Card frame change for Magic 2015
- Thread starter Oversoul
- Start date
turgy22
Nothing Special
My sentiments exactly. They made a whole lot of nothing changes that I don't really care about one way or the other.
The only thing I could see as a potential bother is the "designer credit". Aside from the designer of the card, who else in the world would possibly want to see that person's name instead of flavor text?
Mooseman
Isengar Tussle
Me?
New card... meh.....
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Why don't I like the stamp, you mean? Well, it's ugly. Obviously the aesthetics of cards are subjective anyway, and I'm sure there will be mixed reactions to these changes (and yeah, if you're not going to dealing with the new cards anyway, I can see why you wouldn't care). I've seen some discussion elsewhere about how thick the border should or shouldn't be, about the new font, about how the power and toughness should be presented, and such. Some people, who I guess really hate redundancy, are annoyed that rarity, already indicated by the color of the expansion symbol, is going to be indicated next to the collector's number. I don't really have an opinion on any of that, since I've always preferred the card face from before the Eighth Edition change anyway. But the extra boxes are here to stay and I can accept that. This M15 stuff is all pretty minor in comparison.
Maybe these changes will be good. Seeing them in the examples so far, I'm not awed by them myself, but it's possible that I'll appreciate them more if I see the actual cards. Or maybe other people will. Maybe people will think the designer credit thing is cool. But no one will think a little oval thrown in the middle of the bottom of the text box is cool. No one has looked at Magic cards and thought, "The bottom of the text box could really use a belt buckle."
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
It seems possible. So far I haven't seen much, but it's still very new. Mostly there's been whining about it and people making fun of the people whining about it, but there hasn't been much reaction overall, either because people haven't seen it or because the changes are pretty minor anyway. I did see someone somewhere speculate that the primary purpose of the changes might be to make the bottom of the card machine-readable. If true, that could be interesting.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Well, there's now considerable furor (on sites other than this one, anyway) over counterfeit cards made by Chinese printing companies. I've seen a lot of speculation that the changes to the frame are an attempt to make counterfeiting harder, as well as arguments on what better counterfeits will mean for the game as a whole.
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Terentius
Guest
I'm fine as long as there's not too much contrast with the current modern cards. More importantly, does Waste Not look insane to anyone else? Two mana to give discard decks a permanent resource engine? The last community-made card I knew of was Forgotten Ancient, and Waste Not looks even stronger than that.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
I'd be pleasantly surprised if it ends up being a strong card. One doesn't get to control which types of cards opponents will be discarding. One might want to draw cards, but find that discard spells can only hit lands, providing useless mana. If it was one effect for any type of discarded card, then it would be easier to build around. Instead one is playing an abbreviated game of Wheel of Fortune with an enchantment that might not actually matter.
In chronological order: Forgotten Ancient, Crucible of Worlds, Vanish Into Memory, Waste Not. Yeah, the whole "You Make the Card" thing took a seven-year break.
T
Terentius
Guest
I guess, but even if they don't get to pick the payoff, discard decks still get a payoff for something they were already going to do. And there are many ways to do something with mana... I'll be running a set in some deck for sure.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
I used to play decks with Megrim in them a lot. I probably wouldn't do that anymore because there are just too many better strategies now. Waste Not is pretty comparable to Megrim and I'm guessing Megrim was kept in mind by whoever was in charge of balancing this thing. I'd hesitate to use Waste Not even more than I'd hesitate to use Megrim, despite it being one mana cheaper. One reason is that Megrim has viable combos, such as with Urza's Guilt. But the main reason is that Megrim is easy to account for. As long as I can predict how many cards I can make my opponent discard, I can estimate how much damage Megrim will do. The semi-randomness of Waste Not, based in part around the composition of my opponent's deck, makes its effects hard to account for.
It's easy to think of scenarios where Waste Not works really well. Turn one, Dark Ritual into Hypnotic Specter. Turn two, Waste Not, attack. Random discard gives me a zombie? Cool. More beats coming right up. Random discard gives me mana? Uh, I'll play Hymn to Tourach to spin the wheel of discard two more times (that's a lie: I actually play Sinkhole and bask in your misery, but maybe I'm playing a themed discard deck for kicks or something). Random discard gives me a draw? Card advantage +2 bonus sounds pretty good. All nice things to have. Not knowing which one will show up next makes it like a special birthday surprise enchantment, or something (although if you use surgical discard spells, like Duress, you have some say). But it's not the good times that concern me. Lots of cards work well when times are good. If I am losing and I topdeck this thing, I'm probably not happy about it.
I wish they'd just stuck with one effect, rather than going overboard and making three separate possibilities depending on the card type of the discarded card. It affects deckbuilding. For example, I might have a monoblack control deck that I think is a bit short on creatures, so I put more creatures in. I play Waste Not and it gives me even more creatures than I'm what I'm already drawing, because I keep making my opponent discard creatures. My opponent plays a game-breaking spell of some sort, and I don't have any answers to it because my deck has such a high density of creatures, and the enchantment I played is only giving me more of them, when more creatures won't save me. If I'd known about that, I'd have put fewer creatures into the deck because Waste Not was going to give me some anyway. But that's not quite right: Waste Not only does that when the cards my opponent is discarding are creatures, and that won't always be the case. Because of the semi-randomness and the increased relevance of my opponent's deck composition, my capacity to plan ahead is reduced. I try to avoid cards that make it harder for me to plan ahead. Planning ahead is hard enough as it is and I don't need some uppity card making it even harder.
I'm making it sound like I think Waste Not totally sucks, which isn't quite what I really think. I think that because it's unreliable and there are so many other options for two-drops, it probably won't be relevant in any constructed formats (I am spewing so much hot air when I say that with regard to Standard, a format I've never played in my life and have only a passing understanding of, but I'm probably right anyway), which could actually be good news if it turns out to be true, as that should mean it'll be a dirt-cheap rare for players who want to craft some weird new discard-based archetype in casual play.
It's easy to think of scenarios where Waste Not works really well. Turn one, Dark Ritual into Hypnotic Specter. Turn two, Waste Not, attack. Random discard gives me a zombie? Cool. More beats coming right up. Random discard gives me mana? Uh, I'll play Hymn to Tourach to spin the wheel of discard two more times (that's a lie: I actually play Sinkhole and bask in your misery, but maybe I'm playing a themed discard deck for kicks or something). Random discard gives me a draw? Card advantage +2 bonus sounds pretty good. All nice things to have. Not knowing which one will show up next makes it like a special birthday surprise enchantment, or something (although if you use surgical discard spells, like Duress, you have some say). But it's not the good times that concern me. Lots of cards work well when times are good. If I am losing and I topdeck this thing, I'm probably not happy about it.
I wish they'd just stuck with one effect, rather than going overboard and making three separate possibilities depending on the card type of the discarded card. It affects deckbuilding. For example, I might have a monoblack control deck that I think is a bit short on creatures, so I put more creatures in. I play Waste Not and it gives me even more creatures than I'm what I'm already drawing, because I keep making my opponent discard creatures. My opponent plays a game-breaking spell of some sort, and I don't have any answers to it because my deck has such a high density of creatures, and the enchantment I played is only giving me more of them, when more creatures won't save me. If I'd known about that, I'd have put fewer creatures into the deck because Waste Not was going to give me some anyway. But that's not quite right: Waste Not only does that when the cards my opponent is discarding are creatures, and that won't always be the case. Because of the semi-randomness and the increased relevance of my opponent's deck composition, my capacity to plan ahead is reduced. I try to avoid cards that make it harder for me to plan ahead. Planning ahead is hard enough as it is and I don't need some uppity card making it even harder.
I'm making it sound like I think Waste Not totally sucks, which isn't quite what I really think. I think that because it's unreliable and there are so many other options for two-drops, it probably won't be relevant in any constructed formats (I am spewing so much hot air when I say that with regard to Standard, a format I've never played in my life and have only a passing understanding of, but I'm probably right anyway), which could actually be good news if it turns out to be true, as that should mean it'll be a dirt-cheap rare for players who want to craft some weird new discard-based archetype in casual play.
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Terentius
Guest
I see. Maybe my Timmy was showing.
T
Terentius
Guest
I peeped your article and it reminded me of this; I think we were both right about Waste Not. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, you kick yourself for running such an unreliable card. However, its CMC is only 2, so that's a saving grace.