Search results

Well thats great. I agree that magic is a poor competitive scene compared to other e-sports, which in theory we were going to address in our thought experiment, before our great debate over the significance of running a card that can undermine our own mulligan rules. I know that you're 100% ok...

Think of it as we're building a format for people that absolutely hate negative variance in game play, because each time it arises they know it will cost them thousands of dollars in high stakes gameplay. They're competing at a very high level, with an incredibly small skill-gap between...

We aren't, we're saying it accentuates the games inherent negative variance, and that there is no reason to do so, when you can run targeted discard spells that do the same thing without accentuating one of magic's design problems. Especially within the context of a hypothetical competitive...

Yes, thats a vastly superior card both design wise, and within the context of a cube. It actually helps address negative variance, as the modal nature coupled with discard helps address mana flooding. + it has incidental lifegain, which is always in demand and hard to find. 10/10 would like...

It also represents a non-interaction when you fire it off. Its like you're just warping the game start in a weird one sided manner. Maybe it feels different when you have a lot of fow in a format, but it feels terrible otherwise, and the way it affects mulligan decisions feels unhealthy. The...

Yes, thank you. If we're trying to get non-games down to or as close to 0 as se can, we aren't running thoughtseize. Period.

Sol Ring I dare you

And for a kitchen table that might be fine; but we're (or at least we were) talking about a hypothetical competitive format. Also, the logic that allows thoughtseize also allows other similar cards: IOK, wasteland etc. Either we're commited to reducing this type of negative variance or we're...

IOK is the most similar equivalent card at uncommon, and that was $10 card before being reprinted. It fills much the same function.

Thats not really how it tends to play out. What they did was force both players to mulligan, but they structured the mulligan in the manner most favorable to them, and in doing so punished the opponent for taking an action intended to reduce non-games. There is a reason its a $20 card while its...

Lets imagine that you take your mulligan to 6, keep, and your opponent t1 thoughtseizes you. 1. They've now forced you to effectively mulligan down to 5 cards. 2. Statistically, your win percentages at 5 cards are "you're going to lose", regardless of hand configuration. 3. On top of that...

I don't like 1 mana targeted discard, as it punishes people for taking mulligans, and represents a sort of one-sided forced mulligan itself. Condensed formats are formats where games have short time horizons. For example, if you average game ends on turn 4, it means that the only activity that...

With magic printings how they are, I'm kind of imagining something very midrangy and interactive. Slow enough where you have time to work out your deck's kinks, but lots of activity on the ground to maintain a sense of game momentum. I think power level is less important than how condensed the...

That post was directed at the narrow argument that "because competitive players enjoy cube, they would support contemporary cube design being a competitive format." Owen's post shows that while he is capable of enjoying cube as a format, his overarching metric for the suitability of a...

My rational side wants to say garbage, but I really like what you're thinking. Reanimator combo, one hit, and than it self bins so the game can go on. The only thing I don't like is that it looks punishing outside of that narrow interaction.

As chance would have it, I just remembered that Owen Turtenwald has this article from 2015. He ranks his 5 best/worst formats of all time; note a repeated theme. Best Formats #5 MTGO Holiday Cube Draft #2 Innistrad Draft Worst Formats #4 Modern #3 Fate Reforged Draft #2 Holiday...

It doesn't appeal to spikes as a serious competitive format. Based on the feedback I got from you when we did the penny league, I'm really surprised to see you dispute this. You pretty much wanted to cut all of the fun high variance cards, and when I did, my core casual audience threw a fit and...

If you made a cube specifically structured for low variance competitive play that would be my ideal ideal competitive format, even over their current offerings. Such a cube, however, does not currently exist, and likely will never exist, as cube fills a purely casual niche in the minds of most...

Guys, spikes can like whacky casual kitchen table formats too, just not when they are competiting at a high level. once your financial health and/or social status depends on the game outcome, that "fun" cube format you liked last week starts to look a lot less appealing.

I ran molten-tail in the innistrad theme cube, which was a format with deliberatly bad removal, and molten-tail was a wheeler there, so I can't imagine it being actively good elsewhere. The math on it seems pretty clear once you start to factor in efficient removal hitting expensive non-etb...