LogFAQs > #978964502

BlackMageJawa posted...

Any of these videos about trying to play Magic with cards designed by AI
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLHPZ4KRrrKuyPuiAumJ-aO0x8fP_0Y43

90/100

Largely because Cardmarket content is just wonderful. I'm helping advise a store looking to get into content, and I hold Cardmarket as the gold standard of "fun stuff" unrelated to specific formats.

If you haven't seen Robo Rosewater on Twitter spitting out AI cards, it's a treat -- and somehow better than what you'll see from many "custom MTG" designers.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Ravnica block (ideally all three parts separately, but an overall rating is cool too)

93/100

You're not getting all three parts separately because I don't feel like writing an analysis the size of a goddamn book.

Original Ravnica is a masterpiece. The best example of bottom-up design creating a world so compelling that modern-day Ravnica is going full Sigil and officially taking Dominaria's place as the "central hub of the multiverse." We describe almost every two-color deck by its guild name. Many characters (or at least their successors) are well known even to fresh players because of how iconic they have become. Hybriid mana was a brilliant fresh piece of design that allowed for lore conveyance, accessibility, and multicolor payoffs even when mana issues would occur. The Ravnica trilogy of novels were fantastic pieces told episodically that blended into a fantastic payoff as the dissolution of the Guildpact welcomed all of the guilds' scheming for power to be brought into the light, while our protagonist Agrus Kos is increasingly disgruntled at having to prevent one madman after another from trying to subvert and/or conquer the city-world. Each guild was portrayed to have both wonderful and terrible qualities to them (except the Dimir, you need some thoroughly bad guys after all). I've DM'd a D&D campaign set in Ravnica where I drew upon both the novels and the cards themselves to generate experiences my players still talk about 5 years later.

Why do I dock 7 points from it, then? Because most of the actual guild mechanics lowkey suck.

-The Selesnyan mechanic, Convoke, was brilliant and deserves its place as getting rerun throughout other sets, even getting color-shifted multiple times. It is still best as a green-white mechanic, though. The rest? Well...
-The Boros mechanic, Radiance, played incredibly poorly in such a multicolor and hybrid-rich environment. You were often going to hit your own guys with bad effects and/or pump your opponents' guys with good effects, and while I miss symmetry in modern card design, this was egregiously awkward.
-The Dimir mechanic, Transmute, turned mediocre spells into hyper-specific tutors. This just didn't agree with their focus on milling (which itself was really cool for the time). It has enabled some combo ridiculousness though since Transmute dodges counterspells.
-The Golgari mechanic, Dredge, snapped the game in half.
-The Orzhov mechanic, Haunt, was extremely awkward to make work because it meant way too many conditions were needed to get a second, often lackluster payoff. The "good" haunt cards were generally just good ETB effects with the Haunt portion being ignorable.
-The Gruul mechanic, Bloodthirst, played pretty well and gave Red-Green a new focus to get aggressive early in order to make the big threats the combo is most known for.
-The Izzet mechanic, Replicate, was pretty cool, but it made it incredibly difficult to counter spells for the same reason as Storm cards: You can only counter one instance of it. I know it's hard to feel bad for counterspells, but it's the main way to interact with the instants and sorceries UR now leans on.
-The Azorius mechanic, Forecast, made absolutely no goddamn sense by making you tap mana on your upkeep in a color combo that largely wants to play Draw-Go.
-The Simic mechanic, Graft, had cool ideas but required you to play incredibly mediocre cards to compensate for supposed versatility that really wasn't there.
-The Rakdos mechanic, Hellbent, was perfect in terms of flavor, but having no cards in hand is pretty bad, and the payoffs for going Hellbent did not justify the inherently bad position you put yourself into. Strangely enough it would play far better nowadays, since Red's card-advantage mechanic of exiling cards to play in a limited time window gives a player options while still being Hellbent.

So yeah, three out of ten mechanics hitting isn't a great track record, which is why I can't give the most beloved block in MTG history a perfect score. I dock one point per mechanical failure. The rest is wonderful.