The Stratagem Lesson

I always enjoy these looks into how games are designed and this window into Stratagems for Transformers is no different. It's an interesting solution to a problem, even if I think they missed the mark on execution, especially with power level. Better put: The idea is good, but the cards don't do anything interesting enough for me to want them.

However, what I want to talk about is this section:

In this case, we asked ourselves how players would feel if they opened a pack that had a body but no head, or a head with no body. We have all different types of players and we need to make sure that they all have a positive experience (or as many of them as possible). ... many players just buy a pack or two looking for something new and different to add to one of their decks. To them, half of a Titan Master is an unplayable card, and that’s a negative experience we want to avoid, so we decided to do our best to make sure that every pack that has a body also has a head, and vice-versa. ...Packs that don’t have a Titan Master now have an unfilled slot that needs a card. What can we put in there?...We considered “nothing” as an answer. You get six battle cards and then either large regular character card or a large Titan Master body and a small Titan Master head. We chose not to do that because we felt that that could be a letdown where people felt disappointed that they got fewer cards than another pack from the same set.

Then I'd like to contrast that with this card:

Reasonably, one might be asking: What does this card have to do with Stratagems? 

To answer that, I need to tell you that the way that WotC is pushing the Transformers game is as "Turbo Sealed" where players open two packs of cards and play with what they open. Setting aside my opinion that it should actually be three packs-because the problem I'm about to discuss remains no matter how many packs you open. 

This is a dead card. This is a moment where a player will feel bad about having this card in their sealed match.

There are three colors on this card, and yet there is a near zero chance that this card will ever produce a color for you during battle, because to produce Blue you need to flip it on defense and flip it for a melee character, or flip it on offense and flip it for a specialist for orange, or a ranged character for black. 

This card is useless in Sealed unless you draw it. 

Now, I'm not saying that every card should be good in every format. That isn't reasonable, nor it is how CCGs work. 

What I'm saying is that in a format WotC wants to push, it is producing cards that are terrible for that format. Sure, it's a rare so it won't appear often but when it does, jeeze is it disappointing. 

I don't like this for Constructed, either, to be honest, in part because it's got no unifying theme. This card wants you to min/max and be run in a deck that cares about colors and has at least 2 of the 3 types of character classes. It's incredibly narrow and becomes less helpful as the game goes on and your characters get KO'd. 

That said, if you play the card as an action and subsequently flip a copy of the card, it's a +3. Which is The Glory of Cool Things if every I saw it, but I do have to acknowledge Master of Metallikato's use. But it doesn't feel very good to open. It feels like a blank.

So what I'm wondering is; why did they catch the letdown in packs that lead them to create Stratagems, and not catch this? Perhaps there's a deck for this card that hasn't been discovered yet? I suppose it's worth considering. 

Bad Blackblade, No Donut

(Note: these games were played before Ikoria came out, or I even knew cycling would be a mechanic in that set.)

The initial games went about as well as I figured they would.

There was the game where I had Living Death put into the graveyard via Wheel of Fortune. There goes my win condition!

There was the game where the creatures in my graveyard started getting eaten. There goes my win condition!

These are not very good signs.

There's something uniquely frustrating about those first games, it seems. Murphy's Law seems to be in full effect, with what seems like bad luck but is also inexperience, inattentiveness, and having to live with the bad decisions of past me-be they in the deckbuild or mere moments ago.

And it is born entirely out of the notion that this SHOULD work, it just DOESN'T. Of course, navigating that is also important to detaching myself enough to really make the fixes that this deck needs to be fun to play.

So the first thing I did was go through the deck and yank every non-cycling card. Then I went to the Ahmonket block and pulled every relevant card I could.

Out:
Resurrection
Sever Soul
Disenchant
Excise
Misdirection
Sky Weaver
Punish Ignorance
Mindleech Mass
Steal Strength
Brass Secretary
Brilliant Ultimatum
Thistledown Liege
Braidwood Sextant
Memory Plunder

Maybe pull:
Dust to Dust
Energy Flux
Stormscape Familiar
Forced March
Stormscape Battlemage
Dromar, the Banisher
Dromar's Charm
Batwing Brume
Esper Charm
Unmake
Seal of Cleansing
Feldon's Cane
Incremental Blight

Probably keeping:
Obelisk of Esper
Armillary Sphere
Moonlit Wake
Ensnare
Call to Mind

To add:
Mortal Combat (thanks to Tyler for the suggestion)
Tribute Mage (to find Fluxuator)
Winged Shepherd
Oketra's Attendant
Forsake the Worldly
Cast Out
Angel of the God-Pharaoh
Vile Manifestation
Razaketh's Rite
Lurching Rotbeast
Striped Riverwinder
Wasteland Scorpion
Wander in Death
Stir the Sands
Horror of the Broken Lands
Faith of the Devoted
Shimmerscale Drake
Lay Claim
Hieroglyphic Illumination
Drake Haven
Curator of Mysteries

Of these, only Faith of the Devoted and Drake Haven both have the potential to augment my cycling cards but cannot cycle.

Of the maybe keeps, I'm holding on to Batwing Brume, Incremental Blight, Dromar,the Banisher, Feldon's Cane and Forced March.

That should represent a pretty big shift.

Hone That Blade

Let's start of with this neat video that came along to give me some ideas.

While that deck is a five color beast, there are still some things that are worth consideration. Alhammarret's Archive, Decree of Silence, Bone Miser and Astral Drift were things that should be on the list to add in, should other cards not cut it.

>

Next: Commander 2020. That arrived last week and with it came a WotC designed cycling deck and it's in two of the three colors I'm using! A bummer about the red but that still leaves Blue and White to mine from.

And Ikoria has cycling as a mechanic. This is going to get weird. 

Still, one of the better suggestions I got was to make Dakkon a problem for opponents-and cards like Dragon Wings or Avian Oddity allow me to give Dakkon flying. Dragon Wings coming in to give flying anytime it can is a very neat trick.

The tests have been challenging though: I find myself mana flooded often, so I'm looking to trim lands down. That feels really counter intuitive but I don't just have cyclers, I have landcycling cards to help fix that issue directly.

The upside again is that I can add in more cards that actually do stuff. 

Commander-Dakkon Blackblade

I'll admit, Dakkon Blackblade is only in this deck to be a "color commander"; it's a general that lets me play Blue, White and Black. But I have a Dakkon and I wanted to use it. And what the heck; when I do cast it, it'll likely be pretty big.

Instant 1 Dromar's Charm 1 Punish Ignorance 1 Esper Charm 1 Batwing Brume 1 Memory Plunder 1 Unmake 1 Steal Strength 1 Swat 1 Rebuild 1 Misdirection 1 Traumatic Visions 1 Resounding Wave 1 Ensnare 1 Excise 1 Disenchant 1 Gleam of Resistance	Artifacts 1 Feldon's Cane 1 Armillary Sphere 1 Obelisk of Esper 1 Wayfarer's Bauble 1 Braidwood Sextant 1 Fluctuator
Enchantment 1 Energy Flux 1 Lingering Mirage 1 Moonlit Wake 1 Seal of Cleansing	Sorcery 1 Brilliant Ultimatum 1 Incremental Blight 1 Living End 1 Forced March 1 Living Death 1 Absorb Vis 1 Sever Soul 1 Call to Mind 1 Dust to Dust 1 Resurrection 1 Akroma's Vengeance
Lands 1 Barren Moor 1 Drifting Meadow 1 Remote Isle 1 Coastal Tower 11 Swamp 11 Island 11 Plains	Creatures 1 Jhessian Zombies 1 Mindleech Mass 1 Esper Sojourners 1 Dromar, the Banisher 1 Sanctum Plowbeast 1 Glassdust Hulk 1 Thistledown Liege 1 Brass Secretary 1 Twisted Abomination 1 Disciple of Malice 1 Scion of Darkness 1 Undead Gladiator 1 Viscera Dragger 1 Shoreline Ranger 1 Primoc Escapee 1 Pendrell Drake 1 Stormscape Familiar 1 Drifting Djinn 1 Sky Weaver 1 Keeneye Aven 1 Stormscape Battlemage 1 Yoked Plowbeast 1 Noble Templar 1 Disciple of Grace

So why bring this up? Because Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation have cycling as a central mechanic in those sets. (Edit: I started working on this before I knew cycling was a mechanic in Ikoria!)

And this deck wants to cycle a bunch of creatures and then cast Living Death to bring them all back and attack for victory. I'll start off with a few games, of course but with a whole bunch of new cards to choose from, I am expecting to be able to hack away some chaff for some solid beats-and maybe even find enough room to make Dakkon a problem when I play it!

Night of Owls

I'm happy to not leave readers hanging on. For once. 

The Retired-Operation: Mindcrime

I am setting this aside.

Operation: Mindcrime

 

4 Ravenous Rats
1 Blizzard Specter
3 Doomsday Specter
4 Arctic Merfolk
3 Nightscape Familiar
2 Ghastlord of Fugue
4 Man-o'-War
2 Parasitic Strix

 

3 Condescend
3 Expunge
2 Impulse

 

4 Underground River 

9 Swamp
9 Island
1 Darkslick Shores

 

3 Serum Visions
3 Lobotomy

What the heck is the unifying theme here? I get that there's a "ETB triggers and repeat" idea happening, but what it doesn't have is a way to lever the tempo that Mindcrime is trying to generate via discard and bounce into a proper win condition. There's also just 'but it's good, right' cards like Ghastlord of Fugue or Serum Visions. 

It just seems to hope for the best. I can tell it lacks a strong identity because I so quickly threw it out for a Liege deck. It was easy to look at my lack of cards that met the Hexdrinker rule and just toss them for something else. Especially since it helped me take apart another deck that was using the Glen Elendra Lieges in a RUB deck. If it's that easy to dispose of, then clearly neither deck is worth the effort I'm putting into them.

So, I'm putting this out to pasture, and harvesting the cards for a new deck I'm calling Night of Owls. 

Low Flying Jets

Alright, let's finish this up. Sorry for all the delays-things have been, uh...well let's just admit there's a lot going on.

So it turns out, three Escape Route is too many. Because Starscream draws so much attention, I can confidently use Escape Route once and if I'm smart and lucky, twice.

But that third time means that something has gone very wrong for my opponent and I'm winning anyway. What is most likely to happen is that I'm going to draw or have the third copy available and Starscream will be dead.

So, two copies of that seems to be correct.

Now, I don't know that Starscream and the Raiders can hang with the best of 'em. I've been playing this deck against a decent range of stuff but there's been a lot of prototype decks, ideas in evolution, that sort of thing and that just doesn't give me the same kind of data that practicing against Bugs or OPBL decks might.

That said, I've done well against those prototype decks, so maybe call this one a Tier 1.5? Good but  not great, and with skillful play and smart sideboard options, a winner. (Although I am not sure how one sideboards this deck.)

I have heard some rumblings about how Tripwire is going to be the end of patrol decks like this but I don't buy that argument.

It's true that Tripwire is a good card and its stock goes up against the 4-5 wide decks. But they still have to draw it and then have to decide that it's the most important action they can take. I will take those odds.

Final listing:

1x Starscream - Air Commander
1x Raider Nightflight - Air Strike Patrol Spy
1x Raider Tailwind - Air Strike Patrol, Strategist
1x Raider Visper - Infantry, Patrol Leader Deck

2x Reprocess
3x Head-on Collision
3x Cooling Vents
2x Repair Bay
3x Improvised Shield
3x Reactive Armor
3x Aerial Recon
3x Bombing Run
2x Dismantling Claw
3x Inspiring Leadership
3x New Orders
1x Personal Targeting Drone
3x Force Field
2x Disassemble
2x Sharpened Talons
2x Escape Route

Uneasy times

I caught this video from a few years ago of Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Magic: they spend the first 10 minutes talking about how he got into the game, and what he remembers from playing as a kid. 

In the end, this is what games are about; the human experience we shared with someone. Games are, inevitably, about life and I've frequently said, if not here than elsewhere; If you want to get to know someone quickly, play a game with them. 

Their character will usually be revealed. 

So, it is with that in mind I present this article about speaking on the times of the day.

I know that I don't matter, when it comes to high profile Magic discussion, or even midrange profile discussion. I write for me and as an impetus to streamline my own selection of decks.

But things have gotten pretty awful over the past 3.5 years and especially over the past 10 days. While I don't expect it to be a constant theme, I do think that it's important for me to say this:

Donald Trump is leading a fascist movement in the United States and it's wrong. 

Killing unarmed people by the police is wrong. Black people are persecuted by systemic racism and it's on everyone, not just Black people, to fight that system.

This is a whole lot of bullshit. And I hope everyone is doing what they can to keep things from getting worse. 

Titan Masters Attack Thoughts

The new Transformers set finally arrives in physical form on Friday! I got thoughts and I think you want to hear 'em.

Stratagems
This is a new and strange card type that was meant to add dimension and/or playability to characters both new and old, but I'm not convinced by them. People weren't not playing Sergeant Kup because they were wishing they could untap it. The character is not good, and the star cost plus the hoops to satisfy the condition to get the Who's Next effect isn't worth it.

That's true for most of them: Jurassic Punch sounds amazing! Except that Bold 10 wasn't what the Volcanicus deck cared about or wanted, it's just the glory of cool things. Most stratagems just don't add something to those characters that they were missing, they instead eat at star values you'd rather put into your deck or characters.

The ones that have potential are the ones that add star value back to your deck: the Spotlights, Science Officer and Stealth Mission, Weapons Cache. Cards that let you cycle through your deck faster, like Systems Enhancement, or offer tempo value like More Guns might have potential but this is not very exciting for a new mechanic that the set wants to highlight. It's generally very, very clear: you don't want them, so there isn't a tension between adding that star card or putting in a stronger character/battle card.

Characters
The clear highlight of the set. I've been reading it for weeks and although I was initially reluctant to believe it, my playtesting has born out the statement: Headmasters are going to change the game.

If two-wide teams are actually three or four, three wide teams actually five or six, that is going to give those decks a lot of wiggle room to outlast the tempo machines of decks that are just naturally two or six wide.

And against natural three or four wide decks, I think they're going to establish a pretty strong advantage. Plus, there are so many mix and match options that deckbuilding really will come with some choices-is it worth running the star cost of 3 for 5 health, instead of just 1 for 2 health? Those kinds of questions make for good play.

The bad characters are still bad-no one is going to convince me that Gears is a good character- and others, like Wingspan, are probably waiting for a time to shine, since having high defense right now really isn't the hotness. But Wingspan fits with characters to keep my eye on, in case the metagame shifts.

There are outstanding characters overall: Wolfwire, Windsweeper, Fangry, Nightracer, Brawn-I mean there are even some not super rare characters in the mix! You can play without having to spend $70+ for a character!

It'll be exciting for people to open a super rare, of course, and I'm glad that big name characters like Optimus or Megatron aren't super rares in this set. It's important to give kids a chance to play with their favorites without breaking the bank.

Battle Cards
Where the soul of the set lies, the battle cards tell us what's possible, and what isn't anymore.

What's interesting is that the designers have talked about how Upgrades seem inferior to Actions, they don't seem to be doing a lot of serious upgrades to Upgrades in TMA. The cards people are talking about are all actions: Tripwire, Belligerence, and End Hostilities are the talk of the day and for good reason.

I'm also looking at Hand-to-Hand Combat, Hold the Line, Hit and Run, Last Stand, Reflect Damage-there are a BUNCH of good actions in this set, including secret actions and characters that interact with them.

By way of contrast, Fusion Borer, Paralyzo Box, and then...maybe Laser Scalpel? Master Sword is great if you can get it to trigger, and Holomatter Projector will probably be a sideboard role player. Regenerative Core has my interest, doing something that hasn't been done before, and it looks like there's a subtheme in this set about damage mitigation, not prevention. But the Upgrades are not as important as maybe they should be, or at least as much as WotC claims they want to emphasize.

The only thing Actions have going against them, is that there are pipless cards, or cards that have conditions on color contributions to combat, making them virtually pipless. No Upgrade has this drawback (unless I overlooked something!).

Which leads me to the one thing I dislike about TMA: the "hybrid" cards. There are memory issues here that are messy, there are rules interactions that are un-intuitive, and visually it's just ugly. I don't like this mechanic and I hope they find a better way to execute this idea.

But there's plenty to dig into, I think, that will reward players for trying new things!