They were the same people that had Uro, Oko, Wilderness Rec. Nissa, Growth Spiral, T3feri, Veil of Summer, and Krasis all in the same standard and didn't think there might be some issues.
White's last powerful spell printed in Standard that wasn't fully intended for Commander (Omn4th and tithe were made for commander, no questions asked) was T3feri and Teferi, HoD. Outside that? White's only real focus is on lifegain in environments that really don't care about it and shit with tokens. Green's demolishing White's shit when it comes to tokens too, remember Scute Mob?
The way they thought they'd fix Trickery was by having you mill. There's no way you could stack the deck in such a way to get the card you want.
Those packs were for the whole Alara block - I picked up a few a year or two ago for a small birthday gift for myself, and I was astonished at how those cards curl far less than the Commander Legends foils. I know curling's always been a problem before, but the problem's gotten really bad with cards printed the past year or so. The etched foils don't have the problem either, so what's going on?
The whole gimmick was that it was alara reborn plus random cards from shards and conflux. They didn’t have a problem with curling like modern foils. The reason I bring it up is that it was a way to get people to buy that set because it was mostly underwhelming. They also had these packs of conflux that were similar to the YGO duelist packs where they were $1 for an uncommon and 4 commons or something like that.
Nah. The problem is, as others pointed out, that Wizards is autistic with the pie except when it comes to Green. Red getting access to more pseudo-draw like light up the stage is strong, but I wouldn't call it busted or beyond the pie. Green, by contrast, is completely fucking off the rails - it ramps, it plays big guys, it goes wide, it draws, it gains incidental life, it has removal, it recurs from the GY -- just pair it with another color and you'll have nothing but upsides.
Once they boot out Throne/theros/ugin, we might be entering a slower phase. There's some pushed shit in Zendikar / Kaldheim, sure, but not a whole ton. Strixhelm sounds like it's going to be tribal-focused, which doesn't tend to pan out all that well either. Tibalt's Trickery has mostly plagued old formats and that's more a shit-designed card that wasn't meant to be crept, and tibalt himself... kindof surprises me that they didn't rule that out earlier, given that the fun breaking // entering & beck // call combos were nuked from orbit way earlier.
Tbh this is probably part of the fact that stores and individual buyers cracked open lots and lots of those decks for the 'free' spells. Everything but the green one has pretty high value as a single - the blue one's already basically the MSRP of the deck. These other little cards that there's not a huge supply of suddenly have tons and tons of them flooding the market, and so even if there was going to be a gradual little tick-up in demand, that gets quashed. People cracking those stupid fucking collector's boosters also leads to a glut of good-but-not-busted rares like Scavenging Ooze being real real cheap while the stuff's hot.
You could fix it with one word: cast. Modern decks like Grishoalbrand are able to get out big guys on nut draws that are able to deal with removal or immediately combo out, same as older formats. They're just not as consistent - but if you just put emrakul into play, rather than cast it, it doesn't instantly win you the game. It's still hard, but I feel like at that point, you can at least try to get rid of it with something. For instants/sorcs, just exile them and copy them with tibalt's fuckery. Even burn decks can get the opportunity to untap for sideboard tech like Deflecting Palm against something like that.
Eh, maybe in legacy/vintage. Otherwise blue does things that are generally good in commander formats but usually wants to pair up with another color to shore up its weaknesses. It's when I start noticing that monogreen decks can draw more effectively than monoblue decks that I begin to wonder if wotc hasn't lost the plot.
I think part of it is that WOTC sees Green as the beginner's color - things start making more sense then. You don't want newbies to feel like they can't keep up, so you give them abundant card draw. You want newbies to be able to cast spells, so you give them easy ramp and make sure land destruction is scarce and targeted. You want newbies to feel powerful, so you give them the strongest creatures or creatures that easily outnumber their opponents. You know newbies obsess over taking a little damage, so you give them life gain so they don't worry about taking a little damage. You know how newbies feel bad when their cards die or get discarded, so you give them ways to get their things back. About the only thing that newbies don't really get is how to counter things, so it's no surprise how Green being paired with blue patches up one of the few flaws the combo has.
I'm old enough to remember that once upon a time, blue was THE color of MTG. Part of that was the fact that when they designed new stuff, each colors' "role" in the new mechanic was always super easy to define. Blue being a very nebulous color from beginning would then get what was "left over" which lead to it getting more and more goodies as the years went on until it was the overpowered favorite. (I mean really, why is blue THE artifact color?) There used to be more than a few memes back in the day that when judging a card, the first question to ask was "is it blue?"
I'm reeeeeeeally hoping for that fabled Tolkien Estate hardassery right about now.
The whole crossover concept in general is a huge turnoff for me. I can ignore dumb woke shit like non-binary planeswalkers tbh, but turning MtG into Geek Culture: The Cardgame just screams “CONSUME!” a little too loudly for my tastes.
It also feels like the creatives are getting stiffed in the process. I don't see the need for it - a lot of their newer planes that played with uncommon themes were wildly popular. Honestly, it's these "do an X set" things that have seemed to flop thematically - the "do an egypt set" was fucking boring and shitty, meanwhile the "do a central asia set" in Khans was wildly popular. "Do a viking" is a snorefest, and yet now people have started to appreciate the campy goodness of aztecs, pirates, and conquistadors.
Yeah, I think that's the issue - or maybe just that it gets everything at great rates. There's that M21 uncommon green enchantment that gives all your dudes trample, draws a card when it enters if you have a p>=4, and draws you extra cards for every p>=4 you've got -- whoah, great card. That's my idea of what really powerful green draw should look like, and even then it's pretty pushed. Not Rishkar's Expertise. Not Return of the Wildspeaker -- those should be cards like Momentous Fall or Soul's Majesty, high risk-reward. Definitely not fucking Toski -- Toski should be like Shamanic Revelation or blessing of frost or mouth//feed or collective unconscious, etc.
What gets me is that you can definitely see that earlier on in Magic's history, but a lot of the insanely bonkers shit has come out in fairly recent memory. Green goes form being one of the smoother commander colors because ramp is powerful and fixing's great in a format like that... to a color that's free to do it all on its own, or to go even more overboard if you pair it up with something else. It feels fairly balanced in other formats for the most part, but there's something about giving the color with the best creatures (which are now great), the arguably-best enchantment/artifact hate (which is super relevant in the format), the best ramp, and some of the best protection... some of the best card draw, too.
Yeah, like I said originally green was all about lands and creatures. Lands and creatures. Well when all the other colors have ways of hosing both - it easily got swamped. It's even more ironic because when Force of Will (anime-mtg) came out, they seemed to realize this and then pushed green into the other direction, giving it MTG's base green along with counterspells.
Oh quite and I agree. That's why I was trying to explain to everyone that what you're seeing now in green is what everyone demands WotC do to white. Not that I disagree, but given how it's turning out when they "fix" one color, I am a bit cautious about demanding they fix another. (although right now if they revealed they're holding back white to be woke I wouldn't be surprised)
You'll be waiting for a long time. Saul can be a push over and Chris is dead.
Honestly, I don't hate that. There aren't tons of cards out there with names generic enough to make the jump from MtG to something like 40k, and a lot of the cards that could - stuff like Murder - could be done more flavorfully as something in-universe for the IP. It's not like you're going to name a regular Magic card "Chainsword to the Face" or whatever, so you're probably not even blowing sweet names on these cards.
If we see Titus in this crossover before he shows up 40K proper, I'm going to be pissed off.