How to do Werewolf mechanics better in MTG

[Whipstitch]

The biggest problem with the werewolf mechanic was how it triggered. Werewolves is very solidly a G/R aggro deck, which means you want to constantly be playing threats in order to pressure your opponent into exhausting resources trying to deal with your shit until you overwhelm them.

Yeah, thematically, people want werewolves to hulk out and kill people, but the mechanic they represented that with would have been better suited to creatures with different effects to swap between rather than shuffling numbers up and down before throwing the dude into combat. Fundamentally, choosing to forgo playing a card for a turn is only going to work out if you're really into muttering about keikaku a lot. Of course, if you didn't think having a card showing was appealing as aggro, it's bound to somehow be even more annoying as you play combo or control. C'est la vie.

[name_here]

You know, how was Kamigawa recieved? In my experience, plenty of people had Kamigawa decks and I didn't hear much grumbling about it. I'd assumed the mechanics up and vanished mostly because they were just too intertwined and having enough Arcane/Spirit cards about to be worthwhile would seriously undermine setting up new mechanics in future blocks.

[Username17]

You know, how was Kamigawa recieved? In my experience, plenty of people had Kamigawa decks and I didn't hear much grumbling about it. I'd assumed the mechanics up and vanished mostly because they were just too intertwined and having enough Arcane/Spirit cards about to be worthwhile would seriously undermine setting up new mechanics in future blocks.

According to Mark Rosewater, as of 2009, the best selling set of all time was Mirrodin. Apparently in 2013, Return to Ravnica is now the best selling set of all time. He has outright apologized for Odyssey (explicitly comparing it unfavorably to Tempest, Mirrodin, Ravnica, Shadowmoor, and Zendikar, though interestingly not to Kamigawa), and this is what he said about Kamigawa:

Kamigawa block did poorly on most metrics (the biggest two being sales and market research).
...
I believe we are more likely to visit a new world than return to Kamigawa as it would allow us to make some new choices. Mechanically, there are things we can reuse from Kamigawa block but it is a small number of things.

-Username17

[Ravengm]

You know, how was Kamigawa recieved? In my experience, plenty of people had Kamigawa decks and I didn't hear much grumbling about it. I'd assumed the mechanics up and vanished mostly because they were just too intertwined and having enough Arcane/Spirit cards about to be worthwhile would seriously undermine setting up new mechanics in future blocks.

Plenty of people used decks that incorporated a lot from Kamigawa, but nobody liked it. Considering that Mirrodin was an extremely beloved set for a long time, it just made Kamigawa look much worse by comparison.

[AndreiChekov]

in my group of friends, kamigawa, and ravnica are all time favourites.

[edit] and we were all a bit dissapointed with return to ravnica, and I still run my ninja deck at my local gaming club

[Prak]

In my anecdotal experience, people's biggest problem with Kamigawa was that the cards were hard to pronounce (not that people cared, I just had to sit there and hear them sound like idiots. Happened with Mirrodin too, though), and the only people who like Mirrodin were wealthy fuckheads who didn't design decks, but rather just built to online specs.

[RadiantPhoenix]

IMO, modern cards mostly feel way, way cooler and more elegant than most cards from back when. ("back when" meaning something like before Time Spiral, but it's probably really more of a continuum)

I mean, compare these two cards:

[Prak]

I do kind of miss the really old cards. If it were feasible, I'd want to do a friendly format based around pre-sixth edition cards.

I think it's the art and nostalgia. I started playing in fourth grade when Unlimited was out. I wasn't very good, but I think it's the last time I can remember my father taking much time to do something with me that we were both into (aside from watching movies or tv). The art on modern cards is amazing. The old art was good too, just different.

[Mistborn]

In my anecdotal experience, people's biggest problem with Kamigawa was that the cards were hard to pronounce (not that people cared, I just had to sit there and hear them sound like idiots. Happened with Mirrodin too, though), and the only people who like Mirrodin were wealthy fuckheads who didn't design decks, but rather just built to online specs.

Lolwut I started attending tournments durring Mirrodin and you could build a decent Raffiny deck for less than 100$.

[Ravengm]

I do kind of miss the really old cards. If it were feasible, I'd want to do a friendly format based around pre-sixth edition cards.

I think it's the art and nostalgia. I started playing in fourth grade when Unlimited was out. I wasn't very good, but I think it's the last time I can remember my father taking much time to do something with me that we were both into (aside from watching movies or tv). The art on modern cards is amazing. The old art was good too, just different.

You could always create a Cube format that's just pre-sixth stuff mashed together, and it would likely be pretty fun since everything would be on the same power level.

[Prak]

In my anecdotal experience, people's biggest problem with Kamigawa was that the cards were hard to pronounce (not that people cared, I just had to sit there and hear them sound like idiots. Happened with Mirrodin too, though), and the only people who like Mirrodin were wealthy fuckheads who didn't design decks, but rather just built to online specs.

Lolwut I started attending tournments durring Mirrodin and you could build a decent Raffiny deck for less than 100$.

Lolwut I was in high school and didn't have a fucking job during Mirrodin, a deck that cost more than $10 was absurd.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I drafted during 5D -> SOK, but I was pretty bad at it, and my store did afterdrafts rather than prize packs.

I'm still kind of bad at draft.

[Prak]

I do kind of miss the really old cards. If it were feasible, I'd want to do a friendly format based around pre-sixth edition cards.

I think it's the art and nostalgia. I started playing in fourth grade when Unlimited was out. I wasn't very good, but I think it's the last time I can remember my father taking much time to do something with me that we were both into (aside from watching movies or tv). The art on modern cards is amazing. The old art was good too, just different.

You could always create a Cube format that's just pre-sixth stuff mashed together, and it would likely be pretty fun since everything would be on the same power level.

To be honest, I still don't entirely understand Cube format.

[Mistborn]

Lolwut I was in high school and didn't have a fucking job during Mirrodin, a deck that cost more than $10 was absurd.

Ok I'm calling bs here, enough magic cards to make a deck cost more that 10$ Even if your plan was buy a fucking starter deck that was going to cost you fucking $11.99.

[RadiantPhoenix]

60 cards * $0.10 per bulk common (assume basic lands have the same cost) = $6

It's more like, your parents might pay $12 for 60 cards, but they're going to go, "$20 for these eight little pieces of cardboard? Yeah right."

Especially if they know that the cards will rotate out of standard in two years. (but then again, someone who knows that is more likely to have an appreciation for the game, so it might cancel out or more than cancel out)

[JonSetanta]

Kamigawa was the only official booster draft I ever did. It was so bad that I never did a draft in a game store like that again.

One thing I noticed about Splice was that it was so severely limited as far as which cards you can Splice onto that it only occured ONCE for my R/B deck. I saw a U/R deck stuffed full of Splice cards do that constantly, but it also lost.

If Splice was by card type, color, or even some kind of Spirit tribal (or any tribal Splice) I could see future use, but with the kind of Yugioh limited mechanic that requires Splice cards from the same set it was just a crapshoot and the designers should be punished.


EDIT: On the plus side I did win a game with Kuro once by spending half my life to wipe out my opponent's creatures. I had cheated it into play using a Fallen Empires card that allows you to sac a creature and put a graveyard creature into play directly, I think it was about turn 5 or so, I had used some kind of imp creature that allows discarding a card to pay a cost so I dropped Kuro...

[Prak]

You're right, Mistborn, a basic deck costs more than $10. But when you're buying booster packs or bulk commons:

1. You can use lands from any point in the game, which you probably own a thousand or more of already, so you you're actually looking at 40 cards.
2. A lot of cards get reprinted, so you can pull evergreens like Terror or Grizzly Bears or Llanowar Elves (when their slot in the core set isn't being replaced by more rare shit like Birds of Paradise, or a functional reprint under a different name like Mystic Elves because LOL WE'RE NOT ON DOMINARIA ANYMORE!!!), so there is some number utility cards one can use
3. You can slowly build up to a mediocre collection of mostly commons by washing the car and mowing the lawn and buying bulk commons and the occasional booster, or pay $10 to draft and get off lightly pricewise because the three boosters are cheaper that way. Though some stores rare draft which sucks.
4. Hell, my FLGS had a format called Junkyard in which you put down $5 and got two randomized stacks of 200 cards from the "we don't care enough to sort these, and barely care enough to count and band them" box. Because stores get a lot of their singles by opening booster boxes, that can include a ton of T2 cards. Sadly, everyone's all about Constructed and Draft and that bullshit, so Junkyard never broke 6 or 7 players in all the times I played it, meaning the format died.
5. Ideally, you should be able to build a competitive deck for way less than $60. Fuck, ideally, Magic's balance should not be so skewed that you can sweep entire tournaments by simply looking for decks online and buying super expensive cards.

Kamigawa was the only official booster draft I ever did. It was so bad that I never did a draft in a game store like that again.

Funny you say that. I was never good at drafts, as stated above, I really only did it for the slightly cheaper cards and because it's a more level playing field than Constructed. It was drafting Kamigawa, however, that made me realize how good Black/Green can be, since I once wound up drafting a B/G Spirit deck and doing decently well.
When I started playing magic again casually last year, I remade that old B/G Kamigawa spirit deck, focusing on Wicked Akuba, Petalmane Baku and Hankyu/Viridian Longbow.

It still needs tweaking, but it works decently.

[OgreBattle]

I really enjoy the execution of the Lorywn and Zendikar blocks for flavor and mechanics that are useful and also support the flavor. Innistrad is also oozing with flavor and most of its mechanics are immersive.

If they do bring back a Kamigawa mechanic I hope they just have some ninja clans in some other setting.

I've been thinking about how to do an alternate Samurai mechanic thats more interesting, but need some help on properly wording it: "When this card is sent to the graveyard from combat,"

The idea being that Samurai dying in battle gives you a benefit, so they're the opposite of Ninjitsu Ninja and have more versatility than "+X/+X"

[RadiantPhoenix]

A large part of the cost of many decks is the mana base. Dual lands make almost any deck better, and are one of the more reliable money cards IME. In standard, the Temples are about $4 each, and the shocklands are about $8. The gates are pretty cheap, though, because they're common. Get lots of them while they're in print, because in casual, they're almost as good as the expensive dual lands, and they're kinda-sorta fetchable with the right cards.

If you playing a monocolor deck, you don't have to worry about that expense, which saves you $30 to $100 on your deck.

[Prak]

Well, and to be honest, I do have an $80 deck. But it's a sliver deck which was put together across my entire time playing Magic. The Sliver Queen was bought at a FLGS store, when singles are half off. The Overlord, if I recall correctly, was either a lucky pull from a booster in Legions, part of a theme deck from that time, or was like $7 and bought with birthday money.

But that still supports my point. The Sliver Queen is one of the most valuable cards I own, and it's only $40, after years of being out. $40 is a notable amount, but I bought it when it was $25, and there are cards from the recent sets which are twice as valuable.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Which cards are you thinking of?

[Prak]

Huh, seems I'm misremembering, or the prices have come way down.

[Mistborn]

But that still supports my point. The Sliver Queen is one of the most valuable cards I own, and it's only $40, after years of being out. $40 is a notable amount, but I bought it when it was $25, and there are cards from the recent sets which are twice as valuable.

That was sort of my point Decks are more expensive these days, Raffinity wan't just the best deck of it's time it was a metagame breaking powerhouse (but still not as bad as cawblade because other decks could actually beat the it) and you could seriously build it for 100$. Heck you could make a budget version for much less that was still competitive. These days even in standard a "budget" deck costs that much and the top tier decks cost more than $300.

[deaddmwalking]

I've been thinking about how to do an alternate Samurai mechanic thats more interesting, but need some help on properly wording it: "When this card is sent to the graveyard from combat,"

The idea being that Samurai dying in battle gives you a benefit, so they're the opposite of Ninjitsu Ninja and have more versatility than "+X/+X"

I think you should go with a sacrifice mechanic (seppuku). Perhaps it could be combined with some type of 'honor token' that is distributable to other cards (+1/+1).

[Prak]

But that still supports my point. The Sliver Queen is one of the most valuable cards I own, and it's only $40, after years of being out. $40 is a notable amount, but I bought it when it was $25, and there are cards from the recent sets which are twice as valuable.

That was sort of my point Decks are more expensive these days, Raffinity wan't just the best deck of it's time it was a metagame breaking powerhouse (but still not as bad as cawblade because other decks could actually beat the it) and you could seriously build it for 100$. Heck you could make a budget version for much less that was still competitive. These days even in standard a "budget" deck costs that much and the top tier decks cost more than $300.

Which is why I'm never fucking with Constructed again. This is Magic, a deck full of cheap commons is supposed to be able to beat a deck full of expensive cards. If you want to just whip out your money dick and win by being bigger, that's what Yu Gi Oh is for.