#mtg discussion

[flavoracle]

Any of my fellow MTG folks wanna chime in on this math? I don’t see any need to correct it.

Okay

So let’s say I make 1 singular Human.

Tapped a Thraben Doomsayer.

Let’s start with the Ojer Taq trigger. 1 token becomes three tokens.

Now Doubling season. Each of those 3 tokens becomes 2 tokens if I’m doing this correctly. 3 becomes 6.

And then primal vigor does the exact same, 6 becomes 12.

Finally, Mondrak. 12 becomes 24.

From 1 SINGULAR Human, I make 24. Did I do that right?

[iridescentholly]

Vast majority of conversations about power creep in mtg are irrelevant unless they're specifying a point when they thought the power level was correct. Oh did they power creep black lotus? Did they power creep ancestral recall? Did they power creep library of Alexandria?

[transgalvantula]

where's my fire emblem and magic the gathering crossover.

[monorayjak]

Trying to figure out how I would flesh out wedge identities, so decided to take a page from MaRo's book and have them talk to one another. First up.

White, black, and red - Order through structure, action, and opportunity. White: Order through structure means having strict rule- Red: Ha! Rules schmules White: Why must you be like this Black: Because they are. Simple as that. White: Ugh… here we go again Red: So tell me, who exactly defined what order is? Order doesn’t mean peaceful. Hell, I’d call most order not peaceful White: Order is the way the world should be organized, so that the most people gain the best access to what they have and need, its a system where everyone is allowed to live Black: No, it isn’t. White: What? What do you mean? Black: Order is how things are organized in a logical manner, yes, but they are not inherently ordered around “goodness” Red: See! Black gets it! White: Ok ok, so what do you two propose order as? Black: Easy. Order is how the world is organized. Order should be based on power. White: Power? Black: Yes. Power. The people at the top have the power, they make the rules and everyone else plays by them Red: Eh, I can see where you’re coming from black, but I don't fully agree with that. Order is how the world is organized. Order should be based around freedom White: Freedom? How? Red: Order should be based on saying “here is everything we don’t allow. If it's not written here, it's a free game.” It should show the hand everyone starts with, metaphorically speaking, and clarify what is not an option. It shouldn’t just rule out personal thoughts and motives. It's the difference between telling someone they can’t do something while they’re in the middle of it versus telling someone up front they can’t do that and allowing them to think of other options for themselves. You want the world to be even? Give everyone the same playing field. White: I can’t believe I’m actually saying this…. But that actually makes some kind of sense. Red: See! I’m not against structure, I'm against pointless structure. Whatever rules are made should be as simple and all encompassing as possible. No complicated legalese telling specifics, it should be all about giving people the information they need. Black: Ok, I want to chime in here. I can see you two agreeing on this but I want to remind you I’m also here. I think order should be used to put the powerful, me, at the top. How does that fit into your little utopia plan? White: Uh….what… what if… oh Serra I’m actually saying this and kind of meaning it. What if we base the order around power, so that the person in charge declares the base rules and others can interpret them. What if… what if we all stay together at the top and set out guidelines that others can live with. Black: How does that give us power though? Red: Oh! I get it! It gives us power because we have the ability to change the rules once we’re on top. We can stop others from taking our place by blocking the path we used to get there with new rules! Black: Hmm… interesting. I can’t believe it's actually happening… but I think we may have an agreement here. White: Holy shit that’s a first. Red: Wait we can cuss!? YOU CAN CUSS!? White: Yeah, no shit. Black: You’re both fucking idiots. Red: I hate you both, but I think that’s an agreement. Truce? White and Black: - Truce.

[whatsthatmagiccard]

(I was gonna make some half-arsed UB crack, but is the original flavor text for Time Warp a Rocky Horror reference, or is Squee just saying that?)

[dailymtgflavortext]

Small talk is a dying art. 

-Pointed Discussion

[theworldgate]

Well, this is a must-read

Spoilery thoughts below!

So, it looks like Jace and Vraska... plan to purify the multiverse and start a whole new one? (well, definitely start a whole new one, it's sort of ambiguous how much of the old one needs repurposing)

Which... to be clear this is definitely a case of, like, insular thinking where three people [Ranna is involved too!] sort of feed off of one another until "cleanse the multiverse and start anew" seems reasonable rather than utterly batshit. (like, to be clear, it is a very fine line Ms Lührs has trodden here, because there's both romance and oh my god this is not a good situation you need to talk to, like, people other than your spouse and your mom Jace!)

I imagine people will take the "oh man this means uncontained threats" thing as a thing we're meant to agree with (or think outweighs the good of Planeswalking not being for a select few). Also the tearing down starting anew etc etc because there are always people who treat visionary heel-turn villains as having a point even when they aren't the POV character.

I do hope that WotC rope Nissa into the wider story, though.

Like, on both those points we know that she takes the exact opposite stance [or, at least, is likely to, based off past behaviour for some of it].

This isn't headcanon, Zendikar Rising was driven by Nahiri doing the great rebuild plan on Zendikar, and so we have a canonical riposte from Nissa!

"Broken doesn't mean weak... Broken doesn't mean that there isn't beauty or redemption." "Broken doesn't mean a life is not worth living,"

And in the Brother's War, we sort of get an adjacent perspective to opposing the "literally three people deciding to do everything" side of things, and also something that could foreshadow putting more weight on the potential for connection than the dangers inherent in the Omenpaths (emphasis mine):

.....friends and strangers from multiple planes assembled just as the disparate people of Dominaria had come together, overcoming their divides and forging a united front. There was something beautiful in that. Something worthy. Something vital that Nissa had not considered. The struggle against the Phyrexians wasn't simply pushing back against the sick plans enacted by a singular megalomaniac like Nicol Bolas, nor was it a task for Planeswalkers to undertake alone. All beings who hoped for any kind of future faced a choice: allow the Phyrexians to transform every plane into the bleak, charred wastelands Nissa witnessed through Gaea's eyes, or fight alongside others who may once have been enemies. Honoring their differences. Forging new bonds that would prevail and endure.

It would further be a thematic tie to how Aftermath focused on Nissa and Nahiri - Nahiri resolving to close off Zendikar (I think if Jace offered her an in to remake Zendikar entirely... I have no idea how she would respond, probably the deciding factor would be that Jace woul insist on there being Planeswalkers), Nissa... well okay Nissa wants to make it back to Zendikar, but the big image of hope for the Omenpaths is her and Chandra stood in front of one.

Plus, like. Maybe Jace does need reminding that there are people other than his mom and Vraska. And, okay, he might not count Nissa as the same Nissa given his inconsistency in counting himself as Jace, but Chandra was never compleated!

(and speaking of, Jace probably needs the punch in the face that Chandra will provide, ngl. Like, Chandra would think this plan is stupid, and she would be right to do so, and she would also be right to employ fist-logic further)

Anyway, I need to go find a hat to eat given how convinced I was that the shady guy who beaned Proft with the lead pipe wasn't Jace, but, in my defence, it looks like Jace has explicitly gotten loads of practice in acting in the meantime and so was putting on a character.

[magicjudge]

How does Ad Naus work? Why is it so good? How does Turbo Naus win? I feel incapable of wrapping my head around this card no matter how many times I try.

Ad Nauseam is a hyper-efficient card "draw" spell that enables storm decks and other combo strategies in eternal formats. It's helped in this by being an instant, allowing players to either go off on other players' turns or to EOT Naus and be set up for a huge turn of their own.

In a normal deck, the rate on drawing a card with Ad Nauseam is pretty poor, meaning that you'd expect to pay at least 10 life for five cards, but Ad Nauseam decks aren't normal decks. Decks built around Ad Nauseam very carefully manage both the total and average mana value of their cards, using tools like hypergeometric calculators to ensure that they're likely to draw enough cards to go off with it, sometimes their entire deck.

Turbo Naus decks want to find and cast Ad Nauseam as fast as possible so that they can combo out. They're usually the decks casting it EOT so they can go off on the next turn with cheap combos like Oracle/Consultation. I don't know a lot of specfics about cEDH archetypes, but I hope this basic idea is enough to help you.

[mtgaddicted]

I've been thinking lately of getting all the decks I'm building together, checking the value of each card, and sell every single card that is worth more than $5. The last time that I got 3 half-decks stolen and were around $600 really demotivated me to have so much money under my bed with no use.

Do you think it's a good idea? To sell those cards? I'd be basically quitting Magic: the Gathering to play Proxy: the Gathering... :/

[starlit-mansion]

also funny that vraska did kiss jace whn he was wearing ashiok's face and thought it was yucky lmao

[generalb]

Hello, General o7

You may recall our last conversation when I was starting on transcribing every planeswalker card's loyalty abilities into a spreadsheet to homebrew a Planeswalker loyalty ability system in dnd. The players will be able to select from a pool of abilities based on those of the cards, mix and match, and swap them out as they level up (think Artificer's Infusions or Warlock's Eldritch Invocations) and they'll use loyalty counters as a resource.

Well I've just had a conversation with some of my DM friends about the abstraction of mtg and translating the card game terms into role-playing game terms for my upcoming Plane Shift campaign.

Namely, how access to resources differs between the two:

In DnD, you will start almost every day on the tail end of a long rest. You'll have full health, access to all of your spells and abilities, and as you go through the day you use these resources. As such, much of the game is focused around the management of these resources. You don't wanna blow your big spell on a weak enemy at the beginning of the day and only have cantrips left by the time you get to the monster's boss at the end of a dungeon.

Contrary to this, in mtg you start with an empty battlefield and slowly build your resources, making bigger and more complex moves as the game progresses.

This can be remedied somewhat by applying a sense of scale. A DnD campaign can run for months or years and have multiple encounters a day. It's tempting to consider a game of mtg as a single encounter. After all the range of durations for a DnD encounter and a game of mtg have undeniable overlap. A long DnD encounter could take well over an hour, and a short game of mtg can be over in less than 10 minutes, and the other way around. However I think it could be useful at times to consider a game of MtG more akin to an entire campaign of DnD, and each turn MtG more like a day of adventures (potentially even more than one encounter: each player has a combat phase, and some card effects can grant additional ones, all within the space of a single turn.)

Both scales of comparison, whether a game is equal to a whole campaign (long) or a single encounter or day (short), struggle with how to address translating cards with particularly strong ramp or tempo.

For example:

In the short timescale, the library can be thought of as everything you, as the player, currently know that could be of use. Whether that's items you can use (artifacts) allies to call upon (creatures) or spells you know how to cast. In this timeframe, your hand represents what is consciously on your mind and what you're thinking about. Your graveyard then would be your expended spells that would be regenerated again when you have had a long rest (new game). A turn on this timescale would be a single turn in an encounter. You can attack, cast your spells, and then the enemies will do the same. This timescale struggles with the aforementioned issue of resources: in DnD, your whole library would essentially start in your hand at the beginning of each game.

Meanwhile in the long timescale, the library can be instead thought of as all of the abilities one will gain access to as they level up or buy spells or armor. It is the possibility of what they can use in future encounters, rather than what they might use in a few turns. The hand, then, becomes akin to what the library was at the short timescale. Everything the player currently knows and has access to. And the graveyard, rather than being replenished upon resting, becomes things that are (more or less) permanently gone. Creatures in the graveyard are literally dead. Artifacts in the graveyard are destroyed, rather than out of charges. A turn at this timescale now represents the time between long rests, with your untap step and end step each representing parts the long rest. At the end step of each turn, damage is removed from all creatures, similar to how you heal during a rest. You can think of the end steps other than the last one before your turn as the short rests between long rests, where you might be able to catch your breath and recover a little bit, but not everything will be recharged. Then during the untap step, you regain access to all of your spells (mana untapping) and your creatures who have used their abilities get those back too (creatures untapping). This timescale suffers from an opposite issue of resources: if a card would give you access to another card in your library before you would draw it, this timescale would represent that as instantly getting access to an ability you would get in the future.

How would these timescales handle a card like Ajani Unyielding's +2 ability, "Reveal the top three cards of your library. Put all nonland permanent cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order"?

On the short timescale, this would essentially say "You can use these items or spells that you've had ready, but you haven't thought about until now." This seems... Anticlimactic, I think is the best word?

On the long timescale, however, this would essentially be getting up to 3 free new magical items, allies, or instantly learning new spells on the spot. Which is just way too powerful, too far in the other direction.

Anyway, I've gotten this far before realizing I've forgotten to mention why I'm sending this ask in the first place: I need help. I'm trying to translate these card effects into DnD terms, but I'm pretty stumped on this one.

The closest I've come to a solution at this point is maybe setting these abilities to have a prerequisite of prepared spells, so that these abilities could be used to swap out a prepared spell with another known spell on the fly. What do you think?

Also, I'm sending this as an ask instead of a private message so that hopefully we can start a conversation and get some more input. If anyone else has thoughts on the matter, please share!

Interesting. You’ve clearly put a lot of time and effort into thinking of this. Good job first and foremost!

Now as you know I’m also a beginner to dnd so most of what I don’t know is terms and limitations. I’m going to type out what feels right to me and pretend I knew what I was saying, okay?

It seems to me that you may have gotten trapped in mixing the Loyaty Ability System(LAS) for your DnD game with the Loyaty Counters(LC) from Magic, as well as the library, graveyard, and hand. I get wanting to take inspiration from the physical gameplay of Magic and implementing that into the game; that sounds fucking awesome! But I worry that it may be too complicated, and I will elaborate:

At the end of the day, I think we can compare DnD and Magic: the Gathering to Windows and Linux. They’re both run on computers, yes, and people use both systems for many similar things; but systemically they’re two different beasts. It may be simpler to take the names and inspirations of Magic and to put them on things in DnD that either already exist or could be created by you.

Here’s an example: the worry about Ajani Unyielding’s +2 ability, yes? You see the complications in directly translating the ability to the game. Perhaps, instead, if we were to take a look at Loyalty Abilities not as separate things that use other tools/powers, but rather as enhancements of already existing abilities. Planeswalkers may have been nerfed since the Mending, but they still hold that Spark that differentiates them from the rest. Perhaps someone could use Ajani, Unyielding’s +2 to interrupt the combat order, swapping out one weapon for another? But it randomly grabs three items or spells, just like how you usually can’t control what is on top of your library. You’ve essentially come to that conclusion already it sounds like so it’s most likely the right track

I think what my thoughts are is that the easiest thing to do is to simplify it and see what feels right. Pretty generic advice I know.

Like my dear friend @rowanoke said, this is an ask, and therefore also a post; so whoever reads this, please do respond to this post if you have any ideas or thoughts.

[strangedaystrangeyear]

2024-01-08 — I Wouldn't Worry — Bedroom / Boredom

Pretty much every time I listen to an album for this, I endeavour to listen to more of the artist's output in the future, and that's definitely the case with this one. I Wouldn't Worry is a five track EP and I'm in the mood to hear more. I really like this band's sound. The music has a nice energy to it. It's a mix of a whole bunch of elements which work together well, elements which might feel at odds together elsewhere. The band just makes the songs work.

This doesn't happen often, but I added all five tracks to my playlist on this first listen through. They're all songs I think I'll enjoy whatever my mood whenever they come up on shuffle. Despite the often miserable lyrics, the songs have more than enough in them to keep you from falling into misery yourself. Or, at least, that's what I thought. If I had to pick a favourite, I think I'd pick the final track, Ghost. I'm not certain, though. Sex Hair is close as well. I think I'll have to see if there's one that will solidify itself as my favourite over time.

I'm over a week into listening to new music every day now. If I'm trying to do this for the whole of 2024, a week isn't that impressive, but a fairly large part of me thought I wouldn't even get this far. The Taigam, Ojutai Master deck I was building when I started this is now a Talrand, Sky Summoner deck. I tested it out today—it definitely needs some more card draw and less situational cards but it's already a fun deck.

[homeostasister]

Because I love taking categorization schemes from one media and applying them to aspects of another, I’ve been thinking about what MTG color identities the different fear entities from the Magnus Archives would have, and I would love to hear people’s perspectives.

I definitely think the Corruption would be white/green/black, given its association with both sickness/parasitism and love/unity/collectives.

The Hunt is definitely green/red.

I feel like the Slaughter would probably be red/white, as the colors associated with war and nationalism. I could also see black in there, but I’m not sure how well it fits.

For the Eye I could see either mono-blue or blue/black, since it focuses on collecting knowledge specifically to exploit people’s suffering.

The Web gives me such Esper vibes that I would feel pretty confident classifying it as white/blue/black, but I could also see green/blue/black as it emphasizes the connections between everything and simply demands that you follow the threads as they have been laid out, which does seem very green to me.

I think the desolation would probably be mono-red—just a force of pure unreasoning destruction.

I feel like maybe the Stranger could be blue/red and the Spiral could be blue/red/black—there’s a lot of overlap between them, I think, but where the Stranger just wants to make reality, well, stranger, the Spiral is actively trying to obscure reality, to make people doubt their own perceptions and feel powerless and unstable.

I think the Buried would probably be mono-green, the End would probably be mono-black, and I’m not too sure about any of the others.

Since there are five colors, ten two-color combinations, and ten three-color combinations, one approach would be to assign each of the 15 entities a distinct 1-, 2-, or 3-color identity, although I’m not sure how well that would work out in practice. I would be happy to discuss ideas with anyone who wants to.

[dravidious]

There's this really janky card from way back in MTG's history called Ertai's Meddling

Nowadays, this wording just does not work within the rules, so its official text ("oracle text") has been updated to say this:

"X can't be 0.

Target spell's controller exiles it with X delay counters on it.

At the beginning of each of that player's upkeeps, if that card is exiled, remove a delay counter from it. If the card has no delay counters on it, the player puts it onto the stack as a copy of the original spell."

Much more modern and rules-friendly. However, on the card's official gatherer discussion page, there's one particular comment that is absolutely... Amazing? Infuriating? Dumb, let's go with dumb. You don't have to read all of it, mainly just the first three lines, but here it is:

There's a million ways to dissect this awful comment, discussions to be had about the history of the game's rules, and how tournament play works, and erratta, and that one time they forgot to print "until end of turn" on a spell, and the fact that nowhere on the original text does it actually specify that the spell doesn't resolve normally, but the funniest thing about the idea of "it stays on the stack" is that, even if you assume the card works exactly as written and does what it's supposed to...

Here's the rules regarding when you're allowed to cast a noninstant spell, straight from the comprehensive rules (important part in red):

117.1a A player may cast an instant spell any time they have priority. A player may cast a noninstant spell during their main phase any time they have priority and the stack is empty.

No matter how you look at Ertai's Meddling's text, it certainly doesn't create an exception to this rule, which means that, as written, no player can play noninstant spells while a spell is delayed with Ertai's Meddling. There's a similar rule for playing lands, so the game just kind of grinds to a halt. If you want to be SUPER literal about it, the game's turn structure can't even progress unless the stack is empty:

500.2. A phase or step in which players receive priority ends when the stack is empty and all players pass in succession.

So yeah. Go ahead and play with the printed text. Come up with all your clever combos and interactions that technically work. But just remember that when you play with technicalities, you play with ALL the technicalities.

[personal-person1]

my hands hurt i should've worked in shorter sessions

closeups and rambling under the cut

-game night initially started with a standard deck of playing cards but they kept losing them inbetween sessions and having to supplement with other things, and now the deck is an absolute abomination of playing cards, uno, yu-gi-oh, pokemon and MTG

-sniper keeps looking at spy's cards, which has made spy So determined to stop sniper from winning that they both end up losing miserably

-demo showed up midgame and only saw uno cards on the table so he figured they were playing uno, and he has yet to figure out that they aren't

-if archimedes coos at the card you played, you have to take it back and play a different card

-scout collects pokemon cards and he added the shit cards he owns to the deck

-the rules change basically every time they try to play this thing so engie stopped caring about winning and is just here for the show

-pyro usually plays too, but currently they're coloring instead

-scout won't stop rocking his chair and he Will fall over during the game

-heavy and medic were meaning to play chess tonight but they were coerced by scout to join, and they're borderline ignoring the game in favor of discussing medic's latest project

-heavy's shirt says "a woman without a penis is like an angel without wings"

i do usually consider tf2 as taking place in the 60s and use the time accordingly but i drew this over a minecraft screenshot LOL i decided to ignore that for the purposes of this

note, i have only started playing this game and engaging with this fandom for a few weeks - ive been meaning to get into it for years but i knew i would go insane when i did, and i was right! i am!

[static-kat]

January has been, hands down, the weirdest month of my life. Started the new year with kissing a woman I could see myself with forever, happy to deal with the distance. And discussing with her flaky Dom a potential three way play session.

Three days later: suddenly dumped. Wtf.

Two weeks later: local Friday night Magic turned into a threesome with local nerds. Some of the best sex of my life. Now we're a weird throuple. He wants to be with me and they wants to date him and I want to date them. And none of us know wtf we're doing. What is my life.