OKTAGON Q&A Session - February 2020 *UPDATE (03/04/20)

Narcoticsagent

Pantagruel said:

bken1234 said:

Pantagruel said:

bken1234 said:

Pantagruel said:

Re: Vigilance

The fact is that combat damage is mostly irrelevant in this game, and almost entirely irrelevant at median and high levels of play. In paper MTG, you can choose to block, you can choose not to block, you can choose to gang up with your blockers, and creatures and life totals have a far smaller varience. Blocking is very different in MTGPQ.

The wrong amount of damage to deal to any creature is any finite amount of damage, because it might live. This is exactly the reason why MTGPQ effects that kill, exile, or even bounce creatures are better effects than those which deal damage. You need a very good reason to run Exquisite Firecraft in a deck; but you wouldn't think it at all unusual to run Final Payment.

Exquisite Firecraft is easily in 80% of my red or R/X decks. 

My good reason is it exists and is infinitely useful with my playstyle. 

Yes, but as you repeatedly say yourself, you don't play competitively because it isn't fun.

I say I don’t aim to play competitively. In my last 4 events I have finished 90%, 85%, 100% and 93%.

Cut Exquisite Firecraft from your red decks and you might find yourself with a win average above 91%.

I run exquisite firecraft in about 80% of my red decks too. My win % is over 95% even with crashes and freezes and would be over 98% without them. I have every non-vanguard card and still play exquisite firecraft regularly. Perhaps you should give the card another look. I think exquisite firecraft is one of only a couple properly costed burn spells in the game. 

Bubbles_CS

+1 for Exquisite Firecraft being a high-quality burn spell. I can’t speak to what belongs in the “best decks” by a win-percentage metric (this is a fun game for me too, by which I mean I don’t care to optimize from 95% win to 98% or whatever) but this card is very good in a Ral deck seeking to burn face. Burning creatures is the backup plan because the primary goal is to lob enough fire to not need to think about opposing creatures, which in this case makes it more useful (being an actual win condition) than any spell that only removes creatures (a don’t-lose condition).

Mburn7

Bubbles_CS said:

+1 for Exquisite Firecraft being a high-quality burn spell. I can’t speak to what belongs in the “best decks” by a win-percentage metric (this is a fun game for me too, by which I mean I don’t care to optimize from 95% win to 98% or whatever) but this card is very good in a Ral deck seeking to burn face. Burning creatures is the backup plan because the primary goal is to lob enough fire to not need to think about opposing creatures, which in this case makes it more useful (being an actual win condition) than any spell that only removes creatures (a don’t-lose condition).

Oh yeah, its also amazing in a Jaya deck too, since you want all of your spells to be able to go to face.

But I use it in a lot of Red decks, since its usually a cheap removal spell and sometimes just cheap damage.

Tilwin90

I agree that a differentiation between vigilance and defender was necessary. I don't agree with the current approach short of being "interesting", and I will explain my reasoning below as a player (by the way, none of the four aforementioned ELD creatures ever make it in my decks to begin with...).

What is the point of blockers in THIS GAME? It's to block creatures and soak up damage. Sure, they are a way of dealing with your opponent's creatures, but I'm certainly not relying on that - every efficiently built deck will include direct removal effects. What we are saying now is that vigilance creatures are cute defenders, except they won't save my tush when I really need them to. Here are two very very relevant examples:
- Chopping down opposing creatures' toughness. Maybe one vigilant creature can't deal with my opponent's 10/10 giant but two of them might
- Previously my vigilant creatures could chump block. Sure, my creature died but at least it would avoid a ton of damage save for the opposing creature having trample.

Next, the current check for block is totally off. It says the creature will block only if its toughness is greater than the power of the creatures it blocks. So we are trying to emulate "this creature blocks only if it would survive the attack", with an oversimplified formula. I'll stick only to the "block only if I would survive" argument for now.
- This ignores any attacker special abilities, most relevant being double strike and deathtouch. 
- This ignores other abilities of the vigilant creature, such as deathtouch, first/double strike and prevent damage. The latter 3 are especially relevant since vigilance is predominantly a white ability, as are prevent damage & first/double strike. The lack of synergy is astonishing.  

What will be the effects of this change?
1) You might as well give high power creatures unblockable. There are VERY few relevant creatures with defender in standard right now expect to see tons of Gaea's Revenges running amock. That's because GR is a high power/lower toughness creature. And it has haste and hexproof. So defenders were the best option of dealing with it in the first place! I'm not saying GR should be balanced, I think it's a formidable card and speeds matches up (plus good deck builders know how to deal with it to begin with), but this change will make it even more powerful.
2) Trample will go down in value as creatures will be less often blocked. Now if those creatures have berserker, sure, it's still relevant, but otherwise not that much.
3) Razia matches will be cringy to watch - two Razias on the board now always end the game on the spot because they won't block each other.


So how can you solve this? Enable a toggle on the vigilant creatures that allows turning blocking on/off on your turn (default ON). Yes, some balancing might be required but at least it would be in the spirit of the ability. Yes, it's more complicated to implement, and yes, I'm already seeing the torches associated with "but Tilwin, this will just introduce more bugs", but that's no excuse for coming with a quick and dirty change for something that wasn't a priority or needed. I like the idea, but let's not just squeeze it in a tiny development story and instead do it properly!

What about the AI? Up to you how you want it for the AI > my guess here would be the AI could be unaffected and always block. It doesn't handicap them in any way, but it will add utility for the players.

These are my two cents on the topic... 

madwren

While I understand the change to vigilance has merit, I'm extremely disappointed that Razia's not going to be the best Gaea's Revenge blocker anymore.

Please consider changing some vigilance to defender to better suit their role. 

Avahad

For ease in conversion I’d say just convert all current vigilant (excluding the 4 ‘new’ vigilant) cards to defenders and then have the new vigilance a thing from this set onwards. 

Mburn7

My conclusion is that far more cards will be improved by the change than worsened.

• The +3 and +2 cards are going to see much more play (and I see that as a good thing in general.)
• The -3 and -2 cards will be less useful.  Most of these cards are carefully designed around their tendency to die, and the change to Vigilance wrecks that careful balance.

My suggestion to Oktagon: In light of the change to Vigilance, consider whether some or all of the -3 and -2 cards (and maybe some -1 cards) should be changed to have Defender instead of Vigilance.

Reposting @Volrak's great guide on the Vigilance change for reference.  I don't see that he accounted for high power/low toughness first strike creatures, but otherwise its a solid starting point for this debate.

There are quite a few creatures with Vigilance that should be changed to Defender, since they were designed with the creature dying quickly from Vigilance in mind.  I really hope Oktagon will take that into account when they make the change (even though I am not hopeful that they will).

Razia is an interesting case, though, since her ability is much more powerful if she does not block often, but she is also an extremely powerful blocker because of the prevent damage.  Changing the new Vigilance to also let a creature block if it has prevent damage is the most obvious solution, but that would effectively make Razia immune to death in combat (since she would block the first creature and then not the rest once she loses prevent damage).

My Thoughts:  Let creatures with Vigilance and Prevent Damage block all creatures, and maybe creatures with first/double strike as well.  Change any creatures with meaningful death effects or low toughness to Defender instead.  Change Razia to Defender as well, since it'll keep her functionally the same as she is now (which is just fine)

Magic:PQ Support Team

UPDATE* New Q&A info.

Bubbles_CS

Oktagon_Support said:

UPDATE* New Q&A info.

Thanks for the update! As I and others have said, changing vigilance requires some cards to use defender instead and I am happy with this plan.

Just a point of feedback that if this was already a part of the plan it would have been good to mention this in the original answer