Not always. At my lgs, I had a dumb chic whining the whole time that we kept "accidently" calling her "HER", like she actually is. I won't play with her no more.
@@RobbyRobRob42 I do both. I've just always gone into games with the mindset of "I'm responsible for the fun that I am having" and I really think that makes a difference
Exactly. People don't become more traditional in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving. I personally am dying for a new set of vehicle cards to play with.
I think my favorite period of magic was between 10 and 15 years ago. We had 4 sets a year. Three were part of a narrative block set, and the other was a core set consisting of mostly reprints. This era saw sets like innistrad and zendikar for example.
I really discovered that I don’t care about universes beyond as long as the card designs are good. Been playing against wolverine and it doesn’t bother me a bit cause i just see a magic card that does a thing. Yes in looking at sets in total the universes beyond aesthetic bothers me alot… but when in game I just barely notice that the cards aren’t “magic”
Yeah, this argument is why I used to defend Universes Beyond, because that is effectively what Magic actually was, originally. The difference, IMO, is that when Arabian Nights came out, it wasn't in the same year as a swashbuckler-themed set, and a wizard school theme set, and a horror-themed set. People are getting whiplash from the rapid pace and changes. If the release schedule wasn't so psychotically fast, it wouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of people. Because they did all those sets I mentioned earlier, (Weatherlight block, Urza's block, The Dark), and most people really liked them, especially at the time. I know, because I was there. I think people are confusing symptoms with the actual issue. The actual issue is that the game is currently in the hands of a company that does not understand the game on a fundamental level and just wants to squeeze every last dollar out of it before they throw the lifeless husk in the trash. Hasbro thinks it bought tabletop Fortnite. And that's a big problem for Magic. I've seen a LOT of tabletop Fortnites in the 31 years I've been playing magic and they come and go in the blink of an eye.
There are a lot of sets that had themes. Antiquities had a theme. Fallen Empires had a theme (other than just being lazy and bad, I mean). They just weren't so on-the-nose like "hey, everyone's a detective" or "everyone's a cowboy." Tempest block was a giant departure from what came before, because it was presented like a cartoon show with a core cast. Here is Gerard, here is his friend Karn, here is his wacky first mate Squee. This is their mighty ship, the Weatherlight. Seemingly every card had to have one of the core characters on it to tell the story instead of representing a more general or abstract "spell." it was a totally different way presenting magic, and honestly it was kind of lame compared to what came before it, but people got used to it and even started to accept it as the normal and best way to build the world. People will get used to Universes Beyond and Magic: The Hattening IF the underlying game is interesting.
@@thevoxdeus the rath, urza and invasion cycles were very different as you said, but since the story was about urza and mishra it was cool to finally see some of magic's lore being played out
while they are smart dudes and I enjoy their stuff for the most part, they seem pretty worthless when it comes to insight into EDH. I'd go as far as to say they seem ignorant and maybe a little hostile to it. Perhaps (meaning "almost certainly") because they're professional game devs and EDH is a community format that is 1000x bigger than anything they'll ever produce. The Ginger, in particular, seems to hold a smug anti-EDH bias that kinda makes me want to smack the taste out of his mouth.
21:00. I didn’t think about that. They are totally gonna do 1 product for each bracket. 50$ bracket 1, 100$ bracket 2, 300$ bracket 3, 1000$ bracket 4.
I hate Loot from the bottom of my heart. Its design is Pokémon, not MtG. I even made a custom proxy of Loot, Exuberant Explorer so I can stop looking at its miserable maw.
They’re trying so hard to remove things from Magic the Gathering that have made it what it is for over 30 years and replace it with things that have nothing to do with MTG at all. How did they ever survive this long without reprints, mascots and Universes Beyond trash 🙄
More important things in life to focus on, why harbor hate for something so trivial? Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a good design. But I have never felt hate towards any aspect of the game because, well, it's a game. My mental stress from work, school, and bills is much too high for me to be worried about a weird looking little creature.
@@palicaoo Well it's more than a pet, it literally holds an infinite map of the multiverse in its mind. That's actually pretty cool in my opinion. With that said, they definitely did not need to make it look like a cracked out gerbil 😂
I appreciate your opinions and agree we shouldn't feel the need to own every product that comes out. Personally, I am okay with the card pool that I've amassed and many of them were your recommendations. If we’re taking what Wizards does with a grain of salt, then certainly let’s not rush to conclusions about the tier ranking system. We are still unsure of how things will actually be; or if they will ever formally be announced in a way people think. Ultimately, what will be embraced is what your play group decides or the community as a whole. My biggest complaint of the year would be Wizards mishandling of Secret Lair drops and changing from being print to demand to limited print runs. Overall, while I can understand why some themes may not have resonated with fans, mechanically this year was very fun. I really liked committing a crime. Was a good way to make older cards backwards compatible.
Yeah, nearly every Magic set is (and should be) a divergence from the _'My_ Magic sets of yore'. Ice Age everyone is in the snow, Arabian Nights is _the Arabian Nights,_ Innistrad is Hammer Horror movies of the 60's-70's, etc.... yadda, yadda, yadda. People don't become more traditional in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving.
1.) too many commanders, especially unplayable ones with the amount of power creep we have now. 2.) players leaving competitive formats for edh is making edh no longer a casual format; the mindset of 60 cards is vastly different, edh is more like a board game……ppl who have to win and “play the best cards” are ruining casual commander. 3.) edhrec has made it so ppl cannot deck build, to a point where barely anyone has interesting decks or unique commanders anymore. Where is the fun in copying decklists? 4.) wotc just took over edh after bannings and then went radio silent; no word on power tiers or anything….this was supposed to happen months ago.
100 agree!!!!! That's why I listen to this channel and tried to go a little old school and mix it in some of the new school stuff and make things work for me. I want it to work for me and not everyone else.
@@OverlyCriticalAnime I'm not passing judgment on net decking, but I will say that it completely changed magic. People are terrible at knowing what is a good/bad card. The randomness of the game before the internet made it so much fun and interesting.
One argument that really annoys me is "you are not the target demographic anymore". Hmm, maybe I am not. But I was a second ago and you were telling me that the game was being made the best game possible for me. So someone lied to me and I can be angry about it. And so are hundreds of thousands other players. Another thing is that the rot starts at the top. The previous CEO of the company had no idea how to play the game and what's it about. If you have people like that at the top for prolonged time then no wonder that it spreads across every facet of the game, causes crisis every few months, destroys multiple formats, annihilates long established lore and traditions of mtg and ultimately causes discontent among so many of the fans of the game.
I’m not trying to be “that guy” but coming into Magic from Yugioh even as an American it was really jarring how many of the characters were black women. I get that magic is for everyone but it seems like they are making a deliberate effort to center black women. But like I’m guessing the majority of magic players are age 30-50 upper middle class white dudes.
I like UB as a concept, but it is really running the risk of alienating core fans as well as risking over saturation. "Gimmicky" sets should be like a once a year thing, be they UB or things like Murder at Karlov Manor. I also think that sets like Thunder Junction or the Racecar set (which, honestly, is probably motivated by F1 Racing which has BLOWN UP in recent years so Wizards' market research probably pointed towards that for whatever reason) should be given as much TLC as the UB sets are in terms of research/authenticity. I was actually excited for a Western themed set and was pretty let down as it was like an amusement park type set rather than something that might've been gritty and interesting. Karlov Manor also suffered from this, and you alluded to it -- they're only doing meme-y or Un-set type humour and not bothering to go down a bit. I think both sets would've been better received if they were treated a bit more respectfully and were actually woven into the MtG universe rather than it being treated like the Halloween episode of a TV show (or whatever.)
Glad to see someone talking about this, a lot of the people who got in to magic for LotR aren’t interested in old magic and they’re certainly not interested in SpongeBob and Spider man cards. I think we’ll see the same with Final Fantasy. They’re not just making all formats rotate, they’re also making a rotating fan base :/
It's certainly a sales gimmick, but as a guy who loves Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who and Warhammer 40k _and_ Magic, the last couple of years have been pricey ones for me. If the card game was going to last 30+ years was always moving this way. Just think back to all those Arabian Night nerds who were looking forward to that set....
I think you might have hit on the point: you want magic to be a kitchen table format, but it just isn't possible to maintain a kitchen table format that has a million interconnected players and cards and sets designed specifically for it. The average deck has become more and more optimized as the format has expanded. If implemented properly (and that's a big if), the power ceiling on tier 4 would be low enough to let some jank survive. Sure, your crab tribal deck won't stand much of a chance in an optimized bracket 4 pod, but I genuinely think it would fare better than if Commander continues on the path it's on now for 5 more years. You seem to understand that there won't be a split in the format so much as a splinter off. Small, established groups of players will try to keep the kitchen table spirit alive with different versions of old-school EDH, while the rest of us move on with the inevitable march of the Commander format. Personally, I wish you the best of luck.
Definitely agreed. Rule zero is everything. Social problems require social solutions. If someone wants to pubstomp, they are going to try and pubstomp, period. There is no rules you can add to the game that will change that. You still need someone who will say, "hey, that deck is too strong for this pod, and you know it. Fix the issue, or play with other people." My hope is that brackets are merely just an attempt to fix the 1-10 power scale and solve the "my deck is a 7" problem. Listing cards as clear examples in an attempt to clearly illustrate what power level a deck falls under
With the way mtg is going, I wouldn't be surprised if there was two formats for it later. Like "standard" being commander, with recent rules and cards, and a "reverse modern" being EDH format where your stop after a certain set. With the passing of Sheldon Menery (RIP), I say stop at the year after he passed which is everything before Murders at Karlov Manor.
In terms of organic Magic sets, we need to then address how March of the Machines was responsible for pretty much destroying it all and setting us up for more Universes Beyond. They did the Phyrexian Praetors dirty with such an anticlimactic ending. Killed off a ton of characters across a ton of plains. They couldn’t even get people excited enough this year for a Ravnica set. MKM is also my favorite set despite its flaws because there is so much value and overlooked gems (for now) in that set. The thing is it could have easily been rectified. Such as simply calling it Ravnica: A Murder Mystery and tuned down the detective angle. Same for Thunder Junction, tune down the cowboy hats and focus on the plain as being a frontier ripe for the extraction of resources and treasures for other planes via the now open Omenpaths. To either gain an advantage and/or rebuild due to being devastated by the Phyrexian Invasion. The point is whoever is in charge of writing is terrible. It’s lazy and sloppy. They didn’t know what to do with almost 30 years of world building so they threw it all out for the easy way out. We see this across all media with old established IPs. Just ask WoW players who they feel about the direction of the lore and story there. Or the recent Star Wars trilogy. So now they’ve settled on essentially UB because they don’t need to create anything. It’s already established in LOTR, FF, Marvel etc.
I play all of my commander games online,,, spellltable is good enough for that Hoping the tier system is a better tool to facilitate Rule 0 talks than the current "my deck's a 7" method
I agree with just about everything in this video except, as a matter of personal taste, I liked Bloomburrow. It was an original high fantasy setting inspired by an established literary tradition- more than "the Rats of NIMH," a story which takes place on modern day earth, Bloomburrow was inspired by genre classics like "Watership Down" and the Redwall series. But it's more than a cheap mishmash of recognizable tropes, because (unlike some other paper-thin "planes" like Thunder Junction) they actually did unique worldbuilding for it- Bloomburrow has its own mythology and history, complete with its own culure of opposing factions and stuff. It's cutesy on the surface but, like the source material it draws from, that kid-friendly aesthetic belies its depth. TL;DR: Bloomburrow is good, actually
Honestly. And it's such a travesty cause the background art in TJ was incredible, and the mechanics were some of the best of the year, yet they top it off with recycled characters in cowboys hats & one of the worst magic stories of all time. Genuinely so fucking mad that they did the Western set like this. Bloomburrow is the best set of the year other than maybe Foundations and I didn't hardly buy anything from it, which is awesome. I got a break, and the people that did enjoy the themes and story had a good time, we need more of that easy going non-powercrept recycling crap.
I totally agree. I would argue that that opinion goes for most of the sets that I've played a bit of this year. I think he's forgetting that sets like Arabian Nights (the actual Arabian Nights), Ice Age (Everybody is in a foot of snow), Visions (Brown people!), Innistrad (Hammer Horror Movies), Kamigawa (Ninjas! Not in my fantasy world, you don't!) all exist and people even like some of them. People don't become more conservative in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving with the rest of the world.
While I do get your point of view, I think it is absolutely fair to be critical of UB while at the same time acknowledging to like one specific IP coming to Magic. It's called nuance, or to use a Star Wars quote: Only a sith deals in absolutes ;)
Happy new year man. I agree with you. I have 3 friends I play with most of the time anyway. Just say "i don't wanna play against chaos decks" and if your friends arent jerks, they'll say "okay, cool" and you'll play perfectly fine👍
Regarding some kind of bracket system, currently, the only "brackets" that work are EDH vs cEDH. The whole power level system does not work. And I think the proposed new bracket system will fail for the same reason: it's too complicated. So here are the two options that I think might work. The first option is we have brackets based on the intention and gameplay, like EDH vs cEDH. And we already do this now. I hear people say, "I'm going to play my low power deck" or "I'm going to play my high power deck". The particular cards in the deck don't really matter; it's what the deck is designed to do that matters, like EDH vs cEDH. The second option, if we really want to focus more on particular cards, would be to just bracket the commanders, not every single card in the deck. So maybe some janky commander that isn't powerful would be bracket 1 and the most powerful commanders would be bracket 4. And then you could put any cards in the 99 that you wanted. People already do this as well by saying "I'm going to play Lathril" etc and then other people might try to find a similarly powerful commander. They wouldn't even have to bracket every single commander; all commanders not bracketed would by default be bracket 0.
In the last 18 months, the core group of commander players at my LGS, composed of around 12-14 people, have stopped regularly coming in for weekly commander, aside from myself and my two friends. We don't actually play commander if we can't fill a pod of 4 anymore, so we bring our 40k stuff to build and paint in the meantime. There's a multitude of reasons for each person who decided to stop coming, but the biggest ones are probably the game becoming bloated with product and rules text (apparently more than half of all the unique rules text ever printed on cards has been printed on cards released in the last 4 years), universes beyond and the "Fortnitefication" of the game, and the ballooning cost of the product.
I bought packs because I just got back and it’s fun to open them. (It’s mtg gambling) But frankly I don’t care about “staples” unless it’s in deck theme.
Here’s the thing. I don’t care if someone else has a lightning McQueen as their commander. If universe beyond bothers me, I’ll not play any universe beyond myself. I’ll still go up against lightning McQueen any day though.
I was just thinking about new commander video ideas. I'm new to commander and started looking for a video of top grixis commanders and nothing really caught my eye. You could start a series going through each color/color combination and list 5-10 commanders for that tribe. Just a thought and maybe you've already done this idk I didn't look very long.
I’m really proud of the rule zero talk in my playgroup. Some of us have been playing for 15 years some of us 3 years. And one newer player plays Sheoldred, voja and eldrazi and we love it 😂
I think another issue w the bracket system is that wotc can print a bracket 4 deck and reprint broken cards and set an msrp of like $150 to make more money.
So I can explain why universes beyond is so popular. Before UB I imagined what cards would look like in Magic. A favourite Character or something. Then they made some Cards and they did a really good job that as a fan of both, Magic and the UB Theme, you can say: They nailed it. Pulling people in is important, but even if pulling people in doesn't work. Cards sold are cards sold. And I like Thunder Junction. Not only becaus I like the wild west and waited for new deserts. It was something different like neon dynastie. They just overdo it now. Every set is like that. And the "Fantasy only" got quite old. And I play since 4th edition... Were Vehicles too much or a good change of lore? I hated Lord of the Rings and Bloomburrow. So take my opinion as something niche.
It's funny that people feel that magic had a feel about it in the past. I honestly never got the sense of cohesion with magic when I just played any of the original magic sets. It just seemed like a mishmash of fantasy creatures that you throw at each other. The only cohesion I gathered was when they added planeswalkers. Even then there didn't seem to be a semblance of a story that I was aware of after just buying some starter decks and fat packs.
Hey Demo, I play since Time Spiral. I had a very negative phase once too. It was Kaladesh and our first journey to Ixalan. I didn't like the style of Kaladesh and when they said "It's Pirates VS Dinosaurs time." I was like "Really!?" I quit the game for 2+ years. When I came back my whole attitude changed. I didn't want to be so negativ anymore. I want to be positive. I want to embrace what designers are trying to achieve! Then they threw Detectives and Cowboys at me. What I did was trying to find joy in the silliness. While it didn't work for the Detectives and I more or less ignore their whole existance the Cowboys really grew on me. Committing a crime is not silly, but fun to me nowadays. Having a Command Tower with an Anime girl on it was a thing I what have hated with a passion back then. Now it brings laughs to the table I am usually playing at. The negativity I had back than ate me alive. Made me quit the game. But the way I see designs and especially what they are TRYING to do give me and my friends the best time we had in Magic ever!
the problem with being positive about everything is that it allows Wotc to be unaccountable for anything they do. i just sit back and say nothing while they ruin the game i love. sorry can't do it.
I'd be for the power bracket levels if they went by a decks average bracket. If there was a method to average a deck, it would be more useful because it includes the nuances of most decks
Can someone cite for me where Wizards has said the bracket system is to determine what other decks you can play? How about that if you have specific cards of brackets that that corresponds to your decks powerlevel? In fact can anyone find anywhere Wizards doesn't stipulate that this is just to aid the rule 0 conversation to talk about the stronger cards in your deck.? If you're arguing in good faith, and take them at their word that this is just to aide players in having a conversation about some of the stronger cards in their decks, does it seem as bad as you were previously thinking by giving it way more weight than what Wizards has specified?
Here’s a knee slapper: I stopped playing after Mirrodin because I hated the new card frame color aesthetic. It didn’t feel like Magic to me. Oh, to have those problems again would be a dream come true.
I quit after Mirrodin because Affinity was the single most awful thing WotC had designed to that point. They've topped themselves several times since I've learned in my decade back.
Aetherdrift's set symbol is a really good illustration of the flavor issues of recent sets. The concept of "underground racing in Ghirapur goes mainstream with a course that uses the new Omenpaths" is neat and builds on what they've previously introduced... but the checkered flag as the symbol is just too cute and obvious. It's like they shy away from thinking too deeply about making a set and its flavor unique and Magic-y anymore.
The recap of the sets that came out this year really changed my opinion on Universes Beyond. I was defending it a lot because a lot of the pearl-clutching was really hyperbolic. I also don't really care about Spongebob cards or whatever. I was way more concerned about the egregious amount of cards being churned out because that volume makes bad design impossible to avoid. But realizing how much the firehose of cards is getting fueled by Universes Beyond... oof. I was definitely wrong about UB. It's increasingly clear Hasbro has no long term plan for Magic as a game. It's just an IP to them. They want to make a lot of money, and they want to make it right now. The game is in a death spiral, pricing out more players every year. And, as every pay-to-win game eventually finds out, as soon as there are no casual players for the whales beat up on, there's no longer any incentive for them to keep throwing cash at the game.
Turning commander into a rotating format is kinda scummy and I can totally see rebelling against that, but trying to tie the dislike for the newer aesthetic into it is just silly.
It was a great year because there was not a lot of product I felt compelled to buy. It allowed me to focus on upgrading older decks and actually playing more than deck building for the first time in many years. We are always complaining that there are too many products released a year yet you're complaining that there wasn't enough for you?
I think the real issue is that Wizards doesn't care about the Magic IP. Lorwyn pushed back? Weird UB-style "all your favorites but with hats" sets? They're not focusing their resources on making a narrative around planes and characters that really make Magic what it is. I don't hate Universes Beyond. I don't hate un-sets. I don't hate getting goofy from time to time, I just really think that it can't just be all silly, all the time. Silly cowboys are fun... but there's just no moderation in that. I ran into former co-workers who got drawn in from Universes Beyond. It's good to see them, to show them how much wild goodness exists as they dig deeper. I'm going to roll Adun Oakenshield against Captain America and Frodo and we're going to have a good time. The biggest thing for me is to be good to the people at the LGS or across whatever table. We can tweak for power level, we can talk about what worked, what people want, and what stuff we cooked up and brought to the table. Un-cards and proxies? Tell us, and we're good! I'll be consistent and never give someone a hard time for what they like. I don't have to like it, I don't have to buy it, but just like I did when Heroclix made weird not-superhero stuff, we're here for each other to have a good time.
As someone who has a regular pod to play with we play the way we want to play and the heck with the "rules", brackets ect we self regulate. Sometimes we see some arms races and what not but removal is cheaper than expensive staples so if the staples don't get to stay on the board they eventually get weeded out of the decks and everything works out. We play for fun and whoever wins wins
The important thing to remember with the bracket system is that it's main purpose is giving everyone a consistent language. It does not mean your janky deck with an enlightened tutor can't play with draft chaff jank decks in bracket 1. It simply means you tell everyone hey guys I'm playing a jank bracket 1 deck at the heart but you'll see a few bracket 1 tutors to make this jank pile silly combo work in a singleton format, is that cool? And they'll likely be fine.... It's also optional, if you have a rule zero discussion that works with the people in your discord, use that instead of brackets, it's not a different format old vs new, it's simply an option to use for rule zero that everyone understands
Ok, sure, but to what end? So how is that going to play out on commander night at an LGS? Is there going to be a bracket 1 table and bracket 2 and 3 and 4 table? To me, that sounds like a pain for everyone to find a game. And if not, what's the point? Ok my deck is a bracket 2 and yours is a bracket 1 and his is a bracket 3, then we play anyway ... so what's the point? We'll find out when we play how powerful the decks are like we do now, and sometimes the more powerful deck wins and sometimes it doesn't. Will all the bracket 1 decks know to gang up on the bracket 4 deck? We already do that without brackets. I just don't see the point. Also, how do you know someone's deck really is a bracket 1? What happens in the middle of the game if you notice a bracket 3 card in their deck? Do you scoop or complain that they cheated or complain that the only won because they had a bracket 3 card? It's like the power levels people tried to create ... no one ever uses them. The only "brackets" that make sense so far are EDH and cEDH. Maybe if they made the brackets more about intention and gameplay instead of the actual cards it would work better? I think that might be a better consistent language that everyone could understand.
@punkypinko2965 yeah that's fair and you make a lot of good points. I don't think there'd be designated tables for different brackets but who knows LGS vary a lot. As far as lying about power level or whatever, I still think brackets are just an optional method of classifying instead of the 1-10 scale. I'm also not a huge advocate of brackets, nor will I run into this since I play with the same group all the time, I just notice a lot of people misunderstanding the intention behind it as an alternative method to 1-10 that a lot of people use or something different entirely, whatever works. I do appreciate Wotc at least trying something different since the ten scale has a lot of issues but they seem open to pivoting how brackets work as they continue to flesh it out with the group of advisors.
Brackets are for one reason, and one reason only: To sell more products. They already did it once. Remember around Mirrodin, where they sold expert, intermediate and basic decks, precons? They will do it again.
As far as rule zero discussions go when brackets are implemented, the only impact will probably be a bit of awkwardness when someone asks about brackets and other players look at them weird and everyone does the usual back-and-forth before picking decks they think are a good fit
Speaking of cards from unsets feeling like normal cards, I played a zombie tribal deck and had Temp of the Damned in my deck. I thought it was odd that it had Funk counters, but figured it was okay since the Unfinity set also had dice rolling. I had it in the deck for months before someone told me it was not allowed, but most people didn't care since the card isn't good.
As an outsider who got into mtg this year, I had always assumed mtg was just another high fantasy product to throw into with the rest. Personally, it was the weird creative liberties that drew me in. My first deck was from Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and I don't think I would of been as intreseted in MTG as I would of been if when I went to my card shop it was just a bunch of high fantasy commanders. Obviously now that I have stuck around I see them for more than that. But it really was the weird, fun stuff that drew me in. For my buddy it was outlaws of thunder junction that he fell in love with. I think a lot of people forget that their anecdotal experiences are not representative
@@MidgetMoto And then stopped for a bit at Arabian Nights (vaguely Middle-Eastern), then again at Ice Age (everybody is in the snow), and then again at Kamigawa (Ninjas), and then again at Innistrad (Hammer Horror Films) and then again.... And so on. People don't get more conservative the older they get, they just stop evolving. ;)
Didn’t realize I was in the minority on this kind of stuff but it seems like I am. In that I literally only care about the text box of cards. Couldn’t care less what the set symbol looks like or what clothes the character in the art is wearing etc. To each their own!
Getting people to try the game used to be the biggest hurdle to convert new players. If a big quantity of players try the game and just move on after a year, maybe there is also something wrong with the gameplay side of things. It certainly doesn't carry as much as it used to be.
I think it's good that they make some sets every now and then that I'm completely uninterested in, it saves me money. Just look for the few cards that might peak you interest and buy those as singles.
As for the bracket system, I genuinely don't understand the whole idea. Either the format splits into several formats if the tiers are enforced or the effort is completely meaningless if it's just guidelines in the power level discussions, evaluating the actual power levels of the deck. But even if it happens, it needs a lot of work, because it's really dumb to have a deck in higher bracket because of one or two goodstuff cards that are assigned into higher power level.
10-15 years ago is my favourite era of magic for me. It felt like it's own thing. I wasn't keen on the MtG but with Hats era we saw this year. I loved Thunder Junction personally, but alongside Murders at Karlov Manor and Duskmorne, alongside Aetherdrift next year it just put a bad taste in my mouth. Almost as if they were prepping us for more UB. And Universes Beyond is a mixed bag for me, I loved the 40k commander decks, I think D&D and Baldur's Gate was a perfect fit. But anything outside of Fantasy needs to be tread very carefully. I'm also not keen on them regularly being standard legal sets. A standard legal UB set every few years wouldn't be a massive issue for me, but with rotation being increased and UB making up half of all Standard Sets? It's a no go for me.
11:43 to be honest, I JUST understood that the OTJ Set Symbol is a hat! the straight lines were confusing me Anyway, everything up to Kaladesh (included) seems "Magic" to me; everything after ... not so much Also, too many ETB effects: Creatures are no more "Creatures", but "Sorceries with "
Remember that meme cards are memorable. You somehow remembered Jacked Rabbit. People keep talking about meme cards, so it’s more incentive for WOTC to keep adding them to modern sets
The fact that he remembered that card isn’t a good thing. The reason he remembered the card was for having a dumb jokey name. I agree with demo that cards like that need to be in un-sets and the line between them needs to be more defined.
As a fellow man in his 40's who has been playing about 2/3rds of my life you have definitely grabbed my attention. On your first point, the only two sets I cracked packs of this year were MH3. Just such a generically powerful set that even if all I pulled was a two sided land/spell I felt okay about it. WOULD buy Foundations Jumpstart but they are literally extinct in out city and our postal service only recently returned to work. Bought singles of everything else because everything that wasn't UB might has well have been since they all had lame themes that felt like "UB we couldn't get the license to". On your second point, while I can't claim to pass some sort of Total UB Purity test, as I have a Sam and Frodo Artifact Artistocrats deck, I never did see this magical (pun intended) influx of new players and actually of all the new sets the biggest influx I saw was lapsed players brought back by Bloomburrow. Most of the UB cards I tend to see are played for their power or fun level as a card *by existing players* not because people are Bronies for whatever washed IP WotC managed to get. I think the "new players" narrative is largely a myth perpetuated by pro-UB players and WotC themself when the actual truth is very much more like what you stated. They (fans of whatever IP) get their stuff and they're out. The word you needed to use for all the non-UB sets since Karlov Manor is "cringe". MaRo and the staff at WotC have a very "punny", unimaginative and, frankly, lame sense of humour and of what is "cute" while they are also pushing this "Magic as Overwatch/ FunkoPop/ Fortnite" agenda and, as an adult, I find it has made MTG kind of embarrassing to be associated with. Hard disagree that you *have to* be consistent. You said yourself, people like what they like, etc. D and D and LotR 100% fit Magic's fantasy aesthetic and I have zero problems with them being in the game. Especially DND even though I have literally played it once for half an hour and said "no thanks, not for me". What I hate is the immersion-breaking stuff that started with Aether Revolt and really started to ramp up with Kamigawa: Blade Runner...I mean Neon Dynasty and has just gotten progressively more eye-rolling. Dr. Who, Marvel, Cowboy Hats, Transformers. Etc. Etc. Etc. It's all the same. It's all just crap that just doesn't *belong in the game's world* Probably my closest MTG playing friend built a 5 colour historic deck and at one point his boardstate had cards from 6 different non-Magic IP. I love the guy but I looked him dead in the face and said "your deck is cringe and I f'ing hate it" It's like playing Monopoly with gamepieces from 10 different licensed editions of the game all mixed together. Re: The space set. There's an old saying in film. It goes: "If the franchise goes to space it has officially run out of ideas". Enough said on that. You're thinking of the "Distraction Makers" UA-cam channel and while they are smart dudes and I enjoy their stuff for the most part, they seem pretty worthless when it comes to insight into EDH. I'd go as far as to say they seem ignorant and maybe a little hostile to it. Perhaps because they're professional game devs and EDH is a community format that is 1000x bigger than anything they'll likely ever produce. The Ginger, in particular, seems to hold an anti-EDH bias. We've argued it before so I'll keep it quick here: Yes, they'll unban stuff. They will not unban the 3 specific cards that people were sending death threats over to bully the RC out of the format, because of the message that would send of "Death threats work in this community". This is WotC...the company that bans cards like Cleanse, Crusade and Jihad because 4 people on Twitter said "insensitive" loud enough. Whole thing ever would have happened if Sheldon was still around and I'll never forgive Jim LePage and company for unilaterally handing the format over to WotC. IMO he's a lilly-livered sell-out who directly broke an oath he made to a dying man. (and yes, I've been doxxed and had death threats made to me before online...then 30 seconds later I moved on with my life). My big takeaway from 2024 was cashing out every card I owned over 20$ that isn't RL or holds some sentimental value and went pure counterfeit/ proxy. None of my local stores enforce anyway and the stuff I buy is all pretty foolproof, unless someone asks to inspect with a loupe. So why should I, even indirectly, send WotC my cash when I completely disapprove of every single decision they make in regards to the game? I won't and I'm happy for the board and Hasbro's shareholders but they're not making a single dollar off this guy, even indirectly, anymore.
This year had sets I mostly didn't care for and yet...I still built a ton of decks and found lots to like lol. The year sorta started for me with Ixalan since it came out so late last year that I rode that set for at least the first quarter of this year. Every set still had a bunch of new tech for my decks and commanders I wanted to build that I'm almost sort of glad they weren't more appealing theme-wise because even just taking the parts I liked from each one was hard to keep up. 😅
People don't become more conservative in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving with the rest of the world. But let's be clear here: Nearly every set is a departure from the original Alpha and Beta and Dominaria-centric releases. The whole conceit of the game is to planeswalk (or now, omen path) to other universes _Time Bandits_ style in-part to keep the play environment fresh. I mean were the sets for Arabian Nights (it's _the_ Arabian Nights), Ice Age (everyone is in a foot of snow), Kamigawa (Ninjas everywhere!), Lorwyn (No Humans?!?), Innistrad (1960's-70's Hammer Horror Movies), etc... any less Magic than what we saw this year, or last, or the one before that? Had there been an actual widespread internet back when it came out, you would have had people moaning about how _"Visions_ isn't _my_ Magic!" I think the sets that I actually got to play a bit this year were a lot of fun. I liked most of the mechanics in them, and the background stories were all at least okay. I don't really need an in depth story to play cards with cowboy hats on them, and who wouldn't like saying that they were "three steps ahead of you" and then play the card. I agree, that power creep is a thing, and will continue to be a thing for as long as they make Magic cards. I kinda hope that they try to make cards that are powerful in more niche instances rather than outright staples, but that's going to happen too if the card game is going to last another 30 years. Also, I for one am looking forward to a new vehicle set and an homage to Hanna Barbara's Wacky Racers, anime like Speed Racer, Red Line, Initial D, the of course the Road Warrior franchise, and Death Race 2000. 😉
I still think they don't go far enough with the crazyness of new sets. MtG has so much potential and I do not want it all squandered on the same LotR ripoff we've been seeing for 30 years now.
So true about players coming in for just a temporary set like LOTRs. Will they stay? They might but its not sustainable. I agree with you about all the themes and all the aesthetics too.
I couldn't agree more. I believe half of the fun comes from the theme, with the other half being the rules themselves and the interactions between players. How many times has someone's interest in the game been sparked by a unique artwork related to the medieval/fantasy theme? There are some other universes that share similarities with Magic, like LoTR, DnD, and Baldur's Gate, but they are going too far. I've stopped buying new cards and am focusing on building a collection of old-border cards, from the 4th Edition to Rise of the Eldrazi.
The best way to play magic is 60 card constructed. Wizards killed/abandoned standard and now promotes the “FUN” commander cash cow. I love commander and its tragic to watch wizards greed corrupt the game ive played for 20yrs
20:43 this is so fucking true. Like sol ring. Swords to plowshares. What?? Swords is one of the most efficient removal spells printed. It’s banned in historic. But that’s the baseline?
I’ve been playing/collecting since khaladesh… the reason i got into magic was the relative absence of power creep compared to yugioh and the epic fantasy/medieval/grim aesthetic. Not much of this is left.
since this is the first year of commander in our playgroup i kinda have to disagree, commander finally hit our village aswell this year and we love it. maybe you need more casual rounds?
One thing I miss is the books that came out. I've only been into Magic for about two years, but I went back and read a lot of the older books. (The Thran, Myths of Magic, etc.) Those stories were really good, and got me invested in Magic's storyline. Then I read the story for Caverns of Ixalan, and it felt so empty. I'm rarely a fan of episodic formats, and Caverns is a good example. Barely anything was fleshed out. There was something about Bartolomé being a father-figure to Amalia, but we were only told that-very few concrete examples, so his death wasn't impactful at all. Same thing with Duskmourn's story. I would have much rather read the story of Winter betraying his friend. Instead we got a pointless adventure with no stakes.
Universes Beyond are either hit or miss for me. Sure, there's UB that I'm not too keen on (like Doctor Who, or the upcoming Spongebob), but some others are working very well, like LOTR and Warhammer. Actually the one thing I dislike is when they reprint a card with a new identity, like the Godzilla cards in Ikoria.
i mean the ub sets are probably for the new player, but like, at this point its probably getting pretty difficult to design or make new cards cause theres so many right
You're an experienced player, brackets are not for you. Brackets will exist for new players and also for people who do not have regulars they play against. It is also just part of the rule zero talk, you can ignore it as much as you want, it is available and contextualized for the players that want to use it.
I think universes beyond sets are fine, as long as they still feel like they fit. I actually made a couple universes beyond decks. Necron tribal and Mothman radiation mill. I think they both have a sort of MTG feel. Artifacts Zombies and Mutants are all over previous MTG so they fit right in. My Little Pony not so much.
@@chrisbenson6753 never played Warhammer or Fallout... I watched the show but that was after the cards came out and I don't recall mothman making an appearance... I might have done warhammer but I've never been much good at painting things so panting all those little mini guys was never appealing. Of the Worlds beyond sets the only one I really new was LOTR and I didn't buy those decks. I think arguing that zombies / undead / gods are not MTG feel is impossible. That's the Necrons. While mutants are less of a thing in Magic, they have been around a long time. Part of why I like that deck is that having a playable mill deck that isn't overpowered combo is hard to do in EDH. The radiation mill actually gets the job done, and the Mothman basically provides you with 2 alternate wincons right off the bat (damage from overrun with +1/+1 - very MTG / commander damage - very EDH)
I don’t particularly care about themes in general, what I liked about older sets was that Magic was dark fantasy (Shadowmoor, mirrodin etc) now everything is too much of a joke/meme as you said. In terms of universes beyond Lotr and Warhammer fit the aesthetic of MTG. The marvel stuff among others just feel out of place
The magic might not always be good, but the gathering is always good.
Even that's gone to the wayside these days. The majority of lgs dwellers are lefty dumb dumbs. They make everything insufferable.
Not always. At my lgs, I had a dumb chic whining the whole time that we kept "accidently" calling her "HER", like she actually is. I won't play with her no more.
@@darushkii heck yeah, I just play with people I like
You must have a home pod instead of LGS pods
@@RobbyRobRob42 I do both. I've just always gone into games with the mindset of "I'm responsible for the fun that I am having" and I really think that makes a difference
Everything changes.....I'm just here for cardboard squares with friendz
Exactly. People don't become more traditional in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving. I personally am dying for a new set of vehicle cards to play with.
I appreciate your takes and sometimes I disagree with some ideas but your channel remains the first commander channel. Thanks a lot.
I think my favorite period of magic was between 10 and 15 years ago. We had 4 sets a year. Three were part of a narrative block set, and the other was a core set consisting of mostly reprints. This era saw sets like innistrad and zendikar for example.
I really discovered that I don’t care about universes beyond as long as the card designs are good. Been playing against wolverine and it doesn’t bother me a bit cause i just see a magic card that does a thing.
Yes in looking at sets in total the universes beyond aesthetic bothers me alot… but when in game I just barely notice that the cards aren’t “magic”
Count me in for old school
6:13 I’d argue Arabian nights fits this bill, or something like ptk
Yea and there are also many joke/funny cards spread throughout the old cards. Goblin Game anyone?
Deadapult?
The Dark was also pretty horror-themed, I'd argue, too.
Yeah, this argument is why I used to defend Universes Beyond, because that is effectively what Magic actually was, originally. The difference, IMO, is that when Arabian Nights came out, it wasn't in the same year as a swashbuckler-themed set, and a wizard school theme set, and a horror-themed set. People are getting whiplash from the rapid pace and changes. If the release schedule wasn't so psychotically fast, it wouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of people. Because they did all those sets I mentioned earlier, (Weatherlight block, Urza's block, The Dark), and most people really liked them, especially at the time. I know, because I was there.
I think people are confusing symptoms with the actual issue. The actual issue is that the game is currently in the hands of a company that does not understand the game on a fundamental level and just wants to squeeze every last dollar out of it before they throw the lifeless husk in the trash. Hasbro thinks it bought tabletop Fortnite. And that's a big problem for Magic. I've seen a LOT of tabletop Fortnites in the 31 years I've been playing magic and they come and go in the blink of an eye.
There are a lot of sets that had themes. Antiquities had a theme. Fallen Empires had a theme (other than just being lazy and bad, I mean). They just weren't so on-the-nose like "hey, everyone's a detective" or "everyone's a cowboy." Tempest block was a giant departure from what came before, because it was presented like a cartoon show with a core cast. Here is Gerard, here is his friend Karn, here is his wacky first mate Squee. This is their mighty ship, the Weatherlight. Seemingly every card had to have one of the core characters on it to tell the story instead of representing a more general or abstract "spell."
it was a totally different way presenting magic, and honestly it was kind of lame compared to what came before it, but people got used to it and even started to accept it as the normal and best way to build the world. People will get used to Universes Beyond and Magic: The Hattening IF the underlying game is interesting.
@@thevoxdeus the rath, urza and invasion cycles were very different as you said, but since the story was about urza and mishra it was cool to finally see some of magic's lore being played out
19:26 Distraction Makers
while they are smart dudes and I enjoy their stuff for the most part, they seem pretty worthless when it comes to insight into EDH. I'd go as far as to say they seem ignorant and maybe a little hostile to it.
Perhaps (meaning "almost certainly") because they're professional game devs and EDH is a community format that is 1000x bigger than anything they'll ever produce.
The Ginger, in particular, seems to hold a smug anti-EDH bias that kinda makes me want to smack the taste out of his mouth.
21:00. I didn’t think about that. They are totally gonna do 1 product for each bracket. 50$ bracket 1, 100$ bracket 2, 300$ bracket 3, 1000$ bracket 4.
Uh oh you mentioned UB, here come all the Arabian Nights false equivalencies.
I hate Loot from the bottom of my heart. Its design is Pokémon, not MtG. I even made a custom proxy of Loot, Exuberant Explorer so I can stop looking at its miserable maw.
lol me too 🎉 it felt such a pointless character from its appearence, just being vraska and jace's pet
They’re trying so hard to remove things from Magic the Gathering that have made it what it is for over 30 years and replace it with things that have nothing to do with MTG at all. How did they ever survive this long without reprints, mascots and Universes Beyond trash 🙄
I would say even though it would fit in Pokemon, it would be a bad Pokemon too.
That thing is designed horribly.
More important things in life to focus on, why harbor hate for something so trivial?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a good design. But I have never felt hate towards any aspect of the game because, well, it's a game. My mental stress from work, school, and bills is much too high for me to be worried about a weird looking little creature.
@@palicaoo Well it's more than a pet, it literally holds an infinite map of the multiverse in its mind. That's actually pretty cool in my opinion.
With that said, they definitely did not need to make it look like a cracked out gerbil 😂
I appreciate your opinions and agree we shouldn't feel the need to own every product that comes out. Personally, I am okay with the card pool that I've amassed and many of them were your recommendations. If we’re taking what Wizards does with a grain of salt, then certainly let’s not rush to conclusions about the tier ranking system. We are still unsure of how things will actually be; or if they will ever formally be announced in a way people think. Ultimately, what will be embraced is what your play group decides or the community as a whole.
My biggest complaint of the year would be Wizards mishandling of Secret Lair drops and changing from being print to demand to limited print runs.
Overall, while I can understand why some themes may not have resonated with fans, mechanically this year was very fun. I really liked committing a crime. Was a good way to make older cards backwards compatible.
Yeah, nearly every Magic set is (and should be) a divergence from the _'My_ Magic sets of yore'. Ice Age everyone is in the snow, Arabian Nights is _the Arabian Nights,_ Innistrad is Hammer Horror movies of the 60's-70's, etc.... yadda, yadda, yadda. People don't become more traditional in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving.
“…now get off my lawn!” - Amen, brother! Happy New Year!
Happy new year to you demo, your channel is awesome!
Appreciate that!
Great video, I think this was a necessary one to make.
1.) too many commanders, especially unplayable ones with the amount of power creep we have now.
2.) players leaving competitive formats for edh is making edh no longer a casual format; the mindset of 60 cards is vastly different, edh is more like a board game……ppl who have to win and “play the best cards” are ruining casual commander.
3.) edhrec has made it so ppl cannot deck build, to a point where barely anyone has interesting decks or unique commanders anymore. Where is the fun in copying decklists?
4.) wotc just took over edh after bannings and then went radio silent; no word on power tiers or anything….this was supposed to happen months ago.
100 agree!!!!! That's why I listen to this channel and tried to go a little old school and mix it in some of the new school stuff and make things work for me. I want it to work for me and not everyone else.
3. The fun is in playing and enjoying the company of the table?
@Supsup516 I feel like people are starting to forget the social aspect of the game.
Edhrec should be used as a reference to help build not outright copy but I see nothing wrong in net decking
@@OverlyCriticalAnime I'm not passing judgment on net decking, but I will say that it completely changed magic. People are terrible at knowing what is a good/bad card. The randomness of the game before the internet made it so much fun and interesting.
Put jihad in every blue deck
Do many folks actually care about the set symbols?
One argument that really annoys me is "you are not the target demographic anymore". Hmm, maybe I am not. But I was a second ago and you were telling me that the game was being made the best game possible for me. So someone lied to me and I can be angry about it. And so are hundreds of thousands other players.
Another thing is that the rot starts at the top. The previous CEO of the company had no idea how to play the game and what's it about. If you have people like that at the top for prolonged time then no wonder that it spreads across every facet of the game, causes crisis every few months, destroys multiple formats, annihilates long established lore and traditions of mtg and ultimately causes discontent among so many of the fans of the game.
that's just capitalism my friend. it turns everything good into a commodity
I’m not trying to be “that guy” but coming into Magic from Yugioh even as an American it was really jarring how many of the characters were black women.
I get that magic is for everyone but it seems like they are making a deliberate effort to center black women. But like I’m guessing the majority of magic players are age 30-50 upper middle class white dudes.
Would you be willing to proxy them? Giving them a new set symbol and maybe new art.
I'm with you all the way. There is nothing coming out next year I can even remotely get excited about.
I like UB as a concept, but it is really running the risk of alienating core fans as well as risking over saturation. "Gimmicky" sets should be like a once a year thing, be they UB or things like Murder at Karlov Manor.
I also think that sets like Thunder Junction or the Racecar set (which, honestly, is probably motivated by F1 Racing which has BLOWN UP in recent years so Wizards' market research probably pointed towards that for whatever reason) should be given as much TLC as the UB sets are in terms of research/authenticity. I was actually excited for a Western themed set and was pretty let down as it was like an amusement park type set rather than something that might've been gritty and interesting. Karlov Manor also suffered from this, and you alluded to it -- they're only doing meme-y or Un-set type humour and not bothering to go down a bit.
I think both sets would've been better received if they were treated a bit more respectfully and were actually woven into the MtG universe rather than it being treated like the Halloween episode of a TV show (or whatever.)
Glad to see someone talking about this, a lot of the people who got in to magic for LotR aren’t interested in old magic and they’re certainly not interested in SpongeBob and Spider man cards. I think we’ll see the same with Final Fantasy. They’re not just making all formats rotate, they’re also making a rotating fan base :/
It's certainly a sales gimmick, but as a guy who loves Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who and Warhammer 40k _and_ Magic, the last couple of years have been pricey ones for me. If the card game was going to last 30+ years was always moving this way. Just think back to all those Arabian Night nerds who were looking forward to that set....
I think you might have hit on the point: you want magic to be a kitchen table format, but it just isn't possible to maintain a kitchen table format that has a million interconnected players and cards and sets designed specifically for it. The average deck has become more and more optimized as the format has expanded. If implemented properly (and that's a big if), the power ceiling on tier 4 would be low enough to let some jank survive. Sure, your crab tribal deck won't stand much of a chance in an optimized bracket 4 pod, but I genuinely think it would fare better than if Commander continues on the path it's on now for 5 more years. You seem to understand that there won't be a split in the format so much as a splinter off. Small, established groups of players will try to keep the kitchen table spirit alive with different versions of old-school EDH, while the rest of us move on with the inevitable march of the Commander format. Personally, I wish you the best of luck.
Definitely agreed. Rule zero is everything. Social problems require social solutions.
If someone wants to pubstomp, they are going to try and pubstomp, period. There is no rules you can add to the game that will change that. You still need someone who will say, "hey, that deck is too strong for this pod, and you know it. Fix the issue, or play with other people."
My hope is that brackets are merely just an attempt to fix the 1-10 power scale and solve the "my deck is a 7" problem. Listing cards as clear examples in an attempt to clearly illustrate what power level a deck falls under
With the way mtg is going, I wouldn't be surprised if there was two formats for it later. Like "standard" being commander, with recent rules and cards, and a "reverse modern" being EDH format where your stop after a certain set. With the passing of Sheldon Menery (RIP), I say stop at the year after he passed which is everything before Murders at Karlov Manor.
In terms of organic Magic sets, we need to then address how March of the Machines was responsible for pretty much destroying it all and setting us up for more Universes Beyond.
They did the Phyrexian Praetors dirty with such an anticlimactic ending. Killed off a ton of characters across a ton of plains. They couldn’t even get people excited enough this year for a Ravnica set. MKM is also my favorite set despite its flaws because there is so much value and overlooked gems (for now) in that set.
The thing is it could have easily been rectified. Such as simply calling it Ravnica: A Murder Mystery and tuned down the detective angle. Same for Thunder Junction, tune down the cowboy hats and focus on the plain as being a frontier ripe for the extraction of resources and treasures for other planes via the now open Omenpaths. To either gain an advantage and/or rebuild due to being devastated by the Phyrexian Invasion.
The point is whoever is in charge of writing is terrible. It’s lazy and sloppy. They didn’t know what to do with almost 30 years of world building so they threw it all out for the easy way out. We see this across all media with old established IPs. Just ask WoW players who they feel about the direction of the lore and story there. Or the recent Star Wars trilogy. So now they’ve settled on essentially UB because they don’t need to create anything. It’s already established in LOTR, FF, Marvel etc.
I play all of my commander games online,,, spellltable is good enough for that
Hoping the tier system is a better tool to facilitate Rule 0 talks than the current "my deck's a 7" method
Went from "excited to play every weekend at my LGS" to "commander players and the format are garbage" this year
I agree with just about everything in this video except, as a matter of personal taste, I liked Bloomburrow. It was an original high fantasy setting inspired by an established literary tradition- more than "the Rats of NIMH," a story which takes place on modern day earth, Bloomburrow was inspired by genre classics like "Watership Down" and the Redwall series. But it's more than a cheap mishmash of recognizable tropes, because (unlike some other paper-thin "planes" like Thunder Junction) they actually did unique worldbuilding for it- Bloomburrow has its own mythology and history, complete with its own culure of opposing factions and stuff. It's cutesy on the surface but, like the source material it draws from, that kid-friendly aesthetic belies its depth.
TL;DR: Bloomburrow is good, actually
Honestly. And it's such a travesty cause the background art in TJ was incredible, and the mechanics were some of the best of the year, yet they top it off with recycled characters in cowboys hats & one of the worst magic stories of all time. Genuinely so fucking mad that they did the Western set like this.
Bloomburrow is the best set of the year other than maybe Foundations and I didn't hardly buy anything from it, which is awesome. I got a break, and the people that did enjoy the themes and story had a good time, we need more of that easy going non-powercrept recycling crap.
I totally agree. I would argue that that opinion goes for most of the sets that I've played a bit of this year. I think he's forgetting that sets like Arabian Nights (the actual Arabian Nights), Ice Age (Everybody is in a foot of snow), Visions (Brown people!), Innistrad (Hammer Horror Movies), Kamigawa (Ninjas! Not in my fantasy world, you don't!) all exist and people even like some of them. People don't become more conservative in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving with the rest of the world.
agree
also just proxy the cards you don’t like and edit out the set symbols, it’s a simple fix
While I do get your point of view, I think it is absolutely fair to be critical of UB while at the same time acknowledging to like one specific IP coming to Magic. It's called nuance, or to use a Star Wars quote: Only a sith deals in absolutes ;)
agreed, not a fan of UB but 40k, lotr and baldurs gate were awesome as a huge fan of those IP's
Happy new year man. I agree with you. I have 3 friends I play with most of the time anyway. Just say "i don't wanna play against chaos decks" and if your friends arent jerks, they'll say "okay, cool" and you'll play perfectly fine👍
Regarding some kind of bracket system, currently, the only "brackets" that work are EDH vs cEDH. The whole power level system does not work. And I think the proposed new bracket system will fail for the same reason: it's too complicated. So here are the two options that I think might work. The first option is we have brackets based on the intention and gameplay, like EDH vs cEDH. And we already do this now. I hear people say, "I'm going to play my low power deck" or "I'm going to play my high power deck". The particular cards in the deck don't really matter; it's what the deck is designed to do that matters, like EDH vs cEDH. The second option, if we really want to focus more on particular cards, would be to just bracket the commanders, not every single card in the deck. So maybe some janky commander that isn't powerful would be bracket 1 and the most powerful commanders would be bracket 4. And then you could put any cards in the 99 that you wanted. People already do this as well by saying "I'm going to play Lathril" etc and then other people might try to find a similarly powerful commander. They wouldn't even have to bracket every single commander; all commanders not bracketed would by default be bracket 0.
In the last 18 months, the core group of commander players at my LGS, composed of around 12-14 people, have stopped regularly coming in for weekly commander, aside from myself and my two friends. We don't actually play commander if we can't fill a pod of 4 anymore, so we bring our 40k stuff to build and paint in the meantime. There's a multitude of reasons for each person who decided to stop coming, but the biggest ones are probably the game becoming bloated with product and rules text (apparently more than half of all the unique rules text ever printed on cards has been printed on cards released in the last 4 years), universes beyond and the "Fortnitefication" of the game, and the ballooning cost of the product.
I bought packs because I just got back and it’s fun to open them. (It’s mtg gambling) But frankly I don’t care about “staples” unless it’s in deck theme.
Here’s the thing. I don’t care if someone else has a lightning McQueen as their commander. If universe beyond bothers me, I’ll not play any universe beyond myself. I’ll still go up against lightning McQueen any day though.
In response I cast Guy Fieri’s protection.
Lightning McQueen and Mater are both sent to FlavorTown.
I was just thinking about new commander video ideas. I'm new to commander and started looking for a video of top grixis commanders and nothing really caught my eye. You could start a series going through each color/color combination and list 5-10 commanders for that tribe. Just a thought and maybe you've already done this idk I didn't look very long.
i got into magic around war of the spark like 5 years ago and man magic has changed so much since then.
I’m really proud of the rule zero talk in my playgroup. Some of us have been playing for 15 years some of us 3 years. And one newer player plays Sheoldred, voja and eldrazi and we love it 😂
I have basically 99% of this in my head, then I just realise we have 30 years of cards and those are more than enough to fill a lifetime of enjoyment.
I think another issue w the bracket system is that wotc can print a bracket 4 deck and reprint broken cards and set an msrp of like $150 to make more money.
So I can explain why universes beyond is so popular. Before UB I imagined what cards would look like in Magic. A favourite Character or something. Then they made some Cards and they did a really good job that as a fan of both, Magic and the UB Theme, you can say: They nailed it.
Pulling people in is important, but even if pulling people in doesn't work. Cards sold are cards sold.
And I like Thunder Junction. Not only becaus I like the wild west and waited for new deserts. It was something different like neon dynastie. They just overdo it now. Every set is like that. And the "Fantasy only" got quite old. And I play since 4th edition... Were Vehicles too much or a good change of lore?
I hated Lord of the Rings and Bloomburrow. So take my opinion as something niche.
I have a Zerg Swarm themed insects deck with Grist at the helm. Bro, if they put insects on motorcycles I’m just not doing it.
It's funny that people feel that magic had a feel about it in the past. I honestly never got the sense of cohesion with magic when I just played any of the original magic sets. It just seemed like a mishmash of fantasy creatures that you throw at each other. The only cohesion I gathered was when they added planeswalkers. Even then there didn't seem to be a semblance of a story that I was aware of after just buying some starter decks and fat packs.
Hey Demo, I play since Time Spiral. I had a very negative phase once too. It was Kaladesh and our first journey to Ixalan. I didn't like the style of Kaladesh and when they said "It's Pirates VS Dinosaurs time." I was like "Really!?"
I quit the game for 2+ years.
When I came back my whole attitude changed. I didn't want to be so negativ anymore. I want to be positive. I want to embrace what designers are trying to achieve!
Then they threw Detectives and Cowboys at me.
What I did was trying to find joy in the silliness.
While it didn't work for the Detectives and I more or less ignore their whole existance the Cowboys really grew on me. Committing a crime is not silly, but fun to me nowadays. Having a Command Tower with an Anime girl on it was a thing I what have hated with a passion back then. Now it brings laughs to the table I am usually playing at.
The negativity I had back than ate me alive. Made me quit the game.
But the way I see designs and especially what they are TRYING to do give me and my friends the best time we had in Magic ever!
the problem with being positive about everything is that it allows Wotc to be unaccountable for anything they do. i just sit back and say nothing while they ruin the game i love. sorry can't do it.
I'd be for the power bracket levels if they went by a decks average bracket. If there was a method to average a deck, it would be more useful because it includes the nuances of most decks
That specific flag may be new, but checkered patterns were used on flags and banners through the ages.
Just saying.
Talking about tropes in early MTG, Ice Age and Mirage had their respective themes, these being Northern Europe and Africa obviously.
Can someone cite for me where Wizards has said the bracket system is to determine what other decks you can play? How about that if you have specific cards of brackets that that corresponds to your decks powerlevel? In fact can anyone find anywhere Wizards doesn't stipulate that this is just to aid the rule 0 conversation to talk about the stronger cards in your deck.?
If you're arguing in good faith, and take them at their word that this is just to aide players in having a conversation about some of the stronger cards in their decks, does it seem as bad as you were previously thinking by giving it way more weight than what Wizards has specified?
Here’s a knee slapper: I stopped playing after Mirrodin because I hated the new card frame color aesthetic. It didn’t feel like Magic to me.
Oh, to have those problems again would be a dream come true.
I quit after Mirrodin because Affinity was the single most awful thing WotC had designed to that point. They've topped themselves several times since I've learned in my decade back.
Aetherdrift's set symbol is a really good illustration of the flavor issues of recent sets. The concept of "underground racing in Ghirapur goes mainstream with a course that uses the new Omenpaths" is neat and builds on what they've previously introduced... but the checkered flag as the symbol is just too cute and obvious. It's like they shy away from thinking too deeply about making a set and its flavor unique and Magic-y anymore.
The recap of the sets that came out this year really changed my opinion on Universes Beyond. I was defending it a lot because a lot of the pearl-clutching was really hyperbolic. I also don't really care about Spongebob cards or whatever. I was way more concerned about the egregious amount of cards being churned out because that volume makes bad design impossible to avoid. But realizing how much the firehose of cards is getting fueled by Universes Beyond... oof. I was definitely wrong about UB.
It's increasingly clear Hasbro has no long term plan for Magic as a game. It's just an IP to them. They want to make a lot of money, and they want to make it right now. The game is in a death spiral, pricing out more players every year. And, as every pay-to-win game eventually finds out, as soon as there are no casual players for the whales beat up on, there's no longer any incentive for them to keep throwing cash at the game.
Turning commander into a rotating format is kinda scummy and I can totally see rebelling against that, but trying to tie the dislike for the newer aesthetic into it is just silly.
I am with you 99% the only thing I keep falling for is retro border reprints
It was a great year because there was not a lot of product I felt compelled to buy. It allowed me to focus on upgrading older decks and actually playing more than deck building for the first time in many years. We are always complaining that there are too many products released a year yet you're complaining that there wasn't enough for you?
I think the real issue is that Wizards doesn't care about the Magic IP. Lorwyn pushed back? Weird UB-style "all your favorites but with hats" sets? They're not focusing their resources on making a narrative around planes and characters that really make Magic what it is.
I don't hate Universes Beyond. I don't hate un-sets. I don't hate getting goofy from time to time, I just really think that it can't just be all silly, all the time. Silly cowboys are fun... but there's just no moderation in that.
I ran into former co-workers who got drawn in from Universes Beyond. It's good to see them, to show them how much wild goodness exists as they dig deeper. I'm going to roll Adun Oakenshield against Captain America and Frodo and we're going to have a good time.
The biggest thing for me is to be good to the people at the LGS or across whatever table. We can tweak for power level, we can talk about what worked, what people want, and what stuff we cooked up and brought to the table. Un-cards and proxies? Tell us, and we're good!
I'll be consistent and never give someone a hard time for what they like. I don't have to like it, I don't have to buy it, but just like I did when Heroclix made weird not-superhero stuff, we're here for each other to have a good time.
As someone who has a regular pod to play with we play the way we want to play and the heck with the "rules", brackets ect we self regulate.
Sometimes we see some arms races and what not but removal is cheaper than expensive staples so if the staples don't get to stay on the board they eventually get weeded out of the decks and everything works out.
We play for fun and whoever wins wins
The important thing to remember with the bracket system is that it's main purpose is giving everyone a consistent language. It does not mean your janky deck with an enlightened tutor can't play with draft chaff jank decks in bracket 1. It simply means you tell everyone hey guys I'm playing a jank bracket 1 deck at the heart but you'll see a few bracket 1 tutors to make this jank pile silly combo work in a singleton format, is that cool? And they'll likely be fine.... It's also optional, if you have a rule zero discussion that works with the people in your discord, use that instead of brackets, it's not a different format old vs new, it's simply an option to use for rule zero that everyone understands
Ok, sure, but to what end? So how is that going to play out on commander night at an LGS? Is there going to be a bracket 1 table and bracket 2 and 3 and 4 table? To me, that sounds like a pain for everyone to find a game. And if not, what's the point? Ok my deck is a bracket 2 and yours is a bracket 1 and his is a bracket 3, then we play anyway ... so what's the point? We'll find out when we play how powerful the decks are like we do now, and sometimes the more powerful deck wins and sometimes it doesn't. Will all the bracket 1 decks know to gang up on the bracket 4 deck? We already do that without brackets. I just don't see the point. Also, how do you know someone's deck really is a bracket 1? What happens in the middle of the game if you notice a bracket 3 card in their deck? Do you scoop or complain that they cheated or complain that the only won because they had a bracket 3 card? It's like the power levels people tried to create ... no one ever uses them. The only "brackets" that make sense so far are EDH and cEDH. Maybe if they made the brackets more about intention and gameplay instead of the actual cards it would work better? I think that might be a better consistent language that everyone could understand.
@punkypinko2965 yeah that's fair and you make a lot of good points. I don't think there'd be designated tables for different brackets but who knows LGS vary a lot. As far as lying about power level or whatever, I still think brackets are just an optional method of classifying instead of the 1-10 scale. I'm also not a huge advocate of brackets, nor will I run into this since I play with the same group all the time, I just notice a lot of people misunderstanding the intention behind it as an alternative method to 1-10 that a lot of people use or something different entirely, whatever works. I do appreciate Wotc at least trying something different since the ten scale has a lot of issues but they seem open to pivoting how brackets work as they continue to flesh it out with the group of advisors.
@punkypinko2965 also a big problem with people misunderstanding was wizards poor job explaining it in that panel video
It's actually an avenue for hallway monitors to police your deck building and tell you how you should be having fun. No thanks.
@@hahahafunniness true but I'd argue that exists today "there's no way that deck is a 6! It's at least an 8!"
I agree with almost everything you said.
Brackets are for one reason, and one reason only:
To sell more products.
They already did it once. Remember around Mirrodin, where they sold expert, intermediate and basic decks, precons?
They will do it again.
Wow, so glad to know that I am not the only one that cares about the set symbol so much. Do you have link to the video you did not set symbols?
The set symbols and meme sets have helped save me some money. I spent some on foundations since it looks lile the MTG i Know
As far as rule zero discussions go when brackets are implemented, the only impact will probably be a bit of awkwardness when someone asks about brackets and other players look at them weird and everyone does the usual back-and-forth before picking decks they think are a good fit
Speaking of cards from unsets feeling like normal cards, I played a zombie tribal deck and had Temp of the Damned in my deck. I thought it was odd that it had Funk counters, but figured it was okay since the Unfinity set also had dice rolling. I had it in the deck for months before someone told me it was not allowed, but most people didn't care since the card isn't good.
I guess I'm weird. this year was pretty sweet for a new player to really dig into. So much fun dumb stuff and the drama.... Peak
He doesn’t care what you think unless you started playing in 1993
As an outsider who got into mtg this year, I had always assumed mtg was just another high fantasy product to throw into with the rest. Personally, it was the weird creative liberties that drew me in. My first deck was from Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and I don't think I would of been as intreseted in MTG as I would of been if when I went to my card shop it was just a bunch of high fantasy commanders. Obviously now that I have stuck around I see them for more than that. But it really was the weird, fun stuff that drew me in. For my buddy it was outlaws of thunder junction that he fell in love with. I think a lot of people forget that their anecdotal experiences are not representative
@@MidgetMotoold man shouts at cloud
@@MidgetMoto And then stopped for a bit at Arabian Nights (vaguely Middle-Eastern), then again at Ice Age (everybody is in the snow), and then again at Kamigawa (Ninjas), and then again at Innistrad (Hammer Horror Films) and then again.... And so on. People don't get more conservative the older they get, they just stop evolving. ;)
11:05 I bet he says "Family" a dozen times in the set
Didn’t realize I was in the minority on this kind of stuff but it seems like I am. In that I literally only care about the text box of cards. Couldn’t care less what the set symbol looks like or what clothes the character in the art is wearing etc. To each their own!
Very strange and embarassing take! You are probably more robot than human!
"Beep BOOP I hate art" - you
Getting people to try the game used to be the biggest hurdle to convert new players.
If a big quantity of players try the game and just move on after a year, maybe there is also something wrong with the gameplay side of things. It certainly doesn't carry as much as it used to be.
I think it's good that they make some sets every now and then that I'm completely uninterested in, it saves me money. Just look for the few cards that might peak you interest and buy those as singles.
They need to bring back the story telling of magic
As for the bracket system, I genuinely don't understand the whole idea. Either the format splits into several formats if the tiers are enforced or the effort is completely meaningless if it's just guidelines in the power level discussions, evaluating the actual power levels of the deck. But even if it happens, it needs a lot of work, because it's really dumb to have a deck in higher bracket because of one or two goodstuff cards that are assigned into higher power level.
Wait, I thought Hasbros whole policy was "let's fix all the positive problems first." 😅😂
Do you think they'll come out with another Un-Set and make it Commander legal?
10-15 years ago is my favourite era of magic for me. It felt like it's own thing. I wasn't keen on the MtG but with Hats era we saw this year. I loved Thunder Junction personally, but alongside Murders at Karlov Manor and Duskmorne, alongside Aetherdrift next year it just put a bad taste in my mouth. Almost as if they were prepping us for more UB.
And Universes Beyond is a mixed bag for me, I loved the 40k commander decks, I think D&D and Baldur's Gate was a perfect fit. But anything outside of Fantasy needs to be tread very carefully. I'm also not keen on them regularly being standard legal sets. A standard legal UB set every few years wouldn't be a massive issue for me, but with rotation being increased and UB making up half of all Standard Sets? It's a no go for me.
11:43 to be honest, I JUST understood that the OTJ Set Symbol is a hat! the straight lines were confusing me
Anyway, everything up to Kaladesh (included) seems "Magic" to me; everything after ... not so much
Also, too many ETB effects: Creatures are no more "Creatures", but "Sorceries with "
Remember that meme cards are memorable. You somehow remembered Jacked Rabbit. People keep talking about meme cards, so it’s more incentive for WOTC to keep adding them to modern sets
The fact that he remembered that card isn’t a good thing. The reason he remembered the card was for having a dumb jokey name. I agree with demo that cards like that need to be in un-sets and the line between them needs to be more defined.
I remember Richard Ramirez but none of his victims
I totally agree with what you said about the set symbols - they break the immersion and the overall feeling of the deck
Flag doesn't bother me but that "C" on the clue cards is beyond hideous.
@@nanoglitch6693100%
As a fellow man in his 40's who has been playing about 2/3rds of my life you have definitely grabbed my attention.
On your first point, the only two sets I cracked packs of this year were MH3. Just such a generically powerful set that even if all I pulled was a two sided land/spell I felt okay about it. WOULD buy Foundations Jumpstart but they are literally extinct in out city and our postal service only recently returned to work. Bought singles of everything else because everything that wasn't UB might has well have been since they all had lame themes that felt like "UB we couldn't get the license to".
On your second point, while I can't claim to pass some sort of Total UB Purity test, as I have a Sam and Frodo Artifact Artistocrats deck, I never did see this magical (pun intended) influx of new players and actually of all the new sets the biggest influx I saw was lapsed players brought back by Bloomburrow. Most of the UB cards I tend to see are played for their power or fun level as a card *by existing players* not because people are Bronies for whatever washed IP WotC managed to get. I think the "new players" narrative is largely a myth perpetuated by pro-UB players and WotC themself when the actual truth is very much more like what you stated. They (fans of whatever IP) get their stuff and they're out.
The word you needed to use for all the non-UB sets since Karlov Manor is "cringe". MaRo and the staff at WotC have a very "punny", unimaginative and, frankly, lame sense of humour and of what is "cute" while they are also pushing this "Magic as Overwatch/ FunkoPop/ Fortnite" agenda and, as an adult, I find it has made MTG kind of embarrassing to be associated with.
Hard disagree that you *have to* be consistent. You said yourself, people like what they like, etc. D and D and LotR 100% fit Magic's fantasy aesthetic and I have zero problems with them being in the game. Especially DND even though I have literally played it once for half an hour and said "no thanks, not for me". What I hate is the immersion-breaking stuff that started with Aether Revolt and really started to ramp up with Kamigawa: Blade Runner...I mean Neon Dynasty and has just gotten progressively more eye-rolling.
Dr. Who, Marvel, Cowboy Hats, Transformers. Etc. Etc. Etc. It's all the same. It's all just crap that just doesn't *belong in the game's world*
Probably my closest MTG playing friend built a 5 colour historic deck and at one point his boardstate had cards from 6 different non-Magic IP.
I love the guy but I looked him dead in the face and said "your deck is cringe and I f'ing hate it"
It's like playing Monopoly with gamepieces from 10 different licensed editions of the game all mixed together.
Re: The space set. There's an old saying in film. It goes: "If the franchise goes to space it has officially run out of ideas". Enough said on that.
You're thinking of the "Distraction Makers" UA-cam channel and while they are smart dudes and I enjoy their stuff for the most part, they seem pretty worthless when it comes to insight into EDH. I'd go as far as to say they seem ignorant and maybe a little hostile to it. Perhaps because they're professional game devs and EDH is a community format that is 1000x bigger than anything they'll likely ever produce. The Ginger, in particular, seems to hold an anti-EDH bias.
We've argued it before so I'll keep it quick here: Yes, they'll unban stuff. They will not unban the 3 specific cards that people were sending death threats over to bully the RC out of the format, because of the message that would send of "Death threats work in this community". This is WotC...the company that bans cards like Cleanse, Crusade and Jihad because 4 people on Twitter said "insensitive" loud enough.
Whole thing ever would have happened if Sheldon was still around and I'll never forgive Jim LePage and company for unilaterally handing the format over to WotC. IMO he's a lilly-livered sell-out who directly broke an oath he made to a dying man. (and yes, I've been doxxed and had death threats made to me before online...then 30 seconds later I moved on with my life).
My big takeaway from 2024 was cashing out every card I owned over 20$ that isn't RL or holds some sentimental value and went pure counterfeit/ proxy. None of my local stores enforce anyway and the stuff I buy is all pretty foolproof, unless someone asks to inspect with a loupe. So why should I, even indirectly, send WotC my cash when I completely disapprove of every single decision they make in regards to the game?
I won't and I'm happy for the board and Hasbro's shareholders but they're not making a single dollar off this guy, even indirectly, anymore.
Hold up... your kids!? You have kids? That's cool!
This year had sets I mostly didn't care for and yet...I still built a ton of decks and found lots to like lol. The year sorta started for me with Ixalan since it came out so late last year that I rode that set for at least the first quarter of this year. Every set still had a bunch of new tech for my decks and commanders I wanted to build that I'm almost sort of glad they weren't more appealing theme-wise because even just taking the parts I liked from each one was hard to keep up. 😅
People don't become more conservative in thought as they age, but their opinions can stop evolving with the rest of the world.
But let's be clear here: Nearly every set is a departure from the original Alpha and Beta and Dominaria-centric releases. The whole conceit of the game is to planeswalk (or now, omen path) to other universes _Time Bandits_ style in-part to keep the play environment fresh. I mean were the sets for Arabian Nights (it's _the_ Arabian Nights), Ice Age (everyone is in a foot of snow), Kamigawa (Ninjas everywhere!), Lorwyn (No Humans?!?), Innistrad (1960's-70's Hammer Horror Movies), etc... any less Magic than what we saw this year, or last, or the one before that? Had there been an actual widespread internet back when it came out, you would have had people moaning about how _"Visions_ isn't _my_ Magic!"
I think the sets that I actually got to play a bit this year were a lot of fun. I liked most of the mechanics in them, and the background stories were all at least okay. I don't really need an in depth story to play cards with cowboy hats on them, and who wouldn't like saying that they were "three steps ahead of you" and then play the card.
I agree, that power creep is a thing, and will continue to be a thing for as long as they make Magic cards. I kinda hope that they try to make cards that are powerful in more niche instances rather than outright staples, but that's going to happen too if the card game is going to last another 30 years.
Also, I for one am looking forward to a new vehicle set and an homage to Hanna Barbara's Wacky Racers, anime like Speed Racer, Red Line, Initial D, the of course the Road Warrior franchise, and Death Race 2000. 😉
I still think they don't go far enough with the crazyness of new sets. MtG has so much potential and I do not want it all squandered on the same LotR ripoff we've been seeing for 30 years now.
Almost none of this really matters if you enjoy hanging out with friends and playing commander. People rarely quit games, they quit their playgroups.
I loved bloomburrow. 🤷🏾♂️. It was 🔥
So true about players coming in for just a temporary set like LOTRs. Will they stay? They might but its not sustainable.
I agree with you about all the themes and all the aesthetics too.
I couldn't agree more. I believe half of the fun comes from the theme, with the other half being the rules themselves and the interactions between players.
How many times has someone's interest in the game been sparked by a unique artwork related to the medieval/fantasy theme?
There are some other universes that share similarities with Magic, like LoTR, DnD, and Baldur's Gate, but they are going too far.
I've stopped buying new cards and am focusing on building a collection of old-border cards, from the 4th Edition to Rise of the Eldrazi.
The best way to play magic is 60 card constructed. Wizards killed/abandoned standard and now promotes the “FUN” commander cash cow. I love commander and its tragic to watch wizards greed corrupt the game ive played for 20yrs
20:43 this is so fucking true.
Like sol ring.
Swords to plowshares.
What?? Swords is one of the most efficient removal spells printed.
It’s banned in historic.
But that’s the baseline?
I’ve been playing/collecting since khaladesh… the reason i got into magic was the relative absence of power creep compared to yugioh and the epic fantasy/medieval/grim aesthetic. Not much of this is left.
since this is the first year of commander in our playgroup i kinda have to disagree, commander finally hit our village aswell this year and we love it.
maybe you need more casual rounds?
Obviously this is a different perspective. It would be the same for anyone who is new to a hobby.
One thing I miss is the books that came out. I've only been into Magic for about two years, but I went back and read a lot of the older books. (The Thran, Myths of Magic, etc.) Those stories were really good, and got me invested in Magic's storyline.
Then I read the story for Caverns of Ixalan, and it felt so empty. I'm rarely a fan of episodic formats, and Caverns is a good example. Barely anything was fleshed out. There was something about Bartolomé being a father-figure to Amalia, but we were only told that-very few concrete examples, so his death wasn't impactful at all.
Same thing with Duskmourn's story. I would have much rather read the story of Winter betraying his friend. Instead we got a pointless adventure with no stakes.
Universes Beyond are either hit or miss for me. Sure, there's UB that I'm not too keen on (like Doctor Who, or the upcoming Spongebob), but some others are working very well, like LOTR and Warhammer.
Actually the one thing I dislike is when they reprint a card with a new identity, like the Godzilla cards in Ikoria.
i mean the ub sets are probably for the new player, but like, at this point its probably getting pretty difficult to design or make new cards cause theres so many right
Yeah, I'm not using brackets either
Great video, Demo. Couldn't agree more.
You're an experienced player, brackets are not for you. Brackets will exist for new players and also for people who do not have regulars they play against. It is also just part of the rule zero talk, you can ignore it as much as you want, it is available and contextualized for the players that want to use it.
I don't hate universes beyond, what I hate is the push to make everything universes beyond but as per usual habro prioritise greed above everything
I think universes beyond sets are fine, as long as they still feel like they fit. I actually made a couple universes beyond decks. Necron tribal and Mothman radiation mill. I think they both have a sort of MTG feel. Artifacts Zombies and Mutants are all over previous MTG so they fit right in. My Little Pony not so much.
Are you sure that it’s an MTG feel or is it that you actually like those IP?
@@chrisbenson6753 never played Warhammer or Fallout... I watched the show but that was after the cards came out and I don't recall mothman making an appearance... I might have done warhammer but I've never been much good at painting things so panting all those little mini guys was never appealing. Of the Worlds beyond sets the only one I really new was LOTR and I didn't buy those decks.
I think arguing that zombies / undead / gods are not MTG feel is impossible. That's the Necrons. While mutants are less of a thing in Magic, they have been around a long time. Part of why I like that deck is that having a playable mill deck that isn't overpowered combo is hard to do in EDH. The radiation mill actually gets the job done, and the Mothman basically provides you with 2 alternate wincons right off the bat (damage from overrun with +1/+1 - very MTG / commander damage - very EDH)
I don’t particularly care about themes in general, what I liked about older sets was that Magic was dark fantasy (Shadowmoor, mirrodin etc) now everything is too much of a joke/meme as you said. In terms of universes beyond Lotr and Warhammer fit the aesthetic of MTG. The marvel stuff among others just feel out of place