The main reason there was such a bad response is that it didn't live up to the expectations set by a Zendikar block at all. The Eldrazi were same-y, and there were too many boring, parasitic mechanics (ingest, cohort). This block ruined Zendikar so much for me.
Can't wait to see how they ruin my favorite plane next set, probably with another set of boring +1/+1 counter mechanics and tribal. Innistrad is next.
I, for one, have enjoyed BFZ and OGW looks even better. Note that I havent played as much lately but I have LOVED the story for the most part and I like the way its been depicted on cards.
And to those who wish it were just more of original Zen or RoE, you guys know that those cards still exist right? Its not like they blinked out of existence. Go buy an old box if your feeling nostalgic, or better yet, create your own Zen Cube or draft sim. The commons are cheap.
If the cards arent what you want to play in standard, you can use the AWESOME multicolor themes from Tarkir. Or a dragon deck. Or some whacky combo. Rather than complain about stagnant standard, try to brew something yourself and mix it up next FNM
Not trying to be mean, but I think its important to remember - ZEN packs and cards still exist! Go for it if thats what you want. BFZ is obv not the same thing
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The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void but always yields to purifying light.
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
I, for one, have enjoyed BFZ and OGW looks even better. Note that I havent played as much lately but I have LOVED the story for the most part and I like the way its been depicted on cards.
And to those who wish it were just more of original Zen or RoE, you guys know that those cards still exist right? Its not like they blinked out of existence. Go buy an old box if your feeling nostalgic, or better yet, create your own Zen Cube or draft sim. The commons are cheap.
If the cards arent what you want to play in standard, you can use the AWESOME multicolor themes from Tarkir. Or a dragon deck. Or some whacky combo. Rather than complain about stagnant standard, try to brew something yourself and mix it up next FNM
Not trying to be mean, but I think its important to remember - ZEN packs and cards still exist! Go for it if thats what you want. BFZ is obv not the same thing
I must say, this post sounds very condescending. The fact of the matter is, that sanctioned limited and standard events use these cards from this set. So, as much as some of us would love to use the cards from other sets, we cannot. And before you complain about how we aren't innovating, understand that almost every multicolor deck is prohibitively expensive because of the cost of fetches.
Well, my opinions may not stack adequately against logic and reason, as you claim, but threads like this that have appeared all over MTGS (and the internet) suggest BFZ didn't meet expectations. Some expectations were different than mine, and different than others, but the common thread that I've noticed is, on some level, regardless of the diversity of expectations, many were simply not adequately satisfied. I still found cards, largely from OGW, that I admire very much. My avatar is Oath of Jace after all. I loved the PW theme. But overall much of this block was not what I wanted from a return set. And the most common statement I've seen around here is essentially "I hope SOI isn't like BFZ." With that fact, I'll digress.
Well, my opinions may not stack adequately against logic and reason, as you claim, but threads like this that have appeared all over MTGS (and the internet) suggest BFZ didn't meet expectations. Some expectations were different than mine, and different than others, but the common thread that I've noticed is, on some level, regardless of the diversity of expectations, many were simply not adequately satisfied. I still found cards, largely from OGW, that I admire very much. My avatar is Oath of Jace after all. I loved the PW theme. But overall much of this block was not what I wanted from a return set. And the most common statement I've seen around here is essentially "I hope SOI isn't like BFZ." With that fact, I'll digress.
I'm of the opinion that if the block had effectively started with OGW, we wouldn't be having this discussion. OGW has it's own unique spins going on, seems like it was cleanly designed with focused philosophy, meets adequate expectations towards playability for most any reasonable person in a constructed mindset, has a little bit for almost everybody, and just seems like a totally fair set.
BFZ just felt like a hot, cluttered, unfocused mess of a set, has little to offer the majority of constructed players, had mechanics that were rather poorly executed or utilized, and simply didn't provide a unique spin to anything it did. It was a set full of mechanics that just sort of exist, with little to do with them even in limited (Unless one of a few very specific cards randomly showed up).
While I wouldn't call OGW the greatest set ever, I will say that I enjoy the set so far, and it has a very interesting limited environment that has a good deal of compelexity that you just didn't see in BFZ (Which was less about hidden complexity, as some claim, and more about randomly getting cards that worked together by pure chance). I also thoroughly enjoy the fact that OGW gives you incentive to pick cards that are normally barely consideration, such as Unknown Shores. When you can have a good reason to run a card that has a good chance of being a 14th pick in a pack, there is something quite right in the design of the environment.
BFZ was an utter let-down on almost all fronts, and I feel OGW suffers because of it. In reality, if OGW were divorced completely from the block I think it would quite positively received by most players.
Well, my opinions may not stack adequately against logic and reason, as you claim, but threads like this that have appeared all over MTGS (and the internet) suggest BFZ didn't meet expectations. Some expectations were different than mine, and different than others, but the common thread that I've noticed is, on some level, regardless of the diversity of expectations, many were simply not adequately satisfied. I still found cards, largely from OGW, that I admire very much. My avatar is Oath of Jace after all. I loved the PW theme. But overall much of this block was not what I wanted from a return set. And the most common statement I've seen around here is essentially "I hope SOI isn't like BFZ." With that fact, I'll digress.
Yeah, I did not meant to be offensive. I kind of admire your attitude, for real, though I find your love for all things blue funny - but we talked about that elsewhere.
But I stand by my opinion that for indeed returning to the adventuring world you crave, one would have to entirely ignore RoE - and it was crystal clear that it's not gonna happen, and still I cannot wrap my mind around why anyone reasonable would even expected that. And here, you were really the only one complainint about that particular thing.
Essentially, all what happened in ZEN/ROE effectively set up the situation so that true "return to (lush) Zendikar" was impossible.
And one more thing - compared to any other battle-ravaged wasteland world, with Zendikar we have clear comparison here what used to be and what it is now. What was lost because of the Eldrazi. And that, in my opinion, is exactly what they wanted to show.
AS for BFZ in general - yes, the set is weaker. But once a time, it has to be. Maybe if it was not a return to one of the most loved and strongest blocks/worlds, but instead some new, unexplored world, people would react differently.
As for "I hope SOI is not like BFZ" ... it depends of what people expect. If they expect Snapcaster and LotV to be reprinted, then they are in for a HUGE disappoitment. It is not gonna be Innistrad. It has to be different. But it seems that it will somehow use graveyard again, and that is a good sign.
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100% Vorthos Spike and Storyline Expert
Former Fact Prospector of the Greek Alliance.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Yes, but BFZ worsened the problem. I would be fine if such a standard lasted during Khans as some seemed to like but now I am truly getting sick of it. Each block should change the trajectory of standard, not increase the defining traits of last block.
I loudly complained about BFZ when it was released and I was shouted down by people who told me I was just bad at draft. I'm glad others see now that the set was garbage and money-grab for Expedition sales.
I disliked the WOTC PR stumbles in the past few months. I disliked the set for limited. I disliked the Expedition lottery. I disliked the obviously nerfed mechanics and never-gonna-use-me Rares.
The whole thing feels slapped together to get another set out there. Maybe they shouldn't religiously have set releases and instead release sets when they have..you know...a good product.
And I also agree with others that we should have seen Wastes turn up in BFZ. It could easily have been introduced quietly in the sideshow in BFZ, and then hammered home in OGW. Another missed opportunity.
It wasn't a 'missed opportunity'..that seems to me like THE *****tiest possible reaction to have to it.
I don't want to disagree so much as point out the fact that in all likelihood every single member of R&D agrees with us but they had to make the ultimate decision to save it for OGW for many **other equally significant reasons**, ok? They're really not morons.
Imagine we had the usual 3-set block, it makes a lot more sense. Then they had the 3-->2 change thrust upon them completely out of nowhere. Just rework the entire first set from scratch? You don't see any inherent risks with THAT? (Here's the key question though: Are the risks associated with that WORSE or BETTER? I'd argue the're far worse and it would have been a lot more risky.) They would have had to rejigger basically every single thing and start over. You simply could not have 'retrofitted BFZ' at that point. I mean..sure, you can say it, but then actually try doing it. Stop and think, folks. They had absolutely no choice.
Imagine you wrote a symphony for someone and you've worked nearly a year on it. Then, six months before you're gonna play it for the public, your patron tells you 'oh, sorry, we found out we only have the hall for 2 hours instead of 3--you're gonna have to make some cuts.' Or, they tell you, 'Oh, sorry, we only have 2/3 the budget to hire musicians, so you're gonna have to cut an entire section of players.' (I'm a musician, sorry..) That's LITERALLY what they were dealing with with BFZ block. You have to make decisions and make some changes and...hope for the best, probably.
It's like getting mad at the pilot that you also soiled your pants during a crash because he just didn't land gently enough..
That turned into a rant about a small issue.. Sorry. Anyway, I didn't like it either but I think people are being a bit very unfair.
I, for one, have enjoyed BFZ and OGW looks even better. Note that I havent played as much lately but I have LOVED the story for the most part and I like the way its been depicted on cards.
And to those who wish it were just more of original Zen or RoE, you guys know that those cards still exist right? Its not like they blinked out of existence. Go buy an old box if your feeling nostalgic, or better yet, create your own Zen Cube or draft sim. The commons are cheap.
If the cards arent what you want to play in standard, you can use the AWESOME multicolor themes from Tarkir. Or a dragon deck. Or some whacky combo. Rather than complain about stagnant standard, try to brew something yourself and mix it up next FNM
Not trying to be mean, but I think its important to remember - ZEN packs and cards still exist! Go for it if thats what you want. BFZ is obv not the same thing
I must say, this post sounds very condescending. The fact of the matter is, that sanctioned limited and standard events use these cards from this set. So, as much as some of us would love to use the cards from other sets, we cannot. And before you complain about how we aren't innovating, understand that almost every multicolor deck is prohibitively expensive because of the cost of fetches.
I think it's more "understand that this is a new thing and don't expect it to be that thing you remember fondly." I myself missed Zendikar during my long hiatus, so I don't have any special attachment to it. I don't see what all the "you ruined Zendikar!" fuss is about. The visual design for this block is well-thought out, the artists are obviously competent, and while I can see "I'm burnt out on non-Euclidian tentacle monsters," doesn't that really boil down to a matter of taste?
As for playing with the cards, BfZ was particularly well-designed for draft (though, yes, green was a little too weak), and "boring, parasitic mechanics" doesn't make any sense in that regard. Ingest worked just fine in limited, and Cohort will as well. Yeah, it does kind of suck that BfZ didn't do anything much for Standard, but that problem is really quite temporary.
So yeah, it's fair to say there were objective flaws in the block - Sealed has too much variance (for BfZ, Oath seemed fine to me) and BfZ (and possibly Oath) didn't make an impact on Standard (leaving us with six months of Khans Block Constructed). However, "not good enough for a Zendikar return" and "I don't like +1/+1 counters" are totally subjective things. If your complaint is, "this block doesn't do it for me," it makes total sense to say "then play something else." They're offering flashback drafts on Magic Online if you want to go play with some old stuff. Or you could check out Modern, Legacy or EDH or Cube or just about anything. I spent most of BfZ season working on my Modern decks because I was disappointed with anything I tried to brew for Standard. You don't have to play with the cards.
It's like getting mad at the pilot that you also soiled your pants during a crash because he just didn't land gently enough..
That turned into a rant about a small issue.. Sorry. Anyway, I didn't like it either but I think people are being a bit very unfair.
+1
Nearly all of the significant problems associated with BFZ block seem to have been introduced during development, rather than design. I believe that this was a direct result of the block being designed as a LSL block and then needing to be rebuilt into a LS block in order to satisfy the two block paradigm. The decision not to include Wastes in the first set of BFZ makes perfect sense if the first set and the last set were never intended to be drafted together. It also explains why virtually all of the mechanics from BFZ were dropped in OGW. I don't know if wizards will ever confirm my theory, but I think it fits.
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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.
- Manite
Sure the set is pretty poor from a standard point of view.
Draft is actually still pretty deep and enjoyable as long as you treat it as its own beast and stop trying to compare it too Original Zendikar Block (and that is with the green screw up).
I actually believe that with the release of Oath the opposite will happen and that the limited format will suffer (I have serious issues that the colorless mana symbol might spread the playables too thin in a set with such poor fixing) but will probably be just fine for constructed, since they have introduced a bunch of mythics, rares and uncommons that look to be making an impact.
Forget about the gameplay and power level; yeah, it's bad, but what makes BFZ a truly terrible block is the storyline. The whole Superfriends/Avengers/X-Men thing is beyond stupid, and makes me embarrassed to play Magic.
I'm not sure I can get behind development being the sole culprit. Responsible for some parts, maybe. Would support be a compelling mechanic if it also added loyalty to planeswalkers? No, just marginally less offensively mundane. What did design do with the exiles-matters theme? Nothing interesting. The storyline, thematics, art direction, these aren't aspects of the card mechanics, but they were also woeful.
While development can be blamed when content is cut or overpowered or underpowered, the metric for design doing its job is whether theres anything interesting/innovative going on. The lack of new content is a failure of design. And BFZ lacked hard, OGW less so but still below average. The colorless cost / errata was the only thing this block had going for it mechanically in any compelling sense, but besides being poisoned by the clunky errata, its just one mechanic, its not enough to drive a two set block.
If design had done its job but development gimped it, we'd see more botched mechanics like Cipher and Bestow and less boring mechanics like Support and Ingest.
I'm not sure I can get behind development being the sole culprit. Responsible for some parts, maybe. Would support be a compelling mechanic if it also added loyalty to planeswalkers? No, just marginally less offensively mundane. What did design do with the exiles-matters theme? Nothing interesting. The storyline, thematics, art direction, these aren't aspects of the card mechanics, but they were also woeful.
Development may not be the sole culprit, but it certainly seems like the problems of the set arose in development rather than design.
While development can be blamed when content is cut or overpowered or underpowered, the metric for design doing its job is whether theres anything interesting/innovative going on. The lack of new content is a failure of design. And BFZ lacked hard, OGW less so but still below average. The colorless cost / errata was the only thing this block had going for it mechanically in any compelling sense, but besides being poisoned by the clunky errata, its just one mechanic, its not enough to drive a two set block.
Design did bring interesting/innovative things though. Processors really are unprecedented in magic. Rally and Converge were both great mechanics, and were fixed versions of previously OK mechanics. Awaken is really cool and pushes the land theme. Design gave us two cycles of unique landfall cards, with modal landfall and type landfall. Scions really are more interesting and play better than Spawns. Devoid is the only "meh" mechanic from BFZ and it played really well and was simple.
OGW mechanics, with the exception of Colorless Mana, are all really uninteresting.
If design had done its job but development gimped it, we'd see more botched mechanics like Cipher and Bestow and less boring mechanics like Support and Ingest.
Ingest was a mechanic created by development, not design. Processors were the real mechanic, development created a new keyword to support them.
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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.
- Manite
I must say, this post sounds very condescending. The fact of the matter is, that sanctioned limited and standard events use these cards from this set. So, as much as some of us would love to use the cards from other sets, we cannot. And before you complain about how we aren't innovating, understand that almost every multicolor deck is prohibitively expensive because of the cost of fetches.
Sorry if I came off as condescending. And I do understand that players have certain expectations when you say 'we are returning to X plane', familiar mechanics and feelings and such. I dont think that power should be a part of that expectation though.
When we go back to Innistrad in April, please dont be upset that they didnt reprint Snapcaster Mage or Huntmaster of the Fells.
Magic exists outside of sanctioned Limited and Standard events. If BFZ limited isnt your cup of tea, no biggy, try to get people together to draft something else
If standard is too expensive (hint its always expensive, Fetches are a wise investment anyway though) then either brew a budget list and work up to the more expensive cards you need, or play a different format. Come play EDH! Its awesome!
I do agree with you about the +1/+1 counter mechanics. Im not opposed to them as a whole, but lately theyve been pretty meh looking. I guess we will see how support turns out but Im not seeing anything I like there.
The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void but always yields to purifying light.
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
If you're recycling old content and not doing anything new with it, you aren't designing anything. Converge / landfall / scions were recycled, rally/support certainly didn't do anything interesting. The modal landfall cycle isn't exactly a compelling case for innovation, and the type landfall was just a more restrictive hurdle. I think the mechanics individually got covered pretty in depth in previous posts in this thread both of mine and others, but suffice to say that processors/ingest are a design failure because they don't do anything with their unprecedented niche of design space. Caring about the exile zone opens up a whole slew of options, and all design did with it is create an arbitrary modal check with no true resource or engine or anything mechanically interesting, with cards that did nothing in a vacuum. Its just a roundabout way of creating another tribal. Theres almost limitless ways wizards could have made innovative mechanics with the exile zone- it could move cards from zones in ways that affect gameplay significantly, like topdecking, or care about properties of those cards, like rules texts / types, or count them, or provide some sort of repeatable engine, so on. Instead, you could have swapped "Card from exile an opponent controls" and "Widget counter" and it wouldn't have made much of a difference.
Awaken was competent for sure, colorless costs were good, but beyond that there were no compelling mechanics in the block. Wizards saying "We're creating the exile matters block" is a good start to a set, but then its up to them to execute well on the premise and actually explore that space in a meaningful way. If all they do is make a parasitic pseudo-tribal out of it, thats not a victory for design, it wouldn't have been convincing whether development had made pushed it or not
Couple of things. They didn't make BFZ 'Cares about Exile Block' because, frankly, there is just not enough design space to fill an entire block. But besides that, considering we have three vastly different legendary Eldrazi, it is an absolutely WONDERFUL idea to devote one set per...flesh them out and give all three very weird, different things to focus on. Ulamog got the Exile thing. Kozilek gets the distortion/psychedlia. Emrakul will something else.
You may think there are 'limitless things they could do with exile'. Apparently, they did not. They've done this way more than any of us and I'll probably trust their judgement there. It's like w/Tarkir...we only got a single 'Wedge' set (Khans) because there's not enough to do more. (This is straight outta MaRo's mouth.) Besides, why mine that vein completely in one block? Isn't it vastly better to go back every few years and explore that zone further incrementally? I think so.
All of this ^^ is specific to your points on Exile and not-enough-of-it.
I think they had to recycle some stuff in a 'Return to' block. That's just completely unavoidable.
I will agree the other mechanics are just throwaways. I am beginning to viscerally dislike all the +1/+1 mechanics. It feels like an endless ******* game of Concentration. No, it's not THAT +1/+1 mechanic you just saw last set (and the set before) (and the five sets before that one)...it's THIS one.
Couple of things. They didn't make BFZ 'Cares about Exile Block' because, frankly, there is just not enough design space to fill an entire block. But besides that, considering we have three vastly different legendary Eldrazi, it is an absolutely WONDERFUL idea to devote one set per...flesh them out and give all three very weird, different things to focus on. Ulamog got the Exile thing. Kozilek gets the distortion/psychedlia. Emrakul will something else.
You may think there are 'limitless things they could do with exile'. Apparently, they did not. They've done this way more than any of us and I'll probably trust their judgement there. It's like w/Tarkir...we only got a single 'Wedge' set (Khans) because there's not enough to do more. (This is straight outta MaRo's mouth.) Besides, why mine that vein completely in one block? Isn't it vastly better to go back every few years and explore that zone further incrementally? I think so.
Think of it this way. What matters is the result- do they produce a good product at the end of the day, is it a success in terms of design, aesthetic, story, balance, etc?
Now wizards had good reasons not to bleed the edges of the exile zone like they've done with graveyards. They want it off-limits as its been used as a dumping grounds for cards that aren't supposed to recur. But at the same time, they produced a set where a very central gimmick was 'exile-matters'. The result was that they create a very tepid and uncompelling set of mechanics, we've gone on about how they do nothing in a vacuum and don't explore the design space of the exile zone. But what matters isn't the thought process of why we wind up with a weak set, what matters is that we did. If they weren't going to be willing to explore the design space of exile-matters, they should have axed the concept early on and done something else instead.
Further, we see some real problems in what happens when they try to create "one set per eldrazi titan". The eldrazi are just recycling worldbuilding and thematics created in RoE. And it was a wonderful job they did back then, and they create a detailed and varied set of monsters. But RoE was only giving us a small taste of each brood, and had just enough thematic and mechanical variety to accommodate the small number of eldrazi. As I explained earlier in this thread;
When wizards created RoE, there were 15 eldrazi creatures. 3 very different legendary titans, 6 lesser colorless titans and 6 drones. These were divided between 3 different broods, with 4-6 of each, and thus plenty of room for the eldrazi to be completely distinct. A hand of emrakul and spawnsire of ulamog weren't going to be mistaken for each other. Note the use of action subjects in artisan of kozilek and it that betrays- these aren't jut eldrazi blankly pictured on a background from the same perspective, they're doing something.
When wizard revisited it for BFZ, they boxed themselves into a corner with the decision to only represent ulamogs brood in set 1, only kozileks in set 2. There are 51 eldrazi in BFZ, of which 47 are from ulamogs. And as a result, its simply not enough artistic direction to cover that many cards. You can see how the artists struggled to do anything interesting on the smaller drones and processors, like mind raker and nettle drone, but even then you start to see tide drifter and fathom feeder sorts of repetitions. But as you scale it up to the lesser titans, you get the almost unbelievable sameness of oblivion sower, void winnower, deathless behemoth, endless one, desolation twin, eldrazi devastator, breaker of armies and of course newalmog himself. "Interchangeable art" indeed.
This is what happens when you create a deep and interesting backstory and worldbuilding for a short story in only a brief view, then revisit it later and try to torturously stretch it into a 3-part series with a shoehorned love triangle and a scene where an elf start hopping on the heads of bloody dwarves in barrels floating down a river. When you spread too little butter over too much 2-dimensional cardboard, ahem. There simply wasn't enough art direction from RoE for 1/3 of the eldrazi to be represented tenfold. They had to either develop a new aesthetic or come up with a better idea.
Now maybe in some alternate universe, they came up with a cool way to introduce variety and deep worldbuilding into the individual broods and made them more than faceless aberrant goons with a single set of characteristics. After all, the phyrexians looked like a copy/paste job for the first 2 sets of SoM/MBS, then suddenly NPH gave them detailed clans, storylines, thematics and even their own language. What we saw in BFZ wasn't a fleshing out and refinement like that, it was just more of the same, stretching too little content over too much cardboard.
I think the eldrazi as villains just aren't suitable for this front stage role. They were written in as inscrutable lovecraftian horrors. Thats a spice best used sparingly, no? How do you give them enough detail and distinction to fill an entire block?
I disagree about the bad artwork and style. The Eldrazi ate away on Zendikar for a long time now. It should actually have looked MORE destroyed in Battle for Zendikar. It instead looked like they've just started to destroy it.
And considering the "ugly, poor quality CGI art"... it's actually a HUGE step forward from the old Zendikar block, which most of the time had artwork which looked like several pics mashed together into one, with awful photorealistic copy-paste landscapes, undetailed stuff going on in the background and so on. Here, it actually looks like it was painted. The idea how the Eldrazis make everything colorless looks better than anything that was going on in ROE. What's not as interesting as before are the full art lands, they chose boring artwork compared to the surreal Zendikar ones.
8) Too much emphasis on "Magic is a war game" and not enough "look at a glimpse of this plane, its magic, its biology, etc." Tarkir was wasteland war world. Now BFZ is too. Well great! Let's trash Innistrad next!
That's why Lorwyn/Shadowmoor are my favorite blocks. No war. No humans. Just tribes disliking each other and cool and bizarre Elemental designs inbetween.
I love Lorwyn as well. Ugh it's such a beautiful plane too, and I adore the Faeries and Merfolk there.
I agree with Caranthir on a lot of this. As I said near when SOI was announced, if you don't want to be disappointed by the next set, you should make a list of what you liked about the original Innistrad. If your list is mostly made up of individual cards, you're probably going to be disappointed. If you like the atmosphere or the graveyard matters themes, you probably have stuff to look forward to.
People have listed the bad things about the block, but let's list some of the good things:
1. Many people consider the limited format to be very good. If Green wasn't so bad, the format would have been even better.
2. Individual card design. They really managed to make the Eldrazi cards feel weird (at least at the higher rarities). Most of the Eldrazi in RotE are just big beaters with Annihilator.
3. While Allies didn't get much love in Eternal formats, plenty of other cards slot into Modern, Legacy, etc. I think the power level complaints are somewhat exaggerated. Khans has been able to dominate because of how insanely good the mana is right now.
I think one of the big problems (from a Vorthos point of view) is the storyline - they've taken one of the richest, colourful, and most interesting planes and turned it into white dust. I think that also reflects in the cards. I have no interest in buying colourless cards, as i just don't they'reas interesting, and don't synergise with the rest of my collection. That's my personal opinion. It also means that there are fewer traditionally coloured cards, so naturally there aren't as many i want as in previous sets. Hopefully the colourless theme doesn't continue into Innistrad.
It wasn't a 'missed opportunity'..that seems to me like THE *****tiest possible reaction to have to it.
I don't want to disagree so much as point out the fact that in all likelihood every single member of R&D agrees with us but they had to make the ultimate decision to save it for OGW for many **other equally significant reasons**, ok? They're really not morons.
Imagine we had the usual 3-set block, it makes a lot more sense. Then they had the 3-->2 change thrust upon them completely out of nowhere. Just rework the entire first set from scratch? You don't see any inherent risks with THAT?
Do we have that in writing anywhere that that's actually what happened during BFZ development? Because if it is, then I come full circle and agree with you entirely.
I was under the impression that they'd planned BFZ / OGW as a two-set block from the beginning. If they made it halfway through and kludged it from three into two, it explains a lot of things (and shows you that WotC probably didn't make a very wise decision on when to begin releasing two-set blocks).
I just see Wastes and as a major, major change to Magic gameplay that deserves to be fully supported and explored. Bringing it in in the last set of a block seems counterintuitive to that. At least it leaves lots of design space to be further explored in future blocks, I guess...
Awaken is interesting, I will admit but it has no application in constructed. Only useful in limmited when you need a creature. Was nice of design to not have any awaken cards in Oath but to make 2 elemental that benefit those cards in that set. Why those creatures weren't in the last set I will never know.
I guarantee you the third act originally featured Zendikar's lands rising up as Elementals en masse and taking the fight to the Eldrazi. Signals were all over the place. Now we won't get to see it.
It wasn't a 'missed opportunity'..that seems to me like THE *****tiest possible reaction to have to it.
I don't want to disagree so much as point out the fact that in all likelihood every single member of R&D agrees with us but they had to make the ultimate decision to save it for OGW for many **other equally significant reasons**, ok? They're really not morons.
Imagine we had the usual 3-set block, it makes a lot more sense. Then they had the 3-->2 change thrust upon them completely out of nowhere. Just rework the entire first set from scratch? You don't see any inherent risks with THAT?
Do we have that in writing anywhere that that's actually what happened during BFZ development? Because if it is, then I come full circle and agree with you entirely.
I was under the impression that they'd planned BFZ / OGW as a two-set block from the beginning. If they made it halfway through and kludged it from three into two, it explains a lot of things (and shows you that WotC probably didn't make a very wise decision on when to begin releasing two-set blocks).
I just see Wastes and as a major, major change to Magic gameplay that deserves to be fully supported and explored. Bringing it in in the last set of a block seems counterintuitive to that. At least it leaves lots of design space to be further explored in future blocks, I guess...
If you look at the big list of sets and compare the placeholder names to the divisions, you'll notice at one point BfZ was block conceived as "Blood, Sweat and Tears," to be followed by "Lock, Stock and Barrel." When MaRo announced in the summer of '14 that they were going to two-block paradigms, they inserted "Fears" after "Tears" and "Laughs" after "Barrel" to make them make sense as two-block sets. Then MaRo announced a couple months later that they were beginning work on the Fall '17 block, "Ham/Eggs." I think it's safe to assume that that one was under the two-block idea from the beginning. But the "we're starting 'Blood, Sweat, Tears' now" announcement was way back in 2012. So it's reasonable to assume they hadn't started the conversation about the new rotation, or reached any actionable conclusions about it, when people started working on Battle for Zendikar. I don't have any quotes directly referring to how it shakes out behind the scenes, but I'm assuming at some point between 2012 when they started working on it and 2014 when they announced publicly it would be only two sets, business-as-usual became "let's figure out how to squeeze this into two sets."
That's a huge time range, though; without knowing when they actually starting turning the boat internally, it's hard to tell what happened with BfZ/OGW and whether or not the same thing will happen with SoI/"Fears"
That's all just from the Wikipedia timeline of the release schedule; if anyone has more directly pertinent information I'd be interested to hear it.
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Can't wait to see how they ruin my favorite plane next set, probably with another set of boring +1/+1 counter mechanics and tribal. Innistrad is next.
Especially bonds of mortality and fall of the titans. More of this please.
And to those who wish it were just more of original Zen or RoE, you guys know that those cards still exist right? Its not like they blinked out of existence. Go buy an old box if your feeling nostalgic, or better yet, create your own Zen Cube or draft sim. The commons are cheap.
If the cards arent what you want to play in standard, you can use the AWESOME multicolor themes from Tarkir. Or a dragon deck. Or some whacky combo. Rather than complain about stagnant standard, try to brew something yourself and mix it up next FNM
Not trying to be mean, but I think its important to remember - ZEN packs and cards still exist! Go for it if thats what you want. BFZ is obv not the same thing
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
Well, my opinions may not stack adequately against logic and reason, as you claim, but threads like this that have appeared all over MTGS (and the internet) suggest BFZ didn't meet expectations. Some expectations were different than mine, and different than others, but the common thread that I've noticed is, on some level, regardless of the diversity of expectations, many were simply not adequately satisfied. I still found cards, largely from OGW, that I admire very much. My avatar is Oath of Jace after all. I loved the PW theme. But overall much of this block was not what I wanted from a return set. And the most common statement I've seen around here is essentially "I hope SOI isn't like BFZ." With that fact, I'll digress.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
I'm of the opinion that if the block had effectively started with OGW, we wouldn't be having this discussion. OGW has it's own unique spins going on, seems like it was cleanly designed with focused philosophy, meets adequate expectations towards playability for most any reasonable person in a constructed mindset, has a little bit for almost everybody, and just seems like a totally fair set.
BFZ just felt like a hot, cluttered, unfocused mess of a set, has little to offer the majority of constructed players, had mechanics that were rather poorly executed or utilized, and simply didn't provide a unique spin to anything it did. It was a set full of mechanics that just sort of exist, with little to do with them even in limited (Unless one of a few very specific cards randomly showed up).
While I wouldn't call OGW the greatest set ever, I will say that I enjoy the set so far, and it has a very interesting limited environment that has a good deal of compelexity that you just didn't see in BFZ (Which was less about hidden complexity, as some claim, and more about randomly getting cards that worked together by pure chance). I also thoroughly enjoy the fact that OGW gives you incentive to pick cards that are normally barely consideration, such as Unknown Shores. When you can have a good reason to run a card that has a good chance of being a 14th pick in a pack, there is something quite right in the design of the environment.
BFZ was an utter let-down on almost all fronts, and I feel OGW suffers because of it. In reality, if OGW were divorced completely from the block I think it would quite positively received by most players.
Yeah, I did not meant to be offensive. I kind of admire your attitude, for real, though I find your love for all things blue funny - but we talked about that elsewhere.
But I stand by my opinion that for indeed returning to the adventuring world you crave, one would have to entirely ignore RoE - and it was crystal clear that it's not gonna happen, and still I cannot wrap my mind around why anyone reasonable would even expected that. And here, you were really the only one complainint about that particular thing.
Essentially, all what happened in ZEN/ROE effectively set up the situation so that true "return to (lush) Zendikar" was impossible.
And one more thing - compared to any other battle-ravaged wasteland world, with Zendikar we have clear comparison here what used to be and what it is now. What was lost because of the Eldrazi. And that, in my opinion, is exactly what they wanted to show.
AS for BFZ in general - yes, the set is weaker. But once a time, it has to be. Maybe if it was not a return to one of the most loved and strongest blocks/worlds, but instead some new, unexplored world, people would react differently.
As for "I hope SOI is not like BFZ" ... it depends of what people expect. If they expect Snapcaster and LotV to be reprinted, then they are in for a HUGE disappoitment. It is not gonna be Innistrad. It has to be different. But it seems that it will somehow use graveyard again, and that is a good sign.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
I disliked the WOTC PR stumbles in the past few months. I disliked the set for limited. I disliked the Expedition lottery. I disliked the obviously nerfed mechanics and never-gonna-use-me Rares.
The whole thing feels slapped together to get another set out there. Maybe they shouldn't religiously have set releases and instead release sets when they have..you know...a good product.
It wasn't a 'missed opportunity'..that seems to me like THE *****tiest possible reaction to have to it.
I don't want to disagree so much as point out the fact that in all likelihood every single member of R&D agrees with us but they had to make the ultimate decision to save it for OGW for many **other equally significant reasons**, ok? They're really not morons.
Imagine we had the usual 3-set block, it makes a lot more sense. Then they had the 3-->2 change thrust upon them completely out of nowhere. Just rework the entire first set from scratch? You don't see any inherent risks with THAT? (Here's the key question though: Are the risks associated with that WORSE or BETTER? I'd argue the're far worse and it would have been a lot more risky.) They would have had to rejigger basically every single thing and start over. You simply could not have 'retrofitted BFZ' at that point. I mean..sure, you can say it, but then actually try doing it. Stop and think, folks. They had absolutely no choice.
Imagine you wrote a symphony for someone and you've worked nearly a year on it. Then, six months before you're gonna play it for the public, your patron tells you 'oh, sorry, we found out we only have the hall for 2 hours instead of 3--you're gonna have to make some cuts.' Or, they tell you, 'Oh, sorry, we only have 2/3 the budget to hire musicians, so you're gonna have to cut an entire section of players.' (I'm a musician, sorry..) That's LITERALLY what they were dealing with with BFZ block. You have to make decisions and make some changes and...hope for the best, probably.
It's like getting mad at the pilot that you also soiled your pants during a crash because he just didn't land gently enough..
That turned into a rant about a small issue.. Sorry. Anyway, I didn't like it either but I think people are being
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I think it's more "understand that this is a new thing and don't expect it to be that thing you remember fondly." I myself missed Zendikar during my long hiatus, so I don't have any special attachment to it. I don't see what all the "you ruined Zendikar!" fuss is about. The visual design for this block is well-thought out, the artists are obviously competent, and while I can see "I'm burnt out on non-Euclidian tentacle monsters," doesn't that really boil down to a matter of taste?
As for playing with the cards, BfZ was particularly well-designed for draft (though, yes, green was a little too weak), and "boring, parasitic mechanics" doesn't make any sense in that regard. Ingest worked just fine in limited, and Cohort will as well. Yeah, it does kind of suck that BfZ didn't do anything much for Standard, but that problem is really quite temporary.
So yeah, it's fair to say there were objective flaws in the block - Sealed has too much variance (for BfZ, Oath seemed fine to me) and BfZ (and possibly Oath) didn't make an impact on Standard (leaving us with six months of Khans Block Constructed). However, "not good enough for a Zendikar return" and "I don't like +1/+1 counters" are totally subjective things. If your complaint is, "this block doesn't do it for me," it makes total sense to say "then play something else." They're offering flashback drafts on Magic Online if you want to go play with some old stuff. Or you could check out Modern, Legacy or EDH or Cube or just about anything. I spent most of BfZ season working on my Modern decks because I was disappointed with anything I tried to brew for Standard. You don't have to play with the cards.
+1
Nearly all of the significant problems associated with BFZ block seem to have been introduced during development, rather than design. I believe that this was a direct result of the block being designed as a LSL block and then needing to be rebuilt into a LS block in order to satisfy the two block paradigm. The decision not to include Wastes in the first set of BFZ makes perfect sense if the first set and the last set were never intended to be drafted together. It also explains why virtually all of the mechanics from BFZ were dropped in OGW. I don't know if wizards will ever confirm my theory, but I think it fits.
- Manite
Draft is actually still pretty deep and enjoyable as long as you treat it as its own beast and stop trying to compare it too Original Zendikar Block (and that is with the green screw up).
I actually believe that with the release of Oath the opposite will happen and that the limited format will suffer (I have serious issues that the colorless mana symbol might spread the playables too thin in a set with such poor fixing) but will probably be just fine for constructed, since they have introduced a bunch of mythics, rares and uncommons that look to be making an impact.
At least that is my 2 cent.
While development can be blamed when content is cut or overpowered or underpowered, the metric for design doing its job is whether theres anything interesting/innovative going on. The lack of new content is a failure of design. And BFZ lacked hard, OGW less so but still below average. The colorless cost / errata was the only thing this block had going for it mechanically in any compelling sense, but besides being poisoned by the clunky errata, its just one mechanic, its not enough to drive a two set block.
If design had done its job but development gimped it, we'd see more botched mechanics like Cipher and Bestow and less boring mechanics like Support and Ingest.
Development may not be the sole culprit, but it certainly seems like the problems of the set arose in development rather than design.
Design did bring interesting/innovative things though. Processors really are unprecedented in magic. Rally and Converge were both great mechanics, and were fixed versions of previously OK mechanics. Awaken is really cool and pushes the land theme. Design gave us two cycles of unique landfall cards, with modal landfall and type landfall. Scions really are more interesting and play better than Spawns. Devoid is the only "meh" mechanic from BFZ and it played really well and was simple.
OGW mechanics, with the exception of Colorless Mana, are all really uninteresting.
Ingest was a mechanic created by development, not design. Processors were the real mechanic, development created a new keyword to support them.
- Manite
Sorry if I came off as condescending. And I do understand that players have certain expectations when you say 'we are returning to X plane', familiar mechanics and feelings and such. I dont think that power should be a part of that expectation though.
When we go back to Innistrad in April, please dont be upset that they didnt reprint Snapcaster Mage or Huntmaster of the Fells.
Magic exists outside of sanctioned Limited and Standard events. If BFZ limited isnt your cup of tea, no biggy, try to get people together to draft something else
If standard is too expensive (hint its always expensive, Fetches are a wise investment anyway though) then either brew a budget list and work up to the more expensive cards you need, or play a different format. Come play EDH! Its awesome!
I do agree with you about the +1/+1 counter mechanics. Im not opposed to them as a whole, but lately theyve been pretty meh looking. I guess we will see how support turns out but Im not seeing anything I like there.
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
Awaken was competent for sure, colorless costs were good, but beyond that there were no compelling mechanics in the block. Wizards saying "We're creating the exile matters block" is a good start to a set, but then its up to them to execute well on the premise and actually explore that space in a meaningful way. If all they do is make a parasitic pseudo-tribal out of it, thats not a victory for design, it wouldn't have been convincing whether development had made pushed it or not
Couple of things. They didn't make BFZ 'Cares about Exile Block' because, frankly, there is just not enough design space to fill an entire block. But besides that, considering we have three vastly different legendary Eldrazi, it is an absolutely WONDERFUL idea to devote one set per...flesh them out and give all three very weird, different things to focus on. Ulamog got the Exile thing. Kozilek gets the distortion/psychedlia. Emrakul will something else.
You may think there are 'limitless things they could do with exile'. Apparently, they did not. They've done this way more than any of us and I'll probably trust their judgement there. It's like w/Tarkir...we only got a single 'Wedge' set (Khans) because there's not enough to do more. (This is straight outta MaRo's mouth.) Besides, why mine that vein completely in one block? Isn't it vastly better to go back every few years and explore that zone further incrementally? I think so.
All of this ^^ is specific to your points on Exile and not-enough-of-it.
I think they had to recycle some stuff in a 'Return to' block. That's just completely unavoidable.
I will agree the other mechanics are just throwaways. I am beginning to viscerally dislike all the +1/+1 mechanics. It feels like an endless ******* game of Concentration. No, it's not THAT +1/+1 mechanic you just saw last set (and the set before) (and the five sets before that one)...it's THIS one.
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Think of it this way. What matters is the result- do they produce a good product at the end of the day, is it a success in terms of design, aesthetic, story, balance, etc?
Now wizards had good reasons not to bleed the edges of the exile zone like they've done with graveyards. They want it off-limits as its been used as a dumping grounds for cards that aren't supposed to recur. But at the same time, they produced a set where a very central gimmick was 'exile-matters'. The result was that they create a very tepid and uncompelling set of mechanics, we've gone on about how they do nothing in a vacuum and don't explore the design space of the exile zone. But what matters isn't the thought process of why we wind up with a weak set, what matters is that we did. If they weren't going to be willing to explore the design space of exile-matters, they should have axed the concept early on and done something else instead.
Further, we see some real problems in what happens when they try to create "one set per eldrazi titan". The eldrazi are just recycling worldbuilding and thematics created in RoE. And it was a wonderful job they did back then, and they create a detailed and varied set of monsters. But RoE was only giving us a small taste of each brood, and had just enough thematic and mechanical variety to accommodate the small number of eldrazi. As I explained earlier in this thread;
Now maybe in some alternate universe, they came up with a cool way to introduce variety and deep worldbuilding into the individual broods and made them more than faceless aberrant goons with a single set of characteristics. After all, the phyrexians looked like a copy/paste job for the first 2 sets of SoM/MBS, then suddenly NPH gave them detailed clans, storylines, thematics and even their own language. What we saw in BFZ wasn't a fleshing out and refinement like that, it was just more of the same, stretching too little content over too much cardboard.
I think the eldrazi as villains just aren't suitable for this front stage role. They were written in as inscrutable lovecraftian horrors. Thats a spice best used sparingly, no? How do you give them enough detail and distinction to fill an entire block?
I love Lorwyn as well. Ugh it's such a beautiful plane too, and I adore the Faeries and Merfolk there.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
People have listed the bad things about the block, but let's list some of the good things:
1. Many people consider the limited format to be very good. If Green wasn't so bad, the format would have been even better.
2. Individual card design. They really managed to make the Eldrazi cards feel weird (at least at the higher rarities). Most of the Eldrazi in RotE are just big beaters with Annihilator.
3. While Allies didn't get much love in Eternal formats, plenty of other cards slot into Modern, Legacy, etc. I think the power level complaints are somewhat exaggerated. Khans has been able to dominate because of how insanely good the mana is right now.
Do we have that in writing anywhere that that's actually what happened during BFZ development? Because if it is, then I come full circle and agree with you entirely.
I was under the impression that they'd planned BFZ / OGW as a two-set block from the beginning. If they made it halfway through and kludged it from three into two, it explains a lot of things (and shows you that WotC probably didn't make a very wise decision on when to begin releasing two-set blocks).
I just see Wastes and as a major, major change to Magic gameplay that deserves to be fully supported and explored. Bringing it in in the last set of a block seems counterintuitive to that. At least it leaves lots of design space to be further explored in future blocks, I guess...
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I guarantee you the third act originally featured Zendikar's lands rising up as Elementals en masse and taking the fight to the Eldrazi. Signals were all over the place. Now we won't get to see it.
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If you look at the big list of sets and compare the placeholder names to the divisions, you'll notice at one point BfZ was block conceived as "Blood, Sweat and Tears," to be followed by "Lock, Stock and Barrel." When MaRo announced in the summer of '14 that they were going to two-block paradigms, they inserted "Fears" after "Tears" and "Laughs" after "Barrel" to make them make sense as two-block sets. Then MaRo announced a couple months later that they were beginning work on the Fall '17 block, "Ham/Eggs." I think it's safe to assume that that one was under the two-block idea from the beginning. But the "we're starting 'Blood, Sweat, Tears' now" announcement was way back in 2012. So it's reasonable to assume they hadn't started the conversation about the new rotation, or reached any actionable conclusions about it, when people started working on Battle for Zendikar. I don't have any quotes directly referring to how it shakes out behind the scenes, but I'm assuming at some point between 2012 when they started working on it and 2014 when they announced publicly it would be only two sets, business-as-usual became "let's figure out how to squeeze this into two sets."
That's a huge time range, though; without knowing when they actually starting turning the boat internally, it's hard to tell what happened with BfZ/OGW and whether or not the same thing will happen with SoI/"Fears"
That's all just from the Wikipedia timeline of the release schedule; if anyone has more directly pertinent information I'd be interested to hear it.