Monday, December 5, 2011

Forge Sharpens Your Skills

One of my goals of Forge was to sharpen people's Magic skills even though the AI would be a little dumb. My idea was that people would use a wide variety of cards and could play more games.


Having actual experience with a wide variety of cards is essential to becoming a good Magic player. Rarely will one card be better than another in all circumstances. Comparing Terror and Assassinate will make a good example.



The question is, "Which card is more valuable?" Obviously Terror costs 1 less and is an instant, making it very valuable. Assassinate can kill any creature if it is tapped, which usually means that the creature gets in one good swing before you can kill it. In general I would take Assassinate over Terror because Assassinate can kill black creatures but it would really depend on the type of deck or format. (Forge doesn't really use the concept of formats like Modern or Legacy.)

Obviously the best way to get better at Magic is to just play the game. It doesn't matter if your opponent is the reigning world champion (Jun'ya Iyanaga) or a random friend. Just playing the game will help you know when you should attack and if you are winning or losing.

(A quick side note, if you are winning you should be willing to trade creatures when you attack but not when you block because you want to the game to end sooner rather than later. If you are losing, you want the game to last longer because you are hoping that you can draw a powerful card to change your situation. When you are losing you should trade creatures very carefully.

Trading creatures means that both creatures die.)

In Forge, the AI attacks often to put pressure on you. The AI may even lose because he attacks too much but sometimes the AI is correct. Since the AI tries to be aggressive, it will occasionally startle you and make you sweat, which means that it is a good game.

Hopefully Forge has made you a better Magic player :+)

Question of the Week:
Has Forge sharpened you Magic skills?

Just a guy,
mtgrares

4 comments:

KamiKazeKenji said...

Yes, Forge has definitely sharpened my skills. I could say Forge has kept me from getting dull during my [physical card] drought. Even though I can't afford cards right now and have no one to play with, I've been playing Forge. I've learned so much in general just by playing with cards I've never had the opportunity to own in real life (e.g. P9, LOL), and analyzing enemy decks and strategies. I've actually pruned up my (IRL) decks and added cards I never considered useful thanks to Forge.

I have an observation that I'd like to make concerning the "Aggressive" AI though. When I have any creature with Deathtouch on the battlefield, the AI refuses to attack. Even with, say, 20 tokens or whatever (with each of them capable of killing my Deathtouch creature - it's my Plant Wall token, FYI), it just sits there and allows me to bring up a killer combo.

Anonymous said...

Forge has sharpened my skills quite a bit. I've been using it a long time and absolutely love it - it's helped me understand how many mechanics play out. It has been an incredible tool for deck building and testing as well - when there is an older card I want to use in my Commander Deck, I can fire up forge and usually see how the card will work.
Because of the "developer tools" checkbox, I can even test a commander - a 100 card singleton, anyway, and then when I have the mana, I can "Tutor" for the commander as if I were playing a commander game.
I am really thankful for Forge as a way to better understand MTG, hard drive space well spent!!!

Anonymous said...

Yes, no doubt.

crapsticko said...

yup2 no doubt. But why the downlink linked to this URL?

http://pagesinxt.com/?dn=cardforge.org&flrdr=yes&nxte=bz2