• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Magic: the Gathering - Battle for Zendikar |OT| Lands matter (but nothing else does)

Status
Not open for further replies.

pigeon

Banned
I mean, that's why Mark Rosewater has one of the largest bodies of written work on game design in the English language.

But then it really is problematic, as Jesse Mason notes, that his primary task in writing about game design is to sell Magic cards. At least with Raph Koster there's a strong distinction between the stuff he wrote on the corporate website about how Star Wars Galaxies would be great and the stuff he wrote on his personal website about how Star Wars Galaxies was awful (but could have been great).

Everything That’s Wrong with Battle for Zendikar

Paulo goes nuclear on BfZ, getting into the mess that are the mechanics and highlighting the sets incompatibility with the other sets in standard.

This is funny, because I was just going to write about how Paulo was wrong about awaken and they specifically printed it on cards that would interact well with a free creature (because MaRo said so and showed like two examples). Then I actually went back to look at the spoiler and they printed Inspiration With Guy, Unsummon With Guy, and Cancel With Guy. So yeah, never mind, they really just slapped it on at random.
 
Everything That’s Wrong with Battle for Zendikar

Paulo goes nuclear on BfZ, getting into the mess that are the mechanics and highlighting the sets incompatibility with the other sets in standard.

He's most dead on about the Ally stuff. What is and isn't Ally is hella arbitrary. Additionally, in the simulated drafts I played there isn't enough rally to make Allies an actual thing in limited. And what is there isn't really that powerful.

Complaints about Devoid are completely baffling to me tho. It'd be one thing if devoid cards cost more because of devoid but they don't. The Eldrazi stuff in general is pretty great in draft, it's like this little machine that you build to churn stuff out. In some ways you need to know what the other Eldrazi mechanics are, but no more than needing to know that Prowess is a possibility, for example.

Personally I got more excited about BfZ after I did a bunch of simulated drafts with friends. We very quickly figured out that you're either playing 'go tall' or 'go wide' with multiple ways to do each. Converge seems like the only outlier in the set. I'm guessing it was supposed to be a mechanic both sides could use, but it really just sucks and has barely come up.
 

kirblar

Member
You know, they mentioned hiring tons of extra creative people because they were doing two sets per year.

I suspect they underestimated the workload on the R&D side.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";179600887]Too bad none of the Processors do anything. To be honest, I'm starting to get really down on this set. And that's coming from a guy who was hyped more than for any other set because of how much I love ROE and Lovecraftian monsters. But outside the lands I really hate this set right now. The more I draft the less playable a lot of the commons seem as well. Or at the very least, less interesting.

I don't know, the set just isn't doing anything interesting. It's like they made up the Expeditions to salvage the hype, I dunno why they couldn't just make the set a little more wild. They're halfway there with a lot of the Eldrazi ideas but it's like they lacked confidence or something. There's basically no constructed worthy ingest or processor cards, converge makes no flavor sense, and devoid is... what the fuck is devoid anyway? It's not even a mechanic. The fact that Devoid is on cards means that there's too much text used up for more Eldrazi to have Ingest. And Ingest isn't even fun to begin with. It just makes all your processor cards feel worthless because you didn't get a mist intruder on turn 2 or your opponent has blockers or you were only able to cast one exile spell and you need to process two cards for your 5-mana dude to do anything relevant.

Awaken is kind of flavorful if it weren't how vanilla all the awaken cards are. None of them scream Zendikar. They scream "core set common with kicker".

Khans was one of the best sets of all time, so this is a major downer. I'm half asleep writing this so maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and have a different opinion. Who knows.[/QUOTE]

Its a shitty low power set. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna have fun with it.

But the actual answer is, trying to take two formats people loved (one without good reason) and jam them into one was never going to work very well. It's like trying to jam Ravnica together with Mirrodin and hoping it will somehow come out coherent.
 

Violet_0

Banned
so anyone else thinks that they might have intentionally decreased the power level with BfZ and then included the expedition lands so the set still sells?
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
so anyone else thinks that they might have intentionally decreased the power level with BfZ and then included the expedition lands so the set still sells?

I don't think it's too far fetched that this is the full art lands was done very purposely. Everybody who ever asked about full art lands was met with some version of "When it makes sense" and/or "We added full art lands to OG Zendikar because we didn't have faith in the set and we knew they'd help move packs."
 
so anyone else thinks that they might have intentionally decreased the power level with BfZ and then included the expedition lands so the set still sells?

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they targeted this block as one that would shift the power level downward and picked Zendikar because they knew they could stuff it with full arts and priceless treasure-like cards to still move boosters.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
so anyone else thinks that they might have intentionally decreased the power level with BfZ and then included the expedition lands so the set still sells?

They do intentionally decrease the power level all the time. Power ebbs and flows because if you don't the game just gets hit with power creep. Cards literally can't just be more powerful than, say, Siege Rhino or they'd just start to dominate both Standard and Modern. This won't be one of the lowest powered standards for one reason: Tarkir block is still in it, and when you look at it, Tarkir block is a powerful set. This is kind of what happened with Theros too - it was low power while RTR was more powerful than Theros. But Theros also had a much more fun and interesting design going on.

The hilarious part is that this standard isn't going to create more demand to come back to Zendikar, its going to create more demand for Return to Tarkir because everyone will get nostalgic over fetchlands and powerful wedge cards. That said, I've already made my peace with BFZ. If it sucks, it sucks, but it only sucks in comparison. It's still magic and you can still brew and play limited with it.

As for Paulo's article, I agree with everything he says, but goddamn does it feel like PVDDR writes a bunch of articles bitching about ___________. I legit wonder if CFB makes him the whipping-boy who has to write the articles that bitch about formats, design, etc. so that the rest of their writers don't get flak from WOTC.
 
As for Paulo's article, I agree with everything he says, but goddamn does it feel like PVDDR writes a bunch of articles bitching about ___________. I legit wonder if CFB makes him the whipping-boy who has to write the articles that bitch about formats, design, etc. so that the rest of their writers don't get flak from WOTC.

It's because he's actually one of their best writers. Can you imagine how shitty the article would sound if Matt Sperling wrote it?
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
To temper my support of his article a little, his point about Awaken is spot on, his point about allies is correct (but trifling, just look at the card) and his point about Devoid is pretty arguable. Devoid exists for gameplay and flavor reasons which are completely legitimate and some reasonable synergies (e.g. Titan's Presence) actually do exist.
 

Yeef

Member
Devoid on creatures is fine. But I'm baffled that they made so many devoid and straight up colorless instants and sorceries when they literally just announced that they're basically phasing out Protection, which is like the one interaction where a spell's redness or blueness actually matters. Without that all they have are "reduce colorless spell costs by 1" effects which...aren't pushed or particularly relevant.
It's a draft thing. Devoid is basically a marker to tell people that those spells play well in an Eldrazi deck.There are a handful of Eldrazi that care about colorless cards and all of the devoid spells either exile things, make scions or care about colorless spells. The two exceptions seems to be Turn Against and Processor Assault. The latter at least makes sense since it acts like a Processor, but the former seems to just be colorless for flavor reasons.
 
To temper my support of his article a little, his point about Awaken is spot on, his point about allies is correct (but trifling, just look at the card) and his point about Devoid is pretty arguable. Devoid exists for gameplay and flavor reasons which are completely legitimate and some reasonable synergies (e.g. Titan's Presence) actually do exist.

Agreed on the devoid, it's like how many keywords are just an abbreviation of what they used before, shadowmoore and eventide already had an untap theme and some on untap triggers which they made inspire for Theros.

Landfall and exploit already existed in some form or another, etc.

There are synergies for devoid but they just aren't particularly good and mostly in red.

The problem with allies is not just that you have to read the card extensively but that in drafting you might have a hard time acquiring the necessary amount to make the deck work.

Sealed will work much better for allies imo.
 

kirblar

Member
With new Allies, if you draw the wrong half or in the wrong order, you have a problem.

With old allies, they all generally worked when you played them out.
 

pigeon

Banned
Complaints about Devoid are completely baffling to me tho. It'd be one thing if devoid cards cost more because of devoid but they don't.

I don't think the problem with devoid is about power level, it's more about design. It's being sold as a big new mechanic in this set when the reality is that devoid isn't a mechanic at all. Mechanics do a thing and, by defining that thing, reify it in the Magic ecosystem, allowing design to play off of it. But colorless spells don't need definition. Colorless spells have existed since Alpha, and they were so far from being a keyworded mechanic that they were left up to the art direction to communicate.

If there's a new mechanic in devoid, it's not "this spell is colorless." It's "this colorless spell costs colored mana." Which is kind of a mechanic (although it's still more or less just a characteristic), but obviously it's basically a negative one. Basically it means the set is just a set with a higher than normal frequency of colorless cards, without the corresponding deckbuilding flexibility that would normally come along with that (because they created a mechanic to get rid of it).

So it's just a set with lots of colorless cards. Well, the reality is that Magic mostly doesn't care about colorless cards. Gatherer only shows 116 cards that reference "colorless" and the majority of them are creating colorless tokens. I dug through them and I found four cards pre-BFZ that actually benefit from having more colorless cards -- Ghostfire Blade (creatures only), Eldrazi Temple (Eldrazi only), Eye of Ugin (Eldrazi spells/creatures only), and Tomb of the Spirit Dragon (creatures only). Which means that a card like, say, Adverse Conditions, which is a devoid non-Eldrazi Instant, has literally no cards that interact with its colorless status in the entirety of Magic. It's defined only by exclusion -- being devoid means that cards that would normally care about blue instants don't care about this one.

So it's almost the perfect example of a "mechanic" that does nothing, interacts with nothing, and creates no new design space. Is that "transgressive?" I mean, in the sense that they're charging money for it, I guess.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
What the fuck is with the art in this set

cardart_NissasExpedition.jpg


Nissa looks like an off-model moment in a cheap anime
 

Yeef

Member
I was surprised by the number of Rally abilities that don't stack with themselves. Cards that get you multiple allies in a single turn almost don't matter because so many of the triggers just grant a keyword, so multiple triggers become redundant.
 

Yeef

Member
I don't think the problem with devoid is about power level, it's more about design. It's being sold as a big new mechanic in this set when the reality is that devoid isn't a mechanic at all. Mechanics do a thing and, by defining that thing, reify it in the Magic ecosystem, allowing design to play off of it. But colorless spells don't need definition. Colorless spells have existed since Alpha, and they were so far from being a keyworded mechanic that they were left up to the art direction to communicate.

If there's a new mechanic in devoid, it's not "this spell is colorless." It's "this colorless spell costs colored mana." Which is kind of a mechanic (although it's still more or less just a characteristic), but obviously it's basically a negative one. Basically it means the set is just a set with a higher than normal frequency of colorless cards, without the corresponding deckbuilding flexibility that would normally come along with that (because they created a mechanic to get rid of it).

So it's just a set with lots of colorless cards. Well, the reality is that Magic mostly doesn't care about colorless cards. Gatherer only shows 116 cards that reference "colorless" and the majority of them are creating colorless tokens. I dug through them and I found four cards pre-BFZ that actually benefit from having more colorless cards -- Ghostfire Blade (creatures only), Eldrazi Temple (Eldrazi only), Eye of Ugin (Eldrazi spells/creatures only), and Tomb of the Spirit Dragon (creatures only). Which means that a card like, say, Adverse Conditions, which is a devoid non-Eldrazi Instant, has literally no cards that interact with its colorless status in the entirety of Magic. It's defined only by exclusion -- being devoid means that cards that would normally care about blue instants don't care about this one.

So it's almost the perfect example of a "mechanic" that does nothing, interacts with nothing, and creates no new design space. Is that "transgressive?" I mean, in the sense that they're charging money for it, I guess.
I'd disagree that devoid is being sold as a big mechanic. Many of the design and development articles on Wizards' site have pointed out during design it wasn't a named mechanic at all. Originally, they just wanted to use a colorless indicator sort of like the ones you see on the Pacts, but focus testing showed that players didn't get it, so they moved it into the text box.

Also, you've missed a whole bunch of cards that would make colorless matter more. In standard, Ugin, for one, doesn't exile colorless permanents. Ultimate Price also misses them. In wider formats, they get around cards like Apostle's Blessing, Kor Firewalker and Iona.

(I think it'd be hilarious if there was a new Iona in the next set that said opponents can't play colorless, nonland cards).

What the fuck is with the art in this set

cardart_NissasExpedition.jpg


Nissa looks like an off-model moment in a cheap anime
That art is from M15.

It looked fine at card size, but it's pretty bad when you can make out the details (or lack thereof).
 

OnPoint

Member
Also, you've missed a whole bunch of cards that would make colorless matter more. In standard, Ugin, for one, doesn't exile colorless permanents. Ultimate Price also misses them. In wider formats, they get around cards like Apostle's Blessing, Kor Firewalker and Iona..

I suggested a Devoid/Ugin deck last page. I still think it could be a thing, possibly.
 

Jhriad

Member
I'm guessing you're referring to Wurmcoil Engine?

Yeah, your creature suite with that many Wormcoil Engines looks more like a RG Tron deck, also known as Eldrazi Green, to me. Here's an example deck from a recent tournament.

To temper my support of his article a little, his point about Awaken is spot on, his point about allies is correct (but trifling, just look at the card) and his point about Devoid is pretty arguable. Devoid exists for gameplay and flavor reasons which are completely legitimate and some reasonable synergies (e.g. Titan's Presence) actually do exist.

Yeah, I don't think of Devoid as one of the sets big mechanics. Colorless Eldrazi is the mechanic/theme, Devoid is just a method of indicating certain cards are colorless despite colored mana symbols in their cost. You don't draft/build a 'Devoid' deck so much as you build a colorless deck which slots in those Devoid cards. They had to make colorless cards with colored costs because of issues with previous sets based on colorless themes and keywording it like this is the clearest way to communicate to players that certain cards with colored mana symbols remain colorless. His point about Awaken is spot on though. It's unfortunate that they just kind of tacked it onto some cards since I think it's a cool version of Kicker. I'd rather see it attached to cards that are more thematically appropriate or interesting like Earthen Arms it can either further pump the land it's Awakening or interact with other cards in the set and previous block in decent ways. Earthen Arms your Gideon, Ally of Zendikar for a bigger body or use it in concert with the rest of your Hardened Scales/Anafenza/Hangarback deck.
 

OnPoint

Member
Devoid is there for a good reason.

Image.ashx


How many of you realized this was not an artifact creature the first time you saw it? Be honest.
 

pigeon

Banned
Also, you've missed a whole bunch of cards that would make colorless matter more. In standard, Ugin, for one, doesn't exile colorless permanents. Ultimate Price also misses them. In wider formats, they get around cards like Apostle's Blessing, Kor Firewalker and Iona.

I didn't miss them -- that's my point about exclusion. Devoid cards are defined by not interacting with stuff they would ordinarily interact with. Which is a lot of stuff in Magic! But that doesn't make it an interesting design choice, because it doesn't add play decisions, it removes them. You could do a set where everything just had hexproof slapped on it, and those cards would maybe see play, but it wouldn't be good design.

Devoid is there for a good reason.

Image.ashx


How many of you realized this was not an artifact creature the first time you saw it? Be honest.

I mean, if that's the problem, then again, that's an art direction problem. A problem that can be solved by a better card frame does not need to be a mechanic.
 

OnPoint

Member
I mean, if that's the problem, then again, that's an art direction problem. A problem that can be solved by a better card frame does not need to be a mechanic.

They said they tried several things, exactly what you suggested even, and none of it worked. Shitty set or not, I believe them when they said they tried.
 
It's being sold as a big new mechanic in this set when the reality is that devoid isn't a mechanic at all.

I don't think its being sold as a new mechanic. Wizards (and Maro) have been out there saying Devoid is basically just reminder text. Specifically that the special border was not enough to symbolize colorless on a card with a colored mana cost. It's not taking up design space that would otherwise have been given to another keyword. It was basically conceived as and subsequently treated like a glorified Eldrazi watermark. Which we can easily conclude was needed since the allies not having an opposing visual schtick is something that people are complaining about.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Yeah, your creature suite with that many Wormcoil Engines looks more like a RG Tron deck, also known as Eldrazi Green, to me. Here's an example deck from a recent tournament.



Yeah, I don't think of Devoid as one of the sets big mechanics. Colorless Eldrazi is the mechanic/theme, Devoid is just a method of indicating certain cards are colorless despite colored mana symbols in their cost. You don't draft/build a 'Devoid' deck so much as you build a colorless deck which slots in those Devoid cards. They had to make colorless cards with colored costs because of issues with previous sets based on colorless themes and keywording it like this is the clearest way to communicate to players that certain cards with colored mana symbols remain colorless. His point about Awaken is spot on though. It's unfortunate that they just kind of tacked it onto some cards since I think it's a cool version of Kicker. I'd rather see it attached to cards that are more thematically appropriate or interesting like Earthen Arms it can either further pump the land it's Awakening or interact with other cards in the set and previous block in decent ways. Earthen Arms your Gideon, Ally of Zendikar for a bigger body or use it in concert with the rest of your Hardened Scales/Anafenza/Hangarback deck.

There's some reasonable synergy there with Ugin and Titan's Presence, which is ridiculously good removal if you're playing a synergistic deck.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
huh these two cards synergise in no way at all, I don't get it? Do you mean Ugin and Titan's presence synergise with devoid?
No, I mean if you make a deck with a colorless or devoid theme, they're both payoff cards for doing it.

I mean, I'm certainly planning to run out that Eldrazi deck I made until I lose too much and go back to just running dumb 'ol Jeskai with Mantis Riders ahoy
 
I'd like to see someone build a Devoid/Ingest deck using some of the new Eldrazi, and then one-side wrath someone with Ugin's minus ability, keeping all of their own permanents.
This was literally the assumption for what would happen with the new Eldrazi. Unfortunately it doesn't really matter if almost none of them are constructed playable.

Sperling's great.
Owen's great.

Keeping it real (and snarky) is a good thing.

I'm a huge fan of Owen, but the difference between PV and Owen is that PV submits finished articles.

so anyone else thinks that they might have intentionally decreased the power level with BfZ and then included the expedition lands so the set still sells?
Its a shitty low power set. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna have fun with it.
The power level wasn't the problem. Theros had a similarly low power level, but the mechanics were both extremely flavorful and fun to play in a way that BFZ just isn't.

But the actual answer is, trying to take two formats people loved (one without good reason) and jam them into one was never going to work very well. It's like trying to jam Ravnica together with Mirrodin and hoping it will somehow come out coherent.

Except that they're almost at a playable set here. Get rid of devoid so there's more text space to give all the non-processor eldrazi Ingest X, stick supertype Ally on the cards that fucking look like Allies and the set plays better. Find another way to show the Eldrazi being colorless. Hell, just call them Colorless Creature - Eldrazi Processor for all I care.

What the fuck is with the art in this set

http://media.wizards.com/2015/images/daily/cardart_NissasExpedition.jpg[/IG]

Nissa looks like an off-model moment in a cheap anime[/QUOTE]

[quote="OnPoint, post: 179625401"]The art direction was wonky for Origins too. It has me kind of worried for the future.[/QUOTE]

At least a higher percentage of the art in Origins actually seemed finished. I honestly believe a significant percentage of the art for BFZ is just [I]not done. [/I]I don't want to speculate on why because it doesn't matter, but I'm on record from the earliest art reveals for this set saying that the art is really bad. Like, shockingly bad. The first art for Khans was the Mardu Clan on the cliff and it looked amazing, instantly told the story and got everyone hype for Wedges on the spot because the art direction was so good. For Magic Origins, Karla Ortiz' Liliana paintings were the only art we had for months and it didn't matter because in both composition and execution it was some of the most successful art in the history of the game. Those two paintings alone illustrated the tone of ORI so well it's all they needed to advertise their set.

BFZ got a stack of art for its first reveal and it all looked like shit. The colors and composition were all over the place and it didn't evoke any particular emotion from the characters that helped us know what's going on. It was legitimately poor art direction.
 
No, I mean if you make a deck with a colorless or devoid theme, they're both payoff cards for doing it.

I mean, I'm certainly planning to run out that Eldrazi deck I made until I lose too much and go back to just running dumb 'ol Jeskai with Mantis Riders ahoy

in the sense that Ugin doesn't exile your creatures, that makes sense.

Even if it does well wouldn't you end up facing mirror matches after a while and doesn't it crumble to tragic arrogance/planar outburst
 
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";179632111]I honestly believe a significant percentage of the art for BFZ is just not done. [/QUOTE]

It couldn't be possible that this is why we haven't seen any commander stuff could it? I don't know how early things have to be done to get out to printers, so I might just be grasping at straws.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
in the sense that Ugin doesn't exile your creatures, that makes sense.

Even if it does well wouldn't you end up facing mirror matches after a while and doesn't it crumble to tragic arrogance/planar outburst

The plan is to get Ulamog out and crush all their hopes and dreams
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
But Ulamog doesn't even beat Abzan Charm. :3

Let me live the dream

I'm at least gonna beat the one guy who inevitably shows up to FNM not being aware that rotation occurred and his deck turns out to be illegal
 
It couldn't be possible that this is why we haven't seen any commander stuff could it? I don't know how early things have to be done to get out to printers, so I might just be grasping at straws.

There's plenty of reasons it could be like this. New rotation schedule changing deadlines unexpectedly, MTG's new extra art directors getting their first whirl, etc. But like I said, it doesn't matter. This is what they printed and I'm not going to give them slack for it because they're professionals and this isn't what I expect from professionals.

It's a real shame because there's some hidden gems in this set's art. Palumbo's Beastcaller Savant, Jacobsen's Tightening Coils, Briclot's Smothering Abomination, Rainville's Mist Intruder, all of Izzy and James Zapata's cards. But outside the lands, there's a shockingly inconsistent level of both finish and direction in the art.

Here's three cards next to each other in the same column from glancing over Mythicspoiler:
draft3rstr.png


The left one looks like concept art, the middle one is cheesy 3D and the last looks like a comic book. All three are perfectly acceptable, but they don't really look like they're from the same era of Magic art. Going over the full list of KTK again, you don't get big discrepancies like this. All the art is consistent. Seriously. Just go over the full spoiler for BFZ for ten seconds, then do the same for KTK and back again. It's remarkable.

More importantly, when you have artists spending weeks on a painting and their card makes these tokens...

my4kfwednz25sj2.png


What do you think their audience is going to remember? This fucking token should have been rejected, it's the most unfinished art I've seen for MTG in a long, long time. It's a real problem that makes the whole set look worse for the story it tells.
 

Angry Grimace

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

Christ, the new eldrazi are just bad.

Kozilek and old Ulamog died to Abzan Charm too. Emrakul didn't, but he died to Journey to Nowhere in the longshot scenario where you managed to put him on the battlefield.

I would argue new Ulamog isn't particularly worse than old Ulamog, really.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I know a low of people seem to hate the card, but I just think Fathom Feeder is one of those annoying (for your opponent) cards nobody really wants to attack into and manages to not be a completely miserable topdeck.

Deathtouch is fucking obnoxious to attack into.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I just see a card like that and say, I'm not going to get angry when this is in my hand basically ever.

Which is funny since I hated this card when I saw it.

I mean, no, he's not gonna bring you back when you're down 6-18 staring down 2 8/9 Eldrazi Tramplers, or 2 Siege Rhinos, but it's also 2 mana.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom