Quote from thecasualoblivion »Im going to disagree slightly, and say that what the casual player wants isn't so much elegant simplicity so much as transparency. Complexity is fine as long as it can be understood.Quote from Colt47 »Quote from thecasualoblivion »Quote from Colt47 »Quote from Varyag »I think the mythic rarity is more of a burden on limited than random inserts. Of course not all mythics or rares are created equal, but its the mythic slot that is prevalent enough and powerful enough to really screw you over with a random Planeswalker or some absurd bomb.
Case in point: I was watching LSV's Amonkhet draft yesterday and the other guy had the new Liliana and rare zombie lord. Lol, it was like watching a constructed vs draft deck match. Even LSV didn't manage to dig himself out of that one.
I think the design issues are important, but the bigger problem is the public image that standard and modern are not card set rules for everyone, but rather for strictly competitive play. They have made bone headed mistakes like this in the past with baby Jace and caw Blade, it's just that the pendulum has swung so far towards pushing competitive that anyone adhering to standard or modern gets dragged into this.
They have always pushed competitive over casual because competitive knows what they want. I have been a casual for 20 years, and can say from experience with other newbies and casuals that they don't know/understand what they want out of the game. What's worse is that non-casuals understand even less about what casuals want.
What casual players want is elegant simplicity, which is why I absolutely hate the fact they created planeswalkers and over complicated the game with too many mechanics on creatures. The reason we have to wait for net decks to show up to figure out what is actually good is due to wizards of the coast designing the best cards with deck builders and puzzle solvers in mind, which is not what the average casual player wants. For example, casual players love zombies, spirits (once they get the hang of the entire flash mechanic), and werewolves because they are easy to break down and digest. Zombies are a war of attrition, spirits are great at disruption and tempo plays, werewolves are a combination of early aggression and mid-range all sandwiched into a single package.
On the flip side, deck builders and puzzle solvers abhore a lot of simplification. Desolator Magic is a pretty good example of this as he hates tribal decks and go ballistic over things like mardu vehicles crushing out the majority of other deck ideas, thus leaving only a few solutions that work. They tend to like things such as combo decks (when they aren't two card combos), non-tribal control, mid-range, and aggro using cards with seemingly no obvious relationship between each other, and watching the entire thing come together.
There are plenty of people stuck between the two extremes as well, and this isn't even talking about the other axis of casual players in relation to competitive prize fighter players. On that axis I'm not really sure what the two extremes would be as there isn't a person on earth who doesn't want to play with strong cards.
Y'all are missing something, which I find kinda funny to me so I'll chime in: casual players often want their deck to make some kind of thematic sense. Pick up a goodstuff pile (say, Jund) and look at what the cards do. Is there a theme? What's the story of this deck? Your answer is wrong because it doesn't have a story, it's just a pile of random death and creatures that would make no sense if they sat in a room together. What you are measuring is wrong: sometimes, deck building in casual magic has exceptionally little to do with how the deck plays or how easy it is to Grok. Sometimes a player just wants to be the lord of all vampires because they look cool and vampires are awesome, and why would you include a reference to eldritch horror in a deck of vampires? Makes no sense if you ask me.
What is totally on with the transparency thing though is that it behooves wizards to make it easy for casual players to jam together stuff that makes thematic sense and come out with a deck that works at some level. It makes even more sense when you remember that you're a powerful wizard summoning magical creatures from distant planes, casting powerful spells and calling upon mighty allies for your cause! Competitive players forget this sometimes.
Random unrelated observation: I think wizards has become so enamored with the draft format that they've forgotten how to play non-draft formats. Their attitude towards standard, and how it should play, seems to be moving slowly and painfully towards "expensive limited". Has a lot to do with why the answers suck, because limited. Also why they severely overvalue slow value generators, because limited. And why they completely blank on synergy/combo, because limited. They furthermore try to jam all their constructed staples into rare, as a dinky way to cordon off the "scary constructed stuff" from their beautiful, meticulously crafted limited format.
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I disagree, the normal Deck has negative aspects, and while yes this does you can't control it like the normal Deck of Many Things. If you've ever played with the Deck in a game of D&D the tension of each card pulled from gaining a magic item to losing all your stuff to a Wraith coming after you the possibilities are grand and terrifying. Someone can walk away smelling like daisies while you may get gems, get experience, a magic item, and then have your soul trapped somewhere.
To me this is definitely the general idea of the Deck rather than really showing what it's all about. Honestly, this likely would have been better as a Planechase esque thing you can buy and add to your games whenever you feel like. Could be me looking at a deck that makes you roll dice, it just doesn't mesh well to me.
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Believe me, there were ways of showing its abilities and fitting it on the card. Yes, it wasn't going to have everything the monster does in D&D, but this card is definitely missing at least a couple of aspects.
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It's meant to look like D&D books/modules. All of the non card name stuff is rather superfluous and kind of pollutes the top quarter of the card, so much it looks like the text is smaller.
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Considering Mother's/Father's Day comes around the same time every year I'm gonna say it was pretty easy for a billion dollar company to look at a calendar to line them up where last super drop had the mother's day and this had father's day.
It doesn't bother me that a father's day one doesn't exist, but to say "it couldn't be done on time" is a lame excuse when it comes to a company pumping out 400 products a year to coincide with a specific day.
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This is an interesting argument, if we go by the "near 30 years ago they did this a couple of times" you could use that same argument for giving blue burn again, land destruction or damage prevention.
The game vastly changed since then and those characters and stories are far more linked to mythology than say a particular story and the fact that they gave up on it in lieu of doing their own stories, lore, and mythology along with not trying it for another 20+ years sort of lends some credence in the "this doesn't work" camp.
Of course nowadays crossovers are all the rage and with that especially WotC is definitely introducing some AAA video game industry stuff into the game the past couple of years, and part of that is crossovers among with many other aspects. Some are getting tired of this, just like with superhero movies, zombie iconography, and others that have plagued media for the last decade. Others of course have seen Magic stay more or less pure for two decades now and this does feel like it's cheapening the brand considerably.
Honestly, all of this is eye rolling. Not even a year into UB and we'll have 2 SLs and a core set removed (yay no reprints!) and we still have a full set and commander deck series changed coming up. What became "we might do it again" is now "get used to it f***os, we're making money and we'll kick this dead horse until you can see the Nike symbol on it. Now let's talk about the Mountain Dew Black Lotus." About five years ago this was "nah, we're not gonna do crossovers, it might cheapen Magic" to "you can fight space gods with squirrels, so this makes perfect sense now buy some Spongebob PWs for your Legacy Deck to have a chance at being a pro!"
Between this and the absolute tsunami of product Magic has pumped out the last two years this looks far more like a gacha game lately than the longest running card game in the world. This week is TWD banner, next week is Stranger Things banner, and stay tuned for the eventual power creep we'll shove in with these units/cards that you'll just have to get to stay competitive.
I'll say this, it's stupid to say you wouldn't play with someone with those cards, just like it's stupid to say you don't like people that don't like UB. It's no different than saying "I won't play against turn 1 infinite combo" or a specific format and you wouldn't judge them for not playing a format, would you?
In the end as the crossovers become money makers it is far more likely that Magic will be an IP licensing vehicle more so than it's own thing. Companies don't stop when they make money and Hasbro/WotC see just how much they can make by pushing this out. They'll push it until something makes them stop either no more money coming in or, much like with loot boxes, regulations get thrown in and I don't see either happening any time soon with this.
Before the whole "that's just doom and gloom, don't worry" argument I'll point to the video game industry for just how bad it got and how bad it still is as my example.
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Folks doing what they wish in their own free time is definitely not the same as this.
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Is this a solution? Yes. Is there any reason why the base card(s) need to be from another franchise rather than it being a Magic card first? No.
Them putting these in the list is honestly, what I think is, them looking to push set boosters more and likely trying to get rid of draft boosters. It's far better for them to sell packs that cost $6-$7 rather than $4. It's also them showing they are not 100% confident in UB if they're going "you can find these elsewhere in product you'll probably actually buy" though you'd have to open a ton of them to do so.
I don't know how easily this kills the "Crossover Reserved List", most definitely damages the idea of it at least, as they won't be tossing in every UB card in there and it will take a lot of time to go through them all. With how hard it is for them to reprint some cards, like fetch lands, I bet the same issue will arise for the more expensive UB cards that end up as Vintage/Legacy staples. "Sorry, we're not reprinting Kermit or the Red Stapler any time soon." This is evident by them saying they can't do it for The Walking Dead SL, likely because the contract made up didn't include that, shows we do still have the "Crossover Reserved List" already.
On a personal note I'm still not going to enjoy the Magic version of a card technically being based on UB card, while artistically it may be better, I will still get to look down and go "Oh, this is actually Gandalf (or Mickey Mouse) I'm playing with" and I still do not want that.
So confident in it that they have to add in a "we swear it's good" is almost pathetic on their part.
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Clearly that means you have to not buy groceries that week. (Only wanted to add to the joke, not saying you said that.)