MTG is dead. Where did it all go wrong?

for me, it was the moment that I realized that it didn't matter how well you could out think your opponent, if he had the money to buy killer cards, you were fucked. (so Ice Age)

also I only started playing because it was a way for my gaming group to kill time while we waited for everyone to arrive for the game, and it switched over to us playing Magic instead of our usual RPG

>>53336449
Pretty much this.
Combining it with the generally competitive atmosphere and it really does boil down to "Whoever spends the most money wins".

The mechanics aren't bad, so as something like a deck-building game it might have been alright, but as a boosters-and-singles game it's more a money sink than anything else.

As for fidget spinners, it's a fad that acknowledges that kids have ADHD, and has exploded in popularity as a result.

>>53336449
>>53336896
In Casual it's always going to be an arms race. That's why you play Pauper

>>53336959
When the term "Casual" ends up being an arms race, it's really not casual at all.

Still, when I got out of playing MtG a dozen or so years ago, I at least learned that I didn't want to invest in games simply because it's what happens to be popular.

Better to invest in and proselytise something that you actually like, whether or not it's popular at the time. If that thing happens to be Magic, then hey, all power to you. For me, it wasn't.

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>>53336449
>>53336896
literally you

>>53337352
This shit is true for every card game
Nostalgiafags always compare playing the game as a child and being stupid with being an adult and playing it competitively.

>>53337532
LCGs don't do it, and mtg is better if you're playing actually powerful decks against other actually powerful decks.

>>53336896
>>53336959

Ya'll are retarded.
Me and two of my friends used to have awesome casual games, one of them being brand spanking new, the other having played for about a year and myself having played for about 4 years.

We had balanced, wholesome fun. We only stopped because we wanted to try roleplaying games with two others friends as a weekly gathering instead of mtg.

You know how we managed this? By not being fucking retards that have to win all the time.
Yeah, I could have brought my modern deck I used to bring to FNM and curb stomped them 1v2. Or I could bring that weird abzan delirium deck I made out of draft fodder and have a balanced game against my friends shitty WB aristocracts and UW unoptimized as fuck spirits.

All our decks were exactly how we wanted them to be and we had heaps of fun.

Theres nothing wrong with casual play. You just can't enjoy it with your playgroup.

>>53338004

Casual constructed MtG pretty much demands that players actively aim for the same exact power level, and that can be hard to coordinate.

Magic is an extremely skill-based and strategy-rewarding game, but only between decks of equal power level. If somebody has just a higher tier of deck, nothing can possibly beat him.

>>53338064
>Casual constructed MtG pretty much demands that players actively aim for the same exact power level, and that can be hard to coordinate.

Yeah, if your a pleb that needs to win all the time to have fun.

The newest player in my group of 3 used to win about 80% of the time and it was still fun as balls for me and the other friend.

We enjoyed playing the game, not winning the game.
If balance is such an issue for you, then MtG as a whole, is not the game for you.

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>>53338122
I'm not even that guy, I saw your post while scrolling down the front page and I felt the need to tell you that you're fucking retarded.

>>53338122
>balance doesn't matter, you just need to learn to enjoy getting your ass fucked

Wow, you're fucking stupid.

>>53338160
>being unable to enjoy social interaction unless you also happen to be winning a card game at that moment.

You remind me of every autistic kid I ever met in school.

>>53336341
When they decided -1/-1 markers weren't fun, along with almost everything they deemed "disempowering" or confusing or some shit. So after Scars basically. Ravnica II and Innistrad I were still really fun, but after that they stopped trying to do anything new. Theros still had some good stuff and Tarkir first two sets had a few interesting cards but they were mostly bland. Zendikar II was meh/10, Innistrad II had no interest aside from the aesthetics, which weren't even that good, and Kaladesh was boring because they didn't dare to do anything too interesting with vehicles, it could have confused kids and retards.
I didn't care enough to check out Amonkhet.

We could have continued playing with our old cards, but with my group we switched to games with a more interesting design philosophy.

>>53336896
>t. Competitive MTG player
Law of diminishing returns is a real thing though. Yes sinking more money into a top tier deck will let you win often against a worse deck, but eventually there is a plateau you hit where spending more money doesn't improve your win rate. For standard that seems to be around $300, which sounds terrible but less than two years ago it was almost double that. Modern seems to be around $1000 and legacy $2000 to $2500

>>53336449
>it didn't matter how well you could out think your opponent, if he had the money to buy killer cards, you were fucked. (so Ice Age)
Necropotence is one of the most broken cards ever and it never skyrocketed in price, it was never even banned when it was standard legal. You're full of shit

>>53338241
>When they decided -1/-1 markers weren't fun
Amonkhet literally has -1/-1 counters

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Embrace the light, come to PTCG where the most expensive non-bling card is $40, where the meta is a healthy balance of control and speed decks, where every top 8 at a major event has at least 6 different decks and the waifus are cuter.

>>53336959
Pauper is such an underrated format. Tempo, aggro, midrange, and control are all viable if not tier 1-1.5. The only macro archetype not well represented in the format is combo, and if you wanted to play combo Modern, Legacy, or Vintage already have you covered.

>>53336341
>mfw never heard about or seen fidget spinners before
>okay anon, it's time for you to do something about your depression
>meet therapist, first therapy session is going great
>before i leave, notice basket full of weird shit including a fidget spinner, ask about it
>three days later this shit is everywhere, even on /tg/
WHAT. WHAT'S GOING ON.

>>53340867
Cell phones have given almost everyone ADD.

As a result, children in particular enjoy things that help. I'm a person with incredible anxiety and depression, and the general concept of the fidget spinner is tremendously useful. I just swirl a pen around in polite conversation, but I can see the appeal.

>>53336896
I thought it was for autistic children? I have ADHD and those things are a fucking nightmare; so distracting.

Magic got a lot worse in the new card frame. You can tell they are trying to keep a tight lid on Frontier's power level and it's strangling it.

>>53346010
this. You can tell R&D is trying a lot harder to design and control what the standard and to a lesser extent modern meta looks like. The fact that their only strategy is "nerf everything except THE standard viable card and make it mythic" shows just how bad they are at their jobs. Maybe bad isn't the word, just inbred and in need of new blood.

>>53337693
But living card games are trash so who cares?

>>53338122
If you don't care about fucking winning then why not just goldfish your decks separately while jerking yourselves off? Everyone not only gets to play exactly what they want but everyone has loads of fun and gets to cum too, my way of playing magic is way better than yours.

>>53338172
>lol I just use magic as an excuse to hang out with friends

This is how retarded you have to be to think casual is a good format.

>>53346612
The fact that they also completely missed Catlady makes then look pretty inept at managing the power level of the formats too.

>>53340020
Nigga I play pokemon tcg so don't you even try to fucking pretend there's anything resembling a control deck

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>>53336341
MTG died at some point when they removed the stack, added planeswalkers and the 4th rarity. It all went to shit from there.

>>53346754
>removed the stack

News to me, and I just played at FNM last night

>>53346763
I'm sure he means either the batch system or removing damage from the stack. Both of which are retarded and he's just an Old Fogey.

>>53346763
>>53346806
Yes, damage from the stack. Game is just a casual garbage now.

fetchlands. Fucking degenerate shit. My dick gets rock hard to the utter thought of a ban.

>>53346827
>removing damage from the stack means I have to decide whether I want to sac my mogg fanatic for one damage or let him deal comabt damage ; ;

Good. Fuck off.

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>>53346894
>remove clever play
>It only deals 1 damage in combat now
Keep sucking that dick.

>>53346956
it took a while, but they did eventually atone for their sins when they printed taylor swit

>>53346956
>Babby's first stack interaction
>clever

>>53346956
>removes clever play
Anon you cannot possibly be so retarded you actually think saccing fanatic with damage on the stack is "clever"

>>53347082
I bet you liked Mana Burn.

It is a simple example that even retards would be able to understand. Of course saccing fanatic for extra damage is not a big deal, but removing damage from the stack essentially made the game hollow and half the cards obsolete. Just an example of much the game devolved to appeal to retards and milk their money even harder.

>>53347109
>so scared of getting bootyblasted he won't even reply to the people who responded to him

lmao

>>53347109
Anon, can you even name an interaction that is impossible to get without damage on the stack and isn't something as simple as saccing fanatic?

>>53347259
Morphling was probably the next most common example.

>>53347259
>inb4 morphling

>>53347316
>>53347313
Fucking captcha fucked me

>>53337352
I don't get this. Who would play merfolk of the pearl trident on any turn but 1? Who would (could afford to) play morpling on turn 1?

Having a shit deck doesn't mean you'd play stupidly

>>53347313
The thing is, even morphling going up and down isn't "advanced play" it's literally just having your cake and eating it too. Without damage on the stack you have to be more thoughtfup about how abilities are used, I'd say that actually raises skill involved than simply having an objectively superior play every time.

>>53336341
MtG isn't dead, it's just exhausted. It had a long ru and it mostly avoided getting stuck in a rut by adding new mechanics each set. But now design space is getting way too filled up.

>>53338621
t. butthurt magic kid

>>53347486
>responding to a 12 hour old post with nonsensical memery
damn that's some sweet butthurt

>>53340867
>okay anon, it's time for you to do something about your depression

Yeah, it's called committing suicide.

>>53338581
People also don't seem to realize that alot of the cost is mitigated if you just show up to events, play, get packs, and trade. Netdecking a $300 list is kinda stupid, but spending $5 or whatever a week to play and gradually collecting and trading for cards you need is very doable.

When I first showed up to Standard FNM(during Khans of Tarkir), I was packing a shitty U/W goodstuff deck that lost to anything it went up against, including $20 prebuilts. A month or so later, I sunk <$20 to finish a B/W outlast-centered list that I designed from scratch, and was good enough to get me like 4th on Origins gameday. A month or so after that, I showed up with a $200 Tutelage Mill list that I traded and collected for almost the entirety of that landed me 2nd on BFZ gameday.

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>>53344131
The fidget cube is the better product for actual ADHD or restless hands or whatever anyways. It's more subtle and it's easier to mindlessly play with.

Pretty sure spinners got popular specifically because they they draw attention to the user and people like to fetishize made up issues like OCD that make them seem quirky or whatever and ruin it for people who actually have issues.

I actually wouldn't mind having a cube since I have a habit of tapping pens/ whistling / playing with an unplugged GameCube controller. It's gotten better as I got older but I imagine having an outlet for it would be nice.

>>53338064
There is much truth in this. One player in our group builds casual decks centered around lore. Another player builds decks that are just really well constructed and synergistic, giving no consistency with regards to what set the deck is based off of. As for me, I am somewhere in the middle, although I dont build decks as much as my two friends. I find it difficult to build decks that wouldnt utterly destroy my lore friend, but also are good enough to beat my competitive friend without breaking the bank (because his shit is usually $100 minimum).

Honestly this is why I see formats as basically essential, its why I prefer draft and EDH over casual magic. At the end of the day I just want to play some fucking Magic and I dont care how we do it, but there is tension with regards to deck building because each player has very different expectations.

>>53347032
Don't anon. He's a red player.

You're wasting your time.

>>53347918
Yeah it ultimately seems like an attention whoring thing, as you say. I like that you touch on the fetishization of made up issues.
Kek I too like to fiddle with my Gc controllers.
Quirky is my go to IRL insert for when one would describe someone as autistic (someone who is not literally autistic) on 4chan.

>>53347439
Wizards should revive MTG by going back in time and making really good core sets again. Like Modern Masters 2017 levels of thoughtful design but in core sets. Give us a reason to buy them. This will remind people why they used to enjoy MTG so long ago.

>>53347907
Magic is only expensive if you don't win.
But Magic is also decidedly pay to win.

You can spend $20 every week updating your shit deck and getting the scraps of other players, or you can drop the $300, win 1st-2nd every week and your deck will have paid for itself in a month.

Magic Online is particularily good at this, you spend $50 on any of the best pauper decks, $8 on a league entry and so long as you don't go below 3-2 you'll be netting your entry fee plus $3-9 every 160 min.

>>53340867
It's mental health month. Which means we fetishize the "look at me I'm so dark and misunderstood" artist types and let assholes who claim to be on the spectrum but arent act like assholes. Meanwhile real mental health threatment remains underfunded, under-studied and if possible, utterly ignored.

>>53347918
My roommate got me a cube because of all the time I spent taking apart pens and putting them back together. It's neat for a day and a half, them you realise that all the interactions the cube has are super limited and not satisfying at all. They're all basically tiny buttons and one switch. When someone with busy fingers plays with a remote control, they dont hit all the bottons, they take the cover off the battery compartment and put it back on so many times it breaks. I got honestly 3 or 4 weeks of satisfying use out of the box the cube came in. Real nice fit of lid on box, real nice to slide on and off, real nice to rotate and realign the designs on the lid and the bottom. The cube itself was hot garbage though.

>>53336341
I gave up around the time they axed manaburn.

>>53348625
literally how often was manaburn coming up in your games to the point that you were upset about it being removed?

>>53348868
It wasn't that it was a super common occurrence, but after taking a break from playing it was the first thing I noticed was missing.
To me it was one thing to add rules, but another thing entirely to remove them, especially because when it did come up it was always fun, and a few times people had to manaburn themselves to make plays

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>>53336341
>mtg isn't searched as heavily as the hot new meme toy middle schoolers will jerk off over like silly bandz so the game is dead

Meanwhile, league of legends is a dead game because more people google donald trump

Pointing to two random statistics and comparing them doesn't magically create correlation, Anon, but thanks for playing.

>>53348991
>literallyIwanttobeangry.jpeg

>>53349159
Hey, I'm just saying that's when I felt like it was dead to me. It was the watershed moment for me when I realized that magic was changing.

But Magic isn't dead. Standard is actually really fun now except for Marvel.

>>53336896
This. Super competitive game that isn't always a good choice for newbies. It doesn't help that getting competitive costs oodles of money and time, and that the community isn't exactly great. I guess that is why EDH took off.

>>53349462
>they took out a stupid gotcha rule no one ever really used except to be a twat to new players and this makes me really buttraged

yeah ok anon whatever

>>53349607
To be honest, it's not great, it's just that we're used to such bad Standards that it looks great

All they've done is gotten to baseline

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Mana burn.

>Turn 1
>dark ritual
>black knight
>1 point of mana burn

Feels good because you're hurting yourself, yet putting yourself at an advantage, which is in theme for black, and also makes you think you're a smart player because you understand tradeoffs. Feels good to the opponent because you're paying a cost to be at an advantage.

Removing mana burn was purely to make the game simpler so it could appeal to a wider audience.

I don't like that, because I am not a wider audience. I actually have a healthy bmi.

>>53347907
>B/W outlast-centered list
So you had a low powerlevel store?
My store had several players who would play top8 decks, bringing your own homebrew would ensure you left with nothing unless you were gud enough to homebrew a tier2 deck if you don't want to netdeck.

It's funny that Magic and it's players do everything in their power to make people stop playing but you're all just a bunch of addicted cucks trying to cling to a relationship where your significant other lives at another man's house

>>53348034
Try to introduce your lorefriend to the idea of 75/25, if only because that'll end up being way more palatable to him than telling a Spike to cool his jets.

(The idea being that roughly 75% of your deck is on-theme, but you've got at least 1/4th general goodstuff for your strategy/colors/staples.) It'll probably at least help him pull together enough to matter, even if only for a turn here and there.

>>53349758
I learned about mana burn during my first learning "game" back in 93. My thought at time was, "so mana is power I can tap from lands and channel into spells at will. Unless I burn myself on it. So I'm an INCOMPETENT god-wizard." It was a pointless, fidgety little rule that was meant to punish badwrong play habits that (much like mana burn) never actually came up. Nobody was smarter for knowing if its existence. There were all of three cards that were more interesting for it exiting. It was the prime example of a stupid rule.

>>53349758
Mana burn was flavorful but rarely mattered. It also made some cards unprintable (Mindslaver and similar effects can't exist with mana burn for example) and was doing more harm than good for the long term health of the game.

In the example you posted by the way, it's not mana burn that's hurting yourself to put yourself at an advantage, it's Dark Ritual. If mana burn didn't exist you are still 2 for 1ing yourself. If anything you should feel like a retard because you played Black Knight instead of Hypnotic Specter or Necropotence.

tl;dr, you don't actually understand game design or more nuanced parts of gameplay but insist on trying to sound like you do.

>>53338064

Yeah, this can be pretty rough sometimes.

I ended up playing with an ex of mine and her EDH playgroup for a while, and while I'm not super cutthroat I do like my deck to run like a well oiled machine where everything has a purpose and is chosen to be good at what it does. Unfortunately that meant I steamrolled through that group without breaking a sweat.

I didn't meant to, and even trying playing some games with precons or their own decks I just kept winning. My player skill was too much for them, and while this sounds like I'm bragging it, I'm no pro. Still, I had to stop because it was just no fun for anyone involved plus I broke up with her and ever saw them again.

>>53349758
>I actually have a healthy bmi
Kek'd hard

>>53349758
This ignores tha fact that the most mana burn in modern magic would come from green and red decks, neither of which have this sacrifice for power theme

>>53348443
This is a really weird thing about Magic if you have a store. I barely even play anymore, but a month ago I went to a draft and placed third. The price pool was complete shit tier because barely anyone wanted to draft Khaladesh three days before Amonkhet, but I still got three boosters out of it. If you play regularly and place good, you get so much shit from price boosters and promos, that sustaining your Standard Deck is probably incredibly easy. For Modern you'd need to do a lot of uptrading, though, which would take a while.
Good luck with Legacy, tho.

>>53346709
The irony of this is that you're greentexting a fairly normal thing to do. You must be rather poor at hiding your power level.

>>53350344
Mana burn balanced cards like Mana Drain.

>>53349976
There were usually 2-3 players running tier 1 lists back then.

>>53336341
Fidget spinners are the gluten free diet of toys.

Made for people with a certain disorder, but made a fad by some other faggots, screwing everyone else over.

>>53357080
>this

>>53348504
Citation required.
Not trying to be smug, I'm genuinely interested in learning about mental health studies/treatment and if it's actually being underfunded.

>>53357080
So they are genuine treatment and not some bullshit fad?
To me they just seemed like Yo-Yos or finger skateboards or the rubics cube.

>>53357080
My Celiac sister in law actually loves the trend of gluten-free stuff. It causes there to be a great deal more availability for stuff she can actually eat, and apparently has been dropping the prices little by little.

Plus she gets to laugh at fad-food retards who pretend they're better off eating gluten-free burger buns.

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>>53349758
>Turn 1
>dark ritual
>order of the ebon hand
>1 mana into first strike !1

lewd art

>>53354826
>Needing an excuse to get together with your friends

Sounds like you're the shit one. Or maybe your friends just don't like you enough.

>>53357080
Fidget Spinners have literally never been used to treat any disorder. That's just marketing some toy manufacturer came up with.

>>53340153
I've even seen Combo do good shit in Pauper.
The format truly is the best way to play Magic. At least until Counterfeits completely kill the Legacy market.

>>53361410
Counterfeits won't just kill the market they will kill the format.

>>53361529
It's practically undead now anyway, with zero influx of new players. Our playgroup has seen two newcomers in six years and both of them were already Legacy players for years prior. We used to laugh at the four Vintage guys, but those are still here and Legacy went down from 35 regular attendees to 11 or 12, the only way to go is up now.

>>53360940

Heh, that's exactly the case with my celiac sister!

>>53361590
I mean if 0 is going up.

>>53361831
The oldfags around here won't quit because of fake cards, they are quitting because the events are going to shit. And the events won't go away because of fakes either, the store could care less if somebody has believable fakes. Legacy only brings money through attendance fees anyway. So, yeah, zero is up from negative growth.

I for one welcome the day when everyone is playing legacy with fake cards.

>>53360894
It's not being understrudied nor underfunded. He's talking out of his ass. The problem is with normies, as usual, and their misinterpretations of mental health and conditions. They are prone to take in and spread (mis)information from second-hand sources, instead of looking up and reading research papers on their own, so most of the time you'll hear somebody talk about mental health topic, it will probably be a retarded normie bullshitting about something they read on a trash clickbait website.

>>53338122

Why would you play a game that was predetermined from the start?

>>53361410
Combo hasn't really been in Pauper since Drake got banned, unless you consider stuff like Kiln Fiend decks combo.
I agree though Pauper is the most fun format in tems of money per amount of fun

>>53360894
So long as a Kennedy lives we won't be getting the ridiculous funding less prevalent illnesses like breast cancer does. Because it'd require accepting what they did to Rosemary.

>>53337352
Those cards aren't even bad though. Spikes should stick to what they're good at and not make dumb comics like this one.

>>53365123
Nigger, the point is one guy is playing a dumb kid creature from 20 years ago while the other is playing the most powerful creature from 20 years ago. Because "casualness" is not a measurable quantity.

>>53365808

It's really weird to see how isolated casual pockets develop.

My local one before I went to college was basically shitty Legacy. After finding out my roommate also played Magic, I was amazed when he pulled out a 200+ card auroch deck that supposedly did well around his group.

>>53340020
>Pokemon TCG
>the meta is healthy
my fucking sides
there's only like two netdecks winning right now you stupid clown

>>53336341
>a game you can't even get into without spending thousands of dollars hunting down ridiculous obscure cards off a list of ten billion cards
>ever having a following beyond niche

You played MtG because it came out when you were a teenager and it was what all the other dorky teenagers were playing.

>>53349758
but muh infinite mana

>>53355713
>cards
is there another example besides mana drain?

>>53336449
>for me, it was the moment that I realized that it didn't matter how well you could out think your opponent, if he had the money to buy killer cards, you were fucked. (so Ice Age)

>Ice Age

Ill give ya necro, but that wasnt until a while after ice age.

You mean to say tempest or Urzas saga, but youre too busy pretending to be old school.

>>53338621
>Necro
>Black Knight
>Order
>Hymn
>Dark ritual

Yah man those ice age decks with their killer cards that were expensive and unattainable.

>>53368282
I think the most expensive card in that deck was Hyppie and it was like $5.

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>>53336341
>comparing a card game that by nature of being a card game isn't going to attract a lot of interest to a weirdly popular new craze that's well known and being talked/memed about by fucking everyone
>posting a chart that shows statistics for the last five years at that
all this shows is that the number of searches for 'mtg' in the last ~five years has remained consistent and steady, whereas the term 'fidget spinner' began trending REALLY HARD recently.
if you wanted to bait harder you'd be better off comparing it to search terms for yugioh instead, and maybe use the 'Yu-Gi-Oh! manga series' setting in particular (regularly double or more searches than for the 'Magic: The Gathering card game' setting over the last five years).

fun fact, according to google trends yugioh-related stuff is more consistently searched for in the southern hemisphere, and magic: the gathering-related stuff in the northern hemisphere
something about poorfags, australians, and mexicans here

what the fuck is even the deal with fidget spinners anyway, where did they come from?

>>53369822
Suicide black remained the cheapest viable way to get into competitive magic until fetch lands and Mirrodin fucked everything up.

>>53364430
?
I thought all the kennedys are dead

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>>53371853
>Mexicans
>Southern Hemisphere
Where exactly did you think the Northern Hemisphere's border was? USA?

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>>53349085