Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
so, I was kind of just minding my business being a Magic: the Gathering nerd and tryna brew up some foul cardboard concoction of brokenness
and one, small itty bitty little thing caused my computer to panic: the set symbol. this tiny little fuckin icon just froze it, and it seemed calm after a solid 75 seconds
until it crashed
yeah it was so bizarre that i wanted to post here lmao
I find the White parts to be my least favourite sections of Phyrexia. Conceptually, a primary reason why I'm drawn to Phyrexia is that, in a way, it's mechanical but not robotic. It has individuals with their own personalities and desires despite all of them being substantially machines. However, Norn end up focusing on conformity and the (literally) faceless masses all thinking alike because that's what happens when you write White as the villain. Her machines are actually robotic in the sense of being stiff and unemotional, which at that point I could just ditch any semblance of flesh at all and play Artifacts.
As for cool things in White in general, I really like the idea of Approach of the Second Sun. I like the concept of a colour that's focused on slowing the pace and not dying having a wincon that (conceptually) is achieved by stalling out turns.
First of all my biggest turnoff is that Commander is the only thing anybody ever wants to play. Commander games take fucking forever and I hate waiting 10 minutes just so I can take my turn that takes like 15 seconds
Second the battle mechanics are some of the least fun to play around because so many abilities make it hard to actually get an interaction in with an opponent without just losing the interaction and even if you can destroy the monster you're wanting to kill the opponent can just take the damage
Also I use the roughly half-ish mana system that everyone recommends and I still brick constantly and bricking in this game is extremely punishing
EDIT: just wanted to add that it really sucks because MTG is the only TCG that really embraces more than 2 player games but it takes way too long to actually play that way
First of all my biggest turnoff is that Commander is the only thing anybody ever wants to play. Commander games take fucking forever and I hate waiting 10 minutes just so I can take my turn that takes like 15 seconds
Second the battle mechanics are some of the least fun to play around because so many abilities make it hard to actually get an interaction in with an opponent without just losing the interaction and even if you can destroy the monster you're wanting to kill the opponent can just take the damage
Also I use the roughly half-ish mana system that everyone recommends and I still brick constantly and bricking in this game is extremely punishing
EDIT: just wanted to add that it really sucks because MTG is the only TCG that really embraces more than 2 player games but it takes way too long to actually play that way
Commander / EDH has that "long multiplayer game where politics is the most important" thing that those middle school lunch multiplayer Magic games had. Yeah chances are someone will win but the real appeal is the journey, not the destination. Eventually everyone figures out that 60 card Magic can be won by turn 4 so EDH is a second chance for people to relive those 90s / early 2000s days where you basically had 20 lands and 40 singleton bulk commons and games could go on for a long time.
If you think the games take too long just look up some budget strong decks. You can make some really strong stuff for literally tens of dollars.
there, i did the low-hanging fruit before the american toddlers woke up. its quite funny, but i have no desire to dig the rabbit hole deeper. instead i will summon 20 treasure tokens to oay my rent this month. bye
there, i did the low-hanging fruit before the american toddlers woke up. its quite funny, but i have no desire to dig the rabbit hole deeper. instead i will summon 20 treasure tokens to oay my rent this month. bye
So, I felt I needed a mental distraction from another part of my hobby life going poorly, and this statement was available.
It feels like a major part of the Praetors' mechanical design is how directly they work within an aspect of their colour. Like, you could reasonably figure out most of the colour pie with only the different iterations of the Praetors.
It then seems to follow that when converting the Praetors to another set of mechanics, there's an amount of logic to following the idea of rigid adherence to a cycle over any specific implementation (even within MTG, J-G, Core Augur is pure card advantage while J-G, Progress Tyrant is pure noncreature spells). Which then raises a different question: what exactly is the cycle that the Praetors would follow under the new mechanics?
For pokemon specifically, the intuitive answer would be types. I'm not convinced of how well it would work to divide all types evenly between them with the most obvious complication being that 18 is not divisible by 5 (though I could see dropping Normal from the rotation for being too mixed-identity and Steel for being shared by all). I also think that trying to shove a whole lot of different types in makes it harder to fit space for a more focused idea of what a type means mechanically.
The alternate idea within the type concept would be to pick one type for each Praetor and focus the Ability/potential signature move on that particular type. My guesses for types (and associated aspects) are below:
Elesh Norn: I'm acutally going to pick Ground here. The Orthodoxy likes to use porcelin (i.e. heavily worked clay) armour in a way that resembles bone, and both bone and clay fall under the Ground type. I'd also say that as villain leaders in pokemon go, the ground specialist Giovanni feels more White than most. I'm split between a focus on spread/indiscriminate damage (earthquake, magnitude, bulldoze, sandstorm chip, spikes) or trapping (arena trap, sand tomb)
Jin-Gitaxias: Psychic, focusing on the knowledge side of Blue compared to straight-up water. I lean towards the idea of more exotic field effects here, such as Gravity, screens, and Trick/Magic/Wonder Room.
Sheoldred: Dark is obvious here. I associate the type with moves that have a low listed power but can be both highly damaging and disruptive in the right situation like Knock Off, Pursuit (RIP), Foul Play, and Beat Up.
Urabrask: Fire still probably works. I think of Fire as high burst damage at the cost of survivability (Flare Blitz, Mind Blown, Solar Power, V-Create, Armor Cannon, Flame Orb as the primary Guts enabler) or sustained force (Overheat, Burn Up).
Vorinclex: Grass is the obvious companion to Green, but I feel like Bug could potentially use some consideration as well. Grass having an emphasis on sun and healing feels a bit more White than Green, while Bug can bring in a larger focus on Evolution (the regional bugs evolving early, Scyther family, Shedinja, Wormadam, shelmet/karablast), rot/decay (Shuckle, Infestation, arguably Paras line and some powders), or extreme boosts (quiver dance, fell stinger, silver wind, tail glow).
Moving on from attack types, pokemon does have a five-element cycle in Contest stats/types. These are indirectly associated with the non-HP base stats due to both being connected with Natures. This means that instead of each having unique Abilities reflecting their own type(s), they could have a common group of Abilities that affects each one's chosen stat in the same way (similar to the Treasures of Ruin). Jin-Gitaxias would almost certainly be the Clever (Sp.Def) one, and Elesh Norn would probably represent Beauty (SpA), but distributing Cool (Atk), Tough (Def), and Cute (Speed) among the remaining three is going to be harder.
So, I felt I needed a mental distraction from another part of my hobby life going poorly, and this statement was available.
It feels like a major part of the Praetors' mechanical design is how directly they work within an aspect of their colour. Like, you could reasonably figure out most of the colour pie with only the different iterations of the Praetors.
It then seems to follow that when converting the Praetors to another set of mechanics, there's an amount of logic to following the idea of rigid adherence to a cycle over any specific implementation (even within MTG, J-G, Core Augur is pure card advantage while J-G, Progress Tyrant is pure noncreature spells). Which then raises a different question: what exactly is the cycle that the Praetors would follow under the new mechanics?
For pokemon specifically, the intuitive answer would be types. I'm not convinced of how well it would work to divide all types evenly between them with the most obvious complication being that 18 is not divisible by 5 (though I could see dropping Normal from the rotation for being too mixed-identity and Steel for being shared by all). I also think that trying to shove a whole lot of different types in makes it harder to fit space for a more focused idea of what a type means mechanically.
The alternate idea within the type concept would be to pick one type for each Praetor and focus the Ability/potential signature move on that particular type. My guesses for types (and associated aspects) are below:
Elesh Norn: I'm acutally going to pick Ground here. The Orthodoxy likes to use porcelin (i.e. heavily worked clay) armour in a way that resembles bone, and both bone and clay fall under the Ground type. I'd also say that as villain leaders in pokemon go, the ground specialist Giovanni feels more White than most. I'm split between a focus on spread/indiscriminate damage (earthquake, magnitude, bulldoze, sandstorm chip, spikes) or trapping (arena trap, sand tomb)
Jin-Gitaxias: Psychic, focusing on the knowledge side of Blue compared to straight-up water. I lean towards the idea of more exotic field effects here, such as Gravity, screens, and Trick/Magic/Wonder Room.
Sheoldred: Dark is obvious here. I associate the type with moves that have a low listed power but can be both highly damaging and disruptive in the right situation like Knock Off, Pursuit (RIP), Foul Play, and Beat Up.
Urabrask: Fire still probably works. I think of Fire as high burst damage at the cost of survivability (Flare Blitz, Mind Blown, Solar Power, V-Create, Armor Cannon, Flame Orb as the primary Guts enabler) or sustained force (Overheat, Burn Up).
Vorinclex: Grass is the obvious companion to Green, but I feel like Bug could potentially use some consideration as well. Grass having an emphasis on sun and healing feels a bit more White than Green, while Bug can bring in a larger focus on Evolution (the regional bugs evolving early, Scyther family, Shedinja, Wormadam, shelmet/karablast), rot/decay (Shuckle, Infestation, arguably Paras line and some powders), or extreme boosts (quiver dance, fell stinger, silver wind, tail glow).
Moving on from attack types, pokemon does have a five-element cycle in Contest stats/types. These are indirectly associated with the non-HP base stats due to both being connected with Natures. This means that instead of each having unique Abilities reflecting their own type(s), they could have a common group of Abilities that affects each one's chosen stat in the same way (similar to the Treasures of Ruin). Jin-Gitaxias would almost certainly be the Clever (Sp.Def) one, and Elesh Norn would probably represent Beauty (SpA), but distributing Cool (Atk), Tough (Def), and Cute (Speed) among the remaining three is going to be harder.
Infecubator, the Oil Pokemon.
- Type: Poison
- Ability: Corrosion The heir in a strange hierarchy of specific Pokemon. On its own, it's rather weak, but has a large amount of potential. It consumes a special oil given by Praevoice, their bodyguards, and the colony are like a flock of bees to an evolving Infecubator.
So, I felt I needed a mental distraction from another part of my hobby life going poorly, and this statement was available.
It feels like a major part of the Praetors' mechanical design is how directly they work within an aspect of their colour. Like, you could reasonably figure out most of the colour pie with only the different iterations of the Praetors.
It then seems to follow that when converting the Praetors to another set of mechanics, there's an amount of logic to following the idea of rigid adherence to a cycle over any specific implementation (even within MTG, J-G, Core Augur is pure card advantage while J-G, Progress Tyrant is pure noncreature spells). Which then raises a different question: what exactly is the cycle that the Praetors would follow under the new mechanics?
For pokemon specifically, the intuitive answer would be types. I'm not convinced of how well it would work to divide all types evenly between them with the most obvious complication being that 18 is not divisible by 5 (though I could see dropping Normal from the rotation for being too mixed-identity and Steel for being shared by all). I also think that trying to shove a whole lot of different types in makes it harder to fit space for a more focused idea of what a type means mechanically.
The alternate idea within the type concept would be to pick one type for each Praetor and focus the Ability/potential signature move on that particular type. My guesses for types (and associated aspects) are below:
Elesh Norn: I'm acutally going to pick Ground here. The Orthodoxy likes to use porcelin (i.e. heavily worked clay) armour in a way that resembles bone, and both bone and clay fall under the Ground type. I'd also say that as villain leaders in pokemon go, the ground specialist Giovanni feels more White than most. I'm split between a focus on spread/indiscriminate damage (earthquake, magnitude, bulldoze, sandstorm chip, spikes) or trapping (arena trap, sand tomb)
Jin-Gitaxias: Psychic, focusing on the knowledge side of Blue compared to straight-up water. I lean towards the idea of more exotic field effects here, such as Gravity, screens, and Trick/Magic/Wonder Room.
Sheoldred: Dark is obvious here. I associate the type with moves that have a low listed power but can be both highly damaging and disruptive in the right situation like Knock Off, Pursuit (RIP), Foul Play, and Beat Up.
Urabrask: Fire still probably works. I think of Fire as high burst damage at the cost of survivability (Flare Blitz, Mind Blown, Solar Power, V-Create, Armor Cannon, Flame Orb as the primary Guts enabler) or sustained force (Overheat, Burn Up).
Vorinclex: Grass is the obvious companion to Green, but I feel like Bug could potentially use some consideration as well. Grass having an emphasis on sun and healing feels a bit more White than Green, while Bug can bring in a larger focus on Evolution (the regional bugs evolving early, Scyther family, Shedinja, Wormadam, shelmet/karablast), rot/decay (Shuckle, Infestation, arguably Paras line and some powders), or extreme boosts (quiver dance, fell stinger, silver wind, tail glow).
Moving on from attack types, pokemon does have a five-element cycle in Contest stats/types. These are indirectly associated with the non-HP base stats due to both being connected with Natures. This means that instead of each having unique Abilities reflecting their own type(s), they could have a common group of Abilities that affects each one's chosen stat in the same way (similar to the Treasures of Ruin). Jin-Gitaxias would almost certainly be the Clever (Sp.Def) one, and Elesh Norn would probably represent Beauty (SpA), but distributing Cool (Atk), Tough (Def), and Cute (Speed) among the remaining three is going to be harder.
Cenobite: Ignores 10% of defensive stats while attacking and 10% of offensive stats when taking damage. Augur: Disables a random move for each opponent on the field. The move changes when they switch out or when the user is hit. Whisper: When the user attacks, a random foe in the party or on the field suffers 1/16th of their max HP as damage. Heretic: Gives +1 priority on Fire- and Poison-type moves. Apex Predator: When the user KO's a Pokemon, it heals itself for 25% HP and boosts its most proficient stat by 1.
