Also in my urza block cube? There it could be of use to avoid mana screw, dead draws and so onI don't think you need to do stuff like this. All I do is allow a friendly mulligan house rule (7/7/6/6... instead of 7/6/5...). But much more important is a relatively low mana curve combined with stuff like:
But also stick with threats like:
It's the best of both worlds really.
General How much do you love Magic right now
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I love Magic - even if the game officially ended or went off a cliff tomorrow, I'd still have a lifetime of fond memories of my time with the game and would keep thinking about new Cubes or Premodern decks etc.
That said, I have a personal/professional/social interest in various parts of the game and I have some concerns across the board:
- Commander is now the primary focus of design in a way that doesn't seem sustainable to me. Sets have always had to serve many audiences - just open a pack of any set from the 2000s and ask who exactly is attracted to each card - but Commander operates with such a fundamentally different game engine (deck size, life total, multiplayer, governed by social norms etc) from even casual 'here's what I own' Constructed that it's hard to balance both. Once you could do this by giving them a few nods in each set and making some build-around creatures legendary but that only takes you so far. Many of the most vocal Commander players are keenly aware that they are the center of this universe and act like it while simultaneously complaining about product that is aimed at Commander and pining for the good old days without realizing that you can't have it both ways.
It also has this stifling impact on the community's experience at large - there's no sense of exploration when looking at new cards. One of the first, awful casual decks I wanted to build was using Living Plane with small sweeper effects like Night of Souls' Betrayal and finding ways to break that symmetry - in a Commander deck each of those cards would be singletons in a 99-card deck that would come together once in a blue moon (if you can even run both in your deck - I hope the Commander you want to run meets whatever arbitrary colour identity restrictions were decided by a third party a decade ago!). Every Twitter/Reddit preview thread now is just identical, soulless pattern-matching - 'Atraxa loves this!' 'laughs in Merek'
Funnily enough, the best and worst designs from the Commander products are barely relevant for Commander. I love Currency Converter but it's the kind of cheap, mainstream trinket I'd expect from a Modern Horizons set rather than a format that doesn't give a shit about mana efficiency. AFAICT few people even play the Initiative cards in Commander but their existence means they get to pollute Pauper and Legacy for no reason.
- As someone who loved watching and competing in Organized Play, the MPL/Arena/'esports' era was a disaster and COVID shut down the SCG circuit as well as the type of low-stakes local paper play that I really enjoy. The days of being glued to coverage every weekend and hoping to appear on it (either on camera or in the booth) have gone and that's a real shame. I hope that getting to play in the Pro Tour again is everything I've waited for.
- I'm glad that new printings and card styles let people customize their decks and give them a means of self-expression but it's over the top now. None of the other paper/digital card games have held my attention and part of that is that Magic looks so much better. There's a decades-long history and experience of worldbuilding that Hearthstone or whatever can't hold a candle to. What a Magic card 'looks like' is constantly changing and has seen seismic shifts over the years but there's always been a sense of a shared aesthetic - a lot of the more adventurous alternate arts look like something from another card game got lost and stumbled into Studio X. With many of Magic's most iconic cards the original art is part of what gives those good brain chemicals - I have the Ravnica Temple Garden art that blew me away when I was 12 years old on my wall and I don't know if it would have made such an impression then if there were three different arts from three different blocks alongside the space art, a random promo art, and an interchangeable Expedition art all at once. The experience of having an old Swords to Plowshares with the classic art cast against me is much different from a new version where I have to pick it up and squint at it to tell what it is. I also find that it's rare that all of the new options speak to me personally - if I'm comparing a card printed years ago to its reprint today the newer version is likely to have worse art on a worse frame with worse print quality/card stock.
The great thing about Magic though is that you can choose how you engage. There are more tools for Cube designers than ever before and I can indulge my nostalgia with Premodern or goof off with stuff like Historic Brawl even if the mainstream Limited/Constructed formats aren't doing it for me at the moment. As always, you just have to find the right people to share that with - it's still about the gathering.
That said, I have a personal/professional/social interest in various parts of the game and I have some concerns across the board:
- Commander is now the primary focus of design in a way that doesn't seem sustainable to me. Sets have always had to serve many audiences - just open a pack of any set from the 2000s and ask who exactly is attracted to each card - but Commander operates with such a fundamentally different game engine (deck size, life total, multiplayer, governed by social norms etc) from even casual 'here's what I own' Constructed that it's hard to balance both. Once you could do this by giving them a few nods in each set and making some build-around creatures legendary but that only takes you so far. Many of the most vocal Commander players are keenly aware that they are the center of this universe and act like it while simultaneously complaining about product that is aimed at Commander and pining for the good old days without realizing that you can't have it both ways.
It also has this stifling impact on the community's experience at large - there's no sense of exploration when looking at new cards. One of the first, awful casual decks I wanted to build was using Living Plane with small sweeper effects like Night of Souls' Betrayal and finding ways to break that symmetry - in a Commander deck each of those cards would be singletons in a 99-card deck that would come together once in a blue moon (if you can even run both in your deck - I hope the Commander you want to run meets whatever arbitrary colour identity restrictions were decided by a third party a decade ago!). Every Twitter/Reddit preview thread now is just identical, soulless pattern-matching - 'Atraxa loves this!' 'laughs in Merek'
Funnily enough, the best and worst designs from the Commander products are barely relevant for Commander. I love Currency Converter but it's the kind of cheap, mainstream trinket I'd expect from a Modern Horizons set rather than a format that doesn't give a shit about mana efficiency. AFAICT few people even play the Initiative cards in Commander but their existence means they get to pollute Pauper and Legacy for no reason.
- As someone who loved watching and competing in Organized Play, the MPL/Arena/'esports' era was a disaster and COVID shut down the SCG circuit as well as the type of low-stakes local paper play that I really enjoy. The days of being glued to coverage every weekend and hoping to appear on it (either on camera or in the booth) have gone and that's a real shame. I hope that getting to play in the Pro Tour again is everything I've waited for.
- I'm glad that new printings and card styles let people customize their decks and give them a means of self-expression but it's over the top now. None of the other paper/digital card games have held my attention and part of that is that Magic looks so much better. There's a decades-long history and experience of worldbuilding that Hearthstone or whatever can't hold a candle to. What a Magic card 'looks like' is constantly changing and has seen seismic shifts over the years but there's always been a sense of a shared aesthetic - a lot of the more adventurous alternate arts look like something from another card game got lost and stumbled into Studio X. With many of Magic's most iconic cards the original art is part of what gives those good brain chemicals - I have the Ravnica Temple Garden art that blew me away when I was 12 years old on my wall and I don't know if it would have made such an impression then if there were three different arts from three different blocks alongside the space art, a random promo art, and an interchangeable Expedition art all at once. The experience of having an old Swords to Plowshares with the classic art cast against me is much different from a new version where I have to pick it up and squint at it to tell what it is. I also find that it's rare that all of the new options speak to me personally - if I'm comparing a card printed years ago to its reprint today the newer version is likely to have worse art on a worse frame with worse print quality/card stock.
The great thing about Magic though is that you can choose how you engage. There are more tools for Cube designers than ever before and I can indulge my nostalgia with Premodern or goof off with stuff like Historic Brawl even if the mainstream Limited/Constructed formats aren't doing it for me at the moment. As always, you just have to find the right people to share that with - it's still about the gathering.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
This hits hard as well. I remember the days where I would battle it out with friends using casual 60 card decks. I had so many of those! A mono blue deck that "abused" Minamo, School at Water's Edge being able to target itself by attaching Darksteel Garrison to it. A BG deck using Wild Pair to first search out Gigantomancer with a Brood of Cockroaches, and then use that Gigantomancer to search up the really wild stuff like... Pelakka Wurm
A pirate theme deck that was UB solely because Ramirez DePietro and Dreadship Reef just felt like they belonged in that deck (also featuring Piracy Charm). The list goes on and on, and I had more fun with those, honestly, than with Commander (even though I like Commander).
I hate this quite a bit, because it's also like... do these people just assume that everyone has all *checks scryfall* 1633 legendary creatures memorized? Because I do not, and I'm someone who remembers the Jellymoose.
It also doesn't help that more recent legendary creatures tend to feel more like... "this is the card for the [blank] deck", where the way to build around it is super obvious and straightforward.
But Train, that man is too cut to be a bear!
...
I think part of the reason why the online community feels so anti-fun sometimes ("no, your deck must be a contender for the top of the meta, otherwise what's the point?") is that the players who are actually interested in spending a ton of time discussing competitive formats are going to be on the Spike-y end of things. Or people who are really invested in complaining about said competitive format, because this is the internet and complaining is both easy and cathartic (says the person who is complaining right now)!
...
I think part of the reason why the online community feels so anti-fun sometimes ("no, your deck must be a contender for the top of the meta, otherwise what's the point?") is that the players who are actually interested in spending a ton of time discussing competitive formats are going to be on the Spike-y end of things. Or people who are really invested in complaining about said competitive format, because this is the internet and complaining is both easy and cathartic (says the person who is complaining right now)!
It absolutely has. It sounds cynical, but Magic is no longer a game first, but a brand. From planeswalkers, to the aggrandizing art, to reflecting your real-life identity through your hard-bought commander, it's a core drive of the design.
Pretty enamored, but not at my peak.
I like thinking about playing (and still look at spoilers / cubes / Canadian highlander), but I am not playing much- maybe 8 hours a month. I deleted Arena as it wasn't sparking joy and have no friends that I am playing with locally. I am part of a discord that rotisserie drafts (with some banned list or restrictions, depending on the mood of the tastemakers), but the nearly full card pools have not sparked much joy for me after I participated in several drafts early 2021. I still really enjoy thinking about Magic gaming ecosystems, particularly the smaller environments of 6-to-8-player draft pods and 2-player, head-to-head drafting. I am also actively buying small batches of cards every few months.
There are some Canadian highlander events in the area that I try to go to monthly, but it is disheartening to see how impactful Eldraine-forward cards have been. Like I've seen in my own cubes and many others, new designs are doing a lot more than the majority of older designs in constructed as well. Today, there is talk of opening Attractions in Legacy as a viable strategy (to join supplemental set all-stars Initiative and Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes). I do not feel like I can build Canadian highlander decks that are overly interesting; all decks are lean, mean killing machines (many featuring a heavy dose of new toys) or just lose readily to the machines.
Regarding Cubes:
* Traditional "Shuffle & Make 15-card pack" cubes: I have two skeletons of untested and/or pilfered cubes. One of these is Penny Pincher 2.0 (but I do not recall if I updated it or not). I see no reason to dust these off unless I played enough with local "cubers"; likely, these will just sit in boxes and continue to get pilfered. If I were to update them, I would consider updates from all cards printed (which many know is the cube curators' downfall as well as their labor of love).
* Fantasy Set "curate packs with duplicates to invoke something similar to retail limited" cubes: I have two of these as well (and have the remains in list form of a few prior projects)! Again, I do not see these being used any time soon, but they are ready to play and novel enough that I assume I might play each once in the next... 2 or so years. They have not been updated since late 2020 (and I do not see a need to do so until some gameplay feedback proves a reason); both projects are firmly rooted in Magic's past design.
* Head-to-head cubes; aka grids aka twoberts aka 180 cubes: these still encompass the majority of my cube efforts (and I have maybe six built but only two are under heavy construction). I also consider all cards printed for most of my grids, and for better or worse, this has kept me engaged in caring about Magic. And, most importantly, I still will play a bit with friends through MTGO or the occasional paper play when visiting.
Through mostly my head-to-head cube engagement, I have a strong affinity for new game piece design. Beyond the top-tier of power and the obviously designed for commander, there is plenty of interesting game piece creation coming out of each set to fit roles within heavily curated mtg ecosystems. I don't want to think much on the economy surrounding the game, but rather how the game is played: the constructed-format-centered approach has failed my interests. Card pools are not curated enough to hold my interest when it comes to deck building and game play.
I echo a lot of what other said about game piece design and the ways we engage with the game, and here are a few points to which I really connected:
I am envious of all y'all that still have a fun time getting together and playing with friends! Maybe that will be me again in the future (if I take the time to wade through cube meet-ups)!
Also, I love being able to lurk Riptide posts and think about about the discussions of others even when I am not participating.
I like thinking about playing (and still look at spoilers / cubes / Canadian highlander), but I am not playing much- maybe 8 hours a month. I deleted Arena as it wasn't sparking joy and have no friends that I am playing with locally. I am part of a discord that rotisserie drafts (with some banned list or restrictions, depending on the mood of the tastemakers), but the nearly full card pools have not sparked much joy for me after I participated in several drafts early 2021. I still really enjoy thinking about Magic gaming ecosystems, particularly the smaller environments of 6-to-8-player draft pods and 2-player, head-to-head drafting. I am also actively buying small batches of cards every few months.
There are some Canadian highlander events in the area that I try to go to monthly, but it is disheartening to see how impactful Eldraine-forward cards have been. Like I've seen in my own cubes and many others, new designs are doing a lot more than the majority of older designs in constructed as well. Today, there is talk of opening Attractions in Legacy as a viable strategy (to join supplemental set all-stars Initiative and Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes). I do not feel like I can build Canadian highlander decks that are overly interesting; all decks are lean, mean killing machines (many featuring a heavy dose of new toys) or just lose readily to the machines.
Regarding Cubes:
* Traditional "Shuffle & Make 15-card pack" cubes: I have two skeletons of untested and/or pilfered cubes. One of these is Penny Pincher 2.0 (but I do not recall if I updated it or not). I see no reason to dust these off unless I played enough with local "cubers"; likely, these will just sit in boxes and continue to get pilfered. If I were to update them, I would consider updates from all cards printed (which many know is the cube curators' downfall as well as their labor of love).
* Fantasy Set "curate packs with duplicates to invoke something similar to retail limited" cubes: I have two of these as well (and have the remains in list form of a few prior projects)! Again, I do not see these being used any time soon, but they are ready to play and novel enough that I assume I might play each once in the next... 2 or so years. They have not been updated since late 2020 (and I do not see a need to do so until some gameplay feedback proves a reason); both projects are firmly rooted in Magic's past design.
* Head-to-head cubes; aka grids aka twoberts aka 180 cubes: these still encompass the majority of my cube efforts (and I have maybe six built but only two are under heavy construction). I also consider all cards printed for most of my grids, and for better or worse, this has kept me engaged in caring about Magic. And, most importantly, I still will play a bit with friends through MTGO or the occasional paper play when visiting.
Through mostly my head-to-head cube engagement, I have a strong affinity for new game piece design. Beyond the top-tier of power and the obviously designed for commander, there is plenty of interesting game piece creation coming out of each set to fit roles within heavily curated mtg ecosystems. I don't want to think much on the economy surrounding the game, but rather how the game is played: the constructed-format-centered approach has failed my interests. Card pools are not curated enough to hold my interest when it comes to deck building and game play.
I echo a lot of what other said about game piece design and the ways we engage with the game, and here are a few points to which I really connected:
I am envious of all y'all that still have a fun time getting together and playing with friends! Maybe that will be me again in the future (if I take the time to wade through cube meet-ups)!
Also, I love being able to lurk Riptide posts and think about about the discussions of others even when I am not participating.