Anyone up for Explorers of Ixalan?

M

Melkor

Well-known member
Looking further, it looks like you guys are tapped out, so I'll speed this up. By my calculations, the Persecutions should kill all Mooseman's creatures except the Marauders and should kill Oversoul's Saproling. The next step in the plan is to attack Oversoul with my 3 fliers for 11 damage and Mooseman with the rest of my guys (the Paladin, the Vampire, and the Vampire Noble)
 
M

Melkor

Well-known member
Just checking

Alright, Spidey is dead, Oversoul is dead, Mooseman has no more creatures, takes 10 (I gain 5) and I lose the Paladin of the Bloodstained, done (I put a counter on the Skymarcher)


Melkor: 17
Command Zone:
High and Dry, Pirate's Market (Site: At the beginning of your end step, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.)
Deeproot Tree (Site: At the beginning of your end step, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.)
Hand: 1
Library: 41
Battlefield:

(T) (T) (T) Swamp x3
(T) (T) (T) (U) Plains x4
(T) Prismatic Lens (T: Add C to my mana pool.; 1, T: Add one mana of any color to my mana pool)

(T) Vampire (3/3, Lifelink) 2 +1/+1 counters
(T) Duskborne Skymarcher (2/2, Flying, W, T: Target attacking Vampire gets +1/+1 until end of turn) 1 +1/+1 counter
(T) Vampire Noble (3/2)
(T) Vampire Interloper (2/1, Flying, Can't Block)
(T) Vampire Interloper (2/1, Flying, Can't Block)
(S) Bishop of the Bloodstained (3/3, when ~ enters the battlefield, target opponent loses 1 life for each Vampire you control)

Graveyard: Shielded by Faith, Mortify, Zealous Persecution, Paladin of the Bloodstained
Exile:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mooseman: 5
Command Zone: Cannons to Port (The next time you deal combat damage to the player on your left, draw a card.)
Hand: 2
Library: 43
Battlefield:

(TT) Island
(TTT) Swamp
(T) Crumbling Necropolis ( ETB tapped. T: Add U, B, or R to your mana pool.)
(T) Prismatic Lens ( T: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.)

(U) Treasure token (they're like Lotus Petals, but in token form)


Graveyard: Vow of Lightning, Coat of Venom, StormFleet Aerialist, Mass Mutiny, Dire Fleet Hoarder, Rigging Runner, Adaptive Automaton, Storm Fleet Spy, Angrath's Marauders
Exile:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Mooseman

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
Well this is not going well.
UUD
I'll search one of the of the 3 tiles.... say the left most one.
Come on Hail Mary

Melkor: 17
Command Zone:
High and Dry, Pirate's Market (Site: At the beginning of your end step, you may discard a card. If you do, draw a card.)
Deeproot Tree (Site: At the beginning of your end step, put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control.)
Hand: 1
Library: 41
Battlefield:

(T) (T) (T) Swamp x3
(T) (T) (T) (U) Plains x4
(T) Prismatic Lens (T: Add C to my mana pool.; 1, T: Add one mana of any color to my mana pool)

(T) Vampire (3/3, Lifelink) 2 +1/+1 counters
(T) Duskborne Skymarcher (2/2, Flying, W, T: Target attacking Vampire gets +1/+1 until end of turn) 1 +1/+1 counter
(T) Vampire Noble (3/2)
(T) Vampire Interloper (2/1, Flying, Can't Block)
(T) Vampire Interloper (2/1, Flying, Can't Block)
(S) Bishop of the Bloodstained (3/3, when ~ enters the battlefield, target opponent loses 1 life for each Vampire you control)

Graveyard: Shielded by Faith, Mortify, Zealous Persecution, Paladin of the Bloodstained
Exile:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mooseman: 5
Command Zone: Cannons to Port (The next time you deal combat damage to the player on your left, draw a card.)
Hand: 2
Library: 43
Battlefield:

(UT) Island
(UUT) Swamp
(U) Crumbling Necropolis ( ETB tapped. T: Add U, B, or R to your mana pool.)
(T) Prismatic Lens ( T: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1, T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.)

(U) Treasure token (they're like Lotus Petals, but in token form)


Graveyard: Vow of Lightning, Coat of Venom, StormFleet Aerialist, Mass Mutiny, Dire Fleet Hoarder, Rigging Runner, Adaptive Automaton, Storm Fleet Spy, Angrath's Marauders
Exile:

----------------------------------------------------------------------[/quote]
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Scrolls of Azcanta
Event
Each player draws two cards, then each of your opponents discards two cards.
 
Mooseman

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
Yeah, great fun, but as I said Vampires are really good. Pirates need to attack a lot. Dinos are going toward extinction. When I played this live, we missed the do damage take control of a site. That does make the tiles a bit more influential in the game. I'd like to see more tribe decks with this. I wonder if we could do this like we did the tribal multiplayer games. Maybe if we bult decks as a group and then pilot one of them.
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
LOL. You did warn us! I just couldn't get going with the Dinos.

I'm of two minds about your suggestion. The first is that sure, this would be nice to see with other tribes. The second is wondering if this was specifically designed for Ixalan in mind and if other tribes would "break" it. And if there was some sort of "deck building" rules used when building these...
 
M

Melkor

Well-known member
I didn't see any of the game pieces specifically reference the tribes, so I don't think there is any reason why other tribes wouldn't work. I'd be fine with just switching up the decks.
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Haven't met many people who tried this game out, but one person did mention adapting it by basically using other (unspecified) decks. Yeah, nothing about the tiles necessarily relies on using the decks that come in the box. We could totally do a variant with tribal decks or whatever. Offhand, I can't think of a specific tribe or type of deck that breaks Explorers of Ixalan except insofar as it would be breaking Magic in a general sense. The site tiles do incentivize attacking other players, so presumably decks with evasive creatures would be favored more than they would in a game without the tiles.
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
So... this is basically "tribal". Would there need to be a set of "ground rules" or expectations for deck building? :p
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
So... this is basically "tribal". Would there need to be a set of "ground rules" or expectations for deck building? :p
Click to expand...
Well yes, I've been thinking about that, but not specifically for Rivals of Ixalan, although I'm not convinced adding that aspect matters so much when it comes to "ground rules." This was actually material I was thinking of putting in an article, but I'd already started a different article (which is now finished and I'll submit it soon). The summary, though, would be that I've been playing a lot of Canadian Highlander at a local gamestore and that in thinking about how the their "point list" is really pretty logical and that seeing the format play out, it works better than something like a list for Legacy, Vintage, Modern, etc. would when applied to a highlander format. The cards that are problems for Legacy/Vintage aren't necessarily the same as the ones that are problems in highlander formats and, more importantly, the cards that are problems in highlander formats aren't necessarily banned or restricted in Legacy/Vintage. However, giving it some thought, I think I can spot most of the truly egregious stuff. My idea was that in a tribal format with all cards outside the tribe restricted, I could (or someone else could, or ideally a small group could) identify potential problem cards, test them, and present them to a "council" to determine whether those cards should be banned. Looking at highlander formats, of which there are a few notable ones, as a starting point, there's a fairly obvious core of broken cards that could be eliminated right away, and that would probably leave a manageable suite of cards for a council to deliberate on. I imagine that there'd inevitably be some game eventually where something questionable flew under the radar, but if even one person is looking into potential problems and reporting them to a committee, the kinks could be worked out, especially as people got more experience in the environment.

I think under a "Tribal Lowlander" setup, the more pressing issue than individual card bans would be which tribes to ban, because in our old tribal games we banned goblins, elves, zombies, and nothing else. When we started in 2005, those were probably the only really scary tribes! But a lot has changed since then and it isn't obvious to me how many more tribes are out there that might be overpowered. There's more risk of, uh, spoiled games, involved in this aspect, I think. In part, this depends on the participants. For reasons that I probably don't need to go into, under this model I'd be reporting to the council anything I found relating to the potential to "break" tribes, rather than actually bringing such tribes to games. :oops:

I think it could work and I find the "Lowlander" concept we seem to have invented here to be an interesting deckbuilding restriction. So I was planning an article based on this, although I wasn't really expecting to get enough participation at the CPA to make such a format a reality. Thought it might be just a good analysis for the potential setup of casual Magic variants. Of course, if CPA people want to try to get a variant going, I'd be happy to work on that. My concern for that wouldn't be that the group is too small or that things would stall (which they might, but whatever). It'd be that some of the players here prefer Limited formats or formats with pre-built decks, because deckbuilding for Constructed Magic is a bit of a chore and ain't nobody got time for that. I mean, that seemed to be the biggest reason the old tribal games ground to a halt. So, not trying to discourage more games in the Games Run board, because I'm always interested in more of them, but I do see that as an obstacle, and an understandable one. If we're essentially making our own format, it also means we need to make our own Constructed decks. While I can't be sure, I think I know how decision-making processes for things like "what cards to ban" and "what tribes to ban" pretty smooth. But "how to build a deck" is going to be a hurdle no matter what.

There are a couple of other things I thought about but wasn't really going to note in the article. We'll see. A bit one might be whether/how to regulate infinite combos. My instinct at this time is to just "ban" them and go from there. I do find that to be inelegant and there are some things about it I don't like, but I can't think of a better solution and I'm kinda torn. On the one hand, infinite combos are probably just bad for multiplayer Magic in general. It's demoralizing to have a 5-person game just abruptly end because one person "went off." On the other hand, the threat of infinite combos adds some interesting counterplay and interactivity: cards like Krosan Grip and Force of Will become better because they can sabotage attempts at going infinite, and in some situations a player can see an opponent's infinite combo components and use that politically to entice other opponents to target the combo player. But yeah, right now I'd be inclined to say that it's probably just not worth it. And that's a real shame, because Tribal Game 6 was really the most memorable experience I've ever had in my entire life. :p
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I'm wondering if for purposes of using "tribal decks" in Explorers, just restricting the cards to an expansion is enough. That's what the original Explorers decks did, right?

I know I've (probably) said it before (in some way), but there's a place for infinite combos, and tribal isn't it. It's the very "nature" of tribal: you have a "tribe", and you go to war with that tribe. They're the centerpiece of the deck, not the "delaying fodder" so a combo can be set up.

Anyway, the construction part is my "kryptonite", because since I don't have most of the cards, I'd need to do this all online and that's tedious.
 
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