So, Hasbro is anti-union and it should be no surprise that their response to the folks creating a union for their work on Arena has been...less than cooperative.
But to insist that people use their deadnames in order to vote on unionization is some bullshit.
This is your reminder that big corporations are not your friends. They aren't here to serve you, they are here to take as much money from you as possible. All of the money, if they can.
Good luck to the unionizers. Fuck Hasbro.
The new B&R list went up yesterday and while the thing I expected to change for Standard did (the Vivi deck got cut out at the knees) they banned Entomb and...like...
They were perfectly willing to kill the Reanimator deck, coupled with feeble 'there are still decks to cheat big creatures out' as though anyone has played Sneak Attack or Natural Order???? seriously* in YEARS.
*I mean, I play those cards but I know they aren't ideal decks. Sneak & Show is a legitimate deck but I don't see a lot of action there and banning Entomb isn't going to open up space for that deck.
But you know what those Reanimator decks listed have in common? AND the Sneak & Show deck they're suggesting might take up the reigns?
Four. Brainstorm.
I also think Daze is an issue, too but once again at the end of the day, it is the Blue Xerox package (Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, Daze, Fetchlands) that is the shell for the problematic deck.
What's even dumber is this line: "For multiple years, Dimir Reanimator has rested atop the Legacy metagame,..."
Yeah, so has U/x Delver decks, and hey guess what deck they cite as a problem for Nadu? UG.
Which is also running...say the line, Bart...The Blue Xerox package.
If the goal is to encourage deck diversity and we already know that every Blue deck should start with the same 16 cards (now 20 due to Tamiyo), then something is wrong.
Either they're lying about wanting deck diversity, or they're terrible about communicating what deck diversity MEANS.
Look. I've been playing card games a long time and I know one thing for sure: drawing cards is the most powerful thing you can do. Until WotC decides to curb the card draw effect, they will always be chasing the next "problematic" card-people are already taking about The One Ring, Mystic Forge and Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student needing to go.
What does that mean for me?
Fuck it, I'm going to keep brewing things and playing stuff. I'm not taking apart MY reanimator deck just because THEY have their head up their ass. (Mine is RB and it's one of the first decks I built. I kinda love it and yes, it is kinda bad.)
You can check that out here. Come on back and I'll tell you my thoughts.
First, under the main Lessons "We need to be better at supporting our themes downstream of our designs"
I mean...what's new is old? This comment could've come right after the debacle of Mirrodin/Kamigawa. It even did, as I recall-because they started implementing ways to bridge the sets to they would interact better. It even could have come after Urza's Saga/Mercadian Masques! That's nearly thirty years ago.
However, I don't want to be condescending here; Magic design is one that is constantly changing and it can be extremely difficult to integrate everything into every set every time. They have done some great things with the Limited environments, and they're aware of the complexity going into sets. These are good things!
That said; how often do you need to learn that lesson, my dudes?
The lessons from Bloomburrow feel...forced. As if they were searching for problems. That is a good thing, I think. When player complaints are "Not the right mix of animals" and not "this play pattern sucked" you're doing something right.
The "on rails" critique is one that I feel could be given to any typal Magic set; focusing on creature types inherently puts a set on rails. So while it isn't an inaccurate criticism, it's not very reasonable.
The assessment of Duskmorn seems pretty good. I was VERY opposed to the mundane items in that set. And I'm really happy to say that Duskmorn is a cool set that is absolutely worth playing! I'm glad that this is the big takeaway because I had a lot to say that was negative about the artistic choices.
Similarly, the Foundations review highlights its strengths as a core set, and I feel like the lessons once again are solutions looking for problems. However, the strain on Foundations may start to show in two more years, when the set is still legal and players are potentially exhausted by it.
Now...Aetherdrift we're going to talk about. I realize that I may be in the minority because vehicles didn't really do it for me, but...if vehicles were exiting to players then why didn't the set hit bigger? So I already disagree with the first highlight, and while we found Start Your Engines to be better than expected, Aetherdrift just did not capture that same sense of fun that I and friends of mine had in the other Limited environments we played.
Maybe that's just me--because the lessons all hit their marks--and suggests they did something wrong here. If the set is about racing and players end up caring about the locations visited and not the race, that's a mistake. AND this directly contradicts the notion that players enjoyed a set revolving around Vehicles-they may have been hyped for the idea, but the execution not so much.
However, the takeaways for the final lesson I have to support. Magic should try new things, and that means they don't always work. But I support the attempt--I just find some of the explanations to be suspect.
Dragonstorm's lessons are particularly interesting to me because in all three cases, it's suggested that there may not be a good solution to them. My takeaway is that sometimes you just have to live with the inelegance of certain things. That's hard--but it's also necessary.
I'm not going to talk about the Final Fantasy set, because I just don't care about Universes Beyond, with one exception:
Money clearly talks, and it says there's going to be more UB sets, and fuck y'all who have critiques about it.
In case you haven't seen it, they've put identifiable tiers for Commander decks.
It's a lengthy article but I do like the direction this is going in. Even though I'm a dabbler in Commander at best, I am glad they are taking the stewardship of the format seriously.
My friend Fuz ended up talking to me about this post, saying (effectively) 'I think we are past the point of (Universes Beyond) making Magic just a skin to put other IP in. It's done.'
Not long after that I came across The Professor's take on the Universes Beyond announcement. He specifically references a Rhystic Studies post to help explain how he's feeling.
I'll even include links to other essays the Prof talks about: The Twitter thread by Gavin Bull, and the essay by Gareth Edwards, for your reference.
Because with the support of the essays I can se what Rhystic Studies and The Professor want to but can't say because they don't want to get demonitized and/or want to maintain good relationships with the people who work at WotC.
I don't judge them for that, but I don't have that problem.
They are trying to speak out against the enshittification of Magic.
How do I know for certain that Magic is being enshittified? It isn't because I think WotC doesn't have talented people who care about the game. The opposite is true-but it is very difficult to get someone to believe something when their paycheck relies on the opposite.
No. I am confident the game is being enshittified because the parent company of Hasbro has been losing money except for Magic.
Hasbro doesn't know how to make or run games. They (seemingly) have ONE arm of the company that does, and they are milking it for all it's worth. They don't care about players. They don't care about what games mean to people.
They care about money. And when what you care about is money, everything else gets burned to the ground for money.
I still love Magic and I will probably always love playing Magic. But Magic has meaning and I am not OK with that becoming watered down into nothing. Like all art, it isn't just the object any more.
It's something bigger, and it's a goddamn shame to see that being pissed away for mammon.
Now Peasant Kenobi has a different perspective on this and while I appreciate his optimism and agree that Magic from a story perspective has always been an amalgam and pastiche of other work. But I feel like he's got some rose colored glasses on. Yes, Magic will change and yes, some people won't like that while others will and no, Magic isn't going to die.
Until it does, because that's how enshittification works (if you did the reading). Nevertheless, I feel the perspective is worth considering.
Well, the 2025 lineup for Magic was released and...boy is it a lot of shit I don't care about.
First; there are only three Magic sets. The rest are Universes Beyond sets. Universes Beyond was always something I was happy to let other people enjoy but they weren't for me. Aside from the occasional remarkably powerful cards (you know what I'm talking about) I felt happy to ignore them.
Well, starting April next year, all Universes Beyond sets will be Standard legal so...that is six sets a year that they are hoping we'll hook into. SIX.
That is just too goddamn much for me. Magic is my hobby, not my personality and it already takes up a huge chunk of my brain.
I get the reasoning; UB sets bring in a bunch of new players-and then the only sixty-card formats they can play with their shiny new cards is Modern, where they will be buttstomped by players who have been playing Modern for years.
Standard is more newbie-friendly. More players buying those cards for that format may help de-centralize the Commander format which...has gotten far too much weight. In my opinion.
I get the reasoning: WotC has literal decades of designing cards for the lower power environment that in Standard, and making cards for Modern power levels and getting people to care about those is far more challenging.
But I also don't like what this does to the game.
From a story perspective; All of the work done to build up a distinct world--like the worlds being borrowed for UB--gets diminished. But it isn't just the story, the IP at large gets watered down. At what point does Magic cease to be a distinct game and become just a rulebook that you can fold anything you want into? Monopoly skins as Magic product.
How is that special?
From a consumer perspective; For me this is just such a naked money grab that it is difficult for me to believe that people with the game's best interest at heart is there.
Which dampens my enthusiasm for all of the product. And OK, I'm not the audience for some of that product but I am in the audience for most of it! Or I was.
Now...well, I guess I'm the audience for about half.
They're changing the way boosters are being done again.
Honestly, I'm not bad about it. I've said before that there are too many products and they're just confusing customers with all of this nonsense.
And as a product, I think that Play Boosters seem just fine: they allow for a Limited experience, which is important for community reasons, and a collector experience, which is important to other players.
All in all I think this is a good thing and hope it makes for a better experience for us.
This is an awesome overview about how they built the upcoming Phyrexia: All Will Be One world. I particularly like the analogy to Dante's Inferno.
All in all this set looks to shake things up in a big way for the overall Magic story, characters and multiverse. I'm into it!
30th Anniversary Edition will be on sale for the holidays, available November 28 for $999 on 30thEdition.wizards.com
Each display of 30th Anniversary Edition will contain four packs of pure nostalgia reimagined in a modern context. Each pack contains 15 cards, 13 cards in the modern frame—1 rare, 3 uncommons, 7 commons, and 2 basic lands—plus one basic land in the retro frame, one additional retro frame card, and a token.
Hey so I just want to let people know that yes, I saw this. I have generally mild feelings about it but I am aware that they are making Transformers characters on Magic cards. Cheers!
This is a great chat not just about what Wizards is doing about White's power level, but also as a look into the design philosophy going into making Magic. I noted that Strixhaven was the first set where Wizards was able to introduce cards to address White's power discrepancy, and this video bears that statement out.
Ari says, near the end of the video, that 'every card we make is for someone, and we hope it finds them' and that's just an amazing way to think about the game.
