MTG Salvation

If they do cover Final Fantasy VII for Universes Beyond then expect Tifa Lockhart to be censored unlike Chun-Li for the Street Fighter II crossover. I get why Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro didn't want to touch Power Rangers for Magic: The Gathering due to the tight grip Saban has on the IP let alone the late Jason David Frank's fallout with Hasbro. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would've been a better choice than Fallout IMO and actually breathe more life to the Ninjutsu mechanic. With Jurassic Park already confirmed I'm expecting Owen Brady and Ian Malcolm cards. That being said, people need to remember that these Universes Beyond IP crossovers are nothing more than a money grab. Universes Beyond has been a very good product for Magic: The Gathering but it has diluted the rest of the sets as they're far weaker than Lord of the Rings for example. Of course they have to make it powerful otherwise why buy the IP? IP's are not cheap. When Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro are buying out IP's in the quantity that they're buying them then they'll cost more and more money.

While Universes Beyond will bring new players to Magic: The Gathering the old players will leave. The quality will go down as there will be more gimmicks involved. They have to make up the money that they pay the companies behind these IP's. These are very expensive franchises especially Final Fantasy to buy the license for. If your Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game isn't strong enough creatively to stand on it's own then the easiest solution is to just get a popular video game series, movie franchise, comic, anime / manga, or TV show and just go with it. Is this sustainable? I don't think so. Eventually you're going to run out of good licenses before you start bringing in the bad licenses that people hate. Often times we see this in other Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games where the games get discontinued due to running out of source material and the players are set back to square one again losing all the money they've spent on them. At least companies are getting smarter on how to keep their games going without running out of source material by following the Weiss Schwarz business model by Bushiroad.

Aetherflux Reservoir seems like a solid wincon with Sythis, Harvest's Hand.

You can also cast Whip Silk, Freyalise's Charm, Flickering Ward, and Gossamer Chains to trigger your Commander's ability multiple times to get the engine going as well. Hope that helps.

Quote from Flamebuster »

The problem here seems to be that WoTC has too many formats to support.

Bingo. With less formats to support for Paper Magic that actually helps alleviate the financial paywall for formats where their barrier to entry makes it almost impossible to keep up with like Commander and Modern. $400+ mana bases to actually play the game on a consistent level? No thank you. As a matter of fact Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro NEEDS to officially discontinue Legacy and Vintage leaving ONLY Standard, Modern, Pioneer, and most importantly Commander as the officially legal formats of Paper Magic.

I don't care If the Old School Magic 93/94 format players whine and complain that their Reserve List collection went down in price. Magic: The Gathering wasn't specifically designed to be based on a societal class warfare system between the poor, middle class, and rich. As for the Whales and Resellers, you're part of the problem and not the solution by hoarding product that you refuse to dump inventory into the Secondary Market to help make Paper Magic more playable but I get that you need to turn a profit to stick it to Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro when you're really hurting Local Game Stores (LGSs).

That reminds me. Can Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro legally keep problematic cards unbanned in Standard for a long period of time solely for the sake of making monetary profits through sealed product because in case you didn't know these problematic cards can indeed carry entire sets with them by making up at least one or two thirds of the Expected Value (EV) of the set. This could all be avoided If Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro actually took the time to playtest the cards before release leading to less emergency bans and less players having to pay more money to rebuild new Paper Standard decks from scratch since they can't find functional replacements for cards getting emergency banned that they've already spent too much money on. Unfortunately Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's ENTIRE workforce has already been cut by 15% so good luck on finding playtesters who aren't bound by Paper Magic's strict release schedule for new products.

I'm guessing nobody remembers how unfun Teferi, Time Raveler was to play against back when he was Standard legal. A card that was LITERALLY designed by Mark Rosewater himself to prevent ANY form of player interaction and he actually thought that it was a fun idea when everyone else was against it. Remember how everyone got so annoyed by Oko, Thief of Crowns and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath in Paper Standard and Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro chose not to ban them immediately so that they could secure the EV on those Throne of Eldraine and Theros Beyond Death boxes? Same thing with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in Paper Standard to prop up the price on Dominaria United boxes where they can now put most of the Expected Value (EV) directly into Commander Pre-Cons because THAT'S what sells right now. The Ikoria Commander Pre-Cons are a good example of this where they can artificially inflate the price and choose to reprint later.

Quote from Simto »

They don't care about modern

That's because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro won't allow us to have a non-rotating format anymore outside of Commander. They just won't. Standard sets have to have cards like Oko, Thief of Crowns or Omnath, Locus of Creation where they HAVE to break another format. That's why any set that goes into Modern has to have cards at the same power level as Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer that would bust it in Modern and become MUST HAVE'S. The formats that were made specifically to escape set rotations like Commander, Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is forcing set rotations into almost ALL of them. They are forcing obsolescence on you. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is arrogant enough to think that they can control every format that everybody plays and force you to keep buying their products. It's insane.

Quote from Simto »

I think commander can absolutely get worse at a game store, at least in my experience. It all comes down to the people you're playing with.

Guess that would explain why Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro and the EDH Rules Committee are so deeply afraid of cEDH especially in terms of design philosophy as well. After the mistake that was Opposition Agent, Hullbreacher, and Jeweled Lotus in Commander Legends Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro were like, "Never again! But we'll reprint Jeweled Lotus one last time in Commander Masters..."

So back on topic, I had to really rethink why longer Standard was a bad idea and IT IS especially with how tone deaf of a decision it is. Aaron Forsythe awhile back posted a poll exclusively on Twitter for people who follow him about what they want to see change in Standard when he could've asked the people who quit the format in the last three years and ask them about why they quit. They're the reason why Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is losing money and are the people he's needing back. Unfortunately there's pushed garbage, too many sets, and too much complexity that makes it almost impossible to play Paper Standard outside of Arena because you can't even tell what's really going on. There's too many complexive rules, too many words on the cards, and too many products per year. There's too long of a rotation cycle, too high of a power level, and too much, "I won because of what I net decked at my locals" which completely suppresses any kind of creativity for deck building compared to how easy it is in Commander. Hmm, I wonder why?

Aaron Forsythe only listened to the FNM Standard players who don't care about fun, they don't care about enjoyment, they are not there to anything other than to WIN. They don't care who they piss off or drive away, who doesn't like their deck unless the store owner bans them, they don't give a crap. They usually give the store owner the most money so even If they resent them they aren't getting rid of them. So unless your store has a spine it doesn't want FNM to shrink by two people every week until it's just the toxic players left. You know someone who knows business and knows what they're doing. Those are the type of people who follow Aaron Forsythe one of the least liked employees at Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro which is a well-known fact. So here's how you REALLY fix Standard: Lower the complexity, lower the power level, ban more cards when they IMMEDIATELY become problematic (don't take so long to ban it), and most importantly have it be a fun approachable entry-level thing for new players just getting into Magic for the first time.

Arena is really where all the money that used to come from Paper Standard is nowadays. So here's a question, how many players leave Arena every time a Standard set rotation happens? Every time an overpowered set full of garbage, broken cards, and toxic archetypes comes out the number dips and every time there's a rotation the number immensely dips. It's basically like MTGO where they just take all your cards at the end. With Standard now being a three year rotation you now have more complexity, more interactions, a higher power level, and more cards you have to wait longer for toxic cards to cycle out because you know they're not going to ban anything If it's making Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro money on their sealed product. They don't want to admit fault by posting an article by saying they screwed up the design of a specific card and ACTUALLY do something about it because then they'll piss off the netdeckers who are just getting free wins because THAT's who they're catering toward!

That's who follows Aaron Forsythe and that's what he thinks the community is. They hang out with Pro players and they hang out on Twitter. That is the LAST demographic they should be listening to. Netdeckers in Standard copy the single most powerful decks on the internet which drives up card single prices, they show up with their $500 decks to FNM, and beat actual children so that they can win a couple of packs and win some of their money back. They also get their little Pro wannabe fantasy at the local level, "Wow... what great work for you designing that deck. Oh wait you didn't. Shut up." So they want Standard to be cheaper because they're dropping hundreds of dollars per month on this but they want to keep winning because they're very shallow that props up their ENTIRE ego. It's about getting the same win rate while putting in zero effort with a bunch of overpowered garbage and copying other people's work but at half the price. So free wins and no bans? Stop netdecking in Standard which is a bit harder to do in Commander but is still viable.

If you see a Standard deck on the internet first of all STOP. But If you insist on doing that in a deck building game, "Oh this looks WAY overpowered and people are talking about this combo and everybody's pissed and they want it out of their game, you build it, purchase it, and then you lose with it because you lost money? First of all you built the deck that beats it and second of all you REALLY should've seen it coming and that's why Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has been so soft on banning problematic cards in Standard lately aside from just being temporary cash grabs. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro really needs to do an online survey for people who used to play Magic but don't anymore and then explain why when they don't even realize how much effort goes into acquiring a new customer for their game. Given the current state of Standard right now would you teach a new person how to play Magic in Standard? You would more than likely have them learn how to play Commander instead right?

It's too unapproachable, too annoying, too toxic, the deck archetypes are annoying to play against, they're not fun. NOBODY would pick up this game from scratch right now and to pick up Arena would cost you about $300. So the amount of new people coming into Magic is zero and Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro needs to focus on why players are leaving the game. Cards that are too fast, too early, too good is now Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's basis for designing new Magic cards because nothing else will compete. They tried to design a low powered set with Streets of New Capenna and that flopped SO HARD. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro doesn't understand how math, business, or marketing of their own game with Magic works or their community. It's clear. And even If they did Hasbro Corporate wouldn't let them. If they lowered the power level of Standard where they're now rotating out 15 cards where we've gotten to a place that we don't like and we're fixing it, whine and complain about it, pretend to leave the game, and show up the next day, that's what these net decking addicts live for.

The rest of us can come play a nice comfortable low-powered format with Standard and after you get sick of it you play Modern. You play EDH. You get into the complex stuff. You start playing with older cards. You start getting into Draft. You elevate. Or at the bare minimum they have you as a customer at least you're a person at a seat at an FNM telling your friends about it. You're keeping the store open. So If Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro ACTUALLY decides to fix Standard and they released four low-powered sets in a row once and then rotated again which is what it would take mathematically then their sales would be so trash for a year as people would be like, "Well why would I want these cards? The Expected Value (EV) of these boxes are $50 and none of them are competitive." Why? Because they would be resetting the power level of Standard. Everything that came before is what you want to play with. To fix Standard even further would've also been to limit Legendary cards to 2 per deck, lower the Mythic numbers, and reclassify Control cards as Control cards.

Another thing that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could do to help fix Standard instead of just extending the rotation period is by completely scrapping Collector's Edition Boosters for Standard legal sets and regulate ALL Standard set releases to ONLY Set and Draft Boosters. They can still release Collector's Edition Boosters but regulate their releases solely on Supplementary products such as Masters set releases, Jumpstart, and Commander releases. That way there would be less variants in Standard legal sets that are shrinking the price and causing sealed product to be more easy to flip and sell which is actually better for Local Game Stores (LGSs) so that they won't be forced to break even to keep their businesses open.

Quote from user_938036 »

Quote from Card Slinger J »

The only reason why there's a market for Gold Bordered Collector's Edition cards is because people actually play them in EDH / Commander. That's why getting a gold bordered Force of Will and Yawgmoth's Will was much cheaper to get a hold of compared to their original printings which are valued much higher. Yes they technically are used for display purposes but the reality is that these cards do actually see play in EDH / Commander and as far as I recall there was also a gold bordered Gaea's Cradle that saw play in the format as well. Do I condone using gold bordered cards in EDH / Commander decks? That entirely depends on your playgroup.

I don't question that people use them. The same I don't doubt that people use cheaper proxies when they want. My question was how can they ban something that isn't legal? Proxies of any kind are currently disallowed so how could they be more disallowed?

I'm not sure how the EDH Rules Committee could get away with something like that when it's probably meant to calm players down whenever Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro does something they've never done before that always seems to upset the majority of the player base. Maybe If they scaled back more on releasing so much product to give their customers enough time to catch up then there would be less people complaining about wallet fatigue which the bean counters at Hasbro corporate automatically dismiss.

There's been a rumor flying around at least from Purp / The Magic Historian that the EDH Rules Committee is planning on banning the use of these proxies for EDH / Commander though strangely enough they haven't updated this on their official website so it's safe to assume that this is being talked about on private Facebook groups and discord servers. Knowing Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro they'll most likely do a repeat of this in the next anniversary product by going after the Four Horsemen sets with Arabian Nights, Legends, Antiquities, and The Dark. If anything they're shooting themselves in the foot with these proxies for $1,000+ cause why release a product that HIGH for only 1 or 2% of the overall player base?

If these proxies aren't even legal for EDH / Commander according to the EDH Rules Committee then why bother? They aren't tournament legal anyhow. The game's already expensive enough to the point where most players are printing out their own proxies of Reserve List cards instead of paying a premium to acquire something close to the original that's really just a waste of money honestly. If your playgroup knows that you don't have the money to shell for the original cards that's okay which is why Rule 0 in EDH / Commander is a thing. Sadly Magic reprints nowadays aren't really able to keep up with consumer demand as much as they did before EDH / Commander was conceived as a format when the demand was really low back then.

Quote from Mystic_X »

When you boil it down, game stores are too dependent on consumers who like playing games.

The truth is they should diversify their product line and increase their target demographic by also selling other intoxicating products, food, coffee, back-scratchers, masks, soaps, deodorant, and plungers.

That alone would quadruple their sales volume!

Not necessarily. I don't think you realize the importance of having In-Person Communities and fellowships in a society that is trying to be anything but by secluding them to a digital space that leads to a less desirable experience. Otherwise you'd be better off playing video games exclusively or some other online exclusive activity. That's another problem where remote jobs through online businesses and streaming services that became heightened as a result of the pandemic has made manual labor jobs more difficult in this day and age that still continue to struggle trying to hire new employees to be willing to work. We were designed to get exercise instead of just sitting all day in front of a computer screen.

We hate inconvenience so much to the point that we're willing to sacrifice it for more convenience that may seem like it's more satisfying than inconvenience when in reality it isn't. We've become too obsessed with perfection rather than imperfection that it's ruining our quality of everyday life in general. Why do we desire a world with no touch, no feeling, no smiles, and no meaning? This I feel will only lead down the path of trans-humanism which is something we all need to avoid with the merging of man and machine as we've been warned about in fiction years ago. Why do you think people are too afraid to let go of their smartphones? FOMO makes us think that we're missing out on something that's not really as important as we like to think it is.

I agree the mana cost is too low (probably needs to be MV 5), but this is the kind of neat little design I'm surprised doesn't exist already. Good work!

Avon is known for two things to me: Photomanipulating real posed photos to look well in the settings and appropriately good looking 90s computer game looking CG art. These... miss heavily on both those fronts. Both look way too new though I think I like the Serra Angel the best out of the four. Miss in terms of card choice and miss in terms of art for me personally, unfortunately.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Maybe Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could put out a Secret Lair in honor of Sheldon Menery's impact on Magic: The Gathering through EDH / Commander in some way though it feels like it would probably be in bad taste since I really don't like the distribution model for Secret Lairs and how they cut the Local Game Store (LGS).

If 100% of the proceeds went to helping people who have cancer I think it would be excellent

I would cut something to get Hurkyl, Master Wizard in there, I mean you gotta run Drafna's wife in a drafna deck don't ya?

The most interesting card here is River Song--drawing cards from the bottom of your deck rather than the top.

This seems very complicated.

I think it can be changed to:
"Whenever an opponent pays mana for a triggered ability from
a permanent you control, at the beginning of your next main phase, add an amount of C equal to that spell’s mana value. This triggers only once each turn.
Whenever an opponent doesn't pays mana for a triggered ability from a permanent you control, draw a card. This triggers only once each turn."

The article you posted seems to suggest that merely logging in to your account qualifies it as active, so you should have no worries. It's kind of a bummer when it comes to content that was uploaded by people who are now deceased or who otherwise moved on from Youtube. More popular content might get archived by internet patriots but it's still a bummer.

Quote from Card Slinger J »

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Ok im just gonna rip the band aid off my Curiosity is too big

why is aftermath so bad? besides some of the cards being off on revealing whats happened after mom like Tranquil Frillback

Also was it expected to be modern horizons powerful or something? Because they literally said its a standard legal. Or is it another one of those petitions to stop making products disgusied as commander products and focus on the other formats.

Aftermath is bad because since it's only a 50 card Standard legal booster set with 5 cards per booster pack it's Expected Value (EV) is so low (as in Fallen Empires and Homelands low) that Local Game Stores (LGSs) aren't able to flip it for money as good as previous Standard sets which had more than 50 cards and they probably aren't making as much money on the card singles for the set either. Why? Because with a set THAT small you're basically pulling the exact same cards over and over in every booster pack where you're just better off buying one box to get everything you need out of the set and that's it. Aside from a few good Commander cards like Nissa, Resurgent Animist there's really not that much demand for Aftermath and is likely to sit on a shelf collecting dust at a Local Game Store (LGS) similar to If they had already ordered pallets of Dragon's Maze years ago that they can't even liquidate and sell because nobody wants it.

Given Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro's strict release schedule for Paper Magic, I could even argue that Aftermath was rushed into production and had no time to add more cards to the set before release to where the Expected Value (EV) would've been no where near as bad as it is right now. You can't really make this comparison to other small Standard sets like Fallen Empires and Homelands in the past unless there was overprinted product for Paper Magic LONG before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast back in the late 90's. I highly doubt this was the case unless you go all the way back to when Chronicles almost killed Paper Magic and resulted in the creation of the Reserve List nearly 30 years ago because collectors didn't want to lose money. There is a big concern with the company lowering the amount of cards printed in new Standard sets to screw over LGSs by lowering their EV.

That's also not bringing up the story, which this set was supposed to set up, doesn't exist. The best this has is two parents died, planeswalkers lost their sparks (but not all of them did, some lost them in different ways, and the multiverse randomly put one woman's spark in a box for some reason), and a gay couple made a clockwork dinosaur. That's it. This "story that will push magic into its next era" has next to no story in it. This is especially true where they have random limited cards in this undraftable set for no reason, they have no value, don't even go into Commander decks, and tell even less story than Training Grounds.