Board and Card Games

4:44 PM

Oracle Changes article is out now: magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/…

Seems RE: pridemate change it was partially for digital and partially because Pridemate is going to be in an upcoming challenger deck

5:12 PM

That means QOL entirely for digital

If it wasn't for that they would've just left it the same way in the challenger deck

It's a good move though

1 hour later…

murgatroid99

6:27 PM

The reasoning in the article explicitly says that paper play is a major part of the reason for the change

Well, it mentions it looks and reads better on paper

But the impetus for the change seems to be Arena, where Pridemate is a popular card in a very popular deck (as the article mentions) and where every instance of lifegain requires you to pick yes or no for every Pridemate you have, and you are always going to choose yes

I read it as, the change was made for reasons that make sense for both paper and digital

which means they are at least including digital in their decision making process

Right

It's been a major QOL problem on Arena for an extremely popular card

The arena case is also a special case as you get 3 Pridemates in the WB NPE deck

so pridemate is going to be seen a lot by new players, if not palying with than playing against

And while it does look and read better, that's never been a reason to change it previously, or really isn't ever a reason to make a functional change like this at all — they just bear with the oddities of cards as they reprint them just like they did when reprinting Pridemate for M19

So I'm just pointing out, they appear to have made the change because of Arena. That's not a bad thing, it's a great move, and paper enjoys the side effect of players not having to wonder why it's a "may".

6:38 PM

The change to beneficial triggers is also a huge part of it though, if the main reason for making a may trigger is gone there is less reason to keep the may trigger

For sure

especially if they foresee benefits for changing it

I'm pretty sure that changed ages ago though didn't it?

6:51 PM

ya 2016 I think

7:06 PM

Unrelated to above, but do you think it would be worthwhile to create a combo tag? If questions get sorted, might make it a bit easier to see if a particular interaction has been asked about before. Often times new combo's are just rehashes of something that has previously existed (infinite mana, life, etb triggers etc.), plus it might be useful for Johnny's browsing the site looking for ideas.

Can either post a meta or just go for it if you think is worth the time

2 hours later…

9:13 PM

@Malco I have not yet but from what I've seen, yeah the dual pre-cons are pretty alright.

ya, the game really opens up after you get all 10. I would consider the pre-unlock starter decks the extended "tutorial mode" for Arena, especially since they use some deck based matchmaking so you are more likely to play other people with starter decks.

Also, the only thing that worries me about Pridemate errata is that we might see a design shift towards "less clicks" or "can't misclick on your stuff" abilities.

I think digital has already had an impact on design, but I can't remember where I read it I think there is a MaRo quote somewhere....

ahh here it is:

Bo1 has definitely made a surge of modular creatures, e.g. Knight of Autumn

> losttothoughts asked: Is there a consideration of trying to design cards that play well more for Arena and less for physical Magic? For example, relying on random effects from a database to determine a creature's ability or base stats, or dealing damage to random targets?

> Cards designed for tabletop (aka paper) need to play well in tabletop. We will make smaller choices that help digital play easier, but we’re not going to make cards in tabletop that play suboptimally in tabletop.

markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/181914220943/…

so small difference but paper still comes first

I think Modal creatures are just something that still has a lot of open design space

it isn't really restricted by colour as far as I know

one thing to be careful of is survival bias, as Bo1 gets more popular, cards that are good in Bo1 will be more popular as well

(so you will notice/think about them more)

9:31 PM

On the other hand, modal creatures do seem a bit pushed.

Nothing like Teferi, mind you. That dude needs to slow his roll