I think the both serra angels are fantastic (but i do prefer the new),
the old djinn is also fantastic, 100%agree
I don't like either art for sengir vampire but I prefer the new one,
and while I do like some of the foglios a lot like browse, I understand why they don't really fit now.
And I already cited Foglio in one of my least favorite arts ever, in Cuombajj Witches
I think it's telling that 3 of the 4 arts youd bring up were on high powered cards from the era, exposing what I think are very thick nostalgia goggles. It's like people who think gen 1 pokemon had the best gameplay, or something. Underage you is probably just more likely to accept whatever it is you have, and then you grow up liking that thing without objectivity.
//
The whole reason I noticed magic was the art, specifically the art on lands. Ravnica lands, if I recall. So I think you're substituting the word "change" with "lost its soul", or "different" with "worse". Because I look at many of the cards done in your favorite era and see a lot of art I'd deem amateur or immature or unfinished.
"dense, sprawling utopia" - i.e. Ravnica, Kaladesh, Amonkhet, these planes all look identical to me, they're just giant cities with roughly the same degree of steampunk/sci-fi influence that all harken back to Mercadia (as was mentioned above).
There's no steampunk or technology in AKH. Ravnica and KLD may have something similar (at least, for the izzet and the markets), but I think you're off base for lumping AKHs aesthetics in with those two. Also, Theros doesn't have a sprawling citiscape as a main focus either.
Set sizes are smaller now, significantly. So whatever extra, narrow, supplemental product they release that has a couple dozen new cards in it isn't really adding to the cardpool by year by enough to say they release more cards per year than they used to. The total number of products released isn't really an issue.
Or it shouldn't be.
"Go ahead and throw more irrelevant numbers at me that noone cares about. If you have even more time to waste you can also go back and see how many of those humans in older sets were actually humans when they were printed, because the fact that so many of them weren't and many of them also didn't look like the 'generic' humans we get on every card nowadays is a pretty huge factor in how the flavor of those sets felt. If we're still arguing if 'personal feeling' should even be considered a factor in evaluating games I'm out. Because it's literally all it's about, or else we wouldn't even be playing the game in question."
If my "irrelevant numbers" don't mean anything when you specifically cry about how the numbers are, then be out then. You can't say there are too many of something now (a numerical claim) and then ignore the facts.
If you feel art is bad now, fine. If you don't like planeswalkers because theyre counter-intuitive (I must assume you mean the burn damage redirection rule? Everything else makes sense) then... Fine I guess.
Are there any cards in AKH that are human reprints of other cards? Should they just flavor every plane to include whatever creature types every reprint is that they want to make during development? Should development stay away from functional reprints even if that means the limited format would be worse? Your alternate reality sounds needlessly restrictive for a game that wants to make sets for decades.
You're willing to shunt gameplay for "flavor", and disregard limited for it too. I enjoy playing the game because of how it plays, not whatever nebulous aesthetic point you play for. And for that, I'm glad wizards is in charge.
//
@phitt
I never noticed how that art looks like a kids book art until now. Now I can't unsee it.
It is interesting how many of the arts you laid out I think are bad, but I do get why people would miss stuff like agility.
Wait, now you are literally comparing story characters represented by legendary creatures with common filler, moaning how much cooler they were? I have been keeping silent and enjoying the show but wow. It keeps reaching new depths.
If anyone shows me a single story character of say Kaladesh or Amonkhet block that has the same depth as Greven and Crovax had I'm more than willing to make a fair comparison. Unfortunately you won't find any, because the only relevant characters in those blocks are the same planeswalkers as always, which means they just paint the same people from slightly different perspectives and call it exciting new cards...
So much this. Kaladesh saw the printing of a legendary FEMALE AIR PIRATE WITH MONKEY SIDEKICK(!!!<3!!!). If that had been a character on the Weatherlight, who we had gotten to know over the course of two or three blocks (6-9 expansions!!) there would have been so much celebrating. Instead we get a character who has all the potential to have an awesome story and personality, but instead they just cram the same old planeswalkers into the main story and expect us to be happy because Gideon has a *gasp* whole new card!
Also, what legendary creature would you like me to compare them to instead? There are exactly 8 legendary humans in Kaladesh and AKH block so far and all of them except maybe Hapatra are just as generic as the filler commons I mentioned.
Like, I 100% agree that the art and re-re-re-re-use of Jace sucks, but the cards actually WORK nowadays, which is by far the more important issue for a strategic card game.
I agree the pirate is awesome. But thats only one card. If everything would ooze that flavor, nobody would complain. At least I wont.
Regarding the old artworks, it was actually "art". Like handpainted artworks painted with different paints and individual styles. Nowadays its just cheap digital thats totally overloaded for the small cards and often very generic. Some of the new artworks have awesome details and look great on high resolutions, but they just dont fit the cards. Like who could identify whats on Tarmogoyf. But thats a continued discussion as well. I still miss the old frame, especially since the foils were so much more shiny. I understand the made some changes, but they messed it up (browserlook) and never redone it, although they got the opportunity with the latest frame update. Like why arent the cards borderless full art? Look at the (great) alters, how awesome magiccards could look today.
I agree with the Planeswalker issue, probably the worst decision to game design by far. Magic jumped the shark when the walkers were introduced. They work outside of normal magic rules (effects cost no mana, dont interact with tons of cards and effects) and also totally destroyed the immersion that YOU the players are the planeswalkers. And yeah, having the same walkers over and over again is horrible. I mean, what story do they even have. Everyone knew about Urza and Mishra back in the days. Removing manaburn is just icing on the cake, destroying more immersion and heavily warp how certain cards in vintage work while also removing another win/losecon.
And yeah, I played in the 90s. I started plaing in 1995. I wonder you guys have problem running a good constructed format from that time. Of course the olds sets are not working for booster drafts very well, but constructed had some real good decks, although quite unbalanced. *cough*Necropotence *cough* (they make the same mistakes today) and colorhate wasnt much different to sideboard cards today. Rest in Peace against your Dredgedeck isnt much fun either. The only issue I had and still have was the enormous decrease of powerlevel in that era. Fallen Empires, 4th Edition, up to Mirage is really horrible compared to 3rd, Legends and so on. Not even mentioning Beta.
Something that's 94% irrelevant when you make four mana to cast a four drop, 5% a GOTCHA for newer and unaware players, and 1% actually useful/interesting (for stuff like Black Market) is exactly what NOT to do in game design. So glad it's gone.
It would be very relevant in vintage, while using various manaeffects like Black Lotus, Mishra's Workshop(the artwork!!!!) and mana drain in particular. It also killed the Eladamri's Vineyard/Mana Flare deck and made a buch of other cards obsolete.
And yeah, it could catch unaware players sometimes, so thats exactly what watering down the game to please noobs means.
yeah, and things like the cathodion and su-chi abilities were supposed to be downsides for the efficient value, now they're just dope. Phyrexian War Beast probably has the accurate downside these days for that sort of artifact value in pauper, despite still being a very old card itself.
"Watering down" games is a great thing. You can't just have an infinite number of rules, so you should cut the ones that simply don't come up in 99% of games and -- crucially -- can be removed from your rulebook with no significant consequences.
Yes, some individual cards -- maybe 20 or 30 out of 16,000 ever printed -- don't work as intended any more, and that's unfortunate, but it's not like removing the "mill" (draw cards from an empty library) rule which needs to be in place or else some small percent of games will literally not be able to come to a conclusion.
Mana Burn "And yeah, it could catch unaware players sometimes, so thats exactly what watering down the game to please noobs means."
So part of your argument relies on people not knowing how to play the game? Ha, looks like you miscounted how much mana your seething song will make. TAKE ONE.
I could probably play 200 games of magic (draft, standard, peasant cube, and unpowered cube) before mana burn came up. That's a rule that doesn't deserve to exist. That'd be like, if in chess, if when you manage to get a board state on your turn with 3 bishops in the corner squares, you win. Removing that would dumb down the game, and water down the strategy objectively, but the rule is vestigial 99/100 times.
"...dont interact with tons of cards and effects"
So, like enchantments? Only two colors really get to interact with enchantments, but at least every color has tools to meaningfully interact with 'walkers with the combat step. Also, just like selesnya gets to deal with enchantments, rakdos has burn or pointed removal for walkers. They're even printing (slowly) more cards that remove counters from cards.
"immersion that you are the planeswalker"
A) They are your allies, such is the flavor. It should not work against the "immersion"
B) Does anyone actually feel like... immersed in a game of magic as though they were a wizard? No offense.
"I agree the pirate is awesome. But thats only one card. If everything would ooze that flavor, nobody would complain. At least I wont."
I'm sorry, but, are we really just going to skip over the theros gods here?
And I can't let you just glaze over Legends. Barktooth Warbeard's bark is as good as his bite, his flavor text told me so.
It didn't take me long to find a rando legendary with no clear reason to exist in Blind seer, outside of legends either. Io brought up two "????" legendaries as well.
/// Weatherlight
Of course no legendary creature is going to be as fleshed out as the ones in the freaking weatherlight saga. They had characters for FOUR YEARS to work with. Every other block only had one. Come on, now.
It's kinda weird that you'd be mad at so many years of jace (Yes, definitely too much Jace) but not a half decade of gerrard. The generic guy who literally goes through a heroes journey with his purposely formulaic story. For four years.
meanwhile "Because you see the same face on every one of them."
Not a whole lot of room for sad art on creature cards. But we have anger, stoicism, determined, mischeif, and stealth. KLD brought us a lot of happines too. Seriously, what do you want?
take this page http://magiccards.info/query?q=t:human f:standard&s=cname&v=card&p=3.
A lot of these cards are not humans in "generic action pose". There are plenty, sure, but magic is a game of combat after all. Meanwhile, of these 20, you have
45% aren't "guy threatens with pointy stick" or "guy casting aggressive spell". Are you going to complain that we don't have enough of "guy does his job"? Izor, you don't want people you see in the street, you say "it's a fantasy game". But you don't want people in fantasy roles doing fantasy things.
??????????
On page 2 we had
Another 45% doing things unrelated to combat/conflict off-camera
I just can't pin down what you want humans to be doing more of.
Should the number of creatures shown outside of combat surpass 50%? But they can't look like regular people doing regular things?
apparently we just make 98% of creatures stupid Humans with uninteresting artwork and with convoluted names that basically just say what the card does.
Oh, and before I forget, a bandar is based on an actual legendary animal from that culture the set was based on. It's not just magic being silly.
90% sure I read that on MaRo's blog
////////////////////
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Finally though, yeah, Io's point should be more relevant than it is.
The cards nowadays are far less likely to just not function. You don't have a Legends expansion nowadays (such flavor, rite?), and you don't have this card which I swear is the first non-modern card to show up when I hit random on .info: Chaos Lord. You don't have to worry about someone playing Gloom or Boil and being unable to play magic this game.
Speaking of weatherlight, who wants to keep track of graveyard order? (actually, I don't mind this but I know people who do). Or band? Or play against desperate gambit? Doomsday seems healthy. Can someone tell me why master of arms exsts?
just because a rule is not relevant in your format, doesnt mean it has to be abandoned. in real magic aka vintage it would matter a lot, as i said.
People not knowing all rules was an argument against manaburn and complex as magic still is, is a stupid argument itself. You guys seem to fail to understand that complexity and crazy stuff like Mishras Factory+Humility are the stuff that made magic awesome. a fckin nerdgame.
Planeswalkers are in general much stronger than enchantments and since you are a planeswalker yourrself, why do you need to generate mana?
Weatherlight is already a later set and you definitely will notice the difference to earlier sets. Ice Age was probably the last "real magic" set and Richard Garfield itself left the game at that time if i remember correctly. Yeah it might sound crazy today, because WL is already 20yrs old itself, but the decline is slow and steady.
and Richard Garfield itself left the game at that time if i remember correctly.
So... wait... you really were propping up magic before the WL saga? Wow! So Legends and so forth are fair game? And Banding? I was using those as half-joking examples. I didn't expect that to be seriously the era you were championing at all!
I don't use explamation points willy-nilly either, I am legit surprised.
And Richard Garfield didn't know anything about game balance back in the ancient days of magic. Unless you're going to tell me that Alpha was well balanced, and the 6th edition rules ruined everything. The dude championed city in a bottle
May as well have kept silent if you have nothing to contribute.
His point was that your point is terrible. You compared characters that may appear in thirteen sets to a no-name creature that appeared in a core set. May as well keep silent if you aren't going to at least try say something intelligible.
Garfield surely made mistakes and some cards are awkward, but they were designed not just to be played but to fill the world with flavor and immersion. Booster drafts werent a thing back then and outside of limited most of the new cards are still wastepaper.
Garfield made real magic, MaRo is just a poisonous steward. Funny enough I just read that Garfield was involved in time spiral and the first innistrad, both the best sets since the old times.
regarding chaos lord, they still print unplayable overcosted red waste Scrambleverse
Planeswalkers are in general much stronger than enchantments
This is true. And one can argue that this is a bad thing.
But your argument was that they aren't able to be easily interacted with, when they may be more directly interact-with-able than non-attacking creatures. You can try to get to them with the most common action in the game (other than land drops and casting stuff).
Aboulutely agree with everything Izor. But besides minor design decisions and fails ive come to the conclusion it all boils down to the presentation aka frame and artworks. Its just too generic and the frame would fit a sci-fi game, not a fantasy one.
I mentioned it, look at some card alter.
Imagine every card would have the look and quality like this one.
now change the frame of the text boxes to a more fantasy one and make the textbox semi-transparent.
Heck, they made absoultely stunning looking masterpieces in KLD just to waste that look on a few ultra rares (talk about greed again)
There's so many instances of cognitive dissonance in these posts it's hard to keep count, but I think "Garfield sucked at designing Magic, that's why Magic was great" takes the cake.
See, that is exactly what made Magic so fun. That not all cards were functional. We have 16 thousand cards right now, I think enough of them are playable. In recent sets I've actually been happy when there was little to nothing to put in my cube. I don't need the 12th pick in a regular draft format to be a playable card. In fact, draft formats were much more skill-testing when packs were full of unplayables. Nowadays a bad player can just jam any 2 colors together and win against people when he gets lucky and draws his curve while the other player struggles. Back in the day a good drafter would completely destroy a bad one. Of course the internet plays an important role here as well, but it's still just one more of those examples that show that they want noobs enjoy the game without making an actual effort to becomr good, instead of learning to enjoy the game as they improve.
Yeah, why would you design a game to make it enjoyable right away?
And... have you actually played against new players at all? It's still incredibly easy to win, even if they get to draft a rare Bristling Hydra instead of Gravebind.
Comparing planeswalkers to enchantments like this shows that you don't have any experience with older sweepers. Cards like Pernicious Deed, Nev's Disk or Akroma's Vengeance all specified the kinds of cards they kill instead of saying 'non-land', and all of those cards were or still are very good and still playable in eternal formats like Legacy, Cube or Commander. The fact that they don't hit pws is just broken nowadays and it pushes their power level even more. See, there's an errata for you that would have actually made sense. Make all of those cards hit planeswalkers at least.
Errata is awful and should be avoided at basically all costs. Show a kid a card that says it destroys X, Y, and Z, then move their Card F to the graveyard. Feels great, right? And every new card of that type (Planar Cleansing, Cast Out, etc etc etc) DOES hit planeswalkers. And... you know... you can attack them. With creatures. That doesn't quite work as well against Humility or Pestilence or whatever else.
Gallowbraid and Morinfen are awesome, btw. Who cares that they're not good. You'll remember them because they had sweet art or some sort of unique effect. Noone will remember Kari Zev or any of those new legends in 2 years, because all we'll remember are Jace number 23 and Gideon number 12.
Art only goes so far. Kari Zev will actually be in cubes and decks in five years, sweet-looking legends with awful text boxes never were.
Sure, Gerrard was around for years, but he was on how many cards? like 5-10ish? and he himself was only printed as a legend once as far as I remember. You didn't have 10 iterations of him around and his damn face on every white spell for 6 years, which is exactly what they're doing with Lilly, Jace, Chandra, Garruk, Tezzeret and Gideon. This is why the stories around him didn't get boring. Some of the big characters didn't even exist as cards back then, which made them even more mysterious and interesting. I don't think Urza and Mishra existed as Legends before they thought they had to print them as a disappointing vanilla human in Time Spiral for instance, correct me if I'm wrong
I recall the Weatherlight saga being boring as hell -- I played in 94-95-96 and found the entire lore back then to be absolutely useless. Dunno how that compares to popular opinion, but whatever. And yeah, Jace still sucks.
Of course Garfield had no clue what he was doing. That's exactly what made the game so great. I dare to say that we probably all wouldn't be here discussing MtG if they hadn't printed those terribly overpowered cards in Alpha that made Magic that iconic game it is today.
This isn't like the demo tape by some 1970s punk band, doing something competent is actually a GOOD thing. And it's not the Black Lotus stuff we're complaining about; it's Squire and White Scarab and Twiddle and so much other absolute crap.
Hating on City in a bottle, sure. Different question: why do you even mention it? Yep, because you remember it. Because it's a unique and iconic card that explores a design space they don't usually explore and those kitchen table stories about that mono red player with all-Arabian Nights Mountains in their deck being shut down by it are much more enjoyable than those stories about people hitting Ulamog with Marvel or not. Who cares if City in a bottle is playable or not? Who cares how good the original Elder Dragons were? They have a whole format named after them, beat that with your playable but irrelevant legends of the last 10 years. We have thousands of powerful cards already and what sticks out of that sheer amount are the cards that have a unique flavor and will thus be remembered forever, no matter what their power level is.
City in a Bottle is a little bit of kitsch. We remember it (Shahrazad, Shooting Star, the enchantment that causes THE GAME TO BE A TIE) BECAUSE it's weird and awful.
Like... someone walks into a game store in 2017.
Game A is weird and kitschy and has cool pictures and is awful to play.
Game B is some generic fantasy or sci-fi or superhero trope pile but you can learn it right away and instantly be having fun.
What's the winner there?
(Please don't answer that, I guess you've already made it abundantly clear you want Game A)
You walk into a store and buy what everybody else is playing around you. So you either buy Yugioh or Magic these days and dont care about the rest. How many of those kids will still play magic in 20 years though?
But if you dont care about the game too much you buy whats the most beatiful collectors game.
See, that is exactly what made Magic so fun. That not all cards were functional. We have 16 thousand cards right now, I think enough of them are playable.
I don't need the 12th pick in a regular draft format to be a playable card. In fact, draft formats were much more skill-testing when packs were full of unplayables. Nowadays a bad player can just jam any 2 colors together and win against people when he gets lucky and draws his curve while the other player struggles.
Uh.... bad players don't make good curves. Bad players don't draft cards that have the same gameplan. I recently drafted my cube (you know,
the format where all the cards are good) and this guy left bonesplitter out of his aggro deck full of shadow creatures.
You think it's more skill testing to pick a good card over a bad card, instead of choosing the correct good card out of t***ood cards? How low is your bar for a "good" player?
As long as magic has had lands, a bad player could beat a good one. This is not a new thing. But to completely ignore deckbuilding and actually playing the game either shows that you're being intellectually dishonest or... something else.
Comparing planeswalkers to enchantments like this shows that you don't have any experience with older sweepers.
Ha
aha
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Wow you're on a new level. The assumption game is too strong. "I bet this guy doesn't ever play any cube with rares in it."
Gallowbraid and Morinfen are awesome, btw. Who cares that they're not good.
We brought these cards up because this feeling that "Legends in my day were dripping with flavor" is asinine. They are also bad as a bonus.
You'll remember them because they had sweet art or some sort of unique effect.
I remember lots of cards, because I generally have avery good memory. Off the top of my head, from shards block I remember Incurable ogre, outrider of jhess, angelic benediction, zombie outlander, demonspine whip, molten frame, and winged coatl just because I play the game. And countless others I remember the art, ability, and p/t of with no name.
Noone will remember Kari Zev or any of those new legends in 2 years, because all we'll remember are Jace number 23 and Gideon number 12.
"All the jaces run together, so we won't remember the things that aren't jace"
Sure, Gerrard was around for years, but he was on how many cards? like 5-10ish?
You didn't have 10 iterations of him around and his damn face on every white spell for 6 years
I know you're still living in the past, but google is, like... really real.
But before I get to my next point, I just want to point out that the wiki for the weatherlight saga lists the reception as "mixed at best".
Anyway
Gerrard is pictured on his own card, and then a couple others.
Abandon Hope
Abyssal Gatekeeper
Anoint
Benalish Missionary
Brawl
Broken Fall
Carrionette
Charisma
Chromatic Sphere (Invasion)
Coalition Victory
Collective Unconscious
Death Grasp
Debt of Loyalty [2]
Desperate Gambit
Dueling Grounds
Eladamri's Vineyard
Ensnaring Bridge (Stronghold)
Ertai's Trickery
Fugue (Exodus)
Gerrard's Battle Cry
Gerrard's Command
Gerrard's Irregulars
Gerrard's Verdict
Gerrard's Wisdom
Harsh Judgment
Heroic Defiance
Hero's Resolve
Heroes' Reunion
Hesitation
Insight
Invasion Plans
Jilt
Kindle
Ley Line
Lunge
Maniacal Rage
Master of Arms
Megrim (Tempest)
No Quarter
Null Rod
Orim's Prayer
Phyrexian Arena (Apocalypse)
Ransack
Reap
Recycle
Redwood Treefolk
Renounce
Rootwater Shaman
Sadistic Glee
Scapegoat
Shackles
Shifting Wall
Smite (Stronghold)
Soul Link
Specter's Wail
Stun
Sudden Impact (Tempest)
Suppress
Temper
Tremor
Uphill Battle
Warped Devotion
Winnow
Gerrard is on over 60 cards. And to really just twist the knife on how cosmically sad your argument is, Jace Beleren is on about 50. Gerrard was on 15 cards a year, Jace is on five.
(Gerrard is also on well over double as many flavor texts, 55, than Jace's 22)
Of course Garfield had no clue what he was doing. That's exactly what made the game so great.
I think we found a new signature for someone
Hating on City in a bottle, sure. Different question: why do you even mention it? Yep, because you remember it.
No, I've been making most of my arguments by looking through a database. Instead of catching feelings for the 90s and pitching them back at you. You see, facts are why things make sense.
Because it's a unique and iconic card that explores a design space they don't usually explore and those kitchen table stories about that mono red player with with all-Arabian Nights Mountains in their deck being shut down by it are much more enjoyable than those stories about people hitting Ulamog with Marvel or not.
...Are you... defending city in a bottle?
In any case
A) I have never, ever heard of anyone actually playing this card. So this story is meaningless to me.
B) It's going to take me a while to figure out how someone can say a 2 mana artifact that keeps your opponent from playing magic and forces them to find new basic lands is more fun than playing something that resembles a real game.
When I was a kid, I had this cousin who wouldn't teach me the controls for any new video game. He was a jerk. But he sure had fun.
This sounds just like that.
Who cares how good the original Elder Dragons were? They have a whole format named after them, beat that with your playable but irrelevant legends of the last 10 years.
Hang on a second. I'm trying to find the place where I put how much I care about EDH, but it's nowhere to be found
Has Magic: The Gathering "jumped the shark"? If so, when did this happen?
Jump was printed in Alpha, but we didn't get the first Shark until The Dark's Giant Shark (since demoted to a Fish). I don't know if or when the first Giant Shark was jumped, but it was probably soon after, so the answer to your question would be sometime in 1994.
There will always be people who consider themselves modern and who think people stuck in the past are stupid
Well, when you say things like "gerrard only appeared on 5-10 cards"
Which is not even half true (not even half of half true)
and then try to base an argument on this easily falsifiable claim
after making numerous similar claims about numbers
which were also wrong
without bothering to fact check anything you say
treating opinion claims like "the art is better" the same way as something that is literally objectively true or false
yeah, I'm going to get a little heated
This claim: "Sure, Gerrard was around for years, but he was on how many cards? like 5-10ish?
You didn't have 10 iterations of him around and his damn face on every white spell for 6 years"
Cannot be used to support an argument. It cannot be used to support a personal opinion. Because it is a lie.
You can complain that they used Jace too much. You can complain he's an edgelord. But you can't say that having literally 3x the concentration of gerrard is less egregious for any reason where you are counting things up and comparing how many you have.
/
You can follow a tonal shift that I've taken with Humphrey. Why? He's gotten to talking about art, and really we can agree on enough. I don't like longtusk cub, I don't like forest bear, I like juzam djinn, but I also like new serra angel. When I first saw it way back I was amazed. It would be nice if all cards had full arts, but they reduce the flow of full arts because humans are bad at valuing things that are commonplace. It's an annoying marketing thing that prevents us from having more nice things, but it isn't like they did it in 94 and took it away from us.
He finds the art valuable more than just an "icing on the cake" thing, which I cannot comprehend. That is true to him, though, and it's impossible to argue to him saying he must enjoys new art more or less for whatever reason.
What I can argue with him is that the relative value of new vs old art is debatable. I am surrounded by people on the site who like old art, but I'm not alone in thinking the new art has advantages over the old stuff. Wizards likes money, so I imagine they switched over to this more homogenized style (which isn't homeogenized by any means) because it tested well.
This isn't like some smuggler's copter mistake, it's a decade-long movement. If the backlash was truly so high, I would be surprised that they keep doing it.
/
And the only reason why I brought up enchantments in the conversation about planeswalkers is because Humphrey said they are hard to interact with. The context being he was unhappy with how they are "different" from "normal" magic. My only correlary was that enchantments are also hard to interact with.
As far as their abilities being better than those on enchantments, yeah, planeswalkers have to be protected and don't promise to be around until the end of a match. Most planeswalker + or 0 abilities aren't worth anywhere near the cost of the card. They earn their higher status by being temporary and asking you to protect them until they pay for themselves. And very often getting them killed doesn't cost your opponent a whole card, because attacking is free.
But as Izor pointed out, Enchantment removal were not limited to green and white, since we had sweeper like the Disc and tons of old cards dont have any interaction with walkers while it also was no problem to splash white for Enchantment removal. Sure, they csn interact with creatures, but the creature centric deck design is "new" magic as well. And the better Walkers can even protect themselves.
When it comes to cubes, a "good" cube designer would probalby just skip them.
Its true that Izors memory is not correct when it comes to the numbers, but thats not lying. Thats alternate facts
Back then I never liked the whole Weatherlight thing and found all of the cards revolving around them pretty boring. Actually the characters were infesting the game like todays walker. But from a todays standpoint they had more soul than generic Jace
and yes, they were only printed once as legends. I actually like Karn and Squee now and they had some interesting adventures with slivers (which got also destroyed by artworks recently) and the shadow mechanic.
Im also not only complaining about the art, although its probably the biggest elephant in the room.
My main problems with magic today
-worse frame and artworks for a fantasy game than the old ones = boring cards/less immersion
-removal of manaburn (yes its that huge for vintage)
-introduction of planeswalkers
-still stuffing the best cards into blue, and on top even when they´d belong to other colors (Snapcaster Mage, TNN, Treasure Cruise and so forth)
-removal of "unfun" mechanics like land destruction, discard, cheap counterpells and removal
-handling of the restricted/banlists
-reserved list
Our small discussion here actually brought me to read some articles about the old sets. I never knew that legends and Ice Agee in most parts were designed by some random dudees that happened to be playtester for alpha/beta. Thats actually explains a lot.
the old djinn is also fantastic, 100%agree
I don't like either art for sengir vampire but I prefer the new one,
and while I do like some of the foglios a lot like browse, I understand why they don't really fit now.
And I already cited Foglio in one of my least favorite arts ever, in Cuombajj Witches
I think it's telling that 3 of the 4 arts youd bring up were on high powered cards from the era, exposing what I think are very thick nostalgia goggles. It's like people who think gen 1 pokemon had the best gameplay, or something. Underage you is probably just more likely to accept whatever it is you have, and then you grow up liking that thing without objectivity.
//
The whole reason I noticed magic was the art, specifically the art on lands. Ravnica lands, if I recall. So I think you're substituting the word "change" with "lost its soul", or "different" with "worse". Because I look at many of the cards done in your favorite era and see a lot of art I'd deem amateur or immature or unfinished.
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There's no steampunk or technology in AKH. Ravnica and KLD may have something similar (at least, for the izzet and the markets), but I think you're off base for lumping AKHs aesthetics in with those two. Also, Theros doesn't have a sprawling citiscape as a main focus either.
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Manamath Article
Or it shouldn't be.
"Go ahead and throw more irrelevant numbers at me that noone cares about. If you have even more time to waste you can also go back and see how many of those humans in older sets were actually humans when they were printed, because the fact that so many of them weren't and many of them also didn't look like the 'generic' humans we get on every card nowadays is a pretty huge factor in how the flavor of those sets felt. If we're still arguing if 'personal feeling' should even be considered a factor in evaluating games I'm out. Because it's literally all it's about, or else we wouldn't even be playing the game in question."
If my "irrelevant numbers" don't mean anything when you specifically cry about how the numbers are, then be out then. You can't say there are too many of something now (a numerical claim) and then ignore the facts.
If you feel art is bad now, fine. If you don't like planeswalkers because theyre counter-intuitive (I must assume you mean the burn damage redirection rule? Everything else makes sense) then... Fine I guess.
Anyway
Not a whole lot of cards got changed to human that were flavored otherwise. Like, unless you really think these cards aren't human.
http://magiccards.info/query?q=T:human e:visions&v=card&s=cname
Are there any cards in AKH that are human reprints of other cards? Should they just flavor every plane to include whatever creature types every reprint is that they want to make during development? Should development stay away from functional reprints even if that means the limited format would be worse? Your alternate reality sounds needlessly restrictive for a game that wants to make sets for decades.
You're willing to shunt gameplay for "flavor", and disregard limited for it too. I enjoy playing the game because of how it plays, not whatever nebulous aesthetic point you play for. And for that, I'm glad wizards is in charge.
//
@phitt
I never noticed how that art looks like a kids book art until now. Now I can't unsee it.
It is interesting how many of the arts you laid out I think are bad, but I do get why people would miss stuff like agility.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
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So much this. Kaladesh saw the printing of a legendary FEMALE AIR PIRATE WITH MONKEY SIDEKICK(!!!<3!!!). If that had been a character on the Weatherlight, who we had gotten to know over the course of two or three blocks (6-9 expansions!!) there would have been so much celebrating. Instead we get a character who has all the potential to have an awesome story and personality, but instead they just cram the same old planeswalkers into the main story and expect us to be happy because Gideon has a *gasp* whole new card!
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
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As opposed to the glory days when the legendary creatures were Gallowbraid and Morinfen? Orim, Samite Healer? Rashida Scalebane or Hivis of the Scale?
Like, I 100% agree that the art and re-re-re-re-use of Jace sucks, but the cards actually WORK nowadays, which is by far the more important issue for a strategic card game.
Regarding the old artworks, it was actually "art". Like handpainted artworks painted with different paints and individual styles. Nowadays its just cheap digital thats totally overloaded for the small cards and often very generic. Some of the new artworks have awesome details and look great on high resolutions, but they just dont fit the cards. Like who could identify whats on Tarmogoyf. But thats a continued discussion as well. I still miss the old frame, especially since the foils were so much more shiny. I understand the made some changes, but they messed it up (browserlook) and never redone it, although they got the opportunity with the latest frame update. Like why arent the cards borderless full art? Look at the (great) alters, how awesome magiccards could look today.
I agree with the Planeswalker issue, probably the worst decision to game design by far. Magic jumped the shark when the walkers were introduced. They work outside of normal magic rules (effects cost no mana, dont interact with tons of cards and effects) and also totally destroyed the immersion that YOU the players are the planeswalkers. And yeah, having the same walkers over and over again is horrible. I mean, what story do they even have. Everyone knew about Urza and Mishra back in the days. Removing manaburn is just icing on the cake, destroying more immersion and heavily warp how certain cards in vintage work while also removing another win/losecon.
And yeah, I played in the 90s. I started plaing in 1995. I wonder you guys have problem running a good constructed format from that time. Of course the olds sets are not working for booster drafts very well, but constructed had some real good decks, although quite unbalanced. *cough*Necropotence *cough* (they make the same mistakes today) and colorhate wasnt much different to sideboard cards today. Rest in Peace against your Dredgedeck isnt much fun either. The only issue I had and still have was the enormous decrease of powerlevel in that era. Fallen Empires, 4th Edition, up to Mirage is really horrible compared to 3rd, Legends and so on. Not even mentioning Beta.
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Something that's 94% irrelevant when you make four mana to cast a four drop, 5% a GOTCHA for newer and unaware players, and 1% actually useful/interesting (for stuff like Black Market) is exactly what NOT to do in game design. So glad it's gone.
And yeah, it could catch unaware players sometimes, so thats exactly what watering down the game to please noobs means.
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GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG
Yes, some individual cards -- maybe 20 or 30 out of 16,000 ever printed -- don't work as intended any more, and that's unfortunate, but it's not like removing the "mill" (draw cards from an empty library) rule which needs to be in place or else some small percent of games will literally not be able to come to a conclusion.
Found the Only True Magic Player(tm)! So excited!
Warning for trolling
-Luffy
"And yeah, it could catch unaware players sometimes, so thats exactly what watering down the game to please noobs means."
So part of your argument relies on people not knowing how to play the game?
Ha, looks like you miscounted how much mana your seething song will make. TAKE ONE.
I could probably play 200 games of magic (draft, standard, peasant cube, and unpowered cube) before mana burn came up. That's a rule that doesn't deserve to exist. That'd be like, if in chess, if when you manage to get a board state on your turn with 3 bishops in the corner squares, you win. Removing that would dumb down the game, and water down the strategy objectively, but the rule is vestigial 99/100 times.
But any other rules changes dumb the game down?
///
Planeswalkers and legendaries
"Planeswalkers... (effects cost no mana)"
What, like virtually all mana rocks, serrated arrows, grafted wargear, cauldron of souls.... It's almost identical to tapping, only as a sorcery.
Don't forget cards like Blinking spirit, opal acrolith, nomads en-kor....
"...dont interact with tons of cards and effects"
So, like enchantments? Only two colors really get to interact with enchantments, but at least every color has tools to meaningfully interact with 'walkers with the combat step. Also, just like selesnya gets to deal with enchantments, rakdos has burn or pointed removal for walkers. They're even printing (slowly) more cards that remove counters from cards.
"immersion that you are the planeswalker"
A) They are your allies, such is the flavor. It should not work against the "immersion"
B) Does anyone actually feel like... immersed in a game of magic as though they were a wizard? No offense.
"I agree the pirate is awesome. But thats only one card. If everything would ooze that flavor, nobody would complain. At least I wont."
I'm sorry, but, are we really just going to skip over the theros gods here?
And I can't let you just glaze over Legends. Barktooth Warbeard's bark is as good as his bite, his flavor text told me so.
It didn't take me long to find a rando legendary with no clear reason to exist in Blind seer, outside of legends either. Io brought up two "????" legendaries as well.
///
Weatherlight
Of course no legendary creature is going to be as fleshed out as the ones in the freaking weatherlight saga. They had characters for FOUR YEARS to work with. Every other block only had one. Come on, now.
It's kinda weird that you'd be mad at so many years of jace (Yes, definitely too much Jace) but not a half decade of gerrard. The generic guy who literally goes through a heroes journey with his purposely formulaic story. For four years.
"Browse through the artworks of all Humans... from before the 2000s. You'll see the difference. This is a fantasy game. I don't want pictures of people on my cards who look like regular boring people I can go out and see on the streets every day."
You mean like half the humans from weatherlight? These are creatures that either look like generic knights, or literally like someone painted their friends and neighbors.
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/121.html (one of the most unintentionally goofy arts ever)
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/124.html
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/125.html
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/136.html
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/138.html (side note: this is a woman?)
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/143.html (It even has generic 90's hair)
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/86.html
http://magiccards.info/wl/en/145.html (the most empty expressions I've ever seen on a magic card?)
meanwhile
"Because you see the same face on every one of them."
Not a whole lot of room for sad art on creature cards. But we have anger, stoicism, determined, mischeif, and stealth. KLD brought us a lot of happines too. Seriously, what do you want?
take this page
http://magiccards.info/query?q=t:human f:standard&s=cname&v=card&p=3.
A lot of these cards are not humans in "generic action pose". There are plenty, sure, but magic is a game of combat after all. Meanwhile, of these 20, you have
45% aren't "guy threatens with pointy stick" or "guy casting aggressive spell". Are you going to complain that we don't have enough of "guy does his job"? Izor, you don't want people you see in the street, you say "it's a fantasy game". But you don't want people in fantasy roles doing fantasy things.
??????????
On page 2 we had
Another 45% doing things unrelated to combat/conflict off-camera
I just can't pin down what you want humans to be doing more of.
Should the number of creatures shown outside of combat surpass 50%? But they can't look like regular people doing regular things?
//
Oh, and before I forget, a bandar is based on an actual legendary animal from that culture the set was based on. It's not just magic being silly.
90% sure I read that on MaRo's blog
////////////////////
///////////////////
Finally though, yeah, Io's point should be more relevant than it is.
The cards nowadays are far less likely to just not function. You don't have a Legends expansion nowadays (such flavor, rite?), and you don't have this card which I swear is the first non-modern card to show up when I hit random on .info: Chaos Lord. You don't have to worry about someone playing Gloom or Boil and being unable to play magic this game.
Speaking of weatherlight, who wants to keep track of graveyard order? (actually, I don't mind this but I know people who do). Or band? Or play against desperate gambit? Doomsday seems healthy. Can someone tell me why master of arms exsts?
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
People not knowing all rules was an argument against manaburn and complex as magic still is, is a stupid argument itself. You guys seem to fail to understand that complexity and crazy stuff like Mishras Factory+Humility are the stuff that made magic awesome. a fckin nerdgame.
Planeswalkers are in general much stronger than enchantments and since you are a planeswalker yourrself, why do you need to generate mana?
Weatherlight is already a later set and you definitely will notice the difference to earlier sets. Ice Age was probably the last "real magic" set and Richard Garfield itself left the game at that time if i remember correctly. Yeah it might sound crazy today, because WL is already 20yrs old itself, but the decline is slow and steady.
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So... wait... you really were propping up magic before the WL saga? Wow! So Legends and so forth are fair game? And Banding? I was using those as half-joking examples. I didn't expect that to be seriously the era you were championing at all!
I don't use explamation points willy-nilly either, I am legit surprised.
And Richard Garfield didn't know anything about game balance back in the ancient days of magic. Unless you're going to tell me that Alpha was well balanced, and the 6th edition rules ruined everything. The dude championed city in a bottle
His point was that your point is terrible. You compared characters that may appear in thirteen sets to a no-name creature that appeared in a core set. May as well keep silent if you aren't going to at least try say something intelligible.
See, I can do it too.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Garfield made real magic, MaRo is just a poisonous steward. Funny enough I just read that Garfield was involved in time spiral and the first innistrad, both the best sets since the old times.
regarding chaos lord, they still print unplayable overcosted red waste Scrambleverse
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This is true. And one can argue that this is a bad thing.
But your argument was that they aren't able to be easily interacted with, when they may be more directly interact-with-able than non-attacking creatures. You can try to get to them with the most common action in the game (other than land drops and casting stuff).
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430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
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I mentioned it, look at some card alter.
Imagine every card would have the look and quality like this one.
now change the frame of the text boxes to a more fantasy one and make the textbox semi-transparent.
Heck, they made absoultely stunning looking masterpieces in KLD just to waste that look on a few ultra rares (talk about greed again)
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Yeah, why would you design a game to make it enjoyable right away?
And... have you actually played against new players at all? It's still incredibly easy to win, even if they get to draft a rare Bristling Hydra instead of Gravebind.
Errata is awful and should be avoided at basically all costs. Show a kid a card that says it destroys X, Y, and Z, then move their Card F to the graveyard. Feels great, right? And every new card of that type (Planar Cleansing, Cast Out, etc etc etc) DOES hit planeswalkers. And... you know... you can attack them. With creatures. That doesn't quite work as well against Humility or Pestilence or whatever else.
Art only goes so far. Kari Zev will actually be in cubes and decks in five years, sweet-looking legends with awful text boxes never were.
I recall the Weatherlight saga being boring as hell -- I played in 94-95-96 and found the entire lore back then to be absolutely useless. Dunno how that compares to popular opinion, but whatever. And yeah, Jace still sucks.
This isn't like the demo tape by some 1970s punk band, doing something competent is actually a GOOD thing. And it's not the Black Lotus stuff we're complaining about; it's Squire and White Scarab and Twiddle and so much other absolute crap.
City in a Bottle is a little bit of kitsch. We remember it (Shahrazad, Shooting Star, the enchantment that causes THE GAME TO BE A TIE) BECAUSE it's weird and awful.
Like... someone walks into a game store in 2017.
Game A is weird and kitschy and has cool pictures and is awful to play.
Game B is some generic fantasy or sci-fi or superhero trope pile but you can learn it right away and instantly be having fun.
What's the winner there?
(Please don't answer that, I guess you've already made it abundantly clear you want Game A)
But if you dont care about the game too much you buy whats the most beatiful collectors game.
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Jump was printed in Alpha, but we didn't get the first Shark until The Dark's Giant Shark (since demoted to a Fish). I don't know if or when the first Giant Shark was jumped, but it was probably soon after, so the answer to your question would be sometime in 1994.
https://www.quora.com/Has-Magic-The-Gathering-jumped-the-shark-If-so-when-did-this-happen
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Well, when you say things like "gerrard only appeared on 5-10 cards"
Which is not even half true (not even half of half true)
and then try to base an argument on this easily falsifiable claim
after making numerous similar claims about numbers
which were also wrong
without bothering to fact check anything you say
treating opinion claims like "the art is better" the same way as something that is literally objectively true or false
yeah, I'm going to get a little heated
This claim:
"Sure, Gerrard was around for years, but he was on how many cards? like 5-10ish?
You didn't have 10 iterations of him around and his damn face on every white spell for 6 years"
Cannot be used to support an argument. It cannot be used to support a personal opinion. Because it is a lie.
You can complain that they used Jace too much. You can complain he's an edgelord. But you can't say that having literally 3x the concentration of gerrard is less egregious for any reason where you are counting things up and comparing how many you have.
/
You can follow a tonal shift that I've taken with Humphrey. Why? He's gotten to talking about art, and really we can agree on enough. I don't like longtusk cub, I don't like forest bear, I like juzam djinn, but I also like new serra angel. When I first saw it way back I was amazed. It would be nice if all cards had full arts, but they reduce the flow of full arts because humans are bad at valuing things that are commonplace. It's an annoying marketing thing that prevents us from having more nice things, but it isn't like they did it in 94 and took it away from us.
He finds the art valuable more than just an "icing on the cake" thing, which I cannot comprehend. That is true to him, though, and it's impossible to argue to him saying he must enjoys new art more or less for whatever reason.
What I can argue with him is that the relative value of new vs old art is debatable. I am surrounded by people on the site who like old art, but I'm not alone in thinking the new art has advantages over the old stuff. Wizards likes money, so I imagine they switched over to this more homogenized style (which isn't homeogenized by any means) because it tested well.
This isn't like some smuggler's copter mistake, it's a decade-long movement. If the backlash was truly so high, I would be surprised that they keep doing it.
/
And the only reason why I brought up enchantments in the conversation about planeswalkers is because Humphrey said they are hard to interact with. The context being he was unhappy with how they are "different" from "normal" magic. My only correlary was that enchantments are also hard to interact with.
As far as their abilities being better than those on enchantments, yeah, planeswalkers have to be protected and don't promise to be around until the end of a match. Most planeswalker + or 0 abilities aren't worth anywhere near the cost of the card. They earn their higher status by being temporary and asking you to protect them until they pay for themselves. And very often getting them killed doesn't cost your opponent a whole card, because attacking is free.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
When it comes to cubes, a "good" cube designer would probalby just skip them.
Its true that Izors memory is not correct when it comes to the numbers, but thats not lying. Thats alternate facts
Back then I never liked the whole Weatherlight thing and found all of the cards revolving around them pretty boring. Actually the characters were infesting the game like todays walker. But from a todays standpoint they had more soul than generic Jace
and yes, they were only printed once as legends. I actually like Karn and Squee now and they had some interesting adventures with slivers (which got also destroyed by artworks recently) and the shadow mechanic.
Im also not only complaining about the art, although its probably the biggest elephant in the room.
My main problems with magic today
-worse frame and artworks for a fantasy game than the old ones = boring cards/less immersion
-removal of manaburn (yes its that huge for vintage)
-introduction of planeswalkers
-still stuffing the best cards into blue, and on top even when they´d belong to other colors (Snapcaster Mage, TNN, Treasure Cruise and so forth)
-removal of "unfun" mechanics like land destruction, discard, cheap counterpells and removal
-handling of the restricted/banlists
-reserved list
Our small discussion here actually brought me to read some articles about the old sets. I never knew that legends and Ice Agee in most parts were designed by some random dudees that happened to be playtester for alpha/beta. Thats actually explains a lot.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t