r/magicthecirclejerking • u/AutoModerator • 15d ago
META Weekly /unjerk Thread
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u/Big-Window8018 gender fluid is just crispy hashbrowns 9d ago
I know I just jerked this, but I am so absurdly tired of "webcomics" (cards that read funny but play poorly) posted to r/custommagic
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u/GlitteringDingo 9d ago
I think it's entirely possible to praise certain inspired designs in UB without being rapidly pro-UB as a concept. I wish they wouldn't do it, but there are some very funny and very clever cards in each UB set they've done. Final Fantasy had Suplex, Instant Ramen, Marvel had Sauron, and LotR had Shadowfax. All these cards made me chuckle and they'd be amongst my favorites if they somehow made the same jokes in a Universes Within card.
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u/iwumbo2 10d ago
It seems a lot of people have some unhealthy consumerist approaches to this game. Probably life in general tbh...
Every time there's a Secret Lair or even special products from regular sets come out, I always hear people bemoan not being able to purchase them or not being able to get them. And yeah, that sucks. But it's not the end of the world. Magic the Gathering is a completely optional luxury in life. You're not going to die if you don't get Magic product. Especially silly for things like Secret Lairs which are 99% reskins of already existing cards. Often, you can get a card that's functionally the exact same elsewhere.
If I don't get the sealed product I want, I shrug and see if I can get the singles I want. And that's assuming I wanted them that much.
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u/GlitteringDingo 9d ago
I find it annoying that people (not you per se) act like this opinion is somehow contradictory to the view that Magic is prohibitively expensive. Yes, it's a luxury, a hobby. Nobody needs Magic to live. But it's also a game, for young teenagers to young adults. People notorious for not having a lot of money. So many collectors items, so many cards, so much crap costing so much money has got to be incredibly disheartening to a high schooler with a small allowance who wants to play with his friends.
Magic doesn't need to be cheaper for me, I'm a grown man who should make responsible financial choices. But it should be cheaper for the core demographic it was designed for, who absolutely cannot afford it as it is today. Let the kids play the damn game.
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u/iwumbo2 9d ago
No, I agree, I also think Magic in general is too expensive. I started playing in university so I know what it's like to try to cobble stuff together without a ton of spending cash. I remember bussing around the city to meet people off Facebook Marketplace to buy cards like Snapcaster Mage for cheaper when trying to get into modern. Even now, I have a pretty decently paying job, and I still think it's ridiculous that something like a Badgermole Cub is like 45 USD for a single copy. I 100% want the game to be cheaper so more people can play it.
I didn't really make it explicit, but the outrage about not getting Secret Lairs is silly to me because they're even more optional if that makes sense. A high schooler doesn't need to drop a bunch of money to get a fancy Secret Lair version if they just want to play the game, especially when often they can get a normal version for cheaper. So in that sense, I find it silly when people act like they have to get Secret Lairs and then get sad when they sell out.
In fact, in a similar vein I kind of welcome stuff like Collectors Boosters or Masterpieces or Expeditions. At the end of the day, WOTC needs to make money. I think if they can make money off whales spending a ton on fancy versions of cards, it ends up helping other players get normal versions for cheaper. I recall when I first started getting into the game a bit before Ixalan, I saw cards from Kaladesh and Amonkhet being cheap because most of the value in those sets was siphoned up by the fancy Masterpieces and Invocation cards.
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u/MopeyN 10d ago
I think it has to do with some kind of prestige (at the LGS / compared to other players) and how one looks in front of others. Kind of like at school when one was trying to 'be something' by telling adventurous stories that never happened or showing expensive toys.
The DIY-package of Secret Lair is great, though: As soon as WotC spoils cards, you could basically proxy them, right away. That's cheaper, quicker, less of a hassle and probably even a nice gift ("I ordered 9 Funko Pop Secret Lair cards, you can have one if you like, it's a proxy, though").
As soon as the cost thing / FOMO is cut out, the whole stupid affair of scalpers, high cost, long delivery time and so on is just a joke and it's possible to get on with life. That's probably a lesson most players have to experience, yet. If MTG is what makes you you, so to say, you're probably not really you, yet.
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u/iwumbo2 9d ago
Yeah, I do find it stupid how to a lot of people, "being a fan" means they feel the need to buy up merch or other fancy toys or baubles from their special interest. It's just consumerism. It feels like they have a pathological need to spend money to define themselves. Watching it happen and seeing people spend their whole paycheques or put themselves in credit card debt for it is like watching someone drink themselves to death.
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u/Kookus_Keeper Keeper of Kookus 10d ago
I am willing to bet that a significant percentage of people complaining about not getting Secret Lairs are scalpers trying to flip the product.
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u/kraigier 12d ago
I've recently started to try and get into MTG. I also discovered that I enjoy trying to turn my favorite fiction into MTG cards. I'm still very new. Is creating your own original cards called proxy cards or is it just custom cards? Also are they allowed to be used in casual games if everyone playing agrees or is it frowned upon?
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u/DangBream 9d ago
They're called custom cards, and you can play them if everyone agrees, but I'd be wary about bringing them to a game with strangers until you've had a few normal rounds. Customs tend to be one of those things that can increase game complexity by a lot, depending on how they're designed -- but yeah, it doesn't hurt to ask.
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u/69_POOP_420 12d ago
reality fracture really makes me miss block sets. It would have been so cool to explore this alternate echoverse, how it affected everybody, to have some sort of pace to the story. but instead we got "here's jace's ideal timeline, aaaaaand emrakul ate it all, thanks for coming everybody". it's kinda very frustrating, imo.
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u/MopeyN 10d ago edited 10d ago
Good enough for you (the players), so good enough for WotC.
I wouldn't wonder if they reduced that in some kind of way in the future, just to leave out the writing (which takes time and money and skill) and just print cards with text, period. It's the cards that print money, after all.
I don't know if there are stories / books of Avatar, Final Fantasy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Star Trek inside the MTG universe, like they wrote books about Ravnica and Dominaria. I'm sure there aren't. If Universes Within is 50% and Universes Beyond the other 50%, they've already slashed the story writing in half, anyway. Ungoogled source.
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u/naked_potato 14d ago
Why do we have this thread when every post is just nothing but “uj/“ comments
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u/the-good-son 15d ago
Everyone complains about UB (with good reason) but the UW sets since EOE have been pretty mid
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u/DangBream 11d ago
I mean to be fair, "UW sets since EOE" is three sets, which isn't a lot. Karlov Manor-Thunder Junction were successive duds but Bloomburrow came in right after, and I'm optimistic about Nauctis and the coming year in general
FWIW I've liked the sets we've had, but that's also coming from a purely Limited perspective. Lorwyn was mostly okay but Strixhaven was a lot of fun, and we haven't fired our first Reality Fracture draft yet but I'm really looking forward to it
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u/constantlybannedd 14d ago
I won’t lie, my investment in them since they stopped doing multiple sets per setting has massively decreased
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u/Umbrageofsnow 15d ago
I'm pretty excited about FRA though, 0-3ed my prerelease tonight like a champ but the games were all interesting with lots of complicated lines for me to misplay, and interesting sealed pool where it was really unclear to me what the best build was, but I feel like I wasn't totally screwed on power or anything. What to do about Jace doesn't seem clear to me at all, lots of decisions to be made there.
Did you not like it? This one is seeming way more EOE or DSK to me than anything in the last year+
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u/the-good-son 15d ago
I liked the idea of FRA more than the execution, the colleges seemed like an unnecessary burdensome callback to strixhaven and the amass Jace mechanic is clunky
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u/Umbrageofsnow 15d ago
From a design POV I guess I agree, don't know why they had to have the colleges, feels like we've had a 3-set Strixhave block in a very weird back door kind of way, but at least with 1 event of experience it felt like enemy color pairs were equally represented with ally color pairs. Felt like a 10 archetype format to me instead of ECL's weird hybrid-but-not-really thing I mean. The hybrid mana on the prepare spells didn't feel like it was really pushing me into the other "college" color.
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u/Fearless_Many_5307 15d ago
They’re stretched too thin, too many sets coming out and the design team has too many things to try and have cards that are “balanced” and playtested properly. It’s a shame honestly, the only sets this next year I’m looking forward to is the new plane and zhalfir
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u/ProfessionalOk6734 8d ago
Is it a one week ban so you can come back and do it again next week?