If your a casual magic player why not just play with proxies, there are some good ones out there. I get why competitive players hate high single prices. I would love to be able to pick up some Chalice of the Void for my side board but they are out of my budget at the moment. I may be able to trade for some with the other singles I have. Play modern buy once, play standard buy all the time, play causal just proxy up stuff.
A lot of reasons but the short answer is, people do. Not everyone wants to.
My collection is small by some standards. About 6k or something cards I guess. Maybe a bit more. About 90% of it unorganized. I can find at least one of say... Force of Will, but I can't locate all of them instantly. The same goes for proxies. There was a time I made B/W photocopies of hard to find cards during my college years. When I find them, I toss them. B/W copies aren't too bad, they're easily stripped without much thought. Their intent isn't to deceive anybody.
But what about the full color high quality proxies? Unless they're marked, do they go through any scrutiny while pulling cards? What if you're building a deck and forget you included one too many proxies and take it to a tournament? What if you Proxy say.... 5% of your cards with high quality ones. What if you decide to sell your collection and choose not to pull the proxies, either because you have too many cards, or you're lazy and don't give a flip or, worse, you sell with intent to deceive the buyer. Will a seller buy them? If I go to a bulk buy and, while randomly shuffling through the collection, I spot 1 proxy in a pile that fits my hand, that raises a red flag. If I spot another in the same handful or another handful, the deals off or I ask for a mega discount. I want to spend my money on real WotC cards, not garbage from wherever. High quality proxies have no business in a collection since their intent is to deceive players.
That is the key point with me on proxies. You want to proxy your cards for casual or play testing? I can't stop you. But don't even think about selling those proxies to me in a collection without telling me up front what they are and where. I don't want them entering the trade channels any more than the next collector.
Mind you, I'm not talking about alt art proxies. Different beast.
I wrote this post three times and I can't seem to come up with a good response. So here are the bullet points.
* In 96ish, give or take a handful of years. Mana Burn was a real thing and decks took advantage of it or built around. Sure some decks ignore it, but this is no different than ignoring say.... milling.
* Because of the above, i find it weird that people playing in the 90's never encountered it. I encountered it at least once, usually more, during tournaments. It didn't dominate, but it sure stung!
* I never encountered anyone that didn't understand it. Not know? Yes. Not understand? No. The batch caused more questions than mana burn.
* Yes, people complained. But IIRC, it was never to get rid of it or how hard to understand but the strategies revolving around it. No different than the life loss experienced with Necro.
* I like mana burn but I don't think it should make a come back. I would, however, like to see a version in a card, like an enchantment, to enable it.
I can write more but most of it just flames random people so I'll stop here.
I started playing magic in 1995 and stopped somewhere around Weatherlight. Besides a few events with borrowed decks TimeSpiral was the set that brought me back to magic and I know a lot of people that brought it back as well. It might be a worse set for the masses, but it hooked some lost players to the game again.
I actually stopped playing again when they decided to ban Survival in Legacy before the meta could adjust. I played Legacy at some points, when the meta got some fresh cards, just to see them banned as well. (Misstep, Treausure Cruise)
In my view, MaRo is responsible for most of the bad stuff happened to magic. Like the whole NWO thing, abandon Manaburn, flooding the game with Walkers, Flipcards, cheap artworks etc.
We had a similiar discussion going on the pauperforum, basically the only format i still play or try to play since everybody seems to play EDH exclusively in my area. So Ill quote myself.
My main problems with magic today
-worse frame and artworks for a fantasy game than the old ones = boring cards/less immersion. Much potential wasted on the overall look. (borderless full arts for example)
-removal of manaburn (its huge in 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
Standard was never really interesting to me, since it always felt like a trialversion of magic. Eternal has always been the better format and legacy was much bigger than standard. High entry prices (lately due to speculation) and low card availabilty were always existent. The introduction of modern and the drop of support from wotc and eventually scg killed the format though.
I'll skip most of the post....
The loss of Mana burn was a bit of a surprise to me. Initially, I was a little annoyed since I did have a deck that tapped out opponents lands. But I digress. The loss of mana burn bothers me less now than it did in the past. Largely because we can't go back. WotC dug themselves in pretty deep and reintroducing Mana Burn would destroy a lot of interesting cards. Basically, if WotC never got rid of Mana Burn in M10, I would argue to keep it for exactly the same reason I cited above. There's just too many cards to errata.
However, I notice a lot of posters talk about it as if it didn't happen very often and not worth dealing with.
I have to wonder what meta were they playing in? Mana burn was the first painful lesson I learned trying to drop (IIRC) a T1 Abyssal Specter by chaining Dark Rituals to try and force my opponent to start discarding cards. Mana Drain was risky if you were top decking. Eladamri's Vineyard could strategically punish some players. Su-Chi's ability was a real drawback in the wrong circumstances. I could go on and on about all the pre-M10 cards. My point is, mana burn came up often enough that I usually built my decks with consideration for it. I used to play Mana Batteries, Circle of Protection or X spells for the express purpose of sinking mana. So the argument that it rarely came up is really puzzling. It's just weird when I ran into it a bit more than "rarely".
I... can't really say adding sleeves would add value.
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
While it's true that a lot of people immediately dismissed the announcement and attacked Wizards of the Coast head-on, I don't understand why people were surprised by it. Wizards has very little credibility with part of the Magic player base at this point, and frankly, I don't blame people for that one bit. A solid decade of propaganda about how hard they work to ensure balance, even as Standard lurched from Jace the Mind Sculptor to various two-deck formats and nonsense formats and now emergency bannings and falling attendance (how bad must it really be if Wizards deviated from its "BEST YEAR EVER FOR THE NTH YEAR IN A ROW" line?). At least Rosewater's communicating with us, when he's not talking about Buffy and dating advice on his Tumblr.
They are definitely not thinking they're doing the BEST YEAR EVER FOR THE NTH YEAR IN A ROW. They have throuhgoutly problematized their latest sets in regards to complexity (SOI/BFZ/KTK blocks were all too complicated) and focus (BFZ was about the wrong part of Zendikar, KTK ended with the wrong world surviving), only Kaladesh was acceptable in regards to these two, and they still screwed up in regards to the power level of combos and answers. They are continually addressing this, explaining why they've done what they've done, but also why they feel they have made some pretty bad choices. Now, from what I know, sales are still the highest of all time, but that doesn't mean they think they have made proper products, and it's rare that they even talk about sales. In fact they just created a brand new department and hired a brand new team on top of their ordinary workers in order to fix the problems they've been struggling with for years at this point.
Now, whether all of these intentions worked out, and whether the new team will matter is another thing entirely. While they often admit they've procured problems, they have made blocks too complicated for like three blocks in a row... then they made Kaladesh which was on a reasonable complexity level, sure. But then the first thing after they found the right level of complexity, they produce Amonkhet which has the most complicated token mechanic of all time, requiring active surveillance of both the graveyard and the battlefield in limited - in fact the active "markers" of the set's mechanic are so complex, they had to make punchout cards in order to not mix -1/-1 counters with embalm, and in order to solve the memory issue of exerting. Now, I absolutely love Amonkhet. But it amazes me that they produce a set needing so many battlefield markers that they printed punchout cards and somehow they still think mixing +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters are too complicated.
... No, I don't think +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters should be in the same limited environment, but I feel Amonkhet is pretty close to doing that. Even as an Amonkhet fan, and as a fan of the punchout cards, it still seems they haven't learned their lesson about on board complexity.
You like the punch out cards? Why? The only thing more wasteful is the double sided advert cards they stick in packs instead of... well.. including an actual token card. WotC creates recyclable cards for the Japanese market and yet they create this? These little bits of paper are annoying to keep around and I haven't seen anyone keep them after a sealed game.
I'm not against the mechanics per se. I'm just puzzled about WotC releasing these cards which likely won't last much past their initial sealed game.
I don't really care much for the Eldrazi. I'm not above playing them as a strategy but I think Eldrazi, in general, are exemplar of the Yu-Gi-Oh style power creep that WotC claims to work so hard to avoid. Every time I see a new Eldrazi, I wonder what WotC is thinking and why they keep going back on their own statements. Outside of reprints to ensure the secondary market prices stay at a reasonable level and accessible to future players, I don't want to see them again.
Looking at some of the leaked cards, I wouldn't be surprised though. There are some real power houses so far and Eldrazi would already be in line for it.
It was the best because of the variety and options and answers it offered. Thats not something we see in set design anymore. THere were close to 30 different decks being played. No one was complaining that there were 5 or 6 different counterspells being used in the format. No one was complaining about Wrath of God. No one was complaining about the 3 land destruction spells being used either. There were a number of playable burn spells. There were a variety of removal spells. Thats the stuff that makes for a healthy format. The only real negative was the overabundance of Jitte. But even that was kept in check
Anyone who says there was no complaining back then was not playing much. I have been playing since 94 and there are always complaints about the game. The reason it seems like there was less complaining back then is the lack of the internet. People complained about control, people complained about land destruction, people complaining about prison decks. That is why Wotc has gone away form those type strategies, because players complained about them.
Funny, i started in 94 too, and the first time i heard real complains were about the urza-block. sure, people had trouble with necro before, but back then, you just sought for ways to beat them anyway. But it was a hobby back then, nothing that was life deciding, like magic seems to be nowadays for some folks. You didn´t have certain cards? well, so what, play something else. But my opinion on that might be clouded, back then i still though every card would had its use in the right circumstances. That turned out to be not true.
I
I heard the first real complaints in Mirage over phasing. It wasn't game breaking but a lot players complained that there were effectively playing two concurrent games of Magic. We just owned up and just bolted the punks as they phased in or swung when they phased out. I think there was a fun little Armageddon deck running around at the time. I don't know anyone that left over it though.
The next major gripes centered around Tempest and Shadow. The word parasitic wasn't in the general vocabulary then, the concept was just being fleshed out. Most of us just threw in 4x shadow creatures as chump blockers or held back a spell to roast 'em but I recall this was a detested mechanic at the time. Largely because Shadow was virtually non-interactive. A pure shadow deck couldn't use its creatures against more traditional creatures. It was argued flyers were no different but the big difference was flying, and ways to deal with them, existed in every set since Alpha. In a meta that also supported landwalking, no one that I knew wanted to deal with Shadow. A similar mechanic years later, horsemanship, was a flavor fail but I wasn't playing at that time.
These were just my local metas at the time and probably wasn't representative of the player base as a whole. I think the amount of complaining really ramped up over the years. Players complained about Phasing and Shadow and just built our decks around them. Or maybe the internet just consolidates and amplifies the complaining. I dunno.
I do know one thing. Magic is way past due for another split like Portal. None of that $10 a pack Magic Modern garbage either. But, rather, a genuine split to create a Standard and Non-standard set and put them into regular rotation. Maybe that'll alleviate some of the complaining since there are distinct differences between the players and WotC has proven it's too hard to address all their needs in just one set.
Am I missing something? Forsaken Sanctuary isn't in Amonkhet. The only tapped non-rare lands are Stone Quarry and Foul Orchard in the planeswalker decks, and they have new art.
It's listed as card #281 so it's one of the "extras".
I always assumed it was because, in Amonkhet anyways, any card over the first 279 were added as last minute afterthoughts so no time to create new art or flavor text. Looking at some of the art, I'm wondering if it's a consideration for the secondary market. Even at C, not as many are getting opened compared to packs. So change the art and collectors and speculators will siphon them up bumping their price and making them inaccessible to their intended market.
The biggest problems with the current state of Magic are boring design since they don't want anything they deem 'unfun' which is really stupid and subjective.
I feel like they're pushing too many products out each year as well which is leading to Magic fatigue.
Also I feel they don't punish cheaters or the types of players that try to win via being a rules nazi or technicalities which is really off putting for anyone in a tournament.
Well saying "boring design" is subjective, but I do agree about the amount of product wizards is producing at an accelerated rate. I think their mindset is to try to hit every fan of MtG in a single year, that they lose sight of quality control. Commander fans will always get cards as a byproduct from every product, whereas standard fans only have the newest stuff etc. I think they have a lot of product that they could be stretching over the span of a couple of years. This past year had a ton of product that I, like most Mtg casual players, just can't afford all at once (Planechase, Commander, Conspiracy 2, 2 standard blocks, duel decks, EMA, MM3 and so on).
Unfortunately, I don't see that changing any time soon. Can you see the board meeting at Hasbro?
Maro: Sir, we can't keep this pace up. Our fans can't afford to buy all our products every year. I think we need to cut back production slightly to keep our fans happy.
CEO: Are they spending every last dime they have on our products?
Maro: I think so sir.
CEO: are they eating at those games you're always talking about?
Maro: You mean the Friday Night Magic? Of course sir.
CEO: Then put out more products! If they have money to buy a soda, they have money to buy our products! Get out of my building and don't come back!
Hascon is a pretty good example of them trying to squeeze every last cent out of us. Hitting all of their fans in one fell swoop.
I just think this entire price issue for modern and other formats is kind of dumb. Wizards could fix the entire problem by printing 100 msrp box sets that have something like the following:
Modern Masters Example:
1 Guaranteed Promo Foil
2 of each Zendikar Fetchland
12 booster packs Modern Masters 2017
Promotional Box, MM17 spindown life counter, "making of" documentary for the sets included in MM17.
Because of the guaranteed land cards the boxes would sell to players easily, and if they sell to big box retailers it would be very hard for the secondary market to try and pump the price up. Again, the only reason those lands are expensive is because of lack of supply. Make the expectation that lands get printed to death and you solve most of the financial gripes people have.
I think the entire price issue is based on a silly thought that I NEED the card to build the deck... but that's only true if you are planing to play in a tournament. If your just playing with friends, there should be no issue with price.
I think there is a good number of magic players *****ing about card prices that don't actually play in a tournament.
Bollocks. There is absolutely no way for WotC or anyone else to make this distinction with WotC's current marketing of MtG. It doesn't matter one iota that people complaining about prices don't play in tournaments. People cracking open a goyf or seeing their friends play with it are going to want goyfs of their own. Not rocket science.
People want to be, at the absolute minimum, on even footing when playing even a casual game. As soon as one person gets a leg up. Cracking open a good PW, Goyf, Eldrazi, or whatever, the other player wants to even that field again. It's an inevitable rat race.
In most games, that race ends when the game ends. Start a new game and everyone is on the same initial level playing field. That doesn't happen in Magic. You either go full in on the rat race or you get frozen out. You NEED those better cards because your friend got those better cards. Is it no wonder that formats like Pauper are so popular?
Players have every right to ***** about prices, no matter the format or choice of play.
I'm just spit balling here but I'm guessing that most right handed players will place the library and graveyard on the right. So turning the card as such makes it legible.
When both is place on the left, the turned card is now upside down relative to the player.
This isn't a big deal when the card is so far forward on the table. But back towards the elbow, the difference is noticeable.
As a right handed player, I place my deck and graveyard on whichever side isn't the center of the table during multiplayer games and on the left for 1v1. I also don't turn these sideways in the yard, so this entire line of thinking is very odd to me. Does anyone else have concerns about the orientation of the GY half of these?
I don't really like them but not exactly for the reason cited above. But that reason is not for discussion here.
I play with my L and GY to my right. I keep my bag of tokens, counter, dice and odd cards (like DFC) to the left. Muscle memory lets me draw or discard cards. The exception occurs if a player to my right has his deck on the left then I switch to avoid him grabbing my cards... or if there's an open can of soda nearest to my deck....
My comment is an observation of players who play goofy side (regular for you skateborders) and how they have to reorient their GY with the new cards.
I play tested high tide and it didn't seem to work very well the red mama requirments.
Yeah...that happens. That's why High Tide went to the bottom of the card box for years (that and Fallen Empires is well....). Then I played a pure U deck and realized just what the card could do. Especially when a ton of other alternate mana producing methods got the shaft (Dark Ritual...). That said, there's Seething Song, Rite of Flame and [c]Pyretic Ritual[c] for red.
Personally, I think Green gets waaaaay too much love in the mana ramp department
Aetherworks Marvel can work, but your deck needs to be designed around Energy which is madly parasitic. Brain in a Jar is popular but, I feel it's snog slow. Counterlash can do some tomfoolery but I've never played it. Diluvian Primordial I suppose... Galvanoth looks very promising. So does Living Lore if you can get the desired card into the graveyard. That's usually my thing.
There's others but I'm tired of futzing with this phone's autocorrect.
Otherwise, invest in mana rocks like Sol Ring or mana cards like any of the Rituals or throwaways like Lotus Petal.
In the casual wcene you have oodles of options. Oh... and High Tide. I thought that card was skank for years, now I covet every single one I have.
I'm just spit balling here but I'm guessing that most right handed players will place the library and graveyard on the right. So turning the card as such makes it legible.
When both is place on the left, the turned card is now upside down relative to the player.
This isn't a big deal when the card is so far forward on the table. But back towards the elbow, the difference is noticeable.
WotC appears to use the infinite planes idea with a specific exclusion of infinite selves.
While any sufficiently powerful mage can in theory create an artificial plane (and, as demonstrated by old Phyrexia and Rashmi, you don't necessarily need to be a planeswalker to reach another plane), there are a finite number of naturally-occurring planes in the MtG multiverse. The number is large, but it's not infinite.
Of course, artificial planes tend to be unstable, and they'll unravel without maintenance. Mirrodin is the only known exception.
You are correct on your first point. I'm merely trying to tie in how WotC treats planes to "real" world concepts and ideas without diving into all the stupid B.S. that goes with it. More importantly, point out that "planes" do not define planets, continents or whatever but, rather, entirely different dimensions.
If you wish to use a better example like the "13 planes" theory from I can't remember where or the 10^10^16 perceivable planes theory from Linde and Vanchurin or some other random theory, by all means go ahead.
Your second point iregwrding artificial planes s a direct result of WotC's terrible writing and I refuse to approach the subject with anything other than scorn.
They explained how Mirrodin is stable, Karn found some empty space in the blind eternities to build Mirridon.
A metaphoric way of thinking of is if islands are planes (which include the world, the space around etc), walkers like Serra would part the oceans (the blind eternities) until land could be found and build thier planes on that new island. The walker then had keep mentance on it so the water wouldn't fall back in and sink the island (collapse the plane). What Karn did was find an island already sticking out of the ocean(empty space where a plane was or could fit) and didn't need to worry about it sinking back in.
Exemplar of why certain people need to stay away from writing anything. At all.
A lot of reasons but the short answer is, people do. Not everyone wants to.
My collection is small by some standards. About 6k or something cards I guess. Maybe a bit more. About 90% of it unorganized. I can find at least one of say... Force of Will, but I can't locate all of them instantly. The same goes for proxies. There was a time I made B/W photocopies of hard to find cards during my college years. When I find them, I toss them. B/W copies aren't too bad, they're easily stripped without much thought. Their intent isn't to deceive anybody.
But what about the full color high quality proxies? Unless they're marked, do they go through any scrutiny while pulling cards? What if you're building a deck and forget you included one too many proxies and take it to a tournament? What if you Proxy say.... 5% of your cards with high quality ones. What if you decide to sell your collection and choose not to pull the proxies, either because you have too many cards, or you're lazy and don't give a flip or, worse, you sell with intent to deceive the buyer. Will a seller buy them? If I go to a bulk buy and, while randomly shuffling through the collection, I spot 1 proxy in a pile that fits my hand, that raises a red flag. If I spot another in the same handful or another handful, the deals off or I ask for a mega discount. I want to spend my money on real WotC cards, not garbage from wherever. High quality proxies have no business in a collection since their intent is to deceive players.
That is the key point with me on proxies. You want to proxy your cards for casual or play testing? I can't stop you. But don't even think about selling those proxies to me in a collection without telling me up front what they are and where. I don't want them entering the trade channels any more than the next collector.
Mind you, I'm not talking about alt art proxies. Different beast.
I wrote this post three times and I can't seem to come up with a good response. So here are the bullet points.
* In 96ish, give or take a handful of years. Mana Burn was a real thing and decks took advantage of it or built around. Sure some decks ignore it, but this is no different than ignoring say.... milling.
* Because of the above, i find it weird that people playing in the 90's never encountered it. I encountered it at least once, usually more, during tournaments. It didn't dominate, but it sure stung!
* I never encountered anyone that didn't understand it. Not know? Yes. Not understand? No. The batch caused more questions than mana burn.
* Yes, people complained. But IIRC, it was never to get rid of it or how hard to understand but the strategies revolving around it. No different than the life loss experienced with Necro.
* I like mana burn but I don't think it should make a come back. I would, however, like to see a version in a card, like an enchantment, to enable it.
I can write more but most of it just flames random people so I'll stop here.
I'll skip most of the post....
The loss of Mana burn was a bit of a surprise to me. Initially, I was a little annoyed since I did have a deck that tapped out opponents lands. But I digress. The loss of mana burn bothers me less now than it did in the past. Largely because we can't go back. WotC dug themselves in pretty deep and reintroducing Mana Burn would destroy a lot of interesting cards. Basically, if WotC never got rid of Mana Burn in M10, I would argue to keep it for exactly the same reason I cited above. There's just too many cards to errata.
However, I notice a lot of posters talk about it as if it didn't happen very often and not worth dealing with.
I have to wonder what meta were they playing in? Mana burn was the first painful lesson I learned trying to drop (IIRC) a T1 Abyssal Specter by chaining Dark Rituals to try and force my opponent to start discarding cards. Mana Drain was risky if you were top decking. Eladamri's Vineyard could strategically punish some players. Su-Chi's ability was a real drawback in the wrong circumstances. I could go on and on about all the pre-M10 cards. My point is, mana burn came up often enough that I usually built my decks with consideration for it. I used to play Mana Batteries, Circle of Protection or X spells for the express purpose of sinking mana. So the argument that it rarely came up is really puzzling. It's just weird when I ran into it a bit more than "rarely".
What sleeves do you go with? Dragon? KMC? It appears that UltraPro has the contract so I guess they would be Ultra Pro. I buy UP because they're ubiquitous at tournaments. I don't have to worry about resleeving decks if I split too many. Not everyone agrees with me. So I can't see sleeves adding much value for many.
The rest of the idea seems to have merit.
Regardless, I keep a bag of select sleeves along with my card boxes anyways for that purpose.
You like the punch out cards? Why? The only thing more wasteful is the double sided advert cards they stick in packs instead of... well.. including an actual token card. WotC creates recyclable cards for the Japanese market and yet they create this? These little bits of paper are annoying to keep around and I haven't seen anyone keep them after a sealed game.
I'm not against the mechanics per se. I'm just puzzled about WotC releasing these cards which likely won't last much past their initial sealed game.
I don't really care much for the Eldrazi. I'm not above playing them as a strategy but I think Eldrazi, in general, are exemplar of the Yu-Gi-Oh style power creep that WotC claims to work so hard to avoid. Every time I see a new Eldrazi, I wonder what WotC is thinking and why they keep going back on their own statements. Outside of reprints to ensure the secondary market prices stay at a reasonable level and accessible to future players, I don't want to see them again.
Looking at some of the leaked cards, I wouldn't be surprised though. There are some real power houses so far and Eldrazi would already be in line for it.
I heard the first real complaints in Mirage over phasing. It wasn't game breaking but a lot players complained that there were effectively playing two concurrent games of Magic. We just owned up and just bolted the punks as they phased in or swung when they phased out. I think there was a fun little Armageddon deck running around at the time. I don't know anyone that left over it though.
The next major gripes centered around Tempest and Shadow. The word parasitic wasn't in the general vocabulary then, the concept was just being fleshed out. Most of us just threw in 4x shadow creatures as chump blockers or held back a spell to roast 'em but I recall this was a detested mechanic at the time. Largely because Shadow was virtually non-interactive. A pure shadow deck couldn't use its creatures against more traditional creatures. It was argued flyers were no different but the big difference was flying, and ways to deal with them, existed in every set since Alpha. In a meta that also supported landwalking, no one that I knew wanted to deal with Shadow. A similar mechanic years later, horsemanship, was a flavor fail but I wasn't playing at that time.
These were just my local metas at the time and probably wasn't representative of the player base as a whole. I think the amount of complaining really ramped up over the years. Players complained about Phasing and Shadow and just built our decks around them. Or maybe the internet just consolidates and amplifies the complaining. I dunno.
I do know one thing. Magic is way past due for another split like Portal. None of that $10 a pack Magic Modern garbage either. But, rather, a genuine split to create a Standard and Non-standard set and put them into regular rotation. Maybe that'll alleviate some of the complaining since there are distinct differences between the players and WotC has proven it's too hard to address all their needs in just one set.
It's listed as card #281 so it's one of the "extras".
I always assumed it was because, in Amonkhet anyways, any card over the first 279 were added as last minute afterthoughts so no time to create new art or flavor text. Looking at some of the art, I'm wondering if it's a consideration for the secondary market. Even at C, not as many are getting opened compared to packs. So change the art and collectors and speculators will siphon them up bumping their price and making them inaccessible to their intended market.
Unfortunately, I don't see that changing any time soon. Can you see the board meeting at Hasbro?
Maro: Sir, we can't keep this pace up. Our fans can't afford to buy all our products every year. I think we need to cut back production slightly to keep our fans happy.
CEO: Are they spending every last dime they have on our products?
Maro: I think so sir.
CEO: are they eating at those games you're always talking about?
Maro: You mean the Friday Night Magic? Of course sir.
CEO: Then put out more products! If they have money to buy a soda, they have money to buy our products! Get out of my building and don't come back!
Hascon is a pretty good example of them trying to squeeze every last cent out of us. Hitting all of their fans in one fell swoop.
Bollocks. There is absolutely no way for WotC or anyone else to make this distinction with WotC's current marketing of MtG. It doesn't matter one iota that people complaining about prices don't play in tournaments. People cracking open a goyf or seeing their friends play with it are going to want goyfs of their own. Not rocket science.
People want to be, at the absolute minimum, on even footing when playing even a casual game. As soon as one person gets a leg up. Cracking open a good PW, Goyf, Eldrazi, or whatever, the other player wants to even that field again. It's an inevitable rat race.
In most games, that race ends when the game ends. Start a new game and everyone is on the same initial level playing field. That doesn't happen in Magic. You either go full in on the rat race or you get frozen out. You NEED those better cards because your friend got those better cards. Is it no wonder that formats like Pauper are so popular?
Players have every right to ***** about prices, no matter the format or choice of play.
I don't really like them but not exactly for the reason cited above. But that reason is not for discussion here.
I play with my L and GY to my right. I keep my bag of tokens, counter, dice and odd cards (like DFC) to the left. Muscle memory lets me draw or discard cards. The exception occurs if a player to my right has his deck on the left then I switch to avoid him grabbing my cards... or if there's an open can of soda nearest to my deck....
My comment is an observation of players who play goofy side (regular for you skateborders) and how they have to reorient their GY with the new cards.
Yeah...that happens. That's why High Tide went to the bottom of the card box for years (that and Fallen Empires is well....). Then I played a pure U deck and realized just what the card could do. Especially when a ton of other alternate mana producing methods got the shaft (Dark Ritual...). That said, there's Seething Song, Rite of Flame and [c]Pyretic Ritual[c] for red.
Personally, I think Green gets waaaaay too much love in the mana ramp department
Aetherworks Marvel can work, but your deck needs to be designed around Energy which is madly parasitic.
Brain in a Jar is popular but, I feel it's snog slow.
Counterlash can do some tomfoolery but I've never played it.
Diluvian Primordial I suppose...
Galvanoth looks very promising. So does Living Lore if you can get the desired card into the graveyard. That's usually my thing.
There's others but I'm tired of futzing with this phone's autocorrect.
Otherwise, invest in mana rocks like Sol Ring or mana cards like any of the Rituals or throwaways like Lotus Petal.
In the casual wcene you have oodles of options. Oh... and High Tide. I thought that card was skank for years, now I covet every single one I have.
When both is place on the left, the turned card is now upside down relative to the player.
This isn't a big deal when the card is so far forward on the table. But back towards the elbow, the difference is noticeable.
Exemplar of why certain people need to stay away from writing anything. At all.