Mike @ mike @mtgzone.com

Started playing Magic with Portal and Mirage. Currently play off-and-on His

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Ok, Seedship Broodtender is a pretty good hit for golgari:

I think all of the abilities added are pretty cool. Generally it seems like Warp, and to a lesser extent Station, are just ways to get value out of the card no matter what the turn is or when you draw it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's further towards to "no bad topdecks" style of design that's been going on and increasing.

I like the ideas of creatures tapping the turn they enter to help station, I don't know if WoTC has playtested that one all the way though, I will say. I feel like this is gonna be pretty bonkers:

Also, if this has a name "Uthros, Titanic Godcore" why is it not legendary? How is this not legendary. I feel this way about the towns in FIN too.

Lander tokens are pretty fun, and Void seems like a lesser Revolt, but it also seems like a great addition.

Link to the top 8 decklists: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=53788&f=ST

Archive page of the tournament coverage: https://web.archive.org/web/20211023053431/https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/1998wc

I think they hit a wide range of cards to really rebalance and shake up the format. I think that Stormchaser's Talent probably should have gone instead of This Town, and I think Omniscience should have gone instead of Abuelo's but I think they hit a wide range of decks with these enough and I'm glad they did it.

Beanstalk hurts because that was driving a LOT of jank and artisan decks, so that is a painful loss. However it is just far too busted with too many cards in Standard right now and it's too much card advantage for nothing. I just am sad to lose it.

I feel like Jeskai Prowess, Golgari Roots, and Mono Black midrange are doing to start cruising though.

Also I think a lot of people are moving to Arena instead which is further hurting store and paper sales. I'm sorry about your store closing though, that is a huge bummer :( I also have been unable to keep up with the release cycle for the last few years.

I agree with him here, and I think he has a good understanding of Standard.

My personal list is Monstrous Rage, Manifold Mouse, Cori Steel-Cutter, Omniscience, Stormchaser's Talent, Caretaker's Talent, and Up the Beanstalk. I think that has a wide band so as not to "bequeath" the crown to another deck, although something in mono-black may need to be hit as well, and if so I think it should be Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber.

This would get rid of these "hyper efficient engines" that are I think are plaguing Standard right now. Cards that just do too much and are an entire deck in a single card. Even if you slow Standard down by hitting Cori and mono-red, I still think these engines need to go because they we're a huge problem for Standard before this mess too in my opinion.

That's a very good point about Omni. And I totally agree on WOTC breaking standard. Normally some of these problems would be resolved with the 2 year rotation too but now we're stuck in this really tough spot that can't be fixed without those Eldraine style bans. They seem very scared to do that though.

I think they will have to hit Monstrous Rage, that feels obvious. But beyond that, I personally think to re-balance the entire format and prevent the next deck running away with it, they need to also hit Cori Steel-Cutter, Stormchaser's Talent, and one of Abuela's Awakening or Omniscience. Up the Beanstalk and This Town Ain't Big Enough don't rise to the same level and feel more like enablers to lots of other decks.

I think Vivi is another insane, over the top, does-to-much card that wins the game on turn 4, but we will need to wait and see with that because nothing in the FF set will get touched.

Phantasm is someone I've been watching lately -- https://www.youtube.com/@phantasmsplayground

Love their budget brews

Can't believe I'm reading this. Hasbro is truly poisoned if this is what they're still doing even after the WoTC division continues to hit insane growth numbers.

The layoff affects roughly 150 of the company's 4,985 global employees (with math accurate to the company's 2024 annual report).

It doesn't say where the 150 are coming from but it seems like a stupid decision.

Yes I completely agree about the fakes issue. No reason IMO not to have a false card back on every proxy. We shouldn't be in the business of duping people, and conversely no one should be forced to pay more than they're able to for a card game piece.

I don't think there was ever going to be a doubt if Final Fantasy, Spiderman, etc would be more popular than regular MtG. I think it's all but guaranteed to increase player count when you have something like a popular outside IP crossed over with a different game.

Steam saw 6,000 additional active users, a 50% increase, and I honestly don't know if that's a signal that the crossover is a big hit, but that number seems really low overall to me. Fortnite is seeing ~6M average actives for reference. Maybe Steam doesn't account for a very high % of the installs, so assuming a 50% increase in players in Arena is a massive jump, but to the original point, if you're a fan of FF why wouldn't you try a FTP game that features cards from the game? How much of it will you try is the real question.

The bigger issue that the game has had to deal with since the 90s is the complexity. I remember in the late 90s hearing store owners say things like "you have to be too smart to play Magic" and even though it's a little silly, there is a high level of state management and knowledge needed to play the game at all. It's quick to get a rundown of the rules, but it's not simple to play the game. These new players are interested enough to check it out, run through the tutorial, maybe do the color challenge, but then what? It has such a high onboard cost that is very different from an RPG for FPS style game. Will they still be interested after FF rotates in 8 weeks?

These are the unanswered questions that they are gambling with at the expense of the enfranchised player base. Maybe the enfranchised players will always continue to play because they just like the game mechanics. Maybe the added players from FF and Marvel sets will outpace the existing players that quit the game. I don't know, but just like with other technical parallels like chess or computer programming, there is a finite number of people who can play the game beyond a surface level.

I think this is unfortunately all we can do :(

Card Sphere and Mana Pool were two other services I found through all of this, but I haven't used either yet.

Some more info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7zWhqVO5AE

This is pretty insane. Ebay moving the grading to Kentucky to effectively kill off the union that the Syracuse team formed. At this point there is an effective monopoly on trading card sales, it doesn't even seem possible to start a competitor anymore.

I totally agree, I wish they would go back to the original foiling method for new cards

Yea I love it too, for all Arena's issues I think watching Arena gameplay is a lot better than MTGO or even paper for me. I just want them to add the rest of the cards! Come on already!

Haha, I love that. Good lesson there lol

I honestly don't see a reason to ever unban them. These three have been proven to be unsuitable for the format, and if people really want to play them, I don't see why they wouldn't just be made available in Tier 4. Or some Tier that has no banned cards for the people who want to play that way.

Not to mention that these cards were the heart of the entire controversy that ended the Commander Rules Committee and caused the death threats to come out from some players. That alone would be enough to me to never bring these cards back to the format ever again.

I will secod MakePlayingCards.com as someone else mentioned. However, with the tariff situation this may end up being far too costly to do anymore. We will have to wait and see. I have used MPC a lot in the past and it's always a great experience. The S33 is just like a Magic card.

If you just want to flat rate the cost and have the easiest experience, I would go with https://www.mtgproxy.com/. I've seen good youtube reviews of them and I'm about to order some PreModern proxies soon from here.

First off, I didn't realize MaRo did this for Tempest too. This is awesome.

Tempest block is when I started but Urza's block was my favorite. I was a little too young to go out and draft those sets but I remember following every spoiler and loving every card that came out in Saga, Legacy, Destiny. I also remember my peak excitement as a child was getting a USG booster box for Christmas and cracking a Gaea's Cradle. Needed 4 of those for a deck and I didn't have the $80 for a playset (lol).

Crazy that MaRo was the only designer for Urza's Destiny. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what a designer does here, but that seems really short staffed at a time when the game was very popular.

Original Goblin General (Goblin Marshall) was very much like a Deranged Hermit and I think the tweak they made was better. I really liked the take he had on Echo + Death Triggers. I think that is just a great example of tradeoffs in the older game. It was a cool idea to staple cycling as a (2) + Sacrifice mechanic for permanents.

It would be pretty incredible if they brought Urza's block draft to Arena for an event. I think that would definitely get be back playing regularly.