Enjoy the hilarity of giving +2/+2 to two target creatures, and giving "2: fight target creature " UeoT. That is truly what I expected from a mythic bee gun in an un-set, as well as the perfectly contained art in every card. Remember: the joke is in the art, name and flavor, but the card are still silver-bordered.
Thanks, Maro. I can't wait for the mythic "put a +1/+1 counter on target creature" with silly flavor text.
Mozal, silver border does not mean "funny and wacky." Its defintion is cards not currently possible to do in Black border. Lighter tones and parodies are a PART of that, but they never were the whole of it.
Watermark matters are silverborder because each black border printing if a card must function the same, and watermarks vary.
Contraptions are silver border because of the use of a Yugioh esque extra deck with back faces that arent mtg cardbacks or dfcs.
They also are a mechanic that makes use of posittioning of cards on the battlefield.
Remember, Contraptions were TRIED to be designed in black border, but the design wasnt possible under current black border rules.
As for the contraption effects, the reason they are more streamlined is because they are designed to combo off with eachother over turns. This is also why the effects are not random, in the spoiler Maro broke down a pretty complex chain of Contraptions were sequencing the effects made a key impact on gameplay (For example to you put the Recombinator on the same sprockey as Dogsnaik engine for the lifegain, or on the same as Bee bee gun for the fight synergy, and id you load them all on one sprocket is it worth only getting to use tje effects once every 3 turns.)
And Khans wasmogolian themed, not chinese
Imo it wasn't even close to Kamigawa 2.0.
The Mongolians did invade China.
The Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan started the conquest with small-scale raids into Western Xia in 1205 and 1207. By 1279, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan had established the Yuan dynasty in China and crushed the last Song resistance, which marked the onset of all of China under the Mongol Yuan rule.
Just an update, the charts just came out.MODO is the #5 digital card game.Behind ygo duel links at @4 (a game that was out FOR A MONTH when this data was taken) WWE card game at #3 and HS and Shadowverse and #1 and 2
HS is about TWENTY TIMES as successful as modo. Just to put it to scale.
The issue with equipment is that its hard to deal with. Unlike crestures which can be killed in combat and auras that fall off them, a powerful equipment is going to be super hard to deal with.
Like if I drop a bomb equipment on something even if you kill my super dude, i just make my other dude super and it keeps going until you pull artifact removal (which is only in three colors)
Also equipment has a very thin region for balance, you get either Op bull***** or worthless jank and the sweet spot is super hsed to find.
Equipment is just a problematic mechanic due to its nature (colorless mostly, buffs that can move across creatures snd dont die if the creature goes) so it makes sense they are pulling back a bit on them.
One of the reasons you have seen fewer and fewer Equipment cards, especially really powerful Equipment, in the last few years is because of how swingy the cards are, and how hard they are to deal with. It's easy to deal with one strong creature, but one strong Equipment turns all of your creatures into major problems for your opponent to deal with. Now, that isn't inherently a problem, especially if the cards are priced well, but we did a very poor job of costing Equipment in our first few sets. A lot of that was just how harsh Mirrodin was toward artifacts, but trying to play against cards like the Swords today is very hard. I think the Swords in Scars of Mirrodin could've cost an additional mana to equip and still seen Standard play...but we kind of needed to match up to the previous cycle.
The problem with Equipment cards is they can easily turn each of your opponent's creatures into basically the same threat. Swords meant you had to deal with protection over and over again. An Equipment card that is very strong against your deck will be almost impossible to beat because of how same-y it makes all of the creatures. Beyond that, the knobs we have on Equipment aren't great because of how unevenly they scale, especially in Limited. Leonin Scimitar is fine, Vulshok Morningstar is hard to beat, and Vulshok Battlegear can easily dominate games in most formats.
While we have no plans to stop making Equipment, we don't make the cards as strong as we make many of our other cards because of how hard Equipment is to interact with. Having to kill every single creature your opponent plays to turn Equipment off is difficult for certain colors or decks.
Vehicles go very much in the opposite direction. We have a ton of knobs with them because of their crew numbers, and we can put a ton of different kinds of abilities on them. Most importantly, your opponent can interact with them once they have been crewed. That means a wide variety of decks can interact with them. It only takes one removal spell at the right time to deal with them, rather than forcing you to kill every creature that becomes equipped.
The vehicles felt like an experiment to make a safer alternative to equipment, but it sort of backfired. There's a reason that Heart of Kiran just isn't very good despite being the best two drop vehicle now that smuggler's copter got banned. The really good vehicle is Aethersphere Harvester, which fits a lot more roles than the airship and feels very much like Batterskull in the sky. In any case, I don't think vehicles are surviving post rotation outside of smugglers and maybe harvester / caravan. Sword of Fire and Ice is arguably the best piece of equipment that is modern legal and it only sees fringe play.
Well that's a little bit unfair towards equipment. It's not the case that every piece of equipment is terrible. The main reason why Sword of Fire and Ice is the best legal equipment in modern is because the good pieces of equiment (looking at you Umezawa's Jitte and at you Skullclamp) are banned.
Just pointing out vehicles were openly stated by wotc to be an easier to balance version of equipment. Stoddard had a whole article on it.
Your first paragraph was describing the secondary market.
If the only value is adding its resale potential that makes it better as an investment scam, not a game.
The Secondary market is filth, games are meant to be played not used as a *****ty stock market.
One thing i like about ygo is they actively hate there secondary market and go out of the way to undercut it. When mtg sacrifices things that would make for good game play at the alter of "preserving value" they are valuing the pocketbooks of rich investors and collectors over what would be most fun for the game.
The Secondary market is why we have ***** like the reserve list and full art lands being so scarce. It also makes cracking packs into *****ty lottery tickets.
And?
Still doesn't change the fact that a robust secondary market has direct impact on the popularity of a tcg and vise virsa. Yugioh is a turd of a game, and as you pointed out, actively takes giant dumps on their secondary market. Now the games on its way to grave and its only semi redeeming quality is apparently its app. Look at Pokémon, its secondary market is getting stronger as the game Picks up in popularity.
Like it or not, Magic's strength has a lot to do with how wizards has help mold the secondary market. That's just a fact. The reserve list sucks. But it's a pact, one wizards will always keep. Because when they finally break it, they've lost all trust and reliablilty by going back in their word. Reprinting cards on the reserve list WILL mark paper magics death knell. When you've lost trust you've lost everything. They tell us it's for legal reason but that's a load of bs. It's because they understand what the reserve list really means and aren't blinded by their desire for specific cards.
Wizards is smart (meh, most of the time) when their data tells them the secondary market is actively driving away their player base they'll do something about it.
>Still doesn't change the fact that a robust secondary market has direct impact on the popularity of a tcg and vise virsa. Yugioh is a turd of a game, and as you pointed out, actively takes giant dumps on their secondary market.
Yugioh is literally the most popular card game on the planet and hss been for most of its history. MTG is the best selling its ever been and its STILL second place. Konami is the biggest tcg company in the world with there ome tcg thats basically a side project, thats how big YGO is. It is objectively the most successful tcg in human history. Sales, tournament attendance,multimedia, circulation... its not even close. How exactly does thst work as an example of *****ting on your secondary market naking your game unpopular? If anything, it implies the opposite.(Although I doubt much of a correlation)
Masterpieces literally exist as a scheme to lower the evs of packs and thus cheapen standard by voluntarily taxing the rich ********s who masterpieces are the audience for.
But back to my original point, outside the secondary market, which is bull***** that doesnt affect gameplay, how is paper and ink a better medium for a game than electricity?
Your original point was why it's more valuable, which I feel like I explained my veiws on pretty well. Why it's a better medium is more subjective, I can't speak for everyone. For me personally, I've paid my dues in both paper and digital and here is no real replacement for sitting across from a real person and playing some games, organizing your cards, putting them binders/boxes, making trades, etc. But as I've said before, there's certainly room for both and each have their merits.
As far as yugioh goes, fair enough. I spoke without really looking into it and only spoke on my own personal observations which isn't evidence at all. However, I will say that it's supported by a massively popular cartoon and I'd wager a guess that a lot of the packs sold are to kids that never really get into the game. Same way my 5 year old has some Pokémon cards, he doesn't actually play the game. He saw the cartoon, has some Pokémon toys, saw they had cards, and wanted them. We'll never really know active player count for either game, it's almost impossible to know the real numbers. Ive been to and have seen advertised, hundreds of Magic tournament vs the hand full of yugioh tournaments I've even even heard of. Every card shop I've ever been to (while not many I admit) has had MAYBE one case of yugioh singles for sale, usually zero. But again, this is in the US, not the whole world, and my own personal observations are in no way proof.
At the end of the day a strong secondary market is good for everyone. Magic has had its ups and downs for sure. Always has, always will.
Oh I misinterpreted, when uou said paper was more valuable than digital I didnt think you meant fiscal, i thoughtyou were one of those people who felt "if i can't touch it it's not Real" or some such nonsense. Yes i agree secondary markets are lesser in digital ccgs,but that is a pro, not a con. HD and dust is a wsy better system than shelling out thousands of bucks for decks and having to keep a tradr binder lime a stock portfolio just to recoup even a sliver of your losses.
Also ygo tournamnets are way more populated than mtg ones. You can look up numbers and see the YGO equal to the pro tour consistently puts up bigger numbers. Although ygo doesn't have a fnm type thinh so smaller events mtg may have a hold on.
But yeah , mtg honestly wishes it could do ygo numbers. And modo wishes it could do HS numbers I cannot exaggerate how much wotc is lagging.
Wotc is like dc, it has the prestige and brand of "quality" but its a steady #2. XC has almost always been second to Marvel, WoTc has almost always been second to ygo, and now its not even on the radar for digital (top 2 digital ccgs are hs and Shadowverse as distant second)
I'm more surprised by how many people know about Hearthstone instead of Magic, even more surprised when they say Hearthstone is the best card game in history.
Whatever.
digital ccgs are 61% of the total ccg market. That means mtg, Yugioh,pokemon , duelmasters etc put TOGETHER are only about half of what hearthstone and shadowverse and such do.
Or in other words, digital ccgs overall make twice as much as physical ccgs overall.
Your first paragraph was describing the secondary market.
If the only value is adding its resale potential that makes it better as an investment scam, not a game.
The Secondary market is filth, games are meant to be played not used as a *****ty stock market.
One thing i like about ygo is they actively hate there secondary market and go out of the way to undercut it. When mtg sacrifices things that would make for good game play at the alter of "preserving value" they are valuing the pocketbooks of rich investors and collectors over what would be most fun for the game.
The Secondary market is why we have ***** like the reserve list and full art lands being so scarce. It also makes cracking packs into *****ty lottery tickets.
And?
Still doesn't change the fact that a robust secondary market has direct impact on the popularity of a tcg and vise virsa. Yugioh is a turd of a game, and as you pointed out, actively takes giant dumps on their secondary market. Now the games on its way to grave and its only semi redeeming quality is apparently its app. Look at Pokémon, its secondary market is getting stronger as the game Picks up in popularity.
Like it or not, Magic's strength has a lot to do with how wizards has help mold the secondary market. That's just a fact. The reserve list sucks. But it's a pact, one wizards will always keep. Because when they finally break it, they've lost all trust and reliablilty by going back in their word. Reprinting cards on the reserve list WILL mark paper magics death knell. When you've lost trust you've lost everything. They tell us it's for legal reason but that's a load of bs. It's because they understand what the reserve list really means and aren't blinded by their desire for specific cards.
Wizards is smart (meh, most of the time) when their data tells them the secondary market is actively driving away their player base they'll do something about it.
>Still doesn't change the fact that a robust secondary market has direct impact on the popularity of a tcg and vise virsa. Yugioh is a turd of a game, and as you pointed out, actively takes giant dumps on their secondary market.
Yugioh is literally the most popular card game on the planet and hss been for most of its history. MTG is the best selling its ever been and its STILL second place. Konami is the biggest tcg company in the world with there ome tcg thats basically a side project, thats how big YGO is. It is objectively the most successful tcg in human history. Sales, tournament attendance,multimedia, circulation... its not even close. How exactly does thst work as an example of *****ting on your secondary market naking your game unpopular? If anything, it implies the opposite.(Although I doubt much of a correlation)
Masterpieces literally exist as a scheme to lower the evs of packs and thus cheapen standard by voluntarily taxing the rich ********s who masterpieces are the audience for.
But back to my original point, outside the secondary market, which is bull***** that doesnt affect gameplay, how is paper and ink a better medium for a game than electricity?
0 power creatures are such a small percentage of creatures in most any set to say that vehicles dont work in any set with them is silly.
And pulling a quote here:
Development played with Vehicles for many weeks and started to see a problem. The reliance on having a certain number of creatures heavily rewarded you for having a lot of small creatures, especially tokens (this ties into the last mechanic, fabricate, which I will get to in a bit). Because the Vehicles worked so efficiently with tokens, development had to cost the Vehicles assuming you had tokens, and then they ended up being too expensive to work with anything but a token strategy.
Meanwhile, I was busy designing Ham, the fall (northern hemisphere) set of 2017. At the halfway point of Kaladesh design, I handed the reins of the set over to Shawn Main so I could start working on the design for Amonkhet, the large set of the next block. And then halfway through Amonkhet design, I handed the reins over to Ethan Fleischer so I could work on Ham. In Ham, we were working on a new mechanic that I was worried felt too much like Vehicles because it required having a certain number of creatures to activate it. To try and distance my mechanic from Vehicles, I changed it so instead of caring about how many creatures you had, it cared about the total power of the creatures you had. We tested with it and I really liked how it played.
From time to time I poke my head back into sets that I had previously handed off. Kaladesh was in development, so I talked with Ian Duke and Erik Lauer, the co-leads for Kaladesh development. They explained that they were having a problem with Vehicles. As they walked through their problem, it dawned on me that my solution for the Ham mechanic might actually work in Kaladesh. Instead of "crew 5" meaning you have to tap five creatures, it would mean you have to tap any number of creatures whose power added up to 5 or more.
The developers thought the idea was interesting and tried it out. It turned out to be a wonderful solution, because a high crew number no longer meant you had to have a deck with a whole bunch of tokens. Now, you could just play a deck with bigger creatures and not have any tokens
If crewing us based on creature number and not power it means its only viable in a deck you spam full of creatures, preferably ones with a cheap go wide style, making them based on power means they become viable in more types of decks than just go wide ones.
Any deck can get 3 power on the board, getting 3 creatures is a more narrow thing.
And making it poeer based means it has a "mix and match " element that fits KLDs invention theme. You can go wide, tall or any mix of the two to turn vehciles on. Pump spells and counters now work, and also you dont have to cost every Dragon Fodder type effect like it could turn into a 3 turn clock with one colorless.
Your first paragraph was describing the secondary market.
If the only value is adding its resale potential that makes it better as an investment scam, not a game.
The Secondary market is filth, games are meant to be played not used as a *****ty stock market.
One thing i like about ygo is they actively hate there secondary market and go out of the way to undercut it. When mtg sacrifices things that would make for good game play at the alter of "preserving value" they are valuing the pocketbooks of rich investors and collectors over what would be most fun for the game.
The Secondary market is why we have ***** like the reserve list and full art lands being so scarce. It also makes cracking packs into *****ty lottery tickets.
Honestly, I'm done with digital, micro transaction games. That's one of the reasons I'm getting back into paper magic after five years. I'm sick of looking at my "free to play" game accounts with hundreds of dollars put into with absolutely zero to show for it. Take a stack of real magic cards, you can feel them, you can smell them, you can buy them, you can sell them. Same with my PS1/PS2/N64/Dreamcast/GameCube games and systems. They're real tangible items. What can I do with my hearthstone/LoL/insertrandomftpgame account that I don't even touch any more? Nothing, that's the answer to that question, absolutely nothing. I was on board this this micro transaction/FTP BS for a long time, but I've become jaded and have realized just how stupid and pointless it is.
And you know that's exactly what they'll put out... FTP! Packs of cards for $3 that are just 0s and 1s on some server! No thanks.
*hops off soap box
Truth right there. Why I dont buy my books as Ebooks. The profit boost must be insane when you consider there is no actual PRODUCT being shipped, created, stored, or taking up rack space. I work in software and always knew digital was a scam.
That said, I play on MTGO because its easier to fit in my schedule, and I'm fine with the costs sunk.
Your paying for a game, not a medium. How is ink and paper inherently more valuable than electricity on an account.
The only thing you could really loose is the secondary market,which is filthy cancer for the most part that has had a net negative effect on the game anyway.
Even now when it is at its peak of peaks it is still behind Yugioh in sales, tournament attendance and cards printed. Quality subjective but the hard numbers had YGO as the market leader.
YGO sells so well Konami is the #1 tcg company on the planet despite it being primarily an arcade/tech company with ONE tcg at all.
YGO has more cards in circulation than us currency.
MTG set its record for tournament attendance and ygo casually DOUBLED it.
MTG is #2 physical tcg and modo is #2 digital tcg (by large margin)
Internationally mtg isn't even wotc's mumber 1 game. wotc Duelmasters is the top game in Japan for example.
Crew is an incredible terrible mechanic as it uses the creatures "power" to work.
That alone makes it pretty blant, as all the vehicles with larger than crew 2 are almost unplayable simply because activating them is so terrible (obvisious bombs in mythic ignored).
Crew 1 is pretty much the real deal, and this makes the mechanic very flat , even more so that 0 power creatures cannot crew in any reasonable way, which further reduces its usefullness (not that 0 power creatures are "good" to begin with ... ).
----
Would they have used the mechanic as they made it (Tap X creatures to Crew X , no power required) , it would be WAY more reasonable and would work way better overall.
WotC simply failed the mechanic ...
----
Having "some" vehicles might be a thing, but in the end, the vehicles we have seen so far are quite the "machines" , some random boat or otherwise basic vehicle might not really reflect the power it would need to have ...
Thats how it was at first but they changed it becasue it led to unfun gameplay.
Also how are vehciles failed ifthey are thr most beloved mechanic of thethe block and quite popular as a mechanic overall?
Also why do people say the Gatewatch winning is some kimd of storytellimg flaw whenthe good guys winning is something that happens in the overwhelming majority of stories?
Very few heroic rales end with the bad guys winning. Star Wars, Lotr, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Avengers, The Legend of Zelda, Terminator 1 and 2, hell even Mad Max hsd the bad guy loose.
I am of the reverse ,I think snow works and didnt pick up the "change" theme. I may have to look again for that one.
Snow should be ok as its basically tribal, and tribal subthemes have been done before (re: bw warriors in khans)
This is an ally faction set yes? I am hsving troible picking out archetypes.
WU is snow obviously
UB is relive/flicker
BR is ramp but for some reason also killing at random?(fyi nice synergy eith gravestorm and saccing tokens for mana)
RG is lands in grave
GW is tokens? I don't get why its draft archetype gold uncommon is a nighthawk though.
RW seems to be a go wide ramp deck
WB maybethe same thing (i have to double check if w hasa lot of etb stuff to abuse relive with)
BG ramp
GU... **** if I know
UR... not sure
a write up of mechanical themes would be appreciated.
also flavorwise Summer is weaker as a theme becasue it lacks a marquee holiday in this hemisphere, make sure to account for that
Mozal, silver border does not mean "funny and wacky." Its defintion is cards not currently possible to do in Black border. Lighter tones and parodies are a PART of that, but they never were the whole of it.
Watermark matters are silverborder because each black border printing if a card must function the same, and watermarks vary.
Contraptions are silver border because of the use of a Yugioh esque extra deck with back faces that arent mtg cardbacks or dfcs.
They also are a mechanic that makes use of posittioning of cards on the battlefield.
Remember, Contraptions were TRIED to be designed in black border, but the design wasnt possible under current black border rules.
As for the contraption effects, the reason they are more streamlined is because they are designed to combo off with eachother over turns. This is also why the effects are not random, in the spoiler Maro broke down a pretty complex chain of Contraptions were sequencing the effects made a key impact on gameplay (For example to you put the Recombinator on the same sprockey as Dogsnaik engine for the lifegain, or on the same as Bee bee gun for the fight synergy, and id you load them all on one sprocket is it worth only getting to use tje effects once every 3 turns.)
Mardu as Mongolia,Jeskai as Yuan China, Temur as the Russian golden horde, Abzan as the Ikhanate.
HS is about TWENTY TIMES as successful as modo. Just to put it to scale.
Like if I drop a bomb equipment on something even if you kill my super dude, i just make my other dude super and it keeps going until you pull artifact removal (which is only in three colors)
Also equipment has a very thin region for balance, you get either Op bull***** or worthless jank and the sweet spot is super hsed to find.
Equipment is just a problematic mechanic due to its nature (colorless mostly, buffs that can move across creatures snd dont die if the creature goes) so it makes sense they are pulling back a bit on them.
The problem with Equipment cards is they can easily turn each of your opponent's creatures into basically the same threat. Swords meant you had to deal with protection over and over again. An Equipment card that is very strong against your deck will be almost impossible to beat because of how same-y it makes all of the creatures. Beyond that, the knobs we have on Equipment aren't great because of how unevenly they scale, especially in Limited. Leonin Scimitar is fine, Vulshok Morningstar is hard to beat, and Vulshok Battlegear can easily dominate games in most formats.
While we have no plans to stop making Equipment, we don't make the cards as strong as we make many of our other cards because of how hard Equipment is to interact with. Having to kill every single creature your opponent plays to turn Equipment off is difficult for certain colors or decks.
Vehicles go very much in the opposite direction. We have a ton of knobs with them because of their crew numbers, and we can put a ton of different kinds of abilities on them. Most importantly, your opponent can interact with them once they have been crewed. That means a wide variety of decks can interact with them. It only takes one removal spell at the right time to deal with them, rather than forcing you to kill every creature that becomes equipped.
Also ygo tournamnets are way more populated than mtg ones. You can look up numbers and see the YGO equal to the pro tour consistently puts up bigger numbers. Although ygo doesn't have a fnm type thinh so smaller events mtg may have a hold on.
But yeah , mtg honestly wishes it could do ygo numbers. And modo wishes it could do HS numbers I cannot exaggerate how much wotc is lagging.
Wotc is like dc, it has the prestige and brand of "quality" but its a steady #2. XC has almost always been second to Marvel, WoTc has almost always been second to ygo, and now its not even on the radar for digital (top 2 digital ccgs are hs and Shadowverse as distant second)
digital ccgs are 61% of the total ccg market. That means mtg, Yugioh,pokemon , duelmasters etc put TOGETHER are only about half of what hearthstone and shadowverse and such do.
Or in other words, digital ccgs overall make twice as much as physical ccgs overall.
>Still doesn't change the fact that a robust secondary market has direct impact on the popularity of a tcg and vise virsa. Yugioh is a turd of a game, and as you pointed out, actively takes giant dumps on their secondary market.
Yugioh is literally the most popular card game on the planet and hss been for most of its history. MTG is the best selling its ever been and its STILL second place. Konami is the biggest tcg company in the world with there ome tcg thats basically a side project, thats how big YGO is. It is objectively the most successful tcg in human history. Sales, tournament attendance,multimedia, circulation... its not even close. How exactly does thst work as an example of *****ting on your secondary market naking your game unpopular? If anything, it implies the opposite.(Although I doubt much of a correlation)
Masterpieces literally exist as a scheme to lower the evs of packs and thus cheapen standard by voluntarily taxing the rich ********s who masterpieces are the audience for.
But back to my original point, outside the secondary market, which is bull***** that doesnt affect gameplay, how is paper and ink a better medium for a game than electricity?
And pulling a quote here:
Development played with Vehicles for many weeks and started to see a problem. The reliance on having a certain number of creatures heavily rewarded you for having a lot of small creatures, especially tokens (this ties into the last mechanic, fabricate, which I will get to in a bit). Because the Vehicles worked so efficiently with tokens, development had to cost the Vehicles assuming you had tokens, and then they ended up being too expensive to work with anything but a token strategy.
Meanwhile, I was busy designing Ham, the fall (northern hemisphere) set of 2017. At the halfway point of Kaladesh design, I handed the reins of the set over to Shawn Main so I could start working on the design for Amonkhet, the large set of the next block. And then halfway through Amonkhet design, I handed the reins over to Ethan Fleischer so I could work on Ham. In Ham, we were working on a new mechanic that I was worried felt too much like Vehicles because it required having a certain number of creatures to activate it. To try and distance my mechanic from Vehicles, I changed it so instead of caring about how many creatures you had, it cared about the total power of the creatures you had. We tested with it and I really liked how it played.
From time to time I poke my head back into sets that I had previously handed off. Kaladesh was in development, so I talked with Ian Duke and Erik Lauer, the co-leads for Kaladesh development. They explained that they were having a problem with Vehicles. As they walked through their problem, it dawned on me that my solution for the Ham mechanic might actually work in Kaladesh. Instead of "crew 5" meaning you have to tap five creatures, it would mean you have to tap any number of creatures whose power added up to 5 or more.
The developers thought the idea was interesting and tried it out. It turned out to be a wonderful solution, because a high crew number no longer meant you had to have a deck with a whole bunch of tokens. Now, you could just play a deck with bigger creatures and not have any tokens
If crewing us based on creature number and not power it means its only viable in a deck you spam full of creatures, preferably ones with a cheap go wide style, making them based on power means they become viable in more types of decks than just go wide ones.
Any deck can get 3 power on the board, getting 3 creatures is a more narrow thing.
And making it poeer based means it has a "mix and match " element that fits KLDs invention theme. You can go wide, tall or any mix of the two to turn vehciles on. Pump spells and counters now work, and also you dont have to cost every Dragon Fodder type effect like it could turn into a 3 turn clock with one colorless.
If the only value is adding its resale potential that makes it better as an investment scam, not a game.
The Secondary market is filth, games are meant to be played not used as a *****ty stock market.
One thing i like about ygo is they actively hate there secondary market and go out of the way to undercut it. When mtg sacrifices things that would make for good game play at the alter of "preserving value" they are valuing the pocketbooks of rich investors and collectors over what would be most fun for the game.
The Secondary market is why we have ***** like the reserve list and full art lands being so scarce. It also makes cracking packs into *****ty lottery tickets.
Your paying for a game, not a medium. How is ink and paper inherently more valuable than electricity on an account.
The only thing you could really loose is the secondary market,which is filthy cancer for the most part that has had a net negative effect on the game anyway.
MTG is the SECOND biggest tcg by far.
Even now when it is at its peak of peaks it is still behind Yugioh in sales, tournament attendance and cards printed. Quality subjective but the hard numbers had YGO as the market leader.
YGO sells so well Konami is the #1 tcg company on the planet despite it being primarily an arcade/tech company with ONE tcg at all.
YGO has more cards in circulation than us currency.
MTG set its record for tournament attendance and ygo casually DOUBLED it.
MTG is #2 physical tcg and modo is #2 digital tcg (by large margin)
Internationally mtg isn't even wotc's mumber 1 game. wotc Duelmasters is the top game in Japan for example.
Thats how it was at first but they changed it becasue it led to unfun gameplay.
Also how are vehciles failed ifthey are thr most beloved mechanic of thethe block and quite popular as a mechanic overall?
Also why do people say the Gatewatch winning is some kimd of storytellimg flaw whenthe good guys winning is something that happens in the overwhelming majority of stories?
Very few heroic rales end with the bad guys winning. Star Wars, Lotr, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, The Avengers, The Legend of Zelda, Terminator 1 and 2, hell even Mad Max hsd the bad guy loose.
Snow should be ok as its basically tribal, and tribal subthemes have been done before (re: bw warriors in khans)
This is an ally faction set yes? I am hsving troible picking out archetypes.
WU is snow obviously
UB is relive/flicker
BR is ramp but for some reason also killing at random?(fyi nice synergy eith gravestorm and saccing tokens for mana)
RG is lands in grave
GW is tokens? I don't get why its draft archetype gold uncommon is a nighthawk though.
RW seems to be a go wide ramp deck
WB maybethe same thing (i have to double check if w hasa lot of etb stuff to abuse relive with)
BG ramp
GU... **** if I know
UR... not sure
a write up of mechanical themes would be appreciated.
also flavorwise Summer is weaker as a theme becasue it lacks a marquee holiday in this hemisphere, make sure to account for that