Zero edition>Banshttps://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/banned-and-restricted-august-10-2026>NewsThe Pro Tour and Magic Spotlight Series in 2026:https://www.magic.gg/news/the-pro-tour-and-magic-spotlight-series-in-2026Metagame Mentor: The Final Four Standard Regional Championships of Early 2026:https://www.magic.gg/news/metagame-mentor-the-final-four-standard-regional-championships-of-early-2026>Spoilershttp://www.magicspoiler.com/https://mythicspoiler.com/CONSTRUCTED RESOURCES>Current meta, complete with deck listshttps://www.mtgtop8.com/https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/>Build and share casual deckshttps://deckstats.net/https://tappedout.net/CUBE RESOURCES>Build and share Cubeshttps://cubecobra.com/landingCARD RESOURCES>Search engineshttps://scryfall.com/https://mtg.wtf/>Proxy a deck or a cube for cheaphttps://www.makeplayingcards.com/https://pastebin.com/9Xj1xLdM>Play online for freehttps://untap.in/https://dr4ft.info/>What is EDH?https://vocaroo.com/1ihc21gJLBh1>The Slop is for the Pigs. Pigs eat Slop.https://x.com/RealPokemoki/status/1972817965847617963>WotC's War Crimeshttps://pastebin.com/JRYDiAjq (OLD)https://pastebin.com/nEcKGAys (NEW)>Previously>>98681668 >TQFave creature with zero power and/or toughness?
>TQMmmm.... BoP
>>98686619Summon Mana Birds (of Paradise)>>98686622>having three copies of Ravnica art but missing M11 promogrim
SEXOOOO SEXOOO SEXOOO WITH WITCH SEXOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
>>98686767that's one ugly hydra...
interesting wish effect for formats without burning/living wish
>>98686809based
holy FUCK
>>98687839that's nice
>>98687839Am I missing something? Split second is good, but there are more efficient two drops that already mess up interactions. The 2/1 dies to everything.
>>98687860>Am I missing something?the less colors you have to splash, the more consistent your deck is, there is a lot of combos in blue that would rather take their chances on samut than splashing white for voice of victory
>>98687839Great, now that split second is getting spread around, WotC will start making some new keyword as a mechanic that's faster than split and so on and so on...
>>98686619Pretend I giant growth my guy in response to this. The creature lives, right? What about at the end of the round, when effects fall off, who determines which effect drops first?
>>98687941Might be wrong but maybe it's like life where the state based action of checking for 0 toughness is done after all the damage and lifegain is tallied up. In the damage phase for example, if you have 2 life, get hit by a 3 power with trample and you blocked with a 1/1 with lifelink, you'll still live with 1 life despite 2 trample bringing you to zero, damage and lifegain happen at the same time.
>>98687961>checking for 0 toughness is done after all the effects wear off in the same phaseOtherwise if wear offs goes on the stack, then it's Active player first so giant growth goes out
>>98687941Both effects are removed in the clean up step, the creature will survive.
>>98687839Love me Samut
>>98686619I know power creep is about as surprising as new art for basic land. But is this thing power creep?Black removal at 2 terror used to be terror. The restriction was often relevant. Doesn't work on black creature or artifact. Than they added stuff like Walk the Plank or Victim of the Night. Yeah it's 2 black pips but it worked on everything minus 1 or 2 creature types that MIGHT be relevant. This is splashable, 1 black pip, it's restriction is that it doesn't work on things that have counters or receive anthem effects. But it beats indestructible.Anyway not that it matters when power is so high that staple creatures of eternal formats wouldnt even see standard play.
>>98688017it's a sidegrade for a card that is in standard right now, it's not that big of a deal
>>98687860Split second works on your opponent's turn as well. Your opponent can no longer use Mother of Runes to protect their creature from your bolt, you win counter battles forever, your opponent can't sac a creature in response to you casting a kill spell on it, etc...The two cards are probably comparable with Voice having a better statline and mobilize as well as being better protection on your turn but Samut is in a better color to care about having split seconds and can be used much more offensively/proactively.
>>98688017I think it's a sidegrade. In real-world use cases I think that you would rather have Dismember in most cases.
>>98687941>in response to thisDoesn't work. Your giant growth resolves first, changing the p/t, THEN it get set to 0/0.>What would work Any anthem or a +1/+1 counter. A continuous effect.
>>98688315Different layers. Changing the base power and toughness is done before modifiers are applied, that includes spells like giant growth.
>>98688035What I meant is that there's already efficient anti-interaction on a 2 cost body, so why is this "holy fuck" and not just "neat, one more". Your analysis seems to be more towards the latter too. In any specific case one will be better than the other, and you gave some good examples, but overall it's not obvious that it will see significantly more play than voice.Giving an efficient hate bear to blue might be significant though.
>>98688024kind of worse than heartless because of prowess/anthem effects, only better specifically against indestructible (which i dont think is that relevant in standard rn?)
>>98688315Wrong. It says "base"
>>98688860>What I meant is that there's already efficient anti-interaction on a 2 cost bodyhe just explained why they are very different
>>98688008alt art of this rocks
>Think pauper will finally lose with the zeta set>Instead they win
>>98692181how did they win?
I ran some numbers and so far this year has introduced about 744 new Legendary Creatures. A substantial increase from 2025, which introduced 479 in total. Someone please tell me I'm wrong because I could've sworn Maro/WoTC said they would reduce this insane pace at one point.
>>98693321They actually said players want more legendary cards for their commanders. Lmao.
>>98686619Guys, how can I beat Tovolar with my Marchesa Madness Deck?
>>98694408wrong thread xister
>>98688024I think Heartless Act is better
>>98694419Oh, this is the Universes Beyond thread, my bad
I bought the last 3 packs of Innistrad Remastered to help the store owner clear some space and opened straight garbadge
>>98686619Previous Thread>>98686602>>98686602>>98686602
>>98693031They didnt
>tfw won FNM with my retarded homebrew deckI'm so proud of my boy
>>98695201what format and coolest card in the deck?
>>98695206Pioneer, and hard to say but maybe Skullspore Nexus
>>98687839commander card
did people react like this to the hexing squelcher? >>98687839
>>98695217>pioneerSo you were the only person to show up and got a pack for it? Neat.
>>98695263Yes and it will have the exact same result (not even played in commander despite having huge hype period)
>>98695309Nah, 7 people, I'm fortunate to have a group of steady regulars
>>98688035So what? He can do his shit as soon as stack is over. Voice of Victory is just hard counter. Opponent can't do shit during your turn at all. It's vastly superior and it's hardly being played. Samut will be the next Bilbos Gambit. Everyone was hyping it now nobody is playing it.
>>98695309Pioneer will comeback as a main competitive next year
>>98695248You are commander card. This will see legacy play
>>98695469>2 mana do-nothing will see legacy playOkay kid.
>>98695488I already put it in my omnitell deck.
>>98686619is it me, or is the modern flavor text kind of lame?it used to have more nuance and mystiquein the past, OP's card would say something like>There is no might capable of withstanding its own absence.or>He understood his mistake only too late, and an instant later was unmade by his own fatal equation.
>>98695488Note that when people say "This will see Legacy play" they generally mean as a one-of toolbox card in an existing deck which is already a well oiled machine, not "This is 4x in a Legacy deck".
I'm playing mono W DNT against Eldrazi, game 3 OTD. Opening hand is 1 Wasteland 2 Ghost Quarter plus some white sources and spells. He opens t1 Hamlet naming Waste, I GQ it, then Waste and GQ his next 3 lands. Put basics in your deck>>98695616Old Magic worldbuilding was more like classic literature or other art forms in nature where an idea, moral etc can be conveyed through subtle means. Over time it's shifted away from that and towards a focus on Legendary Creature and lowbrow quips written by dumb people for dumb people. You compare Love Song of Night and Day and the worldbuilding done in Ice Age block to the garbage we get now. Look at cards like Karakas or 9th ed Seething Song. It's embarrassing.
>>98695682>>98695682>I'm playing mono W DNT against Eldrazi, game 3 OTD. Opening hand is 1 Wasteland 2 Ghost Quarter plus some white sources and spells. He opens t1 Hamlet naming Waste, I GQ it, then Waste and GQ his next 3 lands. Put basics in your deckI'm interested anon but I don't know what most of your abbreviations mean
>>98695682>Hey guys what if we compared the most serious cards of the past to the least serious cards todayYeah no shit when rose-tinted lenses are on the set looks way better.
>>98695309pioneer is unironically the only fun format you can play without having to proxy shit
>>98695642Not even one card. It really does nothing on its own. It's not even an enabler like Kona is. It's there to make sure that potential combo succeeds. But if you draw it and miss on a combo enabler, it'll do nothing. On top of that, every card right now must be a threat on its own. This one isn't. People won't spend removal on it.
>>98695705Could you post an example of a serious card from today? I'm asking in good faith. I do find there are some nice newer cards but they are few and far between.
>>98695705The issue here is that Ice Age as a whole is a bleak as fuck set with the entire known world (at the time) suffering and struggling to live and it is presented as such. Yes, there are some silly cards (there has been since Alpha) but sets nowadays have like 50%+ silly or self-referential cards. Having a few sprinkled in is fine. Welcome, even. But when your entire focus becomes making sure all flavour text is quippy or "funny" and making sure every set has heckin' pupperinos or kitty cats in it then you have lost the plot....on that note, FRA almost didn't have any cute animals, but they had to include the Kamigawa dog and "sell more cards to China" guy's dog.
SHENMENG BLOCK 2028
>>98695794This is probably the first example that comes to mind. Whether you think this storyline was good or not, it's very clearly an attempt at a card sincerely depicting an important moment.
>>98695847Yeah I can really feel the suffering in this card.
>>98695682flavor text was hit or miss even in its best eras. please bring back the barely relevant quotes from classic literature, those are my favorite. (just kidding. I know nobody still working there reads books)>>98696022the card where they're both laying on the ground gazing at each other was a more serious and unguarded moment, too. (can't find it now.) the writers seem to have had a real soft spot for Jace x Vraska which is a shame because I never quite got used to her freaky face tentacles.
>>98688017It doesn't do plainswalkers, it doesn't exile. It's weak against ward, and protections, and counters. And it costs 2 mana. You maybe put two the sideboard. That's it.
>>98696160>It doesn't do plainswalkersaw damn
i've been out of mtg for a few years now and i've gotta say it's really hard to get back in
>legacy
>>98696260why did he scoop
>>98696573It was over.
>>98696573turn 1 magus of the moon shutting his deck down
>>98696573i think this was shardless bug before fatal push. there wasn't really much reason in running basics at the time when you need bg for abrupt decay
https://scryfall.com/card/fra/220/samut-tyrant-of-naktamun>Instant and sorcery spells you control have split second. (As long as a spell with split second is on the stack, players can’t cast spells or activate abilities that aren’t mana abilities.)How does that work with sorcery? Once you announce a sorcery, no one can response to it?
>>98696673yeah basically.has it really been that long since split second was printed?
>>98696673>response to it?respondGah, too cold to think straight today.
>>98696673probably
>>98696676No response to it BEFORE it is cast? While instant spells cast is clear-cut, other players can't respond to the sorcery before you cast it?
>>98696676almost 20 years
>>98696673you can activate mana abilities (tap a llanowar elves before it gets destroyed by removal with split-second, for instance)if you can trigger an ability by doing that, you can respond but nothing else
>>98696683how would you respond to something before it happens?
>>98696685wow damn.also ERRRRM ACTUALLY
>>98696692You could go "I'm gonna cast a sorcery", let the opponent respond and then when you cast it, nothing else happens. Is that how it should go?
>>98696713>let the opponent respondthey dont get to
>>98696713Anon the only things that pass priority in Magic the Gathering are an ability/spell going on the stack, or the active player passing to the next step/phaseif you say the words "I'm about to cast a sorcery" during your own main phase, nobody is allowed to take any game action in response to that. Unless you count conceding as a game action
>>98696718Nice. Split-second is the best!
>>98696730>>98696734man, split-second kills any interaction. Just like "cannot be blocked" & "cannot be targeted"
>>98696734yeah it alright. it's kind of like uncounterable but it doesn't bypass Ward
>>98695263Yes mostly commandtards.
>>98696573Owari da.
>>98696573HOW CAN HE SCOOP
>>98696992scoop up that ice-cream
wow this place really is dead huh
and it's all thanks to universes beyond. white straight men cannot leave this game fast enough
>>98697125>>98696992SCOOP?
>>98695206>>98695217I've slept on this and feel I should amend my answer to say that the coolest thing my deck does is attacking with a 24 power trampler on turn 4
I like the stained glass window aesthetichttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF8ouCqIAiY
>Non mirror pairs uncommons are almost as rare as actual rare cards due to how pack collation works in the setLimited for this set is going to be an absolute shit show I can tell
are there higher res versions of these two pics? I wanna AI edit huge tits on to the chicks.
>>98697963
There is now a MONORED merfolk that's not a changeling/illusion/shapeshifter.>>98686619>TQTime Elemental
>>98696154>we can't have real world quotes, that's too immersion breaking>have seven new york sets instead
>>98696154>please bring back the barely relevant quotes from classic literature>>98698053I miss those the most
>>98698043>no monogreen angelThen Lyra fills the monoblue angel slot.
>>98698673Here is your monogreen angle
>>98698742bizarre little men
>>98698673We already had a blue angel.They could have at least given us a sphinx of each color since Jace is apparently into them and the only non-blue one to date is an old forgotten one in white.
>>98698673>Clipwing Archer>3GG>vigilance, reach, protection from demons>4/4Serra Angel goes VietCong on a demon dictatorship that cut off her wings
Apparently 40 lands in a commander deck isn’t enough to avoid getting a series of mana screws on MTGA, pretty unfortunate
>>98699024That would be pretty cool but make it a 5/5 and give it First Strike and protection from Sphinxes to make it a parallel to Baneslayer. Lifelink is 'iffy' in green so I wouldn't include that but you probably could get away with it now given it is a 'special circumstance' and green gets a ton of lifegain already, just not usually through combat.
what is left to this game beside disgust and laughing at it?
>>98699988brewing commander decks
>>98700020>brewing commander decksthat counts as disgust, gtfo
>>98700039idk I like making Jumpstart decks too
>>98700078pretty kino considering the state of things these days. enjoy the last bit of magic we have left.
NOOTICING the uptick in wizard warrior cleric rogue types. Party is probably returning soon.
>>98700129Richard Garfield's Magic: The Gathering, the card game, had already had a pretty good run by the time Apocalypse wrapped up in 2001. By whatever time you want to say it started to go to shit, it had had an amazing run. So I'm not bitter about it "dying." There are so, so many cards to play with, and home printing and professional proxy printing has never been cheaper or more accessible. I'm not oblivious to reality, of course. I understand that there are certain aspects of this card game that rely on the meta environment surrounding it. In order for things like weekly drafts and huge tournaments to happen, yes people do have to be interested in the game. And people also need to be interested in discussing the game in order to have an active 4chan thread about it, which is (usually) fun, too. And what I miss most about MtG is the fact that it used to be a laboratory where a bunch of professional artists and designers created a new fantasy setting with hundreds of illustrations from scratch once a year. That organ seems to have atrophied to the point of death (please prove me wrong, Nauctis)But there is so, so much Magic "we have left" to play it that's something you actually give a shit about. Not saying you should but if you do, take heart. The cards are just ideas and the ruleset is just a canvas.
>>98700210Yeah nigga fucking Warcraft.
>>98700277>Up to Apocalypse>New worldsMotherfucker the problem with Weatherlight that everyone hated was that the game was stuck in Dominaria the whole time and it was getting stale as fuck.
>>98700368... right, so when I wrote those two separate sentences, they weren't referring to the same periods. but yes. I agree with you and that is true.
>>98686619I think it's neat.
>>98700277thank you for the constructive and positive reply. I will be less of a doomsissy for at least the rest of the day. unfortunately personally those meta effects you mentioned are so severe it's not possible to play the way we used to. cube has become a monoculture and if you try to edit out the parts of magic that suck you lose your group. I've seen many such cases lately. constructed is hopeless, and casual has been swallowed by edh. I stay on the hunt for the connections. it's good to know there are people that think like you out there.
>>98698673>>98698742changelings/tokens etc don't count
>>98700368Weatherlight sucked because it was the first time they tried to turn Magic into a Saturday morning cartoon with characters for hylics to identify with instead of a serious game for adults where you represent yourself and play the game for its own sake.
How is Reality Fracture NOT a hat set? It’s literally “here’s normal Joe… and here’s Joe if he was a twisted fucking physchopath”. Repeat x99.
>>98701399Excellent point. I hereby declare you the smartest boy in the thread.
>>98701399Lili Bianco was fine. Too bad, she was killed by black Lili
>>98701466rian_gonzales
Don't really like UB sets but airbending & earthbending mechanics should be in the standard mtg sets
>>98701502Agreed. 20 more Badgermole Cubs to Standard.
>>98697656we have that in standard
>>98701399because that's not what "hat set" means and there were like two actual hat sets ever.agree with your criticism of the Echoverse pairs, though. for every interesting "what if?" there are two pairs that boil someone down to a single Flanderized trait and then invert it. it would have been funny if it had been done only once or twice, like with Ruric Thar maybe since he's a bit silly in the first place.
>>98701502Earthbending is retarded. There's no downside because the land just comes back when destroyed etc. We've had earthbending to some extent for a long time. Fuck you, fuck your UB, fuck avatar, and fuck Nickelodeon.
>>98701466Thalia surrounded by orcs....
>>98701590facts
>>98701590I'd say the thing that makes it extra-retarded is that cracking a fetch still returns it because xdddd
>>98701619how else would landfall be good bro??
>>98701590Do we like this depiction of Nissa?
>>98701502>generic "return thing to hand so you can cast it again for more value" mechanic>turning lands into creatures which has been something green has done for longer than you've probably been aliveNah.
>>98701641nah they shouldnt be mechanics?
>>98701529which standard deck does that? sounds cool
>>98701590what if she were a centaur haha
>>98701636I'm conflicted. She has a nice looking tummy but also nigger lips. She looks a bit like if a nigger had white skin.
>>98698673This is the closest you'll get.
>>98686619>Jace is dead and now his tranny daughter has his sparkman, i knew mtg story is not that great and wotc was going to kill Jace at some point but never thought it would be in the most lamest way possible.
>>987017145 man Ugin?
>>98701552Thunder Junction and Karlov Manor are unquestionably 'hat sets'.Duskmorne is also a hat set if you have a basic understanding of what the criticism actually means.'Theme park worlds' is what we complained about before hat sets and that is what Anon is thinking of.
>>98701636>>98701673>relevant filename dept>Someone on tg posted this picture showing how Nissa Revane's art was clearly traced from a picture of South African musician Yolandi Visser.jpg
>>98701767ewwww
>>98701726I don't think Duskmourn isn't a hat set but it is a theme park world.The humans have 3 distinct factions1.Survivors2.Cultists3.Serial Killers
>>98701718Ugin is only "good" because he's a colorless tron payoff (aka "3 mana"). 5 mana + sac kills this card's usability.
>>98701726yup, those would be the two, with Duskmourn and Aetherdrift receiving the dishonorable mentionsalso everyone expected EoE to also be a "hat set" (picrel ugh) and I have an evidence-free suspicion that they reworked a lot of what they had for it relatively late in development due to "hat set" criticism, and that's why we didn't even know the name of the set until I think six months before the set came out
pauperbros:mono blue terror or UB terror?
>>98702213mono U ez
>>98702201Duskmourn jacked up the power creep too far.
>>98701726Every that has happened since 1999 was a disgrace.
>>98701767fits the original idea of racist elf Nissa. Not such much the landfall Nissa.
>>98701678Sigarda should have been monogreen.
The set is trying to do too many things at once.- Jace has gone mad and is creating an alternate multiverse called the echoverse- The Hogwarts plane becomes a surveillance distopia- There are 5 new factions we've never heard before (The original Ravnica set introdcuced only 4)- The Gatewatch is trying to stop Jace- The set also contains echoverse cards from Theros, Innistrad, Kaladesh, Ravnica and other planesThey need to flesh out all of these stories in only 285 CARDS, 26% of them being legendary creatures.If RF was released in 2003 it would have a been a cool block to explore. But it doesn't work with the way WotC is designing sets now. Current year Hasbro/WotC can only do "catwalk" sets. Any semblance of worldbuilding or theming is fading away. The only thing that matters is showcasing popular characters in different clothes and attires, like a card version of a cosplay convention.
>>98702617Nauctis is the last shit test to see if MTG has any real future apart from random IP tie-ins and Arena whales.
>>98702637Nauctis is going to be shit. SHIIITTTTT
>>98702648After two months of Star Trek anything will be better.
>>98702637Players have been saying this shit since Innistrad.
>MtG does Magic 30>$1000 boosters you could only order online, 99% of the cards were both hideous and unplayably terrible, on top of all the cards being illegal in every format>Pokemon TCG does a 30th anniversary event>Special printings and artwork, ruins scalpers with how much volume was printed, making the whole set affordable even to little Timmy
>>98702707>sells piggies proxies for over one grandProblem?
I'm thinking of printing the entire Bloomburrow set and keep it as a cube to play with friends. Any thoughts?
>>98702724>One 30th anniversary is for pigs>The other is for people that like the cards and characters
I don't give a shit about Bant and never have but I just might start to because of how beautiful this card is jfc
>>98702809Not even my favorite elf artwork of hers.
>>98702809did wotc really allow this to come out, in the current year? she doesn't even have black facial features.
>>98702907She has manjaw. It's a troon.
>>98702617This set is trying to do too much story-wise. Would have been great as a 3-set block for a year.
>>98701502We did. Earthbanding is just Awaken, but with any potential downside removed to make it less "feel bad" for retards
>2026... I'm forgottenSeriously, why didn't we get at least one echoverse card from Ikora?
>>98703042I bet it was planned as a 3 set block originally years ago. But then as with everything it got FUCKED by UB. Fuck this miserable fucking company.
My pet peeve is that the echoverse would make sense if it wasn't about Jace. It's like a mirror world, so you get the opposite of the real characters. But this is supposed to be a better multiverse created by Jace. Why create evil Avacyn or killier Garruk?
>>98702809Dang me too Bant really has beautiful aesthetics as a combination. The only UB set I actively want is elden ring. I would love a tree sentinel card
>>98703211nostalgic about companion I see
>>98703211Because this set, and the whole concept of Echoveese was a mess... Instead of built the alternate multiverse they tried to cramp as much as possible in the huge amount of... 1 set before blowing it away. Very smart from JotC
>>98703211>I'm forgottenGood it was a shit set
>>98702201>hat setsEOEOTJMKMDFTDSKNEOSTXSOSKHMSNC>Honorable mentionSOI
>>98701636All Nissas are valid.
>>98703211Literally coming back next year with titanbreach
>>98703544>let's start designing a Pacific Rim set before clearing it legally>oh shit we inexplicably couldn't get the IP rights
>>98702617>>98703042>>98703223>actually wanting a whole YEAR of Everyone is JaceNo, I don't think you do.
>>98703211You're getting a whole fucking set next year you greedy bitch
>>98701502Never noticed this was ai generated before. Look at those fingers.
>echoverse ikoria Spacegodzilla, living vaxx6WW8/8~ enters with a shield counterCycling 2WWhen you cycle ~, put a shield counter on target creature you control
>>98703634no, you retard. You get>one set is Hexhaven (hints of Jace)>one set of OH SHIT IT'S JACE>one set of mirrorverse
Personally I fucking hate strixhaven, and hexhaven was even more stupid and gay. As far as I'm concerned this whole year was strixhaven block (they infested lorwyn, SoS, and hexhaven), and I'm glad it's fucking over.
>>98703655Do you remember how 3-set blocks actually worked?>First set: big set with simple mechanics.>Second set: small set that expands on first set. Meant to be played in the same limited environment as the first set. >Third set: small set that expands on first set. Meant to be played in the same limited environment as the first set. The set symbol is Jace. Jace is front and center of everything and has a whole ass general card advantage mechanic across all 5 colors named for him. What you would actually get is>OH SHIT I'S JACE>Hexhaven with expanded Jace mechanics>Mirrorverse with expanded Jace mechanics
>>98702637I'm expecting a DFT tier set, sadly.
>>98703395yeah I can't agree with all of that lol.>>Honorable Mention>SOIthis one I do agree with, actually. and it doesn't get enough shit for being a case of wotc breaking the "revisit beloved plane" glass only four years after the previous visit.
>>98703685half the time it was two big sets and a small, just do that. And make Echoverse extra big like Time Spiral.
>>98703655>>98703685it SHOULD have been>Secrets of Strixhaven>Hexhaven>Echoverse/It was Jace all along!
>>98703655That would have been kino>>98703685The problem is not the three arc structure. Time Spiral was a block starter with a lot of different mechanics. Planar Chaos and Future Sight added their unique formula to the mix. The crux of the issue is that Empower Jace is a bad keyword all around: it's extremely narrow in scope and you can only exploit it if you give all of your planeswalkers extra abilities. It feels rushed and something that should have never left the draft stage imho.
>>98703685my vision:>hexhaven set, instead of ECL, going as deep on the five houses as STX did for its five houses >echoverse set with all of the mirrored pairs and planar chaos references, instead of SOS, going deeper than just "legendary creature but he's evil instead of good" >small set (remember those?) where Jace is revealed as the architect of the Echoverse and Emrakul eats it, to be released next month, this would be the only set with Empower Jace(actually what I would have done was write a different plot that doesn't require Jace to lobotomize himself into a retard who thinks that shooting Hitler as a baby will create a world without suffering, but that's a different conversation)
My take:>Secrets of Hexhaven (normal-looking set focused on the 5 new houses but something is clearly off, cliffhanger)>Parallel Visions (first appearance of color shifted cards and mentions of the echoverse, hinting at the Theorist)>Through the Mirrorverse (entire set focused on the echoverse, Jace reveal and final battle)
I was gifted a Hobbit bundle and all my rares were worth less than a dollar. Feels bad man. Ah wells. Been a long time since I cracked a booster and actually pulled a card worth much. That's gambling though.
>>98703731Frankly I don't think "2nd legally distinct Hogwarts but more different this time" can carry a large set on its own. Even then Hexhaven would need to be completly different from what we got as Jace is all over the cards and art that reference it. Which maybe is the point but we're designing a completly different thing at every level now.
>receives a gift>instantly calculates its monetary equivalence
>>98703793breaking a single set into three would necessitate designing a pretty much completely different thing, yes.
>>98703795They're booster packs, a gamble with each opening. It's not the only metric to view them through but it would be weird to not look at them through that lens at all ever.
What happened to annihilator on eldrazi? I like the ward sac 3 permanents but it could have annihilator as well, that was such a cool mechanic that fit them.
>>98703816Annihilator is one of the most-hated keywords in the game and Wizards only designs for casuals and drafters these days.
I like the artwork of the set (except Vigorbloom) but it feels weird to have so many status and portraits of Jace lying around. I wish they made the Theorist more subtle instead of reminding me of the "are we the baddies?" meme.>>98703816Annihilator is a 9/10 on the storm scale. I thought it very fitting for Eldrazi but it's very unlikely to return. https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/storm-scale-zendikar-and-battle-zendikar-2016-11-21
>>98703833I’m not sure how quickly people can get 10-15 mana in constructed anymore but in zendikar you had plenty of wiggle room to slow them down and burn them out before they started slamming annihilator triggers. At their mana cost it doesn’t even few out of place on a power scale, you can cast omniscience at 10, or any other effective instant win for 10 mana. Annihilator is slow by comparison
We have annihilator at home.
My take:>no hexhaven>no strixhaven>no retarded jace storyline>do something that isnt absolute shitI look forward to not:Atlantis, not:Pacific Rim, and not:Detroit next year, yippee
>>98703883not sure if sarcasm but I kinda am looking forward to all of those sets, the only one I'm afraid they're really fumble is kamigawa
>>98703900I love Mirage / Visions too much to have any hope for Zhalfir. They are missing the point completely.
Not gonna read the published stories so someone spoonfeed me on the lore: My understanding is Jace has some dipshit plan to "reduce suffering" but his mirrorverse doesn't seem any less shitty than the regular multiverse. Is the idea that when he merges them the least shitty parts of both will replace all the shitty ones and the final product will be a hodgepodge multiverse? And if that's the case why are all the mirrorverse people his minions when some of them won't have a place in the final product?
>>98703872this is way better than annihilator so not really
>>98704060I think he deleted the Phyrexians and the Eldrazi.and maybe Bolas since Belzenlok is ruling EchoAmonkhet
>>98703665Counterpoint: My owlfu is cute and big.
>>98703685It's a mix of rose-tinted lenses and LARP. People think 3 sets to a setting magically make the story and mechanics better when this has historically never been the case. Ironically the original Tarkir is a very good example of this where its mechanics were all over the place (delve and prowess were in the same set as fucking morph and raid) and the main reason people bought it was because it had fetches. As much as I liked Tarkir after FRF it's also extremely hard to argue that the story was well-received by 90% of people.
>>98704141I don't think it's the story so much as the mechanics and theming all feel very crammed together and disjointed. It's trying to do much at once.
>>98702637Are you forgetting Neo-Wakanda?
>>98704185This is the exact same argument people make for why one set/setting isn't good enough. The reality is:>You could not fully explore a well-developed setting even with 100 sets>Magic settings are developed with very early focus on fitting MtG the game, so as a result the amount of content a set can explore degrades rapidly after set 1's highlight reel (which is why sets 2 and 3 were smaller, and later on they started trying to do shakeups)>Most Magic sets are not masterpieces. Saying a set would have been better with more space is just another way of labeling it Potential Man. "If we got 3 sets of this, the setting would have been good," and "If this setting was good, I would want 3 sets of it," are two completely different statements with inverted causation. Thunder Junction would not have magically improved with 3 sets. You would have gotten 3 sets of Thunder Junction.
>>98704141The third set problem was real. Ironically I think two-set blocks solved it and mostly worked but WotC bean counters just have no faith in spending more than one set in a location unless it's a guaranteed crowd pleaser like Ravnica or Innistrad. Then you have a quasi-block as long as they're still standalone sets.
>>98704333The funniest part is that the old justification for not wanting to spend multiple sets in one story location in case it turns out to not be popular (like OG Kamigawa block) is that three whole sets used to be an entire year of the Standard release calendar. And now they're dumping seven sets a year on us.
>what if the sphinx had huge tits?
>>98704327Most modern sets would not be improved by being three sets, true. But that's because modern Wizards doesn't know how to design sets anymore.
>>987043566 instead of 7 and 3 are UB so I think the argument is even stronger. The playerbase would fucking riot if you gave them a year of Jace wank as their only UW content between TMNT, Marvel, and Star Trek.
>>98704375>The playerbase would fucking riotno they would buy out all the collector boxes and eat the slop like good little piggies
>>98703872I'm a big fan of this card
>>98704375I think the bigger problem is that Jace sucks and UB sucks. These aren't good excuses for why when a new popular setting like Bloomburrow comes out we have to wait 5 years to revisit it.
>>98704416Prove it by posting deck.
>>98704431I'm going to guess that Bloomburrow was considered a huge risk internally. The last time they did a block with no humans was Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and that was received as the gay fairy block. That at least had some traditional Celtic and Welsh influences, now you wanna spend a whole three sets on the rats of Nimh? Suicide.
>>98704375They haven't rioted yet despite endless slop being shoved down their mouths
>>98704491The playerbase loves it.
>>98704499clearly not as Spider-Man, TMNT, Marvel, The Hobbit, and soon Star Trek rot on the shelves.
>>98704431Personally i skipped bloomburrow because i hate that shit
Play premodern.
>>98704509You keep saying this but the line goes up.
>>98704583>the line goes upAccording to Mark? Nebraska sales? Or what?
>>98704373I literally gave you an example of a classic set (Tarkir) that sucked shit. Most people believe the story shit the bed in set fucking 2. It was not consistently better. Hated sets came out all the time it's just that you're tunnelvisioning in on the highlights.
>>98704585Hasbro. Tcgplayer.
>>98704585So what's the narrative here? Players keep buying shitting UW sets but it's somehow impossible that cards appealing to people that don't go to an LGS are selling online?
>>98704327>>You could not fully explore a well-developed setting even with 100 setsabsolute bullshit
>>98704141>people think 3 sets to a setting magically made [...] the mechanics betterThey absolutely did you faggot retard. Introducing a mechanic in set 1 needed to be 'simple' to give players the opportunity to play around with them and understand how it worked on a basic level. Sets 2 and 3 allowed iterations, sidegrades, and more complex designs. Cycling, Kicker, Morph, and Flashback are all classic and obvious examples of how this worked. The single set model means that JotC does not have the opportunity to iterate on returning mechanics in a way that allows them to experiment and do interesting things because they are assuming that there is a significant amount of the playerbase that is not familiar with the 'base' version of the mechanic and they cannot just grab a booster of the previous set to have that mechanic because there's no guarantee the mechanic hasn't been gone for a year or two at this point.There are other extremely basic elements of storytelling that make it obvious that being able to tell the story with control over when certain moments are revealed to the reader is better and being forced to introduce and solve a problem in the same set hampers the ability to make the audience care about the stakes or consequences of the story but you are obviously too retarded to apply any kind of thought outside of whatever retarded opinion was peddled to you by your favorite e-celeb.
>>98704621A well-developed, fully fleshed-out setting will always have another stone to unturn because you can indefinitely establish causal relationships between events. MtG settings, by contrast, have their depth stop at their one gimmick. Ravnica is urban fantasy but MtG. Theros is Greek mythos but MtG. Innistrad is Twilight but MtG. It's always "we took something else then crammed it into 5/10 factions for the gameplay." This is also why UB sets feel drastically more diverse than UW sets. Because UB forces design to approach a setting that never told itself "okay now this world needs 20% of its inhabitants to be impulsive retards to fill the red quota" then fit that established setting into an MtG set.
>>98703685The base mechanics could have been prepare and surveil/scry focus. Empower Jace could just be Fateful Hour or Kinship or Sunburst or any of the new mechanics that get introduced in a second set.
>>98704772>It's always "we took something else then crammed it into 5/10 factions for the gameplay"Oh great wise shitposter, please illustrate that principle at work in Urza's Saga; Mirage; Ice Age; Arabian Nights; The Dark; Homelands; and, hell, let's say Stronghold.
>>98704765The fact you had to reach for fucking morph as an example of a "classic" block mechanic says everything. It was one of the worst gimmicks ever conceived and was never good at any point in history specifically because it was ludicrously overcosted due to it being printed during an era where WotC massively overvalued base P/T on a card. For every cycling, you got 20 bushidos and rampages where it was some forgettable bullshit nobody remembers because of how garbage it was, and blocks did not remedy this in the slightest. "Blocks made Magic good" is the exact type of retarded take that gets peddled by YouTubers with rose-tinted lenses to LARPers that want to seem like epic oldfags that actually played before 2018.
>FIRE-BreakThis is an MTG tabletop format I've kinda been mentally brewing off and on for a bit. I like the IDEA of Premodern but my problem with it has always been that it literally fucking cuts off when I started playing magic. I have no attachment to those old cards, and I know a lot of millenials are in my boat. So I started to think about the era of Magic I liked and the card pool I'd want to see and I came up with.The card pool consists of: All Standard Legal Sets spanning from 4E-RNA (Fourth Edition to Ravnica Allegience if you don't want to look up set codes, aka 4th Edition to pre-WAR.)Card Bans:All reserved list cards are banned.The rest of the ban list consists of:Ancient DenAncient TombBalanceBlazing ShoalChannelChrome MoxCloudpostDark DepthsDeathrite ShamanDig Through TimeEarthcraftEye of UginFlashFrantic SearchGitaxian ProbeGlimpse of NatureGoblin RecruiterGolgari Grave-TrollGreat FurnaceGushHermit DruidHypergenesisKrark-Clan IronworksLotus PetalMana VaultMemory JarMental MisstepMind TwistMind's DesireMystical TutorNecropotenceSeat of the SynodSecond SunriseSensei's Divining TopShow and TellSkullclampSneak AttackStrip MineSummer BloomTinkerTreasure CruiseTree of TalesVault of WhispersWastelandWindfallYawgmoth's WillI'm not 100% sure how broken the format, or playable, it would be in this state. I'm also somewhat tempted to ban Force of Will and Daze to make interaction slower, but I'm not sure how hard that would fuck izzet tempo given the other contexts.Either way I've never actually tried to come up with a "semi-competitive" format before I just tried to come up with something that bans most of the shit I dislike (fucking RIP Emry though) and keeps the era of cards I love, and hopefully preserves the power level.I dunno I'm throwing it out here for thoughts, suggestions, people telling me to keep myself safe, etc. I guess would (You) play this???
>>98704818Oh sorry we're talking about the Gerrard jerkoff era which was notoriously stagnant, and nobody liked it until 20 years later when it became cool. You should have led with that.https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/add-text-flavor-2002-03-25https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/bursting-flavor-2003-02-24
>>98704772no no no no no. you are trying to have it both ways. I will not entertain your premise that no number of sets can possibly be a satisfying exploration of a setting. the crux of the rest of your argument is that 3 sets was overkill anyway which directly contradicts that notion. there are people who liked the more deliberate pacing and more detailed depictions in 3 set blocks and you're just trying to invalidate that by inb4ing their preference by holding set design to this ridiculous "well you could always theoretically add even MORE detail" standard that nobody cares about.
>>98704918>SOME people liked itIrrelevant. The pattern was that blocks were clearly, routinely producing flops especially in sets 2 and 3 specifically because of diminishing returns on a setting's novelty. Ask 99% of players about the cards in Odyssey block and they'll wonder what the fuck you're talking about. This is why Alara started trying to do mid-set shakeups, which people hated. People remember "dude the phyrexians won in scars of mirrodin that was so cool" while conveniently forgetting times it produced total shit like all the Alara shards coming together or all of Tarkir. You can't keep spending a full year at a time chasing the dragon that this time you're totally going to make another Ravnica. That is not a model for success.
>>98704964Tarkir was great
>>98704479I've already said that two is the ideal size for "blocks" (WotC is never going to go back to making interdependent sets and everything has to be standalone so they'll just be storyline blocks). Three sets in a row is too many for even popular locations like Ravnica these days. But these storylines just fucking suck when you have to cram ALL the build-up and ALL the payoff into a single set. Before people can even figure out what's going on they've already opened the card that shows the final story beat and the result is nobody gives a fuck. It's the Netflix binge problem. People are already discussing the ending before you've watched the first episode. Minimum two sets, one for establishing the story and setting, and one for paying it off, makes the most sense.
>>98704964Imagin trying to do the whole Tarkir time travel story in 1 set.Now that would be a total shitshow
>>98704964it's not irrelevant, because you're replying to the person who liked it. it was me. I liked it. I liked the way things were done between Mirrodin and Tarkir. this whole conversation thread began with people criticizing FRA and saying things that they wished had been done differently, which is a discussion that relies on absolutely nothing other than their own opinions and preferences. then YOU leapt into the conversation bringing up irrelevant points about sales and wotc being fuckups, as if that was a valid criticism of random anons saying how they would have handled the same subject matter if they were in charge. you did this probably because YOU are a perpetual agendaposter who treats every online conversation you participate in as a continuation of some eons-long argument you've been engaging in for years on end.
>>98705021Yeah because the agenda wins, dipshit. No matter how much you bitch and moan that you would have liked a year in Thunder Junction, the history is there clearly demonstrating you are in a massive minority even among people that aren't slopping up UB sets. You can keep LARPing that it was totally better back then, but that's not backed by any factual evidence. You're the demographic that wants to eat shit then wonders why nobody shares this opinion because shit is obviously better.
>>98693321>I could've sworn Maro/WoTC said they would reduce this insane pace at one point.You're high af.
Two block sets were the best and would have worked for RF.>Set 1: Hexhaven and hints of Jace's plans>Set 2: The knockoff Planar chaos multiverse stuff and Jace getting killed/Emrakul getting summoned.
>>98705364That's also not how they've ever done 2-set blocks. Again this is two different notions that are being rolled into one.>A Hexhaven set would have been good>2 sets of Reality Fracture would have been good2-set blocks would have been the former, as demonstrated by basically every other time they did this (with MOM being a very notable example). They likely did not want to do a Hexhaven set given that this was coming out of Strixhaven (the natural starting point) which itself had presence in Lorwyn as buildup.
>>98704842>100% sure how broken the formatWhy not take it the other way and make a format out of ONLY broken cards? In order to be legal, the card has to have been banned somewhere at least once.
>>98686619>be me>be part time tcgplayer with over 1,000 sales last year>see new tcgplayer "protections for sellers" giving credits for any refunded missing orders <$50 sent without tracking to customers>list expensive card I do not even own and mark as shipped>customer says it is missing, promptly refunded>get $50 credit from tcgplayerwhat should I buy bros? Im thinking foil fetch or an expedition land
>>98705479just play vintage cube
>>98704591the narrative is people who actually play the game (you know, the playerbase) generally prefer UW sets to UB sets, as evidenced by UW sets selling out in short order while UB sets rot on shelves. But stores (both LGSes and retail) have to buy lots of everything because Hasbro are megakikes and determine how much they can buy of an upcoming set based on how much they bought of the last set.
>>98704842>I guess would (You) play this???sure, my first deck would probably be some form of junk/jund midrange, until somebody killed me with a combo deck, then I would switch to that combo deck
>>98704551
>>98705683>as evidenced by UW sets selling out in short order while UB sets rot on shelvesBecause UB sets sell online, and outsell UW sets, according to Amazon, TCGplayer, and WotC.>B-But the shelves...If your store keeps buying UB sets, then one of the following scenarios is true:>UW sets sell so well they offset the losses on UB products for the store, despite UB costing twice as much (lol)>Your store is retarded and keeps buying shit that's losing them money because your LGS owner can't understand cause/effect relationships>UB products make enough money that the store wants to stock themBut it's always this "real player" argument when "real players" are the ones slopping up Reality Fracture saying they cried when Jace died. You're just a LARPer.
>>98705952Depends on the UB set. Some did very well like Final Fantasy, Avatar etc. TMNT was fucking shit in terms of sales. They learned from this. I won't say what they are but next year's UB are all much more fitting to a fantasy card game. No more New York. Screenshot me if you want.
>Next UB is Star Trek>Next non-UB sets are Nauticus (maybe good), Not-Godzilla, Not-Black PantherUnrionically looking forward to the next UB set after Star Trek.
>>98706135Avatar set had meta defining cards. Power creep sells.
>>98706158>Make ultra-powercreep set>Suddenly players love it and say it's one of the most iconic Magic sets in historyHmm...
>>98706207Crazy how hard people are jerking Urza's block nowadays when it almost killed constructed. So many players quit during combo winter it almost got the design team fired.
>>98704842The problem with micro-formats like this is that people can never agree when the cutoff should be. For example a while ago I was brainstorming 'High School' which is similar to your format but ends with Theros block; i.e anything that had its first printing in M15 onward is not legal. For example in yours I might question why Sneak Attack, S&T, Wasteland, then Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox but not SSG.The other problem is that you need to be a big Youtuber with a bunch of retards eating out of your hand to get any kind of traction for your homebrew format.
>>98706156Magic Godzilla sets have historically been bad, so I can understand being wary of that. Magic Wakanda sets have historically been good, and while they were all pre Current Year brainrot it should still be worth a cautious look.>>98706207nuPhyrexia was a mistake.
what was the most powerful set released in standard rn? Duskmourn?
>>98706698Probably Bloomburrow off Mighty Mouse and Stormchaser's talent.
talmbout mighty mouse?
>>98705952It's so funny how angry it makes UBrownoids that le 25 Jaces set is less sloppy than le 25 Cloud Strifes set. They fucking hate it, man.
we are getting a warhammer or WoW set hopefully
I don't care for strixhaven as a setting, so reverse strixhaven does nothing for me.
>>98706744I don't see FRA setting sales records with WotC rushing to make more FRA.
>>98706813this but TMNT
>>98706818Last UW set to match FIN, LTR, or TLA numbers? Come on little piggy surely you had at least one high point above Cloud 9 if it's so much better.
>>98706698After all the bans it's Duskmorn by far. You can tell how desperate WOTC was trying to sell the set after the past flops.
