MTG Salvation

Quote from Ashiok »

Very hard not to look at this as a cash grab move.

Exectuive 1: "Folks, standard is failing and our profits are down. We can't just keep churning masters set to make people buy premium products, they're starting to notice our scheme".
Executive 2: "Standard has been bad for years, but you know what people like? Commander"
Executive 3: "Why don't we make Commander with only standard legal cards, so people are forced to buy into our new product even though it is bad?"

*Cheers in the room*
*End scene*

It is... almost as though they were a for-profit company instead of the non-profit charity we were led to believe! Monsters!!!

Quote from GoutPatrol »

Can't wait to draw three lands or garbage for 3 mana!

One is tempted to suggest not to add any garbage to your deck. More seriously, though, if your three next cards are garbage, you got them out of the way instead of over three painful turns.

Quote from entombedhydra »

Quote from GildanBladeborn »

Quote from entombedhydra »

I hate Dutiful Servants so much it's not even funny. You know Wizards did this on purpose. And poorly designed zombie camel aside, this may be the insult that breaks my back. It's a poorly designed vanilla, with art and flavor purposely designed to trick you to confuse it for another card in the same block. This is the sort of thing that leads to entirely preventable gameplay mistakes in limited. And somehow MaRo said "Print it."

Well, I'm sorry MaRo, but peddle your joke cards elsewhere. And I'm sorry piss-poor designers, but PAY ATTENTION to what you do.

Fun fact - design doesn't come up with the card names (at least not finalized versions) and they most certainly don't pick the art. Blaming Mark Rosewater for this is silly, it's Development you have an issue with (and the art director).

As ridiculous as most of the things you complain about are (like suggesting WotC should have made Rhonas' Last Stand go from questionable to straight out garbage by costing it at 3 CMC, presumably because it offended your sense of symmetry by costing less than the other 2 cards in the cycle that were spoiled at the time), almost NONE of those things are indicative of bad design. In point of fact, almost all of the complaints everyone makes about cards on this forum can be blamed on Development. Why does this card cost so much, it would be so much better if it didn't have this clause, etc etc... odds are the version Design handed off did cost less, and didn't have those riders that render it basically unplayable. It may also have been horrendously broken and cause no end of complaint for entirely different reasons if Development passed it through unchanged, no way to know for sure unless they release an M-Files article on it.

MaRo is responsible for a lot of stuff, but gets blamed for even more.

I'm using MaRo as a stand-in for the kind of guy who advocates (!) printing bad cards. But you're right; this is the kind of combination of art fudge + design fail + "Who cares? It's a common, it's okay that it's garbage" that you'd think MaRo would have caught. Now I don't know what MaRo would have done if he hadn't been asleep at the wheel (perhaps he'd have picked a different piece of art from the reject pile and made it some generic white beast. But that doesn't change the fact it's 1 more for +0/+1 within the same block. It's insulting. And I think MaRo might just be the kind of guy who's okay with that, given his articles.

Dude, please stop talking, you know nothing, nothing at all.

1st: Mark Rosewater is the guy at the beginning of the process, who creates /some/ of the cards' first drafts. He's not an overseer of the full process, nor the one to establish and enforce the power level or the creative direction of cards, nor the one to "okay" the whole result at the end. If you actually read his articles you'd notice how he keeps mentioning that cards he or other people designed were changed by development in ways that they could not influence or predict.

2nd: Again, if you read his articles as you said, you'd have picked up that he's barely involved at all in second sets due to his workload.

3rd: this card was clearly not a makeshift patching of refused art and mechanics. It is clearly a card purposefully created by the Creative Department representative to stress how in a world crumbling to bits, the mummies kept dragging along as if nothing. It's not a cutesy joke, it is a world-building statement.

Quote from poison counter »

Quote from Marquisd »

Commander Goodness

Basically sums up the set.

Basically sums up the first reactions to every card, every set.

And yet, impossibly, people manage to play Standard and other constructed formats with these cards, set after set.

Quote from SecretInfiltrator »

And this doesn't address the dry way this is written. Even without giving new information a flavor text written from Liliana's perspective (to include information that the story did not have due to being written from Djeru's perspective) during the Hour of Revelation story when this happens:

Quote from The Hour of Revelation by Alison Luhrs »

The demon smiled, razor teeth and fathomless eyes a portrait of power and despair. Its voice boomed out again across the river of blood.
“I know you are here, Liliana Vess. You cannot hide from me.”

could transport the same information but also help to transport feelings - maybe just the awe inspired by the demon, maybe Liliana's determination despite this display of power. Flavor text that makes you feel something.

But when you say "Of course" when someone asks "Must we write flavor test to dryly explain the story for people who don't read the articles?" you do not affirm only that enfranchised players should get to experience the story - which is a fairly uncontroversial point - but you also affirm that it needs to be delivered "dryly" and that's just not the way to go.

As I have said before I do wish it was not "dryly" written. However, I acknowledge that dry writing is what conveys the maximum amount of information to people that have not read the stories. What we call "dry" is "informative" for an outsider. Look at the card, there's only room for three lines of flavour text, which is not much. Having it be a quote, for example, would waste the third line on the attribution.

My position when it comes to things like these is that that people are professionals of their field who have worked on this game for years. I trust that this unsightly piece of flavour text was arrived at because given constraints (such as "make sure that new and less enfranchised players understand how this character ties into the story even though he's not the main baddy" and "make it fit in three lines of text") and is the best result they manage after several tries (remember, there's also a time constraint as flavour text is one of the last things to be created, closer to release date). Could it be better? For sure, with enough time and people, I am sure we'd manage to make a better sounding text that conveys the same amount of information and maybe even give it a flavourful angle, but given the constraints, I choose to believe this is close to the best these pros could do in the given time.

Quote from Token_Hunter »

Must we write flavor test to dryly explain the story for people who don't read the articles?

Of course. What other answer is there for that question? I hope you can forgive them for sacrificing a few cards' flavour text for the benefit of players less enfranchised than you.

Quote from Dynamite_Private »

Proof that enough vitriol is enough to change Wizards' minds. They may cite data but I'm positive the massive negativity surrounding their inaction had its fair share of influence.

That said, about time. Let's see what happens now.

This is a poor attitude to have. Why? Because many times vitriol will be produced with no warranted (or at least sufficient) causes. I hope I don't need to spell out why it would be a bad thing if Wizards surrendered factual, data-backed exploration of an issue to bending over at every juncture where a mob of loud, angry fans is formed. This time the vitriolic mob was right, yes, but since the issue was real and would evidently be exposed by data-gathering, feedback needn't be vitriolic to do its thing.

I don't see the problem with GU Nissa? That's a very natural and expected character growth after her time in Kaladesh, if you read the stories carefully. In Kaladesh she learned that humanoid-made technology can be a beautiful expression of understanding of the natural order and that even lifeforms created as a byproduct of people's "meddling"(aetherborn) are a welcome part of the world.

That flavour text. I can almost picture an acolyte asking his teacher, "Master, why are there 5 Gods and 5 Trials but only 4 Hours? Maybe there is an Hour we don't know about?" "Don't be silly, stop questioning the teachings of our God-Pharaoh".

Quote from void_nothing »

Don't get me wrong, the card is great and I will play it, but... we're just doing this Oath thing once a block from here on out, huh? I'm way more interested in the revolution and Tezzeret's machinations than a flimsy excuse to get the "good" planeswalkers to work together.

And? You'll certainly get the cards you're talking about. Why resent a card for the people who like Planeswalkers and the good guys?

I like the frame and the Jace-tastic art on these (especially Brainstorm), but can't see spending $20 on it even though you are technically getting value (Beleren + Gifts + Mystical are worth about that much, even post-price crash). If you were just starting out at, say, EDH and really wanted to power up your blue collection this is a fine buy as Mystical Tutor, Counterspell, Brainstorm, and Negate are amongst the best instants in the format and you can hopefully find a tournament player interested in Threads of Disloyalty, Gifts Ungiven, and Blue Elemental Blast, and for a die-hard collector they are pretty, but for the average player like me this feels like a pass.

Each opponent sacs a creature at instant speed for 3?! Sure! + bonus sometimes?! Deal!

Quote from 31F »

When the "bread and butter" cards for decks are taken away from standard, that is why I have a gripe about it.

How long is eating bread and butter going to sustain fun? Not long. It's nice to have the game we love evolve over time so that we never feel like it's getting stale like constant bread and butter. The "this game used to be about spells not creatures" thing is an issue I don't really care about. I care about Magic. If I want to play only noncreature spells or only creature spells I can still do that. And so can others. I miss Rampant Growth but it's still out there in Magic. Standard is different. Good.

Quote from AnImAr_ »

I hope there is plenty of cards that make you ascend. This mechanic is only going to do well if they pushed it...like energy.

The mechanic seems to be one-and-done with multiple instances being redundant, so we don't need all that many cards that make one ascend. Also, there probably should't be too many cards that care about the blessing either so it is not an auto-include in every deck.

Boy these reactions sound a lot like when they updated to the modern card frame 15 years ago. You'll get used to it guys, I promise.

Ah, the usual "this set sucks" as a wave of commons is finally spoiled.

During all preview time, people were excited by gret rare pirates, vampires and dinos. During that time we got enraging dino that grow, draw cards and ramp, combo vampire and great raid cards. Now that all new cards are the common and uncommon limited fillers. Of course you were underwhelmed. The goods cards were already previewed.

Come back in two weeks when decks pop up and everyone claim they'd called it.

Quote from Creedmoor »

Quote from Tekkactus »

Grim Captain's Call wins the award for "Card Most Likely to Never, Ever Get a Reprint".

Should have been a Choose a Creature type effect.

I think this is the BG 'draft milepost' uncommon. All the colors that actually share a tribe got a gold uncommon that is either a creature of that tribe or a sorcery creating tokens in that tribe. BG doesn't actually share a tribe... but a BG deck DOES see cards in all four tribes. THis card would be ideal in a BG draft where you're taking G dinos and merfolk and B vampires and pirates.

Quote from Tolarian PC Principal »

I feel like they could have made then 9/9 cost 7, but maybe the Dinosaur type is a little too relevant for that.

Compare to Greater Sandwurm, a 7/7 for 7 with upside uncommon with cycling. I don't see it being outside the rarity convention for a 9/9 vanilla to cost 8 since it will be very difficult to remove it without a direct removal spell. Any upside to this card would have pushed it to uncommon, which also includes lower CMC.

Quote from Xcric »

Trash.
By the time youre at 7 lands you shouldnt be caring about removing attacking creatures from combat because you should have won already

Can't tell if you're trolling or if you truly believe that everyone plays aggro decks.

Quote from hippohugger »

I swear that put the phrase "in a random order" so that MaRo doesn't throw a hissy fit.

Well, that or so that this doesn't let you literally stack your deck if you have no creatures in it.

Oh man with all this salt I could open a pretzel shop.