Hey everyone! Here's a link to Forrest's Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/forrestimel/five-color-playmat-collection-by-forrest-imel?ref=5pk3n6
Now we have to start some fake internet beef with each other so we can just do react content back and forth on that, our people will get in touch with your people 😎
I think I finally understood why you guys say you're not an mtg channel. You're actually a commander channel, which brings much more inherent engagement. Well played
In magic, the survival win condition is card advantage. Cards in hand is a resource that naturally empties out faster than it replenishes. A control deck seeks to ensure it never runs out of stamina, while trading cards with the opponent to negate theirs. Eventually you will "Survive" and reach a point in the game where you are the only player with stamina and the opponent is effectively dead on the ground while you walk over and beat them with a stick. In magic, mill is not played as survival. It is played as a race, where you try to empty their library as fast as possible. By the definition here, that is a mastery win condition. The closest thing to mill as survival would be a control deck that can refill their library. Combo/synergy is essentially the mastery win condition in magic. If I achieve X combination of cards, all previous tempo and card advantage are negated/eclipsed by the output of that combo/synergy.
Isn't card advantage a means to the survival win condition and not the win condition itself? For comparison, tempo is a way to achieve conquest win condition, but would that mean tempo is the conquest win condition?
I'd say that in a control deck, the card advantage is what effectively wins the game. Sure we can split hairs on what specifically caused your opponent to die between decking out or some big hexproof flyer, but dominating the card advantage resources is what defines the strategy and deck building decisions within the game of magic the gathering. I think in each game, you can point to a resource and identify it as being related to survival, conquest, etc, and through that correlation make conclusions about what "survival" requires for that game. For example, I would personally argue that mana is the core resource of conquest in magic. The player who converts their mana into on board advantage and damage the most efficiently can win through conquest. An aggro deck maximizes their mana conversion to dominate the board, while a tempo deck prevents the opponent from efficiently converting in order to dominate the board. In a way, both decks are attacking the problem of "tempo" from a different angle to achieve the same goal. The resource they focus on, mana, is what generally identifies conquest deck in magic.
Wizards has decided that 1 mana is worth 5 cards in 1v1 for the comparison. Tome scour does 5 Glimpse the unthinkable does 10 Mind funeral mills until a land is hit 4 times, which on average is 10-14
In my earliest days of playing Magic while understanding the rules the holy grails of alternate win conditions for me were mill and winning without playing lands (though honestly this would actually fall into conquest or mastery since the absence of lands is not itself the win condition but the success condition for the deckbuilding challenge). They're so satisfying, deliberately attempting to circumvent the fundamental play pattern of the game.
it's so cool seeing the relatively smaller MtG channels supporting each other~! I've been watching that mill guy for over a year and I've been watching y'all for a few months it's really amazing see some amount of collaboration between the two of y'all~!
The level of “feels bad” you get from mill vs discard vs counter vs kill is more than actualization, it’s also resources expended. A card in your deck is a potential resource, a card in hand is something that you have “spent” a draw to obtain, a card being played is something that you have both drawn and spent mana on, while a card in play is one that you have gotten some potential benefit from.
Yeah, I don't feel bad because I get milled or have to discard. I feel bad because when I have no cards in my deck or in hand, I can't actually play the game. 😂
Then, of course, there's the secret fourth win condition, which is to annoy your opponent until they concede. Like the good old fashioned Shahrazad/Panoptic Mirror combo deck! 😄
Probably the weirdest alternate win condition I've seen in a game is yugioh's Victory Dragon (and similar cards). If Victory Dragon reduces your opponent's life points to 0, they lose the match. Not the game, the entire best of 3 or whatever. Fundamentally this doesn't work because you're allowed to concede at any time in yugioh (and its banned), but its still a funny concept. Its such an alternative win condition that you literally dont even need to play the game.
*Distraction Makers is not responsible for any friends lost, property or personal damage, or removal from local game stores based on the content of our videos.
@@OrdemDoGravetoI’m genuinely curious; what is it about those decks and play patterns that you like? (I’m coming from a head space where those effects don’t upset me, but I don’t understand the appeal of solely playing to make your opponents miserable, which to be clear is only how I see those decks, not why you personally play them.)
@@maximillianhallett3055 It's not about making the oponent miserable. It's about controling the match and not letting the oponent progress his game plan until you menages to win with whatever win condition you have.
@@maximillianhallett3055 For me personally, it's the same appeal that any other control strategy has: It's very fun both during deckbuilding and gameplay to try and "solve the puzzle" that your theoretical opponents will throw at you. I think there's an under appreciation from the other side sometimes about how much thinking and strategizing actually goes into "not letting you play", and solving that puzzle can be very mentally stimulating. It requires a real mastery over the possibility space of the game, and being able to demonstrate and exercise that knowledge can be really satisfying.
Love the channel, but just here to say the opening little voice and whistle sound is entertaining enough for me to click all by itself, so kudos to whoever was responsible for that
Turbo Fog decks usually played a large number of Howling Mine style effects to both ensure they always had a fog or interaction in had every turn, and to force opponents to draw out faster. Which means games were no were near as slow, grueling and soul destroying as Lantern Control was. It's been a long time since a Turbo Fog was viable in any format, but those games weren't that much longer than standard control decks because of the fact that players would often be drawing 3-4 cards a turn if the Fog deck stabilized and the Fog deck's turns become very quick at that point; almost like a draw/go control deck. I don't think it's accurate to describe TF decks as creating a play pattern where there is no interaction given that they are achieving their stable controlled game state be actively playing spells and interaction each turn to prevent themselves from dying, not just controlling people's draws to stop them from playing the game. IMO it's a fine archetype and not particularly powerful or problematic.
I feel the opposite way about counter spells vs kill spells. If you're gonna remove the creature, I'd rather have it happen up front so I don't get my hopes up that I'm advancing toward my win condition. Destroying a creature thats in play could also mean losing enchantments and counters, if that same creature was countered I could use the enchantments on something else
but at least if its in play there is potential that i can interact with and make use of or save the creature before it gets removed without myself having access to countermagic. Also, a lot of very good creatures have etb's that matter
@@marcello9476 Thats fair. I play a lot of control so maybe I'm just more comfortable with the grief that I tend to give other players by using counterspells
@@marcello9476 I play alot more aggro than control, but I still lean towards the control player's opinion in this case; a resolved removal spell usually represents a bigger loss of resources to me than a spell being countered. To try and clarify; a permanent in play means in addition to resources spent to draw and play it, keeping the shields up/managing board state so a permanent can keep contributing is an upkeep cost. Yes, good ETB effects mitigate the loss, but an opponent resolving removal still technically slows a clock; not necessarily the most important one atm, but a clock nevertheless.
@@maximillianhallett3055 I know, thats my point. Im saying its ridiculous to try and argue that youd rather have your creature be countered than kill spelled since counters are more effective against creatures. Did you think i was arguing for the removal of countermagic from mtg??
I find it amusing that people hate counterspells more than kill spells, as I feel the opposite. Counterspells have a very narrow point of interaction: they have to have it right when you cast your spell. A kill spell can be drawn and cast later to bail the player out. Counterspells give the opponent more agency over the counterspell player because they can hold their spells to overwhelm the countermagic with multiple spells, utilize activated abilities to dodge countermagic and “waste” the counterspell player’s mana that they held up for the spell, and simply cast things before the counterspell player has the resources to even hold up a counter in the first place, so now they are faced with the choice of countering new threats vs answering the already-existing threats, and so on.
This is a great analogy. Do you have more thoughts on economy = mastery? I'm wondering if it's more of combo, since the term economy makes me think of resource accumulation vs resource depletion.
It would be interesting to then explore the other end of this spectrum of cards and resources with creature enchantments/ auras being so poor for the majority of the history of magic.
There are some "race wincons" that I really like, The millennium calendar is one of them. It starts slow, but when you notice it is already late. Cards that Say "you win the game" are cool, because everyone now is united with one thing in mind.
Mill as deck archetype is more of a conquest or even a mastery type of decks. But history brought to life some decks that play controll to a point that there is no wincon it them. First PT millstone deck or Floch UWx controll decks were closeer to pure survival type of gameplay.
I do feel milling, as a win condition, is still 'conquest'. Though decking *yourself* is a loss due to failure to survive. So it's a weird space there.
Sometimes it feels like starving the opponent out - even literally if they didn't have lunch yet! When you have no cards to draw in "Inscryption" it places a nigh-unkillable creature on the opponents board EACH turn. It also becomes more powerful over time, and I think it's called "Starvation" or "Hunger"
I’m still unsure how fun is a win condition that asks you to reach a certain height of points. Like lorcana. It does not feel satisfying to me to reach 20 unlike in MTG it is satisfying to get my opponent to 0. It even feels more satisfying if my opponent got me to 1 while on my way to win.
It’s definitely a difference in player story. Conquest is interactive in nature. You have to beat your opponent rather than surpass a challenge. Both have merit, just depends on the experience you’re designing.
The turbo fog archetype didn’t exist in 2005/2006, but my ex played a Bant version with Gaea’s Blessing and Mesmeric Orb. She brewed the extended legal list on her own. Still hate the orb.
I'm not salty about a card being milled here or there. Unless im tutoring a lot, the card that got milled might as well have been milled from the bottom of my library: I don't see every card every game anyway.
Hey everyone! Here's a link to Forrest's Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/forrestimel/five-color-playmat-collection-by-forrest-imel?ref=5pk3n6
AYOOO WE FAMOUS, gotta do some low effort-high quality react to this one after watching the first 20 seconds :)
Lmao
epic
And then they do a reaction to that reaction, which is an alternative win condition to break the TH-cam algorithm
Now we have to start some fake internet beef with each other so we can just do react content back and forth on that, our people will get in touch with your people 😎
@@ForrestImel internet content farming 101, they'll never know 🤣
I think I finally understood why you guys say you're not an mtg channel. You're actually a commander channel, which brings much more inherent engagement. Well played
Been playing this game for ~20 years, so I’m pretty sure “winning” a game of MtG is a myth-only your opponent(s) can do that.
In magic, the survival win condition is card advantage. Cards in hand is a resource that naturally empties out faster than it replenishes. A control deck seeks to ensure it never runs out of stamina, while trading cards with the opponent to negate theirs. Eventually you will "Survive" and reach a point in the game where you are the only player with stamina and the opponent is effectively dead on the ground while you walk over and beat them with a stick.
In magic, mill is not played as survival. It is played as a race, where you try to empty their library as fast as possible. By the definition here, that is a mastery win condition. The closest thing to mill as survival would be a control deck that can refill their library.
Combo/synergy is essentially the mastery win condition in magic. If I achieve X combination of cards, all previous tempo and card advantage are negated/eclipsed by the output of that combo/synergy.
Isn't card advantage a means to the survival win condition and not the win condition itself? For comparison, tempo is a way to achieve conquest win condition, but would that mean tempo is the conquest win condition?
I'd say that in a control deck, the card advantage is what effectively wins the game. Sure we can split hairs on what specifically caused your opponent to die between decking out or some big hexproof flyer, but dominating the card advantage resources is what defines the strategy and deck building decisions within the game of magic the gathering. I think in each game, you can point to a resource and identify it as being related to survival, conquest, etc, and through that correlation make conclusions about what "survival" requires for that game.
For example, I would personally argue that mana is the core resource of conquest in magic. The player who converts their mana into on board advantage and damage the most efficiently can win through conquest. An aggro deck maximizes their mana conversion to dominate the board, while a tempo deck prevents the opponent from efficiently converting in order to dominate the board. In a way, both decks are attacking the problem of "tempo" from a different angle to achieve the same goal. The resource they focus on, mana, is what generally identifies conquest deck in magic.
Wizards has decided that 1 mana is worth 5 cards in 1v1 for the comparison.
Tome scour does 5
Glimpse the unthinkable does 10
Mind funeral mills until a land is hit 4 times, which on average is 10-14
In my earliest days of playing Magic while understanding the rules the holy grails of alternate win conditions for me were mill and winning without playing lands (though honestly this would actually fall into conquest or mastery since the absence of lands is not itself the win condition but the success condition for the deckbuilding challenge). They're so satisfying, deliberately attempting to circumvent the fundamental play pattern of the game.
it's so cool seeing the relatively smaller MtG channels supporting each other~! I've been watching that mill guy for over a year and I've been watching y'all for a few months it's really amazing see some amount of collaboration between the two of y'all~!
The level of “feels bad” you get from mill vs discard vs counter vs kill is more than actualization, it’s also resources expended. A card in your deck is a potential resource, a card in hand is something that you have “spent” a draw to obtain, a card being played is something that you have both drawn and spent mana on, while a card in play is one that you have gotten some potential benefit from.
Yeah, I don't feel bad because I get milled or have to discard. I feel bad because when I have no cards in my deck or in hand, I can't actually play the game. 😂
@@Xoulrath_tergrid smiles upon you
@@xDukii Tergid is a joke of a card. 😂
Then, of course, there's the secret fourth win condition, which is to annoy your opponent until they concede. Like the good old fashioned Shahrazad/Panoptic Mirror combo deck! 😄
Probably the weirdest alternate win condition I've seen in a game is yugioh's Victory Dragon (and similar cards). If Victory Dragon reduces your opponent's life points to 0, they lose the match. Not the game, the entire best of 3 or whatever. Fundamentally this doesn't work because you're allowed to concede at any time in yugioh (and its banned), but its still a funny concept. Its such an alternative win condition that you literally dont even need to play the game.
Whaaaaat XD
Now I want to create a turbo fog deck!
Seems like the type of deck I love: "I won't let you play".
*Distraction Makers is not responsible for any friends lost, property or personal damage, or removal from local game stores based on the content of our videos.
@@distractionmakers It won't be much worse then my "all counters" or my discart or land destruction decks hehe
@@OrdemDoGravetoI’m genuinely curious; what is it about those decks and play patterns that you like? (I’m coming from a head space where those effects don’t upset me, but I don’t understand the appeal of solely playing to make your opponents miserable, which to be clear is only how I see those decks, not why you personally play them.)
@@maximillianhallett3055 It's not about making the oponent miserable.
It's about controling the match and not letting the oponent progress his game plan until you menages to win with whatever win condition you have.
@@maximillianhallett3055 For me personally, it's the same appeal that any other control strategy has: It's very fun both during deckbuilding and gameplay to try and "solve the puzzle" that your theoretical opponents will throw at you. I think there's an under appreciation from the other side sometimes about how much thinking and strategizing actually goes into "not letting you play", and solving that puzzle can be very mentally stimulating. It requires a real mastery over the possibility space of the game, and being able to demonstrate and exercise that knowledge can be really satisfying.
God, I miss playing Nephalia Drownyard control.
Love the channel, but just here to say the opening little voice and whistle sound is entertaining enough for me to click all by itself, so kudos to whoever was responsible for that
Turbo Fog decks usually played a large number of Howling Mine style effects to both ensure they always had a fog or interaction in had every turn, and to force opponents to draw out faster. Which means games were no were near as slow, grueling and soul destroying as Lantern Control was. It's been a long time since a Turbo Fog was viable in any format, but those games weren't that much longer than standard control decks because of the fact that players would often be drawing 3-4 cards a turn if the Fog deck stabilized and the Fog deck's turns become very quick at that point; almost like a draw/go control deck. I don't think it's accurate to describe TF decks as creating a play pattern where there is no interaction given that they are achieving their stable controlled game state be actively playing spells and interaction each turn to prevent themselves from dying, not just controlling people's draws to stop them from playing the game. IMO it's a fine archetype and not particularly powerful or problematic.
I feel the opposite way about counter spells vs kill spells. If you're gonna remove the creature, I'd rather have it happen up front so I don't get my hopes up that I'm advancing toward my win condition. Destroying a creature thats in play could also mean losing enchantments and counters, if that same creature was countered I could use the enchantments on something else
but at least if its in play there is potential that i can interact with and make use of or save the creature before it gets removed without myself having access to countermagic. Also, a lot of very good creatures have etb's that matter
@@marcello9476 Thats fair. I play a lot of control so maybe I'm just more comfortable with the grief that I tend to give other players by using counterspells
@@marcello9476 I play alot more aggro than control, but I still lean towards the control player's opinion in this case; a resolved removal spell usually represents a bigger loss of resources to me than a spell being countered. To try and clarify; a permanent in play means in addition to resources spent to draw and play it, keeping the shields up/managing board state so a permanent can keep contributing is an upkeep cost. Yes, good ETB effects mitigate the loss, but an opponent resolving removal still technically slows a clock; not necessarily the most important one atm, but a clock nevertheless.
@@marcello9476strong etbs are why counterspells are needed lol
@@maximillianhallett3055 I know, thats my point. Im saying its ridiculous to try and argue that youd rather have your creature be countered than kill spelled since counters are more effective against creatures. Did you think i was arguing for the removal of countermagic from mtg??
The presence of infinite combos adds to the mastery win space , wonder what a format without them would play like
Normally I'd say Standard, but WotC screwed the pooch and we have MULTIPLE infinite loops in standard right now. Uhhhh try Draft.
Great video as usual! Love the uploads.
Also, did Forrest mute his own mic when he said "shit" like 13 minutes in instead of fixing it in post? Hahaha
Haha thanks. No, usually I put a quack sound in the edit, but I missed this one.
I find it amusing that people hate counterspells more than kill spells, as I feel the opposite. Counterspells have a very narrow point of interaction: they have to have it right when you cast your spell. A kill spell can be drawn and cast later to bail the player out. Counterspells give the opponent more agency over the counterspell player because they can hold their spells to overwhelm the countermagic with multiple spells, utilize activated abilities to dodge countermagic and “waste” the counterspell player’s mana that they held up for the spell, and simply cast things before the counterspell player has the resources to even hold up a counter in the first place, so now they are faced with the choice of countering new threats vs answering the already-existing threats, and so on.
Conquest, survival and mastery fit with rush, defense and economy
Conquest = Rush
Survival = deffense
Economy = mastery
This is a great analogy. Do you have more thoughts on economy = mastery? I'm wondering if it's more of combo, since the term economy makes me think of resource accumulation vs resource depletion.
@guksungan1267 some combos can go off on turn 2, so, I don't associate economy with combo
It would be interesting to then explore the other end of this spectrum of cards and resources with creature enchantments/ auras being so poor for the majority of the history of magic.
There are some "race wincons" that I really like, The millennium calendar is one of them. It starts slow, but when you notice it is already late. Cards that Say "you win the game" are cool, because everyone now is united with one thing in mind.
Mill as deck archetype is more of a conquest or even a mastery type of decks. But history brought to life some decks that play controll to a point that there is no wincon it them. First PT millstone deck or Floch UWx controll decks were closeer to pure survival type of gameplay.
I do feel milling, as a win condition, is still 'conquest'. Though decking *yourself* is a loss due to failure to survive. So it's a weird space there.
There is always a winner and loser in MTG so conquest is the direction it leans for sure.
Sometimes it feels like starving the opponent out - even literally if they didn't have lunch yet!
When you have no cards to draw in "Inscryption" it places a nigh-unkillable creature on the opponents board EACH turn. It also becomes more powerful over time, and I think it's called "Starvation" or "Hunger"
Man vs Self would be deck construction
I’m still unsure how fun is a win condition that asks you to reach a certain height of points. Like lorcana. It does not feel satisfying to me to reach 20 unlike in MTG it is satisfying to get my opponent to 0. It even feels more satisfying if my opponent got me to 1 while on my way to win.
It’s definitely a difference in player story. Conquest is interactive in nature. You have to beat your opponent rather than surpass a challenge. Both have merit, just depends on the experience you’re designing.
Yall were playing pre grindstone?
That’s before my time, but yeah that is probably the best example.
The turbo fog archetype didn’t exist in 2005/2006, but my ex played a Bant version with Gaea’s Blessing and Mesmeric Orb. She brewed the extended legal list on her own. Still hate the orb.
Ooof I remember the first time someone played mesmeric orb against me. It felt like cheating XD
@@distractionmakers psychological warfare at its tabletop finest.
Just curious what category you would select for poison counters.
Hmm seems like conquest, but could be considered survival with proliferate.
It kind of makes me sad and happy at the same time that all my favorite deck archetypes are disliked so much.
Haha probably means you just like things outside the norm. Honestly, we probably shouldn’t use negative terms to describe the play patterns.
The fourth and least talked about way to win by making your opponent time out
Arenas win condition is making sure to match you against a deck you do absolutely nothing against and they just flood you with lands
Tfw you are playing a Ramp deck and you get matched vs Burn 5 games in a row.
i wonder if people would feel less bad about mill if it mostly exiled face down instead of into the graveyard.
Good idea.
I'm not salty about a card being milled here or there. Unless im tutoring a lot, the card that got milled might as well have been milled from the bottom of my library: I don't see every card every game anyway.
Request more enunciation when saying “mastery or race”… to avoid some looks…
Hahaha noted
Second!
Graveyard vs removed from the game 😅
First,!
as a simple green player: counterspells should be banned, kill spells r fair
Strong etbs require counterspells to exist. Combo wins too.
@@maximillianhallett3055 i also believe those should be banned as typical blue mage nonsense. i shouldve said ban island in the og comment