Rhystic Studies posted a fantastic article about the UB problem. For those who don't want to read the whole thing, here's the highlights:
The Walking Dead was the canary’s call that we were told to ignore. We were accused of overreacting – it was just five cards, and they weren’t good enough to be relevant anywhere, and but neither was the television show at that point, so the concept felt a little odd and out of place, all things considered. When the set did gangbusters, we were lectured about invisible people who care about Magic beyond our little internet bubbles. The gas burns brightest from street lamps just above your wary head.
Four years have passed, the boundaries between our game and their media franchises have melted away, and Magic is now designating itself an “IP” within its own flagship presentations.
If the goal is to invite more people into Magic, then what do you do once they’re here? How do you separate your own signals from your own noise?
How many more times must you qualify Magic to the people who built and funded the empire you’ve put up for sale?
If the goal is to make more money, what happens when that money is just being spent on more crossovers? At that point, isn’t the proverbial ouroboros just eating its own tail?
For four straight years, my yum for Magic has been repeatedly yucked by Booster Fun and Special Guests and Universes Beyond and everything else that requires learning the keyboard shortcuts to produce the trademark™ icon. My dismay for these decisions has always been met with a frown. “You have to let people like things.”
The
only UBs that, imo, can fit well in MTG as-is are LOTR and D&D, since MTG took tons of direct inspiration from both.
I think the simplest solution for WOTC to have their cake and eat it to was to
really utilize the hell out of silver bordered cards. Any mechanically unique UB card (outside of those two IPs) is silver bordered. Reskins of existing cards can be black bordered since they're functionally WOTC-printed alters.
My logic for why they should've embraced the silver is this:
The non-MTG playing tourists don't care, they aren't playing the game anyway and are only there to collect cards of whatever IP they're interested in. The turbocasuals and EDH cattle don't care, they're already playing the game they way they want. The 60-card format players don't have to deal with all the nonsense that UB is causing.
Here's a comment in agreement:
...and here's the replies to that comment:
But what I hate the most are the people dancing and profiting on the grave of the game and setting I love and celebrating it. The people who say they don't care about the lore or the flavor, and only the mechanics matter, or the people who say Magic never had an identity in the first place. That includes the investor keks, the shills at Hasbro, and WotC themselves. People may say only gameplay matters...
You nailed the kind of person who has invaded our hobby harder than I thought possible.
Here we again see Josh, the consumerist niggercattle, responding to another person with very reasonable concerns about the hobby he's enjoyed for more than 20 years:
That second and third comment makes me think he may be a troll. It's so on the nose. MTG has all of those pieces of media
except for a TV series (and it's gotten close to getting one numerous times).
