Anyone here play Magic: The Gathering?

[Sima Tuna]

I play some ripoff Magic game called Faeria on my Switch and it's pretty fun. I'd play magic IRL if it wasn't such an obvious money pit. I got sucked into yugioh when I was a kid and already feel I wasted enough of my money on that.

I suppose there are probably video games/simulators for Magic now though. I tried one of those years ago and thought it was shit. I think it was magic 2014 for xbox 360. Terrible ai and single play options and I didn't feel motivated to learn the game.

[BryanM]

The Heads I Win Tails You Lose product's been in limbo for over like a year now. This guy's comment on ordering the deck really hits in the feels:

"I ordered it as a way to get into EDH at my LGS. My LGS went out of business yesterday."

I play some ripoff Magic game called Faeria on my Switch and it's pretty fun.

I've been wanting to make a TCG RPG thread here for a while, since it kind of seems like it's coming back into vogue (by that, I mean more than one game in the genre was released in the past few years). The Shadowverse Switch game, and, something absolutely noone saw coming and long given up asking for: a port of SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash. In english. For real.

It really seems like the whole genre peaked in the 90's, with the Pokemon TCG gameboy games, card fighters, SMT Card Summoner, and MTG: Shandalar. They really ought to make a few more of these things...

The fangame MTG Forge has a league/RPG kinda mode, though I didn't like it much when I tried it 18 years ago. Maybe it's better now..

I stopped playing the game in about 2005, so here comes the question : is the game still good post 2020 ?

I think it's subjective. There's good sets and bad sets, and what you like is gonna be different from what other people like.

I actually like that they've upped the churn rate on planes: in the old days, by the second and especially third sets of a place, you could tell they've run out of ideas and are just making a set by going through the motions. Dragon's Maze is the poster child of that kind of thing, the only new thing it had was the Fuse mechanic, and it felt like they had been holding it back from the other sets. The two sets that came before it would have been better if they just had the dumb Fuse cards to begin with. I think the only reason they originally did the one year = one plane thing was to give their aesthetic design teams an easier job on art.

What isn't subjective is the number of banned cards has gone through the roof since they've been pushing the power level since power = $$$$$. Standard's seen like double or more bannings in the past few years than it had for the rest of the game's life combined, I believe.

Also foil cards are universally assumed to be as curved as potato chips these days. I guess that saves them $0.0000001 per card or something. The "joke" is you can tell proxies and counterfeits from the real thing, because the unofficial cards are of a much higher quality.

Their MTG Arena game is free to play (aka, a being in a jealous marriage kind of game), so I guess if PvP against anonymous internet people on the internet appeals to a person, it's better than ever.

...argh, this reminds me that the Pokemon TCG Online game (which came out years earlier than Hearthstone) is getting an overhaul. While there's a few things that could be improved on it... like how this kind of thing usually goes, it seems it's change more for the worse.

[guigui]

I've been wanting to make a TCG RPG thread here for a while, since it kind of seems like it's coming back into vogue (by that, I mean more than one game in the genre was released in the past few years). The Shadowverse Switch game, and, something absolutely noone saw coming and long given up asking for: a port of SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash. In english. For real.

It really seems like the whole genre peaked in the 90's, with the Pokemon TCG gameboy games, card fighters, SMT Card Summoner, and MTG: Shandalar. They really ought to make a few more of these things...

Oh please do create the thread. I think played MTG Shandalar in early 2000 and had a really nice time with it, definitely would like to find this vibe back 20 years later : I'm not really into the "rogue" deck builders ala Slay the Spire and such.

[Sima Tuna]

Roguelike deckbuilders aren't for me either. I like building a deck that's persistent and being able to summon monsters 'n' shit. I don't like those games where the cards are just "attack" or "attack while defending." I wanna summon muh blue eyes, dude.

[BryanM]

omg, the ceo of Hasbro really is "Cocks" >_<

I thought that was just a floppy Rudy meme.

The computer simulation we live in is just making fun of us, now.

[BryanM]

The drama of M30th keeps paying out. A Yu-Gi-Oh guy got sent a box, did an opening, and from the garbage fire realized it maybe wasn't the right thing to do. The very next day he privated the video and issued an apology. You can't blame the guy for not knowing a company would charge $250 for a random rare; much like my assumption it'd be impossible to screw up a Jurassic Park movie or a To Be A Power In The Shadows adoption, some things you think are impossible are quite possible indeed.

It's been heading to this for awhile now. Their greed has really crossed a cartoonish threshold. When "Double Feature" was just two sets mashed together with the color taken away, lots of us played a game of trying to guess the various ways they could screw even more money out of people with little to no work.

Can't wait for the full illustrated by Mark Rosewater in crayon set. They'll at least have to pay an artist like $150 for the art.

[Air Master Burst]

It would be kinda funny if this is how MTG finally dies; but at the same time, I wouldn't count it out just yet. I thought for sure it was gonna die back in the day after the Urza block came through and basically destroyed all levels of competitive play. I switched to sealed only at that point, and was out of the game before the end of Invasion block.

Best-case scenario here is they go bankrupt and have to sell the rights to Netrunner to someone who will release a proper 3rd edition.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I don't think it's gonna die just yet but I did just dump all my high end RL cards. Fuck it.

The drama of M30th keeps paying out. A Yu-Gi-Oh guy got sent a box, did an opening, and from the garbage fire realized it maybe wasn't the right thing to do. The very next day he privated the video and issued an apology. You can't blame the guy for not knowing a company would charge $250 for a random rare; much like my assumption it'd be impossible to screw up a Jurassic Park movie or a To Be A Power In The Shadows adoption, some things you think are impossible are quite possible indeed.

It's been heading to this for awhile now. Their greed has really crossed a cartoonish threshold. When "Double Feature" was just two sets mashed together with the color taken away, lots of us played a game of trying to guess the various ways they could screw even more money out of people with little to no work.

Can't wait for the full illustrated by Mark Rosewater in crayon set. They'll at least have to pay an artist like $150 for the art.

LOL

[BryanM]

I'm immeasurably disappointed they actually put the One Ring into the boxes instead of lying about it. Or that some kid didn't throw it in a trash can.

Was enjoying this greater fool lottery scam draining idiots out of their money, and now prices are gonna come crashing to earth all too soon.

--

People like to call gacha games evil, but good lord. MTG tries to hold friendship behind a paywall..

.. but these days it feels more like a speculation scam than an actual game. If in all things you must consider value, then in all things you are bound by money.

--

The new secret lair with four commons/uncommons with art that's just a low-res screenshot of the LotR animated movie sure is something though. $40 for $0.07 cards, pliz.

Like with Double Feature, it's amusing to watch the innovative ways they can ask people for money in exchange for doing no work. This is a far more entertaining show than any regular 'ole game could possibly be at this point. I'm constantly surprised and astonished almost every month at how audacious they are~

[Steamflogger Boss]

People are blasting that secret lair but of course it doesn't matter because even when something doesn't do well for them they are still just raking money overall.

Gacha and Magic are similar tbh. Biggest difference is that I would think it's easier to get some money back out of it. I'm sure you can sell stuff on gacha games but idk how easy it is, how flavor of the month they are etc... Magic is a proven commodity at this point.

I haven't given WOTC money in well over a year at this point. I am healing.

[Sima Tuna]

The danger of a gacha game is the dev can close the game down suddenly for any or no reason and then you're SOL on the value of whatever dumb shit you wasted money on. You don't actually own anything.

As lame as it sounds, at least with TCGs, you do have that 7-cent piece of cardboard in your hand. Short of making the TCG illegal to play/own (which would be hilarious,) there's no way for them to do something similar to what mobile games get away with.

[guigui]

Reading MTG's developpement through this thread only, I am wondering. When I used to play (2000-2005), there was this deep strategic part of the game : deckbuilding, meta, learn how to play that I really liked.
Does that still exist ? Are there still people out there using the actual game part of MTG ?

[BryanM]

Lots of people still play, but I do think the netdecking and profiteering have taken larger roles than they used to. (There's something about that Taco-lovin' Rudy and the financialization of the game that's seedy!) Pile on the greed from corporate and the magic's gone, for many. The impression is that Commander is now the default way to play the game.

I think most of that comes from the playerbase getting so damn old. Can't learn to play if you've been here 20+ years and already know. Affluent millennials seem to make up the majority of the base... it's just not the kind of thing that brings in new blood on its own. The rules are complicated and clunky (playing with priority using the proper rules of having to check if you can continue every. single. time. you. breath. isn't fun), the art stagnant and subdued. (Example: Full art basic lands haven't become standard yet.)

Pokemon in comparison has a onboarding route for new players; tv show, flashy looking cards that don't require you to mortgage your house to make a deck, etc. Like some kind of card game, yanno?

Those cards just seem to explode with passion and joy... while the love of classic 80's DnD doesn't really seem to have stuck with MTG. They're both technically soulless corporate products at their core sure, but, there's degrees between them. Universes Beyond using every other IP in the world makes it feel like they've given up on that completely.

I read the rules for Wixoss the other year, and could only think to myself how smooth it all sounded. No mana screw/flood. A built in catch-up mechanic for a player on the backend of battles. The "second deck" is actually just like a tech tree in an RTS: playing generals and upgrading them determines what cards you can play. Like you need a Level 2 blue general to play level 2 blue cards. It seemed refreshing, like some kind of new game or something.

Magic Arena is probably fine if all you want to do is play the game without a social aspect to it. The format I'm most interested in, Penny Dreadful, has zero official support and is apparently extremely dreadful to get a game started with someone.

... without friends, a table, and a cube I recommend playing other games though. A week of Shadowverse and then moving on is probably worth a month of Arena...

The danger of a gacha game is the dev can close the game down suddenly for any or no reason and then you're SOL on the value of whatever dumb shit you wasted money on. You don't actually own anything.

It really is a bloodbath, sometimes it feels like more games get shut down every year than launch. You'd think at least a couple companies that care about their reputation would keep their legacy games up in maintenance mode at least, but precious few do.

I've pointed it out already a few times, but the etymology is very similar to card games. Old mobage browser games that'd launch dozens of new cards per month, and the characters on them would be largely be pervy stuff or cool monsters or anime characters or perverted cool anime monsters.

There's always something special about when an obviously doomed mobile game comes out. The new Muv Luv Alternative game seems like a really bad squad-based Robotron thingy, and doesn't seem to be advertising any dating sim elements that were core to the franchise and its fanbase. The thing was up for four hours before closing it for a year for maintenance, a world record.

(I guess that's like card games too: remember the hundreds of dead card games that were released trying to ride the trend MTG started? A cardgame for every franchise. From The Addams Family to Full House. Such a low cost of entry with massive potential profits.)

And something weird whenever a game that someone seems to have given a shit about gets announced. The Wizardry thing could be a terrible game, but the preview videos seem to show some actual love for the material.

[Davey]

No mana screw/flood.

I don't think it's a coincidence that every other Magic-like card game either tweaks the land system or does away with it entirely. Figuring out your mana base can be an interesting puzzle when designing a deck, I'll give it that, but I don't think it makes for good gameplay once you're actually in the game.

Obviously this is a generalization and maybe a little overly harsh, but I think the gist of this Brian DeMars quote hits uncomfortably close to the truth:

I have a feeling that roughly 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too few lands, 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too many lands, 25% of games are decided by a player having a legitimate bomb not get answered immediately, and the last 25% of games are the ones that everybody hopes for where there is a ton of back-and-forth on both sides.

... without friends, a table, and a cube I recommend playing other games though.

This can be frustrating, though. If you find a similar game that you like, hopefully you already have friends that are just as interested as you are. One of Magic's big strengths is how many people play it; if you don't already have friends that play, it's probably not too hard to find people that do. At local shops, I saw a lot of other niche card games come and go over the years, most of which I never played, although some of them looked kind of interesting. But they usually just had a small group of devotees that you'd eventually stop seeing as the game inevitably failed to gain enough traction to keep going, at least locally. I've heard fighting game players sometimes run into the same problem: you find some obscure game you really like, but the community is all about the current iteration of Street Fighter or whatever, so you begrudgingly go with the flow.

[BryanM]

One of Magic's big strengths is how many people play it; if you don't already have friends that play, it's probably not too hard to find people that do.

Yeah, that's the problem with activities that make you dependent on other people. There's a natural monopoly that forms; that's why I keep saying the Magic basically gatekeeps friendship behind a paywall.

There's no real solution to that, than fake people I guess. The RPG Cardgame videogame genre kind of almost would work, if designers put more effort into the imaginary friend aspect of the games. In AI bots are now to the point of being able to start revitalizing dead MMO's (it's the golden age of launch day hype, 24/7!).

I know that feel of it being 1 AM and no one to play ping-pong with : (

[Steamflogger Boss]

RE mana system: Yeah it's pretty bad but it's an ingrained part of the game. In some formats having more non-games due to mana not working is even a FEATURE (hello Wasteland).

[Davey]

Yeah, mana screw is sometimes pitched as a feature of the game, I think Maro said so himself in his blog back in the day. I get that every card game needs some RNG to keep it from getting predictable and monotonous, and to let players of different skill levels play together, but the games where you can't make any meaningful plays due to flood or screw just suck for both players.

I don't play it anymore, but I was hooked on Marvel Snap for a while. I appreciate the snap system since the ability to retreat takes a bit of the sting out of non-games and gives back some sense of agency. It'd be like in Magic if you mulled to 5, then got Thoughtseized turn 1 and said "meh, fine, I scoop" and it only counted as losing half a game. This is probably a "yeah, no fucking duh" thing for poker players, but it was a refreshing new concept for me.

And on the subject of "hey I like this game but nobody plays it anymore," Keyforge is releasing its first new set in years. Game had been dead locally for a while, and probably overall I assume. I guess I'll have to get my fill before it dies off again. Then back to playing online games where I meet fellow internet nerds IRL once in a blue moon, I guess.

[guigui]

RE mana system: Yeah it's pretty bad but it's an ingrained part of the game. In some formats having more non-games due to mana not working is even a FEATURE (hello Wasteland).

I remember my type 2 (does the format still exist ?) deck designed around wasting your ennemy's mana base :

Stone Rain, Rain of Tears, Despoil, Dark Ritual to destroy lands
Tangle Wire to tap many lands, the best card out there.
Rishadan Port to tap yet more lands
Veteran Brawler to attack
Flametongue Kavu to kill what could come to play
Terminate to kill what could come to play
And my favorite unplayed card : Plague Spitter, total wrecker of green turbo mana elf/bird deck at that time.

A joy to play for me, a nightmare for the opponent.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Yeah at some point "type 2" was changed to "standard". Functionally it's the same thing. Cards from the most recent sets only (gotta sell packs, after all).

[BryanM]

Fudge, AI's gotten better... asked Bard to make up some Mario cards and got

Spoiler

Daisy, Princess of Sarasaland

Legendary Creature — Human Noble

Flying

Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {1}. If you do, draw a card.

3/3



Bowser Jr.

Legendary Creature — Bowser Horror

Flying

Haste

Whenever Bowser Jr. deals combat damage to a player, you may pay {R}. If you do, destroy target artifact or enchantment.

3/3



Toad

Creature — Frog

Whenever Toad deals combat damage to a player, you may return target creature card with converted mana cost 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield.

1/1

Which are totally cromulent cards, just missing mana costs. I asked it to add some, and it gave them WU, BR, and G respectively. Which is pretty undercosted, and completely busted in the case of Daisy~ But they're in the appropriate colors (though toad feels more white mechanically) which is impressive for a stupid toaster.

It's not remotely as much fun as the insane gibberish old robo cards had... but is actually playable in a real game.

Reminder that while having a computer design and draw all the cards in a set is indeed very lazy, it's still not as lazy as many real products they've really released, for real!





.... Oh shit. I used to joke about lazier ideas when they released Double Feature, trying and failing to come up with something I didn't believe they'd ever do. They literally did effectively reprint an old set as-is with the anniversary cards when it came to the cost+effort on their side..... they're gonna do this one day they're gonna do this one day they're gonna do this one day they're gonna do this one day

..... okay, got my existential dread out of my system. Universes Beyond has a bright future in front of it!

[BryanM]

The IP collaboration/crossover thing has always been a staple of card games and gacha games and sometimes games games. That Magic resisted for so long, even having an entire decade where the lead designer Mark told people it'd never happen on his blog, is commendable to its dedication to conservatism.

I'll be the first to admit things that came before around the original Ravnica tended to be rather stale: every set, here's some goblins, elves, angels, etc. All in the same colors, all basically the same characters. Crusty things like pointy-hats on wizards or bottle gnomes just wouldn't be marketable today.

Recently they announced the sets that are coming out in the next two or four years, I forget. But it's a long time to go without being surprised by their world building themes.

I love the idea of Duskmourn. It's nice they're not regurgitating Innistrad for a fourth dryhump of an empty well.

All of this is to say: I never thought the day would come that a Magic expansion would have 80's guys walking around wearing a t-shirt, leather jacket, denim pants, while holding a PKE meter from Ghostbusters.

The natural endpoint of this is obvious: They'll largely do away with the Tolkien-fantasy roots of the game. Except for the occasional Tolkien set. That stuff's for nerds. The theming of the game will be like Ready Player One: It costs the same to draw a dwarf as it costs to draw a Batman, so why wouldn't they pick the road that leads to more sales? Ditching the planeswalkers makes sense too: card type's too complicated for casual fans. Nobody cares about those guys anyway. A failed experiment in building up the brand.

Technically I even think it'd make the game better. More variety, yeah? But at the same time would have to agree with the Professor: Magic won't be Magic. It's a bastardization of what the game was originally designed to be.

Remember when Wizards briefly experimented with making other card games? Haha, what dopes.....



(A reminder during The Brother's War, they put in cards featuring those two well-beloved MTG characters, once brothers who became enemies: Megatron and Optimus Prime.)

[BryanM]

Learned something delightful today: The Disney legal department bamboozled them and denied them video game rights, so the Spider-Man set isn't coming to either of their online games. Instead they're doing a mechanically identical but creatively distinct set instead called 'Through the Omenpaths'. Different art, different story, different looking Peter Porker card.

I find this deeply amusing, more than the average of their corporate vampire antics. And of course find the alternate themeing far more interesting than an Uncle Ben card and all the other stuff I already know exists...

It all just goes back to our subjective experience making us think we’re more than we are. Every standard we apply to debase AI applies to us also. I barely know wtf I’m saying unless I’m parroting some cliche I’ve heard before which is all many people ever do.

Many People literally get mad and make angry faces when they hear anything original. Most of life is echo chambers and confirming what we already think. That’s why it feels like understanding, it’s just a heuristic for familiarity.

[Sweatlord_STG]

I miss this game. Played it during the mid/late 90s for some time. I really wish I still had my old cards and someone to play against. At the school I went to the game was like in at some point and during the breaks there were so many kids who were trading and playing. When the break was over they were still playing because they had to finish their epic match
At some point even tournaments were organized. I remember there was this older bully who was known for showing off with his album that had an entire few pages only with cards of the sought after Sengir Vampire.
I remember one weekend I was baby sitting a relative's child for an entire night, they paid me the exact amount that I could buy one pack of cards for (15 cards or so?), from the latest edition, so I was looking forward to that over the weekend, then finally bought the pack after school on Monday, and all the cards I got were shit lol. It was such an expensive hobby back then, especially for children as they have no income
There was a monthly magazine I think, not sure if it was free, but we always had a copy with us to ensure we wouldn't get ripped off when trading cards, as the magazine always contained an up to date price list of what each card was worth. My dad always used to point out what a great business idea it was to print those cards and claim each card was worth a certain amount, while people actually went along with it.
The cards looked so cool and everything was just so cool about it. Blue counter deck with lots of different counter spells and all that stuff, white rush deck with savanna lions, white knight etc. Five color sliver deck with the sliver queen where each new sliver got all the abilities from any other sliver in play! Dark ritual, birds of paradise, ball lightning. So much hype!

This is how I remember magic. Later at some point, in the early 2000s, i was hanging out with a friend who was still into the game. We wanted to play it so he tried to explain all those new features to me that they had come up with in the meantime and it was impossible for me to catch up with everything in a short time. At that point it made me think that I didn't like all the new features and rules, because part of the fun and the appeal to me was the simplicity of how I knew the game. Sure it's cool to find exploits and come up with mean setups to destroy your opponent, but only to a certain extend.

There was also this star wars trading card game at the same time (mid/late 90s) that looked very cool to me. The pictures on the cards were all from the movies so it looked super high res and everything compared to magic. One friend always wanted to spark my interest in the game but not many people were playing it and playing magic was already more than I could afford anyway.

This is not related to magic but I'd like to share this anyway because it's related to old games. It was around the same time (mid 90s) when I got my PSX chipped and then there was this bootleg dealer at my school. He and his brother were high level nerds and according to urban legends and people who had been to their home, they had a basement full of PCs, all linked up ready to play FPS/RTS pvp (the most popular games for local pvp at that time were Duke 3d and command n Conquer), CD burners, and internet! So they always downloaded PSX games and sold them at school. These two brothers even went to a different school each, which resulted in maximum customers and profit for them I'm not making up any of this. They had lists printed out, it was a few pages only of PSX games, and handed them out at school. You just had to write your name down and tick what you wanted, and the next day they would just hand over a stack of burned cds to you and you would pay them. Sometimes they would hand out multiple stacks to different kids during a single break. But nobody cared, of course.
It was a dream come true for me because I grew up in Europe, where everything was still pal 50 at the time! But I already knew about the differences from older friends who only played imports, and I refused to play any of those shitty slow pal versions. Also keep in mind that back then games always came out first in Japan, then in the US, and then in Europe. But on those lists I got from the bootleg brothers, it also stated the region/version of each game listed, like NTSC-J, US or PAL.
I could hardly afford buying games from the shops, but I didn't want those anyway because they were all PAL. Imports were even more expensive and it was difficult if you wanted to import them yourself. You needed a credit card and there was no PayPal, fast shipping and hardly any shops online in the first place. So thanks to these guys I was able to play Einhänder, R-Tyle Delta, Harmful Park, Ehrgeiz, and all the best stuff from Japan right after they came out in Japan!!!
I also got countless games just after their US release (games with a language barrier, that you would preferably want to play rather in English instead of Japanese) like Resident Evil 1-3, and just countless games in general.
They always handed out updated lists with the latest games added and I always had the best games on the system and everything I could never have afforded without those guys.
The selection of games on their lists was not random though. All games that were listed as NTSC-J were actually all games that had been only released in Japan so far, and they were all badass action games that didn't require any knowledge of the Japanese language. So I just always bought any game from them that was listed as NTSC-J because I knew it would be something good, even if I didn't know what it was. I know that the PSX version of Metal Slug is considered bad in comparison, but to someone who hasn't played the NeoGeo version it would still be a 10/10 game and that's what happened to me. I had heard of the game but never played it. So one Friday I came home from school. I had a new stack of burned games. One said "Metal Slug NTSC-J" on it. I smoked a big bong, was totally knocked out, then decided to put that random new CD into my PSX that said "Metal Slug NTSC-J". I played it...and I was completely mind blown. It was the sickest most awesome badass game ever. I was like WTF did I just play???

[Steamflogger Boss]

My friends that still play tell me Standard is as bad as it has ever been. Basically a one deck format atm.

Learned something delightful today: The Disney legal department bamboozled them and denied them video game rights, so the Spider-Man set isn't coming to either of their online games. Instead they're doing a mechanically identical but creatively distinct set instead called 'Through the Omenpaths'. Different art, different story, different looking Peter Porker card.

I find this deeply amusing, more than the average of their corporate vampire antics. And of course find the alternate themeing far more interesting than an Uncle Ben card and all the other stuff I already know exists...

It all just goes back to our subjective experience making us think we’re more than we are. Every standard we apply to debase AI applies to us also. I barely know wtf I’m saying unless I’m parroting some cliche I’ve heard before which is all many people ever do.

Many People literally get mad and make angry faces when they hear anything original. Most of life is echo chambers and confirming what we already think. That’s why it feels like understanding, it’s just a heuristic for familiarity.

Considering all the UB stuff they are pumping out it is pretty amusing.

[BryanM]

My friends that still play tell me Standard is as bad as it has ever been. Basically a one deck format atm.

Definitely like the Necropotence days, some $2000+ deck or something. Consists of over 66% of the top decks in tournaments. I'll show you the two main cards in question:

Vivi and Soul Cauldron.

I'm sure the longer you look at this, the more obviously, insanely broken it is.

MTG Development these days passes through cards like this all the time, like how Oko lets you remove an artifact or creature every single turn. Or create a little soldier to defend himself with if you have token generators in your deck.

They just... don't care. Six sets release every year now, and they're interested in servicing speculators and collectors foremost.

Thinking back on the original Ravnica days where there were tons of viable archetypes, the peak the game ever reached... seems so far away now.

Considering all the UB stuff they are pumping out it is pretty amusing.

In retrospect it seems like they knew they couldn't secure video game rights upfront. They did the math and decided it was worth going through with it anyway, which is horrible in its own, different, kinda way.

Lord of the Rings brought them $200 million of revenue over six months. Most successful set they had ever printed, by a large margin. (Modern Horizons 2 took two years to reach that mark. That's one of the scam sets where they powercreep the shit out of Modern, a format nobody plays anymore.) Final Fantasy brought that in, in a single day.

It's going to be the funcopop trading card game completely in the future, aside from these weird reskinned sets for stuff they can't get the online rights to.

There's a lot of bitterness among some fans about how they weren't able to expand MTG into a wider franchise. No videogames, no Saturday morning cartoon, no breakfast cereal.

Ravnica could make for a pretty good jRPG or tacticsish game, but any corpo capable of making a good one of these would rather use their own IP or at least a bigger IP than MTG. Hasbro always neglected their games division; they had the IP and capital to make Baldur's Gate 3 themselves, but never bothered to build the capability to do that internally.

(They really wanted to milk the hell out of Dungeon and Dragons like they are with MTG, but were completely incompetent at it. Tabletop bros make their own content. If Hasbro wanted to provide value, they should have focused on the people who want to play DnD who don't have friends. (I always thought a trendy kind of indie game like the Stanley Parable where you're playing a tabletop RPG with a bunch of pals at a dinner table could have gotten some traction. Where each of them want to drag the game into a different direction.)

Anyway, I think a lot about how Netrunner is run by a player committee these days. We don't really need Hasbro for MTG to live on. Never really did.)

[Steamflogger Boss]

Yeah Oko was hilarious. That one is old enough that I played with it. Vivi is a nuts card for sure. What you mentioned is a big part of why I got out. Product saturation.

It's certainly all working for them. I'm sure FINAL FANTASY is the new most popular set of all time. The collector booster boxes are going for absolutely nutter amounts on ebay dot com. My friend won 4 of them through playing MTGA. Every time he listed on there he just kept raising the price and they kept selling anyway.

Funko is actually about to probably go out of business. The last time they made any money was Q2 in...2024... Losing millions, with a debt to pay off. Tough scene.