Magic the Gathering's design articles

[...You Lost Me]

Affinity can be a fine mechanic that encourages you to build around certain themes, so long as it doesnt' snowball off itself. The Affinity for Lands cycle was a clever way to make 2-4 mana creatures that were good in monocolor decks.

The primary problem with Affinity, and with a lot of artifact cards, is that they build on each other. Even if artifact lands didn't exist, putting Affinity for Artifacts on a bunch of artifacts was a bad idea.

Separately, artifacts in MtG suffer from what WotC calls the blob problem. Artifacts are usually colorless cards, which means it's easy to put all the good artifact cards in a single deck alongside the best artifact-synergistic colors (UB in Mirrodin, RUG In Kaladesh), and there isn't always a single broken card which makes individual bannings less effective. That's why 9 cards were banned during Mirrodin standard and 7 were banned during Kaladesh standard.

[OgreBattle]

FFtcg’s approach to colorless cards is...

- have two types, dark and light, that cannot be played if the other is on your field
- cannot be discarded for crystal points so dead in your hand
- can only play one permanent at a time unless you have enabling cards

Those are things MtG can’t really do now, and then the bestest color blue does artifacts best.

Colored enchantments occupy a similar space and many cards that destroy one destroy the other

[Mistborn]

Affinity was never the problem with Affinity, like no good version of that Deck even played Broodstar and cards like Myr Enforcer, Frogmite and Somber Hoverguard are eminently reasonable to the point that the Modern Affinity doesn't even play them anymore. The reason why affinity actually won games was the critical mass of artifacts powering Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault, and Cranial Plating.

As for current standard the problem is obviously Uro and to a lesser extent that ramp and ramp payoffs are too good. Like before the format was dominated by Bant Uro and then the banned a bunch of cards and all that changed is now the Uro decks are Sultai now. Like the card is both reasonable against aggro and brutally oppresses any non-Uro deck that's trying to grind you out.

Edit: If you want a review of Magic's design that's not also a marketing puff piece you might want to check out Kill Reviews which goes through all the sets from Ice Age to the first Theros.

[OgreBattle]

Edit: If you want a review of Magic's design that's not also a marketing puff piece you might want to check out Kill Reviews which goes through all the sets from Ice Age to the first Theros.

I did have fun with Zendikar, which he 'criticizes' because few did:
http://blog.killgold.fish/2015/02/kill- ... block.html

I don't really grasp what the criticism is, but I only played that set casually with allies and landfall aplenty.

[Mistborn]

I did have fun with Zendikar, which he 'criticizes' because few did:
http://blog.killgold.fish/2015/02/kill- ... block.html

I don't really grasp what the criticism is, but I only played that set casually with allies and landfall aplenty.

His beef with Zendikar era standard is threefold. First Zendikar limited sucks. Second he doesn't think landfall is a good implementation of the lands matter theme. Third both standard formats with Zendikar were abysmal. In Shards-Zen the format was Jund which ought to be a byword for boring midrange slog. Zen-Scars on the other hand was Caw-Blade a deck that was so oppressive they had to break out the banhammer in standard for the first time in 7 years.

[Mistborn]

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2009-05-04

I don't think this is all that good of an article given that it exists to justify Cascade, one of the worst mechanics ever printed. Like cascade and miracle are the go to examples for mechanics that amplify the sort of variance that players dislike.

Like as much as we love that one clip where Craig Jones topdecks the $16,000 Lightning Helix one of the most frustrating experiences in magic is losing a game to a lucky top deck. Both Miracles and Cascade take that scenario, amplify it, and even rub it in the other players face by flipping up the top card(or cards in the case of cascade) of the players a then putting it onto the stack.

[...You Lost Me]

I don't think this is all that good of an article given that it exists to justify Cascade, one of the worst mechanics ever printed. Like cascade and miracle are the go to examples for mechanics that amplify the sort of variance that players dislike.

That's a very aggressive statement, and the majority of MtG players would disagree with you. Cascade was well-received. It has a powerful mix of upside, controlled variance, and it gives free cards which players love. I think that article touches on almost every reason that Cascade is popular.

It's important to know when to stand back and differentiate between "I don't like this" and "players' don't like this". You may dislike this kind of variance, but a large contingent of players love it. People do want those Lightning Helix moments in their games.

[Whatever]

one of the most frustrating experiences in magic is losing a game to a lucky top deck.

The two most frustrating experiences in Magic are not drawing enough land and drawing way too much land. Nothing else comes close. It's the difference between getting to play and just sitting there watching.

Lucky moments are fine. Sometimes the other player gets their one out at the last possible moment. Sometimes you do. It's not even a big deal.

[OgreBattle]

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2009-05-04

I don't think this is all that good of an article given that it exists to justify Cascade, one of the worst mechanics ever printed. Like cascade and miracle are the go to examples for mechanics that amplify the sort of variance that players dislike.

Like as much as we love that one clip where Craig Jones topdecks the $16,000 Lightning Helix one of the most frustrating experiences in magic is losing a game to a lucky top deck. Both Miracles and Cascade take that scenario, amplify it, and even rub it in the other players face by flipping up the top card(or cards in the case of cascade) of the players a then putting it onto the stack.

I didn't play in the cascade environment but bloodbraid and so on did look like antifun to play against

I think the general idea of the article is good though. The randomness that's completely detached like a die roll is disliked, but randomness based on something under player control like deck construction is liked more.

I like the "reveal top card and if..." effects, I think there's a vampire boost that works if the top card is Black. That's a soft way to do 'environmental phases' using existing mechanics.

[Mistborn]

That's a very aggressive statement, and the majority of MtG players would disagree with you. Cascade was well-received. It has a powerful mix of upside, controlled variance, and it gives free cards which players love. I think that article touches on almost every reason that Cascade is popular.

Players will like any mechanic in the abstract so long as it is powerful, and cascade is very powerful. That said like OgreBattle alluded to players did not like that standard format in which cards with cascade were the dominant force, largely because decks built around cascade have a tenancy to be boring once the hit the table.

[...You Lost Me]

Players will like any mechanic in the abstract so long as it is powerful, and cascade is very powerful. That said like OgreBattle alluded to players did not like that standard format in which cards with cascade were the dominant force, largely because decks built around cascade have a tenancy to be boring once the hit the table.

After the mechanic was released and players played with it, they liked it. MaRo is on the record calling Cascade a well-received mechanic. Aaron Forsythe's major criticism of cascade is that players didn't find it fun when they built decks that reduced the randomness. The boringness you noted in Alara Reborn standard is the perfect indicator of where Cascade failed: it didn't have enough variance. Too much could be mitigated through deckbuilding, so the randomness that players wanted wasn't there.

The excitement of Cascade is why it is continues to show up outside of standard sets. Cascade cards have made appearances in Planechase, Commander, Modern Horizons limited, Archenemy -- formats where the randomness can take center-stage because players find it fun as hell.

[OgreBattle]

In the cascade environment, were there competitive decks that didn't use that mechanic at all?

[Mistborn]

In the cascade environment, were there competitive decks that didn't use that mechanic at all?

There was always the various builds of Bant which happened to not have any of the generically good cascade spells in their colors. Those decks along with Superfriends would eventually edge out Jund and Naya at the top tables after Rise of the Eldrazi. Of course before Rise was Bloodbraid Elf was putting 24 copies of itself in top eights.

The problem was that the best Jund-killers, Mtyhic Bant and Superfriends were these wallet eating monstrosities with tons of mythics. So if you had the misfortune to go to FNM during the era what you would be playing against was disproportionately Jund.

[infected slut princess]

For me I don't like most of their current art style. Everyone is mostly photorealistic with armor that's mostly stylized in that warcrafty way with segments. My favorite 90's 00's MtG cards had artist's style like Kev Walker (who does have big fantasy armor but composes it in a way where certain points stand out instead of it feeling like a pattern) and Rebecca Guay.

perhaps this is a bit off-topic but would you mind explaining what you mean about the fantasy armor?