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The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

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Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#31

Post by brandnewlow »

stephengillie wrote: post #22
shiado wrote: post #14

I played Magic briefly as a teen and the thing that bothered me the most was how mana worked and the tendency to either get mana flooded or mana screwed. I even played a custom format with friends where you separated your deck and your mana into two decks and drew one from each every turn. It made the game much more enjoyable and consistent.

This game mechanic (mana burn) was removed when the rules were refactored across the past 20 years. Mana (edit:) simply disappears at the end of each stage.

dusts off DCI card

Mana Burn is gone, yes, in terms of doing damage, but players' mana pools still empty after each phase.

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#32

Post by technofiend »

brandnewlow wrote: post #18
freeone3000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's led to the recent trend of stapling the effect you actually want onto a creature with appropriate-stats-for-effect-level. Crucible of Worlds is a 3 mana effect. As a creature, it should be green. It should therefore cost 2G. A 2G creature is reasonable at 2/3. Therefore, Ramunap Excavator is appropriate. My modern deck plays entirely creatures, and entirely humans. It has duress, thorn of amethyst, nevermore, an…

Along with the radical power creep of creatures, Wizards has - increased the cost of blue spells that counter creatures, because new players get sad when their monsters get countered - started giving evasion abilities to many more creatures, since new players get sad when their monsters get blocked

Time to dust off the shadow deck. :-)

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#33

Post by Tyr42 »

rpowers wrote: post #21
shiado wrote: post #14

I played Magic briefly as a teen and the thing that bothered me the most was how mana worked and the tendency to either get mana flooded or mana screwed. I even played a custom format with friends where you separated your deck and your mana into two decks and drew one from each every turn. It made the game much more enjoyable and consistent.

I played a format that stated you could put creatures down as long as you had enough mana to cover their cost, but you couldn't attack with a creature unless you payed for their cost. You would have to pay their cost every time you attacked with them. This variant meant you would need to prioritize spells versus attacking. You wouldn't attack with all your creatures so you could save some mana for a counter spell.

Gotta go all in on Exulted creatures then.

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#34

Post by brandnewlow »

lvspiff wrote: post #30
brandnewlow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest set, Dominaria, is the best in years. Richard Garfield worked on it. Magic: Online is slowly being bled out by Wizards in favor of their new Hearthstone-like digital client. That said, the best way to play today is Vintage Cube drafts on Cockatrice. Free. High level of play. The best cards. There’s almost always a game going.

>> Vintage Cube drafts on Cockatrice What/where can I find this? never heard of it and never had much fun/luck with magic online but would love to be able to play online

https://cockatrice.us/

Install. Log on. Make a deck and join a game or jump into a draft. There's two Dominaria drafts filling up right now. There's no rules engine and it's a bit janky at first, but you can play magic against a real human 24/7 for free.

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#35

Post by xedarius »

shiado wrote: post #14

I played Magic briefly as a teen and the thing that bothered me the most was how mana worked and the tendency to either get mana flooded or mana screwed. I even played a custom format with friends where you separated your deck and your mana into two decks and drew one from each every turn. It made the game much more enjoyable and consistent.

My friend and I used to play from 40 life rather 20, also seemed to even out the effect.

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#36

Post by mbunch »

brandnewlow wrote: post #19
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that affects both players equally, as in general the luck factor. My experience is that while you might lose a few games stupidly because of mana screw/flood, in the long run luck balances out and skill makes the difference.

It's secretly a feature, not a bug. Due to mana screw, even the best players lose 30-40% of the time.

It is my least favorite part of the game (really the only part of it that I dislike), but you're right. I don't know if it was quite what Richard Garfield had in mind, but at this point it's 100% an intentional part of the design philosophy.

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#37

Post by mbunch »

pimmen wrote: post #12
claudiulodro wrote: post #2

How is the MTG scene these days? I spent my childhood through high school obsessively playing the game, reading these sorts of breakdowns, and spending all my money. Then life got in the way and I haven't played in about 10 years. I remember Friday Night Magic used to be a wholesome way to spend a Friday evening, and you got a lot of entertainment for the $5 entry fee.

If you want a good deck, we're talking a lot more cash than 10 years ago.

Drafting will only cost you about $10 if you like Limited. Commander can be done on a reasonable budget too if you like wacky multiplayer.

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#38

Post by brandnewlow »

brandnewlow wrote: post #34
lvspiff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Vintage Cube drafts on Cockatrice What/where can I find this? never heard of it and never had much fun/luck with magic online but would love to be able to play online

https://cockatrice.us/ Install. Log on. Make a deck and join a game or jump into a draft. There's two Dominaria drafts filling up right now. There's no rules engine and it's a bit janky at first, but you can play magic against a real human 24/7 for free.

Also, the cockatrice drafting community relies on opensource apps like http://dr4ft.info to run the actual drafts. There's always room for improvement and anyone can host a fork. It'd be great to get more HNers tinkering with them.

https://github.com/dr4fters/dr4ft

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#39

Post by BookmarkSaver »

stephengillie wrote: post #22
shiado wrote: post #14

I played Magic briefly as a teen and the thing that bothered me the most was how mana worked and the tendency to either get mana flooded or mana screwed. I even played a custom format with friends where you separated your deck and your mana into two decks and drew one from each every turn. It made the game much more enjoyable and consistent.

This game mechanic (mana burn) was removed when the rules were refactored across the past 20 years. Mana (edit:) simply disappears at the end of each stage.

He's not talking about mana burn, that was never really a problem except for extremely niche combo decks. He's talking about when you draw lands/mana producers for 5 turns in a row after starting with a heavy mana hand. That is "mana flooding".

Re: The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

#40

Post by overcast »

nlawalker wrote: post #20
shiado wrote: post #14

I played Magic briefly as a teen and the thing that bothered me the most was how mana worked and the tendency to either get mana flooded or mana screwed. I even played a custom format with friends where you separated your deck and your mana into two decks and drew one from each every turn. It made the game much more enjoyable and consistent.

Have you ever looked at Hearthstone? I tried it briefly, and I think it's got its share of problems but I thought that the way they designed around this was really cool. https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Mana covers it in detail, but the gist of it is that mana is generally an automatic thing, and it's granted per-turn at an increasing rate throughout the game, meaning that most games follow a natural power curve tha…

I've played daily since beta, and stopped about a year ago. The problem with Hearthstone is that they traded mana RNG for effect RNG. The fate of every match revolves around how well a card randomly targets an enemy. Far too much is decided by a coin toss in that game, because it makes for funny youtube videos.
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