|
|
Post by sdfkjgh on Jun 22, 2023 18:23:14 GMT
Daij_Djan : See, I'm kinda the opposite side of the same coin, in that I really like the rebalanced cards, and think that whenever they do an Alchemy rebalance, they should just errata all the cards to say that the rebalance is the official version, and then hold a complete recall for those cards, to be replaced with the new, rebalanced ones. Also in terms of same coin, different side, it has been downright temperate here, never breaking 80°F, and on the one hand, I'm kinda dreading that other shoe when it drops, because August & September will be absolute murder when it does (think Northwards of 110°F, on a good day), but it seems as though, for now, our heat has been moved off to be your heat. Sorry. Stay cool. Now, the two changes I'd make are thus: 1) Get rid of all cards made specifically for Alchemy. I don't mean the cards that are rebalanced, I mean the cards that were designed specifically for the online Alchemy format, like Inquisitor Captain. This would eliminate seek, conjure, perpetual effects, and, worst of all, spellbooks. Spellbooks I especially have a major problem with, because they are non-depletable. You could conceivably keep drafting the exact same card over and over again, getting 5, 6, 7, 8 copies of the same card, breaking one of the fundamental rules of deckbuilding, and I'm bloody sick and tired of the fundamental, bedrock rules being ignored for purely power reasons! Oh, sure, Persistent Petitioners, Seven Dwarves, and the like are fine, but those specifically say that they break the rule, so they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Y'all remember the Wishes? They had to change the basic terminology of the game because of them, because "removed from the game" still technically counted for the Wishes. Spellbooks are super-Wishes, giving you 15 extra cards, at no cost to deckbuilding requirements like land to nonland ratios, and they even ignore one of the fundamental laws of wishing itself: NO WISHING FOR MORE WISHES! By the rotting corpse of Robin Williams (R.I.P. King & Legend), why aren't the spellbooks depletable?!! 2) Either they improve Arena's shuffler so that it isn't utter trash, or they get rid of mana screw entirely, across the board. I'm thinking a rule that states that as long as the ration of lands to nonlands in your starting deck is at least 40%, then for the first seven cards you draw each game, Abundance is in effect. How many times have you been stuck at 2 or 3 lands, only to draw upwards of 5 nonlands in a row? 40% lands implies that for every 5 cards, there should be 2 lands, SO WHY AM I DRAWING 8 NONLANDS IN A ROW?!?!?!!! I'm getting fed up with the shuffler thinking that in the beginning of the game, I need nonlands, and in the late game, I only ever need lands! WHY IS IS SO BASS-FUCKING-AKWARD?!! The worst is when it twists the knife by giving me a string of cards of the type I don't need, then and only then giving me a card of the type I need the turn before I'm gonna lose. With results like that, it's hard not to anthropomorphize, and when I do, the shuffler's a petty, vindictive bitch that gets extremely pissy whenever anyone doesn't play any of the established decks. Our next Question comes from dangerousdice , and it's a Question I should've asked at the very beginning: What was everyone's first magic set and what's your opinion of it?
|
|
|
|
Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jun 23, 2023 2:57:11 GMT
My first 'real' Magic experience was playing with Wagic the Homebrew a bunch, so hard to say exactly...based on some of the cards I remember the most it was likely some mix of the oldest core sets, Time Spiral, original Ravnica, and Scourge.
I'd say I enjoyed it pretty well, though in hindsight I didn't really understand Magic well as a game until many years later. I think it's more fun to discover the unknown in a singleplayer cardgame, and more fun to square up and fight the best you can in a pvp cardgame.
|
|
|
|
Post by dangerousdice on Jun 23, 2023 4:16:20 GMT
My first set was, technically, War of the Spark. Or Explorers of Ixalan I guess. The first one where I actually followed the previews for was Throne of Eldraine though I suppose.
The first magic cards I ever owned was the dino deck from the Explorers of Ixalan pseudo-boardgame, the first set I actually looked up to see what the new cards were was War of the Spark, and finally, the first set where I actually got to actively follow the previews for it was Throne of Eldraine.
Explorers of Ixalan, despite the janky board game elements I never actually used, was a decent place to learn to play magic. I'd probably rate it a 6-7.
War of the Spark was fun, but I didn't really know what was happening, mechanically or story-wise(ly?). probably a 5-6.
Throne of Eldraine was fun to watch the previews, not much else to comment on. 8-9.
|
|
|
|
Post by Daij_Djan on Jun 26, 2023 22:02:03 GMT
Our next Question comes from dangerousdice , and it's a Question I should've asked at the very beginning: What was everyone's first magic set and what's your opinion of it?Well, for me everything Magic started with this 1 TV commercial 2: So yeah, for me technically my first ever „set“ was Starter 200's game box. I liked the commercial, so I bought the box – and definitely had quite much fun with it depite not really having anyone else to play with. Which to be fair is true for many years, as aside from a few preconstructed decks or boosters I bought from time to time I didn't really experience the game with a full playgroup at all until university – where after the first semester our workgroup realized we had half a dozen old Magic players, from pretty much complete beginners like myself all the way to to one national level pro payer. We pretty much were brought up to speed very quickly back then – and I think Time Spiral block is the first ever block I really experienced as a release..
| 1 | The internet is quite amazing, btw. Wasn't sure whether I would find the ad or not – and it took me merely seconds. Wow. | | 2 | Also now that I started going down the rabbit hole of old commercials, I do indeed have one addendum to our previous question: New MtG commercials!  |
|
|
|
|
Post by sdfkjgh on Jun 26, 2023 23:42:24 GMT
Before I give my Answer, I'd just like to take this time to voice a conspiracy theory I just came up with, so tinfoil hats on nice & tight, errbody! The reason for the recent overproliferation of Treasure tokens is because WotC knows their Arena shuffler is absolute "I vant to be alone" garbo, and they figure that fixing it would take too much time, manpower, & money for businessdaddy hasbro's liking, so they just say "Fuck it, all Treasure tokens all the damn time!", instead of fixing the problem and making the game more equitable for all players. Hats off, unless they're now on too tight for removal, in which case, please don't read anything into what comes next. Or, if you do, just remember that your paranoia is being ramped up by your now permanent tinfoil hat. My introduction to Magic actually starts some time after June '95, but doesn't involve me playing yet. See, my mom has a lifelong friend with whom she frequently travels (they just got back from a cruise in I can't remember where), Rikki. 1 Rikki and her family live in Carlsbad, CA, so it's a bit of a shlep for us to visit, but round about the latter half of 1995, we (me, Mom, Dad, & Juliana) were visiting, and Rikki's elder son, Eric, invited Juliana and me to learn how to play Magic. Juliana accepted, but back then (and still a little bit now; I'm working on it in therapy), I suffered from Groucho syndrome, so I never joined anything. One card in particular caught my eye, though. Juliana quickly decided that Magic wasn't for her, so rathern than let me feel left out, Eric taught us both a card game that simulates slot machines. One obligatory tangential Ryan Reynolds reference, and I'm in the Westfield Promenade with the family (we were prolly there to see a movie), and lo and behold, there's one of those dinky little vending machines where you put in a quarter or two, twist a knob, and get a prize, and the prize being advertized, bright as day right on the front of the machine was that particular little card. That must've been '96, '97, or '98. Anyway, same reference and I'm at North Hills Prep, and I've been going through some things. Actually, I might've already been at NHP for about a year, my memory around that era is extremely jumbled and spotty at best, due to extreme sleep deprivation. Like I said, going through things. Anyway, I see my fellow classmates playing this funny little card game, yukking it up and having a grand old time, and my curiosity gets the better of my reticence, so I ask them about it. They tell me what it is, and that the Gym teacher can teach me how to play. This was round about late '99/early 2000, so the cards he had were from Urza and Masques blocks, and I hesitate to even call them decks. They were more like two random piles of cards from both blocks, neither of which were all that powerful, but they were pretty evenly matched. 2I was hooked immediately and for life, so I quickly bought some preconstructed decks from the latest sets and blocks, Invasion through Odyssey. After that & graduation from high school, it was another few years before I played again (Groucho syndrome rears its ugly head again), mostly due to not knowing anyone else who played, nor knowing anyplace near me that let people play there. However, it was around the runup to original Ravnica block that I found The Mothership, and shortly after that I also found a comic shop within long walking distance that hosted FNMs, and the rest is history. From Ravnica to the pandemic, I had a nearly unbroken string of prerelease attendance. And finally, from ZephyrPhantom : Magic made cars and guns okay last year. When do you think social media will be 'old' enough to get black border magic cards? Wrong answers only. 1Coincidentally, Rikki's face looks almost exactly like Maelsterom Archangel's. Rikki's also been doing our taxes for decades, so if you need a tax prep pro, let me know. Her entire family are math genii. 2I too remember that series of commercials fondly, Daij_Djan. |
|
|
|
Post by sdfkjgh on Jun 27, 2023 0:02:24 GMT
Also, since this has been bugging my brain for the past few days, in regards to Question 3, I was quite excited when they announced that Alchemy would allow them to rebalance cards on Arena, especially when one of the first cards they rebalanced was Wizard Class, showing that they were willing to tweak as well as nerf. If they'd have just stuck with tweaking underpowered cards and nerfing overpowered cards, Alchemy could've been an excellent tool to fix past mistakes of R&D. Instead, the rebalances are few and far between, and the OP bullshit made specifically for Alchemy is the norm, making the entire format just one big dumpster fire of compounded OP bullshit mistake after mistake that seems to have had exactly zero balance playtests. I did this rather than Inception edit my previous response, so mebbe now you can stop bugging me about it, brain?!! |
|
|
|
Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 2, 2023 1:59:52 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jul 2, 2023 2:45:22 GMT
I think at the rate social media is going, it might be dead before we even get cards of it.  That's the spirit!You don't get to comment, what element of the periodic table are you on right now? Uhhh probably not one on it. Say, do you remember that one Reddit thread about what it'd be like for historians to figure out the rules of magic if they just had all the cards and no context?Sort of. A future where having a commander is a rule for all formats...I'm sure that'd cause some interesting reactions. |
|
|
|
Post by dangerousdice on Jul 3, 2023 19:00:05 GMT
Honestly, I don't see them adding it simply because how on earth are you supposed to make a mechanic or even a card for social media? An emblem mechanic? Just... manifestations of memes? Perhaps Spiders Georg will be the fun new spider commander, but I can't see them doing that, even in an unset.
|
|
|
|
Post by Daij_Djan on Jul 3, 2023 20:40:32 GMT
Have to admit, I'm quite confused by the answers given so far – since social media has long been represented on cards already.. Sure, as Magic often does this, the names were converted into the game's setting but still: We have cards depicting search engines, social media networks like the old MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram or even Truth Social – and even some common social media topics (like religion, climate change, vaccination, memes, and well.. even porn ) have received cards as well! |
|
|
|
Post by sdfkjgh on Jul 4, 2023 14:27:43 GMT
I'm sorry, but nothing I could say would ever be able to even come close to how excellent Daij_Djan's Answer is. It may not be a Seven, but you win this week's Trophy. Talk about impossible acts to follow. Anyway-- *loud pounding on door* OPEN UP! Oh shit, Kels has found us! How the hell did she find us?! I thought you said she'd never be able to! Teferi: No, I said we'd have to be insane to pick a North Korean missile launch site as an Episode location! Well, she'd have to be insane to follow us here! Ral: You'd better open up, they're getting angry. Fine. *opens door* Listen, Kels, I--you're not Kels. Jack Zahran: Who the hell is Kels? Different bit of trouble. But nevermind that, who the hell are you? Jack Zahran: I'm the president and CEO of the Pinkerton Detective agency, and by order of Wizards of the Coast and its parent company, Hasbro, you entire lot are to come with us. Not if I can help it, GETTIM, JUND! Jack Zahran: Your eloquently violent friend has already been dealt with. Oh my god, what have you done with and/or to Jund, you horrible bastard! Jack Zahran: Nothing that they can't handle... Somewhere in North Africa
Daryl, dear! How's my favorite cousin?!682: Hello, Jund. Did the Foundation finally get you, too? Not at all. I'm just here doing a bit, visiting family, springing them out of their imprisonment, causing massive havok, chaos, and panic; you know, one of our usual playdates682: It has been too long, cousin. Shall we? Surely! *horrible violence and several murders ensue* Meanwhile, back in North Korea Jack Zahran: Right, you lot are coming with us. HELP, KELS, SAVE US!!! Jack Zahran: I'm sorry, she can't help you now-- Ral: I thought you didn't know who she is. Jack Zahran: I just did the research on her, and she's been hired as a middle manager. I really liked her talent for torture and information extraction. I'll give him this: he works fast, and knows his stuff. Jack Zahran: Right, you're all under arrest. Come quietly or not, it matters little. The entire North Korean army has been rented to aid us in your detainment. Teferi, Ral, any chance either of you could-- Jack Zahran: And the Foundation has loaned us some Scrantons to prevent your friends from aiding in your escape. You must've done something very wrong to've pissed off so many people into wanting your heads. You know we're still broadcasting, right? TO EVERYONE OUT THERE, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, COME TO OUR AID AND-- Jack Zahran: Cut the feed. |
|
|
|
Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jul 5, 2023 2:44:02 GMT
I think they forgot someone. Hey, this dirt smells awful.
Do you know what they put in North Korean soil, my dude?
What? Ewwwwwwwwwwwww.
You went through the ENTIRE periodic table of elements and THAT's where you draw the line?
It's about public relations, you fool. I'm supposed to make other people eat sh-*BANG*
|
|
"When in doubt, do a common." 