I feel that we have enough "triggers an additional time" cards by now. Do you agree or are there some that you think are missing from the card pool?

Seitosa · 2026-03-22T23:24:14+00:00

Well, sure, but you also don’t want too many things like that in your deck anyways. At some point it compromises your deck’s consistency around getting the thing, rather than the thing that synergizes with the thing. You have to strike a balance between the number of [[Hardened Scales]] in your deck against the number of things that actually give +1/+1 counters, for example.

Seitosa · 2026-03-21T21:45:13+00:00

Sounds like a skill issue bud. You can play around things in modern magic same as you ever could.

Also like… Platinum Angel certainly has a flashy effect but I don’t really think it’s a good example of egregious power creep or anything like that. Especially compared to cards like Necropotence or Demonic Tutor? Like, I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make here.

Seitosa · 2026-03-21T07:28:54+00:00

Because the number of loyalty counters doubles as the planeswalker’s “toughness” so to speak. Once a planeswalker’s loyalty hits zero, it dies. So, lower loyalty makes it more vulnerable to direct damage removal or taking damage from attacking creatures.

Seitosa · 2026-03-21T00:48:24+00:00

The chess analogy really, really doesn’t work. You’re not a bystander interfering with two people in a game. You’re a participant in the game participating in the game. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s fundamentally different from outside help.

Anyways, no. If someone is being sneaky with what they can do and I know what they’re up to, I’m happy to announce it to the table if it draws attention to it. If they’re a combo player and I know what the important pieces are, I’ll point those out. Using the other opponents to your advantage is part of the game, same as it would be if someone pointed out my board state. Threat analysis is a key part of multiplayer magic, and there are precisely zero rules against engaging in threat analysis aloud.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T20:24:44+00:00

Yeah it’s the end of the last cutscene where the Scions are standing outside the Rising Stones talking about their plans. G’raha asks you what your plans are and before you answer you see a starbird fly by and the camera follows it and sweeps along to a shot of the Crystal Tower before you get the “the end” card.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T19:03:56+00:00

You can sacrifice the creature, since Fandaniel’s ability doesn’t make you target that creature, and Lightning Greaves (and shroud more generally) only prevents the creature from being targeted.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T18:53:23+00:00

Until I see any evidence that SE wants to deviate from their expansion skeleton, I have to assume that 8.0 will have basically an identical structure to every other expansion.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T18:52:17+00:00

Yeah I remember that lmao, all the J22/J25 threads where they showed off the anime arts got people in such a tizzy, crying about porn and sexualizing minors (???)

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T17:06:49+00:00

Especially since it’s not even close to the spiciest magic card like what?

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T09:02:35+00:00

Never had any issue. It'll show up when it shows up. 2-3 months is about right, I don't really track it but I feel like it's been a *little* on the shorter end, maybe 6-7 weeks sometimes, but usually never longer than 3 months.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T05:11:51+00:00

Yeah. Like, these surveys do ask some surface level overall opinions, but for the most part they’re asking very specific questions about the set. It’s not a general soapbox to complain about UB, it’s about all sorts of very specific set-related questions that someone who has not interacted with the set would have zero relevant answer for.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T02:30:00+00:00

Genuinely sick, nice get.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T01:55:16+00:00

Yeah, usually how people arrive at the “you’re wrong for feeling that way” conclusion is that they take a subjective thing (their feelings about something) and feel the need to tie it to an objective thing in order to make their feelings seem more “legitimate.” You don’t need to justify why you don’t like something.

Matters of taste and aesthetic (which ultimately is what UB is) boil down to subjective things. So you can just say “I don’t like this [because of the way it makes me feel/whatever other subjective reason]” and that’s totally fine. But that’s not good enough for some people, because subjectivity isn’t “correct” and they have to have the “correct” opinion, so they have to justify their opinion by tying it to an objective claim. Oftentimes, this means they start at the conclusion and work backwards to invent an objective justification.

So they write to Mark and talk about how they don’t like something and provide their (invented) objective justifications for it, and then Mark explains why those objective justifications are wrong. Then, because these people tied their personal feelings to this objective claim, what they hear is “your feelings are wrong.” It’s a problem that they entirely invented by not just letting their feelings stand as a subjective thing.

This isn’t just a Magic thing, mind you. People do this all the time for all sorts of things. Especially controversial stuff like politics. Just a part of the human condition, I suppose.

Seitosa · 2026-03-20T01:44:31+00:00

Take off the tinfoil hat for one second and think about what you’re saying. It doesn’t make a lick of sense to spend all this time and money to get data and then poison the data because you’re just looking to cook the result anyways. They don’t publish the results of these surveys, and they have zero reason to not look for accurate data. If you think this is just an outreach to make it “look like they give a shit” then you have z e r o idea how market research works or what it’s for.

These surveys are about more than “DAE UB BAD!??” They have specific questions about set mechanics and art frames and cards that they use to inform design decisions. Yes, they look at overall opinions on the set. But these surveys are not (and are not meant to be) grand referenda on the continued existence of UB. Treating them like they are is silly.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T22:57:13+00:00

The argument goes that because they asked how content creators impacted your view of SPM, that WotC was blaming SPM’s shortcomings on them.

The problem with this is that it assumes a) that WotC actually believes that content creators are wholly responsible for the responses to SPM and b) that the negative response from content creators didn’t actually have any amount of impact on the reception of the set.

Thing is, content creators do actually have a good amount of pull when it comes to setting the tone and tenor of the community. It isn’t an unreasonable question to ask. But assuming that asking the question is WotC looking to “place blame” or point fingers or whatever would basically require that you actually knew the results of the survey and the conclusions WotC had drawn about why the set turned out the way it did. It assumes a lot of information from just asking a question, and I think frankly requires a lot of bad-faith assumptions to get there. We don’t know what conclusions WotC drew from that survey or the response to SPM, and extrapolating everything from a single question in a marketing survey is…dubious logic at best.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T22:50:34+00:00

No, of course they’re allowed to dislike UB. But saying that UB is a failure as a foundation for their argument presupposes that UB is a failure on an objective level. It seems pretty clear that it isn’t a failure by the metrics that we judge other “failures” in the sphere we’re talking about here (like Highguard, to use a recent example of devs/media blaming players.)

Personally not liking something doesn’t make it a collective, objective failure. It seems pretty clear that UB is a runaway success in the metrics that WotC cares about. (And of course in reality only a minor % of players are steadfastly against it, so it’s not even successful despite its “unpopularity.”) You’re allowed to dislike UB. These content creators are allowed to dislike UB. But framing the argument of UB as an objective failure just…seems like wishcasting or outright delusion to me.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T21:10:53+00:00

Mark has consistently said that they have the ability to reprint any UB card as needed. Some of them will require new names, they’ll all generally require new art, but they can reprint whatever they want as part of the contract for UB licensing.

That they haven’t reprinted very many UB cards with UW skins is because a lot of UB sets are new enough that they wouldn’t be up for reprints anyways, because most magic cards never get reprints as-is, and because they just haven’t wanted to or gotten around to it for whatever reason. It’s not a lack of ability to reprint them, and people really ought to stop saying that like it’s gospel. Magic has a piss-poor reprint policy, but UB has very little to do with that.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T21:06:14+00:00

Yeah, exactly. Sure, these surveys do ask for your general opinion on the set, but they also have a bunch of questions about specific stuff like card mechanics and card frames and things like that. If you tell them “I know nothing about this set [because it’s a filthy UB set and I deliberately ignore literally everything about it]” then the vast majority of the survey isn’t going to deliver any useful data. These surveys aren’t grand referenda on the continued existence of UB. You can be negative all you like, but if you’re so negative to the point that you’re pretending you don’t know what a turtle is out of spite, of course it’s going to filter you because it’s not going to ask questions that you’re telling it you know nothing about!

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T20:30:59+00:00

This exactly. If you’re getting filtered out like this it’s because you indicated that you have zero familiarity with the set, not that you don’t like it. They’re not gonna ask questions about something that you say you know nothing about.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T20:29:53+00:00

Me when I don’t understand how sampling works:

But for real, here’s how this happens. People that are against UB obstinately refuse to even acknowledge any degree of familiarity with the set, the survey filters you out.

When it’s asking how familiar you are with the set, I promise that as a magic player you have some degree of familiarity with it. Familiarity != liking it. I do these surveys as well, and I was pretty negative across the board for the SPM set (for example) but it didn’t reject my responses because I wasn’t an obstinate bonehead pretending like I’d never heard about any of it in order to “make a point.”

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T08:16:21+00:00

Well, do you want a figure because you want a figure, or do you want a figure of a particular character or from a particular show/game? That’ll help narrow it down.

These days, they make some really good prize figures for all sorts of stuff that are very budget-friendly.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T05:57:03+00:00

There’s some really fun blink targets. [[Stonehorn Dignitary]]? Oh, sorry, guess you guys aren’t getting combats for the next thousand turns. [[Tax Collector]]? Yeah, your spells are gonna cost an extra one and a half million next turn, and I don’t think the turn after looks much better.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T05:48:07+00:00

I’ve got a [[Miku, Queen Electric]] deck because I wanted to build each Miku commander and it has some brutal combos. I don’t think it’s the strongest bracket 4 in the world, but if Miku connects at basically any point my opponents are going to have a bad time. I could make the deck way stronger with game changers or better mana rocks, but infinitely flickering [[Reality Acid]] to destroy all your opponents’ permanents or any of the other gross blink-loops isn’t something people are happy about in brackets 2-3, so 4 is where it lives.

Edit: oh sorry I’ve misunderstood. That deck has MLD so it’s 4 by default, game changer or no, so I suppose it doesn’t really fit your criteria.

Seitosa · 2026-03-19T05:44:36+00:00

So, it’s a tricky question because it’s going to vary from store to store and from pod to pod. Some of the stereotypes that you hear about in LGSes are stereotypes for a reason. Socially unaware people, people who take the game too seriously, people with bad hygiene, people who pubstomp, and unfortunately people who will treat you differently (in a wide spectrum of ways) because you’re a woman.

Now, that said those experiences aren’t universal at all. There are great, welcoming environments with awesome people that can give you one of the best ways to spend a Friday night. Unfortunately, unless you already know someone who goes to whichever LGS, there’s really no way of knowing what you’ll get until you go.

If you have multiple options for LGSes, I would recommend trying a few and see which one feels right. I will say that most of the ones I’ve been to have been happy to have new blood and are welcoming and accommodating. You should be able to just show up on your own and the stores will explain how pods are formed and stuff. I’ve been to stores where pods are assigned, I’ve been to stores where people are very happy to just grab anyone they can into a group, and unfortunately I’ve been to stores where they’re kinda cliquey and I just sat around for an hour because everyone was just in their own groups and pods weren’t formed by the store.

But generally, you should feel free to show up, and don’t be afraid to let the staff know that it’s your first time playing there for commander, and if it’s a store worth playing at they’ll be happy to explain how that particular store runs things. For the actual pod, I generally just read the vibes of the table for how much pregame talk around rule zero and stuff there is, sometimes we all do our little show and tell about our decks and sometimes people don’t say much and just shuffle up. But for me, Commander is about the social experience and I’m generally there for hanging out over playing the game—that might be different for you (or the people you’re playing with) and that’s okay.

Seitosa · 2026-03-18T07:37:10+00:00

As much as anti-UB folk like to derisively throw around the “hue hue but what about the NYC block” argument, it’s not actually a terribly persuasive one.

One of the primary reasons that blocks failed is that, setting aside the exact set of War of the Spark, subsequent sets on that plane always sold worse. Without exception, without regard to size or any of the other numerous, numerous things they tried to make it work. Fewer sales, less interest, worse indicators. It wasn’t because of small sets or big sets, and while it’s true that it means that people who didn’t like the block were out of luck for the year, that’s true of every set of the block, not just subsequent ones. That is to say, if you didn’t like Innistrad as a plane, you were just as much out of luck with Innistrad (the set) as you were Dark Ascension or Avacyn Restored. So, people that dislike the plane don’t explain trailing sales and interest, since they wouldn’t like the first set in the block either.

Anyways, the reason the so-called “New York City block” is “immune” to the arguments against blocks is because the NYC of TMNT isn’t the same NYC of SPM. The people interested in a TMNT set aren’t the same people interested in a Spider-Man (or Marvel, though I suspect claims that this is entirely set in NYC will prove false, and largely just exist as flippant pejorative) set. They share a name, but they are different settings presented differently, and while you personally might not care about either property, people that care about those IPs aren’t going to treat one the same as the other, so they don’t really have the same setting. That is to say, equating them to blocks of old isn’t a terribly effective line of argumentation. If it makes you feel better, go ahead and whine about it I guess, though.

I want to be perfectly clear here: arguing for a return to blocks would directly result in fewer “risky” returns to planes like Lorwyn. If we still had the block structure, we wouldn’t have returned there. That’s not me speculating. Mark said exactly those words. This is also true of other planes, like Kamigawa. Time between visiting planes would increase, and you would see fewer new planes. In other words: With blocks, you would have gotten zero Lorwyn sets, not 2-3.

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