yeah the animations not being turned off makes very hesitant to even liking this a lot. It's not a hard pass, and I'll give it a chance, but it's really disappointing to me.
"Animations cannot be turned off"
And there we go. No, thank you.
"They were asking players to get involved in the beta. They also started that cards and collections in the beta will be wiped at times, (1:16:00) presumably because of changes and updates."
See, I don't get this. If I'm going to be an unpaid playtester for their new game, the least they could do is allow perks such as keeping what I have in my collection. This is why I never, ever play in any betas. My time is worth way more than that.
Dang, I misspelled flippy Jace's name in almost every place I used it (Vryn, not Vyrn). Stupid apostrophes messing up the old-school card linker (which is normally how I double check card names; everything pre-Shadows will link, unless it has an apostrophe) :(
I'm currently planning to record one featuring Vampires, as I found them to be an awesome tribe so far (and with a bunch of ways to overcome those stalled boards). I have been moving, so no drafts for the last few days, but I'll be back at it tonight.
About Sorin, here's something interesting: when he first showed up monoblack in Zendikar, he was definitely what I would call a 'good guy'... maybe more of an antihero, but still. It's when he got white added in that the story started to show him as this ruthless, pitiless, extremely cold character, even if his motives were 'good'. The one in which we get to flash back through Nahiri's story and what happened between her and Sorin... man, that was some heartbreaking stuff. Almost made me understand her unleashing a flying tentacled monstrosity on an unsuspecting plane as a means of vengeance.
Yeah the cookie cutter + powerful effects nature of the core PW team is what makes them unappealing to me. I am not spiky enough to appreciate cards just for their intrinsic win value. Though I am, I guess, enough of a spike to ignore my annoyance mostly. :p
By the way, I saw the videos, and boy, this Limited format doesn't look very dynamic, a lot of vanilla (or essentially vanilla) bodies piling up and staring at each other across the board until one side reaches critical mass. I hope the next drafts you record (please do not disappear until January!) will prove less stalling-prone.
And they're white, too. I always like when they disengage white from the idea of "good guys". White is lawful, not necessarily good. In fact, it can be pretty evil, they have inquisitors, jihad and stuff. Our world tells us organized power can be the ultimate evil.
They struggle more in depicting black as good. I guess Sorin is sort of a good guy? And Liliana was a good guy for a minute, I suppose. (Or was her joining the Gatewatch entirely self-serving?)
They've an easier life using red for chaotic good, and green can also easily comes off as neutral evil, or at least true neutral.
The opinion section gave me a good giggle. I don't agree with all of it, but I do agree with the sentiment.
In fact, once upon a time we had the Weatherlight. The Weatherlight was a skyship, and that skyship had a crew - so in a way, they were what the Gatewatch is now. I definitely understand the appeal of having a recurring cast of characters, but you know what was so great about the Weatherlight crew? They each got exactly one card - two at most, in the case of Crovax and Ertai, and in both cases they underwent severe transformation before showing up again. I remember how stoked I was to find out Squee was finally going to be printed in Mercadia, or Hanna in Invasion, or Tahngarth in Planeshift, or Gerrard in Apocalypse.
I'm okay with having an ongoing cast of central characters, but I think Wizards severely underestimates the power of finally getting to see a beloved character on card form - emphasis on 'finally'. When there's a new version of Jace/Chandra/Gideon at every corner and all virtually unchanged, it's hard to care, and even harder not to get annoyed.
Haha, tell me about it. The clothing and costumes are definitely nothing like the actual indigenous peoples of the Amazon (which is to be expected, since the main inspiration seems to be the Mayans and Aztecs), but I'll take it!
And yeah, I'm still pretty awestruck as to how perfectly everything fits together in the setting. Vampire conquistadores has to be a genius idea with a genius execution here.
Blue is the "favorite" because it, for nearly all of Magic's history, has had more of the color pie, and the stronger portions of it. Card draw is strong in this game, and it got paired with things that supported to quite well. The balance isn't as bad as it used to be, but the impact will always resonate through the game.
I think blue is and has always been the favorite color of pros, Spikes and insiders, because it's the color that "plays the game", it's the color of true power (and Power), and it's the color of wizards, therefore the most representative of *Wizards*. It's even the color of their logo!
So Jace is always the best walker because Jace is *the* blue walker. Despite the fact that Jace as a character is incredibly boring and unimaginative.
To be honest, all the original walkers are super-clichéd, except maybe Garruk (especially with the unexpected place where they brought his arc): the impulsive pyrokinetic redhead? The dark-haired femme fatale who's queen of the dead? The noble lion from Narnia in bipedal form?
I was quite happy between Kaladesh and Hour of Devastation, because for that short period, Jace was not the most printed walker, nor was he even close to the best in standard. Chandra was always been my favorite (she seems vastly more relatable than most of the other walkers).
I've long been of the theory that Jace is the "most popular" walker only because Wizards wants him to be. His versions have been so much better than most other walkers most of the time, that of course players are going to like the most powerful. Then, when he is the center of the story time after time after time, it seems more like Wizards saying 'Jace should be your favorite' and less 'we want more Jace' from the players.
If *one* of the Gatewatch is in every other set, that seems better. At least for a while until Gatewatch fatigue passes.
A while ago, we were talking about the likelihood of a Brazilian setting, and I think this is as close as it'll get. I mean, it's mostly Mesoamerica, but there's Amazonian stuff in there too, and that's yours, no? And conquistadores were Portuguese, too. By the way, looks like part of your European ancestors were vampires. :) I take that as a political statement – although a pretty easy one, who would ever defend conquistadores? They made sure not to use actual Spanish and Portuguese names, though, which would have been a bit too disrespectful.
I always used saved-up coins from completing the daily quests to buy the add-on blocks. Of course someoneone who played Arena more often than I do wouldn't be able to do that.
Here's something that might help keep some of the flow of cards into MTGO going - I don't think this would solve all of the problem, but it could be a partial solution in conjunction with other measures.
Make it so Arena players can only draft the very newest set. This is probably how they plan to do it anyway. Then, have MTGO let you draft, say, the last year's worth of sets. This also addresses players (such as myself) who often find at the end of a draft season "Awww, I wish I could have drafted that set some more times, it was so fun". That's how I feel about Hour of Devastation right now, in fact. At each rotation, they could put some popup dialogs in Arena saying "[NewSet] is here! (Want to draft [LastSet] some more? Click here to download Magic Online!)"
I am very curious whether the correct thing to do after Arena (hopefully) takes off is to cut the price of boosters/drafts somewhat on MTGO as well. The could consider a tiered approach - drafting the latest set is at a discount, since it's competing against free drafts on Arena (or maybe you have to grind for some game currency to buy a draft, as on Hearthstone - but still it's gonna be cheaper than MTGO by far). Drafting older sets is closer to or at current MTGO pricing. This gives people some incentive to draft the latest set on MTGO also, keeping card supply flowing, as they will feel a sense of urgency. "I'd better draft it now, because if I wait till after rotation it will cost me a lot more".
Wizards, ya listening? Anyway hope that helps, unless you've already thought of all that anyway. ;)
If they only had Eon Hub and two or three other "special case" cards, it wouldn't be too hard. But given the vast number of special case cards, the fact that some of their special changes interact with other cards special changes (which will cause bugs and debugging/fixing time), and that some of them require additional UI just for that one card, the total amount of man hours of work to support all cards in the history of magic is pretty large.
Cards like "Goblin Game" can be a lot of extra work for us game programmers, believe me.
Apparently I don't need to do all the work, since GoatBots have done it for us. Granted, I don't see their work anywhere, but their numbers seem reasonable:
Treasure Chest EV (2.45)
Type EV
Curated Card 4.63
Modern R/M 0.49
Play Points 2.48
Standard C/U 0.0083
Slot EV
#1 2.00
#2 0.36
#3 0.093
In fact, according to their prices Treasure Chests are plus-EV right now (assuming you use the Play Points). You obviously shouldn't buy them based on that (the price has already risen about 0.1 tickets since the update, and it'll probably go up more, and there is still a lot of variance), but it's very interesting, and confirms my hypothesis.
Hi SteveJeltz... the omission is intentional because when I started testing this deck, Monarch was not available to pauper... so after its arrival to the format I have not tested the card yet... but I will... tks!
yeah the animations not being turned off makes very hesitant to even liking this a lot. It's not a hard pass, and I'll give it a chance, but it's really disappointing to me.
"Animations cannot be turned off"
And there we go. No, thank you.
"They were asking players to get involved in the beta. They also started that cards and collections in the beta will be wiped at times, (1:16:00) presumably because of changes and updates."
See, I don't get this. If I'm going to be an unpaid playtester for their new game, the least they could do is allow perks such as keeping what I have in my collection. This is why I never, ever play in any betas. My time is worth way more than that.
Thanks! :)
The apostrophes got me too, having my son and nephew over has been more distracting than normal, I'll get that fixed and back up
Dang, I misspelled flippy Jace's name in almost every place I used it (Vryn, not Vyrn). Stupid apostrophes messing up the old-school card linker (which is normally how I double check card names; everything pre-Shadows will link, unless it has an apostrophe) :(
In case it wasn't obvious, the second decklist named "Idol Teachings" is actually "Mono Blue Control."
I'm currently planning to record one featuring Vampires, as I found them to be an awesome tribe so far (and with a bunch of ways to overcome those stalled boards). I have been moving, so no drafts for the last few days, but I'll be back at it tonight.
About Sorin, here's something interesting: when he first showed up monoblack in Zendikar, he was definitely what I would call a 'good guy'... maybe more of an antihero, but still. It's when he got white added in that the story started to show him as this ruthless, pitiless, extremely cold character, even if his motives were 'good'. The one in which we get to flash back through Nahiri's story and what happened between her and Sorin... man, that was some heartbreaking stuff. Almost made me understand her unleashing a flying tentacled monstrosity on an unsuspecting plane as a means of vengeance.
Yeah the cookie cutter + powerful effects nature of the core PW team is what makes them unappealing to me. I am not spiky enough to appreciate cards just for their intrinsic win value. Though I am, I guess, enough of a spike to ignore my annoyance mostly. :p
By the way, I saw the videos, and boy, this Limited format doesn't look very dynamic, a lot of vanilla (or essentially vanilla) bodies piling up and staring at each other across the board until one side reaches critical mass. I hope the next drafts you record (please do not disappear until January!) will prove less stalling-prone.
And they're white, too. I always like when they disengage white from the idea of "good guys". White is lawful, not necessarily good. In fact, it can be pretty evil, they have inquisitors, jihad and stuff. Our world tells us organized power can be the ultimate evil.
They struggle more in depicting black as good. I guess Sorin is sort of a good guy? And Liliana was a good guy for a minute, I suppose. (Or was her joining the Gatewatch entirely self-serving?)
They've an easier life using red for chaotic good, and green can also easily comes off as neutral evil, or at least true neutral.
The opinion section gave me a good giggle. I don't agree with all of it, but I do agree with the sentiment.
In fact, once upon a time we had the Weatherlight. The Weatherlight was a skyship, and that skyship had a crew - so in a way, they were what the Gatewatch is now. I definitely understand the appeal of having a recurring cast of characters, but you know what was so great about the Weatherlight crew? They each got exactly one card - two at most, in the case of Crovax and Ertai, and in both cases they underwent severe transformation before showing up again. I remember how stoked I was to find out Squee was finally going to be printed in Mercadia, or Hanna in Invasion, or Tahngarth in Planeshift, or Gerrard in Apocalypse.
I'm okay with having an ongoing cast of central characters, but I think Wizards severely underestimates the power of finally getting to see a beloved character on card form - emphasis on 'finally'. When there's a new version of Jace/Chandra/Gideon at every corner and all virtually unchanged, it's hard to care, and even harder not to get annoyed.
Haha, tell me about it. The clothing and costumes are definitely nothing like the actual indigenous peoples of the Amazon (which is to be expected, since the main inspiration seems to be the Mayans and Aztecs), but I'll take it!
And yeah, I'm still pretty awestruck as to how perfectly everything fits together in the setting. Vampire conquistadores has to be a genius idea with a genius execution here.
Blue is the "favorite" because it, for nearly all of Magic's history, has had more of the color pie, and the stronger portions of it. Card draw is strong in this game, and it got paired with things that supported to quite well. The balance isn't as bad as it used to be, but the impact will always resonate through the game.
I think blue is and has always been the favorite color of pros, Spikes and insiders, because it's the color that "plays the game", it's the color of true power (and Power), and it's the color of wizards, therefore the most representative of *Wizards*. It's even the color of their logo!
So Jace is always the best walker because Jace is *the* blue walker. Despite the fact that Jace as a character is incredibly boring and unimaginative.
To be honest, all the original walkers are super-clichéd, except maybe Garruk (especially with the unexpected place where they brought his arc): the impulsive pyrokinetic redhead? The dark-haired femme fatale who's queen of the dead? The noble lion from Narnia in bipedal form?
I was quite happy between Kaladesh and Hour of Devastation, because for that short period, Jace was not the most printed walker, nor was he even close to the best in standard. Chandra was always been my favorite (she seems vastly more relatable than most of the other walkers).
I've long been of the theory that Jace is the "most popular" walker only because Wizards wants him to be. His versions have been so much better than most other walkers most of the time, that of course players are going to like the most powerful. Then, when he is the center of the story time after time after time, it seems more like Wizards saying 'Jace should be your favorite' and less 'we want more Jace' from the players.
If *one* of the Gatewatch is in every other set, that seems better. At least for a while until Gatewatch fatigue passes.
I think the main problem with the guild pact was the storyline in Oath of the Guildpact. That story made so little sense.
Collective Brutality is a modern card, not standard
A while ago, we were talking about the likelihood of a Brazilian setting, and I think this is as close as it'll get. I mean, it's mostly Mesoamerica, but there's Amazonian stuff in there too, and that's yours, no? And conquistadores were Portuguese, too. By the way, looks like part of your European ancestors were vampires. :) I take that as a political statement – although a pretty easy one, who would ever defend conquistadores? They made sure not to use actual Spanish and Portuguese names, though, which would have been a bit too disrespectful.
I always used saved-up coins from completing the daily quests to buy the add-on blocks. Of course someoneone who played Arena more often than I do wouldn't be able to do that.
Here's something that might help keep some of the flow of cards into MTGO going - I don't think this would solve all of the problem, but it could be a partial solution in conjunction with other measures.
Make it so Arena players can only draft the very newest set. This is probably how they plan to do it anyway. Then, have MTGO let you draft, say, the last year's worth of sets. This also addresses players (such as myself) who often find at the end of a draft season "Awww, I wish I could have drafted that set some more times, it was so fun". That's how I feel about Hour of Devastation right now, in fact. At each rotation, they could put some popup dialogs in Arena saying "[NewSet] is here! (Want to draft [LastSet] some more? Click here to download Magic Online!)"
I am very curious whether the correct thing to do after Arena (hopefully) takes off is to cut the price of boosters/drafts somewhat on MTGO as well. The could consider a tiered approach - drafting the latest set is at a discount, since it's competing against free drafts on Arena (or maybe you have to grind for some game currency to buy a draft, as on Hearthstone - but still it's gonna be cheaper than MTGO by far). Drafting older sets is closer to or at current MTGO pricing. This gives people some incentive to draft the latest set on MTGO also, keeping card supply flowing, as they will feel a sense of urgency. "I'd better draft it now, because if I wait till after rotation it will cost me a lot more".
Wizards, ya listening? Anyway hope that helps, unless you've already thought of all that anyway. ;)
If they only had Eon Hub and two or three other "special case" cards, it wouldn't be too hard. But given the vast number of special case cards, the fact that some of their special changes interact with other cards special changes (which will cause bugs and debugging/fixing time), and that some of them require additional UI just for that one card, the total amount of man hours of work to support all cards in the history of magic is pretty large.
Cards like "Goblin Game" can be a lot of extra work for us game programmers, believe me.
That was recommended in the reddit where I posted this as well. I will be doing it going forward, as it is quite a sound and solid suggestion.
Apparently I don't need to do all the work, since GoatBots have done it for us. Granted, I don't see their work anywhere, but their numbers seem reasonable:
Treasure Chest EV (2.45)
Type EV
Curated Card 4.63
Modern R/M 0.49
Play Points 2.48
Standard C/U 0.0083
Slot EV
#1 2.00
#2 0.36
#3 0.093
In fact, according to their prices Treasure Chests are plus-EV right now (assuming you use the Play Points). You obviously shouldn't buy them based on that (the price has already risen about 0.1 tickets since the update, and it'll probably go up more, and there is still a lot of variance), but it's very interesting, and confirms my hypothesis.
Hi SteveJeltz... the omission is intentional because when I started testing this deck, Monarch was not available to pauper... so after its arrival to the format I have not tested the card yet... but I will... tks!
I'm very surprised that you're running a midrange deck that doesn't involved the Monarch mechanic. Is the omission intentional?