General [SPM] Marvel's Spider-Man
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You better be thankful they didn't make a card out of Paste-Pot Pete then!
...in before he's one of the missing four commons or whatever.
(for a guy who self-identifies as "not knowing a lot about Spider-Man" I sure have seen a lot of the things people tended to post around 2012)
...in before he's one of the missing four commons or whatever.
(for a guy who self-identifies as "not knowing a lot about Spider-Man" I sure have seen a lot of the things people tended to post around 2012)
So far my favorites are Romantic Rendezvous and Wisecrack. They have a lot of potential for fun storytelling moments in mainline sets.
Also, it just makes me happy that Red spells are all either "I'm blasting you with a cone of molten lava" or "Kissing makes me feel good."
Also, it just makes me happy that Red spells are all either "I'm blasting you with a cone of molten lava" or "Kissing makes me feel good."
I feel like I'm amongst the most positive about this set from a design POV but I really do feel this sentiment in my bones.
This morning I wanted to look at the last 4 spoilers and I saw this and felt a pit in my stomach:
It's an ideal card for my Cube. I really, really like the design. It's hard to overstate how great it is as a partner for Marauding Mako, Scrounging Skyray, Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, and all the various discard outlets I've been forcing in my list, as well as the legendary-matters theme I've been going hard on.
But man. I hate it. Like, Sharp-Eyed Rookie is still not in my Cube despite being perfect because I cannot stand the art, and while this Hobgoblin looks slightly more Magic than the rest of the superheroslop of the rest of the set, it still kills me that one of the coolest designs of a standard expansion looks like he's flying around NYC with a cape and looking like a 2-bit villain -- because he is. This does the opposite of what happened when I first saw Inti, Seneschal of the Sun riding in on his dinosaur, where I was stoked to Cube the card even before reading the text box.
There's 10-15 cards I want to Cube in this set, and it makes me more annoyed than it should that if I want to play with the proper cardboard, that means I'll have a bunch of spidermen running around. And now the card that should be my new darling looks like...this.
My Cube is my Zen Garden. My unending reach for perfection means I thrive by trying out all new technology.
I love new cards. I love spoiler season. Hell, I even love UB: I think that the build-in storylines and love for the IP make for more interesting designs on average than we'd get starting from a Magic-based world, even if I like them less aesthetically on average. I love trying out new strategies, I love taking out cards, I love missing cards and putting them back in over and over again. The process is the best part.
This is the first and only expansion for UB I am personally offended by besides maybe Doctor Who, though that was easier to tolerate because I like Doctor Who as a franchise (theoretically) and the card art felt more in line with Magic. Hell, I even "upgraded" a few of my cards to the Doctor Who versions because they had the better art!
I think this is the way.
I'd rather proxy/get an alteration than miss out on cool mechanical opportunities. We all have to make sacrifices for what we want, and I think I'd rather stomach bad aesthetics for one set than skip a card like Hobgoblin. This new era of Magic with way too many releases mostly suits me, so I feel like it's ok that one of them is really unappealing to me.
And inevitably there will be another card printed within a year or so that will fulfill a similar enough role, with better aesthetics, and is good enough to replace the eye-sores. I think of a handful of cards as stand-ins until the perfect card comes along…it allows me to hone in my cube’s design
Yeah, me too. I think I'm gonna have to look into the universes within thing after seeing this card.
I think right now for me personally (and maybe for my cube too) it would be better to accept it and don't strive to change it all the time. I have a lot of challenges coming up in life right now, the biggest becoming a father in about two months. I don't want to, at least for the foreseable future, spend hours or days even, obssessing over card changes. Especially when I have a cube, that is so, so close to my ideal of perfection. There are only 10-12 cards in my core cube that I actively want to upgrade and I have very specific ideas for what I would like in these slots. And for my occasionals, I don't really care about perfection there as much as I do for the core.
Congrats. And good luck. Even when the baby wakes you up at night, the joy the baby gets when you cuddle them is worth it. Yes, you will have almost no time for hobbies or are too tired, but you will get a lot in return.
Best wishes to the missus and hopefully an easy birth and a healthy and happy baby!
I’m surprised how passionate it seems most people are about the art, flavor, borders, etc of cards.
I won’t say that I couldn’t care less because given two cards that are mechanically identical I guess I could feel preferences for the one I thought looked better or whatever.
but in general, all I care about is how the card plays. Not what it looks like or what the flavor is. If wizards wants to do a twilight themed set next it doesn’t matter to me at all as long as it is cool mechanically.
I won’t say that I couldn’t care less because given two cards that are mechanically identical I guess I could feel preferences for the one I thought looked better or whatever.
but in general, all I care about is how the card plays. Not what it looks like or what the flavor is. If wizards wants to do a twilight themed set next it doesn’t matter to me at all as long as it is cool mechanically.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Congrats, and welcome to the club!
I always like to wish soon to be parents the best of luck, because as much as you know your life is going to change, it’s hard to really prepare yourself mentally for it. Just gotta experience those sleep-deprived nights where you desperately try to figure out why they won’t stop crying for yourself. But let me tell you, nothing melts your heart like the sight of your sleeping child. It’s the best feeling in the world to see them finally give in to sleep and happily dozing off into dreamland <3I gave you a heart reaction because you deserve it.
However..
How can it be surprising that people have passion for how the game was originally sold to us? Magic cards are not mechanics. They are mechanics + art + feelings + memories + smell of new cards + the christmas like feeling of opening a pack + competitive deck building + spikey moments of game play against an opponent etc. etc.Forgetting half of that is like telling your customers that we don’t want you anymore because we would rather have a new type of costumer.
everyone's got their opinions! and they're idiosyncratic enough that they probably seem weird from outside any given person's head!
me, I think the original frame (Alpha through Scourge) absolutely oozes vibes that have been totally lost
also I think the new frame (honestly, even the Fifth Dawn new frame, let alone the "new" new frame with the shiny stamp for anti-counterfeiting) is about 3x as readable and a huge improvement for the game as a whole and any player with less than perfect vision in particular
but despite that. there's still something about the old cards that you just don't get anymore vibes-wise.
the
es of the world (I love how the fake modo reprint is still old-bordered)
Yeah that makes sense. Fair point.I gave you a heart reaction because you deserve it.
However..
Forgetting half of that is like telling your customers that we don’t want you anymore because we would rather have a new type of costumer.
I think I am pretty exreme in that regard. Maybe it's my inner little boy who was fascinated by awesome looking trading cards even before I started with Magic. I still feel like every card should be a little treasure that is beautiful to look at. When I go through my main cube, full of retro frames, hand-altered cards, showcase and foil cards, full-arts etc. it sparks a huge amount of joy for me.
And having Bagle and Schmear in a pack completely kills that joy. Of course gameplay is the most important aspect, but I have marked cubes as "don't want to play this" for events because of aesthetic concerns. So, every designer should do it the way they want, but be aware that people like me exist that might not want to join a draft when there are too many Peter Porkers in the pool.
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I mostly agree... with the weird caveat that I think I'd 100% love the card if it was a post in the custom magic thread. There's just something about a west coast company making a "New Yorkers are proud of their bagels" reference due to frickin' Spiderman that ruins it for me.
More loosely, that's my feeling about the set as a whole - despite my distaste for superheroes, I'd think a lot of the cards were super awesome and would be happy as a clam to draft with them if they were custom cards made by a person I could talk to and not a large company that I already have complicated feelings about.
Best of luck with the new chapter! This seems like a great approach. When you're pretty content with the cube anyway, you can hang back and wait for the one new card that really appeals to you instead of trying to do a lot.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I couldn't tell you how much those things matter to me or why they do. But on a broad scale, they are a big part of why Magic has held my focus for 20 years while I can't get myself excited about the newest, sleekest paper or digital TCG with a cleaner rules engine etc. I have prints of Magic arts all over my walls and I like tracking down my favourite printings/arts of cards I want; there's something viscerally satisfying about looking at an iconic card in the 'right' frame etc. I can handle middling art/aesthetics but the most jarring UB stuff is obtrusive enough that it grabs your attention in all the wrong ways
Once the in-universe versions release online, proxying them in paper may be the best compromise here?