If they really wanted more people to play standard, just put eternal staples as prizes instead of more standard cards. They don't even need to be Tarmogoyfs or LoTV, path or IoK would probably be sufficient.
I see lots of people here who are angry. I see people who are frustrated that standard is getting more support while their format is ignored. I see people who feel somewhat vindicated(?) that this apparent "move of desperation" validates their their dim views on WotC's business practices. I see people who mourn for the halcyon days when these promos would be associated with giant money mythics. I can even see some people lamenting the general play direction that standard has taken.
With that said... is anyone out there claiming that this program will make the game actively worse?
I mean, the worst-case scenario I could see here is the risk of accidentally reinforcing bad behaviors if attendance picks up... and that's it.
This is MTGS fool.
People here don't play Magic, they netdeck and pat themselves on the back.
It's all about feeling smart, not having fun or being good on this subforum.
I see lots of people here who are angry. I see people who are frustrated that standard is getting more support while their format is ignored. I see people who feel somewhat vindicated(?) that this apparent "move of desperation" validates their their dim views on WotC's business practices. I see people who mourn for the halcyon days when these promos would be associated with giant money mythics. I can even see some people lamenting the general play direction that standard has taken.
With that said... is anyone out there claiming that this program will make the game actively worse?
I mean, the worst-case scenario I could see here is the risk of accidentally reinforcing bad behaviors if attendance picks up... and that's it.
This is MTGS fool.
People here don't play Magic, they netdeck and pat themselves on the back.
It's all about feeling smart, not having fun or being good on this subforum.
You aren't alone on feeling that some of the community here is a bit out of touch with the general public. Ultimately, MtG is a game much like World of Warcraft, as in the only thing that can kill it is itself. Unfortunately, I feel that is exactly what has been happening since probably the start of September 2016 after the massive number of sets that were released. My own opinion is that they had a complete management meltdown, poor communications with the player base, and have the greed monster at Wizards HQ to blame for their woes. To make matters worse, even though they realized the problem was happening, their company is so slow to react that they didn't get a statement out until the past month and due to how they handle their print runs, can't turn the ship around for at least 2 years as far as set printings go. They might be able help the situation if they set Modern masters 2017 down to a 150 msrp and print the hell out of it, but I don't think even that is going to restore faith in the game that they basically butchered.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
Maybe just maybe this is simply a reward for Standard regulars who were coming anyway. A lot of the complaints about WoTC over the last few years have been that they only care about trying to get new people in the door adn dumbing down the game. A promotion that will mainly be for those who are regulars is just nice.
Big publicly traded companies don't just do things to "reward" their customers without a good reason for doing so. Giving away free ***** for no reason tends to sit badly with shareholders. The most likely answer is that they believe that Standard attendance is down and are offering incentives to bring people back in.
Is this a bad thing? Of course not, it shows that they recognize that there is a problem and are working to address it. However, some of us have been saying for a while that their short-sighted business practices and decisions were going to hurt the long term health of the game, and it seems to be coming to pass lately. The big question is whether they plan on fixing their game through an overhaul of their business strategy, or by just taking the band-aid approach of slapping down a few heavy handed bans and waving shiny promos in our faces.
Well, the main problem is that they didn't listen to the community on what people wanted to see reprinted and instead reprinted things that either people weren't even thinking about at the time or printing completely new cards that no one was asking for. Conspiracy 2 and eternal masters did provide reprintings that helped the secondary market a bit, but with modern being popular, people wanted more modern cards, not more legacy playables. That and they really could have reprinted more legacy staples in the commander decks and simply changed how they sold the decks to resolve the truename nemesis fiasco.
Another problem they probably had no idea about is that the community into legacy and modern just don't crack packs. All those pack openings have to go through the limited / draft crowd outside of stores cracking boxes to sell singles, so when they printed so many sets so close together they oversaturated the market and people just ignored certain products. By the time they brought the Planechase anthology out as a VPN product people were already dealing with a re-release of eternal masters, which bombed the price on those well down from their original 250+ price tag.
How can they fix Magic? Reprint the old cards that worked and that people love would be a good start. Something else would be to put more money into building places that are convenient, safe, and fun environments for players to actually get together at and possibly build more time friendly paper tournaments for older players on tighter time tables or with jobs.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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 see lots of people here who are angry. I see people who are frustrated that standard is getting more support while their format is ignored. I see people who feel somewhat vindicated(?) that this apparent "move of desperation" validates their their dim views on WotC's business practices. I see people who mourn for the halcyon days when these promos would be associated with giant money mythics. I can even see some people lamenting the general play direction that standard has taken.
With that said... is anyone out there claiming that this program will make the game actively worse?
I mean, the worst-case scenario I could see here is the risk of accidentally reinforcing bad behaviors if attendance picks up... and that's it.
This is MTGS fool.
People here don't play Magic, they netdeck and pat themselves on the back.
It's all about feeling smart, not having fun or being good on this subforum.
Did... did you just seriously use "netdeck" as an attempt at an offensive buzzword? DesolatorMagic, is that you? If you hate the place so much, why do you keep coming? And don't you know that whining this hard about this hyperbolic attitude you are as much of a whiner as them?
EDIT: nevermind, seeing your post history I see you're a renowned troll around here.
They are reprinting the cards, I started to type up the list but its a waste of time.
Getting more people cracking the Masters series packs would be good, but they are being reprinted. I own a ton of reprints.
You are right, they are reprinting cards, a shame that they are trickling them out and most of them in $10 packs. Commander is about the only product that has been decent in this regard, with Conspiracy being the 2nd best. Masters sets have had some major flaw in them in one way or another, either low print run, unneeded rarity upgrades, booster cost, or reprint choices. That's not to mention how Duel Decks have been terrible for years now, I mean in Niss vs. Ob Nixilis the best reprint was Crop Rotation.
2. Eliminate mythic rares. That fact that you are telling us what is very rare destroys the games trading card aspect.
I do agree that the advent of mythic rares was a big factor in messing up Standard, even if it didn't mess it up overnight. It raised the barrier for entry into the format while simultaneously skewing the EV of every pack and driving down the value of regular rares. Sure, in WotC's eyes it was worth it because the whales spend more, now. But it also means that the minnows are left without much of an entry point into competitive play.
I would actually be happy to see masterpieces totally supplant mythic rares. If you're going to put lottery tickets into packs, don't make them Standard legal. Now you have to spend less to build a Standard deck, but you still have a chase element that will drive the whales to crack packs.
Change the role of Mythical Rare from being elusive cards to be alternate art of select Rare cards.
2. Eliminate mythic rares. That fact that you are telling us what is very rare destroys the games trading card aspect.
I do agree that the advent of mythic rares was a big factor in messing up Standard, even if it didn't mess it up overnight. It raised the barrier for entry into the format while simultaneously skewing the EV of every pack and driving down the value of regular rares. Sure, in WotC's eyes it was worth it because the whales spend more, now. But it also means that the minnows are left without much of an entry point into competitive play.
I would actually be happy to see masterpieces totally supplant mythic rares. If you're going to put lottery tickets into packs, don't make them Standard legal. Now you have to spend less to build a Standard deck, but you still have a chase element that will drive the whales to crack packs.
Change the role of Mythical Rare from being elusive cards to be alternate art of select Rare cards.
^This. Mythic rares should really never be the only copies of lynch pin cards for standard. Having the rarity be changed to being basically super rare alt-arts and fun nuche cards would mean that for the most part mythics would still be valuable, they just wouldn't be necessary at all for standard and thus average standard deck prices will decrease meaning that the format is more attractive to both existing and new players. By the way, standard should ALWAYS be attractive to new players. It's essentially the default format of FNM for a reason.
Also, on the promos, as someone who has started going to events more often, these are sick. I want a playsst of all of them.
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"Pop in, find a dragon, roast a dragon."
-Chandra Nalaar
There is a problem with that idea. It would force Planeswalkers to be Rare. And that would make Limited unbalanced. WotC designs new sets for Limited first and foremost.
There is a problem with that idea. It would force Planeswalkers to be Rare. And that would make Limited unbalanced. WotC designs new sets for Limited first and foremost.
I would argue that WotC should have never introduced Planeswalkers to begin with, because the original game design by Richard Garfield didn't support that card type. They had to add weird rules baggage when that card type was introduced, such as the player damage redirection rule and being able to attack opposing Planeswalkers directly while still not being able to attack opposing creatures directly. (WotC tried to fix that problem using the Fight mechanic and similar "exchange damage" mechanics).
There is a problem with that idea. It would force Planeswalkers to be Rare. And that would make Limited unbalanced. WotC designs new sets for Limited first and foremost.
I would argue that WotC should have never introduced Planeswalkers to begin with, because the original game design by Richard Garfield didn't support that card type. They had to add weird rules baggage when that card type was introduced, such as the player damage redirection rule and being able to attack opposing Planeswalkers directly while still not being able to attack opposing creatures directly. (WotC tried to fix that problem using the Fight mechanic and similar "exchange damage" mechanics).
You can feel any way you want about planeswalkers, but don't act like the game that Garfield produced was some piece of inviolable perfection. Magic has undergone many, many changes, big and small, good and bad, long before the planeswalker card type was introduced. It's not even the first change that involved card types.
And all of that is ignoring that Richard Garfield invented Planeswalker cards
(as Building cards that didn't make it in RAV, but that's where it started).
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
The crux of the matter is that what is killing standard is their horrible set design due to their absolutely idiotic attempts to keep reprinting to a minimal. Now, I'm not against having a depowered MtG format compared to the older format where lightning bolt and Blood Moon existed, but the entire reason they depowered / rebalanced spells to begin with was that they could only create so many different viable cards in that sort of environment. However, even if they keep shifting the environment, that permutation of different spells eventually dries up, so then they have to start finding new naming conventions, comboing abilities together, etc, just to make new cards that aren't effectively reprints of older cards. That and if they keep shifting the environment, I'm not really sure how they can say they can learn from their past set mistakes. Even if they did, the power levels have changed and what would be perfectly fine in a past set may not be okay in an environment where perhaps direct damage isn't as heavily supported or everything is printed at a higher CMC value to slow the game down.
Is it good they are offering more promotional items to players at FNM? Well, yes that is what people have wanted for ages, but the issue is that they are basically trying to pay players to show up to a game that many just don't want to play right now. What we really want are these promos and a welcoming format to play in.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
Is it good they are offering more promotional items to players at FNM? Well, yes that is what people have wanted for ages, but the issue is that they are basically trying to pay players to show up to a game that many just don't want to play right now. What we really want are these promos and a welcoming format to play in.
There are actually people out there who want to play standard. Throwing them a freebie is a nice thing to do regardless of what you (and I) think of the quality of the current format.
I don`t think the payoff is big enough to "trick" people into playing standard. Not a lot of people are going to go "ugh, I don`t really want to play standard, but I guess I`ll do it anyway, because I just have to have that bonus Game Trail". It`s like a next level FNM promo, where it`s not at all the reason to go, but when I get that Noose Constrictor in my hand, I go "uh ok, cool I guess, thanks".
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Is it good they are offering more promotional items to players at FNM? Well, yes that is what people have wanted for ages, but the issue is that they are basically trying to pay players to show up to a game that many just don't want to play right now. What we really want are these promos and a welcoming format to play in.
There are actually people out there who want to play standard. Throwing them a freebie is a nice thing to do regardless of what you (and I) think of the quality of the current format.
I don`t think the payoff is big enough to "trick" people into playing standard. Not a lot of people are going to go "ugh, I don`t really want to play standard, but I guess I`ll do it anyway, because I just have to have that bonus Game Trail". It`s like a next level FNM promo, where it`s not at all the reason to go, but when I get that Noose Constrictor in my hand, I go "uh ok, cool I guess, thanks".
There's always people who want to play standard regardless of what is going on, and standard can still be fine if the meta is different locally. I just feel like wizards wants to win back the people that don't like the current standard, and they just can't do that using the promo system with a lukewarm land cycle.
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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!
And all of that is ignoring that Richard Garfield invented Planeswalker cards
(as Building cards that didn't make it in RAV, but that's where it started).
Ah, I did not know that Richard Garfield had a concept of a Planeswalker card. I thought that was not in his original designs or in the planning while he was still at WotC.
To be fair, if you rule out fetches and shocks, the BFZ duals is one of the most attractive land cycles we've seen in a long time. They are EDH staples and could potentially be ubiquitous in some future format. The rest of the post I agree with; if they actually want to make bonus cards a reason to play standard, they need to bring out bigger guns than BFZ duals with unnoticably different art. But I really don't think they expect people to grind a format they don't already like just to get these cards.
These BFZ duals must be some of the recent cards that have received the higher number of versions in such a short timespan. They are still Standard legal for almost a year, and you can choose from 1) regular pack nonfoils 2) regular pack foils 3) prerelease promos 4) expeditions 5) alternate art optimistic standard grinder program promos. And that's before you introduce the language variable. If you really want to turn some heads, I endorse Korean prerelease promos
ATTACHMENTS
lands
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
I have a few cards in foreign languages (mostly Japanese),
and it gets annoying explaining what the card does to the unfamiliar.
It's especially problematic when I lend a deck out.
Something like Scalding Tarn is so ubiquitous it's probably fine,
but an unfamiliar player staring down a Japanese Soothsaying is likely to be very confused.
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
There is a problem with that idea. It would force Planeswalkers to be Rare. And that would make Limited unbalanced. WotC designs new sets for Limited first and foremost.
It would only be unbalanced because PWs right now are pushed.
As others have said, answers exist. Its just that the risk of playing a PW almost always outweighs any possible answer, because they're so good if your opponent can't draw their answer in time.
If you dialed back PWs so they were merely "really good", "playable", and "often among the best cards in a set" rather than "categorically light-years better than 95% of the other cards in any given set" then you would have no issues with Limited. But, alas.
FWIW, I think the idea of alt-art rares is... OK... but it doesn't go the distance. (Many? / most?) players don't care about deck-pimping, so an alt-art rare is going to be more of a "huh, cool" moment, rather than a reason in itself to crack another booster box. No, I think you want Masterpieces in there so that you can print crazy-powerful, big-money chase cards for formats OTHER THAN STANDARD. I mean, think about it... how many brand-new players are cracking boxes to open Masterpieces? Not too many, I'd wager. It's your enfranchised players who are likely to have Modern or Eternal decks anyway. Let them drive the chase card economy. And keep Standard playable for new players by eliminating mythic rares.
Also, gotta say, for a card type that's supposedly meant to be the face of Magic these days, PWs are doing a pretty crappy job of that at mythic. Bump them down to rare so players get a better chance to see them. And again, leave mythic for the dogs. It has always been an imperfect concept, and it's time for it to go, IMHO.
I have a few cards in foreign languages (mostly Japanese),
and it gets annoying explaining what the card does to the unfamiliar.
It's especially problematic when I lend a deck out.
Something like Scalding Tarn is so ubiquitous it's probably fine,
but an unfamiliar player staring down a Japanese Soothsaying is likely to be very confused.
I do the exact same thing, I only do foreign languages on cards that everyone should know, like Lightning Bolt, Tarmogoyf, Mana Leak, shocklands and so on. I played a Spanish Aven Mindcensor for a while because I couldn`t find an English one, and that led to some awkward and unfun situations.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
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This is MTGS fool.
People here don't play Magic, they netdeck and pat themselves on the back.
It's all about feeling smart, not having fun or being good on this subforum.
You aren't alone on feeling that some of the community here is a bit out of touch with the general public. Ultimately, MtG is a game much like World of Warcraft, as in the only thing that can kill it is itself. Unfortunately, I feel that is exactly what has been happening since probably the start of September 2016 after the massive number of sets that were released. My own opinion is that they had a complete management meltdown, poor communications with the player base, and have the greed monster at Wizards HQ to blame for their woes. To make matters worse, even though they realized the problem was happening, their company is so slow to react that they didn't get a statement out until the past month and due to how they handle their print runs, can't turn the ship around for at least 2 years as far as set printings go. They might be able help the situation if they set Modern masters 2017 down to a 150 msrp and print the hell out of it, but I don't think even that is going to restore faith in the game that they basically butchered.
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!
Big publicly traded companies don't just do things to "reward" their customers without a good reason for doing so. Giving away free ***** for no reason tends to sit badly with shareholders. The most likely answer is that they believe that Standard attendance is down and are offering incentives to bring people back in.
Is this a bad thing? Of course not, it shows that they recognize that there is a problem and are working to address it. However, some of us have been saying for a while that their short-sighted business practices and decisions were going to hurt the long term health of the game, and it seems to be coming to pass lately. The big question is whether they plan on fixing their game through an overhaul of their business strategy, or by just taking the band-aid approach of slapping down a few heavy handed bans and waving shiny promos in our faces.
Another problem they probably had no idea about is that the community into legacy and modern just don't crack packs. All those pack openings have to go through the limited / draft crowd outside of stores cracking boxes to sell singles, so when they printed so many sets so close together they oversaturated the market and people just ignored certain products. By the time they brought the Planechase anthology out as a VPN product people were already dealing with a re-release of eternal masters, which bombed the price on those well down from their original 250+ price tag.
How can they fix Magic? Reprint the old cards that worked and that people love would be a good start. Something else would be to put more money into building places that are convenient, safe, and fun environments for players to actually get together at and possibly build more time friendly paper tournaments for older players on tighter time tables or with jobs.
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!
Getting more people cracking the Masters series packs would be good, but they are being reprinted. I own a ton of reprints.
Spirits
Did... did you just seriously use "netdeck" as an attempt at an offensive buzzword? DesolatorMagic, is that you? If you hate the place so much, why do you keep coming? And don't you know that whining this hard about this hyperbolic attitude you are as much of a whiner as them?
EDIT: nevermind, seeing your post history I see you're a renowned troll around here.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
You are right, they are reprinting cards, a shame that they are trickling them out and most of them in $10 packs. Commander is about the only product that has been decent in this regard, with Conspiracy being the 2nd best. Masters sets have had some major flaw in them in one way or another, either low print run, unneeded rarity upgrades, booster cost, or reprint choices. That's not to mention how Duel Decks have been terrible for years now, I mean in Niss vs. Ob Nixilis the best reprint was Crop Rotation.
Change the role of Mythical Rare from being elusive cards to be alternate art of select Rare cards.
^This. Mythic rares should really never be the only copies of lynch pin cards for standard. Having the rarity be changed to being basically super rare alt-arts and fun nuche cards would mean that for the most part mythics would still be valuable, they just wouldn't be necessary at all for standard and thus average standard deck prices will decrease meaning that the format is more attractive to both existing and new players. By the way, standard should ALWAYS be attractive to new players. It's essentially the default format of FNM for a reason.
Also, on the promos, as someone who has started going to events more often, these are sick. I want a playsst of all of them.
-Chandra Nalaar
My only disappointment with these is that we only get 1 lol... Best of luck trading for the other 19 tho
I would argue that WotC should have never introduced Planeswalkers to begin with, because the original game design by Richard Garfield didn't support that card type. They had to add weird rules baggage when that card type was introduced, such as the player damage redirection rule and being able to attack opposing Planeswalkers directly while still not being able to attack opposing creatures directly. (WotC tried to fix that problem using the Fight mechanic and similar "exchange damage" mechanics).
You can feel any way you want about planeswalkers, but don't act like the game that Garfield produced was some piece of inviolable perfection. Magic has undergone many, many changes, big and small, good and bad, long before the planeswalker card type was introduced. It's not even the first change that involved card types.
(as Building cards that didn't make it in RAV, but that's where it started).
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
Is it good they are offering more promotional items to players at FNM? Well, yes that is what people have wanted for ages, but the issue is that they are basically trying to pay players to show up to a game that many just don't want to play right now. What we really want are these promos and a welcoming format to play in.
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 don`t think the payoff is big enough to "trick" people into playing standard. Not a lot of people are going to go "ugh, I don`t really want to play standard, but I guess I`ll do it anyway, because I just have to have that bonus Game Trail". It`s like a next level FNM promo, where it`s not at all the reason to go, but when I get that Noose Constrictor in my hand, I go "uh ok, cool I guess, thanks".
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
There's always people who want to play standard regardless of what is going on, and standard can still be fine if the meta is different locally. I just feel like wizards wants to win back the people that don't like the current standard, and they just can't do that using the promo system with a lukewarm land cycle.
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!
Ah, I did not know that Richard Garfield had a concept of a Planeswalker card. I thought that was not in his original designs or in the planning while he was still at WotC.
These BFZ duals must be some of the recent cards that have received the higher number of versions in such a short timespan. They are still Standard legal for almost a year, and you can choose from 1) regular pack nonfoils 2) regular pack foils 3) prerelease promos 4) expeditions 5) alternate art optimistic standard grinder program promos. And that's before you introduce the language variable. If you really want to turn some heads, I endorse Korean prerelease promos
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
I have a few cards in foreign languages (mostly Japanese),
and it gets annoying explaining what the card does to the unfamiliar.
It's especially problematic when I lend a deck out.
Something like Scalding Tarn is so ubiquitous it's probably fine,
but an unfamiliar player staring down a Japanese Soothsaying is likely to be very confused.
Reprint Stasis!
Control needs more love.
EDH:
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Melek, Izzet Paragon
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Bruna, Light of Alabaster
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight
Rhys the Redeemed
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Sen Triplets
The Mimeoplasm
WUBRGSliver OverlordGRBUW
WUBRGSliver Hivelord(Superfriends)GRBUW
As others have said, answers exist. Its just that the risk of playing a PW almost always outweighs any possible answer, because they're so good if your opponent can't draw their answer in time.
If you dialed back PWs so they were merely "really good", "playable", and "often among the best cards in a set" rather than "categorically light-years better than 95% of the other cards in any given set" then you would have no issues with Limited. But, alas.
FWIW, I think the idea of alt-art rares is... OK... but it doesn't go the distance. (Many? / most?) players don't care about deck-pimping, so an alt-art rare is going to be more of a "huh, cool" moment, rather than a reason in itself to crack another booster box. No, I think you want Masterpieces in there so that you can print crazy-powerful, big-money chase cards for formats OTHER THAN STANDARD. I mean, think about it... how many brand-new players are cracking boxes to open Masterpieces? Not too many, I'd wager. It's your enfranchised players who are likely to have Modern or Eternal decks anyway. Let them drive the chase card economy. And keep Standard playable for new players by eliminating mythic rares.
Also, gotta say, for a card type that's supposedly meant to be the face of Magic these days, PWs are doing a pretty crappy job of that at mythic. Bump them down to rare so players get a better chance to see them. And again, leave mythic for the dogs. It has always been an imperfect concept, and it's time for it to go, IMHO.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'