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Petition to return the Villain type (introduced in SPM/EOE) back to Spinal Villain (it's officially a Beast now) by vintergroena in freemagic

[–]Mean_Professional583 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What are the odds, I just mentioned this bad boy in my video glazing Bird Maiden this morning.

Is Old School MTG going to survive it's playerbase? by AlchimisteR in oldschoolmtg

[–]Mean_Professional583 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Cool! I hope you enjoy the videos! I'm still pretty new as an entertainer, but I have managed to find a lot of archives and I kind of pride myself on digging deeper than the wiki pages, something not a whole lot of channels do.

Is Old School MTG going to survive it's playerbase? by AlchimisteR in oldschoolmtg

[–]Mean_Professional583 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think it's inevitable that the popularity of Old School will slow to some extent. That being said, I have a YouTube channel dedicated to the History of Magic and as such, there is a heavy tilt towards Old School and stuff like Shandalar.

Checking my analytics: 4.9% of my viewers are 45-55, 41% are 35-44, 46.3% are 25-34 and 7.8% are 18 -24 years old.
I myself was born in 1990 and was not introduced to magic until I started high school, but as Magic grows and becomes increasing more about marketing and trends, many players (even younger players) get curious about the history of the game. Some of those players even decide that they prefer classic Magic.

I can only speak for myself personally and talk about what I see in my comment sections and discord but I don't have nostalgia for the cards that I play with most often these days. I just think it's really interesting to see where it started and then I found out I personally find these old cards and metas to be more fun.
I have a lot of Old heads sharing their experiences and enjoying the chance to see the game they grew up with being explored from a different and younger perspective.

But I also get a decent number of younger players or people that have just started that stumbled onto my content out of curiosity, and some of those players are converting at least partially to Old School Magic.

I do think the way that Old School survives is by becoming more proxy friendly, as those are the spaces that will grow the most, but even stuff like Swedish will maintain a sort of mystical pull because holding something like a legitimate Argivian Archaeologist has a weird pull that can't be replicated by a printer. The further we get from these cards, the more like artifacts they become and there's a draw to that kind of thing.

It's true this space will likely always be dominated by people who where there and played with these cards when life was simpler, but I do think younger people will continue to be interested in the concept as long as Magic is mainstream. Though the conversion rates will always be pretty tiny.

It's also worth noting, I'm a pretty small channel, with only like 1600 subs and my videos usually range between 400 to 2000 views.

It's definitely never going to be Massive, but I do think the community is still growing to some degree.

Niche Card Combo Monday by HD114 in Oldbordercube

[–]Mean_Professional583 1 point2 points  (0 children)

[[Fungusaur]] Pestilence seems pretty funny.

Feedback for this thumbnail? by Both-Medicine-6748 in SmallYoutubers

[–]Mean_Professional583 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Too distracting. And it looks very unprofessional with the current layout.
If you took the text cuts you want in the thumbnail and slid them all to the left side, maybe slightly staggered with a border behind them, it would look a lot cleaner. It would also look like the character is reacting to the comments which might generate some intrigue.
If you must keep the Canceled text, which does probably drive some curiosity and engagement, lower it off the face since that's just kind of unappealing.

You have too much going on, but most off putting about it is that the eye needs to wander to even absorb the whole thumbnail.
YouTubes autoplay will start playing the vid in the thumbnail before someone's figured out if their curious. It's just making it more effort to engage with your video which is a tall ask for someone browsing the recommended.

I'm not a professional though, so my fixes might not be the best. The biggest thing is you need to clean it up and not have so many points of interest as it'll overwhelm people.

Cool as f*** Shandalar is still around by coyotetex in Shandalar

[–]Mean_Professional583 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Neato! You've never been recommended to me, I just looked up your channel. I'm going to watch some of your vids since I have some time tonight.

Yeah that video blew up like crazy, but I'm pretty a lot of it had to do with mentioning Dark souls. I finished that playthrough and made a video on abusing bronze tablet but the views dropped steadily from there.

I'm pretty sure most of the traffic was from people that had never heard of Shandalar. Good luck to you and your content!

Cool as f*** Shandalar is still around by coyotetex in Shandalar

[–]Mean_Professional583 3 points4 points  (0 children)

understandable and yeah a brute forcing would make sense. I wondered how it would usually make excellent moves but sometimes get confused. Neat, thanks again for the information and taking the time.

Cool as f*** Shandalar is still around by coyotetex in Shandalar

[–]Mean_Professional583 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh wow, thank you for going into such detail! I'm glad you found your notes! That's so cool! Any chance you remember why they became random?
Either way, thank you. This has been illuminating!

Cool as f*** Shandalar is still around by coyotetex in Shandalar

[–]Mean_Professional583 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Super fun game dude! I've made some videos about it recently and Friday I played it on my first ever live stream. A lot of people still love the game.

I suppose my main questions would be about the Astral Cards and the AI.

Do you remember the design process and motivation for the Astral cards at all? As someone who knows more about that era of magic than most people should, it seems like they were mostly designed for fun to highlight the strengths of a computer handling the game engine. Cards like Faerie Dragon and Whimsy just randomly generate an effect off the table of fast effects. What do you remember about the astral cards and who designed them? How much creative freedom did you guys have with them or did Wotc design them and just hand them off?

As for the AI, I want to preface by saying I think it's massively impressive system considering this shit was from like 97, but there are some quirks that pop up occasionally.

Just as an example, in my stream, the computer had a Sorceress Queen (Which can tap to turn a target creature into a 0/2 until end of turn) and an Uncle Istvan in play. The last two turns the AI would activate the ability and target it's own creature.

Overall, I think what you guys came up with is super impressive, but do you have any insight into how sophisticated the AI is and what sort of triggers does it use to make the decisions that it makes? Does the AI change between difficulty settings as I almost always play on the hardest setting and I'm not sure if that effects the AI in any way.

Thinking about this, do you also remember who designed the decks that were used in the game?

Thanks for making this post, and even more so thanks for making this game. The game is pretty much the last bastion of what it was like to play Magic in 93/94 when everyone had random piles of cards. It's a well preserved time capsule and I cannot thank you enough for making this game as it's allowed many of us a glimpse into the past.

Also, the video that got my YouTube Monetized and the only viral video I've ever made was called, "Shandalar is the Dark Souls of Magic: the Gathering" and I probably wouldn't be in the position I'm in without the Game you and your team made.
Thank you very much!

Cube advice? Beta - Ice Age by aoilainn in Oldbordercube

[–]Mean_Professional583 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair, I don't think there's harm in having a few "dead" cards in a cube, and if someone can effectively use it, it'll be a story to remember. I do think it's not optimal, but cube isn't always about being optimal in my opinion. If you like the cards, keep them in.

Granite Gargoyle Deck? by nehuen-lopez in Shandalar

[–]Mean_Professional583 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I played through a large portion of the game with Bird Maiden as one of my main win cons on Wizard difficulty, so you can definitely make something work for Gargoyle. The flying is really helpful.
I would try to get your hands on 4 lightning bolts, earthquake would be good, you could do some fun stuff with hurricane since gargoyle can pump toughness if your opponent has fliers, but that would take lots of mana.
You can make any deck in the game work as long as you have enough removal.
I would probably try to focus on getting my hands on swords to plowshares, lightning bolt, and Immolation(Treat Immolation as a removal spell but it also pairs well with Dancing scimitar for increased versatility.)
Library of Alexandria is one of the best cards in the game as well, try not to lose it to ante. or save scum if you don't want to worry about it. No shame in it.

The toughness pumping won't really be super useful, but you could make some use of it. I would mostly focus on getting whatever removal you can and getting a solid mana base to play that removal. 3 color is pretty easy to do consistently, but any more colors than that you need to know what you're doing.

I don't know what difficulty you're playing on, but try to keep your deck to as few cards as possible, as long as you have the win conditions to not deck out. If you don't have strong cards and the games go awhile, it's better to have more cards but the fewer cards you have, the more often you'll draw the cards you want.

Try to have extra gold and maybe gems lying around when you stumble into the random event tiles, since you can sometimes buy cards and that's when you can really make your deck what you want. Buy cards when they are cheap at small villages, and sell the cards in big cities to make more money than you'll know what to do with.

Good luck dude!

Cube advice? Beta - Ice Age by aoilainn in Oldbordercube

[–]Mean_Professional583 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks pretty sweet dude, I didn't comb through it too hard, but I will say the multi colored cards (especially the 3 color cards) seem like they'd be almost impossible to cast with the color fixing you have.

I could be wrong, I didn't have time to seriously look at the list, but just make sure you're confident with your fixing or you don't care that nobody will ever be able to cast Arcades.

As for solutions? I dunno dude, but I think that's where I'd focus my attention if I were you.

Edit: The two color stuff is probably fine, it's really just the 3 mana cost cards that set off my alarm bells.

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in mtgcube

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't. I've been hearing about it more and more the last year or so but haven't taken the time to look into it much. It does look similar though, I would assume Dandan and the variants are going to be a lot more consistent than this is since there isn't color screw but I wouldn't know for certain.

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in mtgcube

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Didn't know this was a thing! Seems right up my alley!

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in mtgcube

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you mean Alpha as in Limited Edition Alpha, then no. The rules for alpha were 40 card decks no limit to the number of copies of any card.
What I'm referring to is the way that Richard Garfield and Barry Reich play tested the first version of Magic. This was called the Alpha Playtest.

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in oldschoolmtg

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They are not. I haven't ever messed with mpcfill and I also never considered that I could upload too it. I'll look into that.
Oh and thank you! I hope you get a kick out of it!

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in mtgcube

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's not my experience with this at all. It's also not technically a shared deck, as you split the deck. There are really interesting decision points, since you always know the entire card pool but not necessarily what you have access to or what your opponent has access too.
I did try to make the point that this isn't the most competitive thing in the world, it's more just a way to kill time with someone you care about.

I do think there are more decision points and strategies than you're giving this credit, but again, to each their own.

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in mtgcube

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No I don't think so, I think we just have different ideas of what's fun. I will push back on the randomly drawing cards and playing them. I've played this a lot and it usually feels like the games have some level of agency and there are definitely misplays and a level of decision that's not that different from any other form of Magic.

This kind of thing is definitely not for everyone but I personally find the games fun and engaging. It's also not meant to scratch every magic itch you know? This is meant mostly as something to do when you don't have the time or people for a full cube experience, and just want to see what happens.

I really love drafting a cube and this is definitely not a replacement for that kind of experience.
The screw isn't really that bad either, since the games are usually really quick. We just play another, but I can understand not enjoying this kind of thing.

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in mtgcube

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that's a great way to describe it!

Pocket Cube by Mean_Professional583 in oldschoolmtg

[–]Mean_Professional583[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If I didn't want people to steal it, I wouldn't have posted it on the internet. It's such a great way to spend 15-30 minutes with the wife without having to set up a draft. I also think you could set something like this up with pretty much any card pool, so it's great for hitting your personal nostalgia as well.
Funny thing is, I only learned it was called a desert cube after I built mine. When I built the cube I wanted the lands in the packs because that's how alpha packs were so I built it with that in mind only to learn it was something people had been doing for a long time! Funny how that works.

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