As I continue to publish more of the Compleat History, I wanted to ask how people felt about decklists in posts. Are they useful? Do they feel like extraneous information? Would you rather they be in a separate supplemental post?
"mr storylets"
- he/him
- brunodias.dev/
writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.
http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain
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in reply to @bruno's post:
I like to see the decklists but I actively play which makes me a nerd for that stuff.
i don't know anything about mtg but the decklists feel important. i think it would feel like something was missing if they weren't there. they're not super disruptive or anything either.
I appreciate it a lot, as someone who has flirted with playing magic a few times but never gotten particularly far into it -- seeing some of the core pieces of the archetypes jogs my memory better than just the archetype names.
they're neat (and look great)! but if they're a pain to put together, i'd be just as happy with a link to a moxfield deck or something
Oh no they're super easy to put together, I just have a script that generates them from a standard decklist text file
I really enjoy the context and clicking over and getting nostalgic about old magic
I like having them a lot, the only thing that's I'd like to see done differently is putting flavor text (and maybe an image) inline, maybe behind a details tag, so I don't have to have 20 scryfall tabs open to get a sense of each card (since I don't play Magic, but have played many of its derivatives)
Of course that might be too much work, heh.
Depending on the APIs and terms of usage and such, I'd be willing to update the generator script to add those if it's all the same to you.
As someone familiar with magic and many of these cards, but unfamiliar with metagame history, I love seeing the decklists right in front of me to see what cards were being played commonly in decks that you may not talk about in the post. Like, that Zuran Orb is being played seemingly for value in several of these decks early is not something I expected, as I've only seen it as something someone plays when they're about to do something broken. It's fun to see what cards were role-players, and having the deck lists right in the post helps better see these things.
Anyways, loving this series!
I think Zuran Orb is in a lot of these decks for three pretty specific reasons:
- a concession to the mono-red aggro decks still running around and being successful, as it effectively blanks burn spells to the face
- a combo with Balance - you sac all your lands to Zuran Orb and then play Balance and send all their lands to the graveyard. being a 0-cost artifact, Zuran Orb also interacts with Balance by being a card that gets out of your hand right away (and interacts with opposing Balances in that way). Zuran Orb/Balance makes it very easy to set up winning situations by easily manipulating the number of lands in play and cards in hand that you have.
- a way to get around various The Rack/Black Vise situations
Yeah as a non-player the deck lists are SUPER useful to have. It's one thing to hear about specific noteworthy cards and the strategies involved, but I basically have to look up everything only mentioned by name unless you talked about it a lot already, so having the links already there is really useful. And having the full list often helps contextualize what those key cards mean for the deck, it's great having them separated by type and having the mana cost visible, and in general I just end up clicking through a lot of the cards shown while reading to help understand better. I think without them it would feel a little bit too abstract, so they're great!
As someone who doesn't play, I certainly scroll right by the decklists for the most part. That said, for people who know a bit more they're probably quite important and they don't hinder my reading at all.