Where to Look: Card Layout Quandries

The layout of a card is incredibly important to players new and old. How much thought goes into these initial decisions? How much is random choice and how much is optimization?

Above we have a typical magic card. The first thing a player notices is the picture, covering up the top half of the card. Then, a new player will usually look to the card name, where an experienced one might look first to the mana cost in the top right or its stats in the bottom right. Those stats are then compared to certain base stats we've become accustomed to and you get a gut feeling for the strength of the card on a whole. Meanwhile, the newer player is reading the name and then skipping the mana cost to look at the text.

New players take the card as a whole, where experienced ones understand that you don't need to look at the flavor text, set symbol, or artist name, and only rarely the card type. That information is there when they need it, but it's not immediately relevant.

Don't Watch Jugglers

For at least a month I'd hit a bit of designer's block with Spacefleet. Nothing seemed to work the way I wanted it to and, though I wanted to playtest, I couldn't even get the base mechanics to work to even allow a simple proof of concept game.

Over the past couple days though I've made enormous leaps forward. The current incarnation has enough of a foundation to allow for successful playtesting. Interestingly, it's almost completely unrecognizable from my first (what I thought at the time was a) brilliant vision.

Trickle Down Balance

Gamers (and unfortunately developers) too often submit to this fallacy:

"Game balance is best achieved by looking at the pro/tournament level. Any balance there must necessarily trickle down to all elo tiers"

This is, quite frankly, false.

Avacyn Restored Bugs Me

This is not to cry that Magic is dead, or that Wizards has ruined the game, or any other such nonsense. I loved Innistrad's flavor AVR hit a lot of those notes perfectly. Soulbond and the "lone monster" mechanics mirror nicely. "Miracle", while awkward, creatres some fun gameplay moments which, when it comes down to it, is why we play the game.

I've played some AVR limited and toyed with the cards in other formats. Here are my concerns:

Faithful Looting

We're coming up on the future.

During MTG's second Great Designer Search,entrants answered ten short response questions to see how well they understood WotC's current design philosophy. The following question was posed:

You are instructed to move an ability from one color to another. This ability must be something used in every set (i.e. discard, direct damage, card drawing etc.). You may not choose an ability that has already been color shifted by R&D. What ability do you shift and to what color do you shift it? Explain why you would make that shift.

Apparently an overwhelming majority of finalists argued to move looting (draw a card, then discard a card, a la Merfolk Looter) should be moved from blue to red. R&D listened. Magic sets are made a few years in advance so we wouldn't see the results of that change surface until...well, about now I suppose.

Once you have seen, you cannot Un-see

Proposed Changes to EDH, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Commander

EDH (you can change names all you want, you're always EDH to me) is a format that has exploded in recent years. Developed by the folks over at what is now mtgcommander.net, it was adopted by Wizards and showcased in the annoying-set-to-search-on-gatherer product Magic the Gathering: Commander.

It had some basic rules and a suggested banlist, both of which were adopted whole when it was adopted. The bandits has both before and since only been tweaked sparingly, with suggestions that people create House lists rather than relying on an official one. While great in theory, in practice I want to be able to go play against people in a card shop without needing to argue about which cards are allowed each time. A unified bandits makes for a more welcoming EDH community.

EDH had always been a multiplayer format, usually a 3-5 player FFA. For me the biggest appeal was that this allowed a chance to showcase cards that would otherwise be marginalized for prohibitive mana cost or marginal gain. But a year or two ago, some Spikes got ahold of it and made the French Banlist to ensure balance in 1v1 games. This is all well and good for that, but it wasn't created with multiplayer in mind.

It is my belief that the official Wizards Banlist is not pulling its weight. I don't expect the same level of maintenance that Standard or Legacy get, but even a little would be nice. So much of the current list is based on the findings of such a small original play group, and times have changed.

As such, I have a few proposed changes to the current EDH rules and banlist. These changes are what I think will contribute most to making each individual EDH game fun and in some way unique.