Comments for MTG Color Pie

Comment on Design Cheat Sheet #1 – Zones and Parts of the Card by MTGColorPie

MTGColorPie — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:22:30 +0000

Command Zone is public, yes. I’ll make a change of that in the next draft. But for the exiled zone, it’s public unless otherwise said it’s not, like Necro. The hand is not public because to be public, it’s revealed to everyone, not just one person.

Comment on Design Cheat Sheet #1 – Zones and Parts of the Card by Jon

Jon — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:34:28 +0000

Command is usually public. Only the planar and scheme decks aren’t. But the current plane or ongoing scheme, all emblems, and the commander are public. (Really, don’t those two decks go to their own place?) The hand is also public to the player who owns cards in it. (Another thing you can’t do: Exchange control of cards off the battlefield or stack.) Exile is sometimes on a need-to-know basis. (Necropotence, Intet)

Comment on Design Cheat Sheet #1 – Zones and Parts of the Card by MTGColorPie

MTGColorPie — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:27:32 +0000

Yes, this is intended for card designers. It’s meant to help them help them look over their cards or if they’re coming up with new mechanics and see that they’re getting the wording right for what they intended. I was wondering if it fit right there between the two areas. As for that land note: I’ve seen player designed cards that have to do with casting lands, or if it they design something that works with landfall.
- I know they aren’t. I was debating if I was going to capitalize them in the wording as well, but was addressing them as proper nouns might be a bad thing.
- I embarrassingly forgot about equipment, and fortification. Will be changed. (I know, no love for the artifacts)
- The “In/On” was mostly for targeting and action purposes. I just wanted to match up the proper preposition to it’s zone in the game. “Put the card INto your hand.” “Select a permanent ON the battlefield.”
- I highlight them because they carry rules text that only apply to transfer of certain zones. “Put into your hand” is easy to know what to do with. “Search your library for a card and put it in your graveyard” is one that’s easy to know what to do with. If “Mill” was templated for putting cards from the top of your library into your graveyard, I’d put that in there as well. I just wanted to highlight that to get in the exile zone a card must be exiled, which is common language.
- That’s why I had the zone transferring language there. Discarding only applies the transfer from the hand to the graveyard. “Return target creature to its owner’s hand” means from the battlefield, not the graveyard. Again, I’ve seen mistakes like that.

Thanks for the feedback. I know I was going to miss something and it needs to be changed slightly.

Comment on Design Cheat Sheet #1 – Zones and Parts of the Card by alextfish

alextfish — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:59:00 +0000

Who is this intended for? Surely not new players, because it goes into too much detail on templating and not enough on gameplay. Card designers? But surely there are more important lessons in design than the details of “on” vs “in” in templating. Card designers as a templating quick reference? But then why the random details of timing of playing lands?

And there are a number of inaccuracies:
* The words “battlefield”, “stack”, “instant”, “permanent” etc are *never* capitalised in card text (unless they’re the first word of a sentence).
* Why include subtypes Curse and Shrine but not Equipment?
* The notes imply that the phrase “In the” is used of graveyards and hands, but it never is. “hand” is always preceded by a mention of a player (e.g. “to its owner’s hand”) and “graveyard” is usually preceded by a pronoun or “a” (e.g. Rise from the Grave).
* Why would you highlight the words “draw” and “discard” as “Zone Transfers”, but not “put… into your hand”?
* “If no zone is given, it is assumed to be the [b]attlefield” – Only when an object is referred to by a type or subtype (such as “target creature” or “sacrifice a Human”). In phrases such as “discard a creature card”, you don’t need to specify “from your hand” because that’s implicit. This is a common templating error.

All in all, I don’t quite get what this is for.

Comment on SOPA Will Kill the Magic Community by Jon

Jon — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:21:46 +0000

One more thing, as Uncle on Jackie Chan Adventures used to say: I just read about how they'll say it'll create jobs by making it so foreigners can't bootleg American goods. This is hilarious. Nothing in the law stops foreigners from bootlegging American goods because, oh, yeah, the law only applies to Americans.

Comment on Design Class – All of These Things Are Just Like Each Other by Jon

Jon — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:24:25 +0000

My favorite cycle is the quests in Zendikar, because, like playing cards, it’s a traditional cycle and a vertical cycle at once. Let’s look at best and worst (in my opinion):

Common: Best: Green. (If only because the minute you finish it, you can crack all your other expeditions.) Worst: White. A good lifegain card has to do something else, and adding tempo issues and the possibility of a Back to Nature if I play with a lot of enchantments (and since I’m playing white, I get some of the best enchantments), no amount of lifegain can fix that.
Uncommon: Best: White. Just because it gets around even more than Stoneforge. I remember at my first Standard tournament after Scars of Mirrodin came out, and I used turn 1, Quest for the Holy Relic, Memnite; turn 2, Glint Hawk, Memnite (again), Glint Hawk, Memnite (again), search for a Sword of Body and Mind. Turn 3, attack with all three, seven damage, mill 10, get a puppy token. Turn 4, attack with all four, six damage, mill 10, lose Memnite, trade puppy with another 2/2, get another puppy. Turn 5, attack with all three, eight damage, win. (Oh, and mill 10 and get a puppy.) Worst: I want to say Quest for the Ancient Secrets, just for being pretty much strictly worse than Feldon’s Cane.
Rare: Best: Bloodchief Ascension: An infinite combo, and works great in mill decks. I love this guy in Modern, BTW. All the ISD milling, and Pipering out Geth? Yeah. Second best is Archmage Ascension. Worst: Pyromancer Ascension. In addition to being useless in singleton games, it’s very linear. Also, I really don’t like red exploiting the graveyard, except as a power-only ‘goyf. (“You killed my father. Prepare to die.”)

In color matters blocks (Invasion, Ravnica, Shadowmoor, Alara), cycles are part of the territory.

Comment on SOPA Will Kill the Magic Community by Heitor

Heitor — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:26:19 +0000

Say that Twitter and Facebook have large legal teams. The website could get shut down WITHOUT NOTICE. The website would be offline all the time until the legal teams could put it back on. This is only one of the various ways that the bill can be abused.

Comment on The 100 Best Designed Cards Ever by Ben Draper

Ben Draper — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:12:56 +0000

@majiger – Clearly you didn’t read Troacctid’s post. None of his “Why X?” comments were in regards to whether cards “won the game”. They were about how well-designed the cards are. And he’s right. Without some clear reasoning as to why they are well-designed, this is a pretty uninformative list. I mean, basic lands as the #1 cards ever designed? Please.

Comment on SOPA Will Kill the Magic Community by Jon

Jon — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:14:48 +0000

Hell, I know people who didn’t know Maro was named after Mark Rosewater.

Next lesson: The influence of Roseanne on Magic design.

Comment on SOPA Will Kill the Magic Community by Jon

Jon — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:12:46 +0000

A lot of this is also because of moral panic. A couple years back, one senator even said “P2P [Peer-to-Peer] stands for Piracy to Pornography”. This of course gives us images of kids searching for their favorite cartoon and learning, ahem, the thirty-fourth rule.

Memes would also be gone, except for a few things like that rainbow dog.