The reality is that we've come to the point where developers are stuck having to make more elaborate mouse traps to keep making new cards and not just renamings of past cards. Also no one likes planeswalkers. I'd rather have Gaea's Cradle or Memory Jar as an iconic set card than these bloated overcomplicated value engines.
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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!
Ultimatedly, we haven't actually heard players say these cards are too powerful and a reason not to play. We've been told it is so.
The only reason I've personally heard for people not wanting to play Magic (other than it's for nerds lol), is the cost of cards, particularily lands. People from other games are used to the bread and butter being inexpensive and the bombs being valuable, not the other way around.
I'm not all that surprised that modern R&D don't want to print these cards, they have their egos too (MaRo won't shut up about "helping" to make Force of Will and all he contributed was the name by his own account), of course they don't want their super creative and fun new creatures to be eclipsed by Terror or Lightning Bolt. Ironically this isn't having a possitive effect for said designs, genuinelly good cards like Ulamog will see play everywhere you can fit them, but Smuggler's Copter's non-rotating debut at my LGS involved the words "Welcome to Modern you piece of *****" as it was unceremoniusly bolted and forgotten about. A card that broke Standard, gone for one mana,
Just think about what a limited game would look like in a set with no creatures. How do you kill your opponent? Are you gonna have PW's that can make tokens? Grats whoever opens one. Are you gonna have super efficient mill cards? Lots of burn? None of that makes for fun, interactive limited games.
I see lots of ways, it would be a prison/control meta, cards like Dingus egg, Megrim, any mill effect, Counter wars, ecking out small systematic advantages not dropping bombs. Lets not forget burn or color hate like Karma! Loads of ways to win.
Except that they are the primary drivers of sales for new sets, according to Wizards. Planeswalkers sell sets, regardless of how some players personally view them.
Except that they are the primary drivers of sales for new sets, according to Wizards. Planeswalkers sell sets, regardless of how some players personally view them.
I wonder if people bought Khans of Tarkir packs in order to crack a Sarkhan Dragonspeaker or Sorin? Or maybe was there some other reason a lot of enfranchised players liked the set?
I get what you mean about Wizards saying Planeswalkers are primary drivers of sales, but I think it's BS. Strong and useful cards are enough of a primary driver in and of themselves.
The walkers drive set sales because of marketing. They illustrate a character that is important to the current sets story, which appeals to casual players. However, this could easily be solved with adding an iconic spell for each character and including a novel or comic with the characters in fat packs. The walker cards themselves are overcomplicated pieces of junk that probably shouldn't exist.
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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!
Ultimatedly, we haven't actually heard players say these cards are too powerful and a reason not to play. We've been told it is so.
The only reason I've personally heard for people not wanting to play Magic (other than it's for nerds lol), is the cost of cards, particularily lands. People from other games are used to the bread and butter being inexpensive and the bombs being valuable, not the other way around.
I'm not all that surprised that modern R&D don't want to print these cards, they have their egos too (MaRo won't shut up about "helping" to make Force of Will and all he contributed was the name by his own account), of course they don't want their super creative and fun new creatures to be eclipsed by Terror or Lightning Bolt. Ironically this isn't having a possitive effect for said designs, genuinelly good cards like Ulamog will see play everywhere you can fit them, but Smuggler's Copter's non-rotating debut at my LGS involved the words "Welcome to Modern you piece of *****" as it was unceremoniusly bolted and forgotten about. A card that broke Standard, gone for one mana,
About that....
Didn't maro say that Bolt ruins the design space of creatures <=3 toughness? If so, how were classic cards like Timmy, Black Knight, White Knight, Hypnotic Specter and multitude of other 3 or less toughness creatures remotely a threat? Those beasts were just as deadly and annoying in a universe with Lightning Bolt.
I lost many many games to the above creatures despite Bolt in the summer of '96. But the way some people write about Bolt, makes it seems like it's a game warping card.
Like Desert, a card that was barely a threat in the 90's is, not surprisingly, a game warping card in Amonkhet. Despite being a card that was just begging to be put in...
Whatever this new design team does, they need to design sets with a balanced meta of archetypes in mind.
We don't need Core Sets to reprint the most famous staples of Magic the gathering; Cards like....
Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are thankfully reprinted fairly often.
Black Lotus isn't but I don't expect the new test team to "fix" that.
Ultimatedly, we haven't actually heard players say these cards are too powerful and a reason not to play. We've been told it is so.
The only reason I've personally heard for people not wanting to play Magic (other than it's for nerds lol), is the cost of cards, particularily lands. People from other games are used to the bread and butter being inexpensive and the bombs being valuable, not the other way around.
I'm not all that surprised that modern R&D don't want to print these cards, they have their egos too (MaRo won't shut up about "helping" to make Force of Will and all he contributed was the name by his own account), of course they don't want their super creative and fun new creatures to be eclipsed by Terror or Lightning Bolt. Ironically this isn't having a possitive effect for said designs, genuinelly good cards like Ulamog will see play everywhere you can fit them, but Smuggler's Copter's non-rotating debut at my LGS involved the words "Welcome to Modern you piece of *****" as it was unceremoniusly bolted and forgotten about. A card that broke Standard, gone for one mana,
About that....
Didn't maro say that Bolt ruins the design space of creatures <=3 toughness? If so, how were classic cards like Timmy, Black Knight, White Knight, Hypnotic Specter and multitude of other 3 or less toughness creatures remotely a threat? Those beasts were just as deadly and annoying in a universe with Lightning Bolt.
I lost many many games to the above creatures despite Bolt in the summer of '96. But the way some people write about Bolt, makes it seems like it's a game warping card.
Like Desert, a card that was barely a threat in the 90's is, not surprisingly, a game warping card in Amonkhet. Despite being a card that was just begging to be put in...
Those creatures were played because they were the best creatures available, and you have to play creatures in order to win the game (well, most of the time). Desert wasn't played much because other answers to creatures were just that much more powerful. I don't know much about Tim, but Black Knight was probably good because neither Swords to Plowshares nor Terror could hit it, White Knight was part of an Armageddon build, and Hypnotic Specter was overpowered due to being part of a game that had Dark Ritual, meaning it was powerful due to the sheer power of noncreature spells, and the remainder of creatures were similarly powerful due to the interactions of major answers (and riding Armageddon too)
Desert wasn't played because the answers were so powerful back then, also, many players didn't play enough creatures for it to be worth the inclusion, this was due to creatures being a bad card type back then.
You can't just list cards of a different meta as an argument, you have to understand how they interacted with the rest of the game.
I played Geistflame during Innistrad Standard. The card was powerful due to being a meta call. But when I faced the kids in the after school club I worked at, the card was completely dead.
WotC found Desert overtly restrictive of what cards they could reasonably make. Contrary to Geistflame, Desert is a colorless answer that costs no mana to play (requiring a land drop + skipping one mana for one turn is not a very high cost for what it does). Additionally, Desert doesn't go to the grave after you activate it. As such it severely warps what kind of cards are useful in a standard environment. This does not mean that Desert is necessarily overpowered, because it isn't. There's a difference between making a balanced game and making a fun game. Land destruction at cmc 3 is reasonable power level-wise. That doesn't mean it's healthy for the format to reprint Stone Rain, because it does bad things for the meta (for different reasons than Desert does, of course). Yes, they could have printed Desert, but then every creature with 1 toughness (or 2 toughness in a format with weenie tokens) had to have many more resources invested. It's probably possible for WotC to craft an Amonkhet format with Desert, but that requires time, money and effort, and they reasoned it was simply not worth the amount of restrictions it brought to their card designs.
Except that they are the primary drivers of sales for new sets, according to Wizards. Planeswalkers sell sets, regardless of how some players personally view them.
I'm 100% sure Fatal Push has sold more Aether Revolt boosters than Tezzeret.
Ultimatedly, we haven't actually heard players say these cards are too powerful and a reason not to play. We've been told it is so.
The only reason I've personally heard for people not wanting to play Magic (other than it's for nerds lol), is the cost of cards, particularily lands. People from other games are used to the bread and butter being inexpensive and the bombs being valuable, not the other way around.
I'm not all that surprised that modern R&D don't want to print these cards, they have their egos too (MaRo won't shut up about "helping" to make Force of Will and all he contributed was the name by his own account), of course they don't want their super creative and fun new creatures to be eclipsed by Terror or Lightning Bolt. Ironically this isn't having a possitive effect for said designs, genuinelly good cards like Ulamog will see play everywhere you can fit them, but Smuggler's Copter's non-rotating debut at my LGS involved the words "Welcome to Modern you piece of *****" as it was unceremoniusly bolted and forgotten about. A card that broke Standard, gone for one mana,
About that....
Didn't maro say that Bolt ruins the design space of creatures <=3 toughness? If so, how were classic cards like Timmy, Black Knight, White Knight, Hypnotic Specter and multitude of other 3 or less toughness creatures remotely a threat? Those beasts were just as deadly and annoying in a universe with Lightning Bolt.
I lost many many games to the above creatures despite Bolt in the summer of '96. But the way some people write about Bolt, makes it seems like it's a game warping card.
Like Desert, a card that was barely a threat in the 90's is, not surprisingly, a game warping card in Amonkhet. Despite being a card that was just begging to be put in...
Those creatures were played because they were the best creatures available, and you have to play creatures in order to win the game (well, most of the time). Desert wasn't played much because other answers to creatures were just that much more powerful. I don't know much about Tim, but Black Knight was probably good because neither Swords to Plowshares nor Terror could hit it, White Knight was part of an Armageddon build, and Hypnotic Specter was overpowered due to being part of a game that had Dark Ritual, meaning it was powerful due to the sheer power of noncreature spells, and the remainder of creatures were similarly powerful due to the interactions of major answers (and riding Armageddon too)
Desert wasn't played because the answers were so powerful back then, also, many players didn't play enough creatures for it to be worth the inclusion, this was due to creatures being a bad card type back then.
You can't just list cards of a different meta as an argument, you have to understand how they interacted with the rest of the game.
I played Geistflame during Innistrad Standard. The card was powerful due to being a meta call. But when I faced the kids in the after school club I worked at, the card was completely dead.
WotC found Desert overtly restrictive of what cards they could reasonably make. Contrary to Geistflame, Desert is a colorless answer that costs no mana to play (requiring a land drop + skipping one mana for one turn is not a very high cost for what it does). Additionally, Desert doesn't go to the grave after you activate it. As such it severely warps what kind of cards are useful in a standard environment. This does not mean that Desert is necessarily overpowered, because it isn't. There's a difference between making a balanced game and making a fun game. Land destruction at cmc 3 is reasonable power level-wise. That doesn't mean it's healthy for the format to reprint Stone Rain, because it does bad things for the meta (for different reasons than Desert does, of course). Yes, they could have printed Desert, but then every creature with 1 toughness (or 2 toughness in a format with weenie tokens) had to have many more resources invested. It's probably possible for WotC to craft an Amonkhet format with Desert, but that requires time, money and effort, and they reasoned it was simply not worth the amount of restrictions it brought to their card designs.
The problem with this argument is current creatures are pretty much all better than Hypnotic Specter.
Go ahead, try beating the BW Zombies list from the PT with a zombie tribal deck from ODY-ONS Standard using the removal from BFZ-AKH instead of Smother, Innocent Blood, Chainer's Edict or Mutilate. Then try again with the appropiate spells and see who's the undead boss.
Save for monsters like Masticore, Morphling and Spiritmonger, creatures used to be pieces of a greater puzzle. Nowadays they're all value engines with superficial synergies making them even better. Nobody is asking for OP spells, people are asking for spells that are adequate to the ridiculous power level creatures and planeswalkers are playing with nowadays.
Just think about what a limited game would look like in a set with no creatures. How do you kill your opponent? Are you gonna have PW's that can make tokens? Grats whoever opens one. Are you gonna have super efficient mill cards? Lots of burn? None of that makes for fun, interactive limited games.
I do recall mentioning that if is wasn't a standard set, then possibly a supplemental product of some sort. Not every single thing has to be for draft.
Then what's the point of the limitation of having no creatures if it's not a set that's meant to be played as every set is meant to be made? If what you're asking for is reprints of powerful cards as a way to help people build sets for constructed, hey, I'm all for it, but why bother with the limitation then?
Having an answer dominated format is rare, and really only happens when the answer is also doing something proactive, like Mana Drain or Flametongue Kavu
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That was pretty interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!
The classic era of magic was incredibly fun to play thanks to cards like Mana Drain and Flametongue Kavu. I think the only two sets that didn't really work well were Ancient Empires and Homelands. Those sets had good flavor, but Homelands had way too many defensive creatures that made games tend to draw out.
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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!
. Disallow is arguably one of the strongest counters ever printed. They also just reprinted Essence Scatter. Commit // Memory is incredibly versatile on the front in being able to "counter" spells (even uncounterable ones), or remove any troublesome permanents except lands, and being an expensive Timetwister on the back end.
Agreed 100%. Bolt should never be in Standard again, nor should Counterspell. They would be format warping cards that would scare all but a select group of players away from the game.
This is blatantly false and is quite surprising to read from someone who claims to have been playing so long. Disallow is unplayable garbage outside of Standard (suggesting that a 3cmc Counterspell is one of the "most powerful" ever printed is just absurd when there are half a dozen cards that outstrip it by a mile at every CMC below 3). I mean, are you serious?
At 0: Force of Will, Daze, Mental Misstep
At 1: Force Spike, Stifle, Flusterstorm
At 2: Counterspell, Mana Drain, Mana Leak, Remand
At 3: Forbid
At 4: Cryptic
All of these outstrip Dissalow by such a wide margin at their respective point in the game or due to utility its not even worth comparing them at all.
Essence Scatter is a card with a long track record of being okay for Standard and mediocre/poor for anything else. Commit//Memory is likewise not played anywhere else. Even with all of this, the deck that played these cards was obliterated at the pro-tour just a few days ago. So they were not good enough even for current standard and can be hated out.
The allegation that Lightning Bolt and Counterspell would scare players away from the game is patently absurd as both have been around since the beginning of the game. They are powerful cards that change deckbuilding possibilities. That is all they do, the rest of the viable decks in a format is adapted to follow suit. So what. Decks are always built around something - there is no case to be made for Counterspell or Bolt being worse than T4 Marvel into Ulamog or Cat Saheeli.
However, its quite certain that more people are scared away by the 100$ price tag for a mythic planeswalker than 4 good commons they can put in their deck and make it competitive.
Thank you. That last comment about Lightning Bolt and Counterspell scaring away new players is so embarrassing, My nine year old will automatically reach for 4x Bolts when building a red deck because even his 9 year old brain can figure out that it's simple, fast, effective, and above all else, fun. That's not to say he can't play newer cards. He loves tutor, scry and cantrips because he realized, as soon as I played Demonic Tutor, that it let him digs for answers.
The cards he hates the most? Planeswalkers. Specifically the Emblems. Why? Once they hit, there's no answers for them. He thinks that Force of Will is a terrible card and Winter Orb is broken, and mana screw sucks but they all have answers one way or another. Emblems? His #1 hated feature because there are no answers.
So Lightning Bolt and Counterspell scaring away newer players? Cards printed since year dot and for years afterwards?? I call bullocks on that. Magic wouldn't have grown at all if those cards are so scary to new players.
We've come from players perceiving Core Sets that had these cards as "weak-sauce" to them being "too powerful" for "Expert Level" Standard sets.
That is the very sad truth. Having litrerally lived through it. Except i still think its weak sauce its just everything got weaker while creatures and planswalkers went up. Which is fine in the grander schemeof things (eternal) since if you have the older cards, its just creatures finally stepping up to the plate. For more temporal formats like standard and arguably modern, the disparity between creatures and other types become more stark. Standard is amusing. They nerf stuff then things that were supposed to be be countered by the stuff that they nerfed become kings and they wonder why. Of couse the solution is to nerf more stuff
I mean we can already play that, just play bfz only without gideon. Its about there.
I still buy lots of magic. Enough to fuel a small shop. Its still oki because like i mention crits and planeswalkers are still powerful enough to match up to older cards. But once its bfz all the way, i'll just collect a little for block cube. Since thats all it really is by that stage.
Get ready to complain that cards aren't strong enough for Modern. Again?
I believe the broken cards that R&D don't want is how it combo's with other cards from the same block, such as the ccpy cat combo. I don't think they are going to stop making broken stuff.
Maro himself has said they don't allow the present to be held hostage to the past. If a broken combo arises out of coincidence, they can always use bans to control the damage. That's why a card like Midnight Guard can be printed in a world that has Elemental Mastery, Presence of Gond, and Splinter Twin.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Maro himself has said they don't allow the present to be held hostage to the past. If a broken combo arises out of coincidence, they can always use bans to control the damage. That's why a card like Midnight Guard can be printed in a world that has Elemental Mastery, Presence of Gond, and Splinter Twin.
"emergency" bans are bad for the game. Also, Maro is awful so I wouldnt look to him to be the "beacon" of righteousness when it comes to what the game needs, wants, etc
It is not the department that is the issue. It is the philosophy.
Creatures. Planeswalkers. Creatures. Planeswalkers. Creatures.
Hand destruction, land destruction, counterspells, taxes, cheap removal and everything else the new players hate have been removed, leaving an anodyne mess of a game and a standard solved in seconds that can't shift once the best two or three creature/planeswalker decks have been esablished per set. Meanwhile those easily irritated new players and more casuals have just sodded off to the commander tables to feed the monster Wizards inadvertently legitimised. You don't need a new department to fix this, you need a new philosophy.
Maro has a philosophy and maxim for many things, he write about them all the time in his columns. Unfortunately his philosophy is "Gatewatch: the gathering" and "zoos are better than spells", both of which are unchallenged axioms that the current team cling to for dear life. Only when the fear of "unfun" changes will things get better.
Totally agree it is a decade of this philoshophy that has gotten us here today unfortunately. Just look at which cards actually hold value. If the game were healthier the price disparity would be far less.
First, cheap land destruction needs to go away and never come back. The single element that makes a game of Magic into a very un-fun non-game is mana screw, and somehow people argue that printing cheap land destruction is healthy for the game? If you want to play cards by yourself so badly, just play solitaire.
Hand destruction is doing just fine now. Instead of just reprinting Duress and Distress ad nauseum, they're creating new hand disruption cards like Lay Bare the Heart, which is actually very powerful since the cards that it can't hit can easily be killed with removal -- especially since they've scaled back on Hexproof so much thanks to players whining about creatures getting too strong.
And you're going to actually complain about taxes when they just reprinted Aven Mindcensor in a Standard legal set? Or printed Gideon's Intervention, the new Thalia, or Reduce // Rubble? If you think that taxes should be so strong that they deny the opponent the ability to do anything, you should, again, just be playing solitaire.
Same thing with counterspells and cheap removal. Disallow is arguably one of the strongest counters ever printed. They also just reprinted Essence Scatter. Commit // Memory is incredibly versatile on the front in being able to "counter" spells (even uncounterable ones), or remove any troublesome permanents except lands, and being an expensive Timetwister on the back end. Fatal Push may be the best cheap removal ever printed (aside, perhaps, from Swords to Plowshares).
And if you aren't playing with planeswalkers in your deck, you are missing out on a lot of fun. They are such a great addition to the game (and this is coming from someone who bought a pack of Revised as his first pack of Magic when the Revised box was sitting next to a box of Legends).
If it wasn't $20 creatures, it'd be $20 counterspells and card draw.
Hand destruction, land destruction, counterspells, taxes, and cheap removal are things the majority of players hate. And claiming they've been removed when we have stuff like Ceremonious Rejection, Fatal Push, and Dissenter's Deliverance is just asinine.
FYI, the creatures nowadays aren't as pushed as the time of Baneslayer and the Titan 5. And you know what card single-handedly lead to that era of power creep? Lightning Bolt. When the hand destruction, land destruction, counterspells, taxes, and cheap removal get better, everything else has to get better, or those things take over the game and then the problem is simply rotated 180°. You complain about people who "only" want the game to be about creatures and planeswalkers, yet what I see here is that you people only want the game to be about instants and sorceries, which is equally bad. It's a mice vs. mousetraps argument.
NEWS FLASH: Pushed, overly-dominant cards aren't fun, no matter what they do. The difference is that a Baneslayer Angel can still be Doom Bladed. A Heart of Kiran can be Shattered. Permanents still have removal to keep them in check. What keeps pushed counterspells in check? Uncounterable spells, and, oh yeah, counterspells.
Honestly, this kind of hypocrite mentality makes me not take a lot of criticism around here seriously, because in the end, it's the same complaints the "other team" would be spewing, only in reverse.
Agreed 100%. Bolt should never be in Standard again, nor should Counterspell. They would be format warping cards that would scare all but a select group of players away from the game.
Wizards is clearly trying to appease the majority of players with the recent changes they've made, and I can't tell if people are just ignoring this or are just looking for a reason to complain.
Last night I played RB reanimator vs Stax in Legacy.
The RB reanimator made Griselbrand and Chancellors, and had turn 0 effects.
The Stax deck made Smokesstacks and Trinispheres and eventually the RB reanimator had zero permanents in the decider.
It was a fantastic match. I guess that is the difference between Legacy players and Standard players. Legacy players accept that in order for someone to have fun that might mean t1 Grisselbrand draw, discard for zero mana spank, discard, discard spank, spank. That also might mean t0 Leyine, T1 Trinisphere, Tabernacle, kill land, kill land. Standard players, who tend to be younger, will think neither is fair. Legacy players accept it as part of a variety of strategies- alongside Storm et al. Each to their own, but I tell you one thing- Legacy players and events are always played in the best humour and spirit.
One thing is for certain though to anybody with experience in the game, these last couple of posts contain huge numbers of unbelievably bad cards being cited to counter arguments about spell quality. Disallow is not one of the strongest counters ever printed- it is actually garbage compared to, say, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mana Leak,Daze and need I go on? Lay Bare is garbage. You want discard- they need to cost 1 or 0 to stand comparison. I mean Hymn cost two, sure, but it gets two at random.
The thing is if one person has powerful taxes, and the other has cheap spells, they balance out, NEITHER plays solitaire, and landkill becomes less powerful too.
Last night I played RB reanimator vs Stax in Legacy.
The RB reanimator made Griselbrand and Chancellors, and had turn 0 effects.
The Stax deck made Smokesstacks and Trinispheres and eventually the RB reanimator had zero permanents in the decider.
It was a fantastic match. I guess that is the difference between Legacy players and Standard players. Legacy players accept that in order for someone to have fun that might mean t1 Grisselbrand draw, discard for zero mana spank, discard, discard spank, spank. That also might mean t0 Leyine, T1 Trinisphere, Tabernacle, kill land, kill land. Standard players, who tend to be younger, will think neither is fair. Legacy players accept it as part of a variety of strategies- alongside Storm et al. Each to their own, but I tell you one thing- Legacy players and events are always played in the best humour and spirit.
One thing is for certain though to anybody with experience in the game, these last couple of posts contain huge numbers of unbelievably bad cards being cited to counter arguments about spell quality. Disallow is not one of the strongest counters ever printed- it is actually garbage compared to, say, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mana Leak,Daze and need I go on? Lay Bare is garbage. You want discard- they need to cost 1 or 0 to stand comparison. I mean Hymn cost two, sure, but it gets two at random.
The thing is if one person has powerful taxes, and the other has cheap spells, they balance out, NEITHER plays solitaire, and landkill becomes less powerful too.
You get it, I have seen Legacy games where people were upset about being ever extended and facing a deck that exploit it but never said that they shouldn't be punished for overextending. They understand deck design that some decks have flaws and sometimes you lose to a meta choice or just a poor match up. Look at Standard people don't hold 2-3 land in their hands any more, Their is no more fear of an Armageddon or wrath of god. no one baits a counterspell or counter bluffs.
What they should do is just print the powerful cards for each colour. Let blue have counterspell, let red have lighting bolt, White should have swords and Wrath of God among other things. Let black have thoughtsieze and innocent blood back. When each colour has it's best tools the game can be quite fun and balanced. The problem is they are too scared to print anything remotely powerful anymore. I haven't touched standard or new sets since RTR as a result.
When they think llanowar elves is too strong for standard you know something is very wrong.
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Standard
none
Modern UBG B/U/G control BBB MBC WUR Control WWW Prison RRR Goblins
Legacy BBB Pox UBG B/U/G Control UWU StoneBlade UW Miracle Control
What they should do is just print the powerful cards for each colour. Let blue have counterspell, let red have lighting bolt, White should have swords and Wrath of God among other things. Let black have thoughtsieze and innocent blood back. When each colour has it's best tools the game can be quite fun and balanced. The problem is they are too scared to print anything remotely powerful anymore. I haven't touched standard or new sets since RTR as a result.
When they think llanowar elves is too strong for standard you know something is very wrong.
As much as I agree with you, I do feel limits may be needed where would you draw the line?
Should artifact be allowed Solring, Black lotus, Mox's, Memory Jar and Skullclamp?
Should Blue welcome home Time walk, mana drain and Ansestral Recall?
Should black allow Necropotence Demonic tutor, Vampire tutor and Yagmoths Will?
Should Green be allowed Allurn?
Should White be allowed Balance, Humility?
Should Red be allowed wheel of fortune?
Should lands be allowed: Torlian Academy, Mishra's workshop, bizarre of Baghdad, Library of Alexandria?
Should we legalize unsets? I mean they have some powerful lands City of !!!, mox lotus, and Richard Garfield PHD would be huge hits,
Edit Yes I am stretching for Green/red they haven't had as many powerful things printed for them that I would consider past that line.....
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!
The only reason I've personally heard for people not wanting to play Magic (other than it's for nerds lol), is the cost of cards, particularily lands. People from other games are used to the bread and butter being inexpensive and the bombs being valuable, not the other way around.
I'm not all that surprised that modern R&D don't want to print these cards, they have their egos too (MaRo won't shut up about "helping" to make Force of Will and all he contributed was the name by his own account), of course they don't want their super creative and fun new creatures to be eclipsed by Terror or Lightning Bolt. Ironically this isn't having a possitive effect for said designs, genuinelly good cards like Ulamog will see play everywhere you can fit them, but Smuggler's Copter's non-rotating debut at my LGS involved the words "Welcome to Modern you piece of *****" as it was unceremoniusly bolted and forgotten about. A card that broke Standard, gone for one mana,
I see lots of ways, it would be a prison/control meta, cards like Dingus egg, Megrim, any mill effect, Counter wars, ecking out small systematic advantages not dropping bombs. Lets not forget burn or color hate like Karma! Loads of ways to win.
Well, that's a bummer.
EDH DECKS
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MAGECRAFT STORM
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Except that they are the primary drivers of sales for new sets, according to Wizards. Planeswalkers sell sets, regardless of how some players personally view them.
I wonder if people bought Khans of Tarkir packs in order to crack a Sarkhan Dragonspeaker or Sorin? Or maybe was there some other reason a lot of enfranchised players liked the set?
I get what you mean about Wizards saying Planeswalkers are primary drivers of sales, but I think it's BS. Strong and useful cards are enough of a primary driver in and of themselves.
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!
About that....
Didn't maro say that Bolt ruins the design space of creatures <=3 toughness? If so, how were classic cards like Timmy, Black Knight, White Knight, Hypnotic Specter and multitude of other 3 or less toughness creatures remotely a threat? Those beasts were just as deadly and annoying in a universe with Lightning Bolt.
I lost many many games to the above creatures despite Bolt in the summer of '96. But the way some people write about Bolt, makes it seems like it's a game warping card.
Like Desert, a card that was barely a threat in the 90's is, not surprisingly, a game warping card in Amonkhet. Despite being a card that was just begging to be put in...
Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are thankfully reprinted fairly often.
Black Lotus isn't but I don't expect the new test team to "fix" that.
Those creatures were played because they were the best creatures available, and you have to play creatures in order to win the game (well, most of the time). Desert wasn't played much because other answers to creatures were just that much more powerful. I don't know much about Tim, but Black Knight was probably good because neither Swords to Plowshares nor Terror could hit it, White Knight was part of an Armageddon build, and Hypnotic Specter was overpowered due to being part of a game that had Dark Ritual, meaning it was powerful due to the sheer power of noncreature spells, and the remainder of creatures were similarly powerful due to the interactions of major answers (and riding Armageddon too)
Desert wasn't played because the answers were so powerful back then, also, many players didn't play enough creatures for it to be worth the inclusion, this was due to creatures being a bad card type back then.
You can't just list cards of a different meta as an argument, you have to understand how they interacted with the rest of the game.
I played Geistflame during Innistrad Standard. The card was powerful due to being a meta call. But when I faced the kids in the after school club I worked at, the card was completely dead.
WotC found Desert overtly restrictive of what cards they could reasonably make. Contrary to Geistflame, Desert is a colorless answer that costs no mana to play (requiring a land drop + skipping one mana for one turn is not a very high cost for what it does). Additionally, Desert doesn't go to the grave after you activate it. As such it severely warps what kind of cards are useful in a standard environment. This does not mean that Desert is necessarily overpowered, because it isn't. There's a difference between making a balanced game and making a fun game. Land destruction at cmc 3 is reasonable power level-wise. That doesn't mean it's healthy for the format to reprint Stone Rain, because it does bad things for the meta (for different reasons than Desert does, of course). Yes, they could have printed Desert, but then every creature with 1 toughness (or 2 toughness in a format with weenie tokens) had to have many more resources invested. It's probably possible for WotC to craft an Amonkhet format with Desert, but that requires time, money and effort, and they reasoned it was simply not worth the amount of restrictions it brought to their card designs.
Also, assuming this only applies to standard? I mean they do say "formats"...
I'm 100% sure Fatal Push has sold more Aether Revolt boosters than Tezzeret.
The problem with this argument is current creatures are pretty much all better than Hypnotic Specter.
Go ahead, try beating the BW Zombies list from the PT with a zombie tribal deck from ODY-ONS Standard using the removal from BFZ-AKH instead of Smother, Innocent Blood, Chainer's Edict or Mutilate. Then try again with the appropiate spells and see who's the undead boss.
Save for monsters like Masticore, Morphling and Spiritmonger, creatures used to be pieces of a greater puzzle. Nowadays they're all value engines with superficial synergies making them even better. Nobody is asking for OP spells, people are asking for spells that are adequate to the ridiculous power level creatures and planeswalkers are playing with nowadays.
Then what's the point of the limitation of having no creatures if it's not a set that's meant to be played as every set is meant to be made? If what you're asking for is reprints of powerful cards as a way to help people build sets for constructed, hey, I'm all for it, but why bother with the limitation then?
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
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 is the very sad truth. Having litrerally lived through it. Except i still think its weak sauce its just everything got weaker while creatures and planswalkers went up. Which is fine in the grander schemeof things (eternal) since if you have the older cards, its just creatures finally stepping up to the plate. For more temporal formats like standard and arguably modern, the disparity between creatures and other types become more stark. Standard is amusing. They nerf stuff then things that were supposed to be be countered by the stuff that they nerfed become kings and they wonder why. Of couse the solution is to nerf more stuff
I mean we can already play that, just play bfz only without gideon. Its about there.
I still buy lots of magic. Enough to fuel a small shop. Its still oki because like i mention crits and planeswalkers are still powerful enough to match up to older cards. But once its bfz all the way, i'll just collect a little for block cube. Since thats all it really is by that stage.
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881
Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
I believe the broken cards that R&D don't want is how it combo's with other cards from the same block, such as the ccpy cat combo. I don't think they are going to stop making broken stuff.
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
*I put your anecdotal evidence on the stack and counter with pithy quip. I then play opinion presented as fact and swing for lethal.*
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
"emergency" bans are bad for the game. Also, Maro is awful so I wouldnt look to him to be the "beacon" of righteousness when it comes to what the game needs, wants, etc
Last night I played RB reanimator vs Stax in Legacy.
The RB reanimator made Griselbrand and Chancellors, and had turn 0 effects.
The Stax deck made Smokesstacks and Trinispheres and eventually the RB reanimator had zero permanents in the decider.
It was a fantastic match. I guess that is the difference between Legacy players and Standard players. Legacy players accept that in order for someone to have fun that might mean t1 Grisselbrand draw, discard for zero mana spank, discard, discard spank, spank. That also might mean t0 Leyine, T1 Trinisphere, Tabernacle, kill land, kill land. Standard players, who tend to be younger, will think neither is fair. Legacy players accept it as part of a variety of strategies- alongside Storm et al. Each to their own, but I tell you one thing- Legacy players and events are always played in the best humour and spirit.
One thing is for certain though to anybody with experience in the game, these last couple of posts contain huge numbers of unbelievably bad cards being cited to counter arguments about spell quality. Disallow is not one of the strongest counters ever printed- it is actually garbage compared to, say, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mana Leak,Daze and need I go on? Lay Bare is garbage. You want discard- they need to cost 1 or 0 to stand comparison. I mean Hymn cost two, sure, but it gets two at random.
The thing is if one person has powerful taxes, and the other has cheap spells, they balance out, NEITHER plays solitaire, and landkill becomes less powerful too.
You get it, I have seen Legacy games where people were upset about being ever extended and facing a deck that exploit it but never said that they shouldn't be punished for overextending. They understand deck design that some decks have flaws and sometimes you lose to a meta choice or just a poor match up. Look at Standard people don't hold 2-3 land in their hands any more, Their is no more fear of an Armageddon or wrath of god. no one baits a counterspell or counter bluffs.
When they think llanowar elves is too strong for standard you know something is very wrong.
none
Modern
UBG B/U/G control
BBB MBC
WUR Control
WWW Prison
RRR Goblins
Legacy
BBB Pox
UBG B/U/G Control
UWU StoneBlade
UW Miracle Control
As much as I agree with you, I do feel limits may be needed where would you draw the line?
Should artifact be allowed Solring, Black lotus, Mox's, Memory Jar and Skullclamp?
Should Blue welcome home Time walk, mana drain and Ansestral Recall?
Should black allow Necropotence Demonic tutor, Vampire tutor and Yagmoths Will?
Should Green be allowed Allurn?
Should White be allowed Balance, Humility?
Should Red be allowed wheel of fortune?
Should lands be allowed: Torlian Academy, Mishra's workshop, bizarre of Baghdad, Library of Alexandria?
Should we legalize unsets? I mean they have some powerful lands City of !!!, mox lotus, and Richard Garfield PHD would be huge hits,
Edit Yes I am stretching for Green/red they haven't had as many powerful things printed for them that I would consider past that line.....