<Split off from MagisterCrow's post on the "OblivAeon Kickstarter Update #35" thread>
MagisterCrow wrote:
Blue MtG player, so....
You, sir, were the bane of my entire existence back in my MtG days. Don't even tell me if you threw in a little UW control, I don't wanna know. I'll lose my S***.
You're now a SotM fan so you can't be that bad of a person so I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Welcome to the forums. Hope you stick around!
I noted the other day on Reddit that Parse's deck feels a lot like a Blue Control deck. Of course, it's a lot less frustrating when it's aimed at the villain you're both beating up and not at you personally.
(I then also started trying to figure out which Magic colors the SotM characters would fit under, and also realizing that you could likely feasibly make a Gideon variant for Legacy's deck, a Chandra variant for Ra's deck, and a Jace variant for Visionary's deck. I am a terrible person.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Idk what any of that means. Are those names for newer deck arctypes? We used colors over names in my day. The last time I played magic seriously, the Urza's block was just wrapping up and 6th Edition was that good new new jawn. I'm old.
Gideon, Chandra, and Jace are all characters from the latter "half" of Magic's history, after a big event that stripped a lot of the more mythical beings in Magic history of their powers and changed how Planeswalking works. This is coming from someone who isn't deeply enriched in Magic lore, so apologies if I botched any of that up. :)
Would that make Mr. Fixer "Jeskai Wins"?
That sounds about right. Then again, I'm new to the, uh, new lore too.
@Foote: If it makes you feel any better, Seventh Edition is the last time I played Magic before getting back into it recently. (And I started out with Fifth Edition.) Ironically it was playing SotM that made me actually pay more attention to the lore this time around.
It's kind of amazing when you consider that Magic has a whole fleet of writers and artists for its cards, while SotM has one writer and one artist for its thousands of cards. To give a comparison, according to Wikipedia, apparently the most prolific Magic artist has 400 cards to their name.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Magic has been going on for a few decades, so I think it's pretty expected and honestly a better idea that they have so many different art styles. I know I'd want some variety from my cards if I've been playing the same massive TCG for years.
@Phantom5613: My comment was less a knock against Magic and more just awe at realizing the sheer scale of work that Christopher and Adam have put in, since the comparison puts it in more perspective.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I didn't take it as a 'knock', no worries. Just giving my 2 cents. :)
To be fair with Magic, it's a very different process. Once the cards start getting settled play-design-wise, the lore team drafts what they want on the card, send to the artist, who does a draft of the art and send it back for review. This happens a few times until WotC (makers of MtG) are happy with the art.
In comparison, Adam conceptualizes and draws the art himself. This makes the process a lot more streamlined. Still, I'm really curious what the unique art count for OblivAeon has to be, that's a ton of art. I'm surprised he managed to get all the alternate art done for all the heroes in time.
The art on M:tG cards is usually incredibly detailed and painstaking. Many of them used to do full-size canvas paintings, even. The comic-book style art is much simpler and less time-consuming. If Adam had to produce M:tG-style art for every card in SotM all by himself, he'd still be working on the first or second set.
Sentinels Statistics Project -- Statistics updated daily!
Submit your games here!
That too. But even if it weren't so detailed, the back and forth of edits would take a lot of time, especially when the the company commissions a few hundred different pieces of art a quarter.
I'm the guy who's old with respect to Magic - the last set I played before stepping away for good was Fallen Empires. I'm still trying to mentor my 11-year-old into financial & temporally reponsible play of the game.
Relevant to a question that came up with him recently: When I left, your draw phase was the only draw you got during a turn, unless triggered by a card you played. Has that changed? (He and his friends are drawing back up to 7 at the end of a turn, he says - they haven't played when I've been around, though.)
Yeah. Good luck with that lol. MtG is a big ol' money sink.
Exactly why neither my ex-wife nor I was crazy about letting him start.
Card draw has not changed substantially, drawing up to seven at the end of each turn is not official play, or even a variant I've ever heard of.
They have messed with combat damage, Legendary rules, and mulligans, though.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
Then since I suspect they're teaching each other by word of mouth, I'm guessing this is something they have decided to do to make it "more fun" (my words, not theirs). They are 11-12, after all.
Wow, I have no idea what most of these are. I stopped playing M:TG when Ice Age came out.
I feel weird, I'm used to assuming everyone is always way more up on everything geeky than I am.
Usually I'm that person who discovers things several years after everybody else already knew about them.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Fallen Empires was maybe 2 or 3 sets after Ice Age. I remember The Dark and the "loss of life" mechanic between them, but can't swear as to whether there were more.
This was also before there were 3 themed and 1 core set every year.....
I'm used to considering myself a veteren because I started playing during Time Spiral Block. You guys started way back in the day! I was only a little baby! (I mean that literally, by the way. I'm 24 as of 2 days ago)
A brief history of Magic by set (blatantly stolen from Wikipedia). Core sets are italicized, Blocks alternate being bold (i.e. one block is bold, next block is not, etc): For most of Magic history, Blocks followed a 3 set structure of large set/ small set/ small set, although they start playing with that from Lorwyn onwards.
1993: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights
1994: Revised, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires
1995: Fourth Edition, Ice Age, Homelands
1996: Alliances, Mirage
1997: Visions, Fifth Edition, Weatherlight, Tempest
1998: Stronghold, Exodus, Urza's Saga
1999: Urza's Legacy, Sixth Edition (major rules restructuring), Urza's Destiny, Mercadian Masques
2000: Nemesis, Prophecy, Invasion
2001: Planeshift, Seventh Edition, Apocalypse, Odyssey
2002: Torment, Judgement, Onslaught,
2003: Legions, Scourge, Eighth Edition (new card frames), Mirrodin
2004: Darksteel, Fifth Dawn, Champions of Kamigawa
2005: Betrayers of Kamigawa, Ninth Edition, Saviors of Kamigawa, Ravnica
2006: Guildpact, Dissension, Coldsnap (Coldsnap was nominally part of the Ice Age block, although Ice Age predated blocks), Time Spiral
2007: Planar Chaos, Future Sight (major storyline restructuring), Tenth Edition, Lorwyn (Introduced Planeswalkers as cards)
2008: Morningtide, Shadowmoor, Eventide (Lorwyn/Shadowmoor was a split block, in the format large/small/large/small, Shards of Alara
2009: Conflux, Alara Reborn, Magic 2010 (rules update, core set restructure), Zendikar
2010: Worldwake, Rise of the Eldrazi , Magic 2011, Scars of Mirrodin
2011: Mirrodin Besieged, New Phyrexia, Magic 2012, Innistrad
2012: Dark Ascension, Acacyn Restored, Magic 2013, Return to Ravnica
2013: Gatecrash, Dragon's Maze, Magic 2014, Theros
2014: Born of the Gods, Journey into Nyx, Magic 2015, Khans of Tarkir
2015: Fate Reforged, Dragons of Tarkir, Magic Origins (last core set, end of the three block structure), Battle for Zendicar
2016: Oath of the Gatewatch, Shadows over Innistrad, Eldritch Moon, Kaladesh
2017: Aether Revolt, Amonkhet, (coming soon: Hour of Devastation, Ixalan)
There are also a variety of special sets (Unglued and Unhinged, Modern Masters x3, and Conspiracy x2, but you can look them up yourself.
I joined Magic half way through Time Spiral block (which was a very strange place to start. Imagine you're a middleschooler who's never played before, and someone hands you Argent Adept and tells you to go have fun. I loved it.) I was never really a serious player. Nowdays I show up for about half the prereleases, and that's good enough for me.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
My brief MTG run was from Revised Edition to Fifth Edition. I remember there was a compilation set that came out around then that reprinted some cards from previous sets and had a white border to differentiate it from the original sets... Chronicles I think it was called...
Ah the memories of where this hobby began.
Okay, let's completely derail this thread...
I started just as Revised came out, jumping in with both feet and getting soaked pretty bad with Fallen Empires. By the time Lorwyn was coming out, I had ~120 playable, casual decks in two suitcases. We were playing bi-weekly, and keeping up with the new sets, figuring out what cards would work with what decks (and what new decks I wanted to build) was just too much time and effort (and money), so I stopped keeping up with the sets but kept on playing bi-weekly. By the time Sentinels came out (2011), I had pared my collection down to 67 decks (so they'd all fit in one suitcase), but we were still playing bi-weekly.
We played Sentinels, and haven't gone back to Magic, since. Finally sold my collection in 2015.
(I'm going to look to see if there's a good place to split this thread off...)
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
I can relate to that, Rabit. As a Johnny/Vorthos, I find Sentinels scratches those itches better than Magic does.
As much fun as it is building decks again and trying to find the best matchup out of what I have available, it's even nicer being in a situation where the decks are what they are and instead the fun comes from mastering each card and figuring out how everything combos together without having to worry about actually pulling or shelling out for part of the combo.
And Sentinels' storytelling just gels better, though I do think Magic has gotten substantially better at that side of things over the years.
I'm so spoiled, though, by the new thing Magic has of writing free-to-read short stories about their settings and planeswalkers on a regular basis. Makes me hope Christopher and Adam one day embark on that webcomic idea they talked about once.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
In addition to all those aspects (and being someone who really appreciates comics and the folks at GTG), the coop aspect of Sentinels is what really put it over the top for me. I love working together with folks to accomplish the goal, far more than competing against them.
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Sentinels just hits on so many cylinders at one time. It scratches the same itch, for me anyway, that MtG did, while also giving me back and foot rubs. It captures so many distinct aspects of what makes an enjoy game experience and executes them well.
This list could be bigger. But those are the ones that stand out to me as major aspects that have kept me and mine drawn to Sentinels over the years.
At my school Magic was banned. It was funny because I went to a Christian college and everyone assumed it was because the cards had demons inside of them or something, but it was actually because two guys got into an argument during a Magic game that ended with a fight and charges being filed.
So, since it was 2002 we ended up playing Yu-Gi-Oh. Which was actually a lot of fun, and I frequently got told I played like a Magic player, becasue my decks were intentionally the most bizarre decks I could build, my favorites being a life point gain stall deck that actually took third in a local tournament, and its only goal was to live long enough to run the other deck out of cards, and a Jar deck, where I would just remove people's monsters from the game then reshuffle the decks.
The Jar deck got me the most memorable rage quit I've ever seen, this dude with a $2000 deck actually threw his cards at me when he realized he was going to discard his entire deck because he didn't have enough monsters to fulfil Cyber Jar, and was going to lose because of it. He had made fun of my deck earlier because none of my cards were expensive at all.
I think I've played all of two games of MTG. This was back when Ice Age was new, and my experience was either "no lands", "all lands" or "after I mulligan, I can never get enough mana to do anything, while my opponent blithely builds up and crushes me". Suffice to say, I'm glad I never got into it, I would have spent way more money on it than was feasible or necessary. I'd much rather stick with deck-building games or, hey, cooperative fixed-deck card games like, uh, what's that one, it's got superheroes in it, Survivors of the Nth Dimension? It's on the top of my tongue.
Also glad I never got into it because I have a friend whose hobby to this day is designing decks that allow her to either take continual turns and own the game or just absolutely crush single players in one go. :B
I would guess that Sentinels probably appeals most to the Johnny and Vorthos folks who play Magic.
For reference: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-a... and http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/melvin-and-vor...
Basically Timmy likes big smashy plays, Johnny likes tricky combos and using cards in flashy and weird ways, and Spike just likes winning. While Vorthos loves the flavor and Melvin is all about figuring out mechanics.
So Sentinels appeals very nicely to the Johnny and Vorthos aspects of things. (Though as "Do All the Damage" Jeremy shows, Timmy types can have fun too.)
@takewalker: Mana screw sucks, though lately the Magic devs have been putting out a lot of new land types and mechanics that help smooth it out somewhat. Stuff like dual-colored lands and cards that help fetch lands or sacrifice no-longer-needed lands for useful effects.
Actually it's kind of funny how many card game terms Magic invented that it's hard to get away from even when playing card games other than Magic. Tutor and Milling especially.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
You were born the day after I turned 17.
At one point in time, I had owned a couple of beta cards (the only one that stands out in my mind was a Serra Angel), and I played fairly heavily from Arabian Knights through The Dark, minus missing Legends entirely for a number of reasons.
Tutor and Mill are probably the biggest ones card games know about, use, and know where they came from. But there are quite the number of other major terms/ideas that originated from MtG play that you hear all the time in other card games.
I was 13 when Arcanist was born. Whoo.
It feels so unreal when I realize I'm only a few years off from 40. Like, when I was a kid the 30-somethings were all people with spouses and families and degrees and big careers and fancy social circles and mainstream hobbies and the ability to command authority and respect, and I have precisely none of those things. So I'm basically like "How am I old adult when I seem to have figured out absolutely nothing about old adulting."
(Also has a lot to do with being a caretaker for my senior citizen mom and thus spending lots of time around senior citizens, so I am pretty much "the kid" to everyone and treated like such despite my age and expertise. Frustrating trying to be a caretaker when nobody really respects you as being one. Anyhoo.)
@Foote: Part of the fun of being a geek is that a lot of geek culture is still young enough that I've been there to see history made and invented.
It's kind of weird, too, that Magic was also one of the extremely few things I could actually get my non-geek friends to be willing to try. In fact, it was the other way around: The reason I got into Magic was because my non-geeky, trendy, popular best friend and her boyfriend had gotten into it first, so they were like, "Hey, [Jeysie] is a nerd, she likes these things right, so let's have her play too."
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Gee, this sounds familiar. What do you mean, I have a birthday coming up? D: Life is hard.
It's funny, the first thing I ask when teaching SotM is if the new players have any experience playing Magic or similar CCG's because it is much easier to describe the turn flow, oneshots, equips/ongoings with that background. I got into it in middle school right at the end of unlimited and stopped actively collecting in high school after 5th Ed. I still use hundreds of my old Magic commons for backs of playtesting decks and could probably still throw together some fun decks from that era. Though I sold a lot of my valuable cards (including a full set of Revised Duel Lands) to finance about 80% of my current board game collection, so no regrets there.
Already had my birthday a couple months ago.
But the other day mom and I's caseworker from the caretaker company I get a stipend from was doing their monthly visit, and when our oxygen delivery guy came in she started going on afterwards about how cute he was and how she liked "older men".
I gave her a really puzzled look and was like, "He's not old, he's my age!" and she was like, "Well, I'm 30, so it's not hard for a guy to be older than me" and I basically had a "oh god people my age are old now to 30 year olds how am I old I don't feel that old" moment after that.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Anyone here happen to go to the Hour of Devastation prerelease?
Turns out I was wrong all this time and there actually is a decent little cadre of people in my area geeky enough, at least, to play Magic face-to-face.
I felt slightly dirty for bringing Sentinels Tactics dice as counters, but they are stylish, conveniently different colors, and one of the few dice-using games in my house I could reasonably borrow parts from.
Both prerelease events I went to my resulting decks kinda sucked. Not sure if I'm bad at deckbuilding, had a bad pool of cards, or both. Not gonna lie I really appreciate the fixed-deck aspect of Sentinels even more after dipping a toe back into Magic. Still eked three match wins in both events, and that even once translated into a round win.
Each event I opened a really great bomb rare in my consolation prize pack rather than the packs I could play with. Darn it.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Longtime MtG player here, holla. I was lucky to get a pretty strong sealed pool with a solid red-green curve and enough bombs to go 4-1. I'm not gonna pretend it's because I'm that good a player; I just had my mojo working Saturday. There's a lot of micro-decisions you gotta make when constructing your deck and playing it in game situations and I've gotten markedly better in my limited opportunities but I'm nowhere close to being good - honestly, luck of the draw and your card pool quality are still the biggest determinants.
(Also, we should make SotM heroes into Magic cards)
I think I picked up playing skills from MigrantP. My cards mostly sucked, but I was still generally able to parlay what I had into making my opponent work for their wins.
And, heh! Sentinels Character Cards are kinda basically a little like mini Planeswalker cards with a single 0 Loyalty ability. So you'd prolly want to turn the heroes/big villains into Planeswalkers and the nemeses into Legendary creatures.
I still want to also do the opposite and make SotM variants out of the Gatewatch. :3
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Well, if you don't want to make entirely new decks, Jace, Chandra, and Gideon match up pretty well to Visionary, Ra, and Legacy.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
That is precisely the thought I had myself way back when.
The hard part is/was coming up with fitting alt powers that don't match any existing SotM powers, as they actually match a little too well.
Jace as a variant for Captain Cosmic (illusions = constructs) would also be amusing if less matching thematically overall.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I actually kinda like the heroes better as MtG creatures since there's more variety in creature design - though you could certainly do both!
Actually, this will be my new pet project that I may or may not get around too but here are some sneak previews of SotM-to-MtG translations I have in mind:
Heh! That works too... I guess my unoriginal mind leapt straight to taking the effectively mini planeswalkers and turning them into actual planeswalkers.
***
This is the best I've been able to come up with so far for the Gatewatch:
Aegis (Gideon variant for Legacy's deck): Power: Reduce damage to hero character cards by 1 until start of your next turn.
Spitfire (Chandra variant for Ra's deck): Power: Spitfire deals all villain targets 2 fire damage and all hero targets 1 fire damage.
The Mentalist (Jace variant for Visionary's deck): Power: Play the top card of a character deck. Until next turn, treat all instances of a character name on that card as if it were "Jace". If it is a villain card, treate all instances of "villain" as if it were "hero" and vice versa.
Or
Power: Until next turn, one copy of Decoy Projection is in play. (I have no idea how to template this word-wise.)
(Honestly I kinda just want to give Jace Omni-X's power straight up, but that's no fun...)
***
Because you can't create Sentinels character cards unless they have cheesy superhero codenames too.
Nissa I guess we could wait until Akash'Thriya's deck comes out? I can't think of any existing deck that would fit.
Liliana I can only think of as being a variant of Biomancer, TBH.
Ajani I have literally no clue; I don't really know him well enough as a character yet.
But honestly I am so not good with coming up with creative or rules stuff.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I like a lot of those! And it's not like there's no precedent for swapping a different person onto the head of a deck - i.e., the Kvothe Six-Strings Argent variant from Name of the Wind. Chandra and Ra both solve literally everything with fire, right?
I think Nissa could be a Naturalist variant (no idea as to power) and Liliana could be a Nightmist variant (Power: Liliana deals one damage to herself. Draw a card. Until the end of your next turn, whenever you discard a card, create a Zombie target with 2 health with "At the end of your turn, Zombie deals 2 damage to a target")
I did think about Nissa as Naturalist, but Nissa's nature connection is to plants and leylines, not so much to shapeshifting or animals.
Arlinn Kord would probably work better as a Naturalist variant, methinks. Also while we're on the subject of non-Gatewatch planeswalkers: Saheeli Rai as Unity and Tamiyo as Parse?
Liliana as Nightmist is interesting, though! (Also possibly a Gloomweaver variant because like actual zombies but I think I like Biomancer better if we go the villain route.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Ajani feels like Haka to me.
Lifeline might work for Nissa, depending on how his deck works. They don't really have much in common other than leylines, though.
Bolas feels like a Gloomy.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
So on the Magic the Gathering Reddit today someone asked for suggestions for "non-mainstream" games that Magic players could additionally pick up to help their Magic playing skills. I dutifully mentioned Sentinels because that's pretty much literally what happened: I got back into Magic because I decided I wanted to try to revisit my Magic playing days with the new skills and appreciation for lore I picked up from Sentinels.
In response three different people also chimed in with "Yeah, Sentinels!" comments, including one person who said "Sentinels is SO Vorthos" and praised the Letters Page, and another person who said they playtested for one of the older Kickstarted expansions back in the day.
(Also I was amused to note someone in the Gen Con Letters Page video wearing a shirt with a Planeswalker symbol on the back.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.