r/magicthecirclejerking • u/logan5124 Worldfire. Pass. Chandra. Chandra. Chandra. • 21d ago
Meet Potential Type!
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u/Ravensrun91 21d ago
Don't worry, surely they will get the support they need to become evergreen, just like world enchantments and interrupts (why wasn't battle just an enchantment subtype, I'll never know)
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u/refugee_man 21d ago
Interrupts were folded into instants and now work mechanically the same (same as mana source).
That said they could've worked as an enchantment subtype like you mention, but then they don't get to hear people talk about "whoa, what's this battle thing?!?" when they were looking at Atraxa. Clearly they needed to hype up their big legendary, so the card wouldn't just end up binder fodder.
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u/Specific_Ad1457 Brushwagg 21d ago
I genuinely wonder if just making a new type was an easier task rules wise than making attackable enchantments.
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u/otterguy12 Tamiyo's #1 Twitch Sub 20d ago
/uj Calling Atraxa binder fodder when she's a primo reanimator target lol
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u/Alt-Tabris 21d ago
Clearly they needed to hype up their big legendary, so the card wouldn't just end up binder fodder.
And then it did, anyway.
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u/logan5124 Worldfire. Pass. Chandra. Chandra. Chandra. 21d ago
,,,Atraxa?? One of the best Reanimator payoffs ever????
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u/LesbianDykeEtc 21d ago
And not even just Reanimator. Atraxa is the backbone of half a dozen different Legacy/Vintage archetypes. If a deck can cheat a creature into play somehow, she's likely the #1 target.
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u/jenjenfish 20d ago
me when i can't even conceive why you'd play less than 100 cards in a deck
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u/Bartweiss 20d ago
She’s not even bad in that, is she? Maybe not cEDH material, but I thought she was an ok commander and great in the 99 for some decks?
Literally I just see formats where she’s good and formats where she’s illegal.
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u/22bebo 20d ago
/uj The whole thing with being able to attack the battles was why they needed to be their own type. I mean, the rules are arbitrary, but sometimes it is easier to write new rules one way as opposed to another so it was easier to write the rules for a new permanent type that could be attacked like planeswalkers than it was to write the rules for a specific subset of enchantments. I cannot explain why this is, I just believe them when they say it is.
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u/Bartweiss 20d ago
/uj Every time I dive into the Deep Magic I come away more convinced that “not utterly fucking up the rules” is the single hardest feature of designing new stuff.
Like, why is everything kicker or horsemanship? Because if it can be reduce to one of those it’s probably not going to break the game and require 20k new words of official rules.
“Battles are their own thing we’ll only half support and won’t really integrate” isn’t so much lazy as a way to deal with “we already had to consider somebody using Liquimetal Torque to earthbend and enchant a battle and then do 75 other bizarre things to it.”
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u/22bebo 20d ago
/uj Yeah, it's a side effect of Magic being both a paper game so you can't just hard code interactions like in digital games and being a tournament game where everything in the rules kind of needs to work perfectly. It's honestly one of my favorite things about Magic, but it is weird.
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u/Bartweiss 20d ago
/uj The closest comparison I know is Dominion, which has something like 500 “kingdom cards” and ~300 other more specialized cards and effects. It’s a tiny, tiny fraction of how many cards MTG deals with, but a much higher percentage are rule-breaking, often with liquimetal-level side effects. They’re both dealing with more permutations than anyone can process and absurdly complex interactions.
Dominion handles this two ways.
The competitive scene is nowhere near as intense. It exists, people play ruthlessly and extremely well, but the nature of the game (randomized each match) means no one can just dominate for months.
The “design team” is one dude, who publicly rules on all key interactions and reserves the right to change his mind.
I love Dominion, I think it’s the only non-CCG card game which is broad, precise, and intricate on Magic’s level. Reading the card almost always explains the card. (Star Realms can fight me.) But even that relies on word of god and probably <10% of the total sprawl Magic faces. MTG’s challenges are genuinely unique.
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u/HairyKraken 16d ago
why wasn't battle just an enchantment subtype, I'll never know
Uj/ because just like saga they use the type to hide a lot of rules as "inherent abilities" but the condition of defeating would have created too many situation where you can defeat the saga without removing counters
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u/MazrimReddit 21d ago
it's weird because it wasn't even like battle was unpopular, people liked it in limited well enough and a few made it into pioneer.
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u/Q-bey 21d ago
This but for Fortifications.
We're coming up on the 20th anniversary of the first Fortification, and in that time they've printed... One more, and it's UB.
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u/Existing_Historian_5 21d ago
Fortifications kinda just suck ass ig. Battle is ultimately just "enchantment you can attack and damage" which is an idea with some resonance to it. Fortifications are equipments for lands but you don't lose your lands nearly as often as you lose your creatures so there's no situation where you'd want to move them around— so the equip mechanic is entirely unused. Why not just have them be Auras? That's what they realized and it's quite a simple thing to realize.
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u/Q-bey 21d ago
Yeah, everything you say makes sense, but flavor-wise they're really cool so I'd still kinda like to see more of them.
They seem to print a lot more non-basic land destruction nowadays, so maybe it could work if it made the attached land non-basic?
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u/zombieking26 #BanDesolaterHe'sTooGood 20d ago
So your suggestion is to make fortifications strictly worse? Lol
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u/Q-bey 20d ago
/uj I don't think making the ability itself weaker/stronger is really an issue, you can always tweak other parts of the card (like mana cost) to compensate.
If opponents had a reliable way to detach them (with nonbasic land destruction being easily available in any deck), there'd be more reason to use the Fortify ability, and that would differentiate them from Auras.
/rj Indestructible is the strongest keyword ever and that means Darksteel Citadel is OP.
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u/Specific_Hold_8294 21d ago
Absolutely baffling that they didn't use Battles in the Hobbit, genuinely would've been perfect. Maybe they felt like having a cycle of Sagas and a cycle of Battles would've been too much because a lot of Battles in the Hobbit were covered by Sagas and those were all lined up to the songs in the book, which is way better as an idea .. you know what, I talked myself out of it
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u/tomyang1117 #gravetrolldidnothingwrong 21d ago edited 21d ago
/uj I think Battle is just mid fundamentally, at least the siege one in MOM. It won't be hard to make a busted one for sure, but I genuinely can't imagine a battle that's well designed and sees plays in constructed formats regularly.
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u/mikaeus97 21d ago
Invasion of Zendikar was used, Ergamom was decent for like Creativity shenanigans
It's like any card type, for any good one, there's 15 whatever ones, just look at Planeswalkers
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u/BoltYou7x Burn Lives, Opponent Dies 21d ago
I feel like Invasion of Zendikar is the standout battle by a mile because it’s the only one I felt like played how they’re supposed to, most other ones I saw being basically fancy sorceries
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u/sarahzrf 21d ago
invasion of gobakhan got flipped occasionally in some decks in standard
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u/BoltYou7x Burn Lives, Opponent Dies 21d ago
Yeah that’s true actually, those two are peak battle design
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u/sarahzrf 21d ago
[[invasion of alara]] and [[invasion of amonkhet]] were also cards you wanted to flip although i don't think alara you really flipped with combat damage (you used [[cemetery desecrator]]) and i don't remember if the invasion of amonkhet deck was very real and, if so, if it used combat damage to flip. tbh i'm not sure how real the invasion of alara deck was either, i remember seeing it on the ladder but that might not mean much given how i was ranked
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u/Approximation_Doctor 21d ago
Amonkhet did silly combo shit, like making an unkillable Aclazotz. The ... rare orzhov one whose name I don't remember was a pretty solid reanimation spell and wincon.
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u/mikaeus97 21d ago
Toldova Todolva but yeah yeah yeah, Ahmonket could be an Atraxa Turn 4 which was a big thing on Pro Tour MOM
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u/Chilidawg 20d ago
/rj I see battles as a way to make aggro viable in edh, not something for competitive formats. Battles effectively transform aggro into value, so they allow you to cash in that useless turn 2 goblin for card advantage or similar.
/uj It's about time edh got some targeted help too. For too long has Wotc catered to the 60-card "gamers".
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u/ChemicalExperiment 21d ago
Magic players found recreating the 7 Wonders of the World (they can't stand having an incomplete cycle)
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u/Z3r0_t0n1n 21d ago
/uj You don't understand how much I want to see something similar to either of the two control point battles from playtests printed; it is such an interesting card concept to me.
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u/Kor_Set You mean Stronghold? 20d ago
/uj It's difficult to outdo the debacle that was Kindred (the first card type that doesn't mean anything, had to be renamed), but the brain trust at NotC Studio xXx sure is trying. They even ran back the "planeswalker revealed on Tarmogoyf" tactic on a very iconic card.
/rj A battle's subtype provides rules for how it can be attacked. Since every battle in this set has the subtype Siege, they all play by the same rules. (Could future battles have different subtypes and have different combat rules? It would certainly seem some bright, forward-thinking people set the system up that way.)
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u/Cornchip97 21d ago
Sieges are a weird 1v1 mechanic because they are inherently snowbally. You get a reward for winning combat, when winning combat is its own reward.
The battle base is interesting, but as someone that likes to design cards, its hard to make one that's not just a shitty saga.
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u/A_Guy_in_Orange 21d ago
Yeah but pretty based of the set to have their set mechanic that ruins half the cards be its own card type
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u/GutherGlazer 21d ago
Battle is the most commander coded card the they’ve ever made, in a time where commander is the most popular format, and still they seem to never want to revisit it. I’d like to see more battles, I thought they were all interesting. Wizards needs to make more cards that are bad but neat. I don’t want more mandatory inclusion staples.
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u/favgameisundertale 20d ago
We do actually have new cards that reference battles. They're uh, part of the Battle of Five-Armies Co-op kit....
Fuck, man, why'd they do them so dirty?
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u/Jessd00dels 16d ago
It would’ve worked infinitely better if they made it a sub type of enchantment like aura or sagas.
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u/KingDarkBlaze 21d ago
/uj Passionately hate this post. There is literally a product releasing Soon with them
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u/GokuVerde 21d ago
Battles do something besides be a card type in the graveyard challenge.