A Dark Day for Magic

[Budget Player Cadet]

Well, congrats wizards. You've done it again.

Please read this, guys: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1039590

Honestly, though, I wouldn't put it past wizards. They've done **** before.

This, however, is just getting ridiculous. Okay...

1. The vintage restrictions.

Okay, some of the things here I understand. Honestly, Flash had it coming. The deck was broken, and flash had to go. All things considered, it'll probably continue being playable, running wishes, more tutors, and the like.
Gush I don't really see, but then again I've never seen a GAT deck run, so I wouldn't know.
Merchant scroll also had it coming; it was a 2-mana tutor.
But brainstorm and ponder are total ********. I mean, they're solid card draw, but not restriction-worthy. Why, guys, is EVERY card on the list blue? Just look at "Avatar of Kokusho" 's Avatar!!!!!

2. The changes.

Okay, guys, what gives? As one guy said on gleemax, "I hope this is a 2-month late april fools joke".
MYSTIC RARE?!?!?!? Someone needs to slap MaRo upside the head, honestly. UGMadness will, I KNOW that... But still. I can't really say anything about this that hasn't already been said in above thread. It is a BAD idea. It is the Yu-Gi-Oh-ization of magic.
As I said in gleemax, I am forced to get following out of my system (albeit not in red):

MAGIC IS DYING!!!!!

Sorry. But honestly. Dredge is still the best deck in extended (no bannings! ), nothing banned in standard, Hell, they even nerfed limited!

3. The land in pack

Some of you might see this as no problem. But what it does is ensures that there's one less card per booster pack that can actually be of use, especially in limited. 3 cards less in draft, 5 cards less in sealed. Total ********.

I had to throw this out there. Sorry, I needed to rant, and this thread didn't exist.

 

[Spiderman]

I'm just about to post two separate threads for this

 

[Killer Joe]

I suppose the claim should be: "Tournament Magic is Dying!"

But until I see the number of participants severly drop I'm not so sure the end is near. New folks joining the game will never know what "The Old Days" were like, so the're not likely to make Magic die.

I have noticed that many "casual magic players" who do participate in tournament Magic are nearly ALWAYS annoyed by rules changes in tournament Magic, or any kind of change for that matter.

The folks I mostly play with are most likely always going to play the 'accepted' way to play Magic according to my House Rules. Wiz Co. can't change that unless they send the Magic Police to arrest me.

 

[turgy22]

I read Maro's article this morning, as well as the official announcement on Shards of Alara changes and was about to post something myself.

Personally, I'm happy about the changes, though mostly just about the scaling back of the number of cards. As a casual player (with a casual player's budget) the only trouble I have with Magic is filling out playsets of cards I like. With less cards per set, it should be a lot easier for me to find four copies of a rare or uncommon I'd like to build around.

Mystic rares - I could care less. There will only be 10-15 per set, so I probably won't feel like I'm missing much. I think they've been created more as a favor to dealers who would have a harder time selling chase rares on the secondary market now that rare playsets will be easier to acquire.

Land in pack - It's not a problem. I personally don't need them, but I definitely remember what it was like starting out and not having enough lands to go around for all my decks. Again, the smaller set sizes really offset the impact of the extra land (don't need to buy as many packs to get every card). For limited, sealed, etc, nothing changes. Everyone will be getting extra lands so it's not like some people are at a disadvantage. Maybe the decks won't be quite as good, but isn't that sort of the whole point of limited?

MAGIC IS DYING!!!!!

If I had a nickel for every time this was posted on the internet...

 

[Spiderman]

If I had a nickel for every time this was posted on the internet...

You'd give 'em to me!

 

[rokapoke]

Yeah, but Spidey, if you had all those nickels you'd probably just spend them on goats and paddles for Ransac's parties.

 

[Ransac]

I highly doubt that Magic is dying. Magic is on an upsoar like I've never seen before (just look at the "hooplah" surrounding the Worlds tournament this past December).

The 1 land per pack kinda blows, but it helps out less-experienced players by helping them build a basic land base while getting other cards as well. Additionally, this means that the older players have the option of getting land with new art without having to resort to buying a sealed deck (though, I personally prefer buying the sealed deck).

I think the "Mythic Rare" thing will be a flop. Most of the time, R&D can't figure out which rares are going to be great anyway. Why throw another rarity into the mix? "Oh wow!!! I got a Power Nine as my Mythic Rare!!!" "Let's see what I get then!!!.... Merfolk of the Pearl Trident......?" Obviously, these won't be the real cards, but you get the point.


Ransac, cpa trash man

 

[Spiderman]

rokapoke: And that's great fun for everyone!

Ransac: I think Mark gave some examples. Like planeswalkers...

 

[Mooseman]

I think the land in place of a common is a ripoff.... just add a land to the pack and make it 16 cards.......

Rarity has never been a hallmark of WoTC's expertise.... but there are always some "rares" that are harder to get than others..... so now they have a name "Mythic"

Magic is not dying, but I do believe that the tournament scene is being reordered or restructured for good or bad...... This is just my gut feeling..... no real evidence.

 

[Oversoul]

1. I think this officially kills my waning interest in Vintage. It was a great format, but restricting Brainstorm? That's too much.

2. The mythic rare thing is just silly. I doubt it will make people buy more packs and it will really only frustrate players who want playsets of those ultra-rare cards but can't afford them.

3. If I were still buying packs, I'd quit. It's a terrible deal. Sorry to wax nostalgic, but I used to be able to buy a pack for like two bucks and get some good cards I could use, often getting a rare that I could trade for even more cards, which helped my small collection out a lot. I stopped buying packs when it became much more economical to just buy grab-bags of used cards and trade for or buy the singles I needed to complete particular decks.

My main reason for not playing any more was that lost everybody I used to play with. But I still thought it was one of the best games out there. I especially enjoyed the storm mechanic and when Ravnica and Time Spiral were coming out I really wanted to get back into the swing of things. But stuff like this really just seems like a drag and takes the fun out of the game. I won't pretend that it's a death knell for Magic because most of their target audience is younger than me now. They don't keep making money by being loyal to their veterans. They have to keep sucking teenagers into the hobby. So I, at least (and most of us, I think) are pretty irrelevant to WotC.

But for me, stuff like this is a death knell. It's killing my interest in the game.

 

[Modus Pwnens]

The one land/booster sucks for drafts, 3 cards less really does matter.

Mythic rare makes me wonder if Wizards have been smoking pot, or hit their head with something heavy. Really.. Mythic rare? It will be ridiculous anyway. If there are (some) good (as in: tournament quality) mythic rares, they will be expensive to get, and if they're not, there will simply be a slightly less common craprare, and nobody cares, which kinda beats the point, so they will most likely make them good.

I wouldn't be surprised if they will turn magic into an entirely different game, losing quite a large part of the old players in the process.

 

[Shabbaman]

If I had a nickel for every time this was posted on the internet...

Heh. I started playing in '95, just after the release of Ice Age. That's when Chronicles got released, with only reprinted cards. Needless to say that this was going to kill magic. Personally I thought Stasis was going to kill magic The african setting of Mirage would be deadly. Taking Balance out of the core set (think about that for a moment...). Colored rarity symbols. The introduction of type 2. Rotating duals out of extended. Urza block. New card faces. Affinity. Balancing the color pie. Rebalancing the color pie. Unbalancing the color pie (Damnation!). Planeswalkers. Printing more cards per year. Now, printing less cards per year. Hardly a comprehensible list, but it let's you put it in perspective. And a lot of nickels!

Mythic rares? So there will be some more expensive cards? Bad luck for type 2 tournament players. For me, as I play eternal formats (like probably most casual players), I couldn't care less. Some new cards are definately good enough to slip in your vintage or legacy deck (Tarmogoyf, Thougthseize), but I wouldn't say you miss a lot if you don't have them. In T2, a different story, because these cards define the competitive decks. But if you're playing T2 you're spending too much to begin with anyway. If you can't get the cards, you have to build decks with different constraints. Building decks without certain cards should fit in the Casual Player's way of deckbuilding. This constraint is what defines casual for me. So we get more casual players?

But in the end it boils down to this: Wizards has been changing the distribution of rares a lot over the years. Legends had more rares than commons. For quite some time sets had equal amounts of commons, unc and rares (a change which didn't kill magic). This changed quite recently with Mirrodin (a change which didn't kill magic by the way). Arabian nights (or antiquities, don't recall exactly) didn't have rares but 3 different rarities of uncommons. So what does it matter that you now have 4 rarities? It's still the same game, only there are 12 cards in Shards you won't see as often as other rares. Hardly shocking if you put it in perspective.

EDIT: I forgot about the planeshifted cards from Planar chaos. These have a higher rarity than normal rares as well. Not only did this prohibit me and a lot of other players to pick up playsets of Damnations (in my case even cheaper than a set of WoG, go higher rarity go!), it didn't kill magic. Wizards toyed with rarity a lot in TS block. Not only didn't it kill magic, it proved to be not so much of a problem.

About the vintage restrictions: Brainstorm changes vintage as we know it. Indeed. Not the first time though. Brainstorm is a lot better than just "solid card draw". Brainstorm was one of the strongest card outside of the B/R list and played in every tier 1 deck, and thus it's not so strange that it's now on The List. Besides, Smemmen was ranting about it for months, and Wizards listens to Smemmen. About restricting Gush: I was amazed that they unrestricted Gush in the first place. I have played against 4 Gush GAT, and it's a monster.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the article explaining these bannings. Should be up by friday.

 

[Spiderman]

Shabbaman: You forgot the big "killer" of Magic (and why this website/group was formed: The introduction of "the stack" with the 6th ed. rules

 

[Shabbaman]

Hm well, I'd rather just pretend that never happened.

 

[Mooseman]

Shabbaman: You forgot the big "killer" of Magic (and why this website/group was formed: The introduction of "the stack" with the 6th ed. rules

Really? The site was formed when the 6th ed rules came out..... sounds like a story for another thread......

 

[Oversoul]

I wouldn't be surprised if they will turn magic into an entirely different game, losing quite a large part of the old players in the process.

WotC doesn't care if they alienate older players. They want th Yu-Gi-Oh crowd. This could be a good move for them financially.

Spidey: Sure, there have been a lot of changes, but something like the new card face probably didn't make many people quit. It was purely aesthetic. The 6th edition rules changes, well, they were huge, but most things actually stayed the same. The way it was handled caused it to get blown out of proportion.

While rarity has changed, that was way back when booster pack card counts and other things were also changing. And it never centered on gimmicky "ultra rare" cards. If anything, the major deviations from the basic formula involved making rares less rare by designating them as "uncommon 1" which was printed at levels between uncommon and rare. I don't know how planeshifted cards work, though, so maybe that one's an exception. This change seems like it can only be bad for players. Sure, not all players will even care, but they won't benefit from it.

And the land thing is even worse for players. It's a slap in the face. There was actually some rationale behind the 6th. edition rules changes, even though I disliked them. Tweaking the color pie, well, regardless of what it actually did, the idea was to balance the game or make it more interesting. Replacing one card in every booster pack with a basic land isn't doing anything to the game itself, just making booster packs a worse deal for people who wanted to buy them.

 

[Shabbaman]

Replacing one card in every booster pack with a basic land isn't doing anything to the game itself, just making booster packs a worse deal for people who wanted to buy them.

It does affect limited. If they decrease set size, the chance of a certain common popping up in your booster increases. By replacing a common with a land the chance of getting a certain common decreases.

 

[Mooseman]

It does affect limited. If they decrease set size, the chance of a certain common popping up in your booster increases. By replacing a common with a land the chance of getting a certain common decreases.

That is true and if they decrease the number of non-land cards in a booster to 6, it decreases your chance of getting a certain common/uncommon/rare........
does that make anyone feel better?
I don't see them decreasing the price of the booster.
How do you increase profits..... lower costs.....

 

[rokapoke]

How do you increase profits..... lower costs.....

How does this lower costs? It doesn't. It increases revenue because a lot of people will just buy more cards to acquire all their playsets. It just dumps on the consumer, that's all.

 

[Shabbaman]

That is true and if they decrease the number of non-land cards in a booster to 6, it decreases your chance of getting a certain common/uncommon/rare........
does that make anyone feel better?
I don't see them decreasing the price of the booster.
How do you increase profits..... lower costs.....

You are correct, but my point was that the addition of a land does have a purpose, whereas Oversoul stated that it doesn't. That it pisses of players is besides the point. True nevertheless.

I'm not sure how much it would lower costs though. Printing cardboard probably isn't the variable cost factor. Perhaps designing less cards is a major cost factor. I don't know.

Personally I couldn't care less about a mountain in a booster. I don't open packs or draft (well, not that much), and I'm not sure if there are a lot of people doing exactly that as a way of collecting playsets of commons. For me the worth of a booster is decided by the average value of rares, plus the occasional worthy uncommon. The expected return on investment is too low to invest in boosters (says the man that bought about a box of Homelands in search of Baron Sengir). I think players are more hurt by worthless rares like Mudhole and Steamflogger boss: a rare doesn't have a guaranteed value, nor does an uncommon. These changes don't affect this.