Support NeoGAF

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";203015949]I can't decide if I want negates or an Orb of Warding in my sideboard. Orbs would be pretty good against goggles ramp.[/QUOTE]
They'll just destroy it with World Breaker.

 

[OnPoint]

I mean, Force Spike itself is considered too strong for Modern, right?

But it's Modern legal

Spoiler

in white

. I didn't realize that was the line of thinking for that card. Dang.

 

[charlequin]

MaRo goes over mistakes, and talks about Battle for Zendikar. It's interesting to note that Battle for Zendikar design started before they decided to focus more on story with Magic Origins. They went with a big war between the Zendikari and the Eldrazi because what else would the cliffhanger of Rise of the Eldrazi lead to? He also makes an interesting analogy about their decision to focus more on Rise of the Eldrazi in their return:

So close and yet so far. He seems to have correctly identified that BFZ is a pile of butt, but he thinks it's because it's too much like ROE (when it's actually not similar at all, and I am confident ROE fans dislike it as much or more than ZEN fans do.)

 

[red13th]

So close and yet so far. He seems to have correctly identified that BFZ is a pile of butt, but he thinks it's because it's too much like ROE (when it's actually not similar at all, and I am confident ROE fans dislike it as much or more than ZEN fans do.)

Yeah, made me scratch my head a little.

 

[kirblar]

So close and yet so far. He seems to have correctly identified that BFZ is a pile of butt, but he thinks it's because it's too much like ROE (when it's actually not similar at all, and I am confident ROE fans dislike it as much or more than ZEN fans do.)

Because he's shitting on Tinsman while propping his stuff up as the holy grail.

Problem is that BFZ's big issues arent the lack of adventure world, its utterly failing at capturing ANYTHING people liked about either side of the block.

 

[Angry Grimace]

BFZ's biggest problem is that it played up the weirdness of the Eldrazi in a way that was weird in a bad way and not all that fun to play. Way too many of the Eldrazi are fiddly cards that are annoying to play with and against in practice.

 

[Joe Molotov]

So MaRo took us to DisneyLand, but he wouldn't let us ride Space Mountain? What a dick.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Zendikar wasn't interesting in the first place. I couldn't tell you anything about that plane.

OGW was pretty good imo.

 

[charlequin]

Problem is that BFZ's big issues arent the lack of adventure world, its utterly failing at capturing ANYTHING people liked about either side of the block.

Yes, although in retrospect the adventure world stuff was some of the better stuff in ZEN.

 

["God's Beard!"]

They'll just destroy it with World Breaker.

I'll probably just stick with my 1-of Pick the Brain in the board that I replaced the 2nd Flaying Tendrils with. Counters are really bad with my strategy and Orbs is too narrow.

Post-board I have 20.5 ways of dealing with World Breakers, but only 6 for fighting Fall of the Titans.

 

[kirblar]

Yes, although in retrospect the adventure world stuff was some of the better stuff in ZEN.

OGW being an amazing set also shoots an enormous hole in his theory.

 

[charlequin]

quincognito asked: I'm glad that you're recognizing problems with Battle for Zendikar, but I don't think your conclusion about it today is correct. You say "We returned to Rise of the Eldrazi" but I think ROE fans dislike BFZ even more than ZEN fans, because it completely fails to recapture what we liked about the eldrazi. You aren't getting feedback that says this set was a hit with people who liked the ROE draft environment, are you?

No, but we knew going in we were going to have that problem because Rise of the Eldrazi ignored New World Order in a way that we weren’t going to repeat. Yet another reason, choosing Eldrazi as the focus was a mistake.

This is at least a little improvement, since I think he's probably right that an eldrazi focus (certainly at the level they did it) was a mistake. This might just be one of his persistent blind spots, though, I'm gonna have to wait and see what Aaron/Shawn/Ethan/Ken say about the set in a year or so.

It does sound like he's gonna harsh much more on BFZ in his State of Design, which at least means he's getting the picture on this set faster than he did on Alara.

I think making the Eldrazi the focus was the mistake. I haven’t spent the time I would need to in Order to solve that problem.

I'm pretty sure you solve this problem by bending the eldrazi back towards the big, individual, scary side and having them as the top-price spice in another land/ramp block.

 

["God's Beard!"]

On the draw vs GW Tokens, keep or mulligan:

 

[kirblar]

@maro254 Going to go into more detail later once full set is out, but strongly believe you've missed the emotional resonance of the Eldrazi.

@maro254 "Weird/Alien" seems to have been the design concept, but "Existential Terror" is what they should be invoking.

@maro254 Evangelion, Attack on Titan- this is the media that should have been used as inspiration here.

@Kirblar024 We want to differentiate them from the Phyrexians who are the terrifying race.

@maro254 Avoiding overlap is definitely necessary, but "inexorable demise" was a huge part of RoE's Eldrazi that's missing outside of Ulamog

@maro254 That's baffling to me, especially given desire for EvP. Evaporating library was a great idea, but its not unifying them.

Getting this in one spot for reference. Such a huge screw up on their end.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

telling them what they should use as reference/inspiration is a bit presumptuous. Especially as AoT is pretty mediocre.

 

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";203030907]On the draw vs GW Tokens, keep or mulligan:

[/QUOTE]

Uh, obvious mull. Your hand has 1 land and even if you draw into a land, your hand doesn't operate particularly great on 2 mana.

 

[kirblar]

telling them what they should use as reference/inspiration is a bit presumptuous. Especially as AoT is pretty mediocre.

It's not presumptuous whatsoever when it's the obvious option- Eldrazi should be invoking existential terror. Removing that aspect neuters them.

Also, anime snobbery is lame.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

It's not presumptuous whatsoever when it's the obvious option- Eldrazi should be invoking existential terror. Removing that aspect neuters them.

Also, anime snobbery is lame.

Same as shoving anime down people's throat, I get it Evangelion is amazing but telling a member of a creative team this is how they should have done it still remains presumptuous.

Nothing in Evangelion particularly invoked existential terror but Shinji's father, personally.

 

[kirblar]

Same as shoving anime down people's throat, I get it Evangelion is amazing but telling a member of a creative team this is how they should have done it still remains presumptuous.

Nothing in Evangelion particularly invoked existential terror but Shinji's father, personally.

The Angels.

They failed to capture the essence of the Eldrazi because MaRo threw out everything that defined them.

 

[charlequin]

Nothing in Evangelion particularly invoked existential terror

wut

 

["God's Beard!"]

Existential terror is like the foundation of Evangelion's scrambled nonsense storytelling.

Uh, obvious mull. Your hand has 1 land and even if you draw into a land, your hand doesn't operate particularly great on 2 mana.

But it's 6 castable cards off any land!

 

[charlequin]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";203034549]Existential terror is like the foundation of Evangelion's scrambled nonsense storytelling.
[/QUOTE]

It's also so so so clearly the inspiration for most of the colorless eldrazi in ROE.

 

["God's Beard!"]

The Angels.

Even not counting the angels, the whole story is about existential terror. Every time shinji crawls into a ball and tries to hide from reality, every time asuka trys to reaffirm her existence. Even human instrumentality is an existential problem. It's a bunch of rambling garbage writing, but the core theme is definitely existentialism. Combine pseudo-philosophical musing with gundams and vague religious imagery and you get the most influential anime in history this side of DBZ.

 

[bigkrev]

LSV is currently quad queue across 3 different formats
Average streamer usually gets close to timing out just doing 2, but here is a guy doing 4 and having no issues, lol

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

board in 3 leylines don't see a single one during 6 mulligans over 2 games (I mulliganed to zero the 3rd game but didn't count past mull to 4, still zero in total tho)

There's so many deck trying GY shenanigans in modern right now that Leyline of the Void is an all star. Heck I played against a weird bant allies deck that had some weird mill combo in it and it won me game 3.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Double post but idc because I just won against Lantern Control by making them draw 6 cards with Ancestral Visions. Game 2 won with Engineered Explosives at 1 and bouncing the pithing needle naming it with cryptic EoT

 

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";203034549]Existential terror is like the foundation of Evangelion's scrambled nonsense storytelling.



But it's 6 castable cards off any land![/QUOTE]
You don't even HAVE that land and your recruiters are just Bears without the mana to use the ability.

 

["God's Beard!"]

You don't even HAVE that land and your recruiters are just Bears without the mana to use the ability.

Yeah but if I draw the land and the first recruiter flips I can play the other two in the same turn without drawing a third land

Spoiler

I didn't draw the 2nd land

 

[Dysun]

LSV is currently quad queue across 3 different formats
Average streamer usually gets close to timing out just doing 2, but here is a guy doing 4 and having no issues, lol

lsv is a real magician

 

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";203115319]Yeah but if I draw the land and the first recruiter flips I can play the other two in the same turn without drawing a third land

Spoiler

I didn't draw the 2nd land

[/QUOTE]

Scrub Keep™

 

["God's Beard!"]

Scrub Keep™

Luckily I wasn't tempted at the PPTQ since both my 1-landers were my 1-of Blighted Fen

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Just had an interesting idea for a more symbiotic PW.

2GG NAME

When NAME enters the battlefield put a */* legendary green elemental NAME2 creature token with vigilance and trample onto the battlefield with power and toughness equal to the amount of loyalty counters on NAME.
+1: NAME2 fights target creature you don't control
+1: Until your next turn NAME2 gets "When this creature leaves the battlefield put a 3/3 green beast creature token onto the battlefield
+1: Put a */* legendary green elemental NAME2 token onto the battlefield with power and toughness equal to the amount of loyalty counters on NAME.

4



For ease of use or balancing the ETB effect should probably be cut. Very overtuned numbers right now but I think otherwise it'd be garbage

 

[Maledict]

Getting this in one spot for reference. Such a huge screw up on their end.

I know I've said this before, but there really did fail. They actually turned the Eldrazi into phyrexians in this block mechanically. The phyrexians are the race that corrupts you, that turns your opponents resources against them, and that builds warped machines that build towards a larger goal. The Eldrazi are the race that obliterates you with overwhelming unstoppable firepower like nothing else in the game - ungodly power at that.

The fact that there's even a card called Phyrexians Ingester, that exiles cards and uses that exiled card to give itself a bonus should have been a clue.

Re his wider comments about Rise of the Eldrazi, we have to bear in mind that sales figures are key to them, and apparently Rise of the Eldrazi sold badly. So I can understand from Maro's perspective why he keeps pushing that set as being a failure and not something they should return to. It's not just him being arrogant, he has evidence that shows the set wasn't popular. To me Rise was very like Time Spiral - a set I absolutely loved because I'be been invested in the game for years, but apparently it was not a hit with newer players.

It would be interesting to see how RTZ compares to OGW sales wise. CErtainly quality wise OGW felt leagues better - but then so did ROE and that set didn't do well.

 

[charlequin]

So I can understand from Maro's perspective why he keeps pushing that set as being a failure and not something they should return to. It's not just him being arrogant, he has evidence that shows the set wasn't popular.

The problem I have is that this is such a naive and simplistic way to look at this type of data. People who look at a single game's disappointing sales and go "well, it's proven now, no other game should ever be anything like this" get laughed out of the room in Sales-Age threads. The way Rosewater typically talks about this specific topic is pretty similar -- it takes it as given that everything about a high-selling set is good and everything about a low-selling set is bad, and then reasons backwards to conclusions about what sorts of things should not appear in the game from there.

There's a lot more gradation to the situation than that, though. Zendikar is actually not a great set despite selling ridiculously well, and the right lessons to learn from it mostly don't involve doing the exact same things it did; quadruple that for BFZ, which sold well despite being the worst designed set since Saviors of Kamigawa. Rise underperformed, but that's primarily a marketing and positioning issue -- the stuff it did well as a set is very much worth learning from and emulating. Time Spiral was absolutely too much and they learned one correct lesson from that, but only a few people in R&D seem to have taken away how valuable the themes in that set are when used sparingly rather than amped to 11. And so on.

 

[Maledict]

Oh, I absolutely agree wth you - sales are way too simplistic a measure to rely judge quality on. Heck, Mirrodin was their biggest selling set for years - but as a result to a of people crashed out of the game because it was so damn unfun to play.

Just trying to view things through his eyes, and Maro definitely places sales as the largest single measure of success for a set. Avacyn In particular shows how bad sales are as the sole judgement of a set.

 

[Angry Grimace]

The stupidest Magic drama in the world:

http://imgur.com/a/3ixfU

 

[divisionbyzorro]

Where did that even come from? I would have expected that sort of thing to be on Reddit.

 

[ultron87]

Eew. Keep that kind of shit out of here.

 

["God's Beard!"]

The only thing I want to talk about involving Frank Lepore is how boring his draft videos on CFB are.

Now Neal Oliver, that dude is the man. By far their best limited content if you're looking to learn. LSV and BBD are good, but they're more entertaining than informative. Same with CalebD and constructed games.

 

[charlequin]

The stupidest Magic drama in the world

I agree.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

The stupidest Magic drama in the world:

http://imgur.com/a/3ixfU

why link that and who even posted that. I have to bleach my mind now.

 

[El Topo]

I stopped reading after the first picture. I don't think I need any Magic drama/gossip. How do you even stumble upon shit like that?

 

[WanderingWind]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";203249671]The only thing I want to talk about involving Frank Lepore is how boring his draft videos on CFB are.

Now Neal Oliver, that dude is the man. By far their best limited content if you're looking to learn. LSV and BBD are good, but they're more entertaining than informative. Same with CalebD and constructed games.[/QUOTE]

Caleb is my Magic spirit animal. I'm always making the same decks as him (obs not exact) ahead of his videos. He's my favorite constructed brewer.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Magic Story - Stories and Endings
* Tamiyo is investigating stuff.
* Out of nowhere, a Kamigawa short story, about He Who Frightens the Sun. The moral is that the truth is better for deception than a lie.
* It seems like Tamiyo's magic allows her to apply aspects of stories to herself. The story involved a goblin disguising herself as an inconspicuous object, and so Tamiyo does the same thing.
* She walks into a library, where she sees that Jace beat up a librarian. She notices that he contracted the madness of Innistrad. She decides to confront him, and Jace recognizes her.
* Another short story, this time from Mirrodin, about the myr after Memnarch was defeated, which they celebrate as their origin story. There is great disagreement about which myr in the story was the "first", but the myr remain in unison despite this.
* Tamiyo is able to use this story to repair Jace's mind.
* Jace offers to join Tamiyo to help fix Innistrad's problem, but Tamiyo simply wishes to learn about it, not to do anything about it.
* Jace says that it would be useful for Tamiyo's research if he could go into Avacyn's mind, and if that incidentally helps save the plane, all the better. Tamiyo accepts, and offers to help anchor Jace's mind when he goes into Avacyn's.
* They read each other's minds. We get a bit of Tamiyo backstory, and she has a pretty good life. There is a Chekhov's Gun involving three iron-bound scrolls that contain dangerous stories, but they are interrupted by Avacyn approaching.
* Tamiyo tries to talk to Avacyn, but the latter declares the former an invader and impure.
* Another story from Tamiyo, about a man being killed by bitter cold just a hundred yards outside his door.
* This allows her to use ice spells against Avacyn. It just slows her down a bit.
* Jace is able to immobilize Avacyn with his mind, but then she grabs him and starts killing him.
* Jace asks Tamiyo to use one of the iron-bound scrolls, which describes the destruction of Serra's Realm. She refuses, and says stories have to end at some point.

Pretty good, and Tamiyo's abilities are neat.

For the record, history of Serra's Realm

Serra made the Realm in the hopes that she could make a haven where suffering could be avoided forever. It was the original home of the famous Serra Angels, and existed in peace and worship of its creator for some time.

All of that changed when Urza fled there after his failed attack on Phyrexia. He spent five years healing from that attack, and learning about the nature of artificial planes, which require constant maintenance from a planeswalker or other powerful being to keep from being consumed by entropy. After Urza left, the Phyrexians attacked. Though they were repulsed, their black mana forever tainted the realm, causing Serra to propose a massive exodus to the realm inhabitants and flee.

After Serra left, her head archangel, Radiant, took control of the plane with increasing militancy and religious paranoia. In her quest to expunge all Phyrexian influence, Radiant became an unwitting tool of the Phyrexians, and began exterminating loyal Serrans. Urza returned to Serra's Realm with the newly-built Skyship Weatherlight, rescuing many Serran refugees before finally collapsing the plane into the ship's powerstone core, giving it enough power to travel the planes.

 

[ultron87]

Caleb is my Magic spirit animal. I'm always making the same decks as him (obs not exact) ahead of his videos. He's my favorite constructed brewer.

Caleb's grudge match vs Wescoe videos from last week were a good time. Mostly due to Caleb preboarding for a Mono-Wescoe meta game and Wescoe's reaction to that.

http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/grudge-match-durward-vs-wescoe/

 

[charlequin]

Pretty good, and Tamiyo's abilities are neat.

Tamiyo as written in this story does a good job of being the knowledgeable voice of reason to Jace without being a massive dickbag like Ugin is.

 

[TheBlackMarvel]

Magic Story - Stories and Endings
* Tamiyo is investigating stuff.
* Out of nowhere, a Kamigawa short story, about He Who Frightens the Sun. The moral is that the truth is better for deception than a lie.
* It seems like Tamiyo's magic allows her to apply aspects of stories to herself. The story involved a goblin disguising herself as an inconspicuous object, and so Tamiyo does the same thing.
* She walks into a library, where she sees that Jace beat up a librarian. She notices that he contracted the madness of Innistrad. She decides to confront him, and Jace recognizes her.
* Another short story, this time from Mirrodin, about the myr after Memnarch was defeated, which they celebrate as their origin story. There is great disagreement about which myr in the story was the "first", but the myr remain in unison despite this.
* Tamiyo is able to use this story to repair Jace's mind.
* Jace offers to join Tamiyo to help fix Innistrad's problem, but Tamiyo simply wishes to learn about it, not to do anything about it.
* Jace says that it would be useful for Tamiyo's research if he could go into Avacyn's mind, and if that incidentally helps save the plane, all the better. Tamiyo accepts, and offers to help anchor Jace's mind when he goes into Avacyn's.
* They read each other's minds. We get a bit of Tamiyo backstory, and she has a pretty good life. There is a Chekhov's Gun involving three iron-bound scrolls that contain dangerous stories, but they are interrupted by Avacyn approaching.
* Tamiyo tries to talk to Avacyn, but the latter declares the former an invader and impure.
* Another story from Tamiyo, about a man being killed by bitter cold just a hundred yards outside his door.
* This allows her to use ice spells against Avacyn. It just slows her down a bit.
* Jace is able to immobilize Avacyn with his mind, but then she grabs him and starts killing him.
* Jace asks Tamiyo to use one of the iron-bound scrolls, which describes the destruction of Serra's Realm. She refuses, and says stories have to end at some point.

Pretty good, and Tamiyo's abilities are neat.

For the record, history of Serra's Realm

That was pretty good actually. Though, the more they reveal, the more I feel the eventual resolution of this is going to be an asspull of the highest order.

From what I gathered, her story magic would have linked Avacyn to Radiant's fate, which doesn't sound like a good thing for Innistrad...

 

[kirblar]

"Planes Die and are Born" sounded like "You fucking idiot, the Eldrazi are there for a reason" to me.

 

[Infinite Stars]

I'm still hoping that the reveal isn't Emrakul. The Serra's Realm/ the line

"The air filled with the smell of rotting meat. Avacyn's light did not dim, but the sense of glory vanished from it; the light was cold, sickening, oily, and cruel. "

Really makes me hope that it's Phyrexians. I know it's insane to think but it makes sense to me.

 

[El Topo]

I hope it's Emrakul just so we can get this over with. We get it, Eldrazi, big ancient beings, I'm sure they'll turn out to be totally important for the cosmic balance or something like that, okay. Next plot please.