Magic The Gathering

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UtadaWasabi2 said:
Is Lorwyn plane good for gooner? Asking for a friend. Goat-feet elf is nice and all but my friend needs more information.
:tomgirl:
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Depends on what you're into.
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Man that original set had so much heart to it.
 
Catastrophically Retarded said:
I havn't played magic in years and just saw that the Avatar set is standard and not a secret lair. WHAT HAPPENED? Can i get a quick rundown? Last i heard they had a black Aragorn and i never looked back until now. Is magic completely fucked now?
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Yep. They also did a spider man set. In standard. A whole set. A lot of the creatures, across the color pie are different versions of spider man.

Not a joke
 
Catastrophically Retarded said:
What the fuck are they doing to Mtg? Seems ridiculous to make their entire game like fortnite just stuffed full of cameo ip's.
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The competent people from design (both mechanics + lore) gave up/quit/were overruled by idiot-in-charge Mark Rosewater, quality collapsed accordingly, that + Hasbro (parent company) losing money pretty much everywhere outside of WotC resulted in licensed sets based on other IPs to gin up sales/money. The craziest part is that it's working.

ETA: The attempts at in-universe sets have mostly been duds, new planes are half-baked while returns to existing ones have none of what made them enjoyable in previous visits. The one exception was Bloomburrow and the feel/art for that was lifted from the "Redwall" books.
 
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Catastrophically Retarded said:
What the fuck are they doing to Mtg? Seems ridiculous to make their entire game like fortnite just stuffed full of cameo ip's.
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On top of what Tusky said, WOTC has taken a commander first perspective to design, so all of these UB products being duds in any format but commander doesn’t seem to bother WOTC from an external view. The competitive scene hasn’t mattered since the fuck up of FIRE design. It was best put in the “pigs eat slop” post in r/freemagic, the good food this restaurant was serving is slowly being forcibly replaced with slop, and I am not a pig.
 
Logistical Nightmare said:
On top of what Tusky said, WOTC has taken a commander first perspective to design, so all of these UB products being duds in any format but commander doesn’t seem to bother WOTC from an external view. The competitive scene hasn’t mattered since the fuck up of FIRE design. It was best put in the “pigs eat slop” post in r/freemagic, the good food this restaurant was serving is slowly being forcibly replaced with slop, and I am not a pig.
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@Catastrophically Retarded - not sure how long you've been away but FIRE was implemented in the late 2010s with the stated goal of making the game fresh and exciting. The practical impact was severe power and complexity creep that effectively made degenerate formats the new normal, especially in Standard.

My personal conspiracy theory is that, after a series of Standard bans, WotC realized it couldn't live up to its own policy of "playtesting/QA should catch 100% of broken Standard cards and anything less means we screwed up" anymore and decided to spin broken Standard formats as a feature rather than a bug.

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And WotC's attempts to push EDH are tearing the format apart with the same "pigs eat slop" approach: Many made-for-commander cards are strictly better than older ones and so versatile they fit in about any deck, put the two together and the format has become very homogeneous. So the barrier to entry is very low but oldtimers miss the fun/challenge of, you know deckbuilding.
 
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Catastrophically Retarded said:
I havn't played magic in years and just saw that the Avatar set is standard and not a secret lair. WHAT HAPPENED? Can i get a quick rundown? Last i heard they had a black Aragorn and i never looked back. Is magic completely fucked now?
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*Take Deep breath and starts talking in Aku Voice*

Long ago in a shitty set we Returned to Ravnica

It was lame, and badly written, and the sets were bad and everyone hated them, So WOTC threw a tantrum and decided to rework blocks because 3 set blocks were too hard! So they switched to 2 set blocks..

We entered the Gatewatch Storyline...and the sets were lame..and terribly written and the sets were bad and everyone complained about the power level...

So they got rid of Blocks Entirely and introduced FIRE design and began to focus on ESPORTS...and the sets were still lame, and terribly written and were overpowered Slop that broke every format because now we print 3 times the new cards a year..

So they got rid of Fire Design and ESPORTS and Planeswalkers....and the sets were still lame and terribly written.....

And now we arrive here at Universes Beyond...were sets are lame...and the in universe is still terribly written...but at least we got Final Fantasy out of it.

Edit

not sure how long you've been away but FIRE was implemented in the late 2010s with the stated goal of making the game fresh and exciting. The practical impact was severe power and complexity creep that effectively made degenerate formats the new normal, especially in Standard.
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They abandoned FIRE design pretty quickly, you can't say Strixhaven and Kaladesh are "FIRE" design in terms of power but every format is still broken because Standard became as large as Extended....you know the format they got rid of because it was powerful enough that it was always miserable but not strong enough to be fun like Modern used to be.

UB products being duds in any format but commander
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YEP this is a commander card all right, that is totally not a limited signpost card is it?

Also again..the best set since 2017 was Final Fantasy..which had one "Broken" card in it that was "Broken with cantrips" and it isn't even the most broken card on that axis to come out this year.

It's not even the second one because

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This exists in the same format as brainstorm.
 
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Is anyone reading the story? I've seen mentions about there being something about Shandalar in there somewhere. @kiwigrok is this true?
 
Noebel said:
Is anyone reading the story? I've seen mentions about there being something about Shandalar in there somewhere. @kiwigrok is this true?
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Yes Ajani mentions it I think.

They have at least managed to stabilize the quality of the stories after Dragonstorm. They are now just mostly boring instead of being mostly terrible, at least without having deep memory about the Lorwyn books.

The worst bit was at the end when a "Twin" of Liliana appeared to talk to her..a "GOOD TWIN" who was dressed all in white..which is either Oko..Bolas...or the universe breaking because we are in the REALITY BREAK arc tm.
 
UncleTusky said:
And WotC's attempts to push EDH are tearing the format apart with the same "pigs eat slop" approach: Many made-for-commander cards are strictly better than older ones and so versatile they fit in about any deck, put the two together and the format has become very homogeneous. So the barrier to entry is very low but oldtimers miss the fun/challenge of, you know deckbuilding.
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Best video I've seen on the matter. And it does not go in the direction you think it might.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
Long ago in a shitty set we Returned to Ravnica
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Return to Ravnica is high art compared to the last 5 years of Magic.

Honka Honka Burning Love said:
YEP this is a commander card all right, that is totally not a limited signpost card is it?
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You're right, that's not meant to be your hot new Lessons Commander. But this is:
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And Gran-Gran just happens to slot into his colors. The self-contained "Lessons" archetype is a prime example of Universes Beyond and Commander influencing set design and that running off into 60-card formats. The only reason you're not seeing Iroh in Standard is that he's a 6-drop with no innate protection, evasion, or immediate win potential.

The idea that you'd be able to build a t1 Standard deck out of a "tribal" archetype from Limited akin to Arcane is ludicrous, but that's exactly what Lessons is (feat. a couple of powerful rares from BLB and DFT). WotC wants thematic representation for their hot fresh UB properties and they want those decks to be easy to build for the newbies who are more than likely going to start with Commander and then hopefully runoff into competitive. At least that's the goal if their poor attempts at revitalizing 60-card play are any indication.

In fact, I would go a step further and make the case that UB is the natural outgrowth of focus shifting to Commander because expensive, splashy iconic legendary versions of popular characters would never make it in 60-card formats but Commander is THE format for them.
 
UtadaWasabi2 said:
Oh so Jace actually achieved something with that stone.
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Fuck if we know we haven't seen him since the ending of Dragonstorm where he got yeeted to somewhere random.

If only there were some sort of Edge...of Eternity he could have gone to for us to see what he really was up to through the Loot storyline before we have to root for him to fix everything in reality break...
 
Very Professional said:
The idea that you'd be able to build a t1 Standard deck out of a "tribal" archetype from Limited akin to Arcane is ludicrous, but that's exactly what Lessons is (feat. a couple of powerful rares from BLB and DFT).
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I'd argue that's happened to standard at least twice before with affinity and energy.
 
Oddjob OTP said:
I'd argue that's happened to standard at least twice before with affinity and energy.
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A few exceptions only serve to prove the rule. Affinity was a failure in execution and has been fine since its reappearance in Standard. Energy is just broken on its face (I would argue it's comparable to Companions where it just shouldn't have been done). In both cases Wizards underestimated the power of the mechanic. Compare that to something like Exert or Amass (which were the peak of FIRE), or Boast or Incubate. Bloomburrow was also like this, where a good chunk of the Limited archetypes were pushed enough to make it into Standard on their own merits.

While I can't say definitively that it's the case, I do believe this is a new direction for the game and it's an effect of UB and EDH. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing either, it leads to 60-card decks feeling very rich and flavorful. But if I am right it is a departure from the older flavor of 60-card ie. "You are a planeswalker cherry-picking the best spells from each world you visit." in favor of a more package-based design.

EDIT: To the earlier point about Limited, I do believe that's also a culprit and I'm not going to try and absolve the designers of that in any way, be it incompetence or negligence (your choice).
 
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I would argue the fixation on archetypes has more to do with eliminating block structure than with any given popularity in UB or Commander, and the obvious-templating which has been used between sets (obvious to limited players) has created grossly redundant archetypes. That plus the fact that WOTC clearly does not playtest their cards and is pumping out so many, much of it being done by nepo-designers who very clearly do not understand the game's actual mechanics, contributes to a sensation of constant churn in the shithole that is standard 60-card. Which has been trash for most of its existence, with most games decided by opening hands due to how on-rails it is.

Modern's enshittification is clearly derived from Modern Horizons, whereas Legacy-Vintage have suffered under the deluge of printed-for-multiplayer cards... though some would argue that initiative shaking up a format so dominated by Brainstorm is a good thing. On the whole, the format suffering the most from Wizards' fixation on Commander is Commander itself, and I can't bag modern limited design because Avatar and FF are both phenomenal all-timers alongside a few other recent standouts like Duskmourne.

I also find that most of the kvetching about modern design extends from people whining that their $50 pile can't compete against $300 decks, 'like back in the old days,' despite the fact that cards like Shivan Dragon or Pack Rat used to be $20. So to say, I think the complaining is drawn from people who've never won an FNM, much less anything bigger, and wizards doesn't really give a shit if the piggies keep ponying up to play mono-red in arena Bo1.
 
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