Wednesday, November 22, 2017

What if Magic restarted from zero?

In this thought experiment, I start Magic from zero. I would start with two starter decks. Here they are. The first one is a White/Blue/Green creature deck with enough counterspells to slow a fast deck down.





The second one is an aggressive Black/Red deck.





With this restart, there are some really neat cards, a few over-powered cards, and a bunch of vanilla creatures and simple spells to improve upon. I would complement these with a first set that enabled more strategies. My restart of Magic would look a lot like the early Yugioh sets, and would not have a limited experience.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Why I walked away from Battlecruiser Standard

Yugioh is about to have some of its best years ever. The link mechanic is reinventing every.single.archetype ever. Actually, Magic needs to take a page from the Yugioh playbook. It's what Innistrad block did for Magic with Delver of Secrets, Snapcaster Mage, the Miracles from Avacyn Restored. Innistrad block reinvented many decks in Vintage, Legacy, Modern, and lay the foundation for the post RTR boom now coming to a close.

Magic is in yet another transition, and all transitions are painful. The ten sets in the 'no core set' era have some awesome cards, but as a whole, were a path that cannot be taken again. It was a profound mistake. No one wants a two mana mana dork, and no one should play Standard without Naturalize.

Magic should have some bold innovators at Wizards with the guts to make the decision to take the game down the Pokemon/Yugioh path: everything is reprinted, everything. MTG Finance will be fine, it will just be a very different game. Instead of a few people who got in early, like Bitcoin, and now have a $5,000 card they pulled out of a pack, there can be 5,000 people with a card that's worth $1, and everyone wants to play. This is a mind bend for many, but believe me, it can work.

I just bought an LOB unlimited Pot of Greed (equivalent of an Unlimited-the Magic set; Ancestral Recall) for $3. Yugioh has thousands of people doing the same. It's equivalent, it just means many small collectors and not that many whales.

Dominaria and beyond needs to get us back to Innistrad block, to a reshaping of the foundations of all Magic competitive decks. Until that happens, even more players will walk away from battlecruiser Standard. I know I have. I review the sets here to keep myself up to date for the next Snapcaster Mage set, but the two-set blocks have been a disappointment for Johnny deck-builders like yours truly.

The Heart of the Cards is what Magic needs.

"My heart is in the cards, and that is what you do not understand."
Yugi Muto.

I will end with a rhetorical question: what happens when the money lost from players walking away is greater than the financial cost of whatever lawsuits are filed when the Reserved List is abolished?