Author: xerent

My Little Pony TCG Primer

For the last few years, every single front page article on GoodGamery has revolved around Magic: The Gathering™ in some way. We’ve touched upon some serious Magic stuff over the years. We’ve done real card previews, in-depth strategy guides, indulged ourselves in Magic poetry and artwork. Now, when you’re reading this, the Magic: The Gathering™ (MTG) content streak has come to an end. In fact, below this paragraph, the article you are now reading will not be related to MTG at all. Ready? Come follow us into the exciting realm of Equestria™, and another trading card game published under the Hasbro™ brand.

The My Little Pony™ (MLP) collectible card game is based on the popular cartoon My Little Pony™: Friendship is Magic™. The TV series debuted in 2010 and quickly gained the hearts of not only little girls, but those of grown men and the older ladies. A preview version of a trading card game was showcased at BronyCon 2013, and now the full version of the game has been out for a few months. Need we mention that the game has been a smashing success?

Basic concepts

Each game of MLP represents a story of playful ponies who make friends with each other. Players (or “friends”) employ acts of friendship in order to gain victory points. At the beginning of the game, players shuffle their decks and draw seven cards. Players then take turns; the first player is determined randomly in the opening game. To gain victory points, players must subject their friend (opponent) to fun, which mainly is done with loving ponies or direct fun. Players can also use event cards to change the conditions of the game or play troublemaker cards in order to prevent oneself from having too much fun. After all, if you have too much fun, and your opponent gains 20 victory points – he or she wins the game!

During most rounds, players will play ponies and let them make friends with each other during the challenge phase. During this phase, ponies set out to love and tolerate each other – and each pony has a love stat and a tolerance stat. The loving player will announce his or her intent to go forth and love with any available ponies, and the tolerating player will announce which ponies he or she will tolerate those ponies with. Then the ponies have fun with (or strictly speaking, “put fun on”) each other. The love and tolerance stats of said ponies are then compared, and if a pony receives more love than it can tolerate it is loved to death and put into that player’s discard pile. If anypony is not tolerated by another, it will go ahead and let the the tolerating player have some fun. The loving player then gets victory points equal to those love stats.

Most cards are played by paying their friendship costs. When you play a card that has a friendship cost, you commit an act of friendship. There are six types of friendship, and each friendship is associated with a color and a pony from the mane cast of the MLP show. Each of these ponies are associated with a unique element of harmony, which means that each friendship has its own characteristics with unique strengths and weaknesses. Friendship flows from resources, which are turned sideways (exhausted). There are six basic resources – one for each friendship and color. By utilizing these resources (turning them sideways), players use the friendships of generousity, kindness, honesty, loyalty, laughter and magic for paying the friendship costs of the cards on hand.

Rarity is not only a description of how common a card is, but a fashionable pony. She represents the element of generosity and white is her color. Sometimes giving to others can prevent one from having too much fun, and this phenomenon is called fun prevention (though since having too much fun will cause your opponent to win, this is a good thing). Being fashionable, white tends to be protective of itself, and also values order and etiquette highly. White friendship excels in turning troublemakers, as generosity and friendship will win over the toughest foe.

Hoity Toity, above, is a typical white card, and one of the most inspired fashion designers in all of Equestria. Being strictly fashionable, he does makes sure that players don’t have too much fun.

Flutteryshy is the kindest pony in all of Equestria. Her color is yellow, which represents the spirit of kindness. Yellow friendship flows from love for critters and animals, and everything else that dwells in the forests. Yellow card effects include pump effects, where ponies and critters gain a sudden love boost, and lots of animals. Yellow friendship yields contains the most powerful, though uncomplicated, ponies and critters with the greatest love and tolerance.

Famous for it’s ability to surprise players during faceoffs, Giant Kindness is sure to cause great amounts of fun being inflicted on other ponies and players, as well as ensuring that the targeted pony isn’t loved to death by too having much fun.

Hard work is the tagline for the farm pony Applejack, and orange is her color. Representing the element of honesty, she keeps things straight. This might mean turning or unturning cards in play, and being a bit of a control freak (which little farm gal Apple Bloom can readily verify). Applejack will interrupt friends and ponies and tell them to think over what they’re doing, and will not hesitate to stop them from doing silly things.

Apple Harvest is one of the more powerful orange cards, and demonstrates the power of hard work. Orange friendship is also the friendship of card draw, because true honesty is always rewarding.

Represented by cool pegasus pony Rainbow Dash, blue is the color of winning. Rainbow Dash will do anything to win, and so will blue. Sometimes this means that blue will hurt others or steal things, and blue is also fond of pranks and enjoys being in a position of power and admiration. Though when it comes down to choosing between your friends and winning, blue will always put the spirit of loyalty to one’s friends first, and then win.

Sometimes enough isn’t enough, and a sonic rainboom can enhance the friendship of loyalty by 300% in an instant. Interestingly enough: In the prerelease version of the game, this card was called a “friendship source”, but this was later changed. We think that’s pretty cool anyhow.

Pinkie Pie’s color is the color of fun and it also represents the spirit of laughter. Pink wants to act on its desires quickly, and doesn’t to think ahead of consequences. Pink favors quick and direct fun, as well as pranking other ponies and forcing them to deal with the unexpected. Pink is also the color of chaos, and sometimes too much fun can hurt itself and others randomly. Though in the end, pink will always put friendship first.

Pinkie Pie loves a good party, and certainly parties will cause everypony to have lots of fun. When Pinkie enters the dance floor, she turns it into one hoof of a disco inferno.

Purple is the sixth color, and it’s the color of magic. Purple also represents the spirit of friendship, because friendship is magic. Purple friendship plays with the fabrics of Equestria and is able to manipulate time and space. This means that you and your friend will be seeing time-traveling cards, cards placed outside the game, reversed turn orders and additional game phases. Yes, unicorns can do that. Twilight Sparkle is a unicorn (at least in the first three seasons of MLP).

Yes, this is Twilight Sparkle, first and best student to princess Celestia and later in the show, a princess herself. Obviously reading lots of books will cause all players to draw cards.

Card types

As you would expect, there are a number of card types in the game with special properties, rules and purposes. We’ve briefly mentioned most of them earlier, but let’s dig in deeper in each card type.

Resources are non-friendship cards, meaning that they don’t count as acts of friendship when you play them. Instead, friendship flows from resources when you exhaust them (turn them sideways). Resources don’t have friendship costs, but you only can play one each turn during the main phase.

We’ve previously mentioned that playful ponies are the mane excitement in the game. But we haven’t mentioned that ponies can have powerful abilities and keywords, such as Derpy Hooves (shown below) has. Derpy is a pegasus pony, so she can fly. It has implications for how she can interact with other ponies – and in this case, it’s obvious that Derpy can’t be tolerated by everypony.

Events are things that happen that have effects on the game play when they are played. The card text specifies when the card can be played; at any time, or during the main phase.

Troublemakers are cards that bring in trouble into the game. This might be useful in some cases, we guess, or Hasbro wouldn’t had put them into the game. We like Discord anyway, so why not? Getting rid of troublemakers can be a hassle, though. The friendship of generousity is the most successful at this, with cards like Distroublemake.

Maneswalkers are powerful ponies that walk across the plains of Equestria. They don’t participate in play like ordinary ponies, but count as friends and have special abilities that are activated by adding or removing points. A player can choose to challenge a maneswalker with loving ponies, and if anypony puts some fun on the maneswalker, she loses that many points.

Next time

Text about the next article, where we dive deeper into enchanting problem cards and give a tour of My Little Pony Online (MLPO).

March 24, 2014
The Power Nine Story: The Myr

It’s finally time for some vintage again. You’ve travelled several hundreds, if not thousands, of miles by car to get here. When you finally slump down into the quite uncomfortable chair besides the table, the stiff plastic texture of the seat makes you painfully and literally remember every travelled bump in the road. But this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Your hands eagerly move to open your backpack and bring out a large book on the table, inconspicuously named ‘The New English Dictionary’.

As you open it, you reveal a hidden safe inside the book, with a deck box inside, to the empty room around you. Inside that deck box is a pile of 75 carefully double-sleeved playing cards. Even though your deck is partially white-bordered, there’s something special about shuffling it. It is after all a $5000 deck; you make sure to take your time and to be more careful than usual. Besides, any card could be a power nine card, and those nine cards alone make out more than two thirds of your deck’s value. Don’t screw this up now. It’ll end in 0-4, drop, beer, of course, but for now let’s focus on winning. It looks like 7 or 8 other people have arrived with legal decks, so let’s get this show on the road.

Playing vintage can be almost be a religious experience, and today we’re revisiting the mid-nineties to tell the story of the most powerful cards ever printed in Magic. These are, of course, the power nine: the powerful mana artifact Gilded Lotus, the winning draw spell Thoughtcast, the turn-tabler Time Warp, the five ultra-speed mana sources Gold Myr, Silver Myr, Leaden Myr, Iron Myr, Copper Myr and the complete game-changer Worldslayer. In this first article, we will focus on telling the story of the Myr.

Originally printed in the first Magic set ever, back in 1993, it is obvious that Richard Garfield had no idea as to what he was doing when he designed these cards. Not only do these artifacts produce mana, they walk and fight!

The Myr are also the first example of mana fixing artifacts, where you take colorless mana as input and are able to produce colored mana as output. This invention alone made the Myr sought-after gemstones, with Silver Myr reaching nearly $100 as early as 1995.

The splendid artwork by Kev Walker, at the time under the fictitious alias ‘xerent’, has accumulated much affection over the years. Walker later returned to depict the less-appreciated Moxen common artifact cycle in the Mirrodin set, printed in 2003. (The artwork for that cycle featured silly robots without googly eyes over weird backdrops, and it never gained much attraction.)

December 23, 2013
Horrorcane

Avacyn Restored is a set about the good guys. Thalia has freed the archangel Avacyn from her millenia-long imprisonment, and now a host of angels has returned to reclaim the night from the dark beings preying upon the plane.
But they haven’t won yet.

If people expect the forces of darkness to just roll over and give back the world to a bunch of losers with wings, they are sorely mistaken. Demons, devils, spirits, werewolves, zombies and vampires have enjoyed free reign on Innistrad for a long time, and they like it just the way it is. What’s more, they know a thing or two about fighting dirty. They’ve got a few tricks up their collective sleeves that no-one quite expected. Here’s one of them.

If your first reaction on seeing this card is “black can’t do that,” then you obviously have not spent much time hanging around black mages. Black is the colour of breaking rules. When black is forced into a corner, you can bet it will do everything it “can’t do”. Black will do anything to win.

So while you might be right in thinking that black is not the colour of dealing damage to flying creatures, black definitely is the colour of slaughtering angels, and that is exactly what Horrorcane is best at. Black is also the colour of eating the last piece of the pie, so if green is going to leave a slice lying around, what does it expect to happen?

We asked the estimable Jarvis Yu to weigh in on this card’s impact on the Standard format:

The Estimable Jarvis Yu

“Horrorcane shows that Wizards is willing to push color boundaries even further. Delver and Esper Spirits are certainly going to have problems with this card. It’s a great tool for Zombies to deal the last few points of damage on a stalled board. Esper Spirits itself can play this card for mirror matches and it has good synergy with Snapcaster Mage.”

April 10, 2012
I’m glad our plane is Innistrad

by Fake Mark Rosewater

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Welcome to Innistrad preview week! It’s once again time to delve into a new and exciting block (it feels so good to be saying that after sitting on this thing for more than five years). As you will see, this time we’ve taken the set design in a whole new direction. What are we doing, and what inspired us to do it? Before today’s column is done, you’ll know.

Ever since we announced Innistrad it’s been known to the public that the set has a gothic or medieval look to it. After enduring a fierce, action-packed metal world, with its own ‘tainted’ flavor, both the design and art teams wanted to get back into traditional fantasy. In fact, they both came to me independently asking to swing the pendulum back from the crazy chaotic feel of war in the Scars of Mirrodin block. They were eager to build a world steeped in a misty full-moon setting, with horrors lurking around every corner (horrors without infect). I hope you’re ready to delve into Innistrad!

Innistrad, the forgotten plane

To get in the mood, I have to tell you something about the story. It so happened that the ancient planeswalker Feroz came across Innistrad, a once-beautiful plane, now ravaged by war and darkness. At the last unspoilt oasis on this plane he met fellow planeswalker Serra, whom he married. Together they worked to restore the plane, and to protect it, Feroz’s Ban was created. Feroz died during its creation, however, and the grief-stricken Serra abandoned the plane. In her absence the isolated civilizations of the plane fight amongst each other while the vampires plot with the secretly lurking Liliana Vess to take control of the plane under the fading Ban of Feroz.

Innistrad is truly an ancient plane, and as such the art team wanted ancient artwork to go with it. They’ve organized a dream team of artists, including Rob Alexander, Mark Poole, Mark Tedin, Anson Maddocks and Kaja Foglio, whose outstanding efforts have defined the plane and the set of Innistrad.

A high knight stands on a precipice, overlooking the plains of Innistrad.

Innistrad is filled with mystic places, where clerics sing mystical chants.

Many horrors lurk in the snowy mountains of Innistrad…

…such as raiders and bandits.

I’m confident that players will be equally impressed by the wow! factor when they open their first packs of Innistrad as I was. This is going to be an amazing fall in the world of Magic!

Force the flash mechanic!

Normally when you design a set (you do that all the time, right?), you start with the mechanics. No block set since Homelands has been without a whole array of new keywords and mechanics, and in this regard Innistrad surely delivers.

The difficulty of being head designer of a Magic set is knowing about cool stuff and not being able to talk about it for years – I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before. In any case, the first mechanic I’ve wanted to highlight for the last five years is featured on this card:

What’s this? Forceflash. If you pay an extra cost, you force the spell through, kind of like Force of Will, only somewhat like Force Spike but not at all like Force of Nature. The forceflash cost is an alternate cost, not an additional cost.

Then how on Earth did we come up with forceflash? From my point of view, it’s simple. Players like when things happen unexpectedly-or at least when they do for your opponent. I knew I wanted a push towards instant-speed interactions. When I proposed my idea during the initial Innistrad development, the team agreed (as I’m their boss). The biggest challenge for the team was trying to find a way to approach the “instant-speed” theme in a way that didn’t just feel like Time Spiral 2.0.

Forceflash’s design story begins with the design of Invasion and the instant-speed rare cycle (Breaking Wave, Ghitu Fire, Rout, Saproling Symbiosis and Twilight’s Call). Here we had five cards that could be cast at instant speed if you only paid 2 more colorless mana. Mechanics like these played directly into this design. I had been longing to exploit this kind of mechanic for years, but (as you should know, if you’ve been reading my columns) a set mechanic isn’t a set mechanic unless you can make it work at the common level.

To that end, I decided that we were going to treat the instant-speed cost as a separate cost. As it came to be, one day (while tossing scrapped designs into a paper bin from across the room), it hit me. It didn’t have to be two colorless mana all the time! It could be anything! I ran down the stairs and up again, screaming with joy. In this setting, you could cast a common spell for four mana more, possibly even colored mana. I knew I wanted some form of innovation involving color. Colorless mana is boring.

Take a trip, slowly

Cantrips are fun. Magic is about fun. Thus, since what I say, goes, Innistrad is about cantrips. But while cantrips are fun, anticipation is a key element in gameplay. Starting with Innistrad, we’re introducing a new revolutionary (and magical) keyword: Slowtrip.

Isn’t that fun anticipation? You’ve cast an awesome spell and are waiting in deep anticipation for your next turn. What could the next card be? While you’re waiting, you can even play spells and interact with your opponent! We believe that this will both work as the format’s draw engine and make the game even more fun to play.

Now that I’ve rattled your brains somewhat, let’s do it completely. The world of Innistrad will not only introduce new mechanics and keywords, but will look and feel radically different from the previous block. In fact, it’ll come in a different container.

Booster packs

Innistrad will come in 8-card booster packs, and… wait, WHAT? Has Mark(eting) gone insane? Yes, it’s true, and no, he hasn’t (at least not me, I don’t know about marketing). The rationale behind this change is actually really simple. In recent years we’ve been experimenting with selling 6-card booster packs at large mass-market stores like Target or WalMart. What we learned from that experiment is that smaller booster packs are selling in large quantities simply because people love to crack packs and frantically inhale the Magic smell. We also noticed that players didn’t miss the rules tip card in the smaller packs, but they did long for tokens.

The Innistrad block will be sold in 8-card booster packs, featuring 1 rare or mythic rare card, 1-2 uncommon cards and 4-5 common cards. The last card will always be a basic land or a token. In limited, two Innistrad boosters equals one regular booster (say, of Magic 2012). That is, a sealed pool would consist of 12 Innistrad boosters.

We spend much of our time designing powerful rares, many of which players never get to slam on the table. It is our hope that players will come to enjoy opening twice the number of rares. This feature will both reduce the value of chase-rares on the secondary market, as well as increase Wizards’ revenues.

One last thing

To round off this preview, I’m happy to announce that the release card will be called Liliana’s Chime. I can’t tell you what it does yet, but I can assure you that it’s a truly amazing card (I admit, I designed it). Liliana’s up to no good and she stops at nothing to get what she wants!

That’s all for this week! Join me next week as we delve deeper into the horrors lurking within Innistrad.

May 8, 2011
Umezawa’s Sofa

We can only show you the card – the rest is up to you.

May 6, 2011
Good Gamery publishes scans of six new M12 cards!

Good Gamery has recently come in possession of six scans of entirely new Magic 2012 cards. Sources close to Wizards of the Coast have confirmed that they might indeed be real. Considering the events of the past few weeks, we have pondered whether or not to release these images to the public. In the end, we decided to go ahead. We’re really excited about this core set, so without further ado, here are the images.

White weenie decks in standard will certainly get a kick out of this innovative swinger!

Finally – a good white sweeper in standard! Thank you, Wizards! This is the card we’ve been waiting for since 1993.

This is a card with an effect we’ve never seen before in any color.

Our only mythic rare shows that Wizards will stop at nothing in being creative and bringing new and surprising cards to the core set!

Just – WOAH! This green common card is sure to find a place in all aggro builds. We’ve never seen anything like it before!

Wrapping up our amazing M12 spoiler scoop, the final card is the soft counterspell we’ve all been waiting for. We’ll be picking this one for sure!

Attention MTGS readers: This article is an obvious joke.

Good Gamery would especially like to thank the artists: Mr–Jack, Abi909, Amedyr, dinmoney, zakariah and barretxiii.

May 2, 2011