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United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

unitedwizardsofthecoast.com

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Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#21

Post by grimgrin »

Avicebron wrote: post #4

Hopefully they can push back against some of these collabs. I have yet to meet someone who is thrilled with playing a deck with Post Malone, TMNT, or The Walking Dead in it. The best you get is indifference.

yeah. scrolling this expansion list, you can see 2018 was really the last _block_ as we knew them: few sets labeled under a theme an author might write a book about

also shortly after we see new sets stopped getting their own wiki articles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_s...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_n...

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#22

Post by mulmen »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #20
Avicebron wrote: post #4

Hopefully they can push back against some of these collabs. I have yet to meet someone who is thrilled with playing a deck with Post Malone, TMNT, or The Walking Dead in it. The best you get is indifference.

As a counter-point, I was hanging out with my brother the other day, who has recently gotten into Magic the Gathering, and he was specifically talking about the TMNT collab as something he thought was neat (I wasn't aware of that specific collab until he mentioned it). I suspect that the collabs are actually making WotC a decent amount of money, because people who do not share your specific tastes are buying them.

Nobody doubts they are making money. It’s literally a nostalgia cash grab. The question is how much that money will cost WotC in reputational harm and loyal customers.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#23

Post by sockbot »

derektank wrote: post #14
legitster wrote: post #12

Anytime this comes up, it's worth pointing out how deeply weird US unionization is compared to the broader world. There is now a union ... just for Wizards of the Coast employees. UWOTC-CWA now has a monopoly on negotiating for WotC employees. Dues flow up to the CWA, but members don't necessarily get the benefit of bargaining industry-wide. There is also no choice within WotC for what union represents you. It's stil…

I’m familiar with sectoral bargaining in the abstract but wasn’t aware European workers had the ability to choose which union represented them in negotiations. How does that work in practice?

Not only in Europe, but in Canada too. Think of the union as a corpo offering bargaining and administrative services. Unions compete with each other for workforces. The typical case would be for a newly unionizing workforce needing to choose which union to join.

It is rare, but a workforce can even choose to move to a different union.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#24

Post by josh_p »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #11
Avicebron wrote: post #4

Hopefully they can push back against some of these collabs. I have yet to meet someone who is thrilled with playing a deck with Post Malone, TMNT, or The Walking Dead in it. The best you get is indifference.

Same here: I own (literally) 50 Commander decks ... and I stopped playing 100% as soon as Transformers and My Little Ponies became cards. Magic will either become "generic TCG that's unrecognizable to the original" or it's going to pay a very painful long-term cost for their short-term gains.

I’m “uhm acshually”-ing a bit.

The MLP cards aren’t legal in any format and Transformers, legal in commander yes, was a very small set.

You can’t deny the popularity of the Final fantasy set. Selling that well indicates a desire.

I don’t think the small secret lair releases deserve the hate.

Wizards is still committed to making in-universe sets. The first novel in years was just published with the release of strixhaven. Every in-universe set has come with a short-story/novella length addition on the official site.

FWIW, I don’t love the marvel collab and I don’t think it fits at all. But I’m sure someone does.

I think criticism should be focused on the actual design and mechanics of sets rather than the IP. Since Wizards is committed to both their own and others. The latest Marvel set for example enables way more infinite combos in standard and is an example power creep gone bad.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#26

Post by legitster »

derektank wrote: post #14
legitster wrote: post #12

Anytime this comes up, it's worth pointing out how deeply weird US unionization is compared to the broader world. There is now a union ... just for Wizards of the Coast employees. UWOTC-CWA now has a monopoly on negotiating for WotC employees. Dues flow up to the CWA, but members don't necessarily get the benefit of bargaining industry-wide. There is also no choice within WotC for what union represents you. It's stil…

I’m familiar with sectoral bargaining in the abstract but wasn’t aware European workers had the ability to choose which union represented them in negotiations. How does that work in practice?

Depends on the country.

In a lot of countries, it's not much different than choosing a pension fund option. You join a job, you choose which union best represents you based on your industry/title/etc (if you are not already a member). If you are not happy with your current agreement, you choose a different union that promises better outcomes.

It's so much less extreme than US unionization. There's not much reason for hostility between business and unions - unions don't get these all or nothing powers like they do in the US.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#27

Post by hobofan »

Avicebron wrote: post #4

Hopefully they can push back against some of these collabs. I have yet to meet someone who is thrilled with playing a deck with Post Malone, TMNT, or The Walking Dead in it. The best you get is indifference.

There are ~25k total different MTG cards. Who cares if even 1k of them are for collabs (as long as they don't contain broken cards that end up in tournament play)?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#28

Post by s1artibartfast »

derektank wrote: post #14
legitster wrote: post #12

Anytime this comes up, it's worth pointing out how deeply weird US unionization is compared to the broader world. There is now a union ... just for Wizards of the Coast employees. UWOTC-CWA now has a monopoly on negotiating for WotC employees. Dues flow up to the CWA, but members don't necessarily get the benefit of bargaining industry-wide. There is also no choice within WotC for what union represents you. It's stil…

I’m familiar with sectoral bargaining in the abstract but wasn’t aware European workers had the ability to choose which union represented them in negotiations. How does that work in practice?

It depends heavily on the country but a worker at a company can pick a union to represent them. You might see a billboards saying join Union a or Union B. If you Union a is corrupt or screwing over one group of workers in favor of another group of worker, the laborers will just leave it and go to a different one.

This solves a lot of problems with us unions, where they have a state sanctioned Monopoly on the workers.

The classic example is unions are going for terms that screw over junior members but there are other perverse examples. At my friend's company the Union demanded that it be forced to return to office because the larger number of field technicians we're a voting majority of the union and angry they couldn't work from home.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#29

Post by dimitrios1 »

kayson wrote: post #16
p1necone wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely lost interest in Magic when they started churning out all the licensed crossovers. It feels like they really jumped the shark compared to how they used to be - they used to seemingly care deeply about the lore, gameplay, structure of releases etc whereas now it all just feels like a cash grab.

I feel that. I really do. But I also LOVED the Avatar crossover. To be fair, I haven't played any other ones, but this one played so well and seemed to be very well thought out. They really did the IP justice. It's also probably worth pointing out that Lego was nearing bankruptcy and was saved by a ton of licensing (and Ninjago, to be fair). Fortunately, they've used that income stream to still consistently put out a…

my favorite cEDH commander of recent memory is Aang at the Crossroads. Cast your commander, and roll the dice to see if you find the win.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB

#30

Post by mwcremer »

cscheid wrote: post #3
protocolture wrote: post #2

Pinkertons inbound

(People might not know the inside joke here, namely that WotC has in the past sent the actual Pinkertons after some people suspected of leaking unreleased cards)

Might also be a reference to the Homestead strike et al. Pinkertons were often employed as strikebreakers.
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