Post by goldensandslash on Aug 17, 2021 1:41:13 GMT
So, Magic Online has a format called “Momir Basic”. It is a spinoff of Vanguard. It’s a format that I’ve never played before, since I don’t play MTGO. But it sounds really fun and I’ve always wanted to try it. In case you’re unfamiliar, I thought I’d explain it here.
So, first of all, what is Vanguard? Vanguard is a format of Magic where each player chooses an avatar character, called a Vanguard, and plays with that Vanguard. Each Vanguard grants different abilities. Some are static abilities, some are activated abilities, and some are triggered abilities.
These work kind of like planeswalker emblems. You just have the effect sitting there. The opponent cannot interact with it. So then, what’s stopping you from just choosing the strongest possible Vanguard? Well, your starting life total and hand size are not fixed in this format. While you start with 20 life and 7 cards in a normal game of Magic, Vanguard modifies this.
Each Vanguard will either increase or decrease these numbers in proportion to how strong its abilities are. The stronger the abilities, the less resources you’ll start the game with. On the other hand, weaker abilities will result in you having more life and cards than normal.
Vanguards started out as a promotional product in Paper Magic in 1997, before being brought to MTGO in 2005. The MTGO version includes several online-only effects, and the most popular of these was Momir Vig, Simic Visionary.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary is a Vanguard that lets you start with 24 life and 7 cards. It has the ability of "{X}, Discard a card: Create a token that’s a copy of a creature card with mana value X chosen at random. Activate only as a sorcery and only once each turn."
This gives you a random creature from throughout all of Magic’s history (well, provided that the card exists on MTGO, but most cards do). People liked this one a lot.
This led to a spinoff format called Momir Basic. It’s a Vanguard game in which you must use Momir Vig as your Vanguard and the only legal cards are basic lands. You just shuffle up sixty lands and then start playing random creatures.
Believe it or not, there is strategy behind this. For one, what basic lands should you use? The naive answer is to use an equal amount of all five. But you should prioritize Mountains and Swamps the most, since the most common activated abilities cost {R} or {B} (usually firebreathing or regeneration). And you should de-prioritize Islands. Turns out a lot of cards just randomly have islandwalk.
On that note, you also need to strategize when to play lands, when to keep them in your hand (remember, you need to discard a card to use Momir Vig’s ability), and when to use the activated abilities of the creatures you get.
On top of that, what values of X do you want Momir to use? There’s a lot of high mana value cards that are absolutely useless in this format. For instance, anything that is a 0/0 by default but has power and toughness equal to some variable is likely to just die when it comes into play. If it cares about how many artifacts you have, for example, well, that’s not likely to be many. And there’s other stuff that just doesn’t work. Reanimation is pretty terrible in a format where everything is a token.
Knowing what cards exist is a great way to help tell when you want to activate Momir. For instance, there’s not a lot of great cards at X = 1. You might get a mana dork that lets you ramp, but if you don’t, then you’re probably gonna get some obscure old card that is total trash. You really want to start using Momir at X = 2. And then when do you stop? Like, at what point does the trade-off of discarding cards become not worth it? Most people say that X = 8 is ideal, with a few opting for X = 9 instead. There’s a lot more good cards than bad at those mana values. Remember, a creature that does a board wipe when it enters the battlefield is bad for you if you have a lot of creatures, so you don’t always want to do this.
Oh, and I should probably mention a variant of Momir that was made. Yeah, there’s another format to unpack here: the Phlottery. The Phlottery is a format created by LoadingReadyRun as a joke, but it kinda caught on as an alternate way to play this format. The idea is that they take all autonomy away from the player and make the whole game pure luck.
How it works is that you cannot activate Momir except for when X = 7. If you have the ability to activate Momir for X = 7, then you must do so. You are not allowed to play any lands if you already have 7 in play. You cannot attack. Once you have seven creatures that are able to attack (which is likely on your eighth creature, but if you got a creature with haste as your seventh, then it comes one turn sooner), then, for the rest of the game, the “you cannot attack” rule no longer applies to you and instead, you must attack with all creatures if able. Note that as creatures get destroyed, you don’t have to rebuild to seven creatures. You keep the ability to attack once you have it, and indeed, you MUST attack if able.
So why seven? Because at X = 7, there’s a chance that you get Phage the Untouchable. When Phage the Untouchable enters the battlefield, if you didn’t cast it from your hand (and you didn’t), then you lose the game. That said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Phage is an instant-death card. Because at X = 7, you can also get a Platinum Angel, which prevents you from losing the game. If you get a Platinum Angel, then you won’t lose from Phage. The odds of this are so low that it’s realistically very unlikely. Hence the name “Phlottery”. It’s the Phage Lottery.
But anyways, I’m not interested in the Phlottery. I’m far more interested in Momir Basic. It sounds like an interesting game to play, but sadly, it just won’t work without MTGO. I mean, you would need to make a spreadsheet that lists every single creature card by mana value. And there’s no way to even automate this process, since there are cards like Adventurers, Double-Faced Cards, Meld Cards, and so forth that would mess up whatever you’re doing, since they’re both creatures and noncreatures.
Shame too, because this sounds like fun. I’m kinda bummed out that I have to miss out on this.
I mean, what, I’d need to filter through 20,000+ Magic cards by hand, all on my own, just to see which ones are creatures, and then sort it by mana value? Yeah, forget it. I’m not doing that.
(some time later)
So here’s a spreadsheet I made of every creature ever printed in Magic, sorted by mana value.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xvqYkLY0ne3O029Q7HSWUwhMwrSp_-AErlfnr4jzZDw/
Note that this list only includes cards that exists in Paper, and it excludes silver-bordered cards, playtest cards, and Heroes of the Realm cards.
So, first of all, what is Vanguard? Vanguard is a format of Magic where each player chooses an avatar character, called a Vanguard, and plays with that Vanguard. Each Vanguard grants different abilities. Some are static abilities, some are activated abilities, and some are triggered abilities.
These work kind of like planeswalker emblems. You just have the effect sitting there. The opponent cannot interact with it. So then, what’s stopping you from just choosing the strongest possible Vanguard? Well, your starting life total and hand size are not fixed in this format. While you start with 20 life and 7 cards in a normal game of Magic, Vanguard modifies this.
Each Vanguard will either increase or decrease these numbers in proportion to how strong its abilities are. The stronger the abilities, the less resources you’ll start the game with. On the other hand, weaker abilities will result in you having more life and cards than normal.
Vanguards started out as a promotional product in Paper Magic in 1997, before being brought to MTGO in 2005. The MTGO version includes several online-only effects, and the most popular of these was Momir Vig, Simic Visionary.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary is a Vanguard that lets you start with 24 life and 7 cards. It has the ability of "{X}, Discard a card: Create a token that’s a copy of a creature card with mana value X chosen at random. Activate only as a sorcery and only once each turn."
This gives you a random creature from throughout all of Magic’s history (well, provided that the card exists on MTGO, but most cards do). People liked this one a lot.
This led to a spinoff format called Momir Basic. It’s a Vanguard game in which you must use Momir Vig as your Vanguard and the only legal cards are basic lands. You just shuffle up sixty lands and then start playing random creatures.
Believe it or not, there is strategy behind this. For one, what basic lands should you use? The naive answer is to use an equal amount of all five. But you should prioritize Mountains and Swamps the most, since the most common activated abilities cost {R} or {B} (usually firebreathing or regeneration). And you should de-prioritize Islands. Turns out a lot of cards just randomly have islandwalk.
On that note, you also need to strategize when to play lands, when to keep them in your hand (remember, you need to discard a card to use Momir Vig’s ability), and when to use the activated abilities of the creatures you get.
On top of that, what values of X do you want Momir to use? There’s a lot of high mana value cards that are absolutely useless in this format. For instance, anything that is a 0/0 by default but has power and toughness equal to some variable is likely to just die when it comes into play. If it cares about how many artifacts you have, for example, well, that’s not likely to be many. And there’s other stuff that just doesn’t work. Reanimation is pretty terrible in a format where everything is a token.
Knowing what cards exist is a great way to help tell when you want to activate Momir. For instance, there’s not a lot of great cards at X = 1. You might get a mana dork that lets you ramp, but if you don’t, then you’re probably gonna get some obscure old card that is total trash. You really want to start using Momir at X = 2. And then when do you stop? Like, at what point does the trade-off of discarding cards become not worth it? Most people say that X = 8 is ideal, with a few opting for X = 9 instead. There’s a lot more good cards than bad at those mana values. Remember, a creature that does a board wipe when it enters the battlefield is bad for you if you have a lot of creatures, so you don’t always want to do this.
Oh, and I should probably mention a variant of Momir that was made. Yeah, there’s another format to unpack here: the Phlottery. The Phlottery is a format created by LoadingReadyRun as a joke, but it kinda caught on as an alternate way to play this format. The idea is that they take all autonomy away from the player and make the whole game pure luck.
How it works is that you cannot activate Momir except for when X = 7. If you have the ability to activate Momir for X = 7, then you must do so. You are not allowed to play any lands if you already have 7 in play. You cannot attack. Once you have seven creatures that are able to attack (which is likely on your eighth creature, but if you got a creature with haste as your seventh, then it comes one turn sooner), then, for the rest of the game, the “you cannot attack” rule no longer applies to you and instead, you must attack with all creatures if able. Note that as creatures get destroyed, you don’t have to rebuild to seven creatures. You keep the ability to attack once you have it, and indeed, you MUST attack if able.
So why seven? Because at X = 7, there’s a chance that you get Phage the Untouchable. When Phage the Untouchable enters the battlefield, if you didn’t cast it from your hand (and you didn’t), then you lose the game. That said, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Phage is an instant-death card. Because at X = 7, you can also get a Platinum Angel, which prevents you from losing the game. If you get a Platinum Angel, then you won’t lose from Phage. The odds of this are so low that it’s realistically very unlikely. Hence the name “Phlottery”. It’s the Phage Lottery.
But anyways, I’m not interested in the Phlottery. I’m far more interested in Momir Basic. It sounds like an interesting game to play, but sadly, it just won’t work without MTGO. I mean, you would need to make a spreadsheet that lists every single creature card by mana value. And there’s no way to even automate this process, since there are cards like Adventurers, Double-Faced Cards, Meld Cards, and so forth that would mess up whatever you’re doing, since they’re both creatures and noncreatures.
Shame too, because this sounds like fun. I’m kinda bummed out that I have to miss out on this.
I mean, what, I’d need to filter through 20,000+ Magic cards by hand, all on my own, just to see which ones are creatures, and then sort it by mana value? Yeah, forget it. I’m not doing that.
(some time later)
So here’s a spreadsheet I made of every creature ever printed in Magic, sorted by mana value.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xvqYkLY0ne3O029Q7HSWUwhMwrSp_-AErlfnr4jzZDw/
Note that this list only includes cards that exists in Paper, and it excludes silver-bordered cards, playtest cards, and Heroes of the Realm cards.