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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-03 01:48:24)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-03 01:48:24)
Flipping a card over is not a simple keyword! Especially when none of the cards these flip into aren't vanillas! That transforming is tied into keeping track of a Saga chapters also convolutes things. You need to fiddle with DFC helper cards to even begin with these.
> "I can't believe you complain specifically about a Saga that also has just two effects (despite one occuring twice), while your example shifts suspended Zombify to a two-mana common."
As far as comprehension complexity goes, I don't see my example card being any more complex than Late to Dinner.
A) Commons can and should be mana effective. This is pretty much what brought for the whole FIRE principle as far as I can see, but it seems it either always was or transitioned to just ignoring NWO which is a wholly wrong path.
B) What the card does have is tactical complexity, where it's easy to play out but to play with it to the maximum potential requires some thought. This is the exact type of complexity that is allowed and even desired. (a link to my common article that links WotC sources)
I get the enchantments & artifacts theme in the set but does it need to fire on every single cylinder possible they can think of? Colorful artifacts, licids jumping around (yes, licids casually among twenty other themes), Vehicles, Sagas, Shrines, enchantment creatures, enchanting lands...
Like is it a good idea to mix in Vehicles and reconfigure in the same set? Oh, and there are just regular Equipment cards with Equip in the set. Chances for confusion much? You can have an animated enchanted land with a few counters on it as well as a regular equipment and reconfigure creature equipped on it that in itself is "modified" with bunch of +1/+1 counters on it, that you then tap into crew a vehicle - all of this with cards at common rarity.
AND then, you have modified trying to tangle almost all of those things together. It's a nice idea but when you have everything else listed above relating to this theme floating around, it's an issue to slam it in there.
A random "compleated" keyword is also just kinda indicative of the mood of throwing stuff at the wall.
Now, ok, so there is that theme that has some 10 different mechanical themes going on, they then decided it was time to add everything else. There is ninjutsu, channel, double-faced cards that I didn't even mention above there that will require helper cards, some mana dork creature tokens, +1/+1 counters plus keyword counters and phasing (?!) being used again with this sort of "whatever goes" attitude. Like, sure, maybe they are deciduous or whatever now, but maybe easy-off on them for a second even at higher rarities when you have like six things than can latch onto and activate each other even without counting all the other themes. When you have this much stuff going on, even simple stuff like Samurai tribal support start to seem iffy to me - the complexity burden is just too high.
Looking at how enchantment type is utilized on creatures, it does look like it has been relegated to a moniker you could technically slap onto any unit without any sort of mechanical justification. A plain out blue ninja is an enchantment creature now - notably some of the blue ninjas are some of them are not (inconsistency which is indirectly causing a complexity increase due to potential confusion). A french vanilla 1/1 Snake with deathtouch is an enchantment creature. Sure! Lore justifies it or whatever - everything can be everything they want, just jam the enchantment type in there so it can interact just a bit more with other cards and add to the total complexity.
I absolutely can't believe something like The Shattered States Era is anywhere near common rarity. Base mode is a threaten, then it has rallying cry that affects other permanents again (a basic red flag) and it transforms on the third chapter into a trample haste. For fs sake.
Counting only the front side of DFCs, NEO was apparently the wordiest expansion ever. Obviously the crazy MDFCS from last year drive that up even higher. Otoh, the sagas all seemed super simply to me. They mostly had a single chapter ability that triggered twice, and then turned into a french vanilla creature.
I can confirm from a recent post on blogatog that Commander has something (unspecified) to do with their deliberate increase in complexity in premium sets.
It has always been the case that repeated text and keywords get to count for less text - and the transform text is something every single Saga has this set.
If you consider the third chapter on that card equivalent to a keyword ability, I think this reasonably fits NWO standards for DFCs; only The Shattered States Era really is an issue.
I can't believe you complain specifically about a Saga that also has just two effects (despite one occuring twice), while your example shifts suspended Zombify to a two-mana common.
I think "enchantments & artifacts" is a loud and clear theme. 302 cards, 282 w/o basic lands... take away all artifacts, enchantments or cards that say "artifact" or "enchantment" and you've got 93 cards left. And that's not counting mention of "Aura", "Equipment", "Vehicle" etc.
Samurai also got re-designed into a tribe that would play well with Aura/Equipment; counters tie into that; channel has a clear purpose in the set enabling more cards of those permanent types while also getting some neat use outside of that.
I'm not trying to be an apologist, but the set is still in a good place. Comparing it with our first trip to Kamigawa I don't see myself despising any part of it as much as sweep and epic.
Dungeons though and companions... well, Rob Balder would remind us: We try things. Sometimes they even work.
No defense on the banned card numbers though. They knew what they were doing, but did it anyway.
Perhaps I'm just becoming grumpy and old but I'm not a particularly fan of Kamigawa 2. It feels like there's a mish-mash of a bit of everything with no clean themes. The cards are also really word, even at common level you have sagas with like 10 lines of text (albeit with half horizontal space so more like 5, but still) that also then transform into something else. This feels not too dissimilar to the sort of mess that I had made some odd ten years ago with scifi themes.
Like Tales of Master Seshiro - what is this? C'mon, common Sagas as a concept is already something one should approach trepidatiously, not slam it into full of text and then have it transform as well - that's the opposite approach of almost seeming like you want to make it as complex as you can. The idea of common sagas did come up recently and there I made one with two chapters and 4 lines of text. Come to think of, the original Saga concept I scratched together from ideas of multiple designers (way before WotC sagas) where commons themselves: Road to Ruin and Tale of Thereafter.
At this point I'm now fully convinced that WotC has just lost their top-tier design sensibilities a long time ago. I mean, it's not like Kamigawa 2 is some exception anywhere (like Dungeons, wtf was that? In standard?) - this is just the norm where things seem rather messed up both in design and development. I would go as far as say that this sort of work is subpar and shoddy.
I have no idea what is going on NWO principles anymore - last I head them it was MaRo saying that they had been repeatedly failing at them - now it looks like they are just willfully doing so. Development also has been terrible - something I would attribute to getting into that sort of Hearthstone mindset where everything is card advantage itself so you enter this infinite grind (so development trouble sort of caused inversely by design choices) - though commander focus prolly plays into this. The number of banned cards in these few years, not only in standard but by extension even in legacy, has been greater than in the past ten years prior to that or something like that. It's absurd.
The people at the WotC should get a grip of themselves lol. I mean, on a personal level I don't care that much since I haven't actively played the game for years (I still follow it actively since you ought to do that if you are into custom design), but what troubles me is that custom designers is going to look up at these messes of sets as if they were some sort of an exemplar precedent to follow. I don't think these are yet disgraceful, or maybe they are but I'm in denial, but they certainly aren't graceful. It's the type of thing that really makes me question how a supposedly professional design teams of multimillion dollar companies can have this sort of output.
I've never seen them put out a whole cycle of cards that are neither in draft boosters nor in the preconstructed decks though.
They've been doing that for a couple sets. With only two commander decks, they can't fit full cycles in them, so they put them in the set boosters but with the commander set symbol
I'm quite happy how Kamigawa 2 is turning out.
They use the set boosters to hand out some eternal bonus cards, like Myojin with indestructible counters and a Shrine commander, that don't fit into the premium set proper.
Those cards seem like they should be in Commader decks, but just sit around separately instead. I know the feelingof pulling a cycle out of a set for space, and this is a wild solution to see from WotC proper.
I want two separate phrases:
But I want the second one as non-intrusive as possible (i. e. it would sound natural in a single player set), while also being clearly distinct.
Wouldn't you then need a term for both "your creatures only" and "your creatures and your team creatures" (whatever that might actually be, "allied creatures")? Or are you suggesting that all anthems would henceforth also be designed to not only buff your stuff but your team mates' stuff as well by default?
> could just like "Your creatures get +1/+1" work (as an example of an anthem)?
It would work for that purpose. I personally want a phrase to include team mates without dedicating too much words to mentioning them.
I would consider design lingo to be completely irrelevant for determining the viability of words for new terminology. For example, I think most would consider me to be pretty thick into that world, yet even I had to think what was even meant by color pair enemy reference - so you can imagine how little that means to vast majority of people.
The Collective game community which I used to be active in, took a lot from mtg's wording in general, but they did diverge in various stuff. One was this definition of "enemy units" and "allied units" that went as far as making just "enemy" refer to "enemy units" and the opponent at the same time. Ie. "Deal 3 damage to an ally" is a card that you could hit yourself into the face or one of your creatures (ally/allied units).
Hmm, actually regarding "allied" or "ally" I think that there is an existing creature type called "Ally" is a big concern for me. Umm, could just like "Your creatures get +1/+1" work (as an example of an anthem)?
I am fine with the suggested "opposing" and "friendly." However, would it be possible to simply be "opposing" and "non-opposing."
SecretInfiltrator, would simply keeping the wording referring to ownership the same for times when ownership is relevant be a simple answer. e.g. Return target opposing creature to its owner's hand.
One of the main reasons I have a problem with "enemy" and "allied" already being occupied by color pair jargon. "opposing" still works well referencing "opponent".
The term for "friendly" is usually the one hardest to get accepted, since it is hard to make another person intuit the intended difference between "you control" and "you or a teammate controls" without them seeing an ability that says "your" directly next to it.
It can work though.
You still have times you want to refer to permanents "another player controls". The argument not to do it is obviously possible confusion between control and ownership. Without mentioning control on the regular you have a harder time establishing ownership as a separate concept.
What about omitting 'control'?
ex.
Hybrid mana using lower-case letters wuld be new to me. It's probably just case-insensitive or laziness since 107.4 clearly uses upper case for other examples that have been written in lower case in the cited post.
We don't have a Saga frame at all, so I just post a lot fewer Sagas than I come up with.
Maybe it does, but the rules are using uppercase, though.
According to Maro, the format for the mana symbol on Tamiyo is "(g/u/p)." Hybrid mana uses lower case letters
I agree that Phyrexian mana being drawn like a hybrid symbol to begin with would be better, since it is like a hybrid mana. However, now there is another one, so that is another consideration, I suppose.
But, for double colour Phyrexian mana symbols, we might have to wait for the rule changes to be released to see the ASCII representation of them; my idea is something like
{M/N/P}(with the appropriate letters in place of M and N), but we will have to wait to see what they do.Also, you can design a transforming Saga even without the appropriate frame, for now, I suppose. (You can just mention the chapter abilities in the text, and mention "Enchantment - Saga" in the type line.)
"Ninja/Samurai tribal cards care about Rogue/Warrior as well. Keeps the type line clean."
I'd rather have the reverse. Allow Warrior tribal cards also affect Samurais.
I suppose Compleated appears only on a single Planeswalker (for now.) Hence may not be a expansion-wide mechanic?
They chose the complementary path and made the Ninja/Samurai tribal cards care about Rogue/Warrior as well. Keeps the type line clean.
Talking about clean/cramped type lines: Legendary Enchantment Creature – Shrine caught me off-guard. Congrats to Yusai, Bound at the Edge.
Equipment Jellyfish is cool, too.
Compleated does not appear in the Mechanics article for the set, so I don't know whether the name is used for phyrexian hybrid mana. But I'm going to plug my view on how Phyrexian mana always should have been hybrid to begin with.
Compleated mana is hybrid Phyrexian mana. Paid with either color or 2 life.
The samurais are still just Samurai. But you could make a case of subclasses on top of major classes, if you want more interaction with major class. e.g. Human Warrior Samurai. Rat Rogue Ninja.
Phyrexian script reappears -- on Phyrexian cards in alternative frames.
Reconfigure is just turning Licid ability into keyword. Probably only appears on Equipments (not Auras) in this set? The Reality Chip is cheaper Future Sight. Could be a card to look out for.
I really, really wanted to design a transforming Saga, but the lack of Saga-frame on the site discouraged me.
Well, two people did.
I'm a big fan of enchantment creatures taking strides towards their rightful position as deciduous/evergreen. I also am very happy they kept the concept of the starry frame (since there was the suggestion that enchantment creatures on other planes would get their own treatment not evoking Nyx). All left to wonder is why they don't expand it to all enchantments the same way artifacts get a shared frame treatment.
I haven't read the story, but am really happy about how the unveiling of the Tamiyo story worked out, though I'm not emotionally prepared.
Good call on merging Ninja/Rogue tribal and Samurai/Warrior tribal respectively?
First thoughts on the big spoilers starting this week:
Why tf did they start on a Thursday? I know I'm not keeping as close an eye on things because I'm on a significant break off paper magic, but that still feels WRONG to have a Making Magic article released on Thursday...)
Creature becoming attached and not being creatures while attached. Oh, how I am reminded of my own Operate mechanic...
Huh... looks like ability counters are just gonna be a general thing now if Biting-Palm Ninja is any indication?
About the acorn, I thought maybe it should be more prominent, but maybe it is good enough.
Since some cards might work in ordinary rules, this could be OK that they are doing this, I suppose.
Some cards are banned in Vintage and so in other official Eternal formats too, even though they are "eternal" cards. I have "pseudo-Vintage" (sometimes used in puzzles, and defined in the "Codex" that I had written) which does not ban many of these, although Chaos Orb and Falling Star remain banned, and the Un-cards, silver-border-cards, and acorn-cards also remain banned. (Some cards such as conspiracies may be banned or not banned depending on the specific kind of rules.) I don't know if they could effectively errata Chaos Orb and Falling Star as acorn-cards, since they should be that instead of the standard rules.
One question about the acorn: Will it affect the errata of any older Un-cards?
I also saw http://www.magicmultiverse.net/cardsets/3067/details_pages/3110 and have some comments relating to both that and this together. Some cards say "eternal star (match)". Rules will need to be written for such things to handle some situations. However, I would think that match rules should mostly be beyond the scope of the game rules, although game rules still will need to specify some such things too, including persistent properties, interaction with subgames, etc. Ante rules should work in a similar way, too. Normally, all game effects cease to exist when the main game ends, although match rules could specify which ones persist, how they persist, other effects relating to them (e.g. scoring), effects lasting beyond a single match, etc. I would define ownership of an object as a persistent property (where all persistent properties are also one-shot properties). Ante can cause ownership to change just as the game ends, so normally this change would not be meaningful. However, match rules could specify that these changes will last until the end of the match (or the tournament), that players can keep the cards, that they will affect scoring and then be reverted, etc. Games rules will still need to define what kinds of effects these are (so that match rules may refer to them), and their effects within a single duel (meaning a main game, subgames within that main game, and restarted games), though. (There are some other problems with the ante rules too, having to do with subgames, team games, multiplayer games, and a few other things; I have ideas how to fix these though, which does not impact match rules.)
Unfinity's greatest break from the accustomed is the end of silver borders in favor of an acorn-shaped holofoil stamp.
Thus WotC has come to call Un-cards, which were formerly known as "silver-bordered", "acorn" cards; non-Un-cards, which were formerly referred to as "black-bordered", are now called "eternal" cards.
I have no problem with the former, but the latter I consider unfortunate, because it overlaps with Eternal formats. I know it is intentional, because WotC wishes to push that eternal cards are for Eternal formats, but it is not a term that really helps conversing about disctinctions between "acorn" and "non-acorn". Which is why I prefer "non-acorn". :)
My observation: The Space Family Goblinson is not an acorn card, so the creature type Guest is coming to the Comprehensive Rules. Now I want creature types to cover the full list again.
https://yawgatog.com/resources/magic-rules/ It is hypertext you can select the numbers from the list (which I had mentioned above) in order to find a specific rule. You can also download the non-hypertext rules from Wizards of the Coast (although they change the URL according to the version of the rules, and Yawgatog doesn't change the URL).
The original llanowar elves was also designed by the artist to be a vampire elf, since there was basically no oversight in the art direction back then
Yeah yeah Elves are natural-loving idealists who live in harmony until you read a speck of Germanic folk lore, and then suddenly 'BAM!' you realize the first text fits a lot better.
These things are descendants of the Fae in most settings, right? That's enough reason to suspicious of them on it's own, right? Everyone saw Lorwyn, yeah? Stop getting tricked by these cunning bastards.
And don't give me "Oh... but that germanic folk lore stuff is soo old, you're totally forgetting about the more recent stuff blah blah blah" dude just quit it. Do you know how old Elves can live until? Not exactly? That's right, most people don't know. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE HIDING THAT INFORMATION FROM US, MAN!
For that reason, the older stuff is sure to be more accurate in revealing their true nature before the Fair Folk (which yes, is a misleading name) deciding to hide their true selves behind masks of beauty and love... wonder when that started... oh idk, maybe the industrial revolution?
Hm... what else did humanity accomplish during that time... warfare? No way... nuclear weaponry? You're saying the elves might be faking it for such reasons? OBVIOUSLY YES. THEY FEAR US NOW, UNLIKE BEFORE!
Disgusting elves and their wicked lies will deceive you if you give them the slightest opening. Do not give them the upper hand over humanity, or we will return to being mere livestock like we were in the days of fairy tales and lost records.
Elves are demons wearing the masks of angels, do not let them deceive you into believing otherwise. Or else you will regret it.