IMPORTANT: Ixalan Cards and Events - Balancing and Thoughts

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
21

I have been pretty hard on this set in my posts recently, and in fairness, I should state: I do think the mechanics make it seem like it could be a fun, interesting set to play with.

My real issue is simple: I have a life. I have a job. I have a family. I like to spend maybe an hour a day on this game, maybe two on weekends, if I feel like it. (I do not like it when a game starts to feel like an obligation or a chore.)

This set will be fun to play with, no argument from me. But with the costs of creatures being extremely high, and the cost of removal still very low, games focused on using this set are going to be slow-moving and take a long, long time to complete. I simply don’t have the additional time available to give to this game, even if I wanted to.

If other sets were balanced the way this one is, I’d never have gotten into this game in the first place. If Oktagon rebalances the older sets to match this one, I’m done. This game often veers perilously close to being too much of a time sink as it is, IMO. If I didn’t enjoy the actual gameplay as much as I do, the punishing ratio of progression to time spent playing would have driven me to quit long since. The calculation of how much time you have to spend in the game to max out even a single, mono-colored PW is already…pretty ugly, IMO.

Maybe you have lots more time on your hands! Maybe you are an international man or woman of mystery leisure. Sincerely: good for you! That’s awesome! I wish you the very best time spending 10 hours a day enjoying the use of Ixalan cards. For me however, all the points raised here about how the abilities and tribes interact with the event structure changes nothing: fun but slooooooow is, for me, not good enough.

22

What you mention are the things that I wonder about too. When I first look at the requirement for reinforcement for the Vampire mechanics, token generation and Nahiri’s ultimate were really the only two good ways that I saw to achieve the requirement in standard, and most of the cards that wanted reinforcement were black, so I wouldn’t be able to put them in Nahiri in the first place. I then stumbled across Legion Conquistador. The 8 mana 3/3 that fetches the next copy of itself from your deck. I could see a deck with ample mana generators being able to get one of those reinforced a number of times to get some interesting synergy with the other vamps. That whole thing really only looks like it will be viable in the Standard new events or in casual play, but it still stood out. I have a near full deck of Ixalan cards that I am excited to try for a vampire deck. The only downside is that I would have to actually buy Sorin, who I think is one of the worst planeswalkers in this game. His starting health pool is such a handicap.

You might not like my solution to what people are saying about Ixalan, but I will share it all the same. My “solution” is to keep the set as it is until we have had a chance to test it out and play with the cards. Please read what I have to say next before completely disregarding what I am saying though. This is the first set that our new developers have made, so there will be room for growth with future sets. If you look through paper Ixalan, it is full of overcosted cards that don’t have enough power to justify their use in formats like Modern or Legacy. In paper Magic, very few cards become viable Modern or Legacy options. We are starting to have enough cards in our card pool here that not every card will be viable outside Standard. With that in mind, I think that Standard would be better in MTGPQ as Core Set + Previous Block + New Block, and always restrict it to that. One of the issues that we will likely face with Ixalan is that the power levels of Origins, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, and Ixalan do not all match up. I have found that even in paper Magic, it is rare for four consecutive blocks to match each other in power. Paper Magic has been struggling with Standard of late too. They made too many cards that worked too well together in Kaladesh, and as a result we have seen more Standard cards getting banned than we have since the original Mirrodin block. Part of why Standard used to be the two most current sets and the core set was so that there was less imbalance in the sets. What is currently happening in PQ is reminding me a lot of the transition between the original Mirrodin block and Kamigawa. Original Mirrodin had some of the most powerful Standard decks ever because of the Affinity mechanic and the printing of Arcbound Ravager, Skullclamp, and Cranial Plating. Kamigawa was an attempt to slow the game down a bit with higher cost cards that had a variety of abilitis. Kamigawa had some very interesting cards to play with like Sensei’s Divining Top, Kiki Jikki the Mirror Breaker, Kokusho, and many others. If Kamigawa was not paired with Mirrodin, it could have had the potential to be more interesting to play, although Betrayers and Saviors really screwed the pooch there as expansions. I think it is possible that this set would be viewed more positively, especially with the way they are doing the new events, if we did not also have Kaladesh in Standard. Kaladesh was just such a powerful block in MTGPQ with some of the game’s marquee cards. Most of the game’s broken loop engines revolve around key Kaladesh cards. Having Kaladesh and those cards in Standard gives off the impression to many of the game’s players that the cards in Ixalan need to be balanced to be as powerful as the combination of Kaladesh and Aether Revolt. If the set was as powerful as both of those sets combined, it would do something terrible to power creep in this game. I think that we need to see Rivals of Ixalan before we can fully judge the power of this set too. Until we see the block as a whole, it will be hard to say if anything should indeed be changed. Because of that, I don’t think they should do anything to Ixalan until we have had a chance to play with it and Rivals together.

When cards like Rishkar’s Expertise and Baral were spoiled, players were flooding the forums with “please nerf these cards before they become available” and there were plenty of threads complaining about the power creep of the game. Many of the threads that I saw leading up to the Ixalan release were about the game feeling too powerful. If Ixalan by itself had the comparative power of the combination of either Kaladesh and Aether Revolt or Shadows of Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, this forum would be full of people complaining that our new devs have no idea how to balance cards and the power creep will ruin this game. I think it is important for us to give this new set a shot. We can try to figure out ways to break it and make it our own. If we still feel that tweaking is needed, we can just keep giving our feedback and hope for the best.

Finally, people who play Standard in paper Magic are mostly people who like having deck diversity and are excited by the prospect of playing with new cards and exploring the new mechanics. People who play Modern want to play with powerful cards, but don’t have the money to invest in Legacy or Vintage. I think it is important for this game to have sets that encourage you to play the cards from the set like Ixalan will do with it’s events to keep the game fresh, while also continuing to develop Legacy events and rules to make it a viable option for the people who just want to play with completely optimized decks.

I hope this answers your question @Houdin, and I am once again interested to hear your response.

23

In terms of interaction creatures need to be cheaper full stop. Spells and supports, no.

The creatures WILL be destroyed or bounced or stolen, you need to be able to play a replacement almost straight away otherwise you can’t do creature strategies at all. Nicol Bolas has messed things up further in this regard by making it even easier.

With the costs of these creatures you can’t. In a different environment without so much destruction it might be different, and Amonkhet itself had emblam and such that could recover slightly from destruction but nothing in this set takes that into account, except perhaps making Hexproof more accessible which messes up the meta in other ways.

But i should be able to play vamps or dinos without needing hexproof and currently I can’t unless their costs are cheap enough to replay.

And (in that regard) what about the AI? It’s going to put these creatures at the top and never get through casting them, we’ll cheat stuff out, deal with the one thing it’s managed to play and then win. And again there is no interaction.

I want games that go back and forth and that is impossible unless creatures are cheap enough to recast.

24

You also bring up an interesting point. The speed of play and the amount of time required to play this game’s events can make it feel like a part time job. Especially if you are in a top coalition. In all honesty, I can’t really imagine events in this set taking longer than cycling events did. I still remember defeating Temmet on turn 1 with a cycling Tezzeret 2 deck because I had a starting hand of Curator Sphinx, New Perspectives, and Faith of the Devoted, and due to a 5 match + cascades, I got all of that out turn one and cycled all few hundred of Temmet’s health away. The duration of events in Amonkhet due to health pools and cycling ultimately burned me out from this game for a while. I couldn’t keep up with playing this game for a few hours a day and manage work, wife, and baby. The obvious thing to cut was the game. I have since started playing again, but I have used cycling less frequently and have worked to build decks that work more quickly. I got incredibly lucky and pulled Omniscience from an Elite Pack, and that made making absurd speed decks very easy for me given the other cards in my collection. From what I am reading in your post, this game is a great game for you to play casually in a more casual coalition that potentially has room for you to play with a more serious group every now and then if you can devote the time for an event. As the game is currently constructed, it will consume a lot of time, and the grinding is not especially rewarding for the time you will be putting in. That is a topic for a separate thread, but I also feel that it takes too many resources to level planeswalkers up, and the drop rate for mythics along with the amount of yellow and purple crystals we receive from events is too low for the time it takes to get them. Like you, I love the gameplay here enough that I keep coming back. I would recommend you give the set a chance, and figure out which cards you can actually build speedier decks with, and try to build around them. I’m sure it can be done. If it doesn’t work out that way, you can just wait until Rivals comes out as it will be coming out more quickly than it normally would as they are trying to catch up to paper Magic, and see if that piques your interest. I hope this helps.

25

We plan on tackling these issues on two fronts: new cards releases and older cards rebalancing. Every time new cards are added to the game, you should see a gradual move towards the environment described in the items above. Older cards will get to meet Gishath’s sharp teeth whenever they are damaging the environment in one of the ways below:

  • The card is the cornerstone of a one-deck metagame, with the deck being linear AND unplayable by the AI.
  • The card creates the feeling of a Pay Wall, due to rarity limitations and its part in a truly overpowered deck.
  • The card is overshadowing all other strategies and stifling all player options in certain events.

We will not be pointing cards to Gishath’s lair if:

  • They create an interesting and defeatable challenge when the AI is controlling them.
  • They are part of a metagame with multiple powerful viable strategies and mechanics.
    With that in mind, it seems that they are only looking to balance certain cards that form a singular deck meta. It does NOT look like they are looking to “rebalance” all of the cards from older sets.
26

I do agree that power creep had become a bit of an issue in the game.

Omni loops for 20 minutes every other match is perhaps a wee bit ‘cough ‘big fat lie’ cough’ of an over exaggeration by some.

I do own the card and yes you can break it.

Things like this go back to the four turn rule I was talking about earlier. Which is the main reason I have been advocating for a balance to cycling.

I do understand this is Oktagon first kick at the can so to speak and whereas I think they would have done better by bringing in a more balanced cost set and rebalancing some of the obvious meta breaking cards currently in standard at the same time. I will agree that there is the possibility that rivals could somehow properly redefine the set to make it viable.

Is it better to wait and see? I guess from my perspective that depends entirely on how long that will be. If it’s 2 months than sure. If it’s another 6 than no. That’s way too long

27

I think that there are cards that fit into the mold you are talking about, but there are a lot of cards that don’t. It might mean that we will see the same Merfolk, Vampires, Dinosaurs, Humans, and Pirates in most decks, but there are a few in each tribe that are viable plays that will see use. There are enough cards that stand out like that 31 mana vehicle to shock you with the casting cost that some of the more powerful cards are flying unnoticed under the radar. Cards like Tilonalli’s Skinshifter, Kitesail Freebooter, Legion Conquistador, Imperial Lancer, and Captivating Crew to name a few are all reasonable with decent power for their mana cost. There are just a lot of cards that probably will not see play mixed in there too.

28

I’m about to agree with Houdin. The new set seems to suffer from bad design. The set is not played alone, and even if they try to add some power to Ixalan cards in the specific Ixalan events, I feel this is still not enough.

This is what I said in other thread: I don’t doubt that when you have most rares and mythics, one can create competitive decks from Ixalan cards. And, of course, this should be easier when Rivals comes out. But would these be accessible to all? Most probably not. It’s like those powerful energy decks from KLD, they exist, but require tons of mythic cards, and so new or free players will most probably never be able to use.

This is in fact why cycling is so used, it’s a working strategy that requires just a few cards, rare at max, and you can adapt it to most of those event missions (like playing X spells) easily.

And here we come to the weak point of Ixalan: while you will most probably have access to commons and uncommons, these are overall a lot of garbage. During the time you can’t get all cards u need for that crazy pirate deck, will you really use the garbage pirates to fully benefit, instead of using other broken decks you own from previous sets? Unlikely, to say the least.

In fact, I don’t know why they needed to create some cards as bad as Demystify, Costly Plunder, Pirate’s Cutlass or Steadfast Armasaur. These are outrageously bad. From the commons, these are the ones I would possibly play in a deck:

Dive Down (if hexproof gain is permanent, I’m not sure)
Emergent Growth (good card, it’s like an alternative to Ambuscade)
Heartless Pillage (can make it in a discard deck, although there are other options)
Legion Conquistador (option to Self-Assembler for those play X creatures nodes)
Legion’s Judgement (good card, will see lots of play)
One With the Wind (this is overcosted compared to Stratus Walk or Ghostly Wings, but will be a standard alternative to Wings in my Sandwurm deck. Still a bad card by itself)
Siren’s Ruse (can be used to refresh HP, remove Cast Out effect and alike; possible to be played, not necessary. Anyway, will the creature keep reinforcements?)

Some other cards like Contract Killing are usable, but we have better options (like Final Reward). Overall, some situational cards, and 2 good cards, Emergent Growth and Legion’s Judgement. Compare it to previous sets and see how much Ixalan is weak. Just AMK Cartouches have more good cards than the entire Ixalan set. Wanna examples of common cards I played a lot from HOU? Here we go: Beneath the Sands, Countervailing Winds (in fact I played it little because I had Censor, but Winds is still very playable), Desert of the Mindful, Lethal Sting, Manalith, Oketra’s Avenger, Sandblast, Strategic Planning, Unsummon.

Common creatures are almost always garbage anyway, but does really Explore 1 need to increase their costs that much? And yep, all too expensive.

29

If it takes 6 months for Rivals to come out, that would be a very big problem indeed. I think there is a lot of potential here with Ixalan, but not 6 months of potential. Still, I am excited to get KRAKEN! Bad Kiora + Merfolk pun. I should now hide in a corner.

30

Only if she eats calamari:)

31

I would, in general, agree with the sentiment that Kaladesh needed to rotate out for the health of this game as its power level, while some might argue, was lower than that of Innistrad, is still inflated when compared to both Ammonkhet and Ixalan.

That said, however, I feel like for some it will be an asset that Kaladesh cards are, at least initially, still legal in standard and maybe should rotate out with Rivals of Ixalan. The reason I say this is because Ixalan is heavily a “tribal matters” set, and Wizards has been seeding those tribes into earlier releases, and that in turn has translated into this game, and will be important for those looking to build for the events prior to having a large collection from this set.

Here’s a list of currently standard legal creatures of each of the important types, those not from Origins will be bolded.

Vampires:
Blood-Cursed Knight
Gifted Aetherborn
Yahenni, Undying Partisan
Rabid Bloodsucker
Malakir Cullblade

Pirates:
Kari Zev, Skyship Raider

Merfolk:
Harbinger of the Tides
Maritime Guard

Dinosaurs:
None

Humans:
There are over 11 pages of humans, this tribe is fine without keeping older sets.

Granted it’s not a huge number, but there is the addition of 3 of the 8 cards currently in these tribes that are from Kaladesh. Not enough to make them your heroes for the event objectives, but at least enough to get some bonus while you build up your collection

32

“”“Common creatures are almost always garbage anyway, but does really Explore 1 need to increase their costs that much? And yep, all too expensive.”“”

Common creatures being almost always garbage is a problem to be fixed not something to accept and give up on.

They should always be usable, not the best, but usable and they currently never ever are.

33

What is this kraken you are talking aboot

34

This. I don’t understand how most of these cards will be useful outside of specific events.

35

Yeah… The events are apparently thought to have sinergy with the new Ixalan creatures and mechanics. And that could be fun indeed, it’s a different approach to what we’ve been doing and building in the last… i don’t know, many months.

Only thing i say is, in a PVP event… Good luck beating Greg with your dinosaurs and pirates n’all when playing against a neverending Rashmi/Rishkar loop deck, or a HUF/Deploy, or simply a well sinergised deck from previous sets.

In my opinion, even with all the boosts and stuff given by the event rules, you have no chance.

36

You’ll do fine when Greg brings a Dino deck to a Pirate fight or you know, a cycling deck to any fight.

37

Ive been reading a lot of comments about this sets, positive and negative ones, and i still feel quite doubtful about how it will adapt to the actual meta. I must confess the new mechanics sound fun though.

I also feel worried about what will happen when kld will rotate out, because the problem might be even bigger …
Amk and hou were quite balanced in term of power except for a few cards or mechanics that are badly OP(cycling, omni, sandwurm, red hour are a few examples ) … The general good level of Aer/kld cards was able to compensate a bit this gap in the standard environement.

When kld rotates out, those OP card will definitely rule over the standard until the get nerfed or pass to legacy. There might be no room for competition if you dont get these.

I can imagine the player that played 3 creatures for 15 mana each , and even reinforced them … And see his whole board cleared with a single red hour shot…will he ragequit? or will he try to build up again for 50 mana to realize his oponent has already filled 2 red hours in the meantime?

I also feel worried about red color. Its suposed to rule over damage spells but none from ixalan will get rid of any creature … If im not confused the most powerful one might deal 6 damage under certain conditions only, 3 in other cases. Hopefully, origins will help a bit. In the meantime, white gets a support that may exile 3 creatures for slmost the same cost … Isn’t something wrong here?

Anyway, i really hope oktagon has something in mind because if they don’t, i feel the platinum will more than ever be a matter of who is lucky enough to own the few bombs from amk/hou … Thus making the game deeply interestless.

Overall , ixalan would probably be lots of fun if it was a standalone block but it isn’t.
Maybe the best option would have been to get rid of the power creep by sending any old set to legacy, and start again with ixalan after giving each player a few 5 booster packs to start the standard collection again.

38

Small reminder - if d3 follows standard rotation kld/are and amk/hou rotate out together with core set available.

39

that’s how I feel about dealing with power creep in general. If they aren’t going to buff the cards in Ixlalan, it should be its standalone set for now (plus Origins for a bit more card variability); people who have the best of Origins will still have an advantage, but it would be more manageable.

40

At the moment, the paper version of standard includes the current block(ixalan+rivals) plus the 2 last blocks (kld and amk blocks).
If PQ follows this pattern, both KLD and AMK blocs will remain standard until dominaria is released. Then only KLD would rotate out.
I hope they wont follow this pattern though.