- We need to balance, tweak and continue to create new forms of proactive Nora gen. Essence capture, Nora shield, soul drinker , pillage ...while not perfect at least promote active more exciting gameplay. This is not a popular opinion but no one (should) wants to turtle for an hour then power turn and then the loser of one skirmish surrenders. It should be attack, counter attack and the win con at least be worked for in several circumstances rather then Nora hoarding then spamming one turn ftw
@DMrBadguy Ok, thanks. I was wondering if there had been any further reasoning on that - I'm well aware already of nora gen's power - or if this was theory stuff I was already familiar with. Still working on the MtG post.
To understand the potential connection between the current state of MtG Standard and the importance of nora gen, it's necessary to know about a lot of Magic history. Here, in a rough chronology, are a couple major points in MtG. Necropotence, ~1995-97 Necropotence dominated Magic. During this time, almost every deck ran the card. It was powerful because it added a new resource dynamic: players could exchange life for cards. In MtG, cards are comparable to nora. A card is a discrete package of value which can operate in the game, and are the fundamental resource. The point will be important later on. During the reign of Necropotence, most decks were combo, and relied on playing Necropotence, protecting Necropotence, and then playing some multi-card combo to kill the opponent. The format was narrow and inbred, and while Sligh shuffled things around, the format didn't change much until Necropotence itself was banned. Up to the point, the various combos that it enabled had been hammered instead. The thing to take away from this is that Necropotence was a major engine of card advantage, far beyond what any other deck could produce, and as a result Green, White, and Red were underpowered and often unplayable. Time Spiral Block, ~2006-2007. Time Spiral standard was a high water point for complexity and power in the modern MtG era. The design crew had learned from things like Necropotence, and while nothing that insane was available, the Standard formats that included Time Spiral - first Kamigawa/Time Spiral and then Time Spiral/Lorwyn - featured enormous card pools and powerful decks. There were more cards in Time Spiral/Lorwyn than there are now in Pox. Control decks had access to direct draw spells, which are equatable to nora generation: direct means of investing to produce raw, fundamental advantage. The Standard format had some diversity, but there were a couple decks that were clearly the best. Scars-Innistrad, ~2010-2012. This is a personal Dark Age in MtG for me; most forms of direct card draw are stripped from the game, and following from a changing designer ethos cards are simplified and potentially unstable interactions pulled back. Brute force mono-color decks were major powerhouses, and the exciting development for Black was which piece of bland, forced sacrifice effect they could run. One gave the opponent some life, but the other costed a wee bit more. I don't have hard numbers for or experience of this format's diversity, but it was mediocre. I see this as a transitional period into where Magic is now. Theros/Khans, 2014, 2015. Standard is at the most diverse it has been in years. There are numerous decks floating around, many potentially viable. It's a three-speed format, with distinct aggro, midrange, and control decks each with their own agendas. There is starkly limited access to direct card advantage: sweepers are expensive, situational, or both, and card draw is relegated to conditionals or expensive one-shot spells. That is not to say the format is weak, on the contrary, there are cards of incredible individual strength and there are good sweeper, but not near the comparative power of their predecessors. Strong draw spells like Treasure Cruise have been outright banned. I won't say these are causal, but from just these points there might be a correlation. For Pox, card advantage is a nora advantage, and direct access to card advantage through sweepers or card draw is equatable to direct nora generation. There's more to its dynamic than just its raw power, though. Nora generation and card advantage is strong because of the decision apparatus that surrounds it. Because the advantage provided is fundamental, there's no need for assessment of the situation beyond comparing momentum and making some strategic judgments. It's a simple decision because the player can work directly in the upper-most level of abstraction. In those situations, solid theory trumps intuition and experience. Now, that's not to imply that's a bad thing, not by any stretch. Those are two different skill sets that are rewarded by different mechanics, and the selection of either is itself preferential. There is no high arbiter of skill. As it directly relates to diversity, here are two theories, each supporting a different side. Assumed: Direct advantage generation impedes diversity. Access to direct power dictates includes, as it will never be a bad idea to include it, the only bad idea is when to use it. Hence, it's inclusion is guaranteed, it's particular use is the only thing that isn't. Assumed: Direct advantage generation promotes or at least doesn't harm diversity. Access to an additional category of cards allows for greater design freedom when designing a deck. The includes are not required because flexibility and synergy are limited by deck space. One obvious counterpoint to the second theory is that direct advantage generation has its own quality of flexibility because the resource is highly convertible, and can be involved in its own synergy based on its particular qualities. Here's a counter argument to that point based on attacking the warrant: cards and nora are not actually the most fundamental advantage. That honor goes to shrine health or life total. Sligh is a distinct and competitive example of this from MtG history. In this case, although the most inherently convertible, cards and nora do not actually determine a winner, only help. Therefore, there's an external and supra-theoretical grounding which is more important than cards or nora; despite being powerful, the dynamic between cards and life is sufficient to keep both in check. Pulling this back into Flame Siphon and nora gen in general, these things need an eye on them because they function on a different level than most other things in the game. I like nora gen, I want it to be a part of the game. The mechanic has a tendency to be broken (unstable), but pure stability is itself a weight on the game. To return to some common examples, check out SC2 for about 2 years ago, Dark Souls 2 versus 1, and that Scars-Innistrad period in MtG. A game should be a little broken, even at the cost of balance and potentially diversity.
Maybe just reduce flame siphon to 1 rank only giving you 150% of the damage dealt, but as I said I am not sure it needs a nerf.
Yeah, I remember looking at Hearthstone from an MtG perspective when it just came out and talking with some buddies about all the stuff that would be broke as hell. All that stuff has been or currently is slated for nerfs. There's a lot of theoretical carryover between games. The comparison is indeed a bit awkward - they're different games. A couple years back I was working on this big collection of comparable theory pieces between Pox and MtG, which highlighted a couple of these comparison problems. For all their differences, I think cards and nora work in a sufficiently similar way within the contextual framework of their respective games to be often equatable. They certainly aren't, which is the reasoning behind the point-counterpoint elaboration after that. Their potential overlap is warranted in those two brief paragraphs, but yes, explicitly, they could coincide. Part of that is because diversity - like skill - is a set of potential axes and preferences, not a singular continuum. Well said that it enabled otherwise nonexistent decks. Of course. That it is often irrelevant or incidental to winning the game is why it is often discarded or ignored. There's some more hack-theory work involved in this topic which I may get into in some other post, but essentially player or shrine life is a non-convertible resource outside of particular enabling circumstances, and is therefore worthless. We've already talked about abstracting all interaction to fiddling with nora numbers or cards, but it's possible to take that a step further and abstract to say that nora is an input value into other elements of the BG that function as converters to expected shrine damage, and that final conversion value is what really matters. A deck that is pure card or nora advantage without a win condition doesn't actually win.
Plenty, certainly, plenty. Life's real problem is that there are no distinct ways to convert from it. Like you said, this is why people are willing to Scry away, and it's part of what made Necropotence good: it's a large, untapped resource, and any way to get something out of it is amazing. The key point about life is that its marginal value is messed up as hell. There's a classic quote from MtG, which embodies the Black ethos and much of the Spike attitude: "The only life point that matters it the last one." So, life is a distinct and supreme resource, but its innate lack of convertibility combined with its whack marginal value curves - which are themselves highly variable depending upon context (e.g. playing against Burn with 3 vs 4 health) - means that it's rarely as integral to winning. That Best of the Worst tournament sounds hilarious.
I'll see if I can dig it up, but probably not worth it. From what I recall and guess, it's old, rudimentary, and terribly written. Edit: Neither can I find the entire thing nor is the entire thing worth finding based upon what I did find. Everything there is better said in this thread already, by myself or others, or elsewhere on the forums.
Anyone else love it when Kasale and DMr start talking? No **** but I'm sure I dropped a semi during all that lovely meta-babble.
I have to agree here. I started this thread with a general Idea but without an answer. My proposition was rather weak and DMrBadguy really brought content to this thread. I can only thank him for his spot on commentary.
I like the flame siphon as it is now but i agree that the range can be reduced At the moment i run flame siphon on my minotaur bg and sacrifice either my battlemage or my stitched first for nora but remember that if your opponent uses backlash it does a lot of damage on you 20 damage each time that you try to do flame siphon Honestly i prefer flame siphon because it much more safer than using scorched dwarf which only gives 6 nora each turn
Just to throw out a simple thought process: I often compare Nora to Mana and Rune Reveals/CD reduction to card draw myself when I make a magic the gathering comparison. I can see why you would make the comparison between nora and card advantage though. The reason I make the comparison that I do is because in an ideal situation having access to your runes to provide variety/access to desired plays would create an advantage I believe is similar to drawing cards in magic because it does affect what you can play/how much. Nora I compare to mana because miners/flame siphon/etc. provide the same benefits or close to them that land ramp/mana producers do in magic. I think the power of abilities like Flame Siphon seem subtle because there isn't a large focus on how a 'ramp' strategy can be used in Pox Nora. Also, I believe that 'scry' and cooldown related abilities aren't as desired because of the lack of incentive to 'draw' cards in Pox. I think if 'ramping' was more transparent and 'scry'/cooldown had more benefits/obvious themes/strategies to fit into that it would not only lead to balancing these abilities but adding new dimensions to Pox. Or I'm crazy and this is gibberish, however.
Mana/Cards and Nora/Reveals are interlaced between the two games, and each has something in common with the others. I've been talking about nora as cards because they are the primary resources which are, crucially, limited across time, as opposed to on a turn-by-turn basis. At the same time, you're quite right that reveals are like cards, in that each provides more options. Reveals are also like mana, in that their sum grows steadily over time while their marginal value plateaus as the game progresses. Looking at how these various resources are entangled would be a great way to learn about both games.
I would have to agree that MTG Cards equate more closely to POX nora resource. In pox the rune reveal rate is high and capped meaning that it rarely becomes an issue except when running combo or needing extra consistency as to running 'rune draw'. Take a look at obelisk... if rune reveals were card draw Obelisk would be an automatic ancestral recall on crack yet it isn't run. In Pox Nora is what makes the game tick currently. What you do is limited by nora cost since there is no way to run out of runes to play and have left over nora... the two resources are lopsided. Back in 15 rune dock's maybe the comparison would be a little muddier since losing cards to cool down did result in you having nora and no runes to play but that is far far from the case today.
I've always wanted the balance between rune reveals and nora to be brought closer together to add more to the game. At the moment rune reveals offer no real strategy beyond combo. As to the comments about shrine health it is mostly irrelevant unless facing specific shrine rush bgs (sligh) which are hard to pilot due to consistency. The game generally boils down to this: The first to reach a lopsided force to where enemy champions can be one rounded while maintaining board presence. Most games come down to this which is why surrenders are more common win condition. You may be able to spend nora on champs but once that tipping point is reached it doesn't matter as the resource doesn't stay. To tie it back to MTG it's like each game is a land destruction bg. You destroy enough champs and they can't recover... then you just poke their shrine till they die.
I can understand that point and the reasoning behind it. My issue comes from the way the comparison is made. Comparing nora to card draw makes sense because they are both the primary way to keep momentum in the game. As you said, runes such as Obelisk don't matter because combo decks and consistency isn't needed in Pox Nora because of the rune reveal rate and the ever constant 'shrine scry' that players may use. On the other hand I compare Nora to Mana because they are both resources and function in a similar matter -- if you have enough you can 'play out' what you have. As you pointed out @yobanchi the idea of card draw and cool down reduction mattering was more prevalent back when the battle groups were smaller. Also, I have an issue likening land destruction to creature destruction just because I compare land destruction to abilities such as Nora Drain. Discard I might compare to something such as conceal or jellibrium mind. Either way, I think abilities such as jellibirum mind and scrying having more of an impact would allow different strategies to emerge in Pox Nora but there is always the worry of creating an environment where the 'iPox' battle groups run rampant (which iPox is a genius anyways, he'd still manage to break something ) and that discourages interactivity between players in the same manner that combo decks do.Z Personally I think if runes had more signature abilities or roles, such as every wing has a different sigil, or that a theme/race/strategy/etc. had a specific style of play that one rune opened up (such as runes like chillshard, extispicer, etc. allow psychic battle groups to play around with dots) then it might make consistency and cool down more relevant. Again though, probably gibberish.
Alright, the stuff you're saying is fine, it's this little tag that's way off. This hurts whatever case you are trying to make, displays a stunning lack of confidence, and makes not only the points but the person seem flighty and insubstantial. If you have something to say, say it loud, and if you need to qualify, qualify with you language rather than a self-depreciating rider. Be more sure of yourself, mate.
