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Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-05-11 09:52:21)
Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-05-11 09:52:21)
FAR too soon to be landfall. Plus they said (IIUC) that the new mechanic is a futureshifted one.
Scratch that about Landfall. However, I'll hazard a guess that the gods are Enchantment Creatures.
I think it's neat that the gods have an alternate frame treatment, but I think it looks a little bit goofy. The "night sky" shadows in the art are beautiful, and a wonderful design, but I don't think it words so well on the card frame. I wonder if the gods are going to have some sort of alternate mana cost, and what their mechanic is going to be.
Does anyone else have the thought that Landfall might be in Theros?
The art for Thassa, the sea goddess, has also been revealed, and is equally as epic as the others. However, I don't have a link to it right now. I'm pretty excited by the gods, and the way there's one for each color.
I'm glad I called the enchantment theme right. It was pretty obvious when looking at RtR and M14, and I would have been sad if they didn't follow through.
Elite Creatures and Hero Cards are both just "alternate play style" card types, correct? Hero cards are for the prerelease, and the Elite Creature is for the Hydra encounter deck, I think.
A lot of info about Theros was revealed at SDCC today. Elite creatures make me think of Jack's enormous creatures (cf. Island Turtle). Hero cards are a new card type which play like Vanguard. The block has an enchantment theme and a future-shifted card - maybe Arcanum Wings or Daybreak Coronet? God cards appear to have new frame: here's Erebos. Art for Heliod and Nylea were also revealed. The blue and red gods haven't been yet (five card horizontal cycle).
Edit: More info at PAX Aus. Thassa is the blue god. Minotaurs, hydras, and krakens are some of the monsters.
Interesting question.
One thought. The best existing examples are probably planeswalker cards. I remember reading an article that said they tried to give the feel of an independent ally by making them act on a predictable schedule, but it didn't really work. But the current implementation is supposed to feel a bit like an independent ally. Not because Garruck CAN do things the player doesn't want, but because the normal flow of the game incentivises the play to have Garruck act in a Garruck-y way.
Second thought: alextfish and some friends eventually implemented a turing machine in magic. So you could encode a simple AI (eliza, siri, etc) in the game :)
The idea that you don't control something is usually brought forth by random effects and coin flips.
As far as I can tell, the only reason cards that players rather than spells or permanents do most keyword actions (e.g. destroying, regenerating or detaining) is historical templating (indeed one might wonder why the player should regenerate anything!). It currently matters not at all, unlike with damage, since cards can care about the source of that damage.
Tricky, tricky, tricky. I get the impression that this is technically two questions: How would you represent free will as an effect (i.e. on Insants and Sorceries), and how would you represent a permanent with free will (Like our friend, Floral Spuzzem, who asks us to sit around while makes a decision).
Wikipedia tells me that "Free will is the ability of agents to make choices unconstrained by certain factors". The factor here, I assume, would be the Planeswalker as an agent of force. That means that you'd need to somehow design a card that the player could make no choices for, and one that didn't use a random determination to resolve (since choose at random isn't a real 'choice'.)
We're getting a little 'Un' here, but the only way I can think of this working was if a person who wasn't a participant in the game made choices for the creature experiencing free will. For example, a card could tell you to go to a website where a human being updates what that card does on a regular occasion. One week, the person may force the creature to always attack. Another week, the creature might enter the battlefield and draw you a card. It isn't perfect, but it's an answer.
Yikes, that's deep. But I mean how would you go about creating a card that's mechanic was top-down "free will"? For example, make Floral Spuzzem work as printed.
Oh, I play with the old cards all the time, but in a different way. I have a big box... which is kind of like a very, very large cube... which I draft out of with friends on a regular occasion. But I can't play cards like Reef Pirates in a constructed deck nowadays if I want to win at least one out of five games.
But, yeah, I'm the kind of goofy bastard that makes an EDH tribal snake deck, then tries my damned hardest to win by Overwhelming my opponents with snakes, knowing full well that each of the 5 players I'm playing against will have at least 6 board wipes in their decks.
The quality of the Mythics and Rares keeps going up, and I keep making decks out of commons. I like playing the underdog... but staying an underdog is a hard wire to balance on when gigantic weights like this one are thrown on the line.
I played Reef Pirates at my first standard tournament. (I lost terribly, so I don't know how good a card it was back then...)
If you miss the old cards, play with the old cards lol. I used to hold casual "Card Soup" tournies at my local LGS. Everyone took aprx 36 random cards of any colors of their choosing from the store's dozen 10 cent bins, then threw some lands in.
As for the card, the thing that makes it crazy to me is that it also doubles counters on other creatures you control; even if it attacks and is blocked, or killed, that attack has a lasting effect on your other creatures too.
Power creep. I'm also utterly confused by reviews that look at that card and say "It looks good, but I'm not sure if it will be good enough." It's bonkers. Not "Break the game" bonkers, mind you, but any reviewer who doesn't recognize that this is the very definition of 'must counter/kill' is off his rocker. It's like an Overrun that doesn't need a damn army, thank you very much.
I just remember when Baneslayer Angel came out, and a pile of people thought that card was way too much for 5 mana. This card makes that card seem quaint by comparison. Sure, the Angel can make you win races, but this hydra wins with two swings, assuming you don't have 8 power worth of defenders to block.
I'm cool with the direction Magic's gone. I just can't help but feel like a dinosaur when I see cards like this, which are so far beyond the power level that I'd accept, it's silly. I was just thinking to myself yesterday "Gee, it's been a while since I turned some Reef Pirates sideways. I miss those guys."
Why so? Just because of power creep?
A creature that attacks naturally on turn 6 as an 8/8 trample is... slightly better than Terra Stomper, and obviously a heck of a lot better than Force of Nature or Crash of Rhinos. The fact that it's a 16/16 trample on turn 7, and that you can easily shrink those turn numbers by 2 with the help of elves, ramp, or Lightning Mauler, does make it pretty terrifying.
It's clearly mythic, where "mythic" is code for "absurdly pushed". But is it particularly worse than other mythics of recent years?
Bwahaha.
...makes me feel old. Very, very old.
Ha!
Apparently the real reason was that Matt Tabak was bored.
I think the removal of the loophole is definitely one of the chief motivators for this change.
I'm certain a huge part of this is the loophole. It may, perhaps, be the point. The fact that it shortens the text of the ability is likely just a nice side effect, since it seems like they tend to print something with a similar effect at least once per block.
the point isnt the loophole. this most likely forecasts a new trend, their willingness to continue to print more of such cards with this ability. thus this new template facilitates that in a few ways: 1. shorter text. 2. more intuitive text. 3. more intuitive interaction. 4. single ability (more in-line with flicker effects, similar effects that don't take up 2 separate paragraphs.)
Agree with the loophole switch. I like the Faceless Butcher + Sacrifice outlet in my EDH reanimator deck... but that loophole will still always exist on that card. Nothing is lost, the game is made less complicated going forward, and that allows Wizards to print more complicated top-down cards. Win-win.
It also means that if I have a Banisher Priest exiling something of yours, and also have a sac outlet like Cartel Aristocrat, I can make your creature can return at faster-than-instant speed. That's probably why they made Banisher Priest say "an opponent controls" along with the new wording: it'd be a bit powerful to have some creatures with continuous effects able to enter the battlefield quicker than you can respond, especially if I have Launch Party or Fling in hand. It's rather less exploitable if it says "an opponent controls". (And also rather less likely to lead to infinite loops.)
I agree with UncleIstvan, it's great to eliminate the loophole.
Doh! Was pleased to see loophole disappear, forgot that meant o-ring would probably need a new name again.