General Alchemy
- Thread starter Velrun
- Start date
I can't decide if I like or dislike that overall...
I like the fact that (for that one version) they actually used a unique art...
I dislike the fact that it's so visually distinct from the others. Two totally separate artworks you have to remember are linked to the same base.
I laugh at the color gradients, but I'm only laughing because they are literally the exact same art with a photoshop color gradient slapped on top. If the arts were slightly distinct in ways that kept the same overall composition and setting, it would look really nice.
I like the fact that (for that one version) they actually used a unique art...
I dislike the fact that it's so visually distinct from the others. Two totally separate artworks you have to remember are linked to the same base.
I laugh at the color gradients, but I'm only laughing because they are literally the exact same art with a photoshop color gradient slapped on top. If the arts were slightly distinct in ways that kept the same overall composition and setting, it would look really nice.
After two Alchemy drafts I can safely say that I hate specialize, or at least this particular implementation of specialize. The cards are SO WORDY. These have to be the wordiest Magic cards ever written. Having to right click on a card and then read through five different possible variations is a nightmare. There are a couple specialize cards that I like, but I am not going to inflict that mental load on my drafters under any circumstances.
Just you wait. Very soon we will have cards on Arena with 10x that amount of text because the card can transform several times because digital cards don’t only have two sides..
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Got curious and decided to look at the Alchemy spoilers this week. Did any of you know this was happening, or are they as bad at marketing this game as I think they are?
Anyways, there are some legitimately interesting design elements here that still fall under the umbrella of bad design held back by 1) being "digital-only" but only by a technicality/wording choice, 2) relying too much on the novelty of digital instead of good gameplay. Here they are:
The art still seems like reject art from the main sets, but another draft of Norn's Dissembly would be a legitimately cool piece of work. The other two are fine if unexciting.
I would run all three of these in my cube...probably. Norn's Dissembly works really well with treasure tokens and the like, and you can even maximize your deck to only have a strong toolbox of legendary dudes/walkers and rely on colored cards that produce artifacts to have it be a pretty strong engine.
Gixian Recycler is a lot like Ashnod's Harvester (recent cube addition for me!) but trades the incidental graveyard hate for some Narcomoeba-ass gameplay. Would love to have a relevant effect like that in my cube!! I also like the idea of looping it multiple times with self-bounce effects.
Kami of Mourning is certainly the lowest power level here and requires 1) another creature in your yard and 2) another creature to die with greater CMC. Luckily, the Kami can be chosen as the card. This is more of a Rock-style value recursion card but...those are my favorite Magic cards to play!
There's not even a centralized place where all these spoilers end up. Even Scryfall always takes its time and has low-res versions forever. Alchemy sucks. It's a bad idea. No one even plays it! But hey, these are "real" Magic cards, certainly a lot more real than the main 30th anniversary celebration concept.
Apparently the above image is from a WotC weekly stream talking about Arena a few weeks ago. It's a chart crime, but I don't really give the WotC marketing team much credit in general. The two formats with digital only cards make up a whole 20% of Arena play....maybe they should just not? Super interesting stats though, wish I had it for the whole year.
Anyways, there are some legitimately interesting design elements here that still fall under the umbrella of bad design held back by 1) being "digital-only" but only by a technicality/wording choice, 2) relying too much on the novelty of digital instead of good gameplay. Here they are:
The art still seems like reject art from the main sets, but another draft of Norn's Dissembly would be a legitimately cool piece of work. The other two are fine if unexciting.
I would run all three of these in my cube...probably. Norn's Dissembly works really well with treasure tokens and the like, and you can even maximize your deck to only have a strong toolbox of legendary dudes/walkers and rely on colored cards that produce artifacts to have it be a pretty strong engine.
Gixian Recycler is a lot like Ashnod's Harvester (recent cube addition for me!) but trades the incidental graveyard hate for some Narcomoeba-ass gameplay. Would love to have a relevant effect like that in my cube!! I also like the idea of looping it multiple times with self-bounce effects.
Kami of Mourning is certainly the lowest power level here and requires 1) another creature in your yard and 2) another creature to die with greater CMC. Luckily, the Kami can be chosen as the card. This is more of a Rock-style value recursion card but...those are my favorite Magic cards to play!
There's not even a centralized place where all these spoilers end up. Even Scryfall always takes its time and has low-res versions forever. Alchemy sucks. It's a bad idea. No one even plays it! But hey, these are "real" Magic cards, certainly a lot more real than the main 30th anniversary celebration concept.
Apparently the above image is from a WotC weekly stream talking about Arena a few weeks ago. It's a chart crime, but I don't really give the WotC marketing team much credit in general. The two formats with digital only cards make up a whole 20% of Arena play....maybe they should just not? Super interesting stats though, wish I had it for the whole year.
New round of Alchemy spoilers for Eldraine, it's been on hold for a while and I'm not sure why they started this back up, but as @Chris Taylor said in another thread a few days ago:
It's worth looking at these designs, since they're not really being discussed anywhere from a design POV. As @Phone said:
As mentioned previously in this thread, I'm still not sold on printing these out into paper for the sake of my cube just yet, but I like to tease myself / make myself miserable with the wasted design space on formats that aren't very popular so I'll be examining these cards through a power-curious cube level.
This is such a funny and well-designed card. Changing it from perpetually getting +1/+1 to counters, under the same rules as things like Skullbriar, the Walking Grave, makes it work very easily in paper. Like with previous cards discussed in this thread, it seems like they're going out of their way to make the cards wonkier to justify them as not-legal-in-paper, a negative for everyone's sake.
I wouldn't really be interested in cubing that particular card, but I did find it very clever and I found a card using the same technology that would be a delight in my 720:
In addition to the obvious goal of maximizing the density of otters in Cube, the Accident-Prone Apprentice 1) tells a great story, 2) gives Turn to Frog -- a fun card by any measure -- a justifiable reason to exist in a Cube alongside Magic's best and brightest, and 3) the creature side is the best version of a 2MV Prowess ability we've gotten to date. I would happily make room in my Izzet section or red suite for this, and I imagine even the MODO cube would be fine replacing Runaway Steam-Kin with the little dude.
I wouldn't personally cube it to avoid the mixed messages that the enchantment half provide, but this card is Magic's first unconditional black creature exile spell for 2B. And it's an instant! Flay Essence, what happened to you?
Neat card. I'm not clever enough to figure out the best way to abuse it, but I feel in my bones that there's something cool going on here.
If you just take out the "boon" formatting and make this "The next creature target opponent casts enters the battlefield tapped and with a stun counter on it", it'll not only be less wordy, but it'll fit in paper Magic just fine. I like this land a lot, the one-time scry 3 makes up for the ETB tapped to me and my tempo decks would be willing to take the small downside after dropping the first 2 lands to have this kind of effect essentially for free.
Complexity creep much, but I actually love this card as what would be the best Gravedigger effect for Cube if it were a real Magic card. 3/1s are always pleasant, giving your next creature a +1/+1 bonus is nice, and the bargain ability feels like the right cost here. WotC, print a proper version of this please!
You basically have me sold on this card from the last ability, which I don't think we've ever gotten so cleanly and at such a good rate before.
In Boros decks in particular, I'm a big fan of having my Phyrexian Arena effects attached to on-curve beaters, and in that guild, I'm a lot less concerned about having to play the cards that turn. The Seven Dwarves is funny and would be a net-negative, but they do get out of hand quickly, and their ability to cantrip does limit the potential for feel bad for them.
I could easily make this work in my Cube as written by having the dwarves printed out ahead of time with the extra text already placed on them, but it'd be a pain to de-deck them after each game. Would certainly test if not play this card if it were a real Magic card.
Anything inspire the bunch of you?
It's worth looking at these designs, since they're not really being discussed anywhere from a design POV. As @Phone said:
As mentioned previously in this thread, I'm still not sold on printing these out into paper for the sake of my cube just yet, but I like to tease myself / make myself miserable with the wasted design space on formats that aren't very popular so I'll be examining these cards through a power-curious cube level.
This is such a funny and well-designed card. Changing it from perpetually getting +1/+1 to counters, under the same rules as things like Skullbriar, the Walking Grave, makes it work very easily in paper. Like with previous cards discussed in this thread, it seems like they're going out of their way to make the cards wonkier to justify them as not-legal-in-paper, a negative for everyone's sake.
I wouldn't really be interested in cubing that particular card, but I did find it very clever and I found a card using the same technology that would be a delight in my 720:
In addition to the obvious goal of maximizing the density of otters in Cube, the Accident-Prone Apprentice 1) tells a great story, 2) gives Turn to Frog -- a fun card by any measure -- a justifiable reason to exist in a Cube alongside Magic's best and brightest, and 3) the creature side is the best version of a 2MV Prowess ability we've gotten to date. I would happily make room in my Izzet section or red suite for this, and I imagine even the MODO cube would be fine replacing Runaway Steam-Kin with the little dude.
I wouldn't personally cube it to avoid the mixed messages that the enchantment half provide, but this card is Magic's first unconditional black creature exile spell for 2B. And it's an instant! Flay Essence, what happened to you?
Neat card. I'm not clever enough to figure out the best way to abuse it, but I feel in my bones that there's something cool going on here.
If you just take out the "boon" formatting and make this "The next creature target opponent casts enters the battlefield tapped and with a stun counter on it", it'll not only be less wordy, but it'll fit in paper Magic just fine. I like this land a lot, the one-time scry 3 makes up for the ETB tapped to me and my tempo decks would be willing to take the small downside after dropping the first 2 lands to have this kind of effect essentially for free.
Complexity creep much, but I actually love this card as what would be the best Gravedigger effect for Cube if it were a real Magic card. 3/1s are always pleasant, giving your next creature a +1/+1 bonus is nice, and the bargain ability feels like the right cost here. WotC, print a proper version of this please!
You basically have me sold on this card from the last ability, which I don't think we've ever gotten so cleanly and at such a good rate before.
In Boros decks in particular, I'm a big fan of having my Phyrexian Arena effects attached to on-curve beaters, and in that guild, I'm a lot less concerned about having to play the cards that turn. The Seven Dwarves is funny and would be a net-negative, but they do get out of hand quickly, and their ability to cantrip does limit the potential for feel bad for them.
I could easily make this work in my Cube as written by having the dwarves printed out ahead of time with the extra text already placed on them, but it'd be a pain to de-deck them after each game. Would certainly test if not play this card if it were a real Magic card.
Anything inspire the bunch of you?
what does Wicked Role do?
i kinda like a 3/1 gravedigger for 2 even if it does nothing else.
agree the perpetual beeg adventure cards are really really nice!
i kinda like a 3/1 gravedigger for 2 even if it does nothing else.
agree the perpetual beeg adventure cards are really really nice!
"conjure a Capashen Standard onto the battlefield..."
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Dollmaker is a versatile 'Blink' effect for your own stuff (including enchantments, battles, planeswalkers, or other types that it's hard to flicker easily). The token copy can be copied with Esika's Chariot or populate stuff and all the usual artifact synergies apply here. On your opponent's stuff it can outright remove some cards (Hangarback Walker or Stonecoil Serpent) or reset others (Everflowing Chalice or others that have benefits tied to how they were cast, Sprites Dragon and Figures of Destiny that grow or level up over time). Really cool design and one I'll definitely proxy up
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Some underappreciated bangers from the All Will Be One release:
A nice self-contained win condition for a control deck (or really any deck that has the time) that can guarantee land drops but also a discard outlet on a land for your Reanimator or Madness stuff - something that doesn't exist otherwise unless you make a pilgrimage to the Bazaar of Baghdad
A fountain of Game Objects but also a blessing for any equipment theme that blunts the usual tension between having enough equipment and not enough equippees
A nice self-contained win condition for a control deck (or really any deck that has the time) that can guarantee land drops but also a discard outlet on a land for your Reanimator or Madness stuff - something that doesn't exist otherwise unless you make a pilgrimage to the Bazaar of Baghdad
A fountain of Game Objects but also a blessing for any equipment theme that blunts the usual tension between having enough equipment and not enough equippees
Thank you for posting this. Had it not been for you I would maybe not even have noticed Wizards did these.
I have a comment that I hope you will appreciate in case you custom these up.
I think for this type of design you will probably want the counters to only stay on the creature in exile and battlefield. This is how I would do it.
wasn't the most stuffed hybrid section already, I'd get very excited for this cutie.
"Activate only once" already exists in black border paper magic, although I agree that using some kind of counter to track it is probably easier to play.