Magic The Gathering

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Retink said:
When was the last time we saw a good creature with a drawback? Goblin Guide is the last one I can think of and that card is nuts, but outside of that there were plenty like Carnophage, Vampire Lacerator, and so on. I suppose Lovestruck Beast or Brazen Borrower had some drawback but both also had a secondary mode outside of their stats.
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Most recent one I can think of, sees some play because of his absolutely insane statline and keywords but he usually dies to removal before he gets to do anything other then give the opponent some blood tokens
 
I don't really play magic anymore, however, I have been content deprived lately and a few days ago I began curiously checking out the new MTG Legacy+Modern climate. I am a little disappointed at the meta as usual but I have always loved Dredge decks, so I began looking at all the new toys they got.

This week I have gotten really into trying (possibly in vain) to solve the puzzle of how to make manaless dredge work even just a little bit better than it does in Modern. After playtesting it over and over and over I have found it extraordinarily limited compared to the Legacy version, which can actually win explosively sometimes, has some cute little high IQ plays every now and then, and has access to Bridge from Below. I know modern manaless dredge is a joke and even the "good" legacy version is far from a high tier deck, but I can't help but feel like there is something, some interaction or upgrade, hiding from the modern status quo. I am probably wrong, but it has been fun trying to figure it out.

edit: replaced red chancellors with Hollow Ones (they absolutely love Phantasmagorian) as well as put in Silversmote Ghouls and now the deck works 100x better than the old list.
 
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Oddjob OTP said:
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Most recent one I can think of, sees some play because of his absolutely insane statline and keywords but he usually dies to removal before he gets to do anything other then give the opponent some blood tokens
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That's a goofy and absurd amount of stats for the cost. For as interactive as Magic can be, I'm surprised how little interaction there really is. You'd think they'd try to find more ways to let you respond to opponents that aren't continuous but it seems like all they can think of is either negating what a card does completely by means of a static effect (Can't be countered, indestructible, etc) or slapping a trigger on it that reduces the impact of cards that interact with it such as making a token when destroyed.

Would have been cool to see more exploration of design space like Ghost Council of Orzhova or Skeletal Vampire where under certain conditions it's hard to remove while not being inherently broken. You don't really need those kind of abilities on low costing creatures, as they have their own built in protection in a sense, but just seeing idiotically pushed stats and effects on bigger stuff got old really quick. Part of it is probably also how removal is designed in the game, it's very binary.
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I actually like this card from the current Standard format, It reminds me of Call of the Herd, where you get a 2 for 1 but it's not as blatant as just an on death trigger. So it gets around removal to some extent, but it's not super recursive like a card you can just play out of your graveyard, and it's not something you just get for free as it's something you still have to take the time and resources to play.

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It requires multiple removal spells to deal with in theory but doesn't give them tempo when you deal with one half of it. There's probably a lot of design space there, especially if you think about making it more varied, something like a big guy on the main body, with the ability to make a small body if you pay a cost and exile it from the graveyard. Makes the graveyard matter, gives you some space to make vanilla dudes with an effect that gives value but not tempo, and makes removal less obnoxious while also getting around counters and discard to some extent. Sure you can Chupacabra my 5/5 for 4, but I can pay something to make a 2/2 to trade with your Chupacabra later but it costs me more as I got the initial large body. It's not amazingly interactive but it's better than A trumps B and that's the end of it.
 
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Arena questions time. I only play arena on and off, usually fairly hardcore around once or twice a year. Last time I played was Strixhaven, I hated the set and gave up on it fairly early but now I am hankering for some card games.

I like to grind ranked and do draft, but now theres something called Alchemy. Reading up on it, its basically their take on Hearthstone, with its own set of balances. My question is, should I bother with Alchemy if I just want to grind Arena games? Should I make an Alchemy deck as well as a standard deck? If I make this alchemy deck will the cards still be playable into next year? I only like to craft cards if I can use them 6-12 months after. Is there any real point? I dont play paper but the best part of Arena for me was that it plays just like paper but is easily accessible.

Also if there's a Gruul's standard deck someone could point me towards I would appreciate it.
 
Alchemy is more expensive than Standard because you can't draft the cards and can only buy packs or burn wildcards. If you want to play it it's a somewhat higher power level than Standard but most people hate the format (frequently for non gameplay reasons like fucking up Historic) and it's even harder on midrange decks then current standard; every deck is either degenerate key to the archives control (which can get access to recurrable turns spells and approach of the second sun) or trying to get under it.

Gruul was better before Neon Dynasty and still sort of exists as a tier 2 option. Basically you're playing gruul good things with haste tribal, werewolves, or landfall. I think Landfall is supposed to be good in alchemy but it's the weakest of the three in standard.
 
Oddjob OTP said:
Gruul was better before Neon Dynasty and still sort of exists as a tier 2 option. Basically you're playing gruul good things with haste tribal, werewolves, or landfall. I think Landfall is supposed to be good in alchemy but it's the weakest of the three in standard.
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Thanks so much for laying it out there with Alchemy, I think I will stick with standard and limited for now.

Im ok if its a tier 2 option, I just really enjoyed my gruul deck from a while ago and wanted to try it out. Haste tribal werewolves sounds pretty cool so I am going to look into it!
 
I don't know if it's been said in the thread before, but digital only cards sure have killed a lot of my interest in the game and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up fucking them over in the long run.
 
Here's something interesting, I was watching a Game Designer Conference talk from a former Wizards employee who works at a different company currently. He mentioned that back in the day when the Necropotence deck was a things actually improved in both sales and events, and the belief was that even though the card was obviously too good it gave players the ability to build a best deck and as such it reduced uncertainty in what they would buy or should bring to an event. He mentioned this then influenced their decision so that there was a best deck in theory and it was good if pros were bemoaning a card to some extent.

If this is still the mentality it probably explains a lot about what's ailing the game and why shit keeps getting out of hand. It's one thing to make a "best" card or deck in theory when it's a paper only game with events being restricted to people traveling out, it's another when you have a digital game that's highly accessible and shit can just be put through the meat grinder at incredible speeds.

AnotherPleb said:
I don't know if it's been said in the thread before, but digital only cards sure have killed a lot of my interest in the game and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up fucking them over in the long run.
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Really the inability to trade cards really makes something like Arena not that interesting. Maybe they can figure out something with an NFT system, but in large part why I think card games caught on was because it's something you can own and can have value.
 
Magic's blessing and curse has always been it's lands.

I've been trying eternal card game which is so close to MtG that I'm impressed they haven't been sued. And when I have lost another round because I'm getting mana flooded (mana screw games bother me less because it still feels like I'm playing) I'm reminded of why I prefer other games.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of luck with my games, strategy on the fly appeals to me, but when a game has a potential luck state of "you cannot win, not even against a chicken playing magic" something is off in design. So yeah, it makes sense that when you can smooth out things just a bit to lessen getting stuck in an unplayable state, of course the game will get more popular.
 
I'd like to see shitty basic land tutors broken out of the color pie. We have that this standard but lessons are almost completely unplayable outside black/orzov blood money decks after they banned the blue bounce lesson instead of Liar. I'd gladly run a 2 mana shock that tutored a basic mountain in every red deck for example.
 
If they got the Color Council then why is Green becoming the fucking swiss knife color, as in they can do anything. How come White keeps getting gimped shit where as other colors get shit that they can either make work or shit that seems out of their color pies. If they fucking played the game instead of fixing it in Arena or making whale shit then they might have more people playing their game.
 
I'mma real anime gurl said:
If they got the Color Council then why is Green becoming the fucking swiss knife color, as in they can do anything. How come White keeps getting gimped shit where as other colors get shit that they can either make work or shit that seems out of their color pies. If they fucking played the game instead of fixing it in Arena or making whale shit then they might have more people playing their game.
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Green is generally seen as the color of newbies. You don't want newbies to complain because they don't have cards in hand, right? Give them card draw. You don't want newbies to bitch about their creatures constantly getting killed, right? Give them cards that are above rate, do things on ETB, or make them uncounterable/hexproof. There's a reason that UGx is so insanely strong in Commander, as the only thing that Green is still unable to do is directly counter things.

And without going into political sperging stuff, a lot of the things white does well just don't translate into the de facto paper format right now. Commander players detest MLD (or even LD in general, though IMO every deck should be able to answer problem lands like Gaea's Cradle or Cabal Coffers) so white being able to wipe out lands hasn't been a thing in a long time. The last time was Fall of the Thran, and IMO the fact that it's an enchantment makes it worse in Commander since it can be brought out of the GY easily. Commander's inflated life totals also means that the low-to-the-ground aggro aspect of white is generally done way better in Red - Red has far better damage amplifiers than White in that regard thanks to Purphoros and all the Furnace effects. White's last great strength is taxing. That is something that standard players detest, is strong enough that Legacy and Vintage have white there specifically to do it, and is loathed enough in commander that there's no commander-only products will promote that. The last good pseudo-taxing effect that white had is Smothering Tithe yes i know the white rare god from kaldheim has a taxing mode, nobody cares as it's shit anyways and the price of that card is through the roof partly because White really has nothing else to lean on.
 
As much bitching people do about white's place in the color pie being shit I can still find better card draw in white then I can find clean answers to enchantments in red, blue, and black. Blue and black can't do shit about artifacts either. White is like 6/10 at everything but life gain, land destruction and board wipes in Commander which is why they are the worst solo color. Every mono white deck is just a pile of good things/hate bears. If you win with white it isn't because you built a fun deck with synergy that outclassed whatever you opponents did it was because you drew the right cards in the right order and stalled your opponents with a turn 2 Drannith Magistrate no one could answer until turn 6.
 
The problem is Commander is a bad format, especially when it's catered to. I actually liked playing Commander back when it was still new, because there wasn't really a meta game and it was just a chance to run some bad cards or strategies against a table of people doing that. Then people started having very refined decks and I just didn't care because the randomness of draw becomes cumbersome or it just devolves into functional reprints plus tutors which just makes it a bad Vintage format. Then the introduced Commander products and leaned into the functional reprints and tools for certain strategies which destroyed the format even more.

As for why white is bad in Commander, I'd say it's that there isn't a ton of functional reprints for things like Thalia, Land Tax, etc, so they're still playing an old style of Commander deck while other colors get far more options in terms of functional reprints. The only thing White has in mass is mass removal, which is fine but not a winning strategy. I guess they have anthems too, but when there are multiple players and so much removal it's hard to play a weenie deck in a naturally slower format, and good spot removal isn't great when there are multiple players playing bomb creatures.

Now moving on, I fucking hate Arena, as I just saw some Alchemy Cards and thought they were a bad joke. I'd post them but Image server is down so here's the text:
Molten Impact 1R
Sorcery
Molten Impact Deals 4 damage to target creature or planeswalker. If excess damage was dealt this way, when you cast your next instant or sorcery spell, Molten Impact deals damage equal to the excess to target creature or planeswalker.
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It's not a super powerful card, but holy shit is that wording is obnoxious and if you're going to have to write something so convoluted, you're better off not doing it. This is the worst part about digital products, they actually have less complexity as the game does a lot of handholding and you can't bluff as easily, which is fine as something gets lost in translation, but then the idiots lean into the design space and make retarded shit like that. Or worse they make black boxes like:

Imperial Blademaster 1RW
creature - Human Samurai
Double Strike
Whenever a Samurai or Warrior you control attacks alone, draft a card from Imperial Blademaster's spellbook.
2/2
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Fuck this type of card style that as far as I know sprung out of Hearthstone and unless you've looked it up on a third party site you have no idea what cards that ability generates. And looking it up it's a list of something like 16 cards, why? I get you're trying to create something that makes games more dynamic, but most of the time this shit doesn't, it just makes you either really happy you got what you wanted or annoyed you got garbage. It also doesn't really make you think that much because most of the time I ran a discover card in Hearthstone I pretty much knew the answer right away in terms of what to pick because you generally have some idea of what you're playing against, what's in your deck, and what you may be lacking with what's in your hand.

Either figure out how to make a game fun without this digital bullshit design space or just go apply to work at Blizzard, where you might get diddled but they love this retarded shit.
 
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Behold the true Arena Experience

He roped me until the last second and then passed to me for extra toxic, if he had been attacking with his token at all he probably would have won because I would have had to chump him
 
Oddjob OTP said:
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Behold the true Arena Experience

He roped me until the last second and then passed to me for extra toxic, if he had been attacking with his token at all he probably would have won because I would have had to chump him
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You know, I've noticed that more and more board states are like this recently, where it's just a pile of crap on both sides whereas before there tended to be a lot of stuff played but most of it was consistently going away. I guess some can argue that means answers are too good, but it could also mean there's a lack of interaction if everything just sticks around for a long time. That and maybe tokens look more like physical objects on Arena, but token generation was more limited back in the day outside of a niche.
 
Retink said:
You know, I've noticed that more and more board states are like this recently, where it's just a pile of crap on both sides whereas before there tended to be a lot of stuff played but most of it was consistently going away. I guess some can argue that means answers are too good, but it could also mean there's a lack of interaction if everything just sticks around for a long time. That and maybe tokens look more like physical objects on Arena, but token generation was more limited back in the day outside of a niche.
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Well, in that particular case it was more a degenerate combo deck doing degenerate combo deck things (basically a gruul version of this deck in standard "best cards banned" event happening now), all except like maybe 5 of those creatures/tokens/planeswalker were cast that turn and given haste until end of turn. Basically, I impulse 2 whenever I cast a legend, ignore the legend rule, and take RG off the cost of casting legends. When you have a Birgi out all spells give you 1 red mana that lasts all turn (and you can have multiples ofc), all my legends (i.e. all creatures except the springleaf drum elves) cost 0/1/2.

Opponent sat through me casting 15 spells and then roped me for 3 extensions while he watched his timer and then emoted before priority passed back to try to waste more of my time like I don't have a second monitor with YouTube open because I run into ropers probably more then 1/10 games. And again, he probably could have won if he tapped his creatures to keep pressure on me while I tried to find my bard class because I took a good hand that didn't start with it or mirror box in a matchup I couldn't attack into before hitting the critical mass combo.
 
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