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JeremiahBlob's avatar

Well, thank god a content creator, a voice in the hobby, someone louder than me has articulated what it feels with the glut of cross IP content.

I have mostly been an omni tcg player. I love it when IPs find their place in the tcg market with their own game rules, where mechanisms are interesting and tied closely to the theme.

I like mtg, I love its lore, and I enjoy it when someone at the table does something weird and almost nonsensical. But I've been playing against hobbits and the brotherhood of steel and they just take me out of the game this time. And I hate the feeling because I love lotr and fallout. I just don't want to play them in the same multiverse, they could (or are) so much more as different card games.

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Rusty Attenborough's avatar

I've come to accept that this game is likely no longer for me as a new wave of players enter the game thanks to UB.

For all the shouting and complaining we do online and as loud as our voice is when these announcements are made, we appear to be the minority now when it comes to the profit that Hasbro and WOTC can make.

Simply saying "I want Magic the Gathering to be Magic the Gathering, not a pop culture pool of what's popular from other IPs" invokes responses of ridicule and contempt for "Ruining the fun of others." "Just let people enjoy things!" "The game still plays the same, so what's the problem?"

Why has it become so wrong to say that I do not want other brands planting their flags down and staking a claim in my own hobby?

I feel this current perception among many players who love UB that MTG is simply a rule set and design philosophy centered around the color pie that can be applied to anything if you want, completely overlooks everything about the game previously. MTG has its own history, its own universe, its own characters, its own style, its own feel to the cards, its own way of playing. All of the parts that made something a true part of the Magic the Gathering world.

Before UB, if someone presented a Spongebob or Captain America MTG card, we would all acknowledge that it it might be unique or have fitting mechanics that flavorfully represent the character, but that it had no place in the game. It was missing that fundamental piece of flavor that's so hard to describe, but that made it a true Magic the Gathering card, even if mechanically, it was no different from any other card. But now that flavor is lost. These UB cards are no different than the custom cards of those characters that our own community would make as a joke so many years ago.

Now here we are. Our game has been sold out to the highest bidder and become something unrecognizable, converted into a cheap pillar meant to prop up a dying company with mindless product consumption until the people at the top have prepared their golden parachutes and jumped off to the next thing they can ruin. My own local community is completely devastated these days as the older players, some of which who had been playing for 20+ years, have silently quit or retreated into personal playgroups that let them preserve the game they loved.

Perhaps it is finally time to join them.

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