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[SigmasonicX]

You'd mostly ever want to target yourself to get a creature out of hand, so Despise would work and not hurt you as much as Thoughtsieze. And is cheaper.

I actually was going to post to recommend this, but you can only target opponents with Despise.

 

[Joe Molotov]

Magic: The Gathering |OT4| I'm so rich, I buy Thoughtseizes and use them on myself

 

[Angry Grimace]

Magic: The Gathering |OT4| Cast Thoughtseize; target myself. IM RICH BITCH

 

[red13th]

I didn't know this Killing a Goldfish blog, loving the reviews. :lol

 

[ultron87]

Vintage Super League is back tonight!

 

[inthrall]

Magic: The Gathering |OT4| Mighty Morphing Manifest Mountains

 

[Angry Grimace]

I wonder what the last Core Set will have in it. Other than Baneslayer Angel to fuck all the Dragons decks. :

I'm really hoping they don't go full off-the-rails and reprint Lightning Bolt.

 

["God's Beard!"]

I wonder what the last Core Set will have in it. Other than Baneslayer Angel to fuck all the Dragons decks. :

I'm really hoping they don't go full off-the-rails and reprint Lightning Bolt.

Brainstorm

 

[Angry Grimace]

[QUOTE="God's Beard!";149421896]Brainstorm[/QUOTE]

I think Brainstorm has been in one core set ever.

 

[The Technomancer]

Core set is a reprint of Alpha

Coincides with a video announcement of Wizards putting the reserved list to the torch

 

["God's Beard!"]

I think Brainstorm has been in one core set ever.

Now it can be in two.

I'm still mad at Wizards for not reprinting Serum Visions in Theros block.

 

[ultron87]

I have been hoping that it is a core set/cards from planes we don't wanna go back to greatest hits kind of deal, but that would wildly upset the power level of Standard.

 

[blindrocket]

Magic: The Gathering |OT4| I'm so rich, I buy Thoughtseizes and use them on myself

I've seen this done.

 

[kirblar]

I've seen this done.

GB lost a match because he didn't remember to do it, IIRC.

 

[blindrocket]

GB lost a match because he didn't remember to do it, IIRC.

Ohhh. lol

 

[Angry Grimace]

I have been hoping that it is a core set/cards from planes we don't wanna go back to greatest hits kind of deal, but that would wildly upset the power level of Standard.

The fabled Llanowar Elves reprint.

 

["God's Beard!"]

GB lost a match because he didn't remember to do it, IIRC.

Yeah could have whipped back hornet queen on turn five. Sleep deprivation sucks.

 

[red13th]

I agree so much with what that goldfish dude says in his Time Spiral review. Especially Zendikar being a great seller due to fetches. And this is also great:

Early Magic: Alpha through Ice Age block. These designs were scattered and unfocused, due to how many different people and teams made the sets. Bringing it all back home to Wizards with Alliances created the standard for what sets would be.

Early blocks: Mirage block through Masques block. The power levels veered back and forth from set to set, and while they had ideas of what blocks were supposed to be like, they didn’t really have strong designs underpinning them.

Strong theme: Invasion block through Mirrodin block. These blocks are defined by choosing that they’re about something, and god damn, they are about that thing down to the very last card. Notably, they have to be about mechanical things. They can be overwhelming in how far they push their favored mechanic, leading to lots of block vs block-type battling in Standard decks.

Renaissance: Kamigawa block through Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. These blocks are where designers start looking carefully at sets of the past, theming their sets not on one big mechanical theme, but on vaguer, more high-concept ideas, from Kamigawa’s Japanese theme to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor’s night and day. This is Magic’s artistic height, where creativity is unreservedly expressed through cards.

Conservative era: Alara block through present. Instead of reevaluating earlier ideas and transforming them into something new and unique, like Ravnica did with the multicolored theme, the conservative era is about taking something done already and driving it into the ground. Ravnica had a two-color theme? Well, how about a three-color theme, despite it not making nearly as much sense. Then a sequel to Ravnica, then a sequel to the three-color theme one. This isn’t to say that this era hasn’t had its artistic highlights, but it’s unapologetically about taking fewer risks than the sets from the Renaissance, as foreshadowed by the 2007 State of Design article.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Uh, weren't three of the four "Renaissance" blocks considered big failures?

 

[charlequin]

I'm very curious if they ever address how the super-safe Theros block ended up being a disaster because of how boring it was. (Sets 2/3, anecdotally, have very real sales issues.) Conversely, they swung for the fences with Innistrad/Khans and did very well. I also don't think Greek/Roman mythology had the flexibility to make a good top-down block- all the references are very specific, unlike the 5 million different takes on Gothic Horror that exist.

The funny thing is just how many problems WotC has actually boil down to the same thing: they make all their products on an immovable fixed schedule and anything that changes past a certain point turns out shitty. JtMS, Jitte, Skullclamp, and Tarmogoyf were all last-minute file changes. AVR was a last-minute change from something completely different into a poorly-considered story twist, and then they threw out their first batch of mechanics completely and built something totally different.

Theros is just a less severe example -- they tossed out a block plan late in the game and didn't have time to let their new idea bake the way they should have.

These Killing a Goldfish reviews are really on-point. He savages just how uninspired Alara's design was from both a flavor and mechanics standpoint (though I'd argue Naya was much more of a failure than Jund; Jund's token subtheme at least actually worked).

They're really good as critical examinations in particular because even when you disagree with them they have insights that are worthy of consideration. I never thought about the art in Mirage in the terms he does, but it's a great point and raised my appreciation for the set.

And Cascade is such an awful mechanic. Randomness is an inherent part of Magic's design, but it works best when it's kept subtle, like drawing cards from a randomly shuffled deck.

What should have really been a red flag for this mechanic is that either extreme on the randomness element is bad. By default, it encourages you to eschew strategy in favor of just dropping bombs and finding out what happens -- basically the antithesis of strategic play. And if you try to ameliorate that, you end up building your whole deck around it and it becomes a tutor that plays the spell for free, i.e. the stupidest possible card you could make.

(Miracle is another mechanic that's built around deck randomness, but ultimately it's just a topdeck discount -- it's high variance but not in a way that's all that different from the game as a whole.)

maybe they shouldn't have made an all gold set

Truth.

Planar Chaos was their own screw-up. Instead of Alternate Reality, they just needed to do Mirrodin+ mechanics.

Ha, yes. It honestly surprised me they didn't consider that execution, it's much more obvious than alternate-universe weirdness.

I honestly don't see what in particular makes Khans a "great set."

Fun limited environment, lots of cards with high strategic complexity, powerful stuff that is getting played in a lot of formats, a broken spell mechanic, utility three-color stuff all us Commander dorks have been waiting for for years, take your pick.

I wonder what the last Core Set will have in it. Other than Baneslayer Angel to fuck all the Dragons decks. :

I'm really hoping they don't go full off-the-rails and reprint Lightning Bolt.

For the first time in basically ever they're doing a Core Set where I feel completely unable to make any useful predictions, lol. I have to assume they'll blow it out with something crazy but, like, how crazy?

I don't think they'll do Lightning Bolt just because they already did that in

 

[The Technomancer]

I'm not sure how much I agree with the newer sets being less about risk taking. That's clearly the case in sets like RtR which is very much just "more of a good thing", but like...okay so a return to Mirrodin was fanservice on its surface, but there were some risky decisions there like the entire existence of infect. Zendikar as "the land block"? Also risky, given how committed they were to the theme. Innistrad? Probably the best set ever made, in no small part to how much they did with DFCs which were a huge risk in terms of reception.

I think they've just figured out how to take risks that, even if they fail, don't result in an entire set or block being awful.

 

[red13th]

charlequin you ruined my evening by linking to that site, now I have to read it all. :/

Uh, weren't three of the four "Renaissance" blocks considered big failures?

yeah!

 

[Angry Grimace]

Fun limited environment, lots of cards with high strategic complexity, powerful stuff that is getting played in a lot of formats, a broken spell mechanic, utility three-color stuff all us Commander dorks have been waiting for for years, take your pick.

For the first time in basically ever they're doing a Core Set where I feel completely unable to make any useful predictions, lol. I have to assume they'll blow it out with something crazy but, like, how crazy?

I don't think they'll do Lightning Bolt just because they already did that in

I just can't shake the feeling people like Khans because "It has fetchlands and Delve is overpowered." Khans itself doesn't seem more strategically complex than say, Return to Ravnica did. Khans is okay, but I don't think its nearly as good as Innistrad.

Call me Vorthos, but I find the setting itself super dull, which heavily affects how I see the block, I guess.

 

[The Technomancer]

Uh, weren't three of the four "Renaissance" blocks considered big failures?

Right, and that's why I find his opinions so interesting. Because I also love every one of those failed blocks for various reasons, but I also recognize the truth behind the eventual New World Order. I don't 100% agree with the idea that a game's quality is in a literal sense how many people enjoy it, but I agree enough with it to know that trying to make Magic more accessible was absolutely the right decision.

 

[Crocodile]

I feel like WOTC should just go apeshit for M16. Bolt, Doom Blade, Mana Leak, Jace the Mindscupltor, Liliana of the Veil, all the Titans, Baneslayer & Thundermaw, etc. Of course they won't which means M16 will have a hard time living up to the hype even if the set is good.

I will also agree with the consensus that most of Alara block was pretty shitty. I have no idea why I played so many PTQs in that sealed format :/ Wasn't really a fan of the limited format and the shards were much less well defined than the clans of Khans. I did like Alara Reborn but mostly because of how powerful many of the cards were.

The funny thing is just how many problems WotC has actually boil down to the same thing: they make all their products on an immovable fixed schedule and anything that changes past a certain point turns out shitty. JtMS, Jitte, Skullclamp, and Tarmogoyf were all last-minute file changes. AVR was a last-minute change from something completely different into a poorly-considered story twist, and then they threw out their first batch of mechanics completely and built something totally different.

Theros is just a less severe example -- they tossed out a block plan late in the game and didn't have time to let their new idea bake the way they should have.

Innistrad block seemed to always be moving in the direction of "Avacyn returns" given the hints in Innistrad and Dark Ascension so remind me what went wrong from a design & story perspective besides the obvious (limited environment is garbage)?

Theors Block was the first block to use pre-planning did it not? Nothing about that block seems rushed or half-baked - just boring outside the high powered cards.

 

[The Technomancer]

I just can't shake the feeling people like Khans because "It has fetchlands and Delve is overpowered." Khans itself doesn't seem more strategically complex than say, Return to Ravnica did. Khans is okay, but I don't think its nearly as good as Innistrad.

Nah I don't care about either of those and I'm having a blast with Khans. Both it and FRF are probably two of the strongest sets since Innistrad, or going back further then that since Zendikar. I just hope they manage to execute on Dragons in the same way

 

[The Technomancer]

Innistrad block seemed to always be moving in the direction of "Avacyn returns" given the hints in Innistrad and Dark Ascension so remind me what went wrong from a design & story perspective besides the obvious (limited environment is garbage)?

Theors Block was the first block to use pre-planning did it not? Nothing about that block seems rushed or half-baked - just boring outside the high powered cards.

Avacyn Restored has a lot of great casual cards, and I always have a big appreciation for that. Even a tier below EDH, I'm talking the fun and weird but tournament underpowered cards who's Kamigawa through Alara counterparts formed the foundations of every deck my friends and I played throughout high-school. If I had still been that kind of lunch-table player back then I would have loved AVR for cards like these

And I'm certain there are some kids out there who did for that exact reason. And for that I can't really call Avacyn a failure.

 

[charlequin]

charlequin you ruined my evening by linking to that site, now I have to read it all. :/

If it makes you feel better, he like almost never updates so you could just read one a week and still catch up!

I just can't shake the feeling people like Khans because "It has fetchlands and Delve is overpowered." Khans itself doesn't seem more strategically complex than say, Return to Ravnica did. Khans is okay, but I don't think its nearly as good as Innistrad.

Sets in my own ranking are like Innistrad >>>>>>>>>>>>> Ravnica >>>>>>>>>>> other stuff

I would rank Khans pretty high in "other stuff."

Uh, weren't three of the four "Renaissance" blocks considered big failures?

Well, they're important because they're central to both Mark's and Jesse's philosophies about Magic design.

Mark's thesis is that the game hit a nadir of popularity when players were getting hit with sets that had incoherent mechanics and incomprehensible creative (Kamigawa), a surfeit of meta-referencey stuff that only worked if you were in on it (Time Spiral), or an environment that made your brain explode (Lorwyn) and so the future of Magic should be based on the universal, standout success from that era (Ravnica.)

Jesse's thesis is that with two contrasting examples of what happens when you completely overturn the apple cart and take a radical new approach to block design (Ravnica and Time Spiral), WotC decided that the downside (what they got from Time Spiral) wasn't worth the upside (what they got from Ravnica) and thus made a Faustian bargain to gain much greater success by aping what worked from a few selected previous designs.

Personally I think Maro's philosophy has thrown out more things from the old school than he's successfully described replacements for, but Jesse's theory can't account for Innistrad, so I'm not fully in either camp... but then I haven't written 50,000 words about Magic so my opinion doesn't really count!

 

[Angry Grimace]

If it makes you feel better, he like almost never updates so you could just read one a week and still catch up!



Sets in my own ranking are like Innistrad >>>>>>>>>>>>> Ravnica >>>>>>>>>>> other stuff

I would rank Khans pretty high in "other stuff."



Well, they're important because they're central to both Mark's and Jesse's philosophies about Magic design.

Mark's thesis is that the game hit a nadir of popularity when players were getting hit with sets that had incoherent mechanics and incomprehensible creative (Kamigawa), a surfeit of meta-referencey stuff that only worked if you were in on it (Time Spiral), or an environment that made your brain explode (Lorwyn) and so the future of Magic should be based on the universal, standout success from that era (Ravnica.)

Jesse's thesis is that with two contrasting examples of what happens when you completely overturn the apple cart and take a radical new approach to block design (Ravnica and Time Spiral), WotC decided that the downside (what they got from Time Spiral) wasn't worth the upside (what they got from Ravnica) and thus made a Faustian bargain to gain much greater success by aping what worked from a few selected previous designs.

Personally I think Maro's philosophy has thrown out more things from the old school than he's successfully described replacements for, but Jesse's theory can't account for Innistrad, so I'm not fully in either camp... but then I haven't written 50,000 words about Magic so my opinion doesn't really count!

Its funny you guys are talking about that. The "guy" you are talking about was just one of the dudes on the Magic thread on another forum I visit and he was posting those pretty regularly for a while, but then he kind of stopped posting altogether (both reviews and his site). Nobody was really reading them in the beginning but now I see them all over reddit and such.

 

[red13th]

I love the emphasis he puts on artwork, that's a very important angle to me too. Sometimes it's like he's preaching to the choir, hell I'm reading about The Dark and he praises Quinton Hoover.

 

[Angry Grimace]

You know what grinds my gears? Why is Vendilion Clique a Mythic in MMA?

 

[red13th]

because collectors? don't want no price crashing, OMG CHRONICLES.

 

[The Technomancer]

Personally I think Maro's philosophy has thrown out more things from the old school than he's successfully described replacements for, but Jesse's theory can't account for Innistrad, so I'm not fully in either camp... but then I haven't written 50,000 words about Magic so my opinion doesn't really count!

I do wonder how much of our impressions are colored by the back to back relative uninspiredness of Return to Ravnica and Theros block. Because while both of those blocks felt exceedingly safe, the three prior blocks were all taking chances in their own ways comparable IMO to, at the very least, the chances that made Odyssey and Kamigawa worthwhile sets. And Khans is shaping up to be similar.

I'm also very curious to hear why Jesse doesn't like Zendikar and Worldwake. The way they handled the land theme seems right up his alley and the Plansewalker mini-piece doesn't make it seem like he has too many issues with JTMS

 

[Angry Grimace]

because collectors? don't want no price crashing, OMG CHRONICLES.

The stupid thing is, Chronicles was almost 20 years ago. Chronicles was "bad' because people just bought cards and didn't do anything with them.

MMA was printed to recirculate cards people were going to actually use in a format that was free of the Reserved List.

 

[charlequin]

Innistrad block seemed to always be moving in the direction of "Avacyn returns" given the hints in Innistrad and Dark Ascension so remind me what went wrong from a design & story perspective besides the obvious (limited environment is garbage)?

The original plan was to have a year where the Fall set was the first of two sets on a new plane with a new theme, and then Innistrad was the spring set. Then they decided it was silly to have the monster set in Spring when Halloween was available so they swapped to two sets of Innistrad followed by a standalone set. Then the lead designer on that set left the company and they decided to save the creative team work by setting it in Innistrad, but taking a complete tonal shift from where they started. So the set concept was pretty last-minute. (I think the Avacyn stuff was originally supposed to be sequel setup instead.)

Mechanically, they started out with a big angels-vs-demons theme and a mechanic called Forbidden that was going to go on all the creatures from the Helvault. Then development decided they couldn't print it and since the set was this last-minute thing in the first place they had nothing else to work with, so they had to hunt around for a new spine and never got to a point where the set actually made much sense mechanically.

In terms of what was actually bad about it? Godawful draft format (like, god, so bad), nothing but Miracles (and their attendant randomness) to contribute to constructed formats, and an abnormally large number of cards that are just obnoxious in casual/MP formats (Sigarda, Deadeye Navigator, etc.), plus a creative treatment that doesn't really fully deliver on what one would want from "the angel set" but still undercuts the creepy atmosphere of Innistrad. On its own it might not have been received so badly, but as the conclusion to a super-beloved block? Ouch.

Its funny you guys are talking about that. The "guy" you are talking about was just one of the dudes on the Magic thread on another forum I visit and he was posting those pretty regularly for a while, but then he kind of stopped posting altogether (both reviews and his site). Nobody was really reading them in the beginning but now I see them all over reddit and such.

I mean, it takes him until Time Spiral to actually get his point across and give people the framework he's trying to fit stuff into. Pretty much everyone gets linked to that one and then goes back and reads the others with it in mind.

 

[Angry Grimace]

The original plan was to have a year where the Fall set was the first of two sets on a new plane with a new theme, and then Innistrad was the spring set. Then they decided it was silly to have the monster set in Spring when Halloween was available so they swapped to two sets of Innistrad followed by a standalone set. Then the lead designer on that set left the company and they decided to save the creative team work by setting it in Innistrad, but taking a complete tonal shift from where they started. So the set concept was pretty last-minute. (I think the Avacyn stuff was originally supposed to be sequel setup instead.)

Mechanically, they started out with a big angels-vs-demons theme and a mechanic called Forbidden that was going to go on all the creatures from the Helvault. Then development decided they couldn't print it and since the set was this last-minute thing in the first place they had nothing else to work with, so they had to hunt around for a new spine and never got to a point where the set actually made much sense mechanically.

In terms of what was actually bad about it? Godawful draft format (like, god, so bad), nothing but Miracles (and their attendant randomness) to contribute to constructed formats, and an abnormally large number of cards that are just obnoxious in casual/MP formats (Sigarda, Deadeye Navigator, etc.), plus a creative treatment that doesn't really fully deliver on what one would want from "the angel set" but still undercuts the creepy atmosphere of Innistrad. On its own it might not have been received so badly, but as the conclusion to a super-beloved block? Ouch.

I mean, it takes him until Time Spiral to actually get his point across and give people the framework he's trying to fit stuff into. Pretty much everyone gets linked to that one and then goes back and reads the others with it in mind.

I was reading them when he linked them up until around Mirage and then I kind of forgot about them.

 

[charlequin]

I do wonder how much of our impressions are colored by the back to back relative uninspiredness of Return to Ravnica and Theros block. Because while both of those blocks felt exceedingly safe, the three prior blocks were all taking chances in their own ways comparable IMO to, at the very least, the chances that made Odyssey and Kamigawa worthwhile sets. And Khans is shaping up to be similar.

Scars -> Innistrad -> Return -> Theros is to Jesse as Kamigawa -> Ravnica -> Time Spiral -> Lorwyn is to Maro -- one really great set, mixed in with three blocks that collectively demonstrate a fundamental problem in the way Design is approaching the game.

I'm also very curious to hear why Jesse doesn't like Zendikar and Worldwake. The way they handled the land theme seems right up his alley and the Plansewalker mini-piece doesn't make it seem like he has too many issues with JTMS

Landfall is like the ultra-linearest dumb turn-sideways mechanic ever. I don't agree at all with the usual "hurr durr aggro decks" thing (in good formats, aggro decks are actually really hard to play correctly) but Landfall is actually designed to just get you to play lands and turn guys sideways without thinking about it. (It's also the core cause of the lousy ZZZ draft format.) I guarantee you this is gonna be a big part of his argument.

The stupid thing is, Chronicles was almost 20 years ago. Chronicles was "bad' because people just bought cards and didn't do anything with them.

Everything WotC has done abut collectors since has been an overreaction to Chronicles, but only because selfish people with insufficient investment in the community have constantly used Chronicles as leverage against WotC. Pretty much everyone in R&D hates the Reserved List and they tried to back-door around it, only to have actual legal threats get them to about-face.

With MMA, they're just trying to boil the frog. If they give people tons and tons of warning that they're slowly ramping up reprints of valuable cards, it reduces backlash. MM2 is gonna have like 3 or 4 times the printrun of the first one.

 

[The Technomancer]

Scars -> Innistrad -> Return -> Theros is to Jesse as Kamigawa -> Ravnica -> Time Spiral -> Lorwyn is to Maro -- one really great set, mixed in with three blocks that collectively demonstrate a fundamental problem in the way Design is approaching the game.

Yeah I really wish he'd come out with more of these. Scars in particular I'm very curious to hear about. I actually don't like Scars that much as a block, but I think the decision to dedicate as much of it as they did to Infect was very interesting. And as an art-style guy I'm dying to know what he thinks about New Phyrexia. Arguments of realism vs surrealism aside, New Phyrexia is amazing in its art direction IMO. They really went full in on the Giger body-horror stuff to a degree I would not have expected.

Landfall is like the ultra-linearest dumb turn-sideways mechanic ever. I don't agree at all with the usual "hurr durr aggro decks" thing (in good formats, aggro decks are actually really hard to play correctly) but Landfall is actually designed to just get you to play lands and turn guys sideways without thinking about it. (It's also the core cause of the lousy ZZZ draft format.) I guarantee you this is gonna be a big part of his argument.

Hm, I guess. Its probably my second favorite mechanic after Suspend, so I don't know what that combination says about me.

 

[Crocodile]

I mean I played AVR limited so I know how bad it was first hand but its interesting to hear about the rest. That was Brian Tinsman's last set right? Avacyn Restored was a BIG seller for WOTC though so while its clear they heard about how enfranchised players weren't happy about it I'm curious how the feedback will be incorporated into future sets.

On a side note, I'll say that as somebody who started with Dissension, I really appreciated Time Spiral because it was like a history lesson about the 10+ years of Magic I missed. When I learned about a reference I didn't initially get, I liked the set more because of it, not less. Time Spiral 2: Electric Bugaglo focusing on Lorwyn forward as a supplementary product would be AWESOME

The stupid thing is, Chronicles was almost 20 years ago. Chronicles was "bad' because people just bought cards and didn't do anything with them.

MMA was printed to recirculate cards people were going to actually use in a format that was free of the Reserved List.

You're preaching to the choir. We all argue with you here but WOTC gonna WOTC

Hm, I guess. Its probably my second favorite mechanic after Suspend, so I don't know what that combination says about me.

Obviously it means you are a bad person and should feel bad

Seriously though, while Zendikar block has a ton of strong cards in it (and is popular as a result), the fact that the limited environment was so bad revealed some pretty clear faults in the design of the block.

 

[kirblar]

You know what grinds my gears? Why is Vendilion Clique a Mythic in MMA?

It actually deserved to be one- Legendary Creature, not a 4-x in most decks, alongside Kiki and Elspeth. Goyf/Bob were the only real terrible offenders.

 

[Angry Grimace]

I liked Chronicles as a kid because it made Elder Dragons cheaper. They're fucking unplayable anyways.

 

[The Technomancer]

Actually I think the answer is pretty simple now that I reflect on it. From a conceptual standpoint Suspend and Landfall are two of the Melvin-ist mechanics of the last decade or so and thats the angle from which I appreciate the game as a whole

 

[kirblar]

MBS, NPH and RTR are all good sets. But they've definitely had massive consistency problems where Lauer was setting a bar and no one else was getting anywhere close. (Although Zac Hill really did make one hell of a limited format in M13.)

 

[Crocodile]

NPH and RTR (as well as Worldwake) were also Ken Nagle designed sets for what its worth. Shame about Born of the Gods :/

 

[kirblar]

NPH and RTR (as well as Worldwake) were also Ken Nagle designed sets for what its worth. Shame about Born of the Gods :/

Yeah, Nagle is fantastic on the design end.

 

[charlequin]

Yeah I really wish he'd come out with more of these. Scars in particular I'm very curious to hear about. I actually don't like Scars that much as a block, but I think the decision to dedicate as much of it as they did to Infect was very interesting. And as an art-style guy I'm dying to know what he thinks about New Phyrexia. Arguments of realism vs surrealism aside, New Phyrexia is amazing in its art direction IMO. They really went full in on the Giger body-horror stuff to a degree I would not have expected.

New Phyrexia is like the only example ever of an amazing third set following up a mediocre first set. They should have just made it a big set and gotten on the two-large-sets-a-year train early.

I mean I played AVR limited so I know how bad it was first hand but its interesting to hear about the rest. That was Brian Tinsman's last set right?

Last set, yup.

BTW, looking this story up again I had even forgotten that they burned extra time trying to make AVR into Preturn to Ravnica before settling on Innistrad part 3.

Avacyn Restored was a BIG seller for WOTC though so while its clear they heard about how enfranchised players weren't happy about it I'm curious how the feedback will be incorporated into future sets.

Well we'll find out soon since Dragons is transparently the followup in the same vein of marketing as AVR was. Hopefully it was "try to deliver themes like this but do a better job executing them."

On a side note, I'll say that as somebody who started with Dissension, I really appreciated Time Spiral because it was like a history lesson about the 10+ years of Magic I missed. When I learned about a reference I didn't initially get, I liked the set more because of it, not less. Time Spiral 2: Electric Bugaglo focusing on Lorwyn forward as a supplementary product would be AWESOME

I think one of the biggest issues they have interpreting player feedback (and this is a universal problem with audience feedback in all media) is disentangling different elements of the same design. Time Spiral block was ultra-nostalgic and had a billion keywords and was full of cards with useless trinket text and cards that were complicated to understand after reading and it had four different card faces and it had a screwed-up color pie (and on and on.) How do you portion out how each piece is responsible for its reception?

My suspicion is that doing something that's just as balls-out no-limits as Time Spiral block is almost always gonna be a bad idea because too much of the audience just can't keep up, but they do seem to have decided that everything it did (well, except bring back old keywords) was a big contributor to that. Just recently though, we've seen incredibly positive reactions to Commander decks that make cards out of old obscure characters, and other stuff that makes me think nostalgia isn't as offputting as they think it is. I think it's extremely possible that (especially now with two blocks a year) they could do a nostalgic block that didn't do every one of Time Spiral's tricks, but did leverage the past in a notable way, and have a lot of success with it.

 

[kirblar]

The Time Spiral feedback is something that I was able to correlate to feedback I got from people re: returning players on Survivor- newer viewers who hadn't seen them play before would comment that they felt "left out" because they didn't have the same base of knowledge the show assumed they had. (Hence, going on an insane spree of returning players from S22->S27 did not end well for them for a large number of reasons.)

 

[charlequin]

Yeah, Nagle is fantastic on the design end.

I was super skeptical-eyes about Nagle after the first GDS but I actually think he's done a great job -- he has really clear, enthusiastic preferences for how he likes to play but is very good at delivering sets that serve a big range of players. His AMA the other day was great -- sharp and interesting answers, plus that demonstrated willingness to be flexible on some of the stuff Rosewater is pointlessly stuffy about.

MBS, NPH and RTR are all good sets. But they've definitely had massive consistency problems where Lauer was setting a bar and no one else was getting anywhere close. (Although Zac Hill really did make one hell of a limited format in M13.)

M13 will always be my favorite core set for that exact reason. Zac was a strong developer and actually a good writer so it was a huge bummer for him to leave.

 

[Haly]

This Jesse guy understands me:

Storm isn’t just a card for combo. Storm has, by this point, defined what combo can be. Instead of just a dumbass combination of two cards like Pestermite and Kiki-Jiki, Storm provides a deck that functions as one holistic machine, each Sleight of Hand a glimmering cog to turn the Tendrils of Agony. These decks, to me, are the highest form of beauty that Magic has achieved.

 

[The Technomancer]

Am I crazy or is Tarkir block the most complex they've done since Lorwyn? There's a lot going on in this block, especially in FRF