mike

I think this is just insane and super confusing. Another huge indicator that the Marvel sets (and probably all of UB) should have never entered Standard. Just make them Commander-only, and you never have this problem. They could release certain UB sets to Arena and not have to push the others if there were digital licensing issues.

Now, instead, we have a huge break in paper/digital that will presumably last and repeat forever. This makes deck list sharing and importing more difficult. This makes watching the game much more difficult. This makes learning the limited environment much more difficult. This is just way confusing and way stupid imo. I guess it's a huge win for Arena players who didn't want Marvel in the game but that's about the only positive I can come up with.

I think this has to be it. No way Marvel wants "Spider man card game" to turn up Arena first in search results over Marvel Snap. And this confused me when they first announced a Marvel set given that Snap was already a thing.

I think this is a win for Arena, but it will be super confusing not having the same card names/artwork across paper and digital especially for anyone who plays both. Have to learn everything twice I guess. Deck list importing just got a lot harder too.

I love that idea

Still, it’s made me much less interested in Standard given that it was nice to have a lower power format but now it feels almost as fast as other formats.

I remember heavily playing 4c Party back when it was in Standard and that was a viable deck in the format. It would not even get 1 win in the current meta by a long shot. Standard right now feels like what Modern was before Horizons and I just don't think there exists a slow constructed format anymore. Nor do I think there will ever be one again.

Yea this is absolutely the direction they're going. I feel like they desperately want to use AI art. They must be salivating at the cost savings from removing artists and set designers from the creative team. I can't imagine the playerbase accepting that but who knows, they've/we've accepted everything so far.

Completely agree. I also think THB wasn't tested outside of limited, and I think nothing was starting with WAR.

I can't help but feel a lot of this could be fixed by creating a separate game. At first I thought UB should be the separate game, and I still do, but it's clear Hasbro will never do that. Perhaps the best outcome could have been a game that returns to the old frame, the old release schedule, the old artwork, and the old play/card design philosophy and just sell it as Classic Magic or something. I would play the crap out of that game, and it would still even be Standard legal since all of the cards are compatible with the original game.

I know it's just a dream at this point, but I think there is still a huge demand for something that's basically premodern with new cards.

This is very well written, and one of the best pieces of content we have on this site. You are really amazing, Evu. I have much more to say in another comment after I finish reading everything in full, but I just wanted to echo that I've felt this way for about a year myself, probably longer. It's just getting too hard to enjoy the game, and it's even harder with MTGZone because I really WANT to enjoy the game and be active here and in other communities but I just can't find the love anymore.

every card that sees play these days does so many things that it’s not even comparable to old standard anymore

This is my biggest gripe with design overall. It has shown its effects most predominantly in Standard since Standard was one of the slowest formats, but I think this problem has caused every format to get a lot faster.

I'm 100% with you, and I desperately want a non-limited, much slower format but I don't know how on earth we get there with Hasbro/WoTC making it pretty clear that they care way more about sales revenue than the game being fun.

I personally think these are all positive bans. It’s unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.

Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth’s Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.

Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there’s tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I’d like to see Bowmasters gone next.

I personally think these are all positive bans. It's unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.

Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth's Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.

Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there's tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I'd like to see Bowmasters gone next.

I just want to mention, I'm glad they printed this as a sorcery. I originally thought this was a better Collected Company at first but then re-read it and I think it's a cool card. Certainly interesting in white instead of blue. Searching 7 cards instead of 6 I guess comes at the cost of the sorcery speed but that feels pretty strong too.