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Magic: the Gathering |OT8| Eldritch Moon - It's only a paper (and digital) moon

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Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
On a different note I always find it funny that people always talk about the bad Chandra's when no one talks about the horrible Liliana of the dark realms. She was a black ramping planeswalker that didn't do ramp well.

People would stop talking about Chandra Ablaze, Chandra the Firebrand and Chandra Nalaar if they printed Chandra of the Veil.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
On a different note I always find it funny that people always talk about the bad Chandra's when no one talks about the horrible Liliana of the dark realms. She was a black ramping planeswalker that didn't do ramp well.

Why? Liliana of the Veil is one of the best planeswalkers ever printed and people clamor for it to be reprinted.
 

Bandini

Member
I gotta say that I'm starting to really tire of UR Spells matches. That's all I play even if they're all different flavors they're never good decks.

I keep getting murdered by UR in EMN sealed and draft. Mercurial Geists + double strike spell = gg.

I'm not sure I've made much progress with my sealed builds. You rarely get enough cards you need to build around a certain mechanic, and even when you do (especially with Delirium) it still doesn't seem that strong. My best decks have just been getting good quality bombs and putting enough solid cards around them. The format doesn't have much quality removal at all.
 
It works just fine. It might be a specific version, but the one that I use works fine.

will try out a different one then was the dragons version and I tried it twice

The leagues in the beta aren't the live versions are they? Just to be safe sometime they mix them up and I'd think it'd be weird if they just let us play SOI sealed for free but I was able to join one and unsure whether to proceed.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Someone needs to give Sam Stoddard shit for saying that the devoid restriction on Corrupted Crossroads (Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast a spell with devoid.) was just a readability issue (and completely nonfunctional otherwise) because it didn't make sense to say "spend this mana only to cast a colorless spell" because they printed a mechanic in Emerge in the very next set that's incompatible with Corrupted Crossroads.

Edit: It was Maro who made this claim.
 

OnPoint

Member
On a different note I always find it funny that people always talk about the bad Chandra's when no one talks about the horrible Liliana of the dark realms. She was a black ramping planeswalker that didn't do ramp well.
People used to rag on Nissa for her first appearance. Then she got güd and no one cares anymore.

If they print a good Chandra people will stop.
 

kirblar

Member
Someone needs to give Sam Stoddard shit for saying that the devoid restriction on Corrupted Crossroads (Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast a spell with devoid.) was just a readability issue (and completely nonfunctional otherwise) because it didn't make sense to say "spend this mana only to cast a colorless spell" because they printed a mechanic in Emerge in the very next set that's incompatible with Corrupted Crossroads.
Done.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"

I misspoke, it was actually Maro who specifically made that argument but Stoddard is the developer so its just as much his fault that you now have an Eldrazi themed land designed to cast Eldrazi that can't fucking cast Eldrazi!
 
I misspoke, it was actually Maro who specifically made that argument but Stoddard is the developer so its just as much his fault that you now have an Eldrazi themed land designed to cast Eldrazi that can't fucking cast Eldrazi!

MaRo is the wrong person blame about wordings of cards anyway, since that's completely out of his hands.
 

Ashodin

Member
Someone needs to give Sam Stoddard shit for saying that the devoid restriction on Corrupted Crossroads (Pay 1 life: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast a spell with devoid.) was just a readability issue (and completely nonfunctional otherwise) because it didn't make sense to say "spend this mana only to cast a colorless spell" because they printed a mechanic in Emerge in the very next set that's incompatible with Corrupted Crossroads.

Edit: It was Maro who made this claim.

Wow yeah the fuck, Corrupted Crossroads is totally useless with Emerge. Fucking flavor and gameplay fail.
 
The BFZ evolving wild works thanks grimace.

Pulled together a grixis graveyard deck again and so far content. Oath of Liliana is very good, especially with flip jace. And I'll never tire of sinister concoction discard fiery temper. I'm trying a singleton Hangarback walker as the artifact for delirium and Emrakul. Got the 6 once but didn't draw her.

Edit: lived the dream cast Emrakul for 6. Pretty good, still lost though.
 
What is up with this sudden swarm of U Bounce decks on MOnline.

I'm 0-5 against them in the past 24 hours. Know why? Cuz they're fucking boring to play against and I just concede the match after 15 minutes of them doing nothing but drawing and bouncing. Looks like I'm gonna have to retire G/B delirium to go with something to outpace it. Probably not the worst idea, since it's too slow to beat ramp or humans, come to think of it.

I wonder what a fun budget rogue would be.
 

Santiako

Member
MTGO is also the only reason that there is no longer a separate banned as commander list.
Apparently it can't handle two banlists together.
 

aidan

Hugo Award Winning Author and Editor
It still blows my mind that they must be implementing different printings of the same cards separately.

I think there was an instance a year or two ago where a foil version of a card behaved differently than the non-foil version. That foiling isn't just a boolean option triggering a graphical effect is hilariously indicting.
 

Joe Molotov

Member
What you guys don't realize is that every time you tap a basic land in MTGO, Maro himself has to push a button to add the mana to your mana pool.
 

aidan

Hugo Award Winning Author and Editor
Apparently, some guy that works on MTGO posted a blog post about how MTGO is harder to work on than most people would think.

http://trulyaliem.tumblr.com/post/147403685497/whats-the-biggest-misunderstanding-you-think-the

I think most critics of MTGO recognize that it's a shambling Frankenstein's monster at this point and essentially impossible to 'fix.' Band-aid after band-aid isn't going to do it. The issue is that to this point Hasbro and WotC have been content to let it stumble along (because it's a cash cow) rather than redevelop it from the ground up using modern design, usability, and engineering methodologies and technologies. (Though signs point to this changing under Cocks' leadership.)
 

Ashodin

Member
Welp it's official

Maro said:
calibur-death sent: What set after alara block are you least proud of?

Mark Rosewater: Battle for Zendikar. It's my worst personal design in a decade.

And also, charlequin gets the juicy deets later he wants:

eshifen asked: If you're not saving it for the State of Design column, what made BFZ a weak design?

Mark Rosewater: I am saving it for my “State of Design” column coming at the end of August.
 
Welp it's official



And also, charlequin gets the juicy deets later he wants:

Wow, just..For MaRo to come out and say "BFZ was a terrible design" when it's still in Standard is a testament to how bad the set actually was. I mean, just wow. That state of design article is going to be a fun read.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Oath was fun and I'm sure the eternals are happy they got a whole new deck archetype. That doesnt really happen much.
 
How much of Oath being a good set is tied to BFZ? I remember talking with some people at my LGS after a draft about how Oath's packs felt completely different then BFZ's that it was a bit confusing. I mean, Oath looks at BFZ and carries over basically none of it's themes. Gone are Processing/Ingesting/Converge/Rally/Landfall(minus 2 cards for Landfall). The only "mechanic" that transfers over is Devoid, and that's less of a mechanic then a flavor/supertype.

Oath is probably one of the best small sets designed, but it being a good set has basically zero to do with BFZ.
 
that's not even the worst they've admitted multiple times now changing cards because they weren't working on MTGO.

There are basically two categories of this: they've specifically mentioned not doing a black-border version of the "Twice" cards in Unglued that affect your next game (which, like, I think I can live without that thanks) and there are a lot of cards which they reword to eliminate MTGO hassles, like having Soulblade Djinn write its effect out rather than grant Prowess to every creature (which maybe isn't optimal but isn't really a big deal overall.) MTGO sucks and all but let's not attribute extra imaginary problems to it too.

MTGO is also the only reason that there is no longer a separate banned as commander list.
Apparently it can't handle two banlists together.

This isn't the deal at all. The RC wrote out in some detail their reasoning for this change, and it doesn't reference MTGO at all. They've actually made a point of ignoring online Commander (even to the point of people's irritation) in the past and the two formats spent years being slightly out of sync.

Apparently, some guy that works on MTGO posted a blog post about how MTGO is harder to work on than most people would think.

http://trulyaliem.tumblr.com/post/147403685497/whats-the-biggest-misunderstanding-you-think-the

There are aspects to this that are accurate. Dealing with a giant legacy codebase is hugely frustrating and challenging in a way that doing something from scratch isn't, and when you have players with years and years of monetary investment in the current version of your platform you rarely have the chance to actually toss out that legacy codebase and start over. Any time you build a system like this, you make a ton of assumptions in the process of data modeling and initial architecture that are assuredly reasonable at the time, but the more new demands you get over time, the more often you have to monkeypatch those assumptions to keep things running. That's definitely a big part of the issue and a lot of smaller issues they deal with spring from this rather than any mismanagement or lack of care.

The problem is the bigger picture. As a few people pointed out on Twitter in response to this, WotC actually doesn't hire the best for tech roles (they hire people who are mediocre, or who will undercut themselves by $30k+ for the chance to work on Magic) which means that the challenges of dealing with this legacy codebase are greatly multiplied. In addition, the tech choices they made with MTGO4 were very poor, and the sunk-cost-fallacy decision to stick it out with this busted client (or the lack of funds to make another choice) has hobbled the UX and platform support dramatically as a result.

The one advantage here is that every one of these problems can be dealt with, at least in part, by a brand-new platform rebuild happening in parallel, and if there really is a talented team working on a Magic Digital Next, they could assuredly leverage some of the experience of the MTGO team in terms of implementing the cards and rules interactions while still building a much better, cross-platform system for the actual UI/UX.

Wow, just..For MaRo to come out and say "BFZ was a terrible design" when it's still in Standard is a testament to how bad the set actually was.

I mean, he's 100%, it is his worst design by a significant margin in his entire Head Designer career.
 

Ashodin

Member
Ideally, MDN would most likely combine the Duels interface (with tweaks, obv) and the depth of MTGO into one better experience. There could be a F2P style gameplay exterior with B2P interior like MTGO.
 

Maledict

Member
Do we think that Maro will say BFZ is bad for the same reasons we do though? I'm just remembering Avacyn Restored where he never seemed to quite 'get' what was wrong with the set. Is he going to blame the Eldrazi aspect of BFZ for being the bit that made the set a failure, or acknlowdge the wider issues?
 
There are basically two categories of this: they've specifically mentioned not doing a black-border version of the "Twice" cards in Unglued that affect your next game (which, like, I think I can live without that thanks) and there are a lot of cards which they reword to eliminate MTGO hassles, like having Soulblade Djinn write its effect out rather than grant Prowess to every creature (which maybe isn't optimal but isn't really a big deal overall.) MTGO sucks and all but let's not attribute extra imaginary problems to it too

You're forgetting the enchantment from oath they wanted to remove hexproof as a static ability and changed it to an activated because it wouldn't work on MTGO.
That's not spelling it out that's a rather different functionality.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Do we think that Maro will say BFZ is bad for the same reasons we do though? I'm just remembering Avacyn Restored where he never seemed to quite 'get' what was wrong with the set. Is he going to blame the Eldrazi aspect of BFZ for being the bit that made the set a failure, or acknlowdge the wider issues?

We need to nerf removal more!
 
I think most critics of MTGO recognize that it's a shambling Frankenstein's monster at this point and essentially impossible to 'fix.' Band-aid after band-aid isn't going to do it. The issue is that to this point Hasbro and WotC have been content to let it stumble along (because it's a cash cow) rather than redevelop it from the ground up using modern design, usability, and engineering methodologies and technologies. (Though signs point to this changing under Cocks' leadership.)

I had a pretty lengthy conversation about MTGO at my game shop last weekend. Lots of people are in agreement that it needs a decent graphical upgrade (at least on par with duels) to play it seriously. The current MTGO looks and plays terrible.
 

PsionBolt

Member
You're forgetting the enchantment from oath they wanted to remove hexproof as a static ability and changed it to an activated because it wouldn't work on MTGO.
That's not spelling it out that's a rather different functionality.

But they had already printed that effect in Born of the Gods. Does Archetype of Endurance not work on MTGO?
 
But they had already printed that effect in Born of the Gods. Does Archetype of Endurance not work on MTGO?

I'd have to look up the article it was in, think it was a the dev article to Oath.

Edit: found the article can't find it mentioned in it, maybe I misremembered or there was a different source. Would have to look in the old thread if I can find it.

Edit 2: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=193471979&postcount=3962 stopping creatures from gaining it was the issue apparently
 

PsionBolt

Member
I'd have to look up the article it was in, think it was a the dev article to Oath.

Edit: found the article can't find it mentioned in it, maybe I misremembered or there was a different source. Would have to look in the old thread if I can find it.

Edit 2: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=193471979&postcount=3962 stopping creatures from gaining it was the issue apparently

Good golly. Can't say I expected that! I guess MTGO really is as poorly-implemented as people say... I'm only a CS minor (so not an expert programmer by any means), but even knowing it's true I'm still having a hard time picturing a system that's written in such a way. Crazy stuff.
 

Smiley90

Stop shitting on my team. Start shitting on my finger.
yeah MTGO really cant be salvaged in its current forms, it's like a plane held together with duct tape. Just a matter of time until it breaks completely.

They better be working on a ground-up replacement... They should really take the DotP/Duels platform and HOPEFULLY that has a solid-enough foundation to be used as a MTGO replacement. I hope they did have that in mind when they started on it, as I doubt they want to put resources into developing a THIRD software from the ground up...
 
Just checked the forum and apparently some people were lost from their database.

I've been removed from their email list like four times. You just have to PM them and they'll add you back.


Really not feeling this new Standard so far. U/G Emerge has potential but I haven't seen anything else that can compete with with Bant. Really hoping we see something cool by the end of the PT.
 
I'm already in love with grixis again. Some great new toys. If you have Lili and Jace in play you can give a creature -4/-1. The -2/-1 can help finish off a creature after getting fiery tempered.
Unsubstantiate is such a great tool against Ormendahl.
 

bigkrev

Member
I have no idea when I am getting a pre-release in this weekend. I'm too old for Midnight, I am going to an ROH show on Saturday that starts at 6PM for some reason, so I don't think I can fit a 1 PM event in unless I plan on dropping early, and I really want to watch the Marvel final at Evo, so the 1PM Sunday doesn't work, and my store does 2HG as it's late afternoon Sunday event, so that isn't an option.
 
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