First of all I would like to say I haven't played Magic seriously in years. I am debating because I don't see where the vitrol is coming from, since I've played one or two booster drafts before and read my brother's cards occasionally. Perhaps I'm wrong completely... I can't do Friday night magic this Friday, but I will definitely come back later and tell you if I got my ten bucks worth.
Destructionator XIII wrote:Then they are idiots, since they failed miserably.
And that is just the top of the list. They made artifacts and creatures wanked out beyond belief while nixing your ability to get rid of them, as your counterspell example shows.
I see nothing wanked out about those cards, because when those cards were in standard everybody had them. It was an artifact themed expansion, of course artifacts would be powerful. Now, it is out of standard. As mentioned already, the power nine are the most powerful and expensive cards in magic worth hundreds of dollars and will continue to be so. Standard play is Ravnica block, Time Spiral, Coldsnap and Ninth Edition. You compare your vintage format cards with other... vintage format cards. Either the power nine are in or they are out. Of course they are going to seem less or more powerful than your own cards, that's what happens over time, you release new cards that happens.
The alternative is not releasing cards with new abilities and new themes, in other words a static game. When you release thousands of cards some are going to be weaker than others and the only alternative is errata rules.
This isn't that bad. The opponent has a full turn to get rid of it if he wants (which is very easy to do), and when it does go off, it hurts you just as much as it hurts him.
Every single worthy deck had the disk in it when it was in. It's 4 colorless, unlinked. Forcing players to play a certain way is primitive. Counterspell was more powerful.
Contrast that to gaining 5 + nx life per turn where n is the number of turns since you put out the goblet and x is the number of energy chambers under your control, while none of them can be destroyed. Or the artifacts that make all your artifacts unkillable.
Yeah, balance. That is almost a big combo, but even any one or two of those cards is brutal. All three is just wank.
Combos have always existed. Do you have any idea how much mana 9 is. Or how many turns 20 is. Or that casting 3 to put out an artifact that shits out 1 mana a turn slows down your mana curve considerably for a short while for an almost meaningless gain. But the main point was: it was an artifact themed expansion (maybe block?) Of course artifacts are going to be wanked. In another creatures will be, in another something else. I see nothing wrong with that. Meanwhile vintage, the eternal format, still has the most powerful cards in magic and always will so the idea that magic has become unbalanced is silly. Creatures are faster and more powerful, so you just need to kill them faster.
Part of the "problem" is the Internet. Now every snot can go online and download a competitive deck, blow a ton of money.
I agree with that. I say half the game takes place before you draw, in the deck building time. No one seems to do that themselves anymore.
There's nothing to do with that but either get in the game yourself, or booster draft. More information exchange makes the game better, not less. There may be people who copy decks out there, but that just means the community's more robust and you know what decks to beat if you come up with your own
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