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3 years ago ::
Mar 14, 2010 - 10:58PM
#11
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Date Joined:
Jul 10, 2008
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I believe Warp World  should have taken the finals since it is fun for each player, while Doubling Season  is only fun for the guy Solitairing out a bunch of tokens. Magic is ultimately a game of interaction among multiple players, and (in my opinion) effects that massively strengthen one player's gameplan are just less fun than those that create interesting moments or "subgames" for the whole table (even if they're not the Shahrazad  variety). Whenever I've seen Doubling Season played it has made everyone but the caster groan; the card has zero potential to interact with other players, except the "interaction" of them getting attacked to death by saprolings sooner than expected. On the other hand, whenever I've seen Warp World played (granted, this has only been in EDH, for what that's worth), it always prompts a few little subgames (which Maro says he enjoys). First everyone counts their permanents, comparing their numbers to their opponents'. Then it becomes a game of "kill your permanents, make more of my own" as players rush to Terror  each other's guys and activate their Kher Keep  s, Vitu-Ghazi  s. All of this before Warp World even resolves. Then take into account the adrenaline rush of flipping cards from your library (hoping for that Iona  or even just some lands), followed by the intricate stacking of Oblivion Ring  s, Shriekmaw  s, and Terastodon  s, and you have one fun card. EDIT: Using this same reasoning I chose Fact or Fiction  , Gifts Ungiven  , Fecundity  , Thieves' Auction  , and Goblin Game  in their respective categories. I am most definitely a Spike in that I enjoy winning a game by making a series of decisions better than my opponent(s), so I like cards that allow for strategic, interactive decision-making rather than randomness or one-sidedness. If I could have chosen a winner from all the candidates it would have been Thieves' Auction , since it is the only card that manages to test players' drafting abilities within the confines of a single game. How cool is that! 
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3 years ago ::
Mar 14, 2010 - 11:18PM
#12
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One thing I realized during this article (and part 1) is that reading it was incredibly fun. Sometimes, through all the mechanical muddling that goes on during design and play of games, you can forget what you're doing or why you're even here in the first place. At times like those, you read an article like this and remember why you play the greatest game in the world. Maybe I just have bracket fever due to the NCAA bracket being released today, but going through the bracket and reading the matchups as they occured was very enjoyable; I had a rooting interest in the matches, I made predictions as to what would win, I remembered fun stories of most of the cards, and I got some design insight into what I believe to be the nuber one most important aspect of Magic. In fact, these two articles might be my favorite MaRo articles ever. some thoughts on the fun-off results, spoilerized due to length
Show
Kudos to MaRo for being willing to pick against Mindslaver. I know how much he loves that card and how hard he fought to get it printed. And it is one of the most fun cards in Magic, and I'm very glad he won the fight to get it printed. But it's not the most fun of all time, because though it generates awesome stories, they are generally only awesome for one player. Here's a design lesson from me: As a player, there is almost nothing less fun than not being having your choices taken away from you. If you get put into a situation where you have no choice in what occurs in the game, why are you even sitting here playing this game. That's the feeling that can happen when this card is played against you. (Side-rant: This is why counterspell shouldn't be hated on nearly as much as it is). It took great skill to design that card, and probably even greater to realize that it isn't the best ever.
About doubling season winning: It was a great pick. It's probably not the most fun card in Magic history, but chosing it as the winner out of these 32 is perfectly acceptable. There are a lot of cool things you an do with it, and everyone can have fun with it in their own way (except for Spike I guess, but he's notoriously difficult to please) so it's a good overall pick.
One card in particular I have to comment on a bit is Booster Tutor. In an ideal world, all of us have infinite money to buy infinite boosters and infinite singles to test every awesome deck and strategy we want. Unfortunately, we do not live in that world, which means that most (almost all) players are limited by logistics (in this case, cash to buy boosters). The lesson we learned from Gleemax is that cards are no fun if you can't play them, and most of the Magic players I know wouldn't be able to play this card more than once a week or so due to budget contraints. And this problem exists for (almost) all of us, even if it's not as severe. Maybe it could work in Magic: Online at no cost to consumer or producer, but in real life it would be ridiculously unfair to the poorer players to make this a black bordered card. As an extreme example, imagine a player was in the finals of a PTQ and lost because he or she couldn't Booster Tutor because all his or her boosters were used up in prior rounds. Obviously this is the absolute worst case scenario, but it illustrates a problem with the cncept that exists in smaller degrees at every level of play: nobody wants to chose between breaking the bank and winning at Magic. If it weren't for this problem, I would probably consider Booster Tutor the #1 most fun card in Magic; unfortunately, it's too big of a problem to ignore.
One final comment: as America's college hoops fans prove year after year, bracket-based tournaments are fun. Very fun. A few years back there was an awesome You Decide! torunament of legends, which Akroma won. I just have to say, tournaments like those are a gold mine of awesome. They would help newer players learn about cool older cards, they would build community by providing us with some framework about what others enjoy about Magic, they would get everyone talking about card and deck ideas, and *drumroll* it would be fun! Gamefaqs.com hosts an annual tournament to determine the best video game character ever, and they consistently draw 125,000 votes per day for tournament matches. In addition, each year the site records 30,000+ entered brackets for an NCAA-style competition to predict the winners, proving that there is great potential in the power of brackets!
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3 years ago ::
Mar 14, 2010 - 11:20PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Jan 20, 2002
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I'm not the type of person who thinks about adding Doubling Season to every deck I own, even the counter/token-based decks, but I appreciate his choice, because large numbers and rewarding unconventional deckbuilding choices are fun. This is probably helped by the fact that it's a part of my personal favorite combo, Doubling Season / Opalescence  / Followed Footsteps  . (Think about it...)
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3 years ago ::
Mar 14, 2010 - 11:25PM
#14
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2009
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This thread is for discussion of this week's Making Magic, which goes live Monday morning on magicthegathering.com.
I agree with almost all of the sentiments, but there's one that really bugs me. Booster Tutor is probably the most unfun card I could think of. It forces you to spend money. I would never play with Booster Tutor. It should have auto-lost to anything, even Chimney Imp.
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3 years ago ::
Mar 14, 2010 - 11:47PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Jun 14, 2006
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I don't understand people's love of endless whispers  . It creates some of the most unfun games ever. Like shahrazad  it is such an annoyance when it comes into play that it probably shouldn't have been on this list to begin with. I think warp world  and doubling season  are clearly the two most "fun" cards out of these 32. In fact it's not really close until you get to the final matchup. If you haven't played with doubling season do it some day and you'll find out why he ranks it so high. He probably should have been more selective about his list. stuff like grizzly bears  and stuff should have been replaced by stuff like polymorph  , rite of replication  , ghostway  etc....
Don't be too smart to have fun
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3 years ago ::
Mar 14, 2010 - 11:58PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Mar 15, 2010
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I voted against Warp World every time. Im not claiming that it cannot be fun. Rather, whenever i see it played its in the context of a deck that seeks to take advantage of its features. Typically it ends up being fun for the person who played it, who has built their deck around taking advantage of its features, rather than the person(s) its being played against. Perhaps this is a consequence of constructed play.
I can see the argument that is it fun in certain multi player situations, but generally it just seems like a headache. Im really not sure why this would be in a deck, or played at all, if the person playing it didnt think they would profit from it some how. Sure, sometimes its a total flop for the person playing it and i guess that is fun for me if im one of that person's opponents. More often though it just seems like a big casting cost blowout of some kind: ob nix and gladeheart (or whatever, these are just modern examples) come down and the game is over.
For me Doubling Season is the clear winner here. It does something other cards dont and doesnt just end games. It may enable some otherwise unlikely scenarios, but i never feel like i got cheated out of the rest of my game because someone played it.
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3 years ago ::
Mar 15, 2010 - 12:16AM
#17
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Cytoshape was my clear winner (although I'd pick Mirrorweave over it anyday). It will do something different each game, it will interact with everyone at the table and it will create many memorable stories.
Remember when I put doubling season in a token deck? yeah, yeah I do, you and everyone else on the planet.
Remember when I was being attacked for lethal so I played Shock on your morph and you flipped it up as an Ironfist Crusher to save it and then I Cytoshaped my creature into an Ironfist and chump blocked your army and then swung back for lethal?
I wonder which story is more 'fun'? tricks make for far cooler moments than random splashy effects.
Fact or Fiction is a similar story. I have many great memories of that card digging into the 1-of out to save its owner from imminent death - and watching the other 4 cards go down the drain as we left them with a 1-4 split. Or having to choose between the most powerful card in their deck vs 4 others.
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3 years ago ::
Mar 15, 2010 - 12:23AM
#18
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Well, this article series has highlighted how different some of Maro's ideas of what's fun are from mine. I'm a little disappointed that even after I posted about why I nominated Phantom Nishoba, you still just highlighted the hard to kill part again. The large size, trample, and lifelink are more important. Phantom Nishoba is fun because it does two of Timmy's favorite things at the same time: smacking your opponent hard, and gaining lots of life.
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3 years ago ::
Mar 15, 2010 - 12:26AM
#19
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Date Joined:
Oct 23, 2003
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3 years ago ::
Mar 15, 2010 - 12:39AM
#20
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Date Joined:
Nov 14, 2002
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I'm sorry, but the "Most fun card in Magic" can't be a card that doesn't do anything on its own. Doubling Season simply doesn't do anything if you don't have the right cards.
IMO Shahrazad needs to be the winner. If playing Magic is fun, playing more magic has to also be fun.
Either that or Warp World.
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Kicker Aggro (Invasion Block)
