The Starstill Cockatrice Plugin

This is the topic for the Sealed and Draft playtesting of Starstill.

Playtesting goals

Our goal is to make Starstill Sealed and Draft:

• Balanced. One strategy can't be so powerful that it dominates all others.
• Deep. There must be a variety of viable archetypes.
• Smooth. The playstyle should be intuitive and the cards should have synergy.
• Thematic. The format has to feel like Starstill. Mastery has to matter.

Current agenda

Right now, Starstill Sealed and Draft is a 100% unknown format. I have some ideas about how it's going to work, and you likely do as well, but the most important thing to do right now is get some games in. The more games we play, the more we can identify any glaring problems with the environment.

I think Sealed is easier to set up than Draft, so we should start with that. You can generate a Sealed pool through Magic Set Editor itself, or you could ask someone else with MSE to help generate a pool for you. The MSE file is here. Scroll down for the latest version.

Draft is a logistical nightmare, but I think we can approximate playtesting by doing forum drafts like in the Limited forum. This lets us see the logic of draft picks, which is the main thing we need to fine-tune for Draft. I would need to ask someone with more experience in forum drafts to help out though.

In summary:

• Play lots and lots of Sealed.
• If you know how to set up a forum draft, we could use your help.

I don't have a Sealed deck right now but will try to put one together later in the day. When I do, I'm willing to gunsling with anyone on Cockatrice that happens to be up.

EDIT: I have a Sealed deck now.

I have work right now, but when I get off and find some time (and resurrect my Cockatrice profile) I'd love to help with Sealed and draft and stuff.

Where can we get the MSE plugin (I downloaded MSE 2)?...or, can someone generate a sealed pool for me?

Nevermind, found it.

Ok, I've got a sealed pool. Gonna build a deck, but the following cards weren't Cockatrice in the plugin, only two of them (*) are in the Magic Canon:

Maraka Grovetender
Numbing Cold
Steel Sabotage *
Tank Golem
Young Pyromancer *

Young Pyromancer is now Giltfang Matriarch. Maraka Grovetender is now Groveskipper Ouphe. Not too sure about the others; I think Numbing Cold and Steel Sabotage might have been cut. See if you have the latest "Starstill 1.0" MSE file.

Thats what I get for not scrolling down. Boo, I like my pool lol.

How can I import the set into MSE?

Adding a link to the OP.

Ok, downloaded Starstill 1.0. It has Auspicious Reversal but Cockatrice has Desperate Prayer.

Metalscape's rules text seems off in Cockatrice...unless I have the wrong Cockatrice version.

Other than that, everything seems right and I have a Sealed Deck!

Also, I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but after I made my deck I got curious and just started clicking away at Generate Pack on MSE...after about a hundred clicks I hadnt seen a Mythic Rare.

So I went to look at the card pool to see if they were in it, saw they were, went back to generate packs, and the next hundred packs all had 2 mythics in them.

Figured it out. While Generate packs will change the contents of the pack, the distribution remains the same. You have to click out of Random and go back in to generate a fully random new pool.

I created three bad decks before misclicking on save instead of save as and losing my pool.

I'll be ready for testing tomorrow.

ccgdecks has a section for uploading custom sets but I have no idea how it works. I'll look into it later if there's any interest in that.

So how do we meet each other on cockatrice?

Click connect and make sure these are the settings
Host : cockatrice.woogerworks.com
Port : 4747

Do you have a constructed deck to test yet?

My user name is K_FM

I am hcimt

Hello World crushed me with Snow Angel, World Queller, and Voice of Unity. It seems like red doesn't have a hard removal spell at common like Turn to Slag, which would go a long way toward solving the problem. I recommend putting it in over Hellish Sandstorm.

Hello World also commented that there was too much fixing in a non-multicolor set. Grovecaller Ouphe, Viashino Suncaller, Abundant Growth, and Loamblood Druid are all rainbow fixers. We should think about restricting some of these to Forests or green mana only.

Maybe change loambrood druid cost to ?

Control bug was a really nice mastery enabler.
World queller vs. enchantment creatures is oppressive.

The only way for green to be come playable is to mix them.... My deck now is GWUR.......... and that fits the theme of the world, where Green is tryng to rebuild what Blue and Red Dragons destoryed.

I derped hard, MSE gives 66 commons if you ask for 6 packs, so I had 6 extra ones, how can this be fixed?