MTG Salvation

Quote from lookingupanddown »

Every single living weapon is based of a body part, or the underlying skeleton. What body part is this...

Based on the name I'd say it's a cancerous growth. Kind of fits with the mechanic also.

Quote from Xcric »

What reason is there for her to hide her identity? Is she known on this plane? For being a multiverse everyone sure does know everyone else.

Easily couldve been any other walker whose storyline HASNT been concluded.

But sex sells.

"Instructor who has a secret identity" is a common Magic School trope. There's Harry Potter of course as has been previously mentioned, also Little Witch Academia. It's not as effective to use this trope on an entirely new character for both their true and assumed identities since neither have a pre-established significance for the audience.

Whether or not my behavior is problematic wouldn't excuse yours. But Kamino_Taka is correct that litigating over that issue doesn't accomplish anything. I'm here because I'm trying to solve a problem as I see it. Not everything I've said has been effective in doing so. But your position that good faith is impossible has got to be a non-starter.

MtG characters are almost never meaningful anyway. Teferi has the advantage of being around for such a long time that the amount of lore associated with him fleshes him out more than just about any of the characters that are around today. A queen in a plane we might not even come back to is bound to be more of a flat character compared to that, and sometimes it's okay for there to be flat characters as long as your rounder ones are well developed. When you have a lot of flat characters and you make an effort to make them representative, having that as a baseline does help somewhat to move toward more meaningful representation. But we have to be clear about what's going on and ask for WotC to do better.

I would fully agree that corporate approaches to representation aren't and can't be adequate. I have no love for executives in the first place, but inclusive hiring is still overall absolutely necessary.

Quote from Buffsam89 »

It’s cynical to believe that is hardly productive to have any sort of political discussion? Specifically on the Internet?

I’d just ask that you step outside and leave the political lens at home. There’s a large world out there just waiting to be explored, and tons of fascinating people that you’ll never have the pleasure of meeting if you expect to align with it all politically.

It’s never been this bad before, and I will lay the blame at the feet of the pandemic. There’s not a ton going on, and aligning yourself with a political party is a sure-fire way to feel included in these times of isolation. Its very sad, really.

Yes, that is cynical. Again, the internet is a place where people act differently than they do in other contexts, but that doesn't mean political discussion can't ever be productive. That notion is a little hyperbolic, frankly.

Look, the fact that you think it's even possible to leave the political lens at home is due to your privilege, full stop. I can't leave the political lens at home, as a queer person, when TheOnlyOne[+string of numbers] is here saying we shouldn't even have Magic cards depicting queer characters because it's somehow inappropriate. I came out as queer at age 13, incidentally, the idea that it's inappropriate for certain age groups is pretty curious and bigoted, but whatever. The politics are here; they've already been here and I am merely replying to them. It's other people who are injecting politics into the discussion, and once it's there, I'm supposed to ignore it? These politics may be invisible to you because you aren't adversely affected by them. And if it doesn't personally affect you, you project that same feeling onto everyone. This environment is not welcoming to me or to my community, and it's not welcoming to a great many other communities as well. There's lots of different people out in the world who are worth interacting with; Nazis aren't among them. Bob wants it to be uncomplicated, well it's not complicated. Nazis are bad. It's ridiculous it even needs to be said. And I'm not even saying "ban the Nazis." Just let the community make it clear that we disagree with them. That's all.

It is the height of presumption to tell me to get out of my "bubble" as though I'm the one who's in a bubble here. I know lots of people with different political views; many different views have been expressed here. I don't get to have a bubble, because I live in your world. There is no bubble for me even here. Having a bubble honestly sounds like a pretty nice luxury to me.

Quote from Buffsam89 »

With that out of the way, I wanted to address this take in that “Everything is political”. I honestly hear this take a lot, primarily on message boards or when a certain aspect of life doesn’t quite line up with your expectations. However, it couldn’t be further from the truth. You can inject politics into any discussion. It’s very easy, incredibly low effort, and sometimes signals ignorance on a particular subject, or at the very best an unnecessary reason to escalate the conversation beyond what it truly is.

There's a huge qualitative difference between injecting an (explicit) political discussion into a topic which is not immediately political in itself and exposing the implicitly political nature of a position which pretends to be apolitical.

Usually, people who claim that their positions aren't truly political are people who are ignorant about logical entailments.

Not a single political discussion is ever carried out in good faith, ever.

That's a pretty cynical and destructive claim. And if it were true, human civilization wouldn't exist.

Bad faith political discussion is certainly common, because it works at what it tries to accomplish (eristics). But it would be less effective rhetorically if the general populace could identify and name it, a skill which can hardly be developed if political discussion doesn't occur at all.


I'd like to touch again on the claim that the site isn't here to make moral judgments. This is false on its face, because the forum has rules of conduct in the first place which are based in moral judgment. Bob, you earlier introduced the term "moral" into the discussion and I was appreciative of you doing so because its frequently the case that people have a dismissive attitude about whatever they term "moral" due to its subjective connotations. If we were so inclined, we could engage in a discussion which in every explicit sense was only descriptive and leave its normative character as subtextual, but I don't think that would be a very sincere, clear, or constructive approach. Every decision we make in life entails a moral judgment; we could take no action otherwise. You can't avoid making moral judgments, just as you can't avoid being political, and maturity involves acknowledging this.

Quote from bobthefunny »

1. This seems to me to be a fallacy. If a policy against political posts is itself political, then the option is either to allow politics, or still be political? Everything is political? I find it irresponsible to believe that mature individuals are entirely incapable of having a conversation of Magic, or anything else, without bringing up politics every 15 seconds. Somehow, I manage to hold many such conversations each day.

The policy is political while presenting itself as not political. It has political results, and is more acceptable to only one side of political issues. For example, TheOnlyOne652089 was quick to accept that the "solution" is to have no discussion of politics whatsoever because this solution clearly suits his purposes. Everything is political, though in more or less obvious ways. "Politics" covers everything that has to do with human life, with humans as social creatures. That's what the word means and it has implications on everything we might talk about. It's important to be honest about it. So yes, if you're going to be political either way, I think a good maxim would be to lean toward allowing discussion. This way, you have people happy with their ability to express themselves and so on, meaning the results are effective for maintaining the health of the community which is your charge as the staff here.

At no point have I suggested that we should bring up politics "every 15 seconds." In fact, the issue I have been pointing out is the trend of political posts hating on groups being posted in threads for causes as minimal as a card depicting a black person. People have a natural desire to want to respond to such content which you have disallowed. But the reverse doesn't happen (people randomly posting leftist or centrist political takes out of the blue), because the nature of politics differs by ideology and this leads to different behavior. I would be perfectly happy to discuss only Magic cards in their direct application as game components if that was the only sort of discussion a particular card inspired.

2. So the options again are either to enforce bias, or to be biased anyways? Again, I disagree. Censoring to one extreme or another can only be harmful to all involved. This is a site that exists to discuss Magic. This should be feasible without overcomplication.

To the contrary, it's entirely possible to not be biased in the matter. The non-biased perspective would acknowledge that one view is extreme and the other is not. The non-extreme (BLM) would only be possible to consider as extreme in the biased perspective that compares and defines it in relation to the extreme one.

3. The site is not here to pass moral judgment. You know what else would be detrimental to a community? Excising anyone with a differing viewpoint than your own.

While you may be judging the entire group to be a hate group, the rest of the collective US community, the commercial interest, and the internet do not currently agree with your assessment. If a change occurs, we will adapt to it. Until then, every other commercial venture is willing to accept it, so will we.

The idea that excising people with different viewpoints than mine would be harmful to the community... is a moral judgment. Politics, after all, is a subset of moral theory. However, I haven't advocated for the excising of people just because their views differ from mine. Earlier in this thread, I engaged in polemics against the political positions you were kind enough to state in order to demonstrate that we're both partisan. I don't think you should be excised just because I disagree with you, because you haven't advocated for things that are inherently dehumanizing. I can recognize that you in good faith believe your views are what's best for a variety of people (a moral judgment).

I take it you're referring to bluelivesmatter here. I'm speaking more generally about hate groups, and it seems to me no coincidence that those same hate groups also are favorable towards bluelivesmatter. The lovely thing about reason is that we can draw inferences about things that lead us to opposite conclusions of popular opinion.

4. And what overzealous and authoritarian approach are you referring to here?

• A simple request to keep discussion to the topics that this forum was made for?
• Or that if people fail to follow the rules of the community, they are asked to leave?

Is it really that hard to understand "Please follow the rules, don't be a jerk, or we will ask you to not be here?"

Intervening in discussions just because they're "off topic" is very likely to be excessive.

5. You know what else would affect revenue? Becoming a Magic site that doesn't discuss Magic.

If a person arrives at this site from google, wanting to look up an interaction, or discuss some new cards - but instead they see a bunch of people yelling at each other about entirely unrelated things? Well suddenly that makes this seem like a terrible site to come to for the answers to Magic related questions.

I don't see how this is the necessary outcome. I suspect that politics is something that will rarely come up because most people here are primarily interested in discussing Magic and that's not going to change.

I joined this site to discuss Magic. I joined it to discuss Commander. I joined the moderator team to help improve the goals of facilitating that kind of discussion. For the last THREE MONTHS, 95% of my interaction and duties on this site have been entirely non-magic related. I'm frankly getting sick and tired of this. Everywhere else, I seem to be able to find people who are able to hold a conversation on a topic without needing to proselytize. Conversations in which if a person says "Hey, I don't want to hold this discussion here, can we let it drop," the other person respects it. Or even following simple rules and requests for use of a facility or services. When the people who collect the garbage in my neighborhood arrive in the early morning with their trucks, no one seems to need to quiz them about their political allegiance.

Everyone saying that we need to discuss non-magic things here... No. We. Don't. There are plenty of places where you can share your political views. There are plenty of places where it's appropriate to do so. Want to share them? Write an opinion piece to your local paper. Write to your congressman. Go to a protest. Go to a townhall. GO. VOTE. Arguing with random people on the internet, on a site which has nothing to do about it is a waste of everyone's time.

I'm willing to bet that you don't go to a Walmart, or a Target, or even a McDonald's to shout at people about your views on this. There is nothing that makes this place any more appropriate than those, expect that on here you can do so from the comfort of your own home and you don't have to actually look anyone in the eyes when you do it. Don't do it. We don't want it here. Grow up. Take it to where it matters.

This site is about Magic. If you want to talk about something Not Magic - you've come to the wrong place.

Never mind that Magic itself is expressly political, apparently provoking political responses with choices as simple as depicting black people in card art. The controversies here are over something really basic, which essentially distills to the question of whether humanity is universal or not. Such a basic controversy can't go unresolved.

I've said before, this is a forum. It's a place where people go to discuss Magic and discuss generally. If you want a forum with a bunch of threads where the only comment is "GILBIC /thread," congratulations, you've created a forum in which discussion is actually dead.

There is no need for further discussion of the issues brought up in this thread. The points have been made. However, with respect to the points I've raised, I have not seen them addressed to my satisfaction or really to the satisfaction of any reasonable standard. From my point of view, the staff has only reiterated their original positions and ignored my concerns.

Please address:
1. The issue that a policy against political posts is itself political
2. A methodology which naively produces balance for its own sake actually produces bias. 'Overbalancing' by representing views that have no business being represented is bias
3. A balance which is inclusive to hate groups is toxic to the cohesion of the forum community
4. Overzealous and authoritarian approaches to moderation will stifle engagement in the forum community
5. 4 & 5 will have the long term effect of diminishing revenue

Quote from bobthefunny »

If you have material you would be kind of enough to send my way, I am intrigued.

I'm deriving this argument from a reading of Bakunin and Marx, there's quite a lot of other literature I'm not well versed in. I'll try to see if I can find any articles applying this analysis to the current issue

All that is required for an institution to be racist is that it participates in and/or perpetuates systemic racism. The institution of police does do this as you admit, so it is a racist institution. It is not necessary for that institution to have a conscious agenda of participating or perpetuating systemic racism. It is not necessary for the individuals who make up the institution in whole or in part to hold racial prejudices. These aren't the claims being made by people who say that the institution of the police is racist. The claim that you want to deny here is that the institution is necessarily racist, and the movement to defund the police is pretty skeptical about that denial to say the least.

I think we are working on different definitions here.

Alright, I think that's probably true. But the definition I'm using seems to be the same definition that FlossedBeaver is using.

This appears to be a moral equivalence argument. Use of violence in any context is, by definition, extreme. Yet what most people (except absolute pacifists) agree on is that violence is sometimes necessary. You, for example, say police violence is sometimes necessary. Meaning, the context determines whether it's appropriate. If the context is an institution which systemically engages in violence under the auspices of state power, and a violent response is considered an undesirable but historically informed strategy of combating this institution, that position shares a principle with yours--neither is pacifist. But yours accepts the basic legitimacy of state violence and chooses moderate rather than extreme action as a response to this state violence. And there is a third position, the promotion of state violence, which you are characterizing as equivalent morally to the violent opposition. I don't think that you are morally equivalent to the state-violence-promoting group here but I do find it dubious that in this situation being moderate is the most rational and appropriate response, and I definitely object to the insinuation that the two groups you are comparing are at all similar.

You've lost me here, and are making things more convoluted than necessary.

Well, I do my best to edit my thoughts so that they're as clear as possible but it can be very difficult when I'm trying to discuss something that's counterintuitive.

Here's a different presentation:
1. You've condemned violent actions for the sake of BLM (hereafter termed "antifascist violence")
2. The condemnation in (1) was placed side by side with the condemnation of police violence (the promotion thereof hereafter termed "fascist violence") but
3. Earlier you stated police violence is sometimes necessary
4. Therefore, you're not a pacifist.
5. The non-pacifist distinction between anti-fascist violence, fascist violence, and your position is when violence is considered necessary
6. The conditions of fascist violence are institutionally in place and produce the most violence of the three standards in question
7. Anti-fascist violence considers itself to be necessary to oppose fascist violence yet is not violent in the absence of fascism
7a. Anti-fascist violence is only violent in practice against fascism, not violent in principle and in practice as with liberalism and fascism
8. You consider anti-fascist violence unnecessary, in direct comparison to the unnecessary nature of fascist violence
9. The toleration of some state violence naturally and predictably leads to tolerating increasing violence. It attempts to negate this violence from the equation by calling it necessary but neglects that its always violent in principle.
10. If you tolerate some degree of state violence per (3) and oppose anti-fascist violence per (8), then you cannot in principle violently oppose fascism
11. Not violently opposing fascism results in more fascist violence
12. Your position creates more net violence despite appearing to favor peace, which is morally untenable

What I am saying is that each group needs to be judged on their own position and merits, and not on the actions of another group that uses their slogan. If we uphold this ideal for #BlackLivesMatters, by saying that the violence and riots are a separate entity from the entity of the movement, and do not reflect the goals and general acceptance of the #BLM movement (which has been largely, but not entirely, peaceful protests) then we should uphold the same standards for others, and not villainize them based on the actions of other groups.

I understand that this was the point you were making, but the examples you choose for your comparison were ill-considered since you did not qualify what you were saying with a statement about how they're not equivalent.

I have never stated that #BLM or any of the peaceful protests, or even civil disobedience, or even straight up riots, were unnecessary. The movement has stepped up its attempts to gain attention for a decade now, and if simple acts of attention aren't enough, clearly larger acts are needed until the attention is given is deserved. Simply because something is necessary however does not mean that it is exempt from repercussion either.

Ok, so you are denying my premise 8 from above.

That does change my interpretation a little bit. But I'm not quite sure what you mean here by repercussion. One possible repercussion of this activism is that society changes in some way along the lines that the activism took as a goal. If this doesn't happen, then that activism was not effective, and this is also a repercussion. I think you mean something like legal, criminal justice type repercussions, which is of course an aspect of the struggle. Or in the context of this forum, the enforcement of rules (you mentioned harassment specifically).

We must all accept the consequences of our actions. But the necessity of our actions ought to be a factor where there's a choice about those consequences. If this isn't weighed properly it implies a denial of the necessity, which would bring premise 8 back into the picture.

There are also various contexts of violence that seem to be conflated here.

Not conflated, considered violence in principle.

(1) Excessive violence and use of force by the Police that has led to the wrongful deaths of individuals with no repercussions; (2) Regular violence and use of Police force in proper procedure when other deescalation methods have failed - No matter what your beliefs or ideals, there will always be some need to apprehend a non-compliant subject;

You seem to misunderstand what I'm saying here. Of all the possible institutional models in which the need to apprehend a non-compliant subject is to be addressed, how does the institution of the police fare? The institution of the police can't be separated out from the capitalist state as a whole... it's integral. And there's a number of factors here because of that: 1. poverty is positively correlated with criminality, capitalism suppresses wages and perpetuates cycles of poverty as the necessary condition of increasing profits 2. in order to increase profits capitalist states are pressured toward privatization 3. privatized prison-industrial complexes profit from increased incarceration 4. police are thereby encouraged to incarcerate as many people as possible 5. poor people are easier to incarcerate (black people are disproportionately poor) 6. reforms leave intact the existence of the capitalist class who organize to undermine these reforms ... etc.

So, for one, I'm suggesting there's an alternate model where the number of situations in which a non-compliant subject needs to be apprehended is diminished. And secondly, when the method of apprehension involves the community in a directly democratic process instead of designated gun-bearers of an official state, that method is compatible with rehabilitative and restorative justice.

(3) the violence of the protests; (4) the violence of the riots; (5) the violence by government authorities against the protesters (peaceful, non-peaceful, and riots); and (6) the violence of confrontations between protesters and counter protesters. At no point did I ever claim that these different situations and contexts of violence are equivalent in scope, context, or anything else.

Yet the comparison implies it. You deem both to be unacceptable, you didn't specify anything beyond this.

=====

The general current accepted context does not seem to support this. If you have additional context to provide, I would be happy to pass it up and add it to the growing research that I have put together on this.

Seems to me the person advocating for bluelivesmatter in this thread is an example of the case I was talking about.

That first is why initially we did not accept #BlueLives. However, after doing some research, what we found is that the blue lives movement is for solidarity of assassinated officers, and was not explicitly started as a counter-movement to BLM. This is reflected in common usage, as companies have explicitly allowed #BlueLives, and/or explicitly rolled back previous disapproval of it. This is in stark contrast to ALM, which is explicitly a counter-movement, and is likewise seen in common usage where companies have been explicitly disapproving of it, with such disapprovals only consistently rising. Likewise with #WLM, which barely even deserves a mention.

Isn't it implicitly counter to it, though? After all, it uses the same framing. I find this interpretation a little obtuse.

An interesting analogy, and actually the exact one I had in mind and that I was alluding to when writing my post, as I had just seen this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

That is a TED talk by a previously prominent Women's Rights Activist who created two feminist documentaries, and then went to research the MRA for a third documentary, examined her own biases, found that they actually had compelling points not covered by feminism, made a documentary about it, and then was ostracized for supporting that unpopular view.

In short, according to her, after doing the research for her documentary she discovered that No, the Mens Rights Activists are NOT the "alllivesmatters" of gender issues. They did have a separate point, and were not necessarily in contention with the feminist movements, and that men are not "already covered."

Anything to be published. Lots of people profess to be "feminist" but it's actually a pretty intellectually difficult subject and not everyone who takes on this title is very representative or consistent with feminism. J.K. Rowling comes to mind, being a TERF. This is a misnomer, by the way; there's nothing radical or feminist about TERFs... they are reactionary and non-feminist. Or, for another example, the typical populist version of feminism which argued that it was automatically sexist to oppose Hilary Clinton's candidacy for presidency in 2016 despite the fact that her policy platform and record wasn't particularly favorable to women's liberation. I find this video to be impossibly shallow to be considered seriously as a counterexample, almost as if she was trying to be a "stereotypical" feminist in her initial spin of her interviews. Just one example.... speaking personally as a man who was a victim of domestic violence, I would point out the discrepancy in institutional support for victims of domestic violence is something that absolutely can be addressed in feminist theory, the idea that some women who call themselves feminists would take a dismissive attitude toward the issue might just be an indicator of a need to reflect more deeply on the commitments their ideology entails.

There are limits to feminist theory as a form of analysis. But I don't see this video as demonstrating its limits, as much as of the limits of the speaker's own thinking. Of course, her exposure to a different point of view was critical for being able to acknowledge her biases and maybe that wasn't possible in her normal feminist circle. Maybe, in practice, feminist discourse has the possibility of inculcating these biases if it forms overly insular communities. But that doesn't prove that MRA is itself necessary, it just had the accidental effect in her case of getting her out of her echo chamber. But that's also kind of why I've hammered on about how we need freer discourse everywhere it occurs. In other words, I don't want the MRAs to shut up, but I do want to explain to them why listening a little can be beneficial.

Quote from Xcric »

Quote from flaming infinity »

I'm pretty sure people are being excessively harsh on party. Yes, a full party is optimal, but the cards are also costed so they're bat ***** insane with a full party. They're so over the top stupid then that there's no comparison unless you count Ancestral Recall that's so broken it hasn't been seen since Unlimited. I think people are forgetting that party creatures already count as party of 1 alone. Party of 2 is quite effective.

Can you provide some clear examples?

I think youre grossly over estimating its potency somewhere

All the good payoff cards are noticeably concentrated in black. In fact, a black-based party deck could well be viable.

But the power level is only part of it. It's the fact that each of the tribes in party had tribal support cards printed which didn't interact with the party mechanic at all, meaning that there were five distinct mechanics in the set marked more so by their tension than synergy (to say nothing of the other mechanics... there is a bit of a play experience redundancy with kicker which is mostly because of kicker's design). So you get clerics who care only about clerics and clerics who care about (full) party, and so on with the other four. Some of that space could have been spared for traps, expeditions, or, if not those exact mechanics, something similar. And that would have been vastly more interesting than yet another set with a tribal subtheme. That would have meant a set with an overall higher level of complexity, though. I think the current design rules against complexity are starting to exhaust the design space that lies within this scope. They're going to have to up the complexity threshold to get us out of the rut we're in.

Seems like they have the same problem revisiting Zendikar as they did with Ravnica.

First Ravnica block was the best, partially because of all the innovative card designs, but also because it had an organic creative feel to it. There were lots of individual features like the nephilim that weren't popular in and of themselves but added character to the setting. These were stripped out during the revisits and replaced with more of the features that marketed well, resulting in a blander, more generic plane. By the third visit I dread ever going back.

Quote from boombox_smk »

It continues to surprise me how many cards in recent sets have the "once per turn" rider. Would this be totally broken if you got three clues after a wrath?

…yes? obviously?

Quote from Vendilion_Critique »

Then why do somenthig like seek in the first place, other than greed, loosing the identity of the game in the process? Is this a cardgame or a videogame?
When you go after somenthig and you do everything to get it including loosing your identity then you are greedy

It's both, now.

Is magic a 2 player game or a (larger) multiplayer game? It was once just about 2 player, but people liked to play multiplayer, so they made cards for that. Is it about collecting, deckbuilding, or drafting? Every set has cards for all 3. Magic has evolved so far from what it what originally meant to be, and gone in so many directions already that adding one more dimension is hardly "losing its identity."

Quote from Evil Never Dies »

Dude, you are trying way too hard. You've died on the hill, then your corpse has been dug up so you could die on it again. We get it. You think these cards could easily work in paper.

(They can't.)

Yes they can. Yes, most of them are easy (like Davriel). You can't project your personal inability to handle it to the entire mtg community, that's a bias.

You've died on the hill, then your corpse has been dug up so you could die on it again.

This is just straight nonsense ranting. Get a life instead of making delirant ranting over people's opinions.

You are the one not letting this go. You're ranting on each thread about these cards how they are so easy to pull off in paper. They aren't! While yes many of them may be possible to do in paper, they would take some combination of lots of words (more than can fit on a standard card), potential changes to the rules, use of paper, use of markers, use of outside materials, an objective third party observer (like a judge watching your entire game start to finish). The majority just aren't feasible in paper.

So I get it if you're mad that they are moving in this direction, plenty of reasons to not want MtG to turn digital-only. But if you think the problem is that these are designs that should be printed in paper, you really need to reconsider. Which I get you won't do now, because you've spent dozens of posts across multiple threads arguing yourself into a hole about how these are just fine paper designs.

And this is why no one likes these forums.

I thought the digital only cards were fine to start, but seeing how much they seem to upset people now I think they're hilarious

Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »

Regular intelligence clearly suffices to play, to play well, it does not (like it or not, its what it is).

But there was a reason that magic was played a lot by students , and now its increasingly casual, there are simply more casual gamers, especially in todays times (Entertainment, video games, its not fringe, its as mainstream as it gets).


And to make money is a twofold. You can make a good product and sell it as the quality is high (thats not the case for Magic, simply look at curling foils).
Or you make a product for the casual and appeal to the addictive nature of the buyer (As magic boosters are quite literally MicroTransactions and LootBoxes).
Plenty of people that are addicted to gambling, catering to that crowd isnt making a good product, its selling to addicted people (questionable business practice, but it brings in big money, if anything politics has to make rules to prevent this, but especially right now, they dont care at all).

Magic invented lootboxes. I don't understand why you are acting like this is a new development. Either Magic has always been bad for taking advantage of gambling addiction, or it is still good in spite of it.
I don't see what the problem with casuals is either. No one has the energy to be hardcore with everything. Either you only play Magic or you yourself are a "filthy casual" in someone else's community. You can make a good game and appeal to casuals, they're not mutually exclusive. Wizards has made a lot of missteps in the past couple years, but there is no reason to believe this is because they sold you out for the dreaded casuals. You're just grasping for any reason you can find to feel superior to other people. I can handle disagreement, bit I am so sick of your damn gatekeeping.

And different people expect different directions and will absolutely tell if things get worse for them and their players (visible by the amount of LGS dying, not just because of the pandemic, but because of how WotC is treating them, theres a reason WotC is opting for big stores like Walmart and retail sellers like Amazon, they want to reach as many players as possible, and sell them the most expensive products possible).
Bunch of areas dont even have a LGS anywhere in reach, so they dont even have the option to play in paper outside of their own kitchen table.
So its a culture that is dying here, artificially as WotC is bleeding them out (so as of right now, WotC is sucking money out of plenty of LGS stores, when they are gone, the future might look different, as the vast amount of monetary value of magic cards is in the hand of nostalgia players and collectable stores).

I seriously doubt this is the case, but you know what? I'll ask my LGS how they feel they've been treated.

Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »

Magic was a good game as you had to track the game state with your mind, understand whats going on, and know the rules to execute.

NOW in digital you need to barely know anything, it displays you all the things and you can just "fk it" and attack and see what happens.


The game dumbed down drastically.
These cards are designed to further push digital, as the playerbase itself is also effected by this (so they are catered to with digital).

A lot of people here embrace paper for the mental capabilities you need to play the game, thats the fun part after all, otherwise you would just play a video game in the first place.

Magic is a game, not a tool for you to feel superior. Games need players, and since the old guard is constantly dwindling, we constantly need new blood.

Imagine if they smarted up the game to the point that only your clearly superior intellect could handle it. Do you think it would still be easy to find a commander game? Do you think FNMs would still be regularly attended? Would you be happy to have no one to play with because it proves how much smarter you are?

Magic is the most complicated game in the world, to the degree that making it a little more approachable isn't going to change that.

Gimmick mechanics like Dungeon and variations of dice and all of that rip Magic of what made it a great card game.
You really just had to bring your deck of cards and you are ready to play.
Today you need Dungeon cards, plenty of counters, tokens, maybe energy-counter dice, treasure tokens, and all other nonsense that adds trash to the game (ever experienced the amount of paper pieces in a casual game ? When people just rip little pieces of a paper, its a lot of trash thats left on the table).


The game is a CARD game, and it got out of hand quite drastically and keeps getting worse in that aspect.

My first commander deck was a token deck. I've needed this stuff for the past 10 years. This isn't new, Magic doesn't suddenly suck.

Marilyn Monroe but with centipedes is not what I expected from MTG

It’s nice to see WB getting some love!
Hopefully GB doesn’t get even more, as they always have

Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »

Quote from FlossedBeaver »

I think this has already been mentioned, but it's really hard to coexist with other people who don't want you to exist at all. There are some attitudes, opinions, and behaviors that don't get a pass under the auspices of tolerance (or free speech), and bigotry might be at the very top of that list.

The extremist sees only extremists.

Terese Nielsen never sought the destruction of anybody, but plenty of people jumped on the hate train against her, blindly following the blood track of the stabbing against her character.

Then they celebrate to demolished a beloved community member, and go out for the next victim.

At some point people realize that, sadly its most of the time when the finger is pointed at them and its too late ...

Imagine going this hard for someone who supports Neo Nazis, follows, likes and listens to Neo Nazis, donates their work to Neo Nazis and doesn't disparage Neo Nazis, and then getting touchy and semantic when she gets called a neo nazi. You can play word games all day until this thread, inevitably, gets locked, but at the end of the day, you defending someone who is a QAnon supporter and donates work to Neo Nazis. Again, what does that make you?

Ah, so that's why inklings fly. They are Twitter Elementals.