Well... good luck, Hammer!

Embala wrote:

Well... good luck, Hammer!

Your well wishes were well recieved, and th sleep stand stands ready for sleeping, and the youngin' loves it. Will see if he'll sleep well tonight!

.. and sweet dreams for young Hammer!

Instead of starting a new thread, just figured tag onto this one with a more philosophical tach. Completely different subject, and Id like inout for anyone who is good with patterns and math.

As most trolls will tell you, we have a fondness for games. I also habe a fondness for designing and making things, and am forever trying to come up with creative new ways to protect my games.

One game that has some dynamics to it that I have wanted to make something interesting for is Magic the Gathering. It is said trolls have little use for magic, but as a game I enjoy the interaction between wit, thinking on the fly, and the multitude of card interactions. Its also interesting how the color wheel is broken down into aspects of personality, and how the dynamics of deck building have gone from free and wild to almost scientifically ridged in some ways.

Im not a big fan of politics in the sense of day to day life. I could spend hours discussing how much of a waste of time it is to argue over opinions, whether they align or conflict, but Im sure few would want to hear that any kore than I want to hear how social dynamics need regulated by someone who isnt part of the social circle being regulated, and thats not the point od this post anyway.

But politics as a game dynamic? This intrigues me. Games dont really matter in the grand scheme od things any more than opinions: they are important in being acknowledged and enjoyed, but they dont put food on the table, generally (well, until live streaming I suppose), but I digress again... Back on track... (One of the reasons I hate politics is that I get sucked into meandering nonsense, so I avoid when possible)

ANYWAY... Magic the Gathering has an offshoot known by a couple of names: EDH or Commander, and though I havent gotten a game in Ive studied it for a few years now, and had a thought: if enough information was determined, could I make a card box (in a steampunk style of gears and levers) whereapon the key features of a deck are encoded such that the box will spit out cards for a deck according to what the commander (the key card of the deck, around which the deck is constructed).

Gears a libkages are easy for me, but keeping track of all the numbers is not. Later, when Im not wasting time typong stuff to explain what no one wants to hear, Ill organize my thoughts on this.

Initially, though, the rules are "simple":
100 cards total. No more, no less (easy for a machine)
Only one of each card, except for basic lands and cards that state otherwise.
One commander unless it has a "partner" function.
Only cards sharing color identity with the commander are allowed (exclusionary for the machine, which is good)


There are a variety of "rules" or guidelines that are considered best practice, which I will put in later. These inslude board wipes, mana sources, lands, ramp, creatures, and so on.
Each color has its strengths and weaknesses in these aspects.
Some colors have very few options, and these have become "staples"" for that color.

Also there are other staples that are always in every deck, as there are very few reasons to not put them in a deck. These would reduce the number of permutations by reducing the overall card selection in the deck.

Anyway, nailing down the above criteria, it would seem to me that a person could set up a box with either several interrlated decks that would share cards between them, or link together standards to generate a semi-playable deck after selecting a few options for the commander of choice. Either would be fun to build towards.

So some numbers:
There are five colors and colorless, which doesnt count as a color per se, but does change the dynamic.
This means you have:
Decks with no color (hard but possible in artifacts and eldrazi) (1 options)
Decks with all 5 colors (hard but possible with certain strategies) (1 option)
Decks with 1 color (5 options)
Decks with 4 of 5 colors (5 options)
Decks with 2 colors (10 options)
Decks with 3 colors (10 options)
Providing 32 possible color combinations.
It should be noted that 4 color is the inverse of 1 color and 2 color is the inverse of 3 color.

We could weed through this, throwing out the stuff that there are too few potential playable commanders for (or in the case of select-a-deck youd be paring this down to only which ones you put in, likely less than 10, likely nearer to 5)


There are usually "types" of decks, and these are generally going to be a small number, around a half dozen or so "standard" types.

Oh, and before someone says "doesnt this mean # time # times # etc and get an astronomical number of combos?", thats where patterns come in. Several of these overlap and use the same parts. For example:

The card "counterspell" isnt the "best" counterspell for all situations but it is one of the best counterspells for most situations in any deck with blue in it. As such it would be in pretty much any deck with blue in it.

"Dark Ritual" isnt usually used in a lot of decks at all anymore but it is universally a cheap ramp spell that goes in any deck with black in it.

Green generally has creatures in it. Therefore "giant growth" may be an option for all green decks. Its not great as it only works once and you are usually against several players, but thats where the politicking comes in: get another player to attack an opponent and then boost their attacker, with the only cost to yourself being ine card and one mana... You didnt attack anyone, it was the other guy!

And so on. No, its impossible to make something to generate a great deck of most situations, but just getting it to generate A deck from a stack of cards is my goal, just as something for fun.