MTG pros speak out about WOTC becoming dogshit

Why does no one play L5R LCG :(

I thought that's what this thread was about. I didn't bother to watch the video, but I kind of thought that's what it was. The thing is-- that's the rate by which good creatures have always been judged. It's the reason for dies to doom blade or bolt or whatever. Creatures need to do something good before they can be killed. That's what makes a good creature. So I didn't really get his complaint. There's never been a point where the best creatures weren't the ones that generated value.

This. Most of the Magic players that I know that are around my age played Yu-Gi-Oh and stopped. At best they might play a game with cards that are a decade old but absolutely no one has said "lets buy yu-gi-oh cards" in front of me since I was in middle school. I haven't seen a Pokemon card outside of incidentally finding them on the ground or something since the millennium.

I don't think either game would see a major influx from Magic going tits up. If anything I think more obscure games will benefit from people looking for something that isn't Pokemon, Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh

>I didn't bother to watch the video
in the op I mean. I watched the PSully rant about Chupacabra

>I didn't bother to watch the video
You actually should watch it, it's edifying in many respects and if you play Constructed Magic you'll benefit from hearing what Sullivan has to say on this topic. It's only 9 minutes and it's worth it.

Creatures may have generated value for most of magic's history, but they haven't generated value in the same way that they do now. Even Nekrataal and flametongue kavu requires some decision making to play/include in a deck. Nowadays creatures just shit value with no synergy or downsides needed.

So tg like SCG now?

But I've meant exactly what you're saying - they just do good shit. Do I need to build around this fucking Chupacabra thing? No, it's just removal, not even conditional, it's just removal. Other well known creatures similar to this didn't had unconditional removal, a.k.a. you have a risk of them ending up just being an overpriced body (by today standards especially).

This is technically true but not practically. Terror was still good almost all of the time, so Nekrataal was still pretty much functionally the same. Same with Flametongue Kavu. It feels like it's principal thing but not evidence of anything practically.

Sell me on it.

>WotC: Mana dorks, Lightning bolt and Counterspells are too good for standard
>Also WotC: Hey guys, look! An unconditional removal on a body!

ITT:
>print good cards
rrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
>print bad cards
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

>a.k.a. you have a risk of them ending up just being an overpriced body (by today standards especially).
A 2/2 for 4 isn't overpriced? If there's nothing to kill that's all the Chupacabra is. Admittedly better than shit like Skinrender or Kavu that has to kill itself if there's nothing else on the field, but outside of very fringe situations where casting it would literally win you the game for some reason both would still just sit in your hand until there's something to kill.

I'll agree that Nekrataal and Kavu were poorly designed cards. Chupacabara is just an even more poorly designed card that is emblematic of all the other poorly designed creatures that wizards continues to print with greater quantity.

>2/2 for 4cmc is not overpriced
Do you live in fucking 1996?

Er... I wasn't saying they were poorly designed so you wouldn't really "agree" with me as it wasn't what I was saying. Though in fairness, they were from a day where the best removal was usually 1-2 mana, whereas removal nowadays is usually 2-3, even some 4s in constructed these days, so a 4 mana murder bear is probably undercosted in fairness as the standards are different.

I'm going to run with your point and use my favorite card as a kid to show how Magic has changed over time. So you pulled a Negator. Holy shit that thing is cheap and hits like a motherfucker. Sounds great, and it is. But it's not overpowering. If you don't know what you're doing you will constantly hemorrhage permanents as your opponent milks your Negators, trading life for your board. What you need to do is realize that this card is insane only if you dedicate the entire deck to making it insane.
>add Dark Ritual to get it on the board before the opponent even has one goblin
>add discard effects like Hymn to Tourach to keep your opponent from using, say, burn spells on it like a little bitch
>add other cards with drawbacks because you're already invested in this concept
>maybe a bit of graveyard manipulation as well I don't even remember
Better players than myself created "Suicide Black" that made heavy use of Negator in the logic that if you are losing slightly slower than your opponent, that still counts as a win. Of course, WOTC no longer prints Negator, and not just because it's on the Reserve List. Negator no longer fits in the design philosophy of Magic. A card that makes you think? One that requires care and attention to achieve all it can be? That might make someone's head hurt, can't have that. As far as I can tell Standard is currently "play my goodstuff before your goodstuff" not least because 7/8 top 8 decks are Energy bullshit mirror matches.

Every single time.

It's the same every single time.

People fucking crying that Magic died, Wizards killed it, and that all that exists now is it's bloated corpse.
Years and years and years of this.

Why is it still around, then?
Is it like some monstrous part of an Elder God, that which is dead may never die, or some shit like that?

Or is it just that you chucklefucks don't actually know what you're talking about, decrying over basically nothing?

This rant is confusing. the whole point seems to be "cards are too good in standard" which is a nonsensical stance to take. he brings up baneslayer angel as a good time because sometimes it wins and sometimes it loses, but I have literally never before heard any professional commentary waxing nostalgic for the days when the best cards available could just lose. "dies to removal" is a meme, but when you have available alternatives that don't die to removal, it's also a valid argument for why you don't run a card. He mentions how oh I might want to run my synergistic merfolk deck with sub-optimal individual creatures but good synergy, and then says if you kill my lord of atlantis they all suck. that's not synergy, if one card is the linchpin of your deck that's just having one good card.

The simplified version is good all purpose removal (like chupacabra) makes it so only creatures that generate value before they can die, killing the the market for creatures that don't do things before dying and the possible excitement or synergies that come with them.

I really hope there's another ban in magic. That would make, what, 4 in a year?

Absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah jesus fuck, i mean we all know how Banewhip Punisher warped standard.

I can't believe the kind of cards they'd have to ban to make energy not as good a thing in standard. gone are the days cards like jace the mindsculptor were the ones that got banned.

You are aware there's a predominately-Black deck in Modern whose gameplan is to pay a bunch of life so you can beat face with Death's Shadow, right? That's very Suicide Black.

Good point, though you can reanimate Ravenous with Scarab and not have to pay 1 more

Huh.

Banewhip punisher is a 1 for 1. You traded your creature for theirs and both died. When you play Chupacabra, their creature dies and your 2/2 stays behind. Now if it was a 1/1 it would be a different story, since 1/1s are pretty terrible. But a 2/2 can kill an opponent in 10 turns and do a decent amount of damage. That makes the chupacabra a 2 for 1

You didn't watch the video.

> that made heavy use of Negator in the logic that if you are losing slightly slower than your opponent, that still counts as a win
No, I'm pretty sure the logic was
>LITERALLY EVERY DECK is combo and burn is nowhere to be found so let's see if we can race the combo decks
And maybe I'm just losing the wrong part of my memory, but from what I remember, it failed.

I am aware, but Death's Shadow is a 7 year old card. I was referring more to very recent sets.

We're talking about Standard design here.

Modern has its own stupid issues.

They don't though, they include decision from your opponent's part, but all it's changing is that instead of opponents playing artifacts/black/5 toughness creatures(if they had artifacts, you were likely in an artifact heavy meta where everyone runs maindeck artifact hate, if they are in black, you're both running the same useless creature, it's a no brainer to include it, there was never any thought behind it and kavu having no targets meant they didn't play any creatire during the first 3 or 4 turns) , they can't build around it. So what a good creature is now isn't doesn't due to bolt/doom blade, but doesn't mind dying to doggo.

What annoys people isn't when answers are too good, but that answers require less thought than threats. If there is a 2 mana black removal card, I'm going to slap it on my deck without even thinking about my meta, because I don't have to, even if it's something like Victim of the Night, which fails against over half of the tribes in the set (walk the plank would be just as good if it was an instant), I can just sideboard it all, but now I force every deck to play taking my specific card into account while I barely planned anything. The only thing this new card changed is that a good card is now something that gives value fast enough.

>MFW I see MtG judges asking to be taught Pokemon instead of playing Magic

If the more recent cards were so strong then surely they'd be taking over all the eternal formats.

Anyone remembers how this shit COMPLETELY DESTROYS STANDARD? YOU DESTROY BANESLAYER AND GAIN 5 LIFEEEEE. And it's a fucking mythic too, it must be like $200 dollars now. fucking wizjewsss rrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Amonkhet and Ixalan are both fine blocks, but we're suffering from Kaladesh murdering any fun in the format

I have never met a more retarded person in my life.

At least watch the video first, you idiot.

I love how they can't resist shilling to buy premium and packs.

yeah I guess, but against, that can still be boiled down to "cards are too good." good removal means creatures have to be better to be viable, but that has happened before and will happen again. "dies to doomblade" was born in the age of baneslayer and yet he points to that as a high point. it just seems a strange thing to rant about. I get his point that printing good removal in a format that should supposedly be focusing on creatures is counter-intuitive, but I don't see how one strong piece of removal negates an entire block, and this feels very much like an overreaction to me. as a card it's very efficient, but purely as removal it's slow, and expensive. it's not as oppresive as efficient, instant-speed removal like doom blade and bolt could be. this feels much more like a safety valve against creature-based strategies than an affront to them.

>when opponent doesn't have creatures on the field, play that other creature you have instead of Nekrataal or Flametongue Kavu
I figured this out in 5 seconds after reading those cards while these 'pro players' needs 5 minutes mulling their cards at tournaments. I must be a fucking genius.

If you're so good at the game then user, when are you gonna top a pro tour?

They literally have their bosses telling them to do that in their ear. You would say, "Hey, buy our stuff" if your boss said, "Hey, tell them to buy our stuff or you're fired."

>tg used to have utter disdain on anything SCG
time changes user

I tried to rework extended suicide black in legacy the other day and after a few gatherer searches the boringness of modern creature design was quite depressing. Other than death's shadow, I didn't see any reason to not play low-effort goodstuff creatures like DRS, goyf, delver, SFM, or TNN.

Honestly, after seeing the different ways you can cheat in paper card games, I'm surprised they haven't died out completely. Imagine how much smoother tournaments would be if everything from shuffling to hand management was arbitrated by a computer.

It also helps for visibility. Hearthstone can be followed by people who don't play since they can read the card text through the Twitch extension. You can't do that with paper magic and even worse, it's hard as fuck to find out what cards players are running by the pictures alone because of sleeve glare and resolution.

>TNN.
>Modern Creature design
It was never intended to be played 1v1

"require skill to play in a deck" not "require skill to play" both nekrataal and flametongue have limitations. flametongue doesn't kill 5 or higher toughness and nekrataal doesn't kill black and artifacts. if there are good enough creatures in any of those categories, those two cards are worse removal, and their inclusion becomes more questionable. ravenous chupacabra kills not your creatures, which takes no consideration to be worth including in a deck all the time.

Because i'm not and because all of you are praising a video from fucking SCG jews who wanted to sell you more overpriced cards.

They've had.
>Storm is really bad guys
>Lets print storm on a fucking permanent
I play a fucking mentor instead of tendrils in vintage, as 90%+ of anyone who plays paradoxical does too and before it was limited, it was best deck with and without gush. It's still an annoyance in Legacy too.

Leovold is recent and sees plenty of play in both Vintage and Legacy. Kambal sees plenty of play in Vintage in anything that runs black and white, at least as a sideboard card. There's more if we look into non-creatures too.

The criticism was mostly that nekrataal had limitations on what it could hit and kavu could only kill things 4 or less. Problem with the point made though is I believe both of those still hit the majority of things. The Chupacabra doesn't hit that much more in a competitive constructed environment. Yes, it technically hits more, but by what margin do you figure too much is too much? For example, if Nekrataal hit, say, I'm pulling this out of my ass, 93% of things, and Chupacabra obviously hits 100%, is splitting that hair really crossing the line?

I agree that this set was a very very weird place to put a clean Nekrataal design though. It doesn't support the themes and in fact actively hurts them and a lot of obvious intended constructed players like Azor.

faceless butcher kinda sorta did warp standard

There are cards like Induced Amnesia that people are thinking about breaking (how do I Wit's End my opponent; how do I make this card into a combo safe; how do I abuse card advantage).
Solemity was designed to be a hoser, but it was also considered for purposes benefiting one's self, such as pairing it with Phyrexian Unlife.
Spell Queller is a card with an ETB ability, but it has to be protected because its LTB ability undoes its ETB.

Pic related is from 2016.

Creatures that generate card advantage can be fine, but when they're simultaneously better than spells and easy to include in a deck the format becomes like standard and legacy right now. Also, fucking swords to plowshares was seen as a 1 or 2 of mainboard at some points back in the day. When the format isn't entirely creature-centric, you don't just slap good 2 mana removal into your deck. A great format probably has a wide variety of conditional threats and answers because that's where complexity comes from.

Apperently there are too many brain dead people who don't have the attention span to understand a video longer than thirty seconds, so I'm gonna explain Patrick's point here.

Previous Magic design was about RISK and CHOICE. If you had creatures and removal in your hand, you had to GAUGE RISK and decide which one would be the better play.

Should I try to drop a smaller creature rather than Baneslayer Angel to draw out removal? Should I attempt to clear their board first, or should I focus on my board position? The way they played, do they have answers available to them?
etc, etc.

NuMagic design has creatures generate value immediately or when you kill them. There's no more RISK. Because there's no risk, there's less CHOICE now. If you have Whirler Virtuoso, you play Whirler Virtuoso. It doesn't matter what your opponent does, you still generate value.

It's also unplayable. (I do think that it's a really cool design, and I did try to make it work while it was in standard)

>When the format isn't entirely creature-centric, you don't just slap good 2 mana removal into your deck

Show me any standard format where doom blade was legal and black decks didn't auto slap it.

>NuMagic design has creatures generate value immediately or when you kill them. There's no more RISK. Because there's no risk, there's less CHOICE now. If you have Whirler Virtuoso, you play Whirler Virtuoso. It doesn't matter what your opponent does, you still generate value.
This is the magic you chose. You know all those times people say "This guy is shit, he dies to removal"? Wizards learned that in order to make creatures appealing, they needed to not die to removal.

They spoiled in in an article where they explained they use supplemental sets to print stuff for eternal formats like Legacy.

It was always intended for Legacy.

IIRC, different decks and local metagames decided whether you ran doom blade, ultimate price, or devour flesh in standard. I can't speak for other doom blade standards however.

Off the top of my head. Frites in SOM-INN was a black deck that didn't play Doom Blade while it was legal.
magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10299

It is, but it's one of those "suicide" creatures.
You might be able to count Gods since they require support in order to be super useful rather than just lackluster permanents.
Inverter of Truth sorta works in Modern if you make a Hunted deck with Torpor Orb effects (which also happens to fuck with ETB creatures), but it's better to just play all Hunted with anti-token cards rather than just try to lay an Orb and hope they don't Abrupt Decay or Kolaghan's Command that shit in response to a creature cast.

The alternative is to make the creatures resilient (return to hand from grave), able to protect itself (hexproof), or print cards that easily enable both (Blossoming Defense).
Wizards is considering having cards with weaker or conditional forms of hexproof (Reality Smasher). If they can follow through with it, it could allow creatures to avoid dying to removal easily without being mindless Bogles. Resilient creatures can make it so that removal isn't as nasty.

If only there was a keyword that protected against removal from a single color.

Retiring "Protection" and "Shroud" were mistakes.

They retired shroud because most people just played shroud like it was hexproof anyway.
Protection is still a thing, just only at higher rarities as necessary.

It's not just a rant on the gameplay but that it's a boring ugly card too

What? I don't remember him saying that. He said it was out of place but the card isn't "ugly". It's very simple and clean. It's elegance and simplicity is probably why it even exists in the first place. The other thing he says is that it's out of place in this block as it not only doesn't support themes and cards in the block, but actively hurts them.

>still a thing
>let's ban the only card with protection since Tarkir :^)

Maybe tell standard babbies not to cry whenever there's a good card.

I've been getting my suicide black fix in pauper with 14 swamp black. Pauper feels like a generally well balanced format to me right now, where all the removal is strong, but conditional and all the creatures are also strong, but mostly conditional. I also like pauper because all the interesting old instants like gush, dark ritual, brainstorm, and bolt are legal.

Though, he raised a good point. It kind of pisses me off the Chupacabras in the set aren't fucking vampires even though the set featured vampires. A chupacabra is a fucking kind of vampire. I do agree that the card would be more flavorful and almost as elegant and simple and appealing if it were destroy target non vampire though.

Maybe they should have kept putting those rule FAQ cards in the booster packs instead of those crappy advertisements.

The biggest problem in standard is having the retarded rotation.

Kaladesh is going to last until the end of the year.

Nothing new is going to happen because of that.

>ITT everyone in thread forgets that SCG are the biggest Modern shills who ever lived and fall hook line and sinker for their baseless attacks on Standard

do they buy up all the modern staples or something? i don't understand how mm3 barely made a dent on snapcasters. i'm pretty sure tarmagoyf would still be at $100+ if fatal push didn't get made.

>he thinks he'll survive until T6
>utterly oblivious to the costs of putting 6 mana cards in deck

tell me more about how exited you are for slivers in dominaria and how you lost to a child at prerelease

The general consensus of Veeky Forums is that they're one of the biggest offenders when it comes to buyouts. On top of this, they just charge more than anybody else. Not really sure why, they just like overcharging, I suppose.

Destroy non artifact, non vampire creature would have been a big improvement.

I don't understand why Wizards even condones these practices.

Printing staples at joke rarities is their favorite prank.

Doesnt need non artifact. Non vampire would have been a better design for the set however. But it could only do that and make sense design wise if chupacabras were vampires in this plane and they arent and that triggers me and I didnt even know it triggered me until Sully brought it up.

On the upside though, I think its cool a chupacabra is one of the sets highest profile cards.

mythological chupacabras are a mix of bloodsuckers and simply livestock eaters. in the set they probably didn't make them vampires to differentiate them from the people-vampires from a flavor point of view. even if chupacabras exclusively drink blood, they are not part of the vampiric curse that the legion of dusk are subject to and so are not vampires proper. even if it bucks the tribal themes, it makes sense from a more holistic perspective.

But how can a chupacabra suck the blood out of a golem or robit?

>2BB
>Creature - Vampire Cleric

ETB destroy target non-vampire creature

1/1

Oh wow, I did it

How do you go for the throat of an ooze?

>chupacabras can survive off of liquid gold
look there's a reason they're beasts AND horrors.

How can you make a bird walk the plank? A good design aims for the sweet spot of flavor and mechanical purpose and simplicity. Non vampire would have done it. The limitation matters in the context of the set since vampires matter and artifact creatures don't while still being as clean as possible. But again only if it were actually a vampire itself imo.

>chupar means to suck
Could have a probiscis.

Non artifact would have done it as well and make more sense due to talking about them being made that way to differentiate them from the vamps in the set.

I dunno man. There are non Empire affiliated dinosaurs. I get what youre saying since chupacabras are flavorfully distinct drom the sets actual vampire faction so making them different makes sure not to dilute their identity. Maybe they could have just tied them together flavorfully somehow, like how the vampire curse is hinted to be associated with a bat god from the continent of Ixalan. Like give them an affinity for the chupacabras or something.

Non artifsct doesnt do it. I literslly explained why right there..non vampire matters im the set and ties into the sets themes. Non artifact does not. Its why, for example, go for the throat was in scars for a non walk the plank example.

even fucking kamigawa did it well with destroy target spirit and destroy target nonspirit cards, right?