I don't see why pact is not bannable. It should not be introduced to the format in the first place. Not only does it not work correctly but also it was obvious what will happen when it will be introduced into historic.
You act like WotC has any clue what they are doing.
Spoiler: They dont.
I mean, better than the assumption that some posters know better than WotC what they are or should be doing.
the clue is "name on a powerful card" not "name in the name of a powerful card"
Unless we have flavour text as iconic as Ghostfire's, Lhurgoyf's, or the Scars block printing of Mindslaver's, I don't think having your name in the flavour text of a card counts as having your name on a card. Flavour text is way too easily omitted and changed, especially in this era when spotlight printings often cannot fit flavour text in (e.g. the latest printing of Lotus Cobra).
Having a name in the flavor text is exactly the kind of oblique reference I would expect from these hints.
You try selling a $15 precon product and get people to buy it. How is it that every other trading card game have a under $15 preconstucted deck option, but MTG doesn't?
You get as much or more value from $15 worth of booster packs as you did from any given intro deck. They weren't products designed for 'beginners,' they were products designed to take advantage of people who don't know that a secondary market exists. There might be good reasons to defend the concept of a theme deck, but the way they were executed, in practice, completely undermines your position that they were Magic's only / necessary point of entry to the game.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. You're engaging in some rather fervent mental gymnastics to explain how catering to the commander crowd is evidence that Wizards have no faith in their own product, when the most obvious, logical explanation is exactly what they're telling us: commander is so popular that it's attracting new players who have no problem paying $20+ for a deck.
That's your choice, but why abandon those who have been loyal to the regular rules of the game? You'd rather pay a lot of money for one precon deck? Well some of us don't.
Continuing to use the arbitrary definition that you've made up isn't going to sway anyone that such a thing exists. All this seems to indicate is that you don't understand how long term value works.
Could moderators be full time tracking and working the forum ? Sure ... but thats simply unrealistic and it doesnt really benefit much anyway, as long as the majority of people is capable to be reasonable (and for quite some time, nothing out of the ordinary came up).
There's a huge difference between not working a forum full time, and waiting 5 weeks to manage a simple response, and only then after being cajoled into doing the job they volunteered for. This wasn't accidentally sidelined because mods have real lives, it was deliberately ignored, and they admitted as much.
"Threatening" a person to make a private discussion public is low blow that will not provide you with trust or help, so i cant fathom how you thought thats a good idea to begin with.
It's called simple accountability. People in positions of power and authority are expected to act in a manner that is beyond reproach; if they're concerned about their conduct becoming public, they should change their conduct.
If something bothers you report it, usually gets dealt with sooner or later if its relevant.
It's not. The site admin just admitted, via PM, that he is deliberately avoiding his site responsibilities and ignoring legitimate complaints out of petty, personal grievances. I followed the rules and waited for a response for 5 weeks, patiently, and only got a response after suggesting that I would make the contents of the PM chain public. Even then, the response boiled down to "I'm not going to do what I'm supposed to because it's you," after admonishing me for following the procedure that he himself had set.
Shadowlancer is abusing his role as admin, which is almost exactly what I was afraid would happen when bob stepped down. I was promised recourse - that other mods would step in correct rogue leadership, or at least report it upwards to the site owners - but I have yet to see any transparency on that front.
I'm getting the impression MTGS is dead now, effectively. Zero moderator presence, no response. What happens when the wider forum population discovers they can do whatever they want now, without repercussion? How do the site owners feels about all of this?
I've never understood this line of thinking, neither from wizards nor fans, at least generally speaking. Mistakes are made regardless of complexity.
In this specific case, it says 0, 1, not 0, 1. It's pretty clear. The fact LED has instant speed clause is also similar. "Oh, only at instant speed? well, sorcery is like an action, instant is like a reaction... that must be how it works." Neither of these cards is too complex for the average new buyer, even if the current paradigm is to coddle standard players with draft chaff.
Oh don't get me wrong, I agree with you. But as this thread clearly shows, Magic players still get confused by these things.
Confusion is oftentimes easily resolved by even the simplest explanation, as this thread clearly shows. If there's a person out there who's never been confused by an interaction in Magic, I'd like to meet them.
Neither of the cards in question are actually complex, and there are things going on in standard that are patently more confusing.
Supplemental sets that are primarily targeted toward more enfranchised and experienced players get more high-complexity cards. Wizards has explicitly stated that they avoid Time Spiral block levels of complexity in contemporary Standard sets, and reserve those more complex card designs for supplemental products that are more likely to be played by long-term players who actually know how Diamond Lion works. They don't want to overly confuse the newer, more casual players who don't know the difference between a mana cost and a converted mana cost mana value.
It's a wonder, then, that modern ever managed to become so complex with so few cards being designed for it in the first place. Remind me again, how many new cards were printed in supplemental sets before MH1?
Consider me tickled by the implication that standard players are not competitive.
I feel it's a bit of a disingenuous take to say that EDH has limited complexity because it's mostly casual, or that players aren't concerned about winning outside of cEDH. You even admit that people jump through some seriously complicated hoops to achieve their goals, but count it as a mark against someone's competitive nature that they want something more challenging than Thassa's Oracle. How are those silly, contrived boards and strategies not just a more complex way of achieving the same win conditions? Anyone who thinks EDH is that simple has probably never seen Warp World come down.
You're right that there is no Lantern equivalent deck in EDH, because the characteristics that define the format have cultivated a completely different meta (to the extent that such a thing exists), and don't generally allow for that sort of thing as a viable win condition. Complexity and target audience were intended to be an apples to apples comparison between the two formats; complexity and 'competitiveness' don't really intersect here in any meaningful way. But if you'd like to apply my metric to standard (since that was the original point of reference), we can do that. Lantern doesn't exist in standard either, of course, and the last time anything came close to perma-fatesealing your opponent it warped the format hard, and that was back when WotC were supremely hesitant to invoke a ban of any kind. How can we say that Wizards is wrong to be careful about experimenting in standard given that a) they do, repeatedly and recently, b) more often than not it backfires, and c) there's always backlash in communities like this one about Wizards being too reckless with their releases?
Well sure, Modern Horizons bucks the trend just a bit... but MH1 was only 230 cards, less than 200 of which were actually brand new, out of almost 15,000 in the entire modern card pool. And while that card pool does go back a ways (2003?), Lion's Eye Diamond goes back considerably further to 1996. If the premise is "they just don't make cards for standard/modern like they used to," I don't understand why someone would make the point of reference for a shift in card complexity a full 7 years before the format(s) in question, instead of something more contemporary. If standard isn't complex enough to live up to modern's level of complexity, then it was never all that complex in the first place. Modern Horizons and Time Spiral are the exception, not the norm.
I get that people come here to complain a lot, and one of the most common through lines is the rapidly increasing pace of banned cards in standard over just the past several years. I'm having trouble squaring that with the idea that there's also no complexity in standard, because why, they don't have arguably one of the most unique or esoteric lines of text in the entirety of Magic? There's plenty of complexity and experimentation in standard on a card-for-card basis, and if it's the breadth of interactivity within the entire format that makes modern so complex, then surely commander - arguably the most popular format at the moment - must be too much for us dumb-dumbs to handle.
My personal take: shifting meta choices are what make modern generally unnavigable for players from other formats, not complexity.
The more cards you have in a card pool vastly increases the number of interactions and complexity of a format. There is no question that Modern is a more complex format than any given Standard. Even though it is largely made up of cards that were once in standard. Similarly, Legacy is more complex than Modern is, the potential interactions are huge. If WotC is supporting Modern as their (lower case l) legacy format they undoubtedly feel they can increase the complexity in Modern because players who gravitate toward Modern over Standard are going to be more acclimated to a larger number of complex situations.
I don't think the complaint was that modern doesn't get complex interactions, it was that modern doesn't get complex cards. Where is a format that derives over 98% of its content from standard sets getting its complex cards from, if not standard?
It's funny because I predicted old-bordered enemy fetches in MH2 like half a year ago, back before TSR was released. I didn't think they'd actually do it, though!
To all the people who think that Diamond Lion's ability isn't a mana ability and can be countered, or that it doesn't need the "activate as an instant" line, or that Urza's Saga's last ability can fetch things like Lotus Bloom or Engineered Explosives, even after having it explained to you: You don't understand the game. This is why we don't have higher-complexity cards in Standard sets.
So only modern, a format characterized by the inclusion of former standard sets, gets "higher-complexity cards"? I guess I'm not smart enough to understand how that premise works.
I mean, better than the assumption that some posters know better than WotC what they are or should be doing.
Having a name in the flavor text is exactly the kind of oblique reference I would expect from these hints.
You get as much or more value from $15 worth of booster packs as you did from any given intro deck. They weren't products designed for 'beginners,' they were products designed to take advantage of people who don't know that a secondary market exists. There might be good reasons to defend the concept of a theme deck, but the way they were executed, in practice, completely undermines your position that they were Magic's only / necessary point of entry to the game.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. You're engaging in some rather fervent mental gymnastics to explain how catering to the commander crowd is evidence that Wizards have no faith in their own product, when the most obvious, logical explanation is exactly what they're telling us: commander is so popular that it's attracting new players who have no problem paying $20+ for a deck.
Continuing to use the arbitrary definition that you've made up isn't going to sway anyone that such a thing exists. All this seems to indicate is that you don't understand how long term value works.
There's a huge difference between not working a forum full time, and waiting 5 weeks to manage a simple response, and only then after being cajoled into doing the job they volunteered for. This wasn't accidentally sidelined because mods have real lives, it was deliberately ignored, and they admitted as much.
It's called simple accountability. People in positions of power and authority are expected to act in a manner that is beyond reproach; if they're concerned about their conduct becoming public, they should change their conduct.
It's not. The site admin just admitted, via PM, that he is deliberately avoiding his site responsibilities and ignoring legitimate complaints out of petty, personal grievances. I followed the rules and waited for a response for 5 weeks, patiently, and only got a response after suggesting that I would make the contents of the PM chain public. Even then, the response boiled down to "I'm not going to do what I'm supposed to because it's you," after admonishing me for following the procedure that he himself had set.
Shadowlancer is abusing his role as admin, which is almost exactly what I was afraid would happen when bob stepped down. I was promised recourse - that other mods would step in correct rogue leadership, or at least report it upwards to the site owners - but I have yet to see any transparency on that front.
Confusion is oftentimes easily resolved by even the simplest explanation, as this thread clearly shows. If there's a person out there who's never been confused by an interaction in Magic, I'd like to meet them.
Neither of the cards in question are actually complex, and there are things going on in standard that are patently more confusing.
It's a wonder, then, that modern ever managed to become so complex with so few cards being designed for it in the first place. Remind me again, how many new cards were printed in supplemental sets before MH1?
Consider me tickled by the implication that standard players are not competitive.
You're right that there is no Lantern equivalent deck in EDH, because the characteristics that define the format have cultivated a completely different meta (to the extent that such a thing exists), and don't generally allow for that sort of thing as a viable win condition. Complexity and target audience were intended to be an apples to apples comparison between the two formats; complexity and 'competitiveness' don't really intersect here in any meaningful way. But if you'd like to apply my metric to standard (since that was the original point of reference), we can do that. Lantern doesn't exist in standard either, of course, and the last time anything came close to perma-fatesealing your opponent it warped the format hard, and that was back when WotC were supremely hesitant to invoke a ban of any kind. How can we say that Wizards is wrong to be careful about experimenting in standard given that a) they do, repeatedly and recently, b) more often than not it backfires, and c) there's always backlash in communities like this one about Wizards being too reckless with their releases?
I get that people come here to complain a lot, and one of the most common through lines is the rapidly increasing pace of banned cards in standard over just the past several years. I'm having trouble squaring that with the idea that there's also no complexity in standard, because why, they don't have arguably one of the most unique or esoteric lines of text in the entirety of Magic? There's plenty of complexity and experimentation in standard on a card-for-card basis, and if it's the breadth of interactivity within the entire format that makes modern so complex, then surely commander - arguably the most popular format at the moment - must be too much for us dumb-dumbs to handle.
My personal take: shifting meta choices are what make modern generally unnavigable for players from other formats, not complexity.
I don't think the complaint was that modern doesn't get complex interactions, it was that modern doesn't get complex cards. Where is a format that derives over 98% of its content from standard sets getting its complex cards from, if not standard?
So only modern, a format characterized by the inclusion of former standard sets, gets "higher-complexity cards"? I guess I'm not smart enough to understand how that premise works.