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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 22:35:20)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 22:35:20)
"There are very few times in magic where it makes sense for a creature to do a verb rather than the player. "
I never get this argument and restriction. Very rarely does it matter who is doing the action. The line between creature and player action is usually ambiguous.
"This creature assembles a contraption."
So what? Does the creature (card) move from the battlefield zone--on its own--over to the contraption deck and slide it into play?
There's a instant/sorcery spell that instructs you assemble contraptions. Are players equivalent to creatures now? Since you perform the same action as a creature. Is that bad design?
"When ~ enters the battlefield, create a 1/1 creature token."
Why is this a player action? Why not "it creates a token"?
"When ~ enters the battlefield, destroy target creature."
Again, why is this player action? Why not "it destroys target creature"?
"Add mana to your mana pool."
Why not "CARDNAME adds mana to your mana pool" directly? The same consequence will occur, but the latter is more flavorful.
I feel like unstable is in the sweet spot of being too normal to count as a silver-bordered set, but still have the cards that don't function right so I hate it. As for contraptions, I consider anything that isn't black-border a concession that they couldn't solve contraptions. It's also not new; Emergents Genesis has this same mechanic with Helios's construct pile.
Yeah, in general un3 seems closer to more normal magic than previous un sets (in terms of rules wackiness, art bursting all over the text box, less ambiguity etc) which makes sense -- a smattering of "really out there" cards is probably more fun than an entire set of "I don't know how to rule on this".
I maybe meant standard legal, not black border, I agree conspiracy is at least as wacky as -un :) I agree that contraptions apparently work in regular black border rules as-is, but I think wizards wouldn't at the moment do the "supplementary deck" thing in black border. (I had my hopes with the monsters you fought against in theros releases, but apparently that was just a one-off)
Yep. The solution is good. I'm not even going as far as saying "it wouldn't quite work in black border magic". It's well-defined if you compare Contraptions with cards that leave parts of their functionality unexplained/implied like Hangman.
There is nothing inherently silver-bordered about this other than the name of the counter - compared to some other large mechanics we got in supplemental products on black border cards - e. g. conspiracies.
This seems to be a theme of the set - though there are some glorious exceptions.
It doesn't seem to matter who/what assembles the contraption though; all it does is gives you an effect you can call on every few turns. Kinda like an archenemy scheme.
It would have been nice if, I dunno, each of the three slots on the crank were populated from different sources - so you could say "Turn 2 is the machine my steamflogger boss is working on..." Which I guess you can still say - but isn't mechanically menaingful.
I agree the solution they found is great, though.
Contraptions in Un3!
And I'm pleased to see that my original analysis of why contraptions were nigh-impossible to get right is still mostly correct.
Rewording slightly with the benefit of hindsight, the difficulty as I saw it is that in order for the steamflogger boss ability to be useful, "assembling a contraption" has to be something that doing multiple times is usually useful.
Several other softer constraints also present problems: they should feel rube-goldberg-y so not all identical; the action of assembling them shouldn't be an action which could be covered by an existing magic word such as "create"; etc
There are very few times in magic where it makes sense for a creature to do a verb rather than the player. And steamflogger boss doesn't have any ability to assemble contraptions itself. So is "assemble" an extra game rule built into contraptions? If so is there any justification for that? Or is it an ability on some contraptions? Or on some creatures? But not only goblins (else boss wouldn't need to narrow it to goblins)? But are you really going to have a narrow keyword ability associated with a creature type but have other creatures have it as well?
One large category of designs are ones where contraptions are normal cards "artifact - contraption" from your deck. That doesn't really work because you'd never have enough that steamflogger boss's ability would ever be useful.
Another is they're a token artifact type like clues or treasure (which have become more common since steamflogger boss was first printed). But it's hard to make those feel steampunk-y, and it's hard to see where the rules to create them would go.
All that mostly still applies, but having a separate contraptions deck (and having contraptions go off every three turns) resolves almost all of the issues. More contraptions is better -- and feels great. But they're still all different, feel steampunk, and don't involve you searching for the most powerful single one. Assembling contraptions is useful enough, boss's doubling ability is useful even if it can't assemble contraptions itself.
But it wouldn't quite work in black border magic.
It's satisfying to see a resolution to a puzzle that seems convincing now I see it, but doesn't undermine any of the assumptions I hoped would be kept.
Well, I usually didn't look forward to Core Cets, but I was disappointed when the "Core Set Plus" that was Magic Origins was announced to be the last, because it showed what a Core Set could do to be relevant.
I very much hope future Core Sets follow the footsteps of Magic Orgins rather than falling back to the "uninteresting" versions we had before. From the announcement my hope gets somewhat supported in that they are themed around character's past etc. just like the aforementioned better example.
I'm also looking forward to Explorers of Ixalan. I like alternate game modes and this could be something new - maybe Frontiers style (not the latest iteration of Legacy/Extended/Modern).
I like dinosaurs, but almost exclusively in prehistoric settings and Ixalan doesn't appear prehistoric at all. As someone who really wanted a Mesoamerican world, I'm worried the pirate aspects will overpower the Mesoamerican ones.
I'm actually interested that the core sets will focus around a character's past and have diminished importance in comparison to the other sets. I understand why core sets were needed, but they were never something I ever looked forward to.
Arena was disappointing. I loved Heroscape, but Arena had none of the draw that the complex battlefield and slightly larger armies had. Didn't play enough to explore how the decks affected it.
I forgot some people don't care about dinosaurs :)
There was already an MtG arena miniatures game, that seemed to be not my kind of thing. "Arena of the Planeswalkers", that's it - a variant on Heroscape.
Explorers of Ixalan seems like it might be more like that Planechase variant where you have a 2D grid of planes? It sounds intriguing, anyway.
Oh, they're doing one of those tie-in games like they did for DnD. Those were actually reasonably well received, iirc? Never tried one though.
I was delighted to hear about Un3, fairly excited about Ixalan being pirates + cities-of-gold (don't care about dinosaurs), moderately interested to see what they do on Dominaria, and very intrigued by the board-game-style Explorers of Ixalan: as well as 4 decks it comes with "20 double-sided tokens, 50 game tiles, and 40 counter pieces" ?!
There's just too many announcements. I can't care about anything because I'm overloaded, and the ones I don't like ruin potential enjoyment of those I do.
Return to Dominaria!
Ixalan, dinosaurs and pirates and cities of gold
(Why are dinosaurs naturally south-american? Is it just "things that go in a jungle", or there was an idea that didn't quite work out in Murganda that became Ixalan, like Akhos and Theros)
Beginner focused core sets! (I like core sets, although I'm not sure why)
Third un set Unstable!
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/25th-anniversary-announcement-day-2017-06-14?/
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/metamorphosis-2-0-2017-06-12
I suspect the design team turn in designs with green common Naturalize and white uncommon Demystify, and then development go "Um, no" and move it around.
ISTR reading somewhere that in Amonkhet, originally Dissenter's Deliverance was a Naturalize; then development wanted to push it for constructed so removed "or enchantment" to make it cheaper, and that meant they twiddled Forsake the Worldly to ensure there was a full Disenchant at common somewhere. Perhaps that keeps happening and Maro hasn't noticed?
This is why I try to take Rosewater's dictates with a grain of salt. He's like President for Life of the Magic color wheel, which means that what he says has a lot of credence. But that doesn't mean his opinion of where the color wheel is is law. His opinion can be overruled.
Which isn't to say that this isn't a very useful tool. It's not every day that you get a peek at the President's agenda.
I wish he'd taken the time to state explicitly that set themes and set mechanics can and will violate the color pie. Also he discussed almost nothing of counters, even though +1/+1 counters outside a few specific cases clearly are distributed along color pie lines. (e.g. put N +1/+1 counters on target creature(s) is primarily green, secondarily white)
Some statements that struck me as odd:
"Deal N damage to a creature that's been damaged this turn" is listed as secondary in black, but it has literally never appeared on a card of that color (unless that is actually a strange way to describe the Fatal Blow/Hooded Assassin effect).
Also "White's artifact destruction is usually at uncommon." Whut? What the hell goes on in the timespan between design and release for MaRo to say something so utterly preposterous?
Along the same line "White and green usually have one enchantment destruction card in common, although green's is usually also a spell that destroy both artifacts and enchantments." which is laughable (he says the same about artifacts too!). What actually goes on is that if only one is destroyed, it's usually an enchantment for white and an artifact for green. There is a strong back/forth movement between the colors for removal that hits both types of permanents. Right now it strongly favors white.
Oh yes! So interesting to see it officially laid out. It's interesting how most of it is about what I thought, but I was often vague about what was primary/secondary for some mechanics, or other distinctions.
I feel like this will be super useful to many people: Mechanical Color Pie 2017
And for Innistrad, that's really just business as usual (cf. Avabruck's destruction and the zombie invasion of Thraben which was part the first Innistrad block's storyline)
I don't think they're literally going to pretend that never happened. I think they're going to use some kind of magic to accelerate the rebirth of life on Zendikar so they can get back to adventure world. (Which, okay, is likely to be more like A Wizard Did It than Magic A Is Magic A, but I could be wrong.)
Innistrad wasn't exactly wrecked, was it? I don't think Emrakul devastated whole continents, just a few towns.
Innistrad is barely a world though; it's "Hey, classic B-movie horron!" followed by "Hey! Classic Lovecraft horror!" followed by... I 'unno, 'the ring' maybe?
Even worse when it's "here's a lovely world, boom we wrecked it, oh look we're back and are going to pretend that never happened" as MaRo is so clear is going to happen with Zendikar and probably Innistrad. I don't expect them to go back to time spiral Dominaria again, either.
Getting really fed up with Wotc doing "Here's a lovely world. boom can't go there ever again now, we wrecked it."
I remember MaRo mentioning that Dominaria might be returned to as a post-apocalyptic plane after the events of Time spiral (I think? I don't really know the story). I personally don't feel strongly about Dominaria one way or the other. I guess since it's the original, I don't find it especially bland- Zendikar committed that crime in my book.
If Dominaria is used as a post-apocalyptic world though, I think that could still be interesting. Too many planes feel so narrow when it comes to their actual depictions. I enjoyed Tarkir since the factions had noticeably different biomes that lent well to Tarkir feeling like more of a world than Theros or Innistrad. The varying regions of Dominaria would be an excellent way to actually depict a world where its regions actually feel unique while all being tied together in the post-apocalyptic setting.
Isn't there another side (continent I'm guessing) on Innistrad that was never explored? I
I feel like that's a terrible restriction that they're self-imposing. Dominaria has always been a multi-faceted world, so why not just pick some continent and revisit it alone?
I think their problem is that revisiting Dominaria would involve approaching it in a way they simply don't do planes anymore.
Every Dominaria set focused on a small, separate portion of the plane (or in some cases on a time period so peculiar it was essentially a narrow subset of the plane). But ever since Mirrodin visiting a plane means visiting all of it, usually organized neatly into color-aligned regions. Doing that with a revisit to Dominaria is an exercise in breaking the base (not to mention the massive amount of baggage to take into account storywise).
I'd be intrigued to see how they get away with it, but honestly, as someone who never played that period of magic (and who thinks Dominaria overall is bland as can be anyway), I can't fault them for actively treating it like "some bad childhood best forgotten."