Gruul War Plow does something very interesting. If you have 3 creatures in play, it pumps up your first creature, and then pumps up creatures 2 and 3 simultaneously. (So does Ethereal Absolution)
We’ve already addressed in the previous thread how stream effects are superfluous, but in addition, pumping creatures simultaneously would also save a hell of a lot of time! Not just on Gruul War Plow, you understand, there are many other cards that could benefit from it; The first that leaps to mind is the Combine Guildmage I’m currently mastering. I’m sure we players can think up a big old list of these things.
Edit: Other cards/effects that buff one at a time:
First one that comes to mind for me is Decimator of the Provinces. It buffs everything in sequence, when (apparently) it could just do them all in one go. That’d save me some time in the long run, as I use that card with some frequency.
Tolsimir Wolfblood’s Voja token does the same thing that starfall is describing - it buffs one, then the other two creatures simultaneously
Jace Unraveler’s ultimate buffs each creature individually on each card draw
Last time I used Ajani’s Welcome and Valor in Akros they both buffed each creature individually
Plenty of others that I would have taken note of had the other thread gotten any attention
To that end, can instances with multiple tokens entering the battlefield as one effect be consolidated into one combined entrance rather than being run individually? I’m not advocating that they count as one ETB, but rather that all X entrances occur simultaneously, and all separate ETB effects accumulate into one big effect.
For example, for the March/Path combo, you would still get 12x the Explore from the tokens entering, but it would happen all at once (convert 24 gems one time) rather than 12 separate instances of converting 2 gems as each token enters separately. Probably a slight nerf compared to the current mechanics, but a much better quality of life feature.
That could be a significant loss of loyalty/mana, possibly even moreso on a board that has a fair number of unchangeable gems as the cascades could open up more. I could see them also citing clarity as a problem (‘how many were changed? was it really 2 per creature?’). Also with that you wouldn’t ever get the explore buff as 24 changes will all but guarantee a match. But they could certainly speed the timing up. Maybe not on the auto setting but certainly on the ‘skip’ option. Like how fast supports come out currently with the ‘skip’ option set, change the gems that fast. And if you wanted to know what happened (not sure if the engine could handle this) but maybe there could be like a rewind button you could tap and hold and the last cascade would play in reverse, and maybe double tap the button to go back to ‘live’ like you would with your tv remote. Or instead of reverse the button could just change the board back to last swap and replay it a little slower.
There is so much they could change to speed the game up, the ‘skip’ option is just a really inaccurate scratch at the surface.
I guess I see all that as a feature, not a bug. Put another way: if the original design was that all tokens ETB at once rather than the current one-at-a-time, I don’t think anyone would believe there was a mana/loyalty “loss”, it would just be the way it is. You’d make different choices on your deck building, but I don’t believe it would be generally viewed as a “problem”. It’s a fundamentally different definition of how tokens/ETB would behave - not inaccurate, just different compared to the current.
As it stands, this case is specific to Explore, which will likely rotate out of standard before any of these suggested changes would ever take place anyway.
@starfall - yes, I have also experienced a abnormal pause from time to time. Though, I agree the issue has been a lot more noticeably after v3.5, I’m not sure it is Vanguards alone that is causing the problem (unless it is due to Vanguards in hand, which is much more difficult to determine).
it seems there is a combination of effects/cards that is causing this, but since I have experienced this many times at the start of Greg’s first turn, I also suspect indestructible supports to be involved.
It only happens to me when the AI has a Vanguard out with an ability that they cannot use (Nahiri, for example).
I’ve been tricked into thinking it was my turn a ton of times already because of how long the AI takes to make a swap. And Lord help you if Greg gets an extra swap. You can waste 20 min watching one turn.
It certainly falls into the category of cards which slow the game down to the point where I play it less in decks than I’d like to. (I like drawing cards!)
The slowdown from servos when trying to play with Heart of Kiran is really infuriating… it’d be such a good vehicle to play in EO and FIRF, otherwise, and these events seem to be going on every week atm.
Plus, of course, Tezz2’s best ability is his second one, and the servo slowdown fair cripples him.