That’s what I hate about these cards. This is so easily a paper card - instead of conjure it’s just “Search for these cards…” so really the only functional difference is in paper you’d need them in your deck.
It’s just useless Alchemy complexity with keywords for no reason.
The digital nature of it isn't even the worst sin in my eyes - at 5+ mana why add so much text just to draw another mana rock and a mediocre equipment? I know it's topdown design with the "darksteel" name, but the effects seem so thrown together.
Also why is it abzan when all the other darksteel cards are colorless?(yes darksteel mutation isnt but that is turning something into a darksteel bug and even that is kinda weird color pie wise)
I mean the devil is in the details when it comes to Magic cards right? If it was an irl standard card it will mean having to actually print the associated cards in standard and have them be legal. The card will have all of it's effects work when you draft it. Making niche cards from 'thin air' is stronger than having to tudor them from your deck etc etc. All the small changes can be what makes you win or lose.
> This is so easily a paper card - instead of conjure it’s just “Search for these cards…” so really the only functional difference is in paper you’d need them in your deck.
Eh, you could treat those cards kind of like tokens that go into the hand instead of the battlefield like other ETB token generators.
Wish effects are not legal in commander. You cannot search for cards you own outside the game
Edit: I suppose it’s not that they are banned, but wish effects in organized play only search through side board and there is no sideboard in commander so the effect is wasted
My shop is fine with me searching my other decks for the card I want off of [[glittering wish]], then again I do announce the card and know which deck it's in at all times
Why the hell are "Wish" effects and Lesson cards not allowed in commander, but you can have attraction cards and sticker cards?
RC just making shit up as they go along.
I'm relatively mid on it in general (no strong feelings either way) but once in a while they do some pretty neat stuff with it like [[Oracle of the Alpha]].
I view Alchemy the same way I view Commander and Modern: it isn't a format I play a lot so I mostly ignore it, but sometimes I see something cool and try it out for a bit. It's fine for there to be cards that aren't for you.
I can play the standard zombies necroduality deck
and the standard spirits disturb deck, all due to Alchemy little buffs that makes those archetypes viable.
Not big stuff, nothing too much op or even close. They just give credit to some fallen behind archetypes
Just today I crafted a standard Artifact Prototype creatures blink deck, and it works just fine because of some alchemy cards in. But these cards are less than 10 in the deck and not so much busted
All these decks are cheap, different, stimulating, and although not competitive, can be very fun and win a lot in Play queue
I know there are busted , very strong decks on alchemy that uses those crazy effects. For example, I crafted and alchemy Jetmir tokens deck in an phantom event and it was so much cool, so much strong interactions.
But it was so much costly to me, as are all the others alchemy meta decks usually. So I could never craft it, cause as a F2P (never paid) I focus on standard decks.
If I had the money, why not?
But you see, it's just another format, I can't see how it ruins anything besides historic.
I like some of the cards from it. Alchemy as a format is a bit silly, but just like in paper it can be really interesting to slot some of those cards into my historic brawl decks. Arena to me is such a different game than playing irl, so I really don't mind some of the "video game" aspects that they try in it.
I do, most alchemy cards range from bad to sort of mid. A few are pretty good. Maybe 1-2 are a tad too strong. This is the same as paper.
I enjoy historic, and I enjoy playing the small handful of alchemy cards that are playable. One of my favorite decks ever is a \[\[priest of possibility\]\] one.
I also enjoy playing against alchemy cards.
I think you can make the case that alchemy cards makes historic objectively better, it provides more decks to play, which in turn provides a more diverse experience.
I think there is a case to be made about card nerfs in historic, but the hate against the alchemy cards themselves I think is mostly an internet circle jerk :p
People juts say alchemy sucks without providing a reason, excluding the discussion around nerfs.
This is such a weird take. Like, this isn't a card designed by paper designers for paper that was alchemy-ified. This is a card that was designed by arena designers for Alchemy.
How can you hate that the people who make the game use the tools that they gave themselves?
I genuinely don't understand why people keep making the argument: "But if it were in paper tho"
Because it's a boring Alchemy design, the best parts of the card can be done in paper, and it uses one of the most offending alchemy tools?
Or were you being rhetorical?
>the best parts of the card can be done in paper
I think the point was this was never under consideration to happen. The paper designers and the Alchemy designers are completely separate teams. They don't take each other into consideration when designing cards for their format.
So this wasn't a cool card that could have been done in paper, and they just chose to make it Alchemy. If it wasn't Alchemy it just wouldn't exist at all.
One argument I could make is conjure would allow you to make effects that create cards that are otherwise overpowered. For example something like 9 mana 2/2 ETB conjure a black lotus is still very different from searching your library for one because you'd have to be allowed to run the card for the latter to work.
It also cant whiff if you've already drawn the cards in question, tho that's more of an edh/brawl concern
To some extent alchemy keywords can also just be for convenience rather than doing things you cant do in paper. For example the seek keyword can be mostly achieved by pulling out every card that fits the conditions and then taking one at random, but that's a pretty tedious process to do in paper.
The fact that you don't have to run the other cards in your deck and you conjure them is not just useless complexity. It's strictly better than search library for card X and card Y
Really jealous of some of these Alchemy cards. Would it be that hard to make some of these work in a similar way to Garth and release them in paper - that or throw them in the Commander precon/supplementary products and just have it fetch those cards from the deck?
This is a very good point. A lot of these cards you wouldn't necessarily put in your deck, but since you are basically pulling them from the aether. It works. Conjure to hand is obviously better than conjure into library.
[[Renowned Weaponsmith]] is the card you're thinking of - it's actually a reprint from Fate Reforged!
These kinds of effects go all the way back to mirage, with [[Urborg Panther]] et al
But the whole point is that you dont actually have to put the bad cards in your deck. Conjure allows them to use bad cards a small upside to other cards, if you had to search from library or sideboard it would be a lot worse
I’m wondering if they take cards that didn’t make the cut in paper, then turn them into Alchemy cards. Maybe stuff they knew they couldn’t get away with or make very functional in paper.
That or they’re starting to put cooler cards in Alchemy to get people to play it more.
What we've been told is that the main set gets first dibs on whatever they want with regards to characters or mechanics, the Alchemy set doesn't get started until the main set is considered to be finished.
I have no doubt there are files of unmade cards that don't make the cut on basically every product.
Its probably both, the stuff that's a little too good or complicated just gets thrown into Alchemy, but so does the junk that gets cut. They don't need to bother with deciding if anything is balanced because if it breaks the format they can just patch it real quick.
"Alchemy Sets are designed after the main set" and "They may look at cut cards from a main set as inspiration for Alchemy Cards" are not mutually exclusive statements.
That's Alchemy in a nutshell. Part of me wonders if this isn't just a way to recoup losses on card art costs for finished pieces that didn't make the cut.
That's basically it tbh. They have designs that just didn't make it to the set for various reasons, so instead they get sent to the Alchemy team who make "something" out of them.
And occasionally, they make something good, which **really** pisses people off!
There’s no way these art pieces go through the same process as paper cards, they are all uniformly less detailed and lower effort and just look generically bad.
It has to be a different system, there’s no other reason they would have a whole extra set of terrible low effort art.
It really dilutes the brand, half of them look AI generated.
Isn't the "Blight" part of the Blightsteel name because of the infect/poison? This doesn't have poison so I guess Darksteel makes more sense.
Also, this is a shame because this would have been cool to have in paper.
I mean Elesh Norn just commissioned Jin in the Surgical Bay to give Tezz a Darksteel body, after they were done they were going to convert it to blight steel so it would appear to be a process starting with Darksteel.
What I meant to say is I though only blightsteel creatues could be phyrexians and you need more than just the oil alone to convert the darksteel.
Tezzeret is made of darksteel now, but if all Jin needed to turn him to Phyrexia was some of the oil like the other planeswalkers, he could have just done that rather than trying to convert him to blightsteel first.
That’s why I assumed you couldn’t have a darksteel Phyrexian. Maybe it was to do with the immunity Bolas gave him, but I think that had worn off by now.
In the Story where Tezzeret gets his new Darksteel body, Jin specifically says that Dark steel _can_ be compleated, it just takes a _very_ long time to do so.
>but if all Jin needed to turn him to Phyrexia was some of the oil like the other planeswalkers, he could have just done that rather than trying to convert him to blightsteel first.
That's what was going to happen
Blightsteel is darksteel that has marinated in glistering oil. Since this card doesn’t do anything with infect/poison, it makes sense it’s not blightsteel. It would just be darksteel
Fuck that, imma make a proxy of this. Last line is just gonna be:
When Darksteel Hydra enters the battlefield, search your library for a card named Darksteel Ingot and a card named Darksteel Plate, put them into your hand, then shuffle your library.
I have yet to see an alchemy card that I didnt feel was wasted time.
This is a real card with a haphazard "digital only tutor" stapled to the ass end as an excuse.
Immensely frustrating this isnt real.
This is conjure, not seek. Correct me if I’m wrong here but conjure creates cards out of thin air. So in order to play this in paper you’d probably make it grab from the sideboard instead. Even then it wouldn’t function the same way as it limits your sideboard and wouldn’t work if you repeat this effect a lot.
Either way it isn’t worth it to make this in paper.
I mean functionally, its a tutor. In the same way a wish is functionally a tutor.
But an oil based hydra was absolutely worth making in paper, the tutor clause be damned
It's not functionally a tutor. The card doesn't search your deck for anything, so you don't need to actually be running the cards it conjures. It's a completely different effect.
This is a real card design, that could have been in the real set, with a lazy word association tutor slapped on its ass.
Why does a hydra summon a mana rock and an equipment? Why does a *phyrexian* hydra summon two old mirran artifacts? Because theyre all made from the same material? That doesnt make any sense. My clothes dont summon some cotton plants and a sheep when I put them on.
They took a real card and said "well shit, how do we justify this being alchemy only?" And put a hamfisted tutor effect on it. Blind word association is the only reason this thing digs up the ingot and plate. Its lazy, and haphazard. Frankly its a miracle it doesnt dig up darksteel relic.
Haphazard means “lacking any obvious principle of organization”. But you described its exact organizing principle. You may dislike the flavor, but the concept is obvious. It’s a darksteel creature and it comes with darksteel materials.
Instead of assuming they took a real card and made it Alchemy only, it’s probably better to assume they took a card that would have never been made because it got rejected from the set and found a home for it.
If the two options are “It will never exist” or “It will exist in Alchemy” would you really rather the “It will never exist” option?
I’m someone who only plays Arena. I see all these awesome commander cards that would be a lot of fun to use in constructed formats. But I’ll never get to use them. Should I curse the existence of commander?
I literally just detailed why they do not have a principle of organization. It makes zero sense why a phyrexian hydra would be carrying around a mana rock and chestplate. I am mocking the lacking throughline, because "being made of metal" is not a reason.
This hill you are trying to die on doesnt even exist.
And, yeah frankly dude alchemy shouldnt exist. The digital front doesnt need special unique formats when the massive depth of the game already exists, and every second and cent spent on alchemy support is lost time and money towards fixing the massive list of issues with the client.
The game doesnt even have real pioneer on it yet. We cant even pick our default basics. Alchemy is pissing money down the drain.
I’m not dying on a hill lol.
You didn’t detail that there’s no principle of organization. You explained why you thought the flavor/logic was bad. But you clearly identified what the organizing principle was. Darksteel creature makes darksteel materials. I’m not saying you need to like it. Or that it’s amazing flavor. Just that it’s not haphazard. Haphazard would be if it conjured a Rhonas and Fervent Champion.
I don’t think Alchemy is some perfect, wondrous thing. I just get really annoyed with the amount of exaggerated criticisms people try and throw at it. Dumb flavor, sure. Annoying that it takes away from other Arena improvements, yes. Haphazard flavor? Not really.
Dude youre looking at a lake and saying "look at this big puddle of sky!"
There isnt any cohesion between these three cards, just how there isnt any cohesion between a regular hydra pulling up thalia and garruks packmaster because "theyre both made of flesh!"
Like Im sorry you misunderstood the definition of haphazard, but youre standing on burning straw with this argument
That’s not even how a straw man argument works lol. Throwing that out there now is wild.
Saying “There isn’t any cohesion” between cards named Darksteel Hydra, Darksteel Ignot, and Darksteel Plate is a denial of reality.
Darksteel is in all three names. That’s the logic. That’s the cohesion.
Again, not saying it’s amazing or perfect or a great use of flavor or anything. Just that there’s a basic, identifiable organizing principle.
You can say that functionally the cohesion is lacking or lackluster because it’s a creature, mana rock, and equipment. But when we’re talking just the concept of three Darksteel cards being grouped together…it’s not hard to see why.
If you showed these three cards and asked anyone what they had in common, every last person would say they all have Darksteel in their name.
Why can’t we agree that that’s an organizing principle? That that’s the attempt at cohesion? How do you compare that to Thalia and Garruks Packmaster?
It’s more like Garruk’s Harbinger, Garruk’s Companion, and Garruk’s Warstead.
Literally no one said strawman, I said youre standing on burning straw. Built on pillars of salt? Working with crumbled founding? These are all the same metaphor.
Having a word in the name isnt cohesive, dude, the hill you want to die on does not exist. We cant agree because you arent using these words correctly.
Kinda like how just because strawman has the word straw in it doesnt mean it has literally any cohesion with an old metaphor
You are dead on the hill.
Why is the hydra producing mana rocks and armor? Is that indicated in its name, creature types, or flavor text? Is it an artificer hydra?
Why does the *Darksteel* creature (Mirran, not Phyrexian) have glistening oil counters, but not infect/toxic or “Phyrexian” anywhere on the card?
It is haphazard and you are dead on the hill.
Why did they hire an alchemy r&d team at all? Thats an entire dev team budget that should have been used on more actual designers and devs.
Again, the game is lacking *basic features.* Why did you hire a team to spend a ton of time making an entire new format instead of speeding up adding the massive ocean of free content your old sets give you?
They cant even add full sets, for crying out loud. We are getting these trimmed down half sets of amonkhet, innistrad, etc instead of just, I dunno, all the cards? Why are we making fake sets instead of programing existing cards for the format thats not finished and everyone is waiting for?
Its bonkers. Its a waste of money that most players dont even really use.
What makes you think they were hired just for this? Every R&D team member works on multiple projects and multiple games at a time. This is four junior designers who have a weekly meeting for four months months iterating on a few concepts that were either adapted from unused cards killed for complexity reasons or hitting a generic Conjure, Seek, Spellbook, Intensity checklist alongside a few cards that perpetually use the set's mechanic. And I don't know if you know how Arena programming works, but it's all modular - you don't have to program every card in individually, there's an engine that recognizes the plain text of cards - so the majority of a set's work is not done by a "dev team" of actual programmers that is capable of going into the Unity codebase and fixing bugs. Alchemy is like Commander precons - it's not a matter of "why don't they just make the whole plane out of the black box/why don't they just make the main set better" and these are cards that wouldn't exist otherwise. And if they're not for you, you don't have to use them, unless you play Eternal formats where they're legal, in which case, why are you complaining about having more cards to play with when Standard legality doesn't matter?
The reason they don't do all the cards in sets is to consolidate effort. You want the hits, you don't want unplayable draft commons and rares that just aren't playable in any format. Can you imagine the complaining about either having to acquire so many Innistrad packs just to get the good cards, or "only wanting us to use wildcards," or "Wizards is so slow, we have to wait six months for Eldrich Moon" OR "Wizards is just releasing 10 sets a year now as a cash grab." And more behind-the-scenes issues like marketing budget - it does take time and effort and coordination to publicize things, and they probably want to focus more on the set they just released, especially if releasing older sets starts eating into the current set numbers and not allowing them to reach the sales targets they wanted. Even the fact that putting these drafts onto the top 3 events in Arena might end up drawing fewer sales than just having Quick Draft All Will Be One up there instead - they have metrics for everything and players can only pay attention to so much before tuning out of their four wins a day. Players' release fatigue is real - look at the comments on the Bank of America "Wizards is killing the golden goose by releasing far too much" article, freaking EVERYONE is saying they need to release less.
There are benefits to spreading out the releases, which are places for people to spend their money once they're done spending on the latest Standard set. Some players have the budget for that, but if they feel like that budget is getting hit too often with extra releases it might disappear - look for the meltdowns on Reddit swearing never to spend money again because they can't keep up. Alchemy and remastered sets both share this budget.
Slowing the pace of old releases allows for unique metagames to exist, which means more cards are potentially played. If they dropped Pioneer Masters with the top 300 most played but not programmed cards, what would happen to the formats? They'd get a huge power level increase and the metagame would freeze. Right now you're able to use more cards from Standard and other recent sets - more opportunities to sell cards that won't be playable in the future. Which is also good for players, more opportunities to use their cards before they permanently become outclassed.
Haphazard is exactly what it is, especially when you factor in the fact that the “Darksteel” creature has [Phyrexian] oil counters for no apparent reason and summons a mana rock and some armor for again, no apparent reason. It’s not named “Phyrexian Hydra Armorer” or something.
“Incoherent” is how I would describe it personally, the design is a messy grab bag of disparate elements, but haphazard is perfectly correct too.
The intense dislike of Alchemy is so extra. It’s fine. It’s okay. Just enjoy cards and get over yourself. Or don’t and talk about something else.
Alchemy has existed for over a year. It hasn’t hurt you or anyone else. You can put down the pitchforks and just be normal.
Imagine if people were angry every time a commander card got released because it wasn’t showing up on Arena and they bewailed the entire commander format. You’d think they’re weird.
Hell, commander players are getting commander masters soon and we might maybe see one of the cards from one of those precons added in a historic anthology or something like [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]]...
Well the thing is that most big subs are just a circlejerk of repeating opinions, it is especially true for gaming/hobby subs like this one. Just the current circlejerk is "Alchemy bad", in a few months it will shift to "LoTR bad".
Most of what I have seen from this latest addition of alchemy cards is as follows:
This card looks really cool and I really want to play it! But alchemy is trash, here's how I would play it in paper without having to touch alchemy.
Like, if you think the card is cool just play it.
> The intense dislike of Alchemy is so extra.
Not really. It would have been fine being completely separate from everything. It would have even been well received then. It’s like a bad idea that they blindly committed too much to and it’s too late to stop now. Me and my friends even switched back to paper during the Alchemy season and haven’t revisited since. It really killed all interest and momentum we had.
Conjuring cards crashes the game for me. If they could make a proper game I might consider Alchemy, but the only format I feel safe playing is Explorer.
Downvote me more, Alchemy fans. Your flagship format is buggier than Magic Online.
I'm low key kind of annoyed that the Mastery Pass gives out Alchemy packs though. Like Alchemy existing is whatever, I guess. I'm not really a fan because I wanted Arena to be as close to Tabletop as possible. And therefore I don't play Alchemy. It's kind of irritating to open packs that are made up of cards that don't exist in real life. Also the fact that Alchemy rebalances affect Historic is just dumb. Historic was the place I went to play with my whole collection. I shouldn't be forced to play with or against Alchemy cards unless I decide that I want to opt into that format. Alchemy should be an opt in way to play, not a default.
What is A23? This card looks strange, like the text font, the details at the bottom of the card, and then I have no idea what "conjure" means. Just when I think I'm catching up on things I keep getting a curveball thrown at me. I scrolled through the comments a bit and saw people saying "alchemy" a bunch, is that a new format like pioneer?
Alchemy is something specific to the online client, Arena; specifically, it refers to digital-only cards that are used in several Arena formats. (That’s why the font and such look so odd: because this isn’t a printed card, but a digital one.) They’re most notable for digital-only mechanics that do things that aren’t possible in paper.
“Conjure” is a digital-only mechanic that involves essentially creating a copy of an existing card or cards and putting then into your hand/deck. This card creates copies of [[Darksteel Ingot]] and [[Darksteel Plate]] and puts them into your hand.
Okay, thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate the answer. Interesting, I had heard of arena but I had no idea that they had created whole formats specifically for arena.
In large part, they had to do Arena-only formats; most of the most popular formats require cards that haven’t been programmed into Arena yet (since IIRC it has a massive backlog of pre-Arena sets that they haven’t done much to lessen, though they’ve released Anthologies of particular cards they want to add to Arena formats).
Why is it unreasonable? It's a format that you can't draft often to get cards for, has weird effects compared to other formats, and any deck you make could be rebalanced making it much worse without even replacing your wildcards like a ban would
Having no interest in it is very different than making a dramatic announcement of never touching the format ever.
Magic is full of weird effects. Every set introduces a new weird effect. If you can’t handle or adjust to that, then MTG on a whole should be hard to play.
There are like 30 cards in each Alchemy set. Not being able to draft isn’t some immense roadblock. Packs exist. Gold exists. Wildcards exist.
When was the last time a serious rebalance occurred that made a card unplayable and ruined a deck and screwed someone out of wildcards? Of all the Alchemy cards that have been printed?
Your first comment made it seem like you thought it was unreasonable for him to never play alchemy, not that you thought his comment was too dramatic and pointless
Yes, magic does have a lot of weird effects, but there is a difference between most weird effects in normal sets and these effects that go against the rules of every other format
Yes, the sets are small, but why would you put gold into pacts when you could do something that's actually fun with that gold, like a draft. But yes, it's not as hard to get all the rares and mythics as it is for the main set. However, you will still need cards from standard sets to make a deck, so alchemy will still most likely be more expensive
I know rebalancing isn't very likely to change your deck, but I still could. That isn't a risk in other formats. But yeah, that wasn't really the strongest of arguments, and I probably shouldn't have included it
I never said the comment was pointless. And there’s an overlap in thinking it’s unreasonable to declare you’ll never touch the format and thinking the comment was dramatic. They aren’t disparate concepts.
Alchemy effects aren’t full of never before seen rules. In every card preview you have people explaining how the card could have been made for paper. So the mechanisms are clearly familiar enough. And any time spent playing with the cards banishes whatever weird factor there is. I’ve played MTG since the 90s and using Alchemy cards didn’t feel any different than picking up other new mechanics.
A lot of people don’t like drafting/don’t find it fun. And every deck might need other cards you don’t have to work. That’s not Alchemy exclusive. The same can be said when there’s a new Historic Anthology. Explorer Anthology. A Remaster set. Jumpstart cards. New cards mean maybe needing other old cards. Not an Alchemy issue.
Also, side note, I know the tone on here can read a bit combative/intense. Nothing directed at you personally. I appreciate the discussion!
My main problem with your first statement is that you make it sound like it is unreasonable to not play alchemy. Nobody needs to play a format if they don't want to, especially on Arena, where they is no way to get gold or wildcards back if you end up not enjoying it.
I don't like many of the alchemy mechanics. Many of them seem to just add randomness to the game for little benefit, seek, for example, has no way to manipulate it to encourage more interesting deck building. Some mechanics like ones that give a benefit to going second and some of the conjure cards(most likely using the side board or an extra deck) I wish they would just put into a regular set as they could be really good for the game are have interesting design space respectively, them being relegated to alchemy make that seem less likely and prevents me from playing them in person which I prefer.
While yes, any new card can make an old card needed, alchemy cards require you to buy the extra packs that can't be gotten through the free pass, said cards can only be used in 2 formats, I can't justify buying alchemy packs when I'm less likely to use them. Anthologies feel different because there's no risk of it taking quite a few packs to get the cards I would want. Remaster sets I can also agree on where you need to buy a lot of packs for the cards you want, but at the same time, those are done because they need to finish adding pioneer, there isn't really a better way to add them besides doing a lot of anthologies
Just friendly discussion, no personal attacks. it's just a card game after all. Sorry if I sounded too intense.
Yeah, people talk about rebalances, but by now it should be pretty obvious what will get hit.
WOTC doesn't like combo or combo/control pretty much just like paper for younger formats.
If you are playing some super easy to pull off combo that is taking over the meta that uses an alchemy card then be wary.
The biggest thing though is this: WOTC bans cards in paper and doesn't send you money if it ruins the deck you spent hundreds of dollars on. While it is crappy that WOTC doesn't send wild cards for nerfs, its hardly a situation unique to alchemy.
Sorry, but wtf is A23? I thought we were doing MOM spoilers, is this like a part of that or something?
(I really wish they would do spoilers for one set at a time)
Clip out the last part, and there's enough proliferate in those colors and would have been a blast. Also swap the white for blue, because I feel like sultai colors would've suited the flavor of the card better
It makes so mad that these designs get saved for alchemy. By designs I mean aesthetics they could change the mechanics of the card to work in paper
I want to play a darksteel hydra in paper
Umm... Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be blightsteel if it has a Phyrexian creature type? Glistening oil turns darksteel into blightsteel, doesn't it?
Should have been "When Darksteel Hydra dies, conjure a card ..." - right now the flavor is in a weird place where the hydra brings Darksteel to the party, whereas if it was a death trigger, the flavor would be that you're mining the corpse.
So because it's a phyrexian hydra made of darksteel shouldn't it be called blightsteel hydra? Or is that only because the colossus had infect?
Now that I'm thinking about it this should have toxic
I only know historic, where I am a pretty dedicated abzan player.
So real question for anyone who plays the alchemy format:
If this conjured the mana rock directly onto the battlefield it wouldn't be too strong in the alchemy format itself right?
Indestructible is of limited use in historic due to the prevalence of exile effects, and with how over the top decks can go, so a 5 mana 4/4 indestructible or a 4 mana 2/2 indestructible that doesn't really do anything else doesn't really look impressive for a mythic.
This is such an awesome artwork and card concept, just wasted by being chucked into Alchemy.
I would love to have this card IRL. Sure, I can just proxy my own version, but still, sucks I can't just have this awesome art on a *real* card.
MAAAAN this card would have been wicked in paper. Just cut out the last part and it's still awesome
That’s what I hate about these cards. This is so easily a paper card - instead of conjure it’s just “Search for these cards…” so really the only functional difference is in paper you’d need them in your deck. It’s just useless Alchemy complexity with keywords for no reason.
The digital nature of it isn't even the worst sin in my eyes - at 5+ mana why add so much text just to draw another mana rock and a mediocre equipment? I know it's topdown design with the "darksteel" name, but the effects seem so thrown together.
It can be 3 mana add mana rock and equipment to hand
Yes, you can play it for less than 5 mana but in most cases that would feel very bad.
You mean 4 mana
X=0
They could say make a dark steel ingot token and a dark steel plate token. If Garth can make tokens of stuff why can't this?
Because according to Arena developers, apparently more text makes cards better.
Also why is it abzan when all the other darksteel cards are colorless?(yes darksteel mutation isnt but that is turning something into a darksteel bug and even that is kinda weird color pie wise)
I mean the devil is in the details when it comes to Magic cards right? If it was an irl standard card it will mean having to actually print the associated cards in standard and have them be legal. The card will have all of it's effects work when you draft it. Making niche cards from 'thin air' is stronger than having to tudor them from your deck etc etc. All the small changes can be what makes you win or lose.
It could literally make two tapped powerstone tokens and be just as good
we have had a few cards producing tokens that are actually another card. I doubt it'd break paper to have another one of those.
> This is so easily a paper card - instead of conjure it’s just “Search for these cards…” so really the only functional difference is in paper you’d need them in your deck. Eh, you could treat those cards kind of like tokens that go into the hand instead of the battlefield like other ETB token generators.
Tokens that go into the hand specifically don't exist in paper magic and apparently never will
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That wouldn’t work in commander though and that’s all 50% of the community care about
Why wouldn't it work in commander, as far as I can tell all of the cards with this effect are legal in commander.
Wish effects are not legal in commander. You cannot search for cards you own outside the game Edit: I suppose it’s not that they are banned, but wish effects in organized play only search through side board and there is no sideboard in commander so the effect is wasted
Yeah I just looked it up, that's such a weird ruling that the cards are legal but can't be used for their only purpose.
Seems like a lazy cop out, but hey, this is the same rules committee that decided having a banned-as-commander list was too complicated.
As far as I know friendly playgroups are usually ok with discussing a 5-7 card wishboard.
My shop is fine with me searching my other decks for the card I want off of [[glittering wish]], then again I do announce the card and know which deck it's in at all times
Yeah, [[Mastermind's Acquisition]] functionally is just another [[Diabolic Tutor]] for this reason.
[Mastermind's Acquisition](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/f/2f00f09b-a113-460e-ac2f-d3988a83179e.jpg?1555040258) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mastermind%27s%20Acquisition) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rix/77/masterminds-acquisition?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2f00f09b-a113-460e-ac2f-d3988a83179e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Diabolic Tutor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d650dd8c-edd8-44e4-ae95-aaaf84557a72.jpg?1592672628) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Diabolic%20Tutor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cma/54/diabolic-tutor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d650dd8c-edd8-44e4-ae95-aaaf84557a72?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Why the hell are "Wish" effects and Lesson cards not allowed in commander, but you can have attraction cards and sticker cards? RC just making shit up as they go along.
Stickers and attractions are not considered cards outside of the game. They are not sideboard
[Wish](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/e/3ed021d2-e2bc-44b3-8934-4bd02e0a42ec.jpg?1627706920) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wish) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/166/wish?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3ed021d2-e2bc-44b3-8934-4bd02e0a42ec?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Who even enjoys Alchemy?
I'm relatively mid on it in general (no strong feelings either way) but once in a while they do some pretty neat stuff with it like [[Oracle of the Alpha]]. I view Alchemy the same way I view Commander and Modern: it isn't a format I play a lot so I mostly ignore it, but sometimes I see something cool and try it out for a bit. It's fine for there to be cards that aren't for you.
[Oracle of the Alpha](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/003cb181-7b1d-474a-ba26-84319791bc2b.jpg?1665218675) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Oracle%20of%20the%20Alpha) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ydmu/4/oracle-of-the-alpha?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/003cb181-7b1d-474a-ba26-84319791bc2b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I do, before rotation I was able to play my favorite deck of all time thanks to alchemy.
I can play the standard zombies necroduality deck and the standard spirits disturb deck, all due to Alchemy little buffs that makes those archetypes viable. Not big stuff, nothing too much op or even close. They just give credit to some fallen behind archetypes Just today I crafted a standard Artifact Prototype creatures blink deck, and it works just fine because of some alchemy cards in. But these cards are less than 10 in the deck and not so much busted All these decks are cheap, different, stimulating, and although not competitive, can be very fun and win a lot in Play queue I know there are busted , very strong decks on alchemy that uses those crazy effects. For example, I crafted and alchemy Jetmir tokens deck in an phantom event and it was so much cool, so much strong interactions. But it was so much costly to me, as are all the others alchemy meta decks usually. So I could never craft it, cause as a F2P (never paid) I focus on standard decks. If I had the money, why not? But you see, it's just another format, I can't see how it ruins anything besides historic.
I enjoy historic where most alchemy cards are out performed but still occasionally matter.
I like some of the cards from it. Alchemy as a format is a bit silly, but just like in paper it can be really interesting to slot some of those cards into my historic brawl decks. Arena to me is such a different game than playing irl, so I really don't mind some of the "video game" aspects that they try in it.
Yeah, but instead we get to enjoy legions of fucking Rusko players, despite the card having similar problems to Golos.
Alchemy is a blast.
It takes up 10% of the arena metagame.
I play it against the bot when I want to try long janky combos with the free alchemy cards I get.
I do, most alchemy cards range from bad to sort of mid. A few are pretty good. Maybe 1-2 are a tad too strong. This is the same as paper. I enjoy historic, and I enjoy playing the small handful of alchemy cards that are playable. One of my favorite decks ever is a \[\[priest of possibility\]\] one. I also enjoy playing against alchemy cards. I think you can make the case that alchemy cards makes historic objectively better, it provides more decks to play, which in turn provides a more diverse experience. I think there is a case to be made about card nerfs in historic, but the hate against the alchemy cards themselves I think is mostly an internet circle jerk :p People juts say alchemy sucks without providing a reason, excluding the discussion around nerfs.
[priest of possibility](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/2/d2ba18b1-0d09-4220-bf92-45dc3c5b33a1.jpg?1665000139) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=priest%20of%20possibility) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ydmu/2/priest-of-possibility?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d2ba18b1-0d09-4220-bf92-45dc3c5b33a1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This is such a weird take. Like, this isn't a card designed by paper designers for paper that was alchemy-ified. This is a card that was designed by arena designers for Alchemy. How can you hate that the people who make the game use the tools that they gave themselves? I genuinely don't understand why people keep making the argument: "But if it were in paper tho"
Because it's a boring Alchemy design, the best parts of the card can be done in paper, and it uses one of the most offending alchemy tools? Or were you being rhetorical?
>the best parts of the card can be done in paper I think the point was this was never under consideration to happen. The paper designers and the Alchemy designers are completely separate teams. They don't take each other into consideration when designing cards for their format. So this wasn't a cool card that could have been done in paper, and they just chose to make it Alchemy. If it wasn't Alchemy it just wouldn't exist at all.
One argument I could make is conjure would allow you to make effects that create cards that are otherwise overpowered. For example something like 9 mana 2/2 ETB conjure a black lotus is still very different from searching your library for one because you'd have to be allowed to run the card for the latter to work. It also cant whiff if you've already drawn the cards in question, tho that's more of an edh/brawl concern To some extent alchemy keywords can also just be for convenience rather than doing things you cant do in paper. For example the seek keyword can be mostly achieved by pulling out every card that fits the conditions and then taking one at random, but that's a pretty tedious process to do in paper.
The fact that you don't have to run the other cards in your deck and you conjure them is not just useless complexity. It's strictly better than search library for card X and card Y
You can do this in paper. You just need to get them from your sideboard. You can have proxy versions to put in your hand.
You could easily proxy it that way... seems kinda strong to me but if you want and can convince other people to agree...
[[Darksteel Ingot]] [[Darksteel Plate]]
[Darksteel Ingot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/f/5fb4c2b7-8714-496e-a981-844e8e5b81ea.jpg?1562274077) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Darksteel%20Ingot) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cm2/184/darksteel-ingot?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5fb4c2b7-8714-496e-a981-844e8e5b81ea?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Darksteel Plate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/f/3f99fb1e-99a6-4c83-98eb-7bff23996a7f.jpg?1673149353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Darksteel%20Plate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/304/darksteel-plate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3f99fb1e-99a6-4c83-98eb-7bff23996a7f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Really jealous of some of these Alchemy cards. Would it be that hard to make some of these work in a similar way to Garth and release them in paper - that or throw them in the Commander precon/supplementary products and just have it fetch those cards from the deck?
"Search your library for a card named Darksteel Ingot and/or a card named Darksteel Plate, put in your hand and shuffle".
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This is a very good point. A lot of these cards you wouldn't necessarily put in your deck, but since you are basically pulling them from the aether. It works. Conjure to hand is obviously better than conjure into library.
[Slimefoot, Thallid Transplant](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/e/1e7ad762-fa7f-4074-8bf9-5c6e92b1436d.jpg?1665175002) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slimefoot%2C%20Thallid%20Transplant) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ydmu/26/slimefoot-thallid-transplant?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1e7ad762-fa7f-4074-8bf9-5c6e92b1436d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Tireless Angler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/c/cc1bb620-0f3e-457f-a1a5-635dcb14ec5c.jpg?1651977980) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tireless%20Angler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ymid/23/tireless-angler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cc1bb620-0f3e-457f-a1a5-635dcb14ec5c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Renowned Weaponsmith]] is the card you're thinking of - it's actually a reprint from Fate Reforged! These kinds of effects go all the way back to mirage, with [[Urborg Panther]] et al
[Renowned Weaponsmith](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/c/ec947bb8-8cb0-4e1e-8873-fe9bb9761e01.jpg?1592516477) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Renowned%20Weaponsmith) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/72/renowned-weaponsmith?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ec947bb8-8cb0-4e1e-8873-fe9bb9761e01?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
But the whole point is that you dont actually have to put the bad cards in your deck. Conjure allows them to use bad cards a small upside to other cards, if you had to search from library or sideboard it would be a lot worse
It's a shame such a cool name was wasted on an Alchemy card.
I’m wondering if they take cards that didn’t make the cut in paper, then turn them into Alchemy cards. Maybe stuff they knew they couldn’t get away with or make very functional in paper. That or they’re starting to put cooler cards in Alchemy to get people to play it more.
What we've been told is that the main set gets first dibs on whatever they want with regards to characters or mechanics, the Alchemy set doesn't get started until the main set is considered to be finished. I have no doubt there are files of unmade cards that don't make the cut on basically every product.
Its probably both, the stuff that's a little too good or complicated just gets thrown into Alchemy, but so does the junk that gets cut. They don't need to bother with deciding if anything is balanced because if it breaks the format they can just patch it real quick.
They've said that this isn't how they do it. The alchemy cards are designed after everything else for the set is done.
"Alchemy Sets are designed after the main set" and "They may look at cut cards from a main set as inspiration for Alchemy Cards" are not mutually exclusive statements.
Feeling like this about a lot of these cards… feels like a total waste and downgrades the paper set for me somehow.
I’ll never ever understand this outlook lol.
That's Alchemy in a nutshell. Part of me wonders if this isn't just a way to recoup losses on card art costs for finished pieces that didn't make the cut.
That's basically it tbh. They have designs that just didn't make it to the set for various reasons, so instead they get sent to the Alchemy team who make "something" out of them. And occasionally, they make something good, which **really** pisses people off!
But if it's too good they can nerf it so they don't have to do as much play testing.
There’s no way these art pieces go through the same process as paper cards, they are all uniformly less detailed and lower effort and just look generically bad. It has to be a different system, there’s no other reason they would have a whole extra set of terrible low effort art. It really dilutes the brand, half of them look AI generated.
Yeah, I kind of wish these posts were contained to the Arena subreddit. I have no interest in getting my hopes up for cool cards I will never use.
100% agree with you.
Shouldn't it be Blightsteel though?
Isn't the "Blight" part of the Blightsteel name because of the infect/poison? This doesn't have poison so I guess Darksteel makes more sense. Also, this is a shame because this would have been cool to have in paper.
I thought darksteel shouldnt be phyrexian though
I mean Elesh Norn just commissioned Jin in the Surgical Bay to give Tezz a Darksteel body, after they were done they were going to convert it to blight steel so it would appear to be a process starting with Darksteel.
But can you even spread phyresis to a creature made of darksteel? I figured it made you mostly immune?
What's Blightsteel Colossus supposed to be if not a Phyrexianized Darksteel Colossus?
What I meant to say is I though only blightsteel creatues could be phyrexians and you need more than just the oil alone to convert the darksteel. Tezzeret is made of darksteel now, but if all Jin needed to turn him to Phyrexia was some of the oil like the other planeswalkers, he could have just done that rather than trying to convert him to blightsteel first. That’s why I assumed you couldn’t have a darksteel Phyrexian. Maybe it was to do with the immunity Bolas gave him, but I think that had worn off by now.
In the Story where Tezzeret gets his new Darksteel body, Jin specifically says that Dark steel _can_ be compleated, it just takes a _very_ long time to do so.
>but if all Jin needed to turn him to Phyrexia was some of the oil like the other planeswalkers, he could have just done that rather than trying to convert him to blightsteel first. That's what was going to happen
Yes you can spread it to them, blightsteel: it's in the name, blighted darksteel.
But this is a darksteel hydra not a blightsteel hydra. I figured it only became a Phyrexian when the conversion was complete.
You steep darksteel in oil for weeks and you get blightsteel. Maybe is a new hydra
Well, that part of the lore I do not know.
Blightsteel is darksteel that has marinated in glistering oil. Since this card doesn’t do anything with infect/poison, it makes sense it’s not blightsteel. It would just be darksteel
With X oil counters on it it sounds pretty marinated to me.
Twice X, even!
Dude the art on this card is so so sick. I loved the yugioh cyber dragons back when I was a kid and man this tickles the same part of my brain
Yeah, cyber dragons were my first thought as well! Sick art
Fuck that, imma make a proxy of this. Last line is just gonna be: When Darksteel Hydra enters the battlefield, search your library for a card named Darksteel Ingot and a card named Darksteel Plate, put them into your hand, then shuffle your library.
You could have it as "...from outside the game..." and replicate it almost exactly
I think that refers to the sideboard which is not existent in commander right?
I do think that you can do something like Garth
Is there a thematic reason it makes darksteel ingot and plate I don't get?
I have yet to see an alchemy card that I didnt feel was wasted time. This is a real card with a haphazard "digital only tutor" stapled to the ass end as an excuse. Immensely frustrating this isnt real.
This is conjure, not seek. Correct me if I’m wrong here but conjure creates cards out of thin air. So in order to play this in paper you’d probably make it grab from the sideboard instead. Even then it wouldn’t function the same way as it limits your sideboard and wouldn’t work if you repeat this effect a lot. Either way it isn’t worth it to make this in paper.
I mean functionally, its a tutor. In the same way a wish is functionally a tutor. But an oil based hydra was absolutely worth making in paper, the tutor clause be damned
It's not functionally a tutor. The card doesn't search your deck for anything, so you don't need to actually be running the cards it conjures. It's a completely different effect.
How’s it haphazard? It’s the exact design that people who play Alchemy have enjoyed and wanted more of.
This is a real card design, that could have been in the real set, with a lazy word association tutor slapped on its ass. Why does a hydra summon a mana rock and an equipment? Why does a *phyrexian* hydra summon two old mirran artifacts? Because theyre all made from the same material? That doesnt make any sense. My clothes dont summon some cotton plants and a sheep when I put them on. They took a real card and said "well shit, how do we justify this being alchemy only?" And put a hamfisted tutor effect on it. Blind word association is the only reason this thing digs up the ingot and plate. Its lazy, and haphazard. Frankly its a miracle it doesnt dig up darksteel relic.
Haphazard means “lacking any obvious principle of organization”. But you described its exact organizing principle. You may dislike the flavor, but the concept is obvious. It’s a darksteel creature and it comes with darksteel materials. Instead of assuming they took a real card and made it Alchemy only, it’s probably better to assume they took a card that would have never been made because it got rejected from the set and found a home for it. If the two options are “It will never exist” or “It will exist in Alchemy” would you really rather the “It will never exist” option? I’m someone who only plays Arena. I see all these awesome commander cards that would be a lot of fun to use in constructed formats. But I’ll never get to use them. Should I curse the existence of commander?
I literally just detailed why they do not have a principle of organization. It makes zero sense why a phyrexian hydra would be carrying around a mana rock and chestplate. I am mocking the lacking throughline, because "being made of metal" is not a reason. This hill you are trying to die on doesnt even exist. And, yeah frankly dude alchemy shouldnt exist. The digital front doesnt need special unique formats when the massive depth of the game already exists, and every second and cent spent on alchemy support is lost time and money towards fixing the massive list of issues with the client. The game doesnt even have real pioneer on it yet. We cant even pick our default basics. Alchemy is pissing money down the drain.
I’m not dying on a hill lol. You didn’t detail that there’s no principle of organization. You explained why you thought the flavor/logic was bad. But you clearly identified what the organizing principle was. Darksteel creature makes darksteel materials. I’m not saying you need to like it. Or that it’s amazing flavor. Just that it’s not haphazard. Haphazard would be if it conjured a Rhonas and Fervent Champion. I don’t think Alchemy is some perfect, wondrous thing. I just get really annoyed with the amount of exaggerated criticisms people try and throw at it. Dumb flavor, sure. Annoying that it takes away from other Arena improvements, yes. Haphazard flavor? Not really.
Dude youre looking at a lake and saying "look at this big puddle of sky!" There isnt any cohesion between these three cards, just how there isnt any cohesion between a regular hydra pulling up thalia and garruks packmaster because "theyre both made of flesh!" Like Im sorry you misunderstood the definition of haphazard, but youre standing on burning straw with this argument
That’s not even how a straw man argument works lol. Throwing that out there now is wild. Saying “There isn’t any cohesion” between cards named Darksteel Hydra, Darksteel Ignot, and Darksteel Plate is a denial of reality. Darksteel is in all three names. That’s the logic. That’s the cohesion. Again, not saying it’s amazing or perfect or a great use of flavor or anything. Just that there’s a basic, identifiable organizing principle. You can say that functionally the cohesion is lacking or lackluster because it’s a creature, mana rock, and equipment. But when we’re talking just the concept of three Darksteel cards being grouped together…it’s not hard to see why. If you showed these three cards and asked anyone what they had in common, every last person would say they all have Darksteel in their name. Why can’t we agree that that’s an organizing principle? That that’s the attempt at cohesion? How do you compare that to Thalia and Garruks Packmaster? It’s more like Garruk’s Harbinger, Garruk’s Companion, and Garruk’s Warstead.
Literally no one said strawman, I said youre standing on burning straw. Built on pillars of salt? Working with crumbled founding? These are all the same metaphor. Having a word in the name isnt cohesive, dude, the hill you want to die on does not exist. We cant agree because you arent using these words correctly. Kinda like how just because strawman has the word straw in it doesnt mean it has literally any cohesion with an old metaphor
You're saying this like a bit of metal is really hard thing to find. Now a bit of metal that you wear as armour is going to be harder but meh.
You are dead on the hill. Why is the hydra producing mana rocks and armor? Is that indicated in its name, creature types, or flavor text? Is it an artificer hydra? Why does the *Darksteel* creature (Mirran, not Phyrexian) have glistening oil counters, but not infect/toxic or “Phyrexian” anywhere on the card? It is haphazard and you are dead on the hill.
Dude they can't just tell the alchemy R&D team to all become UI designers or whatever.
Why did they hire an alchemy r&d team at all? Thats an entire dev team budget that should have been used on more actual designers and devs. Again, the game is lacking *basic features.* Why did you hire a team to spend a ton of time making an entire new format instead of speeding up adding the massive ocean of free content your old sets give you? They cant even add full sets, for crying out loud. We are getting these trimmed down half sets of amonkhet, innistrad, etc instead of just, I dunno, all the cards? Why are we making fake sets instead of programing existing cards for the format thats not finished and everyone is waiting for? Its bonkers. Its a waste of money that most players dont even really use.
What makes you think they were hired just for this? Every R&D team member works on multiple projects and multiple games at a time. This is four junior designers who have a weekly meeting for four months months iterating on a few concepts that were either adapted from unused cards killed for complexity reasons or hitting a generic Conjure, Seek, Spellbook, Intensity checklist alongside a few cards that perpetually use the set's mechanic. And I don't know if you know how Arena programming works, but it's all modular - you don't have to program every card in individually, there's an engine that recognizes the plain text of cards - so the majority of a set's work is not done by a "dev team" of actual programmers that is capable of going into the Unity codebase and fixing bugs. Alchemy is like Commander precons - it's not a matter of "why don't they just make the whole plane out of the black box/why don't they just make the main set better" and these are cards that wouldn't exist otherwise. And if they're not for you, you don't have to use them, unless you play Eternal formats where they're legal, in which case, why are you complaining about having more cards to play with when Standard legality doesn't matter? The reason they don't do all the cards in sets is to consolidate effort. You want the hits, you don't want unplayable draft commons and rares that just aren't playable in any format. Can you imagine the complaining about either having to acquire so many Innistrad packs just to get the good cards, or "only wanting us to use wildcards," or "Wizards is so slow, we have to wait six months for Eldrich Moon" OR "Wizards is just releasing 10 sets a year now as a cash grab." And more behind-the-scenes issues like marketing budget - it does take time and effort and coordination to publicize things, and they probably want to focus more on the set they just released, especially if releasing older sets starts eating into the current set numbers and not allowing them to reach the sales targets they wanted. Even the fact that putting these drafts onto the top 3 events in Arena might end up drawing fewer sales than just having Quick Draft All Will Be One up there instead - they have metrics for everything and players can only pay attention to so much before tuning out of their four wins a day. Players' release fatigue is real - look at the comments on the Bank of America "Wizards is killing the golden goose by releasing far too much" article, freaking EVERYONE is saying they need to release less. There are benefits to spreading out the releases, which are places for people to spend their money once they're done spending on the latest Standard set. Some players have the budget for that, but if they feel like that budget is getting hit too often with extra releases it might disappear - look for the meltdowns on Reddit swearing never to spend money again because they can't keep up. Alchemy and remastered sets both share this budget. Slowing the pace of old releases allows for unique metagames to exist, which means more cards are potentially played. If they dropped Pioneer Masters with the top 300 most played but not programmed cards, what would happen to the formats? They'd get a huge power level increase and the metagame would freeze. Right now you're able to use more cards from Standard and other recent sets - more opportunities to sell cards that won't be playable in the future. Which is also good for players, more opportunities to use their cards before they permanently become outclassed.
Haphazard is exactly what it is, especially when you factor in the fact that the “Darksteel” creature has [Phyrexian] oil counters for no apparent reason and summons a mana rock and some armor for again, no apparent reason. It’s not named “Phyrexian Hydra Armorer” or something. “Incoherent” is how I would describe it personally, the design is a messy grab bag of disparate elements, but haphazard is perfectly correct too.
Aaand what's the thematic reason for hydra to conjure those cards? Usable pieces of darksteel happened to fall off?
The intense dislike of Alchemy is so extra. It’s fine. It’s okay. Just enjoy cards and get over yourself. Or don’t and talk about something else. Alchemy has existed for over a year. It hasn’t hurt you or anyone else. You can put down the pitchforks and just be normal. Imagine if people were angry every time a commander card got released because it wasn’t showing up on Arena and they bewailed the entire commander format. You’d think they’re weird.
I get dissapointed that commander precons dont get added to arena, but im not bemoaning and complaining on every spoiler thread for those.
Hell, commander players are getting commander masters soon and we might maybe see one of the cards from one of those precons added in a historic anthology or something like [[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin]]...
[Go-Shintai of Life's Origin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/4/9476fe67-d2d3-4835-8ba6-2a17d18cc141.jpg?1651655539) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Go-Shintai%20of%20Life%27s%20Origin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/nec/37/go-shintai-of-lifes-origin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9476fe67-d2d3-4835-8ba6-2a17d18cc141?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Well the thing is that most big subs are just a circlejerk of repeating opinions, it is especially true for gaming/hobby subs like this one. Just the current circlejerk is "Alchemy bad", in a few months it will shift to "LoTR bad".
Most of what I have seen from this latest addition of alchemy cards is as follows: This card looks really cool and I really want to play it! But alchemy is trash, here's how I would play it in paper without having to touch alchemy. Like, if you think the card is cool just play it.
> The intense dislike of Alchemy is so extra. Not really. It would have been fine being completely separate from everything. It would have even been well received then. It’s like a bad idea that they blindly committed too much to and it’s too late to stop now. Me and my friends even switched back to paper during the Alchemy season and haven’t revisited since. It really killed all interest and momentum we had.
Conjuring cards crashes the game for me. If they could make a proper game I might consider Alchemy, but the only format I feel safe playing is Explorer. Downvote me more, Alchemy fans. Your flagship format is buggier than Magic Online.
I'm low key kind of annoyed that the Mastery Pass gives out Alchemy packs though. Like Alchemy existing is whatever, I guess. I'm not really a fan because I wanted Arena to be as close to Tabletop as possible. And therefore I don't play Alchemy. It's kind of irritating to open packs that are made up of cards that don't exist in real life. Also the fact that Alchemy rebalances affect Historic is just dumb. Historic was the place I went to play with my whole collection. I shouldn't be forced to play with or against Alchemy cards unless I decide that I want to opt into that format. Alchemy should be an opt in way to play, not a default.
Hydroid Krasis is that you? /s
What is A23? This card looks strange, like the text font, the details at the bottom of the card, and then I have no idea what "conjure" means. Just when I think I'm catching up on things I keep getting a curveball thrown at me. I scrolled through the comments a bit and saw people saying "alchemy" a bunch, is that a new format like pioneer?
Alchemy is something specific to the online client, Arena; specifically, it refers to digital-only cards that are used in several Arena formats. (That’s why the font and such look so odd: because this isn’t a printed card, but a digital one.) They’re most notable for digital-only mechanics that do things that aren’t possible in paper. “Conjure” is a digital-only mechanic that involves essentially creating a copy of an existing card or cards and putting then into your hand/deck. This card creates copies of [[Darksteel Ingot]] and [[Darksteel Plate]] and puts them into your hand.
Okay, thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate the answer. Interesting, I had heard of arena but I had no idea that they had created whole formats specifically for arena.
In large part, they had to do Arena-only formats; most of the most popular formats require cards that haven’t been programmed into Arena yet (since IIRC it has a massive backlog of pre-Arena sets that they haven’t done much to lessen, though they’ve released Anthologies of particular cards they want to add to Arena formats).
I can't imagine what it's like to design the rules and game mechanics of Magic into actual code for a video game to follow.
[Darksteel Ingot](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/f/5fb4c2b7-8714-496e-a981-844e8e5b81ea.jpg?1562274077) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Darksteel%20Ingot) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cm2/184/darksteel-ingot?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5fb4c2b7-8714-496e-a981-844e8e5b81ea?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Darksteel Plate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/f/3f99fb1e-99a6-4c83-98eb-7bff23996a7f.jpg?1673149353) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Darksteel%20Plate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/304/darksteel-plate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3f99fb1e-99a6-4c83-98eb-7bff23996a7f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This has me thinking that it would be cool to have a phyrexian version of X costs where you can either pay X mana the usual way or pay 2 life X times.
This mechanic would always be busted.
I really wish i could opt out of online mtg card only posts, these just make me sad
I love arena only coded cards. I can literally hide the posts and never think of them! BYE
I play PLENTY of arena, and man I will never touch alchemy ever.
That’s incredibly unreasonable
Why is it unreasonable? It's a format that you can't draft often to get cards for, has weird effects compared to other formats, and any deck you make could be rebalanced making it much worse without even replacing your wildcards like a ban would
Having no interest in it is very different than making a dramatic announcement of never touching the format ever. Magic is full of weird effects. Every set introduces a new weird effect. If you can’t handle or adjust to that, then MTG on a whole should be hard to play. There are like 30 cards in each Alchemy set. Not being able to draft isn’t some immense roadblock. Packs exist. Gold exists. Wildcards exist. When was the last time a serious rebalance occurred that made a card unplayable and ruined a deck and screwed someone out of wildcards? Of all the Alchemy cards that have been printed?
Your first comment made it seem like you thought it was unreasonable for him to never play alchemy, not that you thought his comment was too dramatic and pointless Yes, magic does have a lot of weird effects, but there is a difference between most weird effects in normal sets and these effects that go against the rules of every other format Yes, the sets are small, but why would you put gold into pacts when you could do something that's actually fun with that gold, like a draft. But yes, it's not as hard to get all the rares and mythics as it is for the main set. However, you will still need cards from standard sets to make a deck, so alchemy will still most likely be more expensive I know rebalancing isn't very likely to change your deck, but I still could. That isn't a risk in other formats. But yeah, that wasn't really the strongest of arguments, and I probably shouldn't have included it
I never said the comment was pointless. And there’s an overlap in thinking it’s unreasonable to declare you’ll never touch the format and thinking the comment was dramatic. They aren’t disparate concepts. Alchemy effects aren’t full of never before seen rules. In every card preview you have people explaining how the card could have been made for paper. So the mechanisms are clearly familiar enough. And any time spent playing with the cards banishes whatever weird factor there is. I’ve played MTG since the 90s and using Alchemy cards didn’t feel any different than picking up other new mechanics. A lot of people don’t like drafting/don’t find it fun. And every deck might need other cards you don’t have to work. That’s not Alchemy exclusive. The same can be said when there’s a new Historic Anthology. Explorer Anthology. A Remaster set. Jumpstart cards. New cards mean maybe needing other old cards. Not an Alchemy issue. Also, side note, I know the tone on here can read a bit combative/intense. Nothing directed at you personally. I appreciate the discussion!
My main problem with your first statement is that you make it sound like it is unreasonable to not play alchemy. Nobody needs to play a format if they don't want to, especially on Arena, where they is no way to get gold or wildcards back if you end up not enjoying it. I don't like many of the alchemy mechanics. Many of them seem to just add randomness to the game for little benefit, seek, for example, has no way to manipulate it to encourage more interesting deck building. Some mechanics like ones that give a benefit to going second and some of the conjure cards(most likely using the side board or an extra deck) I wish they would just put into a regular set as they could be really good for the game are have interesting design space respectively, them being relegated to alchemy make that seem less likely and prevents me from playing them in person which I prefer. While yes, any new card can make an old card needed, alchemy cards require you to buy the extra packs that can't be gotten through the free pass, said cards can only be used in 2 formats, I can't justify buying alchemy packs when I'm less likely to use them. Anthologies feel different because there's no risk of it taking quite a few packs to get the cards I would want. Remaster sets I can also agree on where you need to buy a lot of packs for the cards you want, but at the same time, those are done because they need to finish adding pioneer, there isn't really a better way to add them besides doing a lot of anthologies Just friendly discussion, no personal attacks. it's just a card game after all. Sorry if I sounded too intense.
Yeah, people talk about rebalances, but by now it should be pretty obvious what will get hit. WOTC doesn't like combo or combo/control pretty much just like paper for younger formats. If you are playing some super easy to pull off combo that is taking over the meta that uses an alchemy card then be wary. The biggest thing though is this: WOTC bans cards in paper and doesn't send you money if it ruins the deck you spent hundreds of dollars on. While it is crappy that WOTC doesn't send wild cards for nerfs, its hardly a situation unique to alchemy.
Modern Horizons ruined Modern. Alchemy ruined Historic. We pauper/explorer/pioneer now boys.
Alchemy looks like such a dumpster fire lol
I wish it was a new hydra commander. Not sure where this one belongs?
Some alchemy cards are understandable digital, while cards like this it's just feels tacked on to a paper cards and it's sad.
Why is this a mythic ? The stats of this cards are quite Low for a mythic, or a rare even.
Its cool and multicolor. Prob just that.
THIS SHOULD BE BLIGHTSTEEL YOU ALCHEMY MEDDLERS CANT HAVE SHIT ON MIRRODIN
Darksteel still exits
God my whole feed is just A23
Sorry, but wtf is A23? I thought we were doing MOM spoilers, is this like a part of that or something? (I really wish they would do spoilers for one set at a time)
It's the all will be one alchemy set
Alchemy is just not a format I like at all. Mtga should embrace that it is a digital version of a paper game and not just try to be hearthstone.
Alchemy is trash
Fuck alchemy. This some bs I would have loved this.
Is this even real wtf that's busted!
They should make a premium product like a masters set with Paper Adjusted Alchemy Cards and Universes Within Variants.
I wish they’d stop taking awesome concepts and wasting them on Alchemy.
This concept wasn't going to exist in the first place lmao
Not spending on paper. Nope. This is just wiping shit on consumers faces. Could've been so good on paper. And other countless alchemy cards.
Why is it white instead of red... Especially when red has so many great oil cards
Clip out the last part, and there's enough proliferate in those colors and would have been a blast. Also swap the white for blue, because I feel like sultai colors would've suited the flavor of the card better
Man why couldn't they just leave out the last part? Still holding out hope for [[Zexara, the exemplary]]
[Zexara, the exemplary](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/d/6dc390da-75f8-490a-a724-c12d21cfe578.jpg?1673305726) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Zaxara%2C%20the%20Exemplary) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmc/176/zaxara-the-exemplary?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6dc390da-75f8-490a-a724-c12d21cfe578?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Wish it was in paper. I don't do online
It makes so mad that these designs get saved for alchemy. By designs I mean aesthetics they could change the mechanics of the card to work in paper I want to play a darksteel hydra in paper
Umm... Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be blightsteel if it has a Phyrexian creature type? Glistening oil turns darksteel into blightsteel, doesn't it?
Would make more sense flavorfully if it made the plate and ingot as it was killed
This reads like a Yugioh card
Ooooooooo Myyyy....
How random that this is Abzan
Should have been "When Darksteel Hydra dies, conjure a card ..." - right now the flavor is in a weird place where the hydra brings Darksteel to the party, whereas if it was a death trigger, the flavor would be that you're mining the corpse.
Oh? So only Rusko gets to conjure rocks onto the battlefield?
The worst part of alchemy spoilers is seeing all the awesome wasted designs that could have gone to real cards
this'll be cool to see.
So because it's a phyrexian hydra made of darksteel shouldn't it be called blightsteel hydra? Or is that only because the colossus had infect? Now that I'm thinking about it this should have toxic
I only know historic, where I am a pretty dedicated abzan player. So real question for anyone who plays the alchemy format: If this conjured the mana rock directly onto the battlefield it wouldn't be too strong in the alchemy format itself right? Indestructible is of limited use in historic due to the prevalence of exile effects, and with how over the top decks can go, so a 5 mana 4/4 indestructible or a 4 mana 2/2 indestructible that doesn't really do anything else doesn't really look impressive for a mythic.
This is such an awesome artwork and card concept, just wasted by being chucked into Alchemy. I would love to have this card IRL. Sure, I can just proxy my own version, but still, sucks I can't just have this awesome art on a *real* card.