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.

I think we absolutely have a Vivi problem. Not sure what they were thinking with 0: create mana ever being printed on a card, but it’s clear they (and all of us too) never saw the interaction with Agatha’s Soul Cauldron.

Cauldron will most likely eat a ban to pay for Vivi’s sins, but here we are. They won’t ban the card while it’s being actively sold and opened imo, and certainly not from the FF set.

Thanks for posting this, I totally spaced and missed the whole tournament this weekend! I’m kinda mad at myself about that.

Seeing the Top 8, I’m not surprised and also not that upset I missed it now. Cauldron will die for Vivi’s sins.

This is awesome! I love the gameplay videos and I love that you were running this in mythic too.

I think you unfortunately are right, it definitely seems that Tribute to the World tree is too essential here to lose it. I never actually saw that card before now. Crazy to me that Tribute was never successfully built around, but standard must be too fast or too powerful for any 3 mana cards without ETBs that need something else to generate the value. Which is a huge shame.

I was curious – how did you find this before and after the bans? It seems like you would eat mono red alive but what was the gameplay/success like when Monstrous Rage and Heartfire Hero were being played?

Ok, Seedship Broodtender is a pretty good hit for golgari:

I think all of the abilities added are pretty cool. Generally it seems like Warp, and to a lesser extent Station, are just ways to get value out of the card no matter what the turn is or when you draw it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s further towards to “no bad topdecks” style of design that’s been going on and increasing.

I like the ideas of creatures tapping the turn they enter to help station, I don’t know if WoTC has playtested that one all the way though, I will say. I feel like this is gonna be pretty bonkers:

Also, if this has a name “Uthros, Titanic Godcore” why is it not legendary? How is this not legendary. I feel this way about the towns in FIN too.

Lander tokens are pretty fun, and Void seems like a lesser Revolt, but it also seems like a great addition.

Link to the top 8 decklists: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=53788&f=ST

Archive page of the tournament coverage: https://web.archive.org/web/20211023053431/https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/1998wc

I think they hit a wide range of cards to really rebalance and shake up the format. I think that Stormchaser’s Talent probably should have gone instead of This Town, and I think Omniscience should have gone instead of Abuelo’s but I think they hit a wide range of decks with these enough and I’m glad they did it.

Beanstalk hurts because that was driving a LOT of jank and artisan decks, so that is a painful loss. However it is just far too busted with too many cards in Standard right now and it’s too much card advantage for nothing. I just am sad to lose it.

I feel like Jeskai Prowess, Golgari Roots, and Mono Black midrange are doing to start cruising though.

Also I think a lot of people are moving to Arena instead which is further hurting store and paper sales. I’m sorry about your store closing though, that is a huge bummer :( I also have been unable to keep up with the release cycle for the last few years.

I agree with him here, and I think he has a good understanding of Standard.

My personal list is Monstrous Rage, Manifold Mouse, Cori Steel-Cutter, Omniscience, Stormchaser’s Talent, Caretaker’s Talent, and Up the Beanstalk. I think that has a wide band so as not to “bequeath” the crown to another deck, although something in mono-black may need to be hit as well, and if so I think it should be Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber.

This would get rid of these “hyper efficient engines” that are I think are plaguing Standard right now. Cards that just do too much and are an entire deck in a single card. Even if you slow Standard down by hitting Cori and mono-red, I still think these engines need to go because they we’re a huge problem for Standard before this mess too in my opinion.

I would definitely play this or find a way to play it

That’s a very good point about Omni. And I totally agree on WOTC breaking standard. Normally some of these problems would be resolved with the 2 year rotation too but now we’re stuck in this really tough spot that can’t be fixed without those Eldraine style bans. They seem very scared to do that though.

I think they will have to hit Monstrous Rage, that feels obvious. But beyond that, I personally think to re-balance the entire format and prevent the next deck running away with it, they need to also hit Cori Steel-Cutter, Stormchaser’s Talent, and one of Abuela’s Awakening or Omniscience. Up the Beanstalk and This Town Ain’t Big Enough don’t rise to the same level and feel more like enablers to lots of other decks.

I think Vivi is another insane, over the top, does-to-much card that wins the game on turn 4, but we will need to wait and see with that because nothing in the FF set will get touched.

Phantasm is someone I’ve been watching lately – https://www.youtube.com/@phantasmsplayground

Love their budget brews

Can’t believe I’m reading this. Hasbro is truly poisoned if this is what they’re still doing even after the WoTC division continues to hit insane growth numbers.

The layoff affects roughly 150 of the company’s 4,985 global employees (with math accurate to the company’s 2024 annual report).

It doesn’t say where the 150 are coming from but it seems like a stupid decision.

Yes I completely agree about the fakes issue. No reason IMO not to have a false card back on every proxy. We shouldn’t be in the business of duping people, and conversely no one should be forced to pay more than they’re able to for a card game piece.

I don’t think there was ever going to be a doubt if Final Fantasy, Spiderman, etc would be more popular than regular MtG. I think it’s all but guaranteed to increase player count when you have something like a popular outside IP crossed over with a different game.

Steam saw 6,000 additional active users, a 50% increase, and I honestly don’t know if that’s a signal that the crossover is a big hit, but that number seems really low overall to me. Fortnite is seeing ~6M average actives for reference. Maybe Steam doesn’t account for a very high % of the installs, so assuming a 50% increase in players in Arena is a massive jump, but to the original point, if you’re a fan of FF why wouldn’t you try a FTP game that features cards from the game? How much of it will you try is the real question.

The bigger issue that the game has had to deal with since the 90s is the complexity. I remember in the late 90s hearing store owners say things like “you have to be too smart to play Magic” and even though it’s a little silly, there is a high level of state management and knowledge needed to play the game at all. It’s quick to get a rundown of the rules, but it’s not simple to play the game. These new players are interested enough to check it out, run through the tutorial, maybe do the color challenge, but then what? It has such a high onboard cost that is very different from an RPG for FPS style game. Will they still be interested after FF rotates in 8 weeks?

These are the unanswered questions that they are gambling with at the expense of the enfranchised player base. Maybe the enfranchised players will always continue to play because they just like the game mechanics. Maybe the added players from FF and Marvel sets will outpace the existing players that quit the game. I don’t know, but just like with other technical parallels like chess or computer programming, there is a finite number of people who can play the game beyond a surface level.