8 oldschool quest worlds, 252 opponents, 56 challenges!

[Xyx]

I see that Sol added a special variable to Kjeldoran Dead which should prevent the AI from casting it unless it controls another creature. I think this should reduce the amount of miscasts to a minimum.

Currently no time to explore them but definitely planning to do so, i'll give you feedback afterwards.

Updating & cleaning up Ravnica & Zendikar is still on my to do list. It'd be cool if we could cover all planes and blocks in the end with worlds!

Sure would! How do you intend to handle the return to those worlds? I've been wondering about this, particularly with regards to Mirrodin, which is no longer the same. It would make no sense to have old Mirrodin and New Phyrexia in the same "world". I thought Zendikar would have been wiped out after Rise of the Eldrazi, but apparently "it got better", as they say, so that's still a possibility (although I understand that Sea Gate, Bala-Ged and Oran-Rief won't ever be the same.) I don't see Mirrodin recovering from the phyrexians at all, though. Phyrexian corrupti- *ahem* compleation is made out to be rather irreversible.

I have a gazillion decks listed by year of creation, ranging from 1993 to 2014. Hope these are useful for you as you create more worlds

That's a lot of decks! A quick look shows that some of them are a mixture of worlds, though. I need set-specific and/or Block Constructed decks. I see some that are pure Oldschool Limited Edition, and some '97 PT decks that appear to be Mirage/Visions. Those will definitely come in handy! I'll have to sort through them and find the ones that are world-specific (and hope that the AI can handle the cards. I regrettably had to cut all the Necropotence decks already, for instance.)

I can try sorting them with my deck sorter (by set) and see if that helps.

If you can see which sets are involved, then it most certainly would help.

[dingbat1]

If you upload those decks you have, I can try sorting them with my deck sorter (by set) and see if that helps.

EDIT: The decks appear to be in some unusual format, most likely meant for another application or game. I'll try writing a converter for them when I have some time, doesn't look difficult to me.

- Agetian

Yeah, I don't recall where I got them. I'd love to convert them to Forge and to Manalink, but just don't have the time to do it.
If you can write a converter, I'd greatly appreciate it

[Xyx]

It's easy enough to convert specific decks manually:

• Open the file as text.
• Select and copy the card list.
• Open a spreadsheet and paste the list to separate the columns.
• Select and copy the card count and card name colums.
• Open Forge, go to Deck Editor, click Import, paste the data.

I then sort by Set and check if it's all the same world. I already found two LEB decks, an ICE/ALL deck and five MIR/VIS decks.

[Agetian]

I converted Dingbat's decks for use in Forge (and also sorted them by approximate set). Hope this helps!
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=18748

- Agetian

[reporter]

I am new to forge but quest mode seems like the fun stuff here. I started with your LEB world recently because of two reasons:

1. You clearly specify suggested settings and they seem reasonable, like no world travel (travel doesn't seem to make sense for many cases IMO - rather have something like subworlds but all inside one design).

2. It seems like an excellent tutorial world series in many ways for a new player. I have played mtg only casually a long time ago. Like, I'm keeping this page of Vintage restricted cards open while I play.

I don't know how worlds in Forge exactly work yet. It seems significant to me that the start card set can contain very powerful cards by random - so different starts could result in very different difficulty I suspect. Also shop selection (and existence!) and reward randomness (I assume) seem to add to this unpredictability.

Related to this, when should I consider I have "won" a world? The duel opponents seem to be randomly selected and shuffle-able (it changes from game reload I think) so I can play this without ever beating a certain opponent?

In your questions you are asking about AI, but why? I'm making a list of things while I play but I assume I should post them to dev topics instead of you.

Edit: Also one more thing. Shop prices as I understand are based on real world prices? So for something like Forge this may sometimes not reflect card usefulness at all but rarity instead. As the first world is LEB, the effect may be especially strange there? Overall it would be interesting if the prices were more related to usefulness.

[Xyx]

(LEB) seems like an excellent tutorial world series in many ways for a new player.

Yes and no. Richard Garfield obviously designed it for new players but (being the first set ever) it is a little rough around the edges. Bad creatures, unusually high focus on mana denial, etcetera. I plan to work on Portal as well, and I hope that will make for a better "tutorial" world.

I don't know how worlds in Forge exactly work yet. It seems significant to me that the start card set can contain very powerful cards by random - so different starts could result in very different difficulty I suspect. Also shop selection (and existence!) and reward randomness (I assume) seem to add to this unpredictability.

Hopefully it'll provide some replayability as well. LEB is a relatively big set, so that helps. Antiquities is so small that you start with most of the card pool already.

when should I consider I have "won" a world?

That is an excellent question and I'm not sure how to answer it. Forge has no built-in "you won the quest" system. You basically play until you've had enough. I considered making the challenges non-repeatable (so you could say you "won" after beating the final challenge), but I don't remember if that lets you retry failed challenges until you succeed.

The duel opponents seem to be randomly selected and shuffle-able (it changes from game reload I think) so I can play this without ever beating a certain opponent?

Theoretically, yes. Some of the smaller worlds in particular have only a handful of opponents at Medium and Hard. With a choice of 3 out of 5, you could theoretically fight the exact same one over and over.

In your questions you are asking about AI, but why? I'm making a list of things while I play but I assume I should post them to dev topics instead of you.

Definitely both. I was once like you, and the first time around I built the worlds thinking the AI programmers (rather than the world builder) should take care of the AI issues. However, there aren't many AI programmers left to take care of that, so I realized I really shouldn't count on that.

Shop prices as I understand are based on real world prices?

Depends. If you ever clicked "Download Card Prices", there is a file somewhere (I think it's card-prices.txt) that contains more-or-less real world prices. Those make it basically impossible to buy moxen and the like, so I personally did NOT download the prices. That sets the price of all commons to 6, all uncommons to 40 and all rares to 120. I suppose not downloading prices (or deleting card-prices.txt or whatever it's called) is one of the "recommended settings".

[serrasmurf]

Sure would! How do you intend to handle the return to those worlds? I've been wondering about this, particularly with regards to Mirrodin, which is no longer the same. It would make no sense to have old Mirrodin and New Phyrexia in the same "world". I thought Zendikar would have been wiped out after Rise of the Eldrazi, but apparently "it got better", as they say, so that's still a possibility (although I understand that Sea Gate, Bala-Ged and Oran-Rief won't ever be the same.) I don't see Mirrodin recovering from the phyrexians at all, though. Phyrexian corrupti- *ahem* compleation is made out to be rather irreversible.

This were my thoughts when I "released" the Mirrodin world:
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=9457&start=135#p168960

Storyline/ Vorthos
The Vorthos is not that strong in me, but I tried to adhere to most of the storyline by allocating the appropriate characters to the right decks with the right quotes . You’ll mostly meet the people & haymakers of Mirrodin. But sometimes you’ll meet a stranger; you can’t stop Wall-E from planeswalking, can you?

I could have told the story linear, batlling first the original Mirrodin decks and later the myr & phyrexians form Scars, but you would sacrifice too much by doing so.

What I did do is using the duel decks respresenting the 2 decisive battles:
- Glissa versus Memnarch
- Mirrans versus Phyrexians
These duel decks are your challenges in this world.

A final multiplayer battle between the 5 Praetors would have been cool but is unfortunately not possible. They don’t command duel decks either because there would be too much overlap with other cooler decks.

You want to mix all the cards and create synergetic decks, that's what makes combining these worlds cool. Create a block constructed that never was (and strangely I hardly couldn't find a website and/or netdecks where this excercise was done). Storyline comes second imo and luckily we have some tools to adress that a bit

[serrasmurf]

when should I consider I have "won" a world?

That is an excellent question and I'm not sure how to answer it. Forge has no built-in "you won the quest" system. You basically play until you've had enough. I considered making the challenges non-repeatable (so you could say you "won" after beating the final challenge), but I don't remember if that lets you retry failed challenges until you succeed.

Same here. Many ideas are floating in the forums about how to "win" a quest game (I know I have spammed various threads with it), but no developer has had the time or spark to create something yet in the quest mode. It's the part which frustrates me the most that I can't develop myself...

[Xyx]

You want to mix all the cards and create synergetic decks, that's what makes combining these worlds cool. Create a block constructed that never was (and strangely I hardly couldn't find a website and/or netdecks where this excercise was done).

If you haven't already, check out the Community Super League, week 2. It's "Innistrad Plane Constructed". Very cool and a lot of fun to watch!

One problem with "Plane Constructed" is that it's often vague which cards belong to which plane. Magic Origins has cards from ten different planes, for example. Is Zendikar Incarnate (printed only in Magic Origins) legal in Zendikar Plane Constructed? Is the Prophecy expansion part of the Jamuraa world? It takes place on Jamuraa, but that's a whole other part of the continent than what we see in Mirage. Should we mingle Antiquities, The Dark, Ice Age/Alliances and Coldsnap because they're all set on Terisiare? What about the Weatherlight expansion, in which the Skyship Weatherlight visits several different continents on Dominaria? Is "Dominaria Plane Constructed" a thing? There must be a thousand expansions set on Dominaria.

Another problem is nostalgia. I originally included Coldsnap in the Ice Age/Alliances world, but the cards stood out like a sore thumb with their modern frames, ruining the nostalgia factor. Also, rather different story, and not much mechanical relevance other than the snow mechanic. So I decided I'd leave Coldsnap to a quest world all of its own. I'll admit that it's tricky, because Alliances is already a slightly different story from what Ice Age tells (what with Kjeldor and Balduvia teaming up against Varchild after defeating Lim-Dûl, and Freyalise having cast her World Spell and starting The Thaw).

I also did not want to do Block Constructed for other reasons. Homelands was originally part of Ice Age block, and Weatherlight is technically part of Mirage block, but those expansions have very little to do with the rest of the block.

Storyline comes second imo

Just about everybody who gives me feedback mentions how they love the nostalgia. That is perhaps a function of oldschool worlds, but it is obviously a major selling point.

[reporter]

Thanks for explaining the prices. Yes, I agree that it absolutely fits within the recommended settings.

I have my "diary" thread elsewhere, but for the time being they are notes from your LEB only.

[Xitax]

when should I consider I have "won" a world?

I think a reasonable compromise is: when you have beat every deck at least once. Especially for those folks, maybe like me, that don't spend a lot of time gaming.

[dingbat1]

I don't know if anyone cares, but, I used to treat Unlimited/Antiquities/The Dark/Fallen Empires as a single block, which is a solid storyline of Dominaria, ravaged by the Brothers' War, resulting in The Dark slide toward Ice Age.
Those 596 cards are not much smaller than most older blocks (Tempest through Kamigawa were 621 per block; Ravnica and Time Spiral about a dozen more) but larger than Alara, Scars of Mirrodin or Theros.
Unlimited is quite a good set, all things considered, and Antiquities is an expansion in the true meaning of the word (beef up artifacts). These make up for the other two sets which are underpowered but add a lot of story and plenty of cards that work well with Unlimited (especially the goblins; back in the day I had a great goblin deck)

I tried the chronological blocks of Unlimited/Arabian Nights/Antiquities (455 cards - like Lorwyn and Shadowmoor) and Legends/The Dark/ Fallen Empires / Homelands (646 cards). But while the first block is quite fun (Unlimited works fairly well and Arabian Nights is a near-perfect expansion, while Antiquities has no major flaws) the "Legends" block just isn't fun to play.

From a gameplay perspective, Legends has a different feel to it. A bit like a slower version of Eldrazi, when the big legends come into play they're a game-changer, but not necessarily game-ending. A block of errata (stuff that never happened in the lore) consisting of Legends/Arabian Nights/Homelands works fairly well.
I found Legends just works better with Arabian Nights in it (it makes the set more balanced. And seriously, Island Fish Jasconius is so out of whack it should have been a Legends card). And it just made sense to throw Homelands in as well.

| Open

it's not the most fun, but, despite having some great cards, like All Hallow's Eve, Legends is a fairly terrible set. This makes it a bit more playable, and makes me want to play it for the challenge

[dingbat1]

when should I consider I have "won" a world?

I think a reasonable compromise is: when you have beat every deck at least once. Especially for those folks, maybe like me, that don't spend a lot of time gaming.

For an extra challenge, you can keep going until you have at least one copy of every card.... much easier in, say, Antiquities, but much harder in the larger worlds

[serrasmurf]

If you haven't already, check out the Community Super League, week 2. It's "Innistrad Plane Constructed". Very cool and a lot of fun to watch!

Cool! thnx

Just about everybody who gives me feedback mentions how they love the nostalgia. That is perhaps a function of oldschool worlds, but it is obviously a major selling point.

True. I started with revised and I still get a bit excited whenever I see a Serra Angel or a Clockwork Beast
I also very much like the quest drafts for that reason.
In the world building though I value play experience a bit higher, combining the blocks gives a lot of fresh deckbuilding possibilities, both for AI decks as for the player.

My preferred method to reflect the development of the plane is to let that happen during your stay in the world. Your easy/medium opponents could be from the beginning of the world. Medium/ hard from the end. I skipped that idea because it would mean I had to give up too many cool AI decks. But there might be other ways. Maybe more recent cards could become available gradually? So currently I only used the challenges as a narrative tool.

[serrasmurf]

when should I consider I have "won" a world?

I think a reasonable compromise is: when you have beat every deck at least once. Especially for those folks, maybe like me, that don't spend a lot of time gaming.

For an extra challenge, you can keep going until you have at least one copy of every card.... much easier in, say, Antiquities, but much harder in the larger worlds

Win once against each opponent: I like that!

Forge could track it all with (world) quest specific achievements. But that would of course mean some dev work.
Here some suggestions I made in that area. I sometimes give myself some of these assignments and track it by hand.
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1516&start=1875#p189303