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I kind of wish that these two articles had focused a little bit more on the concept of the face-off as a way of exploring how you evaluate things, rather than becoming a tournament to decide which card is the most fun in Magic (although I do think that Rosewater did a good job stressing that these decisions were the result of his personal feelings, not some sort of sweeping judgement about the definition of fun). The point of comparing cards like this isn't to determine which cards will win, but rather to find out why you picked one over the other. Perhaps the article could have ended by summing up what MaRo discovered about himself through this exercise.

While I was trying to make these picks, I discovered that I had a lot of trouble because I have two conflicting definitions of fun:

1. Potential fun. These are cards that have the ability to do wacky things, but, when actually played, don't really increase the fun level for other players. This would include cards like Doubling Season and Stuffy Doll. The fun doesn't come from your interactions with your opponents (in fact, decks built around these types of cards can be extremely boring for whoever you're playing against), it comes from the joy of helping the card achieve its potential to do over-the-top things. I tend to like playing these decks more in duels than in multi-player because I feel less obligated to raise my opponent's level of fun in a duel.

2. Interactive fun. These are cards whose fun is derived from their wide variety of possible interactions with other players. This category includes things like Radiate, Cytoshape, and Fact or Fiction, whose functionality can change depending on what decisions your opponent makes. Both the fun and unfun aspects of these cards stem from the fact that anything can happen when you play them, which means that sometimes you nab a cool spell with Radiate, or Goblin Game causes a huge life swing, but sometimes you're just Radiating a shock while your Cytoshape sits in your hand for lack of good targets. I tend to enjoy these cards more in multiplayer because you have a wider range of possible interactions.

When decisions came up that pitted a card ouside of either of my ideas of fun (such as Grizzly Bears) against a card fit one or both of them, the choice was easy. The difficult decisions came when one card met one ideal of fun and the other card fell into the other category.
I still think that cards like Grizzly Bears are important for this exercise, though, because it helped me understand why they are outside of my definition of fun.

Mar 15, 2010 -- 9:09AM, oranges wrote:

Time to head off and build a Doubling Season/Warp World deck - you mean my Siege-Gang warps into six tokens and my planeswalkers are double big? Thanks MaRo!

This is a bombo remember that warp world puts the creatures, lands, and artifacts into play before the enchantments.

Still sounds like fun no matter which way you slice it. I think the problem with warp world and why it would not win is because it is usually just an "I win" card. If you build your deck with the card in mind then it usually serves as a finisher which I think puts doubling season over the top in this matchup.

Mar 15, 2010 -- 10:03AM, morticianjohn wrote:

Mar 15, 2010 -- 9:09AM, oranges wrote:

Time to head off and build a Doubling Season/Warp World deck - you mean my Siege-Gang warps into six tokens and my planeswalkers are double big? Thanks MaRo!

This is a bombo remember that warp world puts the creatures, lands, and artifacts into play before the enchantments.

The combo with Siege-Gang Commander is not a bombo.  It's true that Warp World puts creatures, lands, and artifacts onto the battlefield before enchantments, but Siege-Gang Commander's triggered ability doesn't go on the stack, let along resolve, until after Warp World finishes resolving.

It would be a bombo with permanents that gain counters as they enter the battlefield, though, such as the Arcbound creatures.


Also, note that Warp World does not put planeswalkers into play.  They go to the bottom of the library, along with the instants, sorceries, and auras that don't have legal objects to be attached to.