Zoness posted:

Jon Loucks wasn't a card designer but rather a modo product designer I thought.

It's a shame because he had a custom cube with some really fun cards.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Devoid is using colored mana for colorless cards.

If your hypothesis is correct (because Ulamog and Mirrorpool inexplicably lack reminder text (which is one of the many reasons they're fake)) then ♦ cards directly refuse colored mana for colorless cards.

This is direct opposition. One wants colored mana, the other wants colorless. These aren't independent sets, they'll be drafted together.

Wastes is a common though so even if it were real (it's not) then the theme is inherently hosed from a drafting perspective. Say what you will about BFZ's archetype focus, at least you didn't have to draft basic lands instead of spells to enable anything.

Voyager I posted:

You raise valid design concerns, but I still remind you that BFZ seems to have been a dubiously designed set from the get-go in terms of shamelessly parasitic mechanics so I don't think those are grounds enough by themselves to rule out the ♦.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

They also confirmed From Beyond as just Awakening Zone that makes Scions, and not with the final card's search ability.

I was thinking something just straight-up removed in the last two or three years, but gently caress me if I am going to attempt to look for something that's been memory hole'd.

NivMizzet posted:

I kind of wonder if they would either replace the basic land slot in OGW packs with Wastes or have Wastes be one of the lands that comes up in that slot.

If it's just another common in the pack then we may get to see a modern-day recreation of everyone trying to open enough packs to get enough basics for their Karn/Kozilek EDH deck just like in the early days of Magic.

But in actuality they're probably just going to put tons of them in each Intro Pack and people will actually buy them.

Lancelot posted:

Is this different from the time just before that Ulamog was trapped and Ob Nixilis disrupted the alignment? These stories are all blurring together.

quote:

In THE ART OF MAGIC: THE GATHERING – INNISTRAD, terror falls from the skies on blood-spattered wings and nameless horrors lurk in the shadows. These pages, lavishly illustrated with the award-winning art of Magic: The Gathering, are your entry into a world beset by terrible evils on all sides and betrayed by the hope it held most dear. Tread lightly as you follow the heroic Planeswalkers of the Gatewatch as they investigate these dark mysteries.

Angry Grimace posted:

This is the problem that entrenched players underestimate by far the most in my experience - you would not believe how much players learning the game hate having to read all the loving cards every single time to figure out what they do.

Zoness posted:

to be fair knight of sursi is pretty simple because what else has flying and flanking anyway?

don't even need to bother doing the check case on flanking and you can effectively treat it as bushido 1 except it kills x/1's immediately.

Sigma-X posted:

parasitic 6th color

rabidsquid posted:

The only cool blue character is Venser. Peace.

Sigma-X posted:

Considering a 6th color retrofit doesn't really add anything to the game at this point in development I don't really get why anyone is excited by it. I've never understood why anyone is attracted to the notion of Barry's Land outside of Commander though, either, but it's existed as a concept long before Commander was a format.

Sigma-X posted:

We've seen multiple cards with ♦ costs on them and I don't think it's a very exciting mechanic. I get that I'm in the minority but I still haven't seen any cards or any potential speculations about the future of ♦ that leave me at all excited by it.

quote:

Zendikar block is home to a million of my favorite cards in the game and BFZ/OGW are complete loving trash and incredibly unexciting to me. As someone who was originally thinking bout getting into standard when BFZ came into rotation because I had been on a long hiatus from standard, the sets thus far look the be the least interesting sets to me that they've produced since kamigawa block. The whole thing is a huge disappointment to me and the most interesting cards in either zen set so far are Newlamog, who is a boring but kinda more powerful version of an existing card I play, and a completely utilitarian boring upgrade card that is at mythic for no good reason.


Like, I bought about a case of Zen/WWK combined, and I bought a case of ROE. I drafted these sets religiously at least once a week, and with ROE in particular I drafted the set literally about 100 times between paper and MTGO.

quote:

I love the gently caress out of legacy, enjoy the hell out of modern, and am completely loving disinterested in playing a standard that involves these sets at this time. Different strokes for different folks, I'm glad some other folks are totally excited about the wonderful mechanical possibilities that a half-assed 6th color retrofit provides, but I can't see it as anything other than a half-assed 6th color retrofit and given that their marquee mythics of kozilek, who should be awesome, and that mythic land, which should be awesome, are both boring as hell instead and feel like lame retreads of things we've seen before outside of having ♦ in their costs. Which indicates to me that we are more likely going to get some boring poo poo like a mana rock that costs 1♦, maybe an on curve 2♦ 3/3, and other completely unexciting things like that instead exciting things like...anything that had annihilator stuck on it was.

quote:

Add all of that together with the fact that they picked the worst time to introduce the new symbol (small second set) so that most of the cards you'll be using to enable it aren't even printed with their most recent rules text despite being 3 months old, just reeks of poor execution and planning and that reek doesn't usually come attached to secret darlings.

quote:

If I was a pessimist I would say that BFZ is what we'll look at in a few years when we try to pinpoint the moment that Magic tripped on its dick and started to bleed out, but I don't actually think the game is going to be any smaller in 5 years. But between expeditions being a sales gimmick to shore up set sales while being coupled with the most uninteresting sets they've done in a long time doesn't leave me excited for new magical cards. And as a huge magic fan that bums me out in a way that mediocrity in something I'm not passionate about wouldn't.

I'm bitching so much not because it's the literal worst thing they've ever done (Homelands and Fallen Empires exist) but because I had really high hopes for this set and it's failed to meet them spectacularly.

Sigma-X posted:

I am tossing out the whole mechanic on 3 cards. Because you can point to any other mechanic and show me the terrible limited filler cards that use that mechanic and I get more excited than I do with these, which are supposed to not be limited filler cards but instead the marquee exciting cards for the mechanic. I'm not kidding, I think wither is more interesting than this is, because any constraint or consideration it places on deck building and gameplay is literally no different than if you had just splashed an off color in your deck. Maybe this will actually look like a good limited mechanic but the marquee mythics don't appeal to me. Ruins of the Sea Gate costing effectively 4 mana and hellbent is a far cry from library of alexandria, it's as apt a comparison as saying Blanchwood Treefolk is just like Tarmogoyf, one of the most powerful cards of all time, because it's a 4/5 for just 3 more mana than goyf, so I'm sorry I don't share your excitement. Maybe there is some application that will make it interesting and exciting but the only thing I've seen suggested is putting it in loam, which is a deck that has lands that let it draw for G already and don't require being on the battlefield and using your engine cards to do so. I don't get excited about Mikokoro either, for what it's worth, although I am sure that this will find itself in commander decks just like Mikokoro does.

I'm posting my thoughts about magical cards in a magical cards thoughts thread and while we don't have to agree on this, do me a favor and don't assume that I'm SUPER MAD IRL about this serious business and tell me I need to take a break. You're acting like I need to make strong objective arguments to legitimize the fact that I think this mechanic is stupid and WOTC handled it terribly but you're not doing that yourself, nor is it really possible to have objectively correct opinions on card games.

jassi007 posted:

You go on to say "we don't know what their income is like" then immediately conclude based off no facts that SCG wasn't paying him fairly for the work he did. He took another job. SCG is shrinking the scope of the open series, Cedric Phillips posted a few months ago about changes to the casting bench as he got promoted and won't be full time. I don't see this is anything other P. Sullivan taking a more secure long term employment. I don't know why you are jumping to some conclusion that SCG did wrong by him.

I don't disagree that he'd have been a good pickup for WOTC for coverage, but lets be honest. WOTC is a good 'ol boys network. It is why Randy, who if you will recall got FIRED from WOTC yet he still does coverage and now wormed his way back in partially by taking over cube design for MTGO. I know his wife works there, but companies rarely if ever maintain a working relationship with people they've fired. Marshall got in because of Loucks and the podcast that propelled him in the GDS, I have no clue about BDM or Rashad but yeah, WOTC needs to do something about coverage, I'm sure they hear the feedback, and they give zero fucks more or less.

Voyager I posted:

Oh well. Maybe they'll accidentally print another good Planeswalker again.

TheKingofSprings posted:

Ciprian Maricon posted:

If they are so opposed to the idea of Modern going a year without a significant shake up, why not just make it rotate instead

Ciprian Maricon posted:

It's a more transparent and palatable way to force change on a regular basis as opposed to the current strategy of "Ban something"

rabidsquid posted:

Its apparently not a big deal to wotc that people should invest a few grand in a deck that might become unplayable

edit: I am not arguing poo poo shouldn't be banned because its expensive, but the format isn't affordable and it's also unpredictable what might eat a ban.