MTG thread

Necrath Evilcraft said:

Good riddance then.

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I'm not sure we've ever had any interaction before. I cannot and will not get behind targeted harassment of artists where people virtue signal their defacement of that person's work all over a liked Trump Jr. tweet.

Mahes said:

Oko is getting banned. There is no doubt that Oko is getting banned from Standard. Not since Jace has there been such a meta defining Planeswalker. It was bound to happen. There really is only so many cards that can be created and so the occasional broke one gets released. I just wonder if they also ban him in other formats.

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This is far worse than even Jace was. Jace wasn't even very good when it was first released due to it being poor against the Bloodbraid Elf Jund decks. It really didn't see that much play until after Shards block rotated out. Even after rotation there was enough things like Valakut etc that you'd never see major events that were almost 70 percent Jace decks.

Also the difference between the various Jace decks was much more significant than the differences between the Oko decks. Almost all of the Oko decks are food decks with the same core of ~ 20 cards or so. That means that they all have over half the same spells. Jace decks had some variety. RUG control was very different from Claw Blade for example.

You should always be able to go to the card pool and give yourself a leg up should the format be warped to a high degree. Metas involving a best deck and its hard counters aren't aren't great but at least the wheel of options is present. If everyone knows X is the best deck you can choose to play Y and if enough people are playing Y than Z has room to shine.

In terms of overarching design philosophy the people in charge are of the opinion that players don't like resource denial (hand destruction, land destruction), locks, board resets or real color hosers. Most of what they want you to do in Standard is attack one another and squabble over board presence and grind incremental value. If your preferred strategy is to interfere in your opponent's strategy you're out in the cold. Something like Oko you have to fight on the board on its own terms.

pharmakos said:

Wasn't that long ago Esper Control was dominating Standard

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Yeah but that was really a planeswalker deck that often ran midrange creatures too.

zzeris said:

I agreed completely until this statement. Any kind of testing would have have shown Oko is far too powerful. Just like any testing would have shown FotD was just as powerful as Valakut. The only question is if they are testing or if they are wanting to push these broken cards and just didn't give a damn if it ruined standard.

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Field is not on the same level as Valakut was. Oko is real nonsense though. It could have been 1 less loyalty and the +1 ability could be 0 cost and it would still be a good card in a good deck. I understand wanting to push walkers since they're usually the face of a set, but this one was definitely turned up to 11. MC Finals is a U/G food mirror, but at least it's PV and Strasky who are both pretty awesome.

If you look at what they did to the storyline, it seems like they are trying to design around making more money but are also incompetent.

So with the story, after they abandoned the shitty novels they started posting weekly stories on their website. You'd get the odd week off for a holiday or worldbuilding articles after a new set. It wouldn't always be something as part of the main story, sometimes it'd be some random character on the plane and sometimes it'd be something a planeswalker was doing. It kept me coming back to the game as they were pretty interesting.

Then with the Gatewatch saga they cut costs and posted only about 8 weeks worth of story after main set releases (not commander etc anymore), after diversity hires and more cost cutting we got the final Ixalan set story which was one article and the events depicted on the cards never made it into the story.

So then they hired a "professional author" for the Dominaria story to fix things, which was OK but that was just a test for the Ravnica set where they would have the finale of the Gatewatch saga be in a novel in a effort to monetise the story again.

But the first Ravnica set didn't have a story, the second set's book was so delayed and so bad it was released after the third as a free PDF. The third set's book referenced events not on cards from the delayed book and didn't follow the events of the cards, eg Sarkhan and Ashiok being in the Meditation Realm.

For anyone following the story on the website they just didnt have anything for half the year, later they posted a version of the story from the point of view of a literal retard describing events as a retard would.

TLDR: They tried to cash in for the Gatewatch/Bolas finale and instead ruined the story. You can apply that to set design too, they tried to make a chase card to drive sales and instead ruined Standard.

zzeris said:

I agreed completely until this statement. Any kind of testing would have have shown Oko is far too powerful. Just like any testing would have shown FotD was just as powerful as Valakut. The only question is if they are testing or if they are wanting to push these broken cards and just didn't give a damn if it ruined standard.

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Oh, I did not mean to imply that what happened with Oko was an accident. They knew what they were doing when they released him. I was more referencing the idea that occasionally they are going to design a broke card as a way to compensate for the limitation of design. They want a chaser card in every set that does not revolve around flash. Oko just ended up tipping a little to much to the side of ridiculous with only a few answers that involve building a deck to beat him. The thing is, Hasbro loves all the attention this is creating for Magic, even if the players cannot stand the format. They know that they can ride this a bit and then Ban the card. Once he is out of regulation play, the players come back to try the format without him in it. Some released sets are just more obvious than others.

Even as a food mirror this finals has been pretty great.

a_skeleton_02 said:

They wanted a trans-asaurus planeswalker Chase card to be a huge hit they even had Forbes and other sites release bullshit puff pieces on the lore of a fucking card even before people knew the stats.

Exclusive: Meet Oko, The 'Magic: The Gathering' Multiverse's Newest Planeswalker

On Wednesday, for the first time, we get to meet one of the planeswalkers who is spending time in Eldraine.

www.google.com

They have a multiyear Oko plan for that faggot elf and since they made him too OP he will be hated more than Jace ever was.

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Could still have done all that with the nerfed stats I keep bringing up. Card is unreal dumb.

If they wanted a pushed planeswalker for a chase card + story focal point combo than fine but three was a poor choice of mana cost especially when the set's mana dork had synergy with him.

Oko is out of Fry range the turn you play him. Someone deserves to be fired over exclusively that interaction.