Card/Deck Ahadabans Newest Least Favorite Card Ever

ahadabans

ahadabans

@anotak
All those cards you posted are basically mistakes. They are broken beyond belief and recognized as broken by Wiards. Most (if not all) of those will never see print again even in today's era of high powered cards. I'd also venture to say that our cubes would be better without running most of them (I'm not sure I can bring myself to cut all of them though).

I don't think the Skeletal Vampire comparison is flawed. It has the identical mana cost and I can attest to that card being good back in the day. The best finishers around were the Kamigawa dragons but Batman was solid. I agree you should get something extra for spending 6 mana on a single card. Batman got two bat tokens and could regenerate by sacing them. Getting rid of that thing was really hard. The kamigawa dragons all got something when they died. But they were just 5/5 flyers for 6 mana while alive. And they finished games and were good cards.

Grave Titan? Well, it is a 6/6 for 6 mana with deathtouch. Already pretty solid for the cost (on par really with a dragon). But you also get two 2/2 tokens (4 additional power) AND you keep getting 2 of those ever turn Grave Titan lives. It's a ridiculous card way over the power curve. Any aggressive midrange deck that runs into that on turn 5/6 loses unless they have such a huge lead on the board and they have removal or get removal on their next draw.

Different strokes for different folks I guess, but the lower power level of the game back during Ravnica I think made the game more fun to play. Limited was certainly awesome back then. And it seemed to me at least that you had less extremes. Aggressive decks had the advantage early, but they didn't auto lose to finishers on turn 6. You can race Batman or a dragon. You really can't race Grave Titan (and don't even get me going on Wurmcoil).

I realize I'm an old fart and stuck in the past. Again, cube is my window back to when I fell in love with the game. Magic has moved on from my generation and I'm cool with that. It's doing well and each set brings me pieces I can use so really I can't complain. My days of playing magic with my buddies every day are long gone anyway. Everybody's got kids and jobs now. LOL.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Jason Waddell said:
I don't know, I feel like the Titans do an effective way of "upping the urgency" of the gamestate, as Cooperfauss would say. Grave Titan is beatable, but it certainly changes things. I realize everyone has their line (wait, that's a lie), and for me Grave Titan and Wurmcoil fall on opposite sides of said line.
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Fair enough. I'm definitely old school about a lot of this.
 
anotak

anotak

a handful of occasionally cubed-with cards that are older, ridiculous and can beat or compete with the card advantage of non jtms planeswalkers

also notice that not one of these is red, but now we have cards like chandra, pyromaster to give that color an actual identity beyond lightning bolt and 'haha coin flips and random selfdiscard and punisher mechanics'
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

@anotak

I like those cards you posted, but most of them aren't unlimited card advantage engines. A lot of them are one shot spells (gifts, gush). Some are more about filtering (top) or tempo (parallax wave), not straight CA. Some require a lot of setup to break parity (smokestack), others cost you a lot of life to use (bob, library). Some are certainly pretty broken though (jitte, land tax). The closest true CA engine in that list is loam.

I still say none of these gives you what most walkers give you (free form of CA every turn for as long as the card is in play - with no consequences or drawbacks or cost other than the initial mana cost - the only decision you make is what free spell to use). Name another card that gives you effectively a free spell every turn indefinitely that doesn't come with some kind of cost/drawback/setup required attached to it? I'm sure there are a few, but it's a short list and I bet you'll find it falls into one of two buckets:
1. It's a really old card that is clearly broken to pieces and has not been reprinted because it's busted
2. The effect is either very small or it impacts both players equally (so breaking parity requires setup)

I'm more than willing to concede this point if you show cards that generate free CA with no cost/drawback/setup required. Just cast it and profit. I don't think there is any card like that that isn't on a plethora of banned lists.
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
ahadabans said:
@anotak

I like those cards you posted, but most of them aren't unlimited card advantage engines. A lot of them are one shot spells (gifts, gush). Some are more about filtering (top) or tempo (parallax wave), not straight CA. Some require a lot of setup to break parity (smokestack), others cost you a lot of life to use (bob, library). Some are certainly pretty broken though (jitte, land tax). The closest true CA engine in that list is loam.

I still say none of these gives you what most walkers give you (free form of CA every turn for as long as the card is in play - with no consequences or drawbacks or cost other than the initial mana cost - the only decision you make is what free spell to use). Name another card that gives you effectively a free spell every turn indefinitely that doesn't come with some kind of cost/drawback/setup required attached to it? I'm sure there are a few, but it's a short list and I bet you'll find it falls into one of two buckets:
1. It's a really old card that is clearly broken to pieces and has not been reprinted because it's busted
2. The effect is either very small or it impacts both players equally (so breaking parity requires setup)

I'm more than willing to concede this point if you show cards that generate free CA with no cost/drawback/setup required. Just cast it and profit. I don't think there is any card like that that isn't on a plethora of banned lists.
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Jesse G

Jesse G

I think the issue with your argument is the assumption that PWs have no "cost/drawback/setup required" as you put it. But they can be attacked.... that's the drawback. The cost is that you have to use resources to protect them by blocking, killing creatures you otherwise wouldn't, or using a +1 when you'd rather use a -2 etc... Also, staff of nin is pretty much pure, no drawback CA, with a little upside on top of it. It's just not costed super aggressively. I think the reason walkers bother so many people is that wotc do their best to make pretty much every pw constructed playable, so often they end up overpowered or too easy to just jam early and ride to victory.
There are plenty of non pw cards that act the same way

Edit: Laz ninja'd me on the staff of nin thing :p
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Well played. You got me on the staff. Not to be a sore loser or anything but that thing is unplayable at 6 mana. :)

I do not concede zone or bounty. Zone as a ramp spell is worse than wood elves 90% of the time. And the 0/1 tokens are useless outside other pieces. Bounty requires other cards to trigger so it is not free in the same way walker abilities are. The cost is other cards to play after it and 6 mana to get the effects the next turn.

I agree with the walkers being pushed comment. And that they are constrained by time (they need to live long enough to be worth the initial investment). They also offer a lot of in game decision points playing with and against them.

I still dislike the design. We'll have to agree to disagree. I freely acknowledge though that wizards has integrated them into the game well. It could have gone very badly but it didn't. If I had discovered the game post Lorwyn, I'd probably be a staunch defender. But I'm old and I liked the game before walkers. My opinion only though.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Jonas said:
I understand the debate on PW's on an academical level, but really, isn't this just a discussion about subjective fun, and that is about worst thing to try to change peoples minds about? And that is why we all run different cubes?
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Well stated. As long as the debate doesn't get mean though I don't see any harm in it. It's fun to share perspectives even if it's not really about changing minds. Most of the time, debate on even completely objective subjects has the same outcome anyway - sort of human nature really. Especially in this type of a setting (I don't mean that negatively). Everyone here knows a lot about Magic and likely has very well developed opinions about the game after years of playing it - that's normal and healthy. You wouldn't be posting in a cube forum if you were a noob and completely open to suggestion. And so most of us are not going to be easily swayed especially on subjects as major as a card type. Either you like PW's or you don't. Either you think protection is a good mechanic or you don't. Nothing any of us says is going to really change most of the fundamental beliefs we have about the game. Arguing card choices and arch type support is obviously a different matter.

So, I have totally hijacked this thread with my ranting and I apologize. Though in my defense, my userid was in the thread title so....uh... yeah... :)
 
Jonas

Jonas

Sorry if I came on as a bit crass in my post, I was a tad tired when I wrote it :p The discussion is pretty interesting to follow though, so by all means, carry on.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

FlowerSunRain said:
A three mana card, which would be completely playable already, has a FOUR MANA effect just randomly tacked on for no fucking reason!
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For people saying it seems out of place, it's clearly for flavor purposes only. This character was born and existed in flavor-land for however long, so they are almost definitely appealing to the MtG comic and EDH crowd.

Jason Waddell said:
Player 1 opens Forest, Lotus Petal, Channel, Island, Mana Crypt, Tinker, Blightsteel Colossus
Player 2 opens Black Lotus, Island, Dack Attack
The game lives on forever as a tweet. now happens on the reg in Vintage.
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Fixed

I can understand why you hate PW's, ahadabans. It is definitely consistent with how they've wanted to change the game. They realized that the best way to bring in new players is to streamline the experience more and force players to engage with the combat step. Being "in play" is to old-school magic as being "on the battlefield" is to modern magic. Old-school magic was a lot more about bizarre combos, unintuitive rules interactions and piles of counterspells than it was about attacking with creatures. Everything they've done since they realized this has worked against that: make creatures way more powerful, make counterspells more terrible, remove stacking damage, reduce shenanigans, and create planeswalkers.

Since planeswalkers are essentially little mini-players that are easier to kill, they create a strong incentive for the opponent to be on the attack, with an even greater degree of urgency than attacking and killing the actual player to win the game. It pushes aggressive creature-based strategies as well as encouraging control players to use creatures, both to attack and kill other control players' walkers and to defend their own. It's actually kind of an elegant solution for pushing the combat step without changing the rules of arbitrarily starting with 20 life.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I still maintain that the link between damage and PW loyalty is one of the cleverest things in modern Magic, and brings some of the interactive resource conversion that defines a game like Netrunner.

I take issue with some of the other rules surrounding PWs (they really create terrible board states in multiples), and some of the designs (PWs the create creatures are notoriously annoying) and surrounding designs (insufficient cards that say "target planeswalker"), but on the whole I love the design.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Very good summary Diakonov and I agree with your assessment.

I've beat this horse pretty dead so saying anymore is just going to be a broken record I think. But I do want to reiterate again that although I personally dislike walkers I do think Wizard's has done an admirable job evolving the game and integrating a new card type into it. That was not an easy thing to do and it certainly could have been much worse. As a game designer myself (purely a hobbiest), I know how hard it is to do what they did.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Jason Waddell said:
I still maintain that the link between damage and PW loyalty is one of the cleverest things in modern Magic, and brings some of the interactive resource conversion that defines a game like Netrunner.

I take issue with some of the other rules surrounding PWs (they really create terrible board states in multiples), and some of the designs (PWs the create creatures are notoriously annoying) and surrounding designs (insufficient cards that say "target planeswalker"), but on the whole I love the design.
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I agree that the mechanic is very clever. Again, how Wizard's integrated walkers into the game really couldn't have been done any better. But by the same token, I think the mechanic itself is exceptionally hard to balance (and that ties in with the design issues you cited). Balancing cards was always tricky (just look at the banned list - mistakes happen all the time), but it's even worse with walkers because they have an additional dimension to them (time) that other cards don't really have (enchantments/artifacts work on a similar principle, but most of them have ongoing costs so it's muted compared to walkers whose abilities are always free and ultimately snowball as time progresses).

In short (and IMHO only), walkers added a layer of complexity to a game that really didn't need it. Just my perspective though.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
ahadabans said:
I agree that the mechanic is very clever. Again, how Wizard's integrated walkers into the game really couldn't have been done any better. But by the same token, I think the mechanic itself is exceptionally hard to balance (and that ties in with the design issues you cited). Balancing cards was always tricky (just look at the banned list - mistakes happen all the time), but it's even worse with walkers because they have an additional dimension to them (time) that other cards don't really have (enchantments/artifacts work on a similar principle, but most of them have ongoing costs so it's muted compared to walkers whose abilities are always free and ultimately snowball as time progresses).

In short (and IMHO only), walkers added a layer of complexity to a game that really didn't need it. Just my perspective though.
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I will say, when I first started my cube, PWs were the card type I was most excited about. I had never played a, for example, Garruk Wildspeaker deck, and being able to jam those bad boys into 40-carders was incredibly novel. I still find it fun, running stuff like Domri Rade and new Chandra, cards I wouldn't otherwise get to really experience first-hand.
 
Jesse G

Jesse G

Same here. Planeswalkers are totally my guilty pleasure in cube... I play them whenever it makes sense, and sometimes when it doesnt. Nothing tempts me to add a color (or two) more than opening Kiora or wildspeaker something...
One time I decided to see if Liliana of the veil and Tamiyo would work in my relatively low powered list..... they each hit the battlefield exactly once before i realized my mistake. :p
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I had a similar experience but with a lot of the older classics. I'd never played with balance or tangle wire before (among many others). Didn't take me long to see how busted they were (balance has since left the cube but tangle wire is still around for now). As far as walkers, I only played with the original 5 (well, 4 - I never ran Chandra 1.0 in anything).
 
CML

CML

Contributor
this entire debate is a giant waste of time. has anyone played with the card yet? (i haven't)
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Changling Bob said:
They have stripped out several layers of complexity and apparent complexity to put them in though. I understand the point you're getting at there though.
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i really beef with the walkers that don't really have multiple abilities (or it's obvious when to use ability x, or when ability x appears to have a choice but doesn't. Here are some PWs whose design pisses me off

Ajani Goldmane -- only has a -1
Jace, Architect of Thought -- has anyone ever split a -2 pile incorrectly?
Gideon Jura -- just miserable
Tibalt -- stupid

for the most part i like all the other ones and find them rich in decision-making possibilities
 
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