Powercreep?

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Comments

  • EDUSAN
    EDUSAN Posts: 197 Tile Toppler
    span_argoman wrote:
    Act of Treason
    Uncommon. 4 mana. Control target non-Defender or non-Reach till the end of the turn + Haste

    Turn Against
    Uncommon. 3 mana. Control target creature till end of turn + Haste.

    Equal rarity. Cheaper. Lesser restrictions.

    That's clear-cut power creep.

    yes
    when i saw that card i was blown away. Turn Agains had no reason to exist. Act of Treason was a pretty good card by itself. Turn against is the definition of power creep
  • knthrak
    knthrak Posts: 39
    Some of the new cards are going to be better than cards in the previous set. I think that's fine and sustainable.

    It isn't sustainable if they never retire old sets. If all the cards are legal all the time, then it's going to be very difficult for cards from a new set to be usable without making them overly powerful.

    In paper MtG, "Shock" saw play in top level tournaments ({R}, instant, deal 2 damage to target creature or player), even though the card "Lightning Bolt" existed ({R}, instant, deal 3 damage to target creature or player). That's because at some point, they retired Lightning Bolt. Shock happened to still be good enough.

    If MtGPQ follows this strategy, then expect either Origins or BFZ cards to stop being legal sometime in the next 6-24 months.
  • EDHdad
    EDHdad Posts: 609 Critical Contributor
    The new card, Stonefury (deal 5 damage to a target for 10 mana), is strictly worse than Exquisite Firecraft (deal 6 damage to a target for 6 mana).

    Lightning Javelin (deal 3 damage to a target for 6 mana) is also strictly worse than Exquisite Firecraft.

    However, Lightning Javelin is neither strictly better nor strictly worse than Stonefury.


    Stonefury.png
    ExquisiteFirecraft.png
    LightningJavelin.png
  • EDHdad
    EDHdad Posts: 609 Critical Contributor
    In paper Magic, the phrase "gain control of target" yields 325 hits on a Gatherer search (a website where the Oracle text of all Magic cards is kept). This effect is often found in blue and red. With blue, the effect is usually permanent. With red, it's often temporary.

    The flavor is that blue uses its superior intellect to gain control of your thoughts and make them their own. Red, on the other hand, is very passionate and can temporarily persuade your creatures to fight for its cause on a emotional whim.

    In paper Magic, Act of Treason is actually a functional reprint of a card called "Threaten", originally printed in Onslaught in 2002. The two cards are absolutely identical except for the name. Because of this, cards like Act of Treason are referred to as "Threaten effects".

    Turn Against is new to Battle for Zendikar. In paper, it costs 5 mana while Act of Treason costs 3. However, Act of Treason is a Sorcery (meaning you can cast it only on your turn) while Turn Against is an Instant (meaning you can cast it on any player's turn). This means you can use it as a "combat trick". An opponent attacks you with two creatures. You use Turn Against to steal one, use it to block the other, and possibly kill them both.

    ActOfTreason.png

    TurnAgainst.png

    FieryConclusion.png

    If you want a deck that's consistent, you need redundant effects. Many people have already noted the synergy between Act of Treason and Fiery Conclusion. You steal a creature then sacrifice that creature to damage another creature. In paper Magic, this is very common - steal your opponent's stuff, use it against them, and then sacrifice it. It's made possible by hundreds of different cards which allow you to gain control of your opponent's stuff and hundreds of different cards which allow you to sacrifice that stuff.

    In paper Magic, there are hundreds of different archetypes possible. A burn deck wants lots of burn spells. A token deck wants lots of token generators. A ramp deck wants lots of ways to produce mana. A goblin deck wants lots of goblins.

    Even if card A is strictly better than card B, it doesn't make card B unplayable. It might mean that card B and card A work together in the same deck. In paper Magic, a deck has 60 cards with a 15 card sideboard, but you can only have 4 copies of any given spell. In Magic Puzzle Quest, you're required to have 10 different cards in your deck. If you want to see the same effect in your opening hand on a consistent basis, you'll want to put several different similar cards in that deck.
  • shteev
    shteev Posts: 2,031 Chairperson of the Boards
    I remember that they deliberately changed the wording on Act of Treason to exclude Defenders.... and then they print Turn Against? Weird.

    Maybe they thought Chandra just wasn't powerful enough *snigger*
  • BassMuffinFIve
    BassMuffinFIve Posts: 231
    Would the new PW's mana gain be considered power creep? Gideon gets 2/2/2 and Garruk gets 2/3/2. I know Garruk is limited to only 4 creature slots, but in a green deck that isn't really even a drawback at all. And Gideon has some insane PW abilities...

    So what is the drawback to these guys?
  • Meto5000
    Meto5000 Posts: 583
    shteev wrote:
    I remember that they deliberately changed the wording on Act of Treason to exclude Defenders.... and then they print Turn Against? Weird.

    I think the stated reason for the change to Act of Treason was that it caused crashes or unexpected game behavior. Maybe they thought they had corrected this in the 1.4.1 update, but I'm seeing a few different reports that Act of Treason/Turn Against are still causing the game to crash. I imagine this is something they're aware of and hopefully will be fixed in the next patch.
  • Plastic
    Plastic Posts: 762 Critical Contributor
    BassMuffinFIve wrote:
    Would the new PW's mana gain be considered power creep? Gideon gets 2/2/2 and Garruk gets 2/3/2. I know Garruk is limited to only 4 creature slots, but in a green deck that isn't really even a drawback at all. And Gideon has some insane PW abilities...

    So what is the drawback to these guys?

    Doesn't seem like there's too much drawback with those two. Koth on the other hand....
  • shteev
    shteev Posts: 2,031 Chairperson of the Boards
    BassMuffinFIve wrote:
    Would the new PW's mana gain be considered power creep? Gideon gets 2/2/2 and Garruk gets 2/3/2. I know Garruk is limited to only 4 creature slots, but in a green deck that isn't really even a drawback at all. And Gideon has some insane PW abilities...

    So what is the drawback to these guys?


    Gideon and Garruk may well be more powerful than older planeswalkers, I don't really know. But, the mere fact that they gain more mana than other planeswalkers should not, in itself, be taken as an example of power creep. It's possible that, during playtesting, the devs decided that the 3 abilities of these planeswalkers were weaker than those of others, and in order to equalise the power of the planeswalkers, they bumped up the amount of mana they gained from a match, rather than change the abilities.

    It's perfectly possible, tho, that Gideon 2 is just far better than Gideon 1 on random QuickBattle games, and in that case I'd probably say that yes, this was power creep in action... even though it's difficult to directly compare the differening abilities of the planeswalkers.

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