Magic The Gathering

[DOUBLE_WHEEL]

You guys are putting infinitely more thought into the commander decks than wotc ever has or will. You need to look at them less like decks and more like content drops for the commander format. It's just to add new cards to the format and provide something consistent for people to buy.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

You need to look at them less like decks and more like content drops for the commander format.

2011 was quite some time ago. Those decks were bizarre hodge-podges that barely kept to a theme, and the 2013 follow-up wasn't much better.
By 2017, they had started making some focused decks that played well out of the box, with some stumbles.

In 2020, they finally released a suite where every single deck was on-theme, focused, and playable out of the box, and that's been the case since. I mean, look at the Baldur's Gate lists and tell me those aren't phenomenally focused decks that play great without additions. It's important to know that the RG Baldur's Gate deck will play great out of the box for a new player, but the Sauron LOTR one will play like confused garbage.

 

[PonderosaPete]

2011 was quite some time ago. Those decks were bizarre hodge-podges that barely kept to a theme, and the 2013 follow-up wasn't much better.
By 2017, they had started making some focused decks that played well out of the box, with some stumbles.

I still like Zedruu to this day, but fuck, between the cost, activation, and the random jank you need to play, she's still unplayable 12 years later. Thankfully Blim exists.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I still like Zedruu to this day, but fuck, between the cost, activation, and the random jank you need to play, she's still unplayable 12 years later. Thankfully Blim exists.

No, no, don't play Zedruu like that. The Zedruu activation ability is very, very niche.

Use cards like Sudden Substititon or Legerdemain to swap your ETB-effect creatures with their good-creatures (or enchantments, or artifacts, or etc).
Admittedly trying to fiddle around with Bazaar Trader, Donate, or shit like Delusions of Grandeur is a one-way ticket to pain-train most of the time.

 

[macrodegenerate]

After playing in todays' prerelease, it has become apparent that WOTCs version of balancing is simply adding activate only as a sorcery to an effect. This is not fun and removes the primarily defensive nature of magic. The ability to react to other players is hindered without instant speed access to abilities and that's strictly in opposition to the defensive nature of magic. This is the most frustrating with discovery. A mechanic which offers an immense amount of potential in being the perfect balance between player skill and luck.

I thus offer an alternative play format which I would like your feedback on. It's called "Heart of the Cards Limited". It is identical to how limited in this format is played except for the following.

1.The basic lands in each pack are swapped with their corresponding discover cave.
2.Each player enters the game with an emblem saying "Any ability which would cause a player to discover, may be activated at any time."

what do you guys think?

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

After playing in todays' prerelease

Shit format. I played last night, originally wanted to play again today because in-concept I like slower, trinket-y sets. Maybe in the draft it'll be good, but fuck me was the sealed dogshit. Whoever gets the tempo lead... wins, unless someone draws their bomb rare. The removal is generally fairly clunky and awkward, so if you can establish early board presence, it's hard to effectively and efficiently reclaim the tempo advantage.

But when someone drops one of the God cards, it becomes apparently clear how fucking terrible of an idea it was to mix a medium-to-low removal set with a huge suite of answer-or-lose rares. The gods are especially egregious, but well beyond them there's so many cards that require you to have an immediate answer or else immediately lose, that it's absurd. Abrade at common means that most of the controlling strategies, which bank around putting all their hopes and dreams into very expensive craft-related artifacts... have an uphill battle against midrange "shit your hand out, constant free advantage" decks.

 

[A skinny fat man]

So the Imperium deck was, loosely, an esper go-wide deck. The whole focus was on making a lot of dudes and swinging in. Squad as a mechanic gets introduced here, which fits into that go-wide theme. The two commanders, Greyfax and Calgar, work with going wide. Greyfax's investigate ability is a little odd, but the 1/0 vigilance aura is genuinely crazy good.

Belisarius has a slight artifact theme, but it works with the deck because you're makin' dudes and cashing in on 'em. Severina introduces some aristocrats elements, but wants you to go wide for the first ability. Lots of riffs on that go-wide theme, different ways to approach it. Silly cards that are honestly not that good but which are hilarious to build around, like a counterspell that also hits abilities and might just blast someone for 30 damage.

But then there's a bunch of shit that doesn't really fit. There's a lifegain payoff reanimator card. There's miracle cards without a way to stack the top of the deck (though one does at least go wide). There's a reanimate life-gain card that has more colors than the life-gain payoff commander choice. There's a guy that cares about manipulating the top of your deck to have instants and sorceries, both things this deck doesn't focus on. These are weird side-tangents that don't make the deck unplayable, but they're weird inclusions.

But then there's The Flesh is Weak. This card pumps your team... when it comes down. And then? Then it permanently debuffs your deck.
There are six cards in the deck that make 1/1 tokens. These tokens immediately die when The Flesh is Weak is on the field. It's a truly idiotic inclusion.

I think the Flesh is Weak is awesome flavor TBF. Although, that's probably the biggest weakness of any of these UB commander deck sets. There's only so many card slots in a commander deck, and representing all of the ideas you want to in a single deck is going to lead to that deck being unfocused and at times contradictory especially for a group of disparate factions like the Imperium.

 

[Flexo]

So this weekend we had a fun old time trying out more Dr Who. Can confirm, classic doctors is a pretty basic, easy deck to pilot with not much in the way of complications. Definitely recommend for newbies.

I also played it 3 times with 3 different commander spreads. 2nd + Leela is... def the weakest mode. I am thinking about a group hug deck around those two though. 3rd + Sarah Jane is solid good fun.

6th + Romana II (or as I'll call it now, 6/2 to make the shipper twitch) is every bit the abuse train you think it would be. It became even worse when I got 5th out early AND an opponent was playing a copy/abuse deck so I was able to use Romana to copy my stuff, then have her untap to start copying opponents' stuff too. And again this was a pre-con casual. I don't even want to think about the war crimes you could get up to with a dedicated 6/2 deck. (for one you'd be on color for Adrix & Nev - Cast with 6 on the field, you now have 2. Have Romana now make a copy of the non-legendary one and you now have 6 total. Every token you create now gets 16 copies!)

Bessie is crazy and pretty much a must include for any aggro deck that wants to win on commander damage.

So yeah, newbies to magic I def recommend the villain or classic doctor decks. For the experienced players who want to do something new, the 2 modern doctor decks.

 

[Logistical Nightmare]

how long do we think it will be until Geological Appraiser is BTFO'd from pioneer? I for one welcome combo winter, if only because I'd 100% play it and get to say "WOTC knows what they're doing" with a straight face for the first time in years.

Link to deck for those uninitiated

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

how long do we think it will be until Geological Appraiser is BTFO'd from pioneer?

I'd care more if both iterations of the deck didn't get blown out by shock or counterspells or removal.

I mean, yes, it's functionally one-card Splinter Twin, but there are so many different ways to deal with it that I find it a little hard to really take issue with it. Thalia dunks on it, shock dunks on it, counterspell dunks on it, Ysharn dunks on the Geological Appraiser side, Lavinia 2 dunks on it, 3feri dunks on it, Drannith Magistrate dunks on it, etc. I personally just want twin unbanned moreso.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

how long do we think it will be until Geological Appraiser is BTFO'd from pioneer? I for one welcome combo winter, if only because I'd 100% play it and get to say "WOTC knows what they're doing" with a straight face for the first time in years.

Link to deck for those uninitiated

Never, free spells are good for every format they sell packs.

I actually don't think it's a problem for pioneer, it's just a 3 turn kill in a format where the other best combo deck in the format doesn't ACTUALLY kill you until turn 4.

I'd care more if both iterations of the deck didn't get blown out by shock or counterspells or removal.

I mean, yes, it's functionally one-card Splinter Twin, but there are so many different ways to deal with it that I find it a little hard to really take issue with it. Thalia dunks on it, shock dunks on it, counterspell dunks on it, Ysharn dunks on the Geological Appraiser side, Lavinia 2 dunks on it, 3feri dunks on it, Drannith Magistrate dunks on it, etc. I personally just want twin unbanned moreso.

3feri is banned in pioneer, the rest are fair

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

how long do we think it will be until Geological Appraiser is BTFO'd from pioneer? I for one welcome combo winter, if only because I'd 100% play it and get to say "WOTC knows what they're doing" with a straight face for the first time in years.

Link to deck for those uninitiated

It will probably need yeeted in some fashion if we ever get some cheaty spells in Pioneer that will let you play the deck while cheating and having cheap interaction (See Cascade in Modern that can use Bonecruser Giant and Fire/Ice as interaction)

 

[Oddjob OTP]

It will probably need yeeted in some fashion if we ever get some cheaty spells in Pioneer that will let you play the deck while cheating and having cheap interaction (See Cascade in Modern that can use Bonecruser Giant and Fire/Ice as interaction)

The "best list" is in flux but most of them have Leyline Binding and some of the shitty split spells in pioneer. Because the deck discovers 3 and 5 the good interaction adventurers all are wiffs for the combo.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

The "best list" is in flux but most of them have Leyline Binding and some of the shitty split spells in pioneer. Because the deck discovers 3 and 5 the good interaction adventurers all are wiffs for the combo.

Binding makes sense, but is less powerful without Fetches.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Thread's kind of dead, but WotC confirmed in a stream that they are actually for real doing bannings for Modern and Pioneer and unbannings for pioneer in the announcement Monday. I personally pray that they ban Karn in pioneer because fuck him, but if they banned Nykthos and Black Devotion had to die for the sins of Green that would be acceptable collateral damage. Probably will just ban Geological Appraiser and Elephant Man because it's unreasonable to be forced to run interaction in non-azorious control or rakdos mid decks I guess.

Oh yeah, and long form stinkpiece on all the ways Arena is known or suspected to be rigged

 

[PonderosaPete]

Computers have always been bad at randomization. I haven't played a digital card that can get by without cheating.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Computers have always been bad at randomization. I haven't played a digital card that can get by without cheating.

Computers are bad at cryptography RNG, shuffling a 250 card max deck is pretty solid territory for a computer. If you REALLY care about RNG because you're running a casino or something you can always use methods like reading static in the air to get your numbers. His shuffler truther argument is several things.

1) they have used a known shitty algorithm to do the shuffler. There are better algorithms to do shuffles that they just didn't use
2) they have done terrible implementations using the algorithm in the past where it shit the bed in the first hand but then was fine in mulligan
3) there are other algorithms determining your shuffle at work, the best known of which is the Bo1 hand smoother, but you're free to speculate there are more. I agree with him that it's probably net positive that results in less non-games but the specifics lead to/have lead to degenerate decks in the past like 13 land blitz decks (or the 14 land cycling decks, but that's also a cycling thing). It's also not a little of the reason that aggro decks do so well in Bo1 overall.

 

[Logistical Nightmare]

I really would love it if enough people realized arena is shit and started going to LGSs, if only because I actually like some of the weird off meta decks that would be brewed because of it. I did the midweek magic arena event and built a caves deck, and it preformed really consistently, but I would never take it to any of the actual standard events or even casual leagues because the Meta is still garbage. I played the mst standard I ever did during energy fever (and was a marvel player to boot), and I was more then happy to admit that the bans were a very good call. The fact that WOTC refuses to use the ban hammer at all makes me wonder if it’s gross incompetence or if they really want to still try to move standard sets that have been out of print for a year…

 

[Flexo]

I always love it when MaRo finally catches up to where everyone started.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/odds-and-ends-2023-part-2

Q: Someone else asked this, but I wish to second it. The Aftermath set was a great concept. But pricing made it not worth the expense. Will you consider these types of sets in the future but tweaked for better results? I really loved the idea of Aftermath, just not the execution.

We do market research on all our sets. We often ask players to rank a set on a scale, and then we look at the top-two-box score, meaning how many people rated this with one of the top two ratings. It's a common metric used in data research. March of the Machine: The Aftermath has the lowest top-two-box score for a randomized booster product we've ever had. Ever! In the history of us tracking this metric, which is something like 25 years. And not even by a little. By a lot. So, I'm not super optimistic about its future. That said, we've made mistakes in the past which we were able to later redo with much better success. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is a classic example, but take note that it took many years to happen.

 

[A skinny fat man]

I always love it when MaRo finally catches up to where everyone started.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/odds-and-ends-2023-part-2

Q: Someone else asked this, but I wish to second it. The Aftermath set was a great concept. But pricing made it not worth the expense. Will you consider these types of sets in the future but tweaked for better results? I really loved the idea of Aftermath, just not the execution.

We do market research on all our sets. We often ask players to rank a set on a scale, and then we look at the top-two-box score, meaning how many people rated this with one of the top two ratings. It's a common metric used in data research. March of the Machine: The Aftermath has the lowest top-two-box score for a randomized booster product we've ever had. Ever! In the history of us tracking this metric, which is something like 25 years. And not even by a little. By a lot. So, I'm not super optimistic about its future. That said, we've made mistakes in the past which we were able to later redo with much better success. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is a classic example, but take note that it took many years to happen.

I think there's potentially merit in an undraftable set that just removes all the commons. But, it has to be something that has a target audience in mind. Who gets excited about the cards in MAT?

Standard players? No, almost all of the cards are unplayable in standard.
Lore nerds? There's almost no interesting lore revelations in MAT.
Commander players? Not as a group. Another couple dozen mediocre Legendary creatures isn't gonna move the needle.
Limited guys? Ha no.

I think there's 3 ways to do a set like that and have it be successful.
1) Standard Horizons-ish. Obviously hoping for it to not break Standard, but an injection of new cards specifically designed to bolster weaker archetypes or hate on strong ones could be good.
2) Super Lore extravaganza. Dive deep into the lore and go UB style "the card fits the event" on things that MOM didn't have time to explore in depth.
3) Standard all-stars. 50-100 of the best cards in Standard to bring the price of the format down some.

Of course, Wizards did none of these things.