If we look at the track record: assurances from WOTC that UB and Secret Lairs were just a top tier premium "add-on" to magic, and it wouldn't disrupt formats, that they were just a fraction of available product, and we could just engage with the classic product line and ignore what we don't like... that Magic would remain Magic.... well, it was misleading when they said it, it isn't true now, and trends seem to indicate it'll be even less true in the future.
we are now facing a future where half of magic is ALREADY universes beyond, and powerful cards in those sets and products make the UB branded cards ubiquitous and unavoidable. What was once a joke about how bad it could get is already in our rear-view mirror, and the dark road stretches on.
every new UB release compounds the problem, and I think MARVEL sets over the next two years are going to skyrocket us over the border into a new era in Magic where we won't even recognize it at all anymore. When we get there, I think we'll see these sale trends begin to reverse, as the longstanding fanbase of the game steadily lose interest and stop playing, and the new players with their mechanically broken cards featuring franchises from across multimedia produce a play environment that will feel over-commercialized, and ultimately... unfun to play.
Maybe a decade from now, someone at WOTC will revive core magic, and a new generation will get a crack at playing MTG... but for now, we're in a full nosedive regardless of what the sales figures may say.
I sit here at my dining/gaming table, sorting my cards and trying to manage my collection. I came here after the Prof's video on the Sonic secret lairs. My heart feels pulled in so many directions Loving Sonic, and loathing the very existence of the cards. I hear so many players that are unhappy with the incroaching Funko-Pop-afacation of our game. People keep pointing at Fortnite, but what this really is, is making Magic the Funco Pop of cardboard.
I've also heard so many people say " I hate X and Y properties, But if they did Z, I'm all in!" We said in droves that the Magic 30th anniversary prodocut was overpriced and it didn't go well for Hasbro and WotC, But with the statement above, we could never be a unified force, they have sold us out for or nostalgic weakness. Slowly and bit by bit, concessions with product after product, Hasbro has broken their promices of not printing limited game pieces like Nalathni Dragon, we were told we would be getting in universe magic equilivent cards, and most aren't available. You either use the IP cross over game piece or you suck it and hope you aren't in a position where you have to use it to win in a tournament, or you know enjoy some fun mechanics.
I turn 40 on the 23rd of July this year. I have spent 28 years of my life in and around the game. I have cultivated a community and had so many fun games, and frusstrating agonizing games, it's part of playing a game. I've been a judge, I still act as a judge when I go to events to help with the complicated plays, special actions are amazing BTW. I have become good friends with several of the origonal magic artists and Hell one of them gifted me the Origonal art for a card. It's hanging on my wall next to me.
I couldn't think of where I would be or what my life would look like without this game. It's been the beacon in my life that sparks joy, even when my dissability and medical issues make life extremly hard. I have connected so much with the worlds, the characters, the amazing art that is brought to life by such amazing artists.
I was there with Gerrard and Urza as they fought in the Phyrexian Arena. I was there when Khamal had his journey with the Mirrari. I was there when Elspeth and Ajani, stepped into Nyx to fight Xenagos, only to have Elspeth fall in the classic Greek tragedy. I was there when Ajani was Completed and saved from being a Phyrexian. Just like Bastian was there with Atreyu in the Swamp of Sadness, and faced Gmork I was there. I might not have loved every setting and world as I did some of the others, but this escape was so rich and exciting.
I have even made my own fan ship with a 2HG commander deck of Zurza's Enchanted Antiques where Zur and Urza are together as a couple and run an enchanted antiques store out of the Urza's tower. When Ikoria came out. I could opt in to the Godzilla IP. I had a friend who loved Godzilla and I got him a card for his deck. It was an opt in skin of fun. I could play my real Magic card and he could play his Godzilla card. But soon it became something I couldn't opt out of. It became even more frustrating as commander has been so fun, that now I was having to look to other formats to play Just Magic. Magic the Gathering is the worlds and flavor of the game. Final Fantasy and other IPs might have cards that function in the game, but they're not Magic cards.
Hasbro and WotC has done a lot of shit over the years, and has been frustrating but it was workable. After the dissapointments of Clue Magic and the Manifest Destiny adjacent Thunder Junction set, Bloomburrow was on the horizon. Bloomburrow felt like Magic had Bloomed again. I hadn't played Squirrels in standard since Odyssey and 7th ed were standard legal. My heart was alight with the excitement of something old being new again. I broke down mentally when It was announced there would be 50% less Magic and more IPs and Into Standard. I literally lost all interest in everything in the game. My spark had been stolen from me. No where was safe, except Cube. which has been where my passion has moved to with aesthetics and vorthos themes. They can't take my cards away from me. I can play them however I want.
In HS, 17 year old me made Sonic, Tails and Knuckles as Joke cards. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my video game. I know every part of that game. The cards were something slilly and fun, but the moment has come when I am faced with my own nostalgia, The game pieces look amazing, but I just can't. Sonic the Hedgehog isn't Magic. they are two unique things like Water and Oil and can't mix. I've only purchased one thing since Bloomburrow as my roomie and I are on a No Money to WotC. I made this one exception and It should have been the highlight Secret Lair of the recent drop.
Phil Foglio came back to Magic after being canned with Kaja as their art styles didn't fit in with the new art styles for Urza's Saga. It had been 25 years since theit last new art to the game. But Final Fantasy was the only thing people wanted and were talking about.
I've started to become bitter and hate the actual properties that are assulting my creative space and killing the flavor of the game. Sure the game will go on, but Hasbro killed the flavor and spirit of the game. I don't know how we can go back. I don't even know if having a seperate format where it's UB only and then Magic has it's own space would even work.
I was neutral towords Final Fantasy, Warhammer, Spongebob, Laura Croft. but I just find myself hating everything about them. This experiance has soured me to them. I don't know if I can fix that or even if I should. My feelings are valid. I have a right to feel how I do. How I act on it is what matters. I truely don't know what the future has in store with Magic, but I'm afraid that by the time UB flops and becomes the latest bad decision that Hasbro tries to back out of, the origonal artists, keepers of the lore, people who tell the history of our game and the uniqueness that is our gathering culture, will be gone and something special will be lost forever.
I've written a lot here, and I'm just left with this sadness that something unique has died, and while nothing lasts forever, I can at least take my part of the game with me and create the space I want to see in the world. I hope you can find your Joy out there, as much as I am working on my own way to engage the game.
I have actually felt what can only be described as a mild depression as the magic world I have loved for over 30 years is slowly slowly being pushed off a cliff in favor of nonsensical pop culture fandom. They rushed a half assed ending to the decades long phyrexian story line so that they could start changing the game wholesale. It's heart breaking to see, and even more upsetting to see how many people seem to be happy about the change.
And this is why I considerably improved my life by quitting purchasing ANY Magic entirely when they demonstrated that The Walking Dead wasn't a fluke. I was there for the lore and actual game play. Commander and UB has killed both.
I did go to a game night a year ago and it was literally unplayable. Ignoring that it was commander (ugh), and that half the decks were nothing but advertisements... nothing was readable. From the white-on-black textboxes, to the "random made up language" cards, to the cereal box crap. It was literally impossible to PLAY the game if you wanted to.
So, yeah, I don't even think about playing anymore. It'd take a HUGE banlist to make the game resemble something someone could play again.
As a Brazilian player, Magic was already at those pricetags ( play boxes around 700 amounts of money and collectors about 1000 amounts of money). And what we saw is that people didn't leave the game ( even if our minimum wage is something like 260 USD per month, making even a Precon, something really expensive that you must do your economical flexibilities to buy one).
And a curious phenomenon is happening -> We are shifting to Premodern and "Prefire" tables rather than keep the pace.
Making casual and proxy friendly events to be held more often than wpn hosting Standard/pioneer/modern events.
This also has to do with the fact that HASBRO took out portuguese language because they wanted to print more English cards, but the amount of Hat sets and overly expensive UBs was a big play here
Well... Until FF the collection came out. Then people got hooked up by their favorite FF games, people who knew nothing about FF became amazed by some characters that has non-futuristic settings.
And as soon as they released Edge of eternities, people got bored again and went back to prefire/premodern
And yes, I'm talking about 60-cards players. Not the COMMANDER players. Commander is always big. But as Graham Stark said in his few last lives: "We should label commander out of regular magic. There's formal magic, the 60-cards with 4 ofs or the Highlander with 1 ofs, it can be 1v1, 2v2 or 1v1v1v1 ... And Commander magic, that has a card in the command zone and can be both Highlander or 4-ofs, it can be 1v1, 2v2 or 1v1v1v1 .. same thing as formal magic, but with the command zone and deck restriction ( because of the announcement of that weird "commander-esque" format, wotc was trying to create).
So, Commander will exist in every corner of this world. But commander doesn't have a pro-tour, nor regionals, there's nothing like a tournament setting. Even Brawl on arena doesn't ranks you up. And as the commander card is public knowledge and the decks are casual, most of the times we brew stuff out of our identification with the character rather if the card is good or bad. Giving us a HUGE amount of Darth Vader/Luke Skywaker custom cards over those almost 20 years of commander.
I have actually felt what can only be described as a mild depression as the magic world I have loved for over 30 years is slowly slowly being pushed off a cliff in favor of nonsensical pop culture fandom. They rushed a half assed ending to the decades long phyrexian story line so that they could start changing the game wholesale. It's heart breaking to see, and even more upsetting to see how many people seem to be happy about the change.
It's a thing to feel like the game I have love the most since I was 8 is not the one I loved anymore and barely interact with it outside of my cube which is keeping all I love in the game while keeping away everything that makes me feel bad about my own hobby.
It's another to see all the fantastic content creators I have loved and followed for years having a similar feeling. Seeing them looking for another game to drive their passion, reducing their involvement in the process or just having some resigned comment about it.
For me it was "just" a hobby taking a large amount of space in my life and now that WotC went so bad that I can't accept to encourage them by giving them any money anymore. I went on to invest my passion into TTRPGs (and not D&D to be safe).
For creators that have invested so much of their time that it became their main job, I can't imagine how hard it must be to all going into a frenzied collector centered soulless heap of collectibles. I'm so sorry.
I was thinking about cards with little/no rules text while planning how to play magic with my kids as they get big enough to understand and play games. Maybe curate some very simple magic cards, or make semi custom proxy cards. Just power/toughness to start, bring in one word mechanics etc. There are cards like that in magic, but tend to be older and have the less interesting art. Could be an idea for Magic to make some cards in sets have minimal rules for collectors or kid format. (Cards with no more than 3 [maybe 5?] words of rules text), smaller rules text box and give those cards interesting cohesive art from a magic plane or UB. This lets those collectors have cards that require minimal effort to learn to play with, might not be a riveting game, but an excellent intro experience of magic for new people to play, especially with their favorite theme.
A side perk (maybe) is that the collector pieces of a UB set would mainly (with exceptions of course) not be the chase cards of magic players, who would get more interested in the more wordy powerful cards.
Edit: liking this idea of kids/inttro formats more as I put it in writing
- Intro format only cards with 3-5 words on them.
- Transition format tiers: can 5,10 cards with any number of words on them
Also having some (20%?) of each set be simple cards, and so unlikely to be significantly powerful, means that the amount of card info that players need to review in each new set gets reduced somewhat, which I imagine would be good for most players who have limited time to keep up with all the new cards coming out. And lets Wizards get the wording and balance better on fewer cards. Not a huge difference, but maybe a nice perk.
Final Fantasy as a set has given me a new metric to weight UB on. If a UB set is executed well enough to where I become interested in that IP, then something has hit the mark. I was skeptical of this set when it was announced, but having gotten to play with it, I have found a lot of enjoyment and downloaded FFVI on my switch. At the same time, I have to spend $200 to draft a box with friends?!
Dude why would you make peace with WoTC pushing the game further and further towards UB? Whatever happened to your article "Your Foundation Is Rotten"? What happened to that guy?
As someone who has learned Mindfuness and radical acceptance as therapy skills I can relate. Acceptance is acknowlaging the situation, feelings and facts for what they are. Acceptance doesn't mean endorcement. I have accepted that this is what is happening to the thing I love. I don't endorse it, I don't like it, but I am one person and can only do so much. I find my own joy where I can and allow myself to experiance and feel things without judgement. This is where the game is at and I create the space I want to see in the game.
I have actually felt what can only be described as a mild depression as the magic world I have loved for over 30 years is slowly slowly being pushed off a cliff in favor of nonsensical pop culture fandom. They rushed a half assed ending to the decades long phyrexian story line so that they could start changing the game wholesale. It's heart breaking to see, and even more upsetting to see how many people seem to be happy about the change.
The thing about the SpongeBob Secret lair that people say is to attract a younger audience? I don't think that's true.
It's a show that started in 1999, people who watched it as kids are over 30 now, it's cashing in on people that start having disposable income and nostalgia, especially released as something as a limited secret lair that as a newbie is kinda weird and inaccessible to buy.
(Yes, the show is still running but the new seasons have lost a lot of their cultural impact, I'd say.)
With Spiderman it might be more diverse in its audience to attract younger players but from what I've seen of it it's the very much classic Spiderman and not the more current Multiverse and Miles Spiderman.
And Avatar later that year? That show released 20 years ago. Again, while it was a show aimed at kids and teens, the ones with nostalgia for it are in their late 20s and early 30s.
imma be real this is how I found out that chocobo isn’t a pokemon
This is a dark road we're on.
If we look at the track record: assurances from WOTC that UB and Secret Lairs were just a top tier premium "add-on" to magic, and it wouldn't disrupt formats, that they were just a fraction of available product, and we could just engage with the classic product line and ignore what we don't like... that Magic would remain Magic.... well, it was misleading when they said it, it isn't true now, and trends seem to indicate it'll be even less true in the future.
we are now facing a future where half of magic is ALREADY universes beyond, and powerful cards in those sets and products make the UB branded cards ubiquitous and unavoidable. What was once a joke about how bad it could get is already in our rear-view mirror, and the dark road stretches on.
every new UB release compounds the problem, and I think MARVEL sets over the next two years are going to skyrocket us over the border into a new era in Magic where we won't even recognize it at all anymore. When we get there, I think we'll see these sale trends begin to reverse, as the longstanding fanbase of the game steadily lose interest and stop playing, and the new players with their mechanically broken cards featuring franchises from across multimedia produce a play environment that will feel over-commercialized, and ultimately... unfun to play.
Maybe a decade from now, someone at WOTC will revive core magic, and a new generation will get a crack at playing MTG... but for now, we're in a full nosedive regardless of what the sales figures may say.
I hate UB
I sit here at my dining/gaming table, sorting my cards and trying to manage my collection. I came here after the Prof's video on the Sonic secret lairs. My heart feels pulled in so many directions Loving Sonic, and loathing the very existence of the cards. I hear so many players that are unhappy with the incroaching Funko-Pop-afacation of our game. People keep pointing at Fortnite, but what this really is, is making Magic the Funco Pop of cardboard.
I've also heard so many people say " I hate X and Y properties, But if they did Z, I'm all in!" We said in droves that the Magic 30th anniversary prodocut was overpriced and it didn't go well for Hasbro and WotC, But with the statement above, we could never be a unified force, they have sold us out for or nostalgic weakness. Slowly and bit by bit, concessions with product after product, Hasbro has broken their promices of not printing limited game pieces like Nalathni Dragon, we were told we would be getting in universe magic equilivent cards, and most aren't available. You either use the IP cross over game piece or you suck it and hope you aren't in a position where you have to use it to win in a tournament, or you know enjoy some fun mechanics.
I turn 40 on the 23rd of July this year. I have spent 28 years of my life in and around the game. I have cultivated a community and had so many fun games, and frusstrating agonizing games, it's part of playing a game. I've been a judge, I still act as a judge when I go to events to help with the complicated plays, special actions are amazing BTW. I have become good friends with several of the origonal magic artists and Hell one of them gifted me the Origonal art for a card. It's hanging on my wall next to me.
I couldn't think of where I would be or what my life would look like without this game. It's been the beacon in my life that sparks joy, even when my dissability and medical issues make life extremly hard. I have connected so much with the worlds, the characters, the amazing art that is brought to life by such amazing artists.
I was there with Gerrard and Urza as they fought in the Phyrexian Arena. I was there when Khamal had his journey with the Mirrari. I was there when Elspeth and Ajani, stepped into Nyx to fight Xenagos, only to have Elspeth fall in the classic Greek tragedy. I was there when Ajani was Completed and saved from being a Phyrexian. Just like Bastian was there with Atreyu in the Swamp of Sadness, and faced Gmork I was there. I might not have loved every setting and world as I did some of the others, but this escape was so rich and exciting.
I have even made my own fan ship with a 2HG commander deck of Zurza's Enchanted Antiques where Zur and Urza are together as a couple and run an enchanted antiques store out of the Urza's tower. When Ikoria came out. I could opt in to the Godzilla IP. I had a friend who loved Godzilla and I got him a card for his deck. It was an opt in skin of fun. I could play my real Magic card and he could play his Godzilla card. But soon it became something I couldn't opt out of. It became even more frustrating as commander has been so fun, that now I was having to look to other formats to play Just Magic. Magic the Gathering is the worlds and flavor of the game. Final Fantasy and other IPs might have cards that function in the game, but they're not Magic cards.
Hasbro and WotC has done a lot of shit over the years, and has been frustrating but it was workable. After the dissapointments of Clue Magic and the Manifest Destiny adjacent Thunder Junction set, Bloomburrow was on the horizon. Bloomburrow felt like Magic had Bloomed again. I hadn't played Squirrels in standard since Odyssey and 7th ed were standard legal. My heart was alight with the excitement of something old being new again. I broke down mentally when It was announced there would be 50% less Magic and more IPs and Into Standard. I literally lost all interest in everything in the game. My spark had been stolen from me. No where was safe, except Cube. which has been where my passion has moved to with aesthetics and vorthos themes. They can't take my cards away from me. I can play them however I want.
In HS, 17 year old me made Sonic, Tails and Knuckles as Joke cards. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my video game. I know every part of that game. The cards were something slilly and fun, but the moment has come when I am faced with my own nostalgia, The game pieces look amazing, but I just can't. Sonic the Hedgehog isn't Magic. they are two unique things like Water and Oil and can't mix. I've only purchased one thing since Bloomburrow as my roomie and I are on a No Money to WotC. I made this one exception and It should have been the highlight Secret Lair of the recent drop.
Phil Foglio came back to Magic after being canned with Kaja as their art styles didn't fit in with the new art styles for Urza's Saga. It had been 25 years since theit last new art to the game. But Final Fantasy was the only thing people wanted and were talking about.
I've started to become bitter and hate the actual properties that are assulting my creative space and killing the flavor of the game. Sure the game will go on, but Hasbro killed the flavor and spirit of the game. I don't know how we can go back. I don't even know if having a seperate format where it's UB only and then Magic has it's own space would even work.
I was neutral towords Final Fantasy, Warhammer, Spongebob, Laura Croft. but I just find myself hating everything about them. This experiance has soured me to them. I don't know if I can fix that or even if I should. My feelings are valid. I have a right to feel how I do. How I act on it is what matters. I truely don't know what the future has in store with Magic, but I'm afraid that by the time UB flops and becomes the latest bad decision that Hasbro tries to back out of, the origonal artists, keepers of the lore, people who tell the history of our game and the uniqueness that is our gathering culture, will be gone and something special will be lost forever.
I've written a lot here, and I'm just left with this sadness that something unique has died, and while nothing lasts forever, I can at least take my part of the game with me and create the space I want to see in the world. I hope you can find your Joy out there, as much as I am working on my own way to engage the game.
I have actually felt what can only be described as a mild depression as the magic world I have loved for over 30 years is slowly slowly being pushed off a cliff in favor of nonsensical pop culture fandom. They rushed a half assed ending to the decades long phyrexian story line so that they could start changing the game wholesale. It's heart breaking to see, and even more upsetting to see how many people seem to be happy about the change.
And this is why I considerably improved my life by quitting purchasing ANY Magic entirely when they demonstrated that The Walking Dead wasn't a fluke. I was there for the lore and actual game play. Commander and UB has killed both.
I did go to a game night a year ago and it was literally unplayable. Ignoring that it was commander (ugh), and that half the decks were nothing but advertisements... nothing was readable. From the white-on-black textboxes, to the "random made up language" cards, to the cereal box crap. It was literally impossible to PLAY the game if you wanted to.
So, yeah, I don't even think about playing anymore. It'd take a HUGE banlist to make the game resemble something someone could play again.
As a Brazilian player, Magic was already at those pricetags ( play boxes around 700 amounts of money and collectors about 1000 amounts of money). And what we saw is that people didn't leave the game ( even if our minimum wage is something like 260 USD per month, making even a Precon, something really expensive that you must do your economical flexibilities to buy one).
And a curious phenomenon is happening -> We are shifting to Premodern and "Prefire" tables rather than keep the pace.
Making casual and proxy friendly events to be held more often than wpn hosting Standard/pioneer/modern events.
This also has to do with the fact that HASBRO took out portuguese language because they wanted to print more English cards, but the amount of Hat sets and overly expensive UBs was a big play here
Well... Until FF the collection came out. Then people got hooked up by their favorite FF games, people who knew nothing about FF became amazed by some characters that has non-futuristic settings.
And as soon as they released Edge of eternities, people got bored again and went back to prefire/premodern
And yes, I'm talking about 60-cards players. Not the COMMANDER players. Commander is always big. But as Graham Stark said in his few last lives: "We should label commander out of regular magic. There's formal magic, the 60-cards with 4 ofs or the Highlander with 1 ofs, it can be 1v1, 2v2 or 1v1v1v1 ... And Commander magic, that has a card in the command zone and can be both Highlander or 4-ofs, it can be 1v1, 2v2 or 1v1v1v1 .. same thing as formal magic, but with the command zone and deck restriction ( because of the announcement of that weird "commander-esque" format, wotc was trying to create).
So, Commander will exist in every corner of this world. But commander doesn't have a pro-tour, nor regionals, there's nothing like a tournament setting. Even Brawl on arena doesn't ranks you up. And as the commander card is public knowledge and the decks are casual, most of the times we brew stuff out of our identification with the character rather if the card is good or bad. Giving us a HUGE amount of Darth Vader/Luke Skywaker custom cards over those almost 20 years of commander.
We are talking about a fandom that sold out a $13,800 statute of Tera.
Anyway, funny you wrote this since Distraction Makers had the same rumination today:
https://youtu.be/xOYphHAI3Io?si=WMfRd2jvUa3zU0HV
(EDIT: whoops, wrong link, fixed now)
Also for fun, red bobcat made a deck once with that Omnath...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDwRYMrQlc
I have actually felt what can only be described as a mild depression as the magic world I have loved for over 30 years is slowly slowly being pushed off a cliff in favor of nonsensical pop culture fandom. They rushed a half assed ending to the decades long phyrexian story line so that they could start changing the game wholesale. It's heart breaking to see, and even more upsetting to see how many people seem to be happy about the change.
Good read, but it pains me to read it.
It's a thing to feel like the game I have love the most since I was 8 is not the one I loved anymore and barely interact with it outside of my cube which is keeping all I love in the game while keeping away everything that makes me feel bad about my own hobby.
It's another to see all the fantastic content creators I have loved and followed for years having a similar feeling. Seeing them looking for another game to drive their passion, reducing their involvement in the process or just having some resigned comment about it.
For me it was "just" a hobby taking a large amount of space in my life and now that WotC went so bad that I can't accept to encourage them by giving them any money anymore. I went on to invest my passion into TTRPGs (and not D&D to be safe).
For creators that have invested so much of their time that it became their main job, I can't imagine how hard it must be to all going into a frenzied collector centered soulless heap of collectibles. I'm so sorry.
Magic: The Gathering WAS the best game ever made.
I was thinking about cards with little/no rules text while planning how to play magic with my kids as they get big enough to understand and play games. Maybe curate some very simple magic cards, or make semi custom proxy cards. Just power/toughness to start, bring in one word mechanics etc. There are cards like that in magic, but tend to be older and have the less interesting art. Could be an idea for Magic to make some cards in sets have minimal rules for collectors or kid format. (Cards with no more than 3 [maybe 5?] words of rules text), smaller rules text box and give those cards interesting cohesive art from a magic plane or UB. This lets those collectors have cards that require minimal effort to learn to play with, might not be a riveting game, but an excellent intro experience of magic for new people to play, especially with their favorite theme.
A side perk (maybe) is that the collector pieces of a UB set would mainly (with exceptions of course) not be the chase cards of magic players, who would get more interested in the more wordy powerful cards.
Edit: liking this idea of kids/inttro formats more as I put it in writing
- Intro format only cards with 3-5 words on them.
- Transition format tiers: can 5,10 cards with any number of words on them
Also having some (20%?) of each set be simple cards, and so unlikely to be significantly powerful, means that the amount of card info that players need to review in each new set gets reduced somewhat, which I imagine would be good for most players who have limited time to keep up with all the new cards coming out. And lets Wizards get the wording and balance better on fewer cards. Not a huge difference, but maybe a nice perk.
Final Fantasy as a set has given me a new metric to weight UB on. If a UB set is executed well enough to where I become interested in that IP, then something has hit the mark. I was skeptical of this set when it was announced, but having gotten to play with it, I have found a lot of enjoyment and downloaded FFVI on my switch. At the same time, I have to spend $200 to draft a box with friends?!
As always, love reading your thoughts.
Thank you for providing even more proof that UB is unabashedly "advertisement".
Dude why would you make peace with WoTC pushing the game further and further towards UB? Whatever happened to your article "Your Foundation Is Rotten"? What happened to that guy?
letting go of dismay and disappointment is the definition of making peace. don't confuse that with endorsement.
As someone who has learned Mindfuness and radical acceptance as therapy skills I can relate. Acceptance is acknowlaging the situation, feelings and facts for what they are. Acceptance doesn't mean endorcement. I have accepted that this is what is happening to the thing I love. I don't endorse it, I don't like it, but I am one person and can only do so much. I find my own joy where I can and allow myself to experiance and feel things without judgement. This is where the game is at and I create the space I want to see in the game.
I have actually felt what can only be described as a mild depression as the magic world I have loved for over 30 years is slowly slowly being pushed off a cliff in favor of nonsensical pop culture fandom. They rushed a half assed ending to the decades long phyrexian story line so that they could start changing the game wholesale. It's heart breaking to see, and even more upsetting to see how many people seem to be happy about the change.
The thing about the SpongeBob Secret lair that people say is to attract a younger audience? I don't think that's true.
It's a show that started in 1999, people who watched it as kids are over 30 now, it's cashing in on people that start having disposable income and nostalgia, especially released as something as a limited secret lair that as a newbie is kinda weird and inaccessible to buy.
(Yes, the show is still running but the new seasons have lost a lot of their cultural impact, I'd say.)
With Spiderman it might be more diverse in its audience to attract younger players but from what I've seen of it it's the very much classic Spiderman and not the more current Multiverse and Miles Spiderman.
And Avatar later that year? That show released 20 years ago. Again, while it was a show aimed at kids and teens, the ones with nostalgia for it are in their late 20s and early 30s.