~Beyond the Border~ > Akyu's Arcade
Cardboard Intervention: TCG/CCG Thread Redux 2
hyorinryu:
--- Quote from: commandercool on February 22, 2019, 06:02:52 PM ---Yeah totally. I've been playing the Pokemon TCG quite a bit online lately and I think the metagame is in a great place right now. The Tag GXs are interesting and fun, and I've definitely picked up a few of them IRL just to look at.
Some of the upcoming ones are super silly with how over the top their effects are. There's a Muk & Alolan Muk Tag GX that can do 150 poison damage a turn under optimal conditions.
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I didn't realize you played it online. I've put in the codes, but didn't really play with anyone. Maybe I'll try. My biggest problem with pokemon is that the Energy mechanic seems too snowbally. It feels really difficult to recover from losing a pokemon with 2 or more energy on it from what little I've done, especially when people have a pokemon with 3 or more energy on it.
Also thoughts on war of the spark? I'm interested. I'd glad to see Sorin's back. I thought they killed him off. I wonder if Nahiri will be back too. I know Ugin is.
commandercool:
--- Quote from: hyorinryu on April 08, 2019, 04:22:32 AM ---I didn't realize you played it online. I've put in the codes, but didn't really play with anyone. Maybe I'll try. My biggest problem with pokemon is that the Energy mechanic seems too snowbally. It feels really difficult to recover from losing a pokemon with 2 or more energy on it from what little I've done, especially when people have a pokemon with 3 or more energy on it.
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Energy is a balancing mechanism, so it can be snowbally if you put yourself in a situation where you're losing a ton of resources to a KO, but if you're doing that then you're presumably getting a benefit that's worth the risk. There are a ton of ways to set up energy so that it rarely takes 3-4 turns to get anything set up, and many/most meta cards have reasonably efficient attacks. I think energy has become a fairly elegant system. It's not perfect, but it's not a huge problem.
I think the Pokemon TCG has been really good lately. It went through a few rough patches fairly recently with some very generic and powerful draw engines that centralized the metagame, but in the last year or so all of those cards have rotated out and have been replaced with much more situational and higher skill cards if they've been replaced at all. Tons of stuff feels decently viable right now and that's always nice to see.
--- Quote from: hyorinryu on April 08, 2019, 04:22:32 AM ---Also thoughts on war of the spark? I'm interested. I'd glad to see Sorin's back. I thought they killed him off. I wonder if Nahiri will be back too. I know Ugin is.
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I don't care for planeswalkers as a general rule, I think they receive too much of the story's focus at the expense of more interesting characters and their cards can do bad things to gameplay. War of the Spark correctly reinvented planeswalkers to make them fill roles other than "constantly generates value and must be answered or you win". They may be mostly just weird enchantments now, but that's much better and more interesting than almost all of them being nearly the same card. I have some balance concerns about some of the stuff in the set (Proliferate really worries me in this Standard) but I'm glad to see Amonkhet stuff back and the set is shaping up to look much more varied and interesting than I was worried it was going to. Plus, Fblthp!
I'm glad to see Sorin back too, I've been playing WB Tokens in Modern and it might as well be a Sorin deck. He's the reason Tokens is good as far as I'm concerned. His new card doesn't really fit in the deck, but it's neat.
Nahiri is in the set, her card has already been revealed. She's... weird. I find her very hard to evaluate. Which is usually a good sign, it means she's interesting. Repeatable damage to creatures seems good, but this might be too situational to be of much use. I guess we'll find out. Too much there's not much relevant equipment in Standard.
hyorinryu:
--- Quote from: commandercool on April 08, 2019, 04:48:27 AM ---Energy is a balancing mechanism, so it can be snowbally if you put yourself in a situation where you're losing a ton of resources to a KO, but if you're doing that then you're presumably getting a benefit that's worth the risk. There are a ton of ways to set up energy so that it rarely takes 3-4 turns to get anything set up, and many/most meta cards have reasonably efficient attacks. I think energy has become a fairly elegant system. It's not perfect, but it's not a huge problem.
I think the Pokemon TCG has been really good lately. It went through a few rough patches fairly recently with some very generic and powerful draw engines that centralized the metagame, but in the last year or so all of those cards have rotated out and have been replaced with much more situational and higher skill cards if they've been replaced at all. Tons of stuff feels decently viable right now and that's always nice to see.
I don't care for planeswalkers as a general rule, I think they receive too much of the story's focus at the expense of more interesting characters and their cards can do bad things to gameplay. War of the Spark correctly reinvented planeswalkers to make them fill roles other than "constantly generates value and must be answered or you win". They may be mostly just weird enchantments now, but that's much better and more interesting than almost all of them being nearly the same card. I have some balance concerns about some of the stuff in the set (Proliferate really worries me in this Standard) but I'm glad to see Amonkhet stuff back and the set is shaping up to look much more varied and interesting than I was worried it was going to. Plus, Fblthp!
I'm glad to see Sorin back too, I've been playing WB Tokens in Modern and it might as well be a Sorin deck. He's the reason Tokens is good as far as I'm concerned. His new card doesn't really fit in the deck, but it's neat.
Nahiri is in the set, her card has already been revealed. She's... weird. I find her very hard to evaluate. Which is usually a good sign, it means she's interesting. Repeatable damage to creatures seems good, but this might be too situational to be of much use. I guess we'll find out. Too much there's not much relevant equipment in Standard.
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I'll have to try it out. I don't have a ton of people to play with, mainly just starter decks.
As for the mtg stuff. I can get where you're coming from about the planeswalker stuff, the sets seem like solid settings for pretty good selfcontained stories without planeswalkers. They seem to like pushing the gatewatch group, but I like the planeswalkers we don't see as often. Well, if you don't like planeswalkers, it sounds like they're going to kill alot of them off. I wonder when we'll go back to the Mirroden or some other plane to deal with the Phyrexians.
commandercool:
--- Quote from: hyorinryu on April 09, 2019, 05:35:12 AM ---I'll have to try it out. I don't have a ton of people to play with, mainly just starter decks.
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Pokemon TCG Online has special leagues for starter decks only and you can use the code cards found in the packaging to unlock the decks you own physically online. I'm not a huge fan of that game mode, but I know a lot of people are and it's a semi-reliable way to get prizes in-game since it's a very level playing field. Just be aware that the starter decks aren't really representative of how a normal deck is built, but they're a good way to learn.
--- Quote from: hyorinryu on April 09, 2019, 05:35:12 AM ---As for the mtg stuff. I can get where you're coming from about the planeswalker stuff, the sets seem like solid settings for pretty good selfcontained stories without planeswalkers. They seem to like pushing the gatewatch group, but I like the planeswalkers we don't see as often. Well, if you don't like planeswalkers, it sounds like they're going to kill alot of them off.
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It's not that I hate all planeswalkers, it's just that I'm tired of snide Jace quotes in flavor text, I'm tired of the story centralizing around them, and I'm tired of Teferi warping the metagame. I really like a few of them, Kaya and Vraska are great, but overall I could do with a whole lot less of them. If War of the Spark could thin out the herd and maybe get us to a point where we're getting one every few sets rather than a bunch every set like Wizards told us was the plan when they came out then that would be nice I think.
--- Quote from: hyorinryu on April 09, 2019, 05:35:12 AM ---I wonder when we'll go back to the Mirroden or some other plane to deal with the Phyrexians.
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If I had to guess then I would guess very soon. Next year maybe? Even this year wouldn't shock me. I'm honestly kind of surprised no Phyrexians or Eldrazi surfaced in this set. Given that they're both part of Bolas' plan somehow I was expecting to see a half-Eternalized half-Phyrexianized Emrakul as his ultimate weapon or something silly like that. :D
commandercool:
Kaya, Orzhov Usurper is climbing the ranks toward being my favorite card. I thought she looked neat when she was spoiled and had a long conversation with a buddy where we guessed that her best use was as a one-of in any Modern deck that she can be cast in, and I feel like that's proving to be true.
She always does something fun and weird whenever she shows up, and she's just a blast to play for some reason. She's relevant against almost every deck in the format but rarely for the same reason twice. I regret not going with my gut instinct and picking up a prerelease foil of her back when she was cheap.