mike

I don't fully understand why a public comment about resigning is needed when there is no explanation or reason given for why they're resigning. I don't follow the CAG much but is there any significance at all to this?

Can you elaborate on Rusko, Clockmaker?

I'm only referring to Rusko in 1v1 Brawl. I think Rusko is a cool card and must do pretty well in Historic but it's definitely easier to play against in Historic. In Brawl its oppressive because it's a guaranteed Midnight Clock on turn 3 or 4 that comes in untapped, and it has a decent wincon built into it. I think it should create the clock on cast only. A 3/3 that ramps, draws cards, and drains life all in one and pretty much removes his commander tax with the clock tokens, that is way too far. Hopefully by now the matchmaker puts Rusko in the hell queue.

I pretty much agree with all of your points, but wanted to add a few more that have gone into me taking a long Arena break:

• All rares are effectively ~$5, and mythics cost even more

One of the greatest aspects of the game pre-Arena was that there were literally thousands of cheap cards (cheap rares/mythics) to make playing off-meta or fun decks affordable. Some are even quite competitive, yet in Arena the cost for every rare and mythic normalizes around the same price. Roughly $6/rare if you buy gems for packs, or about $2.50/rare if you buy rare wildcards directly. However, there is a cap on the direct buy WCs.

Having ALL rares equalized in a rather high price forces everyone to spend their WCs on only the highest performing rares and mythics. If you only have $20 for Arena, you're not going to spend it all on 4 jank rares for a pet deck, you're going to use them on the top tier rares in the tier 1 decks.

I believe this has unbelievable consequences in game play all the way to player mental health, and after a while I was looking at just how much I was spending to stay current in Arena and I was sickened by it. Not even kidding here -- I never had more than a few hours a week to play, so I was putting in about $200/set! I stopped in January 2024 and haven't returned but at this point I think it's essentially impossible for the economy to change.

• Not interested in the play patterns

This is not Arena-specific, but all of the formats available on Arena right now are inundated with play patterns that I don't find enjoyable. Starting with Timeless, because it's the most powerful format, I don't even watch gameplay on Twitch or Youtube anymore because it's not interesting. That is a huge problem I think, because it doesn't look fun to play. You have horrible play patterns like the boros energy cards, Grief+Reanimate, all of the silly Alchemy cards like Juggernaut Peddler, and when you combine everything the game is literally decided on turn 2. That is not fun at all, in fact that feels like the opposite of fun to me. I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game. We don't have that right now.

With Standard, often Standard players say the format is healthy or "healthier than it's ever been" and I contest that with it's flat out not fun to play and not fun to watch. That's my experience. Look at the # of Twitch streamers. Look at CovertGoBlue quitting the game because he found Standard to be too unenjoyable. These are the real effects of what WoTC is doing to the format -- making it faster and more powerful, more pushed rares and mythics, and way less deck design thought. The fact that Sheoldred is still in standard makes me sick.

I have been getting into Pioneer lately because I think it's perhaps the only interesting format left to play, and with that I may get into Explorer but I really wish the card pool was equal to Pioneer. I think that's a huge mistake they're making in slow-rolling the card releases.

• Brawl is unplayable

If anyone can give me one reason why Nadu isn't banned in Brawl I'll concede, but the fact that it hasn't been banned (as well as Rusko and Baral imo) tells us everything we need to know about Brawl: WoTC. doesn't. give. a. shit. They don't care at all, and the lack of not only meaningful but ANY updates at all to queuing or banlist is enough of a reason to hard avoid it all together.

This is a format where players just auto-concede to certain commanders that they don't want to play. Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.

I could go on but this has gotten long already. I appreciate the post because some of this stuff I have been thinking about for a long time.

I think all of these are good. Nadu especially. Didn't see Extortionist coming but that is also probably a good idea.

They hit more fast mana artifacts, which are going to continue to be a problem for EDH as they continue to print more powerful cards. I thought the comment about Sol Ring was interesting:

We should also talk about the elephant in the room. We're not banning Sol Ring and have no desire to. Yes, based on the criteria we've talked about here, it would be banned. Sol Ring is the iconic card of the format, and it's sufficiently tied to the identity of the format that it defies the laws of physics in a way that no other card does. Banning Sol Ring would be fundamentally changing the identity of the format. We aren't trying to eliminate all explosive starts—it happening every once in a while is exciting—and removing the other three cards geometrically reduces the number of hands capable of substantial above-curve mana generation in the first few turns.

I think they're doing things right here.

Didn't see this until today, but ZNR might actually get me back onto Arena drafting again 🤣 That was the last set I drafted a lot of. UB Rogues for me forced.

Yea I agree, I thought this was the cancelled one but maybe they changed their minds? 😝 I am exited though, I've always thought there is more than enough content in the game's history to make a tv show out of.

Wow I didn't know this was even something considered.

I think this is just all a bad take from Mark. I understand his position and that this blog is mostly a defense for WoTC's decisions, but this just misses every one of the complaints for me. He's basically saying "this is hard, I've been doing this for 30 years, trust us" while not addressing the actual complaints.

To me these are arguments why Maro, Michael Majors, and the entire FIRE team should be let go and new people brought in. Doing this for 30 years and still making these mistakes means that someone else is making the decisions and those decisions are not and won't be in the best interest of the game.

All good bans here, I think they're still 3-6 months behind on Legacy tho.

The Vintage bans really surprised me, both of those are much needed imo and I'm glad they did something about them. Vexing Bauble kind of nerfs the entirety of why anyone plays Vintage, and Urza's Saga is just ridiculous with that many cheap powerful artifacts.

Yes, absolutely. I think they're being a little tongue-in-cheek with that but it was Ice Age Block Constructed and Rade came with a brew that was targeted against the current meta.

Yea I think you're right, I remember reading somewhere that Wizards may change the card abilities up to the last minute too. Perhaps it was more balanced at one point.

The artwork in this is as good as the card design is bad! Jokes aside this is really cool looking.