MTG Salvation

Quote from Justavictim1182 »

Was Field really THAT bad? I have played a bunch of paper tournaments and no one was playing it. I have seen a ton of red based decks. Most were aggro but I have seen some Phoenix decks

Field is just a bit of an oppressive card IMO. Being entirely land-based means both that it leaves a lot of room in your deck to fill in whatever support cards you want whether it's ramp, answers, card draw, or other threats, and that there aren't that many answers to the card as lands are relatively hard to remove. Combine that with the endless value stream it generates and it's a bit of a menace. Older, naturally faster formats like modern shouldn't have much problem with its existence because it's not hard to race down, but pioneer was a little bit too slow like standard such that it shuts out a lot of slower decks, making it a problem even if it didn't exactly flood the meta, but the suggestion seems to be there was just a lot of it too. Look at MtgGoldfish's pioneer meta breakdown for example. There's a lot of Field of the Dead decks.
I'm by no means a metagame expert, but that seems to be how it works.

Yup. Sensible choices.

Quote from Ree Wicker »

I think the more silly thing is writers seem to have it down pat the ability to build up a romance, but then when the characters are finally in a relationship, the writers tend to flounder about and are unsure where to take it from there.

Oh, absolutely. Easy to write a dramatic buildup because it has clear narrative arc to work with and significant emotional payoff. Stable relationships not so much.

Quote from Caranthir »

I'm frankly disgusted by the reaction of some of the community. I have seen people attacking Weisman under his tweets saying he is a "crap writer" and a "terrible person overall". People claiming "freedom of speech" and "right to voice their disagreement" as an apology to behave like stupid jerks bashing the author in a rude and arrogant way. People writing below every single status and tweet repeating tirades about Chandra and Nissa.

Online harassment is a serious problem— especially the way it follows erratic trends of whatever's the latest and greatest thing to bash on, as in this case, but not all forms of outspoken strongly-worded criticism constitute harassment. When you're dealing with an issue like this that concerns questions of actual bigotry, a certain amount of intensity is called for. This isn't just a matter of creative disagreement, it's a very real moral, social and political one. Even if the specific consequences here aren't very big, it's a very meaningful thing to a lot of people and for good reason. I'm sure there's more than a few people stepping over the line, but what do you expect? I'd honestly rather that happen than the response be muted and ineffectual.

I mean, his works are not a masterpiece. But I quite enjoyed and appreciated threading the old lore into Forsaken - for example, the cameo of Myc Zunich, or senator Nhillosh, the pro tem Grand Arbiter of the Azorius - that one is taken directly from Dissension. That alone are hints that he frigging tried to respect the old things. Or his representation of Teysa Karlov, that was by all means more truthful to the original character of Cory Herndon that when Doug Beyer wrote her in The Secretist.

That doesn't really have anything to do with whether harassment is justified.

When I started with Magic lore, I was a student of about eighteen. Now I am almost forty father of two. I had many gripes with the storyline along the years, many pages of heated discussion. Maybe it all mellowed me a bit, taught me to appreciate small things, but I still do not understand and loathe these people insulting the writer, full of empty self-entitlement, behaving like kids...

People in gaming communities can definitely get quite self-entitled about things being specifically to their liking, but it's definitely not self-entitled to want WotC to live up to their own promises about positive, meaningful representation of marginalized groups, as far that applies to this issue.

Quote from Pip_Maxwell »

So we have more understanding thanks to Greg of what happened finally with WotS: Ravnica and WotS: Forsaken. Something I was actually waiting on.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKRpQpGU0AARU3l?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Its not what people were hoping in an apology, but it confirms much more about him being hamstrung. Essentially it was doomed from the start with Nissa and Chandra. They were never truly meant to be together, the possible romance forever baiting the readers.

As them actually being in a romantic relationship is not what the company WotC or the publisher Del Rey wanted, but Greg did. That when it came to Forsaken, he was given a mandate to break them up. Along with being asked to rewrite chapter seventy-three until it met their approval.

And what he says redeems Forsaken a little, even if its just for the single chapter of seventy-three.

If anything, the fact that WotC planned this some time in advance and let us all believe it was going to happen anyway, only makes it all the more so a case of queerbaiting. What on earth were they doing except deliberately stringing us along? For what, the cheap drama of it? Because they thought for some ******* reason this would count for any kind of meaningful representation? I expected better.
But this does help Greg Weisman's case for not being a homophobe at least.

Quote from ilovesaprolings »

Wait... are them from Kylem?

That was one of my first thoughts on seeing them too. They certainly look like it, with the big arena wall around them.

Should be "Spend this mana only to cast artifact spells."
See Mishra's Workshop, Castle Garenbrig, Interplanar Beacon.

This actually seems a little bit weak to me and the 3 life payment is aesthetically unappealing in combination with two mana produced, so I suggest you could probably change it to pay 2 life. You might be able to add activating artifact abilities to the condition as well. It's a bit of a risky design balance-wise though so I don't know.

Quote from Dom4419 »

Has it ever been confirmed that she is bisexual? I've been reading the stories since KTK and never got this confirmation. I understand why people might interpret it so as there were some passages that did make you wonder but nothing definitive. Her only obvious interest to me was Gideon. Is there any parts I missed or is it all speculation?

The Forsaken novel includes these two notable passages in it.

On Ravnica, in the wake of Gideon’s death and Bolas’, they had admitted to each other that they loved. But both of them knew deep down they were only speaking platonically.

That first bit referring to the previous novel.

Chandra had never been into girls. Her crushes — and she’d had her fair share — were mostly the brawny (and decidedly male) types like Gids. But there had always been something about Nissa Revane specifically, something the two of them shared in that great chemical mix — arcing between them like one of Ral Zarek’s lightning bolts — that had thrilled her. From the moment they first met.
Now everything’s different.
It was over. Before it had ever had a chance to begin. Maybe, maybe they had missed their moment.

So even if you haven't read the previous story content in which it is made pretty clear that there is definitely something going on with Chandra and Nissa, the story here reiterates that, before telling us it wasn't actually real though whoops.
WotC's apology says that "Chandra will love and be involved with many characters as her story unfolds—regardless of gender", which makes it sound like Chandra is going to be written as bi or pan going forward. I really hope that's what they mean, because it would be massively *****ty and massively stupid of them to say that while apologizing for queerbaiting otherwise, because then you're just layering queerbaiting on top of queerbaiting.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/189241573888/even-though-i-do-not-quite-a-few-people-view-the

So I'm glad Mark actually mentioned the words 'diverse' and 'inclusive'— unlike the official apology, which didn't use any such language— which does go some way toward acknowledging that this was a serious failing on meeting up to their goals with diversity and inclusivity.
I like that, despite being a game which has a significant, fairly vocal 'anti-SJW' crowd (as most games do), WotC has been bold enough to be very explicitly in favour of diversity and inclusion and has delivered on that front definitely with female characters, but this whole debacle does have the air of not wanting to push the envelope any further for fear of backlash, and I really hope that's not true.

Quote from Tiro of Meletis »

It’s not enough. De-canonize both novels immediately before this hemorrhages our faith In WOTC out any longer.

I agree, it's not enough. They had yet to even allude to other complaints with the story (like about Jace and Vraska) and for this one they put it as 'not meeting expectations' when it is was more of a case of straight-up queerbaiting and bury-your-gays erasure, which is a lot more than not meeting expectations. I hope there will be more to come on this and this was just an initial statement to make sure they get something out there. But, even still, they could have done better.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/chandra-and-forsaken-novel-2019-11-22
"Oops" — WotC

Quote from Pip_Maxwell »

Farewell elks, you will be missed.

Frankly, I think the architecture of Castle Garenbrig is looking a lot better now that one of those elks turned back into The Great Henge. It just wasn't the same without it.

Quote from the n00b king »

Quote from JaceBluesMaster »

I feel like this is confirmation that the higher ups at WotC had no faith in this set's ability to sell based off of a combination of its themes, setting and lack of a Jacetice League member, so they relied on the tried and true method of adding a couple pushed cards to the set to ensure it sold well. Play Design had been doing such a great job, this is really the only reason I can think of for why this set has experienced so many problems.

I mean everyone immediately knew Oko was going to be oppressively good. There is no way Play Design missed that, or let it slip through the cracks.

The more I read about play design and the more I think a lot of people's hate is super misguided. Play design DOES NOT design cards with the purpose of sales. That is NOT their role. I don't believe for a second that that's their main goal when designing cards.

Indeed. I'm ready to believe that a for-profit company did something bad for customers just for the sake of profit, but as they say, why assume malice for what is adequately explained by stupidity, or rather, in this case, simple human fallibility? It's a pretty bold claim to suggest WotC is so deliberately screwing with players, after all. That would be a rather risky move on their part. Just the fact that players are so annoyed with this situation to feel like this must be some deliberate slight against them tells you that it might not be ideal for WotC. Especially if someone leaked anything that substantiated that— can you imagine the fallout after that?

Quote from the n00b king »

Reading the last article about play design really helps puts things in perspective, in my opinion. What's been happening is that they have actually powered down standard quite a bit but have pushed a few cards really far in one direction. So that's why some of these seem so egregious. To be completely honest, it's better to push the envelop than to hold back. Sometimes things come together super well and other times, they don't. They have no way to predict what the meta will look like (consider that there's only like 20 of them vs the collective hive mind when it comes to play testing). Mistakes will slip through.

Exactly. I don't know why anyone would be surprised that this happens. It happens with like, every game. Most game communities seem to think the devs are incompetent at balancing, or have nefarious ulterior motives. You can criticize shortcomings without jumping to a conspiracy theory or claiming to be smarter than the entire dev team, guys. Trust me, it's possible. In fact, it would make your criticisms a lot more impactful.

Quote from the n00b king »

The problem, and i hope they scale this back, is 3 mana planeswalkers. These tend to be too strong when you have 1 drop acceleration available in standard. Hell even without acceleration, we all know how strong 3 mana walkers are (too efficient). If you bumped both Teferi and Oko up to 4 mana, they are nowhere near as oppressive (as your opponent will have had time to build a board).

Yes. They should have slightly more options for interactivity with planeswalkers too.

Quote from the n00b king »

Additionally, WotC has mentioned that they would be more aggressive to correct metagames with bannings. I'm totally on board with this. In fact, the truth is that in the past, they should have been more proactive to address bad metagames.

Agree. Bannings are annoying in losing cards, but if it opens up more cards to playability and reduces the need to buy into a select set of ridiculously expensive cards then it's easily worth it on that front.

Quote from the n00b king »

I understand that some players may feel frustrated with this, but without the ability to "nerf" cards, this is the only way.

Ah, the advantages of a digital game...

Quote from the n00b king »

Green has been pushed quite a bit since the last Innistrad. I think every color will get it's time to shine. Eventually, that might even be white!

I remember a time when white-blue decks were the monster of the metagame. White will have its time. Hell, after these bannings, white-blue looks to be in a pretty good position again.

Interesting, but this mechanic seems extremely narrow. It only makes sense on designs with two separate effects where either order of effects would work but one is better than the other and you have to put an appropriate cost to that such that the choice of whether to cast it with or without the invert is relevant and meaningful, while also trying to keep the balance of card power level and making fun card designs.
It's a hard sell to include at common. I imagine it will confuse a lot of newer players— even some more experienced players— who aren't used to thinking about the order of effects. And I'm not sure there are enough good, usable designs to justify making this a name mechanic even at higher rarities only.
This would work much better as just a cycle.

EDIT: more thoughts because I can
This mechanic seems too clever for its own good, essentially. Its a neat concept to play with reordering effects, but that doesn't mean it's actually a particularly fun idea in actual gameplay. Like Rules Lawyer from Unstable has a very interesting effect in interacting with state-based actions like that, and it works well enough on a single quirky card, but it's not something you want to make very many cards out of it because that novelty interest is going to wear off very quickly when you do.

This seems like narrow design space. I doubt the infiltrate for cost reduction cards are going to be very fun and I don't there's room for many of the upside designs.