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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2026-06-24 08:51:47)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2026-06-24 08:51:47)
Affinity for artifacts was a massive huge problem. They removed the artifact lands to fix it; but just removing the mechanic would have been a better fix (except for, you know, needing to recall and reprint all the cards). It might be possible to balance it; but likely not - 0 cost artifacts are plentiful and jumping the mana curve by that much leaves you either printing "It's Counterspell! But it costs more if you don't have artifacts!" or printing, well, horribly horribly broken everything.
People have a visceral hatred of Mirrodin block standard. Even if Wizards gets the balance right, either the cards with affinity will be so nerfed that the people who wanted it back will be disappointed and/or everyone else will go into it already distrustful. I know they briefly considered it for SOM.
I'm not sure why Affinity for Artifacts deserves a 10. It seems perfectly reasonable on colored spells. Assert Authority was both powerful and balanced, for example. I understand why it would be unlikely to return, but I probably would have stuck with 'if the stars align' 8.
Thing is, Wizards have been trying to remake banding for years. Nomads en-Kor, Catapult Squad / Crossbow Infantry, Infantry Veteran, Akrasan Squire have I think all been explicitly stated to be trying to capture something of the appeal of banding without the rules complexity. And Defensive Formation and High Ground for the other half, too.
vast majority of players these days either don't know banding was ever a thing or vaguely know it's that old ability that was confusing. it's not a strong enough sentiment to really turn people off a functional remake
:) I think Mark has said 10 for banding and 11 for bands-with-others, though as he says, ratings have shifted around over time as he's become more certain about things, or varied with his mood.
I think that's probably about right.
I think a mechanic like banding but less confusing is probably a bit more likely, in the possible, but we have to have a good reason range. I think the idea in banding, of having creatures clump up into a unit, in order to make the most vulnerable of them less vulnerable, is a good one with strong flavour and gameplay potential. But it needs a version which is clear, and I'm not sure if that's possible or not.
But they'll be really really careful doing that because banding has such a bad reputation. That seems to fit with his #10 examples "Storm, dredge, affinity for artifacts", which I don't think are completely impossible, but they have one major and several minor reasons not to use...
And even more so with bands-with-others, which I think they will probably avoid forever, because it's banding, but MORE confusing, with WORSE flavour and a LOT more parasitic... I'm not sure any of those traits will be desirable ever.
Mm, even banding is probably only 9 or 10.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/storm-scale-khans-tarkir-block-2016-02-29
Mark revisits the storm scale.
Of course, it could probably be extended.
11. I never say never, but never
• Real-world people
• Dexterity cards
12. I never say never, but never ever
• Cards on reserved list
• Triple-face cards
• Cards that make you tear up your own cards, cards that affect other games than this one, you know, basically most of Unglued.
13. Never.
• Ante
• Profanity, graphic gore, graphic sex, racial slurs
I was going put "free spells" and "functional reprint of power 9" on there, but they're probably still in the "#10, i never say never, butwould need a major miracle" category. I couldn't think of many actual mechanics that fell above 10!
True; my usual behaviour when commenting on a card is to click a card link; and read the card, and comment on it in isolation of anything else. If it's deliberately "different" I get told so (snottily, usually) and then I just try to remember never to look at cards from that set.
I have noticed that when someone starts a set here that is intentionally not NWO (even if not in that many words), people commenting tend to assume it is NWO. That leads to the designer testily defending their decision and antagonism between them and some of the criticisers, which can be an issue.
NWO forms the core of nearly every project I do, as it makes the custom set more accessible, consistent and fun.
As someone who prints out my set to draft and also makes custom draft decks I want as many people as possible to want to be able to learn and play it.
I even have written probably the most comprehensive primer to NWO outside of MaRo's writings/podcasts. For anyone wanting more understanding of NWO I'd highly recommend checking it out. http://tinyurl.com/pg9as4u
I'm the first to defend outside opinions and practices that I wouldn't try myself. I'm far more interested in seeing imagination at work. When that imagination is coupled with consistency, it can be a wonderful thing. In fact, I know I've given multiple good reviews to games I would never want to play again. Mostly, because I can easily imagine the type of person who would love the mechanics I find tedious, or convoluted.
Anti-NWO concepts can easily appeal to a lot of players, so I'm all for the change of pace, assuming the designer's identity shines through. Not every MTG idea has to feel like it could be the next set. Give me some strange and original ideas. But if a person makes a non-NWO set, they should first have a firm grasp of what NWO is. The designer should know what they're doing and how they plan to achieve their goals. I want a roller coaster, not a drunk driver.
For sets: I try to stick by it; but I wouldn't be completely dogmatic about it.
One good reason to do so is that stunning wonderful complex cards with nifty tricks are harder to appreciate without a background of normal cards - and a normal card can turn out to secretly be a clever card, once you appreciate its hidden interactions.
And, of course, sets need a +3/+3 instant, and a Murder and a Shock and...
For non-set stuff? I typically write the card, and then forget to set rarity, or set it rare+
For a while I did try and do a "What rarity should this be" analysis, for mashup cards. A surprising number of them could be uncommon :)
I think one thing that often happens is that people agree with NWO in theory, but designs from people focussed on design usually drift towards more complicated things...
And obviously, many people design pretend-sets as if they were designing for wizards, but other people design cubes or custom sets for friends who are experienced players, when higher complexity is more acceptable.
"I hope that these days we wouldn't jump in with a lot of critical feedback."
I hope so, but I also think it's difficult -- I often see an individual card and have the urge to comment on it, but it's not always obvious if the set is doing something different to wizards deliberately or not.
"Every card should serve a role (preferably more than one), and Summit Prowler's role was to be a Limited role-player and illustrate one uniquely unchanged part of the story."
I would love to see more vanillas (or other simple effects) which stand out in some way other than being mechanical. It's one reason I suggested full-art vanillas by default.
I wish cards could be equally useful in limited or constructed, but it's probably impossible we probably just have to live with the best compromise we can come up with, tho' I'm not sure what that is...
There are certain of MaRo's decisions that I don't agree with, such as printing double-faced cards. But NWO I can see the benefit in. I've always targeted my custom cardsets at "the high end of the current permissible complexity spectrum"... so if the permissible complexity spectrum shifts downwards, I'll shift my cards' complexity downwards too.
Part of that is because I'm a game designer, not just a custom Magic card designer. And I know that complexity is not just a synonym for "strategic interest". Complexity is mostly a bad thing, and not just for new players. Even with experienced players it makes people need to take longer to consider their options, more likely to overlook things and feel bad later, and generally find the experience more stressful.
"Emergent complexity" is much better. When all (or most of) the pieces are simple enough, but the strategic results of combining them can lead to fascinating gameplay decisions, that's a much better place to be.
To your question, Tonks: I think there has been one or two users who've been fairly strongly anti NWO. I'm all for the community including differences of opinion.
I hope that these days we wouldn't jump in with a lot of critical feedback. We're aware that NWO has nuances, and every set is allowed some complex / red-flagged commons; NWO is about the experience of playing with the set as a whole, not about any one card.
Vanillas are a somewhat separate discussion. I was a rather vocal critic of Shards of Alara when it came out, with all the vanillas, and I'm still not very keen on them, even if I can see their value in simplifying a limited environment. Do note that Summit Prowler served a storytelling purpose: Khans and Dragons had many parallel cards telling stories of how things were affected by the timeline change, but that was the only straight reprint with the same art - but even then, the flavour text had an amusingly different tone between the Khans and Dragons printings. Every card should serve a role (preferably more than one), and Summit Prowler's role was to be a Limited role-player and illustrate one uniquely unchanged part of the story.
But "Being useless in constructed and cube", sadly, is very much not restricted to vanillas. The majority of commons are so strongly focused on Limited that they're unlikely to show up in any but the most casual constructed decks, and that annoys me.
I am surprised that there's so much consensus on this issue. Has there ever been a vocal anti-NWO user around here? In part the consensus could be self-reinforcing: someone makes an overly complex common, they get a lot of critical feedback, they feel overwhelmed and leave?
Anyway though, I generally agree. NWO is good, mostly. Alara was pretty dull, so it's certainly possible to take NWO too far. You'll never see people excited about Wetland Sambar, but the occasional Summit Prowler that occupies an important P/T/cmc spot can spark interesting debates while being of great use to the savvy drafter.
But constructed players and cube designers are still gonna set that yeti on fire like it's a chimney imp. :P
I want to believe!
Apparently there's more. There are some things that seem off, like the rarity system and the timeline.
Fair. This could just be an old card file made by a novice Magic designer, and someone decided to slap Barry's name on it. That actually would explain the reference to 'Swamp Home' nicely, as well as explain why there are any reprints during a time when Wizards didn't do reprints in expansions (I spotted Northern Paladin in there.) This could just be design that's heavily influenced by Invasion.
It could well be.
FWIW, if a fake seems too elaborate, I often consider the idea that someone came up with it for some legitimate related reason, and then someone else slapped a fraudulent label on it.
Oh geez, there's all kinds of fun things in there and I don't have the time to pick through them now. Just a quick glance told me that the term 'Swamp Home' existed and was used long before it was keyworded, then rejected.
That is, assuming this isn't a fake. It's a pretty elaborate fake if it is, though. Which is more believable? That a person when through the trouble of creating a very elaborate hoax? Or an old document happened to surface? I tend to favor the answer that infers that most people are too lazy to create something and not take credit for it.
It's also where the term 'Barry's land' comes from. The idea of a 6th basic land type to help power up Domain.
Probably. It was designed by Barry Reich as part of the first batch of expansion sets. There were the East Coast Playtesters, who created Ice Age (and a bunch more sets later); there was a second team that created Menagerie, which saw print as Mirage and Visions; and there was Barry, trying to make the first multi-colored set. It introduced domain, for example. It eventually got rejected in favor of Legends.
I've never heard of Spectral Chaos. Should I have?
Supposedly someone found the card file for the original Spectral Chaos. No way to tell if this is real, of course, but assuming it is: what do we think of it?
The Bonds of Faith treatment could be valid, I suppose. Of course, I feel this is pretty similar to the flash/instant supertype problem.
It's not so crazy to image this format though:
Holy Strength
Enchantment-Aura
If enchanted permanent is a creature, it gets +1/+2.
Sure, there's some extra words in there. But "If... permanent is a" takes marginally less space than "Enchant Creature" with a line break. And it would make all auras functionally simpler.
It wouldn't work well with cards that specifically ask for an Enchant Creature. But it wouldn't be the first time previous cards were altered when a functional change appeared.
They changed how they were written, but that didn't affect the functionality of any of the cards-that-became-Auras. I guess it changed cards that cared about Auras a bit, but mostly to make them with the way you'd expect. Your suggestion makes them functionally different and work different than how'd people expect.
They changed how Auras were written quite a bit when they introduced auras instead of local enchantments: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af77
I'm less convinced it's a good idea, but if it is, and it can express all the same functionality, why can't they change?
Even if this change was a good idea, I believe it's too late in Magic's life to initiate.