I agree that the frames look pretty bad. Why would the name text box have extra text in it aside from the card name?! It's visual clutter in my eyes. And I don't see the theme for the Invocations, either. They just feel like a mini-Modern Masters/Eternal Masters set, but the cards are so rare that they won't really do the job of a proper Masters set. Just a handful of great Constructed cards that are sure to be valuable, but not lower card prices to any significant extent. I had hoped for a solid enchantment theme instead, and with card frames that aren't this gauche. Who wouldn't want a Masterpiece Ghostly Prison or Glorious Anthem or Sylvan Library?
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I'm usually the guy who's all "chill out, MtG community, you ride Wizards too much over little things," but I'm right on the hate bandwagon with this one. When I saw these spoiled my immediate reaction was "what the crap am I looking at?" It took me a while to realize that there was still a title box, and even though it was garbled, it said "Containment Priest," which is a real magic card that does... something (I don't play Legacy). After a bit more searching I tracked down the power/toughness, type box, mana cost basically where they usually are and trained my eye to read them... and then went on to read the rest of the list...
Trouble is, they decided to add a bunch of extra faux-hieroglyphic noise in the title box of the cards that have really short names (Daze, Stifle). This is my biggest complaint. I got a headache staring at #$@WD+__STIFLE!#$Q#FI)DI/ trying to get a clue what the card was until I finally just gave up and read the text. "Oh, that sounds familiar. That's a blue spell, it's been around a while... what was it called? Stifle?"
This is awful for me. I used to hate playing EDH because around my shop people feel it's necessary to make really bad black-and-white photocopies of cards they don't own and stick them in sleeves. "Are you done with your turn?" "No, hang on, I'm trying to figure out what that blur is on the other side of the table." Bleh. Cards should first and foremost be easy to recognize at a distance. Part of the reason for Magic's success is the simple, loud design: turns out bright colors and big numbers convey a lot of information really quickly. And while I agree that the classic frames were better than the new frames, this is a huge step off the beaten path, and it seems like a slippery slope to me as far as the Masterpieces are concerned. With the first Expeditions it was like "cool, those can be full art and shiny, they're just duals, the text doesn't really matter anyway." Then the second set added a bunch of other lands which weren't quite as simple, then the big change to gaudy copper border for the last block, now this. They really don't seem to care about making these aesthetically pleasing or readable, it seems like the gaudier the better because that's what they think people want and now the rest of us have to suffer across the table from the person whose deck, ten years down the line, has a different frame for every single card. No thanks.
Now, to be fair, I thought foils and mythics were dumb, too, so I'm obviously not the target audience for these things. But there's a difference between clinging to my original-from-Antiquities-with-the-brown-frame-and-the-DaVinci-looking-design Ornithopters and saying "I'm not touching that copper monstrosity, but you go right ahead" and having to struggle to actually read my opponent's card. At least the ugly Ornithopter still looked like a magic card. These look like a parody of a Magic card, or a quirky alternate-universe idea of what a Magic card could be. I'm okay with people doing their own thing with what I don't find aesthetically pleasing, but when the cards are so poorly designed that they can't be easily read, that's interfering with the game itself.
My only hope at this point is that they misdesigned them on purpose so that the backlash will give them an excuse to prematurely dump the whole "expeditions in every set" idea.
Here ya go. I also simplified the title line and got rid of the damn black on the left side. The right side is untouched.
When doing this, I found that the width of the pillars on each side of the art is inconsistent. The right side is slightly wider than the left, and noticeably so.
Honestly, the general idea of the frame is fine. It's just too busy, like they kept literally every idea anyone threw into the mix.
Honestly the fact that the chances you'll even see one of these is so low, I'm willing to write it off as almost the same as a judge promo or something like that.
Yeah they don't look great, but whatever it's some super-rare promo. In the big scheme of magic that's not even a drop in the bucket
Um, I see Expeditions and Inventions all the time. Like all the time. Most players I know rock full sets of them for whatever EDH decks they run. These are gonna make my eyes bleed on the regular.
EDIT: It looks even more okay when you cut out the pillars entirely.
I had a friend post these on Facebook and I legitimately thought they MUST be fake because WotC couldn't possibly print something SO ugly, and SO irritating to read. Lo and behold I discover THEY WERE REAL. These are seriously some of the ugliest cards of any card game I have ever seen and it hurts me deep down that some of my favorite cards are getting the general treatment of Masterpieces and Expeditions, but they're getting it in the worst most unfathomably hideous fashion.
The person that designed these must be fired immediately, it hurts my SOUL to know that these are going to be real, actual Magic: the Gathering cards found in real sealed product.
Um, I see Expeditions and Inventions all the time. Like all the time. Most players I know rock full sets of them for whatever EDH decks they run. These are gonna make my eyes bleed on the regular.
EDIT: It looks even more okay when you cut out the pillars entirely.
Yes thats a MUCH cleaner design and would be much more appreciated. Still i would make the normal manacost colors, its terrible if the manacost are "hidden" and do not stand out. The name of the card, and the manacost are in the end the only truly important part of a card, as we see on all the full art cards (its still better to have the text still on the card, even at full-art, just remember the textless Cryptic Command and you know that people simply cannot remmeber all the modes in detail).
Hiding text in a lot of noise of symbols is a incredible terrible design choice.
Its like altered artwork that completly changes the card to something you cannot recognize anymore. And that kind of alter was illegal in tournament play so far, so WotC making their own terrible alter art is not really going to help ...
----
Changing design is one thing, messing cards up to make them "unreadable" is not cool.
Keep it clean, people should at the very least see what card you play.
So hopefully this mistake serves as an example for them what they messed up and i can already see the Maro Article about how he realizes this.
I don't like these invocations either for the same reasons others have mentioned here, and what is bothereing me the most about them is that the card links on this forum is already showing the invocation version of the card.
So, I'm starting a motion for the card links to stop showing invocation versions, or any masterpieces for that matter. Not very fond of those either. Latest regular version printed would be fine for me, instead.
I don't like these invocations either for the same reasons others have mentioned here, and what is bothereing me the most about them is that the card links on this forum is already showing the invocation version of the card.
So, I'm starting a motion for the card links to stop showing invocation versions, or any masterpieces for that matter. Not very fond of those either. Latest regular version printed would be fine for me, instead.
Thank you.
Our hover-over links use the most recent version of the card that was added to the database. The only way to bypass that is to delete an older version and add it back to the database, which would erase all memory of that card for pricing and trading trends.
The theme may have been pretty scattered.
Honestly though I love this masterpiece series. The card frame is beautiful in my opinion, it doesn't look too different from a magic card, all the info is in the correct place.
I even like the heiroglyphic text on the names. It's not hard to read. There's even a line where the heiroglyphs end and the actual card name begins.
The art doesn't seem smaller at all, just the border bolder and more eye catching. And all the art is extremely well done.
That new consecrated sphinx.
The starkness of mind twist.
This is gonna be the first time I get a masterpiece. Definitely the Sphinx, and probably one of the gods to use as a commander.
I don't like these invocations either for the same reasons others have mentioned here, and what is bothereing me the most about them is that the card links on this forum is already showing the invocation version of the card.
So, I'm starting a motion for the card links to stop showing invocation versions, or any masterpieces for that matter. Not very fond of those either. Latest regular version printed would be fine for me, instead.
Thank you.
Our hover-over links use the most recent version of the card that was added to the database. The only way to bypass that is to delete an older version and add it back to the database, which would erase all memory of that card for pricing and trading trends.
Add a mtgs "set". Call it the "we don't want to view these garbage invocations" set and just upload a picture of the last normal printing.
Personally, I think these are both ugly and kinda cool at the same time. I can forgive the ugliness somewhat because most of it comes from going for an ancient look, which is kinda cool. I have no problem with the smaller art frame either. The letters look bad in smaller images, but at card size they will be fine. This does mean they'll probably look like ***** in mtgo though. The frames would look better if the black bars were just the card's color instead, as in NineInchNail's mock up. The gaucheness also makes sense because this is Bolas' plane, and its consistent with how his character has been written to have a gaudy, tasteless, plaster gold plate everywhere aesthetic.
This is the place for WotC to take risks, because even if you absolutely HATE the design, they are rare enough that you'll still be happy opening one to trade it for stuff you do like, because so long as they have their fans they will be valuable.
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Gotta agree, they are uggos. When they first started getting spoiled I was like why is (fill in mtg content creator/store/whatever) posting yu-gi-oh cards all of a sudden and why are they so ugly?
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They don't lack a theme. The theme is the power of the Gods/Bolas. The problems inherent in making every Masterpiece run a single cardtype should be obvious.
Our hover-over links use the most recent version of the card that was added to the database. The only way to bypass that is to delete an older version and add it back to the database, which would erase all memory of that card for pricing and trading trends.
But why thinking about bypassing it instead of just updating the function? I'd imagine it to be a minor update to add some 'excludeFromTooltips' flag to the database and check for it in addition to creation date on fetching the card version to show.
Obviously I don't know your current implementation, so I might be missing potential problems here, just seems to be easily solvable.
I have a hard time reading the cards and they dont look like magic cards at all.
This. I mean, I don't really understand why people spend a bunch of money on foil cards or japanese/russian cards, and I've occasionally run into people who use those awful near-porn anime lands. I don't like them or get them, but at least I can identify them. Even the foreign cards, if you play a lot you probably know most of them by the art (and the context of the deck). These things though... I can barely read the text and the alternate art means I can't identify it by anything else either. It would be a huge distraction if someone had a bunch of these in a deck.
My hope is that they sit in store display cases not being sold, and Wizards gets the message.
But why thinking about bypassing it instead of just updating the function? I'd imagine it to be a minor update to add some 'excludeFromTooltips' flag to the database and check for it in addition to creation date on fetching the card version to show.
Obviously I don't know your current implementation, so I might be missing potential problems here, just seems to be easily solvable.
To be honest, I'm not very adept at the more technical stuff nor do I understand programming and coding. But I do know that this is a complaint that we've gotten often so I hope at some point we are able to address it.
The font. That weird, ALL CAPS thing? Not helping.
While we're here, the lack of color on the mana symbols is also kinda distracting. In fact, the layout in general? Not helping.
The lack of a theme. For instance, "invocation" would suggest creature. (The old school French word for "summon" was in fact "invoquer".) Many of us thought of instants and sorceries, of which there are many powerful ones. (This leads to the balance of power, rarity, and fame, while not breaking the Reserved List.)
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I find myself wondering if Wizards did any kind of market testing at all with these. Like if they showed them to any players and just asked "what do you think of these designs?" I find one of 3 likely possibilities regarding this. #1...they just didn't do it at all. #2...they did ask people and for reasons that will forever baffle the finest minds on this planet the people they showed them to gave positive reactions. or #3...they did ask people, the people told them what a steaming pile of stomped dog **** these cards were and Wizards said "well...we like em so we're just gonna go ahead and print them anyway cuz who cares what you think you're a dumb dumb poopy head."
Which of these scenarios is most likely? I'll leave it up to you guys to decide. One thing I know for sure...I hate these damn cards. I hate every single solitary gosh dang thing about them except for the art which looks awesome, but they couldn't even get THAT right because they made the damn art window so small you can't even properly appreciate it!
I don’t know what went on with the market test but, even though there are people who don’t like these cards, they will sell anyway. They’re still gonna be shiny super rare cards, and almost anyone who cracks a booster with one in it will be happy, even if they don’t like the design very much.
On top of that, these cards are very different from all we’ve seen so far in magic cards and because of that they’ve generated quite some stir in the magic community, and I bet there will be people wanting these cards for this sake alone, for the same reason people collect defective cards and whatnot, things that were a thing (good or bad) at some point in the Mtg history.
Chasers will chase, so I don’t predict any financial catastrophe or anything like that coming wotc’s way, but after seeing the art revealed months ago from an anticipated Egyptian theme, which was stunning by the way, I find these invocations, and everything else revealed so far about this expansion, quite disappointing.
I don't loathe these, but clearly there are some problems. Hazoret the Pervert is not some joke, that seriously looks like it's supposed to be the name of the card. (Also, if you want a character in your art to read as giant, there has to be something there for scale, just saying.)
In terms of theme, I would agree that it's too loose here to really be called a theme, but I would also say that having card-type themes is not something they can keep doing forever.
They can only make so many dramatically different card-faces before they make some ugly ones, and though these are muddy, difficult to read, and don't scream "Magic card", these are kinda cool once you get used to them. They do have an ancient Egyptian feel, but they take some navigating to even read, and elements like power/toughness are not as obvious across the table as they probably should be.
These are okay, I guess, but not the right stride for Masterpieces to be taking. Certainly, Spell Pierce is a great card, but it's a card to print in the set, not as a masterpiece. When someone opens it, they're just as likely to say "Seriously??? Spell Pierce??" as they are to say "Holy ****, I got an invocation!!"
My only hope at this point is that they misdesigned them on purpose so that the backlash will give them an excuse to prematurely dump the whole "expeditions in every set" idea.
I wouldn't count on it.
1) They make a supplemental product each year called From the Vault.
2) Folks (really really) don't like the printing process in that product.
3) From the Vault involves additional production, packaging and marketing costs.
4) It is primarily designed and marketed at casual players and deck pimps (aka the secondary market).
I suspect FtV will phased out in 2017/2018 and these will take its place. There are just too many similarities and they can save a ton of money just putting them in normal boosters instead of a special yearly set that no one really wants anymore anyway.
I find myself wondering if Wizards did any kind of market testing at all with these. Like if they showed them to any players and just asked "what do you think of these designs?" I find one of 3 likely possibilities regarding this. #1...they just didn't do it at all. #2...they did ask people and for reasons that will forever baffle the finest minds on this planet the people they showed them to gave positive reactions. or #3...they did ask people, the people told them what a steaming pile of stomped dog **** these cards were and Wizards said "well...we like em so we're just gonna go ahead and print them anyway cuz who cares what you think you're a dumb dumb poopy head."
Which of these scenarios is most likely? I'll leave it up to you guys to decide. One thing I know for sure...I hate these damn cards. I hate every single solitary gosh dang thing about them except for the art which looks awesome, but they couldn't even get THAT right because they made the damn art window so small you can't even properly appreciate it!
Well done Wizards...crikey...
I think the most they tested this on was close friends and family of developers at Wizards. There is *no way* they asked random Players because random Players would run out and tell everyone what they were just asked by WOTC. Can't have spoilers!
Something is ****ed at Wizards right now - see you all in 2 years when they get their heads out of their asses or they fully devolve into becoming a reprint company.
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Trouble is, they decided to add a bunch of extra faux-hieroglyphic noise in the title box of the cards that have really short names (Daze, Stifle). This is my biggest complaint. I got a headache staring at #$@WD+__STIFLE!#$Q#FI)DI/ trying to get a clue what the card was until I finally just gave up and read the text. "Oh, that sounds familiar. That's a blue spell, it's been around a while... what was it called? Stifle?"
This is awful for me. I used to hate playing EDH because around my shop people feel it's necessary to make really bad black-and-white photocopies of cards they don't own and stick them in sleeves. "Are you done with your turn?" "No, hang on, I'm trying to figure out what that blur is on the other side of the table." Bleh. Cards should first and foremost be easy to recognize at a distance. Part of the reason for Magic's success is the simple, loud design: turns out bright colors and big numbers convey a lot of information really quickly. And while I agree that the classic frames were better than the new frames, this is a huge step off the beaten path, and it seems like a slippery slope to me as far as the Masterpieces are concerned. With the first Expeditions it was like "cool, those can be full art and shiny, they're just duals, the text doesn't really matter anyway." Then the second set added a bunch of other lands which weren't quite as simple, then the big change to gaudy copper border for the last block, now this. They really don't seem to care about making these aesthetically pleasing or readable, it seems like the gaudier the better because that's what they think people want and now the rest of us have to suffer across the table from the person whose deck, ten years down the line, has a different frame for every single card. No thanks.
Now, to be fair, I thought foils and mythics were dumb, too, so I'm obviously not the target audience for these things. But there's a difference between clinging to my original-from-Antiquities-with-the-brown-frame-and-the-DaVinci-looking-design Ornithopters and saying "I'm not touching that copper monstrosity, but you go right ahead" and having to struggle to actually read my opponent's card. At least the ugly Ornithopter still looked like a magic card. These look like a parody of a Magic card, or a quirky alternate-universe idea of what a Magic card could be. I'm okay with people doing their own thing with what I don't find aesthetically pleasing, but when the cards are so poorly designed that they can't be easily read, that's interfering with the game itself.
My only hope at this point is that they misdesigned them on purpose so that the backlash will give them an excuse to prematurely dump the whole "expeditions in every set" idea.
When doing this, I found that the width of the pillars on each side of the art is inconsistent. The right side is slightly wider than the left, and noticeably so.
Honestly, the general idea of the frame is fine. It's just too busy, like they kept literally every idea anyone threw into the mix.
Yeah they don't look great, but whatever it's some super-rare promo. In the big scheme of magic that's not even a drop in the bucket
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EDIT: It looks even more okay when you cut out the pillars entirely.
The person that designed these must be fired immediately, it hurts my SOUL to know that these are going to be real, actual Magic: the Gathering cards found in real sealed product.
I am a drama queen.
But it still hurts me.
Yes thats a MUCH cleaner design and would be much more appreciated. Still i would make the normal manacost colors, its terrible if the manacost are "hidden" and do not stand out. The name of the card, and the manacost are in the end the only truly important part of a card, as we see on all the full art cards (its still better to have the text still on the card, even at full-art, just remember the textless Cryptic Command and you know that people simply cannot remmeber all the modes in detail).
Hiding text in a lot of noise of symbols is a incredible terrible design choice.
Its like altered artwork that completly changes the card to something you cannot recognize anymore. And that kind of alter was illegal in tournament play so far, so WotC making their own terrible alter art is not really going to help ...
----
Changing design is one thing, messing cards up to make them "unreadable" is not cool.
Keep it clean, people should at the very least see what card you play.
So hopefully this mistake serves as an example for them what they messed up and i can already see the Maro Article about how he realizes this.
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So, I'm starting a motion for the card links to stop showing invocation versions, or any masterpieces for that matter. Not very fond of those either. Latest regular version printed would be fine for me, instead.
Thank you.
Our hover-over links use the most recent version of the card that was added to the database. The only way to bypass that is to delete an older version and add it back to the database, which would erase all memory of that card for pricing and trading trends.
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Honestly though I love this masterpiece series. The card frame is beautiful in my opinion, it doesn't look too different from a magic card, all the info is in the correct place.
I even like the heiroglyphic text on the names. It's not hard to read. There's even a line where the heiroglyphs end and the actual card name begins.
The art doesn't seem smaller at all, just the border bolder and more eye catching. And all the art is extremely well done.
That new consecrated sphinx.
The starkness of mind twist.
This is gonna be the first time I get a masterpiece. Definitely the Sphinx, and probably one of the gods to use as a commander.
Add a mtgs "set". Call it the "we don't want to view these garbage invocations" set and just upload a picture of the last normal printing.
Personally, I think these are both ugly and kinda cool at the same time. I can forgive the ugliness somewhat because most of it comes from going for an ancient look, which is kinda cool. I have no problem with the smaller art frame either. The letters look bad in smaller images, but at card size they will be fine. This does mean they'll probably look like ***** in mtgo though. The frames would look better if the black bars were just the card's color instead, as in NineInchNail's mock up. The gaucheness also makes sense because this is Bolas' plane, and its consistent with how his character has been written to have a gaudy, tasteless, plaster gold plate everywhere aesthetic.
This is the place for WotC to take risks, because even if you absolutely HATE the design, they are rare enough that you'll still be happy opening one to trade it for stuff you do like, because so long as they have their fans they will be valuable.
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But yeah they're ******* ugly.
But why thinking about bypassing it instead of just updating the function? I'd imagine it to be a minor update to add some 'excludeFromTooltips' flag to the database and check for it in addition to creation date on fetching the card version to show.
Obviously I don't know your current implementation, so I might be missing potential problems here, just seems to be easily solvable.
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This. I mean, I don't really understand why people spend a bunch of money on foil cards or japanese/russian cards, and I've occasionally run into people who use those awful near-porn anime lands. I don't like them or get them, but at least I can identify them. Even the foreign cards, if you play a lot you probably know most of them by the art (and the context of the deck). These things though... I can barely read the text and the alternate art means I can't identify it by anything else either. It would be a huge distraction if someone had a bunch of these in a deck.
My hope is that they sit in store display cases not being sold, and Wizards gets the message.
To be honest, I'm not very adept at the more technical stuff nor do I understand programming and coding. But I do know that this is a complaint that we've gotten often so I hope at some point we are able to address it.
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On phasing:
Which of these scenarios is most likely? I'll leave it up to you guys to decide. One thing I know for sure...I hate these damn cards. I hate every single solitary gosh dang thing about them except for the art which looks awesome, but they couldn't even get THAT right because they made the damn art window so small you can't even properly appreciate it!
Well done Wizards...crikey...
On top of that, these cards are very different from all we’ve seen so far in magic cards and because of that they’ve generated quite some stir in the magic community, and I bet there will be people wanting these cards for this sake alone, for the same reason people collect defective cards and whatnot, things that were a thing (good or bad) at some point in the Mtg history.
Chasers will chase, so I don’t predict any financial catastrophe or anything like that coming wotc’s way, but after seeing the art revealed months ago from an anticipated Egyptian theme, which was stunning by the way, I find these invocations, and everything else revealed so far about this expansion, quite disappointing.
In terms of theme, I would agree that it's too loose here to really be called a theme, but I would also say that having card-type themes is not something they can keep doing forever.
They can only make so many dramatically different card-faces before they make some ugly ones, and though these are muddy, difficult to read, and don't scream "Magic card", these are kinda cool once you get used to them. They do have an ancient Egyptian feel, but they take some navigating to even read, and elements like power/toughness are not as obvious across the table as they probably should be.
These are okay, I guess, but not the right stride for Masterpieces to be taking. Certainly, Spell Pierce is a great card, but it's a card to print in the set, not as a masterpiece. When someone opens it, they're just as likely to say "Seriously??? Spell Pierce??" as they are to say "Holy ****, I got an invocation!!"
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I wouldn't count on it.
1) They make a supplemental product each year called From the Vault.
2) Folks (really really) don't like the printing process in that product.
3) From the Vault involves additional production, packaging and marketing costs.
4) It is primarily designed and marketed at casual players and deck pimps (aka the secondary market).
I suspect FtV will phased out in 2017/2018 and these will take its place. There are just too many similarities and they can save a ton of money just putting them in normal boosters instead of a special yearly set that no one really wants anymore anyway.
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I think the most they tested this on was close friends and family of developers at Wizards. There is *no way* they asked random Players because random Players would run out and tell everyone what they were just asked by WOTC. Can't have spoilers!
Something is ****ed at Wizards right now - see you all in 2 years when they get their heads out of their asses or they fully devolve into becoming a reprint company.