General CBS

Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
vennythekid said:
Has anyone given any thought to a MTG-based deckbuilding game (in the vein of Dominion, or Spire)?
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Ascension: Chronicles of the Godslayer might be a good starting place? The cost of a card would be the cost to acquire it, the aim of the game can still be to get your opponent from 20 to 0, creatures are the monsters, other cards types go into your deck. Include spells that kill or deal damage to creatures, have creatures with "dies" effects, like Anodet Lurker, Hissing Iguanar (triggers are always controlled by the active player). Maybe there's something there?

To be fair, something like Dominion might work too.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
So in the general terms of "nice cards that make magic variance kill people less", I've had a lot of success with these:
Tracking.pngAncient Mantra.png009 - Crack the Case.jpg057 - Tomb Pillage.jpg

But I kinda noticed we've almost got a full analogue of 2cc ones:



There's not really a white card that works like this because it's a noted color pie weakness of white, but some stuff like Theraben Inspector helps.
 
Brad

Brad



White sucks. Overall, there's been a lot of smoothing lately.



I like how simple these are. Decent bodies, bit of smoothing, a payoff in the right deck.

There's plenty more, but I've been appreciating those two recently.
 
Velrun

Velrun

A card named Tomb Pillage with an art like that should be able to find artifacts. What else are you tomb pillaging for?

Chris that is a very well designed cycle! Good job!
 
Heymaker

Heymaker

Chris Taylor said:
So in the general terms of "nice cards that make magic variance kill people less", I've had a lot of success with these:
View attachment 2304View attachment 2305View attachment 2306View attachment 2307

But I kinda noticed we've almost got a full analogue of 2cc ones:



There's not really a white card that works like this because it's a noted color pie weakness of white, but some stuff like Theraben Inspector helps.
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Is the white color pie weakness of card filtering/advantage ever quoted somewhere by Rosewater/WotC or just a note on what's been historically printed? Genuinely curious to read more on that if it's ever been touched on. After they printed Board the Weatherlight, I have been somewhat hopeful to see that explored more in future sets.
 
David Bohlander

David Bohlander

The white card draw topic pops up often on Rosewater's Blogatog blog. Here's a decent answer.

wisdomofstark asked: So what kind of card draw DOES white get?
White’s greatest strength is that its defensive nature gives it the largest access to answers. White’s greatest weakness is that it doesn’t have a great way to draw into the answers. If white knows what threat is coming, it can be prepared, but if it gets surprised, White’s inflexibility can make it vulnerable. That’s a long-winded way of saying that White doesn’t get much card drawing.

When white does get card drawing, it’s very narrow and forces white to have to focus and not have all the answers in its deck.
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Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Yeah there's a lot of white EDH players that want stuff printed to make red/white more like blue or green in EDH. (Ramp, card draw, etc) because the most aggressive colors are shit in a format where you've always got 2+ people trying to stop you and everyone's life totals are doubled. Who knew :p

That being said, I've disagreed with mark on many occasions, one of which is filtering like this. Trust me, I've done worse :)
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

Chris Taylor said:
Yeah there's a lot of white EDH players that want stuff printed to make red/white more like blue or green in EDH. (Ramp, card draw, etc) because the most aggressive colors are shit in a format where you've always got 2+ people trying to stop you and everyone's life totals are doubled. Who knew :p

That being said, I've disagreed with mark on many occasions, one of which is filtering like this. Trust me, I've done worse :)
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White Filtering should just look like Crack the Case without the "sacrifice clues to draw" clause. Needs to be playable, and usable in decks with synergies with it, but it doesn't need to be Preordain.
 
Heymaker

Heymaker

Chris Taylor said:
Yeah there's a lot of white EDH players that want stuff printed to make red/white more like blue or green in EDH. (Ramp, card draw, etc) because the most aggressive colors are shit in a format where you've always got 2+ people trying to stop you and everyone's life totals are doubled. Who knew :p

That being said, I've disagreed with mark on many occasions, one of which is filtering like this. Trust me, I've done worse :)
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I don't necessarily disagree with Marky Mark on colors having strengths and weaknesses, as it's a great opportunity to introduce flavor. What I don't quite buy is that colors should miss out on essential game-fluidity mechanics completely. I like the idea of splashing into colors for more effective answers to a problem, I don't necessarily like the idea of splashing into colors BECAUSE a color can't come up with any answers. There are fun and flavorful ways to give colors access to capabilities that still look rubbish in comparison to other colors; to me it shows that the colors have at least some ingenuity, liveliness, some character, in coming up with ways to accomplish things despite their own shortcomings.

Planar Chaos kinda of spits in the face of what Mark said, though I don't know how much influence he may have had with that set. If they have to introduce story elements simply to alter their flavor-driven gameplay elements, I'll be the first to cast a vote for that future.

(some reading on Planar Chaos design: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/chaos-theory-2007-01-08 & https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/utter-chaos-2007-01-15)
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Onderzeeboot said:
Oh man, now I wish they did another Planar Chaos-style set with a bunch of alternate timeline colorshifted reprints!
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It's been asked for a lot, and make specifically hates the idea :p
Basically 90% if the coloor pie questions he gets are answered by "planar chaos doesn't count", "we don't do that any more" or "stop trying to make color X better by giving it the tools of color Y"

Someone was like "what if white had an oblivion ring effect that have you a token of whatever you exiled" which is just volition reins, downside and all.

TrainmasterGT said:
White Filtering should just look like Crack the Case without the "sacrifice clues to draw" clause. Needs to be playable, and usable in decks with synergies with it, but it doesn't need to be Preordain.
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It originally make clue activations cheaper but was too weak.
 
genericco

genericco



These feel like white's most successful forays into direct card advantage to me. Color pie bends that seem totally appropriate. Compare them to the Beast Whisperer effect - they only work on small creatures, and aren't free. Green gets unbounded, explosive draw, while white makes an orderly exchange of resources for cards.

Crack the Case, as a sorcery that slowly cantrips, seems fine to me color-pie-wise. I would be more wary about a white Elvish Visionary - I like those being limited to green & black.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
While bugler and wall of omens are fine cards (I've actually got wall slotted in as a removal spell right now, fwiw) the specific problem I'm looking to solve with the cantrips is "man I'm really [flooded / screwed], let's make some decesions to fix that"
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Mentor of the Meek always worked better in theory than in practice for me. Does Day of Judgment count as direct card advantage?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

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Jason Waddell said:
Does Day of Judgment count as direct card advantage?
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Good point, and yes it does imo. I don't think what white is missing is card advantage in this sense though, it's finding a way to get to those answers. As David Bohlander pointed out somewhere up here:

David Bohlander said:
The white card draw topic pops up often on Rosewater's Blogatog blog. Here's a decent answer.
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As we can see from his link, this weakness is entirely by design. I wish they would find a way to do a bit of smoothing in white though, as games just get more interesting if you can actually play your deck, and white's a bit like: "well, hope you draw your cards in the right order!" I've actually been playing this one for the longest time in my cube, and it plays really well.

Savvy Trader.full.jpg

I think white could benefit from Index effects in general shifting from blue (where they're a dog to actual card draw effects) to white, where they would be way more welcome, precicely because white is lacking in cantrips/card filtering. Theming them shouldn't be too hard, besides trading something like prophecies would work really well. Sage Owl is a really tame effect, but on a white card you could maybe push the stats and have a perfectly serviceable card.

Sage Spirit.jpg
(Art source: here)
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I really don't like hand revealing as a frequent mechanic. Once I know too much about the opponent's hand it becomes too much of a headache-inducing math problem. Or you realize that they already have answers to everything you want to do and it becomes pretty feel-bad. Knowing a card or two here and there is fun though.

Could Savvy Trader work without the hand reveal?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Jason Waddell said:
I really don't like hand revealing as a frequent mechanic. Once I know too much about the opponent's hand it becomes too much of a headache-inducing math problem. Or you realize that they already have answers to everything you want to do and it becomes pretty feel-bad. Knowing a card or two here and there is fun though.

Could Savvy Trader work without the hand reveal?
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Well, the idea is you get a bit of flexibility and planning on an aggressive white drop, but the trade-off is that your opponent knows what you're up to. I agree that you don't want too much revealing going on, but this never felt like you were exposing everything. I suppose you could reword it so that you put a card from your hand on top of your deck, then index for 4, then draw a card, but I do think the current wording is cleaner.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

So... WOTC just released the new challenger deck decklists today they're ok I guess, and they had a couple of surprise inclusions from a reprint perspective, but I was more surprised by what was left out.

The mono-white deck was missing Venerated Loxodon and was too short on legion's landing
The mono-red deck had only 1 copy of Rekindling Phoenix and was missing Risk Factor
The Golgari deck had no Carnage Tyrants or Vivien Reids, for some reason including Vraska, Relic Seeker.
The Izzet deck was... surprisingly good, but it didn't have any Enigma Drakes for some reason. To be fair, a lot of the PT lists this deck was based on didn't run Enigma Drake, but drake really needs to be in the deck in the absence of 3 copies of Arclight Phoenix. 1 Copy is better than I was expecting, but not enough to justify the absence of the second-best card for the budget version of the drakes deck.

Over all, the 2019 challenger decks are... fine. Just fine. I think a lot of people are going to be really excited about the inclusion of Arclight Phoenix in the Izzet deck and Overgrown Tomb in the Golgari deck and miss that these lists are not quite as complete as last year's offering of this product. The Golgari deck is literally just a bunch of explore uncommons with a Vraska thrown in.

So... It's a fine offering I suppose. I almost bought all four of these, and had they included the cards I mentioned, I probably would have. Right now, I think the White and Golgari decks are hard passes. I might pick up the Drakes deck and the Red deck.
 
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