Thread 715028050

When did the decline of Magic the Gathering begin?

>>715028050 (OP)
bfz / wots

>>715028050 (OP)
what a loser. peasant wants to discuss mtg while I'm sitting here on a 65k gaming rig. filthy peasant!! I'm part of the master race! (while my girlfriend gets her throat stuff with big black cocks, multiple cocks that is).

When they started banning old cards for being 'racist'

>>715028050 (OP)
People have been pronouncing MTG dead or dying since at least Fallen Empires in 1994.

>>715028050 (OP)
when they decided to make hexproof because players felt bad when shroud sometimes hade negative interactions

>>715028050 (OP)
With Return to Ravnica.

>>715028393
LOL that set was so shit but I miss it so much

>>715028050 (OP)
no idea, i played between Return to Ravnica and Kahns of Tarkir

i had a fair bit of fun but from what i understand the power level of cards was fairly weak at the time, however that likely contributed to my enjoyment factor.

i quit because life got in the way but i tried Arena for a while but that shit was absolute ass but likely due to all the metafaggotry as a local playgroup would get more people running homebrew nonsense instead.

add in massive power creep in standard cards, DEI crap, and flavor of the week tie-ins and you have a recipe for a shit product that all but forces wallet fatigue.

With the addition of planeswalker card type

MTG would unironically be a better game if Blue cards didn't exist.

seems all the anti-fun toxic shit comes in that color.

>>715028050 (OP)
Personally I'd say with Planeswalkers and how retarded the concepts of new planes have gotten. Objectively it's all the insane product release schedules and IP tie-ins. Magic has completely lost it's identity.

>>715028050 (OP)
product that's designed to rape your wallet bec ur a low iq consoomer deserves to die

>>715028050 (OP)
I stopped playing after the Lorwyn block, but they were alreaedy losing me with coloured artifacts and planeswalkers.
I thought Lorwyn was overall decent.

Depends on if you want to talk about identity decline or balance decline. The identity decline probably started either at wots like the other anon said, or when the multiverse stuff started, which led to all the crossovers that are even worse than both of them put together for a lot of people. For balance there have been plenty of really heinous sets that have nearly killed the game, but the newest examples would be the FIRE design era or the modern horizons sets causing eternal formats to effectively rotate with how high a power level the cards they printed are

>>715028936
>MTG would unironically be a better game if Blue cards didn't exist.
no

>>715028050 (OP)
Urza's Saga

>>715028050 (OP)
Just use the Jund test. Whenever Jund mid was a viable strategy, magic was good. When it’s not, magic is bad

>>715029302
there are blue adjacent cards in the other colors but less obnoxious.

i mean how many time niggas and nexus of fate do we need?

>>715028050 (OP)
War of the Spark. It all went to shit right after that set. Every set since Kaldheim has been hat sets combined with this image, LGBT stuff, and other crap as well as UB and EDH taking over.
Bloomburrow was a blessing in disguise as they were all animals, Duskmourn brought back good monster designs, and Dragonstorm proves that they can make attractive women again.

>>715029227
They were "already losing you" with stuff that first appears in Lorwyn and then right after in Shadowmoor?

When they raised the prices.

>>715029379
lol it really is this simple.

Return to Lorwyn is confirmed to be ruined

begin? that's hard to pinpoint, there's a lot of fuckups that have slowly bled out the game. It's pretty easy to find when it entered full nosedive though, that's around when they introduced the gatewatch.

>>715029639
I count Future Sight as the first coloured artifact.

>>715028050 (OP)
The game died...
When Homelands Released and was shit
When Black Summer happened
When Combo Winter happened
When 8th edition changed the card borders
When Mirrodin was broken and Kamigawa failed to fix it
When Lorwyn introduced Planeswalker Cards
When the game pivoted to marvelstyle shit with Origins
When BFZ was shit
When they accepted bans as a normal part of standard again during Kaladesh
When War of the Spark ended the storyline with hyper power creep and Plansewalker bloat
When Commander overtook Standard in terms of importance
When Tie in Cards to outside IP started being released
When Lockdown solidified Commander as the default format
When March of the Machines dropped the ball on the story again
When Universe beyond entered standard.
And a thousand other personal deaths


The game has died for people multiple different times.
Its better to look at the points when the game was most stable, which were the 5 years of the post-Combo Winter to 8th period and the 8 year long Post-Planeswalker Cards to Origins period.

>>715029815
Pffft
>You want a setting WITHOUT DEI? Privileged much?
They're so fucking predictable. It's what made 'It's okay to be white' work.

>>715029815
>cognizant of the aesthetics of the world
Didn't they literally turn Kamigawa into a cyberpunk setting when they did a return to it?

>>715030325
Yes. He's just full of shit. But it's not like Maro is known for telling the truth anyway.

>>715030325
Yep
OG Kamigawa was to close to real Japanese culture for the market to get it and so they shelved the plane and refused to come back to it thanks because they thought audiences would not "get it" again.
Then they wanted to do a cyberpunk set and someone said "why don't we use Kamigwa for this?' since people had been wanting it back and doing so would scrub all the unprofitable "weirdness" away.

>>715028050 (OP)
The moment they capitulated to feminists because of this art.

>>715028050 (OP)
Mythic rares in 2006.

>>715028936
Sorry, I only have fun when I know my opponent isn't. Sucks to suck, nigger.

>>715030535
>to close to real Japanese culture for the market to get it
I think most of the cards were just really lame. bushido wasn't interesting.

>>715030825
i know blue players enjoy solitaire but I'm just saying in general the game would be better if blue didn't exist.

>>715030859
The world would be better if you didn't exist yet here you are. Deal with it.

>>715030856
That's the real reason, but whenever anyone asked about going back "it was to weird" was the reasoning given for not.

>>715030859
Have fun when combo decks run rampant on your ass.

>>715031269
>>715031101
blue adjacent cards exist in other colors, the more uniquely blue cards are the problem, the prison decks, the NO decks, infinite extra turn decks, time nigga decks, ect

>>715028050 (OP)
Hasbro

>>715028050 (OP)
Innistrad/RTR is when the decline began, Theros kicked it up hard and Khans is when it became too much and I dropped it

around mirrodin when they changed the card frame

>>715031334
Sounds like you just hate being a loser. Why don't you play blue if it's so OP?

>>715031381
i played the RTR to Kahns period and had fun, i was never that good but really liked to homebrew things, this was one of my last decks before i got married and moved to a different town so going to the game store i used to play was a pain.

>>715031564
it's not overpowered, just anti-fun

>>715031334
>Prison
A white deck concept first and foremost.
>NO decks
Enjoy getting killed by a from hand combo every game because their are no counterspells to keep them in check
>infinite extra turn decks, time nigga decks
Only a problem if you play commander in which case you get what you deserve.

>>715031381
INN/RTR was the last brewers paradise

>>715031862
infinite turns was a big issue a few years ago on Magic Arena when Nexus of Fate and Teferi were in standard.

>>715031918
>Arena
You still get what you deserve for playing without the capability of being able to manually move past infinite turn wins.
Same issue with the MKM standard Aftermath Analyst combo decks on arena

>>715030540
qrd?

>>715031862
also i made a type of prison deck before, i stopped because the rounds took entirely took long.

it used enchantment creatures from theros and combined it with Sphere of Safety, i had rounds where i would out-ramp green decks and they give up because they couldn't afford the 25-30 mana to attack with one creature.

>>715032058
>REEE IT DEPICTS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

>>715032058
Brady Dobermouth was the head story and setting guy since the mid 2000s and letting this card happen got him kicked out of the company because of >>715032136 controversy.

>>715030540
God damn it has been so long I completely forgot about that bullshit. And then they spent so long trying to redeem her as part of the Jactice League crap.

>>715028050 (OP)
2016 and anyone who says otherwise doesn't play the game.

>>715029815
standard will suck as long as this retard continues to be in charge

>>715028050 (OP)
>stage 1
hasbro buyout

>stage 2
planeswalkers/mythic rares

>stage 3
mid 2010s when wotc entered the bfz/horizons era, where they explicitly printed cards in standard sets meant to break older formats (so modern/legacy players would buy packs), edh staples (so commander players would buy packs), and excessively broken standard cards (so standard players would buy packs every time new stuff got banned)
other later sets like MH1/2, WotS, LOTR etc get a lot of the flak, but eldrazi winter is what really kickstarted a lot of the cancer

Our friend group collectively decided that we would refuse to support planeswalker decks. I would imagine signs of decline there readily present before than that someone more knowledgeable and privy to scene than a filthy causal like me would know. But planeswalker was a marker as definitive directional change for the worse.

>>715031656
It's pretty fun for me. Every color has cheap shit. You're just too retarded to play blue so you impotently rage against it.

>>715028050 (OP)
Whenever they started printing 2-3 color lands every set

>>715029815
Jeez they're a bit behind the cultural curve aren't they?

>>715028050 (OP)
After Planar Chaos with the Jacestice League.
There were fun sets here and there but the stories sucked, there was never another threat like Yagmoth.
The heroes had to do a series of sacrifices both personal and gargantuan and it was never enough. They had to throw everything at him including the kitchen sink, twice. before he even began to feel it.

The Mirari saga was still pretty good, Ravnica was a fresh start.
The Planeswalker kids were never good and focusing on them is when WotC began to lose it. You are in a bad place when Yu-Gi-Oh can do better card stories.
Branded is better than the past 15 years of MTG stories.

Phyrexians and Bolas deserved better.
The end of War of the Spark still makes me mad.

>>715028050 (OP)
>When did the decline of Magic the Gathering begin?

>>715031656
"blue bad and unfun" is a very common calling card from someone who's never been above a kitchen table. You know what sucks harder than having your epic 6 drop countered? Getting grief scammed.

>>715028050 (OP)
I take one look at it as an outsider and see that they started doing weird crossovers. I would think that it started going downhill whenever they let people have minecraft cards in the game.

>>715032236
Yep.
Kaladesh was utter shit but I had fun with Amonkhet, Ixalan, and Dominaria. I thought we were back but then War of the Spark saga happened.

>>715032529
i'm sure it's fun to play blue but usually pretty anti-fun to play against.

black/red/white tend to have most of the less annoying parts of blue but still has the utility, usually being 3 cost cards vs 2.

if blue was removed entirely it would make the game better, you could balance this by reducing the hexproof/shroud cards.

>>715032795
possibly but most of the money would be from people buying packs and playing casually/friday night magic since tournament fags would likely just buy singles online.

i've played against blue decks that didn't even have a win condition and all they did was shut down everything you did, sure it was on Arena at the time but to spite the person i made them play the round out, took them nearly an hour before they realized and they forfeited themselves even though there was nothing i could do anyway.

>>715032956
Sound like your issue is less with blue and more with the fact that arena is a bad way to paly only offset by its convenience.

>>715029815
MTG, DnD, and now Baldur’s Gate 3 are cultural phenomena that terminally progressive in the most unhinged ways. How did these kinds of things become so obsessed with being as gay as possible?

>>715033120
i stopped playing Arena years ago so your probably right, i would prefer tabletop still but i got married almost 9 years ago and moved back to my hometown, hard to justify driving back every week or more to continue playing, especially when i had my son to raise.

>>715033153
The company in charge of both D&D and MtG is based in Seattle and its hiring pool and the social circle of its employees are in Seattle.

we beat up the kid who played blue in our friend/hobby group till he played something else

violence solves everything

>>715033383
amazing how much more fun tabletop play is when the opponent is within punching range.

>>715028050 (OP)
Modern Horizons 1 while not the start of the decline was about the time the decline kicked into over drive.

>>715028050 (OP)
M15 frame change/Dragons of Tarkir/BFZ as a set as well as expedition shit
those three things were the biggest signs of 'oh shit they are gonna start acting real retarded'

>>715029815
Is UB like MTG actually the secret to saving MTG then? Most of these franchises won't let WOTC race change all their characters(except LOTR)

>>715028050 (OP)
magic has been awful lately, truly abysmal. aetherdrift sucked, duskmorne sucked, bloomburrow sucked, thunder junction sucked. wilds of eldraine was the last one i had fun with. until final fantasy. i hate UB, but FF is so great and magic's worldbuilding so shite nowadays that it was kino. and the gameplay was fucking amazing. but they made it so goddamn expensive and did NOT print the amount that they should have. even singles are crazy expensive. they should have just used amano art as the main art, these fucking alt arts for 5 dollar cards that go for 40 just because the art is what it should be instead of the shitty digital art that wizards has put on so many cards. im losing it, i fucking hate wotc and that i am still roped into buying their product.

>friend wants me to get i to mtg
>says there's a pirate deck i can buy (i fucking love pirates)
>look inside
>pirates are fat women

He got embarrassed and we played something else lmao

>>715033740
Dragons (and Fate) were such a let down after Khans was a slam dunk
Triple Khans is up there with original Innistrad and Ravnica as one of the best draft sets of all time, and its standard was incredibly healthy, even with the percieved dominance of siege rhino the truth is that there were dozens of viable decks and it wasn't until cards like CoCo, Dromoka's Command and Gideon that Abzan decks became broken

>>715029391
>nexus of fate
this shit is gay, but counterspells and time nigger are based

Snapcaster Mage
gay ass card for gay ass decks

>>715036647
par for the course for blue cards.

>>715028050 (OP)
Is the slab signed or the actual card?

>>715030182
Draft, sealed and commander are just overall better formats. Standard and historic just maintains the same exact meta rotation.

Commander for fun with the bros
Draft/sealed for a test of understanding of the game and ability to create new decks on the fly.

>>715028050 (OP)
Fucking over the game's most beloved artist by giving into the mentally ill minority was the beginning of the end.
It was a dividing moment that separates old and current MtG for me.

>>715034617
Teferi and Elspeth are the only two Planeswalkers I legitimately enjoy in story.
Seriously if the set story doesn't include either of them I just stop reading.

>>715036976
i feel sealed is better than draft, helps equalize the playing field as with Draft you can get fucked over if your neighbor picked the same card colors you were going for.

sure it is more expensive but you just get your cards and do the best you can manage with it, no weird gimmicks or money drafters, ect.

when they added mythic rare and made it so damage didn't use the stack. I think this was also the same time they added planeswalkers as cards. this is objectively the point where the game jumped the shark and if you don't agree it's because you're a zoomer who started playing after it happened.

>>715037163
If you haven't been interested in the game for almost 20 years, why would you even think or talk about it. The game has had planeswalker for a longer amount of time now then it didn't.

>>715036985
Terese Nielsen is god tier, but between Seb McKinnon (the only good modern mtg artist), Richard Kane Ferguson, the Foglios, John Avon, Chris Rush, Rebecca Guay...you have so many beloved artists.
Almost nothing in the last 15 years though ever since they cheapened out by going to almost entirely digital art with restrictive prompts.

>>715037421
>If you haven't been interested in the game for almost 20 years, why would you even think or talk about it.
for the same reason people are still fans of dad rock bands that broke up 40 years ago. it was good when I was into it.

>>715036985
she was ousted because of politics but not in the way you think. she donated art to a podcast part of new tang dynasty television, a falun gong funded podcast. it was at a time that wotc was really trying to break into the chinese market. they had to oust her or they couldn't do business in china. everyone just thought it was because she liked a jk rowling tweet or something which was really more of a convenient cover where wotc didn't have to outright explain WHY they ousted her because there was already a bunch of discussion happening around her that they capitalized on.

Man, the art on these old cards is so genuinely cool. You dont really see art like that anymore

>>715028050 (OP)
When they stopped making the ante gambling cards

>>715037836
>she donated art to a podcast part of new tang dynasty television, a falun gong funded podcast
lolwat
is this true

>>715029378
That was peak MtG, tho. Urza and Masques was funnest time to play.

>>715037987
Yes. That dumbass tranny scribbling on TN art basic lands did a fantastic job covering for it.

>>715028050 (OP)
They declined in every aspect except the most important one, which is profits. The only customer base seems to be scalpers and degenerate collectors, which is so small yet so foolishly rich that one is equivalent to a thousand actual players.
The UBs and Secret Lairs give me a fucking aneurism, I just can't fathom that absurdity.

>>715037987
yes. the podcast is called "edge of wonder". it is a conspiracy podcast, sometimes described as a "q anon podcast". it, like the epoch times, was used more as anti communist propaganda by anti-CCP chinese parties. edge of wonder is a new tang dynasty television podcast. if it was just for her assumptions of conspiracy, why did seb mckinnon not get a public ousting for his support of the trucker convoy? it all has to do with business, terese was ousted with a public statement as a promise to the CCP and a show of good faith. wotc really wanted the chinese market. a year before the ousting, wotc made china only planeswalkers called mu yanling and jiang yanggu.

tl;dr companies don't give a fuck about your pet problems or politics, they care about what will or won't impede them making money.

>>715037836
>look up falun gong
>Led by Li Hongzhi, who is viewed by adherents as a god-like figure, Falun Gong practitioners operate a variety of organizations in the United States and elsewhere, including the dance troupe Shen Yun
>mfw my city has been hosting Shen Yun for 20 years
Huh.

>>715037084
I wish stores ran sealed more often, I only ever see stores offering draft unless it's a pre-release

>>715039223
most major cities have been hosting shen yun for a great many years.

>>715028936
Most unfun cancer mechanic is chiefly green, landfall
Most consistently unfun cancer creature type is green, Hydra

>>715039225
a lot of players prefer draft. more skill intensive, less at the whims of RNG. not to mention cheaper.

>>715039225
likely due to the cost of entry leading to low turnouts, don't each player need to buy 6 packs each if i recall? not sure what packs costs these days but that isn't a small amount.

>>715039391
maybe in tournaments, but in standard Green is usually weenie hut jr and dies to removal when i used to play, usually just mana ramping into huge creatures with trample.

>>715030325
That's super baffling to me because people are way more into that stuff now than they were the first time around, they just saw it didn't land the first time and didn't stop to consider how much audiences have changed since then

>>715039391
The last time a hydra has been even remotely playable in any tournament environment was hydroid krasis in 2019.

>>715039495
It was a stupid decision. From memory the complaints about the original Kamigawa set was nothing to do with the setting or aesthetics and more do to with underwhelming mechanics.

>>715028050 (OP)
i dunno man, probably that viking set where they made half of them niggers for no reason. like mtg was always "diverse" but it made sense based on the setting of the plane being explored in each set, i.e. kamigawa was asian and there were no browns or even whites, but then they started judeo-diversifying every single plane and set for no reason and it really went to shit.

and don't forget they fucking made aragorn black in their lotr set

>>715028050 (OP)
When the magic awards program ended.

The game started to really die when they introduced planeswalkers and "mythic rares" although I do love Alara. However, adding a new special class of card that was always a new special super rarity was a completely Jewish move and only made scalping worse.

War if the spark
Soulless shit set that was created to imitate marvel avengers popularity.
>that shifty trailer with royalties free Linkin park song cover

>>715039401
>more skill intensive, less at the whims of RNG.
i've made top 8 in 90% of my local pre-releases and limited PTQs for the last 15 years, usually a scene of about 150-200 people for these bigger events. sure you can sweep if you get some megabomb and get paired against shitters, but it's a lot more skill intensive format than people seem to think it is. sadly I suck ass at draft because I just don't find it very fun and refuse to practice it, so I've never actually taken the top spot in a PTQ and "gone pro"

>>715028050 (OP)
Ravnica

>>715039863
I think War of the Spark was the first set that was made primarily with Commander in mind and started to rapid decline of standard.

>>715039839
i still treasure my foil wastelands

>>715028525
This guy understands the game

>>715039495
>>715039651
cyberpunk kamigawa it was a test. they wanted to see how well players would receive a shifting of magics aesthetics. likely the reason for a test at a shift was because it was also around the time UB starting up (2 years after the first appearance of UB in ikoria with godzilla cards, enough time to take some initial responses and shift its look/design). one of the complaints about UB is that it "doesn't fit the aesthetics of magic". so, wizards then shifts the aesthetics of magic so that "ANYTHING can be magic :^)" fast forward and you have cheerleaders in sneakers in duskmorn because people were okay with some of the other shifts. now we are getting a sci-fi space set. now people can't really say things like "doctor who doesn't fit the aesthetic of magic", because their worldbuilding now allows for CRT televisions, sneakers, star wars-esque starfighters, and anything else.

>>715039948
You're right but the irony is that planeswalkers are at their weakest in EDH where they're more easily dealt with and put a target on your back. So they had to start making them even stronger with catastrophic results like t3feri.

>>715039868
there still is a lot of skill in a sealed event, but you can get absolutely blasted by RNG in ways that is far less likely than in draft. in draft, despite having less packs you actually see more cards to build your deck with.

>>715040081
NTA but i actually prefer Sealed because it forces you to play different colors than you would otherwise settle into as you just gotta run the best deck you can put together.

>>715037853
and you never will again now that AI has become part of every artists workflow

>>715040139
yeah, but multi color decks are dependent on the availability of dual/tri lands
some sets print them at common, some at uncommon, some just don't have any, and even still you're unlikely to get more than 1-2 of the colors you need if you want to play a tricolor deck
makes me miss khans, the lifelands were so good since the format was slower paced and also made up for being wedges with the prevalence of morph creatures

>>715039401
Sadly not any more, the introduction of RNG giving up to, what? 4 rares or mythics in a pack has broken the limited math in bad ways. Leading to a direct and explicit dumbing down of the limited card pool for each set to compensate for the higher power level.

>>715037084
Drafting is a high skill format where you read the signs and do exactly that: find the open lane and not end at the same color as 'neighbour'.
Sealed is more luck based.
>>715037163
Damage on stack was the worst fucking thing in the game and for long time.

>>715039948
>>715040016
Commander started being taken into account starting with possibly Theros Block at the earliest with Shadows being the tipping point where cards became so blatant as "Commander Designs" that theu admitted to making the legendary Spider purely to fill a commander niche.
When they released the 2011 decks they were a one off novelty product and they were shocked by the success. So for 2012 they rushed out the toolkit reprints to have something commander related for the year and have been letting it creep u on the game since.

>>715040139
same for drafting. if everyone at the draft table just tries to force a GB deck, they are all going to end up with a third of a GB deck and a muddied mess of other colours with an unfocused deck. drafting has a certain set of skills and just trying to force a colour because you are comfortable with it's playstyle or you pulled a bomb might lead you down a path where you deck is not as strong as it could be.
that being said, how you draft changes dependant on the set and some sets have more freedom in how you draft than others, there is a whole lot more variance in the skill of drafting across sets than there is in the skill of sealed across sets. there are some draft sets where drafting is very "on rails" and you do sort of just force a colour and end up with something good every time.
>>715040498
depends on the set. thunder junction was very RNG heavy it felt like, too bomby. aetherdrift was kind of an on rails draft but the actual matches ended up having a lot of complex decisions. duskmorn had a heavy skew in power levels of the colours (and while green wasn't the strongest, it had an uncommon 9/9 trample for 7 that draws cards when it gets targeted, which was just stupid). FF has been pretty fair with some complex drafting and gameplay decisions with nothing too stupidly powerful. i have enjoyed it far more than pretty much any set in the last few years.

>>715028525
Came here to post this. The New Phyrexia / Zendikar block was the strongest the game had ever felt -- going from that to the dogwater that was RtR was devastating.

>>715028287
for real?

>>715040836
If you have people 'forcing' a color pair, they are not good in drafting and the better player will come up with a better deck.
Thats why drafting is more skill intensive than sealed.

Mid-late 10s.
>with Amonkhet, physical cardstock quality and printer quality control plummeted leading to pringles straight out of the pack, that has not been fixed to this day
>fringe playable Kess, Dissident Mage literally unplayable because it only existed in foil, and every foil was curled to the point that it was considered marked
>explosion of commander popularity
>gatewatch
>no more playtesting for extended formats leading to eldrazi winter
>reprint packs with 10-15 dollar per pack MSRP and decks not actually getting cheaper at all

>>715040865
>The New Phyrexia / Zendikar block
That was the last time I played mtg, or paid any attention to it

Used to play all the time on cockatrice too which I guess is dead now or something?

>>715038658
you talk about corporations like they are thinking and feeling entities unto themselves

but humans made these decisions, not a robot, not a system. A person sat down and said, "lets try and ruin this woman's life so we have a shot at the chinese market" and a couple other people went, "hell yea".

>>715040949
yes, that is what i said. that there is more skill in drafting. but the skill required to draft is actually different across sets, with some sets having more complex drafting decisions while some sets have a very "on rails" draft that doesn't require you to think that much while you play.
sealed is overall more RNG dependent than draft, but there is still skill involved and your ability to construct a feasible deck out of what is in front of you rather than what you draft is a skill more easily transferred across sets.

>>715040443
>makes me miss [one of the worst drafts ever]
A daring thesis

>>715041318
yes. it was made by a committee of humans. many of whom have no emotional investment in the product, only monetary investment. the higher ups at hasbro could not give a fuck about whether the worldbuilding is good or the aesthetic is good. all they care about is "will this sell?" that's it. they also regularly fire people and "ruin their lives" just because it didn't fit in their budget for the year or whatever other reason. it is business, and in business you live or you die.

>>715041448
triple KTK was one of the best draft formats of all time. the people who didn't like it are people who were not good at draft and did not understand the game.

>>715041318
>A person sat down and said, "lets try and ruin this woman's life so we have a shot at the chinese market"
You're making it sound like wizards ran a smear campaign against her and stoked fires for a witch hunt.
All they did was stop contracting her for art. They didn't even put out some stupid virtue signaling statement like they usually do.
Wizards is a faggy ass company, but this one time it's not on them.

>>715041592
>take every morph card you see because removal sucks and itll protect your ponyback brigades
Wow so best format very skill

>>715028287
That's way after you secondary cunt.

>>715037853
>>715040232
Post the best MTG card art and artists

>>715041930
>implying

>>715042469
NTA but Richard Kane-Ferguson and Ron Spears.

>>715041930
>removal sucks
??? Black and red had great removal as usual with cards like Murderous Cut, Throttle, Arc Lightning, white had great situational removal like kill shot and smite the monstrous, savage punch was amazing in green, even a lot of removal which would normally be unplayable in other formats was viable in Khans due to its slower speed.
There were a wealth of great common and uncommon removals in the format, no matter which wedge you played you should have access to some good picks. KTK was one of the last draft formats where it didn't feel like you insta-lost to a single bomb you couldn't answer, the best bomb was Wingmate Roc and while it was great, it was no means unbeatable

>>715043719
don't mind him, he is just retarded and got upset at the mind games of morph despite that being such an interesting aspect of the set.

>>715040615
>Damage on stack was the worst fucking thing in the game and for long time.
sounds like a skill issue. if everything else uses the stack why shouldn't combat damage?

>>715042469
Elesh Norn
Johannes Voss
Jason chan
Steve Argyle
Terese Nielsen

>>715028050 (OP)
Let's ignore the art direction and the feminism-induced downfall for a spell.
Commander was the beginning of the end.
Although it took years to materialize the power creep that format desired, I will confidently pinpoint that as the lynchpin that started it all and held the mentality needed for the ridiculously overtuned cards.

>>715046142
this comic is confusing because on the one hand it seems to be making fun of commander players but on the other hand commander players are the only ones that look like they're having fun

>>715029815
lmfaooooo

>>715046246
The problem wasn't Commander players, it was idiots coming into the format thinking it was supposed to be a serious competitive format. The WotC starting printing high value cards specifically to boost the format and driver sales which only reinforced that problem more.

>>715028050 (OP)
When they replaced brown with grey.

>>715028050 (OP)
I still play Arena on steam. I don't buy any packs though. They can fuck off.

It takes a bit of grind, but you can farm wildcards and make a couple of good Historic, Timeless and Brawl decks for free. I still have fun.

>>715046897
>This nigga loves shittifacts
But seriously, while I don't mind the change, there is just something about the old frame that can't be beat.

>>715028050 (OP)
Probably around 2008-2012. That's when the decline of everything begun.

>>715028050 (OP)
When they started hiring women as designers.