Board 8 > Trdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related

(+) Yeah! (+)

Emeraldegg posted...

I protest dimir being purely evil as they were one of the few unambiguously good guilds to help fight off bolas, and were in fact hte main reason ravnica knew bolas was coming

Also what does FIRE mean

The Dimir in the original block were purely evil. They got more nuanced in the future blocks under Lazav's leadership, much like the Rakdos.

Kenri posted...

I regret to inform you that the imp is actually 1/1 for 3. I mainly just like it for the cute art :3

Fuck. I'd drop it by 10 more points, but upon review the art is in fact cute, so it gets to stay where it is.

oh okay fair, I thought you were talking the context of the entirety of ravnica as we have it, including the more recent stuff

Oh right, FIRE design was a pushback against the intentional depowering of Standard that happened in Battle for Zendikar and Kaladesh. It deliberately pushed for more powerful and exciting cards instead, especially at common and uncommon. Unfortunately, it also pushed more and more complexity into higher-rarity cards, resulting in design abominations like Questing Beast and Bonecrusher Giant. Throne of Eldraine gets its bad reputation because it was the first set to explicitly use FIRE design and created multiple obnoxious cards as a result, but FIRE's legacy remains with the ever-heightening power and complexity creeps.

Anyway, more later

Honestly the most obnoxiously pushed card in Standard recently for me was Fable of the Mirror Breaker. Why does that card just do everything I hate it.

I was in grad school when it came out, and by the time I started playing again, it had already been banned. Having seen it in Cube though... yeesh.

Yu Gi Oh TCG

It's a lot more reasonable in higher powered formats I think honestly. Since it's not doing any one busted thing, when the overall power level gets high enough it's just a fair card with a good rate.

oh I guess oko being so OP makes sense if eldraine was the blatant first attempt at making cards too good

Akroma Angel of Wrath (include Angel of Fury/lore stuff here too don't mean just the one card)

Mind Goblin

Wait. So were the Rakdos not pure evil in OG Ravnica?

Cube drafts

redrocket posted...

Wait. So were the Rakdos not pure evil in OG Ravnica?

I got more the vibe that they were chaotic neutral with maybe a slight evil lean than super evil.

The back of the card

The pink back of the card

Teferi

trdl23 posted...

See if you can recite all of Questing Beast's rules text from memory.

I'm thankful for digital magic because I would not have remembered he gets around protection from green the two times out of a thousand it came up.

Tirofog posted...

Secret Lairs

15/100

I enjoyed a couple of the early Secret Lairs despite the Walking Dead fiasco, but now they're just cancerous. They completely cut out retailers that keep the game thriving and instead just want your money directly for cards that would previously be parts of collections like From the Vault -- which you could buy locally.

Quality issues abound now, especially with foils, and many of their "drops" have atrocious EV and even more atrocious art. I'm all for art experimentation, but I do want my Magic cards to look like, well, Magic cards. All the time and development they invest on this crap would be better served on making cooler art for the normal releases, or at least not burning reprint equity on this.

Don't buy Secret Lairs. Don't give WotC your money. They don't need your money. Local game stores need your money.

GANON1025 posted...

Brian Kibler

80/100

Cool dude as far as I know. Met him once before I knew he was a legend, super chill guy. I think he was glad to have a Magic player not know who he was for once. It's too bad he stopped playing in favor of Hearthstone and even too-er badd-er he ended up as part of the 30th anni fiasco, but I'm not going to hold it against him too much... even if I probably should. Ah well.

Bitto posted...

Timmy, Johnny, and Spike

75/100

These psychographics are really useful from a game design perspective, but like anything resembling pop psychology, they end up being labels players attach to themselves without any nuance nor context. We all have some level of each of these in us, and it can fluctuate day-to-day and format-to-format. Identifying yourself or someone else as a single one of them (especially Spike since it almost always gets used with negative connotation) misses the point.

DireKrow posted...

Niv-Mizzet

100/100.

Is he executed perfectly? Absolutely not. I don't care. Niv is one of the coolest ever takes on an ancient badass dragon. He also has probably the most pants-shittingly terrifying statblock in D&D 5e.

Isquen posted...

Everyone Lives! from the Dr. Who set.

84/100

One of the coolest designs I've seen in a while and a great interpretation of one of Who's best moments. Still suffers a bit from being a Doctor Who card and the art making absolutely no sense if you haven't seen the corresponding episode.

Emeraldegg posted...

Secret lairs being limited run instead of print to order

15/100

Trading terrible lead times for mega-FOMO. Secret Lairs suck.

TomNook posted...

Earthbind

69/100

Nice

hylianknight3 posted...

Shandalar

82/100

I never got to play it myself, and it would probably be lower if I had. As an observer, seeing Magic with its wonky AI, 90s CRPG jank exploration mechanics, ante rules, and other stuff... it's not a great game but it's an incredibly charming one. Not to mention the delightful tutorial FMV stuff.

Eddv posted...

The Murders that occured at Karlov manor

40/100

Cool premise, cool set, but the actual story beats grow more wack as I think about them. Teysa's death should have been 5D-chessed to be something she saw coming and could leverage in her favor because 5D-chessing misfortune is Teysa's entire thing. Zegana deserved better too. And Aurelia should've gotten got so that Feather could take her rightful place as Boros guildmaster.

More tomorrow

redrocket posted...

Wait. So were the Rakdos not pure evil in OG Ravnica?

They absolutely were, sorry that I implied otherwise. They just weren't the "bad guys" that drove the plot and caused the Decamillennial crisis.

Raka_Putra posted...

Destroy All Humankind. They Can't Be Regenerated.

77/100

It's been a while since I saw bits and pieces of it, so that's the only thing I can draw from, but iirc it's a nice wholesome manga despite the name. Plus it's by a mangaka who clearly was around for old-school Magic. Apparently it's still going? I'll need to put it along with everything else in my backlog.

pyresword posted...

The Tolarian Community College Youtube channel

88/100

I've gotten kind of exhausted with the channel by now, especially because he focuses so heavily on Commander now. I can't blame him, that is the biggest format in the game now, no matter how much I dislike it. You see one Booster Box Game, you've seen them all; same with Secret Lair reviews.

He still puts out the best product reviews, and he isn't afraid to call out terrible products or choices by HotC, yet he avoids delving into the siren song of cynicism. Even though I only check a few of his videos anymore, it's still the first Youtube channel I recommend any Magic player watch.

redrocket posted...

Magic: The Gathering Arena

71/100

It's f2p Magic. It has the same predatory freemium business model as any other online card game, the wildcard economy sucks ass, and the focus on best-of-one matches is incredibly obnoxious -- especially with the game deliberately smoothing your opening hands in Bo1.

At the same time... it's f2p Magic. I go on Arena almost every day to do my quests. I get to practice drafting for free before I go and spend money to do it IRL. I won a Festival in a Box a few months ago without spending a dime. I get to test out standard decks whenever I want to. The interface largely works (auto-tapper aside, but that's something entirely in the player's hands to use it or not). It looks nice, and it feels nice. If I use it and appreciate it so often, I can't really go too low on my score.

Eldrazi as an archetype

Xtlm posted...

Stronghold Overseer

50/100

One of the cards of all time. Having flying and shadow is pretty funny -- good fuckin luck blocking it

greengravy294 posted...

jace the mind sculptor

85/100

One of the ACTUAL cards of all time. It's kind of incredible how this guy, once one of THE most amazing cards in the game, has become completely "eh" now. Nigh-unplayable in Modern thanks to the Horizons sets fucking everything up and The One Ring just doing his job better at an easier cost. He's only a mid-level pick in Cube now, too.

Still, I want to honor his legacy with this rating. He really was fun to play with, especially in Eternal formats with both better answers to him and support for him. My Jace is signed by Luis Scott-Vargas, and I'll always keep it.

azuarc posted...

Land

85/100

To hijack a quote from Winston Churchill: Magic has the worst resource system of any card game except for all the others that have been tried.

That's not entirely true; Netrunner's freedom and agency in its systems were beautiful, and I still mourn for that game. Still, as much as getting mana-screwed / flooded leads to frustrating non-games, getting guaranteed perfect curves has its own issues, as seen in games like Hearthstone where it makes ramp even more busted. The color system also forces constraints in deckbuilding and makes decks adhere to philosophies without going force-fed cookie-cutter like Yugioh archetypes. The game also gives you plenty of agency on what to do with lands should you so desire, with abilities like Landfall, stuff like Seismic Assault letting you weaponize them, creaturelands letting you actually use excess mana to give you a hidden threat late-game...

You come around on lands once you've played other games. At least I did.

Mobilezoid posted...

Jumpstart

??/100

I never really interacted with it in any capacity so I can't really rate it. I've heard it's good.

Peter Adkison selling out to Hasbro

The Wandering Emperor

trdl23 posted...

You come around on lands once you've played other games. At least I did.

I definitely did not. I'm still in the position of your Churchhill quote without the disclaimer at the end.

I also haven't played MTG in a long time, and they've added various mechanics that alleviate the situation a bit...at least for non-mono decks, anyway. But I'll take the guaranteed mana of Hearthstone over losing a card intermittently any day.

Nominate: Walls

Scorching hot take: Cardgames are better when the resource you fight over is literal board positioning over mana. The game Duelyst died because of mismanagement, but its idea of grid-based combat was a brilliant way of controlling ramp in a consistent resource environment by limiting the amount of ways an opponent could leverage it with smart positioning.

There was another game by Wizards of the Coast called Duel Masters that had a really cool mana system where there was no land and every card in the game was overloaded to be able to be played as mana if you chose to play them upside down as your one mana play a turn. For instance you could instead of playing Lightning Bolt that does 3 damage to anything as an instant you could play it upside down and have it function as a mountain.

It was really neat. Game never really took off though.

Was also a fan of the Star Wars CCG that let each player start with mana in play and holding control of locations was used to do damage to your opponent and most locations had mana symbols for both sides of the board. And then Legend of the Five Rings was kinda cool because you'd get 4 cards revealed a turn so it was unlikely you'd ever get clogged with mana.

There are actually a lot of games with better mana systems than mtg but mtg is the bare minimum of passable. I'd probably rate it like a 20-30 as one of the weaker elements of the core game to be honest. Getting mana screwed either way (too much or too little) feels real bad and there's no real out for it.

End rambling tirade.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Scorching hot take: Cardgames are better when the resource you fight over is literal board positioning over mana. The game Duelyst died because of mismanagement, but its idea of grid-based combat was a brilliant way of controlling ramp in a consistent resource environment by limiting the amount of ways an opponent could leverage it with smart positioning.

Man I wish you'd been around for Android Netrunner. It's still the greatest card game I've ever played (yes, above mtg) and right up your alley, but the LCG model is just unviable.

Rest in Peace, king

Lopen posted...

There was another game by Wizards of the Coast called Duel Masters that had a really cool mana system where there was no land and every card in the game was overloaded to be able to be played as mana if you chose to play them upside down as your one mana play a turn. For instance you could instead of playing Lightning Bolt that does 3 damage to anything as an instant you could play it upside down and have it function as a mountain.

This is what Lorcana does (and does quite well), though some cards can't be played for mana/"ink." I'm excited to see how that game develops. It has super strong roots.

my biggest gripe about lands is how expensive the good ones are. If you wanna run a true multicolor you p much need fetches and shocks, and good luck if you wanna run 5 color lmao.

and we don't talk about cavern of souls

trdl23 posted...

though some cards can't be played for mana/"ink."

Yeah I believe Duel Masters had similar mechanics-- or rather at the bottom of each card had the amount of mana it gave in an upside down digit and sometimes that number would be 0

I mean it was pretty much always 1 but yeah some cards could have 0, or 2 or 3 with restrictions of some sort I believe. I don't remember the cards but yeah, the potential was at least there to change the value down there baked into the card design

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Scorching hot take: Cardgames are better when the resource you fight over is literal board positioning over mana. The game Duelyst died because of mismanagement, but its idea of grid-based combat was a brilliant way of controlling ramp in a consistent resource environment by limiting the amount of ways an opponent could leverage it with smart positioning.

I really enjoyed how Faeria handled this. I think that game died off primarily because its games ran longer, but the positional/board development element is probably the best I've seen in a game.

Mana burn

Isn't Netrunner still kinda maintained by the fanbase? I guess it's harder to find players, but I did play it with a friend a year or so ago. Pretty cool asymmetrical gameplay.

What is the critical flaw with the LCG model?

Lorcanas 3rd set looks uhhh insane?

Im excited to see it play out

Duel Masters has a better mana system than MTG and it's not close. Still pissed at Wizards for mismanaging that game and it's successor into the ground in the West. Basically any card can also be played as a land and that led to some really interesting early game decision points based on what card you want to "throw away", in addition to significantly reducing the number of non-games. (Though I also think that problem is overstated by people complaining about the land system tbh, at least the way current Magic design works).

In principle Duel Masters mechanics allowed for cards to be played for 0 or 2 mana but all the English cards released just had a 1 in that slot. Not sure about current Japanese DM cards where the game is still ongoing.

Fun fact one of the lead designers for Lorcana (Ryan Miller) previously worked on Kaijudo (the failed successor to Duel Masters) and very obviously loved that game. Would not surprise me at all if it was a major inspiration for Lorcana based on that, though I don't know much about Lorcana mechanics.

The Lore

The actual Streets in New Capenna

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Yeah, it's surprisingly still ongoing.

Nom:
My Little Pony cards.

I played Duel Masters a bit, but I didn't like the surrounding mechanics enough for the resource system even to "click" in how quality (or not) it was. Didn't try Kaijudo because I heard it's just Duel Masters again.

Lorcana takes a couple elements of it, but it's really more like Keyforge than anything -- which is good, since Keyforge had some great ideas (e.g. being a "race" game instead of a "knockout" game) but the execution was a bit of a mess.

Anyway more tomorrow

trdl23 posted...

Didn't try Kaijudo because I heard it's just Duel Masters again.

This is accurate. The cards are different, but there's only a handful of small differences in the rules and you wouldn't really expect people to have strongly differing opinions of the two games.

Fetchlands

Richard Garfield

I can't believe I'm saying this

Leonardo da Vinci

AI art