Friday night magic draft was the most important for me as a new player starting and trying to get better. I got better at play, card analysis and got to meet all the people that made up the backbone of the community
FNM, or any competitive event at LGSs back in the day (going back to 2014 at least) were all about actual competition. There wasn't this mentality today where FNM is for "casuals," and that you're a tryhard if you bring a meta deck, meta adjacent deck, or even simply a rogue deck designed with the meta in mind (my usual preference). It's pretty sad actually. I've just moved on to other games because Magic is just Commander now.
@@Xoulrath_ Around here, for many years (don't know if it's still true or not) 'friday night magic' and 'draft' became synonyms. Gave you most of the advantages of being 'casual', while still being a competative tournament... and, of course, it's good for the shop owner's ability to move product too.
@@laurencefraser places by me just used FNM as a way to get people in the door. Sometimes there were drafts. Sometimes it was Standard. Regardless, it was ALWAYS competitive. Now, not so much. As for Modern, it seemed to be done more on Monday and Tuesday so as to give the format its own day. It also allowed players, who might wish to do Standard/Draft as well, the ability to do both. Again, now not so much. Some Modern events still fire around here, but they're all a solid 45+ minutes in shit traffic there and back. Add 3-4+ hours of a tourney and it just isn't worth it. Oh well.
Your point about commander players feeling undercut too is absolutely correct imo. I used to have a lot more fun figuring out ways to build commander decks that weren't necessarily dictated by a "strictly better" variable progression - ways to win with like Phage and manifest for example. It almost feels like commander is becoming increasingly monolithic with the archetypes and play styles being released/strengthened which partially detracts from the creativity side of commander (which may be in line to some degree with the mastery you talked about).
I've felt that particularly with the tribal releases. Feels like every set one of the precons supports a tribe and inevitably becomes "play this commander tailor made for this deck, and every good thing with the correct type, and there's your deck". Or keyword specific commanders. Why even bother with deck building at that point, if it's going to be "the opt commander and the 30 best opt cards"
Salubrious Snail made a video talking about this wrt the cycling commander and how engine+payoff commanders flatten out gameplay into "do x to draw a card, do y to cheat some mana, do each enough and a z happens." It is genuinely such boring design, but people eat it up.
@@ratbaby3107 I'd like more tribal commanders, but specifically for creature types that don't have reasonable support. We don't need more elf, zombie, or dragon support. I personally was really excited when Disa the Restless because goyfs weren't represented as a tribe until now. I don't think it's a perfect card and that it's too easy to make overpowered when you add self mill, but it's a step in the right direction and should be rewarded so that WOTC is incentivized to continue down that path. I'm really hoping for some janky simic frog tribal commander, but I can't think of a way that you could make Grolnok work cohesively with Gitrog and Uurg.
They're just mining past loyalty, past glory, other IPs, and goodwill, like all of these properties that homogenise. Otherwise the casuals wouldn't be there. The fact that this makes a lot of money in a short period is absolutely an imperative of capital, but it also kills the long-term profitability of a product once the mining operation is complete and the property itself is denuded of not only novelty but the *ability* to be novel for itself. Capital is not a flawless value assignment engine but an incentive system that can lead to the destruction of long-term viable enterprises for short-term gains. Those two progression paths are incompatible. MTG will StarWars-ify or MCU-ify itself into utter incoherence on this path.
@@BatCaveOz * nuanced criticism of a company that reflects on how it's motivated by broader socio-economic incentives * "YOU SAID CAPITAL, DO YOU LIKE "COMMUNIST" I HATE? LIB LIB LIB-"
Variable progression in EDH is evident in the sheer amount of commanders that both "does the thing" while simultaneously rewarding you for "doing the thing". Not to mention the increasing amount of KOS commanders where "doing the thing" means they're so far ahead that it's near impossible to level the playing field.
Yeah, every new legendary seems to be a "do it all" commander and that's frustrating because it's a huge telegraph and also they're often absolutely cracked (voja)
Then Wizards just slaps ward onto the KOS commanders and makes them practically unbeatable because let’s be real, ward 2 and up is just hexproof. Nobody wants to turn their swords into a murder and give up their entire turn. Ward was a mistake and don’t even get me started on how ward tends to be on Blue cards which means your spell can get countered after you paid extra for it. Absolutely garbage card and game design.
You guys have articulated the issue so well with this video and the previous one. I know it is in the nature of everything to change over time. But I lament the passing of the version of the game that I used to play.
I think the fact that Wizards released four premium COMMANDER precons in Modern Horizons 3, including extra expensive extra-premium versions (multiple hundreds of dollars for fancier cardboard game pieces that are functionally the same as the regular product (one of the premium decks here in Canada is going for around $600+ !!!)) is the most telling of where their priorities are. Nothing new of course since Hasbro demanded wizards double it's revenue that one time, so why would the rich-suits-up-on-high ever choose to stop over-feeding the golden goose when it keeps laying more and more eggs, even if the goose may look exhausted and is showing signs of potential decay? If the goose dies, hasbro and the investors will just move onto the next one, they don't need to worry about betraying a player base that helped enable this franchise to live past 20 years. Power-creep? fine, it's been happening anyways, part of the product to keep it viable. Different, more goofy creative direction lately? Fine, that's a matter of creative taste and agency of the leaders of the company doing what they will, it happens. Cross over with other franchises changing this game from its own creative entity into TCG Smash Bros? Sure, in theory it can be kinda cool to see sometimes, and even I appreciate some of the cross overs too. But for me, it's the blatant underlying philosophy that drives these changing components to their over exhausted limit; profit gains above all else. Assassins Creed doesn't feel like it was added as a product to enrich the gameplay experience and add to the complex, multifaceted fantasy world of Magic, it felt like "hey remember me, this other franchise too?"
I posted on a popular forum recently discussing the downfall of tournament Magic and how it might be reversed. I was met with derision and pushback from commenters pointing out that commander is the most popular format now and that Magic is still very successful. But as a more long-term player who values the mastery more than vertical progression, I do feel vaguely undercut.. So thank you for having this discussion.
EDH is very successful indeed. But I think it's successful as a form of "custom Munchkin". It's a very fun tabletop experience with friends. It needs some caution and adjustment when playing with strangers. And worst of all, I don't think it can hold a company afloat for 30 years. I basically don't play legacy or modern anymore as I feel these formats are rotating every 2 years anyway. Pioneer is fine so far, but I cannot shake the feeling we don't have a "straight for Pioneer" set just because it isn't as popular yet. So Flesh and Blood it is, and I'll leave edh to be played at home with friends, like the boardgames it is.
As a magic player of 10+ years who was previously a very invested modern format tournament grinder: the state of the modern format post modern horizons pushed me out of competitive magic as a whole. They sold out their premier non-rotating format in order to sell even more supplemental product that rotates the format every other year. Commander is fun sometimes but doesnt scratch the competitive itch at all. I suggest those mtg players who are looking for a reasonable and well organized 1v1 competitive card game to look into Flesh and Blood. The game is everything i have personally been looking for as a competitive player and rewards deck mastery unlike any other tcg i have played before.
@@Xoulrath_ the state of the modern format pre-horizons/FIRE design was such that with every set release there would be maybe up to 4 or 5 cards that would see play and 1 of which might be considered good or even a new staple of an existing archetype, and very rarely create new archetypes such as Hollow One, Deaths Shadow, Dredge with Prized Amalgam, jeskai ascendancy combo, arclight phoenix, etc. That's not a rotation. Those are new archetypes emerging that largely do not push out existing archetypes because they are on a similar power threshold. Cards once considered format staples worth quite a bit of money with very high playability in the format fell off the map after the initial Horizons set, and that has continued to be true even more so with each Horizons set they release. Modern as a format has become Horizons block constructed with very few non-horizons cards seeing play mostly out of utility/glue/redundancy to support new archetypes put into the format by Horizons sets. THAT is a true rotation, and that did not happen pre-horizons.
I'm the UA-cam research guy who spends too much time learning about deck building and improving your play. It does cause friction sometimes and it's hard to pare back.
My group sometimes jokes about that with me, because I'm a mom and stay at home and I'm able to use Scryfall 😹 I always tell them that using it is very fast if you know how to use it, plus that is why I get to play a lot of Jank but in a functional way
Interesting because I've been playing for almost 9 years now and I watch a lot of deckbuilding videos but I play very casually and just want to have fun. I have a cEDH deck but I only play it when other people want to play their cEDH decks
I don't own a single mtg card. I have single digit playtime for mtg arena on steam. You would not belive how much elitism I feel towards this change of philosophy. How could they do that? I am a hater without even playing the game.
Mostly I think they're busy cranking out more content, and to keep those new cards interesting, they make them stronger. It's a snake that eats its own tail, and I don't think any fans think that good will come of this. WotC is making sales after some bad years, but I think it's steadily turning downwards. There are more and more good games out there, and less and less reason to stick with the one we used to love but won't recognize in half a decade's time.
I don't want to see Magic become Cards Against Humanity. CAH is a fun party game that is great for a laugh, but I would want to stop that transition if I could.
I think WotC changed the mastery path for a lot of us older Modern format players. I played through 2 Standard rotations and change, and 2 or 3 limited events per set. At that time, Modern felt like this format to work towards. Some of your Standard cards would be playable there. You could trade for or use store credit to get format staples. Pick up cards when Modern Masters sets came out. Once you had a deck, you knew it was going to be legal (outside of bans) and likely competitive for a good while. Then you would buy into a second deck and a third deck. You might have the staples to pivot between Jund and Abzan, play something fast like Infect or Affinity. You could pivot and respond to the meta, or shake up playstyles for fun. There were also single deck players that essentially dormant as Magic consumers, but it kept them engaged with the game instead of off it entirely, and they'd hop back in when something really spoke to them. It's not that way any more. It's kind of big standard with a soft rotation from power creep forcing out the old cards. I get it WotC makes more from MH sets than MM sets. Outside of limited or that Commander group with cards they already have, there's nowhere for that kind of player to go anymore, that mastery path is just gone.
I feel you. there used to be a kind of ecosystem. even a pipeline into commander since there were no direct to commander cards. you really had to dig and look through a lot of mtg history to find pieces that fit into a deck, at least thats how it was for me. Thats how I learned so much about older sets and other cards by looking for relevant cards for modern and commander. It made new sets more exciting when you could find unique interractions across multiple formats rather than the direct-to-format power creep. I miss those times
I think the internet is to blame. You suddenly got a whole expertise at your fingertips, and an ability to buy singles you need before they even got released. And you can't tell people not to use it, because this is the right (wrong) way to master it fast.
@@Wolan.I dont see what you mean. how does presale of 2nd market singles and sharing gameplay info online factor into WoTC changing trajectory on mastery of the game for enfranchised players vs new ones?
could you guys comment on how paper play VS digital play effect the game and player expectations? Does Magic need to define and market towards its formats better?
I feel like WOTC or Hasbro is doing a hail mary dive to try and see as much financial growth as possible. Their approach to this is to leverage power creep, fomo, gambling tactis, and familiar IPs as much as possible. All design philisophies have turned away from careful balance and conserving a steady progression and are prioritizing constant and quick purchases. The issue with this is that it's just not sustainable. People will burn out sooner or later and many people will say "screw this" and walk away. The old veterans of the game are likely to stick around because they're already too deep to dig themselves out. However, it will be harder to get newer players into the game if they see massive prices and complex compeittive barriers with each deck being irrelevant within a month. That's exactly what's been happening with Yu-Gi-Oh! And why that game's been dying out and taken out of stores. MTG is a collectible game with luxury prices. The global economy is struggling and there's hordes of cheaper alternatives for entertainment. Focusing on short-term gains at the cost of the game's integrity and reputation is a massive mistake and can easily cost MTG its slice of market dominance.
The old veterans will bow out into historical formats. Like Old School, PreModern, Lego, etc. so they cut off a period of time where they feel the “Magic” ended.
But.. Being a advocate of a devil: How can you expand the player base with every new set being "worked out" within a hours after release ? How many new players would you get in tournament driven game like MTG used to be ?
People have been saying “Wotc is ruining the game” for 20 years now- they make $1 billion a year for Hasbro . Next year someone will make the same comment
@@bobthor9647 I know we all hate doomerism; the issue is that "Make 1 billion dollars" isn't coming from substantiblity, it's coming from "how much can we undermine our products so we can squeeze every ounce of profit out of this game?" While I doubt mtg itself is gonna end over this; this era will NOT be looked back at as a golden age for the game.
@@Wolan. Good question; but unfortunately for me and you, it's not one that Wotc is approaching with any caution. In the past; the way wotc delt with "meta" was to more or less have three main deck types (Aggro, Control, mid-range) and a few subtypes (combo, tribal/typal, ramp, tempo, etc.). The idea being if any deck gets too powerful, there should be easily available counter-decks that can be made and will generally defeat the format boogie man. This would had meant even in times like the dominance of og mirrodin Affinity in 04-05, there was decks like Big Red, Goblins, and GW anti-Affinity that would prevent a top 8 overloaded with the same deck. As we can see with Nadu and irk; we don't got much available safety valves that can remotely handle the current wave of broken stuff outside of bannings.
Magic in the early days was designed with slow mastery progression in mind. Richard said many times, that one of the key components of the game was a discovery of new cards, by expanding a player base (and a number of cards in playgroup). It was essentially killed by internet. First, the knowledge of existing cards, then the strategies, lastly the availability of singles cards - stripped away the slow progression aspect of mastering the game. Now, if you want to attend to a tournament, you have to invest a ton of time to search online for strategies, meta, optimal cards to buy (for a format that you intend to play) ...etc. Otherwise you will encounter the people who done it, and they will have a ton of advantage against you. That's why this type of progression doesn't work in tournament scene despite of people (who are already invested) wanting to go this way, because it's barier of entry is still growing, and it keeps away most of new players. On the other end is a "casual" progression in Commander is killed by the same players who wanted a mastery progression. They tend to play Commander the way they played in tournaments and are ruin the whole "not mastery" format by the things you said in the video. The vertical progression aspects of the game are simply killed by not being important in face of loosing the game to someone who doesn't care about social aspect, aesthetics or many decks (toys)...
All I feel like I've been doing latley with my decks is optimizing. Happens with every set of course. Latley it's been like whole sections of my decks will just get swapped out with just better cards. Now that's fine for a bit but it's up to me to decide whether I constantly want to be kept up or not.
This exactly my argument for a lot of players lately, the brewing gets to the best point possible before a lot of money spent and it stumbles on gameplay. Try to catch up on learning how to use the tool instead of getting a better hammer.
Commander was fun while being a clunky, non optimized random play format. If you want to play it competitive way you'll end up in EDH power creep nonsense...
Fact is its not fun to play a casual format againstpeople that still want to win by turn 3. It takes all the fun out of building for flavor or for "cool factor". But these people have ALWAYS been lurking in every play group. We all know them and love them, they usually play "the deck" once and laugh as you all lose then move on to a deck that is fun for everyone. People have to realize it's not the destination it's the journey, as cliche as that sounds.
The real pain is when you get someone who refuses to do the 'then move on to a deck that is fun for everyone' part. Whether that ends in them being kicked out of the group or everyone else refusing to play magic anymore...
@laurencefraser Yeahhh... there's someone at my LGS that's always there and they only play combo decks so I rarely can win with my casual decks and sometimes have to resort to using my cEDH Kinnan deck lol..
This is why a lot of people (myself included) think that cube is the future of Magic for these enfranchised players. Similar to Elden Ring, it gives play groups the ability to tailor their experience to fit the groups level of skill or play style. Vintage cube is complicated with a high skill ceiling, but you can also make a cube with a bunch of French Vanilla creatures and lightning bolt equivalents. The only negative is you lose that tinkering aspect for the players of the cube as the decks are ephemeral; but then you can just do a cube rotation between your playgroups cubes. You also don’t have to update it for every set that releases.
Great points! I'm a player that really enjoys Magic for the mastery aspect but enjoy the IP as well. I think they are doing a good job at catering to both types. I think we might eventually see a much more commander like competitive format in the future to re-bridge the gap as Commander is the "main" format now. I feel like as long as they keep commander, draft, and a 60 card format alive they can satisfy like 80% of their current audience.
I wouldn't say progression is particularly inevitable in casual EDH, yes people can buy better cards but there isn't a direct relationship between that and getting better at the game. You could have a deck full of bangers, but if you play with the same general mindset and strategy you won't get better - you may win more games, but you won't get better, and I think that's an important distinction. Conversely, someone who has good threat assessment, knows how to use the stack, when to interact and how to employ different strategies will beat you with a precon. The reason is that it's very hard to learn and master these skills if you don't play against people who want to do the same.
Or you can spend a ton of time reading and completing the deck and being beat by a new precon with stronger cards. But you've got point that players don't have time to learn (progress) by themselves by playing the game.
Had to move to Modern because the rule zero keeps getting increasingly bullshittier as time goes on. Feels so good being able to just sit down and know we're both doing our best to win, instead of feeling bad because of making optimal decisions and targeting in what's essentially a party game.
I moved onto playing other games and it’s a breath of fresh air. Often we feel our memories of good games are connected to us having to continue playing them and then there’s the sunk cost fallacy to deal with.
For me I feel like Modern and EDH should be separate, it's not hard to make Competiative cards and cards for edh, problem is cEDH when they start mixing and MH3 has EDH cards in it causing Modern players having to deal with EDH bull. it's fine as Standard was normally for standard. but more and more legendaries keep getting made, the cards look more like Yugioh, Modern is turning into legacy because of MH and UB sets. it's getting to the point people are annoyed of commander bias. I love commander I play Prossh but it's annoying when Wizards is pushing to many sets causing problem in other formats and not testing their cards properly like Nadu
@@freddiesimmons1394 that makes sense, I was waiting for them to address the old progression of improving at a deck such as Jund over years, but the conversation never went in that direction
I think the key difference between designing for casual vs. competitive - and a major pain point of people like myself who prefer competitive - is that designing for casual is ruining competitive environments. Whereas when the game was designed for competitive, the casual formats got the "trickle down" cards that you mentioned in a previous video, but the play environment was never made less fun for those players. Casual players got the enjoyment of putting pieces together to make something cool. Now, cards are designed to do everything under the sun because WotC assumes there's 3 opponents to deal with, and the competitive players have to deal with the stress and monetary cost of bannings.
I think you might be imagining a world where the main way to play the game was competitive. The overwhelming majority of players have always been casual. Kitchen table magic turned into commander at some point but in both eras most players were not training for a grand prix or even had a dci number.
My brother is a Mastery kind of player, and he's voiced to me his concerns with how Magic is changing. I'm a sucker for Variable Progression, but with my childhood playing against my brother so regularly, I have a strong love of Mastery, even if it doesn't come naturally to me.
As someone who is only interested in commander and limited, I still think that having products that bypass standard is what led the game to this not ideal situation. Standard is a great filter for having good diversity while keeping all the various "creep" in check, not perfect but decently effective. While commander products are cool and all, I still feel the format and magic itself would be better without them (I mean the exclusive cards, not having a product in itself just with reprints). Sadly what is best for the game usually isn't in line with what the company deems more profitable.
It’s funny, I was introduced to magic with commander a decade ago. Played super casual standard and whatnot and then didn’t play for years and picked it up again last year. I’m not entirely against the game changing but the complexity creep and power creep is a bit of a turnoff (and the constant deluge of new cards as compared to the old release schedule) still enjoy magic but it’s definitely changed a fair bit
I just want horizontal sets for a few year power creep has been balls to the walls the past few years how did we get sheoldred thats such a rediculous effect that has absolutly no place in a card game
I totally agree. I stopped buying, acquiring, and playing cards from newer sets. I can’t support it. But apparently, the majority love it because they are selling more overall product than ever.
The problem solves itself if WotC reverts some of its recent decisions from like 2018 to current. FIRE design needs to stop. It is turning the game into YGO/PKM. Sets for actual formats should not be designed with commander in mind at all. The health of other formats should be more important. This isn't a real format. Products to help push the unofficial commander format should be reduced to 1 or 2 a year and be specific to the format.
... I'd be impressed if they managed that, given how much of a disaster YGO is by design and that pokemon's flaws are fundamently 'we doubled down on MtG's flaws, but tried to keep the complexity way down'.
@@laurencefraser At this point it would be a miracle. Either they will get so desperate in the future they will actually ax the reserve list as a last ditch effort to keep MTG going, or it will just continue on the decline until it crashes and burns. Maybe if we are lucky, Hasbro will sell WotC off to a company that actually cares.
I've played Yugioh before, it's actually the first card game I ever played and honestly I don't get the appeal people have for it. Almost all combos in the game are the same. There's barely any variety to the game. There's nothing fun about it.
@@azelia2464 I have played it since 2002. I have tons of great memories and fun experiences with friends. Playing in tournaments and the ever growing costs of power creep and misused ban lists have me on a judge events only break right now. The game has definitely gotten worse since Takahashi passed and that bar was already kind of low.
Power creep is destroying magic. Printing cards at the same level does improve decks with redundancy. Lightning Bolt is better than shock, a second Bolt is also better than the shock. It does not require a 4dmg Uberbolt. At some point which I recon is already passed, the ratio between mana cost to card effect to cards in hand to life total gets irreparably destroyed. If Shock-like card does 10 damage you only need 2 cards to win the game. Meaning you can play 10% lands rather than 40% , win on turn 2 at the latest etc. Everything will be just off
Ok, 1v1 60-Card Magic and multiplayer Commander Magic are fundamentally different. Which style of play* would you say 1v1 Commander and/or multiplayer 60-card is more like? (*Commander is a format, but calling 1v1 a format doesn't seem accurate to me)
Sadly, with Wizards simply not supporting Modern/Pioneer, or even helping LGSs to promote it, I've been pushed out of a game that I once loved. So I don't even buy singles anymore. I wish that I liked Commander. I just don't. I don't even mind FFA 60 card Magic; it's how me and a few friends played a lot back in the day for the sake of time and making sure that we all got some games in. But Commander itself has become Magic. I don't even begrudge the Commander lovers. I just wish that there was some focus on what Magic was, so that I could still enjoy my game.
@@shorewall I'm aware. As I said, I don't care that Commander exists. Nor do I care that a casual format is the most popular format of the game. That's par for the course in life. Even so, it definitely sucks that Wizards, who could have supported Modern/Pioneer more, especially after making must-have product for the Modern, didn't. So now it's just all Commander, all the time, at every game store within a reasonable driving distance where I'm at. There is no more 1v1 Magic, which is what I'm interested in. So I've taken my money and moved to other games. I've spent well over $2,000 in the last 7 or so months on Lorcana. I've recently gotten into One Piece now that I can find product for a reasonable price, and I've dropped about $265 on it in just the last month. That could have all gone to Wizards had they just kept 1v1 competitive Modern/Pioneer alive at LGSs. Hell, I might have even been willing to check out the new Standard format now that it's a longer rotation. But I can't even find that near me. Oh well. Guess that I gotta give my disposal income to other companies. Hopefully the casuals, who spend nowhere near as much as players like me over the same time period, number enough for long enough to keep Hasbro in the black.
They’re related but on different ends of motivation. Challenge is what the game is extrinsically presenting to you. Mastery is intrinsic for the player, effectively creating their own challenges.
Yu-Gi-Oh will just do both in the worst way possible. You wanna play now and have an old deck you like - here is basically the same deck with a new coat of paint and higher numbers, but to keep it exciting there are now more effects and triggers that can only happen once per turn (across multiple copies of a card) and conditions to using or not being allowed to use it and of course you have to keep track of it in your head ... Wouldn't want to clutter the field up with more counters or tokens than absolutely necessary, it is so much more convenient to make the game take so much mental load that in Feature matches both players and multiple judges will miss someone making mistakes
I think mtg should have or start goin into a very very niche way of making cards to control power creep … make cards specifically for niche curtain cards so cards can only get better with curtain cards not 50% of cards … have cards like for example commanders plate … have a card upgrade a curtain card or commander for low cost very niche … then a higher cost or no cost just to keep it niche for combo ing game pieces … just gotta make cards that don’t combo or go with every card … create some style for a unique niche commander or play style then cards can’t get too out of hand or expensive
That's generally the direction that Yu-Gi-Oh takes; where cards reference very specific archetypes and only work within them (apart from some more generic cards). But then the issue of power-creep still exists, it's just that instead of power-creeping the individual cards each set, the archetypes themselves are what becomes powercrept in order to sell the new cards.
They used to have this kind of power creep control when Standard cards were almost all made to be used in Standard 1v1. Rarely there would be a reprint or new card that was perfect for Modern. Fire design was they began focusing on putting Commander playable cards in Standard. That upset the old system, and forced a ton of bans. Hopefully they can address these issues in Foundations, but its obvious now that the Commander-first design is here to stay until players stop buying
I'm a commander player and I *hate* where Magic is going. The moment Wizards designed for Commander, Magic started to slowly move into *suuuuuuck* territory, even and *especially Commander*!!! Commander used to be the fun thing where you can play weird and janky things that don't have a home anywhere else. Now it's the thing that has cards designed specifically for it that everyone plays because they're just too fucking good. Of course Wizards and Hasbro saw the Dollar signs when Commander popped off. Yet another beautiful thing ruined by capitalism :'cc
The 'strictly better' Progression is a _huge_ issue for mtg. Mtg is a game played based on ressource Management. If the only way to go is up in efficiency, ultimately that means that the only way a card can become 'better' at one point is making it cheaper. Bloomburrow has a new card, 'Fell', which is an uncommon for one and a Black to destroy target creature as a sorcery. That's unheard of - this effect so far has only ever existed on higher rarity cards, or been associated with more restrictive costs at that mana value. Walk the Plank is two black and destroys Non-merfolk, some cards destroy a creature based on low mana value, etc. Fell is a card that has taken an effect previously found at the 3 mv slot, and brought it into 2 mv, while dropping the restrictions similar cards had in the past. This directly illustrates the major issue with this kind of progression, which is format/game speed. This game gets ever more faster, and unless you want to make some calculation up at which point a card is too efficient, you cannot escape that. This is not comparable to YuGiOh at least, which iirc in this day and age has nearly no ressource restrictions to work with other than cards. All this is to say that WOTC Is actively undermining the ressource Management aspect of their game, and at some point that will likely be entirely broken if they continue like this; because what does a 5-c-card have to become to compete against hyper efficient 1 and 2-drops? At some point, people will just stop running 5-mana cards alltogether, already more expensive strategies are falling out of favor it seems. Basically, WOTC is making commander into a rotating format as they do with modern, losing a lot of the appeal of the format intended to be for everybody and giving everybody the Chance to actually play with all cards of mtg history.
@@lVideoWatcherl exactly right. How much does the best card in modern take to cast? 0 mana. The last card that was banned in Modern cost 0 mana to cast too.
@@lVideoWatcherl Yep. When you make cards like Psychic Frog, Murktide, and Nadu at 2 and 3 mana, why would I ever play cards that cost more? They win the game on their own.
I think the key takeaway here is that - for casuals edh anyway - it is now getting a lot more difficult to identify new cards that are the right level of "fun" without that fun letting one player completely spiral out of control under the right circumstances. That stuff is for cedh. I mostly play cedh and new toys don't really cause problems for us (we're always looking for ways to iterate better on what we're already doing) but with cards like Nadu a more casual player will think to bring it to a casual table and not realize what kind of absurd play patterns it produces. One thing I WILL defend about new precons is that they're tuned pretty well. Precons from about 5-6 years ago were pretty good, but you'd still need to look for cards printed half a decade ago for them to really shine. This might not be an immediate consideration but people come up to our LGS all the time asking which precon is best for a new player, and we're increasingly recommending them the newer ones. Games have to grow somehow and if commander is how new people are getting into the game, it makes more sense to start them off of a powerful precon so they can keep up with people who have been working on their decks for a while. A little power creep in the precons is thus forgivable. You guys have been talking a lot lately about your gripes with commander and what happens when decks of different power levels come to the table. I think the boogeyman shouldn't be players or cards that are at the top end of the competitive spectrum - if anything they are very transparent about what their decks do and they're not coming to your store lying about having a 6- or 7-power deck that has a turn 3 otk in it. Precons solve this problem!
Precons DON'T solve this problem... The problem is that not all players are focusing on a same game goal as you. If you want to play a deck of "Goat sacrifice and demons", you cannot because it's not optimized for winning. And buying newer and newer precons won't lead you to construct a deck you know and love for it's theme.
I miss the pre-planewalkers days when it felt like the players were wizards battling wits. Planeswalkers and Commanders take the player out of the immersion of the game and put focus on the cards as characters instead. Probably not a popular take, but that's how I feel. I'm looking for a tcg that has that vibe or maybe alternate rules in magic (no planeswalkers, no commander magic?).
Totally agree. I have never played a Planeswalker, don’t like them. But I still build and play! And I don’t play Commander either. We need to start a group lol
This is a perfect video I was tldr texting my buddies a couple days ago about a lot of this same train of thought. I recognize that neither philosophies are “better” than the other, but I am in the old school boat. I feel that before wotc started printing cards with commander in mind (anything printed before the first commander set I think 2013) “commander” was a thing that magic players dabbled in, where now “magic” is a thing that COMMANDER players dabble in now, if at all. I like the environment where commander felt more experimental, there were less auto include cards for the archetypes (if you can even call them archetypes back then), and the cards were designed with the vertical progression idea and then were almost discovered for commander. Really good video nailing the idea of two very distinct audiences
Big fan of this content and the recent discussions on Magic’s journey. Would love to hear y’all’s thoughts on how it could better incorporate each player base in the future (hoping the Foundations discussion was a hint at future dialogue).
The only way to save the game is for Hasbro to spin off WOTC and sell it to a private group of passionate Investors. And that's only Step 1 of a few. Safe to say that even when MTG is dead, I think Hasbro will bury it in the vault so that no one else can do anything with it. Thus do all Corpos.
These two things are not wholly separate. Play for play's sake, and seeking novelty, are learning experiences. And any learning experience can aid in mastery. Mastering the design and play of a gimmick deck, may allow it to compete but not necessarily win. Although there will be differences in player attitudes, there's good and bad in both angles. Tho I will say money may well factor into card design. A niche card will have a niche audience, but raw power drives sales.
I could see the argument for there being mastery in other aspects of the game, like deck building or playing for fun. But I think we have to take into account what the systems of magic are incentivizing. Someone has to win for the game to end.
Gavin, go beat Elden Ring and then play Miyazaki's previous games if you haven't. Sekiro, Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1 especially all have things that will add to your game design skill set.
I havent played mtg for few years, but I was always consider myself as commander player. But never have an issue with 1v1 formats, I have constructed dozen of rogue decks and performed kinda competitive in constructed enviroment, both times my failure in nationals was Draft. You know, competitive players not very good in reacting to non-orthodox decks, for exemple while most stompy meta was MonoG or Gb stompy (Dominaria khaladesh), players was not ready to side against Gu stompy. Btw playing commander and teaching new players was my motivation to became judge, and lot of constructed players was asked ruling about obscure interaction because EDH has lots of such interactions.
Tbh I think, now that we're 20 to 30 years out with MtG/Pokemon/YGO, I think trying to make them perpetually alive games is a mistake. It makes variable progression/power creep and the loss of identity inevitable. Plus, there's clearly space and a desire for new game systems. I think they should retire the games and recreate MtG and YGO 2.0 with revamped, improved system rules. Much like how Digimon retired its bad TCG and created one of the best with its 2.0.
Pokemon tcg is not in a similar spot to yugioh and magic. The game is arguably worse but it is simpler and more fun for most young kids. Also the format rotates and meta decks are like 50bucks or less so it doesn't have the barrier to entry mtg and yugioh have
I didn't know Digimon reset that's interesting. Wizards will continue creating new formats as they put older ones to rest. Legacy is dead on modern on it way out. Pioneer/pauper horizons is on the horizon and they will just make a new format. Yugioh is a weird case because there's only 1 format and it's the most complicated advanced version of the game. Yugioh could definatley do a reset or make a new format for onboarding new players
I highly disagree with your thesis that commander players are more interested in variable progression than tournament spikes. I think the opposite is true. Tournament spikes want a one mana way to deal 4 damage; commander players want a sorcery that gives all none squirrels -x/-x where x is the number of squirrels you control. Commander players want linear strategy, tournament grinders want stronger cards
very VERY unpopular opinion, but that's why I love Devil Daggers so much. I can make my own playthrough depending on my skill level and it gets me right on the edge where I get these amazing adrenalin rushes and flow states.
I like Magic as a game. Because of my geographical location I can't play in paper (there are at least two ten year old decks somewhere in my house and no local scene that's advertised). Arena is fine. Arena mostly rewards vertical progression by design. I would love to try Commander. Commander won't work on Arena because it'll just be sweaty players going infinite with optimised decks in a format that should be "for fun" and "use what you have" because of the rewards track in Arena. I once complained on the Reddit about idiots just durdling around with their infinite standard combo, the response was "well if you're dead on board just scoop," that kind of attitude isn't conducive to a social game format.
Also, you mention Binding of Isaac. Go play Hades if you haven't, in regards to the rogue-lite done right. Hades is a masterpiece in the same vein as the soulslike are.
The easy solution to "I am no longer the target demographic and disagree with the new direction" is to quit. Magic is not my abusive ex girlfriend who keeps telling me it's going to be different next time.
When did magic start to lean more towards casual? I didn’t get this memo. Do you all play the game? Do you not pay attention to the power creep that’s happening?
2004. You can still find the Maro podcast where he explains that the tournament scene doesn't advertise enough to make them money and that they would be simplifying the game for a broader audience going forward.
outside of kitchen table magic, Commander is the most popular format by far since the pandemic. Wizards has doubled down on the amount of commander product, and commander focused design since, ON TOP of the multi-format power creep. Fire Design was a mistake imo.
The thing I like about commander is that it allows for more creative and unusual deck building, allowing you to play cards and strategies that aren't really viable in 1v1 formats. IN THEORY. In reality, Wizards have been pushing the base line power level of the format so much with the strength of precons and super efficient commander cards for the last few years that you can't actually play 90% of available commanders if you want a shot at participating in the game. It fucking sucks.
Sorry this is a tangent only barely related to what you talked about but it's something I've thought about for a long time and think is interesting. I think incredibly few cards are objective upgrades over others, and I think that's really cool. Is Lightning Bolt better than Shock in every single instance? No, actually. What if you end your turn tapped out and your opponent takes control of your turn with Mind Slaver or Emrakul, and you have exactly 3 life or a creature with 3 toughness? In that case, you would wish you had a Shock instead. What if the opponent has a Phyrexian Obliterator with 2 toughness left? Using the bolt to finish it would require you to sacrifice one additional permanent. Is Fabled Passage objectively better than Evolving Wilds? Well...yes. Except that Evolving Wilds is a card with a different name. So if you're at max copies of Passage and you really want another effect like that, you still have a reason to play Wilds. I know these are hyper specific niche edge cases that will rarely if ever happen. In general you can definitely say that some cards are better than others without splitting hairs because it'll be true in 99% of cases. But I think it's very cool that if you try really hard, you can always think of *some* niche or edge case where almost every single card might be the best option for the job,
Diluting the idea of strictly better cards with absurdly convoluted play scenarios is just distraction, and doesn't address the main point of strictly better cards at all. It's a deckbuilding choice, not a play scenario puzzle. Like you said, it can be really interesting to think about those scenarios, especially if you count out the ubiquitous "what if Mind Slaver?" solution. However, if both were legal and the choice was between the two of them, when would you ever put Shock in your deck _over_ Lightning Bolt? Not in addition to, like in your Fabled Passage vs. Evolving Wilds example, but over. In short, you could say that when given a choice, one card would always be picked over another because it either gives more for the exact same resource cost, or it gives the same for a lesser cost. In my opinion, the only instance where this gets a bit muddied is with tribal synergies. It's easy to see that cards like Sunhome Stalwart, Bounty Agent, Relic Seeker, Sun Sentinel and even Kjeldoran Outrider and Moorland Inquisitor are all strictly better than Glory Seeker. However, is Terrain Elemental really strictly better than Cylian Elf? In an absolute vacuum yes, of course it is. But would you always pick Terrain Elemental over Cylian Elf when building a deck? That's a trickier question. It would require a very specifically shaped format, but it is very much possible that the question of whether to pick Cylian Elf or Terrain Elemental is not obvious. Once again, though, this is a deckbuilding choice. Not a puzzle.
I think your aside about Elden Ring speaks to how competing tracks of mastery can co-exist in a single player game, because you actually can choose to engage in either of them in limited capacities. Once you enter a multiplayer environment, that's not the case anymore, because now you have to negotiate how you're collectively engaging with those systems. I'm reminded somewhat of speedrun categories - if Any% stops feeling like meaningful skill expression in a game due to high rng, players seeking mastery move on to Any% Restricted or Any% Modded (like the 15 card mod of Forbidden Memories). And a lot of the gameplay grief we're seeing is from players who wanted to play Magic getting pushed into more restricted subsets of the game. As always, I appreciate y'all slipping broader game design discussions into a "Magic" video. I'm glad the channel blew up and popped into my recommended feed!
It IS a full negative, cause there are many good casual games. Magic was the BEST game ever made. And that game is dying. Him saying MTG is not a lesser game now is just wrong and he explained why hes wrong.
Yes New magic is NEGATIVE. The past is glorious in design, by creating cards following design points... now is just CREEP IT UP BECAUSE MONEY. Then: lets do a good game because it will bring money - now: create super broken cards to deceive the players with a false power sense ruining the game for get MORE MONEY
I've been strictly playing commander for a few years - played magic before, but got back into it because of commander maybe like.... 6-7 years ago. It's a legacy format- some of the most powerful garbage ever printed, literal mistakes in card design, plus heinous combos with a card from fifteen years ago and a new card with perfect interaction are there. I don't want more progression of powerful effects. Commander doesn't need cards that are better than previous cards, and arguably needs fewer cards with insane powerful effects. Variety is better for it and magic as a whole- something can be powerful in limited or standard, but weak and usable in commander. But WotC has bad priorities anyway, and only care about whatever method sells more product anyhow.
Aggro is cancer. Ocelot is not even legendary. 1/1 first strike, lifelink + triggers??? Playing any 1 mana creature that's in your hand anytime you can is dumbing down the game a lot, have you seen the developer interview for MH3 these people have no concept of high level modern play, they just made a bunch of easy cards to win with by not having to make difficult decisions. "I m A nEw pLaYeR aNd i tOo wAnT tO wIn 😢" Modern was a format for high level plays and deep knowledge of the game. Now we just put a bunch of 1 mana creatures and win the game with free tokens. Modern in a nutshell: It's either just super easy plays with scam or just dump all your creatures anytime you can or everlasting turns with nadu. Who is gonna watch these events?? There are no subtle plays, no neurons needes to win. It's amazing how they can ruin a format with incompetent developers, these people don't play modern and developed a modern set. Hilarious This is shit. And no fury doesn't solve this problem.
The most elaborate and complicated game ever made has been dumbed down too much. The fact these cards don't require you to know the complexities of the game is an insult to the format. Mh3 is 90% shit
Friday night magic draft was the most important for me as a new player starting and trying to get better. I got better at play, card analysis and got to meet all the people that made up the backbone of the community
FNM, or any competitive event at LGSs back in the day (going back to 2014 at least) were all about actual competition. There wasn't this mentality today where FNM is for "casuals," and that you're a tryhard if you bring a meta deck, meta adjacent deck, or even simply a rogue deck designed with the meta in mind (my usual preference). It's pretty sad actually. I've just moved on to other games because Magic is just Commander now.
Yes! @@Xoulrath_ MTG is just commander now.
Draft was very important to me as someone who has played the game since 1994. Keeping up with all the new sets is also too difficult now
@@Xoulrath_ Around here, for many years (don't know if it's still true or not) 'friday night magic' and 'draft' became synonyms. Gave you most of the advantages of being 'casual', while still being a competative tournament... and, of course, it's good for the shop owner's ability to move product too.
@@laurencefraser places by me just used FNM as a way to get people in the door. Sometimes there were drafts. Sometimes it was Standard. Regardless, it was ALWAYS competitive. Now, not so much.
As for Modern, it seemed to be done more on Monday and Tuesday so as to give the format its own day. It also allowed players, who might wish to do Standard/Draft as well, the ability to do both. Again, now not so much. Some Modern events still fire around here, but they're all a solid 45+ minutes in shit traffic there and back. Add 3-4+ hours of a tourney and it just isn't worth it. Oh well.
Your point about commander players feeling undercut too is absolutely correct imo. I used to have a lot more fun figuring out ways to build commander decks that weren't necessarily dictated by a "strictly better" variable progression - ways to win with like Phage and manifest for example. It almost feels like commander is becoming increasingly monolithic with the archetypes and play styles being released/strengthened which partially detracts from the creativity side of commander (which may be in line to some degree with the mastery you talked about).
I've felt that particularly with the tribal releases. Feels like every set one of the precons supports a tribe and inevitably becomes "play this commander tailor made for this deck, and every good thing with the correct type, and there's your deck". Or keyword specific commanders. Why even bother with deck building at that point, if it's going to be "the opt commander and the 30 best opt cards"
Salubrious Snail made a video talking about this wrt the cycling commander and how engine+payoff commanders flatten out gameplay into "do x to draw a card, do y to cheat some mana, do each enough and a z happens."
It is genuinely such boring design, but people eat it up.
@@ratbaby3107 I'd like more tribal commanders, but specifically for creature types that don't have reasonable support. We don't need more elf, zombie, or dragon support. I personally was really excited when Disa the Restless because goyfs weren't represented as a tribe until now. I don't think it's a perfect card and that it's too easy to make overpowered when you add self mill, but it's a step in the right direction and should be rewarded so that WOTC is incentivized to continue down that path. I'm really hoping for some janky simic frog tribal commander, but I can't think of a way that you could make Grolnok work cohesively with Gitrog and Uurg.
@@al8188 WOTC is ruining Commander.
@@chasm9557 small tribal support is always the best way to make tribal matter more
They're just mining past loyalty, past glory, other IPs, and goodwill, like all of these properties that homogenise. Otherwise the casuals wouldn't be there. The fact that this makes a lot of money in a short period is absolutely an imperative of capital, but it also kills the long-term profitability of a product once the mining operation is complete and the property itself is denuded of not only novelty but the *ability* to be novel for itself. Capital is not a flawless value assignment engine but an incentive system that can lead to the destruction of long-term viable enterprises for short-term gains. Those two progression paths are incompatible. MTG will StarWars-ify or MCU-ify itself into utter incoherence on this path.
Fortnitification
Thats a very eloquent way of putting it. Im stealing it.
So you like Bernie Sanders?
Got it.
@@BatCaveOz * nuanced criticism of a company that reflects on how it's motivated by broader socio-economic incentives *
"YOU SAID CAPITAL, DO YOU LIKE "COMMUNIST" I HATE? LIB LIB LIB-"
Well said sir.
Variable progression in EDH is evident in the sheer amount of commanders that both "does the thing" while simultaneously rewarding you for "doing the thing". Not to mention the increasing amount of KOS commanders where "doing the thing" means they're so far ahead that it's near impossible to level the playing field.
Yeah, every new legendary seems to be a "do it all" commander and that's frustrating because it's a huge telegraph and also they're often absolutely cracked (voja)
Then Wizards just slaps ward onto the KOS commanders and makes them practically unbeatable because let’s be real, ward 2 and up is just hexproof. Nobody wants to turn their swords into a murder and give up their entire turn. Ward was a mistake and don’t even get me started on how ward tends to be on Blue cards which means your spell can get countered after you paid extra for it. Absolutely garbage card and game design.
Love this channel, it's a healthy and well though analytical discussion on a deeper level. Keep this up.
You guys have articulated the issue so well with this video and the previous one.
I know it is in the nature of everything to change over time. But I lament the passing of the version of the game that I used to play.
What a time it was!
I think the fact that Wizards released four premium COMMANDER precons in Modern Horizons 3, including extra expensive extra-premium versions (multiple hundreds of dollars for fancier cardboard game pieces that are functionally the same as the regular product (one of the premium decks here in Canada is going for around $600+ !!!)) is the most telling of where their priorities are. Nothing new of course since Hasbro demanded wizards double it's revenue that one time, so why would the rich-suits-up-on-high ever choose to stop over-feeding the golden goose when it keeps laying more and more eggs, even if the goose may look exhausted and is showing signs of potential decay? If the goose dies, hasbro and the investors will just move onto the next one, they don't need to worry about betraying a player base that helped enable this franchise to live past 20 years. Power-creep? fine, it's been happening anyways, part of the product to keep it viable. Different, more goofy creative direction lately? Fine, that's a matter of creative taste and agency of the leaders of the company doing what they will, it happens. Cross over with other franchises changing this game from its own creative entity into TCG Smash Bros? Sure, in theory it can be kinda cool to see sometimes, and even I appreciate some of the cross overs too. But for me, it's the blatant underlying philosophy that drives these changing components to their over exhausted limit; profit gains above all else. Assassins Creed doesn't feel like it was added as a product to enrich the gameplay experience and add to the complex, multifaceted fantasy world of Magic, it felt like "hey remember me, this other franchise too?"
I posted on a popular forum recently discussing the downfall of tournament Magic and how it might be reversed. I was met with derision and pushback from commenters pointing out that commander is the most popular format now and that Magic is still very successful. But as a more long-term player who values the mastery more than vertical progression, I do feel vaguely undercut.. So thank you for having this discussion.
EDH is very successful indeed. But I think it's successful as a form of "custom Munchkin". It's a very fun tabletop experience with friends. It needs some caution and adjustment when playing with strangers. And worst of all, I don't think it can hold a company afloat for 30 years.
I basically don't play legacy or modern anymore as I feel these formats are rotating every 2 years anyway. Pioneer is fine so far, but I cannot shake the feeling we don't have a "straight for Pioneer" set just because it isn't as popular yet.
So Flesh and Blood it is, and I'll leave edh to be played at home with friends, like the boardgames it is.
As a magic player of 10+ years who was previously a very invested modern format tournament grinder: the state of the modern format post modern horizons pushed me out of competitive magic as a whole. They sold out their premier non-rotating format in order to sell even more supplemental product that rotates the format every other year.
Commander is fun sometimes but doesnt scratch the competitive itch at all. I suggest those mtg players who are looking for a reasonable and well organized 1v1 competitive card game to look into Flesh and Blood.
The game is everything i have personally been looking for as a competitive player and rewards deck mastery unlike any other tcg i have played before.
Modern ALWAYS rotated. I'm really getting tired of people NOT understanding this.
Limited is still a great option for 1 v 1 or team play
@@Xoulrath_ were all getting tired of people like you trust us
@@tylerberg4832he's not wrong though.
@@Xoulrath_ the state of the modern format pre-horizons/FIRE design was such that with every set release there would be maybe up to 4 or 5 cards that would see play and 1 of which might be considered good or even a new staple of an existing archetype, and very rarely create new archetypes such as Hollow One, Deaths Shadow, Dredge with Prized Amalgam, jeskai ascendancy combo, arclight phoenix, etc.
That's not a rotation. Those are new archetypes emerging that largely do not push out existing archetypes because they are on a similar power threshold. Cards once considered format staples worth quite a bit of money with very high playability in the format fell off the map after the initial Horizons set, and that has continued to be true even more so with each Horizons set they release.
Modern as a format has become Horizons block constructed with very few non-horizons cards seeing play mostly out of utility/glue/redundancy to support new archetypes put into the format by Horizons sets. THAT is a true rotation, and that did not happen pre-horizons.
I'm the UA-cam research guy who spends too much time learning about deck building and improving your play. It does cause friction sometimes and it's hard to pare back.
My group sometimes jokes about that with me, because I'm a mom and stay at home and I'm able to use Scryfall 😹 I always tell them that using it is very fast if you know how to use it, plus that is why I get to play a lot of Jank but in a functional way
Interesting because I've been playing for almost 9 years now and I watch a lot of deckbuilding videos but I play very casually and just want to have fun. I have a cEDH deck but I only play it when other people want to play their cEDH decks
I don't own a single mtg card. I have single digit playtime for mtg arena on steam. You would not belive how much elitism I feel towards this change of philosophy. How could they do that? I am a hater without even playing the game.
😂
Because you care about people who get invested
Mostly I think they're busy cranking out more content, and to keep those new cards interesting, they make them stronger.
It's a snake that eats its own tail, and I don't think any fans think that good will come of this.
WotC is making sales after some bad years, but I think it's steadily turning downwards. There are more and more good games out there, and less and less reason to stick with the one we used to love but won't recognize in half a decade's time.
I don't want to see Magic become Cards Against Humanity. CAH is a fun party game that is great for a laugh, but I would want to stop that transition if I could.
Wizards disagrees 😅
I think WotC changed the mastery path for a lot of us older Modern format players. I played through 2 Standard rotations and change, and 2 or 3 limited events per set. At that time, Modern felt like this format to work towards. Some of your Standard cards would be playable there. You could trade for or use store credit to get format staples. Pick up cards when Modern Masters sets came out. Once you had a deck, you knew it was going to be legal (outside of bans) and likely competitive for a good while. Then you would buy into a second deck and a third deck. You might have the staples to pivot between Jund and Abzan, play something fast like Infect or Affinity. You could pivot and respond to the meta, or shake up playstyles for fun. There were also single deck players that essentially dormant as Magic consumers, but it kept them engaged with the game instead of off it entirely, and they'd hop back in when something really spoke to them. It's not that way any more. It's kind of big standard with a soft rotation from power creep forcing out the old cards. I get it WotC makes more from MH sets than MM sets. Outside of limited or that Commander group with cards they already have, there's nowhere for that kind of player to go anymore, that mastery path is just gone.
I feel you. there used to be a kind of ecosystem. even a pipeline into commander since there were no direct to commander cards. you really had to dig and look through a lot of mtg history to find pieces that fit into a deck, at least thats how it was for me. Thats how I learned so much about older sets and other cards by looking for relevant cards for modern and commander. It made new sets more exciting when you could find unique interractions across multiple formats rather than the direct-to-format power creep. I miss those times
I think the internet is to blame. You suddenly got a whole expertise at your fingertips, and an ability to buy singles you need before they even got released. And you can't tell people not to use it, because this is the right (wrong) way to master it fast.
@@Wolan.I dont see what you mean. how does presale of 2nd market singles and sharing gameplay info online factor into WoTC changing trajectory on mastery of the game for enfranchised players vs new ones?
could you guys comment on how paper play VS digital play effect the game and player expectations? Does Magic need to define and market towards its formats better?
Good idea!
I feel like WOTC or Hasbro is doing a hail mary dive to try and see as much financial growth as possible. Their approach to this is to leverage power creep, fomo, gambling tactis, and familiar IPs as much as possible. All design philisophies have turned away from careful balance and conserving a steady progression and are prioritizing constant and quick purchases. The issue with this is that it's just not sustainable. People will burn out sooner or later and many people will say "screw this" and walk away. The old veterans of the game are likely to stick around because they're already too deep to dig themselves out. However, it will be harder to get newer players into the game if they see massive prices and complex compeittive barriers with each deck being irrelevant within a month. That's exactly what's been happening with Yu-Gi-Oh! And why that game's been dying out and taken out of stores. MTG is a collectible game with luxury prices. The global economy is struggling and there's hordes of cheaper alternatives for entertainment. Focusing on short-term gains at the cost of the game's integrity and reputation is a massive mistake and can easily cost MTG its slice of market dominance.
The old veterans will bow out into historical formats. Like Old School, PreModern, Lego, etc. so they cut off a period of time where they feel the “Magic” ended.
But.. Being a advocate of a devil: How can you expand the player base with every new set being "worked out" within a hours after release ? How many new players would you get in tournament driven game like MTG used to be ?
People have been saying “Wotc is ruining the game” for 20 years now- they make $1 billion a year for Hasbro . Next year someone will
make the same comment
@@bobthor9647 I know we all hate doomerism; the issue is that "Make 1 billion dollars" isn't coming from substantiblity, it's coming from "how much can we undermine our products so we can squeeze every ounce of profit out of this game?"
While I doubt mtg itself is gonna end over this; this era will NOT be looked back at as a golden age for the game.
@@Wolan. Good question; but unfortunately for me and you, it's not one that Wotc is approaching with any caution.
In the past; the way wotc delt with "meta" was to more or less have three main deck types (Aggro, Control, mid-range) and a few subtypes (combo, tribal/typal, ramp, tempo, etc.). The idea being if any deck gets too powerful, there should be easily available counter-decks that can be made and will generally defeat the format boogie man. This would had meant even in times like the dominance of og mirrodin Affinity in 04-05, there was decks like Big Red, Goblins, and GW anti-Affinity that would prevent a top 8 overloaded with the same deck.
As we can see with Nadu and irk; we don't got much available safety valves that can remotely handle the current wave of broken stuff outside of bannings.
Magic in the early days was designed with slow mastery progression in mind. Richard said many times, that one of the key components of the game was a discovery of new cards, by expanding a player base (and a number of cards in playgroup). It was essentially killed by internet. First, the knowledge of existing cards, then the strategies, lastly the availability of singles cards - stripped away the slow progression aspect of mastering the game. Now, if you want to attend to a tournament, you have to invest a ton of time to search online for strategies, meta, optimal cards to buy (for a format that you intend to play) ...etc. Otherwise you will encounter the people who done it, and they will have a ton of advantage against you. That's why this type of progression doesn't work in tournament scene despite of people (who are already invested) wanting to go this way, because it's barier of entry is still growing, and it keeps away most of new players. On the other end is a "casual" progression in Commander is killed by the same players who wanted a mastery progression. They tend to play Commander the way they played in tournaments and are ruin the whole "not mastery" format by the things you said in the video. The vertical progression aspects of the game are simply killed by not being important in face of loosing the game to someone who doesn't care about social aspect, aesthetics or many decks (toys)...
wizards has been printing a lot of cards with modal options
I’m thinking this is an attempt to make a card work in 60 card and commander as well as hedge against the 100 card singleton rules.
All I feel like I've been doing latley with my decks is optimizing. Happens with every set of course. Latley it's been like whole sections of my decks will just get swapped out with just better cards. Now that's fine for a bit but it's up to me to decide whether I constantly want to be kept up or not.
I reckon most Magic players spend far more time brewing than they do playing. I am one of that legion.
This exactly my argument for a lot of players lately, the brewing gets to the best point possible before a lot of money spent and it stumbles on gameplay. Try to catch up on learning how to use the tool instead of getting a better hammer.
Commander was fun while being a clunky, non optimized random play format. If you want to play it competitive way you'll end up in EDH power creep nonsense...
Cool discussion. I'm a designer for an online fighting game, and the times these concepts crossover is super interesting.
Ah... I very much want to see the rest of that Foundations discussion!
Magic is dead to me you have to pay so dam much nowadays to have cards that can compete.
Fact is its not fun to play a casual format againstpeople that still want to win by turn 3. It takes all the fun out of building for flavor or for "cool factor". But these people have ALWAYS been lurking in every play group. We all know them and love them, they usually play "the deck" once and laugh as you all lose then move on to a deck that is fun for everyone. People have to realize it's not the destination it's the journey, as cliche as that sounds.
The real pain is when you get someone who refuses to do the 'then move on to a deck that is fun for everyone' part. Whether that ends in them being kicked out of the group or everyone else refusing to play magic anymore...
I saw a really cool video on the Stricktly Better Commander channel about "Jank"..... for us people who see the game that way
@laurencefraser Yeahhh... there's someone at my LGS that's always there and they only play combo decks so I rarely can win with my casual decks and sometimes have to resort to using my cEDH Kinnan deck lol..
This is why a lot of people (myself included) think that cube is the future of Magic for these enfranchised players. Similar to Elden Ring, it gives play groups the ability to tailor their experience to fit the groups level of skill or play style. Vintage cube is complicated with a high skill ceiling, but you can also make a cube with a bunch of French Vanilla creatures and lightning bolt equivalents. The only negative is you lose that tinkering aspect for the players of the cube as the decks are ephemeral; but then you can just do a cube rotation between your playgroups cubes. You also don’t have to update it for every set that releases.
Great points! I'm a player that really enjoys Magic for the mastery aspect but enjoy the IP as well. I think they are doing a good job at catering to both types. I think we might eventually see a much more commander like competitive format in the future to re-bridge the gap as Commander is the "main" format now. I feel like as long as they keep commander, draft, and a 60 card format alive they can satisfy like 80% of their current audience.
I wouldn't say progression is particularly inevitable in casual EDH, yes people can buy better cards but there isn't a direct relationship between that and getting better at the game. You could have a deck full of bangers, but if you play with the same general mindset and strategy you won't get better - you may win more games, but you won't get better, and I think that's an important distinction. Conversely, someone who has good threat assessment, knows how to use the stack, when to interact and how to employ different strategies will beat you with a precon. The reason is that it's very hard to learn and master these skills if you don't play against people who want to do the same.
Or you can spend a ton of time reading and completing the deck and being beat by a new precon with stronger cards. But you've got point that players don't have time to learn (progress) by themselves by playing the game.
Getting better at politics is a new wrinkle the 1vs1 crowd never had to deal with.
Multiplayer magic also has the problem of collusion and king making. 1vs1 doesn’t have that.
Great video wish it was longer!
Had to move to Modern because the rule zero keeps getting increasingly bullshittier as time goes on. Feels so good being able to just sit down and know we're both doing our best to win, instead of feeling bad because of making optimal decisions and targeting in what's essentially a party game.
I moved onto playing other games and it’s a breath of fresh air. Often we feel our memories of good games are connected to us having to continue playing them and then there’s the sunk cost fallacy to deal with.
For me I feel like Modern and EDH should be separate, it's not hard to make Competiative cards and cards for edh, problem is cEDH when they start mixing and MH3 has EDH cards in it causing Modern players having to deal with EDH bull. it's fine as Standard was normally for standard. but more and more legendaries keep getting made, the cards look more like Yugioh, Modern is turning into legacy because of MH and UB sets. it's getting to the point people are annoyed of commander bias. I love commander I play Prossh but it's annoying when Wizards is pushing to many sets causing problem in other formats and not testing their cards properly like Nadu
Gonna be honest I didn’t really understand the point being made here. Ideas felt very scattered and all over the place.
Power creep appeals to people who are less invested in getting good
@@freddiesimmons1394 that makes sense, I was waiting for them to address the old progression of improving at a deck such as Jund over years, but the conversation never went in that direction
@@jonahcalvo1873 i did too
But expecting it didnt make me listen as if that was the only way it made sense
@@jonahcalvo1873 Read my long comment maybe it will address it :) At least I hope it will.
I think the key difference between designing for casual vs. competitive - and a major pain point of people like myself who prefer competitive - is that designing for casual is ruining competitive environments. Whereas when the game was designed for competitive, the casual formats got the "trickle down" cards that you mentioned in a previous video, but the play environment was never made less fun for those players. Casual players got the enjoyment of putting pieces together to make something cool. Now, cards are designed to do everything under the sun because WotC assumes there's 3 opponents to deal with, and the competitive players have to deal with the stress and monetary cost of bannings.
I think you might be imagining a world where the main way to play the game was competitive. The overwhelming majority of players have always been casual. Kitchen table magic turned into commander at some point but in both eras most players were not training for a grand prix or even had a dci number.
My brother is a Mastery kind of player, and he's voiced to me his concerns with how Magic is changing. I'm a sucker for Variable Progression, but with my childhood playing against my brother so regularly, I have a strong love of Mastery, even if it doesn't come naturally to me.
As someone who is only interested in commander and limited, I still think that having products that bypass standard is what led the game to this not ideal situation. Standard is a great filter for having good diversity while keeping all the various "creep" in check, not perfect but decently effective. While commander products are cool and all, I still feel the format and magic itself would be better without them (I mean the exclusive cards, not having a product in itself just with reprints). Sadly what is best for the game usually isn't in line with what the company deems more profitable.
It’s funny, I was introduced to magic with commander a decade ago. Played super casual standard and whatnot and then didn’t play for years and picked it up again last year. I’m not entirely against the game changing but the complexity creep and power creep is a bit of a turnoff (and the constant deluge of new cards as compared to the old release schedule) still enjoy magic but it’s definitely changed a fair bit
I just want horizontal sets for a few year power creep has been balls to the walls the past few years how did we get sheoldred thats such a rediculous effect that has absolutly no place in a card game
Yeah.. the amount of power creep in these past few sets (especially MH3, it's the most EGREGIOUS by far) is getting ridiculous.
I totally agree. I stopped buying, acquiring, and playing cards from newer sets. I can’t support it. But apparently, the majority love it because they are selling more overall product than ever.
Don't think I've ever said it.. but you guys are too eloquent and studied not to make one "jealous" sometimes 🤭
The problem solves itself if WotC reverts some of its recent decisions from like 2018 to current.
FIRE design needs to stop. It is turning the game into YGO/PKM.
Sets for actual formats should not be designed with commander in mind at all. The health of other formats should be more important. This isn't a real format.
Products to help push the unofficial commander format should be reduced to 1 or 2 a year and be specific to the format.
... I'd be impressed if they managed that, given how much of a disaster YGO is by design and that pokemon's flaws are fundamently 'we doubled down on MtG's flaws, but tried to keep the complexity way down'.
@@laurencefraser At this point it would be a miracle. Either they will get so desperate in the future they will actually ax the reserve list as a last ditch effort to keep MTG going, or it will just continue on the decline until it crashes and burns. Maybe if we are lucky, Hasbro will sell WotC off to a company that actually cares.
I've played Yugioh before, it's actually the first card game I ever played and honestly I don't get the appeal people have for it. Almost all combos in the game are the same. There's barely any variety to the game. There's nothing fun about it.
@@azelia2464 I have played it since 2002. I have tons of great memories and fun experiences with friends. Playing in tournaments and the ever growing costs of power creep and misused ban lists have me on a judge events only break right now. The game has definitely gotten worse since Takahashi passed and that bar was already kind of low.
Given how Wizards has treated Commander and how the majority of the player base feels about Commander, I'd say Commander IS a real format.
I played in the 90s till 2000 and came back for throne. It's crazy how much magic has changed in each of those time frames.
Power creep is destroying magic. Printing cards at the same level does improve decks with redundancy. Lightning Bolt is better than shock, a second Bolt is also better than the shock. It does not require a 4dmg Uberbolt.
At some point which I recon is already passed, the ratio between mana cost to card effect to cards in hand to life total gets irreparably destroyed.
If Shock-like card does 10 damage you only need 2 cards to win the game. Meaning you can play 10% lands rather than 40% , win on turn 2 at the latest etc.
Everything will be just off
I don’t think they realize how much precons suck
Ok, 1v1 60-Card Magic and multiplayer Commander Magic are fundamentally different. Which style of play* would you say 1v1 Commander and/or multiplayer 60-card is more like?
(*Commander is a format, but calling 1v1 a format doesn't seem accurate to me)
“Progression is inevitable” my track record in any modern competitive game would like to disagree
Cool take: you can play for both progressions and I do.
If WotC prints a card that effectively shuts down a tournament, I would argue that that is a legitimate problem
“Make Standard Great Again!”
"Variable progression" is just fancy talk for power creep designed to increase sales
The comparison with computer games doesn’t seem helpful. Only buy singles.
Sadly, with Wizards simply not supporting Modern/Pioneer, or even helping LGSs to promote it, I've been pushed out of a game that I once loved. So I don't even buy singles anymore.
I wish that I liked Commander. I just don't. I don't even mind FFA 60 card Magic; it's how me and a few friends played a lot back in the day for the sake of time and making sure that we all got some games in. But Commander itself has become Magic. I don't even begrudge the Commander lovers. I just wish that there was some focus on what Magic was, so that I could still enjoy my game.
@@Xoulrath_ The thing is, it didn't have to be this way. There are near infinite ways to play MTG, but Corpos gonna corpo, until the product is dead.
@@shorewall I'm aware. As I said, I don't care that Commander exists. Nor do I care that a casual format is the most popular format of the game. That's par for the course in life.
Even so, it definitely sucks that Wizards, who could have supported Modern/Pioneer more, especially after making must-have product for the Modern, didn't. So now it's just all Commander, all the time, at every game store within a reasonable driving distance where I'm at. There is no more 1v1 Magic, which is what I'm interested in.
So I've taken my money and moved to other games. I've spent well over $2,000 in the last 7 or so months on Lorcana. I've recently gotten into One Piece now that I can find product for a reasonable price, and I've dropped about $265 on it in just the last month. That could have all gone to Wizards had they just kept 1v1 competitive Modern/Pioneer alive at LGSs. Hell, I might have even been willing to check out the new Standard format now that it's a longer rotation. But I can't even find that near me.
Oh well. Guess that I gotta give my disposal income to other companies. Hopefully the casuals, who spend nowhere near as much as players like me over the same time period, number enough for long enough to keep Hasbro in the black.
What’s the difference between Mastery and Challenge? I apologize, the descriptions sounded basically the same to me.
They’re related but on different ends of motivation. Challenge is what the game is extrinsically presenting to you. Mastery is intrinsic for the player, effectively creating their own challenges.
Yu-Gi-Oh will just do both in the worst way possible.
You wanna play now and have an old deck you like - here is basically the same deck with a new coat of paint and higher numbers, but to keep it exciting there are now more effects and triggers that can only happen once per turn (across multiple copies of a card) and conditions to using or not being allowed to use it and of course you have to keep track of it in your head ... Wouldn't want to clutter the field up with more counters or tokens than absolutely necessary, it is so much more convenient to make the game take so much mental load that in Feature matches both players and multiple judges will miss someone making mistakes
I think mtg should have or start goin into a very very niche way of making cards to control power creep … make cards specifically for niche curtain cards so cards can only get better with curtain cards not 50% of cards … have cards like for example commanders plate … have a card upgrade a curtain card or commander for low cost very niche … then a higher cost or no cost just to keep it niche for combo ing game pieces … just gotta make cards that don’t combo or go with every card … create some style for a unique niche commander or play style then cards can’t get too out of hand or expensive
That's generally the direction that Yu-Gi-Oh takes; where cards reference very specific archetypes and only work within them (apart from some more generic cards). But then the issue of power-creep still exists, it's just that instead of power-creeping the individual cards each set, the archetypes themselves are what becomes powercrept in order to sell the new cards.
They used to have this kind of power creep control when Standard cards were almost all made to be used in Standard 1v1. Rarely there would be a reprint or new card that was perfect for Modern. Fire design was they began focusing on putting Commander playable cards in Standard. That upset the old system, and forced a ton of bans. Hopefully they can address these issues in Foundations, but its obvious now that the Commander-first design is here to stay until players stop buying
I'm a commander player and I *hate* where Magic is going.
The moment Wizards designed for Commander, Magic started to slowly move into *suuuuuuck* territory, even and *especially Commander*!!!
Commander used to be the fun thing where you can play weird and janky things that don't have a home anywhere else. Now it's the thing that has cards designed specifically for it that everyone plays because they're just too fucking good.
Of course Wizards and Hasbro saw the Dollar signs when Commander popped off.
Yet another beautiful thing ruined by capitalism :'cc
You managed to explain exactly why I hate EDH
The 'strictly better' Progression is a _huge_ issue for mtg. Mtg is a game played based on ressource Management. If the only way to go is up in efficiency, ultimately that means that the only way a card can become 'better' at one point is making it cheaper. Bloomburrow has a new card, 'Fell', which is an uncommon for one and a Black to destroy target creature as a sorcery. That's unheard of - this effect so far has only ever existed on higher rarity cards, or been associated with more restrictive costs at that mana value. Walk the Plank is two black and destroys Non-merfolk, some cards destroy a creature based on low mana value, etc. Fell is a card that has taken an effect previously found at the 3 mv slot, and brought it into 2 mv, while dropping the restrictions similar cards had in the past.
This directly illustrates the major issue with this kind of progression, which is format/game speed. This game gets ever more faster, and unless you want to make some calculation up at which point a card is too efficient, you cannot escape that. This is not comparable to YuGiOh at least, which iirc in this day and age has nearly no ressource restrictions to work with other than cards.
All this is to say that WOTC Is actively undermining the ressource Management aspect of their game, and at some point that will likely be entirely broken if they continue like this; because what does a 5-c-card have to become to compete against hyper efficient 1 and 2-drops? At some point, people will just stop running 5-mana cards alltogether, already more expensive strategies are falling out of favor it seems. Basically, WOTC is making commander into a rotating format as they do with modern, losing a lot of the appeal of the format intended to be for everybody and giving everybody the Chance to actually play with all cards of mtg history.
@@lVideoWatcherl exactly right. How much does the best card in modern take to cast? 0 mana.
The last card that was banned in Modern cost 0 mana to cast too.
@@lVideoWatcherl Yep. When you make cards like Psychic Frog, Murktide, and Nadu at 2 and 3 mana, why would I ever play cards that cost more? They win the game on their own.
I think the key takeaway here is that - for casuals edh anyway - it is now getting a lot more difficult to identify new cards that are the right level of "fun" without that fun letting one player completely spiral out of control under the right circumstances. That stuff is for cedh. I mostly play cedh and new toys don't really cause problems for us (we're always looking for ways to iterate better on what we're already doing) but with cards like Nadu a more casual player will think to bring it to a casual table and not realize what kind of absurd play patterns it produces.
One thing I WILL defend about new precons is that they're tuned pretty well. Precons from about 5-6 years ago were pretty good, but you'd still need to look for cards printed half a decade ago for them to really shine. This might not be an immediate consideration but people come up to our LGS all the time asking which precon is best for a new player, and we're increasingly recommending them the newer ones. Games have to grow somehow and if commander is how new people are getting into the game, it makes more sense to start them off of a powerful precon so they can keep up with people who have been working on their decks for a while. A little power creep in the precons is thus forgivable.
You guys have been talking a lot lately about your gripes with commander and what happens when decks of different power levels come to the table. I think the boogeyman shouldn't be players or cards that are at the top end of the competitive spectrum - if anything they are very transparent about what their decks do and they're not coming to your store lying about having a 6- or 7-power deck that has a turn 3 otk in it. Precons solve this problem!
Precons DON'T solve this problem... The problem is that not all players are focusing on a same game goal as you. If you want to play a deck of "Goat sacrifice and demons", you cannot because it's not optimized for winning. And buying newer and newer precons won't lead you to construct a deck you know and love for it's theme.
I miss the pre-planewalkers days when it felt like the players were wizards battling wits. Planeswalkers and Commanders take the player out of the immersion of the game and put focus on the cards as characters instead. Probably not a popular take, but that's how I feel. I'm looking for a tcg that has that vibe or maybe alternate rules in magic (no planeswalkers, no commander magic?).
Totally agree. I have never played a Planeswalker, don’t like them. But I still build and play! And I don’t play Commander either. We need to start a group lol
This is a perfect video I was tldr texting my buddies a couple days ago about a lot of this same train of thought. I recognize that neither philosophies are “better” than the other, but I am in the old school boat.
I feel that before wotc started printing cards with commander in mind (anything printed before the first commander set I think 2013) “commander” was a thing that magic players dabbled in, where now “magic” is a thing that COMMANDER players dabble in now, if at all. I like the environment where commander felt more experimental, there were less auto include cards for the archetypes (if you can even call them archetypes back then), and the cards were designed with the vertical progression idea and then were almost discovered for commander. Really good video nailing the idea of two very distinct audiences
Big fan of this content and the recent discussions on Magic’s journey. Would love to hear y’all’s thoughts on how it could better incorporate each player base in the future (hoping the Foundations discussion was a hint at future dialogue).
The only way to save the game is for Hasbro to spin off WOTC and sell it to a private group of passionate Investors. And that's only Step 1 of a few. Safe to say that even when MTG is dead, I think Hasbro will bury it in the vault so that no one else can do anything with it. Thus do all Corpos.
These two things are not wholly separate.
Play for play's sake, and seeking novelty, are learning experiences. And any learning experience can aid in mastery.
Mastering the design and play of a gimmick deck, may allow it to compete but not necessarily win.
Although there will be differences in player attitudes, there's good and bad in both angles.
Tho I will say money may well factor into card design. A niche card will have a niche audience, but raw power drives sales.
I could see the argument for there being mastery in other aspects of the game, like deck building or playing for fun. But I think we have to take into account what the systems of magic are incentivizing. Someone has to win for the game to end.
Gavin, go beat Elden Ring and then play Miyazaki's previous games if you haven't. Sekiro, Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1 especially all have things that will add to your game design skill set.
We were referring to the expansion btw. I have completed the main game three times. XD
I havent played mtg for few years, but I was always consider myself as commander player. But never have an issue with 1v1 formats, I have constructed dozen of rogue decks and performed kinda competitive in constructed enviroment, both times my failure in nationals was Draft. You know, competitive players not very good in reacting to non-orthodox decks, for exemple while most stompy meta was MonoG or Gb stompy (Dominaria khaladesh), players was not ready to side against Gu stompy. Btw playing commander and teaching new players was my motivation to became judge, and lot of constructed players was asked ruling about obscure interaction because EDH has lots of such interactions.
Do you guys sell those mugs?
Working on it! 😄
Tbh I think, now that we're 20 to 30 years out with MtG/Pokemon/YGO, I think trying to make them perpetually alive games is a mistake. It makes variable progression/power creep and the loss of identity inevitable. Plus, there's clearly space and a desire for new game systems.
I think they should retire the games and recreate MtG and YGO 2.0 with revamped, improved system rules. Much like how Digimon retired its bad TCG and created one of the best with its 2.0.
Funny enough, Yugioh is trying to to this with Rush Duels. Still waiting for it to not be "the other yugoih" though.
Pokemon tcg is not in a similar spot to yugioh and magic. The game is arguably worse but it is simpler and more fun for most young kids. Also the format rotates and meta decks are like 50bucks or less so it doesn't have the barrier to entry mtg and yugioh have
I didn't know Digimon reset that's interesting. Wizards will continue creating new formats as they put older ones to rest. Legacy is dead on modern on it way out. Pioneer/pauper horizons is on the horizon and they will just make a new format. Yugioh is a weird case because there's only 1 format and it's the most complicated advanced version of the game. Yugioh could definatley do a reset or make a new format for onboarding new players
@@Merew22Rush Duels are so fun, I can’t wait for it to be brought to the West
The magic rules system is already optimal for its purposes I don't see why they should change it
An interesting take on things - could use more data on tournaments, is modern more popular than a year ago ?
I highly disagree with your thesis that commander players are more interested in variable progression than tournament spikes. I think the opposite is true. Tournament spikes want a one mana way to deal 4 damage; commander players want a sorcery that gives all none squirrels -x/-x where x is the number of squirrels you control. Commander players want linear strategy, tournament grinders want stronger cards
Im also very excited about foundations. I think it will be a great reset for standard magic.
We hope so too!
Crazy that adults can fall for variable progression. It's not progression of the player, just the kit. A fugaze
I guess it’s newer players, that don’t have all this game knowledge like some of the ancient players
@@Zarbon000 even without ancient game knowledge, getting bolts instead of shocks shouldnt make you feel like *you* got better
Progression is good but the power creeping of mtg is pretty good imo. It is limited and more like it is better if you do this.
Lamort gang rise up!
we need an episode talking about Elden Ring!
We’ve recorded a few. They’ll be coming soon.
@@distractionmakersYou both are very well versed in Magic. I can’t believe you play other games! I sure don’t 😂
The realization that casual play will always be more popular in EVERY game fills me with so much sadness
very VERY unpopular opinion, but that's why I love Devil Daggers so much. I can make my own playthrough depending on my skill level and it gets me right on the edge where I get these amazing adrenalin rushes and flow states.
I like Magic as a game. Because of my geographical location I can't play in paper (there are at least two ten year old decks somewhere in my house and no local scene that's advertised).
Arena is fine.
Arena mostly rewards vertical progression by design.
I would love to try Commander. Commander won't work on Arena because it'll just be sweaty players going infinite with optimised decks in a format that should be "for fun" and "use what you have" because of the rewards track in Arena.
I once complained on the Reddit about idiots just durdling around with their infinite standard combo, the response was "well if you're dead on board just scoop," that kind of attitude isn't conducive to a social game format.
Also, you mention Binding of Isaac. Go play Hades if you haven't, in regards to the rogue-lite done right. Hades is a masterpiece in the same vein as the soulslike are.
The easy solution to "I am no longer the target demographic and disagree with the new direction" is to quit.
Magic is not my abusive ex girlfriend who keeps telling me it's going to be different next time.
Or you could voice your opinions and encourage the game you love to consider your views.
The answer is to keep playing casually but stop getting new cards. Like an Old Wizard emerging from times forgotten!
But she is still the most beautiful, and you love her despite of her problems, because you know her.
@@Wolan. we are Stockholm syndromed.
Game peaked in 2013 imo
Still waiting for things to be as good as Gatecrash standard and 2013 modern
When did magic start to lean more towards casual? I didn’t get this memo. Do you all play the game? Do you not pay attention to the power creep that’s happening?
Power Creep is inherently casual. It empowers the noob more than the skilled.
2004.
You can still find the Maro podcast where he explains that the tournament scene doesn't advertise enough to make them money and that they would be simplifying the game for a broader audience going forward.
@@SymmetricalDocking that’s 20 years ago. GTFOH
outside of kitchen table magic, Commander is the most popular format by far since the pandemic. Wizards has doubled down on the amount of commander product, and commander focused design since, ON TOP of the multi-format power creep. Fire Design was a mistake imo.
@@stevendefeo8424I know, people have short memories so don't realize it's been that long.
I do not get competitive players what's the fucking point of comboing out turn 3?
The thing I like about commander is that it allows for more creative and unusual deck building, allowing you to play cards and strategies that aren't really viable in 1v1 formats. IN THEORY. In reality, Wizards have been pushing the base line power level of the format so much with the strength of precons and super efficient commander cards for the last few years that you can't actually play 90% of available commanders if you want a shot at participating in the game. It fucking sucks.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention cEDH
It will always be frustrating when something that was once made with you in mind, is now made at your exclusion.
Sorry this is a tangent only barely related to what you talked about but it's something I've thought about for a long time and think is interesting.
I think incredibly few cards are objective upgrades over others, and I think that's really cool. Is Lightning Bolt better than Shock in every single instance? No, actually. What if you end your turn tapped out and your opponent takes control of your turn with Mind Slaver or Emrakul, and you have exactly 3 life or a creature with 3 toughness? In that case, you would wish you had a Shock instead. What if the opponent has a Phyrexian Obliterator with 2 toughness left? Using the bolt to finish it would require you to sacrifice one additional permanent. Is Fabled Passage objectively better than Evolving Wilds? Well...yes. Except that Evolving Wilds is a card with a different name. So if you're at max copies of Passage and you really want another effect like that, you still have a reason to play Wilds.
I know these are hyper specific niche edge cases that will rarely if ever happen. In general you can definitely say that some cards are better than others without splitting hairs because it'll be true in 99% of cases. But I think it's very cool that if you try really hard, you can always think of *some* niche or edge case where almost every single card might be the best option for the job,
Diluting the idea of strictly better cards with absurdly convoluted play scenarios is just distraction, and doesn't address the main point of strictly better cards at all. It's a deckbuilding choice, not a play scenario puzzle. Like you said, it can be really interesting to think about those scenarios, especially if you count out the ubiquitous "what if Mind Slaver?" solution. However, if both were legal and the choice was between the two of them, when would you ever put Shock in your deck _over_ Lightning Bolt? Not in addition to, like in your Fabled Passage vs. Evolving Wilds example, but over. In short, you could say that when given a choice, one card would always be picked over another because it either gives more for the exact same resource cost, or it gives the same for a lesser cost.
In my opinion, the only instance where this gets a bit muddied is with tribal synergies. It's easy to see that cards like Sunhome Stalwart, Bounty Agent, Relic Seeker, Sun Sentinel and even Kjeldoran Outrider and Moorland Inquisitor are all strictly better than Glory Seeker. However, is Terrain Elemental really strictly better than Cylian Elf? In an absolute vacuum yes, of course it is. But would you always pick Terrain Elemental over Cylian Elf when building a deck? That's a trickier question. It would require a very specifically shaped format, but it is very much possible that the question of whether to pick Cylian Elf or Terrain Elemental is not obvious. Once again, though, this is a deckbuilding choice. Not a puzzle.
I think your aside about Elden Ring speaks to how competing tracks of mastery can co-exist in a single player game, because you actually can choose to engage in either of them in limited capacities. Once you enter a multiplayer environment, that's not the case anymore, because now you have to negotiate how you're collectively engaging with those systems.
I'm reminded somewhat of speedrun categories - if Any% stops feeling like meaningful skill expression in a game due to high rng, players seeking mastery move on to Any% Restricted or Any% Modded (like the 15 card mod of Forbidden Memories).
And a lot of the gameplay grief we're seeing is from players who wanted to play Magic getting pushed into more restricted subsets of the game.
As always, I appreciate y'all slipping broader game design discussions into a "Magic" video. I'm glad the channel blew up and popped into my recommended feed!
let me shorten this up for you "the game is designed for noobs" now.
Where is my cEDH Precon Wotc ? Oh wait it’s Stella Lee 😊
Dark souls already hit the mainstream it's literally just a melee focused bullet hell
It IS a full negative, cause there are many good casual games. Magic was the BEST game ever made. And that game is dying. Him saying MTG is not a lesser game now is just wrong and he explained why hes wrong.
Aogarythm
Yes New magic is NEGATIVE. The past is glorious in design, by creating cards following design points... now is just CREEP IT UP BECAUSE MONEY. Then: lets do a good game because it will bring money - now: create super broken cards to deceive the players with a false power sense ruining the game for get MORE MONEY
I've been strictly playing commander for a few years - played magic before, but got back into it because of commander maybe like.... 6-7 years ago.
It's a legacy format- some of the most powerful garbage ever printed, literal mistakes in card design, plus heinous combos with a card from fifteen years ago and a new card with perfect interaction are there.
I don't want more progression of powerful effects. Commander doesn't need cards that are better than previous cards, and arguably needs fewer cards with insane powerful effects. Variety is better for it and magic as a whole- something can be powerful in limited or standard, but weak and usable in commander. But WotC has bad priorities anyway, and only care about whatever method sells more product anyhow.
Don't swap shirts. Don't like change.
Aggro is cancer.
Ocelot is not even legendary.
1/1 first strike, lifelink + triggers???
Playing any 1 mana creature that's in your hand anytime you can is dumbing down the game a lot, have you seen the developer interview for MH3 these people have no concept of high level modern play, they just made a bunch of easy cards to win with by not having to make difficult decisions.
"I m A nEw pLaYeR aNd i tOo wAnT tO wIn 😢"
Modern was a format for high level plays and deep knowledge of the game.
Now we just put a bunch of 1 mana creatures and win the game with free tokens.
Modern in a nutshell:
It's either just super easy plays with scam or just dump all your creatures anytime you can or everlasting turns with nadu.
Who is gonna watch these events??
There are no subtle plays, no neurons needes to win.
It's amazing how they can ruin a format with incompetent developers, these people don't play modern and developed a modern set.
Hilarious
This is shit.
And no fury doesn't solve this problem.
The most elaborate and complicated game ever made has been dumbed down too much.
The fact these cards don't require you to know the complexities of the game is an insult to the format.
Mh3 is 90% shit
The simplicity of the power creep is utter crap. The requirements for the new power levels are non-existant.
No draw back, low requirements for power.
Elden Ring is good, but it sounds like Gavin is just describing all single player open world games ever made lol
Haha I suppose so 😆
First 😘