General 'walkers and "everything costs 4"
- Thread starter CML
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There's a lot going on here. For one, card distribution (planeswalkers are printed ~ 7x per year, with a power floor), but suffice to say, if they were printing board wipes and spot removal and token generators in that volume and power level all the time we'd feel the need to constrain their numbers too.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Its true. There are certainly more, say, 4 mana white creatures that I could run then would be healthy for my cube to run. This is also true for 2 mana black cards that kill stuff, three mana green enchant creatures that make stuff bigger, etc. I think thinking "I need to limit planeswalkers" is a failing of powermax design. If you are crafting your environment to achieve some gameplay driven goal, you won't have to artificially cap how many you run, that number will naturally settle to the proper amount as you approach the ideal of your design.
CML
Contributor
I suppose it's not that simple. Interestingly enough, those two cards types (enchantments/artifacts) are the closest things to planeswalkers. And they happen to be the most difficult to balance (coincidence?).
Nope, you're right -- creature bannings are super-rare.
Yeah, I'd say I limit artifacts as well, partly because of their universality and partly because I hated running Torch Fiend, Manic Vandal, Ingot Chewer, and Smash to Smithereens all at once. And that was just in red.
Still, though, don't let anyone here stop you from ranting. In actual fact, I would love to read this dissenting opinion of yours. It's not going to stop me from running my seventeen walkers in 380 cards, but I think we're all the richer for hearing from different vantage points. If you don't mind typing it all back up again?
edit: holy crap I missed the whole last page of this thread when I posted this
Still, though, don't let anyone here stop you from ranting. In actual fact, I would love to read this dissenting opinion of yours. It's not going to stop me from running my seventeen walkers in 380 cards, but I think we're all the richer for hearing from different vantage points. If you don't mind typing it all back up again?
edit: holy crap I missed the whole last page of this thread when I posted this
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I'm running an extremely high number of enchantments in my cube and a pretty low number of cards that blow them up. Will this be a problem? I'm thinking/hoping it won't be, but we'll see. I mean, even if I was running more enchantment hate 60% of the colors would be fucked anyway.
Creatures are a lot easier to remove, and I think that is why they pose less of a problem. They can also be blocked (usually), which typically negates a good portion of their threat. In short, they are the easiest permanent to find answers for and they don't even need to be destroyed to be neutralized. Creatures are the most balanced permanent type in the game (if they are fairly costed that is).
Non-creature artifacts and enchantments on the other hand almost all grant some kind of reusable (or static) ability that can't be countered easily (without removing the permanent), and so they generally have more impact on the game. With that said, artifacts and enchantments usually only do one thing, and those that do multiple things usually don't do any of them well (or at least not in a cost effective manner). There are exceptions of course, and those happen to be really powerful cards that have been banned at one time or another in one format or another (Necropotence, Jitte, etc.).
Planeswalkers are essentially non-creature artifacts/enchantments on steroids. They all do more than one thing, and the things that they do are completely free after you pay an initial cost. And this is where the real problem comes in. Every single walker that has ever been printed will win the game single handedly if it is not dealt with in a timely manner. They essentially are a free source of CA over time, in addition, they are also their own combo engine (because the ultimate ability is generally so powerful that it is game ending). In a way, they also serve as a ramp effect since the turn after you play them you get to use all your mana for a spell plus you get to use a free ability on the walker (which is nothing more than a sorcery when you get right down to it). The design of this card is IMO awful for the game as it breaks one of the most fundamental mechanics of Magic - mana (having to spend mana for an effect). When you get something for nothing (or next to nothing), the game breaks down. All of the most broken game warping cards in the game do this (library, sol ring, mana drain, moxen, etc.). After all, Magic is a resource management game. If you don't fairly cost the resources, your game stops functioning correctly.
Making walkers attackable with creatures and targetable with burn is the only thing that has kept them from completely warping the game beyond recognition. Because most decks have a built in way to remove them quickly (which again is REQUIRED based on their design). Unfortunately though, it has changed the focus of Magic - towards a more creature oriented system - and it has ushered in a disturbing level of creature power creep. And that has caused it's own set of problems.
To those that played this game since the very beginning (two of my close friends - I started sometime around Kamigawa) and haven't been keeping up with the times, Magic is almost a completely different game now. Some would call that an evolution, but not all changes IMO are positive. Some of us didn't want the game changed the way it has been changed. Of course, that is what I love about cube. I get to preserve Magic the way my friends and I remember (while still playing a lot of new cards - though this is proving a difficult thing to balance).
Non-creature artifacts and enchantments on the other hand almost all grant some kind of reusable (or static) ability that can't be countered easily (without removing the permanent), and so they generally have more impact on the game. With that said, artifacts and enchantments usually only do one thing, and those that do multiple things usually don't do any of them well (or at least not in a cost effective manner). There are exceptions of course, and those happen to be really powerful cards that have been banned at one time or another in one format or another (Necropotence, Jitte, etc.).
Planeswalkers are essentially non-creature artifacts/enchantments on steroids. They all do more than one thing, and the things that they do are completely free after you pay an initial cost. And this is where the real problem comes in. Every single walker that has ever been printed will win the game single handedly if it is not dealt with in a timely manner. They essentially are a free source of CA over time, in addition, they are also their own combo engine (because the ultimate ability is generally so powerful that it is game ending). In a way, they also serve as a ramp effect since the turn after you play them you get to use all your mana for a spell plus you get to use a free ability on the walker (which is nothing more than a sorcery when you get right down to it). The design of this card is IMO awful for the game as it breaks one of the most fundamental mechanics of Magic - mana (having to spend mana for an effect). When you get something for nothing (or next to nothing), the game breaks down. All of the most broken game warping cards in the game do this (library, sol ring, mana drain, moxen, etc.). After all, Magic is a resource management game. If you don't fairly cost the resources, your game stops functioning correctly.
Making walkers attackable with creatures and targetable with burn is the only thing that has kept them from completely warping the game beyond recognition. Because most decks have a built in way to remove them quickly (which again is REQUIRED based on their design). Unfortunately though, it has changed the focus of Magic - towards a more creature oriented system - and it has ushered in a disturbing level of creature power creep. And that has caused it's own set of problems.
To those that played this game since the very beginning (two of my close friends - I started sometime around Kamigawa) and haven't been keeping up with the times, Magic is almost a completely different game now. Some would call that an evolution, but not all changes IMO are positive. Some of us didn't want the game changed the way it has been changed. Of course, that is what I love about cube. I get to preserve Magic the way my friends and I remember (while still playing a lot of new cards - though this is proving a difficult thing to balance).
I talked briefly about this card types problem in the chatcast, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing to have a cube with few artifacts, no game breaking ones, and no artifact removal.
Planeswalkers are usually scaled such that you don't get your mana's worth if you activate them once and then they get attacked to death. I maintain that the most interesting thing a Planeswalker can do is provide some incremental advantage and then die. Games actually won by Planeswalkers are far less interesting than ones where planeswalkers tip the scales a little bit.
Planeswalkers are usually scaled such that you don't get your mana's worth if you activate them once and then they get attacked to death. I maintain that the most interesting thing a Planeswalker can do is provide some incremental advantage and then die. Games actually won by Planeswalkers are far less interesting than ones where planeswalkers tip the scales a little bit.
CML
Contributor
I don't remember the last time I ever pumped mana into my Wild Nacatl ...
Not to get into the whole "creatures" debate again (I am pro) but I do think walkers can be used to correct certain design problems (say, an overbundance of straight control, as Domri and Garruk combated last season) and are sweet. The main problem is that they do have a slippery slope feel to them, but I am not so sure that the same isn't true for just making a guy of comparable size
Also the allegations of walkers being oppressive (I should answer, being one of the very few here who plays competitive constructed) do not describe my experience of tournament Magic, and I've only been playing for a few years.
Not to get into the whole "creatures" debate again (I am pro) but I do think walkers can be used to correct certain design problems (say, an overbundance of straight control, as Domri and Garruk combated last season) and are sweet. The main problem is that they do have a slippery slope feel to them, but I am not so sure that the same isn't true for just making a guy of comparable size
Also the allegations of walkers being oppressive (I should answer, being one of the very few here who plays competitive constructed) do not describe my experience of tournament Magic, and I've only been playing for a few years.
Well, as competitive constructed demonstrates, the oppressiveness of planeswalkers decreases as the power of the other cards increases.
My biggest problem with planeswalkers is how clunky and bolted on to the main rules they are; cf: the you may redirect damage to a player from a spell to a planeswalker that player controls rule, because old spells don't say 'deal 3 damage to target creature, player or planeswalker' and they seem unwilling to patch that on the cards. Also the fact that they can often be GRBS, and I have a strong objection to GRBS.
Interestingly enough, this is the one thing I commend Wizards on. The game was not designed with a new card type in mind, and really this was an elegant way of introducing a new permanent type without totally wrecking the game.
We have more cards today that interact directly with walkers (dreadbore for example), but when that card type first came out there were very few (only ones that said "permanent" or included them via an exclusionary clause). Without the burn/creature attack rules, they would have been completely un-interactive and either GRBS or useless (depending on how powerful they were).
If they had introduced a new card type ("Relics" for example) and had them function like enchantments or artifacts, they would have destroyed the game due to lack of interaction.
With that said, I still am a purist and don't think the game is better with a new permanent type. Does chess need a new piece after all these years? If you want a game with different permanent types, go make a new game. Sorry I keep ranting here, but I see this with many games (board games, role-playing games). You have a core system that was testing and balanced and built to function together, and they work and are really tight systems. And then you get greedy and want to make more money and you start printing add-ons that make the game less balanced. It is exceedingly rare for a board game expansion to actually improve upon the original game. The same goes for role-playing games. The advanced character handbook is always full of unbalanced garbage that breaks the damn game.
Let's keep in mind that chess is a game that was iterated and iterated until reaching it's current state. Chess didn't fall out of somebody's brain as the game that is played today. I am sure there were versions that were much worse, and versions that thankfully introduced new pieces.
That's the other side of the coin, and it's a valid argument. As I mentioned in my last post above, walkers were cleverly integrated into the game and didn't destroy it. They just changed it (in much the way that Seafarer's of Catan changed the original game and made sheep more important - the game still worked and was fun, but it was fundamentally altered by the expansion). But did that expansion make Catan better? IMO, it didn't. The original game is still the best version of Catan. Dominium is one of the few exceptions where I think a couple of the expansions are actually better than the original (but the list of games where this is true is really short - Magic is not on that list IMO).
I don't disagree with any of this. Walkers were balanced to provide a reasonable amount of value before they were removed. And that dynamic works, but it altered the way the game is played. You can't just run creature-less decks anymore with wrath effects. The game is much more combat focused. It all works and has found an equilibrium, but it's not how Magic worked before. That's all I'm getting at. Some like this change in focus, others do not (although I suspect people like me who don't like it represent a very small minority).
Can I say that Magic is much better than it was in 1993?
Yup. That's totally fair. And I agree. It has come a long way.
I just happen to think it peaked sometime around Ravnica while I think most would say it's still peaking and that walkers ushered in a golden age. Cards sales certainly seem to back that stance up.
Again, I'm an old guy and part of my resistance is just being an old guy. I wasn't opposed to walkers when they were first introduced in Lorwyn. In fact, I made a bunch of decks with them as they were new and exciting. But I quickly saw some power issues and then when the mystic rare nonsense came out and there were $100 walkers running around, that is when I realized the game had gone in a direction I didn't agree with. I walked away from Magic for years and it wasn't until I found cube that I came back. Cube let's me craft a meta that is true to my favorite memories of the game (not just mine but also my group which consists of a couple 1993 guys).
Anyway, thanks for listening to me rant. I'm glad the game is still going strong and that each of us has a place in it. It's an amazing game and I hope it survives many more years.
Err, sorry about that last post, I made it from my phone in the dog park and it doesn't quite have the tone I'm looking for. Let's dig in, as this is an interesting topic.
Unless you've tried to make your own, chances are you've never played the original version of any game. You've played a stable version after loads and loads of iterations. The game improved from that process (hopefully). The problem is that, upon release, a game's "core" is fixed. Mark Rosewater often uses this metaphor of "you can't just tear up the roads" and talks about things he would do differently if he could start all over again. I'm sure that, were the makers of Dominion, Catan or any other game given the chance to remake the original after all that they know now, they could improve the product.
Adding something new to an existing core is a hard process, and I agree that Planeswalkers were cleverly integrated. If Wizards were to scrap Magic and make a brand new game with Planeswalkers in mind, the design would be even better. Certain supertypes would change. Maybe the upkeep system would be less clunky. They'd eliminate miles of rules baggage.
Just think if, instead of their current expansion system, every year Wizards dedicated their design efforts to making a self-contained 360 (or whatever) card custom cube. Those games would be amazing. Good for the health and sales of Magic? Undoubtedly not, but from a gameplay perspective I'm sure they could make ridiculously fun games.
Unless you've tried to make your own, chances are you've never played the original version of any game. You've played a stable version after loads and loads of iterations. The game improved from that process (hopefully). The problem is that, upon release, a game's "core" is fixed. Mark Rosewater often uses this metaphor of "you can't just tear up the roads" and talks about things he would do differently if he could start all over again. I'm sure that, were the makers of Dominion, Catan or any other game given the chance to remake the original after all that they know now, they could improve the product.
Adding something new to an existing core is a hard process, and I agree that Planeswalkers were cleverly integrated. If Wizards were to scrap Magic and make a brand new game with Planeswalkers in mind, the design would be even better. Certain supertypes would change. Maybe the upkeep system would be less clunky. They'd eliminate miles of rules baggage.
Just think if, instead of their current expansion system, every year Wizards dedicated their design efforts to making a self-contained 360 (or whatever) card custom cube. Those games would be amazing. Good for the health and sales of Magic? Undoubtedly not, but from a gameplay perspective I'm sure they could make ridiculously fun games.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I dislike what recent Magic design has done to Constructed but I think it's been an incredible boon for Cube designers.
Great post Jason. I agree with you.
And for the record, I do make games as a hobby. What you describe is exactly how the process goes. You make something and it works but you see issues after awhile - things that no amount of development could have caught. If I try to bolt-on solutions, they are never as good as scrapping entire parts of the game and starting over. I can do that (scrap parts of my games) because I'm not producing a product I'm selling. So it's not about the business side of it but the creative side only.
And that's what cube is for me I guess. Where I can create a custom set that plays the way I envision the game should play. Of course, the reality is I don't have enough hours or enough testers to really make my cube environment that solid, so it's ends up 90% theory and 10% practice. But I get hours of enjoyment doing it, so it works out.
On the subject of what would make the game better if you could redesign chunks of it. I would try and introduce a better system to deal with mana flood/screw. Because too many games are decided by that for my tastes. What about you?
And for the record, I do make games as a hobby. What you describe is exactly how the process goes. You make something and it works but you see issues after awhile - things that no amount of development could have caught. If I try to bolt-on solutions, they are never as good as scrapping entire parts of the game and starting over. I can do that (scrap parts of my games) because I'm not producing a product I'm selling. So it's not about the business side of it but the creative side only.
And that's what cube is for me I guess. Where I can create a custom set that plays the way I envision the game should play. Of course, the reality is I don't have enough hours or enough testers to really make my cube environment that solid, so it's ends up 90% theory and 10% practice. But I get hours of enjoyment doing it, so it works out.
On the subject of what would make the game better if you could redesign chunks of it. I would try and introduce a better system to deal with mana flood/screw. Because too many games are decided by that for my tastes. What about you?
They should have made Planeswalkers suffer from summoning sickness when they were inventing the card type. The least they could do now is make playable Pithing Needle effects. I would like a Pithing Needle that cantrips or that effect strapped to reasonable creature, Revoker just sucks as a piker.
I don't think it's perfect, but the article that comes out in ChannelFireball next week describes my new 15-card format that largely eschews flood and screw by virtue of having small deck sizes which inherently reduce variability in draws (if you have a land heavy opener you really can't draw more lands, e.g.). It's not a perfect format but it has some good ideas in it and, most importantly, plays well.
I would probably merge enchantments and artifacts into a single card type, and institute a legend rule that says if any two Planeswalkers are on the battlefield at the same time (doesn't matter which side of the table), they both are sacrificed. Planeswalkers are cool but games with multiple walkers on the table are the worst.
As someone who does make their own games: original versions of games suck balls. You might be able to go 'something here is good' and 4 sweeping iterations later you might get something non-awful to start actually iterating on and caring about.
That process is hella fun in and of itself though.
Sounds cool. I'll check out the article.
On the subject of Enchantments/Artifacts - I would probably leave the distinction for flavor and make enchantments provide a global or triggered effect while artifacts would have activated abilities (or something along those lines). But the game would do well to have more ways to deal with these card types, and I don't particularly care for the layout where black and blue can't do shit about these things g
once they are in play (well, bounce I guess but black is just SOL) while white and green can destroy them (and red gets half the shaft). I like that each color has strengths and weaknesses - that's cool - but some artifacts and enchantments are so powerful that not having an answer usually means doom (jitte). And I for one really like mono colored decks. I'm super excited about devotion (at least in theory), so I hope they continue to push mono colored incentive.
A couple buddies of mine used to play Magic on our lunch break and we came up with our own mana screw fixing rule. It wasn't something I could get anyone else on board with (and it was flawed), but it worked pretty well actually. Here's the basic rule: Any card in your hand can be played face down as a Resource Land. It taps for 1 colorless mana and would count as your land drop. There are two additonal rules to prevent landless artifact decks and broken blink/graveyard shenanigans:
1. If you control more resource lands than non-resource lands, sacrifice a number of resource lands until you have an even number of resource / non-resource lands.
2. If a resource land would leave play for any reason, remove it from the game instead.
So this allowed you to make land drops and not just auto lose the game to tempo (even if you still were vulnerable to color screw - that's your own damn fault for being too greedy) but it wasn't a perfect solution (and opened you up for 2 for 1 land destruction if you got carried away or couldn't buy a land to save your life). Bouncing a resource land was basically a stone rain (not the greatest side effect, but one you can work around).
That second rule wasn't there at first, but then we had one guy (um... me) blinking resource lands into Akroma's and other such nonsense. We toyed with allowing returning resource lands to your hand (which added an additional element of strategy), but that made bounce lands (bounce in general) too good (and the other two guys were convinced I would find a way to break the resource land thing again). So we made it so once you made a card a resource land, it either stayed a land or was removed from the game.
CML
Contributor
not always true, the best walker in any format right now is Legacy's Liliana (followed closely by Modern's ... Liliana, though Jace AoT is a great standard card right now; recall that nobody played walkers a year ago). they often need support just as often as other cards do.