General CBS

[Velrun]

Spot on @shamizy
My Duel Commander decks look ridiculous because it is a competitive 1v1 format.

As an example I have both Legolas’s Quick Reflexes and Goldbug, Humanity’s Ally in the one of the decks.

And there is nothing I can do about it if I want to play the format as intended for tournaments.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think it's naïve to assume that there won't be format shifting staples coming down the pipeline through these sets given their track record in recent years. Almost every major move has been for short term profits to the detriment of the long term health of this game. They're going to keep pushing designs because they need to sell sets, these designs will affect formats in a big way, and it's just slowly going to kill the game over time because people don't want to keep up with a money sink.

I get that Cube is the main focus here, but I don't think it makes sense to ignore the happenings around the game making it a shell of itself. The long term prospects for this game look fucking terrible in 2023.

To be fair, this is the same thing people have said for decades, and the game still exists! I know that doesn't really help you with enjoying the current burst of Universes Beyond cards, but there's still good Magic being made these days. Wilds of Eldraine was incredible, and to be fair, so were a lot of recent "in-universe" sets. I don't know that the long term health of this game is at risk atm, to be honest.

 

[shamizy]

With all due respect, I think you're ignoring a fair bit of context. I'm not going oh the sky is falling just because of some short term fallout ala bad Standard or broken mechanics, the issue here is more that I don't believe upper management understands what sustained the game for 30 years to this point with how they've been making moves the past few years.

The lifeblood that kept Magic afloat for decades was a variety of ways that led to a sustained longevity. You had Constructed formats to scratch the itch for those looking for competitive play, you had kitchen table for casual play, and you had the collectible aspect for those who loved that part of the game. Constructed formats in paper are mostly dead from what I've seen locally the last two years, their long-standing formats in Modern and Legacy are constantly being shaken with artificial rotation due to new pushed staples and have driven all but the diehards away, and everything Commander all the time has just led to an insane influx of product seemingly every month.

I have friends who used to keep up with the game but they've all drifted away over the past 3 years with this new release schedule. Hell, I don't even bother keeping up any longer because there's so much coming out all the time. And I was a diehard fan playing for well over a decade. Wilds of Eldraine came out last month, but with the product deluge it might as well have been last quarter with how quickly things move.

I think bad leadership is ultimately what will tank the game and every misstep just solidifies my lack of faith in the long term prospects for this game. Many of the different things that made the game appealing to me when I picked it up again a decade ago are mostly gone.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think it's fairly normal to drift away from a game over time. That Magic has held your (and indeed our) attention for as long as it has is a small miracle in and of itself! The place where I live has more players than ever, despite only a small portion of them actually playing in constructed events anymore. It may be that the way you used to enjoy Magic is on the decline, but that doesn't mean Magic on the whole is as well. That said, the new release schedule is dizzying to me as well. New stuff comes out so fast that you don't even have time to appreciate the set that just came out. Hell, it's hard to keep interest in preview season when it's non-stop. If you ask me, I hope they slow down things again, but the game itself? Yeah, Magic remains a fun, engaging game to me. I actually ended up including multiple Universes Beyond cards in my cube, though all but one (Mawloc) are from the excellent Lord of the Rings.

 

[Brad]

With all due respect, I think you're ignoring a fair bit of context. I'm not going oh the sky is falling just because of some short term fallout ala bad Standard or broken mechanics, the issue here is more that I don't believe upper management understands what sustained the game for 30 years to this point with how they've been making moves the past few years.

I mentioned it in another thread, but I suspect that new UB products will attract fans of that IP to the game. Nerd IPs will lead to new MTG nerds. Seems logical. The issue is that it seems to run the risk of alienating people who have been used to the old release schedule, traditional designs, etc.

I do think that upper management seems interested in short-term profit. Push more UB IPs now to get more players now. Then what?

Still, more cards is a good thing for cube if you can avoid spoiler burnout. As designers, we can ignore the shit we don't like.

@shamizy, I hope that those friends who have drifted away from the game are still interested in a draft from time to time. The game will always be here, no matter what WotC does.

 

[Velrun]

@Brad
Dread Shade -> Inquisition of Kozilek

Nice!

 

[Brad]

@Brad
Dread Shade -> Inquisition of Kozilek

Nice!

Yep! Changed it over for the transition to the Eldrazi cube. I've always thought this art was awesome and I get to keep it as a black card, too.

Ironically, I don't run it because I don't like the potential nongames created by stealing specific cards.

 

[LadyMapi]

I mentioned it in another thread, but I suspect that new UB products will attract fans of that IP to the game. Nerd IPs will lead to new MTG nerds. Seems logical.

I question that logic, though. Or, at least, I think it's making a bunch of unwarranted assumptions about conversion rates and the demographic buying these products.

To put it differently: imagine that Mattel made a deal with Hasbro and put out a line of Barbies where she was cosplaying various Magic characters. Would that make you interested in collecting Barbie dolls if you weren't already?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Most of what it takes to get someone to start playing magic is to just get cards in their hands.

If you were a fan of Dr who, and you had a decent time with that one commander game you played with the 4 decks, yeah maybe. You might start playing

 

[LadyMapi]

Yes, but how likely is it that there's a bunch of Doctor Who fans who aren't already interested in Magic that also happen to be friends with enough people who play Magic that buying a Magic deck is worth their time? Like, I wouldn't doubt that that has happened, but it's far more likely that the people who are buying the Doctor Who decks are Doctor Who fans who are already somewhat invested in Magic.

If the "I like the IP that this game is pulling from → hey, the game is kinda fun → lifetime [INSERT GAME HERE] nerd" pipeline was that simple, the Harry Potter trading card game wouldn't have been cancelled after two years during a period where Harry Potter was massively culturally relevant (the early 2000s).

Granted, part of the issue with this whole conversation is that none of us are capable of being objective about how good Magic is at grabbing people, since we're a self-selected bunch of hardcore Magic nerds. Like, of course we're going to assume that the main reason other people aren't Magic fans is that they just haven't been exposed to it in the right way...

 

[Brad]

I question that logic, though. Or, at least, I think it's making a bunch of unwarranted assumptions about conversion rates and the demographic buying these products.

To put it differently: imagine that Mattel made a deal with Hasbro and put out a line of Barbies where she was cosplaying various Magic characters. Would that make you interested in collecting Barbie dolls if you weren't already?

I think this is pretty different because the Barbie demographic and the MtG demographic likely have very little overlap. Getting a LOTR fan interested in a fantasy card game seems like a much larger overlap of demographics and interests.

If the "I like the IP that this game is pulling from → hey, the game is kinda fun → lifetime [INSERT GAME HERE] nerd" pipeline was that simple, the Harry Potter trading card game wouldn't have been cancelled after two years during a period where Harry Potter was massively culturally relevant (the early 2000s).

I think this is also very different because it's starting a brand new game with 0 players. If MtG does a failed HP UB, they still have MtG players. If HP TCG doesn't go well? It's dead.

I'm also not feeling like it's a simple pipeline, but it seems like a solid way of attracting fans. They already have a ton of players and this is a new way to reach out for more.

 

[Karshtakavaar]

Can't make broad sweeping generalizations, don't have the data.
Anecdotally the only people I know who've picked up UB stuff were already MTG players, and while I have friends who are megafans of other IPs that have gotten the UB treatment (Street Fighter, LoTR, Doctor Who and now Fallout) the extent of their reactions to the products have ranged from "Ew I don't want to play Magic" to "Heh, I get that reference. Still not buying it."

 

[ellogeyen]

I know multiple non-Magic players who collected all/most cards from an UB set but never played the game with them. (Especially including the D&D sets)

Its similar to the popularity of the Pokemon TCG. I know multiple people who collect (specific) cards but none who actually play.

 

[Chris Taylor]

If the "I like the IP that this game is pulling from → hey, the game is kinda fun → lifetime [INSERT GAME HERE] nerd" pipeline was that simple, the Harry Potter trading card game wouldn't have been cancelled after two years during a period where Harry Potter was massively culturally relevant (the early 2000s).

I don't think the pipeline would only need to end in lifetime fan to be relevant.

 

[Seeker]

Its similar to the popularity of the Pokemon TCG. I know multiple people who collect (specific) cards but none who actually play.

Game's super fun. And the best tournament card in every set is like the fifth most expensive super rare variant at most because the waifu tax is absolutely off the charts from all the collectors.

 

[ravnic]

Is their a way to search for (non-) wordiness on scryfall? I was looking for tdfcs that could be interrsting enough to proxy flip cards of them, but half of them are really wordy, so that they wouldn't fit well.

 

[Brad]

Is their a way to search for (non-) wordiness on scryfall? I was looking for tdfcs that could be interrsting enough to proxy flip cards of them, but half of them are really wordy, so that they wouldn't fit well.

-fo:/([^\s]+\s+){20,}/ -o:/([^\s]+\s+){10,}/

That does 20 words total text, 10 words non-reminder text. Adjust as your heart desires.

 

[Zoss]

-fo:/([^\s]+\s+){20,}/ -o:/([^\s]+\s+){10,}/

That does 20 words total text, 10 words non-reminder text. Adjust as your heart desires.

Regex is a fucking magic system lmao.

 

[Phone]

Completely guessing: I imagine there is a significant portion of magic players who aren't buying much product (like me!) but have a lot of other interests (D&D, LotR, Dr. Who, 40K, etc.). I also imagine that an MTG cross-over pulls a significant portion of that group to buy/collect the specialty sets (not like me). I don't think it's likely that a large part of growth is absolutely never-touched-a-card players, but disenfranchised/lightly enfranchised players who get super hype about them. Just a guess mostly.

 

[Phone]

-fo:/([^\s]+\s+){20,}/ -o:/([^\s]+\s+){10,}/

That does 20 words total text, 10 words non-reminder text. Adjust as your heart desires.

This is beautiful.

 

[Brad]

I gotta come clean. I just found that on Reddit a long time ago. I have no idea what the hell that regex bullshit says.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

-fo:/([^\s]+\s+){20,}/ -o:/([^\s]+\s+){10,}/

That does 20 words total text, 10 words non-reminder text. Adjust as your heart desires.

I gotta come clean. I just found that on Reddit a long time ago. I have no idea what the hell that regex bullshit says.

I can help "\s" matches a whitespace character, and "\s+" means you're looking for one or more of those. As you can probably imagine by now, "[^\s]+" searches for one or more non-whitespace characters. The pattern "([^\s]+\s+)" thus searches for a piece of text that's one or more non-whitespace characters followed by one or more whitespace characters. Most of the time that'll be a word followed by a space. The "{20,}" means you are looking for a minimum of 20 of those repetitions and no maximum. "fo:" means you are searching in the full Oracle text, and the minus sign before that means you are excluding all cards that match the search pattern.

Because the final word of a card's text will not be followed by a whitespace character, in practice this regex pattern finds all cards that have 20 or less words in the full Oracle text (which includes reminder text), and 10 or less words in the Oracle text (which excludes reminder text).

Note that this actually checks the Oracle text, not the printed card text! So Ember-Fist Zubera has 20 words, not 32 (the number of words used in its Champions of Kamigawa printing, #reprintAllTheZuberaAlreadyWotC!).

Feel free to add " -is:vanilla -is:frenchvanilla -t:land" to the end of that to exclude all vanilla and French vanilla (= keyword-only) creatures and lands from the search result.

Edit: Some cool cards that became non-wordy (in the Oracle text) over time:

Concordant Crossroads went down 15 words from 19 to 4.
Breath of Life went down 16 words from 26 to 10.
Caterwauling Boggart went down 17 words from 26 to 9.
Deathgrip went down 22 words from 27 to 5.
Hurkyl's Recall went down 22 words from 31 to 9.
Sea Scryer went down 24 words from 31 to 7.
Chaoslace went down 25 words from 31 to 6.
Elvish Bard went down 25 words from 34 to 9.
Kormus Bell went down 28 words from 38 to 10.
Ashnod's Altar went down 32 words from 37 to 5.
Control Magic went down 36 words from 42 to 6.
Sage of Lat-Nam went down a whopping 46 words from 53 to 7.
And finally, can you believe that Time Walk has the exact same wording as when it was first printed in Alpha?!

 

[Chris Taylor]

I gotta come clean. I just found that on Reddit a long time ago. I have no idea what the hell that regex bullshit says.

This is the way

 

[Brad]

I may have asked this before, but with Ixalan 2 on the horizon, what's everyone's experiences with vehicles? I don't have much and it's a bit difficult for me to evaluate them.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I like Vehicles! I think you can slot them into a similar part of your brain where you slot Equipment, because they are not really threats on their own and you need a creature in play to make them do anything. So a deck really only wants like 1 or 2 of them at most, and you probably want them to be decently powerful for players to justify wanting to put them in their deck. Vehicles with low crew numbers tend to be the most flexible and useful, similar to equipment with cheap equip costs. Ones that have alternate means of animating them besides crewing also tend to be more flexible.

So I think they are at their best in cube when there's only a few of them and they're a little bit above the power curve.