Targetable support destruction

Monkeynutts

My god this is needed.

Just got bored and quit a game in Trial Ixalan first node because my opponent had Lich's Mastery and a few other support plus 2 treasurers each turn. After 9 minutes of having enough damage to kill my opponent 10 times over it got old quickly.

I used 14 support removal spells and didn't hit it.

You can choose what creature you want to destroy. Why can you not put a list up of the supports to TARGET and confirm?

Tilwin90

This was discussed and rediscussed. Up until now the current interface has some problems with supports, namely that:
1) It's very easy to misclick them
2) You don't actually always know which support is what. Alas, whenever I end up with a board filled with activated gems I have a huge problem figuring out which activated gem belongs to which source support (it highlights the support itself, but god, I have to tap the activated gem, then tap the support to know what it is about, and by then I forget what I wanted to swap actually).

Supplementary Support removal is dirty cheap - lately this has been less of a problem, but if for cards like Demolish you can actually choose the support to remove, it would be the end of supports.

I've come to like the random factor, in spite of it being frustrating at first. If you live in a support heavy environment you just have to adapt. And yes, sometimes it so happens that that one Lich's Mastery is difficult to remove because it hides behind a lot of other supports.

I think the real problem is balancing supports actually and finding a way around them. People have complained in the past about Hixus, Suppression Bonds, Prism Array or other annoying supports, but funny enough, I don't see any of these around that much in legacy (or even standard) PVP. I barely play with Lich's Mastery myself nowadays, but it is indeed a support you have to keep in mind all the time or it can blow in your face.

Wait for Ravnica's new support hosers - white gets a double support removal spell and blue/black will be able to directly remove supports from opposing hand. That should make for a different angle to deal with supports.

Mburn7

I agree with @Tilwin90.  The randomness of stuff is a vital part of the game, even if it is annoying sometimes.

Also, we now have semi-targeted support destruction (destroy enchantment, or non-land or whatever) which should alleviate some of the issues.

madwren

MTG is an inherently strategic game, and Puzzle Quest is an inherently random game. Those that prefer to be able to react with precision to an opponent's play are always going to be frustrated by this.

Imagine if every creature removal spell was random. How happy would everyone be then--and that's with only 3 possible outcomes on the board instead of the plethora of supports. Further imagine if when killing an opponent creature, you might inadvertently kill one or two of yours as well. Would that be an acceptable amount of randomness? No, of course not.

It's beyond silly that Greg can cast a support, bury it in the corner, then ride it to victory while support destruction spells hit everything around it for the rest of the game. That may be random, but it isn't fun; it's futile, it removes player agency, and emphasizes a disparity in luck rather than skill.

Thankfully, Oktagon seems aware of this--and thanks to their informative dev post last month, we know that things aren't going to change. However, more targeted support removal  (as mentioned above) does help to an extent. What I'd like to see more of, however, is:

1. More intelligent use of the "decay" mechanic for supports. This was a welcome innovation.

2. More mass removal. I sorely miss By the Force and Remove the Gremlins, and am thrilled to see Crush Contraband in GRN as a cheap multi-support removal. Hopefully they fixed the "exiling supports makes their effects last forever" bug.  But there's no reason to have multiple creature sweepers, or support+creature sweepers, but not support sweepers. Give me my non-masterpiece variant of Shatterstorm, please.

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Mburn7

starfall said:

Mburn7 said:

Also, we now have semi-targeted support destruction (destroy enchantment, or non-land or whatever) which should alleviate some of the issues.

This doesn't really work for me as a solution. When building a deck, a 'semi-targeted support' is just a less powerful support removal spell. You have to know which type of support your potential opponent might be playing before you even start the game.

Yes, technically, but it helps you plan better for the stuff you are really afraid of.  If you are worried about a Litch showing up, run enchantment removal.  Worried about combo supports but not lands?  Run non-land removal.

Sure you won't always guess right, but since Greg almost never casts supports anyway support killer spells are usually dead draws anyway.  Might as well have one that works the way you need it to.

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nerdstrap

Id be fine if every spell was like isolate exiling their first thing with no recourse! byeeeeeeee if token supports werent real supports that would be great too

nerdstrap

and yes I agree the argument that targeting supports is too difficult or fraught with error... NOPE just do it already

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EvilDead

How about ignore all Treasures and I'd be fine with the things the way they are now. Single shield Treasure is the number one target for support removal. The AI seems always manage to knock your good ones even when all four treasures are on the board.

Mburn7

EvilDead said:

How about ignore all Treasures and I'd be fine with the things the way they are now. Single shield Treasure is the number one target for support removal. The AI seems always manage to knock your good ones even when all four treasures are on the board.

Technically part of the 2.9 fix was to make treasures and other token supports the lowest priority for support spells.  This, of course, ended up making them the highest priority instead as well as ruining Vraska's first ability (and a couple of other cards that relied on supports).

Once its fixed, though, token supports shouldn't work as flak anymore

ElfNeedsFood

We have some destroy all token supports spells. 

Monkeynutts

Randomness is fine, but when your games is dictated by a Starfield Nyx or a Lich's Mastery then it becomes boring and stale fast.
Why can a list not be popped up and you select and confirm?
You can do it with fetching next cards etc.
Randomness i get
stale game i don't 

Kinesia

It sounds like the meta changed from creatures being the most dangerous thing to supports. I know I adjusted and started running more than a single support destruction spell, like the old days.

Whatever you personally find annoying you personally have the responsibility to change your decks to cope with.

Monkeynutts

yeah I get that @Kinesia.
When you run several removal spells to cater for them and you still can hit them as its random what do you do?

NinjaE

Monkeynutts said:

yeah I get that @Kinesia.
When you run several removal spells to cater for them and you still can hit them as its random what do you do?

River's Rebuke.

wereotter

madwren said:

MTG is an inherently strategic game, and Puzzle Quest is an inherently random game. Those that prefer to be able to react with precision to an opponent's play are always going to be frustrated by this.

Imagine if every creature removal spell was random. How happy would everyone be then--and that's with only 3 possible outcomes on the board instead of the plethora of supports. Further imagine if when killing an opponent creature, you might inadvertently kill one or two of yours as well. Would that be an acceptable amount of randomness? No, of course not.

It's beyond silly that Greg can cast a support, bury it in the corner, then ride it to victory while support destruction spells hit everything around it for the rest of the game. That may be random, but it isn't fun; it's futile, it removes player agency, and emphasizes a disparity in luck rather than skill.

Thankfully, Oktagon seems aware of this--and thanks to their informative dev post last month, we know that things aren't going to change. However, more targeted support removal  (as mentioned above) does help to an extent. What I'd like to see more of, however, is:

1. More intelligent use of the "decay" mechanic for supports. This was a welcome innovation.

2. More mass removal. I sorely miss By the Force and Remove the Gremlins, and am thrilled to see Crush Contraband in GRN as a cheap multi-support removal. Hopefully they fixed the "exiling supports makes their effects last forever" bug.  But there's no reason to have multiple creature sweepers, or support+creature sweepers, but not support sweepers. Give me my non-masterpiece variant of Shatterstorm, please.

I'm going to say that in general I agree with your assessment as I've been frustrated by my support destruction killing everything but what was needed in a match, and as someone who came here from paper magic, the inability to act with precision, to have legitimate counter spells (I still think blue cards that counter spells should either act like Insidious Will, or like Transgress the Mind rather than simply draining mana) is frustrating. The game already has a large degree of luck. We've all been in those matches where Greg cascades out 50 mana in a turn and leaves the board with only a match three of loyalty gems, and then he rides that mana advantage to victory.

I will say this, however, there are a handful of major offender supports that are the ones people want to remove, and destroying by type has only made those supports stronger. The main support types PQ is recognizing are enchantment, artifact, and land. The main supports that pose an immediate need to destroy would be cards like Hixus, Gideon's Defeat, Vault of Catlacan, and Starfield of Nyx. Granted there are others but let's consider these four for now. Hixus is translated from a creature and has none of those three support types. Gideon's Defeat was an instant, and also has none of those types. Vault of Catlacan is a land, and interestingly most of the new support removal specifies either enchantment or artifact, meaning this support is safe, or non-land. Even River's Rebuke can't touch this support. Lastly Starfield which is an enchantment, but has an annoying habit of burring itself behind a whole slew of decoy supports.

I think the solution is that the game absolutely needs mass removal for supports. As you mentioned By Force and Release the Gremlins, but also I miss having Consulate Crackdown that got rid of 100% of the supports your opponent had in play (really handy for those pesky Starfield decks) Cleansing Nova should have just had the destroy all supports text rather than needing no creatures in play to clear the field, but they decided to put destroy all creatures as the priority. This would have taken the card from something gathering dust in most collections that have it to an actually usable card.

Kinesia

NinjaE said:

Monkeynutts said:

yeah I get that @Kinesia.
When you run several removal spells to cater for them and you still can hit them as its random what do you do?

River's Rebuke.

Yep, but sometimes you just have a bad start and you probably _are_ going to fail and you need to accept that losses are inevitable, you can do everything you can to minimise them and still fail, so you just accept that loss and move on to the next game and try again.

In the Rising Tensions Izzet event yesterday I had one game where I fought and fought and fought to get control back but died slowly over a long time because I couldn't get anything out to stick...
Because of the special rule + storm the vault and BsZ they were playing River's Rebuke every single turn. If I'd already had StV flipped I might've recovered but because they got there first they were just going to win...

And I _think_ I've tweaked my deck a little to deal with it, but I can't know for sure. I can't set things up so that _can't_ happen to me again, I've just got to bite it...

But yeah... Decks all have risks, it's hard to get rid of every possible risk from every deck.


(Though I do think RR is too broken currently and should be "non-land and non-token" support. It getting rid of the PW ability tokens was part of why I couldn't recover.)

stikxs

Tilwin90 said:

This was discussed and rediscussed. Up until now the current interface has some problems with supports, namely that:
1) It's very easy to misclick them

I remember that being mentioned in the last Q&A and seemed to make sense. Then I thought about it some; they are just gems. If misclicking were an issue we'd be hearing about it 24/7 because gem matches would also be having an issue. I don't think I've ever swapped a different gem pair than the 2 I intend to swap.

Kinesia

stikxs said:

Tilwin90 said:

This was discussed and rediscussed. Up until now the current interface has some problems with supports, namely that:
1) It's very easy to misclick them

I remember that being mentioned in the last Q&A and seemed to make sense. Then I thought about it some; they are just gems. If misclicking were an issue we'd be hearing about it 24/7 because gem matches would also be having an issue. I don't think I've ever swapped a different gem pair than the 2 I intend to swap.

You are lucky if you haven't. I do it all the time, I don't usually _lose_ from it, but sometimes!

(I also have huge problems typing SMSes on my phone, all you petite people are privileged in this new age... Being big is now a huge (ha) weakness.)