My agenda? You “know what kind of person I am”? Uh huh…
Seriously dude, maybe you need to drop out of the forum for a while…
I’ve done it from time to time myself when my anger overwhelms my good sense, and I think you’re reaching that point.
Easy. You didn’t instantly agree with his EXTREMELY flawed assertions, same as me.
Frank Karsten runs a weekly column on magicthegathering.com tallying the top 8 presence of decks in various formats. At last check, there were 7 standard decks that boasted at least a 7% presence on average, and a bunch more that show up to varying degrees. The most dominant deck was at 13%.
no really dominant cards
There are cards that show up a lot (throughout all rarities,) but in general there are very few cards that truly dominate a metagame these days. The last huge mistake card like that was Skullclamp, which was printed about 3 and a half years ago. And it was a huge, huge mistake, there’s no doubt about it. I quit playing for three years because of it (and the whole affinity fiasco,) so I definitely consider this point to be important. They’ve done pretty well since then, though, enough that I picked the game up again recently, and I’ve been really happy with it. There continue to be some mistake cards, but I think even those often aren’t mistakes from a power level perspective as such, but from a design perspective (Damnation and Sulfur Elemental spring to mind.)
As an example re: power level and rarity, at the last constructed pro tour the top 15 nonland cards consisted of 5 commons, 4 uncommons, and 6 rares, so roughly even throughout rarity.
a relatively low percentage of cards that are useless
This is a tricky one, because you have to define useless, and there are a lot of factors that go into determining how useful a card is, and who it’s useful for. For starters, cards are only as good as the other cards around them. If, in the same format, there are two blue cards that draw 3 cards, and one costs 3 mana and the other costs 4, the 4 mana card is probably going to be pretty useless. But in another format without the 3 mana card, the 4 mana one might be very powerful. For a slightly different example, take Wrath of God. 2WW, destroy all creatures, they can’t be regenerated. In the abstract Wrath of God is a very powerful card. But in a format without good aggro decks, Wrath of God becomes pretty bad because it won’t ever kill more than maybe one or maybe two creatures, and it’s literally useless against most of the control and combo decks you’ll be playing. Or maybe there’s a better creature sweeper available in another color, or there aren’t any other good while cards to support a deck with Wrath, or whatever. In any of these scenarios Wrath of God is useless, but no one is going to tell you that it’s not a powerful card.
On the other hand, consider the card Primal Frenzy, a truly bad card in all respects. G, enchant creature, enchanted creature has trample. Giving a creature trample and nothing else is never worth a card. But to a new player, Primal Frenzy lets his Craw Wurm smash through his friend’s chump blocking saproling tokens, handing him the win. To this player Primal Frenzy is a very good card! And better yet, he’s learned that if his deck’s goal is to smash face with big green creatures, trample is a good ability to have on hand because it lets you attack through cump blockers. And then if he keeps playing he’ll learn that Primal Frenzy isn’t very good! There are other cards that do similar things in a more effective way, and though they may cost more mana, they’re ultimately better choices. A simple, bad card has taught this player two very valuable lessons about the game. So is Primal Frenzy useless?
Part of the game of magic is figuring out what’s good and what’s not. R&D obviously have a lot of influence on what is, but they don’t have complete control by an stretch of the imagination. When they reprinted Dragonstorm in Time Spiral they didn’t realize it was a viable deck, they just did it because they were giving storm to red and it’s sort of an iconic card. Maybe they should have known, since they printed some very powerful fast mana along with it (Lotus Bloom,) but they didn’t. At any rate that’s a seperate question, and none of it stopped Makahito Mihara from winning worlds with the deck. Not bad for a card they thought would be useless.
relative lack of a need to ban or errata cards
Changes to the banned/restricted lists in the eternity formats (Vintage and Legacy) happen about once or maybe twice a year. Wizards admits they don’t really playtest cards with these formats in mind (or Extended for the most part,) in part because doing so is practically infeasible. To my knowledge (I don’t play these formats) they’re pretty diligent about keeping them from becoming too degenerate. This is more difficult for Vintage (where there are no bannings, only restrictions to 1 card) which is kind of inherently broken. These formats also have far fewer players, owing to the rarity and price of many older cards, and for better or worse the financial incentive just isn’t there to spend tons of time developing them. They are generally well maintained nonetheless.
In the major contemporary formats (Standard and Block Constructed) bannings are exceedingly rare. The last major ones were Skullclamp and later the ravager deck components from Mirrodin Block, in both Block and Standard, roughly 3 and a half years ago as I mentioned above. Prior to that the last banning in either Standard or Block was Linn Sivvi and Rishadan Port in Masques Block Constructed in 2000.
Wizards no longer issues power level errata, and actually recently removed all power level errata ever issued, which in turn led to the banning of Flash in Legacy. One thing they try very hard to avoid is having cards play differently than the way they are printed, so players don’t feel like they need to look up an oracle wording every time they play a card. Most errata issued these days are for rules or templating reasons. If they feel a card is over the line they ban it.
a willingness to errata cards when they’re found to be too effective
Addressed above.
The rarity of a card in Magic does have (at every point I checked) an impact on playing – they tend to be better. This trend has diminished, but even magic advocates admit it hasn’t disappeared. IMHO those making magic know exactly what they are doing, and intentionally make a few power rares every set. I believe this because the power rares I’ve seen have been so obvious, and I know that those making the game are strong players.
As detailed above, power level in Magic is an abstract concept. One could quite reasonably argue that Terramorphic Expanse and Prismatic Lense, both common mana fixers, are the most defining cards of Timespiral Block Constructed. They are by far the most represented cards in tournament decks aside from basic lands, and all they let you do is play spells, but they enable 3+ color deck strategies. You could also argue that Damnation, a rare reprint of Wrath of God in black, is the most defining card in the set, because it enables powerful control archetypes, and the rest of the format had to react. Wizards thought white was going to be really good in Time Spiral, but they were completely and totally wrong. White is awful. They thought Magus of the Disk was going to be hot shit, and he’s a bulk rare.
I mean, they have an idea of what they’re doing, but they don’t really know. There’s absolutely no doubt that R&D attempts to shape upcoming metagames, but their success in doing so varies wildly. And yeah, they put powerful effects on rare cards, on purpose no doubt. They put powerful effects on commons and uncommons too. The rares are often flashier, and sometimes just plain better. But if they made Terramorphic Expanse a rare its price would be extremely high, because everyone needs 4. It is a good card because it is good, not because of its rarity. Ideally they want you to want cards across all rarities, and that’s mostly true.
You also completely ignore the limited (draft and sealed) aspect of the game (which is mostly what I play,) where a card’s rarity actually does matter to the actual game of playing magic. If they printed Wrath of God at common limited play would be reduced to seeing who can open the most Wraths of God, which is pretty stupid. It’s OK to have cards like that show up sometimes, and combatting powerful cards is one of the more skill intensive parts of the game (really, limited as a whole is far more skill testing than constructed in my opinion.) But having them show up all the time is bad for the game.
One of the other really cool things about limited ties into “useless” cards. In limited cards that are often perceived as useless can become very good in the right deck or with the right strategy. In the most recent Pro Tour, which was 2-headed giant Time Spiral draft, the winning team was able to get a lot of cards that are generally perceived to be unplayable (Virulent Sliver, Shadow Sliver) very late in the draft, and those cards enabled them to pull off turn 4 wins in a couple of games. They took cards that most people thought were terrible and won $50,000!
After having written all that I can’t imagine I’m coming off as anything other than Wizards sycophant, which is too bad because I’m not. I have plenty of complaints about the game. I absolutely agree that Wizards tries to structure the game to maximize the number of cards they sell, and rarity is a big part of that. To assume otherwise would be foolish. I also think you give the game far too little credit. The days of Urza Block power cards are long gone. R&D isn’t perfect, and they’re definitely in it for the money, but I don’t think that’s stopped them from crafting a really excellent game. Ultimately I don’t agree with your assertion that Magic is not well balanced. I am interested in checking Shadowfist out, though. Is it playable online?
For the record, I’ve played many other games, and have played the Vs. System (Marvel and D.C. Comics) and WoW TCGs competetively; the former for almost three years. I’m not so sure about WoW, but the Marvel game was nowhere near as balanced, even by Jasper’s definitions, than Magic. I imagine if Shadowfist and Vampire had million dollar Pro Tour seasons, there would be some broken things discovered. Who knows?
It is pretty straightforward: simple scarcity, artificially created or naturally occurring, and differentiation in value/demand. Counterfeit money doesn’t really touch on IP laws. Nor fake gold, pearls, gems, etc.
Counterfeiting really comes from trademark issues, and ancient common law torts such as misrepresentation and passing off; that’s the “other law” you’re referring to. It is all too easy to conflate copyright and trademark theory, even Federal circuit court judges have done it, contributing to the slow-moving train wreck that is most of IP law in the US, but they are distinct issues.
Yes, if there were no IP, counterfeiting, fraud, misrepresentation and passing off laws, people could produce cards to remove any scarcity between different cards. But would these be allows in sanctioned play? That’s up to the sanctioner.
Well, the passing off versus the infringement by creating unsanctioned copies is a legal delicacy that I do not think is particularly relevant here, but I understand your point. The end question is whether, if you had the right to make a card that looked exactly like the Wizards card and was indistinguishable from it, how it would affect the game. In that context, the only real value would be in some form of trademark right to denote the origin of goods as being from Wizards. But the problem is that in the case of a cardboard card with some easily reproduced graphics on it, there really is not a lot of value there outside of the copyright that prevents recreation. Wizards could obviously create tournaments in which only Wizards denoted cards appear to generate a form of scarcity, so let’s assume (because I agree with your fundamental question on the law, it was just a level of detail I did not think necessary for this) that the passing off, Lanham Act, and similar rights are also waived.
Slyfrog, if this is such an important issue to you, and it is so cheap to produce these cards, and this is something the world is clamoring for… then why in the hell don’t you get off your lazy ass and just do it? Create your own supplemental card deck or whatever and give them away at bus stops or whatever you think is the valid way of distributing cards. But when your argument is that there is no cost, no worth etc then it should be easy for you to do it, right?
That’s a great idea. You could commission jpinard to do your artwork.
Huh? Why is this such an important issue to me? Where did I ever say that? I think it is an interesting question. If I think it is an interesting question whether Japan could have successfully invaded on a small scale the western United States, that I need to get off my ass and start shooting Californians?
What are you spitting about?
Sorry i took your complete outrage at anyone who disagreed with you and furious defense of your bizarre ideas as some kind of importance. Much like a dog trying to understand humans, I don’t speak stupid, so when you behave like you did, I just thought it was important to you. My bad. Carry on.
Sorry chet, I took your rabid ranting and babbling gibberish thrown out like vomit on a frat party night as trying to express something. I have only worked with relatively lucid people, not the mentally ill, so I thought at first you might be trying to say something sane. Keep going.
Just so pathetic. I hope you think asserting someone is “stupid” in combination with whatever strained and half-clever analogies you can come up with wins you some prize. It seems to be a favorite around here lately, so I hope it is good for something. Did it impress the other gifted and talented kids at your 7th grade science camp? I bet you won “most acerbic - 1991” and consoled yourself with really being smarter than those idiot kids who thought that multiclassing half-elf was the good way to go.
SlyFrog- The reason you have so many “forum enemies” is that you think someone pointing out that you’re wrong is being contrary and anyone who disagrees does so because they hate you.
I bet you won “most acerbic - 1991” and consoled yourself with really being smarter than those idiot kids who thought that multiclassing half-elf was the good way to go.
Are you calling chet out as a nerd? In a thread that you started on an internet messageboard, the subject of which was collectible card games?
I watched someone play some Magic the other day, and from a cursory examination there are way more “power rares” than there were back in the Revised->Mirage era that I played in. Some of the cards people were playing were one shot game winners.
It still looked like a ton of fun, I miss Magic. We should do some Magic Online stuff as a forum.
No, that isn’t the case. bloo pointed out I was wrong. bloo is not an idiot looking to score internet points. bloo is also capable of understanding the topic and issues, and does not rant and scream, “This isn’t copyright, you’re so stupid!” while clearly not really understanding what is even being discussed.
Others here have also been capable of discussion. They have also disagreed, intelligently. The ones who have not stand out very clearly.
I think it does. And I get double bonus points when the poster tries to copy them while slamming them for being pathetic.
Triple when you think you discovered something ironic. Very clever for you to have noticed that unintentional copying - you win again!
Oh sure, now try to pass it off as intentional. Good one retard, just like the time you “intentionally” pissed yourself out of excitement on the annual shortbus trip to McDonalds.
I want to be Flowers. Don’t tell anyone.
Someone should play an Armageddon card on this thread.
Oh the hilarity, it’s palpable. Palpable!
Yeah. That’s certainly something I’m still working on. Sometimes it’s difficult in text to seperate the two.
I can imagine a Magic tournament with blank slips of paper on which players can write the text of any Magic card in existence, the only limitation being deck size. That seems something you could actually test (and it would be easier to do it digitally).
It might be an excellent tool for discovering unbalanced cards and flaws in game design. My suspicion is that you would quickly discover which cards players believe to be the most powerful, and by implication, those believed to be least powerful. And subsequently, the cards that actually are most powerful (universal validity being a major factor, i.e., generalist decks beating all specialized deck, except for counter deck designed specifically to defeat them).
I’d be willing to wager that game play would quickly evolve into “first mover wins.”
Thanks for the kind words, if only they were always true. :)