Ixalan card costs

Matthew

I'd love an explanation for the following.

Colossal Dreadmaw

Common for 17 mana, 6/6 with Trample

Charging Monstrosaur

Uncommon for 17 mana, 6/6 with Trample and Haste

Burning Sun's Avatar

Mythic for 17 mana, 6/6, with no amplifying abilities like Trample or Haste, and deals 3 dmg to opponent and one creature on ETB.

It looks like they started with Dreadmaw and thought "Yeah, let's make them more complex as we go up," which admittedly is how card design should go. Except then they completely forgot to follow through with Avatar.

Given that Avatar has exactly the same mana cost as the other two cards, it should A) deal more damage (6 would be nice); B ) have a higher power/toughness value; C) cost about 25% less mana; or D) some combination of the above.

wereotter

Matthew said:

I'd love an explanation for the following.

Colossal Dreadmaw

Common for 17 mana, 6/6 with Trample

Charging Monstrosaur

Uncommon for 17 mana, 6/6 with Trample and Haste

Burning Sun's Avatar

Mythic for 17 mana, 6/6, with no amplifying abilities like Trample or Haste, and deals 3 dmg to opponent and one creature on ETB.

It looks like they started with Dreadmaw and thought "Yeah, let's make them more complex as we go up," which admittedly is how card design should go. Except then they completely forgot to follow through with Avatar.

Given that Avatar has exactly the same mana cost as the other two cards, it should A) deal more damage (6 would be nice); B ) have a higher power/toughness value; C) cost about 25% less mana; or D) some combination of the above.

They're doing more to follow course with how actual magic works. Higher rarity doesn't equal stronger and cheaper creatures, at least not in all cases. They admitted point blank that the higher rarity cards would be made so as to provide interesting interactions. So Burning Sun's Avatar is more flexible than the other two in this case. First it deals damage directly to your opponent as soon as it enters. This could be argued to be similar to haste and trample, but depending on the board state could be more relevant, especially if your opponent has a 4+ toughness blocker in play.

Additionally the 3 damage can be targeted where you need it. So maybe your opponent has a creature you want to remove with low enough toughness, this creature can do it for you. Or say you want to upgrade your Raptor Hatchling to a 3/3 or you want to power up all your creatures with your Bellowing Aegisaur. This can do that too. It's not higher in terms of raw power, but it's more flexible, and that seems to be the direction things are heading.

Gone are the days of them upgrading cards (see Olivia and Heart of Kiran) from a 3/3 creature and a 4/4 creature to an 11/11 and a 16/16 respectively, and this is something I think will be good for the game in the long-term.

Brigby

Hi Everyone. I just spoke with the development team, and it would appear that this is how Treasures behave:

"Whenever you match this support’s gem, a random card in your hand gains 3 mana. Whenever an opponent matches this support gem, a random card in your hand gains 2 mana and a random card in your opponent’s hand gains 2 mana."

Treasures seem to be quite the Mana ramp tool, which should help offset the high Mana costs that some of these cards have.

ZW2007-

wereotter said:

Matthew said:

I'd love an explanation for the following.

Colossal Dreadmaw

Common for 17 mana, 6/6 with Trample

Charging Monstrosaur

Uncommon for 17 mana, 6/6 with Trample and Haste

Burning Sun's Avatar

Mythic for 17 mana, 6/6, with no amplifying abilities like Trample or Haste, and deals 3 dmg to opponent and one creature on ETB.

It looks like they started with Dreadmaw and thought "Yeah, let's make them more complex as we go up," which admittedly is how card design should go. Except then they completely forgot to follow through with Avatar.

Given that Avatar has exactly the same mana cost as the other two cards, it should A) deal more damage (6 would be nice); B ) have a higher power/toughness value; C) cost about 25% less mana; or D) some combination of the above.

They're doing more to follow course with how actual magic works. Higher rarity doesn't equal stronger and cheaper creatures, at least not in all cases. They admitted point blank that the higher rarity cards would be made so as to provide interesting interactions. So Burning Sun's Avatar is more flexible than the other two in this case. First it deals damage directly to your opponent as soon as it enters. This could be argued to be similar to haste and trample, but depending on the board state could be more relevant, especially if your opponent has a 4+ toughness blocker in play.

Additionally the 3 damage can be targeted where you need it. So maybe your opponent has a creature you want to remove with low enough toughness, this creature can do it for you. Or say you want to upgrade your Raptor Hatchling to a 3/3 or you want to power up all your creatures with your Bellowing Aegisaur. This can do that too. It's not higher in terms of raw power, but it's more flexible, and that seems to be the direction things are heading.

Gone are the days of them upgrading cards (see Olivia and Heart of Kiran) from a 3/3 creature and a 4/4 creature to an 11/11 and a 16/16 respectively, and this is something I think will be good for the game in the long-term.

The trouble here is that in paper, the haste dino is intentionally weaker (5/5) than the other two. Also, 3 damage to the opponent in paper is 15% of their total life. 3 damage to the average PW in PQ is ~3%. 3 damage to target creature is also much better in paper since it can pick off almost any early to mid-game creature. In PQ, it puts 3 damage on a creature and is unlikely to kill anything you actually want to kill. I'm fine with the P/T of all of them but their mana costs should not be identical. Increased rarities are supposed to be pushed slightly. Keep the Dreadmaw where it's at, not a terrible common. Drop the Monstrosaur to 15 and 5/5. Put the mythic at 16 for a 6/6 and deal 12 to the opponent and 6 to target creature. This isn't OP, it gets you a lot of value for your card. It's an Inferno Jet stapled to an Exquisite Firecraft glued to the back of a Colossal Dreadmaw. Literally all they did with these three cards is triple their paper mana cost and call it a day.

Brakkis

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. I just spoke with the development team, and it would appear that this is how Treasures behave:

"Whenever you match this support’s gem, a random card in your hand gains 3 mana. Whenever an opponent matches this support gem, a random card in your hand gains 2 mana and a random card in your opponent’s hand gains 2 mana."

Treasures seem to be quite the Mana ramp tool, which should help offset the high Mana costs that some of these cards have.

Except that Treasures are a mechanic devoted to pirate related creatures, spells, and supports. That ability is only found on those cards. Not every PW can run pirates, and not every PW who can run pirates will run pirates.

In addition, the immense mana cost of these cards is prevalent within all colors and so again, Treasures will often be of no help in ramping through those costs.

These cards cost too much and the power scaling from Common to Mythic is lacking.

ILikePancakes

OK, it's been a loooong time since I played paper ('95-'98). What I remember isn't much, but you started out with 20 life. It was a slow build up and damaging your opponent was somewhat difficult b/c of interrupts and instants. Puzzle Quest seems much different, and please take this for what it's worth from someone who has been out of the paper loop, but it doesn't make much sense to make the cards close to paper when the mechanics are so different between the two platforms. We have PWs with over 100 health. And puzzle quest seems to be a pick up and play game, not something you settle in for several hours like Skyrim. This game is fun and it brought back great memories for me, as I don't have anyone around me remotely interested in paper. I'm glad I can play when I can, but sometimes it has to be fairly quick. Maybe a balance can be struck between fast and slow play. I dunno.

wereotter

ILikePancakes said:

OK, it's been a loooong time since I played paper ('95-'98). What I remember isn't much, but you started out with 20 life. It was a slow build up and damaging your opponent was somewhat difficult b/c of interrupts and instants. Puzzle Quest seems much different, and please take this for what it's worth from someone who has been out of the paper loop, but it doesn't make much sense to make the cards close to paper when the mechanics are so different between the two platforms. We have PWs with over 100 health. And puzzle quest seems to be a pick up and play game, not something you settle in for several hours like Skyrim. This game is fun and it brought back great memories for me, as I don't have anyone around me remotely interested in paper. I'm glad I can play when I can, but sometimes it has to be fairly quick. Maybe a balance can be struck between fast and slow play. I dunno.

When they first made this game with the Origins set, the cards were actually pretty close to their paper counterparts. Some are a bit stronger, for example Exquisite Firecraft deals 4 damage in paper magic but deals 6 damage her, but as you mentioned, life totals are higher, and there are other differences that can account for the disparity as well, such as the buildup isn't quite the same considering mana banks from turn to turn, unlike the paper game where you lose it.

Problem became that creatures that were smaller utility creatures became overpower pieces of garbage that people have been riding on for years now. Examples of this include Tyrant of Valakut. In the paper game that card is a 5/4 flier that deals 3 damage to a creature or a player when it enters, and only if you'd cast another spell before it that turn. Here it's a 9/8 that deals 6 damage to your opponent and all his or her creatures when it enters, making it vastly more powerful. Then came the Innistrad block and Olivia went from being a 3/3 flier who couldn't buff herself and gave other creatures entering +1/+1, haste, and turned them into vampires into an 8/8 flier who buffed herself +3/+3 when she entered and gave flying and lifelink in addition to haste to creatures when they entered, more than tripling her power level from her paper counterpart and introducing mechanics to her card that were never there to begin with. Even now, Samut is a 3/4 double strike, haste, vigilance on her paper card, but here lost her vigilance to be a 7/8 double strike instead, again more than doubling her power level.

People have gotten too accustomed to the overly powerful cards so that now when the power level is being dialed back to more closely mirror the actual cards, people are crying that things are too weak and they just want more over powered garbage like they've been seeing for years now.

wickedwitch74

Brigby said:

Treasures seem to be quite the Mana ramp tool, which should help offset the high Mana costs that some of these cards have.

With the exception of admitting that these cards have a high Mana cost, I don't find this to be an acceptable answer.

Each Magic card needs to exist in the context of it's limited environment AND in the context of the greater MtG universe.

Simply put, these cards fail to do the latter.

While the Treasure mechanic may act as a Mana accelerator, that should have nothing to do with the design, casting cost or power level of any of these cards.

Those need to be independent in order for cards to survive on their own merit.

As it stands, there are a few decent cards that will find their place in competitive decks, but the vast majority of this set is underpowered, overcosted, and are functionally made obsolete by several other card choices.

Brakkis

It's not so much the power of the creatures or their abilities for me; rather, it's the immensely higher mana cost of a great many of the cards in this set that really turns me off from them.

ZW2007-

Since @wereotter brought up Origins, I decided to compare the sets. I used only rare cards for the comparison since those are the more powerful cards that are still relatively easily accessible.

Creatures
Number of rare creatures in Origins: 26
Average cost of a rare creature in Origins: 13 mana
Average power of a rare creature in Origins: 5.19 (this includes etb spawned tokens)
Average toughness of a rare creature in Origins: 5.65 (this includes etb spawned tokens)
Number of creatures in Origins with Vigilance/Reach/Defender: 6 (23.1%)

Number of rare creatures in Ixalan: 22
Average cost of a rare creature in Ixalan: 15.55 mana
Average power of a rare creature in Ixalan: 4.05
Average toughness of a rare creature in Ixalan: 3.95
Number of creatures in Ixalan with Vigilance/Reach/Defender: 1 (4.5%)

The interesting takeaway here is that Origins had a lower average mana cost but a higher average power and toughness compared to Ixalan. Origins also had a much higher % of vigilance/reach/defender creatures and those tend to have a higher mana cost compared to creatures without those abilities.

Spells:
Number of rare spells in Origins: 13
Average cost of a rare spell in Origins: 9.31 mana

Number of rare spells in Ixalan: 6
Average cost of a rare spell in Ixalan: 11.83 mana

I'd say 8 of the Origins spells are still perfectly playable, even in Power-creep-land. Only 2 of the Ixalan spells will see a lot of play, 2 more will be used in very specific decks, and the other 2 are useless (I'll let the reader determine which these are.)

Supports:
Number of rare supports in Origins: 10
Average cost of a rare support in Origins: 10.4 mana

Number of rare supports in Ixalan: 12
Average cost of a rare support in Ixalan: 14.33 mana

Supports are a little harder to evaluate since we don't know shield counts for Ixalan. Origins has 4 or 5 that still see a good amount of play and a few interesting ones outside of that. Ixalan also has some pretty interesting ones but there's also 3 total stinkers compared to Origins 1.

Total:
Number of rares in Origins: 49
Average cost of a rare in Origins: 11.49 mana

Number of rares in Ixalan: 40
Average cost of a rare in Ixalan: 14.63 mana

So in the end, the average mana cost of Ixalan is more than 3 higher per card while the creatures on average are weaker, the spells are not as good (subjective), and the supports are probably a wash since they are so vastly different. Overall, Origins is a much better set than Ixalan as far as I am concerned. If you want to blame people complaining about power creep and overpowered cards that's fine but it's still on Oktagon for making a set that is weaker than Origins (at least when looking at the rares.)

wereotter

I was referring to comparing the cards to their paper counterparts, not stats from the set overall. The power and toughness of most creatures are about the same as the power and toughness of creatures from the paper set with the exception mostly of a few cards being pumped up too much, or being pumped up possibly because they didn't know how to otherwise implement their mechanics. For example, Dwynen's paper card is a 3/4 with reach that gives your other elves +1/+1. Assuming you have two other elves in play that counterbalances the Puzzle Quest version being a 5/6.

The comparison of mana costs is interesting, though, when you consider what spells could you actually play and how quickly with the original 5 planeswalkers given the mana gains available to them. To compare, when you had original Liliana with gains of +1 red, +3 black, and +1 blue your spells by design had to cost less when you now look at the latest Liliana who, even with her negative mana on white and green, has +4 blue, +5 black, and +3 red making her much more able to cast higher costed spells more easily. If anything that comparison brings up the issues regarding power creep on a long-term basis.

It's apparent that due to the power creep on all levels there eventually has to be a reset of things in order for the game to balance out. They've already said that they didn't get the chance to do that yet, but it will be coming. So right now, yes, things will be odd, and people might not love what's happening. But It's entirely possible that the end result after all rebalancing is done will be such that what everyone is complaining about with Ixalan will no longer be that out of line with everything else.

Thuran

So, here is a thought: what if they reduced the cost of all cards by 2, and gave all creatures +1+1?

Houdin

@LakeStone
@Brigby

Brigby, I know we don't always see I to eye on things. I have to call you guys out though on this.

We all love this game, and I'm sure you guys do as well. In two years, I have never seen this kind of player response, excepting possibly after austerity, and we all know how bad that was for the game and I'm pretty sure d3's bottom line.

Reading through the comments I come up with this. Feel free to say I'm wrong.

70% this is the worst set ever released. The cards are incredibly over costed, even if the goal is reducing power creep. The mechanics are poorly thought out and don't actually make sense to the game. Ie treasures - you can't say a mechanic that requires an over costed card to be played to give you a one spot match on the board that could possibly give you 3 extra mana is a viable excuse for playing over costed cards.
Only perhaps 1 or 2 of these cards will see play.

20% There is no way the cards can be as bad as they seem. There must be something we aren't being told about the new mechanics. There's no way anyone could have play tested this and not realized how bad this is, and hey there are a couple of cards that might be playable...sometimes.

10% power creep bad. 30 minute matches good. I think there are a bunch of cards that can be used if they are paired with other cards from other sets, mostly legacy and hey I like legacy better so thats ok if they aren't playable in standard. And hey there are two cards that are really good.

Guys, please tell me you have seen all this and have called an emergency meeting to fix this either before it drops or as a patch right after like you did with crafting.

I would have spent hundreds on a new set that was even remotely decent after months of nothing. Now I can't see Any reason to spend anything. That has to tell you something??

Please????

DBJones

With an the discussion of Ixalan, and card rebalancing coming whenever Rivals comes out, I'm curious what people's opinions are.

DBJones

I think Origins should be the baseline, and other sets should have some advantage over Origins, but still be beatable by a well-crafted Origins deck with reasonable luck. Origins will be playable indefinitely, we need some reason to use new sets too. If each set is balanced within this range, they'll be reasonably playable against each other too.

khurram

wereotter said:

It's apparent that due to the power creep on all levels there eventually has to be a reset of things in order for the game to balance out. They've already said that they didn't get the chance to do that yet, but it will be coming. So right now, yes, things will be odd, and people might not love what's happening. But It's entirely possible that the end result after all rebalancing is done will be such that what everyone is complaining about with Ixalan will no longer be that out of line with everything else.

I hope the solution to the terrible cards in this set is not being suggested as making the rest of the sets terrible too. 

I can't see the silver lining in making a mess of other sets like they have done with Ixalan so that the ridiculous cards in this one don't feel out of line.

khurram

@wereotter
 "Examples of this include Tyrant of Valakut. In the paper game that card is a 5/4 flier that deals 3 damage to a creature or a player when it enters, and only if you'd cast another spell before it that turn. Here it's a 9/8 that deals 6 damage to your opponent and all his or her creatures when it enters, making it vastly more powerful."

This is not the first time you have brought this up and i can't fathom how this comparison is justified.
A 5/4 flier against a 20 health opponent versus a 9/8 flyer against 100+ health opponents. The paper version can finish off the opponent with 4 strikes and the PQ version needs quite a lot more than that... How is it "vastly" more powerful?

You may want to get into how all creatures can block in paper or some other differences (i have never had a chance to play) but thats the point. Can you stop treating like MTGPQ and paper are the same?

I should note here that Tyrant and Samut are considered among some of the better designed mythics and I have never seen players complaining about how they are "vastly over powered".

theobserver

Tyrant was the original OP card.

The fact that no one is talking about tyrant as OP now is testament to how crazy it is now.

tfg76

I actually think that AKH/HOU had a really good balance, except for some obvious cards (New Perspectives, Drake Haven). The costing across rarities created a lot of playable cards (e.g. the common creature and support removal). 

Origins and some of the legacy sets have too much of a difference in quality between commons and mythics. The commons are mostly unplayable, many of the mythics are way overpowered (Gaea's Revenge, Nyx, etc). I like the philosophy that Octagon stated (mythic is more "interesting" than rare, but not necessarily more powerful), but didn't actually follow.

khurram

theobserver said:

Tyrant was the original OP card.

The fact that no one is talking about tyrant as OP now is testament to how crazy it is now.

I'd argue that it was "the original OP" card. We already had 16/9 GR (which had mostly went underutilized when it was 9/6) by then. With BFZ the devs made a conscious decision to increase the baseline for mythics because the high cost high swing approach to mythics during the origins days was lacking. There is a post from JC on this somewhere.

Tyrant was... formidable, yes. I think he is at the right level and worthy for a mythic. But the players in this game generally have a tendency to go overboard in labelling cards as OP.

It's like the cards are either trash, or OP.