• kajib@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, that’s great that you enjoy them! I think the negativity is the sets aren’t self-contained. Once they’re released, they’re a part of magic and the eternal formats forever. Especially for those who have played for decades, that identity shift of the game is jarring.

    • rubythulhu
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      1 year ago

      I first started playing between 4e & ice age, and it’s BECAUSE i’ve been playing magic for 28 years (well, off and on like many people), that I’ve been wanting to see optional UB-like special releases that reinterpret other universes as if they were a plane in the magic multiverse for over a decade.

      Playgroups can very easily ban UB from their own eternal format playsessions, and I think in formats like legacy and commander where nearly anything goes anyway, it’d be silly to ban them. Perhaps there should be official “UB-friendly modern” and “core lore only modern”? modern is kinda the midway point between serious competitive and casual play anyway.

      Plus in those 28 years, magic’s core lore itself has gotten way wackier, especially in the last decade and a half or so. We now have a whole bunch of weird magic planes that would have felt just as out of place in the mid-90s; there are now:

      • a mobster plane
      • a fairy tale plane
      • an egyptian plane
      • a plane that covers everywhere from ancient to modern japanese culture
      • a vampire/werewolf centric european gothic horror set
      • a nordic/viking plane
      • a bunch of other wacky planes
      • plus eldrazi and the blind eternities are an obvious take on lovecraftian horror

      For most of the above, the only reason they’re not considered UB themselves is that the source material they’re copying is old enough to be in the public domain. And almost none of them feel like they fit in the universe magic was in its first decade or so. Even without UB, today’s landscape in mtg is far separated from the original/“pure” lore i grew up with (and even that took plenty of influence from classic public domain fiction).

      A whole bunch of top-down sets have been “jarring” to people who have been playing magic for decades.

        • rubythulhu
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          1 year ago

          it’s very hard to control your play group when that includes games at a store or CommandFest

          Correct, because some of those players will not have the same opinions as you; hell, some of them may actually enjoy UB releases. They also can’t control you ([[mindslaver]] and similar cards notwithstanding 😉).

          We have public games, and we have private games with friend playgroups. It’s not a bad thing for public games to be more inclusive, especially in casual formats like commander.