The big downside to Living Card Games compared to Trading Card Games/Collectible Card Games is that it's much easier to get back something stolen in Trading Card Games/Collectible Card Games than it is with Living Card Games where everything is in bulk
Living Card Games feel too much like playing a board game.
How is losing TCG cards easier to get your cards back? A smart thief won't try to sell the stolen cards in one piece to reduce people tracing the theft back to the thief. Most people don't insure their cards unless the collection is very expensive.
On the flip side, if the cards are cheap and accessible like Living Card Games, then they are easy to replace. If you lose your LCG cards, you can arguably by a new set at the store to get all your cards back, in addition to reporting the theft.
Living card games are board games. They are a board game using cards, like Uno. Living Card Games could feel like Magic and other TCGs if they release more expansions, but those expansions have to be playtested. As it stands, LCGs seem to have an annual or semi-annual expansion release cycle, which are less frequent than TCG releases. Also, living card game designs appear to lean towards constructed decks rather than draft/limited like MTG does.
I think what they meant if a single card gets stolen or lost you just have to buy a single card to replace it where LCG singles are harder to come by. I've dabbled in the Lord of the Rings LCG and the new Vs System 2pcg and there is very little resources for singles. Lord of the Rings could even be considered to have a block structure with a 80 initial set or so new cards and then they release about 6 or so new mini expansions that add adventures and characters to the "block". I would argue that LCG's are a little more changing than a board game (at least with the ones that I've played). I've only played both with family members but both seem to have changing metas in their leagues/tournament scenes from what I've gleaned from the internet.
In all honesty the problem is environmental for the game more than anything else. The game of magic is one of the oldest TCGs if not the oldest and it's facing the inevitable situation of overprinting. They can define all the formats they want and try to enforce these borders with tournament play, but players will still use older cards if they have them and people can still forge their own playgroups to use whatever set they feel like. It's not even about modern, legacy, or standard: it's the very simple fact that if someone has a better card from ages ago they aren't going to find a weaker version appealing even if it was done so because the current sets are balanced differently.
Hit the nail on the head, Talk to people who have used lighting bolt and ask them if they are excited to have shock (or ANY of its many 1 mana 2 damage +block gimmick varraent). You won't hear anyone saying "Hell ya I want to play THAT shock varrent over bolt any day!. Ask people who love their 2 mana creature kill or 4 mana wraths or 1 mana, mana dorks how much they LOVE the new more expensive less powerful ones... Same answer, No one wants to use day of judgment when wrath of god is also a choice. If a format has both cards legal the better card will always get picked first. Sometimes they accidently do it right and the weaker card becomes a great card all on its own (LED looking at you) but 99% of the time you know which card you want to play .
So as a result Legacy became what it is, vintage is a dice toss as to who wins based on who is on the play, modern is basically a creature centric format more than a spells format just as much as standard is now, etc. Investors and speculators are a symptom of the problems the game faces in that WoTC isn't willing or maybe isn't capable of supporting the full library of cards they brought to the table. In addition, the development issues with new sets are probably another case of this. Unfortunately, the marketing side has made the problems worse by driving prices on masters sets instead of letting the company freely use older power cards to drive standard sales.
Leave poor vintage alone its a very "thinky" format.... However I agree with you, frankly spicing up sets with afew legacy/ventage cards has never hurt a standard set... take a look at 3sphear and chalace of the void, fetchlands all were great eddtions to sets that help sell it by attracting multi format players
So two things on what Wizards is doing that I find intriguing:
1) they are moving to bigger sets, so this could mean they are trying to address the two deck format issue by making more strategies viable in a given season.
2) They brought back core sets, which likely can act as a glue to put basic, non-set specific answer cards into standard.
Number 2 is somethign the community has been yelling at them to do for a while (alterantively they could post a list of "legal cards for standard" on the site that are legal but may not currently be in print (but can be at any given point or any given set at their dissension. Number one sounds good as long as its an actual format... I want some combo, I want some Hate I want REAL control along side all this agro midrange fests.
I don't see why they didn't do this for some of the bannings they did. To me, it still takes just as much reading to find out that a card you own is banned than a card you have in your collection is standard legal. And they could always print a promo slap the most recent sets symbol on it and call it good.
I don't know if I've said this before, but think it would have been cool if they had us choose a faction for our DCI number and had us duke it out at FNM. The better you do on the tables the better your faction does. Fire Emblem Heroes does popularity polls this way (though it has no standing toward the game's story).
That would be really cool to be honest.
Hopefully someone at Wizards is reading and they can use the idea when we have a Phyrexian war or something. I think that it would be a neat way to get those who aren't into the story into it and those who care about the story to FNM.
Didn't they do something like this for Ravnica with the guilds? They had them ranked based on players wins. I don't think it had anything story related to it but it was interesting seeing each guild ranked, I think one guild(izzet?) led the majority of the time.
That was awsome, and if they did the same for the factions with the city at stakes it would have been cool too, but might have made people feel forced to go play when they don't want to or their voice won't be heard. Or that their voice won't be heard due to being too weak.
I think the problem with doing it this way is that it becomes less a matter of "Which faction is your favorite/the most popular" and more a matter of "which faction performs better in gameplay/is the most mechanically powerful."
its trying to sell cards first and tell a story second. if one really wanted to remain spoiler free they would probably have to wait until the story is done before looking at any of the cards. its possible.
only 5 stories this time, i hope that means there will be even more stories for DOM, i dont want to just have less stories.
I find it more likely that we're only getting 5 stories this time because they wrote 4 different endings and they didn't want to increase the creative team's total workload. So they wrote 8 stories (fairly standard), but we'll only ever see 5 of them.
I think they would have to make sure that standard could support all the guilds or factions in the set. Ten was a big number but I think it would have been easier to deal with four. I think the model would be best with two factions like Mirodin vs Phyrexia. And while themeing would be off, they didn't have to have a deck totally based on their faction. I think that if they were able to do something like this they would have to have arena up and running as it could be there for people who can't go to their LGS. I don't know it's just a musing I had. I was just starting when they did the Return to Ravnica polls this way so I can't remember if people liked it. But Return to Ravnica was a very strong standard season.
So who won? Looks like Merfolk took the Sun and ran off with it, while Vampires conquered the land, Pirates took all the treasure, and Dinos are dead.
They are doing a "pick your own ending" adventure book thing where between geocaching and a future social media votes, one of the faction will win. Creative has written all four 4 ending and until we know who got the most "points" we won't know who takes the city.
I don't know if I've said this before, but think it would have been cool if they had us choose a faction for our DCI number and had us duke it out at FNM. The better you do on the tables the better your faction does. Fire Emblem Heroes does popularity polls this way (though it has no standing toward the game's story).
That would be really cool to be honest.
Hopefully someone at Wizards is reading and they can use the idea when we have a Phyrexian war or something. I think that it would be a neat way to get those who aren't into the story into it and those who care about the story to FNM.
So who won? Looks like Merfolk took the Sun and ran off with it, while Vampires conquered the land, Pirates took all the treasure, and Dinos are dead.
They are doing a "pick your own ending" adventure book thing where between geocaching and a future social media votes, one of the faction will win. Creative has written all four 4 ending and until we know who got the most "points" we won't know who takes the city.
I don't know if I've said this before, but think it would have been cool if they had us choose a faction for our DCI number and had us duke it out at FNM. The better you do on the tables the better your faction does. Fire Emblem Heroes does popularity polls this way (though it has no standing toward the game's story).
Now I am not a vorthos any longer nor was I even a rather large one in the past, but I hope for more Urza centric abilities added in the future. Didn't he pull a Jurassic Park and brought the Thran back as the Metathran? Why not have a plus ability that creates a metathran token. They could have a callback to his war with Phyrexia and have an emblem that says players can't gain poison counters and can't pay life for cost or abilities. I can understand that his abilities reflecting other planeswalkers is a nod to him being the first prominent one but I think he needs new abilities that are a little more specific to him, but maybe they are going to add those later.
Vs System had a similar concept with a card version of Bizzaro World and it would change to reflect the core concepts of each set. It would be cool if they do something similar like if Urza was on Tarkir he could give your artifact spells Delve for the turn or something. I know it's a comedy set but I hope they keep the tone of his abilities more black border and powerful. I think that the only thing that would necessarily keep this out of black border is they would have to have a phone with them during tournaments. Maybe in a commander product, they could do something similar.
I think the only one that I'll be hunting for is Garruk I love his new artwork. I think it's awesome that it mirrors his old artwork. He starts off with his helmet and flips into not wearing it in the original.
But printing close-to-equivalent-to-existing burn is also a problem. If this errata leads them to avoid errata by printing a new Lightning Bolt, a new Chain Lightning, a new Lava Spike - you’re adding more redundancy/degeneracy to the cardpool and giving people more ways to skirt the 4-of-each-card rule that exists to avoid degeneracy, especially in Burn.
Wizards has no intention of printing a new Lightning Bolt (or Chain Lightning as far as I can tell). It's explicitly too strong under the old rules for Standard, so they wouldn't want to print a new version of that. And since Wizards already prints new burn spells all the time there is always a chance of reundancy, but this would be counterbalanced by a new lowered top power level.
The problem "If new cards are bad nobody will use them." would exist whether my proposal is followed or not - except with my suggestion the likelihood of that is lessened - and the relatively more powerful cards still would not be stronger than what we got in Standard up until now, so at best the newly redundant burn deck would return to the level it already has had before the proposed change.
The only issue here is if there are eternal formats that lose an integral archetype in their meta. I will happily admit that I'm not equipped to judge this, but I feel that eternal formats are robust enough to adapt.
My question is though will it really change much to modern and vintage? Planeswalkers tend to shine more in standard and edh but the most prominent planeswalker in modern is Liliana of the veil. To my knowledge (which admittedly I am not an expert) planeswalkers aren't running wild in modern or vintage because most of those games want to close the game by turn three. I think if they changed the rule without the errata they can create sideboard worthy planeswalker answers for mono red burn decks that would run into trouble when they face planeswalker heavy decks. Edh in my experience would be fine because using only burn as an archetype is very hard to pull off in multiplayer and most decks I've seen use burn as a form of removal rather than a flat out win condition unless you are some how comboing off. I just think it will cause even more trouble errataing hundreds of damage spells than the confusion of the redirection rule.
I think Omesh could still be black border even though it would be hard to keep track of -1/-1 counters. Skullbriar, the Walking Grave keeps all +1/+1 counters on it. You could add a clause that exiles the creature if the amount of -1/-1 counters is equal to or greater than the creatures toughness.
Now I am really scared that the pirate themed planeswalker deck is going to have Vraska as the cover card and is going to be Black Green, when pirates have nothing to do with green. If that was the case, it means that they are building the deck around the planeswalker, not around the theme, in which case I just wished they went back to theme decks.
I'd expect the pirate deck would be Angrath.
Pretty much guaranteed; that will make for an unusual Ajani deck, though, as he will have to splash black in order to fit Vampires.
Actually, I would bet that Ajani is not on Ixalan, but Dominaria. If you look at the art on the booster packaging for "Conquest of Power" (the pre-Rivals of Ixalan name), it's none other than Huatli, Warrior-Poet on the booster packaging. Huatli's in Ixalan, not Rivals, so we can't assume that Ajani is in Rivals. Instead, it makes perfect sense that he'd be on Dominaria -- you know, the plane that he told the rest of the Gatewatch to meet him on?
Cited booster art for reference.
I agree with you that Ajani is most likely in Domniaria. I think it would be disappointing not to have a vampire-themed deck in the block and have either two pirate-themed decks in rivals or another dinosaur-themed deck if Ajani is indeed going to be in rivals. I'm guessing there are three possibilities for the last planeswalker.
1- For some reason, Ajani really is in Ixalan. He could be loosely aligned with the sun empire or be mono-white and will help with the life maters theme that the vampires have.
2- I think this one could cause contention but I'm going to throw it out there. Sorin will be revealed to have escaped Nahiri's stoney prison and is searching for something on Ixalan. To me it would be weird to have a vampire faction in the colors of the premier vampire planeswalker and not have him in the block. I find it weird to be honest that Kiora isn't involved either. But a lot of people are "sick of a Sorin in every standard" (I'm not one of those people) so if you are, please don't yell at me for suggesting this.
3- A third life gain or vampire related walker.
One problem I had with the Tarkir block is that the walkers didn't fall into an alignment like in Alara and I hope that this block isn't a repeat of that.
I have a theory that ajani will not be in rivals. The two reasons I have is that the conquest of power were just mock ups and I think domniaria would better fit him as didn't he say let's all get some friends and meet up on domniaria? The second reason is ixalan ia a heavy tribal set and as of right now there is only one tribe missing a planeswalker ally in the set. Hautli is dinosaur aligned. Both vraska and angrath seem pirate aligned and from the card in his intro pack jace seems aligned with the merfolk. So my opinion would be that there will be a vampire aligned walker in rivals. It doesn't have to be a vampire but I think it would have to be someone who would align with them. I'm probably wrong but I just think it makes sense.
I find that I'm more excited for Ixalan than I expected to be, considering I'm in a bit of a slump in my interest for the game overall at the moment.
The flavor and tropes are excellent and there are no obviously broken powerhouses like Eldrazi titans, Aetherworks Marvel or Smuggler's Copter that stand out to a quick glance.
I love the new flip cards and there seems to be interesting synergies to be had with many cards.
My two concerns are the fact that the removal looks absolutely atrocious, talking Standard here. Sure, we get Lightning Strike back but that card should always be in the format and red removal isn't lacking at this point. Black removal has been a joke for some time now and for a format that seems keen to push very aggressive 1- and 2-drops it's mindboggling that we can't get decent sweepers.
The other, admittedly more niggling, issue is that there turned out to be more Hexproof (and Indestructible) cards in the set than I had hoped. I dearly hope the format won't be slow enough for Carnage Tyrant to see play because I don't know how you'd even handle that card, especially considering I'm already breaking out in hives every time my opponent plays consecutive Bristling Hydras.
Most importantly though, or so I feel personally, is this...
Besides all of this, the art is OUTSTANDING - colorful, exciting, and visceral in a couple cases...but that is just my opinion.
Yes, a thousand times yes!
The quality of the illustrations in this set are a noticeable improvement over where we are now. I felt BFZ and SOI blocks were the low points (not all cards, just there being a lot of really poor work in there) with illustrations improving with KLD and AKH.
I'm very, very happy about this... more so than anything else about the set.
Now let's hope the card stock and actual printings do it justice too.
I think the problem was in BFZ and to a lesser extent SOI is that the focus on the Eldrazi was so big and squiggly tentcle art isn't exactly pretty and it got kind of old fast. Khaladesh I think had pretty art. My favorite art from Ixalan is from Axis of Mortality. Their also seems to be a lot of new artists that I haven't seen or recalled seeing.
I think what they meant if a single card gets stolen or lost you just have to buy a single card to replace it where LCG singles are harder to come by. I've dabbled in the Lord of the Rings LCG and the new Vs System 2pcg and there is very little resources for singles. Lord of the Rings could even be considered to have a block structure with a 80 initial set or so new cards and then they release about 6 or so new mini expansions that add adventures and characters to the "block". I would argue that LCG's are a little more changing than a board game (at least with the ones that I've played). I've only played both with family members but both seem to have changing metas in their leagues/tournament scenes from what I've gleaned from the internet.
I don't see why they didn't do this for some of the bannings they did. To me, it still takes just as much reading to find out that a card you own is banned than a card you have in your collection is standard legal. And they could always print a promo slap the most recent sets symbol on it and call it good.
I think they would have to make sure that standard could support all the guilds or factions in the set. Ten was a big number but I think it would have been easier to deal with four. I think the model would be best with two factions like Mirodin vs Phyrexia. And while themeing would be off, they didn't have to have a deck totally based on their faction. I think that if they were able to do something like this they would have to have arena up and running as it could be there for people who can't go to their LGS. I don't know it's just a musing I had. I was just starting when they did the Return to Ravnica polls this way so I can't remember if people liked it. But Return to Ravnica was a very strong standard season.
Hopefully someone at Wizards is reading and they can use the idea when we have a Phyrexian war or something. I think that it would be a neat way to get those who aren't into the story into it and those who care about the story to FNM.
I don't know if I've said this before, but think it would have been cool if they had us choose a faction for our DCI number and had us duke it out at FNM. The better you do on the tables the better your faction does. Fire Emblem Heroes does popularity polls this way (though it has no standing toward the game's story).
My question is though will it really change much to modern and vintage? Planeswalkers tend to shine more in standard and edh but the most prominent planeswalker in modern is Liliana of the veil. To my knowledge (which admittedly I am not an expert) planeswalkers aren't running wild in modern or vintage because most of those games want to close the game by turn three. I think if they changed the rule without the errata they can create sideboard worthy planeswalker answers for mono red burn decks that would run into trouble when they face planeswalker heavy decks. Edh in my experience would be fine because using only burn as an archetype is very hard to pull off in multiplayer and most decks I've seen use burn as a form of removal rather than a flat out win condition unless you are some how comboing off. I just think it will cause even more trouble errataing hundreds of damage spells than the confusion of the redirection rule.
I agree with you that Ajani is most likely in Domniaria. I think it would be disappointing not to have a vampire-themed deck in the block and have either two pirate-themed decks in rivals or another dinosaur-themed deck if Ajani is indeed going to be in rivals. I'm guessing there are three possibilities for the last planeswalker.
1- For some reason, Ajani really is in Ixalan. He could be loosely aligned with the sun empire or be mono-white and will help with the life maters theme that the vampires have.
2- I think this one could cause contention but I'm going to throw it out there. Sorin will be revealed to have escaped Nahiri's stoney prison and is searching for something on Ixalan. To me it would be weird to have a vampire faction in the colors of the premier vampire planeswalker and not have him in the block. I find it weird to be honest that Kiora isn't involved either. But a lot of people are "sick of a Sorin in every standard" (I'm not one of those people) so if you are, please don't yell at me for suggesting this.
3- A third life gain or vampire related walker.
One problem I had with the Tarkir block is that the walkers didn't fall into an alignment like in Alara and I hope that this block isn't a repeat of that.
I think the problem was in BFZ and to a lesser extent SOI is that the focus on the Eldrazi was so big and squiggly tentcle art isn't exactly pretty and it got kind of old fast. Khaladesh I think had pretty art. My favorite art from Ixalan is from Axis of Mortality. Their also seems to be a lot of new artists that I haven't seen or recalled seeing.