Half Of Magic: The Gathering Will Not Be Magic: The Gathering
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- Опубликовано: 1 ноя 2024
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The Foundation Is Rotten: rhysticstudies...
The Thermacline Principle: every.to/p/bre...
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Reading Homework:
The Foundation Is Rotten: rhysticstudies.substack.com/p/what-are-we-doing-really?
The Thermacline Principle: every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business
and also nitter.poast.org/garius/status/1588115310124539904
Welp MAGIC is DEAD can't play in my city anymore anyway due to a store owner who has it out for me but to quote Grandpa Motto from Yugioh (In my day Monster cards used to be actual Monsters not this)
this is the kind of community you guys fostered so you could get some attention and a hand out on the internet. Now youre crying about it.
Please read geeks, MOPS, and sociopaths in subculture evolution. It's on the meaningness website. It perfectly explains why everything feels like it's losing its soul and why we get things like secret lairs and universes beyond.
Well they made them Cowboys with a circular saw train, they went to the Clue mansion and made a Clue game.... Probably better they just make MTG using other peoples IP's because they literally have no direction to take the actual stories in the game.
Bloomborrow was great, it should've been a 3 set release like -- "The good old days" instead of a single set that got run over by the next set 1.5 months later.
Will I buy singles from these sets? Of course but I'm not happy about it.
Maybe this is why I try harder and harder to use old cards from 30 years ago in my decks.
The "racing set" reminds me of Yugioh 5d's where they played cards while riding around a race track.... Pretty funny.
Great video Prof.
I believe it was the Lord of the rings set and the card The One Ring that brought this all forward. Look at how well that set sold and how the card The One Ring has dominated modern. Wizards wants that type of sales to continue. I get that people are mad with the beyond sets being in every format. You have to look at it from Wizards point of view, though. Lord of the Rings set sold very well, so they see that as a open letter to bring more sets like that into the game for every format now.
"Where ambition meets industry, passion is poisoned by greed."
- flavortext of Blackcleave Cliffs
Not matter how much you love MTG, if you still support Hasbro so much after all they have done to their IPs, you are part of the problem about Hasbro being a greedy and incompetent company. They're ruining their IPs and they don't care about it. They just care about profit. What about your dignity, hardcore MTG fans?
@@AxsorXI true and real, I am not paying money for this anymore, ever
well said magic of old
@@AxsorXI I am not paying anything for this shit
"Sorry I burned your card game down, here's some more cards."
Looks like everyone was right about the Walking Dead, huh.
Crazy how all the people who were upset way back then were actually founded in their concerns and criticism. It leaves me smug about all the people who were fine with the UB stuff and moaned about all the complainers.
They said people complaining about Horse Armor were being hysterical and overreacting and that one piece of cosmetic armor won't actually be that bad
Nearly 20 years later, games a service is considered the default for major game developers, microtransactions are near in every game (including indie games) and games have to advertise that they aren't pay-to-win because of how pervasive that model is in modern day gaming
Idk why people think that companies won't tank any sort of integrity they have for potentially millions of extra dollars if they can do it. Of course WotC is expanding beyond the original fantasy/mediveal/folktale/mythology settings and into already existing IPs because that shit makes money.
Companies man, you give the finger, they want the arm
@@jakehr3 this, also now everyones fears of mobile game design infiltrating the territory of true gaming is going to come true now that genshin has opened pandoras box as alot of people dont classify it as mobile since it has console releases..
Please dont pretend there wasn't massive toxicity and harassment and death threats.
People called them out because of the toxicity primarily.
@Tristan-fz8jg
“Mike how does it feel to live long enough to watch all the franchises you love die?” -a very old somewhat wise man.
I clapped
why do I suddenly want pizza rolls
ENDLESS TRAAAASH
AT ST...AT ST...AT ST....are standard legal.
Don't ask questions. Just consume product, and then get excited for next product.
Hasbro did the stupid corporate thing of "This rare and special version of a thing sells well, so lets make more of it until it's no longer special and degrades the foundation of the thing." Sets like Neon Dynasty did well, so we get Aetherdrift. UB products always sold out, so we get more of them.
No subtle understanding of why those things were special, just "this sells, so sell more".
Do the right thing. Don't support Hasbro. They're destroying MTG. They're destroying their IPs. Just because Hasbro is a greedy and incompetent company. Move on from Hasbro, people. They don't deserve support. Just support IPs owned by company which care. Please. Make it right. Do it for your own good. For your information, the MTG RUclips channel deleted some comments about criticism for Hasbro. That's the Hasbro company for you all.
Welcome to corporate transparency everyone!
@@AxsorXI Which TCG do you recommend to scratch the Magic itch?
@@markusbiewer2756 Sorcery, Flesh and Blood has a rich World of Fantasy not affected by outside Big Company yet.
@@silikdo6514 Thank you very much!
I reckon Universes Beyond should be its own format. Fixed 😎
Funky time!
WOTC would never do that because then everyone isn't forced to eat slop from the UB trough to be competitive.
Maybe Magic should be it's own format...
they said they didn't do it because it would be too confusing for players. mind you this is the same company that makes 20 different versions of the same card and releases cards alongside a standard set that for whatever reason are *NOT* standard playable.
That's in fact , a idea I love
I used to joke that I'll be equipping Captain America with Darth Vaders lightsaber and using him to crew the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Scary how it's slowly but surely coming true.
1/3rd of that is here already.
Star wars coming next lol
In response I cast "Care Bear Stare" to exile your Captain America
I mean, Gandalf can equip Negan's bat and ride into battle in the Ecto 1 against Godzilla. And they only attacked because Chucky goaded them into it.
Reality that surpasses fiction 😢
Magic in 2026: "I tap the Sonic Screwdriver to play the Buster Sword, and equip it and Spongebob's Spatula to my Optimus Prime.
Oh God, I just threw up a little in my mouth after reading that
Lfg
That is so vile.
@@23345star "I Doom Blade Optimus"
"I pay 1 for Mirror Entity, making all my creatures all creature types. Since that makes my Optimus a Time Lord, I'm going to play Time Lord Regeneration. My Optimus regenerations into... The 10th Doctor!"
The light won't be denied, Planeswalker.
“How will Jace get out of this one? Find out next time after this Commercial set!”
Amazing comment.
No notes.
he will 10x mill for every mana spent LMFAO
Foundations is not a love letter. It is a send-off, a bidding of farewell.
Yeah, I feel like I'm pretty much done with magic. The return to Lorwyn was all I was looking forward to. Now, I have no real interest in anything.
Foundations is what they can point to as a temporary bandaid when anyone says anything bad about having to put the new spider man and final fantasy cards in their deck "Well just play with those instead" while everything else is power creeped to hell and back. "Oh you don't like aetherdrift and dont want cowboys riding motorcycles.... poor baby buy another pack of foundations then."
I see it more as a love letter and a last effort to put a ton of time, energy and effort into making the highest quality quintessential magic set possible in an effort to outsell UB sets.
If Foundations became the highest selling set of the year it'd maybe not change the planned releases for 2025 but it may make the suits at Hasbro rethink plans for 2026 onward by showing them that there is a real desire and enthusiasm for Magic sets which are quintessentially magic. I think Bloomburrow exceding their expectations in terms of how popular it was already shows this to some extent and the point needs to be driven home by embracing foundations
I'll be honest. I deeply hope this isn't true but I'll force myself to go the the pre-release. If nothing else it'll be a good memorial service for the game I once loved.
@@austinmorrissey3507hey, check out Star Wars unlimited?
"Magic isn't dying" - basically everyone I know stopped playing, my local game store stopped hosting MtG tournaments due to lack of interest, haven't followed the competitive scene (if there is one) since 2018, and every announcement is just one big step in the wrong direction while keeping the product ultra expensive.
At which point is the game dead then? Who is gonna get hyped with me when I open foil Beyoncé and Ronald Reagan in the same pack if my friends stopped playing? 😕
in the other hand, I just started playing with some friends. MTG is still the most played tcg in my local card store and still hosts pauper, commander, standard etc tournaments. I really hope you are wrong and this game keeps on going. It would suck to just start a game right where it starts its downfall
I definitely quit with this, duskmorn is really great and might be the last good limited set
I haven't played a game since before the pandemic. The writing was on the wall and I stopped spending my money on Magic. Plenty of yes me/optimists around back then, "no way that will happen," yet here we are.
Sadly, I was a long time supporter of MTG. Started playing in 2004. I have so much invested and I absolutely loved the game, but now I'm at the point where I'm just hoping it will die and make more room in the market for decent new competitors.
It's sad how we've gone from "This product isn't for you" to "This game isn't for you". If there's no format that offers an escape from these Universes Beyond sets, then the only escape is to quit the game entirely. I've lost count of how many times I've said this over the last few years, but I miss when Magic took itself seriously.
Yes. I thought the occasional joke/reference-to-something card was fun, but that doesn't mean I want all of that all the time.
I was in your shoes some years ago. Changed to Sorcery TCG and never looked back :)
@@olamoum3695 I love sorcery. Unfortunately I don't think it'll ever get too far off the ground. I only know 3 other people who play it and the lack of available sources to buy singles and even sealed product makes deckbuilding hard
Consider older formats, Old School 93/94, premodern, or hextended.
"Oh, you guys want to hide in your commander bunkers? Boy howdy, do we have news for you" 💀
10 years ago when my son was born, I looked forward to introducing him to Magic the Gathering and playing with him. Instead, little by little, the choices they have made have made current Magic the Gathering not feel anything like what I played, and each time I try to play I feel a bit more alienated from the current direction. So instead he's getting me into Pokemon, which is fun and he loves it, so that's good. I just wish I'd gotten to share the feelings I had about this game with him.
Pokémon is a story turned into a card game. MTG is the opposite. When they realized their Avengers-copy storyline with the Gatewatch didn't work out, they decided to instead outsource their storytelling to succesful IPs from the outside. I wish instead they would have tried to give MTG a worthwhile story of its own.
It's all about perspective,spiderman or spongebob are probably just the thing to catch your kids eye and introduce him to magic once he loves the game via those sets you can graduate him on to magic cards, like "proper" ones tell him stories about the cards the lore etc
@@bankylaw3745 That doesn't change the fact that when you go to sit at your LGS tournament now you're going to have to go against decks full of garbage IPs that you hate looking at and playing against.
The tone of the game was important and wizards decided to unleash sloppy diarrhea all over it.
MTG is the Fortnite of TCG's.
OH BOY ANOTHER FORTNITE SECRET LAIR!
and they already have the secret lair lol
Now the flood gate of IP is open and will be flooding with IP set. Someone build Noah’s ark!!
Oh that makes it so different than Union Arena or Weiss Schwarz. 😂 you dweebs need to grow up. Everything isn't happening to you, it's just happening.
this is the saddest thing i've heard lol
I miss blocks. Back when they cared about the product. Pushing one major box set every month is too much. Eventually the bubble will pop and all the investors who push this .. As long as they keep doing this, it makes it harder not easier to get into magic. The block method allowed for synergy over sets.
The absolute irony of this situation is that we will 100% get a Universes Beyond block before we get an in universe block again
I started getting into magic right around the time of Guilds/Allegiance/War of the Spark so I never really got to experience what blocks were like but, yeah, returning to blocks would be great. I know some players back then had complaints about the block structure, especially the smaller sets, but, I don't know how much of a problem it was.
The most common complaint I've heard from magic players every single year since I started playing has been about product fatigue to the point that perpetual spoiler season went from being a meme to becoming reality. Blocks would fix that.
Frankly, I would be fine with Universes Beyond as standard sets if the release schedule were 1 standalone UB set (preferably IPs that are thematically consistent with core MTG) and a 3-set block per year. That would be a manageable number of releases with an acceptable, although not negligible, rate of introducing UB cards to the game.
Half of all sets being UB with a new release every 2 months is ludicrous.
I agree. My friend recently got me to jump on Arena and build a deck to play Standard with him. I looked over the card pool and it's utter chaos. No consistency, a million mechanics, just a total mess.
I've already stopped buying two or three sets with every new release, simply because it's too much AND there are too many silly IPs and ideas being forced upon us. I have lost interest in those cards specifically, but magic in general because of over saturation. I have ONLY bought singles for the last year, so instead of me spending thousands each year, I now will only spend a few hundred, at most, so good job WotC. You played yourself.
If we breaking promises, reprint black lotus
Maybe more practically, reprint the OG duals.
Hell, fuck it. Reprint the ENTIRE reserved list in every Core set moving forward. Who cares? Just serialize some of the reprints so people can still have their precious chases that are high in price.
Because, at this point? What more harm can honestly be done?
they're only breaking promises that won't get them sued by "investors"
@@manicka111 Honestly, do you even need og duals anymore? There's so much good fixing, reprinting duals would be a moderate increase in power, depending on which formats they'd be reprinted in.
I'd like a Time Walk and Ancestral Recall please.
soon
I wish Prof would stop apologizing for not liking Universes Beyond. There is nothing at all wrong with saying "I greatly dislike the thing you like" you do not need to add more, it's okay, if people are being honest with each other then that alone should be enough
I agree but you have to remember that as a dedicated content creator he has to choose between taking a principled stand and ensuring he doesn’t offend potential viewers.
Prof has bought his fair share of UB cards. More than the average player I'm 100% certain. He's stated himself in this video he has no issues with UB cards; only that they now take up half of all future sets, which anyone who's been playing MTG for the past 30 years should have an issue with. The future of MTG is concerning.
My table is a "No UB Allowed" table. Tell UB players they are destroying the game.This is why gatekeeping your hobbies is so important. Keep the general audience and corporations out. They destroy everything they touch. Capitalism is a cancer.
Gate Keep your hobbies.
I hate UB with passion and am proud of it.
A lot of content creators try to anticipate potential misunderstandings by overexplaining the things people might be offended by, which feels like the intent of that
5:06 THANK YOU, I feel like this point has been drowned out by the bigger issues, but the fact that the main sets have been moving away from fantasy/fantasy interpretations of mythology, and into more contemporary or future settings is also a problem. In the Aetherdrift promo Chandra was riding motorbike doing an Akira slide, and these are the sets that are meant to be a blessed relief from UB??
Yeah, it's more like "Magic is 100% Universes Beyond" at this point.
I hate the World of Warcraftification of core MTG more than any of this, yeah.
I think we might have gone beyond that already. We’ve hit Fortnite levels of IP splicing.
Giant mechs in dominaria?
@@Crusina As best as I can recall we’ve had those more or less the whole time, they were just called golems and constructs. Unfortunate that upper level executives think that somehow doesn’t have as much “mass market appeal” as UB flavored products.
Bloomburrow was the first set in years to really catch my attention and get me to buy new cards. It appears it will also be the last
I'm starting to think the thing I liked most about Bloomburrow was the originality and how well it fit as a Magic plane.
@@creamsoda2392 They took all the wrong lessons from LotR set. That was a universally beloved IP that fits in with magic vibes pretty closely, was insanely well designed, and it still has caused a lot of issues. Instead of seeing it as a “oh this could be fun once a year as a special thing”, execs just saw $$$
@@creamsoda2392
You know, when you put it like that, it occurs to me that's how I've felt about it since it released. Bloomburrow feels fresh and true to character for the game as I perceive it.
Bonus points for the set's noticeable effort to scale back the power creep.
@@creamsoda2392 Also how it dared to be self-contained in terms of story instead of being an excuse to move along the lackluster meta-narrative
@@electricnick260 but bloomburrow fucking sucked?
For some reason Prof's description of Foundations as this "Love Letter to Magic set" has put this horrible almost baseless fear in me that it's almost like a fond farewell, and WOTC is gonna use "Of course we care about the MTG IP, we have Foundations" as UB becomes 55% of total product, then 60% then 70% etc
Yeah, UB will grow and grow, and wotc will just claim Foundations is there so you have nothing to fear. Foundations is only meant as a way to offload actual Magic card creation so they could focus on UB, at least till 2029, or longer.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they did that, where MTG normal sets would go back to only 2 or 3 per year, and the rest can just be UB or other cash-grabbing sets that I have no problem just ignoring. Issue is that they are going to be legal in all formats, so once you get broken op cards in those sets, you will have to buy them...
To be honest, Bloomborrow feels more MTG love letter than Duskmorn and Foundations, combined.
@@mugthemagpie3001Bloomburrow feels like an old Magic set that somebody brainstormed in 2006 that got lost in a drawer at WOTC until now. Good theme, good flavor, fun mechanics, a decent story that's basically disconnected from their bootleg Avengers plotline going on in the background. Unfortunately I could throw money at them for Bloomburrow specifically and WOTC would think I want more Spongebob cards.
Foundations is weird. Gloss over the reasons core sets have been cancelled at least 3 times in the past. Never mind that this set targeted at stability for new players needed 133 new cards among 600 reprints. Why fix for 5 years?
Standard is already set for 3. Why would you want a different rotation on top of that? I don't even think they can go 5 years without announcing a change to their printing. And if the goal is that it exists for new players, how many stores are going to keep these packs stocked in 4 years when 20+ new sets have come out since then?
I predict Foundations will rotate before 2029. But I also don't care, because I won't be playing anymore.
I am so damn sick of having Marvel shoved in my face.
I don't care if they make more UB. I care that there's no longer a format without it.
come play pre-modern :D
The problem is everyone sits on the side lines and says this exact thing and does nothing, bystander effect.
@@Pug8 In this specific situation doing nothing (i.e. not buying cards) is probably the thing Wizards will notice the most.
@Pug8 true.
We should all rally together and form #MAGICGATE as a reactionary movement against
I am sure we can all band together and get twice as big and 10x as toxic as we got with the most recent commander bannings
@@fgckrion Unironic where do I do this? Also why ban Necropotence : (
“They have taken the Bridge and the Second Hall. We have barred the gates, but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes... Drums. Drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A Shadow moves in the dark... We cannot get out... They are coming”
Kind of ironic to use a lord of the rings quote considering it's already ub
@@BludMun i'd say a fantasy set with fitting archetypes, lore, creature types and aesthetics is extremely different from a modern-day set about quirky superheroes...
@@gronizherz3603 you're absolutely right
@@gronizherz3603 couldn't agree more. Lord of the Rings feels like magic, it's fantasy. My favorite fantasy. I hadn't played magic in a few years and the LOTR set was one of the things that brought me back if I'm being entirely transparent. But to me there is a huge difference between a UB set with elves/dwarves/dragons/etc and a UB set with effing Spongebob.
@@christopherschwarz1959 By this thought process would Berserk and A Song of Ice and Fire be acceptable? For argument's sake.
As someone who doesn't even play MtG this just makes me sad. Watching yet another beloved and venerable franchise get turned into corporate slop by transparent greed is just so depressing and demotivating.
Imagine the world we could live in if money wasn’t the only thing people cared about.
Foundations hints at the creative potential and care for the game that the designers at Wizards have. If only they werent a under bunch of greedy suits.
This move is the equivalent of a restaurant saying "Appetizers and drinks sell well and have high margins. Let's just eliminate the whole menu except appetizers and drinks".
I made a similar analogy. Like a restaurant analyzing that people love their long-cherished spaghetti, but also receiving incredible praise about a new chocolate cheesecake they brought in- and deciding to put chocolate sauce from the cheesecake into the spaghetti the restaurant is famous for.
Absolutely the best metaphor I have seen to describe this.
I was extremely salty towards Universes Beyond when I first saw them and avoided them like the plague. But then a long-time friend of mine who had never once played Magic asked me about the Fallout set. And we each ended up buying one of the Preconstructed decks, and he had a blast playing it. Before long he was building a collection and tuning this precon deck and I did the same with my cards on hand. Even now my Preston Garvey commander deck still goes with me in my box to game nights and I still crack it out every now and then.
That showed me the value these had in bringing new players to the game, and also showed me that I should be thinking about UB differently: it was a garnish--a spice that could be thrown in, to help stir things up and create a different way of playing the same game. And that change of heart has led me to actually use these sets as a recruitment tool for new players with great success.
Replacing half of your existing recipe with a spice is going to make for a terrible overall meal.
i grew up in a tourist trap, and saw a lot of restaurants get replaced with cafes, so unfortunately, it does happen.
I’m once again begging the internet to stop coming up with terrible analogies.
@@Feelosopher__ Don't you understand, if people can't use terrible analogies how can they justify hating change
Funko Pops: The Gathering
That's a perfect take
Disney+ The Gathering
This comment needs more upvotes
@@charleshammel8541 Its Rhystic Study's after all, see first link in the description (a good - if a tad disheartening - read, check it out)
Suddenly it's not magic anymore. Ha ha ha
Hasbro imagines they're in a HBO vs Netflix competition with Lorcana - that they need to become Lorcana before Lorcana has enough cards out to become MTG. That's lame.
They are just doing what they did with monopoly. They were always good at getting licenses.
I doubt Hasbro gives a single fuck about Lorcana, they are way too ignorant to imagine it being a threat
Can't wait for the D&D crossover setting books
honestly the only thing that stops me playing lorcana instead is just how much disney it is.
but if that remains their point, that's fine by me.
I remember when I first read someone say MTG is now "Cardboard funko pops". Man was that on the bullseye. I know the numbers don't support this, but it feels like desperation for WotC. Its like when IPs run out of steam in Hollywood- sometimes the short term solution is to fuse them together such as "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" or "Alien vs. Predator"
It isn't desperation. It is just line must go up. There is no way MtG doesn't make boatloads of money. The problem is the same as all for profit corporations. They have to make two boatloads next year, three the next, and so forth. It isn't enough to make a boatload of money year over year.
Alien vs Predator is awesome btw
I stopped buying magic a few years ago and every time I start thinking I might miss the game, I see something like this and realize that I don’t want to play modern magic at all.
Paradoxally, the standard has rarely been so good, so diversified, so competitive, so open to creativity.
I sold my entire collection to a friend this year. I've played one game since then, and it reminded me of all the reasons I stopped playing. The power creep, the lack of cohesion, etc.
Same… same 😢
Same, I only buy cards from Alpha to Modern Masters 2017. After that I kinda fell off the game and now its cooked.
It's become so fking complicated. I'm 53 and have MS. My brain can't comprehend have the rules
the thing that pisses me off the most are the people calling anyone that wants Magic to have a shred of integrity a gatekeeper.
Yeah. That's one of the reasons I stopped caring.
Integrity of what? Mostly bad storytelling?
Yeah I want this game that was made primarily to make money to have (checks note) "integrity"
@@Rhavas theme and identity. It's not a crazy request
@@Rhavas Because Marvel is well known for it's great storytelling.
I would say, “stop buying the products and WOTC will learn their lesson.” But everyone will complain about it, then continue to buy case after case. And you’ll play the collector booster box game with every set and happily promote the sets while claiming you’re not happy. And I get it, it’s your livelihood at this point. But until we hit WOTC / Hasbro in their wallets, this won’t change.
Not everyone. I sold my collection and stopped buying with Walking Dead. Plenty of people are tapping out, and have been. Numbers are going up from out-of-towners and investors, and retention for those wont stick, the bubble will pop.
Morons don't learn. If something retarded as SpongeBob is in magic the gathering, then I wont buy that deck.
"Voting with your wallets" is a thing of the past when whales exist. FF fans or Marvel fans with tonnes of cash will dump huge amounts of money on boosters, more than filling the gaps made by old guard customers turned away who've spent their money already. Companies target whales and new fans over supporting old fans because new fans have a higher chance of spending money than old fans who have already bought their products.
I stopped playing when this bupkis began. I just sometimes watch videos about it, to only see it's worse every day. Lol
That"s the problem. It's useless. UB are the most selling product bc they reach people outside the game. They don"t really care if old players drop the game, they are still winning money. If the fans of the tcg itself stop buying Magic, only UB will sell and we will get to +% of sets being UB.
There is no escape from this. Crossovers sells too much becuase there is almost infinite potential costumers. Look at Fortnite.
Wizards has severly lost sight of what makes this game special. It no longer feels like a way to bond with the people i care about over a common intrest, but feels like a cash grab. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wanted this. And wizards isnt going to listen to the community
It feels like as if the people working st wotc dont even know what the player want. Are they not fans of mtg? Do they even have anyone saying its a bad idea? I feel like they only work there for the money and not because there are fans as well. Its just sad and disconnected
Then explain why UB sells so well.
@@MrNoAvailit sells so well because 90% if the people in comment sections across all platforms complaining about it are going to buy UB packs on release. Thats why no corp respects their customers anymore. Customers dont respect themselves. Why should they?
I am SO PISSED they pushed back Lorwyn. It is my favorite plane and I was so looking forward to it.
I hear you. I'm Welsh also, so it's extra hurtful.
I think you said it best when comparing UB to advertisements. It feels we are bombarded by ads from everywhere and MTG has been an escape from that (and pop culture). I play magic to “escape” and now I’ve got pop-up ads everywhere in our once “pure” world. BRANDO, it’s what plants crave.
Idk, I know how to play magic, I know how the game functions. I like that.
These let me play with Ip's that i love without having to learn new games, games that would probably be half baked, poorly balanced with a minimal player base.
Instead i get to play one of the most popular card games in the world with a bunch of cool cards from a bunch of stuff i already love. As someone who has never had a single interest in the "World of magic" or rather even knew there was a whole lore behind it... UB is the reason I am playing Magic today.
You can complain about the new sets all you like but the reality is WotC is printing them, because people are buying them.
Makning money isn't a bad thing... it's what makes them able to make new sets and continue printing cards year after year and pumping more money into the magic community.
I'd much rather have a pile of trash cards and people to play with then sit at home with my Perfect deck of "Traditional Magic Cards" wanking off...
@@GeneralHiro the thing is why cant we both be happy, we can have magic as it curently is and you can have the UB sets that are not legal in normal magic. you get to play with the sets you want to with other people who also want to and we get to play MTG with the lore accurat stuff. sure we can have crossover tornament that allow both sets but then we also have seperate sets so if you dont like just the lore acurate stuff or if we dont like the UB stuff you still have a choice. the problem is by making these sets legal in all formats we then have one of two options buy all this exstra stuff or dont be competative, its a cash grab forsing anyone who want to play certan formats to spend more money.
@@GeneralHiroWhy should we be miserable so you can be happy? When you don't even care enough about the game to begin to understand its storied almost 30 year old setting, older than you are probably? Why should we have our hobby degraded into funko pop slop just so Johnny Come Lately can be pulled in because they had the right brands flashed into their mindless consumer skull? You leave.
@@feihceht656cry about it.
@GeneralHiro I've recently taken up the Final Fantasy card game, as that game ironically has more respect for its own worlds than Magic does.
Just 2 years ago they released an un-set with aliens and clowns and Jace as an astronaut as jokes and now all of those are gonna be in OFFICIAL mainline Magic sets😳
actually no, the new legality only applies to sets releasing in 2025 and beyond. any sets released before then don’t change legality.
Un-set? They don't do those anymore, those were black bordered and modern legal.
@@davidmarquette9268 I think they where not saying, the un-set will be legal, but that it is ridiculous that the un-set was a jokey space set and now we are getting an ACTUAL space set just casually.
They pretty much already did this with Thunder Junction and Markovs at Karlov Manor,
@@davidmarquette9268 duskmourn has a both aliens and clowns in it and we are getting a magic in space set, so if any of the main brand planeswalkers, especially jace, in that set. they will be astronauts, meaning both parts of the joke will no longer be a joke.
I Absolutely can not wait for the MTG: Universe Beyond: yu-gi-oh crossover.
I block your Colossal Dreadmaw with my Patrick Star
Ill counterspell your timmy turner
In response i tap James Bond to draw a card
At your end step I’ll flash in the grinch, swing for lethal
I play my animaniacs wb water tower land tapped and pass my turn
@@cptnqusr ah, but i have the backyard from Plants vs. Zombies, and it's night, so there's fog, and i prevent combat damage
Thank you for being sincere, Prof!
get ready for the "MtG x MtG Secret Lair" coming soon
That politician woman?
Please no! 🤮 @@TubbyBubbleLove42
@@TubbyBubbleLove42
"I tap 3 and play jewish space laser to end my turn"
Tarkir is the plane i started on as an adult and when i started watching you, its been ten years. Oh man what a ride.
I’m a sucker for theme. Ixalan and Innistrad were the planes that got me into the game in 2018. Love me zombies, pirates and eldritch horrors beyond man’s comprehension. Even the D&D stuff was welcome and fun. It matched the theme.
Now, I hate that every time I brew a Zombie, Pirate, or Horror tribal deck, I’m encouraged to include cards from Doctor Who, Assasin’s Creed, Fallout etc. Reprints of cards with new art will always be welcome. Full sets of unique cards with no Magic version suck the identity out of the game.
Sure it’s just a card game, but I cared about the themes. I liked the flavor of being a planeswalker gathering spells from different planes to use in your library.
Game mechanics are important, but theme is what keeps me involved when the game gets frustrating or bland. So now, I play less and less.
I think the same. The whole feel of it just felt right, it's getting muddled more now
I get you, but one thing is theme, another is turning the game into a billboard for other IPs. Imagine if Universes Beyond was like... Magic in a world of Japanese Yokai? Or South American folklore? There are SO MANY WAYS of doing this in an interesting, non-cash-grabbing way.
Here, here! Hear here!
once upon a time, I'd suggest reskinning htem as proxies with an in-universe, or at least in theme. When I built a human typal commander deck, I did exactly this with Rick, making him an Odric instead. But now there's just so many cards that this is next to impossible to do for any card you might want to play
I am on the same page when ot comes to theme. But in Magic, theme is very strange. You never play as the characters, thematically you as a player incorporate a wizard who fights another wizards, and you conjure pieces of universes and lore that meet your ends the most. So why not conjure an army of goblins, timelords, giants, dragons, ghostbusters and superheroes? The game thematically made never much sense, because you do not play the lore, you use it in a fractured way to beat your oponent. I build limited decks, because I like them to be thematically coherent as a piece of flavor. But when it comes to gameplay and scenery, you were never part of the worlds you played, you made them part of yours. But what your world is seems blurry to me at best. And that is what makes Magic adaptable to many flavors and open to anything.
I know this comment will probably get lost but I felt I should speak my mind. I recently started playing magic with friends as of this year and LOTR universe beyond is what got me into the game. However I have fallen in love with magic because of the existing magic universe not because there’s LOTR cards in it. The beautiful fantasy art was what drew me in as it was identifiably “magic”. I’m sad to see it going in this direction and I don’t have the same nostalgia that I’m sure many of you veterans do!
You are not alone. I've seen many comments like yours, people who started with Universes Beyond and fell in love with Magic, many of whom now don't know how to feel or worry that their opinion is not valid. You have as much a right to criticise or celebrate the game as any other player. You're an example of UB working as intended, drawing in new players to the game, and I think that is proof that UB sets have no need to be tournament legal (even though LOTR is tournament legal, lol).
I've played for 31 years, and can say that in my tempered opinion, LotR was one of the best sets WotC has ever done. Up there with Mirage, Mirrodin, Ravnica, Time Spiral, Alara, Lorwyn, Innistrad. . .
What an excellent way, but such a sad time, to get in to the game.
The best part of Magic is the old art. People have always played the meta, trying to win asap. Taking the time to invest in the art, the flavortext, and the lore is what was memorable.
Go back to the Urza block. Check out Ice Age or Tempest or Mirage or Weatherlight or Mercadian Masques or Odyssey.
The art was better. The power level of the cards was lower. It's not purely rose colored glasses, it really was more enjoyable.
Cracking a booster felt like you actually had a chance of winning the big card. You used to look forward to foils instead of cursing them. They didn't sell you a card that was strictly an advertisement for a microtransaction laden video game.
People knew this was gonna happen and were berated as Debbie Downers for being pessimistic. Funny how none of those MtG creators have gone on an apology tour to all of us who were spot on(names withheld)
I’ve played over 30 years and I did love the LOTR set. I was also happy it wasn’t in standard though. They should be stand alone or in their own format. Definitely should not take the place of actual MTG lore.
It’s pretty depressing.
Something that never gets mentioned when people talk about the frog in the boiling water experiment... The frog only stayed in the plot when they cut its brain stem first. Normally, when the frog feels the water starting to get too hot, it would leave.
"Frog with cut brainstem doesnt try to escape water with slowly raising temperature" ? I dont think that was an actual experiment. Its all just an urban legend.
The point isn't the actual experimemt at this point, it is just used for simile. The literal scientific effect holds no water, but it does in psychology. Conditioning and gradually worsening things can work. We see Google doing it now even, but that is another subject. All things are by degrees. Eventually, the temperature gets too hot, and you don't want to wait until it puts things in actual danger to say something.
The LotR set made me realize just how scummy of a cash grab MTG is.
"It bears repetion" is proof the English Prof is exhausted by all of this
For an English prof, he gets English words wrong a startling number of times.
@@megabubfish humor is lost on you guys, huh?
It was on purpose shut up boomer
To be fair, the Bard is famously used in English classes and he made up words like “repetion” all the time!
New words get skibidi made up all the fantom tax time gyatt rizzler. Who here is old enough to remember when people started saying "STATION!" because they did it in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey? Even the actors didn't know what it meant, and it turned out to be a literal typo by drunk script writers. "REPEATION!" There; now it's an English word. It means "repeating."
Damn. When prof said “I’m not happy and I’d like to talk about it” it hit me deep. Wish magic would realize how amazing of an IP they have and would just focus on that. Secret lairs were already starting to get annoying
I wish he’d actually talked about it and taken some kind of stand. It’s essentially a 15 minute video saying “I’m disappointed but not going to change anything about my behavior to show wotc that.”
@@tc5589-1 what good does him saying anything do? wotc hasnt listened to anything prof has said since the beginning. theres nothing he can do with his platform to change the direction of UB, otherwise believe me he would try.
I don’t understand you people, Magic is now a format. It has been for a while. I’ve been playing since the original innistrad, I’m not crying about having more UB. It has brought in friends who I thought would absolutely never play Magic. It’s turned into a constantly evolving board game for all of the friends of the group rather than the sweaty neck beards who have no life and hate on popcultute to seem edgy.
Prof., you nailed it. It’s an advertisement product and not Magic anymore. Imagine this would happen to Star Wars. Suddenly Elza and Olaf run through the picture and are part of the rebels. Wotc makes magic ridiculous.
Well said.
Or you’re just a fucking old head who tf cares what characters are in it as long as there cool go cry about less original characters by yourself
I feel like that only sort of works if what's being advertised is less known.
Everyone on planet Earth knows what a Spiderman is, and I doubt they'll buy UB:Spiderman for one of the side-characters that show up in 1 comic from the 80's.
Only the premise of star wars is not multiple universes and those who walk through planes of existence.
Just wanted to say I understand how you feel completely. I teared up a little at the end when you gave your final thoughts. Thank you for putting into words what a lot of us feel. 👍
All of Magic might not be for me any more.
A couple of days ago I realised I wasn't having as much fun with the game and was contemplating just moving on to another TCG... I think my decision will be the correct one at this rate.
Yup, same. Selling my collection and moving on
Was on a forced hiatus for the last two years, about to move back to my home country after Christmas... looks like I'm not going to move back into Magic, though.
@@branimirstoilov8640 If you are looking for a really good competitive focused tcg, you should try out Flesh and Blood! I used to play a lot of legacy (death and taxes, maverick) and I stopped playing MtG because of WotC which made me interested in trying out Flesh and Blood (FaB) when I was at PAX West this year. I went to the Rosetta pre release and I got hooked immediately. The community that I connected with was amazing and was really helpful on getting me started and I would recommend checking it out if your local LGS has a weekly armory!
I agree, the game just pisses me off and I can't stand to watch it turn itself into Fortnite. The game cant survive without the core of what made it fun. The game sadly will not be going backwards. Foundations looks to me to be just that, a set of staples that they then are going to dump all this shit on top of. I think magic needs a reboot, not garbage.
The idea that from now on we may be getting three Universes Beyond sets, two in universe theme sets, and one real in universe set per year makes me legit sad.
I suggest proxies. Cost next to nothing and any casual group worth playing with will take them.
Wotc in 2025:
“Henceforth Magic The Gathering will be called Hasbro Presents: Universes Beyond!”
Sounds about right
I think you mean Coca-Cola, EA Games, and Comcast present a Hasbro production: Universes Beyond: Return to Mountain Dew: Code Red.
Pretty much
It won’t be a game soon. Just pretty AI art on pretty foiling. No text. No rules. Just pictures.
As some say..
This is now The Gathering
But without Magic..
some moron at corporate thought they had a big brain moment and said "magic is just the mechanics lets monetize the mechanics to the greatest extent possible" and this is what we ended up with
I don't think they're a moron. I think they are three incredibly convincing raccoons in a business suit.
Weis Schwarz but somehow less complicated
It's just Uno... or Monopoly
and that "moron" in corporate actually made wizards a lot of money. The UB cards sell. Which makes you shudder to think about why in the world would people fall for such gimmicky "nerd culture" bait.
He adapted the fornite model "smashing action figures together" into a card game. It prints money. That moron is sitting peachy and garunteed on the golden parachute list if the bough finally breaks.
Breaks my heart too. Magic is being so diluted.
After foundations, done updating my decks. Sticking with plane based cubes as neat board games in the closet
I didn't think Universes Beyond sets would be so bad but 2:21 definitely had me rethinking haha.
I get it..... it's about money but it really feels like jack slaying the golden goose because he forgot to buy gravy......this sux!!!!!!
Things can be about money without being about greed. They see MTG as a cash cow and they want to milk it even at the cost of it's reputation.
@@snarbloxoh yeah, because a fuckin Spongebob card is going to push people away, lmao.
@@snarblox What reputation? You know the reputation that card game nerds have right? It's not exactly a good one.
@@snarblox How is that anything other than greed? Lol
Personally, I'd be in favour of a UB and Magic format split. One for just magic, and one for both.
The pioneer Reddit has already started multiple UB free discords. I think I’ve seen the name pure pioneer or Salvation floating around.
They already had that, and decided they preferred more money instead of integrity
If they're going to turn "competitive paper magic" into a joke then stop paying to play it. Rule 0 out the UB slop everywhere else.
I would far prefer this solution.
@@Unknown-qj9sm Ooooh that sounds interesting. Immediately after the announcement I started considering dropping magic altogether but I realized it's not a problem of UB existing or not (after all drafting these sets can be a joy in itself), it's the problem of them being legal everywhere. We need some UB free formats, and if the community's starting to push it then it's great news and maybe I don't have to quit at all.
It's sad that WotC did not create these safe havens themselves, in that they definitely broke my trust, but a community driven format would still be great news.
It's been a fun ride, Prof.
There are many foods I enjoy. But I wouldn't want them served on the same plate. I would say that MTG has clearly "jumped the shark", but for fear that a Happy Days Commander Deck is already in the works. Hasbro just wants MTG back in Walmart. There I said it.
What fucking sucks for me personally, is that, back when UB Final Fantasy was first announced I was hype for it, but with the intervening time, and esp with UB just getting shoved into standard instead of Modern (AND INSTEAD OF JUST BEING IT'S OWN FUCKING FORMAT), my disgust for the corporate EVERYTHING just overrules my LOVE of FF as a series, and that just fucking sucks man :
Mood. FF is even one of the crossovers that doesn't feel like it would be a huge stretch either; it doesn't feel nearly as 'invasive' as say Marvel or Spongebob. But waiting so long and watching everything slip makes me hesitant to actually involve myself.
This right here. I don't like UB but I was willing to stomach it for Final Fantasy. Now that it's a Standard set in a world where we're expected to buy a Standard set every two months? It makes me reconsider buying any Magic products.
Same. I was very excited for it when it was announced years ago, but Universes Beyond is becoming too consistent a product and frankly doesn't really belong in the main formats (which didn't really affect me due to being a commander player first and foremost, which means a FF themed Commander deck was always the goal). I remember the old criticism of 'where does this end, Spongebob?' but it turns out they appear to have been absolutely right.
Theres an ACTUAL Final Fantasy Trading Card Game! Many crossover mechanics from magic but NO "land" issues like mana flooding or mana screwing. So if you like magic as a game but love FF, FFTCG is actually for you! Cheaper, awesome community. I would encourage you to try it out with your friends. I will NEVER go back to magic.
Theres an ACTUAL Final Fantasy Trading Card Game! Many crossover mechanics from magic but NO "land" issues like mana flooding or mana screwing. So if you like magic as a game but love FF, FFTCG is actually for you! Cheaper, awesome community. I would encourage you to try it out with your friends. I will NEVER go back to magic.
I always say, as soon as a game starts doing cross-over products, that heralds the end of that game, because the creators sacrifice long-term health and cohesion for short-term excitement.
It wont die. But im impressed by how many people have stockholm syndrom over games. I started with a new tcg and it was the best decision. I hated being mad because of my hobby (mtg). So many fails in the last years
@@SpecialOfficerHunk What TCG? I'd like a paper TCG to get into that's not yugioh (can't stand playing it), or mtg (ruining the aesthetic)
@@snowshow6207I personally play One Piece and Digimon but if you want a more traditional western fantasy spin theres Flesh & Blood and Sourcery
Who is evening buying this UB garbage? Surely there is not enough novelty for these products from Magic players to warrant the high number of releases we're seeing. Are new players creating this much demand for these products?
@@snowshow6207Look into One Piece, Digimon and Lorcana. We're in the golden TCG era
I still remember altering Magic cards back in the day to make them look like Batman. I never thought that soon we’d be altering Spider-Man to make him look like he belongs in the Magic universe
Again, thank you Prof for being our voice. There are many of us.
True, there are plenty of the neckbeards
To me that announcement was the most impactful change that's ever happened to Magic and I saw very little backlash online from creators. It's been a week, where is the backlash
It's their livelihood so most will choose to ignore it unfortunately.
It’s so strange that I feel so alone in this worry, but the overwhelming response to wizards has been positive, everywhere but online. In person people cheered, content creators seem to either be very positive on it or not care with the only two exceptions I can think of being Spice and Prof, spice having made a 2 hour video on this exact concern a year ago. It feels so strange to be so isolated on this hill watching a million other people stranded on their own isolated hills.
@@Unknown-qj9smdo you have a ref for the spice video? Title or link? Not sure which one it is on their page
Maybe the people fearing the MTG sky is falling are just in the minority even though it may seem like the majority. Certainly not saying the concerns of the minority are invalid or anything like that.
@ Yeah it’s the this one. More recent than I thought.
ruclips.net/video/m9AvT6mS0xE/видео.htmlsi=KmuZ-o1TAqq7Nhsg
People should do tournaments where they ban universes beyond.
The problem is everyone sits on the side lines and says this exact thing and does nothing, bystander effect.
Feel free to ask people at your lgs about this, I personally like UB but I think everyone should have their group.
We've been playing 60card kitchen table magic since commander warped magic the gathering. We let people play whatever they want. We don't see many UB cards at the table. We're all old noncompetitive nostalgia players. We draft a lot of the remastered sets and play decks like the rock, UG madness, UW control, monored/black/white etc. Just play how you want. There are others that play that way too.
@@Pug8what do you want us to do about it right now?
You’re complaining that people are complaining about a new decision wotc made?
We dont need tournaments. We just need many groups of 4 or more friends who game regularly with and internally agreed upon ruleset.
Think of it as going from "the NHL" to "shooting penalties in Daves backyard".
Where nobody can tell us how to play.
As someone who also plays Weiss Schwartz and Universus, universes beyond never really bugged me. But seeing it jump to 50% of magic releases in the future so fast is concerning.
Yeah I mainly play weiss and understand inherently that the game is based on X anime/popular thing. Magic grabbing that now with SpongeBob feels EXTREMELY out of place though.
The difference in weiss vs mtg for this case is mtg doesn't live and die by its acquired property, and it really never should, it has its own universe, own people and own setting, a crossover should be a nice addition, a new flavor, not the whole 31 flavors in your damn bowl.
Seriously if you said it was ONE set a year out of 4 or 6, it would feel forced but fine. Half? Half of all MTG?
Then you are and have been the problem from the start. We all warned you this was absolutely going to happen, we KNEW it was going to happen... But nooooo "its cool... its hip... its fun".... Thanks for ruining my beloved game. You and all the rest of your ilk. You bought this shit, you caused this shit, if I was your father id be very disappointed in you.
SpongeBob doesn’t bother me any more than Chucky or Fortnite or any other secret lair exclusive property. The commander decks and full sets we’ve gotten have all been made with care and love for both their properties and the Gameplay Magic provides. I just really dislike how “get out of my front yard” all the UB critics get about anything deviating from Magic history or high fantasy.
I do however think 50% of standard sets is ridiculous and I wish Universe Beyond critics would stop putting so much focus on the SpongeBob secret lair and focus and that issue instead
Yeah! UVS is my IP-game of choice! Not mtg sorry!
The worst part is WOTC (largely through MaRo) telling us (UB critics) at every turn that our criticisms aren’t about things that will ever happen, and that we’re just being bitter or being haters or whatever, and being told “just don’t play with the cards.” To me, it was always obvious that “just don’t play with UB” was eventually going to mean “just don’t play magic.”
I have been pushed out, after multiple decades, and relegated to just playing cube. Good thing cube is the best format anyway. I’ll miss the endorphin-rush of cracking packs, but there’s other gacha out there.
Wizards cares about where the money is. MaRo has made that much clear.
Buy Bloomburrow product. Buy Tarkir product. Don't let the Fomo of falling behind in eternal formats push you into buying UB product, only buy those as singles, if you must.
Put your money where your heart is. Let's keep Drafting Bloomburrow and Foundations until Tarkir gets here.
In order for WotC to push the focus away from UB, non UB sets have to outperform them.
As much as I appreciate the intent, people buying those sets are not just meta chasers. The people that prefer old MtG might be, but I have spoken to so many people who just genuinely enjoy where Magic is right now as well as people who don't play it that are, for the first time, curious after FF and Marvel were suggested.
Absolutely, if you don't want to buy these sets, don't buy them. You should always speak with your wallet and buy what you enjoy vs what is good or popular...but I personally don't think the amount of people that are upset by this are going to have enough of an impact vs the people excited for non-meta reasons to shift things.
@@adavies425 Yes exactly
@Shyruni And I fully agree with this as well, tbh. There are UB products I absolutely love and invested in myself, and I don't want to deny anyone that fun.
I guess my main concern is specifically with the few who ARE meta chasers yet still complain. Can't have it both ways. I'm mostly concerned with the feeling that UB moving to Standard will lead to meta chasing more than ever, and that it will be difficult to avoid.
@@adavies425 Very true.
Thank you Prof for voicing our concerns and being such a wonderful part of The gathering ✨
I’ve been waiting for this video since the announce. ❤ prof
Edit: just finished the video. The day after the announcement I drove 40mins to sell my cards. I just don’t want to continue this trend, not just in magic but in our whole culture, of treating “line go up” as a reasonable answer to anything. Squeezing every dollar out of something like it’s some virtue is disgusting, and we pay a cost in our souls at a certain point. I might still pop a draft with friends now and then, but I’m done with Hasbro.
I'm selling my collection on ebay too
A lot of my cards have personal, childhood memories in them. But a lot of the rest I have considered dumping. Proxies are a thing after all.
...you could still play with them, tho?
@@RHCole Since wizards started prioritizing arena, undercutting stores with online sales, and removing community events like GPs, 3 LGS have closed in my area basically wrecking huge communities of players. Like I said my friends and I might do drafting. I kept a modern spirits deck and a pauper burn, but selling everything else. I had to drive that far because all our local stores that bought singles closed.
I'm not selling my cards but my sentiment is the same as yours so I'm not buying anything new, UB or not. My decision was just as sudden though. The second I read about the new legality I thought "well, that's it then."
Imagine trying to watch basketball but NBA think football made more money and have football game instead of basketball
IPs and crossovers are truly the poison of original worlds and storytelling, just like Fortnite and so many other forms of entertainment they slowly get more deluded and drowned out. Even tho the lord of the rings magic the gathering set was really cool it still had the feeling that it didn’t truly belong in the world of magic. I just want new original worlds and storytelling of magics world, I just hope for the future that magic stays magic.
Just when I was excited to get back into competitive standard with a 5 year Core Set they pull this and kill my enthusiasm.
Dude i was hyped to return because of that core set and tarkir, SO HYPED. But knowing half sets next year will be UB it's just depressing. Other formats already had some UB, leave at least standard out of this, it's the only thing i play.
Oh, you're kinda right... meh, maybe it'll still be fun.
Aside from the UB angle, don't overlook that they are on pace to push Standard to well over 6000 cards. If you're old-school you remember the infamous "Year of Living Changerously" article in which MaRo explained that 2100 cards was far too many for standard. (And assured us this was not just a trick to make Mythics seem more common by introducing them in smaller sets.)
Maro says a lot of stuff. Money talks at the end of the day.
At some point you're going to have to acknowledge that MaRo's job is to sell you whatever the latest corporate nonsense is.
@@FalseHerald I know. I hope for nuggets of actual design insight to sneak out but they are so few and far between these days.
His article on "10 things every game needs" and speech on "20 years, 20 lessons" will always be classics though. RIP that Mark's demise to the one who says we have always been at war with Eastasia.
It's kind of insidious, however, that the thing "we shouldn't worry about" was specifically targeted - a high-price collector's item that had functions, but would not see reprinting (for a while), targeted at a franchise that still had momentum, and when it "did gangbusters", they could tap both the fanbase and the inherent gamblers in the community (specifically those treating MtG as a financial option) to make their revenue, and justify their position.
I won't say outright it's a conspiracy, but I will say it's definitely not entirely lightning in a bottle. Hasbro, and Wizards of the Coast, want money, more money than last year, and want more money next year, and this is the path of least resistance: damning the few, and spoiling the many; poisoning the well, and selling the antidote. They cut the chaff of weaker-willed or lower-income players who can't afford the inevitable price-hike on these "IP's" and yet can dip into them by giving us sets like Aetherdrift to collect the few remaining souls that have a lingering nostalgia with MtG.
I'm part of this problem, of course. I want the Final Fantasy cards because I like the idea of FF in MtG, and don't want to drop money for the dead FF card game. I'm not unaware of the fact that I like the art and function of the Warhammer cards, or the Fallout cards. I realise, too late of course, that this part of the problem - the constant and incessant pandering to the mass appeal - even works against somebody who loved Magic *for* Magic. My interests, and the interests of the worlds they introduce, intersect in a way that made sense to me then, but was the carrion call of the unrecongnisable morass MtG is soon to become, and I damned the warning because I fell for the allure of the pop, the here-and-now.
If I speak honestly, I can't bring myself to enjoy the idea of a return to Tarkir, or the idea of a racing set. Phyrexia had the biggest blow-up of the known MtG Multiverse, and we'll never feel the repercussions of it. We'll be damned to minor blocks, sets within settings, fractals and shards of what could've been the defined future of Magic. Instead we're saddled with cards the populous will love, referential material to make the reptilian mind crave for collecting, and be eternally damned to the wheel of Magic's slow grind from fantastical, mythological settings, to truly rancid, jank, and unfitting worlds are slotted in for the sake of the last few pennies.
If the above doesn't tell it, then I'm sad about it. Sad about the world we live in where this is the future - the only future - we have for the game. If nobody buys these UB sets, they won't change their mind. It's a sunk cost fallacy now, likely, akin to Funko contunally mass-producing cheap knock-offs of characters. It doesn't inspire confidence that the Sephiroth key art for the FF set is AI generated, clearly and almost unabashedly. What a world to live in.
WotC has become beyond irredeemable in my books
I mean, when you fire a massive percentage of your staff at Christmas during a time when your story is already feeling rushed and sidelined, moving to Universes Beyond seems like a really good idea so that your skeleton crew can do a bit of story stuff and try to figure out what's upcoming, while your card design team figures out how to translate the card effects properly.
I quit buying magic cards years ago when I saw the writing on the wall with secret lairs. Sorry everyone still interested in the game has to go through this, feels a bit disconnected and creatively bankrupt.
I stopped buying when Wizards decided to be rasists (raceswaped characters from LoTR) and then figureout that they started to work with bigger racists - Baby Sweet inc
It's good to be in something from the ground floor, and I came too late for that... I know.
But lately I've been getting a feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.
I see what you did there
I will admit that I have been one of UB's staunchest defenders. I liked the idea of cards from my favorite pieces of media being optional bling I could use in Commander or other formats. I had always imagined what it would be liked if X or Y character was made into a card - and now I could find out, for real! I really enjoyed the UB Commander decks, and I felt like they brought a kind of cohesiveness and creativity to card design and deck design that usually didn't appear in Universes Within products. I also didn't really mind when they had functionally unique cards in UB - I found the cards interesting and fun enough to be worth playing, it was really cool to see my characters I recognize doing cool and unique things, and I could just ignore the name and artwork if I wanted to; many of the UB cards felt like their theming wasn't too far off Magic's own, anyway.
I add this preface to make a point. I am among the direct target audience for UB. I like the idea, I like the products, and I have spent money purchasing them. I thought the Warhammer decks were the coolest thing since sliced bread, and you have no idea how ecstatic I was to see Hatsune Miku on a Magic card.
I think turning UB into full, direct, mainline, standard-legal sets is about 10 steps too far. To me, UB has always felt optional, buy-in if you want to, opt-out if you don't. I know this hasn't always been the reality, but this is how it felt to me. Now, they are unavoidable, and they are noticeably so. It boggles my mind that they are making TWO UB standard-legal sets IN THE SAME YEAR. Either they will pump out cards and sets at a ridiculous pace (something players have already complained about and something they have said they will address), or these sets will take up space that would have otherwise been New-Cappena-done-right or some other Magic-original idea. Perhaps the answer is that they will do both, at the same time.
To me, this feels like a death of what made the game great to me. Saying that feels awfully dramatic, but at the same time I know it isn't. Great ideas and wonderful sets will be put down to make space for marketable collaborations. If I want to play my wacky jank deck in standard, I have to play Spider-man or else the deck doesn't function. As time goes on, more and more of this will happen, and the suits will work to squeeze any money they can out of this. The Magic of old will be pushed to the side for the Magic of new, and as long as the new players spend money, that's fine by them.
I think they've made an enormous mistake here, and I think they know it. They know this is a terrible decision for enfranchised players. They just hope the payoff - the players and money this brings in - will be worth the loss. I think our best bet going forward is to make our voices known, and to tell them: NO. It will not be worth it. There may still be time to course correct.
Genuine question that is in no way meant to be provocative: In all the discourse, I see the term "unavoidable" used a lot to describe the impact of UB sets on the playscape. What doss that mean exactly? As someone who has played Magic casually since Amonkhet, but has only started playing more frequently since 2022, I don't really comprehend what it means for these sets to be "unavoidable". Is it because of power creep? I'm only asking to understand the POV just cause I feel like I've gone the last 7 years largely ignoring most of the BS products and while being happy with my overall experience. Cheers
I'm all for UB being allowed in all formats. Only the fact that half the upcoming sets are UB is a problem as far as I'm concerned.
Separately issue SpongeBob is a worst idea possible for magic.
Players have bullied WotC into backing off of terrible game ideas several times already in the D&D space. We can do it here too.
I'm right there with you on everything, from loving the idea of UB to this being a massive overstepping of the game's boundaries
@ yeah agreed and agreed half of all sets being UB is a lot of UB and I didn't register just how much that means cause I've lost my sense of the Magic release cycle in general (almost feels like there isn't one anymore). I also agree that Spongebob is just super NOT it
Nice to see the regrets. Hopefully you didn't criticise the real mtg fans that were critical of UB from the start, like the Walking Dead. They were always right of course.
Magic was more than just a rules system to me. I'm the type of player who really buys into a games world, lore, and identity. I've always described my hobbies as like different rooms in a house. Sometimes I want to be surrounded by that hobbies world with no outside influence. All these IP crossover tends feel like someone is busting down all the walls between my interests and I can no longer be immersed in them fully.
I've always tried to make my decks have a sort of thematic cohesion even beyond the decks mechanics. Even if it actively makes the deck worse, it's just how I've sort of kept up the immersion of the original premise of the game.
The proliferation of UB in my opponents decks isn't the problem for me, it's the reduction in new sets that mesh with that original high fantasy feel that is a problem for me. It doesn't matter how much folks try and call out the early cards with golems, mechanical suits, Phyrexians or the Thrann to try and argue it's always been like that, those cards all still felt like they meshed with a fantasy setting and were a natural representation of what technology might look like in a world full of magic and inventors. But the automatons, vehicles, and battle suits of Urza, Mirrodin, or the Phyrexians have a very different , fantasy-tech feel from the sci-fi/retrowave feel of Neon Dynasty, Duskmourn, and the upcoming Aetherdrift.
@@ddalton86ify This, exactly. People don't seem to realise that "fantasy with some mechs" is not the same thing as "actual factual sci fi". The fact that some earlier sets had some tech-looking stuff sprinkled in doesn't mean that Magic was never firmly rooted in high fantasy.
That's my key problem. Even actual Magic doesn't feel like Magic anymore. I was drawn into the game some two and a half decades ago because I like fantasy - good, strong, classic fantasy. Of course there can be variation in theme, but some people like to pretend that the difference between a medieval knight and Greek hoplite is the same as the difference between those things and a straight-up Ghostbuster. And I don't even know where to begin with that.
I'm fine with UB in general, but not only is the 50/50 split way too much, the fact that there is absolutely no consistency or cohesiveness anymore, either in universe or out, sucks most.
@@ddalton86ify I always felt MTG's original premise was more "fantastical" than Fantasy. There was a dabbling of varying subgeneres which came together to create a more fantastical setting. More traditional dwarves, elves, orcs, etc but also varying kinds of magic, machinations, artifacts powered by energy or magic or something unknown. It was all different but almost always felt like it belonged to whatever plane us Planeswalkers (which was originally the player) pulled it from. But today it's less cohesive. Rather than sets and planes having an identity that inspired the cards Wizards picks a vague theme and makes that a set.
The fact that Tarkir is the only real magic set coming out all year is tragic. I usually only buy singles, but I'll be going to prerelease and buying a handful of packs just to show wizards that's what I want more of.
Yes I’ve done a lot of Bloomburrow drafts too hoping to boost sales over the other 2024 sets
Also for fun- great set
This is a great way to show WOTC what we want. I usually only buy singles anymore, but I think I want to make a statement by buying a box of the Tarkir--so long as it, too, isn't diluted to be something else.
Fortunately, there's actually three magic sets coming out! Not good, since there's also three UB sets, but not as bad as you think.
Aetherdrift? Edge of Eternities?
But yeah.
@@seanpkruegerbarely Magic Sets at all, really
There will now be YEARS in between releases of actually original ideas in magic. It could very easily see us hitting a point where most of what comes out is universe is beyond and every once in a while, they’ll come out with an actual set that’s within the original magic universe. Magic WILL look like Fortnite within five years. No real identity of its own beyond being everything else mashed into one. Why did everything nerdy have to go mainstream?
This is probably the end of my engagement with this hobby.
I got into MtG around when Lorwyn was about to come out. Planeswalkers were a new card type.
I really liked the paperbacks for Lorwyn Shadowmoore.
I'm really sorry.
Welcome to FaB my friend 😏 Prof also loves that game and it's really more player than corporation oriented. 2024 World's are just live so you can check how many lovely people are also engaged it this game 😅
@TulipQ I got in 7th edition. I owned every paperback from then up until they stopped making them... but stop they did. And it wasn't long after that I stopped buying cards.
Let's get a Professor secret lair.
One card can have the Professor holding his ears, as if trying to block out sound, while surrounded by his heads all screaming "Secret Lair alert!". The card would be "Tormenting Voice".
Or just new art for Tolarian Winds.
That’s great 😂 needs to be a 3 card + basic land secret layer for irony
The fact they're doing a spongebob crossover and STILL haven't done one with the Witcher universe BLOWS my mind
The Witcher show started to underperform and is basically getting cancelled or something right? They haven't made a Witcher game in like 9 years. Spongebob is still on TV to this day somehow.
After the disaster launch of Cyberpunk I am sort of surprised that CD Projekt Red wouldn't want to license out some IP to make money though.
@@Linkard Isn’t that just assassin’s creed?
@@Elfenlied8675309 Witcher show didn't die because it was bad though... it died when Henry Cavil decided he didn't wanna play Gerald anymore. Yes.. fans were starting to get disappointed that it was going a little to wide from the games... but we would still be watching it if Henry Cavil never left it honestly.
@@GhostNarwhal1no, the show was in fact, really bad and Henry Cavill couldn't do enough to save it, since he himself is a massive fan of The Witcher
He probably decided to jumo ship because he saw it was no longer salvagable
@@xolotltolox7626 Don't just regurgitate what you heard. Not everyone thinks it was bad, despite it diverging from the source material and some of us haven't experienced the source material anyway ...
Nice that some people don't mind or enjoy it, but for me Magic is dead, I will not come back. Wish you happiness if you like this though :)
okay yeah this absolutely reaffirms my decision to stop buying magic products altogether and just play commander with my friends. I came to magic because I want to play Magic and collect Magic and have fun with Magic, not because I wanted to play Fortnite: the card game
I stopped two years ago after seeing the trend... Never felt better. The last two years I only bought singles of older premodern cards.
This is my 'told everyone so' moment. So sorry it's here.
Whatever unique, interesting, special interest you might have enjoyed, must become a homogenized sludge able to be "consumable by anyone and everyone".
Ironically, didn't MaRo once comment about how something that everybody likes but nobody loves is doomed to fail? It's honestly sad and pitiful seeing him (and WotC) turn back on what he said more and more. The only problem is that the casualty is our game.
Line must always go up! Up line good! Down line bad!
As a Yugioh Player I was actually going to try the Gathering and build a Magic deck for commander and one for Standard and I was more Interested in Intriguing Creatures and characters and other Concepts and themes that were Original too Magic and not some other random or popular IP’s.
Some IP’s just need to stay in their box And bigger isn’t always better.
Magic has always had planes based off of tropes including the first expansion Arabian Nights. However, there has a been a huge shift even in new planes to just hit hard on gimmicks without really exploring the depth of a plane. I think this is the really sad part is that the depth of world building through new planes hasn't really been done in over five years.
I feel ya dude. Every time we tried to talk about our fears of such things, we have been shut down. I guess we have the acknowledgement of being correct (if we are even granted that), but in the face of where the game is headed it just means being right is a bitter pill. I love MtGings lore. My only deck I've blinged out is a dedication to the my favorite legends, story lines and planes of Magic. I don't allow any expanded universe cards in it. It hurts watching this happen, but might hurt worse knowing how few people care.
Well, they'll acknowledge we were correct but mock us or condescend to us for ever caring at all.
I don't think the situation warrants "right" and "wrong" here. There will still be MTG original sets. There will still be UB sets. Everyone can be happy here. Why do preferences and personal tastes have to be "right" or "wrong?" Wanting everything to be original MTG or conversely, everything to be UB is a bit selfish when everyone can get what they want.
@@maxv658 Get outta here with this. This is the exact kind of stuff I'm talking about in my comment. This is the constant placating and acting like wanting something very reasonable is some how ridiculous. This is the exact kind of toxic positivity that people who respect the history and world of this game always run into. It is 100% fine to want Magic to maintain it's focus on it's own house and I will not respect this empty kumbaya facade covering the vapid capitalism of these decisions.
@@maxv658 Players who want to be able to play a sanctioned format without dealing with being beaten over the head by corporate mascots cannot get what they want. There's no constructed format for us anymore.
Hell, 4/5 of my last Commander games all had UB decks in the pod. This is just what Magic is now, and *that's* not even sanctioned. (And you gotta understand, I would have no problem if UB was a sometimes thing, but it's now been made the entire thing. No, I cannot get what I want anymore, and that upsets me.)
@@maxv658 I echo the sentiment of others who have replied to your comment. I haven't ever been a big fan of UB, but I could simply play standard, pioneer, or at one point even modern to avoid having to deal with them. Eventually Modern was out once UB sets started becoming legal there. Now there is no format of MTG I can play that will be free of random characters from properties that are very out of place in the world of Magic. No. Not everyone can be happy. If you like UB you can be happy. If you don't, there's nowhere left in this game for you. I guess that means there's no place left in this game for me. I refuse to play against Spiderman in any constructed format and will not deal with handicapping myself by not playing staples that will be printed in UB sets. I like Spiderman. I like MTG. That doesn't mean I want Spiderman in MTG.
Card games on motorcycles!!!! Wait yugioh already did this
The Dark Signer saga was great.
At least it ended up doing pretty well in the first half.
You should see card games on battleplates.
Forever wild someone did that idea. Yeah lets combine card games, the game of stable table and thought process in strategy, and combine it with a moving vehicle in a race.
And lets make it sick as hell.
Yugioh has yet to have A SINGLE OUTSIDE COLLAB in 20 years so i dont see the comparison
I love the game structure they've created for MTG. It's one of the most complex and rewarding systems I've ever played with on table top.
It is no longer MTG though. It's Magic the Multiverse. I like the game, but between choosing to spend money on other things and the way Commander is basically rolling a standard rotation where it's not about coming up with new content - it's about finding 5 different ways to make the same card so you can put make everything reliable; this is not what made MTG magic.
It's American Weiss Schwarz at this point.
which is freaking awesome!
@@Goldy01The numbers disagree with you.
Except Weiss Schwartz somehow feels more respectful to the core game than this
I have made this comparison pretty often, and then I literally saw someone say their lgs stopped running Weiss Schwarz so they picked up magic *so they could keep playing Hatsune Miku cards* and eventually play the FF set. I felt my heart break in my chest reading that; this is what new people turn to magic for now. It sucks.
@@aaronbasham6554because it never pretended to be something else
More and more frequently I think to myself that my cube is the only set I'm interested in anymore
I will attack with a 10/10 mr crabs
Block with Pearl. Do it.
When he deals damage, you create that many treasure tokens. 🤣🤣
@thomaseddy7347 he also has the ability to sacrifice 2 food tokens to create a treasure token.
@@thomaseddy7347 I assume crabby patties will be the art for food tokens Sponge Bob will create
Don't worry, he'll be printed as a Dockside Extortionist