Quest Mode: Guide to Formats, Worlds, and everything

[friarsol]

I expected it to be six booster packs and I'm genuinely surprised that it isn't, because why not? Sticking with the traditional six booster packs would have many advantages: familiar, recognizable, comfortable, people need less time to get their bearings, their Sealed experience carries over, etcetera. Why depart from that? That just raises the already considerable barrier to entry.

(Balanced colors is actually bad for Sealed since that way none of your colors are "deep".)

You keep saying Sealed, are you talking about the Sealed deck that we have in limited or are you talking about Quest mode?

I've opened lots of quest starting pools, by no way are they balanced. They give you roughly the same amount of colors, but it's not really that simple. There's plenty of variation built into how the Quest pools are built.

And one of the main reasons we don't do 6 packs is because you aren't playing against other sealed pools. If you are interested in doing so, you can create a sealed pool in our limited mode, and then import it into Quest mode. On top of that we already allow a ton of customization to what your starting pools will end up being.

[Xyx]

I know Quest isn't actual Sealed but it's so similar that it makes me wonder why it wasn't made identical (which would have aforementioned advantages.) Quest currently starts me off with 134 cards as opposed to the 84 I would get in Sealed, but the Easy opponents should still be manageable.

[friarsol]

I know Quest isn't actual Sealed but it's so similar that it makes me wonder why it wasn't made identical (which would have aforementioned advantages.) Quest currently starts me off with 134 cards as opposed to the 84 I would get in Sealed, but the Easy opponents should still be manageable.

I've already answered your question, so if that hasn't satisfied you there's nothing that I can provide you that will, so I'm going to stop responding about after this.. Quest mode has been around since longer than I've been at Forge, you'd have to ask whoever initially made it why they choose the numbers they did. I balanced out the numbers so there'd be more consistency, and a range of difficulty levels.

[Thrint]

I assume it has moved locations since the days when the guide was written - where can I find a list of the icons I can use for duels/quests when creating a world?

[Xyx]

where can I find a list of the icons I can use for duels/quests when creating a world?

<Cache>\pics\icons

But where that is depends on your installation. I think it's in user\AppData by default (but I modded my forge.profile.properties to move everything to the same drive.)

[RanDomino]

Hello,

I reworked the quest worlds slightly. Mainly I added every precon and event deck, created worlds that didn't exist for those decks, and changed the names of some of the other worlds (ones with the dates in the names).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwWI_ ... ThweHE3a0E

[ZotoPatate]

Great job, i used it now. Thanks

[dingbat1]

Hello,

I reworked the quest worlds slightly. Mainly I added every precon and event deck, created worlds that didn't exist for those decks, and changed the names of some of the other worlds (ones with the dates in the names).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwWI_ ... ThweHE3a0E

I haven't had time to go through it yet, but, from what I saw, I have some questions.

1) why split up Mercadian Masques block?
You added Nemesis to the Rath cycle (Weatherlight would make more sense) and Prophecy to Jamuura

2) why use asynchronous versions of cards?
For example, in the Rath world, the Breakdown deck has 10th edition versions of cards found in Mercadian Masques.
Also, that deck has cards from Mercadian Masques, which isn't even in the block. As a matter of fact, it only contains cards from Mercadian Masques and Nemesis.

Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm very grateful you put this all together in a way that I meant to do but never got around to. Just that there's something strange going on, that's going to take some time & effort to unravel.

Hopefully, I can do this before too long, and I'll share what I've fixed

[lujo]

I think he did that because he split things according to lore/flavor rather than block mechanics. This is just plain wrong, since the Masques block was indeed tested and works as a block, while Nemesis and Prophecy weren't meant to be lumped with their respective "flavor" blocks. (It's kinda important because of the drafts awailable in quest worlds - 3XMasques is a godawful draft format while Masques-Nemesis-Prohecy or even that in reverse is a great draft format).

Also - a whole lot of these "worlds" aren't worlds, they're just places on Dominaria and get referenced in the lore-clusterf**k that is Invasion block as well as Time Spiral.

[dingbat1]

So far, I've split Onslaught and Odyssey, put Nemesis and Prophecy decks into the Mercadia block, and updated those blocks plus Kamigawa and Rath Cycle to show the correct versions of cards.

Opening up Alara, the first 10 decks contain cards that aren't even in that block, and it's more a matter of seeing what's salvageable. After that, I still need to look at Theros.

I'm hesitant about whether to split up the larger blocks (Mirrodin + Mirrodin Besieged, Innistrad + Shadows over Innistrad, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Ravnika + Return to Ravnika), because there are a fairly large number of decks that use both. I'll probably split them up and keep the mixed decks in a separate folder, for anyone who wants to put them back together.

Any suggestions on the best way to deal with Tarkir?

(after that's done, I'll post the results here; at some point Intend to add decks as well)

[lujo]

So far, I've split Onslaught and Odyssey, put Nemesis and Prophecy decks into the Mercadia block, and updated those blocks plus Kamigawa and Rath Cycle to show the correct versions of cards.

This means you put the sets into their correct blocks, yes?

I'm hesitant about whether to split up the larger blocks (Mirrodin + Mirrodin Besieged, Innistrad + Shadows over Innistrad, Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Ravnika + Return to Ravnika), because there are a fairly large number of decks that use both. I'll probably split them up and keep the mixed decks in a separate folder, for anyone who wants to put them back together.

Any suggestions on the best way to deal with Tarkir?

1) Ravnica is called Ravnica and not Ravnika.

| Open

This is because it's a slavic themed block, with names of characters pretty much lifted from any random south slavic phonebook, and most words that look "made up" in Ravnica are just actual slavic words or even just vaguely eastern european names and surnames (Like Izzet and Simic ). "Ravnica" means "plain", which they mistakenly took to mean "plane" or simply decided it sounds better than "Ravan" (Ravnica is a diminutive of that). So it's a plane called "plane". It's pronounced "Ravnitza" with the "c" sound the same as in, say, "pizza". Razia the archangel has a common Bosnian female name, Wojek just means "soldier" in check, and Boros is a misspeling of "Borac" which just means "fighter". "Drekavac" is a creature from Serbian myth specifically, it literaly means "screamer". The cheese refferrenced in the flavor text for the ogre who tutors rats is actual RL Serbian cheese. Just listing the examplets to make sure you understand I'm not making this up. Yes, the non slavic-world pronounces it Ravnika, but that just means the flavor went right past them and makes them look like dinguses mangling a language (or indeed several).

Oh, just a few more off the top of my head - Experiment Kraj (Krahy I suppose) means Experiment "End" as opposed to Experiment One , Momir Vig has a Montenegrin/Bosnian name (means something like "Youthful" or something like "Mypeace") , Lazav is Lažov as pronounced by an anglo who can't read ž as zh , means "liar" , "Dimmir" is "Dim" (Smoke) + "Mir" (Stillenss), so "Stillsmoke" I suppose , Argus Kos is Argus the Hunk , Mirko Vosk is hilarious because some anglo saw Mirko and thought it was dark and "Murky" but it's pronounced Meerko and is short for Miroslav or just means "Still" or "Peaceful" - not something you'd stick on a creepy vampire , Borborygmos went for picking up a greek influence to go with "Borba" (fighting) for obvious reasons , Izzet is just a bosnian (albeit muslim) male name which probably sounded quirky, Simic is just Šimić (Shimich), a comon Croatian surname ("From the familiy of Simon") as read and interpreted by an anglo speaker , and the list goes on and on and on. If it sounds made up and it's in Ravnica block it's very likely either a perfectly mundane slavic word or a mangling of one

2) Those aren't originally big blocks, and I suppose they were made to have more cards to make decks with?
3) Make it all one block? That way at least block constructed works.

The main thing about it is the drafts, if you're in a particular world you have to be able to draft the block, mainly in a way the block was meant to be drafted (if you're unsure then give choice to the player). My quests, for example, usually start out as playing against decks and then just devolve into serial drafting at the first opportunity.

Which reminds me - I've gotta finish the damned Fallen Empires draft AI! And also, can I take a look at the enemy decks for "Sarpadia" since I probably know that particular format better than anyone you'll be likely to find...

[Marek14]

...Wojek just means "soldier" in check...

It's "Czech", and the Czech word for "Soldier" is "Voják", with a different vowel -- "Wojek" might be from a different Slavic language.

[lujo]

...Wojek just means "soldier" in check...

It's "Czech", and the Czech word for "Soldier" is "Voják", with a different vowel -- "Wojek" might be from a different Slavic language.

Eh, speling Češki in English always gives me a headache, I'm perfectly capable of being a dingus mangling a language . "Wojek" is what happens when an english speaker tries to read Voják (they read it as Whoah-jack or Wojek). I had a gf who's surname was Vojak, and that's exactly how a tourist pronounced it right in front of me. Same ting happened to "Boros" , it's "Borac" but as pronounced by an english speaker who got told it doesn't end in "k". I think they did this sort of thing to avoid the Kamigawa mistake and not confuse english audiences about how you pronounce things (ecept, lol, they managed to arse up with he name of the set. Spelling it Ravnisa or Ravnitsa was out of the question because it would be pronounced more properly, but would feel too foreign to look at).

[dingbat1]

I've been thinking about it, and perhaps one way to tackle the larger blocks is to use multiple worlds, representing stages:

1) Lorwyn/Morningtide
2) Lorwyn/Morningtide + Shadowmoor/Eventide (representing the Great Aurora)
3) Shadowmoor/Eventide (transformation is complete)

This could also be done with Ravnica (and Mirrodin and Innistrad)
1) Ravnica
2) Ravnica + Return to Racnica
3) Return to Ravnica

We could probably do something similar with Zendikar:
1) Zendikar & Worldwake
2) ZEN/WWK/ROE
3) ROE
4) Zendikar block + Battle for Zendikar block
5) Battle of Zendikar block

Any opinions/suggestions?

[onderzeeboot]

For what it's worth, I quite enjoy the worlds being actual geographical locations. For me it would be weird to not have Zendikar, Rise of the Eldrazi and Battle for Zendikar in the same world. That's also opens up some design space for stronger decks that use cards from both blocks that are actually a challenge. I do agree with the sentiment that sets from a single block should be kept together though, if only to ensure mechanical cohesivenes. Of course we stayed on Dominaria for a good while, so some splits are in order there. One safe split is post-invasion, i.e. Odyssey block + Onslaught block.