General Unstable Spoiler Unthread

[Velrun]

The AskUrza app by Taamas is absolutely incredible and I encourage everyone to try it out. It works for PC and Android phones and he has written a thorough guide as to how to use the app.

I bought a Foil Urza, Academy Headmaster for that reason and it is bound to be a huge succes. The way my cube format works (The Fantasy Cube) is with a huge focus on the community. I make some of the bigger decisions but many of the small decisions is made in coorperation with the community. I also arrange for a weekly poll each week that will determine a small change to the cube every week. And why am I telling you this?

The way I will incoorperate Urza into The Fantasy Cube is by letting the winner of each 8-man tournament decide a new ability for Urza. In this way the winners will get to affect the cube ‘forever’. He or she will also remove an existing ability.

For starters I have changed all of Urza’s abilities into Choose One’s where all the options to choose from is the ones that Urza already has but as ‘pairs’. For instance I have put the two Ajani’s + abilities together in a Choose One. Same goes for the rest.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I drafted Unstable today. It was fun to draft and fun to play, although it feels like there might be to few removal spells in the format. I'd also like to state that "X" is absolute game-ruining garbage. There's no interaction with the card, and you fight an uphill battle when your creatures are being blocked by creatures that got stolen from your hand. It's a single card that can just win you the game. Fucking dreadful experience playing against it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

The experience is probably akin to an early Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. Either you deal with it on the spot or it runs away with the game. You can discard X from your hand if you have an outlet, but most of the self discard effects happen to be in the same colors as it, so X's owner probably had some opportunity to snipe some of those effects, plus you need to cast them before X's owner can cast them, and they get to cast cards from your hand in your draw step :/

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I seriously don't like the design of it. There's zero counter play to it. Absolute garbage, it's like someones silly custom card.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah there's no wild mongrel in this set, and it's fairly easy to assemble them being hellbent, at which point it's essentially a hardlock.

 

[ahadabans]

I mean, it's an UN set. If X is the only truly ridiculous card, Wizard's probably undercooked the UN aspect of the set right?

I know Unstable was intended to be more playable than previous unsets - and reports make it sound like it is - but it's still about silly things (including super broken mechanics). I had to read X twice just to understand what it did. Seems in flavor with an Un set, though I can see how it might be difficult to beat once online.

 

[RavebornMuse]

The point of Un-sets is silly, experimental fun, and a miserable, unbeatable bomb like X is hardly satisfying those parameters. It's one thing to lose to something stupid powerful like Over My Dead Bodies and quite another to lose to something with almost no answer that takes a long time to steal the game while depriving you of your coolest cards in the process.

 

[ahadabans]

Yeah. That's fair. I didn't do a good job making my point. X is a bad card but it's also IMO an unavoidable side effect to pushing the boundaries of the game. If you want to push the envelop you have to accept that you will wind up with some number of X type cards. You can't keep this sort of exploration G-rated I'm afraid.

 

[Velrun]

Different kind of people enjoy different kind of decks to play and to play against. While some enjoy losing to something that powerful that leaves the opponent with 0 counterplay because it’s infinite burst damage, others enjoy losing to slow grindy attrition plays where it is possible to react before the game is over.

There is no right and wrong as long as people enjoy the game. There is wrong if something exists that almost no one enjoy. The game is made by Wizards to make money but we play it to have fun.

 

[Dom Harvey]

'Retail Limited but designed to be even more slow' is the exact kind of format that X would dominate in. In a faster Cube environment (and one where decks have more cleanly defined roles, so cards aren't generically good the way they are in Limited - paying 5 mana to steal an aggro deck's 1-drop doesn't get you anywhere), I think it could make for a more fun and unique subgame that feels quintessentially UB

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

To me it would require every deck to have access to either discard or very very cheap unconditional removal. Not made for every format.

 

[Aston]

Adding a sorcery speed restriction to his ability would go a long way.

 

[Velrun]

¡Urza is alive!

Dear Taamas
Question about AskUrza. Writing spaces in the code will change the visual output of the card text on AskUrza. Am I correct to assume that not all spaces are actually visible and that it takes approximately five to seven spaces to make a difference?

To everyone else:
Please prise your voice if you feel like these questions do not belong in the public discussion forums. I only ask here because others might have the same questions but, please, tell me if I should ask these questions over private messages with Taamas.

 

[James Stevenson]

Anything goes round here. Anyway, it's pretty cool to see this app get worked on!

 

[Taamas]

Dear Taamas
Question about AskUrza. Writing spaces in the code will change the visual output of the card text on AskUrza. Am I correct to assume that not all spaces are actually visible and that it takes approximately five to seven spaces to make a difference?

I'm not sure I'm getting what you mean. By writing spaces, do you mean writing spaces between words in a given effect? Are you trying to change the line length or something like that?

And yeah, it might be a good idea to start a thread just about the app.

 

[James Stevenson]

I just installed AskUrza and it seems great! I just want to ask - will it work the same as the website? What is the set of abilities that this is drawing from?

 

[James Stevenson]

Bluh.... I'm searching through the sources for askurza.com, trying to find the pool of possible results. Where the hell is it!

Edit: Wow! Found it!

Edit edit: So there's only 20 options for each loyalty ability. Might be interesting if the AskUrza app could have another window where the user can add or remove options.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Thats....kinda disappointing. I figured that given it's a 5 color cards in a set with barely any manafixing, they'd go hog wild with like "A random effect on an instant/sorcery in magic from the last 18 years" or something.

 

[Taamas]

Thats....kinda disappointing. I figured that given it's a 5 color cards in a set with barely any manafixing, they'd go hog wild with like "A random effect on an instant/sorcery in magic from the last 18 years" or something.

Urza has three different abilities, so I'm not sure how that would map to them.

I will open a thread about the app when I get some time, just to have it a bit more organized. But I don't think I will be able to work much more on it.

 

[Velrun]

I just installed AskUrza and it seems great! I just want to ask - will it work the same as the website? What is the set of abilities that this is drawing from?

The app comes with a single folder. In there you find a very easy to read text file with all the information.

Bluh.... I'm searching through the sources for askurza.com, trying to find the pool of possible results. Where the hell is it!

Edit: Wow! Found it!

Edit edit: So there's only 20 options for each loyalty ability. Might be interesting if the AskUrza app could have another window where the user can add or remove options.

The app comes with exactly the abilities that the real AskUrza comes with but it is very easy to change those. You can write whatever you want in there. Even add many more abilities and/or remove some existing. Only the sky and your creativity is the limit

Thats....kinda disappointing. I figured that given it's a 5 color cards in a set with barely any manafixing, they'd go hog wild with like "A random effect on an instant/sorcery in magic from the last 18 years" or something.

Go to Gatherer and search for instants and sorceries over the last 18 years and write them into Urza.

I have done something similiar.

 

[Chris Taylor]

He'll you could hit random cars until you find something that works

 

[Onderzeeboot]

How about +1 does a random instant or sorcery of 1-3 mana, -1 does a random instant or sorcery of 4-5 mana, and the -6 does a random instant or sorcery of 8+ mana (which could hilariously backfire when you roll Final Fortune or Enter the Infinite or something like that, depending on your definition of hilariously of course )

 

[Aston]

I don't know how hard it would be to program but you could also do it like the Jhoira avatar on MTGO which gives three random instants/sorceries and then you choose one to cast, limited by mana cost like Onder suggests.

 

[Velrun]

All suggestions you guys have written above is possible within the program as it is now if you are willing to do the legwork (find all the abilities and write them into the program)

I have taken all existing Planeswalker abilities* and added them. All of the + and - abilities are ‘Choose One’s. The ults are simply randomized from all existing Planeswalkers*.

In this way I will always look forward to newly spoiled Planeswalkers even if their power level are too high/low.

(* Few exceptions)

 

[Chris Taylor]

Is Gideons 0 an ult or a 0?

Also I'm interested in the exceptions