The power level of commons and uncommons is by design and it's more accurate to say the developers got better at their jobs. Originally when the game first came out no one really had a good idea of what a common, uncommon, and rare was supposed to be, so rarity got based loosely on a combination of perceived power and whether the creature was some kind of special creature like an angel or dragon. The whole rarity by power deal didn't really start getting hashed out until a little before modern borders became a thing, and it was still really shaky until a bit after mythics got introduced.
My own hypothesis is that they did the rarity by power because they wanted to make it easier on players to know what the "best" cards are supposed to be in draft / limited while also encouraging more scratch off ticket purchases from players.
Outside of booster drafts, booster packs appeal to a specific demographic of players that overlaps with the repack market, and that is the group that dreams of owning a power 9 but doesn't have the money immediately available to buy the card outright. Instead of saving up for the single, they jump the gun and gamble with buying packs, being blinded by their own overwhelming desires. People don't realize how much money they tend to waste buying things like booster packs, tacos, random food items from stores, etc via impulse. It can often add up to 50-100 usd or more a week depending on the person, and I know during MtG spoiler season my own impulse spending usually adds up to 50+ usd in a two week period easily if the flavor is good.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It would be interesting to see how 4c Saheeli and Mardu Vehicles do in the Historic Standard format. It would tell a loy about if threats have gotten too weak, or if proactive strategies have gotten too strong.
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Pauper: UB Wight Phantasm RB Burn UR Faerie Rites of Initiation
It would be interesting to see how 4c Saheeli and Mardu Vehicles do in the Historic Standard format. It would tell a loy about if threats have gotten too weak, or if proactive strategies have gotten too strong.
I mentioned a while ago I beat Mardu Vehicles consistently with my old Nightmares deck from ODY-ONS block and that deck wasn't anywhere close to Tier 1. I don't want to know how hard decks like Mono Black Devotion, UW Delver, Jund or UB Faeries would ruin the post-Origins Standard.
On the topic of boosters, again. Yes, it's mythics that ruin booster values. Not entirely because you have to open a Mythic to make the booster's value, but because SCG, CFB, T&T, etc. have to open over a hundred boosters to get a specific mythic and they need to open dozens of playsets of said mythics just in the first weekend post-release to cover their presales. Of course no rogue cards are gonna be any value when there's so damn many around, even multi-format playables like Shambling Vents can't go past a $5 and that's just SCG trying to recoup money wherever they can because you can find Vents for half that.
It would be interesting to see how 4c Saheeli and Mardu Vehicles do in the Historic Standard format. It would tell a loy about if threats have gotten too weak, or if proactive strategies have gotten too strong.
I mentioned a while ago I beat Mardu Vehicles consistently with my old Nightmares deck from ODY-ONS block and that deck wasn't anywhere close to Tier 1. I don't want to know how hard decks like Mono Black Devotion, UW Delver, Jund or UB Faeries would ruin the post-Origins Standard.
On the topic of boosters, again. Yes, it's mythics that ruin booster values. Not entirely because you have to open a Mythic to make the booster's value, but because SCG, CFB, T&T, etc. have to open over a hundred boosters to get a specific mythic and they need to open dozens of playsets of said mythics just in the first weekend post-release to cover their presales. Of course no rogue cards are gonna be any value when there's so damn many around, even multi-format playables like Shambling Vents can't go past a $5 and that's just SCG trying to recoup money wherever they can because you can find Vents for half that.
The power level of the Celtic block and original Zendikar were very high. I recall my elf deck that I built on a budget was strong enough to go toe to toe with a standard deck from BFZ/Kahns. Part of the reason is the speed of the game has been altered in standard to try and encourage turn 5-8 wins over turn 4, not so much to differentiate the format from modern, but because it makes the game more attractive to players and lets more cards become playable.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
As a completely casual player for nearly 20 years; (No tourneys, no trips to store to play, don't care about standard, legacy or modern) just a guy who has magic cards and plays with his friends over some drinks and snacks. I'd have to say the majority of my spending on cards is basically wait until a couple of sets have come out or a commander release. Check what has been released maybe buy a commander set maybe not. Note down a few cards I'd like that seem cool, if I can get them at a reasonable price buy some and probably add a couple of boosters for kicks.
With these cards I have collected over the years I have built a cube for my friends to play and its a lot of fun, occasionally breaking out a commander/edh session.
My opinion with today's magic:
The new mechanics are on the whole pretty cool and fun, although it would be nice if they released some sets where new mechanics were not introduced at all. I feel that the new commander products are especially guilty of this as that is not a place for new mechanics, it should be a place for theme and flavour to be the focus.
The artwork remains really good if a little too stream-lined today, some quirkiness here and there is always nice to look at.
The Masters series, Archenemeny and Conspiracy are completely irrelevant to me. The masters series are overpriced and frankly I'd rather see the core set return instead of this, I don't play Archenemey & Conspiracy much like some of the commander product is too obsessed with creating mechanics for a format which don't work elsewhere in magic, which is useless and a waste for me a casual player. Sovereign's Realm is a really cool card with nice artwork, but I can't use it outside of a draft.
The themes MtG are coming out with currently are really great. We as a group have liked the exploration of zendikar, the return to Ravinca, lovecraftian, invention, and egypt so I have no issue witht he theme.
Creatures dominating is becoming a little stale, fortunately I can alter my cube to combat that so not as much of an issue for us, but I could see it being a problem for others.
The slow shift of WOTC from focusing on making a good game, to focusing on making a social agenda statement.
Even worse, a half-assed social agenda statement.
The way I see it:
Chris Cocks wants an e-sport.
Corporate wants a superhero movie.
MaRo wants clogged boards and topdeck wars.
Development wants people to forget constructed is a thing.
Sales wants to kill everything that doesn't sell in-print booster pallets. <Creative's just a character that has vitiligio and identifies as an attack thopter from filling it's tumblr SJW bingo.>
No wonder nobody is getting what they want, the company's more Split than Kevin Crumb.
The slow shift of WOTC from focusing on making a good game, to focusing on making a social agenda statement.
Even worse, a half-assed social agenda statement.
The way I see it:
Chris Cocks wants an e-sport.
Corporate wants a superhero movie.
MaRo wants clogged boards and topdeck wars.
Development wants people to forget constructed is a thing.
Sales wants to kill everything that doesn't sell in-print booster pallets.
Creative's just a character that has vitiligio and identifies as an attack thopter from filling it's tumblr SJW bingo.
No wonder nobody is getting what they want, the company's more Split than Kevin Crumb.
Agreed. And since I just watched that movie last night for the first time, I greatly enjoyed the reference
I get behind a lot of things that are bad in contempoary MtG, but people really think a couple LGBT characters that are revealed as such only subtly and most of whom exist only in a couple bits of supplementary online reading are a problem with Magic? Really?
You're just making up things to be upset about now.
The difference between representation and pandering to mismanaged cultural marxism is that when you care about diversity you don't swipe your "non-normative" characters off the table as soon as they've net you enough notes/retweets/likes/upvotes.
Why are there people who have an emotional connection to Teferi nearly a decade after his death but Kaya came and went?
It has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with how much WotC cared about them in the first place.
The difference between representation and pandering to mismanaged cultural marxism is that when you care about diversity you don't swipe your "non-normative" characters off the table as soon as they've net you enough notes/retweets/likes/upvotes.
Why are there people who have an emotional connection to Teferi nearly a decade after his death but Kaya came and went?
It has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with how much WotC cared about them in the first place.
I think part of the reason has to do with Wizards putting more money in the writters. The same compairson can be made of Karn, Urza, Yawgamoth, Squee and Mishra. The story/s and lore were just better written more cared about in the old days.
Why are there people who have an emotional connection to Teferi nearly a decade after his death but Kaya came and went?
It has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with how much WotC cared about them in the first place.
Like many players, I never really followed the stories. I became endeared to some of the old characters via their references on cool and interesting cards. With newer characters it feels like they are trying to this backwards - as though the character references are expected to bolster interest in the cards, not the characters, which presupposes that the characters are interesting.
When the new cast came out in 2007, it felt very forced. As if they were pointedly renewing the game's premise, and expecting me to care about a bunch of pop-culture-esque personas they were shoving down our throats. I felt we went from MTG to MTNG (Magic - The Next Generation).
Maybe the characters are fine - maybe they never grew on me because the card design has been such a disappointment? (The walkers themselves are almost entirely boring midrange value engines). Maybe I just resented the characters being pushed from the background to the foreground?
If you've only read Jace quotes from the cards you'd think he's an insufferable too cool for school Gary Stu anime protagonist, like Ertai on steroids. But it turns out he's meant to be a mousy nerd pushover with low self esteem who'd get beat in a fistfight by a newborn kitten and is afraid of using his telekinesis to it's full potential.
If you've only read Jace quotes from the cards you'd think he's an insufferable too cool for school Gary Stu anime protagonist, like Ertai on steroids. But it turns out he's meant to be a mousy nerd pushover with low self esteem who'd get beat in a fistfight by a newborn kitten and is afraid of using his telekinesis to it's full potential.
One more example of WotC's split personality.
Wait wait wait. Don't go condemning WotC for this, because they're actually DEAD ON. How many neckbeards/serial killers/psychos fit that exact description? They're shrimpy, shy, socially awkward losers on the outside, but if you listen to their manifestos, forum posts, youtube comments, etc., you learn that they have these grandiose visions of how they think they really are. I think Jace is simply Magic's neckbeard planeswalker.
Except Jace doesn't think ***** about himself. He's so insecure he uses illusion magic to look taller, looks up to Gideon like a child does his older brother and lets Liliana do whatever she wants with him with no pretense or hope of control over the situation.
It's not clever character depth, it's flavor text writers and fiction writers writing different characters who are supposed to be the same person. Not even comics are so bad, sure you can read mental case Batman (Miller) and tortured soul Batman (Snyder), but those weren't being written at exactly the same time and might actually be form different universes/timelines.
The difference between representation and pandering to mismanaged cultural marxism is that when you care about diversity you don't swipe your "non-normative" characters off the table as soon as they've net you enough notes/retweets/likes/upvotes.
Why are there people who have an emotional connection to Teferi nearly a decade after his death but Kaya came and went?
It has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with how much WotC cared about them in the first place.
It is kinda unfair to compare Teferi to Kaya since Teferi was a major character for a couple of years (and also still alive fyi) and Kaya was just introduced less then a year ago.
I'd also say most of the diverse character get "swiped off the table" at the same rate as any other character in magic does.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
This is not the place to make sociopolitical statements. This is a Magic forum, not a political debate forum. If you're looking for political debate, thesesitesoughttogetyoustarted. Thanks, Osieorb18
Right now the big problem magic has is being too dependant on the competitive scene to even stay alive. The lack of tools for players to find and play fair games of magic on the casual level make it hard to play normal 60 card decks, as players who don't know each other could end up with one guy playing a standard tier deck and an older player playing a legacy deck. This lack of a good casual scene helped, though certainly isn't the main cause of, price inflation on cards primarily used in tournament play such as Engineered Explosives and Noble Hierarch, the lack of value in booster packs to players of all walks, etc.
I don't know, maybe the entire casual scene is just going to all go digital and leave paper magic in the dust. It certainly makes finding people to play against easier on the fly and can act as a digital gathering place for circles of friends.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Why are there people who have an emotional connection to Teferi nearly a decade after his death but Kaya came and went?
It has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with how much WotC cared about them in the first place.
Like many players, I never really followed the stories. I became endeared to some of the old characters via their references on cool and interesting cards. With newer characters it feels like they are trying to this backwards - as though the character references are expected to bolster interest in the cards, not the characters, which presupposes that the characters are interesting.
When the new cast came out in 2007, it felt very forced. As if they were pointedly renewing the game's premise, and expecting me to care about a bunch of pop-culture-esque personas they were shoving down our throats. I felt we went from MTG to MTNG (Magic - The Next Generation).
Maybe the characters are fine - maybe they never grew on me because the card design has been such a disappointment? (The walkers themselves are almost entirely boring midrange value engines). Maybe I just resented the characters being pushed from the background to the foreground?
That's how I got into the backstory as well. Now a lot of cards don't stand on their own but seem like screenshots from an already dull movie. The exceedingly weak flavor text doesn't help.
Idea for a more interesting story: maybe next we can go from MTNG to MTMNT and have Master Biomancer create a Meandering Towershell that's destroying the city so his turtle buddies have to grab some bad ass ninja weapons and try to stop him. They fail at first, due to internal conflicts, but then (right when they're about to give up) somebody gives a super sweet motivational speech and they realize everything is radical and kick the bad guy's butt in a super awesome epic battle! Plus there are probably some magic spells or Nicol Bolas or something involved, I don't know.
I just get so annoyed at how horrible the secondary market is for this game. You can't plan to buy anything on a set schedule because 60 USD worth of cards can go from a playset of two good cards to a single copy of one of those cards, or maybe half a playset of a single card.
And what the heck is someone going to do with two copies of a needed land card when a deck they are planning for requires 4? Also, why are the very backbone cards of competitive play and land cards not getting printed when people clearly want and need them at lower prices?
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Now a lot of cards don't stand on their own but seem like screenshots from an already dull movie. The exceedingly weak flavor text doesn't help.
I'm not sure if that's it.
I think the more subtle character references maybe just inspired more mystery. You see Tefari's Isle, Tefari's Response, Tefari's Puzzle Box, etc, and you eventually might get a little curious about Tefari. The new Walkers are/were heavily promoted. Almost like a laugh track trying to "force" you want into accepting something as being funny. So a card like Jace's Erasure or Jace's Sanctum they don't warm me up to this mysterious Jace character. I know exactly who Jace is (despite never reading or taking an interest) because they've plugged him so hard.
I don't care too much about the character's either way, but Jaya Balard, Yawgmoth, Freylise, etc all earned a soft space in my heart.
Yeah, i think that is wrong with magic today. In the old days, if you didn´t have a card, you substituted it with something else. You played with the cards you actually had. Now you cry for bannings or reprints.
The reason is deckbuilding. It used to be part of the skill as a magic player to build your own decks. Nowadays, most people just play whatever list won the last big event, and then cry about card prices because everyone else want to get those exact cards, too.
Netdecking has always been a thing, and I think that it's only become problematic more recently when quicker standard cycles, and proliferation of the internet "solves" the format too fast. They acknowledged this problem a while ago when they stopped posting all the daily decklists. So I guess they just delayed things by five years.
The old frames did a better job evoking the different... let's just call them "elementals".
In the examples you gave, the old green frame is paper-like, blue frame has a watery look, and artifact has a stone like appearance. The text box and the colored bordered work together, it's not just the text box. Couple this with the vastly different art styles from each artist and you have the sense that you're looking at pages of a tome intended for the target spell caster. Each page or "vision" recorded by someone else and you're learning then playing the spell.
It's obvious the designers keep heehawing over the design such as their treatment of lands like the classic Duals. But the intent seemed to be there.
The new frame did away with the stylized text boxes, shrunk the borders and added a sort of embossed frame. Even the artwork was modernized into a "wide screen" format and forced into a consistent style. To me, I'm just looking a futuristic viewscreen looking at the Discovery Channel. It doesn't feel like a collection of spells that survived the ages, but more like I'm using a Pokedex and all my stats and details are spoonfed to me. Devoid of any character. Look at the drawings of a Dodo bird. All of them, every single one is an artistic rendition of an extinct species drawn from differing viewpoints and skillsets. That's what magic should feel like. Understanding the story of Urza and Mishra through word of mouth and lore. Tainted by generations and altered through distance.. Instead we get Jace spoonfed to us like watching the six O'clock news. Less mystical and more "exact". Science and technology instead of Magic.
The different versions of Ornithopter is a great example of something whimsical and magical morphing into something we see every day.
I 100% agree with everything this person says. I have not been playing since 1994. I have been playing since Onslaught, which was the newest set that was out when I started playing, so it is not like I was using the old format for 10 years. However, I can comfortably say that the old format looked way better, evoked a feeling of fantasy and whimsy. The new card face looks generic, dumb, too modern, and is more about graphic design than anything else. Graphically it is beautiful, but IMO the old card face looked better for this particular game. The old cards had an old time-esque feel, I don't know how to explain it, but they were better, IMO. They looked great and were characteristic of the game.
I miss it. If they went back to the old card face, they would get a lot of my money. Maybe they will some day. I understand you have to change and innovate to keep making money, that's why the modern mustang does not like like they did in 67.
TL;DR I miss the old card face as it was characteristic of Magic. If I stopped playing at Onslaught, did not keep up with MTG in the mean time, and I bought a pack of the new set, I would be very confused (not even considering getting one of the new masterpiece cards, which I am OK with since they are super rare. )
If there is a problem with today's art is that it doesn't have a signature feel to it. They homogenized into mediocrity and the great pieces stand out because they come from great artists that can make the dullest crumb glitter.
You know when something's from Warhammer, or WoW, or Pathfinder. But Magic art might as well be from D&D or concept art for the next Elder Scrolls game.
I agree, the new art seems very generic, I miss the diverse styles of the old sets and it was easy to say "I can tell by the art that this is a ::insert artist:: card". It is not easy to do anymore, very generic. The art was one of the things that got me into MTG.
They would have nuked the card backs ages ago if it wasn't a massive complication to do so. So they just changed the half they could.
Why would they do that? How would that even work? I guess it would force people to use protectors...I just made the switch to card protectors a few months back, up until them I was playing my cards raw.
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My own hypothesis is that they did the rarity by power because they wanted to make it easier on players to know what the "best" cards are supposed to be in draft / limited while also encouraging more scratch off ticket purchases from players.
Outside of booster drafts, booster packs appeal to a specific demographic of players that overlaps with the repack market, and that is the group that dreams of owning a power 9 but doesn't have the money immediately available to buy the card outright. Instead of saving up for the single, they jump the gun and gamble with buying packs, being blinded by their own overwhelming desires. People don't realize how much money they tend to waste buying things like booster packs, tacos, random food items from stores, etc via impulse. It can often add up to 50-100 usd or more a week depending on the person, and I know during MtG spoiler season my own impulse spending usually adds up to 50+ usd in a two week period easily if the flavor is good.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
UB Wight Phantasm
RB Burn
UR Faerie Rites of Initiation
Legacy:
R Burn
CG-Post
On the topic of boosters, again. Yes, it's mythics that ruin booster values. Not entirely because you have to open a Mythic to make the booster's value, but because SCG, CFB, T&T, etc. have to open over a hundred boosters to get a specific mythic and they need to open dozens of playsets of said mythics just in the first weekend post-release to cover their presales. Of course no rogue cards are gonna be any value when there's so damn many around, even multi-format playables like Shambling Vents can't go past a $5 and that's just SCG trying to recoup money wherever they can because you can find Vents for half that.
The power level of the Celtic block and original Zendikar were very high. I recall my elf deck that I built on a budget was strong enough to go toe to toe with a standard deck from BFZ/Kahns. Part of the reason is the speed of the game has been altered in standard to try and encourage turn 5-8 wins over turn 4, not so much to differentiate the format from modern, but because it makes the game more attractive to players and lets more cards become playable.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
With these cards I have collected over the years I have built a cube for my friends to play and its a lot of fun, occasionally breaking out a commander/edh session.
My opinion with today's magic:
The new mechanics are on the whole pretty cool and fun, although it would be nice if they released some sets where new mechanics were not introduced at all. I feel that the new commander products are especially guilty of this as that is not a place for new mechanics, it should be a place for theme and flavour to be the focus.
The artwork remains really good if a little too stream-lined today, some quirkiness here and there is always nice to look at.
The Masters series, Archenemeny and Conspiracy are completely irrelevant to me. The masters series are overpriced and frankly I'd rather see the core set return instead of this, I don't play Archenemey & Conspiracy much like some of the commander product is too obsessed with creating mechanics for a format which don't work elsewhere in magic, which is useless and a waste for me a casual player. Sovereign's Realm is a really cool card with nice artwork, but I can't use it outside of a draft.
The themes MtG are coming out with currently are really great. We as a group have liked the exploration of zendikar, the return to Ravinca, lovecraftian, invention, and egypt so I have no issue witht he theme.
Creatures dominating is becoming a little stale, fortunately I can alter my cube to combat that so not as much of an issue for us, but I could see it being a problem for others.
Anyway just my thoughts.
Mr Barrin this Cube is on Fire!! - http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/80149
WG Kei Takahashi: Is in Charge Now !? (EDH) WG
My current trade binder.
"People most likely to cry "troll" are those who can't fathom holding a position for reasons unrelated to how they want to be perceived"
The way I see it:
Chris Cocks wants an e-sport.
Corporate wants a superhero movie.
MaRo wants clogged boards and topdeck wars.
Development wants people to forget constructed is a thing.
Sales wants to kill everything that doesn't sell in-print booster pallets.
<Creative's just a character that has vitiligio and identifies as an attack thopter from filling it's tumblr SJW bingo.>
No wonder nobody is getting what they want, the company's more Split than Kevin Crumb.
Agreed. And since I just watched that movie last night for the first time, I greatly enjoyed the reference
You're just making up things to be upset about now.
Why are there people who have an emotional connection to Teferi nearly a decade after his death but Kaya came and went?
I think part of the reason has to do with Wizards putting more money in the writters. The same compairson can be made of Karn, Urza, Yawgamoth, Squee and Mishra. The story/s and lore were just better written more cared about in the old days.
Like many players, I never really followed the stories. I became endeared to some of the old characters via their references on cool and interesting cards. With newer characters it feels like they are trying to this backwards - as though the character references are expected to bolster interest in the cards, not the characters, which presupposes that the characters are interesting.
When the new cast came out in 2007, it felt very forced. As if they were pointedly renewing the game's premise, and expecting me to care about a bunch of pop-culture-esque personas they were shoving down our throats. I felt we went from MTG to MTNG (Magic - The Next Generation).
Maybe the characters are fine - maybe they never grew on me because the card design has been such a disappointment? (The walkers themselves are almost entirely boring midrange value engines). Maybe I just resented the characters being pushed from the background to the foreground?
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
One more example of WotC's split personality.
It's not clever character depth, it's flavor text writers and fiction writers writing different characters who are supposed to be the same person. Not even comics are so bad, sure you can read mental case Batman (Miller) and tortured soul Batman (Snyder), but those weren't being written at exactly the same time and might actually be form different universes/timelines.
It is kinda unfair to compare Teferi to Kaya since Teferi was a major character for a couple of years (and also still alive fyi) and Kaya was just introduced less then a year ago.
I'd also say most of the diverse character get "swiped off the table" at the same rate as any other character in magic does.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I don't know, maybe the entire casual scene is just going to all go digital and leave paper magic in the dust. It certainly makes finding people to play against easier on the fly and can act as a digital gathering place for circles of friends.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
That's how I got into the backstory as well. Now a lot of cards don't stand on their own but seem like screenshots from an already dull movie. The exceedingly weak flavor text doesn't help.
Idea for a more interesting story: maybe next we can go from MTNG to MTMNT and have Master Biomancer create a Meandering Towershell that's destroying the city so his turtle buddies have to grab some bad ass ninja weapons and try to stop him. They fail at first, due to internal conflicts, but then (right when they're about to give up) somebody gives a super sweet motivational speech and they realize everything is radical and kick the bad guy's butt in a super awesome epic battle! Plus there are probably some magic spells or Nicol Bolas or something involved, I don't know.
And what the heck is someone going to do with two copies of a needed land card when a deck they are planning for requires 4? Also, why are the very backbone cards of competitive play and land cards not getting printed when people clearly want and need them at lower prices?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'm not sure if that's it.
I think the more subtle character references maybe just inspired more mystery. You see Tefari's Isle, Tefari's Response, Tefari's Puzzle Box, etc, and you eventually might get a little curious about Tefari. The new Walkers are/were heavily promoted. Almost like a laugh track trying to "force" you want into accepting something as being funny. So a card like Jace's Erasure or Jace's Sanctum they don't warm me up to this mysterious Jace character. I know exactly who Jace is (despite never reading or taking an interest) because they've plugged him so hard.
I don't care too much about the character's either way, but Jaya Balard, Yawgmoth, Freylise, etc all earned a soft space in my heart.
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
Netdecking has always been a thing, and I think that it's only become problematic more recently when quicker standard cycles, and proliferation of the internet "solves" the format too fast. They acknowledged this problem a while ago when they stopped posting all the daily decklists. So I guess they just delayed things by five years.
I 100% agree with everything this person says. I have not been playing since 1994. I have been playing since Onslaught, which was the newest set that was out when I started playing, so it is not like I was using the old format for 10 years. However, I can comfortably say that the old format looked way better, evoked a feeling of fantasy and whimsy. The new card face looks generic, dumb, too modern, and is more about graphic design than anything else. Graphically it is beautiful, but IMO the old card face looked better for this particular game. The old cards had an old time-esque feel, I don't know how to explain it, but they were better, IMO. They looked great and were characteristic of the game.
I miss it. If they went back to the old card face, they would get a lot of my money. Maybe they will some day. I understand you have to change and innovate to keep making money, that's why the modern mustang does not like like they did in 67.
TL;DR I miss the old card face as it was characteristic of Magic. If I stopped playing at Onslaught, did not keep up with MTG in the mean time, and I bought a pack of the new set, I would be very confused (not even considering getting one of the new masterpiece cards, which I am OK with since they are super rare. )
I agree, the new art seems very generic, I miss the diverse styles of the old sets and it was easy to say "I can tell by the art that this is a ::insert artist:: card". It is not easy to do anymore, very generic. The art was one of the things that got me into MTG.
Why would they do that? How would that even work? I guess it would force people to use protectors...I just made the switch to card protectors a few months back, up until them I was playing my cards raw.