As someone who plays Birthing Pod in Modern, I have no problem going with a main deck of 61 cards. I like having the extra spot there in case I need another option from the sideboard.
Additionally, the new rule encourages more transformative sideboards. You can put different colored lands in your deck to go up to 75, which usually isn't a problem if you have a lot of draw excel (ie, a Sphinx's Revelation deck that draws 40 cards in one game).
"The change makes Clone weaker, but blue is not supposed to have a way to destroy permanents. Bounce, yes. Counter, yes. But Vindicate an opposing permanent, even one with Shroud, no. That's out of flavor for U."
Well I agree according to color pie. But sometime, the color pie isnt the rule : the recent release of Colossal Whale in example (m14), provides to a blue creature a kinda "parallax wave" (sure, parallax is much better for many reason, but the effect amazingly looks like in what it does). And even if the whale would probably remain a detail (the card is pretty weak, probably never see play), its effect is very weird toward color pie rules ...
PS : once again gg for your series I read every week for years now.
I think he (and I) were referring to sign posts (omens if you will). It is not a stretch to suggest a decline and to believe one is happening if you see sign posts that indicate that in your personal life.
It is my feeling this won't be universal at all and I think the same is true of Blippy hence his disclaimer about skies not falling etc. It will impact some of us heavily and others not at all and in my case already has.
I don't feel my response to the quality of the current sets printed is ennui. At heart I enjoy playing the game. I enjoy it less when certain strategies are dominant. I have enjoyed playing with the GTC and DGM cards. Just not as much as I have previous sets. I expect this to continue and I have noticed others who feel the same way. This to me indicates a trend.
In standard this has translated into aggro being the top dog with combo second and midrange/control decks bringing up the rear (though this may swing in reverse come October if the block pt is any indication.)
I don't mind facing aggro all day (though how monotonous!) but I do hate seeing the same strategies over and over and this has become more prevalent with the last two sets and I don't see a trend for the better with sliver/mutants on the rise in m14. (Slivers tend to prevail in aggro decks more than otherwise).
Some of this is certainly just me analyzing what games I've played against the randoms of Juff and so has no meaning outside of the anecdotal but it is like sniffing the wind, smelling smoke and thinking: Fire. Not everyone smells the same way and not everyone feels the same way about the way decks are forming.
As for the m14 rules changes I don't think they're important in the least to me (I have not said otherwise...) and probably not so much for most players other than those who enjoy Commander. I expect the rules committee will address those concerns soon enough.
It is true I don't agree that the legend rule/planeswalker uniqueness rules are "good" but that is probably partially because I enjoyed being able to strategize on how to beat the insanely difficult cards effected by this and being able to clone something or bring in an alternate form via side boarding seemed excellent. I also loved the combat stack. I'll get over it quickly enough as I did that. I don't think it is of any account. Honestly I could give a fig about "fixing" the color wheel. Magic is what it is.
The Sb ruling is another "it's more convenient to forgive this kind of thing than to try and enforce it every single time and punish sleep deprived players because they can't count properly after 11 hours of mtg." thing and so seems par for the course. The rest have no bearing at all on anything I can think of.
Meanwhile keep the homefires lit for us whilst we do other things (I will of course continue to brew and play just on a far lower scale in the last few years.) It isn't like D3 where I stopped playing altogether after 2 weeks, in disgust at the state of the game. D3 doesn't compare to it's predecessor at all. D2 Lod still rocks.
M:TG also still rocks. Just hope the up turn comes sooner rather than later.
sometimes we get bored of the games we play. Sometimes we have been playing them for a long time and need an indefinite, or even permanent, break from them. this is the way of things.
I think it's a little bit a stretch to elaborate from personal ennui to a fundamental/objective decline, though. Blippy's specific prediction seems to be based on his strong personal reaction to the slivers thing - which I personally couldn't care less about - a rules change which I think is actually a good thing (and I'm not alone, see the adam barnello CF article for example) and nothing else. It does seem a tad... dramatic to infer an overall decline in the game from that though.
Nail --> head --- yep. I agree that M:TG is in decline (though I wonder how lame it will get before the rise again to non-duckiness.) I think this decline began with the beginning of the GTG spoilers. RTR was awesome, GTC less so (imho) and DGM while having some fun cards and interesting interactions continues the spiral downward.
I love gold sets and blocks so I fully expected to have nerdgasms over the last two sets in the RTR cycle but it just hasn't happened. Instead I find myself pulled by other games and playing less and less MTG, online or off. Which is sad because I did hope for some revitalization of my interest in the game. I am still interested and the Rules changes for m14 don't seem terrible at all compared to the stuff we got hit with in 2010. (4 core sets ago.) But I feel like I am in a holding pattern for now.
As you say the Slivers change is "ho hum" at best if you don't care about slivers and "OMGWTFBBQ!!!?" if you do. What else is going to happen during this "dark age"? Will we find out that Johnny Magic is really Mike Long in disguise and has been all along? Will Batman finally meet his match? Meh it goes on...
Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway since I bet a few people have been wondering) I have felt absolutely no urge to write about the game in months. I am glad you and the rest of the pure crew have carried on in such a fine tradition, leading the way among the free to play MTGO sites.
A) making the hard, but technically optimal, decision to cut back to 60.
B) making an easier, but strictly worse in almost all situations (ie. barring mill), to go above 61.
It sounds like this is adding more complexity and skill to the game. You give people an "easy but wrong" way, some will take it but you've actually just made the game more skill based and complex by doing that, rather than just forcing everyone into the technically correct decision.
Printing all these legends seems to be a cash grab to me. That's part of why I threw it in the group that I did. Something's popular, and we can make a profit off it? Great, let's print more! Admittedly this example is poor since the original Ravnica block had a whole ton of legends. But I can't shake the feeling that a lot of the legendary creatures printed recently are done so specifically to work as Commanders. I dunno, maybe it's just me reaching at straws. I'm willing to admit I was incorrect on this one, despite what my gut tells me.
I dunno, I had a lot of fun in the early days that I played, with Armageddons and Stone Rains running around. Yes, the early days of Magic weren't perfect, and there were a lot of goofy cards. But there was everything from Lightning Bolt decks to "The Deck" running around. I'm not saying that land destruction strategies were perfect back then. I lost to them, and won against them. But they were another nuance of the game that you had to plan around, another layer of complexity you had to consider. They figured out that rarity wasn't going to keep the power 9 in check pretty quickly and restricted them. Even still, there was a wide variety of decks running around out there. I'm just saying that getting rid of all this stuff is really frustrating. Maybe I'm an old man telling the kids to get off my lawn, but I'm willing to admit it and say that I don't like this change.
As I said, this isn't really "dumbing down the game" despite incorrectly calling that in the beginning. And it isn't really about accidentally giving Blue a form of removal. It's about reducing the complexity of the game to satisfy and acquire players, despite the fact that the game has been able to do both at a good pace recently.
Blue doesn't need to be better, and admittedly this does hurt Blue a little. But what did they expect when the printed Phantasmal Image? A 2 mana clone is going to create issues. And now they think it should be able to do exactly what they designed it to do? The card was created when the current rules were made, they had to have considered its effect on various legends. To me, if they didn't like that Image could get rid of legends, they should have either 1) printed another card, or 2) worked around it (essentially the same as 1)). They're R&D, they have a lot of leeway when it comes to printing stuff. I'm fine with Blue getting the shaft here tho. It's the idea have having 2 different Avacyn's on the battlefield that makes me really annoyed.
The same argument can be made with a lot of different planeswalkers...
Turn 3: Cast Liliana of the Veil, +1, everyone discards a card
Turn 4: Liliana goes -2, target player sacrifices a creature. Cast Liliana of the Veil, ditch the one from last turn. Activate -2, target player sacrifices a creature.
Turn 5: +1 to Liliana, each player discards a card.
In three turns, you have caused an opponent to discard two cards and sacrifice two creatures. That's very hard to come back from.
Turn 2: Have a creature in play.
Turn 3: Cast Ajani, Caller of the Pride. Use his +1 ability to put a counter on target creature.
Turn 4: Ajani goes -3 to give that creature flying and double strike. Cast Ajani, Caller of the Pride. Ditch the old one. New Ajani goes +1 to put a counter on that creature. You now have a 4/4 double striker with flying.
Turn 5: Ajani goes -3 to give the same creature flying and double strike again.
You have dealt 16 damage to an opponent as a result of the new legends rule.
With Garruk Relentless, it might look like this:
Turn 4: Resolve Garruk Relentless. He deals 3 damage to target creature. He then flips to his other side.
Turn 5: Garruk the Veil-Cursed makes a 1/1 Wolf with Deathtouch. Cast Garruk Relentless, then ditch the transformed one. Garruk Relentless deals 3 damage to target creature. He then flips into Garruk, the Veil Cursed.
In two turns, you have had three effects on the game state:
-3 damage to a creature (twice)
-Put a 1/1 wolf token in play.
These scenarios get even sillier given that Obzedat's Aid will return a planeswalker from your graveyard to play.
If you ultimate tamio and manage to leave her at 1, you deserve to win the game :). You were also probably going to win the game regardless of the new planeswalker rule, and in fact could have done a play almost as powerful by just ulting tamio the previous turn. The redundant tamio in hand doesn't really add much to your position there...
The new legend rule is fine for creatures. I just wish they would have left planeswalkers out of it. Going ultimate with Taimyo leaving her at 1, then casting another Tamiyo and putting the original Tamiyo back in your hand while the second gets to freeze a permanent or draw cards? Not so fun.
Additionally, Scavenger Ooze is going to dominate standard for the next year. But I'm sure you all know that.
It is less thinking because it gives you the option to NOT think/agonize/strategize about which card your last hate card has to replace, you can just put it as a 61st and call it a day (I know I will do just that). It gives you the option to shrug it off a difficult choice.
Again, more options doesn't necessarily equal more thinking, if you can immediately identify the option that trumps all the other options.
Mirror Gallery totally lets you keep 3 copies of the same legend in play, like before. Or 8. A deck of 20 hondens with Mirror Gallery can get way crazier than one without Mirror Gallery, that hasn't changed.
The original "I did it evenings and weekends, can we push it live?" implementation of Commander for Magic Online was the ONLY version that let rival commanders ignore the legend rule, paper Commander/EDH never had any such rule and you were expected to "negotiate" which decks to play so no two players matched. The nice Online variant was a concession to the fact that the matchmaking for games online makes it impractical to discuss commander choices up front. When they modified the online version to more closely reflect the paper version, they made the commanders legend each other out like in paper commander, which made me a little sad. Now we will have "You can always play your commander no matter what other people brought", which I think is a BIG improvement for Commander. Losing a little value on Sakashima and Lazav (really Sakashima just stops being "better than other clones" and other clones got "as good as him", he still does that stuff he USED to do) seems pretty minor, it's only two cards.
Overall, I think both aspects of this change cause the game of Magic to have less "There's one or more cards stuck in my hand I can't usefully play" situations, and more "I can play this card and do something beneficial to me" situations instead. That's generally less Frustration and more Fun, which should be the goal here. I like the change.
Reworking the sideboard changes all those instance of "Oops I have 61. Judge! Ok we don't even get to play that game, move on to game 3" or worse "Let's sign the match slip now", replacing them with "Let's draw cards and play spells and have a game of magic for the next 5-20 minutes" which I think is an experience that involves more thinking, more fun, and less sitting there moping that something brief, boring and bad happened because of a little carelessness or clumsiness.
I don't see how increasing options like "I'll sideboard up to 65 against mill" or other unusual configurations means LESS thinking between games. MORE options means more thinking, not less. There's less "mindless counting to make sure I didn't screw myself over", I don't see how THAT one particular piece of "thinking" makes the game better or more fun. And you can replace that time with a little more time thinking about, oh I don't know, sideboarding strategy?
Seriously, how do you get "less thinking" out of this change? I don't see it.
I can't see a control matchup as "losing nuance and complexity" when you go from "I play my Jace, I activate one ability once" and "Ok, I play my Jace, and now we both have an empty board and lands" to "I play my Jace, you play your Jace, we both get a total of 12 activations of abilities over the next 6 turns". THAT is a more complex mirror match!
Commander is not part of "the lowest common denominator". Whoever that is, they're probably not playing commander much, if at all. And commander is considered by some (including me) to be "the most awesome and fun format". It certainly sees complex and unusual interactions happen a fair amount.
So I can't see "printing a crap ton of new legends for commander" as part of "catering to the lowest common denominator" in any way. More like "a good idea, thank you Wizards". I don't see it harming standard or modern in any way, it's just a good thing.
@PatrykG - Like I said, it's baffling that they undid Lazav after so little time since its creation, it makes you think when this change was decided since they work several years in advance of releases, so M14 was conceived right after Gatecrash anyway.
But a few cards being lost in a change isn't the issue (we ENTIRELY lost Mirror Gallery too, for instance).
Re: Commander. Wasn't there already a rule (that maybe we never got online?) about commanders with the same name co-existing on the battlefield? Of course, now it's true of all the other legends as well.
(By the way, background check says Sakashima is actually male :)
@Kumagoro42 - I have to emphatically agree with you on the whole "old times are not necessarily good times" - I too have been around since Alpha/Beta/Unlimited/Revised, and it was definitely not all fun. Sure, Force of Nature was a great card at the time, but Moxes, Black Lotus and the rest of the P9 do NOT for a fun game make. God knows the amount of horrifying game states that can be created with nine little cards... so I concur on that.
However, I agree with Leviathan that the legend rule is going to completely upturn my favorite format, Commander. I mean, what's the point of Sakashima now? She copies Legends but doesn't die... but so does ANY clone now. And Lazav... he's actually LESS than a clone now, because he can become a copy of an opponent's Legend... and so can any clone now. There is no no reason for the line "except that his name stays Lazav". Unless, of course, your opponent happens to have the same legend in play as you do and then it dies, and you copy it, I guess. Clearly NOT as powerful as it used to be, and definitely a much weaker general overall.
I will admit I AM going to enjoy mirror matches again - I liked the whole "commander isn't really a legend" mindset from the old days, so I guess in a way it's going to be different in a completely new way and I'll just have to see.
The change makes Clone weaker, but blue is not supposed to have a way to destroy permanents. Bounce, yes. Counter, yes. But Vindicate an opposing permanent, even one with Shroud, no. That's out of flavor for U.
The clearest example of why Clone should not have acted in this manner was the interaction of clone and Thrun, the Last Troll. Thrun was built to be be green's answer to blue control. It could not be bounced, and it regenerated through Day of Judgement. However, blue could kill it for just 1U. That is just wrong.
Does the change make Hexproof better. Yes. Does that mean that we are "dumbing diwn the game?" No. Blue lost one out of flavor power. It will now have to find other options. Maybe decks need to play Glaring Spotlight, or Wrath, or Pyroclasm effects, or soemthing like Meekstone or Propaganda, or Ensnaring Bridge. Blue lost one trump that killed opponents cards every time, without recourse, in a way that blue shouldn't be able to do. Now it has to struggle to do the same thing, in the same ways eery other color does. That is not dumbing down the game. That is resetting the balance.
This hardly makes clone bad. It is still thragtusk or Angel of Serenity or Acidic Slime or Restoration Angel for 3U (or 2BU for Evil Twin) - and you can still reset it with cloudshift or Resto Angel. Why isn't that enough?
As someone who plays Birthing Pod in Modern, I have no problem going with a main deck of 61 cards. I like having the extra spot there in case I need another option from the sideboard.
Additionally, the new rule encourages more transformative sideboards. You can put different colored lands in your deck to go up to 75, which usually isn't a problem if you have a lot of draw excel (ie, a Sphinx's Revelation deck that draws 40 cards in one game).
No, Modern Masters won't be redeemable at MTGO.
DOes anybody know if Modern Masters will be redeemable?
"The change makes Clone weaker, but blue is not supposed to have a way to destroy permanents. Bounce, yes. Counter, yes. But Vindicate an opposing permanent, even one with Shroud, no. That's out of flavor for U."
Well I agree according to color pie. But sometime, the color pie isnt the rule : the recent release of Colossal Whale in example (m14), provides to a blue creature a kinda "parallax wave" (sure, parallax is much better for many reason, but the effect amazingly looks like in what it does). And even if the whale would probably remain a detail (the card is pretty weak, probably never see play), its effect is very weird toward color pie rules ...
PS : once again gg for your series I read every week for years now.
I think he (and I) were referring to sign posts (omens if you will). It is not a stretch to suggest a decline and to believe one is happening if you see sign posts that indicate that in your personal life.
It is my feeling this won't be universal at all and I think the same is true of Blippy hence his disclaimer about skies not falling etc. It will impact some of us heavily and others not at all and in my case already has.
I don't feel my response to the quality of the current sets printed is ennui. At heart I enjoy playing the game. I enjoy it less when certain strategies are dominant. I have enjoyed playing with the GTC and DGM cards. Just not as much as I have previous sets. I expect this to continue and I have noticed others who feel the same way. This to me indicates a trend.
In standard this has translated into aggro being the top dog with combo second and midrange/control decks bringing up the rear (though this may swing in reverse come October if the block pt is any indication.)
I don't mind facing aggro all day (though how monotonous!) but I do hate seeing the same strategies over and over and this has become more prevalent with the last two sets and I don't see a trend for the better with sliver/mutants on the rise in m14. (Slivers tend to prevail in aggro decks more than otherwise).
Some of this is certainly just me analyzing what games I've played against the randoms of Juff and so has no meaning outside of the anecdotal but it is like sniffing the wind, smelling smoke and thinking: Fire. Not everyone smells the same way and not everyone feels the same way about the way decks are forming.
As for the m14 rules changes I don't think they're important in the least to me (I have not said otherwise...) and probably not so much for most players other than those who enjoy Commander. I expect the rules committee will address those concerns soon enough.
It is true I don't agree that the legend rule/planeswalker uniqueness rules are "good" but that is probably partially because I enjoyed being able to strategize on how to beat the insanely difficult cards effected by this and being able to clone something or bring in an alternate form via side boarding seemed excellent. I also loved the combat stack. I'll get over it quickly enough as I did that. I don't think it is of any account. Honestly I could give a fig about "fixing" the color wheel. Magic is what it is.
The Sb ruling is another "it's more convenient to forgive this kind of thing than to try and enforce it every single time and punish sleep deprived players because they can't count properly after 11 hours of mtg." thing and so seems par for the course. The rest have no bearing at all on anything I can think of.
Meanwhile keep the homefires lit for us whilst we do other things (I will of course continue to brew and play just on a far lower scale in the last few years.) It isn't like D3 where I stopped playing altogether after 2 weeks, in disgust at the state of the game. D3 doesn't compare to it's predecessor at all. D2 Lod still rocks.
M:TG also still rocks. Just hope the up turn comes sooner rather than later.
sometimes we get bored of the games we play. Sometimes we have been playing them for a long time and need an indefinite, or even permanent, break from them. this is the way of things.
I think it's a little bit a stretch to elaborate from personal ennui to a fundamental/objective decline, though. Blippy's specific prediction seems to be based on his strong personal reaction to the slivers thing - which I personally couldn't care less about - a rules change which I think is actually a good thing (and I'm not alone, see the adam barnello CF article for example) and nothing else. It does seem a tad... dramatic to infer an overall decline in the game from that though.
Nail --> head --- yep. I agree that M:TG is in decline (though I wonder how lame it will get before the rise again to non-duckiness.) I think this decline began with the beginning of the GTG spoilers. RTR was awesome, GTC less so (imho) and DGM while having some fun cards and interesting interactions continues the spiral downward.
I love gold sets and blocks so I fully expected to have nerdgasms over the last two sets in the RTR cycle but it just hasn't happened. Instead I find myself pulled by other games and playing less and less MTG, online or off. Which is sad because I did hope for some revitalization of my interest in the game. I am still interested and the Rules changes for m14 don't seem terrible at all compared to the stuff we got hit with in 2010. (4 core sets ago.) But I feel like I am in a holding pattern for now.
As you say the Slivers change is "ho hum" at best if you don't care about slivers and "OMGWTFBBQ!!!?" if you do. What else is going to happen during this "dark age"? Will we find out that Johnny Magic is really Mike Long in disguise and has been all along? Will Batman finally meet his match? Meh it goes on...
Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway since I bet a few people have been wondering) I have felt absolutely no urge to write about the game in months. I am glad you and the rest of the pure crew have carried on in such a fine tradition, leading the way among the free to play MTGO sites.
So the new change gives you you the choice of:
A) making the hard, but technically optimal, decision to cut back to 60.
B) making an easier, but strictly worse in almost all situations (ie. barring mill), to go above 61.
It sounds like this is adding more complexity and skill to the game. You give people an "easy but wrong" way, some will take it but you've actually just made the game more skill based and complex by doing that, rather than just forcing everyone into the technically correct decision.
Printing all these legends seems to be a cash grab to me. That's part of why I threw it in the group that I did. Something's popular, and we can make a profit off it? Great, let's print more! Admittedly this example is poor since the original Ravnica block had a whole ton of legends. But I can't shake the feeling that a lot of the legendary creatures printed recently are done so specifically to work as Commanders. I dunno, maybe it's just me reaching at straws. I'm willing to admit I was incorrect on this one, despite what my gut tells me.
I dunno, I had a lot of fun in the early days that I played, with Armageddons and Stone Rains running around. Yes, the early days of Magic weren't perfect, and there were a lot of goofy cards. But there was everything from Lightning Bolt decks to "The Deck" running around. I'm not saying that land destruction strategies were perfect back then. I lost to them, and won against them. But they were another nuance of the game that you had to plan around, another layer of complexity you had to consider. They figured out that rarity wasn't going to keep the power 9 in check pretty quickly and restricted them. Even still, there was a wide variety of decks running around out there. I'm just saying that getting rid of all this stuff is really frustrating. Maybe I'm an old man telling the kids to get off my lawn, but I'm willing to admit it and say that I don't like this change.
As I said, this isn't really "dumbing down the game" despite incorrectly calling that in the beginning. And it isn't really about accidentally giving Blue a form of removal. It's about reducing the complexity of the game to satisfy and acquire players, despite the fact that the game has been able to do both at a good pace recently.
Blue doesn't need to be better, and admittedly this does hurt Blue a little. But what did they expect when the printed Phantasmal Image? A 2 mana clone is going to create issues. And now they think it should be able to do exactly what they designed it to do? The card was created when the current rules were made, they had to have considered its effect on various legends. To me, if they didn't like that Image could get rid of legends, they should have either 1) printed another card, or 2) worked around it (essentially the same as 1)). They're R&D, they have a lot of leeway when it comes to printing stuff. I'm fine with Blue getting the shaft here tho. It's the idea have having 2 different Avacyn's on the battlefield that makes me really annoyed.
The same argument can be made with a lot of different planeswalkers...
Turn 3: Cast Liliana of the Veil, +1, everyone discards a card
Turn 4: Liliana goes -2, target player sacrifices a creature. Cast Liliana of the Veil, ditch the one from last turn. Activate -2, target player sacrifices a creature.
Turn 5: +1 to Liliana, each player discards a card.
In three turns, you have caused an opponent to discard two cards and sacrifice two creatures. That's very hard to come back from.
Turn 2: Have a creature in play.
Turn 3: Cast Ajani, Caller of the Pride. Use his +1 ability to put a counter on target creature.
Turn 4: Ajani goes -3 to give that creature flying and double strike. Cast Ajani, Caller of the Pride. Ditch the old one. New Ajani goes +1 to put a counter on that creature. You now have a 4/4 double striker with flying.
Turn 5: Ajani goes -3 to give the same creature flying and double strike again.
You have dealt 16 damage to an opponent as a result of the new legends rule.
With Garruk Relentless, it might look like this:
Turn 4: Resolve Garruk Relentless. He deals 3 damage to target creature. He then flips to his other side.
Turn 5: Garruk the Veil-Cursed makes a 1/1 Wolf with Deathtouch. Cast Garruk Relentless, then ditch the transformed one. Garruk Relentless deals 3 damage to target creature. He then flips into Garruk, the Veil Cursed.
In two turns, you have had three effects on the game state:
-3 damage to a creature (twice)
-Put a 1/1 wolf token in play.
These scenarios get even sillier given that Obzedat's Aid will return a planeswalker from your graveyard to play.
Because the Tamiyo situation is so much less of a blowout under the rules as they are now...
If you ultimate tamio and manage to leave her at 1, you deserve to win the game :). You were also probably going to win the game regardless of the new planeswalker rule, and in fact could have done a play almost as powerful by just ulting tamio the previous turn. The redundant tamio in hand doesn't really add much to your position there...
The new legend rule is fine for creatures. I just wish they would have left planeswalkers out of it. Going ultimate with Taimyo leaving her at 1, then casting another Tamiyo and putting the original Tamiyo back in your hand while the second gets to freeze a permanent or draw cards? Not so fun.
Additionally, Scavenger Ooze is going to dominate standard for the next year. But I'm sure you all know that.
The new legend rule. It's crap. That is all.
It is less thinking because it gives you the option to NOT think/agonize/strategize about which card your last hate card has to replace, you can just put it as a 61st and call it a day (I know I will do just that). It gives you the option to shrug it off a difficult choice.
Again, more options doesn't necessarily equal more thinking, if you can immediately identify the option that trumps all the other options.
Yeah, I don't really know why I was counting Mirror Gallery out. :)
Mirror Gallery totally lets you keep 3 copies of the same legend in play, like before. Or 8. A deck of 20 hondens with Mirror Gallery can get way crazier than one without Mirror Gallery, that hasn't changed.
The original "I did it evenings and weekends, can we push it live?" implementation of Commander for Magic Online was the ONLY version that let rival commanders ignore the legend rule, paper Commander/EDH never had any such rule and you were expected to "negotiate" which decks to play so no two players matched. The nice Online variant was a concession to the fact that the matchmaking for games online makes it impractical to discuss commander choices up front. When they modified the online version to more closely reflect the paper version, they made the commanders legend each other out like in paper commander, which made me a little sad. Now we will have "You can always play your commander no matter what other people brought", which I think is a BIG improvement for Commander. Losing a little value on Sakashima and Lazav (really Sakashima just stops being "better than other clones" and other clones got "as good as him", he still does that stuff he USED to do) seems pretty minor, it's only two cards.
Overall, I think both aspects of this change cause the game of Magic to have less "There's one or more cards stuck in my hand I can't usefully play" situations, and more "I can play this card and do something beneficial to me" situations instead. That's generally less Frustration and more Fun, which should be the goal here. I like the change.
Reworking the sideboard changes all those instance of "Oops I have 61. Judge! Ok we don't even get to play that game, move on to game 3" or worse "Let's sign the match slip now", replacing them with "Let's draw cards and play spells and have a game of magic for the next 5-20 minutes" which I think is an experience that involves more thinking, more fun, and less sitting there moping that something brief, boring and bad happened because of a little carelessness or clumsiness.
I don't see how increasing options like "I'll sideboard up to 65 against mill" or other unusual configurations means LESS thinking between games. MORE options means more thinking, not less. There's less "mindless counting to make sure I didn't screw myself over", I don't see how THAT one particular piece of "thinking" makes the game better or more fun. And you can replace that time with a little more time thinking about, oh I don't know, sideboarding strategy?
Seriously, how do you get "less thinking" out of this change? I don't see it.
I can't see a control matchup as "losing nuance and complexity" when you go from "I play my Jace, I activate one ability once" and "Ok, I play my Jace, and now we both have an empty board and lands" to "I play my Jace, you play your Jace, we both get a total of 12 activations of abilities over the next 6 turns". THAT is a more complex mirror match!
Commander is not part of "the lowest common denominator". Whoever that is, they're probably not playing commander much, if at all. And commander is considered by some (including me) to be "the most awesome and fun format". It certainly sees complex and unusual interactions happen a fair amount.
So I can't see "printing a crap ton of new legends for commander" as part of "catering to the lowest common denominator" in any way. More like "a good idea, thank you Wizards". I don't see it harming standard or modern in any way, it's just a good thing.
@PatrykG - Like I said, it's baffling that they undid Lazav after so little time since its creation, it makes you think when this change was decided since they work several years in advance of releases, so M14 was conceived right after Gatecrash anyway.
But a few cards being lost in a change isn't the issue (we ENTIRELY lost Mirror Gallery too, for instance).
Re: Commander. Wasn't there already a rule (that maybe we never got online?) about commanders with the same name co-existing on the battlefield? Of course, now it's true of all the other legends as well.
(By the way, background check says Sakashima is actually male :)
@Kumagoro42 - I have to emphatically agree with you on the whole "old times are not necessarily good times" - I too have been around since Alpha/Beta/Unlimited/Revised, and it was definitely not all fun. Sure, Force of Nature was a great card at the time, but Moxes, Black Lotus and the rest of the P9 do NOT for a fun game make. God knows the amount of horrifying game states that can be created with nine little cards... so I concur on that.
However, I agree with Leviathan that the legend rule is going to completely upturn my favorite format, Commander. I mean, what's the point of Sakashima now? She copies Legends but doesn't die... but so does ANY clone now. And Lazav... he's actually LESS than a clone now, because he can become a copy of an opponent's Legend... and so can any clone now. There is no no reason for the line "except that his name stays Lazav". Unless, of course, your opponent happens to have the same legend in play as you do and then it dies, and you copy it, I guess. Clearly NOT as powerful as it used to be, and definitely a much weaker general overall.
I will admit I AM going to enjoy mirror matches again - I liked the whole "commander isn't really a legend" mindset from the old days, so I guess in a way it's going to be different in a completely new way and I'll just have to see.
The change makes Clone weaker, but blue is not supposed to have a way to destroy permanents. Bounce, yes. Counter, yes. But Vindicate an opposing permanent, even one with Shroud, no. That's out of flavor for U.
The clearest example of why Clone should not have acted in this manner was the interaction of clone and Thrun, the Last Troll. Thrun was built to be be green's answer to blue control. It could not be bounced, and it regenerated through Day of Judgement. However, blue could kill it for just 1U. That is just wrong.
Does the change make Hexproof better. Yes. Does that mean that we are "dumbing diwn the game?" No. Blue lost one out of flavor power. It will now have to find other options. Maybe decks need to play Glaring Spotlight, or Wrath, or Pyroclasm effects, or soemthing like Meekstone or Propaganda, or Ensnaring Bridge. Blue lost one trump that killed opponents cards every time, without recourse, in a way that blue shouldn't be able to do. Now it has to struggle to do the same thing, in the same ways eery other color does. That is not dumbing down the game. That is resetting the balance.
This hardly makes clone bad. It is still thragtusk or Angel of Serenity or Acidic Slime or Restoration Angel for 3U (or 2BU for Evil Twin) - and you can still reset it with cloudshift or Resto Angel. Why isn't that enough?