New Card Frame coming with M15

[Arsenal]

Overall, I suppose it doesn't matter... just clunky.

Yeah, I mean, it'll have no impact on gameplay, which is the most important aspect, but Magic is unique from most other games in that the aesthetics and visual play a large role in the enjoyment of players. Making something uglier when the same goals could've been accomplished with a more elegant design just seems lazy and rushed.

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I think I'll let someone else describe my reaction to the new tweaks...

[prateta]

Really good counterfeiting already exists. They're trying to protect their intellectual property and make it easier for players to identify real cards.

If you go online right now, you can buy stuff like this from China:



Yes, the text on Tarmogoyf looks fucked, but that Liliana looks pretty damn good, no?

From the same website:



It's Bed Decks Palyer's wet dream come true!

Build ALL the decks! Long live the chinese! :D

[UnderwaterGuy]

I spent most of 2013 leading the design of M15, an ambitious set that will introduce a few new things to the game, not the least of which is an update to the existing card frame.

I've got a bad feeling that I'll be quiting magic this summer. Sounds like another rules change.

[Higgs]

Really good counterfeiting already exists. They're trying to protect their intellectual property and make it easier for players to identify real cards.

If you go online right now, you can buy stuff like this from China:

UV finish with blue paper.. Spooky.

[kc.hogan]

The modern border is already ugly. Is this really that much worse?

Also, now people on eBay have no excuse to correctly list the language of the ferrin' cards they're selling. Sure, I can read the damn card and know the difference between French and Portuguese, but Xx_card_killa690101 from Nowhere, Nebraska may not be so blessed with a cursory understanding of the product he's selling.

Anyway, it's not that bad.

[kaiserruhsam]

I just read the article. What a blather. MaRo would be a great politician or insurance agent, his ability to sell and promote crap is outstanding.

Aaron wrote the article, not Mark.

[Aggro_zombies]

It's also worth noting that WotC basically doesn't ever admit that things didn't go over well with a set until the product is out of Standard. You need to buy that shit, man, their business ain't gonna run itself.

Aaron has spoken frankly in the past about what has and hasn't worked for sets that were then not in Standard. Reading his article, I'm guessing a couple things:

1) Starting off with Modern Masters - an all-reprint set - suggests this was a very lukewarm year for them. Either that, or they were abjectly terrified that MM would end the Magic world as we know it.

2) Specifically mentioning Slivers suggests there was a bigger backlash than they expected or than he's letting on. That makes sense from my experience, because almost everyone I talked to about it either didn't care or didn't like some aspect of the new Slivers.

The new card frame is pretty whatever at the end of the day. The Planar Chaos colorshifted card frame is the modern card frame done right and it's not coming back, so I guess they can only make things uglier from here. I just wish they would fuck with the card frame less often because I don't like having eleventy bajillion different-looking frames in my decks.

[Dzra]

2) Specifically mentioning Slivers suggests there was a bigger backlash than they expected or than he's letting on. That makes sense from my experience, because almost everyone I talked to about it either didn't care or didn't like some aspect of the new Slivers.

I'm just making a stab in the dark about this one, but I wonder if they were disappointed with their attempt to bring some of the eternal/casual/edh players back to Standard. Slivers were an obvious throwback to when a lot of us eternal players started playing magic, so I wonder if they had anticipated more excitement than they got from us.

[Dan Turner]

Talked to a person from the hong kong factory. They have about 60 cards to choose from...all the blue duals all the fetches all the shocks and pretty much most of the $100+ legacy stuff. Ordered in decks of 55 cards that you choose from the list. 20 decks run $450 smallest order or 1000 decks for $1200 shipped. 55,000 underground seas to wallpaper my house lol.

Sent from 15 min in the future via Tapatalk Timewarp.

[Dan Turner]

On another not never buying anything via ebay ever again. Possibly never online at all.

Sent from 15 min in the future via Tapatalk Timewarp.

[TsumiBand]

I'm just making a stab in the dark about this one, but I wonder if they were disappointed with their attempt to bring some of the eternal/casual/edh players back to Standard. Slivers were an obvious throwback to when a lot of us eternal players started playing magic, so I wonder if they had anticipated more excitement than they got from us.

Major shocker, that. "Hunh, our market research indicates some people actually dig nostalgia. So let's reintroduce Slivers again, only fuck with them real bad and make them unrecognizable as Slivers except because they'll all say "Sliver" in the right places so people don't go 'oh shit I thought it was an Ally, my badt' and I bet that people will just not even notice the fucking difference"

I mean 'throwbacks' are exactly that, typically. How tough was this to conceptualize? Pepsi Throwback has fucking sugar in it. Pseudo-old band shirts they sell at the mall don't have, like, the guys from Nazareth dressed in Limp Bizkit gear; shit, half the time they come "pre-worn out" like someone's dad actually got pissed on during cokesex while wearing it in 197__.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Aaron wrote the article, not Mark.

What is this I don't even.




Twenty Things That Were Going To Kill Magic
Mark Rosewater
Monday, August 05, 2013

[Higgs]

Bed Decks Player, you are quickly becoming my favorite person on the forums.

About the Hong Kong factory thing, if this exists how do you know that people don't sell these fake cards to dealers and the cards you buy from them are real?

And Aaron's comments about the new slivers is just a prime example of their general arrogance imo. Even when he is saying that they've made a mistake, he is dancing around the sentence so much that he can't just flat out say that it was a mistake, like a man.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Bed Decks Player, you are quickly becoming my favorite person on the forums.

About the Hong Kong factory thing, if this exists how do you know that people don't sell these fake cards to dealers and the cards you buy from them are real?

Yep, this is what scares me a lot. That's why I like the holo-thing, because it makes the counterfeits at least a bit more hard/expensive to make. Sadly there's nothing they can do about P9 and all other money cards, as not even the massive scale reprints would have any effect on the price of ABU stuff [enter Beta BoP/WoG example here] RL notwithstanding. Thus they'd be still counterfeited.

_____________

And Aaron's comments about the new slivers is just a prime example of their general arrogance imo. Even when he is saying that they've made a mistake, he is dancing around the sentence so much that he can't just flat out say that it was a mistake, like a man.

MaRo's article is even better:

Over the years, the Reserved List has remained a contentious issue, with players constantly calling for its abolishment but Wizards of the Coast saying it's going to honor its promise and has vowed to retain it.

So be it. Clever guys, really clever. Oh, is this a Black Lotus with "Made in China" sign? How come?

The Sixth Edition rules were the largest rules change the game had ever seen. The stack was introduced, numerous rules went away, and the sequence of the turn was tightened up. It fundamentally changed the way the game was played and many of the established players didn't like it one bit. They had spent years learning the game and weren't happy to have to relearn numerous aspects. After the introduction of Standard, I believe this change created the loudest outcry from the public.

Dude, if only you weren't an ignorant self-loving moron, you would have realized that the only thing that players disliked back in 1999 was "combat dmg on stack" rule, as it was counterintuitive, unnecessary and opened space for Mogg Fanatic tricks that were completely stupid.

As this new frame first appeared in Eighth Edition, they were referred to as the Eighth Edition card frames.

This change had a huge impact on how the cards looked and many players objected to the shift. They felt the new layout had less of a fantasy feel and moved the game away from its roots. This was another very loud outcry with many words written both in articles and on message boards...

"...and that's why we mess with the frames even more."

They disliked that the new cards would be harder to get than other card types that each had cards in all — at the time — three rarities. They disliked that they required you playing creatures. They disliked that they were not that easy to understand.

Wow, MaRo is such a pathetic loser. I lack words.
The only trouble with PWs is that they were really hard to fit into the game that was designed without them in mind and that had 15 years of non-PW history. The PW rules stick out like a sore thumb...

For starters, "damage on the stack" was removed. R&D felt that it created situations that didn't feel natural and that removing it would lead to more dynamic play.

Wait wut? I thought that WE, the players, were wrong when 6th Edition came out. But now I see that we were also wrong when 10th Edition came out. What's this? MaRo, you're such a babbler it's not even posible.

Some players felt the Magic back was a hard-and-fast rule that could never be broken, so the idea of cards without one upset them greatly.

They required sleeves or a checklist card. They messed up Draft. They made players have to de-sleeve and flip them over. Every flaw was pointed out time and time again. Despite that, though, they went on to be the highest-ranked mechanical component in Innistrad and Dark Ascension. There was even a large outcry when the last set in the block, Avacyn Restored, didn't have any.

So you just basically list all the cons os the transform cards, then fabricate an outcry when they ceased to show up, and even have guts to tell us we're wrong? What's wrong with you, dude? Also, IE/CE are banned, but this awful stuff is legal? Do you have any more of your weed?

This change was a number of things, from the replacement of the ELO rating system to Planeswalker Points...

...and that was when I ceased to care about my rating. PW Points? For cereous?


Really, reading this guy's articles is like a lesson in dialectical historism.
"Everything that The Party ever done is right. There were no bad decisions made, and even though it may seem that sometimes The Party contradicted itself, or made two directly opposed decisions, in fact they were always good and The Party was always right. You need to see all of them in right historical perspective."

[Barook]

It's also worth noting that WotC basically doesn't ever admit that things didn't go over well with a set until the product is out of Standard. You need to buy that shit, man, their business ain't gonna run itself.

Aaron has spoken frankly in the past about what has and hasn't worked for sets that were then not in Standard. Reading his article, I'm guessing a couple things:

1) Starting off with Modern Masters - an all-reprint set - suggests this was a very lukewarm year for them. Either that, or they were abjectly terrified that MM would end the Magic world as we know it.

2) Specifically mentioning Slivers suggests there was a bigger backlash than they expected or than he's letting on. That makes sense from my experience, because almost everyone I talked to about it either didn't care or didn't like some aspect of the new Slivers.

The new card frame is pretty whatever at the end of the day. The Planar Chaos colorshifted card frame is the modern card frame done right and it's not coming back, so I guess they can only make things uglier from here. I just wish they would fuck with the card frame less often because I don't like having eleventy bajillion different-looking frames in my decks.

1) MM was the only good thing they released this year. High value, awesome drafting experience and the GP with the highest attendance in MtG history.

And then we have Gatecrash, Dragon's Maze, M14 and Theros. Neither could live up the hype after RtR became the best selling set of all time (hey, a set with a decent power level that doesn't suck ass!). Maro even stated some time after its release that Dragon's Maze wasn't well received - "due to too many mechanicals making things complicated". Well, it was disliked - certainly not for that, but for being a low-powered clusterfuck of uninteresting cards. Making Voice of Resurgence the only chase rare of the set because nobody wanted to buy that shit otherwise speaks volumes. Not to mention the Emmara Tandris disaster. M14 was meh and so was Theros. I seriously hope that Ken Nagle can fix this dire situation in the next set, but since Tom LaPille was also working on it, we have to wait and see.

2) They shat over everything that made Slivers Slivers and expected the old crowd to love them. Guess what - we loathe them to death. And the new players simply don't care because the "cool factor" of the original Tempest Sliver doesn't exist anymore. Crappy Predator rip-offs aren't going to change that. Nobody cared that the presentation of Slivers was limited since they were iconic.

Talked to a person from the hong kong factory. They have about 60 cards to choose from...all the blue duals all the fetches all the shocks and pretty much most of the $100+ legacy stuff. Ordered in decks of 55 cards that you choose from the list. 20 decks run $450 smallest order or 1000 decks for $1200 shipped. 55,000 underground seas to wallpaper my house lol.

Sent from 15 min in the future via Tapatalk Timewarp.

So Wizards saw the danger of Hong Kong decent fakes flooding the market and made the holo stamp?

But what are the implications for the Eternal formats? If they pass the common tests, how can you still distinguish fake and original?

"When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."

[prateta]

So Wizards saw the danger of Hong Kong decent fakes flooding the market and made the holo stamp?

But what are the implications for the Eternal formats? If they pass the common tests, how can you still distinguish fake and original?

"When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."

I spoke to that company too. They offered me few samples for shipping only ($28). I'm so curious about it, but I think I won't pay 28 bucks for some fake seas. Anybody wanna split? :D I would be interested how close to the original are those.

[Higgs]

What I read from MaRo's article is this:

"Over the years we've made many changes majority of the players didn't like. You whined and complained but guess what, it didn't change anything and we did what we wanted. You learned to live with them like a good puppy. So we will continue to do whatever we want to do whether you like it or not. Suck it up and get over it."

This alibaba print factory thing on the other hand, is quite worrying now that the cat is out of the bag. I wonder how long it would take for the community to get up to speed with the and the market to be literally flooded with fakes. I also wonder if Wizards will take any action on this. Other than MaRo writing another article telling how right they've been with the holo thing in the new frame.

[Humphrey]

So instead of getting loyal customers they now need to add copy protection

[Kayradis]

Debating if I should order 1000 SFM while they are hot and flood the market.....
It's like printing 25$ bills!