Now that we've looked at each of the major mechanics in Theros, let's take a brief moment to consider the bigger picture.SPOILERS:
Devotion (in this set) rewards players for building mono-colored decks. (Note that includes hybrid decks and doesn't exclude gold decks.) At the same time, there are a significant number of multicolored cards at uncommon and above. There's clearly some tension there. Why? Cross-block synergy. It's more fun to support the themes of the adjacent blocks than to ignore them. Theros sits between Return to Ravnica and next year's block and is clearly bridging the gap between multicolored play and monocolored play (or at least, not explicitly multicolored play).
Enchantment creatures are in a strikingly similar boat. Pairing two card types and just letting the existing rules imply new gameplay is Melvin-y, but the flavor is strong for Vorthos, again. Similarly, Timmy doesn't care but Johnny might and Spike is super-aware of the added-value+vulnerability implications.
Heroic also mitigates the usual problems of playing auras, giving Timmy even more room to stretch and do his thing. Spike doesn't hate it, and Vorthos is happy again too.
Scry isn't exciting to read, but anyone that's played with it knows that it's the king of smoothing mechanics and really does make the game more fun. In theory, scry is for Spike who likes to micro-manage draws and mitigate luck, but everyone benefits from the way scry reduces you-just-lose games.
There are also some relevant mechanical themes that don't have a new label associated with them. Auras are well-represented in Theros, particularly via the Ordeal cycle and the cantrip cycle (and the bestow cycles, obviously).
I haven't done a line by line comparison of the removal against other sets, but my general impression is that red and black have as much as usual, but that there's less conditionless removal, which will make big monsters harder to erase. That said, they haven't left us without answers, as there are quite a lot of good combat tricks. Looks like they expect us to actually fight our way out of the grim situations we face. I approve.
What else do you detect in the design of Theros? What did I miss or misread?
My impression, from having played Theros with a bunch of Spikes (the Magic developers) is that Heroic is unappealing to Spike. While it mitigates the downside of casting spells on your own creatures, it's still encourages a risky, high-variance deck style that Spike wants to avoid.
ReplyDeleteAs always, it's fascinating to get your input from the inside. I think Conley Woods' initial look at Theros did a good job of addressing that while Heroic may not be as remotely "bad" as many Spike-ish players will think it is, it will take a significant paradigm shift for Heroic cards to be significantly embraced by constructed deck builders — a paradigm shift perhaps too drastic to have even been strongly considered in FFL.
DeleteIt must have been a source of some annoyance for the developers to look at Bestow and recognize its potential as a way to appeal to deck builders as a solution for having sufficient means to activate Heroic without overly diminishing your threat-count, only to have to acknowledge that pushing Bestow too hard would result in more limited-format problems than it was worth doing.
That said, I've been impressed with Battlewise Hoplite (the UW Scrying Hero) and hopefully White Weenie enthusiasts the world over will at least try out some of the more intimidating heroes.
Not sure why it signed me out, but the above Unknown comment is mine.
DeleteI barely even considered Constructed (which is clearly a huge oversight in a post with as broad a title as this one). I was imagining Limited where I'd happily play a few of the better tricks, squeeze extra value out of my heroes and even bluff on occasion. But when people can put as many Doom Blades in their deck as they like, heroic is almost as vulnerable to 2:1s as always, and now that you've pointed it out, it's not hard to see that it still falls on the negative EV side for Constructed Spikes.
DeleteThanks for chiming in, guys. Always glad to be reminded of perspectives I've missed, and this was a big one.
If any "hero" sees Constructed play, it will be Agent of the Fates. It has an aggressive body by itself and never gets 2-for-1-ed as long as your opponent has a creature. After that, you basically have to figure out what auras/targeted spells are playable enough in black to facilitate this.
DeleteDevotion doesn't seem particularly Spiky to me. I think it is aimed at least partially at Timmy, who likes imagining epic best-case scenarios and having lots of permanents on the board. Case in point: the way the Theros Gods are designed to prove cool options for monocolor Commander decks.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of it as marginal value to be maximized by optimizing an underutilized resource (colored mana symbols), but I like your perspective: Play lots of black things, appease the black god, wait for benefits to come. Interesting.
DeleteI see Heroic as being appealing to Johnny sensibilities on more of a micro scale than a macro scale. It's not all that inspiring to make a very creative deck built around it, but it gives you opportunities to feel very clever within a game by taking advantage of it in unexpected ways. I already feel like a genius just for coming to the realization that, in a pinch, it will be correct for me to target my heroic creature with a harmful spell to get the heroic bonus. There's a lot of Johnny appeal in realizing you can cast Pharika's Cure on your Centaur Battlemaster, or better yet, using Boulderfall to remove some creatures and ping your own Hero(es) to push through for a win.
ReplyDeleteI agree and I particularly like the way you stated it.
DeleteYes, this is a good point and nicely put.
DeleteIt's interesting that you say that Devotion isn't for Timmy, and I don't disagree with you on most of the cards. That said, for the Gods, I do think the method of measuring devotion is Timmy, as there's (what I consider) a strong subset of players who enjoy reaching or meeting thresholds. Seeing a number on a card and matching that number in play, whether it's "devotion to blue five", or "three artifacts", and then fulfilling that order to gain a benefit, is a great play-experience. That may be toeing the line between Timmy and Johnny, but it's a design tactic that I have a lot of respect for regardless.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious: what are some examples of mechanics which do cater directly to Johnny?
ReplyDeleteProliferate is the best recent example, but I'd put Cipher in that camp as well. Basically anything that requires a creative approach to optimize is fair game.
DeleteI imagine Populate and Evolve both do. But then, a normally Spike mechanic like Flashback in Innistrad could also be said to, given that in that limited format, the Johnny-decks (Burning Vengeance, mill, and Spider Spawning) all had a very heavy flashback component.
DeleteGood examples. I think I come down on the side of Devotion not being particularly Johnny, since there's just not enough cleverness in using it.
DeleteFateful hour was another Johnny-friendly mechanic.
DeleteYep, populate and evolve are the most Johnny of RTR block's mechanics. Which is not at all unrelated to why I chose to play Selesnya and Simic at the prereleases. I'd have expected Izzet, but, well, even MaRo has admitted that the guild with the Johnniest flavour have had very un-Johnny mechanics.
DeleteHeroic seems like a very Johnny-friendly mechanic. Like finding the best wine to pair with an entree, I suspect Johnnies are already enjoying the puzzle of which heroic abilities work best with which targeted spells.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest surprise was seeing how heavily skewed by color Devotion is. Black gets five cards, two of which are common! Blue, by contrast, just gets two mythics. That's a huge as-fan discrepancy.
ReplyDeleteNow I really want to draft the Magical Christmasland mono-black deck and Gray Merchant my opponents to death in massive chunks of damage.
Nice analysis.
ReplyDeleteDevotion seems very Timmy/Johnny to me. It requires a commintment to the board that makes Spike twitchy. Timmy doesn't worry about overextending if big effects are possible. And I think it's more a Johnny mechanic in terms of deck building than playing. Choosing which color-intenzive cards to put in is very puzzly and a form of self-expression.
ReplyDeleteBestow hits Johnny from the ingame puzzle. Choosing how to play each Bestow card is the key here. And I think in that regard it will be a hit if the format is slow enough to let players actually cast for Bestow cost. I think Bestow is very Timmy too, because it lets you build big monsters with no downside.
I think Heroic will be largely ignored until the limited format is cracked and the clear Heroic path is determined. Johnny-Spikes will find that path and then Spikes of every variety will expoit it since the mechanic seems very grindy and incremental.
I agree Monstrosity is very Timmy and will be a force to be reckoned with in Limited. There are a few instant speed removal options, but I think mostly players will be able to get their monstrous triggers to stick. The timing of when to activate and being ready to react could give Limited much needed depth for Spike.
Even if the format is slow, I expect Scry cards will be snapped up by every player just because they are so good at keeping games chugging along. And I think every card with it is appropriately costed too, so they will be attractive to every deck.
I love seeing Thassa's Bounty at common. I've long wanted to see a draw 3 at common just to change up the tempo of a set. Jay's really smart to predict the effect it will have on gameplay.
PS - Looking at the comments, it seems a lot of people have already made these points. I'm late to the party.
Your added perspective is still very helpful. Thanks.
DeleteI'm not convinced about the cross-block synergy argument. There are twenty-five gold cards in Theros. That's an awful lot. It's more than there were in all of Innistrad block put together.
ReplyDeleteMore saliently, what in RtR block actually cares about you casting multicoloured spells? Lobber Crew, if anyone cares; the Maze Runner cycle, which even fewer people are excited about; and Pyroconvergence, which is definitely build-around, but is literally just one card. But it's not like RTR was Eventide with its Mimics, Hatchlings, Lieges and so on. RTR didn't even have the Momir Vig cycle. So what's the point in having all these gold cards?
Not all Vorthos are happy about Heroic. I've seen some Greek mythology nerds arguing that Greek heroes were inherently heroic from their birth (usually due to divine parentage), and so needing external help doesn't fit so well. But, well, some Magic players will complain about anything :)
Thassa's Bounty is certainly unusual to see a common Concentrate at any cost. And I was utterly astonished to see Boulderfall. I can't remember the last time I saw an 8 mana common... ...Okay, searching tells me it was in fact Horncaller's Chant. But that was awful. Before that it was Hand of Emrakul, which, well, was an Eldrazi.
So what role do you think multicolor serves Theros?
DeleteInnistrad did have off-color flashback costs, which are admittedly different from Gold, but probably bring the numbers closer together.
DeleteI know there's potential for multicolored-devotion, but I don't know how you'd do it. If the small set Gods are multicolored, I don't expect that they'll use devotion in the same way.
ReplyDeleteAssuming we have
Kruphix - UG
Iroas - WR
Athreos - WB
Phrarika GB
Keranos UR, we could maybe expect them in Born of the Gods, and
Ephara W
??? U
Phenax B
Mogis R
Karamatra G as a monocolored cycle in Journey into Nyx.
The current Gods are bizarre but almost intuitive. Any hints or guesses as to the follow-up act?
I believe MaRo stated that the ten "minor gods" in the pantheon are each associated with one of the ten two-colour pairs, and will be five in BotG and five in JtN.
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