As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

Penny Arcade - Comic - Magicians, Part Two

2»

Posts

  • Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Man, when it comes to lore, I don't know anything at all about MTG. Back in my day, MTG didn't even have lore.

    But seriously, this MTG rabbit hole goes deep. You know what I've been doing today? Looking at set lists for all the sets currently included in Standard format.

    Did you guys know there's an Egyptian themed set from a while ago? With anubis's and shit? Like omg you guys. I need to just give WotC all my money right now.

    Magic's more abstract nature has let it explore a lot of themes other CCGs can't suddenly pivot to as easily. Hearthstone always has to be Warcraft fantasy, Pokemon always Pokemon, Legend of the Five Rings Japanese inspired fantasy, etc. Magic gets to do a post magical apocalypse cycle, a fairy tale cycle, a horror themed cycle, an Asian inspired fantasy cycle, and more without anything feeling out of place.

    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    Drascin wrote: »
    The fuck you mean "Scion of Urza". Urza was a wanker! Like half of everything that went wrong in Magic was explicitly his fault! Dude's basically Fëanor levels of fuckup! You don't have to keep your deadbeat dad's name, Karn!

    What are you talking about, Urza's a hero, it's not his fault everything got blown-

    39.jpg?1524790386

  • E.CoyoteE.Coyote Registered User regular
    Drascin wrote: »
    Wait, is that Karn? Wasn't Karn kind of dead from a sudden case of Oh God Not The Fucking Phyrexians Again?

    There was a book! It involved a ragtag bunch on a rescue mission into the bowels of phyrexia. Venser phased out and Karn was liberated. (venser <3 s karn.)

  • rahkeesh2000rahkeesh2000 Registered User regular
    edited May 2018

    Magic's more abstract nature has let it explore a lot of themes other CCGs can't suddenly pivot to as easily. Hearthstone always has to be Warcraft fantasy, Pokemon always Pokemon, Legend of the Five Rings Japanese inspired fantasy, etc. Magic gets to do a post magical apocalypse cycle, a fairy tale cycle, a horror themed cycle, an Asian inspired fantasy cycle, and more without anything feeling out of place.

    Don't know what you mean by "abstract" here. I'd just chalk up this difference to being based in a multiverse rather than a single world, and whose apex beings are defined by traveling between worlds. Something they rarely took full advantage of for the first decade or so as well.

    rahkeesh2000 on
  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    The foil cards in Dominaria are spectacular. On Serras Wings is incredible in person. Also I don't get this strip, as lands have amongst the best art in the game for some of them.

    The Roleplayer's Guild: My blog for roleplaying games, advice and adventuring.
  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    Aegeri wrote: »
    The foil cards in Dominaria are spectacular. On Serras Wings is incredible in person. Also I don't get this strip, as lands have amongst the best art in the game for some of them.

    Yep.
    en_D7XslDCZC2.pngen_4Z4vlBCurq.pngen_Ya7wmNQR1V.png
    en_KPkzhlJ32h.pngen_sxQoU206eG.png


  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    maybe Gabe only has one version of each basic

  • EnigmedicEnigmedic Registered User regular
    I mean there is very clearly a best art for each basic land type, it just so happens most of them were by John Avon.

  • Wesley FoxxWesley Foxx Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    The land art also is some of the most crazy when you dig into it. Like, there's a whole cycle of old lands that are referenced in the dominaria land art done by Mark Poole.
    https://scryfall.com/search?q=e:fem+t:land+o:sacrifice&amp;unique=cards&amp;as=grid&amp;order=name

    Cabal Stronghold literally has a Terrain Generator in it.
    e72cbb626365ac85c5862f5412dd28f0.jpg

    Wesley Foxx on
  • Munkus BeaverMunkus Beaver You don't have to attend every argument you are invited to. Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    Sunrize wrote: »
    PMAvers wrote: »
    I mean, mechanics like lands are just bad game design nowadays. They aren't interesting to draw. There's no interesting situations that come from drawing too many of them or not enough of them so you can't actually *play* the game.

    They have a much bigger impact in the deck building aspect than the in play aspect. I'd enjoy more non-basic lands that can have secondary effects but that too has its own issues such as you'd see them pop a lot repeatedly because all decks need mana generation.

    But their use allowed for things like doing multi-colored decks, trading in some reliability for a bigger card pool. And the colored mana tied to lands allowed for more out there formats like Elder Dragon Highlander/Commander which remains the most fun I've had with a CCG. The knock-on effects of the mechanic are many but since they're mostly in the deck building aspect they're not as significant for more competitive game styles that favor adapting decks others have collaboratively honed.

    To build on this, every CCG needs a mechanic that keeps all the decks from being exactly the same. This is really problematic when you have generic resources (like Hearthstone) instead of flavored resources, like Magic. Hearthstone addresses this with classes, but even with that, there is usually only one deck for each class that is competitive, and frequently some classes are just out of luck. By making it so that you had to include your resource cards in the deck, Magic opened up the idea that there were different ratios of cards--and card power levels--that could be competitive.

    The old Star Wars game did this by giving each card a "Force Value" or something like that, where really weak cards had a high force value, and vice versa. Instead of rolling a die, you'd flip over a card and get the force value. So if you had all Tusken Raiders, your "random" dice rolls would be all 10, if you had all Darth Vaders and Emperors, your "random" rolls would be all 1.

    Edit: Pretty embarrassed I can't spell Star Wars right on the first try...

    I remember that game. Those were the "destiny rolls" that were on the top right of the cards. Lands had a zero destiny roll. And a lot of weak characters had 1 destiny rolls too. You also needed guys with high forfeit values so you could sacrifice them to pay the cost. Your 'life' value was in your deck size of sixty cards, as was your resource pool. Which generated force points based on your locations and your own person. It was a ridiculously complicated game.

    Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    Yeah the Decipher Star Wars CCG required a huge amount of rulebook study and interpretation to play. But man I loved that game.

    I used to go to weekly tournaments at my local game shop for it, and I was deeply entrenched in that game back in the day. That CCG is actually the most I have ever been into a tabletop hobby at any time in my life. I've dabbled at other points, but I've never stuck with it for long. But man. With that Star Wars game, I was in it.

    I've played MTG off and on, but it has never stuck. I've also dabbled in Pokemon TCG, WoW TCG, Final Fantasy TCG, and Warhammer 40k Miniatures, but none of them have stuck like Star Wars did. I played Star Wars to the bitter end, when George Lucas decided to pull the license from Decipher and give it to some other company so they could make a new, shitty CCG based off of the prequel trilogy.

  • Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular

    Magic's more abstract nature has let it explore a lot of themes other CCGs can't suddenly pivot to as easily. Hearthstone always has to be Warcraft fantasy, Pokemon always Pokemon, Legend of the Five Rings Japanese inspired fantasy, etc. Magic gets to do a post magical apocalypse cycle, a fairy tale cycle, a horror themed cycle, an Asian inspired fantasy cycle, and more without anything feeling out of place.

    Don't know what you mean by "abstract" here. I'd just chalk up this difference to being based in a multiverse rather than a single world, and whose apex beings are defined by traveling between worlds. Something they rarely took full advantage of for the first decade or so as well.

    The multiverse is part of it but also the general idea that any random thing could end up as a summoned creature, artifact, or spell. Plus the card designers willingness to not have very card in a set be super serious leading to things like cards to enable squirrel decks. Compare that to something like Legend of the Five Rings where every minion in a deck is going to be a samurai or a demon or Pokemon where every minion will be a known Pokemon.

    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    edited May 2018
    Enigmedic wrote: »
    I mean there is very clearly a best art for each basic land type, it just so happens most of them were by John Avon.

    that's a weird way to spell Terese Nielsen

    (Avon's stuff is also very good)

    KalTorak on
  • Wesley FoxxWesley Foxx Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Yeah the Decipher Star Wars CCG required a huge amount of rulebook study and interpretation to play. But man I loved that game.

    I used to go to weekly tournaments at my local game shop for it, and I was deeply entrenched in that game back in the day. That CCG is actually the most I have ever been into a tabletop hobby at any time in my life. I've dabbled at other points, but I've never stuck with it for long. But man. With that Star Wars game, I was in it.

    I've played MTG off and on, but it has never stuck. I've also dabbled in Pokemon TCG, WoW TCG, Final Fantasy TCG, and Warhammer 40k Miniatures, but none of them have stuck like Star Wars did. I played Star Wars to the bitter end, when George Lucas decided to pull the license from Decipher and give it to some other company so they could make a new, shitty CCG based off of the prequel trilogy.

    I was only casually into it back when I played it before, but I think probably due to me actually starting to get an understanding of the lore and whatnot, on top of finding a format that's more casual and fun and social in Commander, which also involves a lot more thought and strategy in deck construction with the color identity and singleton restrictions, that's why I've been going HAM on it.

Sign In or Register to comment.