General Worst Limited Mechanics

CML

CML

Contributor
Lucre said:
  • I thought haunt was great, you could get some great play out of them with proactive decisions about future plays, but for the most part haunt creatures just encouraged them to print more good abilities on creatures in the set.
  • I like Clash, I just played it like spell + both players scry 1 and I was usually just pleasantly surprised when I won the clash.
  • Recover was a sweet way to get extra cards out of multiple colours and give games tonnes of stages.
  • Ripple is a mechanic that I think has a lot of potential in limited.
Soulshift got pretty fucking overwhelming fast. Way too many things to think about while drafting.
Reinforce was pretty stressful to play around all the time.
Invasion's hyper colour matters cards made you really stressed out when playing. Having most of your removal countered by colour changers was pretty balls.
Ninja was annoying it was kinda annoying with all the rules discussion that resulted.
I liked untappers but many people didn't.
Half of me likes morph in limited and the other half of me found it led to rather ugly environments.
People found threshold could lead to really weird uncomfortable games, especially given the disparity of a decks ability to attack or fill graveyards in various colours.
Devour looks like it could have used way more help but, ya know, I never played that set.
I found sunburst kinda weird and uncomfortable
I also found in M/M/M drafts affinity created a real disparity between your shitty draft creatures and plays, and super aggressive above the curve creature + equipment decks. (Drafting artifact lands in mirrodin was also hard for me to call)

Theros shitty removal dynamic turned out alright but had discomfort and problems of it's own.
I really didn't like the dimir encode dynamic, though I feel like it might be neat if reimplemented.
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hey now i love most of those mechanics. i dunno what your greatest joy is when playing magic but mine is checking to see if i have 7 or more cards in my graveyard -- or hand! up with Saviors of Kamigawa I say.


let me resume hating:

ripple is unbelievably awful. it's funny to mind twist people on t2 with your "8 surging dementia" deck, sure, but it's funny exactly once. i feel the same way about, say, the mono-U poison deck in original Modern, very cool for one tournament, then get the hell out of my format.

getting back to why i hate ripple, in general incentivizing people to draft multiples of cards is pretty cool (another reason to rag on singleton) but jesus this was a little too much. i hate conspiracies that do the same, as well as the entire concept of conspiracy draft, for that reason.

some more reasons i hate ripple include: at least conspiracy was fundamentally dumb but coldsnap was cool outside of ripple! this will surprise nobody because my small reputation in mtg, outside of being an asshole on the internet, revolves around my love of martyr of sands, but cards like sound the call hit the right note with that same mechanic, you could blind-flip a 5 off your counterbalance to counter theirs, the whole thing had a self-referential jerkathon feel familiar to lovers of Time Spiral draft and modern literature, and cumulative upkeep was the perfect mechanic for both baroque rules text and tough gameplay decisions. even the art was good outside of Garza Zol, Macaroni "Art" Model.

i also hate ripple because it's the perfect example of a fucking limited mechanic that would never see the light of day in constructed on a single goddamn card, and yet IT WAS STILL MISERABLE IN LIMITED. the mechanics we nominate should have that inexplicable misery and/or should have also ruined constructed games. Haunt gets off the hook for actually being sweet in limited + Orzhov Pontiff stuff in Modern. Infect is a fun and interactive deck in Legacy, ditto Miracle. I also can't bring myself to hate Allies, stupid as it is, because I once kicked a Rite of Replication on Halimar Excavator and nearly died of laughter. This remains my second-funniest Limited win of all time, after the time I played two Fire Servants and Lava Axed him from 20. but this is not about happy things, this is about me hating ripple. Here are the mechanics that suck slightly less than ripple:

Hexproof
Cipher
Heroic

but it is ripple that sucks the most. in conclusion, ripple is a taint on the magic: the gathering brand. by this i mean not a metaphorical taint, but a taint, the anatomical between the anus and the testicles.

i fucking hate ripple.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I maintain that hexproof is a) not a limited mechanic and b) not fundamentally terrible, vis a vis Geist of Saint Traft and the new assassin card. Thrun was also pretty cool and a card I enjoy having around.

Boggle and Invisible Stalker can go to hell though.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
I like those cards. Sylvan Caryatid is a tasteful implementation too.

check out my homey's SCG-winning deck:

http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=69434

afterwards, portland radio heard the world-historical announcement, "I used to hate hexproof guys, but now I just feel they're misunderstood." thank you rob

as for Bogle it's gotten to the point that i board Hallowed Burial instead of Wrath of God in modern because i want to randomly ranch them at the cost of croaking to something equally dumb like Merfolk because woop extra mana, just because i hate Bogles THAT MUCH. he is an ugly tumor upon the legacy of Eventide
 
Changling Bob

Changling Bob

shroud is clearly a better hexproof

i feel like surging sentinels is the reasonable ripple card, and the others are all feel-bad as drafting them makes them one-sided evacuation, mind twist, fireball, or the biggest pants imaginable at a fraction of the fair cost. sentinels actually forces you to then do something, and they can actually answer it.

writing that, it seems like ripple is zero-effort storm, with the exact same 'it turns out that one damage is still too good on a storm card, and wing shards is probably fair but no one gives a shit' effect.
 
Lucre

Lucre

CML said:
but it is ripple that sucks the most. in conclusion, ripple is a taint on the magic: the gathering brand. by this i mean not a metaphorical taint, but a taint, the anatomical between the anus and the testicles.

i fucking hate ripple.
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I think cascade was an example of a ripple I'd be happier to play with, but I think it should probably be more limited and look for a typed card or something. I'm not sure. I just think these effect multipied cards from out of your deck (Kinda like spliced spells or army in a can cards but working randomy out of your limited deck) could be interesting if a format was shaped around them and they were much more limited. Just plopping down sever 2/1 first strikers on turn 3 was not the most fun ever, but I'm sure it doesn't have to feel so awful and swingy to do that sort of thing.

They shat out an extremely dull and very powerful mechanic onto a set that really didn't need it or know how to deal with it, which sadly made coldsnap draft kinda toxic.
 
Changling Bob

Changling Bob

I'm tempted to stick 4 sentinels in consipricube(TM) and see what happens. Given I'm expecting worldknit dragons and cruel ultimatums, or at least mono-red unexpected potential-ing scapeshift/valakut combo, it can't be the most degenerate thing around.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Ripple was pretty bad yeah.

I love sunburst, it's actually the mechanic that brought me back to the game! Etched Oracle and Pentad Prism (into t3 Bringers!!!) still have a special place in my heart.

Splice onto Arcane was a pretty bad limited mechanic. It caused real feel-bad moments when you drew a non-Arcane instant or sorcery...
Sweep was okay, but I still hate Barrel Down Sokenzan with a passion, because I missed the "twice" on that card, which cost me a game. The other three (only!) cards do something equal to the number of returned lands, so I just assumed Barrel did as well...
Radiate was pretty dumb, ranging from good to actively bad, depending on the color of your opponent's deck (i.e. something completely out of your control).
 
GenericZero

GenericZero

FlowerSunRain said:
My name is going to get dropped whenever the topic of Heroic and 1/3 creatures comes up whether I want it to or not isn't it?
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Ya, I've got you jotted down in my memory as "that guy who's in love with Theros block". Whether you actually are or aren't, I don't care. But you only reinforced this belief when you said (somewhere around here, I swear) that Soul of Theros looked fun.

To be clear, that card is one very strong keyword passed fun. It's just dumb.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
GenericZero said:
Ya, I've got you jotted down in my memory as "that guy who's in love with Theros block". Whether you actually are or aren't, I don't care. But you only reinforced this belief when you said (somewhere around here, I swear) that Soul of Theros looked fun.

To be clear, that card is one very strong keyword passed fun. It's just dumb.
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My exact words were: "Soul of Innistrad and Soul of Theros both seem pretty legit, but those slots have a lot of other options that might be more interesting."

The card doesn't look particularly fun and while I am interested in finding graveyard effects in white, that isn't what I'm looking for.

I am in love with Theros block. And I really don't care if no one else is.
 
GenericZero

GenericZero

FlowerSunRain said:
My exact words were: "Soul of Innistrad and Soul of Theros both seem pretty legit, but those slots have a lot of other options that might be more interesting."

The card doesn't look particularly fun and while I am interested in finding graveyard effects in white, that isn't what I'm looking for.

I am in love with Theros block. And I really don't care if no one else is.
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I don't love Theros but I liked it. Monstrosity was awesome. Inspired was okay. Tribute was a joke. Heroic was nice but I wish they pushed it more. Same for bestow. Devotion was aight. WotC played it way too safe with the set but it still gave us some great toys.
 
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