[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/25412_Eternal-Europe-ndash-Talking-Design-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/25412_Eternal-Europe-ndash-Talking-Design-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 :wu::wu: 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.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Thanks for the feedback everybody, especially for also taking the time to address the form as well as the content. It's important for me to see what works and what doesn't. I won't try to defend the style, as it's either readable or not, and remember that for a lot of people this is more disturbing than helpful. Good to know.

As to the content, some responses:

Terminus being oppressive: Oppressive isn't something I'd apply to that card. It's played in a single deck, a UW hard control deck that crushes midrange aggro. That type of control deck has always done that, the difference being that that kind of deck hasn't really been playable for quite some time and people have forgotten that a viable Wrath of God makes the control matchup a nightmare for midrange-decks without any card advantage. In time we'll see UW wax and wane with the tides of the meta and it's prey rising and falling accordingly.

Lemnear: Agreed on the titans, but those were a little too old to fit into the article. As for your suggested card, I was thinking about some similar stuff while writing the article. Fateful Hour - which is essentially a less flexible version of what you suggested - feels like a missed opportunity as far as balanced comeback-mechanics are concerned.
As to your second post, there is a huge difference between Will-style broken cards and Tinker-style broken cards: Will-esque cards require you to dance for position and to set up your plays and once you've successfully done that (because your opponent didn't interact with you as much as they needed to) the game ends. Tinker-like effects on the other hand get cast and just win when they're cast, independent of what has been going on beforehand. That's why I never had a problem with Will in Vintage but despise Tinker-lossus ever since Darksteel made it truly dumb.

Amon Amarth: I don't have a problem with the Eldrazi in general but Emrakul is terrible design imo (even though it has great flavor). Cast it, you're dead on the spot just isn't something the game needs.
As for the whole S&T discussion, remember this was about design. S&T is the reason these expensive uber-bombs mess up Legacy to a certain extent (because it is what makes them easy to get down) but if a lot of decks got to regularly cast these cards, it'd be just as bad. The problem I have with them isn't just that they are playable (which leads to them actually having an impact on the format) but them existing in the first place - they just make for terrible gameplay whenever they're involved, no matter which way they get down. It isn't that they're overpowered in the sense that they break the game by existing - it's that they're overly dumb whenever they get down.

@brattin: Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't realize the second version even existed. Always happy to learn something new about the English language.

@Finn: Evidently, we agree about Miracles. As for this

Ahh, like Ad Nauseam. Ban combo. Right.

I guess that's one way to interpret what I wrote, though that isn't the way it was intended. Maybe there is some bias involved - after all I'm a big fan of playing storm :p - but most combo doesn't feel the same way as GriselB and Emmi decks.
1) Ad Nauseam is actually rather conditional, between life total, variance, deck-construction requirements and the resources involved in casting it. It's a brilliant threat early in the game but usually a rather terrible comeback-card. I won't deny it has some of the flaws of the one-spell-I-win cards, but they feel more mitigated to me especially because something like "Bolt you, double Bolt you" or "Turn 1 Nacatl, turn 2 double Goblin Guide" already weakens it significantly.
2) Storm decks in general have matchups that feel as blow-outy as those involving Griselbrand and Emrakul, no question. If Goblins and Elves were the whole format, Storm would cause exactly the same problems. The different Storm decks make up for the dumb games by being highly complex and entertaining dances against most decks that have interactive capabilities, though. For one thing, because they have to do so many different things to go off and involve a number of different spells they need to have available during the combo-turn, there are a lot of different places to attack them and choosing the right ones makes a huge difference. That's the opposite of "tap my lands, cast spell X, you're dead".
In addition, because their game plans are a lot more flexible in the sense that they force the pilot to adapt to what the opponent is doing, they act much less linear than something like Sneak and Show. Sure, they kill their opponent in basically the same way every game, but what happens before that point is hugely different from matchup to matchup and game to game.
At least that's my impression. Again, maybe it's just my bias talking, but I remember basically no game where playing against the "cheat a big spell" decks was exciting, they feel too binary for that. On the other hand, I remember a ton of tense and complex games against various engine-combo archetypes (including Dredge once graveyard interaction below Leyline-levels is involved). Granted, I usually either play combo myself or I'm on some kind of blue control deck, which skews my judgement because I always have the tools to force interaction.

[Finn]

Actually Karsten, I was addressing a few posts that had quoted and discussed those words. I think you have it correct. My Ad Nauseam example is also not that strong for the reasons you point out. The strongest I Win cards beside Show and Tell are no where near as powerful. Maybe Jace. When Gris got spoiled I was probably the first person to compare it to Hulk Flash. But after facing the deck many times since then I know how to beat it - with white DnT no less. So I balk at people complaining that it is too good. It just isn't. It wins when it does in a way that may be distasteful to some. But you know it's coming just as surely as a Tarmo or Tendrils. Same thing. Different wrapping paper.

Btw, I also found myself trying to get past the stylized conversation for your facts and opinions hidden inside.

[Lord Seth]

As for the whole S&T discussion, remember this was about design. S&T is the reason these expensive uber-bombs mess up Legacy to a certain extent (because it is what makes them easy to get down) but if a lot of decks got to regularly cast these cards, it'd be just as bad.Okay then. How will "a lot" of decks be able to regularly cast cards like Omniscience or Enter the Infinite? The only deck I can see that can do that is High Tide, which honestly has better options than either. You're prefacing that statement with an astoundingly big "if."

If it wasn't for Show and Tell, Omniscience would be a card suitable solely for goofy casual decks and subpar High Tide builds (I'll wait until Enter the Infinite is out to make any definite statements but it's hard to see how it'd be any different). Omniscience probably would see only slightly more play than Time Stretch and would be considered on about the same power level (i.e. "casting this card would be really awesome but it costs so much mana it's really not worth it") and I wonder if Legacy players would even care about it at all.

[Aggro_zombies]

Okay then. How will "a lot" of decks be able to regularly cast cards like Omniscience or Enter the Infinite? The only deck I can see that can do that is High Tide, which honestly has better options than either. You're prefacing that statement with an astoundingly big "if."
It was a hypothetical. His point was that "Draw literally your entire deck" and "Cast all your spells for free, no strings attached" are not effects that are good for the game at just about any price; if they were cheap enough to realistically ramp to in this format, they would still be shitty effects to have in the game. That SnT is basically the only way to get Omniscience doesn't excuse Omniscience being a card in the game of Magic.

[Amon Amarth]

It was a hypothetical. His point was that "Draw literally your entire deck" and "Cast all your spells for free, no strings attached" are not effects that are good for the game at just about any price; if they were cheap enough to realistically ramp to in this format, they would still be shitty effects to have in the game. That SnT is basically the only way to get Omniscience doesn't excuse Omniscience being a card in the game of Magic.

I don't know about anyone else but I play a lot of formats. Casual and Constructed. Often, I'll have a very schizophrenic view of whether something is "good" or "bad". I like the idea of drawing my deck or attacking with enormous fatties and I like the cards in a vacuum. I just think the execution is flawed. I can hate and love the same card for the exact same reason.

It wasn't always like this, look at Door to Nothingness. It wins you the game if you activate it. But it also requires a lot of work to open up oblivion. So it feels cool. Battle of Wits is the same. Ditto Biorhythm. All cool, huge sweet, flavorful spells that make you do something other than tap mana to win. Why can't we swing the pendulum closer back to that?

[FieryBalrog]

I don't know about anyone else but I play a lot of formats. Casual and Constructed. Often, I'll have a very schizophrenic view of whether something is "good" or "bad". I like the idea of drawing my deck or attacking with enormous fatties and I like the cards in a vacuum. I just think the execution is flawed. I can hate and love the same card for the exact same reason.

I'm especially annoyed by these cards because they do directly matter in EDH, which is the format I like to play almost all the time now. What's worse, they also get past the self-regulating nature of EDH, unlike say Ad Nauseam or Hermit Druid combo; because the format is "supposed" to be about "big dumb bombs", in theory; though this theory was made at a time when "big dumb bombs" were significantly less "dumb". You can avoid those super Spike decks in EDH because very few people want to play them and they require the whole deck built in a certain way. On the other hand, you're often going to run into casual guy with a Consecrated Sphinx in his deck, or Jin-Gitaxias, in a deck full of mostly unobjectionable cards, and yet that one card will take over the entire game when it's cast.

Omniscience is a terribly boring card in EDH, too, where you do realistically get to hard-cast it. The card is bad not because it's overpowered; the card is bad because it's stupid and leads to stupid games. Just like Enter the Infinite will. I despise cards like that. When I get to draw my deck in Ghave, it's because I have a 3 card engine + skullclamp or + fecundity or something like that, which is an engine with a lot of moving parts. Even Mind Over Matter + Arcanis is at least 2 cards, and MoM is pretty dumb itself. When you get to the same thing for no effort beyond getting 12 mana, the game becomes worse.

I can't believe cards like this make it through R&D because they should really know better. At least they used to.


It wasn't always like this, look at Door to Nothingness. It wins you the game if you activate it. But it also requires a lot of work to open up oblivion. So it feels cool. Battle of Wits is the same. Ditto Biorhythm. All cool, huge sweet, flavorful spells that make you do something other than tap mana to win. Why can't we swing the pendulum closer back to that?

Exactly. I think that's what a lot of people want, and I don't see any valid reason why we need Emrakul, Jin-Gitaxias, Consecrated Sphinx, Enter the Infinite or other idiotic cards instead. I would be thrilled if all of them were deleted from the game.

[Aggro_zombies]

Exactly. I think that's what a lot of people want, and I don't see any valid reason why we need Emrakul, Jin-Gitaxias, Consecrated Sphinx, Enter the Infinite or other idiotic cards instead. I would be thrilled if all of them were deleted from the game.
It's an issue of splash creep. Mythics carry a disproportionate amount of weight in terms of getting hype for a set and being desirable, chase cards once the set starts selling, so the pressure is high to up the "wow!" factor. The problem is that you can't drop the wow factor: look at how people are responding to Hellkite Tyrant or the new Orzhov Angel. The cards are still ridiculously powerful by, say, the first Ravnica block's standards; one is a 6/5 flying for six with a built-in way to auto-win while the other one is a large creature with built-in recursion. But we're so inured to stuff like that on the mythic level that people are complaining about the dragon being boring and the Angel being too finnicky.

[Ellomdian]

But we're so inured to stuff like that on the mythic level that people are complaining about the dragon being boring and the Angel being too finnicky.

What we seem to forget is that a majority of the time, the big, splashy cards are virtually unplayed and useless, and the boring, finicky cards end up being the gems of the set. Magic players like to complain about everything...


If WotC put $50 bills in the packs, players would complain about how they were folded.

Initial impressions from brand new, incomplete spoilers are LEGENDARILY bad. While I agree that I don't like the impact for the overall health of the game when they print truly dumb spells, I do feel that the designers are working within an established envelope. Realistically, I feel like they are starting to butt up against the constraints of the Game as a whole, and that there are a few who just know how to push the envelope in power, instead of interesting design.

[LurkingMatt]

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

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/25412_Eternal-Europe-ndash-Talking-Design-2012.html

Somewhat unusual presentation, let me know what you think!

First of all, this article was well thought out and you tried to show why you came to various conclusions.

Did I like it narrative, quasi discussional style?
Hard to say.
I usually enjoy your articles since they give me new perspective, new ideas or simply point
out facts. Although I resent you for calling me and my pet deck Reanimator names. (You are actually right,
still I don't like it!) You had your facts researched and presented them in an unusual way.

The style itself shows how much you - as a writer - have matured.

Would I like to see more of your "mind discussion"?
I liked it in your presentation of Cabal ANT, I am unsure in this specific case.

Still a good read.

Well see in next years "Player Profiles" I guess!

Regards,
Matt

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

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

Bingo, this is one of the biggest mistakes R&D has been making as of late; their insistence on pushing "value" creatures (usually those with Comes Into Play effects). And it's tangential to the only part of the EE article I disagreed with (otherwise was excellent, good job brother); the mention of Thragtusk as a good example of creature design. He is godawful design for creatures. Not only do you get an efficient body, but you get an effect that puts you ahead of the opponent in the card advantage game in most situations. The only ways they have to answer it upon resolution are creatures that can kill it and survive in creature combat (hard now that plenty of these dudes have good P/T) or a counterspell. So these value creatures, pushed in sufficient numbers, give rise to stale formats of midrange goodstuff versus aggro/combo decks tuned to defeat the other player before they can start chaining value dudes. Maybe you'll find a few rogue strategies or some Blue tempo. Sounds a lot like Standard lately, and to a lesser extent, Modern.

What was really jarring in the article was that Thragtusk was put side-by-side with Knight of the Reliquary as a well designed creature. Knight is clearly a model for creature design, while the other shouldn't be. Players want creatures like Knight to stick around. Creatures like Knight gain value from attacking/blocking and the use of their abilities. Creatures like Knight can (most of the time) be responded to via Sorcery speed removal without losing too much momentum or card advantage. They are more interactive, more fun, and overall better for the game.

[guelahpapyrus]

@OP

I thought the content was good; thoughtful, intelligent, and well reasoned. That said, the structure was painful. I appreciate the artistic gesture but I think it's ill suited for what you're trying to say. It convolutes your message and that's the most important part. You can offer both sides or all three sides or all ninety-nine sides of the argument using the traditional essay, do a little wandering a bit on the page. This script seems like a good way to get a first draft out of your head but I'd go through and rewrite something like this as an essay. With fewer adverbs.