This is pretty dang cool.
I can't afford it, apparently you can't draft it and sealed would be bullshit.
That is; no, I won't buy it, nobody should and this product is a distortion of what Magic needs to be about: form (the art) follows function (the game).
But it's still a pretty cool art project.
Just going to take a couple weeks break: I'm feeling kinda burnt out, so a short vacation will be nice.
See y'all back in a couple!
Of these, the one I'm most excited for is Titanbreach. Pacific Rim set? Yes please.
The most interesting one is Zhalfir of course: Wakanda mythos writ large? Alright let's see what you got! It doesn't hurt that it's a riff off of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and Lorwyn Eclipsed, a modern set I loved, with Shadowmoor, a set I'm very fond of.
Plus, I always enjoy it when Magic goes to a place that doesn't get a lot of exposure. It's an opportunity for a window to be opened in my world that wasn't there before.
Which is probably why I feel that Nauctis has something to prove. Atlantis was never a thing. I know, it's a high fantasy staple and truthfully, I'm shocked Magic hasn't done it. But it's such an old trope that I don't feel much excitement about it.
The trailer said that it's the first Magic set-maybe ever?-without flying as a mechanic, which is great, I love that.
It also says that there's a mechanic to replace that aaaaaannnnnd that raises some eyebrows. Because previous attempts at making creatures "unblockable except by X" (shadow, horsemanship) have had some very bad impacts on the game, especially in limited.
Sill, I'm glad to see these sets coming next year and I hope y'all are too.
Hey, they announced a 2-Headed Giant event for the Avengers Academy set coming out! That's pretty cool I think it's rad that 2HG is getting some time in the spotlight, I think it's a great way to play Magic. Let's see who the theme deck characters are....
Lessee...Best Known Comic Guy, Best Known Movie Guy, Best Known TV Guy, They Can't All Be Men, and They Can't All Be White.
What an interesting lineup of choices!*
*My point is not that there shouldn't be women or non-white characters heading the decks. There should-the game should appeal to a broad group. My point is that you have the most cliched picks possible with art that couldn't be more boring if it came with bong hits. It's just too bad that there aren't any real choices when it comes to Avengers you can pick!
While I'm not going to dive into the TMNT set-and no shade to anyone who is-I think there's a few things to talk about.
First; there's the Professor's video on the set design. I highly recommend it, as he's very good at breaking down what the problems are, drawing from experience and the game's history.
Second, I said back in September that the small sets were being floated as a way for WotC to introduce a new set every month. I feel like the Prof's video supports this idea-because he thinks this is just the way things are going to be, going forward. At least 4 of the 7 sets are UB this year and TMNT and I guess The Hobbit are small ones?
That's not great for the game.
Third, all of this product is having an impact on the card quality. I don't know if you've ripped any Lorwyn Eclipsed boosters, but I have and it is clear to me that multiple cards have been miscut. It isn't much and you might not notice at all if you just automatically sleeve every card you get before paying it. But it's something I've noticed and it's diminished my optimism about things going forward.
The Lorwyn Eclipsed pre-release was this weekend--and do you know what WotC did all weekend?
If you said: preview cards from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set, then collect your prize!
Sigh. Why are they ignoring the product I'm about to give them money for, product that I had in my hands this weekend to play, for product that doesn't even exist yet?
I don't know; maybe a mistake was made and the cards were leaked early but it just seems like WotC doesn't care to allow us to enjoy things.
If there's one overwhelming problem with this game, this cartoon has outlined it well.
I came across it because of this video and how it spotlights the comment from the Mothership that 'we meant what we said at the time' as an excuse for why something they said was true in 2015 isn't true now. (About nine minutes in.)
And yes, ten years is a long time-long enough for the playerbase to know that we are going to get screwed over in order for Hasbro to make money.
That their word is not bond.
Which is why it gets all the weirder when it comes to things like the Reserve List. And it shores up two notions for me personally: I am going to ignore as much of Universes Beyond as I can and I'm going to proxy cards if they get too expensive.
My entertainment time is worth more to me than the effort they put into obfuscating the truth.
Ah well. On to 2026. See you next week!
I was sick for the entire holiday weekend and that kinda sucked.
I did play some videogames, and I'll work on writing up my thoughts but for today, I'm taking a mulligan.
I'm not the only person who's noted that WotC's decisions are about money. But Seth digs into the quarterly earnings and if he's reading it right, Magic is the only moneymaker Hasbro has...which is not a good sign for the game.
Look, I really enjoy playing this game, even if the decisions being made by WotC/Hasbro are compelling me to carve out my own version of Magic. And I don't feel like trying to gatekeep the game away from people who enjoy Universes Beyond properties. It's an old, tired attitude and I don't feel like being exclusive.
But I can't help but raise concerns when product starts to flood the market like this, all to buoy a company that is really flailing everywhere else. This isn't a sustainable model, or at least it doesn't feel like one.
I still want to play the game-so I want it to continue, just in a way that builds a future for Magic, and not for other IPs.
After being told that I am missing the point of the Spider-Man set, because while it seems half-baked to me: ‘what does half-baked feel like to casual players’ and I'm 'overestimating what people are looking for out of Magic. It's not like MtG is such a complicated game', I have a few thoughts.
With the new Spider-Man set coming out I could not be less excited. I'll pick through it to see if there's anything that sparks my interest but I have no intention of playing at the pre-release or buying packs.
And the question came up from MaRo himself "is there anything that can happen with the Universes Beyond product where you accept it's had a positive effect on Magic as a whole?"
The answer to that is: I can hold two thoughts at once.
The sales of Universes Beyond apparently demonstrate more people are getting into the game. I say "apparently" because I've never seen anyone cite numbers-either for or against. They certainly are selling. Hasbro posts profits and the signs point to Magic being an important brand. That is a net good, if you love the game.
Which doesn't change the fact that the product is also predatory because it's priced higher than regular product, creates a second reserve list, where if people don't buy into product they don't want right now because of the theme (not the mechanics), then they run the risk of never being able to see that product again, and that the Universes Beyond sets have increased the flow of Magic cards to a deluge and that feels exhausting.
Nevertheless, I would still like a Universes Within set-something like the Time Spiral or Innistrad Remastered sets. Collected editions of UB sets but printed as Magic cards in-universe. This would go a long way towards mitigating the ire that players like me have towards these outsider sets, because it would show a willingness to bring the game back to the people who have invested so much into it, or just don't want Spider-Man in their Black Lotus.
I recently learned how to play Love Letter, which is a delightful little game. Thematically it is about trying to get a letter to the princess to woo her-and intercepting the letters of your rivals.
Now, Love Letter has a LOT of reskins-basically different riffs on the same idea. While I was being taught the game, this subject came up and it was said, with no small amount of derision,
"There's a dragon one, Batman themed one-"
I kinda shrugged it off. "I mean,dragons?"
"Sure, sure, but nobody needs a Batman themed Love Letter."
And this bothered me but I couldn't figure out why--and today I finally did.
If Batman gets someone playing a game, why is that a problem? If the goal is, say, to get a message to Batman to help him prevent the diabolical schemes of Bane, while diverting messages that would take Batman off the case...then how is that bad?
Especially since thematically, it is a game that involves no violence itself-it's all about cunning and wit.
The derision was especially jarring coming from friends who actively seek inclusion. I think that was one of the reasons it threw me. We should have as many ways to get people to play as they might like!
Nooooooooooooooooow.....I can hear people already starting to wonder about this in regards to my feelings about Universes Beyond sets.
So I want to be clear about this: I am glad that sets that show off Warhammer 40k, Dr. Who, Spider-Man, Final Fantasy, etc. bring new people into Magic. I love this game-and sharing things you love is one of the best things you can do.
The issue between Love Letter's reskins and Magic's sets is that Magic sets become integrated into the game. Love Letter allows you to pick the flavors of the game you want. If the Batman version of Love Letter bothers you, you can ignore it and your experience doesn't change.
Magic is a stew, and it doesn't matter if the flavors don't go together anymore, you're stuck with everything that's thrown in there. The stew can't be unsalted, can't be reflavored. You've concocted a permanent change, and now instead of being able to pick the jalepenos off my pizza, I just have to swallow it.
Maybe that's part of the price to pay, to bring more people in. If that's the case then...well, in the spirit of being welcoming, I suppose it's worth paying. But I do wish that the issues that players like me have with this introduction of flavors we do not like, didn't seem so easy to dismiss.
Because UB isn't about making a better game of Magic, it is about making a more profitable one.
Sometimes that reality is a little hard to take.
I am in need of a break and I want to avoid burnout-on writing, on gaming, just in general.
So I'm going to take a week off, get some games in and not worry about the writing so much.
Cheers!
I get that Universes Beyond is there to exploit other IPs.
But the advertisement inside of my game inside of my game is something I vehemently dislike. It isn't funny. It's just a crass grab for money.
Things...have not been awesome lately. My anxiety has spiked and it's been especially awful since I cannot point to anything specific to address in order to make things better.
In a Commander game last night-in all my Magic games last night-I just felt like trash.
It didn't help that I was effectively locked out of the game via a Niko, Light of Hope loop with Solitude. I was playing Gisa and Geralf, and for some reason this deck just never works well, a condition that was adding to my poor state of mind. Plus: graveyard interactions are frequently nerfed by exile removal suites, so I had a bad matchup on top of that.
Maybe you know how it is; Why isn't this thing ever getting better?
I've felt like that a lot lately-decks I'm building just not coming together and the experience of losing but not knowing why feels bad.
And it wasn't the other players: I really like the company I keep! But still, I was mostly helpless against the board state until I drew a Decree of Pain. Cool, here's an out for everyone! I don't have any creatures, the Hazezon Tamar player has five tokens and we're both being blown out: let's reset the board.
So I do that, and the Tamar player shoots his tokens at me via Goblin Bombardment.
Which felt like a mistake to me. I'm not saying that it was, just that I was not the threat on board: The player gaining 12+ life a turn was.
So; felt locked down and then mis-identified as the threat; ugh. It was bad for my headspace.
This morning I realized that the game was unearthing how I have felt at large for the past weeks. Helpless and frustrated. The game just put a spotlight on things so I couldn't ignore it.
Which isn't fuckin' fun, right?
So, what can I do?
Well, the first thing is to remember that I am not helpless here. I conceded the Commander game-and the constructed one early-in order to keep my headspace from getting worse.
The other thing I can do is take Gisa & Geralf out of rotation until I can figure out what the fuck is wrong with that deck. It's zombie typal; it should be fun and it's got power. Maybe put some of my problem solving towards fixing that!
The third thing I can do is remember that sometimes, things don't work out; that's part of the deal. It isn't personal. Even though it can feel personal.
And the fourth thing I can do is look back and see if there is something I learned. There can be things overlooked in the moment because I'm not at my best, so I should give myself enough slack to review things and see if there's anything beneficial!
In this case there was: in the constructed game I was playing Peaches and recognized that if I copied Will-o-the-Wisp with Silent Hallcreeper, I could have a 2/3 flying, regenerating creature to help keep the beats going.
Nice spotting that interaction!
