MysticKetchup @ MysticKetchup @mtgzone.com

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287

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Joined

6 mo. ago

This one is more obviously a joke, but I'm always unsure of whether to tag satire or if that ruins the fun

I get why they did it, but I was hoping for a couple "unidentified" creatures like alien grays or a Thing-style creature to show up as aliens

Surprised it focused on Tezzeret so much given that he didn't do much in the story

They weren't taking any chances. Still glad though, right now it feels like it's better to overcorrect than to not go far enough

Though I don't think we've had this massive of a list in a long time, maybe this finally wakes them up to tone the power of the format down

Oh I didn't even see the Historic changes at first, Counterspell feels like a good addition to the format

I loved running her in Esper Hero. Definitely a kill on sight. Even in Commander she can run away with a game if left around with extra tokens

The issue with Beans is that it becomes a must-play in pretty much every midrange/late game deck because of how much advantage it creates. And with it being so easy to trigger with the Overlords it's only really being held back by Aggro being insanely overpowered right now

For reference, here are all Legendary vehicles that would be available as commanders.

The best is probably Esika's Chariot but maybe there's something else that could be interesting

Wow, that's surprising to hear. Dragonstorm was absolutely hopping at the LGS near me. Was Bloomburrow big or do you just not see a lot of Magic traffic recently?

Neat, I've been considering building her with a bunch of Monarch and similar cards makes people want to attack me

Yeah, the new look is nice but I can't imagine it's as functional as Scryfall

Afaik, CardKingdom eventually relented and the union is still in place there. They settled a wage disagreement in Oct 2024 so I assume it's still in place absent of any more recent updates

So checking rulings for Inkshield with other cards like Kambal, Profiteering Mayor, it looks like all the tokens from Inkshield enter at the same time. If they're created as a group you'd only get one Food token regardless of how many Inklings you created

Yeah while MTG Arena makes some things a lot easier to acquire (Sheoldred costs the same as any other mythic) unfortunately it makes jank decks way more expensive to play where it's not worth the wildcards that could be spent on meta staples

Some notable exclusions:

On Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, and Mana Crypt

We would be plugging our ears if we did not acknowledge the elephants in the room when it comes to this series of unbans: the September bans of Dockside, Lotus, and Mana Crypt. Many players out there probably immediately scrolled down this long article as quickly as they could to discover the fates of these cards.

We did talk about these cards and are not unbanning them at this time.

Opinions from the Commander Format Panel varied. Some believe Commander is more fun without them, others would like more time to see how the Commander Bracket system is adopted before doing anything here, and others felt it's too soon to do anything with these cards. There were a few people who were open to doing something with Jeweled Lotus now, but that was not the majority opinion. The overwhelming majority of the panel did not want to do anything with any of these cards at this time.

I will be transparent and say that I believe if any of these are ever to return, the most likely one is Jeweled Lotus due to its one-shot nature, iconic feel, and ability to help support high-mana value commanders. I want to be clear, this is not me saying that will ever happen, but that was the one among the panel with the most traction.

I know many of you love these cards. Many of you are also glad you no longer have to play against these cards. There's always that kind of push and pull with powerful and potentially ban-worthy cards in Commander. I appreciate there are many people in both camps, and that no matter what happens with these cards, somebody will feel like they didn't get the result they wanted. However, we wanted to talk about the cards here honestly and what was said internally for transparency.

These cards will be something I'm sure we'll talk about next year. But for this year, the book is closed on these three cards.

Behind the scenes of early Magic was really a handful of people flying by the seat of their pants. They really were completely unprepared for Magic's overwhelming success.

Mark also talks about this on his Drive to Work podcast if you want more, it's pretty fun to hear his old stories of how they had to learn through experience for basically everything

Yeah the mismatch between paper/digital is going to be annoying. What makes it worse is that it's a mess that could have been entirely avoided had they just not tried to push UB within everywhere

I'm wondering if this is because Marvel also has Marvel Snap which they don't want Arena competing with. Or the rights for both paper and digital were just too high for Wizards

Regardless of the reason, yay for more Universes Within! This makes it a lot easier for them to reprint those cards in paper as well since the art + creative is already done

I was musing on the power level of Standard earlier but it's still shocking at how much Standard Izzet Prowess resembles Modern Izzet Prowess right now

I can't really blame anyone for wanting to walk away right now. When they first announced UB, admittedly I felt like people were overreacting. I thought they would be printing UW versions of most cards and that it wouldn't go beyond Commander release 1-2 times a year. Turns out I was very, very wrong. I think I was already tired about the constant UB releases and the encroachment into Modern, but Standard really solidified my distaste for it.

It's not like I hate everything about it, I think they've made some very cool designs that I don't know would ever get made otherwise. But in every case there's a card I like I would always rather have a UW card over the UB card. And the rate they're printing them has made it impossible to print UW versions to keep up.

Power creep is definitely happening, I feel like I'm less concerned about it because I played Yu-Gi-Oh before Magic, and compared to that the power creep in Magic is much slower. Still, it's made me much less interested in Standard given that it was nice to have a lower power format but now it feels almost as fast as other formats. I still enjoy Modern but looking at how MH3 in particular pushed out so many of the decks before it and how Wizards constantly drags its feet on banning obvious problem cards... It does not inspire confidence.

Obviously this new path is profitable, but I hardly think they need it. Based on sales of Bloomburrow and Dragonstorm they likely still would be doing fine with a slower release schedule and only in-universe sets. But it just wouldn't satisfy Hasbro's shareholders and the constant pressure for more profits, especially since WotC is basically propping up the rest of the company. I don't know how long they can keep this up, and I still enjoy so much of Magic that I don't really want it to crash, but there's just so much that's happening the I wish wasn't happening.

Wow, I had heard about Blue Prince but I didn't realize it was the same person behind Mythic Spoiler!