I quit playing Magic: the Gathering on a sour note. I really loved playing the game, but its economy system meant that I needed a ~75% win rate to be able to play the draft mode competitively without losing all the gems. It felt a bit toxic, grinding all day for gold and gems to eventually lose them despite having a ~60% win rate.
Anyhow, I reinstalled it again after ~1.5 years of not playing it. Scrolling through social media and all I ever seen is people talking about its flaws. I think it is easy to think that way because for people who just play that “one big title”, things are taken for granted and it is easy to just see the “problems” with those games as the magic of joy slowly diminishes. “Look at those bugs, the archetypes feel so unbalanced.”
But man, Magic the Gathering: Arena felt amazing to play. As much as I still love Collective: The Community Created Card Game and love trying out small indie titles, the difference in those “objective” qualities is just too insane. MtG has a lot more game modes, music that makes the game feel hype, simple to understand designs, and yet very deep gameplay. It really feels like MtG just does everything but better, astronomically better. Aside from the Card Creator system, a relatively lax economy system... After further reflections, I think Collective is a worthwhile playing game and it has its own charms and wacky stuff. Nevertheless, MtG was so much fun, I haven't felt this way in a long time.
Draft Results Thoughts
Now let’s talk about the drafts. I went 4-3 with Rakdos Vampire, 6-3 with Golgari Wolves, 3-3 with Selesnya Humans, 7-1 with Azorius Spirit Flyers, 7-1 with Gruul Wolves, 0-3 with Rakdo Vampires, 4-3 with Gruul Wolves, 6-3 with Naya Humans. Here are some of the best drafts:
7-1 Azorius. Evasion and decent ground game. The pack 1 Rare made me draft everything around Spirit and it worked out.
7-1 Gruul. Packsong Pup, Child of the Pack, Glorious Sunrise were amazing. Witch's Web felt like a solid combat trick.
6-3 Naya Humans. A bit more complex and risky draft, but it ended up feeling rewarding.
Overall, the decks I drafted were all fairly simple and straightforward: See what bombs I get in packs 1 and 2, if the bombs are good, hard force those colors/archetypes. Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr was great to build around, Glorious Sunrise is just unloseable in most matchups since the value generation is too insane. For the commons, I drafted a lot of 2-3 drops with decent stat lines, some combat tricks, and then attacked a lot.
I made so many mistakes and it feels regretful that I went 3-3 with Selesnya Humans when it should have been a 7 win deck based on the power level of the draft. But it was good that I was able to win after not playing this game for so long. 37-20 is an okay record, although as always, the higher I climb the more I lose.
Green decks are really easy to draft and pilot and all green decks had fairly good results. I find that I am really biased against Black/Blue colors, it feels like I am pretending as if these two colors don't exist. It is kind of funny to me because I used to only draft Dimir when I used to watch Deathsie religiously. When I see his video talking about how Green and White are the worst colors, it feels as if I am living in a different world because I don’t notice Dimir being very obnoxious to play against aside from that one really cursed mythic rare flyer for Black. It is cool that I am finding success in archetypes I would likely ignore as mediocre if I was still a regular Twitch watcher. I feel like I have improved as a player even though I don’t even play the game anymore, which is pretty wild to me. But I do feel clueless when it comes to more complicated archetypes in Dimir, such as Exploit and Zombies and it does feel difficult to draft Rakdo decks.
My Favorite Mechanic
This is a copy and paste of Jamey Steigmaiher's format where I discuss what I liked the most. I really liked the Dayhound/Nighthound mechanic from the new set Crimson Vow. It creates a lot of interesting strategic decisions while the mechanic itself is so simple. It is amazing that MtG can continue innovating new mechanics despite having 20+ years of history.
Day/Night mechanic begins when the first Dayhound card is played. It becomes night when a player decides to not play any card. Cards with Day/Night mechanics get stronger during the night as all Werewolves do. I think this mechanic is cool in a lot of ways:
- It affects how I deckbuild. If I have a lot of nighthound cards, while the opponent is playing cards that do not have Day/Night mechanics, then they will do everything to stop me from getting the bonuses for NIght. This incentivized me to consciously put in more instant speed spells into my deck so that I can pass the turn while still having cards I can reliably react against opponents while not losing tempo.
- Basic, but fun synergy. If I find a really good Nighthound card, then I would want to get at least a few more in the deck so that I can get the best out of the bonus effect. It feels really good when I get multiple cards that gain the bonus Nighthound effect.
- It gets tricky when it comes to in-game decisions: If I aggressively turn things from Day to Night, opponents can counter me by playing two cards from their hands. This decision was game-losing for me because the opponent countered my play by avoiding attacking and developing the board. As someone playing against Day/Night cards, sometimes I deliberately do not dump all the creature cards I have from my hand onto the battlefield so that I avoid triggering Night for my opponent on their turn.
- It is, of course, flavorful and easy to understand. Werewolves are human during the day and thus, weaker. But once it is night, it becomes stronger and more powerful.
- An interesting note is that the cheapest Dayhound/Nighthound is a 3 mana card. This is more important than one might think: If the cheapest card is a 1 mana card, then this mechanic would become really frustrating because most draft decks do not have any 1 drops and it removes too much agency from the player when it comes to being able to somewhat manipulate the Day/Night cycles.
Simple is the Best
Recently I read a random Discord game design advice for a card game that feels really applicable here: "I consider a universal design principle to be that the most important thing to design in any card game, action economy game, etc. is not all the wild special stuff but the vanilla. The special cool stuff is the most exciting, but the basic vanilla stuff is the most important. It gives the players a clear baseline to see just HOW exciting those exciting cards are and gives them a basis of comparison that accelerates their ability to parse the strategies of the game, and it gives designers a clear benchmark to design everything else against."
I feel this is very applicable to MtG. Many cards are so awfully simple: Hungry Wolf gets +1|0 if you control another wolf, Pup Song gets +1|+1 before combat if you control another wolf… The list goes on. Yet, the game feels really fun, strategic, and diverse in play styles. Lots of payoff of the synergies feel really good and practical. +1|+1 when another human enters play? Put this card in Human aggro. Get +x|+x based on # of spirits on the board? Draft a ton of spirits and a few decent generalist cards.
I still remember that one time when I top deck’d my 1 Rare card in my draft deck. Everyone knows that it is too strong with a generally non-factor downside. Strong Rare/Mythic Rare can always feel outright unfair. But at the moment when I top deck’d it? I didn’t care. I jumped and screamed my ass off because I knew I just won the game from a nearly unwinnable situation. The ignorable common cards are important for these moments to feel special.
It is also intriguing how small, simple cards can enable so many options. 1 mana 1|1 Traveling Minister that gives +1|0 to any unit and gains 1 life. It is such a small ability, but so helpful: It enables lifegain synergy for Orzhov and it enables Training as a mechanic very much since Training as a mechanic runs into the problem of it becoming tied highest-powered card.
Whenever I tried to design things back in high school/University, I always ran into the problem of trying to design to prove something. It is easy to want to give every card some next-level crazy ability when a lot more can be accomplished with a lot less. Writing this makes me want to give designing another try again.
Duo tribes create interesting dynamics as well. If I draft a really good Human Werewolf card early on, it opens me up to two possible paths of either heavy human or heavy wolf, sometimes even both! I feel that the past Collective: The Community Created Card Game drafts have lacked that in both Standard and Draft environments. Collective has three heroes dedicated to the theme of tribal decks, yet, many tribal decks would rather be a part of the generalist heroes. The MtG tribals feel interesting to draft and I liked how the Human Werewolves tag opens things up to two archetypes instead of just one.
It is 3:20 am. MtG can be discussed in a million ways but this is all from me tonight. I hope I can try out some new indie games this month and write/learn from them. Goodnight.