Of course! I should have been searching for the Magic Cards that weren't "Card"!
General [TLA/TLE] [UB] Avatar: The Last Airbender
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So, you claim to define "true old school fans"? And if someone would be playing for 25+ years, be well versed in old mtg lore, loves playing old school cards from pre modern area etc. but doesn't hate UB in general, they wouldn't be a "true old school fan"?
I usually don’t read what you write after you get personal when I make an objective statement about the entire game as a whole. And I also haven’t made any of those claims. But you are appearently, according to yourself, not part of the fans that want the game to stay the way the game was when you fell in love with it. This game is no longer for the fans but for the next fans. The Transformers fans. The Marvel fans. The anime fans. And you.
UB will outnumber Magic sets in 2026. And UB will be a part of Magic at least for the next five years according to Wizards.
Let's be real though, even without UB, the game still wouldn't be the one most of us fell in love with when we first started playing. Heck, it stopped being the game that I fell in love with on October 2, 2015 when Battle for Zendikar was printed and Theros block rotated out of Standard. But then, on October 5, 2018, it became a game I loved even more than the one I fell in love with when Guilds of Ravnica was released.
Magic changes. That's actually one of the big appeals of it, in my opinon. While I think it's fair to argue that they're doing a little bit too much universes beyond stuff at the moment, I don't think that this is going to be a permanent change. Remember when Standard was only going to last 18 months? Or when we were getting two Masters sets per year? Or when FNM promo cards were replaced with tokens? All of these changes were quickly reverted because they just weren't sustainable. I suspect something similar is going to happen with Universes Beyond and we're going to start seeing fewer full sets again.
Talk about "no true Scotsman". Now, I'm relatively new to these forums. Lurked for a while. I don't know y'all as well as you presumably do. But even I can tell you Ravnic is a true "old school" fan of the game. We all are, otherwise we wouldn't be here on an MtG Cube forum. Cube is the ultimate way to express that. People's opinion of UB doesn't change that.
Now, obviously, the game has changed a lot over the last thirty years. The core rules have changed, multiple times in fact. New card types have been introduced. Old favourites have been power crept. I haven't been playing as long as you guys as I only got into the game as an adult; my first booster packs were Core 2019 and Guilds of Ravnica, and the game has changed substantially even since then, both positively and negatively. We got thematically strong crossover sets like D&D, and thematically abhorrent sets like Spiderman. Throne of Eldraine broke the game in half, and so did Ikoria. Strixhaven gave us a new popular cube mechanic in Lessons. March of the Machine: Aftermath is a set that exists. We got the long awaited return to Kamigawa, and it kicked ass. We're getting way too many UB sets, but we're also getting a return to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, and another novel. There have been ups, and there have been downs, and we've stuck with the game through it all. I much prefer that to the game being stagnant, relentlessly unchanging. As my first set I have a great affection for Guilds of Ravnica, but I'm glad the game isn't just Guilds of Ravnica repeated ad nauseum.
Ultimately, people can like more than one thing. I like the old frame Demonic Tutor and the new frame Demonic Tutor, for different reasons. Some versions look cool but are ultimately impractical, some I'm not really a fan of but I'm sure there's an audience for it. Similarly, people can geek out over Balduvian Hydra and jam it into every deck regardless of theme or format because they just love the card, while also being excited to build a The Tenth Doctor Commander deck because they're a fan of Doctor Who. That doesn't make them less of a fan, "old-school" or otherwise, than somebody who is into Balduvian Hydra but hates the idea of a The Tenth Doctor deck even being possible outside of alters and custom cards.
You're only getting back what you're handing out. You have a strong opinion, and that's fine, laudable even. But ease things up a little.
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Yeah, of course the cards that aren't Cards are the cards that you want! This makes total sense.
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If we must give our grand opinions... I think Avatar was a good choice as the setting for a Magic set, but feel like the implementation got hurt by how WotC designs UB sets (unlike Spiderman, which was just a straight-up bad fit).
First off, there are too many legendary creatures. And sure, it makes sense why - EDH drives a bunch of WotC's decision making, and part of the theoretical appeal of UB sets is that you get to play with your favorite guy as the commander. And in that context, giving players options for what version of that character they get to play means its more likely that someone will find a version they like (see also: @MilesOfficial being pumped that there was a version of Toph he actually wanted to cube with).
This is a laudable goal, but it leads to Mown's problem where the setting feels flat if you don't have existing experience with the source material. I feel like it would've been a much stronger showing if the 28(!) slots used on characters with multiple cards were spent on cards showing off the broader worldbuilding/character arcs/etc. And even then, you'd probably have too many legendary creatures (the ratio is about 1-in-4 cards with the redundant cards and 1-in-7 cards if you remove them), and could move some characters from having their own cards to flavor-text or fun easter eggs in the art.
It'd also let things be more focused. Like, it's baffling to me that the very important character dynamics between Zuko and both Ozai (his dad) and Iroh (his uncle) basically got nothing? In the main set we have Ozai's Cruelty (where it isn't obvious that the kneeling figure is Zuko or that it's portraying him begging his father not to publicly maim him), three cards of Iroh and Zuko working at a tea shop (which probably makes no sense if you don't know the source material), and Iroh standing in the background of Obsessive Pursuit and Zuko, Exiled Prince. No wonder Mown doesn't give a shit about the guy, none of the reasons to give a shit are in the set!
Paired with this, however, was the decision to also have TLE and the scene cards all get spoiled at once, all mixed together. Since TLE also includes legendary creatures (because of fucking course it does, this is 2025 Magic we're talking about), you get even more versions of the same damn character. And of course some of the character stuff that would make the legendary creatures in the main set more resonant got shoved off into TLE (The Art of Tea should've been in the main set with Uncle Iroh!), so now you have even less of a chance to figure out why so-and-so matters.
Avatar has the right kind of bones for a magic set, but I think they let the fan-bait carry things a bit too much.
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Oh, and like... I recommend watching the original Avatar series if you haven't and it seems even vaguely interesting to you. Yes, it is a children's show, but it's a children's show in the same way that The Little Prince is a children's book.
Interestingly, MaRo recently published an article on exactly this scenario, getting a UB design to resonate with people not familiar with the source material, as apparently he wasn't at all familiar with Avatar before going into playtests for the set. It's a good read and I recommend it if you're at all interested in Magic design, but notably it never actually touches on the issue of characters with multiple cards from this perspective, or potentially missing pieces of the puzzle.
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lolOh shiz more people commenting. You love these kinds of topics!
The truth is that you can vote with your words and your wallet. If you don’t fight back then you are part of the problem.
Clearly, you're being outvoted on both fronts. For my part, I did the LotR prerelease, and had a good time, but haven't actually bought any sealed UB product otherwise, unless you count the Transformers stuff that I ended up acquiring via BRO. I've bought singles from a few other UB sets like Fallout, FF and 40k. I couldn't care less about Marvel so even if the Spiderman set wasn't shit I'd probably still be skipping it. I might pick up some Avatar, haven't decided yet.
That's what "voting with your wallet" means. You cast your vote and everybody else casts theirs. There's nothing to "fight" here.
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Well, I did read those too, and I'm able to gather that Iroh is some kind of mentor figure to Zuko that cares about him, about tea I guess although I don't see what's especially noteworthy about that, and can seemingly be quite a badass. My issue is that I mostly just get a highlight reel of things that happen, like Zuko seems like a very developed characters who experiences a fairly involved character arc (as seen in the very confusing Fire Lord Zuko card having three different art treatments that I would guess span three seasons of the show), but I don't really know the order in which they happen and why they play out the way they do. I love the "I have changed." That's great buddy, what changed? Why did you disobey in the first place, and how did your mission pan out? What are you conflicted about? Who is brainwashing Jet and why? Why is Aang visiting the Realm of Koh?
And do I even want to know these answers? If you're a fan then you already recognize the thing, and if this set makes you curious, would it cheapen the watching experience if the set told you all these things that are probably emotional climaxes and sources of intrigue? I'm always going to compartmentalize the world as "not magic" anyway, I only did this exercise because I enjoy disagreeing with people on the internet and wanted to explore the veracity of a random statement. Although my thesis is that I want less plot and more world building anyway, so in that sense I'm not actually in favor of including all that, I'm just tangentially also criticizing the way wotc decided to focus on the events of the story given the fact that they did.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
The truth is that if someone doesn’t fight back, they like different things than you. It might not align with your ideals, but it’s not inherently wrong to like UB. I don’t like that you call people who like UB a problem Velrun. I too wish UB didn’t exist, but that doesn’t give us the right to act morally superior to those who do like it.
Nope, because they messed up and gave the emotional climaxes equal billing to random side characters that only show up in a couple episodes!
I agree with you on worldbuilding > plot for Magic, for the record - it plays to the strengths of the medium better. I just think that if you're going to do something, you should commit.
Also, as a side note, I think it's kinda funny that you mention 40k as one of the three UBs that feel Magic-y to you, when to me it really sticks out. I think it's the guns and the absolutely horrible frame? Meanwhile stuff like Benevolent River Spirit or Firebending Student have a very Magic-y vibe to me.
If I had to put UB sets in some kind of order from most Magic-y to least Magic-y for me, I'd probably go with something like D&D -> LotR/Baldur's Gate -> the non-directly-character-focused parts of Avatar -> Aetherdrift -> Final Fantasy/40k -> the character-focused parts of Avatar -> Dr. Who/Assassin's Creed -> Spiderman/Turtles.
One person's problem is another person's pleasure!