I've been working on a chrome extension called MTG Gatherer Plus that's getting close to being released into the wild, but I need your help in finding bugs and figuring out what I could do better. I'm not a professional programmer, and I'm sure I've made more than a few mistakes, so I'm looking for ~10ish volunteers who use Gatherer regularly to take a first look, muck about, and let me know what they find is broken.
Just send me a message here if you are interested, and I'll send you a link. Thanks!
Here's a rundown of the basic features I've been working on:
Sweet! I hated sunburst. I'd love to see a non-broken variant of affinity, perhaps they will make it so that you never put affinity for X on a permanent that itself is an X, to avoid chaining the effect (so no myr enforcer, but yes to razor golem type cards)
I simply don't understand why anyone would prefer a straight reprint of a card that gets better in multiples then a functional reprint that lets you play 8. I love funtional reprints! I love haveing the option of playing 8 copies of a card in a casual deck if I have some fun idea that replies on it. I simply don't understand at all why someone could be mad they make a function reprint rather then a reprint.
Players will have to ask themselves what do they want more: A turn 1 Elite Vanguard into a turn 2 Kazandu Blademaster or a turn 1 Student of Warfare into a turn 2 bigger Student of Warfare.
The opponent holding the removal will prefer option B.
Perhaps the 14/1 token spell is something along the lines of:
Variable Lightning RRR
Sorcery
As an additional cost to playing Variable Lightning discard any number of cards.
Place an X/1 elemental token onto the battlefield where X is equal to twice the number of cards you discarded. This token has haste and "sacrifice at end of turn".
its called mana drain. and if other people are worried about the secondary market falling apart if FoW is reprinted, imagine what would happen if they reprinted drain.
dark ritual would be fun for standard, i remember the time when duress and rit were both in the block, it was fun then maybe toss in high tides, see UB take off.
You misread, it is the opposite of mana drain. The person who cast the counter doesn't get the mana, the guy who's spell was countered gets their mana back for reuse.
I had to check, I was going to say it is the token for Varchild's War Riders, but that was Alliances not Weatherlight. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
Good, I was a bit concerned since we have like 15% of the art and didn't see even one. Those guys are really the glue for limited in my experience, let's hope they have another two full cycles at common and uncommon.
The problem is in tournament level play you don't have to protect every last life point. People don't block in tourney play, and I was excited at the prospect that these cards would perhaps be good enough to force players to alter their strategies and maybe, just maybe, blocking would become important again. But basically any deck that can stop any damage from squeaking through via the red zone isn't going to be able to stop damage to the dome, and vice versus.
Normally that wouldn't be so bad except that what we have seen so far these cards are a major investment (4-5 mana in tourney land is a lot). That don't do squat unless they've been in play kept alive for multiple turns, and wizards have gone out of their way to make them super easy to kill. Now my initial impressions was one of the following:
A.) They would make them immune to traditional burn. Then players could devote themselves to creature defense, and blocking would become important.
B.) After learning they were burnable, I assumed one ability could be used each player's turn. So they would be dominating on the game, but super easy to kill (having two extremely basic routes to kill them, and player damage spells being so aggressively costed).
C.) At the very least you would be able to add counters by using an ability in response to burn/attacks, giving you some small measure of control over their continued existence.
Even beyond killing them, just doing a few points of damage will make them neigh useless. Take the black one, making a player discard one card each turn on your turn
sucks. No one played that black shrine back in the day outside of a shrine deck. So getting to squeeze off one or two of those before you lose your guy is crap, getting a discard and a sorcery speed vamp tutor for 5 mana is crap also.
I just can't see any scenario where these cards as printed will see any real constructed play, and I think that really sucks. Because this isn't just a cycle it's a new card type! Imagine if instants simply weren't constructed worthy or creatures, or artifacts and so forth. And that stupid sorcery only rule really just makes them less *interesting* period.
I'm sure they could make constructed worthy planeswalkers, but if the cards they have shown so far are a good judge of average power levels then, meh. Double meh.
Wow, they are pretty awful after all. The saving grace of Garruk was the hope that you could use it's first ability in response to an bolt of some sort in order to add an emergency toughness. Not so much. And basically they are the easiest to destroy permenent type in the game, and they have abilities that require you to keep them alive for several turns to be any good. Yeah, I don't see these being played outside of casual.
My gut instinct is that they really needed to have abilities playable as instants (and on the other guy's turn) to make these things even considerable in serious play. 5 mana to make someone discard a card or two before they kill your guy isn't too impressive. 4 mana and you might get a two mana rebate , or a 3/3 before your guy gets killed isn't too impressive.
I was waaaaaay more excited before I knew the exact rules (especially when I thought there was a chance each planeswalker could use one ability once *each* player's turn).
Archers - we've already seen this is just a mistake. Archers should have the "ranged pinging" ability, not "Reach" or whatever you call it. The fact WOTC doesn't want to make them all spiders or have webs is their own fault. But, like I said, the archers can shoot webs. The gunmen can shoot web bullets. Which leaves us with random things Like Tree Monkey, Frogs, etc. And Frogs have webbed feet
A vine is a web? A tree creature is a web? Every membrane is a web? And now you declare unilaterally what ability archers *should* have? Wow, the games you design for a living must be pretty awesome.
Seriously, you were wrong. You got owned. Your desperate attempts to rationalize your bad argument is only serving to embarrass yourself.
Is reach the most evocative word in the English language, well no. But I think it's probably about as you as you can expect for this situation. Web is just terrible, for the reasons pointed out above.
I do, mostly becuase I already spend 1,000s on REAL cards, and spending even 100s on fake cards that I have no real control over just doesnt tickle my fancy.
Yeah, I know the feeling. I know a guy who has his paychecks direct deposited to his checking account. I tried to explain to him that he was only getting paid in FAKE money, since it's all just bits on some bank's server somewhere. I refuse that crap, and other junk like those so called "checks". I only allow myself to get paid in REAL money, the green papery cloth kind. After all, it's the papery cloth that makes money real. Sure he claims he can purchase goods and services with his so called FAKE money, but I know if all the banks collapse then he'll be screwed, but my coffee cans of $20s buried in the backyard will still be worth every penny, even in the case of total economic collapse because it's the ink on paper that's inherently valuable.
(ie, see the guy that had his entire collection hacked, and WoTC basically told him your crap out of luck)
If I get my backpack full of cards stolen from me what are the odds of WoTC mailing me a set of replacements.
No one has ever gotten their cards hacked in a literal sense (i.e. someone bypassing security directly into the MTGO servers and somehow deprived you of cards, or acquired your login info directly). What people who claim they got "hacked" mean is that someone somehow got their account info, and logged into their account and stole their cards. Usually it's because they gave out their info to someone they trusted but shouldn't have, they get tricked into revealing their account info (say from a fake customer service e-mail), or (most rarely) if someone is infected with an existing computer virus/trojan of some sort that allows an interloper access to their information.
In 100% of these cases it's the account holder that failed to secure themselves, and it would be the equivalent of leaving a backpack full of cards sitting on a table unwatched for whatever reason, only to have it stolen.
The fact of the matter is, percentage wise, far more paper magic players have had cards stolen from them then MTGO players. So if you are hoping to keep your cards safe, you should be praising MTGO not burying it.
I know a lot of people who buy MTGO singles and say "I can cash it in for a full set of real cards later", but none who have ever done it. They've all got hundreds (or thousands) in pretend cards and justify it by saying they could make them real with just a bit of buying, trading, and paying of shipping fees. Haha!
As for version 3, hopefully this will bring about the sloppy end of a terrible idea in the first place.
I have. In fact every new set release I drop $100 on cards, play in PR drafts. Then use my drafted cards to build a set to sell on e-bay, and keep the leftovers. Generally my $100 investment returns between $80 and $130 (depending on how quickly I can build the set, and how popular the set is). I also get hours of fun and plenty of singles left over to play casual constructed with, and at worst (if I do poorly in drafts, and the set sells poorly on e-bay) it costs me $20 every three months.
I think the idea of "Fake" cards to be absurd, since all the cards are just selling the idea of value. There is nothing inherently valuable about a piece of paper with a picture on it, nor is there anything inherently valuable about a few bits flipped on a server somewhere. But the fact is a physical dollar bill and a digital dollar in my checking account are worth the same amount, but each has it's advantages-disadvantages on where to spend it. Sure I can't use my dollar bill to buy something via paypal, but then again I can't use my checking account dollar to buy something out of this vending machine.
Magic is basically the exact same thing, no cards are actually inherently valuable, except in the idea of what they represent. And both can be used in exchange for pleasure, it just depends on how you find it more convenient to 'spend'.
I've been working on a chrome extension called MTG Gatherer Plus that's getting close to being released into the wild, but I need your help in finding bugs and figuring out what I could do better. I'm not a professional programmer, and I'm sure I've made more than a few mistakes, so I'm looking for ~10ish volunteers who use Gatherer regularly to take a first look, muck about, and let me know what they find is broken.
Just send me a message here if you are interested, and I'll send you a link. Thanks!
Here's a rundown of the basic features I've been working on:
By that logic Players will have to ask themselves what do they want more: A turn 1 Elite Vanguard into a turn 2 Kazandu Blademaster or a turn 1 Figure of Destiny into a turn 2 bigger Figure of Destiny.
The opponent holding the removal will prefer option B. Therefor Figure of destiny must not be any good.
Variable Lightning RRR
Sorcery
As an additional cost to playing Variable Lightning discard any number of cards.
Place an X/1 elemental token onto the battlefield where X is equal to twice the number of cards you discarded. This token has haste and "sacrifice at end of turn".
You misread, it is the opposite of mana drain. The person who cast the counter doesn't get the mana, the guy who's spell was countered gets their mana back for reuse.
Normally that wouldn't be so bad except that what we have seen so far these cards are a major investment (4-5 mana in tourney land is a lot). That don't do squat unless they've been in play kept alive for multiple turns, and wizards have gone out of their way to make them super easy to kill. Now my initial impressions was one of the following:
A.) They would make them immune to traditional burn. Then players could devote themselves to creature defense, and blocking would become important.
B.) After learning they were burnable, I assumed one ability could be used each player's turn. So they would be dominating on the game, but super easy to kill (having two extremely basic routes to kill them, and player damage spells being so aggressively costed).
C.) At the very least you would be able to add counters by using an ability in response to burn/attacks, giving you some small measure of control over their continued existence.
Even beyond killing them, just doing a few points of damage will make them neigh useless. Take the black one, making a player discard one card each turn on your turn
sucks. No one played that black shrine back in the day outside of a shrine deck. So getting to squeeze off one or two of those before you lose your guy is crap, getting a discard and a sorcery speed vamp tutor for 5 mana is crap also.
I just can't see any scenario where these cards as printed will see any real constructed play, and I think that really sucks. Because this isn't just a cycle it's a new card type! Imagine if instants simply weren't constructed worthy or creatures, or artifacts and so forth. And that stupid sorcery only rule really just makes them less *interesting* period.
I'm sure they could make constructed worthy planeswalkers, but if the cards they have shown so far are a good judge of average power levels then, meh. Double meh.
My gut instinct is that they really needed to have abilities playable as instants (and on the other guy's turn) to make these things even considerable in serious play. 5 mana to make someone discard a card or two before they kill your guy isn't too impressive. 4 mana and you might get a two mana rebate , or a 3/3 before your guy gets killed isn't too impressive.
I was waaaaaay more excited before I knew the exact rules (especially when I thought there was a chance each planeswalker could use one ability once *each* player's turn).
A vine is a web? A tree creature is a web? Every membrane is a web? And now you declare unilaterally what ability archers *should* have? Wow, the games you design for a living must be pretty awesome.
Seriously, you were wrong. You got owned. Your desperate attempts to rationalize your bad argument is only serving to embarrass yourself.
Is reach the most evocative word in the English language, well no. But I think it's probably about as you as you can expect for this situation. Web is just terrible, for the reasons pointed out above.
Technically speaking, Gaea's Skyfolk would like to have a word with you =)
EDIT: Bah, I was quickly beaten to pretty much everything I tried to say.
Yeah, I know the feeling. I know a guy who has his paychecks direct deposited to his checking account. I tried to explain to him that he was only getting paid in FAKE money, since it's all just bits on some bank's server somewhere. I refuse that crap, and other junk like those so called "checks". I only allow myself to get paid in REAL money, the green papery cloth kind. After all, it's the papery cloth that makes money real. Sure he claims he can purchase goods and services with his so called FAKE money, but I know if all the banks collapse then he'll be screwed, but my coffee cans of $20s buried in the backyard will still be worth every penny, even in the case of total economic collapse because it's the ink on paper that's inherently valuable.
If I get my backpack full of cards stolen from me what are the odds of WoTC mailing me a set of replacements.
No one has ever gotten their cards hacked in a literal sense (i.e. someone bypassing security directly into the MTGO servers and somehow deprived you of cards, or acquired your login info directly). What people who claim they got "hacked" mean is that someone somehow got their account info, and logged into their account and stole their cards. Usually it's because they gave out their info to someone they trusted but shouldn't have, they get tricked into revealing their account info (say from a fake customer service e-mail), or (most rarely) if someone is infected with an existing computer virus/trojan of some sort that allows an interloper access to their information.
In 100% of these cases it's the account holder that failed to secure themselves, and it would be the equivalent of leaving a backpack full of cards sitting on a table unwatched for whatever reason, only to have it stolen.
The fact of the matter is, percentage wise, far more paper magic players have had cards stolen from them then MTGO players. So if you are hoping to keep your cards safe, you should be praising MTGO not burying it.
I have. In fact every new set release I drop $100 on cards, play in PR drafts. Then use my drafted cards to build a set to sell on e-bay, and keep the leftovers. Generally my $100 investment returns between $80 and $130 (depending on how quickly I can build the set, and how popular the set is). I also get hours of fun and plenty of singles left over to play casual constructed with, and at worst (if I do poorly in drafts, and the set sells poorly on e-bay) it costs me $20 every three months.
I think the idea of "Fake" cards to be absurd, since all the cards are just selling the idea of value. There is nothing inherently valuable about a piece of paper with a picture on it, nor is there anything inherently valuable about a few bits flipped on a server somewhere. But the fact is a physical dollar bill and a digital dollar in my checking account are worth the same amount, but each has it's advantages-disadvantages on where to spend it. Sure I can't use my dollar bill to buy something via paypal, but then again I can't use my checking account dollar to buy something out of this vending machine.
Magic is basically the exact same thing, no cards are actually inherently valuable, except in the idea of what they represent. And both can be used in exchange for pleasure, it just depends on how you find it more convenient to 'spend'.
Learn something new every day...