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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 6, 2022 17:22:53 GMT
A moment of silence for what we all hope won't be the yahrzeit of Democracy in the U.S.
Welcome back, errbody, to The MageLaughlin Group. After laying low for a while, having escaped Kels' displeasure-domes, we're meeting up again in beautiful, sunnythe Stronghold. I'm sure nothing bad's gonna happen here...
Seems pretty fitting for the time, considering Belzenlok and trump are both malignant narcissists.
Anyhoo, please welcome our esteemed Panel, Daij_Djan, ZephyrPhantom, ArkiThe7th, and foureyesisafish. We unfortunately had to leave a man behind, so dangerousdice, wherever you are, we're sorry, and we hope you're still alive, or at least still aping the semblance of life in a mocking affront to the natural order.
Now that we've gotten introductions out of the way, let's get straight on with our First Question, from ZephyrPhantom: What's your favorite holiday card? |
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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 Jan 7, 2022 2:33:40 GMT
The best holiday card is definitely Thopter Pie Network. First, it’s a pun, which automatically places it at the top with Season’s Beatings and Topdeck The Halls. Second, it lets me use food to represent tokens, which is great because I do that all the time in black-border Magic, and now people don’t give me weird looks anymore. I would put Topdeck the Halls up there as well, because of the aforementioned pun name, and because of the alternate win condition. Unfortunately, I don’t have much disposable income, so it’s hard to get any large amount of decorated cards. |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 8, 2022 14:16:33 GMT
Hi everyone – it's good to be back  I was kinda hoping we would in a nicer place for once.. But oh well  What's your favorite holiday card? Honestly, I pretty much like all of them for one reason or another. Topdeck the Halls would probably my runner-up as it combines nice flavor with some interesting gameplay – except in a time of Secret Lairs and alternate frames in literally every single set it's pretty much borderline broken? Imagine it in my Rarity deck (assuming I'd switch to all-snow basics and ignoring the color identity issues).. Ouch. However my favorite design still is 2010's Snow Mercy. Yeah, the card really isn't that good (compared to stuff like its origin..) – but that tap/untap cost is awesome and the flavor text is flat out hilarious. I can't really explain why, to be honest, but that joke just completely destroys me |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 8, 2022 19:23:47 GMT
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 8, 2022 19:50:36 GMT
Oh, I didn't forget - but isn't there some sort of middle ground between a Luxury Suite and where we are now..? Heck, I've heard rumors about some high society wedding happening right now. Sure, we're not invited - but at the very least our planeswalker powers should make us perfect party crushers, no? 
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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 Jan 8, 2022 21:59:25 GMT
Oh, I didn't forget - but isn't there some sort of middle ground between a Luxury Suite and where we are now..? Heck, I've heard rumors about some high society wedding happening right now. Sure, we're not invited - but at the very least our planeswalker powers should make us perfect party crushers, no?
1: I have to agree here: weddings are the worst. Too much happiness! Gross! |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 9, 2022 3:34:02 GMT
Topdeck the Halls also comes up a lot in conversation on this little corner of meatspace - it seems fun but it would an extremely expensive deck to build. How 'broken' it would be...I think that's rather dependent on the competition - are we talking playing against Sneak Attack and Show and Tell, or Ajani, Inspiring Leader? I'm currently a fan of Mishra's Toy Workshop. It helps sort of unify all the various toy-using cards like Grimlock, Dinobot Leader and Nerf War in the sense that you can use any of the toys in the event you can't use them for their signature card. In a more 'serious' context, it's got surprisingly great synergy with Urza's Saga.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 9, 2022 18:39:13 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 Jan 10, 2022 16:32:20 GMT
Not much to add other than Bog Humbugs or Last-Minute Chopping |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 10, 2022 20:09:13 GMT
While I love the kookiness of Snow Mercy, the punniness of Yule Ooze, and the continued irl food (as opposed to Food) theme of Thopter Pie Network1, I will always have a soft spot in my heart2 for the one that started this whole meshugaas. Plus, I've eaten fruitcake3, and I gotta say, it's delicious. I don't know what everyone else's problem with it is. Mebbe it's just one of those pre-internet memes that just became accepted as established fact without anyone checking to see if it's actually true, like a major Communistic4 infiltration of the U.S., or the existence of Wyoming.
On to our next Question, from ArkiThe7th, and it's quite the doozy: What are your thoughts on Alchemy and the discourse surrounding it?
1Tonight on the TPN: Cake--is it as good as some weirdos say it is, or is it just an inferior version of the ideal dessert? We go now live to Thopterfax.
2Clogging up my aorta; srsly guiz, I think I have a real problem here.
3See 2.
4 |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 10, 2022 20:56:50 GMT
Oh boy, here we go.. First of all, I know the Magic community is kind of known for being rather easy to upset (to put it mildly ) – insert „Magic is dead“ meme here. So full disclosure: No, Magic is neither dead nor will it die because of this. To be fair, I think Magic is too big to ever die completely anyway. So with this out opf the way: For me, the concept of WotC now doing Arena-only (rather than oracle) changes is the worst thing that has ever happened to Magic since I'm part of this game – and it's not even close. Yes, the game has always been divided into different formats, sure – but a card's cost(s) / stats / effects / whatever should never ever depend on the medium you play it in. To me, this completely kills the integrity of Magic as a single game. Having different versions of a card with a single name literally is an Un-Set concept – and maybe that's the best (a.k.a. „most positive“) way for me to look at it? Arena isn't Magic anymore, it's literally Un-Magic. - Also a small sidenote: As mentioned a few times in the past, I don't play Standard simply because I don't like the concept of a rotating format. However I really understand the paper Standard player's anger about Alchemy. With Alchemy literally having fixed versions of their cards, WotC pretty much told them they're going to play a strictly inferior version of the format in the future. Yeah, I'd be mad a well. However, there is one additional thing to Alchemy: The Alchemy exclusive cards – and I honestly think they will at least lesser this grief over time. Apparently we'll get 20-30 extra cards within every Standard-legal set (or „Premium Set“ as they're referred to nowadays?), so in one or two years thanks to the card pool alone Standard and Alchemy Standard will be such different formats – there probably won't be a point in comparing them anymore anyway.
Now looking at these exclusive cards, which are Historic (which is as I mentioned in the past several times as well is the one format on Arena I care about) legal, from a personal standpoint.. 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.
As a closing statement to my previous question: Yeah, it's more about the specific type of effects coming to Arena for me personally (as mentioned digital only cards aren't really new anyway). The powerlevel is indeed (thankfully) rather low – I think Davriel's Withering will see the most play btw – but I doubt it'll be that way next time (because there will be a next time for sure)..
Yeah, the „next time“ came even faster than expected. For the record, though: This one isn't WotC's fault, I absolutely acknowledge this being a personal taste issue. I've actually heard some good things about some of these cards. PS: For the record, I don't mind WotC doing changes to these Arena-exclusive cards (like they did to Faceless Agent, if I remember correctly?). The only thing that.. disgusts me.. is when the oracle wording differs from the Arena wordings. PPS: The way rebalancing existing as well as the Alchemy-exclusive cards are handled in Arena „financially“ has been critisized by many people already, but to be honest I don't care much about this – for reasons I'll get further into when we move over to our next question PPPS: There's also a discussion to be had about how „WotC now being able to rebalance cards at will“ and the F.I.R.E. Design concept might influence future set design in general – but this really is a whole new and vast potential discussion to be had. I'll just leave link to this video which partly covers the topic in case anyone is interested but hasn't seen it already. |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 11, 2022 3:12:34 GMT
There's a lot to take in here but my biggest gripe with Arena-only changes is that they won't even bother to keep the patch history somewhere in a gatherer rulings-style section. It seems other sites like Scryfall have followed this convention and thus it may be harder to tell in the future why a past deck did well because of nerfs that make it seem unplayable in a given deck.
Has Tome of the Infinite actually broken anything ever since it was printed?
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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 Jan 13, 2022 12:00:46 GMT
I’m generally pretty apathetic about Alchemy, actually. Which might actually be a sign of my current feelings with Magic (specifically Arena). I just don’t care about much anymore. Yeah, the ability to change any card text with the press of a button is gonna screw over a lot of people, but I just don’t have the energy to care. From the direction Wizards has been going in for the past couple years, I don’t feel like getting upset about Alchemy is going to change their minds.
Realistically, there’s gonna be large enough of an audience that has plenty of disposable income that Wizards will make a profit and will keep doing it. We’ve seen these exact money-making tactics in action in Hearthstone. Keep power creeping cards with every set to make everyone buy the new cards, then nerf them and make everyone buy more cards. It upsets me how effective it is.
If Wizards would just give people refunds for their cards that get reworked in Alchemy, I think I wouldn’t mind at all. The problem is that Alchemy isn’t trying to create the best possible constructed environment; it’s trying to make more money.
It looks like I’m not that apathetic after all, never mind. I’m going back under my rock to play pauper.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 13, 2022 19:01:49 GMT
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 13, 2022 19:38:53 GMT
I find it a little ironic that rotating formats don't seem particularly popular in this group despite Standard being the primary reason card power levels are able to be kept under control in Magic (i.e. why we're able to get cards that bounce back and forth between really powered to forgettable with plenty of in between).
There's probably more nuance to it than that, but on a surface level it's interesting to me because printing such a wide range of power for printed cards doesn't really seem to work in most other card games.
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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 Jan 13, 2022 20:45:06 GMT
same as my thoughts about Historic Horizons, though so far some of these erattas I want to see come to paper (especially phylath).
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 13, 2022 21:01:20 GMT
I think a lot of people are overreacting these cards. This isn't the first time that magic's been split, guys. We've had format-exclusive cards for a WHILE, especially in regards to commander. I don't see this as anything different asides from having really nifty digital-only tech tacked on. Yeah, I have to say I still agree with this for the most part. It's why I asked if Tome has actually broken anything (or are the complaints are about a card that is actually too low power to meaningfully color bend or impact the game in general.) To take something I said from that episode as well that got passed over: (And just to be clear, I don't mean "make a card that is a Scorching Spear reference". I mean what happens to Arena if every controversial digital only card was replaced by a literal copy of Scorching Spear.) |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 13, 2022 22:00:22 GMT
Has Tome of the Infinite actually broken anything ever since it was printed? Pretty sure it hasn't. Only wanted to keep the quote complete, that's why it was mentioned again this episode But to maybe explain better: It's why I asked if Tome has actually broken anything (or are the complaints are about a card that is actually too low power to meaningfully color bend or impact the game in general.) I honestly don't care about the power – powerlevel rarely is a major topic for me, to be honest. I just don't play competative enough to care. I generally dislike these digital only mechanics (again, this is purely a personal taste issue), and the Tome is a rather outrages example of this. These speelbook designs are pretty much the worst of those digital only stuff for me, and the Tome creating (and casting) nonblue spells additionally annoys me as a massive color pie breaking design. So to shorten it up: - Don't mind digital only cards..
- ..yet hate the digital only mechanics purely for their design esthetics (that' the best way I have to put it, sorry).
- Have a hard time expressing how much I hate Arena-only errata's differing from oracle wordings.
So, to me: I wouldn't have to face the mechanics I dislike – assuming none are used to design the variants, of course Again, I don't mind that digital only stuff exists – it's just what type of cards we're talking about here. |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 14, 2022 8:47:35 GMT
I see your point for the most part but I would like to note that powerlevel does matter in a causal setting (or any setting, really) because it affects how often the card sees play. If Tome enabled some kind of easy to build strategy or instant win combo, a lot of people would be trying to run it. (As far as I can tell, that's not the case.) Raw power alone can make a card pretty useful which in turn results in it being more likely to show up at the table, virtual or otherwise. In other words my question is less "Is this card competitive in <format>" and more "Is this card's power/synergy good enough that it promotes playing it in any context more?" That said, I do think it's reasonable to simply not like a mechanic especially if it makes playing the game more difficult (hence why I do agree that rapidly changing cards on the fly causes issues, though for different reasons).
Side tangent: Maybe it's just me, but my experience with of Tome of the Infinite is that it gets a lot of dead hits - for example, if your opponent is mostly about slamming cheap creatures, then only about 4/9 (44%) of the cards actually matter (Path to Exile, Light of Hope, Lightning Bolt, Fog, and that's being fairly generous in Light of Hope's case), which is worse than a coinflip. In general I find it hard to get the number of relevant potential hits in a situational above 5/9 (~56%, usually because we're counting Ponder), which means you're basically flipping a slightly weighed coin every turn. In my experience you end up having to use something like Pool of Vigorous Growth to mitigate that and ensure you can always make use of the cards you get (replace with something like Zombie Infestation if you want less digital cards involved). Then again, I'm also playing an Arena digital only card outside of its intended digital realm, so make what you will of that. =P Tome might be a poor example to lead of in terms of "This card is annoying -and- will be everywhere." Maybe something like Rahilda, Wanted Cutthroat (which could be proxied as a Commander or used in Red Aggro decks) would make a better "stress test" argument? |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 14, 2022 11:37:27 GMT
I see your point for the most part but I would like to note that powerlevel does matter in a causal setting (or any setting, really) because it affects how often the card sees play. If Tome enabled some kind of easy to build strategy or instant win combo, a lot of people would be trying to run it. (As far as I can tell, that's not the case.) Raw power alone can make a card pretty useful which in turn results in it being more likely to show up at the table, virtual or otherwise. In other words my question is less "Is this card competitive in <format>" and more "Is this card's power/synergy good enough that it promotes playing it in any context more?" Ah sorry, completely misunderstood what you were referring to Yeah, you do have a point here and you did bring this one up last time as well. As I acknowlegded, the Jumpstart batch wasn't really powerful (as quoted above), but it was just the beginning. And now we have confirmation for 20 to 30 new cards like this coming into the format per set - meaning naturally more and more of these kind of effects will meet the required "power treshhold" and see play. Side tangent: Maybe it's just me, but my experience with of Tome of the Infinite is that it gets a lot of dead hits Also yeah, generally speaking the spellbook effects probably are the weakest ones because of their gigantic build-in randomness. I don't think this is just you
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 14, 2022 21:22:42 GMT
Nerfs (and tweaks) are a tacit admission of guilt on the part of R&D--"We fucked up, everyone knows it, so let's just erase and move on (and please don't make us actually say out loud that we fucked up)." A big problem with R&D is that they've proven time and again, and again and again, that they have no idea how to balance, or properly rebalance, their most broken cards. Goldspan's worst ability wasn't that its controller got a Treasure when it was targeted, but the ability to sac treasures for double mana! Likewise, Epiphany's (aside from being an extra turn spell in Standard, which is already a huge no-no, additionally was printed alongside about a dozen Fork effects, thereby compounding no-no after no-no) worst offense wasn't the birbs, it was the extra turn! Plus, seven mana just isn't enough. We'll get into this later, but Epiphany should've originally been something like this:
Alrund's Epiphany   Sorcery  This spell can't be copied. Create two 1/1 blue Bird creature tokens with flying. If this spell was foretold, take an extra turn after this one, and you can't cast spells named Alrund's Epiphany for the rest of the game. Exile Alrund's Epiphany. Foretell 
Now, errbody's down on the nerfs, but what really interests me are the tweaks. Again, tacit admission of a fuckup (that sounds like a great album title), but how often do we get to see R&D admit that something could've been pushed a bit harder? For example, I run Wizard Class in a mono- venture into the dungeon Control deck, and while it definitely could've been pushed even further beyond1 (like switching Levels 2 & 3), the tweak on Level 3 from  to is very much appreciated, and very helpful.2 Before the tweak, I would constantly be in the position of needing to get to Level 3 in order to win, but either not having enough mana, or not being able to afford activating it AND be able to protect myself afterwards--I'd need to activate it in order to win, but activating it would cause my immediate loss the very next turn.
I wanna see more tweaks, more admissions that they overbalanced cards that they should've just let be powerful. In a world of almost constant powercreep, one way of maintaining a flat power curve is to creep ERRTHING, including the draft chaff.
Another huge problem I have with Alchemy (aside from the fact that I keep reading it as Archenemy, getting my hopes up for a revival of that format, and causing much confusion whenever they say that it's all new, never been done before) is that they didn't restrict the Alchemy cards to an Alchemy-only format. If I see another Inquisitor Captain in Modern or Historic, I swear I'm gonna scream my throat out, then learn how to hack, just so I can hack Arena into allowing personal banlists, so I never have to see another one, or even another Planeswalker or Control deck, ever again. Perhaps if the Alchemy cards and tweaks/nerfs had been restricted to a new, Alchemy-only format, we wouldn't have heard such a big uproar over the differences between them and the printed cards. But what the hell do I know?
Our next Question comes from ZephyrPhantom: A very common sentiment these days is "I wish Arena was just paper magic." If a viable PVP alternative like Cockatrice or Xmage came to mobile, would you still play Arena?
1Thank you, UV, for introducing me to the DBZ meme.
2You'll notice (as I've done just now) that I prefer synergy and/of themes to raw power, preferring to win via expertly piloting an underpowered deck that goes all-in on a lesser theme, rather than playing the best cards in the format and winning via R&D's mistakes/powercreep. Call me an Old Fogey, but I want the game to be about skill and slowly eking out meager advantages until it snowballs you to victory, not just jam errthing that is designed to end the game on the spot. |
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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 Jan 18, 2022 13:22:38 GMT
Well, the last time I played arena was at least a year ago, so I wouldn’t really play it no matter what.
Hypothetically though, if something like Cockatrice1 was available on mobile, I’d probably play it more than I play Arena. I think it would have to have matchmaking and some sort of drafting simulator to really get my attention, though. But we’re kinda going into fantasy land there.
1: He means free.
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 18, 2022 19:52:25 GMT
Forge covers the drafting simulator part quite well, if nothing else, haha. I do find that other card games like Hidden Dimensions* deserve a mention for emulating the "quick match that feels like a PvP match" feel if they're not PvP cardgames outright. There's definitely a bit of an art to making PvP feel satisfying or emulating such a feeling. There's also Spectromancer, which was also made by Richard Garfield back then and is fairly compelling (though a bit more campaign/deckbuilder based). That said, I think it's fair to say that there's no 'perfect' solution; there are, however, a lot of "mostly good" solutions dependent what you're looking to do and what you're planning to play Magic or something like Magic on. I find that having a mix of solutions makes for the best time at the moment. *I can recommend it as an alternative to Arena (and Magic in general if you (general you) are feeling burnt out). It's a 100% free port of a card game from the flash game era, no strings attached, so it respects your time. |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 19, 2022 2:07:46 GMT
Forge covers the drafting simulator part quite well, if nothing else, haha. I do find that other card games like Hidden Dimensions* deserve a mention for emulating the "quick match that feels like a PvP match" feel if they're not PvP cardgames outright. There's definitely a bit of an art to making PvP feel satisfying or emulating such a feeling. There's also Spectromancer, which was also made by Richard Garfield back then and is fairly compelling (though a bit more campaign/deckbuilder based). That said, I think it's fair to say that there's no 'perfect' solution; there are, however, a lot of "mostly good" solutions dependent what you're looking to do and what you're planning to play Magic or something like Magic on. I find that having a mix of solutions makes for the best time at the moment. *I can recommend it as an alternative to Arena (and Magic in general if you (general you) are feeling burnt out). It's a 100% free port of a card game from the flash game era, no strings attached, so it respects your time. Oh man, Hidden Dimensions & HD Xyth was my JAM! I still got my forum entry with all my fully-upgraded decklists bookmarkedPage not found. Sadclownface. Welp, that's about 2-3 or 5 years of my life wasted. I'd still like to see some of the abilities of those games (like retaliate and dealing combat damage to all of the defending player's creatures) in Magic. Nebula Spire and an omniattacker is utterly broken, as is boosting a Spark to be a massive, world-ending threat (like, say, 21/100 or something else ridiculous). Go ahead, block it with your puny-ass Hiraga, I dare you! Better yet, put a tri-attacker in an adjacent slot, I double-dog dare you!
Ahem. Sorry. Reliving some glory days.
Anyway, I would also like to recommend Astral Masters. I wasted so much time at Valley College playing this & Escape Velocity: Nova when I should've been doing homework, or walking home, or not hogging a computer in the computer lab (once, even while a class was going on!), or literally anything else.
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 19, 2022 7:52:57 GMT
Oh man, Hidden Dimensions & HD Xyth was my JAM! I still got my forum entry with all my fully-upgraded decklists bookmarkedPage not found. Sadclownface. Welp, that's about 2-3 or 5 years of my life wasted. I'd still like to see some of the abilities of those games (like retaliate and dealing combat damage to all of the defending player's creatures) in Magic. Nebula Spire and an omniattacker is utterly broken, as is boosting a Spark to be a massive, world-ending threat (like, say, 21/100 or something else ridiculous). Go ahead, block it with your puny-ass Hiraga, I dare you! Better yet, put a tri-attacker in an adjacent slot, I double-dog dare you!
Ahem. Sorry. Reliving some glory days.
Anyway, I would also like to recommend Astral Masters. I wasted so much time at Valley College playing this & Escape Velocity: Nova when I should've been doing homework, or walking home, or not hogging a computer in the computer lab (once, even while a class was going on!), or literally anything else.
Hidden Dimensions 3 (the last and final release) was ported to Steam/as a standalone PC game and Android, for what it's worth (it's why I brought it up actually). I was initially skeptical of it because I thought the cardpool was heavily rebalanced from Xyth but after playing it a bit I was pleasantly surprised to find the cardpool seems mostly the same as Xyth with a few new additions and a handful of underpowered cards getting a new ability or a slight stat boost. Rip to the forums; thankfully the wiki seems to be kept up as a record of download links for the game. I completely forgot about things like buffing multi-attackers or Sparks and I'm just trying to relearn the game via starter decks atm. Will keep in mind when I build a deck at some point  Astral Masters looks really neat! I had no idea Spectromancer was part of a series of these games, and it seems like they also made one more game called Astral Towers to boot. I'm definitely going to play these sometime; thanks for bringing them up! |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 19, 2022 20:14:43 GMT
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 19, 2022 23:12:22 GMT
(Hey everyone, sorry for the delay on my part - should have the time to type my answer by tomorrow )
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jan 20, 2022 0:02:38 GMT
(Hey everyone, sorry for the delay on my part - should have the time to type my answer by tomorrow  ) Take your time. Remember, there's no set order to who should answer next.
Except me. I always answer last, like a shepherd leading a flock.
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Post by Daij_Djan on Jan 23, 2022 22:14:19 GMT
Yeah, that didn't go to plan.. But finally, here we go: Our next Question comes from ZephyrPhantom : A very common sentiment these days is "I wish Arena was just paper magic." If a viable PVP alternative like Cockatrice or Xmage came to mobile, would you still play Arena?When I read this question for the first time, I wasn't really sure how to answer it. As I've mentioned once in the past (this was quite some time ago though – pretty sure it was back when the rocks were soft and sdfkjgh and myself were just shittalking to one another?), I actually don't enjoy playing card games on my computer much. I've tried several programs / apps, some Magic related others not, but I always loose interest in the after two or three weeks tops. The „gathering“ in Magic the Gathering is quite important to me, I need to sit down with people I know and talk to them while playing to have fun and keep interested in the game – otherwise I'll loose focus and just get bored. Arena is pretty much the only program to ever make me come back to it every once in a while and slowly but surely draw me in at least a bit more – I even bought one of those seasonal passes recently (used saved up gems though) and considered maybe spending some cash for the next one. But then Alchemy got announced and.. Yeah, don't want to repeat my previous rant, so let's just say I haven't touched the client even once since then. This obviously renders the question kind of obsolete (except I obviously agree with the mentioned sentiment) – but for full context I guess I should mention a mobile version isn't important for me. I actually didn't knew this in the past and was rather excited when Arena came to Android, but that didn't last long. Full disclosure: Compared to some other users (as far as I've heard) I've never had any issues with the client – but it's just that the small screen apparently amplifies my issues with card gaming via computer tenfold. I've tried it a few times but literally fell asleep once while playing  So no matter what card game app I might ever get back into at some point in the future (if any), a mobile version won't be important for me at all |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jan 24, 2022 6:49:19 GMT
Yeah, I feel like this question in general came a little late as the dust from Alchemy has long settled and people for the most part have made up their minds about whether they want to keep playing Arena or not. I do feel like the big takeaway from this question is that there's many different opinions and ways of playing Magic or something like it.
I'll just briefly throw my answer here - I don't really have a lot of time to sit down and set aside the hours for a Magic session in my life, but would like to play with people in general more - just not via Arena, as I definitely make use of tons of cards that would never make it to that app (pretty sure almost none of my Deckbuilder's Challenge decks would be valid for it.) A lightweight app like Cockatrice on mobile would be really useful for me to set up games anytime anyplace.
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"When in doubt, do a common." 
)
So no matter what card game app I might ever get back into at some point in the future (if any), a mobile version won't be important for me at all