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Irony Be My Shield posted:What was parasitic in BFZ? Colorless-matters, to a certain extent. In most sets the only colorless spells you'll have will be a few random artifacts.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:03 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:43 |
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Entropic posted:Colorless-matters, to a certain extent. In most sets the only colorless spells you'll have will be a few random artifacts. Also, wastes aren't in any other sets so far.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:11 |
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But there are still at least some colorless creatures in almost every set. There has even been constructed relevant cross-set synergy with cards like Hangarback Walker, Thopter Engineer and morphs.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:12 |
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Irony Be My Shield posted:What was parasitic in BFZ? Rally was actually less parasitic than the original allies because it affects all your creatures rather than just allies; Cohort was super parasitic though Devoid/colourless matters wasn't parasitic at all, artifacts are in every set and the previous block had morph Converge was if anything anti-parasitic because there was very little 5c support in the block itself Ingest was about as parasitic as you can get though, an additional trigger that does basically nothing unless you also have processors, sending cards to a zone that by design is rarely interacted with
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:14 |
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Barry Shitpeas posted:Rally was actually less parasitic than the original allies because it affects all your creatures rather than just allies; Cohort was super parasitic though I was going to mention ingest and processing, but those are less parasitic than arcane, for example, because exile is at least deciduous (is it evergreen? My offhand card knowledge is... Not as good as some in this thread).
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:34 |
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I'm so pumped for splice onto instant and splice onto sorcery like they originally planned when they eventually get around to it
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:42 |
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I guess Ingest doesn't do very much on its own but Processing works with a lot of other stuff and has seen some modern play with enablers from other sets.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:51 |
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Processing isn't entirely parasitic since there's stuff that exiles stuff in every set, albeit not in the same concentration. Ingest is parasitic since it's useless without process. efb
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:55 |
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Lawnie posted:I was going to mention ingest and processing, but those are less parasitic than arcane, for example, because exile is at least deciduous (is it evergreen? My offhand card knowledge is... Not as good as some in this thread). Exile is a thing that happens in general, not so much a mechanic. But as a thing it's pretty evergreen in that regard, pretty much every set has stuff that exiles, either permanently, or as a temporary holding zone (for blinking, or even stuff like O-Ring or D-Sphere). Processing is weak without further specific support, but not parasitic, and Ingest just does a thing, also not parasitic (just not terribly exciting).
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 15:56 |
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Allstone posted:I'm so pumped for splice onto instant and splice onto sorcery like they originally planned when they eventually get around to it Was this the original intent? I've always read this as hindsight, ie, we should've done this instead of splice onto arcane.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 16:01 |
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Barry Shitpeas posted:Ingest was about as parasitic as you can get though, an additional trigger that does basically nothing unless you also have processors, sending cards to a zone that by design is rarely interacted with While I don't think ingest is very good, I don't think it's fair to say that ingest does nothing without processing. There's other sorts of top-deck manipulation cards that interact with ingest, like Time Ebb or Memory Lapse style cards. A buddy even tried out Benthic Infiltrator in a modern lantern control brew for a while; he correctly determined that it wasn't very good, mind you, but there are interactions to toy with beyond processing.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 16:09 |
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Markovnikov posted:Was this the original intent? I've always read this as hindsight, ie, we should've done this instead of splice onto arcane. What they should have done is had spell subtypes from the start; storm and now overload make splice onto instant/sorcery a no-go weird vanilla posted:While I don't think ingest is very good, I don't think it's fair to say that ingest does nothing without processing. There's other sorts of top-deck manipulation cards that interact with ingest, like Time Ebb or Memory Lapse style cards. A buddy even tried out Benthic Infiltrator in a modern lantern control brew for a while; he correctly determined that it wasn't very good, mind you, but there are interactions to toy with beyond processing. Basically nothing, not literally nothing Lawnie posted:I was going to mention ingest and processing, but those are less parasitic than arcane, for example, because exile is at least deciduous (is it evergreen? My offhand card knowledge is... Not as good as some in this thread). I was specifically referring to ingest. You could argue that ingest is only half of the mechanic, in the same way as devoid was half of the colourless-matters mechanic, but I think it's different in that ingest is a trigger that goes off regularly, whereas devoid is mostly transparent unless you are playing colourless- (or coloured-) matters
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 16:34 |
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I mean there are often "parasitic" support cards to help make a (non-parasitic) mechanic work/be more of a defined theme in limited. Examples would be Morphs Matter in Khans or Clues Matter in SoI. I guess the only difference is that Ingest got a keyword.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 16:38 |
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A splice onto instant mechanic that has several UR April's that day "spells spliced onto this cost (1) less"
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 16:42 |
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Processing isn't entirely parasitic since there's stuff that exiles stuff in every set, albeit not in the same concentration. Ingest has some minor side benefits like messing with things like sorcery speed scry effects and I guess vaguely interacting with some graveyard mechanics, so I wouldn't say it's entirely parasitic. But only slightly, it's rather parasitic and cutting it and processing made a whole bunch of cards extra lovely in Oath draft.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 16:43 |
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Someone should play a deck with ingest creatures, four Startled Awake's and Behold the Beyond and live the dream.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:07 |
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Kalli posted:Ingest has some minor side benefits like messing with things like sorcery speed scry effects and I guess vaguely interacting with some graveyard mechanics, so I wouldn't say it's entirely parasitic. Infect is probably one of the first examples that comes to mind when you mention parasitic mechanics, but strictly speaking it still isn't 100% useless even without other Infect creatures around, since it still lets you block as if you had Wither. Ingest has no place in a set without Process. It could have a place in a hypothetical set with a heavy sorcery-speed top-of-deck manipulation theme (perhaps there's a faction whose faction mechanic is T: Scry 1, activate only as a sorcery), but you couldn't just toss it into an arbitrary set. That's what it means to be parasitic.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:09 |
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Infect is probably one of the first examples that comes to mind when you mention parasitic mechanics, but strictly speaking it still isn't 100% useless even without other Infect creatures around, since it still lets you block as if you had Wither. Splice Onto Arcane is another mechanic that comes to mind.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:13 |
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TheMaestroso posted:Splice Onto Arcane is another mechanic that comes to mind. Even if a given Splice card is the only one in the set, it's still an Arcane card itself, so you could Splice it onto other copies of itself. (Unless it's Evermind.) In fact, Desperate Ritual shows up as the only Arcane spell in Storm decks, so this use really does exist in practice. Not strictly useless -- but still parasitic. To take a less extreme example, Metalcraft is a parasitic mechanic. Yes, every set has artifacts, so it will never be completely blank in any set. But most sets aren't designed in a way that makes getting to 3 artifacts a reasonable objective. For example, Battle for Zendikar has only 6 artifacts in the entire set, only one of which is at common; if you tossed some cards with Metalcraft into BFZ, how often do you think they would be turned on? There are blocks other than Scars where Metalcraft would make sense, like Alara or original Mirrodin, and even in other sets it would still be technically theoretically possible to get some value out of occasionally, so you might say it's not as extremely parasitic as Splice. But it's a mechanic that expects and depends on a particularly artifact-heavy environment and would flounder anywhere else, which means it's still parasitic.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:24 |
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That sounds more like a definition of "linear mechanic" than a parasitic one. t's fine for a mechanic to only make sense in the context of one limited environment because that is what leads to interesting and unique limited environments. The only format where that causes issues is Chaos Draft.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:36 |
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Lottery of Babylon posted:Ingest has no place in a set without Process. It could have a place in a hypothetical set with a heavy sorcery-speed top-of-deck manipulation theme (perhaps there's a faction whose faction mechanic is T: Scry 1, activate only as a sorcery), You mean Theros?
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:38 |
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Jabor posted:You mean Theros? Yeah, I could see it fitting there. It couldn't be any worse than Inspired. Irony Be My Shield posted:That sounds more like a definition of "linear mechanic" than a parasitic one. t's fine for a mechanic to only make sense in the context of one limited environment because that is what leads to interesting and unique limited environments. The only format where that causes issues is Chaos Draft. I'm using Maro's definitions here. Basically, linear makes demands on [how the player builds] a deck, parasitic makes demands on [how a designer crafts] an environment. Maro posted:A parasitic mechanic is one that is only useful in the set it is in. A linear mechanic is one that encourages you to put other types of cards in the deck with it.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:40 |
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You can make a metalcraft deck that works with any artifacts ever printed. Yeah, metalcraft would be lovely in a hypothetical Standard that didn't have any support for it, but that's true of most block-specific mechanics. Conversely, you're gonna have a real hard time making an Allies deck with cards that aren't from one of the Zendikar blocks.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:45 |
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suicidesteve posted:It's a little more parasitic than Kookus and his Keeper. Hey keeper of kookus was sweet in the old school goblin mirror.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 17:51 |
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Allies at least seemed playable without going all in this time, as opposed to Hada free blade, kazandu blade master, and tuktuk scrapper
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 19:17 |
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I was always really interested in what Kookus was since he was a rare and his keeper was a common, and then I found out he was a floating head. My friend somehow acquired playsets of Kookus by trading around the school and I responded by putting King Suleiman in my deck. Simpler times.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 19:37 |
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Angry Grimace posted:I was always really interested in what Kookus was since he was a rare and his keeper was a common, and then I found out he was a floating head. I had a Kookus but could never find his little buddy. Nobody I knew had one so I figured he must have been very hard to find.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 21:17 |
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Irony Be My Shield posted:What was parasitic in BFZ? Ingest/Processors were extremely parasitic since most of the processors sucked unless you could get cards into exile, which is not something that usually happens over the course of a normal game of magic. And Oath of the Gatewatch introduced cards that require colorless mana, which is also fairly parasitic since look how many colorless sources they had to put into the set for it to be a thing. Shadows over Innistrad seems to hit the right balance of synergy between cards without making them too reliant on each other to be good. Most of the Madness cards and discard outlets are playable bythemselves but really shine when you combine them. Investigate is a great mechanic, and the only two cards that care about clues (without making clues) have passable bodies if you don't have clues.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 21:52 |
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As an example of what is parasitic and what is not on a scale of 1-5, lets look at the Ravnica and Return to Ravnica guild keywords, ability words (keep in mind that just because a mechanic isn't parastic doesn't make it good): Convoke: 1 Populate: 5 Radiance: 1 Battalion: 2 Transmute: 1 Cipher: 1 Dredge: 2 Scavenge: 1 Replicate: 2 Overload: 1 Bloodthirst: 2 Bloodrush: 1 Haunt: 2 Extort: 1 Hellbent: 3 Unleash: 1 Graft: 3 Evolve: 2 Forecast: 2 Detain: 1 A mechanic can be parasitic as hell and still be awesome. Populate is super cool and fun, and proliferate is maybe one of the best mechanics ever created. Cipher is not parasitic but is a trash mechanic with maybe one good card, and that's being generous.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 22:01 |
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How is colorless mana parasitic, it's been used with all kinds of non-BFZ block cards in eternal formats. Most sets have at least one land that produces it.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 22:14 |
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I don't know what your numbers mean, but how is Populate a 5?
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 22:42 |
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The worst parasitic mechanic ever was infect. Other mechanics are worse mechanics, or better mechanics, but infect just completely hosed up the format, especially without how it touched the color pie. The notion of splitting damage types among the available creatures just makes the whole thing kinda suck.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 22:55 |
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Lets Pickle posted:As an example of what is parasitic and what is not on a scale of 1-5, lets look at the Ravnica and Return to Ravnica guild keywords, ability words (keep in mind that just because a mechanic isn't parastic doesn't make it good): I'm not sure you're using parasitic correctly. Many of these mechanics are not remotely parasitic. They might be linear, but that is not the same thing. Parasitic means that they don't function well outside of their own set because they depend on some sort of element that isn't generally available. For instance populate is extremely linear but not all that parasitic because token makers are in every set.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 23:06 |
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Myriad Truths posted:I'm not sure you're using parasitic correctly. Many of these mechanics are not remotely parasitic. They might be linear, but that is not the same thing. Parasitic means that they don't function well outside of their own set because they depend on some sort of element that isn't generally available. Yeah, none of the guild mechanics were that parasitic, though I'd consider Populate the most parasitic of the 20. Actual parasitic mechanics are things like Splice onto Arcane, Rebel search, and Soulshift.
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 23:44 |
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lightning bolt is extremely parasitic bc it makes you play red producing lands, what was wotc thinking
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 23:44 |
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in fact, every colored spell in the games is so parasitic that they have to reprint basic lands n every block, god such terrible design
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 23:46 |
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mandatory lesbian posted:lightning bolt is extremely parasitic bc it makes you play red producing lands, what was wotc thinking Lightning Bolt is also linear because it encourages a particular playstyle (no 1 or 2-toughness creatures).
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# ? Jul 29, 2016 23:52 |
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mandatory lesbian posted:in fact, every colored spell in the games is so parasitic that they have to reprint basic lands n every block, god such terrible design Now I just want a set where every basic is replaced by a dual of some sort.
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# ? Jul 30, 2016 00:42 |
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Shadow225 posted:Now I just want a set where every basic is replaced by a dual of some sort. This happened in both Dragon's Maze and Fate Reforged.
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# ? Jul 30, 2016 00:46 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:43 |
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Lets Pickle posted:As an example of what is parasitic and what is not on a scale of 1-5, lets look at the Ravnica and Return to Ravnica guild keywords, ability words (keep in mind that just because a mechanic isn't parastic doesn't make it good): Lmfao at this post
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# ? Jul 30, 2016 00:50 |