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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

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Prompted by the ridiculous amount of Aether Revolt includes in my cube, I did a count on my cube to see which blocks contribute the most cards. Aether Revolt has to be my favorite block ever, it encourages everything I love about Magic, and hits exactly the right note on all fronts. The mechanics, the flavor, the story, the power level, the synergies. I'm talking "if I was forced to marry a Magic the Gathering block, Kaladesh would be my bride"-levels of satistfaction. Anyway, the count! I'm going by earliest printing (not counting Duel Deck and From the Vault previews) here, so the Kaladesh Inspired Charge in my cube counts for Magic 2011, for example. I also split out the lands, because they often come in cycles, artificially upping the count for certain blocks.

KLD block: 110
SOI block: 37
BFZ block: 12
Origins: 17
KTK block: 19
THS block: 13 + 5 lands
RTR block: 18
INN block: 20
SOM block: 15
ZEN block: 10 + 4 lands
ALA block: 14 + 3 lands (borderposts)
LRW/SHM blocks: 8
TSP block: 5
RAV block: 12 + 15 lands
pre-RAV expert sets: 52 + 6 lands
pre-Origins core sets: 18
Other (commander, planechase, Coldsnap, etc.): 22
Custom cards: 13 + 12 lands (2 of which are custom borderposts)

Original Ravnica is the last block with a significant number of includes, original Mirrodin has the most includes (9) of the pre-Ravnica blocks.

If I'm not counting the lands, my favorite blocks are Kaladesh, then nothing for a looooong time, then Shadows over Innistrad, then nothing for a while again, and then original Innistrad, Khans of Tarkir, Return to Ravnica, and Origins, all very close together. Invasion, the first set I ever played with, and probably my favorite before Kaladesh, is the old-bordered block with the most includes (6).

Does all this information tell you anything important? No, not likely, but I had fun figuring this out anyway :)
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

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Taamas said:
I think it says that the last sets have been very interesting for limited environments! Can't wait for Amonkhet.
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Haha, fair enough :) Yeah, I think they hit it out of the ballpark, with Kaladesh especially. Shadows over Innistrad still has its unbeatable bombs, but Kaladesh really is a rich environment where you can draft a lot of different, fun archetypes. The energy mechanic (which I really, really hope will return sooner rather than later) is a bit poisonous, or at least not backwards compatible, but I really love it. it's one of the reasons the block is so overrepresented in my cube, because I want energy in my cube, and the mechanic works best when it's well supported. Still, there's 29 energy cards in my cube, which still amounts to a ridiculous 81 non-energy cards from the set, and that's because the other mechanics are all very, very open-ended and ridiculously backwards compatible. It seems like every other card in the set does something cool with a bunch of older cards.
 
japahn

japahn

Is that the first appearance of each card in your cube? Did you count that by hand? Would be nice to share a script, if there is one, because I'm curious about my cube but not enough to look up 840 cards =)
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

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japahn said:
Is that the first appearance of each card in your cube? Did you count that by hand? Would be nice to share a script, if there is one, because I'm curious about my cube but not enough to look up 840 cards =)
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Yeah... I did that by hand, sorry. I'm sure it's possible (and maybe quite easy, given the export formats) to make a script, but sadly I'm a software tester, not a software developer. I can tell you when something doesn't work, but I can't fix it for you ;)
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

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Chris Taylor said:
Get into unit testing :p
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I'm blessed with developers who take unit testing (and regression testing) seriously. The bugs I find are often related to useability, corner cases, or a different interpretation of ambiguous specifications. Mostly though, the difference between a developer and a tester is that a developer checks whether their code works, and the tester checks whether they can get the code to not work, and the tester's approach tends to find a lot more bugs ^_^
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
japahn said:
Is that the first appearance of each card in your cube? Did you count that by hand? Would be nice to share a script, if there is one, because I'm curious about my cube but not enough to look up 840 cards =)
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You can actually do this with CubeTutor - if for every card you add to your cube, you select the card's first printing, rather than the actual card that you own. It'll make your CubeTutor list less pretty, as any sweet judge promos and stuff like that won't be represented online, but on the bright side you can get a better sense of which sets are contributing to your cube.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Actually if you do that there is still an option to make your CubeTutor 'pretty'

All you gotta do is be a supporting Patreon (Champion) and upload pictures for your cards.

Say you own a foil Swords to Plowshares but want Alpha Swords on your list: Change your list to Alpha Swords, become a Champion, download a picture of your foil Swords (from Starcitygames or any other place) and upload it on top of your Alpha version. This way it is listed as an Alpha version for statistics but is shown as a foil version on the Visual Spoiler.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Taamas said:
A perfect example of lovecraftian horror done wrong. That's probably why I didn't like the Battle for Zendikar block and eldrazis in general.
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You've gotta give it to Wizards of the Coast. How poorly the story was written was a horror story in itself.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Chris Taylor said:
The issue does tend to be the classic DND thing: If you stat it, they will kill it.
No matter how big, no matter how indestructible, now matter how over the top, it's still mortal if it's on a card

The issue being: the big 3 are the face of this whole set. Wotc Marketing was centered around them, if they were missing from the set they'd kick themselves at all the lost profit.

This makes a lot more sense in original zendikar, with it's more DnD type setting where they were just the next monster to be killed.
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Agreed. When Wizards printed Newlamog I was like: "Yep, no God shuffling, they're going down!"

Cause Wizards' explanation in Rise to their last ability (the shuffle) was that the Eldrazi was immortal and could never leave the game. They kind of gave it away when they printed the new ones without their immortal-ness.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I do want to reiterate that my issue comes with the fantasy being presented, not of the actual expression of the monster. In DnD, the Terrasque (sp?) is statted, and is killable, despite having a similar "god shuffling" effect. This is fine because DnD doesn't tend to pit players in "you lose" type situations, the fantasy is about being a hero, triumphing. Magic has a similar fantasy, what with the (mostly) even playing field and strategic emphasis.

Cuthulu, or cosmic horror (the fantasy being aped in eldrich moon specifically) is all about "you lose" type scenarios. It's about something so vast it doesn't even care about you, much less beating you. It's VERY important that Cuthulu not only isn't killable, but can't even be engaged with. You specifically can't win against them, which presents balance problems if they're on cardboard, and thematic dissonance if they're on cardboard but killable (God shuffling mechanic or no).

I heard a lot of people complaining about how tired they were of the eldrazi (which is weird considering the completly different themes being explored), and how the eldrazi on zendikar hardly felt different than traditional antagonists like the phyrexians or....fuck I dunno. Mercadia.

I think this is mostly due to the fact that most of magic design is through a very heroic lens, and while wotc thought they had something different with eldrich moon it wasn't recieved that way by players.

You could make a set about magic that tried to communicate something different, but you'd have to build it from the ground up despite magic's rules, not because of it.

Through a certain lens early magic sounds a lot like depression: very few of your cards actually do anything, there's a tendancy towards defensive nature and going through the motions each turn with overly complicated abilities, so you keep going and finally resolve a serra angel, only for your opponent to tap knowingly on their trio of maze of ith's they've had in play for ages, so you sigh, and eventually one of you decks.

People remember the cards like necropotence and sol ring, but I imagine this is more to what legends and homelands limited actually felt like.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

I think the only way you could properly tell a Lovecraftian story in Magic would be to focus on saving what you can in a hopeless situation.

Ironically, Chris you mentioned the Phyrexians, who actually succeeded in conquering an entire plane. I would say those stories should have been swapped, except since the Phyrexians lost against Dominaria they needed a win.

The Eldrazi story could have been about creating Rathi-style portals to transport people out of Zendikar before the plane was consumed, with most people not surviving. That would have still allowed for combat-oriented situations while allowing the block to have a unique theme. Mechanically, ROE essentially worked this way, because if you took too long against an Eldrazi opponent they would eventually start landing titans that would overwhelm you.
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

Diakonov said:
The Eldrazi story could have been about creating Rathi-style portals to transport people out of Zendikar before the plane was consumed, with most people not surviving. That would have still allowed for combat-oriented situations while allowing the block to have a unique theme. Mechanically, ROE essentially worked this way, because if you took too long against an Eldrazi opponent they would eventually start landing titans that would overwhelm you.
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A functional reprint of Barren Glory feels super flavorful in this kind of story. You could flavor it so that it's your last look at the plane as its destroyed right before you get out. It feels a little intriguing against annihilator too. The card's still bad but man, the story it would tell.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

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Fulcrum said:


A functional reprint of Barren Glory feels super flavorful in this kind of story. You could flavor it so that it's your last look at the plane as its destroyed right before you get out. It feels a little intriguing against annihilator too. The card's still bad but man, the story it would tell.
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How would leaving behind a barren plane on the brink of destruction count as victory though? That's not winning the game, it's losing the match!
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

Onderzeeboot said:
How would leaving behind a barren plane on the brink of destruction count as victory though? That's not winning the game, it's losing the match!
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I was thinking of it being something like, when you're going against something you have 0% chance at beating, getting away with your life is pretty
good.
 
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