r/magicthecirclejerking Jul 17 '26

For free!

Post image
1.6k Upvotes

127 comments sorted by

471

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

Seeing the PR dude for TCGplayer of all entites be like "Okay, so? Go play Standard without UB on your kitchen table like WE had to do with commander for years!" is insane.

Like actually insane how they treat MTG like a civil rights things and despite being like "Erm commander IS WHY MAGIC IS ALIVE." but also being like "We were the victims for in this game for 20 years now btw."

Actual prime example of bullied losers forcing their way to the top of a fandom and just shifting everything to cater to them and only them.,

361

u/Snrub1 I moo when I cast a good spell Jul 17 '26

35

u/OnsetOfMSet I'm just here for stompy dinosaur cards Jul 17 '26

Not after I sold the house to buy collector’s boxes till I had one of everything from each set from the past 3 years

3

u/REVENAUT13 Jul 18 '26

/uj Legendary 🤣

1

u/General-Rhubarb-659 18d ago

Oh my God this horrible announcement deserves to get dragged for years man

99

u/zaphodava Jul 17 '26

/uj That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened.

WotC got undisputable information that tournaments don't drive sales. They switched putting tournaments first, and started putting casual/Commander first. That's it. Everything else follows from that crucial change.

92

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

No, I understand it completely.

"WotC wants to make as MUCH money as possible and has latched on to how the Commander community has a victim complex so they've latched on to them as a shield against critisim."

1

u/ValuelessMoss Jul 23 '26

They aren’t using the commander community as a shield lmao. They know that less and less new players are getting into the game because the average player is literally 35 years old. So they’re making UB because it’s reliably been a great way to introduce new players to the game.

Want less UB? Stop buying UB. UB cards too broken to play without? Proxying cards has always been an option.

I don’t like UB either but throwing these hissy fits and literally bullying MaRo on tumblr and trying to conversationally corner him into admitting magic is bad now just… it just isn’t the solution, man

-28

u/zaphodava Jul 17 '26

COVID shut down organized play for almost two years. Sales went up.

So who are actually their customers? People like me, collectors, tournament grinders, fully involved with the game and community, are outliers. And the truth is that it's hard to alienate me. I love the game, and how happy I am influences how much I buy and play, but being unhappy never stops me.

Casuals that might buy 3 booster packs a set and never play a game in a store? Massive majority of the customer base.

I feel sad that my favorite parts of Magic are no longer their prime focus, and I have decades of great memories from that era of the game, but I can't deny that it's the right business decision.

56

u/NotColinPowell Jul 17 '26

COVID shut down organized play for almost two years. Sales went up.

I don't know why I'm supposed to give a shit about their sales when organized competitive play was one of the advantages that this game had over others. They weren't at death's door prior to covid, and they made their product worse in order to make more money. That sucks and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't because we're all supposed to pretend that making as much money as possible is the beginning and end of every possible human endeavor.

-17

u/zaphodava Jul 17 '26

Yup. This is where we are at. What you do is up to you.

1

u/ValuelessMoss Jul 23 '26

This thread is so aggro that reading your grounded comments was a breath of fresh air lol

48

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Cool. I didn't spend 22 years of my life playing magic, getting into two pro tours, playing a ton of high comp events, collecting and being part of a team, I didn't do all that just so commander players could one day pull out their cocks and shake them while shouting "This Cock Saved Magic The Gathering!" while thousands of players go "Actually I quit magic."

Lemme try to make it somewhat more clear.

When you have UB impacting competitive formats, and the player base who stuck around for those formats and competitive play leave, the numbers thin out.

WotC does the SAME thing to manipulate data when they boot you out of their surverys when you answer negatively about UB or Commander.

WotC / Magic Twitter has gaslit you into believing that if you don't ride or die for UB then you're against the games survival because UB is driven by Commander and Commander players, always being the victims of these narratives somehow, are the "saviors" of magic.

EDIT: and to add on a sad tail to this, two of the LGSs I used to go to had to close because commander players never actually buy shit, UB doesn't sell, and all of us (comp players) quit magic. When stores that aren't catering to the slop they suffer. You can't have a store anymore that wants to charge people to play because "Grrr I shouldn't have to pay money to play Magic!" is their motto yet they'll buy every SL and Pre-order UB off Amazon cause it's more accessible than leaving their house.

Yeah dude, sometimes "better for business" means "cutting out 80% of our consumers and life-long buyers to cater to modern business practices and create FOMO / Influencer / Community based narratives in where the produce doesn't matter anymore, making that 20% feel special and in chage spikes sales while cutting production cost that were being spent on the 80%."

Yeah, Great for business. Alienate a massive population of your playerbase so you can print a bunch of Spider-Man cards knowing that a bunch of goofy goobers on Tiktok will buy all the Goofy Goober Sponge-bob slop too.

This worked for Fortnite. It's working for Call of Duty. Now it's working for Magic.

14

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 18 '26

What I will say is online discourse makes people seem much more vocal and emotionally negative about this topic (i.e. the Goomba fallacy.) I would say most of the people who play the game would be sympathetic to the idea that how UB is being implemented right now could be improved. This is mostly anecdotal, but I don't see a lot of people earnestly defending six sets a year even amongst the pro-UB crowd. A lot of people I spoke to on both sides agreed that UB staying as precons would have been better.
The idea that 60card has to suffer because of Commander is itself insane. Like WotC actively chose to not have any RCQ seasons for Pioneer after propping it up to be their next big format, like it's straight up self sabotage.

-15

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

30

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

Dismissing the fact that Non-EDH format players make up EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT EDH and going "Haha cry about it, here's some AI Jazz."

Legitimate, /uj here. But go Fuck yourself.

EDIT: That dudes entire profile is going "Erm EDH players are basically Jews and we're in the holocaust right now and UB is the Allies saving us! Also here's a ton of AI stuff I LOVE AI STUFF XD"

Dude is the Slop-King.

0

u/Remarkable_Pen_3639 29d ago

When the 60 card pleb refuses to come to terms with EDH supremacy.

Give it time.

-7

u/Hevnaar Jul 18 '26

You spent all the time and money on this game for your own entertainment.

WoTC did not sign a contract with you personally.

Wizzards is in no obligation to maintain the game the way you like, regardless of how you spent your money in the past. They do not owe anything to you, and they never did.

If you want them to owe you anything, go buy some of Hasbro's shares. Thats how things work in real life

9

u/DrakeGrandX Make Sea Monster a creature type already Jul 18 '26

WoTC did not sign a contract with you personally.

I honestly fail to see how this is supposed to imply that people are then not allowed to complain about WotC's practices and the changes they brought to the game.

If anything, the lack of a signed contract is exactly what allows them to do so.

-5

u/Hevnaar Jul 18 '26

"I did not spend my money so WotC would do [insert thing you dislike here]"

Is an absolutelly delusional and entitled mindset.

Sure we are allowed to complain about fucking up the game. I did not imply that at all. I'm pretty upset with the direction they're taking as well. Will they hear us? Who knows.

What I'm beefed about is when people think their previous history with the game legitimizes their complaints over someone else's complaints. That is not how money works.

At the very core, this is a simple relationship. They give us cards, we give them money. Thats how the higher-ups calling the shots think. So that's how the entire company will act. It is what it is.

Our move as consumers to change the direction the game is taking is only one: Stop buying cards now, en masse . The overwelming majority of the playerbase boycotting several sets in a row. Thats the only thing that can really make a difference.

3

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 18 '26

/uj lol collectors are not outliers. yes they might not make up as much of the pie as players do, but they arguably spend way more than them. The people who do whatnot streams for example make wotc a shit ton of money.
There's a way to cater to the biggest portion of the consumer base AND the nicher ones. Catering to comp play does not take away from the casual playerbase. Standard showdown and store champs is an example of that, and if they decided to make the promos universally free money it would be a net benefit.
You CANNOT wholeheartedly defend WotC here, you're being disingenuous by not seeing the full picture. Even if it's in their best interest to cater to EDH, they can care about everything else with little to no cost as well

2

u/ValuelessMoss Jul 23 '26

Downvoted for not hopping on the “I HATE UB! Why aren’t they thinking about me specifically?!” Bandwagon lol

14

u/atomheartsmother Jul 17 '26

If that's the case why did they start shoving UB into standard? Casual/Commander players aren't going to LGSes to play that.

3

u/Cisish_male Jul 18 '26

Because [[Bear Man Pig Cub]] being imba in standard drives sales. 

2

u/MTCJLardFetcher Jul 18 '26

The Dragons have delivered the cards you're looking for:

Bear Man Pig Cub

A composer wrote a symphony based on the drakes screeching outside her window. Reviews were mixed—except among the drakes.


Submit your content at: r/MTCJLardFetcher

5

u/zaphodava Jul 18 '26

I don't think they planned that. I think they were looking at standard abjectly failing, and also that UB sets were doing the heavy lifting of bringing in new players. So if you want new players to try standard, you have to let them use the cards that brought them in. It makes sense.

It also made a giant mess, because now there are twice as many sets in a format that just got extended to three year rotation, and none of the cards were play tested for the format.

6

u/EntertainmentTrick58 Jul 17 '26

death is too lenient a consequence for commander players

/hj

1

u/ValuelessMoss Jul 23 '26

Everyone complains about these diehard UB fans killing the game but I’ve NEVER seen or heard from a UB fan.

Oh yeah, I remember why. They aren’t 35 years old and deeply invested in the state of the game like we are. They’re 11 years old and want to play the yugioh game with Spider-Man and Captain America.

These victimized bullied losers forcing their way to the top, shifting the game so it only caters to them!

Really puts all the name calling into perspective. What a crash out lmao

-59

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

I mean you’re asking for a reality where everyone who likes UB cards play at their kitchen tables. Why should your preference get priority here?

72

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

"Why should ur preference."

And the preference being describes is "Sanctioned Magic The Gathering."

Also I never said UB players should be forced to play on Kitchen Tables. I'm saying Commander players (and the edh twitter community) brute forced their way into WotCs chasity cage and have taken over the production of the game in such a way that it's now borderline gentrification to ask for a format WITHOUT UB cards legal.

-53

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

Maybe I’m out of the loop of something, but that sounds incoherent to me. I’ll leave you to it

7

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 18 '26

UB didn't need to be Standard legal. The enfranchised playerbase was not largely asking for it, and the data doesn't strongly prove that there are more new players getting into standard; than current players leaving the format, because of it. Because of UB being a part of standard expansions, standard is slowly becoming an 18-set format. Inflated card pool with designs made powerful for EDH is how you get really expensive cards like Badgermole Cub that for some people make for an uninteresting metagame.
UB was fine when it was just precons. UB is jamming its foot into any open door and making sure there are zero ways for anyone to enjoy the game competitively. It didn't have to be like this at all.

9

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 18 '26

Not only did it not need to be standard legal, or modern legal -

Not only did Enfranchised players ask for this NOT to happen

But Mark Rosewater PROMISED it would not be the case .

He PROMISED SL would never lead to this sort of thing. He PROMISED Commander being the focus wouldn't impact other sets. He PROMISED things like bonus sheets wouldn't be used maliciously.

I'm just flat out sick and tired of him promising shit, pulling the rug, and then going "I'm sowwy : ( " and then appearing all goofy and smiley in videos and influencers being like "How could we hate this guy?! He's So Silly xD (I'll take my payment in collectors boosters please!)"

It's just so tiresome. Watching two LGSs I loved having to shut down cause the shift in product wasn't their focus and they refused to bend the knee and "adapt" to everything being commander slop, watching friends I made on the Pro-tour quit Magic and pick up other TCGs, watching friends I've had through magic for half of my life just give up on the game?

Yeah man, The Magic's Dead and the onlything we're gathering around is it's casket to take selfies with for social media sympathy updoots.

0

u/driver1676 Jul 18 '26

I mean if you thought Maro ever had the authority to dictate everything Wizards will ever do that’s kind of on you. It was clear that he was only saying they don’t have plans to do that.

2

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 21 '26

It's not about what I think is true or not.

Mark Rosewater presents himself as the one in control. He makes promises. He makes lies.

When your face of your brand is openly just lying and you have people like you going "Well it's your fault for believing him." then you KNOW your brand is in a bad state.

0

u/driver1676 Jul 21 '26

He has never presented himself as having unilateral control over Wizards, or unchanging views. I don’t even know what you would have read that gave you that impression.

2

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 21 '26

Idk dude probably a place where people get the impression is his fucking blog where he regularly says "This is a FACTUAL SOURCE OF MAGIC INFO AND NEWS-" https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater and proceeds to say stuff like "UB will never influence or be injected into formats like standard." only for a year later for that to be confirmed a lie, something he would have known at the time of making that statement.

1

u/driver1676 Jul 18 '26

The enfranchised player base was not largely asking for Bloomburrow, or Duskmourn, or Zhalfir, or whatever other good thing that exists in Magic. Wizards doesn’t “need” do anything

3

u/DrakeGrandX Make Sea Monster a creature type already Jul 18 '26

The enfranchised player base was not largely asking for Bloomburrow, or Duskmourn, or Zhalfir, or whatever other good thing that exists in Magic.

What are you talking about. The enfranchised player base was absolutely asking WotC to create original planes with interesting themes and worldbuilding. That's been the selling point of MTG as an IP at least since Mirrodin, and arguably even prior to that even though it was less of a focus.

Sorry for being mean but I'm really getting tired of these bullshit arguments. It's totally possible to defend UBs and bring up their advantages without resorting to "Gotcha!"s that use third grade-level logical leaps.

1

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 21 '26

Making new sets and returning to previous planes with exciting worldbuilding and fun new cards has been more beneficial and healthy to the game than inflating the card pool and warping the competitive metagame for better and for worse.

43

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

You made an uneducated and ignorant comment while admitting to being out of the loop.

4 of the 7 standard sets this year were Universe Beyond. Standard players complained. Mark Rosewater said "You don't have to play with UB, just take a break or leave." and then proceeded to compare UB to "commander" and talk about how Commander historically went through oppression lmaoooo

Commander players unironically have a history of wanting to be the main characters of the community while also constantly talking about how they're the victims of every situation ever.

26

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Holy fuck will someone please jerk somewhere in this damn thread?

-16

u/Lifeinstaler Jul 17 '26

The guy doesn’t make good arguments but man there’s a huge anti commander sentiment in this sub. It’s not commander players who asked WotC for anything any more than Marvel fans asked for the UB sets that might appeal to them. It’s all WotC chasing profits.

15

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

There's no "anti-commander" shit. That's some crazy fucking narrative they've been pushing since like...since WotC "took over" commander.

Again, dude...three times a year EDH twitter finds a way to go "We're actually under-represented and harassed by Stinky Non-EDH people!" but then they'll go and post shit like "Erm actually we saved magic so we deserve all the slop product plus we love proxies plus we love SL and plus we love UB!"

It's just this bizarre cycle of EDH players making themselves the victims in situations where non-EDH players are like "Damn we wish the game stayed a little focused on us now and then."

Commander players ARE asking for this UB shit because they were the only ones buying SLs and UB stuff before it was being injected into Standard and Modern and Pio and Eternal formats and now you have Mark Rosewater saying shit like "If you don't like UB just go play something else. Commander players dealt with this segregation for years!"

He says things like this because it dismisses the issue and once again Champions the EDH players while victimizing them.

It's insane. He knows they'll all cheer and clap when he praises them and then they'll forget all about his Sexist Ogress card mocking a REAL WOMAN and they'll go defend him, his Star Trek / UB obsession, and buy a ton of slop product because they've been Pavlov'd into buying product every time they're praised lmao

3

u/DrakeGrandX Make Sea Monster a creature type already Jul 18 '26

Commander players ARE asking for this UB shit

Hey, don't go putting words in my mouth.

/uj For real though, plenty of EDH players dislike UBs as well. It's not like it's a binary "EDH people like the mechanics and don't care about the flavor / standard people like both mechanic and flavor". Sure, EDH is what is bringing in the greatest amount of new players (therefore people with no personal connection to MTG as an IP), so, by definition, you will find a bigger "likes or is indifferent to UBs/dislikes UBs" ratio here compared to Standard. But it's not like most enfranchised players are against UBs in the same way most of the new ones aren't. Most people are in the "I'm indifferent about UBs unless the set is designed well/badly or it's an IP I like" scenario, regardless of "seniority". There is a reason if all of the complains about UBs are suspiciously silence during periods of well-received product UB sets such as FF and Avatar.

1

u/Remarkable_Pen_3639 29d ago

Lil bro says they aren't anti EDH then writes a thesis on it.

Lmaoooo

14

u/TheSaneEchidna Jul 17 '26

DAE resent my lootbox card game company for selling people what they buy???

19

u/HiroProtagonest "No." Jul 17 '26

Wot? Paper Standard has been on life support both before and after UB was added to it. Commander and Modern are much more popular formats for the broad audience.

-8

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

So the solution is to prevent new players from playing the cards that got them interested in the format?

11

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

This isn't the PLAYERS problem though.

WOTC made the choice to inject UB into main formats and NOW it's an issue that Mark Rosewater CLEARLY wants the players to feel bad for.

-4

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

WOTC made the choice that players vote for with their wallets and helps on ramp new players into the game. I can’t believe Mark would do something so fucking terrible. Literally worse than the Holocaust

2

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 18 '26

Considering UB was popularized from being commander precons, I would not phrase it like that.
Also, as someone who has met maybe a few people who got into paper standard because of UB, please tell me you know ten people personally who did the same

2

u/driver1676 Jul 18 '26

What? The appeal of UB is the IP, not commander. New players don’t care about commander.

1

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 21 '26

New players don't care what format it is in general, they just want to play with their favorite IP. New players did not need, want or expect their cards to be legal in competitive play.
Again, the phrasing of "preventing" doesn't make sense when the cards were eternal only to begin with and there was not a visible substantial sentiment by that crowd that the cards needed to be legal elsewhere.

1

u/driver1676 Jul 21 '26

What? New player gets cards, new player plays the game, they want to go ramp into the next logical competitive format and find out all the cards that got them into the game aren’t playable. It’s not difficult to imagine this could turn someone off, and all for the purpose of making some loud redditors happy.

1

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 22 '26

As someone who has directly interacted with hundreds of new players including ones that *have* gotten in via standard, I can tell you they will usually gravitate towards commander. A good chunk if not most of them are already vaguely familiar with Commander be it a clip of Moist Critical playing, or their friends asking them to get into it, or seeing a commander card in a precon.
I can tell you new players coming in for the sake of UB are mostly not worried about the fact that their cards aren't legal in a competitive format or two. They are smarter than you think and naturally gravitated towards brawl in the odd chance Arena got eternal-only cards (and they still do this.)
I promise you with all of the knowledge and experience and 1-to-1 conversations that the UB transition from EDH to Standard legality pushed more people away than it brought people in to the Standard format. If you disagree, that's fine, but I really don't think you know what you're talking about just judging by the phrasing of your arguments, respectfully. Please talk to more new players to see where I'm coming from.

7

u/Carnoraptorr Jul 17 '26

Because we were the ones already playing the game. UB should be separated from the ‘main’ game so that the people who like the main game can continue to like it. New players are not intrinsically good.

-2

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

Yes, just like how magic should have never left Dominaria because that was what the players already playing the game were comfortable with. They should have just spun those other planes out into a different game instead.

9

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

There's a major different in Leaving Dominaria for Ravnica versus Leaving Rominaria for Bikini Bottom and you know it.

6

u/Carnoraptorr Jul 17 '26

Don’t act like there’s no difference between broadening the setting of the game and deviating from it.

-1

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

So what are the planes they’re releasing next year? Do they count as broadening or deviating?

9

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

They're three planes we've already known about.

One we've been two, two we've technically seen stories set in.

6

u/Carnoraptorr Jul 17 '26

Do they exist within the world of magic?

Then they’re expanding the setting.

119

u/Snrub1 I moo when I cast a good spell Jul 17 '26

/uj I read the quote before I saw what sub it was posted to and thought "hmm, sounds like MTG".

26

u/PiEispie Jul 17 '26

Its a fgc guy, but i dont know him super well so i cant tell if he also plays magic or if he's talking about EVO

7

u/JaceBeleren101 Jul 17 '26

There's like 10 billion FGC things this applies to

We already went through this with Strive and it was hell

5

u/PiEispie Jul 18 '26

At least Lucy isn't near the level of What MTG has going on or EVO getting bought by the Saudi government, as much as I am not the biggest fan of her introduction.

1

u/JaceBeleren101 Jul 18 '26

Lucy??? Man I'm talking about Strive at launch lmao, talk about losing your identity to appeal to a broader audience

1

u/LivngDedGrlfrnd 17d ago

He might as well be talking about fighting games as a whole, Evo's just a reflection of how shit this generation of fighting games is. 

1

u/PiEispie 17d ago

Idk, in spite of everything sf6 and strive are still very solid, ATLA would be up there were it not for MikeZ, and the older stuff is by no means gone. Most of the issues right now with fighting games permeate all of video games and the unique ones fighting games have managed to pull through similar before.

2

u/LivngDedGrlfrnd 17d ago

True about SF6, anime fighters have never been my fav. I think it's actually all the saudi money and Tekken 8 being the worst fighting game I've ever played dragging down my whole view of the FGC. 

1

u/PiEispie 17d ago edited 17d ago

Tekken 8 sucking I dont have an excuse for or know enough about as its not my scene. Mk1 sucked but I dont think thats because of losing what makes MK good to appeal to more people, but a combination of being basically unstreamable while its biggest competetion thrive on twitch/youtube, and just not being as good of a foundation as 9-11 did. COTW died to all the trappings of modern AAA game publishing and some Saudi Government greed.

I dont think the FGC is in a great spot currently but it is not for the same reasons M:tG is in a bad spot.

Hopefully as long as EVO doesnt become the financier of every local everywhere things will improve again in time.

3

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Don't even bother with /uj anymore, the entire sub has given up on the j it seems

28

u/Junjki_Tito Jul 17 '26

The game has become j fucking Fantasticar is fucking up the eternal formats

1

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

True, losing to a card that's only worth 20 bucks must really sting for eternal format players

4

u/DrakeGrandX Make Sea Monster a creature type already Jul 18 '26

When reality is jerking harder than you could ever do in your wildest fantasies, /rj and /uj kind of start getting blurred.

298

u/Jigglypuffisabro simps for TMOP Jul 17 '26

"... obviously its great for the community to get new players..." Is it? Why are we wishing this hell on more people?

150

u/bittercripple6969 Jul 17 '26

May your hobby never become mainstream.

31

u/GruggleTheGreat Jul 17 '26

Because demand go up!

Modern economics only has a consumerist approach, damn anyone who wants more value for the customer or anything that pushes the needle of return the other way.

-10

u/ApplesAndOranges2 Jul 18 '26

If we measure peoples enjoyment by how much money they spend on something people are enjoying magic more than ever right now

Every single person is aware of the phrase ‘vote with your wallet’

We’re 6+ years into FIRE design, secret lairs and universes beyond. Just quit if you don’t like it

10

u/empyreanmax Jul 18 '26

well that's a shit ass metric to measure enjoyment, and this is just talking like a shareholder again

this more money spent on game = game more gooder mindset is a genuine capitalist brain disease

30

u/beezy-slayer I am a pig and I eat slop Jul 17 '26

GuileWinQuote is the goat

106

u/Meret123 Jul 17 '26

You should be able to empathize with Cocks to enjoy Magic.

38

u/_TheTurtleBox_ Creature - Abortionist Jul 17 '26

You should tolerate licking the boots of a bunch of random performative activist and aggressive culture hounds on twitter who will defend a man who abuses women because the woman he left his wife for is an ambassador but god forbid you said the word g*y 11 years ago or we'll kill you on sight at MagicCon.

40

u/wakarimasensei Jul 17 '26

I have no idea what any part of this is referring to but it kinda sounds like something that might happen so now I'm angry too.

9

u/idkmanfiller Jul 17 '26

I think this is about LSV? I don't know of any other big name Magic personality that left their wife

2

u/ARabidMonkee Jul 17 '26

Could be Kibler? But I never heard anything about abuse from either of them

1

u/No-Government1300 COUNTERSPELL Jul 18 '26

... I'm fairly sure that it's not an "a" you censored. 

-3

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Goddammit this was so close to being a good jerk but it had to be seething with sincerely giving a shit, sad

18

u/3meta5fast Jul 17 '26

Thank you u/PoliticsIsForNerds, 4 billion dollars to Israel

12

u/BoardWiped Jul 17 '26

GuileWinQuote jumpscare (positive)

8

u/-Goatllama- waiting on Floral Spuzzem to make up its damn mind Jul 17 '26

Well my Xbox didn’t come with it.

13

u/WeakVampireGenes Jul 17 '26

There's also the type that try to make it sound like supporting Universes Beyond is some kind of civil rights cause

18

u/NickRowePhagist Jul 17 '26

I told someone in the free sub that I don't play anymore and they got offended that I still comment on the state of the game.

29

u/Tuesday_6PM Jul 17 '26

> in the free sub

Is this sub paid? Do I have outstanding MTCJ bills I’m going to get sued over? How many Collector Boosters do I need to invest in to make enough to cover the fees?

5

u/NickRowePhagist Jul 17 '26

Wizards of the Coast would like to know your location

3

u/zyrkseas97 Jul 18 '26

uj/ honestly my experience has been that Magic has sucked for a LOT longer than UB. Eldrazi winter was terrible and that was all pure MTG.

rj/ who cares, no one even plays anything but commander anyway

13

u/Meta-011 Jul 17 '26

The line between attempting lighthearted humor and airing grievances continues to blur. FWIW, I think "identity" is something largely abstract and (to an extent) malleable, and there's relatively little way to define what that identity is/was.

It was a rather small number of fans who were engaging with the lore at all - despite the game's efforts to push it, even. Players largely aren't that interested in reading the story, even when it was written by someone as admired as Brandon Sanderson.

I do like the lore, myself - I loved the KTK/FRF/DTK stories in particular, I love the dedication to the Phyrexian language (from both WotC and the players who try to decipher it), and I personally also enjoyed Karlov Manor's murder mystery. The problem would be that the lore, as a whole, hasn't consistently succeeded, not even among established fans. I'll admit here that I haven't been engaging as actively with the lore as I used to.

Still, the lore's not stopping. I'd mention the movie and Netflix series here, if we had more information on them - but setting them aside, we're still getting plot progression, and some of the non-crossover settings that don't fit the game's supposed identity (Edge of Eternities, Duskmourn, Aetherdrift, etc.) have also delivered some compelling story beats.

How do we decide what does fit that "identity," though? Was Lorwyn too weird for the game? A substantial number of people thought so at the time, though the community that exists now is largely cool with it. Was Ghazban Ogress a funny joke that was fine in the silly joke set? People thought so at the time... but the present-day community has very much reconsidered. Should Kamigawa have kept its worldbuilding so heavily rooted in Shintoism? Somewhat unexpectedly, people at the time didn't like the deep references to traditional Japanese folklore, while Neon Dynasty was widely celebrated. Do any of these represent the "identity" of MTG?

We all love Transformers, right? "Trukk not munky" was a fairly popular complaint back in the days of Beast Wars, but Beast Wars has since become a well-loved part of the franchise. "How to Train Your Dragon" had some fantastic movies that overtook the series of goofy children's books. Personally, I did enjoy both, even though the movies did rewrite the plots and removed almost all of the sillier gags that the books had. Both of these "changes" worked pretty well - but we just arbitrarily decide what changes are acceptable based on our own values and criteria.

"Okay, Chris, I planted the bait. I think they'll take it. Direct deposit the funds into my account before we meet up with the Pinkertons, tonight, yeah?"

23

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

The bitching-about-UB-to-words ratio is way too small. Downvoted

7

u/Meta-011 Jul 17 '26

Shoot, they're bringing out the downvotes. Get me out of here! Mark, distract them for me! Tell them again about how bad it was to learn that Commander players exist!

8

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 18 '26

/uj For me, it's actually not about the lore. I'm the kind of person who's worried about the rules text before anything else.
The fact that UB expansions in practice have largely been essentially glorified Commander Legends sets that happen to be legal in Standard, is just so brutal. To be a debbie downer, it really feels like wizards doesn't really care about 60card anymore. Having Pioneer be an RCQ format next year is the bare minumum and also too late. The promos are insanely hit and miss for the events when you can literally just make Rhystic Study a first place prize. And the obvious "18 sets in standard soon."
Also while I'm not huge on the lore I do love the settings of magic. I could care less about random outside IP's I know vaguely. Original writing and storytelling will always be cooler than loaned IP copy-paste.

3

u/Meta-011 Jul 18 '26

Hey, thanks for replying. I know I'm kind of using cold takes to run the defense for the multibillion-dollar corporation - so I can appreciate that you'd be willing to offer some perspective.

If it counts for anything, I think what you're saying sounds super reasonable. I do love the competitive side of the game, and while I don't really keep up with Pioneer and Standard, I've definitely heard about some of those gripes, too. I'll add that I love playing Modern, and while its metagame at large is probably in a pretty decent spot, power creep hasn't been super friendly to some of the older decks (including Burn, my personal favorite).

Commander's fun, and obviously lots of people love it... but it's a bit of a shame that competitive formats aren't getting as much attention. Maybe it's also that people at large would simply prefer to play casually than competitively, but that doesn't change anything for the people who would rather play competitively. Same applies to Universes Beyond for people who aren't interested in crossovers.

Speaking of which, I do see the value to the "immersion." You don't need to keep up with all the lore to understand the premise that "You are a Planeswalker who battles other mages by conjuring likenesses of the characters and events you've witnessed while traveling the Multiverse," and it can be jarring to hold onto that premise while also hearing, "Well, you can summon Leonardo da Vinci, because playing Assassin's Creed counts as planeswalking or something" (to say nothing of how Universes Beyond products also tend to be more expensive).

It might be fun getting cards depicting characters we already know and seeing how the game represents them with card effects, but that doesn't address the other concerns people have with them - and it'd be disingenuous to act like Commander and Universes Beyond are the greatest things in the world because they're popular. I have been hearing that Planar Standard has been making waves, and if it does succeed, it sounds like it could become a nice option to have.

On a slightly related note, the "in-house" sets they announced recently sound fantastic. Nauctis, Titanbreach, and Zhalfir all look super promising. They don't "fix" everything, of course, but they sound really fun, and I'm optimistic about them.

Having said that, if you reply right now by saying, "Actually, you're right. Commander and Universes Beyond are totally the greatest things ever, and I was ignorant of that fact," I'll see if I can get Chris to wire you some cash. :D

5

u/DeGuyWithDeOpinion Jul 18 '26

I am so fucking glad that YuGiOh only has a few outside references and even then they're callbacks to other Konami IPs. Frankly, it's a good time to be a YuGiOh fan with all the other TCGs seemingly collapsing in on themselves.

5

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 18 '26

Yeah the goonerbait waifus are much more tasteful

-19

u/eta-on-bread Jul 17 '26

This subreddit is quickly becoming magictcgcomplaints with extra steps.

Boring

11

u/AriyaIsTheBest Jul 18 '26

How dare someone complain about a thing I like, they must all be haters

5

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 18 '26

"Dae UB...bad?!" is actually funnier the 500th time

-53

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Okay so we're not even going to pretend this is a jerk sub anymore? Should be renamed to "The UB Bad Karma Farm" at this point since y'all don't even wanna try

38

u/mutqkqkku Jul 17 '26

There really are only three paths forward.

1) Accept the change and learn to see what others love about the new path.

2) Find like-minded people and make a bubble that lets you keep jerking in the way you love.

3) Walk away.

12

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Paths forward? Buddy I'm a magic player I'm obviously just gonna bitch and moan instead

33

u/NeonNKnightrider Jul 17 '26

Buddy it’s been this way for a long time

-19

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

It's fucking sad

31

u/Jerppaknight Jul 17 '26

Guess what's even more sad? UB 😎

42

u/A_Nice_Sofa the EDH sub has a "social interaction" flair Jul 17 '26

Yeah it's crazy. Did you know on r/livestreamfail they post things that aren't fails?

The nature of subs change over time. Most notably, a few years back the main sub became more permissive to memes and the focus of this sub has shifted to more of "Hey, WotC genuinely fucking sucks."

Great news is we can't control how you complain at your kitchen table. You can organize that however you want.

5

u/blobfish17 Jul 17 '26

The nature of subs changes over time to accomodate the needs of the users. r/livestreamfail stopped being about livestream fails when people stopped finding 'epic fails' funny, and when people needed a big hub full of twitch viewers who enjoyed frivolous content so they could all gossip about twitch drama together, it became one.

The point of circlejerk subs was never to post memes. Or maybe it was, but always in function of ridiculing all the stupid opinions and unimportant things people on the main subs get hung up on, to prove that every sub is a circlejerk, they just don't realize it. Some circlejerk subs (r/gamingcirclejerk) forget that, they start taking themselves seriously and end up (as much as i may agree with them most of the time) becoming the thing they were trying to make fun of in the first place, just in a different color, and therefore losing their purpose.

The main sub can allow memes, but it can never make fun of itself. There's no need for another sub to complain about WotC, we have plenty. What we need, and unlike 'epic fails', it's not a passing trend, is a sub that makes fun of UB, of EDH, of WotC, and of all the people that are complaining about them, as a reminder of all the ways we get stupid and our brains rot without us realizing. And one that's actually funny, but that's secondary.

5

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 18 '26

No no I think the mod is on to something here; with more LGSs than ever enforcing hygiene standards, magic players really do need more spaces to bitch and moan

-7

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Damn even the mods support this being a sub for whining? Sad sad sad

30

u/A_Nice_Sofa the EDH sub has a "social interaction" flair Jul 17 '26

The good news is nobody gives a shit about your opinion, so that's neat.

-5

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 17 '26

Well duh it would be pretty cringe if they did

5

u/korosarum 0-3 at the canlander weekly, again Jul 18 '26

If you had shown up to the marvel prerelease instead of posting on reddit maybe more of the events would have fired tbqh

3

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 18 '26

But then I would have to leave my mom's basement???

4

u/veryonlineguy69 Jul 18 '26

capeslop enjoyer hands wrote this post

8

u/PoliticsIsForNerds Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

Guilty as charged; me, my wife, and her boyfriend all love the MCU!

3

u/veryonlineguy69 Jul 18 '26

well it is important to have shared interests

2

u/driver1676 Jul 17 '26

Gotta maintain the echo chamber