Magic the Gathering tip: good and evil aren’t real there’s only aggro combo and control

Andulka
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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

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occasionally subtle
hello vonnie
Peter Solarz
$LAYYYTER

Janaina Medeiros
Cosmic Funnies

shark vs the universe
YOU ARE THE REASON

JBB: An Artblog!
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

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taylor price

titsay
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@brewingbad
Magic the Gathering tip: good and evil aren’t real there’s only aggro combo and control
WOTC is hiring a "Principal AI Engineer"
After multiple scandals of them trying to "covertly" using AI (and denying it, when found out, up until the evidence was too big to deny), declarations from Hasbro's CEO, Chris Cocks, saying how much he loves AI, after their empty promises with dubiously worded "No, we won't use AI (in our final products)", Wizards of The Coast is now hiring a "Principal AI Engineer".
And as highlighted (the highlighted version was posted by @/SpicyEncounters on Twitter), this does include AI usage for all sorts of things- Including writing, audio, and art. (Which is an incredibly broad amount of subjects, but the wonders of AI is being able to have a single guy hitting the keyboard 'til the plagiarism machine pukes something decent)
This is no surprise to most people, I think, but it's still a great time to just boycott WOTC, and make noise about this everywhere: Social media, on your way out for your DnD Beyond subscription, amidst many others. Don't give them the money. The cents they save from not hiring artists shouldn't be worth much amidst many users refusing to use their products and bringing their money elsewhere. They already had massive layoffs- Which of course heavily hurt their artists, and this was the "natural", greedy next step.
I keep thinking about getting sent death threats over bringing up this in the past with people who were too deep in on the corporate bootlicking. Who would've thought that the same company that threw their creators under the bus with the OGL would now be looking forward to keep running them over for a measly profit.
:fingers in ears while screaming:
IT'S A LEGITIMATE STRATEGY!!
I’ve been getting a lot of questions that boil down to “I don’t like X, could you stop doing X?” or “Okay X exists, but I don’t like it, can you do less of X?”, and I don’t think I’ve been particularly empathetic, so I thought I’d share a story where I was the one wanting less of X.
My background is fiction writing. I did a lot of playwriting and short story writing growing up, and then in college got into TV writing and film writing. I care a lot about individual card flavor making sense.
When I started playing Magic, the nails on the chalkboard for me was Walls. Creatures should be creatures. They didn’t all have to be sapient, but at least sentient, or, at bare minimum, alive. I could handle Living Wall or a Plant that was a Wall, but things like Wall of Stone really threw me for a loop.
It was so contextually silly that there was even flavor text in Fallen Empires making fun of it. (“Ever see a wall drop dead of fright, kid?. It ain’t pretty.”)
I’m a Johnny, so I did build a few wall decks. I got the mechanical joy of attacking with things that couldn’t normally attack, but boy did the flavor just irk me.
Unlike most of you, I got into a position where I could do something about it. I was one of the people who pushed to make the defender keyword. Then, with the help of Brady Dommermuth, I got rid of Walls. For several years, we stopped making creatures with the Wall creature type.
But as time rolled on, I kept getting requests from players for more Walls. The very thing I disliked about them, the incongruity, was something that made them charming to a host of players.
When R&D first starting talking about Walls returning, I initially fought against it. Magic felt better to be without them in it.
What turned me around was Demons, of all things. In early Magic, we took away Demons because there was this fear that it would turn away too many players. It became clear though that the majority of the players liked Demons, and that we were letting a small minority remove something from the game that a majority enjoyed.
So, we brought them back. If we did that with Demons, why not Walls? The only difference was I personally didn’t like Walls. Didn’t the philosophy for including one apply to the other?
These issues, Demons and Walls and several others, helped us form a philosophy of inclusion over exclusion. Assuming it didn’t cause direct harm to certain players (things like harmful stereotypes), we should let players have access to the things that made Magic enjoyable to them.
With time I came to realize that making other people happy was a net benefit to me. I love Magic. I want others to love it too. The more happy players, the bigger the community, and the bigger the audience. That means it’s easier to find people to play with and the game could expand out and do even more things.
I came to see Walls as a good thing, not because it made me happier in a vacuum, but it made the Magic audience net happier.
That’s where my answers are coming from. Magic is too broad to not occasionally do something that any one player might prefer not to do. That’s where the customizability comes in, and even more importantly, that’s where the empathy comes in.
If something is net negative to you, take a step back, and see if it’s net positive for the audience as a whole. Does its inclusion make others happy? Does it allow someone else to fall in love with Magic? Is it doing good even if the good gained isn’t specifically for you?
I went through that exact process with Walls, and my shift in perspective made Magic even more enjoyable for me because I could see how it improved Magic for others.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do with my answers. Not neglect acknowledging that whatever you’re upset about isn’t impacting you negatively. It is. I get that. It makes Magic something less for you personally.
I’m just asking you to think about the thing you love most in the game. Some one dislikes that thing. Magic would be better for them if we removed it. But Magic is better for you and them if we include both things rather than take them both away.
Inclusion over exclusion.
Let the game have all the things people enjoy, and each person individually leans into what they enjoy and learns to deal with what they don’t. That’s the recipe for making the most players the happiest, and making Magic the best game it can be.
As a walls player I am shocked...
Well, not that shocked.
Yeah, walls don't make a lot of sense being a creature type. It would make a lot more sense to have them as the fortification type to lands that was tested. I get it, but boy do I love me some Pauper Walls combo.
You've talked about planar portals as drawing attention away from the Planeswalkers that are a major focus of Magic. Now we have the Omenpaths. What changed?
Magic changed.
That it did.
THE MAGIC FACTIONS BRACKET FINALS!
It's finally here, gang! Our last bout is here! It's been a cutthroat series, and a lot of our fights have been down to the wire, but we finally have two phenomenal factions in our final fracas! Let's do this!
The Final Round!
The Golgari Swarm
The Izzet League
It's actually kind of fascinating - our two factions are very representative of Magic as a whole. It's factions from one of the most, if not THE most, popular planes in the game, and it represents all but one of the colours of Magic (and that one has been clawing itself out of weakness for years). We have created a Magic Microcosm. :D
Now...
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!
MAKE
YOUR
CHOICE!
Verification that white is the worst color.
got my hopes up for something about a monored deck
but no
just fascism
I know the feeling. Every time I search for MTG, I get political crap.
How I became an Arena player
Article I wrote about why I see Arena as a F2P vs P2W. Also I talk about gambling addiction.
This is part 1 of a series of articles. In the next article we will be discussing our methods for 'going infinite' in the game so we don't have to spend any money to get new decks and play in competitions etc.
Maro’s Streets of New Capenna Teaser
Before previews for Streets of New Capenna officially begin, I thought it would be fun to do another of my Duelist-style teasers where I give tiny hints of things to come. Note that I’m only giving you partial information.
First up, here are some things you can expect:
• five mana costs, using existing mana symbols, that we’ve never used before
• a spell that costs 13BB
• a mechanic we’ve tried to get in numerous sets finally finds a home
• a creature type theme for a draft archetype that’s never been used before
• a red creature that can make token copies of creatures you control
• a card that adds WWUUBBRRGG
• a mechanic which first premiered in a Standard-legal set in the 00’s sees a return to Standard
• a card that makes Cat and Dog tokens
• a draft theme caring about a threshold in the graveyard we haven’t cared about before
• multiple white cards capable of drawing a card each turn
Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:
• “Then if you control ten or more creatures, you may play the exiled card without paying its mana cost.”
• “Copy target spell you control that wasn’t cast.”
• “As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature, discard a card, or pay 4 life.”
• “If exactly three colors of mana were spent to activate this ability,”
• “Create a 1/1 blue Fish creature token”
• “When you cast this spell, copy it.”
• “WUBRG, T, Sacrifice CARDNAME:”
• “where X is the number of permanents you’ve sacrificed this turn.”
• “Count the colors of the sacrificed creature,”
• “You may cast any number of the copies without paying their mana costs.”
Finally, here are some creature type lines in the set:
• Creature – Devil Warrior
• Creature – Raccoon Rogue
• Creature – Bird Assassin
• Creature – Plant Dinosaur
• Artifact Creature – Treasure Dog
• Artifact Creature – Angel Warrior
• Legendary Creature – Sphinx Demon
• Legendary Creature – Cat Citizen
• Legendary Creature – Cephalid Advisor
• Legendary Creature – Vampire Demon Noble
Check out the Streets of New Capenna debut on April 7th at 9:00 am PT on Twitch and YouTube.
"The past form of cast is cast. Blogatog is pro-grammar."
I would ask that you be careful about stating things like this, as it can push into an area of grammatical prescriptivism that has its roots in classism and racism.
"Illuminate" and "Orientate" both use to be words that were considered improper conjugations of "Illume" and "Orient" (the expectation being that you should ONLY conjugate them to "Illumiation" and "Orientation" if at all). Now these words are used regularly by everyone who speaks English; in fact, most people don't even know about the base word "Illume" anymore and default to "Illuminate".
The Notorious BIG used the word "Conversate" in one of his songs, which follows the same conjugation pattern as the above mentioned words, and yet he was besmirched by the white elite of this country as being uneducated and unable to "properly" speak, all in the name of being "pro-grammar".
My point is that language is a living thing that constantly changes, and "Casted" follows some pretty normal and expected patterns of how to conjugate a verb into the past tense for US English. As much as the base rules of a language are necessary, an expection of HOW to speak it is a slippery slope towards the quashing of dialects and othering certain groups of people.
TL;DR: If +80% of the native US English speaking population say "Casted", then at the bare minimum both options are valid, and at a certain point the old rule will be forgotten.
You raise an important point, and I very much believe language is fluid and changeable. If enough people start using a word, it’s a word.
That fluidity though shouldn’t mean there are no rules to language. Grammar has a use and a purpose (especially in Magic where exact wording dictates game functionality). Because it might change doesn’t mean for now there isn’t an accepted usage.
But I agree that it’s something to be careful about because historically it’s been abused. This is a great example of how there are nuances to many conversations.
Thanks for sharing.
I didn't realize that people may have a problem with this, but it has dawned on me that I go way out of my way in physical play to clearly explain every play. "...has been cast..." "While being cast..." "If you cast in response..." are some of my most used phrases when teaching stack mechanics.
Your article 'The Big Picture' goes a long way to display the thought process behind your interactions here. I feel many askers would benefit from a read through. Well done again
Thanks.
For those that haven't read it:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/big-picture-2022-01-17
Wheel of Fortune signed by Vanna White is pretty choice but this price is wild
Lololol
That is flavor win right there.
I don’t know who RomanChicken is on Arena, but once we got past some communication issues, they seemed to get a kick out of my deck. And even though it started in my library, seeing over 250 Scute Swarms across the field from me was pretty cool. Using them as fodder for their Meathook Massacre by destroying all creatures? EPIC.
Arena doesn’t have the face-to-face interaction and tends to be more focused on just winning than seeing how a deck can interact, and it was cool to see someone else that wanted to let things play out. So RomanChicken, whoever you are, Good Game. Really refreshing, and I hope you enjoyed seeing our decks interact. (It’s just too bad all the Massacre triggers couldn’t resolve!)
Honestly glad about this
https://deadline.com/2021/08/magic-the-gathering-jeff-kline-new-creative-team-netflix-animated-series-russo-brothers-exit-1234818588/