WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Who is responsible for Prowess and Undying? Because they're awesome at cards.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT4| Izzet Me; Izzet You? A Love Story
- Thread starter The Technomancer
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Undying is more powerful but there are way more good Persist cards than there are Undying cards. Persist is just easier to develop for and its clear WOTC pushed the later mechanic more than the former. More combo-errific too.
Well, going back to that original Weatherlight story guide, I'd say that Gerrard started out sounding pretty black, especially given his thoughts on Han Solo.
The problem is that last part. Sounds like he'd shift toward white in the end. I think they need to focus on writing a black hero with black motivations. It can be both selfish and benefit the greater good.
I also think he's off base in saying white doesn't torture people. I think of the Spanish Inquisition or something similar as an example where an organization as a whole, dedicated to God and cleansing evil from the world could be white.
Yes, he's very off-base. White in particular can be a very cruel, unpleasant colour but that aspect is totally ignored. To put it in topical, personal terms, white is the colour still fighting against gay rights - whilst black and red are the colours that support it because they put the self above the will of the group.
And re black, I think it's very hard because fundamentally selfishness is an evil thing. It is not a good quality. Black heroes that do things that lead to the greater good either shift colour (Han solo, Gerrard), or stay black and accomplish good things "by accident". Evil, selfish characters shifting to good through redemption is an incredibly powerful tool - selfish characters who stay selfish and self-absorbed to the end are much harder to write.
Having just listened to his White / Black podcast, I thought he missed a really obvious parallel as well - White / Black is the colour of Lawful Evil. It's the colour of structure, order, obeying the rule s- but the rules can be evil, the rules can be twisted, and the rules are used to benefit you and by extension the group as much as possible.
And re black, I think it's very hard because fundamentally selfishness is an evil thing. It is not a good quality. Black heroes that do things that lead to the greater good either shift colour (Han solo, Gerrard), or stay black and accomplish good things "by accident". Evil, selfish characters shifting to good through redemption is an incredibly powerful tool - selfish characters who stay selfish and self-absorbed to the end are much harder to write.
Having just listened to his White / Black podcast, I thought he missed a really obvious parallel as well - White / Black is the colour of Lawful Evil. It's the colour of structure, order, obeying the rule s- but the rules can be evil, the rules can be twisted, and the rules are used to benefit you and by extension the group as much as possible.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I think you could have a black character who starts from the bottom and rises through the ranks of power. His or her rise through power is due to how the character rallies the support of a crowd -- a revolution, an election, whatever -- to their cause. It's framed publicly as "for the good of the people" but the character is actually acting in his or her best interest, and doesn't actually care about them, just the power they get from accomplishing this act.
Obviously you'd need to write something more engaging, but this is me on my couch on a Saturday morning thinking about this for like 5 minutes. It's possible to do this if they put a sliver of thought into it.
Obviously you'd need to write something more engaging, but this is me on my couch on a Saturday morning thinking about this for like 5 minutes. It's possible to do this if they put a sliver of thought into it.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
phazedplasma
Member
I would wish you luck, but youre not running crackling doom!!!!
It's your fault I got mana screwed round 2!
Lol. I just don't have the mana base to play Mardu and Grixis was too wonky for me without tweaking the deck and I just wasn't comfortable enough with the list.
Foul-Tongue Invocation does a decent enough job being Crackling Doom. Guy ran Gw devotion and top Decked a genesis hydra on an empty hand and empty board, proceeded to get a Whisperwood Elemental and value me out of the game.
This is different than the current artwork how exactly?
Innistrad and Scars lands aren't exactly comparable to the Temples because for the vast majority of archetypes the former two are better. A typical land will see growth commensurate with it's use in Modern and those that see little to no use will stagnate and see little to no growth post Standard crash. The Temples are strictly worse than a good number of the other Modern land cycles for the vast majority of decks. Lets look at the Scars lands you point out.
Blackcleave Cliffs would probably be the example you're looking for as it sees play as a four-of in Jund & Living End, a 2-of in Twinning End, and probably some EDH/Casual play. The Jund play is significant because the popularity of that archetype in the period after Blackcleave's standard run was probably the largest component in it actually seeing significant growth compared to the rest of the cycle.
Seachrome Coast
Copperline Gorge
Darkslick Shores
Seachrome Coast sees spotty use in UW Control, Ad Nauseam, and Merfolk (a very small subset of the archetype that has white). In all three cases it only sees occasional use and in most of those instances it's not a 4-of. Hence Seachrome Coast has remained practically the same price in it's post-standard lifetime. Copperline Gorge & Darkslick Shores have suffered the same fate as they're priced at or near the same price they were post-standard devaluation.
Now if we're going to translate that to the Temples let's take a look at them all. Most of them area actually below that $3-5 threshold you talked about whereas the two land cycles you mention were typically above that price prior to rotation. So in order for the Temples to hit that range they'll have to increase their value noticeably post-standard and that's for a more recent cycle that likely saw a larger print run than Scars & Inn.
Temple of Abandon. Temple of Epiphany, Temple of Malice, and Temple of Plenty see no Modern play.
Temple of Malady, Temple of Mystery, Temple of Triumph, and Temple of Silence have seen play at some point but it's so small that I had trouble determining exactly what decks it was in and when it occurred. Basically it's so insignificant that it won't be any help in driving prices.
Temple of Enlightenment and to a lesser extent Temple of Deceit both see play in smaller numbers. It should be noted that they only see play in a very small subset of archetypes and I wouldn't expect even the sort of modest inflation the lesser played Scars lands saw. If I were going to get in on a set of Temples after rotation it would be Temple of Enlightenment. Born of the Gods wasn't opened nearly as much as Theros which is part of the reason why it has the price it does currently.
ChazAshley
CharAznable's second cousin
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/119117367483/not-intended-as-a-question-or-an-mean-insult#notes
Alright.. which one of you guys are Kiblar024
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Its not a real question: its just Kirblar. Its basically a terrible criticism anyways. It's a complaint about Maro doing his fucking job and he's the only guy that happens to blog about it.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Stop wasting time asking Maro questions that aren't about the start date of the next GDS.
Yeah, pretty much. I don't always agree with Maro but he's the only one that gives us such a deep insight into a lot of behind the scenes of Magic.
I wasn't even trying to say I agreed with it completely- but I think his framing of "everything is conflict" is probably an explanation of what was nagging at me that the post earlier brought up.
How MaRo approaches communication is not how I prefer communication - narrative actually actively annoys me, in the sense that I don't actively analyze data that way. (This may explain why I'm a terrible story-teller.)
No, I'm sorry but that's an unfair criticism of my post.
I presume you listen to his podcasts and read his blog. Every single story over conflict is about him proving himself right against everyone else who was wrong. Even when he loses, the theme is "I was right, they were wrong and they should have listened to me".
I *love* listening to his stuff. I love reading it - it's a great insight, and I don't think Mark is a terrible thing for the game like many do. But as a narrative feature, he just needs to drop it. Either the rest of R&D is dreadful, and they should be fired and Mark creates sets on his own, or he starts talking a bit more fairly about his role and what the teams do. It is ridiculous - and it's not his job to constantly grandstand about himself. Because that's all it is - he is constantly the hero of his tales battling the stupidity and short sightedness of the rest of R&D, and it's a lame thing he should just drop. Its been over 100 podcasts now, and many many more web articles, he really needs to learn some way of writing this stuff.
"God's Beard!"
Member
lol @ Brad Nelson's story about double queing premiere events and splitting with himself or the tournament crashing then submitting for refunds on both accounts.
I love the set reviews with Evan Erwin. Maximum entertainment value.
I love the set reviews with Evan Erwin. Maximum entertainment value.
Also: we only hear his side of ongoing arguments inside R&D.I think Maro is more than willing to admit to when he fucks up. Usually only though when enough time has passed and everybody else has pretty much agreed he's fucked up though. Everything is the "best idea ever!" before/during launch
Un3 is the obvious example- he's going to be losing this battle in perpetuity because, to quote Matt Tabak, "Why would we make that when we could make literally anything else."
It's the development folk I feel sorry for, there's a constant tone of them being boring "numbers people" who restrain the brilliance of the artists in design...
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
That Mark Rosewater has his own biases isn't a reason to criticize him, really. It shouldn't be surprising he's going to believe that his own opinions are correct.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Well I'm visiting my hometown and my LGS here went out of business. Good thing the Witcher is coming out, damn...
keeblerdrow
Member
Assault Formation was just embarrassed on camera at the open. Kinda deserved it. If you're going to play that card, you can't just jam a bunch of other cards that are dead without it. It needs to be an enhancement, not a linchpin. Too much enchantment hate going around to lean that heavily on 4 copies of a card in your deck.
I like the idea of also having an alternative win con with Phenax with all those big butts, but it probably still isn't close to competitive enough.
Just got trounced by esper Dragons, mulled to 5 both games but I still don't think I could have gotten that matchup. I need a better sideboard for that or not play the deck lol.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Ass Formation sucks
I got beaten handily by Assault Formation multiple times in draft. When their 2/4s turn into 4/4s and they can pump them, man, that's an ass whooping.
I'm tired of Dragons in general. Last night I got blown the fuck out by Atarka. Sad to say this, but I'm actually looking forward to MM2. Tempest Remastered is alright, though I have yet to open Wasteland. :lol
I'm tired of Dragons in general. Last night I got blown the fuck out by Atarka. Sad to say this, but I'm actually looking forward to MM2. Tempest Remastered is alright, though I have yet to open Wasteland. :lol
"God's Beard!"
Member
Yeah, Formation is a fantastic limited rare.
Sequence Six
Member
I know it was a long time ago, and things can change, but any time someone wonders about the evil side of white I point them to The Dark. There's some mean stuff in there.
acheron_xl
Member
The gimmicky stuff like when he writes the colors 'in character' really grates on me. But after writing a column for 13 years, I guess you have to entertain yourself sometimes.
yeah I'm not touching those.
charlequin
Banned
This is the black equivalent to the "show that red is about art and romance" problem. People who are selfish and don't follow the rules are common in fiction but they're hard to express in a restricted format like CCG storytelling, and the problem is small enough that they constantly kick the can down the road in favor of addressing bigger problems.
That said, Sorin and Liliana are the best black characters they've basically ever had, so, eh?
Eh, this is an internecine battle for white. The color combo that opposes gay marriage is probably green/white -- the combo that believes in the power of tradition and everyone sacrificing their own happiness for the maintenance of the existing order. The combo that pushes for it is white/blue/red -- red for the underlying emotional love argument, white for being traditional enough to care about an old historical tradition and legal recognition, and blue for the Enlightenment idea of enshrining rights in the law and self-improvement through a war of ideas. Black would tend to lean in support once there's some momentum, but that's just the assholes who only care about their own personal tax breaks and the companies cynically using gay makeouts to advertise lite beer.
I don't think this is really fair. One of his most popular articles was the one that's literally just stories about him fucking things up: http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr166a
The real problem here is asymmetry. When there's an idea he has that's left-field and he needs to sell everyone on it, from his own perspective he's valiantly fighting against an implacable resistance, and what he remembers about the story is having to convince everyone. When someone else has an idea like this, unless he fights tooth and nail against it, what he's gonna remember is "someone else had an idea and convinced us to go with it." This isn't really a Rosewater thing, it's a pretty natural result of anyone sharing their own internal narratives. The issue is that nobody else on the team communicates about any of this stuff as much as he does (and only a few do it as well) so it ends up really one-sided.
It's the development folk I feel sorry for, there's a constant tone of them being boring "numbers people" who restrain the brilliance of the artists in design...
We just have so little time spent with developers who do a good job writing about what they do. We had Forsythe for a while, who was also a great narrative storyteller and who never hesitated to poke fun at fuck-ups or to say when he thought Maro was nuts, but he got promoted out of the gig too fast; later we had Zac Hill, who probably did the best job of anyone at conveying why development is valuable, but he left the company. I think Stoddard does a pretty okay job with the column but he's not a narrative writer and so we get a lot more abstract "here's the thought process we went through" and a lot less "here's how these people battled it out."
I do really wish Erik Lauer was a communicator. (Based on https://twitter.com/eriklauerquotes he is pretty much the opposite.) He's the single best predictor of set quality from a competitive standpoint and probably the single biggest individual asset on the R&D team, but we mostly have to interpret his approach to development second or third-hand.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The "Maro fucks up" articles are usually just him talking about Urza Block.
acheron_xl
Member
To be fair, he fucked that up so badly they had to invent modern development.
charlequin
Banned
Well they're just the easy counterpoint to dig up. He had a story about being totally in the wrong on some mechanic that turned out well a couple years ago but I can't remember which one well enough to google it up.
EDIT: You also have to remember the thing that underlies everything he says and writes these days, which is that he thought Time Spiral block was gonna be the biggest hit set OF ALL TIME and instead it sold like wet poo and wound up nuking complex commons forever.
I think he mentioned it in a podcast recently. Could've sworn it was the Exalted mechanic?
Nonetheless, he does give props and kudos to the other members of R&D when appropriate.
charlequin
Banned
That was it! He thought it was stupid and then Tinsman convinced them it was a good idea.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Tinsman is the boss.
charlequin
Banned
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";164213698]Tinsman is the boss.[/QUOTE]
On the plus side: lead designer of Time Spiral and Rise of the Eldrazi. On the minus side.... Saviors of Kamigawa and Avacyn Restored.
On the plus side: lead designer of Time Spiral and Rise of the Eldrazi. On the minus side.... Saviors of Kamigawa and Avacyn Restored.
One of those moments where the early years got stuff right.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Everybody makes mistakes. Not everybody makes Rise of the Eldrazi.
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";164218714]Everybody makes mistakes. Not everybody makes Rise of the Eldrazi.[/QUOTE]
We're never seeing anything like that again.
Strongly suspect that invalidating traditional aggro and making games go long severely reduced the amount of "free" wins not-good players were getting. (The "bear trap" is BS- sometimes a bear should be very mediocre.)
We're never seeing anything like that again.
Strongly suspect that invalidating traditional aggro and making games go long severely reduced the amount of "free" wins not-good players were getting. (The "bear trap" is BS- sometimes a bear should be very mediocre.)
"God's Beard!"
Member
We're never seeing anything like that again.
Strongly suspect that invalidating traditional aggro and making games go long severely reduced the amount of "free" wins not-good players were getting. (The "bear trap" is BS- sometimes a bear should be very mediocre.)
The aggro decks were sweet, though. Kiln Fiend and Bloodthrone Vampire are great build-arounds. The white level up aggro cards kinda sucked, but you can't get everything perfect.
Just the fact that there's these crazy wall tribal decks and 8 mana commons everyone fights over made Rise so much fun. Everything just has its own cool twist.
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";164222287]The aggro decks were sweet, though. Kiln Fiend and Bloodthrone Vampire are great build-arounds. The white level up aggro cards kinda sucked, but you can't get everything perfect.
Just the fact that there's these crazy wall tribal decks and 8 mana commons everyone fights over made Rise so much fun. Everything just has its own cool twist.[/QUOTE]
Kiln Fiend and Bloodthrone Vampire are synergy cards, they are explosive but they need a specific subset of cards to really do their thing. Kirblar is talking about those any 2 drop, any 3 drop, any 2-4 drop, first removal spell on your opponent's blocker and "oh did you miss a land drop? I guess you dead!" starts that just don't happen in RoE limited.
Just the fact that there's these crazy wall tribal decks and 8 mana commons everyone fights over made Rise so much fun. Everything just has its own cool twist.[/QUOTE]
Kiln Fiend and Bloodthrone Vampire are synergy cards, they are explosive but they need a specific subset of cards to really do their thing. Kirblar is talking about those any 2 drop, any 3 drop, any 2-4 drop, first removal spell on your opponent's blocker and "oh did you miss a land drop? I guess you dead!" starts that just don't happen in RoE limited.
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