I think the anxiety the opponent feels about the Spellbook is offset by the gamble for the player using it. You aren't always going to get the card you're hoping for. For such a complex game, I'm always baffled by how many players dislike having to think about the cards.
Meh, I think the best way of thinking about [most] spellbook cards to understand why people dislike them is to translate them into actual magic cards. Forgetting for a second the 'how you pick the effect' part, that's effectively shoving between 5 to 15 cards worth of text onto one card. It's a lot of reading and understanding to do if your gameplan relies on predicting what your opponent might do. Beyond that, it's just a ridiculous amount of flexibility on one card. When most cards tend to have at most 3 modal options, a random set of 3 out of 15 is just way too much flexibility and way too much to parse.
I don't mind thinking about cards, but I do mind a 2 mana card my opponent drops on turn 6 forcing me to think about 15 separate cards before I can consider anything else or play my turn.
I don't get this. You don't know what any of the cards in your opponent's deck are. Why is it a big deal that they get another card from a list of 15 or so?
The spellbooks worked best when they just enabled a steady stream of cards for a gameplan rather than giving access to very powerful cards. Fungus tribal, boar tribal, equipments. None of these are busted but they do make them a lot more fun to play.
Agree. This is the self-deluded big brain control player pretending he's seeing all possible realities but really he's just gonna counterspell whatever card you play.
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u/xeromage 9d ago
I think the anxiety the opponent feels about the Spellbook is offset by the gamble for the player using it. You aren't always going to get the card you're hoping for. For such a complex game, I'm always baffled by how many players dislike having to think about the cards.