[State of the Art 2016] by Mark Rosewater

[maharis]

Hot take:

Magic R&D should spend less time goofing off on social media and writing columns and more time curating the game. Maro's column is basically "We just did 2 terrible years of QC." I would argue that RTR, Theros, and Khans weren't exactly great either compared to the 3-4 blocks before them. That's everything: the flavor, the mechanics, the actual cards, the gameplay.

As much as I felt the game had changed in the 10 years between when I originally quit and New Phyrexia, when I returned, the game is almost unrecognizable compared to NPH as well now. I look at a standard decklist and it might as well be a different game.

I had heard so much about the original Ravnica when I restarted and I was so hyped for RTR as a result. But there were no cool guild mechanics, the Eastern European flavor was completely watered down in favor of The Jace Show, and the hammers it introduced to all formats narrowed the gameplay considerably.

[PirateKing]

What got me the most was the meteoric crash in power level from RTR to GTC. I was pumped to see what the can't be countered cycle had for the other pairs if we could expect Abrupt Decay and Supreme Verdict level usefulness in UB and RG, that would have been something. 1 mana hybrids like Deathrite Shaman and Dryad Militant and Judge's Familiar would have been cool to see as well. But the colors who lost the first set lottery just got hosed in power compared to the others.

[phonics]

Jeez... of all the good points ITT this is the one that actually bugs me the most.

It's one thing for the artist to do this -- making a living in a creative field is really tough and the deadlines are intense. Shortcuts are to be expected.

It's another thing for Wizards to not go back to him and say "This is not OK." This makes them look like they built their set on Magic Set Editor lifting random images from DeviantArt like someone on Reddit. It's probably only going to get worse as they crank out more sets each year.

Im pretty sure that the art was a promo piece with all 4 planeswalkers killing the titans with the power of friendship, not sure why they decided to make two composite images for different cards out of the original though.

[Ace/Homebrew]

I wonder if its possible these days to arrange the cards of an expansion to tell the story basically in a comic strip like it was possible back then

Bored... and this is actually fairly enjoyable to do.
Unfortunately there wasn't a card depicting the end result of Nahiri and Sorin's battle.

[TsumiBand]

Bored... and this is actually fairly enjoyable to do.
Unfortunately there wasn't a card depicting the end result of Nahiri and Sorin's battle.

You made me google the outcome because I didn't know what had happened, and now I'm all frowns because as much as I like Nahiri, Sorin is a fucking boss and it's stupid that he's... where he is. Fuck that.

[LarsLeif]

I feel that there is both good and bad old style art, and good and bad new style art. Have you guys seen the new high-res art from Kaladesh though? Some really beautiful stuff there, love it.

[Zombie]

I really like Kaladesh's art - the first time in a long while that MTG art consistently feels handmade and characterful instead of unnaturally clean CGI.

[LarsLeif]

I think that the new mechanics also seem very intriguing, really cool designs being unveiled as we speak.

[Meekrab]

Didn't read anything but the first post... glad MaRo is taking the brunt of the guilt for BFZ being a complete pile of shit. Everyone loved Zendikar, nobody loved the Eldrazi except LSV after winning the Pro Tour.