The Design Problem Magic: the Gathering Had to Solve to Survive

Comments · 221

• DA

  @danielyang6177 · 2 months ago

  We're seeing in Magic over these last few years that every game piece is basically slowly becoming queen-adjacents. In Commander you're seeing more and more legends that are single card engines that simultaneously enable you to do the thing and rewarding you for it. Combine that with cheaper, stronger cards and it feels like we're headed towards a place where everything is a queen

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• AV

  @avenage · 2 months ago

  The queen problem is avoided by having intransitive balancing in such a way that there are no true queens because there's always a counterplay to each strategy. The problem though is that certain cards are now pushed so hard that they no longer function like that because they either do everything or they resist interaction, they have in essence created the queens they should have been avoiding in the first place.

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• JE

  @jeanclaudevanslamme · 2 months ago

  If proxying undermines a solution to the queen problem then you didn't have a solution to the queen problem,  imo

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• EL

  @ElmoTheRed · 2 months ago

  FYI Ante cards were printed all the way to revised and homelands (1994). I was playing in this era. We did not play this way and local tournaments did not use ante. I think the community didn't abide by the rule so they got rid of it.

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• JS

  @Jsimon402 · 2 months ago

  Last time I was this early there was mana burn

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• LO

  @Lobosthecrow · 2 months ago

  set rotation is still one of the most elegant solutions to the Queen Problem. And we are seeing the ramifications now in standard with longer rotations and more sets.

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• TH

  @TheMarsKce · 2 months ago

  I gotta say I truely fell in love with your channel. Topics are really great, and as someone who makes games I find lots of information here really usefull. I guess what Im trying to say is thanks :) Cheers from Poland <3

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• GI

  @giff64 · 2 months ago

  This is part of the reason I disagree with people when they call magic "basically deckbuilding chess"

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• RA

  @rain4825 · 2 months ago

  I can kinda see the shadow of the old magic ante system in how the pokemon tcg's reward system works.

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• SM

  @SmellySquid · 2 months ago

  I think a Cube tournament of Magic the Gathering could use Ante to great effect. In most cubes, the entire card pool is owned by whoever is hosting the cube so there wouldn't be any exchange of ownership in changing decklists for the players' sets for later games in the cube.

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• IM

  @ImaginaryNumb3r · 2 months ago

  In the end, it all comes down to resource cost. Not only in total mana, but also in colored mana.<br>But the real trick was to seamlessly merge resource cost with faction identities. It&apos;s the factions that truly sets magic apart, and allows for combination os hybrid mana cards, mono-colored identities and tradeoffs in resource generation. Not only does this give the game a natural progression curve, but also different playstyles that lends itself to various gaming personalities.

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• SO

  @SovietDancebot · 2 months ago (edited)

  There&apos;s probably an argument that something like Pokemon&apos;s Prize Card system where a random portion of your deck is set aside until the player completes certain in game objectives resembles an update to the ante system that&apos;s less at odds with player sentiment, but I don&apos;t know how that game has evolved over time.

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