MTG Salvation

Quote from MRHblue »

Quote from 31F »

I can't buy this. I looked at the same poll as well. 37Y, 77N, 8U. That (122 votes) is far too minuscule of a number when gathering statistics. The only that is an accurate poll that represents the "overall community" is if that is all the players in the world for commander, which makes me wonder how a game of commander even fires regularly with such a tiny player base. Also why would Wizards bother with catering so much to only 122 players? As this doesn't reflect a profitable format that became a mainstay.

You cant claim a statistic you cant back up, then dismiss the only available statistic. Check the main EDH forums, its mostly against as well.

I didn't make up a statistic regarding that poll of "37Y, 77N, 8U" I posted the results of the statistic from that thread that FunkyDragon mentioned, so yes I can back it up. Also yes I can dismiss it, its one single poll that polled the equivalent of 1% of the commander player base.

Quote from BloodyWednesday »

But honestly, with the amount of people who look at this sites EDH Subforums and that 4,748 people looked at the thread and didn't feel strongly enough about the results as to add more votes, it's a pretty good assumption that most people either agree with the current results on the poll or don't care about it. And if most people really neither want them nor care one way or the other then what's the point of changing the rules?

Lets say the 4,784 were from one user each and not the same users viewing it multiple times, yes? 122 votes equates to 2.57% of the 4,784 who bothered to vote. If a 1000 users voted instead of 122, at least you would have 21.06% of the votes from each of the 4,784.

So when Sam_Eldrestein noted that the 4:100 for a theoretical poll would be considered anecdotal, shes being correct in the matter. When polls are done regarding laws or medicine for instance, a number like 122:4784 is the equivalent of saying "I knew a guy of my friend who said..."

The fact of the matter in saying that "most don't care" is referring to the silent majority. The vocal minority, which is what is happening in that poll, is the ones who are like "we don't want planeswalkers as commanders". This vocal minority is composed of 77 users. To put this in perspective, make up 1.71% of the community that is of the theoretical 4,784. Which is the equivalent of the 1% vocal minority making decisions for the 99% silent majority while claiming they are the "overall community".

The poll itself does in fact lack proper visibility as Sam_Eldristein put it. Its on a non-official forum, in a subthread about a single format, in a subsection regarding rules for that one format. This entire website is composed of 365,674 users as of the time of writing this. Meaning that only 1.31% of the 365,674 users saw this thread. Where the 77 who were against this are the equivalent of 0.02% of the users here.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

Quote from FunkyDragon »

Quote from 31F »

Quote from FunkyDragon »

Quote from Gashnaw »

Will the RC allow PW to be generals? The community (Overall) has no issue. But right now you still have to ask each person after the other. If one person says no, well then you are stuck.

There have already been polls that prove this wrong. The overall community does have an issue with planeswalkers as commander. I just checked the poll, and it stands at 63.6% against, 5.8% neutral, and only 30.6% in favor of planeswalkers as commanders. That's less than a third for. If Wizards wants them in Brawl, fine. But in Commander, it would cause problems, and they'd probably have to ban a few.

I can't buy this. I looked at the same poll as well. 37Y, 77N, 8U. That (122 votes) is far too minuscule of a number when gathering statistics. The only that is an accurate poll that represents the "overall community" is if that is all the players in the world for commander, which makes me wonder how a game of commander even fires regularly with such a tiny player base. Also why would Wizards bother with catering so much to only 122 players? As this doesn't reflect a profitable format that became a mainstay.

Any poll is merely representation and has a margin of error because you can't poll every single player. However, can you show any poll that would indicate this sample does not represent the overall community? And just how big a margin of error do you objectively think this poll has? Without saying "it disagrees with me, so it's wrong," can you show that there would be a complete reversal of results by sampling a larger group?

That poll is not sufficient, polls need to be done frequently on the same subject matter to actually understand what people think. Only doing one poll is frankly not enough data in the real world. All this poll shows is the people who frequent MTGS Commander (Rules Discussion) would have seen this poll. Its not because "it doesn't agree with me, so its wrong" its blatant statistical bias from a subgroup that doesn't want to see planeswalkers as commanders. Like if WOTC did this same poll, you think the results would be close to the same when on a larger scale?

I personally only am against planeswalkers as commanders if Doubling Season is allowed to remain unbanned. There are healthier and cheaper alternatives than DS for the format like Primal Vigor, Parallel Lives, or Hardened Scales based on the deck.

Quote from FunkyDragon »

Quote from Gashnaw »

Will the RC allow PW to be generals? The community (Overall) has no issue. But right now you still have to ask each person after the other. If one person says no, well then you are stuck.

There have already been polls that prove this wrong. The overall community does have an issue with planeswalkers as commander. I just checked the poll, and it stands at 63.6% against, 5.8% neutral, and only 30.6% in favor of planeswalkers as commanders. That's less than a third for. If Wizards wants them in Brawl, fine. But in Commander, it would cause problems, and they'd probably have to ban a few.

I can't buy this. I looked at the same poll as well. 37Y, 77N, 8U. That (122 votes) is far too minuscule of a number when gathering statistics. The only that is an accurate poll that represents the "overall community" is if that is all the players in the world for commander, which makes me wonder how a game of commander even fires regularly with such a tiny player base. Also why would Wizards bother with catering so much to only 122 players? As this doesn't reflect a profitable format that became a mainstay.

Quote from Silver_Spellthief »

Quote from 31F »

Quote from Rizso »

Playing alot of useless cards to acheive it. If thats the way you get the pay of has to be very good to be worth it.

Not that useless. Both Cartouche of Solidarity and Legion's Landing see competitive play. I dunno where you heard they were useless.

But you realize that any of the abundance of creature removals spells in standard makes this useless, right? Fatal Push, Lightning Strike, Harnessed Lightning, Sweltering Suns, etc. With ascend in the format it's very easy to see what you're trying to do and none of the answers to a creature centric ascend strategy are hard to find because they're being run in nearly every standard deck anyway.

Dies to Doom Blade argument? Really? What next? Every deck is packing Cancel or Negate? I thought this was MTG where I throw questions at you and you either come up with better questions or you have answers for my questions. Just because Wrath of God existed in standard at one point didn't mean creature-based decks still didn't try to work. Likewise if your opponent has UU open, do you never play a spell again?

Where if the local meta swings too far in one direction such as packing lots of creature hate, you can always swap to a creature-lite strategy such as treasures or lands and you just created new questions that the meta may not be prepared to handled.

9

Quote from drmarkb »

Probably going to get shot down for this given the previous posts, but for me I don't want them to go back to any plane because they have a story to tell.
I mean I hate the story aspect because of the previous relentless focus on Planeswalkers and dire screw ups of story based cards going over the top, and I don't really care about the characters any more than I would about the 5 of spades or a chess piece, and I actively avoid the story, so much so I could not tell you one tenth of the things that previous posters know. If they go back to a plane I want it to be because they have some ideas for mechanics and game play that would suit a plane- so some cool enchantment ideas or Enchantment-based mechanics that could fit with Theros, or some desire to re-work Snow permanents that makes them go to whatever the continent of Dominaria was that produced Ice age/Cold Snap. Not "let us resolve Koth's story". If they can tell a story for those that care, then great, but going back to a plane to complete a story sounds awfully close to some of the story-tail-wagging-the-game-dog which has been responsible in part for some pretty poor decisions over the past few years.
olk

Want to know something fascinating? Even without novels, comics, trailers, story piece articles, etc, you are still learning the story of a given plane. Through its artwork, the names of cards, the flavor text and/or even the mechanics help tell a story.

@Ruggley Changed Matata so it brings the curse to the hand rather than to the field. Didn't decide a gender for them, but girl works. Also the art is very nice.

NEW ADDITION:

Quote from PhyrexianBolas »

Quote from 31F »

Maybe they should have printed some energy hate cards? Its like lands except ethereal/untouchable.

Like here is what I brewed in 2 mins:

Energy Hog 1R
Creature - Gremlin (R)
Haste
T: Remove up to three from target player. Then put a +1/+1 counter on Energy Hog for each removed this way.
1/1

So you think a parsititc mechanic should have had parasitic answers?

The problem was never the inability to remove/ punish opponents for gaining energy.

Yes its a problem. All anyone did was race to the finish line to get enough energy to power up their Aetherworks Marvel.

The problem is and always has been the scaling on the cards with Energy.

So why not print answers to the questions that energy throws?

Everyone crying about interaction is just crying.

Said the boy who cried wolf.

Why aren't they crying that only Teferi interacted with Suspend?

Teferi didn't just interact with suspend.

Or that Hellbent has no good answers?

The easy way to counteract Hellbent is through allowing your opponent to draw a card. With a non-empty hand their spell gets weakened.

Why can't they interact with my Hexproof creatures?

Glaring Spotlight and Arcane Lighthouse.

Why is the 3 card from the bottom of my library have no specific answers?

Sadistic Sacrament, Jester's Cap, etc.

It's all a lot of bluster with no wind.

Which is how some might be regarding you right now.

It distracts from both actual discussion of the card spoiled

Like the acrobatic leaps of logic you are going through?

and the fact that these players have deep issues in their lives that are unresolved

Now that is just petty from you.

and instead are being vented in the guise of complaints about a card game they don't fully understand.

Neither do you. As you apparently don't even have correct reading comprehension.

But really, is sacrificing half of my creatures that bad?

Depends on the board state. Tell you what kiddo, whip me up a magical christmas land scenario to prove your not just grasping at straws.

It seems that for the same cost, I could just play Necropotence (cmc) and just win. Worst card ever.

Not even the same category of card. Man you're bad at this game. Like you didn't even pick the easiest answer, Damnation. Necropotence doesn't win you the game, it digs for the win conditions you need.

Quote from 31F »

I didn't make up a statistic regarding that poll of "37Y, 77N, 8U" I posted the results of the statistic from that thread that FunkyDragon mentioned, so yes I can back it up. Also yes I can dismiss it, its one single poll that polled the equivalent of 1% of the commander player base.

My mistake, I though you had said "The community (Overall) has no issue", but I misread the quote.

No poll is going to be definitive. Claiming bias ("its blatant statistical bias from a subgroup that doesn't want to see planeswalkers as commanders") does not mean the majority of players don't agree. I see where you are coming from, but even a poll of 10,000 is going to be a small subset of any commander group. And the ones listening to Podcasts or engaging on Social Media are giong to be a biased group anyway.

Add on top of that this isnt even close to a democracy, and what is a 'better poll' going to accomplish?

Quote from FunkyDragon »

Without saying "it disagrees with me, so it's wrong," can you show that there would be a complete reversal of results by sampling a larger group?

Well for starters, your poll you wish to cite lacks proper visibility. Do it again on a more visible platform like a social media website from a user/company that would give it the most attention. If it comes out the same or similar result, then you were correct in your statement.

EDIT: For example why not let Josh Lee Kwai set up a poll on his twitter with the question of "Should planeswalkers be commanders?". As he has 15.2k followers and is one of the main faces for Command Zone. That is a much more reasonable size to poll.

EDIT 2: 122 people is also far too small of a number for a community with thousands of players. It is at best anecdotal, like if I polled 4 people out of a possible 100 in a building.

So WotC announced a new format, Brawl.


Now while it has been discussed at good length about it, the main thing to view it, as some have called it, "a bridge for new players" so as to wrap their heads around a commander-variant format without feeling as overwhelmed.

One of the key problems I notice is Commander itself. As lets say, hypothetically, brawl takes off. A new player really loved their Teferi, Hero of Dominaria Brawl deck and it has now rotated out. They look to Commander at first as a way to continue having fun with Teferi, but whether by misreading or not reading at all, they are told Teferi, Hero of Dominaria can't be a commander. So they might feel disenfranchised with Commander, even given the wrong impression, and stick with Brawl instead.

To remedy this and make the transition as smooth as possible for new players who were influenced by Brawl, planeswalkers would need to be commanders by default.

TL;DR: Commander would need to adapt.

Quote from jamis »

Quote from 31F »

While its a necro'd thread, I feel it can be a good way to discuss ideas of how to teach new players.

In my opinion: A 60 card deck built by a friend. A few rares and/or inexpensive mythics, mostly commons and uncommons, has a coherent theme but is not overly complicated. I'd personally avoid planeswalkers if it is still the beginning of the teaching phase as planeswalkers are a fairly complicated addition.

This is my approach, as well. I have a red deck and a green deck built for whenever I am teaching a friend how to play. Both of these decks are full of iconic vanilla creatures like Grizzly Bears, Gray Ogre, and Craw Wurm. There's a few creatures with evergreen abilities like Raging Goblin, Goblin Glider, and Giant Spider*. And just a sparse amount of creatures with Activated or Static abilities like Llanowar Elves and Goblin Chieftain. Nothing too complicated, just enough to have them learn how to tap mana to cast spells, learn the basics of combat, and see that creatures are able to do a few things other than attack or block. Mix that in with just a few enchatments, instants and sorceries, and I find there's just enough there for them to learn a lot of different concepts without getting overwhelmed.

*edit: one thing I also tried to do was make sure to pick editions of cards with reminder text whenever possible.

Hands down. This is the way to go. I tried the precon route and it just failed miserably.

My sons private school group got interested in MtG so I built them, IIRC, four mono-colored 40-card decks. I think U was the only one I didn't put together. Each one was largely vanilla with only four or five cards offering slightly more sophisticated play. Two of them got hooked so they bought duplicate decks along with the deck lists, suggestions for improving the decks, what to avoid, and a basic flow chart for each step. I gave the teacher 5 extra cards for each deck (sort of like a sideboard) that I thought would promote whatever lesson plan.

IMHO, using 40 card decks prevents them from being slaughtered at their local LGS with such weakened decks but still allows them to experiment and expand the decks. I figure by the time they put together a 60 card deck, they should understand the game well enough to play against others.

Quote from 31F »

While its a necro'd thread, I feel it can be a good way to discuss ideas of how to teach new players.

In my opinion: A 60 card deck built by a friend. A few rares and/or inexpensive mythics, mostly commons and uncommons, has a coherent theme but is not overly complicated. I'd personally avoid planeswalkers if it is still the beginning of the teaching phase as planeswalkers are a fairly complicated addition.

This is my approach, as well. I have a red deck and a green deck built for whenever I am teaching a friend how to play. Both of these decks are full of iconic vanilla creatures like Grizzly Bears, Gray Ogre, and Craw Wurm. There's a few creatures with evergreen abilities like Raging Goblin, Goblin Glider, and Giant Spider*. And just a sparse amount of creatures with Activated or Static abilities like Llanowar Elves and Goblin Chieftain. Nothing too complicated, just enough to have them learn how to tap mana to cast spells, learn the basics of combat, and see that creatures are able to do a few things other than attack or block. Mix that in with just a few enchatments, instants and sorceries, and I find there's just enough there for them to learn a lot of different concepts without getting overwhelmed.

*edit: one thing I also tried to do was make sure to pick editions of cards with reminder text whenever possible.

In its current form Alia, the Peaceful One might read better as:

I can't argue with your design philosophy for Alia but I'm worried about what the 99 might look like with it as your Commander. What do you do while all creatures are these passive plants? How are you pushing toward your victory? Alia feels like an enchantment but with an ability that does feel like justification for the Elder type. I can see and feel the flavor you intened to convey. There's no reason some plane doesn't have something like an elder plant and, if it did, Alia is likely a good representation of that (for a peaceful plant anyway. A BG elder plant would be a different story!)

The effects will produce wildly different situations from game to game depending on the boards of each player. Aggro will try to strangle Alia on sight but the next game Aggro might want to take the chance to replenish their hand and then kill Alia. it's hard to predict every weird situation Alia would produce.

Alia is a powerful effect to have ready in the Command Zone.

Inspired by a card I made for the Card Confluence Game, Polyhulk is a mix of Protean Hulk, Polymorph, and Mitotic Slime. Polyhulk runs in the same vein as something like Progenitor Mimic and, to me, feels very UG. I love whacky cards

@31F I was looking at Matata again and I think that she should return the Curse card to your hand as to increase synergy with her activated ability. Here is a render if you're interested:

@Sam-Eldristein I can see why Jo was popular over there. It has a Silas Renn, Seeker Adept vibe to it but with a lot more potential build strategies in my opinion. In the right build Jo, the Militant Artificer becomes a kill on sight creature. Low p/t on base Jo is perfect and the 2 power is is great for the first time you cast her. There are a lot of plays that open up on turn 3 if you drop a mana rock turn 1 or 2.

@31F I followed your thread dedicated to Matata and the other Curse cards and with all of the advice you applied to his card, it really tightened up the design as far as I can see. There is only a single aspect that I would like to see you implement. The activated ability should not gain you back 3 life in my opinion. Matata is a extremely neat card and I've already added it to my private thread of cards to proxy out for playtesting but I included my proposed change. I won't be back into the swing of playtesting for another two months but Matata will see play!

Your other cards that will see play are:

So yeah, lots to try. Nice stuff

Quote from 31F »

Curse of Shared Pain 1WB
Enchantment - Aura Curse (U)
Enchant Player
Whenever the controller would take damage from a source that the enchanted player controls, the enchanted player is dealt that much damage as well from the same source.

Multiple notes:

• The rules text as-is does not work in magic lingo. Try this instead:
Whenever a source enchanted player controls deals damage to you, it deals that much damage to enchanted player.
• There is a weird interaction with this card if you manage to donate it to enchanted player. At that point, if they manage to deal any damage to themselves, they will loop themselves to death (Any other damage dealt will have no effect). Not an issue, just a bit weird. If that is not intended, you could change it to 'enchant opponent'

Quote from 31F »

Curse with Immortality 2WBG
Legendary Enchantment - Aura Curse (MR)
Enchant Player
The enchanted player can't lose the game and they can't win the game.
As long as the enchanted player hasn't lost the game, Curse with Immortality has indestructible and shroud.

I don't see how this works. So as long as no-one manages to get you to sacrifice this enchantment, no-one can win the game? (Because enchanted player can't lose)
The second ability also does not work, since the first will remove any triggering instance for the second.
Is the intent here to make this curse nigh-unremovable until enchanted player is in a losing state?
In that case, try this wording instead: