The Curse of the Black Lotus (2015)
npr.org
npr.org
Over time, the amount of utility for mana cost with the current sets has increased, which means the overpowered cards of the past are 'relatively' less powerful. On the flip side it renders a ridiculous amount of cardboard never-competitive playable again. 2/2 Grizzly Bears with no abilities for G(1)?
First turn Savannah Lions used to be huge.
For my starting era (late Revised / late Dark) first turn Kird Ape was about the best you could do with the R/G dual-tap land, or maybe something involving Sol Ring.
Looking through the one-drops in Standard right now, I don't see any vanilla 2/2; which one are you thinking of?
Creatures were deliberately pushed to make them more central to competitive play, which is why you got absurd stuff like the Titans in M11. At the same time, Wizards never want a return to the degeneracy of Urza block and so spells are less powerful. They still mess up regularly (Splinter Twin/Deceiver Exarch was an oversight giving a reliably turn 4 combo kill, for example), but it's true that some stuff will probably never reach that peak power level again outside of combat.
Also neither of those are in standard right now.
They've also much pushed the Planeswalker type, and you see plenty of them in Legacy/Modern/Standard; apparently it's a deliberate design decision to make sure that the characters featured in their lore see play at competitive tables.
On the other hand, older noncreature spells are still king among their kind. Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares and Glimpse of Nature aren't getting dislodged any time soon.
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/stark-reality-battl...
> Battle Box creates a scenario where almost every game of Magic is a good game of Magic. Sometimes you will lose, and if the cards had come in a different order you would have won. You still draw a random card every turn. However, if you wanted to play around what your opponent has and increase your chances of winning, you will be able to. Cards are roughly the same power level, and no one ever gets mana screwed or flooded, so the vast majority of games come down to the decisions you make.
Creatures on the other hand, way more powerful.
But I don’t think they have a power creep problem, although admittedly I only read up on the game periodically, not play. I think they did one main rebalancing, and that’s it. It’s not like cards from a few years ago are unplayable.
So the solution to WoTC refusing to reprint these cards is for people to do it for them.
[1] https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Reserved_List, despite the fact that WoTC claims they don't consider the secondary market
[2] Calling them reproductions is being charitable. At best, they're replacements when people use them in decks and are honest about them, and at worst, they're counterfeit when people try to pass them off to others as legitimate for a profit.
I understand WoTC going after counterfeits, because it's their business. But players? Who cares how much money your opponent actually spent, as long as you're both enjoying the game? This is WoTC's problem, but it shouldn't be the players'.
Allowing anyone to use counterfeits tends to level the playing field: just print the cards you want yourself (or buy them cheap, hopefully not at the same price as the real deal!). This also means M:tG turns into something more about skill ("I know how to build an effective deck and play well with it") than about money. I know which game I'd want to play ;)
The Vintage/type 1 format does allow lotuses, in quantities of one. Most non-wizards Vintage tournaments allow a set number of proxy cards, usually around 7-10 because of the Power Nine (Lotus and eight other ridiculous cards).
For most players the issue is recurring costs of new decks from rotation/metagame, or buying landbases if they play Modern/Legacy. Reprinting issues aren't limited to reserved cards.
Well, Lotus, 7 other ridiculous cards, and then Timetwister.
It's not "take an extra turn" good, but Jesus does it solve a lot of problems. P9 inclusion warranted IMO.
It's common when prototyping decks, before buying the singles, to have several cards proxied (WoTC calls these play test cards) - replaced by a representation of the card but not the actual card. There are several ways to do this - sharpie on another Magic card, a small piece of paper sleeved over a bulk common so that it's clear what the card is, or specific, sleeved playing cards.
The format I typically play, Commander, is generally a casual format. My rule (and the rule of the playgroup I'm in) is that any number of cards can be proxied as long as the card clearly indicates what it is and is not designed to deceive such that we can clearly see the board state.
Another format I play, Cube Draft, is like a living card game - there is a pre-determined set of cards that are drafted from. The cube I have is considered a "Power Cube", in that it contains several powerful and expensive cards. It is an all-proxy cube. Every card, except for basic lands which are added later, is a sheet of paper that is laser printed to contain an image of the card it represents, slipped in a sleeve in front of a bulk common.
The truth of the matter is, a lot more people are playing counterfeits at tournaments than everyone'd be ready to admit. Hell, a pro player got disqualified recently for playing with one, despite pros getting their cards from sponsors.
1) Erase the surface of a real MtG card (using one of those erasers that were roughly the consistency of thick gelatin it could be done in about an hour).
2) Scan the card to be duplicated
3) Split out the black channel using photoshop
4) Pattern fill the missing black channel in photoshop. Hand fixup any obvious bad details
5) Print the color on a dye-sublimation printer
6) Print the black on a laser printer
7) Put a thin plastic coating on top
Step #7 was the trickiest manual step, but could be omitted if the card was going to be in sleeves.
I was never able to get the right "feel" by making my own two-ply cardboard, but somewhat surprisingly the closest I got was my first attempt of two index cards rubber-cemented together.
Note also that Revised-edition cards lacked any full bleed, and the text backgrounds were quite simple. It might be harder today.
It's always strange hearing people who are not into Magic, describing Magic. "Flowers" here refers to Black Lotus- whose defining feature is that it's an artfiact. But, I guess, it's also a flower. So dragons and creatures and "even rare flowers".
It's one of those things that while technically true, the dumbed down explanation leaves people with incorrect assumptions about fundamental aspects of the story.
It's not that they need to explain the rules of the game, it's that they are imparting some of the value on the basis of rarity, and some on the basis of it being a flower or dragon, when in reality it's a function of rarity and utility in the game. They do touch on this in the article, as they note the power of some of these rare cards (equating it to buying extra aces in poker), so it's not that they haven't explained it, it's that they chose poor wording in that specific sentence which could cause confusion or misunderstanding.
It's only worth mentioning because the story went to lengths to explain the reason how the market functions as it does for these cards, and then throws in extra attributes into a sentence either as a mistake or because they wanted to use words such as "flowers" and "dragons" to impart something to the reader (familiarity? Oddness of those in a game? I dunno).
It's unfortunately one of the few problems Planet Money suffers from that has persisted over the years. They'll do a great job of explaining some topic, and in their wrap-up they dumb it down a tad too much or choose form over function in their prose and actually hurt some of the understanding they've built over the last 15-30 minutes by introducing new ambiguity.
So... sorry for wasting both our time. :/
In terms of costs for the real world version, its easy to pick up a somewhat competitive deck on a budget.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/thirty-casual-decks-und...
Also it really depends on who you're playing. If you go into a tournament you might be expected to spend several hundred on a deck. However at the kitchen table and playing with friends you can just grab a few of those budget decks and have a blast.
It can feel a bit like a lottery in some sets (where a certain OP card and a semi-competent deck builder can beat a more highly skilled player who got hosed for powerful cards) but that's a core aspect of CCGs. If you don't want variance, a perfect information board game would probably be better.
Don't decide to "get into Magic", figure out what part of Magic you want to get into. The game is so big most players who make it past the kitchen table specialize in one or two formats, and inside that format they have a few decks. This is definitely a tricky thing to do when you don't really know the game that well, but if you put in some research it's not too bad.
This is the best way to mitigate feeling like the game is Pay to Win. It turns the game into Pay to Play. You're not losing because your buddy spent $300 on new cards, you're losing because he's basically playing Legacy, and you've just got a Sealed deck from the latest expansion (Sealed is where you build a deck out of 6 packs).
Magic is a hobby that will go as deep as you are willing to go. If you want to play once a month with friends at the kitchen table, or twice a week at a store and try earn a spot into the next Invitational, you can do it with Magic. Figure out limits though, they don't call it Cardboard Crack for nothing.
All people I know who play MtG have an extensive collection of old cards worth tens of thousands of dollars. All of them wish the reserve list gone and the cards reprinted to hell. They care more about being able to actually play the game with human opponents who can afford it rather than masturbating over a triple sleeved A+ graded beta Lotus. Hell, even big card stores such as StarCityGames or ChannelFireball want it gone too, because holding such fragile assets worth that much ($300+ pieces of cardboard) is a liability that sees limited transfers.
Play a 2$ steam game or spend dozens of dollars on card games.
Anyone care to explain?
Tangentially related anecdote on the Power 9: a play tester claimed he had a card so powerful, he could win all his games with it. It was the Time Twister, which initially stated that “opponent loses next turn” (it meant, of course, that the other player had to skip the next turn).
This is why I love board games and tabletop miniatures games -- both very expensive hobbies -- even though videogames exist. I like videogames too, by the way.
But to your point, is all entertainment fungible? I don't think its really comparable. Magic is a competitive, fun game to play with lots of strategy and community behind it. This isn't to say that a $2 Steam game doesn't have those, but people play Magic specifically because it is Magic, not because it is generic entertainment.
MtG has survived far longer than any $2 Steam game.