Limited Fetching of creatures

arNero

Okay, I'm not sure if they implemented some feature or something, but this is what happens:

I have a W/x deck which runs Forerunner of the Legion and Legion Conquistadors, usually to finish the "Cast 5 or more creatures" objective in Across Ixalan. Recently I found out that after fetching its own copy several times for a while, Legion Conquistadors will fail to fetch another copy. Ditto with Forerunner: In fact, with Forerunner, after one or two fetches, the next time I cast it, the options of creatures I can fetch shrink and eventually there is no more creatures that can be fetched.

I suspect this is also the case with other fetchers like Sylvan Messenger and the other Forerunners, which I haven't tested personally.

Is this an intended feature? Frankly I don't like this limitation, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Thanks

Wolfbane

There is indeed a sort of limitation on how often you can draw the same card in a row. If I'm correct this was implemented as a measure to stop / break some infinite loop issues.

Mburn7

The Legion Conquistadors were intentionally changed to stop creating a new deck to fetch themselves to stop the infinite combo with Path of Mettle.

I don't know if the Forerunners change to do the same was also intentional or not, since I'm not sure if it was really an issue as it was.

rafalele

@Tombstone , @Oktagon_Daiane devs are aware of this?

I have 2 vampires in my deck, Forerunner of the legion and Vona.

After summoning the forerunner 4 times it's ability has triggered 3 times before. The first one I had 4 vampires to select, the second 3, the third 2 and I show you the fourth in the screenshot, just 1.

This never happened before 2.9 version, I always had 4 vampires to select.

Gun Bunny

This was mentioned in the release notes for 2.9. Legion conquistador combined with path of discovery can result in an infinite loop for Huatli2, in which it fetches itself, triggers a match 3 (8 mana for H2) and casts the next copy of itself. This is especially egregious with forerunner of the legion in play, because of the token generation. I've personally had that deck take 45 minutes to resolve a turn, ending with over eighty copies of conquistador in play when the match fours finally killed path of discovery.

TL;DR Working as intended

Tombstone

I discussed this with the team, and they confirmed that the limitation on using a card to Fetch additional copies of the same card was an intentional change. 

Mburn7

Tombstone said:

I discussed this with the team, and they confirmed that the limitation on using a card to Fetch additional copies of the same card was an intentional change. 

Ok, 2 followup questions then:

1.  Why?  I get the Conquistador, but why the forerunners too?  And this post shows that you can't fetch other creatures with it either.  Why limit all fetching?

2.  Why was this not communicated to us in the patch notes?  That just had the Conquistador "fix" and nothing else (as far as I remember).  With a change this significant, it would be nice to have some warning

rafalele

Tombstone said:

I discussed this with the team, and they confirmed that the limitation on using a card to Fetch additional copies of the same card was an intentional change. 

These changes could be intended but incomprehensible.

Please I want old way of fetching creatures back.

They are making this game impossible to understand, no card is going to work as worded or at least as expected if you ever have play Magic in paper.

It seems that they do not know how to solve an specific case and use a sledgehammer to crack nuts.

If we continue in this way every new bug will be a feature.

Every single version, comes with changes in the behaviour of cards that worked pefect in previous versions, without any note in the release notes and without a reason why or if it is explained without updating the wording.

rafalele

This new behaviour is much more fun than I thought.

If you have just Forerunner as the only vampire in your deck, the first time you cast it you only have three forerunners to select (though wording in the window says 4 all time), when you have 2 forerunners in the battlefield you only can select dfrom 2, when you have  in the battlefield only one is shown to be selected and when you have 4 no question is asked an just creates the vampire token.

If you have another one vampire besides the forerunner in your deck the first time you can select 4, the second 3 and so on.

@Tombstone this is nonsense. Why they lose time changing things that always worked well.

And I think that the pirate forerunner will work the same, no?

Update:
I was wrong, this is a very buggy behaviour. I have tried the pirate forerunner as the only one pirate in my deck. Played twice and both different cases.

In the first battle when casted the first forerunner I was allowed just to select one, with the next forerunner casted just did the 2 damage without any question. The opponent killed the forerunners in battlefield and the next forerunner casted allowed me to select from 4.

The next battle was different, the first forerunner casted allowed me to select from 2 and the next one from 1. The next picture shows this las step, you can see the x1 counter in battlefield in the forerunner behind the selecting screen. 
 
Please @Tombstone can you report this to devs.

Kinesia

@Brigby I totally understand the need for examining these things, but it really needs to go back to the roots of the "40 card deck" that gets constantly recreated. Limiting it for these things but not HUF or other fetchers is broken. The root cause needs looking at.

I _really_ don't think there's an easy answer since this game won't work with the same limitations as paper, we'll run out of cards with our enemies on half life still.

But patching individual cards won't do it.

Maybe there could be something weirder like "All cards in the 2nd created deck cost 1 more, in the 3rd cost 2 more, etc". though communicating that cleanly to people is confusing.

And confusing is the biggest problem... People think things are bugs because they don't make sense based on what is written on the card. Things have to make sense based on the CARD only, not the forums, not anything else, some people only ever see the card wording and that is it, it needs to stand 100% alone.

rafalele

Hi @Brigby, @Tombstone, @Oktagon_Daiane, can anyone of you report to developers that they should review/test the behaviour of fetching creatures, unles for pirate and vampire forerunners.

As told before, with just the forerunner in the deck (one of them) the results are different while having the same circumstances.
Always first casted: first battle 3 to select, in second battle 1 to select, in third one 4 to select.

This is an inconsistent behaviour. 

Furks

It seems weird to me for a card that says 'fetch X' to not fetch X.

The wording should be updated to reflect this new change. Maybe add 'up to 4 times' to it. 

Often times when a patch 'fixes' cards, the text on the card doesn't change, leaving people in the dark as to how they actually function. 

Tombstone

@rafalele I'll pass this along and see if the team can take another look at this behavior. 

rafalele

Tombstone said:

@rafalele I'll pass this along and see if the team can take another look at this behavior. 

Thank you.

Mark_Tedin

Once again they fix a bug with an unannounced SUPER NERF.

This is completely disproportionate. This happened twice with Naru Meha.

This way of solving the bugs has harmed the whole community. Change that, please.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Kinesia

Mark_Tedin said:

Once again they fix a bug with an unannounced SUPER NERF.

This is completely disproportionate. This happened twice with Naru Meha.

This way of solving the bugs has harmed the whole community. Change that, please.

Mark, please stop brining Naru Meha into every conversation. It actually derails more serious discussions. These are all individual cases and need to be dealt with one by one with proper pros and cons and your personal bugbear harms our ability to argue properly about the separate issues.

arNero

Nice to see the feedbacks for this, thanks guys.

Of note is HUF. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it when I used HUF+Approach to destroy Bolas in RotGP just earlier, but indeed, I could use Pyromancer's Goggles to fetch HUF several times over which then fetches me up to 12 Approaches (12 Approaches = dead Bolas).

Which means that my new stance for this issue is consistency: It's good that Oktagon has addressed a broken combo and shut it down, but it does cause some complications with HUF+Approach inconsistency as I just highlighted (as well as a few other inconsistencies that perhaps you may have found as well).

If the old Forerunner/Conquistador functionality causes problem with Path of Discover, why not nerf Path instead of Forerunner/Conquistador? Like, make it trigger only once per turn, or make the support self-destruct (as in, lose a shield everytime a creature enters field) etc?

rafalele

arNero said:

Nice to see the feedbacks for this, thanks guys.

Of note is HUF. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it when I used HUF+Approach to destroy Bolas in RotGP just earlier, but indeed, I could use Pyromancer's Goggles to fetch HUF several times over which then fetches me up to 12 Approaches (12 Approaches = dead Bolas).

Which means that my new stance for this issue is consistency: It's good that Oktagon has addressed a broken combo and shut it down, but it does cause some complications with HUF+Approach inconsistency as I just highlighted (as well as a few other inconsistencies that perhaps you may have found as well).

If the old Forerunner/Conquistador functionality causes problem with Path of Discover, why not nerf Path instead of Forerunner/Conquistador? Like, make it trigger only once per turn, or make the support self-destruct (as in, lose a shield everytime a creature enters field) etc?

No, the answer should not be changing every card that allows combos, it is to fix the code to handle with loops longer than a fixed time or iterations. 

Changing cards just makes the game very inconsistent.

Combos are Magic if we can not play them this is not a "Magic the Gathering" game.

Bubbles

Ah. Came here to report this bug. Nope, not happy. It broke 3 of my most played decks. 

I also noticed that since the update, the decks are no longer properly shuffled until I fetch a card. I end up with 4 or more copies of the same 2 cards in a row way more often than before. 

arNero

rafalele said:

arNero said:

Nice to see the feedbacks for this, thanks guys.

Of note is HUF. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it when I used HUF+Approach to destroy Bolas in RotGP just earlier, but indeed, I could use Pyromancer's Goggles to fetch HUF several times over which then fetches me up to 12 Approaches (12 Approaches = dead Bolas).

Which means that my new stance for this issue is consistency: It's good that Oktagon has addressed a broken combo and shut it down, but it does cause some complications with HUF+Approach inconsistency as I just highlighted (as well as a few other inconsistencies that perhaps you may have found as well).

If the old Forerunner/Conquistador functionality causes problem with Path of Discover, why not nerf Path instead of Forerunner/Conquistador? Like, make it trigger only once per turn, or make the support self-destruct (as in, lose a shield everytime a creature enters field) etc?

No, the answer should not be changing every card that allows combos, it is to fix the code to handle with loops longer than a fixed time or iterations. 

Changing cards just makes the game very inconsistent.

Combos are Magic if we can not play them this is not a "Magic the Gathering" game.

I won't disagree with you since your point is indeed good. Yeah, maybe I'd like to hear what the developers has to say about these feedbacks.