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is force of will a good magic alternitive? im interested in playing a card game again but i dont wanna deal with Wotcs autism anymore

Don't know about force of will but I've been watching Flesh and Blood. Apparently the secondary market is doing fairly well and they have their first expansion Arcane Uprising. The art on the cards is good,it's definitely not bush league. Hero card and 80 card deck but that's because their resource generation involved "pitching" any cards to the bottom of your deck to cast other cards in your hand. Ideally it should smooth out mana screw though it looks like there are 3 types of resources so you can't just cast anything you want.

It looks really interesting and I kind of want to get into it but I can't justify $80 for a booster box that isn't Magic. I might get the starter decks just to try it with my play group (2 other people lol) but we tried the Game of Thrones LCG and they absolutely hated it so I'm a little wary of trying new things with them.
 
is force of will a good magic alternitive? im interested in playing a card game again but i dont wanna deal with Wotcs autism anymore
Like with most games check your local community. For my state MtG is the common game, followed by Asian/weeaboo enclaves playing Vanguard or WS, with Pokemon and YGO seeing extremely limited activity outside of kids with starter decks that they badgered their weary moms to buy. I myself have been on a binge for buying up Android: Netrunner LCG packs despite the game being out of print for years, and despite the fact I know most players have largely retreated from the scene - I just wanted to collect them for posterity.
 
Man. I miss when it was only a question of "Type 1 or Type 2?" Magic has gotten so fucking convoluted.
It's funny, because it is and it isn't. There are a lot of formats, but more than half of them have collapsed down into tiny niches. Nobody plays Legacy because it's fucking expensive. Nobody plays Vintage because it's REALLY fucking expensive. Nobody plays Standard because it's hopelessly busted.

Competitive constructed people play Modern or Pioneer, casual constructed people play Commander, and draft people play draft like they always have.
 
It's funny, because it is and it isn't. There are a lot of formats, but more than half of them have collapsed down into tiny niches. Nobody plays Legacy because it's fucking expensive. Nobody plays Vintage because it's REALLY fucking expensive. Nobody plays Standard because it's hopelessly busted.

Competitive constructed people play Modern or Pioneer, casual constructed people play Commander, and draft people play draft like they always have.

In my area standard is all but dead. I can't recall the last tournament any store had even before the pandemic. One of the owners of the shops said that Wizards was asking them to enter Pioneer and Modern FNM's as standard to boost it's numbers.
 
Standard has been hopping from garbage fire to garbage fire. Ever since Nexus of Fate things have been messed up. Then in came Oko and turned standard into a 3/3 elk meme. Then a rare land overran it with zombies. Then, when the bannings settled, they released Ikoria with the companions. Now it's all about "how quickly can I get this 7 mana 2/3 out and start stealing stuff? Also, I'll just make my deck 80 cards and play a free flicker effect that's always in my starting hand.
 
I almost dipped back into Magic and took a look around and immediately dipped out.

The powerlevel in standard is the highest it's been maybe since the Jace debacle (and I was around during the Energy deck meta) and all signs point to the sets not being playtested... at all.

Mark Rosewater, head designer, is hard at work trying to defend the increased power level. Recently on a twitter poll heran specifically about the power level of standard, 63% of people said it was too high. Common criticsism is that they put cards meant specifically for Commander, Modern and other formats into the Standard sets and these cards are having a power warping effect. And this is after MTG already prints various products specifically for these formats. MaRo responded saying he wants ALL players to buy standard, which may have worked 15 years ago, but at this point their wrecking standard by playing to the eternal format crowd who is more active on social media but make up less of a player base.

Archive of Rosewater's tweet
They are, Jace was the only major card released in the past decade that was completely broke. The game isn't Yugioh where everything is a broken mess. Most cards are pretty weak unless they're made for EDH.

is force of will a good magic alternitive? im interested in playing a card game again but i dont wanna deal with Wotcs autism anymore
Force of Will pretty much died off last year.
 
Mark Rosewater is still George Lucasing MtG? Thank God I didn't start playing this shit again. Troons, everyone is a lesbian, companions... The only good news is standard dying.
We still have Standard and Sealed tournaments here. Down south it's more Modern and Sealed. Out East it's Standard and EDH tournaments (which actually pay out well), with Two-Headed-like EDH games also being a thing. It all depends on the city for what formats are popular. Some shops are getting into Cube too.

Haven't noticed any troons in my local stores yet too, but if they exist they'd be at the one store I refuse to shop at since all they have is woke fuckers there.
 
You mean this? It sounds fun as hell...I'd love to do an old Tempest or Mirage block kind of draft. Or 360 kinds of elf. There's probably a ton of fun ways you could construct the draft.
Yes, I have a few Cubes myself but no one interested in it so me and my fiancee just try out EDH decks since we'll be moving to a city that has more people interested in different formats.
Site you can got to check out various Cubes
 
Yes, I have a few Cubes myself but no one interested in it so me and my fiancee just try out EDH decks since we'll be moving to a city that has more people interested in different formats.
Site you can got to check out various Cubes
I guess that's neat but why isn't the point just to do draft with whatever you have laying around? Like, what's the point of building a specific one, is it supposedly balanced out better?

Edit: also concerned about the "heavily pimped" tag, is it for wallered-out cards?
 
I guess that's neat but why isn't the point just to do draft with whatever you have laying around? Like, what's the point of building a specific one, is it supposedly balanced out better?

Edit: also concerned about the "heavily pimped" tag, is it for wallered-out cards?
Some people like themes, others like to create their own block with different abilities that work well together. Some like certain rarity drafts. It's really whatever you and your group want to draft.
 
I guess that's neat but why isn't the point just to do draft with whatever you have laying around? Like, what's the point of building a specific one, is it supposedly balanced out better?

Edit: also concerned about the "heavily pimped" tag, is it for wallered-out cards?

Balance mainly. I have a cube and I love it. Only problem is, I only have one person to play with.

"Pimped" just means not the basic card. Could be foil, extended art, different language, etc. An old friend of mine had a full foiled cube.
 
Standard has been hopping from garbage fire to garbage fire. Ever since Nexus of Fate things have been messed up. Then in came Oko and turned standard into a 3/3 elk meme. Then a rare land overran it with zombies. Then, when the bannings settled, they released Ikoria with the companions. Now it's all about "how quickly can I get this 7 mana 2/3 out and start stealing stuff? Also, I'll just make my deck 80 cards and play a free flicker effect that's always in my starting hand.
Good to know its not just me that thinks Standard's been a garbagefire for a while. I started to notice things getting terrible when War came out. I thought things were bad then but its just been getting worse with every set.
 
Good to know its not just me that thinks Standard's been a garbagefire for a while. I started to notice things getting terrible when War came out. I thought things were bad then but its just been getting worse with every set.

I can't even remember the last decent standard. It seems like each one since KTK has had massive problems plaguing it.

I remember having fun during BFZ/SOI and I brewed a bant deck that was pretty unique and actually did pretty well against T1. But that was it. Even Theros/RTR had the mono-black deck that just killed everything.

Sidisi Whip was fun too during KTK.
 
I can't even remember the last decent standard. It seems like each one since KTK has had massive problems plaguing it.

I remember having fun during BFZ/SOI and I brewed a bant deck that was pretty unique and actually did pretty well against T1. But that was it. Even Theros/RTR had the mono-black deck that just killed everything.

Sidisi Whip was fun too during KTK.
I had fun during BFZ/SOI standard, there was a clear diversity that I haven't seen in decks for a while. I think in more recent memory the only standard I had a ton of fun with was whatever we had before War came out. The meta wasn't great, but it was a hell of a lot better than it currently is. Granted I've pretty much exclusively played standard on arena, so it could be different in paper.
 
I had fun during BFZ/SOI standard, there was a clear diversity that I haven't seen in decks for a while. I think in more recent memory the only standard I had a ton of fun with was whatever we had before War came out. The meta wasn't great, but it was a hell of a lot better than it currently is. Granted I've pretty much exclusively played standard on arena, so it could be different in paper.
Yeah, I didn't stick with Arena, but I've had fun with it from time to time. In my experience, unless you spend just a bonkers amount of money, it takes an insane grind to build even one upper-tier deck, which has the effect of forcing some diversity on the meta in a way you don't see in the paper game.

Khans-era Standard wasn't too bad until it boiled down to seven guys out of any given top eight playing Collected Company. You had a brief respite after that, but then the energy decks came in with Kaladesh, and from there on out Standard has just careened from ban to ban for...jeez, more than three years now.

For those who want a history lesson there's a good page at the MTG wiki chronicling banned and restricted list updates. After the Jace the Mind Sculptor debacle, Standard managed to go almost six years without a banned card. Over the last three years and a bit they've had to ban fourteen.
 
The funniest thing is that they were supposed to have Play Design coming in after WAR to help. "Yes, Standard is a mess, but we have PLAY DESIGN now!" they said. Then it turns out that they were just as bad at making cards and balancing them as everyone else was. "Oh, this planeswalker can turn any nonland permanent into a 3/3 elk permanently, and make it lose all abilities. I'm pretty sure people will only use it on their stuff. Also, make that a +1 ability rather than -1. And give it a +2 ability that makes an artifact they can freely turn into an elk."

I'm sure companion is somehow their fault too. For those who don't know what companion is, it's a cycle of 10 cards in the new set. You can place this card in your sideboard, and once per game you can cast it from your sideboard as if it was in your hand. After that, just treat it like any other card. Essentially, you can have a 61 card deck without paying a penalty. The catch? You have deck restrictions to go along with it. Some aren't too bad (like playing 20 more cards in your starting deck) to the bizzare (only have 1 or 2 cost permanents in your deck) but they are breaking formats left and right. The 1/2 cost permanent is crushing legacy and vintage where they are recasting black lotuses each turn. There's a standard combo that uses a 6 drop companion to mill out your opponent in one turn. (cast gyruda, get a clone back, clone gyruda, repeat. Blink with Thassa if needed.) It's insane. Plus, each of these companions use hybrid mana, so they can go into multiple decks. Heck, UW control uses a 3/2 companion in a creatureless deck because it's essentially free to put in there and it's worth losing a sideboard slot.
 
I never thought, looking at this, that Sheldon and the Rules Committee would actually be on top of things for Commander when they banned Lutri...
 
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