- Joined
- Aug 1, 2016
It seems R&D is made up of mad scientists trying to see who can break the game worse...
Magic The Gathering
- Thread starter IHeardThatCurtis
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- Joined
- Jan 2, 2017
Blue can do creature removal.
Black can remove enchantments.
Green can do direct damage.
Red can counter. *
White? it can help the opponent put out the biggest thing in their deck for free.
*red elemental blast, guttural response, and the rest of the legacy shenanigans already exist but still
Black can remove enchantments.
Green can do direct damage.
Red can counter. *
White? it can help the opponent put out the biggest thing in their deck for free.
*red elemental blast, guttural response, and the rest of the legacy shenanigans already exist but still
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2018
Hello Deso, i like your meme videos...
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2017
fuck that guy. hydras growth is amazing for my counter-heavy, small blue 2-drop deck
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
When one of their biggest things to advertise is a nonbinary troon planeswalker with that mental illness haircut that looks like a woman with a goatee then I really feel like it’s time for the game to just die. Top that off with low effort cash grabs and the fact they still try to ignore the reserve list.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
Their focus on EDH is going to kill the game since new people need to be worked in with a more gentle pace. EDH can be long as fuck with complex board interactions or done in the blink of an eye, and their 'year of EDH' has done nothing but speed the game up more and more.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
Which is ironic because they built a way to ease people into EDH: Brawl. (aka standard EDH) Which is much easier on Newbies since you only need to buy a $20 card once, not 4 times. And the singleton format at least makes it just slightly harder to break than normal standard. (not impossible, just a bit more work)
I've got nothing against commander, I would have just loved more brawl decks being released with the sets (like they did with Eldraine) only maybe not break so many cards with them. (Love Korvald but damn is he OP.)
Which is funny because MaRo once wrote a whole article going LONG into the process of "easing" people into mtg. Can't believe they seem to have already forgotten all of it.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
The Brawl decks might have been a failure in WOTC's eyes - why do you think they jumped right into making the Planeswalker decks Commander decks instead? I can't wait for the reprint quality to start taking a nosedive as they always do.
- Joined
- May 25, 2020
What I don't understand is their weird obsession with printing a bunch of pointless archetypes and obvious EDH-bait in each new set, rather than getting a solid selection of cards sure to influence standard and then adding in some of the splashy, dumb shit. Remember Gatecrash? Some good weenie and aggro stuff. Some cards that wind up seeing play across formats. Some great cards that get going once theros-rtr standard kicks off, even if it wasn't quite as good in the Innistrad-rtr block. Dimir gets shafted with the stupid mill theme, but the other archetypes work and some of those cards translate nicely into aggro or midrange or control decks.
Then you've got cards like the primordial cycle, which is pretty obviously EDHbait - and it's fine. But then there's also a lot of cards that feel really ambitious, like Duskmantle Seer, where you could see someone trying to play that in standard, even if that ultimately didn't come around. Lots of cards that feel like they could see play, even if not many of them make it in the end.
And while I like a lot of the Kaldheim cards for EDH, sure, I don't understand why they're in a standard set. Or, rather, why there's so many of them? So many of them are narrow and specific, flashy but impractical. There's a handful that seem like they might go somewhere, but that's mostly because they're aggressively-costed fliers with upsides.
Maybe the foretell->3-mana wrath goes somewhere. Snakeskin veil could maybe be considered over blossoming defense in some eternal formats, I guess. Four-color goodstuff could get a boost with the world tree, though still probably nothing like the Khans-BFZ shit.
Then you've got cards like the primordial cycle, which is pretty obviously EDHbait - and it's fine. But then there's also a lot of cards that feel really ambitious, like Duskmantle Seer, where you could see someone trying to play that in standard, even if that ultimately didn't come around. Lots of cards that feel like they could see play, even if not many of them make it in the end.
And while I like a lot of the Kaldheim cards for EDH, sure, I don't understand why they're in a standard set. Or, rather, why there's so many of them? So many of them are narrow and specific, flashy but impractical. There's a handful that seem like they might go somewhere, but that's mostly because they're aggressively-costed fliers with upsides.
Maybe the foretell->3-mana wrath goes somewhere. Snakeskin veil could maybe be considered over blossoming defense in some eternal formats, I guess. Four-color goodstuff could get a boost with the world tree, though still probably nothing like the Khans-BFZ shit.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
Inn/rtr was one of my favorite standards because of the variety of decks that came from the available card pool. You could play an aggressive aggro deck, a decent midrange or a rewarding control deck and be able to play competitive. It wasn’t just having all 10 buddy and shock lands available, but also that there were so many decent rares and uncommons made for the format instead of just being EDH, cube and niche sideboard bait. Many of those rares like Rest In Peace, deathrite shaman, abrupt decay, snapcaster mage, Liliana of the veil and such saw legacy play long after cycling out.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
What happened between then and now? For fuck's sake, the last two years have been so dumb. Each set lately has broken legacy formats besides maybe the Core Sets. Narset, Lurrus, Oko, Underworld Breach ring any bells? Standard's clearly got no vision behind it either. Used to be Standard understood it needed an ebb and flow to help regulate the game, but that's not there any more.
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2019
I think a lot of it’s related to how they sell their products now. They put more focus on things like collector’s editions and limited runs than they do on the quality of life of the game. Yes, cards like tarmogoyf, snapcaster mage, jace the mindsculptor, æther vial and stoneforge mystic slip through and then become really good in eternal, but they’re forcing cards more for eternal formats in standard faster than the format can adapt to them.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
*cough* (emphasis mine)
Booster Draft is a fun way to enjoy Magic and is more fun the more meaningful choices you have. Opening a booster pack and having to decide which card to put in your deck is hard for new players. We can make Booster Draft more inviting by making a few more cards easier to identify as powerful. Magic should be about making interesting decisions, but we felt like it was too nuanced earlier in the draft.
Play Design Lessons Learned
Bryan Hawley looks at Play Design's past, present, and future, and what they've learned along the way.
magic.wizards.com
F.I.R.E
F.I.R.E
Around the time we were designing Guilds of Ravnica, largely in reaction to the points above, we adopted a philosophy we call F.I.R.E.
Magic should be . . .
Fun
Inviting
Replayable
Exciting
This philosophy spurred a large number of changes in how we design Magic, and shifted the way Play Design approached our work.
First, we intentionally powered up our marquee sets (and therefore Standard) from Guilds of Ravnica through Throne of Eldraine. We took this path for a variety of reasons. We think Standard is more fun at a slightly higher power level. It's easier to make cards relevant to more players without making bizarrely engineered cards laser-focused on a specific niche that may or may not actually get there (looking at you, Alpine Moon). Also, while we'd opened up design space at higher mana costs, we realized we'd lost design space in the wackier strategies because a lower-powered Standard couldn't absorb them as easily.
Our intention was that this powering up was gradual over the course of the year, and afterwards, we would level off at a Standard power level somewhere in the range of Standard circa Return to Ravnica and Theros. The strength of a Standard format is such a nebulous concept that we don't try to rigidly and rigorously define it, but that era is a good ballpark description of our aim.
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2015
The worst part about that was that WotC was doing that even before Ravnica. Urza's Saga and Mirrodin flashbacks come to mind.
On a side note, given how Skullclamp was one notable example of R&D turning their brains off with card design, in hindsight, how does it fare compared to the broken shit that R&D has pushed out in recent years?
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
But in Urza's Saga and mirrodin they outright admitted they made mistakes (MaRo tells the story that they got pulled into the president's office and chewed out over Urza's) and deliberately tapped the breaks in the following sets.
Now? They're stomping on the gas.
Ironically Skullclamp has the same story as another recent card... Oko! Both were late in development changes that nobody had time to properly playtest.
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
So, no flex, but moving house I came across some of my old Magic collection (haven't played in like 20 years.) Found what I was sure I'd lost—my Black motherfucking Lotus (Unlimited edition, white border.) So from what I've gathered from a quick googling, this could be quite the windfall for me (I bought it i think for around $100-200) Any advice on getting it appraised and possibly selling it?
- Joined
- May 14, 2018
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
No shit? Gotta see a pic of it just so I can say I knew someone with a black lotus!
I'd definitely email Rudy about how to get it appraised. As for whether you want to sell to a retailer or ebay...
That's what magiccards.info prices it at.