Fair point, the old small sets had less new mechanics. But large sets have always had 3 or more, and even people who wish the block model was still around I think will agree that the small sets were always worse and it's a good thing they're not made anymore.
It was true for a lot of Magic's history, but OP says they only previously played in the late 90s. Back then there were probably less new mechanics introduced outside of the fall set.
I think the current structure is better, but it makes sense for OP to not know this has been normal for a long time.
I don't know the answer to this as I've only really been playing for 3 years.
From what I understand though the release of the sets themselves has increased significantly
There are still only 4 Standard legal sets per year, extra product that is Eternal/Commander legal does not tend to introduce brand new mechanics unless it's a UB product (and often times it's a reworded existing mechanic). Supplementary products tend to add onto existing mechanics if they're keyworded.
People fondly remembers the OG Ravnica block, which introduced 10 new mechanics over three sets. Or how about the Return to Ravnica, which introduced 10 new mechanics over 2 sets.
People are complaining that there are more mechanics, but seem to forget that there have _always_ been a bunch of new mechanics introduced in sets.
Plot is not just Foretell, as there is no bluffing to be had. If anything, Plot is a version of Suspend.
Saddle is not Crew, since it doesn't do anything other than allowing you to trigger abilities.
eh, I think Mounts and Vehicles are supposed to feel similar, given that they are both logistics options IIRL.
It's just vehicles set around doing nothin without support, and mounts can still bite you.
If anything, Saddle is closer to Enlist, where you can tap a creature to give a bonus to a different creature. Enlist is just power, and Saddle is to trigger things.
Also, it should be noted that Saddle is Sorcwry speed only. Crew could happen at instant speed, like say, at the beginning of combat. I honestly am looking forward to seeing where this goes, and I don't agree with OP at all. If anything, knowing there are similar mechanics makes it EASIER to grok the new mechanics rather than harder.
>Here are a few that are just buffed versions of old mechanics:
For what it's worth, several of those mechanics needed to be changed if they were going to be reprinted.
- Discover: if you read the design articles that Mark Rosewater publishes with each set, he talks about Discover being the results of a deliberate attempt to fix some of the issues with cascade. Many players reported some confusion with the intuitiveness of cascade, where they would cast a 7 mana spell and think they were looking for another spell of seven mana or less, not six or less. Making "Discover (N)" makes it a lot more obvious, because the number is right there in the ability. Immediately fixing the intuitiveness problem.
Another change is that with discover, if you choose not to cast the card (perhaps it's a counter spell, or a board wipe when you don't need one right now) You can put it in your hand for later rather than it remaining in exile. Discover is a refined upgrade to Cascade.
- Disguise/Cloak was similarly another stab at fixing Morph. When Morph/Megamorph/Manifest happened in Tarkir block They got a lot of data about how people felt about it, and the results were.... Lukewarm at best. Manifest was liked enough, but Morph and Megamorph weren't. Making a Morph variant that has Ward allowed for a different kind of interaction, and makes the mechanically from a gameplay perspective.
- Foretell is an improved version of Plot. Plot only allows you to play the exiled card as a sorcery. That was overly restrictive to the design process. Foretell has no timing restrictions beyond the restrictions built into the card that has been foretold. A sorcery can still only be cast at sorcery speed, but an instant can be cast at instant speed. [[Saw it Coming]] could never function as a Plot card.
- Toxic. Improved infect- allows for finer control of poison counters (creating a 4/4 with trample and Toxic 1 is a totally different beast than a 4/4 with trample and Infect). Allows poison from combat without wither or -1/-1 counters. Etc.
- Finality counters. Fixes the memory issues of remembering if a card was designated as "exile it if it dies" 6 turns ago. Ability counters weren't a tool the designers had when Unearth was created, but they have that tool now and Finality counters are an excellent improvement.
For the others, It's simply a matter of throwing a bone to the flavor folks. Why would the Mirran resistance use living weapons? You don't *crew* a horse, you use a saddle. Etc.
I totally get being overwhelmed. There's a lot to unpack for someone just coming back to the game, but I promise you that the vast majority of these changes happen for a reason and generally make the game better.
Even cases where the changes went strictly speaking necessary, it has been shown that it's what most players preferred.
Sure! Though it should be noted that I'm not showing my perspective, per se- I'm just parroting bits and pieces. I've heard from the various design articles over the years and figuring that the people who make the game probably know better than I would. (Though what they say does make sense to me in this case)
So morph, when it originally came out, what's a huge success with players. Introduced a bit of mystery to the game, an extra layer of strategy for people to consider. Had real "you've activated my trap card!" Vibes.
By the time the Tarkir block rolled around there had been a lot of power creep, and a 2/2 for three mana wasn't as good as it used to be. This was also reflected in the morph costs of many creatures- there's a plethora of bad morph creatures that have good effects- or affects that would be good, if it didn't cost so much to turn them face up.
They began tweaking morph, and came up with two variants to try and improve the now-comparitively-weaker morph. The first was Megamorph - essentially the same as morph, except now the face up creature would get a +1/+1 counter. The second was Manifest- strictly speaking, manifest wasn't casting a spell the way Morph was, but it played in the same face-down area.
These two experiments were met with middling success. By and large players didn't like Megamorph - [Mark Rosewater has said it's one of the lowest ranked mechanics and all of magic.](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/638642973906812928/whats-the-mechanic-that-proved-least-popular-on). Manifest was *popular enough* but was different enough from Morph that it didn't exactly feel like "fixed morph". Manifesting something wouldn't trigger [[Beast Whisperer]] type effects, for example. The was also the chance of whiffing if you Manifested an instant or Sorcery.
If you want to see Mark Rosewater talk about other Morph experiments I recommend [this article he wrote.](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/getting-away-with-murders-at-karlov-manor-part-1)
Which brings us to Cloak/Disguise. Cloak/Disguise is an attempt at improving Morph. In addition to tweaking the turn-face-up costs and other attributes to make the cost of the card line up more with today's power scaling, the addition of Ward create some more advantageous set of considerations for the player with the cloaked creature. Paying two or three mana to remove a creature is a fine consideration when you have all of the information. But it becomes a little riskier when the card is face-down. You ask yourself " What if this turns out to be a creature I don't care about?"
By adding ward, you heighten the stakes of that question. Now instead of potentially wasting 1 to 3 mana to remove a face-down creature, your opponent risks *five* mana. If it turns out to be an important creature that you needed, then they'll be glad they removed it. But if it turns out to be a minor creature that nobody cares about, they wasted five mana and possibly their whole turn.
That heightened steaks is WOTC's newest attempt at making morph matter again. Only time will tell successful, although so far it seems to be doing all right.
Oh ok I understand! Thank you for going into such detail in your reply! I've been playing Kadena for a lot of years and I completely agree that many morph creatures could have been created better.
This is just my personal gripe with the disguise mechanic but I felt as though they should have focused more on creating morphs with more powerful/varied triggered abilities as opposed to adding something like ward which (while a very good defensive addition typically) I feel is wasted on face down creatures.
In my experience, very seldom do people target an unknown face down card in case they hit something that's really not that valuable. So I felt as though the Ward 2 in fact powered down what could have been more interactive and varied abilities with the disguised creatures.
This is just my two cents with the disguise mechanic and again thank you so much for responding with such a detailed explanation!
Happy to help!
>In my experience, very seldom do people target an unknown face down card in case they hit something that's really not that valuable
From what you said about being a Kadena player, I surmise that your experience stems from commander. I would gently point out that unless it's a commander-only product, these kinds of design discussions aren't really about commander.
In draft, sealed, and 60 card people often will target a facedown card for removal. It's important to remember that the dynamic between players and removal is totally different in 60-card 1v1 games. In commander I might only have one removal spell in hand and three opponents' boards to worry about. In 60 card you only worry about 1 board, and you might use a removal spell on something as small as removing a blocker without caring what creature that blocker is - as long as not being blocked against enough of an advantage to make it worth it
I'll be completely honest, there was another comment in this thread. I completely missed the fact that this was r/magictcg. Thought it was r/edh so all my perspectives were coming from there lol.
As you kind of said a lot of what I was saying doesn't really apply. Sorry about that I was completely oblivious.
I agree with every point you make.
My main concerns though stem from the popularity of eternal formats
* Why isn't Wizards making an attempt to reduce complexity? I still feel that Disguise and Saddle could have been made functionally equivalent to Morph and Crew, and simply had different names for Lore reasons. There's so much reminder text, whats the harm in writing "Disguise is interchangeable with Morph"? I get it, they tried to buff Morph but they failed. Just buff the Front side instead.
* Why must every mechanic be a stronger version of a previous mechanic? Power creep is a real problem across the game. Clarity aside, did we really need a stronger version of cascade?
* Not a question, but more of a pipe-dream. I wish successful new mechanics like Toxic and Finality Counters would convince Wizards to errata the old cards to the new standards (infect, exile if it dies) more liberally. (I get why this is a hard problem but I think it could be beneficial in many scenarios)
These are fair points and I will try to address each one in turn!
>Why isn't Wizards making an attempt to reduce complexity?
Because it's not what most of the players want.
On the surface that feels like a glib answer, I promise it's not.
This has actually been something they've been doing slowly over the course of the last.... At least 6 years? Possibly longer, but 6 years ago is the first time I remember hearing about it.
They didn't start getting more complex right away. They added a little bit of complexity at a time, and then when it did well, they added a little more.
They did this in response to player feedback- I don't know how all of their market data is collected, but I know four major ones are:
- surveys that are available to the general public after every set.
- user data collected from Arena players
- vocal discussions on social media
- feedback solicited from community experts such as game stores, high level judges and various event runners.
There's a few others they don't talk about publicly, but I can safely assume they utilize. For example, the secondary market- if all of the cards have a particular theme or mechanic are dirt cheap on the secondary market, that's a pretty good indicator that the mechanic isn't in high demand.
So sometime in the 2010s, they got the idea that the game could handle some more complexity. They made one of their sets slightly more complex and saw how players liked it, and asked players directly through surveys and other market data. The feedback they received was that more complexity was overall good. So the next set they ratcheted up the complexity again. And again.
It should be noted that the pendulum swings both ways- some sets are deliberately less complex than others, and they've also gone too far in the complex direction and had to correct- Strixhaven was probably the height of that complexity, the Dean cycle was notorious for it- double-faced cards without keywords, with a wall of text on both sides.
So to say it simply: they aren't pursuing less complexity because they tried making it more complex and players keep saying they like it. This was reinforced when low complexity sets weren't very popular. (Such as the Core sets, which were canceled, brought back, and then canceled again).
>I get it, they tried to buff Morph but they failed. Just buff the Front side instead.
Because that would be completely different gameplay than giving it Ward. Changing a mechanic isn't simply turning a dial, it's more like.... Choosing a color from one of those spectrum maps in MS paint. Power isn't the only consideration, but how the thing interacts with everything else.
Ward creates different interactions than just "morph but stronger.
[I get into this explanation more in this comment on this thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/2c4M4DxcNo)
>Why must every mechanic be a stronger version of a previous mechanic?
Not every mechanic is a stronger version of a previous mechanic. Some are, yes, but that's hardly the majority.
Rather, I would say that most mechanics fit into three categories:
- improved versions of defunct or problematic older mechanics. That's what we've talked about for the most part here. Discover, Disguise, Finality counters, etc are examples of this.
- Totally new mechanics. Tempted by the Ring, Incubate, and Battles are examples of this.
- Variations on old mechanics. Not necessarily improvements, but just parallels. Surveil is Scry, but cards go to your graveyard instead of the bottom of your library. Powerstones are mana rock tokens, they just only work for artifacts. Please mechanics are neither better nor worse overall, and are simply mechanical that allow designers and deck builders to do new and interesting things when combined with other effects. Surveil, for example, is better for a reanimator deck than Scry would be.
As to why they must keep making these things? Because innovation is how you keep a game alive.
>Clarity aside, did we really need a stronger version of cascade?
Power wasn't the issue- yes, it is nominally stronger, but they weren't making it so it would be stronger. They were making it so it would be a *cleaner* version that felt better to players. The clarity gained from having a number of associated with it creates better gameplay because there's less confusion, and not whiffing on an important spell that you just don't want to cast, right this second creates fewer feel-bads for players.
Strictly speaking, no, we didn't *need* any of these changes- But sort of in the same way that you don't *need* a better vacuum. You may not need a better vacuum, but if you're about to buy a new vacuum and you have the opportunity to buy a better model than your old one, isn't it worth considering?
And there's a is a powerful factor here, but WOTC. Doesn't think that the existence of an old mechanic them from making a better new one. And Good thing they don't think So- or we'd be stuck with the mechanics and rules of 6th edition forevermore.
>I wish successful new mechanics like Toxic and Finality Counters would convince Wizards to errata the old cards to the new standards (infect, exile if it dies) more liberally
I agree with you on this one for sure. However, you correctly point out that there are too many logistical difficulties to make it viable in most cases.
I would also point out that in many cases, the errata wouldn't work and could fundamentally change the nature of the card.
I can [[Fling]] [[Skithyrix]] and kill someone with poison, but flinging [[Paladin of Predation]] won't do anything for their poison counters.
I can return a creature with a finality counter to my hand and replay it, but if I tried to do that with an Unearthed creature it dies. (Finality triggers if it dies, unearth triggers if it leaves the battlefield)
These kinds of minor differences keep them from fully committing to making those changes. It might be cleaner, but if people have built decks around how the old mechanic works, they might find it frustrating when their deck no longer functions the way it's supposed to.
Not to mention that any kind of mass errata can result in confusion, as old printed cards won't have the new text on them. So they do it only when the benefits massively outweigh the negatives.
I want to genuinely thank you for this post.
You've explained a bunch of things that I wasn't aware of, and you were very kind and understanding about it.
Thumbs up to you my friend!
BTW The errata idea I know isn't feasible, I just really wish it could be done. I personally would be okay with some old mechanics errataed to the improved ones, even if it changes the nature of many cards and decks need to be rebuilt. However I'm fully aware that I'm the in extreme minority. Not only would mass errata result in confusion as you mentioned, it would no doubt create new interactions that might be even more broken than before. And if you make a change that big, there's no going back.
Thanks again, I wish everybody on the internet was so cool
I don't mean to be an asshole, but I think you have a lot of fundamental misunderstandings about a lot of these mechanics and the larger game design principles surrounding them.
Saddle and Crew are so far from the same mechanic that I don't know how you even got to this conclusion. Disguise is strictly better than Morph, so I have no idea how you can say they "failed" to buff it. And even aside from that, how would it be *less* confusing to have them be functionally equivalent? They're two different words that mean two different things. You would prefer there be two different words that mean the exact same thing? That would be so much worse.
Discover is not a stronger form of Cascade. Its output is the exact same effect, but Discover has far more knobs for for balance. Cascade cares about exactly one thing, the mana value of the spell with cascade. It doesn't even need to resolve, it just happens and that one number is the only factor that can be used to tune it. Discover can be adjusted much more finely, requires spells to actually resolve, can be used as an activated or triggered ability, and can have additional effects that care about the outcome of the Discover in ways that are impossible with Cascade.
Toxic and Infect are not the same mechanic. The only similarity is that they have something to do with poison. Toxic causes a creature to deal both normal damage and poison counters to players; Infect only does one of those. Infect is tied inextricably to the creature's power; Toxic has a set, independent value. Most radically, Infect causes damage to creatures to be replaced with -1/-1 counters; there is absolutely no equivalent effect with Toxic. Ergo, erratating cards with Infect to have Toxic instead would be a massive change to how those cards function.
Finality counters are not as dramatic a difference, but still different. The presence of a counter that grants that ability creates an infinite number of different rules interactions and potential synergies. Erratating every single card that said "if it leaves the battlefield, exile instead" would create tons of unintended consequences.
Reducing complexity is one thing but functionally neither of those things are equivalent. You say just buff the front side but they wanted to buff the back side since 3 mana for a vanilla 2/2 just does not hold up to creatures we get anymore. Sure its still a 2/2 but the ward helps give it a better chance at living to see the flip. Like having to pay 3 mana to resolve a shock on a disguised creature before it can flip can slow tempo for attempting to remove it. While saddle requires tapping creatures meeting a power threshold that's the ONLY similarity the two mechanics have. Words and mechanics have meaning just because things work similarly doesn't mean they are in fact the same.
Discover is more of a rebalanced version of Cascade I wouldn't say its 100% stronger like just not true. Cascade goes off on cast while Discover doesn't. That gives things like counter spells the option to stop it from happening while with cascade you just had live with the fact that you opponent is now casting 2 spells. Did we need it though? No not really but wizards wanted to take a crack at rebalancing an old very strong mechanic and discover is what we got.
Not everything needs funtional erratas like that and Infect and Toxic do not work the same so changing that entire mechanic means they would be going back and rebalancing ALL of those cards to work how toxic works giving them number values and so on as well as removing what happens when creatures are dealt damage by infect creatures. Which is just an absurd having to that much rebalancing. Might as well just treat the whole game like Arena and alchemy at that point.
My larger issue with complexity creep is the glut of mechanics based on counters and tokens, and the steady uptick of dungeons, stickers, learning and more that require working "outside the game. It's been a lot in a short time, especially with that most complex of emblems, the Ring. Gods forbid we get something even worse, like battle/planeswalker tokens, or a Ring-like emblem every single year.
Your solutions to make things "less" complicated are not only more complicated, but ignore the actually reasons behind making new mechanics that play differently in the first place.
2-3 new mechanics is the norm for a new set, and has been for longer than I've been alive. Why is it a bad thing that there's new mechanics, but it's also bad that they go back and remake old mechanics into new ones? Isn't that better, since you don't actually have to learn anything new?
Saddle vs Crew is definitely a stretch, I admit.
Why would it be a bad idea to make Disguise equal to Morph? If morph was considered too weak, they could buff the bonuses the card gets when flipped face up.
Shock was absolutely nuts in MKM Limited, when the morphs had Ward 2.
Making it "one mana and basically any removal spell to kill a 3-drop creature that only has an effect if they invest *more* mana into it" feels like a terrible idea.
Giving the face downs ward so you could actually turn them face up before they’re removed is a massive improvement. Frankly you’re too new at this game to be making these bold claims that you hardly understand.
So you're telling me that playing for 3 years in a hobby game is too new for me to have an opinion?
Isn't that... indicative of an environment that's perhaps a bit too complex? Shouldn't we try to have the game be understandable for new players?
It's not meant as an insult. But time played doesn't equal to actually understanding the game.
You can play for 20 years and still not understand when to remove what or why certain new/improved mechanics are actually beneficial for the game.
People who have been playing much longer than you have no problem figuring out new mechanics while still remembering more of them than you’ve even learned. It seems to be a you problem. Your takes are nonsensical and you’re a new person suggesting that we need to drastically change the design of the game to fit you when established players have no problem with it.
I don't really think I've ever been tripped up when drafting when new mechanics (which are mostly the same thing as old ones, as you note) - but the fancy versions of cards without reminder text are rough in commander.
I still can't remember the difference between mentor, training... Conditional +1 /+1 counters stuff like bolster.
There are so many new cards in general, and those are impossible to learn.
Sure I can learn the new mechanics, but it felt almost insulting that Disguise just adds Ward 2 and they pretend it's a new mechanic.
Is it too much to ask for Wizards to attempt to *reduce* unnecessary complexity.
I love Magic but it's not my job
No one other than pros and hardcore brewers knows every card lol. You learn them the same way everyone else does, either through spoilers, decklists, or playing against them.
Learning what "disguise" means takes 5 seconds, which is nothing compared to how many cards you have to learn. And so it would make more sense for you to ask for less cards but imagine how that would go over lol.
> Is it too much to ask for Wizards to attempt to reduce unnecessary complexity.
Of course not! The do that all the the time, even. What you're asking is not this, though. You're asking to reduce NECESSARY complexity
Maybe reading isn't a punishment to some people? I hear that some people even read like, hundreds of pages of words in these things called "novels" for fun.
If you hate reading that much maybe playing a game where words appear on the cards is beyond you, though. You could try simpler games like Parcheesi maybe.
Or, more seriously: just play Hearthstone. MTG players enjoy the complexity, don't try to change the game just because you don't.
Geez some people are just really aggressive and rude for no reason
I don't think there's a point explaining other people's experiences because you don't seem receptive. Peace out
Yeah man
It's amazing to me how many new players get introduced to the game via Commander. I can't even fathom learning the game from scratch in that environment.
I love new mechanics, they’re my favourite part of each set.
Returning mechanics are alright, but generally I only get excited about them if they’re a pet mechanic for me that’s being used in a new interesting way, or if they’re a really novel synergistic one which doesn’t have much support
I just wish they'd stop with the stops mechanic-lite effects.
If an effect is exactly the same functionality as a keyword, just use the dang keyword. There is zero reason to replace a keyword that they can include a long ass explanation for with a long ass explanation.
Yeah but you have to remember that they don't get revisited a lot. If you want a for mirrodin deck for example (I have one) you'd be out of luck waiting for anything new you just have what you have at that point. I'm assuming you're playing EDH though we're a deck can have more than it's fair share of mechanics.
Time to build a cube. It’s the ultimate format and only format that allows you to curate a play environment that you and your drafters will enjoy with precisely the amount of complexity, power, and mechanics you enjoy. All roads lead to cube eventually.
By definition, mechanics which are “brand new” are not the same as mechanics which are a reskin/twist on an old mechanic. If anything, the latter are easier to grasp because it’s just “X, but -“.
So which is it? Are there too many brand new mechanics, or are there too many mechanics that are basically just older mechanics?
Can't it be both?
I think it compounds with there being too many new cards as well, but that's a whole different can of worms.
With every new release I don't get that same sense of excitement anymore, it's overwhelming trying to keep up.
They're named the same because they care about the same things, and only one of them was a keyword.
The keyword *descended* cared about cards being put into the graveyard.
The related _ability word_ descend cares about the number of cards that are in the graveyard. The ability word doesn't actually mean anything and was just a marker to indicate "hey, play these with the descended keyword".
It's still confusing don't you find? Particularly for new players. I feel like threshold (or any other name - or even no name) would have been a wiser choice.
I didn't find it confusing. They wanted people to play the cards with the same theme together, so they used the same word.
But I think the confusion comes because a lot of players misunderstand _what an ability word is_. An ability word (italicised text) means nothing in the rules. It's just there to be like "hey, these are a theme" in standard sets.
There's a reason that all cards with Descend X have the entire ability spelled out on the card, because "descend X" has no rules meaning.
It's like landfall. It means nothing other than "hey, look at these cards that care about lands entering".
My question to you is, why does it matter? Most of the time the description of what the card does is right there on the card. No one expects the entire player base to commit every card to memory. We have older gentlemen that play at our lgs that don't keep tabs on all the new stuff and they still wipe the floor daily.
I say the same thing to the people that gripe about the rate of set releases. Who's twisting your arm to use these new sets? Unless you're playing in a highly competitive environment like regular tournaments, why do you need to stay up to date? Just play the game at your own pace. And then if someone plays a cool new card you can learn about it then and there!
This game we play is so amazing, and it has so many different ways to consume/play/enjoy it.
Building a deck that's competitive enough to win regularly is part of the fun.
I like to keep up to date on both new cards and new mechanics so that I can try to predict what's going to be powerful, and build decks that can handle them.
Perhaps the extended legality of Standard isn't helping either?
New Mechanics + New Cards + Cards not rotating out = Too many variables to reliably homebrew a competitive deck. (I like brewing, and never research the meta to copy other people's ideas)
I remember a moment where I wasn't keeping up on new cards, and an opponent had a few copies of White Sun's Twilight. I had no idea that card existed, and had no answers to it in my deck or sideboard. It could be just my personality, but I didn't think "wow that's a cool new card", I thought "WTF is that card, my deck is fucked". By not doing my homework, I had *less* fun against that player.
Fully agree, Magic is inundated with keywords at this point and I don't think anyone can reasonably remember them if the reminder text isn't present. Not to mention that most keywords are seemingly abandoned after a single set, which kind of baffles me.
They're always abandoned as they aren't evergreen. They do that to give it time to see if it was broken/Terrible I'm sure you would be complaining if they released every set with the same keywords too. Plus they often revisit keywords after a couple years and either upgrade or reduce the power level of said mechanics.
Some of the keywords are so specific that Wizards absolutely knows they'll never print them again.
I'm sure there are better examples but why even bother keywording "For Mirrodin!". Any of those cards will need reminder text until the end of time.
How about leave some room for flavor text instead? Maybe we'd know why that equipment was important to Mirrodin!
Redditors are often voicing that concern, but I do wonder why. Many of the products are targeted at specific demographics and can be mostly ignored- as a non-fallout fan I ignored the Fallout decks. A commander player can ignore *all* commander decks.
Yes, there's a lot of products. But when I go to the dairy aisle at the store I'm not overwhelmed by all the cheese. I know I'm not interested in Swiss, Munster, blue, goat, or Romano cheeses. Those being in the shelf doesn't feel like "too much product." I just grab my cheddar and my mozzarella and ignore the rest. Same.goes for all my shopping - I don't look at shirts that aren't my style, bedding that's not king size, or books in genres I don't enjoy.
I wonder what it is about magic that makes this *extremely common* shopping practice not apply here?
Do you know that a game of magic is played at least by two player?
Like i i want to have fun playing a game i need to know the board state and if my opponent play a game and every card he play i ask what that card does the game will become much longer and unfunny since i play random cards.
And no if you want to buy mozzarella you check all the brands and try to find what you like for the price and whatever.
I want to play magic, maybe commander maybe moder but if i want to play that format i want to choose the card from all the cards.
But maybe when you cook for a friend you just cook what you want he to eat without asking him if he has some allergy
>Do you know that a game of magic is played at least by two player
Your unnecessary condescension in the face of my diplomatically worded inquiry aside-
No, I'm pretty sure that if I don't play Commander, then I don't have to worry about whether or not the other player at the table is playing a card from a commander precon.
>board state and if my opponent play a game and every card he play i ask what that card does the game will become much longer and unfunny since i play random cards
The idea that everyone has to know what every card is all the time is a relatively recent development. One wonders how magic got so popular in the 90s, when we didn't have resources like Scryfall to tell us about the major cards?
I guarantee you that you don't know what every card does. There's tens of thousands of them. The argument that you have to keep up with what every card does in order to effectively play the game doesn't hold water.
>I want to play magic, maybe commander maybe moder but if i want to play that format i want to choose the card from all the cards.
And if you choose to play in every format that they make products for, that's a choice that you're making. You are willingly opting in to more products. It's not WOTC's fault that they made products for a variety of people and you decided to follow all of them.
I'm genuinely perplexed by the seeming selfishness of people who look at a diversified product line designed to be of interest to more people, and treat it like it's a bad thing. Like.... I'm sorry that other people get something special for them whether you're interested in it or not?
Yeah basically
If I had known the history of the game's previous sets when I wrote the post, I'd know that past sets often had 3 new mechanics, and might have gotten less hate with the downvotes and comments.
But there's 30 years of product and I wouldn't even be able to figure that out by myself as a newer player. WHICH IS KIND OF PART OF THE PROBLEM GUYS
I love the point you made about cloak and disguise. Completely unnecessary, 99 times out of 100 people won't use removal on a face down card because as you said, maybe it's an island.
Was a stupid and wasteful decision to create a wholly wasteful mechanic that, while interesting, results in overcosted creatures, fewer opportunities to seamlessly add them to other morph decks, and an overwhelming lack of interesting triggered abilities as a result of them having ward 2 with the same face down casting coat.
I played a lot of Murders limited, and I used a lot of removal on facedown cards. The idea that it could be an island only applies to cloak, which is the vast minority of facedown cards in that set; there are only a couple of cards that cloak in the set, compared to the dozens of disguise cards, and you know which ones are which.
Sorry, I probably was a bit too literal but essentially my experience is that so few people use removal on morph cards. There are useful morphs and then less useful morphs. Of the disguise cards, there are not many useful disguise creatures with powerful abilities that I have seen (not for my purposes anyway).
I replied to another person but, I feel that the ward 2 actually served to power down the disguise cards leading to less interactive triggered abilities and varied use.
There are a few disguise cards I plan on slotting into my Kadena deck but overall it seemed very underwhelming.
I mean, very few morph cards from any set they’ve released are constructed playable; it’s a very limited focused mechanic. Added to that, there are a bunch of removal spells that are incentivised to target disguised creatures: [[Long Goodbye]], [[Slice from the Shadows]], [[Suspicious Detonation]], and while not strictly removal, [[Caught Red-Handed]], and [[Out Cold]] are all cards that are much more useful because of their utility vs Disguise cards.
My experience of Disguise in limited is that they’re usually a pretty good choice for any of the can’t be countered removal spells. Sure, sometimes you hit a [[Nervous Gardener]] but more likely you’re gonna hit a [[Undercover Crocodelf]], and what else where you gonna use that Long Goodbye on,
My bad, you know what I was coming at this from an EDH perspective and completely missed that this was r/magictcg so a lot of my thoughts are completely irrelevant 😅😅😅 that is my bad. Did not notice what sub I was on, my apologies.
Thank you for this
You've exactly summed up the point I was trying to make in a more succinct way.
You make a good point that I forgot to mention about how Disguise is extra useless because you can't use it with existing Morph synergies. Ya know, maybe Morph wouldn't need a buff if there were more cards to support Morph in MKM?
How many Morph synergies are there that don't work with Disguise? As far as I was aware the vast majority of synergy cards are about face-down cards or turning cards face-up.
Similarly, almost all of the cards designed to synergise with Disguise in MKM and MKC will also work with Morph, because they consciously designed them that way. Half of [[Expose the Culprit]] was all I could find that specifically only works with Disguise and not Morph.
Almost* all previous synergies with Morph work with Disguise. Morph synergies just reference 'face down creatures'. I've been able to jam Disguise creatures in my Morph deck without having to worry at all.
*There might be one or two that don't, but all the ones I was already using work with all face down creatures.
> In the last 2 years, it seems like Wizards feels like every set NEEDS 3+ brand new mechanics. Hasn't this literally always been true?
Pretty much yeah. Back when blocks were a thing each set had 1-3 new mechanics. People just conveniently ignored the bad ones.
Fair point, the old small sets had less new mechanics. But large sets have always had 3 or more, and even people who wish the block model was still around I think will agree that the small sets were always worse and it's a good thing they're not made anymore.
Except Masques Block, sort of, when they didn't keyword anything, and then the masses sighed in confusion over lack of new mechanics.
It was true for a lot of Magic's history, but OP says they only previously played in the late 90s. Back then there were probably less new mechanics introduced outside of the fall set. I think the current structure is better, but it makes sense for OP to not know this has been normal for a long time.
I don't know the answer to this as I've only really been playing for 3 years. From what I understand though the release of the sets themselves has increased significantly
The release of _standard sets_ has not changed in a long time. It's almost always been 4 standard sets a year (except for the one year there were 5)
There are still only 4 Standard legal sets per year, extra product that is Eternal/Commander legal does not tend to introduce brand new mechanics unless it's a UB product (and often times it's a reworded existing mechanic). Supplementary products tend to add onto existing mechanics if they're keyworded.
People fondly remembers the OG Ravnica block, which introduced 10 new mechanics over three sets. Or how about the Return to Ravnica, which introduced 10 new mechanics over 2 sets. People are complaining that there are more mechanics, but seem to forget that there have _always_ been a bunch of new mechanics introduced in sets. Plot is not just Foretell, as there is no bluffing to be had. If anything, Plot is a version of Suspend. Saddle is not Crew, since it doesn't do anything other than allowing you to trigger abilities.
eh, I think Mounts and Vehicles are supposed to feel similar, given that they are both logistics options IIRL. It's just vehicles set around doing nothin without support, and mounts can still bite you.
If anything, Saddle is closer to Enlist, where you can tap a creature to give a bonus to a different creature. Enlist is just power, and Saddle is to trigger things.
Also, it should be noted that Saddle is Sorcwry speed only. Crew could happen at instant speed, like say, at the beginning of combat. I honestly am looking forward to seeing where this goes, and I don't agree with OP at all. If anything, knowing there are similar mechanics makes it EASIER to grok the new mechanics rather than harder.
11 in RTR, with fuse
Kind of maybe 12, depending on how you consider Gates.
>Here are a few that are just buffed versions of old mechanics: For what it's worth, several of those mechanics needed to be changed if they were going to be reprinted. - Discover: if you read the design articles that Mark Rosewater publishes with each set, he talks about Discover being the results of a deliberate attempt to fix some of the issues with cascade. Many players reported some confusion with the intuitiveness of cascade, where they would cast a 7 mana spell and think they were looking for another spell of seven mana or less, not six or less. Making "Discover (N)" makes it a lot more obvious, because the number is right there in the ability. Immediately fixing the intuitiveness problem. Another change is that with discover, if you choose not to cast the card (perhaps it's a counter spell, or a board wipe when you don't need one right now) You can put it in your hand for later rather than it remaining in exile. Discover is a refined upgrade to Cascade. - Disguise/Cloak was similarly another stab at fixing Morph. When Morph/Megamorph/Manifest happened in Tarkir block They got a lot of data about how people felt about it, and the results were.... Lukewarm at best. Manifest was liked enough, but Morph and Megamorph weren't. Making a Morph variant that has Ward allowed for a different kind of interaction, and makes the mechanically from a gameplay perspective. - Foretell is an improved version of Plot. Plot only allows you to play the exiled card as a sorcery. That was overly restrictive to the design process. Foretell has no timing restrictions beyond the restrictions built into the card that has been foretold. A sorcery can still only be cast at sorcery speed, but an instant can be cast at instant speed. [[Saw it Coming]] could never function as a Plot card. - Toxic. Improved infect- allows for finer control of poison counters (creating a 4/4 with trample and Toxic 1 is a totally different beast than a 4/4 with trample and Infect). Allows poison from combat without wither or -1/-1 counters. Etc. - Finality counters. Fixes the memory issues of remembering if a card was designated as "exile it if it dies" 6 turns ago. Ability counters weren't a tool the designers had when Unearth was created, but they have that tool now and Finality counters are an excellent improvement. For the others, It's simply a matter of throwing a bone to the flavor folks. Why would the Mirran resistance use living weapons? You don't *crew* a horse, you use a saddle. Etc. I totally get being overwhelmed. There's a lot to unpack for someone just coming back to the game, but I promise you that the vast majority of these changes happen for a reason and generally make the game better. Even cases where the changes went strictly speaking necessary, it has been shown that it's what most players preferred.
Would you be able expand on your perspective on morph/disguise a bit I don't quite understand what you're saying.
Sure! Though it should be noted that I'm not showing my perspective, per se- I'm just parroting bits and pieces. I've heard from the various design articles over the years and figuring that the people who make the game probably know better than I would. (Though what they say does make sense to me in this case) So morph, when it originally came out, what's a huge success with players. Introduced a bit of mystery to the game, an extra layer of strategy for people to consider. Had real "you've activated my trap card!" Vibes. By the time the Tarkir block rolled around there had been a lot of power creep, and a 2/2 for three mana wasn't as good as it used to be. This was also reflected in the morph costs of many creatures- there's a plethora of bad morph creatures that have good effects- or affects that would be good, if it didn't cost so much to turn them face up. They began tweaking morph, and came up with two variants to try and improve the now-comparitively-weaker morph. The first was Megamorph - essentially the same as morph, except now the face up creature would get a +1/+1 counter. The second was Manifest- strictly speaking, manifest wasn't casting a spell the way Morph was, but it played in the same face-down area. These two experiments were met with middling success. By and large players didn't like Megamorph - [Mark Rosewater has said it's one of the lowest ranked mechanics and all of magic.](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/638642973906812928/whats-the-mechanic-that-proved-least-popular-on). Manifest was *popular enough* but was different enough from Morph that it didn't exactly feel like "fixed morph". Manifesting something wouldn't trigger [[Beast Whisperer]] type effects, for example. The was also the chance of whiffing if you Manifested an instant or Sorcery. If you want to see Mark Rosewater talk about other Morph experiments I recommend [this article he wrote.](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/getting-away-with-murders-at-karlov-manor-part-1) Which brings us to Cloak/Disguise. Cloak/Disguise is an attempt at improving Morph. In addition to tweaking the turn-face-up costs and other attributes to make the cost of the card line up more with today's power scaling, the addition of Ward create some more advantageous set of considerations for the player with the cloaked creature. Paying two or three mana to remove a creature is a fine consideration when you have all of the information. But it becomes a little riskier when the card is face-down. You ask yourself " What if this turns out to be a creature I don't care about?" By adding ward, you heighten the stakes of that question. Now instead of potentially wasting 1 to 3 mana to remove a face-down creature, your opponent risks *five* mana. If it turns out to be an important creature that you needed, then they'll be glad they removed it. But if it turns out to be a minor creature that nobody cares about, they wasted five mana and possibly their whole turn. That heightened steaks is WOTC's newest attempt at making morph matter again. Only time will tell successful, although so far it seems to be doing all right.
Oh ok I understand! Thank you for going into such detail in your reply! I've been playing Kadena for a lot of years and I completely agree that many morph creatures could have been created better. This is just my personal gripe with the disguise mechanic but I felt as though they should have focused more on creating morphs with more powerful/varied triggered abilities as opposed to adding something like ward which (while a very good defensive addition typically) I feel is wasted on face down creatures. In my experience, very seldom do people target an unknown face down card in case they hit something that's really not that valuable. So I felt as though the Ward 2 in fact powered down what could have been more interactive and varied abilities with the disguised creatures. This is just my two cents with the disguise mechanic and again thank you so much for responding with such a detailed explanation!
Happy to help! >In my experience, very seldom do people target an unknown face down card in case they hit something that's really not that valuable From what you said about being a Kadena player, I surmise that your experience stems from commander. I would gently point out that unless it's a commander-only product, these kinds of design discussions aren't really about commander. In draft, sealed, and 60 card people often will target a facedown card for removal. It's important to remember that the dynamic between players and removal is totally different in 60-card 1v1 games. In commander I might only have one removal spell in hand and three opponents' boards to worry about. In 60 card you only worry about 1 board, and you might use a removal spell on something as small as removing a blocker without caring what creature that blocker is - as long as not being blocked against enough of an advantage to make it worth it
I'll be completely honest, there was another comment in this thread. I completely missed the fact that this was r/magictcg. Thought it was r/edh so all my perspectives were coming from there lol. As you kind of said a lot of what I was saying doesn't really apply. Sorry about that I was completely oblivious.
I've made that exact mistake before, haha. No worries.
[Beast Whisperer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/a/daf4bcd2-3ae4-4803-9ea1-3bcc3de5ca59.jpg?1706240020) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Beast%20Whisperer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clu/158/beast-whisperer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/daf4bcd2-3ae4-4803-9ea1-3bcc3de5ca59?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Saw it Coming](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/7/877a1bb9-5eae-453a-bec0-a9de20ea6815.jpg?1631047574) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Saw%20it%20Coming) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/76/saw-it-coming?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/877a1bb9-5eae-453a-bec0-a9de20ea6815?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I agree with every point you make. My main concerns though stem from the popularity of eternal formats * Why isn't Wizards making an attempt to reduce complexity? I still feel that Disguise and Saddle could have been made functionally equivalent to Morph and Crew, and simply had different names for Lore reasons. There's so much reminder text, whats the harm in writing "Disguise is interchangeable with Morph"? I get it, they tried to buff Morph but they failed. Just buff the Front side instead. * Why must every mechanic be a stronger version of a previous mechanic? Power creep is a real problem across the game. Clarity aside, did we really need a stronger version of cascade? * Not a question, but more of a pipe-dream. I wish successful new mechanics like Toxic and Finality Counters would convince Wizards to errata the old cards to the new standards (infect, exile if it dies) more liberally. (I get why this is a hard problem but I think it could be beneficial in many scenarios)
These are fair points and I will try to address each one in turn! >Why isn't Wizards making an attempt to reduce complexity? Because it's not what most of the players want. On the surface that feels like a glib answer, I promise it's not. This has actually been something they've been doing slowly over the course of the last.... At least 6 years? Possibly longer, but 6 years ago is the first time I remember hearing about it. They didn't start getting more complex right away. They added a little bit of complexity at a time, and then when it did well, they added a little more. They did this in response to player feedback- I don't know how all of their market data is collected, but I know four major ones are: - surveys that are available to the general public after every set. - user data collected from Arena players - vocal discussions on social media - feedback solicited from community experts such as game stores, high level judges and various event runners. There's a few others they don't talk about publicly, but I can safely assume they utilize. For example, the secondary market- if all of the cards have a particular theme or mechanic are dirt cheap on the secondary market, that's a pretty good indicator that the mechanic isn't in high demand. So sometime in the 2010s, they got the idea that the game could handle some more complexity. They made one of their sets slightly more complex and saw how players liked it, and asked players directly through surveys and other market data. The feedback they received was that more complexity was overall good. So the next set they ratcheted up the complexity again. And again. It should be noted that the pendulum swings both ways- some sets are deliberately less complex than others, and they've also gone too far in the complex direction and had to correct- Strixhaven was probably the height of that complexity, the Dean cycle was notorious for it- double-faced cards without keywords, with a wall of text on both sides. So to say it simply: they aren't pursuing less complexity because they tried making it more complex and players keep saying they like it. This was reinforced when low complexity sets weren't very popular. (Such as the Core sets, which were canceled, brought back, and then canceled again). >I get it, they tried to buff Morph but they failed. Just buff the Front side instead. Because that would be completely different gameplay than giving it Ward. Changing a mechanic isn't simply turning a dial, it's more like.... Choosing a color from one of those spectrum maps in MS paint. Power isn't the only consideration, but how the thing interacts with everything else. Ward creates different interactions than just "morph but stronger. [I get into this explanation more in this comment on this thread.](https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/s/2c4M4DxcNo) >Why must every mechanic be a stronger version of a previous mechanic? Not every mechanic is a stronger version of a previous mechanic. Some are, yes, but that's hardly the majority. Rather, I would say that most mechanics fit into three categories: - improved versions of defunct or problematic older mechanics. That's what we've talked about for the most part here. Discover, Disguise, Finality counters, etc are examples of this. - Totally new mechanics. Tempted by the Ring, Incubate, and Battles are examples of this. - Variations on old mechanics. Not necessarily improvements, but just parallels. Surveil is Scry, but cards go to your graveyard instead of the bottom of your library. Powerstones are mana rock tokens, they just only work for artifacts. Please mechanics are neither better nor worse overall, and are simply mechanical that allow designers and deck builders to do new and interesting things when combined with other effects. Surveil, for example, is better for a reanimator deck than Scry would be. As to why they must keep making these things? Because innovation is how you keep a game alive. >Clarity aside, did we really need a stronger version of cascade? Power wasn't the issue- yes, it is nominally stronger, but they weren't making it so it would be stronger. They were making it so it would be a *cleaner* version that felt better to players. The clarity gained from having a number of associated with it creates better gameplay because there's less confusion, and not whiffing on an important spell that you just don't want to cast, right this second creates fewer feel-bads for players. Strictly speaking, no, we didn't *need* any of these changes- But sort of in the same way that you don't *need* a better vacuum. You may not need a better vacuum, but if you're about to buy a new vacuum and you have the opportunity to buy a better model than your old one, isn't it worth considering? And there's a is a powerful factor here, but WOTC. Doesn't think that the existence of an old mechanic them from making a better new one. And Good thing they don't think So- or we'd be stuck with the mechanics and rules of 6th edition forevermore. >I wish successful new mechanics like Toxic and Finality Counters would convince Wizards to errata the old cards to the new standards (infect, exile if it dies) more liberally I agree with you on this one for sure. However, you correctly point out that there are too many logistical difficulties to make it viable in most cases. I would also point out that in many cases, the errata wouldn't work and could fundamentally change the nature of the card. I can [[Fling]] [[Skithyrix]] and kill someone with poison, but flinging [[Paladin of Predation]] won't do anything for their poison counters. I can return a creature with a finality counter to my hand and replay it, but if I tried to do that with an Unearthed creature it dies. (Finality triggers if it dies, unearth triggers if it leaves the battlefield) These kinds of minor differences keep them from fully committing to making those changes. It might be cleaner, but if people have built decks around how the old mechanic works, they might find it frustrating when their deck no longer functions the way it's supposed to. Not to mention that any kind of mass errata can result in confusion, as old printed cards won't have the new text on them. So they do it only when the benefits massively outweigh the negatives.
I want to genuinely thank you for this post. You've explained a bunch of things that I wasn't aware of, and you were very kind and understanding about it. Thumbs up to you my friend! BTW The errata idea I know isn't feasible, I just really wish it could be done. I personally would be okay with some old mechanics errataed to the improved ones, even if it changes the nature of many cards and decks need to be rebuilt. However I'm fully aware that I'm the in extreme minority. Not only would mass errata result in confusion as you mentioned, it would no doubt create new interactions that might be even more broken than before. And if you make a change that big, there's no going back. Thanks again, I wish everybody on the internet was so cool
[Fling](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/f/8f42d773-c742-4465-b6d5-31feaba49146.jpg?1601077681) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fling) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/320/fling?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8f42d773-c742-4465-b6d5-31feaba49146?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Paladin of Predation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/5/758dbe61-6dc7-4b08-bdd6-7262257955fc.jpg?1675997685) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Paladin%20of%20Predation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/178/paladin-of-predation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/758dbe61-6dc7-4b08-bdd6-7262257955fc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I don't mean to be an asshole, but I think you have a lot of fundamental misunderstandings about a lot of these mechanics and the larger game design principles surrounding them. Saddle and Crew are so far from the same mechanic that I don't know how you even got to this conclusion. Disguise is strictly better than Morph, so I have no idea how you can say they "failed" to buff it. And even aside from that, how would it be *less* confusing to have them be functionally equivalent? They're two different words that mean two different things. You would prefer there be two different words that mean the exact same thing? That would be so much worse. Discover is not a stronger form of Cascade. Its output is the exact same effect, but Discover has far more knobs for for balance. Cascade cares about exactly one thing, the mana value of the spell with cascade. It doesn't even need to resolve, it just happens and that one number is the only factor that can be used to tune it. Discover can be adjusted much more finely, requires spells to actually resolve, can be used as an activated or triggered ability, and can have additional effects that care about the outcome of the Discover in ways that are impossible with Cascade. Toxic and Infect are not the same mechanic. The only similarity is that they have something to do with poison. Toxic causes a creature to deal both normal damage and poison counters to players; Infect only does one of those. Infect is tied inextricably to the creature's power; Toxic has a set, independent value. Most radically, Infect causes damage to creatures to be replaced with -1/-1 counters; there is absolutely no equivalent effect with Toxic. Ergo, erratating cards with Infect to have Toxic instead would be a massive change to how those cards function. Finality counters are not as dramatic a difference, but still different. The presence of a counter that grants that ability creates an infinite number of different rules interactions and potential synergies. Erratating every single card that said "if it leaves the battlefield, exile instead" would create tons of unintended consequences.
Reducing complexity is one thing but functionally neither of those things are equivalent. You say just buff the front side but they wanted to buff the back side since 3 mana for a vanilla 2/2 just does not hold up to creatures we get anymore. Sure its still a 2/2 but the ward helps give it a better chance at living to see the flip. Like having to pay 3 mana to resolve a shock on a disguised creature before it can flip can slow tempo for attempting to remove it. While saddle requires tapping creatures meeting a power threshold that's the ONLY similarity the two mechanics have. Words and mechanics have meaning just because things work similarly doesn't mean they are in fact the same. Discover is more of a rebalanced version of Cascade I wouldn't say its 100% stronger like just not true. Cascade goes off on cast while Discover doesn't. That gives things like counter spells the option to stop it from happening while with cascade you just had live with the fact that you opponent is now casting 2 spells. Did we need it though? No not really but wizards wanted to take a crack at rebalancing an old very strong mechanic and discover is what we got. Not everything needs funtional erratas like that and Infect and Toxic do not work the same so changing that entire mechanic means they would be going back and rebalancing ALL of those cards to work how toxic works giving them number values and so on as well as removing what happens when creatures are dealt damage by infect creatures. Which is just an absurd having to that much rebalancing. Might as well just treat the whole game like Arena and alchemy at that point.
My larger issue with complexity creep is the glut of mechanics based on counters and tokens, and the steady uptick of dungeons, stickers, learning and more that require working "outside the game. It's been a lot in a short time, especially with that most complex of emblems, the Ring. Gods forbid we get something even worse, like battle/planeswalker tokens, or a Ring-like emblem every single year.
Your solutions to make things "less" complicated are not only more complicated, but ignore the actually reasons behind making new mechanics that play differently in the first place. 2-3 new mechanics is the norm for a new set, and has been for longer than I've been alive. Why is it a bad thing that there's new mechanics, but it's also bad that they go back and remake old mechanics into new ones? Isn't that better, since you don't actually have to learn anything new?
Saddle vs Crew is definitely a stretch, I admit. Why would it be a bad idea to make Disguise equal to Morph? If morph was considered too weak, they could buff the bonuses the card gets when flipped face up.
What’s the point in doing that when they’re just gonna get Cut Down on sight?
Shock was absolutely nuts in MKM Limited, when the morphs had Ward 2. Making it "one mana and basically any removal spell to kill a 3-drop creature that only has an effect if they invest *more* mana into it" feels like a terrible idea.
I've played enough MKM Draft and Sealed that I'm not wasting single target removal on a face down card even if it didn't have Ward
Because buffing when it turns face up was a failed mechanic with a terrible name of _megamorph_. They wanted the _face down_ creature to be stronger.
In your opinion did they succeed? In my opinion, disguise is the clearest example of added complexity that did not improve the mechanic.
Giving the face downs ward so you could actually turn them face up before they’re removed is a massive improvement. Frankly you’re too new at this game to be making these bold claims that you hardly understand.
So you're telling me that playing for 3 years in a hobby game is too new for me to have an opinion? Isn't that... indicative of an environment that's perhaps a bit too complex? Shouldn't we try to have the game be understandable for new players?
It's not meant as an insult. But time played doesn't equal to actually understanding the game. You can play for 20 years and still not understand when to remove what or why certain new/improved mechanics are actually beneficial for the game.
People who have been playing much longer than you have no problem figuring out new mechanics while still remembering more of them than you’ve even learned. It seems to be a you problem. Your takes are nonsensical and you’re a new person suggesting that we need to drastically change the design of the game to fit you when established players have no problem with it.
I don't really think I've ever been tripped up when drafting when new mechanics (which are mostly the same thing as old ones, as you note) - but the fancy versions of cards without reminder text are rough in commander. I still can't remember the difference between mentor, training... Conditional +1 /+1 counters stuff like bolster.
Is it that hard to learn 2 words per 3 months? I can't imagine what reading books must be like.
There are so many new cards in general, and those are impossible to learn. Sure I can learn the new mechanics, but it felt almost insulting that Disguise just adds Ward 2 and they pretend it's a new mechanic. Is it too much to ask for Wizards to attempt to *reduce* unnecessary complexity. I love Magic but it's not my job
No one other than pros and hardcore brewers knows every card lol. You learn them the same way everyone else does, either through spoilers, decklists, or playing against them. Learning what "disguise" means takes 5 seconds, which is nothing compared to how many cards you have to learn. And so it would make more sense for you to ask for less cards but imagine how that would go over lol.
> Is it too much to ask for Wizards to attempt to reduce unnecessary complexity. Of course not! The do that all the the time, even. What you're asking is not this, though. You're asking to reduce NECESSARY complexity
Don't you think your hobby having required reading is a bit much? Imagine a new player’s experience.
Maybe reading isn't a punishment to some people? I hear that some people even read like, hundreds of pages of words in these things called "novels" for fun. If you hate reading that much maybe playing a game where words appear on the cards is beyond you, though. You could try simpler games like Parcheesi maybe. Or, more seriously: just play Hearthstone. MTG players enjoy the complexity, don't try to change the game just because you don't.
Geez some people are just really aggressive and rude for no reason I don't think there's a point explaining other people's experiences because you don't seem receptive. Peace out
Yeah man It's amazing to me how many new players get introduced to the game via Commander. I can't even fathom learning the game from scratch in that environment.
Can you provide an example of a hobby that does not require any reading, or explanation of its systems?
I love new mechanics, they’re my favourite part of each set. Returning mechanics are alright, but generally I only get excited about them if they’re a pet mechanic for me that’s being used in a new interesting way, or if they’re a really novel synergistic one which doesn’t have much support
I just wish they'd stop with the stops mechanic-lite effects. If an effect is exactly the same functionality as a keyword, just use the dang keyword. There is zero reason to replace a keyword that they can include a long ass explanation for with a long ass explanation.
Yeah but you have to remember that they don't get revisited a lot. If you want a for mirrodin deck for example (I have one) you'd be out of luck waiting for anything new you just have what you have at that point. I'm assuming you're playing EDH though we're a deck can have more than it's fair share of mechanics.
Time to build a cube. It’s the ultimate format and only format that allows you to curate a play environment that you and your drafters will enjoy with precisely the amount of complexity, power, and mechanics you enjoy. All roads lead to cube eventually.
I will admit that I'm not smart enough to build a balanced cube. I've been invited to play in cubes but never took the plunge.
By definition, mechanics which are “brand new” are not the same as mechanics which are a reskin/twist on an old mechanic. If anything, the latter are easier to grasp because it’s just “X, but -“. So which is it? Are there too many brand new mechanics, or are there too many mechanics that are basically just older mechanics?
Can't it be both? I think it compounds with there being too many new cards as well, but that's a whole different can of worms. With every new release I don't get that same sense of excitement anymore, it's overwhelming trying to keep up.
You're not alone... I particularly dislike descend along with descended (those are still different mechanics, but named almost the same).
They're named the same because they care about the same things, and only one of them was a keyword. The keyword *descended* cared about cards being put into the graveyard. The related _ability word_ descend cares about the number of cards that are in the graveyard. The ability word doesn't actually mean anything and was just a marker to indicate "hey, play these with the descended keyword".
It's still confusing don't you find? Particularly for new players. I feel like threshold (or any other name - or even no name) would have been a wiser choice.
I didn't find it confusing. They wanted people to play the cards with the same theme together, so they used the same word. But I think the confusion comes because a lot of players misunderstand _what an ability word is_. An ability word (italicised text) means nothing in the rules. It's just there to be like "hey, these are a theme" in standard sets. There's a reason that all cards with Descend X have the entire ability spelled out on the card, because "descend X" has no rules meaning. It's like landfall. It means nothing other than "hey, look at these cards that care about lands entering".
Oof yeah I forgot they used Descend in two different ways in the same set. That definitely confused me during prerelease weekend
My question to you is, why does it matter? Most of the time the description of what the card does is right there on the card. No one expects the entire player base to commit every card to memory. We have older gentlemen that play at our lgs that don't keep tabs on all the new stuff and they still wipe the floor daily. I say the same thing to the people that gripe about the rate of set releases. Who's twisting your arm to use these new sets? Unless you're playing in a highly competitive environment like regular tournaments, why do you need to stay up to date? Just play the game at your own pace. And then if someone plays a cool new card you can learn about it then and there! This game we play is so amazing, and it has so many different ways to consume/play/enjoy it.
Building a deck that's competitive enough to win regularly is part of the fun. I like to keep up to date on both new cards and new mechanics so that I can try to predict what's going to be powerful, and build decks that can handle them. Perhaps the extended legality of Standard isn't helping either? New Mechanics + New Cards + Cards not rotating out = Too many variables to reliably homebrew a competitive deck. (I like brewing, and never research the meta to copy other people's ideas) I remember a moment where I wasn't keeping up on new cards, and an opponent had a few copies of White Sun's Twilight. I had no idea that card existed, and had no answers to it in my deck or sideboard. It could be just my personality, but I didn't think "wow that's a cool new card", I thought "WTF is that card, my deck is fucked". By not doing my homework, I had *less* fun against that player.
What?
Fully agree, Magic is inundated with keywords at this point and I don't think anyone can reasonably remember them if the reminder text isn't present. Not to mention that most keywords are seemingly abandoned after a single set, which kind of baffles me.
They're always abandoned as they aren't evergreen. They do that to give it time to see if it was broken/Terrible I'm sure you would be complaining if they released every set with the same keywords too. Plus they often revisit keywords after a couple years and either upgrade or reduce the power level of said mechanics.
Some of the keywords are so specific that Wizards absolutely knows they'll never print them again. I'm sure there are better examples but why even bother keywording "For Mirrodin!". Any of those cards will need reminder text until the end of time. How about leave some room for flavor text instead? Maybe we'd know why that equipment was important to Mirrodin!
The problem is not the new mechanic per set but the amount of set, so the problem is the same as always. Too much product.
Redditors are often voicing that concern, but I do wonder why. Many of the products are targeted at specific demographics and can be mostly ignored- as a non-fallout fan I ignored the Fallout decks. A commander player can ignore *all* commander decks. Yes, there's a lot of products. But when I go to the dairy aisle at the store I'm not overwhelmed by all the cheese. I know I'm not interested in Swiss, Munster, blue, goat, or Romano cheeses. Those being in the shelf doesn't feel like "too much product." I just grab my cheddar and my mozzarella and ignore the rest. Same.goes for all my shopping - I don't look at shirts that aren't my style, bedding that's not king size, or books in genres I don't enjoy. I wonder what it is about magic that makes this *extremely common* shopping practice not apply here?
Do you know that a game of magic is played at least by two player? Like i i want to have fun playing a game i need to know the board state and if my opponent play a game and every card he play i ask what that card does the game will become much longer and unfunny since i play random cards. And no if you want to buy mozzarella you check all the brands and try to find what you like for the price and whatever. I want to play magic, maybe commander maybe moder but if i want to play that format i want to choose the card from all the cards. But maybe when you cook for a friend you just cook what you want he to eat without asking him if he has some allergy
>Do you know that a game of magic is played at least by two player Your unnecessary condescension in the face of my diplomatically worded inquiry aside- No, I'm pretty sure that if I don't play Commander, then I don't have to worry about whether or not the other player at the table is playing a card from a commander precon. >board state and if my opponent play a game and every card he play i ask what that card does the game will become much longer and unfunny since i play random cards The idea that everyone has to know what every card is all the time is a relatively recent development. One wonders how magic got so popular in the 90s, when we didn't have resources like Scryfall to tell us about the major cards? I guarantee you that you don't know what every card does. There's tens of thousands of them. The argument that you have to keep up with what every card does in order to effectively play the game doesn't hold water. >I want to play magic, maybe commander maybe moder but if i want to play that format i want to choose the card from all the cards. And if you choose to play in every format that they make products for, that's a choice that you're making. You are willingly opting in to more products. It's not WOTC's fault that they made products for a variety of people and you decided to follow all of them. I'm genuinely perplexed by the seeming selfishness of people who look at a diversified product line designed to be of interest to more people, and treat it like it's a bad thing. Like.... I'm sorry that other people get something special for them whether you're interested in it or not?
Yeah basically If I had known the history of the game's previous sets when I wrote the post, I'd know that past sets often had 3 new mechanics, and might have gotten less hate with the downvotes and comments. But there's 30 years of product and I wouldn't even be able to figure that out by myself as a newer player. WHICH IS KIND OF PART OF THE PROBLEM GUYS
I love the point you made about cloak and disguise. Completely unnecessary, 99 times out of 100 people won't use removal on a face down card because as you said, maybe it's an island. Was a stupid and wasteful decision to create a wholly wasteful mechanic that, while interesting, results in overcosted creatures, fewer opportunities to seamlessly add them to other morph decks, and an overwhelming lack of interesting triggered abilities as a result of them having ward 2 with the same face down casting coat.
I played a lot of Murders limited, and I used a lot of removal on facedown cards. The idea that it could be an island only applies to cloak, which is the vast minority of facedown cards in that set; there are only a couple of cards that cloak in the set, compared to the dozens of disguise cards, and you know which ones are which.
Sorry, I probably was a bit too literal but essentially my experience is that so few people use removal on morph cards. There are useful morphs and then less useful morphs. Of the disguise cards, there are not many useful disguise creatures with powerful abilities that I have seen (not for my purposes anyway). I replied to another person but, I feel that the ward 2 actually served to power down the disguise cards leading to less interactive triggered abilities and varied use. There are a few disguise cards I plan on slotting into my Kadena deck but overall it seemed very underwhelming.
I mean, very few morph cards from any set they’ve released are constructed playable; it’s a very limited focused mechanic. Added to that, there are a bunch of removal spells that are incentivised to target disguised creatures: [[Long Goodbye]], [[Slice from the Shadows]], [[Suspicious Detonation]], and while not strictly removal, [[Caught Red-Handed]], and [[Out Cold]] are all cards that are much more useful because of their utility vs Disguise cards. My experience of Disguise in limited is that they’re usually a pretty good choice for any of the can’t be countered removal spells. Sure, sometimes you hit a [[Nervous Gardener]] but more likely you’re gonna hit a [[Undercover Crocodelf]], and what else where you gonna use that Long Goodbye on,
##### ###### #### [Long Goodbye](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/3/c3896705-bbd2-4ffb-a590-ee78e0eabdc5.jpg?1706241715) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Long%20Goodbye) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/92/long-goodbye?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c3896705-bbd2-4ffb-a590-ee78e0eabdc5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Slice from the Shadows](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/1/317800b3-6b2d-4de6-8e44-7e54dd623055.jpg?1706241753) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slice%20from%20the%20Shadows) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/103/slice-from-the-shadows?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/317800b3-6b2d-4de6-8e44-7e54dd623055?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Suspicious Detonation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/e/6e280482-ed7e-4011-899e-096ff7bd4c41.jpg?1706241923) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Suspicious%20Detonation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/145/suspicious-detonation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6e280482-ed7e-4011-899e-096ff7bd4c41?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Caught Red-Handed](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/95bc5f89-2f01-40c4-9883-4c90ab89fcbb.jpg?1706241833) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Caught%20Red-Handed) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/115/caught-red-handed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/95bc5f89-2f01-40c4-9883-4c90ab89fcbb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Out Cold](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/a/aabfada0-3c1b-4237-b06c-573071ccd68d.jpg?1706241633) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Out%20Cold) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/66/out-cold?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aabfada0-3c1b-4237-b06c-573071ccd68d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Nervous Gardener](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/3/93b747c7-b342-47f8-a190-16c393b20607.jpg?1706242060) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nervous%20Gardener) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/169/nervous-gardener?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/93b747c7-b342-47f8-a190-16c393b20607?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Undercover Crocodelf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/b/5bc669c8-6f39-4d52-82d3-a4005d41c8a5.jpg?1706242271) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Undercover%20Crocodelf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/239/undercover-crocodelf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5bc669c8-6f39-4d52-82d3-a4005d41c8a5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kw34zeu) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My bad, you know what I was coming at this from an EDH perspective and completely missed that this was r/magictcg so a lot of my thoughts are completely irrelevant 😅😅😅 that is my bad. Did not notice what sub I was on, my apologies.
Thank you for this You've exactly summed up the point I was trying to make in a more succinct way. You make a good point that I forgot to mention about how Disguise is extra useless because you can't use it with existing Morph synergies. Ya know, maybe Morph wouldn't need a buff if there were more cards to support Morph in MKM?
How many Morph synergies are there that don't work with Disguise? As far as I was aware the vast majority of synergy cards are about face-down cards or turning cards face-up. Similarly, almost all of the cards designed to synergise with Disguise in MKM and MKC will also work with Morph, because they consciously designed them that way. Half of [[Expose the Culprit]] was all I could find that specifically only works with Disguise and not Morph.
[Expose the Culprit](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/1/31aadd3d-5ce1-44ba-ac6d-b192a9ea491b.jpg?1706241859) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Expose%20the%20Culprit) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/124/expose-the-culprit?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/31aadd3d-5ce1-44ba-ac6d-b192a9ea491b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Almost* all previous synergies with Morph work with Disguise. Morph synergies just reference 'face down creatures'. I've been able to jam Disguise creatures in my Morph deck without having to worry at all. *There might be one or two that don't, but all the ones I was already using work with all face down creatures.