Thoughts on restrictions
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@wappla I play Dredge to win games
The choices I make in picking a deck, and the choices I make in advocating for a certain design philosophy need not align
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But do you agree it would be nice if they did?
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@ajfirecracker The only difference between seeing a permanent on the board that stops you from winning vs a draw/counter wall that counters everything meaningful you cast is....you SEE the problem on the board instead of it being hidden in the opponent's hand. If you play certain decks vs landstill, you WILL get crushed by card draw and counters most of the time. Certain decks vs shops (especially pre chalice/golem restriction) WILL get locked out slowly but surely. Dredge WILL outrace your plan 90% of game 1 and just need to win g2 or 3 most rounds. That's not meaning you actually have any more chance of winning those matches...you only think you do because the hate isn't staring you in the face on the battlefield. My only assumption can be that by "thinking" you have a chance (when in reality you won't resolve anything meaningful vs certain decks) , you are having "fun". When you see the answer to your strategy on the table and can't beat it, you are not having fun....even though the net result is exactly the same.
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@wappla said:
But do you agree it would be nice if they did?
Not enough info to answer. It would be nice if who did what?
"Pitch Dredge is the worst thing to happen to Vintage this decade." - 2015 Vintage Champion Brian Kelly
youtube.com/user/ajfirecracker/videos
twitch.tv/ajfirecracker -
@Thewhitedragon69 The only difference? That's kind of a ridiculous claim. There are other differences, such as the fact that the hate I am complaining about narrows your options to interact, while plenty of decks can and do beat counter-spell based strategies with pure sequencing
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The choices I make in picking a deck, and the choices I make in advocating for a certain design philosophy need not align
But do you agree it would be nice if the choices did align?
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@ajfirecracker And permanent-based hate gives me more options as a deck builder. I have to tweak my deck to account for certain permanents. I can't just add 4x cavern of souls and call it a day. If you run blue yourself, yes, there are times you can out-counter the counters and win a battle through sequencing. But guess what - if you AREN'T playing blue, you can't. You cast a spell, they counter it, you draw a card, they draw 5, rinse, repeat. The only chance you have is laying disruption fast that stops them from grinding you out on the stack. Luckily, Vintage is not all blue-vs-blue matches, but it seems those are the matchups you enjoy, while the others are just unfun.
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@wappla Oh, absolutely. I would prefer to play engaging decks. The very essence of my argument is that it's possible for hate to address a narrow strategy in a way that is engaging to play against, even if the narrow strategy is losing a majority of the time.
There are countless examples of cards that achieve exactly that - Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Karakas (sometimes), Gorilla Shaman, Nature's Claim (against Oath, for example), Pyroblast, Supreme Verdict, and many more.
I don't think you can look at Tormod's Crypt and Pyroblast and honestly conclude that I want to get rid of disruptive cards, or make them bad, or stop designing them. I am saying we should have more of these and less Leyline of the Void and Choke. (Or to be more precise, I am saying that when you design the next Leyline or the next Choke to try and make it more like these and less like those)
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@Thewhitedragon69 said:
@ajfirecracker And permanent-based hate gives me more options as a deck builder. I have to tweak my deck to account for certain permanents. I can't just add 4x cavern of souls and call it a day. If you run blue yourself, yes, there are times you can out-counter the counters and win a battle through sequencing. But guess what - if you AREN'T playing blue, you can't. You cast a spell, they counter it, you draw a card, they draw 5, rinse, repeat. The only chance you have is laying disruption fast that stops them from grinding you out on the stack. Luckily, Vintage is not all blue-vs-blue matches, but it seems those are the matchups you enjoy, while the others are just unfun.
You fail at reading comprehension. I'm sorry, I don't know what else to tell you. I am fine with hate, I am fine with making a space for non-blue decks, what I am asking for is that space to be fun to play (defined in objective terms: to have as many decisions as possible which are not obvious and have a probabilistic connection to a game win)
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Wow, this thread is so much Arguing On The Internet that it makes your head spin. I wanted to pipe up and congratulate those who kept a level head while engaging in this discussion (you know who you are!)
Also, how about some data to go with the Hate Souffle that's being served up here?
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/vintage#onlineLooks like Shops is still king of the roost with Ravager Shops being 24%, Mentor being 14%, and Grixis being 13%. Huh, that's odd... no white hatebears in the top three decks according to Goldfish? As we go down further, we get Storm and Grixis Thieves at 5% and... AHA! There we go, Thalia's Hatemongers are down at 3% of the metagame.*
Truly, Vintage as we know it is broken beyond repair. The sky, indeed, has fallen.
- = This analysis subject to correction by people with better data than me, i.e. So Many Insane Plays.
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@smmenen Actual design is messy. It's hit-and-miss. We have a restricted list because of this. We have cards that see no play (in part) because of this. It's really strange to say "Well, you couldn't know 100% for certain that a card would lead to more meaningful non-obvious decisions, so we better not take that into account when designing cards in any way". That an insanely higher bar than any other design principle has to pass.
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@MaximumCDawg Darnitall! Now I'm going to live the rest of my life knowing I could have chosen Hate_Souffle my name on here, but missed it. Thanks a bunch Max... thanks a bunch.
Brian Kelly Freudian self-analysis of the day:
I like to express the id that a player would feel without the superego of being like, "oh you have to be nice." -
@Topical_Island My deepest condolences for your loss
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@snowydude said:
the cards you use to fight mentor pyromancer and eldrazi are all compltely different from the cards you use to fight thalia containment priest and other bears.
I hear Sulfur Elemental, Dread of Night, etc. etc. are pretty good against both.
sure verdict is good against multiple decks but how many slots are you going to devote to a 4 mana card that you cant always cast and is dead in every other matchup?
What? Of course some sideboard cards are dead in other matchups. Are you running dredge hate, for example? How many decks are those slots useful against? However, you're saying that Supreme Verdict is useful against Mentor, YP, Eldrazi, and hatebears. Isn't that the mark of a good sideboard card, making it easier to board against hatebears?
And you just said:
the cards you use to fight mentor pyromancer and eldrazi are all compltely different from the cards you use to fight thalia containment priest and other bears.
I don't follow your line of thinking if you're saying both of these things simultaneously. Am I taking you out of context?
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I want to go on record saying that @ajfirecracker fundamentally understood a problem in hate and interaction design. Thank you for putting up with this messy thread, i just really cant be bothered.
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@Archae said:
@snowydude said:
the cards you use to fight mentor pyromancer and eldrazi are all compltely different from the cards you use to fight thalia containment priest and other bears.
I hear Sulfur Elemental, Dread of Night, etc. etc. are pretty good against both.
well you heard wrong.
sure verdict is good against multiple decks but how many slots are you going to devote to a 4 mana card that you cant always cast and is dead in every other matchup?
What? Of course some sideboard cards are dead in other matchups. Are you running dredge hate, for example? How many decks are those slots useful against? However, you're saying that Supreme Verdict is useful against Mentor, YP, Eldrazi, and hatebears. Isn't that the mark of a good sideboard card, making it easier to board against hatebears?
well as i i generally play storm i sideboard 0 cards for dredge. partially because they are all dead in every matchup and partially because wishboard.
And you just said:
the cards you use to fight mentor pyromancer and eldrazi are all compltely different from the cards you use to fight thalia containment priest and other bears.
I don't follow your line of thinking if you're saying both of these things simultaneously. Am I taking you out of context?
ahh i spoke poorly there. i intended that spot removal which is strong vs bear style decks is quite poor against token strategies and thoughtsieze on a 4/4. that was poor communication on my part.
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@ajfirecracker said:
@smmenen Actual design is messy. It's hit-and-miss. We have a restricted list because of this. We have cards that see no play (in part) because of this. It's really strange to say "Well, you couldn't know 100% for certain that a card would lead to more meaningful non-obvious decisions, so we better not take that into account when designing cards in any way". That an insanely higher bar than any other design principle has to pass.
Although I disagree with your position and many of your ideas, it is difficult to avoid nitpicking when you make claims of such staggering breadth. The last sentence above is a case in point. It's impossible to know whether you actually mean something less hyperbolic and the error is in formulation or whether your ideas are just badly conceived. I usually take sloppy formulation as a sign of sloppy thinking.
Case in point: I can think of a dozen design principles (top down design, for example) that do not require such information at all. That's because most design principles don't require knowledge of specific Vintage outcomes. I already pointed out that Wizards, by their own admission, do not test cards for Vintage play. At all.
The problem with your counterpoint here isn't that Wizards can't know with 100% certainty whether one card design or an alternative, both aiming at the same target, would both preserve the same degree of meaningful choice and also contribute to the same match win %. The problem is that there is no way of knowing with even 50% certainty, or perhaps any confidence at all.
The problem of the multiplicity of formats underscores, most severely, the problem with your ideas for design. A card might actually maximize meaningful choice in one format, but be destructive to it in another format. What if the card maximizes meaningful choice in Vintage, but is utterly destructive of it in Modern or Standard? How would you resolve that problem if you were a designer? How would you, as a designer, even assign weights to that, let alone to match win %ages across formats?
This is, of course, aside form the theoretical impossibility of what you ask (the most advanced magic theory suggests that win%ages and choices are correlated and explain each other). The practicalities are worse.
Your design ideas aren't operationalizable.
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See self-refutation, above
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I don't see anything logically responsive to those points. Please be specific.
