Mike

Started playing Magic with Portal and Mirage. Currently play off-and-on Historic and Commander.

I love collecting older cards, and I’ve put together a full Portal set cube and about 20 thematic tribal decks with cards all from 2012 and earlier.

  • 162 Posts
  • 437 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 9th, 2023

help-circle

  • I honestly don’t see a reason to ever unban them. These three have been proven to be unsuitable for the format, and if people really want to play them, I don’t see why they wouldn’t just be made available in Tier 4. Or some Tier that has no banned cards for the people who want to play that way.

    Not to mention that these cards were the heart of the entire controversy that ended the Commander Rules Committee and caused the death threats to come out from some players. That alone would be enough to me to never bring these cards back to the format ever again.



  • MikeMAtoMTGDesign Files: Urza's Destiny, Part 1
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    3 days ago

    First off, I didn’t realize MaRo did this for Tempest too. This is awesome.

    Tempest block is when I started but Urza’s block was my favorite. I was a little too young to go out and draft those sets but I remember following every spoiler and loving every card that came out in Saga, Legacy, Destiny. I also remember my peak excitement as a child was getting a USG booster box for Christmas and cracking a Gaea’s Cradle. Needed 4 of those for a deck and I didn’t have the $80 for a playset (lol).

    Crazy that MaRo was the only designer for Urza’s Destiny. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what a designer does here, but that seems really short staffed at a time when the game was very popular.

    Original Goblin General (Goblin Marshall) was very much like a Deranged Hermit and I think the tweak they made was better. I really liked the take he had on Echo + Death Triggers. I think that is just a great example of tradeoffs in the older game. It was a cool idea to staple cycling as a (2) + Sacrifice mechanic for permanents.

    It would be pretty incredible if they brought Urza’s block draft to Arena for an event. I think that would definitely get be back playing regularly.



  • I think this is just insane and super confusing. Another huge indicator that the Marvel sets (and probably all of UB) should have never entered Standard. Just make them Commander-only, and you never have this problem. They could release certain UB sets to Arena and not have to push the others if there were digital licensing issues.

    Now, instead, we have a huge break in paper/digital that will presumably last and repeat forever. This makes deck list sharing and importing more difficult. This makes watching the game much more difficult. This makes learning the limited environment much more difficult. This is just way confusing and way stupid imo. I guess it’s a huge win for Arena players who didn’t want Marvel in the game but that’s about the only positive I can come up with.


  • I think this has to be it. No way Marvel wants “Spider man card game” to turn up Arena first in search results over Marvel Snap. And this confused me when they first announced a Marvel set given that Snap was already a thing.

    I think this is a win for Arena, but it will be super confusing not having the same card names/artwork across paper and digital especially for anyone who plays both. Have to learn everything twice I guess. Deck list importing just got a lot harder too.



  • Still, it’s made me much less interested in Standard given that it was nice to have a lower power format but now it feels almost as fast as other formats.

    I remember heavily playing 4c Party back when it was in Standard and that was a viable deck in the format. It would not even get 1 win in the current meta by a long shot. Standard right now feels like what Modern was before Horizons and I just don’t think there exists a slow constructed format anymore. Nor do I think there will ever be one again.





  • I can’t help but feel a lot of this could be fixed by creating a separate game. At first I thought UB should be the separate game, and I still do, but it’s clear Hasbro will never do that. Perhaps the best outcome could have been a game that returns to the old frame, the old release schedule, the old artwork, and the old play/card design philosophy and just sell it as Classic Magic or something. I would play the crap out of that game, and it would still even be Standard legal since all of the cards are compatible with the original game.

    I know it’s just a dream at this point, but I think there is still a huge demand for something that’s basically premodern with new cards.


  • This is very well written, and one of the best pieces of content we have on this site. You are really amazing, Evu. I have much more to say in another comment after I finish reading everything in full, but I just wanted to echo that I’ve felt this way for about a year myself, probably longer. It’s just getting too hard to enjoy the game, and it’s even harder with MTGZone because I really WANT to enjoy the game and be active here and in other communities but I just can’t find the love anymore.



  • every card that sees play these days does so many things that it’s not even comparable to old standard anymore

    This is my biggest gripe with design overall. It has shown its effects most predominantly in Standard since Standard was one of the slowest formats, but I think this problem has caused every format to get a lot faster.

    I’m 100% with you, and I desperately want a non-limited, much slower format but I don’t know how on earth we get there with Hasbro/WoTC making it pretty clear that they care way more about sales revenue than the game being fun.


  • I personally think these are all positive bans. It’s unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.

    Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth’s Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.

    Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there’s tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I’d like to see Bowmasters gone next.


  • I personally think these are all positive bans. It’s unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.

    Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth’s Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.

    Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there’s tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I’d like to see Bowmasters gone next.



  • MikeAtoSpoilers[TDM] United Battlefront
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 month ago

    I just want to mention, I’m glad they printed this as a sorcery. I originally thought this was a better Collected Company at first but then re-read it and I think it’s a cool card. Certainly interesting in white instead of blue. Searching 7 cards instead of 6 I guess comes at the cost of the sorcery speed but that feels pretty strong too.


  • MikeAtoSpoilers[TDC] Betor, Ancestor's Voice
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 month ago

    I mean I guess it’s par for the course but this card just seems crazy to me. Definitely commander focused, as is much of the design lately, but this is usually getting played on turn 4 in commander and the life loss trigger seems pretty easy to activate every turn. Often I think you will get getting two triggers off this every turn. And then it has lifelink and flying to boot!




  • MikeAtoCustom CardsEchoing Abyss
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    First off I love that artwork. The frame kind of clashes a little with it but I think that is super cool looking.

    The ability tho! I’m trying to think if there’s something obviously broken about this to enable infinite combos but I haven’t come up with it yet. I think that’s a really cool ability. This would combo so well with Living Death, one of my all time favorites.