I like white bordered blue cards from 8th and 9th edition. I like all sorts of things about them:
The look of the blue card frame with a white border The name and flavors of the cards The simple concepts of the cards- small amount of rules text and occasionally a lot of flavor text in the case of vanilla creatures
Coral Eel is a wonderful example of these things. I have both a regular, white-border Coral Eel and a foil black-border one (black border suits the foil one better than white border, in my opinion). When I have a Coral Eel in play, the foliage in the foreground gives my board a much needed boost in vibrant decoration. The white border helps the card stand out since the majority of the surfaces I play on are darker. I also think that it is better that the border matches the color of the text box and contrasts the color of the text. In the case of Coral Eel, it is easy to notice that it has no rules text- it even has little flavor text. Along with all of these things, the mana cost makes the card even easier on the eyes. It definitely has the form of 'being a card' quite secured. It is solid in a few of the fundamentals of the game. After all, that which matters more than what is executed is how perfectly it is executed.
Just like a great work of music, great ongoing strategies all have some sort of underlying essence that can't be described explicitly. In deck building, how well one understands that essence correlates to the playability of the deck. You can notice this correlation when giving a deck to someone who has never played it. It is hard to see- mainly because it must be compared to an instance of that person playing an unplayable deck (the mana curve starts a 6, the mana base doesn't match up with the spells, most spell don't have an applicable function such as hoser enchantments) or a playable deck that does something impressive or fancy but doesn't win games often or ever (drawing lots of cards that let you draw more cards, or producing lots of mana with nothing to use it). Mind you, I distinguish between the playability of a deck and how often the deck wins- i.e. The $4,000 Solution won in tournaments but can not compete against a store-bought pre-constructed deck. If you were to tell someone about the game or teach them how to play, you wouldn't show them a game between that deck and some Storm Combo deck. That kind of game is quite different you know- spawned from a dense metagame.... ...(WHOA! It's been more than a month since I started this comment...lol) ... but yeah, back to my main point, there is a certain essence of a good deck- and I mean 'playable' good (I can't think of a better way to describe it actually). OH WAIT! I have a great example: think of everytime R&D develops a new Duel Decks thingy. Not counting the Knights v.s. Dragons, if you have a game with any of the other pairs of decks, then it turns out to be a somewhat interesting game most of the time. No, the games are no Batman v.s. Superman or Ninja Turtles v.s. Power Rangers or Chuck Norris v.s. Bruce Lee or Goku v.s Vegeta or anything hot like that. However, the games are not..... stale and lame such as:
Turn 2: I get Enchantment X onto the board; I think you lose Or Turn 5: Nope, I didn't draw my combo pieces; I can't do anything.
Self-proclaimed experts describe 'quality' games as ones with "back-and-forth" interaction. An appropriate analogy for a quality game v.s. a stale game would be an episode from a bad soap opera v.s. an assembly on CSPAN. Taking that analogy further, one who degrades into a politician would then develop the capacity to appreciate CSPAN, as certain magic players who play the game for long enough begin to enjoy a match between affinity and dredge (I know because I am one of those players). There is a greater part of me who appreciates games that are merely a more colorful, flavorful, version of Chess.
ZaisConsultant
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
A hidden message on gatherer for one printing of an island: /watch?v=_366fjO5iMc
Comments (3)
The look of the blue card frame with a white border
The name and flavors of the cards
The simple concepts of the cards- small amount of rules text and occasionally a lot of flavor text in the case of vanilla creatures
Coral Eel is a wonderful example of these things. I have both a regular, white-border Coral Eel and a foil black-border one (black border suits the foil one better than white border, in my opinion). When I have a Coral Eel in play, the foliage in the foreground gives my board a much needed boost in vibrant decoration. The white border helps the card stand out since the majority of the surfaces I play on are darker. I also think that it is better that the border matches the color of the text box and contrasts the color of the text. In the case of Coral Eel, it is easy to notice that it has no rules text- it even has little flavor text. Along with all of these things, the mana cost makes the card even easier on the eyes. It definitely has the form of 'being a card' quite secured. It is solid in a few of the fundamentals of the game. After all, that which matters more than what is executed is how perfectly it is executed.
Even though certain decks suggest otherwise, the game still rest on certain fundamental foundations. The decks use cards. Cards contribute to the effort of the deck. This is what puts Concentrate and Tidings in high esteem. We all know that a 3-word rules text box is golden.
Just like a great work of music, great ongoing strategies all have some sort of underlying essence that can't be described explicitly. In deck building, how well one understands that essence correlates to the playability of the deck. You can notice this correlation when giving a deck to someone who has never played it. It is hard to see- mainly because it must be compared to an instance of that person playing an unplayable deck (the mana curve starts a 6, the mana base doesn't match up with the spells, most spell don't have an applicable function such as hoser enchantments) or a playable deck that does something impressive or fancy but doesn't win games often or ever (drawing lots of cards that let you draw more cards, or producing lots of mana with nothing to use it). Mind you, I distinguish between the playability of a deck and how often the deck wins- i.e. The $4,000 Solution won in tournaments but can not compete against a store-bought pre-constructed deck. If you were to tell someone about the game or teach them how to play, you wouldn't show them a game between that deck and some Storm Combo deck. That kind of game is quite different you know- spawned from a dense metagame....
...(WHOA! It's been more than a month since I started this comment...lol) ... but yeah, back to my main point, there is a certain essence of a good deck- and I mean 'playable' good (I can't think of a better way to describe it actually). OH WAIT! I have a great example: think of everytime R&D develops a new Duel Decks thingy. Not counting the Knights v.s. Dragons, if you have a game with any of the other pairs of decks, then it turns out to be a somewhat interesting game most of the time. No, the games are no Batman v.s. Superman or Ninja Turtles v.s. Power Rangers or Chuck Norris v.s. Bruce Lee or Goku v.s Vegeta or anything hot like that. However, the games are not..... stale and lame such as:
Turn 2: I get Enchantment X onto the board; I think you lose
Or
Turn 5: Nope, I didn't draw my combo pieces; I can't do anything.
Self-proclaimed experts describe 'quality' games as ones with "back-and-forth" interaction. An appropriate analogy for a quality game v.s. a stale game would be an episode from a bad soap opera v.s. an assembly on CSPAN. Taking that analogy further, one who degrades into a politician would then develop the capacity to appreciate CSPAN, as certain magic players who play the game for long enough begin to enjoy a match between affinity and dredge (I know because I am one of those players). There is a greater part of me who appreciates games that are merely a more colorful, flavorful, version of Chess.
/watch?v=_366fjO5iMc