8 oldschool quest worlds, 252 opponents, 56 challenges!

[lujo]

Just to note and kinda back Dingbat up:

Arabian Nights was significantly more powerful than the others on average.
Antiquities had a lot of chaff and if you took Strip Mine and Mishra's Factory out, it's not that high on the power curve.
Legends just sucks and is bloated and incoherent.
The Dark has internal consistency, and if its blue had a more obvious deck in it you could blow it up to something draftable.
Fallen Empires have more "decks" in them than all the others combined as it hit the modern set structure 10 years ahead of time, it just doesn't have large evasive creatures, enough effortless removal or mana ramp.

[dingbat1]

Antiquities had a lot of chaff and if you took Strip Mine and Mishra's Factory out, it's not that high on the power curve.

Antiquities is quite different compared to the other expansions, in that it doesn't just add more cards, but it really turns artifacts into a 6th color. The same way that there are hosers and enablers for every color in unlimited, antiquities added hosers and enablers to artifacts. Now it was possible to have mono-artifacts.

That makes it different from every other set which could be summed up as "more cards for you to play the same game". There was fundamentally nothing new or different about the cards in Arabian Nights, The Dark, Fallen Empires or Homelands (and Alliances)
The big sets at least added new mechanics, with Legends bringing in multi-color cards, Legends, and Rampage, while Ice Age had cumulative upkeep (yay). But antiquities encouraged players to treat artifacts as another color, in the same way that Zendikar encouraged the colorless concept.



doesn't mean it wasn't a shit set, though

[dingbat1]

On a separate note, I know it'll never happen, but I kinda hope they'll do a Return to Rabia block.

[Xyx]

Ice Age had cumulative upkeep (yay).

*cough*snow*cough*

(But, for some reason, way more cards that punished you for playing snow lands than cards that rewarded you.)

On a separate note, I know it'll never happen, but I kinda hope they'll do a Return to Rabia block.

Haha, me too but that's never gonna happen. Same as Return to "the P3K plane" (whatever its name is.)

[dingbat1]

Ice Age had cumulative upkeep (yay).

*cough*snow*cough*

(But, for some reason, way more cards that punished you for playing snow lands than cards that rewarded you.)

yeah, the snow mechanic was completely screwed up. And there were only 31 cards in Ice Age that interacted with snow lands. (plus 4 more in alliances)

It could have been an interesting mechanic, and I wouldn't mind if they took another stab at it, but fully fleshed out. And no, coldsnap doesn't count. (Although its 35 snow-matters cards are much better and show the potential of the mechanic; Kaladesh and Zendikar also show the kind of things that can be done when departing from traditional casting costs)

[Xyx]

Welcome to Portal!



It's 1997 and Magic has become the most elaborately complex game on the planet. In an attempt to make the game accessible to a wider audience, Wizards of the Coast releases Magic's first "Starter level" product: Portal, a set of simple cards with generic fantasy flavor. Fortunately, "simple" and "generic" do not automatically translate to "dumb" or "bland". Portal is quite elegant in its simplicity, visually distinct, with resonant top-down card design. It is both AI-friendly and beginner-friendly, but because it is not immediately apparent what all the good cards and decks are, it is also "experienced-player-friendly". If you ever want to introduce a friend to Magic and/or Forge, you could do a lot worse than send them on a Portal quest!

Unlike every other set in the history of Magic--including Portal 2 and Portal Three Kingdoms--the original Portal has no backstory at all! I do not even know the name of its plane or world. If anyone has any info on that, please let me know!

I'm still experimenting with the Challenge system. As such, all challenges still require zero wins and provide a substantial reward (a rare of your choice plus enough gold to buy another rare.) The challenges repeat, and most of them are easy (for a change), so they can currently be farmed rather effectively. The exception is the new "Final Challenge" (thanks to Agetian) that marks the completion of the quest. I will eventually tailor all rewards to the difficulties (though it is hard for me to gauge the difficulties because of my inside knowledge.) I would also like to find a way to make challenges persist (or return) until completed, so that you can try as often as you need. Ideally, you'd complete each challenge once, get a substantial reward, and then never see it again.

1997-05 Portal 201702012331.zip

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Name:Portal|Dir:1997-05 Portal|Sets:POR

[Agetian]

@ Xyx: Nice job on the new world! I ran some simple tests and committed it upstream to trunk, so that more people can test it in an easier way.

- Agetian

[Xyx]

Welcome to Caliman (also known as Portal Second Age)!



Portal Second Age is the first official "Starter Level" set (a term not yet in use when the original Portal was released.) It outdoes its predecessor in easy-to-understand cards. Portal Second Age has a unique steampunk flavor that hasn't been replicated since, featuring firearms, steam engines and zeppelins.

The open-ended story is staged in the Dominarian island of Caliman and focuses on the conflicts between the kingdom of Alaborn, the Talas merchant/pirates (some say there is no difference), the goblin tribes, the elves of Norwood forest and the nightstalkers created by the evil Tojira, swamp queen of Dakmor.

58 duels and 13 challenges await!

1998-06 Portal Second Age.zip

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Name:Caliman|Dir:1998-06 Portal Second Age|Sets:PO2

Note: The deck Description fields include \n linebreaks that are currently not "escaped". Please let me know if Forge can be tweaked to properly display these linebreaks or whether I should remove them.

[Agetian]

Thanks for your effort, Xyx! I implemented the necessary change to support "\n" newlines and added the world upstream.

- Agetian

[daitokujibiko]

Nice. Let's get a world for every set.

[Xyx]

Welcome to... third century Earth!



The story of Portal Three Kingdoms retells the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, a romanticized version of events that unfolded in third and fourth century China. The set was specifically designed to introduce Magic to the Asian market and was not sold in North America. The artwork was produced entirely by Chinese artists in order to give it an authentic feel. It is arguably the strongest flavored set in all of Magic.

In this world you will get to meet famous heroes, re-enact historical battles, and finally block a creature with horsemanship!

52 duels and 13 challenges await!

1999-05 Portal Three Kingdoms.zip

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Name:The Three Kingdoms|Dir:1999-05 Portal Three Kingdoms|Sets:PTK

[Agetian]

PTK quest world is now integrated. Thanks, as always, Xyx! Hope to see more awesome quest worlds from you!

- Agetian

[Xyx]

Thanks!

Did you manage to get those images fixed? All of the basics and then some?

[Agetian]

I checked the images on the server and they appear to be the PTK ones, at least to the best of my knowledge :/ Are you sure they still download incorrectly?

- Agetian

[Xyx]

I deleted the incorrect images and ran "Download LQ Set Pictures". Now I have PTK images but... they're black-bordered! Very weird, as the rest of the set is white-bordered. Are those black-bordered images from some sort of MTGO set? They have the PTK expansion symbol. They're also kind of low res.