After seeing the (near) full spoiler, I can't help but feel that Return to Ravnica is the most dumbed down "expert set" we've seen in a decade.
Compare the Guild abilities. Each is FAR easier to grok and looks to be designed so that it can easily be played in Duels of the Planeswalkers.
Azorious
WAS: Forecast - cheaper costed abilities that gave you an effect before you had the mana to play the full card, but could only be done during upkeep
NOW: Detain - Arrest for one turn
Golgari
WAS: Dredge - turns your draw step into a complcated decision, allows for massive recursion, (and ended up being completely broken)
NOW: Scavange - turns cards in your graveyard into +1/+1 counters, can be done at sorcery speed (definitely isn't broken)
Izzet
WAS: Replicate - "storm light," excellent way to fight control, gave player a lot of options
NOW: Overload - one or all
I could go on, but you get the idea. Then you look at the commons and even some of the uncommons. They EASILY could be in a core set, and many have been. I mean where is the Sky Hussar or Court Hussar, or even something simple but new like Azorius First-Wing?
Honestly, I haven't seen this many "French Vanilla" creatures outside core set, well, ever.
Obviously this set is going to be huge. The rares and mythics are awesome, it's the best setting they've ever done, and everyone loves gold cards. But I can't help wondering if this "core plus" style of expert set will be the way of the future...
I don't have any hard numbers on this, but I'm targeted more often than a black guy driving a beat-up sedan with a broken tail-light and no license plate, and Cy's well aware of that.
They haven't done "expert sets" in years. Waaaaaaay back around Lorwyn, MaRo said that they were doing away with that concept and instead trying to make all sets easy for new players to jump in with instead of just the core set.
And I just don't know what to say about your griping about RtR. The set is great. I guess Dr Jebus said it best when he said that Wizards could put $100 bills in packs and some people would complain about the way they're folded.
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I do totally get that we get a "this set sucks/is the worse set ever" for every set and that this is indeed that thread.
But hell, I can't help but kinda agree with it this time. The set is just pretty underwhelming. I mean, it's not "terrible" or anything but damn there's a lot of filler in here. Why all the weird low power/high toughness rare creatures and crap like that? Lots of high CC crap rares. Nothing too amazing. And as the OP mentioned the "guild abilities" or whatever you wanna call them are preeeetty friggin lame. Especially when compared to the previous ravnicas guild tricks.
I mean, it's not the worst set or anything but I definitely agree it's pretty unimpressive.
But you know what, and I'm definitely gonna be alone on this. I wasn't all that excited about the first Ravnica block either. Sure we all love the shock lands, Lightning Helix, some of the cool removal and a few creatures but meh..... I wasn't too upset when it rotated. I worry that this block might be the same. Just shock lands, a few cool removal spells, a handful of cool creatures and that's it.
I agree that the vanilla and french vanilla galore of cards should have been left for core instead of clogging space here, I also think Unleash is the most stupid ability they have ever "designed". The set as a whole will be awesome to play anyways, as long as you're in U.
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I looked through Ravnica's creatures at common and uncommon.
They can be roughly divided into four different categories: easily grokkable french vanilla cards, easily grokkable french vanilla cards that feature a new guild mechanic, junk with marginal abilities, and Zephyr Spirit.
Ravnica's really good commons and uncommons have also been revisited in reprints, and both sets look to have some iconic rares that people will be keen to chase down. I think it's still too early to jump on the 'RUINED FOREVER' bandwagon until after someone builds a manaless Unleash deck in Vintage.
Got to agree. When they had ~100 cards spoiled, I thought maybe better cards would be forthcoming. Now that it's almost fully spoiled, I'm not seeing the power level that everybody was raving about. Shock lands and cards too expensive to cast in Standard. I pre-ordered 3 boxes, and although I'm glad I got in before box price reached 120, I'm not as excited as I was before.
But what do I know. Maybe the new Jace will turn out to be amazeballs...
I agree that the vanilla and french vanilla galore of cards should have been left for core instead of clogging space here, I also think Unleash is the most stupid ability they have ever "designed". The set as a whole will be awesome to play anyways, as long as you're in U.
Actually, of anyone, Selesnya probably got the best deal. While golgari got a lot of really good cards, they are going to have trouble with ALL the GY hate wizards decided to print.
Izzet just seem to be everywhere and dont really seem to have much of an end goal besides casting Niv-mizzet. All the cards just seem scattered everywhere and of all the guilds they have the least synergy within itself.
Rakdos could make a good sligh deck but trying to make a RAKDOS
Cult deck may prove difficult. Many of their top end cards are just kind of underwhelming.
Azorious is an interesting one. They haven't attracted to much attention to themselves. They will probably though end up being like a Rock deck, just with Giest of St. Traft as the rock and everyone else helping him tempo.
Now for selesnya...
They lost their BIGGEST killer, ratchet bomb. And most other removal can be blanked with rootborn defense. They also indirectly protect themselves from cards like sever the blood line by producing many different types of tokens. Additionally, the also save themselves from the single target hate cards by not being so reliant on LS. And their biggest advantage? Nobody will see them coming. As it stands, Izzet and Golgari have ALL the spotlight.
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Bloody hell. Apparently you can't ask a simple question around here without being called a whiner.
I actually DON'T think that the set sucks. I'm very excited to play it, and have pre-ordered more boxes than any other set in YEARS.
That all said, I'm concerned about the direction of **Game Design** seen here. I can't be the only one that noticed that the abilities are much simpler than the first Ravnica block - not that they're bad, just simpler. And this makes you want to ask "why?" If it was just Unleash as the simple mechanic, and another guild had something more complex - that used the stack, or changed a turn step, or used exiled cards... something - then no one would be asking. But when all 5 guilds are simpler, that was a decision made by the team and carried as a tennet throughout design and development.
I suspect that Duels of the Planeswalker has had something to do with this. DotP has done wonders for WotC and the Magic brand, so it would not be surprising to see it starting to affect game design...
In terms of mechanics, not a big fan. My RTR glow is starting to wear off already. :/
Sorry, Squid you get flamed if you agree or disagree in MTGS land. I started a thread about the lack of good RTR commons and got blasted. Try not to take it personally, it's going to happen (sadly). It's funny that those people that genuinely care about the state of Magic get such negative feedback from other so-called Magic fans.
The "effect when you pay a color" thing is already used in Shadowmoor. So i guess that is why they away from it.
As for being simplier, well done too, doing it in a popular plane to buffer the whining. They have to "level down" once in a while you know (and part of that level down is making stuff simplier), to pop the bubble that is power creep. I think the goodies are in Sinker.
Ah yes, i remember when people call Wizards lazy due to cards like Lightning Helix (combine two effects and shazam) and Watchwolf (make stuff bigger) and now, when they make the effort (they try to be REALLY different from first Ravnica), you guys want them back.
I wouldn't call it "dumbed down"... more "mechanically conservative". Guild keywords for the original Ravnica block were a crapshoot on the whole, with only Convoke, Replicate, and Bloodthirst being truly reasonable. The rest were either broken (Dredge), boring (Radiance, Graft), repetitive (Forecast, Transmute), or unwieldy (Haunt, Hellbent). And that was fine at the time, especially since Ravnica was new and exciting. But now we're in a set where the Guilds are familiar to all of us and essential to the drafting experience. They all need to be playable, so there seems to be a strong mechanical focus on strict value. It's very easy to look at a card in this set and determine its value for each format. Nothing much seems breakable here that Wizards didn't intend, and perhaps that's also a result of the Snapcaster/Caw-Blade debacles. They want to have a clearly defined Standard environment where each color is playable, rather than having to go back and retroactively print hate.
I think Populate and Unleash are both good mechanics. Unleash is a pretty tough decision to make on a lot of the cards when they feature things like Deathtouch, and First Strike.
Populate is a really good evolution of Convoke, i think.
Scavenge is pretty 'meh' i would've liked something 'cooler' and less 'vanilla' from a Guild that's all about the Graveyard.
I think Detain is pretty simplistic; it's just attaching Frost Breath on creatures. However, i think it's a good mechanic for limited, albeit a rather uninspired one. It does fit Azorius flavorwise.
Again, Overload is pretty simplistic, but i think it's very Izzet. There isn't much decision to be made there, though. You either have the mana or you don't. The Overload is always better. (to combat this they could've made a few good spells with 'Target X' rather than 'Target X you don't control'. That would've been an 'Expert-Level' thing to do. 'Is the juice worth the squeeze?' is a good question to ask your players with your mechanics and design, especially for Izzet.)
I think it's odd that blue got the 2 least inspiring or hard mechanics to play with. At least with Scavenge you may want to use that creature again or decide whether or not to Scavenge that turn or not. With Detain, you use it on the 2 biggest threats to make the combat math come out in your favor. With Overload if you can X for 1 then you X for 1 after counting your mana.
That all said, I'm concerned about the direction of **Game Design** seen here. I can't be the only one that noticed that the abilities are much simpler than the first Ravnica block - not that they're bad, just simpler. And this makes you want to ask "why?" If it was just Unleash as the simple mechanic, and another guild had something more complex - that used the stack, or changed a turn step, or used exiled cards... something - then no one would be asking. But when all 5 guilds are simpler, that was a decision made by the team and carried as a tennet throughout design and development.
I suspect that Duels of the Planeswalker has had something to do with this. DotP has done wonders for WotC and the Magic brand, so it would not be surprising to see it starting to affect game design...
The answer is that they've been moving in this direction for years, even before Duels was ever conceived. They realized that complexity for the sake of complexity is bad, it scares new players away, and that "complexity creep" is a real threat to the future of the game. I do agree that sometimes they tend to overdo it a bit and over-simplify, but it's difficult to argue with the success the game has enjoyed the past couple years.
I suspect that looking ahead to a Limited and Standard environment that would eventually include all ten new guild mechanics at once, probably scared them a little into making sure that all the guild mechanics were easy to understand and easy to grasp. I do like some more than others, I'm a big fan of Detain for instance, Unleash not as much.
I'll admit that now that the set is nearly all spoiled, the early early momentum it had seems to have fizzled.
I think the problem is too heavy a belief in jank cards being needed for a healthy limited environment.
Are you aware that Ravnica had a healthy dose of jank cards also?
I mean crap some of the cards in Ravnica that everyone seems to have conveniently forgot even look crappy in pure limited environments.
Even if every card that is considered sub-standard was made 2x more powerful it wouldn't matter to truly competitive constructed. Constructed by definition only has so much room for an amount of cards, the cream of the crop always will make deck lists even if the lowest cards are brought up higher.
Well they did decide to print better cards that aren't creatures for once which is nice but its no where near as good for spells as old ravnica on a whole.
They really have taken a liking to showing creatures mass love continuously im hoping the trend has a decent middleground for spells and creatures sometime soon ravnica is certainly about there but ISD block wasn't really at all...
But the set has a lot of filler a lot of it...but it still looks ok wish there was a bit less filler.
There is a video of Adam Forscythe explaining want has happened in design between the Ravinica's on youtube somewhere.
It really shows the evolution of what has happened.
"dumbing down" has help the game as a whole... Timespiral was a massive flop losing most of the people ravinica had gained because it was a) an in joke and b) unnecessarily complicated...
Lorwyn also stupidly complicated to actually have any combat when there was a million abilities that could happen.
then there was the new world order and things made more sense and sales started rising.
Compare the Guild abilities. Each is FAR easier to grok and looks to be designed so that it can easily be played in Duels of the Planeswalkers.
Azorious
WAS: Forecast - cheaper costed abilities that gave you an effect before you had the mana to play the full card, but could only be done during upkeep
NOW: Detain - Arrest for one turn
Golgari
WAS: Dredge - turns your draw step into a complcated decision, allows for massive recursion, (and ended up being completely broken)
NOW: Scavange - turns cards in your graveyard into +1/+1 counters, can be done at sorcery speed (definitely isn't broken)
Izzet
WAS: Replicate - "storm light," excellent way to fight control, gave player a lot of options
NOW: Overload - one or all
I could go on, but you get the idea. Then you look at the commons and even some of the uncommons. They EASILY could be in a core set, and many have been. I mean where is the Sky Hussar or Court Hussar, or even something simple but new like Azorius First-Wing?
Honestly, I haven't seen this many "French Vanilla" creatures outside core set, well, ever.
Obviously this set is going to be huge. The rares and mythics are awesome, it's the best setting they've ever done, and everyone loves gold cards. But I can't help wondering if this "core plus" style of expert set will be the way of the future...
I think the problem is too heavy a belief in jank cards being needed for a healthy limited environment.
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And I just don't know what to say about your griping about RtR. The set is great. I guess Dr Jebus said it best when he said that Wizards could put $100 bills in packs and some people would complain about the way they're folded.
Anyways, this set is fine. It's amazing, dont like it? dont play it.
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Oh god no... Don't remind me -.-.....
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
But hell, I can't help but kinda agree with it this time. The set is just pretty underwhelming. I mean, it's not "terrible" or anything but damn there's a lot of filler in here. Why all the weird low power/high toughness rare creatures and crap like that? Lots of high CC crap rares. Nothing too amazing. And as the OP mentioned the "guild abilities" or whatever you wanna call them are preeeetty friggin lame. Especially when compared to the previous ravnicas guild tricks.
I mean, it's not the worst set or anything but I definitely agree it's pretty unimpressive.
But you know what, and I'm definitely gonna be alone on this. I wasn't all that excited about the first Ravnica block either. Sure we all love the shock lands, Lightning Helix, some of the cool removal and a few creatures but meh..... I wasn't too upset when it rotated. I worry that this block might be the same. Just shock lands, a few cool removal spells, a handful of cool creatures and that's it.
I feel the same way. RTR has not turn out to be head and shoulder above the few sets preceding it, although some of us had assumed that it will be.
Apart from the dual reprints, other cards are all kinda blurry to me. No snapcaster level excitment this time.
I am still trying to pin down reason for my slowly declining interest in new sets. And I haven't played the game for that long.
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They can be roughly divided into four different categories: easily grokkable french vanilla cards, easily grokkable french vanilla cards that feature a new guild mechanic, junk with marginal abilities, and Zephyr Spirit.
Ravnica's really good commons and uncommons have also been revisited in reprints, and both sets look to have some iconic rares that people will be keen to chase down. I think it's still too early to jump on the 'RUINED FOREVER' bandwagon until after someone builds a manaless Unleash deck in Vintage.
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But what do I know. Maybe the new Jace will turn out to be amazeballs...
Actually, of anyone, Selesnya probably got the best deal. While golgari got a lot of really good cards, they are going to have trouble with ALL the GY hate wizards decided to print.
Izzet just seem to be everywhere and dont really seem to have much of an end goal besides casting Niv-mizzet. All the cards just seem scattered everywhere and of all the guilds they have the least synergy within itself.
Rakdos could make a good sligh deck but trying to make a RAKDOS
Cult deck may prove difficult. Many of their top end cards are just kind of underwhelming.
Azorious is an interesting one. They haven't attracted to much attention to themselves. They will probably though end up being like a Rock deck, just with Giest of St. Traft as the rock and everyone else helping him tempo.
Now for selesnya...
They lost their BIGGEST killer, ratchet bomb. And most other removal can be blanked with rootborn defense. They also indirectly protect themselves from cards like sever the blood line by producing many different types of tokens. Additionally, the also save themselves from the single target hate cards by not being so reliant on LS. And their biggest advantage? Nobody will see them coming. As it stands, Izzet and Golgari have ALL the spotlight.
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
I actually DON'T think that the set sucks. I'm very excited to play it, and have pre-ordered more boxes than any other set in YEARS.
That all said, I'm concerned about the direction of **Game Design** seen here. I can't be the only one that noticed that the abilities are much simpler than the first Ravnica block - not that they're bad, just simpler. And this makes you want to ask "why?" If it was just Unleash as the simple mechanic, and another guild had something more complex - that used the stack, or changed a turn step, or used exiled cards... something - then no one would be asking. But when all 5 guilds are simpler, that was a decision made by the team and carried as a tennet throughout design and development.
I suspect that Duels of the Planeswalker has had something to do with this. DotP has done wonders for WotC and the Magic brand, so it would not be surprising to see it starting to affect game design...
Sorry, Squid you get flamed if you agree or disagree in MTGS land. I started a thread about the lack of good RTR commons and got blasted. Try not to take it personally, it's going to happen (sadly). It's funny that those people that genuinely care about the state of Magic get such negative feedback from other so-called Magic fans.
As for being simplier, well done too, doing it in a popular plane to buffer the whining. They have to "level down" once in a while you know (and part of that level down is making stuff simplier), to pop the bubble that is power creep. I think the goodies are in Sinker.
Ah yes, i remember when people call Wizards lazy due to cards like Lightning Helix (combine two effects and shazam) and Watchwolf (make stuff bigger) and now, when they make the effort (they try to be REALLY different from first Ravnica), you guys want them back.
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Populate is a really good evolution of Convoke, i think.
Scavenge is pretty 'meh' i would've liked something 'cooler' and less 'vanilla' from a Guild that's all about the Graveyard.
I think Detain is pretty simplistic; it's just attaching Frost Breath on creatures. However, i think it's a good mechanic for limited, albeit a rather uninspired one. It does fit Azorius flavorwise.
Again, Overload is pretty simplistic, but i think it's very Izzet. There isn't much decision to be made there, though. You either have the mana or you don't. The Overload is always better. (to combat this they could've made a few good spells with 'Target X' rather than 'Target X you don't control'. That would've been an 'Expert-Level' thing to do. 'Is the juice worth the squeeze?' is a good question to ask your players with your mechanics and design, especially for Izzet.)
I think it's odd that blue got the 2 least inspiring or hard mechanics to play with. At least with Scavenge you may want to use that creature again or decide whether or not to Scavenge that turn or not. With Detain, you use it on the 2 biggest threats to make the combat math come out in your favor. With Overload if you can X for 1 then you X for 1 after counting your mana.
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The answer is that they've been moving in this direction for years, even before Duels was ever conceived. They realized that complexity for the sake of complexity is bad, it scares new players away, and that "complexity creep" is a real threat to the future of the game. I do agree that sometimes they tend to overdo it a bit and over-simplify, but it's difficult to argue with the success the game has enjoyed the past couple years.
I suspect that looking ahead to a Limited and Standard environment that would eventually include all ten new guild mechanics at once, probably scared them a little into making sure that all the guild mechanics were easy to understand and easy to grasp. I do like some more than others, I'm a big fan of Detain for instance, Unleash not as much.
Are you aware that Ravnica had a healthy dose of jank cards also?
I mean crap some of the cards in Ravnica that everyone seems to have conveniently forgot even look crappy in pure limited environments.
Even if every card that is considered sub-standard was made 2x more powerful it wouldn't matter to truly competitive constructed. Constructed by definition only has so much room for an amount of cards, the cream of the crop always will make deck lists even if the lowest cards are brought up higher.
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They really have taken a liking to showing creatures mass love continuously im hoping the trend has a decent middleground for spells and creatures sometime soon ravnica is certainly about there but ISD block wasn't really at all...
But the set has a lot of filler a lot of it...but it still looks ok wish there was a bit less filler.
It really shows the evolution of what has happened.
"dumbing down" has help the game as a whole... Timespiral was a massive flop losing most of the people ravinica had gained because it was a) an in joke and b) unnecessarily complicated...
Lorwyn also stupidly complicated to actually have any combat when there was a million abilities that could happen.
then there was the new world order and things made more sense and sales started rising.
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