Still, it’s made me much less interested in Standard given that it was nice to have a lower power format but now it feels almost as fast as other formats.

I remember heavily playing 4c Party back when it was in Standard and that was a viable deck in the format. It would not even get 1 win in the current meta by a long shot. Standard right now feels like what Modern was before Horizons and I just don't think there exists a slow constructed format anymore. Nor do I think there will ever be one again.

Yea this is absolutely the direction they're going. I feel like they desperately want to use AI art. They must be salivating at the cost savings from removing artists and set designers from the creative team. I can't imagine the playerbase accepting that but who knows, they've/we've accepted everything so far.

Completely agree. I also think THB wasn't tested outside of limited, and I think nothing was starting with WAR.

I can't help but feel a lot of this could be fixed by creating a separate game. At first I thought UB should be the separate game, and I still do, but it's clear Hasbro will never do that. Perhaps the best outcome could have been a game that returns to the old frame, the old release schedule, the old artwork, and the old play/card design philosophy and just sell it as Classic Magic or something. I would play the crap out of that game, and it would still even be Standard legal since all of the cards are compatible with the original game.

I know it's just a dream at this point, but I think there is still a huge demand for something that's basically premodern with new cards.

This is very well written, and one of the best pieces of content we have on this site. You are really amazing, Evu. I have much more to say in another comment after I finish reading everything in full, but I just wanted to echo that I've felt this way for about a year myself, probably longer. It's just getting too hard to enjoy the game, and it's even harder with MTGZone because I really WANT to enjoy the game and be active here and in other communities but I just can't find the love anymore.

every card that sees play these days does so many things that it’s not even comparable to old standard anymore

This is my biggest gripe with design overall. It has shown its effects most predominantly in Standard since Standard was one of the slowest formats, but I think this problem has caused every format to get a lot faster.

I'm 100% with you, and I desperately want a non-limited, much slower format but I don't know how on earth we get there with Hasbro/WoTC making it pretty clear that they care way more about sales revenue than the game being fun.

I personally think these are all positive bans. It’s unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.

Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth’s Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.

Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there’s tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I’d like to see Bowmasters gone next.

I personally think these are all positive bans. It's unfortunate that bans are needed every cycle lately, but these are all good ones to me.

Breach is a card that should never have been printed. Yawgmoth's Will was already insane, and printing the same thing for 1 mana cheaper was a huge mistake imo. This is just now finally catching up to reality. There was talk of banning Mox Opal but I think that is too premature when the obvious issue right now is Breach.

Sowing Mycospawn should never have been printed. And Troll was enabling too much efficiency for Blue/Black decks. I think both of those were the right hits right now. I know there's tons of talk about banning Reanimate, Daze, Entomb, etc but these are absolutely the right hits for now in my opinion. I think waiting to see what a format without Troll looks like is better than hastily banning any of the core cards. I'd like to see Bowmasters gone next.

Enigma Jewel is one I personally specced on. I knew that card was busted beyond belief and made a dimir Jewel/Rats deck for Pioneer last year before the UB announcements. I have not played 1 game with the deck but at least there are marginal gains on the Enigma Jewel playset lol.

First off I love that artwork. The frame kind of clashes a little with it but I think that is super cool looking.

The ability tho! I'm trying to think if there's something obviously broken about this to enable infinite combos but I haven't come up with it yet. I think that's a really cool ability. This would combo so well with Living Death, one of my all time favorites.

This was fantastic and so is Matt Nass. My main takeaway from this was with the lands in the deck, how much we could use Blood Moon in standard right now 😆 My mouth is salivating at the idea of punishing that mana base.

Reposting my comment with this account for visibility as it appears my mtgzone account still is not visible outside the instance.

Non-magic, but I may have to open up a discussion on the Lemmy hosting discord for this. I actually thought it was working after an update we applied but I'll see what they and Andrew can help with.

I'm curious to know how many price increases and card or pack decreases have happened over the last 2-3 years. Hasbro's insane requirement of WoTC to increase revenue 50% year over year, and WoTC's constant pushing of all costs onto the consumer has gotten us to this point.

I'm also curious what this looks like even just 1 or 2 years down the line. 50% YoY is impossible to maintain, so what happens when they don't hit the target? What happens when they decrease revenue for a quarter or fiscal year? What happens if it bears true that some UB sets are hits, and others are flops? What happens if we hit a recession?

They've traded the health of the underlying game for short term profits under the tenuous assertion that people will always continue to pay.

I have a lot of thoughts on this but I'll keep it crazy short (lol).

First, that was incredible and I totally felt his excitement the whole time. However, what am I watching! Timeless has effectively now become Yugioh, and it's not even a joke, that's what Yugioh game play is like.

I started out really interested in Timeless as a format, but this is what you get when you take free interaction out of Legacy. It's a joke format to me right now, and adding Chrome Mox makes it unplayable. I think it was unplayable before with the prevalence of combo decks, but this is truly something else. This guy won the game on the opponent's upkeep without any lands in hand or in play...

I don't think Wizards gives a shit really, they don't care about 60 card constructed at all imo, but I can't seem them adding Force of Negation in 2025 when it was actually needed in 2024. I'm very curious to know how big that Timeless playerbase is.

I think that's okay tho, but you could also have the Vehicle stay a creature until the following turn. Like you crew it on your turn, and it stays a creature until your next turn.

This is awesome! Congrats, I haven't played it yet but it seems like Boros is a pretty strong pair for this format. Did you like playing it / Aetherdrift draft in general?

I really think the issue I have with Vehicles is that they can be crewed at instant speed. That holds up every single turn and step of the game for that action. I would have preferred crew being a sorcery speed action. Something you can only do on your turn makes more sense to me and it solves that problem.

Love this one. I could absolutely see it being printed now or in an old set.

I think this is a pretty good idea, and I like the overall take on it. It's a little confusing at first but I imagine it will get iterated on. The Game Changers are very confusing, I feel like people will just optimize against these or any list like this.

What I love most is that my old school 5c Knight Tribal Kenrith actually qualifies in the bracket 1 it's designed for. Whenever I said Kenrith before people never wanted to play against it but the deck stinks! It's just equipment and knights from the first 15 years of the game. Kenrith is only in there to get 5c and because he's an awesome and loreful king and commander.

I actually think this will revitalize the jank decks by giving them kinda of a dedicated format in Bracket 1.

Congrats, Evu, that is seriously awesome. I think you're the Zone's highest ranked player :P

What format or formats do you mostly play?