Sets (ONE) Phyrexia: All Will Be One Previews

[Onderzeeboot]

Kicker is an example of not a good keyword, it only tells you that you can pay additional but what it does is unknown.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. Like, a lot. Because reminder text actually is ignored by those in the know, here's the difference between keyworded kicker and written out kicker.

Exhibit 1A
Sorcery
Kicker
Target player discards two cards. If this spell was kicked, it deals 3 damage to that player.

Exhibit 1B
Sorcery
You may pay an additional as you cast this spell.
Target player discards two cards. If you paid an additional , Exhibit 1B deals 3 damage to that player.

Kicker is much shorter, and requires experienced players to read a lot less words (and it's not just one card in a set either). This alone makes it worthy of being keyworded, in my opinion. However, this isn't even the only reason why it's a good thing to keyword.

Exhibit 2:


Another benefit of keywording things, correctly identified by MaRo, is that you can riff off of them and make payoff cards. Sure, you could maybe rewrite this as "Whenever you cast a spell, if you paid an additional cost to cast that spell", but that generally uses more words, and it usually makes the effect much broader, which isn't something you always want. For example, Astral Slide would be horrifying if it triggered on discarding just any card.

 

[Rusje]

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. Like, a lot. Because reminder text actually is ignored by those in the know, here's the difference between keyworded kicker and written out kicker.

Exhibit 1A
Sorcery
Kicker
Target player discards two cards. If this spell was kicked, it deals 3 damage to that player.

Exhibit 1B
Sorcery
You may pay an additional as you cast this spell.
Target player discards two cards. If you paid an additional , Exhibit 1B deals 3 damage to that player.

Kicker is much shorter, and requires experienced players to read a lot less words (and it's not just one card in a set either). This alone makes it worthy of being keyworded, in my opinion. However, this isn't even the only reason why it's a good thing to keyword.

Exhibit 2:


Another benefit of keywording things, correctly identified by MaRo, is that you can riff off of them and make payoff cards. Sure, you could maybe rewrite this as "Whenever you cast a spell, if you paid an additional cost to cast that spell", but that generally uses more words, and it usually makes the effect much broader, which isn't something you always want. For example, Astral Slide would be horrifying if it triggered on discarding just any card.

Sorry, I disagree. Especially with multiple kickers on a card. Then it is really difficult. Yes, kicker keyword tells you that something is up, which is nice.
But what it does is not clear unless you went through the whole card. Kicker is actually more like an ability word like channel. Yes it helps you to tell you that you can do something but what it does for this ability is not clear unless you read whenever you play for the kicker do this. You can still riff of an ability card if you wish.

Flying, trample, shadow, protection (from), and yes even banding is a keyword since you do not need to read further than the (extended) keyword. What it does is always the same (costs and protection from what can differ, but still).

If you find ability words also keywords than fine, but a keyword keyword does always the same and a ability keyword makes you read the whole ability keyword part. Yes, it can reduce some mental load to have ability keywords but it can also introduce mental load, e.g,


edit: exhibit c:
Kicker r: ~ deals 3 damage to that player
target opponent discards a card

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So, I think the reason the keyword and the effect are disconnected in the text is because they apply at different times. The kicker cost is paid (or not) when casting the spell, but the effect of paying that kicker cost happens at another time, e.g. when the spell resolves, the creature enters the battlefield, or at the beginning of you end step. There's lots of mechanics that are decoupled, but I don't believe that is a reason for not keywording those mechanics, nor do I agree they would be clearer without a keyword.



I think kicker's major sin is not that it's a keyword. The reason you don't know what a card with kicker does when you read a card has kicker is because the mechanic is too broad. All of the above cards are basically just narrower variants of kicker, which means most of those keywords convey a bit more information on how cards with those mechanics play out. I can see you feel very strongly about this though, and there's nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree

 

[Rusje]

So, I think the reason the keyword and the effect are disconnected in the text is because they apply at different times. The kicker cost is paid (or not) when casting the spell, but the effect of paying that kicker cost happens at another time, e.g. when the spell resolves, the creature enters the battlefield, or at the beginning of you end step. There's lots of mechanics that are decoupled, but I don't believe that is a reason for not keywording those mechanics, nor do I agree they would be clearer without a keyword.



I think kicker's major sin is not that it's a keyword. The reason you don't know what a card with kicker does when you read a card has kicker is because the mechanic is too broad. All of the above cards are basically just narrower variants of kicker, which means most of those keywords convey a bit more information on how cards with those mechanics play out. I can see you feel very strongly about this though, and there's nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree

I find it weird that one like channel is not a keyword and kicker is. It could be that this is due to the decoupling. But that is just a rules thing that can be solved. These keywords you have showed are also an example of that you do not know what this ability does unless you read the whole card. Maybe this has to do with me parsing a card in a programming way. Maybe that is why entwine reads easier for me. However the cleave mechanic, which could be used to do the same as entwine is a great example of how to NOT write code.

I just like things simple, magic with simple cards can become tremendous complicated. Anything that makes cards easier to understand without a lot of baggage is a win. That is why reverse kicker like skizzik is so weird.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

However the cleave mechanic, which could be used to do the same as entwine is a great example of how to NOT write code.

Hahaha, I can definitely agree that cleave is horrendous. It may be my least favorite keyword ever for how ugly and unreadable it makes the cards

I just like things simple, magic with simple cards can become tremendous complicated. Anything that makes cards easier to understand without a lot of baggage is a win. That is why reverse kicker like skizzik is so weird.

When I see kicker, I immediately shortcut to “oh, kicker, so pay extra for an improved or extra effect.” That’s a useful shorthand, that makes it easier to parse the card, because you know broadly what to expect, even if you don’t know exactly what the card does. I do agree exceptions to the general rule like Skizzik make it a little bit weird.

 

[Humpty_Dumpty]

You can still riff of an ability card if you wish.

I find it weird that one like channel is not a keyword and kicker is.

You can’t reference ability words mechanically in the same way you can keywords. MaRo confirmed this in an article last year:

Ability Word – This is a mechanic that doesn't have an official keyword but has an informal name to help players identify and talk about the mechanic. The name appears in italics before the rules text. The text doesn't have to be exact as with a keyword, just share a general sense of doing something similar. You can remove an ability word, and the card would work identically. Note that this is slightly different than a flavor word, which I define below. From a design standpoint, the important thing to note about an ability word is that you can't refer to it mechanically.

I don’t know why you can’t reference an ability word, but there you go. I agree that it is odd that Channel is not a keyword, but it may be a good thing that it isn’t. I like Containment Construct as an open-ended card that can play off all sorts of discard, but would be uninterested if it only worked with channeled cards.

 

[Rusje]

Hahaha, I can definitely agree that cleave is horrendous. It may be my least favorite keyword ever for how ugly and unreadable it makes the cards

When I see kicker, I immediately shortcut to “oh, kicker, so pay extra for an improved or extra effect.” That’s a useful shorthand, that makes it easier to parse the card, because you know broadly what to expect, even if you don’t know exactly what the card does. I do agree exceptions to the general rule like Skizzik make it a little bit weird.

I also immediately shortcut. But I do the same with channel. The area is gray, e.g., we have cycling, cards with cycling that actually behave like channel cards (with a draw added), and we have channel cards.

Channel cards read cleaner to me than cycling which do something when you cycle. Similarly, kicker is even easier for me to parse when it is done in a channel way.

You can’t reference ability words mechanically in the same way you can keywords. MaRo confirmed this in an article last year:

I don’t know why you can’t reference an ability word, but there you go. I agree that it is odd that Channel is not a keyword, but it may be a good thing that it isn’t. I like Containment Construct as an open-ended card that can play off all sorts of discard, but would be uninterested if it only worked with channeled cards.

You can’t because they did not yet put it in there rules. Why baffles me. I would like it if you can reference it. In that case you could make stronger cards than the construct but more restricted.
Nowadays, astral slide does not do a lot. Would it seriously be much stronger than other cards when it is any discard? There is a end of turn clause so no insta hand discard with ravenous rats. I think no one bats an eye.

 

[landofMordor]

i feel like it's relevant to link a thing i wrote about complexity recently: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/defining-optimizing-complexity.3633/

Somewhere along the path they made the mistake of making many different keywords each set

I think it's more correct to say they made a design decision. As you increase keywords, complexity goes up, but fun scales nonlinearly with complexity.

A game that's not sufficiently complex isn't fun! Magic would be less fun if every creature was vanilla, or if stack interaction didn't exist. I reject the claim that more mechanics and keywords leads to bad Magic by default. At the same time, a game that's too complex isn't fun, either. I've certainly played Magic formats (Unfinity, The Devoid Cube) that were overwhelming and less enjoyable. So it is also untrue to argue that more mechanics is good for Magic by default.

Instead, there's a bell curve or landscape of fun as a function of complexity, and some optimum of complexity that leads to the most fun for a given player. I think it's important to anchor discussion of Magic's complexity in the realization that ludic fun is subjective and personal. There's no arguments to be won, here, just opinions that we all need to respect.

---

More constructive, I think, is design-oriented analysis of what mechanics work for you and why.

E.g., I think Retail Limited draft formats (even NEO and co.) are relatively simple. A newcomer to Magic doesn't know that transforming Sagas are new -- they absorb it just like they do Flying and First Strike. And because NEO repeats those mechanics over and over in every pack, a newcomer gets to shortcut the 2nd, 3rd, and 10th instances of these mechanics. There are even plentiful duplicate cards to ease comprehension once you're over the initial barrier.

Yeah, NEO is more complex than MMQ, but contrast NEO to a random Riptide cube instead! My main cube has like 80+ unique mechanics and 360 unique cards. The only reason we cube curators can even conceptualize our formats is years of experience and memorization of these cards -- name a card in my cube, and I'll probably be able to give you the exact rules text for it by memory. We're all so deeply engaged with Magic that we take that huge complexity barrier for granted.

(And while we're here, it's worth noting that we only bother to memorize old cards that are well-designed. So there's a huge selection bias. NEO and ONE's most complex cards are still better than Dead Ringers.)

---

Cube actually has a lower complexity threshold than Draft or Commander, and I think that's why these spoiler threads always degenerate into complexity-talk.

It's because we're planning to abduct 1-10 cards from their context, and plop them in these enormously complex formats where the new cards add to 30 years of design complexity and compete against 30 years of design elegance. No wonder the new stuff can't keep up.

 

[Rusje]

i feel like it's relevant to link a thing i wrote about complexity recently: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/defining-optimizing-complexity.3633/




Yeah, NEO is more complex than MMQ, but contrast NEO to a random Riptide cube instead! My main cube has like 80+ unique mechanics and 360 unique cards. The only reason we cube curators can even conceptualize our formats is years of experience and memorization of these cards -- name a card in my cube, and I'll probably be able to give you the exact rules text for it by memory. We're all so deeply engaged with Magic that we take that huge complexity barrier for granted.

(And while we're here, it's worth noting that we only bother to memorize old cards that are well-designed. So there's a huge selection bias. NEO and ONE's most complex cards are still better than Dead Ringers.)

---

I asked before, never ever mention the abomination of the ringers.

That you can name all the rules and can handle the complexity is because you curate it and spent years in the game.
I cater for my playgroup and those do not know the cube by heart, do not want the complexity of 60 keywords and so on.
You are correct that the fun is like a bell shape, but that shape is different for each player. It is possible to make fun and decision complex draft sets that are fun for starters and have depth for the entrenched players. It is difficult, but I think they can do better than just throw a big number of new keywords.

Edit: and I am a tad jealous that your playgroup can handle the complexity

 

[LadyMapi]

Honestly, I feel like a bigger issue is that new cards with old mechanics tend to not play very nicely with older instances of that mechanic. I noticed that when I was working on my very kicker-heavy cube — like, it's not super bad, but you can tell that creatures have gotten bigger over time. Which is a shame, because I want the cube to be at a power level where these dudes are playable:



That's what honestly makes a lot of Modern "pushed" designs really annoying. Yeah, sure, Kalonian Tusker with upsides might be balanced in 2023 Magic, but including it in my cube either means that I'm dumping a bunch of cool old cards or that it's a big power outlier. I blame Commander, honestly (what a surprise!) — the most popular format having 6x as much life to chew through means that WotC has a big incentive to keep making creatures bigger and bigger.

---

To bring things back to the set at hand:

The big problem with Infect creatures is that most of them were boring French Vanilla creatures that just so happened to be printed with one of the most powerful hyper-aggro keywords ever devised. Like, here are all of the infect creatures that you could theoretically run in a deck that wasn't trying to kill people through poison counters:



And all of those cards are pretty marginal. Hopefully, Toxic + Corrupted will lead to a much better play experience — I hope Skrelv's Hive won't be the only Corrupted card that can self-support, since those are really the cards you want if you're cubing the mechanic. That said...

I'm a little annoyed that they attached poison counters to creatures again. I've always felt like the whole poison counter + proliferate thing naturally lends itself towards control, both mechanically and thematically, so it was honestly a pretty big misstep that the only non-creature ways of slapping poison on people were:



With the only non-creature payoff for having a poisoned opponent being:

 

[landofMordor]

I asked before, never ever mention the abomination of the ringers.

haha oops

That you can name all the rules and can handle the complexity is because you curate it and spent years in the game.
I cater for my playgroup and those do not know the cube by heart, do not want the complexity of 60 keywords and so on.

I also try to cater to this, increasingly so.

I took a look at the cube in your signature. It is extraordinarily simple relative to most Cubes (with heavy non-singleton, and mechanics focusing on a single block), but it still assumes that your drafters played Magic in the aughts, know what Regenerate does, are able to understand outdated rules text, etc. I do think any cube curator tends to underestimate their cube's complexity barrier, but you've done a great job in reducing it.

(Honest question, tho: why are you following spoilers if your main/only cube is limited to Urza Block?)

 

[blacksmithy]

complexity creep? never heard of it

*cackles in squadron picks, spellbook drafting, conjuring, custom cards, erratad cards, official cards with unofficial art, Attractions, special draft rules…*

 

[Rusje]

haha oops

I also try to cater to this, increasingly so.

I took a look at the cube in your signature. It is extraordinarily simple relative to most Cubes (with heavy non-singleton, and mechanics focusing on a single block), but it still assumes that your drafters played Magic in the aughts, know what Regenerate does, are able to understand outdated rules text, etc. I do think any cube curator tends to underestimate their cube's complexity barrier, but you've done a great job in reducing it.

(Honest question, tho: why are you following spoilers if your main/only cube is limited to Urza Block?)

Simple, cater to the playgroup (and a bit of accessibility). Most of the people I play with are familiar with the old rules but do not remember all the cards anymore. Also they stopped playing after mirrodin.
Most of the players do know regenerate but are overwhelmed with too many different abilities/choices. One way to solve this is to have a cube with only a few special keywords.
I wanted a cube where there still is complexity so that I also have a good time. As correctly stated in this thread the power level fluctuates and creatures have become much stronger. So a block cube it is.

Onslaught cube sucked. I overdid it on the morph I guess. It is also very creature centric. Oddessey block has conflicting abilities (threshold and flashback) so I skipped it. Invasion cube was fun, but is lacking complexity/replay ability. Mercadian block is no fun, well come to think about it, maybe it is. How to balance rebels is a challenge. Rath+mirage was a flunk. Shadow is hard to balance. A redo is in order. Urza block is great in cube. It only lacks special keywords. Still every draft is different.

Great! Now I have to redo the other cubes!

I still follow because I hope the game returns to the game I used to love. I know it will always be different, but still. Sadly, the power creep and other choices make me afraid that it will not happen soon.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I still follow because I hope the game returns to the game I used to love. I know it will always be different, but still. Sadly, the power creep and other choices make me afraid that it will not happen soon.

I think a big part of the reason why Magic isn't the way you remember it in the past is that the focus of the game has shifted from Noncreature spells to Creatures.

The last 15 years or so have been defined by creatures reaching the power level of the spells of early Magic. While Tarmogoyf is a lot more powerful than Grizzly Bears, they are both equally screwed by cards like Swords to Plowshares and Force of Will. The only difference is between Bears and Goyf that Tarmogoyf is good enough that you would actually want to play with it because it's so good in the event that it doesn't die to make up for the times when it gets immediately nuked. Because creatures used to be so bad, there were decks that could conceivably skip on creatures entirely and just play more spells. But, that has changed over time as more creatures have become worth the risk to play. We're only just now getting to the point where creatures are of a similar power level to their noncreature counterparts, and that is changing the dynamic of the game in a way that it really hasn't since the introduction of Planeswalkers and the big mistakes of the early 2000s (specifically Storm, Affinity, and Dredge).

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Good questions! You put my words to shame. I should not have said ‘all in’.

I think poison could be an interesting mechanic to include in a cube if I was decently devoted to it and had some supplimentary mechanics to go along with it like proliferate.

However as it stands there is nothing in my cube that would work together with poison. I could maybe find room for a single Blightsteel Colossus because it isn’t parasitic at all in my opinion.

I wasn't trying to put your words to shame, I was just curious to know more about what you thought

I agree poison is super parasitic (I'm pretty sure Jason named the Poison Principle after this very mechanic?). I do think that now with the toxic mechanic, it might be possible to pull off a minimalist poison theme combining cards that provide incidental poison counters with good proliferate effects. I don't think anyone is chomping at the bit to do that, but it seems to be on the table. We'll just have to wait and see what the Common, Uncommon, Mythic, and Commander toxic cards look like

 

[blacksmithy]

I wasn't trying to put your words to shame, I was just curious to know more about what you thought

I agree poison is super parasitic (I'm pretty sure Jason named the Poison Principle after this very mechanic?). I do think that now with the toxic mechanic, it might be possible to pull off a minimalist poison theme combining cards that provide incidental poison counters with good proliferate effects. I don't think anyone is chomping at the bit to do that, but it seems to be on the table. We'll just have to wait and see what the Common, Uncommon, Mythic, and Commander toxic cards look like

i just want a cantrip that adds a poison counter to villain and a Search for Azcanta that proliferates. i guess i could just make them if wotc drops the ball

 

[Rusje]

I think a big part of the reason why Magic isn't the way you remember it in the past is that the focus of the game has shifted from Noncreature spells to Creatures.

The last 15 years or so have been defined by creatures reaching the power level of the spells of early Magic. While Tarmogoyf is a lot more powerful than Grizzly Bears, they are both equally screwed by cards like Swords to Plowshares and Force of Will. The only difference is between Bears and Goyf that Tarmogoyf is good enough that you would actually want to play with it because it's so good in the event that it doesn't die to make up for the times when it gets immediately nuked. Because creatures used to be so bad, there were decks that could conceivably skip on creatures entirely and just play more spells. But, that has changed over time as more creatures have become worth the risk to play. We're only just now getting to the point where creatures are of a similar power level to their noncreature counterparts, and that is changing the dynamic of the game in a way that it really hasn't since the introduction of Planeswalkers big mistakes of the early 2000s (specifically Storm, Affinity, and Dredge).

This could indeed be the culprit. Even though in the old days the creatures were weak. In cube/draft/sealed most of the times the bad creatures did the work. It was also very much less bomby than it is now. The clock is soo much quicker recently.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Anyone need a second, worse, gold Garruk Wildspeaker?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Anyone need a second, worse, gold Garruk Wildspeaker?

With kicker!

 

[LadyMapi]

Dear lord, new!Lukka really is just Bad Gold Garruk, isn't it?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Dear lord, new!Lukka really is just Bad Gold Garruk, isn't it?

I think this is somewhat true (hence why I said it). I do think Lukka's ultimate and his ability to immediately -4 if "kicked" is more interesting than Garruk, but as a whole he is less powerful if a little bit compelling.

 

[Dom Harvey]

The Phyrexians took a cool PW and made him boring and bad

 

[ravnic]

[...]Planeswalkers big mistakes [...]

[...]Commander toxic [...]

My man train dropping the truths

 

[Velrun]

Nahiri also compleated

 

[Rusje]

Nahiri also compleated

View attachment 7902

Yes, I mostly play with only old cards. Still, the flip flop from no we do not want the story to span multiple sets to yes we do and so on, and just copying storylines, and the lack of returning to weak creatures rubs me the wrong way.

mmq block cube let’s go