I think this is just all a bad take from Mark. I understand his position and that this blog is mostly a defense for WoTC’s decisions, but this just misses every one of the complaints for me. He’s basically saying “this is hard, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, trust us” while not addressing the actual complaints.

To me these are arguments why Maro, Michael Majors, and the entire FIRE team should be let go and new people brought in. Doing this for 30 years and still making these mistakes means that someone else is making the decisions and those decisions are not and won’t be in the best interest of the game.

All good bans here, I think they’re still 3-6 months behind on Legacy tho.

The Vintage bans really surprised me, both of those are much needed imo and I’m glad they did something about them. Vexing Bauble kind of nerfs the entirety of why anyone plays Vintage, and Urza’s Saga is just ridiculous with that many cheap powerful artifacts.

Yes, absolutely. I think they’re being a little tongue-in-cheek with that but it was Ice Age Block Constructed and Rade came with a brew that was targeted against the current meta.

Yea I think you’re right, I remember reading somewhere that Wizards may change the card abilities up to the last minute too. Perhaps it was more balanced at one point.

This was so unbelievably needed, but I think these cards are also proving to be too strong in the other eternal formats too.

I think what we’re seeing here is how little playtesting is actually being done anymore. Now, and especially with Arena and the # of games being played, they just do whatever they want and wait and see how it breaks the game. Then let everyone hate their lives for a month or two before fixing the cards back to what they should have been from the outset.

I don’t think anyone in the world can convince me Ocelot Pride should ever have been printed at 1 mana. That’s a 1/1 or 1/2 for 2W all day every day for me. I just saw Ocelot Pride win in a LEGACY mtgo challenge last night. The deck at least got to the finals, the player streaming lost to it in the top 4.

If they don’t ban Grief in the August announcement then I think the organizers may just take matters into their own hands.

Yea you’re right about Sunfall, I don’t know how I forgot about that lol I hate that one too.

This is awesome! @[email protected] is in Pittsburgh, and may be going. You could win this, Andrew!

Top 32 players get one 😛

This is really cool actually, I love products like this and Bloomburrow is the perfect set for it

IMO I think we ultimately see 3 UB sets per year, 3 “in universe” i.e. Magic sets per year, and 2 Horizons/Remastered type sets per year. You can’t really pump a set shorter than 6 weeks, and it seems like 8 or 9 sets is the upper bound on what they can release each year.

I forgot how much I love Susan Van Camp’s artwork. This really brings you back to the older game.

I honestly think they’re going to try selling these for $3, which is absolutely bonkers nuts but I think their plan was to raise the “normal” booster price and then sell this garbage for around the original booster price.

I think Guide of Souls is the real issue here. Ocelot Pride and Phlage are certainly pushing it over the top, but Guide of Souls is just an insane card for 1 mana and I don’t see how it doesn’t get nerfed in Historic at some point.

What I see is them asking $270 (!!!) for 120 cards. 12 boosters of 10 cards each, for $270 is just insanity to me. Right out of the gate you’re spending $2.25 per CARD. The first and last collector booster box I ever opened was for Neon Dynasty and even those 12 packs felt bad given the cost. I remember trying to stretch it out over two days. This feels even worse for the same exact price and I just cannot understand who is paying it.

Saw this on the reddit thread and did a real lol:

It’s a value booster for their shareholders

Yeah that’s a very good point. If WoTC starts getting their lunch eaten by a rival game (cough Sorcery Contested Realm cough) or if anything else happens that starts tanking demand then I could definitely see them selling it off for the short term gain while they “regroup on traditional games in their product lineup”.

It’ll never happen, but the only way to make Magic better for the players is if Hasbro sold off WoTC. I can’t even come up with a scenario that would cause them to sell, it seems to be the only thing keeping them alive.

That could actually be fun. Especially with the lower powered packs. The person who opens a rare would be like the one-eyed among the blind 😆

What’s kinda funny is that the 7 card packs don’t even make it around the table once in a draft lol

This comes from the same market research that showed “the vast majority of tabletop Magic players (over 75%) don’t know what a planewalker is, … don’t know what a format is”. Take that for what it’s worth. I personally cannot believe it, but if that’s what we’re dealing with it almost doesn’t matter what question they ask, they’ll get whatever answer they’re looking for.

https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/698478689008189440/a-mistake-folks-in-the-hyper-enfranchised