Magic The Gathering

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I think the easy explanation is that cyberpunk 2077 was a big deal a few years back during the designing phase, and the current team is clearly far too busy overlooking that oko's +1 could be used on opponents' permanents to bother with making another japanese-influenced plane that took from their mythos, culture, buddhistic & shinto influences, etc. and so here have some ninja turtles instead

As most standards are, it has now seemingly gone to the point where 'play the best cards in your color without much concern for synergy' is the prime go-to. I will say that at least RG has some interactions between the cards, despite still being a flowchart braindead "play your stuff on curve" deck. But without Epiphany, you can at least -try- weird rogue midrange decks out without every-other match being sealed from the start as your doom.

 

[Retink]

That's a shame, I kinda dig (the first two) Ravnica books, I like Kos just being a cop that is too old for this shit in the first book..and says "Fuck it" and retires in the second book only for the Guild Stupidity to follow him so he says "FUCK IT FUCK IT" and dies...except he gets brought back as a spirit guard because he was a young and Naive Cop he signed away his soul for an extra 1% on his paycheck..and then forgot he did that.

Ok, I can dig the fucked over policeman thing, but really it was the writing style that just didn't drag me in.

Yeah the art looks like shit these days, though I will admit the Neon Dynasty stuff is largely Cyberpunky enough that I don't mind the art style being cheap.

I like the chip and Tamiyo art as a concept, but I don't like it in the context of MtG. I get it will look fine in the set and as stand alone art it looks pretty cool, but then you have to think about it in the context of a deck, where you'd be playing your Cyber Punk 2077 cards next to your ancient Greek cards and your Walking Dead Negan cards now. It just ends up looking like shit when put together and just makes the game feel less cohesive.

Then there's whatever the fuck this is along with our Homo card. Fuckers just need to hire that one Neo-Nazi furry who made Invoke Prejudice to do all of the art at this point.

I think that we can trust Dyfed's words on this one, she didn't exactly have reason to lie.

It's not so much that she's lying as much as she's probably just guessing. From what I remember the planeswalker who supposedly made the plane was long dead before her and Yawgmoth showed up.

I think the easy explanation is that cyberpunk 2077 was a big deal a few years back during the designing phase, and the current team is clearly far too busy overlooking that oko's +1 could be used on opponents' permanents to bother with making another japanese-influenced plane that took from their mythos, culture, buddhistic & shinto influences, etc. and so here have some ninja turtles instead

As most standards are, it has now seemingly gone to the point where 'play the best cards in your color without much concern for synergy' is the prime go-to. I will say that at least RG has some interactions between the cards, despite still being a flowchart braindead "play your stuff on curve" deck. But without Epiphany, you can at least -try- weird rogue midrange decks out without every-other match being sealed from the start as your doom.

Everything about the people running MtG currently is just shit. Instead of wanting to make their own original lore they just started doing cultural references with things like the D&D set, the crossover cards with Walking Dead and the like, and they decided to ban cards for being offensive like "Crusade" and "Cleanse" because god forbid some 11th century Muslim from the Persian caliphate might be offended.

They're also just shit at game design because of how much crap constantly needs to be banned, because making things interesting is too hard but making things overpowered as a crutch is brain dead easy. The last time the game was probably good was back in Rav-Timespiral or the Timespiral-early Lorwyn back when you had a lot of space to build a deck that wasn't just a Mythic Bant knock off in whatever color combination that was just a good stuff pile of overtuned cards. Thragtusks should always be the exception to the rule, not the norm.

Oh, and modern MtG art is also shit as can be seen above.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I like the chip and Tamiyo art as a concept, but I don't like it in the context of MtG. I get it will look fine in the set and as stand alone art it looks pretty cool, but then you have to think about it in the context of a deck, where you'd be playing your Cyber Punk 2077 cards next to your ancient Greek cards and your Walking Dead Negan cards now. It just ends up looking like shit when put together and just makes the game feel less cohesive.

That is kind of how Magic has always worked though, especially post Mirrodin where they visit a billion planes, Phyrexians have always been a combination of Cyberpunk and Hellraiser. Kamigawa is at least doing something kind of interesting with it, by setting the Cyberpunk stuff in a plane where Spirits are an intrinsic part of the planes, which I don't even think Shadowrun has ever really invoked.

Then there's whatever the fuck this is along with our Homo card. Fuckers just need to hire that one Neo-Nazi furry who made Invoke Prejudice to do all of the art at this point.

Oh The art is fucking trash in general, Neon Dynasty is just unique enough that there are some cool bits, but the actual skill of the artists doesn't matter when you have art design that doesn't direct people to do action things for action cards.


Look at the flavor text for what is supposed to be going on, vs the actual image. How did this get approved by the art direction, why did they not give instructions of "Kaya fighting Spirits" or "Kaya preparing to fight spirits in an action pose"

She looks like she is god damn waving at a neighbor, they could hire Bob Ross and if the actual instructions being given out are fucking trash. Which it is because MARO IS BAD AT HIS JOB, and always has been, me saying Neon Dynasty is sort of cool and sort of makes sense isn't me saying the people in charge aren't retards.

I am just saying that they managed to stumble ass backwards into something actually kind of neat vs "MAGIC HARRY POTTER" and "MAGIC NORSE" and "INNISTRAD AGAIN" and of course Kamigawa is going to be different in the Minimum of 2000 years after we last visited (the first block's events were made possible by the Apocalypse Chime, which is at latest during the Dominarian Ice Age if we take Nicol Bolas's words exactly it could be more)

The last time the game was probably good was back in Rav-Timespiral or the Timespiral-early Lorwyn back when you had a lot of space to build a deck that wasn't just a Mythic Bant knock off in whatever color combination that was just a good stuff pile of overtuned cards. Thragtusks should always be the exception to the rule, not the norm.

Nah, the last really good Standard was a couple of years ago right before War of the spark. The top deck was a huge mix of different rarities (though tbh I give exactly zero shits what rarity count a deck has, Lantern Control is based all around uncommon basically and is a fucking miserable deck to pilot and play against)

The Thing driving the game into the absolute dirt is the amount of new cards they print, in the Original Block structure you would have

Core Sets - Very few new cards
Large Block set - 300ish
Two small Block sets - 150ish each

That is 600 new cards a year give or take, now all sets are 300ish so just from Standard sets alone you are doubling the amount of new cards, that is going to have extreme swings of power without any other design changes.

And whose idea was it to fuck around with the Block Designs?

Maro the Retard. Before anything improves in Magic they need to fire Maro.

Edit : PS, yes the entire "Brand" is going to shit, but the game system will probably continue on since WOTC will Funko Pop Magic since Maro's little pet Projects (Arena and The Gatewatch) Crashed and burned, no don't tell me "OMG ARENA IS MAKING MONEYZ." if it were popular you wouldn't be seeing Star City games abandoning high level gameplay and Channel Fireball Simping so hard for Flesh and Blood.

in 10 Years Magic will be nothing but a game system that whores itself out to ((POPULAR)) IPs and I can't fucking wait to punch some lame faggot who has a Will Deck in the face with My Monkey D Luffy deck, because Stranger things became lame after the first season and One Piece is fucking awesome.

 

[UncleTusky]

And whose idea was it to fuck around with the Block Designs?

Maro the Retard. Before anything improves in Magic they need to fire Maro.

And why did they fuck around with block designs? Because Maro could not come up with enough cards to make a compelling 3-set block anymore. Time Spiral (maybe Lorwyn if you want to be generous, Ravnica 1 if you want to be strict) was the last time until Return to Ravnica that Wizards did not add some catastrophic event in the 3rd set of the block to justify making all new themes/mechanics, Return to Ravnica coasted on the original's popularity, then we only had one more block (Theros) before the two-block structure was implemented.

They also need to fire whatever idiot decided to gut quality control and decide broken cards are acceptable - if drafting amounts to hoping I get a chase rare and my constructed deck could get banned for WotC's mistakes, I'm not going to spend a dime.

Edit: I just realized two things. First, Maro became head designer in late 2003 or after Ravnica was already in development. This means Time Spiral was the only block where he was in charge that tried to follow the old 3-set structure until Return to Ravnica. The second thing I didn't realize was that Gatecrash was a large set which means Theros was the first time in six years and only the second set he created that didn't deviate from the 3-set block design in some way. Put them together and either he never had the creativity or he was eager to break the block design WotC had used for over a decade the second he took over.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

And why did they fuck around with block designs? Because Maro could not come up with enough cards to make a compelling 3-set block anymore. Time Spiral (maybe Lorwyn if you want to be generous) was the last time until Return to Ravnica that Wizards did not add some catastrophic event in the 3rd set of the block to justify making all new themes/mechanics, Return to Ravnica coasted on the original's popularity, then we only had one more block (Theros) before the two-block structure was implemented.

Who got rid of the books which sent the lore into a spiral that it never really recovered from?
Maro

Who fucked up the 3 act structure that let us see a plane over the year?
Maro

Who ran Competitive magic into the dirt chasing the Esports bug?
Maro

Who outright killed competitive magic by introducing Alchemy and confirming that Competitive magic will exist ONLY on Arena and paper is for commander?
Maro.

Fucking Fire Maro.

 

[Retink]

That is kind of how Magic has always worked though, especially post Mirrodin where they visit a billion planes, Phyrexians have always been a combination of Cyberpunk and Hellraiser. Kamigawa is at least doing something kind of interesting with it, by setting the Cyberpunk stuff in a plane where Spirits are an intrinsic part of the planes, which I don't even think Shadowrun has ever really invoked.

I don't really agree with that, as Cyberpunk is a bit too clean compared to what Phyrexians are. I get we won't go back to the very grungy art style of pre original Mirrodin for them and Magic as a whole, but even in the new style they're more industrial than Cyberpunk. When you see a Phyrexian thing it's usually supposed to be hauntingly beautiful or invoke the sound of heavy industrial machinery clinking and clanking as it functions.

A couple good examples of that would be Elesh Norn who looks more fucked up the longer you look at her with all the blood and cracks in the porcelain that looks sleek at first glance, or Phyrexian Rebirth that has a very heavy industrial machinery vibe to it. Whereas Covert Technician is too sleek. Think of it as the difference between a forklift and a Mac computer.

There's also this alternative printing abomination. They really need to stop doing this shit as it fucks up the flow of their own design way more than anything else.

Oh The art is fucking trash in general, Neon Dynasty is just unique enough that there are some cool bits, but the actual skill of the artists doesn't matter when you have art design that doesn't direct people to do action things for action cards.


Look at the flavor text for what is supposed to be going on, vs the actual image. How did this get approved by the art direction, why did they not give instructions of "Kaya fighting Spirits" or "Kaya preparing to fight spirits in an action pose"

She looks like she is god damn waving at a neighbor, they could hire Bob Ross and if the actual instructions being given out are fucking trash. Which it is because MARO IS BAD AT HIS JOB, and always has been, me saying Neon Dynasty is sort of cool and sort of makes sense isn't me saying the people in charge aren't retards.

I am just saying that they managed to stumble ass backwards into something actually kind of neat vs "MAGIC HARRY POTTER" and "MAGIC NORSE" and "INNISTRAD AGAIN" and of course Kamigawa is going to be different in the Minimum of 2000 years after we last visited (the first block's events were made possible by the Apocalypse Chime, which is at latest during the Dominarian Ice Age if we take Nicol Bolas's words exactly it could be more)

Some of the Neon Dynasty art is fantastic, and the idea is cool but it would be better as it's own game where the style fits more than a Magic set. I get a plane will evolve over time, but the thing is that worlds with magic don't normally evolve technology in the same way we evovled it as the way their reality works is completely different. If you can make enchanted clockwork limbs, you don't really need microchips for cybernetics and the inclusion of them feels more alien than it should.

I do agree with you on the art direction, she looks like she's doing air traffic control for spirits with glow sticks, which is just goofy. Not only is that bad direction, but it's also bad quality control. I was listening to something recently where the people were talking about how they did art for a Marvel card game and they'd send the artist notes on what they wanted, then the artist would send them back a draft, and they'd either approve it or reject it.

One of the designs they sent to the art team was "Galacticus blocking out the sun" and they expected it to be Galacticus blocking out the sun because of how big he is that him standing up creates an eclipse type thing. What they got was Galacticus squinting with his hand above his face trying to block out the sun from his eyes. That was something they sent back for a rework, which is what should have happened with this art, but it didn't.

Maybe that's part of the overall problem with the MtG team currently, they're not doing second takes to see if they can make something better and just coasting on their clout.

Nah, the last really good Standard was a couple of years ago right before War of the spark. The top deck was a huge mix of different rarities (though tbh I give exactly zero shits what rarity count a deck has, Lantern Control is based all around uncommon basically and is a fucking miserable deck to pilot and play against)

The Thing driving the game into the absolute dirt is the amount of new cards they print, in the Original Block structure you would have

Core Sets - Very few new cards
Large Block set - 300ish
Two small Block sets - 150ish each

That is 600 new cards a year give or take, now all sets are 300ish so just from Standard sets alone you are doubling the amount of new cards, that is going to have extreme swings of power without any other design changes.

And whose idea was it to fuck around with the Block Designs?

Maro the Retard. Before anything improves in Magic they need to fire Maro.

Edit : PS, yes the entire "Brand" is going to shit, but the game system will probably continue on since WOTC will Funko Pop Magic since Maro's little pet Projects (Arena and The Gatewatch) Crashed and burned, no don't tell me "OMG ARENA IS MAKING MONEYZ." if it were popular you wouldn't be seeing Star City games abandoning high level gameplay and Channel Fireball Simping so hard for Flesh and Blood.

in 10 Years Magic will be nothing but a game system that whores itself out to ((POPULAR)) IPs and I can't fucking wait to punch some lame faggot who has a Will Deck in the face with My Monkey D Luffy deck, because Stranger things became lame after the first season and One Piece is fucking awesome.

That's also a weird one, why would they get rid of blocks? I get that it lets them explore things more, but is it really that hard to work within a block structure and still innovate things? At the very least they could have figured out how to do it without killing any possibility of Block Constructed being a thing. I get that Block Constructed wasn't exactly popular, but reducing the amount of ways you can play the game isn't ideal either.

I Arena dead already? I remember it being fun when it came out as you could play Magic without paying for it, but the draft system sucked as you weren't playing against people in your own pod making it impossible to have any consistency in how strong decks were. I stopped playing around the time Companion was coming out, as the game was just boring playing the same crap constantly that felt overpowered. Then Companion was also just a retarded idea that everyone saw as a bad idea, because giving people a free card they can cast at any time with a powerful effect is obviously too good, so much so that they had to change how the mechanic works so now what's printed on the card is just wrong. I get that works with digital games, but Magic is a physical product, and now you have to contradict what your cards say with an errata. Would have just been easier to ban Companion in every format and call it a day.

I'm also baffled by them whoring Magic out so much, as Magic was a cultural icon in itself. I get crossovers of franchises happen, but it's weird how much they're treating it as if Magic is just a new IP that doesn't have any of its own standing.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I don't really agree with that, as Cyberpunk is a bit too clean compared to what Phyrexians are.

Hence why I said a combination of the post Humanism of Cyberpunk integrating machines and flesh with the horrifying monstrosities of the Cenobites. The Original Phyrexians were a Mono-white Technological city state, until they got locked off for a couple of thousand years. That is one of my major complaints about the Yawgmoth Card, it should probably be Orzhov because he was a Physician who used the fact that he cured the Powerstone Sickness to take over Halcyon.

Remember, the Backstory for the Phyrexians never got an actual set as it was an extra book that came out right before Apocalypse to give Yawgmoth a backstory before he showed up for real in Apocalypse so most of the Phyrexians we see in card form are a result of Yawgmoth basically letting creatures like Gix (who was vile before he was compleated) design things instead of the original intended designer of what the Phyrexians were supposed to be. (Rebbec, who Yawgmoth thought had the best eye for beauty)



Gix has much more smooth lines compared to the New Phyrexians (who are an echo of an echo of the original intention for what Yawgmoth wanted)

There's also this alternative printing abomination. They really need to stop doing this shit as it fucks up the flow of their own design way more than anything else.

Variants are fine, the only complaint I have is that they don't just print Variants of the absurdly expensive cards like Reserve list cards, and that art isn't nearly as bad as the Amonknet Invocations. You can not like "Anime shit" but as long as the card rules text is legible IDGAF, bitching about Variants is stupid faggotry if you don't like it buy the normal version, it will likely be cheaper anyways.

Also that Variant was done by an actual Anime Artist who works on Fire Emblem and Advance wars, which is why it exists. They have a bunch of Variants done by Famous Japanese Artists, it is a better way of selling packs than putting all the Lands at Mythic Rare. Like so long as they have a normal version of the card I am fine with all the Variants possible.

I will wipe my ass with the Stranger Things cards before I use them, but there are cards there that when they print the alternate versions of I will be happy to buy on the secondary market, and it is not like art in magic hasn't always been kind of hit and miss.

Maybe that's part of the overall problem with the MtG team currently, they're not doing second takes to see if they can make something better and just coasting on their clout.

The overall problem is the MtG team chasing after trends from half a decade ago while puking out as much product as they possibly can, between the normal sets, the extra sets and commander product we got nearly 2000 new cards in the year 2021.

An Average of 5 new cards a day, a full cycle of cards, just by sheer numbers things are going to end up broken or untested.

That's also a weird one, why would they get rid of blocks? I get that it lets them explore things more, but is it really that hard to work within a block structure and still innovate things? At the very least they could have figured out how to do it without killing any possibility of Block Constructed being a thing. I get that Block Constructed wasn't exactly popular, but reducing the amount of ways you can play the game isn't ideal either.

Because Maro is a lazy fucktard and instead of reworking the way releases, pro tours and the like all interacted he just said "Fuck it no more blocks its to hard to manage if we wanna visit a place for more than one set (read if we can figure out a cycle we can split into two sets to sell even MORE packs like Innistrad did with the super powerful Slow lands and Ravnica did shock lands)

I Arena dead already?

They had to introduce Alchemy so they could "Fix" Standard every month because people weren't playing Standard because it has been shit Since War of the spark because 1% of 1200 cards being broken is still 12 broken cards, and 1200 Cards is the minimum for Standard now.

Which also pissed off half the player base because MAGIC THE GATHERING IS A PAPER CARD GAME AND ALCHEMY BEING A PRO TOUR LEVEL FORMAT MEANS YOU CAN'T PLAY THE SAME DECKS AS THE PROS AT FNM.

I'm also baffled by them whoring Magic out so much, as Magic was a cultural icon in itself. I get crossovers of franchises happen, but it's weird how much they're treating it as if Magic is just a new IP that doesn't have any of its own standing.

Because they ran it into the ground.

Maro got rid of the books after Llowryn which basically killed the lore because the only place it could ever be found was on some shitty short stories on a website that not even I (a person with all the books) didn't care to look at once a week, then they tried to "Revive it" with the "Totally not a ripoff of avengers....which isn't a bad idea in and of itself but we chose 3 characters that shouldn't be main characters..as well as Chandra and Gideon" which fell horribly flat because nobody liked Jace, Nissa is a racist (because the retcon didn't change that she was a dick to Sorin in Zendikar for no reason) and every act that Liliana has ever done was FUCKING EVIL until Gideon died and she went "uwu oh noes a consequence to my evil I art depressed."

Between Standard being garbage for the majority of the Time since 2015 (Dominara/Ravnica 3.1 and Ravnica 3.2 are the exception to that rule) the lore being absolute shit, them not having any idea how to run a professional circuit for high end play (Both Hall of Famers Reid Duke and LSV were left out of the Pro Tour Circuit when it was Revamped) to the point where as I type right now..we do not know what the 4th version of the Pro Tour Scene in a decade will actually look like..if there will even be one.

They are whoring everything out because nobody gives one red fuck about the actual settings or characters anymore. I bought all of the books because I read The Thran and thought it was kind of cool, now I don't even look at the lore unless I have a specific question like

"How did Jin compleate Tamiyo?"
"Oh..the magic spirit..octopus reality rewriting thing let him do it."
"Well okay, still not as dumb as Emrakul putting itself in the Moon."

 

[BlackDragoons]

I still want my Alternate Liliana Art Card. Even if I can't read japanese.

 

[I'mma real anime gurl]

That would be offensive and risk triggering people.

So? it'll make more sense

 

[Retink]

Hence why I said a combination of the post Humanism of Cyberpunk integrating machines and flesh with the horrifying monstrosities of the Cenobites. The Original Phyrexians were a Mono-white Technological city state, until they got locked off for a couple of thousand years. That is one of my major complaints about the Yawgmoth Card, it should probably be Orzhov because he was a Physician who used the fact that he cured the Powerstone Sickness to take over Halcyon.

Was he really a white aligned character though? He was a healer, but one who was specifically doing it to further his own power and not because he actually cared about saving others. When the representatives from the other countries showed up it was pretty clear he was going from country to country and solving a problem but then using it to start a civil war in hopes of usurping power. It just never really worked out for him until he found the Thran and they handed him the keys to the city.

Variants are fine, the only complaint I have is that they don't just print Variants of the absurdly expensive cards like Reserve list cards, and that art isn't nearly as bad as the Amonknet Invocations. You can not like "Anime shit" but as long as the card rules text is legible IDGAF, bitching about Variants is stupid faggotry if you don't like it buy the normal version, it will likely be cheaper anyways.

Variants are fine to a point, but I think the quantity of them and the style of them is excessive. We are seeing constant printings using pop culture references and versions of cards that feel nothing akin to that of Magic's art style which isn't good in any quantity, especially not the massive quantity that we're seeing it now. The other issue is with all of the normal variants we have in the main products with full art, alternate art, etc to the point it's just too much and none of it feels special.

Because Maro is a lazy fucktard and instead of reworking the way releases, pro tours and the like all interacted he just said "Fuck it no more blocks its to hard to manage if we wanna visit a place for more than one set (read if we can figure out a cycle we can split into two sets to sell even MORE packs like Innistrad did with the super powerful Slow lands and Ravnica did shock lands)

Which also pissed off half the player base because MAGIC THE GATHERING IS A PAPER CARD GAME AND ALCHEMY BEING A PRO TOUR LEVEL FORMAT MEANS YOU CAN'T PLAY THE SAME DECKS AS THE PROS AT FNM.

That's incredibly lazy and really easy to solve. They could have easily made it focused on the planeswalker's travels instead of the plane itself, thus letting them do big set for one plane and two small sets for another plane if they really wanted to. They could even do something like multiple areas on one plane, because Tolaria and Yavimaya are incredibly different places but share some themes as they're both on the same plane.

What the fuck is Alchemy? And why are they being so retarded about pro tours and competitive play? I get Commander is a popular casual format, but the competitive scene brings in a ton of players as well and not just those who play at a high level. There's a reason why most games that take off, like Hearthstone, have a very heavy competitive scene focus and most new online games try to make a league of some sort happen. Players want to feel like there's a goal they're aiming for, and even if they never really play at a highly competitive event, they'll still show up and do side events as well as follow their favorite pro or team.

Maro got rid of the books after Llowryn which basically killed the lore because the only place it could ever be found was on some shitty short stories on a website that not even I (a person with all the books) didn't care to look at once a week, then they tried to "Revive it" with the "Totally not a ripoff of avengers....which isn't a bad idea in and of itself but we chose 3 characters that shouldn't be main characters..as well as Chandra and Gideon" which fell horribly flat because nobody liked Jace, Nissa is a racist (because the retcon didn't change that she was a dick to Sorin in Zendikar for no reason) and every act that Liliana has ever done was FUCKING EVIL until Gideon died and she went "uwu oh noes a consequence to my evil I art depressed."

I read all of the books up to Mirrodin and then just read the Time Spiral ones. They were all pretty good and way better than what I expected for the franchise, well with the exception of Masques which was trash, but Nemesis was amazing. The thing is, that the individual characters were always Magic's weakest aspect and Gerrard was very much one I just didn't care about, but the settings and stories were good. Urza, Gatha, Barren, etc were all great because they had varying shades of grey to them and they were actually doing something as opposed to being generic fantasy heroes.

Part of why Nemesis was so good was because it focused on the villains and gave them depth with Ertai being a very tragic character at the time. None of the new planeswalkers are at all interesting and all of them are just basic cliches. Nissa might be "our" girl but what the fuck is up with characters like Liliana lately? She's like Sylvanas from Warcraft, an interesting character initially that they took and butchered, made her do a bunch of fucked up shit, then just randomly forgave without any reason because she became emo.

 

[Flexo]

So? it'll make more sense

Oh I don't disagree, but you want an answer, there's your answer.

Who got rid of the books which sent the lore into a spiral that it never really recovered from?
Maro

Who fucked up the 3 act structure that let us see a plane over the year?
Maro

Who ran Competitive magic into the dirt chasing the Esports bug?
Maro

Who outright killed competitive magic by introducing Alchemy and confirming that Competitive magic will exist ONLY on Arena and paper is for commander?
Maro.

Fucking Fire Maro.

I mean I'm not a huge Maro fan or anything but I need to see some citation on the above. A lot of that stuff isn't even his department or up to him. He hasn't even written an article on arena that I've seen.

 

[updoot farmer]

Maro just needs to retire and go work on some showtunes production and let somebody else run the game.

 

[Retink]

So? it'll make more sense

They had to publically apologize when an author made Chandra not gay and into Gideon, unlike people's dumb fan fiction. They're owned by literal retard faggots.

Maro just needs to retire and go work on some showtunes production and let somebody else run the game.

He'll never give it up, it's the only meaning his worthless life has to anyone.

 

[BlackDragoons]

Was he really a white aligned character though? He was a healer, but one who was specifically doing it to further his own power and not because he actually cared about saving others. When the representatives from the other countries showed up it was pretty clear he was going from country to country and solving a problem but then using it to start a civil war in hopes of usurping power. It just never really worked out for him until he found the Thran and they handed him the keys to the city.

He also did more damage then he healed, he experimented on humans further diseases and poxes and utilize the Phyresis to his own goals. He's pretty much the embodying of Black. Willing to sacrifice others to further his power.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Was he really a white aligned character though? He was a healer, but one who was specifically doing it to further his own power and not because he actually cared about saving others. When the representatives from the other countries showed up it was pretty clear he was going from country to country and solving a problem but then using it to start a civil war in hopes of usurping power. It just never really worked out for him until he found the Thran and they handed him the keys to the city.

Much like the Ghost Council on Ravnica..he sincerely cared about The Phyrexians/Thran because they handed them the key to the city. It is fucked up and Warped as hell, but that is why he is a villain.

Variants are fine to a point, but I think the quantity of them and the style of them is excessive. We are seeing constant printings using pop culture references and versions of cards that feel nothing akin to that of Magic's art style which isn't good in any quantity, especially not the massive quantity that we're seeing it now. The other issue is with all of the normal variants we have in the main products with full art, alternate art, etc to the point it's just too much and none of it feels special.

Magic hasn't had a Cohesive Art style since they Abandoned Dominaria to do the multiverse hopping shit, before then it was "largely bad high fantasy art" and now it is "Largely bad high fantasy art mixed with whatever cultural theme the plane stole shit from."

Like if you are going to complain about Kamigawa Variants, then you should have gave up back in llorwyn when "ELVES" had fucking Horns and Hooves and they introduced Lawyer friendly versions of Hobbits, and of course they Ran the idea of Variants into the ground. Hell I personally think that the Kamigawa waifu shit is better than..all the Eldrazi art combined because "Shitty C'thulu Ripoffs" have no place in magic to me.

and as for WOTC running it into the ground....WOTC runs everything into the ground, we went from DFCs every five years, to DFCs in every set.
And Sagas every set
and a billion Legendary creatures every set.
And Fucking Treasure tokens every set
The Billion Masters sets
Ravnica as a setting
Innistrad as a setting
Zendikar as a setting

and well, you are talking like "Magic The Gathering" matters as a brand.

It doesn't, It really hasn't since War of the Spark, when it became clear they literally don't care about any level of character development. Can't have Liliana sacrifice herself like she should have because we need Her Tiddies...we can't have Jace and Vraska become an Item like they were supposed to because that would ruin the image of Emoboy Jace for the Fangirls, and gotta remove him as the Guildpact because god forbid we restrict him to just Ravnica sets.

The art doesn't have to be "MAGIC" anymore because Magic doesn't mean anything as a brand. Its a game system now.

That's incredibly lazy and really easy to solve. They could have easily made it focused on the planeswalker's travels instead of the plane itself, thus letting them do big set for one plane and two small sets for another plane if they really wanted to. They could even do something like multiple areas on one plane, because Tolaria and Yavimaya are incredibly different places but share some themes as they're both on the same plane.

and that takes too much effort for the bunch of Twitter addicts (And one Tumblr addict) nobody really gave a shit about any of it, Vorthos's are not even a faction of Magic the Gathering players. Hell Tomer (of MTG Goldfish) considers himself pretty good with the lore..and has admitted he forgets to read the short stories when they come out, Magic Salvation..the first result when you search "Magic the Gathering Forum" has a Lore Section and the thread for The two Innistrads is a whole...8 Pages.

Reading the thread most of is is pretty positive (aside from them Cucking Sorin again KEK) but even among the hardest of core they can only get about 5-6 people to pay attention.

Looking at Reddit..I see one Lore post from 14 hours ago...which is a joke about not being sad Tamiyo got phyrexianed..because she probably has a kindle integrated in her arm now.

The Brand is dead, has been for a long time.

What the fuck is Alchemy? And why are they being so retarded about pro tours and competitive play? I get Commander is a popular casual format, but the competitive scene brings in a ton of players as well and not just those who play at a high level. There's a reason why most games that take off, like Hearthstone, have a very heavy competitive scene focus and most new online games try to make a league of some sort happen. Players want to feel like there's a goal they're aiming for, and even if they never really play at a highly competitive event, they'll still show up and do side events as well as follow their favorite pro or team.

Alchemy is their fixed standard alternative that is arena only..because it has cards that have been nerfed and buffed (like a creature being a 2/1 instead of a 1/1) and cards that don't exist in paper and really can't exist like this fucking pile of faggotry.


What does "draft a card from the key to the archive spellbook mean?"

it means that you pick one card from a choice of 3 generated from a random pool.

https://scryfall.com/search?q=spellbook%3A%22Key+to+the+Archive%22&unique=cards

that pool, because randomly getting FUCKING DEMONIC TUTOR in standard at random is great fun, and because standard is always shit since the Card Pool is so large that they can't keep the power in check..Alchemy is going to be the format they use in worlds.

As for why they can't make a good pro-league? Fuck if I know, they are retards who can't decide what they want to do. Before Arena they were chasing the Esports bug, which has been an absolute failure, They will have major events that don't even get noticed by people like MTG Goldfish, people who actually run a website tracking Metagame numbers..and not even they care enough about high end play to watch.

I read all of the books up to Mirrodin and then just read the Time Spiral ones. They were all pretty good and way better than what I expected for the franchise, well with the exception of Masques which was trash, but Nemesis was amazing. The thing is, that the individual characters were always Magic's weakest aspect and Gerrard was very much one I just didn't care about, but the settings and stories were good. Urza, Gatha, Barren, etc were all great because they had varying shades of grey to them and they were actually doing something as opposed to being generic fantasy heroes.

Part of why Nemesis was so good was because it focused on the villains and gave them depth with Ertai being a very tragic character at the time. None of the new planeswalkers are at all interesting and all of them are just basic cliches. Nissa might be "our" girl but what the fuck is up with characters like Liliana lately? She's like Sylvanas from Warcraft, an interesting character initially that they took and butchered, made her do a bunch of fucked up shit, then just randomly forgave without any reason because she became emo.

I had em all, i haven't read em in ages cause I keep em packed away so I can't say if they still hold up. What is up with Liliana? They made her a good guy because they needed a "Black Mana Planeswalker" for the Gatewatch and couldn't be bothered to make a new one so they used a literal villain...then in War of the Spark she betrayed Nicol Bolas which triggered her Demonic Pact thingy (all 4 demons were dead, so ownership of the curse went to Bolas cause he set up the meetings) and as she was burning alive Gideon absorbed the curse somehow and he died isntead.

And then she was super sad for Strixhaven, and learned not to be...because she is SUPER SPECIAL and Gideon wouldn't want her to be LE SAD FACE because Gideon was a fucking dickless faggot who would have raped little boys...if he had a dick.

At least with Sylvanas the fact she grew up in the lap of luxury, was handed EVERYTHING she ever received without earning a single piece of it, grew up to be an entitled middle class white girl bitch..and realize that everything after her death is just her having a fucking tantrum like a spoiled upper middle class white girl because the world didn't actually bow to her whims and let her one shot Arthas because IT WAS HER TURN TO BE THE HERO LIKE HER SISTER.

 

[Retink]

Much like the Ghost Council on Ravnica..he sincerely cared about The Phyrexians/Thran because they handed them the key to the city. It is fucked up and Warped as hell, but that is why he is a villain.

Did he though? I know he cared about the Phyrexians in the sense that he wanted his creations to be better than others, but he seemed to have a lot of contempt for the Thran. Before confronting him about all the shit he was doing behind the scenes they teleported out the Thran nobility and goblins which created Mercadia. He also had no issue enslaving the people at the mana station that eventually became the Null Moon, and he made Gix one of the first great Phyrexians while viewing Gix as a coward he could use because Gix would always prefer his safety over doing anything moral. That and Gix was also just willing to fuck people up being a beaten down leper.

I think having White aligned villains is fun, and Elesh Norn as well as the Church of Tal from the Ice Age books are great examples of those, they believe what they're doing is saving the world. Yawgmoth strikes me more of a Lim-Dul type of character who says that they're saving people but mostly just wants power and is interested in the study of the virus than the actual benefit the cure would have to society.

Magic hasn't had a Cohesive Art style since they Abandoned Dominaria to do the multiverse hopping shit, before then it was "largely bad high fantasy art" and now it is "Largely bad high fantasy art mixed with whatever cultural theme the plane stole shit from."

I think it had a certain grimy style that most other games weren't using, which can be best seen in Mark Tedins work, but it always had a lot of variance. Maybe I'm just overthinking it but it always felt like a very visceral style of art even through the Onslaught block where things looked unpleasant and over detailed in a way that made them look really interesting and unique. Think of something like Repentant Vampire, which was a Buffy reference or the original Goblin Sharp Shooter art which evoked a sense of trench drudgery.

These days we're getting a lot more of this shit though

The art doesn't have to be "MAGIC" anymore because Magic doesn't mean anything as a brand. Its a game system now.

I do agree with this a lot, they took a lot of the uniqueness of the brand and strip mined it. It goes back to the variants thing, an occasional box topper or full art land makes things special, but when every set has tons of each it's more of a burden than a benefit. DFCs were always a mistake, one they avoided when they didn't give their first ever expansion a different card back but decided to go back to for some reason.

and that takes too much effort for the bunch of Twitter addicts (And one Tumblr addict) nobody really gave a shit about any of it, Vorthos's are not even a faction of Magic the Gathering players. Hell Tomer (of MTG Goldfish) considers himself pretty good with the lore..and has admitted he forgets to read the short stories when they come out, Magic Salvation..the first result when you search "Magic the Gathering Forum" has a Lore Section and the thread for The two Innistrads is a whole...8 Pages.

It's funny you mention Salvation, that site has always been a joke but at least it always seemed active in my experience. I went there a few days ago to see if I could dig up some old info and it was pretty dead. That really can't be a good sign as it was very much a scrub haven.

it means that you pick one card from a choice of 3 generated from a random pool.

So they just want to be Hearthstone, which is a dying system? Some level of RNG is good, but RNG is a crutch that a lot of companies use to make their system feel like it has more interesting game states when it's just random. You obviously don't want it to be that each game players play the exact same hand and it's a solved puzzle, but you also don't want it to feel like the element of luck has taken agency out of a player's hands. There's a reason why people hate being mana screwed or flooded, as there's not much you can do about it and most games after MtG have tried to solve it. WoW TCG probably had one of the better solutions.

Why make a whole system around the feeling of your opponent being dead only to top deck the perfect answer, except so much worse with this retard "Draft" mechanic when you can make way better mechanics that have a similar play pattern?

I had em all, i haven't read em in ages cause I keep em packed away so I can't say if they still hold up. What is up with Liliana? They made her a good guy because they needed a "Black Mana Planeswalker" for the Gatewatch and couldn't be bothered to make a new one so they used a literal villain...then in War of the Spark she betrayed Nicol Bolas which triggered her Demonic Pact thingy (all 4 demons were dead, so ownership of the curse went to Bolas cause he set up the meetings) and as she was burning alive Gideon absorbed the curse somehow and he died isntead.

I'm vaguely familiar with this as I wanted to know what happened with Bolas and looked it up back in the day, and that's retarded. If I had to write this, with War of the Spark being my starting point I'd do it as follows, and let me know if it's more or less retarded than their version.

My version would have Lilian being an asshole, she doesn't really want to be a good guy, but after fighting the Gatewatch they have some banter and realize that they can't really beat Bolas without Lilian, but Lilian can't help them as she has the demon contract thing. Gideon decides to sacrifice himself to give her immortality, and she's only into the deal because it frees her and she's not too hyped about Bolas being a god that's also her slave master. They do their thing and now she joins up as normal, turns the zombie army on Bolas and kills him, after that she leaves and they don't just instantly kill her because she's immortal and they've all taken a beating.

That just seems like something a black aligned mage would do, make a new bargain, kill their old master, and get the fuck out of dodge before things turn on them. She's still evil, but maybe she has a soft spot for the people who freed her and maybe there's some kind of tether between them where the Gatewatch makes it a bother for her to kill them and them to kill her, so it's easier for her to just avoid them and if she does run into them in the future she can't just nuke them as something bad could happen because there's a type of contract with them.

 

[Flexo]

They had to publically apologize when an author made Chandra not gay and into Gideon, unlike people's dumb fan fiction. They're owned by literal retard faggots.

Which is even funnier because Gideon was literally invented to be a boy toy for Chandra by an author.

There's a reason why people hate being mana screwed or flooded, as there's not much you can do about it and most games after MtG have tried to solve it. WoW TCG probably had one of the better solutions.

You should look up Force of Will game sometime which is literally "fixed" magic. (Even making the game commander like.)

 

[cuddle striker]

equipment jellyfish

 

[Retink]

You should look up Force of Will game sometime which is literally "fixed" magic. (Even making the game commander like.)

I've heard of it but never really looked into it. I know they had a big bust with overprinting and stuff, but what did they do to fix the problem of flooding? WoW TCG basically made it so you could place any card face down as a land, but then had "quests" which were basically lands with a one time use ability. So for example, pay 1: Look at the top 2 cards, draw one. That way you never mana screwed but you still wanted to play lands as you'd otherwise exile useful resources.

equipment jellyfish

As is normal for the Japanese based on all of the hentai I've seen.

 

[updoot farmer]

I know they had a big bust with overprinting and stuff, but what did they do to fix the problem of flooding?

Lands are a second separate deck, usually 10-15 cards, you get one guaranteed land draw a turn by tapping your commander. Still possible to get somewhat color screwed, but never land screwed.