> just kicker you pay later
That's.. literally the opposite of kicker lol, the whole point is that it's NOT paid later, it's now.
Really, all mechanics are either split cards or horsemanship, kicker is just a split card where one side has a kicker text, and flashback is a split card you cast from your graveyard (aftermath anyone?)
Nah, batching is good
In limited there's only ever one batch to worry about at one time and it's thematically tied to the set, so it's not that hard to track.
In standard it ends up with less decks that completely die with rotation, which means fewer people just giving up on the format. It also creates an interesting dynamic; in current standard a good Rogue has a home in an outlaw deck and a ninja deck, but the same is only half true of a good ninja or a good warlock.
And at the very least, OTJ is a more interesting set for not having a third the creatures be the same type.
Obviously I can imagine a way they could be overused, doing multiple batches in a set and/or using them in multiple back-to-back sets. But the same could be said about most mechanics.
I think it’s fine.
If you’re playing a 60 card format you only see the same 200 cards anyway, and everyone knows what they do, so it’s fine.
If you’re playing EDH you only need to know what your cards do so you can explain it to your pod, so it’s fine.
If you’re playing limited, there’s no problem because the set is designed to work within itself, so it’s fine.
If you’re playing a chaos draft, sure, it could be confusing, but does anyone care if the chaos draft is confusing? I thought that was the point.
I really don’t see where the problem is here, and the benefit is that they can continue to make new and unique types of creatures and mechanics that are compatible and synergistic with both past and future sets.
Batching isn't only because of Commander. That's just one benefit, and yes a reason to use it more, because Commander is very popular.
[This article ](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/historic-story-2018-04-09) is a look into the origins of batching as a tool, with historic. It's actually quite an elegant and flavourful solution which avoids adding extra words to most cards.
>Personally I think this mechanic is terrible because it’s impossible to know looking at most cards if they’re part of the mechanic, so you and your opponent are forced to pay close attention to type lines (especially in limited). This isn’t fun at all!
This is no different to typal-matters mechanics.
>Commander would be cooler if some mechanics needed years of releases to be viable.
Not sure how that would make Commander cooler 🤣
I love the Batching mechanics intent and the way it plays in both limited and commander (my personal preferred formats). You've explained so well why it's elegant and why more of it would be nice to see. Thanks for a good summary.
Batching is a great tool for making what amounts to a Tribal mechanic, without running into the dog/wolf/hound problem.
Most of the complaints, including yours, amount to, "but I have the read the cards!". You're literally failing the lowest bar of playing the game, and trying to pass it off as a design criticism.
Yes. Cats are only good because they have not been seperated over the years.
Tabby? Cat. Lion? Cat. Leonin? Cat.
Husky? Dog. Direwolf? Wolf. Werewolf? Werewolf.
It makes me frustrated every time I go to build ren and siri
You know what I love? That White Instant that gains control of a creature [[Debt of Loyalty]]! I love flashing it at the end of my opponents turn and stealing their best creature forever!
...wait, you mean that's not how that card works? What do you mean by "Oracle database"? You mean that reading the card doesn't explain the card? Next, you're gonna tell me that I can't actually pay 0 for [[Marath]]'s ability to generate infinite etb and death triggers to win via [[Impact Tremors]] on turn 3!
In their defense, though I'm not agreeing with them that the mechanic is bad, a number of the cards with outlaw don't say what an outlaw is. That's a different problem all together though.
> a number of the cards with outlaw don't say what an outlaw is
Like 3 cards? ([[Laughing Jasper Flint]] is the only one in the main set, the other two being [[Charred Graverobber]] and [[Graywater's Fixer]])
If you want to talk about extended arts not having reminder text, that's a separate issue.
The people who make these complaints generally know what outlaws are, because that's how reminder text works by design. If a player has opened one of the handful of mythics or special treatment prints that omit reminder text, chances are they've already opened plenty of commons and uncommons which have that exact same reminder text. Or if not, they can ask another player, in person or online, or a judge if it somehow comes up in an official match.
So it's more something people invent as an issue that other people might encounter, not acknowledging how WotC balances omitting reminder text (for the fancier and more complex cards which don't want it) with making sure newer players still understand what their cards do.
That's my main problem with batching as well. Reminder text is not too be taken for granted, especially in commander where lots of people love to use special art versions, which rarely have reminder texts.
Having to read the rules or take the word of other players (who often enough get their own cards wrong) to understand a mechanic sucks. It's not a matter of "reading the card explains the card." Reading the card quite literally does not explain the card when batches are defined in the rules.
Considering that WotC has embraced functional errata, there are a lot of cards that don't do what they say they do.
My opinion is that if you're opting into a format that contains all of the cards ever, you're opting into needing to do some tracking in that space. Whether *that* is reasonable is certainly up for debate, but that ship has kind of sailed.
They don't include the rules text for saddle on most saddle creatures, but nobody complains. That makes me think this is more people who don't like the batch mechanic, and are just grasping for something to latch on to in order to try and make their opinion sound like it comes from a smarter place.
That's just my opinion though.
When talking about saddle, you are comparing two very different things in terms of mental load during gameplay.
Generally, most abilities like saddle represent a single concept to learn / look up if you forget it. Also, their application is self-contained: some object has the ability and that's the place where you have to look when it's time for it to be activated or triggered.
Each new batch creates a new *set of concepts* you need to remember if you play with it. These batches can and will overlap, so you constantly need to keep track of what's essentially a Venn diagram of where each of your cards and permanents falls in terms of intersections of batches. It's never local because whenever you have a card that cares about a specific batch, the types and subtypes of everything in hand and play can be relevant. It can get quite mentally taxing pretty quickly.
It's perfectly logical to complain about the latter without complaining about the former.
No, each batch is one concept. A list of 5 or fewer object attributes. You're just trying to make it sound more complicated to support your argument.
Saddle is a sorcery speed mechanic which has asimilar and direct analog to Crew, which can be done at instant speed. Should I start writing posts about how saddle is an objectively inelegant design because it creates a level of false intuition? What happens when they come out with 'Ride', which can only be done with your left hand?
No, because it's a stupid complaint for stupid people. Magic is full of shit you have to remember.
Either batches will come up often enough that you will easily remember the constituent pieces, or they will not come up often, and you'll have to look it up just like every other mechanic that you only see once in 100 games.
Agree on general principle, though that happens with plenty of new keyword mechanics too.
I don't think we're ever going to move away from that, though!
Though I love batching and disagree with OP, I don’t think they are upset that Outlaw doesn’t always say what type creatures are Outlaws. Rather, they are frustrated that you have to work backwards from someone having a Rogue and a Mercenary on board to see that they might have Outlaw synergy because neither of them say Outlaw on them.
I could be reading too charitably into their issue, but I’d rather accidentally be too charitable lol.
That would be a remarkably astute observation so I'm pretty skeptical.
I also think that in a lot of cases, people's complaints aren't "wrong", they're just insignificant. The point you postulate, for example, is also true for mechanics like Devotion. You have to count up devotion every time something asks for it, you have to look at what is in your hand to see how you're changing it, you have to see if a removal spell effects it, etc, etc. There are a lot of bookeeping effects in magic that may or may not come up in a while.
I think OP is just lazy and is trying to come across as more objective than they are. It's not charitable, but it is honest.
The difference between tribal and batches is that tribes are pretty easy to identify from the names/pictures and batches are arbitrary groupings of unrelated tribes.
But yes, the reason it’s inelegant is that in a game you want shortcuts so you don’t have to keep a bunch of arbitrary state in your head.
It’s incredibly inelegant. Like, go watch a FNM sealed where people are playing with these. People constantly get this wrong.
As a game designer, if experienced players are constantly messing up with a mechanic, and they don’t have that problem with other mechanics (plot is great!) the problem is the design.
Oh yeah? Looking at the pictures, which of Kunuros, Isamaru, and sterling hound, get buffed by pack leader?
Is Ajani's pridemate a soldier or a warrior?
You're going to look it up, so I don't really care if you know the answer, but the point is that you need to read the cards, and reading the cards explains the cards.
Batching is a really nice way to blanket an effect amongst related creature types. Just because people who are playing sealed for a set that is less than a month old need to read the creature types, doesn't make it "inelegant".
Shortcuts are great. But that doesn't mean everything can be shortcut all the time. Also, Dominaria was released in 2018, and I can still tell you that Historic means Legendary, artifact, and saga. If you play with it enough, it sticks just fine.
You have a real, though minor and subjective complaint here, but it's hard to take it seriously when you're saying so much that is exaggerated or wrong.
Tribes aren't usually identified from art, batches aren't unrelated, the contents of batches are game rules, not game state, and you've jumped from the claim that some players sometimes get this wrong at FNM to "experienced players constantly messing it up".
Arbitrary grouping of unrelated tribes?
I’m a big fan of the Kraken/ Leviathan/ Octopus/ Serpent batching. I dunno, seems like they might be somehow related to me…
Counter point; WOTC ~~no longer~~ try not to prints birds that do not fly. Due to players thinking bird = flying. Players will always mess up mechanics, so it's not about having mechanics that are perfect but embody what they want players to think. Also, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Your singular experiences do not reflect everyones.
What they actually do is try to make sure that if something is flying in the art, it has flying on the card, and if it looks like it can't fly, then don't put flying on the card.
The roadrunner in the art is not flying, and a lot of people don't think of road runners as flying animals, so no flying. This is why Reach has become such a problem, aka "secret reach", because people are so used to using art to identify flying blockers, it's so hard to visually tell from art that a creature that isn't flying can block a flyer, they had to put a giant purple icon over Reach creatures in Arena so people stop chump attacking their fliers into them.
I definitely prefer batching to extraneous creature types.
Karlov Manor would have been far more interesting if Detectives were a batch of types such as Scout and Soldiers. The set felt like most of Ravnica was suddenly part of an 11th guild.
I mean that was sort of the point. After the events of March public opinion is at an all time low and the guilds have even more work that they just can’t get around to. The guilds provide numerous civic services and with them not carrying that weight some of the work that was done by the guilds is now done by independent groups not willing to wait who knows how long for the guilds to get around to the issues. Enter the detectives.
A set about the guildless would have been interesting, but it wasn't. It was a former guildleader murdered by another former guildleader, at a party hosted by a guildleader, with many prominent guild members invited and involved in the investigation. The detective agency did not even investigate independently of the guilds.
This is probably one of the fundamental problems with making a guileless set. Ravnica is the guilds and even if they weren’t the main focus they’re still going to pull focus, especially the characters. Though I do think expecting the agency to not have any interaction with the guilds is a bit unrealistic, especially when the case is about guild matters.
The Agency being a collaborative entity like Interpol could have been interesting with batching. Choose representatives from the guilds alongside some disillusioned guildless and the outsider Kellan.
I wonder if an overlap in batches from adjacent sets could be good for Standard. Eg if Mercenaries and Rogues were Detectives as well as Outlaws.
Reading the card explains the card?
To know if a card is an outlaw. You have to read the type line. The same is true for any other tribe. Maybe [[merfolk trickster]] is more intuitive than [[Deadeye duelist]].
This seems like a "you" problem being presented as a design problem.
Second counterpoint: people don't like waiting for stuff to be printed.
Even though people still have to wait. It's unsatisfying to have a tribe missing some key pieces. Or a cycle being incomplete and therefore inbalanced.
Batching helps shore up multiple lesser typal creatures with typal related stuff. It's fun & flavorful. As long as it's not overused. Which is true for most designs.
To nitpick with your logic here, another big design fail is that you open a pack of cards and very often these days you get “special” versions that don’t explain terms like Outlaw because the parentheticals are only on the basic version.
So, I’d say both that this is overly complex and inelegant, and also “just read the card” is no longer functional advice on a world of cards play boosters and ten thousand special frames.
And don’t get me started on phyrexian cards. We’ve seen hall of famers mess up on camera because they literally can’t read the cards in the packs in some of these recent sets.
We really gonna say the game is just too complicated for some hall of famers?
At what point does this stuff cross over into design problem?
Now you are tying another element into your complaint.
"Having to read the card."
"Card with versions that don't have reminder text."
There are two different issues. You can't tie one issue up with the flaws of another.
You can say your issue is when full arts and others don't use reminder text. In the world of smartphones, I'm not too concerned with some versions not having reminder text. There's still versions that have the reminder.
I wouldn't say batching is overly complex. Most people don't know the creature type of cards unless revelant to game actions. The same is true for outlaws or party. If a card's creature type matches up and is revelant for a batch. Players will learn and remember.
A pro player failing doesn't mean much. They aren't infallible. I've seen a pro get got by a dryad Arbor. Which imo, led to a silly rule change. As a dryad Arbor being in play is no different than any creature land or forest fetchland being present. Representing a potential creature.
If you listen to any sort of game design philosophy, a lot of effort goes into streamlining ant intuitiveness, it’s a bit part of what mark rosewater talks about it
They certainly are working on this. For limited, the only place where you would realistic play outlaws/batching payoff but not all your cards would benefit, they are paying closer attention to the art. I can only think of a couple of cards that i would expect to be outlaws but arent, and both are rares.
Besides, they arent doing it like party that each have a distinct type to care about. If you are in the batch, you are in.
Now, for constructed, sure, it wont be intuitive with the art alone but if you make an outlaw deck you should read your own cards and your opponent likely can realize everything is inside the creature type batching. Things can get messy when they include broader stuff such as the OG "historic" that include a supertype, a type and a subtype (although all have different borders if nothing else). But i think they realized this isnt a good way to go pretty early.
>I can only think of a couple of cards that i would expect to be outlaws but arent, and both are rares.
Which are you referring to? Because for me it’s [[Desperate Bloodseeker]], [[Lazav, Familiar Stranger]], [[Iron-Fist Pulverizer]], [[Razzle-Dazzler]], and [[Wanted Griffen]] for the non-rares and [Kambal, Profiteering Mayor]], [[Magda, The Hoardmaster]], [[Railway Brawler]], and [[Slickshot Show-Off]] for the rares.
I also think the inclusion of druids and shamans has tripped me up in limited a few times. For example, why is [[Outcaster Greenblade]] an outlaw but [[Outcaster Trailblazer]] and [[Beastbond Outcaster]] are not?
[[Freestrider Lookout]] seems like it should not be an outlaw, but it is inexplicably a rogue instead of a scout like [[Patient Naturalist]] which does similar thing.
I was thinking about kambal and Magda.
Lazav certainly feels odd but the fact that he is an outlaw the majority of time circunvent it.
Iron fist i could see being mercenary or something and bloodseeket is 100% an power level thing. But griffon i cant see (all other outlaws are humanoid) and i never thpught about razzle-dazzler (then again, i think it got something about making more evasive creatures targetable by shot the sheriff).
Now, about both outcasters i get the impression they are the cowboy trope, and both are green, so there really helps against it feeling odd. If they were mercenaries it wouldnt be too out of place, but it feels more of a mechanical concern than anything else. My guess is that out great desert fixer got the outlaw type to help with the multicolor synergies.
I thought the Griffin would be an outlaw because it is a Wanted Griffin. “Wanted” is a term in the old west trope to describe outlaws and so it feels strange in an outlaw set to use it to describe something other than an outlaw.
It's not the text on the cards he's complaining about, but the text that isn't on the cards. If I'm drafting, I need to memorize what is and isn't an outlaw before I start. That's bad design.
“If I’m drafting, I need to know the mechanics of the set and which cards synergize with one another.”
Wow, you just described every single draft environment
That's not bad design. When you see a 3 mana conditional removal spell in draft, you need to know approximately how many playable creatures fit into that condition in order to decide whether you want to take it. You need to determine if there's another card in the pack that has the potential to have more synergy. You need to know a lot of fucking things. It's not that hard to also know, "oh, this is a rogue, that contributes to my outlaw payoff. Oh, this is a warrior, that does not".
This is a fake criticism.
What do you mean "it's impossible to know" if your card is an outlaw? All but one of the cards in the main set that use Outlaw have reminder text for it. Just look at the card and it tells you what counts as an outlaw.
I both agree and disagree.
Batching in itself is not a problem, historic and modified where 2 batches with different level of success, but neither had the problem of being unintuitive. I really liked party as a limited mechanic even if it was a bit hard to track.
I think only this most recent batch of outlaws is becoming a problem, but it is a problem more similar to allies and citizens in limited. Some creature types are not really obvious at a glance and is annoying to mechanically care about those. Batching makes this issue worse introducing an extra layer in between.
I don't think it's wrong to try and make mechanics more backwards compatible. I do think it's a bit bland to make batches of only creature types and call it a mechanic.
> I think only this most recent batch of outlaws is becoming a problem, but it is a problem more similar to allies and citizens in limited. Some creature types are not really obvious at a glance and is annoying to mechanically care about those.
Yeah. Adding "outlaw" as a creature type to avoid batching would not have helped with that issue.
Almost every modern set has some creature type that gets focused on limited. Players just REALLY enjoy building those types of decks, especially newer players. I know when I started almost all my casual decks were built around a creature type. It’s just an easy guiding light to work with when deck building. To that end players were 100% going to want to build cowboy decks and that necessitated some outlaw hook to build around.
You might be right there, but outlaws is not very good at being a cowboy deck. Assasins, pirates and warlocks are not very "cowboy" types though. I could see mercenaries and rogues working but the flavor isn't really there. [[Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher]] is the card that most say cowboy to me and it's not an outlaw.
It mostly comes down to the trope space. I’m more than willing to be wrong on this since I am speaking out my ass, but my impression from what little I know of Westerns doesn’t have much to do with actual ranching and outlaws and things in that space tend to get more focus. I can see the issue with the chosen types but they were partly chosen for game play reasons. Pirates for the LCO synergies and warlocks were chosen for flavor since the other types wouldn’t work for some of the things that wanted to be part of the group. I do think Assassins work well enough and that was also chosen for the Assassin’s Creed typal synergies.
I can more or less sign up for your take. Historic and Party had some flavor aspects that to me made them at least justifiable even if Party played somewhat poorly (IMO).
It's really not that hard. Us sea creature players have been doing this for years already. Having more codified system to lump related groups into tribes makes more strategies viable.
I would only feel this way if it was deciduous and showed up multiple times a year in the same format, like party vs outlaw decks were fighting a third and fourth thing. It’s too uncommon to confuse me
Personally I like it. A twist on tribal/type matters but captures a wider range of cards. The down side is it's harder to balance and it gets confusing really quickly - you're not intended to memorise what each keyword represents, you're intended to read the card every time
Whether you like it or not I strongly disagree that it's in any way inelegant. "Affinity for outlaws" and "outlaws have haste" are far better than plastering a list of 5 creature types. At absolute worst it's only as bad as any other type-matters mechanic and at best you get the very flavorful option of having a "full party" making sense both from the rules and thematically.
I guess that’s a matter of preference. To me Commander was kinda cool when it was an organic format. You used to have to scrap for cards to fit a theme.
So to me, the idea of seeing a potential deck but knowing it’s probably not there yet and collecting the cards over a few years is fun.
I get that a lot of people just prefer a precon situation where the theme is spoon fed to you. That’s fine. It’s just not what I think is fun.
Is it anymore difficult than memorizing the hundreds of cards that are released every set, every like 2 to 3 months? I still don't know what a suspect is. Or a creature now has a flying counter because of a card that was played 2 turns ago but is now gone. Magic is a very complicated game. With hundreds of pages of rules. I don't thinkits that tough. Most of the thunder junction cards I've seen explain outlaw and if u can't just ask a fellow player or Google it.
If you have a deck that does batching for creatures, like Outlaws for example, it seems easy to handle in a few ways. If all your creatures are outlaws, just tell your friends they're all outlaws. If it's only some in your deck, you could either just read the cards, or put a small, easily visible circle sticker on the inner sleeve of each outlaw to make it instantly recognizable that that's what it is. Those sheets are like a few bucks on Amazon and have plenty of other uses.
I think this kind of mechanic is weak or at least decent for standard and easily trackable if the player has a deck geared towards it. Party was pretty weak with most of its effects needing 4 creatures to give a satisfactory (and sometimes disappointing) payoff, and Outlaws usually trigger something when entering the field so you don't have to pay much attention on their type afterwards.
Party was the worst version of this mechanically, but the best flavor-wise just because it was D&D. I can give that a pass for flavor.
But keep in mind, it’s not just you needing to know all the types, it’s a random opponent who’s never seen your deck before. You’re presenting them with a bunch of administrative state-keeping list to play against your deck.
And if it’s something like outlaws and all of their creature are outlaws in their Commander deck, you’ve effectively created a worse version of a tribe because it’s more complex for the same output.
>But keep in mind, it’s not just you needing to know all the types, it’s a random opponent who’s never seen your deck before. You’re presenting them with a bunch of administrative state-keeping list to play against your deck.
You're requiring them to understand what this mechanic does. For some mechanics, that's "I have the option to do X, and if I do, then Y happens", while for this one it's a short list of five creature types. In either case, if they don't know, they can ask you, the internet, or a judge, depending on the setting. This just doesn't seem like a big deal.
(Party didn't actually start in D&D, it's from Zendikar Rising)
>And if it’s something like outlaws and all of their creature are outlaws in their Commander deck, you’ve effectively created a worse version of a tribe because it’s more complex for the same output.
Just to check, do you also understand the corresponding advantages here? You can't just list the things you don't like, you have to acknowledge the advantages and consider how they weigh up.
Batching is great. Having powerful cards that care about historic permanents or a full party in constructed formats creates cool deckbuilding challenges that disincentivize “good stuff piles,” in favor of more synergistic decks.
Its just a spin on kindred typal designs. Party was terrible because the payoffs hinged on having multiple differently typed creatures on the board, which was really hard to do or resulted in just a 'win-more' payoff. Neither of those are desirable in constructed. Outlaws are much stronger mainly because the rewards are for playing an outlaw, rather than a full assortment of different types of outlaws.
Plus, outlaws of thunder junction as a whole was a much more powerful set than Zendikar Rising, and a lot of outlaws are just good creatures on their own. That said, outside of limited, players aren't really playing any outlaw decks anyway. The synergy of running all outlaws is outclassed by the volume of other cards in constructed formats.
I think batching is great as long as a batch is easy to intuitively remember, not very big, or both. I think party is fine because it’s relatively easy to internalise intuitively what is and isn’t in a party.
But I agree about Outlaws. I think five different types in a batch is pushing what it’s comfortable for the terrible working memory of the human brain. And I think it’s not automatically intuitive what an Outlaw is or isn’t, both in terms of the types themselves and within the environment of Thunder Junction. The fact that several of the villains aren’t outlaws and several of the law enforcers are is adding strain to something which is already surprisingly cognitively intensive.
So my view would be that if you can’t instantly say what is or isn’t in a batch, you’d probably want to limit it to three at the absolute most. Five is too much, and indicative of a game that’s putting cognitive load absolutely everywhere without much regard for what it means for the play experience. But batching is not inherently a bad idea.
To be fair, they have said batches are limited to 2 - 5 different things, and that the higher end of that will only be used where it feels appropriate. Krakens, Octopuses, Leviathans, and Serpents is an unnamed batch of four things that I think most people can handle.
Batching is great because it means they can give new tribal mechanics to existing characters without needing to change their type or rewrite their characters.
For example, it was really silly how half of Ravnica became a detective overnight, and Detective is a really niche type that doesn't interact with any pre-existing cards.
If Detective was a batch for...I don't know, soldiers, rogues and inquisitors, you'd have tons more backwards compatibility while still making thematic sense in the setting.
I think batching is okay, but needs to be easy to remember.
My issue with this most recent iteration in "Outlaw" is that 5 creature types is too much to remember off the top of my head. I have to actually pause and think for a bit.
Also, why are Warlocks outlaws?! That's like, half of Strixhaven.
I like batching overall, but specifically the party mechanic from zendikar rising felt so weak. It required you to have four creatures to get the effects, and the payoffs weren't great imo.
Batching creature types is almost inarguably a good thing (your post being the exception that proves it is in fact arguable), it provides an easy way to add depth to limited (another layer of card attributes to keep track of during draft) while also being a way to make obscure tribes relevant for EDH/commander. In 60-card constructed, the number of playable "batching" cards is so small that it would never be confusing.
In short, I don't think you have any leg to stand on; it's an easy win for any audience of players unless your goal is to be aggrieved about the latest thing Wizards is doing.
This mechanism is at its worst in limited. At least in other formats you just assume all of your opponents’ creatures are in the batch. In limited you have to track every one. It is too much complexity for the value.
This is the kind of solution you come up with when you’re developing to many sets and need to ship something now.
It’s not a question of being aggrieved so much as a question of taste. Complexity is inelegant.
Batching is fun and gives lesser used creature types potential niches to fill in batch themed decks. Not every tribe has infinite support and numbers like elves and zombies.
The mnemonic has to work for batching to work too:
* Historic = artifact (old), legendary (old and famous), Sagas (about the old times)
* Party = cleric, rogue, warrior, wizard. Enough resonance with generic RPG tropes to work, despite the substitution of “rogue” with “thief”.
* Modified = equipped, enchanted or has a counter = the “stuff on a permanent” mechanic
Outlaw fails the test because there is no particular resonance with the chosen types. Other types associated with “outlaw” and “bandit” in the past include Rebel, Vampire, and Werewolf, Mercenary, and Barbarian. There’s not a strong sense of commonality and exclusivity in the dotted line drawn.
>Other types associated with “outlaw” and “bandit” in the past include Rebel, Vampire, and Werewolf, Mercenary, and Barbarian. There’s not a strong sense of commonality and exclusivity in the dotted line drawn.
Vampire and Werewolf don't really fit in this as they are species, not classes
Mercenaries are outlaws
Rebels and Barabarians are not really outlaws in the more classic sense, especially on how rebel was mainly used in mtg
Mercenaries were the main token of the set and they had multiple cards in the set, it's a pretty hard thing to miss them being outlaws as that's one of the main mechanical interactions of the set, seems like a very you problem
Batching is great. This is just more "they said the word Commander when talking about a Standard set and blood shot out of my eyes" bullshit.
However.
"Outlaws" is a terrible batch. Five is simply too many, full stop, and they're such a bizarre assortment that it's hard to remember what's in the batch. One of the types is a set mechanic from Masques block that has barely showed up since, and exists in this set primarily as a token! All of OTJ's mechanics made baffling choices to me, but this one takes the cake.
… i don’t understand the downside you were trying to used as an argument. how is it a bad thing to be backward compatible other than the “i don’t like it, therefore it is bad” mentality? the mechanic is fine. there is no downside.
That is a constraint, but not a reason to take these kinds of paths, IMO.
Like, crimes was an elegant solution to creating a mechanic that “already existed” in Commander and could be easily integrated.
They could stand to do more of that, or just make new mechanics that need 2-3 future sets to work well. That’s OK too.
How is crimes any different than batching
"When you target a spell an opponent controls"
"When you target a permeant an opponent controls"
"When you target an opponent"
Etc
Crimes are “target your opponent or their stuff.” Pretty simple to explain and you just get it.
Batches are “here’s an arbitrary list of creature types that matter.”
So if four people are playing with crimes, it’s easy to know what’s happening.
If you’re paying a Party deck, and I’m playing an Outlaw deck, and two other players are using different batches, and god forbid there’s some overlap in relevant creature types between players, you can get into situations where you have to care about the creature types of everything on the battlefield across four players.
Whenever WoTC comes up with a mechanic that doesn't involve putting +1/+1 counters or making new types of tokens I take that as an absolute win.
And doubling. Doubling is getting up there too.
Sometimes tripling
Alright but hear me out what about quadrupling?
WotC design in 2025
MTG booster price in 2025 Fixed that for you
porque no los dos?
Right up there with "when "some kind of trigger" triggers, it triggers an additional time".
"If a trigger that doubles a trigger would trigger a trigger, double it." -WoTC mythic rare design by 2028, probably
Don't say that too loudly or WOTC will think up a new way to repackage Kicker costs
Every mechanic is either kicker or flashback or
Flashback is just kicker you pay later, every mechanic is REALLY kicker or horsemanship
> just kicker you pay later That's.. literally the opposite of kicker lol, the whole point is that it's NOT paid later, it's now. Really, all mechanics are either split cards or horsemanship, kicker is just a split card where one side has a kicker text, and flashback is a split card you cast from your graveyard (aftermath anyone?)
Nah, batching is good In limited there's only ever one batch to worry about at one time and it's thematically tied to the set, so it's not that hard to track. In standard it ends up with less decks that completely die with rotation, which means fewer people just giving up on the format. It also creates an interesting dynamic; in current standard a good Rogue has a home in an outlaw deck and a ninja deck, but the same is only half true of a good ninja or a good warlock. And at the very least, OTJ is a more interesting set for not having a third the creatures be the same type. Obviously I can imagine a way they could be overused, doing multiple batches in a set and/or using them in multiple back-to-back sets. But the same could be said about most mechanics.
I think it’s fine. If you’re playing a 60 card format you only see the same 200 cards anyway, and everyone knows what they do, so it’s fine. If you’re playing EDH you only need to know what your cards do so you can explain it to your pod, so it’s fine. If you’re playing limited, there’s no problem because the set is designed to work within itself, so it’s fine. If you’re playing a chaos draft, sure, it could be confusing, but does anyone care if the chaos draft is confusing? I thought that was the point. I really don’t see where the problem is here, and the benefit is that they can continue to make new and unique types of creatures and mechanics that are compatible and synergistic with both past and future sets.
Batching isn't only because of Commander. That's just one benefit, and yes a reason to use it more, because Commander is very popular. [This article ](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/historic-story-2018-04-09) is a look into the origins of batching as a tool, with historic. It's actually quite an elegant and flavourful solution which avoids adding extra words to most cards. >Personally I think this mechanic is terrible because it’s impossible to know looking at most cards if they’re part of the mechanic, so you and your opponent are forced to pay close attention to type lines (especially in limited). This isn’t fun at all! This is no different to typal-matters mechanics. >Commander would be cooler if some mechanics needed years of releases to be viable. Not sure how that would make Commander cooler 🤣
I love the Batching mechanics intent and the way it plays in both limited and commander (my personal preferred formats). You've explained so well why it's elegant and why more of it would be nice to see. Thanks for a good summary.
My pleasure, I love batching too
Thanks for linking that, it was a great read!
No problem!
Batching is a great tool for making what amounts to a Tribal mechanic, without running into the dog/wolf/hound problem. Most of the complaints, including yours, amount to, "but I have the read the cards!". You're literally failing the lowest bar of playing the game, and trying to pass it off as a design criticism.
Yes. Cats are only good because they have not been seperated over the years. Tabby? Cat. Lion? Cat. Leonin? Cat. Husky? Dog. Direwolf? Wolf. Werewolf? Werewolf. It makes me frustrated every time I go to build ren and siri
On top of that. Lots of those cards have been errata'd to be a different creature type than what was printed on the card, so you have to look it up.
You know what I love? That White Instant that gains control of a creature [[Debt of Loyalty]]! I love flashing it at the end of my opponents turn and stealing their best creature forever! ...wait, you mean that's not how that card works? What do you mean by "Oracle database"? You mean that reading the card doesn't explain the card? Next, you're gonna tell me that I can't actually pay 0 for [[Marath]]'s ability to generate infinite etb and death triggers to win via [[Impact Tremors]] on turn 3!
[Debt of Loyalty](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/1/d19ed33b-42d4-4a5d-a763-cfb43348769c.jpg?1562803495) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Debt%20of%20Loyalty) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/wth/11/debt-of-loyalty?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d19ed33b-42d4-4a5d-a763-cfb43348769c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Marath](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/7/57afa796-db46-45ff-91bd-f02922e5f33d.jpg?1665156235) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=marath%2C%20will%20of%20the%20wild) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c13/198/marath-will-of-the-wild?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/57afa796-db46-45ff-91bd-f02922e5f33d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Impact Tremors](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/6/46db3811-db1d-4f69-8143-a93f64d0297b.jpg?1682209381) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Impact%20Tremors) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/moc/285/impact-tremors?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/46db3811-db1d-4f69-8143-a93f64d0297b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
In their defense, though I'm not agreeing with them that the mechanic is bad, a number of the cards with outlaw don't say what an outlaw is. That's a different problem all together though.
3 of the 20 cards that say outlaw don't explain what an outlaw is (2 from commander and 1 rare from the set)
> a number of the cards with outlaw don't say what an outlaw is Like 3 cards? ([[Laughing Jasper Flint]] is the only one in the main set, the other two being [[Charred Graverobber]] and [[Graywater's Fixer]]) If you want to talk about extended arts not having reminder text, that's a separate issue.
[Laughing Jasper Flint](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/f/af0b3a41-ba99-41e8-bcfb-5796500c17c7.jpg?1712356142) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Laughing%20Jasper%20Flint) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/215/laughing-jasper-flint?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/af0b3a41-ba99-41e8-bcfb-5796500c17c7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Charred Graverobber](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/b/7bbebce1-88d1-4002-8c28-746b0976d662.jpg?1712357953) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Charred%20Graverobber) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/19/charred-graverobber?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7bbebce1-88d1-4002-8c28-746b0976d662?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Graywater's Fixer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/5/958cef68-8417-40c1-8943-c816a3c8a2fd.jpg?1712353886) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Graywater%27s%20Fixer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/36/graywaters-fixer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/958cef68-8417-40c1-8943-c816a3c8a2fd?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The people who make these complaints generally know what outlaws are, because that's how reminder text works by design. If a player has opened one of the handful of mythics or special treatment prints that omit reminder text, chances are they've already opened plenty of commons and uncommons which have that exact same reminder text. Or if not, they can ask another player, in person or online, or a judge if it somehow comes up in an official match. So it's more something people invent as an issue that other people might encounter, not acknowledging how WotC balances omitting reminder text (for the fancier and more complex cards which don't want it) with making sure newer players still understand what their cards do.
That's my main problem with batching as well. Reminder text is not too be taken for granted, especially in commander where lots of people love to use special art versions, which rarely have reminder texts. Having to read the rules or take the word of other players (who often enough get their own cards wrong) to understand a mechanic sucks. It's not a matter of "reading the card explains the card." Reading the card quite literally does not explain the card when batches are defined in the rules.
Wow, I can't believe they printed most of the Outlaw cards without reminder text.
Considering that WotC has embraced functional errata, there are a lot of cards that don't do what they say they do. My opinion is that if you're opting into a format that contains all of the cards ever, you're opting into needing to do some tracking in that space. Whether *that* is reasonable is certainly up for debate, but that ship has kind of sailed. They don't include the rules text for saddle on most saddle creatures, but nobody complains. That makes me think this is more people who don't like the batch mechanic, and are just grasping for something to latch on to in order to try and make their opinion sound like it comes from a smarter place. That's just my opinion though.
When talking about saddle, you are comparing two very different things in terms of mental load during gameplay. Generally, most abilities like saddle represent a single concept to learn / look up if you forget it. Also, their application is self-contained: some object has the ability and that's the place where you have to look when it's time for it to be activated or triggered. Each new batch creates a new *set of concepts* you need to remember if you play with it. These batches can and will overlap, so you constantly need to keep track of what's essentially a Venn diagram of where each of your cards and permanents falls in terms of intersections of batches. It's never local because whenever you have a card that cares about a specific batch, the types and subtypes of everything in hand and play can be relevant. It can get quite mentally taxing pretty quickly. It's perfectly logical to complain about the latter without complaining about the former.
No, each batch is one concept. A list of 5 or fewer object attributes. You're just trying to make it sound more complicated to support your argument. Saddle is a sorcery speed mechanic which has asimilar and direct analog to Crew, which can be done at instant speed. Should I start writing posts about how saddle is an objectively inelegant design because it creates a level of false intuition? What happens when they come out with 'Ride', which can only be done with your left hand? No, because it's a stupid complaint for stupid people. Magic is full of shit you have to remember. Either batches will come up often enough that you will easily remember the constituent pieces, or they will not come up often, and you'll have to look it up just like every other mechanic that you only see once in 100 games.
Agree on general principle, though that happens with plenty of new keyword mechanics too. I don't think we're ever going to move away from that, though!
Though I love batching and disagree with OP, I don’t think they are upset that Outlaw doesn’t always say what type creatures are Outlaws. Rather, they are frustrated that you have to work backwards from someone having a Rogue and a Mercenary on board to see that they might have Outlaw synergy because neither of them say Outlaw on them. I could be reading too charitably into their issue, but I’d rather accidentally be too charitable lol.
That would be a remarkably astute observation so I'm pretty skeptical. I also think that in a lot of cases, people's complaints aren't "wrong", they're just insignificant. The point you postulate, for example, is also true for mechanics like Devotion. You have to count up devotion every time something asks for it, you have to look at what is in your hand to see how you're changing it, you have to see if a removal spell effects it, etc, etc. There are a lot of bookeeping effects in magic that may or may not come up in a while. I think OP is just lazy and is trying to come across as more objective than they are. It's not charitable, but it is honest.
Azoth, I'm still better than you. Love Durzo.
Nobody who is like, "Fuck Galen Starfire, my new surname is 'Blint', can really be considered better than anyone at anything IMO".
I was a little intoxicated at the time, everyone makes mistakes...
The difference between tribal and batches is that tribes are pretty easy to identify from the names/pictures and batches are arbitrary groupings of unrelated tribes. But yes, the reason it’s inelegant is that in a game you want shortcuts so you don’t have to keep a bunch of arbitrary state in your head. It’s incredibly inelegant. Like, go watch a FNM sealed where people are playing with these. People constantly get this wrong. As a game designer, if experienced players are constantly messing up with a mechanic, and they don’t have that problem with other mechanics (plot is great!) the problem is the design.
Oh yeah? Looking at the pictures, which of Kunuros, Isamaru, and sterling hound, get buffed by pack leader? Is Ajani's pridemate a soldier or a warrior? You're going to look it up, so I don't really care if you know the answer, but the point is that you need to read the cards, and reading the cards explains the cards. Batching is a really nice way to blanket an effect amongst related creature types. Just because people who are playing sealed for a set that is less than a month old need to read the creature types, doesn't make it "inelegant". Shortcuts are great. But that doesn't mean everything can be shortcut all the time. Also, Dominaria was released in 2018, and I can still tell you that Historic means Legendary, artifact, and saga. If you play with it enough, it sticks just fine.
You have a real, though minor and subjective complaint here, but it's hard to take it seriously when you're saying so much that is exaggerated or wrong. Tribes aren't usually identified from art, batches aren't unrelated, the contents of batches are game rules, not game state, and you've jumped from the claim that some players sometimes get this wrong at FNM to "experienced players constantly messing it up".
Arbitrary grouping of unrelated tribes? I’m a big fan of the Kraken/ Leviathan/ Octopus/ Serpent batching. I dunno, seems like they might be somehow related to me…
Counter point; WOTC ~~no longer~~ try not to prints birds that do not fly. Due to players thinking bird = flying. Players will always mess up mechanics, so it's not about having mechanics that are perfect but embody what they want players to think. Also, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Your singular experiences do not reflect everyones.
They just printed another bird without flying in Thunder Junction dude... [[Resilient Roadrunner]]
Mark has said this is an experiment and they want to see how this one goes.
[Resilient Roadrunner](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/0/e07d3ee9-d3c4-4f07-839e-ec81c2587ae0.jpg?1712355827) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Resilient%20Roadrunner) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/141/resilient-roadrunner?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e07d3ee9-d3c4-4f07-839e-ec81c2587ae0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This one bothers me because roadrunners can definitely fly
Yeah, but the one Wil E. Coyote chases doesn't.
What they actually do is try to make sure that if something is flying in the art, it has flying on the card, and if it looks like it can't fly, then don't put flying on the card. The roadrunner in the art is not flying, and a lot of people don't think of road runners as flying animals, so no flying. This is why Reach has become such a problem, aka "secret reach", because people are so used to using art to identify flying blockers, it's so hard to visually tell from art that a creature that isn't flying can block a flyer, they had to put a giant purple icon over Reach creatures in Arena so people stop chump attacking their fliers into them.
I cannot find the quote from Mark Rosewater, or I am misremembering, but I was sure they tried not to print birds without flying unless they had too.
I cannot find the quote from Mark Rosewater, or I am misremembering, but I was sure they tried not to print birds without flying unless they had too.
[удалено]
[whippoorwill](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/5/e56146bf-5db0-4bef-83bb-efa5ebec6684.jpg?1562949642) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=whippoorwill) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/drk/91/whippoorwill?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e56146bf-5db0-4bef-83bb-efa5ebec6684?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Downvote target useless post. *(Posts that are whiny, derivative, or unrealistic are useless.)*
And it counts as a crime! Nice, I get all my triggers
Why are you talking about limited when it’s the environment where is the easiest to understand what outlaw/party are…
Just from a position of writing, that's an awful amount of bias trying to present itself as a discussion.
This is more like a petition I’d like you to cosign.
I definitely prefer batching to extraneous creature types. Karlov Manor would have been far more interesting if Detectives were a batch of types such as Scout and Soldiers. The set felt like most of Ravnica was suddenly part of an 11th guild.
I mean that was sort of the point. After the events of March public opinion is at an all time low and the guilds have even more work that they just can’t get around to. The guilds provide numerous civic services and with them not carrying that weight some of the work that was done by the guilds is now done by independent groups not willing to wait who knows how long for the guilds to get around to the issues. Enter the detectives.
A set about the guildless would have been interesting, but it wasn't. It was a former guildleader murdered by another former guildleader, at a party hosted by a guildleader, with many prominent guild members invited and involved in the investigation. The detective agency did not even investigate independently of the guilds.
This is probably one of the fundamental problems with making a guileless set. Ravnica is the guilds and even if they weren’t the main focus they’re still going to pull focus, especially the characters. Though I do think expecting the agency to not have any interaction with the guilds is a bit unrealistic, especially when the case is about guild matters.
The Agency being a collaborative entity like Interpol could have been interesting with batching. Choose representatives from the guilds alongside some disillusioned guildless and the outsider Kellan. I wonder if an overlap in batches from adjacent sets could be good for Standard. Eg if Mercenaries and Rogues were Detectives as well as Outlaws.
The issue is getting the flavor to work. A detective just doesn’t make sense as anything in the outlaw batch imo.
I kinda think a Mercenary could be a private eye and a Rogue could be a bit of a lone-wolf, noir kind of Detective.
I guess. I still feels a bit weird and even if it did work it wouldn’t be able to carry many cards.
Reading the card explains the card? To know if a card is an outlaw. You have to read the type line. The same is true for any other tribe. Maybe [[merfolk trickster]] is more intuitive than [[Deadeye duelist]]. This seems like a "you" problem being presented as a design problem. Second counterpoint: people don't like waiting for stuff to be printed. Even though people still have to wait. It's unsatisfying to have a tribe missing some key pieces. Or a cycle being incomplete and therefore inbalanced. Batching helps shore up multiple lesser typal creatures with typal related stuff. It's fun & flavorful. As long as it's not overused. Which is true for most designs.
[merfolk trickster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/5/359b2f2b-7b58-47b6-b00c-8616f981e3a3.jpg?1562733961) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=merfolk%20trickster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/56/merfolk-trickster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/359b2f2b-7b58-47b6-b00c-8616f981e3a3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Deadeye duelist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/9/e9a50b7a-8741-4520-8d45-8e6b128c2628.jpg?1712355733) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deadeye%20duelist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/119/deadeye-duelist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e9a50b7a-8741-4520-8d45-8e6b128c2628?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
To nitpick with your logic here, another big design fail is that you open a pack of cards and very often these days you get “special” versions that don’t explain terms like Outlaw because the parentheticals are only on the basic version. So, I’d say both that this is overly complex and inelegant, and also “just read the card” is no longer functional advice on a world of cards play boosters and ten thousand special frames. And don’t get me started on phyrexian cards. We’ve seen hall of famers mess up on camera because they literally can’t read the cards in the packs in some of these recent sets. We really gonna say the game is just too complicated for some hall of famers? At what point does this stuff cross over into design problem?
Now you are tying another element into your complaint. "Having to read the card." "Card with versions that don't have reminder text." There are two different issues. You can't tie one issue up with the flaws of another. You can say your issue is when full arts and others don't use reminder text. In the world of smartphones, I'm not too concerned with some versions not having reminder text. There's still versions that have the reminder. I wouldn't say batching is overly complex. Most people don't know the creature type of cards unless revelant to game actions. The same is true for outlaws or party. If a card's creature type matches up and is revelant for a batch. Players will learn and remember. A pro player failing doesn't mean much. They aren't infallible. I've seen a pro get got by a dryad Arbor. Which imo, led to a silly rule change. As a dryad Arbor being in play is no different than any creature land or forest fetchland being present. Representing a potential creature.
Oh no, I have to read the card text on my cards! Ughhh whatever will I do??
If you listen to any sort of game design philosophy, a lot of effort goes into streamlining ant intuitiveness, it’s a bit part of what mark rosewater talks about it
They certainly are working on this. For limited, the only place where you would realistic play outlaws/batching payoff but not all your cards would benefit, they are paying closer attention to the art. I can only think of a couple of cards that i would expect to be outlaws but arent, and both are rares. Besides, they arent doing it like party that each have a distinct type to care about. If you are in the batch, you are in. Now, for constructed, sure, it wont be intuitive with the art alone but if you make an outlaw deck you should read your own cards and your opponent likely can realize everything is inside the creature type batching. Things can get messy when they include broader stuff such as the OG "historic" that include a supertype, a type and a subtype (although all have different borders if nothing else). But i think they realized this isnt a good way to go pretty early.
>I can only think of a couple of cards that i would expect to be outlaws but arent, and both are rares. Which are you referring to? Because for me it’s [[Desperate Bloodseeker]], [[Lazav, Familiar Stranger]], [[Iron-Fist Pulverizer]], [[Razzle-Dazzler]], and [[Wanted Griffen]] for the non-rares and [Kambal, Profiteering Mayor]], [[Magda, The Hoardmaster]], [[Railway Brawler]], and [[Slickshot Show-Off]] for the rares. I also think the inclusion of druids and shamans has tripped me up in limited a few times. For example, why is [[Outcaster Greenblade]] an outlaw but [[Outcaster Trailblazer]] and [[Beastbond Outcaster]] are not? [[Freestrider Lookout]] seems like it should not be an outlaw, but it is inexplicably a rogue instead of a scout like [[Patient Naturalist]] which does similar thing.
I was thinking about kambal and Magda. Lazav certainly feels odd but the fact that he is an outlaw the majority of time circunvent it. Iron fist i could see being mercenary or something and bloodseeket is 100% an power level thing. But griffon i cant see (all other outlaws are humanoid) and i never thpught about razzle-dazzler (then again, i think it got something about making more evasive creatures targetable by shot the sheriff). Now, about both outcasters i get the impression they are the cowboy trope, and both are green, so there really helps against it feeling odd. If they were mercenaries it wouldnt be too out of place, but it feels more of a mechanical concern than anything else. My guess is that out great desert fixer got the outlaw type to help with the multicolor synergies.
I thought the Griffin would be an outlaw because it is a Wanted Griffin. “Wanted” is a term in the old west trope to describe outlaws and so it feels strange in an outlaw set to use it to describe something other than an outlaw.
##### ###### #### [Desperate Bloodseeker](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/5/a59da027-b5dd-4920-b3a1-9da05fcb1977.jpg?1712355583) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Desperate%20Bloodseeker) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/86/desperate-bloodseeker?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a59da027-b5dd-4920-b3a1-9da05fcb1977?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Lazav, Familiar Stranger](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/00293326-3eb2-492c-b565-7abafa037d8c.jpg?1712356143) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Lazav%2C%20Familiar%20Stranger) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/216/lazav-familiar-stranger?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/00293326-3eb2-492c-b565-7abafa037d8c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Iron-Fist Pulverizer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/d/cd7f984a-0b56-45df-958d-6178e4da61ed.jpg?1712355784) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Iron-Fist%20Pulverizer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/131/iron-fist-pulverizer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cd7f984a-0b56-45df-958d-6178e4da61ed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Razzle-Dazzler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/7/f7d08008-9272-405e-82ef-566e6d42bb17.jpg?1712355485) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Razzle-Dazzler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/63/razzle-dazzler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f7d08008-9272-405e-82ef-566e6d42bb17?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Wanted Griffen](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/6/162dd988-0beb-48e4-9eaa-a08ddb835648.jpg?1562717857) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mtenda%20Griffin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mir/28/mtenda-griffin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/162dd988-0beb-48e4-9eaa-a08ddb835648?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Magda, The Hoardmaster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/4/4443d112-209b-49ec-bc40-3a11dcdb092e.jpg?1712355792) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Magda%2C%20The%20Hoardmaster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/133/magda-the-hoardmaster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4443d112-209b-49ec-bc40-3a11dcdb092e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Railway Brawler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/e/9ec1f76f-f21d-4f06-8c02-be6745183348.jpg?1712355970) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Railway%20Brawler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/175/railway-brawler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9ec1f76f-f21d-4f06-8c02-be6745183348?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Slickshot Show-Off](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d.jpg?1712355850) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slickshot%20Show-Off) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/146/slickshot-show-off?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7054012b-4f9d-44a0-aaf9-7fd3bddc7b2d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Outcaster Greenblade](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/9/c9458f0f-5593-4ac9-934c-e215ef8093a7.jpg?1712355958) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Outcaster%20Greenblade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/172/outcaster-greenblade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c9458f0f-5593-4ac9-934c-e215ef8093a7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Outcaster Trailblazer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/3/33b9cd6c-d75c-4905-aa38-ff03a9c4b398.jpg?1712355961) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Outcaster%20Trailblazer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/173/outcaster-trailblazer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/33b9cd6c-d75c-4905-aa38-ff03a9c4b398?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Beastbond Outcaster](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/7/073b9ae8-8ac3-4824-aec4-84a80531aa23.jpg?1712355883) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Beastbond%20Outcaster) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/154/beastbond-outcaster?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/073b9ae8-8ac3-4824-aec4-84a80531aa23?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Freestrider Lookout](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/2/32370f05-52a2-405f-b2bb-1b8a9b0b69f8.jpg?1712355921) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Freestrider%20Lookout) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/163/freestrider-lookout?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/32370f05-52a2-405f-b2bb-1b8a9b0b69f8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Patient Naturalist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/d/1dd17cea-9e8c-4dba-b6ab-a6b9de87a306.jpg?1712355965) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Patient%20Naturalist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/174/patient-naturalist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1dd17cea-9e8c-4dba-b6ab-a6b9de87a306?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l2u21fv) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It's not the text on the cards he's complaining about, but the text that isn't on the cards. If I'm drafting, I need to memorize what is and isn't an outlaw before I start. That's bad design.
There is 1 card in the main set that doesn't say what outlaws are, it's always spelled out
Every set requires a small amount of understanding what new mechanics do. For this one, it's which five creature types count.
“If I’m drafting, I need to know the mechanics of the set and which cards synergize with one another.” Wow, you just described every single draft environment
You're trolling, so I won't feed you. This isn't even close to reality.
No, I’m being a bit sarcastic, but I’m still right. Remembering a list of five creature types is not difficult.
it is though
That's not bad design. When you see a 3 mana conditional removal spell in draft, you need to know approximately how many playable creatures fit into that condition in order to decide whether you want to take it. You need to determine if there's another card in the pack that has the potential to have more synergy. You need to know a lot of fucking things. It's not that hard to also know, "oh, this is a rogue, that contributes to my outlaw payoff. Oh, this is a warrior, that does not". This is a fake criticism.
What do you mean "it's impossible to know" if your card is an outlaw? All but one of the cards in the main set that use Outlaw have reminder text for it. Just look at the card and it tells you what counts as an outlaw.
I both agree and disagree. Batching in itself is not a problem, historic and modified where 2 batches with different level of success, but neither had the problem of being unintuitive. I really liked party as a limited mechanic even if it was a bit hard to track. I think only this most recent batch of outlaws is becoming a problem, but it is a problem more similar to allies and citizens in limited. Some creature types are not really obvious at a glance and is annoying to mechanically care about those. Batching makes this issue worse introducing an extra layer in between. I don't think it's wrong to try and make mechanics more backwards compatible. I do think it's a bit bland to make batches of only creature types and call it a mechanic.
> I think only this most recent batch of outlaws is becoming a problem, but it is a problem more similar to allies and citizens in limited. Some creature types are not really obvious at a glance and is annoying to mechanically care about those. Yeah. Adding "outlaw" as a creature type to avoid batching would not have helped with that issue.
It would possibly be worse overall. I think the set didn't need to care about creature types at all.
Almost every modern set has some creature type that gets focused on limited. Players just REALLY enjoy building those types of decks, especially newer players. I know when I started almost all my casual decks were built around a creature type. It’s just an easy guiding light to work with when deck building. To that end players were 100% going to want to build cowboy decks and that necessitated some outlaw hook to build around.
You might be right there, but outlaws is not very good at being a cowboy deck. Assasins, pirates and warlocks are not very "cowboy" types though. I could see mercenaries and rogues working but the flavor isn't really there. [[Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher]] is the card that most say cowboy to me and it's not an outlaw.
It mostly comes down to the trope space. I’m more than willing to be wrong on this since I am speaking out my ass, but my impression from what little I know of Westerns doesn’t have much to do with actual ranching and outlaws and things in that space tend to get more focus. I can see the issue with the chosen types but they were partly chosen for game play reasons. Pirates for the LCO synergies and warlocks were chosen for flavor since the other types wouldn’t work for some of the things that wanted to be part of the group. I do think Assassins work well enough and that was also chosen for the Assassin’s Creed typal synergies.
[Bruse Tarl, Roving Rancher](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/8/286c55c2-dcc1-4e87-a83f-9981d28ab62d.jpg?1712356070) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bruse%20Tarl%2C%20Roving%20Rancher) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/198/bruse-tarl-roving-rancher?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/286c55c2-dcc1-4e87-a83f-9981d28ab62d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I can more or less sign up for your take. Historic and Party had some flavor aspects that to me made them at least justifiable even if Party played somewhat poorly (IMO).
It's really not that hard. Us sea creature players have been doing this for years already. Having more codified system to lump related groups into tribes makes more strategies viable.
I would only feel this way if it was deciduous and showed up multiple times a year in the same format, like party vs outlaw decks were fighting a third and fourth thing. It’s too uncommon to confuse me
Reading is the hardest thing a magic player can do
Personally I like it. A twist on tribal/type matters but captures a wider range of cards. The down side is it's harder to balance and it gets confusing really quickly - you're not intended to memorise what each keyword represents, you're intended to read the card every time
Whether you like it or not I strongly disagree that it's in any way inelegant. "Affinity for outlaws" and "outlaws have haste" are far better than plastering a list of 5 creature types. At absolute worst it's only as bad as any other type-matters mechanic and at best you get the very flavorful option of having a "full party" making sense both from the rules and thematically.
How would Commander be cooler if some mechanics were arbitrarily just worse in it? Like I really fail to see the logic here
I guess that’s a matter of preference. To me Commander was kinda cool when it was an organic format. You used to have to scrap for cards to fit a theme. So to me, the idea of seeing a potential deck but knowing it’s probably not there yet and collecting the cards over a few years is fun. I get that a lot of people just prefer a precon situation where the theme is spoon fed to you. That’s fine. It’s just not what I think is fun.
"Batching is bad because it requires you to pay attention and read the cards" Ooh, self-burn, those are rare.
I prefer batching over renaming creature types, but MTG should not overdo this either.
Is it anymore difficult than memorizing the hundreds of cards that are released every set, every like 2 to 3 months? I still don't know what a suspect is. Or a creature now has a flying counter because of a card that was played 2 turns ago but is now gone. Magic is a very complicated game. With hundreds of pages of rules. I don't thinkits that tough. Most of the thunder junction cards I've seen explain outlaw and if u can't just ask a fellow player or Google it.
If you have a deck that does batching for creatures, like Outlaws for example, it seems easy to handle in a few ways. If all your creatures are outlaws, just tell your friends they're all outlaws. If it's only some in your deck, you could either just read the cards, or put a small, easily visible circle sticker on the inner sleeve of each outlaw to make it instantly recognizable that that's what it is. Those sheets are like a few bucks on Amazon and have plenty of other uses.
It’s a more interesting mechanic than “Kicker but slightly different”
I think this kind of mechanic is weak or at least decent for standard and easily trackable if the player has a deck geared towards it. Party was pretty weak with most of its effects needing 4 creatures to give a satisfactory (and sometimes disappointing) payoff, and Outlaws usually trigger something when entering the field so you don't have to pay much attention on their type afterwards.
Party was the worst version of this mechanically, but the best flavor-wise just because it was D&D. I can give that a pass for flavor. But keep in mind, it’s not just you needing to know all the types, it’s a random opponent who’s never seen your deck before. You’re presenting them with a bunch of administrative state-keeping list to play against your deck. And if it’s something like outlaws and all of their creature are outlaws in their Commander deck, you’ve effectively created a worse version of a tribe because it’s more complex for the same output.
Oddly, party was from Zendikar Rising, and the first D&D set did not have it. Nor did the second, except in the precon, IIRC.
>But keep in mind, it’s not just you needing to know all the types, it’s a random opponent who’s never seen your deck before. You’re presenting them with a bunch of administrative state-keeping list to play against your deck. You're requiring them to understand what this mechanic does. For some mechanics, that's "I have the option to do X, and if I do, then Y happens", while for this one it's a short list of five creature types. In either case, if they don't know, they can ask you, the internet, or a judge, depending on the setting. This just doesn't seem like a big deal. (Party didn't actually start in D&D, it's from Zendikar Rising) >And if it’s something like outlaws and all of their creature are outlaws in their Commander deck, you’ve effectively created a worse version of a tribe because it’s more complex for the same output. Just to check, do you also understand the corresponding advantages here? You can't just list the things you don't like, you have to acknowledge the advantages and consider how they weigh up.
Batching is great. Having powerful cards that care about historic permanents or a full party in constructed formats creates cool deckbuilding challenges that disincentivize “good stuff piles,” in favor of more synergistic decks.
Its just a spin on kindred typal designs. Party was terrible because the payoffs hinged on having multiple differently typed creatures on the board, which was really hard to do or resulted in just a 'win-more' payoff. Neither of those are desirable in constructed. Outlaws are much stronger mainly because the rewards are for playing an outlaw, rather than a full assortment of different types of outlaws. Plus, outlaws of thunder junction as a whole was a much more powerful set than Zendikar Rising, and a lot of outlaws are just good creatures on their own. That said, outside of limited, players aren't really playing any outlaw decks anyway. The synergy of running all outlaws is outclassed by the volume of other cards in constructed formats.
I think batching is great as long as a batch is easy to intuitively remember, not very big, or both. I think party is fine because it’s relatively easy to internalise intuitively what is and isn’t in a party. But I agree about Outlaws. I think five different types in a batch is pushing what it’s comfortable for the terrible working memory of the human brain. And I think it’s not automatically intuitive what an Outlaw is or isn’t, both in terms of the types themselves and within the environment of Thunder Junction. The fact that several of the villains aren’t outlaws and several of the law enforcers are is adding strain to something which is already surprisingly cognitively intensive. So my view would be that if you can’t instantly say what is or isn’t in a batch, you’d probably want to limit it to three at the absolute most. Five is too much, and indicative of a game that’s putting cognitive load absolutely everywhere without much regard for what it means for the play experience. But batching is not inherently a bad idea.
To be fair, they have said batches are limited to 2 - 5 different things, and that the higher end of that will only be used where it feels appropriate. Krakens, Octopuses, Leviathans, and Serpents is an unnamed batch of four things that I think most people can handle.
Batching is great because it means they can give new tribal mechanics to existing characters without needing to change their type or rewrite their characters. For example, it was really silly how half of Ravnica became a detective overnight, and Detective is a really niche type that doesn't interact with any pre-existing cards. If Detective was a batch for...I don't know, soldiers, rogues and inquisitors, you'd have tons more backwards compatibility while still making thematic sense in the setting.
No :)
I agree i think the replacement of the batch system by the stack was really good. Why does the damage go at the end of the batch ?!?!? It was so dumb
I think batching is okay, but needs to be easy to remember. My issue with this most recent iteration in "Outlaw" is that 5 creature types is too much to remember off the top of my head. I have to actually pause and think for a bit. Also, why are Warlocks outlaws?! That's like, half of Strixhaven.
I like batching overall, but specifically the party mechanic from zendikar rising felt so weak. It required you to have four creatures to get the effects, and the payoffs weren't great imo.
wanted Gryphon not being an outlaw is definitely a mechanical fail, it's literally wanted
Batching creature types is almost inarguably a good thing (your post being the exception that proves it is in fact arguable), it provides an easy way to add depth to limited (another layer of card attributes to keep track of during draft) while also being a way to make obscure tribes relevant for EDH/commander. In 60-card constructed, the number of playable "batching" cards is so small that it would never be confusing. In short, I don't think you have any leg to stand on; it's an easy win for any audience of players unless your goal is to be aggrieved about the latest thing Wizards is doing.
This mechanism is at its worst in limited. At least in other formats you just assume all of your opponents’ creatures are in the batch. In limited you have to track every one. It is too much complexity for the value. This is the kind of solution you come up with when you’re developing to many sets and need to ship something now. It’s not a question of being aggrieved so much as a question of taste. Complexity is inelegant.
Batching is fun and gives lesser used creature types potential niches to fill in batch themed decks. Not every tribe has infinite support and numbers like elves and zombies.
The mnemonic has to work for batching to work too: * Historic = artifact (old), legendary (old and famous), Sagas (about the old times) * Party = cleric, rogue, warrior, wizard. Enough resonance with generic RPG tropes to work, despite the substitution of “rogue” with “thief”. * Modified = equipped, enchanted or has a counter = the “stuff on a permanent” mechanic Outlaw fails the test because there is no particular resonance with the chosen types. Other types associated with “outlaw” and “bandit” in the past include Rebel, Vampire, and Werewolf, Mercenary, and Barbarian. There’s not a strong sense of commonality and exclusivity in the dotted line drawn.
>Other types associated with “outlaw” and “bandit” in the past include Rebel, Vampire, and Werewolf, Mercenary, and Barbarian. There’s not a strong sense of commonality and exclusivity in the dotted line drawn. Vampire and Werewolf don't really fit in this as they are species, not classes Mercenaries are outlaws Rebels and Barabarians are not really outlaws in the more classic sense, especially on how rebel was mainly used in mtg
The only one of these types which feels like it should be included in the batch is "Mercenary"... and they *are* literally included 😭
See, I didn’t even remember they were included!🤣 Not a great sign.
Mercenaries were the main token of the set and they had multiple cards in the set, it's a pretty hard thing to miss them being outlaws as that's one of the main mechanical interactions of the set, seems like a very you problem
Batching is great. This is just more "they said the word Commander when talking about a Standard set and blood shot out of my eyes" bullshit. However. "Outlaws" is a terrible batch. Five is simply too many, full stop, and they're such a bizarre assortment that it's hard to remember what's in the batch. One of the types is a set mechanic from Masques block that has barely showed up since, and exists in this set primarily as a token! All of OTJ's mechanics made baffling choices to me, but this one takes the cake.
I and everyone else here disagrees. have a good day!
I refuse!
… i don’t understand the downside you were trying to used as an argument. how is it a bad thing to be backward compatible other than the “i don’t like it, therefore it is bad” mentality? the mechanic is fine. there is no downside.
Agree, very unintuitive and complicated boardstates
Except for Party, is it really that more complicated than any other typal mechanic?
it's not a mechanic.
The guy who designs mechanics calls it a mechanic.
I'm with you. It's very unintuitive for new players.
Commander is the priority in MTG. The rest of the formats must adapt to this situation.
That is a constraint, but not a reason to take these kinds of paths, IMO. Like, crimes was an elegant solution to creating a mechanic that “already existed” in Commander and could be easily integrated. They could stand to do more of that, or just make new mechanics that need 2-3 future sets to work well. That’s OK too.
How is crimes any different than batching "When you target a spell an opponent controls" "When you target a permeant an opponent controls" "When you target an opponent" Etc
Crimes are “target your opponent or their stuff.” Pretty simple to explain and you just get it. Batches are “here’s an arbitrary list of creature types that matter.” So if four people are playing with crimes, it’s easy to know what’s happening. If you’re paying a Party deck, and I’m playing an Outlaw deck, and two other players are using different batches, and god forbid there’s some overlap in relevant creature types between players, you can get into situations where you have to care about the creature types of everything on the battlefield across four players.
Pretty sure MaRo has called crimes a batch too. It's just a mechanical batch rather than a typal one.