In March of last year, @Hibernum_JC explained the way decks are supposed to work in game in mtgpq:
Four copies of each card are used to form a virtual 40 card deck. When the deck is depleted, another 40 cards are appended. Likewise, when a card fetches a fifth instance of a card (i.e. Deploy is looking for three creatures in a mono-creature deck after two have been cast) another 40 cards are appended.
There have been a few instances recently of this not being the case. Noted have been:
Koth drawing 5 Olivias in first 7 cards with no fetching.
Saheeli drawing 5 Talent of the Telepath by turn 3 (each time, fetching a different card).
I’ve been noticing for a while now that it’s possible to draw 5 copies of a card before having drawn 4 copies of all the others, even without any searching of decks going on to possibly confuse the numbers.
My hypothesis at the moment would be that the deck works exactly the same as before, but now has 60 cards (Always best, when trying to guess the inner workings of Hibernum, to assume they’ve done as little work as possible. I call it ‘Hibernum’s Razor’).
I have noticed this too. 5 Metalwork Colossi (pl?) by turn 7. Multiple other instances, too. How does this happen if the deck is meant to be 40 cards? Honestly, I really don’t think it’s been 40 for quite a while now.
I understand that the dev team is very busy right now, but in the same vein as @toastie’s post, do you think someone might be able to go into a bit more detail in the next week or so?
Great questions! Not sure when they’ll have time to answer in depth, but I can pass it along to them, and I’ll relay their responses when they do get the chance to answer.
@Brigby - I’m also interested in the points @toastie brings up. Also, is the exile which is done with Aven Mindcensor different from the exile which you do when you pitch cards from your hand? Do cycle cards go to the graveyard or the exile zone? Thanks!
all these basic game mechanics should be explained in an official faq page. Is there one on mtgpq official facebook page? If there isn’t, i think it is about time for the developer to write one.
@EDHdad To my knowledge, Cycling and Aven Mindcensor utilize the same Exile mechanic, just in different scenarios. Having said that though, the final release notes will have much more of a detailed explanation of how Cycling, and the Exile stack, works.
@Brigby But the page does not seem to explain why aven mindcensor would be at all playable. Exiling the top card of a deck is completely worthless in a game where you have endless copies of a card (since extra copies are simply generated if you have run out previously).
Can we please get an explanation for this? It seems baffling that the dev team made a rare that is a 3/2 flier for 10 mana WITH NO ABILITIES. Why on earth would you ever care about exiling cards from the enemy library, if they simply get 4 new copies whenever they have run out of previous copies?
Also, regarding game mechanics, are there any plans to ever make the graveyard visible? And how about letting us see the exile zone while at it?
It seems like certain parts of Amonkhet were designed by people who have no idea how the game works, so it would be nice to get some clarifications on what they were thinking when they made those cards
The developers confirmed that decks are maxed out at 40 cards, therefore players do not receive endless copies of a card; only 4. The way I see it, the purpose of exile cards that target the opponent’s library is to act as a way of milling/denying the opponent.
When it comes to making the graveyard and/or exile stack visible, I have passed that inquiry along to the developers. I will relay their response when I hear back from them.
@Brigby
That is some very interesting news!
Is it a change in the upcoming update? Today I was able to play at least 12 copies of the same creature in one match, so it’s either fake news or a new feature.. In this case it needs to be announced, since it has a vital impact on a lot of deck strategies.
Decks are confirmed to max out at 40 cards, however I will double check about the number of card copies players are able to summon. If the intent was never to have players summon more than 4 copies of a card, then it would in fact be a bug, and I agree it would be quite a significant change.
I will be sure to relay the developers’ responses once I hear back from them about it.
