Magic The Gathering

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Though to watch a grown man be so emotional over being told maybe it's not for him after doing the same to others is just disgusting.

That's kindof his thing, though. If you look at any of the commander games he posts, it's frankly hard to get through them because how awkward everyone is clashes with the amount of effort put into the editing. Especially given his metamorphosis from even just half a decade ago, the financial success and fame seem to have made him somewhat neurotic, and there's a definite whiff of him afraid of losing it all if he ever steps out of line with whatever the 'line' is to be toted among wealthy socialites with plenty of cash to spare at the moment.

It's sortof why you look at all these people railing about socialism and the working class... while spending thousands of dollars on cardboard squares, and sharing stories about their early lives that suggests luxury isn't anything new to them. Kenobi is one of the worst about it - if you had the cash to play Warhammer as an adolescent, chances are you're about as removed from proletariat as Bojo is. But that's a lot of the MTG playerbase, and more specifically a lot of the playerbase that shells out the big bucks on patreon.

 

[Forsaken Wanderer]

Okay I gave up on MTG years ago when it starting going woke and they kept revisiting the same settings and the art went all digital and stale, and every now and then I see weird shit like DnD MTG cards or Godzilla or some shit, now they are doing 40k cards!? So we went from trannie goblins to extreme greed? Is nothing sacred in this fucked world?

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Okay I gave up on MTG years ago when it starting going woke and they kept revisiting the same settings and the art went all digital and stale, and every now and then I see weird shit like DnD MTG cards or Godzilla or some shit, now they are doing 40k cards!? So we went from trannie goblins to extreme greed? Is nothing sacred in this fucked world?

Basically WOTC gave up on MTG as well and it is going to become an IP mule, which is quite frankly fine. I would Rather play with Dracula, Godzilla and Bele'kor than fucking Jace and Liliana.

The story has been fucking shit since the end of Time Spiral so it isn't like the actual Magic IP is some grand hill to die on.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I heard some one point out exactly how ridiculous Yorion getting banned for making a deck 80 cards to shuffle is in a world where the most popular format is exactly 100 cards.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I heard some one point out exactly how ridiculous Yorion getting banned for making a deck 80 cards to shuffle is in a world where the most popular format is exactly 100 cards.

I've heard that too I may cut them some slack on it though because most Commander decks don't run every fetch possible so you aren't shuffling a trillion times a turn.

 

[Polock]

I heard some one point out exactly how ridiculous Yorion getting banned for making a deck 80 cards to shuffle is in a world where the most popular format is exactly 100 cards.

MTGAids pointed out how a double sleeved 60 card deck is nearly identical in size to a single sleeved 80 card deck and that WotC saying "mtg players tiny baby hands too smol to fully handle big girthy Yorion" is pure bullshit used to misdirect people away from the fact that Modern Horizons 2 cards are the real problem with Modern.

 

[Flexo]

PFP on point!

 

[Retink Retunk]

That's kindof his thing, though. If you look at any of the commander games he posts, it's frankly hard to get through them because how awkward everyone is clashes with the amount of effort put into the editing. Especially given his metamorphosis from even just half a decade ago, the financial success and fame seem to have made him somewhat neurotic, and there's a definite whiff of him afraid of losing it all if he ever steps out of line with whatever the 'line' is to be toted among wealthy socialites with plenty of cash to spare at the moment.

It's sortof why you look at all these people railing about socialism and the working class... while spending thousands of dollars on cardboard squares, and sharing stories about their early lives that suggests luxury isn't anything new to them. Kenobi is one of the worst about it - if you had the cash to play Warhammer as an adolescent, chances are you're about as removed from proletariat as Bojo is. But that's a lot of the MTG playerbase, and more specifically a lot of the playerbase that shells out the big bucks on patreon.

I really hate socialists and commies, they're all disingenuous pricks who don't know shit and think people not being able to get cardboard rectangles for free is some grand injustice. I think that's why Rudy is the only MtG creator I still watch, as he just seems to not care, while everyone else is blubbering like a child about all of the dumb shit. I don't care if someone can't afford a product, and I don't care if people lose money on product they're holding, that's life, there's no assurance of anything and sometimes shit goes your way, and other times you end up with a globohomo game made for the champaign socialists of California or Seattle that no one else cares about.

It's the same thing for all of the other big franchises, I'm just as tired of them as people whining about Star Wars and other shit. Just let it die, and find new obscure shit to be into, because anything made for a "world" audience is going to devolve into goyslop bullshit that pleases no one. Except China, where they edit out the gay, blacks, and any Taiwan flags because they won't put up with it.

So we went from trannie goblins to extreme greed? Is nothing sacred in this fucked world?

Usually how it works. Adding a little diversity draws in a new audience, but the gay and troon demographic demands it spreads to everything, causing the original demographic to bleed out as it becomes too obnoxious instead of self contained. Then to make up the now declining sales they pander to larger whales who can pick up the slack as troons are rather poor after spending all their money on bathtub HRT and furry art commissions.

Basically WOTC gave up on MTG as well and it is going to become an IP mule, which is quite frankly fine.

That's what kind of bothers me, they did the hardest part first, which is setting up a unique IP, and then they just tossed it and turned it into a mule for other IP. It worked for Monopoly but Monopoly is also a singular game that doesn't evolve so it needs new skins, while MtG was actually a living product with products outside of the game itself in the IP. Just seems like a real waste of what could have been a much better financial opportunity to be the one licensing out.

 

[Noebel]

Usually how it works. Adding a little diversity draws in a new audience, but the gay and troon demographic demands it spreads to everything, causing the original demographic to bleed out as it becomes too obnoxious instead of self contained. Then to make up the now declining sales they pander to larger whales who can pick up the slack as troons are rather poor after spending all their money on bathtub HRT and furry art commissions.

To be honest, most of their diversity can't bee seen from the cards alone. One would need to read a story on their site, read some tweets, or something like that. Most players don't frequent reddit. Most of those who do know, either agree or don't care. Thing is, game is still there. I, as many others, care about textbox much more, than about art.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

That's what kind of bothers me, they did the hardest part first, which is setting up a unique IP, and then they just tossed it and turned it into a mule for other IP. It worked for Monopoly but Monopoly is also a singular game that doesn't evolve so it needs new skins, while MtG was actually a living product with products outside of the game itself in the IP. Just seems like a real waste of what could have been a much better financial opportunity to be the one licensing out.

The problem is nobody ever took that IP seriously. It was like most MMO's where nobody actually reads any of the lore. The Lorefags like me were in the vast, vast minority and after they ditched the novels we became even less of a % because most people couldn't be bothered to read short stories 2 months after the set dropped.

And then..The Gatewatch happened. The Gatewatch as a whole was not a terrible idea, Planewalkers were always kind of the face of Magic (Urza being basically the main character for a long time) and the "Tour of the Multiverse" was making the stories kind of very flat "Learn about plane, resolve planes issues..move on to new plane" arc where characters appeared and poofed in the course of a year.

Where this shit fell the fuck apart was the writing and who was in the Gatewatch. Gideon, Jace and Chandra were all kind of fine picks. Generic as fucking hell but if I had a Treasure for every generic character in magic I would be able to Hard Cast Eldrazi till The Dimensional Merge happened.

Even Argus Kos who was fucking amazing was basically a Magic Version of John McClane.

Where the Gatewatch went to shit was how fucking AWFUL the writing was.

Nissa getting Retconed into not being a racist elf

Liliana NOT EVEN GETTING THAT and just being Evil and joining the Gatewatch for no actual reason

Gideon apparently having spent 3 in-universe years going back and forth between fighting Eldrazi on Zendikar and Helping the Boros Guild do Cop shit with like 2 hours of sleep a night because he thinks that the Boros Guild will somehow be able to help Zendikar?

Tamiyo* being a GIGANTIC cuntbag and refusing to help Jace when the world is literally ending.

Sorin apparently just having shoved Nahiri into the Helavault instead of slapping her around until she listened and Nahiri acting like a petulant fucking child.

Emrakul deciding to just go into the moon because "Oops we are written into a corner"

Tezzeret and the Gate Watch just...HAPPENING to be on Kaladesh, right when Rashmi creates the Planar Bridge, which just HAPPENS to be the thing that Nicol Bolas needs for the army that he just happens to have been making the entire time and somehow knows that Rashmi's Planar Bridge wouldn't send Organic Matter through and that he would need Zombie Robots. It would have been fucking hilarious if Rashmi had forgotten to carry the 1 somewhere and got a Planar Bridge that worked like Terminator Time Portals and couldn't Metal through wouldn't have it.

Then War of the Spark happened and was so nonsensical and bad that even Lorefags like me just stopped caring. The Lore section in an MTG discord I am in hasn't had a Lore post about the actual current lore since fucking August when 3 people went "MEH" about the end of Dominaria United and hasn't had a post in it in weeks.

To be honest, most of their diversity can't bee seen from the cards alone. One would need to read a story on their site, read some tweets, or something like that. Most players don't frequent reddit. Most of those who do know, either agree or don't care. Thing is, game is still there. I, as many others, care about textbox much more, than about art.

You can ignore the diversity and the Lore and art are still absolute fucking ass, like Saheeli and Huatli being NiggerDykes was announced in a Secret Lair and nobody gave a shit because neither of them have done anything actually relevant in lore to the point where them being a couple is literally not in the Wiki of either character.

 

[Noebel]

Then War of the Spark happened and was so nonsensical and bad that even Lorefags like me just stopped caring. The Lore section in an MTG discord I am in hasn't had a Lore post about the actual current lore since fucking August when 3 people went "MEH" about the end of Dominaria United and hasn't had a post in it in weeks.

Yeah, even furries don't want this shit. If they don't care, that means something.

You can ignore the diversity and the Lore and art are still absolute fucking ass, like Saheeli and Huatli being NiggerDykes was announced in a Secret Lair and nobody gave a shit because neither of them have done anything actually relevant in lore to the point where them being a couple is literally not in the Wiki of either character.

Yes, their art is definetly getting more soulless. I speculate it has to do with corporate influence.

 

[anti SJW]

If WOTC charged a grand for a box and every box was a full set, I could see that being reasonable given how rare and expensive some of these cards they are reprinting are. I still wouldn't pay but it makes more sense than a grand and not getting the full set.

How many boxes to a case?

 

[Thiletonomics]

So WotC is running a MTG shirt subscription, and they are rightfully getting roasted in the comments.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

View attachment 3731517 View attachment 3731519 View attachment 3731521

So WotC is running a MTG shirt subscription, and they are rightfully getting roasted in the comments.

Oh hey the single worst written character in the history of the game gets a shirt.

 

[Retink Retunk]

(Urza being basically the main character for a long time)

The thing that made Urza work was he was used in small doses as to keep his power consistent. In fact, a lot of his story was told through the eyes of other characters like Xancha, Barren, and others, which was a great way of conveying a complex and powerful character without just constantly having him blowing everything up. The new walkers are supposed to be depowered but they still seem godlike in random situations and completely powerless in others, but even depowered, them just randomly choosing not to planeswalk to get out of every bind is retarded. Yes, in some cases they excused it with things like the Immortal Sun or whatever, but in other cases the planeswalker just for whatever reason doesn't.

View attachment 3731517 View attachment 3731519 View attachment 3731521

So WotC is running a MTG shirt subscription, and they are rightfully getting roasted in the comments.

Why would anyone subscribe to a shirt service? Why wouldn't I just buy the shirts as I want instead of having to be on some kind of subscription plan?

. Thing is, game is still there. I, as many others, care about textbox much more, than about art.

I don't think the game will die just because of woke art, but the general art direction and quality has made me far less interested in products I'd normally probably like.

 

[Polock]

It was like most MMO's where nobody actually reads any of the lore.

For all the years I was a Magic superfan, I would constantly try to get into the lore and constantly just...couldn't. At least, not at a level where I would follow the short stories and know all the tiny details of what was going on. Just like MMO stories, I quite liked them when they were presented in a generic big picture way, but once you zoom in you get distracted by all the retarded, poorly written details.

I took a long break and got back in right before War of the Spark, decided "Hey I liked the lore before, maybe I'll check out the book" and it almost killed my desire to continue playing the game.

 

[Flexo]

The problem is nobody ever took that IP seriously. It was like most MMO's where nobody actually reads any of the lore. The Lorefags like me were in the vast, vast minority and after they ditched the novels we became even less of a % because most people couldn't be bothered to read short stories 2 months after the set dropped.

And then..The Gatewatch happened. The Gatewatch as a whole was not a terrible idea, Planewalkers were always kind of the face of Magic (Urza being basically the main character for a long time) and the "Tour of the Multiverse" was making the stories kind of very flat "Learn about plane, resolve planes issues..move on to new plane" arc where characters appeared and poofed in the course of a year.

Where this shit fell the fuck apart was the writing and who was in the Gatewatch. Gideon, Jace and Chandra were all kind of fine picks. Generic as fucking hell but if I had a Treasure for every generic character in magic I would be able to Hard Cast Eldrazi till The Dimensional Merge happened.

Even Argus Kos who was fucking amazing was basically a Magic Version of John McClane.

Where the Gatewatch went to shit was how fucking AWFUL the writing was.

Nissa getting Retconed into not being a racist elf

Liliana NOT EVEN GETTING THAT and just being Evil and joining the Gatewatch for no actual reason

Gideon apparently having spent 3 in-universe years going back and forth between fighting Eldrazi on Zendikar and Helping the Boros Guild do Cop shit with like 2 hours of sleep a night because he thinks that the Boros Guild will somehow be able to help Zendikar?

Tamiyo* being a GIGANTIC cuntbag and refusing to help Jace when the world is literally ending.

Sorin apparently just having shoved Nahiri into the Helavault instead of slapping her around until she listened and Nahiri acting like a petulant fucking child.

Emrakul deciding to just go into the moon because "Oops we are written into a corner"

Tezzeret and the Gate Watch just...HAPPENING to be on Kaladesh, right when Rashmi creates the Planar Bridge, which just HAPPENS to be the thing that Nicol Bolas needs for the army that he just happens to have been making the entire time and somehow knows that Rashmi's Planar Bridge wouldn't send Organic Matter through and that he would need Zombie Robots. It would have been fucking hilarious if Rashmi had forgotten to carry the 1 somewhere and got a Planar Bridge that worked like Terminator Time Portals and couldn't Metal through wouldn't have it.

Then War of the Spark happened and was so nonsensical and bad that even Lorefags like me just stopped caring. The Lore section in an MTG discord I am in hasn't had a Lore post about the actual current lore since fucking August when 3 people went "MEH" about the end of Dominaria United and hasn't had a post in it in weeks.

I was actually kind of excited and digging the change to planeswalkers at first. (But then I liked Sliders back in the day too)

The biggest fault in the stories is the one a lot of amateurs miss when trying to do magic in worlds: What magic CANNOT do is more interesting than what it can. You need to put on brakes and limits to make any drama or tension work.

Ironically from the game you had a simple solution: spells take time (representing the 1 land per turn and untapping). The more powerful the spell, the longer time the PW or wizard needs to gather up the mana to cast it (as well as concentration). The writer of the Purifying Fire (chandra's book, first appearance by Gideon) played this pretty well but other than her, many of their writers play the magic in the stories like phone apps - just press a button and get a fireball. Which like @Retink Retunk pointed out, then makes PW overpowered again because you have to wonder why they can't just side step in and out of planes to escape trouble. Just make "planeswalking" (especially for neo-walkers) a high level spell and there's your plot patch. Walkers when they land on a plane at least have to take some time before they can hit the blind eternities again.

Heck I was on board for the Gatewatch vs Eldrazi of BFZ but then it just turned out... so... boring. What should have been an epic moment was like... 2 paragraphs, maybe a page tops with not even the slightest tension on whether they might fail. They spent longer on the relationships in the coda afterwards.

It's like the writers they hired thought "well nobody actually believes we're going to put our moneymaker characters in danger, so we won't even try for tension."

I'm not going to argue that the previous lore was great art, but it was at least entertaining. Heck I still remember the Bolas duel in Time Spiral before the mending. Nothing sticks out in my brain from the Gatewatch era other than Jace accidentally becoming James Bond because they kept demanding he be a main character and each writer would give him a different love interest in their work.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I was actually kind of excited and digging the change to planeswalkers at first.

It was kind of lame to me, but I understood it they wanted to make their most iconic thing less of a story breaking mess.

Just make "planeswalking" (especially for neo-walkers) a high level spell and there's your plot patch. Walkers when they land on a plane at least have to take some time before they can hit the blind eternities again.

Post mending it is supposed to be, but it just really doesn't matter because the actual Planeswalking spell is irrelevant in most plots because "Screw you guys, I am going home" isn't a great resolution to most plots.

Heck I was on board for the Gatewatch vs Eldrazi of BFZ but then it just turned out... so... boring.

The problem is that the Eldrazi are Cosmic Horrors, there is no situation in which The Gatewatch could face down Ulamog and Kozilek without feeling absolutely overmatched because the Eldrazi aren't antagonists they are forces of nature, the Gatewatch Story should have started with something smaller.

It's like the writers they hired thought "well nobody actually believes we're going to put our moneymaker characters in danger, so we won't even try for tension."

Or they are just that bad.

 

[Retink Retunk]

@Flexo Not sure why it won't let me quote you directly but:

Ironically from the game you had a simple solution: spells take time (representing the 1 land per turn and untapping). The more powerful the spell, the longer time the PW or wizard needs to gather up the mana to cast it (as well as concentration). The writer of the Purifying Fire (chandra's book, first appearance by Gideon) played this pretty well but other than her, many of their writers play the magic in the stories like phone apps - just press a button and get a fireball. Which like @Retink Retunk pointed out, then makes PW overpowered again because you have to wonder why they can't just side step in and out of planes to escape trouble. Just make "planeswalking" (especially for neo-walkers) a high level spell and there's your plot patch. Walkers when they land on a plane at least have to take some time before they can hit the blind eternities again.

I think it's fine if they are OP, but I don't think it's great to have them as the perspective character. Something old Magic lore did really well was treating Planeswalkers like Greek gods, in that they existed in the world and interacted with it, but were essentially too powerful to be directly observed. Think of it as we know stories of Zeus coming down and fucking around in the human world, and we know Odysseus having beef with Poseidon, but it's not exactly like we have epics that follow the journey of a god directly, rather they are about people in the world of the gods with segments following the story of the god directly for short periods.

They used to treat Walkers much like that, with Urza mostly being viewed by others, and characters like Freya and Leshrac being meddlers in the world than direct characters, and despite their power they could still err as Freya almost killed Jodah with the whole mirror thing because she mistook him for a planeswalker instead of realizing it was Jaya.

I'm not going to argue that the previous lore was great art, but it was at least entertaining. Heck I still remember the Bolas duel in Time Spiral before the mending.

That whole story made me way more interested in the story of Leshrac than I was before but sadly there wasn't a ton out there for him prior. I also for some reason remember when they met the Keldons there was a scene where Jhoira went to bluff them, and she's holding one of their daggers and acting casual, but the inner monologue is that she's holding it so casually in a bent wrist way like you'd be presenting it to someone to take was because it's too heavy and she's basically just trying to save face as she couldn't hold it any other way. It was just an interesting bit of writing which showed a character out of their element, but playing to their strengths to trick an enemy into respecting them when in reality they were freaking out internally.

I feel like if that scene was written today Jhoira would just arm wrestle the largest Keldon without breaking a sweat to prove she's competent instead of having to overcome an awkward moment of weakness.

The problem is that the Eldrazi are Cosmic Horrors, there is no situation in which The Gatewatch could face down Ulamog and Kozilek without feeling absolutely overmatched because the Eldrazi aren't antagonists they are forces of nature, the Gatewatch Story should have started with something smaller.

That's a good point and kind of what screwed the DCU, they went right into the Justice League movie instead of making stand alone films to build up to it like the MCU did. Sure, we all know who Batman, Superman, and whoever is, but each media entity presents them differently so while you can shortcut the backstory in a pre movie credit roll like Watchmen did, you still want to give people time to watch the characters and get to know them before you throw them into a clusterfuck of a movie.

 

[Haywire]

In fact, a lot of his story was told through the eyes of other characters like Xancha, Barren, and others, which was a great way of conveying a complex and powerful character without just constantly having him blowing everything up.

This was one of the defining ways MTG dealt with the game breaking concerns PWs originally had: perspective was from the ants while the PWs were treated as natural disasters. The players related to the characters that had to deal with powers that could turn their whole family history into dust in a blink.

My biggest complaint for the story lately was the complete lack of it. The block structure was how the setting and conflict was introduced, the climax, then resolution. Now it's firehosed into our faces and we move to the next world. I assume because WotC is so concerned with making a bad story and being committed to it for 9 months they want to reduce their risk and never build anything monumental.

There used to be a single overarching lesson from old-lore too: discipline in progress. Argoth is sunk in a petty squabble, and Phyrexia was unrestricted and amoral progress in technology. Urza, while attempting to destroy the Phyrexian progress he saw as a threat, ultimately reinvented much of it and was tyrannical to the entire planet. It would be a poignant lesson today, with kids glued to screens and having no attention span.