General Best designed Magic card of all time

T

Tanner K.

My favorite thing about Clique, from a design standpoint, is that it's sometimes right to not use the ability, and very occasionally right to target yourself.
 
Goldenpineapple

Goldenpineapple

I actually dislike that about it. It's not that you don't use the ability (the way you sometimes don't + a liliana of the veil), you just choose not to take a card. You still get to look at their hand. Choosing yourself is one of those gimmicky things that actually just puts blue over the edge from the rest of the colors (remanding your own spell to save it from a counterflux you can't deal with etc.). The next-closest things any other color can do is killing your opponent with sign in blood or using an edict + health on yourself to stay in the game. Also the flavor difference they were going for between black's "reveals their hand" and blue's "look at their hand" feels off when you're pilfering a card.
 
Lucre

Lucre

Jason Waddell said:
Shriekmaw is fine, but I don't really consider a rather bland modal card to be in contention for "best design of all time".
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I just feel like it can't be a staple effect and it really shouldn't be a niche or flashy effect. I think it needs to be something that exemplifies understanding and has good landmarks that show that understanding and negotiation and can prove that forethought through play.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Lucre said:
I just feel like it can't be a staple effect and it really shouldn't be a niche or flashy effect. I think it needs to be something that exemplifies understanding and has good landmarks that show that understanding and negotiation and can prove that forethought through play.
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I don't necesserily agree. Recoil is the definition of staple effects, but it creates play opportunities that those staple effects can't achieve on their own. It is also a very elegant design. The more complex the card, the less likely I would vote for it in a 'best design' poll. I don't think Vendilion Clique is the best design, for example, because it is a rather wordy and "complicated" amalgation of keywords and rules text. It does provide a lot of play, and I find playing it immensely satisfying, but it's not as elegant in its execution as Recoil, despite the latter only consisting of staple effects :)
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

To me, it's not about elegance or a card having a ton of play to it (though I certainly appreciate those things). I think if something is designed well the game will play better when that card is drawn.

Clique does that by having a ton of depth, offering a lot of choices and opportunities to make mistakes or clever plays. Something like magma jet does that through Scry and not being over the power curve. It's a much simpler card but has a very good effect on the game nonetheless. I don't think lightning bolt makes most games better because it does too much for the mana cost.

This is all highly subjective though. And it's very difficult to separate favorite from best designed.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I like Mulldrifter too, but it's a very Level 1 card. There's really no counterplay, which I think would be a plus for "best designed blah blah".
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
ahadabans said:
To me, it's not about elegance or a card having a ton of play to it (though I certainly appreciate those things). I think if something is designed well the game will play better when that card is drawn.

Clique does that by having a ton of depth, offering a lot of choices and opportunities to make mistakes or clever plays. Something like magma jet does that through Scry and not being over the power curve. It's a much simpler card but has a very good effect on the game nonetheless. I don't think lightning bolt makes most games better because it does too much for the mana cost.

This is all highly subjective though. And it's very difficult to separate favorite from best designed.
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Yeah, the whole problem is that "best" is very subjective in both what it constitutes and how you apply whatever criteria you use to the card. Flavor and the color pie, to me, is less important than the card actually being good.

For example, while clique is less elegant than other cards in the abstract, when I consider how much depth it adds to the game, i.m.o it starts to look like a triumph of elegant design.
 
Lucre

Lucre

In my post I described how much play to it shriekmaw had. Maybe I only hinted at it's elegance.

I dispute that recoil is a true paragon of staple effects as you attest. I believe it is conplex and in the negotiated vein of cards like shriekmaw and harrow that I sort of associate with uncommons. Certainly it amounts to something very common in most instances, but it has a lot of nuance there and it breaks the mold a little. It has found a little way to fix the difference between boomerangs and their ilk and the card disadvantage inherent in such cheap hard removal spells (hard in this case removing to it's ubiquity). It does this by opening up a lot of control of the situation to your opponent, depending far more on your decision making then a terror in hand might.

I feel like mulldrifter is the inferior example between the two cards for a number of reasons I considered before. For colour situation reasons or the costing reasons alone.

How much do we expect counter play to be inherent in a cards design, shall we evauate it's original situation too? I find that prospect daunting. How much history do we take into account? Shall we look at giant growth with our educated eyes or ones used to playing with alpha?

I'm curious here, do we consider courser a great entry because we are happy with it and it is somewhat revolutionary? Because formats have appreciated it? Do we give clique merit for selfless reasons? When we think of blue is it efficient evasive beaters, disruption and discard abilities we think of? I love it, it's revolutionary, but the card is obviously problematic and definitely cobtributed to a weighted format.

As for blade splicer that creature makes me very sad for green.

Eternal Witness, I remember, after the artifact land banning a from standard (the 2nd issue of bans from a single standard set) I started counting down the days wondering when they might ban witness. It was in like 2/3s of decks in standard and was incredibly frustrating to fight against. I like that card, but god does it's current presence not reflect my experience.
 
Goldenpineapple

Goldenpineapple

The problem I have with calling cards that are creatures with spells stapled onto them well-designed, much less best-designed, is that they are often side-creations of the mechanics that produce them. Shriekmaw and mulldrifter both being prime examples.

They weren't designed as "this one spell we all know and love, which can also be a creature if you kick it," they were designed as "alright Dave came up with this 'elementals are essentially spells with bodies, so what if you have these elementals that you can not-quite summon to get their spell but not their body' idea and we're going to run with it," and then they cherry-picked some effects and slapped them on bodies.

Of course I don't ACTUALLY know how cards/mechanics come into existence, but that is the general feel a particularly-good / well-oiled card that is simple part of a larger picture gives me. I don't want to nitpick and be all "if a card is just the posterboy for this one mechanic that is everywhere in this set/block it can't be best-designed because they were just pushing their fancy new mechanic," because for all I know the card could have come first, and it was so nice they decided they wanted to make a mechanic out of it- I just feel that a more unique card that isn't "this one card also this" is much more impressive design-wise. Bold for tl;dr effect.

My argument against blade splicer is essentially a design definition: all of the splicers have the same design in my eyes.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
So, all of this talk got me interested in Clique's actual design, and I found this article, which was fascinating.

Relevant parts extracted and quoted below:

The Vendilion clique is a trio of faeries: Veesa (female), Endry (male, the twin brother of Veesa), and Iliona (the largest and often bossiest of the three)—the name "Vendilion" comes from a combination of their three names. Like all faeries, they purport to work for Oona, the Queen of the Fae (who, according to legend, lurks behind layers of deception and glamer in a valley called Glen Elendra). The one thing Oona would need, as a powerful being who never ventures from her magical vale, is spies—and that's where the Vendilion clique come in. They serve as Oona's eyes and ears in Lorwyn at large, keeping tabs on certain elves, flamekin, and treefolk as needed, so that Oona's plans—whatever they are—will not be interrupted when the time comes.
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When it came time to make a legendary creature card of the Vendilion clique, Creative's role was pretty narrow. We just repeated over and over again, "They're magical spies. They're mischievous." A lot of design candidates were proposed and rejected, usually for being too annoying. As it turns out, being the eyes and ears of Oona is difficult to translate into mechanics while still making an interesting, powerful Magic card. And since the card was to represent all three of these faeries, each important characters to the novel in their own right, I was personally hoping that the card would reflect their "threedom" somehow.
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Vendilion Clique is a powerful card that centers on its three properties (yay), given that flying is a freebie:
  1. Flash (also known as the tendency of the fae to show up exactly when they aren't wanted)
  2. 3 power (also known as the combined fighting prowess of Veesa, Endry, and Iliona—it probably goes without saying that this "three faeries, three power" thing pleases me to no end—the only thing that might please me more is if the card somehow got +3/+3 instead of +1/+1 from a Scion of Oona)
  3. Their hand-affecting ability (also known as their mischievous power of magical spying for Maralen or their Queen).
Flash combined with 3 power gives them a powerful way to remove an attacker via blocking and trading, sort of like a blue Neck Snap. That fits perfectly into the Faerie tribal strategy of sitting there with mana open, waiting for your opponent to do something dumb to you like attack, and then punishing them for it. The Clique's evasive 3 power for three mana (another three—yay) also makes them a formidable threat, with an option for pseudo-haste if you cast them at the end of your opponent's turn.

The Clique's final ability is what sets them apart from other Faeries. When they come into play, you get to use the Clique as your eyes and ears, allowing you to spy on your opponent's secret plans.

And you get to mess with them.

I'm very fond of how mischievous this ability feels. It doesn't just straight-up Coercion your opponent. It doesn't Meddling Mage him, locking out a spell from his hand. In fact, the Clique gives your opponent the chance to draw into something better than what he had before, or even another copy of that same troublesome spell you selected. But most of the time, it'll give him something way worse than what he had squirreled away. The Vendilion Clique are likely to reach into your opponent's mind, find his most treasured thought, and touch it with faerie mischief, turning it into either harmless memories of a location (a land) or a vision more pleasant to you (some less innocuous spell).
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CoopsVBD

CoopsVBD



I've been really impressed lately with Stab Wound. This is the kind of card that seems innocent (-2/-2, who cares) but It's remarkably deep. Do you use it as straight removal, or hamstring a larger creature? How do you attack into a stabbed creature? How do you block one?

I've had several agonizing moments in m15 draft when I had to choose to either keep up my creature assault or stab the other guy's fattie and play defense. It completely changes the game from a brawl into a calculated race against the clock. I had to guess at the future: which strategy can the opponent draw out of? Can I survive for 3 more turns while the clock ticks down? You almost never see removal that has this kind of impact on the game beyond the creature it's targeting. Plus the flavor! All this from a 3 mana enchantment.

Now best card ever designed? No, but I'm sticking with Stab Wound.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
ahadabans said:
Let me see what I can do. I really like Expunge but I only have so much room for kill spells at 3cc.
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fuck it, try 'em both

i told my group i was gonna add stab wound and they told me not to so i am going to ignore them

i am certain there will be an uprising should expunge ever leave

remember that with corpse dance and victimize i have a lot more BS at 3 than most of y'all
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

CML said:
fuck it, try 'em both

i told my group i was gonna add stab wound and they told me not to so i am going to ignore them

i am certain there will be an uprising should expunge ever leave

remember that with corpse dance and victimize i have a lot more BS at 3 than most of y'all
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Yup. You are totally right. Turns out my last round of tweaks dropped a lot of my non-creature kill stuff, so it makes sense to run both of them.

And for the record I probably run just as much BS in my cube (Haakon for instance and I'm tossing in Necropotence against my better judgment - will probably regret that move).
 
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