I’ve been part of some interesting forum threads in the past wee while. Discussions have varied but frequent topics of how the new set is shaping up, what are our motivations and limitations as Magic players and what makes certain Magic players tend towards certain formats. It’s been interesting and incredibly enlightening reading other people’s opinions and I feel I’ve learnt a thing or two. It’s been a while since Tony got my first article, I think because I’ve been struggling to think of something to write about. A lot of the problem has been that over the Christmas period I haven’t played a lot (read: no) paper Magic.
Now I read mtgtwincast every day and the quality of the articles constantly impresses me. However, one thing I have noticed is that the vast majority of articles are very much card based. We have a lot of casual decks, limited walkthroughs, potential breakthrough decklists, FNM reports... What appears to be missing are the straightforward discussion articles which are intended to inspire debate and make you think about Magic in the wider sense. There are a lot of writers out there that accomplish this very well – Talen Lee, The Ferrett, Riki Hayashi and Pat Chaplin are a few that spring to mind. Anyway, to cut to the chase, I like reading these articles and as I see a bit of a gap in the market as far as mtgtwincast is concerned, I’m going to have a stab at filling it.
Quick warning number 1; this article is going to be a lot about opinion and feeling and less about pure Magic strategy. I sincerely hope that doesn’t put a lot of the purists off. Quick warning number 2; I’m writing this article to inspire some debate and thought. To that end I may be a bit obtuse / play Devil’s advocate a wee bit. Please remember to take some of my thoughts and feelings with a pinch of salt. Tongue may be firmly in cheek during a lot of this.
Ok, to set us off, what’s the current state of T2? Kamigawa block went a long way to proving that whilst flavour is important, playing with fun cards is a lot more vital to the game. Mistakes were made, the most notable being Jitte. The Magic community was definitely a bit jaded and R&D needed a hit. I think it’s fair to say that Rav block was an unmitigated success and a lot of friends who have a lot more years Magic experience under there belt have suggested that RGD may be the best draft format ever.
Then we had Coldsnap. There’s an article there in itself. Here’s what I will say – I saddened me greatly to see such a cynical, money-grabbing ploy from WotC. What I have heard on the grapevine is that since Wizards have been bought by Hasbro, they are now obliged to release four new Magic sets a year. Obviously every other year that’s the Core Set. We’ve had a couple of Un-sets as well. God only knows what we’ll get Summer ’08. Oh, and I like drafting Coldsnap. Yep. I like it. Or at least, I did when it came out. ‘Pourquoi?’ I hear all you bilinguals ask. Lets take it in context. RGD was a lot of fun. It really did separate men from boys due to its complexity. There were so many ways you could go with that set and you needed to be constantly on the ball. Coldsnap? Absolutely zero brainpower required. Grab as many of one card as you can and away you go. Diverse it was not. Skill-based it was not. Fun and chilled out? After RGD, definitely.
Then we have Time Spiral. Hmmmm. I like the set. I like the ideas behind it. I like getting to play with Akroma ‘for real’ for the first time. Am I the only person a bit worried about power creep though? Very quickly, just in case you aren’t aware, the basic theory behind power creep is that for each new set to be ‘better’ than the last, the easiest way is to make it more powerful. What you eventually end up with is a stupid block (I’m looking at you Mirrodin). Then you end up with Kamagawa. I remember sitting at the Dissension pre-re, ‘Man what a powerful block. They’ve really given us some amazing tools this block’. Over the Christmas period, I’ve been thinking of decklists and reading other people’s suggestions on the ol’ Interweb. The more I look over them, the less I see Rav block cards appearing. Is TS that much more powerful than Rav? Maybe it’s just me. Then again we might be heading headfirst into another Mirrodin or <whisper it> Mercadian Masques.
Chaos cometh… The new set has been fully spoiled and by the time you read this you will probably have played with it. Firstly, what great new stuff do we have to look forward to in Planar Chaos? Nowt. Wizards have taken some old mechanics and tidied them up. And they’ve taken some old cards and stuck them in different colours. Innovative it is not. Is this a problem though? I think a lot of this comes down to perspective. If I was someone who had been playing since the dawn of time (ok, early 90’s) and I had seen these cards in there original setting, I might feel slightly cheated. I’ve never played with these cards in the first place so it’s all new and exciting to me. But we have this power creep thing still hanging around like the weird guy who plays Magic every week in your store but you never really know… - you know who I mean. Every store has one. To my eye, PC looks every bit as powerful as TS, if not more so. If you are involved in the forum you will know my problem with Damnation. I honestly think it could wreak havoc on Standard. I think it may have effectively killed white. Jitte was easy to spot as a mistake. It existed in a poor set in terms of overall card quality. I know, Kokusho, Gifts Ungiven, etc. But these were all peaks in amongst a dirge of mediocrity. And none were as difficult to surmount as Jitte. Damnation is different. It exists in a format with much less mediocrity. It is going to be a lot more difficult to see Damnation as the mistake it may be in its current surroundings. You have no idea how wrong I hope I am about that card.
Going back to a previous point I will now point out that we now have a significantly bigger T2 card pool than we did just before Coldsnap was released. I don’t have exact figures but I read somewhere that Rav block + 9th + Coldsnap + TS was only very slightly smaller than Kamagawa block + 9th + Rav block. PC takes us well over that number. And we still have Future Sight to come. Wizards held the last World Champs in the Louvre. This is not a company that is struggling. I have a considerable Magic budget compared to some people so I accept it and move on. WotC needs to be very careful that whilst having this open and dynamic Standard format, they don’t ostracise new players from the format by making it too complicated and too expensive to infiltrate. We all know how expensive it is to play Standard at the moment as it is. Which takes me onto a whole new topic….
I am still a relatively new Magic player. If you’ve read my last article you’ll know I started dabbling with the game around Mirrodin and it’s only in the last year or so that I can say my game is starting to reach it’s potential. That’s 2 and a half, 3 years ish to get myself to what I would consider to be a decent, competitive, average player. I’m not troubling the Pro Tour any time soon but I’m not finishing last in FNM any time soon neither. All my focus during this time has been on Limited and T2 with a pretty heavy tilt towards Limited play. I’ve never even considered dabbling in the older formats of Extended, Legacy or Vintage. I am originally from a very small community where most of the players were new so there just wasn’t any option to play these formats. Most of my time was spent trying to get everyone else to a decent standard in draft. Now that I’m in Aberdeen I’m playing with better players week in, week out and I’m meeting new people in the UK scene all the time which is how I came to be involved with mtgtwincast. A key part of this is speaking to people who regularly play other formats.
I’ve found from speaking to a lot of you guys that maybe Extended / Legacy isn’t quite as terrifying and expensive as I thought it might have been. Indeed, from speaking to some of you it seems likely that it’s cheaper than playing Standard. This has surprised me somewhat and definitely piqued my interests. I don’t think <£100 is a lot to pay for a deck and based on what some people have said in the forums, I can get a winning deck for that figure. But then I have the problem of finding people to play against… The joys of a small Magic community.
It does make me wonder what other preconceived ideas I have about the game that are totally wrong. As I’m sure Crispin will testify to, it’s very easy to take certain something the wrong way. We had been debating an individual who is part of my local playgroup who I don’t see eye to eye with. Does every Magic group have people that are just impossible to interact with? I enjoy playing Magic with the guys on a Sunday but to be honest, there are very few of them (one or two) that I would actually go out of my way to spend time with in a non-Magic context. Maybe we aren’t as welcoming a group of players as I’d like to think we are. In the wider setting, UK Magic is not enjoying a strong period at the minute. Active player numbers are falling and this was underlined, highlighted and circled in red pen by WotC UK when the decided we weren’t worthy of a Grand Prix in 2007. Now we have the Magic Weekender in Birmingham in July. It’s going to be a great weekend and I am so looking forward to it. But any of you out this is comparable to having a Grand Prix in the UK is wrong. Wizards have stolen the cake before we could eat it and handed back a wee slice. WotC don’t even consider us worthy of four separate Nationals anymore. But maybe this is all our own doing. Maybe as a Magic nation we are becoming less inclusive. The numbers don’t lie and the evidence is as plain as the line through UK Grand Prix on WotC’s 2007 schedule – UK Magic is in trouble.
I’d like to think that what we are doing here on mtgtwincast.com is making a difference but let’s be honest here, the vast majority of active people writing articles and appearing in the forums, are people that have played a long while. Now don’t misunderstand me, having the website can hardly be having a negative effect. The fact that I am writing this in Aberdeen knowing that the majority of people reading this are in England I think is a good thing. Getting the UK Magic scene onto one website is a worthy goal indeed and I think Tony and Chris are doing great jobs. I do worry for the future of the game in the UK and what I can personally do to make it better. If Wizards are making Magic intimidating in terms of sheer numbers of cards and expense to new players, it puts even more onus on us.
Right, well that’s enough for now. This whole article has been about making you think not just about how we play the game but where Magic is headed in the future. I hope you enjoyed the article, even if you didn’t agree with all of it. I’ll be waiting for you in the forums ;)
-Flame on-
Dave
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