Tumblhurgoyf

Ach! Hans, run!

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Wait, what's a sticker cube?

The single greatest fan-made format I’ve ever heard of.

@mtg-peasant came up with this gem. They don’t seem to be around anymore from what I can tell but you can search their blog for “sticker” and get a lot of relevant stuff such as:

Here’s the long and short of it. Cube is straight garbage, nothing great in it, the whole thing was bulk I had an maybe $10 of singles. Each player who shows up to draft gets two stickers in sleeves with an indicator of what types of cards they can go on. As you draft or deck build, you apply stickers to cards, chaos ensues. Stickers range from “Haste” to abilities pulled off of planeswalkers to mana symbols to change colors of abilities or casting costs. If players want to, they can bring another garbage card and swap something in their pool for thie new garbage they want to play with. In reality people have been incredibly generous with their additions, I figured it’d be homelands commons, but there’s a few neat rares that have snuck in there. Most powerful cards are either Lightning elemental (RRR for a 4/1 Haste, shadow, double strike, lifelink, cantrips on etb and has echo) or the elegant but simple Mulldrifter (4U for a 2/2 Flyer, etb draw 2, evoke 2U, 1U: return to hand, Cascade).

Also here’s an image they posted of prepping stickers for the cube:

There’s another post where they share a google doc of their sticker sheets but it doesn’t seem to be around anymore. I really need to get my own sticker cube going.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

meet the new goyf, same as the old goyf

I remade @tumblhurgoyf with the same url:  https://tumblhurgoyf.tumblr.com/

Been meaning to do some house cleaning and this is the easiest way, so give the new blog a follow if you’ve enjoyed the nonsense you’ve been seeing here. I’ll probs try to tag the new blog better and actually archive stuff.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

meet the new goyf, same as the old goyf

I remade @tumblhurgoyf with the same url:  https://tumblhurgoyf.tumblr.com/

Been meaning to do some house cleaning and this is the easiest way, so give the new blog a follow if you’ve enjoyed the nonsense you’ve been seeing here. I’ll probs try to tag the new blog better and actually archive stuff.

[markrosewater]

Do you think there's an audience large enough to justify "From the Vault: Silver Border"?

Once we get fifteen holiday cards. : )

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Pleeeeeeease!

[flavoracle]

I fully intend to cash in on that statement, @markrosewater @wizardsmagic

JUST THREE MORE YEARS!!

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

So it’s now 2020, which means we are getting a 15th holiday card this year. Which means within the next year or two we can and should--nay--MUST get a holiday card From the Vault. The people demand it! @markrosewater @wizardsmagic

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

meet the new goyf, same as the old goyf

I remade @tumblhurgoyf with the same url:  https://tumblhurgoyf.tumblr.com/

Been meaning to do some house cleaning and this is the easiest way, so give the new blog a follow if you’ve enjoyed the nonsense you’ve been seeing here. I’ll probs try to tag the new blog better and actually archive stuff.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

meet the new goyf, same as the old goyf

I remade @tumblhurgoyf with the same url:  https://tumblhurgoyf.tumblr.com/

Been meaning to do some house cleaning and this is the easiest way, so give the new blog a follow if you’ve enjoyed the nonsense you’ve been seeing here. I’ll probs try to tag the new blog better and actually archive stuff.

[nostalgic-breton-girl]

because i have just been asked about it: wortcraft is mentioned in the book fundaments of alchemy, which can be found in all of the mages’ guild in cyrodiil, maybe elsewhere as well. wortcraft is referred to as “amateur alchemy”, and is the technical term for eating/carefully nibbling ingredients to discover their primary effects

anyway it’s not my cup of tea. don’t eat bees they’re disgusting

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

you call it wortcraft, i call it going out to eat

[markrosewater]

What's the cutoff date currently for "all of the cards from this point forward are representative of the modern color pie"? Like, the set after the last set with a card that was clearly a break.

The color pie is always in flux, but the last five years is usually pretty close.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Even going back like 10 years large swaths are still accurate. Zendikar came out in 2009.

Plus you really need an established color pie to do a block like original Ravnica (2005) and especially to play around with that color pie the following year in Time Spiral block. I’m not gonna look at original Ravnica block card by card, but my hunch is something like 95% or more of those cards still fit modern color pie.

[markrosewater]

Which is easier: printing one punch out card that can represent 6 counters, or printing out 6 full card tokens that represent counters (like how infect had full card poison counters)?

Printing a card is easier than printing a punch out card. But making sure people have access to the counter is a lot harder on cards if there are a lot of different counters. That’s where a punch out card shines.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Also punch outs make a lot more sense for like ability word counters and stuff that goes on creatures or other permanents. I don't want full card counters for that stuff.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Want to create your own Magic card? We’ve teamed up with Omaze and a great cause to give you the chance to win a visit to the mothership and create a...

@markrosewater and @wizardsmagic want someone to help them design a Magic card!

[magicarasa]

Silver border because of the can of worms that is mutate on any creature card.

Costly because of the nonsense second ability on top of the nonsense first ability. I’m a fan of this sort of text replacement thing, though it’s probably a huge pain to develop. But I think there’s potential in a couple of auras or equipments that change ETBs, upkeeps, attacks, dies, end of turn, etc triggers around.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

natew000

For consistency, I’d start the first line with “Non-human creature cards...”

Also, this makes me wish scientist was a creature type! I guess there aren’t scientists on most planes, but it could work on Innistrad and Ravnica.

The non-human thing’s a bit weird, true.

And yeah, scientist woulda been perfect. I agonized a bit over which creature type to go with there. Being a fan card, I shoulda just made it scientist.

[magicarasa]

Silver border because of the can of worms that is mutate on any creature card.

Costly because of the nonsense second ability on top of the nonsense first ability. I’m a fan of this sort of text replacement thing, though it’s probably a huge pain to develop. But I think there’s potential in a couple of auras or equipments that change ETBs, upkeeps, attacks, dies, end of turn, etc triggers around.

[sadlyglyphtaken]

ikoria has SO many cards that are just humans bonding with animals and i am absolutely weak for it

[jeskai-lesbian]

Definitely thought the lesbian in “Unbreakable Bond” was wearing aviators for a full minute there.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

iconic

[charlesoberonn]

Not to go too deep into alternate history but the world would’ve been a better place if Al Gore won the 2000 Presidential Election.

[reallycoolsoup]

Not to get too deep into alt history but the world would be a better place if the American government was overthrown around the time of the Vietnam war and replaced with a leftist government that was antiwar

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Not to get too deep but we’d all be better off if Nat Turner’s rebellion had been successful in leading slaves to overthrow white racists and install a worker’s government backed by poor whites and maybe even native americans

[markrosewater]

Is it possible to see a set where classic limited archetypes are found outside their more common colors? Without color pie breaks, but with some bends to allow the existence of weird archetypes like Dimir aggro, Boros spellslinger, Gruul control or Rakdos flying

It is possible, yes, but tricky.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Sounds like a neat cube project

[cannotwynn]

This is one of those “one day” projects I have. GW Reanimator, RW Control…or something…

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

I’m especially intrigued by RG control, maybe upping the number of enchantment/artifact creatures in the cube so their naturalize effects become creature removal a consequential amount of the time.

If we just go off the suggestions so far, plus one idea from me, we have:

WU: Zombie Tribal UB: Aggro BR: Flying RG: Control GW: Reanimator WB: open UR: open (Zombie Tribal could maybe go here) BG: open RW: Spellslinger or Control (Zombie Tribal is available in these colors too maybe, but that’s just normal Boros Aggro really) GU: open

Is there enough for UR to get an aristocrats archetype? That’s always a lot of fun to me but it’s usually in some combo or WB and maybe R.

Can you do a BG self mill archetype that isn’t reanimator? Doubtful, especially if you do plan on doing a reanimator archetype partly in green. Oh, and mentioning reanimator, it could easily shift to an ETB value strat with reanimation as additional pay off. Then white blink effects make a bit more sense and you don’t just need the somewhat limited white reanimation abilities.

Maybe some decks can work off stuff we’ve gotten in the past--UG energy or UB cycling, for example, but with the mechanics in at least one other color. The issue you’d run into here is finding enough worthwhile cards to make those work. Like if WU energy wasn’t really a thing in Kaladesh, why would it be here? This should be easier to make happen with a mechanic like Cycling that we’ve seen so much more of.

I think you really want a tempo archetype or two but any color can and has done tempo to the best of my knowledge so that’s the gonna be the spot where this idea falls a bit. My solution there would be to look first for off beat ways that color combo can get a tempo build. But the plus side is this means you actually only need 3 or 4 other atypical archetypes and the tempo builds can fill in the remaining one or two that are perhaps especially hard to make work with what cards are available. It would probably also be ok to have one sort of normal archetype a player could fall back on while everything else is weird and different.

Oh, lastly, I’d look into a tribal element or two. Particularly a characteristic or iconic tribe that has been stretched into more than one additional color, and you drop the core color. Like UW zombies (or one of those two with red since War of the Spark gave us some good red zombies) or some non-red dragons though those are kind of big to do as a draft archetype without probably more support than is reasonable.

[markrosewater]

Is it possible to see a set where classic limited archetypes are found outside their more common colors? Without color pie breaks, but with some bends to allow the existence of weird archetypes like Dimir aggro, Boros spellslinger, Gruul control or Rakdos flying

It is possible, yes, but tricky.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Sounds like a neat cube project

[markrosewater]

Your new article mentions some blue-black mechanics that were dropped in order to keep the keyword counters as familiar ones. Do those mechanics still have a chance of being used?

They’re not off the table for the future.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

Odd that two hexproof variants and an unblockable variant are being considered. That’s not what UB needs more of.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

simicmimic

@tumblhurgoyf You’re assuming they’d be additions and not replacements. I could see them considered as less pushed versions of hexproof, much like “hexproof from” was for protection (though that one doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere).

In the context of the article hexproof was the UG keyword and they were looking for a UB keyword.

bentheechidna

Menace and Flying are “unblockable” variants. Evasion is an integral part of the game.

UB has access to the most evasion hands down, including flying, menace, and straight up can’t be blocked. I don’t think they need yet another variant. For almost as long as R&D has been looking for such a word, I’ve been of the opinion that it should be something that impacts combat math, not something that evades creature-to-creature combat damage altogether.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

scourgediva

My thought would be something along the flavor of “Roguish” or “Ambush” or “Backstab” re: combat math. Some of those could certainly be implemented as evasion variants, but if explicitly *not* about evasion, maybe it’s a conditional buff/keyword relating to blocking/being blocked (thus acting as a block deterrent more than outright evasion). All that said, I think the simplest implementation of an evergreen UB keyword *would* be an evasion keyword (because that’s something both colors do a lot)

It’s precisely because both colors do it and have access to the best evasion, that I don’t think they need more of it. R&D tried Skulk in the past and now Sneaky or whatever that was called. And I mean, they keep trying them, so maybe some day they’ll find an evasion mechanic that does what they need.

Personally, I’d offer the following:

Unsettling (Creatures blocked or blocking any number of creatures with unsettling get -1/-0.)

The wording here is intentional so that it doesn’t stack–a Craw Wurm blocked by one creature with unsettling will deal 5 damage. So will a Craw Wurm blocked by six creatures with unsettling. It also only effects combat. As soon as a creature is no longer blocked or blocking then the debuff stops.

Also -N/-0 is something UB can do. Should be obvious, but doesn’t hurt to point that out.

As far as utility, I like to look at how it impacts other creature keywords, since it will have the most chance to interact with those specifically. It can potentially reduce a creature with deathtouch and turn it into a safe block or allow a multiblock to result in an even trade rather than a two-for-one. It might allow the unsettling creature to survive the first round of first strike or double strike damage. It effectively takes away two points of damage from a creature with double strike. It shaves off a point of damage that could trample over normally. It takes away a point of life gain from a creature with lifelink.

It doesn’t meaningful interact with the other evergreen keywords, but that’s a whole lot more interaction than evasion mechanics offer. The questions are, how deep is the design space, and how does it play?

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

natew000

@tumblhurgoyf I like that unsettling idea. (I also like the Craw Wurm reference — there were probably a lot of people saying whaaat?) I notice that while WotC has used plenty of keyword mechanics that involve combat resizing effects (flanking, bushido, battle cry, mentor), none of them have ever stuck as evergreen or even deciduous mechanics. I suspect it is because those kind of mechanics have an impact on what sizes of creatures a set can have. Making it a power-only and combat phase-only effect probably mitigates that problem a bit.

That’s a good point. I think another thing is that they like to do different things with those sorts of mechanics (particularly boosting your creatures) to create variations in play, like how exalted and battle cry are basically inversions of each other. Choosing one for evergreen means less play variation and essentially deciding each set do we push the evergreen mechanic to the side for now for this new thing or no?

Unsettling might get around that with it being a -1/-0, and you don’t want or need nearly so many -N/-0 variations. But that may also be an indication that an environment doesn’t want that many. Standard currently has 14 -N/-0 effects of some sort, all in blue (one being WU) and 10 being on instants or permanents with flash. Still, this hits different space with it being an on the board combat changer, plus it isn’t doing nearly as much of a -N as all those effects.

Also iunno why, but when I thought of an example to put in, Craw Wurm was the first thing right on the top of my mind. I don’t think I’ve even seen that card in years but there it was.