08-01-2023, 06:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-02-2023, 09:08 AM by lemonoppy. Edited 1 time in total.)
As someone who enjoys both Magic The Gathering and the ISFL, I am now going to attempt to combine the two into one horrific amalgamation. I have no real knowledge of a lot of the prospects outside of the updates they have made and I have no real knowledge of most Magic cards, but nevertheless, I will attempt to compare the two anyways. How stats relate to the cards is fairly arbitrary, but I'll try my best to make it reasonable. Let's begin.
Ryan McBean - DT
Katarn is up first here with his prospect. An interior rusher defensive tackle with nearly maxed-out speed, minimum agility, tackling, competitiveness, and improved endurance and strength. Also, based on an inside source, I have knowledge that Katarn aligns mostly with mono-blue as well, so that will come into play. The first attribute to take into account is his speed. We'll limit ourselves to creatures with flash (meaning that they can be cast anytime), because I feel that that would match up well with his near maxed-out speed. There are 248 mono-blue creatures with flash, however, so we must limit ourselves further. As a DT, he's a beefy boy, so we'll need a high-health creature as well. I typically consider a toughness of around 4 minimum to be a fairly nice toughness, so we'll set that as the minimum. His high, but not maxed out, strength, won't hold him back, but it isn't enough that he'd be insanely powerful, so we'll give him a power of 3 to 5. We still have 14 cards left to choose from, so we'll move on to the tackling stat. A minimum tackling stat, to me, suggests that it's a card that won't always succeed in what it's trying to do. Now, there are no Magic cards that have a 50% chance of their effect succeeding or something, so we might have to stretch the definition to be that it's a card that won't always work or be effective unless the opponent does something (such as play an instant or a specific kind of card) or a type of creature needing to be on the board or something like that. With minimum competitiveness as well, we're looking for a low monetary cost card that doesn't see play often. Minimum agility is a little harder to factor in, but to me agility relates to the cost of the card (it's a bit arbitrary admittedly, but I feel like it also makes a bit of sense, so that'll be how it is). Admittedly the minimum agility for an interior rusher DT is 60, so it's not incredibly low by any means. But it also is still the minimum, so we'll give it a fairly high, but not ridiculous, cost. Based on all of this, the only reasonable card for Katarn is...
Thor Bǫllrsveifla - QB
Back to QBs, though this one should be much easier than Bamford due to the points being a bit more min-maxed. We've got a field general QB with a high throwing accuracy, an even higher arm stat, minimum agility, strength, and competitiveness, a high intelligence that's also near minimum for a field general QB, and a very low speed. An inside source informed me that he, like Bamford, leans towards mono-green, so it'll be another mono-green planeswalker. This time, however, due to the low speed and agility, a very different one. Due to the incredibly low agility of 35, we will limit ourselves to only Planeswalkers with a cost of six or above. I have absolutely no idea how to include throwing accuracy in this comparison, so I will say it relates to destroying the other player's enchantments/creatures. I have no good explanation for this, though maybe you could say that it's because rather than throwing a ball accurately at a receiver, you're throwing a spell/shooting a bow accurately at an opposing creature/enchantment. It's a shoddy explanation, but it will do. We have a low but still serviceable speed of 45, so we'll set a minimum of 3 turns to activate their most powerful ability. The endurance stat being at a minimum means we need a low starting loyalty, though there are exceptions, such as Planeswalkers that can be cast for cheaper at the cost of their loyalty. The strength stat is very low at a 40, but still higher than the agility. Therefore, while no ability buffing your creatures would be preferable, an ability either buffing only one creature, the buff being dependent on outside circumstances such as specific kinds of creatures, or the buff being hard to activate would all work. Plugging all of these factors in, we have one solid option left for us
Now, you may be wondering to yourself: "Hey wait, what about the arm stat, you said they had a high arm stat. What happened there?" WELL, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS BUT THE ARM STAT REPRESENTED THE NUMBER OF ARMS. THE HIGHER THE ARM STAT, THE MORE ARMS THEY HAVE. And Nissa, wouldn't you know it, has 3 and a half arms (one of them is a staff sort of thing, I'm not one hundred percent sure exactly whether or not it's an arm but still. A very high-cost planeswalker at 7 mana (3GGG/PG/P), with an ability that buffs creatures conditionally depending on the number of forests. This ability also happens to be hard to active, requiring 3 turns to do so. He has a high starting loyalty at 7, BUT the two phyrexian mana, if paid using life, decreases the loyalty counters by 4, leaving Nissa with a starting loyalty of 3. Another ability of Nissa's destroys a target artifact or enchantment as well. Now, there is one issue with this choice, and that is the competitiveness. Ideally, with the competitiveness of 45 Thor has, this would be a cheaper card. At around 10 to 12 dollars a card, the competitiveness is a little off, but 45 is still slightly higher than a lot of other creates (most players seem to start at 40), and the card isn't 50 dollars or something, so I'll give myself a little bit of a pass. Anyways, congratulation to Thor Bǫllrsveifla on the 3 and a half arms and I am rooting for him.
Zenzeroni Xystarch II - K/P
That's right, we're doing a kicker now. I wasn't going to do this beforehand due to the lack of stats they have, buttttt then I remembered that kicker is an actual keyword in Magic the Gathering and I figured it would be a funny thing to do, so let's do this. A power kicker from Disappointment Island, New Zealand with a kicking power of 75, a kicking accuracy of 69 (nice), and an intelligence of 63. We admittedly don't have much to go off of here, and there are 131 creatures with the keyword kicker, (counting alchemy creatures as separate from their paper counterparts) so we will be a bit flexible with the rules here. First, we'll bring the number of creatures down to 13 by limiting ourselves to multikicker creatures, as a kicker that could only ever kick a football once would be a terrible kicker. Next, let's say that kick power is the power of the creature and kick accuracy is the toughness. Xystarch II has a higher kick power than kick accuracy, so the power must be greater than the toughness. The intelligence is higher than the minimum, but not crazily high. Intelligence in kickers is meant to buff their accuracy and improve their game overall, so we'll look for specifically creatures that buff themselves, but not an insane amount (because the intelligence is only somewhat higher than the minimum). Shockingly, just off of these parameters we are left with only one possible creature card, which is
A 3 mana (RR) mono-red multikicker creature with a power of two and a toughness of 1 (higher power than toughness) and the ability to buff itself by +1/+1 every time it is kicked, which is a good amount, but not insane by any measure. The mutikicker cost is 2 anyways, so it isn't incredibly easy to buff or anything as well. He also appears to have very muscular legs and looks like he could probably punt a football the length of the field and more.
Thank you everyone for joining me on this magical Magic the Gathering adventure, and I hope you enjoyed it. These comparisons aren't perfect by any means (I literally didn't question why a QB would have a throwing accuracy of one), but they're better than I expected and that's enough. I may do another one of these before the DSFL draft depending on the amount of time I have, and if I don't do it before the draft perhaps I will do it for whatever team drafts me (so if any team wanted some cool media about their team, you know what to do. See ya!
Ryan McBean - DT
Katarn is up first here with his prospect. An interior rusher defensive tackle with nearly maxed-out speed, minimum agility, tackling, competitiveness, and improved endurance and strength. Also, based on an inside source, I have knowledge that Katarn aligns mostly with mono-blue as well, so that will come into play. The first attribute to take into account is his speed. We'll limit ourselves to creatures with flash (meaning that they can be cast anytime), because I feel that that would match up well with his near maxed-out speed. There are 248 mono-blue creatures with flash, however, so we must limit ourselves further. As a DT, he's a beefy boy, so we'll need a high-health creature as well. I typically consider a toughness of around 4 minimum to be a fairly nice toughness, so we'll set that as the minimum. His high, but not maxed out, strength, won't hold him back, but it isn't enough that he'd be insanely powerful, so we'll give him a power of 3 to 5. We still have 14 cards left to choose from, so we'll move on to the tackling stat. A minimum tackling stat, to me, suggests that it's a card that won't always succeed in what it's trying to do. Now, there are no Magic cards that have a 50% chance of their effect succeeding or something, so we might have to stretch the definition to be that it's a card that won't always work or be effective unless the opponent does something (such as play an instant or a specific kind of card) or a type of creature needing to be on the board or something like that. With minimum competitiveness as well, we're looking for a low monetary cost card that doesn't see play often. Minimum agility is a little harder to factor in, but to me agility relates to the cost of the card (it's a bit arbitrary admittedly, but I feel like it also makes a bit of sense, so that'll be how it is). Admittedly the minimum agility for an interior rusher DT is 60, so it's not incredibly low by any means. But it also is still the minimum, so we'll give it a fairly high, but not ridiculous, cost. Based on all of this, the only reasonable card for Katarn is...
Voracious Greatshark!!!!!
A mono-blue card with a mana cost of 5 (3UU), flash, a power of 5, a toughness of 4, an ability to counter an artifact or creature spell (fits the conditional bill), a monetary cost of 40 cents, and a lack of competitive viability in the MTG landscape (as far as I know at least), it feels like a solid pick to represent Katarn. I will note however that as Katarn is, and I quote "Island boy, just an island boy", islands could perhaps be a better fit. I will allow the comments to discuss this.
Jordan Bamford - WR
EDIT: During this write-up, I assumed Bamford was a QB due to him being on the QB page. After looking again, however, i realized he is actually a WR. Oops. I don't know why I didn't question a QB having no throwing power or accuracy and 65 hands, but whatever. Maybe in a future writeup I will correct this mistake, but for now enjoy my writeup of QB Bamford.
Bamford is up next due to the happening to be active on the ISFL discord at the time of writing this. A mobile QB with high speed, slightly improved strength, hands, endurance, and intelligence, and minimum competitiveness. For QBs, I am going to say that they are automatically limited to Planeswalkers, as both are very different and very important roles. There are no green Planeswalkers with flash that I can find, so for speed instead we're going to say that that correlates to how easy it is to activate their hardest to active loyalty ability, with high speed meaning much easier to activate abilities. This means any planeswalker that would take 5 turns to activate their most powerful ability is out. The endurance will relate to the starting loyalty, as a planeswalker with high loyalty can survive a hit much easier than one that can't. With an endurance of around 60, a solid but not amazing stat, I'd say a starting loyalty of around 4-5 works. Bamford is at minimum agility, but he is also a mobile QB, so his agility is at 65. Katarn was given a five-cost creature for an agility stat of 60, so we'll limit the cost to 4. I have absolutely no idea how to quantify hands in a QB for Magic cards, so we'll say for this specific instance because of the improved hands they must be holding something in their artwork, whether it be a sword, an instrument, a bow, or a staff. Planeswalkers don't have any sort of power stat as creatures do, so rather we'll base it on their buffs. Higher strength for a planeswalker, at least a green one, would suggest they may increase the power of creatures. Intelligence is another stat I'm unsure how to work in, so maybe something involving card drawing/searching for a card could work? It's the only thing I can think of. Based on all of the possible factors, the only option would be...
Jordan Bamford - WR
EDIT: During this write-up, I assumed Bamford was a QB due to him being on the QB page. After looking again, however, i realized he is actually a WR. Oops. I don't know why I didn't question a QB having no throwing power or accuracy and 65 hands, but whatever. Maybe in a future writeup I will correct this mistake, but for now enjoy my writeup of QB Bamford.
Bamford is up next due to the happening to be active on the ISFL discord at the time of writing this. A mobile QB with high speed, slightly improved strength, hands, endurance, and intelligence, and minimum competitiveness. For QBs, I am going to say that they are automatically limited to Planeswalkers, as both are very different and very important roles. There are no green Planeswalkers with flash that I can find, so for speed instead we're going to say that that correlates to how easy it is to activate their hardest to active loyalty ability, with high speed meaning much easier to activate abilities. This means any planeswalker that would take 5 turns to activate their most powerful ability is out. The endurance will relate to the starting loyalty, as a planeswalker with high loyalty can survive a hit much easier than one that can't. With an endurance of around 60, a solid but not amazing stat, I'd say a starting loyalty of around 4-5 works. Bamford is at minimum agility, but he is also a mobile QB, so his agility is at 65. Katarn was given a five-cost creature for an agility stat of 60, so we'll limit the cost to 4. I have absolutely no idea how to quantify hands in a QB for Magic cards, so we'll say for this specific instance because of the improved hands they must be holding something in their artwork, whether it be a sword, an instrument, a bow, or a staff. Planeswalkers don't have any sort of power stat as creatures do, so rather we'll base it on their buffs. Higher strength for a planeswalker, at least a green one, would suggest they may increase the power of creatures. Intelligence is another stat I'm unsure how to work in, so maybe something involving card drawing/searching for a card could work? It's the only thing I can think of. Based on all of the possible factors, the only option would be...
Garruk, Unleashed
a mono-green planeswalker with a 4 mana cost (2GG), a starting loyalty of 4, a minimum of 3 turns to active his most powerful ability, a monetary cost of around 90 cents, an ability that buffs a creature by 3/3 with trample, another ability that allows a player to search for a card, an axe in his hand, and a cool helmet all point towards Garruk being the only planeswalker to choose.
Pete Moss - LB
Made by a cool user that's definitely not me. I will be completely unbiased in my analysis of this player and will only give a card that is a completely fair comparison to the player. Anyways, I think a valid comparison would be
Pete Moss - LB
Made by a cool user that's definitely not me. I will be completely unbiased in my analysis of this player and will only give a card that is a completely fair comparison to the player. Anyways, I think a valid comparison would be
Black Lotus
Not only does it completely make sense that Pete Moss's comparison is the most valuable card ever made in Magic The Gathering history, but it also makes so much sense that I will not even explain why Pete's MTG card comparison is Black Lotus. I will not be taking any questions at this time.
Thor Bǫllrsveifla - QB
Back to QBs, though this one should be much easier than Bamford due to the points being a bit more min-maxed. We've got a field general QB with a high throwing accuracy, an even higher arm stat, minimum agility, strength, and competitiveness, a high intelligence that's also near minimum for a field general QB, and a very low speed. An inside source informed me that he, like Bamford, leans towards mono-green, so it'll be another mono-green planeswalker. This time, however, due to the low speed and agility, a very different one. Due to the incredibly low agility of 35, we will limit ourselves to only Planeswalkers with a cost of six or above. I have absolutely no idea how to include throwing accuracy in this comparison, so I will say it relates to destroying the other player's enchantments/creatures. I have no good explanation for this, though maybe you could say that it's because rather than throwing a ball accurately at a receiver, you're throwing a spell/shooting a bow accurately at an opposing creature/enchantment. It's a shoddy explanation, but it will do. We have a low but still serviceable speed of 45, so we'll set a minimum of 3 turns to activate their most powerful ability. The endurance stat being at a minimum means we need a low starting loyalty, though there are exceptions, such as Planeswalkers that can be cast for cheaper at the cost of their loyalty. The strength stat is very low at a 40, but still higher than the agility. Therefore, while no ability buffing your creatures would be preferable, an ability either buffing only one creature, the buff being dependent on outside circumstances such as specific kinds of creatures, or the buff being hard to activate would all work. Plugging all of these factors in, we have one solid option left for us
Nissa, Ascended Animist
Now, you may be wondering to yourself: "Hey wait, what about the arm stat, you said they had a high arm stat. What happened there?" WELL, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS BUT THE ARM STAT REPRESENTED THE NUMBER OF ARMS. THE HIGHER THE ARM STAT, THE MORE ARMS THEY HAVE. And Nissa, wouldn't you know it, has 3 and a half arms (one of them is a staff sort of thing, I'm not one hundred percent sure exactly whether or not it's an arm but still. A very high-cost planeswalker at 7 mana (3GGG/PG/P), with an ability that buffs creatures conditionally depending on the number of forests. This ability also happens to be hard to active, requiring 3 turns to do so. He has a high starting loyalty at 7, BUT the two phyrexian mana, if paid using life, decreases the loyalty counters by 4, leaving Nissa with a starting loyalty of 3. Another ability of Nissa's destroys a target artifact or enchantment as well. Now, there is one issue with this choice, and that is the competitiveness. Ideally, with the competitiveness of 45 Thor has, this would be a cheaper card. At around 10 to 12 dollars a card, the competitiveness is a little off, but 45 is still slightly higher than a lot of other creates (most players seem to start at 40), and the card isn't 50 dollars or something, so I'll give myself a little bit of a pass. Anyways, congratulation to Thor Bǫllrsveifla on the 3 and a half arms and I am rooting for him.
Zenzeroni Xystarch II - K/P
That's right, we're doing a kicker now. I wasn't going to do this beforehand due to the lack of stats they have, buttttt then I remembered that kicker is an actual keyword in Magic the Gathering and I figured it would be a funny thing to do, so let's do this. A power kicker from Disappointment Island, New Zealand with a kicking power of 75, a kicking accuracy of 69 (nice), and an intelligence of 63. We admittedly don't have much to go off of here, and there are 131 creatures with the keyword kicker, (counting alchemy creatures as separate from their paper counterparts) so we will be a bit flexible with the rules here. First, we'll bring the number of creatures down to 13 by limiting ourselves to multikicker creatures, as a kicker that could only ever kick a football once would be a terrible kicker. Next, let's say that kick power is the power of the creature and kick accuracy is the toughness. Xystarch II has a higher kick power than kick accuracy, so the power must be greater than the toughness. The intelligence is higher than the minimum, but not crazily high. Intelligence in kickers is meant to buff their accuracy and improve their game overall, so we'll look for specifically creatures that buff themselves, but not an insane amount (because the intelligence is only somewhat higher than the minimum). Shockingly, just off of these parameters we are left with only one possible creature card, which is
Flametongue Yearling
A 3 mana (RR) mono-red multikicker creature with a power of two and a toughness of 1 (higher power than toughness) and the ability to buff itself by +1/+1 every time it is kicked, which is a good amount, but not insane by any measure. The mutikicker cost is 2 anyways, so it isn't incredibly easy to buff or anything as well. He also appears to have very muscular legs and looks like he could probably punt a football the length of the field and more.
Thank you everyone for joining me on this magical Magic the Gathering adventure, and I hope you enjoyed it. These comparisons aren't perfect by any means (I literally didn't question why a QB would have a throwing accuracy of one), but they're better than I expected and that's enough. I may do another one of these before the DSFL draft depending on the amount of time I have, and if I don't do it before the draft perhaps I will do it for whatever team drafts me (so if any team wanted some cool media about their team, you know what to do. See ya!