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Eclipse12 posted:You know, MtG lead designer Mark Rosewater writes a weekly column called Making Magic and it's a wonderful look into the process of game design. There's been a lot of issues with this in Master Duel specifically, since it's a best of one format, rather than best of three. There's a specific category of (mostly) trap cards called Floodgates.   It's a general catch-all term for cards that permanently stay on the field and restrict both players from doing certain things in game. The above combo is a particularly toxic one - the first one says that you can only control monsters of one type, the other says that you can only control one monster of each type. So if both are on the field at the same type, each player can only control one monster. There's plenty of strategies that can put one big hard to kill monster on the field, then sit behind a wall of various floodgates to stop opponents from playing the game. Add to that a quirk in the rules. There are various summoning mechanics that involve sacrificing one monster to bring out another. But with the way the rules work, you can't for example sacrifice a Zombie to summon a Dragon if Rivalry of Warlords is on the field. So that's another way in which floodgates can make it really hard to build up a board. The game has had some truly toxic floodgates that have since been banned. I believe Mystic Mine in particular has already had a post in this topic. There's other infamous ones, like Vanity's Emptiness. Floodgates aren't nearly as relevant in paper formats, because these are played best of three with a side deck. So if your opponent plays a lot of floodgates, you can bring in appropriate removal spells in game two and three. Since Master Duel doesn't have this option, they had a much larger impact in the game. Now, with the Master Duel format being two years old, it seems that Konami has finally come around to reining in pretty much every floodgate, usually limiting them to one copy per deck.
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Jan 20, 2024 19:10
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Skios posted:(Yugioh Maze of Memories set post) I was at a game store yesterday with a friend and I mentioned this post you made to her because we were looking at some YGO packs they had for sale. Neither of us plays the game any longer but we did play years many years ago, me when the game came out in the US, and her a few years later. She decided to pick up a pack for old times' sake. Turns out she opened the third most expensive (non-collector's rare) card in Maze of Memories by complete chance:  It's about $35 right now. That was just really funny to me coming off your post about how all these meta relevant cards are printed in such garbage quantities here.  But speaking of this card I am really having trouble understanding how it even works and I feel like I need someone to explain it to me.
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Jan 20, 2024 19:28
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FPzero posted:But speaking of this card I am really having trouble understanding how it even works and I feel like I need someone to explain it to me. The first effect is fairly straightforward, you activate it, pay half your life, and it's effect becomes the effect of a trap in your opponent's discard. The second effect I believe means that you can use it from the discard to get the effect of a different trap that's in your discard. So of you've already used, say, a trap hole to destroy a monster, and you need to destroy a monster your opponent is summoning, you can remove this card from the game to use your trap holes effect again.
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Jan 20, 2024 19:38
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An example of a combo in magic is something like quote:Exquisite Blood{4}{B} Paired with quote:Dina, Soul Steeper{B}{G} Once someone loses life, if these two are on the field together, the game is likely over, because a loss of life makes you gain life, so then it triggers Dina, who makes them lose life, which makes you gain life, etc. This is distinct from what you might call an engine. An example is quote:Obyra, Dreaming Duelist{U}{B} And any faerie cards. They synergize well, but there is no specific faerie that makes this card's effect more powerful than any other faerie. You could easily kill someone just by bouncing and recasting faeries, but that isn't a combo.
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Jan 20, 2024 19:48
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Skios posted:There's been a lot of issues with this in Master Duel specifically, since it's a best of one format, rather than best of three. There's a specific category of (mostly) trap cards called Floodgates. Its hard to know what the philosophy is because Konami hasn't actually explained their banlists in years. I think pure stun (where you just drop these cards in the field and bore you opponent to death) is something they don't want to entirely kill under the impression that it's a popular beginner playstyle, but it became a huge problem last format which is probably why they set just about every major floodgate to 1. When people actually play pure stun in higher level tournaments like what happened in MD, I think that was a major format issue. Also the fact that all three major formats (tcg/ocg/Master Duel) hit these cards simultaneously is a sign that this is a directive from up high, but it's hard to tell. One of the big differences between WOTC and Konami is that Konami do not communicate with the playerbase like, at all. I think they last explained a banlist in 2014, meaning that every banlist reaction is people trying to read the tea leaves and guess the rationale for a ban or unban.
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Jan 20, 2024 21:01
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Randalor posted:The first effect is fairly straightforward, you activate it, pay half your life, and it's effect becomes the effect of a trap in your opponent's discard. The second effect I believe means that you can use it from the discard to get the effect of a different trap that's in your discard. So of you've already used, say, a trap hole to destroy a monster, and you need to destroy a monster your opponent is summoning, you can remove this card from the game to use your trap holes effect again. That's what I thought it was trying to say but Yugioh's grammar makes it so much harder to understand. In Magic it would basically just say "this card becomes a copy of target card". I think the YGO "this effect becomes" tripped me up. Can definitely see why that's an expensive card though.
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Jan 20, 2024 21:40
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So here’s something I’m curious about with YGO, given how expensive it seems to be to field a competitive deck. Is there some kind of a bootleg scene like there is with MTG? MTG bootleg cards have been really high quality for some time now, especially as the quality of genuine MTG printing has gotten so inconsistent / cheap. There are a lot of people who use fake cards because it’s the only way that certain formats can be affordable (I think the average Modern meta deck hovers around $1,000 or so). Whereas it’s relatively easy to find a place where you can get a Ragavan for like three bucks a pop and save yourself almost $250 from getting the actual playset. I don’t know if people would use these fakes at high level events but there have got to be tons of them floating around any given FNM event. Also if this topic is verboten I’m happy to drop it and edit out the post.
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Jan 20, 2024 21:58
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There's plenty of proxying. The problem with Yu-Gi-Oh proxying is that basically every rarity besides common comes with some sort of shiny effect.
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Jan 20, 2024 22:26
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There's some proxying but you don't have the market for it like in MTG because there's no single relevant card as expensive as like, a duel land or something
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Jan 20, 2024 22:44
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i gotta say, I think trying to classify things as a "combo" or an "engine" is pretty fuckin stupid there are so many edge cases and there is no clear classification, and there really is no reason to be trying to define this in the first place
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Jan 20, 2024 23:57
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It can be more of a gradient than a spectrum and there are plenty of decks that can do some of both, but there's absolutely a difference worth mentioning between Storm and Cat Oven. It's also perfectly fine not to be into Magic enough to care about that, but the fact that you, personally don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't exist and nobody else should either.
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Jan 21, 2024 00:06
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Voyager I posted:It can be more of a gradient than a spectrum and there are plenty of decks that can do some of both, but there's absolutely a difference worth mentioning between Storm and Cat Oven. Is there, though? I'm serious. Like, Storm is a mechanic that lends its name to a whole wide variety of decks across older formats. Cat oven is a specific interaction that has been played in a couple decks in lower-power formats. There are obviously a hell of a lot of differences between them. I just don't really see how a combo/engine classification plays into that. Drawing some line between how an engine is NOT a combo because it does not INSTANTLY win the game is just meaningless. It tells you nothing. It does not tell you how the deck wins the game, it does not tell you what it is weak to, it does not tell you how it functions, it does not tell you how to stop it. What is the point?
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Jan 21, 2024 00:21
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Feels Villeneuve posted:One thing that did happen in response to this is that big boss monsters more often have an effect that triggers when it leaves the field because of an "opponent's card", versus an "opponent's card effect". The former triggers if it's removed for cost, the latter doesn't. (the former also includes battle, which means you can trigger it yourself by crashing the monster and destroying it by battle intentionally) I really appreciate these explanations, but also, this reminds me of nothing more than a bunch of 6-year-olds running around the playground talking about 'invincibility-shield-piercing lasers!' and 'super-invincible laser double-blocking shields!' etc.
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Jan 21, 2024 00:42
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Muscle Tracer posted:I really appreciate these explanations, but also, this reminds me of nothing more than a bunch of 6-year-olds running around the playground talking about 'invincibility-shield-piercing lasers!' and 'super-invincible laser double-blocking shields!' etc. I mean, in a way, it kind of is exactly that though, just stretched out over 20 years. You start off, you have monsters and cards to kill monsters. A few years later, you make a new Boss monster for an archetype but don't want it to die as soon as players play it, so you give it protection from destruction. You do that for a few years, but now the game is reaching a point where the game turns into "Whoever plays their boss monster first wins" so you introduce cards that get around it, but then it reaches the point where boss monsters are killed as soon as they're summoned, so then you introduce boss monsters that are immune to your opponent's cards... Basically, the problem of your main format being a Legacy format means you have MASSIVE loving power creep and have to start figuring out how to deal with the previous cards you made to deal with the previous cards you made to deal with the...
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Jan 21, 2024 00:55
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Phthisis posted:Is there, though? I'm serious. I mean lets use an actual MTG combo so people not familiar can follow along. Let's start with Squirrel Nest:  On it's own, this card is an engine. All it does is give you one squirrel a turn at the cost of effectively losing access to one mana. Now lets add a second card to establish the combo:  As long as Squirrel Nest is on a basic land, you can now generate an infinite number of squirrels, but at the end of the combo, all but one of them are tapped. Sure if you untap with them you've probably won the game, but this is where I'd argue the distinction between "engine" and "combo" matters. As long as the opponent has any way to stop you from untapping with those creatures, you haven't won yet. Which is why we need a third card to make this a true combo instead of just a massive value engine:  Now each of those infinite squirrels entering is inevitability, and this is the point it truly becomes a combo. Basically, the primary difference in Magic is "does it actually lead to an end state when you start comboing off." Sure, it probably seems like nitpicking, but like, half of the reason the Second Sunrise deck is banned is because it isn't a true combo and can possibly fail partway through if you sequence it wrong. poorlywrittennovel has a new favorite as of 02:41 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 02:39
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It’s worth noting that these aren’t terms that people just randomly decided to make up and define for fun. They came about organically because people wanted words to describe elements that came about as the game developed. So to a certain extent it’s correct to say that trying to apply super strict definitions and clear boundaries to these terms is a fool’s errand. However, that doesn’t mean they are silly or nonsensical terms. Really, when you get down to it, the same applies to all words. For any given definition of the word “chair” I could probably come up with an edge case where something fits the description despite not being a chair or vice versa. That doesn’t mean the word chair is meaningless.
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Jan 21, 2024 02:51
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poorlywrittennovel posted:Now each of those infinite squirrels entering is inevitability, and this is the point it truly becomes a combo. Basically, the primary difference in Magic is "does it actually lead to an end state when you start comboing off." Sure, it probably seems like nitpicking, but like, half of the reason the Second Sunrise deck is banned is because it isn't a true combo and can possibly fail partway through if you sequence it wrong. Is Sneak n Show not a combo deck? Does casting Show and Tell and putting Emrakul into play count as a combo? The combo consists of just casting a card and using it as intended. It wins by attacking with a creature. Emrakul is hard to beat, but it's hardly inevitable. I don't have any problems with people using the terms "combo" or "engine", because they're certainly useful, but trying to define their boundaries is what I take issue with. For what it's worth, at this point I've been playing mostly combo decks competitively for over 15 years now, across just about every format ever (I've even brewed and played combo deck pairs in sanctioned 2HG Standard events back when that was a thing), and I actually legitimately personally disagree with your definitions. You are free to draw your lines as precisely as you want, but that does not mean they reflect any consensus.
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Jan 21, 2024 03:26
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A combo is when two or more cards interact for some gestalt-like effect. Doesn't have to be infinite or OTK. An engine is when you can reproduce an effect multiple times in a single turn or, most commonly, over multiple turns.
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Jan 21, 2024 03:43
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I think there's a difference between a "combo" and an "infinite combo", but ultimately the terms are a bit nebulous and depend on what game you're even playing, and "comboing off" is just another self-defined term.
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Jan 21, 2024 03:45
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I call it a combo when it instantly kills, I call it a combo when cards work together, I call it an engine when it works in combos and I call the things that make my engine work some other poo poo or something engines make things and combos happen when the engines interact with the combos and Squirrels kill
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Jan 21, 2024 04:07
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Randalor posted:I mean, in a way, it kind of is exactly that though, just stretched out over 20 years. You start off, you have monsters and cards to kill monsters. A few years later, you make a new Boss monster for an archetype but don't want it to die as soon as players play it, so you give it protection from destruction. You do that for a few years, but now the game is reaching a point where the game turns into "Whoever plays their boss monster first wins" so you introduce cards that get around it, but then it reaches the point where boss monsters are killed as soon as they're summoned, so then you introduce boss monsters that are immune to your opponent's cards... This all makes sense. I guess it's funny specifically because it's effects getting even finer and narrower, rather than bigger and more bombastic? YGO certainly has that too, but it's very funny to me to be drawing a distinction between "opponent effects" and "opponent card effects" 20+ years into a card game.
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Jan 21, 2024 04:11
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Arkham Horror: The Living Card Game is a non-collectible, coöperative, deck-construction game based on Fantasy Flight Games's H.P. Lovecraft-inspired universe (mostly known from the old, bad classic Arkham Horror: The Board Game). One to four players take control of various unlikely protagonists who have been thrust into danger, as the world is threatened by incomprehensible horrors from beyond time and space. You fight cultists and tentacled horrors and try to find the clues you need to figure out how to stop them permanently over the course of ~8 connected scenarios in a campaign. It's very hard for a coöp game to have "toxic cards" but here's one that I was thinking about recently:  This is a card that is available to Guardian and Mystic characters (see the blue shield and purple all-seeing eye in the top right), and it's really loving good. It is easily the best weapon in the game. Unlike some of the guns that are more powerful per shot, it has no limited ammo. You can just swing and swing and swing this thing. And you're probably going to hit, because it adds your Willpower stat to your Strength while fighting, and for most characters that's pretty dang good already. But then it has the quality of sometimes doing 3 damage instead of 2, and has a knockback effect. It's just too good. Compare:  This is neutral, so it is available to more characters (everyone), and it only takes one hand to use, but other than that it is inferior in nearly every way for the same XP cost (the five dots in the top left). It also gives you a stat boost, but it's two instead of equal to willpower (which is dependent on the character; on average, three, unless you boost it somehow). It only does two extra damage once per game instead of one extra damage all the time. It doesn't have the enemy knockback. It occasionally will be able to draw some cards but that pales in comparison to the +1 or 2 extra to hit and fairly frequent extra damage that you get from Cylcopean Hammer. You can also, alternately, invest in firearms or spells, but those simply aren't as reliable as an infinite-use melee weapon; they require more investment to be good. And why invest in stacking extra ammo on your Lightning Gun:  when Cyclopean Hammer is right there? Cyclopean Hammer did receive a nerf; Arkham Horror has an optional set of rules called the "taboo list" where certain cards are buffed or nerfed. Cylcopean Hammer has been nerfed such that the extra damage and extra knockback from succeeding by 3 can only happen once per turn. But it's still the best weapon in the game, able to outpace almost any other setup in terms of damage, with the exception of things like the aforementioned Lightning Gun which will be out of ammo after a single turn's worth of blasting. It's "toxic" because every time I build a fighting-focused deck, especially a Guardian deck, I think "okay, but is all this bullshit that I'm doing better than just playing Cyclopean Hammer?" And the answer is always "no." I hate that feeling. I don't want to build the same deck over and over again.
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Jan 21, 2024 09:16
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FPzero posted:That's what I thought it was trying to say but Yugioh's grammar makes it so much harder to understand. In Magic it would basically just say "this card becomes a copy of target card". I think the YGO "this effect becomes" tripped me up. Oh thats because of Hard Once Per Turn clauses: "you can only use the effect of [name] once per turn" So if you used [name] and it had the clause, and then went to use transaction rollback to copy it, if TR copied the name it would fizzle. It lets you double dip on cards intended to be once per turn. This wording also dodges activation costs and conditions, since it solely copies the effect. (So yes it means you cant copy a TR with TR and go into a fractal) Rigged Death Trap has a new favorite as of 09:41 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 09:37
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speaking of ways to get around effect protection, there's also "your opponent must do x", which I think MTG also has a version of? 
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Jan 21, 2024 18:11
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Most protection effects in Magic work by prohibiting targeting. So when WotC wants to let you get around that, most often the effect is global so it hits everything/everyone and targets none of them. Wrath of God is probably the best known classic example of that. But every once in a while an effect tells you to choose something/someone that is affected by it, which is not targeting because it doesn’t use the word target. (“Choose target X” also exists though, gotta keep you on your toes.)
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Jan 21, 2024 18:48
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Feels Villeneuve posted:speaking of ways to get around effect protection, there's also "your opponent must do x", which I think MTG also has a version of? Yes, a common form of removal in Magic is making your opponent sacrifice something, which gets around most forms of protection. The downside to this is that your opponent gets to pick, so you will get their least important target. They periodically play around with stronger versions of the effect that stipulate your opponent must sacrifice their most expensive or largest creature.
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Jan 21, 2024 19:16
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Or having an opponent "lose life" instead of "taking damage."
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Jan 21, 2024 19:18
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Cards like this one also exist: They're called "Edicts" because many of the ones in Black have the name format of "[name] Edict", though edict effects do exist on cards other than these. Basically, forcing an opponent to sacrifice something through the card's effect gets around targeting or other forms of protection like Ward, Hexproof, or even Indestructible. I think it even works on Shadow, but Shadow is such an old keyword they don't use anymore I've never really seen it played.
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Jan 21, 2024 19:19
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I know the conversations moved on but what’s the story behind this art? TSA agents flagging skeleton tourists? There Can Be Only One… Checked Bag
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Jan 21, 2024 20:22
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it's part of a set of cards with funny art featuring King of the Skull Servants the best one clearly being this  
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Jan 21, 2024 20:27
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It’s showing that the TSA harasses Wight people
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Jan 21, 2024 20:33
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there's actually a loose storyline through multiple cards about that dog, i hope we get more on him soon     
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Jan 21, 2024 20:37
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FPzero posted:Cards like this one also exist: Shadow has nothing to do with being targeted, just that creatures with Shadow can only block or be blocked by creatures with Shadow. It hasn't been seen in standard-legal sets in over a decade, but it comes up in supplementary sets on occasion. Also, here is a tutorial on how Edicts work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swYQrDUfV0U
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Jan 21, 2024 20:37
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Feels Villeneuve posted:there's actually a loose storyline through multiple cards about that dog, i hope we get more on him soon Now this is quality
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Jan 21, 2024 20:38
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ohhyeah posted:I know the conversations moved on but what’s the story behind this art? TSA agents flagging skeleton tourists? There Can Be Only One… Checked Bag King of the Skull Servents, The Lady in Wight, Wightprince and Skull Dog Marron are the 4 skeletons in the art. King, Lady and Prince are all zombie-type, and Wightprince was allowed through, so they're stopping the other two zombies (Marron is a beast, so he's also allowed through). They also have a daughter, but she's not in the card art. There's a whole story in the cards about how the skull servents rebelled against their overlord, the leader of them became their new king (possibly by killing all the other Skull Servants), and he got a family and found a good doggo, and proceed to have a happy life.
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Jan 21, 2024 20:44
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but apparently he ended up having an extremely lovely vacation
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Jan 21, 2024 20:45
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I said he had a happy life, not a perfect life. Sometimes you just have a lovely vacation, that they can look back on years down the line and laugh at.
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Jan 21, 2024 20:54
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also one of my favorite card art jokes is when they reference the ban list on card art that's part of a funny storyline series about Sangan getting banned (which is why he's on the bus to the "Forbidden Realms"), he's on the bus with Tribe Infecting Virus, Cyber-Stein, Magical Scientist, Yata-Garasu, and you can barely see Rescue Cat there too  this one is about Thousand-Eyes Restrict coming off the banlist (with Shock Master, Performage Plushfire, Elder Entity Norden and Goyo Guardian still banned at the time of the card release) Feels Villeneuve has a new favorite as of 20:57 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 20:55
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Yeah, they love doing little “arcs” of famous monsters getting screwed over, like poor Sangan taking the bus ride from hell      
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Jan 21, 2024 20:57
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Sangan actually is a rare case of them errata-ing the card to release it from the banlist they actually had to errata him *twice* to get him unbanned, because its ability to search low-ATK monsters is one of those things that became stronger and stronger as time went on originally it did its effect when sent to the GY in any way, including being discarded and milled, which was completely busted - then they changed it so it only activated when sent from the *field* to the GY, and that still became too strong as a combo enabler, especially as it wasn't a once-per-turn and could conceivably be looped finally they added the restriction that the card you add from Sangan can't be activated that turn, and nobody really plays it outside of extremely niche scenarios anymore. typically they usually try to "fix" banned cards by releasing retrains - erratas are only done for really iconic cards (or Imperial Order for some loving reason) Feels Villeneuve has a new favorite as of 21:12 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 21:03
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