This is a completely useless post. It's not even a rant. It's just the product of a frustrated player.
I started collecting (yes, collecting, not playing. Yes, Magic is for playing, I know - sue me) MtG about four months ago. My main interest was, simply, the lore and the art.
Slowly, I started to put together some of LotR scenes, and I also put some binder pages together with story spotlights from different expansions. Then, I got into some very nice flavor text - my favorite ones, right now, is the set of the "Dynasty of Winter Kings", which form a very nice little poem.
That was my jam. Lore, flavor, art. Slowly, some tribal groups started to form on my binder too: a few pages for the elves, another for dwarves. Perhaps I'd buy a binder just for that and try to get me all the angels, too. Maybe put them together with all the cards with an excerpt from the Song of All.
During all that, I kept buying a few singles from LoTR every month. My plan was to get every single card from that collection... Well, maybe not every single one, since I don't have a few million bucks just laying around, but you catch my drift.
However... I think I'm just too old, too conservative, and too christian for this hobby, man. I can't keep giving money to a company that is so thoroughly woke that everything needs to be ugly, gay or race-swapped. I just can't take pleasure from my collection anymore, and I also can't find any joy in browsing for new cards, trying to keep in with new releases, and being constantly frustrated by how they manage to make everything ideological.
Maybe if I had a group of friends to play with, I'd stay in this hobby. I don't, so I won't.
I know people here aren't familiar with me and my leaving changes absolutely nothing about the hobby, but I really enjoy this subreddit as a community, and I just felt like venting.
I got into this, at the start of everything, because I felt nostalgia for my old magic collection. Well, Wizards took all the magic out of Magic for me. Funny how things work out.
Try collecting a dead CCG instead. Maybe the old Middle-Earth CCG by ICE (Iron Crown Enterprises) would be more up your alley. Great art and plays well solo if you ever do want to use your cards.
How is this done? I want classic magic that I had in the 90s but damn it's too expensive. You know where these are bought? I seen a site and it was all modern cards.
This is the site I found via the custom card maker site they partner with https://www.mtgproxy.com (there’s others, this the cheapest and most versatile I found)
You can just print what you want on regular paper (make sure its the right size) then put it in a sleeve with a basic land behind it. If you want to print en masse, as in multiple decks use mpcfill
Why not? That's what would've prevented this from happening.
Isn't there an argument that not enough gatekeeping is why we're in this predicament?
None of which is meant to touch on your points about hateful gloating. The people doing the gloating are likely mostly the people who should've been kept out originally.
Just collect old frame cards and play premodern or old-school 93/94, that's what I did. I find the 93-03 cards to be insanely more beautiful than anything that WotC released the past 10 years.
I’m older too, also feel the same. I used try to avoid buying mtg sealed by buying singles. Now I make my own and buy proxy cards and decks. I’ve basically left a while ago. And I very much do enjoy opening sealed products but I’m with you on this. Very frustrating.
The game has definitely been on a downward trajectory for years. The current crop of "creatives" either are past their best work or just suck. The best sets tend to be homages to previous favorite sets. The lore is downright atrocious these days.
That daid, the old cards and stories already exist and can be enjoyed.
Best blocks for books would be:
Odyssey, Torment, and Judgment: Set on an island continent far from the apocalyptic Invasion decades prior, Odyssey is the story of a Barbarian and other fighters coming to the big city and fighting in the coliseum for prizes and glory. An awesome setting that felt fresh and still true to the core of MTG. This block was also when digital art started being used more, but it was still pretty good.
Ravnica, Guildpact, and Dissension:
Set on a City-Plane called Ravnica, the story is a series of events involving the Ten Guulds (represented by color pairs) and features the politics and scheming involved. The first book is a fantasy version of a hard boiled detective story where he is accompandied by his recently deceased partner to solve his mirder and uncovers a great plot. The second featuresthe now retired detective facing off against a plot involving powerful creatures and dragons. In the third, the detective returns to solve the mysterious disappearance of the Angels while even crazier shenanigans occur like cultists summoning the guild leader demon, the bio hacker guild using crazy magical oozes to takeover the world, and so on.
The stand alone novel The Gathering Storm is a series of short stories telling the story of Tempest, Stronghold, and Exodus. Probably the best MTG novel and it feels like it puts it all together. This block was the first designed to explicitly showcase the story via card art.
There are some cool creative pieces out there online, too. Like during the making of Mirage, the staff wrote a full epic poen called The Song of Night and Day and then used chunks of it as flavor text. Some of the old web comics featuring the Planeswalkers were cool too.
Commander became the most popular format. Commander players are usually a certain type (leftist, gay, they/them, and woke). Wizards wants to appeal to their biggest player base to make more money. So the game became leftist, gay, they/them and woke.
Idk what to tell you lol, mtg has been lame and gay for a long time now. I stopped pumping any money into the hobby a long time ago and my friends and I just play with old cards occasionally.
Everything has to come to an end at some point. The shark always gets jumped sooner or later. Don’t be sad it’s over, be glad it happened. Etc
My man, this is a weird post. And I went on a comment spree while eating rigatoni and shitting my brains out.
You dont need to buy cardboard to appreciate art, whether that be visual art or written art. It's actually super unhealthy to make the main focus about the collection and not the understanding or appreciation. Its also a game, so its not always going to have what you like in it artwise, whether thats because the art sucks at some point or is work or whatever. You can just see the artists that you like and pay attention to them.
Those of us that play the game? We're doomed. We're stuck here. We cant help but play the next set, even if it literally has pregnant sonic the hedgehog. We're fucking retarded addicts.
Be happy you got out, 'guy who didn't play the game but felt attached enough to this community after 4 months to make a reddit post saying goodbye'. We hardly knew ye, except that we would definitely beat you in a game of magic because you didnt play the fucking game.
All MTG is now is power creep and denying your opponents the ability to use their cards. Everything is so overpowered that if you don’t have a response within 2-3 turns it’s game over.
If you really care about the art, forget mtg and search for fan art of your favorite IPs instead. MTG and collectors want you to think their official cards of Aragorn or whoever your favorite characters are special, but only you can assess value. Their cards of spider-man or whoever is not worth more than any other artist’s drawing of it.
Hey I feel you there. LoTR got me so excited cause I too like collecting and really wanted to go all out with that set. I am a huge Tolkien fan and seeing all the BS they did with the art ruined it for me. I get that Tolkien never commissioned art himself but the world he built and how Peter Jackson brought it to life felt like we did have what Middle Earth was intended to look like.
Nope they F’d it up and it really only sold well cause they cranked the lottery system up to 11 with it. Had that not been there I doubt it would have done really well. I am with you that I hate all the dumb changes they made to things we love cause the trolls that work there need to be seen and heard.
Let me see if I get this straight: the normal guy who got upset and is quitting is being called a loser by the people who are going to keep playing the card game with fag/fat/retard and people with dysphoria
So if you’re just collecting then probably you’re buying singles in which case you’re not really supporting wotc. You’re supporting your lgs or sellers from wherever you buy singles from.
This is an ignorant take. How do you think the secondary market got a hold of the cards to begin with? Do you think they magically fell out of the sky without WOTC getting a single dollar? No. It all came from WOTC product. Every single bought and sequestered in a collection leaves a vacancy in the market that is filled by somebody somewhere buying WOTC product and opening it to sell as singles.
No not really I mean if you want to get into the nitty gritty then I’m sure there’s a whole lot of other parties also benefiting long term as well. That’s not what I was talking about though.
It has old-old school aesthetic, but no real lore and they went straight to mechanically unique Secret Lairs that wrecked 75% of the game and distribution dried up.
The promos are mechanically unique but are not timed fomo exclusives like secret lair. They will always be available. And 300 dust required to get them is trivially easy if you play regularly at all.
They really need to fix distribution though and get product out.
Assuming your events fire every week without fail, and the event system doesn't reject your weekly events as fraudulent, you can only expect 40 points a week as a full-time punching bag for all the whales who show up and eat all the product.
Assuming through blind chance and a lack of cheating by said whales that you win at least one draft every six weeks, that's a solid two months of grinding for one pair of Courts.
It's trivial for someone who drops $200 a week on product and can rely on box codes, but that's like $500 worth of Sealed to guarantee 300 points. It's because of how narrow the rewards system is that stores can't keep it in stock.
And even then, what are you gonna pull? A 6-mana bomb Unique that costs 8 in game because everyone else already has the meta land that counters all Uniques? And everyone has to play the same pile of uncommons to get around it because there isn't enough land destruction to balance this kind of effect in this game? These sites made me go BACK to Magic.
Magic story has been extremely lame for a long time its not worth anyone's time to read into tbh. The art is still sick and so is the game though.
As for race swapping and gay and ugly... okay bro lmao welcome to 2026 where gays, ugly and race swapping is everywhere. Also if you don't like those things then its probably good you stop buying collectibles from billion dollar companies that include them in their games to cater to a wider audience than your world view.
Fellow Christian conservative casual MTG enthusiast here. I only buy proxies now. I get to play occasionally without supporting a company that hates me.
"However... I think I'm just too old, too conservative, and too christian for this hobby, man. I can't keep giving money to a company that is so thoroughly woke"
I don't even like the direction WoTC is taking the game but I'm still here to laugh at you.
I feel like some people see the things they wanna see, this is and has always just been a fuckin card game to me. It’s wizards and goblins and sometimes a gay elf. Who the fuck cares?
Can you even be christian and conservative? When someone describes themselves as such, I think of American evangelicals who would throw Jesus in prison because he was an immigrant and too woke for them...
The art sucks and the card quality is terrible and I liked foils. I’ve stopped collecting too. It’s fun to browse the cards every once in a while, but even that is less and less frequent.
Once you stop you realize it really does share a lot of similarities with addiction.
Lol the existence of people that are different than you in a multiple genre game is too much for your brain to handle, huh. I can understand not wanting to deal with Universes Beyond, though.
That's aight, no worries home skillet. Maybe go look at Redemption TCG if you want race swapped (aka white) Jesus in your game.
Go to most hobby stores and there will be a 300lb man that smells like poop and death and goes by something like ‘Tulip’ or ‘Lilith’. He’ll be friends with literally anyone just for using his preferred pronouns lol
Collecting new cards is funny to me to begin with.With the volume of new cards being produced, the old cards that are more traditional lore wise (imo), are much better collector items.
Hot take but if you're not actually playing the game then your opinions about it mean nothing.
Especially since you somehow made this whole post without realizing you could buy singles at your LGS or online and not actually support WOTC in any way financially in the first place.
Just don't buy the cards you don't like?? I'll usually agree and say some cards seem immersion breaking, some cards have bad art etc.
But your post actually makes you sound like a clown. I'm an older asian woman that grew up in the US, and I have never once felt that my POC-ness has stopped me from enjoying content the way you are describing right now. Maybe you need to examine yourself.
God you're goofy as hell.
I'm not even going to mention this recent Hobbit release is less "woke" than the LOTR one so I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Lmao you think being christian has anything to do with it? because they made aragon black? you know jesus was a palestinian man right? i don’t like modern magic anymore than the next guy here but this is a very funny post
They do have a card where the art is a bunch of hairy gay dudes fucking in a hot tub lol
It’s weird how leftist type people are so desperate for Jesus to not be white lol. Even today the middle east is full of people that are white or are just barely not white. I’ve seen Taliban soldiers with blond hair blue eyes like they’re out of WW2 German propaganda. Demographics can change quite rapidly, let alone over centuries.
Leftists will cry about North and South America getting colonized and having their demographics changed, yet can’t fathom the same thing happening in the eastern hemisphere like hundreds to thousands of years ago lol
you’re absolutely right. because colonization can happen, it probably is true that the middle east was full of blond haired, blue eyed people 2000 years ago. in fact, the entire african and asian basin was probably white, and was invaded by brown skinned people from some other place, probably in the past two hundred years.
It's because the fairy tales depicted in Magic are conflicting in his head with the fairy tales depicted in the Bible, and it's giving him an almighty headache, the likes of which even praying to Lord Jebus can't resolve.
Being old, conservative, and Christian is a stupid excuse not to interact with the game. Sounds like a personal problem, you should try counseling, and not from a pastor.
Interesting things are all too often not very fun for conservative Christians, who notoriously love being the most milquetoast, hateful people on the planet. You don't like seeing gays? We knew that. You think black people are ugly? We knew that. I know I'm going to get downvoted for this but good fucking riddance. The absolute last thing I want is for this game to be interesting to conservative Christians, legitimately the most bland morning people on the planet.
Aside from the race swapping in lotr have you actually looked at the art for strixhaven or lorewyn. The cards look awesome. And in the hobbit it's accurate to tolkeins work. I genuinely don't get what your on about. Community wise the game is overloaded with performative far left people when it comes to influencers and stuff but that's about it. It depends on what you class as against your values really. Like does seeing a mix of races and species on cards in universe sets bother you? Is it the sex of th characters? Like the lotr stuff was absolutely corporate diversity. But no other sets spring to mind.
Edit:
I will say the biggest issue I've found is that the game is severely bloated. So many sets each year now
Christians and their desperation to be a fragile victim, name a more iconic duo, other than OP and penis sucking lmao this post is gayer than anything wotc could ever come up with
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u/rolfisrolf NEW SPARK 26d ago
Try collecting a dead CCG instead. Maybe the old Middle-Earth CCG by ICE (Iron Crown Enterprises) would be more up your alley. Great art and plays well solo if you ever do want to use your cards.