I’m grateful that you shared this. Some times I feel like I’m taking crazy pills because I’m like “Does nobody else see this? Does no one else care about Magic lore!?” So I’m glad I’m not the only only one
Thank you so much for commenting this. I don't like to come across this negative, and there's always comments from people upset that I don't share their joy. So it's nice to hear that not only am I not alone, but that what I've said has been appriciated. Thank you
It's really bad on Facebook. The "let people enjoy things" crowd will drown you out in ridicule if you just dare insinuate that this might be detrimental to Magic's indentity. Then, of course, Facebook groups are full of terminally online tankies and other lowlives so it doesn't come as a surprise that they instinctively shit on any opinion of nuance.
Ive been playing off and on my entire childhood, but I got really into it in high school with Return to Ravnica, and it became such an important part of my identity, but ever since War of the Spark I've just been getting more and more disappointed with how things are handled. I think for me it's because its attracting more toxic players than ever before. I don't enjoy playing anymore, I have boxes of cards and many many decks that will likely never be played again because there's nothing grounding the game anymore. Just like all of social media and short form content it's all about the next big thing and I wish we had the time to really explore and appreciate what they give us before moving on to the next set. I love magic and I dont think I could ever really give it up entirely but my ire is real and I'm likely gonna give up a large chunk of my collection in the next couple years
Yes but the redditors and various players who happent to be toxic will call you pedantic or annoying regarding the changes. All in all, the major change in design philosophy for magic is a valid criticism to leave. In fact most changes are valid to leave: format changes, removal of blocks, poor design of story, whatever fundamentally holds you to this game, if it's ruined, you have every right to bicker, criticize and leave for it.
The childish thing is having a very emotional reaction and just doing it without properly giving it time to thoughtfully handle your departure.. Just quitting and selling all your cards for much less than they're worth and later regretting it is the childish way of going about it. That's what I see him saying
@@jonathan-6958 i could send you a hiking trip with some experts and along a path where good equipment will later be revealed to be fundamental, almost vital, especially for your feet, knees and lungs. Could it work? :D
Record earnings and other stuff are things that make me go like "well you aren't telling the whole story", like how much did you spend on advertisement for that? How much did you spend on development? How much of that is by people who actually play the game or by people making investments? All of it very cloudy.
@@zander2758 You hit the nail on the head. They may be making more gross revenue from all these crossover sets, but what do they net once you take away all the licensing deals? The trademark costs? I bet that, behind the scenes, they're barely able to scrape by on these
I buy cards 1$-19$ bucks (when available) at my LGS, along with sleeves, playmats and *snacks & drinks* (For Garfield’s sake, people, stop carrying in mini-coolers when your LGS is selling sodas out of a clear door fridge at soda machine prices!) For anything more expensive, I buy counterfeits I never would have bought from the LGS or anyone else. That’s what people don’t get. If something is so expensive you wouldn’t have bought it from anyone, you didn’t “cost” anyone anything. In fact, you stimulated the economy by injecting money into the bootlegger’s business, who almost certainly employs other people and pays taxes. MtG is one of the few areas where you *aren’t* helpless in the face of insatiable corporate greed.
When a player summons Thanos piloting Old Man Jenkins Jalopy & wielding Naruto's Kunai - You have an indication the game isn't going to be around for long and is in it's final death throes.
From the same block, another that perpetually weighs on my mind, especially this past week: "War glides on the simplest updrafts while peace struggles against hurricane winds. It is the way of the world. It must change."
“The absence of binocular vision imposes certain challenges for a flying creature, which are overcome via echolocation.”. It's not really relevant to the conversation, but Aeromunculus is fun to say, look at and think about
On the one hand, I really do respect that they want to help Standard. Commander and modern are NOT good sets for new players to be thrust into. Even if commander is a casual format, it's so convoluted and wild that it can turn people away. On the other, the fortnite-ification of every IP out there is getting pretty fucking boring.
@foxhoundms9051 if they want to make Standard easier to get into, I'd rather they just make it cheaper. Do more reprints. MAKE STANDARD STRUCTURE DECKS LIKE WHY ISNT THAT A THING!?
@@zachall1573 Yu-Gi-Oh used to have a lot of periodic meta-defining Structure decks being released with powerful reprints of meta staples (like the salamangreat structure deck), but nowadays, they have been literally undoing the structure decks in the tcg to put the strong cards into random ass sets to milk the vendors and playerbase into buying worthless sets on the offchance they buy a shortprinted chase super rare (like sp little knight). The reason they don't do that is because they wanna shakedown the playerbase even if it forces budget players out of the game entirely
@@foxhoundms9051 unfortunately rotation is an essential part of keeping standard healthy. Does it make the format more expensive to keep up with? Absolutely. But it also allows the format to fight powercreep and maintain accessibility. Keeping the number of sets in rotation small makes it easier to understand for beginners by presenting them with a smaller pool of cards. Without rotation, every new set would need to print high-power, high-complexity cards or people won't buy it. That's why modern horizons is always pushing the power of cards so much, if it didn't, nobody would buy it (look no further than Kamigawa block). Now every set *is* printing high-power, high-complexity cards but that's mostly caused by modern and commander taking over as the game's premier formats.
Magic feels like it's being strip mined for cash as quickly as possible. I love Magic's lore. I love its worlds and characters. They've always played off tropes but that's fine. They use those tropes to make something unique, like Phyrexia (my favorite world in ANY game). It feels like they slammed the Phyrexia story through to the end as quickly possible so they can pump out more meme sets. Also, the last point is because *every set is a Commander set until proven otherwise.*
I agree, but weirdly I'd say less strip mined and more... watered down? Like, they don't care if the quality is bad they just have to put out as much as possible, you know?
Likening combat tricks to counterspells is the perfect explanation. I've been struggling to explain to my friends why I hate the change so much, and that puts it very succinctly. It puts the defender even further on the back foot, giving the attacker every opportunity to play around you. It makes me want to start running Banding out of spite, at least then I'd be able to adequately leverage my defenses
@@RedBobcatGames Isn't the combat change motivated by Commander's format? If anything, it accelerate the game THERE where big board can swell up the time played significantly. Of course, WotC being what they are, they haven't thought how that would affect 1vs1 format, where mono red is currently a bit too popular. Just a thought. I am not saying this is a good change, but still, I wonder if commander's not the culprit here (since it's also the most popular by large).
@@daedalusdreamjournal5925 After basically a decade of them trying to push the game to be more and more aggressive, creature-centric, and braindead, you see a change that hits all three of those and say, "Yep, this probably has something to do with EDH." EDH, of course, being a format notable for using combat to break board stalls... I don't know if you could be more wrong if you tried.
Exactly thoughts about the combat trick analogy. He said it perfectly! I hate the change. It's like forcing instant speed combat tricks to be played at sorcery speed. Not literally obviously, but the reason you play them is to snake by your opponent or whatever. Them knowing defeats the purpose of playing it as a gotcha. Its dumb.
Because not enough people would play it to justify it, and Hasbro would be forced into tacit admission that it's all just a marketing gimmick to sell their licensed Spiderman and Spongebob crap.
I love magic so much but Hasbro's cartoonishly villainous greed is genuinely making it so hard to get excited about anything coming out. I loved Ixalan and I loved Bloomburrow, but I can't bring myself to care about anything else they've brought out recently
The only real thing I'm looking forward to is Innistrad remastered. And I liked Ravnica Remastered so I have high hopes. If I end up having to make a "Innistrad Remastered is a Mess" video I'm going to be heart broken
Wild to see you in these comments. It's crazy, listening to the music you and the other "nerdcore" (for lack of a better term because you guys have been making like 40% of my favorite music for 5 years or so now) has helped me enjoy anime and manga more. I see all this passion poured into constantly making something cool. I look at Magic and it's going so rapidly in the other direction. I absolutely loved this game when I got into it at the tail end of Scars block. I kept loving it until around the time Arena introduced Alchemy (AKA "we didn't actually test cards before we printed them:" the format. I tried advocating Pauper and proxies as the best way to experience this game for a long time. WotC/Hasbro kept breaking formats repeatedly, kept introducing new Universes Beyond shit to break the immersion, and kept increasing the amount of product you have to pay attention to with no room to breathe. I never thought I'd see a time when Bandai was LESS diabolical than a product with the WotC logo on it. Right now, Digimon is the only card game that feels even marginally more fun than just listening to music or engaging with a story. There used to be a wonderful balance between the desire to consume content and the desire to play that you could fulfill entirely with Magic. It's long since gone now. Why engage with a product that's become inherently self-destructive? SpongeBob is probably going to be the reason I completely abandon this game. It's so antithetical to Magic's identity that it's almost like losing a piece of your own if you loved prior eras of the game. Fuck Hasbro, dude.
I agree on EVERY. ONE. All my friends and plenty of people online are so quick to dismiss my concerns and say I’m being “hyperbolic” or “overreacting”. It’s really cool to have someone saying the things I’m saying, at least it’s less lonely.
My friend was very stand offish and rude about it all because to him he only cares about the mechanics of the game and it took me a few days and a lot of personal accounts on videos like me to validate those feelings. For me I started in m13 with the Odric Master Tactician and have been commited since but the direction the game is headed and the treatment of artists I can no longer support this path they are going down
Interesting. My community is on the brink of complete dissolution right now. Not one person I know is even mildly happy with the current game direction, personally I’m going to start making proxies of every single card I decide I want to use from every product past and future in any deck building from now on. If a playgroup refuses to play with that condition I’ll simply leave that group and find another.
@@tc5589-1Proxying is great, but I think there's further nuance to it. Our playgroup tends to build with bought cards, so there is an idea that budget affects the powerlevel. If proxying allows one to go beyond a reasonable budget (and therefore powerlevel), then it is actively discouraged. But if you build a proxied deck at a reasonable budget, go for it! 😄
Whenever a company starts trying SOOO hard to cater to "new players", its just a giant red flag to me that they are intentionally trying to shift directions, give a big middle finger to their veteran fanbase, and are totally down to fuck up all the precedents set beforehand.
WotC probably knows that most veteran players actually dont spend as much money directly on magic. They tend to he saavy, undersanding card value and why buying booster boxes is a bad idea only sometimes indulged in - usually just paying for drafts and otherwise buying singles second hand. WotC wants to churn through players in that honeymoon phase of magic where everything is new and fresh, where you dont have an established collection for deck building and you need to pay the huge onboarding costs for various formats - often buying boxes because they don't know better yet.
A guy who did on the ground retail to small businesses and I were talking options for expanding the menu I held at my own business. He pointed out that it is usually easier to increase ticket sales among existing customers than to draw new customers. When these companies choose to favor "new customers" it means they are, wittingly or unwittingly, killing their revenue base. There are several reasons they may do this - they may just be ignorant, seen significant declines in sales to the existing base, see a decline in the number of the active customer group (they may be spending more money, but a player base that is in decline is a problem to address), or there is some ideological reason for changing customer demographics (or attempting to). Is Magic being played at high schools, still? The guy I was talking with used to work for a local HVAC and general maintenance contractor here in town before going on his own. "Back when I first started, it was just a few of us and a dispatch... Then the owner started hiring all of these managers and our cost to customers went way up." These are big businesses that are no longer the small works of passion which defined an era. They are not interested in either their product as a product of their endeavors, but instead a revenue stream. It's an inversion of the usual formula where someone is interested in a product/service and needs a revenue stream to keep it going vs someone who is interested in a revenue stream and needs a product/service to keep it going. The more the business becomes an entry in a spreadsheet, the more detached and hollow it becomes.
I stopped playing Magic two months ago, and I’ve never felt better. There wasn’t just one specific reason, though the overabundance of UB products (even reskinned Secret Lairs) and the overwhelming product fatigue were major factors. Ultimately, it came down to how the game felt. Magic was no longer just a game, a passion, or a story to cherish and enjoy. Instead, it turned into a capitalistic machine focused on making shareholders happy, stripping away the joy it once brought. This shift has been evident in countless decisions made over the past four years. These, weren’t just decisions I disagreed with, but it was more about how these decisions felt. they felt like deliberate, short-sighted grabs for quick profit at the expense of everything else. It’s like watching climate change on steroids happening to Magic. The impact has been visible everywhere: in the products, announcements, gameplay changes, lore, events, and the ways to play the game (mtg arena is basically still in a beta state). It’s been a disaster, a form of corporate colonialism driven by unchecked capitalism. I can’t help but feel that if Wizards of the Coast weren’t a publicly traded company-or weren’t based in the U.S.-many of these decisions either wouldn’t have been made or would have been handled very differently. It feels like what's have been happening to Boeing or countless other US companies. I had to leave the game. It was giving me only bad emotions, of everything that was, and everything that could be, and everything that instead it was.
I agree the most with the whole "dress-up set" criticism. I hated OTJ because of it. I hated Murders because of it. I'm going to hate Aetherdrift because of it. You know what I liked? Bloomburrow. Here is a world, and the characters in the world are concerned with the issues of the world. It reminded me a lot of the sets I loved before, like Mirrodin, Kamigawa, and Lorwyn. I'm not giving WotC money for Aetherdrift. I likely won't give them money for the space set. They can keep making this garbage if they want, but they are doing it without my wallet interacting with them.
Honestly way I see it, apart from Tarkir, the only original thing that may have potential is space set since everything else is either other IP or people wearing hats. Or sit in cars in this case.
I actually didn't like Bloomburrow, because everyone was an animal instead of being in their natural form. It was too "cute" a set for me, even though I appreciate that it was an actual Mtg set.
I think Zendikar was pretty cool. And I may be biased, but I liked Amonkhet and Ixalan even though they were a new take on a trope, they still had deep world building and an interesting story.
Bloomburrow was great for feeling like its own world, allowed to have its own heroes going on their own adventures to deal with their own conflicts, rather than just being a playground for whatever random planeswalker to drop in on and futz about in with no real thought given to the world itself. Unfortunately I still think the story was pretty bad for other reasons, but it was a step in the right direction - which just makes it sad that it seems like it's not a direction they're continuing in.
I think that was the general sentiment, even WotC did not expect that the Khan set was going to be more popular than the dragon set, but because of how sets are made they could not course correct.
@@SilverCyan khans was my first mtg set release, and bloomburrow brought me back. i asked the store manager of my lgs and he said that in terms of sales bloomburrow was comparable to khans. everything else doesnt even compare. and tbh even now a lot of bloomburrow stuff is out of stock
If WotC had kept the Ikoria Godzilla model for Universes Beyond cards being skins of in-universe cards there never would have been a problem of new fans attracted by UB cards not being able to play those cards in Standard. Nor the problem of people who don’t want to play with UB cards being forced to collect them to stay competitive.
This was never an option on the table. You either get every IP under the sun or you actually stand up for the integrity of the game. You don't get both. Enjoy paying premium for advertising "game pieces" with no flavor outside of pop culture garbage that is barely even relevant anymore but you'll have to have to stay competitive. Players earned it.
@@jamescobblepot4744 I think both you and tc5589-1 misunderstand OP's point. He's not saying they should've only made Godzilla cards. He's saying they should've printed cards from other IPs in the same manner as the Godzilla cards. I.e. have a normal Magic card, with fitting abilities, and have an alternate version with the "Universes Beyond" character art.
Hasbro definitely killing the goose that lays the golden eggs - classic corporate misguided focus on quarterly returns over long term profitability. I stopped paying attention to new sets completely.
Exactly. In Weiss Schwarz's case, it's fine since that's the premise, I love it. But MtG? It already had its worlds, its characters and it used to do a good job of it. (Well, thing were a bit different early on with Arabian Nights, but other than that)
I need to try Weiss Schwartz at some point. I mean, I assume it's actually a game. I wonder how it handles balancing and power creep over sets. Interesting to look at I think
I just want blocks and the novels that would come with fat packs back. They can make easy bake oven and tammy craps a lot cards after that and I won't care.
The finger curles and the wish is granted: All Universes Beyond sets will now come in 2-set blocks, leaving no space for MTG sets and making every single UB IP you don't personally care about twice as exhausting!
@@RedBobcatGamesi dropped mtg in 2019 for fab... Never looked back. Mtg made up a big chunk of my childhood in the 90's....I just feel like the company has let the IP down so hard.
I remember talking to my friends while playing Fortnite, cause it was the second Marvel season and I was not gonna walk away empty handed again. But I said "Y'know, when you think about it, MTG is the 'Fortnite' of Card games." and immediately my one friend practically bit my head off, telling me that 'I shouldn't compare that 'Shitass' game to a 'simple little card game', and since MTG came out first, Fortnite should be called the MTG of battle royales. All I meant was that MTG is the (As far as I'm aware) only TCG that has crossovers, and very prevalent ones at that. And now look at the game, half of the new sets are gonna be IPs ranging from Marvel to Final Fantasy. So yeah still think it's not the Fortnite of Card games my friend?
With regard to the ending, I think the biggest inconsistency is the non-legality of Foundations Jumpstart. Foundations is not one set, but four sets with different legalities. The beginner box seems to be standard legal jumpstart boosters with the foundations symbol, the jumpstart boosters that are labeled as such are non-standard with their own symbol, the play boosters have standard legal cards with the foundations symbol and non-standard special guests with the special guests symbol, and the starter collection has cards "from foundations" that aren't in any of the other products but have the foundations symbol/legality, plus commander-only cards that just have the magic "M" logo, which has been described as a "commander set symbol". That's insane.
@@alexandrbatora9674 In fairness it's functionally a lot simpler than I've made it sound: * The Beginner Box, Play Boosters, and Starter Collection all have different cards, but they're all predominantly standard legal and have the Foundations set symbol. * A few cards from the three standard-legal Foundations sets aren't standard legal and have different symbols. * Foundations Jumpstart is an entirely different set that shouldn't even have the Foundations name attached to it. It's just Jumpstart 2024. ... No, never mind. Now that I read it back, it's still silly.
this 100.000%, when I heard that they would make foundations products for modern and Commander I was like... What is even the fucking point of making Foundations if you're going to dillute it with all that crap? It makes no sense at all
I recently gave up playing the game in any real capacity in favor of migrating to pokemon TCG. I have been having a blast. All the decks are like 25 dollars, there's a lot more experimentation in terms of gameplay to be had, and there is enough variety I haven't been bored of the game even a little in my last few months of playing. If you're a long time magic player, like I was, and you love 60 card formats specifically, you're gonna have a great time with pokemon, give it a try.
I LOVED the Pokémon TCG for many years, but I only really played it digitally. When they shut the client down and said they weren't migrating a bunch of my collection to the new client I sort of stopped sadly. I admit, I never really played any of those cards, but they were mine and seeing them go was a feel bad
@DreadPirateRobertz you're just mad my standard deck was the same price as the sleeves I put it in and beats the stuff at the top of the meta. It also has a PC client that isn't pay to win, predatorily monetized slop. You can't fool ME, hon, I've actually played both games and I can tell you it's great.
thank you for making this video. It put into words all the frustrations that had been quietly brewing at the back of my mind and yet could never place.
I just realised something that's going to have a huge impact on how much I play MTG going forward - with 50% of standard sets now being UB, 50% of LGS-sanctioned drafts will be UB. Draft is a major factor in me bothering to go play MTG on a friday night, and from now on, 6 months out of the year, there will be functionally no draft environment for me as a UB-ignorer. That's especially significant for me because draft was always a safe fallback option if I got to 5PM and realised I didn't really feel like playing constructed - I could still go down to the LGS and play Magic, and get the refreshing experience of a semi-randomised deck. Now, on those days where constructed doesn't enthuse me, which will no doubt be increasingly common as Standard gets locked off to UB players only, and LGS commander pods more often have a UB player, I'm going to be choosing to do something unrelated to MTG, because the prospect of drafting Spiderman won't appeal to me. The more that happens, the less I'm going to take for granted the assumption that MTG is the thing I'll be doing come Friday - and that's how every one of the hobbies I've eventually dropped has gone: It became less prominent in my weekly schedule and then I found myself having a better thing to do in that time slot.
Such is the cycle of death for hobbies. True quitting this never a product of instantaneous irritation but the casual replacement you described. Typically it’s brought on by the fatigue we are all feeling. A lack of joy means a lack of engagement. A lack of engagement means a lack of time allocation. When you no longer give it time you stop giving it money and then you’ve essentially quit.
the game is functionally the exact same, ill never understand why its such a deal breaker. Yes i dislike UB but like it literally doesnt change the gameplay which is the reason to play. If your reason to play is lore magic was never the game for you
@@DSR505 @ form matters. That’s why art matters. That’s why the cards aren’t just black text on a white space. That’s why legendary creatures have names and titles. Community also matters, the sense of shared love for a specific thing rather than individual parts of an inconsistent existence matters. That’s why these other ips have their own followings. Function isn’t the whole of magic.
@@DSR505it's not that hard to understand. Read what people say and try to empathize. So many people don't want fucking spongebob fighting planeswalkers and Captain America. It looks like shit. It sounds like shit. This isn't fortnite
I think we need to get all of us who feel this way and make a new fan/player format. We need to pick a cutoff point and not allow cards originally printed after that point. Then we can recapture the Magic. We can also take the opportunity to replace the banned/restricted list with an unsportsmanlike conduct rule and maybe make a few more changes to restore the game to what it used to be instead of just giving in to WotC and Hasbro. There have to be other options between "keep giving Hasbro money" and "walk away from the game forever."
This is a completely understandable sentiment and I agree with it up to a point, but this comment is also a really good example of why that format will be hard to get off the ground. It's not obvious where the cutoff ought to be, people will likely want to put it in very different places, and that's just the first problem. Still, I was nodding along with you until I got to the bit about replacing the banned/restricted list with an unsportsmanlike conduct rule and my monocle fell right into my Frappuccino. To me that seems like a bad idea that has nothing to do with the overall concept. That's just my personal taste, obviously, but I think it's a sign of how hard it might be to get people to agree on the specifics. We'll cheer for the idea, but most people will probably be put off by any particular implementation.
@@tomhowell8398 Somewhat agree arguing about cutoff points. Except that there are some bigger obvious ideas like: 1. no Horizons but everything else is fine 2. cutoff before Horizons 3. the Standard formats of the past before set rotation
when they announced the racing set I was really excited about it, even thunder junction seemd fun, and I still belive those are cool scenarios magic could explore, imagine if insted of getting a meme thuder juncton acctualy took itself seriously, exploring themes of clonialism and the false myth of the old west, or even if they acctualy did a a serious western story insted of just putting reconisible character in costumes, and I think that's the worst part of it all, they just don't care enought to explore theyre own ideas, all they care about is universes beyond because it makes a lot of money, and honestly I'm really tired of trying to look for anything good in a game that dosen't care about itself or about me. 30 years, this game lived 30 years on the back of it's own story, sometimes it was kind shit to be honest, but they always tried to make things special in some way, never gonna forget how amazing it was learning about phyrexia, I took the time to learn about everything since the time when dominaria was the main plane in magic, and it scare the shit out of me at the time, and when I saw we were going to return I got so excited, and them it was that, it's really hard to love something and see it wither away like that, I just wish it lasted a bit longer, sorry if my english wasn't the best today, I got really emotional and this isn't my first language
If English isn't your first language then I'm very impressed, because this was fine and made total sense. And I agree totally. OTJ and MKM could have been fine if they were given a little more time to explore the settings and stories. I think a return to 3 set blocks would fix this issue honestly
I genuinely believe that the best thing that could happen to Magic's lore would be to just permanently retire 75% of current named characters, and banish the remaining 25% back to their home planes, desparked. A hard reset to the storyline that allows the creation of new characters who can't just be dressed up in costumes for "Look, your favourite characters are back and this time they're riding dinosaurs!" sets. They'd have no choice then but to find a story to tell.
@@yurisei6732 I really don't think that would work, they could change all characters and still write bad stories, the problem imo is that the writers don't have time or resources to create good stories, and the direction the bosses want the game to go is a more casual fun, wich by that I mean Marvel style humor and small self contained stories that don't require much context to work, as long as the philosophy behind the company remains the same any story they write will continue to be this way, be with Jace or a new character, that said I belive changing some of the protagonists is a necessary step, the current characters have way to much baggage, but the main thing would be a change in the entire philosophy of the company, theres no easy solution unfortunetly
As a person with a passive interest in Magic, the biggest barrier for me getting into the game is actually the lore. And releasing sets that aren't even themed in Magic make me think that WOTC themselves don't care about the lore. So why should I care about trying to get into the story of a game and 'obsess' over characters in the game if the game doesn't respect itself?
If you want to look at good Magic lore, look into the old lore of the Weatherlight Crew and their stories or even the Brothers War from all the way back
You don't need to know the lore to get into Magic. I've been playing since the 90s and know very little of the lore. I love the art, fantasy setting, flavor text, and most importantly the addictive gameplay. But something like Spiderman hitting the battlefield is an absolute disgrace and breaks all immersion. Hasbro is a trash company and they only care about milking this game for every last drop.
The lore is literally just that wizards did it. Why are goblins tackling a robot? Wizards. How do we visit such diverse settings? Wizards. There are serious subplots in all the different blocks, but they're all just different variations on "wizards did some wizard stuff, here's a bunch of cards themed around whatever it was." When you play the game you take on the role of a nameless wizard and also do the wizard stuff, that's all you need to know to get invested in the big picture concept.
I'm in a similar boat to you. I was already feeling bad about all the UB announcements, and spongebob, and all that, but I told myself 'it's still magic, I'll still play it and love it'. But then I saw the new daretti card. Oh, how they both powercrept and massacred my beautiful boy all at once. It made me so sad to see such a cool character that embodied the struggles of poverty and overcoming your own limitations using your own wit and whatever you can scrap up, a character that represented class warfare... Turned into a wacky races mad max hot wheels guy with a goatee.
I just want to add my concern that the Aetherdrift plot is generally abelist AF and the Chandra hints we've been given are much more so. If she is really racing to help restore Nissa's spark it just screams that she believes Nissa is not a complete person anymore. When they decided to travel the Multiverse together via the Omenpaths in the story "She Who Breaks the World" it is expressly a sign that Chandra has committed to Nissa no matter what and "has a place in her life for someone who can't planeswalk." That quote is Nissa's direct question to her. But if a year later trudging indirectly thru Omenpaths has led to Chandra trying to bring Nissa back to PW status, that's just her bailing on her commitment and making it Nissa's fault. And any person with a disability will tell you this is a very familiar, and very disappointing occurrence. Anyway, it worries me a lot. I hope a disabled writer is writing this set's story
@@flowbot159 Thanks for that info - always glad to be warned about ableism in things; life's too short to have to put up with that in something I do for fun...
We cannot have SpongeBob in our game. Immersion will be fully broken. WotC was the cutting edge of card games, and now each set is trying to Manifest Destiny me into Commander?! Drafts used to be fun because I got closeup with a plane, but that has also been changed because of special guest cards 😞 I do not know what planes are anymore. And do they even matter? Why did we spend so much time on Garruk hunting other planeswalkers because he was going mad from a curse? Why does Ravnica feel less special now? Do eldrazi matter? Why can we not kill off planeswalkers? My regular playgroup will not stop buying into each set. Even casual commander is being impacted and I'm not having fun. And nobody wants to stop and unpack those feelings
SpongeBob is a Secret Lair, it won’t be Standard legal and will only really appeal to SpongeBob fans in casual Commander. They aren’t going to be everywhere and you never have to interact with them.
11:48 I don't believe that framing because this kind of format exclusivity has always existed in Magic. A new player who opened a pack of Modern Horizons 1 and discovered they couldn't use their cool new mythic in Standard that year wasn't a concern. The reason they're expanding legality is simply because the demand won't be there if the sets are only legal in Modern and they won't sell as much. It's about the money. They want the maximum possible distribution potential so they can bring the exponential sales graphs to the next IP pitch meeting with HBO, Disney or Nickelodeon
I do believe them. Their UB sets haven't struggled to sell, and their future sets aren't going to struggle either - Spiderman is even more popular than LOTR, particularly with international audiences. Making these sets standard legal kills three birds with one stone for WOTC, as is the case with many corporate decisions. Increasing conversion of new players into competitive formats is a good thing that will happen and will have been foreseen. This kills the second bird by giving new players more reason to invest deeper, and kills the third bird by giving MTG players a reason to at least look at UB sets.
@@yurisei6732 But two of these birds are about sales potential and the one about player retention assumes that people aren’t going to stick around if they have to play actual Magic in Standard and not this new crossover TCG. WotC are saying that these new players are coming for outside IPs so they have to change their whole game to accommodate them. But all the people who came for magic originally, well WotC doesn’t have to accommodate them at all by protecting their own IP. All of this is fundamentally about the money because if UB sold low numbers compared to normal Magic sets, WotC wouldn’t care about coddling the people who came for UB by making sure they never have to make an actual Magic deck in any format. They would leave it up to those players to transition themselves into Standard
@@RedBobcatGames I tend to agree because Universes Beyond joiners are predominantly Commander and kitchen table Magic players but from WotC’s perspective, it’s about future projections for their flagship formats. They were quick to make Universes Beyond legal in the formats that made them the most money, Commander and Modern, but Standard was non-existent at that time in paper so they didn’t care. Now since they’re bringing back Standard Open Qualifiers and all kinds of supported store competitions, they’re expecting Standard to start generating money. Whatever is driving sales has to have Universes Beyond. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hasbro executives mandated it as soon as WotC management disclosed the plan to revitalise Standard two years ago. I know they’re lying about whatever framing excuse they give because they assured us several years ago that Universes Beyond would never be in Standard and at the same time they were beginning to design Spiderman and Final Fantasy sets for Standard.
@@yurisei6732Spiderman does not have more potential to sell than LotR. The main reason LotR set didn't sell 100x more is because everyone and their mother took one look at it, noticed every major character was now black, and got creeped out by the 'american values' on display. I don't think they even realize how many potential customers they lost.
I started in 1995 and have been playing the entire time for the most part, no extended time off. I haven't played MTG in about 8 months now. This isn't the game I fell in love with anymore and it makes me sad. I've been waffling on whether or not to sell my collection. I hate just about everything that has been done to my precious game over the past 4-5 years.
take a look into Premodern, especially if you have those old WCD-decks or Collectors Edition cards since those are also legal in the Format. It's the closest to the oldschool Magic feeling from 10-15 years ago you can get
the combat trick change feels like it makes them sorcery speed. my playgroup all decided to just ignore this new change but i feel for everyone who cant just ignore the rules (like at fnm and such)
Yeah, I'm tempted to suggest the same thing to the people I play with. But then, that creates even more of a divide in my brain when I play with other people
@RedBobcatGamesMy group also ignored the "1st player no longer draws a card" rule in YuGiOh for years, until our power-level got to the point where the rule was acceptable. Nothing beats the freedom of physical cards!
People always say "you're overreacting and you'll never actually quit playing." But to that I say, I played Yu-Gi-Oh all the way from the very earliest Starter decks through all the way to the announcement of Pendulum monsters, and I thought Pendulums were such a horrendous mechanic and saw the writing on the wall for the degenerate nonsense modern Yu-Gi-Oh has become that I literally quit Yu-Gi-Oh cold turkey on the spot after over a decade of playing within 2-3 days of the Pendulum announcement. This is a long winded way of me saying I can, will, and indeed have quit playing a card game, even as an extremely long running entrenched player, if the card game becomes so horrendously mismanaged. MTG is legit teetering very close to that line for me these days, between the predatory collector boosters, the destruction of the game's identity through universes beyond, and the horrendous power creep in the last 5 or so years since printing cards directly into eternal formats became common place.
Yeah, I'm much the same. I still love Magic for what it was and hopefully can be again. But that doesn't mean I have to stick around if they keep going the way they are
funnily enough the number of playable, let alone those that were meta, pendulum decks, can be counted by fingers current yugioh is extremely fun, if you learn how to play it
@@Kylada-o5t I heard that statement from a friend and that's when Link Summoning was coming in. I tried it and it's just a different flavored slop. It's still the same gameplay of "if you can break this board state you win" situation on every turn 2. Maybe it's different now but honestly with how MTG is going downhill, I still enjoy it much more over yugioh. And that's me playing it way back in early GX era.
@@MasouShizuka break this board state? "Thats step 1, but what about 2 through 10?" but seriously, currently most decks have a level of grind game the decks of the past couldnt wish for. Also since the release of new handtraps the game shifted towards midrange strategies, and due to the ban of generic extra deck negates only handful of decks actually build a "fuck you" board
@@RedBobcatGames MTG is a robust game. Even if constructed formats become a mess with all the stuff going on there is still the option to play things like Cube if you want a curated format that just ignores most or all of the new stuff.
I'm torn, because I love fantasy media and what drew me to Magic, the lore the fantasy, is gone and if it were just me playing I'd have stopped by now. But I'm an entrenched player, I have thousands of cards, I have a dedicated commander playgroup, I have fond memories of prereleases and store championships, and I now wonder if that's all that's keeping me going. Do I still love the game, or do I only love the memory of what the game was, and is my stubbornness and nostalgia goggles all that's keeping me here?
You can make proxies for next to nothing and continue playing at reduced investment without wotc benefiting in the slightest. Also eases you out of the sunk cost fallacy causing you to hesitate leaving the game due to past investment. Which lets you know if it’s genuine enjoyment or not and whether or not you want to quit.
I'm the same way. I love me some good strong fantasy vibes. But when even the in-universe stuff is moving further and further away from that, and the majority of UB sets not even trying to stick to it, it's hard to stay invested.
I've made the prediction that next year, the set that will feel the most like classic MtG, will be the Final Fantasy one. The franchise has always had high fantasy medieval themes, like knights, mages, undead, aiships etc. All, things that were present in MtG. Honestly, having a card of Cecil or Kain from FF4, or Ystola from XIV, feels a lot more like MtG than seeing Chandra on a motorbike racing Jace.
@@RedBobcatGames I guess something like "Webshot" 1U Instant "tap target creature or put a stun counter on target tapped creature" It will totally work...mechanically Will it feel like MtG? Nope
6:33 I don't agree that you can just ignore these products. When you are bombarded with new products all the time, it becomes taxing filtering through all of them to find the ones you are interested in. Players and content creators stopped talking about the current sets and only talk about what's next, and it's very difficult to simply ignore them.
Yes, I'm with you here. I don't mind that they're making all these "Advertising Sets", which is what they are, But, I'm a bit sad that this is what Magic is now; it is losing, or lost it's dark, mature identity of magic. Magic used to be the more edgy game converse to Pokemon for example. The original dominaria sets, the war between the brothers, these were deeply flawed, dramatic, characters, the magic, was unique, it's own universe. Now, it's more and more generic. What happened to Mirrodin's Elves of the Tangle, How were the Phyrexians wiped out, off screen in one set when we used to build a narrative over many sets, what happened to the strange stories of how the Kami effected the world, and so on. I miss the days, when Magic could stand out and be unique, now magic is just another product, and the cards, another place to put an ad. I'm hopeful for Foundations, I really am, but I'm sad that we're going through this intense set creep, narrative bankruptcy and creative death.
I feel you Mr Bobcat... Magic died for me with the WH40k Commander Deck way back when. I liked Magic - I liked 40k. I like Steak - I like Ice Cream. This doesn't mean that I want Steak Flavored Ice Cream.
While I feel the sentiment... I just want to say steak ice cream is pretty great lmao. I got to try some made with A5 fat a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised. That said, I don't blame anyone for being upset with Universes beyond products and less focus on magic lore and IP. I can see why people feel like we're getting less magic from magic.
@@Linkdude74 Really, I wouldn't have guessed this Combo can go together. Well you knew it was more a figure of speech, but color me surprised none the less ;)
It's not quit that bad :) But I'll comfortably be able to by a cool, high quality power tool every release. And a pile of wood once i manage to sell off my collection.
I just found your channel due to the algorithm and this video got you a subscribe. A rare video that says it all exactly how I would but sums it up succinctly.
up until 10:10 is enough reason for me to leave the game.. pushing that many standard sets, people will go mad (or burn their wallet) just to catch up with meta
Foundations was a coupon to stop trying any longer. Now that "the Magic IP" will be in at least 1 set until 2029, you can just stop printing the Magic IP in a few years. It'll still be there in Foundations! Look! Llanowar Elves!
I had this feeling in War of the Spark, and I wish I fully left, but I love what the game used to be too much, and what I hope it could become in the future.
Man, I had that feeling with Battle for Zendikar. Even Origins felt weird to me. Everyone has a different moment that the whole thing broke down, but, weirdly, I think it was the loss of the block format for me. Not that that's causal, but that enough changed then to notice that the game wouldn't be what I loved going forwards. And ever since then, even fan favorite planes have felt hollow when we return to them. I don't know. We're coming up on ten years of being busted to me.
Wow, I didn't even realise how clogged up standard had become with sets. Like, I get the appeal of the cards you get in a set staying legal for longer, as the rapid rotations dumping your cards out of legal relevance has always felt bad, but at the same time it makes standard a quagmire to get back into for returning players. My main issue, by a lot, is the universe beyond stuff. I just hate it - it dilutes the IP of the game, and only gets worse the longer it goes on. There will be people who don't care about this, and power to them, but it crosses a hard boundary for me. I've already been slipping away from having any interest in standard sets, or the standard format, but when these start hitting it will kill my interest in standard dead... and then begin poisoning my interest in modern. Fortunately, I am insulted from much of this within a playgroup that can keep playing with the cards/sets we like and agree to ignore the ones we don't. With the rule chance, I'm really on the fence. This is a bigger deal for limited formats, where defensive combat tricks are a thing that actually happens, and even there this still won't change much. I generally don't like the rules changing, so I am biased against this one, but I will admit it makes the game more accessible to new players and eliminates an extra round of priority that slows games down. But yeah, I have sooooo many decks, and I none of them will play any different with this rule change except for a small handful or niche corner cases that could crop up. I don't like it, but more on principle than for any real reasons.
I didn't play Magic in over 5 years and just recently started again with Commander, and oh my god was it a shock to see all those new cards that come from random franchises and don't belong in magic at all. A lot of them have decent rules and work, but it bothers me to just look at the cards
God, why has no one else brought up how stupid the rule change is Everything I've gotten to hear from others has been nonsense about it switching up the flow of combat and how easy/better it is. Was it really that hard? I literally started playing not even a year ago, and I can honestly say the new rule is both somehow more confusing and completely shits on the flow. Combat "tricks" are now just something the attacker gets to do. So dumb.
I’ve played for like 15 years in multiple states and cities and have literally never had someone use that rule like that. Not saying it’s complicated just that the new rule is more in line with actual practice for most players, as far as my observations go. That’s why backlash is so close to nonexistent.
i'd recommend trying out pauper if you're looking for a 60 card constructed format. it can be played both casually and competitively and since its only out of commons you only need to pay attention to a much SMALLER segment of each set coming out. really helps the congnitive load.
you also don't need to change your decks with every set since most new commons aren't as good as the classic lightning bolt or brainstorm. meaning your favorite deck will be good for a long time.
That's actually good advice. But I like the rares and the mythics though, because that's usually where you find the characters important in the narrative. The issue is I love the lore. I just wish we had quality, and not quantity
As a fellow Apple Cart, I too am upset, but thank our overloards at WotC and their glorious leaders for correcting me and telling me how I feel. Blessed be thy names.
Once MTG quits posting record profit, that RL gonna turn into a golden parachute for the shareholders before they sell off and light cigars with $100 bills LOL
Not only MTG. Everything we used to love got watered down and/or destroyed by the woke agenda and the "everything should be for everyone" mentality. When I was growing up, card games and geek stuff weren't seen as cool by the general consensus. I think the Big Bang Theory series brought a lot of light to the need/geek culture (even if it did try to get all the usual tropes in one) it did bring some consciousness about the culture and how many of us collectors, gamers, etc make money with the things we collect. I know that's not necessarily the reason why I started collecting in the first place, but I think it really influenced the follow up with the MCU. And it's brought us here
Ive been getting back into mtg again after a break from lockdown, starting again in eldraine and picking up the odd pack when i can. With the release of foundations i was tempted to try and get back into standard again since im getting tired of commander’s casualness, but seeing the future is spiderman and sheoldred still bieng around (fuck that card) just makes me less interested as a whole. It all feels so fast everything coming. I only picked up my first duskmourn pack the other day, now its over? Universes beyond also stings, i am a huge fan of final fantasy, one of my faveroute games ever and i feel like its the few thematically to fit into mtg (like lotr and warhammer), but seeing how agressive UB is becoming, id rather they just cancel it or make it commander only. Commander is much more casual and you dont need to add broken cards, so you could thematically make a ff only deck. But thats not gonna happen, and i dont want to live in a world where standard meta needs 4 doctor octopus and 2 kefka’s to take out Dora the explorer
And one thing I didn't mention in the vid too was the cost. If you wanted to run a Sheoldred deck yourself those nearly 3 year old cards and now what, like $100 each? No thanks!
Hey, I know people making suggestions is usually not what people want to hear when they are not happy about something, so I apologise in advance. If the casualness of commander is starting to get on your nerves(the rule 0, the saltiness, the different ideologies etc.), then I highly recommend dipping your toes into cEDH. I was against it initially, so I know it has a stigma, but i had the total wrong idea of the format and the people that play it. The best thing is, there is a meta which means very little change within the format; generally, you can find a deck you love and it will have very little cards released within a year that even scrape the *potential* of being an include. Because of the recent bannings there has been a huge shake up in the meta, there has never been a more interesting time to get into it 🍻
Having 3 other competitive players sitting at a table with you is unreal. Everyone testing their knowledge of the game, timing and the stack to the best of their ability, people constantly stopping win attempts, multiple win attempts from multiple players within in a game. Sweaty hands and adrenaline rushes are regular, format is pure gas 🤘
I don't think it was by accident that I switched from mtg to chess around 2022. No more getting exhausted by being constantly blasted with new product if you know what I mean.
I think wizards really missed on discontinuing universe within. I think doing universes within masters (like a modern masters set but with only universes within cards) could have been one of the few ways we could have got reprints of expensive beyond cards (ie one ring renamed to urza's/jace's ring in line with Godzilla/Dracula magic card renaming template used before in Ikoria and midnight hunt) For the amount of universes Beyond in general. Instead of it all being standard legal, i think they should just make a universes Beyond only format/formats. Have normal 60 card 4 of format and then have Beyond only brawl as the commander variant. People then can chose if they want spongebob counterspelling Gandalf as ironman and Optimus Prime look on in horror. And are not just forced to play ajani and Garfield in the same deck because Garfield is a new op cat lord. I think its funny to have the crossover stuff but 100% forcing it in my face. Im alot less cool with.
I wish that there were more LGS exclusive products that would drive players to stores, if at least to try and compensate for Secret Lairs. Hasbro’s demand for massive growth is a beast all it’s own that people with figure out ways for Wales to pay for, but there ought to be more thought put in for LGSs and weekly players.
This weekend I went to the prerelease of foundations only because a friend of mine realy wanted me to go. I felt actively bad supporting the state of the game. Its so sad to see a game I grew up with turned in a pop culture trashcan owned by an evil corporation.
The frequency of set releases cranked up as soon as Hasbro took over. You'll notice that card quality varies wildly after that due to ... Not being properly tested.
"And no, it's not because the game went woke, let the dragons have their rainbows" My brother in Christ, things go woke because the corporation thinks they can make more money that way, if you say it's okay for your hobby to go woke then don't surprised when they die off like this. I've been watching Magic die for the last five years, warned my brother of this. The weekly "I told you so" are just warming up if anything the last two years
I've already started working on custom proxy art for making universes beyond cards into proxybuniverses within cards. Also, even start testing out some cards I'm designing myself for friend group play and encouraging my friends to do the same.
It's very disheartening to be dismissed when I voice my disdain for UB products because I'm not new player. So i appreciate videos like these for making me feel less alone.
If I ever play Magic again it'll be with a small group who have agreed to play with Innistrad, Return to Ravnica, and the core sets that were legal during those rotations. It was such a diverse format with so many viable decks and rich lore. Magic feels soulless now.
From the non-cynical perspective on Aetherdrift specifically, I really loved the racing sub-theme of original Kaladesh / Aether Revolt. The fact that these characters, particularly Chandra Nalaar, were apart of a revolutionary culture that was intrinsically connected to their vehicles really vibes with the world of racetracks and modded cars. The fact that this story (from what it looks like) is Chandra going off and participating in a race (connecting her to her home plane) to win back her true love's Spark... doesn't feel meaningless to me, it's honestly quite touching. I genuinely have not anticipated a Magic story the way I do this one.
@@brandoe61how dare they enjoy thing i feel out of love with, right? Lets be real, bobcat, you and everyone here in the comments don’t really care about the stories magic was telling, just “the lore”. the all important “lore”. ftfy.
@@ProXyki don't really care about the lore, i look at all cards in the set and i look at the art in the cards. eg-> New Capenna: at first i said what is this shit and i said to myself porcodio! (an italian expression that translates "god is a pig"), but after some time, after i looked at the cards in the set as a whole, it made sense, i could feel that world, i could see the connections. Since Wilds Of Eldrain i just don't feel this anymore :(. So it's more complicated than saying "i don't like the lore", witch btw means "i don't like the short stories that some underpayed slave/intern wrote to justify this mtgxhotwheel mario kart bullshit."
When the Walking Dead Secret Lair cards were revealed, it seemed like everyone and their grandmother criticized the shift. Now it feels like most have either shrugged and accepted the Universes Beyond takeover or enthusiastically support it. I care about lore and flavor to the game. I don't want my Urza facing off against Wolverine, Darth Vader, and My Little Pony. But I always got pushback for this take. I ask others, imagine if Games Workshop released IP crossovers and players had their Ultramarine and Chaos Armies face off against the XMen. It wouldn't be 40K, anymore.
I stopped playing Magic because everything started to upset me, and stressed me out. The fact that I felt like gatekeeping the game from people coming in with Universes Beyond upset me. Because it felt like *they* were taking the game from me. A game that was special and separate from everything else. I never bought any UB product because I was one of the "town criers", and people said I was insane that The Walking Dead would be the end of what Magic once was. Now look at it, a meme become reality. The Fortnite of card games. Now that Foundations is coming around, and Universes Beyond IPs I still don't care about, I'm never coming back. The game isn't for me anymore. I'm done. I always felt the community was toxic and that it got worse after this new era of Magic started. Now I just play Force of Will TCG.
@@RedBobcatGames You can prop a corpse up and make it move like a puppet; doesn't mean it's not dead. Spongebob and Spiderman in Magic. SPONGEBOB. The game couldn't be more dead. What an absolute joke of a game, now. Glad I only played in the 90's and 2000's.
I don't understand what "Cultural Consultants" would contribute to a completely made up fantasy world. On ethat is there only to give flavour to a card game. For a TTRPG? Could be useful (but still not necessary). For a card game? Waste of money, the only thing they will do is upset the eisting fanbase with some immersion breaking nonsense
Because they are not completely made up. Ixalan, Tarkir, Kaladesh are examples of planes with designs rooted in particular cultures or periods of history. Although in the case of Thunder Junction I question their use of them because they opted to completely ignore the nuances and intricacies of what they took inspiration from as mentioned in the video.
"We worked with cultural consultants for Tarkir." Okay, but where the fuck did you find a consultant for a fictional place with fictional cultures of people fighting dragons? Did you find a real-life planeswalker to tell you which words dragons think are racist?
"Did you base your cultural pastiches on real world history or John Wayne's The Conqueror" "Real world, definitely, we even hired a guy" >looks inside >Radiation poisoning.
I don't get the new player argument at all. I started playing magic in 2020, back when one of the fan-made online clients was made accessible for blind people. This was right when the Walking Dead secret layer released. Being blind, I could never really play the game before, there aren't any braille MTG cards out there unfortunately, so draft is out of the question, and constructed would be more difficult because I'd have to braille the cards myself, then hope I could actually use them in a tournament or LGS. This is why I was super excited when I could play online, it was the first time ever playing the game. The accessibility for the client was short-lived unfortunately, so I'm back to watching without being able to play myself. I don't know though, maybe I'm fortunate for not being able to play. The one thing about magic that has always struck me was its lore, and it was one of the main reasons I was excited to pick it up when I could. It has been ruined though, completely ruined. I love Lord of the Rings, I have no issue with Spiderman, I still watch Spongebob with my nieces and nephews to this day and enjoy it, I'm starting to get into Warhammer lore, loved sitting and listening to my brothers play Assassin's Creed, but...none of this is MTG. It will not get me into the game. If I magically grew working, fully functioning eyeballs, and could actually play and draft, I would skip out on every UB draft, and only go to the ones where they drafted real MTG sets. I'd not put a single UB card in a deck, only play with real MTG cards. Even to some of us who are new to the game, the lore is important, and this universes beyond crap is even discouraging us from even wanting to enter the game in the first place. For every new player WOTC gets with this crap, 2 of us will back off and never even try because of it.
This blind guy was playing at the store and he had sleeves that had Braille dots painted onto the sleeve fronts, they shuffle regularly and I thought it was brilliant!
I stopped playing commander and buying new cards regularly about 2 years ago when i fealt like the new cards price and power were feeling a bit too high for my casual taste, cant say im regretting it but i wish i could go back to 2015 commander
Pretty much same here. I want to play the game, not shuffle up my cards, get to turn 3 or 4 , then someone plays their entire hand, half their damn deck, or just outright wins (outside cedh using non-cedh decks/strategies). You can't even say anything or you get hated out for not being okay with it because "it wasn't cEDH so its fine" seems to be most peoples mentality. My final game at my LGS was a 3 person game and one guy quitting and walked away because I dropped a stasis on turn 5 to catch back up to the table since I was making treasures through combat and had vigilance. Dude can have wincon in hand turn 5 and that's fine, but god forbid I stop him from killing the table. Some variation of this scenario would happen almost everytime I tried to play at an LGS. I loved this hobby immensely, but I can't seem to be able to enjoy it anymore. Between the actions of half of the player base, and the constant issues WOTC refuses to address with appropriate responses, Magic The Gathering has truly lost everything special it once brought to me.
IMO, Final Fantasy or LotR are the kind of IP that MtG *should* be doing Universes Beyond with. It has very similar feel and "vibe" to MtG's older sets in a lot of ways. However, seems more like WotC is taking whatever they can get instead of choosing stuff that actually meshes well with MtG. Spiderman...?? Biggest problem I have is just... they seem to be losing any semblance of creative vision. Planes in the past weren't a wacky assemblage of random places, they had a coherent unifying *vibe* to them despite how different they were. That seems to have just... disappeared.
i'm sorry but they are all a problem, yes aleo LOTR yes also everyones favourite IP (even mine, whatever they are). they count on people saying "just this one IP, please", that's how they can do that
I'm VERY new to magic. I started earlier this year with my first set being Bloomburrow and I loved it! I was excited for Foundations, as it would be my first "real" magic set, but after seeing the 2025 roadmap and Marvel Spiderman specifically, meaning there will probably be multiple Marvel sets, completely killed my excitement. I like mythical creatures, spells, and fantasy! I have never really been a fan of superhero stuff and... I don't really like the idea of "This set is for people who are fans of this specific IP." Also, being new, I don't like that I'll have to relearn combat phases. Like, come on, I JUST learned and you're gonna change the rules?
Explore the older sets. I got into it during the first Tarkir block. It was amazing. Magic has a rich history. While the new is, well, not MTG, MTG is a deep deep game with decades of cards. Discover them. That's my recommendation as someone who fell away from MTG circa covid due to external reasons.
i stopped playing in august we were going to gencon and my friends all had commander decks... and it wasn't fun anymore i drafted bloomburrow at gencon 3-4 times but when i got hoem i realized the local game stores were not wehre i wanted to spend my saturdays and bloomburrow was going to rotate
In all honesty, and this isn't popular, I blame Commander. Commander changed Magic into something it wasn't on a base rules level. It's a format that kills aggro by its very nature. It doesn't teach fundamentals applicable to other formats, whereas being good at standard makes you more likely to be good at modern once you get the meta. So many Commander players only see Magic as Commander. It created a massive rift in the community. We can't even speak the same language anymore if you see card evaluations in spoiler season. Even if mostly online, the fact that conversations have been had on whether or not it is rude to win spells out that Magic has been a zombie for years. Obviously WotC is at fault for how exactly all that happened, but still. A format centered around playing your special Blorbo deck gives a pretty clear path to just printing everyone all the characters they already know to helm those same decks.
I agree, though I don't point the finger at Commander. I point it at WotC for chasing Commander. The format was fine while it was just a little community thing. As soon as we started getting cards printed for the format I think we saw the tipping point
@@RedBobcatGames In 2011? Because I'd say it took a while longer. I'd still agree that that was the seed of the change, but very specifically because of the community before the precons changed everything. An EDH player back then would have been a Magic player first, just one who had a deck for that wacky format you play at conventions and stuff. They probably went to the same forums and checked out the mothership the same way any other player did. They knew many of the inside jokes and shibboleths of the community. So on and so forth. While the cards are getting longer and dumber, it's looking around at the community and seeing a mass of people playing a different game that gets to me. And now they'll be playing a different game with non-Magic characters.
i honestly hope they go bankrupt and that's coming from a player who technically loves this game- but all these atrocious mistakes and comments they made in the last few years leaves me with almost 0 sympathy for the entire company. with every new expansion i'm getting more and more annoyed with what dumbass mechanics or ideas they came up with again that ruins the gameplay experience. there basically isn't much fun left in the game for me and i don't see that changing much with all the additional ways that arena cheats you with doesn't help either
They've had their logo proudly on display on the Sweet Baby Inc banner for a while now, years at least. That is, until SBI hid their associate banner... It would also explain the deteriorating story and lack of creativity.. 🤔
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As a long-time player, the Magic lore has always been somtheing I've enjoyed. I still have my old novels from back when they used to actually release paperbacks for each set and I do really miss the old style of lore, the stories being continued between every set is something that I am afraid is now gone. It seems to have been replaced by UB and Mr. Benn-style fancy dress sets.
I'm so glad I found your channel! I briefly played Magic years ago and was lured back in recently when I joined a new community group where everyone loved the game. Bloomburrow was just coming out and it was exactly my jam, so I bought the starter kit and began relearning from scratch. But it seems like I've arrived at a bit of an odd time, and I'm not entirely sure if players like me and my friends are the people that WotC want to keep around... I knew discontinued cards could appreciate, so asked how long Bloomburrow was likely to run, and folk reassured me that it could go anywhere from six months to three years, depending on sales. What I didn't know was that the prices would go sky-high within thrwe months. I'd slept on getting a Commander deck (a new format for me) and now the only one still under £40 is not my colour preference - I can't justify £88 on a deck that cost £40 in August. Friends suggested singles, but even those seem to be skyrocketing and becoming unavailable. I come from the AFOL community, where I'm used to seeing some Lego sets rise steeply in price, but that's retired sets, so I'm a bit at a loss to understand this. Now, I can still play with my starter decks and the odd booster, and there's one (blue/red/white) Commander deck still going for under £40, but it's weird - like this is a game meant for rich people and WoTC just aren't saying that bit aloud. They're rushing people from set to set with no time to appreciate the community that forms among fans of a specific set, the game's vast storehouse of original lore, or human artistic talent... all things Hasbro is keen to bundle out the door along with affordability, I guess. Granted, Foundations looks amazing and the beginners' set is good value - it's like they read my mind with the cat and vampire decks, with pirates and goblins to boot! But if I cut my losses re: Bloomburrow and switch to deck-building in Foundations, will the same steep price rises happen there too? I don't like the feeling that I'm in an arms race with the wealthiest people at the gaming table, and I can't believe this is good for the youngest players either. Like we all remember from our own childhoods, pocket money only goes so far...
Sell out fast. I am. The writing has been on the wall and it started in roughly back in kaladesh if i recall? Maybe bfz if you want. But that unlocked the ability to add more sets more chase more cosmetic overrides. They saw the profit and never went back. Also the power creep really started to show at kaladesh and beyond. They dont care about the game health your right. They dont care and they even stated why they dont. They think they can attract more new players in with universes beyond playing broken magic than satisfying the old playerbase. That new playerbase will leave in a few years time anyways. Theyll wonder why they printed a 2x the value nee captain america still in the same standard rotation as the old one. Their greed is unparalleled. Oh sorry this is also ignoring the fact that they've done almost everything to kill off LGS too
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m grateful that you shared this. Some times I feel like I’m taking crazy pills because I’m like “Does nobody else see this? Does no one else care about Magic lore!?” So I’m glad I’m not the only only one
Thank you so much for commenting this. I don't like to come across this negative, and there's always comments from people upset that I don't share their joy. So it's nice to hear that not only am I not alone, but that what I've said has been appriciated. Thank you
It's really bad on Facebook. The "let people enjoy things" crowd will drown you out in ridicule if you just dare insinuate that this might be detrimental to Magic's indentity.
Then, of course, Facebook groups are full of terminally online tankies and other lowlives so it doesn't come as a surprise that they instinctively shit on any opinion of nuance.
You are not alone. Non-lore sets are not concerned with advancing the story we've all come to love.
I know! Every other content creator has such Luke warm takes on this. I'm like, "you're allowed to be mad!"
Ive been playing off and on my entire childhood, but I got really into it in high school with Return to Ravnica, and it became such an important part of my identity, but ever since War of the Spark I've just been getting more and more disappointed with how things are handled. I think for me it's because its attracting more toxic players than ever before. I don't enjoy playing anymore, I have boxes of cards and many many decks that will likely never be played again because there's nothing grounding the game anymore. Just like all of social media and short form content it's all about the next big thing and I wish we had the time to really explore and appreciate what they give us before moving on to the next set. I love magic and I dont think I could ever really give it up entirely but my ire is real and I'm likely gonna give up a large chunk of my collection in the next couple years
I just read someone else say it VERY WELL: It isn't Magic anymore. It's the Hasbro Trading Card Game.
This!
Perfectly summarizes my feeling with MTG nowaways
Magic: the Gathering of IPs.
Fortnite the card game
Always has been.
I mean, its not childish to stop playing a game that isnt bringing you joy.
Yes but the redditors and various players who happent to be toxic will call you pedantic or annoying regarding the changes.
All in all, the major change in design philosophy for magic is a valid criticism to leave. In fact most changes are valid to leave: format changes, removal of blocks, poor design of story, whatever fundamentally holds you to this game, if it's ruined, you have every right to bicker, criticize and leave for it.
The childish thing is having a very emotional reaction and just doing it without properly giving it time to thoughtfully handle your departure.. Just quitting and selling all your cards for much less than they're worth and later regretting it is the childish way of going about it. That's what I see him saying
The card game spell is a simple one, but quite unbreakable (im a yugioh player SEND HELP)
@@jonathan-6958 i could send you a hiking trip with some experts and along a path where good equipment will later be revealed to be fundamental, almost vital, especially for your feet, knees and lungs.
Could it work? :D
@@SwedeRacerDCanyone quitting now inherently has to have given it significant thought.
it really grinded my gears when Wotc told everyone that they had record earnings and in the same breath told us they are raising prices.
Record earnings and other stuff are things that make me go like "well you aren't telling the whole story", like how much did you spend on advertisement for that? How much did you spend on development? How much of that is by people who actually play the game or by people making investments? All of it very cloudy.
The graph is never allowed to dip down so it always has to grow. Corporate greed is insatiable
@@zander2758 You hit the nail on the head. They may be making more gross revenue from all these crossover sets, but what do they net once you take away all the licensing deals? The trademark costs? I bet that, behind the scenes, they're barely able to scrape by on these
I buy cards 1$-19$ bucks (when available) at my LGS, along with sleeves, playmats and *snacks & drinks* (For Garfield’s sake, people, stop carrying in mini-coolers when your LGS is selling sodas out of a clear door fridge at soda machine prices!)
For anything more expensive, I buy counterfeits I never would have bought from the LGS or anyone else.
That’s what people don’t get. If something is so expensive you wouldn’t have bought it from anyone, you didn’t “cost” anyone anything. In fact, you stimulated the economy by injecting money into the bootlegger’s business, who almost certainly employs other people and pays taxes.
MtG is one of the few areas where you *aren’t* helpless in the face of insatiable corporate greed.
@@Shawn-f3x Wtf are you even talking about.
When a player summons Thanos piloting Old Man Jenkins Jalopy & wielding Naruto's Kunai - You have an indication the game isn't going to be around for long and is in it's final death throes.
Its what Hasbro does- Pump'n dump til a company dies and buy another.
Fortnite battle pass but it's paper
"How tragic that greed eclipses beauty."
-Seton, centaur druid
Crystal Quarry for those interested
@@blurose deep cutting this hard only happens on this channel
From the same block, another that perpetually weighs on my mind, especially this past week:
"War glides on the simplest updrafts while peace struggles against hurricane winds. It is the way of the world. It must change."
ow. what once was.
“The absence of binocular vision imposes certain challenges for a flying creature, which are overcome via echolocation.”. It's not really relevant to the conversation, but Aeromunculus is fun to say, look at and think about
On the one hand, I really do respect that they want to help Standard. Commander and modern are NOT good sets for new players to be thrust into. Even if commander is a casual format, it's so convoluted and wild that it can turn people away.
On the other, the fortnite-ification of every IP out there is getting pretty fucking boring.
Yeah, 100%
Standard sucks too. Who has money to keep up with the constant rotation crap? MTG is dead.
@foxhoundms9051 if they want to make Standard easier to get into, I'd rather they just make it cheaper. Do more reprints.
MAKE STANDARD STRUCTURE DECKS LIKE WHY ISNT THAT A THING!?
@@zachall1573 Yu-Gi-Oh used to have a lot of periodic meta-defining Structure decks being released with powerful reprints of meta staples (like the salamangreat structure deck), but nowadays, they have been literally undoing the structure decks in the tcg to put the strong cards into random ass sets to milk the vendors and playerbase into buying worthless sets on the offchance they buy a shortprinted chase super rare (like sp little knight). The reason they don't do that is because they wanna shakedown the playerbase even if it forces budget players out of the game entirely
@@foxhoundms9051 unfortunately rotation is an essential part of keeping standard healthy. Does it make the format more expensive to keep up with? Absolutely. But it also allows the format to fight powercreep and maintain accessibility. Keeping the number of sets in rotation small makes it easier to understand for beginners by presenting them with a smaller pool of cards. Without rotation, every new set would need to print high-power, high-complexity cards or people won't buy it. That's why modern horizons is always pushing the power of cards so much, if it didn't, nobody would buy it (look no further than Kamigawa block).
Now every set *is* printing high-power, high-complexity cards but that's mostly caused by modern and commander taking over as the game's premier formats.
Magic feels like it's being strip mined for cash as quickly as possible.
I love Magic's lore. I love its worlds and characters. They've always played off tropes but that's fine. They use those tropes to make something unique, like Phyrexia (my favorite world in ANY game). It feels like they slammed the Phyrexia story through to the end as quickly possible so they can pump out more meme sets.
Also, the last point is because *every set is a Commander set until proven otherwise.*
I agree, but weirdly I'd say less strip mined and more... watered down? Like, they don't care if the quality is bad they just have to put out as much as possible, you know?
Likening combat tricks to counterspells is the perfect explanation. I've been struggling to explain to my friends why I hate the change so much, and that puts it very succinctly. It puts the defender even further on the back foot, giving the attacker every opportunity to play around you. It makes me want to start running Banding out of spite, at least then I'd be able to adequately leverage my defenses
Thank you. It's probably not a perfect comparison, but I think it gets my feelings across
@@RedBobcatGames Isn't the combat change motivated by Commander's format? If anything, it accelerate the game THERE where big board can swell up the time played significantly. Of course, WotC being what they are, they haven't thought how that would affect 1vs1 format, where mono red is currently a bit too popular.
Just a thought. I am not saying this is a good change, but still, I wonder if commander's not the culprit here (since it's also the most popular by large).
@@daedalusdreamjournal5925 Mono red is popular in Bo1 and pretty much always has/will be. It rarely stands up in any other BoX format.
@@daedalusdreamjournal5925 After basically a decade of them trying to push the game to be more and more aggressive, creature-centric, and braindead, you see a change that hits all three of those and say, "Yep, this probably has something to do with EDH." EDH, of course, being a format notable for using combat to break board stalls... I don't know if you could be more wrong if you tried.
Exactly thoughts about the combat trick analogy. He said it perfectly! I hate the change. It's like forcing instant speed combat tricks to be played at sorcery speed. Not literally obviously, but the reason you play them is to snake by your opponent or whatever. Them knowing defeats the purpose of playing it as a gotcha. Its dumb.
What I don’t understand is: why don’t you make a new format just for Universes Beyond? Just say that those cards are only legal in that format.
Wokies want to destroy anything pure
Because not enough people would play it to justify it, and Hasbro would be forced into tacit admission that it's all just a marketing gimmick to sell their licensed Spiderman and Spongebob crap.
@thelippyserver58 good let it be it's own thing then no one wants to see that crap anyways
Because the new players those sets bring in will be confused when they can't play with everyone else.
Think of the new players rings a lot like THINK OF THE CHILDREN when someone is trying to push an agenda on you and ducking criticism
Yeah, I can agree with that actually
what "Agenda"?
@@jadedheartsz I assume they mean the universe beyond changes
Yup
If children are actually being targeted, then it's true that we need to protect them
In this case there are no "children".
I love magic so much but Hasbro's cartoonishly villainous greed is genuinely making it so hard to get excited about anything coming out. I loved Ixalan and I loved Bloomburrow, but I can't bring myself to care about anything else they've brought out recently
Ay fancy seeing you in the wilds lol, I'm a big fan! Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised lol.
The only real thing I'm looking forward to is Innistrad remastered. And I liked Ravnica Remastered so I have high hopes. If I end up having to make a "Innistrad Remastered is a Mess" video I'm going to be heart broken
Wild to see you in these comments. It's crazy, listening to the music you and the other "nerdcore" (for lack of a better term because you guys have been making like 40% of my favorite music for 5 years or so now) has helped me enjoy anime and manga more. I see all this passion poured into constantly making something cool. I look at Magic and it's going so rapidly in the other direction.
I absolutely loved this game when I got into it at the tail end of Scars block. I kept loving it until around the time Arena introduced Alchemy (AKA "we didn't actually test cards before we printed them:" the format. I tried advocating Pauper and proxies as the best way to experience this game for a long time. WotC/Hasbro kept breaking formats repeatedly, kept introducing new Universes Beyond shit to break the immersion, and kept increasing the amount of product you have to pay attention to with no room to breathe. I never thought I'd see a time when Bandai was LESS diabolical than a product with the WotC logo on it. Right now, Digimon is the only card game that feels even marginally more fun than just listening to music or engaging with a story.
There used to be a wonderful balance between the desire to consume content and the desire to play that you could fulfill entirely with Magic. It's long since gone now. Why engage with a product that's become inherently self-destructive? SpongeBob is probably going to be the reason I completely abandon this game. It's so antithetical to Magic's identity that it's almost like losing a piece of your own if you loved prior eras of the game.
Fuck Hasbro, dude.
I agree on EVERY. ONE. All my friends and plenty of people online are so quick to dismiss my concerns and say I’m being “hyperbolic” or “overreacting”. It’s really cool to have someone saying the things I’m saying, at least it’s less lonely.
My friend was very stand offish and rude about it all because to him he only cares about the mechanics of the game and it took me a few days and a lot of personal accounts on videos like me to validate those feelings. For me I started in m13 with the Odric Master Tactician and have been commited since but the direction the game is headed and the treatment of artists I can no longer support this path they are going down
Interesting. My community is on the brink of complete dissolution right now. Not one person I know is even mildly happy with the current game direction, personally I’m going to start making proxies of every single card I decide I want to use from every product past and future in any deck building from now on. If a playgroup refuses to play with that condition I’ll simply leave that group and find another.
@@tc5589-1Proxying is great, but I think there's further nuance to it. Our playgroup tends to build with bought cards, so there is an idea that budget affects the powerlevel. If proxying allows one to go beyond a reasonable budget (and therefore powerlevel), then it is actively discouraged. But if you build a proxied deck at a reasonable budget, go for it! 😄
we were "hyperbolic" and "overreacting" a few years back, and we are knee deep in the gutter now
I was expecting far more push back on this video, so reading comments like these are really nice. It IS good to know you're not alone. Thanks everyone
Whenever a company starts trying SOOO hard to cater to "new players", its just a giant red flag to me that they are intentionally trying to shift directions, give a big middle finger to their veteran fanbase, and are totally down to fuck up all the precedents set beforehand.
WotC probably knows that most veteran players actually dont spend as much money directly on magic. They tend to he saavy, undersanding card value and why buying booster boxes is a bad idea only sometimes indulged in - usually just paying for drafts and otherwise buying singles second hand.
WotC wants to churn through players in that honeymoon phase of magic where everything is new and fresh, where you dont have an established collection for deck building and you need to pay the huge onboarding costs for various formats - often buying boxes because they don't know better yet.
A guy who did on the ground retail to small businesses and I were talking options for expanding the menu I held at my own business. He pointed out that it is usually easier to increase ticket sales among existing customers than to draw new customers.
When these companies choose to favor "new customers" it means they are, wittingly or unwittingly, killing their revenue base.
There are several reasons they may do this - they may just be ignorant, seen significant declines in sales to the existing base, see a decline in the number of the active customer group (they may be spending more money, but a player base that is in decline is a problem to address), or there is some ideological reason for changing customer demographics (or attempting to).
Is Magic being played at high schools, still?
The guy I was talking with used to work for a local HVAC and general maintenance contractor here in town before going on his own. "Back when I first started, it was just a few of us and a dispatch... Then the owner started hiring all of these managers and our cost to customers went way up."
These are big businesses that are no longer the small works of passion which defined an era. They are not interested in either their product as a product of their endeavors, but instead a revenue stream. It's an inversion of the usual formula where someone is interested in a product/service and needs a revenue stream to keep it going vs someone who is interested in a revenue stream and needs a product/service to keep it going. The more the business becomes an entry in a spreadsheet, the more detached and hollow it becomes.
I stopped playing Magic two months ago, and I’ve never felt better. There wasn’t just one specific reason, though the overabundance of UB products (even reskinned Secret Lairs) and the overwhelming product fatigue were major factors.
Ultimately, it came down to how the game felt. Magic was no longer just a game, a passion, or a story to cherish and enjoy. Instead, it turned into a capitalistic machine focused on making shareholders happy, stripping away the joy it once brought. This shift has been evident in countless decisions made over the past four years.
These, weren’t just decisions I disagreed with, but it was more about how these decisions felt. they felt like deliberate, short-sighted grabs for quick profit at the expense of everything else. It’s like watching climate change on steroids happening to Magic. The impact has been visible everywhere: in the products, announcements, gameplay changes, lore, events, and the ways to play the game (mtg arena is basically still in a beta state).
It’s been a disaster, a form of corporate colonialism driven by unchecked capitalism. I can’t help but feel that if Wizards of the Coast weren’t a publicly traded company-or weren’t based in the U.S.-many of these decisions either wouldn’t have been made or would have been handled very differently. It feels like what's have been happening to Boeing or countless other US companies.
I had to leave the game. It was giving me only bad emotions, of everything that was, and everything that could be, and everything that instead it was.
I agree the most with the whole "dress-up set" criticism. I hated OTJ because of it. I hated Murders because of it. I'm going to hate Aetherdrift because of it.
You know what I liked? Bloomburrow. Here is a world, and the characters in the world are concerned with the issues of the world. It reminded me a lot of the sets I loved before, like Mirrodin, Kamigawa, and Lorwyn.
I'm not giving WotC money for Aetherdrift. I likely won't give them money for the space set. They can keep making this garbage if they want, but they are doing it without my wallet interacting with them.
Bloomburrow rocked, and it's the first time Magic has felt like Magic again in a long time
Honestly way I see it, apart from Tarkir, the only original thing that may have potential is space set since everything else is either other IP or people wearing hats. Or sit in cars in this case.
I actually didn't like Bloomburrow, because everyone was an animal instead of being in their natural form. It was too "cute" a set for me, even though I appreciate that it was an actual Mtg set.
I think Zendikar was pretty cool. And I may be biased, but I liked Amonkhet and Ixalan even though they were a new take on a trope, they still had deep world building and an interesting story.
Bloomburrow was great for feeling like its own world, allowed to have its own heroes going on their own adventures to deal with their own conflicts, rather than just being a playground for whatever random planeswalker to drop in on and futz about in with no real thought given to the world itself. Unfortunately I still think the story was pretty bad for other reasons, but it was a step in the right direction - which just makes it sad that it seems like it's not a direction they're continuing in.
Can we also just admit that Tarkir was way more interesting with Khans than with Dragons? Bring back the wedges!
i believe they will do that.
Khans was the last time Magic was good
I think that was the general sentiment, even WotC did not expect that the Khan set was going to be more popular than the dragon set, but because of how sets are made they could not course correct.
@@SilverCyan khans was my first mtg set release, and bloomburrow brought me back. i asked the store manager of my lgs and he said that in terms of sales bloomburrow was comparable to khans. everything else doesnt even compare. and tbh even now a lot of bloomburrow stuff is out of stock
@@ozmiumYTBloomburrow was the best selling standard set ever
If WotC had kept the Ikoria Godzilla model for Universes Beyond cards being skins of in-universe cards there never would have been a problem of new fans attracted by UB cards not being able to play those cards in Standard. Nor the problem of people who don’t want to play with UB cards being forced to collect them to stay competitive.
Yeah but that’s what happens when you regard the slippery slope as a fallacy. People needed to take a stand then.
This was never an option on the table. You either get every IP under the sun or you actually stand up for the integrity of the game. You don't get both. Enjoy paying premium for advertising "game pieces" with no flavor outside of pop culture garbage that is barely even relevant anymore but you'll have to have to stay competitive. Players earned it.
If we MUST have Universes Beyond, I'd have preffered the Godzilla method as well
@@jamescobblepot4744 I think both you and tc5589-1 misunderstand OP's point. He's not saying they should've only made Godzilla cards. He's saying they should've printed cards from other IPs in the same manner as the Godzilla cards. I.e. have a normal Magic card, with fitting abilities, and have an alternate version with the "Universes Beyond" character art.
And so many of us sent in feedback saying exactly that. What a time to be alive
Hasbro definitely killing the goose that lays the golden eggs - classic corporate misguided focus on quarterly returns over long term profitability. I stopped paying attention to new sets completely.
That is 100% exactly what it feels like they're doing. I wish I'd worded it that way in the vid
0:12 man why'd I click this video then?
Just wait, I tie it back around at the end
@@RedBobcatGamesthe end?! The videos 20 minutes!!!!!!
It’s called thumbnail clikbait. Welcome to you toob. All the best do it 😂
Yeah, if you want a thumbnail explained in 20 seconds instead you really wanna try TikTok
Man I guess jokes aren't common on youtube
At this rate Magic is just turning into American Weiss Schwartz without the courtesy of being upfront about it.
Exactly. In Weiss Schwarz's case, it's fine since that's the premise, I love it. But MtG? It already had its worlds, its characters and it used to do a good job of it. (Well, thing were a bit different early on with Arabian Nights, but other than that)
And with shittier art.
I need to try Weiss Schwartz at some point. I mean, I assume it's actually a game. I wonder how it handles balancing and power creep over sets. Interesting to look at I think
With a longer Standard rotation, it just makes sense to bring back Block formatting for storytelling.
I just want blocks and the novels that would come with fat packs back. They can make easy bake oven and tammy craps a lot cards after that and I won't care.
im huffing on the "bring back blocks" copium because with only 3 in-universe sets per year, its a perfect opportunity to do annual story arcs
The finger curles and the wish is granted: All Universes Beyond sets will now come in 2-set blocks, leaving no space for MTG sets and making every single UB IP you don't personally care about twice as exhausting!
@@varsoonhks3211 that might get in the way of the advertisement sets so no can do.
Standard going three years was always going to be a massive mistake. Either admit they have too much overstock or go back to two years.
Because of my similar issues I discovered Flesh and Blood and have been loving it
Had a few comments on this vid like that. I think I'll have to check it out
@@RedBobcatGamesi dropped mtg in 2019 for fab... Never looked back. Mtg made up a big chunk of my childhood in the 90's....I just feel like the company has let the IP down so hard.
I also dropped mtg for fab about two years ago, and whenever I poke my head back in on magic I'm left more confident it was the right move
@Aegisworn yeah. Same man. Nice oscillio pic. I main Viserai and have since he came out.... Alllll those years ago :-p
@@andrewostman3135 good time to be a vis main
I remember talking to my friends while playing Fortnite, cause it was the second Marvel season and I was not gonna walk away empty handed again. But I said "Y'know, when you think about it, MTG is the 'Fortnite' of Card games." and immediately my one friend practically bit my head off, telling me that 'I shouldn't compare that 'Shitass' game to a 'simple little card game', and since MTG came out first, Fortnite should be called the MTG of battle royales. All I meant was that MTG is the (As far as I'm aware) only TCG that has crossovers, and very prevalent ones at that. And now look at the game, half of the new sets are gonna be IPs ranging from Marvel to Final Fantasy. So yeah still think it's not the Fortnite of Card games my friend?
"Were you right?"
"yes"
"What did it cost?"
"My Patrick Star swings for lethal."
I was seriously thinking about getting back into Magic. Thank you, RUclips, for showing me this video.
TBH I agree with you, but I'm not going to quit MtG, I'm going to quit _spending_ on MtG.
That's probably the way forward honestly
Good call. I hope those words are serious
@@tc5589-1 Ayup. I'm only going to be proxying from now on if I want new cards.
PROXY THE EARTH
Just buy singles or counterfeit cards... F wotc garbage comapny but a great game.
With regard to the ending, I think the biggest inconsistency is the non-legality of Foundations Jumpstart.
Foundations is not one set, but four sets with different legalities. The beginner box seems to be standard legal jumpstart boosters with the foundations symbol, the jumpstart boosters that are labeled as such are non-standard with their own symbol, the play boosters have standard legal cards with the foundations symbol and non-standard special guests with the special guests symbol, and the starter collection has cards "from foundations" that aren't in any of the other products but have the foundations symbol/legality, plus commander-only cards that just have the magic "M" logo, which has been described as a "commander set symbol". That's insane.
jesus christ, I may need a coloured scheme or some kind of manual to understand this mess.
@@alexandrbatora9674 In fairness it's functionally a lot simpler than I've made it sound:
* The Beginner Box, Play Boosters, and Starter Collection all have different cards, but they're all predominantly standard legal and have the Foundations set symbol.
* A few cards from the three standard-legal Foundations sets aren't standard legal and have different symbols.
* Foundations Jumpstart is an entirely different set that shouldn't even have the Foundations name attached to it. It's just Jumpstart 2024.
... No, never mind. Now that I read it back, it's still silly.
so, the actual "foundation" of Magic is ... chaos?
this 100.000%, when I heard that they would make foundations products for modern and Commander I was like...
What is even the fucking point of making Foundations if you're going to dillute it with all that crap? It makes no sense at all
I'm completely lost hahaha
I recently gave up playing the game in any real capacity in favor of migrating to pokemon TCG. I have been having a blast. All the decks are like 25 dollars, there's a lot more experimentation in terms of gameplay to be had, and there is enough variety I haven't been bored of the game even a little in my last few months of playing. If you're a long time magic player, like I was, and you love 60 card formats specifically, you're gonna have a great time with pokemon, give it a try.
I LOVED the Pokémon TCG for many years, but I only really played it digitally. When they shut the client down and said they weren't migrating a bunch of my collection to the new client I sort of stopped sadly. I admit, I never really played any of those cards, but they were mine and seeing them go was a feel bad
Experimentation of gameplay?????
Pokemon sucks dude. You ain't fooling anyone here.
@DreadPirateRobertz you're just mad my standard deck was the same price as the sleeves I put it in and beats the stuff at the top of the meta. It also has a PC client that isn't pay to win, predatorily monetized slop. You can't fool ME, hon, I've actually played both games and I can tell you it's great.
@@newsuperstevebros 😂😂😂😂
Reject Magic, embrace Flesh and Blood
thank you for making this video. It put into words all the frustrations that had been quietly brewing at the back of my mind and yet could never place.
I just realised something that's going to have a huge impact on how much I play MTG going forward - with 50% of standard sets now being UB, 50% of LGS-sanctioned drafts will be UB. Draft is a major factor in me bothering to go play MTG on a friday night, and from now on, 6 months out of the year, there will be functionally no draft environment for me as a UB-ignorer. That's especially significant for me because draft was always a safe fallback option if I got to 5PM and realised I didn't really feel like playing constructed - I could still go down to the LGS and play Magic, and get the refreshing experience of a semi-randomised deck.
Now, on those days where constructed doesn't enthuse me, which will no doubt be increasingly common as Standard gets locked off to UB players only, and LGS commander pods more often have a UB player, I'm going to be choosing to do something unrelated to MTG, because the prospect of drafting Spiderman won't appeal to me. The more that happens, the less I'm going to take for granted the assumption that MTG is the thing I'll be doing come Friday - and that's how every one of the hobbies I've eventually dropped has gone: It became less prominent in my weekly schedule and then I found myself having a better thing to do in that time slot.
Such is the cycle of death for hobbies. True quitting this never a product of instantaneous irritation but the casual replacement you described. Typically it’s brought on by the fatigue we are all feeling. A lack of joy means a lack of engagement. A lack of engagement means a lack of time allocation. When you no longer give it time you stop giving it money and then you’ve essentially quit.
the game is functionally the exact same, ill never understand why its such a deal breaker. Yes i dislike UB but like it literally doesnt change the gameplay which is the reason to play. If your reason to play is lore magic was never the game for you
@@DSR505 @ form matters. That’s why art matters. That’s why the cards aren’t just black text on a white space. That’s why legendary creatures have names and titles. Community also matters, the sense of shared love for a specific thing rather than individual parts of an inconsistent existence matters. That’s why these other ips have their own followings. Function isn’t the whole of magic.
@@DSR505it's not that hard to understand. Read what people say and try to empathize. So many people don't want fucking spongebob fighting planeswalkers and Captain America. It looks like shit. It sounds like shit. This isn't fortnite
@@DSR505 Then why give cards concepts at all? WOTC can save a fortune on art if the game is the same regardless of flavour.
I think we need to get all of us who feel this way and make a new fan/player format. We need to pick a cutoff point and not allow cards originally printed after that point. Then we can recapture the Magic. We can also take the opportunity to replace the banned/restricted list with an unsportsmanlike conduct rule and maybe make a few more changes to restore the game to what it used to be instead of just giving in to WotC and Hasbro. There have to be other options between "keep giving Hasbro money" and "walk away from the game forever."
I've been thinking that same thing. I've got some ideas but am still working on it. I'll probably post a video once it's done
Basically what Yugioh legacy formats are like, because of no set rotation.
This is a completely understandable sentiment and I agree with it up to a point, but this comment is also a really good example of why that format will be hard to get off the ground. It's not obvious where the cutoff ought to be, people will likely want to put it in very different places, and that's just the first problem.
Still, I was nodding along with you until I got to the bit about replacing the banned/restricted list with an unsportsmanlike conduct rule and my monocle fell right into my Frappuccino. To me that seems like a bad idea that has nothing to do with the overall concept. That's just my personal taste, obviously, but I think it's a sign of how hard it might be to get people to agree on the specifics. We'll cheer for the idea, but most people will probably be put off by any particular implementation.
@@tomhowell8398 Somewhat agree arguing about cutoff points. Except that there are some bigger obvious ideas like:
1. no Horizons but everything else is fine
2. cutoff before Horizons
3. the Standard formats of the past before set rotation
The Amish of MtG
when they announced the racing set I was really excited about it, even thunder junction seemd fun, and I still belive those are cool scenarios magic could explore, imagine if insted of getting a meme thuder juncton acctualy took itself seriously, exploring themes of clonialism and the false myth of the old west, or even if they acctualy did a a serious western story insted of just putting reconisible character in costumes, and I think that's the worst part of it all, they just don't care enought to explore theyre own ideas, all they care about is universes beyond because it makes a lot of money, and honestly I'm really tired of trying to look for anything good in a game that dosen't care about itself or about me. 30 years, this game lived 30 years on the back of it's own story, sometimes it was kind shit to be honest, but they always tried to make things special in some way, never gonna forget how amazing it was learning about phyrexia, I took the time to learn about everything since the time when dominaria was the main plane in magic, and it scare the shit out of me at the time, and when I saw we were going to return I got so excited, and them it was that, it's really hard to love something and see it wither away like that, I just wish it lasted a bit longer, sorry if my english wasn't the best today, I got really emotional and this isn't my first language
If English isn't your first language then I'm very impressed, because this was fine and made total sense. And I agree totally. OTJ and MKM could have been fine if they were given a little more time to explore the settings and stories. I think a return to 3 set blocks would fix this issue honestly
@@RedBobcatGames Thx I'm from Brazil, and I too think the block structure probably could fix a lot of things
I genuinely believe that the best thing that could happen to Magic's lore would be to just permanently retire 75% of current named characters, and banish the remaining 25% back to their home planes, desparked. A hard reset to the storyline that allows the creation of new characters who can't just be dressed up in costumes for "Look, your favourite characters are back and this time they're riding dinosaurs!" sets. They'd have no choice then but to find a story to tell.
Thunder junction should be a ixtalan 3.0.
@@yurisei6732 I really don't think that would work, they could change all characters and still write bad stories, the problem imo is that the writers don't have time or resources to create good stories, and the direction the bosses want the game to go is a more casual fun, wich by that I mean Marvel style humor and small self contained stories that don't require much context to work, as long as the philosophy behind the company remains the same any story they write will continue to be this way, be with Jace or a new character, that said I belive changing some of the protagonists is a necessary step, the current characters have way to much baggage, but the main thing would be a change in the entire philosophy of the company, theres no easy solution unfortunetly
As a person with a passive interest in Magic, the biggest barrier for me getting into the game is actually the lore. And releasing sets that aren't even themed in Magic make me think that WOTC themselves don't care about the lore. So why should I care about trying to get into the story of a game and 'obsess' over characters in the game if the game doesn't respect itself?
If you want to look at good Magic lore, look into the old lore of the Weatherlight Crew and their stories or even the Brothers War from all the way back
@@zirilan3398- Yes, I felt like opening packs from Stronghold, Tempest, Urza Block and etc., connected me with the lore big time!
You don't need to know the lore to get into Magic. I've been playing since the 90s and know very little of the lore. I love the art, fantasy setting, flavor text, and most importantly the addictive gameplay. But something like Spiderman hitting the battlefield is an absolute disgrace and breaks all immersion. Hasbro is a trash company and they only care about milking this game for every last drop.
The lore is literally just that wizards did it. Why are goblins tackling a robot? Wizards. How do we visit such diverse settings? Wizards. There are serious subplots in all the different blocks, but they're all just different variations on "wizards did some wizard stuff, here's a bunch of cards themed around whatever it was." When you play the game you take on the role of a nameless wizard and also do the wizard stuff, that's all you need to know to get invested in the big picture concept.
I have quit MTG and sold my collection 2 years ago. I never regretted it, don't cling to a failing game, it's not going to get better.
I'm in a similar boat to you. I was already feeling bad about all the UB announcements, and spongebob, and all that, but I told myself 'it's still magic, I'll still play it and love it'. But then I saw the new daretti card. Oh, how they both powercrept and massacred my beautiful boy all at once. It made me so sad to see such a cool character that embodied the struggles of poverty and overcoming your own limitations using your own wit and whatever you can scrap up, a character that represented class warfare... Turned into a wacky races mad max hot wheels guy with a goatee.
The memes are more important than the story telling it seems. I felt similar with the return to Innistrad just being about Halloween and a Wedding
I just want to add my concern that the Aetherdrift plot is generally abelist AF and the Chandra hints we've been given are much more so. If she is really racing to help restore Nissa's spark it just screams that she believes Nissa is not a complete person anymore. When they decided to travel the Multiverse together via the Omenpaths in the story "She Who Breaks the World" it is expressly a sign that Chandra has committed to Nissa no matter what and "has a place in her life for someone who can't planeswalk." That quote is Nissa's direct question to her. But if a year later trudging indirectly thru Omenpaths has led to Chandra trying to bring Nissa back to PW status, that's just her bailing on her commitment and making it Nissa's fault. And any person with a disability will tell you this is a very familiar, and very disappointing occurrence. Anyway, it worries me a lot. I hope a disabled writer is writing this set's story
@@flowbot159 i hope daretti gets it and starts fucking shit up
@@flowbot159 Thanks for that info - always glad to be warned about ableism in things; life's too short to have to put up with that in something I do for fun...
"this product from the megacorporation really represented class warfare" lol ok
We cannot have SpongeBob in our game. Immersion will be fully broken.
WotC was the cutting edge of card games, and now each set is trying to Manifest Destiny me into Commander?!
Drafts used to be fun because I got closeup with a plane, but that has also been changed because of special guest cards 😞
I do not know what planes are anymore. And do they even matter? Why did we spend so much time on Garruk hunting other planeswalkers because he was going mad from a curse? Why does Ravnica feel less special now? Do eldrazi matter? Why can we not kill off planeswalkers?
My regular playgroup will not stop buying into each set. Even casual commander is being impacted and I'm not having fun.
And nobody wants to stop and unpack those feelings
Well, I attempted to unpack them at least. It's mad lately
SpongeBob is a Secret Lair, it won’t be Standard legal and will only really appeal to SpongeBob fans in casual Commander. They aren’t going to be everywhere and you never have to interact with them.
11:48 I don't believe that framing because this kind of format exclusivity has always existed in Magic. A new player who opened a pack of Modern Horizons 1 and discovered they couldn't use their cool new mythic in Standard that year wasn't a concern. The reason they're expanding legality is simply because the demand won't be there if the sets are only legal in Modern and they won't sell as much. It's about the money. They want the maximum possible distribution potential so they can bring the exponential sales graphs to the next IP pitch meeting with HBO, Disney or Nickelodeon
I do believe them. Their UB sets haven't struggled to sell, and their future sets aren't going to struggle either - Spiderman is even more popular than LOTR, particularly with international audiences. Making these sets standard legal kills three birds with one stone for WOTC, as is the case with many corporate decisions. Increasing conversion of new players into competitive formats is a good thing that will happen and will have been foreseen. This kills the second bird by giving new players more reason to invest deeper, and kills the third bird by giving MTG players a reason to at least look at UB sets.
@@yurisei6732 But two of these birds are about sales potential and the one about player retention assumes that people aren’t going to stick around if they have to play actual Magic in Standard and not this new crossover TCG. WotC are saying that these new players are coming for outside IPs so they have to change their whole game to accommodate them. But all the people who came for magic originally, well WotC doesn’t have to accommodate them at all by protecting their own IP.
All of this is fundamentally about the money because if UB sold low numbers compared to normal Magic sets, WotC wouldn’t care about coddling the people who came for UB by making sure they never have to make an actual Magic deck in any format. They would leave it up to those players to transition themselves into Standard
I think if people are coming to magic for Spider-man, they're probably not going to care what format the cards are in honestly
@@RedBobcatGames I tend to agree because Universes Beyond joiners are predominantly Commander and kitchen table Magic players but from WotC’s perspective, it’s about future projections for their flagship formats. They were quick to make Universes Beyond legal in the formats that made them the most money, Commander and Modern, but Standard was non-existent at that time in paper so they didn’t care. Now since they’re bringing back Standard Open Qualifiers and all kinds of supported store competitions, they’re expecting Standard to start generating money. Whatever is driving sales has to have Universes Beyond. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hasbro executives mandated it as soon as WotC management disclosed the plan to revitalise Standard two years ago.
I know they’re lying about whatever framing excuse they give because they assured us several years ago that Universes Beyond would never be in Standard and at the same time they were beginning to design Spiderman and Final Fantasy sets for Standard.
@@yurisei6732Spiderman does not have more potential to sell than LotR.
The main reason LotR set didn't sell 100x more is because everyone and their mother took one look at it, noticed every major character was now black, and got creeped out by the 'american values' on display.
I don't think they even realize how many potential customers they lost.
I started in 1995 and have been playing the entire time for the most part, no extended time off. I haven't played MTG in about 8 months now. This isn't the game I fell in love with anymore and it makes me sad. I've been waffling on whether or not to sell my collection. I hate just about everything that has been done to my precious game over the past 4-5 years.
take a look into Premodern, especially if you have those old WCD-decks or Collectors Edition cards since those are also legal in the Format. It's the closest to the oldschool Magic feeling from 10-15 years ago you can get
Get into sorcery instead you’ll love it- it’s old school proper fantasy magic.
Just give me all your cards. I'll appreciate them better
Okay boomer
the combat trick change feels like it makes them sorcery speed. my playgroup all decided to just ignore this new change but i feel for everyone who cant just ignore the rules (like at fnm and such)
Yeah, I'm tempted to suggest the same thing to the people I play with. But then, that creates even more of a divide in my brain when I play with other people
@RedBobcatGamesMy group also ignored the "1st player no longer draws a card" rule in YuGiOh for years, until our power-level got to the point where the rule was acceptable.
Nothing beats the freedom of physical cards!
People always say "you're overreacting and you'll never actually quit playing." But to that I say, I played Yu-Gi-Oh all the way from the very earliest Starter decks through all the way to the announcement of Pendulum monsters, and I thought Pendulums were such a horrendous mechanic and saw the writing on the wall for the degenerate nonsense modern Yu-Gi-Oh has become that I literally quit Yu-Gi-Oh cold turkey on the spot after over a decade of playing within 2-3 days of the Pendulum announcement.
This is a long winded way of me saying I can, will, and indeed have quit playing a card game, even as an extremely long running entrenched player, if the card game becomes so horrendously mismanaged. MTG is legit teetering very close to that line for me these days, between the predatory collector boosters, the destruction of the game's identity through universes beyond, and the horrendous power creep in the last 5 or so years since printing cards directly into eternal formats became common place.
Yeah, I'm much the same. I still love Magic for what it was and hopefully can be again. But that doesn't mean I have to stick around if they keep going the way they are
funnily enough the number of playable, let alone those that were meta, pendulum decks, can be counted by fingers
current yugioh is extremely fun, if you learn how to play it
@@Kylada-o5t I heard that statement from a friend and that's when Link Summoning was coming in. I tried it and it's just a different flavored slop. It's still the same gameplay of "if you can break this board state you win" situation on every turn 2.
Maybe it's different now but honestly with how MTG is going downhill, I still enjoy it much more over yugioh. And that's me playing it way back in early GX era.
@@MasouShizuka break this board state? "Thats step 1, but what about 2 through 10?"
but seriously, currently most decks have a level of grind game the decks of the past couldnt wish for. Also since the release of new handtraps the game shifted towards midrange strategies, and due to the ban of generic extra deck negates only handful of decks actually build a "fuck you" board
@@RedBobcatGames MTG is a robust game. Even if constructed formats become a mess with all the stuff going on there is still the option to play things like Cube if you want a curated format that just ignores most or all of the new stuff.
I'm torn, because I love fantasy media and what drew me to Magic, the lore the fantasy, is gone and if it were just me playing I'd have stopped by now. But I'm an entrenched player, I have thousands of cards, I have a dedicated commander playgroup, I have fond memories of prereleases and store championships, and I now wonder if that's all that's keeping me going. Do I still love the game, or do I only love the memory of what the game was, and is my stubbornness and nostalgia goggles all that's keeping me here?
I'm asking myself that exact same question
You can make proxies for next to nothing and continue playing at reduced investment without wotc benefiting in the slightest. Also eases you out of the sunk cost fallacy causing you to hesitate leaving the game due to past investment. Which lets you know if it’s genuine enjoyment or not and whether or not you want to quit.
I gotta recommend sorcery! It really delivers that fantasy vibe and strategic play that I miss from MTG
I'm the same way. I love me some good strong fantasy vibes. But when even the in-universe stuff is moving further and further away from that, and the majority of UB sets not even trying to stick to it, it's hard to stay invested.
I've made the prediction that next year, the set that will feel the most like classic MtG, will be the Final Fantasy one.
The franchise has always had high fantasy medieval themes, like knights, mages, undead, aiships etc. All, things that were present in MtG.
Honestly, having a card of Cecil or Kain from FF4, or Ystola from XIV, feels a lot more like MtG than seeing Chandra on a motorbike racing Jace.
Yeah, you could well be correct. I honestly have no idea what a Spider-man set is even going to look like
@@RedBobcatGames I guess something like "Webshot" 1U Instant "tap target creature or put a stun counter on target tapped creature"
It will totally work...mechanically
Will it feel like MtG? Nope
6:33 I don't agree that you can just ignore these products. When you are bombarded with new products all the time, it becomes taxing filtering through all of them to find the ones you are interested in. Players and content creators stopped talking about the current sets and only talk about what's next, and it's very difficult to simply ignore them.
Yes, I'm with you here.
I don't mind that they're making all these "Advertising Sets", which is what they are,
But, I'm a bit sad that this is what Magic is now; it is losing, or lost it's dark, mature identity of magic. Magic used to be the more edgy game converse to Pokemon for example. The original dominaria sets, the war between the brothers, these were deeply flawed, dramatic, characters, the magic, was unique, it's own universe. Now, it's more and more generic.
What happened to Mirrodin's Elves of the Tangle, How were the Phyrexians wiped out, off screen in one set when we used to build a narrative over many sets, what happened to the strange stories of how the Kami effected the world, and so on.
I miss the days, when Magic could stand out and be unique, now magic is just another product, and the cards, another place to put an ad.
I'm hopeful for Foundations, I really am, but I'm sad that we're going through this intense set creep, narrative bankruptcy and creative death.
I feel you Mr Bobcat... Magic died for me with the WH40k Commander Deck way back when.
I liked Magic - I liked 40k.
I like Steak - I like Ice Cream.
This doesn't mean that I want Steak Flavored Ice Cream.
While I feel the sentiment... I just want to say steak ice cream is pretty great lmao. I got to try some made with A5 fat a few years ago and was pleasantly surprised.
That said, I don't blame anyone for being upset with Universes beyond products and less focus on magic lore and IP. I can see why people feel like we're getting less magic from magic.
Also also, I'm not telling you you should try steak ice cream. I just wanted to say I was surprised by it lmao
Having universes beyond is fine as long as they stay in their universes and are not legal outside of that universe.
@@Linkdude74my wife ate that when she was pregnant. Practically lived on it for 9 months.
@@Linkdude74 Really, I wouldn't have guessed this Combo can go together. Well you knew it was more a figure of speech, but color me surprised none the less ;)
I love how damn expressive you’re able to make this cat despite the minimal animation, excellent work
Why thank you very much
if you stop buying/collecting MTG. I bet you can retire, buy a house, buy a sports car, and have a luxurious life.
If someone is spending $100k+ on magic cards, they probably have 5 houses and 16 sports cars
Ha! If only it were to easy to steal a house
It's not quit that bad :) But I'll comfortably be able to by a cool, high quality power tool every release. And a pile of wood once i manage to sell off my collection.
I just found your channel due to the algorithm and this video got you a subscribe.
A rare video that says it all exactly how I would but sums it up succinctly.
up until 10:10 is enough reason for me to leave the game.. pushing that many standard sets, people will go mad (or burn their wallet) just to catch up with meta
I agree. And they seem to know it too, that's why they pushed Lorwyn back. But what they kept is still A LOT
Foundations is one of the best sets in years and after i get some drafts in im quitting to play FaB. Foundations is a eulogy.
Oof. Ouch, that was hard to read but very powerful
Foundations was a coupon to stop trying any longer. Now that "the Magic IP" will be in at least 1 set until 2029, you can just stop printing the Magic IP in a few years. It'll still be there in Foundations! Look! Llanowar Elves!
When a company lays off poeple they do it to "keep costs down and revenue up." Poeple are just pawns and numbers on paper to them.
Sadly, yeah
I had this feeling in War of the Spark, and I wish I fully left, but I love what the game used to be too much, and what I hope it could become in the future.
Man, I had that feeling with Battle for Zendikar. Even Origins felt weird to me. Everyone has a different moment that the whole thing broke down, but, weirdly, I think it was the loss of the block format for me. Not that that's causal, but that enough changed then to notice that the game wouldn't be what I loved going forwards.
And ever since then, even fan favorite planes have felt hollow when we return to them. I don't know. We're coming up on ten years of being busted to me.
If it weren't for Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow burning me like they did, I don't think the channel would exist.
Wow, I didn't even realise how clogged up standard had become with sets. Like, I get the appeal of the cards you get in a set staying legal for longer, as the rapid rotations dumping your cards out of legal relevance has always felt bad, but at the same time it makes standard a quagmire to get back into for returning players.
My main issue, by a lot, is the universe beyond stuff. I just hate it - it dilutes the IP of the game, and only gets worse the longer it goes on. There will be people who don't care about this, and power to them, but it crosses a hard boundary for me. I've already been slipping away from having any interest in standard sets, or the standard format, but when these start hitting it will kill my interest in standard dead... and then begin poisoning my interest in modern. Fortunately, I am insulted from much of this within a playgroup that can keep playing with the cards/sets we like and agree to ignore the ones we don't.
With the rule chance, I'm really on the fence. This is a bigger deal for limited formats, where defensive combat tricks are a thing that actually happens, and even there this still won't change much. I generally don't like the rules changing, so I am biased against this one, but I will admit it makes the game more accessible to new players and eliminates an extra round of priority that slows games down. But yeah, I have sooooo many decks, and I none of them will play any different with this rule change except for a small handful or niche corner cases that could crop up. I don't like it, but more on principle than for any real reasons.
I didn't play Magic in over 5 years and just recently started again with Commander, and oh my god was it a shock to see all those new cards that come from random franchises and don't belong in magic at all. A lot of them have decent rules and work, but it bothers me to just look at the cards
God, why has no one else brought up how stupid the rule change is
Everything I've gotten to hear from others has been nonsense about it switching up the flow of combat and how easy/better it is. Was it really that hard?
I literally started playing not even a year ago, and I can honestly say the new rule is both somehow more confusing and completely shits on the flow. Combat "tricks" are now just something the attacker gets to do. So dumb.
I’ve played for like 15 years in multiple states and cities and have literally never had someone use that rule like that. Not saying it’s complicated just that the new rule is more in line with actual practice for most players, as far as my observations go. That’s why backlash is so close to nonexistent.
See I'm the opposite. When I heard people already played that way I was really surprised because I've never seen it
i'd recommend trying out pauper if you're looking for a 60 card constructed format. it can be played both casually and competitively and since its only out of commons you only need to pay attention to a much SMALLER segment of each set coming out. really helps the congnitive load.
you also don't need to change your decks with every set since most new commons aren't as good as the classic lightning bolt or brainstorm. meaning your favorite deck will be good for a long time.
That's actually good advice. But I like the rares and the mythics though, because that's usually where you find the characters important in the narrative. The issue is I love the lore. I just wish we had quality, and not quantity
As a fellow Apple Cart, I too am upset, but thank our overloards at WotC and their glorious leaders for correcting me and telling me how I feel. Blessed be thy names.
Haha, reading this made me laugh. Thank you
If WotC can make a "promise" to not make UB cards legal in constructed and break it, then the reserve list can be broken as well.
Once MTG quits posting record profit, that RL gonna turn into a golden parachute for the shareholders before they sell off and light cigars with $100 bills LOL
@HitthaChoint420 agreed.
Not only MTG. Everything we used to love got watered down and/or destroyed by the woke agenda and the "everything should be for everyone" mentality. When I was growing up, card games and geek stuff weren't seen as cool by the general consensus. I think the Big Bang Theory series brought a lot of light to the need/geek culture (even if it did try to get all the usual tropes in one) it did bring some consciousness about the culture and how many of us collectors, gamers, etc make money with the things we collect. I know that's not necessarily the reason why I started collecting in the first place, but I think it really influenced the follow up with the MCU. And it's brought us here
Ive been getting back into mtg again after a break from lockdown, starting again in eldraine and picking up the odd pack when i can. With the release of foundations i was tempted to try and get back into standard again since im getting tired of commander’s casualness, but seeing the future is spiderman and sheoldred still bieng around (fuck that card) just makes me less interested as a whole. It all feels so fast everything coming. I only picked up my first duskmourn pack the other day, now its over? Universes beyond also stings, i am a huge fan of final fantasy, one of my faveroute games ever and i feel like its the few thematically to fit into mtg (like lotr and warhammer), but seeing how agressive UB is becoming, id rather they just cancel it or make it commander only. Commander is much more casual and you dont need to add broken cards, so you could thematically make a ff only deck. But thats not gonna happen, and i dont want to live in a world where standard meta needs 4 doctor octopus and 2 kefka’s to take out Dora the explorer
And one thing I didn't mention in the vid too was the cost. If you wanted to run a Sheoldred deck yourself those nearly 3 year old cards and now what, like $100 each? No thanks!
Hey, I know people making suggestions is usually not what people want to hear when they are not happy about something, so I apologise in advance.
If the casualness of commander is starting to get on your nerves(the rule 0, the saltiness, the different ideologies etc.), then I highly recommend dipping your toes into cEDH.
I was against it initially, so I know it has a stigma, but i had the total wrong idea of the format and the people that play it.
The best thing is, there is a meta which means very little change within the format; generally, you can find a deck you love and it will have very little cards released within a year that even scrape the *potential* of being an include.
Because of the recent bannings there has been a huge shake up in the meta, there has never been a more interesting time to get into it 🍻
Having 3 other competitive players sitting at a table with you is unreal. Everyone testing their knowledge of the game, timing and the stack to the best of their ability, people constantly stopping win attempts, multiple win attempts from multiple players within in a game.
Sweaty hands and adrenaline rushes are regular, format is pure gas 🤘
Totally agree with all of this
Thank you. Bit of a shame I'm not the only one who's feeling this way though really
@ WOTC has been a shame recently unfortunately.
i find funny how extended died "because it had too many cards" and now standar has more cards than extended ever did haha
I don't think it was by accident that I switched from mtg to chess around 2022. No more getting exhausted by being constantly blasted with new product if you know what I mean.
Magic and chess are different mate, wat are u saying?
@@caspermultiverseHe's saying that he only plays black or white.
I'm all about proxies after seeing how little of my money makes it to the people that design the cards.
I think wizards really missed on discontinuing universe within. I think doing universes within masters (like a modern masters set but with only universes within cards) could have been one of the few ways we could have got reprints of expensive beyond cards (ie one ring renamed to urza's/jace's ring in line with Godzilla/Dracula magic card renaming template used before in Ikoria and midnight hunt)
For the amount of universes Beyond in general. Instead of it all being standard legal, i think they should just make a universes Beyond only format/formats. Have normal 60 card 4 of format and then have Beyond only brawl as the commander variant. People then can chose if they want spongebob counterspelling Gandalf as ironman and Optimus Prime look on in horror. And are not just forced to play ajani and Garfield in the same deck because Garfield is a new op cat lord.
I think its funny to have the crossover stuff but 100% forcing it in my face. Im alot less cool with.
Yeah, and honestly if they gave every one of these cards a Universes Within counterpart I'd be a lot more okay with them
I wish that there were more LGS exclusive products that would drive players to stores, if at least to try and compensate for Secret Lairs. Hasbro’s demand for massive growth is a beast all it’s own that people with figure out ways for Wales to pay for, but there ought to be more thought put in for LGSs and weekly players.
Yeah, I completely agree with you here
I like all The Red Bobcat's videos. Even this one
Thank you
This weekend I went to the prerelease of foundations only because a friend of mine realy wanted me to go. I felt actively bad supporting the state of the game. Its so sad to see a game I grew up with turned in a pop culture trashcan owned by an evil corporation.
Yeah, I feel that. It's rough
The frequency of set releases cranked up as soon as Hasbro took over.
You'll notice that card quality varies wildly after that due to ... Not being properly tested.
"And no, it's not because the game went woke, let the dragons have their rainbows" My brother in Christ, things go woke because the corporation thinks they can make more money that way, if you say it's okay for your hobby to go woke then don't surprised when they die off like this. I've been watching Magic die for the last five years, warned my brother of this. The weekly "I told you so" are just warming up if anything the last two years
I've already started working on custom proxy art for making universes beyond cards into proxybuniverses within cards.
Also, even start testing out some cards I'm designing myself for friend group play and encouraging my friends to do the same.
This is awesome. Good luck
You *are* allowed to quit. Nothing has to last forever. For instance, this style of content doesn't exist at all in Pokemon TCG.
YET! You wait till my second channel starts up
It's very disheartening to be dismissed when I voice my disdain for UB products because I'm not new player. So i appreciate videos like these for making me feel less alone.
If I ever play Magic again it'll be with a small group who have agreed to play with Innistrad, Return to Ravnica, and the core sets that were legal during those rotations. It was such a diverse format with so many viable decks and rich lore. Magic feels soulless now.
The turd sandwich restaurant is not gonna stop selling turd sandwiches until everyone stops buying turd sandwiches.
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
From the non-cynical perspective on Aetherdrift specifically, I really loved the racing sub-theme of original Kaladesh / Aether Revolt. The fact that these characters, particularly Chandra Nalaar, were apart of a revolutionary culture that was intrinsically connected to their vehicles really vibes with the world of racetracks and modded cars. The fact that this story (from what it looks like) is Chandra going off and participating in a race (connecting her to her home plane) to win back her true love's Spark... doesn't feel meaningless to me, it's honestly quite touching. I genuinely have not anticipated a Magic story the way I do this one.
no
@@brandoe61how dare they enjoy thing i feel out of love with, right?
Lets be real, bobcat, you and everyone here in the comments don’t really care about the stories magic was telling, just “the lore”. the all important “lore”. ftfy.
@@ProXyki don't really care about the lore, i look at all cards in the set and i look at the art in the cards. eg-> New Capenna: at first i said what is this shit and i said to myself porcodio! (an italian expression that translates "god is a pig"), but after some time, after i looked at the cards in the set as a whole, it made sense, i could feel that world, i could see the connections. Since Wilds Of Eldrain i just don't feel this anymore :(. So it's more complicated than saying "i don't like the lore", witch btw means "i don't like the short stories that some underpayed slave/intern wrote to justify this mtgxhotwheel mario kart bullshit."
When the Walking Dead Secret Lair cards were revealed, it seemed like everyone and their grandmother criticized the shift. Now it feels like most have either shrugged and accepted the Universes Beyond takeover or enthusiastically support it. I care about lore and flavor to the game. I don't want my Urza facing off against Wolverine, Darth Vader, and My Little Pony. But I always got pushback for this take. I ask others, imagine if Games Workshop released IP crossovers and players had their Ultramarine and Chaos Armies face off against the XMen. It wouldn't be 40K, anymore.
Exactly, imagine if the Pokémon TCG did this…but if you criticize mtg for doing it there’s suddenly an issue 😂
I stopped playing Magic because everything started to upset me, and stressed me out. The fact that I felt like gatekeeping the game from people coming in with Universes Beyond upset me. Because it felt like *they* were taking the game from me. A game that was special and separate from everything else. I never bought any UB product because I was one of the "town criers", and people said I was insane that The Walking Dead would be the end of what Magic once was.
Now look at it, a meme become reality. The Fortnite of card games.
Now that Foundations is coming around, and Universes Beyond IPs I still don't care about, I'm never coming back. The game isn't for me anymore. I'm done. I always felt the community was toxic and that it got worse after this new era of Magic started.
Now I just play Force of Will TCG.
I quit years ago and have no regrets. I keep looking hopeing WoTC course corrects but nope. Magic is pretty much dead.
Well not yet, and I don't think it will die. I think it'll more likely transform into something unrecognisable
@@RedBobcatGames You can prop a corpse up and make it move like a puppet; doesn't mean it's not dead. Spongebob and Spiderman in Magic. SPONGEBOB. The game couldn't be more dead. What an absolute joke of a game, now. Glad I only played in the 90's and 2000's.
I don't understand what "Cultural Consultants" would contribute to a completely made up fantasy world. On ethat is there only to give flavour to a card game. For a TTRPG? Could be useful (but still not necessary). For a card game? Waste of money, the only thing they will do is upset the eisting fanbase with some immersion breaking nonsense
it will be a CCCP functionary to curb hints of tibetan nationalism in the jeskai
Because they are not completely made up. Ixalan, Tarkir, Kaladesh are examples of planes with designs rooted in particular cultures or periods of history. Although in the case of Thunder Junction I question their use of them because they opted to completely ignore the nuances and intricacies of what they took inspiration from as mentioned in the video.
They consult on how many major characters have to be changed to black people before each set 😂
How else would we get 5 color Aragorn without the consultants?!
"We worked with cultural consultants for Tarkir."
Okay, but where the fuck did you find a consultant for a fictional place with fictional cultures of people fighting dragons? Did you find a real-life planeswalker to tell you which words dragons think are racist?
I think my issue with this statment is they only seem to mention things like this when the set is going to be offensive so... guess we'll see
"Did you base your cultural pastiches on real world history or John Wayne's The Conqueror"
"Real world, definitely, we even hired a guy"
>looks inside
>Radiation poisoning.
I don't get the new player argument at all. I started playing magic in 2020, back when one of the fan-made online clients was made accessible for blind people. This was right when the Walking Dead secret layer released. Being blind, I could never really play the game before, there aren't any braille MTG cards out there unfortunately, so draft is out of the question, and constructed would be more difficult because I'd have to braille the cards myself, then hope I could actually use them in a tournament or LGS. This is why I was super excited when I could play online, it was the first time ever playing the game. The accessibility for the client was short-lived unfortunately, so I'm back to watching without being able to play myself. I don't know though, maybe I'm fortunate for not being able to play. The one thing about magic that has always struck me was its lore, and it was one of the main reasons I was excited to pick it up when I could. It has been ruined though, completely ruined. I love Lord of the Rings, I have no issue with Spiderman, I still watch Spongebob with my nieces and nephews to this day and enjoy it, I'm starting to get into Warhammer lore, loved sitting and listening to my brothers play Assassin's Creed, but...none of this is MTG. It will not get me into the game. If I magically grew working, fully functioning eyeballs, and could actually play and draft, I would skip out on every UB draft, and only go to the ones where they drafted real MTG sets. I'd not put a single UB card in a deck, only play with real MTG cards. Even to some of us who are new to the game, the lore is important, and this universes beyond crap is even discouraging us from even wanting to enter the game in the first place. For every new player WOTC gets with this crap, 2 of us will back off and never even try because of it.
This blind guy was playing at the store and he had sleeves that had Braille dots painted onto the sleeve fronts, they shuffle regularly and I thought it was brilliant!
Yeah I sold all my magic. I was getting burnt out on it for a year or so but these things are the straws that broke this camels back.
I stopped playing commander and buying new cards regularly about 2 years ago when i fealt like the new cards price and power were feeling a bit too high for my casual taste, cant say im regretting it but i wish i could go back to 2015 commander
Pretty much same here. I want to play the game, not shuffle up my cards, get to turn 3 or 4 , then someone plays their entire hand, half their damn deck, or just outright wins (outside cedh using non-cedh decks/strategies). You can't even say anything or you get hated out for not being okay with it because "it wasn't cEDH so its fine" seems to be most peoples mentality. My final game at my LGS was a 3 person game and one guy quitting and walked away because I dropped a stasis on turn 5 to catch back up to the table since I was making treasures through combat and had vigilance. Dude can have wincon in hand turn 5 and that's fine, but god forbid I stop him from killing the table. Some variation of this scenario would happen almost everytime I tried to play at an LGS. I loved this hobby immensely, but I can't seem to be able to enjoy it anymore. Between the actions of half of the player base, and the constant issues WOTC refuses to address with appropriate responses, Magic The Gathering has truly lost everything special it once brought to me.
IMO, Final Fantasy or LotR are the kind of IP that MtG *should* be doing Universes Beyond with. It has very similar feel and "vibe" to MtG's older sets in a lot of ways. However, seems more like WotC is taking whatever they can get instead of choosing stuff that actually meshes well with MtG. Spiderman...??
Biggest problem I have is just... they seem to be losing any semblance of creative vision. Planes in the past weren't a wacky assemblage of random places, they had a coherent unifying *vibe* to them despite how different they were. That seems to have just... disappeared.
i'm sorry but they are all a problem, yes aleo LOTR yes also everyones favourite IP (even mine, whatever they are). they count on people saying "just this one IP, please", that's how they can do that
Your title has a typo, it should say, "Magic *Has been* dumb and *people should've stopped playing years ago*."
Haha, you had me for a minute there. My spelling is bad so I was very worried!
@@RedBobcatGames You're fine lol, i thought it was a funny joke
Yep. I quit magic and have no desire to go back. I don't get the itch I used to.
I'm VERY new to magic. I started earlier this year with my first set being Bloomburrow and I loved it! I was excited for Foundations, as it would be my first "real" magic set, but after seeing the 2025 roadmap and Marvel Spiderman specifically, meaning there will probably be multiple Marvel sets, completely killed my excitement. I like mythical creatures, spells, and fantasy! I have never really been a fan of superhero stuff and... I don't really like the idea of "This set is for people who are fans of this specific IP." Also, being new, I don't like that I'll have to relearn combat phases. Like, come on, I JUST learned and you're gonna change the rules?
... Perhaps I chose a bad time to first get into MtG haha
Explore the older sets. I got into it during the first Tarkir block. It was amazing. Magic has a rich history. While the new is, well, not MTG, MTG is a deep deep game with decades of cards. Discover them. That's my recommendation as someone who fell away from MTG circa covid due to external reasons.
i stopped playing in august
we were going to gencon and my friends all had commander decks... and it wasn't fun anymore
i drafted bloomburrow at gencon 3-4 times but when i got hoem i realized the local game stores were not wehre i wanted to spend my saturdays and bloomburrow was going to rotate
In all honesty, and this isn't popular, I blame Commander. Commander changed Magic into something it wasn't on a base rules level. It's a format that kills aggro by its very nature. It doesn't teach fundamentals applicable to other formats, whereas being good at standard makes you more likely to be good at modern once you get the meta. So many Commander players only see Magic as Commander. It created a massive rift in the community. We can't even speak the same language anymore if you see card evaluations in spoiler season. Even if mostly online, the fact that conversations have been had on whether or not it is rude to win spells out that Magic has been a zombie for years. Obviously WotC is at fault for how exactly all that happened, but still. A format centered around playing your special Blorbo deck gives a pretty clear path to just printing everyone all the characters they already know to helm those same decks.
I agree, though I don't point the finger at Commander. I point it at WotC for chasing Commander. The format was fine while it was just a little community thing. As soon as we started getting cards printed for the format I think we saw the tipping point
@@RedBobcatGames In 2011? Because I'd say it took a while longer. I'd still agree that that was the seed of the change, but very specifically because of the community before the precons changed everything. An EDH player back then would have been a Magic player first, just one who had a deck for that wacky format you play at conventions and stuff. They probably went to the same forums and checked out the mothership the same way any other player did. They knew many of the inside jokes and shibboleths of the community. So on and so forth. While the cards are getting longer and dumber, it's looking around at the community and seeing a mass of people playing a different game that gets to me. And now they'll be playing a different game with non-Magic characters.
13 reasons on your List Of Misery! 🙈🙉🙊💕
Haha, yup
i honestly hope they go bankrupt and that's coming from a player who technically loves this game- but all these atrocious mistakes and comments they made in the last few years leaves me with almost 0 sympathy for the entire company. with every new expansion i'm getting more and more annoyed with what dumbass mechanics or ideas they came up with again that ruins the gameplay experience. there basically isn't much fun left in the game for me and i don't see that changing much with all the additional ways that arena cheats you with doesn't help either
I might just link this from now on, when the topic of what's wrong comes up again.
Solid, concise, well presented video.
Well thank you very much
Master duel playthrough when?
If I ever learn Yu-gi-oh!
WotC trends left wing… aka the false promises people
They've had their logo proudly on display on the Sweet Baby Inc banner for a while now, years at least. That is, until SBI hid their associate banner...
It would also explain the deteriorating story and lack of creativity.. 🤔
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As a long-time player, the Magic lore has always been somtheing I've enjoyed. I still have my old novels from back when they used to actually release paperbacks for each set and I do really miss the old style of lore, the stories being continued between every set is something that I am afraid is now gone. It seems to have been replaced by UB and Mr. Benn-style fancy dress sets.
Valid points across the board. We are the dinosaurs getting ready to be hit by that giant meteor that just entered the atmosphere.
That's exactly how it feels actually
I'm so glad I found your channel! I briefly played Magic years ago and was lured back in recently when I joined a new community group where everyone loved the game. Bloomburrow was just coming out and it was exactly my jam, so I bought the starter kit and began relearning from scratch. But it seems like I've arrived at a bit of an odd time, and I'm not entirely sure if players like me and my friends are the people that WotC want to keep around...
I knew discontinued cards could appreciate, so asked how long Bloomburrow was likely to run, and folk reassured me that it could go anywhere from six months to three years, depending on sales. What I didn't know was that the prices would go sky-high within thrwe months. I'd slept on getting a Commander deck (a new format for me) and now the only one still under £40 is not my colour preference - I can't justify £88 on a deck that cost £40 in August. Friends suggested singles, but even those seem to be skyrocketing and becoming unavailable.
I come from the AFOL community, where I'm used to seeing some Lego sets rise steeply in price, but that's retired sets, so I'm a bit at a loss to understand this. Now, I can still play with my starter decks and the odd booster, and there's one (blue/red/white) Commander deck still going for under £40, but it's weird - like this is a game meant for rich people and WoTC just aren't saying that bit aloud. They're rushing people from set to set with no time to appreciate the community that forms among fans of a specific set, the game's vast storehouse of original lore, or human artistic talent... all things Hasbro is keen to bundle out the door along with affordability, I guess.
Granted, Foundations looks amazing and the beginners' set is good value - it's like they read my mind with the cat and vampire decks, with pirates and goblins to boot! But if I cut my losses re: Bloomburrow and switch to deck-building in Foundations, will the same steep price rises happen there too? I don't like the feeling that I'm in an arms race with the wealthiest people at the gaming table, and I can't believe this is good for the youngest players either. Like we all remember from our own childhoods, pocket money only goes so far...
Sell out fast. I am. The writing has been on the wall and it started in roughly back in kaladesh if i recall? Maybe bfz if you want. But that unlocked the ability to add more sets more chase more cosmetic overrides. They saw the profit and never went back. Also the power creep really started to show at kaladesh and beyond. They dont care about the game health your right. They dont care and they even stated why they dont. They think they can attract more new players in with universes beyond playing broken magic than satisfying the old playerbase. That new playerbase will leave in a few years time anyways. Theyll wonder why they printed a 2x the value nee captain america still in the same standard rotation as the old one. Their greed is unparalleled.
Oh sorry this is also ignoring the fact that they've done almost everything to kill off LGS too