Post by ThatDamnPipsqueak on Oct 20, 2018 21:18:37 GMT
There are just under 20 thousand canon Magic the Gathering cards. The vast, vast majority of them are unplayable garbage. Most of that garbage fills a purpose of limited fodder of course, but that doesn't change the fact that for anything but draft you'd never way to run a Throttle, unless it was the only removal you had access to in 60 card casual. With this in mind, assume for the rest of this post when I talk about cards being "good" or "bad", I'm referring to them being strong or weak in a constructed format, with Standard as my baseline for the weakest a format can be that we can evaluate cards in.
I want to touch on the subject of "Strictly Better", because it's something that comes up a great deal in the custom Magic community. Most notably, everytime someone prints a kill spell, people immediately compare it to Murder, as that has become the iconic kill spell of this era. Perhaps for a fair reason: Murder is simple and has no obvious downsides. For 3 mana (1BB), at instant speed you can kill a creature. Regardless of whether its an artifact, legendary, black, or a vampire/werewolf/zombie, Murder can and will kill it. It's been printed repeatedly, and has an evocative name. But in reality, Murder is a terrible card to compare things to. Why? Because it's not good.
Murder has seen play in Standard environments, but only rarely, and usually as the 5th and 6th copies of a removal spell. It's big brother, Hero's Downfall, is a much more reasonable comparison, but even that tends to not see play when it is sorcery speed (Never//Return and Ruinous Path are failed members of the family). Without going into a whole rant on this subject, the core of the problem here is that Murder isn't a good baseline for how strong a kill spell can be. Strictly Better Murder isn't a problem. But, I would argue, strictly better Hero's Downfall might be.
The vague metric I'd like to propose for conversations of "Strictly Better" is as follows: If a new card would be run in addition to the card it is strictly better than, then it is problematic to print a strictly better version of the old card. Why? Because the old card was already good enough to see play, and good enough to want more than 4x copies of that effect. Too strong doesn't mean its a bad design, but it does mean that "You do realize this is a strictly better lightning bolt" is a very reasonable criticism. This applies to threats as well as answers, but it is much easier to assess answers in a vacuum, so that's what we'll be focusing on.
On the other hand, if a new card would replace the old card in all formats that it is currently played, that likely means it isn't as much of a problem. The old card was something people were running out of necessity, and wasn't a strong enough effect to want multiple copies of the effect. Strictly better than a card people barely tolerate means you shouldn't really be worried about it, unless the design is bad for other reasons. A card being a strictly better Tormenting Voice isn't a balance problem inherently; although Tormenting Voice has been printed in a ton of sets and is an iconic looting spell, it isn't actually good enough to see play in most decks, other than some fringe graveyard decks without access to better options. There isn't a deck running 4x copies of Tormenting Voice that would happily run 6x copies if it had a functional reprint, or 2x Tormenting Voice and 4x Tormenting Voice at instant speed.
And finally, and I hope obviously, if an old card sees no play a format, printing a strictly better version of that card into that format holds no inherent problems. You can't base balance off of cards that see 0 play, because they are clearly too weak. For constructed, a "strictly better Throttle" that cantrips is impossible to evaluate, because Throttle doesn't see play. This card is better, but is it good enough to see play (based on grasp of darkness seeing fringe play, probably not?). A strictly better version of an unplayable card is equivalent, design wise, to printing a totally new card. You're exploring design space where you're closest equivalents are all different playable effects. You couldn't compare Throttle+ to Throttle, but you could compare it to Vraska's Contempt in the same roundabout way you have to compare all removal spells (What does this hit in the context of the format? What doesn't it hit? What's the upside? Is it fast enough?). In the case of Throttle+, it is far too weak. But it is strictly better.
So as a result, if your first critique is to point out that a card is "Strictly Better" than an unplayable card, or a fringe card, your critique is unhelpful. In fact, it is flat out useless. Instead, you should compare it to a playable card with a similar effect. If you don't have a good enough sense of balance in constructed formats to give critique based on those, your critique is going to be generally limited in its effectiveness (pun intended), although that's a post for another day.
An additional note: a card's playability in EDH or other Highlander formats isn't a good indicator of a general playability, given that those decks need a higher density of effects, and are thus willing to run the 5th and 6th best versions of related effects. Also EDH is a casual format and thus people aren't concerned about optimal deckbuilding, which influences the cards people are willing to run.
I want to touch on the subject of "Strictly Better", because it's something that comes up a great deal in the custom Magic community. Most notably, everytime someone prints a kill spell, people immediately compare it to Murder, as that has become the iconic kill spell of this era. Perhaps for a fair reason: Murder is simple and has no obvious downsides. For 3 mana (1BB), at instant speed you can kill a creature. Regardless of whether its an artifact, legendary, black, or a vampire/werewolf/zombie, Murder can and will kill it. It's been printed repeatedly, and has an evocative name. But in reality, Murder is a terrible card to compare things to. Why? Because it's not good.
Murder has seen play in Standard environments, but only rarely, and usually as the 5th and 6th copies of a removal spell. It's big brother, Hero's Downfall, is a much more reasonable comparison, but even that tends to not see play when it is sorcery speed (Never//Return and Ruinous Path are failed members of the family). Without going into a whole rant on this subject, the core of the problem here is that Murder isn't a good baseline for how strong a kill spell can be. Strictly Better Murder isn't a problem. But, I would argue, strictly better Hero's Downfall might be.
The vague metric I'd like to propose for conversations of "Strictly Better" is as follows: If a new card would be run in addition to the card it is strictly better than, then it is problematic to print a strictly better version of the old card. Why? Because the old card was already good enough to see play, and good enough to want more than 4x copies of that effect. Too strong doesn't mean its a bad design, but it does mean that "You do realize this is a strictly better lightning bolt" is a very reasonable criticism. This applies to threats as well as answers, but it is much easier to assess answers in a vacuum, so that's what we'll be focusing on.
On the other hand, if a new card would replace the old card in all formats that it is currently played, that likely means it isn't as much of a problem. The old card was something people were running out of necessity, and wasn't a strong enough effect to want multiple copies of the effect. Strictly better than a card people barely tolerate means you shouldn't really be worried about it, unless the design is bad for other reasons. A card being a strictly better Tormenting Voice isn't a balance problem inherently; although Tormenting Voice has been printed in a ton of sets and is an iconic looting spell, it isn't actually good enough to see play in most decks, other than some fringe graveyard decks without access to better options. There isn't a deck running 4x copies of Tormenting Voice that would happily run 6x copies if it had a functional reprint, or 2x Tormenting Voice and 4x Tormenting Voice at instant speed.
And finally, and I hope obviously, if an old card sees no play a format, printing a strictly better version of that card into that format holds no inherent problems. You can't base balance off of cards that see 0 play, because they are clearly too weak. For constructed, a "strictly better Throttle" that cantrips is impossible to evaluate, because Throttle doesn't see play. This card is better, but is it good enough to see play (based on grasp of darkness seeing fringe play, probably not?). A strictly better version of an unplayable card is equivalent, design wise, to printing a totally new card. You're exploring design space where you're closest equivalents are all different playable effects. You couldn't compare Throttle+ to Throttle, but you could compare it to Vraska's Contempt in the same roundabout way you have to compare all removal spells (What does this hit in the context of the format? What doesn't it hit? What's the upside? Is it fast enough?). In the case of Throttle+, it is far too weak. But it is strictly better.
So as a result, if your first critique is to point out that a card is "Strictly Better" than an unplayable card, or a fringe card, your critique is unhelpful. In fact, it is flat out useless. Instead, you should compare it to a playable card with a similar effect. If you don't have a good enough sense of balance in constructed formats to give critique based on those, your critique is going to be generally limited in its effectiveness (pun intended), although that's a post for another day.
An additional note: a card's playability in EDH or other Highlander formats isn't a good indicator of a general playability, given that those decks need a higher density of effects, and are thus willing to run the 5th and 6th best versions of related effects. Also EDH is a casual format and thus people aren't concerned about optimal deckbuilding, which influences the cards people are willing to run.
- in this case, yes, saying Sylvan Advocate is "strictly better" than 
