Magic The Gathering

[Oddjob OTP]

I don't disagree but my feeling is because Plainswalkers are basically enchantments any unblocked creatures can disenchant they have to be much better at their jobs then an enchantment of comparable cost (or a legendary creature if they are a planeswalker-as commander). Some decks that's an easier thing to achieve, like Atraxa Superfriends or Vorenclex Superfriends but most of them absolutely fail that test in practice on most boardstates which makes them relatively bad cards in the format because most of the time they sit in your hand dead.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I don't disagree but my feeling is because Plainswalkers are basically enchantments any unblocked creatures can disenchant they have to be much better at their jobs then an enchantment of comparable cost (or a legendary creature if they are a planeswalker-as commander). Some decks that's an easier thing to achieve, like Atraxa Superfriends or Vorenclex Superfriends but most of them absolutely fail that test in practice on most boardstates which makes them relatively bad cards in the format because most of the time they sit in your hand dead.

That is why you have to be choosy about which ones go in, when you play them and not just ticking down on them like a dork, honestly it is the ones that saw almost no standard play that tend to be great in EDH. Like the Temur Sarkhan is super powerful in my dragon deck, I've played him, ticked down to make a 4/4 that nobody could reasonably attack through..then next turn used him as a bridge to get to 7 Mana to put down Belledros Witherbloom and now the only way to really get rid of the thing is to use Removal or a Board Wipe so at minimum I am even on cards on the person that nuked the field while ahead of everyone else.

 

[Retink Retunk]

I hear there's a lot of openings right now...

Are you sure he isn't one already using the pen name of Taika Waititi?

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Because the Unsets are his baby, every single one of them was a thing he pushed to have happen and he used his position to shove them down player's throats because the first two sold like fucking ass so he attaches shitty gimmicks to them like making the third one "draftable" and forcing Sheldon to make silver boarded legal for 2 months when Unstable came out.

See, Unglued and Unhinged are just a collection of dumb jokes with a few entertaining chuckles here and there, which are broadly miserable to play with. But Unstable actually just felt like them having fun with the mechanics inside of a goofy theme. Forcing Sheldon to make it legal for 2 months was retarded and the greatest mark of Maro having zero understanding of the game he's in charge of - but so it goes.

A glance through the legendary cards in the set (oh, those days before they decided 'cater to EDH' meant 'print entirely too much garbage no-one will ever play') shows off a lot of cards that are mostly-intuitive, play around with the nature of the game, and take a little but not a lot of explaining. Kindslaver is hilarious, Baron Von Count is hilarious and easy to understand, Grusilda is a somehow more-intuitive Mutate (great job pushing that one Maro), The Grand Calcutron makes the game into a different subgame that doesn't also make the game take 30 years to finish, and X is just a funny card that requires you to be playing with someone not a grog. The flavor may not be to everyone's taste, but I can totally see why people like Unstable - I certainly do. (Yes, yes, the decision to make Spike a woman was retarded even back then, but if it's any reassurance the foreshortening on the left hand tells me this piece was shat out the door and fast)

But fuck me, Unfinity is total shit. The draft environment sucked, the mechanics suck, the jokes suck, it doesn't actually feel like it's playing with Magic's rules so much as it was built top-down by an idiot with no understanding of them. Stickers is such a... remarkably stupid idea, it blows my brain that it ever got out of concepting. And why the fuck would you print whale-bait collector boosters of a product with zero competitive relevance? Shocklands aren't enough to carry a product that is otherwise 100% chaff.

"Planeswalkers aren't good in Commander so now they can use Mythic slots on more EDH cards instead of Planeswalkers"

I find it funny that everyone - everyone - has been complaining about the number of legends that have been printed in the last few sets, and yet this is almost certainly correct.

Who do they market-test this shit on? Maro himself? People Maro has paid to say that Maro is making good decisions? I play exclusively casual commander, and everyone I know is fatigued with how much shit they keep dumping into the format and would prefer they leave it alone. But then, I guess whales probably do keep buying all the shit up.

Yep because 3 set blocks were "UwU twoo hurd for the poor designers"

I sympathize with this because of the draft environment - it was a lot of work to try to make XYZ formats function, particularly since for some part of them you also had to have XXY or XYY formats, too. But they have failed to deliver at every step of the way - the two-block format also sucked, the one-block format sucks extremely and is why every draft format feels the same. Bouncing around from place to place like a spastic sure does also make every single plane feel identical alongside increasingly boilerplate art. Ixalan and Eldraine being next to each other feels perfect: both of them are retarded, illogical planes that are nothing but window-dressing.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

, the jokes suck,

This is why I hate Un-sets in general, the jokes are chuckle worthy once. I hate that people began to jerk off to them because Maro shoved it up Sheldon's ass and then shoved it into Legacy.

I find it funny that everyone - everyone - has been complaining about the number of legends that have been printed in the last few sets, and yet this is almost certainly correct.

Because Maro and WOTC can literally only chase after the current fad, they ruined Standard and competitive magic chasing after Hearthstone and now they are gonna fuck up EDH.

I sympathize with this because of the draft environment

Quite frankly, every draft format ends ups "sucking"

I love the idea of drafting, its a fun time once or twice in a set but as a competitive format it is kind of shitty. Even something like Vintage Cube which is absurd amounts of fun (cube is the best draft format) would make for an absolutely shit competitive format just because of how imbalanced shit can be.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

What really grinds my gears about all the commander stuff in standard is that they HAVE supplementary products for each standard set FOR commander and they still shove in cards completely unplayable in every format other than low powered EDH. Like every set there's some rare card for Simic "unique creature types" zoo or Simic "birds and beasts tribal" but they never amount to anything in 60 card constructed or limited. Meanwhile there are cards in the commander only sets that would make for great constructed cards. Prosper is my personal favorite example, he probably wouldn't have been T1 in that standard because fuck Winota, Emergent Ultimatum and Rogues but he would have been an interesting inclusion for some of the shit I was on like Mardu Blood Avatar.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

This is why I hate Un-sets in general, the jokes are chuckle worthy once

The jokes themselves, yeah, but that's what makes Unstable stand out - it had actual mechanics. And fun ones! The 'person outside the game' cards offer up a surprising amount of variety and make it great for cube, because someone could decide to totally fuck you over if they wanted. Other cards can be build-arounds for goofy, stupid strategies, and altogether Unstable just clicked and was a satisfying product. Everything that made it work was not carried over into Unfinity, which was self-indulgent tripe.

I love the idea of drafting, its a fun time once or twice in a set but as a competitive format it is kind of shitty.

I think it's infinitely better than constructed as a means of judging player skill, because drafting and construction on the fly are important. But the quality varies from set-to-set.

LOTR has been great- green has some troubles but is far from unplayable. There are crazy rares, but it's nothing on ONE - ONE being a sterling example of a set you couldn't pay me to draft again. Yeah, that'll happen - from rare bombs that were stupid autowins to commons-uncommons that decided games around turn 2 or 3 with a huge advantage to the player on the play, that set is perhaps one of the worst formats I've ever seen.

However, I don't view limited sets sucking balls from time to time as any different than constructed formats sucking balls. What's that? T1 Grief Feign Death? Awesome, gg, game 2? Oh, whoops, you did it again, and I didn't have my silver bullet, GG. And Mono-G Devotion: The Format, for that matter.

Like every set there's some rare card for Simic "unique creature types" zoo or Simic "birds and beasts tribal" but they never amount to anything in 60 card constructed or limited.

UG Tawnos was only unplayable in Brother's War because blue was a pretty shit color, and UG was byfar the worst pairing. There were enough theoretical beast-bird cards at common that you could try to make it work, and the 3/3 flash flyer that made a powerstone or whatever was actually pretty choice with him. But you were never in UG, because blue was a support color that didn't play well with anything green was trying to do.

Similarly, Volo in the first DND set had the problem of having U in his casting cost. U in that set was perhaps the most unplayable that that color has been in recent memory. Like, blue was bad in Brother's War and had to be played a very specific way in ONE, but in AFR it was just genuinely 'never play this color unless it is a splash for shit like Xanathar.' Otherwise, he's a pretty good value stick. 3/2 for 4 is bad stats, but if you get off one clone effect with him, it really wasn't too shabby.

I don't mind that standard sets get goofy commander cards that won't really see any use in constructed. I just hate when they have no application in limited, either, like Fateful Handoff or Hurkyl's Final Meditation or Over The Top. I love cards like Haphazard Bombardment, though. Dogshit useless in constructed, but a slowass, random 3-for-1 in limited? Sure, you need to be running a grindy midrange deck, but it totally worked wonders there - and Dominaria (OG) was grindy midrange the set.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I think it's infinitely better than constructed as a means of judging player skill, because drafting and construction on the fly are important. But the quality varies from set-to-set.

I kind of hard disagree in that a good constructed format requires skill, the problem is WOTC has been so shit about everything that constructed has also suffered massively. Quality Varies set to set but the only ones that don't eventually end up with people getting "tired" of them are the ones with degenerate bullshit like Triple Innistrad.

LOTR has been great- green has some troubles but is far from unplayable. There are crazy rares,

The rares aren't even the best cards in LOTR for the most part, the Powerful for their mana value Uncommon Legendaries blow the rares out of the water..and you can easily splash them because they put in an uncommon land that can filter mana for Legendaries with basically zero downside because so much of the set is Legendary that it is basically a 5 color land.

However, I don't view limited sets sucking balls from time to time as any different than constructed formats sucking balls. What's that? T1 Grief Feign Death? Awesome, gg, game 2? Oh, whoops, you did it again, and I didn't have my silver bullet, GG. And Mono-G Devotion: The Format, for that matter.

I don't really see it any differently either aside from the fact that a shitty draft format gets replaced with a different shitty draft format in a couple of months. To be honestly I haven't really given a shit about draft since they fucked with the Block formats, as much as people hated "3 set drafts" I like the idea of a draft format evolving slowly as cards are added to it.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I kind of hard disagree in that a good constructed format requires skill, the problem is WOTC has been so shit about everything that constructed has also suffered massively. Quality Varies set to set but the only ones that don't eventually end up with people getting "tired" of them are the ones with degenerate bullshit like Triple Innistrad.

I think they can, yeah. I mean, honestly - pre-MH2 (arguably MH1) modern was pretty awesome to watch. A lot of variety, a lot of interplay, a lot of guesswork and options for all kinds of decks - huge rewards for knowing the meta, guessing at what your opponent was doing, and rogue brews. Legacy & Vintage were like that as well, but I didn't follow them as much.

Nowadays... not so much. Standard I've never been high on, but the fact that Rakdos Scam so frequently makes non-games in modern and a lot of the format feels like two ships sailing right on by, alongside how Legacy/Vint got assfucked by companions and then Initiative... eh. They need to go in with a cleaver and really gut a lot of the modern, retarded design mistakes to get those back to my kinda liking.

The rares aren't even the best cards in LOTR for the most part, the Powerful for their mana value Uncommon Legendaries blow the rares out of the water..and you can easily splash them because they put in an uncommon land that can filter mana for Legendaries with basically zero downside because so much of the set is Legendary that it is basically a 5 color land.

Oh, yeah, I know, but that's also part of why I think it's a great set. When the rares dictate your wins, in the worst case you get ONE but even in 'better' cases, you get sets like Crimson Vow. I fucking hate Crimson Vow - here, have a 4/4 hexproof that grows other shit and flips to give everything hexproof, you can totally beat that. So many of the uncommons in this set are good but reactable cards, and knowing which to prioritize, which to splash, and what path to take in the draft format is satisfying. It's a little simple, but in all honesty the Ring mechanic provides enough choice during games (and smooths out flood and starvation) that there's still a lot to go by.

And the format is kindof already over, but what makes shit so splashable isn't Gray Havens - that does poorly on 17 Lands overall - but Pelargir survivor. Blue's mythic common, really. The Grand Halls of the Citadel or whatever is also a common land that allows you to splash any of the 2c legends regardless of your own color combination, provided you get enough of them -- and green really shines if you can grab some Many Partings and Wose Pathfinders for just such a reason, to the point that base-green 4/5c legends is a legit strat if the lanes are open. It's trinkety little draft strategies like that which make me love a format.

To be honestly I haven't really given a shit about draft since they fucked with the Block formats, as much as people hated "3 set drafts" I like the idea of a draft format evolving slowly as cards are added to it.

I preferred them this way, too, but I can at least in theory see why it was hard to balance. I liked the way it turned out in RTR-GTC-DGM, beyond that DGM was shit. Immediately after that was Theros, though... and I can't say I was a fan of the way those three sets paired up. It felt jumbled and disjointed and just... not very good. Khans block I also don't have fond memories of - FRF actually worked decently as the small set, but the two large blocks didn't play nice.

What I think they should do, draft-wise, is go back to the two-block format. A decent bit after the second set has released, put out an epilogue-ish set, which has effectively a 'sheet' of new cards and then combines the two other block sets otherwise, ala Double Feature. Shakes things up potentially a lot, but also ensures you don't get another drafting-black-in-avacyn-restored.

In terms of how modern draft formats (LOTR excluded) feel to play... they're generally pretty samey, except for when you have sub-par or shit formats (Crimson Vow, New Capenna, ONE). The color pairs usually do the same things from block to block, so the main difference is how the set mechanics play with those themes. Sometimes works, sometimes they print a 2/1 flying draw a card gain a life for 3.

 

[Retink Retunk]

And why the fuck would you print whale-bait collector boosters of a product with zero competitive relevance? Shocklands aren't enough to carry a product that is otherwise 100% chaff

Because Wizards does everything by a rigid system with no regard for context or tone? It's why the game relies so heavily on cycles of things and returning ideas like the millionth "Sword of X and Y" or whatever other variant of past successes they're throwing in there as well as copious "nods" to past cards that were popular. Wizards seems to be afraid of creativity, which might be because things like Companions were such a disaster.

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

Toronto man sells ultra-rare 'One Ring' card to rapper Post Malone for $2.64M​

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/post-malone-one-ring-canada-1.6925849 | Archive


Link to the tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8LekN4D/ | Proxy

Honestly, happy to see this just went to a retail andy and didn't end up rotting in a box for all eternity. 2.6M is a no joke figure too, I hope he's ready for his life to dramatically change in many ways. I'm sure every relative he's ever known is reaching out to him right about now.

This will not be the last 1/1 we see is what this also signifies to me and I'm sure Hasbro/WOTC is loving this right now.

 

[Flexo]

alongside how Legacy/Vint got assfucked by companions and then Initiative...

Wait... i remember hearing and seeing how companions screwed up legacy but Initiative??? I didn't even think it was that great in BG. How is it cracking things in legacy?

Khans block I also don't have fond memories of - FRF actually worked decently as the small set, but the two large blocks didn't play nice.

But MaRo stressed multiple times that FRF was supposed to be drafted with Khans OR Dragons - that the two large blocks weren't supposed to be drafted together. Or you mean they didn't draft well with FRF? (I didn't get the chance to draft them but man morph was such a square peg into that set's round hole - also apparently megamorph is offensive to trannies now?)

Toronto man sells ultra-rare 'One Ring' card to rapper Post Malone for $2.64M​

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/post-malone-one-ring-canada-1.6925849 | Archive
View attachment 5247849

Link to the tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8LekN4D/ | Proxy

0h5rsp4jjed04ptpfnvpd_source.mp4View attachment 5247852

Honestly, happy to see this just went to a retail andy and didn't end up rotting in a box for all eternity. 2.6M is a no joke figure too, I hope he's ready for his life to dramatically change in many ways. I'm sure every relative he's ever known is reaching out to him right about now.

This will not be the last 1/1 we see is what this also signifies to me and I'm sure Hasbro/WOTC is loving this right now.

You know... I'm actually kind of glad Post got it as he seems to have a genuine love of the game (heck he has been caught on camera playing it) and I'd rather it be in the hands of a player than a speculator like Rudy.

Hope the Toronto man gets himself something nice with the mil. Heck I hope he got to play a game with Post if that's what he wanted.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

Wait... i remember hearing and seeing how companions screwed up legacy but Initiative??? I didn't even think it was that great in BG. How is it cracking things in legacy?

they recently had to ban white plume adventurer. it turns out that fast mana like chrome mox + ancient tomb for turn 1 initiative is really difficult to deal with.
it was and still is a problem in pauper too, even after banning aarakocra sneak, underdark explorer, and vicious battlerager. similar story there, lotus petals + dark ritual-ing out one of those on turn 1 or 2 is practically impossible to come back against

 

[CyrusHowler]

Oh shit! A Magic Thread? I love Magic. I play Henzie "Toolbox" Torre in commander.

 

[Monolith]

Toronto man sells ultra-rare 'One Ring' card to rapper Post Malone for $2.64M​

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/post-malone-one-ring-canada-1.6925849 | Archive
View attachment 5247849

Link to the tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8LekN4D/ | Proxy

0h5rsp4jjed04ptpfnvpd_source.mp4View attachment 5247852

Honestly, happy to see this just went to a retail andy and didn't end up rotting in a box for all eternity. 2.6M is a no joke figure too, I hope he's ready for his life to dramatically change in many ways. I'm sure every relative he's ever known is reaching out to him right about now.

This will not be the last 1/1 we see is what this also signifies to me and I'm sure Hasbro/WOTC is loving this right now.

On the one hand, winning the lottery. On the other hand, whales' reaction when you wordlessly burn the 1/1 Ring while staring into the camera.

 

[CyrusHowler]

Maybe Ol’ Posty can get it graded and wear it around his neck at concerts like Logan Paul does with that Charizard at WWE events.

 

[Flexo]

they recently had to ban white plume adventurer. it turns out that fast mana like chrome mox + ancient tomb for turn 1 initiative is really difficult to deal with.
it was and still is a problem in pauper too, even after banning aarakocra sneak, underdark explorer, and vicious battlerager. similar story there, lotus petals + dark ritual-ing out one of those on turn 1 or 2 is practically impossible to come back against

Interesting. So the idea is to get initiative early, and then the opponent has trouble hitting you back to steal it?

I guess my big question is why is this breaking the formats but like monarch wasn't? (or was it and I didn't notice)

Oh shit! A Magic Thread? I love Magic. I play Henzie "Toolbox" Torre in commander.

Looks like an interesting commander, but I have to say his text is some of the clunkiest wording I've seen for what should be a simple effect. (also looks like a fun aristocrats variant)

 

[Oddjob OTP]

And Mono-G Devotion: The Format, for that matter.

Mono Green manages to be the deck hardest to interact with in a format where 80% of decks just have zero respect for interaction and play their hands. I'm literally happier to see a Parthelion in the graveyard turn 2 then seeing elf -> wolfwillow haven + elf. It's not dominating the metagame in wins or games played, it's just fucking boring. They dump their hand and unless you have Farewell you can do fuck all about their board

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I think they can, yeah. I mean, honestly - pre-MH2 (arguably MH1) modern was pretty awesome to watch. A lot of variety, a lot of interplay, a lot of guesswork and options for all kinds of decks - huge rewards for knowing the meta, guessing at what your opponent was doing, and rogue brews. Legacy & Vintage were like that as well, but I didn't follow them as much.

Nowadays... not so much. Standard I've never been high on, but the fact that Rakdos Scam so frequently makes non-games in modern and a lot of the format feels like two ships sailing right on by, alongside how Legacy/Vint got assfucked by companions and then Initiative... eh. They need to go in with a cleaver and really gut a lot of the modern, retarded design mistakes to get those back to my kinda liking.

Inserting free spells into Modern was a massive mistake, Especially in the form of creatures that can be cheated back into play, it was kind of inevitable that the free Evoke creatures would eventually come to dominate Modern just because WOTC was pushing the 1 CMC Malakir Rebirth effects to see how far they could be pushed till they busted.

Standard has been bad for the past decade because they keep fucking with Block Structures and bloated the format to the point that the card pool is 4 times what it used to be with the Core/Large/Small/Small format they used to have, and pushing off Rotation is just going to make it worse. The card pool is going to be so large that nothing will ever break through until a Rotation happens unless it is absolutely busted. with 3 year rotation the standard card pool is going to be almost 4000 Cards.

Oh, yeah, I know, but that's also part of why I think it's a great set. When the rares dictate your wins, in the worst case you get ONE but even in 'better' cases, you get sets like Crimson Vow. I fucking hate Crimson Vow - here, have a 4/4 hexproof that grows other shit and flips to give everything hexproof, you can totally beat that. So many of the uncommons in this set are good but reactable cards, and knowing which to prioritize, which to splash, and what path to take in the draft format is satisfying. It's a little simple, but in all honesty the Ring mechanic provides enough choice during games (and smooths out flood and starvation) that there's still a lot to go by.

And the format is kindof already over, but what makes shit so splashable isn't Gray Havens - that does poorly on 17 Lands overall - but Pelargir survivor. Blue's mythic common, really. The Grand Halls of the Citadel or whatever is also a common land that allows you to splash any of the 2c legends regardless of your own color combination, provided you get enough of them -- and green really shines if you can grab some Many Partings and Wose Pathfinders for just such a reason, to the point that base-green 4/5c legends is a legit strat if the lanes are open. It's trinkety little draft strategies like that which make me love a format.

The part that annoys me is that the (common sorry, I legit pay no attention to rarity anymore since I only buy singles and Draft on Arena) is that the Land is great fixing specifically for legends but not much else. I like draft formats that don't have hard coded "color pairings" with "Signpost uncommon" cards.

*Writes longer post, hits post reply, gets error..refreshes to see that most of his post got ate by the internet*

Well fuck.

Re : Initiative: It broke in Legacy because of White Plume Adventurer + Fast Mana letting you get the Initiative on turn 1.

Re : The One One Ring, It's fucking pathetic that WOTC has to drag Post Malone out for every major expensive card because Maro can't find anyone else remotely famous to simp for his game. I don't mind Post but holy fuck It's pathetic that Maro is so horny to have MTG seen as "Popular" that he trots out the same Mid Tier Celerity over and over again.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

I guess my big question is why is this breaking the formats but like monarch wasn't? (or was it and I didn't notice)

in legacy it isn't uncommon for decks to run zero creatures, so once your opponent gains the initiative there's nothing you can do about it. the white plume decks were also set up a lot like D&T, with cards like thalia, archon of emeria, and chalice of the void to slow the opponent down a lot while snowballing the initiative lead.
initiative can also be activated more than once per turn. say you open with turn one white plume; you'll immediately search out a basic land from the dungeon. then on your next turn, you choose forge and now your white plume is a 5/5. you have another white plume, or a seasoned dungeoneer, which you play and can now venture another step to activate trap for 5 damage and swing for another 5. it might not seem all that powerful on its own but it can be very difficult to keep up with once it gets going.
without white plume i think it's fine to have initiative in legacy, but even after banning the "turbo" initiative stuff in pauper i still think it's a problem. a lot of people want it completely gone from the format, along with monarch, and i can't say i disagree with them. probably won't happen because the pauper committee are useless and don't see anything wrong with mono red: the format.