General [STX] Strixhaven Spoilers

[Onderzeeboot]

Has anyone mentioned this card yet?



3 mv means Zur the Enchanter can fetch it in my cube, but even ignoring that, this seems like a pretty sweet card. Either it deters your opponent from attacking (hooray, less damage!) or it compensates you with their cards (yay, card advantage and mental torture in one!)

 

[Brad]

Feels like Phyrexian Arena will usually be better.

Arena guarantees the card every turn. Arena can't mix up players cards. Arena costs a life, but you're likely losing some life if the opponent is attacking, anyways. Your mana base is plenty good enough to support the BB, and Arena reads a lot cleaner to me.

 

[Velrun]

To me this was instant testing. Very easy to cast. Also it 'draws' faster than Arena because it doesn't have to wait until your next upkeep to draw which, admittedly, is only relevant if you have instants. The real reason why I want to test this is because I think it can create some fun games because you're suddenly running a mix of your own deck and your opponent's deck.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Someone call a (Hearthstone) priest

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Someone call a (Hearthstone) priest

But not for me?

 

[Jason Waddell]

But not for me?

 

[SirFunchalot]

Has anyone mentioned this card yet?



3 mv means Zur the Enchanter can fetch it in my cube, but even ignoring that, this seems like a pretty sweet card. Either it deters your opponent from attacking (hooray, less damage!) or it compensates you with their cards (yay, card advantage and mental torture in one!)

3 mana, wait a turn, draw a single card, not even from your own library but from your opponent's deck that might not even synergize with yours, and you only even do this when your opponent attacks you seems *incredibly* weak. I think black divinations with life loss like painful lesson are probably the significantly stronger card draw options at this price point and are certainly by no means strong.

 

[Velrun]

3 mana, wait a turn, draw a single card, not even from your own library but from your opponent's deck that might not even synergize with yours, and you only even do this when your opponent attacks you seems *incredibly* weak. I think black divinations with life loss like painful lesson are probably the significantly stronger card draw options at this price point and are certainly by no means strong.

But stronger is not always better for a cube environment.

Fun > power level

Otherwise we could all include Ancestral Recall

Question is if this card is fun to you/me/everyone else. I am not sure yet but I 100 % want to test it.

 

[inscho]

Cunning Rhetoric reads pretty bad to me for most cube settings. I see the fun appeal due to the randomness and the mini head game...but it’s probably more at home in a casual multiplayer format

 

[SirFunchalot]

I can only speak for myself, but a card that's worse than an already strictly worse version of an already weak card, divination, doesn't exactly scream "fun magic gameplay" to me. This is obviously a personal preference thing, but I'm with @inscho here, this looks like a casual multiplayer card to me; something I'd want to see in an Archenemy deck where 1 player expects to have 3 opponents and can eek out a few crumbs of extra value than they might normally expect. In a 1v1 format where the intention of games is to win them, this looks pretty not great.

 

[inscho]

The topic of feel bad effects occasionally comes up in low power settings...land destruction is the obvious bogeyman, but it may also extend to avoiding things like mill or counterspells. If you are running a low powered environment with these types of concerns you may run into a similar situation when people start playing other people’s cards via Rhetoric. It’s no Mindslaver, but in a casual playgroup it might be annoying

Just speculating

 

[Velrun]

I can only speak for myself, but a card that's worse than an already strictly worse version of an already weak card, divination, doesn't exactly scream "fun magic gameplay" to me. This is obviously a personal preference thing, but I'm with @inscho here, this looks like a casual multiplayer card to me; something I'd want to see in an Archenemy deck where 1 player expects to have 3 opponents and can eek out a few crumbs of extra value than they might normally expect. In a 1v1 format where the intention of games is to win them, this looks pretty not great.

I am going to repeat myself a little bit here. I’m not talking about power level. The fact that better cards exist should not be an issue. Unless you (I don’t mean you you) want a cube with fun is less in focus than a high power level.

This card is perfect for cubes in my opinion. The catch is you have to have the right power level in your cube to fit this new card in. Otherwise this one will stand out as either too good or too weak. This logic is universally true with each new card one can add to a cube. The reason why I say it is perfect for cubes, is because it opens up possibilities in games we don’t normally see.

Also: Welcome to the forum Very happy to have you here!

 

[SirFunchalot]

I am going to repeat myself a little bit here. I’m not talking about power level. The fact that better cards exist should not be an issue. Unless you (I don’t mean you you) want a cube with fun is less in focus than a high power level.

This card is perfect for cubes in my opinion. The catch is you have to have the right power level in your cube to fit this new card in. Otherwise this one will stand out as either too good or too weak. This logic is universally true with each new card one can add to a cube. The reason why I say it is perfect for cubes, is because it opens up possibilities in games we don’t normally see.

Also: Welcome to the forum Very happy to have you here!

I understand you aren't talking about power level. I am. I care about power level. To me, a card that is weaker than cards most of us would probably consider to be "draft chaff" doesn't appeal to me, I don't see anything inherently interesting or fun about cards with horrifically low floors and inconsistent value, it looks like a card that outside of some similar context, like a format that approximates the power level of retail limited sealed where my pool is almost entirely comprised of chaff and I'm scrounging for playables, this card isn't a card I would want to pick particularly high in most other contexts and I don't personally enjoy formats that operate around the power level of core set sealed as they tend to offer a higher variance and lower decision dense gameplay experience than I personally prefer. My opinion doesn't mean those kinds of formats don't appeal to others and that folks here can't enjoy and want to curate such environments, but that is not a goal I share with them.

Thanks for the welcoming!

 

[inscho]

I understand you aren't talking about power level. I am. I care about power level. To me, a card that is weaker than cards most of us would probably consider to be "draft chaff" doesn't appeal to me, I don't see anything inherently interesting or fun about cards with horrifically low floors and inconsistent value, it looks like a card that outside of some similar context, like a format that approximates the power level of retail limited sealed where my pool is almost entirely comprised of chaff and I'm scrounging for playables, this card isn't a card I would want to pick particularly high in most other contexts and I don't personally enjoy formats that operate around the power level of core set sealed as they tend to offer a higher variance and lower decision dense gameplay experience than I personally prefer. My opinion doesn't mean those kinds of formats don't appeal to others and that folks here can't enjoy and want to curate such environments, but that is not a goal I share with them.

Thanks for the welcoming!

Fwiw, you’ll probably wear your fingers out here if you approach card evaluations from this perspective alone. A good 75+% of cards discussed here won’t sniff your list, and most cards aren’t brought up as considerable in that type of context

I realized I was being dismissive in my first comment on the card, so I tried to follow it up with something more productive that was relevant to the cubes that would be interested in this effect. My cube isn’t remotely interested in the card, but it’s helpful to discuss cards from a perspective that’s different from my immediate interests

Just something to consider. Most people here know when a card is far from the most powerful of its kind

 

[inscho]

I should also add that I don’t comment on most cards brought up here, because they aren’t remotely relevant to my goals, and it’s often exhausting enough to maintain my own philosophy and standards of card evaluation let alone wear those of others like I’m changing out hats

 

[SirFunchalot]

Fwiw, you’ll probably wear your fingers out here if you approach card evaluations from this perspective alone. A good 75+% of cards discussed here won’t sniff your list, and most cards aren’t brought up as considerable in that type of context

I realized I was being dismissive in my first comment on the card, so I tried to follow it up with something more productive that was relevant to the cubes that would be interested in this effect. My cube isn’t remotely interested in the card, but it’s helpful to discuss cards from a perspective that’s different from my immediate interests

Just something to consider. Most people here know when a card is far from the most powerful of its kind

I should also add that I don’t comment on most cards brought up here, because they aren’t remotely relevant to my goals, and it’s often exhausting enough to maintain my own philosophy and standards of card evaluation let alone wear those of others like I’m changing out hats

So if discussing cards from other perspectives isn't productive, what exactly is the point of talking about individual cards? Is it just a space for people to say "I think this is cool" and no other conversation beyond that matters? Just trying to get a feel for the kinds of discussions you cats are interested in having here bc the way I think about and analyze cards is always from the perspective of "how does this card contribute to the gameplan of my deck compared to other options I could be running and is it an increase or decrease in my expected winpercentage?" and I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of folks don't really care at all about shit like that.

 

[japahn]

I agree power level is an important point to discuss, since this card's power level, though clearly not high, is uncertain between unplayable and playable in low power cubes. If it's worse than basic swamp, it sadly doesn't matter how cool the card is.

I'm not sure this is worse than Divination. If you are attacked > 2 times, you'll get more CA, even though you'd generally prefer to draw from your deck, this can be the engine that buries the opponent in CA. I think I don't like the play pattern of this particular card, regardless of playability, though. Terrible topdeck, and rather than provide CA it'll more likely either do nothing or turn the game into a board stall. If you lose to your own cards because you attacked and triggered it too often, it can feel very punishing.

 

[Jason Waddell]

So if discussing cards from other perspectives isn't productive, what exactly is the point of talking about individual cards? Is it just a space for people to say "I think this is cool" and no other conversation beyond that matters? Just trying to get a feel for the kinds of discussions you cats are interested in having here bc the way I think about and analyze cards is always from the perspective of "how does this card contribute to the gameplan of my deck compared to other options I could be running and is it an increase or decrease in my expected winpercentage?" and I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of folks don't really care at all about shit like that.

I'll make a video addressing this some time but basically it comes down to designer versus player. I feel like a lot of the statements you make about cards is from the player perspective. The designers of set x or other card game y know that their are better options for every card slot for increasing win rate of a deck.

But I'm not designing a deck, I'm designing an environment. Power level does matter, yes, but small misevaluations in power level often either don't really matter, or get revealed during testing, or get corrected for via the self-correcting nature of drafting.

The question for Strixhaven limited or Rise of Eldrazi limited isn't "does it contain the best options for win rate maximization", but "is it fun? is it worth coming back to?".

If you imagine you're making a game that doesn't exist yet, how do you approach the problem. Where do you want the strength to lie? What kind of player are you trying to appeal to?

If I'm trying to place well at an upcoming GP, yes I absolutely care about finding the most powerful options available to me. If I'm trying to make Dominion or Race for the Galaxy or Hearthstone or whatever, I care far more about whether the array of options I'm presenting create a fun experience for the player.

 

[dbs]

And from a designer's perspective the question "how does this card contribute to the gameplan of my deck compared to other options I could be running and is it an increase or decrease in my expected winpercentage?" is still useful, but it's not the designer's objective. Within any given pack, that's probably the question the player is asking, so you still need to consider it... but only within the context of the pack/cube. In this sense, maybe we have a minimax game of sorts between player and designer. You're optimizing a designer's objective to produce a certain kind of play environment, but decks are formed by players maximizing their own objective.

I think I personally don't consider this enough. When doing my card selection, I often construct "example" decks where I just hand-pick cards to try to explore the diversity of cool strategies you could, in theory, arrive at as a player. I tend to focus on flexibility of mixing and matching overlapping strategies including across colors. But even if you can create a really diverse array of well-balanced decks by doing this, that's not what necessarily happens when players draft decks! If players are optimizing their win-rate then they do things like stay-open, and pick color-combinations and strategies after being pulled by powerful individual cards or synergy sign-posts. So even if BW Control and UW Control are equally viable (in a winrate sense) when hand-picking cards, based on cube construction and draft dynamics it might be that players arrive at UW Control 90% of the time.

I haven't really explored the impacts of these draft dynamics on my own cube very carefully. I might try considering hypothetical series of packs which could lead you in very different directions with only small differences in the packs. Or maybe there are draft dynamics (most common pick sequences?) that make certain combinations much less likely to occur even if they're perfectly viable. One thing to note: for my own players, I highly doubt they're actually power-level optimizing. I think they're trying to pull off cool and unusual strategies (but given this constraint, trying to achieve a decent winrate because losing all the time isn't fun). So in this case a purely adversarial minimax objective isn't quite right, but something more cooperative between player and designer where power-level effects are still relevant because there's an underlying competitive setting.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

So if discussing cards from other perspectives isn't productive, what exactly is the point of talking about individual cards? Is it just a space for people to say "I think this is cool" and no other conversation beyond that matters? Just trying to get a feel for the kinds of discussions you cats are interested in having here

Well, it is productive to talk about cards in terms of power level, it's just not everyone's individual design goals care about power level alone. Lots of people here are ok with playing mediocre cards as long as they can do something some amount of the time. To them, it's less about "how much does this card let me win on average" and more about "can this card ever do it's thing in my broader environment."

This doesn't mean that people don't care about power level, they just care less about picking the most powerful card available in their given power band and more about picking the coolest card available in their power band. Like yeah, Painful Truths is almost always going to provide more immediate value than Cunning Rhetoric, but that's not the only important factor if one of your goals is to do cute stuff with Zur the Enchanter. In that case, you're just trying to figure out if Cunning Rhetoric can do it's thing often enough to justify it's slot.

Basically, people tend to evaluate more from the perspective of...

How does this card contribute to the gameplan of my deck compared to other options I could be running?

And less from...

Is it an increase or decrease in my expected winpercentage?

...because a lot of people here don't care too much about win percentage provided the different support archetypes are roughly even in terms of power level.

Now having said that, if someone just randomly asks about a card out of context, there's not an issue with saying that it's probably not good. I think it's important to try to help ground people in when a card is going to be worth playing on average. If you think about the discussion we had about Goblin Engineer yesterday, I think you can maybe get an idea of what I'm talking about. Goblin Engineer is really, really strong when you have proper support for it, but it doesn't do anything without that support base. Goblin Engineer has a terrible base rate without support, but in the right environment, it can be one of the best cards. Obviously the ceiling on Goblin Engineer is much higher than that of some of the other cards that tend to get thrown around here, but the example still stands.

What I like to do when I'm trying to argue against a card is state the applications where it could be useful, but showcase why that ceiling isn't necessarily realistic or would require a lot of dedicated support to pull off. Basically, I like to acknowledge that the card could do something, but then state why it generally won't

 

[inscho]

So if discussing cards from other perspectives isn't productive, what exactly is the point of talking about individual cards? Is it just a space for people to say "I think this is cool" and no other conversation beyond that matters? Just trying to get a feel for the kinds of discussions you cats are interested in having here bc the way I think about and analyze cards is always from the perspective of "how does this card contribute to the gameplan of my deck compared to other options I could be running and is it an increase or decrease in my expected winpercentage?" and I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of folks don't really care at all about shit like that.

I'll try to better articulate the point I was making, and I'll preface by saying I'm only bringing this up as a voluntary liaison of sorts, because I'm genuinely happy to have you here, and hope that you remain a long term productive member of our community. I'm already incorporating some ideas you've introduced into my own cube. It's dope! I'm just picking up on some subtle tensions, and feel like heads are butting a little

There are a few subgroups within this community that prioritize design and play differently, and you just kind of feel them out with time. But I think it's generally safe to assume that most people know where a card roughly lies on the power spectrum, and if they are bringing a card up it's because it is within the realm of consideration for their design goals. If you have the stamina for it, you are certainly welcome to evaluate every card by your personal standards (dismissing 99% of them). I was only trying to say that you will find that you are talking on a different planet at times, because the person bringing up the card is crafting a completely different environment. Often times things are simply discussed from a position of "what kind of environment would X be viable in, and is value there?" rather than "X is not viable based on my standards"

So when a card like Cunning Rhetoric pops up for discussion, I see a card that is slow, situational, clunky, and random....not relevant to my design goals and irks my obsession with game flow...it's not a card for consideration in the upper third(?) of the strix scale (which I'm only just now familiarizing myself with). I can either dismiss the clearly fringe card that someone is generally interested in, I can choose to not reply because it's not on the spectrum of my design goals, or I can engage it from a purely speculative place and debate the hows and whens the card might be interesting and useful.

 

[SirFunchalot]

I'll make a video addressing this some time but basically it comes down to designer versus player. I feel like a lot of the statements you make about cards is from the player perspective. The designers of set x or other card game y know that their are better options for every card slot for increasing win rate of a deck.

But I'm not designing a deck, I'm designing an environment. Power level does matter, yes, but small misevaluations in power level often either don't really matter, or get revealed during testing, or get corrected for via the self-correcting nature of drafting.

The question for Strixhaven limited or Rise of Eldrazi limited isn't "does it contain the best options for win rate maximization", but "is it fun? is it worth coming back to?".

If you imagine you're making a game that doesn't exist yet, how do you approach the problem. Where do you want the strength to lie? What kind of player are you trying to appeal to?

If I'm trying to place well at an upcoming GP, yes I absolutely care about finding the most powerful options available to me. If I'm trying to make Dominion or Race for the Galaxy or Hearthstone or whatever, I care far more about whether the array of options I'm presenting create a fun experience for the player.

So the way I think when I'm designing is that an environment doesn't exist in a vaccuum, it has a context of supported decks and there are matchups that we as designers know exist within that context. When we put a card in the cube we are excluding something else, I assume with some sort of purposeful intention, and those changes effect the balance of the format. If I hypothetically am running a cube with Painful Lesson and I decide to replace it with Cunning Rhetoric, this swap has the consequence of decreasing the power level of black as a color and all deck archetypes that play black cards because Cunning Rhetoric is a less powerful card. Nerfs and Buffs are a vital tool for format balancing of course, so there are contexts where this decision could hypothetically make sense from the perspective of the matchup tables within the environment.

When it comes to judging fun factor, I think as far as Magic card design is concerned it's mostly a non-issue in that most changes are fun-agnostic as Magic is an inherently fun game and the act of playing it generally means that players are enjoying themselves. I've played plenty of games of that are far from what I would consider to contain my ideal play patterns and I'd still consider the experience to be mostly fun enough to revisit time and time again. It's hard to design a draft format where the gameplay experience is any worse than say, mulling to 4, or losing to flood or screw, barring a few particularly egregious designs like Shahrazad which are mostly the exception to the rule. Obviously fun is a super subjective thing and individuals can have differing opinions on what is or isn't fun for them, and if you design your cube solely for yourself and a small handful of individuals that you intimately know the preferences of you can certainly cater to those specific needs and try and "funmax" for that particular set of individual tastes, but that's not really something some stranger on the Internet is capable of helping someone do as it requires a ton of hyper specific context about the psychology of other individuals that are typically absent from these conversations. In essence, it's not a kind of conversation I think that frequently bears meaningful fruit except when had within the context of the playgroup dynamic itself. To make an analogy, these sorts of questions are sort of like asking a worker at an Ice Cream Shoppe to figure out what your favorite flavor of ice cream is, but you don't tell them any allergies you may have or flavor profiles and textures that you have a preference for, they're simply expected to randomly guess whether you're going to prefer Rum Raisin, Mint Chocolate Chip or Vanilla. Even if you the customer ask the shoppekeep what flavor they most enjoy, that's far from a guarantee that their answer will help you as the flavors they like might not appeal to your palette.

The kinds of conversations about cards that I think can be useful are the more objective leaning discussions about quantifiable aspects of cards, decks and format context. We can figure out and discuss the rate of cards, the decks that are interested in playing them, the competing options available within the format and where we expect them to be taken within the pickorder of packs as well as look at the context of the entirety of Magic's card pool to see competing options that might better suit the particular design goal in question. Sure, there's a ton of subjectivity mixed into these discussions as well, especially when comparing non-similar cards, as in the absence of hard data no one can say with any degree of certainty just how strong/weak things are, but we can approximate closely enough to have meaningful back and forth exchanges. Through this we can expand our underlying knowledge of not just the game as a whole but also the context of the individual format itself and what the decks within it need to be successful and viable and how individual cards contribute to that.

 

[japahn]

When it comes to judging fun factor, I think as far as Magic card design is concerned it's mostly a non-issue in that most changes are fun-agnostic as Magic is an inherently fun game and the act of playing it generally means that players are enjoying themselves.

I don't take fun for granted, and I see a lot of people playing Magic and not having fun with it. I believe Magic is a popular game because there are many formats to cater to people who crave different things. But when you curate a cube, it is (generally) a single format, and understanding what makes Magic fun to people is a major, perhaps the most important part of curating a cube, so that your cube will be fun for your playgroup.

Obviously fun is a super subjective thing and individuals can have differing opinions on what is or isn't fun for them, and if you design your cube solely for yourself and a small handful of individuals that you intimately know the preferences of you can certainly cater to those specific needs and try and "funmax" for that particular set of individual tastes, but that's not really something some stranger on the Internet is capable of helping someone do as it requires a ton of hyper specific context about the psychology of other individuals that are typically absent from these conversations.

People don't like cards completely randomly though. There are cards that a lot of people like, and there are cards that no one likes, so it is worth discussing whether a given card is one that they will like to play. Also worth discussing whether it is a card that will lead to a bad experience from the opponent's point of view too.

"Strangers on the internet" - and most people here aren't strangers to me - don't need to intimately know my other friends to see patterns of what makes some cards fun to most people and other cards not fun. What I appreciate most in RiptideLab is that there is discussion around "fun" and other concepts that are not power evaluation. Power evaluation is absolutely worth discussing, though, as it influences fun, deck diversity, draft dynamics, play patterns, viability of strategies, and a lot of other things. But it's only one part of the puzzle.

In essence, it's not a kind of conversation I think that frequently bears meaningful fruit except when had within the context of the playgroup dynamic itself.

I disagree, I think people's tastes are absolutely possible to discuss. Not judge, but understand. Of course you are the best positioned person to design a format for your playgroup, but with information from other designers and other playgroups, you can learn concepts, techniques and have insights that will help your own design. I certainly have learned a lot from these conversations and continue to do so.

To make an analogy, these sorts of questions are sort of like asking a worker at an Ice Cream Shoppe to figure out what your favorite flavor of ice cream is, but you don't tell them any allergies you may have or flavor profiles and textures that you have a preference for, they're simply expected to randomly guess whether you're going to prefer Rum Raisin, Mint Chocolate Chip or Vanilla. Even if you the customer ask the shoppekeep what flavor they most enjoy, that's far from a guarantee that their answer will help you as the flavors they like might not appeal to your palette.

If you offer Rum Raisin, Mint Chocolate Chip and Vanilla, you'll find almost everyone will have at least one flavor they like. That's not true if you offer Lemon, Mango and Orange. We could productively discuss how to build a nice ice cream portfolio that makes your ice cream shop a success even though two or three people in the world like Bacon ice cream.

 

[Velrun]

SirFunchalot seems very, very capable of standing on his own legs, defending his arguments and retain his resolve.

But.

Having tried to be on the receiving end of massive comments pointing my way, I think we should maybe give SirFunchalot a rest. He's not new in the cube environment but he is still new in here and having everyone respond to your comments all at once can be daunting for even the most sturdy of personalities.

 

[japahn]

Having tried to be on the receiving end of massive comments pointing my way, I think we should maybe give SirFunchalot a rest. He's not new in the cube environment but he is still new in here and having everyone respond to your comments all at once can be daunting for even the most sturdy of personalities.

I just feel like the statement of "we should not discuss anything apart form power level" needed to have at least one answer, it is far enough outside our norms that ignoring it would be a disrespect to Funch because... no one can ignore that except consciously.

But yeah, sorry if I was too verbose on the response.