General What are your favorite mechanics that merge Cool Things with Winning Things?

yeh basically anybody who is doing any sort of "design", the provided opportunities to find and utilize synergies will usually be in line with what "correct" play is in that format. Otherwise that particular synergy isn't really fitting into the format design, and so is usually cut for something more in line.

A term for "cards that can provide teaching moments" that I really like: lenticular design. MaRo has done some good writing in the past on the topic.
 
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landofMordor

Administrator
yeh basically anybody who is doing any sort of "design", the provided opportunities to find and utilize synergies will usually be in line with what "correct" play is in that format. Otherwise that particular synergy isn't really fitting into the format design, and so is usually cut for something more in line.

A term for "cards that can provide teaching moments" that I really like: lenticular design. MaRo has done some good writing in the past on the topic.
I agree it's certainly possible to design or draft synergies poorly. As examples from my own cubes, I've designed horribly supported Wildfire and Upheaval decks that were nearly always a trap. And even when I do support decks well, sometimes my drafters see a random mana dork in Pack 1 and hard commit to a mega-ramp deck that isn't supported at all. Yes, usually those things get cut, but it's a process and so the lenticular designs have got to also be assessed in vivo, as it were.
 
@landofMordor To continue using "I love lands in my graveyard" as an example, I think the key part is that it asks you for something without telling you how to achieve it. It just says "get lands into your graveyard", and not, say, "discard land cards". That makes it harder to "miss" the synergy.

I also think it helps that there are two "layers" to the payoffs — some cards literally ask about lands in your graveyard, while others just ask you for Threshold/Delirium/cards to Delve/Escape with. As a result, a new player might start off by just drafting the first set of payoffs, and then organically discover that, hey, there are other benefits to getting cards into their graveyard. Let them feel clever.

On a similar note, it could actually be really neat to build a beginner cube geared towards teaching players how to use Fetches properly. They're hilariously deep cards, so you'd have a bunch of material to work with.

...

Font of Agonies and Spell Snuff aren't great teaching cards because they need you to go all-in on life payment to get their benefits. Font needs four life payments to match Murder, and eight to get another one. You aren't going to see the benefits just by playing a shock/fetch mana base, whereas Ore-Scale Guardian turns into a Volcanic Dragon as soon as you've cracked a single fetch (with the promise of stronger dragon-y goodness if you bin some more lands).

I think these cards are better "sometimes losing life is a good idea" teaching tools:



The secret here is that there's an obvious way to lose life on villain's turn (don't chump block if you can take the damage) and there's an incentive to figure out how to lose life on your turn. Boom. Life-total management.

EDIT: I think it's important to notice that a lot of cards that are great teaching tools aren't high-power cards. I think that an environment geared towards teaching new players has to be forgiving to misplays.
 
@landofMordor To continue using "I love lands in my graveyard" as an example, I think the key part is that it asks you for something without telling you how to achieve it. It just says "get lands into your graveyard", and not, say, "discard land cards". That makes it harder to "miss" the synergy.

I also think it helps that there are two "layers" to the payoffs — some cards literally ask about lands in your graveyard, while others just ask you for Threshold/Delirium/cards to Delve/Escape with. As a result, a new player might start off by just drafting the first set of payoffs, and then organically discover that, hey, there are other benefits to getting cards into their graveyard. Let them feel clever.

On a similar note, it could actually be really neat to build a beginner cube geared towards teaching players how to use Fetches properly. They're hilariously deep cards, so you'd have a bunch of material to work with.

...

Font of Agonies and Spell Snuff aren't great teaching cards because they need you to go all-in on life payment to get their benefits. Font needs four life payments to match Murder, and eight to get another one. You aren't going to see the benefits just by playing a shock/fetch mana base, whereas Ore-Scale Guardian turns into a Volcanic Dragon as soon as you've cracked a single fetch (with the promise of stronger dragon-y goodness if you bin some more lands).

I think these cards are better "sometimes losing life is a good idea" teaching tools:



The secret here is that there's an obvious way to lose life on villain's turn (don't chump block if you can take the damage) and there's an incentive to figure out how to lose life on your turn. Boom. Life-total management.

EDIT: I think it's important to notice that a lot of cards that are great teaching tools aren't high-power cards. I think that an environment geared towards teaching new players has to be forgiving to misplays.
I agree on those two white payoffs. They are splendid finds!

I do not like a mana base which makes many colors to easy. Magic is a game where every color has its restriction. Abolishing this turns all cards into 'colerless' ones, which in turn makes the game less rich than it is. Snuff Out is a great card. But it should not be viewed as a life payoff. It is a card which is actually good, but does not have the mistake of phyrexian mana (it requires a swamp, hence color restrictions).

EDIT: I love the legacy like plays/interactions, but I abhore the lack of color restrictions due to the combination of fetch and duals. The game would be much richer if one of the two did not exist. Which one should be removed I do not know.
Most cubes do not fall into this trap so it is fine, but it is something to keep in mind. Similarly to the edh mentality of not allowing mass land destruction, which makes ramp too strong. In normal magic if you go all in agro you are weak to a wrath-like effect, which in turn creates a nice tension in the games. If you do not allow wrath like effects aggro becomes much stronger [end of rant, sorry for it].
 
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EDIT: I love the legacy like plays/interactions, but I abhore the lack of color restrictions due to the combination of fetch and duals. The game would be much richer if one of the two did not exist. Which one should be removed I do not know.
Most cubes do not fall into this trap so it is fine, but it is something to keep in mind.
having played a lot of magic with decks and environments containing highly restrictive manabases, “budget” manabases, and Legacy style manabases, my personal experience is that high powered manabases greatly increase the depth and repeatable enjoyment of MTG. but fun is subjective of course
 

landofMordor

Administrator
@LadyMapi , I love fetches haha. They're so amazing! The thing holding me back from that beginner cube is that shuffling is their main downside, and I would like to imagine that any beginner cube I make would be shuffle-less.

@Rusje , I find it ironic you say that, given my cube runs like 90 fixing lands :) 3x cycles of fetchlands and 3x dual lands (in addition to a few more cycles). For what it's worth, I have really enjoyed being able to cast my spells on curve, and haven't ever experienced the "color is arbitrary" thing* mostly because a) it's still Limited and you still have to make tradeoffs for consistency's sake, and b) the proactive decks like Zoo and Prowess are great at punishing mana stumbles which gives a very good reason to only splash responsibly. But again, fun is subjective, so I'm not trying to convince you or anything.

*except for Niv-Mizzet Reborn piles, which are intentional and awesome when they come together.
 
So I've given some thought to this topic, and though my first response was in the direction of "here is why I think Clarion Spirit is great and other mechanics with the same traits", it took me longer to think about "what mechanics are educative to players". Let me try to organize my thoughts:


Didactic Cards and Mechanics

I'm going to tentatively call the design device we're talking about didactic cards and mechanics. Didactic cards and mechanics explicitly state what is good in this environment (signposting). If sacrifice is a supported archetype, put payoffs that are explicit about it: Mayhem Devil is didactic, but Priest of the Blood Rite isn't. If tricolor decks are good, tricolor cards like Mantis Rider and Temur Charm are didactic. If it's a fast environment in which aggro is good, some didactic mechanics are raid, pack tactics, boast, unleash, bloodrush, can't block, and must attack.


Traps

As important as having didactic cards that signal to the right direction (true signposts) is avoiding false statements about what is good (traps or false signposts). If you add Rattlechains to a cube that has few spirits, it alludes to a deck that's not there, constituting a trap. Similarly, having an archetype that is at a lower power level than the other archetypes or the good-stuff (which is super common) is also a trap. You promised the player that the archetype was a legitimate way to win, but it can't compete. I wrote a post on false signposts last year: https://desolatelighthouse.wordpres...d-paragon-and-false-signposts-one-card-a-day/


Pros and Cons of Didactic Cards

Didactic cards and mechanics are a tool that brings multiple advantages. Most importantly, they help novice players that haven't come across that sort of environment to more quickly grasp it and have a better deck in their first try, instead of having to fail spectacularly before they learn something. They also signal to players of all skill levels what is good in that environment. Didactic cards serve as a test that your vision is working out - if the didactic card turns out to be a trap, your vision of the environment isn't aligned with the reality of what's good in the environment. Didactic cards can also reduce the inherent familiarity delta between the cube design and other players, but that's contingent on them not being traps. More generally, didactic cards reduce the delta between a player that is familiar with the list and one that isn't.

Like everything, didactic cards and mechanics have negative sides. Players may feel obliged to do what the cards say and "play aggro" or "draft many colors" or "avoid splashy creatures". Some players want to do their creative thing, or enjoy a particular type of deck (say, control), and if you force them into the best strategies in your cube, it can feel bad to them. For many players, exploring an environment and finding the best strategies is a more rewarding experience if there is less signage. Didactic cards do not often cross-polinate between multiple archetypes too (though Clarion Spirit is a nice exception).

A broader feature/issue with didactic cards is that they deepen and solidify the designer's vision and beliefs. That is both good, neutral and bad, but it's good to know. A possible issue is that it creates false beliefs about what is good in an environment, though you'll only find out when someone breaks it, which may be never.


Cube Spectrum: Didactic x Uncharted

Overall, you could say there are cubes that fall on the "didactic" side of the spectrum, with more explicit signage, and cubes that are on the "uncharted" side of the spectrum. Good "didactic" cubes will reduce the skill difference between players and present a more approachable environment, while and good "uncharted" cubes will give them a puzzle consisting of building something great from a bunch of parts. I say it's a spectrum because those two features are somewhat at tension with each other. One can layer a cube so that it has a bit of each, and I would consider that to be in the middle of the spectrum. For example, in original Innistrad, there are explicit archetypes, but Spider Spawning is quite hidden. There is no enchantment that says "Spiders you control have deathtouch. When ~ ETBs, mill four cards." https://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...ited/remembering-innistrad-limited-2016-03-08


Typical environments

@landofMordor asked specifically about didactic cards for "kinds of Magic strategy that might get discussed in Next Level Deckbuilding, Limited Resources, or another similarly universal resource." I haven't read the first yet, but I listened to quite a bit of LR, Lords of Limited, and limited Twitch streamers. They have different views of what is good and how to approach environments, and even in Next Level Magic Chapin says:
Often, you hear things like “Birthing Pod is game over,” or “I got mana-screwed, then mana-flooded,” or “It's all about tempo and mana curve,” or “Just draft removal and bombs,” or “Just pick your colors and stick with them.” Sometimes you're even the one saying them. These narrow observations are surface-level, and reveal only a small part of the picture of what is going on.
Fixed perspectives like these are weak compared with a reasoned, multilayered, systematic analysis.
I'm skeptical that single didactic cards can really convey the nuance present in limited environments, especially the well balanced ones. Good game design, in my opinion, is based on tension. If it's obvious you should attack all the time, you are forced to do it, so you're watching the game itself playing out rather than actually playing the game. That's why I believe the best way to approach didactic cards is to add ones that have tension with one another: Delver of Secrets, Wrath of God, Goblin Chieftain. The top end of the power band is where one should be most careful about maintaining tension.

Lessons I can think of that are commonly useful for beginner players and apply over a breadth of formats:
- Draft bombs highly
- Draft removal highly too
- Play good cards
- Play creatures
- Play a good curve (though what is acceptable varies a lot from format to format)
- Keep synergies in mind, but evaluate them considering worst case, average case, and best case
- Affect the board

I don't know what single cards will signal these principles to your players. Making games about bombs and removal by making their power level high is a way to do so, for example, but I don't personally like it. I prefer to create an environment that challenges these limited basics, though it does have the drawback of not preparing players to play retail limited.

Edit: forgot to finish this part.


Awareness is everything

Most of all, I believe the designer having awareness of the cube's environment is the hardest part to get right, rather than identifying the didactic cards. Traps are quite damaging to an environment, whether those traps are individual cards or unsupported archetypes. At the same time, draft environments are so chaotic, jagged, dependent on human behavior, individual preferences, context, and variance, that it is incredibly hard to simply know what is good in the environment you created yourself, while at the same time maintaining the tensions and make it deep.
 
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landofMordor

Administrator
@japahn I love these points you bring up:
> teaching one's players is in tension with letting them discover
> introducing tension in the actual synergy payoffs compensate for the designer's own lacunae

Luckily, we have some design aids of our own -- the color pie naturally introduces tension even if all our didactic cards point the same way, for example.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
 
Luckily, we have some design aids of our own -- the color pie naturally introduces tension even if all our didactic cards point the same way, for example.
Yeah, totally agree with that! Choosing your colors in a draft is resolving the tension between playing a subset of the cards available versus playing another subset. In a remarkably similar way that choosing an archetype is the tension between playing a subset of the cards available versus playing another subset.

There are a few fundamental differences, though:

If you view cards as payoffs for playing lands that make colors in its mana cost, and lands as enablers, you find a difference between colors and archetypes: basic lands are enablers that are available to everyone, which doesn't happen with microarchetypes. You have to draft your enablers.

Nonbasic lands are, therefore, cross-polinating enablers. Another difference: with colors, a fetch/shock manabase can play a large number of enablers for all subsets of cards, effectively blending them together. It's as if the there were lots of cards in the draft that were:

The Ultimate Glue (2)
Artifact Creature - Human Wizard Zombie Goblin Elf
When ~ ETBs, gain 1 life.
Modular 1
Afterlife 1
Embalm 3

Except in a much more elegant fashion.

The 50 copies of The Ultimate Glue make all archetypes function a lot better. But it also has the issue of homogenizing the pool, and reducing the tension between one archetype or the other, because you can play all of them in the same deck. Colors might run into this problem, but in microarchetype land we're just glad when we find a Wing Splicer because they are so rare. In microarchetype land, we have nothing close to The Ultimate Glue.
 
I personally prefer cubes more leaning towards the uncharted spectrum. When I basically rebuild my CCC during last winter, I tried to make the vast majority of my cards less didactic (even without knowing that term :p ), yet have them have as much synergy potential as possible. I wanted cards that could stand on their own, yet could become better in a specific or even better multiple specific decks. Alongside increasing my cube's size I tried to make the drafter's vision matter more and the designer's vision matter less.

And so far I have to say I enjoy this more and I feel like my players do so too.

What I did was using my few gold slots for more didactic cards, as those slots are narrow already and I felt these signpost would be really helpful for overwhelmed drafters.

For example, this is my azorius gold section:



You can probably tell what three possibilities for white/blue are showcased here.
 

this becomes more and more a favorite card the more i play it. it’s extremely strong and teaches people just how powerful a 3 mana creature can be, or how powerful a “measly” 2 mana discount can be.


Another powerful didactic card that makes you think “well how do i make sure i can get that second Plains?” and hopefully realize you can respond to cracking your own fetch, and feel very clever while doing very powerful things!
 

this becomes more and more a favorite card the more i play it. it’s extremely strong and teaches people just how powerful a 3 mana creature can be, or how powerful a “measly” 2 mana discount can be.
I actually have cut down to a single copy of Unearth in my higher-power grid due to it having a high relative power (when coupled with ETB effects and not a ton of 1cmc board presence-related spells)! Entomb for or rummage away a 3cmc on Turn 1 or 2 into Unearth became a power play; it really did merge something cool (fair graveyard) with winning!
 

landofMordor

Administrator
Yeah, I guess that a modal card is a way of teaching players that peanut butter and chocolate go well together, even in Magic strategy :)
 
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