An Observation on the Mutate Mechanic
Apr. 20th, 2020 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitBetween being reintroduced to Magic by someone who had been a judge and having very much wanted to be a judge myself until Wizards killed that dream with the advent of Judge Academy (I am still *so angry* about Judge Academy), I read and listen to a fair amount of judge media. (I was the person whose response to finding a bunch of essays on how to properly conduct a deck check was more or less "Yes, this is fascinating, tell me more in great detail!") Less now, because, again, Judge Academy killed it, but JudgeCast is still there and the same as it was, and I still listen to it.
They've got the current episode out on the new Ikoria set. This is an episode they do for every new set, and they're usually among the longer episodes, as the hosts go through the new mechanics for the set and then go over every card that has been deemed likely to have weird or counterintuitive interactions with other commonly used cards or mechanics, laying out what *should* happen with that card if those weird things ever come up.
I've heard people saying that Ikoria is the first set that was *designed* for online play-- it's the first set that went through the large bulk of its design process *after* it became apparent that the new online Magic game was wildly popular and had wildly increased the playerbase of the game. I had not fully appreciated the significance of that until I started listening to the Judgecast episode on the subject: 20 minutes into the episode, they're not done explaining mutate, and I've had to stop and replay parts of it several times to process what they're saying. The episode itself is 3 hours and 20 minutes, for a show where the release notes for War of the Spark, which everyone considered an overly complicated set resulting in an extra-long release notes episode, was an hour forty. This is *absurd*.
Bear in mind, as well, that Wizards has a history of explicitly setting out to reduce complexity in the game-- a *long* history, dating back to the fall 2006 set Time Spiral, which was loved by experienced players and completely incomprehensible to new ones. The reaction to Time Spiral has shaped their design philosophy ever since, and part of that design philosophy has been that you don't make sets too complicated. You make a few very complicated cards per set and the people who want extra complicated gameplay play in formats where those complicated cards are legal.
Honestly, this is the set that makes me give credence to the "Wizards is trying to kill paper Magic and move everything online" rumors. Ikoria is going to be a complex pain to play on paper. It will drive new players crazy and even I will probably find it frustrating. Online, with a game engine that manages merged cards for you, it'll be fine.
They've got the current episode out on the new Ikoria set. This is an episode they do for every new set, and they're usually among the longer episodes, as the hosts go through the new mechanics for the set and then go over every card that has been deemed likely to have weird or counterintuitive interactions with other commonly used cards or mechanics, laying out what *should* happen with that card if those weird things ever come up.
I've heard people saying that Ikoria is the first set that was *designed* for online play-- it's the first set that went through the large bulk of its design process *after* it became apparent that the new online Magic game was wildly popular and had wildly increased the playerbase of the game. I had not fully appreciated the significance of that until I started listening to the Judgecast episode on the subject: 20 minutes into the episode, they're not done explaining mutate, and I've had to stop and replay parts of it several times to process what they're saying. The episode itself is 3 hours and 20 minutes, for a show where the release notes for War of the Spark, which everyone considered an overly complicated set resulting in an extra-long release notes episode, was an hour forty. This is *absurd*.
Bear in mind, as well, that Wizards has a history of explicitly setting out to reduce complexity in the game-- a *long* history, dating back to the fall 2006 set Time Spiral, which was loved by experienced players and completely incomprehensible to new ones. The reaction to Time Spiral has shaped their design philosophy ever since, and part of that design philosophy has been that you don't make sets too complicated. You make a few very complicated cards per set and the people who want extra complicated gameplay play in formats where those complicated cards are legal.
Honestly, this is the set that makes me give credence to the "Wizards is trying to kill paper Magic and move everything online" rumors. Ikoria is going to be a complex pain to play on paper. It will drive new players crazy and even I will probably find it frustrating. Online, with a game engine that manages merged cards for you, it'll be fine.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-23 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-23 08:59 pm (UTC)All cards in a mutate pile must be owned by the same person, regardless of who controls it at the moment, because while on the battlefield an entire mutate pile is considered one permanent and the game can't handle one permanent with multiple owners. (So you can't steal your opponent's mutate creature and then add more mutate stuff onto it.) The "considered one permanent on the battlefield except it splits into its component parts anywhere other than the battlefield" is one of the areas I anticipate problems coming from. (There are others.)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-23 09:35 pm (UTC)