Magic: The Gathering

[Tomiko]

That's the question everyone has been asking. That and how did that get past playtesting.

[Weltall]

They admitted they completely missed it during testing which is just insane. Reddit found the combo like 25 seconds after the card was spoiled. Oh well, hopefully a step closer to Maro being shitcanned.

[Tricen]

I honestly can't believe they have a testing team. I don't know what happened to MTG, but it's dead to me. I gotta make a trip to Tampa and vendor my shit, I hate driving, ughghghgh

[Weltall]

They did the exact same thing that Capcom did to Street Fighter: neutered it into the ground to appeal to newbies/casuals for more $.

[Moridam]

I honestly can't believe they have a testing team.

their testing team is probably a focus group of people who have never played the game before, evaluating cards based on their artwork.

[Xerlic]

They admitted they completely missed it during testing which is just insane. Reddit found the combo like 25 seconds after the card was spoiled. Oh well, hopefully a step closer to Maro being shitcanned.

To be fair, Maro is head of design. It's development's job to catch this shit and say no this is bad.

their testing team is probably a focus group of people who have never played the game before, evaluating cards based on their artwork.

Their testing team actually has a lot of former pro tour players and hall of famers. It's a huge fuckup that this made it out into print.

[Weltall]

I realize what Maro's job is, but I want him gone regardless. He throws people under the bus and makes excuses instead of making the game better. He has been there forever and is only in his current position because all of the smarter employees left for bigger opportunities. And yes, their testing team is actually Pro Tour players lmao.

[Moridam]

i think i knew that too, but my brain refused to reconcile that with them somehow letting thru a 2-card auto-win combo in the current era of standard, lol

[Krandor]

This is the most banned cards in standard in well over a decade I think. There wasn't even this many bannings during the reign of Cawblade

[Weltall]

That is correct. It isn't even because the cards are completely busted (Yawgmoth's Bargain, Tolarian Academy, etc). Ever since they started focusing on a power decrease, 98% of the cards are fucking terrible, limited trash, and the remaining 2% end up "must play" or broken.

Of course, they aren't going to sell Amonkhet boxes when the estimated value is sitting somewhere around $65. There isn't shit from the set worth lucking out in a pack for.

[dasva]

Honestly I doubt they missed the combo so much as missed how well it could do.

Saheeli is by todays standards a pretty bad planeswalker on her own and Felidar is just good combined with it being 3 colors and mana situations not being as good not that long ago when we had fetches and fetchable duals probably didn't think a 3+ color combo deck using meh cards would do so well. And standard or T2 back in the day traditionally has had less need for bannings just because the support card selection and mana situation means the same combo is less powerful so the obvious parallels to splinter twin weren't quite the same and even then they printed a few cards that preemptively stop the combo dead for standard. Of course you also aren't facing the same pressure to stay alive in standard so you can get away with durdling with your 4 color deck for several turns if it gets you to an insta win combo and there just isn't plethora of great cheap removal for felidar that there is in modern and older formats... if fetches were still in standard to easy revolt whenever it might be a different story.

Either way time to welcome your mardu overlords

[Weltall]

I'm thinking Mardu Walkers and some control deck (UR or URW) will be tier 1. G/B and RB aggro tier 2.

[Xerlic]

Honestly I doubt they missed the combo so much as missed how well it could do.

They confirmed that they missed it entirely.

[Viserdes]

They also don't really test uncommons in general, they've pretty much admitted as much when they banned reflector mage too. I think both mage and guardian were created for limited purposes and no one tested them in constructed.

[Krandor]

Trying to force all the actual good cards into Rare/Mythic would certainly line up with that.

[Xerlic]

Of course, they aren't going to sell Amonkhet boxes when the estimated value is sitting somewhere around $65. There isn't shit from the set worth lucking out in a pack for.

It's because of expeditions. They soak up so much of the value. Playable rares never break more than a few bucks nowadays, so all the value sits on the playable mythics and expeditions.

[Viserdes]

I think overall the regular rares in this set are weak and the dual land cycle is marginal much like Shadow over Innistrad's rare land cycle, usually that helps prop the set up value-wise. Just comparing the rares for amonkhet to say, the uncommons from kaladesh/aether revolt i feel there is a huge power gap (kaladesh/AER's uncommons being quite good). Also, the invocations seem much lower then the Inventions/expeditions so the EV from that is also much lower. Honestly, this set is giving me Bored of the Gods vibes and i probably won't open any packs of it outside of limited.

Going into how i feel about KLD/AER's uncommons i'd say stuff like whirler virtuoso, rogue refiner, fatal push, weldfast engineer, aether hub, longtusk cub, etc. are all more constructed playable then most of amonkhet's rares, there just isnt any reason to build around amonkhet mechanics. Another interesting point is amonkhet will never exist in standard without kaladesh block (an interesting result of wotc's backpeddling of standard rotations) so kaladash will always overshadow amonkhet in that regard.

[Ghost_Wheel22]

Limited Amonkhet plays pretty fresh and fun but (as always) a meager and lackluster addition to other formats. And to top it off the set expeditions was a nice idea but holy fuck they went way way off base for font text and art.

And people have been calling for MaRo's head on a pike as far back as like Mirrodin for his (and associated) bullshit and he's managed to dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge past it all so far.

[dasva]

They confirmed that they missed it entirely.

I know they said they did... but cmon it was pretty obvious no testing required within minutes of it being spoiled people were already brewing it kind of thing

[dasva]

Limited Amonkhet plays pretty fresh and fun but (as always) a meager and lackluster addition to other formats. And to top it off the set expeditions was a nice idea but holy fuck they went way way off base for font text and art.

And people have been calling for MaRo's head on a pike as far back as like Mirrodin for his (and associated) bullshit and he's managed to dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge past it all so far.

I liked the expeditions up to this point but man a lot of these ones they just aren't that recognizable and the text is practically runes. They went from oh wow that's cool looking version of xxx to wtf is that let me look really close