Category: best of

  • Announcing: Jace Week

    It’s Jace Week here at Good Gamery. In celebration of the new collector’s set, titled “From the Vault: Jace”, we will be giving you sneak previews of cards every day.

    Sometimes we will show you these new Jace cards one at a time, and sometimes it will be two at a time. Today we will start with two of our favorites from Good Gamery R&D.

    About Jace

    About Jace has showed that even one copy of a sufficiently powerful loyalty-increasing card can warp formats when combined with powerful card-drawing Planeswalkers. Multicolored joke decks were among the best decks in Standard and Extended for a long time. One of the reasons they were so strong is that if an aggressive creature deck got ahead of them, all they had to do to catch up was find their single About Jace with one of their myriad card filtering effects. This meant that any creature deck had a massively uphill battle to fight against this tireless champion of an instant, and this had an oppressive effect on the format. Good players simply played joke decks rather than expose themselves to getting About Jaced out of games.

    Battlejace Angel

    Battlejace Angel is a tribal creature card designed with hammer of “Tribal Matters” striking against the anvil of “Creatures”. It’s a big creature, and the best creature, which hardly seems fair to me. We like the card anyhow, because we like sending big Wizards into the red zone. (This card is a Wizard.)

    Battlejace Angel has been printed for the first time as a Wizard Angel. Here it is with new art, which is also a new thing we added to this card. It also features new collector’s numbers and a never-before-seen copyright date.

    We’ll tell you more about this exciting new collection at the end of Jace Week, but until then, enjoy the sneak previews every day this week, only at Good Gamery!

  • Fall 2010 preview: Pirates and Wenches and Rum

    We here at goodgamery.com have done it again! Our crack agents* have infiltrated R&D and have come back with notes from 2010’s fall expansion. The block is code named rape/burn/pillage and its theme is pirates, proving once and for all that Wizards is out of good ideas.

    Extensive focus group polling** has shown that players cannot get enough of islands, so this set will have an “islands matter” theme. We are moist with anticipation. ***

    Important rules changes for rape block:

    • “Battlefield” renamed to “Spanish Main.”
    • “Destroy x” retemplated to “Make x walk the plank.”
    • “Graveyard” renamed to “Davy Jones’ Locker.”
    • Players do not have libraries because pirates cannot read.

    Ready to dive in?

    White

    James Goodhead, Pirate Hunter – 2WW
    Legendary Creature – Human Hunter Fop (Mythic)
    First Strike
    Whenever a pirate enters the Spanish Main or attacks, exile James. Return him to the Spanish Main at the beginning of the next end step.
    3/3

    Goodhead’s Love Interest – WW
    Legendary Creature – Human Harlot (Mythic)
    At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control both James Goodhead, Pirate Hunter and Goodhead’s Love Interest, and no pirates are on the Spanish Main, you win the game.
    All creatures have: “T: Gain control of Goodhead’s Love Interest.”
    0/1

    Path to Davy Jones’ Locker – W
    Instant (Uncommon)
    Make target creature walk the plank. Its controller searches his or her library for an island card and puts that card into play tapped. (Libraries don’t exist.)

    Catholic Schoolgirl – 1W
    Creature – Human (Common)
    Sacrifice a rum: Catholic schoolgirl is a harlot in addition to her other creature types until the beginning of the end step.
    2/2

    Blue

    Stingray – U
    Creature – Fish Assassin (Common)
    Islandhome
    T: Bury target hunter at sea.
    Too soon?
    1/1

    Moby Dick – 6UUU
    Legendary Creature – Fish Cetacean (Mythic)
    Islandhome, Protection from Ships.
    Power and toughness are unknown. (Nobody has ever gotten to the end of Moby Dick.)
    */*

    Blue Balls – 1U
    Enchantment – Aura (Common)
    Enchant Creature
    Enchanted creature doesn’t untap during its controller’s untap phase.
    Tap a Harlot you control: Make Blue Balls walk the plank. Any player may play this ability.

    Black

    Smooth Criminal – BB
    Creature – Human Pirate Rogue (Common)
    Fear
    Smooth criminal wishes he were white.
    At the beginning of your upkeep, if an opponent cannot prove they are over 18, put a +1/+1 counter on Smooth Criminal. (A valid state driver’s license is acceptable proof.)
    Defnitely too soon.

    2/1

    Blackbeard, Goodhead’s Nemesis – 3BB
    Legendary Creature – Human Pirate
    At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player makes target non-pirate creature they control of their choice walk the plank.
    If a Hunter or Harlot walks the plank in this way, put a +1/+1 counter on Blackbeard.
    “I know what you’re thinking and yes, the carpet does match the curtains.”
    3/3

    Bukkake, Whore’s Wage – B
    Enchantment – Aura (Uncommon)
    Enchant Harlot
    At the beginning of your upkeep, put a -1/-1 counter on enchanted harlot for each other creature in play. It becomes white until the beginning of the end step.

    Unkill – B
    Sorcery (common)
    Return target creature from your Davy Jones’ Locker to your hand.
    After the first time his spell was renamed, the necromancer was merely demoralized, but after the second time he said unkill.

    Red

    Pirate Pillager – 4RR

    Creature – Human Pirate

    1RR, T: Make target artifact or land walk the plank. Masticores that walk the plank this way cannot be regenerated.

    4/4

    The Beast – 4RR
    Legendary Creature – Demon (Rare)
    Whenever a Harlot you control becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, that opponent sacrifices seven creatures.
    “Avenged.”
    4/4

    Persuasive Recruiter – 2RR
    Creature – Human Pirate Harlot (Uncommon)
    Whenever a creature enter the Spanish Main under your control, that creature becomes a pirate in addition to its other creature types and target opponent sacrifices a permanent unless they pay 2.
    “Join us and all this booty could be yours!”
    2/2

    Fusillade Cannonnade – 3R
    Sorcery (Rare)
    Until the beginning of the end step, permanents you control gain “T: This permanent deals 2 damage to target creature or player and 3 damage to you. Draw a Card.”

    Green

    Thai Hooker – 1G
    Creature – Human Harlot (Common)
    When Thai Hooker enters the Spanish Main, flip a coin. If you win the flip, draw a card. If you lose the flip, put an indestructible green Herp token into play that has “At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life.”
    2/2

    Pegleg Privateer – 2G
    Creature – Human Pirate (Common)
    Pegleg Privateer enters the Spanish Main with 2 leg counters.
    If pegleg privateer would be dealt damage, prevent that damage and remove a leg counter from it.
    When pegleg privateer has no leg counters, sacrifice it.
    3/2

    South Pacific Bachelor Party – 2GGG
    Sorcery (Rare)
    For each harlot you control, each opponent puts one indestructible green Herp token into play that has “At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life.”

    Trojan Man (TM) – 2GG
    Legendary Creature – Human Superhero (Rare)
    Protection from Harlots.
    4/3

    Artifact

    Captain Morgan Black – 1
    Artifact – Rum (Uncommon)
    T: Target creature thinks it can fly until the beginning of the ends step. Come next turn, that creature will never want to drink Captain Morgan Black ever, EVER again.

    Roofie Delight – 2
    Artifact – Rum (Uncommon)
    T: Target creature doesn’t untap during its controller’s next untap step.

    Yo Ho Ho and This – 4
    Artifact – Rum (Rare)
    At the beginning of your upkeep, put a 1/1 Pirate creature token onto the Spanish Main.
    If you control 15 pirates and your Davy Jones’ Locker contains a pirate, you win the game.

    USS Constitution – 6
    Creature – Ship (Rare)
    Islandhome, Indestructible
    3/3

    RMS Titanic – 8
    Creature – Ship (Mythic)
    Islandhome, Not Indestructible
    Probably not too soon.
    9/9

    Land

    The Lost Island
    Legendary Land – Island (Rare)
    Phasing
    At the beginning of the end step, a random player gains an extra turn after this one.
    “Ben decides that the island is no longer secret enough and turns a big underground dial that moves the island, teleports him to the Sahara desert and back in time three years, and screws up time on the island.” -skamunisM

    The Best Little Whorehouse
    in the South Pacific

    Tribal Land – Harlot Island (Common)

    Australia
    Legendary Land – Island (Mythic)
    You receive an additional 2 armies per turn.

    Join us next time when we spoil 2011’s expansion, “drinking/dancing/sodomy.” That third set is a doozy!

    * And by that we mean agents that are addicted to crack.
    ** Focus group membership: LSV and Wafo-Tapa.
    *** Like your mother was last night.

  • Lighthouse Scientists Prepare Large Hedron Collider

    TAZEEM, ZENDIKAR — The Large Hedron Collider was successfully loaded yesterday with a second White Mana Octahedron, say Lighthouse scientists.

    The Octahedron, a whopping 5 zendi-meters in length, was placed in the hammer of the device located on the foothills of East Ulzhet. Its twin, installed last zendi-January, rests upon the woodlands of Hul’Morag.

    The successful installation of the second hedron comes after the “Doom Quench” earlier this year, where a Black Mana Spheroid was loaded into the Collider with catastrophic results.

    “Rather than smashing open the target hedron, the spheroid just exploded with swamp goo,” said Mituantir the Knowledgeable, project coordinator at Lighthouse. The spheroid was, it turned out, an ancient prison for a dark vampire lord prophesied to unite the vampire tribes in an apocalyptic conquest of the whole of Zendikar.

    The stench of the goo lent weight the hypotheses of other merfolk scientists: that Black Mana Spheroids are the droppings of ancient, colossal zendi-bunnies.

    “We’re past that now,” said Mituantir. “We’ve cleaned up the goo, and we hear there’s a prophecy about a destined Promised One who’ll take care of the dark vampire lord we unleashed.”

    The goal of the Large Hedron Collider project is to smash open the target hedron and expose the contents within. Said Mituantir, “It’ll probably be the massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Zendard Model of particle physics: a Planeswalker spark.”

    “The idea is to force a severe landfall using what amounts to an oversized zendi-mouse-trap,” said the goblin artificer Dromms, head engineer, who has allied with the merfolk for the duration of the project. “Hopefully we’ll progress enough on this quest to enable some beneficial effects.”

    “Kicker,” he added.


    The Large Hedron Collider is set to activate on zendi-November 1st, the day after thousands of little Korlings dress up in costumes and quest for zendikandy.

  • GG News: Elder Dragon Unable to Stop Man on Horse

    Noted Elder Dragon Legend Vaevictis Asmadi is accustomed to being the big bad ruler of the battlefield.

    But with the release of Master’s Edition III on Magic Online, he has been facing down some foes unlike any he’s seen before. Vaevictis was reached in his volcanic lair to describe one such encounter.

    “When I first saw it I thought, ‘no big deal’ – just looked like your garden variety Tarpan or whatever. I figured I would just fly down there, break every bone in its body, roast it in my polychromatic flame, and devour its earthly form and ethereal soul,” he said.

    But as what we know now as Shu Cavalry got closer and closer, eyewitness reports indicate that the venerable dragon’s grin slowly disappeared, beads of sweat the size of Muck Drubbs began to form on his brow, and 3 of his 7 testicles receded in an unprecedented display of terror.

    “I was like ‘SHIT SHIT SHIT’, you know? There was a horse, right, but there was a GUY RIDING IT,” he recounted, visibly shaking at the memory.

    “A GUY. Riding A HORSE,” he continued.

    As the Cavalry drew near only one thing was clear to the great Scourge of All That Lives.

    “There was no way I could go down there to stop it. Nuh-uh. NOOOOOO WAY.”

    “I mean are you even listening to me? HE WAS RIDING A HORSE. I mean, shit man.”

  • Magical Cards Facebook Feed 2

    Bog Wraith suck it Scathe Zombies!

    July 10, 2009
    Aaron Forsythe is extremely happy with the “flavor reboot” in M10. For the first time we are presenting a compelling, cohesive, and completely intuitive fantasy world to new players.

    July 8, 2009
    Howling Mine
    I totally agree. Now that you’ve gotten rid of all the cards whose flavor made no sense, you won’t have to look for such cards ever again. Well done!
    Amnesia posted his Top 5 New M10 Cards

    June 30, 2009

    Kelinore Bats, Runeclaw Bears, Essence Scatter, Act of Treason, and Divination.

    Kaboom! Billy Mays: REST IN PEACE

    June 28, 2009
    Lifelink joined the group Cards named after abilities.

    June 27, 2009
    Fear
    Why can’t I join this group?
    Vigilance
    you’re looking for “abilities named after cards”, grandma

    Kjeldoran Knight is looking for another knight to band with. Let me know if you know anyone.

    June 26, 2009
    White Knight
    Sorry man, I’m kind of busy. I just got reprinted you know.
    Black Knight
    Will any knight do?
    Kjeldoran Knight
    Yeah any knight at all.
    Black Knight
    So you’re saying… it don’t matter if I’m black or white?
    Squire
    too soon :(
    Overrun can somebody make some damn tokens over here?

    June 26, 2009
    Elvish Archdruid
    Sorry, I only make mana!
    Llanowar Elves
    It’s ok, nobody’s perfect.

    Savannah Lions is friends with Captain of the Watch.

    June 25, 2009
    Serra Angel
    honestly man, you’re embarassing yourself
    Savannah Lions changed his profile picture.

    June 25, 2009

    Savannah Lions
    sup guys :)
    Serra Angel
    this is just sad
    Air Elemental
    you didn’t make it, give it up
    Magma Spray is looking for Kitchen Finks. Anyone know where I could find them?

    June 25, 2009
    Harm’s Way
    Sorry man, no idea. But you know what? I think it would be way more interesting to go find Figure of Destiny.
    Magma Spray
    Sweet, thanks for your help!
    Lightning Bolt thinks he nailed that job interview :)

    June 16, 2009
    Nantuko Husk While it used to require a trained professional to deal combat damage, that’s no longer the case: Modern combat damage is as easy as 1, 2, 3, literally.

    June 12, 2009
    Nantuko Husk
    Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
    *Turn to page 56 and find the FIFTH sentence.
    *Post that sentence AS YOUR STATUS.
    *Post these instructions in a comment to this status.
    *Use the CLOSEST book. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book.
    Mogg Fanatic
    What a weird coincidence, I’m reading Combat Damage for Dummies too.
    Pulse of the Forge left the group Cards you can pretend are in your deck when you accidentally take mana burn

    June 11, 2009
    Braid of Fire
    Oh cheer up! Maybe we can work together ;)
    Wizards of the Coast posted a note: M10 Rules Changes.

    June 10, 2009
    We have instituted some exciting new changes to the way Magic works! Read all about them here:
    http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/46a
    Wall of Denial
    I’m pretty sure this is just a late April Fool’s joke
    Anger
    What the FUCK. I’m quitting Magic forever.
    Yawgmoth’s Bargain
    I’ve got a better idea for how you can fix Deathtouch.
    Despondency
    im going to kill myself
    Acceptable Losses
    In six months we probably won’t even remember playing with the old rules.
    Wizards of the Coast tagged Ball Lightning in a photo.

    June 10, 2009

    Ball Lightning
    what the hell
    Ball Lightning
    man, i look awful there. i don’t remember this picture at all.
    Glacial Fortress joined the group Chase Rare Lands that could have easily been Uncommon.

    June 9, 2009
    Secluded Glen
    Hi and welcome to the steadiest-growing group on Facebook!
    Yann Massicard changed his profile picture.

    May 30 2009

    Yann Massicard is feeling lucky :)

    May 30 2009
  • Veteran Magic Players Shocked at M10 Rules Changes

    Last month, Wizards of the Coast announced a salient set of rules changes. Although many of these changes are superficial, one in particular is not; combat damage now uses the stack. While events like these can be expected to raise cries that Magic is dying among scrubs, even more cogent veterans expressed unhappiness at the change.

    “The change removes decisions a lot of interesting decisions from the game,” commented one player. “Consider blocking Savannah Lions with a Sakura Tribe Elder. Under the old rules I had to make a choice between trading and getting a land, but now there will simply be only one correct play. I understand their desire to make the game more accessible to newer players by removing the unintuitive waterfall damage system but they’ve done it at the cost of dumbing down the game for competitive players.

    “The changes don’t even make sense from a flavor perspective either,” he continued, “under the new rules if I triple block a Dauntless Escort with Scion of Oona the attacker can split the damage and kill all my guys. How does that even make sense at all? Is it that when the Scion dies his buddies are torn up about it and suddenly realize that their wounds are lethal? And how does Nantuko Husk fight some dude and then eat one of his buddies who was just fighting at the same time only his buddy still kills the dude he was fighting and husk survives? Two Ravenous Baloths engage in a fight to the death and then both commit ritual suicide in order to avoid dying normally? What?”

    Although many competitive players believe that the changes give them fewer opportunities to outplay their opponents during the combat phase, others point out that these opportunities have just shifted from declaring the order of blockers to damage assignment.

    “I’m really surprised that people are getting worked up about this, if you play with the new rules for a bit you’ll see that the changes are pretty minor and don’t come up very often,” said another player who acknowledged that he was going to miss windmill slamming his cards ‘onto the battlefield’.

  • Sakura-Tribe Elder: “I Will Fight No More Forever”

    Facing an overwhelming force intent on expansion, redrawing the map and its resettling and modernizing its traditional homelands, the Elder of the Sakura Tribe has declared an end to years of armed retreat and asymmetrical warfare by surrendering to Magic: The Gathering rules manager Mark Gottlieb. The surrender took place on October 5, at Miren, the Moaning Well (now a national historic site), about 40 miles south of the Canadian border.

    While the Sakura Tribe has responded to repeated attacks by giving up its traditional lands for years, it had long engaged in a practice of putting damage on the stack, wherein a rear guard would inflict a single point on the advancing army before committing ritual suicide. This practice made the tribe folk heroes among many Magic players, who, while they still settled into the seized lands, applauded the snakes’ courage, resourcefulness, and ability to keep counters off Umezawa’s Jitte.

    “I always liked Steve,” said powerful wizard and Baylor College freshman Ankur Kartamian, using the common racial epithet for the tribe. “He was a good man, a common man. Sometimes he even got there, but mostly, he showed us to die as we lived, and to never make a choice between the two.”

    “I am deeply saddened by his surrender,” added Kartamian’s roommate Mitchell Hart, as he tapped seven of the tribe’s ancestral mountains, plains and islands to cast a Bull Cerodon and have it enter the battlefield, “Some of us are getting together to protest this. We are considering a strongly worded e-mail, or maybe quitting Magic.” Hard then ordered Kartamian’s blockers and cast Unsummon before damage for a 2-for-1.

    The Elder’s surrender was as eloquent as it was saddening:

    “Tell Mark Gottlieb I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Seshiro is dead, Shisato is dead. The Kamigawa Block is all dead. It is the Coatl who say yes or no. He who put damage on the stack is dead.


    It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little Orhan Vipers are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have left the in-play-zone and run away to the removed-from-the-game-zone, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find, collect and trade with my friends. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

    Hear me, my chiefs! My mana neither floats nor burns; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

    Claims that this speech was written by Wizards of the Coast poet laureate Doug Beyer, and not in fact by a playing card with a snake on it, remain unconfirmed.

    Gottlieb responded to his longtime foe with a knowing respect, “It is true, many of the Elder’s children have left the battlefield and gone into exile. And I wish we had made this change earlier, before so many of the Sakura Tribe had to die. But this game has a bright future; a Manifest Destiny.

    The Sakura tribe is part of that destiny. It is very hard to explain to our own children the lives that are lost in what is already a decided conflict. It is merely the march of history. To live together as one people, we must put an end to these senseless murder-suicides, as courageous as they may be.

    Or else the whole country might collapse, replaced by a larger budget for Monopoly or other such bullshit.”

    “You just watch,” said Sachi, daughter of Seshiro, a longtime advocate for a more violent, fireball-based Orochi policy. “This will change nothing. The Sakura Tribe will keep getting played and killed by the white man and giving him land until there is none left in its library. This amicable surrender is just a fog effect for genocide. The only choice our Elder has made is to die rather than fight.”

    While the exiled Orochi were promised basic land, rumors are flying they have instead been forcibly relocated to the Dust Bowl.

    “Whatever the damage this has caused, it has been assigned, and it is now too late to prevent it,” mourned Sachi.

  • The Evolution of Magic’s Rules and Flavor

    With big changes coming in 2010, now is a great time to look at the past to help contextualize the new framework of magic. In this series, we’ll consider an area being updated in 2010, trace it back to its earliest roots, and look at what 2010 means to its future.

    Flavor and Terminology

    Alpha — Ice Age

    Cards were often printed with their initial inspired-by-fantasy-flavor wording, with any revisions or clarifications tacked on the end rather than represented by edits. As a result, it was common to see effects such as “Draw an extra land or spell from your library in addition to your normal draw for the turn, but only once a turn, and not if your hand is full already or you didn’t pay 4 mana.”

    Ice Age — 6th Edition

    Designers get tired of magic cards that sound like your drunken uncle trying to tell a joke he barely remembers, and standardize the wordings of common effects and meanings. Now all the cards with the same intended effect say the exact same thing, except the 90% of those cards printed either before this standardization or after one of the several changes to the standard in question.

    6th Edition — 2010’s Paper Release

    Flavor takes a back seat to functionality in card wordings. Terms are further standardized, and evocative fantasy words are replaced with mundane gaming ones. For instance, ‘cast’ becomes ‘play.’ Unfortunately, due to a rather severe editing error, the words ‘tap,’ ‘control,’ ‘card,’ ‘phase,’ ‘attack,’ and most confusingly ‘library’ also become play. Thus prompting Noam Chomsky to famously declare Godo, Bandit Warlord’s text…

    … to be “completely friggin’ indecipherable.”

    2010’s paper release — 2010’s MTGO release

    Evocative fantasy words return in greater numbers than ever before! This brings an end to the confusion over how coming into play is different from being played, and replaces it with confusion over how three islands and an underground river can be in a field.

    2010’s MTGO release — ???

    Due to a strconst.dat error, words on cards will be chosen almost entirely at random.

    Mana and Burn

    Alpha — Legends

    In keeping with the fantasy-flavor-driven motif, mana is conceived as magical energy drawn from the land – wild and not easily contained. Likewise, mana burning is conceived as absentmindedly leaving the eldritch stove on and setting your arcane house on runic fire.

    Legends — 6th Edition

    The game checks to see if you are mana burning at the end of each phase, but only checks to see if you’re dead every turn. Because of these questionable priorities it becomes popular to intentionally burn yourself to death, then later reveal that the game takes place in a mirror universe where it is actually the opponent that has been dead all along. Although this strategy never won any major tournaments, its supporters were vindicated when the film adaptation was nominated for 6 Oscars.

    6th Edition — 2010’s Paper Release

    Death makes up for lost time and starts killing people at 0 life any time anyone has priority. Mana burn keeps up its steady pace of once a phase. R&D members realize they can create cards that use mana burn as a weapon or a balancing drawback. This epiphany opens up fascinating design space for upwards of 4 cards, which range from “sort of ok” to “reasonably good I guess?”

    2010’s Paper Release — 2010’s MTGO Release

    Instead of mana burn arbitrarily taking effect at the end of each phase, it will arbitrarily take place at the end of each step, or it would if it existed at all. Previous cards built partially on mana burn degrade from their previous quality to “nothing special” and “meh, it’ll do.”

    2010’s MTGO Release — ???

    Whenever you pass priority with mana in your pool, a dialogue box will appear asking, “do you want to take mana burn?” If you click “no” you will retain priority. If you click “yes” you’ll be removed from the event for cheating and your account will be suspended pending administrative review.

    Combat and the Stack

    Alpha — Mirage

    Combat damage and its prevention or mitigation do not use “the stack.” Instead, there is a plethora of various reactive sub-steps for damage prevention. For example, whenever a creature is played, there is immediately a sub-step in which you can pay 2 mana to prevent it from ever doing damage. If you elect not to, you’ll enter a series of steps and phases where you can pay 1 mana to nullify its ability to deal damage. Finally, if a creature somehow entered combat, its damage was immediately dealt, after which point you had one last chance to prevent its damage. As previously noted though, there was no real rush even then, as you still had a whole turn to gain that life back before anyone noticed.

    Mirage — 6th Edition

    Catino’s infamous Grave Servitude ruling at PT Atlanta sets precedents that will be pivotal to the priority and the stack understanding of magic. The idea of judges interpreting and creating the rules in the middle of a high level event may seem unpleasantly arbitrary and unpredictable to neophytes, but savvy pros know you can count on them to make decisions along party lines 95% of the time.

    6th Edition — 2010’s Paper Release

    Alarmed by its loss of market share in the adolescent boy demographic to other collectible games, Wizards re-directs its marketing to Turing-complete machines. Abilities use a first-in-last-out stack to resolve. The game no longer contains unique, reactive batches and sub-steps; each step and phase operates in the same basic fashion. Play is accomplished by explicitly passing the right to use actions several dozen times per turn. Combat damage is now an object that takes time to process and exists independent of the source it is referencing. People looking to enjoy a casual game complain that only a computer program could process these painfully rigid rules in their stated form. Unfortunately, they are widely discredited when repeated attempts to create such a program fail miserably.

    2010’s Paper Release — 2010’s MTGO Release

    While the stack is still seen as a positive device, combat damage using it is deemed too confusing to new players. In order to remedy this, a system in which combat damage is dealt upon assignment is instituted, which renders damage prevention and regeneration terribly unintuitive. In order to remedy this, an unintuitive damage-prioritizing system is instituted which renders deathtouch terribly unintuitive. In order to remedy this, the system unintuitively doesn’t apply to deathtouch. Because of this corner case, the war is lost, and all for want of a nail.

    2010’s MTGO Release — ???

    Changes function exactly as intended; are reported broken by hundreds of players unfamiliar with the new rules.

  • Unbelievable News

    Author Image

    Making Magic Archive
    Mark Rosewater Archive

    Mark Rosewater
    Monday, June 1, 2009


    The letter F! olks, I have a special treat to announce today. But first, a little background. Those of you that play Magic Online know two things: Magic Online is a terrific product; and it doesn’t always work as well as we’d like. We believe that, like the economy, Magic Online is fundamentally strong. Sure, it’s had hiccups. Sure, it’s had ups and downs. But at the core is an incredible play experience that brings together players from all over the world from a variety of backgrounds, and lets them duel as though they are sitting in the same room. We decided we wanted to thank the players that have stuck with us through the tough times, and now have a front row seat for V3, the most stable Magic Online platform ever. Now that we’ve worked out the kinks, I think we can all look back with a sense of humor and have a laugh.

    I’m proud to announce the third Un-expansion: Unavailable.

    Unavailable is the first product exclusive to Magic Online. That’s right: it will not be sold in stores, and will not be redeemable. Unhinged, after all, was only available in cardboard, and this is the same principle. Much like the Astral set from Microprose, we will take advantage of the unique features of online play and translate them to Magic in ways that simply can’t be duplicated in cardboard.

    Team Rocket

    The design began nearly two years ago. Justin Ziran (Gamer Zer0), was at the time the Brand Manager, and he approached me with the idea of putting together a set to try and lighten the mood online, since he felt like the feedback he was getting from the community was somewhat negative. We went with an approach that felt like a winner, a one-two punch of top Magic designers, and experts in Magic Online.

    Here’s the team:

    MaRO Mark Rosewater – I was Lead Designer for the set.

    This shouldn’t come as a great surprise. I was also Lead Designer of Unglued and Unhinged. Having written for Roseanne, I know funny. And any time someone has a good idea, I’m pretty quick to take credit. I may not have ever played Magic Online, but I’m pretty sure the skills translate.

    Gamerzer0 Justin Ziran – Justin was the Brand Manager and Community Liaison, and as such, knew the feelings of the Magic Online community better than anyone. I have always been impressed with Justin’s ability to create just the right tone with players, and to strike a balance between the needs of the community and the needs of the company. I really don’t know what we would do without him.

    SloggerSucks Devin Low – An all-star Magic Designer. Devin is the kind of guy who instinctively knows what players want, even if they don’t quite realize it themselves. With his finger on the pulse of the Magic community, he is utterly irreplaceable.

    GTFO Jenna Helland – Jenna is a flavor guru, but more importantly, Jenna was the lead designer for the User Interface for Magic Online V3. As such, she was uniquely qualified to recreate the classic look and feel of the Magic Online experience. We wanted the cards themselves to reflect the intuitive familiarity of online play.

    On With The Show

    Unavailable features several new mechanics that reflect the nature of online play. One of the most fun is Ban. Any time a card is Banned, it will be, well, banned. That means it will instantly disappear from play, your hand, your library, your graveyard, in fact from all zones. This will affect every player in the game, and will last for the rest of the match. That’s right, it will carry over into the next game.

    (Amusing aside: during the beta testing, Banning was coded to prevent wishing for the card later in the game, which required removing the Banned card from your collection temporarily. The code to replace it didn’t quite work, however. Randy Buehler cast Radiate in a FFA game and eradicated every card on the test server. Permanently. That pushed us back a few days of testing. Don’t worry, though, we’re pretty sure that’s fixed.)

    buffer-overrun

    Another powerful new addition to your arsenal is Edit. Mages have long been able to change certain words on card, typically related to color or land type. Now, Edit allows you to change the text of a given card is all-new ways, such as swapping abilities, doubling, them or removing them outright.

    strconst-dat-out-of-date

    Not all new cards focus on a new mechanic. Some harken back to the old days and poke a little fun at some problems that you may have forgotten ever happened.

    wrath-of-marit-lag
          
    temporary-isolation

    Finally, there is a subtheme that players have been clamoring for ever since we hinted at it in Future Sight. Many people had guesses about what it would mean, but now you know for sure: The Magic Online game servers have been nicknamed Contraptions for years now!

    server-machinations

    You’re Such A Tease

    You’ve gotten a taste of what’s to come, but I’d like to leave you with some hints. You won’t believe what we’ve held back.

    • A 13/13 creature for 2 mana. Hint: its creature type is “Crasher”.
    • A way to make your opponent’s cards non foil – permanently!
    • The first ever “rating matters” card.

    I think all of you are going to get a real kick out of this set. I know it’s been a long road, but we’re finally a place of stability and consistency, and all of you are a big part of why that came to be. Without your positive feedback and steadfast loyalty, I don’t even want to think about where we’d be. Hopefully, giving you this set will let you know just how much we listen to you.

    Until then, may your client be stable, your packs be winners, and your rares be cool.