MTG thread

TheNozz said:

Damn good reading on the current state of Magic and what’s grown wrong with the meta

How To Fix Magic

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Yeah sounds like the current changes for the worse have been identified here.

I would go further and say that Magic has issues beyond this which will cause it to lose ground against mobile TCGs like Hearthstone or Runeterra, especially after seeing what an improvement Runeterra is over both Hearthstone and Magic.

1) Random lands leads to 1/3 of games being mana screw or mana flood, so best of three is required to potentially just get a competitive game. They need to add a mechanic to stop this without breaking legacy.

Just a random untested idea, but how about something like the Catan trade mechanic? Exile 3 non land cards, draw cards until you hit a land, add the land to your hand and shuffle your deck. Exile 3 lands, draw cards until you hit a non land permanent, add the permanent to your hand and shuffle your deck. Still a disadvantage but better than nothing.

2) Pointless underpowered cards making up half the set to allegedly make draft work. I never bought packs because of the amount of shit you get, I did singles online. I have a box of rotting commons I can't get rid of. If they made all of the cards be viable for constructed, you'd have more variety of decks, make the formats take longer to solve and be able to sell sets for longer making up for increased development time. I don't think draft would be negatively effected at all either.

I’m starting to wonder if encountering the same deck type in Arena over and over and fucking over is a result of everything homogenizing because there are several cards that facilitate it.

I mean there are supposedly around 3 million players on the platform:all of them are net decking? Or apparently the vast majority of them are?

Most people play to win. When a *meta* deck wins, these people get their Skinner reaction. And the game, by virtue of being an internet game, there was never a chance for non-net-decking to exist.

only a tiny fraction play to create. Only a tiny fraction of those creators are skilled enough to build something that changes the meta.

Either be one of that fraction of a fraction, play a meta or counter-meta (still meta....) deck, or just play what you want and accept the worse W/L ratio.

Ninen said:

Most people play to win. When a *meta* deck wins, these people get their Skinner reaction. And the game, by virtue of being an internet game, there was never a chance for non-net-decking to exist.

only a tiny fraction play to create. Only a tiny fraction of those creators are skilled enough to build something that changes the meta.

Either be one of that fraction of a fraction, play a meta or counter-meta (still meta....) deck, or just play what you want and accept the worse W/L ratio.

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This is why the game needs more complexity in terms of each set having more viable cards, more build around cards and more cards that counter other strategies.

Instead they are going for unexplored design space and breaking the game. There are so many cards now that they could just retread old ground with design space and it still be new to most people.

Like isn't Theros 2 next? They could reprint all the cards that saw play from Theros 1 and have space to add loads of new cards with those and new mechanics. No instead we will get some shit cards nobody plays and some broken cards.

Banned and Restricted announcement for June 1


New Companion Rule:

Once per game, any time you could cast a sorcery (during your main phase when the stack is empty), you can pay 3 generic mana to put your companion from your sideboard into your hand. This is a special action, not an activated ability.

Standard:

Agent of Treachery is banned.

Fires of Invention is banned.

Historic

Agent of Treachery is suspended.

Fires of Invention is suspended.

We are all so shocked. Truly, very shocking. The most shocking of all shockingness.

The most shocked are the people who bought WOTC's Fires of Invention Event Deck!

Can't wait until thursday when we get to start seeing the next batch of cards to be banned in standard!

WOTC sell a premade deck with 4x of a card they are about to ban? Pfft as if they would ever do - wait what? Oh oops nm!

Honest to god I still don’t think it’s enough: still too much ramp and cheesing shit out

fanaskin said:

we could get new cards if they stopped making broken new cards?

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It's like they are pushing boundaries because they want to make the game more exciting, they could just reprint old cards people enjoyed playing with in the slots all the broken and intentionally shit cards take up.

fanaskin said:

at some point you have to design new cards, I don't see how this addresses design mistakes

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As I said, they are pushing boundaries to make the game exciting. They already have exciting cards people remember fondly from years ago, that's why people play eternal formats.

It's not the only solution, they could just raise the power level of the shit cards "needed to make draft work" and add more mechanics per set - without adding game breaking cards that break their own rules.

Push Boundaries, make a Wheel of Fortune that costs RWW.

Wasn't sure what to think when I started hearing claims of people getting an entire Theros Collector Box, but guess it's legit. Going to be a lot of pissed off people who ordered the Stargazing set that STILL hasn't been delivered, who only get a pack. I mean, yeah it was too good to be intentional, but still. Those mofos who bought the Stargazing set will have been waiting a lot longer by the time they finally get what they ordered.

Boundary pushing is fine but we don't need the explore the design space of things we already know are a bad idea like zero mana spells. How many times are they going to keep touching that stove?

Arbitrary said:

Boundary pushing is fine but we don't need the explore the design space of things we already know are a bad idea like zero mana spells. How many times are they going to keep touching that stove?

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Till they find one that doesn't burn? Bonus points if it's not some super nich mechanic, so they can add it to core sets and be The One that finally gets a powerful, but balanced version of lotus (or w-e) back into standard.