Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[bv310]

I'm not sure what you mean by "enfranchised players" here. I've been playing for 6 years, and I regularly consume a ton of MTG content. I don't feel disenfranchised at all. Khans block actually has me caring about the game a lot more than I have in the past few years, both from a story and gameplay perspective. I feel like that article was just pointing out something that I always thought was incredibly obvious (Rosewater is selling a product, MTG is trying to sell packs which causes them to play it safe, etc.)

From my perspective, what others experience disenfranchisement with is the fact that the game has fundamentally shifted in gameplay mechanics, and is not the same game it was fifteen years ago. From where I came into the game, this is a good thing, because I learned the game as it is now.

Am I close, or completely off the mark?

[Natirasha]

Yeah, it's shifted to be 'safe'. Every set since ISD has been 'safe'. There have been no real attempts at dangerous things since ISD(And, before that, Lorwyn).

The gameplay mechanics shift is part of it, because they want these sets to be safe and digestible to the casual player, but it's not the whole picture.

[Natirasha]

Which isn't to say playing it safe is bad--I agree that KTK block is really fun and the best standard we've had since original Ravnica(yeah I went there)--but it isn't an intellectually

deep

block.

[Natirasha]

(And speaking as someone who cares about lore, Dragons has shaped up to be the worst execution of a classic story as possible)

[Klazam]

I actually think that the fact it isn't the exact same game it was as 2002 (when i started) is a good thing.

ideas, archetypes, paradigms evolved, making the game feel organic.

Yes, they are playing it safe. (wait, are they?)

Treasure Cruise, Thragtusk, Delver of Secrets, Jeskai ascendancy, Mental misstep, Jace the Wallet Sculptor, Walletslayer Angel, Titan cycle (all post Lorwyn, most post ISD) are example of newer really strong cards. Psychatog, Astral Slide, are examples of older strong cards. What I'm getting at is that the game at its core is still the same, with its silly strong cards, and standardized archetypes.

If you're experiencing "disenfranchisement" from this- just find a new hobby, you're burnt out on M:tG. This is a natural thing for a game that has been around since 1993, not everyone can play for that long without feeling bored.

[Klazam]

And i can't say the same about lore. i've been loving the new block-stories.

[Natirasha]

I actually think that the fact it isn't the exact same game it was as 2002 (when i started) is a good thing.

ideas, archetypes, paradigms evolved, making the game feel organic.

Yes, they are playing it safe. (wait, are they?)

Treasure Cruise, Thragtusk, Delver of Secrets, Jeskai ascendancy, Mental misstep, Jace the Wallet Sculptor, Walletslayer Angel, Titan cycle (all post Lorwyn, most post ISD) are example of newer really strong cards. Psychatog, Astral Slide, are examples of older strong cards. What I'm getting at is that the game at its core is still the same, with its silly strong cards, and standardized archetypes.

If you're experiencing "disenfranchisement" from this- just find a new hobby, you're burnt out on M:tG. This is a natural thing for a game that has been around since 1993, not everyone can play for that long without feeling bored.

That's not what I'm talking about at all. Anyone can make a Good card. Like, fuck, I have been designing my own set in my own time and it's easy to make good cards. It's about execution of a theme. There are a thousand ways they could have executed Return to Ravnica in such a way that it was great--I mean, the second set was named 'Gatecrash'. That's a great evolution of original Ravnica's theme!

We got a maze and the status quo. Because the status quo sells. It's cynical.

[Klazam]

uh, i thought the RtR theme was amazeing.

[Natirasha]

How? It was just more of the same, there was no payoff at all!

Like, fuck, at least Theros killed Elspeth!

[GreyICE]

Treasure Cruise and Delver are some of the laziest forms of "strong card" imaginable. Delver is a 3/2 flyer for U that requires you to run cards you were already running in blue. That's not in any way interesting design. It's like Tarmogoyf. "Do what you're doing already and I'll reward you with ridiculously off-curve power". Same with Treasure Cruise - we know "U - Draw 3" is broken, this is the oldest rule in magic. In vintage people ran a 1U sorcery primarily to go fetch the U - Draw 3 card, to the point where it got restricted. They printed "U - Draw 3". What did they think would happen? The card was absurdly strong when you had to wait infinity turns to get your cards.

Here, let me design a great card: "U - Draw 3 cards". Ooh, it needs a drawback. "U - Draw 3 cards, then return a land you control to your hand." Witness the design.

Huh, that card is at once totally broken and might actually be weaker than Treasure Cruise.

[bv310]

I actually think that the fact it isn't the exact same game it was as 2002 (when i started) is a good thing.

ideas, archetypes, paradigms evolved, making the game feel organic.

Yes, they are playing it safe. (wait, are they?)

Treasure Cruise, Thragtusk, Delver of Secrets, Jeskai ascendancy, Mental misstep, Jace the Wallet Sculptor, Walletslayer Angel, Titan cycle (all post Lorwyn, most post ISD) are example of newer really strong cards. Psychatog, Astral Slide, are examples of older strong cards. What I'm getting at is that the game at its core is still the same, with its silly strong cards, and standardized archetypes.

If you're experiencing "disenfranchisement" from this- just find a new hobby, you're burnt out on M:tG. This is a natural thing for a game that has been around since 1993, not everyone can play for that long without feeling bored.

That's not what I'm talking about at all. Anyone can make a Good card. Like, fuck, I have been designing my own set in my own time and it's easy to make good cards. It's about execution of a theme. There are a thousand ways they could have executed Return to Ravnica in such a way that it was great--I mean, the second set was named 'Gatecrash'. That's a great evolution of original Ravnica's theme!

We got a maze and the status quo. Because the status quo sells. It's cynical.

That's fair, actually. I'm fairly disappointed at the execution of DTK overall. I really, really liked Sarkhan as a character, since I like redemption stories. Narset had a cool story too, same with the Anafenza story from today. Each individual Uncharted Realms has been a fairly well-written piece of writing for Magic (except Doug Beyer's one last week. That one just sucked butts). Overall though, it feels just like they're shoehorning this set because dragons. I'm really interested in how the new rotation structure will work with the stories, since it seems like they're building up to an actual overarching story with the Eldrazi and/or Phyrexia and/or Nicol Bolas (who now has an actual counterpart, power-wise, in Ugin)

From a gameplay perspective, I'm fairly excited to see how Standard shapes up once Theros rotates out. I really like some of the themes to Khans block, and seeing them play out more will be nice once the dead weight of Theros leaves.

[bv310]

uh, i thought the RtR theme was amazeing.

This is a bad pun and I hate you for it

[Natirasha]

The pacing of DTK so far hasn't worked out. I'm fine with the 'subversion' of Dragons being a shittier timeline for everyone besides Sarkhan, but it's just not working out. Anafenza, for instance, her whole story was completed on her card. Having an entire week dedicated to her just ruins the pacing. If we have a week about Taigam, I don't know what I'll do. We just really haven't seen the payoff of the timeline changing in any noticeable way. Ugin's alive, but the status quo is still just enforced.

I'm not even saying you can't make a story set in a status-quo world, but you do have to have some impetus--I actually think you could make a 'character study' of sorts out of a Magic set(I mean, that was the supposed goal of Theros...), but they don't. It's all hype for the sake of hype.

Perhaps I'm expecting too much in terms of artistic depth from my pre-packaged extremely-popular card game. :/

[Espeonage]

Isn't the point of origins to set up a platform for better lore and stories?

[GreyICE]

You don't set up a better story by having an origin story. You set up better stories by having strong characters, coherent motivations, and compelling events.

So far magic lore has lacked that for... um... kinda a long time. Since Weatherlight really.

[Natirasha]

Weatherlight was pretty awful actually, imo. It veered too much in the opposite direction and became kinda self-servicing.

The best two stories in Magic were prob Kamigawa and Lorwyn. How much of that is due to being self-contained, though, who knows(also I have a special attachment to Lorwyn so I'm not the best judge). OG Ravnica was a very serviceable political thriller, too(part of why LOLMAZE is so absolutely abominable). Mirrodin sucked soooo much though. Those books had no thought put into them and were such a mess. A somewhat hot mess though--it was so fucked up and plot thread-crashing that the third novel literally began with Glissa falling asleep for 2 years and completely retconning the first two books. I was like ten at the time and even I could tell that this wasn't how it should be. It's telling that when we returned to Mirrodin, Slobad(the other protagonist) was killed offscreen by goblins--we only knew he died at all because Brady Dommermouth used to post WoG on the WotC forums! And that's not even going into the hot mess that was

Quest for Karn

!

I actually think the Mirrodin novels are why I love consuming dramatically poor media.

I don't have much hope for Origins, although I can't wait to see the walkers. I actually don't think the overarching storyline is too bad. I mean, it's schlock, but that's okay. You can make good schlock(ISD is a good example of that!). It's when the schlock is also stupid(RTR) or boring(THS) that you have problems.

[Klazam]

i loved the Urza v Phyrexian arc (from the Thran, all the way to Future Sight), loved Kamigawa story, loved Old Rav.

Onslaught, scourge was cool but Legions was... interesting at least. Pit fighting, the cabal, Braids was fun

Lorwyn was weird, and Mirrodin stories, both old and new was shit, i agree.

The thing i hate about new lore is the reimagining of planewalkers. while i get why, its still meh. I enjoyed the insane powers that old walkers could employ, and i also enjoyed the creative lengths phyrexia went to, in order to shut down Urza (Brain scrambler was a fun one)

Purifying Fire was decent, but Agents of artifice went a tad too far.

and then they stopped the books, which made me sad

[GreyICE]

Weatherlight was pretty awful actually, imo. It veered too much in the opposite direction and became kinda self-servicing.

The best two stories in Magic were prob Kamigawa and Lorwyn. How much of that is due to being self-contained, though, who knows(also I have a special attachment to Lorwyn so I'm not the best judge). OG Ravnica was a very serviceable political thriller, too(part of why LOLMAZE is so absolutely abominable). Mirrodin sucked soooo much though. Those books had no thought put into them and were such a mess. A somewhat hot mess though--it was so fucked up and plot thread-crashing that the third novel literally began with Glissa falling asleep for 2 years and completely retconning the first two books. I was like ten at the time and even I could tell that this wasn't how it should be. It's telling that when we returned to Mirrodin, Slobad(the other protagonist) was killed offscreen by goblins--we only knew he died at all because Brady Dommermouth used to post WoG on the WotC forums! And that's not even going into the hot mess that was

Quest for Karn

!

I actually think the Mirrodin novels are why I love consuming dramatically poor media.

I don't have much hope for Origins, although I can't wait to see the walkers. I actually don't think the overarching storyline is too bad. I mean, it's schlock, but that's okay. You can make good schlock(ISD is a good example of that!). It's when the schlock is also stupid(RTR) or boring(THS) that you have problems.

IMHO, the best stories were actually Fallen Empires (Tevesh Szat, the Doom of Fools...) and Ice Ages. Although brothers war belongs in there. The stories were unique, the characters were strange, good didn't always win, and evil was hard to quantify. Sure, Lim-Dul was evil, but Katarina, ostensibly of a "good" color, was very isolationist/dangerous, and Freylise was awesome (Nissa is a pale shadow). There was a time where there were actual interesting, weird, experimental novels based on the worlds of magic being produced. You can almost tell when Hasbro's PR department stepped in and started regulating them - no more plane with a 10,000 year war between two walkers simply because one realized that there was a threat he couldn't take, and used the war to create a walker so monstrously powerful that he himself could be defeated. No more brothers war, no Ashnod. Do you realize how weird it was to read Xantcha's story next to Urza's? A monster learning to become human, traveling with a human that had learned to become a monster? The monster being the one hope against Yawgmoth, a being beyond the concept of evil?

The low point was either Mercadian Masques (utterly irrelevant side story) or fucking Onslaught Block (seriously... the story was just SO BAD and the writing was TERRIFYINGLY bad). Ravnica was serviceable, but I'd never really choose to buy it if I was purchasing fantasy novels, minus the logo. The rest have generally been some flavor of horseshit.

Really, it's a shame. Marketing departments have become so slick nowadays, especially with the "nerd stuff". Used to be in the 90s that companies would throw shit at the wall and see what happened. I mean I don't miss the colossal fuckups and giant failures, irregular schedules, incomprehensible decisions, but maybe my love of Kickstarter is that I remember what I missed about the hobby.

[Natirasha]

Oh right, I forgot about all the pre-revision stuff.

Yeah, those were probably the best.

[Natirasha]

Got third at draft tonight with a subpar RB deck.

Turns out Dragonlord Dromoka is unbeatable.

[Espeonage]

As a result of this thread I spent a few hours at work not doing work and instead reading about important characters.

[Shanba]

Yeah, it's shifted to be 'safe'. Every set since ISD has been 'safe'. There have been no real attempts at dangerous things since ISD(And, before that, Lorwyn).

The gameplay mechanics shift is part of it, because they want these sets to be safe and digestible to the casual player, but it's not the whole picture.

What did ISD do that was so dangerous? I admit, I've only started playing snce M13, but apart from the draft environment being apparently very good (and one I am sad I missed out on) it doesn't appear to be pushing the envelope, especially.

I also don't think Treasure Cruise was a deliberately pushed card, I just think they had no idea what the correct cost was on delve cards. Like, there clearly is a "fair" cost for treasure cruise, cause you wouldn't play it if it were 20U, but they missed. It reads as costed for limited (where it is playable, but not broken) and standard (where it lacks the enablers to make it busted). Deliberately pushed cards are like, Loxodon Smiter, where you look at the combination of stats and abilities and you see a card that they decided to make a cornerstone of constructed play. I don't really like this, but this is development in action rather than design. I think development can be more subtle than this. One of the things magic does well is to sell a dream - the dream that if I am creative enough, if I can scour the cards deeply enough, I can find something different, something magical and something uniquely powerful. These kinds of pushed no-brainer creatures punish you for thinking this way, since they push towards a deckbuilding style that emphasizes the efficient over the interesting. Magic is better the closer it is to Lego.

I have to say I love kill reviews, and agree with him on a bunch of things. He's right that RTR is not a particularly inspiring set from any standpoint - it is not pushing any boundaries, it's just filler. I like the parallel he's drawing between RTR and Roseanne, here. It makes sense - creatively, we're talking about something that is not so much a void as it is a deliberately and slickly structured regurgitation - comforting but bland. But I sort of suspect it's a deeper malaise - not just the result of marketing intervention but the result of a worn out creativity, a consequence of the limits of a human capacity for creative exploration. Fundamentally I think Mark Rosewater is running out of ideas. (That, of course, isn't helped by his own insistence on drawing limits on what spaces he is allowed to play in. I know his constant refrain is "restriction breeds creativity", and to an extent this is true, but it is a creativity born from being forced to explore a smaller design space more thoroughly and potentially coming up with some surprises. Eventually that design space will run out, no matter how creative you are. If exalted were the main mechanic of every single set from now on out there would almost certainly be some interesting spins on exalted, but eventually the mechanic would get a little stale.)

Theros block is the biggest pile of shit. I was so excited for Theros block - Greek mythology theme? Enchantment theme? When I was little I had an illustrated book of Greek mythology. I loved that book, all the epic stories condensed down into a handful of paragraphs, evocative and satisfying, with grotesque monsters leering behind the text. And I loved enchantments from the moment I laid eyes on them. Magic sometimes has this quality of being a bit like nomic, where the rules are whatever the cards happen to say on them at the time. You win when you have 40 life. All permanents are enchantments. Creatures have haste and attack each turn if able. And enchantments are the permanent type that most encompass this philosophy. So a magic set that based on these foundational points should have been something that appealed to me, specifically. But Theros...

It's my firm belief that the mediocrity of Theros can be traced directly back to the mechanic of Heroic. Heroic is a moderate mechanic as it is, I mean whatever, put some counters on a dude, that's fine, I can get behind that. It's supposed to be this wonderfully flavourful "ah my guy went through these trials and now he is stronger", but for me it slightly misses the mark on that point - firstly cause I don't think that is an especially strong theme of the stuff, though it is there, but also cause sticking an enchantment on a dude isn't quite what I would describe as heroic deeds. But whatever. The problem with the mechanic is how it warped the set around it. All the removal is crap. None of the other mechanics have any support (I strongly feel that the mechanic that got crapped on the most in this regard is Inspired, which is a mechanic that could have worked if there were a bunch of twiddles and so forth in the set, and if the inspired cards were costed a little more aggressively, such that you could start to hope of activating them a couple times a turn. That dumb 5 mana 2/2 flyer with inspired draw a card mighta been playable with a few more cards that allow you to get value from it. (And yes, I know things like triton tactics existed. The problem with these cards is untapping your creature is only half the puzzle - you need to tap it first. Maybe inspired was just unworkable, I'm certainly sympathetic to that viewpoint, but it's not like Theros particularly tried to make it work.) Devotion also got crapped on, incidentally - yes you could draft Black devotion in trip THS draft, but that was it - and devotion decks in constructed only worked when paired with the hybrid creatures from RTR. I appreciate blocks supporting the other blocks in their standard pool, but there should be something, at least, from the set it came from.), and I suspect that the reason this is is because so much effort was spent in making Heroic work and playtesting Heroic that none of the other mechanics and draft arounds really got any development time.

And then there's the enchantment theme, which ends up not being an enchantment theme, but actually an aura theme. Auras are cute, in a kind of Rita Repulsa GROW kind of way, and they can be interesting designs that do cool and powerful things, but I think on the whole they are less interesting than global enchantments. In terms of these global enchantments, the nomic enchantments, I think Theros does worse than almost any other block

at all

, which is really impressive in a depressing kind of way. Yes yes there were the enchantment creatures that purportedly filled that niche but when Maro said they worked really hard to make sure they didn't just feel like normal creatures with abilities on, I'm afraid he didn't quite get it right. If they wanted to do this then they needed to do more work to make the enchantments feel enchantmenty, with, I'm afraid, effects like "all my creatures gain flying" not quite cutting it. Or at least, not filling that niche.

Although, to be honest, I can't believe I wasted this much time on a block where the design/development team put this and this in the same fucking block. I mean, come on.

[Shanba]

holy crap that was a rant sorry

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I think Theros' main mechanic was Bestow, which leads me to draw paralels to "Totem Armor" mechanics in Rise of the Eldrazi.

The difference between the two is that RoE has removal like Vendetta, Corpsehatch, Staggershock, Flameslash, Domestication, Induce Despair, Forked Bolt.

And Theros has stuff like Voyage's End, Lightning Strike, Sip of Hemlock, Lash of the Whip.

MtG can't print removal that anymore, which was the major failing of Theros.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I mean, things like Griptide, Divine Verdict, Pharika's Cure and some of the enchantment removal spells are "ok", but it's not enough.