Yeah, again, that's why we're having this discussion. Unplayable cards definitely add something negative to the game. My opinion is just that their benefits outweigh that. It's just that it adds positive things on different levels than where it adds negative things.
I suppose I can agree that they do add something. I just disagree that the something couldn't be added in other ways that don't have such a negative impact elsewhere.
True. I do wonder how much this has to do with New World Order. With commons being simpler, there are less knobs to turn for variation, so it's harder to make something that isn't just strictly worse than another card.
Very much so. In Magic, simpler almost always means weaker. There are a few exceptions, where the simplest effect is at the top of the power curve for that cost (Lightning Bolt ) but for the most part, the "vanilla" effect, at any given cost, could be made more powerful by adding more complication.
This is especially true for creatures, where adding a point to power or toughness could take the card over the power level for its cost quite easily while there is still plenty of room to add additional abilities without crossing that line. Coral Merfolk vs. Azure Mage .
Yes this could theoretically be a problem, but I don't think it is one in practice. Sometimes it's a foil basic. Sometimes it's a card in a color you're not in. Sometimes it's a card playable only with synergies you don't have. A limited pool can handle a few "never-looked-at-again" slots. When the boosters went from 15 to 14 cards, the world didn't end either.
In Sealed not so much, but in Draft, opening a pack with unplayable cards, or being passed one, yields fewer choices. That card might mean the difference between a situationally useful card that would push your deck in a new direction, and a pack from which you get absolutely nothing in your colors.
Yes this could theoretically be a problem, but I don't think it is one in practice. Sometimes it's a foil basic. Sometimes it's a card in a color you're not in. Sometimes it's a card playable only with synergies you don't have. A limited pool can handle a few "never-looked-at-again" slots. When the boosters went from 15 to 14 cards, the world didn't end either.
In Sealed not so much, but in Draft, opening a pack with unplayable cards, or being passed one, yields fewer choices. That card might mean the difference between a situationally useful card that would push your deck in a new direction, and a pack from which you get absolutely nothing in your colors.
They've said that that's deliberate. Having many playables in a pack makes the individual choices matter less and makes decks too easy to draft. Reducing boosters from 15 to 14 cards, and having the last few cards in a pack be bad, means that drafters have to be more careful with their picks to make sure that the final deck has enough useful spells.
I appreciated being able to go through my cards and - on 2nd reading - ditch nearly half of them for being 'worse' and use the others to determine what colour(s) I should play.
Well, wouldn't it also have been easier if you'd had to deal with fewer cards in the first place?
I find that the better that players are, the more they want the power-curve of all cards to be closer together, making evaluation harder and encouraging deckbuilding to be about synergy and specific deck needs rather than simply putting in the most powerful cards of your colour.
I think this statement is quite profound. It reminds me of another quote from that Extra Credits episode: "The problem with many games is that they let all the player's objectives align all the time, or worse still, they simply give one objective and leave the game to be only about executing the steps to complete that objective." I wouldn't consider myself an expert player, but I do think Magic would be a richer game without unplayables or auto-includes. For example, I went white at the Magic 2010 Prerelease because I just happened to open a Baneslayer Angel ; there wasn't really any decision making involved. Instead of being strong or weak in a vaccuum, cards should be strong or weak in certain combinations--after all, the game is designed to be played with an entire deck, not just one or two mythic bombs (well, with the recent marketing decisions, perhaps this is no longer true). In a way, this is related to the conflict between tension-upside design and all-upside design. Players who enjoy tension-upside cards will favor harder evaluation and a closer power level, and those players will tend to be Spikes.
MtG has to differentiate between all abilities on the 'spectrum' though and I like being able to beat someone worse than me, despite not being very good myself. If MtG became the game that forum-posters and pros often seem to ask for, there wouldn't be much differentiation in skill levels until you'd reached a certain point.
When you say "MtG has to differentiate between all skill levels," I'm not sure whether you mean a) that it has to have design that appeals to players of all skill levels or b) that it has to reward skilled players moreso than unskilled players. Point A is important, but I think tension-upside versus all-upside has to do more with psychographic than actual skill level (again, I'm a Spike but not particularly expert at the game). As for Point B, I imagine that if evaluation in the game were made more difficult it would reward high skill even more, wouldn't it?
1. True. Luckily for Wizards it takes quite a few drafts/weeks before a format is 'figured out'. However, they've published a number of articles now on how the SCG circuit is endangering their model as people are playing Magic at a hugher frequency than before (and thus formats take less weeks to be figured out). It could be that they need to change their current model in the future, and this 'trick' doesn't work anymore.
Right-o. While I would agree that discovery is part of Magic, I think it is a mistake to rely solely on novelty to provide strategic depth. The game should be interesting because there is inherent conflict in the gameplay choices, not because the players haven't yet figured out that certain strategies are unviable. Rosewater once said that all games which last the test of time have a "rock, paper, scissors" metagame--three or more strategies that work to defeat one another without any one being dominant. Tricking players into pursuing an strategy that will ultimately turn out to be unviable flies in the face of this in my opinion. It emphasizes the emphemerality of the game as opposed to its timelessness...but I suppose that's to be expected from a trading card game.
2. Certainly, a game without unplayable cards is still functioning and good. They're not essential. I'm just saying the game is better with than without them.
Interesting. You're saying that unplayable cards are not essential, and you agree that they have a negative impact, but you're arguing that their positive impact outweighs the negative impact. I know that's what you've been saying all along, but it's taken me until now to process it. I'm going to have to reread your posts.
3. Not sure in what way this makes the analogy fall.
Actually, I'm not sure what I was getting at with this either. I think I was starting to say something different but then it ended up bleeding into Point 4. Probably all I meant by this was that your analogy assumes that a card has to strictly fall into the categories of "playable," "unplayable," or "appears unplayable but has hidden uses," and that that assumption is false.
4. But what is obvious and what isn't? There are only a few truly obvious unplayable cards. Many are not obvious but still unplayable, others seem obvious but are actually playable.
This is a great point and I would totally agree with it, except that LaPille has gone on record saying that some cards are deliberately designed to be unplayable. My inner Johnny just about died when I read that article.
Just out of curiosity, are you in the "Incite shouldn't change colors" camp?
This wasn't directed at me, but I don't mind that Incite changes colors. I kind of wish color change effects in general were more relevant to the game. (I don't even remember the wisps being all that relevant in Shadowmoor, where color was supposed to be one of the set's themes.) I think it would be really flavorful if, say, you could destroy a Disciple of Law by somehow turning it red. Maybe color change effects will become less parasitic now that intimidate has replaced fear, but I don't really see that happening.
True. I do wonder how much this has to do with New World Order. With commons being simpler, there are less knobs to turn for variation, so it's harder to make something that isn't just strictly worse than another card.
Very much so. In Magic, simpler almost always means weaker. There are a few exceptions, where the simplest effect is at the top of the power curve for that cost (Lightning Bolt ) but for the most part, the "vanilla" effect, at any given cost, could be made more powerful by adding more complication.
Simpler doesn't always mean weaker! Typhoid Rats is a simpler card than Lab Rats , but I promise it's much stronger in my Rat deck than Lab Rats is. Especially when I have a Swarmyard out, bwahaha...
No, that's fine. The card, as a whole, still serves some purpose. I enjoy the occasional extra bit of flavor, as long as it doesn't go too far.
Right. When you look at it that way, the "Target creature turns red" part of Incite serves to reinforce the same purpose as its flavor text: The veneer of rationality peeled from the mage, revealing the spite and rage beneath. But what purpose does Defensive Stance serve in the context of Scars of Mirrodin block? It lets us know that...some of the Mirrans fought defensively. Yay? Although I suppose that since the Mirrans ultimately lost the war, it makes sense that the card isn't very good.
They've said that that's deliberate. Having many playables in a pack makes the individual choices matter less and makes decks too easy to draft. Reducing boosters from 15 to 14 cards, and having the last few cards in a pack be bad, means that drafters have to be more careful with their picks to make sure that the final deck has enough useful spells.
For a moment I thought you were referring to the same LaPille article I was, but I think he was making a different point than you are. Anyway, wouldn't they be able to accomplish this by just reducing the size of the booster packs? What's the difference between choosing from 10 good cards and 5 bad cards and choosing from 10 good cards?
Yes this could theoretically be a problem, but I don't think it is one in practice. Sometimes it's a foil basic. Sometimes it's a card in a color you're not in. Sometimes it's a card playable only with synergies you don't have. A limited pool can handle a few "never-looked-at-again" slots. When the boosters went from 15 to 14 cards, the world didn't end either.
In Sealed not so much, but in Draft, opening a pack with unplayable cards, or being passed one, yields fewer choices. That card might mean the difference between a situationally useful card that would push your deck in a new direction, and a pack from which you get absolutely nothing in your colors.
They've said that that's deliberate. Having many playables in a pack makes the individual choices matter less and makes decks too easy to draft. Reducing boosters from 15 to 14 cards, and having the last few cards in a pack be bad, means that drafters have to be more careful with their picks to make sure that the final deck has enough useful spells.
But the packs have pretty clearly gone the opposite way. We haven't had a format where you normally end a draft with 21 or 22 playables in a very long time. For instance, in Masques limited, you'd pretty routinely get ~22 playables. There has been a pretty noticeable decrease in the number of "bad" card. This, Along with million pack sealed, building a not unplayable deck has gotten way easier than it was in older limited formats. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it makes limited much more accessible, but the focus of limited has definitely moved away from rewarding drafting skills.
(Also sea snidds are bad and limited doesn't care about combat math anymore. They've pretty much turned limited into constructed and it sucks)
I appreciated being able to go through my cards and - on 2nd reading - ditch nearly half of them for being 'worse' and use the others to determine what colour(s) I should play.
Well, wouldn't it also have been easier if you'd had to deal with fewer cards in the first place?
Fewer cards means it would be less likely to have enough cards in your color(s), sadly.
I wouldn't consider myself an expert player, but I do think Magic would be a richer game without unplayables or auto-includes. For example, I went white at the Magic 2010 Prerelease because I just happened to open a Baneslayer Angel ; there wasn't really any decision making involved. Instead of being strong or weak in a vaccuum, cards should be strong or weak in certain combinations--after all, the game is designed to be played with an entire deck, not just one or two mythic bombs (well, with the recent marketing decisions, perhaps this is no longer true).
I agree here. Auto-includes are just as bad as unplayables, because they require no skill to evaluate and decrease decisions in deck-building.
I fear that the growing power of mythic rares is yet another consequence of their "New World Order". With fewer Constructed-playable cards being allowed at common and uncommon, they have to increase the power level of the average rare (and especially mythic, since that's the least likely to show up in Limited) to compensate. Of course, this means that Limited then swings more around "whoever opened the bombiest (mythic) rares wins" than it used to.
This is a great point and I would totally agree with it, except that LaPille has gone on record saying that some cards are deliberately designed to be unplayable. My inner Johnny just about died when I read that article.
That article depressed me as well. If the unplayable cards were ones that R&D thought would be good in some situations but miscalculated, or were key players in deck archetypes that wound up never showing up, that would be more acceptable. Having a design goal be "Make an unplayable card" is a slap in the face.
Simpler doesn't always mean weaker! Typhoid Rats is a simpler card than Lab Rats , but I promise it's much stronger in my Rat deck than Lab Rats is. Especially when I have a Swarmyard out, bwahaha...
I said "almost always"; I know there are exceptions. For the most part, though, it's easier to add more complication without increasing the cost than it is to tweak the numbers and keep it simple. You can't add a point of power to Grizzly Bears without making it too strong, but you can add extra abilities .
I suppose I can agree that they do add something. I just disagree that the something couldn't be added in other ways that don't have such a negative impact elsewhere.
So then how would I be surprised for example, by the playability of Gnaw to the Bone ?
In Sealed not so much, but in Draft, opening a pack with unplayable cards, or being passed one, yields fewer choices. That card might mean the difference between a situationally useful card that would push your deck in a new direction, and a pack from which you get absolutely nothing in your colors.
About what kind of packs are we talking about here? If there are only a few cards left, sometimes there's nothing in your colors, sometimes there is, independent of how good the cards are. If there are many cards left, then aren't you in the wrong colors?
No, that's fine. The card, as a whole, still serves some purpose. I enjoy the occasional extra bit of flavor, as long as it doesn't go too far.
And that's how I think about unplayable cards. In the set, as a whole, they still serve some purpose. I enjoy the occasional unplayable card, as long as it doesn't happen too often.
I played this game a long time, I don't care about every individual card anymore. The set as a whole is more important.
Right-o. While I would agree that discovery is part of Magic, I think it is a mistake to rely solely on novelty to provide strategic depth. The game should be interesting because there is inherent conflict in the gameplay choices, not because the players haven't yet figured out that certain strategies are unviable. Rosewater once said that all games which last the test of time have a "rock, paper, scissors" metagame--three or more strategies that work to defeat one another without any one being dominant. Tricking players into pursuing an strategy that will ultimately turn out to be unviable flies in the face of this in my opinion. It emphasizes the emphemerality of the game as opposed to its timelessness...but I suppose that's to be expected from a trading card game.
Well, it also depends on the format. Limited doesn't have to be timeless, it won't be played for more than a year.
Actually, I'm not sure what I was getting at with this either. I think I was starting to say something different but then it ended up bleeding into Point 4. Probably all I meant by this was that your analogy assumes that a card has to strictly fall into the categories of "playable," "unplayable," or "appears unplayable but has hidden uses," and that that assumption is false.
Well, it doesn't have to assume that. Take the scene from Jurassic Park about the women in the generator. Something scary is about to happen, but instead of a dino another man graps her, but then it turns out that's just an arm. So that's also something fuzzy that doesn't fit the 3 categories, but doesn't contradict it. It just uses it in a more fuzzy way.
This is a great point and I would totally agree with it, except that LaPille has gone on record saying that some cards are deliberately designed to be unplayable. My inner Johnny just about died when I read that article.
What part of that article is about unplayable cards?
So then how would I be surprised for example, by the playability of Gnaw to the Bone ?
I don't believe you need to be surprised by the playability. The sense of discovery could be served by finding the use for a card, rather than finding that the card has a use. Just knowing that every card has some use doesn't mean you necessarily immediately know what that use is.
About what kind of packs are we talking about here? If there are only a few cards left, sometimes there's nothing in your colors, sometimes there is, independent of how good the cards are. If there are many cards left, then aren't you in the wrong colors?
Colors in packs tend to be balanced, in my experience. Roughly two to three cards per color. Therefore, if you get a pack in which one of the cards in your colors is unplayable, that's one fewer options. Had the card instead been situationally useful, you might have found a new direction for your deck; with it being completely unusable, you just lose out on options. In extremely unlucky situations, you might wind up with multiple unplayable cards in your colors, in which case you have a completely dead pack.
And that's how I think about unplayable cards. In the set, as a whole, they still serve some purpose. I enjoy the occasional unplayable card, as long as it doesn't happen too often.
I played this game a long time, I don't care about every individual card anymore. The set as a whole is more important.
The set as a whole serves a purpose. Individual cards in the set may not. I suppose you could claim that the unplayable cards serve a similar role to flavor text, which also has no gameplay impact... except flavor text serves the purpose for which it was intended: to add flavor. Cards are meant to be played, so any given card should be able to be played, or it's not worth printing.
The difference between an unplayable card in a set and the additional line of text on Incite is that the individual line of text will never have to stand on its own; a card will.
What part of that article is about unplayable cards?
This part:
None of us came up with a blue card that was weak enough, so Aaron created Defensive Stance to fill the hole. While I have seen Defensive Stance sideboarded in against Plague Stingers and Blighted Agents, it is hardly a Limited all-star. That same meeting also resulted in Evil Presence entering the set. While Evil Presence was important in Masters Edition III for dealing with certain legendary lands, in New Phyrexia it is merely a weak black card with a flavorful name that we put in to balance the colors.
In order to balance the colors, rather than weaken some cards (while still leaving them playable), they instead design cards whose sole purpose is to be bad and detract from the overall playability of the color.
If you made a set of the 250 best cards in Magic history, cards #225 - 250 would be unplayable because they'd get the snot beaten out of them by cards #1 - 100.
That is not true. They may be unplayable in Standard, but not in Limited or Casual or other formats.
The sorts of cards I'm talking about when I say 'unplayable' are cards like Favor of the Woods that are just plain bad in any situation.
I just about guarantee that Grave Exchange WILL be showing up in some limited decks.
Oh yeah, I was killed in the finals of a draft the other day by Grave Exchange ... targeting it's controller. I was at 3 and he had a Soulcage Fiend ...
I don't believe you need to be surprised by the playability. The sense of discovery could be served by finding the use for a card, rather than finding that the card has a use. Just knowing that every card has some use doesn't mean you necessarily immediately know what that use is.
And that's the difference between discovery and surprise I've talked about with notthephonz. I agree it isn't needed. But that's not what you've said, I think. You've said "I just disagree that the something couldn't be added in other ways".
Colors in packs tend to be balanced, in my experience. Roughly two to three cards per color. Therefore, if you get a pack in which one of the cards in your colors is unplayable, that's one fewer options. Had the card instead been situationally useful, you might have found a new direction for your deck; with it being completely unusable, you just lose out on options. In extremely unlucky situations, you might wind up with multiple unplayable cards in your colors, in which case you have a completely dead pack.
Very few situational cards are really build-around. I can see a pack with Furor of the Bitten and Nightbird's Clutches which are perfectly playable but not for me. What you're saying will still happen without unplayable cards. And again, because the number of actual unplayable cards is so low, the number of times the above is caused by unplayables is also just a tiny faction.
The set as a whole serves a purpose. Individual cards in the set may not. I suppose you could claim that the unplayable cards serve a similar role to flavor text, which also has no gameplay impact... except flavor text serves the purpose for which it was intended: to add flavor.
Cards are meant to be played, so any given card should be able to be played, or it's not worth printing.
The difference between an unplayable card in a set and the additional line of text on Incite is that the individual line of text will never have to stand on its own; a card will.
The game is meant to be played. That's where people get their enjoyment from, and why they keep coming back for more. Card design is not so much about individual cards, but environments as a whole. As long as a card contributes to the game, it's worth printing.
When I play the game, I do not see cards standing on their own. I see the limited environment as a whole. I see cards in a pack as picks. I see cards in my deck at a curve and function. I do not see cards standing on their own. That's why I don't mind their downsides as much.
None of us came up with a blue card that was weak enough, so Aaron created Defensive Stance to fill the hole. While I have seen Defensive Stance sideboarded in against Plague Stingers and Blighted Agents, it is hardly a Limited all-star. That same meeting also resulted in Evil Presence entering the set. While Evil Presence was important in Masters Edition III for dealing with certain legendary lands, in New Phyrexia it is merely a weak black card with a flavorful name that we put in to balance the colors.
In order to balance the colors, rather than weaken some cards (while still leaving them playable), they instead design cards whose sole purpose is to be bad and detract from the overall playability of the color.
That's in general about weak cards, bad cards, situational cards, not unplayable cards.
Fewer cards means it would be less likely to have enough cards in your color(s), sadly.
Sure, but the rules could be tweaked to accommodate the decreased pack size. For example, the minimum deck size could be decreased or the amount of packs opened could be increased.
I fear that the growing power of mythic rares is yet another consequence of their "New World Order". With fewer Constructed-playable cards being allowed at common and uncommon, they have to increase the power level of the average rare (and especially mythic, since that's the least likely to show up in Limited) to compensate. Of course, this means that Limited then swings more around "whoever opened the bombiest (mythic) rares wins" than it used to.
Yes, this makes a lot of sense. The power level of the cards is redistributed from the lower rarities to the higher ones. It's pretty much exactly the opposite of the closer power-curve Bezman was describing. In other words, the game is becoming less Spike-friendly and more Timmy-friendly. I realize New World Order is supposed to help acquire new players, but I don't think new players are necessarily Timmies and older players are necessarily Spikes.
I said "almost always"; I know there are exceptions. For the most part, though, it's easier to add more complication without increasing the cost than it is to tweak the numbers and keep it simple. You can't add a point of power to Grizzly Bears without making it too strong, but you can add extra abilities .
Oh, I got what you were saying; I just couldn't resist a chance to brag about my rats.
I don't believe you need to be surprised by the playability. The sense of discovery could be served by finding the use for a card, rather than finding that the card has a use. Just knowing that every card has some use doesn't mean you necessarily immediately know what that use is.
Right. Going back to the horror/thriller analogy, you might know that someone in the room is the murderer, but you don't know who--or you know who, but the story is about trying to prove it. You don't need to be surprised by the murder itself taking place.
About what kind of packs are we talking about here? If there are only a few cards left, sometimes there's nothing in your colors, sometimes there is, independent of how good the cards are. If there are many cards left, then aren't you in the wrong colors?
Well, if there are no picks for you late-pack because nothing's left in your color, that could mean too many drafters were competing for that color. If there are no picks for you late-pack because of stuff like Evil Presence , then it's just because of random chance. It's a matter of something bad happening that you had control over (for example, by reading the drafting signals better) versus something bad you had no control over, which is one of the things Rosewater mentions in Kind Acts of Randomness. Competing over a color is also a more inherent conflict to Draft whereas having cards randomly be bad is an artificial conflict. In fact, as admitted in LaPille's article, the unplayable cards are deliberately designed to band-aid unbalanced formats.
I played this game a long time, I don't care about every individual card anymore. The set as a whole is more important.
Eh, this swings both ways, though. If you don't care enough about an individual bad card for it to detract from your experience, you can't say that it adds to your experience either.
The set as a whole serves a purpose. Individual cards in the set may not. I suppose you could claim that the unplayable cards serve a similar role to flavor text, which also has no gameplay impact... except flavor text serves the purpose for which it was intended: to add flavor. Cards are meant to be played, so any given card should be able to be played, or it's not worth printing.
I just had a weird thought--if flavor affected gameplay, cards would have to have reminder text that said stuff like "Griselbrand was destroyed by Liliana after escaping from the Helvault. This card may not be cast."
The difference between an unplayable card in a set and the additional line of text on Incite is that the individual line of text will never have to stand on its own; a card will.
Ah, this is what I was going for when I made the comparison to Defensive Stance . "Target creature becomes red" adds or detracts from the card; Defensive Stance adds or detracts from the set. "Target creature becomes red" is neutral in terms of viability as a gameplay option whereas Defensive Stance is itself a gameplay option.
I think a better comparison would be if Incite said, "Target creature becomes red until end of turn or attacks this turn if able." In that case, the line of text becomes a superfluous gameplay option rather than a flavor additive.
And that's why Sealed is just a sucky format. In draft, that P1P1 Baneslayer still has a nonzero chance of not making your deck.
Yes, the Baneslayer Angel would most certainly have been an auto-pick in Draft...which is sort of my point. Getting back to Cube Draft, LaPille mentions that he would first-pick a Chrome Mox from the hypothetical pack because it doesn't commit him to anything and he values mana acceleration highly. First-picking a Baneslayer Angel doesn't have the same reasoning; you first-pick it because it's just flatout stronger than anything else. Rosewater wrote about the balance of rock-paper-scissors strategies being key to a successful game; adding in nuclear bombs and nuclear duds detracts from the elegance and strength of the design.
Well, it also depends on the format. Limited doesn't have to be timeless, it won't be played for more than a year.
Eh, personally, I don't think the fact that Limited formats rotate so quickly is an excuse to do a bad job. But like I said, ephemerality is a given since we're dealing with a trading card game. Rosewater's always talking about Magic standing the test of time, but looking at Magic in terms of Limited, it becomes apparent that Magic's design is in direct conflict with doing so. It isn't one game that stands the test of time but a series of related games.
Being a pretty decent sideboard card against infect if you had a slowish curve.
Right. It has a situational use, but that doesn't change the fact that it was deliberately designed to be bad. The article suggests that hosing infect was a coincidental side effect of the card.
Colors in packs tend to be balanced, in my experience. Roughly two to three cards per color. Therefore, if you get a pack in which one of the cards in your colors is unplayable, that's one fewer options. Had the card instead been situationally useful, you might have found a new direction for your deck; with it being completely unusable, you just lose out on options. In extremely unlucky situations, you might wind up with multiple unplayable cards in your colors, in which case you have a completely dead pack.
Very few situational cards are really build-around. I can see a pack with Furor of the Bitten and Nightbird's Clutches which are perfectly playable but not for me. What you're saying will still happen without unplayable cards. And again, because the number of actual unplayable cards is so low, the number of times the above is caused by unplayables is also just a tiny faction.
I think this is really a matter of linearity versus modularity rather than playability versus unplayability. There's certainly a bit of overlap between the two conflicts, and the fuzziness of each definition doesn't help matters much.
The game is meant to be played. That's where people get their enjoyment from, and why they keep coming back for more. Card design is not so much about individual cards, but environments as a whole. As long as a card contributes to the game, it's worth printing.
When I play the game, I do not see cards standing on their own. I see the limited environment as a whole. I see cards in a pack as picks. I see cards in my deck at a curve and function. I do not see cards standing on their own. That's why I don't mind their downsides as much.
So we're all thinking at different scales again. On the other hand, a lot of the polarizing cards we're talking about demand to be evaluated on an individual level. As a few people pointed out in the Building on a Budget threads, sometimes there are situations where you can't make a budget version of a deck because the deck relies on an expensive card that can't be replaced. No other card can do the same job as Snapcaster Mage , for example.
That's in general about weak cards, bad cards, situational cards, not unplayable cards.
Well, this has more to do with us not having come up with a concrete definition for what constitutes "weak," "bad," "situational," or "playable." I'm not sure this is possible, which is why I've been sticking to mentioning cards the developers have explicitly stated were designed to be bad. The best I can think of is to define playability as how often the card appears in decklists in tournaments or Magic Online.
Kicker Aggro (Invasion Block)
I think I was starting to say something different but then it ended up bleeding into Point 4. Probably all I meant by this was that your analogy assumes that a card has to strictly fall into the categories of "playable," "unplayable," or "appears unplayable but has hidden uses," and that that assumption is false.
