Playing recycle against a discard deck is self destruct
@jigley9higleyКүн бұрын
I've always built my Arcades with more of a combat focus. For that kind of build, Tower Defense is an amazing overrun style of effect.
@MareczqZglosКүн бұрын
I love Isshin - its my nr.1 deck, that i play from day one. I even won the full Isshin "deck" 1.5Y agoo in the Cardmarket Video/Competition ;) One thing I want to add at start - if You play fast mana its super high power deck, so we are talking like PL8 or even "low" 9. More if you add cards like Smothering Tithe and top tutors. Esper Sentinel, Ragavan and Dockside makes it closer to 9 for sure. I think You are just missing Jeska's Will, One Ring and Bowmasters from High Power cards that would work good in Yours deck ;) I would suggest some changes to be fair, i playd this deck like 200+ times, and a lot of cards after testing didnt "felt" as good as I expected (but still this is Commander, a lot of player have diffrent play style, even the change of mana base can change how some cards works/feels etc. - so its just sugestion not 100% better options !!!). 1. Audacionus Thief in my opinion is not good any more. We have better options in his place, and like a lot of them ;) I Play Caustic Bronco and Glimmer Lens as creatures that draw on attack and are lower CMC. I did test Gollum, Scheming Guide and Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy - and both are better then Audacionus Thief , but still i cut them after adding new cards. I really love to run Connecting the Dots and Horn of the Mark as my draw engins - they both are amazing in Isshin. On top of that i play Skullclamp as You, but i play Trouble in Pairs too (its "attack" trigger is double too with Isshin - but even if not, this is one of the best draw engin in the game, level of Ristic Study). The same is for Mindblade Render its worst the other options i mention here (At least in my opinion) ;) 2. Breeches, Eager Pillager is not that good in my opinion. You cannot choose the same options 2 times (You suggest that YOu can - you cannot - both options must be diffrent - Isshin to do not COPY, you just tirgger two times ), and the Treausre is most of time the best one. On top of that its 3 mana, and dont have haste. I would prefere to play Zhentarim Bandit and Kellogg, Dangerous Mind. On top of that in stircte attack deck old good Professional Face-Breaker and Grim Hireling are amazing. I play Goldspan Dragon too - but mine deck is more like high 7 , so for sure with fast mana, Dockside and Smothering Tithe You dont need that many. Still I would Play Kellog and Face-Breaker - ther are two best in my opinion. On top of that i think both are better then Burakos that a lot of time will make 2 treasuer for 4 mana, and dont have haste - I would even play Goldspan Dragon in his place , he makes 2 treasures on attack, but both will give You double mana. 3. I dont exacly get the energy cards... you added only three of them, and they are not that good (an they are BAD even if You dont have Isshin in play). I would add more creautres that creates tokens on attack, or do some extra dmg. /tirggers etc. Sure as You explain they can Combo off - but thats super far-fetched. If you want to have infinit combat just add Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki and Orginal Kiki-Jiki - both will work great with other cards You have, and they both combo off with any of the "extra combat" creautres like Combat Celebrant. You alrady play Delina for that effect, so its better to add more ;) You play Breath of Fury so you can easly add Caesar, Legion's Emperor that are 2 cards combo (and Ceasar is really good in this deck). 4. I would for sure change mana base a littel, You dont play ANY spell-lands / channel-lands. We have so many great options, i would play at least few of them. On top of that new Arena of Glory is amazing in this deck. I would at least add Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt, Fell the Profane // Fell Mire and Shatterskull Smashing // Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass. I would add at least one Survail lands (like Shadowy Backstreet) to have option fetch for it , if You dont need untaped land. I love to play Mount Doom too - but you need at least one legentardy artifact in deck - but it won some games. This is list of cards I Think You shoud cosnider (that I didint mention above): 1. Reconnaissance (this is Vigilace with extra that is reallyyy good) 2. Galadriel's Dismissal (in my opinion its one of the best cards in white. You can use it as singel remuval, mass remuval or singel/mass protection - its really/really good - it won me so many gimes, i cannot even count) 3. Andúril, Narsil Reforged (in my opinion one of the best "finishers" for this deck - its 4x +1/+1 on each attack for all creatures) and Cathars' Crusade (best Finisher for any deck that can generate a lot of tokens). 4. Clever Concealment (i think you dont play any mass protecion, and this is best in my opinion). Really good is the new one Flare of Fortitude - but with tutors, and fast mana - you dont need as many, as Me ;) 5. Otharri, Suns' Glory - this is the best token maker in game for this colors (in my opinion). With Isshin you make 3x 2/2 on 1st. attack (and its a haste atack), and then on 2nd. attack its 7x2/2.... its going so fast thats its crazy. On top of that it have build-in reanimate effect... 6. I dont see the best "extra" attack creature - Karlach, Fury of Avernus. This trigger from "You" attacking - so its fast, and it gives FS , thats really metter. Its really good - recommend to play it ;) 7. Rabble Rousing - this is amazing in Isshin. Its near alwasy "cast" for free the stuff you hideway the turn You play it, and most of time on 2-nd attack it makes like 20 creatures. Ps. I dont like the 1 mana creauters with Battlecry - espieclay that you dont have THAT many token makers. I prefer to play cards like Generous Plunderer and Sardian Avenger as "cheap" creatures to attack - but thast mine way of playng. Battlecry for sure its "good" with Isshin (Still i think better is to have more "pernament" buff like the Andúril, Narsil Reforged). Ps.2 - I would think hard if its worth to play Ad Nauseam and Bolas's Citadel. Sure both are really strong cards - but this is not cEDH deck for sure, so they do not work with a game plan (ATTACK !!!). I for sure would cut them for more cards that are synergistic with ouer strategy ;) What i notice with Isshin - you love to Attack all the time, so a lot players will "attack" You too. You will be not high life - and both cards are super life depended. Still both are super strong, and they can win the game on they own. Ps3. Its more general "my opinion" - I think its much more fun to play Isshin without any Infinit Combat stuff and no tutors (exept Fetch Lands). It make deck much more fun, and PL that allows You to play much more tables.
@AmmiO28 сағат бұрын
Thanks for the suggestions.
@alexanderficken9354Күн бұрын
The cards that "should be banned" are a bit ridiculous
@CptManboobsКүн бұрын
When you come to it and you cant go do it and you cant knock it down you know that you found THE WALL (WHAT) THE WALL THE WALL nothin on earth can make you fall When you come to it and you cant go do it and you cant knock it down you know that you found THE WALL (WHAT) THE WALL THE WALL nothin on earth can make you fall
@movingcardboard8254Күн бұрын
All these cards are going in my next cube lol
@derekreynolds6962Күн бұрын
Very well done. Probably the best video I've seen on the format. All killer, no filler!
@Virmie2 күн бұрын
was this scripted or just talking points
@AmmiO22 күн бұрын
The topics and many of their lead-ins were prepared in advance, but the discussion itself was conversational.
@tinfoilslacks37502 күн бұрын
24:30 devoid was hated because it was a marker mechanic. i.e. it didn't *do* or *cause* anything, it was just a way to artificially make coloured cards count as colourless. It wasn't a bad mechanic, it was just disappointing when people wanted more.
@guillemamat20002 күн бұрын
How would you deal with an opponent playing a Blood Moon with this deck? I noticed you did not have any basic lands.
@AmmiO22 күн бұрын
Tons of decks in EDH get killed by cards like Blood Moon, Back to Basics, etc. I'd rather not make a deck worse but slightly more capable of beating Stax. If you're having a problem against those cards in your playgroup/LGS then you need to make changes to the deck.
@guillemamat2000Күн бұрын
@@AmmiO2 Makes sense, thanks!
@jesseflanders17812 күн бұрын
I'm only about halfway throught the video, but most of the problems seem to come down to two problems: (1) WOTC's inability/refusal to acknowledge the secondary market, in paper and digital, and (2) the people at the top marketing and forming the game as one of those trash mobile games where you cater solely to the %1 whales who stick around long enough to uphold the sunk-cost fallacy. To the first point, they need to aggressively reprint cards or figure out something so they don't tank the market as a whole, but they cannot do both. They're trying to walk a line that is not doing the company any good in the long-run. To the second point, Magic has a very very large player base. They cannot treat Magic, especially Arena, as one of those mobile games who's goal is to rope in a small percentage of people who will pay astronomical amounts of money, and not care about the rest. For the health of the game, they need to cater to the wider player-base and not just those that will or can pay hundreds of dollars on a regular schedule without a second thought. I am firmly in the camp that if they made it possible to buy wild cards at a reasonable price, the longevity, sustainability, and financial success of the Arena client would skyrocket. Make commons $.25, uncommons $.50, rares $.75, and mythics $1.00. If they did that, I would play so much more Magic online because I can build all the decks I want, when I want, and I would willingly pay that price for a digital-only product. Magic's design-philosophy and power creep is a whole other beast.
@sable-eyesonixdragon86423 күн бұрын
Commander: Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow Double-Faced Creature/Lands: Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt Hagra Mauling // Hagra Broodpit Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary Kazandu Mammoth // Kazandu Valley Valakut Exploration // Valakut Stoneforge Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore Lands: Polluted Delta Bloodstained Mire Watery Grave Blood Crypt 10 Islands 10 Swamps Mystic Sanctuary Bojuka Bog Rogue's Passage Creeping Tar Pit Otawara, Soaring City Takenuma, Abandoned Mire Card Draw and Selection: Brainstorm Ponder Preordain Mystic Remora Rhystic Study Sensei's Divining Top Scroll Rack Pay-off Cards: Thassa's Oracle Jace, Wielder of Mysteries Laboratory Maniac Notion Thief Opposition Agent Ninjas and Creatures: Changeling Outcast Mist-Syndicate Naga Throat Slitter Fallen Shinobi Ingenious Infiltrator Silent-Blade Oni Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire Baleful Strix Ornithopter Faerie Seer Shapeshifters: Sakashima the Impostor Sakashima of a Thousand Faces Spark Double Mirror Image Clever Impersonator Disruption and Removal: Counterspell Swan Song Force of Will Cyclonic Rift Snuff Out Damnation Additional Utility: Lightning Greaves Whispersilk Cloak Strategy and Playstyle: Early Game: Setup: Play double-faced lands to ensure you hit your land drops. Cast low-cost creatures like Changeling Outcast and Faerie Seer to set up for ninjutsu triggers. Mid Game: Ninjutsu: Use ninjutsu to return unblocked attackers to hand and put Yuriko onto the battlefield attacking. Focus on drawing cards and dealing damage through Yuriko’s ability. Utility: Utilize cards like Scroll Rack and Sensei's Divining Top to manipulate the top of your deck for optimal Yuriko triggers. Late Game: Win Conditions: Execute combos with Thassa's Oracle, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, or Laboratory Maniac. Maintain control of the game with Notion Thief, Opposition Agent, and your disruption package. Combat: Continue to pressure with evasive creatures and ninjutsu to keep Yuriko’s damage flowing. Notes on Shapeshifters: Sakashima the Impostor, Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, and Spark Double can copy Yuriko without invoking the legend rule, allowing multiple instances of Yuriko’s ability to trigger. Mirror Image and Clever Impersonator provide additional flexibility to copy any critical creatures or permanents on the battlefield. This deck is designed to maximize the potential of Yuriko’s ability, ensuring consistent land drops, efficient card draw, and multiple win conditions. This isn't too farfetched, is it?
@bigbellyobie62043 күн бұрын
I've been loving lorcana, hoping they don't eventually make the same mistakes.
@atheistmantis12643 күн бұрын
Excellent analysis!
@joshuaturner46023 күн бұрын
My suggestion for leveling out the play draw advantage is that Player 1 does actually get to draw a card on their first turn, but player 2 gets to search their library for a basic land and put it into play untapped before turn 1. This means that you no longer need a free spell to interact with your opponents turn 1 combo because you can cast a 1 mana spell on their turn, but also it means that you get to untap and play a second land and make a 2 drop in response to your opponents 1 drop.
@alexanderzubrey81963 күн бұрын
Previous episodes were cool, but this one is just a 4-hour remix of them with nothing new
@SoftwareNeos3 күн бұрын
I know this is the last one..... but a video about edh vs Cedh has always been something i wished people talk about. Not about the power level per say. But just how decisions were made in the banlist and what would happen it we had seperate versions. I honestly feel like edh and cedh should just have their own banlists. Cause its really weird that we dont ban certain things when a lot of reasoning is "its not fun." But then smothering tide, ghostly prison, land destruction, the one ring... things that effect the whole play group are allowed... If edh is supposed to be the "FUN, CAREFREE" Format. Why are there so many cards that are unfun to play against FOR THE GROUP. It just doesnt make sense. And putting too much stock in rule 0 is bad.
@denisskenderovic37074 күн бұрын
I casually play Mtg Arena, but use these to fall asleep regularly. That's a compliment!
@EpicWin13374 күн бұрын
Oh hey my comment got read on the podcast. That's cool.
@tinfoilslacks37504 күн бұрын
Something I think should have been covered more thoroughly here is how much draft has changed too. Sign posting got way more aggressive (2 colour legendary creature signpost uncommon trend for instance) and fixing has been getting so good drafts are stupid flexible. I do disagree with several of the design complaints however. Draw Go isn't inherent bad, otherwise all control decks would be definitionally a design and gameplay failure. I'll admit there are problems with the current iteration of white blue control, but it goes beyond "control unfun". When there's a critical mass of good reactive answers in the game it encourages passive and reactive play when playing cards reactively is already innately advantageous. Draw go is more a failure of incentivizing proactive play and aggression. Sometimes answers are also so good they can't be meaningfully played around, you simply have to play into them and if they have it they have it. I find that the distinction between good variability like the random order of the library and bad variability like CoCo was poorly articulated/unjustified. Unless the problem is simply that even a mathematically optimal deck's chance to whiff on CoCo is too high.
@LizaPlz4 күн бұрын
03:40:35 they might think of secret lairs and all the far out artwork but i generally agree that magic art has gotten better
@geek5934 күн бұрын
I hate to be that guy but the point about foil curling is mostly wrong in comparison to other games. Pokemon and Yugioh cards have full layers of foil layered onto the card stock just like Magic's normal foils. Literally all of them use a cardstock layer, glue layer, foil layer, and ink masks. You can take acetone to any foil from any game and see the foil layer underneath the ink layer. Really only Magic's etched foils work differently since they use a special reflective ink layer. All TCGs have had issues with curling at some point, mostly starting around the same time due to using the same factories. There was a set from Yugioh called Fists of the Gadgets in 2019 which was an all foil set and literally all NA cards came curled because of poor manufacturing humidity control during the set's run. The reason we notice Japanese cards don't seem to curl as much is because their quality control right off the line is much tighter. Having tight quality control at the printing stage matters a lot because, like you said, the worst curling happens when the card is freshly manufactured. I have very few Shadowverse Evolve cards that are curled. I own thousands of foils. The only cards that have curled have been ones coming from a friend who didn't store them properly. The game is produced in Japan under their strict quality control and that makes the difference. And no, curled foils are absolutely not near mint for the vast majority of players. I'm perfectly willing to uncurl some of my big money and gameplay staple cards with humidity packets but not everyone should have to do this. Curling is a reality for sure but one that can be severely mitigated by the manufacturer. WotC needs to crack the whip on their printing contractors and either pay more for better quality or invest in them to keep their quality more consistent since it's negatively affecting the product for most consumers. Pokemon got sick of quality control being out of their hands so they built their own printing factory. Quality has been perfect ever since.
@busTedOaS4 күн бұрын
dear lord, we're going DEEP ain't we
@TheMinskyTerrorist4 күн бұрын
Nothing about MH3 on its own said "commander players, this isn't for you." That’s ridiculous. It didn't need to have a lot of legendary creatures or commander decks for commander players to buy it. People are so forgetful that commander used to be where you used whatever cards you had lying around from playing all the other formats. It didn't need official support or 50 legendary creatures every set to be playable, and arguably adding command tower, arcane signet, etc. and all the "staples" made it worse.
@TheMinskyTerrorist4 күн бұрын
You guys lost me on the art thing, the art is hideous
@thesvengallideck4 күн бұрын
In regards to the ETB doscussion i think your problen is more with the pushed design of teferi and omnath rathwr than how the ETB interaction works. Without some ability to get vakue off of a creature outside the body itself the tempi pendulum just swings massivly in favor of thw removal palyer ebxause you are trading 1 for 1 and you have a mana advantage because in most cases the removal spell is cheaoer than the bomb creature.
@AmmiO24 күн бұрын
I probably should have elaborated more but yes, I don't have a problem ETBs such as Kitchen Finks. The problem is that ETBs are now incredibly pushed.
@TopMostFlavor4 күн бұрын
I had a friend download arena because he played a lot of the yugioh app. He loves it and basically only plays arena now but he plays historic and will probably never play paper because he only knows the fake digital formats.
@weasley3134 күн бұрын
My favourite deck ever since commander legends. But I play it with a big focus on copying krark a bunch of times. Once you get your 5th copy you are pretty much guaranteed to both copy and bounce every spell you cast. On top of that I run more card draw and all the creature tutors to find tavern scoundrel, storm kiln or birgi to be able to infinitely draw my whole deck and win with aetherflux or sphinx bone wand. Also whirlwind denial is probably my most favourite counterspell here because even if you don't manage to win after your first big turn,having multiple krarks and mana generators you can with that spell only completely lock out any chance of your opponents doing anything besides attacking and playing lands because you can counter activated abilities with it aswell. Also twinning staff wins games if you are behind or just having a bad luck day.
@brian7424 күн бұрын
Ill build this comment as I listen. We always need to be wary when using "fun" as a reason to ban or change something. You look hard enough, you will find that every aspect of the game is disliked by some people. Draw go control is a great experience. As a player going against it, unless you bring a linear deck, you need to make relevant decisions about how to approach the matchup, or you will lose easily. The same goes for the control player. Your answers need to be used well, or you will lose. The issue is when cards do too much and there are no decisions to make. As yall said, the wandering emperor is the problem. It is removal and a win condition in one, and at flash speed. Furthermore, the way not play into it either leaves you exposed to wipes or gives the control deck more time to dig. Remove the flash speed from TWE, and i have no qualms with the control matchup. I genuinely ask players that dislike facing draw go do they actually like mtg. If combat math is your absolute joy, sure, ill take that. Otherwise, draw go will not win fast, but it also will not play solitaire. Do you want your opponent to not interact with you? I wasnt paying attention when modern descended into two ships passing the night, but pioneer is well on its way there. It was the first 60 card constructed format i tried and the first i quit due to linear play patterns. In that format, a large majority of relevant decks are about cheating mana costs T3, defending the plays that cheat mana, or aiming to do some combo T3-4. If every deck does that, there are no decisions to make. Your mulligans will always be about stopping their thing. Whether or not you could stop the thing, a binary decision - actually, decision is too generous- situation, decides the game. When that is the case, why play coin flips? I disagree on spreading countermagic out because i disagree with the notion that there are no universal answers to big spells. Emergent ultimatum gets stopped by colorless cards anyone can run, easiest example is damping sphere. Choosing to have no answer is on the deck builder. Planeswalkers get answered by pithing needle effects if a player is that concerned about them. The arena economy sucks and i dont know how people support it. It is free, yes, but the system is soooo anti player unless you spend $$$. It caps your earnings unless you gamble with events. If youre going to spend $$$ or risk things, you may as well play MTGO. Then, you can at least sell your cards once you are done. EDH runs design now, obviously. This hurts everyone with product fatigue, broken cards busting 1 v 1 wide open, literal coin flips in sets, etc. EDH has its place, but it should not run design. I hope this gets fixed before it is too late. MtG is just a busted game when it comes to constructed. Wait long enough, they all boil down to do some busted thing as fast as possible. Every format struggles with this issue, even standard with convoke. Decisions rarely matter unless it is a midrange mirror, and even those can feel swingy and snowbally because cards are busted and so many run away with the game on their own. Cant answer bronco, preacher, raffine immediately? Youve probably lost.
@GameMageVideos4 күн бұрын
I think the part about programming the cards was misinformed. Keywords ARE trivial to add. But most Magic cards go beyond just having plain keywords. Most of the keywords are prefaced by unique conditions or what have you. I guess consider something like "When you eat a food, do X. Repeat for each food you've eaten while this minion is alive." That's a very simple mechanic but you would need to actually manually create that for that creature, and that's proabably just draft chaff. There's like 20 sets a year and they all have 400 cards. There are way more complicated/unique card examples but I'm too tired to come up with any. Some cards have to be aware about certain states that aren't usually kept track of. And all of this has to work within a long twisted codebase. When they're looking at cards from a set, they can't just choose to ONLY import the simple cards. A set in MtGA has to have packs and the whole nine yards, so it's an all or nothing thing. Nothing about it is particularily IMPOSSIBLE, it just takes a lot of manpower and oversight to check that each card actually behaves exactly as its rules text suggests.
@nosrenda10145 күн бұрын
I really like the deserts from Thunder Junction in this deck to get the last bits of damage :)
@Rob-qe3cg5 күн бұрын
As a programmer who has worked for a couple big companies, I just wanna put out there what I think about Arena's slowness to add cards. I totally understand Dylan wanting to give the benefit of the doubt here, but YGO is, imo, much nastier to program for vs Magic, if you do things right. YGO *does* have concrete engine rules, but so many of the cards are ad hoc sort of effects with often bespoke logic. MTG has very rigid comp rules, and even with more unique effects, you can decompose them. If I were given 6 devs and told to make an MTG engine, I'd go through the comp rules and implement everything with behaviors tied to each thing. Even really strange one off cards, like Trinisphere, have little clauses in the rules that make them work. You can block out your comp rules with the relevant stuff, leaving yourself openings to enhance later, and you should be able to make a robust editor in XML or something that a dev should be able to quickly knock out any new effect that comes out that doesn't do anything novel. The fact that Emrakul took so much effort for MTGO indicates to me that they weren't accounting for the breadth of effects, and being somewhat ad hoc with their programming: was mindslaver not a card already in the game? Did they not already have an effect that controlled target player? Even if it was an activated effect on something else, it should have been reusable as an ETB. Did they just code mindslaver/emrakul as separate one-off effects unrelated to one another? As I said, YGO is suited for that sort of ad hoc programming, but I think MTG becomes a pile of painful code if you use a similar approach. No shade on them, it's an old code base written during 7th edition, but I doubt that they set themselves up a good foundation. The host's question regarding keywords is pretty naive, since no cards exist anymore that just say "flying" on them with nothing else, but he is right that the engine should be able to decompose 99% of effects. I want to be clear that the decision between "incompetence" and "not enough people" isn't quite right, the most competent devs in the world given insufficient time and bad or unclear requirements would probably land themselves in this spot. No doubt there are tons of TODO's in the code marking spots they wanted to refactor or build it better. Rocky initial development causing horrible tech debt is almost surely to blame.
@Rob-qe3cg5 күн бұрын
Just to elaborate with an example, since my initial comment is long: There's a common joke that every mechanic is kicker, but it's kind of true. If you were to make a robust engine that can handle the idea of "effect 1, or pay a cost for effect 2" then something like the new Gift mechanic for Bloomburrow would take no extra effort. You have an engine that understands a cost, which could be *any* effect. It could be something obvious paying mana, sac'ing something you control, or any other action that's less obvious, like summoning a creature for either player, or having the opponent draw a card. Then, the text "Gift a Fish" would be decomposed into your engine as a card with kicker, where the kicker cost is summoning a 1/1 blue fish token on the opponent's side. With a good editor and a robust engine, this *should* be trivial for a dedicated dev to go through and knock out. Again, if they do not have this robust system, it is not because they are incompetent, but because they were probably given really tight confines to work in and who knows how many devs cycled through with how many changes in management over the course of Arena and MTGO's development.
@AmmiO22 күн бұрын
I take your points. The hypothesis should have been that their lack of ability to implement new cards on MTGO/Arena is due to intentional lack of resources or incompetence on the part of the programmers _and/or_ management.
@tinfoilslacks37505 күн бұрын
As LoR's strongest soldier (yes I know, zombie game player) it's interesting to compare what were generally considered "bad' periods in the game's short 4 year life to the problem trends outlined here. Some trends include: -curve out gameplay was generally considered boring both to play and play against. Players hated when a deck's optimal gameplay was "1 drop on T1, 2 drop on T2, 3 drop on T3" etc -players really disliked decks which were primarily collections of generically good independently strong "above rate" cards which don't meaningfully interface with the other cards -players didn't like decks with extremely narrow or specific wincons, because it made games against them feel samey. A good example of this was how every game against Trundle Lissandra Control boiled down to "T8 Ice pillar into matron into Watcher" and only that -players don't like when one player takes an egregiously larger amount of game actions and spend large portions of time waiting, regardless of whether they are winning or losing -aggro versus control matchups are well received when aggro has hail mary plays lategame, and badly received when the matchup was entirely defined by if the aggro player ran out of gas before winning. It was very important who was on the beatdown switched several times a game. -players liked when decks' card economy ebbed and flowed and tended to not like decks which simply either won or ran out of gas and never got more -players liked routinely seeing most of the cards in their deck even if they didn't play all of them, and disliked when they'd only see less than half of the cards in their deck (keep in mind LoR had no true tutors) -players really don't like when a card effect has been worded in a particular way to exclude it from interacting with other cards, especially when it clearly wouldn't be a balance problem either. -some of the most well regarded cards were cards which could be threats or answers to threats or answers to answers, especially if they could conditionally be more than one at the same time. -complex cards are well liked as long as the abilities are related to each other -games where the two decks played on different axis were generally disappointing, like if a match was a board based combat deck versus a spell based combo deck Obviously LoR is a different game than MtG, but it's interesting to see it in comparison to the game that many of its dev decisions are a direct response to.
@Shadowmilll5 күн бұрын
say you like insane midrange slop without saying you like insane midrange slop
@soarel3254 күн бұрын
Because Horizons Block Constructed is such a fun and skill-intensive format in comparison to classic Modern!
@LizaPlz5 күн бұрын
02:32:06 it felt awesome losing to both ashlask (ass lick idk the new eldrazi commander) and ulalek at the MODERN horizons 3 pre release and I had no idea you could even open toilet commander cards in the play boosters
@soarel3255 күн бұрын
I continue to be baffled as to why there isn’t a concerted “revolt” by players of Real Modern (2011-2021). Why not start organizing unsanctioned Horizonless Modern tournaments and pushing Horizonless Modern everywhere, refusing to play in sanctioned Modern events, etc. from players to force WotC’s hand on the subject? Horizonless Modern is the only path forward, but sheer complacency and refusal to fight stands between it and us. They just keep eating the pigslop when they could easily do something about the problem. Even just refusing to play Modern and playing Pioneer instead would be SOMETHING, but no, Modern is somehow doing better than both Standard AND Pioneer both in paper and MODO. I just want people to stop being broken bucks about Horizons. Complacency is the great enemy. You guys are totally off base in regards to the comment at 3:37:46, btw. Core sets (from M10 onwards) and three-set blocks were great. Did all of the issues you've talked about in these podcasts exist back when we had those? No? Then you see the point. The art since 2015 has leaned heavily into this dull Artstation photorealism (often including outright photobashing) - this has partially been ameliorated by a the glut of variant artwork lately, but it’s still an issue. This isn't about cartoony stuff like Foglio - they could never do a set with visual aesthetics like Lorwyn/Shadowmoor these days. The game should look like classic fantasy artwork, not a Marvel movie.
@jadegrace13124 күн бұрын
Perhaps people enjoy modern horizons more than you think
@soarel3252 күн бұрын
@@jadegrace1312 yes, I’m aware that the wretched demiurge Yaldabaoth has many slaves
@LizaPlz5 күн бұрын
01:32:17 most corporate way to say hey don't play our game then
@sixonethreee5 күн бұрын
I am in this weird space where Magic used to be my primary hobby, but because of the many numerous problems with the game I am playing it less and less, but I have not found adequate hobbies to fully replace it, so Magic still continues to live 'rent free' in my head even though I don't like it.
@AmmiO25 күн бұрын
Yes.
@TopMostFlavor5 күн бұрын
Have you guys tried touching grass or having s3x?
@garak554 күн бұрын
Get into a sport. I started ballroom dancing basically for that reason and now have friends who smell good and stuff to do on the weekends.
@sixonethreee4 күн бұрын
I've been trying Warhammer 40k as a hobby replacement. I really enjoy painting models, but it is a solitary activity. There is a bit of a hurdle before I can graduate to actually playing 40k and get into the social aspect of it.
@Chris3s4 күн бұрын
Kinda the same for me, I started brainstorming ideas for TTRPGs, TCGs and board games and to get more experience I started trying out games. Most of the times I go for games with good 2 player mode to play with my wife (my favorite so far is Res Arcanum, it even has a draft mode if you want that). Alternatively go play online some TCGs on digital clients (I did play pretty much all digital CCGs in my lifetime, I revisited some but nothing is what I am looking for. elder scroll legends was great when it released, eternal had also a great draft mode). MTGA is actually free if you are good at drafting. Or play some good solo deckbuilder games like slay the spire.
@GlazedGoose5 күн бұрын
afaik they use machine learning (aka AI) to code the cards for arena so I'm not convinced that they actually take longer to code than a yugioh card. obviously you'll have to audit and potentially adjust the cards that this spits out, but for any random french vanilla card it should take no effort at all
@ClubbingSealCub4 күн бұрын
Citation needed, because if you knew anything about software you'd know this is not possible
@tarkus11135 күн бұрын
To explain the stupid three year rotation: They have to get rid of a bunch of overstock from currently (soon to be eight sets) that did Draft-set boosters.
@xboxgamer4742465 күн бұрын
Stack Interaction in other colors exists with cards like Tamiyo’s Safekeeping. The issue is that those cards are usually not good enough to see maindeck play unless they’re Veil of Summer good or you’re building a linear combo deck.
@xboxgamer4742465 күн бұрын
I’d also argue that going over someone extending an advantage with lethal burn spells is stack interaction. I get that you don’t like burn, but price of progress -> fireblast on your own end step bc your opponent activated something is great gameplay.
@Hapkins-le6xf5 күн бұрын
I've been focusing on pauper and pioneer. I have 3 modern decks. At current pricing and rotation from horizons and universes beyond sets, I can't justify spending more on the format. On card quality, the recent assassin's creed cards are the thinest flimsiest cards I have seen yet. Edit: on the subject of cheap entry points into the game, I think wotc wants commander to fill that role. That's why they print 24 precons a year. As players, we have the idea in our heads that standard should be cheap. I don't think wizards agrees with that anymore. In their heads, standard is for people that like rotation and draft.
@garak554 күн бұрын
From what I understand, the goal is that standard is and will stay a magic arena thing. Paper magic is now synonimous with commander and I think that was the plan all along.
@maximuscesar5 күн бұрын
1:07 Don't give counters to other colors dude. The other colors ways of interacting with big spells is "killing the opponent before they can cast them". If people are cheating big spells too easily, well, there is the problem; not the spell itself.
@wardm45 күн бұрын
I've talked to people about play/draw fixes and here's what we came up with: Player 2 starts with a land token that you can tap and sacrifice to make 1 of any color. The fact that it's a token means you don't need to bring a special "real card" to play and you don't get a land in your graveyard. The fact that it's a land fixes using a treasure, so that artifcat synergies don't get messed up. You only get the ramp effect once, and so the effect is that non-games are less likely from crazy turn 0 plays from the person on the play. It almost makes scam a reasonable deck to play against, because now you can have a 1 mana answer and not just auto-lose the game before you get to play a land.
@CptManboobs5 күн бұрын
I think I might quit playing Modern when the Marvel universe beyond set comes out. I don't want to have sit down across from some guy playing his Spiderman Assassin Deck
@CptManboobs5 күн бұрын
3:55:55 See the thing is they DID give us "Good" answer cards in MH2, it just so happened that the answers also doubled as threats, and they got so oppressive that they banned one. There was absolutely nothing worse than an opponent scamming a turn 1 Fury and you actually just lose the game on the spot because it dodges all the removal and none of your creatures can actually trade in to it.
@montefrenkel82055 күн бұрын
This is a fascinating video, but i do wish there was slightly more discussion of the "ideal" game play pattern to accompany the problematic mechanics discussion. For instance, blood moon is clearly a feels bad mechanic, but it also seems to be a card that serves as a middle ground between mass land destruction and a game where "uninteractable" lands take over. Just feels like the discussion is missing an additional layer of detail to consider which effects are "bad" but necessary versus effects that are just unfun versus effects that can just become too strong, etc... Excellent video.
@AmmiO22 күн бұрын
We've touched on "ideal" game play patterns before and unfortunately an explanation would be very long, so to briefly discuss this: I think the most important thing is player agency; does it feel like your wins/losses are a result of skill or making mistakes, rather than randomness. Obviously the game has variance and sometimes you lose purely as a result of luck, so it's about striking a good balance. I believe competitive MTG has moved way too far into gameplay where you need specific, narrow answers at exactly the right moment, too early, sometimes multiple times a match (Ragavan, Blood Moon, etc.) or where you literally can't do anything (e.g. vs. Scam on the draw).
@thesvengallideck5 күн бұрын
I am not sure if you touch on it in the video but id love to see you two design a cube. It would be interesting to see the designs you include or how opinions on cards change with respect to the environment. Eg grief being worse without a scam spell
@AmmiO25 күн бұрын
We actually both have cubes. Here's mine: cubecobra.com/cube/overview/86f7325f-2a65-4006-9160-ee7b86aadcca Here's Dylans: cubecobra.com/cube/list/43ec42bf-0088-4801-bbd2-afca6c8a7a27
@neoteo74785 күн бұрын
Wizards should make Standard and Pioneer precons that give strong manabases to new players. These decks should not try to be meta or else they run into the same problems discussed in the video: Auras was instantly irrelevant and Lotus field was scalped for Omniscience Instead of meta, if the precons were based on color pairs or triples, Standard players would have something to 1) Play with right away and 2) Use as a shell for a meta deck It's important that the decks should have 4x cards in the mana base at the very least. And secondarily the decks should be relatively balanced to play against other precons. Even draft chaff for spells would be fine if it meant that these kinds of decks could survive on shelves for new players to get started with 1 purchase If wizards printed Standard Starters like this and put them on the shelf for 20 bucks next to commander precons, maybe I could convince someone to play a game of Magic with me after we swapped out of an hour slog of waiting for my turn and hearing people complain about threat assessment. Because that's all my LGS plays
Пікірлер
Playing recycle against a discard deck is self destruct
I've always built my Arcades with more of a combat focus. For that kind of build, Tower Defense is an amazing overrun style of effect.
I love Isshin - its my nr.1 deck, that i play from day one. I even won the full Isshin "deck" 1.5Y agoo in the Cardmarket Video/Competition ;) One thing I want to add at start - if You play fast mana its super high power deck, so we are talking like PL8 or even "low" 9. More if you add cards like Smothering Tithe and top tutors. Esper Sentinel, Ragavan and Dockside makes it closer to 9 for sure. I think You are just missing Jeska's Will, One Ring and Bowmasters from High Power cards that would work good in Yours deck ;) I would suggest some changes to be fair, i playd this deck like 200+ times, and a lot of cards after testing didnt "felt" as good as I expected (but still this is Commander, a lot of player have diffrent play style, even the change of mana base can change how some cards works/feels etc. - so its just sugestion not 100% better options !!!). 1. Audacionus Thief in my opinion is not good any more. We have better options in his place, and like a lot of them ;) I Play Caustic Bronco and Glimmer Lens as creatures that draw on attack and are lower CMC. I did test Gollum, Scheming Guide and Paladin Elizabeth Taggerdy - and both are better then Audacionus Thief , but still i cut them after adding new cards. I really love to run Connecting the Dots and Horn of the Mark as my draw engins - they both are amazing in Isshin. On top of that i play Skullclamp as You, but i play Trouble in Pairs too (its "attack" trigger is double too with Isshin - but even if not, this is one of the best draw engin in the game, level of Ristic Study). The same is for Mindblade Render its worst the other options i mention here (At least in my opinion) ;) 2. Breeches, Eager Pillager is not that good in my opinion. You cannot choose the same options 2 times (You suggest that YOu can - you cannot - both options must be diffrent - Isshin to do not COPY, you just tirgger two times ), and the Treausre is most of time the best one. On top of that its 3 mana, and dont have haste. I would prefere to play Zhentarim Bandit and Kellogg, Dangerous Mind. On top of that in stircte attack deck old good Professional Face-Breaker and Grim Hireling are amazing. I play Goldspan Dragon too - but mine deck is more like high 7 , so for sure with fast mana, Dockside and Smothering Tithe You dont need that many. Still I would Play Kellog and Face-Breaker - ther are two best in my opinion. On top of that i think both are better then Burakos that a lot of time will make 2 treasuer for 4 mana, and dont have haste - I would even play Goldspan Dragon in his place , he makes 2 treasures on attack, but both will give You double mana. 3. I dont exacly get the energy cards... you added only three of them, and they are not that good (an they are BAD even if You dont have Isshin in play). I would add more creautres that creates tokens on attack, or do some extra dmg. /tirggers etc. Sure as You explain they can Combo off - but thats super far-fetched. If you want to have infinit combat just add Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki and Orginal Kiki-Jiki - both will work great with other cards You have, and they both combo off with any of the "extra combat" creautres like Combat Celebrant. You alrady play Delina for that effect, so its better to add more ;) You play Breath of Fury so you can easly add Caesar, Legion's Emperor that are 2 cards combo (and Ceasar is really good in this deck). 4. I would for sure change mana base a littel, You dont play ANY spell-lands / channel-lands. We have so many great options, i would play at least few of them. On top of that new Arena of Glory is amazing in this deck. I would at least add Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt, Fell the Profane // Fell Mire and Shatterskull Smashing // Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass. I would add at least one Survail lands (like Shadowy Backstreet) to have option fetch for it , if You dont need untaped land. I love to play Mount Doom too - but you need at least one legentardy artifact in deck - but it won some games. This is list of cards I Think You shoud cosnider (that I didint mention above): 1. Reconnaissance (this is Vigilace with extra that is reallyyy good) 2. Galadriel's Dismissal (in my opinion its one of the best cards in white. You can use it as singel remuval, mass remuval or singel/mass protection - its really/really good - it won me so many gimes, i cannot even count) 3. Andúril, Narsil Reforged (in my opinion one of the best "finishers" for this deck - its 4x +1/+1 on each attack for all creatures) and Cathars' Crusade (best Finisher for any deck that can generate a lot of tokens). 4. Clever Concealment (i think you dont play any mass protecion, and this is best in my opinion). Really good is the new one Flare of Fortitude - but with tutors, and fast mana - you dont need as many, as Me ;) 5. Otharri, Suns' Glory - this is the best token maker in game for this colors (in my opinion). With Isshin you make 3x 2/2 on 1st. attack (and its a haste atack), and then on 2nd. attack its 7x2/2.... its going so fast thats its crazy. On top of that it have build-in reanimate effect... 6. I dont see the best "extra" attack creature - Karlach, Fury of Avernus. This trigger from "You" attacking - so its fast, and it gives FS , thats really metter. Its really good - recommend to play it ;) 7. Rabble Rousing - this is amazing in Isshin. Its near alwasy "cast" for free the stuff you hideway the turn You play it, and most of time on 2-nd attack it makes like 20 creatures. Ps. I dont like the 1 mana creauters with Battlecry - espieclay that you dont have THAT many token makers. I prefer to play cards like Generous Plunderer and Sardian Avenger as "cheap" creatures to attack - but thast mine way of playng. Battlecry for sure its "good" with Isshin (Still i think better is to have more "pernament" buff like the Andúril, Narsil Reforged). Ps.2 - I would think hard if its worth to play Ad Nauseam and Bolas's Citadel. Sure both are really strong cards - but this is not cEDH deck for sure, so they do not work with a game plan (ATTACK !!!). I for sure would cut them for more cards that are synergistic with ouer strategy ;) What i notice with Isshin - you love to Attack all the time, so a lot players will "attack" You too. You will be not high life - and both cards are super life depended. Still both are super strong, and they can win the game on they own. Ps3. Its more general "my opinion" - I think its much more fun to play Isshin without any Infinit Combat stuff and no tutors (exept Fetch Lands). It make deck much more fun, and PL that allows You to play much more tables.
Thanks for the suggestions.
The cards that "should be banned" are a bit ridiculous
When you come to it and you cant go do it and you cant knock it down you know that you found THE WALL (WHAT) THE WALL THE WALL nothin on earth can make you fall When you come to it and you cant go do it and you cant knock it down you know that you found THE WALL (WHAT) THE WALL THE WALL nothin on earth can make you fall
All these cards are going in my next cube lol
Very well done. Probably the best video I've seen on the format. All killer, no filler!
was this scripted or just talking points
The topics and many of their lead-ins were prepared in advance, but the discussion itself was conversational.
24:30 devoid was hated because it was a marker mechanic. i.e. it didn't *do* or *cause* anything, it was just a way to artificially make coloured cards count as colourless. It wasn't a bad mechanic, it was just disappointing when people wanted more.
How would you deal with an opponent playing a Blood Moon with this deck? I noticed you did not have any basic lands.
Tons of decks in EDH get killed by cards like Blood Moon, Back to Basics, etc. I'd rather not make a deck worse but slightly more capable of beating Stax. If you're having a problem against those cards in your playgroup/LGS then you need to make changes to the deck.
@@AmmiO2 Makes sense, thanks!
I'm only about halfway throught the video, but most of the problems seem to come down to two problems: (1) WOTC's inability/refusal to acknowledge the secondary market, in paper and digital, and (2) the people at the top marketing and forming the game as one of those trash mobile games where you cater solely to the %1 whales who stick around long enough to uphold the sunk-cost fallacy. To the first point, they need to aggressively reprint cards or figure out something so they don't tank the market as a whole, but they cannot do both. They're trying to walk a line that is not doing the company any good in the long-run. To the second point, Magic has a very very large player base. They cannot treat Magic, especially Arena, as one of those mobile games who's goal is to rope in a small percentage of people who will pay astronomical amounts of money, and not care about the rest. For the health of the game, they need to cater to the wider player-base and not just those that will or can pay hundreds of dollars on a regular schedule without a second thought. I am firmly in the camp that if they made it possible to buy wild cards at a reasonable price, the longevity, sustainability, and financial success of the Arena client would skyrocket. Make commons $.25, uncommons $.50, rares $.75, and mythics $1.00. If they did that, I would play so much more Magic online because I can build all the decks I want, when I want, and I would willingly pay that price for a digital-only product. Magic's design-philosophy and power creep is a whole other beast.
Commander: Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow Double-Faced Creature/Lands: Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt Hagra Mauling // Hagra Broodpit Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary Kazandu Mammoth // Kazandu Valley Valakut Exploration // Valakut Stoneforge Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore Lands: Polluted Delta Bloodstained Mire Watery Grave Blood Crypt 10 Islands 10 Swamps Mystic Sanctuary Bojuka Bog Rogue's Passage Creeping Tar Pit Otawara, Soaring City Takenuma, Abandoned Mire Card Draw and Selection: Brainstorm Ponder Preordain Mystic Remora Rhystic Study Sensei's Divining Top Scroll Rack Pay-off Cards: Thassa's Oracle Jace, Wielder of Mysteries Laboratory Maniac Notion Thief Opposition Agent Ninjas and Creatures: Changeling Outcast Mist-Syndicate Naga Throat Slitter Fallen Shinobi Ingenious Infiltrator Silent-Blade Oni Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire Baleful Strix Ornithopter Faerie Seer Shapeshifters: Sakashima the Impostor Sakashima of a Thousand Faces Spark Double Mirror Image Clever Impersonator Disruption and Removal: Counterspell Swan Song Force of Will Cyclonic Rift Snuff Out Damnation Additional Utility: Lightning Greaves Whispersilk Cloak Strategy and Playstyle: Early Game: Setup: Play double-faced lands to ensure you hit your land drops. Cast low-cost creatures like Changeling Outcast and Faerie Seer to set up for ninjutsu triggers. Mid Game: Ninjutsu: Use ninjutsu to return unblocked attackers to hand and put Yuriko onto the battlefield attacking. Focus on drawing cards and dealing damage through Yuriko’s ability. Utility: Utilize cards like Scroll Rack and Sensei's Divining Top to manipulate the top of your deck for optimal Yuriko triggers. Late Game: Win Conditions: Execute combos with Thassa's Oracle, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, or Laboratory Maniac. Maintain control of the game with Notion Thief, Opposition Agent, and your disruption package. Combat: Continue to pressure with evasive creatures and ninjutsu to keep Yuriko’s damage flowing. Notes on Shapeshifters: Sakashima the Impostor, Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, and Spark Double can copy Yuriko without invoking the legend rule, allowing multiple instances of Yuriko’s ability to trigger. Mirror Image and Clever Impersonator provide additional flexibility to copy any critical creatures or permanents on the battlefield. This deck is designed to maximize the potential of Yuriko’s ability, ensuring consistent land drops, efficient card draw, and multiple win conditions. This isn't too farfetched, is it?
I've been loving lorcana, hoping they don't eventually make the same mistakes.
Excellent analysis!
My suggestion for leveling out the play draw advantage is that Player 1 does actually get to draw a card on their first turn, but player 2 gets to search their library for a basic land and put it into play untapped before turn 1. This means that you no longer need a free spell to interact with your opponents turn 1 combo because you can cast a 1 mana spell on their turn, but also it means that you get to untap and play a second land and make a 2 drop in response to your opponents 1 drop.
Previous episodes were cool, but this one is just a 4-hour remix of them with nothing new
I know this is the last one..... but a video about edh vs Cedh has always been something i wished people talk about. Not about the power level per say. But just how decisions were made in the banlist and what would happen it we had seperate versions. I honestly feel like edh and cedh should just have their own banlists. Cause its really weird that we dont ban certain things when a lot of reasoning is "its not fun." But then smothering tide, ghostly prison, land destruction, the one ring... things that effect the whole play group are allowed... If edh is supposed to be the "FUN, CAREFREE" Format. Why are there so many cards that are unfun to play against FOR THE GROUP. It just doesnt make sense. And putting too much stock in rule 0 is bad.
I casually play Mtg Arena, but use these to fall asleep regularly. That's a compliment!
Oh hey my comment got read on the podcast. That's cool.
Something I think should have been covered more thoroughly here is how much draft has changed too. Sign posting got way more aggressive (2 colour legendary creature signpost uncommon trend for instance) and fixing has been getting so good drafts are stupid flexible. I do disagree with several of the design complaints however. Draw Go isn't inherent bad, otherwise all control decks would be definitionally a design and gameplay failure. I'll admit there are problems with the current iteration of white blue control, but it goes beyond "control unfun". When there's a critical mass of good reactive answers in the game it encourages passive and reactive play when playing cards reactively is already innately advantageous. Draw go is more a failure of incentivizing proactive play and aggression. Sometimes answers are also so good they can't be meaningfully played around, you simply have to play into them and if they have it they have it. I find that the distinction between good variability like the random order of the library and bad variability like CoCo was poorly articulated/unjustified. Unless the problem is simply that even a mathematically optimal deck's chance to whiff on CoCo is too high.
03:40:35 they might think of secret lairs and all the far out artwork but i generally agree that magic art has gotten better
I hate to be that guy but the point about foil curling is mostly wrong in comparison to other games. Pokemon and Yugioh cards have full layers of foil layered onto the card stock just like Magic's normal foils. Literally all of them use a cardstock layer, glue layer, foil layer, and ink masks. You can take acetone to any foil from any game and see the foil layer underneath the ink layer. Really only Magic's etched foils work differently since they use a special reflective ink layer. All TCGs have had issues with curling at some point, mostly starting around the same time due to using the same factories. There was a set from Yugioh called Fists of the Gadgets in 2019 which was an all foil set and literally all NA cards came curled because of poor manufacturing humidity control during the set's run. The reason we notice Japanese cards don't seem to curl as much is because their quality control right off the line is much tighter. Having tight quality control at the printing stage matters a lot because, like you said, the worst curling happens when the card is freshly manufactured. I have very few Shadowverse Evolve cards that are curled. I own thousands of foils. The only cards that have curled have been ones coming from a friend who didn't store them properly. The game is produced in Japan under their strict quality control and that makes the difference. And no, curled foils are absolutely not near mint for the vast majority of players. I'm perfectly willing to uncurl some of my big money and gameplay staple cards with humidity packets but not everyone should have to do this. Curling is a reality for sure but one that can be severely mitigated by the manufacturer. WotC needs to crack the whip on their printing contractors and either pay more for better quality or invest in them to keep their quality more consistent since it's negatively affecting the product for most consumers. Pokemon got sick of quality control being out of their hands so they built their own printing factory. Quality has been perfect ever since.
dear lord, we're going DEEP ain't we
Nothing about MH3 on its own said "commander players, this isn't for you." That’s ridiculous. It didn't need to have a lot of legendary creatures or commander decks for commander players to buy it. People are so forgetful that commander used to be where you used whatever cards you had lying around from playing all the other formats. It didn't need official support or 50 legendary creatures every set to be playable, and arguably adding command tower, arcane signet, etc. and all the "staples" made it worse.
You guys lost me on the art thing, the art is hideous
In regards to the ETB doscussion i think your problen is more with the pushed design of teferi and omnath rathwr than how the ETB interaction works. Without some ability to get vakue off of a creature outside the body itself the tempi pendulum just swings massivly in favor of thw removal palyer ebxause you are trading 1 for 1 and you have a mana advantage because in most cases the removal spell is cheaoer than the bomb creature.
I probably should have elaborated more but yes, I don't have a problem ETBs such as Kitchen Finks. The problem is that ETBs are now incredibly pushed.
I had a friend download arena because he played a lot of the yugioh app. He loves it and basically only plays arena now but he plays historic and will probably never play paper because he only knows the fake digital formats.
My favourite deck ever since commander legends. But I play it with a big focus on copying krark a bunch of times. Once you get your 5th copy you are pretty much guaranteed to both copy and bounce every spell you cast. On top of that I run more card draw and all the creature tutors to find tavern scoundrel, storm kiln or birgi to be able to infinitely draw my whole deck and win with aetherflux or sphinx bone wand. Also whirlwind denial is probably my most favourite counterspell here because even if you don't manage to win after your first big turn,having multiple krarks and mana generators you can with that spell only completely lock out any chance of your opponents doing anything besides attacking and playing lands because you can counter activated abilities with it aswell. Also twinning staff wins games if you are behind or just having a bad luck day.
Ill build this comment as I listen. We always need to be wary when using "fun" as a reason to ban or change something. You look hard enough, you will find that every aspect of the game is disliked by some people. Draw go control is a great experience. As a player going against it, unless you bring a linear deck, you need to make relevant decisions about how to approach the matchup, or you will lose easily. The same goes for the control player. Your answers need to be used well, or you will lose. The issue is when cards do too much and there are no decisions to make. As yall said, the wandering emperor is the problem. It is removal and a win condition in one, and at flash speed. Furthermore, the way not play into it either leaves you exposed to wipes or gives the control deck more time to dig. Remove the flash speed from TWE, and i have no qualms with the control matchup. I genuinely ask players that dislike facing draw go do they actually like mtg. If combat math is your absolute joy, sure, ill take that. Otherwise, draw go will not win fast, but it also will not play solitaire. Do you want your opponent to not interact with you? I wasnt paying attention when modern descended into two ships passing the night, but pioneer is well on its way there. It was the first 60 card constructed format i tried and the first i quit due to linear play patterns. In that format, a large majority of relevant decks are about cheating mana costs T3, defending the plays that cheat mana, or aiming to do some combo T3-4. If every deck does that, there are no decisions to make. Your mulligans will always be about stopping their thing. Whether or not you could stop the thing, a binary decision - actually, decision is too generous- situation, decides the game. When that is the case, why play coin flips? I disagree on spreading countermagic out because i disagree with the notion that there are no universal answers to big spells. Emergent ultimatum gets stopped by colorless cards anyone can run, easiest example is damping sphere. Choosing to have no answer is on the deck builder. Planeswalkers get answered by pithing needle effects if a player is that concerned about them. The arena economy sucks and i dont know how people support it. It is free, yes, but the system is soooo anti player unless you spend $$$. It caps your earnings unless you gamble with events. If youre going to spend $$$ or risk things, you may as well play MTGO. Then, you can at least sell your cards once you are done. EDH runs design now, obviously. This hurts everyone with product fatigue, broken cards busting 1 v 1 wide open, literal coin flips in sets, etc. EDH has its place, but it should not run design. I hope this gets fixed before it is too late. MtG is just a busted game when it comes to constructed. Wait long enough, they all boil down to do some busted thing as fast as possible. Every format struggles with this issue, even standard with convoke. Decisions rarely matter unless it is a midrange mirror, and even those can feel swingy and snowbally because cards are busted and so many run away with the game on their own. Cant answer bronco, preacher, raffine immediately? Youve probably lost.
I think the part about programming the cards was misinformed. Keywords ARE trivial to add. But most Magic cards go beyond just having plain keywords. Most of the keywords are prefaced by unique conditions or what have you. I guess consider something like "When you eat a food, do X. Repeat for each food you've eaten while this minion is alive." That's a very simple mechanic but you would need to actually manually create that for that creature, and that's proabably just draft chaff. There's like 20 sets a year and they all have 400 cards. There are way more complicated/unique card examples but I'm too tired to come up with any. Some cards have to be aware about certain states that aren't usually kept track of. And all of this has to work within a long twisted codebase. When they're looking at cards from a set, they can't just choose to ONLY import the simple cards. A set in MtGA has to have packs and the whole nine yards, so it's an all or nothing thing. Nothing about it is particularily IMPOSSIBLE, it just takes a lot of manpower and oversight to check that each card actually behaves exactly as its rules text suggests.
I really like the deserts from Thunder Junction in this deck to get the last bits of damage :)
As a programmer who has worked for a couple big companies, I just wanna put out there what I think about Arena's slowness to add cards. I totally understand Dylan wanting to give the benefit of the doubt here, but YGO is, imo, much nastier to program for vs Magic, if you do things right. YGO *does* have concrete engine rules, but so many of the cards are ad hoc sort of effects with often bespoke logic. MTG has very rigid comp rules, and even with more unique effects, you can decompose them. If I were given 6 devs and told to make an MTG engine, I'd go through the comp rules and implement everything with behaviors tied to each thing. Even really strange one off cards, like Trinisphere, have little clauses in the rules that make them work. You can block out your comp rules with the relevant stuff, leaving yourself openings to enhance later, and you should be able to make a robust editor in XML or something that a dev should be able to quickly knock out any new effect that comes out that doesn't do anything novel. The fact that Emrakul took so much effort for MTGO indicates to me that they weren't accounting for the breadth of effects, and being somewhat ad hoc with their programming: was mindslaver not a card already in the game? Did they not already have an effect that controlled target player? Even if it was an activated effect on something else, it should have been reusable as an ETB. Did they just code mindslaver/emrakul as separate one-off effects unrelated to one another? As I said, YGO is suited for that sort of ad hoc programming, but I think MTG becomes a pile of painful code if you use a similar approach. No shade on them, it's an old code base written during 7th edition, but I doubt that they set themselves up a good foundation. The host's question regarding keywords is pretty naive, since no cards exist anymore that just say "flying" on them with nothing else, but he is right that the engine should be able to decompose 99% of effects. I want to be clear that the decision between "incompetence" and "not enough people" isn't quite right, the most competent devs in the world given insufficient time and bad or unclear requirements would probably land themselves in this spot. No doubt there are tons of TODO's in the code marking spots they wanted to refactor or build it better. Rocky initial development causing horrible tech debt is almost surely to blame.
Just to elaborate with an example, since my initial comment is long: There's a common joke that every mechanic is kicker, but it's kind of true. If you were to make a robust engine that can handle the idea of "effect 1, or pay a cost for effect 2" then something like the new Gift mechanic for Bloomburrow would take no extra effort. You have an engine that understands a cost, which could be *any* effect. It could be something obvious paying mana, sac'ing something you control, or any other action that's less obvious, like summoning a creature for either player, or having the opponent draw a card. Then, the text "Gift a Fish" would be decomposed into your engine as a card with kicker, where the kicker cost is summoning a 1/1 blue fish token on the opponent's side. With a good editor and a robust engine, this *should* be trivial for a dedicated dev to go through and knock out. Again, if they do not have this robust system, it is not because they are incompetent, but because they were probably given really tight confines to work in and who knows how many devs cycled through with how many changes in management over the course of Arena and MTGO's development.
I take your points. The hypothesis should have been that their lack of ability to implement new cards on MTGO/Arena is due to intentional lack of resources or incompetence on the part of the programmers _and/or_ management.
As LoR's strongest soldier (yes I know, zombie game player) it's interesting to compare what were generally considered "bad' periods in the game's short 4 year life to the problem trends outlined here. Some trends include: -curve out gameplay was generally considered boring both to play and play against. Players hated when a deck's optimal gameplay was "1 drop on T1, 2 drop on T2, 3 drop on T3" etc -players really disliked decks which were primarily collections of generically good independently strong "above rate" cards which don't meaningfully interface with the other cards -players didn't like decks with extremely narrow or specific wincons, because it made games against them feel samey. A good example of this was how every game against Trundle Lissandra Control boiled down to "T8 Ice pillar into matron into Watcher" and only that -players don't like when one player takes an egregiously larger amount of game actions and spend large portions of time waiting, regardless of whether they are winning or losing -aggro versus control matchups are well received when aggro has hail mary plays lategame, and badly received when the matchup was entirely defined by if the aggro player ran out of gas before winning. It was very important who was on the beatdown switched several times a game. -players liked when decks' card economy ebbed and flowed and tended to not like decks which simply either won or ran out of gas and never got more -players liked routinely seeing most of the cards in their deck even if they didn't play all of them, and disliked when they'd only see less than half of the cards in their deck (keep in mind LoR had no true tutors) -players really don't like when a card effect has been worded in a particular way to exclude it from interacting with other cards, especially when it clearly wouldn't be a balance problem either. -some of the most well regarded cards were cards which could be threats or answers to threats or answers to answers, especially if they could conditionally be more than one at the same time. -complex cards are well liked as long as the abilities are related to each other -games where the two decks played on different axis were generally disappointing, like if a match was a board based combat deck versus a spell based combo deck Obviously LoR is a different game than MtG, but it's interesting to see it in comparison to the game that many of its dev decisions are a direct response to.
say you like insane midrange slop without saying you like insane midrange slop
Because Horizons Block Constructed is such a fun and skill-intensive format in comparison to classic Modern!
02:32:06 it felt awesome losing to both ashlask (ass lick idk the new eldrazi commander) and ulalek at the MODERN horizons 3 pre release and I had no idea you could even open toilet commander cards in the play boosters
I continue to be baffled as to why there isn’t a concerted “revolt” by players of Real Modern (2011-2021). Why not start organizing unsanctioned Horizonless Modern tournaments and pushing Horizonless Modern everywhere, refusing to play in sanctioned Modern events, etc. from players to force WotC’s hand on the subject? Horizonless Modern is the only path forward, but sheer complacency and refusal to fight stands between it and us. They just keep eating the pigslop when they could easily do something about the problem. Even just refusing to play Modern and playing Pioneer instead would be SOMETHING, but no, Modern is somehow doing better than both Standard AND Pioneer both in paper and MODO. I just want people to stop being broken bucks about Horizons. Complacency is the great enemy. You guys are totally off base in regards to the comment at 3:37:46, btw. Core sets (from M10 onwards) and three-set blocks were great. Did all of the issues you've talked about in these podcasts exist back when we had those? No? Then you see the point. The art since 2015 has leaned heavily into this dull Artstation photorealism (often including outright photobashing) - this has partially been ameliorated by a the glut of variant artwork lately, but it’s still an issue. This isn't about cartoony stuff like Foglio - they could never do a set with visual aesthetics like Lorwyn/Shadowmoor these days. The game should look like classic fantasy artwork, not a Marvel movie.
Perhaps people enjoy modern horizons more than you think
@@jadegrace1312 yes, I’m aware that the wretched demiurge Yaldabaoth has many slaves
01:32:17 most corporate way to say hey don't play our game then
I am in this weird space where Magic used to be my primary hobby, but because of the many numerous problems with the game I am playing it less and less, but I have not found adequate hobbies to fully replace it, so Magic still continues to live 'rent free' in my head even though I don't like it.
Yes.
Have you guys tried touching grass or having s3x?
Get into a sport. I started ballroom dancing basically for that reason and now have friends who smell good and stuff to do on the weekends.
I've been trying Warhammer 40k as a hobby replacement. I really enjoy painting models, but it is a solitary activity. There is a bit of a hurdle before I can graduate to actually playing 40k and get into the social aspect of it.
Kinda the same for me, I started brainstorming ideas for TTRPGs, TCGs and board games and to get more experience I started trying out games. Most of the times I go for games with good 2 player mode to play with my wife (my favorite so far is Res Arcanum, it even has a draft mode if you want that). Alternatively go play online some TCGs on digital clients (I did play pretty much all digital CCGs in my lifetime, I revisited some but nothing is what I am looking for. elder scroll legends was great when it released, eternal had also a great draft mode). MTGA is actually free if you are good at drafting. Or play some good solo deckbuilder games like slay the spire.
afaik they use machine learning (aka AI) to code the cards for arena so I'm not convinced that they actually take longer to code than a yugioh card. obviously you'll have to audit and potentially adjust the cards that this spits out, but for any random french vanilla card it should take no effort at all
Citation needed, because if you knew anything about software you'd know this is not possible
To explain the stupid three year rotation: They have to get rid of a bunch of overstock from currently (soon to be eight sets) that did Draft-set boosters.
Stack Interaction in other colors exists with cards like Tamiyo’s Safekeeping. The issue is that those cards are usually not good enough to see maindeck play unless they’re Veil of Summer good or you’re building a linear combo deck.
I’d also argue that going over someone extending an advantage with lethal burn spells is stack interaction. I get that you don’t like burn, but price of progress -> fireblast on your own end step bc your opponent activated something is great gameplay.
I've been focusing on pauper and pioneer. I have 3 modern decks. At current pricing and rotation from horizons and universes beyond sets, I can't justify spending more on the format. On card quality, the recent assassin's creed cards are the thinest flimsiest cards I have seen yet. Edit: on the subject of cheap entry points into the game, I think wotc wants commander to fill that role. That's why they print 24 precons a year. As players, we have the idea in our heads that standard should be cheap. I don't think wizards agrees with that anymore. In their heads, standard is for people that like rotation and draft.
From what I understand, the goal is that standard is and will stay a magic arena thing. Paper magic is now synonimous with commander and I think that was the plan all along.
1:07 Don't give counters to other colors dude. The other colors ways of interacting with big spells is "killing the opponent before they can cast them". If people are cheating big spells too easily, well, there is the problem; not the spell itself.
I've talked to people about play/draw fixes and here's what we came up with: Player 2 starts with a land token that you can tap and sacrifice to make 1 of any color. The fact that it's a token means you don't need to bring a special "real card" to play and you don't get a land in your graveyard. The fact that it's a land fixes using a treasure, so that artifcat synergies don't get messed up. You only get the ramp effect once, and so the effect is that non-games are less likely from crazy turn 0 plays from the person on the play. It almost makes scam a reasonable deck to play against, because now you can have a 1 mana answer and not just auto-lose the game before you get to play a land.
I think I might quit playing Modern when the Marvel universe beyond set comes out. I don't want to have sit down across from some guy playing his Spiderman Assassin Deck
3:55:55 See the thing is they DID give us "Good" answer cards in MH2, it just so happened that the answers also doubled as threats, and they got so oppressive that they banned one. There was absolutely nothing worse than an opponent scamming a turn 1 Fury and you actually just lose the game on the spot because it dodges all the removal and none of your creatures can actually trade in to it.
This is a fascinating video, but i do wish there was slightly more discussion of the "ideal" game play pattern to accompany the problematic mechanics discussion. For instance, blood moon is clearly a feels bad mechanic, but it also seems to be a card that serves as a middle ground between mass land destruction and a game where "uninteractable" lands take over. Just feels like the discussion is missing an additional layer of detail to consider which effects are "bad" but necessary versus effects that are just unfun versus effects that can just become too strong, etc... Excellent video.
We've touched on "ideal" game play patterns before and unfortunately an explanation would be very long, so to briefly discuss this: I think the most important thing is player agency; does it feel like your wins/losses are a result of skill or making mistakes, rather than randomness. Obviously the game has variance and sometimes you lose purely as a result of luck, so it's about striking a good balance. I believe competitive MTG has moved way too far into gameplay where you need specific, narrow answers at exactly the right moment, too early, sometimes multiple times a match (Ragavan, Blood Moon, etc.) or where you literally can't do anything (e.g. vs. Scam on the draw).
I am not sure if you touch on it in the video but id love to see you two design a cube. It would be interesting to see the designs you include or how opinions on cards change with respect to the environment. Eg grief being worse without a scam spell
We actually both have cubes. Here's mine: cubecobra.com/cube/overview/86f7325f-2a65-4006-9160-ee7b86aadcca Here's Dylans: cubecobra.com/cube/list/43ec42bf-0088-4801-bbd2-afca6c8a7a27
Wizards should make Standard and Pioneer precons that give strong manabases to new players. These decks should not try to be meta or else they run into the same problems discussed in the video: Auras was instantly irrelevant and Lotus field was scalped for Omniscience Instead of meta, if the precons were based on color pairs or triples, Standard players would have something to 1) Play with right away and 2) Use as a shell for a meta deck It's important that the decks should have 4x cards in the mana base at the very least. And secondarily the decks should be relatively balanced to play against other precons. Even draft chaff for spells would be fine if it meant that these kinds of decks could survive on shelves for new players to get started with 1 purchase If wizards printed Standard Starters like this and put them on the shelf for 20 bucks next to commander precons, maybe I could convince someone to play a game of Magic with me after we swapped out of an hour slog of waiting for my turn and hearing people complain about threat assessment. Because that's all my LGS plays
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us AmmiO