3.7 Release Notes *Updated (8/20/19)

Brigby

3.7 Release Notes

New Planeswalker

Wrenn and Six

"Little is known about this enigmatic pair. Wrenn is the dryad and Six is the treefolk, with whom she has formed a symbiotic relationship. Wrenn has formed that relationship with five previous treefolk, which we know due to her naming convention of strictly numbering them."

Max Level Stats

Cycle of Lands
(Red, Green) Support Card (Indestructible) Token
"Can't be Destroyed or Exiled. Whenever you exile a Land from your hand, if it has 6 or more mana, move it to the graveyard. Then, return the first spell from your graveyard to your hand. It gains half of its mana."

New Cards

• Check out 9 brand new cards that we're introducing alongside Wrenn and Six. Take a look at the card gallery HERE

New Ability

Threshold

• Threshold reads: "A Threshold ability is active for as long as there are X or more cards with the same name as this card in your graveyard."

Changes

Inbox Messages

• The VIP Weekly Reward Inbox Message now indicates the Week and references the rewards listed under 7 Days Rewards in the Membership area.

Card Changes

• The Historic Card Hint now includes Vanguard Supports and now reads: "All Legendary cards, Artifacts, Vanguard supports, and Sagas are Historic cards."

Card Balance

• Sunscorched Desert
• Mana Cost: 15 -> 11
• Ramunap Hydra
  
• Mana Cost: 16 -> 13
• Shefet Dunes
  
• Mana Cost: 13 -> 10
• Endless Sands
  
• Mana Cost: 12 -> 9
• Foundry of the Consuls
  
• Mana Cost: 11 -> 10
• Ipnu Rivulet
  
• Mana Cost: 11 -> 9

Event Changes

• 'Destroyer' Objective
• “Kill X or more creatures during a single fight.”
  
• Killing both enemy and player creatures now count towards this objective.
• Trial of Zeal - Point Distribution
• The point distribution for progression rewards has been changed:
• [40, 80, 140, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 750] -> [10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 55]
• Points awarded from objectives have changed:
• Objective 1: 5 Points -> 4 Points
• Objective 2: 5 Points -> 2 Points
• Objective 3: 5 Points -> 1 Point

Bug Fixes

• Players are no longer able to claim event rewards based on the rank of a new Coalition they join, instead of the rewards based on the Coalition they were in when participating in the event.
• A crash no longer occurs when a creature's resistance is reduced to 0 after the Widespread Chaos opponent in The Elderspark event activated their abilities.
• The game no longer force-closes when connecting to the server using multiple devices with 1024 MiB of RAM
• The game no longer crashes on the Asus Memo Pad 8 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite 7.0 when proceeding through a battle.
• The player no longer occasionally gets stuck viewing a card's artwork, when attempting to exit the card visual in battle.
• The VIP timer now properly resets when reaching 0 while the player remains on the same screen in the Vault, instead of remaining displayed at 0.
• The special event rules in Across Ixalan and Battle of Four Tribes no longer count as Spell cards, and do not trigger multiple effects anymore.
• The Partnership objective tracker no longer remains inactive when casting multiple cards with Partner during a fight.
• The card, Ugin's Conjurant, is no longer missing Prevent Damage.
• The Shield symbol is no longer being displayed when the opponent summons a Dominaria's Knight token Creature
• If the opponent's first Creature has Prevent Damage, then it is now properly destroyed when the player's Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire attacks.
• The Propagation objective in The Elderspark event now properly tracks the number of Proliferate cards cast during the entire fight, instead of only during a single turn.
• The Riot prompt is no longer missing when casting a Creature while Rhythm of the Wild was on the battlefield.
• The player's first Creature is no longer destroyed when attacking after an opponent's Gideon's Triumph support is exiled
• The Haste evergreen is no longer missing when gaining control of an opponent's Creature, while controlling a Mirror March Support gem.
• When the player discards a card by an opponent's effect, while Tamiyo, Collector of Tales is on the board, the card now properly returns to the player's hand with half mana.
• Despoiler of Souls no longer returns to the battlefield without draining Mana when Despoiler of Souls is destroyed while the only cards with Mana in the player's hand are Stored Mana cards.
• The game no longer takes an extended period of time to load when launching it on the following devices: Nextbit Robin, Sony Xperia Z5 Compact, OnePlus 2, and Nexus 6
• The Rotten objective no longer remains inactive when summoning a Creature, with one of its listed subtypes, without casting that Creature from the player's hand.
• The Call to Arms objective no longer tracks Creature tokens created by the opponent when they activate Eternal Invasion's Planeswalker ability in The Elderspark event.
• All Creatures the player controls are now properly buffed, instead of just the Creature fetched from the player's library, when casting Finale of Devastation with 8 or more Stored Mana.
• The buff is no longer missing when a blocking, or blocked, creature is destroyed while Death's Presence is on the field.
• When a creature with multiple Evergreens attacks while Vraska, Swarm's Eminence is on the field, the life gain is now properly equal to the creature's power before the buff, instead of after.
• Only one For a Greater Cause event Support gem is now created, instead of two, when beginning any of the Node 3 encounters in The Elderspark event
• The player's Creatures are no longer valid targets when the opponent cast Courage in Crisis while the player controlled a Creature with Toughness higher than the opponent's Creatures.
• The Necromancer and Army of the Dead objectives now properly track Token Creatures being summoned.
• When activating Tamiyo, Collector of Tales's -3 Active Vanguard ability, the card is now properly fetched from the top 4 cards of the player's graveyard, instead of the player's library.
• Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner's Passive Vanguard ability no longer incorrectly triggers when the opponent summons a Creature with 5 or greater Power.
• The opponent's Creature is now properly destroyed when Callous Dismissal is cast while the opponent has a full hand.
• After Proclamation of Rebirth drains Mana to return a Creature from the Graveyard, that same Creature is no longer still displayed as in the Graveyard.
• Dovin, Grand Arbiter's Custom 1 Deck no longer incorrectly displays 7 Spell card spaces, instead of the intended 6.
• Dreadhorde Butcher no longer remains on the battlefield, instead of being destroyed, when blocked by a creature with Power that is equal to the card's Toughness while having Trample.
• The last card in-hand is now correctly discarded, as opposed to the first card in-hand, when an opposing Reality Smasher is targeted by a spell.
• Mox Amber now correctly counts Vanguard Supports as Historic cards.
• Benalish Honor Guard's buff now properly includes the player's Vanguard Support gems.
• The following cards' Historic effects now properly trigger when casting a Vanguard Support: Daring Archaeologist, Cabal Paladin, Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, Mishra's Self-Replicator, Relic Runner, Serra Disciple, Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, and Traxos, Scourge of Kroog.
• Blighted Land's Support gem effects now properly activate when destroying a Blighted Land Support gem while Tomik, Distinguished Advokist is on the battlefield.
• The Not Available Banner is no longer missing when viewing multiple Planeswalkers' icons in the Profile's Select An Avatar screen.
• When a Wolf Creature enters the battlefield while Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves is on the battlefield, the Wolf Creature is now automatically targeted.
• The Land Support gems' reinforcements are no longer missing when viewing the Land Support gems fetched after activating Nissa, Who Shakes the World's -7 Active Vanguard ability.
• A casting prompt no longer appears for Aligned Hedron Network when activating Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge's Planar Retrieval Planeswalker ability while there is no valid target for Aligned Hedron Network on the battlefield.
• The game no longer freezes when the player attempts to log in after getting a new account restored to their old account.
• Boil no longer displays as valid to cast when it had full Mana while the opponent controls no Blue Support gems on the board.
• The game no longer displays an "Error while loading assets" prompt when launching the game for the first time while the device's Automatic Date & Time setting is deactivated
• The confirmation prompt is no longer missing when casting Living Death and the player controls a Creature on the battlefield.

OmegaLolrus

YES. YES YES YES YES.

I have no idea how good those cards and the walker are, but they look super fun to me. The quality of life stuff is really nice, as well... Is there any chance we'll get a fix for some of the lag on Fblthp's card?

Also, how do we get these new cards? I need Ayula to live.

I for one welcome our new bear majesty.

octal9

>bug fixes

This pleases me.

bk1234

octal9 said:

>bug fixes

This pleases me.

Me too. We are so basic. 

Unknown

This content has been removed.

ElfNeedsFood

There was a big with Boil?  Who knew?

Mburn7

Gotta say, I like the look of this update.

I don't like how my device isn't one of the ones listed to have loading times reduced, but I like the rest.

Now, who's taking bets on how many new bugs pop up with this update?

I'm putting the over/under at 6.5

Tremayne

Have I understood the new keyword Threshold correctly?

Using Nomad stadium as an example. I need to have at least 3 Nomad stadium in my graveyard in order to gain 4 life at the beginning of my turns. When I get to 7 Nomad stadiums in my graveyard, my PW (or my creatures, this is unclear) gain prevent damage for two turns and then the support is destroyed.

@brigby - could you elaborate on how the designer of this keyword thought I, a player, can manage to pump my graveyard full of Nomad stadium (my immediate assessment is that the shield 3 isn’t the way to go), in order to take advantage of Threshold, keeping in mind that this is a game where players seldom get more than 20 turns during a match?

secondly, could you clarify, who gets the prevent damage on Nomad stadium, the PW or my creatures?

thirdly, could you illustrate through a few examples how full mana on 2 cards (blue) equals 4 to 8 damage (red) equals +3/+3 with berserker/trample (green) equals destroy one creature (black) equals 2 rounds of prevent damage (white), because I’m struggling to understand the balance of these cards. My immediate assessment is that blue has again gotten the best deal.

Tremayne

Mburn7 said:

Gotta say, I like the look of this update.

I don't like how my device isn't one of the ones listed to have loading times reduced, but I like the rest.

Now, who's taking bets on how many new bugs pop up with this update?

I'm putting the over/under at 6.5

Seconded, there is a lot to like about this update and a few things that is unclear, to me at least.

Azerack

I can't count the number of times, as I'm clicking away the cards to move along a turn, that the artwork gets stuck in my face and I can't get back to the game.. Thanks for fixing that...

But.. you COULD have just added an option in the Settings section to turn OFF the artwork focus feature, yeah?.. 

Also, all the added cards have the "special" (seasonal?, whatever it's referred to as..) card tag, meaning we'll only be able to use them in Legacy matches... Kind of a bummer, there. Would have been nice to have a new strategy or two for Standard matches.. 

Stormcrow

Mburn7 said:

I don't like how my device isn't one of the ones listed to have loading times reduced, but I like the rest.

 Agreed, I thought I remembered Brigby or somebody saying that optimizing the game's code was going to be a focus of this update, and while obviously there was a little optimization done I was hoping for something a little more....sweeping.

Tremayne said:

When I get to 7 Nomad stadiums in my graveyard, my PW (or my creatures, this is unclear) gain prevent damage for two turns and then the support is destroyed.

This doesn't seem unclear to me. Where it says "Gain 4 life", you don't wonder whether it's you or your creatures gaining 4 life, do you? So why, when it says "Gain prevent damage", do you wonder whether its you or your creatures gaining prevent damage? The card as written very clearly gives you, the planeswalker, prevent damage for 2 turns.

I do agree that these lands aren't at all balanced by color, looked at on their own, but -- in an odd way they are sort of balanced: none of them are actually worth the effort to trigger, for the color they are. Trying to get 7 copies of the same card into your graveyard and one more into play requires, as far as we understand the way the PQ decks work, either a ton of land-specific fetch and then a way to get those fetched lands into your graveyard, maybe by exiling them from your hand with the appropriate stuff in play already (which adds up to some mind-boggling amount of card disadvantage), or else milling through your entire deck at least once, so you've gotta be a minimum of 44 cards deep into your deck to trigger Threshold. At which point you should just hit them in the face with a Beacon Bolt or two instead of trying to pull off these land-based shenanigans. Blue's is the best but because blue is already a better color, blue's still isn't worth trying to actually pull off. As it stands, I expect Threshold to just be another keyword that might as well not exist.

Really underwhelmed by the design of Wrenn and Six, for similar reasons. Feels like the same issues Kaya's design has - built towards one specific deck idea that will only work one specific way, and that specific deck design that works that one specific way is a slow and time-consuming way to kill someone, albeit novel.

I do agree with lowering the cost of the expensive "spell" deserts, and although my Kiora Ramunap Hydra deck has never once made me think, "gosh this Hydra, just too expensive" I won't complain about that one either.

I do like all the bug fixes, just hope the patch doesn't introduce a ton of new ones. 

TheDude1

Tremayne said:

thirdly, could you illustrate through a few examples how full mana on 2 cards (blue) equals 4 to 8 damage (red) equals +3/+3 with berserker/trample (green) equals destroy one creature (black) equals 2 rounds of prevent damage (white), because I’m struggling to understand the balance of these cards. My immediate assessment is that blue has again gotten the best deal.

These are all colorless lands.  Yes, they convert gems to specific colors, but the effect is not tied to the color - you could run them in any deck and still get the benefit.  Blue PWs benefit more, but I'd say that benefit outweighs the fact that you have three gems changing to a color you may or may not prefer.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Zzyzzx

Hooray!  A well overdue "Technical Debt" release candidate!

Tremayne

@Stormcrow said:

 

Tremayne said:

When I get to 7 Nomad stadiums in my graveyard, my PW (or my creatures, this is unclear) gain prevent damage for two turns and then the support is destroyed.

This doesn't seem unclear to me. Where it says "Gain 4 life", you don't wonder whether it's you or your creatures gaining 4 life, do you? So why, when it says "Gain prevent damage", do you wonder whether its you or your creatures gaining prevent damage? The card as written very clearly gives you, the planeswalker, prevent damage for 2 turns.

Strange answer (since I know you are an old-timer)!

When have anything in MTGPQ been consistent? Sure your assumption seems fine, but I’m asking for confirmation of said assumption, so that when I, heaven forbid, play these promo cards, they will behave as expected.

Stormcrow said:

 

I do agree that these lands aren't at all balanced by color, looked at on their own, but -- in an odd way they are sort of balanced: none of them are actually worth the effort to trigger, for the color they are. ...
As it stands, I expect Threshold to just be another keyword that might as well not exist.

Totally agree (with my current level of information regarding threshold), because they look pointless to me in the current form.

@TheDude1 - fair enough they are colourless, but since each land convert to a specific colour I consider them targeted at a specific colour.

FindingHeart8

LOVE the new lands, very nostalgic of the old sets plus really neat and creative abilities!!  Good job

Jazzpha

As someone who recently returned to the game from a very long absence and got slammed with repeated crashes on my iPhone 6, I'm delighted to see that devices with 1 GB of Ram won't be force-quitting every 10 minutes anymore.

Many thanks to the team for fixing that up, and I can't wait for this patch to hit!

Firinmahlazer

ElfNeedsFood said:

There was a big with Boil?  Who knew?

The one guy whose using it must have noticed 

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Tremayne

@starfall - Isn’t it sufficient to exile the lands from your hand? So some card drawing should do the trick in order to have lands in hand. Or am I missing something?

Unknown

This content has been removed.