Think of it this way: how many more boxes would WoTC sell if every pack of battlebond had a full art foil of a random card from the set? Full art foil Land Tax is attractive from a financial point of view, but full arts of even the commons and uncommons would be heavily sought out. Plus, imagine if they said every 6 packs in a booster box had a full art, border-less basic land and one of those lands would be a foil?
Yet when Wizards puts things like Masterpieces in sets, the MTGS crowd calls them "lottery cards" and gets angry that they exist and accuses Wizards of wanting to cash in...
Also the idea that Magic artwork is bad is... utterly ridiculous. Magic players are insanely spoiled for art. Magic art is a who's who of the best fantasy illustrators and consistently shows up in stuff like Spectrum. Most fantasy games would be lucky to get one illustration from someone like Seb McKinnon, last year magic got nine. There's a lot of stuff where Magic lags behind other CCGs but the quality of the art is basically unparalleled.
Land Tax at mythic is really just about not wanting to piss off people who own that card (particularly with that art) too much by tanking its value. Plus it's a card with little play value in Limited. It's good in Limited, but not particularly fun or interesting, and it leads to a lot of shuffling which is bad gameplay. Mythic rarity exists pretty much to stick cards that people will want for Constructed but which are irrelevant in Limited, plus a mythic Land tax in a modern unlimited-run normal-price set = way more of those in circulation than there are Legends or 4th Edition ones even if it was a regular rare in 4th Edition.
Benalish Marshal only makes the setting "unbelievable" if you're uncomfortable seeing nonwhite people in positions of authority. Which explains the previous "there's never been a Black 3/4 star general in the US" post.
That doesnt change a bit. There are people that like some cards and dislike others. Representation is a hoax they put into peoples minds, but its utter bogus in terms of magic and fantasy games. If you print regular human beings, classic artwork, people will put their own image into them. Some people might like Angels, Dragons, Demons, Wizards, its such a basic fantasy setting and diversity in THIS area is a win for everyone, as it broadens the universe without making it silly and lose context.
...? what? Are you saying black people in card art aren't "regular human beings"? Do you think black people in card art "make it silly and lose context"?
"Bigoted": White males with money to spend on hobbies and a lack of better, more social things to do. You are now bullying the bullied because they do not agree with your worldview.
And your cancerous "we don't need those fans!" view is sick for many reasons, but particularly because it is NOT YOUR HOBBY! See, you are proving my point by stating that "you" don't need "them" in your hobby. The only way this is possible is if you are in the driver's seat, which you actually almost are, because people with your worldview work at Wizards. So you admit then that you will keep pushing your worldview, and "they" (meaning me) can leave. There is a reason Dominaria has been the most flavorful and well-designed block in a while: "we/you" did not lead the design exclusively, Richard Garfield was involved. He tried to, dare we say, Make Magic Great Again?
This post is a just a who's who of dishonest angry gamer arguments, huh?
Conflating bigoted people with "white males with money to spend on hobbies" is a classic. I know it's comforting for you to think that everyone else has your regressive beliefs but... we don't. I'm a white guy who plays Magic; somehow I have avoided being angry that Wizards put black people on card art. No, I do mean specifically the people who, the moment they see a black person in a fantasy setting, instantly become experts on history and start demanding accuracy from their games with dragons in them. And of course you follow it up with the "bullying" accusations, which is rich coming from someone who repeatedly posts right-wing diatribes.
And then you pull out another canard that's common in this kind of discourse: claiming that the anyone who doesn't agree with you is an outsider coming in to ruin the game. But, uh, I've been playing Magic since 1997. It absolutely is my hobby, which is why I care that people feel comfortable entering it. Representation on cards helps that. You know what doesn't help? An angry loud minority of grognards constantly spewing negativity about the game that's based mostly on their own bigotry.
If you're annoyed that nobody takes your arguments seriously it's because you made it clear they don't come from a place of honest criticism but because you view Magic as just another battleground for pushing political resentments that people are tired and sick of.
How would you read the reminder text as anything but search your library for this other card then shuffle? You might be confused about Aven Mindcensor effects but there's probably not a single one in the entire set, and it's only a sort of enfranchised player rules lawyer mindset ("I'm searching my deck for a card but it doesn't count as a search because it doesn't use that word!") that would even lead to being confused. What other reading of that reminder text is there?
Lots of abilities in Magic have reminder text that is incomplete for brevity or written out casually instead of in Magic rules text ("Your creatures may help you cast this spell" for example). The difference between the partners-with creatures and the partners-with planeswalkers is that the partners-with creatures have a keyword with reminder text, while the planeswalkers have rules text that's needed for the card to function as intended in Commander. The reminder text doesn't mention commander because Commander isn't relevant in the context where reminder text is most important (ie, to players drafting the set encountering Partner for the first time). Once again, heavily invested EDH players are mad that they weren't catered to in even the smallest details of a card even as a bunch of Commander stuff is being printed.
are you seriously coming to a magic the gathering website and arguing that Abraham and ancient egyptian pharaohs were fair-skinned like modern Europeans
I was prepared for a righteous rant about how most players don't live in the US or Japan, how he has no idea the ethnic background of those US players (yo), or their sexual orientation, or how high school clique doesn't matter worth a lick in the real world but if we must go that route, Bob Maher (yes, that Bob) started playing after a sports injury, so, fractal wrongness ahoy!, but I think it'll be easier to just remember that the general response to this attitude among gaming companies is #ByeFelicia and leave it at that.
Yeah, for good reason. Having bigoted grognards be the audience for your game is poisonous. For a PC game dev, you're looking at the segment of the audience that supports key resellers, refunds games after beating them, and will harass you if a youtuber tells them the game doesn't run at 60fps. Catering to people who have naked contempt for game devs isn't very attractive to the vast majority of people in the industry.
Gavin's article on the mothership today said explicitly this, yes. The draft archetypes are ally-colored (with ally gold cards and themes), while all of the partner with cards specifically are enemy-colored to encourage you to split them between two players.
And no, actually, nice try, but I did not say that people who "look different" are part of a leftist tilt. I have loved the Teferi character for 20 years. Shanna, Huatli, Saheeli, all characters that make sense. The sets were set in those cultures, it does not feel forced.
But half of Benalia, including its Marshall (highest ranked military order) being randomly black after 25 years of it clearly being a white feudal society? Forced. Lyra, the leader of Serra's angels, randomly black? Forced. A transexual elf? Jesus freaking christ forced. These characters were not asked for by the community. They were asked for by a smattering of people, some of whom are not even players, and the rest of push came from inside WOTC.
And I do not think the decline is a coincidence. The same is happening (happened) in comics. I also think its hilarious how much uglier the female characters got, but that is besides the point. If I had the time, I would compare the number of busty women and muscular men in artwork in say Ravnica 1 versus Dominaria. One day maybe.
Dudes saying transparently racist things like "wow this black character in this fantasy artwork is so forced, I can't believe they didn't make this fictional society all white like I ignorantly believe real medieval europe was!" is way worse for sales than the recent dearth of cheesecake in card art
Ad hominem go! No, "bro", it is not racist to say that inaccurate over-representation that reflects neither reality nor the fan base (or even the fan-bases' politics) is not smart or fair. I do not have to explain to you why inaccurate "diversity" is improper; the burden is on you.
And yes, Europe was overwhelmingly white. The trope is based on a pink washing of Medieval Europe, without the rape, plague, and generally toothless broken people. But yes, overwhelmingly white. Unless you count the Moors of Spain (who were outright invaders, and eventually expelled as a politically relevant people) or Jews, who were traders and merchants (I would know, my ancestors were amongst them.)
I never said anyone, let alone you specifically, is a racist; I said that statements like that are racist. And they are, because they're just a bigoted form of special pleading: Dragons, wizards, and vampires are all okay but suddenly realism and accuracy is really important when it comes to people's skin color or gender. That's not fooling anyone.
"Medieval Europe was overwhelmingly white" is a ridiculously broad and blatantly untrue statement. Dark-skinned people ("white" and "black" as we understand them today are racial concepts that did not exist to medieval Europeans) did demonstrably live in Europe in many times and places. Are there times and places that don't show evidence of that? Yes; but evidence in the middle ages is sparse in the first place, so you can't even assume that those places would have been unfamiliar with dark-skinned folk. There are African-borne Roman legionnaires buried in Britain, and obviously the entire Mediterranean world was a melting pot of African, Middle Eastern, and Southern European cultures. Examples of medieval or renaissance art featuring dark-skinned figures abounds if you actually bother to research it. So even if something were purporting to be accurate and historical, which Magic isn't, it's not accurate or historical to portray an all-white European past; it's at best making a big unsupported assumption that just so happens to align with racist ideology.
The reason for the Commander text is that Partner means they can be your commander together, but it doesn't mean they can be your commander in the first place (for a planeswalker), and I figure WotC thought it was more confusing to include that in the "partner with" rules (since Partner has a meaning in 2HG and not just in Commander, one wouldn't automatically assume you can play partner-with planeswalkers as commanders).
And no, actually, nice try, but I did not say that people who "look different" are part of a leftist tilt. I have loved the Teferi character for 20 years. Shanna, Huatli, Saheeli, all characters that make sense. The sets were set in those cultures, it does not feel forced.
But half of Benalia, including its Marshall (highest ranked military order) being randomly black after 25 years of it clearly being a white feudal society? Forced. Lyra, the leader of Serra's angels, randomly black? Forced. A transexual elf? Jesus freaking christ forced. These characters were not asked for by the community. They were asked for by a smattering of people, some of whom are not even players, and the rest of push came from inside WOTC.
And I do not think the decline is a coincidence. The same is happening (happened) in comics. I also think its hilarious how much uglier the female characters got, but that is besides the point. If I had the time, I would compare the number of busty women and muscular men in artwork in say Ravnica 1 versus Dominaria. One day maybe.
Dudes saying transparently racist things like "wow this black character in this fantasy artwork is so forced, I can't believe they didn't make this fictional society all white like I ignorantly believe real medieval europe was!" is way worse for sales than the recent dearth of cheesecake in card art
Yet when Wizards puts things like Masterpieces in sets, the MTGS crowd calls them "lottery cards" and gets angry that they exist and accuses Wizards of wanting to cash in...
Also the idea that Magic artwork is bad is... utterly ridiculous. Magic players are insanely spoiled for art. Magic art is a who's who of the best fantasy illustrators and consistently shows up in stuff like Spectrum. Most fantasy games would be lucky to get one illustration from someone like Seb McKinnon, last year magic got nine. There's a lot of stuff where Magic lags behind other CCGs but the quality of the art is basically unparalleled.
...? what? Are you saying black people in card art aren't "regular human beings"? Do you think black people in card art "make it silly and lose context"?
This post is a just a who's who of dishonest angry gamer arguments, huh?
Conflating bigoted people with "white males with money to spend on hobbies" is a classic. I know it's comforting for you to think that everyone else has your regressive beliefs but... we don't. I'm a white guy who plays Magic; somehow I have avoided being angry that Wizards put black people on card art. No, I do mean specifically the people who, the moment they see a black person in a fantasy setting, instantly become experts on history and start demanding accuracy from their games with dragons in them. And of course you follow it up with the "bullying" accusations, which is rich coming from someone who repeatedly posts right-wing diatribes.
And then you pull out another canard that's common in this kind of discourse: claiming that the anyone who doesn't agree with you is an outsider coming in to ruin the game. But, uh, I've been playing Magic since 1997. It absolutely is my hobby, which is why I care that people feel comfortable entering it. Representation on cards helps that. You know what doesn't help? An angry loud minority of grognards constantly spewing negativity about the game that's based mostly on their own bigotry.
If you're annoyed that nobody takes your arguments seriously it's because you made it clear they don't come from a place of honest criticism but because you view Magic as just another battleground for pushing political resentments that people are tired and sick of.
Yeah, for good reason. Having bigoted grognards be the audience for your game is poisonous. For a PC game dev, you're looking at the segment of the audience that supports key resellers, refunds games after beating them, and will harass you if a youtuber tells them the game doesn't run at 60fps. Catering to people who have naked contempt for game devs isn't very attractive to the vast majority of people in the industry.
I never said anyone, let alone you specifically, is a racist; I said that statements like that are racist. And they are, because they're just a bigoted form of special pleading: Dragons, wizards, and vampires are all okay but suddenly realism and accuracy is really important when it comes to people's skin color or gender. That's not fooling anyone.
"Medieval Europe was overwhelmingly white" is a ridiculously broad and blatantly untrue statement. Dark-skinned people ("white" and "black" as we understand them today are racial concepts that did not exist to medieval Europeans) did demonstrably live in Europe in many times and places. Are there times and places that don't show evidence of that? Yes; but evidence in the middle ages is sparse in the first place, so you can't even assume that those places would have been unfamiliar with dark-skinned folk. There are African-borne Roman legionnaires buried in Britain, and obviously the entire Mediterranean world was a melting pot of African, Middle Eastern, and Southern European cultures. Examples of medieval or renaissance art featuring dark-skinned figures abounds if you actually bother to research it. So even if something were purporting to be accurate and historical, which Magic isn't, it's not accurate or historical to portray an all-white European past; it's at best making a big unsupported assumption that just so happens to align with racist ideology.
Dudes saying transparently racist things like "wow this black character in this fantasy artwork is so forced, I can't believe they didn't make this fictional society all white like I ignorantly believe real medieval europe was!" is way worse for sales than the recent dearth of cheesecake in card art