MTG

The Nadu Situation

This has become a big topic in the community this week, so I wanted to add my thoughts to the discussion. My focus isn’t on the banning, but on the behind-the-scenes processes that led to it. I’m Head Designer, so I want to focus on the design elements of the situation.

When we make Magic there are a few things we do to try and make it the best it can be. First, we design in what we call an iterative loop. That is, we make something, we playtest it, we get feedback, we make changes on that feedback, and begin the next iteration of the loop. We try to get as many iterative loops in as we can before the set is locked (aka “no more changes”).

No matter where we set that line, there’s a last day to make changes. Moving that line earlier doesn’t change anything other than giving us less iterative loops to improve things. Also, we make lots and lots of last minute changes. The vast majority of them make the game better. I understand there’s more focus on the times we make a mistake, but it represents a truly small percentage of the changes.

Also, whenever we design a card, we ask ourselves, who is this card for? If we’re trying to make game play the best it can be, it helps to understand who will use the card, where they will use it, and what they will do with it. Obviously, in a game as modular as Magic, the players can often zig when we expect them to zag, but in general, this process leads to the best design.

We have two play design teams, one focused on competitive play and one focused on casual play. The competitive play design teams determines which cards they think have a shot at competitive play (remember we’re making predictions as where we think the environment might go,we don’t definitively know; we need to make an environment complex enough as to entertain tens of millions of players). The casual play design team then looks as the cards that don’t play a competitive role to see what casual role they can play.

With that said, let me respond to a few popular lines this week:

“Stop designing for Commander” - The nature of competitive formats is that only so many cards can be relevant. As you start making more competitive relevant cards, they displace the weakest of the existing relevant cards. That’s how a trading card game works. That means that not every card in a set (or even just the rares and mythic rares as the commons and uncommons have a big role making the limited environment work) has a competitive role. As such, we examine how they will play in more casual settings. There’s no reason not to do that. And when you think of casual settings, you are remiss if you don’t consider Commander. It’s the 800-pound gorilla of tabletop play (aka the most played, heavily dominant format). Us considering the casual ramifications of a card that we didn’t feel was competitively viable is not what broke the card. Us missing the interaction with a component of the game we consider broken and have stopped doing (0 cost activations), but still lives on in older formats is the cause.

“Stop making late changes” - Whenever you see an airplane on the news, something bad has happened. It crashed, or caught on fire, or had an emergency landing, or a door fell off. Why do we still make planes? Because planes are pretty useful and what’s being highlighted is the worst element. That focus can lead people to false assumptions. Magic would not be better if we stopped making last changes. A lot more broken things would get through (things we caught and changed), and many more cards just wouldn’t be playable. Our process of fixing things up to the last minute does lots and lots of good. Maybe it doesn’t get the focus of the screw ups, but it leads to better design.

“Everything needs to get playtested” - My, and my team’s, job is to take a blank piece of paper and make something that doesn’t exist exist. That’s not an easy thing to do. I believe play design’s job is even harder. They’re trying to make a balanced environment with thousands of moving pieces a year in the future. And if we’re able to solve it on our end, that means the playerbase will crack it in minute one of playing with it. One minute, by the way, is the time it takes the Magic playerbase to play with a set as much as we can. There are tens of millions of you and a handful of us. There simply isn’t time in the day to test everything, so the play design team tests what they think has the highest chance of mattering. They take calculated gambles (based on years of experience) and test the things most likely to cause problems. Will things slip through? There’s no way they can’t. The system is too complex to not miss things.That doesn’t mean we don’t continually improve our processes to lower the chances of mistakes, but nothing we’re going to do can completely eliminate them.

Designing Magic is difficult. Next year is my thirtieth year working on the game, and I think we have the most talented team we’ve ever had. Plus, just as we iterate on the designs in a set, we iterate on design processes of making Magic. How we make Magic today is light years different, and I believe better, than how we made Magic when I started. (”If I have seen further, it’s because I stand on the shoulder of giants.”)

One final thing. I’ve always pushed for transparency in Magic design. No one on the planet has written/spoken about it more than me. I truly believe Magic is better as a game because its players have the insight to understand what we, the people making it, are doing. We do ask for one thing in exchange. Please treat the designers who take the time to share with you the behind-the-scenes workings of Magic design with kindness. We are all human beings with feelings. There’s nothing wrong with feedback, but it can be delivered with common courtesy.

Sorry if this isn't the right community, and if it isn't hopefully someone can point me in the right direction!

I am looking for some input on an EDH deck I am working on. This is the deck and it revolves around [[Gandalf the Grey]] as the commander. So lots of instants, sorceries, and prowess. Mostly aiming for Gandalf commander damage as the win condition by combining the 3 damage to each player and then putting Gandalf back on the top of the library. I played this for the first time last night and while it has a ton of potential, I definitely feel that things are missing.

Things I am looking for are:

1. More card draw. This was without a doubt the biggest issue and I'll take any input on how to improve this!
2. More counters. Less of an issue than card draw, but definitely was struggling against my buddy's Balen/Token deck.
3. Any sort of board wipe. This was definitely an issue but by the time I could've really used the board wipe, I had fizzled out due to no card draw.

Hopefully folk have some input! I would definitely love to keep this on the cheaper side as this deck so far has cost me $15 for a couple boosters. Most of the deck was inherited from someone in college years ago lol.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19105887

The new plane of Duskmourn is a perilous place, but if you can survive the horrors within you may come out stronger than ever. I’ve been there. I’ve seen the darkness and to that end, here are some hints of things to come – but will this information help or hinder your journey? Only time will tell. As with any good piece of horror media, you’re only receiving partial information and things are not always as they appear: 

First up, here are some things you can expect:  

• A component of the set with a frame using technology first designed for an Un-set

• A tweak on an ability word that first appeared in the third set of a block

• Counters used in the set: +1/+1, -1/-1, finality, flying, lifelink, lore, loyalty, nest, possession, rev, stun, and time

• The first ability word to reference “second main phase”

• A 10/1 creature for UUU

• A variant on a mechanic that itself was a variant on another mechanic

• A modal three mana white mass removal spell

• A character returns as a legendary creature that first appeared in flavor text in Alpha

• A new ability word that cares about a card type and a (new) keyword action

• Creature tokens: 1/1 white Toy, 1/1 white Glimmer, 2/1 white Insect, 3/1 white Spirit, 4/4 white Beast, blue token copy, X/X blue Spirit, 2/2 black Horror, 6/6 black Demon, 1/1 red Gremlin, 1/1 red Balloon, 2/2 green Spider, 1/1 black and green Insect, and 0/0 green and blue Fractal

 Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:  

• “unlock a locked door”

• “Search your library for a Demon card,”

• “where X is the number of creatures you control with power 2 or less.”

• “Exile any number of target instant, sorcery, and/or Tamiyo planeswalker cards from your graveyard.”

• “The same is true for creature spells you control and creature cards you own that aren’t on the battlefield.”

• “You have no maximum hand size and don’t lose the game for having 0 or less life.”

• “Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets only a single creature you control, copy that spell.”

• “Shards you control become copies of it until the beginning of the next end step.”

• “of creatures you control that don’t have the same name as this creature.”

• “(2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, and 31 are prime numbers.)”

 Here are some creature type lines from the set: 

• Creature – Human Doctor

• Creature – Kor Survivor

• Creature – Goat

• Creature – Shark

• Creature – Eye

• Creature – Fish Insect

• Artifact Creature – Monkey Toy

• Creature – Human Clown Berserker

• Legendary Creature – Elder Demon

• Legendary Creature – Rat Ninja Wizard

 Finally, here are some names in the set: 

• Acrobatic Cheerleader

• Don’t Make a Sound

• Exorcise

• Friendly Ghost

• Jump Scare

• Let’s Play a Game

• Meathook Massacre II

• Orphans of the Wheat

• Split Up

• Unsettling Twins

 Tune into Duskmourn’s Debut at 2pm PT, August 31 – streaming live from PAX West – where the House will finally reveal more of its secrets.

Pioneer:

• Amalia Benavides Aguirre is banned.
• Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is banned.

Modern:

• Nadu, Winged Wisdom is banned.
• Grief is banned.

Legacy:

• Grief is banned.

Vintage:

• Urza's Saga is restricted.
• Vexing Bauble is restricted.

Explorer:

• Amalia Benavides Aguirre is banned.
• Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is banned.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19072631

More JP exclusive merch for the holiday season:

https://mtg-jp.com/twe-christmas

Japanese customers get a sticker with every 6 packs purchased that has a chance of winning sleeves or a playmat featuring the above illustration.

The art looks nice but they made it as annoying as possible to acquire. I can only imagine these will be hard to find and expensive outside of Japan

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19037498

Magic Untapped takes a look back at Oath of the Gatewatch, the second half of the two-set BFZ block.