Magic: the Gathering: I play a larger and larger green man

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Magic: the Gathering: I play a larger and larger green man

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Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Charity Porno posted:

Luminarch Aspirant, Goldspan Dragon, Faceless Haven

The Arena thread is dumb, why is there a separate thread for Arena, it's all MTG

Probably because the Arena thread is about playing the game, which this thread steadfastly does not post about

# ? May 30, 2022 23:04

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# ? May 29, 2024 10:11

odiv: Jan 12, 2003

Sometimes I just wanna criticize some sexist decision WotC made. And why should someone who just started playing Arena a few months ago have to wade through that?

# ? May 30, 2022 23:08

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Hey fellas I just want to get some help on this draft I did

*eyes glaze over upon encountering wall of text about which God of Faerun was canonically anti-black or not*

# ? May 30, 2022 23:13

ilmucche: Mar 16, 2016; What did you say the strategy was?

If you want to talk about playing I'd love for some discussion around hardened scales in pioneer. Is it better going GB with the snake and pelt collectors/experiment ones for total aggro, gw for conclave mentor and luminarch aspirant aggro or try and make artifact scales a thing?

That or give me ways to improve my modern RG jank deck that aren't "play regular RG midrange instead of rhythm of the wild and kalonian hydra you buffoon" since I haven't updated it pretty much since once upon a time got banned

# ? May 30, 2022 23:29

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Let's talk about why Mercadia needs to come back.

# ? May 30, 2022 23:34

odiv: Jan 12, 2003

Just don't invite any rebels, because the next thing you know they all fuckin' show up.

# ? May 30, 2022 23:39

Rinkles: Oct 24, 2010; What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?

Leperflesh posted:

The way alchemy sets up players to be ripped off if they paid money for cards sucks a lot and this opportunity to maybe randomly draw an alchemy card only reduces that grift a little and folks here are not going to accept that as an actual fix.

Can someone explain this a bit more in depth? I thought Alchemy was just regular magic with some extra cards that couldn't work in paper.

# ? May 30, 2022 23:59

Macdeo Lurjtux: Jul 5, 2011; BRRREADSTOOORRM!

MonsieurChoc posted:

Let's talk about why Mercadia needs to come back.

A Masque Mandate you would say?

# ? May 31, 2022 00:02

resistentialism: Aug 13, 2007

Rinkles posted:

Can someone explain this a bit more in depth? I thought Alchemy was just regular magic with some extra cards that couldn't work in paper.

When they ban a card or fiddle around and suspend it (and then ban it), they've been giving out wildcards as a refund. When they rebalance an alchemy card they aren't going to do that.

Of course, if they ban a key card in a deck they aren't going to give you wildcards for all the supporting cards that might have only fit in that deck. So it's not a straight dichotomy.

Also, they overwhelmingly made the cards in the weird alchemy grafted-on supplementary sets rares and mythics with a few uncommons.

resistentialism fucked around with this message at 00:14 on May 31, 2022

# ? May 31, 2022 00:10

Thom Yorke raps: Nov 2, 2004

MonsieurChoc posted:

Let's talk about why Mercadia needs to come back.

I think they could make Mercenaries non crappy by having them make a treasure token (or, if you use a treasure token you can go up in casting cost instead of having to recruit down in cc?)

# ? May 31, 2022 00:13

fadam: Apr 23, 2008

Eej posted:

Hey fellas I just want to get some help on this draft I did

*eyes glaze over upon encountering wall of text about which God of Faerun was canonically anti-black or not*

Lmao

# ? May 31, 2022 01:17

flatluigi: Apr 23, 2008; here come the planes

iirc their reasoning for not giving refunds out for alchemy rebalances is a combination of not wanting to do it for buffs/sidegrades and that they still hold themselves to banning cards in paper formats as normal

the reason it honks is that the cards that get rebalanced for alchemy carry over to the other digital only formats (historic and historic brawl) and a card that might be too strong for standard might be fine unchanged in historic

they've said that when cards that are rebalanced rotate out of standard/alchemy they'll look at reverting the rebalances, at least, but it's gonna be a few months still before we see how that ends up

# ? May 31, 2022 01:23

jpmeyer: Jan 17, 2012; parody image of che

flatluigi posted:

they've said that when cards that are rebalanced rotate out of standard/alchemy they'll look at reverting the rebalances, at least, but it's gonna be a few months still before we see how that ends up

they made that nerfed version of fires of invention explicitly for historic and meanwhile the normal version is legal in explorer lol

# ? May 31, 2022 01:26

Leperflesh: May 17, 2007

The Arena thread is in Games, a different subforum with different (albeit overlapping) community. Much like how there's Ukraine threads in C-SPAM, D&D, GBS, and TFR, it is OK to have some topics that span different interest areas across the subforums have multiple threads so that members of those communities don't have to ~~risk the psychic damage of daring to wander from the safety of their happy places~~ talk to people they don't know as well, or under different rules, or whatever.

# ? May 31, 2022 01:27

kalel: Jun 19, 2012

here's a persistent thought I've been having: does magic's inherent randomness preclude the validity of competition?

If one person top decks lands 6 turns in a row, could it be said that their opponent's skill mattered at all when they win? And if the possibility of not drawing the right cards always exists (among countless others—not drawing your sideboard hate cards, having a counterspell in hand vs. not, getting stuck on one color of mana, etc.), do your decisions in game even matter if your skill can't solely guarantee victory?

I spoke with a friend in the competitive TF2 scene who absolutely abhors randomness in games. I was discussing magic and he made the argument above. I pointed out that fps's have RNG like bullet spread, and he argued that it's an acceptable level of randomness because it can be compensated for by the player. Everything else in TF2 (allegedly since I've never played it myself) is determined by the decisions of players, so it's a more valid competitive gameplay experience because knowledge of your opponent pays off if you can outmaneuvre them. At a certain skill level disparity, you can best your opponent nearly 100% of the time in a shooter; meanwhile, no matter what you know about LSV as a player, 10% to 15% of the time one of you will win because the other will draw too many or not enough lands

this isn't meant to be an indictment of the mana system specifically. there are numerous scenarios like the examples I gave above. the game engine itself is fundamentally based on randomness. The most fun part of the game is drawing a card, and that's because the hidden information of the top of your deck allows for the true game state to be obscured. If you played the game with your decks and hands face-up, would it still be fun? Would it be more "pure" in a competitive sense?

thinking about it recently because of how snowball-y SNC limited is, and because of how often my explorer experience recently has been coming down to "I need to find karn for grafdigger's cage/tormod's crypt or I'm dead". What's the point of winning if it's based on forces outside of either player's control?

thank you for coming to my Ted talk

# ? May 31, 2022 02:49

Captain Invictus: Apr 5, 2005; Try reading some manga!; Clever Betty

shoulda built your deck to account for that!

# ? May 31, 2022 02:52

Pablo Nergigante: Apr 16, 2002

Leperflesh posted:

The Arena thread is in Games, a different subforum with different (albeit overlapping) community. Much like how there's Ukraine threads in C-SPAM, D&D, GBS, and TFR, it is OK to have some topics that span different interest areas across the subforums have multiple threads so that members of those communities don't have to ~~risk the psychic damage of daring to wander from the safety of their happy places~~ talk to people they don't know as well, or under different rules, or whatever.

Why is there a Ukraine thread in TFR.

# ? May 31, 2022 02:53

DangerDongs: Nov 7, 2010; Grimey Drawer

kalel posted:

here's a persistent thought I've been having: does magic's inherent randomness preclude the validity of competition?

If one person top decks lands 6 turns in a row, could it be said that their opponent's skill mattered at all when they win? And if the possibility of not drawing the right cards always exists (among countless others—not drawing your sideboard hate cards, having a counterspell in hand vs. not, getting stuck on one color of mana, etc.), do your decisions in game even matter if your skill can't solely guarantee victory?

I spoke with a friend in the competitive TF2 scene who absolutely abhors randomness in games. I was discussing magic and he made the argument above. I pointed out that fps's have RNG like bullet spread, and he argued that it's an acceptable level of randomness because it can be compensated for by the player. Everything else in TF2 (allegedly since I've never played it myself) is determined by the decisions of players, so it's a more valid competitive gameplay experience because knowledge of your opponent pays off if you can outmaneuvre them. At a certain skill level disparity, you can best your opponent nearly 100% of the time in a shooter; meanwhile, no matter what you know about LSV as a player, 10% to 15% of the time one of you will win because the other will draw too many or not enough lands

this isn't meant to be an indictment of the mana system specifically. there are numerous scenarios like the examples I gave above. the game engine itself is fundamentally based on randomness. The most fun part of the game is drawing a card, and that's because the hidden information of the top of your deck allows for the true game state to be obscured. If you played the game with your decks and hands face-up, would it still be fun? Would it be more "pure" in a competitive sense?

thinking about it recently because of how snowball-y SNC limited is, and because of how often my explorer experience recently has been coming down to "I need to find karn for grafdigger's cage/tormod's crypt or I'm dead". What's the point of winning if it's based on forces outside of either player's control?

thank you for coming to my Ted talk

This makes sense if a single game of Magic was all you ever played, but you look at someone's win percentage as a whole. There is a reason why the best players in both Magic and Poker end up at the top tables.

I can't speak for online Magic, but I don't think people realize how important reading people's facial expressions and mastering your own is important for paper Magic.

# ? May 31, 2022 02:53

Eight-Six: Oct 26, 2007

kalel posted:

here's a persistent thought I've been having:

What's the point of winning if it's based on forces outside of either player's control?

to writhe against entropy nurtures the fires within, op

# ? May 31, 2022 02:56

HootTheOwl: May 13, 2012; Hootin and shootin

kalel posted:

here's a persistent thought I've been having: does magic's inherent randomness preclude the validity of competition?

If one person top decks lands 6 turns in a row, could it be said that their opponent's skill mattered at all when they win? And if the possibility of not drawing the right cards always exists (among countless others—not drawing your sideboard hate cards, having a counterspell in hand vs. not, getting stuck on one color of mana, etc.), do your decisions in game even matter if your skill can't solely guarantee victory?

I spoke with a friend in the competitive TF2 scene who absolutely abhors randomness in games. I was discussing magic and he made the argument above. I pointed out that fps's have RNG like bullet spread, and he argued that it's an acceptable level of randomness because it can be compensated for by the player. Everything else in TF2 (allegedly since I've never played it myself) is determined by the decisions of players, so it's a more valid competitive gameplay experience because knowledge of your opponent pays off if you can outmaneuvre them. At a certain skill level disparity, you can best your opponent nearly 100% of the time in a shooter; meanwhile, no matter what you know about LSV as a player, 10% to 15% of the time one of you will win because the other will draw too many or not enough lands

this isn't meant to be an indictment of the mana system specifically. there are numerous scenarios like the examples I gave above. the game engine itself is fundamentally based on randomness. The most fun part of the game is drawing a card, and that's because the hidden information of the top of your deck allows for the true game state to be obscured. If you played the game with your decks and hands face-up, would it still be fun? Would it be more "pure" in a competitive sense?

thinking about it recently because of how snowball-y SNC limited is, and because of how often my explorer experience recently has been coming down to "I need to find karn for grafdigger's cage/tormod's crypt or I'm dead". What's the point of winning if it's based on forces outside of either player's control?

thank you for coming to my Ted talk

There's a reason why cantrips are so powerful and constantly getting banned: They remove variance and provide you an edge. but there's a reason why even with variance accounted for it's still the same people at the top tables.

# ? May 31, 2022 02:59

kalel: Jun 19, 2012

Eight-Six posted:

to writhe against entropy nurtures the fires within, op

can you just tell me now if you drop any good loot? I don't want to spend an hour finding your quest items for nothing

# ? May 31, 2022 03:03

Eight-Six: Oct 26, 2007

kalel posted:

can you just tell me now if you drop any good loot? I don't want to spend an hour finding your quest items for nothing

best I got is an uncommon alchemy ICR

# ? May 31, 2022 03:05

Lone Goat: Apr 16, 2003; When life gives you lemons, suplex those lemons.

kalel posted:

here's a persistent thought I've been having: does magic's inherent randomness preclude the validity of competition?

If one person top decks lands 6 turns in a row, could it be said that their opponent's skill mattered at all when they win? And if the possibility of not drawing the right cards always exists (among countless others—not drawing your sideboard hate cards, having a counterspell in hand vs. not, getting stuck on one color of mana, etc.), do your decisions in game even matter if your skill can't solely guarantee victory?

I spoke with a friend in the competitive TF2 scene who absolutely abhors randomness in games. I was discussing magic and he made the argument above. I pointed out that fps's have RNG like bullet spread, and he argued that it's an acceptable level of randomness because it can be compensated for by the player. Everything else in TF2 (allegedly since I've never played it myself) is determined by the decisions of players, so it's a more valid competitive gameplay experience because knowledge of your opponent pays off if you can outmaneuvre them. At a certain skill level disparity, you can best your opponent nearly 100% of the time in a shooter; meanwhile, no matter what you know about LSV as a player, 10% to 15% of the time one of you will win because the other will draw too many or not enough lands

this isn't meant to be an indictment of the mana system specifically. there are numerous scenarios like the examples I gave above. the game engine itself is fundamentally based on randomness. The most fun part of the game is drawing a card, and that's because the hidden information of the top of your deck allows for the true game state to be obscured. If you played the game with your decks and hands face-up, would it still be fun? Would it be more "pure" in a competitive sense?

thinking about it recently because of how snowball-y SNC limited is, and because of how often my explorer experience recently has been coming down to "I need to find karn for grafdigger's cage/tormod's crypt or I'm dead". What's the point of winning if it's based on forces outside of either player's control?

thank you for coming to my Ted talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1feEqgRZQI

# ? May 31, 2022 03:43

Ghislaine of YOSPOS: Apr 19, 2020

kalel posted:

here's a persistent thought I've been having: does magic's inherent randomness preclude the validity of competition?

If one person top decks lands 6 turns in a row, could it be said that their opponent's skill mattered at all when they win? And if the possibility of not drawing the right cards always exists (among countless others—not drawing your sideboard hate cards, having a counterspell in hand vs. not, getting stuck on one color of mana, etc.), do your decisions in game even matter if your skill can't solely guarantee victory?

I spoke with a friend in the competitive TF2 scene who absolutely abhors randomness in games. I was discussing magic and he made the argument above. I pointed out that fps's have RNG like bullet spread, and he argued that it's an acceptable level of randomness because it can be compensated for by the player. Everything else in TF2 (allegedly since I've never played it myself) is determined by the decisions of players, so it's a more valid competitive gameplay experience because knowledge of your opponent pays off if you can outmaneuvre them. At a certain skill level disparity, you can best your opponent nearly 100% of the time in a shooter; meanwhile, no matter what you know about LSV as a player, 10% to 15% of the time one of you will win because the other will draw too many or not enough lands

this isn't meant to be an indictment of the mana system specifically. there are numerous scenarios like the examples I gave above. the game engine itself is fundamentally based on randomness. The most fun part of the game is drawing a card, and that's because the hidden information of the top of your deck allows for the true game state to be obscured. If you played the game with your decks and hands face-up, would it still be fun? Would it be more "pure" in a competitive sense?

thinking about it recently because of how snowball-y SNC limited is, and because of how often my explorer experience recently has been coming down to "I need to find karn for grafdigger's cage/tormod's crypt or I'm dead". What's the point of winning if it's based on forces outside of either player's control?

thank you for coming to my Ted talk

you have to make the best decision possible for every spot you're in. if you do that over a long enough period of time you'll have lots of success. magic is a less perfectly competitive game than chess but more than tic tac toe. any asymmetrical game where matchups play a factor there's gonna be a huge element out of your control. so you have to find reasons you're doing whatever you're doing instead of arm wrestling or darts or reading a book. you have to be playing because you like the game at the end of the day.

# ? May 31, 2022 03:54

Fajita Queen: Jun 21, 2012

My take on Alchemy is that it isn't Magic the Gathering and therefore should not be discussed here, do that poo poo in the Arena thread.

# ? May 31, 2022 05:54

Leperflesh: May 17, 2007

Pablo Nergigante posted:

Why is there a Ukraine thread in TFR.

I guess there's a lot of ex-military folks there and they want to chat about ukraine with their pals?

kalel posted:

here's a persistent thought I've been having: does magic's inherent randomness preclude the validity of competition?

No. Magic has variance, not true randomness: you (typically, in most formats) choose the cards that are in your deck, and shuffling them randomizes their order, and in most but not all cases, you're drawing from that set of cards, much like poker. But because you know the cards in your deck, and because you can do some statistics and probability analysis, you can play the odds. In the long run, it is in fact possible to be "unlucky" or "lucky" in that if you distilled all the random draws a player made over their whole life, exactly where they sat on the probability curve would be very unlikely to land at precisely 50%.

But as with poker, the best players will win more often, because of the skill element. The best players will make better decks, make fewer mistakes during play, and will make more clever plays. For any given match they may still win. But in poker, the "edge" a player has over a net-zero outcome is called Expected Value (EV), and a +EV player wins more than they lose, and there's lots of players who are +EV over such a long period, against such good players, that it's very very unlikely all their winning is down to just an incredibly long streak of good luck.

And just to toot my own horn a little, you might enjoy skimming this post of mine from early in this thread where I posted a primer on probability w/r/t drawing cards from shuffled decks, and a bit about how I think that affects thinking about magic.

# ? May 31, 2022 06:46

Rahu: Feb 14, 2009; let me just check my figures real quick here; Grimey Drawer

Hey I have a dumb rules question.

This was just revealed for CLB and I'm not sure I understand why they used "and/or" instead of "and". In this case would "and" mean that a creature has to be all three to be counted?

# ? May 31, 2022 07:25

Toshimo: Aug 23, 2012; He's outta line...

But he's right!

Rahu posted:

Hey I have a dumb rules question.

This was just revealed for CLB and I'm not sure I understand why they used "and/or" instead of "and". In this case would "and" mean that a creature has to be all three to be counted?

This is just how the templating works. See also frequently played cards Demilich, Angel of Serenity, Force of Vigor, and/or Xenagos the Reveler.

# ? May 31, 2022 07:31

Fajita Queen: Jun 21, 2012

I think it's just to remove any possibility of ambiguity. If it were just 'or' then it might mean it counts any one of the three separately, or something.

# ? May 31, 2022 07:33

Goa Tse-tung: Feb 11, 2008; ;3; Yams Fan

and if they use "and", anyone could argue it would have to be all three at once, now it can be if you want to

# ? May 31, 2022 10:50

Lord_Magmar: Feb 24, 2015; "Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"

Goa Tse-tung posted:

and if they use "and", anyone could argue it would have to be all three at once, now it can be if you want to

Someone could also argue that "or" would mean that you check each individual creature type printed on a card separately.

"and/or" removes all ambiguity in what is intended, which is that any card with one or more of those types written on it counts, but you do not count each word individually when printed on the same card.

# ? May 31, 2022 12:32

Party Miser: Apr 1, 2011

They really need to do it like that because some nerds are insufferable with interpretations. I once saw a nerd at Gencon get mad and yell at a concession worker because the sign said �hot dogs $5" and they only got one.

# ? May 31, 2022 16:05

Aphrodite: Jun 27, 2006

Does the phrasing mean you could choose to only count Oozes if you want to?

# ? May 31, 2022 16:18

champagne posting: Apr 5, 2006; YOU ARE A BRAIN
IN A BUNKER

Party Miser posted:

They really need to do it like that because some nerds are insufferable with interpretations. I once saw a nerd at Gencon get mad and yell at a concession worker because the sign said �hot dogs $5" and they only got one.

thanks for reminding me why I only very rarely venture to physical venues to play games

well I say rarely, I mean only with people I know

# ? May 31, 2022 16:19

Qwertycoatl: Dec 31, 2008

Aphrodite posted:

Does the phrasing mean you could choose to only count Oozes if you want to?

No, you don't have a choice

# ? May 31, 2022 16:23

vegetables: Mar 10, 2012

Party Miser posted:

They really need to do it like that because some nerds are insufferable with interpretations. I once saw a nerd at Gencon get mad and yell at a concession worker because the sign said �hot dogs $5" and they only got one.

In response the concession worker releases multiple flaming hellhounds, who maul their new owner to death

# ? May 31, 2022 17:19