MTG Salvation

Read some history and look at the context about the format of the time it was made. Look at who made the format. Look at why. It will enlighten your perspective and give you some basis to form an argument. Right now you are not making coherent arguments regarding the format. We here are seeing complaints about your LGS, in this thread's current form.

There is literally an article that came out yesterday by the NYT titled "Beach Body Tyranny Hurts Men Too"

Seems relevant to this conversation about the oversexualization of male characters

I would post a link but I don't want this post deleted. Shouldn't be hard to find.



A thought regarding the thread title - Maybe WoTC has seen the shapeshifter typing as an opportunity to present visually androgynous humanoids? I ask you to consider a scenario with me.

Maybe someone high up at WoTC made an equation in their minds and thought that "if one can shapeshift at will, into whatever gender they so choose as a result of their transformation, then maybe this physical change also constitutes a change in their sexuality as well - and therefore we will represent shapeshifters to be recognizable as androgynous".

I'm not saying this scenario was the logical steps taken to arrive at this representation of shapeshifters, but the scenario does point out the slippery slope of bad logic that is associating the shapeshifting mechanic with an equally fluid sexuality.

Without a background of how a given shapeshifter acquired this ability (magic or genetic) how are we to know how there ever becomes more shapeshifters? If it's genetic manipulation that allows the transformation, it begs the question of "how does this species reproduce?" And if WoTC's explanation for the shapeshifting ability is indeed based in genetics, then there would be an assumption of sexuality placed on this species - but we know well that WoTC won't delve into whether they reproduce asexually, sexually or anything else under the sun. WoTC would still not go into that detail, and would therefore continue the disconnect of information regarding whether this species even has a sexuality at all.

And if we can't know how this species reproduces, how then can WoTC confer our own human interpretation of sexuality onto these characters just because they shapeshift?

Quote from Brisket Elemental »

Right? I don't understand people who get so irrationally irritated at something like this. Just go to a spoiler compiler and let other people enjoy it their own way. Woof.

On your first point - Outrage is soooo so easy, and most people would rather walk away from ugliness rather than engage and call out someone.. I appreciate you're calling out the irrational outrage

On your second point - The outrage seems to be a function of laziness

But I'm lazy too in that I very much enjoy coming here to see everything in one place

And I do want to say thank you to all the folks who do that leg work of sharing the content here with us. Thank you folks for enabling my laziness, the centralized spoilers here on this forum were the initial reason I found this site some years ago.

The fact that content creators get the opportunity to benefit on the back end of all their work and WoTC's combined is good business - and I don't find that reason for the dispersion of the spoilers as anything but good business. It's not a detractor, it just comes with the territory. It's baked into the bread.

Congrats to all those content creators

Quote from Creedmoor »

Kind of happy Iona got the ban. She locked some opponents out of the game completely.

Iona is such a cheese card in EDH that:

every one of my monocolored EDH decks ran at least 4 devoid/colorless spot removal cards
(that's 8 EDH decks *4 = 32 cards)

every one of my black or red-dominant multicolor decks also ran the same suite of spot removal
(that's at least another 6 decks *4 = 24 cards)

So I bought 56 copies of duplicates of the same 4 colorless removal cards just for that *****.

So what that means is that I had to pay the cost of those 50+ cards as an overhead cost on all those decks, just so I can play EDH.

Banning Iona in itself means a depression in value is coming for all that colorless spot removal, if any significant number of other folks gameplanned specifically for Iona like I was doing.. That's a format warping card if I'd say so. Glad she's gone

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Quote from Galspanic »

Quote from cyberium_neo »

Such a rapid preview, wouldn’t people get overloaded by cards? I personally prefer a slower preview so I could digest.

You don’t already feel completely overloaded with new cards?! With War of the Spark, Modern Horizons, M2020, and C19 all coming out at basically the same time it feels like giving us a whole week is slow.

Precisely why I feel the need to slow down a bit. As an EDH player who could use cards from all sets, there’s no resting/brewing time between War, Modern Horizon and Core 2020.

WoTC's product releases are so close together - we may as well all be paying monthly subscriptions! The effect is the equivalent

To the Mods/Site dev's/anyone relevant:

There are plenty of passionate and skilled people who frequent this site who may be willing to offer you assistance in getting a new site on its feet.

It would be a tragedy to lose content/fail to get all of us a new home just because the workload was insurmountable for too few people. There are those who are willing to help if you ask us.

I don't have skill in coding/comp sci but I have dollar bills that can help. If there is funding needed for the creation of a new home for us, I would gladly pitch in to guarantee that reality.

Thank you for your work on this site

Quote from RxPhantom »

Solid card, even though the elf druid himself looks like he's probably hitting some shrooms at a Phish show while he tries to sell you some poorly made burlap clothing.

What else besides hitting shrooms would a druid be doing? Much flavor!

A very abusable Harrow with flicker effects. Astral Drift makes this look interesting for sure.

I like the approach of taking what would have been a $20-$30 mythic the moment of it's announcement - and making it a common instead.

Lowering the rarity of such power makes the game more affordable, in regards to $.

Nice moves that WoTC is making.

This may also be a byproduct of the existence of Modern Horizons in a way that we don't yet recognize at face value.

Standard can be better, and focus more on being a better Standard, when WoTC doesn't have the pressure to feed Eternal formats through it. This is a side-effect of this new outlook, I believe.

Quote from rcwraspy »

Wait, you're taking credit for the "idea" to print Modern-legal cards outside of Standard?

That has literally been in every Modern player's mind since the rule was announced that Modern cards must enter by way of Standard. Since the moment the format was announced.

Quote from Shea_0 »

We did it!!!!!!!! You did it!

I did my part in getting WoTC to adopt a policy for printing format-bypassing cards

More than anything, I want to express my thanks to every person who was fighting for the expansion of format-bypassing cards.

I'm wanting to celebrate the moment, there's no intent for snobbery

If you were a voice online like I was, then thank you for your contributions too! I wouldn't mind hearing how other people did their part too. This is a cathartic moment for me... likely others too!

EDIT: also, I brought all of this up in the Commander forum, I honestly have never owned a Modern deck. I made those threads while unaware of any movement within the Modern community for the same goal, so to hear you confirm others were fighting the good fight makes me very happy

When I posted 2 years ago it was after an internal thought process not at all influenced from any already-existing movements for the same goal. It was parallel thought, from the perspective of an EDH, Legacy and Vintage player

We did it!!!!!!!! You did it! The new Modern Horizons set! Certainly more people were a part of this than I was. We all did our part and we have made the game better by voicing our concerns for the health of all of the formats. Standard, for as much as I have loathed it for the problems it has presented for so long, may become a better format itself due to this change. This will help Standard stand on its own, as I described a few years ago in the links below.

I did my part in getting WoTC to adopt a policy for printing format-bypassing cards, specifically eternal format cards that skip the loathsome Standard format.

August 13th 2017 is when I shared this idea, and at the time there was no (apparent) talk elsewhere on these forums about such a novel concept being applied beyond Commander. Format-bypassing cards directly into Eternal formats. I'm glad for all of us! This means everything for the future of Magic.

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/781415-the-rule-of-56-originals-in-commander-is-a

I brought it up again here too, and my estimation of the situation was essentially correct. Battlebond was the first step to getting where we are today. Congrats everyone, we ALL worked hard for this. YOU get to enjoy the results of that hard work now!

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/789425-wotc-breaks-its-56-card-shackles-for-commander


More than anything, I want to express my thanks to every person who was fighting for the expansion of format-bypassing cards.

I don’t consider secret lair to be a “reprint” of anything at those prices

Shea

That is really a goldmine of information you just wrote. I have copied it on a notebook file on my PC and printed it also.
I will consult it often to help me start on the right track.

Thanks again

Pat

It is simply unrealistic to build a deck from a single booster box. And theme decks are so weak it's usually not worth upgrading them. Sp I would recommend you pick a deck within your budget and buy it as singles.

As for casual play I can only recommend commander as the commander decks so well against eachother out of the box and provide plenty of replay value and wide avenues for upgrading. Of course you will need your friends to stay at the same level because commander supports ultra casual all the way up to super cutthroat.

Really he is just a great commander for any sort of combo deck that needs disruption from the command zone. I have a dedicated deck to each of the 6 legendaries from the rakdos guild, and showstopper ended up best just piloting a storm deck,

I think it's best to not focus on his etb, and instead use him when you need to clean up the board a little or apply pressure in the air. He's one of the better "generically good" black+red legendaries available, mainly for how players react to you not casting him when you could and potentially causing them to hold back valuable creatures. I think adding something like vedalken orrery would be ideal just so you can lord him over opponents heads a bit longer.

Quote from Decadent_Creed »

Why am I buying physical cards if hundreds, if not thousands are going to be inaccurate? Every burn spell, tons of creatures.

If WotC wants to invalidate thousands of cards they sold to us because "lol flavor" then they should be buying back old copies and replacing them with newly printed, accurate versions.

This is an incredibly dumb line of thinking, we're so deeply entwined with technology at this point that familiarizing ourselves with Oracle text isn't that hard

The cards aren't invalidated just because the printed wording isn't up to date, and Wizards isn't going to waste their time or money printing "updated" versions with each errata just because a very tiny minority of people find it mildly inconvenient

I'd rather they make periodic improvements to the game and retrofit preexisting cards into those changes than let it stagnate in those areas, and I would want them to put their resources into anything other than pointless reprints of cards with updated Oracle text

Quote from ccc1522 »

Where is my logic lacking? if the aim is diversity and inclusive why cant someone have the opinion that the homosexual PW should die?

If your motivation for wanting the gay character to die and go away forever is simply that they're gay then you're just a piece of **** and your viewpoint has no value. Tolerating intolerance is not a virtue, it's cowardice.

Quote from Shea_0 »

I dont recall how it goes this year, but I'm really hoping this is a foil... or has a foil at some point. The art on the Weatherlight characters would pop in foil. Especially this and the new Gerrard art

Weirdly, if they follow the general convention for foils, Greven will be foiled but Gerrard will not.

I have wanted them to touch on old legends and creatures that never got cards for ages. Still waiting on a few others like Ashnod and Fix.

But seeing remakes of 15 year old cards is amazing. I don't know what else they could do outside of the Weatherlight to keep up the trend but I am hopeful

I like how the artwork mirrors Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero!

I love that built in hatred