Another thing that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could do to help fix Standard instead of just extending the rotation period is by completely scrapping Collector's Edition Boosters for Standard legal sets and regulate ALL Standard set releases to ONLY Set and Draft Boosters. They can still release Collector's Edition Boosters but regulate their releases solely on Supplementary products such as Masters set releases, Jumpstart, and Commander releases. That way there would be less variants in Standard legal sets that are shrinking the price and causing sealed product to be more easy to flip and sell which is actually better for Local Game Stores (LGSs) so that they won't be forced to break even to keep their businesses open.
don't even bother with set. just bake all the collectors pack good stuff into draft packs but reduce the frequency of appearance
its not that sets rotate too quickly, its that there isn't an emphasis on standard any more and there are just too many damn products competing for the same time and money.
i also think that its going to make for an exceptionally stagnant environment because sets are so formulaic now. every set has a 4-5 mana white board wipe, every set has a 3 mana cancel, every set gets a shock, an edict, etc
if they really wanted to solve the problem they'd re-emphasize standard by supporting competitive high level play accessible to all not just pros. they should also eliminate all supplemental products except for collectors boosters and commander precons as these all compete for your money. do one major reprint set per year thats standard legal. bake reprints into standard level sets. bake meaningful nonstandard reprints into the commander precons and especially collectors boosters, as well as new commander cards. eliminate set boosters, jumpstart, commander specific sets, even the masters sets really should be standard support that has reprints that filter into other formats.
we need the flow of product to diminish and we need actual support for the format. no one has been complaining it rotates too fast for the past few years because we get a new set/product every single month so why even bother with standard.
some of the reprints are neat, some i'm so use to seeing that there is just zero enthusiasm. yay another vampiric tutor and urza reprint i guess? the price point is far too high, the alternate arts aren't that great, its sandwiched between things awkwardly yet again... but the cards are decent reprints and some are high demand. so...
its a set. nothing more, nothing less.
it'll be forgotten in a week anyway once we're onto the next thing.
i think alandra has the potential to be a really fun, and decently good, aggroey monoblue commander.
drawing two cards a turn is easy, drawing 5 cards a turn is also pretty easy with stuff like time spiral and echo of aeons and puzzle box and junk. control the board a little, cantrip a lot, pop off with some hand refilling spell and swing for a massive amount. is she cedh level good? hell no. is it a fun and slightly different angle for monoblue? just enough!
Not sure how I feel about this.
On the plus side, new cool mono-White Commanders are always exciting, and I've been saying that W deserved a Blink Commander since forever. This is a really cool design that can even be a funny way of making a Illusion Tribal or mono-White Reanimator if you want to.
On the other hand... It's so pathetically easy to go infinite with this by playing Felidar Guardian or similar which is already the kind of cards you'd want to run anyway. I feel like this could end up as a "cool on paper, linear and boring on practice" Commander like Prime Speaker Vannifar.
Also, holy crap they are REALLY drip-feeding us on this Anthro/Fable Plane aren't they?
are there enough tools accessible to monowhite for that kind of infinite flicker to actually matter?
i mean yeah, cathars' crusade will make a third (or more) creatures infinitely large, but that's already a card that gets out of control really easily. its not like monowhite has a purphoros or impact tremors
i hate this style art on magic cards. it clashes so much with established styles, especially from magic's past. makes the game look like a completely different franchise.
Ashnod seems like such an evil, powerful overlord. Wonder why her card that's been spoiled is so pathetically weak
she never really leveraged it, but the deck was stacked against her anyway. the red hair wasn't a good omen to the fallaji peoples, and they hated her barbarism in what she did to create the transmogrants
anyway...
i wish u/g tawnos was depicted younger, like the u/r one since he was a toymaker in his youth. alternatively, i wish it included more creature types or let you choose a nonhuman creature type since so many animals were the basis of his designs.
the stonebrain is a call back to the greensleeves books right? its been a long time since i read those but little 3rd grader me remembers an artifact from the time of urza and mishra called the "stone brain" that didn't have a card in the game and seemed like the dumbest ******* thing ever
don't even bother with set. just bake all the collectors pack good stuff into draft packs but reduce the frequency of appearance
all of them
also feels like a lot to track
i'm okay skipping this one for sure now
its not that sets rotate too quickly, its that there isn't an emphasis on standard any more and there are just too many damn products competing for the same time and money.
i also think that its going to make for an exceptionally stagnant environment because sets are so formulaic now. every set has a 4-5 mana white board wipe, every set has a 3 mana cancel, every set gets a shock, an edict, etc
if they really wanted to solve the problem they'd re-emphasize standard by supporting competitive high level play accessible to all not just pros. they should also eliminate all supplemental products except for collectors boosters and commander precons as these all compete for your money. do one major reprint set per year thats standard legal. bake reprints into standard level sets. bake meaningful nonstandard reprints into the commander precons and especially collectors boosters, as well as new commander cards. eliminate set boosters, jumpstart, commander specific sets, even the masters sets really should be standard support that has reprints that filter into other formats.
we need the flow of product to diminish and we need actual support for the format. no one has been complaining it rotates too fast for the past few years because we get a new set/product every single month so why even bother with standard.
its a set.
some of the reprints are neat, some i'm so use to seeing that there is just zero enthusiasm. yay another vampiric tutor and urza reprint i guess? the price point is far too high, the alternate arts aren't that great, its sandwiched between things awkwardly yet again... but the cards are decent reprints and some are high demand. so...
its a set. nothing more, nothing less.
it'll be forgotten in a week anyway once we're onto the next thing.
drawing two cards a turn is easy, drawing 5 cards a turn is also pretty easy with stuff like time spiral and echo of aeons and puzzle box and junk. control the board a little, cantrip a lot, pop off with some hand refilling spell and swing for a massive amount. is she cedh level good? hell no. is it a fun and slightly different angle for monoblue? just enough!
are there enough tools accessible to monowhite for that kind of infinite flicker to actually matter?
i mean yeah, cathars' crusade will make a third (or more) creatures infinitely large, but that's already a card that gets out of control really easily. its not like monowhite has a purphoros or impact tremors
she never really leveraged it, but the deck was stacked against her anyway. the red hair wasn't a good omen to the fallaji peoples, and they hated her barbarism in what she did to create the transmogrants
anyway...
i wish u/g tawnos was depicted younger, like the u/r one since he was a toymaker in his youth. alternatively, i wish it included more creature types or let you choose a nonhuman creature type since so many animals were the basis of his designs.
the stonebrain is a call back to the greensleeves books right? its been a long time since i read those but little 3rd grader me remembers an artifact from the time of urza and mishra called the "stone brain" that didn't have a card in the game and seemed like the dumbest ******* thing ever