mike

I've been thinking about this more. Would Aang then have to be {W}{U}{R}{G} or would there be 4 different versions of Aang?

Yea that's pretty cool actually

Avatar at least fits in thematically with Magic, like LoTR and possibly Assassin's Creed. What's frustrating is that there aren't many other IPs that fit in very well, so once they get exhausted we're left with things like Marvel, Spongebob, etc.

As an aside, Tintin is probably my favorite IP in my life, and I will always love everything Tintin. But I don't think I would buy a Tintin magic set at all, and in fact it would kind of make me feel weird. Tintin, a journalist set in the 20s/30s, grounded fully in reality and current events, is the exact opposite of magic and spellcasting. They make as much sense as peanut butter and tomato sauce together.

And I think that right there might be my biggest underlying problem and disgust with it all -- because there is zero thematic overlap it comes off entirely as a naked cash grab. Effectively, "see! you love magic and you love tintin, you should love magic-tintin! will you give us money now?" That's how I see this in my head and that's how it all plays out to me. The "game" of Magic is now very clearly a much lower priority than the "business" of Magic and right there you lost me. They have figured they won't lose enough to impact "growth" and maybe they figure they can recapture lost fans with a "return to magic" phase in the future. But right now I have 0 interest in anything coming out this year, and I've grown too frustrated with the current state of the game regardless of UB.

I think Air would have to become White. Black doesn't really fit at all in Avatar, that one would be curious to see how they fit in.

I honestly cannot believe standard players are going to be dealing with Sheoldred until Fall 2025. Effectively another year, it feels like it's been in standard forever.

It's also really interesting to me that the next rotation sees that entire Brother's War arc rotate out. That arc was kind of the last consistent in-universe story line we got in the sets. That will rotate out after having experienced the universes beyond sets for 4-6 months, and from there on out, we are more or less in a whole new era of the game.

I'd stay this 2025 rotation is actually pretty significant. Moving into 3 year standard, so the following rotation isn't until 2027 (!) and then by then we will have 9 universes beyond sets in standard, Foundations still around for another 2 more years, and a standard format that is incorporating 19 sets in total. Gonna be a very interesting site to behold!

I also wasn’t experimenting. I wanted to get to Mythic, so I stuck to decks that I knew were good and that I was experienced with.

To me this is a problem w/ ranked ladder games for sure, but it's also the main reason I don't play as much anymore. Card acquisition is so expensive for non-drafters that you pretty much cannot brew on Arena unless you pay a lot of money every set.

I still vividly remember crafting 4 mythic WCs for a playset of Body of Research for a bad combo deck. I played the deck 3 times, don't think I ever won with it, and then never played it again. Those wildcards are $20-30 of in-game currency never gonna get that back. Being able to dust/de-craft those cards would get me back. Still makes me mad when I think about it.

I’m still not sure I would want to play without one.

Yea I also have never played a constructed event on Arena, and have never had any desire to at all. I don't think those tournaments are better than a ladder, and I don't think asynchronous leagues work. I think the ladder is better than the alternatives, it would just be nice maybe if there was a literal play queue that wasn't using deck strength and/or mmr. I'd love to see what random brews people are playing with. It would be even better to share decklists mid-game or after the game.

Matching players with evenly matched players is one of the main reasons for ladder play. This is not without its merits, but it also isn’t a strictly good thing. If you match people precisely then there is no sense of progress because players will win about half their games regardless of how good they get.

I think this is definitely frustrating, basically everyone always just wins about half of their games. I understand why the ladder exists in games and especially Arena, but I think it just got to a point for me where its not fun anymore. You're only ever playing people at your exact ability level. The variety of opponents makes it more fun I think.

I must say, this is a really cool synergistic deck. I'd say it looks more like a tempo deck than full on aggro but really this looks really fun to play while still also looking competitive too. I love the combo between Spiteful Hexmage and Nurturing Pixie. There are so many little combos and synergies in this and not too many rares either.

I think they finally did something the players have been asking for. Jegantha correctly identified as a mistake. I'm glad they hit something in Modern's Boros Energy w/ Raptor but they could have gone harder with Guide of Souls. That card is just silly and will always be the source of too much energy.

Frog and Bauble also great hits in Legacy, I think TOR should go in Legacy but I guess they will let that go a little longer too. Really can't wait to see what new decks come out in Modern over the next few weeks.

$54 for a bundle has finally pushed me out of all sealed product purchasing. The $40 bundles were the last thing I was buying, mainly for the oversized dice, but this is too much. I can buy the dice on ebay I guess.

Exactly. My current take on this is that the % of the customer/player base that wants to collect all or a majority of the cards, wants to know about all the cards as they hit etc is just small enough to not matter to them anymore. Same thing for the 60-card non-rotating constructed player base. Too small to cater to and maybe they figure that group isn't going to quit anyway.

No doubt in my mind that the suits at Hasbro would kill off all competitive events and just sell us scratch lotto cards if they could but they must currently figure that's an end-game scenario. So they begrudgingly have to support constructed play and they went in on Standard because it rotates (i.e. forced buying) and Commander because it's the largest group that actually still plays the game.

The biggest group though, and the one they principally cater to is the Finance/Investment base. The ones who buy 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars of sealed products. That's who they are building this "game" for moving forward but that's a different topic.

Personally, I think this is not a very clear question to ask in a poll. I'm not sure if Mark is asking if we want standard to be higher power or if we no longer want any direct to modern sets, or something else. It's not clear and it's going to just be used to further whatever conclusion they've already come to.

I think direct to %format% sets have been perhaps the biggest mistake in the game's history. That's how you kill off constructed formats through engineered powercreep, and it looks like that has succeeded. The entire game's balance hinged on the cards being designed for a single format that waterfalled through the other non-rotating formats. We have pretty much Standard and Commander right now and if you like 60-card formats you're pretty much out of luck moving forward unless you want to play a 7-sets-per-year Universes Beyond standard.