Quote from Teia Rabishu »There's a lot about the pro scene that really trickles some bad values down through the playerbase when you get right down to it. Problem is I can only antagonize so many people in one article, you know?
True that.
There's only so many times I can handle people questioning why I mainboard Duress instead of Thoughtseize or inquisition of Kozilek, when those cards are outrageously priced and someone would have to have either gotten lucky with their drafts or have a lot of disposable income devoted to magic just to have them. But yeah, it goes back to the whole deal of Wizards needing to print something like Vingolf Engage Knights each rotation that contains all the dominant main deck cards found in top pro-tour decks that are rotating out. Just slap two of each in there and sell them at msrp 35 usd to all major retailers.
I don't think they will do a River of Tears cycle because it's too inconsistent and probably a tad bit complex for most people to understand how to use well. Just about the only designs they have left to print are Horizon Canopy and Nimbus Maze. I'd love to see a filterland reprint and they will probably do one of those in a return to Lorwyn block, but they've been trying to move away from lands that don't have any kind of dependencies. If they do release a Nimbus Maze land cycle eldrazi players will be rejoicing.
Most of the LGS's in my area are slowly warming up to frontier and are now planning to run events on mondays. I'm not able to attend them due to my day Job and was hoping for a weekend time, though. I don't think they are replacing FNM standard yet with Frontier, but attendance has been drooping at my local store for it and even with the promise of these better cards most people are just shrugging because they don't like the feel of the sets in standard atm. On the upside, the people still playing are a lot less competitive so the game nights have been a lot more positive. No Rules lawyers or anything showing up or Tier 1 decks, though plenty of Tier 1 standard cards IN decks.
I'm hoping wizards warms up to supporting the format, but after reading up some posts on MaRo, I got a feeling that wizards is going to start their next format with BFZ as the start point. He doesn't want fetches in the format they build, which basically kills any possibility of there being a reprint of Zendikar fetches in a standard set. Not exactly good news on that front for anyone playing modern, but then again he doesn't have the final say on what gets reprinted so we'll have to see. That leaves Frontier in an odd position with only half the fetchland cycle in it much like old modern did before Kahns block. I think that if fetches were banned from the format and the format extended to Theros then you have something closer to what MaRo may be envisioning.
Well, if they go that route than it feels almost like they are trying a Zendikar 2.0 in that they have a plane that houses some kind of ancient power / evil, a force that seeks to foolishly try to use the power, and then mistakenly unleashes the apocalypse and nearly destroys an entire plane of existence doing so. Which, actually sort of makes sense for an egyptian set considering everyone probably remembers movies like The Mummy, where Imohtep is a vengeful all powerful undead abomination seeking to restore himself to life and take vengeance on the ancestors of the pharaoh that spited him.
Nicol Bolas is powerful, but he isn't going to be able to stop something like Imhotep. That's a being that literally can bring about biblical level natural disasters, like turn the river red, rain frogs, conjure massive unyielding sandstorms, summon swarms of flesh eating Locusts, command an army of undead servants, and can basically steal the life of other beings by touch. Basically, smash an OP liliana together with Vengeful Pharaoh and Ugin, the spirit dragon. That's about him in card form.
I was actually thinking of frontier, but yeah they got Kolaghan's Command in the format which is always a good play when it comes down (at least that is how it felt playing against it).
I'm pretty sure that in a vacuum a like standard was Lightning Helix would have been fine during RtR. Swarmyard is definitely not a broken card and Hedron Crab would have been fine in BFZ and could have replaced one of the filler creatures.
Well, by not ignoring old cards that people liked or provide some interesting form of interaction and reprinting them like what the old core sets did. The failing of the design team over the last few years is their ignorance of the history of cards they already designed. There isn't a whole lot they can do about legendary creatures as they are kind of time and place specific other than print it in a commander product, but there are cards like Lightning Helix, Hedron Crab, Idyllic Tutor, Swarmyard, etc that would be fine in a standard set and they instead print things like Warleader's Helix? They spend too much time reinventing the wheel when they got a working one.
Another problem they probably had no idea about is that the community into legacy and modern just don't crack packs. All those pack openings have to go through the limited / draft crowd outside of stores cracking boxes to sell singles, so when they printed so many sets so close together they oversaturated the market and people just ignored certain products. By the time they brought the Planechase anthology out as a VPN product people were already dealing with a re-release of eternal masters, which bombed the price on those well down from their original 250+ price tag.
How can they fix Magic? Reprint the old cards that worked and that people love would be a good start. Something else would be to put more money into building places that are convenient, safe, and fun environments for players to actually get together at and possibly build more time friendly paper tournaments for older players on tighter time tables or with jobs.
You aren't alone on feeling that some of the community here is a bit out of touch with the general public. Ultimately, MtG is a game much like World of Warcraft, as in the only thing that can kill it is itself. Unfortunately, I feel that is exactly what has been happening since probably the start of September 2016 after the massive number of sets that were released. My own opinion is that they had a complete management meltdown, poor communications with the player base, and have the greed monster at Wizards HQ to blame for their woes. To make matters worse, even though they realized the problem was happening, their company is so slow to react that they didn't get a statement out until the past month and due to how they handle their print runs, can't turn the ship around for at least 2 years as far as set printings go. They might be able help the situation if they set Modern masters 2017 down to a 150 msrp and print the hell out of it, but I don't think even that is going to restore faith in the game that they basically butchered.
Also, Heart of Kiran is a flying Batterskull, basically. I'd actually have preferred lifelink instead of vigilance, but that might have made it too good. Man that is one weird vehicle.
The problem is that a card is only obscure for as long as it never sees the light of day in a promotional material. If someone high profile does a deck tech and includes it, that cards no longer obscure and if it is really old, it's going to have price spiking, especially from a pre-return to ravnica set with a smaller print run. Again, not something a lot of people can do anything about, but it's still a con and part of that whole "buckling under the weight of it's own history" issue modern has. Legacy has it way worse thanks to the reserved list, though.