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The mathematics of Magic: the Gathering (1999)

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

#51

Post by junctioniv »

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 is generally seen as the main flaw with the games core design. Most other currently successful trading card game (mainly Hearthstone) with mana resources have gone the route of providing a consistent source of resources per turn. This approach does significantly reduce the variance match to match and leads to a lot less of the "feel bad" moments of getting flooded or screwed.

That being said I personally find the variance that Magic has when it comes to mana resources to be more interesting than the alternatives as most of the newer card games have abandoned the idea of having mana resources(lands) in your deck all together. I think the lands are one of the main things that makes Magic an interesting card game.

One interesting alternative to lands was from the World of Warcraft Card game (spiritual successor to Hearthstone) which allowed you to play any card from your hand face down as a mana resource. Although they completely did away with this in Hearthstone so they could limit the deck size and the reduce the number of duplicate cards that were needed in each deck.

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

#52

Post by GFischer »

xanamander wrote: post #9
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.

Well, the "spending all my money" part hasn't changed at all, in fact depending on the format you're interested in, that may be the defining characteristic of your experience. The wholesomeness of Friday Night Magic is highly dependent on what your LGS scene happens to be like though, that part hasn't changed too much. Magic's player base is bigger and more vibrant than it's ever been, and I think by most metrics Lim…

Well, I've read that it's actually gone a bit down from it's peak (some sketchy estimates put the active player base at 12 million, down from a 20 million peak), as games such as Hearthstone and fatigue eroded the playerbase, but Dominaria did bring some people back and it's on the upswing again - and with the new Hearthstone-like client they might get back to 20 million again.

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

#53

Post by r00fus »

overcast wrote: post #40
nlawalker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also liked in MTG how much more responsive the game was due to instants/interrupts & triggers - was far more complex and nuanced.

In HS it's simplified - with few exceptions, your stuff happens only on your turn, very little targeting of the player (ie, no discard). The strategies are limited. I still like it, but ... it's definitely not up to MTG richness.

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

#54

Post by nkrisc »

overcast wrote: post #40
nlawalker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More often than not the only randomness that affects the outcome of a game is card draw. There are random effects that can flip a game but that happens less frequently than just a bad draw.

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

#55

Post by torben-friis »

stephengillie wrote: post #25

Some time ago, I tried to recreate a few basic Powershell commands as MTG cards.[0] Try/Catch [1] is one of my favorites - it's designed to "pre-counter" counterspells. [0] https://imgur.com/a/4sa6v [1] Reveal 2 cards from your hand. Choose 1 and pay its casting cost, then cast it as normal. If it fails to resolve, reset the game state to before the card was cast, then cast the second card as normal. https://i.imgur.…

>reset the game state to before the card was cast, then cast the second card as normal. https://i.imgur.com/E2cbdEo.png

wouldn't that make the card useless?

play cardA -> get countered ->state reset -> play card B -> B gets countered (because your opponent recovers the counter and untapped cards, due to the reset).

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

#56

Post by jeeyoungk »

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.

That's why in most formats lands are considered staples and fairly expensive. Duallands, shocklands, and fetchlands can make your mana base much smoother.

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

#59

Post by sincerely »

brandnewlow wrote: post #11
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.

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.

> High level of play.

On cockatrice...? I love doing a cockatrice cube but this is simply not true.

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

#60

Post by derivagral »

brandnewlow wrote: post #11
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.

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.

XMage is similar to Cockatrice but also has rules enforcement and drafting in-client. Just the Java download gets you the game, but you do have to scrape the images yourself (within their software) if you want those.
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