Deck Description Markdown Support + UX Improvements

Hey everyone, this blog post is a summary of a lot of smaller improvements I made across the app.

Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback through the Google form, Patreon, or directly by email. All of these changes came from user feedback.

The biggest change here is Markdown support for deck descriptions and private deck notes. This came from user jacopogf, so thank you for providing the feedback and helping me improve MythicHub.

Markdown in deck descriptions

I had been thinking about adding Markdown support for quite some time, but it was never the main priority for me. I kept thinking that I should focus on the core experience, and that deck description improvements were only a nice extra.

It turns out they were more important than I thought. Happily, Markdown support is now available, and it is more powerful than simple Markdown support.

Deck descriptions can now have headings, bold text, lists, links, quotes, and normal line breaks. That already makes longer primers easier to read, but I also added a few Magic-specific bits.

You can reference cards with double square brackets, like [[Sol Ring]] or [[Thassa's Oracle]]. When the card is found, it becomes a clickable card name with the usual card tooltip.

Mana symbols work too. Write {G}, {2}{U}, or similar symbols and MythicHub will render them as mana icons.

There are also highlight markers. If you use card highlights in a deck, you can now explain them in the description with syntax like {highlight:yellow}.

For example:

## Game plan

Use [[Llanowar Elves]] and [[Sol Ring]] to get ahead early.

Keep {U} open when you need to protect [[Thassa's Oracle]].

{highlight:yellow} Combo pieces
{highlight:blue} Protection
{highlight:green} Ramp

Rendered, the same notes look like this:

Use Llanowar Elves and Sol Ring to get ahead early.

Keep open when you need to protect Thassa's Oracle.

• Combo pieces
• Protection
• Ramp

I added a Markdown syntax help page with the supported syntax and a few examples. Card references try to handle normal card names, front-face names, printed names, and flavor names, but there is no syntax for forcing a specific printing.

If you want to see how it looks in action, check out this deck.

A few browsing improvements

I also cleaned up a handful of browsing pages.

The prints page now has a small statistics section with total prints, unique arts, first printed, and cheapest print. I also fixed the print stats so Art Series cards do not distort the numbers.

Artist pages got a similar pass. They now show card count, unique art count, first card, and latest new art. The artist list also shows the number of cards and unique arts for each artist, and it can be sorted by those values.

Filters and sorting should feel a bit less chaotic now too. Filters stay in the URL where that makes sense, so filtered pages are easier to share or reopen. Sorting and view preferences (table or images layout) are stored separately, so they can follow you without filling the URL with state. Filter buttons also have a clearer active state now, which should make it easier to see when a page is narrowed down.

Importing decklists into collections

Collection imports can now use decklist-style text too.

That means you can paste a list or upload a .txt file when importing a data into a binder. It reuses the decklist parsers, so formats like MythicHub, Moxfield, Arena, ManaBox, Archidekt, and TappedOut can be used as collection imports.

This is useful when you do not have a CSV export, but you do have a plain list of cards you want to add to a binder. Unmatched cards are reported in the import summary as usual.

Thanks

Thanks again to everyone sending feedback. This is a smaller update post, but I think these kinds of changes make MythicHub nicer to use day to day.

If something about the syntax is confusing, or if a card reference does not resolve the way you expected, please let me know at matt(at)mythichub.com or through the feedback form.

Happy brewing!