Wow, what happened to the CPA?

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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Not having heavily played the last three blocks, I'll say that I enjoyed the multi of Invasion, the graveyard use of Odyssey (and hated playing against it, but in a fun way :) ), and the tribal themes of Onslaught. Although it's too bad dwarves didn't get a good nod in it ;) But I could use a lot of cards from all those sets in other casual MP decks of mine in general.
 
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train

Guest
I have to admit - Madness was an extremely unique mechanic - about as game changing as Buyback was for it's time...:cool:
 
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Notepad

Guest
I tend to disagree about Mirrodin being super cool and free. Its about as stale as IPA, OTJ and OLS. The thing that makes it look free is the fact they spilled in a ton of artifacts. With all those artifacts in the block, MDF looks like you can do anything you want, but really, you have to play around artifacts. Just like having to play around tribes, graveyards and domains.
 
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train

Guest
I think by free - they mean that each color now has access to all the other colkor's abilities...

no bounds...
 
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Gizmo

Guest
There are two things I want to say.

1. Somebody complained about blue being too good?

IMHO blue is very weak right now, but they made a HUGE mistake with an artifact set, because by their very nature artifacts remove the weaknesses that specific colours have. The reason blue is good in T2 now is because of the synergy it has with artifacts. End of story.


2. The problem with recent expansions has been that Wizards design the decks for us, then just hand them out... "here we made this Affinity deck for you"... "here, we think if you use Wild Mongrel with all the blue Madness cards it will be good". They need to take a step back in playtesting from simply designing fun decks and then printing them as one lump. The design process should involve making CARDS not making DECKS... and then let the players make the decks.

This is all because people bitched over Urza because a few broken cards slipped through. Personally I'd rather have a pool of cards being released that rewarded creative deckbuilding and a few banned cards where combinations are found to be too strong, as opposed to being spoon-fed my neutered theme decks that I'll be playing for the next 18 months.

From a deckbuilding point of view Magic has been a total waste of time for about three years - and that's the opinion of almost every good/creative deck designer I know.
 
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train

Guest
This is all because people bitched over Urza because a few broken cards slipped through. Personally I'd rather have a pool of cards being released that rewarded creative deckbuilding and a few banned cards where combinations are found to be too strong, as opposed to being spoon-fed my neutered theme decks that I'll be playing for the next 18 months.
Click to expand...
Broken cards in Urza's?!!!...

I think banned in current formats is also okay if it makes the environment stable again - otherwise - if not everyone is playing it - leave it alone...:)
 
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Notepad

Guest
The reason they do the FFL testing is because they want to make sure no degenerate decks come into focus. But, as they have said themselves in different words, they have no idea what the future holds thanks to last minute changes and such. I remember an article of theirs on MTG.com saying they had no idea Psychatog decks would rule in OTJ Standard, and I think a recent one alluded to them having no idea Astral SLide would be so powerful in OLS Standard.

So...I agree--less deck testing. They can't get it right. They should just make fun cards.
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
My impression is that they don't test decks as a whole, just cards as they make it into what they think people will use as decks. Of course, they are only few while Magic players are many, and they probably don't think of a few things that others outside might. Still, from all the inside looks of R&D that Aaron and others provide, there'd probably be a lot more broken cards now if they didn't test them in decks and from what they can think up and predict.
 
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train

Guest
welll they build decks around cards, to see how muc it can be manipulated... of course - until the rules faQ is completely determined, holes may exist, and even after the faq exists - more holes are created...;)
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I completely agree with Gizmo, on well, just about all counts...

Which is why I don't use cards from Invasion-block on up, although some of them are cool, I'll admit.

And some of the concepts, like Flashback, Madness, Gating, I actually like.

But it seems like the game is trying to hit new lows in some other areas. Storm, Morph, and Indestructable all seem to me to be rather bad ideas. Granted, Bands with other..., and some quite old concepts have been bad as well (and I would under no circumstances put the free cards from the Urza's block here-I think it's a great idea, but some of the individual cards are overpowered, obviously), not in the same way though....
 
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Nightstalkers

Guest
Everything was fine until just after Portal 2nd Age... then it got to sucking.

Oh, did I just type that?

...

I mean... I like everything up till Odyssey, then it sucked for the longest time... Mirrodin made me come out of my tin-foil fort and see the shiny glittery junk that I could put to good use.
 
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Rooser

Guest
What's the deal with people not liking odyssey block? That's my favorite block!
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
The entire block revolved around the graveyard, with a few individual exceptions and Madness, which sort of still follows the trend. I like being given a variety of methods to consider for my deckbuilding, and things like the Invasion block (and all blocks following it) really narrow that down.

So, while I dislike the block, there are, sadly, some individual cards in it that I consider rather cool. Well, a few come to mind, but Cabal Therapy is one that I just think is cool, and that made me not hate the Flashback mechanic.
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I think that's true if you were Block constructing, but if you take all of the sets together, the graveyard mechanics added to decks and made some a bit more difficult to deal with (you think you normally get rid of a permanent and oops, it's back in play). Since none of the sets before it really dealt with the graveyard in depth, I think the Odyssey block enhanced deck construction, at least casually speaking.
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Well, there are definitely some cards from it which enhanced deck construction IMO.

But I remember that for a certain time period, almost everyone I came across was playing a threshold or madness deck, or a deck that made heavy use of graveyard abilities (kind of vague term, but it works). That, and almost all the good players (casual players that also played in tournaments somewhat, typically) played Psychatog.

And then I remember another time period in which everyone played decks based around creature types. Elf decks, dragon decks, zombie decks, sliver decks, wizard decks, goblin decks, beast decks...

Well, some people are still stuck in that period, and they're bad players. It was very easy for me to win against pretty much anyone in casual around this time, because they would always predictably play creature-based decks. And then Mind's Desire came out! :eek: Thank Urza's Saga for Arcane Laboratory...

And now...

Now it seems like if I really wanted to, I could stomp on most people I come across simply by using Hurkyl's Recall or Shatterstorm in my decks. Oh, and I should get more Powder Kegs, not because it's a good card, but because I don't know how much longer this artifact-land craze is going to last...

I thought that the game had achieved some amount of balance during the Masquerade cycle, and trusted Wizards too much, thinking they would continue the trend. That was stupid, but new cards still suck! :p
 
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Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Well, when a new block comes out, of course people are going to use it heavily, so you would have seen a lot of graveyard manipulation during Odyssey. And Psychatog was just a winning deck, no surprise people would have been playing it.

People still play creature decks, no surprise there. It's like your own little army... :)

And of course now people are going to use more artifacts and of course they'll get hosed a bit by Shatterstorm or other anti-artifact cards (that's why they weren't printed in Mirrodin, so people would play with them more in Standard). Their choice if they go against someone using older cards...

But the point is more decks have opened up and though there may be foils to them, everyone's discovering new ways of card interaction.
 
A

Apollo

Guest
I agree with what Gizmo (and 20 other people) have said in this thread.

Deckbuilding just doesn't seem interesting anymore, which is why I haven't bought cards in a long time. I remember the first time someone played Stupid Green against me and I stared at it for 6 turns or so until finally it clicked what he was doing and I was amazed. The same goes for Secret Force, and Peace of Crap, and even those Wildfire decks that were so popular for a while. I just don't ever see exciting decks anymore, so I get bored.
 
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