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The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

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Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#81

Post by yownie »

dccoolgai wrote: post #52
hobs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I will never be unsad about dominion.isotropic.org shutting down with its dead simple and fast dominion implementation, they promised to take it down if the company ever did its own thing and they did and you had to buy every expansion and it generally sucked.

I was a big player on isotropic too. (I played Innovation after they shut down Dominion which was also fun). The one at dominion.games really isn't too bad - not as good as isotropic IMHO but not bad either.

Big fan of Innovation here too, I'd recommend the version over on boardgamearena atm it's excellent.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#82

Post by 2024throwaway »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #67
2024throwaway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely don't have to pay to win. I play entirely on MTG: Arena, and you can pay $0 and still build a competitive deck. For paper magic, just find people who don't have sticks in their posteriors and use homemade or printed versions of the cards you want.

I remember my fancy black deck I was so proud of and all the nights playing against tooth and nail, a deck full of cards many of which was worth as much as my whole deck. It sucked. I won 1/3 games at my best because I wasn’t willing to sink hundreds of dollars into my decks Playing with printed cards though is janky. It’s not how the game is meant to be played and contradicts the aesthetic experience. Better to swit…

> Playing with printed cards though is janky. It’s not how the game is meant to be played and contradicts the aesthetic experience.

My original comment was telling them specifically to find people to play with who aren’t like you.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#83

Post by tommit »

schrectacular wrote: post #56
johtso wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I find so much of the art of modern magic cards completely uninspiring. They all look the same. Old magic cards had an element of the strange and the quirky. Sometimes the designs bordered on naive. Hand painted illustrations had a distinctly human touch. And the illustrations were punchy and had contrast. You knew exactly what a card was from a distance. A lot of the modern art is just polished, air brushed…

Note also that all those old cards were done on physical media, whereas today almost all the cards are done digitally. So the modern cards are much more _detailed_. Check out the Jesper Ewing cards like Frantic Scapegoat. He's notable for creating real paintings. To me they capture a bit of the old feel.

Minor correction: Jesper Ejsing

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#84

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

gklitz wrote: post #69
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it seems like it went wrong when greed took iver and now there are so many cards that it doesn't make sense. I love all the 3 games you mentioned, but not mtg because card packs should be illegal from my perspective (I know it's a me problem). they can say whatever they want, it is legal gambling

I quite like magic the gathering online for this purpose. You can’t trade cards, so the gambling and trading aspect go away. And you get wild cards in packs so it’s easier to craft the specific decks you want. Also the rapid cycle of releases just feels more fitting here. I’la be away for some months now and again and come back to an entirely new challenge of cards and decks. I also paying is optional, you get enough…

It is still expensive, but yes, that way makes sense.

The accessibility of the game is poor in terms of rules, to properly play mtg you need to know a lot of cards (the rules are mostly on the cards).

I have been looking forward purchasing a deck of proxies to play with a friend of mine.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#85

Post by dccoolgai »

yownie wrote: post #80
dccoolgai wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dominion is such an amazing game - the complexity that can arise from such a dead simple set of core rules is awesome. It tends to break down with more than 4 or 5 players - I wish there was a version of it for larger groups to play online.

Do you know about www.dominion.games ?

yeah, I have a subscription there - you can jerry-rig it so 5 or more people can play on that (by creating the table with slots and not having players wait to join) but the game itself gets a little unwieldy with more people

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#86

Post by scruple »

freediver wrote: post #79
scruple wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia or not, I let myself get sucked back into MtG in 2021, after discovering the unofficial format Premodern [0], and a major component of that is the artwork on the cards in those sets with the black border. I'm sure it really is just nostalgia but I truly enjoy playing games in that format and looking at the artwork, especially cards which I've never really seen before because they weren't meta back in the da…

Thanks for the link. Do you play it offline only?

I do, I have a small group of friends in SoCal that I play with a couple of times a month.

There's a thriving scene in Madison, Wisconsin and NYC, and abroad in Europe where the format originated.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#87

Post by random42_ »

awithrow wrote: post #26
mxwsn wrote: post #13

Part of the original magic that Garfield talks about, the player experience of discovering a world of cards you've never seen before, is captured by recent video games like Inscryption (especially) and Slay the Spire. Dominion is also an excellent game as the progenitor of the deck-building game genre, where you build a deck from scratch inside each game (and Inscryption/Slay the Spire descend from), rather than outs…

Its probably the nostalgia talking but a lot of the early magic was the art as well. It was professional enough to look good but not so polished that it didn't have its own character. I had favorite artists and it was always fun just admiring the art. The new cards just don't capture me the same way. Something about them is too polished or too homogenized. They don't leave any room for imagination. I feel the same wa…

D&D artwork was something else back then. I remember spending hours and hours just looking at it.

For anybody interested, there is a documentary about the history of the art in D&D: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt8888186/ It’s quite interesting.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#88

Post by calfuris »

2024throwaway wrote: post #82
barbariangrunge wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember my fancy black deck I was so proud of and all the nights playing against tooth and nail, a deck full of cards many of which was worth as much as my whole deck. It sucked. I won 1/3 games at my best because I wasn’t willing to sink hundreds of dollars into my decks Playing with printed cards though is janky. It’s not how the game is meant to be played and contradicts the aesthetic experience. Better to swit…

> Playing with printed cards though is janky. It’s not how the game is meant to be played and contradicts the aesthetic experience. My original comment was telling them specifically to find people to play with who aren’t like you.

I have no objections to proxies, but I do dislike printed cards. Proxies should be indistinguishable from real MTG cards when face down or in your deck, and printouts generally aren't. The right way to make proxies if you can't make decent counterfeit cards is with basic lands and a felt tip pen.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#89

Post by itsdrewmiller »

ipqk wrote: post #25
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #12

The guy who invented the power 9 complaining about these new designers making rares that are too good… right. Also the hate on Arena is bizarre - it’s not perfect but it is polished and works well on (at least) iPhone PC and Mac.

Balancing a game is hard. You can hardly blame anyone for getting it wrong on their first attempt. But getting it wrong 30 years later…

He didn't get it "wrong" though - he purposefully made much more powerful rares in the very first set. Maybe he now believes that was a mistake, but as a limited player I don't think it was! I like having some powerful cards show up from time to time but not to have the draft format dominated by them. Their latest change makes rares show up more frequently in packs and it is really bad for the sealed deck format IMHO.

Re: The creator of 'Magic: The Gathering' knows where it all went wrong

#90

Post by 2024throwaway »

calfuris wrote: post #88
2024throwaway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Playing with printed cards though is janky. It’s not how the game is meant to be played and contradicts the aesthetic experience. My original comment was telling them specifically to find people to play with who aren’t like you.

I have no objections to proxies, but I do dislike printed cards. Proxies should be indistinguishable from real MTG cards when face down or in your deck, and printouts generally aren't. The right way to make proxies if you can't make decent counterfeit cards is with basic lands and a felt tip pen.

You are making my point for me.
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