This could be a good supplementary product. For example, this could have been a cool spin on the Planechase format. But, it has no business being in regular magic formats.
Agree. As is, it's kind of laughable that what seems like a the main mechanic of a set gives you only three (3!) options to explore. As a stand-alone supplemental product, they could have added much more variety. But Magic is now in the era where everything has to be legal in regular formats or the Hasbro bigwigs won't approve of it.
Core sets were getting more and more complicated lately, I think they want to attract new players especially d&d people to magic and it's going to work, for this set at least.
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This could be a good supplementary product. For example, this could have been a cool spin on the Planechase format. But, it has no business being in regular magic formats.
Agree. As is, it's kind of laughable that what seems like a the main mechanic of a set gives you only three (3!) options to explore. As a stand-alone supplemental product, they could have added much more variety. But Magic is now in the era where everything has to be legal in regular formats or the Hasbro bigwigs won't approve of it.
Do we have confirmation that there are only 3 Dungeons in the whole set?
The pre-release kits come with 3 DOUBLE SIDED foil dungeons... So, that would mean they are either priting different pairings of the 3, or that there are more. There is a commander deck that will for sure have it's own Dungeons too... the only thing we don't know is how often we get Dungeons in packs. Is it alternating with the Token card we get in packs? Or the Ad cards?
i Would assume more Dungeons.
But there are not a whole lot of Well known named dungeons in the game. Maybe Temple of Elemental evil. But i can't think of another...
I usually dislike these kind of gimmick mechanics but this one isn't too bad. in the end is just some weird modular triggers mixed with sagas.
The big problem is that there are only three dungeon. I mean really? Please tell me i read wrong, because only 3 is extremely underwhelming...
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How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
Venturing into dungeons is almost as parasitic as ascending to get the city's blessing. I want to withhold judgement if/until we see more dungeons and/or dungeon payoffs but this is very limited in scope as to how it can be expanded upon in future sets, if at all.
Almost makes you wish they went back to the three-set block format for things like this.
So... what they Design is that you go with Tomb of Annihilation + Dungeon Crawler; You venture once to start the Dungeon, then Cloister Gargoyle to venture again, Sac Crawler, then venture again. You beat the Dungeon, you get Crawler back. Gargoyle is now a 3/4 with Flying and you have a 4/4 with Deathtouch.
That's the Fastest Clear possible with the current spoilers.
This mechanic will depend heavily on Pinging Venture or Low cost Venture.
I imagine two of the main reasons they only made three dungeons are because it's harder to balance the more dungeons you add both in terms of the power level of venture cards and the dungeons themselves relative to each other, and secondly because the more dungeons you add the more complex all the venture cards become with different possible choices and outcomes.
In the end ALL the "dungeon" cards have to be somewhat balanced with the Dungeon cards, so this is a complexity creep thats endlessly destructive.
The entire dungeon "card" idea is total brainfart to begin with, as the need to have this card to play with in addition to your actual cards is just annoying, its not just a "token".
If you had even more of them, you would basically need them all the time if you want access to all of them.
So this can end up like a entire deck of Dungeon cards you carry around ... which is just absolutely stupid beyond believe, especially as its such a required part of the entire set.
Imagine you have hundreds of dungeons , have FUN with this crap ... you cant possible remember all of them anyway, so you look through them and pick a dungeon that suits your game situation ... and the opponent doesnt know them either, they have no clue what your "venture" actually means unless you show them your super promo dungeon or your special edition Commander deck dungeon ...
People this is absolutely trash ... having only 3 is already awful enough, its a mechanic that shouldnt exist in the first place.
TLDR:
Having this mechanic is just trash and its terrible to play with, as it requires an outside piece of paper or something to proxy the dungeon, its just awful.
I imagine two of the main reasons they only made three dungeons are because it's harder to balance the more dungeons you add both in terms of the power level of venture cards and the dungeons themselves relative to each other, and secondly because the more dungeons you add the more complex all the venture cards become with different possible choices and outcomes.
The first mistake was not limiting the number of dungeons "in your deck". They should at least have made the dungeons take up a sideboard card slot.
Honestly, these should've just worked similar to sagas: Cards with a mana cost that you cast and go into your deck. If it was me I would've made them double-faced to represent the reward or loot on the backside, similar to the Ixalan DFCs.
This mechanic feels very undeveloped front, back and center. And I cannot wrap my head around why they thought it was a good idea and exciting for the players to only print three dungeons. It boggles my mind.
How i feel about competitive players and casual players in EDH: The competitive are german tourists, the casual are italian tourists, both in a italian beach. The italians asking themselves "why are the germans here?" make a legitimate question, the answer is because the beach is beautiful, no matter the country you came from. The italians wanting to ban the germans are dumb, because if the germans pay for their stay and follow the rules like everyone else, they have the right to be in the beach. Hovewer, if the germans started to ask themselves "why are the italians here?"... they would be dumb as hell.
The problem with creating lots of dungeons is it would make it tedious to be aware of what they all do, so what you're really up against, and would also make playing tedious unless they put all those dungeons into lots of boosters as without having access to all the dungeons it's a really tedious mechanic to play with in person.
The other issue is creating balanced dungeons so there aren't options that are just clearly better than others, which is what I assume WOTC wanted, rather than creating 20 dungeons, and you only ever actually see 1-2 as they are clearly the best. The more you create the harder it is to balance, like how many base level entry abilities can you come up with that would be suitable? We have scry 1, gain 1 life, each player loses 1 life, there aren't infinite very weak abilities to tack on as an entry to a dungeon, many ideas are already on these cards as later stages.
I'm in the camp that I hate this mechanic, but it seems completely unplayable from what we've seen so far anyway, good chance you never see it outside of Limited on the power level shown so far.
Also to fully understand these. Am I right in interpreting the rules that both players cannot be in the same dungeon at the same time?
Each player has their own dungeon cards.
It just means you cant snack in the first room of the same dungeon over and over again, you have to move on (and not back).
If you enter a dungeon you are forced to complete it.
Only if you finished it, you can get back in the entrance (of any dungeon).
In the end ALL the "dungeon" cards have to be somewhat balanced with the Dungeon cards, so this is a complexity creep thats endlessly destructive.
The entire dungeon "card" idea is total brainfart to begin with, as the need to have this card to play with in addition to your actual cards is just annoying, its not just a "token".
If you had even more of them, you would basically need them all the time if you want access to all of them.
So this can end up like a entire deck of Dungeon cards you carry around ... which is just absolutely stupid beyond believe, especially as its such a required part of the entire set.
Imagine you have hundreds of dungeons , have FUN with this crap ... you cant possible remember all of them anyway, so you look through them and pick a dungeon that suits your game situation ... and the opponent doesnt know them either, they have no clue what your "venture" actually means unless you show them your super promo dungeon or your special edition Commander deck dungeon ...
People this is absolutely trash ... having only 3 is already awful enough, its a mechanic that shouldnt exist in the first place.
TLDR:
Having this mechanic is just trash and its terrible to play with, as it requires an outside piece of paper or something to proxy the dungeon, its just awful.
I find it interesting that you perfectly explained why there are only 3 and then somehow also complained about there only being 3.
I imagine two of the main reasons they only made three dungeons are because it's harder to balance the more dungeons you add both in terms of the power level of venture cards and the dungeons themselves relative to each other, and secondly because the more dungeons you add the more complex all the venture cards become with different possible choices and outcomes.
The first mistake was not limiting the number of dungeons "in your deck". They should at least have made the dungeons take up a sideboard card slot.
Honestly, these should've just worked similar to sagas: Cards with a mana cost that you cast and go into your deck. If it was me I would've made them double-faced to represent the reward or loot on the backside, similar to the Ixalan DFCs.
This mechanic feels very undeveloped front, back and center. And I cannot wrap my head around why they thought it was a good idea and exciting for the players to only print three dungeons. It boggles my mind.
Maybe they are afraid of making them too good after companion debacle? Designing more of them and making them legal only in limited, prerelease or something would fix that issue. There is also missed opportunity to allow players to make dungeons themselves from pre-designed pieces in similar fashion as there were equipment stickers in theros. As was mentioned dungeons look like excellent material for supplemental product like planechase. Just do not make them legal in any tournament setting.
As game pieces they are terrible. Very clunky. There is a lot of text on them and the marker for currently occupied room needs to be tiny. In paper this will be annoying to use and I can imagine accidental displacement of marker will be a thing. Making oversized variants would fix the problem (they could put oversized variants in prerelease packs). I can imagine this will have "cool" animations on arena, alongside with list of bugs and performance issues for mtga and modo longer than dungeon mechanics entry in comprules.
For now this looks like the party mechanic that had no impact in any format whatsoever. And btw why not reprint party mechanic in DnD tie-in set instead of inventing new one? It seems like perfect fit for a DnD set and was already proven to be safe for the game.
As game pieces they are terrible. Very clunky. There is a lot of text on them and the marker for currently occupied room needs to be tiny. In paper this will be annoying to use and I can imagine accidental displacement of marker will be a thing.
I plan on using a d6 to clearly indicate which room I'm in for the regular size ones.
And btw why not reprint party mechanic in DnD tie-in set instead of inventing new one? It seems like perfect fit for a DnD set and was already proven to be safe for the game.
They touched on this briefly in the Weekly MTG stream yesterday. They are planning on having other stock D&D classes represented in the set and didn't want the Party mechanic to spoil others' fun.
Maybe they are afraid of making them too good after companion debacle? Designing more of them and making them legal only in limited, prerelease or something would fix that issue. There is also missed opportunity to allow players to make dungeons themselves from pre-designed pieces in similar fashion as there were equipment stickers in theros. As was mentioned dungeons look like excellent material for supplemental product like planechase. Just do not make them legal in any tournament setting.
Dungeons do not carry the same risks as companions though. Companions are effectively an 8th card in your starting hand, which is huge.
(As an aside I think making many companions into combo pieces was a huge mistake. Limiting the cards you can play is not as much of a deal for combo decks if they can play their combo pieces while the reliability of play through the extra card was extreme. As companions like Kaheera show, the mechanic wasn't inherently busted. It was only busted on combo pieces like Gyruda and Lurrus. But that ain't gonna be the learning Wizards will take away from this...)
Dungeons meanwhile are only extra cards because that's the easiest way to handle them, but you still needs cards that "journey into the dungeon", meaning you don't get any inherent card advantage from using dungeons. (The dungeon itself doesn't really count as a card here in terms of card advantage, it's just an effect generated by the creature.)
Why? If there were 5, there'd either be a clear tiering and only 2 or three would actually get used, or decision making would be way too complicated for such low impact decisions.
I love the concept of using magic cards to explore a boardscape such as Explorers of Ixalan or even Planechase. That said they really dropped the ball with this mechanic. Half of Dungeons & Dragons is the Dungeons! We really deserved an alternate game mode that takes magic in another direction to explore dungeons in a more developed way.
Having 3 dungeons, while they might be iconic to those of us who have played the modules before, is fairly underwhelming. The reason they had to keep it at 3 is because the mechanic is extremely parasitic and vulnerable to power creep.
It would have been amazing to have a multiplayer game where up to 4 players explore a dungeon together using magic cards, with other magic cards representing obstacles and enemies to get past, and dungeon cards face down on the board waiting to be flipped over as we venture within. Perhaps with one player as the DM similar to the Archenemy. WotC could have easily sold preconstructed Magic 'modules' to create such experiences for us if they had really tried to give us a real D&D experience using Magic cards. As is this is just a reskinned contraption mechanic from Unstable of sorts.
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I hope to see other location like bases, library and armory
Do we have confirmation that there are only 3 Dungeons in the whole set?
The pre-release kits come with 3 DOUBLE SIDED foil dungeons... So, that would mean they are either priting different pairings of the 3, or that there are more. There is a commander deck that will for sure have it's own Dungeons too... the only thing we don't know is how often we get Dungeons in packs. Is it alternating with the Token card we get in packs? Or the Ad cards?
i Would assume more Dungeons.
But there are not a whole lot of Well known named dungeons in the game. Maybe Temple of Elemental evil. But i can't think of another...
The big problem is that there are only three dungeon. I mean really? Please tell me i read wrong, because only 3 is extremely underwhelming...
Almost makes you wish they went back to the three-set block format for things like this.
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That's the Fastest Clear possible with the current spoilers.
This mechanic will depend heavily on Pinging Venture or Low cost Venture.
They said so in the explanation video. I suspect there might be more in the commander supplement that are not Standard legal.
Source: https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/654923593621389312/are-there-dungeons-in-addition-to-the-three
Well that's rather underwhelming.
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I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
The entire dungeon "card" idea is total brainfart to begin with, as the need to have this card to play with in addition to your actual cards is just annoying, its not just a "token".
If you had even more of them, you would basically need them all the time if you want access to all of them.
So this can end up like a entire deck of Dungeon cards you carry around ... which is just absolutely stupid beyond believe, especially as its such a required part of the entire set.
Imagine you have hundreds of dungeons , have FUN with this crap ... you cant possible remember all of them anyway, so you look through them and pick a dungeon that suits your game situation ... and the opponent doesnt know them either, they have no clue what your "venture" actually means unless you show them your super promo dungeon or your special edition Commander deck dungeon ...
People this is absolutely trash ... having only 3 is already awful enough, its a mechanic that shouldnt exist in the first place.
TLDR:
Having this mechanic is just trash and its terrible to play with, as it requires an outside piece of paper or something to proxy the dungeon, its just awful.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
The first mistake was not limiting the number of dungeons "in your deck". They should at least have made the dungeons take up a sideboard card slot.
Honestly, these should've just worked similar to sagas: Cards with a mana cost that you cast and go into your deck. If it was me I would've made them double-faced to represent the reward or loot on the backside, similar to the Ixalan DFCs.
This mechanic feels very undeveloped front, back and center. And I cannot wrap my head around why they thought it was a good idea and exciting for the players to only print three dungeons. It boggles my mind.
Incredibly dumb choice
The other issue is creating balanced dungeons so there aren't options that are just clearly better than others, which is what I assume WOTC wanted, rather than creating 20 dungeons, and you only ever actually see 1-2 as they are clearly the best. The more you create the harder it is to balance, like how many base level entry abilities can you come up with that would be suitable? We have scry 1, gain 1 life, each player loses 1 life, there aren't infinite very weak abilities to tack on as an entry to a dungeon, many ideas are already on these cards as later stages.
I'm in the camp that I hate this mechanic, but it seems completely unplayable from what we've seen so far anyway, good chance you never see it outside of Limited on the power level shown so far.
Each player has their own dungeon cards.
It just means you cant snack in the first room of the same dungeon over and over again, you have to move on (and not back).
If you enter a dungeon you are forced to complete it.
Only if you finished it, you can get back in the entrance (of any dungeon).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I find it interesting that you perfectly explained why there are only 3 and then somehow also complained about there only being 3.
As game pieces they are terrible. Very clunky. There is a lot of text on them and the marker for currently occupied room needs to be tiny. In paper this will be annoying to use and I can imagine accidental displacement of marker will be a thing. Making oversized variants would fix the problem (they could put oversized variants in prerelease packs). I can imagine this will have "cool" animations on arena, alongside with list of bugs and performance issues for mtga and modo longer than dungeon mechanics entry in comprules.
For now this looks like the party mechanic that had no impact in any format whatsoever. And btw why not reprint party mechanic in DnD tie-in set instead of inventing new one? It seems like perfect fit for a DnD set and was already proven to be safe for the game.
They touched on this briefly in the Weekly MTG stream yesterday. They are planning on having other stock D&D classes represented in the set and didn't want the Party mechanic to spoil others' fun.
Dungeons do not carry the same risks as companions though. Companions are effectively an 8th card in your starting hand, which is huge.
(As an aside I think making many companions into combo pieces was a huge mistake. Limiting the cards you can play is not as much of a deal for combo decks if they can play their combo pieces while the reliability of play through the extra card was extreme. As companions like Kaheera show, the mechanic wasn't inherently busted. It was only busted on combo pieces like Gyruda and Lurrus. But that ain't gonna be the learning Wizards will take away from this...)
Dungeons meanwhile are only extra cards because that's the easiest way to handle them, but you still needs cards that "journey into the dungeon", meaning you don't get any inherent card advantage from using dungeons. (The dungeon itself doesn't really count as a card here in terms of card advantage, it's just an effect generated by the creature.)
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Like tokens.
Why? If there were 5, there'd either be a clear tiering and only 2 or three would actually get used, or decision making would be way too complicated for such low impact decisions.
Having 3 dungeons, while they might be iconic to those of us who have played the modules before, is fairly underwhelming. The reason they had to keep it at 3 is because the mechanic is extremely parasitic and vulnerable to power creep.
It would have been amazing to have a multiplayer game where up to 4 players explore a dungeon together using magic cards, with other magic cards representing obstacles and enemies to get past, and dungeon cards face down on the board waiting to be flipped over as we venture within. Perhaps with one player as the DM similar to the Archenemy. WotC could have easily sold preconstructed Magic 'modules' to create such experiences for us if they had really tried to give us a real D&D experience using Magic cards. As is this is just a reskinned contraption mechanic from Unstable of sorts.