same here. it was 7th to 10th by the way. mtg jumped the shark when they added ultra rares and made it so mogg fanatic couldn't trade with a 2/2 anymore.
For the record I started with Urza's block, so this isn't pure nostalgia talking. Also funnily enough as much fun as I had with Ravnica block and even Return to Ravnica block, it was Return to Return to Ravnica that made me bow out of Magic. I just didn't want to go back to there a third time.
For the record I started with Urza's block, so this isn't pure nostalgia talking. Also funnily enough as much fun as I had with Ravnica block and even Return to Ravnica block, it was Return to Return to Ravnica that made me bow out of Magic. I just didn't want to go back to there a third time.
I just said I'd backed out with Return to Return to Ravnica. Or War of the Spark, whatever. I guess I'm okay with Magic trying new things, and a cyberpunk magic Japan setting is certainly new. I'm fine with it in principle.
The problem is that it's part of the New Phyrexia storyline, and I fricking hate New Phyrexia. I have absolutely despised every single reference to Phyrexia since the end of Invasion block, with the exception of Time Spiral since the entire point of that set was time shenanigans and nostalgia. Otherwise it's not that I hate the idea of five-color Phyrexians or hate any specific story points. It's that I hate that the Phyrexians came back at all.
The entire *point* of Invasion block was ending the Phyrexian threat, forever. Magic should have moved on to new storylines.
I also hate the current paradigm of block releases. I liked the 1 Big Set/2 Small Set paradigm that dominated most of Magic's history; the two-set paradigm made me feel like we weren't spending enough time on given worlds or stories or mechanics. The current paradigm of running at breakneck speed through planes and mechanics and stories is just too much.
weird, when kamigawa came out it was called the death of MTG. I Remember it well, it was 2005ish, right before Ravnica.
And when Ravnica came out it was not regarded as great at start, I guess people were burned out from Kamigawa, but then Ravnica slowly got its reputation.
As
That depends on how you define "golden age," doesn't it?
Some people in MtG threads like to throw around the phrase "as Garfield intended." If that's your definition, Magic probably stops being good before Ice Age - not just because of somewhat lackluster The Dark and especially Fallen Empires, but because Chronicles and base set reprints were an answer to the player demand for more copies of the best cards instead of just playing with what they had and possibly never seeing the best cards in person. Overprinting to meet demand and then Reserve List to soothe the collectors who jumped on board after the comic book market crash changed the nature of the game to include another demographic that wasn't initially catered to. You can feel the repercussions of it today, with Secret Lairs and special card treatments.
Late 90s are when Magic finds its legs. Block structure takes shape with Mirage-Visions-Weatherlight, and is backported to Ice Age-Homelands-Alliances, with Coldsnap knocking out Homelands much later. Weatherlight plot centralizes lore - which is bad if you're a purist, but provides a backbone for the sets that unifies their tone somewhat. Tempest and Saga block speed up the game, but more importantly create A LOT of tourney-viable decks. Tournaments start to get professional, to the point of appearing on TV. "Classic" 6th Edition gets commercials. Garfield vs Finkel (then world champ) box set is promoted with their match on ESPN (2 I think). Masques block throttles things down (on purpose), but Invasion is a strong finish. Whether this "golden age" cuts off in 1999 or 2001 is your call.
Mirrodin was memorable but divisive. Kamigawa was another purposeful slowdown. Ravnica, though, is another good candidate for at least a "silver age." Card power level rises again, deck variety is huge, lore reception is positive - all things people remember fondly. Coldsnap may be a small dip, but it's a supplemental set. Time Spiral and Lorwyn are strong too...
said Mirrodin was another high point, higher than Ravnica imho
for "normies" the greatest magic golden age was in early 2010s, circa 2012-2015 I started to see more and more people being interested in it and there was a great outreach online to spread the game mostly by fans. That Tolarian fella was a byproduct of this time imho
That's a good point - if Magic making it onto TV in the 90s is an indicator of a golden age, then online outreach in the 2010s should be considered in a similar light. If Magic wasn't popular enough online, art on Triumph of Ferocity wouldn't have gotten caught up in all that mess.
One other thing to mention are the video game adaptations. 2010s saw a string of rather good ones on Steam. I think the initial one was an XBox port of Magic 2010, but the 2012 through 2014 entries kept improving deckbuilding and added play modes (Archenemy/Planechase). The 2015 one was largely a disappointment, though, mainly due to the monetization scheme they introduced. And then they killed the series for Magic Origins, which was supposed to match all releases going forward but didn't add full sets and eventually got killed to make room for Arena. So in those terms, 2012 through 2014 were a great time.
I called Mirrodin "divisive" because the 2003 card frame change was the reason I quit. Those Steam games were good enough to make me get over it. I still harbor some resentment towards Mirrodin, but I can't deny that it was an uptick similar to Saga and should be regarded accordingly in terms of its impact on the game overall.
Mirrodin was the least active standard format of all time, and with the underpowered Kamigawa set that was so different then anything out before, or for a while, after, it was jarring.
I remember the joke being they banned the Mirrodion block just to make Kamigawa playable.
Ravnica is herald as the set that saved Magic, and really, the Kamigawa/Ravnica standard was pretty awesome. You had boros deck wins, you had owling mine variants, you had Dredge when it was still a fair mechanic, and so many different Greater Good decks, one using Yusei was awesome.
Ravnica/Cold Snap/Time Spiral was also an awesome standard format.
Personally though I'll always have a soft spot for Alara/Zendikar. In retrospect the blood was in the water with Scars of Mirrodin, but that was still a cool set.
Agreed. Lots of good periods. But this is the one I frequently post here. Powerful but balanced and seemingly every archetype was good including combo, prison and LD based decks. Not just varying degrees of midrange slop which has felt like basically everything for the last decade or so.
That depends on how you define "golden age," doesn't it?
Some people in MtG threads like to throw around the phrase "as Garfield intended." If that's your definition, Magic probably stops being good before Ice Age - not just because of somewhat lackluster The Dark and especially Fallen Empires, but because Chronicles and base set reprints were an answer to the player demand for more copies of the best cards instead of just playing with what they had and possibly never seeing the best cards in person. Overprinting to meet demand and then Reserve List to soothe the collectors who jumped on board after the comic book market crash changed the nature of the game to include another demographic that wasn't initially catered to. You can feel the repercussions of it today, with Secret Lairs and special card treatments.
Late 90s are when Magic finds its legs. Block structure takes shape with Mirage-Visions-Weatherlight, and is backported to Ice Age-Homelands-Alliances, with Coldsnap knocking out Homelands much later. Weatherlight plot centralizes lore - which is bad if you're a purist, but provides a backbone for the sets that unifies their tone somewhat. Tempest and Saga block speed up the game, but more importantly create A LOT of tourney-viable decks. Tournaments start to get professional, to the point of appearing on TV. "Classic" 6th Edition gets commercials. Garfield vs Finkel (then world champ) box set is promoted with their match on ESPN (2 I think). Masques block throttles things down (on purpose), but Invasion is a strong finish. Whether this "golden age" cuts off in 1999 or 2001 is your call.
Mirrodin was memorable but divisive. Kamigawa was another purposeful slowdown. Ravnica, though, is another good candidate for at least a "silver age." Card power level rises again, deck variety is huge, lore reception is positive - all things people remember fondly. Coldsnap may be a small dip, but it's a supplemental set. Time Spiral and Lorwyn are strong too...
...so as far as "modern" Magic goes, you could call that "silver age" its golden age. Granted, you get the introduction of mythic rarity and planeswalkers that will make some people question that. But people seem to have a hard time pinning down the "end" of it because it's been a gradual slide. Until Khans, that is. Because that's where the card face changes (again), and the block system breaks down (into 2 sets per, not completely yet) which leads to storyline collapse - both immediately, with the way Eldrazi are handled on Zendikar/Innistrad, and eventually, with singular sets feeling disjointed.
When the art used to look like something an old bearded pipesmoker would hang up on his wall was prominent, and it didn't look like anime or globohomosexual digital art.
I remember the controversy over John Avon's beloved land art being painted digitally rather than by hand, or hand painted and then digitally enhanced. In the earliest of days, art direction was almost non-existent. Sometimes artists would be told the name of the card, sometimes the color. Very rarely did they know what the card might do. Sometimes art would come in and then designers had to make a card out of it. Cohesive art direction is a good thing. But corporations have spent the last few decades turning in-house jobs into freelance ones to save money, so we end up with both oppressive control over what appears on the cards and lower quality of produced art. Also because as artists get better they want more pay, and Wizards just switches to cheaper options again.
Even if the death is fuzzy, Planeswalkers where the absolute last nail in the coffin.
Taking staples and putting them on a free repeating stick is just braindead. Make most entire decks just support to a planeswalker.
I can take an old teaching deck I have and mop the floor with newbies, because they are so inflexible and dependant on thier planeswalker as an answer and win con. They don't even understand the idea of "answers".
When the art used to look like something an old bearded pipesmoker would hang up on his wall was prominent, and it didn't look like anime or globohomosexual digital art.
Different anon. I would say that there's a hierarchy. Old MTG art > Anime >>>>>>> Modern MTG art > Very old MTG art where you can't tell what you're looking at.
Anime is just a series of coos and yaps. I've never liked it and have used this site since 06. Of what I've seen from screenshots, there are only a few that have artistic merit. To memory, that one about the guy who designed the Zero.
That genre harms your mental health. Read, listen to music (but not K-pop), or watch film. I guarantee you'll look back if your noosphere progresses and go "Huh maybe all of those Jap cartoons about teenage girls wasn't the best media to consume in my mid 20s."
>I've never liked it and have used this site since 06
You started coming to moot's personal Evangellion circlejerk website where he and his friends posted about anime all day every day, and yet you didn't like anime?
I think they invited some anime artists to do art for Neon Dynasty, but their efforts were apparently smothered by unified art direction. I'd like that set more if they went full anime waifu.
Different anon. I would say that there's a hierarchy. Old MTG art > Anime >>>>>>> Modern MTG art > Very old MTG art where you can't tell what you're looking at.
Post very old MTG art where you can't tell what you're looking at.
When it comes to anime, It's not even about liking or disliking it. It's more about getting all these things mixed: anime, doctor who, WH40K or Fallout. The game looks better when it has some consistency. I know It's well past the point where WotC cares about that, but it wasn't like that before.
It's funny how often that's true. I started at the very end of Saga block, so it always felt like I was trying to catch up due to Masques being a slowdown reaction to how powerful Saga was. It seemed like everything was Saga, with only a few cards from Masques even making a dent in Type 2 (Standard). Then Invasion hits and half the field is playing Fires of Yavimaya (Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elf, Blastoderm, Rishadan Port to tap opponent for tempo, Assault/Battery to kill enemy mana dork) and half the rest is playing Rebels (upward search + Lin Sivvi recursion).
>beta weebs actually think this
Grow up, Peter Pan
Too true. I kinda liked Ramunap Red and the Energy decks of that 2017-ish era but that's still pretty rough. And the FIRE era followed immediately afterward and that was obviously shit.
I also enjoyed Invasion/Odyssey a lot too but mostly because I liked playing Tog. Not because it was a particularly diverse metagame..
There were some metas that were "bad" in terms of lack of diversity but I found games fun all the same. Tog vs Tog and Caw Blade mirrors were some of the most engaging Magic.
That was the nice thing about Tog. They were long , grindy old school kill all your stuff take forever- lol jk Tog, kill you. When Tog came down if you untapped, they died. Or that turn if you played Corpse Dance or the like.
1996-2002ish. Premodern.
1994-1995 the overall power level is a bit too high, but the cheaper cards from 94-95 could be okay.
MtG had a pretty short run before it progressively went to shit. About 8 years.
I don't think there is such think as a "golden age". Magic was always a complex and hard to manage game and WotC, while they often get criticised for making bad decisions and making cards too powerful and broken nowadays, weren't that different or how do you explain Homelands becoming such a bad set, Urza block being too broken that it caused alot of issues in tournaments or Kamigawa block being weak and Lorwyn not selling well, despite having a nice setting. In the end I don't think it matters how WotC decides cause in the end it's the people that makes something out of the game, it's definitely a great game with friends at home having your own rules and what cards you prefer but Magic itself isn't a perfect game but I might be wrong, this is how I view things, the more I read what other people say about the game.
It has been a very different game giving different experiences at different points in its history. It's more than "this card is OP", it's "the meta has shifted so dramatically that it I don't get what I used to enjoy out of it anymore."
Similarly, the people who like it now, probably wouldn't be so into how it played back when I liked it in the 90s.
>while they often get criticised for making bad decisions and making cards too powerful and broken nowadays >Urza block being too broken that it caused alot of issues in tournaments
The difference is back when Urza's sets fricked up the game the designers were berated and told their jobs were next if they did it again. Now they release Urza block-tier frickups yearly and pat themselves on the back with their "best selling set ever"s
>Golden Age
Masques and Invasion. >Silver Age
Mirrodin, Kamigawa and Ravnica. Exclude Kamigawa if you want. >Bronze Age
Scars of Mirrodin and Innistrad.
The game itself is so good but the card design never even came close to peaking after alpha/beta. Every set since then is more self aware, pandering and cowardly than its predecessor.
Alpha through alliances is all decent, although legends is somewhat sullied by the legend mechanic which has always been shit and I've always hated. Game designers should not be allowed to inflict their ocs on people
There are three eras that people consider to be golden ages. >Boomer Golden Age
Alliances to Exodus: Cards had increased in complexity and the game had finally found its footing.
Ended by Urza's block braking the game balance over itself and then going into the horribly under powered Mercadian Masques Block leading into an uneven transition into the 2000s
>Most Veteran players Golden Age
Ravnica to Future Sight
game had finally found its footing again with Ravnica and had a solid yet also experimental run of sets
Ended by the introduction of Planeswaker Cards in Lorwyn block and the creation of New World Order Card Design in Shards block.
>The Golden Age most exiting Players think of
Innistrad to Origins (Twin Banning)
Had a incredibly solid run of Standard formats, drafts, and the rise and peak of modern as a format
Ended by Wizards intentionally fricking with a good thing to try and increase profit while working less.
You missed millennial golden age. 5th-7th. I wasn't old enough to catch really early magic, and I got in with... Stronghold? Exodus? One of those, whichever came first, I don't recall. But those sets before 8th were a fun meta.
The "Golden Age" ends before 2002, however a person wants to chart where the climax of that period actually sits will largely fall to personal preference but 2002-07is a low point before Alara kicked off a small renaissance from 08-11.
Really what I'm getting at is there is Classic M:tG and there is New School M:TG and while I don't want to point at the elephant in the room the divide is created by the introduction and proliferation of Planeswalkers as a necessary consideration for deck building. The Golden Age is in the Classic period but the New School had it's own mini golden age for people who liked the direction Magic as a game has gone in.
I'm utterly ignorant of anything that happened after the first Khans pre-release as that when I finally, permanently, threw in the towel. That was the last time I spent money on Magic product.
I am fascinated by your preferences towards what is a golden age as it seems contrary to the average community tent poles (Game Environment surrounding OG Ravnica and Game Environment surrounding Return to Ravnica).
Could you go into more detail why?
NTAYRT but once modern started and the introduced equipment, they really shifted the gameplay style towards aggro compared to how it played in older sets. Matches started being shorter, plays got simpler, fewer people included a combo subtheme. Not to mention it got much easier to find singles because of online shopping, which made the average power of standard decks shoot up, which again puts a pressure on the meta to veer towards faster decks and run fewer suboptimal cards. The game was different in a lot of ways before 2002ish.
the big transition in magic philosophy is when they stopped printing cards that are good in combination with other things and started printing cards that are simply just good by themselves.
Honestly any point prior to m15 can be argued.
You had the super oldschool days, The pre 8th edition premodern era, Mirrodin and ravnica stuff, The SPECTACULAR lorwyn to New phyrexia times, and the Innistrad to Theros time point. It all had problems but largely all had awesome stuff going on. What im trying to say is MTG has neen steadily downhill since they added m15 cardframes.
Magic died with 8th edition and the new card border. I'll never be over it, every single card since 2003 has looked like utter dogshit. What kind of israelite frick thought itd be a good idea magic cards look like a sleek modern software UI, they used to look so much better
Ehh. I could have got over the uglier card design. It's a bit easier to read with more contrast at least. But card gameplay got worse starting with 8th, and the game got Staler with age.
I do prefer the older borders, but the change in general style didn't bother me that much. What did bother me is that they changed the border color of artifacts from brown to silver. It's hard for me to even say why it bothers me so much, but I guess the brown borders just made it seem like you were looking at a page from a spellbook. Meanwhile the silver border just feels so lifeless and mechanical.
Initially 8E artifacts' border color was so washed out you'd mistake it for white. Had to look at the cost sometimes. Later print runs made the silver darker, but the feeling might have stayed. Especially if you saw them side by side with the old brown.
Golden Age was everything prior to The Dark. Silver Age was everything prior to Urza's Saga. Copper Age was from the fixed urza meta through Scourge. the Lead Age ended with Innistrad. the Shitstank age extends from then to the present.
Might as well call your Copper Age the "old foil" age. Foils were added with set 2 of Saga block.
I just said I'd backed out with Return to Return to Ravnica. Or War of the Spark, whatever. I guess I'm okay with Magic trying new things, and a cyberpunk magic Japan setting is certainly new. I'm fine with it in principle.
The problem is that it's part of the New Phyrexia storyline, and I fricking hate New Phyrexia. I have absolutely despised every single reference to Phyrexia since the end of Invasion block, with the exception of Time Spiral since the entire point of that set was time shenanigans and nostalgia. Otherwise it's not that I hate the idea of five-color Phyrexians or hate any specific story points. It's that I hate that the Phyrexians came back at all.
The entire *point* of Invasion block was ending the Phyrexian threat, forever. Magic should have moved on to new storylines.
I also hate the current paradigm of block releases. I liked the 1 Big Set/2 Small Set paradigm that dominated most of Magic's history; the two-set paradigm made me feel like we weren't spending enough time on given worlds or stories or mechanics. The current paradigm of running at breakneck speed through planes and mechanics and stories is just too much.
I don't know if you paid attention to Magic lore (and you shouldn't, at this point) but they made New Phyrexia even worse. I hold no love for Mirrodin I quit because of card frame and power level but I understand how players who liked it felt about Scars block. Especially since Mirrodin Pure got dangled in front of them, and then Maro went all "whoops we didn't realize you guys would want that" (which is exactly what he later did with Khans, come to think of it).
Anwyay, the "worse" part is that the "new phyreixan invasion" broke even the New Phyrexian lore. "One drop of oil corrupts an entire plane"? Nah, it's no longer an existential threat or even universally deadly. Phyrexians are death machines? Nah, here are some humans in dentist cosplay. Phyrexians keep fighting even after the main force's defeat? Nah, Elesh Norn turned herself into a 5G tower controlling them, and now that she's dead everything just shuts down. And the biggest insult - did you think defeating Phyrexians would bring Mirrodin back? Nah, let's do a planeswap (since planeshift merged two planes and this didn't) between the phased-out Zhalfir and all of Mirrodin. Undo Teferi's tragic backstory for a win that didn't even need the cavalry fricking Segovia beats back the invasion then undo phyrexian corruption of the vast majority of named characters too.
Just...frick the lore. Who needs lore consistency, lore doesn't sell cards. Nerds will make up their own justifications to keep buying shit.
It’s worth noting that I was actually slowly losing interest when Amonkhet block came along. but then Ixalan block really re-ignites my interest in Magic. I liked the factions, I enjoyed the mechanics, and I REALLY liked the story, particularly the Jace and Vraska bits. Vraska managed to go from just being a ‘walker who filled design space, to being my favorite ‘walker thanks to the story. And Jace went from being a try hard who I hated to my second-favorite purely by association (and the amnesia really helped too). Their whole budding relationship and adventure was really fun. I was actually hoping that the next few sets would ALL be like Ixalan - the Jacetixe League on solo adventures recovering from the drubbing they got from Bolas.
But Dominaria was meh for me. I liked more Teferi and Jhoira. I always like more Teferi and Jhoira. But the one-set paradigm kicked in there and it felt just too damn fast. And then Return to Return to Ravnica. And I haven’t really been back since, especially when I learned that character arcs I liked (Liliana’s slow march to her own death no matter how she tries to avoid it, Jace and Vraska’s relationship, and Nissa and Chandra’s too) just seemed to get short-circuited.
I got the online game a while back and played it. I liked Eldraine. But I hated Ikoria, and as the Phyrexians started to take center stage again I just bowed out.
And yeah, I really hate that New Phyrexia is phased out. You know that was just done so that MaRo can bring it back.m down the line. Same reason Bolas or Emrakul aren’t dead.
>What was the golden age of MTG?
Whenever you started playing and it ended, coincidentally, right before you decided to stop playing. Good job at always finding the golden age of games.
Uh. Yes and no. Kind of? They didn't retcon Serra's death per se. Serra got a planeswalker card in a non-standard set (Modern Horizons) which doesn't have to be at the same point in the timeline as the current plot. But...
During the new phyrexian invasion of everywhere, NPH which my brain will always interpret as Neil Patrick Harris used a version of the worldtree from Kaldheim to connect the planes for invasion. The Jacetice League activated their supernuke (new sylex potentially worse than what Urza used in Argoth), but Elspeth had second thoughts and planeswalked into the blind eternities with it, so it wouldn't blow up mulitple planes. Then it and her exploded. Then Elspeth met Serra's ghost/echo/whatever and was remade as an angel planeswalker.
How canon is that version of Serra? Anyone's guess. Karona in Scourge's story supposedly spoke to multiple historical figures, including a phased-out Teferi. But when Teferi phased in, he had no recollection of that. So this "Serra" could have been anything, including Elspeth's hallucination.
On the other hand. They brought back Ertai. Squee personally killed Ertai via luck/incompetence by cranking up the dial on Ertai's tanning bed/Rejuvination Chamber to read "toasty" and turning him into ash. And yet Ertai's back. But they were probably setting up Elspeth to be "the new Serra" and will leave Serra dead. They killed Jaya to give Chandra more space, after all.
Wait. Where does this new fluff come from. Are they still printing novels? I stopped following the plot at the beginning of modern. I liked the weather light crew though
They stopped consistently printing novels post Theros and starting with Khans moved the entire story into weekly online web articles.
Then they backtracked a bit to try and made a novel for War of the Spark but if bombed and have basically stuck to articles ever since.
Fat packs no longer have novels in them, and haven't for a while. Some "story spotlight" cards explicitly spell out parts of the plot as flavor text, but it's mostly digital articles on WOTC website as
They stopped consistently printing novels post Theros and starting with Khans moved the entire story into weekly online web articles.
Then they backtracked a bit to try and made a novel for War of the Spark but if bombed and have basically stuck to articles ever since.
says. The plot for MKM - Murders at Karlov Manor, latest release - was in like a dozen weekly (?) digital stories. Maybe WOTC thinks that builds hype better: easier to share digitally on social media, keeps interest due to smaller chunks + repeat in quick succession. Some novels also got details wrong in the past, either due to the author having to write them too far in advance before details are finalized or due to the author not being told stuff. In any case, short digital stories would be easier for WOTC staff to read through and approve. Assuming they even care about lore consistency. >I liked the weather light crew though
So did Maro, who hit his stride at WOTC while they were doing the Weatherlight plot sets. He missed them badly enough that WOTC had Weatherlight rebuilt and re-staffed (but incapable of planeswalking, due to Mending changing rules in Time Spiral block). "New invasion" converted the new ship into a phyrexian, and we haven't seen it since. Might have been fixed, might have been wrecked from losing its 5G connection to Elesh Norn.
It’s worth noting that I was actually slowly losing interest when Amonkhet block came along. but then Ixalan block really re-ignites my interest in Magic. I liked the factions, I enjoyed the mechanics, and I REALLY liked the story, particularly the Jace and Vraska bits. Vraska managed to go from just being a ‘walker who filled design space, to being my favorite ‘walker thanks to the story. And Jace went from being a try hard who I hated to my second-favorite purely by association (and the amnesia really helped too). Their whole budding relationship and adventure was really fun. I was actually hoping that the next few sets would ALL be like Ixalan - the Jacetixe League on solo adventures recovering from the drubbing they got from Bolas.
But Dominaria was meh for me. I liked more Teferi and Jhoira. I always like more Teferi and Jhoira. But the one-set paradigm kicked in there and it felt just too damn fast. And then Return to Return to Ravnica. And I haven’t really been back since, especially when I learned that character arcs I liked (Liliana’s slow march to her own death no matter how she tries to avoid it, Jace and Vraska’s relationship, and Nissa and Chandra’s too) just seemed to get short-circuited.
I got the online game a while back and played it. I liked Eldraine. But I hated Ikoria, and as the Phyrexians started to take center stage again I just bowed out.
And yeah, I really hate that New Phyrexia is phased out. You know that was just done so that MaRo can bring it back.m down the line. Same reason Bolas or Emrakul aren’t dead.
Moving away from blocks fricked plot hard. Old paradigm was, big set introduces plane, small set introduces conflict, small set resolves it. They started cramming that into 2 sets, now it's all in 1. WAR should have been its own block, honestly. And WOTC clearly rushed "new invasion" to line up with 30th anniversary.
Jace was sympathetic in his Origins video game backstory. Then you find out he gets mind wiped so the character you liked doesn't even exist. And that was the LEAST butthole backstory in Origins.
>Jace was sympathetic in his Origins video game backstory. Then you find out he gets mind wiped so the character you liked doesn't even exist.
That was one of the things I liked about Ixalan, though; he was mind-wiped *again*, but lost pretty much all of his baggage in the process of losing all his memories, so the Jace that Vraska saved from being marooned is, in essence, the original, real Jace, the guy who'd exist if not, well, all the crap that had happened to him throughout his life.
And, well, I'm a sucker for Disney-style adventure-romances. And Jace and Vraska's story through Ixalan felt like a Disney romance, in the best possible way.
>Vraska picked up his spoon and threw it at his chest. He tried to bat it away and missed. >"Hey!" >Clumsiness like that couldn't be faked. "Not an illusion," she concluded. >Jace's irritation evaporated into happy surprise. "You know I can make those?" His lips were lifting in a little half smile. >Vraska couldn't believe this. Why the hell was he so chipper? Where was the pasty, moody Guildpact she knew and loathed? >She pursed her lips. "You're an illusionist. Not an actor. Why are you still lying to me?" >"You know more about me than I do. What would I have to gain by lying to you?" >"A lot," Vraska deadpanned. "I think you're faking this." >"What is your name?" >This is hell. I'm actually in hell. ". . . My name is Vraska." >"Vraska." Jace smiled a bit. "Your name sounds like it has a different linguistic root than mine. Where are you from? " >"You know damn well where I'm from, butthole." >Jace looked visibly hurt. >Oh. Vraska felt . . . bad? >He's like a dog, Vraska thought. He's a human-shaped retriever. What happened to him?
And of course later on there's their boat ride down a river that practically had Sebastian singing "KISS DE GIRL!" in the background.
As a drafter? Ravnica, Innistrad and Khans.
Constructed? I liked legacy before the homosexualry of mirroden and kamigawa with ravager and top respectively for opposite reasons. Most standard formats haven't appealed as they do little to commend themselves with too few strategies operating with similar power or resilience.
When I first discovered the game. It's been downhill ever since
same here. it was 7th to 10th by the way. mtg jumped the shark when they added ultra rares and made it so mogg fanatic couldn't trade with a 2/2 anymore.
Kamigawa/Ravnica Standard.
For the record I started with Urza's block, so this isn't pure nostalgia talking. Also funnily enough as much fun as I had with Ravnica block and even Return to Ravnica block, it was Return to Return to Ravnica that made me bow out of Magic. I just didn't want to go back to there a third time.
Thoughts on Neon Dynasty?
I just said I'd backed out with Return to Return to Ravnica. Or War of the Spark, whatever. I guess I'm okay with Magic trying new things, and a cyberpunk magic Japan setting is certainly new. I'm fine with it in principle.
The problem is that it's part of the New Phyrexia storyline, and I fricking hate New Phyrexia. I have absolutely despised every single reference to Phyrexia since the end of Invasion block, with the exception of Time Spiral since the entire point of that set was time shenanigans and nostalgia. Otherwise it's not that I hate the idea of five-color Phyrexians or hate any specific story points. It's that I hate that the Phyrexians came back at all.
The entire *point* of Invasion block was ending the Phyrexian threat, forever. Magic should have moved on to new storylines.
I also hate the current paradigm of block releases. I liked the 1 Big Set/2 Small Set paradigm that dominated most of Magic's history; the two-set paradigm made me feel like we weren't spending enough time on given worlds or stories or mechanics. The current paradigm of running at breakneck speed through planes and mechanics and stories is just too much.
weird, when kamigawa came out it was called the death of MTG. I Remember it well, it was 2005ish, right before Ravnica.
And when Ravnica came out it was not regarded as great at start, I guess people were burned out from Kamigawa, but then Ravnica slowly got its reputation.
As
said Mirrodin was another high point, higher than Ravnica imho
for "normies" the greatest magic golden age was in early 2010s, circa 2012-2015 I started to see more and more people being interested in it and there was a great outreach online to spread the game mostly by fans. That Tolarian fella was a byproduct of this time imho
That's a good point - if Magic making it onto TV in the 90s is an indicator of a golden age, then online outreach in the 2010s should be considered in a similar light. If Magic wasn't popular enough online, art on Triumph of Ferocity wouldn't have gotten caught up in all that mess.
One other thing to mention are the video game adaptations. 2010s saw a string of rather good ones on Steam. I think the initial one was an XBox port of Magic 2010, but the 2012 through 2014 entries kept improving deckbuilding and added play modes (Archenemy/Planechase). The 2015 one was largely a disappointment, though, mainly due to the monetization scheme they introduced. And then they killed the series for Magic Origins, which was supposed to match all releases going forward but didn't add full sets and eventually got killed to make room for Arena. So in those terms, 2012 through 2014 were a great time.
I called Mirrodin "divisive" because the 2003 card frame change was the reason I quit. Those Steam games were good enough to make me get over it. I still harbor some resentment towards Mirrodin, but I can't deny that it was an uptick similar to Saga and should be regarded accordingly in terms of its impact on the game overall.
Mirrodin was the least active standard format of all time, and with the underpowered Kamigawa set that was so different then anything out before, or for a while, after, it was jarring.
I remember the joke being they banned the Mirrodion block just to make Kamigawa playable.
Ravnica is herald as the set that saved Magic, and really, the Kamigawa/Ravnica standard was pretty awesome. You had boros deck wins, you had owling mine variants, you had Dredge when it was still a fair mechanic, and so many different Greater Good decks, one using Yusei was awesome.
Ravnica/Cold Snap/Time Spiral was also an awesome standard format.
Personally though I'll always have a soft spot for Alara/Zendikar. In retrospect the blood was in the water with Scars of Mirrodin, but that was still a cool set.
Agreed. Lots of good periods. But this is the one I frequently post here. Powerful but balanced and seemingly every archetype was good including combo, prison and LD based decks. Not just varying degrees of midrange slop which has felt like basically everything for the last decade or so.
1994-1998 were the best years. Everything after that has been a slow decline that turned into tumbling down a mountainside ten years ago.
When you would show your craw worm to the other kids on the bus and they'd remark on its stats.
pre 8th edition
Hello premodern fren
when I was 10 years old. So 2006
Invasion block
Yes! Urza's, Masques, and Invasion were my favorites.
That depends on how you define "golden age," doesn't it?
Some people in MtG threads like to throw around the phrase "as Garfield intended." If that's your definition, Magic probably stops being good before Ice Age - not just because of somewhat lackluster The Dark and especially Fallen Empires, but because Chronicles and base set reprints were an answer to the player demand for more copies of the best cards instead of just playing with what they had and possibly never seeing the best cards in person. Overprinting to meet demand and then Reserve List to soothe the collectors who jumped on board after the comic book market crash changed the nature of the game to include another demographic that wasn't initially catered to. You can feel the repercussions of it today, with Secret Lairs and special card treatments.
Late 90s are when Magic finds its legs. Block structure takes shape with Mirage-Visions-Weatherlight, and is backported to Ice Age-Homelands-Alliances, with Coldsnap knocking out Homelands much later. Weatherlight plot centralizes lore - which is bad if you're a purist, but provides a backbone for the sets that unifies their tone somewhat. Tempest and Saga block speed up the game, but more importantly create A LOT of tourney-viable decks. Tournaments start to get professional, to the point of appearing on TV. "Classic" 6th Edition gets commercials. Garfield vs Finkel (then world champ) box set is promoted with their match on ESPN (2 I think). Masques block throttles things down (on purpose), but Invasion is a strong finish. Whether this "golden age" cuts off in 1999 or 2001 is your call.
Mirrodin was memorable but divisive. Kamigawa was another purposeful slowdown. Ravnica, though, is another good candidate for at least a "silver age." Card power level rises again, deck variety is huge, lore reception is positive - all things people remember fondly. Coldsnap may be a small dip, but it's a supplemental set. Time Spiral and Lorwyn are strong too...
...so as far as "modern" Magic goes, you could call that "silver age" its golden age. Granted, you get the introduction of mythic rarity and planeswalkers that will make some people question that. But people seem to have a hard time pinning down the "end" of it because it's been a gradual slide. Until Khans, that is. Because that's where the card face changes (again), and the block system breaks down (into 2 sets per, not completely yet) which leads to storyline collapse - both immediately, with the way Eldrazi are handled on Zendikar/Innistrad, and eventually, with singular sets feeling disjointed.
I remember the controversy over John Avon's beloved land art being painted digitally rather than by hand, or hand painted and then digitally enhanced. In the earliest of days, art direction was almost non-existent. Sometimes artists would be told the name of the card, sometimes the color. Very rarely did they know what the card might do. Sometimes art would come in and then designers had to make a card out of it. Cohesive art direction is a good thing. But corporations have spent the last few decades turning in-house jobs into freelance ones to save money, so we end up with both oppressive control over what appears on the cards and lower quality of produced art. Also because as artists get better they want more pay, and Wizards just switches to cheaper options again.
Even if the death is fuzzy, Planeswalkers where the absolute last nail in the coffin.
Taking staples and putting them on a free repeating stick is just braindead. Make most entire decks just support to a planeswalker.
I can take an old teaching deck I have and mop the floor with newbies, because they are so inflexible and dependant on thier planeswalker as an answer and win con. They don't even understand the idea of "answers".
This isn't even just newbies.
When the art used to look like something an old bearded pipesmoker would hang up on his wall was prominent, and it didn't look like anime or globohomosexual digital art.
Not liking anime makes you gayer than a globohomo.
Different anon. I would say that there's a hierarchy. Old MTG art > Anime >>>>>>> Modern MTG art > Very old MTG art where you can't tell what you're looking at.
Anime is just a series of coos and yaps. I've never liked it and have used this site since 06. Of what I've seen from screenshots, there are only a few that have artistic merit. To memory, that one about the guy who designed the Zero.
That genre harms your mental health. Read, listen to music (but not K-pop), or watch film. I guarantee you'll look back if your noosphere progresses and go "Huh maybe all of those Jap cartoons about teenage girls wasn't the best media to consume in my mid 20s."
>I've never liked it and have used this site since 06
You started coming to moot's personal Evangellion circlejerk website where he and his friends posted about anime all day every day, and yet you didn't like anime?
Yeah I came here for when /b/ was more like a public FYAD. Then went to Ganker, and Ganker. Ganker 360 vs PS3 was comfy lol
I think they invited some anime artists to do art for Neon Dynasty, but their efforts were apparently smothered by unified art direction. I'd like that set more if they went full anime waifu.
Post very old MTG art where you can't tell what you're looking at.
Drew Tucker had that abstract watercolor aesthetic down pat, still looks like you're trying to view it through a foggy window.
>beta weebs actually think this
Grow up, Peter Pan
>Grow up, Peter Pan
Anime website
Childrens' card game thread
>beta weeb thinks it’s a tranime website
lmao
When it comes to anime, It's not even about liking or disliking it. It's more about getting all these things mixed: anime, doctor who, WH40K or Fallout. The game looks better when it has some consistency. I know It's well past the point where WotC cares about that, but it wasn't like that before.
I don't know about the golden age, but the war of the spark was when it fell off the cliff, still waiting for mtg to hit the bottom.
It's always one set before you started playing and it went to shit right afterwards
It's funny how often that's true. I started at the very end of Saga block, so it always felt like I was trying to catch up due to Masques being a slowdown reaction to how powerful Saga was. It seemed like everything was Saga, with only a few cards from Masques even making a dent in Type 2 (Standard). Then Invasion hits and half the field is playing Fires of Yavimaya (Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elf, Blastoderm, Rishadan Port to tap opponent for tempo, Assault/Battery to kill enemy mana dork) and half the rest is playing Rebels (upward search + Lin Sivvi recursion).
early to mid 2000s
Peaked right around Invasion block.
From a lore perspective, Weatherlight-Apocalypse
>From a lore perspective
The Brothers' War was the only good lore MtG ever had.
>Urza could build any kind of doomsday device to frick up and go too far with
>Deus ex salad bowl drops into his hands and ends the plot
1. Invasion/Masques
2. Ravnica/Time Spiral
3. Ravnica/Kamigawa
Kino. INV/MM is good. Lots of sweet decks.
Too true. I kinda liked Ramunap Red and the Energy decks of that 2017-ish era but that's still pretty rough. And the FIRE era followed immediately afterward and that was obviously shit.
I also enjoyed Invasion/Odyssey a lot too but mostly because I liked playing Tog. Not because it was a particularly diverse metagame..
There were some metas that were "bad" in terms of lack of diversity but I found games fun all the same. Tog vs Tog and Caw Blade mirrors were some of the most engaging Magic.
That was the nice thing about Tog. They were long , grindy old school kill all your stuff take forever- lol jk Tog, kill you. When Tog came down if you untapped, they died. Or that turn if you played Corpse Dance or the like.
>1) When I was 12
>2) When I first started playing
>3) The year I pretend was good because I'm a chuddy
Honestly, anything before about 2012 is playable. After that, things get kind of dark.
93/94
1996-2002ish. Premodern.
1994-1995 the overall power level is a bit too high, but the cheaper cards from 94-95 could be okay.
MtG had a pretty short run before it progressively went to shit. About 8 years.
I don't think there is such think as a "golden age". Magic was always a complex and hard to manage game and WotC, while they often get criticised for making bad decisions and making cards too powerful and broken nowadays, weren't that different or how do you explain Homelands becoming such a bad set, Urza block being too broken that it caused alot of issues in tournaments or Kamigawa block being weak and Lorwyn not selling well, despite having a nice setting. In the end I don't think it matters how WotC decides cause in the end it's the people that makes something out of the game, it's definitely a great game with friends at home having your own rules and what cards you prefer but Magic itself isn't a perfect game but I might be wrong, this is how I view things, the more I read what other people say about the game.
It has been a very different game giving different experiences at different points in its history. It's more than "this card is OP", it's "the meta has shifted so dramatically that it I don't get what I used to enjoy out of it anymore."
Similarly, the people who like it now, probably wouldn't be so into how it played back when I liked it in the 90s.
People shitting on Kamigawa and Lorwyn was a sign that the community was always filled with brainlets.
>while they often get criticised for making bad decisions and making cards too powerful and broken nowadays
>Urza block being too broken that it caused alot of issues in tournaments
The difference is back when Urza's sets fricked up the game the designers were berated and told their jobs were next if they did it again. Now they release Urza block-tier frickups yearly and pat themselves on the back with their "best selling set ever"s
That stretch after the Phyrexian Invasion, but before Time Spiral.
>Golden Age
Masques and Invasion.
>Silver Age
Mirrodin, Kamigawa and Ravnica. Exclude Kamigawa if you want.
>Bronze Age
Scars of Mirrodin and Innistrad.
The game itself is so good but the card design never even came close to peaking after alpha/beta. Every set since then is more self aware, pandering and cowardly than its predecessor.
Alpha through alliances is all decent, although legends is somewhat sullied by the legend mechanic which has always been shit and I've always hated. Game designers should not be allowed to inflict their ocs on people
There are three eras that people consider to be golden ages.
>Boomer Golden Age
Alliances to Exodus: Cards had increased in complexity and the game had finally found its footing.
Ended by Urza's block braking the game balance over itself and then going into the horribly under powered Mercadian Masques Block leading into an uneven transition into the 2000s
>Most Veteran players Golden Age
Ravnica to Future Sight
game had finally found its footing again with Ravnica and had a solid yet also experimental run of sets
Ended by the introduction of Planeswaker Cards in Lorwyn block and the creation of New World Order Card Design in Shards block.
>The Golden Age most exiting Players think of
Innistrad to Origins (Twin Banning)
Had a incredibly solid run of Standard formats, drafts, and the rise and peak of modern as a format
Ended by Wizards intentionally fricking with a good thing to try and increase profit while working less.
You missed millennial golden age. 5th-7th. I wasn't old enough to catch really early magic, and I got in with... Stronghold? Exodus? One of those, whichever came first, I don't recall. But those sets before 8th were a fun meta.
The "Golden Age" ends before 2002, however a person wants to chart where the climax of that period actually sits will largely fall to personal preference but 2002-07is a low point before Alara kicked off a small renaissance from 08-11.
Really what I'm getting at is there is Classic M:tG and there is New School M:TG and while I don't want to point at the elephant in the room the divide is created by the introduction and proliferation of Planeswalkers as a necessary consideration for deck building. The Golden Age is in the Classic period but the New School had it's own mini golden age for people who liked the direction Magic as a game has gone in.
I'm utterly ignorant of anything that happened after the first Khans pre-release as that when I finally, permanently, threw in the towel. That was the last time I spent money on Magic product.
I am fascinated by your preferences towards what is a golden age as it seems contrary to the average community tent poles (Game Environment surrounding OG Ravnica and Game Environment surrounding Return to Ravnica).
Could you go into more detail why?
NTAYRT but once modern started and the introduced equipment, they really shifted the gameplay style towards aggro compared to how it played in older sets. Matches started being shorter, plays got simpler, fewer people included a combo subtheme. Not to mention it got much easier to find singles because of online shopping, which made the average power of standard decks shoot up, which again puts a pressure on the meta to veer towards faster decks and run fewer suboptimal cards. The game was different in a lot of ways before 2002ish.
Onslaught block.
the big transition in magic philosophy is when they stopped printing cards that are good in combination with other things and started printing cards that are simply just good by themselves.
Honestly any point prior to m15 can be argued.
You had the super oldschool days, The pre 8th edition premodern era, Mirrodin and ravnica stuff, The SPECTACULAR lorwyn to New phyrexia times, and the Innistrad to Theros time point. It all had problems but largely all had awesome stuff going on. What im trying to say is MTG has neen steadily downhill since they added m15 cardframes.
Between the first ravnica block and the first innistrad block
From Mirrodin to Time Spiral Block. Lorwyn and Shadowmoor was the warning, from Alara forward is all decay and gay aids.
Magic died with 8th edition and the new card border. I'll never be over it, every single card since 2003 has looked like utter dogshit. What kind of israelite frick thought itd be a good idea magic cards look like a sleek modern software UI, they used to look so much better
Black text on a lighter background is easier to read
get your eyes fixed
The cornea in my right eye is warped
Ehh. I could have got over the uglier card design. It's a bit easier to read with more contrast at least. But card gameplay got worse starting with 8th, and the game got Staler with age.
I do prefer the older borders, but the change in general style didn't bother me that much. What did bother me is that they changed the border color of artifacts from brown to silver. It's hard for me to even say why it bothers me so much, but I guess the brown borders just made it seem like you were looking at a page from a spellbook. Meanwhile the silver border just feels so lifeless and mechanical.
Initially 8E artifacts' border color was so washed out you'd mistake it for white. Had to look at the cost sometimes. Later print runs made the silver darker, but the feeling might have stayed. Especially if you saw them side by side with the old brown.
>Arabian Nights
Game had it's footing, cut ante was normal at my LGS and 8-10man kill the person matches to your left was always going on.
>wrong pic, I thought that was my shahazarad pic witch I thought I had a photo of on hand.
Everything up to M13.
Golden Age was everything prior to The Dark. Silver Age was everything prior to Urza's Saga. Copper Age was from the fixed urza meta through Scourge. the Lead Age ended with Innistrad. the Shitstank age extends from then to the present.
Might as well call your Copper Age the "old foil" age. Foils were added with set 2 of Saga block.
I don't know if you paid attention to Magic lore (and you shouldn't, at this point) but they made New Phyrexia even worse. I hold no love for Mirrodin I quit because of card frame and power level but I understand how players who liked it felt about Scars block. Especially since Mirrodin Pure got dangled in front of them, and then Maro went all "whoops we didn't realize you guys would want that" (which is exactly what he later did with Khans, come to think of it).
Anwyay, the "worse" part is that the "new phyreixan invasion" broke even the New Phyrexian lore. "One drop of oil corrupts an entire plane"? Nah, it's no longer an existential threat or even universally deadly. Phyrexians are death machines? Nah, here are some humans in dentist cosplay. Phyrexians keep fighting even after the main force's defeat? Nah, Elesh Norn turned herself into a 5G tower controlling them, and now that she's dead everything just shuts down. And the biggest insult - did you think defeating Phyrexians would bring Mirrodin back? Nah, let's do a planeswap (since planeshift merged two planes and this didn't) between the phased-out Zhalfir and all of Mirrodin. Undo Teferi's tragic backstory for a win that didn't even need the cavalry fricking Segovia beats back the invasion then undo phyrexian corruption of the vast majority of named characters too.
Just...frick the lore. Who needs lore consistency, lore doesn't sell cards. Nerds will make up their own justifications to keep buying shit.
It’s worth noting that I was actually slowly losing interest when Amonkhet block came along. but then Ixalan block really re-ignites my interest in Magic. I liked the factions, I enjoyed the mechanics, and I REALLY liked the story, particularly the Jace and Vraska bits. Vraska managed to go from just being a ‘walker who filled design space, to being my favorite ‘walker thanks to the story. And Jace went from being a try hard who I hated to my second-favorite purely by association (and the amnesia really helped too). Their whole budding relationship and adventure was really fun. I was actually hoping that the next few sets would ALL be like Ixalan - the Jacetixe League on solo adventures recovering from the drubbing they got from Bolas.
But Dominaria was meh for me. I liked more Teferi and Jhoira. I always like more Teferi and Jhoira. But the one-set paradigm kicked in there and it felt just too damn fast. And then Return to Return to Ravnica. And I haven’t really been back since, especially when I learned that character arcs I liked (Liliana’s slow march to her own death no matter how she tries to avoid it, Jace and Vraska’s relationship, and Nissa and Chandra’s too) just seemed to get short-circuited.
I got the online game a while back and played it. I liked Eldraine. But I hated Ikoria, and as the Phyrexians started to take center stage again I just bowed out.
And yeah, I really hate that New Phyrexia is phased out. You know that was just done so that MaRo can bring it back.m down the line. Same reason Bolas or Emrakul aren’t dead.
MTG have moved into Comic Book territory where Batman can never actually kill the joker because then we don't get new Joker stories.
>What was the golden age of MTG?
Whenever you started playing and it ended, coincidentally, right before you decided to stop playing. Good job at always finding the golden age of games.
But I never actually started playing because the golden age had already ended before I got to the game.
I haven't played mtg since 2008. did they ever bring serra back?
Uh. Yes and no. Kind of? They didn't retcon Serra's death per se. Serra got a planeswalker card in a non-standard set (Modern Horizons) which doesn't have to be at the same point in the timeline as the current plot. But...
During the new phyrexian invasion of everywhere, NPH which my brain will always interpret as Neil Patrick Harris used a version of the worldtree from Kaldheim to connect the planes for invasion. The Jacetice League activated their supernuke (new sylex potentially worse than what Urza used in Argoth), but Elspeth had second thoughts and planeswalked into the blind eternities with it, so it wouldn't blow up mulitple planes. Then it and her exploded. Then Elspeth met Serra's ghost/echo/whatever and was remade as an angel planeswalker.
How canon is that version of Serra? Anyone's guess. Karona in Scourge's story supposedly spoke to multiple historical figures, including a phased-out Teferi. But when Teferi phased in, he had no recollection of that. So this "Serra" could have been anything, including Elspeth's hallucination.
On the other hand. They brought back Ertai. Squee personally killed Ertai via luck/incompetence by cranking up the dial on Ertai's tanning bed/Rejuvination Chamber to read "toasty" and turning him into ash. And yet Ertai's back. But they were probably setting up Elspeth to be "the new Serra" and will leave Serra dead. They killed Jaya to give Chandra more space, after all.
Wait. Where does this new fluff come from. Are they still printing novels? I stopped following the plot at the beginning of modern. I liked the weather light crew though
They stopped consistently printing novels post Theros and starting with Khans moved the entire story into weekly online web articles.
Then they backtracked a bit to try and made a novel for War of the Spark but if bombed and have basically stuck to articles ever since.
Fat packs no longer have novels in them, and haven't for a while. Some "story spotlight" cards explicitly spell out parts of the plot as flavor text, but it's mostly digital articles on WOTC website as
says. The plot for MKM - Murders at Karlov Manor, latest release - was in like a dozen weekly (?) digital stories. Maybe WOTC thinks that builds hype better: easier to share digitally on social media, keeps interest due to smaller chunks + repeat in quick succession. Some novels also got details wrong in the past, either due to the author having to write them too far in advance before details are finalized or due to the author not being told stuff. In any case, short digital stories would be easier for WOTC staff to read through and approve. Assuming they even care about lore consistency.
>I liked the weather light crew though
So did Maro, who hit his stride at WOTC while they were doing the Weatherlight plot sets. He missed them badly enough that WOTC had Weatherlight rebuilt and re-staffed (but incapable of planeswalking, due to Mending changing rules in Time Spiral block). "New invasion" converted the new ship into a phyrexian, and we haven't seen it since. Might have been fixed, might have been wrecked from losing its 5G connection to Elesh Norn.
Moving away from blocks fricked plot hard. Old paradigm was, big set introduces plane, small set introduces conflict, small set resolves it. They started cramming that into 2 sets, now it's all in 1. WAR should have been its own block, honestly. And WOTC clearly rushed "new invasion" to line up with 30th anniversary.
Jace was sympathetic in his Origins video game backstory. Then you find out he gets mind wiped so the character you liked doesn't even exist. And that was the LEAST butthole backstory in Origins.
>Jace was sympathetic in his Origins video game backstory. Then you find out he gets mind wiped so the character you liked doesn't even exist.
That was one of the things I liked about Ixalan, though; he was mind-wiped *again*, but lost pretty much all of his baggage in the process of losing all his memories, so the Jace that Vraska saved from being marooned is, in essence, the original, real Jace, the guy who'd exist if not, well, all the crap that had happened to him throughout his life.
And, well, I'm a sucker for Disney-style adventure-romances. And Jace and Vraska's story through Ixalan felt like a Disney romance, in the best possible way.
>Vraska picked up his spoon and threw it at his chest. He tried to bat it away and missed.
>"Hey!"
>Clumsiness like that couldn't be faked. "Not an illusion," she concluded.
>Jace's irritation evaporated into happy surprise. "You know I can make those?" His lips were lifting in a little half smile.
>Vraska couldn't believe this. Why the hell was he so chipper? Where was the pasty, moody Guildpact she knew and loathed?
>She pursed her lips. "You're an illusionist. Not an actor. Why are you still lying to me?"
>"You know more about me than I do. What would I have to gain by lying to you?"
>"A lot," Vraska deadpanned. "I think you're faking this."
>"What is your name?"
>This is hell. I'm actually in hell. ". . . My name is Vraska."
>"Vraska." Jace smiled a bit. "Your name sounds like it has a different linguistic root than mine. Where are you from? "
>"You know damn well where I'm from, butthole."
>Jace looked visibly hurt.
>Oh. Vraska felt . . . bad?
>He's like a dog, Vraska thought. He's a human-shaped retriever. What happened to him?
And of course later on there's their boat ride down a river that practically had Sebastian singing "KISS DE GIRL!" in the background.
As a drafter? Ravnica, Innistrad and Khans.
Constructed? I liked legacy before the homosexualry of mirroden and kamigawa with ravager and top respectively for opposite reasons. Most standard formats haven't appealed as they do little to commend themselves with too few strategies operating with similar power or resilience.