Weird that the game Infernal Contraption from Privateer Press (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29456/infernal-contraption), about fitting cards together for multiple effects with goblin "bodgers", came out the same year as Steamflogger Boss (2007). I guess Future Sight would have been spring, not sure when Infernal Contraption came out, but I guess they would have had to have the set planned a lot earlier. I think the concept of bodgers in the Iron Kingdoms was described earlier, though. In Infernal Contraption you attach things to any of the four sides of cards and build them out, which is similar to what Maro said was one of the mechanics they tested. The companies are in the same area - wonder if someone might have been inspired one way or the other. I guess goblin mechanics are a reasonably common trope in stuff like 40K as well though.
It seems people are missing my point. At the end of a draft you will normally have 45 cards. 42 if you don't count the lands. But if part of those 42 cards aren't part of your main deck you're going to be well below the deck minimum just because of drafting the set's primary mechanic. I'm not concerned about not being able to get Contraptions. I'm concerned that getting a decent number of them could be detrimental to your game even if they say that the deck minimum isn't a thing for this format.
Of the 42 card you get from the draft at most 25(more likely 23) actually go into your deck. So even assuming your last three picks from each pack are off color/awful/not contraptions, you still have 8 picks for contraptions. It seems you could be punished for picking contraptions too highly and too often but such cases should be exceptionally rare and only results in running slightly more lands than optimal.
Watermarks is neat, because it's something I felt they've always needed to try, but honestly its really a mechanic no different from checking creature subtypes, still glad it's added though
Watermarks can and do change on reprints. Because the WotC does not want different versions of a card to be functionally different, they cannot reference watermarks in black border.
This is not true. They printed as much as they would for a normal expansion because they didn't understand supplemental sets yet. Your point is valid, the audience for these sets is a subset of the overall MTG audience, people just need to stop saying the Un sets were a failure or that they sold bad because that's not true.
if every pack has 13 non-contraption cards, that leaves you with 36 cards at the end of a draft instead of the usual 42. That's a pretty big difference.
Assuming you take 2 contraptions per pack. Some players may end up with more or less depending on how highly they draft them. Theoretically you could draft only contraptions or 0 contraptions.
Edit: if every pack has 13 non-contraption cards, that leaves you with 36 cards at the end of a draft instead of the usual 42. That's a pretty big difference.
Except you typically only play 22-24 of those cards anyway; the rest of your deck is lands. This set will probably have a more flat power level than most so there aren't as many blatantly bad last-picks.
Games might be slower on average so you can accrue a bit of extra value out of your contraptions or they may have set up contraptions to give you stuff to do when games stall naturally and you start drawing useless lands.
If the smaller pool size were an issue, it would have come up way early and development would have found a solution long before it went to print. I wouldn't worry about it.
As with Conspiracies, it's not yet clear how much of the power in a deck will come from the cards that aren't actually in it. It might just be a higher variance format than normal, and to be honest, I wouldn't find that as surprising since the audience isn't the super spikey crowd. Though as far as draft is concerned, a smaller contraption deck is probably better: you'll more reliably hit the effects you want. They'll act as delayed ETB triggers that sometimes come up again later.
Yeah dog, they should give +2½/+2½ if you balance the card on your nose, like real Un-cards, the ones that were super fun and human beings enjoyed playing with.
Yes, I surely will enjoy my mythic "Until EoT, 2: fight target creature".
You keep repeating this in the thread, and while I agree that it isn't the most mythic-feeling, it's not completely unreasonable at mythic. There's a reason why repeatable fighting that doesn't require fighting never appears on creatures. That ability is brutal in limited, often allowing you to remove two of your opponent's creatures for 4 mana and maybe not even lose yours. That's a huge swing in limited, and with it being repeatable it could allow you to completely lock down the board. At rare the card might have appeared too often in limited. Although the inherent randomness of contraptions might have mitigated that somewhat, it's still a brutal limited bomb when combined with a decent sized creature, so the less often it shows up the better.
Plus there could be a lot of other contraptions that synergize with it. We've already seen one that can pump creatures, and there could easily be others that are similar. Plus contraptions that grant lifelink, deathtouch, or indestructible would go great with it. The ability to align synergistic contraptions on the same sprocket allows you to make the card even more of a blowout, which makes it even better in both limited and casual constructed.
When the defense of this un-set is there is no reason why cards shouldn't be silver-bordered... welp.
It wouldn't fit in black-border (yet), so there is a reason for it to be silver-bordered. It's not as silver-bordered as some cards, but maybe that's a good thing. The two ends of the spectrum for un-cards are totally out there and humorous designs that are fun to look at but mostly godawful to actually play with, and less crazy but still not ready for black border designs that could be fun to play with and might end up influencing black border in the future. The first two un-sets had both leaning towards the former, but this one looks to be leaning much farther toward the latter. That's a good thing in my book. I wasn't playing Magic when the first two un-sets came out. I got a kick out of looking through the cards once, sure, but they look nightmarish to actually play with. This set will probably be much more playable, which will not only cause me to actually want to draft it but also probably cause it to sell better and be more popular with players, allowing more un-sets to be made in the right direction. I think it's a step in the right direction, and most people seem to agree.
Cards don't have to involve physical activity. They only have to be fun. Hangman is fun. Earl of the squirrel is fun with its distorted keyword. Small things like adding "½" can make a card a bit more fun and original, even if it's only common. But there are no redeeming qualities this time. The art is amazing which only makes it worse due to the contrast.
We've only seen a few of the cards so far, and already there are a few cards that are fun by your standards. I think that we'll see a decent number of cards like those that are more traditionally silver border, so it's a bit early to claim that there are "no redeeming qualities".
The little girl, a common from Unhinged, is more fun and original than any of the mythic contraptions so far. It is simple, it does not involve physical activity, but there are things that make it strange and interesting, it really catches the eye.
Once again, fun to look at is different than fun to play. Not only is it disgustingly underpowered (even in limited, 1/1s for 1 with an ability are often bad, 1/1s for 1 with no abilities are terrible, and something smaller than a 1/1 for 1 with no abilities is downright awful) but using halves in general is just complicating the combat math in an already math-heavy game. It doesn't bother me that much but I could understand how that could be annoying to a lot of people. Combat math with only whole numbers can get pretty mind-numbing when the board state is complex enough, so introducing fractional numbers to further complicate it is even worse. So no, I don't think that Little Girl is a good design. It's a unique design, but unique for the sake of unique seldom leads to good gameplay.
The same with the hangman and the earl of squirrel. You see the card without the art and flavor text and you know perfectly that it is a card from an un-set. Some things are repeated accross cards, but in many cases those are uncommons or commons. I expect the rares and mythics to be particularly fun. Super secret tech, Rare-B-Gone... they are special, they play with mechanics in an unexpected way, and even the frame of the card is special.[/card]
Again, I think we'll see some cards with that in Unstable (and, as you said, we already have with Hangman and Earl of Squirrel). It won't be every card, because they're trying to make a coherent limited experience that you can actually enjoy drafting multiple times.
[quote]But if you read the text from any of the contraptions, anyone who is not famiiar with the spoilers would believe it is a normal, boring card from a normal set.
I doubt it. The cartoonish art, the punny names, the absurd flavor text, and the word "contraption" in the typeline would probably tip them off.
+2/+2? fight target creature? Those are wasted slots. Wasted MYTHIC slots in an un-set, and the cards whose wackiness consists in assembling contraptions also become wasted slots. I like the cards that are unrelated to contraptions, but every single card that is related to contraptions right now. Every-single-one, is a disappointment. The only reason behind them I can think of is that they will try to make them tournament legal. I would be ok with that. Some cards are boring but they can be used outside the un-set. But I really doubt this will happen.
From what Maro's been saying, that seems to be a possibility. But even if it isn't, these cards seem pretty viable in casual constructed (including Commander). Most Commander playgroups will groan at the best or throw you out at the worst if they have to watch you put your shoes on the table or try to find out what the hell Ambiguity says, but I think that the majority of Commander players wouldn't mind if someone used contraptions in a casual game. These cards are so much usable in actual games than a lot of the more absurd cards we've seen in past un-sets.
If anyone wants to play normal magic, then there are already hundreds of sets that even are more fun than these contraptions. But if a card has a silver border (or equivalent), then there should at least be a reason why that card can't be played in tournaments. And the art and flavor text are not valid reasons.
Contraptions don't belong in tournament play. Extra decks aren't part of tournament play, even when they originally appeared in black border (there are no sanctioned tournaments for Planechase or Archenemy). But the idea of deliberately making silver border cards as absurd as possible to justify their illegality is flawed because un-cards being unplayable outside of un-drafts has historically been the biggest turn-off to players whenever an un-set comes around (we saw the exact same reaction when this set was announced). So the more usable the cards are in constructed (obviously casual constructed rather than competitive), the more appealing they will be to more players and the more successful the set will be.
I feel like Spikes won't see the appeal of Contraptions at all, and T[ia]mmys may only see it after a bit of consideration, but us Johnnys and Jennys... we see the loveliness immediately Contraptions are all about combos, combos, combos. They give you more consistency than triggered effects, but slightly less control than activated abilities. You need to decide which effects will trigger together for the best combo, but also think ahead to the next step of the sequence and what should trigger then. You have a sequencer of combos, basically, and you just need to decide how the sequence will progress. It's beautiful Who cares if one Contraption only gives you +2/+2 when you can combine it with the perfect set of 5 other Contraptions in just the right way to make an amazing sequence of effects? The beauty is in putting the puzzle together, not in critiquing the brush strokes on each of the puzzle pieces
My initial reaction to contraption was mixed too, but I think they'll be fun to play - and my suspicion is that we've only seen the tamest ones so far. After all, the point of MaRo's article where most of them were spoiled was just to explain how they work. With 90% of the set still unknown, I bet there's plenty of high-octane nonsense left in the set.
We shouldn't underestimate the role of flavour in shaping the experience either. I know I'm more jazzed to dome someone with a Bouncing Beebles than with any old 2/2 cuz, well, they're Beebles! The creature type alone was considered too goofy for black-border! But then again, I *am* kind of a filthy casual, so. *shrug*
Hmmm.... as far as Un set goes, the feel does look a bit too serious in some ways (with clearly defined mechanic and the tribal-based abilities), but at least hopefully they're still ok.
I’m gonna write this once in this thread and once in the small thread from today and then no more:
Can we just agree that none of us can tell Wizards what ‘Unsets are suppose to be about’?
It’s their game, their rules.
And they want to create a game that matches expectations, so voicing when your expectations are not met is information they can use to re-evaluate their process. That's feedback and it has worked in the past to change how things are done.
If I want a family car and the latest family car a company presented to me was a convertible without backseats or room for luggage they receive feedback that their product-line did not meet the standards expected and what expectations were not met. If you want something in particular from your silver-bordered experience and you get a preview that indicates you are not getting that, why not discuss the issue?
Previews are about discussing the set while it is only partially known, and somewhere at the company someone's job is to make sure previews are representive and enticing. So from that premise I can totally see disappointment. Contraptions probably create interesting gameplay, but they fail to satisfy a need in the audience that will likely not be addressed on any larger scale until the next silver-bordered expansion.
Wizards has failed to correctly read the requests of the audience before.
I'm fine with getting a more down-to-earth mechanical side, but the humor in the art, flavor text and theme is lacking as well so far.
tl;dr: Wizards does not define alone what silver-borded is. It's a negotiation. They decide what they release under that brand, but the audience decides what it expects. And the expectations are a part of the identity of the "genre".
One of the big problems with Unstable that hasn't been addressed, and is the main reason why side decks in ccgs are a really bad idea is that you get punished for buying it in small amounts.
you need 15 contraptions to make a side deck, and you cannot use doubles. You get 2 in a booster pack, so you need to buy a minimum of 8 booster packs to be able to use them, you cant play with these cards without looking online to see how they work, its a huge barrier to people buying them.
A lot of people will buy a handful of booster packs of a set to see new cards, maybe they want to see some joke cards and unless you buy in bulk you are likely to get half your pack be parasitic useless contraption/contraption related cards that arent funny on their own.
Its a dangerous thing for a random booster pack set in a ccg to do, and is fixed if the contraptions were a boxed product like Planechase that came with all the contraptions in it.
Umm, I'm sure marketing loves this "problem" because the player needs to buy more packs to get the 15 single contraptions. Mind you, you are going to get more of the common contraptions than uncommon, rare, and mythic. Other than being told 9 contraptions per faction, what is the breakdown of rarity among that? Is is 1 mythic, 1 rare, 3 uncommon, 4 common?
One of the big problems with Unstable that hasn't been addressed, and is the main reason why side decks in ccgs are a really bad idea is that you get punished for buying it in small amounts.
you need 15 contraptions to make a side deck, and you cannot use doubles. You get 2 in a booster pack, so you need to buy a minimum of 8 booster packs to be able to use them, you cant play with these cards without looking online to see how they work, its a huge barrier to people buying them.
A lot of people will buy a handful of booster packs of a set to see new cards, maybe they want to see some joke cards and unless you buy in bulk you are likely to get half your pack be parasitic useless contraption/contraption related cards that arent funny on their own.
Its a dangerous thing for a random booster pack set in a ccg to do, and is fixed if the contraptions were a boxed product like Planechase that came with all the contraptions in it.
Umm, I'm sure marketing loves this "problem" because the player needs to buy more packs to get the 15 single contraptions. Mind you, you are going to get more of the common contraptions than uncommon, rare, and mythic. Other than being told 9 contraptions per faction, what is the breakdown of rarity among that? Is is 1 mythic, 1 rare, 3 uncommon, 4 common?
Is this really so different from everything else, though? If you want to build around a certain theme/faction/mechanic/whatever, you need a fairly high number of boosters too. It's not like you absolutely have to play with contraptions, it's just one way to go.
Can someone explain to me why Sword of Dungeons and Dragons exists? I understand the name of course and that you roll a 20 sided die but doesn't it seem a little too plain. Just playing a sword equipping it and attacking does not seem very UN flavored with the only added part being roll a d20. Seems like they could have done much more with this card such as different effects depending on what you roll making it more fun and interactive. Attacking someone and making a 4/4 which you can equip and attack and make more 4/4's doesn't seem very fun.
I feel the same way. Seems like 1/4 of the set are Contraptions, 1/4 cards that assemble Contraptions and another 1/4 cards about rolling die. None of those are particularly out there.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
—Eli Shiffrin, Rules Manager, on a design stacking lifelink instances
I feel the same way. Seems like 1/4 of the set are Contraptions, 1/4 cards that assemble Contraptions and another 1/4 cards about rolling die. None of those are particularly out there.
You've seen the rest of the unspoiled set? Do share!
I feel the same way. Seems like 1/4 of the set are Contraptions, 1/4 cards that assemble Contraptions and another 1/4 cards about rolling die. None of those are particularly out there.
You've seen the rest of the unspoiled set? Do share!
"There are 45 Contraptions in Unstable, nine per faction." said by Mark Rosewater. There's 210 draftable cards in the set. That's roundabout 1/4th. If there's already 3 cards that care about rolling die but don't even roll dies, you can expect there to be a whole lot more die rolling cards. Without having seen the whole set, yes, I feel like large parts of this set are occupied by things that are not particularly out there.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
—Eli Shiffrin, Rules Manager, on a design stacking lifelink instances
Without having seen the whole set, yes, I feel like large parts of this set are occupied by things that are not particularly out there.
For one, some of these things overlap. We've already seen dice based contraptions and contraptions that assemble contraptions. Second, we've already seen several cards that assemble more than one contraption. I don't think the set will need 1/4 assemblers if you can easily make multiple per card. Third, for dice enablers, they don't necessitate a huge amount. For example, there are only 12 cards in Ixalan that explore yet there are explore pay-off cards.
Basically, wait until the whole or most of the set is spoiled before you make generalizations.
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.)
Trying to look at any given Contraption in isolation is like looking at any given piece of a Rube Goldberg machine and evaluating it in isolation.
It's not going to work. Contraptions are literally designed as cogs in a machine. You don't judge a watch by the cogs (on anything other than a very technical level). You judge the machine by the effect it has.
To paraphrase a famous saying (without meaning offense), 'People complaining about Contraptions should get out of the way of people planning on how best to use them.'
while I agree that it isn't the most mythic-feeling, it's not completely unreasonable at mythic
It is completely unreasonable at mythic. It is garbage. It is boring. It is as if the effect had been selected with one of those random cards generators. Please, stop talking about how it is mythic because of how viable it is in limited and whatever... Stop trying to dissect it to justify the insanity of the designers, who forgot what they were maing. This is an un-set. That is a mythic in an un-set. It is not special. It is not outstanding. It is not mythic, it is garbage. It would be boring garbage in a normal set. In an un-set, this is amplified.
Look at the other cards that allow repeatable fighting: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text= [:]+[fights] (note that all of them are rare at minimum, since Triangle of War isn't repeatable.) The only mythic on the list is Domri Rade, since both essentially allow a fight every three turns. Granted, Domri can do other things as well, but that unlike Bee-Bee Gun, he can't use the fight ability multiple times in the same turn and he's much easier for the opponent to get rid of. Repeatable fighting is something that is consistently rare if not mythic, probably for power level reasons (again, inexpensively removing multiple creatures every three turns is brutal in limited, and not something you want to play against often). Bee-Bee Gun is better at what it does than most of those cards, so for its power level, mythic is perfectly reasonable.
Now conceptually, it doesn't feel as mythic as most mythic cards, but you can't deny the brutal efficiency of repeatable fighting. Combined with any decent-sized creature, this card is an absolute beating for the opponent. It probably could have been rare, but maybe it was moved up so that it would appear less often in limited, because of its power level or maybe because it combos with an as-of-yet unrevealed card of a lower rarity in the set, like Worldgorger Dragon. Just don't act like this is the worst mythic we've seen. We've seen a lot of bad mythics over the years, including Comet Storm and the aforementioned Worldgorger Dragon. At least this one is powerful. It's just not very mythic-feeling. But some mythics are really unique in their designs (which, I agree, un-sets should be aiming for especially) but there are always going to be those that just have a lot of raw power. Again, I'm not saying that this card is a great mythic or anything, but your reaction seems a bit extreme. If you really hate this card so much, just be glad that's it's mythic so that you don't have to open it as frequently.
It wouldn't fit in black-border (yet), so there is a reason for it to be silver-bordered. It's not as silver-bordered as some cards, but maybe that's a good thing. The two ends of the spectrum for un-cards are totally out there and humorous designs that are fun to look at but mostly godawful to actually play with, and less crazy but still not ready for black border designs that could be fun to play with and might end up influencing black border in the future
No. Cards from un-sets are special in some way, they have strange mechanics or elemtns that make them fun to see and use.
That is literally what contraptions are. Maybe they aren't fun for you, but heaven forbid that they make different cards for different types of players. As I said, a lot of people avoid un-sets because the cards are basically useless, so making a set that 1. makes a limited environment that's fun to draft multiple times and 2. gives people cards other than basic lands that they can actually play in constructed (albeit casual constructed) will greatly broaden the audience. Contraptions are a large part of that. They're still mechanically strange and they will probably be fun to see and use for at least some players.
That is the only end of the spectrum. The other one is not being a card from an un-sets. The contraptions are not part of an un-set.
Once again, this is literally exactly what contraptions are. They are part of Unstable, which is an un-set. At least make an effort to separate fact from opinion.
They are unholy monstrosities with randomly generated text that they shamelessly shoehorned into a sets that is supposed to be fun.
Fun is subjective. It's different for every person. What you find fun is very different than what someone else finds fun. I don't know if this un-set will be more or less fun than previous ones, because we've hardly seen any cards yet and no one's played it yet. So while I can predict that it might be better than previous one's, I'm not going to state it as objective truth the way that you are for the opposite claim. Claiming that something is poorly designed or un-fun before playing it or even seeing all the cards revealed is pure conjecture and not going to be taken seriously.
Hangman is not a nightmare to play. Earl of the squirrel is not a nightmare to play. Little girl is not a nightmare to play.
I never said that they were.
They are fun. You and the other ones who for some reason feel the need to defend the contraptions pretend that they must be that way. If you want to draft a normal set where you can spend 384578 hours studying how viable each card is in limited and constructed, and why the "put a +1/+1 counter on target creature" card deserves to be mythic, then you have many, MANY sets.
This is still very different from a normal set. They're just asking "how much can we use an opportunity to test new mechanical ideas that aren't possible in black border" instead of asking "how many cards can we make that are funny for people to read but painful and embarrassing to actually play in real life".
But when an un-set is released every 83578478 years, I don't want its defense to be "it is good because it is not an un-set".
It is very much an un-set, and it's good because it's putting more emphasis on the part of un-sets that are good: exploring new design space that can't be done in black border (yet). People having to sing and scream and buy drinks for each other and put their shoes on the table might be funny in theory, but most people don't want to actually do it. This un-set seems to be focusing more on the types of cards that have practical value, both in how the cards themselves can be used and in how they might influence future Magic design. It's always been part of un-sets, they've just been doing more of it because it's what the designers and most players want.
People don't like it. People don't like "2: fight target creature". People like special effects and mechanics.
We've never seen "2: Fight target creature" on any card before, but I assure you, there's a reason for that: it's extremely powerful. It allows one creature to remove multiple creatures very, very cheaply, and on this card it can be combined with any creature you have (meaning potentially a very large bodies) and it's not attached to any one creature so it doesn't "die to removal". If we saw a creature in a normal set with "2: fight target creature", people would probably be pretty excited about it as long as it's not on a 1/1 creature or something. It's just that in this set, it's been overshadowed by a lot of other, crazier cards. But even in a set that's all about being crazy, some cards have to crazier than others. If you like the cards that are crazier, than enjoy those cards and let other people enjoy the cards they want to enjoy.
Once again, fun to look at is different than fun to play. Not only is it disgustingly underpowered (even in limited, 1/1s for 1 with an ability are often bad, 1/1s for 1 with no abilities are terrible, and something smaller than a 1/1 for 1 with no abilities is downright awful) but using halves in general is just complicating the combat math in an already math-heavy game
Again, stop trying to dissect un-set cards af it it was some serious business thing, this grey thing. It is a normal card, a common chump blocker or whatever. The math is not complicated at all, only a 2 years old would find it complicated.
It's not so much that the math is complicated as that Magic can already have complicated math with large board states and adding fractional numbers doesn't really help. Plus fractional damage is kind of parasitic because the only thing to make it useful is more fractional damage. 2 and 1/2 damage is just going to be 2 damage unless you have something else that does more fractional damage. Fractional mana works a similar way, except it's even worse because there are hardly any cards that produce or require fractional mana. Little girl is basically a 0/1 for one mana unless you have other fraction cards. I haven't used fractional cards in Magic but I've seen fractional numbers introduced to other games and they add NOTHING to gameplay. They exist only for the novelty. They're mildly amusing to read once but they're not particularly fun to play with (something that was common with the first two un-sets). For someone so concerned with fun, I'm surprised to see you defending them. There's a reason they weren't brought back for this set.
If you want your SOULLESS LIMITED DRAFTING then go buy one of the packs of the other sets.
Ok, a few things.
Drafting requires three boosters, not one. Have you ever drafted before?
Drafting is a major part of Magic and every set sold in boosters is designed with limited in mind. If you don't like draft personally, that's fine, but expecting a booster product to ignore how things play in limited in pretty delusional.
Drafting is not antithetical to an un-set. Both previous un-sets were designed so that you could add them into other drafts to make them more ridiculous. They were designed with drafting in mind, just to a less extent. This un-set was designed to actually be drafted alone and be a coherent limited format on its own. They've made this very clear since the product was announced. So once again, expecting anything else is delusional.
If you don't intend to draft this set, and you don't intend to use the cards casually in constructed either (I assume you don't, because you don't seem to have any appreciation of their efforts to make cards more usable in actual casual constructed games), then what do you plan to do with this new un-set? Buy booster packs, laugh at the cards inside, put them on a shelf, and never use them again? At that point wouldn't it be better to just look at the cards online and not spend them at all? If you have no intention of actually playing with these cards in actual games of Magic, then what authority do you have do decide if they're "fun" or not?
And if you want to, you can remove every hability that goes beyond "target creature gets +2/+2 until EoT".
Ignoring the absurdity of this, I'd like to point out that there are a lot of cards in Unstable with more complicated effects, in fact, this set looks much more complex than any other set in recent memory, so a few cards that are simpler in their designs are necessary to balance them out somewhat. Simple cards are needed in every set, especially at common, but they can exist at other rarities as well. We just got a mythic that does nothing but draw seven cards. Plus contraptions are inherently pretty complicated in the way they work, so even if the effect they grant is simple, the overall card is relatively complex. So this seems like a pretty big exaggeration.
I doubt it. The cartoonish art, the punny names, the absurd flavor text, and the word "contraption" in the typeline would probably tip them off.
There is no reason why they can't do it. The art or the flavor text don't affect how it is played. If they want to, they can. And there is nothing preventing them from doing so, with or without some word printed on it.
You're right, they can change art and flavor text to whatever they want. So if the mechanical design of contraptions was doable in black border, it would be in black border. If it's in silver border, it's there for a reason. It might be black border material in the future, but it isn't yet. Contraptions involve a separate deck that is present to support specific cards (rather than as a rule for format) and have card backs that are neither the normal Magic back nor DFCs. And they involve a counter that doesn't exist on a permanent, player, or exiled card. Contraptions are in silver border for more than just flavor.
these cards seem pretty viable in
They are boring in everything. They are not what cards from un-sets are supposed to be. They are cards from the most boring of basic sets, and the mythics are the perfect examples of what mythics SHOULDN'T be, even in normal sets.
Again, all of this sounds like it's from the perspective of someone only looking at the cards and not playing them. When you're actually playing a game of Magic, "2: fight target creature" isn't boring; it's an extremely large advantage that is difficult for your opponent to come back from. Rolling dice repeatedly to rapidly empty a mini-library full of artifacts onto the battlefield is not boring either. And those are only the mythics that I assume you are referring to as boring. There have been several other non-contraption mythics that have been revealed today that certainly couldn't be considered boring, even by an enlightened card critic such as yourself.
Extra decks aren't part of tournament play
It doesn't matter. If tey say they are, then they are. There is no contract that forces them to not to allow something. This set is not appealing because the contraptions are BORING. What part of this don't you understand? Do you think that players care about some limited score viability? No, they care about cards being fun.
I probably sound like a broken record here, but here we go: Contraptions can't be in black border (at least not yet) for multiple reasons. "Fun" and "boring" are subjective and different people will find different things to be fun or boring. Even the cards you think are boring and simple and aren't as bad as you think, and if you still don't like them, there are lots of other ones you can enjoy. Limited viability is a major factor for many players and limited play will likely be one of the main appeals of the set.
The most repeated defense of the contraptions from an un-set: "they are nothing like cards from an un-set". Truly bright times. I can't wait until they release poker cards kits and you say "they are the best, they are nothing like magic cards, now there are no mana balancing problems!"
This is also repeated from before, but these last two rebuttals will work well as a conclusion/TLDR I suppose: contraptions are still very much in the spirit of what an un-set is, just in a different way than the types of cards you seem to like. They're more about exploring design space than being absurd for the sake of being absurd. When people say that contraptions are good because they're not like previous un-sets, it's because they don't want to draft a set (or attempt to use it in constructed) if it's full of cards that force them publicly embarrass themselves. An un-set that's more focused on good gameplay and exploring design space is exactly what a lot of people needed to get them to start playing un-sets, and much more likely to result in more un-sets in the future. The designers were well aware of this and made an un-set that has better gameplay on purpose. Cards that are fun to read don't sell packs, but cards that are fun to play will.
Oh agreed very much so. I can see myself actually buying and drafting packs of this with some buds. I haven't really cared for these types of sets but it does feel like a functioning set so far.
Oh agreed very much so. I can see myself actually buying and drafting packs of this with some buds. I haven't really cared for these types of sets but it does feel like a functioning set so far.
Replying to you so I don't have that big ol' wall of text (please make this a card wizards) in the quote, but yeah. Count me as one of the players who see the contraption mechanic as silly, but with powerful PLAY potential. I'm not going to yawn as I lay down my Bee bee gun- I'm going to cackle as my guild's superweapon cranks to slot 3 and I slam 7+ effects down with it and blow up the table. Add a cohesive but, entirely UNdeck next to it (seriously the guild stuff makes this hard not to), and you have a seriously fun and silly time on your hands. Note, that the old UNsets are fun to read, but I would never imagine putting most of those cards in a deck because they have no mechanical synergy. (I do want some reprints like duh, for example though.) How much you guys bet they are going to do a planechase style release with contraption gameplay with another name if contraptions are well-received?
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My favorite flavor text: Time of Heroes
Feel free to tell me yours!
Dear Mr. Infiltrator
I remember you from many custom designs in the Creative section. So you happen to be on Riptidelab as well?
Mr.? That's not what I put into my username.
I'm not a fan of having to check too many sites, so I have not spread that far. I actually might have read a post from there since the name rings a bell, but I'm not active there. It might also be that the Cube theme is too specialized to incentivize me to join.
There was a guy (on page 5) who wrote this:
“They are boring in everything. They are not what cards from un-sets are supposed to be. They are cards from the most boring of basic sets, and the mythics are the perfect examples of what mythics SHOULDN'T be, even in normal sets.“
And that’s where I commented that we should all agree that Wizards are the ones deciding what cards from UN-sets are suppose to be about because this guy clearly misunderstands. It seems like he has an imagination that determines what he can accept from Wizards but truly, honestly Wizards are the ones deciding what UN-sets are about. It’s their invention, their trademark and their designs.
See if I see someone quote another person, I know who they are refering to. If I see someone not quoting anyone and continue to as "Can we just agree that none of us" do somethign, then this seems not like a question addressing a single person, but the entire thread or entire community. This is emphasized by the fact that you point out that this statement is not restricted to this thread and confirmed by the fact that you choose to state "we should all" agree now (emphasis mine).
And even if you address just a single person then their opinion is not invalid just because they are part of the audience rather than the creatorship. I personally can think of arguments that put their complaint into perspective and are in favor of what WotC created over what the quote implies they want, but before you can way opinions and challenge their merit, those opinions need to be voiced.
And sometimes creators make mistakes and run stuff into the ground that might have been served by another better approach. I don't think our conversation should be limited to the things we ourselves have trademarked. In fact we know that feedback is encouraged across social media by these specific creators. So they value the opinion of their audience to review their decisions.
As an example of one occurence where WotC made the call and later considered their approach flawed because they didn't meet the expectations of the audience (i. e. what someone else thought the should have done), let's remember Battle for Zendikar. The total loss of the adventure tropes is a point of critique they took to heart.
Another example is their pulling back on the representation of Gatewatch members in actual planeswalker cards in favor of other characters getting more representation. WotC decided one thing, the audience vocally disagreed, WotC takes this into account and adjusts.
I prefer this course of events over "WotC decides one thing, the audience hates but doesn't comment on the new course, WotC obliviously goes on."
This doesn't mean I have to agree with each critics point of view (e. g. I disagree with a lot of people about what they identify as the problem with the Eldrazi-oversaturation during BfZ/SoI) or how they voice their point of view (e. g. I found a lot of conversation regarding the Gatewatch being shut-down pre-emptively by the mocking and derisive behavior of some people who even may have had a point about the issue, but resorted to insulting and trolling behavior instead), but I don't think suggesting the audience has no place in the discussion.
I would rather we agree that we want to adhere to some standards in our discussion and ask each other to elaborate in a constructive manner than agree that we don't want any discussion and ask each other to shut up.
If nothing else you had the choice between (A) helping this other person to overcome their grievances and maybe come around to another point of view or at least come to terms with the fact that their specific taste will not be served and maybe learn to enjoy the product nevertheless for what it is rather than what it could have been; and (B) telling them that they have no place imagining their preferred outcome or stating this regardless of the effect they can have.
On some level your post communicated "Shut up! You've got nothing to say here." and that's going to be a problem for some. And the way you made the post you made it appear to address a large number of people. That seems like an issue on a forum like this open for discussion.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
I could have quoted both but I did not want to bring them into dishonesty because my message to ‘the world’ had nothing to do with them but with the general opinion that everyone can decide what Wizards are allowed to do or not and what a certain set is about.
You are using really strong language here. What they are "allowed" to do implies some form of right to grant or deny permission. But the quote you provide talks about what they "should" (not) do, so the quote uses less strong language than you do maybe implying some advisory position.
I don't think someone giving advice and someone giving an order are the same thing. I have not seen anyone in all those posts recently that has gone out of their way and tell Wizards they are not allowed to do something. Unless you count something like "Continue to give us cool stuff like that, Wizards!"
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
I'm only as determined as you end each of your post with the same question or variants there-of over and over... as long as you ask "Can we all agree...?", "Can we all accept...?" and so on, you imply that you have interest in learning whether you have managed to define some common ground.
They are boring in everything. They are not what cards from un-sets are supposed to be. They are cards from the most boring of basic sets, and the mythics are the perfect examples of what mythics SHOULDN'T be, even in normal sets.
Thst is literally the thing I already quoted you quoting now with a name assigned and some quote they replied to.
What is your point? That they are passionate enough about their opinion that they use caps lock? That you are not capable to filter out the valid criticism? The role of mythic rare is ill-explained and arguably ill-executed. The role of silver-bordered has been redefined. Both of these issues come together on this card.
Is the only point you are making that you cannot read an implicit "IMO" (or likely "based on my reading of previous statements by the creators on this topic"; or "based on precedence").
Would it be wrong to say Archangel's Light SHOULDN'T be a mythic rare?
I am pointing out that it is not up to him to decide but up to Wizards to decide.
And I'm pointing out that you seem to be setting up a false dilemma where only one entity makes the call while in fact both entities make the call independently from each other and when they don't match in their used definition both become unhappy.
Easy example. Let's say on life-long experience you associate the brandname Kleenex with facial paper tissues and use them synonymously and when you ask someone for a Kleenex you get passed a tampon. That might be fine if you want to stop a nose bleed, but entirely useless if you wanted to swipe some spilled liquid of the ground.
Being technically in their right to pass you another Kleenex product does not make you as the recipient happier or make them happier for having wasted their time walking to the bathroom bringing you something you don't need. Now compound this by the facts that (A) the last time you got told "Here, have a Kleenex" you got the facial paper tissue you expected and (B) you actually got tought that you can refer to facial paper tissues this way by exactly that person.
Communication is not something you do alone.
I could easily say “I know what UN-sets are about. They are about die rolls” and nobody would be able to question me if this guy is not proven wrong as well.
Well, Unstable conains die rolls, so as opposed to their expectation your expectation got matched. If you give an example where your psition and WotC's position match you don't really create a good analogy.
Though you could argue the mentioned mechanic is more about an individual instance of a larger set of criteria and it would be better to say "They are about stuff like die rolls". And that would be kind of fruitful.
So. Can we now please accept that Wizards are the ones who decide what UN-sets are about? They ‘should’ listen to feedback from the customers if they choose to do so but it’s entirely up to them. They made the game.
This is still such an submissive position. I mean, it's fine for you to favor this behavior, but why do you feel the need of everyone to agree with you, accept your world view as their own, when there are clearly people around you who discern between "what things receive a certain label" and "what kind of thing you can expect something with a certain label to be", and consider "what a certain label is about" maybe not strictly either of those two.
I notice you are pleading, but I won't lie to you for your own comfort. I do not agree. I think accepting something you consider an untruth is disingenuous, which I do not want to be.
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Or another way: You quote two people. Those use words like "should" and "supposed to" with regards to terminology which has received meaning by the way it was applied. Whether those are wrong or not they have the right to form supposition like this at least as much as Wizards has the right to design product and label it based on their own pool of assumptions.
I assume you could be made happy by people questioning their own suppositions without everyone accepting your own position as their own, so how about you ask people to put their views into perspective and communicate with them as individuals rather than ask them to abandon their 'truth' based on an impersonal appeal?
In my experience talking to people directly is more effective than speaking into a room. You might accidentally address someone you do not intent to, while being overheard by those you would like to change.
I don't know whether you expected your post to get any reply at all really. I was just 'standing nearby and listening' virtually. Maybe you just wanted to feel good about yourself for proving yourself in front of an anonymous faceless crowd that is likely to swallow your statement without reply, deriving affirmation from the lack of opposition. Sorry, then.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Let me make this simple: I can right now say “Unsets were never suppose to be 3 sets. It was suppose to be Unglued and Unhinged and Unstable has no business here. It is a mistake and it was not suppose to see print.”
I would be wrong.
I suppose you would be wrong from your perspective if you disagree with your words, but there might be people out there who assumed we would not get a new Un-Set. Suppositions like opinions are not universal after all - which is why people can differ on what something is supposed to be.
I cannot make it any more simple. People cannot dictate what other people’s belongings are ‘suppose’ to be about.
You mean, people cannot dictate what other people suppose something is about, right? Because everyone has authority over their own thoughts and expectations. If anything you are telling people they are not allowed to make statements about what was expected - even if the fact that you found multiple people to quote implies that this is not even just a singular individual's beliefs but a widely held incorrect expectation.
Edit: The issue comes down to this. They could instead have said “Unsets WERE about this and this” because then it would be an analysis about past Unsets. Demanding what Unstable should be about before Wizards show us exactly the full picture of what Unstable is about is 100 % wrong. One of the guys says that Unsets are about doing things black-bordered sets can’t do and we can clearly see that is wrong because we have a few cards in Unstable who could easily have been in a black-bordered set.
This is differned. Now you are just talking about someone who conflates a set's theme with an individual card's theme e. g. we have many multicolor sets, but only Alara Reborn contains only multicolored cards. Their supposition that every single silver-bordered card needs to be something that cannot happen has been proven wrong, but that does not mean they are morally wrong to make predictions or have opinions.
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Planar Chaos was not a mistake neither was it random. You might want to look at it again.
[thread=239793][Game] Level Up - Creature[/thread]
Watermarks can and do change on reprints. Because the WotC does not want different versions of a card to be functionally different, they cannot reference watermarks in black border.
This is not true. They printed as much as they would for a normal expansion because they didn't understand supplemental sets yet. Your point is valid, the audience for these sets is a subset of the overall MTG audience, people just need to stop saying the Un sets were a failure or that they sold bad because that's not true.
Assuming you take 2 contraptions per pack. Some players may end up with more or less depending on how highly they draft them. Theoretically you could draft only contraptions or 0 contraptions.
Games might be slower on average so you can accrue a bit of extra value out of your contraptions or they may have set up contraptions to give you stuff to do when games stall naturally and you start drawing useless lands.
If the smaller pool size were an issue, it would have come up way early and development would have found a solution long before it went to print. I wouldn't worry about it.
As with Conspiracies, it's not yet clear how much of the power in a deck will come from the cards that aren't actually in it. It might just be a higher variance format than normal, and to be honest, I wouldn't find that as surprising since the audience isn't the super spikey crowd. Though as far as draft is concerned, a smaller contraption deck is probably better: you'll more reliably hit the effects you want. They'll act as delayed ETB triggers that sometimes come up again later.
Older Magic as a Board Game: Panglacial Wurm , Mill
You keep repeating this in the thread, and while I agree that it isn't the most mythic-feeling, it's not completely unreasonable at mythic. There's a reason why repeatable fighting that doesn't require fighting never appears on creatures. That ability is brutal in limited, often allowing you to remove two of your opponent's creatures for 4 mana and maybe not even lose yours. That's a huge swing in limited, and with it being repeatable it could allow you to completely lock down the board. At rare the card might have appeared too often in limited. Although the inherent randomness of contraptions might have mitigated that somewhat, it's still a brutal limited bomb when combined with a decent sized creature, so the less often it shows up the better.
Plus there could be a lot of other contraptions that synergize with it. We've already seen one that can pump creatures, and there could easily be others that are similar. Plus contraptions that grant lifelink, deathtouch, or indestructible would go great with it. The ability to align synergistic contraptions on the same sprocket allows you to make the card even more of a blowout, which makes it even better in both limited and casual constructed.
It wouldn't fit in black-border (yet), so there is a reason for it to be silver-bordered. It's not as silver-bordered as some cards, but maybe that's a good thing. The two ends of the spectrum for un-cards are totally out there and humorous designs that are fun to look at but mostly godawful to actually play with, and less crazy but still not ready for black border designs that could be fun to play with and might end up influencing black border in the future. The first two un-sets had both leaning towards the former, but this one looks to be leaning much farther toward the latter. That's a good thing in my book. I wasn't playing Magic when the first two un-sets came out. I got a kick out of looking through the cards once, sure, but they look nightmarish to actually play with. This set will probably be much more playable, which will not only cause me to actually want to draft it but also probably cause it to sell better and be more popular with players, allowing more un-sets to be made in the right direction. I think it's a step in the right direction, and most people seem to agree.
We've only seen a few of the cards so far, and already there are a few cards that are fun by your standards. I think that we'll see a decent number of cards like those that are more traditionally silver border, so it's a bit early to claim that there are "no redeeming qualities".
Once again, fun to look at is different than fun to play. Not only is it disgustingly underpowered (even in limited, 1/1s for 1 with an ability are often bad, 1/1s for 1 with no abilities are terrible, and something smaller than a 1/1 for 1 with no abilities is downright awful) but using halves in general is just complicating the combat math in an already math-heavy game. It doesn't bother me that much but I could understand how that could be annoying to a lot of people. Combat math with only whole numbers can get pretty mind-numbing when the board state is complex enough, so introducing fractional numbers to further complicate it is even worse. So no, I don't think that Little Girl is a good design. It's a unique design, but unique for the sake of unique seldom leads to good gameplay.
I doubt it. The cartoonish art, the punny names, the absurd flavor text, and the word "contraption" in the typeline would probably tip them off.
From what Maro's been saying, that seems to be a possibility. But even if it isn't, these cards seem pretty viable in casual constructed (including Commander). Most Commander playgroups will groan at the best or throw you out at the worst if they have to watch you put your shoes on the table or try to find out what the hell Ambiguity says, but I think that the majority of Commander players wouldn't mind if someone used contraptions in a casual game. These cards are so much usable in actual games than a lot of the more absurd cards we've seen in past un-sets.
Contraptions don't belong in tournament play. Extra decks aren't part of tournament play, even when they originally appeared in black border (there are no sanctioned tournaments for Planechase or Archenemy). But the idea of deliberately making silver border cards as absurd as possible to justify their illegality is flawed because un-cards being unplayable outside of un-drafts has historically been the biggest turn-off to players whenever an un-set comes around (we saw the exact same reaction when this set was announced). So the more usable the cards are in constructed (obviously casual constructed rather than competitive), the more appealing they will be to more players and the more successful the set will be.
We shouldn't underestimate the role of flavour in shaping the experience either. I know I'm more jazzed to dome someone with a Bouncing Beebles than with any old 2/2 cuz, well, they're Beebles! The creature type alone was considered too goofy for black-border! But then again, I *am* kind of a filthy casual, so. *shrug*
And they want to create a game that matches expectations, so voicing when your expectations are not met is information they can use to re-evaluate their process. That's feedback and it has worked in the past to change how things are done.
If I want a family car and the latest family car a company presented to me was a convertible without backseats or room for luggage they receive feedback that their product-line did not meet the standards expected and what expectations were not met. If you want something in particular from your silver-bordered experience and you get a preview that indicates you are not getting that, why not discuss the issue?
Previews are about discussing the set while it is only partially known, and somewhere at the company someone's job is to make sure previews are representive and enticing. So from that premise I can totally see disappointment. Contraptions probably create interesting gameplay, but they fail to satisfy a need in the audience that will likely not be addressed on any larger scale until the next silver-bordered expansion.
Wizards has failed to correctly read the requests of the audience before.
I'm fine with getting a more down-to-earth mechanical side, but the humor in the art, flavor text and theme is lacking as well so far.
tl;dr: Wizards does not define alone what silver-borded is. It's a negotiation. They decide what they release under that brand, but the audience decides what it expects. And the expectations are a part of the identity of the "genre".
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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Umm, I'm sure marketing loves this "problem" because the player needs to buy more packs to get the 15 single contraptions. Mind you, you are going to get more of the common contraptions than uncommon, rare, and mythic. Other than being told 9 contraptions per faction, what is the breakdown of rarity among that? Is is 1 mythic, 1 rare, 3 uncommon, 4 common?
Is this really so different from everything else, though? If you want to build around a certain theme/faction/mechanic/whatever, you need a fairly high number of boosters too. It's not like you absolutely have to play with contraptions, it's just one way to go.
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Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
—Eli Shiffrin, Rules Manager, on a design stacking lifelink instances
You've seen the rest of the unspoiled set? Do share!
"There are 45 Contraptions in Unstable, nine per faction." said by Mark Rosewater. There's 210 draftable cards in the set. That's roundabout 1/4th. If there's already 3 cards that care about rolling die but don't even roll dies, you can expect there to be a whole lot more die rolling cards. Without having seen the whole set, yes, I feel like large parts of this set are occupied by things that are not particularly out there.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.
—Eli Shiffrin, Rules Manager, on a design stacking lifelink instances
For one, some of these things overlap. We've already seen dice based contraptions and contraptions that assemble contraptions. Second, we've already seen several cards that assemble more than one contraption. I don't think the set will need 1/4 assemblers if you can easily make multiple per card. Third, for dice enablers, they don't necessitate a huge amount. For example, there are only 12 cards in Ixalan that explore yet there are explore pay-off cards.
Basically, wait until the whole or most of the set is spoiled before you make generalizations.
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.)
It's not going to work. Contraptions are literally designed as cogs in a machine. You don't judge a watch by the cogs (on anything other than a very technical level). You judge the machine by the effect it has.
To paraphrase a famous saying (without meaning offense), 'People complaining about Contraptions should get out of the way of people planning on how best to use them.'
Look at the other cards that allow repeatable fighting: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text= [:]+[fights] (note that all of them are rare at minimum, since Triangle of War isn't repeatable.) The only mythic on the list is Domri Rade, since both essentially allow a fight every three turns. Granted, Domri can do other things as well, but that unlike Bee-Bee Gun, he can't use the fight ability multiple times in the same turn and he's much easier for the opponent to get rid of. Repeatable fighting is something that is consistently rare if not mythic, probably for power level reasons (again, inexpensively removing multiple creatures every three turns is brutal in limited, and not something you want to play against often). Bee-Bee Gun is better at what it does than most of those cards, so for its power level, mythic is perfectly reasonable.
Now conceptually, it doesn't feel as mythic as most mythic cards, but you can't deny the brutal efficiency of repeatable fighting. Combined with any decent-sized creature, this card is an absolute beating for the opponent. It probably could have been rare, but maybe it was moved up so that it would appear less often in limited, because of its power level or maybe because it combos with an as-of-yet unrevealed card of a lower rarity in the set, like Worldgorger Dragon. Just don't act like this is the worst mythic we've seen. We've seen a lot of bad mythics over the years, including Comet Storm and the aforementioned Worldgorger Dragon. At least this one is powerful. It's just not very mythic-feeling. But some mythics are really unique in their designs (which, I agree, un-sets should be aiming for especially) but there are always going to be those that just have a lot of raw power. Again, I'm not saying that this card is a great mythic or anything, but your reaction seems a bit extreme. If you really hate this card so much, just be glad that's it's mythic so that you don't have to open it as frequently.
That is literally what contraptions are. Maybe they aren't fun for you, but heaven forbid that they make different cards for different types of players. As I said, a lot of people avoid un-sets because the cards are basically useless, so making a set that 1. makes a limited environment that's fun to draft multiple times and 2. gives people cards other than basic lands that they can actually play in constructed (albeit casual constructed) will greatly broaden the audience. Contraptions are a large part of that. They're still mechanically strange and they will probably be fun to see and use for at least some players.
Once again, this is literally exactly what contraptions are. They are part of Unstable, which is an un-set. At least make an effort to separate fact from opinion.
Fun is subjective. It's different for every person. What you find fun is very different than what someone else finds fun. I don't know if this un-set will be more or less fun than previous ones, because we've hardly seen any cards yet and no one's played it yet. So while I can predict that it might be better than previous one's, I'm not going to state it as objective truth the way that you are for the opposite claim. Claiming that something is poorly designed or un-fun before playing it or even seeing all the cards revealed is pure conjecture and not going to be taken seriously.
I never said that they were.
This is still very different from a normal set. They're just asking "how much can we use an opportunity to test new mechanical ideas that aren't possible in black border" instead of asking "how many cards can we make that are funny for people to read but painful and embarrassing to actually play in real life".
It is very much an un-set, and it's good because it's putting more emphasis on the part of un-sets that are good: exploring new design space that can't be done in black border (yet). People having to sing and scream and buy drinks for each other and put their shoes on the table might be funny in theory, but most people don't want to actually do it. This un-set seems to be focusing more on the types of cards that have practical value, both in how the cards themselves can be used and in how they might influence future Magic design. It's always been part of un-sets, they've just been doing more of it because it's what the designers and most players want.
We've never seen "2: Fight target creature" on any card before, but I assure you, there's a reason for that: it's extremely powerful. It allows one creature to remove multiple creatures very, very cheaply, and on this card it can be combined with any creature you have (meaning potentially a very large bodies) and it's not attached to any one creature so it doesn't "die to removal". If we saw a creature in a normal set with "2: fight target creature", people would probably be pretty excited about it as long as it's not on a 1/1 creature or something. It's just that in this set, it's been overshadowed by a lot of other, crazier cards. But even in a set that's all about being crazy, some cards have to crazier than others. If you like the cards that are crazier, than enjoy those cards and let other people enjoy the cards they want to enjoy.
It's not so much that the math is complicated as that Magic can already have complicated math with large board states and adding fractional numbers doesn't really help. Plus fractional damage is kind of parasitic because the only thing to make it useful is more fractional damage. 2 and 1/2 damage is just going to be 2 damage unless you have something else that does more fractional damage. Fractional mana works a similar way, except it's even worse because there are hardly any cards that produce or require fractional mana. Little girl is basically a 0/1 for one mana unless you have other fraction cards. I haven't used fractional cards in Magic but I've seen fractional numbers introduced to other games and they add NOTHING to gameplay. They exist only for the novelty. They're mildly amusing to read once but they're not particularly fun to play with (something that was common with the first two un-sets). For someone so concerned with fun, I'm surprised to see you defending them. There's a reason they weren't brought back for this set.
Ok, a few things.
Ignoring the absurdity of this, I'd like to point out that there are a lot of cards in Unstable with more complicated effects, in fact, this set looks much more complex than any other set in recent memory, so a few cards that are simpler in their designs are necessary to balance them out somewhat. Simple cards are needed in every set, especially at common, but they can exist at other rarities as well. We just got a mythic that does nothing but draw seven cards. Plus contraptions are inherently pretty complicated in the way they work, so even if the effect they grant is simple, the overall card is relatively complex. So this seems like a pretty big exaggeration.
You're right, they can change art and flavor text to whatever they want. So if the mechanical design of contraptions was doable in black border, it would be in black border. If it's in silver border, it's there for a reason. It might be black border material in the future, but it isn't yet. Contraptions involve a separate deck that is present to support specific cards (rather than as a rule for format) and have card backs that are neither the normal Magic back nor DFCs. And they involve a counter that doesn't exist on a permanent, player, or exiled card. Contraptions are in silver border for more than just flavor.
Again, all of this sounds like it's from the perspective of someone only looking at the cards and not playing them. When you're actually playing a game of Magic, "2: fight target creature" isn't boring; it's an extremely large advantage that is difficult for your opponent to come back from. Rolling dice repeatedly to rapidly empty a mini-library full of artifacts onto the battlefield is not boring either. And those are only the mythics that I assume you are referring to as boring. There have been several other non-contraption mythics that have been revealed today that certainly couldn't be considered boring, even by an enlightened card critic such as yourself.
I probably sound like a broken record here, but here we go: Contraptions can't be in black border (at least not yet) for multiple reasons. "Fun" and "boring" are subjective and different people will find different things to be fun or boring. Even the cards you think are boring and simple and aren't as bad as you think, and if you still don't like them, there are lots of other ones you can enjoy. Limited viability is a major factor for many players and limited play will likely be one of the main appeals of the set.
This is also repeated from before, but these last two rebuttals will work well as a conclusion/TLDR I suppose: contraptions are still very much in the spirit of what an un-set is, just in a different way than the types of cards you seem to like. They're more about exploring design space than being absurd for the sake of being absurd. When people say that contraptions are good because they're not like previous un-sets, it's because they don't want to draft a set (or attempt to use it in constructed) if it's full of cards that force them publicly embarrass themselves. An un-set that's more focused on good gameplay and exploring design space is exactly what a lot of people needed to get them to start playing un-sets, and much more likely to result in more un-sets in the future. The designers were well aware of this and made an un-set that has better gameplay on purpose. Cards that are fun to read don't sell packs, but cards that are fun to play will.
(W/U)(B/R)GForm of Progenitus, Shape of a Scrubland
BRGJund Tokens with Prossh, the Magic Dragon Foil
URGAnimar, the RUG CleanerFoil
RRRFeldon of the Third Path 2.0 Foil
BG(B/G)Not Another Meren DeckFoil
UR(U/R)Mizzix, Y Control and X Burn Spells
(W/U)(B/R)GHarold Ramos - The 35 Foot Long Twinkie (In +1/+1 counters)
UB(U/B)Dragonlord Silumgar
Replying to you so I don't have that big ol' wall of text (please make this a card wizards) in the quote, but yeah. Count me as one of the players who see the contraption mechanic as silly, but with powerful PLAY potential. I'm not going to yawn as I lay down my Bee bee gun- I'm going to cackle as my guild's superweapon cranks to slot 3 and I slam 7+ effects down with it and blow up the table. Add a cohesive but, entirely UNdeck next to it (seriously the guild stuff makes this hard not to), and you have a seriously fun and silly time on your hands. Note, that the old UNsets are fun to read, but I would never imagine putting most of those cards in a deck because they have no mechanical synergy. (I do want some reprints like duh, for example though.) How much you guys bet they are going to do a planechase style release with contraption gameplay with another name if contraptions are well-received?
Feel free to tell me yours!
Mr.? That's not what I put into my username.
I'm not a fan of having to check too many sites, so I have not spread that far. I actually might have read a post from there since the name rings a bell, but I'm not active there. It might also be that the Cube theme is too specialized to incentivize me to join.
See if I see someone quote another person, I know who they are refering to. If I see someone not quoting anyone and continue to as "Can we just agree that none of us" do somethign, then this seems not like a question addressing a single person, but the entire thread or entire community. This is emphasized by the fact that you point out that this statement is not restricted to this thread and confirmed by the fact that you choose to state "we should all" agree now (emphasis mine).
And even if you address just a single person then their opinion is not invalid just because they are part of the audience rather than the creatorship. I personally can think of arguments that put their complaint into perspective and are in favor of what WotC created over what the quote implies they want, but before you can way opinions and challenge their merit, those opinions need to be voiced.
And sometimes creators make mistakes and run stuff into the ground that might have been served by another better approach. I don't think our conversation should be limited to the things we ourselves have trademarked. In fact we know that feedback is encouraged across social media by these specific creators. So they value the opinion of their audience to review their decisions.
As an example of one occurence where WotC made the call and later considered their approach flawed because they didn't meet the expectations of the audience (i. e. what someone else thought the should have done), let's remember Battle for Zendikar. The total loss of the adventure tropes is a point of critique they took to heart.
Another example is their pulling back on the representation of Gatewatch members in actual planeswalker cards in favor of other characters getting more representation. WotC decided one thing, the audience vocally disagreed, WotC takes this into account and adjusts.
I prefer this course of events over "WotC decides one thing, the audience hates but doesn't comment on the new course, WotC obliviously goes on."
This doesn't mean I have to agree with each critics point of view (e. g. I disagree with a lot of people about what they identify as the problem with the Eldrazi-oversaturation during BfZ/SoI) or how they voice their point of view (e. g. I found a lot of conversation regarding the Gatewatch being shut-down pre-emptively by the mocking and derisive behavior of some people who even may have had a point about the issue, but resorted to insulting and trolling behavior instead), but I don't think suggesting the audience has no place in the discussion.
I would rather we agree that we want to adhere to some standards in our discussion and ask each other to elaborate in a constructive manner than agree that we don't want any discussion and ask each other to shut up.
If nothing else you had the choice between (A) helping this other person to overcome their grievances and maybe come around to another point of view or at least come to terms with the fact that their specific taste will not be served and maybe learn to enjoy the product nevertheless for what it is rather than what it could have been; and (B) telling them that they have no place imagining their preferred outcome or stating this regardless of the effect they can have.
On some level your post communicated "Shut up! You've got nothing to say here." and that's going to be a problem for some. And the way you made the post you made it appear to address a large number of people. That seems like an issue on a forum like this open for discussion.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
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You are using really strong language here. What they are "allowed" to do implies some form of right to grant or deny permission. But the quote you provide talks about what they "should" (not) do, so the quote uses less strong language than you do maybe implying some advisory position.
I don't think someone giving advice and someone giving an order are the same thing. I have not seen anyone in all those posts recently that has gone out of their way and tell Wizards they are not allowed to do something. Unless you count something like "Continue to give us cool stuff like that, Wizards!"
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
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Thst is literally the thing I already quoted you quoting now with a name assigned and some quote they replied to.
What is your point? That they are passionate enough about their opinion that they use caps lock? That you are not capable to filter out the valid criticism? The role of mythic rare is ill-explained and arguably ill-executed. The role of silver-bordered has been redefined. Both of these issues come together on this card.
Is the only point you are making that you cannot read an implicit "IMO" (or likely "based on my reading of previous statements by the creators on this topic"; or "based on precedence").
Would it be wrong to say Archangel's Light SHOULDN'T be a mythic rare?
And I'm pointing out that you seem to be setting up a false dilemma where only one entity makes the call while in fact both entities make the call independently from each other and when they don't match in their used definition both become unhappy.
Easy example. Let's say on life-long experience you associate the brandname Kleenex with facial paper tissues and use them synonymously and when you ask someone for a Kleenex you get passed a tampon. That might be fine if you want to stop a nose bleed, but entirely useless if you wanted to swipe some spilled liquid of the ground.
Being technically in their right to pass you another Kleenex product does not make you as the recipient happier or make them happier for having wasted their time walking to the bathroom bringing you something you don't need. Now compound this by the facts that (A) the last time you got told "Here, have a Kleenex" you got the facial paper tissue you expected and (B) you actually got tought that you can refer to facial paper tissues this way by exactly that person.
Communication is not something you do alone.
Well, Unstable conains die rolls, so as opposed to their expectation your expectation got matched. If you give an example where your psition and WotC's position match you don't really create a good analogy.
Though you could argue the mentioned mechanic is more about an individual instance of a larger set of criteria and it would be better to say "They are about stuff like die rolls". And that would be kind of fruitful.
This is still such an submissive position. I mean, it's fine for you to favor this behavior, but why do you feel the need of everyone to agree with you, accept your world view as their own, when there are clearly people around you who discern between "what things receive a certain label" and "what kind of thing you can expect something with a certain label to be", and consider "what a certain label is about" maybe not strictly either of those two.
I notice you are pleading, but I won't lie to you for your own comfort. I do not agree. I think accepting something you consider an untruth is disingenuous, which I do not want to be.
---
Or another way: You quote two people. Those use words like "should" and "supposed to" with regards to terminology which has received meaning by the way it was applied. Whether those are wrong or not they have the right to form supposition like this at least as much as Wizards has the right to design product and label it based on their own pool of assumptions.
I assume you could be made happy by people questioning their own suppositions without everyone accepting your own position as their own, so how about you ask people to put their views into perspective and communicate with them as individuals rather than ask them to abandon their 'truth' based on an impersonal appeal?
In my experience talking to people directly is more effective than speaking into a room. You might accidentally address someone you do not intent to, while being overheard by those you would like to change.
I don't know whether you expected your post to get any reply at all really. I was just 'standing nearby and listening' virtually. Maybe you just wanted to feel good about yourself for proving yourself in front of an anonymous faceless crowd that is likely to swallow your statement without reply, deriving affirmation from the lack of opposition. Sorry, then.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
I suppose you would be wrong from your perspective if you disagree with your words, but there might be people out there who assumed we would not get a new Un-Set. Suppositions like opinions are not universal after all - which is why people can differ on what something is supposed to be.
You mean, people cannot dictate what other people suppose something is about, right? Because everyone has authority over their own thoughts and expectations. If anything you are telling people they are not allowed to make statements about what was expected - even if the fact that you found multiple people to quote implies that this is not even just a singular individual's beliefs but a widely held incorrect expectation.
This is differned. Now you are just talking about someone who conflates a set's theme with an individual card's theme e. g. we have many multicolor sets, but only Alara Reborn contains only multicolored cards. Their supposition that every single silver-bordered card needs to be something that cannot happen has been proven wrong, but that does not mean they are morally wrong to make predictions or have opinions.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO