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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-06 01:16:57)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-06 01:16:57)
I'm quite happy about where Very Cryptic Command is going. And alternate illustrations are neat, too.
I'll use my non-US status as excuse once again to sit by the sidelines. But I'll nevertheless be participating on the challenges from the outside as usual. I'll probably make a [GDS3] set here and put up my answers there, so you can all laugh at me getting an easy multiple choice question wrong (which IIRC would have kicked me out during GDS 1 or 2 already - but mostly because I didn't really make use of the whole time window).
A fun exercise is a fun exercise. :)
I recall during ( once again IIRC) GDS 2 one contestant late in the rounds was not technically eligible to work in the US yet, but they decided to go on with the contest on the basis that they would likely be able to arrange things if they made it to the finals (though they didn't and that was that).
I wonder whether a familiar name will turn up again. I recall being quite excited about Greg Krajenta making it in there and submitting some designs I recognized from their earlier posts at MtGS.
I was also thinking of them merging, but maybe just to make a third faction so perhaps not entirely.
Mechanically, I'm thinking "devotion to phyrexia (mana)" would definitely be a thing - especially since that religion element in phyrexia is something the cosmic, (ele)mental forces of eldrazi don't really touch upon.
Still, I haven't figured anything beyond "that's interesting" that would be enough of an angle to really frame this thing around.
I have very similar reasons not to participate. However, it's a good point that the chances of winning are slim so that it might be a fun exercise nonetheless.
EDIT: Nevermind, it requires you to be residing in US.
I figure if I win somehow, I'll just turn down the offer and tell them to pick another finalist because my actual interest in real MTG has waned dramatically over the last year.
Granted that's only if I win, so the chances of that are effectively zero, especially with that hefty salary being attached to an internship position.
On the plus side, it will probably increase the amount of people doing custom card design dramatically.
I'm really interested to see how it goes, and I'd like to see how much my design skills have actually grown :)
But last time, I reflected realistically, I'm probably more satisfied to be a career programmer than a career designer, so I don't want to actually compete.
I was thinking that if the Eldrazi vs Phyrexians did ever clash, the entire arc / outcome of the story would be them fusing / merging together. The Eldrazi would severely damage the Phyrexians (because that's just what they do, annihilate stuff) but the Phyrexians would end up corrupting/ tainting them and you'd eventually end up with the Phyrexdrazi.
I was also under the impression that Nicol Bolas was manuevering the Phyrexians & Eldrazi to eventually encounter each other, with the intention that they destroy each other leaving him as the sole big bad in the Multiverse, but his plan would backfire. TBH, I thought that was what WotC was headed towards, it seemed really obvious to me, but IDK.
In terms of narrative, I'd much rather Magic be a series of short stories than one big drawn-out comic book plot, especially with the way they're handling the recent sets narrative-wise. Feels too Marvel-y.
So keep the Eldrazi and the Phyrexians separate and rarely used, otherwise you end up with what happened to the Weeping Angels/Daleks/Cybermen/literally every recurring villain monster in Dr. Who, or the xenomorphs in each subsequent Alien movie. Do what SecretInfiltrator said and focus on the various brood types or Praetor factions if you want variety.
I'd also only be down for a multi-plane set if it was Time Spiral 2 or two planes happened to merge via shenanigans of a previous block or something. Ends up taking the focus away from both/all of the planes involved.
I like the idea of being able to do multiple planes at once. I'm not massively invested in the ongoing plot, so I don't really care what happens to Phyrexia or Eldrazi, although they were used to good effect in the blocks they appeared.
Cool! I'm definitely tempted!
Note: Phyrexian currently are not able to traverse planes but likely are going to gain this ability (or be revealed to have gained that ability off-screen e. g. from playing with known student of planar travel Venser's corpse) as the story progresses.
Note 2: Eldrazi are currently not narratively in a shape to pose their usual threat, so you would have to build them up first.
With that out of my system... meh. I like both of them as villains, but they don't particular interest me as opponent's to each other. Part of this is that they both (especially when you are talking about Phyrexians rather than they a Phyrexian) are quite similar in being an alien morality that tries to convert/consume worlds.
Sure there are details which allow them to be different kinds of villains (e. g. Phyrexia being vulnerable to in-fighting), but that just means they are just different enough to replace each other without getting dull.
But am I going to care about an Eldrazi Drone being assimilated into a phyrexian agent as much as I might care about the same happening to a leonin? Do I care about Emrakul's body horror transformation being unleashed upon the already body horror member of the Vicious Swarm as much as seeing tentacles grow out of a Thraben human guard?
Killing a sentient humanoid to turn them into a Zombie slave is horrifying, but destroying that Zombie to build a flesh golem is kinda redundant.
I like Alien. I like Predator. Both cool "Human" vs. "Alien Nature" stories. But "Alien Nature" vs. "Alien Nature"? That's not a story archetype that resonates quiet as well.
Now you can try to make the Phyrexians more approachable and there is certainly a foundation for that laid out in the New Phyrexia Planeswaker's Guide/style guide. But then again you could just as well built a set around the already established inner strife of New Phyrexia or a whole block just around watching five different planes being invaded by five different flavors of Phyrexia and not repeat yourself.
If you do the same approach and turn the Eldrazi Titans and their brood lineages into more distinct subgroups you have about eight interesting villains that each can tell their own story... or you can pit them against one another in a monster mash.
Either of the two against Bolas would be more interesting as far as a villain vs. villain matchup goes, because I imagine Bolas to be just the kind of guy inhabitants of a plane might be fine with submitting to as long as they can avoid body horrors - which is a far more intersting bargain.
If you want this to work you need to pitch hard and work through these issues.
Multiverse Feedback has many suggestions e. g. Allow Custom Symbols.
There are some options:
. But unfortunately they don't work everywhere on the card e. g. not in the mana cost.
So some additional functionality that it could use to be tweaked towards this goal:
> * Choosing different border forms, or the absence of a border entirely.
> * Choosing to input different color schemes (i.e. pick a primary, secondary, tertiary color for the border's main color, highlight color, accent color) or gradients? Maybe let people enter colors hexadecimal codes?
> * Giving an option that we can choose to link via URL to different 'mana' symbols, i.e. card costs symbols / icons which almost every card game has?
Any other ideas? I know this might be fruitless dreaming, since Alex has his handsful and probably isn't making a killing off of this site, but it has so much potential and so much work has already gone into it.
Edit: Also, it's been a while since I looked at the code underlying Multiverse, but from what I recall it seems to be a clever use of HTML's 'boxing' of elements, i.e. everything on a webpage is basically a 'box' that is graphically tweaked and altered so that they don't appear box-like.
Mary O'Kill's switch and combined creatures are two things I'm going to be exploring in the future. Its something many people dabbled into (the latter more than the former) and it's often been more of a matter of choosing one option over the other and with a semi-canon reference mechanic a lot of this is just easier to handwave.
Supertypes are allowed to be shared with other card types while subtypes are tied to a card types, so if you make instant a subtype (or rather "Instant") you could make cards with the typeline "Sorcery - Instant", but would lose out on "Creature - Instant".
I personally would conider replacing "instant" with another term for any reboot situation. "Flash" has been suggested.
This all to me is a discussion entirely separate to other spell subtypes to me e. g. I have pondered repeatedly to adopt at the very least a rudimentary system of Arcane and Divine.
I have posted a list of several subtypes (including artifact type) here. It also contains Cantrip and Charm, but also Command, Tutor and Summon.
The idea is that there is a priority system that says the type depends strongest on belonging to a group of mechanical relevant aspects as an identifier within the set (e. g. Traps) and cycles/megacycles (Charm/Command). Then you have some fallback-types for your generic spells like Divine for your white life gain and Arcane for your blue card draw and Primal for your green creature pump (white creature pump may be a Tactic).
Enchantments have more subtypes than you give them credit for: Shrine exists. :) But I also expand upon artifact types and enchantment types in the above link.
Creating a consistent system though is not always easy and will eventually lead to similar issues like Battle for Zendikar's Ally creatures; there the formerly mechanically tight tribe was interpreted creatively and used much more loosely - and at some point typeline space becomes an issue.
I actually am pondering using this system exclusively for digital custom card creation, because I generally agree with the reduced cost/reward situation for noncharacter card type (i. e. noncreature, nonplaneswalker).
Players as a whole instinctively care more about subtypes of living things, because they themselves are living things and care about speciasation within their own representive group.
This is also, btw, why we are fine to have creature type Plant rather than distinguishing between e. g. Tree and Herb, and why we have a lot of mammalian subdivision (Sable, anyone?), but outside of that use blanket terms like Fish and Lizard (though there is a catch-all term for fantasy mammals that also serves for some fantasy-animals of other classe: Beast).
I could write a lot more on the topic - and have done so in the past. Just gonna force myself to stop for now. ;)
EDIT: Note that the linked forum post is not up-to-date as it doesn't mention e. g. Oath as an obvious option.
I've also been thinking about this. MaRo has said before that while he wishes everything was sorcery speed, and that sorceries with Flash would be the occasional exciting exception. But he's also concurred that that ship has sailed because so much of the game is tied into the words Sorcery and Instant. It would fundamentally change too many cards.
That said, I've wondered if the best course of action would be to just make a new type--Let's call it Hex for now--that was identical to Sorceries. From that point forward, all past cards that referenced Sorceries, like Envelop would only affect cards made the year before Hex was introduced. In the future, whenever one would make a sorcery, they'd make a Hex. If they wanted to make an Instant, they'd make a Hex with flash.
I don't know. I think it solves the potential power-level problems that arise. But I also think that I'd be burned at the stake for a number of Hex's transgressions.