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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2021-02-25 15:39:56)
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I'm not sure "mana value" is clear to new players, but I think it's a lot, lot more clear than converted mana cost, so that's probably a good decision. I think most of the terminology changes they've made in the past have been good ones.
[1] If you're a mathematician you could write |mana cost|manhattan or somehting but that wouldn't help most people :)
It isn't the amount of the party mechanic that I am complaining about (although you may be right about that too), but rather the definition of "party"; it requires four specific creature types and is not generalized.
Yes, I think writing "shuffle" when a library is implied is OK. (However, I think that you should not write "shuffle" without specifying what to shuffle unless library is implied by "search [a player's] library" or something similar.)
Shortening "converted mana cost" to "mana value" is probably OK too since it is shorter, but it just feels the wrong way to me somehow.
Personally, I also omit reminder text, and use "dies" to mean "is put into a graveyard from the battlefield" regardless of the object's type.
I dislike the rules for legendary instants/sorceries. Legendary means something different. Rather, this rule should be a keyword ability (although those cards should remain legendary, which also means they remain historic).
Restricted hexproof is OK, but I think that protection should generally be used instead.
Removing "to your mana pool" is often OK, but should be retained where it would help to clarify.
The definition of "historic" is OK.
I like the rule about "any target", but I dislike that wording; I think that it should be "target damageable", and it is what I use in my own cards. (A card may also say "any damageable", "enchant damageable", etc.) (The meaning of "any target" and "target damageable" are the same, and are considered equivalent for the AST, e.g. with overload.)
I like their removal of the planeswalker damage redirection rule; that rule was too klugy.
Replacing "his or her" with "their" is probably better, except where it would be unclear. Fortunately, the rules do say that it can say "that player" where "their" is unclear, so that is OK.
Equip variants is OK.
The bar between ability text and flavor text is OK.
My opinion of the modified frame is neutral.
Note: Although I dislike the rule about legendary instants/sorceries, I do think that the rule for the ongoing supertype should be expanded. Ongoing supertype currently suppresses a state-based action (for schemes). I propose generalizing it to the other similar state-based actions too (for phenomena and for Sagas).
See the rules in my set here on Multiverse for some of my other ideas. (The rule about the ante zone being shared across subgames was apparently someone's interpretation used in a puzzle, actually; I decided to use it since it avoids some problems that can otherwise occur, such as in team games. Also, at least one of the other rules I listed in my own set seems to now be official.)
Sequels are hard. I agree, a lot of magic's sequels have been a bit lackluster. The modern-legal dominaria sets had great callbacks but didn't really try to be sequels to previous sets.
The Ravnica sets and other returns to Modern planes have mostly been "more of the same". Which is a shame, because "same guilds, new mechanics" is a great hook, but there wasn't really anything to make them stand out from the original.
Scars of Mirrodin was probably the best "sequel". It skewed a little towards "new", but there's no doubt we were visiting the same place, but no risk of confusing it with the original. Innistrad II was pretty similar, but I can at least remember "horror" vs "cosmic horror noir"
I guess, the nature of the game, if people want to play with more gothic horror cards or more adventure world cards or more city cards, they don't NEED a different set premise. If they said, "Ravnica, but published in half a dozen sets over 20 years" I'd think, "yay, more Ravnica". But it seems like a lost opportunity.
Also an interesting point about "Star Wars planet syndrome plane". I think there's always going to be some of that, because there's not much pressure to have multiple different places in the same world, and a new world allows new things that wouldn't coexist on the same world. But I don't think it means the worlds HAVE to be non-fleshed-out. Theros was crammed with greek myth references, and even in sets that were a bit weak on them, I think they could put in interesting individual cards. But if I were thinking seriously about sequels I'd establish places which were only loosely characterised in the first set, but could potentially support a whole sequel. E.g. have most of zendikar set in generic "adventure world" but a number of cards about the "dark side of the planet" or "the underworld" and then a second set could be set mostly in that place which players already have some resonance with. Because in a sequel people DO want what they loved in the original.
Torrezon could be great, but it would be basically starting over from scratch, it would only work if there was the appetite for a say european rennaisance world separate from any feelings about Ixalan. Which would be cool, actually. But the only real benefit of crossing over the sets would be a FUTURE set which might mash up parts of both.
I'll agree that many recent planes are theme parky or suffer from Star Wars planet syndrome. For such a reason, Tarkir was one of my favorite planes in that Tarkir's geography felt fleshed-out and expansive that played well into developing the clans. Tarkir's lore aims the story in a specific direction, sure but I can give that a pass.
However, I wonder how much of weak world-building is Wizard's fault and how much is the fault of the audience. Kamigawa, which had vibrant spirits and a lot of engaging influence from Japanese folklore was considered a flop on most accounts (though the plane does have some of the most vocal support from it's small group of fans), with only the samurai and ninja being considered successful elements. There can be really excellent opportunities to expand upon ideas presented, but a large bulk of the audience is unfortunately picky and seems to only want what it knows. Applying that to a sequel/return distills the idea further into something simple, flanderized without the nuance since the goals will presumably have shifted from exploration of the idea to presentation of previous exploration. Take Innistrad- for Innistrad 3 we're going back to vampires and werewolves. Shadows Over Innistrad block did a good job switching from gothic horror towards the eldritch horror, thus expanding on a root theme. The other elements in Shadows Over Innistrad could be flanderized since they took a back seat to the eldritch focus. Contrast with the slop that's Zendikar Resurgeant, or over-simplified guilds in Ravnica's subsequent returns. Fwiw, I'd love to see Torrezon be a focus. But, unfortunately people will probably want what they're already used to from Ixalan on return. The best route would be don't even call the set Ixalan, and just call it Torrezon and minimalize the parts from the continent that iisn't Torrezon. Also, not really related, but Innistrad was supposed to have another continent, and it'd be awesome if that continent was based on horror from another part of our world.
No, the new "shuffle" text is only being used where it's unambiguous that you're shuffling your library. We've seen examples both ways already: Quandrix Command explicitly says "target player shuffles up to three cards into their library," because the library hadn't been mentioned yet; otoh, the Demonic Tutor reprint says "search your library for a card, put it into your hand, then shuffle," because you were already talking about the library
I'm going to assume that "Shuffle" works like "target". You shuffle whatever is most appropriate.
Thus we can re-word cards into such loveliness as "Choose a creature each player controls, then shuffle".
"Large amount of speakers" was what I meant when I said "the people."
I see the saved space in the text box, but what's this "large amount of speakers"-part referring to?
Source: https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/643774353956388864/ive-seen-mention-of-it-a-few-times-here-but
As someone who loves to see language adapt as needed by the people [large amount of speakers], I am thrilled to see this simplification in Magic. Oh, and this change will save some space in the text box.
After looking through the whole card set, I do agree there's too much of the party mechanic. It's cute when used sparingly, but I guess it needs to be the main mechanic for as-fan reasons. I like that they added class types to more creature to support it, though, so that other rogue/cleric/fighter/wizard tribal decks get support too
I don't like the "party" mechanic it just looks like too messy to me. (I probably would not use this on my own custom cards; there are a few things I would probably not use on my own custom cards.)
Modal DFC is a interesting idea though. (Although there are reasons I dislike cards being double faced in general, this is because of the physical cards and not because of the rules.)
I think the limiting to the four selected types makes for tediousness with tired flavor, doubling-down on the trope so hard that it's no longer appealing. What I would expect to make the mechanic feel natural and not choked into a box would be too expansive for paper Magic to check (a fully digital card game could probably code in the necessary categories). I mean, why can't druids, knights, scouts, shamans, artificer, barbarian, assassin, etc. parts of parties? A monstrous creature like a beast even fits the concept of a party as a mascot. These floppy, farcical flavor choices are why I loathe Zendikar.
If you asked most gamers who play fantasy games what four creature types made up an adventuring party, I am extremely confident that most would get at least three right. These are the obvious choices
@SecretInfiltrator Maybe, or "Four creatures that share no types?"
@amuseum I agree. It's awkward, and feeling the need to include those should have been, IMO,a red flag regarding the mechanic. The Packbeast flavor isn't so bad, since it's an artifact, but really it should have been a Golem instead of a Beast.
"CARDAME is also a Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard" just sounds so forced, and out of flavor. Especially when they want non humanoids to be "in your party", but have no business being any of those classes. For example, a Beast with this phrase is such huge immersion breaker.
Wouldn't it be " a creature of each of up to four different creature types"?
"Four creatures with different types," I suppose, but that doesn't accomplish the flavor they were looking for, and you can't refer to "classes" under current rules.
It sucks that party refers to specific creature types. Like why is a party of Knight, Warlock, Shaman, Archer not a party? How would you alter to make it apply to any types?
Oh no, "keeping people honest" is going to be from Confounding Conundrum, IMO (at least as far as mana acceleration goes). I mean, don't get me wrong, Cleansing Wildfire will also be WILDLY popular to keep things like Tron and Field of the Dead in check, but in this format, it's mostly a weird way to potentially trigger landfall in red (since it looks for now like the limited Landfall deck is centered in
)
For years Wizards said they wouldn't "cross the streams" of Magic and D&D. Then they went quiet for a while on the issue. Then they started printing guides to help people run D&D campaigns in various Magic worlds like Ravnica and Innistrad (because, of course, people were doing that anyway, and were looking for "official" guides on what spells and stats and levels various creatures should have). I'm not that surprised that they went the other way at last. I don't have a problem with it.
Black enchantment destruction still feels weird to me, even though I know there's been Pharika's Libation and friends for a little while. Maro is still saying that the rule is black can't destroy its own dangerous enchantments.
Cleansing Wildfire is fun. Seems like a good way to keep people honest, make sure people play at least a few basic lands in their decks. I also like the idea of running it in a deck with Darksteel Citadel, Cascading Cataracts and Flagstones of Trokair.
The modal DFC lands might have been better as flip cards.
Several sets ago, Wizards decided that black needs to be able to destroy enchantments. Three colors can destroy artifacts but only two could destroy enchantments, and blue and red were worse options. There have been a couple of enchantment edicts already
Re: D&D world, Legends was also based on D&D, although it was a homebrew campaign rather than a canon world. There were other earth mythological figures too
Redefining of the pie, it seems. Definite break of the old pie. Interestingly still respecting the weakness that black originally was supposed to have that started the whole inability to remove enchantments.
Black's weakness (in regard to what is relevant to this design) was supposed to be an inability to get rid of its own dangerous enchantments (Phyrexian Arena & co.). I suppose we are going back to that.
Yeah; wow. That's a pie-break.
So Cleansing Wildfire seems quite strong to me. I don't know how it'll affect standard, but I wonder if it will impact modern and legacy.
I was expecting some type of caveat or hoop to jump through for black's enchantment destruction, but Feed the Swarm's is fairly straight forward. I wonder why black gets the option for enchantment destructionn now.
> "Constant resleeving will be another reason these dual lands will be tedious to play with."
I don't think so. Since one side is always quite a simple land in most environments you probably can get away with a simple marker. No one is going to need to read up on your ETBT Mountain's exact rule text.
No - they really haven't. "Arabian Nights" was a one-off outlier, mainly due to needing something in a hurry (and, at the time, the thinking that 'the gathering' would be the overarching concept; not 'magic' - which they then didn't do). Everything since then has been crossed with genres and flavours. Even the topiest-down of top-down sets has tended to try and keep the ideas rather than the named things themselves.
Actually directly crossing over, with named characters and everything? Well, I don't mind it for the occasional charity event and such. I do mind it as actual play-set though. I mind it quite a lot.
Magic has been doing crossovers since 1993. Get over yourself