What Cycles Teach us About Design
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- Cycles are everywhere in Magic: the Gathering, that is if you know where to look. I have spent the last few weeks digging into countless cycles, poured over mtg articles and interviews with Mafic: the Gathering Developers to bring you a comprehensive look at one of MTG's greatest design tools.
What I found was far more than anything I ever expected. You see MTG Cycles aren't merely an arbitrary set of five cards; rather they are a physical expression of the Magic the Gathering color pie, tools for defining factions, a method for guiding players, integral to weaving larger narratives, and part of Magic's greater Aesthetic. If that sound like a lot, that is because it is, and the deeper I got into the research the more I found out how important Cycles are to Magic: the Gathering
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Crazy set idea: A set that is entirely cycles. just 100% cycles, no card exists without 4 other cards with a similar theme
Crispy, delicious video. More of this, please
Nice!!!
Death Wish 3WW
Choose a creaturt card you own from the garm outsidee, reveal that card, You lod, and putour hand. Remove Remove Living Wom the game.
Ancestral recall, lightning bolt, giant growth,dark ritual, healing salve. K thx bye
Yep. I came to comment this. The very first cycle. The one for three Alpha cards.
Ohh yeah, the "grixis fucking rules" cycle
Oh are those the options for white and green? Sweet, good to know.
best to worse:
recall, ritual, rolt, rowth, healing salve
1:20 "Consume the cards themselves" But people said I shouldn't eat the tasty cardboard. :(
FOR THE LAST TIME JEREMY, YOU ATE THE 002 ONE RING DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING RARE THAT WAS?????
"Let them complain. As long as the addictive ink is working, we can do anything we want."
-R&D's Secret Lair flavor text
The thumbnail is the best. "Choose a creaturet card you own from the ganm outsidee, reveal that card, you lord, and puour hand. Remove Remove Living Wom the game."
Thanks for having me, Dice :) I'm such a Rosewater fan, it was an honour to voice him. My favourite cycle is Avacyn Restored's rare miracles - the interesting bit for me is that, because the colour black didn't have the miracle mechanic (and also because miracle is very niche), the 5 horizontal pices took 6 full years to finally find their last missing piece, with commander 2018.
When I first saw "Entreat the Dead" in black with the miracle mechanic, I felt something finally - oh my goodness, FINALLY - fell into place!
Thanks for lending me your voice, you make for a decent Mark replacement
@@DiceTry You should see me announcing I'm pulling off my driveway (I don't even drive, but I'm sure I can fake it)
What's that cycle, I've never seen it
Honorable mention to Tempest where every card was a story spotlight card.
I love cycles! They're especially fun to collect and display, I was really happy to open both the legends cycle and the realm lands from my Kaldheim booster box for example! They just look so neat together. Also Strixhaven is one of my favorite sets for this reason, somebody on Reddit neatly put all the cycles of that set together in one image and there's actually like twenty or more, it's crazy.
mega-mega cycle do at least also have the alternate name of "Supercycle", given by Gavin a while back in a video.
11 hours ago this released and its already underrated. Rhystic Studies level of evocative. Bravo.
Thanks, that made me smile. I am glad people are enjoying it, I put a lot of love into it.
A video about cycles without the boon cycle is both staggering and appalling
The quality here is astounding.
Thanks, I spent probably way to many hours on it
"Not the best naming convention" Gigacycles. One step up is Teracycles. Then- fuck, was it yota or zeta next?
mega-mega cycle are actually also called Supercycles.
Next is Peta, then Exa, then Zetta, and then Yotta
As xkcd taught me, Karl Marx Gave The Proletariat Eleven Zeppelins, Yo
I think i like cycles best when they're mirrors, and not a full color pie thing. 'Angel of glorys rise' for human typal and 'zombie apocalypse' for zombie typal come to mind, same with champion of the perished and champion of the parish. i always love to see "Equal opposites" but that's just because they feel more special to me. We see cycles of the whole color pie spectrum (The charms come to mind) all the time.
This video is very good, but I can't help to feel a bit disappointed. After laying out all the different types of cycles there are out there, I was expecting a closer look to existing cycles as examples of said types, and how each card in a cycle compares to the rest; sure, there are many cards shown on screen as examples, but they're often partially obscuring each other so they're clearly not meant for paused reading.
This is an ode to the concept of card cycles, and a good one at that, which I appreciate, but it requires and assumes previous knowledge of them
Very impressive research! I enjoy the categorization of them and definitions, my personal favorite cycle is the cantrip cycle back in Alpha, I don't think there is a more iconic cycle than the good ol fashioned Lightning Bolt, Ancestral Recall, Giant Growth, Dark Ritual, and while people may not like it, but I do, Healing Salve.
You are probably right, it has to be the most iconic
@@DiceTry hahaha now balance wise... different story hahaha
We shouldn't really talk about balance and Alpha in the same breath I think, that first go at a Magic set was something else, lol.
If you really think about it balance wise in a market where balance wasn't really a concern for games, like honestly its also its own pioneer for balancing its own game. Think about it back in the 90's we played boomer shooters where there was a CLEAR Heirarchy of guns, who is to say Ancestral Recall isn't the BFG of Magic games? The difference is technically anyone could run around and grab it then go on a murder spree, but its that same feeling I get when you 1v1 a friend in like old boomer shooters or really any old school game there either variance dictated the game or just clearly broken strats worked.
So in defense of Alpha, that's on par with the gaming market that was available at that time. @@DiceTry
My favorite cycle are artifact weapons from kaldheim, that can create a spirite token to attach to
3:20 WELL ACHTHYULLIIEE--- White and Black knight have a 3rd brother, the BLOOD KNIGHT which was as u may guess has the 2 hard red cost first strike and a 2/2. It's a funny name though as I would EXPECT it to be call Red Knight but hey, Wizards strikes again.
Once again, we suffer the sins of Planar Chaos being the alternate present "what if" set resulting in situations like this, where people "um actually" using Planar Chaos as if it holds any water whatsoever when the _entire point_ of that set was "what if we did things we wouldn't normally do". Blood Knight isn't a "third pair", it's a "what if the White and Black Knights were a White and Red Knight _instead"._
So you're saying that Blood knight DOES belong to the set..
@@CocoMura But it's not a set of 3, it's a pair of White Knight and Black/Blood Knight, because in the context of Blood Knight being printed, Black Knight wouldn't exist.
this is a great video about game design. No notes 👍
I love the 2-card cycle of Live Fast/Die Young- One of the most brilliant card pairings of all time, from design to flavor to execution. I was working on a video about it for another channel- Maybe I'll upload it and tag you! Cheers!
Great video
Thanks! A lot of love went into this one, and I hope it shows
‘Remove remove Living Wom the game’
Prolific thumbnail
Such Power
Your voice is so soothing. Also thanks for the content! Might have just found my new fave Mtg creator! I shall deep dive now
I agree with a lot of stuff, but I really do have to disagree with the story spotlights. I personally do not like them because I feel like it lessens the impact of the story and makes it more simplistic and almost like wizards is just cramming it in our face. I honestly have fun looking through old cards and noticing something new or recognizing a character on a card. It felt more like a puzzle honestly and made the storytelling feel so much more smooth and just interesting. I think that cycles are amazing and incredible, I just really wish they focused on writing a story over condensing it into specific cards that they designate to put story significance. I want to be able to see a story throughout all of the cards, not just a few, you know?
This definitely feels like a lighter rhystic study’s video, I love it some times I want this style with out the commitment thank you for the awesome video
The thought cycle did go up in power, you just need to put it in the right decks. I use all three in my Domia deck as an alternative way to discard my hand to be less than 7, while also being able to add blockers to the board.
The fact that you built a shitty deck does not make a card good.
@@StarkMaximum my guy, you've never even seen a deck list, let alone played against the deck, chill with the judgements
I knew that cycles were a common element to MTG. But I did not expect it to go THIS deep 😮
Call me a boomer but my favorite cycle is giant growth/lightning bolt/healing salve/dark ritual/ancestral recall
I personally think that story has been way too big of a focus for everything except the commander sets lately.
We don't remember Lorwyn for politics and plot, we remember it for the insane world building and background lore.
Most of the latest sets are completely unremovable from their plot. I don't think since around eldritch moon have we had a set that worked both as a standalone story as well as an expansion to existing sets.
Everything else feels very narrow in scope, and while we've been given some great cards, the decks sorta build themselves lately.
Lowering your hand size is a viable play strategy these days. Helps you discard more and quicker, for graveyard manipulation.
I'd like to see them print more mind eaters.
Love the brothers war uncommon cycle mention. They were such cool designs.
saw the Dark Tower book on your shelf and that's an instant sub, long days and pleasant nights Sai DiceTry!
The cicle of life and death...continues. jokes aside. The end of The vídeo is perfect. Most of The cycles i didnt even realize were there.
i love how you used a magic card as your mic clip location. :P
Bro... As always, a great pleasure to go deep analysis into those precious theme's. What about talking of the artists perspective into the lore ? Example: Jesper Ejising my favorite
He is one of the best for sure
Lol he's trying to not look at the goofball in the mask 3:44.
Best mtg channel on the net, full stop, criminally underrated by the algorithm.
Richard and Mark havent even contributed as much to the philosophy of this game as you have.
That's a huge compliment thank you!
This is why I like Universes Beyond. It's fun to see how they design and express characters through the color wheel.
It would help A LOT if you defined what a cycle was...
Got a fun little button for you to hit, right here! 1:00
Why don't you click that and tell me what happens!
Hmm, did you watch around 0:58 ?
Shoutout YV.
Keep getting those tags up.
I found the irl inserts in this video to be intrusive. Cutting back on those may benefit your channel.
Please... Not all cycles are created the same. Kamigawan Dragons for one.
It speaks more about a lack of creativity or imagination, as well as limitations from the designers.