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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 17:38:36)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 17:38:36)
The early cards are hilariously non-sensical, but when it started making more coherent stuff, it's actually very interesting to see when it gets close to something printable.
Not too much input to give, but the idea is pretty cool, and I hope more work is put into it.
See the thread here: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/creativity/custom-card-creation/612057-generating-magic-cards-using-deep-recurrent-neural
I find it interesting how similar the results of this are to the results of my old random Magic card BNF generator, even though they're derived in pretty much opposite ways: my generator is hand-crafted top-down with an intricate knowledge of (pre-M10) Oracle templating and rules structure, while the neural network is completely naive, just building up what patterns it can observe from the existing Oracle text of all cards.
With regard to flavour, that's a really good point. But it seems scry itself has flavour, and the core set that used scry had a lot of it (crystal ball, entrail reader, etc, etc), but that a lot of the recent uses of scry are minor additional effects on spells that don't reference the flavour at all like Dissolve and Lightning Javelin, so it's just like cycling or "draw a card", a mechanical bonus only.
I'm happy overall, but I still think it's weird that menace is primary in black and secondary in red. Before Blood-Chin Rager, it's never been a black ability. Black and red still overlap at haste (if R&D hasn't forgot about that), and black already has secondary flying.
The other thing is that scry is a bit weird being evergreen. If you tack it at the end of many spells, they lose a little focus and make the game much more predictable and repetitive. I get it as a block mechanic, but I'm not sure how I feel about the core game being like that. I'll guess I'll wait to see how often they actually use it.
@Jack and Alex: On cycling Mark has noted before that it has absolutely no flavor resonance whatsoever. It's an entirely... er... mechanical mechanic. Scry may be somewhat harder to balance, but on top of his flavor ascendant over cycling, it also has the advantage of not acting like a cantrip, which is relevant for colors like red or white where too much card flow causes balance issues (Mentor of the Meek anyone?)
I think Prowess is the first evergreen triggered ability, which is unusual. I guess it makes sense as a go-to ability for blue and red, but it seems much more linear than other evergreen keywords. I like scry as evergreen. A spell mechanic that smooths gameplay is just fine by me. Menace is good, although I think Menacing would sound better. I won't miss intimidate. Protection was cool, but I understand why it has to go.
Yes, I was surprised by Prowess and Scry too, but Mark's explanation was persuasive.
It's true, cycling feels more natural, but maybe they serve slightly different functions: cycling lets you have more niche cards, but scry makes your deck slightly more consistent overall. I also wonder, if they've been more willing to use "scry 1" as a rider. "Scry 1" doesn't really feel like scry, so it was never really used before Theros, but maybe it works better as a "slight bonus" especially outside blue, like clash but less intrusive, that wizards feel better about scattering across core sets.
And yes, I was surprised Prowess was chosen, so quickly, and that it seems more potentialy more complicated than most evergreen keywords (in terms of board complexity, not understanding the rules). But it seems like a good niche to find.
It's interesting seeing things work in conjunction with one another. The Menace ability has been floated before as a keyworded ability but never as something necessary or common enough to warrant it. Likewise, the swingy landwalk and intimidate have been problematic for a while. It just took putting both of those ideas together to come up with this solution.
I think I like these, though I'm a little meh about scry.
The only thing here that really surprised me is Prowess.
Eliminating protection concerns me primarily because the white protection spell has been (to my eyes) an important piece of flexible protection for limited (and sometimes constructed: heroic decks would have been impossible without Gods Willing) that nothing existing can replace quite as effectively.
Very sensible set of changes indeed! Landwalk, intimidate and protection are very matchup-dependent, making the game much more about the metagame and less about choices you make when actually playing. Protection was also incredibly complicated and confusing. I'd still expect to see "Indestructible by red" and "Untargetable by red" turn up eventually (as on Gaea's Revenge), but I'm very happy with them taking protection out.
Scry is great; I'm fine with it becoming evergreen; but I'd really have expected cycling to become fully evergreen before scry did.
Prowess's elevation to evergreen surprises me a little bit, but it is a nice fun mechanic. It makes combat more tense, but it does have the drawback of encouraging lower-skilled players to put fewer creatures in their decks.
Oh, cool. Mark Rosewater describes latest evergreen keyword changes, including some which we've wondered what wizards were going to do with for a while.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/evergreen-eggs-ham-2015-06-08
Wizards upgraded Prowess immediately to an evergreen U/r mechanic, which they've wanted for ages. I've barely played with it but I like it a lot. That makes sense: combat-relevant, but tied to spells somehow.
Intimidate and landwalk are retired, being too swingy, from unblockable against some decks to useless against others (which would make sense as a hoser, but doesn't fulfil the role they apparently wanted of "a bit of evasion for red")
Protection has been semi-retired to "sometimes but not every block".
And they've been replaced by keywording Menace as "Can't be blocked except by two or more creatures", now replacing intimidate in B and R.
Scry is evergreen, including in red. (Might not be every set, but can be. Maybe we'll see some basic-effect-plus-scry cards become one of the baseline staple cards?)
Overall, that seems like a very sensible set of changes, even though there's quite a few of them.
I like looking back at my old comments and seeing how wrong I was. I quite like the new modal formatting.
Heh, dude's comment here proved to be amusingly wrong: not only has Profane Command been reprinted with the new formatting, but also DTK brought an entire new cycle of commands - Dromoka's Command etc :)
Oh yes, I think I was going to count swamp bending as G. And bloodbending as B.
I'd have G under water benders, though that's because of plant bending. I'd do Earth: G/r, Air: W/u Water: U/w/g Fire: R/b. I guess it depends on what location you were looking to source a card from too. The Northern Water Tribe feels U/w while the Foggy Swamp Benders feel U/g. Ba Sing Se would eel W/g while most unnamed Earth Kingdom villages would feel closer to G/r. I put b in the Fire Nation because I took selfishness in the form of "I'm doing this for myself" as a spiritual element of learning firebending.
Gah, this reminds I still need to get on with finishing Korra.
I'm always fascinated to learn how other people would assign things to colours! It tells me a lot I hadn't thought of. I was going to go:
Earth: G
Water: U/w
Air: W/u
Fire: R
Spirits: W, B, maybe other colours
Animals: All colours
And I'd put some bad guys in B, though I don't think firebenders in general are more B.
I thought that worked fairly well, both philosophically and mechanically. But I couldn't think of any good mechanics: I considered having element subtypes, but couldn't think of anything to do with them and wanted to avoid the "arcane" problem.
I love Avatar. It would be a difficult theme, though. All of the elements fit in
, so finding a place for 
and 
might be challenging. 
. Maybe air benders could be 
and fire benders could be 
. Where does that put water benders? 
? Perhaps 
?
I wonder if, for such a set, earth benders could be
Did someone create an avatar set? I seem to remember one, but can't find it in search. And it seemed a really good theme.
I guess the better comparison might ultimately be to Retrace. In any case, I wasn't too enamored of the idea both on repetitive play grounds and for the guild.
I've explained how the spell unearth mechanic differs elsewhere: Yes it has a "rebound" element, but it is linked to going into the graveyard, not being cast.
Link's "Rebirth" seems not so much flashback as recover (Krovikan Rot). In particular, it's not limited to happening just once.
"Spell unearth" seems very close to rebound (Virulent Swipe).
Rebirth seems a little too close to a worse Flashback for comfort. I would have to avoid recreating flashback cards and I would be threading very close to a well-loved, famous mechanic.
For now I'm considering your Grudge as a very good front-runner to experiment with, with "spell unearth" as my second.
Rebirth (Whenever another creature you control dies, you may exile it. If you do, you may cast this from your graveyard.)
This might be a good fit with a more "ruthless" name.
I think this is my favorite so far. I'm tentatively using "Vindictive" for it and "Grudge" for the rebound one. (Vindicitive is my tentative final name). Gonna design a couple cards now...
Those both work. Though Rakdos Transmute may be a bit too 'thinky'. How about something that gives Black/Red some reach?
Grudge
(
, Exile ~ from your graveyard: Target opponent loses 1 life.)
It doesn't look very special. But when you start milling and looting, this could really add up.
Ah! I guess it's going to be difficult to do something else than a variation on madness... Think a graveyard transmute works?
Rakdos Transmute
(
, Exile this card: Return from your graveyard target card with the same converted mana cost as this card. Transmute only as a sorcery.)
The red costs would go mostly on instants and sorceries, and the black on creatures...
That makes me think:
Carpe Diem
(When this is put into your graveyard from anywhere except by casting it, you may cast it for 
)
Except that does nothing by itself :(
Sodkar are giving me hell in Suvnica. I want them to have a graveyard mechanic because they're the only black guild where I can still fit one, but I suck a B/R design! Thankfully they are set for set 2 of the block, so I got some room to work with.
Constraints:
If you can tweak and/or reflavor Graverush or the unnamed spell unearth mechanic, feel free to go that way.
I made ((C44067)), which has Faze, the first idea I've had for this that I really liked.