MTG

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20498466

The Dynasty Cube is a collaborative, league-style draft in which teams of players draft through the history of Magic, starting with the first handful of sets, and cumulatively adding sets in chronological order in subsequent Seasons. Drafts are done rotisserie style online, with matches played through the following weeks to determine a Champion. The collaborative aspects of The Dynasty Cube have also heavily inspired by Blaseball - expect The League to evolve into something entirely different over time.

The League is currently looking for additional participation to keep the final Beta phase moving before the first Season begins at the end of this month.

The first Beta phase (Season 0) just completed (congrats to the Season 0 Champions, Innistrad Creeps!), and The Season 0.5 Draft begins today, Thursday Oct 3rd. This will be a "Draft-Only" Season intended to work out any bugs in the progression between seasons. The League will reset before beginning the first real Season that follows.

As no matches will be played in Season 0.5 and everything resets shortly after, the stakes are as low as they're ever going to be to jump in and see what The Dynasty Cube is all about!

The inaugural Season 1 will begin the week following CubeCon, with the Draft kicking off Oct 24th.

Additional details about The League and Season 1 list.

The Season 0.5 draft list

Discord server where you can join a Team and start participating!

If you have any questions about The League that aren't answered in the links above (or, hell, if you're just to lazy to click them), I'll be answering them here for as long as people are asking 'em!

Tl;dw shamelessly stolen from Reddit:

• "We all, WOTC and RC, reached this conclusion together."
• They are taking precautions to ensure the safety of RC members.
• They still want to keep it a community-driven format.
• Gavin plans to establish a committee similar to Pauper Format Panel. RC and CAG members are likely members.
• Aaron addresses the worries about profit-driven actions. "I'm also here for the love of the game(like RC).Yes Hasbro wants things. Yes my bosses wants things. I have a lot of freedom to do what I think is best. Our goal is to make things last forever. Keeping the community happy is our way to make money."
• They want to wait until the Panel is established to talk about the banlist. Beyond the initial banlist changes they don't want to make changes too often.
• Quarterly banlist updates similar to RC. It won't follow B&R of other formats.
• Power brackets: E.g. tier 1 swords, tier 2 thalia, tier 3 drannith magistrate, tier 4 armageddon etc.
• Aaron Forsythe used to play Armageddon 😱
• They aren't trying to replace Rule 0, they are trying to make it easier.
• At least 1 person from the CEDH community will be part of the panel. WOTC will still focus on casual commander.
• No separate banlists. Brackets will already do that job.
• Aaron: "4th bracket will be cards that you will rarely see in precons."
• Sol Ring isn't going anywhere. Sol Ring is "Bracket 0" so to say.
• Points system similar to Canlander is too complex and competitive for casual commander.
• Brawl in Arena already separates decks into 4 categories.
• Jeweled Lotus, Arcane Signet, Dockside etc. were mistakes. Cards that were banned recently are the kinds of cards they wouldn't want to make today. They want to reduce ubiquitousness going forward.
• They are discussing implementing more digital tools. E.g. you enter your decklist and it tells you your bracket.
• They want to release first Brackets article before MagicCon Las Vegas.
• Committee will be in the range of 10-20 people. There are also 10 commander designers working in WOTC.
• They are not tied to number 4. They can make a 5th bracket for CEDH.
• It is undecided whether the Committee will be anonymous. At least some names will be known.
• They can divide combos into different brackets: Thoracle combos bracket 4, SangBond+EqBlood bracket 3 etc.
• Gavin reads reddit a lot.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20355770

The Professor talks about the recent bans in Commander

While Secret Lairs and alt art cards have expanded the art styles on Magic card recently, anyone who misses some of the goofy art from classic Magic might like these

This post is meant to help me (and you, be welcome) vent some frustration, as well as help this community grow.

To make it interesting, try to explain at least a little bit why something bothers you.

• Noisy pets. I hate them.

I'm talking about the cackling goblin, the obnoxious horses, the dumb dogs, the intrusive mice and whatever repeatedly makes any sound.

I mean, it's a fun addition at first, but it gets old quickly. And whenever Someone gets some damage, or something else of minor importance happens, it gets commented by not more than 3 (?) sound reactions. I think I heard all of them a few thousand times by now. It's just annoying.

Sadly, the only way to mute them for good is to mute all opponent's text and image emotes, basically shutting off communication. Which has it's own merit, but it's a different thing. Why combine both in one control?

So sometimes I cruise on everything off to have more peace of mind. When I feel more open, I enable reactions again, but manually mute every opponent who has a pet which cannot behave. Sorry bros. If you want to be heard, make this useless thing shut up.

• Decks which require you to react on dozens of triggers per round. Like 0-cost artifact spam, lifegain frenzy, foodcat sacrificers.

It's just so tedious. And some people seem to do it just for the fun of it, without any impact on the game.

Like when the Scurry Oak starts growing, I have a Ritual of Soot in Hand, but still want to use my remaining mana in their end step. I may have to click through hundreds of triggers just to wipe it all away whenever they feel they spammed enough.

• One trick shows.

Talking about Dualcaster Mage, Minion of the Mighty, some decks around Colossal Hammer. I mean, it's nice you can make these decks which can kill you on round 2 or so (but fall apart instantly when they don't), just in principle. But in common play, it's just a boring waste of time. I know these decks exist, cool. I'm pretty sure you just copied it from someone else or the internet, wow. Okay, you won and the only thing good about it is that I don't have to shuffle physical cards afterwards. Now get lost.

• Fast decks in general.

I'm aware they are necessary to keep the lategame horrors in check, but meh. Why do I put 60 cards together if I only get to see 10, and to play 2?

To me, it smells like bad game design that some strategies revolve around making your opponent unable to play (also looking at discard, counter and other locks). Again, in principle it is amazing that MTG has this flexibility and variety. But does it make for interesting and fun matches for both sides? I much prefer games which have some back and forth, not one steamrolling the other.

• Uncreative decks.

Such wow, 4 copies of each elf/goblin/whatever, which everyone else plays too. Generic UR wizards, or Boros cats with Goblin Bombardment. Seen them a hundred times, mostly losing to them. I guess there's the crux; they are so strong you can hardly play anything else. Which ironically makes the aforementioned flexibility and variety of this originally amazing game self defeating, resulting in stale repetition.

• Overpowered / too cheap cards

Did the reanimators really need an upgrade in the form of a 2-mana Persist? Or lifegain the Ocelot Pride? Both were already strong and popular before these were added. I also consider Sheoldred's Edict one such culprit. Just a few years ago, I (and many others) were playing Fleshbag Marauder, a creature which has "on enter: each player sacrifices a creature" or something. Now it's a 2-mana instant with more flexibility and precision. I think it just leads to a race to the bottom, where games are decided by whoever drew their winning solution first (we give you 3 turns to make that happen). Again, I very much like that something like this is possible, but it should not be so common that it displaces other strategies, which could make for more interesting and more fun games, for both sides.

This got longer than I anticipated. Feel free to add your own thoughts independent from mine, or cheese to my whine.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20142862