I love this one. Feels more like a black card w/ the artwork but so good.

I agree, I think odds are in favor of that set being a “break” where we see UB/other IP characters as planeswalkers. Spun as “a silly what if?” scenario but then ultimately and always planned as the full transformation.

Wow lol what on earth could this even be… I can’t wait for Secret Lair Crayola to come with crayons and blank cards to make your own!

Wow I stand corrected – currently watching Azorius Control in the finals O_O

This is super helpful, thanks @TehPers@beehaw.org

I’m glad you posted this here, I saw a discussion a few days ago and the entire thing just disgusted me. I actually played when these cards came out but I never knew about this card or any of what this was. Now, in hindsight, it’s pretty ridiculous to me that Mark Rosewater pushed this thru to actually being printed. To print something like this, it has to go through numerous stages of review. He thought this was so funny and such a good “in joke” that he pushed it through. Never once apologized, and whenever was asked about this, he never said anything or apologized at all.

NOW after this all comes out the guy issues an apology and owns it. That’s great and all, but what kind of a scumbag does this, especially someone in their 30s. He wasn’t a child, he was a grown adult working for a big game company. He even brought this card up on his drive to work podcast and never said anything about the true meaning behind the card. I have lost a lot of respect for Rosewater over the last few years but this is beyond sick.

This is especially sick because this was done to a woman during a time when it was incredibly difficult for women to get into the game. A woman who just dared to “have a relationship” with other magic players. Done to someone who didn’t and couldn’t really speak up for herself given the overwhelming pressure of trying to fit into the group of magic players and the heightened position that Rosewater had at WoTC. All the more egregious to me.

Good to see some deck diversity but I guess control is just dead as an archetype now. I don’t know if there is a viable control deck in any format, maybe Pauper has one. The death of control seems directly related to threats becoming far better than answers over the last 5-10 years.

This is absolutely mental and it’s very clear to me that I’m just taking a long time off from this game. Unreal.

Wow I actually never noticed that until now. That’s kinda odd for the game too, they kinda have to have the same rules and type/subtype for it to work. I don’t know how the rules fully work, but it could be that they’re both “stones” and Infinity/Terminus is an adjective or something. I have no clue what is going on anymore.

It’s too bad we can’t see overall pre-release attendance by set but there was a reddit thread on the main subreddit about attendance. All if it anecdotal but it seems like it’s pretty down overall. I’m not surprised either, regardless of UB they totally half-assed this entire set. It was originally planned to be an aftermath style booster, like those 7 cards, and this is what we get when executive leadership decries 6 standard sets a year. Upper management is the only force possible to ruin this game.

This is awesome work, nocturne. I can’t believe you got this much done already. I’m pinning it to the top for a little while and maybe we could even make a separate page on the site to host these rankings with comments.

Wow, this is awesome work you’re doing here. I never would have assumed that but I would say if I were going to buy a precon I would absolutely want to know this ahead of time.

That actually is very important context, not just for beginners but anyone looking to get into Commander with a pre-con. It would be a huge amount of work but honestly it could be something we even try to crowdsource here or Reddit. I would love to see a fan-created list of what the brackets actually are for the pre-cons.

Apologies because I don’t have an answer for your question, but it was my understanding that all pre-cons were Bracket 2. I didn’t think any pre-cons came in higher or lower than that.

It would be a great service to see what the bracket is for the pre-cons, it could be a lot of work - it looks like there are currently 145 of them.

I think its a huge loss to have those players leave MtG but at the same time, there is no real home for 1v1 competitive in Magic anymore. Locally here (Pennsylvania) it seems to be mostly Flesh and Blood and some Lorcana picking up those players, in Baltimore I noticed there was a huge growth in Sorcery. Maybe the diaspora will end up being a good thing overall, technically for as far Magic has swung towards casual play they could technically always swing the pendulum back towards competitive but I am laughing as I’m typing this out lol.

To that end, we’re going to be more aggressive next year with the number of banned and restricted announcement windows and the timing, adding more. We’re still fiddling with that cadence, but our aim is to have one for each major set release (or close to that amount) to maintain a sense of predictability and avoid disruptions during play seasons. It’s not always possible to have that particular cake and eat it too, but we hear loud and clear that we don’t have enough windows of opportunity.

We’re also going to slightly move up our previously announced banned and restricted announcement date from November 24 to November 10. This keeps the basic premise of not interfering with players who had planned their decks and travel for the Standard RCQ season while still moving up the announcement and giving players more time to prepare for the World Championships should something change.

I think it should always be avoided. Fortunately that one is somewhat subtle but I think it should never be done. The text should be the highest layer in the design file. I already think they took things too far with that bordered text on the FCA cards:

This is nearly unreadable for me and it hurts my head to read it.

Yea honestly I can’t believe that card lol just absolutely nuts.

They know that printing activated abilities like 0: and abilities that keep mana floating forever are hyper dangerous yet just don’t seem to care anymore. Or maybe they think they have to do this to sell, who knows.

This is awesome, thank you for posting the deck lists!

This is never going to stop until Hasbro/WoTC change their overall strategy. They’re catering 100% to casual commander, and are either actively or passively forcing competitive constructed formats into the ground.

“You cannot serve two masters” is at play here and the two design philosophies are at odds with each other. It’s Vivi right now, it will be Electro in the next set. After that it will be something Avatar, etc etc etc.

They have two options:

1. Increase the power of cards/sets, specifically legendary creatures, to grow revenue but ruin competitive formats
2. Decrease or maintain the power of cards/sets to save competitive formats but decrease (or risk decreasing) revenue

Since WoTC no longer runs the business of Magic the game, they cannot do option #2 anymore which is what we saw with Masques block and all of the other lower powered sets that re-stabilized competitive formats.

We are forever stuck with #1 until Hasbro sells WoTC.