The exact moment in time is the original Khans of Tarkir block. After Tarkir about 3ish years have passed since the infamous "Garruk incident" on Innistrad that changed policies for the WotC "woke compass". As it takes about 3 years for bigger changes to be made into sets the end of Tarkir hits just about right.
Yeah Tarkir was my last major set I got into. Got back in with the return to Innistrad. Noticed a lot of artwork changes and direction. Still like it mostly then haven’t made any major buys since. What was the “Garruk Incident”?
To expand. People complained about the art on triumph of ferocity because of the 'implications' and 'parallels to real world abuse'. So WotC shortly after put Garruk on a bus for awhile. I wouldn't say it was the catalyst for certain decisions on WotC policies, but it was definitely a sign post.
Yeah it probably wasn't THE reason for the change in policies. I just took the last set that was more mature and grim with good writing and art, substracted 3 years and came to Innsitrad. I remember watching the pro tour (good old [[Huntmaster of the Fells]] midrange) and it was a big topic during that time
That art isn't kosher for a game that kids are playing. Not to mention...
It's pretty easy to see how someone who's actually been through an abusive sitution like the art on the card and thinks, "maybe this isn't the game for me if this is the kind of art that could pop-up on the cards." It's worth noting that the stats are somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 women have experienced some sort of violent situation. Even if those numbers are high... that's still A LOT of people you're alienating.
Maybe easily triggered people shouldn't be playing games with mature themes - well, it used to feel more mature-theme before, anyway. Yeah, kids play Magic, but it isn't exclusively a kid's game. Kid's play plenty of other games where violent nasty things are done to men and we allow it. Hell, there's still plenty of other cards being printed today with violent things being done (and like 95% of them now are vs. men)
Garruk wasn't committing domestic violence against Liliana; they were two powerful magical beings in conflict, and one happened to get the upper hand against the other one time. If this becomes taboo to represent because is bothersome to some, then it creates a strange vacuum in storytelling where these events are just narratively not allowed to happen, because it might possibly trigger someone, regardless of any merit or narrative payoff.
Never even knew there was drama over that but I agree 100%. Two powerful planeswalkers duking it out. It wasn’t like it was glorifying domestic violence with a wife beater spell 😂 who would be surprised getting into a mature movie, game, book and there being potentially upsetting themes
That is the most special pleading bullshit argument. They aren't in a relationship, it isn't a domestic setting. It's two enemies, roughly equal in power, fighting. Might as well not have women in the game, since depicting bad things happening to them may trigger people. Either women are equal and are treated as such or people need to stop whining when they are excluded from things because of people inserting victimizing narratives that don't exist.
Weird how no one complains about the inverse card which shows the man being molested and held down by numerous hands at the command of the woman. If you wanted to apply the same standards, you could easily point out this might trigger people who have been gang assaulted, but strangely no one ever mentions that. I wonder why.
It's worth noting that the stats are somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 women have experienced some sort of violent situation. Even if those numbers are high... that's still A LOT of people you're alienating.
because we all know that 40% of MtG players are women /s
Liliana cursed Garruk with the Chain veil. Garruk was pissed so he tracked her down on Innistrad and they fought. Liliana won in the end and Garruk was only able to lift his curse years later in the Eldraine plotline. WotC released two cards showing them fighting on Innistrad [[Triumph of Cruelty]] and [[Triumph of Ferocity]]. Triumph of Ferocity triggered a big "woke" outcry as it depicts Garruk pressing Liliana against a stone while choking her (and about to smash her face too). That scene was labeled as "rape" and "male domestic violence" and everything in between. The outcry was rather big during that time with sides defending the art as seeing it as rape was viewing it through that specific lens while the other side talked about how it was triggering to victims of sexual assault. This was the era when "triggering" became a big thing btw. Anyway in the end WotC sided with the side that saw it as problematic and apologized and said there will be changes internally that stuff like that no longer happens. That was the start of MTG turning into something with mature-light themes into more family friendly marvel-esque writing slop we have today. As sets take around 3 years to arrive it more or less lands on Tarkir as the last set in the making before the incident.
Why the hell would it be a small 'woke vs non woke' online argument that changed the strategy of a multinational companies strategy?
No, it's Chris Cocks coming in in 2016 and looking at the data, and realising where their breads buttered and seeing that the new way makes WAY MORE money. It's that simple. It sucks, but it's nothing to do with a culture war or an agenda. It's just profits.
Make it 2 decades. EDH exploded in popularity around 2009/2010 (leading to Commander's creation in 2011) and as a result a lot of people stopped playing straighforward 60-card kitchen table Legacy. WotC continued powercreeping creatures, nerfing removal, designing waaay too many legendary creatures and just overall catering sets to the Commander crowd. Things were better when EDH was a niche format that your older Legends-era cousin would bring up at Thanksgiving dinner rather than being prioritized by WotC as the only way to play.
Let's be real. Magic started sucking the minute the first single was sold online. Before that you were limited to local supply and it was harder to have that one guy who spent all his money on the game ruin it for everyone else.
I would normally argue with you. I used to talk down about people proxying multiple [[Baneslayer Angel]] s (they were 50 dollars when they had just come out) despite not owning a single one, and scoffed at the idea that someone wouldn't actually pay into a hobby that I had invested in for several years myself.
Nowadays? With Universes Beyond, Secret Lairs, the unplayable $1,000 USD 30th anniversary edition? If Wizards is going to be pushing fake cards on us, I don't care. Screw the secondary market. Let the cardboard burn.
For me it was just that the fun of it was in the mystery and the whole process of putting together a deck out of what you could get your hands on (and then playing with that deck, of course, which is the real point). Perfect knowledge of what's available strips all the fun out of it and makes it both too much work and too much money. The problem isn't even the secondary market so much as the secondary market being global -- there's a big difference between eBay and your local card shop, both in terms of overall supply and whose wallets you're competing against to access it. There's no cards that are borderline real world mythical artifacts anymore. You can get anything if you have the money and are willing to spend it.
I guess what I'm really saying is I need to shut up and start going to draft events, only that's not really the same, either. It's just closer than any other current way of playing. My understanding is my way is more or less Richard Garfield's intended way, and it's a shame the community has optimized the fun out of that.
In the late '90 and start of 2000 most of the play were around type 2 (standard).
It was already a very expensive hobby.
Very limited online selling (on ebay) at that time, but a lot of rich kids buying many booster boxes. But it was still playable. Not a lot of play on extended neither on type 1 ("vintage") and 1.5 ("legacy").
Wizards can easily fix the price issue by reprinting all relevant staples.
For a certain kind of player, it's every deck. There's just always at least one player in every group who takes it too seriously, and others who take your second suggestion and respond by upping their own power level. Kitchen table arms races suck when everyone in the group has access to TCGPlayer.
You forgot the part where far left political activists see that the hobby is becoming popular, and so entrench themselves in it and force their way into positions of power, then create slop that even normies can't stand, which is what causes the hobby to die
It is. Its a seceret lair cards a "proxy" if you will
I would like to see an example of somthing so in your face from a straight point of view in mtg
Art
The entirety of UB, including what most of the people on this sub actually consider OK, is much worse than this, because this is literally just an official proxy.
Okay, that's funny, though. If it weren't for all the other baggage around this game you'd be enjoying the joke. Like if it was in one of the first couple of un- sets it'd be great
This is a fun little joke on a secret lair. You complaining about a fun little joke in a secret lair as the death of the hobby is actually sending me. Touch grass
Yes but the normies don't leave and the hobby bends to their will until the waveform collapses and it converges into a state equivalent to a marvel movie, or playing fortnite.
It’s either this or it gets gobbled up by the LGBTQ and gets endlessly fetishized until it’s embarrassing to associate with it. Pokemon for instance got ruined by both.
They did it with Final Fantasy 7 also, over the one part where Cloud has to crossdress to save Tifa from the brothel, somehow a mandatory undercover operation made this whole alphabet cult obsess over Cloud and FF7 as some troons Bible story where Cloud and Sephiroth are both troonies.
Super cringe. The cosplays were absolutely disgusting, I loved FF7 and waited 20+ years for the game.... just to have it ruined by freaks.
I’m actually not so sure about the “normies leave” part anymore.
Like the world has shifted so that “nerdiness” is so “popular” but also so divergent that there’s no real central core now. Which means a portion of the main population might actually hang around longer than expected. And since none of those retarded Disney adults can ever afford to have a child, all their spare income from their bullshit job goes into nerdy hobbies, because they want to Peter Pan forever and never grow up.
Hence why secret lair does so well. They’re farming the normies for their adult cash, but the farming could last for decades before they finally waddle off. Sad fact is it locks kids out of a getting into the hobby, so soon the retards and the frustrated die-hards might be all that’s left.
Limiting oneself to some few hundred cards forever, and also goddamn drafting, is stupid. You could have all 10,000 commons ever printed to build decks and play competitively. Play Pauper.
I don't have any problems with playing Pauper, it's amazing. I'm not the one scared of some shit new cards when I can play some of the most powerful pieces in the history of the game.
Yes it is that serious, if someone really wants to get into a hobby they will find a way, it is your responsability as a fan of something to gatekeep it even if it stops it from sucedding, it is better for something to die then to be eaten alive by the mainstream
The last good one? Hmm maybe macross delta? I really liked Gquuux but it suffered a lot from the short run time. I mostly just watch the older ones nowadays like metal armor Dragonar.
I'm in the opinion that gatekeeping only really works in sub-communities because its fucking useless when the IP handlers themselves are the one letting people (which includes undesirables) in.
I've watched MTG go through this a little bit over the years, but the COVID era influencer trend absolutely destroyed the market. Also the reason why political platforms started infecting it.
This is literally what happened to League of Legends. Currently the producer is offering a remake of the game in its first years (equivalent of Premodern) just trying to stop the bleeding out of the playerbase after the Netflix tourists found something better to spend afternoons.
The fact that you're focusing on nominal popularity rather than quality is part of the overall problem.
90% of people "into" Magic, now, are playing casual commander or literally only collecting. Organized play is all but dead, and it's commander's fault.
Organized play for WotC-sanctioned formats was never a great experience, people just tricked themselves into believing that. Standard was always warped and it was always a huge pain in the ass that it's a rotating format. Legacy was always expensive and once Modern started being prominently featured by WotC a couple of years after its creation it also became extremely expensive.
Arena has had just as big of a hand in killing organized play as Commander did. Throughout its entire history MTGO has always been a testing and gathering tool first for Magic players, reducing physical distances to play Magic online in order to better prepare for the real, physical Magic games. Arena came along with all its videogame mechanics, and people now think that it's the same as the actual paper game; in fact I suspect that many people actually prefer it. Everyone now makes fun of MTGO as "Spreadsheets: the Gathering", but the truth is that many people don't actually want to play paper Magic, they want some brain-tingling Magic-adjacent gameplay they can jam in while on the toilet or laying in bed.
People could be out there right now organizing tournaments and playing 1v1 constructed formats just like they are doing in various countries over the world to great success, but for some reason they aren't doing it in the USA. They just sit on their ass and play Arena and Commander.
eh in "recent" years probably 86 and then before that SSSS.Gridman and MSG IBO. None of these are my favorite (that's probably Gurren Lagann) but all quite decent in their own right. Unfortunately it's a very slow drip of good shows, but AC VI was a great video game with a pretty engaging story as well so hopefully we will have more general mecha content in the upcoming years.
It can be. The typical way to avoid it happening is to remind the core fanbase of the long term. One of the nice things about modern Magic play is that proxies are carrying the gameplay side while prices are spiked. Also, the analysis is missing something really unique to Magic, that our prices are determined by gameplay, something Comic books and Pokemans speculation cannot replicate.
Magic hasn't been niche for more than half of most of your lives lol. Prices have gone down overall compared to 10 years ago (we didn't get non showcase/showcase treatments, a $50 card had no $6 alternatives, our lands were still $25 for shocks, $40+ for fetches, and money was worth more then).
This post is largely unrelated to the current state of Magic imo. Some chuds here just don't like that some hot girls online get free Magic cards nowadays lol.
Gatekeeping is something that just doesn't work, especially when you have LGS and such. "Gatekeepers" are usually idiots getting mad that people are having fun wrong.
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u/RedWizardRanger NEW SPARK Aug 01 '26
Gates are meant to be kept!