it is interesting, sadly i haven’t heard any good feedback about it from people who’ve seen it played at prereleases. one quote from a limited junkie:
“PSA about New Capenna limited: You don’t have to put Incriminate in your deck. No one’s forcing you to do that.”
Feeling nostalgic about this discussion! A decade back when I was a baby cuber (in the MTGSalvation days), edict effects were popular because tokens were not very popular, and the prevailing attitude towards midrange threats and control finishers was that they had to pass the Terminate test to be viable.
Edict effects went in the cube, ironically, because even the powermax crew wanted outs to these creatures that weren't "end the game before they get there". But then Wizards shifted away from shroud/hexproof and towards printing threats that passed the Terminate test and also passed the edict test:
Given the popularity of tokens here and antipathy towards GRBS finishers, I think edicts are probably pretty dead in most Riptide cubes. I still love Chainer's Edict, though. I used to really like the subgame of trying to clear the board of less relevant creatures so you can edict their hexproof guy.
Feeling nostalgic about this discussion! A decade back when I was a baby cuber (in the MTGSalvation days), edict effects were popular because tokens were not very popular, and the prevailing attitude towards midrange threats and control finishers was that they had to pass the Terminate test to be viable.
Edict effects went in the cube, ironically, because even the powermax crew wanted outs to these creatures that weren't "end the game before they get there". But then Wizards shifted away from shroud/hexproof and towards printing threats that passed the Terminate test and also passed the edict test:
Given the popularity of tokens here and antipathy towards GRBS finishers, I think edicts are probably pretty dead in most Riptide cubes. I still love Chainer's Edict, though. I used to really like the subgame of trying to clear the board of less relevant creatures so you can edict their hexproof guy.
They are not dead. However, one has to reign in the etb/cip bullshit and when tokens are abundant one has to resort to variants!
In the old days the spells were more powerful but (constructed aside) could not win the game. You had to kill with bad creatures. Wizards tried to solve it by printing stronger creatures with etb. But this actually made the game worse. Now you have a quick clock where even an answer sets you back where in the old days you had a slow clock where an answer would be on par. The answers would be slightly worse since they were sometimes dead cards.
sorry for the old man grumbling. Some of the changes are really better, but many others were not (and they made a 180 one many of the changes). Sadly, the grbs clocks remain…
To me, the terminate test is like a corona test. I usually want to have a negative result there.
But in all seriousness, if every threat replaces itself, it kills the whole fun of ressource management. You'll just always have hands full of cards to play, no matter what you do. No more chosing between tempo or CA, no more pondering wether to add to the board or draw cards. Let's hope the rise of Ward will lead to an age of threats neither being unremovable nor having etbs worth a card or more.
Yup. It's quite baffling, that it took them decades to find a good middle ground between "You can't touch this carnage tyrant" and "I trade my terror for your shivan dragon so I'm up 4 mana now".
And they've had the puzzle pieces in place too lol. They have several examples of both ward and shield effects as powerful but fair abilities through MTG history. At least they've figured it out now
Wizards tried to solve it by printing stronger creatures with etb. But this actually made the game worse. Now you have a quick clock where even an answer sets you back where in the old days you had a slow clock where an answer would be on par. The answers would be slightly worse since they were sometimes dead cards.
This is not very evident to me. You could argue that because answers are now relatively worse than threats, people play more threats, meaning that boards get clogged which leads to board stalls and longer games. Even if that's not true, some people like quick games and would consider better clocks an unmitigated success.
But in all seriousness, if every threat replaces itself, it kills the whole fun of resource management. You'll just always have hands full of cards to play, no matter what you do. No more choosing between tempo or CA, no more pondering whether to add to the board or draw cards.
Can you explain this train of thought a little more? Every experience I've had with a full hand of cards (ie, on Turn 0 of every single non-mulliganed game of Magic) comes with intense sequencing/tempo/CA decisions, because I simply don't have enough mana/life to goof around with suboptimal resource management. In the scenario I hear you proposing, where a full hand means I don't need to optimize my decisions, this implies I'd need to be able to play my entire hand (mana/cards) and refuel back up to 7 (cards/mana) without falling behind on board (life/tempo), which would require functionally infinite amounts of all of Magic's core resources. But that hasn't happened in any Limited format I've played in the last decade -- there's always a pinch point in Magic's resource system throughout every stage of the game.
(And to explicitly address the "no more choosing between CA and tempo/board presence", this just seems demonstrably exaggerated. I mean, yeah it's true that they've replaced Zephyr Spirit with Honey Mammoth these days, so relative to 2003 I guess this has some basis. But among the creatures printed within a single set, there is no spell that simultaneously offers the board presence of Watchwolf/Questing Beast/Baneslayer and offers the card advantage of Fblthp/Cloudkin/Mulldrifter. Even the decision of which spells to put in a deck is a choice between card advantage and board presence.)
I do agree that sometimes Magic's resource management doesn't come with deep decisions, but I see that symptom arising from opposite causes, namely hellbent-esque topdeck wars. In this game state, decisions are meaningless because you either play your topdeck or hold it to destroy your opponent's topdeck... but the funny thing is that tends to arise from high-quality interaction and low-quality threats. (Decision-killing game states also arise from prison combo decks, and noninteractive combo decks in general, but these were most actively supported in Magic's early days.)
This is not very evident to me. You could argue that because answers are now relatively worse than threats, people play more threats, meaning that boards get clogged which leads to board stalls and longer games. Even if that's not true, some people like quick games and would consider better clocks an unmitigated success.
Can you explain this train of thought a little more? Every experience I've had with a full hand of cards (ie, on Turn 0 of every single non-mulliganed game of Magic) comes with intense sequencing/tempo/CA decisions, because I simply don't have enough mana/life to goof around with suboptimal resource management. In the scenario I hear you proposing, where a full hand means I don't need to optimize my decisions, this implies I'd need to be able to play my entire hand (mana/cards) and refuel back up to 7 (cards/mana) without falling behind on board (life/tempo), which would require functionally infinite amounts of all of Magic's core resources. But that hasn't happened in any Limited format I've played in the last decade -- there's always a pinch point in Magic's resource system throughout every stage of the game.
I do agree that sometimes Magic's resource management doesn't come with deep decisions, but I see that symptom arising from opposite causes, namely hellbent-esque topdeck wars. In this game state, decisions are meaningless because you either play your topdeck or hold it to destroy your opponent's topdeck... but the funny thing is that tends to arise from high-quality interaction and low-quality threats. (Decision-killing game states also arise from prison combo decks, and noninteractive combo decks in general, but these were most actively supported in Magic's early days.)
It is quite a challenge and in my opinion not decision killing to face a prison deck.
What I mean is that playing a clock with an etb has completely invalidated answering it with a kill spell. Due to the etb answering already puts you behind (unless the answer also cancels the etb). So damned if you do and doomed ig
Also quicker clocks are not nice, neither are clogged board stalls. A quick clock requires a quick answer, e.g., do you have it now or die. This is not something I seek in a game.
Etb nonsense makes the game like vintage, e.g, who did draw the most restricted cards.
This is not very evident to me. You could argue that because answers are now relatively worse than threats, people play more threats, meaning that boards get clogged which leads to board stalls and longer games. Even if that's not true, some people like quick games and would consider better clocks an unmitigated success.
I literally almost commented the same thing but decided to keep my mouth shut because I didn't want to start a flame war over something subjective like "do ETB effects lead to good gameplay." Some of the most highly regarded formats of all time (mostly standard but also some limited environments) have been characterized by creatures with good ETB abilities. Whether we're discussing the Invasion era with it's Flametongue Kavu//Kicker Dude piles, Lorwyn-era Faerie and Evoke decks, Alara's cascade decks, and even Theros-Khans era value midrange decks, creatures with Strong ETB abilities have played a pretty major role.
Now, I think it's fair to argue that the answers WOTC has been printing recently have been worse than some of the threats, but that's not because answers are bad in general now. It's just that some of the threats demand answers more on the level of Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares than Murder and Open Fire. Back in the old days, the answers were way better than the threats could possibly be. Swords to Plowshares, a card that has been very good for magic's entire history and still sees play in eternal formats today, was being used to kill Grizzly Bears, Ironclaw Orcs, Goblins of the Flarg, and Serra Angels. These creatures are just insanely bad in comparison to cards that essentially read "one mana: kill a thing." It was to the point that many decks save for linear critical mass decks would completely ignore creatures because they were just so terrible against removal. You need something on the level of Questing Beast or Ragavan, Nible Pilferer or Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath before Swords to Plowshares becomes reasonably equivalent in power level.
The big problem is that Wizards has been printing high-value creatures into Standard without keeping the removal powered up in kind. Bad Players really don't like it when their big cool creature dies to efficient removal, so Wizards has purposefully reduced the power level of the answers to give idiot creatures a chance to be competitively viable. This is a pretty recent development, roughly coming about in the Battle for Zendikar era. Wizards has course-corrected a little bit, bringing the removal power level back up to where it was during the Theros-Khans days, but creatures have still been pushed a bit beyond that, so the removal really needs to be back where it was during roughly the original Innistrad or Alara time frames, but hasn't gotten there just yet. Notice that most of the creature decks in the current standard aren't ETB heavy decks, they mostly just play efficient beaters, but the removal is inefficient enough on average that simply curving out with big things is a reasonable strategy.
Creatures don't need to staple Baneslayer and Mulldrifter together to lead to the problem ravnic describes. These days, incremental advantage is so much higher on things you commit to the board (not just creatures) that often something like blue sun's zenith seems like a silly inclusion these days. Or even a standalone answer like hero's downfall seems silly (because you can run an ETB kill spell instead and 2-for-1, or as TGT notes the opposing creature is just so efficient that the straight kill spell loses out badly).
Like, look at any enchantment that costs like.... 3.5 mana or more and doesn't have an immediate or EOT effect. It will be very common these days to see many people on this forum (let alone a place like MTGS) say something like "yeah, it's neat, but it doesn't do anything the turn it comes in :\". Similar story with many creatures mana 4+ that don't have an ETB or something immediate.
Value has been condensed a lot further than it used to be.
I'm not going to speak to if that makes MTG "better" or "worse", but one thing I know it has a demonstrable impact on is the viability of multi-part gameplans. If you can assemble wins with single standalone pieces that advance multiple angles of your gameplan, there is little reason to have 2+ piece engines/synergies/combos that will have less consistency and rely on your deck having other pieces like card selection and recursion.
What I mean is that playing a clock with an etb has completely invalidated answering it with a kill spell. Due to the etb answering already puts you behind (unless the answer also cancels the etb). So damned if you do and doomed ig
Yeah, I get this to some extent. Crested Herdcaller has essentially "ward: 0, but i keep half my stats" which does put the kill-spell caster behind. But what if the ETB is Honey Mammoth, which is mostly "ward: an opponent gains 4 life"? I don't think ETBs are categorically the problem. Actually, framing ETBs as "ward" costs really helps me see that they're just both ways to get fractional returns on resources when the initial investment is answered for fewer resources. Cue the Kanye "everything is exactly the same" meme.
I respect that opinion regarding your desired gameplay. However, as cube curators, this is totally within our control, so I think we should make the design tools available so that people who do like fast games can have those design tools. (I'm one of them -- I'd rather play 3 quick "remove-it-or-die" matches than 1 long one.) I similarly think it's a matter of opinion whether or not battling out from under a lock combo deck leads to fun decisions.
I literally almost commented the same thing but decided to keep my mouth shut because I didn't want to start a flame war over something subjective like "do ETB effects lead to good gameplay."
I agree with these essential points, and I think it also speaks to @sigh's comment.
Sigh mentions (and I agree) that BSZ used to be good enough to compete with weak threats and is now no longer strong enough; to me this implies that BSZ was always a weak/niche card-draw spell and we just lacked the context to notice. (To verge slightly on topic, this is exactly what's going on with Diabolic Edict.) We always knew that Ancestral, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Necropotence, etc etc were the top-tier card-advantage engines anyways. The only reason the C-tier stuff was ever viable is because creatures were anemic. Now we're finally seeing threats that are roughly as good at threat-ing as Necro was at card-ing and Swords was at interaction-ing, so I'm not surprised that the weak reactive cards are showing their age.
Imagine, if you would, that Magic got printed backwards-to-forwards in time. We'd then be saying, "answers and card draw are too strong these days! My mid-tier creature deck is getting power-crept out of existence by this new card Doom Blade that can kill them for insane tempo advantages or Divination which out-advantages their ETBs. Perfectly good cards like Nessian Courser aren't even competitive anymore!" In either timeline, we're only saying that the C-tier stuff was good because it was printed in what amounts to an insanely warped metagame where parts of Magic's game engine were severely neglected.
I'm essentially positing that Magic's game engine (of which the threat/answer tradeoff is a small piece) has not fundamentally changed* in any way; only the cards through which we discover the game engine have changed. Observing that the game engine behaved differently with old-as-dirt threats is like saying it behaved differently in Theros with a high Aura ASFAN. The game engine never changed -- only our context did. Not only is the context's fun quotient entirely subjective, it is entirely in our power to change as Cube designers. That's the beauty of this hobby, IMO.
*I guess there was 6th edition rules and so on, where the game engine really did change, but I'm not counting that
Then there's the argument of whether BSZ was actually weak, or it's at the proper power level, and the power of the game has been dragged too far up past it. I think that's the crux of the original statement anyways. Almost all of the cards mentioned above are widely known as design mistakes in a wide array of contexts. Balancing a game engine with it's mistakes is a... risky decision.
Then there's the argument of whether BSZ was actually weak, or it's at the proper power level, and the power of the game has been dragged too far up past it.
I think that's definitionally not possible. The game of Magic is nothing more or less than its rules and its cards. Change one card of Magic, or change one rule, and the game evolves. That's the whole premise.
But I do certainly agree that different combinations of cards yield different amounts of fun for different people. Ideas of "pushed too far/mistakes/risky/proper power/fun/not fun/balanced" all fall into this subjective space. This includes majority opinions about "fun", including if the majority agrees about Necro, or if the majority of contemporary Magic players prefer threats with ETBs (which I assume is the case since WotC keeps printing them). One cannot be better than the other, because it's subjective.
To appropriate Voltaire and hopefully end on a lighthearted note: I will reject any assertion that Magic is objectively less fun for having X, but I will defend to the death anybody's ability to design their ideal cube without X.
I think that's definitionally not possible. The game of Magic is nothing more or less than its rules and its cards. Change one card of Magic, or change one rule, and the game evolves. That's the whole premise.
The average power level of the cards of magic changing in relation to some reference card is absolutely possible. It's how card games can have the concept of "power creep" in the first place. I'm not even sure what you are trying to say, to be perfectly honest.
"proper power level" in this case, is the power level of the game that yields the most average fun for the most people, the weight of hundreds of thousands of subjective opinions weighed together, as one would do for any survey or census.
Why should BSZ be "weak"? What made you immediately jump to that conclusion? Rather than the conclusion that new creatures have become too good?
To appropriate Voltaire and hopefully end on a lighthearted note: I will reject any assertion that Magic is objectively less fun for having X, but I will defend to the death anybody's ability to design their ideal cube without X.
To speak to this for myself: I have less fun playing Magic when I put a card in my deck because it looks fun and then I just lose the game for playing it on curve. Jace's Sanctum is a canonical example - ever played it across the table from a Hero of Oxid Ridge? That's not to say that either card is inherently strong or weak. I'm agreeing here that the power to design a satisfying environment is almost entirely within our hands.
I say "almost entirely" because none of our cubes exist in a vacuum, and we are not the only ones who draft and play them. I may be really excited about a format where Jace's Sanctum is an incremental value engine that lets a UR deck outgrind its opponent, but if my opponent is glum because the cube had to have Goblin Razerunners instead of the Hero to make my Sanctum deck viable, have I succeeded or not? This seems to be @sigh 's point as well.
Do you all design for a specific playgroup? Yourselves? Whoever shows up at your LGS on Cube night? I'm genuinely curious.
I design almost entirely as a mental exercise at this point. I haven't played physical magic besides with my wife since before the pandemic. Back when I did play with other people, I designed for the group with a strong bias towards my preferential playstyle. So I picked power levels that seemed to make the group the happiest overall, but made sure I kept my focus on engines and GY synergies.
You said something like "Beethoven's 9th isn't at the proper volume/key/instrumentation for a Beethoven symphony". I'm saying, because the 9th was written by Beethoven, the 9th expanded the definition of Beethoven symphonies to inlcude its non-beethovian properties, therefore the 9th must be a Beethovian symphony. Similarly, because Necro and Ember Shot and Grizzly Bears and Ragavan were printed, they expanded the definition of what a proper Magic card looks like to include their game properties, and therefore no Magic card can possibly be un-magic-like*.
(*Of course, I'm setting aside the racist or appropriative cards Magic has printed in its past. They absolutely matter, but that's really far off-topic.)
I absolutely don't put any stock in what the majority of Magic players think as prescriptive of what I should like. And may I gently suggest, I don't believe you do either, because if you did, you'd be lauding all of the latest X (whether that's ETBs, NEO aesthetics, planeswalkers, EDH, SLD products, or whatever) along with the majority.
To speak to this for myself: I have less fun playing Magic when I put a card in my deck because it looks fun and then I just lose the game for playing it on curve. Jace's Sanctum is a canonical example - ever played it across the table from a Hero of Oxid Ridge? That's not to say that either card is inherently strong or weak. I'm agreeing here that the power to design a satisfying environment is almost entirely within our hands.
I say "almost entirely" because none of our cubes exist in a vacuum, and we are not the only ones who draft and play them. I may be really excited about a format where Jace's Sanctum is an incremental value engine that lets a UR deck outgrind its opponent, but if my opponent is glum because the cube had to have Goblin Razerunners instead of the Hero to make my Sanctum deck viable, have I succeeded or not? This seems to be @sigh 's point as well.
Do you all design for a specific playgroup? Yourselves? Whoever shows up at your LGS on Cube night? I'm genuinely curious.
Yeah, this sword cuts both ways for sure. I agree that everybody should feel entitled to leave aside Card Category X in their cubes, and/or play the cards their group enjoys, which sometimes does include bowing to the "majority" (with the caveat that this majority is like one playgroup's worth of people large, not "the entire magic community").
I design for me, my 4 or so most-invested players, and then I try not to make the list too hostile for newcomers or strangers. But mostly me, because I'm the person who has to stare at these pieces of cardboard all the time
Yeah, I get this to some extent. Crested Herdcaller has essentially "ward: 0, but i keep half my stats" which does put the kill-spell caster behind. But what if the ETB is Honey Mammoth, which is mostly "ward: an opponent gains 4 life"? I don't think ETBs are categorically the problem. Actually, framing ETBs as "ward" costs really helps me see that they're just both ways to get fractional returns on resources when the initial investment is answered for fewer resources. Cue the Kanye "everything is exactly the same" meme.
I don't think Ward is the right comparison, really. Maybe if we were talking about death triggers/leave the battlefield triggers?
I think it's generally better to look at ETBs as if the card was a Sorcery (or Instant, if the critter has Flash) that happens to make the appropriate token.
Honey Mammoth? It's a 6-mana Sorcery that makes a 6/6 creature token and gives you 4 life. In most cases, the "token" is what you're after, so having someone remove it is a big deal. Gallant Cavalry? It's literally just Call The Cavalry. A removal spell isn't going to feel good here. Mulldrifter? It's a Divination with Kicker and "if this spell was kicked, create a 2/2 flying creature token". If you're casting it, you're probably more interested in the cards, so a removal spell feels meh.
What I've meant is, that I have more fun playing magic when I have to fight for my value, and when every threat generates card advantage, either by incremental value or by having great etbs worth "draw a card" or more, I feel like, I get more than I've earned. That's why there aren't too many creatures with an etb of that kind in my cube, and those that do this mostly either have anemic bodies (Wing Splicer) or cost so much mana, that they'd otherwise trade down against even middling expensive removal (Black Dragon).
One thing that I have found to be a great middle ground are morphs.
The Exterminator is the much more intriguing version of this effect for me. You get almost the same 2-for-1, but you have to pay twice and you get the whole mini game where your opponent has one turn before it happening and they can decide to kill that grey ogre.
This Exterminator/Skinrender comparison is a perfect example of why lower power level = more fun imho. Here both playery have more time for relevant decisions, and they have to risk more for the value of a 2-for-1.
At this point, I mostly design for me and my girlfriend, as she's by far the most regular drafter of my cube next to me. Beyond that, I try to create an environment where decisions matter as much as possible, but things are simple enough that your brain doesn't hurt. That has proven to be a good formula to appeal to both magic newbies and limited veterans.
I very much use my cube as a teaching tool too, 7 people have learned magic thanks to cards from it and they're all still playing to some degree. Spreading the fun is an important part of being a mtg fan for me.
Creatures don't need to staple Baneslayer and Mulldrifter together to lead to the problem ravnic describes. These days, incremental advantage is so much higher on things you commit to the board (not just creatures) that often something like blue sun's zenith seems like a silly inclusion these days. Or even a standalone answer like hero's downfall seems silly (because you can run an ETB kill spell instead and 2-for-1, or as TGT notes the opposing creature is just so efficient that the straight kill spell loses out badly).
Like, look at any enchantment that costs like.... 3.5 mana or more and doesn't have an immediate or EOT effect. It will be very common these days to see many people on this forum (let alone a place like MTGS) say something like "yeah, it's neat, but it doesn't do anything the turn it comes in :\". Similar story with many creatures mana 4+ that don't have an ETB or something immediate.
Value has been condensed a lot further than it used to be.
I'm not going to speak to if that makes MTG "better" or "worse", but one thing I know it has a demonstrable impact on is the viability of multi-part gameplans. If you can assemble wins with single standalone pieces that advance multiple angles of your gameplan, there is little reason to have 2+ piece engines/synergies/combos that will have less consistency and rely on your deck having other pieces like card selection and recursion.
Yes, I'm in full agreement that value condensation is the biggest issue with Magic design nowadays. There is just so much bang for your buck when it comes to individual cards. The pendulum has swung so far in the direction of easily generating value just for doing things that you'd already want to do. Whereas before you'd get the tradeoff of useful effects on meager creatures bodies, nowadays you can just have it all.
I don't really like bringing it up much due to how this community likes to disparage EDH like a bunch of snobs, but I personally like to take what I can for design inspiration from that format as I find it to be the most exploratory and "true" to core Magic tenets and what drew me to the game. Build the deck you like playing with cool cards, explore themes, try out interesting cards and see how to interact with one another. That's what the format is to me beyond the social aspect. I definitely play it more often than other formats and it had always been about exploration and looking to maximize the whole greater than the sum of its parts if you aren't playing at the absolutely highest level of cutthroat combo decks. But that has changed in recent years and it has mostly coincided with a shift in design philosophy for Wizards. People don't play 3 mana rocks that much anymore because the 2 mana rocks and dork ramp you faster to your payoff cards that are no longer 6 or 7+ mana but can be assembled at 4-5 mana. You can refuel and/or set up engines much earlier than you could before and this is primarily due to pushed card design.
I bring this up mostly to supplement what you've mentioned with tangible examples as it's a little difficult to do it within a cube context as you aren't beholden to the whims and choices of the community at large in your own sandbox. In EDH while you'll have the more casual segment still slinging battlecruiser haymakers like it's 2011, I would say that the community as a whole has put a greater emphasis on card efficiency and impact than ever before. Why waste time building up to a Blue Sun's Zenith in my Simic deck when I could just play Toski, Bearer of Secrets and draw cards all day long pecking in with my dorks to refuel? Why would I want to play with any other Jund legendary card as the commander for my deck I can play Korvold, Fae Cursed King and just draw cards for free from fetches and cracking clues? They just released Professional Face Breaker which is a creature that features an evasive 2/3 body, generates treasures for EACH opponent that gets hit, AND gives you a virtual source of card advantage at a splashy 2R. What's the downside? This is just above rate in every single way. Why would I ever want to play with cards like Outpost Siege or even the relatively new Valakut Exploration to generate card advantage, going out of my way to do so, when this is so much better in a vacuum?
This is what seems to happen every other set. This need to push creature efficiency and staple effects onto passable bodies to reach that threshold of playability has given us some cool designs, but I'd say that it has also grossly simplified the inclusion process when it comes to cube if that is a primary metric you design for. If you want efficiency and emulation of a more Constructed style of gameplay then many old designs are straight up invalidated. They aren't bad cards, but they just aren't up to snuff with the rates for cards being printed nowadays. Like you mentioned just recall how big a deal it was when Hero's Downfall was printed the first time. An efficient answer to both creatures and walkers, wow! Nowadays you get a variant every set, the card itself is now only at uncommon power level, and a lot of people just straight up turn their nose at 3+ mana removal unless there's additional upside. Continually stapling effects to creatures and promoting this snowball style of play is fun if you only want to design for the highs of Magic from a single player's perspective, but it's not nearly as engaging for players like me that enjoyed actually having to make decisions on card inclusions.
I think Magic design suffers greatly when you create these one stop shop type cards with how they shift the cutoff point for "viable" inclusion. They thoroughly invalidate other options that might have been viable previously on sheer card quality. And players WANT to play with the shiny new toy, that's just human nature. You can curb this to an extent as the designer of your own environment, but it's very difficult to curate that experience with the plethora of unique and interesting designs that would otherwise be great inclusions but are a bit too much. That's where base cube design kind of suffers nowadays if you aren't a very diligent or dedicated curator because it is just so easy to invalidate many inclusions and strategies with new designs. Why bother designing for synergy or with interactions when I can just do it all on X card?
I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing here and there for an environment, and I've definitely deployed more pushed individual cards over the years, but I do think it's a tough balancing act with how ubiquitous the above average body + additional upside has become with card design. Almost all of the otherwise interesting cards seem to be designed like this nowadays and it's what seems to be needed to be "worth it" in cube. As a cube designer you're obviously looking to curate the best game environment that you can and it'll vary from person to person, but for me at least I'm not very high on the current era of design and find that the game is suffering for it as a whole. Limited is great within that closed off environment, but this permeation of all upside design has definitely made the game worse as a whole when looking at far reaching impact in various formats.
Then there's the argument of whether BSZ was actually weak, or it's at the proper power level, and the power of the game has been dragged too far up past it. I think that's the crux of the original statement anyways. Almost all of the cards mentioned above are widely known as design mistakes in a wide array of contexts. Balancing a game engine with it's mistakes is a... risky decision.
I don't think there is such a thing as a proper power level. Magic cards are defined by the cards that exist around them, so how well or poorly something plays entirely depends on what else exists in the format in question. For example, Tarmogoyf started to see way less play than it used to around the time Fatal Push got printed. Is fatal push too good in a vaccum? I wouldn't say so, but the card is really good at killing Tarmogoyfs, which in turn made the Goyf worse than it was before. Does that mean fatal push is not at the proper power level?
"proper power level" in this case, is the power level of the game that yields the most average fun for the most people, the weight of hundreds of thousands of subjective opinions weighed together, as one would do for any survey or census.
I think this point actually would lead to the conclusion that Blue Sun's Zenith isn't at the proper power level, at least, not anymore. Wizards of the Coast has the resources to actually run surveys and weigh the data regarding public opinion. And I think the results are clear: people like the cards that have pushed expensive noncreature spells like Blue Sun's Zenith out of constructed relevance. The most popular magic set of all time for several years was Battle for Zendikar- a much anticipated return to a beloved plane following coming right off the heels of one of the best blocks in Magic's history. It stayed the best selling set until War of the Spark, a Planeswalker fueld drug trip through Ravnica. None of the sets in the three and a half years between Battle for Zendikar and War of the Spark could come close to the success of either. Why? The answer is simple: they were powered way down to prevent them from having "problematic" cards like some of the early 2010s sets, such as M13's Thragtusk, Return to Ravnica's Pack Rat and Supreme Verdict, and basically half of Innistrad. It wasn't until WOTC turned the burners back on again and started printing high quality cards that the game was able to get out of it's slump. I know a lot of people here like the sets that were released between Battle for Zendikar and War of the Spark, and there are some individual gems, but I remember feeling like Magic was a worse game during this time frame. Almost none of the new cards were good, standard was constantly a mess because there were basically no playable cards outside of a couple random design mistakes, and there were almost no reprints of note. More powerful sets ended a dark age for Magic, and there's not really any disputing that. There are some individual cards that people don't like which may be considered "improper" by this definition, such as Uro, Ragavan, and Oko, but the school of thought that led to these mistakes led to magic prospering. Notice I didn't mention Omnath here– people love that card even though it was a huge misstep for constructed that was banned in standard and should probably be banned in several other formats. I don't the mistakes people don't like not existing would all of the sudden make Blue Sun's Zenith playable again– the stuff people do like pushed it out of relevance.
But honestly, as I said earlier, I don't think a proper power level can truly exist. Every card that gets printed opens up the gates to some interaction or line of play that either destroys an old card's playability or elevates an old card to new heights. The individual peices of this game do not exist in a vaccum and as such cannot be perfectly balanced. I think a great example of this paradigm is Divide By Zero. This card was behated and was even banned in Standard. It sees no play anywhere else. In standard, this card was instrumental in letting U/x control decks stall the game until they could play a big threat or take an extra turn and win. Elsewhere, 3 mana for a C tier interaction spell was too much, so it saw no play. Banned in one, unplayable in the other. Really the only place this card worked correctly was Strixhaven draft. Was this card improper? I don't think there's any way to tell. It did exactly what it was supposed to do in limited, does it's problematic standard history and unplayability in eternal formats subvert it's successes in draft?
Likewise, trying to achieve the goal of "pleasing the broadest number of players" can lead to bad places from a design perspective. Look at Companions. These cards exist in no small part because Commander became the most popular Magic format. The people at Wizards thought that making cards that let people have an experience similar to commander in other formats (and let Commander players use a partner even if their commander doesn't have that keyword) would please the masses. Instead, every constructed player hated them for the effect they had on every format and almost no Commander players use companions with their deck. I'm not saying that making companions work is impossible, but I think they were a failed attempt to make something that worked at, as you said "the proper power level." Obviously, they missed the mark by a country mile, but I think their intentions were simply to make cards that as many players as possible would enjoy.
I don't really like bringing it up much due to how this community likes to disparage EDH like a bunch of snobs, but I personally like to take what I can for design inspiration from that format as I find it to be the most exploratory and "true" to core Magic tenets and what drew me to the game. Build the deck you like playing with cool cards, explore themes, try out interesting cards and see how to interact with one another.
Sorry if I contribute to this feeling at all. I really like deckbuilding for EDH as well, I just don't like playing the format. I don't have a dedicated EDH group to play with so I have to play with random people at my local game store or online. The exploratory and gameplay elements that I suspect many people fall in love with are almost always completely overshadowed for me by the poor management of the format by the Rules Comittee and (to a lesser extent) WOTC, so it almost never ends up being any fun. I think when a format with what I see as fundamental flaws ends up eclipsing the entire rest of the game in popularity, to the point of even effecting standard sets, it's a little frustrating. I find that EDH has never been able to acheive it's full potential because the people who run the format just are not good game designers. Ultimately it's sentiments like yours that have caused me to roll back my EDH-bashing from when I was younger. There's inherintly wrong with EDH, it's biggest "sins" are being popular and being mismanaged, neither of which necessarily ruin the core of what could make it great.
They just released Professional Face Breaker which is a creature that features an evasive 2/3 body, generates treasures for EACH opponent that gets hit, AND gives you a virtual source of card advantage at a splashy 2R. What's the downside? This is just above rate in every single way.
It's funny you mention this card because I actually skipped it for being too far below rate. Why would I ever play a red Ally Strangler when Goblin Rabblemaster, Old Pyromancer, and William Afton exist? The treasure stuff is really cool and can provide some cool value, but a 2/3 is almost always just going to eat a Lightning Bolt and die. There's like no reason to play this card!
It's almost like the context of the card dictates it's function : )
good question for discussion!
i design my cube primarily for myself, and secondarily for the folks who show up to draft with me. for context, i’m that crazy fella who runs a bazillion super busted custom lands and custom 1-drops. i want my cube to be something really unique that you can’t experience anywhere else, and i’ve intentionally filled it with a lot of meta game idiosyncrasies (watch out for the 5c Burn deck), pop culture references that i find cool or funny (Kroxa and Uro are Eren and Reiner), and stupid stuff that is only there because one of my drafters likes it (like a custom Nahiri that brings Sunforger into play with her, for my regular who’s an old-school Boros Control fanboy).
it’s a weird and wild cube, and it’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s the most fun i’ve ever had playing Magic and i hope to give that same feeling to at least some of the others who draft it with me.
There's the strict literalist sense in which any Magic card necessarily looks like a Magic card - but if every card in the next set suddenly looked like an Invention/Invocation (or the Secret Lair concert poster cards etc) it would mark a definite aesthetic shift and it would be missing the point to call out someone who said 'X doesn't look like a Magic card' for making an incoherent statement.
Power level/design philosophy is a lot more nebulous but some of that still applies. If you came back to the game recently and looked at Omnath or Oko, you'd wonder what the hell was going on; similarly, if you went backwards and played the average Standard or Extended format from the 1990s, it would be unrecognizable to someone reared on Arena. Even the tightest, smallest Premodern Cubes have issues finding enough good creatures or achieving a reasonable colour balance - the early Modern sets made important strides in fixing that problem, to the extent that mid-late 2000s Cubes have a deep roster of tools despite predating totemic changes like planeswalkers etc.
(I'd take issue with some of the specific historical comparisons here - say what you will about Kaladesh, Eldritch Moon etc but those weren't weak sets with the glaring exception of Ixalan)
There certainly is a trend towards cards being more flexible, giving you more 'virtual' cards at the cost of a single card, leaving some additional resource behind etc - in total this means that it's really difficult to run out of stuff to do in games of Constructed these days. I think that's a great change on the whole but it does change the value of some staple effects and Edicts are hurt more by this than anything else. I miss playing Consuming Vapors a decade ago but even then it was a flawed concept.
I think I have to disagree with the assertion that Standard was improved by War of the Spark and friends... but that might just be because I can't look at any of the top decks from ELD standard without vomiting in my mouth a little.
I also have the suspicion that a lot of the "popularity" of powerful sets is a result of Constructed players feeling the need to get their hands on cards from that set to compete in their format of choice, and not, say, because that set producing a good limited format (though it that could also be the case). Now, we can argue about whether or not a set adding a ton of playable cards to an eternal format (instead of just adding one or two outliers, like Fatal Push and the like) is a good thing... but that's something that needs to be kept in mind when evaluating sets.
I'm trying to provide a constructive dissenting opinion and I think your comment does this, too.
