Mike @ mike @mtgzone.com

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

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Yeah that's a very good point. If WoTC starts getting their lunch eaten by a rival game (cough Sorcery Contested Realm cough) or if anything else happens that starts tanking demand then I could definitely see them selling it off for the short term gain while they "regroup on traditional games in their product lineup".

It'll never happen, but the only way to make Magic better for the players is if Hasbro sold off WoTC. I can't even come up with a scenario that would cause them to sell, it seems to be the only thing keeping them alive.

That could actually be fun. Especially with the lower powered packs. The person who opens a rare would be like the one-eyed among the blind 😆

What's kinda funny is that the 7 card packs don't even make it around the table once in a draft lol

This comes from the same market research that showed "the vast majority of tabletop Magic players (over 75%) don’t know what a planewalker is, ... don’t know what a format is". Take that for what it's worth. I personally cannot believe it, but if that's what we're dealing with it almost doesn't matter what question they ask, they'll get whatever answer they're looking for.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/698478689008189440/a-mistake-folks-in-the-hyper-enfranchised

I checked these set out because it seemed somewhat interesting, and my take away was definitely not right now.

Maybe when the box prices crash to $50 it could be worth it, but I would spend maybe $2 per booster on this and they're retailing for $5 right now. That's a yikes.

I think The One Ring has been slipping under the radar with all the focus on Nadu. Nadu is definitely a problem but The One Ring is being run in nearly every other deck and I just cannot see how this is a good thing for any format. If aggro, midrange, combo, and control are all running the same card I think that's a clear sign the card is not only too strong, but too easy to run as well.

There just aren't any downsides, not even color pips, to prevent auto-including it and the upside is to high that it's often the right decision to just run 4 of them. I saw a number of games in PT MH3 where the game was almost over but the player behind casts TOR and then ends up winning from the card advantage it generated.

60% for Bant Nadu with that many games is insane imo. This is after a short time since MH3 came out too, not sure what that's going to be once it gets played more and more.

There's no doubt in my mind Nadu eats a Hogaak style ban too. Way overpowered and way too much representation.

I also honestly still think The One Ring needs to go too. That card is bonkers level nuts and I think it's being slightly overshadowed by the even more nuts Nadu.

I just want to say I think we're lucky to have Corey Baumeister and his commentary! I could listen to this guy 24 hours a day.

Looking at the full decklist, damn I think you would have 3-0'd this even without any!

This is hilarious, I think I'd play 10 if I saw them all 😛

I totally agree. In this video one of the guys basically says whenever he sees a turn 1 Grief->Reanimate->Grief or an Initiative creature he just scoops and decides its not worth playing that game. I get that this on the extreme side, but when you have players activity deciding to just scoop instead of playing out a game, because of how mentally exasperating it is, I wonder what the f- are we even doing! This is a GAME. This screams to me local/community ban list. I were running a store and trying to get people to come out, I would just manage my own banlist, but a community created one would go the furthest I think.

I don't play Legacy but I've always been a big fan of the format. It's very interesting to hear their thoughts on how negatively impactful Grief has been for the format. I think it's frustrating but expected that Wizards delays banning a card from the current active set that they're promoting. They haven't even shipped out Gift Bundles yet (July) so to ban a card from the set before people even receive the product is definitely never happening.

I do think that Grief creates non-games, and I think non-games are truly antithetical to "fun" and fun should be the #1 concern for every game in existence. The fact that they're not banning it means they care more about money than fun.

I think they quietly renamed Historic Brawl to "Brawl" and then Brawl became "Standard Brawl". That's just from what I've seen online but I don't if that's formal or anything.

I've always loved this artwork, and just how gross it is

Damn, this is so beautiful

I think they should have dropped the 2,300 gem cost to unlock it, and just allowed everyone to accumulate tickets accordingly. I don't mind a new currency in the game, but this is really just another bundle sold to us for gems/money. And you have to do work to accumulate the rewards after you pay.

Not really in love with this, as it kinda reads like a second Mastery Pass that costs less but with fewer (worse?) rewards. Still just kind of comes off like another complicated and confusing system to extract more money up front from the players.

So far, fwiw, the best take on solving mana screw imo has been what the game Sorcery Contested Realm has done. You have a 40 card deck and a separate 20 card lands deck. In Magic you would start with 4 spells and 3 lands, one free mulligan in both decks, and then you draw from either deck for the turn. Cards would have to be erratad en masse to make this work in Magic, but I think Arena kinda solves it with "seeking" a land vs. a spell. I don't know how that works in Magic outside of at least smoothing an opening hand. The game would need to refer to the deck separately from the "atlas" of lands.