Is MTG still good, both in terms of the game and the lore/fluff? If yes, what would you do to improve it further? If no...

No, its been overrun with lefty shit and political tripe for years now

I'm sure it will have great mechanics MTG has been pretty good on those recently in the form of Enrage and Afflict. What i'm worried about is the lore.

I wouldn't say the game itself has been ruined. It's just harder to play and take the game seriously now because of the fluff.

Howdy /pol/

Why is red mana so fucking boring?, isnt it supposed to be like the color of freedom and passion?, its seems like its nothing but predictable FIRE, DESTRUCTION, ANGER AND GOBLINS!

I mean I understand that its supposed to be the mana color with a "direct" gameplay but why does the flavor needs to be so simple too?

>not wanting political propaganda in your games is bad!

No sign of the Jacetice League so far in Dominaria. That’s good sign.

>I can't stand seeing black people and women who are something other than fanservice on my cardboard!

MTG was never good

There is no denying that the kaladesh story arc had leftist influence in it's hero's motivations.

Purse puppy tokenism ruins everything it touches.

We had fucking excellent black characters in Mirage block. Serra Angel was an icon of MtG and a badass card with non-sexualized female art.

What we have today are fucking one or zero dimensional purse puppy characters and SJW entryism and it's killing the fucking game.

Second that leftist SJW overcrowded rant. WOTC is real neomarxist and nepotism related company. Banning for owning facebook group with literaly originate facebook idea of rating women (TravisWOO) or owning youtubechanell for edgy criticism and get in the hot water cause hysterical whomen cosplayer´s feelings (unsleeved media). Nepotism cause if you are women or transgender or ally with no meaningful skills playin MTG you are practicly on board. Exept card design MTG is full of unexperienced, uneducated people (vice president of global marketing is bachelor elementary school graduate seriousky unexperienced) and no wonder they pay shit to people on imporant places compared to Seattle wages. And also mean words on sites=ban, pedophile as judges=not our problem (SJW and leftist tend to be apologetic to pedophiles as another minority). Also: "Hurr, durr magic was created by LGTB community, for men and women and not for Pepe crowd of bullies and their toadies. They are interloopes and they need to go" Jespher Myrfos founder member of WOTC.

>I just hope they don't bring back old characters and just make a new "gatewatch" with them.
That's exactly what's going to happen.

Remove focus from the Gatewatch and instead put it on exploring the worlds. MtG is not a good medium for telling a linear within and the flavor texts are used much better for giving tiny insights into aspects of the plane rather showing us how quipped Jace is or how quirky Chandra is. For fuck's sake, at this right I'm expecting to read the following as flavor text in the near future:

>"You're a very very bad and evil dragon, Bolas," Jace said.
>The dragon laughed. "No. I am the baddest and evilest dragon!"

>"I'll get you for this Jace! Next time!" - Nicol Bolas

the lore is shit and has been forever, the brothers war was the only thing in magic that was ever decently interesting.

>Gideon thought himself impervious to any form of damage... until he didn't.

red is the color of friendship, love and art, it cant be that hard to represent these effects in game.

looting never should have been blue, its such a red concept, creativity, letting go of the past and looking towards new possibilitys.

faithless looting made me think Wotc had figured it out but they have not printed decent red loot since then.

>in terms of the game
Standard's a bit dull, as it has been for years now since WotC is too scared to print more than four good removal spells within a couple blocks of each other, but everything is still more or less fine.
>and the lore/fluff
That's never been good outside of Odyssey block, Kamigawa block, and maybe two other books. Settings are solid, everything else is retarded.

If you had payed attention you'd know that they printed FL when they still thought looting would simply be shared between blue and red. It didn't take long for them to decide that straight up looting felt to methodical for red, and so they decided that red either needs to discard before drawing or discards cards at random.

Goblins are pretty carefree and passionate user. It takes actual mania or psychotic tendencies for a human to be red but goblins just do that without being mentally broken.

Not to be that guy, but a pretty big plot point was that they got fucked by Daddy B on Amonkhet. The only thing that /might/ not have gone according to the bad guy's plan is that exactly one of the five subjugated gods survived.
That said, the Gatewatch probably didn't need to appear at all, and their influence certainly wasn't worth a cycle of garbage removal spells

my point is that it should not have been shared at all, philosophically looting is completely red, its about creativity opening yourself up to new ideas and living in the present.

the only reason its not red is cause Wotc didn't want to take an effect that had been in blues slice of the color pie for so long so they gave then strictly worse version of the same effect.

if they wanted blue to keep looting they should have given a red a version thats not simply worse in every way.

or even jut slap it only competitively costed cards rather than shit like pic related.

wizards hate red now, didnt you know?

Blue is also about creativity though. Blue is also about improving on the old and being methodical. Meanwhile red is all about rushing out through the gates without thinking things through.

blue is about knowledge not creativity, and even if it was red is still primary in that trait.

Meanwhile red is all about rushing out through the gates without thinking things through.

yea, red is about action, they want cards now even if it does not come with card advantage, blue is inactive looking towards the future, gathering resources, increasing their hand size.

It makes the game less varied. Every block since the Gatewatch was formed has had one or more Jace, Chandra, Gideon, and Nissa cards (and Liliana). It's oversaturating the game with samey planeswalker cards, the lore and stories of the set tend to focus too much on them and not enough on the titular plane and its inhabitants, and most of the time the Gatewatch are one dimensional characters with annoying personalities. That last point means all the story content reads like bad Marvel movie scripts.

Especially in the 2 block format, since they're needing to be introduced for each block.

>Is MTG still good, both in terms of the game
Eh.
>and the lore/fluff
Absolutely not.

>If no, what would you do to fix it?
Kill the Gatewatch, hire some actual writers, and make the stories primarily about non-walkers and the planes they're on instead of trying to force brand mascots. Also, fire MaRo. Breaking from Hasbro as well could only do well for the gameplay and story end of things, though it's a pipe dream.

>purse puppy

???

>blue is about knowledge not creativity
No, blue is about improvement. Knowledge and creativity are both means to that end, which is why blue values them.

>blue is inactive looking towards the future, gathering resources, increasing their hand size.
And sometimes getting rid of old ideas that have proved to be less efficient than other alternatives. Looting is blue, no matter how much you wish it wasn't.

>they want cards now
It's more than that. Red decides beforehand that it doesn't want a particular card and gets rid of it before it's even seen what the alternative is. Blue is more thoughtful and weights its alternatives before making a decision.

So did Robin Hood and the New Testament, cunt

>Red decides beforehand that it doesn't want a particular card and gets rid of it before it's even seen what the alternative is
as the guy before pointed out, why does a strictly worse Merfolk Looter cost 1 more in red? Like Looting is a pretty solid card, but since then we didn't get a competitively costed red looting/runmaging, the closest would be Chandra's ability to exile top card. Why can't they power red up in that aspect? When the red draw works best in dredge, something is effed up.

>why does a strictly worse Merfolk Looter cost 1 more in red?
Don't know. You'll have to ask someone on the development team (which isn't actually the development team anymore). My guess is that they simply don't want red to be as good at it as blue, or they fear that aggressive red decks would too reliably be able to get rid of excess lands in limited.

I'd say it was more of a libertarian story. The whole conflict was about the dangers of government regulation and overreach in the free market.

...

I get it. He means like those dogs that have been bred as status objects and can't even walk by themselves. So purse puppy tokens would be a token person who is heavily objectified, coddled, infantalized, and otherwise treated as property, while also being shown off ass cute and adorable. It's another take on the bigotry of lowered expectations with mockery of objectification thrown in.

Chihuahuas were bred as guard dogs, if I don't misremember (could also be hunting dogs, I'm not sure). It's only recently that Hollywood celebrities started using them as a fashion accessory.

Alright, I'm a shitty writer, and this is how I'd fix the gatewatch.

Yadda yadda dominara happens, leading to New Phyrexia, because that shit is scripted as fuck.

Jace gets sucked into the planar portal with tezzeret who tries to use New Phyrexia to fuck over bolas' crazy army of murderous indestructible zombies. Bolas gets trapped in New Phyrexia, but because Karn sacrificed himself due to mcguffin reasons, they're all trapped.

Jace winds up talking to Elesh Norn, who murders tezzeret, and she explains the glory of perfection. Jace decided that, to prevent further mind wipes, he needs to become perfection, and they both go to talk to Jin Gitaxias. Jin-Jan Augur Man had spent the whole time dissecting Venser's brain, and as a result figured out how to artifically engineer a planeswalker spark. Jace and Elesh Norn both undergo a transformation into some sort of fleshy monsters with the goal of phyrexia-fying everything.

Enter Urabrask. As the portal opens and dominara is going to get a dual fisting of fuck, he warns the gatewatch that this timeline is irreversibly fucked, and they need to go to innistrad to see emrakul, the time fucking, reality warping moon monster to go to an alternate timeline. Dominara dies, again, as Jace and Elesh ruin everything.

On Innistrad, Emrakul can't be contacted, so the gatewatch need to rescue Sorin from his stone prison. Que Nahri teaming up with evil jace and elesh norn to murder the gatewatch, but urabrask uses a remnant of Karn to travel and contact Emrakul.

An alternate timeline is established before the mending with oldwalkers, Ulamog and Kozilek are back. Unfortunately, this is Bolas' alternate timeline, and the gatewatch need to defeat bolas, team up with him, and get non-phyrexian jace to fight new jace across a bunch of planes through various maguffin-related shenanigans. Something something, we can never go back, and they reboot with a new storyline.

Huh. Even more appropriate then.

Never ever going to happen, but shit that'd be pretty interesting.

goblin chieftain still pisses me the fuck off! the original flavor text was so cool and good and thats not even after comparing it. I hope they fix the shot with the new core set coming this year.

just need to insert something in there about a kaiju-level battle between emrakul and marit lage and i'd be happy.

Purposefully dragging in politics where there was none is bad.

Sounds like a good set of blocks. Alternate planar chaos options and such.

I mean, the idea of the timeline being fucked and going to explore a different version of the alternate planes.

And of course, if they want to use the standard planeswalkers, they could colourshift them as everything becomes unravelled. Cryomancer Chandra for example.

RG's favorite card he has ever designed is Shahrazad. The man is clearly a genius, but he is also insane.

Garfield has a tendency to fill the sets he works on with very wacky cards that would never be printed normally but which none of the other people arc WotC dare remove from the file because "Richard designed it, so it must be great."

Putting minorities in your game isn't politics, they've been doing that since it launched. Fastforward to the past few years and in complete defiance of the game's history, they're continuing to do so but adding
>"LOOK AT ALL THESE NEW MINORITIES WE'RE ADDING! WE EVEN HIRED MINORITIES TO WRITE THEM BECAUSE IF WE DIDN'T WE'D DO IT WRONG! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, GET OUT RACIST!"
The only people who dragged politics in was WotC.

Personally, I love insane cards like pic related. It actually made me rebuild my love, monoblack suicide aggro, for standard. I just wish those cards were printed at uncommon, or rare at worst. Mythic rarity (and souped up legendary/planeswalker cards) is such shit.

>he's a genius and also insane
Lel, insanity is the world for misunderstood genius.

I really hope he liked the gods system of Theros.

The Eldrazi were great for that. Really loved the way they could mess with the game experience.

Hah, maybe there could be an Eldrazi functional reprint of Shahrazad.

>Putting minorities in your game isn't politics
It is when you intentionally do it to make a political statement, ya dingus egg.

That was my entire point. Did your eyes break at the first comma?

Yes :^)

I hope they heal soon.

I can't read what you wrote I'm blind but thank you.

Is it worth it to get into Modern? Standard seems kinda like a shitshow, but I'm not sure I can justify spending at the very least ~400$ for a playable deck.

wait but not putting minorities in your game also a political statement?
so there is literally no way for them to not make a political statement according to you. Your problem is that they are making a political statement you don't like instead of one you do.
You just hate minorities.

I’m sure I’ll get shat on for this, but no. I would never recommend anyone to get into a competetive constructed format. It just feels like pure cancer to me. I personally like cube, edh with friends, draft and other more casual and fun formats. To be honest, kitchen table with proxies is best magic.

>so there is literally no way for them to not make a political statement according to you.
wat are you dum?

The way to not make a political statement is to not make political statements. It's pretty easy...

>You just hate minorities.
Correct. Fuck tusken raiders.

Not that guy, but I certainly wouldn't say not putting minorities in isn't a political statement. Not unless you make it one. There are perfectly valid reasons to only include certain groups in your setting. Of course, that implies to begin with that ethnicities in fantasy have any correlation to real-world ethnicities, which is just silly. A black person in the real world has no inherent reason to identify with a black person in Jamuraa, for instance. Realistically speaking, they probably don't have much in the way of shared values, culture, definitely not history, etc.

Modern is pretty good right now. Spend your time watching some videos of people playing decks and find the one you think you'll love, try it out on xmage, see if it remains interesting to you after a few weeks. If it does then just buy the pieces over a few months/a year, if your budget doesn't allow enough money for a modern deck over 6-12 months then maybe solitaire is more your kind of card game.

Standard isn't as bad as the doomsayers would have you believe, it isn't great, but you can have some fun. The issue is that, in the same amount of time as you spend buying your never rotating modern deck, whatever $150 standard deck you are using is going to lose some cards, require replacements, have expensive upgrades printed, get killed by a rotation or ban, etc. So while you may save money in the short term on standard, if you keep up with it for a year or two you'll have sunk just as much cash as modern.

Great advice, I'm sure the guy asking Veeky Forums about what format to start has tons of friends who play magic that he can play casual constructed formats with.

>Your problem is that they are making a political statement you don't like instead of one you do.
I should actually probably be very specific in regards to this. My problem is that they are actively bringing political, contemporary intent into a creative medium.

Creativity is a form of creation, and it is corrupted by a fool trying to push any message. A political message is fundamentally one that is esoteric, meaning that injecting current politics into your creative output results in your creative work being entirely ephemeral. By being political with creativity, you give your art a lifespan. You make it terminal.

AKA MTG is currently being developed by politically motivated, talentless hacks. It shows in how close to abject shite storytelling in recent MTG has been.

Garfield is very smart and talented, but he definitely makes games made for game designers

IMO, mtg at its best is a bunch of friends chipping in to buy and draft a booster box or a block worth of boosters.

Unfortunately, most of the good draft formats are expensive as flip nowadays. (RGD, 3x RoE). Conspiracy and Conspiracy 2 are both wonderful formats though, and both still very cheap.

; ; the only good constructed formats are the casual jank ones you play with friends, no removal allowed, no trying to win until turn 20, no cancer combos like midnight ghrond, and everyone must give someone who makes a good play a hug.

I know you're assdevestated that people like to try to be the best they can at games, but there's no reason to lie to people on the internet to get them to think like you.

You are either sufficiently retarded to ask this or work for WOTC. Which means you're sufficiently retarded to ask.

IMO, mtg is at its best when you are tuning your deck, fitting in cards that help against your meta, shifting around flex slots to help you in match ups the shell didn't anticipate, testing out weird counters in the sideboard.

Lack of decent ban lists destroyed EDH. The EDH format should be cut in half--one side with infinite combo & tutor shenanigans, one side without.

Story & art look like bland Marysue comic book crap.

Planeswalkers destroyed the game, if you ask me. They are badly designed (mechanics wise) and were pushed for some absurd marketing reason, which is how we ended up with the Gatewatch. If I have to choose between Gerrard's political scheming on Mercadia and similar incompetence or the Mary Sue "we love you blue planeswalker" bullshit, I'd choose Gerrard any day.

I am actually wondering, at which point did Digital art house style devour the card art ? It's usually hard to pinpoint the excact point without scrolling thousands of cards because people remember cards that had excellent art, or cards that were format staples.

Also who is the worst mdoern mtg artist ?

Reynolds dungeon punk
EDH needs exactly waht you stated.

Gerrard and co. were somehow more fun and yet the story simultaneously felt more bleak, gritty, and grounded.

Yes, Modern has never been more fun than it has now.

Thats a terrible opinion to have. I would say I've never been more bored playing mtg than I was playing EDH.

>Planeswalkers destroyed the game
This this and this. I honestly can't imagine how they thought that adding cards that are like powerful enchantments that do multiple things and work as additional lifetotal unless your enemy is absolutely turbo-level aggro deck was a good idea. Not to mention that they are mostly just boring variation of "this same guy" except on this plane.
Imagine how old mtg would have been if every block from weatherlight to invasion had multiple legendary creatures that portrayed the same character.

>Not to be that guy, but a pretty big plot point was that they got fucked by Daddy B on Amonkhet.

I don't care if the Gatewatch wins or loses, I don't care if they're the heroes we deserve or the bumbling fuckups we expect. What I care about is them showing up all the fucking time in new Planes that are now forced to revolve in some way around them.

It reeks of Mighty Whitey - there I said it. It reeks of the sort of limp-wristed subconscious attempts to make the strong and wise white man/woman come save the day for the poor filthy natives who don't know any better.

Little late to the party but here's my 2 cents.

Game and mechanics really depends on who you ask. Individually most of the recent sets have been fine in a vacuum. Really feels like Wizards designs for limited first these days, since that's what moves product. Changing blocks from 3 to 2 and nixing core sets have made Standard stagnant, since sets stay in rotation longer and no core set means no reliable constant answers to threats. The eternal formats have been stable, but a lot of people want more things printed to shake them up, as lately Wizards has seemed hesitant to impact those formats too hard. EDH is goofy and full of infinites, but since it's mostly supported by LGSs and not the DCI most leagues I've seen set house rules to mitigate the problems or adjust for the group. The introduction of Masters sets is hit and miss. It keeps a lot of staples cheaper, which is good for players but bad for people in the second hand market looking to make a buck (before you say people shouldn't remember buying singles would be a lot harder if people didn't think they could make money doing it).

As to the story, yeah, Gatewatch is a problem right now. But it goes deeper than that. The desire to tell the stories via the cards instead of through novels really reduces how complex the lore can be, changing blocks from 3 to 2 reduces how much time we have to see and learn about the setting, and putting the lowest common denominator planeswalkers as the stars means the plot is typically rife with cliches. Plus making the planeswalkers the focus means running away is always an option for the cast (see the end of OG Zendikar, New Phyrexia, and Hour of Devastation), while in the old stories the characters had to deal with the problem or die.

Overall I still like the game, but the lore needs to be rethought before I go back to caring about it.

>It reeks of Mighty Whitey

You say that as though that isn't the criticism cited on tg constantly to point out the irony of wotc's attempts at political correctness.

It's never been better than okay, mechanically.
Fluff has gone down the shitter though.

If you had been to a tournament you would know that you get deck checked during rounds, not after you win the whole thing.

I said it because those criticisms usually beat around the bush instead of stating the trope directly.

Except the master sets don't actually do that.

Since their print tun are smaller, they just decrease the price of staple cards for a week or two and then the secondary market actually hikes UP the price to make up for the "loss" during said weeks.

Master sets are these fucking terrible middle term "solution" because wizards is so afraid of actually making the older formats affordable and making the "investors" and stores to stop buying their product.

Wizards is afraid of either commiting 100% to LGSs and resale places or go full pokemon and have to actually put the effort to make a distribution system to work retail like the pokémon products.

why? this card was worth like 50 cents through outt most of it's time in standard.

>Assuming the reason I think the story was bad is because it had leftist motivations

But guys. Gideon isn't white, he's mediterranean, since he's from the greek plane.

Also, Chandra is technically indian, she's just an albino indian.

Point is it was political something I don't recall MTG making stories about.

>mfw their awkward attempts at making Gideon blacker as time went on

It's almost like they realized their mistakes.

Was this the exact moment MtG became as it is today?

I agree they are overpowered in some cases, but if they were any less powerful, they just wouldn't be played. Furthermore, they add more depth to the game. The only problem is they are super powerful and turbo aggro is one of the few ways to make them less good. There aren't really any clean answers to them. As I've gotten better at the game I've found them to be less of a problem though.

>An indian with freckles and bright red hair.
They clearly designed her as a fiery Irish redhead stereotype, they just shoehorned her into Kaladesh years later. For years, no such plane existed and she never alluded to as much. It was just some shit they made up for Origins when they were soft (and in some cases hard) retconning things to get a coherent story for the GatewatchTM.