The mark of talent is ingenuity and improvisation.
Creating (or in this case expanding upon) a game function blooms from that seed.
This is what keeps those fires burning, towering; fun and interesting; brand new, everytime.
Just doing my job, please forgive me.
So, uh... Do you have the ability to implement new ideas in a way that does not require the amendment of new rulings?
You may claim that creating ideas is more vital or more difficult than being able to "color within the lines" but one should logically be able to do the simpler task if one can do the harder task. Otherwise, you might as well say "I am incapable of walking because I can only dance" or "I am incapable of drawing circles because all of my art depicts complex fractals".
The fact that you do not demonstrate the ability to "color within the lines" without need for rulings raises skepticism.
It is simply a fact of how one needs to "amend the comprehensive rulings" to define the function of evoking a card into a full form factor.
Why do you only create rules that create a need to "amend the comprehensive rulings"? Are you against the idea of cards that fit within current rulings?
I am still waiting for a legitimate explanation as to how this is any different from Vexing Devil or the suite.
Vexing Devil and the like make your opponent make a choice once and only once. Snake makes your opponent repeat the choice each turn if they don't kill it.
Vexing devil can be removed through its ability if I have no removal in hand or have already used my removal. Snake does not.
If my opponent has a X/5, vexing devil is useless. If my opponent has an X/3, I can just choose to never attack or block with my snake to force the opponent to discard cards each turn.
Not having counters or removal means that I lose life with Vexing Devil. Not having counters or removal means that I discard cards at random with Snake.
The apparent misunderstanding is:
1. Paying life is a much less severe cost than discarding a card in most situations. That is why Vexing Devil, book burning, browbeat, breaking point, risk factor, blazing salvo, molten influence, and skullscorch (plus the colorshifted imp's mischief, dash hopes, and temporal extortion from planar chaos)ALL make the alternate cost being dealt damage/paying life. Life gain decks are not a major force in most metas and losing on card advantage is much more impactful than losing life unless specific burn decks are currently a bit piece of the meta.
2. You seem to not grasp that this effect essentially creates a punisher effect every turn instead of just once like the above effects and do not see that as impactful as you apparently assume that your opponent will always have a removal card in hand and will have never used it on something else? Even if you have 8 pieces of removal in your deck, you are the one who is always reporting that combos are unrealistic and that you can't count on getting 2 cards in your opening hand.
Vexing Devil: “If I don’t have a kill spell and can’t handle the Devil, I can instantly kill it by paying 4 life”
Pyresnake: “If I don’t have a targeted spell (hopefully to remove the snake)… I am stuck dealing with a cost-efficient snake that forces me to reveal everything that I have and robs a card each turn.
This seems like it might be a standard-defining card, if only because it’s so hard to deal with.
If your opponent tries to kill it, they have to discard two noncreature cards to avoid giving you a free creature and you still draw a card if the answer your opponents have destroy Sheoldred (a 4-for-1, essentially).
If your opponent throws down a wrath, the odds are that you are going to steal a creature and draw a card and still come out ahead unless your opponent was specifically using farewell
When you consider that this thing can actively make kill spells, discard, and sacrifice effects more efficient as well (and that a second copy of this card can be cast as an expensive divination effect), that seems to be a fairly resilient threat.
I think you're right, Rosy. I think it's supposed to be a 'punisher'-style card (your classic Browbeat), but, you know, there are issues.
I don’t think you’re going far enough, actually. I think that the intent was less browbeat and more plaguecrafter in the sense that a player can’t choose to discard a card instead of sacrificing a creature. Everyone NEEDS to cast their targeting card. Those who can’t are punished. Slightly different from past finishers that offer actual price.
But yeah. It’s overpowered, undercosted, and doesn’t seem red.
Using Reap-logic, it seems obvious that the “or” in the original card text wasn’t intended to symbolize that opponents had a choice but rather to signal a consequence for failing to complete a mandatory action.
The ability was clearly meant to be a word of command style effect (which would require an opponent to show their hand to show they aren’t cheating) which was worded terribly. I am only able to discern this meaning because I have seen enough reap design and have learned to speak “terrible designer” as a result.
Reap already coined the term “modal or” so I’m going to preemptively name this the “consequential or”.
EX: Do what I want OR you will face the consequences.
Wait, what’s that? Even the example above would technically be offering the person the choice to face the consequences? Ignore that. The English language can be fixed with specific rulings. When someone says to pay your taxes OR you will go to jail, the obvious meaning is that you are physically compelled to pay your taxes by force and that people who are incapable of doing so are shipped right to jail. That’s how the English language is intended to work.
Thanks for the clarification above. I did watch that 6 minute video. And I am having a hard time thinking these were just sitting in a warehouse for 28 years. Stranger things have happened but it just seems a bit off.
At 3% pull rate for these it pretty well means you would have to buy 3 collector booster boxes (36 packs) to "guarantee" you a lost legend. So at maybe 220 USD for a collector booster box times 3 you are looking at paying $660 before taxes/shipping for a chance at ONE lost legend. (That could be worth less than a dollar)
They love this lotto don't they?
WotC is laughing all the way to the bank. A cool concept but just more of the same in the FOMO department.
Wouldn't 3 boxes just get you a -9% chance?
Actually, you are both wrong.
The odds of an event with a 97% chance of happening (not opening one of these) 36 times in a row means multiplying 0.97 by itself 36 times. The end result of which is ~0.334 (a 33.4% chance of opening nothing), meaning that you only have a 66.6% chance (100% - 33.4%) of opening one or more lost legend cards.
If you want the odds of failure to drop below 5% (if 95% success is close enough to "guaranteed"), you'd have to open around an additional 5 collector boxes (a total of 99 packs, more specifically).
Let's be realistic here for a moment. These Lost Legends are not for most of us us as they don't appear in traditional booster packs like the original hidden treasures did as the supply of first printings (which is probably going to have all of these cards) is going to be snapped up by major whales who buy by the pallet. While I still expect to see an occasional "this dude at my LGS opened a Moat" story, I expect this to be less common than it was the first time around by a considerable degree (especially as the products holding the cards cost more and the packs holding the legends would never be cracked in most lgs limited events).
This announcement will make major whales more comfortable with ordering more product up-front, however, meaning that single prices for the actual cards in the set should be very reasonable. That is a very nice consolation prize, I think.
I'm expecting... land cycle (please give us pain lands), a planeswalker, and all the promos of the set. Maybe we'll get to see a new mechanic. We get a few days of discussion, then preview season goes dark until last August.
Okay, yeah. You win.
My predictions were for the set as a whole but I think that you nailed it as far as tomorrow’s announcement.
What do I expect? Well, I like to huff conspiracy theories in reddit comment sections so I guess that I anticipate:
A new Jodah legend.
A new Squee legend.
A new Radha legend.
A new Teferi Planeswalker.
A new Karn Planeswalker.
A new Ajani Planeswalker.
A new Liliana Planeswalker.
The Weatherlight
At least some members of the weatherlight crew.
Painlands
A rare or mythic utility land representing Zhalfir that lets you pay mana and tap it to phase out a creature you control (perhaps with limitations or difficult conditions to phase back in).
A card with "lotus" or "mox" in its name
At least one card that calls back to historically powerful cards from magic history (Think wizard's lightning or llanowar elves from Dominaria)
Phyrexians
Surprise Elesh Norn
A surprise Compleated Walker
A sizeable handful of legendary creatures from Dominaria (such as Grunn or Danitha Capesahn) being compleated.
An artifact-friendly mechanic or draft archetype to signal future directions in Brother's war (which seems quite likely to use Historic).
A colorless mythic artifact representing a temporal portal (completing the same "story linkage role" as fateful absence did in midnight hunt).
While I know that you are looking for 5 cards, I have been brewing equipment for a while and wanted to point out the different possible areas where cards may fill a gap. Sorry if this seems a bit vague.
Regarding Tutors: While you have a decent number of tutors, I see that there are some fairly powerful ones that could still be added if you have the budget (possibly in place of more expensive ones). Recruiter of the Guard / Imperial Recruiter are good for getting whatever utility creature you need. Steelshaper's Gift / Enlightened Tutor / Stoneforge Mystic are just generally decent tutors for finding the right equipment at the right time, often doing more than something like Forging the Tyrite Sword.
Speaking of tutors, one special consideration for this deck might be Sunforger, which works really well with a commander that can equip it for free each turn. Of course, you would need to supplement it with some utility instants for it to do work. Cards like: Generous Gift/Chaos warp: flexible removal Flawless Maneuver/Deflecting Swat: Protect your equipped creature, possibly for free. Teferi's Protection/Tibalt's Trickery: Surprise tech that might save you from a combo. Akroma's Will: Protect your creatures or swing with unblockable doublestriking lifelinkers to mess someone up.
Godo, Bandit Warlord and Helm of the Host create an infinite combo where one piece can find the other (even if it costs 11 mana to get started), which some people like having up their sleeve.
It is hardly revolutionary for me to claim that simply trying to rate your deck on a scale of 1-10 is not a good way to predict whether everyone will have a good time. Different people have VASTLY different ideas regarding what a 7 would look like and measuring relative power levels between vastly different deck archetypes isn't exactly a winning proposition. I wanted to explore a two Binary measurements that I think are generally a bit more useful for predicting what type of game you want to have.
Measurement 1: Board-Accretive Victory (BAV)
Board-Accretive Victory is a fairly straightforward measurement.
If your deck is BAV-Positive, that means:
1) Your deck accumulates a presence on the battlefield (not counting rocks/dorks).
2) The board presence is accumulated over the course of several turns (typically 3+ turns)
3) This board presence is used as the primary win condition for your deck.
So, what is BAV-Positive and what is BAV-Negative for this purpose? The shortened version is that you "build up" if you are BAV-Positive and "go off" if you are BAV-Negative. If you want a better idea of what falls where...
BAV-Positive:
Quite a few stax decks.
Most Aggro/Voltron decks.
Board-based value engine decks (including blink decks)
Even though they technically don't add new permanents to the board, mutate and counter-based decks are typically counted here
Superfriends Decks
A majority of token-based decks.
Most tribal decks.
Purely toolbox pod decks
Most Discard decks.
Most wheel decks
Most Aristocrats
Most Life Gain
Some "board-based spellslinger decks" relying on tokens from cards like Talrand/monastery mentor/young pyromancer/etc.
Most infect decks
Group Hug decks.
Most Chaos Decks
Most Theft/Clone decks.
Most Land-based decks
Some control decks.
While perhaps controversial, I count decks that try to accumulate a known "presence" in zones other than the battlefield (such as Feather having known spells in hand that it casts each turn or Chainer trying to build up the right combination of cards in the grave) as BAV-positive unless they are otherwise acting in ways described below.
BAV-Negative
Decks that use infinite combos to win the game (including those that get infinite mana and infinite card draw to cast your entire deck and win).
Decks that use alternate win conditions (like Thassa's Oracle) to win in the space of a single turn.
Decks that routinely throw out a couple of permanents out on the same turn and attempt to win with them instantly, even if there is no combo (such as throwing down Ulder Ravenguard and Blightsteel with Defense of the Heart or Tooth and Nail to instantly attack everyone with a Blightsteel out of nowhere).
Decks that try to chain extra turn effects to win with little to no prior board commitment (like some Mizzix/Narset decks).
Storm decks and storm-like decks (including some Cheeri0s/Enchantress) that try to win off of effects like storm, reservoir, sentinel tower, etc.
Most mill decks (other than petitioner decks), surprisingly.
Measurement 2: Commander-Inherent Resilience (CIR)
If you are playing a game where people are fine with BAV-negative decks, you can skip this factor entirely. If the game table is fine with the game suddenly ending at any given point, after all, a factor that becomes more salient in longer games is kind of moot. If the playgroup decides that they want a BAV-Positive game, though, an important question to ask is if they are okay with commanders that have built-in resilience.
Examples of Commander-Inherent Resilience:
Obviously, commanders with keywords that protect them like Hexproof/Protection/Ward/Regeneration/Shroud/Undying/Persist/Indestructible
Cards that can effectively pay for their own commander taxes one or more times (like Atsushi/Tivit/Jolene)
Cards that revive themselves like Scorpion God/God-Eternal Kefnet
Cards with cost reduction mechanics that can effectively cheat around commander tax like Korador/Emry
Cards that ignore commander tax like Derevi/Yuriko
Cards whose effects carry over between several castings and who are not "reset" by killing them (like Mairsil or Grolnok)
Examples of what does not count for this purpose
Effects like Prossh/Marath/Gyrus that scale up to the number of times you've cast the commander.
Commanders with punishing death triggers (like Yosei) that opponents may not want to trigger.
Commanders that protect other permanents but not themselves (like Kyodai/the second Tajic/the Second Gerard).
If a game table discusses these matters, you should ideally end up with one of three different scenarios:
1. BAV-Negative: The table doesn't mind if the game suddenly ends and may in fact enjoy getting the chance to shuffle up and play again. Players recognize the importance of their interaction effects for this purpose.
2. BAV-Positive, CIR-Positive: Players don't want the game to end out of nowhere and ultimately want the game to finish on the battlefield. Players don't mind if players use commanders that are difficult to disrupt or have elements of inevitability to them, however. The game has to end some time, after all.
3. BAV-Positive, CIR-Negative: Players want the game to be won and lost on the battlefield with a fair amount of time for interaction and want to make sure that everyone's strategy is vulnerable to basic removal so anyone could be knocked down a few pegs with the right wrath. The player in the lead of the game should have the potential to naturally eb and flow several times in each game, even if it takes a while.
Of course, these two factors do not take the place of the entire rule 0 discussion. Some players may still have preferences for what they play against (such as "No MLD" or "No Stax") and not all BAV-negative decks or CIR-positive commanders are made equal so talk about the expected speed of the deck may also be useful. At the end of the day, though, I think the determining how the table feels about BAV/CIR is much more useful for setting up a good game than telling everyone to take out a deck that's a 7 in power.
May post the idea elsewhere later. Wanted to check with this community first, though.
So, uh... Do you have the ability to implement new ideas in a way that does not require the amendment of new rulings?
You may claim that creating ideas is more vital or more difficult than being able to "color within the lines" but one should logically be able to do the simpler task if one can do the harder task. Otherwise, you might as well say "I am incapable of walking because I can only dance" or "I am incapable of drawing circles because all of my art depicts complex fractals".
The fact that you do not demonstrate the ability to "color within the lines" without need for rulings raises skepticism.
Why do you only create rules that create a need to "amend the comprehensive rulings"? Are you against the idea of cards that fit within current rulings?
The apparent misunderstanding is:
1. Paying life is a much less severe cost than discarding a card in most situations. That is why Vexing Devil, book burning, browbeat, breaking point, risk factor, blazing salvo, molten influence, and skullscorch (plus the colorshifted imp's mischief, dash hopes, and temporal extortion from planar chaos)ALL make the alternate cost being dealt damage/paying life. Life gain decks are not a major force in most metas and losing on card advantage is much more impactful than losing life unless specific burn decks are currently a bit piece of the meta.
2. You seem to not grasp that this effect essentially creates a punisher effect every turn instead of just once like the above effects and do not see that as impactful as you apparently assume that your opponent will always have a removal card in hand and will have never used it on something else? Even if you have 8 pieces of removal in your deck, you are the one who is always reporting that combos are unrealistic and that you can't count on getting 2 cards in your opening hand.
Pyresnake: “If I don’t have a targeted spell (hopefully to remove the snake)… I am stuck dealing with a cost-efficient snake that forces me to reveal everything that I have and robs a card each turn.
These are not the same.
If your opponent tries to kill it, they have to discard two noncreature cards to avoid giving you a free creature and you still draw a card if the answer your opponents have destroy Sheoldred (a 4-for-1, essentially).
If your opponent throws down a wrath, the odds are that you are going to steal a creature and draw a card and still come out ahead unless your opponent was specifically using farewell
When you consider that this thing can actively make kill spells, discard, and sacrifice effects more efficient as well (and that a second copy of this card can be cast as an expensive divination effect), that seems to be a fairly resilient threat.
I don’t think you’re going far enough, actually. I think that the intent was less browbeat and more plaguecrafter in the sense that a player can’t choose to discard a card instead of sacrificing a creature. Everyone NEEDS to cast their targeting card. Those who can’t are punished. Slightly different from past finishers that offer actual price.
But yeah. It’s overpowered, undercosted, and doesn’t seem red.
Using Reap-logic, it seems obvious that the “or” in the original card text wasn’t intended to symbolize that opponents had a choice but rather to signal a consequence for failing to complete a mandatory action.
The ability was clearly meant to be a word of command style effect (which would require an opponent to show their hand to show they aren’t cheating) which was worded terribly. I am only able to discern this meaning because I have seen enough reap design and have learned to speak “terrible designer” as a result.
Reap already coined the term “modal or” so I’m going to preemptively name this the “consequential or”.
EX: Do what I want OR you will face the consequences.
Wait, what’s that? Even the example above would technically be offering the person the choice to face the consequences? Ignore that. The English language can be fixed with specific rulings. When someone says to pay your taxes OR you will go to jail, the obvious meaning is that you are physically compelled to pay your taxes by force and that people who are incapable of doing so are shipped right to jail. That’s how the English language is intended to work.
Second to last sentence on the second post.
Actually, you are both wrong.
The odds of an event with a 97% chance of happening (not opening one of these) 36 times in a row means multiplying 0.97 by itself 36 times. The end result of which is ~0.334 (a 33.4% chance of opening nothing), meaning that you only have a 66.6% chance (100% - 33.4%) of opening one or more lost legend cards.
If you want the odds of failure to drop below 5% (if 95% success is close enough to "guaranteed"), you'd have to open around an additional 5 collector boxes (a total of 99 packs, more specifically).
Let's be realistic here for a moment. These Lost Legends are not for most of us us as they don't appear in traditional booster packs like the original hidden treasures did as the supply of first printings (which is probably going to have all of these cards) is going to be snapped up by major whales who buy by the pallet. While I still expect to see an occasional "this dude at my LGS opened a Moat" story, I expect this to be less common than it was the first time around by a considerable degree (especially as the products holding the cards cost more and the packs holding the legends would never be cracked in most lgs limited events).
This announcement will make major whales more comfortable with ordering more product up-front, however, meaning that single prices for the actual cards in the set should be very reasonable. That is a very nice consolation prize, I think.
Okay, yeah. You win.
My predictions were for the set as a whole but I think that you nailed it as far as tomorrow’s announcement.
Does that count?
Regarding Tutors: While you have a decent number of tutors, I see that there are some fairly powerful ones that could still be added if you have the budget (possibly in place of more expensive ones).
Recruiter of the Guard / Imperial Recruiter are good for getting whatever utility creature you need.
Steelshaper's Gift / Enlightened Tutor / Stoneforge Mystic are just generally decent tutors for finding the right equipment at the right time, often doing more than something like Forging the Tyrite Sword.
Speaking of tutors, one special consideration for this deck might be Sunforger, which works really well with a commander that can equip it for free each turn. Of course, you would need to supplement it with some utility instants for it to do work. Cards like:
Generous Gift/Chaos warp: flexible removal
Flawless Maneuver/Deflecting Swat: Protect your equipped creature, possibly for free.
Teferi's Protection/Tibalt's Trickery: Surprise tech that might save you from a combo.
Akroma's Will: Protect your creatures or swing with unblockable doublestriking lifelinkers to mess someone up.
Speaking of removal, having a single farewell to handle big boards may not be enough in some cases. A Vanquish the Horde and/or blasphemous act may help to simplify some matters. Other good cards include Esper Sentinel (which works quite well with equipment), Talisman of Conviction (which is excellent in any boros deck), and Smuggler's Share/Deep Gnome Terramancer (the newer generic great white cards that people have been sprinkling everywhere).
Zirda, the Dawnwaker reduces equip costs. Kazuul's Toll Collector, Armory Automaton, Heavenly Blademaster, and Hammer of Nazahn allow you to equip your cards for free (and the latter grants indestructibility), which is generally more important than reducing the mana cost of the equipment cards (as with Danitha). Goblin Welder, Goblin Engineer, and mantle of the Ancients grant your equipment some level of resilience as well, letting you grab back cards that have been killed.
Godo, Bandit Warlord and Helm of the Host create an infinite combo where one piece can find the other (even if it costs 11 mana to get started), which some people like having up their sleeve.
AS far as equipment itself, Brass Knuckles, Grappling Hook, Fireshrieker, Gavel of the Righteous, Lizard Blades, and Embercleave all give doublestrike. Two-Handed Axe, Inquisitor's Flail, and Grafted Exoskeleton each effectively double your damage output as well while stacking with each other and with doublestrike. Blackblade Reforged is one of the bigger power boosts you can get from equipment (not counter the hammer, of course). Sword of the Animist is included in nearly every equipment deck as it is a way to get lands and skullclamp is all but a must if you want to stick with your token subtheme. Sword of Feast and Famine and sword of fire and ice are the better swords of X and Y (though it's worth noting that the former works really well with sunforger really well while the latter stops red equipment like Embercleave, so be careful) and Commander's Plate is a very affordable (MV-wise) way to grant protection. Other protective equipment may include Darksteel Plate and Robe of Stars, both of which potentially protect themselves and the latter of which can even avoid mass bounce or mass exile. Trailblazer's Boots and hot soup are also cheap forms of evasion if that's what you are aiming for. Finally, Shadowspear and Bloodforged Battle-Axe are fairly decent 1 mana equipment that can have a big impact on the game.
Measurement 1: Board-Accretive Victory (BAV)
Board-Accretive Victory is a fairly straightforward measurement.
If your deck is BAV-Positive, that means:
1) Your deck accumulates a presence on the battlefield (not counting rocks/dorks).
2) The board presence is accumulated over the course of several turns (typically 3+ turns)
3) This board presence is used as the primary win condition for your deck.
So, what is BAV-Positive and what is BAV-Negative for this purpose? The shortened version is that you "build up" if you are BAV-Positive and "go off" if you are BAV-Negative. If you want a better idea of what falls where...
BAV-Positive:
BAV-Negative
Measurement 2: Commander-Inherent Resilience (CIR)
If you are playing a game where people are fine with BAV-negative decks, you can skip this factor entirely. If the game table is fine with the game suddenly ending at any given point, after all, a factor that becomes more salient in longer games is kind of moot. If the playgroup decides that they want a BAV-Positive game, though, an important question to ask is if they are okay with commanders that have built-in resilience.
Examples of Commander-Inherent Resilience:
If a game table discusses these matters, you should ideally end up with one of three different scenarios:
1. BAV-Negative: The table doesn't mind if the game suddenly ends and may in fact enjoy getting the chance to shuffle up and play again. Players recognize the importance of their interaction effects for this purpose.
2. BAV-Positive, CIR-Positive: Players don't want the game to end out of nowhere and ultimately want the game to finish on the battlefield. Players don't mind if players use commanders that are difficult to disrupt or have elements of inevitability to them, however. The game has to end some time, after all.
3. BAV-Positive, CIR-Negative: Players want the game to be won and lost on the battlefield with a fair amount of time for interaction and want to make sure that everyone's strategy is vulnerable to basic removal so anyone could be knocked down a few pegs with the right wrath. The player in the lead of the game should have the potential to naturally eb and flow several times in each game, even if it takes a while.
Of course, these two factors do not take the place of the entire rule 0 discussion. Some players may still have preferences for what they play against (such as "No MLD" or "No Stax") and not all BAV-negative decks or CIR-positive commanders are made equal so talk about the expected speed of the deck may also be useful. At the end of the day, though, I think the determining how the table feels about BAV/CIR is much more useful for setting up a good game than telling everyone to take out a deck that's a 7 in power.
May post the idea elsewhere later. Wanted to check with this community first, though.