Give us support removal than can target supports

BlessedOne

Please give us support removal that allows us to target specific supports. This random removal concept such with cards like Lich Mastery in play needs an update. Why does Demolish destroy a 1 shield, un-casted treasure instead of something useful? I just played a 162 turn game of Across Ixalan, first node. My Demolish spell consistently destroyed the random treasures instead of the land supports or the Lich Mastery that were all more important. There is something wrong with support removal right now. This extends to Vraska's first ability. Paper magic allows us to target, why is this not the case in this digital version? 

Kinesia

Targeting would make supports worthless to play. (The amount of creature removal already causes problems with creatures for the same reason!)

But they have started introducing "destroy aura support" "destroy artifact support" etc and these matter a lot.
We DEFINITELY need more options though, and updating some of the old ones and

"Destroy non-token support" is absolutely needed.

But, really, people have to stop with this stupid stupid idea that just running 1 support destruction ability in a deck is acceptable in standard! It's not.

Vraska's change is absolutely a bug. Cause she is worded exactly right and used to be perfect because of it. She needs fixing asap. But even with her I STILL always use another support destruction spell.

It's crazy to rely on a single support destruction spell these days but I see soooo many people doing it. I suppose if you have enough card draw it's ok, but that's not always the case.

DBJones

All the support destruction is supposed to target non-token supports over token supports now (which is definitely a big improvement). However, the way they did it messed up some things, Vraska's first being the most obvious. Looks like Demolish is another victim, it should be hitting non-token first, but it's doing the opposite.

Kinesia

Demolish is interesting, since it's pretty clear there's one standard "destroy support" function that most cards use, then demolish is 100% coded individually with a totally different function that doesn't even call that for the destroy part (and it looks like Vraska is too!)

DBJones

I wonder if Haphazard Bombardment also faces this issue, given how it's destruction ability is basically the same as Demolish.

Kinesia

DBJones said:

I wonder if Haphazard Bombardment also faces this issue, given how it's destruction ability is basically the same as Demolish.

Ooh, that'd be interesting, if it was calling the Demolish code... There's a new one in M19, the "demolish+can't block" for 6, wonder about that too.


(I love that so many of the community are techies that discuss the implications of possible implementations of things in the background...)

Laeuftbeidir

DBJones said:

I wonder if Haphazard Bombardment also faces this issue, given how it's destruction ability is basically the same as Demolish.

It's unlikely.

Demolish seems to accept the indestructible supports as supports for its trigger, but can't target them, so it either destroys any other support (if there is one) or fizzles.

H-bomb is supposed to target one support at a time, and itself when there is no other targetable support, so it'll self destruct once there is no other non indestructible support on the board

DBJones

I was actually wondering if Haphazard Bombardment would target treasures before other supports. I hadn't even thought of how it would interact with the invincible ones, you're probably correct that it wouldn't be able to target them.

Dkrone

I want to request an enhancement for destroying supports. I’d like to be able to pick which support gets destroyed when casting something like Demolish, Smash to Smithereens, Assassin’ Trophy, etc.

This weekend I had several games against Path to Discovery (annoying little card) and a couple against Lich’s Mastery. I was getting super frustrated that I would draw “destroy support” cards over and over, yet when I used them they were destroying the opponent’s treasures instead. So I’m wasting my draw, my mana, and my turn...so I can give the opponent more mana? I want to select the support that gets destroy, simple as that.

Mburn7

This has been requested several times, but will probably never be implemented.

That being said, there was a fix a few updates back that made it so Token supports would be not be targeted by support destruction cards if there were other enemy supports on the field.

If your spells were hitting Treasures instead of other supports, that is a bug.

Tilwin90

I guess an alternative nowadays would be to get either more mass support removal (Shatterstorm does wonders in legacy but it's a masterpiece so definitely hard to obtain), or some sort of support removal spells that specifically do not target token supports so as to be able to remove supports hiding behind a barrage of tokens.

Monkeynutts

Asked for this ages ago in a big thread that went no where.
Apparently they like the randomness of support destruction . ....

Laeuftbeidir

Actually, they answered this in a Q and A a while ago. The main argumentation was that the implementation is tricky due to the layout - picking a support on the battlefield could easily go wrong (anybody git a big thumb or small phone?).

Kinesia

Laeuftbeidir said:

Actually, they answered this in a Q and A a while ago. The main argumentation was that the implementation is tricky due to the layout - picking a support on the battlefield could easily go wrong (anybody git a big thumb or small phone?).

I have a big phone but a bigger thumb... I accidentally mismatch things sometimes and it's very frustrating. Missing a support could be even a bigger problem than the wrong match.


They have a lot of other options now though... Vraska targets highest shields, Statue targets artifact then enchantment (This one MIGHT have done a Treasure rather than the enchantment you wanted...).

They can add more options like this...
Highest cost, lowest cost, highest/lowest shields, "destroy all blue supports or if none exist 1 artifact".
Now they've opened up the dev space the possibilities are endless...

"Destroy all supports in the corners" if we want to get silly...
or more sensible
"Destroy the highest cost artifact and the highest cost enchantment"



People sometimes forget, though, that Greg gets whatever you ask for... If we get targetted support then we can suddenly rely on Greg to mess us up in the worse possible way at the worse time. While randomness is annoying it's part of the smokescreen that protects us too.

Skiglass6

Not sure how accidentally selecting the wrong support is any worse than what we have now.  Especially since they once again can target token supports.  At least if I choose the wrong support, I  had the chance to pick the right one. 

I always thought that if they wouldn’t give us targeted support removal, they should make it destroy the non-token support that has been on the board longest.  Some players feel that targeted support removal is to strong for the cost of cheap removal spells. Destroying the oldest support is at least not targeted but can help get to the support that you can not reach or help against the starfield lockdown. Nothing more frustrating than removing hixus 3 times in row and have starfield keep bringing it back. 

Brigby

*Merged same topic threads together

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Brigby

starfall said:

Laeuftbeidir said:

Actually, they answered this in a Q and A a while ago. The main argumentation was that the implementation is tricky due to the layout - picking a support on the battlefield could easily go wrong.

What a shame no programmer has ever solved this problem over the last 40 years or so.

I'm not a developer, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe since their reply had to do with the physical responsiveness and accuracy of device screens, it sounded like it was a hardware challenge as opposed to software.

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Kinesia

It works well for SOME people on SOME devices. Not universally.

I absolutely want more options, not only with this but also with the dull counter spells that "drain all mana from card", but I suddenly changing all the old ones to targetted would be bad...

I wouldn't be adverse to adding a really expensive new one that was targetted though that you paid extra for the privilege.

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