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CaptnIrony

CaptnIrony

Here's the example I always pull.

Pretend you want to search for all the cards that reference +1/+1 counters and dying, or have prowess, using the advanced search, how would you do this?

IMO: ("+1/+1 counter" dies) or prowess (go ahead, copy paste it into the Oracle text search field here https://scryfall.com/advanced)

When the advance search parses this, you get this page: https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=(o:("+1/+1+o:counter"+o:dies)+o:or+o:prowess)

Which means they searched (o:("+1/+1 o:counter" o:dies) o:or o:prowess) . This is very wrong, and fairly easy to fix.

However, I've brought this up three times to various group and gotten the following answers:

1. The UI is better than MCI's was.
2. The search is not broken, you need to search (o:"+1/+1 counter" o:dies) or o:prowess.
3. Yeah but MCI also had issues.

:/
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Ah, yeah, the translation of the UI to the actual search pattern is very unfortunate in places. That's why I never use it. I immediately type the search pattern into the search box. So what I would do in your case is manually type in:

Code: 
(o:"+1/+1 counter" and o:dies) or o:prowess

... and that works splendidly! ;) Really, if you want to use scryfall, it pays tremendously to just learn the syntax inside out and use it directly, instead of using the admittedly sometimes clunky UI search-pattern-ization. I know it shouldn't be a prerequisite, so I can't blame you for questioning scryfalls usability, but it really is a tremendous tool if you do know how to write those patterns by hand, better than magiccards.info was even! There's a reason I hadn't been using magiccards.info for a long, long time.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Info was better imo. How can I search on scryfall for cards that fit a 2- colored identity? Not only gold cards, but include these with off color activation and so on. On MC.info, that was easy :(
 
Velrun

Velrun

Chris Taylor said:
They've also gone on record that they won't do proxy services, so where am I coming for that now.

You can however search for all the unique printings of a card and sort by release date if you want:
https://scryfall.com/search?q=!"Lightning+Bolt"+unique:prints
Click to expand...

Their problem is that you cannot see all sets a Basic land was printed at the same time because, for some reason, they have decided to only include a few sets on each page.

Scryfall has literally no upsides on magiccards.info except they branded themself in a cool way and has higher quality pictures.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Example (poor example but Scryfall has decided to completely remove .info’s page so there is no way I can find a better picture for you)

5971BAAE-C687-4D44-85C3-A68577554CF1.jpeg

Imagine I was looking at a Basic land that has been printed in almost every set since Alpha but not every set. That is just not elegant or functionally optimal on Scryfall because I cannot see all sets that includes an ‘Island’ and hat they look like.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Velrun said:
Their problem is that you cannot see all sets a Basic land was printed at the same time because, for some reason, they have decided to only include a few sets on each page.
Click to expand...



I don't get exactly what you're looking for... Do you mean this:

https://scryfall.com/search?q=!“Island”&order=released&as=checklist&unique=prints

Or this...

https://scryfall.com/search?q=!“Island”&order=released&as=grid&unique=prints

??

Also, how is this specifically "their problem"? Why do you need this specific piece of information?
 
sigh

sigh

Gatherer shows all the sets in one ungodly pile of set symbols :)

FWIW, I actually like Gatherer's Advanced Search UI better than Scryfalls. Very uniform and procedural, not a hodgepodge of different interfaces and checkboxes and lists... [shudder]
 
Velrun

Velrun

I appreciate you guys trying to help.

Scryfall is quite an excellent page but it doesn’t have that very intelligent set overview in the right side of the screen like thep picture I shared.

I was using that every week :(

Imagine you want to have an Island altered for your cube. Is there any way to see all the sets without having to switch pages anymore? Before we had two options: Use Scryfall or .info. Now we only have one of them. Guess it is not ‘their problem’ and I do not think anyone has said that.

And Gatherer doesn’t have promos. Only official Wizards of the Coast.
 
CaptnIrony

CaptnIrony

Onderzeeboot said:
Ah, yeah, the translation of the UI to the actual search pattern is very unfortunate in places. That's why I never use it. I immediately type the search pattern into the search box. So what I would do in your case is manually type in:

Code: 
(o:"+1/+1 counter" and o:dies) or o:prowess

... and that works splendidly! ;) Really, if you want to use scryfall, it pays tremendously to just learn the syntax inside out and use it directly, instead of using the admittedly sometimes clunky UI search-pattern-ization. I know it shouldn't be a prerequisite, so I can't blame you for questioning scryfalls usability, but it really is a tremendous tool if you do know how to write those patterns by hand, better than magiccards.info was even! There's a reason I hadn't been using magiccards.info for a long, long time.
Click to expand...


CaptnIrony said:
However, I've brought this up three times to various group and gotten the following answers:

2. The search is not broken, you need to search (o:"+1/+1 counter" o:dies) or o:prowess.
:/
Click to expand...

frostymoose said:
mana=2u cmc=3

I never much liked magiccards.info but I adore scryfall.
Click to expand...


Eesh, that's really gross. MCI's mana=2U was better, IMO, and mana>2U was more usable than mana=2U doing the same thing, which is super unintuitive.

Onderzeeboot said:
Also, how is this specifically "their problem"? Why do you need this specific piece of information?
Click to expand...

Well... they're the ones who removed MCI saying things would be better cause it would redirect to their site, which lacks all the functionality of the predecessor. It would have been better for MCI users if they just had two sites pointing to the same database rather than shutting down the 2nd.

Velrun said:
I appreciate you guys trying to help.

Scryfall is quite an excellent page but it doesn’t have that very intelligent set overview in the right side of the screen like thep picture I shared.

I was using that every week :(

Imagine you want to have an Island altered for your cube. Is there any way to see all the sets without having to switch pages anymore? Before we had two options: Use Scryfall or .info. Now we only have one of them. Guess it is not ‘their problem’ and I do not think anyone has said that.

And Gatherer doesn’t have promos. Only official Wizards of the Coast.
Click to expand...


Unless you want https://scryfall.com/search?q=!“Island”&order=released&as=grid&unique=prints, which seems to be good, there is https://www.mtgstocks.com/prints/28724, where if you scroll down you can see all the printings in a list. Maybe that'll help.


As for scryfall, their site had a few things I liked (worked better with color combinations for sorting, sorting by price, ignoring contraptions and un-cards by default, faster update), but the reason I had never switched completely was that I still considered MCI better. Also MCI features regular expression search. Is*nd would find you Island among others.
 
Velrun

Velrun

If all Islands were possible to view on one page I would consider that search function useful. Now it is too 80’s to my taste. It will take hours to achieve the same.

The second link I do not understand. It shows a list of sets the same card was printed in but it only shows nine other versions out of hundreds. May I ask how we see the other ones?

E0E8BE3D-1DE0-475D-86E2-C2A64F20EEEF.png
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
CaptnIrony said:
Eesh, that's really gross. MCI's mana=2U was better, IMO, and mana>2U was more usable than mana=2U doing the same thing, which is super unintuitive.

Well... they're the ones who removed MCI saying things would be better cause it would redirect to their site, which lacks all the functionality of the predecessor.
Click to expand...
Ok, I can agree that MCI's mana=2U was better and that regular expressions are the bee's knees, but "lacks *all* the functionality", really? https://scryfall.com/docs/regular-expressions

Velrun said:
If all Islands were possible to view on one page I would consider that search function useful. Now it is too 80’s to my taste. It will take hours to achieve the same.
Click to expand...
I'm still at a loss for your use case, but if you show the search results as a checklist, you can fit 175 printings of Island (or any other card) on one page, meaning the sets for all printings of Island can be viewed over just three pages. You can also do stuff like https://scryfall.com/search?q=!“Isl...&order=released&dir=asc&as=grid&unique=prints, which shows all unique arts for Islands, showing the oldest printing if an art was reused.
 
sigh

sigh

Syntax searching seems great for people really into computers.... I legit thought "regular expressions" meant, like, normal human speak or something? Lol nope

I need someone to bust out the AI, so I can just write regular words at it. It's 2018, is that too much to ask???
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
While we are here, can we play one of my favourite games (yet another Magic related thing I do more than playing Magic...), Scryfall golf!

In this, we find the minimum length scryfall search string that satisfies a certain criteria, i.e.

"All reprints of the original Lorwyn five"
A naive implementation is:
Code: 
t:planeswalker in:lrw is:reprint unique:prints
However this is 46 characters, so clearly can be optimised.

Some of these challenges can be a bit more art than science, such as, "construct a search which provides a core of cards for an artifact archetype for a cube"

Have fun.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Laz said:
While we are here, can we play one of my favourite games (yet another Magic related thing I do more than playing Magic...), Scryfall golf!

In this, we find the minimum length scryfall search string that satisfies a certain criteria, i.e.

"All reprints of the original Lorwyn five"
A naive implementation is:
Code: 
t:planeswalker in:lrw is:reprint unique:prints
However this is 46 characters, so clearly can be optimised.
Click to expand...

Dammit, my first idea for a different angle is 52!

Code: 
("ni go"or"a ve"or"k wi"or"ra n"or"bele")is:reprint

I did find out that you don't need the unique: prints in the search pattern though, since you can manually change the top left dropdown on the results page from "Cards" to "All prints". Also, you don't need to type out the full card type, and I managed to find a two-letter identifier that, in Lorwyn, matches only the five planeswalkers. So, I propose...

Code: 
t:ke in:lrw is:reprint

22 characters

Proof that this works.

Next Scryfall golf challenge: Find desirable targets for Tinker in a peasant cube. Or improve upon my 22 character solution for the previous challenge :)
 
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