Questions for today’s Q&A Show!
Added 2024-03-21 15:18:08 +0000 UTCWe are (very likely anyway) doing the Q&A show this week, so this is your chance to ask any question you’d like about Magic, gaming, life, food, etc! Fire away in the comments below and we’ll get to as many as we can, and thank you!
Comments
Hi guys, one aspect of MTG that has always fascinated me is how the community often talks about gameplay with the assumption that there is a single objectively correct line of play. In contrast, one of my other favorite hobbies is Fighting Games (ex. Street Fighter), in which relying too heavily on "correct" gameplay patterns can cause you to become too predictable and lose. As a result, while I recognize that both require learning basic skills and heuristics, at a competitive level I end up approaching the two genres very differently when attempting to analyze my gameplay. My question is, does there come a point in learning MTG where the mindset of a singular correct line of play becomes flawed? Big thanks to you both, always appreciate the content!
Ryan Inwards
2024-03-21 19:40:30 +0000 UTCHi guys, my question is about the new packs. I think I know some of the differences, for example you can't look at your second or third pick and think "the rare is gone" or "the blue common or the white common is missing." I was hoping you all could cliff-notes the new pack mechanics and offer advice on how this changes what you look for in the first few picks. Love the show, thanks a lot.
Ryan Glinski
2024-03-21 19:10:46 +0000 UTCHey guys! This question is mostly for LSV. My playgroup has recently gotten into team draft (thanks in no small part to your YouTube channel). However, the cube we usually draft with is much lower on power level than Vintage — think somewhere between Pauper and Arena cube. It’s also flatter on power level, with the difference between the best and worst cards in rotation being significantly smaller than the best and worst cards in vintage cube. I know you can’t get into specifics without seeing a card list, but from a high level, how might you adjust your team draft strategy in a lower, flatter power-level cube environment? Would the hate drafting element becoming less pronounced? Signals more or less important? Curious to hear your thoughts! I’ve been listening since Fate Reforged — thank you both for nearly a decade of content (dear lord), and thank YOU LSV for the daily videos! Truly can’t get enough. Cheers!
Sam Pape
2024-03-21 18:59:19 +0000 UTCHow are we currently feeling about Pacifism? Locked in the Cemetery was bad enough in MID where you said you needed to re-evaluate their playability. Petrify was pretty good in LCI and Dramatic Accusation seems okay. Do you have any new heuristics for evaluating that effect? Are they still generally bad, or was MID an outlier?
Dr. Ace Manliness
2024-03-21 18:58:56 +0000 UTCHi Marshall, Luis and Producer Jeff, thanks for continuing to produce great content and being a pillar of the Magic limited community! I generally only play Arena (no MTGO) and only BO1 at that, which is primarily for convenience. It's a lot easier to find time to play a couple BO1 matches and, as a parent, also less of a feel-bad when I need to drop a match for something that comes up with the kiddo. However, you guys have mentioned that BO3 can sometimes be quite different than BO1, and I've heard other limited content creators also express the sentiment that playing BO3 "refreshes" a format for them after BO1 gets stale. Using MKM for example, I've heard others say you are far less likely to repeatedly face busted Boros decks in BO3. I understand that Arena B03 isn't the same as paper pod drafting where you actually play against the people you drafted with, and I also realize BO1 has the hand smoother, but would you be able to explain why people think the BO3 queues and games are meaningfully different than BO1, why you're more likely to see lower power decks, and anything else you think significantly contributes to this difference?
Mark Farewell
2024-03-21 18:24:07 +0000 UTCHi Marshall and Luis, I love the podcast, it's the best magic content on YouTube hands down. I started playing magic a little bit before Arena went into beta and so my model of the game is shaped mostly by Arena. I'm personally an advocate for Alchemy; I think it can be used to really enhance otherwise mediocre sets. A-SNC is one of my favorite draft formats both because of how much the small buffs brought the color balance in order and how much it made previously bad archetypes noticeably more fun to play. But I've also been burned by some of the alchemy stuff in recent times, MKM alchemy is a mess of a format with insane cards at every rarity in my opinion. I remember Marshal expressed a sentiment at one point floating the idea of a full-fledged alchemy set designed specifically for limited. Where do you guys stand on Alchemy in Limited? Is an "Alchemy Limited Horizons" style set still something you guys would be open to?
Xeronax
2024-03-21 17:40:10 +0000 UTCFirst of all, thanks to Marshall, Luis, and Producer Jeff for the consistently great content. How do you go about improving when you hit a plateau and don't know what you're going wrong? I live in a very competitive region for RCQs and have been grinding them for a while now. I can pretty consistently do well, but am still not quite there for winning one. Obviously improvement gets harder as you get better, but I'm finding myself blaming variance more often than is realistically right. Presumably there's some concept that I'm missing and don't even realize it.
Radnor
2024-03-21 17:02:23 +0000 UTCI have been listening to the podcast since the beginning (boomer alert). I would like to know what price I must pay to bring back the physical crack-a-packs? I miss the real sounds, the crinkle, the light shuffling as each card is passed over. Most importantly, I miss the crack-a-KitKat-pack troll. So, please name your price and I will gladly pay it.
MB
2024-03-21 17:00:37 +0000 UTCI just played pickup basketball for the first time in five years, recruiting some friends from FNM and local cube groups to join me, and I am Very Stoked! So, can we pretend for a second that your podcast is Roundball Resources instead? Any quick tips for improving at basketball or even big concepts to share? What's Quadrant Theory for pickup ball? Also, can you take a sec to evangelize playing basketball to the listeners? Magic is a sedentary hobby but lots of players also love basketball — and a lot of us, like me, could use the exercise. Thank you both!
Steve Stormoen
2024-03-21 16:43:33 +0000 UTC(Long time listener, first time questioner -- I've been listening since M12 set review) How do you think about crushing it in a format you've never played before? I'm decent at drafts after listening to set reviews and getting a few reps but find myself being uncertain/pretty terrible at things like flashback/new kinds of cube drafts if I just jump in.
Benjamin Reinhardt
2024-03-21 16:39:04 +0000 UTCWhat excites you most about Magic's future?
Luke Johnson
2024-03-21 16:30:07 +0000 UTCLet's say you're getting together with your buddies this weekend for a draft. You have access to every (print) set from the last 6 years (including the masters, remastered, etc.). What format (or combination of formats) do you play?
Luke Johnson
2024-03-21 16:29:29 +0000 UTCWhat are your best ideas to improve the Arena ranking system? Would it ever make sense to just do away with the step system and just start everyone in mythic (or whatever its equivalent would be in a new system)? This idea comes on the heels of a somewhat recent change where they seem to just throw everyone entering mythic into the middle of the ranks, regardless of how well (or poor) they did on their way there.
Brett Shears
2024-03-21 16:17:21 +0000 UTCHey guys, I hope all is well! Marshall, it was so good to hear such a great update on your mom last Q&A! Louis, that Doomsday deck you posted the other day was amazing! Everyone needs to go and watch that one, particularly game one of match 2! 🤣 Congratulations to Seth and the rest of your team on the great run in Chicago! It was great to see a new deck perform so well. Also, congrats on going undefeated in draft! I really have enjoyed drafting the new play boosters, particularly the list cards. What have been some of your guy's favorite list cards in the format? One last note: I know once that in awhile you like to offer up a book recommendation, so here's one for you! The Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell is super enjoyable. It is about the Danish invasions of England during the late 800s into the early 900s. There is also a Netflix series based on the books, which is phenomenal as well! Thank you both and Jeff for all your hard work!
Jeremy Church
2024-03-21 16:11:53 +0000 UTC1. Critical question for Luis: Have you started teaching your kiddos to play Magic?! I started my son early... may too early, as now that he's a teenager, he's beating me way too often! 2. For both, if you could add a theoretical 'Ravnican Lotus' artifact card to cube, would you? Details: CMC 0 Tap, sac: add two mana of any two different colors 3. For both, any good stories about eating something waaay too spicy? Thank you for all of the amazing content!
Chris Doersen
2024-03-21 16:09:33 +0000 UTCI find that I can draft almost any archetype, but agro never seems to pan out for me. The decks I build I think are similar to the agro decks that beat me, so my thought is my piloting of agro decks is incorrect. Any advice how to not run out of gas and know when to make bad trades in agro?
James Ammeson
2024-03-21 16:07:17 +0000 UTCYou talked a little bit with Sierkovitz about this, but I would really like to know how the new proportion of commons to uncommons in play boosters changed your draft picks. Aren't uncommons relatively more rare, now there's more of them? On the other hand, you sometimes get two of the same common per pack. What's your view on this? Thanks for the great show, as always. Greetings from Berlin.
Alexander Matzkeit
2024-03-21 16:04:56 +0000 UTCLuis mentioned Supreme Draft recently. What are some other "oddball" limited experiences you've enjoyed beyond the usual draft/sealed/cube?
Ron Laufer
2024-03-21 16:01:21 +0000 UTCHello Marshall and Luis, thanks for being the ESPN of my life. Are either of you experiencing Trope Fatigue? I feel like more and more these sets are conceptually top down. How do you think Wizards design needs to balance world flavor and some originality?
John Pickens-Green
2024-03-21 15:58:12 +0000 UTCI've been focused on leveling up my drafting by keeping my game plan in mind and allowing that to influence my picks and I'm finding it harder in practice than in theory. There are a couple of challenging aspects that I'm struggling with. 1. If you have already picked some cards that put you in a more mid-range strategy and you see a few picks that might pull you in more aggressive or controlling directions, how do you know when to "switch"? Do you think about switching game plans like you do switching colors or is this the wrong way to think about it? 2. When evaluating cards, there are some that clearly fit into one strategy or another. Do you have any tips on evaluating a card based on fitting a particular strategy? Sorry for the long, convoluted question, but you've only got yourselves to blame because I wouldn't be thinking about these things if not for the podcast :). That's a weird way to say thanks for helping me get better, but thanks!
Wood Young
2024-03-21 15:55:37 +0000 UTCWhat are your thoughts on the intersection of generative AI and MTG, especially in the aspects of art and lore? How about gaming in general?
Russ Maloney
2024-03-21 15:50:20 +0000 UTCHey Marshall and Luis. Do you have any hard rules you follow when presenting information to general audiences? Luis’ success at getting people into one of the most skill testing formats, Vintage Cube, and the massive success of Wristwatch Revival (congrats Marshall) have me convinced you two could be put in a room and asked to present on the phonebook and I’d end up backing the Patreon.
Lewis Williams
2024-03-21 15:44:39 +0000 UTCHey guys, thanks for all the great content on the podcast. I love listening and improving my game. When Khans of Tarkir came out the names for the enemy color wedges (Temur, Sultai, Abzan, Jeskai, and Mardu) replaced the names from Odyssey (Ana, Ceta, Dega, Necra, and Raka). When Streets of New Capenna came out I wondered if the family names would replace the classic Shard names, but that does not seem to have happened. Why do you think we still use the Shard names to describe ally colors while the wedge names changed?
Daniel
2024-03-21 15:42:16 +0000 UTCAs a game designer, do you think there's actually a way to improve on the mana system as other similar games have tried to do? I notice screw/flood a lot more in limited than in constructed, since in the latter there are so many ways to mitigate it, and spells tend to be cheap. In limited, the games where there are two lands in your top 15 cards not only feel bad, but also aren't very interesting for either player.
Brian Sullivan
2024-03-21 15:38:57 +0000 UTCI enjoyed watching the pro tour coverage! This year I’ve also managed to squeeze in a standard RCQ as. well as a limited one. What I was not totally prepared for is just how hard it is to get your hands on cards for constructed. Playable commons from last year? Out of stock city wide. Online shipping taking weeks. Good rares barely in stock online. It was a slog even for standard, which got me thinking - how do your guys switch decks at the eleventh hour at the pro tour? How do you even find 32 vein rippers? I assume you can’t share playsets since you’re all playing in the same event. Curious about the logistics!
Douglas Cox
2024-03-21 15:38:04 +0000 UTCNot sure if this makes a good question for the show but- how can I get a card signed by you guys? Do you have a PO Box? I don't have any Magic Cons on the calendar at the moment. Thanks for everyhing- love the show.
Alexander Pacheco
2024-03-21 15:35:16 +0000 UTCHey - Luis, have you ever considered writing a book about Magic gameplay theory? How come these books don’t exist like the prolific amounts of poker theory books? I’d expect there to be a lot of value you could bring to new players on general Magic theory, sprinkled with your great stories from pro play.
Andrew Shapiro
2024-03-21 15:34:52 +0000 UTCAge of Empires 2 has a tournament called Hidden Cup where the top 16 players play a single elimination tournament using hidden identities. After it’s all over the identities of the players are revealed. Do you think a hidden identity vintage cube draft would be viable and Luis would you purposefully pass Tolarian Academy so people wouldn’t immediately suspect you?
Brandon Housman
2024-03-21 15:32:52 +0000 UTCGreetings to one of the greatest magic players of all time, and also Luis, I guess ;) Between the arena opens, magic cons, and pre-releases I end up playing a lot of Day 1 sealed. Over the years, I have come across two deck-building situations that have repeatedly stymied me, both counterintuitively related to opening good pools rather than garbage. I would love to hear a professional thought process to work through them: 1. You open a pool full of plenty of decent cards, but they're scattered across four or five colors. What criteria do you use to pick your two colors when multiple combinations all seem equally good? 2. This one is rare, but it has happened to me at least once. You open a good pool. Excellent rares, synergies, and a clear direction of which two colors you should go with... except there aren't enough cards. I'm talking about using every card in those colors AND the garbage colorless stuff to fill it out, and you still can't reach 23 cards. What do you do from here? Dilute the pool with a third color, take one good color and mix it with a lesser color, or just play 20 lands or so and hope you just draw all the good stuff? Hopefully Luis is still willing to help after my opening sentence.
Spencer St. James
2024-03-21 15:30:44 +0000 UTCA friend and i recently successfully crowd funded our first board game, and now want to start work on a follow up project. We're struggling to find something we're keen to take forward. Any advice on starting a new creative project?
Chris Fisher
2024-03-21 15:26:22 +0000 UTCWhy are dishes with a lot of lime juice just the best?
Nathan S
2024-03-21 15:24:03 +0000 UTCFor Luis, curious if all of the recent cubing has inspired any thoughts about game design?
Nathan S
2024-03-21 15:23:50 +0000 UTCI have bought J Kenzie Lopez Alts book “The food Lab” on your recommendation and love it. Do you guys have any other cook/chef content creators or similar you would recommend? Thanks for the years of great content!
RadioacDev
2024-03-21 15:23:31 +0000 UTCWhat is the best way to get into competitive magic and how do you usually prepare for an event (RC, Pro Tour, Worlds, etc.)
Lorunzo
2024-03-21 15:23:24 +0000 UTCMany recent formats have suffered from their fast paced metas. At least some amount of this can be fixed by playing BO3. Would you consider playing more BO3 or are the incentives just not there? Should they introduce ranked BO3 on Arena?
Nathan S
2024-03-21 15:23:06 +0000 UTCWould you like to see vintage cube on arena? If so would you prefer it over using mtgo?
David Craig
2024-03-21 15:20:35 +0000 UTC
