MTG Salvation

Quote from SilvosRogueElemental »

I don’t really get the complaint about too much sealed product. I take issue with WotC releasing extremely in-demand cards in annoyingly limited ways, but releasing stuff like Commander Legends, Jumpstart, Masters, etc is fine. You don’t have to buy every sealed product. You can just buy singles and these types of products make buying in-demand cards cheaper. Complain about VIP Boosters and Ultimate Secret Lairs, not too many opportunities to get the cards you want at lower prices.

I pretty much only buy singles (minus some packs and a bundle of a set), skip collectors/VIP boosters, Masters sets, and Secret Lairs and it's getting me bogged down. There's just way too many products and by the time one comes out they are already hyping the next set two weeks later and sprinkled in is more Secret Lairs. The last few years we've added on another booster every year. I really don't want to know what comes next year.

Earlier this year when they announced Jumpstart was being pushed back a bit I sat there and though "What's Jumpstart" because there were so many products that I couldn't keep them straight. Considering how rare the packs are, I've only been able to acquire two of them, I practically forget the set even exists still thanks to the printing so far behind.

Quote from 5colors »

Quote from Dontrike »

Quote from The Lord of Tresserhorn »

Spoiler Season is Eternal.
Spoiler Season is Always.

Can't let you catch breath, spoil, spoil, spoil, consume, consume, consume!!!!!!

And I'm sure between now and then we'll have 2-5 Secret Lairs spoiled that they can't ship until March of next year.

Amazing with a plague, protesting, an election year and you really needed to come to a magic forum to look for a reason to ***** huh?

It's a joke, not a <expletive D-eleted>, don't take it so hard. Also, no idea what those things have to do with anything when it comes to a game, but good on you for bringing those up. "There are worse things out there so you can't complain" is one of the worst arguments ever. Yay for you for not being able to see a joke and also <expletive deleted>'ing about something at the same time even though you're lambasting me for doing said <expletive deleted>. Congrats!

Quote from The Lord of Tresserhorn »

Spoiler Season is Eternal.
Spoiler Season is Always.

Can't let you catch breath, spoil, spoil, spoil, consume, consume, consume!!!!!!

And I'm sure between now and then we'll have 2-5 Secret Lairs spoiled that they can't ship until March of next year.

Quote from HighHolder »

Am I only one completely bored with +1/+1 counter themes in every set? Cant we do some other means of creature enhancement for a change? For instance, threshold was super fun and unique.

That would be a nice change of pace. Also, makes me wonder why they believe Threshold to be too much to keep up with and yet the new mill threshold "eight cards or more" is everywhere.

That's pretty cool, would have been better if the white border went around the entire card and not stopped.

Quote from FlossedBeaver »

I guess I would need a more robust definition of what you (or anyone else) thinks adventuring should be fully comprised of in order to respond with efficacy here. Looking at the spoilers again, I see represented: class roles (party), phat loots (equipment), wild beasties of every imaginable size (from jerboas to a giant crab), and exotic locales (MDFC lands).

I want to focus on the last three here, as I looked at what you said and decided to delve a bit deeper into my thoughts and yours.

First, we have your "phat loots". Looking at the equipment for the set I do believe you are correct here, but only partially. Some of the equipment are clearly things that adventurers would take with them or use, rather than find (Utility Knife, Kitsail, and the pick axe), Scavenged Blade seems less like loot and more like "finders keepers" in the cave/forest that it's in which I guess is the same, but I guess that's semantics there, and the white, black, multicolored, and Relic Axe seem more like loot. In this case I'd think your quite right with over half of them.

The wild beasties, I think this is kind of a given as we were always going to get creatures and you can say a party would come across on their journey, but I don't think there's anything that sticks out in that regard. I stayed away from mentioning the beasts they could come across as of course they would.

The flip lands I think are less exotic locals and rather the different paths one could choose to go on in your journey. Do you head climb the rocks or the branches in the sky? While they are exotic locals I don't think they represent exactly the part of the journey that you described.

In these cases I was perhaps far more wrong in my assessment. Usually a journey/quest is far more remembered by the "moments" in it rather than the locations. In the case of something like One Piece, which has varied locations from a winter island where the mountains are like drums to an island where the trees emit bubbles all the time that are used for that areas technology, they are memorable in their own right but you remember far more about what happened there, rather than....well there. In this case I believe I'm looking more for those D&D esque moments of "Remember that time we were in that cave and the floor caved in when he stepped on that rock" or "When we beat that Mimic that was a literally treasure vault and then he got that cursed item and changed into a woman?"

Perhaps what they were going for is more of a scenic route when it comes to adventures rather than the experiences of it.

An aside: I had to learn how to either come to terms of what being a Star Wars fan meant to me, or give it up entirely.

I'll try and keep up here. I can enjoy Star Wars, but I am no die hard fan. I've really only seen the movies, the Christmas special, and various chunks of the Clone Wars show.

To be perfectly honest, I hate most of it; the original trilogy represents the definitive Star Wars experience, and anything which doesn't jibe with that is generally too far afield to be enjoyable for me. When the brand first started to grow in the mid-late '90s, it was easy to be dismissive - this old part was good, this new part part was bad, and despite some contrary opinions my perspective seemed to align with the general consensus. Fast forward a couple of decades and now there's simply too much material for a consensus to even be possible. The prequels haven't aged well, but for a particular generation they're highly nostalgic; the Disney acquisition invalidated a huge body of former canon that some people adored; Rogue One was well received by more traditional Star Wars fans, but I hated it; I enjoyed Solo, a movie that was critically panned by the greater fandom; the 'kiddie stuff' absolutely grates on my nerves, and while it ultimately drove me out of almost every licensed board, card, or miniatures game, I recognize that it's generally well received by the larger audience; The Mandalorian is objectively great, let's not kid ourselves;

I see you tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to Star Wars before the prequels, for the most part at least. For me the prequels are pretty much garbage. I actually like Phantom Menace, well at least I think it has the most memorable parts with Darth Maul, the music, and the fight at the end (the rest is awful.) Lucas being in charge of everything was a huge mistake and why we got so many terrible lines, characters, and stories.

and while the sequel trilogy is hit or miss (Rian Johnson deserves his own ring special ring in the Inferno), it generally resonates with what I appreciate about the franchise as a whole.

I find that half of the sequels are good, the other half is bad. Force Awakens is a decent movie, it's pretty safe, and had some nice potential with what it was setting up.

Where I start to head off from the usual Star Wars fans is #8. The Star Wars stuff I thought was very good, it's that stupid casino side quest that was pointless and unneeded. I understand many Star Wars fans hated what they were adding with #8, and even what they were doing with various stories from #7, but honestly I thought it's what was needed. It was the right amount of change and even Rey's parents being nothing actually called back to the original series where you don't need to be linked to a bloodline to be special (albeit Rey takes that a little too far), and it was a nice bit of circumventing expectations, at least I thought. Luke wanting to burn the books and how tradition needs to be changed was in a way a nice meta call in that Star Wars does need to change a little. You can't just strictly stick to things, even if the new ideas don't work. There was a lot of things they tried to undo about #7, which did feel like wasted time by watching it if things weren't going to go anywhere, but #8 did actually try some new things and I can appreciate it.

Of course #8 has a ton of stupid plot and story bits that are just awful, like the Order not just swinging around and blowing the ship up. The light speed crash was amazing.

Then #9 just completely **** the bed in every way. While #8 sort of destroyed bits of what #7 was setting up, Disney took the fan outcry and went to far with fixes that it went from "repairing" what they thought was broken to straight pandering that no one enjoyed. It really went to show that they had zero plans on how the story was going to go, which is strange considering Marvel's well thought out plans for the MCU. The fact you had to play Fortnite to even understand parts of the story is asinine. The entire thing was an unbridled mess.

Coming back to my original thought: at a certain point I had to either accept that there was simply too much content to categorize Star Wars as being either good or bad - based on my prescribed criteria - or adhere to what has eventually come to be a very narrow definition and, since Star Wars would accordingly be 'bad,' walk away from something I've loved from adolescence through most of my adulthood. It took some serious introspection, but I eventually decided that it was okay to recognize that what I loved about Star Wars need not define it as a whole - I can take what I like, discard the rest, and not pass judgment on others for the mere existence of disagreeable content, let alone their enjoyment of it. Applying this to Magic, I think it would be wise to find ways to grow as both individuals and as a playerbase. When a given set or block doesn't meet our expectations, sometimes that blame can be placed on Wizards, but for better or worse the onus is on us to determine our own enjoyment of the game as a whole. Take things as they are, not for what you think they should be, and you'll be a lot happier with the things you're passionate about.

That's a correct way to look at it, look at the positives and negatives, and while talking to you I found a bit more of that "adventure", although I still think they missed parts of it.

Now just to be clear I don't have a major attachment to Zendikar. While I did come back to the game at around the time of RoE I was more enthused by the return of Mirrodin, which is about the time I stopped playing at Fifth Dawn. Most of my nostalgia laid with Dominaria as Torment was when I first got into the game and Onslaught is when I first started playing at FNMs and understanding the actual rules, and I was pleased with the return there. So it's strictly not me being a purest when it comes to that. I enjoyed that BFZ had a different direction and a continuing story, although the Gatewatch walking away with nary a scratch when defeating two eldrazi titans I wasn't thrilled about, and a large part of Zen3 that I'm not enjoying is the lack of story here when it comes to the plane itself.

They certainly tried their best to dodge any mention of the Eldrazi and I think this set feels a bit naked with it, yes there are a couple art nods and Forsaken Monument, but after that it's weird to completely sweep an apocalyptic event, where enormous swaths of the land were turned alien and large sections of populations decimated, under the rug like that. Understandably we can't focus on the Eldrazi again and Nahiri's "motivation" seems to be based on them and the Roil, but the world seems far more healed than it probably should be, considering that it probably happened with the last few years in story time. It certainly feels like WotC made Zen3 up in the skies on purpose just to go "Look up there, a distraction!" as a means to not look down at what happened the last time we were on Zendikar.

All Secret Lairs will be a skip from me unless they somehow print five of my pet cards and the price isn't $30+

Quote from FlossedBeaver »

Quote from Dontrike »

*snip*

Zendikar 2.0 failed to be the 'Eldrazi matters block' we thought it should be, and yet the very next block was (to my mind) the best possible iteration of that theme. Zendikar 2.0 also failed to be the 'plane of adventures' that, again, everyone expected and hope for - just 3 blocks later we got Ixalan, a spectacular adventure plane. This tells me three things: one that yes, we should absolutely be optimistic about having our expectations met further down the road; two, that we should judge a set based on its own merits; and three, the name of a plane / set is ultimately meaningless as long as we realize that our expectations are actually being met.

Were people expecting a return to adventuring in a world being attacked by space abominations? Where did they think that would fit in exactly? "Oh that spaghetti monster just ate that mountain. Oh well, I'm off to go see if there's a goblet in that cave over there." It was pretty obvious BFZ was not going to be the Zendikar we knew. You had mentioned growth before and seems like people just wanted more of the same.

In Zen 3 we were promised the feel of adventuring to return and while we got part of it, with Party, you didn't really experience the other parts of adventuring. Feels like they only got about a third of the adventuring.

1.Make a party.
2.Go out and adventure while facing various trials and tribulations.
3.Reward

We really didn't get #2 one bit or #3, unless maybe WotC thinks the "Reward" is the Masterpieces in boxes this time. "You young adventurers have grouped together, risking life and limb against the plague, and now your reward is this shiny trinket (for $100)."

Seems like if people were upset about the lack of adventure in BFZ then I can't see how they'd be all that accepting of only getting part of it now.

Quote from FlossedBeaver »

Again, quest, level up, and traps were all distinctively tied to Zendikar 1.0.

Traps are the one thing I wanted to touch on. If the Party mechanic is a thing where in you take a group of people and go out adventuring it would go without saying that while they explore long lost areas looking for treasure and adventure you would expect them to run into traps, right? Part of the point of this return was to go back to the adventuring roots of Zendikar, which at least I would assume would include them. I'm not upset they aren't here, but when you think it about it it seems like they should be.

Party wasn't executed well, but mechanically and flavorfully it's better than ally. Expect it to get even mo' better after D&D: The Gathering drops later next year.

"It might get better" isn't the selling point you think it is. If Party returns for D&D Core, and I'm sure it will, that isn't a great thing that we need to wait for a mechanic to get better when the other half of it comes out. If Party were to return I don't think it will get much better, if any.

Should Magic grow as a brand, or just do the same old things every time we revisit a plane?

Yes, it should indeed grow, but with this set I'm not seeing a whole lot of growth. Kicker and Landfall are being used much in the same way they always have with nothing really sticking out. In the case of Kicker there wasn't even any strange costs to it, yes we now have more cards that care about the mechanic, but there's nothing new happening here.

As for Zendikar itself story wise there isn't much, if any, growth here. Seems like the focus on the sky was strictly to avoid even discussing the Eldrazi in any way and there's really only a few nods to it in the whole set. The only continuing story is Nissa going back to her older ways. Yes, we have the new ones with vampires becoming endangered, Nahiri trying to do some various evil for *queue Hot Fuzz* "The greater good", but after that there's really no growth or continuation for the plane as a whole. Compared to the most recent return of Theros where we had the continuation of Elspeth's story and how that affected the gods, and therefore the plane (even if it meant retconning the rules so a spark could come out of nowhere), what we are seeing here is lacking.

While BFZ and Oath were not so great overall, honestly pretty bad, I am going to remember the weird things it did (from their own Avengers and the start of the Bolas arc) and the crap it caused at the time (from their own Avengers constantly being around, Gideon running amok, and the bad CG art) this Zendikar on the other hand feels mediocre and something I don't think I'm going to remember all that much.

Is this set terrible? No. Is it amazing? No. It's in the middle. A bland middle.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

You know just realized something

Why come we didn’t get the purple orb/ocohedron thing nahiri used in the trailer as a card

Depends on the story really. Lack of a card either means WotC hasn't decided what it does yet or they don't want to spoil what it does. My personal theory is it either kills anything not Kor or turns things to stone so those like Nahiri and bend them to their will or what have you.

Wouldn't surprise me though if this ends up as another Mirari level mcguffin that can just do a lot of stuff and is powerful.

Quote from Singe »

This will be great in Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient and Tawnos, Urza's Apprentice EDH decks.

I think any deck with abilities, spells, or creatures will benefit from this card.

Quote from Creedmoor »

I wish it had better protection. I'm tired of poor man's hexproof. It's a legendary creature, just put it on there. It's not like it's going to break the meta.

I would have accepted the same ability, but equal to its power or the number of islands you have.

Quote from the n00b king »

Also I would think the expeditions are what was added to sell the set more than anything else.

Honestly, I think that's all they needed to sell the set if you could find them in draft packs.

Quote from Brisket Elemental »

But if I'm reading/understanding the Crossroads, it can't produce colored mana unless the spell has devoid. So it doesn't work for Sunburst or Converge, correct? Maybe I'm reading these comment replies incorrectly.

You are correct, it cannot do that. My point is if it was strictly "colorless spells" instead of "devoid spells" it would have at least some use, but since all it cares for is Devoid that brings its future uses to near zero.

I had completely forgotten about "The List" until just now and I'm not really seeing the point of it, then again I don't really understand the point of the set booster to begin with. Four different boosters, two of them are not any better nor all that different from draft boosters, and the final one is just ripping you off by asking you to pay $25 for Standard cards, but at the very least you are getting something different from them with different art.

I'll probably end up buying two or three of these to give them a shot, but after that I'm going to stick to draft packs and singles.

Quote from rowanalpha »

You're looking at this wrong. The pack has a dedicated token slot, but sometimes you get one of these instead. Its a surprise bonus, not something you're getting shafted of if you don't open it, just like foils in regular sets.

I'd much rather open up a token than many of those cards.

Quote from ashrog »

Quote from Dontrike »

This would have been pretty interesting if it wasn't for the kicker spell thing. Reminds me of the last time we were at Zendikar and we got a land (Corrupted Crossroads should have just been colorless spell)) with an incredibly specific prerequisite for using its mana which killed it.

What do you mean? Crossroads can be used for any colorless spell.

Although I do agree about this card, it would have been fine without the kicker req.

Crossroad's issue is a very niche one, like when it comes to artifacts with Sunburst or Converge or whatever potential mechanics may come. We're unlikely to see devoid in any meaningful amount in the future, but it's easily possible for non devoid cards that are colorless that may care about colored mana in some way (ex. more Sunburst/Converge cards.)

That's really it. With Makindi Throne turning it solely into a kicker land really hurts it as if it didn't have that clause it wouldn't have been strong, definitely interesting and had its uses, but now it only has one specific use.