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Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!
So, I was swayed by the Doctor Who collab to try the game, in part because I heard the decks were good. And naturally I assumed that since the whole point marketing-wise is to bring in new customers, I figured they'd be a pretty natural jumping on point to learn the game. So I played my first few games today, using the Thirteenth Doctor deck against an acquaintance's Davros/villains deck.

And oh god I was wrong in the most amazing way. I'm actually kind of impressed at the deck's power level once I found how to make it swing, but holy poo poo, is it a weird introduction to start with a deck that literally rewards making your turn as unnecessarily complicated as possible.

I actually won one of those games, and I think I gave myself a headache just trying to process the combos that got me there.

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Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!

Algid posted:

I don't keep track of commander stuff, but that's a time counter deck right? Does seem sort of annoying to track, but with the design constraint of having the cards both being flavorful and faithful to the media as well enticing new players because insert_brand_here, I guess they leaned more towards the former.

The Tenth Doctor deck is primarily time counters, Thirteen is mainly built around a new keyword, Paradox - several cards trigger effects for every time a card is cast from outside the hand. Thirteen herself distributes a +1/+1 counter; some others let you draw cards or do damage. So not only does the deck swing a lot of stuff like Foretell, Cascade and Rebound, it rewards using those basically just for the sake of it, because even if you don't get a stronger benefit from casting the card like that, you proc an additional effect just for doing it.

The Classic Doctors deck, for comparison, is mostly swinging Sagas: it's an entire deck built around watching a TV show and finding out you're watching a multi-part story, which I think is perfect.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Nov 3, 2023

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!

Captain Invictus posted:

Are you new to magic in general? It sounds like you're familiar with it but also your first post in the thread is you saying you tried out the game with the crossover decks. Your second post sounds like you're more familiar with the game than you might actually be, so excuse me for asking.

If you're actually really new, I would recommend picking up a starter deck set for dirt cheap off Amazon. There's a few of them, mostly extremely cheap at like 10-20 bucks for two decks, and they also come with codes you can input into the MTG: Arena client to get full copies of said starter decks on there as well for two people if you have a friend who also plays. They're much more simple decks in the Standard game type, rather than the commander game type that the doctor who decks are from, which is much more complicated a format.

This is the first time I've actually played the game, but I've been peripherally aware of a lot of it for a while, partially thanks to playing Yu-Gi-Oh and partially thanks to just being friends with nerds.

But I did a fair amount of research beforehand, both to generally know what decks I wanted and how to play it without stopping play to ask basic questions too much. I built myself a quick reference of terms this deck alone was using that I couldn't immediately understand, and it's 24 entries long; this thing is complicated. (Granted, a handful of those are just stuff like 'what's that diamond mana symbol' that I committed to memory pretty quickly.) The Thirteenth Doctor deck absolutely dropped me in the deep end, but it does at least mean I'm not quite working from zero, and was able to see the history of a lot of those mechanics just from how I prepared. So yeah, I know Paradox is new but time counters aren't, stuff like that.

I think I probably will get into playing the game in some other forms at some point, and if so I've kinda got my eye on black or blue decks that have my favorite flavors of control, but I'll probably focus on getting good with this deck first.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!

Lurks With Wolves posted:

And don't forget how important flavor is. At the end of the day, it wouldn't feel like a Doctor Who product if you weren't doing something weird and needlessly complex that's powerful if you line it up right. People are willing to deal with a lot for the sake of genre emulation.

I am really impressed how well they implemented Doctor Who stuff into the game, actually. I sort of expected it'd just be cameo-filled reskins of 'normal' decks, but they really went above and beyond to make the deck play like it feels like it should. The decks also managing to be good certainly doesn't hurt, either.

It weirdly helps me learn the game, too. The first time I looked at The Foretold Soldier I spent a good few seconds just trying to parse what it was trying to get across, and then I remembered what that guy's whole thing was in the show and it all made sense.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!
I don't think I saw people mention it, but apparently Secret Lair is packing a few more Doctor Who cards for this year's specials. And from my eye, probably the best one is also the most historically interesting one:



From what I know, either the second or third trans character on a Magic card (a friend of mine put it as 'depends on if Balan, Wandering Knight counts')! And I can see her being a pretty fun one in the Paradox deck.

There's also one for the Celestial Toymaker which is a weirdo choice gimmick clearly intended for the villain deck, and one for David Tennant Again that's basically designed to reflect regenerations as a concept. There's also two more they haven't revealed yet, one of which is likely Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor.

EDIT: I've kept bringing the Paradox deck to locals, and given it a bit of extra kick from the Ixalan stuff; I haven't won with it yet, but I keep managing to do pretty okay and finding neat combos that I don't quite draw early enough in the game to get rolling. There's also a pretty fun dynamic that every night I've gone someone's come up with a different idea for what to pair with Paradox, it's just generic enough as a concept that everyone goes different ways with it. I've also been suggested the Fae Dominion deck as a Black/Blue that seems to fit my style, so I guess I"m keeping my eye out for that one!

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Dec 6, 2023

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!

Weird Pumpkin posted:

Man that would be amazing

Also I mean.. I would probably buy an ace attorney secret lair


Objection could be counterspell

The weird thing is that, going by their general personalities, I don't think Phoenix and Edgeworth would be blue and red commanders respectively.

I think Edgeworth is primarily blue, focused on laying down a lot of restrictions and snuffing out enemy strategies. Phoenix is probably white and/or green, doing a lot of buildup and defense until he eventually has a case that can't be stopped.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!
I feel like if you really want a Jack in that deck, there's a 'good enough' card to fit his flavor and the deck's color identity in the game somewhere.

He was basically RTD doing a Han Solo type, and I'd be stunned if Magic doesn't have like, eight different Han Solos in its card pool.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!
So, I'm wondering if people can help me pick out a potential white commander deck to build out. I'm tired of not being able to do anything with like 20% of the cards I open, and I've wound up with a few Ixalan commanders that are apparently decent:

-Amalia Aguirre, the white/black that wants to turn twenty and explode.
-Anim Pakal, the white/red who wants a bunch of counters for garden gnome swarms.
-And Kutzil, the white/green who wants a board full of big fuckers so she can draw a bunch of cards.

My other decks are beefed-up versions of the Thirteenth Doctor deck (red/green/blue) and the Tegwyll fairy deck (black/blue); I intend to try building out them all, so there's sort of inevitably gonna be some competition going.

Going by my current collection Kutzil's probably got the headstart in terms of currently synergizing cards, and the things she wants from green don't really cross over with the Doctor's wants, but I'm not a massive fan of the 'haymaker' style strategy. I like getting weird and tricky. Amalia I've got some decent spice to join her, but there's a little bit of clash between her and the fairies over good black cards. Anim I don't have much that inherently synergizes right now, and also hits a struggle that she and the Doctor have a lot of crossover in appealing red cards, so she's probably not the one, but I'm still open to it.

I'm sort of tempted to get one of the Karlov Manor precons to build out in the same way as my other two decks, but I get the feeling they might all be a bit too specific in what they're up to. If the plan is just 'have something to do with all those white cards', Karlov's decks seem a bit too gimmicky to serve that.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Man, functional reprints and strict upgrades are gonna be really loving funny here.

The person who gets Aethereon will be real pissrd about Aethereus who by complete coincidence also gives boundless ascend but has a cost of 4.

That game's not gonna reach the point where they need to handle that. I'd be surprised if it even releases, but it's definitely not getting to a third set.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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So, rules question: does turning a face-down disguised card face-up count as 'casting a card from outside the hand'?

I won a prerelease pack at the local commander night, and if that works how I hope, there's some fun synergy to be had with my Thirteenth Doctor deck.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:

It does not, sorry

generatrix posted:

No, turning up a creature is not casting it. It also doesn't trigger "enters the battlefield" effects. It's a special action on a permanent that is already in play, and doesn't involve changing zones or casting.

Disguise could be used at any point you can cast from exile, but there's no added benefit to a deck that cares about it.

drat. A little disappointing, but on review, I think disguise would be a bit slow for her anyway. And prone to backfiring; you don't want your cascades and topdeck casts to be the cards you intend to get cast from elsewhere by other means.

Oh well, I've got Warleader's Call and a few ugly red buffs, so my goad deck's getting way pricklier anyway.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Goa Tse-tung posted:

I think "do x when no name" has potential for more cards, maybe even an ability word

Is there an element of 'no name on a creature' that isn't just a token?

Conceptually this is a great idea (just giving this mechanic to fairies alone would make it worthwhile), but I'm not sure if there's actual mechanical purpose for it.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Irony Be My Shield posted:

Tokens are named for their type(s) if it's not otherwise specified right? It's just facedown creatures that have no name?

Oh, okay. And theretically there's at least a couple ways that happens, even if it'd be really targeted counter-strats.

...unless, again: we made fairies that steal names.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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Jiro posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5fZCFr08cU

I find it strange that Humility is on his list as most complicated, but the explanation goes into way more detail than I really considered.

I feel like Tacklemaggot is getting unfairly dragged here, and it's actually in the Animate Dead pile.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Do you really think someone would do that? Just go to a commander pod and tell lies?

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Aphrodite posted:

My win condition is Prisoner's Dilemma.

I don't mean winning via it dealing lethal damage (though that's acceptable), I mean that if I cast it and get to see everyone's face as I explain how it works I have won.

A game I played yesterday came down to Hot Pursuit's second effect coming into play right at the end. And the look on the other guy's face when he read the second paragraph of a card that had been sitting on the board all game was the best payoff of the whole night.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Aphrodite posted:

Yesterday I got to have the perfect Blame Game finish in a 5 player game. 2nd to last turn I played Disrupt Decorum; everyone survived but their boards got really beat up. When it got back to me, I got Fiendish Duo out then played Prisoner's Dilemma. One player snitched, killing two and leaving the last player pretty low. Player 3 there was also mostly tapped out because of the Disrupt Decorum except for some small tokens he had created.

I had Hot Pursuit out from a previous turn and a couple of Suspected creatures were still alive, but the snitch used Assassin's Trophy to blow it up as I went to combat so it passed to him. He dropped Craterhoof for ~5 but only sent 2 attacks at me and the rest at the 3rd player. Duo blocked one to shave off enough and I Deflecting Palmed the other back at him, using the land he gave me.

Then the snitch got beat up in the next game for snitching. It was everything I have ever wanted.

Honestly, I am thrilled by how well-designed Blame Game is for the format it's designed for. It's not that it's powerful (although it's definitely got some muscle behind it), it's just that it's clearly made with such an understanding of how Commander works that it'll just always play pretty well. And the fact that its main strength comes from essentially encouraging everyone to attack each other means that it scales really well to your opponents.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Lieutenant Centaur posted:

As someone who never watched a Professor video is he always this awkward and cringe?

I couldn't play with someone with that energy for more than 2 or 3 turns. Also, agree with one of the comments on the video. Why is there light, awful music being played during the game. It's kind of distracting and takes away from just listening to 4 dudes jam a game and talk.

My general read on the Professor is that, yeah he's got some general 'Dad Joke' energy that leads to him being a bit cringeworthy in that harmless way, he's also got a generally decent sense of ways to channel that in a table dynamic, and in this video he has absolutely identified that the best way to play that is to be a big silly dork around three people who are rock-solid straight men being introduced to the dumbest side of Magic. He's not always like that; off the top of my head I remember that in the Doctor Who episode he had a more appropriately kind of 'subtle trickster' angle to go with his Seventh Doctor deck. (But also that episode had TeferiMagic going full ham, so he was hardly the biggest personality at that table.)

As to the music... as someone who also makes Youtube videos, you'd be surprised how much some light music improves the energy of a video that's otherwise just talking. Not just in setting the tone, but also in keeping it feeling a lot more lively and energetic in general. My videos feel downright anaemic before the music gets added in editing. It also helps paper over minor audio issues.

Also: I like that this video shows me that the Professor also thinks the funniest thing to do with Universes Beyond cards is to put exactly one in an otherwise normal deck.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Feb 20, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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GreenBuckanneer posted:

put down money for the 4 Fallout commander packs

commander night gonna be boppin

I mentioned in the commander thread, the survivor deck has some hilarious synergy with the paradox Doctor Who deck, since the junk counters just straight-up have Yasmin Khan's effect.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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Kurtofan posted:

holy poo poo i didn't expect an aradesh card



I know I was certainly hoping for an Aradesh card, but I had no idea what he'd actually do. But that's largely because when I was trying to spitball how I'd do the Fallout precons, I was stuck on 'the NCR probably deserves one, but they don't have any strong names to put down' in a way that the Enclave has Frank Horrigan and John Henry Eden.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Feb 21, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Kurtofan posted:

they made the decks to fit themes rather than specific factions
the mardu deck is made up of military factions from throughout the games, so it includes ceasar's legion but also the ncr, the enclave probably (except frank horrigan who was put into the mutant sultai deck, which includes mutants and mutated from throughout the series)

Yeah, I know, and my spitballing ideas ultimately went in the same direction, although I landed on different ones.

My angle was a Vault-Tec/salvaged tech deck built around the Vault Dweller, the Enclave with Frank Horrigan as the face will a full-bore scorched earth policy (they can probably also fit military/raider sorts like Caesar's Legion), a 'taming the wasteland' deck with Mr. House as the face, and then a deck of the wasteland itself, with maybe Three Dog as the commander just to sell the notion that nobody's in control of this nonsense, you're just watching. No idea what colors those would've been, but it's generally where I would've gravitated; I get that it's basically the decks we have with a few bits shuffled around.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!
Everyone arguing about how to optimize their chance at the Luck Bobblehead's victory, meanwhile I'm just gonna use its mountain of treasure tokens to win by Mechanized Production.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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President Ark posted:



johnny 5 aces is in the art of a magic: the gathering card

...are all these in the survivors deck?

Because good lord this might make it a must-buy for me. Finally, a solution for the main problem of Thirteen's game plan: that sometimes I'm casting cards that are in my hand!

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
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Kurtofan posted:


truth is, the game was rigged from the start

I'm starting to realize that the reason they made Caesar the face card of the New Vegas deck was in an effort to make sure we didn't get a Masters of Evil situation where every single person wants the exact same deck. Bcause the only thing that's not great about this deck is that you have to buy the one with a fascist on the box.

And not even a cool fascist, even the chuds would just prefer Liberty Prime.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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So, if anything that targets or affects an opponent's overall game state is a crime, what's the most offensive possible deck that's committing the fewest crimes?

Is it, like, mono-green or green/white Big Beefy Boys with giant numbers? Even those guys have to commit a crime eventually to win, but if you play it right you're only committing it once.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Khanstant posted:

Cops leaping to the easiest conclusion early and ignoring all else is a pretty classic and common way crimes just go forever unsolved.

It's not quite part of the murder mystery genre, at least not as a protagonist, but it does feel very tonally in-keeping that Nelly and her entire deck has absolutely no way to find a murderer (and despite it being her job to do so, no cards based around solving a case), and only ways to accuse people presumably innocent people of being one.

She is definitely a character in the inevitable true crime podcast that ensues.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 25, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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flatluigi posted:

the cops are the boros, not the detectives. they even made the new aurelia card a pun on 'above the law'

In fairness to the complaint, the non-angel Boros cards in the set--both white/red themselves or just mono-reds and whites that support their style--do have a fair amount of detectives in their creature types. I think that's more just because they don't have 'cop' as a distinct creature type, though, and from what I can tell they tend to gravitate towards 'detective' to describe law enforcement types.

I feel like the Karlov manor set really expresses that there's clearly a divide within that 'detective' creature type between the actual investigators and just the cops, though. Like, there's not a hint of the 'investigate' keyword on any of the Boros detectives, and any of the white/red cards that have 'investigate' on them (mainly white) basically only has it as an incidental, on cards like No Witnesses. It's the other color identities that actually do something with investigate and detective support, in Boros all of that's just incidental to the main cause of raw destruction.

And if it needs to be said: Boros' strongarm policing is in no way framed as positive in the actual flavor. Like I said before, Nelly literally cannot solve a case either mechanically or conceptually, all she can do is start fights. Aurelia is framed as above the law, and flavor on cards like Demand Answers show that she's being ridiculous in her demands. Boros aren't the people solving the murder mystery, they're the ones making the entire situation way harder than it needs to be.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Weird Pumpkin posted:

honestly I think petulant streamer who rages as stuff is a pretty popular niche judging by like.. half the clips of streamers I see?

I don't get it, but the big league guy Tyler1 has made more money than I will ever see in my life getting very mad at videogames

Yeah, I don't like that niche, and I'm sure very few of us do too, but ever since the Angry Video Game Nerd it's always been a really popular type of gaming content.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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distortion park posted:

They should have abbreviated it as ETB like everyone does online

That's genuinely so much worse as a solution. If the argument is that 'enters' is too ambiguous for new players to understand (it's not by the way, they're not that stupid), 'ETB' is the exact worst solution, because without any explanation it's completely meaningless jargon. Even if by some weird brain misfire somebody initially interprets 'enters' incorrectly, they probably still at least got closer to the intended meaning than they would have with 'ETB'.

'Enters' is good, especially when you remember that as a multiplayer game, nobody playing Magic is going to have to figure that one out alone.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Vando posted:

Are they really so hard up for card real estate that they couldn't just use 'enters play'? Or hell just make the term for entering the battlefield a whole other unambiguous word like 'appears' or something.

From what other people mentioned, 'enters play' was the original problem term, and genuinely did have ambiguity in it, because 'enters play' could mean a lot of things, especially now where you've got a lot of cards that do things from the graveyard or that do things from exile.

Like, if I'm using Atraxi Warden's Suspend cast, it's plausible to explain how that isn't the creature entering the battlefield, or entering at all; it didn't walk in the door to the battlefield, it's not available to attack or be attacked, it's just flying around outside the place until eventually it's gonna swoop in through the window. But it's now in the play space, it's now visible to everyone, it's performed an action that's now meant that it's actively doing things, it can be interacted with by other cards. How does that not by reasonable standards count as having 'entered play'?

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Mar 9, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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A Thunder Junction... side-story, I think, not a main one? It's not numbered. But it does give us something very important:

Trans MtG Character number 2, 3 or 4, depending on how you count alt arts and Secret Lairs... but no matter what, the first trans man in Magic!

I hope his card is green or black, to get us one step closer to the best color cycle in the game.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Kids and Guns posted:

He's the face card in the Naya lands commander precon for Thunder Junction.

Oh, drat. ...Wizards really wants me playing red all the time, don't they?

Well, at least that color identity does mean that he can run Bearscape and Alesha for a decent t4t deck.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Mar 13, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Kids and Guns posted:

Alesha's got a Mardu color identity, doesn't she? Unfortunately.

I admit I haven't probed the actual rulings for something like this, but Alesha's Mardu by color identity, but doesn't actually need all three of those colors. She needs red to summon and either black or white to use her effect. It might be that she's illegal to play in that by Commander format rules, but if she is legal to play in his deck, then she operates just fine.

And if that is illegal to play her in his deck, that's just the establishment forcing trans people to fight each other instead of standing in solidarity.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Sickening posted:

But again,playing the deck causes a certain type of person to lose their mind. Like break them to the point of using gamer words. None of it makes sense.

https://x.com/pleasantkenobi/status/1767845994270433465?s=46&t=6TcDRv5TsjsK9hYJMKVitA

This is the best part of Unfinity: watching middle-aged men's brains break when faced with stickers.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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So, something that's occurred to me, and I'm wondering if I'm actually noticing something or am just responding to a narrow knowledge of the game:

Is blue just... not very interested in high-concept gimmick stuff?

In the few sets I've been around/buying stuff for, I've noticed that red and green seem to most often get to play with some weird poo poo, with white and black joining in to some degree depending on what said weird poo poo is; black loved itself some play with poison counters in Phyrexia, while white loved a lot of Karlov Manor's ideas. But throughout all the sets I've got, blue's not really playing in those spaces; it might incidentally poke at them, occasionally through reactive keywords like corrupted and paradox, but blue seems to default to its core playbook much more often than the others. You see a bunch of every other color stunting off of some unusual gimmick or keyword, and then you hit a blue card and it's just going 'yep, I'm still card draw and flying'.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Mar 19, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Eej posted:

Thinking about how many blue decks win the game by decking themselves or their opponents. Definitely not gimmicky.

You've definitely found the one exception in terms of 'gimmick stuff', but I think it just sort of refines the point rather than refute it: mill is kind of the only 'gimmick' blue's got, but it's a gimmick that's existed in the same form for decades. It's just part of blue's core, and blue sticks to its core so much more strictly.

What I'm noticing is more the fact that it doesn't get to play much with new keywords, to get new weird gimmicks, probably because of the sheer power level of that core. Blue pretty much remains the same across the years while everyone else gets to go weird; the only 'new thing' that I'd say is consistently given to blue more than anyone else in what I've got is adventures, but that's still more than a presidential term old--and you can argue it's basically just a new way to let them get to their usual tools, rather than something new itself.

I was going to say the big exception is rad counters, which are a distinctly 'blue' gimmick that provide a different direction to their usual stuff... but looking at those cards, rad counters mostly aren't blue. Green and black get the lion's share of those actual cards, blue is just providing support; less outright 'give rad counters', more proliferates. (EDIT: As Khanstant said, supporting the other colors going hard on the gimmick rather than pressing it itself.)

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Mar 19, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Eej posted:

I do think that restricting yourself to "one presidential term" in terms of design is very shortsighted. Pioneer's library starts in 2012. Standard itself is 3 years now which edges dangerously close to one presidential term.

For some context on my window of experience, I've been playing since Wilds of Eldraine/Doctor Who, but throw myself way too hard into new hobbies and have been playing Commander pretty often. So while I admit I don't have the biggest view of things, it's enough to start noticing that, say, whenever there's a new keyword it's never blue that gets to play with it, and it's never the blue decks I'm playing against that are throwing me the weird new curveballs; blue's gameplan just doesn't change per set in the way other colors do. For Adventure I actually looked up its debut for that post because I thought it might've been in Wilds, and found out that the closest thing I could call a 'new blue-centric keyword' was still six years old.

I am noticing that I think you're making a whole different argument, though. Like, I'm largely talking about new keywords; the new central gimmicks of a set that means that this crop of green cards has some distinctly different style from previous green cards. You're instead bringing up individual cards and combos that are powerful, even if they aren't powerful in especially new ways; I hate to tell you, 'mill as victory condition' isn't exactly new and different in blue.

Everyone else is answering what I was talking about, though. Flatluigi's right, blue probably shouldn't get a whole lot of, say, poison counter access given how much access they have to ways to shut down counterplay.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Mar 19, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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fadam posted:

• Some of the planes with legendary Villains in this set: Dominaria, Eldraine, Fiora, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, Kaldheim, Kamigawa, New Capenna, and Ravnica

So to get my head around this tease a bit: could Eldraine's villain just be Oko, who we already knew? Just trying to figure out if Mark's talking 'villains with origins from other planes but are more generally around', or 'villains specifically tied to these planes now getting to do something outside of it'.

Eldraine's my attention here either way, one of the fairytale folk rocking up to the wild west has to be fun. I immediately thought Ixalan's import was gonna be them trying to have their cake and eat it too with Thunder Junction being an empty plane (so no displaced natives) while still getting to do some of the native American stuff from classic westerns, but I don't know if any of Ixalan's villains really do that aesthetic; Ixalan's villains these days are more the pirates and the vampire conquistadors, right? So it's probably someone like Lannery Storm, or maybe one of the dinosaurs; maybe Etali's coming back.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 20, 2024

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
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Can't post for 16 hours!

plainswalker75 posted:

The Eldraine villain is probable Eriette, since she has a minor role in the story. Also Rakdos is there too and now he's best friends with Tiny-Bones

Eriette's an... odd pick, I'm not entirely sure how you fit her into this whole vibe. Shady medicine woman, maybe? I might be thinking too simply.

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Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010
Probation
Can't post for 16 hours!

flatluigi posted:

maro answered this a bit back iirc, apparently the lci and mkm stories were written at the same time and Amalia going with Kellan was a thing added by the writer for the former that wasn't communicated to the latter

I was initially excited because I thought that could mean she's the Ixalan villain, but on checking I realized she's not actually a villain at all, I just assumed she was because of... y'know, being a vampire partially in black whose card basically revolves around committing mass murder.

According to the MtG fandom wiki she's off studying in Ravnica during Thunder Junction, but they don't actually cite that, and I have no idea how much stock people generally put in the MtG wiki being right in that situation.

Cleretic fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Mar 20, 2024

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