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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-08 11:57:14)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-08 11:57:14)
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.
Players are stupid. They don't realize that when a land-creature stops becoming a creature that the Enchant Creature is supposed to fall off.
Players are stupid. If you can put something like "enchanted creature gets +1/+1" on a land, players will assume the land becomes a 1/1 creature.
That's true, but those are very very much the exception, and they're nearly all curses. Either they could have an except "this may enchant a player", or you could say "auras may target anything that matches all 'enchanted x' on them", or you could errata the exceptions,
I think that can be worked round, I'm more worried whether the wording for creatures, or specific types (eg. "enchant island") is ugly, that could prevent it working at all.
Then what about things that don't enchant permanents, such as curses?
Would it be simpler to remove "enchant creature", etc, assume auras can be played on any permanent, and just say that "enchanted creature does x" has an effect only if it's currently enchanting a creature?
It seems like, they would do about what people would expect, but with less words.
The small minority of auras that have a more specific restriction could have it spelled out, or say "if enchanted creature is X, it has Y". And you'd incidentally remove the clumsy wording with auras which have targeting restrictions only.
I don't suggest putting women on a pedestal, and I never suggested that female names should be used in exclusion to male names. Nor do I think it's such a terrible idea to use popular Asian names (For example, I suggested 'Jani' earlier.) My point is that Timmy/Johnny/Spike are names obviously biased toward Western males. It suggests that the only people who play the game are white boys/men. That's not only unwelcoming to other players, but it's untrue.
I have no problem with whatever names could be used, but I would personally suggest a set of male and a set of female names because many men can't identify with being female, much like many females can't identify with being male. Personally speaking, if you called me a José, I'd be cool with it. But I would have a hard time associating with the name 'Janice'.
And you're welcome to think that I'm a fanatic if you want. I can be very fanatical when I feel anyone is being bullied. I don't stand for it. I prefer an environment where people are treated with equal dignity. Claiming that a person's gender can be ignored in favor of traditional male gender bias is demeaning to the person being excluded.
Claiming that speaking your mind on the subject will only result in a push in the opposite direction is easily proven false, considering the history of the United States within the past 50 years. Some people will push back. Others will listen, assuming you are willing to communicate fairly.
Does assigning a name to online post make your points more valid? Do you need a name so you can "peer pressure" them with shame and guilt until they submit and kowtow to your ideology?
Two types of people fear anonymity: authoritarians and ideology fanatics. They don't like people questioning their power and/or ideology.
So trying to find better females names, such as admirable historic women like Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace is "not being cognizant of females". No, it is patronizing when you're assigning female names due to convenience and not putting much thought into them.
"Treating women as if they aren't contributing members of the community is, at the very least, anti-social behavior."
such a strawman. like I asked, why stop at female names? why not Asian names? Asia is a huge market. because Wizards is Western company? why the lame excuse? I thought we were all-inclusive.
"I'm very comfortable applying peer pressure to those who refuse to make other people feel welcome because it doesn't suit their ego."
yep people like you are the first person who would proactively violate another person for not agreeing with your ideology. and i'm the anti-social one. your fanaticism is showing.
Treating women right doesn't mean putting them on a pedestal and glorifying them without disregard for others' feelings and considerations.
Why your ideology fails: read this article "Why Trying Not to Be Prejudiced Backfires"
> "Being told to "stop" prejudice and racism led to more prejudiced and racist responses; " > "If they were asked to suppress stereotypes while they wrote, they ended up writing more stereotypical stories." > "Trying to push away any type of unwanted seems to only more strongly activate it. So the person who tries to eliminate prejudice by suppressing stereotypes is more likely to act on them."
"Being forced to be gender aware is patronizing and is a form of thought control."
So is shushing people to be quiet while an orchestra is playing or being upset at someone who uses racial epithets to describe your friends. In fact, you're attempting to be patronizing right now.
Treating women as if they aren't contributing members of the community is, at the very least, anti-social behavior. I'm very comfortable applying peer pressure to those who refuse to make other people feel welcome because it doesn't suit their ego.
The only reason Timmy sounds like someone who likes big creatures is because that's the arbitrary name MaRo picked years ago. That's a false argument. Also, the fact that you think being cognizant of the female Magic players is thought control makes me pretty confident you're not the kind of person we went in the Magic community or influencing this decision. Considering that you're posting on a visitor account, you know that already.
being forced to be gender aware is patronizing and is a form of thought control.
moreover having the female names sound like the original male names misses the mark of the origins of the male names. just because you have similar sounding names doesnt mean they evoke the same emotions or mental visuals and connotations. timmy likes big creatures. but why would tammy also like big creatures? maybe gertha or heidi likes big creatures more than tammy. jenny doesnt sound combo lover to me. how about Marie (Curie) or Ada (Lovelace)?