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Apr 23, 2012 -- 12:49PM, Brodo wrote:

Such a pool would need to be treated with care and you would want to avoid putting in cards that are just inferior to other cards. Putting in Plummets while at the same time real burn, Doom Blades or other stronger removal would be a mistake. Unless decks were forced into their own colors (poor green), there is going to be a slight bias to the colors with more universal cards. Unless the format was dominated by high toughness, black fliers of course.

It's probably best to treat this as a "utility" pool of sorts where the cards are of close quality and perform distinct roles a deck may want. I actually think combat tricks look extremely weak in such a pool, as removal makes defensive tricks look terrible, and offensive pumps usually aren't that worthy of inclusion once you have better control and freedom in deck design. That said, many decks are going to want key essentials like land acceleration, color fixing, nonland permanent interaction, hand disruption, card advantage generation, etc. I wouldn't leave out creatures out of potential inclusion either, because a lot of creatures can fill a utility slot in a lot of decks. Something like Mold Shambler or Gravedigger comes to mind.

It's a dangerous line to dance around though in trying to perfect it. Depending on how far you push this mini-pool and how well the core decks were designed, you might reach a point where it would have been better to just make the entire format open or not even have bothered with it in the first place. Consider that a pool that's too good could easily reformat what every deck looks like which changes the intended play and balance. Or the pool could be so bad that no one is going to even bother utilizing most of the cards in there.

Good points.  

The reason I thought putting in the plummet would be a good idea would be because not everybody will want to splash another colour.  Obviously in most cases Doom Blade is better that Plummet, but I felt that it would give the player a wider choice of what cards they wanted to use without feeling like they had to splash a colour.  

Reading your input on the creatures that fill utility slots as well is also a fair point.  The reason I said to exclude creatures was mainly so Stainless/Wizards could decide the general feeling of the decks, as most of the decks in 2012 were based around creatures.  I just felt that they would be more willing to try something like this if creatures were excluded.  Listening to your points though it could be worthwhile considering having creautres included as well.   

The last point you made is why I said about putting a limit on the cards you can have from the pool in the deck.  Having a finite number of cards you can include would hopefully make play more interesting but stop the decks from losing the theme that Wizards/Stainless were aiming for.

I agree that it would be a challenge to balance it, but feel that if they could do it correctly it could really add to the game.

Apr 27, 2012 -- 10:32AM, Brodo wrote:

Apr 27, 2012 -- 4:00AM, whitephantasmo wrote:

Spoiler: Show

Good points.  

The reason I thought putting in the plummet would be a good idea would be because not everybody will want to splash another colour.  Obviously in most cases Doom Blade is better that Plummet, but I felt that it would give the player a wider choice of what cards they wanted to use without feeling like they had to splash a colour.  

Reading your input on the creatures that fill utility slots as well is also a fair point.  The reason I said to exclude creatures was mainly so Stainless/Wizards could decide the general feeling of the decks, as most of the decks in 2012 were based around creatures.  I just felt that they would be more willing to try something like this if creatures were excluded.  Listening to your points though it could be worthwhile considering having creautres included as well.   

The last point you made is why I said about putting a limit on the cards you can have from the pool in the deck.  Having a finite number of cards you can include would hopefully make play more interesting but stop the decks from losing the theme that Wizards/Stainless were aiming for.

I agree that it would be a challenge to balance it, but feel that if they could do it correctly it could really add to the game.

Spoiler: Show

Yeah, I was just approaching it from an angle that makes most of the [small] pool highly playable or desirable. If you want to make the pool small enough so that players aren't editing their decks on a large scale, you'll want to avoid cards considered "sideboard only." I consider Plummet one of those cards and I would very rarely run that card. I don't even run it in any of the decks now because of the risk it just doesn't do anything. Elves or Treefolk don't need their copies because they can either overrun the enemy with brute force or have access to better removal, which is essentially the problems Apex suffers with and I'm sure Plummet wouldn't fix that in the grand scheme of things.

The more cards that have the potential to "do nothing", the larger the chance no one will want to use them because they are less effective and highly dependent on what's in the meta. We're not playing best of 3 in which we can sideboard though, so it's not really preferable to have these as options. Already, plenty of players opt out of using bare bones disenchant effects because the decks can just plow through the opposition nearly every time as most decks don't consistently drop scary artifacts/enchantments to warrant its use. It's not worth it in a long term sense to run a situational 2-of to combat their always useful 1 or 2-of. However, throwing in cards like Manic Vandal or Kor Sanctifiers type cards can easily fix that as you're creating a card that's never really "dead." This is so much better in from a limited sense and it's the direction I'd personally take in this situation.

Thanks for your input Brodo.  I only came to learn about magic through DOTP so my knowledge of cards and gameplay in general is very limited.  I always enjoy seeing peoples deck ideas on this forum and the various cards that people put in their deck ideas.  I have also spent quite a while looking through Gatherer looking at all the cards that will never find their way into DOTP.  

Reading comments from people such as yourself, who are obviously very experienced in the game, is very welcome...it lets me see things from a new perspective and makes me realise there are plently of things to learn.  Thanks for taking the time to explain in a civil manner why cards like Plummet would probably fail to make the cut even in a pure green deck, and why the creature cards with abilities attached are far better choices in the long run as they aren't a totally wasted card if your opponent doesn't run a certain something etc.  

I see now that creatures such as the ones you mentioned would really have to be included to make the pool viable; the direction you suggested in your last post definately seems to be the optimal route.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, it's appreciated.

P.S. Really liked your old avatar by the way...although I am more of a Gob fan myself.  They are recording a new series, in case you didn't know. Think it is going to be exclusive to Netflix or something...I can't wait!

So why is there still no footage of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013? I assume the game will be released on Wednesday June 13th (one month before the actual 2013 core set). With 2012 we already had gameplay videos and a trailer early March. Why does Wizards hesitate? I want to see the new UI and a few cards.

Apr 28, 2012 -- 9:26AM, CrazyToast wrote:

So why is there still no footage of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013? I assume the game will be released on Wednesday June 13th (one month before the actual 2013 core set). With 2012 we already had gameplay videos and a trailer early March. Why does Wizards hesitate? I want to see the new UI and a few cards.

Could be waiting for the Avacyn Restored spotlight to run its course. Maybe they will use DotP 2013 as a stronger marketing/preview tool for M13 as well. Like when they first spoil some cards, some screenies and/or videos will be provided that just so happen to have those spoiled cards in action?

That's my guess at least.

The guy who tell us about the colours is wrong.
I think (sadly) we get many monocoloured decks.

100% confirmed Planeswalker/decks at release:

- Garruk
- Chandra
- Jace
- Ajani
- Liliana
- Talrand
- Unknown

Than we saw this decks in action, but we don't know if they are in at release or in the expansion, because many the pictures and the trailer had the expansion and only WotC-Microbless show us Non-Expansion screenshots.

- Krenkno
- Odric

At least 2 unknown decks are in the video:


In the middle a monogreen deck with an Elfwoman and the left one looks like a white-green deck.
So additional:

- Unknown
- Unknown

If the expansion have 3 new decks as always, we know 11 decks out of 13, there is not much room left.

Maybe Nicol Bolas could be playable, we could have a Grixis deck too.

- Nicol Bolas

And than we miss only 1 deck.