General Wetness

Jason Waddell

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Staff member
I'm not fully sure how to verbalize this concept. When playing @Chriskool's Meddling Mage Grid, I really appreciated the design. There were tons of cool synergies and interesting interactions that unfolded as we played. But even though there were plenty of strong cards around, something about it felt... dry? I don't really mean that in a negative way, but I got a similar feeling from when I played Pauper constructed. There are interesting decks, interesting lines, but I could feel that, for my personal taste, I gravitate towards something a bit splashier and swingier. At the same time, there are cubes I've played that I feel like go too far in the other direction. Again, for my personal, 'optimal taste'.

There's probably some correlation with power (lower power cubes are more likely to be 'drier'), but mostly I'm feeling like I don't fully have the terminology I want to dig into this. Does anyone have thoughts on the subject? @landofMordor care to lay out some new verbiage?
 

landofMordor

Administrator
Hm I think I understand what you're saying, but let's see if we can dig into this a little deeper. I'm gonna try to expand a bit; you tell me if I'm on track.

Pauper Constructed might be "dry" insofar as its decisions mostly revolve around the same few egregious power outliers -- Monarch; Spellstutter Sprite and broken blue cantrips; Tron; Affinity. Those decisions are incredibly fascinating, but there might not be novel card interactions, or the correct line might not change very often from turn to turn, or the suboptimal lines are usually never correct.

For something that's maybe too splashy, what about Arena Cube as an example? On one hand, bombs and synergies lead to a lot of novel combinations of cards. But it can be a little bomb-heavy, or contain "oops, I guess you lose to a new card interaction" moments.

When I think about correlation between power and "dryness", I think about the following:

Watchwolf is a card whose power floor is pretty good in the whole scheme of things (attacks and blocks cheaply). But its power ceiling is low, because it doesn't have any extra game text that might be sometimes-relevant, AND it is inherently incapable of synergizing with a wide swath of Magic cards due to that lack of game text.

Contrast this to Fleecemane Lion. Power floor is identical. Its power ceiling is higher than Watchwolf, though, because 1) sometimes hexproof/indestructible wins games, 2) mana sinks are inherently good if the base rate is also good, and 3) what I think you mean by "wetness": the extra text on the card provides combinatoric opportunity to create synergy, e.g. with Winding Constrictor or Soul Diviner. The more text on the card, the more likely it is to have good abilities, and the likelihood of having synergistic game text increases as the # of combinations of Magic cards increases (that is, near-exponentially).

In other words, it takes words in the text box to create synergy, splash, and "wetness". And having words in the text box is strongly correlated with higher power level, since modern Magic design rarely includes game text which is irrelevant or downside. Then again, having too many words/novel game text combinations/synergies can overload the human capacity to make satisfying decisions, leading to "too much wetness".

Am I close to what you're imagining? Thanks for starting the discussion :)
 
Just a possibility: maybe you're thinking of smooth vs jagged search space? Smoother as in "lines of plays that are equally good tend to be similar" vs jagged as in "similar lines of plays vary a lot in how good they are". Environments with little tension (everything is an artifact, all decks are aggro, it's all about ramp into high end) tend to the first. More tension and more complexity tends to cause the latter.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I think maybe an adjective for the 'dry' side would be technical. I think part of it is the size of the margins that your decisions relate to. In Pauper I plated a couple of decks (mono-blue Delver, Grave Scrabbler madness), and the games were fairly decision dense, but it was hard to always appreciate the ramifications of the decisions, since the affect on the gamestate of each decision tended to be fairly marginal.

Whereas something like Strixhaven I thought felt much splashier. I played a bunch of 4-color control matches where I felt like there were radically different ways to pilot the deck and bigger, swingier moments.
 

landofMordor

Administrator
oh, so dry might mean that one's decision-making is on the back end, just to make the deck function. Stacking triggers, holding priority, tracking which cards are in which zone. Whereas splashy gameplay may result from cards that always "do the thing", and the interesting decisions are which ones to cast, how to leverage them, etc.

Is that any closer?
 
I think maybe an adjective for the 'dry' side would be technical. I think part of it is the size of the margins that your decisions relate to. In Pauper I plated a couple of decks (mono-blue Delver, Grave Scrabbler madness), and the games were fairly decision dense, but it was hard to always appreciate the ramifications of the decisions, since the affect on the gamestate of each decision tended to be fairly marginal.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. When the outcome of your decisions is relatively small and local (lose one creature, lose 2 life), each decision is less exciting than big decisions when the outcome is winning or losing the game. A lower power level and particularly lower tempo often lends itself to decisions having small outcomes. Higher tempo makes every single decision more important because their ramifications branch through the rest of the game. When tempo doesn't matter, it's easy to reduce things to a single card advantage dimension. When the tension of tempo vs card advantage is present, balancing the two dimensions causes butterfly effect implications more often. Going down 5 life to draw a card that turns out to be your out, or chump block with your crucial piece to set up a scrappy win with fliers two turns from now are very satisfying plays.

Whereas something like Strixhaven I thought felt much splashier. I played a bunch of 4-color control matches where I felt like there were radically different ways to pilot the deck and bigger, swingier moments.
Strixhaven had some snowballing threats, magecraft triggers, and lots of playable combat tricks that created these tempo spikes, even if the format was relatively slow and control mirrors went very long.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I guess, if we imagine the decision space as a physical space, a 'dry' environment has lots of paths that are physically very close to each other, even if those small differences can create very meaningful differences in win percentage. A small advantage the size of a 2/2 bear could be enough of a margin to swing the game.

In a splashier environment there are much more divergent ways the game could unfold. Like in Strixhaven a lot of games hinged upon whether to tempo out a Serpentine Curve or sit back and try to extract maximum value out of it later. The two approaches to playing a matchup felt super different based on that choice, as well as a lot of the wish choices.
 
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Is this in any way like the sense that some games couldn't have gone differently? The sense that your fate was sealed on T2, and that you can't pull yourself out of that pit?
 
I wonder how much of this is the extent to which a format lends itself to telling good stories. Our brains basically work in terms of "stories" so a format in which it's easier to understand why you won and why you lost is more prone to being relatable and making sense, instead of being a bunch of numbers and data.
 
This whole thing reminds me a bit of Bernie DeKoven's well-played game, where two players kept trying different variants of the same game until they found a good skill/ruleset match.

I think I kinda understand the feeling, but really, I think we all need to be better at describing the material conditions in which those feelings come up, because it feels like everyone trying to contribute has kind of an idea, but maybe not. What are examples of games/drafts/etc where it feels dry or lubed-up. Maybe what we really need is a typology of types of fun to see what is lacking in a dry game, something like IonStorm's types of fun in games, but specifically for Magic (I'm kinda having a deja-vu about saying this here, but might be a false memory. I bring this up whenever I'm trying to disambiguate game experiences)

Besides the thing about effects having a local effect that @japahn mentions, the Strixhaven example that @Jason Waddell brought makes me think a bit on how retail draft rarely gives you the aggressive and the control archetype, and being the beatdown or not is more negotiable in those games. Since cube has a tendency of trying to be more like constructed, sometimes out archetype supports are very blunt towards a single direction, leaving no space for players to discover who is bringing the threats and who is bringing the answers.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Talking with @Chriskool, he said:
No worries on terminology! It is meant to be unfold as an accrual of many small plays so playera have a decent amount of back and forth (not much card adv beyond 2for1, lots of sitiational answers and not high-powered threats)



This is the kind of thing my deck was trying to do. But, IF everything goes well with the cards above, and you name correctly with Therapy twice, you end up with a 4-for-3. It's fun play, but I do think there's something about so much known information that changes the dynamic. I like personally I like playing games where you rely more on your intuition than actually known information. I don't really like playing Chess, and this pushed in that direction.

Similarly, I love freewheeling in Tetris but don't usually enjoy puzzles with fixed solutions.

What adjectives would you use to describe chess?



Kirb's Giants Amulet gave him kind of a 2-for-1. I Repealed the token, which kind of 2-for-1'd back.
 
it sounds like the “wetness” you’re looking for is the ability to make a big play either by reading the opponent or unlocking a synergy within your deck.
so like… hitting the third landfall on 4 color Omnath sounds pretty wet to me, or hitting like 5 guild cards when you resolve WUBRG Niv, or (a personal fav) Gifts for 4 burn spells that all have some form of flashback?

EDIT: adding card images in spoiler for clarification
 
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I'm not fully sure how to verbalize this concept. When playing @Chriskool's Meddling Mage Grid, I really appreciated the design. There were tons of cool synergies and interesting interactions that unfolded as we played. But even though there were plenty of strong cards around, something about it felt... dry? I don't really mean that in a negative way, but I got a similar feeling from when I played Pauper constructed. There are interesting decks, interesting lines, but I could feel that, for my personal taste, I gravitate towards something a bit splashier and swingier. At the same time, there are cubes I've played that I feel like go too far in the other direction. Again, for my personal, 'optimal taste'.

There's probably some correlation with power (lower power cubes are more likely to be 'drier'), but mostly I'm feeling like I don't fully have the terminology I want to dig into this. Does anyone have thoughts on the subject? @landofMordor care to lay out some new verbiage?

I feel like there is a lot of garbage in this response, as it is in by no means succinct (and half proofread). Please, forgive me (even though y'all need to be forgiven for trying to turn cube into something thirsty)!

By my count, there are 89 unique cards (8 of which are lands, appx 15 each color) in the Invitational Limelight grid. Only a subset of these are interactive beyond being a creature (low variety of interaction, flatter power band through less variety), but playing a hetfy number of multiples means the density of interaction is high.

A constructed pauper deck might be 10-20 unique cards pre-SB. I assume the successful decks have a pretty consistent powerband in how they approach the metagame (and there is also a low variety of cards played).

In the grid, assuming I'm approaching my design goals, every proactive play pattern should have a response & the small card pool combined with the open information lends both players to metagaming (similar to a known Constructed format). The gameplay threat-response should be similar to how top-tier decks are constructed in established metagames. Compound this with the grid draft experience involving only a single opponent: there is no need to hedge against multiple unknowns (only specific unknowns given the cards the opponent drafted versus what they play).

So given the design approach of the aforementioned grid, how does that approach compare to (loaded word warning) "normal"-ish cubes?

I assume that even singleton-breaking "normal" cubes will have a large variety of unique cards per color pair (and shock/dual/fetch manabases will lend players to splashing). The viable combinations of cards are most likely much greater under these construction rules.

Lastly, in my observation of "normal" cubes, interactive spells are often lower in density and have a large variety of attributes by how they interact. Under these constraints, proactive strategies have more room to flourish.

I assume that the variety of both (1) cards included and (2) plausible proactive lines are going to be greater in a "normal" cube looking to highlight certain cards or combinations over an environment with less variety of spells and supported strategies.

...

I think the grid experience for the Invitational Limelight will be much closer to battling "World Championship" decks against one another while something like the M-Origins grid is more like playing head-to-head Whatever Masters draft. I could see grid approaching the "normal"-ish cube experience as well, but the dynamics of grid drafting will always diverge from the 3x15 draft experience against multiple (somewhat unknown) opponents.

Some cubes like the Inventors' Fair has a lot of variety in sheer numbers like a "normal" cube, but it looks to an overabundance of glue in a flatter power band to enable synergy-based gameplay. And again, the interaction is limited such that synergy has a place in the format.

If I had to put words in your mouth, I'd wager you like more potent variety in your drafting and game play. The grid you played (and thank you again for playing it and sharing thoughts), Pauper decks and the Inventors' Fair cube are all well-seasoned but are never going to yield the flavor of a big mana Jund resolving Kozilek, Butcher of Truths into Fractured Identity counterplay out of a Boros deck with Lightning Greaves to quickly turn the tables (or whatever big splashes might happen). Just compare some "normal" cube plays (that may lead you to think "wow" if you see a screenshot) to Unmarked Grave for Nether Spirit with Murderous Cuts' delve to unlock the spirit's returning ability and Cabal Therapy and Repeal in hand to dismantle the opponent's offense; this is a cool chain of events much each component feels relatively tame.

Maybe the axes to discuss are preferences for "variety" and "magnitude of impact" among different classes of cards within a card population. Strixhaven's Mystical Archives adds a lot of both variety and magnitude of impact as does the "Learn/Lesson" mechanic, and say what you will about MDFCs, but those legendary novellas of rules text had some interesting and powerful abilities! (I really loved Strixhaven draft; I could see it being an all-time great draft format despite some color power imbalances and the feel-bad rares that are just to be expected when playing draft.)

Talking with @Chriskool, he said: {extremely butchered English language}
I need to stop attempting to converse on mobile :D
 
That's pretty cool, actually. It's like a metagame cube - sideboard against your opponent while drafting, play with decklists in mind. Tons of tech.
 
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