#blessed
If you just want to get through it as quick as you can, here's some random tips after going around 20-10 in this so far:
- Mana is one of the the two main restrictions in Magic, cards being the other. When mana is unrestricted, cards become king. Card draw, selection, and velocity rule each game. On several occasions, I have sacrificed an advantageous board stage to [[God-Eternal Bontu]] to draw additional cards.
- Targeted removal should be prioritized as a way to prevent card drawing. a Murder effect is most-effective when it stops a card draw in some form, for example playing [[Hearthless Act]] in response to a player casting [[Warbriar Blessing]].
- You tend to not need to worry about the power on the board, and can chump block pretty-freely. There are a decent number of board wipes, and at worst-case, usually a removal spell on their biggest thing will balance out the board enough to give time.
- Almost all of the value-generating enchantments ([[Death's Oasis]], [[Season of Growth]], [[Whirlwind of Thought]], etc.) should be leaned-into heavily after you play them, as they can snowball a game easily.
- Be watchful for combos. [[Scholar of the Ages]] can just be infinite with [[Arrestor's Admonition]] or [[Time Wipe]]. Kogla's 1G "bounce a Human" can draw you a lot of cards, more than it can protect it.
Quirks of the format:
- Mutate is unaffected by the emblem, so you have to use your WUBRG each turn to play them. They're still useful, but notably, you cannot mutate the IKO mythics due to their double-mana costs.
- Mulligan heavily and aggresively. You get three free.
- You will just lose to players having more-explosive draws on turn 1.
You will just lose to players having more-explosive draws on turn 1.
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
Of course, that experience can still be frustrating. At least for this event, we tried to also make it as fast and fantastic to watch as possible. :-)
seems like they should have done something else for the mana cost so you could get 5 mana of any color, not one of each. Then all the mutates would work. Bit of a let down when it is the 'festival of monsters'
Unfortunately for this specific case, the stock Omniscience emblem that we use does have limits. We considered some solutions, but they were either unsatisfying, too expensive at the time, or had undesired side effects. As it stands, the Apex cards in the event are daunting enough monsters to make the grade on their own, and finding another mutate card to activate them can be a cool success moment - but I certainly appreciate that it's a bit unintutive.
And just to note, while I was willing to live with this for a controlled specialty event, I do consider it a must-solve for looking at a full-on Ikoria Omniscience draft.
Read moreJust wondering, what is the reason behind why these events are only available for three days? I know I won't have the time during those three days to play them. Why aren't they available for a week at a time? Also, why do I have to sign up by a certain time? Why isn't sign up available for as long as the event is available? Thanks.
It's a trade-off. Like any limited-time event in any venue, a shorter timeframe can draw people in because it feels more special. Also, more people are playing at once instead of being spread out - queue health is always something we have in mind for specialty events.
As for closing entries, we just want to make sure that anyone entering has enough time to play the games they need. Even if you could enter 5 minutes before the event ended, you wouldn't be able to actually get the prizes.
Treasure events always seem to just end up being "play cheap aggro and run people down" since it was originally the Kripp event back in beta. Seems like there are about a few dozen more cards that should have been banned for it to end up being about anything other than playing established bo1 aggro decks.
Hmm, that read a little more definitive than I wanted. It's not about forcing everyone to play big stuff - it's just making it feel like a possible choice, since it's thematic for the set. Anyway, we try to save the super-long ban lists for events like Shakeup.
I notice all the banned cards have inherent synergies with sacrifices, tokens, artifacts, and extra mana, which all get massive value out of the treasure tokens, or counter them. All except for Agent of Treachery, which doesn't seem to be banned for any reason at all, other than "it's fucking bullshit".
I wonder if this is a sign of an incoming ban for Agent in Standard? We can only hope.
Our thought process was pretty straightforward:
- Treasure helps you ramp into giant, crazy stuff.
- Agent scales with how giant and crazy your opponent's stuff is.
- Treasure helps you ramp into Agent - even if you're not playing ramp or playing blue!
This event is supposed to be about doing wild stuff, and having Agent looming over things is a way to make people not want to be so wild. Nothing more than that.
Ah yes, good old Winota Cycling with Light of Hope, staples of that deck :P
Guess they had to nerf it for the event somehow ^^
This was really a victim of how quickly language develops. We weren't on guard to differentiate between a solid deck with some cycling synergy layered on top for extra kick vs. the extremely specific set of cards that players now refer to as "The Cycling Deck." Given how that label is now used, I would have chosen a different name for this deck in hindsight.
Anyway, even if the deck is somewhat unconventional, it still got 7 wins!
it still got 7 wins!
So were these decks from an internal draft from the team? Selected from 7-0 runs on Arena? Some Limited event tourney?
All decks in the Heroes workshops are decks from actual players that went for 7 wins on the live server. (I don't think we differentiate between 7-0/7-1/7-2, though.)
Just ban Paradise Druid, then people can play spot removal for Pridemates and Empyrean Eagles...
Which is the problem, a 1/1 for 1? Or the Hexproof creature, pumped up to be a 10/10 or whatever, that is literally impossible to interact with?
Hawk is non-interactive in its own ways. A large Paradise Druid can be answered in ways a large Hawk can't - say, with a Foulmire Knight to block or a bunch of tokens to attack around it and race.
To be clear, all three of the decks I named were at levels that could justify some kind of action. We would prefer to hit a single enabler that crossed many problematic archetypes than do individual cards for each. This was an opportunity to do some good in a lot of places with (relatively) minimal upheaval.
Why there's nothing from the Cycling deck getting banned? Cycle deck will easily dominate this event after being showcased by SaffronOlive.
We don't love doing preemptive bans, and this was locked in well before Ikoria even came out, let alone any specific piece of content. If this deck is as prevalent as the general expectation, there will be some action for next time.
Last time we ran an Artisan event, Hawk had a very high win rate and play rate. We were pretty surprised to see it, so we dug in a bit more, and it turns out it was a meaningful component of multiple top-performing decks: lifegain, enchantments, and flyers. The numbers were extreme enough that we thought it warranted action.
Fat Dog for Midterms!
There's a brand-new dance based on an old phrase!
2400 matches is statistically significant. so it's 80-20
I doubt you see a major difference. 1-2% maybe.... at most ?
There is a meaningful selection effect in players who use third-party trackers. The actual numbers are around 73/27.
We have the raw numbers internally. They aren't quite that extreme, but they are significant. The point of my post was that we are aware this event missed the mark.
I am, thanks for asking.
And yep, players are struggling more with the Vadrok deck. It is naturally harder to be the one trying to find the perfect spot for each spell, but as currently constructed, it looks like it's too difficult to piece that together. The overall card quality in Vadrok's deck was sort of forced down in order to provide enough grist for both mutating and cheap spells, and we didn't dock enough points from Chevil to keep things in line.
For those out there fighting the good fight with Vadrok:
- Kill Chevil. At instant speed, right before playing your creatures. Use the free mulligan.
- Create tokens. The Chevil deck does have some removal, but not enough to keep up. Even just two tokens can be enough to secure you a mutate target.
- Amass tokens are serious-business mutations.
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Me and one of our Duel Scene devs every time I bring up Battle of Wits
Let's just call it an ongoing conversation.
Can I offer some feedback? It feels a little bad that you basically get the same win reward for 4 wins vs 5 wins. Maybe add a small amount of gold to 5 wins so you get more than just the join fee? Other than that, great work, the cube itself has been very fun!
This is a bit of feedback that I've seen a few times and that makes a lot of sense! Gems are technically more valuable than gold, since they have better buying power in a few situations, but you need to be hyper fluent in the Arena economy for that to feel like it matters very much. For many other players, it's kind of unsatisfying. We'll certainly be taking this into account for the future.
I love Sealed Cube as a fun, fairly cheap, casual, varied format. I hope the devs don't take all of the negative feedback on this sub to mean they should never do it again. :\
<3
We will absolutely do it again - in one form or another. :)
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Sure. As we were starting up the Workshop series, we were looking at all kinds of sources for decks content - this is a new feature, and it wasn't clear (still isn't!) what kinds of things players would enjoy or hate. One source we tapped was the old NPE precon decks that you see here (and there's another Workshop coming in a few weeks that uses a different set of decks from the same family).
For a couple reasons, this Workshop didn't get as much direct scrutiny during development: one, these decks came from that common source, and two, having three decks is a bit of a backstop for lopsided matchups (as players can go try the third deck instead of beating their heads against the unfavored one). We certainly don't want to put up an imbalanced scenario, but we have limited time and attention, and we focus them where we think they will do the most good.
That said, regardless of the "expected" deck balance, experience with the tools will make a noticeable difference. If you've been play...
Read moreI won’t lie, Thassa and Callaphe were easily the two cosmetic rewards I’ve been the most excited about and while a Blue Singleton Mirror Event has amazing flavor, I guess I was expecting another cool emblem
Edit: I really did enjoy this event despite my own grandiose ideas for what I thought it was going to be. Like I said, the flavor is phenomenal and that’s why I play the game! I definitely plan to do the event either on or off stream, but my ideas for what it was going to be have absolutely no bearing on the validity of event design!
Sadly, our Emblem Guy headed off to a deserted island with some animal friends at the last minute, so here we are... ;)
I kid, I kid. Really, we just try to mix up the types of events we offer, especially within a connected series like the Festival. Different Magic players like different play experiences, and we want to provide a wide spread - something for everyone, you know? Emblem events are sweet, but they can be taxing for newer players who don't own the more offbeat cards, and many players just don't enjoy building a whole new deck for a temporary event.
I hope you still got those styles and that it was at least interesting for you, even if it wasn't what you were expecting. And thanks for the feedback! #wotcstaff
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