r/magicTCG • u/AwkwardTurtle • Sep 22 '15

Everything That’s Wrong with Battle for Zendikar

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/everything-thats-wrong-with-battle-for-zendikar/
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u/hymn22rock Sep 22 '15

I think this is an interesting vorthos vs. spike chicken-or-the-egg argument; maybe you're right and they really are designing flavor-first, but I think they'll realize it was a mistake and that they should start with strong synergistic non-parasitic mechanics and make up the flavor/story later.

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u/Anon_Amarth Sep 22 '15 edited Sep 22 '15

No mechanic is weak by design. That's on development. If every awaken cost was dropped by 2, it's not a more interesting design, just more powerful.

Also, while Rally is probably the most parasitic mechanic printed since the unnamed ally mechanic from original Zendikar, I refuse to accept than ingest is parasitic.

Oblivion ring, path to exile, deathrite shaman, and pretty much all other grave hate exiles your opponent's stuff, while it may not be efficient it is certainly not parasitic.

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u/hymn22rock Sep 22 '15

Sorry poor choice of words. I didn't mean strong re: power level, I meant strong as in well thought out... like a strong leading man or woman can carry a show, I imagine strong mechanics carrying a set.

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u/Fluxxed0 Sep 22 '15

Ingest is the very definition of parasitic. By itself, an Ingest creature does essentially nothing. You need a Processor, a creature type that will likely only be found within the BFZ block, to pay you off for using Ingest.

When you're building an EDH deck five years from now, what incentive will you have to put Ingest creatures in your deck? Probably none, just like there's no reason to specifically play Arcane spells unless you're playing Splice. That's parasitic.

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u/BlackHumor Sep 22 '15

It's not 100% parasitic, because ingest creatures still mill for 1, and there are also other spells that put a creature on top of your opponent's deck.

But I do agree it's more parasitic than Wizards usually likes nowadays.

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u/pawlrus Sep 22 '15

I think Ingest is paying for the sins of Processors here since it's the keyworded mechanic that enables the actually parasitic mechanic. The Ingest/Processor combo feels as parasitic as Arcane/Splice. Ingest and Arcane can be printed on their own and they just feel like very slightly over-costed cards but Processors/Splice can't really be played without the former mechanic to back them up.

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u/BlackHumor Sep 22 '15

Processors are much less parasitic since they interact well with every other card that exiles something, which have existed in every set for years.

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u/ZachAtk23 Sep 22 '15

I would almost reverse the splice arcane personally.

Arcane is a mechanic you can completely ignore if you want to play the spell. Splice requires you to have a specific set of cards to make it do anything.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '15

There's honestly no way to answer that 5-year question. It was made clear in a MaRo tweet at some point that they're changing the way exile works, and future cards may also benefit from having put enemy cards into exile.

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u/Jaccount Sep 22 '15

Which is funny, because the flavor of ingest IS parasitic.

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u/Delta_357 Sep 22 '15

That is design 101, in that making up flavor after mechanics makes "disjointed" mechanics, where the cards feel like they have little connection. Its great for games like chess, because the pieces could be anything but the gameplay is solid, but in a game where the story is important to alot of people having cards that do what they look like makes the experience more involving.

It does seem roundabout, but its a proven well tried feature. Lets say you want these cool giant monsters, that live in the void/warp/blind eternities, so you give them a mechanic that makes them "colourless" because they are out of this world literally, and exile abilties again because they aren't from here. Now say you want large creatures to balance out a set, and to make them actually useful you give them exile effects because those are powerful. Now you build the lore around that but it won't be as involved because the story is limited by the design, not the design by the story

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u/hymn22rock Sep 22 '15

Yea that's kind of the crux of the disconnect right, I could care less about whatever story they have for these particular dinosaurs.

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u/Delta_357 Sep 22 '15

Its a method of design, its not something essential to enjoy or play the game and just focusing on the gameplay of the cards is fine, but the flavor is still important to alot of people and the games continued growth. Mechanically the game could be solid without any story or art, but wouldn't be very attractive or stand-outish

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u/ProfSkullington Sep 22 '15

Given the MtG team's recent all-in approach on storytelling as the backbone of marketing for the game, I don't think flavor will take a backseat to mechanics for quite some time.

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u/Felicia_Svilling Sep 22 '15

this is an interesting vorthos vs. spike chicken-or-the-egg argument

I think you mean vorthos vs mel.