General Timespiral Remastered Timeshifts

Every card uses the current oracle wording and templating sensibilities in general. Notice that Flickerwisp, for example, exiles a permanent.

Oh good point! Makes it even nicer to switch out some cards I have to the ones with the new frame :) Generally find the new wording to be much easier to read.
 
EvKYWEyUYAQUWfo
treasurecruise.jpg


Blue cards coming up! I guess I should be buying singles but I'm feeling tempted in grabbing at least one or two boosters of this when it comes out.
 
Blue day was going pretty badly for me so far. I mean, they picked some sweet cards (and some terrible ones, lookig at you TNN), but none of these fit my current cube for various reasons (except I could see Baral now), but with the Lab Man I got today's Flickerwisp! ... or Thraben Inspector. A staple got upgraded.
 
Wow, these cards look so good in the old frame. It's so natural.

I didn't like the new frame in 2003, and they said "one day you'll get used to it and not be able to go back to the old one." I did get used to it, and it does make the text more readable, but the old one still looks nicer.

Also, they seem to be basically reprinting my cube, which I appreciate. Edit: Actually I think I've removed most cards they are reprinting at some point :(
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
the old one still looks nicer.

Mainly to show other opinions do exist, because everyone seems to be digging these old border reprints a lot, full disagree. I thought the 8E border was an improvement, except for the artifacts, and I think the current border is head and shoulders above both the old frame and the 8E frame. Looking at all these new cards in the old border is like looking at a 90's website for me. It looks so outdated and suboptimal to me, important information is just floating in the border with no clear delineation. The white frame in particular is awkwardly unreadable. I mean, it works, and I still play cards in the old frame, but nostalgia is really all that makes me appreciate these reprints in the old border. The only things I liked better in the old frame were the tombstone icon for flashback cards and the brown frame for artifact. All this is personal taste of course :)
 
Onde
100 % agree. You are expressing the thoughts I didn’t want to type down but still felt inside.

But Ravnic I am so happy for you :D When I saw you for LabMan I cheered! :)

I am a fan of Wizards giving us a new temporary card frame for almost every new set. I like the variety.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Onde
100 % agree. You are expressing the thoughts I didn’t want to type down but still felt inside.

But Ravnic I am so happy for you :D When I saw you for LabMan I cheered! :)

I am a fan of Wizards giving us a new temporary card frame for almost every new set. I like the variety.
Haha, yeah, that YESYESYES was great to see :D
 
Mainly to show other opinions do exist, because everyone seems to be digging these old border reprints a lot, full disagree. I thought the 8E border was an improvement, except for the artifacts, and I think the current border is head and shoulders above both the old frame and the 8E frame. Looking at all these new cards in the old border is like looking at a 90's website for me. It looks so outdated and suboptimal to me, important information is just floating in the border with no clear delineation. The white frame in particular is awkwardly unreadable. I mean, it works, and I still play cards in the old frame, but nostalgia is really all that makes me appreciate these reprints in the old border. The only things I liked better in the old frame were the tombstone icon for flashback cards and the brown frame for artifact. All this is personal taste of course :)
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I like having some cards with the old border in my cube, but M15 border and the most recent oracle wording is just so much better than what they were doing back in the 90s and early 00s! I used to think I don't like the new border, but I realized that I just don't like the overly-glossy feel of Post M15 art. The old-school, grainy treatment they've given to these Time Spiral cards is part of what made me realize this, actually! Everything in the new border just looks so much cleaner. That said, I think I am going to use the old-border Ponder for my cube. Ponder wasn't legal in modern back in '15 (it still isn't), and the old border treatment fits with my other legacy staple cantrip and one of my favorite cards in my cube from an aesthetic standpoint , my Mercadian Masques Brainstorm!

Also, new Fblthp! I think this kind of explains what I'm talking about in terms of border clean-ness. Fblthp's art looks like it was done with a physical medium, so the art doesn't look super glossy and feels a bit more like an old-school card. Even though Fblthp has a somewhat old-school feel, he looks better in the new border because the card looks cleaner.
fblthpthelost.jpg
fblthpthelost.jpg


Compare this to a card like Baral, Chief of Compliance who has a more "digital" look to it. Baral looks better with the old border treatment because the colors are a bit less glossy.
baralchiefofcompliance.jpg
baralchiefofcompliance.jpg


Also, I found this picture of Fblthp's artist holding his work. WOTC apparently photoshopped the version that actually made it onto the card to make it look a little bit more like the original Totally Lost...
2.Fblthp-Artist.jpg
 
Train
The M15 frame came out with M15 which was released in 2014.
Ponder was banned in Modern in september 2011 along with Preordain

Public service

Based on above logic, shouldn’t you run Ponder in its original card frame, the Modern card frame, which is Lorwyn from 2007?
 

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I appreciate some things about the 8th Ed card frame but the new, 'thinner' iteration of that is a real downgrade for me. People said in 2014 that we'd all get used to the new frame but I've only become more ardent about wanting the thicker border back. Compare this MM1 Gifts Ungiven to the MM3 version:

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The MM1 version does such a better job at framing the card properly without distractions.
 
Yeah, i agree. I was fine with the 2003 frame, but I really hate the M15 one, especially for rares. You already have like 4 different round shapes within the frame, and the holo foil stamp add another one and cuts into the text box in a super ugly way. Also, the cards lack color with only 3/4 of the frame being colored and they look inconsistent and unstill. The color should frame everything. Imho you can really see that this frame evolved from the previous one and wasn't created to fit it's needs.
 
Train
The M15 frame came out with M15 which was released in 2014.
Ponder was banned in Modern in september 2011 along with Preordain

Public service

Based on above logic, shouldn’t you run Ponder in its original card frame, the Modern card frame, which is Lorwyn from 2007?
Ponder may have been printed and banned in the 2003-14 era, but it's now only able to be played competitively in legacy and vintage, which are the two formats which naturally include all black-border cards printed with the 1993-2003 frame. Since Ponder is now known for it's time in Legacy, I think giving it the old frame is rather fitting.

I appreciate some things about the 8th Ed card frame but the new, 'thinner' iteration of that is a real downgrade for me. People said in 2014 that we'd all get used to the new frame but I've only become more ardent about wanting the thicker border back. Compare this MM1 Gifts Ungiven to the MM3 version:

4b11f693-716e-41de-a0ea-2a5178a284dc.jpg
79d7dbbd-7947-4d1d-aaf8-a74e1ffdae97.jpg

The MM1 version does such a better job at framing the card properly without distractions.
I think the issue there is that whoever was in charge of the art department for MM3 went through decreased the contrast on the art a bit, making it less vibrant and hiding a lot of detail. The pattern on the moonfolk's dress, the details behind her head, and texture on the floor all run together on the MM3 version of the art. The MM1 version, by contrast, has sharper lines, and allows for many details to be more easily discerned.

There are several cards which have been improved by the new border treatment when the art is left unchanged or minimally changed. For example, take a look at Young Pyromancer:
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The Eternal Masters and other later prints of young pyromancers are a little bluer than the original, however, the contrast of the piece remains largely the same. The newer versions of the pyromancer look a little bit cleaner than the original.

Now, look at Stoneforge Mystic:
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4d3473d0-b46f-41f5-ac1e-ba217f7747d4.jpg
The art for the double masters version of the mystic appears to have been brightened a tiny bit, but otherwise remains unchanged. The biggest change here is that the text size has been increased on the double masters variant, making it a bit easier to read than the original.

I'm not necessarily trying to say that the M15 frame looks better than the 8th Edition frame, but rather that certain prints look better based on how the cards have been formatted within said frame. I too prefer the Modern Masters 2013 Gifts Ungiven to the Modern Masters 2017 Version, but that's not the fault of the frame so much as the art director who decided to mess with the lighting. As we've seen, the new frame can have a neutral or improving effect on cards where the art is either not changed or minimally altered.

What card looks better in what frame depends on how each card was edited after the fact, and is not intrinsically linked to the frame itself.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, i agree. I was fine with the 2003 frame, but I really hate the M15 one, especially for rares. You already have like 4 different round shapes within the frame, and the holo foil stamp add another one and cuts into the text box in a super ugly way. Also, the cards lack color with only 3/4 of the frame being colored and they look inconsistent and unstill. The color should frame everything. Imho you can really see that this frame evolved from the previous one and wasn't created to fit it's needs.

To each their own, but the M15 frame was in fact exactly created to fit its needs. They didn't want to do another massive overhaul because they liked the 8E border, but they adopted a new digitized printing method that required computer readable card information. You'll notice that the M15 frame has a consistent and readable footer that, compared to the 8E frame, now also includes the abbreviated set code, the language, and the rarity. In addition, counterfeiting was a rising problem at that moment in time, so they introduced a holofoil, that, while ugly, made it harder to create forgeries. I, in fact, like the rounder frame, as it fits the round corners of the cardboard much better. I do wonder if the frame would have looked slightly better if they had extended the side border to the bottom of the text box, but that's the only nitpick I have.
 
The artist information, besides being more computer readable, is way more human readable too. The black bottom also helps the text box and P/T box stand out better. The text box is also ~10% bigger on the M15 frame, and they lightened the coloring inside the textboxes (again, increasing contrast and therefor readability). It's a good design.
 
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