Magic The Gathering

[I'mma real anime gurl]

For instance: Bloomburrow. I asked about it previously, and I was told that it was apparently "fine" in terms of lore and such, it's just... after dealing with similar settings like Small Saga over the past few years, I feel like I have to approach everything asking whether or not it's "woke" these days. I want to enjoy the lighterhearted Redwall-esqe setting, was planning on building a Commander deck around it, but I've heard enough comments about "no gender issues" and "everyone being equal" that it makes me hesitant. It's shit, I know, but after dealing with the Radiant Citadel in DND...

Aside from that, I've been having trouble figuring out which specific settings to get into, both for lore and gameplay. I was considering Innistrad, as playing as a werewolf sounds fun on paper, but the whole Day/Night mechanic sounds like an absolute pain in the ass to deal with. Aside from that... if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. Assuming half my response doesn't get deleted again and I have to type everything out...

Bello, Bard of the Brambles is a perfect commander that had come out of Bloomburrow. You could make Bello into a enchantress, vehicle, or even artifact commander. It's literally simple and all you need is ramp, removal, and high mana value artifacts and/or enchantments. Like that commander alone is a standout despite the two tri color frogs and the cat that turns everything into food.

Recently there's Rootha and Muddle which takes spellslinger in different directions. Rootha cares about the mana value of instants and sorceries so that she makes a fat ass elemental that has flying and haste but sticks around unlike the other shit that'll create elementals. Whereas Muddle could be any nonlegendary creature (that you control) with myriad if you cast a instant and sorcery. But there's a cycle of elder dragons in Secrets of Strixhaven that gives instants and sorceries various abilities that you can tinker with.

However one other commander that I'll suggest is Calix, Guided by Fate. Now currently it's a 13$ card but it and Ob Nixilis are the standouts from MOM: Aftermath. It's a enchantress voltron commander that copies your enchantments when you deal damage with Calix or deal damage with a enchanted parament. You could use it to copy your ramp, pillow fort, or stax piece and any enchantment creature that you might want.

Point is there's good niche commanders that you could find and work with without really looking at their lore.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

That's your problem. You care a bit too much. This is, first and foremost, a game. Lore was never stellar, and it's mostly needed to make it so that spellslinging happens somewhere. So don't let it bother you, if you like the game part.

You are right about me caring too much, frankly. It's just... like @Snow Miku said, the woke shoving everything in so retardedly is what's giving me conniptions. After all the crap the woke's pulled over the past few years, my tolerance for their shit is getting lower by the day. That said... as long as it's not over-the-top, in-your-face constant wokeshit, I think I'm willing to overlook it.

Strixhaven was lame and gay the first time we went but I'm honestly impressed they found a way to make it lamer and gayer when we went back.

You know, I never really took a look at Strix; never interested me all that much beforehand. Now it looks like I have a proper reason not to.

Point is there's good niche commanders that you could find and work with without really looking at their lore.

I'll take a look at all of these, thanks; any suggestions are appreciated, and these all sound solid.

 

[UncleTusky]

The problem I have with the lore being crap is that it makes it a bit more difficult for lore guys like myself to get invested. Granted, I appreciate a challenge sometimes, but it's still annoying.

As a rule of thumb the further back you go, the more likely it is to be good - Weatherlight Saga (Mirage through Apocalypse) and the following Odyssey block were mediocre to competent high fantasy, and since then there have been a few flashes of decent lore (Zendikar and Lorwyn are tops imo). IMO Invasion+ Odyssey were the sweet spot where there was decent lore and card design at the same time.

Individual sets can be good but whole blocks tend to have issues - starting with the end of Onslaught block, maybe even Odyssey depending on your tastes, the writers started to develop a bad habit of having some sort of disaster/end times in the third set to kill + replace a bunch of characters/locales. I can't prove it but some of them really feel like the writers had run out of ideas/plot only two sets in. The two set blocks/post block sets dodge into th3 punch here because the lore is terrible from the start. Even the parts they didn't nab from other IPs.

 

[Very Professional]

As a rule of thumb the further back you go, the more likely it is to be good - Weatherlight Saga (Mirage through Apocalypse) and the following Odyssey block were mediocre to competent high fantasy, and since then there have been a few flashes of decent lore (Zendikar and Lorwyn are tops imo). IMO Invasion+ Odyssey were the sweet spot where there was decent lore and card design at the same time.

Old lore had some real highlights. For my list of recommendations: The Brothers' War, Gathering Dark, Nemesis, Chainer's Torment, and pretty much everything from Kamigawa to Alara. If you like any of these, read the surrounding novels too.

We can talk about the ups and downs of modern lore, but the real issue is the shitlib influence, make no mistake. I saw a very succinct post summarizing this issue the other day and it applies completely to all of Magic since... I'd say probably Kaladesh. It absolutely nullifies any sense of tension or stakes.

"At any point in the story, you're able to sus out who is the character who will win any argument or conflict with another character due to their placement on the progressive stack. As a result, any encounter is entirely performative."

 

[Stains Davidson]

Now do his claims that every set is the best selling set ever.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/816694070386835456/lapsed-player-here-played-from-mirrodin-besieged

Speaking of...

 

[Very Professional]

Speaking of...

God I hate that smarmy Jew.

 

[DootSkeleton]

View attachment 9010134

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/816694070386835456/lapsed-player-here-played-from-mirrodin-besieged

Speaking of...

man does that post does a great job of summarizing and encapsulating my feelings on the game and where it's currently at, though it lacks explicitly pointing out "the whales and the masses have shit taste"

also wasn't the point of Commander to build within special restrictions? If products start catering to that format/mindset then don't those restrictions become less meaningful?

 

[SIMON THE PIEMAN]

also wasn't the point of Commander to build within special restrictions? If products start catering to that format/mindset then don't those restrictions become less meaningful?

This is why I like Pauper Commander. WotC is not interested in this format at all and you get to see all the shitty commons and draft chaff in a completely new light. There are a lot of restrictions not seen in regular EDH and some of these are a welcome addition (such as lack of true board wipes), which make the format quite enjoyable.

 

[Casshern]

After all the crap the woke's pulled over the past few years, my tolerance for their shit is getting lower by the day. That said... as long as it's not over-the-top, in-your-face constant wokeshit, I think I'm willing to overlook it.

ProxyShop would definitely help with that since it sounds like you’re more looking into playing casually. I use it to de-woke all the cards I hate. Also, there’s a decent handful of MtG novels for the first two decades; by about Zendikar people became illiterate and books stopped selling so it went online and went to shit.

Spoiler: Vorthos Autism

In particular I hate the GayWatch era because they’re Avenger-ripoffs who never suffer consequences. Ugin—the elder dragon twin of the core antagonist at this point Nicol Bolas—said don’t try to kill the Eldrazi, which are Cthulhu monsters. Jace (who is basically just a slightly above average intelligence guy who thinks he’s magic Batman) said that Ugin, the guy who’d been studying the Eldrazi for decades, was “unconvincing”. He then told Chandra, an angry hoe, to blow up two thirds of the Eldrazi pantheon, and she just could, because anger? These things were literally destroying an entire plane, and an above-average fire mage just trivialized the entire block with no multiversal repercussions. The writing only improves during Hour of Devastation and into War of the Spark, which was a good enough capstone to the Bolas plot.

Then we get everything between WAR and March of the Machine, which is the return of the Phyrexians, and really the only decent character at this point is Elspeth. Even if they make her pull a retard move in the return to Tarkir. Everyone agrees the writing sucks ass here because they cram what should have been a decade of plot into 3 years and gloss over so many things that it barely works. A combination of the loss of blocks and the loss of novels really hurt the storytelling through this entire era.

So yeah, 1990s to late 2000s is considered the golden age of Vorthos, and has the most lore. By 2000s to late 2010s the lore has been decent to boring, 2020s is just bad. Frankly most of the enjoyment I derive from the later lore is rewriting it.

also wasn't the point of Commander to build within special restrictions? If products start catering to that format/mindset then don't those restrictions become less meaningful?

Yes. Commander is restricted by color identity of your commander and being a highlander format. Cards that generate high amounts of value at one-of and/or break the color pie limitations are amazing in the format, and building generic support (such as Command Tower) reduces the creativity. At this point Commander suffers from a “staple problem”, where the decks are already “solved” and builds itself because WotC is printing massive amounts of generic value engines and color breaks to satisfy the unwashed masses of Commander players, alongside what already existed from the 15 years prior to Commander-centric design.

As Rosewater has said, it’s a format that glorifies every mistake R&D has ever committed and designing for this Commander-first era was, literally, the darkest time for him as a designer before Stockholm syndrome took effect.

 

[DootSkeleton]

Cards that generate high amounts of value at one-of and/or break the color pie limitations are amazing in the format, and building generic support (such as Command Tower) reduces the creativity. At this point Commander suffers from a “staple problem”, where the decks are already “solved” and builds itself because WotC is printing massive amounts of generic value engines and color breaks to satisfy the unwashed masses of Commander players, alongside what already existed from the 15 years prior to Commander-centric design.

Good to know I'm not crazy. When I'm feeling particularly insane I occasionally wonder how I might build an EDH deck and I inevitably realize my plan is "just jam all the best evergreen cards that have the right colors for a given deck".
It's funny that it sort of shares the staple problem with Vintage.

As Rosewater has said, it’s a format that glorifies every mistake R&D has ever committed and designing for this Commander-first era was, literally, the darkest time for him as a designer before Stockholm syndrome took effect.

do you think he's actually gaslit himself into liking it now? Or has someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him to shut the fuck up so they can keep printing money? Maybe one led to the other?

 

[Very Professional]

Good to know I'm not crazy. When I'm feeling particularly insane I occasionally wonder how I might build an EDH deck and I inevitably realize my plan is "just jam all the best evergreen cards that have the right colors for a given deck".

There is slightly more nuance than that, but you're not too far off. There's no blue deck that doesn't want Rhystic, there's no white deck that doesn't want Tithe, etc. etc. And most EDH players are all too happy to just slap together an expensive slop pile while crowing about how unique their format is because they get the joy of choosing which avatar their homogenized deck uses.

 

[Casshern]

do you think he's actually gaslit himself into liking it now? Or has someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him to shut the fuck up so they can keep printing money? Maybe one led to the other?

I certainly think he’s convinced himself it’s good for the game at least. You can read his statement here, but in summary, he talks about how Commander’s lower skill and social element, the very things he hated about it, were exactly what made it so popular. How he had to learn to design it not for himself, but because he was meant to design cards for the player base. To quote him, "You either walk away because the thing isn’t what you fell in love with, or, you start to understand what made it change.” He doesn’t love Commander; he loves Magic and wants it to live in whatever form the players want it in.

In accordance with this, it wasn’t his idea to cater to Commander; these were orders he was given. He didn’t want to leave, so he learned what the players wanted and adapted. He’s also consistently kept his opinions on UB to himself and is instead using player retention as a shield. I think that’s just as much to protect the company from criticism as it is to convince himself this is a positive direction for the game. I can’t imagine he hasn’t been told to sweep for UB, but I can also imagine he’s just so invested with Magic as a game that he’s willing to shill whatever they’re pushing until the numbers tell him they don’t work. He is the guy who made a game all about emotions and has built a workplace of toxic positivity.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I never particularly followed MTG's story, but got into it for the aesthetic of the art. That, at least, stays generally-good until Origins, at which point it becomes fairly middling until Eldraine, which was when it began its steady decay into what it is today: if something is 'in-universe,' it looks like trash and the old heads who have stuck it out with the game might phone in a piece or two that's clearly uninspired, like the RKF Gonti where it looks like he got bored of detailing and submitted it half-finished, because he's RKF and WOTC isn't going to gainsay him.

By contrast, if something is UB or a supplementary set vis-a-vis Commander Masters or Modern Horizons, the art is usually pretty good. It's probably down to the creative leads being different, and whoever is guiding the in-universe direction is the far-less-competent (and thus far-more-woke-accredited) individual(s).