority of Blue decks warp around its presence. I have no problem with Historic being a powerful sandbox format if that's WoTC intention, but it feels like that's not what the format was originally pitched as, and if it is what it's going to become, we kind of have a Pioneer-esque shaped hole in Arena that needs to filled - I'd like to know how all of Arena's cards interact in their own 'clean' format, essentially. If I was WoTC I'd probably just make Pioneer 2.0 that starts with Kaladesh and goes onward, so that people looking to play something like that without any powerful format shaking reprints being released. I get the impression these kinds of releases in general are meant to encourage players to buy cards via said artificial rotation - but players will do that too if naturally released cards in Standard turn out to be useful in another format anyway (see: Acererak). I think WoTC could stand to have a little more faith in the natural rotation of cards from Standard instead of essentially printing the card equivalent of clickbait - but I suppose that's at odds with any potential demands to make more money for Hasbro. (Sorry O.G. Pioneer, but between the need to implement all cards from RTR onward and WoTC's general favoring of Arena for "next step up from Standard" formats, I don't think its chances are particularly good when it comes to official support anymore.) tl;dr I don't have issues with WoTC pitching a sandbox format where potentially anything goes in design or gameplay (there are formats in both digital and paper with similar mission statements ranging from Commander and Conspiracy Draft to Vanguard and Momir Vig), but I do think it's a problem that WoTC thinks it can put a square peg in a round hole - in other words, the "new" Historic isn't really a good substitute for Pioneer, and shouldn't be treated as such. I'm going to hold off on fully talking about the digital cards themselves until the air's cleared a bit with the currently existing discussion, because there's a lot being said here and I'd like to get through that all first.
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Post by Daij_Djan on Aug 15, 2021 22:14:24 GMT
Much better, thanks Still a little bit tired (and it's a bit hard to really formulate my thoughts), but much better already. What I meant was: If infinity combos get involved – whether we talk about infinite mana or cheating a card onto the battlefield over and over again – I don't think this says much about whether a mechanic is parasitic or not in any way. Also yeah, single draft-around-me cards don't determine whether a mechanic is parasitic either. But that aside, I do actually agree with you. This is acually more a discussion about parasitic vs linear (which is the topic of the podcast I linked as well), like how tribal stuff is pretty much not „parasitic“ (unless a completely new tribe gets introduced to the game) but is often quite „linear“ which means it rewards going all-in more than other mechanics. The dungeon looks very parasitic at first glimpse, which I totally fell for when writing my original comment a while back, but is in fact much more linear than parasitic. Also yes to your general take on the Historic format. |
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"When in doubt, do a common." 
