Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Trailer

In 2004, Wizards of the Coast released the Kamigawa block, sets inspired by traditional Japanese mythology. By every measure, they were a failure.

The original Kamigawa was a "deep cut" into Japanese mythology and spirit lore. Too deep, it turns out. Most of the audience didn't get the references and concepts. It didn't help that it was much less powerful than the sets immediately before.

This year, WotC took another crack at Kamigawa. 

I do admire this about Wizards of the Coast, they are willing to revisit their failed mechanics and settings. They even brought back phasing in the last couple of years, which stunned old-timers. It's now something you can do temporarily to targets, to remove a threat, or save one of your creatures. "Target creature phases out." 

In the intervening years, manga and anime has become much more popular, especially in Magic's target demographic. So the new Kamigawa set, Neon Dynasty, jumped forward in time, and leaned heavily into a lot of recognizable anime/manga tropes.

And naturally enough, WotC made an anime trailer for the set, featuring two of their new planeswalkers, Kaito and the Wanderer:

Magic: Universes Beyond

Magic: the Gathering is introducing "Universes Beyond", a new initiative to go heavily into cross-overs with other franchises. The first new products will be Warhammer 40k and Lord of the Rings.

Here's the announcement.

Such cards will be mechanically unique, look exactly like regular Magic cards and will be tournament-legal, at least in the non-rotating formats. Wizards did this last year with a special package of 5 cards from the television show The Walking Dead.

Needless to say, the enfranchised fans on in the internet are not happy.

I don't know, maybe it will work out for Wizards. Maybe they'll get more new people to buy in on the strength of the external IP, and most enfranchised players will stick with it.

Personally, though, this feels to me like the moment Magic jumps the shark.

A funny comic from Cardboard Crack:

 

A Novel RPG Resolution Mechanic

I came across a homebrewed tabletop RPG based on Magic: the Gathering. In particular, it has a really neat resolution mechanic.

As background, there are five colours in Magic: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green. Each represents parts of the world. For example, among other elements, White is order, Blue is knowledge, Black is death, Red is raw emotion, and Green is nature. If you arrange the colours in a circle, adjacent colours are considered allies, and opposite colors are enemies. For example, White is allied with Blue and Green, and is enemies with Red and Black.

This RPG uses a Fate deck composed of 2 land cards of each colour, and 1 Wastes (colorless). If you attempt something difficult, the Game Master first chooses the color your challenge belongs to. You then draw a card from the Fate deck. If it matches the color of the challenge, it's a success. If it matches an allied color, it's a partial success. If the character you are playing belongs to the same color, you get an extra draw and you take the best result.

For example, if your character is attempting to research something, that's Blue. Drawing a Blue land is success. Drawing White or Black is a partial success. Red, Green, or the Wastes is a failure. If your character is Blue, you get two draws, making it likely you'll get a partial success at least.

This is a very clever mechanic. It matches Magic: the Gathering intuitively, especially the color wheel which all players know well. As well, it's an 18% change of full success, and 36% chance of partial success. I find the clean use of partial successes particularly interesting, because partial success often lead the players to solve additional problems and makes the story more memorable.

Of course, this mechanic isn't really suitable to a numbers-heavy type of game. It looks to be more appropriate for a lighter, story-telling game.

Throne of Eldraine Trailer

Wizards of the Coast released a trailer for their latest Magic: the Gathering set, Throne of Eldraine. Apparently, these high-quality trailers might be a regular thing from now on. The trailer for War of the Spark was pretty good.

This trailer is a little ... different.

As one person on Reddit put it, "I didn’t expect to be rooting for a gingerbread lady to kill Garruk when I woke up today, but here we are I guess."

War of the Spark Trailer

Wizards of the Coast unveiled the trailer today for the latest Magic: the Gathering set, War of the Spark. This is the culmination of the story for the last seven years or so. The trailer quite quickly hit 4 million views, so it's clearly struck a chord in the gaming community.

You know, if someone had described this trailer to me, I would have been skeptical. Time flowing backwards, showing events in reverse. The unironic use of a cover of Linkin Park's In the End. And yet, it works.

Perhaps the aspect that makes it work is that the central character is Lilliana Vess, the necromancer planeswalker who represents the color Black. Black is selfish and ruthless, and Lilliana is all of those things. In the Magic community, Black's tagline is "Greatness, at any cost."

Yet Lilliana is still very popular, and is perhaps the character that WotC has done the best job with.

A Virtual Core Set for Magic: the Gathering's Standard Format

Background

Magic: the Gathering has several constructed formats. The flagship format is called Standard, and basically consists of all sets released in the last couple of years. As new sets are released, older sets rotate out, so the pool of cards from which to build decks changes regularly.

Lately, the Standard environment has had a lot of issues. Earlier this year, WotC banned 3 cards, the first time cards have been banned in around five years. And even after that, the resulting environment is not perceived as healthy, and there are calls to ban more cards.

Proposal

Right now, WotC really has only one way to affect the Standard environment: banning cards. New sets in the pipeline have already been finalized. Changes made to sets in production won't show up for over a year.

I propose that WotC add a new Virtual Core Set for Standard. This would be a list of already printed cards from older sets which are now legal in the current Standard.  I envision a starting list of about 50 cards, 10 from each color, which are "staples" of traditional Magic. The Core Set would not be cards that you build a deck around, but be mostly utility and sideboard cards to help weaker decks challenge the stronger ones.  Not the stars of your deck, but role-players. "Engine" cards, finishers, and "flashy" cards would come from the current sets in print.

A candidate staple for the Virtual Core Set

Advantages:

• This would provide a second, less-drastic mechanism for tuning Standard. Instead of the only option being to ban or not ban cards, WotC could first try adding or removing cards from the Virtual Core Set. If Standard needs a little more graveyard hate, rotate in some more graveyard hate.
• This would allow WotC to add cards to Standard without affecting Limited formats. This allows WotC not to have to worry damaging a good Limited environment by reprinting a strong card meant for Standard.
• Allows WotC more breathing room when it comes to reprints. Sometimes reprints are necessary, but don't fit in the set thematically, or have to replace a new card. This avoids that issue.
• Cheap. There used to be a Core Set made up mostly of reprints. But since most players already had the cards, and the Core Set was at a lower power level, it didn't sell well. A simple list of allowed cards has a minimal cost, in contrast. There should be a healthy supply of most cards that would be in the Virtual Core Set from previous sets.
• I think a Core Set would provide a stronger "baseline" for Magic in Standard. There would always be a little counter-magic, a little burn, etc. that adds additional support for the main themes from the released sets.

Disadvantages:

• Standard legality becomes more complex. Right now, it's just cards in the legal sets minus a handful of banned cards. Standard would become cards in the legal sets plus cards in the Virtual Core Set minus the banned cards. Depending on how often the Virtual Core Set changes, keeping track of whether a deck is legal or not would become harder for more casual players.
• Virtual Core Set cards might oppress or crowd out new cards. For example, let's say Counterspell was added to the Virtual Core Set. Obviously it would displace any counters from the new set, and may end up killing whole potential strategies.

Exchange of Material

I've been thinking about Magic: the Gathering lately. One thing I've been musing about is the complexity of "fat" creatures, that is creatures with toughness greater than power.

For reference, creatures in Magic have power and toughness. When one creature blocks a second creature, they deal damage equal to their power. If that damage is higher than the toughness, the creature dies. Two important differences between Magic and Hearthstone. First, in Magic the defender chooses which creatures block (or not block) which attacker. Second, damage done to a creature is wiped away at end of turn. It isn't permanent like in Hearthstone.

In any case, consider a very simple board. Jane has a 2/2, and Sally has a 2/2. Jane attacks with her 2/2. Now Sally has a choice: she can either take 2 damage, or block with her 2/2. If she blocks, both creatures will die. It will be an even exchange of material.

A similar situation happens if Sally has two 2/2 creatures. She can block, but will still exchange material.

However, let's consider what happens if all the creatures are 2/3 creatures. In the first scenario, if Jane attacks, Sally simply blocks and both creatures bounce off each other. There's possibility of a simple exchange here.

In the second scenario, it becomes foolish for Jane to attack. Sally would block with both 2/3 creatures, and kill Jane's creature without losing one of her own.

Simply adding that extra point of toughness makes exchanges less likely. But exchanges are good for the game. They simplify the game state. The high toughness creatures lead to a more "stalled" board, which becomes more and more complicated.

High power doesn't display this. If the creatures where 3/2, exchanges would be just as prevalent.

I think it's good for PvP games to be able to exchange resources. Otherwise, the board state builds and builds, until one side gets a sudden advantage and overruns the other side.

I think healing plays a similar role in MMOs, especially PvP. It prevents the exchange of material until a certain threshold is met. For example, Eve PvP might be more interesting without logistics ships. An outnumbered force could attempt to come out slightly ahead in each exchange of material.

But with healers, you either have enough firepower to get past the healing, or you don't. Or you have enough crowd control to disrupt the healing long enough to kill something.

In any case, evenly exchanging material in PvP is good. Anything that makes exchanging material harder, even as small as a single point of toughness, should be considered very carefully.

WotC's Solution to Intentional Draws and Concessions

Back in March we discussed the problem of intentional draws and concessions in Magic: the Gathering. Today, Wizards of the Coast unveiled their solution for professional Magic tournaments. It's pretty hardcore.

Click to enlarge

The Top 8 is turned into a single-elimination gauntlet, where higher seeds get to skip matches and start closer to the end.  T5-T8 need to win 4 matches, T3-T4 need to win 3 matches, and T1-T2 only need to win 2 matches.

Now, you want to get as high a seed as possible in the Swiss portion of the event as it greatly impacts your chance of winning.  It certainly aims directly at intentional draws and concessions.

In retrospect, I'm kind of amused at how timid my suggestion was. I suggested giving the higher seeds a single game in-hand, and thought that might be excessive. WotC blew right past my limits.

There are some other interesting administrative factors in this setup. The same number of matches are played [1], but there are four rounds instead of three. However a maximum of two games per round are played. Thus if you broadcasting the event, you only need to cover two games, rather than four in the first round of the traditional style. Similarly, it also means that you only need 2 judge teams to cover the finals, making it more likely that nothing will be missed rules-wise.

All in all, I'm impressed that Wizards is trying something this radical. We'll have to see how well it works in practice.

1. Technically, this mathematically obvious. 8 players, single-elimination, thus 7 players have to lose a match, no matter how you arrange the rounds. It's a old elementary school math puzzle. Given X players, how many matches do you have play to determine a winner? The answer is always X - 1.

Intentional Concessions in Magic: the Gathering

There's an interesting controversy in tournament-level Magic these days around the concept of "intentional concessions".

Background

Tournaments in Magic follow a standard format: X rounds of Swiss, followed by a Top 8 playoff. In Swiss matching, players with the same record in the tournament so far are matched with each other. For example, for Round 4, the players who are 3-0 play each other, the 2-1's play each other, etc. So you're always playing an opponent who's done roughly as well as you are. The top 8 after the Swiss portion go to the playoffs.

In the past, in the last rounds of the Swiss portion, the players who are at the top often "intentionally draw". With the draw, both players' records are good enough to qualify for the Top 8. And they get to save some time and the possibility that a loss might knock them out of the Top 8. Though getting knocked out is pretty unlikely, due to the way tie-breakers work.

The intentional draw is regarded as a fact of life in tournament Magic. It may not be the best scenario, but it's equal on both sides and has a fairly neutral effect on the tournament on the whole.

Current Controversy

At the pro level, some players are now asking for intentional concessions in certain situations, where one player deliberately takes a loss, not just a draw. For example, say Alice is 8-0 coming into the final Swiss round, and she gets paired down with Bob, who is 7-1. A player will need at least an 8-1 record to get into the Top 8. So regardless of whether she wins or loses, Alice is a lock for Top 8.

Bob, on the other hand, must win this round. Even a draw, which will bring him to 7-1-1, won't be enough. Bob asks Alice to intentionally concede the match, since it makes no difference to her.

Now, the non-Pro community is strongly against Alice deliberately losing. It is completely against the spirit of competition. It screws over Carl, who ends up in 9th because Bob got a "free" win.

However, the Pro community is a bit more torn on the issue. To see why, you can think of them as being in an iterative Prisoner's Dilemma where they can co-operate or defect. The optimum strategy in these types of situations is to cooperate. After all, in next tournament, maybe Alice will want to ask someone to intentionally concede. If she defects first instead of cooperating, she can expect future partners to defect to punish her. And hardcore gamers are the type of people who will very strongly flock to the optimal strategy in a Prisoner's Dilemma game.

It's also really hard to outlaw intentional concessions. For example, there are good reasons to concede. Maybe you need to leave, so you concede the current match. And it's really hard to tell when someone is deliberately playing badly. Gamers are very good at obeying the letter of the law and completely evading the spirit.

Solutions

In my view, the main reason this is a problem is because seeding in the Top 8 does not really matter. It's really hard to predict who your first opponent in the Top 8 will be. Plus the 8th person's deck is only slightly worse than the 1st person. That difference would be swamped by the variance in the game of Magic itself.

If seeding mattered, Alice would be hurt, perhaps significantly, by taking a deliberate loss.

Right now, the Top 8 playoffs are a best-of-5 match. My suggestion would be to give the higher-seeded player a game in hand. So the higher seed only needs to win 2 games, but the lower seed would need to win 3 games to take the match and advance.

Of course, this significantly slants the matches in favor of the higher seed. But that in turn makes it vital to get as high a seed as you can in the Swiss portion of the tournament. Perhaps this solution could be toned down to only apply to the first round of the playoffs, essentially giving the Top 4 an advantage over the 5th-8th place.