Oct
5th
2020
New Story Out · 7:48pm Oct 5th, 2020
Sometimes, you write something because Magic: the Gathering is dying and you have nothing better to do.
WHAT IS LACKING CANNOT BE COUNTED
Rarity disappeared years ago. Rainbow never got the full story. No one wanted to talk about it. Painful memories, bits and pieces of half-remembered interactions, none of it told her anything. So she started looking on her own, and at long last, she found Rarity.
On a different continent, under a different name, with a different life.
Rainbow would like to know why.
“Well, my house burnt down but at least I have my magic cards, and no one is playing magic in town, okay.”
Big sad for paper MTG. What format do you play most?
Wait, Magic is dying? I thought a new set just came out?
Or is Hasbro scaling back due to far fewer in person events?
5371839
From what I understand, MTG has been bit by the "unrestrained capitalism" bug as upper management seems committed to squeezing as much short term profit from the game as possible while burning down it's long term viability.
5371839
I'm being bitter. The Secret Lair drops have been harmless and even fine, but they dropped one for the Walking Dead of all things (people stil lwatch the walking dead??? since when??) with actually mechanically unique cards that are legal in eternal formats which means that the best tribal lord in Legacy is a card that will have a supply of about a thousand if that, and that is only available for like 48 hours. It's incredibly predatory, and the only real hope we had to maybe strongarm Hasbro/WOTC into not doing this anymore beyond not buying it was to ban it before the drop in Commander, which all of the cards were kinda also made for. The Rules Committee refused to do so because (honestly bullshit and paperthing) reasons and so the community has been non-stop ripping itself to shreds for like a week or two. Standard was already bad and had been for like, several sets. Magic is a huge mess right now. It killed the standard scene at our store.
Also, you *can't* have in-person stuff in stores and elsewhere in North America officially. Stores are doing it anyway but its all unsanctioned.
5371836
It's incredibly depressing and from now on I refuse to follow any magic creators except for Saffron Olive and Pleasant Kenobi, cause they have beards and I like them. I used to play Standard and Draft, but no one plays standard anymore so mostly I play on Fridays when we draft at the store. My wife and I have been going to our local game store every friday to draft for like two years stragiht with maybe 2-4 missed weeks. We also play Commander! I just finished a Bant Enchantress deck that I pilot with Twilight Sparkle (yes, the silly charity bundle one) as my commander. IT's fun, nobody minds a silver border card that doesn't have anything super broken, and the deck itself is good.
5371820
the whole world tastes of ash, pickles
5371872
Hasbro has been leaning hard on WOTC to be profitable because basically everything else they have sucks right now. Especially in Covid Time, people ain't buyin' toys. But they will sit on MTG Arena for a few hours and spend like 10 bucks a week maybe. So Magic has to push to be more and more profitable in the marginal spaces of its production, and they're just running out of those margins. Secret Lairs are not a big cash grab. They're pocket change, but they're pocket change ventures designed to sell the brand or raise its prestige, which WOTC has been needing to do for awhile as they lose ground in the Esports and Online arenas due to, well, Arena not being a fun environment and their premier format sucking for a really long time with other games having great periods.
TBH if Yugioh could get its shit together they might have just one-two'd Arena out of the spotlight entirely at any time in the last six months. But they'll never get their act together about having an online platform.
We'll see what happens. I'm not remotely happy with that Secret Lair or the RC fig leaf that followed, but at least Zendikar Rising is a lot of fun to draft. Plus, we have a lot to look forward to next year (provided the game and the world last that long.)
I literally only play commander. I don’t keep up with Secret Lair so I don’t really care but the fact that they’re legal in eternal formats is dumb. Wizards has definitely been pandering to the whales recently so it’s kind of annoying as a broke boi.
If you wanna play on Cockatrice HMU I haven’t played in forever.
5371903
Right now I’m kinda of the mindset of “I like playing with people and I don’t have to buy new stuff to do that, so no matter what the suits do the real magic is playing cards with friends”
5371907
Hell yeah. I haven’t used cockatrice in so long lol
Not since the days of Frank Elfbert’s Dune (so many sandworm adjacent creatures, so little time to cast them all)
This fic sounds fascinating. :D I'm in.
While I agree with standard sucking for a long while now and continuing to suck, and while I also agree that the nonsense that is the Walking Dead Secret Lair is actively predatory and bad, at least limited has been great this entire time. The only significant limited miss in the last couple years was that they overtuned the Cycling deck in Ikoria, but at least draft can self-correct and make it less of an issue.
I just wish that whatever has been making limited great could be applied to the rest of their design so more formats were great. Also let's kill Buy-a-Box promos and anything else that is mechanically unique and not available in a booster/normal product (ie: the old planeswalker decks).
5371974
I'm mostly just being bitter. I've actually really liked the new set for limited, and its the main way I play. Limited hasn't been bad since War of the Spark, which was the worst. Theros wasn't great but it was actually decent enough that I enjoyed playing it, and Zendikar has some fun archetypes. Eldraine is probably my favorite draft format literally ever. I miss spamming mono red and sweeping pods lol
5371873
YOU AND SCARLET ARE MARRIED NOW?!?!?!?!
5372439
Not legally I am working on getting the paperwork cause turns out it requires many Steps
But yea
5372466
Fuck the state be gay do crime get married.