Community

This thread is for discussion of the feature article "Choose Your Guild!", which goes live Friday morning on magicthegathering.com.

The graphic that shows the full sized art for the achievement and describes how to achieve them, still is too large for smaller resolutions (including iPhone screens) to the point where it's impossible to read the text.

I'm really excited by these new aspects of the PWP system, but it is very frustrating that I can't get the information I need to actually take advantage of them.

So I can run my golgari deck while being a member of the Izzet guild? *facepalm*

GRUUL!!! We will win and roast you as our victory meal!

Un fortunately i can't seem to get into planeswalkerpoints.com (this was the first thing that made me want to) because apparently I have an invalid number and I never saved my activation code (heck, I didn't know they existed). If anyone here knows how to solve this, It would be very much appreciated.

Somehow I am unsurprised that the four top guilds are all blue. Magic players in general tend to identify at least partly with blue, and especially the sort of players who do enough Magic'ing to mess with Planeswalker Points.

My issue with this whole thing is threefold:
First, it's meaningless. I have problems caring about this for the same reason I have problems caring about Planeswalker points in general: There's no reward for it (Yes, for Planeswalker points at the 'obessive' level there's rewards, but not for 99% of the players in the system.) and thus no reason to bother checking it or caring about it.

Second, I don't know if anybody else at my local store actually knows about this or has signed up for a guild. I'll feel pretty silly if I get zero achievements for guildbeating because nobody else I play against is signed up.

Third, it's arbitrary. As much as I love RedBlue as a color combination, it's not the colors my current Standard deck is in because I don't have the cards for the deck I'd want to build and even if I did it would fare poorly in the current meta at my store. So (assuming other people at my store are actually in guilds) I'll probably get the achievement for beating up on Dimir and supporting Izzet for winning a game against GreenWhite Humans with my MonoBlackControl deck.

Anyone else having trouble with the guild picking?  It keeps telling me there is an error.

I haven't tried yet. Anyone have a layman's description of the tribes? Like, "I am Golgari. I am vegan and I will kill you."

Aug 31, 2012 -- 10:43AM, rstnme wrote:

I haven't tried yet. Anyone have a layman's description of the tribes? Like, "I am Golgari. I am vegan and I will kill you."

Sure thing:
Azorius: The rule of law is absolute. Order and justice above all. Bureaucrats and judges are Azorius
Orzhov: Manipulation and power. Controlling the masses to achieve personal goals. Lawyers and corrupt politicians are Ozhov.
Boros: Peace through Power. Justice, delivered by any necessary force. Cops and soldiers are Boros.
Selesnya: The circle of life. Everybody has a place in the natural order. Vegetarians and environmentalists are Selesnya.
Dimir: Deception and lies. Using invisible strings to control others. Ninjas and evil advisors are Dimir.
Izzet: Experimentation and insanity. Pressing buttons just to see what happens. Mad scientists and different mad scientists are Izzet.
Simic: Improving on nature. Helping natural evolution along with some good ol' science! Biologists and Frankenstein are Simic.
Rakdos: Kill everything. Playing the fiddle while the city burns. Cultists are Rakdos
Golgari: Death is just a phase. Abusing the other side of the circle of life. Zombies and necromancers are Golgari.
Gruul: Survival of the fittest. Bringing down society with raw muscle. Thugs and monsters are Gruul.

These are just rough (and somewhat incorrect approximations) but they'll do as an extremely basic outline.

The top four guilds are blue. I guess they weren't so far off choosing a blue planeswalker as the posterboy after all.
Who that blue planeswalker actually became is another matter.

The gruul are not survival of the fittest. The gruul are the very people who have been crushed by society (primarily the orzhov), and they want revenge. Their role in the original guildpact was to guard what remained of nature, but the orzhov and azorious overruled them and the other guilds stole their identity, so they will destroy them to take it back. Outcasts and former slaves are gruul.

Is it just me or does the Boros symbol look a lot like the Federated Commonwealth's from Battletech?

Aug 31, 2012 -- 10:43AM, rstnme wrote:

I haven't tried yet. Anyone have a layman's description of the tribes? Like, "I am Golgari. I am vegan and I will kill you."

Selesnya: An organized religion based on cooperation and harmony, and if you like your individuality, well, stay away.
Simic: Kinda mysterious at the moment, but their old identity was about improving nature. They were originally pretty mono-Blue in personality.
Azorius: A bureaucracy and law system that is entirely dedicated to stability, even when that stability is the tyrrany of the guilds.
Orzhov: A mafia-like church that has a stranglehold on the market; they place a high value on personal connections.
Dimir: Who?
Izzet: "Ooh, what's that?" These are people who want to learn more to fuel their emotions, occasionally blowing themselves (And others) up in the process.
Rakdos: They are a guild that wants freedom... The freedom to do whatever the hell they feel like. Such as killing people. Lots of killing people.
Golgari: They believe in using every resource possible, especially the dead. For the Golgari, there are no standards; there is only survival.
Gruul: The outcasts of society, the Gruul are sick of being the guys with the short straw. Their solution is to smash things. Lots of smashing things.
Boros: An army dedicated to a cause. Alas, nobody can agree on what that cause is other than "hit people I don't like."

It is possible that I misunderstood something, but there appears to be an achievement for being in the winning guild. This creates a perverse incentive*, by encouraging people to switch to the winning guild at the end. I love my boros, but for an extra badge, I'll switch to Izzet. Was this a worry? Since it's in BETA, are you open to changing it? I feel like at the year, all the people who care will be in Izzet and I'm cheating myself out of bonus points my being loyal to the Boros.

*I'm actually using my degree for something, wow.

Ha. I thought I was the only person who noticed that.

I don't think it'll be a huge issue since most people either identify too strongly with their guild to ditch at the last minute (See: GruulSmash) or just don't care enough about the meaningless badges to bother changing.

Does anyone know if there's a way to join the Planeswalker Point system using a MtGO account?  If not can it please be implemented at some point?

Sep 1, 2012 -- 7:45AM, Dragon_Nut wrote:

Ha. I thought I was the only person who noticed that.

I don't think it'll be a huge issue since most people either identify too strongly with their guild to ditch at the last minute (See: GruulSmash) or just don't care enough about the meaningless badges to bother changing.

yep thats me. I also think that the system self selects vorthoses, so it probably won't be a huge problem.

Have to respond saying the achievement pictures are way too big with no way to scroll, so can't even see any info on any of the achievements. It's actually funny, I can sort of read the bottom of the pictures on my phone, but not my laptop. They are more or less meaningless till this is fixed.