mike

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[–] mike@mtgzone.com 3 points 5 days ago

I just want to mention, I'm glad they printed this as a sorcery. I originally thought this was a better Collected Company at first but then re-read it and I think it's a cool card. Certainly interesting in white instead of blue. Searching 7 cards instead of 6 I guess comes at the cost of the sorcery speed but that feels pretty strong too.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 3 points 5 days ago

I mean I guess it's par for the course but this card just seems crazy to me. Definitely commander focused, as is much of the design lately, but this is usually getting played on turn 4 in commander and the life loss trigger seems pretty easy to activate every turn. Often I think you will get getting two triggers off this every turn. And then it has lifelink and flying to boot!

 

Just saw these yesterday, what do you all think? Seems like a fun take on basic lands, but it also sort of makes me question what a basic land even is at this point 😝

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Enigma Jewel is one I personally specced on. I knew that card was busted beyond belief and made a dimir Jewel/Rats deck for Pioneer last year before the UB announcements. I have not played 1 game with the deck but at least there are marginal gains on the Enigma Jewel playset lol.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This was fantastic and so is Matt Nass. My main takeaway from this was with the lands in the deck, how much we could use Blood Moon in standard right now 😆 My mouth is salivating at the idea of punishing that mana base.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Reposting my comment with this account for visibility as it appears my mtgzone account still is not visible outside the instance.

Non-magic, but I may have to open up a discussion on the Lemmy hosting discord for this. I actually thought it was working after an update we applied but I'll see what they and Andrew can help with.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 8 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I'm curious to know how many price increases and card or pack decreases have happened over the last 2-3 years. Hasbro's insane requirement of WoTC to increase revenue 50% year over year, and WoTC's constant pushing of all costs onto the consumer has gotten us to this point.

I'm also curious what this looks like even just 1 or 2 years down the line. 50% YoY is impossible to maintain, so what happens when they don't hit the target? What happens when they decrease revenue for a quarter or fiscal year? What happens if it bears true that some UB sets are hits, and others are flops? What happens if we hit a recession?

They've traded the health of the underlying game for short term profits under the tenuous assertion that people will always continue to pay.

 

Is an individual final fantasy play booster intended to be the same price as aetherdrift? Sorry for the basic question, but it's hard to find clear info online.

No, Universes Beyond boosters normally have a higher MSRP.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I have a lot of thoughts on this but I'll keep it crazy short (lol).

First, that was incredible and I totally felt his excitement the whole time. However, what am I watching! Timeless has effectively now become Yugioh, and it's not even a joke, that's what Yugioh game play is like.

I started out really interested in Timeless as a format, but this is what you get when you take free interaction out of Legacy. It's a joke format to me right now, and adding Chrome Mox makes it unplayable. I think it was unplayable before with the prevalence of combo decks, but this is truly something else. This guy won the game on the opponent's upkeep without any lands in hand or in play...

I don't think Wizards gives a shit really, they don't care about 60 card constructed at all imo, but I can't seem them adding Force of Negation in 2025 when it was actually needed in 2024. I'm very curious to know how big that Timeless playerbase is.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think that's okay tho, but you could also have the Vehicle stay a creature until the following turn. Like you crew it on your turn, and it stays a creature until your next turn.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I really think the issue I have with Vehicles is that they can be crewed at instant speed. That holds up every single turn and step of the game for that action. I would have preferred crew being a sorcery speed action. Something you can only do on your turn makes more sense to me and it solves that problem.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 4 points 1 month ago

I think this is a pretty good idea, and I like the overall take on it. It's a little confusing at first but I imagine it will get iterated on. The Game Changers are very confusing, I feel like people will just optimize against these or any list like this.

What I love most is that my old school 5c Knight Tribal Kenrith actually qualifies in the bracket 1 it's designed for. Whenever I said Kenrith before people never wanted to play against it but the deck stinks! It's just equipment and knights from the first 15 years of the game. Kenrith is only in there to get 5c and because he's an awesome and loreful king and commander.

I actually think this will revitalize the jank decks by giving them kinda of a dedicated format in Bracket 1.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 15 points 1 month ago

This new wiki will be 100% ad-free, forever.

Can't overstate how great Scryfall is to the community.

[–] mike@mtgzone.com 3 points 2 months ago

June 20–22, 2025: Pro Tour Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ at MagicCon: Las Vegas

It will never not feel weird reading this lol

 

Richard Garfield blogs about the differences between a ranked ladder and tournaments for competitive play.

Recently I started playing a digital game. There was a tournament announced for the top players. Although I wasn’t a top player – the game was new enough and there was enough luck in the play that I thought maybe I could qualify, and so I started paying attention to my ranking.

Quickly I noticed that I was having less fun because I was no longer experimenting and trying new things – I was focusing on what I knew worked. I began to lean more heavily on what other people said was correct rather than finding my own way. Losses were setbacks rather than learning experiences. When I rose to a level that corresponded to my actual skill, I stalled. Then the games became more samey, with the players mostly playing similar styles. I noticed that I felt like a mediocre player even though I was in the top 10%.

The experience brought into focus and made personal some of the misgivings I have had about extensive player rankings in games. [...]

 

tylerja-blog asked:

"That’s the nature of Magic. It adapts to the needs of the collective whole. It used to upset me, but I came to realize it is one of the game’s greatest strengths. It becomes the game its players need/want it to be." Is to me, a market-friendly way to say "sloughs emotionally invested players in pursuit of the unremarkable, but widely palatable middle"

Many players like to assume the core of the people making the changes aren’t enfranchised players, but it’s exactly the opposite. Why, for example, is Universes Beyond so popular? Because the people who play the most Magic really adore it.

We’re not ignoring the hard-core Magic players, we’re doing what they say they most want through their actions and in market research.

Magic is a business. Ignoring our core customers would just be bad business.

We make changes because Magic players, and especially our hard-core enfranchised players, want it. Maybe in this particular case it’s not you in particular (or maybe it is, I don’t know), but it’s not us ignoring “emotionally invested players”.

 

izzipurrito asked:

I know this is a big ask, but...

Please no more direct to Modern sets.

If you guys must, at least make it so that it is Standard legal so it is Standard level in power.

 

Some distributors have posted their Aetherdrift order pages and revealed that starting with Aetherdrift, the booster boxes will have 30 packs instead of 36.

I believe it's been stated that the per pack MSRP will not change, meaning the overall box price will just go down accordingly by 1/6th.

A Duskmourn Play booster box is $138 on TCGPlayer, or $3.83 per pack. They are $4.25 when bought individually.

The new MSRP for Aetherdrift $5.50 per pack. If they keep the same price of $140 per box, that would work out to about $4.66 per pack when buying a box. And if they left it at 36 packs it would cost about $168 per box which I think everyone in the world realizes is just far too expensive to buy.

 

For fans of sudden victories, unexpected upsets, and comebacks that come out of nowhere, the 20 Ways to Win Commander deck is loaded with jaw-dropping win conditions that will leave your friends and foes speechless. Now, you'll never have to rely on old-fashioned ways of winning ever again! Featuring ten cards with brand-new artwork in dazzling rainbow foil, this 100-card Commander deck is ready to play (and win) right out of the box.

 
 

Hi Mark,

From one Marvel fan to another, what does the chance of getting access to the otherwise mechanically unique Secret Lair Marvel cards in a later product look like now after the feedback was passed on? Still low? Impossible?

All the unique mechanical cards from the Marvel Secret Lair will appear later in the same mechanical form, possibly with the same name, in some product.

 

Here are some of the biggest brained, 300 IQ Magic plays ever caught on camera!

Some great plays, some of these are more like "tricks" but all of them are really impressive and fun to watch.

 

The Professor gives us his thoughts on the recent Universes Beyond announcements.

 

Now an update for @MTG_Arena! Pioneer Masters is coming December 10th 2024! Pioneer Masters brings many cards to MTG Arena for the first time as we work towards our goal of parity with competitive Pioneer in tabletop.

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