Devs: On Mechanics

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

I’ve been one of the biggest detractors of energy from its earliest days, so I wanted to express how much more enjoyable I find energy since the release of AER.

In KLD, the problem was that there weren’t enough consistent energy generators. Most of the cards of lower rarities were fairly low power (if not nonexistent). Seeing your energized gems get washed away within a turn gave the impression that energy simple wasn’t viable. At the time, I suggested that energy would have been better if it was on a per-turn basis rather than an ETB effect.

Part of the problem was that the most effective energizers were locked away as exclusive event rewards. By limiting the primary energy enablers to only a handful of players, it only reinforced how unexciting energize was. Not only did we not get to play with them, but we never saw them being played. This perpetuated the belief that energize simply wasn’t worth it.

However, once people were able to attain those exclusive enablers through packs, AND once we had a follow-up set that gave us a few more repeatable energy enablers (Miner, Runner, Heart), AND once we started facing PVE enemies that energized the board, it opened up an entirely new layer of strategy. I’m really enjoying it. Not only do you have to pay attention to color matches, but energy matches; not only do your actions facilitate your own abilities, but they also facilitate your opponent.

To that end, I really wish that we had been given the tools to do this from the get-go. I wish you hadn’t made the poor choice to gate away Dynavolt and Marvel instead of making them accessible. I wish you hadn’t put so many terrible cards like Eddytrail Hawk in. I wish you’d priced the commons and uncommons a bit more fairly so that people would have been motivated to include them in their decks (which they still do not, because they are, well, terrible. Make no mistake, this mechanic is mostly held up by the rares/mythics.)

Most of all, I wish that you’d given us a story mode that enabled us to see the full power of energize in action–to allow us to test, experience, and tweak our decks and learn how energize worked in an environment conducive to using it. When you see post after post about people wanting story mode, it isn’t simply us wanting additional content because we’re bored. It also allows us to explore set-based mechanics and become adept at their usage. While JC has stated that balancing/creative story mode takes time and effort, please know that providing us with viable testing grounds is a way to strengthen our interest in the game and its mechanics.

It’s a genuine shame that it took until Aether Revolt for me (and I suspect many others) to enjoy/appreciate the energize mechanic. Please, do not repeat this mistake in the future. Don’t hide away the elegance of your mechanics behind rarity and exclusivity. Otherwise, even though I now see that energize is pretty fun, you’re going to once again foster low interest, a lack of enthusiasm, and player burnout when we open our cards and say, “what are we supposed to do with this? Nothing, apparently.”

2

I agree that energy is much better in AER. My complaint right now on energy is that the PvE decks that use energy are all using the Gonti Heart, Marvel, Planar Gate set of mythics which actually makes energy too dangerous to keep on the board. So for these events I’ve had to move to “destroy all energy” deck design rather than playing around with all this energy. Would be nice to see the events use just some of these or other energy based cards (especially less Gonti Heart).

3

is dangerous having a board full of energy with a deck set up to utilize it, my biggest problem is that only a few colors really have access to it green and a bit of red with the best makers of it locked to mythics that are almost impossible to get like in white then dont have much use for it, so of course they dont even give those colors really much way to get rid of it. none for white at all is there? or a colorless at least?

4

Your comment regarding the event exclusive cards from Kaladesh reminds me of a comment I was going to make regarding those cards:

I think it would be better for players if the same event exclusive mythics were also the paid ones. For example, maybe Dynavolt Tower was the event reward, then two weeks later it’s available for purchase. Considering the poor power level of purchased mythics like Deepala not only would more people have played block mechanics, but they would have made more money in the process. Plus those who won the card still had it exclusively for a couple weeks and don’t have to shell out money to purchase a mythic. Wins all around.

5

When we first saw the spoilers, everyone in the coalition was like “Dynavolt? Wow, that’s one worth buying.” We were pretty disappointed that it was then unavailable for us.

I wonder if the marketing strategy is “see if they’ll spend more money chasing it than simply buying it”.

6

Possibly but did they then lose money on purchasable cards? Ulrich, Olivia, and Emrakul were arguably better buys than anything we’ve gotten from this block.

7

Actually, they seem to just avoid putting non-creature mythics for sale. Not really sure why. Maybe they suspect they won’t sell well because they are less immediately obviously useful than creatures.

8

You are right. Cant believe i never noticed it but i dont think there has ever been an exclusive spell or a support for sale other than Shrine of Forsaken Gods and Titan’s Presence.

9

Pretty sure D Tower was a prize for an event, albeit only ?5 people won that prize Gold Tier?
Still the card is shaky, in PVE the opponents who gums up the board with Energy have a lot of life.
In PVP, it’s not that good. I’d rather other energy cards.

Still would be fun in some decks.

10

Cards should be made available for purchase if they really want players to continue supporting this game. I mean, if I have to chase for that one card by opening big boxes after big boxes, that’s pretty greedy in my opinion. Why do I say that? If we’re expected to pay and invest into this game, it has to meet our expectations and demands before we’ll do it. Right now, it doesn’t seem to match up to the community’s expectation. Some players have already openly declared about not wanting to spend a dime until things are fixed. While there are still some players who are still willing to spend on the game, the high rate if dupes in this game will turn them off sooner or later.

11

I liked the energy mechanic from the start, but I agree with the initial post, that there are to little ways for casual players to really energize the board. And the mythics in this set energize the board to much or have to much power in using it.

But this critic can be generalized, I think.

Commons should be usable cards. Less may be the better there, but I have a feeling that they put a lot of these out as also-ran cards to lessen the number of useful draws.

From there on uncommons should be better than commons, rares should be better than uncommons and mythics should be better than rares… Nobody would disagree there as a general rule of thumb, right?

But I feel that the jumps in powerlevel are to high to be healthy for this game, especially when you look at mythics.

Okay, I’d like to see useful common and uncommon cards with that you can build reasonable decks. Then rares and mythics increase the power of decks in a reasonable way and not through the sky.

Regards!

Edit: I thought about the also-ran cards in the common rarity and there are also plenty uncommon and even rare and mythic also-ran cards… That’s quite a shame.

12

I just want to pipe in here.

Despite having the mythic Energize supports, I’ve lately drifted into using the energise creatures instead to fulfill my energise needs.

When you have more than 2 sources of energise in your deck, overload 1 is actually pretty easy to hit when you need it.

I think the mythic energise supports are being blamed too much. A couple of rares and uncommons are really all you need to do the energise objectives.

13

And which “couple of rares and uncommons” can stand up to highly optimized PVP decks? A Kiora loop will wipe your board clean of energize anyways, so I trust you are basically using your own highly optimized deck with a couple of energize cards to fulfill requirements.

I think the OP is more geared towards building energize-based decks, instead of just a couple cards to meet an objective.

14

The thing about many of the mythics is that they not only have overload effects, but also they add energy on a continual basis, not just as an ETB effect. There are only three energy mythics: Aethertide Whale, Planar Bridge, and Territorial Gorger, that only Energize on entry or don’t energize at all. It’s a combination of good effects with a renewable source of energized gems that makes them powerful.

The problem with most the other energy cards is they have to be run with one of the Kaladesh planeswalkers to be viable. You need the energy from the planeswalker to supply energy for the cards to work, especially since the AI will target energy gems to match even if it’s not running cards with overload.

15

Aetherspere Harvester is a new favorite of mine.
Costs 11, energise 2

I like lathnu hellion too, but your mileage may vary
Costs 10, energise 2

Glimmer of genius. Mvp in blue node beatdown
Costs 5, energise 2

Deadlock trap
Costs 3, energise 2

Decoction module
Costs 2, energise 1 per creature
Great for token/weenie decks

Attune with aether
Costs 4, energise 2

Multiform wonder
Costs 12, energise 3

What constitutes a energise deck vs a deck with just energise slot in? A change in win condition?

Win condition:
My Saheeli beat down deck has only one non energise creature in it. It can stand up to pvp decks.

My dovin deck would not work half as well without my energise cards powering aether hub, Deadlock trap and skill 2.

Nissa2 is of course self explanatory.

Jace 2 module/copter deck is shaping up to be sick, but I haven’t submitted it for events yet.

Like I said before, once you have 3 or more cards in your deck with etb energise effects, overload 1 isn’t a problem at all. If all you’re doing is slotting in the bare minimum to do objectives, of course they look useless. Kind of like how natural connection is useless on its own.

It’s entirely possible to build a competitive deck that uses energise. The AI is pretty sucky.

16

how many of of the cards quoted are common/uncommon?
how many of those have overload?
do people see why so many players mostly use aether hub?

without overload energy is useless.

creating energised gems is easy, decoction module+ulvenwald mysteries+
any fabricate/investigate card(no rares required). it’s getting the critical
overload that you need rares or better.

which cards in aer made have energy enabled decks more competitive
against their non energy competitors? (how many of those are mythics
such as gonti heart?)

I believe that energy being more useable has nothing to do with aer.
players opening packs/winning events have rolled the dice more and
have acquired a better selection of overload enabled rares+.

(saheeli rai with her good colour combo and best of planeswalkers
accumulative mana gain. not exactly my top choice to show off the
merits of an energy deck)

HH

17

Kinda shifting the goalposts don’t you think?

I was listing rares and uncommons as requested and now you’re asking for commons and uncommons.

Most of those cards have overload or use energy. Not sure why it has to be aether hub.

I mean if you’re having trouble synergising energy generation, these are the cards I’ve found to be easy to build a deck around. If you’re just looking for people to join you moaning about energy, I’m not your guy.

You want to use only commons and uncommons to build a deck that can beat pvp decks that are by definition stocked with rares and mythics. That’s a very unfair bar to set.

18

I’ve tried building decks with the cards you’ve listed, even used better ones, and while they can do well most of the time, the risk of getting overrun in an event is too high.

The minute you start including the key mythics from KLD and AER, your survivability skyrockets. I had proc’d an Aetherworks Marvel from a booster the minute AER was released (had saved some packs) and the ability to fetch and play a card from your library on an overload 2 is light-years ahead of any of the lesser KLD cards.

Even with that card though, I found that the best way to proc the overload was to use the new PW’s first ability to generate energy and then immediately take advantage of a swap. By doing so, you prevent yourself from getting to ultimate, which I didn’t like.

19

If you want to state that the average mythic in aer is better than the average rare, you’ll get no argument from me. This is constant across all sets.

Everything I listed was based on overload 1, and I emphasized that repeatedly. If you’re hoping to proc overload 2 for your marvel, then of course you’ll need better energise.

What I’m saying is that you don’t need to do that for objectives, and can build a completely coherent and competitive deck around the lower rarity cards.

20

My experience of Energize differs somewhat from madwrens.

At first, it’s similar. Buying a couple of Big Boxes of Kaladesh at release, and then opening prize packs as I went along, got me almost no playable Energize cards for weeks. And there’s just not much in the way of regular Energy production in the commons and uncommons. Empyreal Voyager makes energy OK if it’s allowed to get going, but there are a LOT of regular opponents in Platinum Tier who’d punish you severely for relying to any degree on a 16 mana 3/4 which doesn’t do anything until the turn after it comes into play. And Decoction Module… just doesn’t do anything. I mean, I know a lot of people made some great energize decks early on with Decoction Module and Thopter Spy Network, but you’ve really got to ask yourself there, which card is it that’s bringing all the power to the deck, and which card is being carried? Bad Energize cards being carried by OP mythics is a theme I will no doubt return to.

There were no commons and uncommons in Kaladesh that made me go, ‘Wow! Not only is that a great card, but it’s got this new mechanic on it! I wonder what rabbit hole that will lead me down!’. BFZ had Transgress the Mind, and Grip of Desolation. Kaladesh needed some more cards like that, I think. Come to think of it, so did BFZ. And some more decent Process and Ingest cards, too.

From my early KLD hoard, I got Aether Hub and Deadlock Trap; Two cards I could tell maybe would be good, if I got some better ways of Energizing, but they were pretty useless to me before Dovin Baan was released. Saheeli Rai didn’t help me much. Glimpse of Genius and Attune with Aether were low power cards which didn’t Energize my Overload cards enough to stop THEM from being low power also. I guess some people might have really liked Live Fast if they didn’t have Read the Bones, or Tamiyo’s Journal, or Behold the Beyond. Anything with Overload 2 or more was just trash.

Skip forward to Dovin Baan. Dovin’s second ability was a revelation. It produced energy better than any single card I owned, and, crucially, it did something else besides merely Energizing. Drawing cards is always great; I like to draw OP cards like Deploy the Gatewatch, or Startled Awake. Dovin finally gave me a taste of what Aether Hub and Deadlock Trap could do (althought it turned out I was better off just running Prairie Stream and Prism Array). What was interesting to me about Dovin was that even with the extreme power of his second ability, my Overload 2 and Overload 3 effects were still worthless; Electrostatic Pummeler wouldn’t trigger enough to justify running it over anything else, and Aethersquall Ancient was pretty meh. I really can’t fathom who is ever going to play with Whirler Virtuoso (let alone Thriving Ibex).

At this point, then, I’m still getting very little use out of Energize.

Onto AER. Players, and indeed PvE enemies are starting to fill the board with energy on a much more regular basis now, when they get their hands on powerful Energize Mythics like Dynavolt Tower, Gonti’s Aether Heart, and Aetherworks Marvel. Like Dovin’s #2 ability, and unlike Decoction Module, these cards have a dual purpose; they produce tons of energy, but they also slot right into powerful combo decks as a win condition or resource generator. Of the new Planeswalkers, Nissa 2, it turns out, can Energize the entire board pretty easily. Screenshots like this and this and this start turning up with alarming regularity. It’s hard for me to comment on these extreme combo decks, because I don’t own the majority of the Energize power cards needed to build them. It seems like they’re unhealthy for the game, but I don’t really know yet how consistent, or how disruptable they are. Also, solitaire combo decks like this are really not what I signed up to this game to play, but people seem to have fun with their combo decks so I could be in a minority on that one. What I do notice, tho, is that Overload 2 & 3 effects have gone from being worthless to winning games outright in combo decks, with no inbetween.

As I say, tho, I didn’t get any of those cards. I didn’t even get Lightning Runner, a ludicrously overpowered beatdown card which is particularly useful for completing levels with both Energize and speed objectives. So what am I playing with? Well, Nissa 2 does make both Aether Hub and Deadlock Trap very powerful for me, although not really enough for me to play her over other planeswalkers who don’t have the disadvantage of being mono-green. I run both Attune with Aether and Glimpse of Genius in decks in order to get Energize related secondary objectives, but they are both absolutely the worst cards in the decks that I use… there’s a quite profound difference in the power levels between Attune and Season’s Past, Animist’s Awakening, or Prism Array; and between Glimpse, and Deploy the Gatewatch, Startled Awake or, er, Prism Array. I’m very, very surprised to hear OhBoy describe Glimpse as the MVP in his EmO <=5 turns Blue Node deck, and can only assume he’s talking about MVP in acquiring energy, rather than for winning the game. I run Live Fast firstly because it draws cards, secondly because it damages me for <20life objectives, and lastly and leastly because it Energizes. Multiform Wonder I’ll play in black decks just because it has Energize 3, so I need to draw less underpowered Energize cards while I get on with the important business of killing my opponent’s creatures, making him discard everything he draws, and winning the game with Ob’s ultimate. A 6/6 for 12 mana is not a good deal, but when you’re running Ob Nixilis with Behold the Beyond, you can carry some sub par cards. If only the +6/+6 wasn’t Overload 3.

Aethersphere Harvester I love. Genuinely love it. Yeah, I know, y’all are expecting me to be sarcastic here now aren’t you, but it’s pretty good! Some of you may remember me saying unkind things about 6/6 creatures which cost around 12 mana, but this one does something which I have never been able to do in Ob, or Liliana, or Sarkhan before, which is gain life. I don’t own Olivia… prior to now my best lifegain cards have been Aetherflux Reservoir and Kalitas. Believe me, this is a major step up. I run it against Tezzeret the Schemer in RatC, and other PvE enemies who Energize the board for me; I run it when I’m forced to run vehicles in Fate is Rarely Fair; and sometimes I can scrape together enough Energize with other cards to make it worth playing elsewhere. You can do that kind of thing when you’re playing Ob Nixilis with Alhammaret’s Archive, drawing 2 cards a turn and 4 more for 3 loyalty… you can just throw away all those crappy Multiform Wonders when you don’t need them any more.

So I guess you can divide my time playing with energy into 3 eons: Firstly the interminably long dark ages, when my Energize cards didn’t work together at all and I hated being forced to play with them; Secondly, the middle ages, where I began Harvesting and had a bit of fun; and lastly, still to be achieved, the grim darkness of the far future, where only combo exists. My enjoyment of Energize really does hinge around a single card. I guess Aetherstorm Roc is alright, if I have to Energize for an objective… but right now I’m just marking time until I can get hold of one of the really broken Mythics. And no, I don’t mean Aethergeode Miner, or Bristling Hydra, or Aetherwind Basker.

TL;DR: Read the damn post, I spent ages on it.

He really did. I didn’t know people could write that slow! // Alve