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2 years ago ::
Jan 28, 2011 - 1:41PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2008
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This thread is for discussion of this week's Making Magic, which goes live Monday morning on magicthegathering.com.
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:09PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Feb 26, 2004
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I would have not given BSC trample. First off, increasing its cost is completely irrelevant; no-one hardcasts an 11-mana creature, and if they do, forcing them to wait for one more mana hardly makes a difference. So giving it trample just means it's deadlier when someone Tinkers it into play on turn 3. Secondly, with trample and infect it's just a double-strength DSC, just another beatdown fatty, not anything special and new. But infect is all by itself an alternate strategy - instead of trampling over blockers, you just infect and destroy them, no matter how big they are, even if they regenerate or are indestructible. The only thing that could thwart a trample-less BSC forever would be a repeatable token generator, and that makes sense - if you keep throwing new guys in front of him to keep him distracted, you survive. But any single creature, no matter how badass, will die to BSC, if not now then soon, and so your doom is inevitable just as soon as you fall short of blockers. That's a very fitting message for Phyrexia's ultimate weapon. It doesn't have to have trample, because it doesn't have to kill you right now - it will kill you eventually no matter what you do (virtually no matter what, I should say), so you stalling only delays the inevitable. That would feel very Phyrexian.
My New Phyrexia Writing CreditsMy M12 Writing CreditsAs far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing.
--Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi 
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:16PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Feb 26, 2004
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(Also remember, that post mythic rare being added, rares aren't as rare as they used to be.)
This is a blatant lie. You still get one rare in a pack, only now that rare is a mythic one time out of eight. So, buying the same number of boosters (nevermind paying more MSRP for them), you get 7 rares instead of 8. They are in fact MORE rare than they used to be, because some of them have been split off to become mythics, which are even rarer still.
My New Phyrexia Writing CreditsMy M12 Writing CreditsAs far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing.
--Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:22PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Feb 26, 2004
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As one of the most inveterate Vorthoi on this forum, I am actually totally okay with Ichor Wellspring. Sure it doesn't really make flavor sense, but by attaching a rather random snapshot of the war to a card with no real flavor inherent in it, they're able to use a card concept that doesn't really speak for itself. Seeing this giant pustule of Phyrexian oil bubble up out of the razorgrass fields - there's not really any way to capture the essence of such an event in a top-down design, but it's definitely a contributor to the overall feel of the set. So having it have an ability that's sort of random is totally fine with me.
My New Phyrexia Writing CreditsMy M12 Writing CreditsAs far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing.
--Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:32PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Aug 20, 2008
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:35PM
#6
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2002
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Triplepost? You are missing two simple truths:
- A deck that Tinkers a Colossus (or even Pipers the damned thing) is already doing silly shenanigans. Blightsteel doesn't significantly break it more.
- If a game gets to the point where it can be hardcast, that game damn well should end soon afterword.
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:40PM
#7
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Willpell, you didn't feel like just posting once? They are in fact MORE rare than they used to be, because some of them have been split off to become mythics, which are even rarer still.
The key phrase there is some of them have split off to become mythics. Too tired to do any number crunching right now, but aren't there fewer rares in the set overall? Few enough to make up for the 1/8 of the time you don't open one
And really, if I open a mythic I'm not really complaining. Better than the 3 Distant Memories  and 0 mythics I've opened out of 21 packs this weekend.
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 9:40PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Apr 15, 2005
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..... Oh god, the set's MaRo is Gleemax, brain in a jar.
also, I like that Decimator Web is more of a mill card then a poison support card, but it does solve the entire (my keep the board clean and under control has been so effective that milling as a win con is just a way to make it even harder for my opponent to stabilize then an actual win condition) type thing.
.... that's probly because the draw 7 at the start of the game is like decimating the guys again.
and the wellsprings draw card effect makes a kinda sense in that you got to get more support (cards) somewhere.
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 10:30PM
#9
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I wasn't very impressed with the way Maro has dealt with the various criticisms of the Blightsteel Colossus design both in this article and on twitter. I don't think he's made a fantastic case for why the various criticisms of the card aren't valid, and nothing he's said has helped me shake the feeling that if someone had submitted evil Darksteel Colossus for GDS2 they would have said it was terrible design. On an semi-related note, it seems like his "favorite tweet" contradicts a lot of the what it seems like they are doing currently in design. Avoiding things like LD or counterspells, not printing rares with drawbacks, and the constant talk of sets like Odyssey being mistakes for making players do things that some players didn't like doing all seem like examples of "trying to avoid things that people hate." The GDS2 comments especially make me think that current Wizards policy is that design thrives when it strives to "avoid making things people hate."
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2 years ago ::
Jan 30, 2011 - 10:57PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Aug 27, 2009
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(Also remember, that post mythic rare being added, rares aren't as rare as they used to be.)
This is a blatant lie. You still get one rare in a pack, only now that rare is a mythic one time out of eight. So, buying the same number of boosters (nevermind paying more MSRP for them), you get 7 rares instead of 8. They are in fact MORE rare than they used to be, because some of them have been split off to become mythics, which are even rarer still.
It's not a lie.
Ever since the creation of the Mythic rarity, the odds of pulling any single rare has greatly increased, especially for a small set. This is the reason why cards like Fauna Shaman aren't $20, there are simply more of them on the market. There have been many articles about the subject and I encourage you to check them out.
What MaRo was talking about was buying more than one pack. You can't just call mythics rares because they're not; that's like calling uncommons rares, but only show up once in a pack.
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