[Article] Eternal Europe: Talking Design 2012

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

My very own take on a year in review article, covering MtG design for the last year plus.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article...sign-2012.html

Somewhat unusual presentation, let me know what you think!

[lochlan]

I can appreciate what you were trying to do with the psychographic profiles in the context of discussing design philosophy, but I don't think it worked well--I found the faux "roundtable" style distracting and hard to read.

[Barook]

I can appreciate what you were trying to do with the psychographic profiles in the context of discussing design philosophy, but I don't think it worked well--I found the faux "roundtable" style distracting and hard to read.

Agreed.

The actual content is buried in a wall of text. We already know that Omniscience and friends are cards with a horrible design, while cards like DRS and AD are pretty sweet.

I think that a review of what 2012 brought to the format and how those cards changed things would have been better.

Design-wise, 2012 was a disaster, despite the new decks that it spawned. Omniscience, Griselbrand and Miracles were all huge offenders. It isn't really enjoyable to play against S&T decks and while miracles made control playable again, it doesn't make it less of a shitty mechanic made out of library manipulation and asspulls.

[lebarion]

My very own take on a year in review article, covering MtG design for the last year plus.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article...sign-2012.html

Somewhat unusual presentation, let me know what you think!

Nice read. I found the style very interesting, and agree with the content.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I enjoyed both the style and the content - it was a very interesting way to present a lot of different perspectives on the game. I also agree with you on every point content-wise, and hope people in R&D read this article.

[lordofthepit]

I skimmed through a lot of the Johnny, Spike, and Timmy stuff, but you are 100% on the mark with some of the issues with current design.

[Finn]

Barook, I think that Miracles is a hugely successful mechanic for Legacy. The fact that it made control - and we are talking old-fashioned blue-white control here - playable again makes a pretty big difference. Ever since Nick what's-his-name was found to be a rampant cheater with 4-color Landstill, no control deck has ever lasted more than a few weeks. Yeah, Miracles can make a player upset at lucksacking, but if that is what it takes to makes control return to the format, I am all for it.

[Viridia]

The fact that it made control - and we are talking old-fashioned blue-white control here - playable again makes a pretty big difference.

I still take that personally >.> Considering that a friend of mine and myself have been going top8/top4 in local tournaments with Ubg Landstill for the past 2 years, i wouldn't say true control was un-playable, people just werent comfortable enough with playing die-hard control.

Sorry for the off-topic :)

[Barook]

Barook, I think that Miracles is a hugely successful mechanic for Legacy. The fact that it made control - and we are talking old-fashioned blue-white control here - playable again makes a pretty big difference. Ever since Nick what's-his-name was found to be a rampant cheater with 4-color Landstill, no control deck has ever lasted more than a few weeks. Yeah, Miracles can make a player upset at lucksacking, but if that is what it takes to makes control return to the format, I am all for it.

Successful =|= good design

By that standard, Affinity in Standard would have been the best mechanic ever, considering how it warped the metagame around it like a black hole of suck.

Also, Blade Control is a contender in the current metagame without massive lucksacking. Miracles are only playable because SDT is just plain stupid.

[Lemnear]

The cornerstones to plain dumb permaments were set with the Titans.

Any card that single-handed take over the game is a problem for magic. If a Primeval/Grave Titan hit's the field the damage is done. Same with Omniscience of Griselbrand ... it was only natural that the Splash damage effect of this Kind of power creep enters the lower mana regions. For the games sake it would have been smarter just to adjust the power/thoughness-to-manacost relation instead of attaching spell-like effects on the creatures which make any attempt to fair-trade (spot removal or creature Combat) a pure disadvantage. Personally I hate the evolution of creatures in the game: they now have better effects and manacosts than non-creature-spells AND come with a body. Imo it SHOULD be the other way round.

Miracles:

I feel Wizards tried to implement a "Comeback-mechanic" for the predictable endings of a game we all know. Something to turn the tide of a match. They try to achieve this with increasingly hilarious splash effects on cards in general but finished with this gimmick which only feed the trolls in their hate for SDT and Brainstorm. There is no miracle; just manipulating your Libraries that annoyed thousands of players already years before in form of Counterbalance. If they want to create such a Comeback-mechanic they better bound it to your life standing and/or handcards like:

This is not a Custom-card thread - Sorcery - BB

Target player sacrifices a creature.
Last Stand (Put a copy of this spell on the stack if you have 10 or less life. Put a copy of this spell on the stack if you have 5 or less life.)

[Maximus]

This is not a Custom-card thread - Sorcery - BB

That would require them to print more than one black-the-color card per year that doesn't suck.

Frankly I think Terminus has been much more oppressive than the other dumb bombs printed this year. At least Show might be banned sooner or later. Wizards has made it abundantly clear that they always want UW to be a playable deck, a 1 mana board nuke was exceedingly unnecessary.

[Barook]

At least Show might be banned sooner or later.

Banning SDT would to the same thing to Miracles. Just saying.

Not that SDT is currently ban-worthy or anything.

[Aggro_zombies]

I found the style annoying and wasn't able to finish the article. That said, this year can be summed up as follows: Avacyn Restored was a mistake in more or less every way and splash creep makes cards that are bad for Magic.

[FieryBalrog]

I like miracles as a mechanic, at least outside of Standard. It's not actually very luck-sack based in Legacy and leads to interesting decisions on both players ends. Cards like Terminus and Entreat are fair cards in a Legacy context, not degenerate effects. And it made classic control a real thing in Legacy, which is always welcome in my book.

Griselbrand & Omniscience are just god-awful. Same with upcoming Enter the Infinite. Dumb, one-note Timmy cards that are bad for the game.

Sounds a lot less fun than "combine pieces A and B, add buried treasure C, and you're at least half-way there," doesn't it? When everything cool in Magic can be done simply by making mana and casting a spell, it suddenly starts to feel cheap. There's a cost here, and it's one that cuts into the heart of Magic.

Brilliant.

Single cards that are powerful enough to just end the game from basically any position ruins this kind of experience. However well you fought, independent of how many traps you've set up and how far ahead you've gotten, your opponent can play one stupidly powerful card that ends the game in their favor.

The problem here isn't even that you lost. What irks is that nothing mattered—there was no meaningful struggle, no fighting for position, no intricate dance of the duelists. There wasn't even any particularly brilliant deckbuilding involved. They made mana, resolved one spell, and the game ended.

Bravo. Nail this shit to R&D's wall like Luther's 95 theses. Seriously, really well-written.

[Amon Amarth]

I didn't like the format of the article. The Timmy, Johnny, Spike thing was distracting. The content was fine and needs to be repeated often. Stop printing dumb cards. I really liked the Eldrazi and I'm willing to give them a pass because not only are they extremely cool, IMO, but the also opened up a lot of design space. The rest, Omniscience, ETI, etc, aren't as cool and just... suck. Boring. Overpowered. Meh. Miracles I'm a little unsure of. I've had fun casting Miracles in EDH and I like that they made Control decks good in Legacy but the idea of "herp derp i win cuz miraclez" is pretty bad. Like ripping a Bonfire for the win when it's your only possible out. That's really fucking feel bad.

[Lord Seth]

Not a fan of the style. Even ignoring the way the actual content ends up being buried in the text, the whole "present argument, then persuade the fictional characters of your point of view" all just comes across as making strawmen and knocking them down (which, honestly, is what I legitimately found some parts of the article to be). It's a presentation style I personally loathe.

I didn't like the format of the article. The Timmy, Johnny, Spike thing was distracting. The content was fine and needs to be repeated often. Stop printed dumb cards. I really liked the Eldrazi and I'm willing to give them a pass because not only are they extremely cool, IMO, but the also opened up a lot of design space. The rest, Omniscience, ETI, etc, aren't as cool and just... suck. Boring. Overpowered. Meh.

Omniscience costs 10 mana and Enter the Infinite costs 12. They also require a fair amount of colored mana, making them even trickier. I can't consider them to be overpowered at all. What's overpowered are the cards (or more accurately, card) that let you completely ignore the stuff in the upper right hand corner of it.

Not liking the cards is one thing, but I have trouble calling them overpowered.

[brattin]

I have a minor nitpick:

As loathe as I am to join that particular line of argument,

"To loathe" (rhymes with "clothe"--kind of a weird word but the best I could come up with on short notice) is to intensely dislike; "loath", as used in this context (approximately the same thing as "reluctant"), doesn't have an 'e' at the end, and rhymes with "both". I hear people say this wrong all the time, and it bugs me in real life as well.

I thought I liked the style of the article, but I think the style is probably the reason I didn't finish reading it. (Or maybe it's cause I got distracted thinking about "loath".) I agreed with the content.

Thanks for consistently writing good articles!

[Finn]

Single cards that are powerful enough to just end the game from basically any position ruins this kind of experience. However well you fought, independent of how many traps you've set up and how far ahead you've gotten, your opponent can play one stupidly powerful card that ends the game in their favor.

The problem here isn't even that you lost. What irks is that nothing mattered—there was no meaningful struggle, no fighting for position, no intricate dance of the duelists. There wasn't even any particularly brilliant deckbuilding involved. They made mana, resolved one spell, and the game ended.

Ahh, like Ad Nauseam. Ban combo. Right.
Note: There are ten decks in the DTB section right now. Two of them have Show and Tell in their 60.

**************

Also, Barook your position seems suspiciously like "I don't like getting beaten by deck 'x'" rather than "deck 'x' is too powerful for the format and warping it". You are saying that the mechanic is unfun, I think. And that is a decent argument. But every good deck in Legacy is gifted with stupid good cards that take over the game. These guys are complaining about Show and Tell for the same reason. But isn't that just the format we have been playing since 2004?

[Lemnear]

Finn, the difference between today and 2004 is that we have more blowouts off unfavorable positions than ever and the majority contains playing/cheating in a single card. It doesn't matter if that card is named Yawgmoth's Will, Tinker, Jace TMS, Stoneforge Mystic, Griselbrand, Omniscience, Enter the infinite, Ad Nauseam, Reanimate or else; we have the tendency that resolving a single spell ends the game because they all come as "the total package". There is no smart combination of cards; they are all (more or less) One-Card-combos whatsoever.

The difference lies between reanimating Phantom nishoba and Verdant Force or Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Griselbrand

[Maximus]

Ahh, like Ad Nauseam. Ban combo. Right.
Note: There are ten decks in the DTB section right now. Two of them have Show and Tell in their 60.

**************

Also, Barook your position seems suspiciously like "I don't like getting beaten by deck 'x'" rather than "deck 'x' is too powerful for the format and warping it". You are saying that the mechanic is unfun, I think. And that is a decent argument. But every good deck in Legacy is gifted with stupid good cards that take over the game. These guys are complaining about Show and Tell for the same reason. But isn't that just the format we have been playing since 2004?

The argument is half reasonable but also half straw-man. I think it's more of a matter of degree. Force of Will checks a subset of cards that we consider "unfair", while Terminus checks a subset of cards with the type "creature". To consider them equal is an incorrect approach to the comparison, as they do not have equal ramifications. Show and Tell (and its targets) punishes an opponent harshly for not playing blue, and Terminus punishes an opponent harshly for playing an aggressive strategy. Are they format warping? Well, that's another question entirely, but yet here we are 5 out of the top 5 decks playing blue, and 3 out of the top 5 decks playing Jace as their primary threat. At some point, "deck 'x' is too powerful" is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to make.