ITT: The exact moment MtG went on the decline. It was longer ago than most of you think...

But not before Wizards ruins the format with more Oloros, Derevis, Eminences and other bullshit

>it still doesn't explain why every year it feels completely shittier than the year that came before it.
Because that's a worthless subjectivity beheld only to your shitty eyes. Eldritch Moon was well made and interesting and I rate it nothing short of fantastic.
Yes, Battle For Zendikar, Kaladesh, and Amonkhet were terrible. And Ixalan is pretty dry (but I don't consider it awful as yet). That's still not "everything's been on a permanent downturn since M10!!!".

I dislike your rhetoric, but I appreciate the sentiment.

EM had very nice art, interesting mechanics, and a generally fun limited environment. Same with shadows.

On some level, wizards is making worse and worse magic cards and sets. There's no defending the current iteration of standard and all the bans that were necessary to create it. Part of that is the shift from away from reactive answers to questions and to a more efficiency based tempo play.

But I don't think this is the major reason magic is declining no matter who you ask. The rise of EDH is actually informative, because EDH encourages us to go back to our favorite cards from when we were just starting out.

But then again, EDH also tends to create more interesting gamestates because of the old cards, so who knows?

Right now my experience with magic is checking out spoilers every few months to scan for interesting EDH cards, and usually becoming disappointed.

>Denounces worthless subjectivity
>Follows with multiple cases of worthless subjectivity.

While bfz was objectively bad due to poor design choices, Eldritch Moon had its share of love-it/hate-it mechanics and flavor.

Can we take a small moment and point out the fact that mtg has been unusually experimental and transformative over the last few years? I know the game is always going through changes and small "improvements" are gradually added, but since mid 2014 we've had:

>"New" card frames.
>Bullet-point multiple choice formatting
>Redesign of Oblivion Ring effects.
>The retirement of Regenerate.
>The colorless mana symbol.
>Pushing the gatewatch
>The Create token word formatting
>The Place vs Put counter word formatting
>The 2-set block plan
>The announced reversion of the 2-set block plan
>Legendary planeswalker type change
>Expedition/Masterwork/Invocation type cards in sealed product
>The mulligan rule change
>Progressive art and lore direction

Among other things I'm probably missing, many of these changes are hardly adding a keyword or a small adaptation; many of these changes alter the way cards have been printed for years. it's an observation that hard to ignore when you compare the changes made in the three years after M15 vs the three years before it, and in my opinion it may have something to do with people's perception of the game on a deeper level than "it's fun / it's not fun".

>Æther no longer printed
>Vehicles being a recurring thing

It started with people bitch about calling man lands man lands

Clearly my brain doesn't function like a normal one then, cause that would mean I'd consider the game to have been in decline since Portal, which I don't. In fact, I consider the Portal sets in general to be a low point of the game as a whole. Not that I consider the game to have consistently been getting better since either though. The last decade or so has overall felt pretty weak and unexciting with a few notable exceptions like Zendikar and Khans (though only the first set, not the entire block).

Many if these changes stem from WotC desperately wanting the Hearthstone audience. The problem with that desire is that the Hearthstone audience don't want to play Magic, and the Magic audience don't want their game to be like Hearthstone.

Shadowmoor(? the stylized fairy land one) was the last good set

planeswalker cards, Jace as the main character, the absolute travesty of a storyline and dearth of interesting characters/places/mechanics/anything... downhill since

t. started in 7th edition, get back into it now and then

Literally all the things you claim to be signs of the decline were introduced in Lorwyn.

underrated

Mythic rares. As soon as they hit I knew that it would end up with most Standard-playable cards being at that rarity and driving up the cost to absurd levels. I quit with no regrets.
>but standard was always expensive
A top-tier standard deck cost around $90 in 2017 dollars back in 2002. They cost like $300 now, and peaked at $700 relatively recently. I did the math, it was tedious as balls, if you want to track down your own price guide and convert everything yourself to disprove me feel free.

Jace was first printed in Lorwyn, but he wasn't part of the plot of that block.

The Dominaria block should be a nice opportunity for them to adjust the flavor a bit back in the right direction. Ixalan was a step in the right direction. If they were to get rid of mythics and some of the most pushed sjw stuff Magic would boom again.

What the fuck is that card holy shit

baneslayer angel

Only after Jace and Stoneforge got banned. That was a wild time.
Also, reminder we're never going to have that many options for removal in standard ever again.

Eh, I started in INN and feel like the greatest decline started around Battle for Zendikar.

Onslaught Mirrodin Kamigawa Ravnica were amazing times and the game never really hit that stride again

Zendikar was quite good, Time Spiral had some moments but the game turned to shit afterwards for the most part. M10 is a fair line to draw but I think it's really somewhere more nebulous around the same time period

A real clusterfuck. I remember when it came out. Standard was fucked. Suddenly we realized the power creep that was going on. It was one of the first mythic rares and to this day I have no fucking clue how this card passed R&D.

are there any mtgo or filmed examples of the meta after that? I'd like to see.

Holy crap, this was harder to find than I thought. Apparently, in the time between the bans and Innistrad's release, there were no standard Pro Tours and only two standard Grand Prix. Here's the top 8 from one of those
magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gppit11
You have to scroll down a ways for decklists.

Correction: I just remembered that October comes after September, and so there was only one standard Grand Prix.

I started playing during khans and that was a really good set, nothing has captured the fun since and if kinda just stopped playing. I have a few narset EDH decks that I play with friends with and I still play sealed/draft occasionally but it's never as good as khans for me.

I'm not saying khans was amazing, I obviously never played previous blocks to compare.

I'll add that I only really play sealed/draft, it was a great block for sealed. The blocks since then have all been meh. I played the game sporadically since kamigawa and khans made me fall in love.

Khans was pretty cool, it just had some shit lore near the end there imo.

Time Spiral will always be my baby though. Tbh I look at what the game has become and feel incredibly lucky my uncle got me into the game around the time of Mirage.

Khan was a good set. Any set with clearly defined multi-colored factions (Ravnica, Alara, Tarkir) is good.

IXN would like a word

IXN's factions are not flashed out enough. What I men is that set whose factiosn were deigned bottom-up are the best. IXN falls under the category of sets where there are no clear lines between archetypes and both designers and players feel lost. Specific factions allow you to design really unique mechanics (because the lore gives you cool ideas) and lead the beginner players into some kind of strategic direction.

Sorry for crappy grammar, I'm cooking dinner.

I mean, there's something to be said about the effect of nostalgia, but there is genuinely some stuff going on right now that makes me a bit worried. Namely, hearthstone. MTG was a successful product before, but nowhere near the level of Heartstone, and it clearly affected Hasbro's decision-making.

It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Ixalan is such a shitty, boring set while being the one that's being used for Wizards' new attempt at a competent digital platform. It could be just a misstep, like BFZ, or it could be a new trend.

They are probably going to replicate some of Heartstone design strategy, thus alienating the old user base. If they do this, it's going to be real bad.

I was so hype for Ixalan and then vampires ended up sucking real bad.

>Oh well just mix them with Innistrad and Kaladesh ones.
But those are from different fucking planes! Being a Vorthos is suffering.

I wish they printed new races. How many times can you come up with 1, 2, 3drop vampire? I want one plane without elves goblin vampires.

But the most fun most random mechanics from Hearthstone like Discover can't be easily replicated in Magic

I don't know how to tell you this, user, but we're never getting another unique race again. This is the same company that won't make nonhumanoid planeswalkers anymore because "market research" and turn slivers into low-budget predators to make them more bland. Milquetoast is the direction this game has been going for years, just look at the themepark settings. The days of races like the metathran are gone, aetherborn were a fluke that came about for the sake of progressive pandering.

I didn't know that, thanks user. I had my fingers crossed for more alien planeswalkers, that's too bad.

> screaming intensifies

OKAY IF YOU HAD TO GO BUY 1 (one) BOOSTER BOX RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD YOU GET?????

serious replies only.

Except Slivers m10/15 were meant to be a different creature type until very late, not to mention they're not the same as original slivers anyways.

Dragon's Maze

Unstable

Depends if I'm paying for it or if I'm getting it for free.

What design do you think we'll get on Dominaria?
Maybe a new one to show that they "evolved" into something else after so much time?

Planar Chaos if we're just talking any set (and I theoretically have cash to spend). If we're talking ones I can just walk down to the store and find, probably Ixalan. I at least like the flavor there.

>This thing wasn't meant to be that thing but then they called it that thing and it released that way and became canon

Oh, well I guess that changes everything

Totally feel you, we haven't had something on the level of the Alara Shards/Ravnica Guilds in such a long time. Khans was okay but it felt like all the factions' unique identities were just different spins on 'attack with a big dude'.

...

Also, the design nowadays is so conservative: Old mechanics that were strong are neutered (is there a single good non-reprint madness card in SoI?), while old mechanics that were weak don't get brought back because they're unpopular.

There's so many races already, though. I know the return to dominaría has to be a big event, but there's no reason a viashino, homarid, nishoba, nantuko, off, etc. can't show up in some other random plane.

Also, not consolidating snakes and nagas is retarded, and I still have no clue of why they don't do it.

G-CB06 - Rondeau of Chaos and Salvation

They're trying to appeal to the people who barely know anything about fantasy, so they stick with the old dwarves and humans and elves and all that usually. Usually. They won't reexplore Viashino, Nantuko, Nishoba's, because it's too weird for the average normalfag. Even if not a lot of normalfags play their game, they want to appeal to them to get their sales.

>can we take a small moment
No, fuck off shill.

Pretty Much this.
I started with Rise of the Eldrazi and Scars Block. Stopped playing for a bit and picked it up again in RTR. Theros kept me interested because of the Lore and art but after Khans I lost interest in everything that wasn't EDH and even then my local playgroup got so cut throat that we would rather just sit around and shoot the shit over a board game than play magic.

Thank you for your feedback, valued customer.

I knew this would happen when mtg was going more d&d-ish. Removal of what made mtg unique, to make it more d&d friendly. Plus planeswalkers. Which was right around the time of 4E getting announced. You don't think...nah. No way would WOTC be that thickheaded

This I disagree with, personally at least. Since starting up in... 2005 there have been sets I like, sets I didn't like, sets I hated reactively and then grew to like, sets I thought were too powerful/weak/bland, etc.

Though, you're right that I have nostalgia for real kitchen table games where everyone's card pool was crap because we were 15 and had no access to a card shop or real money.

This game will have the reputation of the Roman empire in the sense that no one can pin point one singular event that tanked the game.

Its a totality of bad decisions, but we can all agree zendikar was a hideous direction the game took

probably something from the time spiral block
a close second would be alara block

RtR or Gatecrash

Battle for Zendikar. Lottery cards, muh eldrazi, affirimative action planeswalkers, jacestice league, etc.

That makes sense within the story.
I mean all of Tarkir is essentially might makes right
I did have a soft spot for the Sultai. Self mill is one of my favorite mechanics

Premium removal, as a concept, is why sets and standard are shit. This probably started around 2012 with the upshift of Doom Blade to uncommon and the intoduction of shit like Lightning Strike. This is made even worse by the lack of core sets.

>Æther
To stop using the Æ was the last straw
Fucking Wizards
Anyone up for some Force of Will? It's unbalanced but it got waifus

Desu I'd play FoW because it's probably cheaper and I like anime but I'm having trouble finding things to look at regarding metas, established archetypes and the like and I don't want to learn from scratch.

Can't blame him, Magic doesn't have a game fit for streaming and earning that sweet $$$

MtG became a business with the move from Revised to 4th Edition and the way Chronicles was handled (keep reading, it is not why you think). At that point, the game became a very valuable property and they have been protecting it ever since. By the way, this is long before Hasbro bought WotC.

Unlimited to Revised was an attempt at protecting the game. They took out the really degenerate stuff, but they added tons of playable cards. If you started playing at that point, like I and many, many others did, since that is the point when the game went really wide, you had tons of playable cards at your disposal at all rarities. Even getting basic lands in packs was not a huge deal.

At that point, WotC saw how much money they could make, and how people would potentially buy large numbers of boosters. And at that point, design took a back seat to greed.

Revised to 4th was a huge drop in playable. Duals were gone, for no good reason, even though everybody understood their importance. Chronicles was just pure greed. It was marketed as a way for the huge number of people that had no access to Arabian, Antiquities, Legends and Dark to catch up. Only it wasn't. No Juzam, no Library, no Moat, no Mana Drain, no Abyss, no Chain Lighnting. Instead, we got Erhnam Djinn, City of Brass and Blood Moon. In other words, WotC knew exactly which cards NOT to reprint.

What expansions followed that explosion in terms of players? Fallen Empires, Ice Age and Homelands. Probably, the worst 4 expansions ever. It was WotC's greed that almost sunk the game. Not reprinting Elder Dragons in Chronicles.

Just open your eyes. MtG has been a business for 23 years now.

Time Spiral, if I could find one. If I had to just buy ANY box or like get shot in the head or something I'd get Ixalan. They're not selling well around here so either of the close game shops would have one.

But that's what it would take, a literal gun to my head.

LMAOing @ all the plebs who didn't start with lorwyn rn

>Buy
What the fuck does buy mean user

>Kaladesh was terrible
Kaladesh was great, the changes to standard were terrible.

>Kaladesh was great
The set was shit
Fucking vehicles are terrible and energy fucked with everything

Nigger there are 3 cards banned from that block and there's speculation brewing about another ban to the energy deck. Do you realize how hard you have to fuck up to have cards banned in Standard?

I got two decks of them recently, it's pretty fun.

But user that's half the fun. It's only painful if you have an established meta/scene.
Just take a gander at the FoW website.

Mirrodin had a ton of bans, it even has cards banned in modern, and it's still a beloved set. Cool mechanics and good cards > everything else.

Gaye card fag

Mirrodin was a cool setting, but the set was OP bullshit. Speaking as someone that played at that time, fuck Mirrodin. People should only love it for the setting it introduced, and whoever came up with Affinity should be shot.

Art direction sucked big time. Kaladesh had enough good cards, but they all look ugly as fuck

>But user that's half the fun
Being inefficient is torture for someone like me. I'd like to get to the point where I'm familiar enough with the game to brew and tweak decks without the time investment desu.

You are confusing getting cards banned in standard with being a bad set. Mirrodin had a very decent design, but as it has happened since the dawn of time, an artifact based block is probably going to cross the line at some point and need to get cards banned. Think Academy in Urza's block. Hell, even Antiquities had the retardedness that is Workshop.

Mirrodin gave us Ravager and the aggro artifact deck and Aether Vial, for instance. Skullclamp is too good, but the rest of the set is fine. Affinity is perhaps too spicy for Standard, especially if you follow Mirrodin with Kamigawa, but the design behind those cards is solid, as evidence by the fact they are not only played in Eternal formats, but also have created new deck archetypes. The cards banned in Kaladesh were not part of a mechanic innovation that got out of hand, they are just reatarded. They are simply pushed to Hell. Who the hell plays Copter or Saheli in modern? This is not good design.

Then just analyze the top 8 decklists shown on the website.

Mythic rares are definitely up there.

Vehicles as a concept are fine. Energy as a mechanic is actually pretty great.

The problem was the cards surrounding them. It's a nitpicky but important difference.

Not a major thing compared to all the stuff mentioned, but giving efficient effects to colorless cards. Like wtf is warping wail even?

This is true. It's a cliché to even bring up but the fucking card named "Paaaaaradox Eeeeengine" is slightly less interesting to look at than the patterns on an elevator wall.

>>"New" card frames.
>>The retirement of Regenerate.
>>The colorless mana symbol.
>>Pushing the gatewatch
>>The 2-set block plan
>>Legendary planeswalker type change
>>The mulligan rule change
>>Progressive art and lore direction

These are not improvements.

A lot of things predated it, but I don't think Mythics or Planeswalkers and the like were really the moment.

The moment it began, seriously, was the release of Modern Masters. It was the beginning of the shift from just making core sets, and having the entire design team focused on quality core products, to printing cash grab sets and supplemental products. Modern Masters was a gigantic ethos shift, and just think about how many crap money grab sets full of worthless filler cards they've printed since. Also, look at the quality of the actual sets from Theros onward. Most of them have been boring and average at best, and laughable garbage heaps at worst. (I'm looking at you, Kaladesh)

Mythic rarity was definitely a precursor, though.

I'd argue it started with Modern itself.
WotC didn't want Modern to exist, it was made by players and got out of their hands as it exploded in popularity because CAW Blade Standard was utter shit.

Being forced to make Modern a real format might have broken them.

>Speaking as someone that played at that time, fuck Mirrodin.
Straight up truth. I still have PTSD flashbacks about Skullclamp and Disciple...

I mean, Affinity wasn't even the worst idea in the set, it was just one of them...

Completely wrong. Every time I can make a new interesting deck I get that same wonder. The problem is none of the new cards are interesting. There are a lot of cards that are ALMOST interesting but are gimped in some way to the point I don't get the urge to build a deck around that theme or idea.

Probably around Khans or BFZ it went to super shit.

Somewhere along the way they started printing a bunch of shittier versions of modern staples and most of the cards are super weak in standard. I don't quite remember when the art started getting terrible but it's definitely noticeable when they started pushing the jacetice league in BFZ and added anus mana. Not to mention, the cardstock quality has ghastly since then.

This, I really like the merfolk and vampires in Ixalan but what's the point when Energy exists and will be around until october?