Board 8 > Magic: The Gathering - New Capenna and Explorer incoming

(+) Yeah! (+)

UltimaterializerX posted...

I love that no one gives a shit about standard so you didn't even bother lmao

I only saw a reaction so i didn't see the full news. But didn't companions rotate out anyway?

I don't play Modern so I don't even know how problematic Yorion was. But companion as a whole... literally everyone told MaRo it was a bad idea when developing Tempest. I can only assume that it got through the process in Ikoria because WotC is owned by the greedlords at Hasbro now.

As for Meathook Massacre, yeah, that probably needed to go. It's on its surface a sweeper yet completely usable in decks that would almost never want a sweeper. It can not only be a sweeper, it can be a finisher, and it even let's you grind games out. I've played it for X=0 more than any other amount, maybe even more than all other amounts. There's not really a deck type where it's an outright bad addition if you're playing black. Not many cards can fit in with agro, control, midrange, combo, and prison.

Massacre pretty much single handedly killed my interest in historic earlier this year, yeah

I think companions are cool, especially in draft, but they wildly underestimated how good they were in general.

I actually think cards like Kaheera are the worst, because creatureless Azorious control playing it is such a flavor fail. Missing on power is one thing, not thinking about restrictions enough is just not enough effort.

They obviously did not do enough R&D about the ramifications.

Massacre as an individual card is nowhere near ban-worthy. I can get behind the ban with the reasoning of "black decks as a whole are too ubiquitous so we want to ban something, and hitting Meathook might allow more archetypes to emerge".

pyresword posted...

Massacre as an individual card is nowhere near ban-worthy. I can get behind the ban with the reasoning of "black decks as a whole are too ubiquitous so we want to ban something, and hitting Meathook might allow more archetypes to emerge".

Meathook mirrors where trigger order matters also isn't great gameplay. I think they picked a good card to ban even if it wasn't specifically broken

this is one of the most transparent "ban the older card because people are done buying those packs anyway" decisions i can remember wizards making in a while.

in a vacuum, i might have targeted invoke despair instead

In a vacuum judging by the individual cards, the only one I'd even consider is Fable of the Mirror Breaker. That said, I do think they more or less made a good ban because I think metagame diversity is something Wizards should always have been factoring into their ban decisions, even though it seems at odds with their previous philosophy on the matter. Bans should be tools, not desperation measures.

true! that card is nuts.

i misspoke- i meant in the vacuum of with regards to revenue, not in a vacuum ignoring the metagame.

mono black has been incredibly busted on the ladder since DMU came out. it has a ~60% winrate while being ~30% of the meta, easily the highest of any deck

Fable is absurdly good but I don't think standard having a best card is a problem. It's only when everyone is playing the best card because the 2nd-5th best cards are in the same deck. There have been standards where the best cards in standard didn't see much play because the rest of the color or archetype sucked.

I don't think Fable should be banned either, to be clear. (Though I certainly wouldn't complain if it was, just because I hate the card)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/8/AAbtIzAADxTu.jpg

Transformers in packs, 30th anniversary $999 boxes, and Post Malone secret lair!

The reading of people complaining online is becoming almost as fun as playing!

I don't really have any issue with the Post Malone SL.

The $1000 proxies are so dumb. They could have offered a full set of dual land proxies or power 9 proxies at a much lower price and people would have eaten that shit up.

The transformers stuff I'm not a fan of due to the weird aesthetic clash and the fact that it's in Brothers' War set boosters. Just seems silly that you can get Optimus Prime in one of those.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Original Collectors Edition cost $49.95, just fyi.

$100 adjusting for inflation, but still

I feel like I picked a very weird time to start getting back into Magic.

xenosaga posted...

I feel like I picked a very weird time to start getting back into Magic.

Not really. Magic is just as fun and accessible as ever. People are just mad about random practices to make money.

For the record I like Erika

Like she is a dick

But an interesting dick

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/1/2/AAbtIzAADxms.jpg

Meanwhile, the internet is loving THIS release!

I actually agree that this is a weird time for Magic, thanks to the greedlords at Hasbro. I'm not going to complain about many of the side projects like secret lairs or commander decks but things like Modern Horizons really bother me. I don't care if someone want Post Malone or Trannsformer cards but I do care about them fucking up tournament formats for the money.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/phyrexia-all-will-be-one-is-coming

Can't believe marketing for All With Be One is already coming out when Brother's War isn't even out yet.

Seems like normal timing to me. They generally show off packaging and availability well in advance, though I think the cards they showed might be out of the ordinary.

Am I a bad person for being upset that it turned out Urzatron is not coming back?

WOW

There's some Urzatrony stuff though.

Eh... the assembly workers are pretty mopey. The Urza's land that's doing its best Cloudpost impression could maybe see play in Modern Urzatron, but I don't see it doing much in standard.

I feel like they're intentionally trying to not make anything quite as strong as history could allow, and are trying to maintain a power level similar to what they've had in other recent sets.

I don't think Urzatron would be bad for standard at all. The last time it was in standard it wasn't even always in meta. I do believe, if memory serves me, after Tooth and Nail rotated out Tron was still in (reprinted in 9th edition) and saw little to no play. It might be better now than it was then (several of the cards with prototype seem pretty good) but I find it unlikely that it breaks the metagame. Hell, I wish it would, the current standard metagame is duller than a doorknob.

The real risk, I'm guessing, is they don't want Tron in Pioneer along side Ugin. That deck can still be piloted to victory in Modern, so adding it to Pioneer could be reckless. Still, I'd rather they try it and drop some bans if they have to than to not try it at all. Considering how tied it is to this particular story line and the lack of a traditional core set (which I deeply miss) I suppose we'll never have Urzatron in standard again.

I think my favourite was the two set blocks. Core sets are whatever to me and the three set blocks felt a bit too stretched out at times. I think two set blocks with a one-off here and there would be a nice balance. The one set stuff going on now just blitzes through everything too quickly and there aren't any official multi-set drafts anymore.

The fact that the set has three versions (four if you count commander decks) kinda speaks to how the three set block was good for the storyline of the games. Beginning, middle, end... that's how you construct a story, right? The problem, I think, was that the developers had a hard time mechanically linking three sets and, maybe, they didn't really need to. I do think at least 2 set blocks would be better than what they're doing now, since it often conflicts with the story or confuses it. New Capenna supposedly not having angels on the plane anymore and suddenly there are a bunch of them in the set is a perfect example of that. Really the only problem with the old 3+1 model was due to an old way of thinking that they could just ignore today if they chose to.

They're technically not required to go to different planes and can still do three set stories. Thay's basically what they're doing with Dominaria United, Brothers' War, and Phyrexia.

But blitzing through different gimmick planes is probably better from a marketing standpoint. It's easier to sell things if the multiverse is treated like a theme park with the Fairytale Plane, the Viking Plane, the Magic School Plane, and the Cyberpunk Plane.

It's the same reason Planeswalkers are pushed in everything (and why they're almost all human). It's easy to market them and to create merch/etc for your fire mage superhero who will make an appearance on every other plane you go to for the next 15 years. It's not as easy to get players attached to characters whose stories entirely take place on their plane and who can't simply hop to the Cowboy Plane or whatever comes next.

I prefer it to the seven year (or whatever) weatherlight saga/dominaria era for sure

My favorite era flavor wise was probably from mirrodin until Planeswalker cards were introduced

That's also my favorite era. It was a a lot cheaper to play the game when there were reprints into standard and no mythics. Plus they really delivered on the story back then, having the fat packs with 6 packs, a book, and a countdown die for basically the cost of the packs. Those books may not have been all that great, but at least they were trying to make a coherent and complete story.

Did prerelease today and between my packs and my promo I opened three rare lands. Feels a bit bad. Didn't think my pool was that good, just didn't have a lot of good creatures or bombs. Ended up going 1-2 with a white, blue, black deck but had a lot of fun.

This draft format is weird. Its not really clicking for me yet.

something about clay champion just feels wrong, even though it's barely technically not more powerful than Gigantosaurus

There is nothing more glorious than your opponent playing overly cautious leading to you hitting your one outer

This was a pretty funny combo

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/7/AANz_VAAD48T.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/6/8/AANz_VAAD48U.jpg

Usually didn't matter because I was base UR but I did make someone discard their last two cards for the win once!

this draft set does feel a bit weird.

everything seems low power, the synergies don't seem that strong, there are a few ridiculous bombs (as usual) but they cost like 9 mana, the timewarped (or whatever) artifacts throw a big wrench in the works, yet everything ends up being balanced somehow