ChaosAngelGeno

Or Cthulhu. (Yes, kids he's in there...)

You're kidding, right?

I've heard that the raves that feature the Music of Erich Zann over there are legendary.

Last I checked blasters use melee attacks.

- Chi Push. KB sounds bad for a melee-based set. I know you have a new animation, but Web Grenade would have been fine.
- I honestly would like to see some variety in the attacks. Three kicks looks boring, how about Cobra Strike?
- Dragon's Tail as your PBAoE? Great.
- Reach for the Limit, Burst of Speed, Reaction Time sound good. I'd like to see a +Regen or +Defense component is Reaction Time or a temporary +Defense boost for a period of time for using Burst of Speed.
- Inner Will if published as is, sounds like a power to skip. I don't want a power that has a conditional usage. Powers like those need to really wow me or have larger benefits like Vengeance. I'd rather use Aid Self or have another attack.
- Throw Sand = Touch of Fear. (Oh look...skip.)
-I'd like to see Eagle's Claw as the T9 attack. To match the other T9's the other secondaries have and it looks sexy to use.

So something like this:

T1: Web Grenade
T2: Storm Kick
T3: Cobra Strike
T4: Dragon's Tail
T5: Reach for the Limit
T6: ???
T7: Reaction Time
T8: Burst of Speed
T9: Eagle's Claw


- Shuriken and Thunder Kick. Ok. Maybe Storm Kick instead?
- Trick Shot. Why not Dart Burst? or a throwing knives effect? Something to break the chain of kicks and shuriken.
- Spin Kick. Too many kicks...Cobra Strike.
- Envenom Blades. Nice.
- Dragon's Tail. Good.
- Caltrops. YES.
- Masterful Throw...it's seems unimaginative. Again I'd like to see more melee. Eagles Claw.
- Explosive Shuriken. OK. Matches your close range, high damage T9's.

So something like this:

T1: Shuriken
T2: Thunder Kick (or) Storm Kick (whichever looks cooler)
T3: Dart Burst (Kunai Knives or Throwing Knives would look cool)
T4: Cobra Strike
T5: Envenom Blades
T6: Dragon's Tail
T7: Caltrops
T8: Eagle's Claw
T9: Explosive Shuriken

Notice it's similar to Thorny Assault's powers.

So...unless Wizards does it's job, Standard might be a healthy format?

No it doesn't. Cards may change, but there is always be chase rares and now mythic rares that cost the most and dominate the format. Then when those cards rotate out, they lose their value in favor of new content. That is power creep according to the definition in the video. A loss of playability in favor of new content.

Modern is dying format that no one plays. It was a last ditch effort from Wizards to create something for the Extended format players who were angry when Wizards destroyed that format with faster rotation cycles. Wizards failed. Now the only viable options are Standard or Legacy. And Legacy is even more broken than Standard. Meanwhile, Vintage is expensive, and barely anyone plays it these days. There is not one single healthy format! Despite whatever the Wizards and anyone who writes about Standard will tell you...one deck...does not...make a healthy format. When more than half the field is Delver, can you honestly say it's a healthy format!?!

So because nothing because nothing matches the power of nine restricted card, in dead format have been printed, there's no power creep in this game? That's your argument?

An argument often posed from people who sell cards a business. I've heard Ben Bleiweiss from StarCityGames make the same point as well as other writer whom he pays to write on his website make the same claim. So I question the source of the argument. But C'mon... 1 and 2 dollar rares are that price, because no one plays them in Standard. And the reason why cards the cost the way they do is because Wizards offers no other legitimate option for constructed play other than Standard!

Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Baneslayer Angel, Griselbrand, Batterskull, Sword of War and Peace, Sword of Feast and Famine, All is Dust, Blightsteel Colossus, Progenitus, Bonfire of the Damned, Huntmaster of the Fells, Iona, Shield of Emeria, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Karn Liberated, Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Liliana of the Veil, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Mindbreak Trap, Mox Opal, Temporal Mastery, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Vengevine, Wurmcoil Engine, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

All of the these were printed recently. All of which you needed to have an answer for. If you didn't, you lose. Never in history of this game has there been a multitude of cards printed in such a small window of time that these cards shook the formats in which they were played and not just in tournament settings. Power crept into into the basic styles of "Johnny" type Magic players. I can't walk ten feet without running into a 10 year old who asks, "Do you have an Enrakul?" The casual game suffers because of Mythic rares.

I honestly wish it were five years ago, when there wasn't this broken crap running rampant in the game.

(Mods feel free to jump in if I get too far off topic.)

I'll first start off by saying I do not believe Magic is a balanced game at the tournament level. In my experience one deck usually dominates for a period of time, then sets rotate out in favor of the most newly printed cards and cycle repeats. I can only recall a few times where there was a diverse field of archetypes in an tournament settings of the past. I remember years by decks Rebels, U/G Madness, Psychatog, Tinker, Astral Slide, Affinity, Faeries, Caw-Blade, Delver. Nothing changes only the deck.

The deck to play.

New mechanics come they often breed new thing not previously done in the past. But Wizards fails to test how they cause non-interactivity, balance issues, or weaken the viablity of older cards. Examples like Storm, Infect, Hexproof, Equipment and Phyrexian mana are examples overpowered abilities that weaken contemporary strategies. Storm...its something players wish Wizards would just dis-invent. It creates non-interactive games where you play a bunch of spells ending with the card with the Storm mechanic...and then the opponent loses. Infect effectively cuts your opponent's starting life total in half where creatures with Infect deal damage in posion counters. Ten poison counters is lethal, a far cry from the poison counter effect from way back in the day dealing one poison counter at a time. Creatures with the Hexproof mechanic make creatures with Shroud mechanic obsolete. Equipment cards are far better than Auras. Phyrexian mana breaks the color pie allowing any deck no matter what color they use, to use cards with Phyrexian mana in their costs. The "best" deck is usually the deck that finds the most synergy with the newest mechanic than the rest of the decks in the field. You see this deck in multiples of the top 8's of tournament reports and they become copied and played by everyone else. This how it goes.

While Wizards does have the power to ban cards deemed too strong for the metagame in an effort to breed diversity, they have taken this act very often in recent memory across several formats not just Standard. You've also mentioned the Modern format. How many cards were banned after the first professional Modern format tournament, hmm? And those broken cards you are alluding to from Alpha were indeed strong, but here's the thing: They did not become broken until years later when the "modern" game developed. The faster, non-interactive games of Type 1/Vintage only developed when cards like Tolarian Academy, Yangmoth's Bargain, Goblin Welder, Oath of Druids, and Tendrils of Agony existed to break those cards you allude to. Cards that were printed years after the ones in Alpha were printed.

This is the part where design fails to breed diversity, and that why I don't believe balance truly exists in the game. But in fairness Wizards cannot truly fix older eternal formats with such large card pools to build from so I can only fault them for Standard, Modern, and Extended (a format that is practically dead).

This does prove however that new cards do make old ones better, not outdating them as you say, but overall Magic being balanced? I disagree. Diversity to me is the better sign of balance. Having options other than, "Play this deck" or "meta against it" don't breed healthy formats. But where does the game fall victim to power creep? Go back to 2008.

For those that do not know, Mythic Rares are rarer than Rares in booster packs. You are guaranteed a Rare in every pack, but Mythics only appear at ratio of 8:1 in booster packs. Many mythic rares are so strong that they defined tournament metagames. While not all Mythics are good or even playable, but some do break the game. They are far stronger than what is or what was legal to play in tournament format settings depending on the format.

Standard used to be and affordable format to play. There were only a few chase rares to get and the average price of a competetive deck for Standard was far less that what they cost today. Not that is game was ever cheap to play, a hundred or two would get you there, nowadays five hundred dollars...easy. A year or two ago, one deck was over a grand. This what Mythic Rares have done to the game. They've elevated the cost to play and inadvertingly raised the price of the normal rares, even commons can cost a dollar each and uncommons can cost over five. Inflation, inflation, inflation as far the eye can see...and it all began to happen when they started making Mythic Rares. Since Magic is a collectible game and thus it is subject to secondary markets...they are very expensive, which makes the packs more valuable. What Wizards did was find a way to generate more cash and inadvertingly inflate the secondary market that surrounds the game increasing the value of the better cards.

This is power creep.

An inability to break into a format and be sucessful due the constraints of money and a lack power in card availibility. I have a full time job, with the normal bills and payments we all face. I could not afford to play Standard if I wanted to. Cards in the Standard and even the Modern format eventually rotate out, reducing the value of most of the cards overtime. Why would I invest in a format where 90% of the cards I invest in lose value, unless the get reprinted (knowledge I wont have until later...) B) The immediate expense. I could just buy the cards I need, but then you are buying power and an advantage over those who cannot afford them or who aren't lucky enough to open them in their packs.

If they had not added a new rarity of cards. This would all be a mute point, then the money factor would not be strong. There wouldn't be such a disparity in power due to the cost/value of the more powerful cards.

The only comparison that I can make between Magic and CoH would be Mythic Rares in Magic and Incarnate Powers in CoH. Compared to CoH, design-wise some of Magic's Mythic Rares are creatures and spells that are at an Incarnate level-like strength. They do absurd things in a game. Give me a deck with the right Mythics against one without and I have a large advantage. It would be similar to running non-incarnate story arcs or missions with them, they just aren't as challenging.

(Example: Griselbrand compared to Yawgmoth's Bargain. Take a broken enchantment that net's you large amounts of card advantage at the cost of your own life points, then, make it a creature, give it wings, lifelink, a 7/7 power and toughness, and that Mythic rare status.)

I will stipulate not all Mythic Rares break the game, just the really good ones. (The one's you see one every tournament report, if you follow Magic)

The video specifically stated the Standard format, which is where I strongly disagree. I don't think there is a single format for Paper Magic (at least that I've played) where Magic is no affected by power creep. Magic's: Duel of the Planeswalkers online card game might have been the better choice to describe a game where power creep isn't a factor.

I'm sure you and I can go into a long discussion about modern Magic, it's game balance, interactivity, it's power creep (or lack of) but this isn't the place to do so per forum rules. I don't want to go off on a long rant about another game. But in terms of the subject of power creep, look at the current block of cards, then go back another block, and then another, and another, and what I see is steady increase in power as you move forward to today. Magic is too big to look at in terms of set to set, you have to look at it in terms of block to block or year to year.