Magic: the Gathering

[surreal stag]

and it was dope AF

[rare sparrow]

ehh, not sure i agree here, the "most recent" stuff in the FF set wasn't that far out of date

[wanton hazel]

FF7 and FFX are from like 97 and 2000?

[tepid stirrup]

Final Fantasy didn't coincide with any notable Final Fantasy release (not even a 14 expansion or, to my knowledge, a mobile game) and I have to think that that was simply a misplay on WotC's part

[rare sparrow]

FFXVI is represented in the FF set and that's from 2023

that's my point

[wanton hazel]

it's "represented" but it's not the focus

three of the four commander decks in Final Fantasy were 25 year old games

[leaden tide]

Yeah with how Wizards supply chain is set up, there's not a lot of wiggle room in when stuff comes out. They can push it a month or two either direction, but more than that is basically impossible once a set is far enough along.

[rare sparrow]

and FFXIV had stuff from endwalker which is 2021

and FFVII is in the process of having a bunch of remakes made literally right now

and that was the focus of a commander deck

[leaden tide]

Which I think illustrates an important aspect of how UB seems to work culturally: It has a way of generating its own cultural moment around it, and doesn't need to piggyback off of something else.

[tepid stirrup]

It had nothing from Dawntrail though which was mid-2024, more than a year in advance of the FF set's release

[leaden tide]

FF as a Magic set kinda dropped into the middle of the ocean. And it was still the best-selling Magic set of all time on day 1

[wanton hazel]

I don't think there was any remake-exclusive content in the UB set (they said they focused only on mainline games)

[surreal stag]

good design in popular media works who could have guessed

[tepid stirrup]

They did specifically collaborate with Remake artists to ensure that there was some level of continuity in the art design for 7 cards with Remake

IE they didn't try and reimagine Cloud from the original polygons, they took the Remake look and iterated from there

[leaden tide]

And how fabulous that turned out.

[tepid stirrup]

For old games like 4 and 6 that have more modern iterations of the character in remakes/remasters/what have you I think they also generally erred on agreeing with the more modern designs

7 just represents the most drastic level of change from first to most recent iteration

[rare sparrow]

It was less than a year, july 2024 vs. june 2025

Which is pretty par for the course for mtg, sets are mostly finalized a year in advance, which is why ffxvi (2023) is in but dawntrail (2024) is not

[tepid stirrup]

Yknow my memory had FF in the like September/October timeframe

[dense orchid]

What do you guys think is the most yugioh mtg card?

[lucid jewel]

Omniscience, Solitude, Fury, Force of will/negation, or questing beast

[leaden tide]

Nah.

[lucid jewel]

Lol

[lucid jewel]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThHdr7nr/

[lucid jewel]

so i wanna start trying out bo3 in mtga

and i wanna start with this deck

https://mtga.untapped.gg/constructed/standard/decks/4401/rakdos-monument/AAQAAQPMhi2pvQSikAQCjQXa-ywD4oIt48cLmaIJC-IJw1qiyQHJP96TKo_QBKuDBKcCuYED8ugI6isAAgAD9gn8zi219QMD6dQZjO8Xg6kQAAAA

can someone give me tips on taking things in and out and what i should do when kinda thing

[dense orchid]

I'd suggest playing with the deck list and making changes based on how you play with the deck

That's what I've done with my mill deck

[lucid jewel]

whats your mill deck look like right now

[dense orchid]

Similar to this. I don't have the decklist uploaded anywhere, but I removed a couple board wipes and replaced them with 4 copies of Don't Make a Sound

I think that's the major difference, but I don't have Arena pulled up

[lucid jewel]

dont make a sound is a great card

some of that specific ability on card removal is nice

with out killing or exiling the card

[dense orchid]

Since I'm searching for combo pieces, it's probably the best counterspell in standard for my deck

The deck's gotten me to almost diamond

[lucid jewel]

nice

searching for the surveiling on demand with a 2 cost counter is so nice

it does get a little poop later in the game thio

[dense orchid]

Then it's 2 mana surveil 2

It's great for finding riverchurn

[dense orchid]

This is what my deck looks like currently. No sideboard yet, that's probably my next goal with the deck
https://moxfield.com/decks/ApnR_RxD10eva1Ibcwiuqw

[lucid jewel]

You need to add these two

To your deck

Even if its just one excrutiator

[dense orchid]

The reef could go in the mainboard, but I think the excruciator would fit better in the sideboard

Those are both phenomenal options though

[lucid jewel]

yaa they are that speaks to me right now as really decent to put into a mill deck in standard

the reef is a must have in the main board tbh

and 4 of them lol

[dense orchid]

Excruciator's going on the deck

Multiple copies of Progenitus and Darksteel in the deck on my first diamond rank game

[charred ruin]

70 dragon tokens lol

[plush bear]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1334133573707366541/1472830352493121588/Screenshot_20260216-134115_1.png?ex=6993ffa7&is=6992ae27&hm=be5fa509dd3ac4664a22d0e0fd136ddd82cc8df80c2702fd89c7094be2c347e7&

Custom card that made me giggle

[leaden tide]

https://tenor.com/view/hmm-suspect-gif-22611582

[lucid jewel]

that was my reaction

[leaden tide]

A) that's black doing green ramp.
B) no reveal clause eh?

[lucid jewel]

its also a 3 cost grab a swamp card

its hilarious

like its just i love it

[fierce dragon]

i think the idea is you grab anything else as long as you have a swamp on hand?

[lucid jewel]

oh wait thats possible with the wording ?

[tepid stirrup]

Well, it'd be cheating, but if you have a swamp in hand presumably unprovably so since you aren't required to reveal it

[fierce dragon]

which i get is what whoever made the card was going for

[charred ruin]

Thus fraudulent tutor

[lucid jewel]

i was curious where the fraudulent part came in ty

[leaden tide]

Fun pride month promo this year.

[surreal stag]

yea its a good one

if i had the money id build and Nissa/Chandra double planeswalker partner commander deck for my LGS' event

but alas....i have bills and the deck owuld cost me like $1000

[slender moss]

Is your LGS ok with proxies?

[surreal stag]

probably for this but honestly im saving up good graces with my boss (the wife) on the amount of time i spend out of the house for magic while she wrangles two little boys lol

https://x.com/TheElderDingus/status/2023412490630279655?s=20

Elder Dingus Highlander (@TheElderDingus)

ready to play!
#magic #magicthegathering #mtg #edh

X · Feb 16, 2026, 3:01 PM

[spare harbor]

combos with

[leaden tide]

Welp. We're getting a Trouble In Pairs reprint finally, and it's a crappy Source Material treatment from Turtles.

Really hope Wizards figures out a better frame/treatment for these, considering they're probably our only source of major reprints for the time being, and they look pretty awful on average.

[lucid jewel]

even if its a different colour of text or something

its just so hard to read and so terrible looking

[leaden tide]

The text needs more than a drop-shadow behind it. They need to put actual frames here, even if they're as minimalist as possible.

Oh thank god, there are other lands in the turtles set, these are so much better than the pizza lands.

[lucid jewel]

okay those are kinda cool

even if they arent my style

much much better than the pizza

[leaden tide]

The pizza stuff sets a really low bar, tbh

But yeah these are a lot cooler, even conceptually

[rare sparrow]

i hate that the end of masters sets means that source material bonus sheets are the main place we're getting reprints like this now

like, for example, there were a lot of $$$ expensive legendary creatures that got their first ever reprints in final fantasy on the source material bonus sheet

[leaden tide]

Yep. This is it for reprints for the foressable future. A few will show up in commander decks, but those have a much lower total allowed value cap than bonus sheets do.

[rare sparrow]

in-universe sets get bonus sheets too, which alleviates the issue a little. but they don't always get them, unlike what seems to be happening for UB

EOE was the only of the 3 in-universe sets to have one last year

[leaden tide]

Yeah. And the EoE one was probably the worst bonus sheet of the year. :\

[lucid jewel]

@leaden tidehttps://media.wizards.com/2026/images/daily/lHQSAKCBUN/Tfkkv1YM1p.webp even stuff like this is better

i think i actually like all of these

[leaden tide]

Yeah the secret lairs for this set are (mostly) quite good.

[lucid jewel]

i might have to grab that settle the wreckage

[leaden tide]

This one in particular slaps, too bad I have no interest in the property. I'd buy this treatment in a heartbeat if it was something Universes Within

[fierce dragon]

This feels they just uh. Wanted to focus on a lot of things and ended up focusing on nothing

[plush bear]

||https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1334133573707366541/1473838933979824308/RDT_20260218_1629081790086500648652516.jpg?ex=6997aaf8&is=69965978&hm=96dc9d3a5a26859038168a42c1ea44337d7cb8f592cafbe0d32a10e8d0d7fec5&||

I hate this so much

[turbid falcon]

...why?

It's not even that good

It's a slightly better urban evolution

Well, you pay one less mana but the land comes in tapped

[plush bear]

The art

[turbid falcon]

I just refuse to make eye contact with any TNMT art

[lucid jewel]

Wait has there ever been a standard legal card where in the art they are playing mtg before

[plush bear]

Don’t think so

[turbid falcon]

As further proof of my above statement I literally did not notice this until you pointed it out

[upper moon]

Can we bring back the Spiderman hot dog cart instead of this?

[dense orchid]

It doesn't seem like a bad effect at least

[leaden tide]

Man this set is such a mess aesthetically. Most of the rares from the main set don't look too terrible.

But also there's too many turtles on everything, and more importantly, anything with a pizza on it looks revolting. I get that apparently the turtles eating weird pizzas is part of the lore, but it doesn't make it look any better.

And then there's that card.

[spare harbor]

Has there been a non standard legal one?

[leaden tide]

Yes. Several Un cards

[leaden tide]

Also @tepid stirrup I had an idea for how to represent Destiny grenade abilities as Magic cards: Do modal Command style spells, where each mode represents a different grenade. For a (hypothetical and probably not at all balanced) example:

Stasis Grenade
Choose one:

• Coldsnap - Tap target creature and put two stun counters on it.
• Duskfield - Until your next turn, creatures your opponents control enter tapped.
• Glacier - Create a 0/2 Wall creature token with "When this creature blocks, remove it and any creatures it's blocking from combat."

[tepid stirrup]

Thing is I think all three of those would be good cards in their own right

There's probably too many grenades for the number of combat tricks you'd want in one set though

[leaden tide]

Yeah that was my thought.

That's not even getting into all the melees and aspects too.

[tepid stirrup]

Glacier isn't a combat trick though and I wonder if there are any other grenades you could represent as creatures, enchantments, artifacts, etc

[leaden tide]

Threadlings for sure

[tepid stirrup]

I could see Tripmine being an artifact

[leaden tide]

I'm wondering if there could be a tripmine token. That you make with both a solar grenade and some Fallen cards.

Also I think this would be a great representation of Shatterdive

[tepid stirrup]

I think there's some grenades that probably aren't mechanically distinctive enough to represent as a card

There's like four different variations on the idea of "create a spot the enemies die if they go there in the next 10 seconds" and that can be pared down to one card tbh

The Stasis Suspend Bola could be something like an enchantment "enchanted creature can't be tapped, attack, or block"

[leaden tide]

Yeah. I was thinking about it, if we had to pare down each element to just three grenades (to match Stasis and Strand, and preferably one for each class), what would they be?

For Solar I was thinking healing grenade, tripmine, and I guess thermite or fusion grenade for Titans? Neither of those last two have a strong mechanical suggestion.

[tepid stirrup]

My gut wants to say you use the Arc version of Tripmine even though Solar is more iconic, and slot in Swarm instead

[leaden tide]

Hmm.

For Arc, I was thinking flashbang for Titans (I'm assuming this hypothetical set goes with my color/element definitions, so arc is red, and making creatures not able to block is in red's color pie), arcbolt for either Hunters or Warlocks (chaining damage is also a red ability)...and then idk. If arcbolt is assigned to Hunters, then that'd leave storm grenade as the obvious Warlock pick. But if we assign it to Warlocks, then yeah it'd the spike grenade for Hunters.

idk. To decide a lot of this I'd need to find a few folks to actually playtest ideas

[surreal stag]

https://moxfield.com/decks/GWOXOPxTHUOpWoCy-JCBmQ

help wanted if you are bored. ramp to arthur, get big dragon, blink big dragon, profit

[leaden tide]

I'll try to remember to take a look in a few!

(I've been a bit busy today, but I wanna check it out!)

Anyways, with most of the Turtles set being previewed, yeah the aesthetic is pretty bad, especially on the uncommons and commons.

Not quite as bad as Spider-man (low bar that is), but still icky.

And honestly it's not even the "literally New York" cards that are that bad.

It's the sheer volume of cards with absolutely disgusting sloppy pizza in their art.

[turbid falcon]

I mean it was gonna be a skip regardless but... Yeah no

[leaden tide]

It feels like the art direction told everyone to deliberately make it look gross. And I'm just like

https://tenor.com/view/why-huh-but-why-gif-13199396

[turbid falcon]

This coming on the heels on the gorgeous art of Lorwyn lmao

[tepid stirrup]

Spider-man 2: Turtle Boogaloo

[lucid jewel]

@leaden tide this is the deck box im putting a doran deck in if i ever make one

It can be my happy Little trees deck

[leaden tide]

Okay, finally had a chance to take a look. Love the idea and gameplan of this deck.

Couple of thoughts, that maybe you've addressed but I'm just not seeing:

• Do you have enough ramp to get Arthur out consistently early?
• Caldera Pyremaw is a favorite pet card of mine, but do you have enough instants/sorceries in here to hit critical mass with her?
• Extra combat spells could go hard in this style of deck.

[surreal stag]

ive got a hand full of rocks and so far in playtests ive been fine with getting a dude and arthur on baord by turn 5-6, after that ive been pretty well set up to just swing out every turn and blink the dragons.

probably dont have enought spell slinging stuff to go crazy with Pyremaw but it is at least 1 a turn which is probably not very powerful

Extra Combat cards means cutting even more blink/removal/protection

thank you for looking at it! the feedback is greatly appreceated.

ive cut blink for removal and protection becuase getting new dragons for cheap isnt as important as getting shut down and having to start over.

im tempted to go from jeskas will to the one ring for the card draw. If i can dig through the deck faster ill have all the counters/redirects/blinks i need

[leaden tide]

Hmm yeah, a proper engine instead of a one-off might be a good call.

[surreal stag]

and the cards i get from jeskas i cant save for combat

[leaden tide]

Also in terms of cuts....you could always cut a few creatures. :P

(I know, hersey)

[surreal stag]

at 30 creatures Arthur still whiffs

[leaden tide]

Hmm true.

I wonder how many dragons there are with good removal/protection ETBs.

[surreal stag]

more combat is more arthur triggers though

i have read many many many dragon cards. i think ive got them lol

[leaden tide]

RIP.

[surreal stag]

im tempting to run hellkite charger, i cant pay the cost if arthur cheats him out but if hes there next turn its likely a way to kill one of two people

same with scourge of the throne

graet train heist is also a great card for this deck

[leaden tide]

Great Train heist is just a fantastic card all around

[surreal stag]

the signets are technically ramp right? its color fixing

which i havnt had issues with but i need some more money

[dense orchid]

You can also go with the filter lands if you just want mana fixing. Otherwise, yeah the signets are ramp

[leaden tide]

Yeah mana rocks are ramp.

You also have a few cost reducers for dragons, which are also ramp, but not for your Commander.

I personally have a rule of thumb of ~10 pieces of ramp for most decks. Unless I'm specifically going for big spells in which case I'll do more.

[surreal stag]

Got em all

[charred ruin]

https://giphy.com/gifs/stonks-stonk-YnkMcHgNIMW4Yfmjxr

[wanton hazel]

welp, we're about a week away from Turtles, no more Lorwyn drafts I'm afraid

at least at any store I'm going to

I'll probably do one paper prerelease and take a break from Arena, I've played way too much over the past month anyway

[leaden tide]

My friend wants me to go to TMNT pre-release with her. Even said she'd pay. So I might go.

And just make sure she gets all the cards after, as I have little interest in them.

[wanton hazel]

It should be fun even if I don’t want to encourage them

[leaden tide]

Today on Reddit being Reddit (well technically yesterday) I got told that I'm "making up reasons" for disliking all the gross pizza in TMNT because cards like City of Ass have existed in the game for decades.
https://scryfall.com/card/unh/134/city-of-ass

[lucid jewel]

Okay but city of ass is classy and beautiful

Silly reddit

I also hate humans who are like "your subjective opinion on this art peice is wrong"

[leaden tide]

I just don't like seeing deliberately gross pizza in my Magic cards, no matter how accurate to the source material it is. I don't see how that's a particularly controversial opinion.

[lucid jewel]

i didnt expect that to be controversial either

i expected most ppl to be like "yeah thats reasonable i can see how you dont like them"

[upper moon]

Thats also a silver border card. These are standard legal cards

[turbid falcon]

This is funny

It's one card, silver border, and frankly there isn't too much ass in my face

Versus 25+ cards of black bordered, disgusting pizza heavily featured

[lucid jewel]

yaa legit i have to look close to see most of the ass

and its like tasteful ass and its quality memes like the card text box being an ass too

[leaden tide]

Also I'm not likely to see a silver border card across the table at Commander night. I'm much more likely to see ugly pizza, especially with how pushed the set seems to be.

[lucid jewel]

im so glad i could con the bio father of my step son to go with him for the pre release

im really not a fan of this set

apart from things like the cow head that i can put in a big butts deck or stuff like that

[tepid stirrup]

Does it? I haven't spent a ton of brainpower on it but my impression was that it was similar to the Spider-man set in that it was a bunch of really niche legendary creatures supplemented by a bare minimum of other cards required to classify it as a standard set

Enough turtles running around to justify having one in every pack

[leaden tide]

There's some very strong cards in the Commander deck at least, several +1/+1 counters cards and this kinda nutty food card.

So yeah I expect this set to see more play than Spiders, on average.

But yeah the sheer volume of turtles is distressing. Including the team-up cards, each turtle individually is represented more than even Aang.

[lucid jewel]

uhhhhhhh......

that goes so wild with so many cards

[leaden tide]

Yep. 🙃

[lucid jewel]

https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/a/1/a1e048e0-19d2-4076-892d-f8b3104dee37.jpg?1682209630 even just this boy

whos in most green decks that care about lands entering

[leaden tide]

Put it in a Naya deck with the lobster. Just turn everything into ramp.

[leaden tide]

But yeah I just did a count. There's 8 Aangs and a minimum (Leonardo has more) of 10 cards per turtle.

Aang also had only four cards in the main set, and that felt like too much. Each turtle has 7 versions in the main set.

[tepid stirrup]

I wonder who though a turtle in every pack was a good idea

Who knows, maybe it is

For sales, anyway

But it has a weird "men only want one thing" energy to it and I'm not sure even people more into a Turtles Magic set than we are actually would agree, Turtles is a weirdly expansive setting

In retrospect maybe WotC/Squeenix deserve more credit for not printing more different Cloud cards than they did

[leaden tide]

Yeahhh. Wizards clearly struggles with UB when a franchise doesn't have a wide cast of iconic characters. With AtlA it kinda works because A) the different versions of characters represent character arcs and B) there's just a lot more than 4 main characters lmao

[charred ruin]

Or Aragorns and Frodos in the LotR set

[tepid stirrup]

Even then Cloud is John Final Fantasy in a way neither Aragorn nor Frodo are exactly John Lord of the Rings

He's been around for nineteen years and there have been as many main line Final Fantasy games since as there were before and he's still absolutely the standout character of the franchise

[native light]

I think there is a clear difference in design when UB products have vibes that are at least sorta compatabile with magic (FF, LOTR, Fallout, Warhammer, ATLA). Maybe they just are more excited to design them so they put more into it?

[tepid stirrup]

Oh for sure, that seems self evident to me at this point

The art directors and the artists they hire definitely seem more excited for some sets than others for sure

[native light]

I don't know whats going on exactly, but the difference in my excitement and enjoyment for UB releases is vast. The ones that really hit are fantastic, but the ones that don't make me almost become one of those "UB ruined magic people" before i snap out of it

I do think that i would have a different opinion if this period of magic didn't coincide with the huge increase in releases. which in turn has turned me off from following the game outside of casual/commander. Which is a shame because i love drafting and used to be into Modern

[tepid stirrup]

Honestly now that WotC runs Commander I can see a world where they start doing UB as full size print-to-Commander sets just to give Standard some breathing room, it needs it so badly

And UB seems more appropriate there

[turbid falcon]

I mean they've done it before

[charred ruin]

That would help a lot

[native light]

I think that non-standard playable UB just doesn't sell the same. and as always Magic has gotta make Hasbro the big bucks because its it and DnD that are holding them aloft (last i saw the numbers)

[turbid falcon]

Quite literally yeah

[tepid stirrup]

They have but I mean with a regularized several times a year full size sets sort of scenario

[native light]

As always "if this company's investors could see long term health/growth and not just past this one fiscal year, I would like their output more" holds true

[tepid stirrup]

Spider-man and Turtles basically are Commander sets in a trench coat

[turbid falcon]

Noooo number must go up big

If number not up money bad

[native light]

Its gotten to the point that at my work we joke "We should be doing X, but number must go up."

but thats off topic

[turbid falcon]

As if number can always go up

[fierce dragon]

I went looking and there is like. 6 cards of a single character not counting teamups and spells with their name on it?? Wtf

[wanton hazel]

the same character having several cards is too common these days

there wasn't much of that in final fantasy, plenty of cards had FIN and FIC cards, but not a lot of dupes in FIN

but spiders, avatar, and turtles all have a bunch, and EoE and Lorwyn had at least a few

[spare harbor]

I think any lorwyn repeats were commander vs. regular set

But I’m not 100% sure

[wanton hazel]

perhaps, I just glanced at the card list and didn't see any within the main lorwyn set, I must have misremembered

EoE definitely had a few

[leaden tide]

Yeah EoE had a couple. An uncommon version of the characters before the story began, and a rare/mythic version of them during the story.

[tepid stirrup]

Which is fine, that's kind of why the Aangs worked too

Turtles is turtles gratias turtles

[leaden tide]

Yep. It's a version of each turtle at each rarity purely for marketing purposes.

[lucid jewel]

Theres a reason im not doing much with turtles

Ill he playing the standard meta but not really engaging with it directly outside of a couple singles for commander

[slender moss]

As a matter of fact I think I would have preferred pretty much any of the alternate options to TMNT

Very excited for Universes Beyond: Women Science Fiction Authors

[wanton hazel]

Robin Hobb has 5 cards

[slender moss]

Elaborate?

[wanton hazel]

I'm speaking hypothetically, if that were a set, sorry

[slender moss]

Oh ok

[leaden tide]

Spotted Giant Flying Squirrel
so just Chatterfang the set?

[slender moss]

Screw Emrakul: The Gathering

[charred ruin]

I was looking up Kithkin cards as one does, and found out that Figure of Fable is actually just a slightly stronger color shifted version of an older card from Shadowmoor

[leaden tide]

Yee! It's quite the fun throw back, with gorgeous art to boot.

Love seeing creative throwbacks like that.

Fun fact, the Champions cycle from the new set is also a throwback that combines two mechanics from the OG Lorwyn set using the updated version of them, Behold.

[dense orchid]

I wonder how many other cards are like those. The only 2 that come to mind are Kellan and Ascendant Spirit

[leaden tide]

There's a few, they're under the oracle tag "pseudoleveler" on Scryfall

https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Apseudoleveler

[wanton hazel]

I'm honestly finding myself looking forward to another magic prerelease, but I figure the real reason is that I just like the sealed format and prerelease is the only way my LGS is going to be running events that the crowd will actually show up to

[they put a draft on the calendar but it never fires]

[charred ruin]

Oh wow that's really cool

[leaden tide]

I'm considering collecting a master's set of the original Tarkir block at some point. They're pretty cheap on the secondary market these days, with only a very small handful of cards (namely the fetch lands and three-color Sarkhan) being over $5.

Heck the list of cards over $1 is even small, and it's mostly a few commons/uncommons like Secure the Wastes and Impact Tremors.

[charred ruin]

Tarkir is so cool

[leaden tide]

Yeah, it's my favorite Magic plane (I think it finally dethroned Innistrad in that regard, though it's still a close second). And all the art is so cool, especially from the original block.

[surreal stag]

Local Library does FREE draft nights. pick 2 4 players for Bloomburrow. didnt win much but it was fun and walked out with some new bulk for free

the other two were Outlwas of TJ, and Duskmourn: House of Horror. Got a pack each of those for playing

[leaden tide]

Free draft nights? Wowza that's so cool.

[surreal stag]

Yea the head librarian is just a huge fan so he does these and some other events to give the community more access to the game

[leaden tide]

That's so incredibly based of them.

[surreal stag]

they do commander nights but its byod and im not anywhere near nor will i ever be readyu to build a commander deck in paper

yea they are doing a night coming up where they have made proxy decks for meta standard lists for people to come out and play with

[wanton hazel]

a lot of people play commander with just the preconstructed decks, and while they're not cheap they're usually not prohibitively expensive either

I wouldn't be surprised if a library like that had more people playing on that level

[surreal stag]

oh yuea im sure if i walked in with a precon id be fine but as you said dropping 80-100 on a deck, that i know im my heart.....can be so much better is a rough hill to get over with the wallet

also leaving the house for 5 hours after work and leaving my wife with both kiddos is not something im looking to ask her to do very often

[spare harbor]

What about proxying something?

[surreal stag]

yea i could do that for sure, but again leaving the house to do something i can do at home with people i know is not compelling

the drafts are fun so if i can make soem of those i will

[turbid falcon]

Lol

My decks tend to have higher budgets than that (though I also lean pretty hard on my existing collection)

Note this is not a dig at budget building, I'm mostly poking at myself for spending so dang much on decks

[wanton hazel]

Playing some turtles tonight

[dense orchid]

Have fun!

[lucid jewel]

good luck

my sons going to play some turtles tomorrow

[leaden tide]

Good luck, I've seen reports of folks opening Lorwyn cards in their promo packs. So I hope you get whichever you'd prefer!

[tepid stirrup]

Again?

[gloomy pagoda]

I'd assume it's less again, and more the flip side of the mix up

[lucid jewel]

thats so amazing

[leaden tide]

Exactly. The Lorwyn promo cards had to end up somewhere

[tepid stirrup]

That's a good point

[wanton hazel]

I honestly wonder whether it’s a joke but whoever posted would be committed to the bit

[wanton hazel]

ultimately won 2 rounds, lost round 3, but didn't necessarily play round 3 to win, I had two decks prepared, WB and UR, and round 3 I lost with both decks [WB was probably better and I probably should have played it twice]

[turbid falcon]

Just managed to kill myself in truly spectacular style
I had 2 trigger doublers and a risen reef, I couldn't get damage in, so I just did what you probably figure and made an absolute crap load of elementals and near instantly drew my entire deck, then drew cards off of another effect to die lmaoooo

[leaden tide]

I feel like it's not the true blue/simic experience without decking yourself at least once.

[turbid falcon]

I mean Ashling is a 5 color deck

but yeah

[leaden tide]

WUBRG contains simic, check-mate atheists.

[surreal stag]

https://x.com/amberglenndaily/status/2028500356544549353?s=46

Amber Glenn Updates (@AmberGlennDaily)

Amber unboxing gifts from Magic: the Gathering on her Instagram story!

▶ Play video

X · Mar 2, 2026, 3:59 PM

[leaden tide]

Good god they sent her collector boxes and secret lairs

Good for her

[surreal stag]

yea absolutely insane lol

[rare sparrow]

she basically gave them a bunch of free press during the olympics

feels like a fair exchange

[lucid jewel]

Left over pre releases

[dense orchid]

How much was there to start?

[spare harbor]

I have a proxy behind my copy of Prime Speaker Zegana for just this reason (text is blacked out until it says "when it enters, you lose")

[lucid jewel]

not sure but its the 1st time ive seen left over pre releases for a while

i think there was some leftovers with spiderman as well

but not many other sets i can think of

[dense orchid]

If it was only 1 layer deep that's a massive flop. If it was 2, that's still not great but better

[lucid jewel]

they never put them out for sale tho

uasually

cause the pre release kids all sell out during the weeknd

ohhh as in

like how many have sold since they put some out

[dense orchid]

My LGS is doing a Lorwyn post release pre release this weekend. They didn't have any prerelease packs, but they managed to get their hands on some later

Wish I could go

[lucid jewel]

that sounds fun, my friends and i are doing a with us post release this weekend too

which in reality is just one of us grabbed a box of lorwyn and we are doing a draft

[dense orchid]

Nice! Have fun with that

[turbid falcon]

Yeah usually most LGSs I go to run out of kits and end up just handing out packs to fill it out lmao

[wanton hazel]

I went to a second prerelease on Saturday and I was the 5th person to show up

which was very much sad because it meant three of us had a bye round

[rare sparrow]

there were ~25 people apparently across all 3 of the prereleases at my LGS this weekend (i was there, but not to play pre-release). i didnt make it there for lorwyn, but a single prerelease had like 50 or so people for atla

[plush bear]

It happens. There were a bunch of leftover LoTR at my LGS, despite its popularity

[surreal stag]

Good

[turbid falcon]

I just hope the LGSs don't lose out to hard on this

And also that it sends a clear message along with spiderman that these kinds of sets are just not acceptable to the community

[surreal stag]

thankfully my 2 LGS are not heavily dependent on MTG to stay a float. Im blessed to live somewhere that can support two stores with many types of media.

[lucid jewel]

mine neither, they are a comics and boardgames/wargames seller 1st and cards second i believe

they definatly lean into their comics more than most other things

[surreal stag]

yea mine is a huge commic book shop and the playing card room is off to the side. Im sure they do lots of business but its not all MTG they do lots of one piece as well

[leaden tide]

Also, most LGSs make more money off of singles than sealed product. So as long as they're still selling individual cards, they still should be making at least some money.

[leaden tide]

According to Wizards' raw numbers, Spider-Man sold well, in the top 10 of all time.

Which was very confusing to me until I realized it was because Wizards sells most of its product direct to retailers.

So the retailers and distributors bought a bunch and now they're the ones holding the bag. 🙄

https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater/810010339618029568/did-eoe-or-spiderman-sell-better?source=share

[gloomy pagoda]

I mean, I'm pretty sure MtG sales are still growing, so I wouldn't be surprised if most of the sets released in the last year are in their top 10 list

[wanton hazel]

EoE sold out, was out of stock for months and I'm only just now starting to see it again

if both were equally available I'd be surprised if Spider Man were still above EoE

maybe though, it's true to say that Spider Man had a lot of people buy with the intent to scalp it, not realizing how unpopular it would be

[rare sparrow]

I think a lot of stores probably bought a ton of it after seeing how final fantasy went

Expecting it to be a huge success as well

[leaden tide]

Yeah also with the reveal timelines, stores and distributors have to claim/request their allocation well before the set is revealed.

[leaden tide]

Yeah and that's the other thing, EoE probably got a smaller print run thanks to FF's reprint getting pushed up.

[slender moss]

Ah yes
MTG Arena

Either my opponent conceded due to my phenomenal bluff or they conceded out of respect for my "Greet death with a sword in hand" emote

Either way top-tier gameplay

[turbid falcon]

That's ridiculously stupid lol

[wanton hazel]

it's sort of understandable in the sense that it's a very popular franchise with multiple billion dollar movies, thus corporations would expect people to like it, and it's the UB set immediately following Final Fantasy which, I don't remember exactly, but is somewhere in the top 3 most successful sets, might have even been #1, not sure

[spare harbor]

I think it was #1

[leaden tide]

Final Fantasy is the #1 best selling Magic set of all time and it ain't even close.

It like, outsold the previous record holder's entire print run (LotR) on day 1.

(And AtlA is the 3rd best selling set, to round out the top 3)

[lucid jewel]

The reality of it is that its too late for them to fix a lot of the current issues. I am hopeful that 2027 and 2028 are better years for mtg than what 2026 is shaping up to be

[plush bear]

Looking at Hasbro’s finances, it’ll be worse

[native light]

yeah i love magic as a game but the last couple of years have made me follow set releases less and less (though its more of the volume than a UB problem). back in college my playgroup was fairly competitivly active and its sad i will probably not be driven do that again.

[leaden tide]

Ugh.
Ordered a 540 card binder off of Amazon to hold my Avatar masters set (including tokens and Jumpstart cards, it's 538 cards total), as that size of binder is difficult to find in stores.

However, the binder that I ordered apparently just doesn't work. As when loaded up with cards, the pages are too thick for the zipper cover to close, at least not without bending the cards and risking damage. So I'm gonna return it and order a new one.

That's not the problem though. The problem is that it took me like 90 minutes to transfer all the cards from my D-ring binder and now I have to take them all out again. And then put them in the (hopefully better) replacement binder when it arrives. 😭

[lucid jewel]

I hope the new one works

[lucid jewel]

They filled it back up

[leaden tide]

So in case you missed it in the video games space, I'm currently playing through Clair Obscur. And this is the kind of franchise that would make a good Magic set.

Or well, at least a couple of Commander decks. Not sure the game has enough for a full set, but it does have options!

Would be way cooler than the Turtles of the mythical New York City

[fierce dragon]

well now it would be silly if they did a turtles set

if they were to do anything in NY spiderman is for sure the better pick

[leaden tide]

Imagine if we went to the mystical plane of New York three times before we returned to Alara

[surreal stag]

we are.....marvel comes out this year

[lucid jewel]

Its okay I just like turtles wont engage with it outside of mtga and im not spending money on drafts in mtga just gonna save up coins

[surreal stag]

mtga is kinda dead to me, i went all in on Lorwyn, built a fun deck (that doesnt win games) and now im broke

which i was told might happen seeing as the economy in that game is awful

[lucid jewel]

well i just keep up with buying the mastery pass every time and playing the standard bo1 game and the draft game when i have enough coins or gems or if im interested in a set ill spend some on the pre orders

so like i engage with it but not more than the mastery pass for most sets

and thats like $20 ish every few months

[wanton hazel]

I think you can get a reasonable amount of cards just playing the game? I think I spent $50 on the preorder and that was it, played some drafts and got the mastery pass, and I've got like an almost complete Lorwyn collection (like every card and 4 of most of them)

[lucid jewel]

yaa just doing daily quests gets you access to at least one draft a week if not more

[wanton hazel]

the pitfall is that you have to actually play for it to be worth it

[lucid jewel]

and if you get gud at drafting they go infinite

"infinite"

[wanton hazel]

I was "infinite" at pick 2 drafting early in lorwyn and then they made it more expensive (it was originaly like 900 orbs)

so I stopped

[lucid jewel]

well they didnt make it more expensive, they changed the format

the 900 orb drafts are not humans you are drafting against "ai" and you can take as long as you want

[wanton hazel]

that wasn't actually the case

[lucid jewel]

where as the more expensive drafts are legit regular human drafts

[wanton hazel]

maybe they mispriced it but it was a legitimate human pick 2 draft that was priced at 900

[lucid jewel]

hmmmm

[wanton hazel]

either way it's gone now

[lucid jewel]

didnt know that

i never do the pick 2 drafts cause they are lame

[wanton hazel]

it was the only reason I did it that way

[leaden tide]

https://tenor.com/view/that-was-the-joke-anthony-vincent-ten-second-songs-i-was-kidding-i-wasnt-serious-gif-19402679

[surreal stag]

im up to 8 decks i can pick up and play

[leaden tide]

Nice! I respect your deck naming conventions.

[lucid jewel]

one good thing about the turtles set is the alt art treatments

https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/f/6/f611ebb9-8e71-46ee-b24e-9f2404678013.jpg?1771344694

for once they really did a good job of readability and quality looking images

i wish the avatar alt art treatments were half as good as the turtles pixel art ones

[leaden tide]

The Avatar showcase cards I like a lot.

The Source Material treatments for AtlA were the ones that were really awful.

They are....slightly better for turtles, but that bar is incredibly low and they're still mostly ugly and unreadable

[lucid jewel]

yaa its legit for me i think the text boxes on the cards that make or break things

[leaden tide]

Yeah and the Source Material frame is literally a frameless card, nothing but text and mana symbols floating over (often quite noisy) art.

[acoustic wedge]

Welp

[charred ruin]

https://tenor.com/view/emperor-star-wars-good-goooooood-evil-gif-12447951

[lucid jewel]

We did a draft of lorwyn tonight and elf supremacy brought me.to victory and I only lost one individual game and won the other two matches 2 0

[leaden tide]

https://tenor.com/view/homer-simpson-bart-simpson-join-us-sit-here-gif-15631014

[leaden tide]

https://tenor.com/view/jack-nicholson-jack-nicholson-yes-yes-nod-head-nod-gif-17444176260167585294

Love me a good elfball

Did you draft Morcant's Eyes, per chance?

[lucid jewel]

Nope but I did draft morecant

Might even make a budget morecant elfball commander deck

[leaden tide]

Ah nice.

Yeah she seems like a potentially very dangerous commander to play against.

[surreal stag]

I really want to buy the blight curse deck but a) I know it can be a million times better b) it would cost me $1600 to make it the way I want

[dense orchid]

Yes. More control players. Let your opponent's tears season your victory

[lucid jewel]

Elfball begins

[lucid jewel]

Who voted red lol

[lucid jewel]

Its only gonna cost me 120 ish to upgrade the blight deck

[dense orchid]

Someone who plays a lot of standard probably

[lucid jewel]

Red hasn't been amazing in standard for a while

Not really since mouse murder day

White, black and green dominance has been key since then

[surreal stag]

I could get much less aggressive with it I’m sure lol

[acoustic wedge]

Yeah...I've yet to actually USE this deck but after I played, and won, twice against my gf with a borrowed deck I was like "you know what this is pretty fun"

[acoustic wedge]

Guess who just won with her own deck this timmeeee :3

[leaden tide]

Nice!

How'd you enjoy the gameplay? Spellslinger builds can get complicated and confusing fast.

[turbid falcon]

Just the way I love them

[lucid jewel]

Elf ball acquired i have now made a deck

Will scan it in tomorrow sometime so I can link it to ppl but its just all the bulk elves and random spells I thought would be fun

[surreal stag]

Having played a well constructed Elf Ball deck i can say with confidnece Elf ball gunna elf ball regardless of the card quality lol

[lucid jewel]

okay heres my "i searched my cards for elf's and golgari good stuff"
https://moxfield.com/decks/ga1maVwLQkyIAGRGn1v2bw

i will probs swap out some black spells for elf when i buy more elf

[lucid jewel]

just spent some time fixing up the printings as well

[leaden tide]

That does indeed look like an elf ball! Lol

Do let us know how it plays.

[acoustic wedge]

Oh I love it. I'm a big fan of spells, apparently. Especially ones that let me burn mana to do direct damage lol

[lucid jewel]

You will love the colours of red and blue and their combination

Especially red theres some really nice red burn decks with commanders like this boy

These are more dam spells matters commanders

I would argue these are just about the best of the best burn commanders

[lucid jewel]

ill be playing at least a couple games with it tonight

i still am not sure if ive got the land base right, might add a couple more forests in if i have issues with mana

[lucid jewel]

what do yall think are prime candidates for purchase with the above deck

like any big things im missing that arent that expensive apart from lanowar elves

[leaden tide]

There's a few Llanowar Elves variants that are reasonably priced.

Elves of Deep Shadow might be a good one.

Also I'm a big Morcant's Eyes stan. Card selection + army in a can are a great deal.

[lucid jewel]

one of my friends has a morcants eyes

and elves of the deep shadow is cool i like that vibe for my deck

all of the deep shadow with the cute lady on them are promos and/or expensive

🙁

https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/f/2/f271969e-1529-42d1-878b-011f80ab0f05.jpg?1562952546

this seems like a good vibe for my deck too

[leaden tide]

The Jesper Myrfors art? Yeah that one is much in demand.

[lucid jewel]

yeah this one https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/f/3/f395278e-6d74-4f35-af9d-21bad7b19763.jpg?1562952805

anything with this art on it

[leaden tide]

Yeah. Only the much more boring Ravnica art is affordable.

[leaden tide]

Also I'm pretty sure this was modeled after Jesper's girlfriend at the time.

[lucid jewel]

yaa it almost looks like a photo

[tepid stirrup]

I always assumed it was that Evanescence album cover

Looking it up now the one I'm thinking of didn't come out for another couple of years and they look less similar than I remember

[leaden tide]

Same vibe though.

[charred ruin]

That's so cool

[lucid jewel]

and ill totally upgrade to it

that specific one is avaliable but 17$

https://i.imgur.com/wEYrmcB.png

heres all the things i added to the list of mabeys

[surreal stag]

https://moxfield.com/decks/yAfV6u2JNke-SNwptVpnIQ

This is all the stuff unique to my build......im cooked

im going to go through and find budget firedly replacments for the effects

[lucid jewel]

Grabbed these cards and swapped them in

[leaden tide]

Nice.

[lucid jewel]

Also played a couple games, deck works pretty good. Only problem on the second game i played this as my 1st card. Then the person next to me was playing prosh and just destroyed me so fast

I was the problem

[dense orchid]

You probably want some elf or changeling token generation for more triggers off the High Perfect

Unforgiving Aim is also a great addition. 3 mana to create an elf, kill a flyer, or destroy an enchantment at instant speed? Sure

[lucid jewel]

I do want some token generation

I just haven't decided on which flavor

[leaden tide]

I have a few elfball token generators in my deck that are pretty good. I don't remember specific names though so give me a bit to pull the deck out.

[dense orchid]

Might I suggest Primal Vigor for a cheaper alternative to Doubling Season? Monetary price is cheaper and the only downside (aside from our being a $10 card) is it helps everyone, not just you

[leaden tide]

@lucid jewel some of the good elfball stuff I have in my deck.

[lucid jewel]

Ty

[surreal stag]

Imperious Perfect one of the best art runs of a single card in MTG. i love it so much

[lucid jewel]

I think that is one of the things my elf ball is really missing, finishers and more token elfs

But I think my ball is a good 1st try and will adjust and collect things as it rolls down hill katamari style

im also putting a hard restriction on every creature or creature i can create must have the word elf on it as a creature type

and especially with the fun name i put on the deck mabey i should focus on just going as wide as possible

[surreal stag]

https://moxfield.com/decks/JLNlw8Qs6kKTzFyyuhjVdA

its incomplete because i gave up building a third version of the same deck but this is the card pool i work with.

[surreal stag]

the only real finisher is Cratterhoof and other simialr effects

[lucid jewel]

yes but i want it to only be elf

[surreal stag]

anything other than that youre looking to activate Lathril 4 times

[lucid jewel]

also yours is much more graveyard/aristocrat 'than i wanan go

[surreal stag]

same which is why ive never run it

[surreal stag]

fair i love golgari so much lol

Oh Chronicle of Victory, Coat of Arms, etc etc is the other "i win now look at my buff elves"

Gathering Stone is new and cheap very good typal card

[lucid jewel]

yaa i think gathering stone and even the flag thing i cant remember the name of it will be good

that kinda tribal matters cards ill put in eventually

definatly feeling the vibes of this deck out, theres also a world where morcant ends up in the 99 rather than the commander and i go with somone like lathril

but thats if i wanna go DEEP into elf tokens

but i will be putting lathril in the 99 at some point

deathrite shaman is also something i need to add for those golgari vibes

and if i go deep enough into tokens ill probs run things like this too https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/c/bc9926d7-91b7-4067-b590-a0430bf68d16.jpg?1717047445

[surreal stag]

both want deep into tokens TBH, you either just wipe other boards every turn or you kill them with Lathril ability.

[lucid jewel]

100% they both want deep tokens its just, i think morcant might generate too much salt to be my long term commander

[surreal stag]

yes yes 1000 times yes

she is MEAN

[lucid jewel]

especially because lathril while being salty is slow and she needs to hit your face in order to do big things

its a slow burn rather than instantly doing work

[surreal stag]

Morcant does go deeper into the aristocrats vibe as well. Make tokens sack tokens. You now have no board and no life

[lucid jewel]

ill have to spend some weeks feeling out the vibe for where im going

cause theres also a pathway where i keep things like this in and just go DEEP on the salt https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/e/2e8ffc89-6436-4e4d-aa43-8f704b658b96.jpg?1692932499

[lucid jewel]

okay that does so many thing

that might NEED to be in the deck

wait hold up, regenerate is "return from graveyard to battlefield" right?

[native light]

No it's

"The next time this permanent would be destroyed this turn, it isn't. Instead tap it, remove all damage from it, and remove it from combat."

It's a little weird in edge cases, which is why newer cards just give things indestructible for the turn

[lucid jewel]

oh that is weird

no wonder they stoped doing that

and no wonder they canned both "cant be regenerated" and "regenerate" for more intuative language

thats still a good elf tho

[surreal stag]

regenerate is dope

[native light]

Yeah older elves were pushed so they get reprinted even with older mechanics

[surreal stag]

its a very cheap way to say "actually you dont kill that thing"

one of my favs if you can fit a colorless pip land into the deck

thats $70!!!!

[lucid jewel]

uhhh idk if ill ever put a 70$ card in this deck

lol

[surreal stag]

yea i had no idea or i wouldnt have mentioned it lol

online player only problems

[dense orchid]

Deathrite Shaman and Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury are great for your self deck. Freyalise makes tokens, and Deathrite Shaman is a 1 mana planeswalker creature!

[surreal stag]

this dude jsut works all the time under $10

[dense orchid]

Also, eye patches are cool

[surreal stag]

https://moxfield.com/decks/NJoMjNJ6bEWC3tb_cQCu7A

https://giphy.com/gifs/waving-lizard-hoppers-LPFNd1AJBoYcVUExmE

watched a Maldhound video at midnight. Spent 2 hours building this. Tired AF.....worth it

[charred ruin]

https://tenor.com/view/lizard-lizard-lizard-button-lizard-tom-the-lizard-pixar-gif-17194109322617058326

[lucid jewel]

looks sweet

lizardball

[surreal stag]

yea should be a fun little "my lizards ping you and then eat your face"

[leaden tide]

May I submit:

"Get in the lizard's gizzard"

[surreal stag]

til Lizard's Gizzard is a inn in Daggerford run by an orc that loves the outcasts of scocity......must add an orc women to my deck

Card Advantage owuld be nice....

[lucid jewel]

i present this band

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Gizzard_%26_the_Lizard_Wizard

[surreal stag]

or do i just go for good stuff and genderbend lol

[surreal stag]

i did see this also lol

okay what lol

[surreal stag]

we go card advantage

[lucid jewel]

https://tenor.com/view/nice-one-gif-22877714

[surreal stag]

I love bloomburrow so much. I love I can just throw together a Br2 deck and its fun to play

[lucid jewel]

Even target is overflowing with turtles stock

[surreal stag]

https://tenor.com/view/good-clapping-sarcastic-gif-14772054

Stop going to NYC!!

[gloomy pagoda]

Glances at store section
They might want to see a vet, shiny squirtle isn't green...

[leaden tide]

My LgS also has a lot of prerelease left.

[tepid stirrup]

That's gotta mean LGSes start massively scaling down buying UB sets right?

I'm not even sure they can afford to be particularly discriminate about it

Since you can take a pretty good guess about which will be booms and which will be lemons but you never really know

[dense orchid]

My LGS seems to be selling TMNT decently well, but that might also be because they're a new store so people want to support them

It did take a while to fill up the prerelease though

[leaden tide]

Yeah that's the problem. Their allocations are based on how much they bought/sold of previous sets. So if they go for less UB, they might loose out on the stuff people actually want.

Kinda a loose-loose situation for them. But at least if they don't buy in, they won't have stuff warming shelves forever.

[stiff horizon]

yugioh faces a very similar problem, and a lot of LGS near me just don't stock yugioh because that problem got bad enough

magic should take a hint and not end up going the same way because of UB

LGS allocations shouldn't be structured in that way, there's too much variance between how much sets might sell
some sell faster than they can get new stock and others rot on shelves eternally

[surreal stag]

sucks for stores, great to send a message to Hazbro. We dont want this garbage.

we want UBs that fit in MTG not ones that just sprew popular IPs

[tepid stirrup]

It doesn't send a message to Hasbro, not yet

Stores bought them so as far as Hasbro is concerned they sold a lot

[surreal stag]

saldy yes'

i wish stores could report back and say "hey this didnt sell" and actually be listened too

[tepid stirrup]

Spider-man "sold" very well because LGSes stocked it in fairly large bulk

[surreal stag]

yea which is dumb becuase it didnt sell well at all

in real life

[tepid stirrup]

LGSes hold a lot of the risk

[surreal stag]

its BS

but thats capitlism baby

[lucid jewel]

Honestly after edge of eternity im hopeful for star trek fitting well

[leaden tide]

Also they've probably been printing more UB stuff than their original sets, which contributes to the problem even if a UB set is popular.

[lucid jewel]

Thing is tho I love ub for bringing ppl like my son deep into the hobby

Just slow it down

[leaden tide]

It's also a small set problem. Like, I'm worried the Hobbit will have similar issues that Spider-Man and Turtles have had.

[lucid jewel]

And give them room to breath

[leaden tide]

Small sets got discontinued for a reason, and now they're back because the ultra-small Aftermath style sets were an even bigger flop.

[leaden tide]

Yeah I'm glad there's several sets I can just skip this year. Doesn't fix the game itself though.

[lucid jewel]

Give me two ub a year out of mabey 5 sets

I would be much happier with that

[leaden tide]

Yeah Turtles could have been a set of Commander decks.

[rare sparrow]

i generally think the doctor who/fallout/40k model of UB being solely commander decks is much preferable

but it seems likely they've abadoned that model

because packs make way more money

[spare harbor]

I want blocks back

The vibes were impeccable

[tepid stirrup]

I don't see them going back to blocks even if UB takes a step back

[surreal stag]

Imagine if the next UW set was Shadowmore (instert celestial event here)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1270387002147340408/1278912612846801038/image0.gif

pov me ^

[leaden tide]

Yep. Blocks just weren't working. Even when they've tried doing two-set mini-blocks in the post-block era, there's been fairly major issues that mean Wizards isn't likely to try it very often.

[leaden tide]

It's sad because (as Spider-Man and Turtles have shown) stretching out a property that doesn't have enough to fill out a whole set is just gonna feel weird.

I've been playing Expedition 33 recently, and thinking about how it'd be a great fit for Magic. It has cool characters with catchy and often elemental-themed abilities. It has enemies that would fit all colors of the pie (many external IPs have historically struggled to fill out green). But I'm not sure that it has enough in the game/world to fill out a full set, even a small one. Yet that world is incredibly rich and trying to cram it into a handful of secret lairs would be doing it dirty. Commander decks would be the perfect compromise, but that just apparently isn't on the table anymore.

There's so many properties that fall in to this category.

[lucid jewel]

I think turtles especially would have lent well to 4 individual turtle commander decks and mabey a together deck and mabey even a villan deck ontop of that

5 or 6 commander decks would habe been better

[acoustic wedge]

I've been thoroughly infected with the Magic bug. I played one game with my own deck and now I just wanna play and learn it and go full Yugioh anime and read the card effect as I dramatically reveal it

[leaden tide]

Hmm that's good

The golden rule of magic is:

Reading the card explains the card.

[lucid jewel]

if you ever wanna learn anything specific just ask

[spare harbor]

(Except when it doesn’t, of course)

[turbid falcon]

You know what I need

People to play with
You know what people in here do
Play magic
We should play online

[lucid jewel]

i am every day of the week playing mtga

i even play ranked standard and have just this week been venturing into best of 3

i also have gotten to mythic once but its a lot of work

[turbid falcon]

I was more speaking of using spell table to get some games in over digital

[leaden tide]

I'd be down to give that a try

[plush bear]

Same

Or using a browser

[surreal stag]

Table top sim my goat

[leaden tide]

Sunday vs today. Even if they restocked more from the back, this is moving a lot slower than other recent sets.

[surreal stag]

Ttsim has a fully scripted commander table

[lucid jewel]

I would also be down and @surreal stag can teach us

[surreal stag]

🙂

[lucid jewel]

Just poke me when yall sit down to do it or make a plan and ill join

Im free most of next week cause its spring break

[surreal stag]

Played the first game of Lizzard…..instantly abandoned the lizzard kindred and now it’s just a fun burn/ping Rakdos Agro deck

[sleek valley]

She finally got him.

[turbid falcon]

Okay ngl

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/from-the-chaos-vault-secret-lair-dandan-decklist

I'm gonna have to get this

I've always been semi interested in getting a dandan deck and then the 10/10 art definitely pushes me over the edge on sending it

Hopefully I can actually get it and it doesn't instantly sell out due to scalpers

[tepid stirrup]

IIRC Dandan is being printed to demand?

[tepid stirrup]

I'm sure she screamed

[turbid falcon]

Is it really? If it is I missed it in the article

[tepid stirrup]

The article doesn't say one way or the other

[turbid falcon]

Well it would be lovely if it is

[tepid stirrup]

But there was some talk of it previously when it definitely wasn't since it should be sort of an evergreen starter set

Before they got the Dandan guy on board

[leaden tide]

If it's a Chaos Drop, probably not likely.

But hopefully the delay was to print a lot more copies than they were planning.

Not something you should bet on though.

[leaden tide]

Yeah that is pretty darn gorgeous.

[turbid falcon]

Yeah I'm not betting on it

I set a reminder for tomorrow

[turbid falcon]

...damn it my reminder went off silently and I missed it entirely 😑

Honestly it didn't even last 45 minutes

I could probably still find it somewhere else but it's gonna include a massive upcharge sigh

[mild plover]

Oh dang I was thinking of picking one up for my friend, didn't realize it'd sell out right away

[turbid falcon]

Yeah nope the scalpers are selling it for like $250

I miss print to demand sigh or even the dual system they supposedly were going to do

I'm still not entirely sure how not printing these things to demand is smart

Like, won't they make more money that way? Especially for a product like this?

Well whatever no dandan for me I guess

[gloomy pagoda]

Simple, this way they guarantee they sell out, and they probably finished the actual print run weeks ago

[tepid stirrup]

My understanding is that (and this is wildly simplifying things) they broadly can't. They've ramped up so many new products (as have other card games) that print shops can't accommodate more print to demand and in fact can accommodate less since their throughput is much higher

[gloomy pagoda]

Sort of. Like they could always just do bigger runs of fewer products, but their presses are basically at capacity

[leaden tide]

Yep. And even if they want to spin up more print capacity over time....these kind of facilities don't just appear overnight. It takes time for their established printers to build new printers and/or for Wizards to negotiate contracts/approve new printers.

Anyways, for anyone tired of seeing turtles everywhere:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/planeswalkers-guide-to-secrets-of-strixhaven

LAW 416 Negotiation and Drafting of Demonic Contracts
Man please let this be a hint that Davriel is going to be in the set in some capacity

[gloomy pagoda]

And everyone in the game (printing for TCGs) has been burned by spinning up production for a bubble before, so everyone's hesitant to develop new facilities

[turbid falcon]

This makes sense but it makes me less grumpy

[leaden tide]

Target update:

Now, this looks pretty bad, considering how almost every other set is gone by the end of the day, and there's still 4 full racks of turtles more than a week later.

However.

It's even worse than that.

There's actually seven full racks of turtles.

[lucid jewel]

[upper moon]

OK, this doesnt make me feel bad in the slightest. I feel a little bad when an lgs has to hold the bag, but this is hilarious

[leaden tide]

Yeah I'm not gonna cry over a big corporate retailer being stuck with these duds.

I do genuinely believe the set is better than Spider-Man too, but I guess that had the benefit of novelty?

[acoustic wedge]

Man, part of me wants to go buy some Avatar cards, but also I cannot let myself get drawn into the FOMO rabbit hole

[leaden tide]

What kind of Avatar cards?

Sealed stuff or singles off the secondary market?

[tepid stirrup]

"Better than Spider-man" does seem to be the consensus and the fact that Standard is actually in a good place right now seems to be being drowned out by the sheer weight of apathy towards the Turtles themselves

[acoustic wedge]

The former, albeit to open myself. The card shop closest to me still has some and I could go buy em...but also I'd like my money to remain in my bank account thanks

[leaden tide]

Yeah. Sealed boosters are generally only good if you're going to play games of limited with them.

If you want specific cards, always buy singles.

[fierce dragon]

yeah dont buy boosters

[wanton hazel]

That's pretty much everything I've seen. Not worth the extra markup but it's fine I guess. My first prerelease was fun and the only reason the second wasn't was that nobody showed up [not that I blame them], 5 players total

[lucid jewel]

Standard meta is effected by this set and in interesting ways

[wanton hazel]

I'm probably gonna skip more UB prereleases if that's how the response is gonna be, I don't know if I'll touch Marvel at all, and I may [or may not] miss Strixhaven due to another thing

[lucid jewel]

So im actually using some.tmnt cards right now

[gloomy pagoda]

But gambling is fun!

[turbid falcon]

Cracking packs can be fun

Which is usually why I do it, if I like a set and want to collect a portion of it, not to make money or get specific cards

[tepid stirrup]

I think this will be a common response and I think that this is probably really bad for Standard

I'll be interested to see if this ends up being more of a "too many sets in 2026 so I'll skip the UB ones primarily as that seems safer" or if it'll be "UB sets are consistently these small awkward sets so I'll consistently skip those" in the long term

I think with seven sets people were inevitably going to skip more this year than normal

I wonder if it'll hold

What's also possible is this year will train people to look for UB sets that they feel comfortable skipping year to year

[leaden tide]

Yeah. Small sets in general seem to be a bad idea. Wizards tried to make them work for literal decades before they finally just gave up. And those older small sets usually had bigger sets to lean on for limited, these are just meant to stand on their own.

[rare sparrow]

prior to the recent UB sets, the last time they encouraged triple small set limited went so poorly they wrote off doing it again for nearly 2 decades

[leaden tide]

I do really wonder what conversations are going on in Wizards right now. I think they clearly intended to use small, non-limited Aftermath-style boosters to represent UBs that are just too small for a full set/not good Magic fits (ironically, I think that Assassin's Creed, their first attempt at a tiny set, probably had enough content for a big set).

[rare sparrow]

i guess in the interim they figured they learned how to design for limited much better that they could now pull it off

they were wrong, of course

[leaden tide]

But Wizards doesn't want to just turn down these properties, and they clearly think they can/are making more money off of making them booster products instead of Commander sets like Doctor Who, Fallout, etc. (and from a design standpoint, this also does make it easier to get iconic characters in the right colors, which is hard in a Commander deck sometimes). So they expanded the design skeletons to have the bare minimum number of cards to be draftable.

[rare sparrow]

i'm curious if the online reaction to the small UB sets has actually affected their bottom line a lot yet. maro mentioned that (from their perspective, selling to distributors) that spiderman sold really well

[leaden tide]

And uh yeah, it's not working.

[tepid stirrup]

I'm gonna guess that most or all people at Wizards knew this was a bad idea before they did it and were leaned on by people who make too much money to do it anyway

[rare sparrow]

it might still take a year or two for them to admit that some of these UB have underperformed, and another couple years before we see any effects of that given how far in advance they make sets

[leaden tide]

Yeah that's exactly where I was going with this.

[rare sparrow]

i would be surprised if we saw any significant shifts to their philosophy re: UB before like, 2030

[leaden tide]

Clearly there's a problem because SPM and TMT have been near-universally panned by the community. But Wizards is sooooooo slow to change.

Like, 2027's sets are probably locked down from a mechanical standpoint.

[rare sparrow]

like, it's pretty probable they are making/have already made deals for UB properties through at least 2029

[leaden tide]

Yeah. And those deals likely have clauses to release a product in a certain year.

[rare sparrow]

and i imagine they are much more locked in contractually with what they have to do for UB properties than they are for their own stuff

[tepid stirrup]

Its possible that Final Fantasy's runaway success also encouraged deals further into the future than normal

[leaden tide]

Like, remember when Brandon was visiting WotC last year? For all we know he could have been negotiating for a Cosmere set that we won't see until then. FF was in development for that long.

[leaden tide]

While FF was (mostly) a well-designed set, its success is gonna be pretty damn hard to replicate, because almost nothing else is FF.

[tepid stirrup]

It is, but I'm sure that's not how decision-makers looked at it

[rare sparrow]

like, OTJ was supposed to have an aftermath product but with only a year of notice they were able to kibosh that plan. but if we assume that the decisions around spiderman being an aftermath set and morphing into a small set were made around the same time, that's like 2.5 years of notice

[leaden tide]

Yep. Lorwyn Eclipsed was supposed to be the last set of 2025, but then they made SPM into a standard-legal set and were likely contractually obliged to release AtlA in 2025 as well.

[rare sparrow]

but they still had to release something, they couldn't take spiderman off the schedule

[tepid stirrup]

It certainly went further in no small part because the artists/WotC people on the line definitely seem to have liked Final Fantasy a hell of a lot more than they liked Spider-man or TMNT

[leaden tide]

Same for AtlA too.

[tepid stirrup]

Yeah

[rare sparrow]

personally, i have to imagine that the marvel set this summer doing poorly is the one that would be actually painful for wotc

[leaden tide]

It's honestly sad seeing so many uninspired designs in SPM, and in the previews for the main Marvel set. MaRo is a Marvel super-fan but there must not be many others on the team.

[tepid stirrup]

I wonder how the Cosmere will do. Certainly there's already crossover between Cosmere artists and MTG artists in a way not normally true, but are people at WotC Cosmere readers?

[rare sparrow]

i imagine they've invested a lot more money and time into trying to make sure it succeeds than any of the recent UB disappointments

[rare sparrow]

well, they partnered with him like a decade ago on children of the nameless, so almost assuredly they are

[leaden tide]

Marvel will probably do better simply by virtue of being a full set. But how much better? idk. The designs we've seen are not sparking joy for me personally.

[tepid stirrup]

Roshar in particular having the vibe of an MTG plane was one of my initial selling points on Stormlight, but I wonder if that inspiration goes both ways

[leaden tide]

Hell I wonder if their strategy is to release a mechanically simpler set to try and appeal to a younger audience.

[tepid stirrup]

https://klipy.com/gifs/so-old

[rare sparrow]

i would be surprised if a company that makes a fantasy tcg did not have employees that were fans of basically every major fantasy property

[leaden tide]

There's also the intersting thing where Dragonsteel has basically already done the art and design needed to make a Cosmere set, with everything in the RPG. I really do wonder how that would complicate things.

[rare sparrow]

with that said, i still do not think we would see a cosmere mtg set prior to mistborn movies

[tepid stirrup]

That's true but I think the strength of Final Fantasy in particular is that its widespread enough that you're gonna have several people who are fans of all or at least nearly all of the Final Fantasies out there

[leaden tide]

Would Wizards just want to do their own take? Work with Dragonsteel to make new stuff? Straight-up reuse a bunch of art from the RPG to save on work/royalties?

[tepid stirrup]

Like, you have the FF6 team and the FF7 team and the FF9 team and the FF10 team and they're all just, which one do you like best?

[tepid stirrup]

Reusing artists certainly is going to happen, Dan Dos Santos is gonna eat good

[leaden tide]

And yeah that's the other question, would WotC go for a set that's not got a live-action adaptation yet?

[rare sparrow]

from what i understand so far, the main gaps in UB so far have been "people familiar with classic doctor who" and "people familiar with FF1-5"

[leaden tide]

Too bad Donato Giancola isn't doing MtG art anymore. His style is one of my favorites.

[tepid stirrup]

I expect Wizards will have original art (that they own) but in more or less lockstep with the normal Cosmere look and feel, which already jives with MTG well anyway

[rare sparrow]

and even then, they just...had their employees do "research"

[surreal stag]

big same

[rare sparrow]

i do feel bad for my LGS having tons of turtles still in stock for sure

[leaden tide]

Yeah. I think the question is whether or not they just do a Cosmere set on its own, or wait for the adaptations to come out.

[rare sparrow]

but yeah, target, walmart, etc. who cares

[tepid stirrup]

Hard to have people unfamiliar with Turtles or Spider-man, but they don't have the same passion as FF or AtlA at all, and its clear from nearly every aspect of the cards

[leaden tide]

I think if any property could pitch a set without a live-action adaptation or game, it's the Cosmere. But it would also be a big risk on Wizards' end.

[tepid stirrup]

Its possible that they do both

[rare sparrow]

i think a spiderverse set is just a fundamentally flawed idea no matter how much the designers like/do not like spiderman

[tepid stirrup]

Do a set now, and one later, but LotR/FF it where they go for the original art style as much as possible and not the more modern adapted styles in cases where there's more modern options (7 excluded, I suppose)

[leaden tide]

I think we can zoom out even a little more than that.

[rare sparrow]

tmnt, idk, that one i can believe moreso that it was not a passion project of anyone

[leaden tide]

TMNT, I think the designers tried to have a little mechanical fun with it (again, better than SPM but low bar), but that was independent of how much they cared about the source material.

[rare sparrow]

if you're trying to say UB is fundamentally flawed, i don't fully agree with that. i think the problems i have are mostly around the quantity and properties they have chosen

[tepid stirrup]

I do wonder where the Ten Million Legendary Creatures idea is coming from

[rare sparrow]

LOTR, ATLA, and FF are all good for magic, imo

[leaden tide]

MaRo recently said on his blog that one lesson they've learned from the "hat sets" era is that original Magic settings only work if the ideas behind them have a sense of environment and depth. They can't just be character-focused ideas, they need to have a sense of a world to them. That's why "Greek mythology set" works and "Mystery story set" does not.

[tepid stirrup]

And even now I don't really mind like Fallout or Spongebob or what have you as the occasional silly swing

[rare sparrow]

i do not feel particularly optimistic about any of the properties they are doing this year tho. hobbit will probably be fine but it's basically just more LOTR

[tepid stirrup]

This I agree with

Its something FF and AtlA also both nailed

[leaden tide]

Meanwhile, (and this is exaclty where the 10 million legendary creatures is coming from Kon) UB sets have to almost inherently be character-based, because they're external stories with their own iconic characters that people are going to be disappointed if they don't see them when opening packs.

[tepid stirrup]

Clearly the New York sets tried

[leaden tide]

Now, if Wizards is lucky/smart, the property they're adapting will have depth beyond those characters anyways, enough to flesh out the rest of the set.

[tepid stirrup]

Like, Cream Cheese Bagel or whatever its called... exists. That's there, that's trying to be set dressing

[leaden tide]

This is why FF, LotR, and AtlA work.

[tepid stirrup]

Hot Dog Stand

Etc

[leaden tide]

And it's why Spider Man and Turtles do not.

When people think of LotR, they think of Frodo and Aragorn yes, but they also think of orcs and elves and ents.

[tepid stirrup]

It'll always be weird to me moving forward to have what I will always think of as the first New York block

[leaden tide]

When people think of Turtles, they think of, well, Turtles.

[tepid stirrup]

Assuming they do a second

Which I'm gonnna guess Marvel at least has a second booked out

And I don't mean Marvel's from next year, I mean a Return to New York type set

Group of sets

[leaden tide]

It literally says on the packaging "A turtle in every pack." Because it's a turtle set and the Turtles property is only known for the 4 titular turtles. So it needs to show up consistently.

[tepid stirrup]

Yeah that was such a mistake

[rare sparrow]

one thing i'm wondering is if UB properties mostly need to have a really cohesive story to be built around to succeed. outside of FF, most of the "hey lets just do a bunch of cards in this universe" haven't really worked. but LOTR and ATLA moreso get clear story moments to deliver on than something like TMNT or SPM or Marvel

[tepid stirrup]

Literally first thing I think when I hear that tagline is "oh this is gonna be a mess"

[leaden tide]

There's no sense of environment or world, the whole set is four iconic characters, some supporting cast, and pizza.

[tepid stirrup]

FF does lean on story moments at least in the art of the cards

[leaden tide]

It's a grab-bag of all the games, but each of the games does have a distinct story.

[tepid stirrup]

It very regularly shows characters in key moments of their arcs

More importantly, it commonly shows them in the right settings

[rare sparrow]

yeah, and i think that's probably part of what makes FF still work

[leaden tide]

Commander decks are great for more character focused properties. They're based on legendary creatures obviously, and just have a much more limited scope that is easier to fill out.

[tepid stirrup]

The Emet cards have [FFXIV Shadowbringers] ||Amourot|| featuring prominently in just about every variation on him in the base cards

(So weird talking about Shadowbringers which is Spoiler Rich Territory in the context of MTG cards where the spoilers are so spoiled lmao)

[leaden tide]

I recently started playing Expedition 33, and I've been thinking about whether or not a UB of the game could support a full Magic set.

[tepid stirrup]

I think its a little too thin

[leaden tide]

Between all the character abilities and the (honestly kinda shocking) variety of enemies, I think it could get a decent bit of the way there.

[tepid stirrup]

Which is a shame because the art is so right

[rare sparrow]

i do feel like SPM and TMNT being just commander decks would have made more sense. but i wonder if the UB commander deck sets like fallout, doctor who, etc. underperformed and they thought a booster set would have done much better

[leaden tide]

But the problem is that, since it's a character driven story, it'd need the main characters to show up a lot.

[rare sparrow]

which is why they shifted away from them

[leaden tide]

I don't think they necessairly even underperformed. It's just, yeah boosters sell better.

[tepid stirrup]

I've suspected for a while that the Commander sets doing as poorly as they did is why Marvel pushed for SPM to be a full set

A small set seems like a compromise there

[leaden tide]

And it's gonna be a compromise for a lot of properties.

[rare sparrow]

it feels pretty likely that 40k was the only one of those commander deck sets that did well

[leaden tide]

A small set with the main characters repeated several times.

I'd love an E33 Magic set. But I would not love an E33 Magic set with 4 different versions of each Expedition member.

[tepid stirrup]

I also think that, for reference, E33 is a Final Fantasy game, and one of the smaller ones

[leaden tide]

I do wonder whether or not the EoE approach would work for Universes Beyond stuff.

[tepid stirrup]

FF as a whole supported a large set fairly easily, but I think most of the games would have struggled individually

[rare sparrow]

main characters being repeated isn't always a bad thing for me. it worked for me in LOTR when you get characters depicted at different points in the story, for instance. it works less well when it's like "here's 10 different versions of spiderman from different spiderman universes"\

[tepid stirrup]

It works in (some) UW sets too

Just, not a million times

[leaden tide]

EoE had two versions of each main character: One at uncommon, one at rare/mythic. This didn't create enough density that you were opening a main character in every pack. But you were basically guaranteed to get at least one version of someone in a pre-release kit.

[tepid stirrup]

There are like four Clouds

Three?

A couple

[leaden tide]

I think that would be a good compromise, personally.

[tepid stirrup]

More than one Lightning too iirc

[rare sparrow]

2 or 3 seems like a good maximum to me. one at lower rarity, one-two at higher rarities

[leaden tide]

Depends on how we count bonus sheet and supplemental stuff.

[rare sparrow]

anywhere from 1-4 clouds, depending on how you want to count

[tepid stirrup]

That's fair

[leaden tide]

Aang had 4 versions in the main set, but 10 total including scene boxes, Jumpstart, etc.

[tepid stirrup]

2 standard legal at least, right?

[rare sparrow]

only one main set version of cloud that wasn't on the bonus sheet

[leaden tide]

Leonardo has.....6 in the main set? And like 11 or 12 total.

[rare sparrow]

technically yes because the beginner product cloud is standard legal

[leaden tide]

Good god there's too many turtles.

[rare sparrow]

turtle in every pack

means there was going to be way too many

[leaden tide]

On the other hand, FFIX could probably have gotten its own set no problem.

[tepid stirrup]

https://klipy.com/gifs/crawling-turtles-nat-geo-wild

I think only the 7 series, the 10 series, the 13 series, and 14 could have pulled off their own sets without really feeling it stretching thin at least

And probably all of those are leaning on the supplemental games quite a bit

[leaden tide]

In any case, I think E33 would be a good fit for Magic, but it'd be best off as Commander decks.

[tepid stirrup]

Maybe Ivalice as a setting as well actually

[leaden tide]

I wonder if one could split the Expedition itself into two different decks.

[tepid stirrup]

Because then you have the Tactics games and 12

[leaden tide]

Temur for ||Sciel, Lune, and Monoco,|| and Abzan for ||Maelle, Gustave, and Verso.||

[tepid stirrup]

I bet you could proxy a good Commander deck with art/names coming from E33 if you really wanted to

[leaden tide]

Yeah I'd be interested in trying that at some point.

This guy as ||Dualliste||

[tepid stirrup]

Counterspell -> Parry It!

[leaden tide]

https://tenor.com/view/parry-it-parry-it-alicia-e33-gif-5018089436067363878

[leaden tide]

Even better:

(this could also be a Gradient Counter)

[tepid stirrup]

Even has the right circular effect, just make it blue

[leaden tide]

Narset does kinda look like Lune.....

But yeah. In conclusion: Properties need worldbuilding to be good UB sets.

And E33 is now in my top-three wanted UBs despite probably only being big enough for a small set at best.

[tepid stirrup]

Keeping it zoomed out, sets need a good sense of worldbuilding to be good sets

[leaden tide]

Yeeeup.

Hats =/= worldbuilding

[rare sparrow]

i doubt anything will top ASOIAF as my #1 most desired UB set. mostly because i also think it's unlikely to happen

[leaden tide]

My most desired UB is Destiny.

[charred ruin]

Yeah not even UB, first-party sets too

That's why Ravnica, Theros, Tarkir, Ixalan, Lorywn/Shadowmoor, and Mirrodin/New Phyrexia are all so beloved

[leaden tide]

Both of ours feel like they could be decent brand fits (though the NSFW nature of ASOIF might turn Wizards off). But both are also past their prime popularity so...

then again, the first UB was Walking Dead.....

[leaden tide]

Yep. It's why dressing Ravnica up in detective hats didn't work.

It's also why New Capenna didn't work, imo.

[rare sparrow]

"(though the NSFW nature of ASOIF might turn Wizards off" this is exactly why i dont expect it to happen

[leaden tide]

Originally they were going to have one of the factions be cops. But then they chickened out and pulled them and just made eatch faction a different flavor of criminal.

So it made the worldbuilding feel thin.

[rare sparrow]

them "chickening out on making a faction cops" makes more sense when you realize they started working on the set when the george floyd protests were happening

they didn't want to touch cops with a 10 foot pole

as to avoid getting too close to real world politics

[leaden tide]

Yeah. I understand why, as a company they did that. But I think it would have been a pogniant statement and made for a much better set if they did.

Specifically if they made sure that the cop faction wasn't the good guys.

[rare sparrow]

i feel like making "faction of crooked cops" also is closer to political commentary than they like to get

[leaden tide]

Oh I'm not disagreeing about that.

There's just...certain stories/genres/settings that are really hard to pull off without their integral elements.

A gangster setting needs law-enforcement to oppose the criminals. A western setting needs a native presence.

[rare sparrow]

i think SNC would have worked better if the angels coming back into play happened in the middle of the story, not at the end

and use them as the "law enforcement" faction that tries to clean up all the corruption, or something

[leaden tide]

That would also be a good solution.

[leaden tide]

Yep. Just counted. 12 total if we count the team-up cards.

[rare sparrow]

15% of the cards in the set are legendary turtles

[leaden tide]

tUrTlE iN eVrY PaCk

[leaden tide]

I think there's a Dragonstorm brewing over my town.

[charred ruin]

When it enters it will create two 1/1 white soldier creature tokens

[leaden tide]

No I think it's gonna draw two cards and then discard a card.

[charred ruin]

Hmmmm perhaps

[slender moss]

Just watch out for Kona...

[leaden tide]

This video talks about some useful things that I think might be the issue I've had with my decks sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oS1E5BGi0U

Gonna try to rework my decks some with some of their tips in mind.

[lucid jewel]

I love command zone

I watch them most weeks and they are what I look to for precon upgrades 1st

[dense orchid]

I know this says turtle, but it looks like turtie lol

[leaden tide]

Yeah, this video is making me re-think how my ramp works (and why I'm ramping). It's long but worth the watch imo.

[leaden tide]

Taking a massive hit of copium that maybe we're getting a Destiny UB soon?

Though, given that we know the reset of the release schedule for this year, such a collab would likely just be Secret Lairs (unless they have a set spooled up for next year?).

Which would be neat but also kinda sad to have so few cards.

[rare sparrow]

I actually think this makes it somewhat less likely we get a set. If a set was coming, they would have held this crossover until that happened

A SL still seems reasonable

Hopefully with some actually unique cards that arent just reskins

[leaden tide]

Yeah that's my worry.

It's got enough material for a full Magic set, but I'm not sure about the popularity, despite it being a much better fit for Magic than something like Turtles.

[gloomy pagoda]

Damn, I was sure "I kill your Chandra with Han Solo's Blaster" would be in Magic first...

[lucid jewel]

Han clearly shot first

[dense orchid]

When you cast Han's Shot, flip a coin. If you win the flip, Han's Shot goes to the bottom of the stack

[gloomy pagoda]

I can see the Han Solo progression now:
First printing: 2/2 with First Strike
Second printing: 2/2, "If Han kills a creature that would damage him in combat, that damage is reduced to zero"
Third printing: 2/2 "If Han kills a creature that would damage him in combat, that damage is reduced to zero. The player that controls that creature must say 'Maclunkey'."

The fourth printing is the subject of constant rumours, and expected to be a 2/2 with First Strike

[lucid jewel]

So how do yall feel about the chaos 40k precon deck. Outside of it being unavailable and mega expensive so will probs proxy some of it

Like is it fun times ?

[turbid falcon]

Of the 4 (I purchased all of them when they came out) I'd say it's the least interesting out of the box

It has some really neat pieces but the overall deck feels a bit clunky

[lucid jewel]

what do you think of the other 3 then

[turbid falcon]

My favorite is by far the necron deck

Mono black artifact creature sacrifice is just a ton of fun

It's the most intact of the 4

My second favorite is the imperium, lots of flavor in the deck and marneus Calgar is a baller commander

It's less intact but many of the pieces found homes in token decks I still use

[lucid jewel]

oh ive been leaning in black directions for a while

mabey ill look at the necron deck

[turbid falcon]

Third favorite is the tyranids, their commanders are less interesting but the gameplay with big x spells with the draw triggers us fun

Well, the one isnt interesting and then magus lucea Kane feels like she just wants an entirely different deck

[lucid jewel]

seems to be a decent ammount of choice in the necron deck for commander as well

[turbid falcon]

Yeah I use the storm lord

But trazyn the infinite is a whole other cool build

[lucid jewel]

may have just discovered this website
https://www.tcgstacked.com/mtg

@leaden tide it solves so many of my proxy issues i was having before

[lucid jewel]

https://mtgprint.net/ this website is infinitely better 0 fuss 0 scammy ai bs trying to be sold to us

im going to become a proxy fiend after finding this

[acoustic wedge]

That's what my gf plays and they love it

[lucid jewel]

im sad theres not a full text wastes

[leaden tide]

Yeah, they don't reprint that one often.

[turbid falcon]

It

would probably be pretty easy to design a custom one

Given the word differences aren't too major between it and other existing ones

[lucid jewel]

totally

i was just sad when lookjing through my proxy list stuff i was doing and found no offical full text waste

i might proxy up an eldrazi deck and try it out

become the true villan

[dense orchid]

If you want to become the true villian you gotta go Nicol Bolas or Urza. Eldrazi are nothing more than a force of nature

[lucid jewel]

the 4 cost that flips into a planswalker?

or the og one

[dense orchid]

High Lord Artificer

[lucid jewel]

nah i know that one but is it the flip plainswalker nicol bolas that your talking about

[dense orchid]

Flipwalker

[lucid jewel]

neither for them fill me with "i want to build and play this"

i dont think highlord artificer is very fun

[surreal stag]

Pulled some heaters last nice. At least in terms of cost

[turbid falcon]

Niiicceee

[surreal stag]

We did a pre-release type thing with some buddies

Rakdos goblins went hard in the pain for ya boi

The collection grows as well

[leaden tide]

Oh hell yeah, the Painter's Servant is gorgeous

[surreal stag]

I’m not sure why it’s $35 is it just a classic card. I mean it’s pretty good with vivid but I’m still so new to mtg

[leaden tide]

It was only printed once before, and is still a relatively unique effect.

(well technically twice, but Kaladesh inventions don't really count)

[surreal stag]

Nice okay yea there’s like 4 prints total for it

[leaden tide]

Judge's gift cards aren't exactly accessible either.

[surreal stag]

Fair enough

[leaden tide]

So in terms of availability, it was only easily acesable in one relatively poorly received set 20 years ago. None of its three printings since have been remotely easy to get.

[surreal stag]

Thought about running it to splash something but I had a really decent pool in Rakdos

[leaden tide]

Yeah, definitely a good idea.

[slender moss]

It's also part of a combo that's very strong in most old formats