Manalink Update 9/3 - 3 more cards

[0rion79]

Jatil, an important question: do you remember who was the "autorh" that has added Warrior Angel to the game? The one that you have replaced in order to add your Baneslayer Angel. Thanks.

[thedrigo]

In my honest opinion, Baneslayer Angel is a much more playable card than Warrior Angel. Warrior Angel is an clunky, overcosted 3/4 with lifelink at six mana whereas the Baneslayer is a 5/5 flyer with lifelink and two more abilities at five mana. The substitution seems to be a step up rather than down.

[0rion79]

Doesn't matter, even if it I agree: it was not the answer for the question that I did.

[Salbei]

i have added the pics for baneslayer angel,elspeth and ajani vengeant.
the quality is not that good,but its good enough till mathusalem comes back

[jatill]

Jatil, an important question: do you remember who was the "autorh" that has added Warrior Angel to the game? The one that you have replaced in order to add your Baneslayer Angel. Thanks.

Since it's in the middle of a group of Homelands cards, I would have guessed you. Is that wrong?

[0rion79]

In fact. Even if I agree with your choice and I always appreciate your work, next time please ask for permission and/or give a warning before replacing somebodyelse work. Also, there are a lot of uncoded Arabian nights, Legends and Dark cards that can be replaced: actually there is no need to overwrite coommunity-made cards to free place for new ones or, if you really have to and are in extremoe short of free lots, you already have my authorization for replacing the 5 single-warded angels that I made and that are almost (but not totally) made obsolete by your Voice of All and a griffin that is an unwanted "twin" of another one already present in 8th edition.
In friendship, thank you.

[jatill]

In fact. Even if I agree with your choice and I always appreciate your work, next time please ask for permission and/or give a warning before replacing somebodyelse work. Also, there are a lot of uncoded Arabian nights, Legends and Dark cards that can be replaced: actually there is no need to overwrite coommunity-made cards to free place for new ones or, if you really have to and are in extremoe short of free lots, you already have my authorization for replacing the 5 single-warded angels that I made and that are almost (but not totally) made obsolete by your Voice of All and a griffin that is an unwanted "twin" of another one already present in 8th edition.
In friendship, thank you.

I understand your point of view, but I respectfully disagree on a couple points.

(1) There are very few free spots available. So each new card can either use up a new spot or replace an existing card. In the past, I have always used up a new spot, but I did the opposite here for 2 reasons:
(i) The card being replaced is not in any sealed set (other then the everything set), and
(ii) The card I added is strictly superior to the card being replaced. You'll never want a Warrior Angel instead of a Baneslayer Angel.

(2) I would have made this decision regardless of who made the original card. I do not believe any of us "own" the rights to the cards.

So as a heads up for the future, I will also be replacing the "Karoo" lands (ex: Izzet Boilerworks) with a different cycle of dual lands, aince the Karoos don't work well for the AI. No code is being deleted for any of these changes, so if the limit is ever cracked, it will be easy enough to add everything back.

[0rion79]

As I've already stated, in this case I agree with you but I would have been informed before than finding such a major change. Also, there are some cloned cards that, IMHO, are a bit useless (no offense): eg, we have 2 Armageddon that are just a waste of resources (when have you ever used 8 of them?), 2 Kismet (one of them is blue) and Nantuko Husk and Phyrexian Ghoul are basically the same creature, with the single exception that Phyrexian Ghoul is just more cute being a pure zombie .

Personally, I think that it is right that you deal with your cards as you like more and so, if you think that you would bring any improvement by replacing some of them, you are wellcomed. But other cards have a particular value that goes over mere power: eg, Autumn willow is an icon for me and many other nostalgic players that LOVE old school cards. As well, other cards that I have added, as the minotaurs, are made to enhance those lovely tribe decks that are part of Magic the Gathering as well.

More, if the card was not in the sealed deck, it was clearly a mistake and, still with no offfense, I strongly disagree about replacing cards despite of the author: it is very unrespectful toward the community and the persons that have given their contribute to this project, no matter of you, mok, fran avalon, me, mathusalem or anybody that did the work.

Also, if we really want to be precise, I'fe found 177 not-coded cards in the deck editor that can be replaced. I know that it would be nice to activate some of them and that others marked as "none" or "empty" are instead used by the game as invisibile effects or stuff, so I suggest a deep testing before using them, but still there is a lot of free space and there is not the need to sacrifice already coded cards.
Those cards are:

ID Card Name
659 Great Wall
664 Halfdane
666 Hazezon Tamar
668 Heaven's Gate
670 Hell's Caretaker
675 Horror of Horrors
678 Ichneumon Druid
680 Imprison
681 In the Eye of Chaos
682 Indestructible Aura
684 Infinite Authority
685 Invoke Prejudice
691 Johan
693 Juxtapose
700 Knowledge Vault
705 Kry Shield
711 Land's Edge
712 Lesser Werewolf
714 Life Matrix
716 Living Plane
717 Livonya Silone
718 Lord Magnus
722 Marble Priest
724 Master of the Hunt
729 Mountain Stronghold
731 Nebuchadnezzar
732 Nether Void
734 North Star
735 Nova Pentacle
738 Part Water
746 Presence of the Master
747 Primordial Ooze
750 Psychic Purge
751 Puppet Master
753 Quagmire
754 Quarum Trench Gnomes
761 Rapid Fire
762 Rasputin Dreamweaver
764 Recall
766 Reincarnation
769 Remove Enchantments
773 Reverberation
775 Ring of Immortals
777 Rohgahh of Kher Keep
778 Rust
779 Sea Kings' Blessing
780 Seafarer's Quay
783 Sentinel
785 Shelkin Brownie
787 Shimian Night Stalker
788 Silhouette
792 Spectral Cloak
797 Stangg
800 Subdue
802 Sword of the Ages
804 Sylvan Paradise
807 Takklemaggot
808 Telekinesis
809 Teleport
810 Tempest Efreet
815 The Wretched
822 Touch of Darkness
823 Transmutation
824 Triassic Egg
828 Undertow
830 Unholy Citadel
832 Ur-Drago
836 Venarian Gold
838 Voodoo Doll
840 Wall of Caltrops
846 Wall of Putrid Flesh
847 Wall of Shadows
849 Wall of Vapor
857 Wood Elemental
872 Empty
873 Empty
874 Empty
875 Empty
876 Empty
877 Empty
878 Empty
879 Empty
880 Empty
881 Empty
882 Empty
883 Empty
884 Empty
886 Wolves of the Hunt
889 Sand Warrior
893 Stangg Twin
901 None
902 None
903 None
904 None
905 None
906 None
907 None
908 None
909 Data Card
911 None
912 None
913 None
914 None
915 None
916 None
917 None
918 None
919 None
920 None
921 None
922 None
923 None
924 None
925 None
926 None
927 None
928 None
929 None
933 Electric Eel
934 Festival
945 Scarwood Bandits
981 Blinding Angel
984 Brass Herald
1002 Cowardice
1013 Deflection
1036 Empty
1041 Furnace of Rath
1043 Gaea's Herald
1052 Guerrilla Tactics
1053 Hammer of Bogardan
1064 Ivory Mask
1072 Living Terrain
1074 Lone Wolf
1086 Mind Bend
1088 Mind Slash
1092 Empty
1095 Natural Affinity
1103 Oracle's Attendants
1111 Phyrexian Colossus
1127 Redeem
1129 Relentless Assault
1132 Rhox
1136 Sacred Ground
1159 Spreading Algae
1163 Story Circle
1168 Teferi's Puzzle Box
1171 Thieves' Auction
1178 Two-Headed Dragon
1257 Utopia Tree
1431 Fanning the Flames
1568 Primal Order
1570 Sengir Autocrat
1625 Stromgald Crusader
1834 Sword of Light and Shadow
1887 Chalice of the Void
1894 Goblin Charbelcher
1908 Tinder Wall
1911 Ad Nauseam
1917 Ill-Gotten Gains
1918 Infernal Tutor
1922 Natural Order
1926 Wall of Roots
1927 Wickerbough Elder
1928 Bloodbraid Elf
1936 Knight of Reliquary
1938 Might of Alara
1947 Treetop Village Ape
1954 Brain Freeze
1959 Enduring Ideal
1962 Flagstones of Trokair
1963 Form of the Dragon
1969 Mayael's Aria
1978 Seal of Fire
1981 Squirrel Nest
1985 Wargate
1998 Dissipate
1999 LAST AVAILEBALE SLOT

[jatill]

Savefile is down for another 10 days. Nice service...
Anyway, here's a tiny update... just fixes the fetchland bug.

http://rapidshare.com/files/277320937/20090908.zip

[thedrigo]

First of all, I want to say that I haven't really contributed in any spectacular way as my only attempt to add any cards was to add Knight of Stromgald and Order of the White Shield as copies of Order of the Ebon Hand and Order of Leitbur. Not very impressive by any means.

I personally think the community benefits more from having better cards like Baneslayer Angel replace Warrior Angel than leaving useless cards like Raging Bull or Anaba Shaman that nobody ever builds decks with. I myself agree with Jatill 100%, but if it's really a big problem, why don't we submit it to a vote? We did when Jatill asked about M10 on this thread: http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1511

In my opinion, there should be a review of all the cards that are in the game cuz there's copies of the same cards (like Prodigal Sorcerer and Prodigal Pyromancer, Slivers in different colors that have the same abilities) that are taking up spots; maybe we should all vote to see which stay and which are deleted to make space for better cards.

This is just my opinion, really.

[aww1979]

Perhaps rather than discuss which cards should stay and which cards should go, our coding experts should look at trying to find a way around the 2000 card limit. We've got enough extra space that Jatill can still give us a card or two a week for quite awhile if he wants. We don't need to replace any existing cards yet, as I see roughly 30 empty/none spaces, plus cards that Jatill plans to code. (though those can be changed if they need to be)

For now, the days of logging in and finding a 20-card update are done, but we still have a lot of potential for small updates like this one with Baneslayer, Ajani and Elspeth. And I for one would be happy to see one card updates consisting of quality new cards like Goblin Charbelcher, or Legends like Recall or Rust.

This is probably best discussed in another thread, but I'll at least throw the question out here. What exactly will be involved in breaking the 2000 card limit? This in my mind is the most important issue we have with the game right now, since it will bring the project to a dead halt eventually if not overcome.

[jatill]

This is probably best discussed in another thread, but I'll at least throw the question out here. What exactly will be involved in breaking the 2000 card limit? This in my mind is the most important issue we have with the game right now, since it will bring the project to a dead halt eventually if not overcome.

There is a thread somewhere here detailing exactly what needs to be done to break the limit. The short of it is only Snacko or someone with his diverse skillset can do the job.

All of the empty/none slots are actually unusable. By my count, there are about 150 spaces left presently.

[0rion79]

I personally think the community benefits more from having better cards like Baneslayer Angel replace Warrior Angel than leaving useless cards like Raging Bull or Anaba Shaman that nobody ever builds decks with.

Again, I absolutely agree about Baneslayer Angel too, but this doesn't mean that I agree about replacing cards as long as there is enough space for new ones, as I've already demonstrated. 150 free slots are something that Jatill would hardly fill even in several months.

About Anaba Shaman, instead, sorry for you but I DO use it both in my tribe deck and in sealed deck. It is part of those cards that I've done for tribe decks and nostalgic players and that don't want to see replaced by anything, no matter what.
I'm the first to appreciate Jatill's work but if the expansion pack is called Manalink 2.X and not Jatill's custom card selection it is because it is a community product that has passed from coder to coder and it is my strong convinction that it is not right nor useful to overwrite cards as long as there is no need for it.

I also have already proposed, in the past, to clean up some very bad cards as Headless Horseman, Raging Bull or Coastal Hornclaw - that are cards that are too lame even for tribe decks, sealed deck fillers or can't be used even with a great immagination: it would greatly benefit the game, but they are only very few exceptions because part of already uncomplete sets. For the same reason I would still like to keep Pearled Unicor, because even if it is a lame filler, it is part of a full set, and so more valuable for sealed deck purposes. So I can't but agree with Aww when he suggests to develop the most intersting cards from Legends and Dark and to use the other slots as the actual main coder (now Jatill) better wishes.

Instead, and sorry if I may look unrespectful or unpolited, but with so many talented coders here I don't understand why jatill has been left alone in the task of implementing new cards: no doubt that he gets tired every some and then! And, even before thinking about the 2000 cards limit, I would strongly suggest to focus in creating new sets for the deck builder as Mok did with 8th edition: adding more cards to the already existing sets will just cause more confusion and the Astral set is becoming congested too. There is the need of more sets to organize new cards in a more logical way and, if he did it, "we" can do it too.

[mathusalem]

Ok first of all here is the link to the pics update.

http://rapidshare.com/files/277383334/CardArtNew_.rar

on to the debate.
I think both Orion and Jatill have a point. Before destroying some cards, it may be better to clear up the clones of existing cards and use the uncoded slots....and of course the cards that like the Karooos are both buggy and redundant (since the signet do the exact same thing)
and maybe when destroying a card, maybe it's best to inform the eventual creator of the card however small the card.
although destroying a coded card is always an issue, since however weak you will always find someone who is using that card..... Hell I don't care for Angel's feather and the likes,and they were pretty redundant the day they were coded, but I'm sure somewhere someone is using them,....yes ! admit it !
it's a pity that the empty slots can't be used but it's little surprise, what other reason could there be for them to be empty after all this time, they may just be used by the engine during the game.

Now we really need to break that 2000 cards barrier, that will be better for everyone.

[somacat]

@ mathusalem's cardart update: The picture for Ajani Vengeant and Elspeth need to be renamed from 822 and 823 to 0822 and 0823 respectively, and the files already named as such can be deleted.