#mtg unlimited

[incorrect-mtg]

Flavor Text Highlights - Alpha/Beta/Unlimited

Next set-> Cool - Black Knight

"Battle doesn’t need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don’t ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don’t ask why I fight."

Funny - Goblin Balloon Brigade

“From up here we can drop rocks and arrows and more rocks!”

“Uh, yeah boss, but how do we get down?”

Worldbuilding - Llanowar Elves

Whenever the Llanowar Elves gather the fruits of their forest, they leave one plant of each type untouched, considering that nature’s portion.

Emotional - Wall of Swords

Just as the evil ones approached to slay Justina, she cast a great spell, imbuing her weapons with her own life force. Thus she fulfilled the prophecy: “In the death of your savior will you find salvation.”

Next set->

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Stasis

Artist: Fay Jones TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[emma-dennehy-presents]

The whiners' opinions are in. Magic the Gathering is dead, again (for like the 20th time in the 20+ years I've been playing). WotC is Satan and no other game company cares about their bottom line over player experience, just WotC. Bloomburrow killed everything and all the formats are trash now.

[sun-3-160]

Just acquired nearly $400 of magic cards from my school's SRO. Ladies and gentlemen we're cooking

[verycoolcardgames]

[toxycodone]

whats some dungeons meshi headcanons u got? owo? i totally believe Laois would be furry and into legos Cx

also i really enjoyed ur Ao3 fanfic about Laios x reader :D!!! I really agree with the way you write him :3

THANK UUU omg. I am gonna start with Laios because I have such a clear version of how he is in my head. I have nsfw hcs too but I’ll include them in a separate post if you want! These will just be sfw and more modern au geared

Laios is 100% a furry I…can’t even deny. he definitely sees himself as some like super cool timber wolf with icy blue eyes and platinum fur (or wolf/hunting dog mix) but everyone thinks he should be a Samoyed or something

he has multiple fursonas tho. one of “that” monster. maybe a dragon sona. he’s made up his own species to. may adopt sonas/species from artists he likes. yeah he’s a furry community veteran.

i never considered legos n Laios but. You’re so right. I think he’s more interested in the more complex nature setups or fandom ones. There’s definitely a half finished setup in his room at any given time (he gets super hyper focused on finishing them for like. a few days then kinda forgets until the next random fixation.)

he definitely has a dog that’s like. his best friend. he spends a ridiculous amount of time at the pet store or dog park or hiking w it

is a local game store REGULAR. he enjoys a lot of tabletop gaming like mtg, dnd, pokemon, and even digimon but in my mind he SLAYS at wingspan in particular. He has all of the extras and stuff. he has a group he loosely calls his buddies there that play with him time to time

not a huge video game fan though? I think he likes stuff like monster hunter and LoZ but like? I’m really unsure what else he’d be into. like yeah he likes monsters but like. he needs a specific genre….strategy based games are probably more his style. he may get into competitive pokemon tbh

no sense of style. Not in like a bad fashion way but like he just dresses extremely plain. Like he wears the most basic ass white boy clothes it’s ridiculous. He has a collection of silly t-shirts but that’s about as exciting as it gets. he believes socks and sandals go together. but somehow his hiking gear and jacket game is top notch. literally looks like ducks unlimited poster boy.

he grew up middle class but in a rural area. so he has manners and such but he’s kinda sheltered?? a little naive too but…he just has a big heart. He’s someone who believes in doing good even if like. There’s a chance you’re getting scammed.

ok that’s all the ideas I have now for gen hcs but tysm for the ask

[markrosewater]

Hi! I just found your blog, and I just want to say I love MTG! It was partly why I learned to read so young, because my dad played in the early 90s and told my brother and me that we couldn't join in until we could read the cards. He's played since either Unlimited or Revised Ed.s,, I can't remember which, and it's always been a huge thing in our house. It has been a really nice bonding experience to play together. It's really nice to run across someone who's made that happen for us! Thank you!

Thank you for sharing your story. I love hearing about cross-generational play.

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

Liliana Vess Propaganda Post

shes a multiple centuries old necromancer. she accidentally poisoned her own brother and he went evil then she was sad about it for ages. shes been historically manipulated by some guy whose identity was unknown for ages and whose lore is contradictory. the laws of reality got altered so she made a pact with four demons brokered by an evil dragon to live forever and got cool tattoos. she seduced one of mtg's other main characters then betrayed him. and also dated his best friend iirc. she cursed a guy to go evil and go around killing all planeswalkers. she killed one of the demons she made a deal with. she blew up an ancient demon prison to kill another one. she joined a group of well meaning heroes and made friends with them but then it turned out her real motives involved killing another of those demons, who she ripped apart with zombies and let her undead feast on, and her actions tore the group apart. they also got beat up real bad by the dragon she made the deal with. she went to another plane and killed the last demon but the pact defaulted and she was indebted to the evil dragon, who made her turn on her allies and go evil. she commanded his zombie legions when he tried to absorb the power of every other interplanar magic user. after her friend died attacking him she betrayed said evil dragon and stole his magic with his own giant zombies. she ran away and was declared a fugitive. theres other stuff that happened after that where she did more morally ambiguous things but ngl i kind of lost track of shit. she was a schoolteacher and defended the school. shes really cool and hot. shes super morally complex. shes even got a bunch of good cards that people dont like playing against sometimes. i love her a lot. please vote for my necromancer girlboss queen

she's a necromancer. she's fantasy catholic. her parents tried getting her to become a nun to curb her wild and crazy attitude and in response she had more sex with MORE stableboys. she accidentally turned her sick dying brother into a zombie while trying to heal him. she bargained for eternal life/youth and unlimited power by making a deal with four demons. when she stopped being into the whole demon's plaything thing, she made a deal with the dragon who brokered the contracts to get out of them. she manipulated, gaslit, and seduced a powerful young telepath into helping her break these contracts and becoming her dark prince of a crime syndicate, and then accidentally fell in love with him FOR REAL. she (paid for someone to) murder his boyfriend to make sure he would help her, because she doesn't know how to ask for help, she only knows how to force people into situations where their only option is helping her. it didn't work. her trust issues gave him trust issues which gave her more trust issues. she tried it with him AGAIN years later and was such a pitiful little meow meow about it he said yes even while knowing it was a mistake. his entire friend group thought he was crazy to do it because they could see all her red flags from the moon. she's fun and flirty and lives only for herself. as the flagship Black Mana(tm) character for Magic: The Gathering's color theory, everything she does is selfish, power-mongering, exploitative, and assumes everyone else is doing the same thing. in her good guy redemption arc, she asked a vampire how he just "decided to stop eating people". she doesn't know what a mango is.

[inventors-fair]

Typal Examples and More

Many thanks to Storm for pointing these cards out, but there are a few more cards from MTG history that have properties we're looking for in this contest:

The thing about Dragon's Approach and Slime Against Humanity is that they also have the unlimited-number clause; considering that those are half the examples we have, it might be a good idea to stray away from this constraint specifically. But Step Through is a phenomenal example because the Wizards in MH2 were...varied, to say the least. They were all situated in Grixis colors (UBR) and looked for a variety of archetypes. Maybe you had a token-making Wizard, maybe it helped with Delirium, or maybe discarding Step Through allows you to cast your Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar that you picked up P1P1!

I'll also note that tokens are an interesting combination to look at. When you're browsing sets, are there any creature types that don't appear on tokens that you could make tokens for? Would that combination of token-plus-type impact someone's deck choices or card selection?

Regardless, we've been digging up a couple of examples, and want to show you what we've cooked up—

@loreholdlesbian designed a nightmarish combat trick from Ikoria that combines counters, menace-matters, and the Nightmare creature type into one horrific attack. The power of the effect makes the flavor of the Nightmare typing all the more effective—i.e. it's the creatures that are born from the psyche that are best at navigating the psychic terrain. This could just put a menace counter on any creature, but at common that would be far too easy to jam any one-mana creature with this spell; Nightmares matter here.

@teaxch brought the idea for an artifact to the table, one from the modern Amonkhet that looks to accompany the rebuilders of the world. I shaped the flavor for this one with some minor tweaks including the cycling, but most of the time this card would be used for either an artifact shell (to represent the rebuilding) or a sorcery-based tempo deck (to represent questions as opposed to the instant-speed answers). Having a Sphinx in your hand to cast would just be an added benefit that might be an extra boon for any Sphinx Commander players.

Actually, that's another note: sometimes these limited cards will significantly affect Commander! Keep that in mind for how you're designing. Maybe your card would possibly help in limited but definitely help in Commander.

And as a last note, I came up with an Ixalanian card that I should add an art description to, but I wanted to get this post up first and foremost. Scouts on Ixalan can be found across multiple groups, but if the future of Ixalan perhaps doesn't involve the heavy typal and features a variety of outcasts and explorers together, this card can represent why you might need a specialist in your party.

Hope this is a useful resource! Have fun, everyone. @abelzumi

[magicwithclass]

Veteran Bodyguard was printed in limited edition Alpha so that means it also has printings in beta, unlimited, and revised. Furthermore, veteran bodyguard has printings in collector's edition and international edition as well as Magic 30th anniversary edition. In this post, I will be discussing the revised edition as that is the cheapest tournament legal printing of the card. I will discuss my thoughts on these other printings at another time. It shocks me that there are any reserved list cards in limited edition that are bulk or near bulk. While revised had a much larger print run than some other reserved list sets, I still believe that these cards are undervalued. There will come a day when even revised, reserved list cards will break the bank. Currently, veteran bodyguard can be purchased for between one and two bucks. Since the card is still budget friendly than the card must be unplayable as a gamepiece, right? I do not agree with that statement. A 2/5 for five is below rate in terms of stats but the ability seems under costed. Redirecting damage is not a commonly used effect. Very few cards redirect damage in the modern era and this is a static, continous effect. Surely, mtg has printed the veteran bodyguard effect on more efficient creatures. A quick search shows that this is not exactly true. Pariah is an aura that offers this ability for three mana but you need to provide your own creature to enchant. Palisade giant and protector of the crown also offer the same effect with upside but those cards cost 6 mana so the mana cost if less efficient. Likewise, weathered bodyguard can morph on turn 3 and flip on turn 4 but that is 7 mana total across two turns. Thus, veteran bodyguard has never really been power creeped. It is so strange that they have never made a more efficient version of the bodyguard effect when the card came out 30 years ago in alpha. The card has never been considered overpowered but this effect is not in favor so I am not sure if we ever get this ability at 4 mana. Can we also note the flavor? A bodyguard jumping in front and taking the damage for you is just spot on. Giving Veteran Bodyguard indestructible is also a strong synergy. Tapping the veteran will turn off the ability which is an issue that some of the other versions of this card do not have. There are not many decks that can utilize this card or this effect. Jared carthelion true heir has a similiar theme and stuffy doll decks may have a need for this. Rune tail kitsune ascendant commander decks work perfectly with veteran bodyguard and it seems like a staple in that deck. Unfortunately, rune-tail decks are not particularly popular. I did not even know the commander existed until today but I do enjoy a flip commander. The card did spike in 2018 to 3 dollars which is still relatively low but there were some reserved list cards that remained flat. The fact that this card did shoot up means there was some interest. 9.50 was the high in 2021 and I still think that is low. Should any playable reserved list card in limited edition be under 10? I think this card is one competitively viable commander away from spiking. Just look at the effect bloomburrow has had. Seeds of innocence was also the most efficient version of an effect and it was still bulk for years even after seeing legacy sideboard play. Will this follow that same trajectory?

[layingeggs]

Concept: TCG that is to yugioh what yugioh is to Magic the Gathering.

Magic is a broken game in many ways, and like all long lasting TCGs it has had inevitable powercreep. But there are certain mechanics it has that add an inherent amount of balance to the game no matter how broken any card is, and yugioh removes those mechanics and replaces them with nothing.

So Magic has the Colour System. Almost every TCG has a Colour System. Even if one card is stupidly good, it still has to work with or works better with other cards of the same colour. Yugioh does not have this and replaces it with nothing. Any cards can work with any other cards, so long as they work together.

Magic has a Resource Mechanic. You can't play cards without spending mana and you need to do things to get mana. Yugioh cards do not have a cost and there is no new mechanic to replace cost.

(Arguably there is tributes for stronger monster, but powercreep has redefined that in ways that powercreep cannot redefine mana in mtg.)

So here's my proposal. A TCG that scraps Turn Phases and replaces them with nothing.

In my TCG, you don't have a Draw Phase and a Main Phase and a Battle Phase and so on. As far as this game is concerned, that stuff is just what yugioh did, and we're doing something different to distinguish ourselves from yugioh. (That will make the game very broken.)

Instead of Phases, we have Actions. During your Turn, you can perform 1 Normal Action of each Action Type. You can perform 1 Normal Draw and 1 Normal Summon and 1 Normal Attack. You can do these in any order, at any time during your turn.

But you also have Special Actions. These are unlimited and called for by card effects. If you play or activate a card and it allows a given Special Action, then you can perform that Special Action.

We already see a similar logic in other TCGs. Most games have you draw 1 card during the draw phase or beginning of your turn and then allow you to draw additional cards if you can use a card effect that allows it.

I'm simply suggesting that we extend that logic to the other mechanics of the game.

So you can draw as many cards as you like, so long as you have the card effects for it. You can summon as many monsters as you like, so long as you have the card effects for it. You can attack as many times as you like so long as you have the card effects for it.

And of course, as is common to many card games, on the very first turn, the player who goes first, must skip their Normal Draw and their Normal Attack. They only get to have their starting hand of 5 cards and their Normal Summon.

But you still have unlimited Special Attacks.

Further, in the same way that other TCGs often have cards that allow you to draw an additional card during your opponent's turn when they satisfy a given criteria, so too will our more-broken-than-yugioh game give you cards that demand you Special Draw during your opponent's turn when they satisfy a given criteria.

As well as cards that demand you Special Attack during your opponent's turn when they satisfy a given criteria.

In this game, it will be very easy for players to get an FTK. However, to balance this, if we design the cards just right, the opposing player shall also be able FTK the starting player during the starting player's first turn and the first tune of the game.

This can be done through hand traps that allow you to Special Summon a monster during your opponent's turn and hand traps that allow you to Special Attack during your opponent's turn, or hand traps that allow you to set the board up with cards that themselves allow you to make a Special Summon or Special Attack whenever the other player satisfies a given criteria.

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Power Surge

Artist: Douglas Shuler TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[kwaggysshardmindemporium]

Behold, WotC making a move so braindead you'd think Hasbro made them fire a ton of people for no reason or something. Long post, so I'm putting a page break for those of you who don't care about MtG drama.

For reference so you know where I'm coming at this from, I'm an idiot whale buyer of these things. Secret Lair is deeply flawed, but I do love the shit out of the alt treatments and they do on rare occasion take an expensive card and torpedo the price.

So, first, the article says that a consistent bit of feedback about Secret Lairs is people want them to ship faster. Not personally a significant grievance of mine, but I get that at least. I wish the average buyer had some patience, but i just kind of have to accept they don't because this isn't something I can change. Okay, so how are they gonna fix this? Well, they're gonna use their market research from 4 years of this program to pre-print based on anticipated demand. And then that's gonna be the whole product run. No more print-to-demand. Or more specifically, the default is now limited print runs on everything and if it's print-to-demand you'll know. (A quick definition of terms here since most of my mutuals aren't into MtG: "print-to-demand/PTD" should here be interpreted as they collect an unbounded number of orders for these products ahead of time then print the total amount sold plus a little extra for replacing defectives and shit, so supply is effectively unlimited since it's going to be definitionally equal to the number of people who want and can afford it. "Limited print run" is there's a fixed amount they already made ahead of time and they aren't making any more after that, so supply CAN run out.)

So, who benefits from this change? Not you, that's for fucking sure.

The obvious MAIN benefactor is scalpers. People who have a bot that refreshes the page 10 times per second until the drop goes live then auto-buys a max cart full of everything. This wasn't a problem with most Secret Lairs before now, because it was print-to-demand. But now, supply is limited, meaning scalpers are going to become a huge problem immediately. WotC's existing market research on Secret Lair would be predominantly for products that DIDN'T have a maximum amount for sale and thus wouldn't attract many scalpers. They've had a few hundred Secret Lairs go out since they started. There's been I believe three that were limited print run previously, one of which was a total disaster due at least in parts to scalpers.

Also, a huge foundational appeal of Secret Lair IS that they're print-to-demand. You want one and have the money at the time? You get one. Period. I have a LOT of criticisms about that "and have the money" part, but those go WAY beyond the scope of a rambly complaint about Wizards of the Coast's distribution decisions. Short version is that if you were interested in getting these products, you could simply do that. No longer!

Now, I do have some faith in WotC. A tiny bit. They said their intent is to print about the sams amount ler drop as demand would've been so that the average buyer won't see a difference. I do absolutely believe their marketing people have enough competence to have factored in that scalpers will increase. I do think that most Secret Lairs will reach the end of their sale period with a little left over. However, I think that any Secret Lair with anything notably GOOD in it gets obliterated by scalpers from here on. That box that had a First Sliver and a Food Chain for $30 regular/$40 foil from a few months ago? Yeah, you're never getting your hands on a box that good ever again.

So I'm gonna ask a serious question: is this change good for WotC? I do think the answer is unfortunately yes, but it's worth noting that any flops from now on flop *even harder* because if a PTD Secret Lair flops then at least they only had to make 3,000 units or whatever and it definitionally still makes money. If a limited run Secret Lair flops... well now they have unsold inventory.

Now, I've complained at length about this. So do I have any suggestions? Yeah, actually. I do. And it's so close to their existing plan that there's no way it didn't come up as an option. I have a decent guess as to why they didn't, but here's my proposal:

The stated problem is that many buyers of Secret Lairs complain their product takes too long to arrive and WotC wants to change this. Their current solution is to switch to limited print runs based off market research projections of how desirable any given box is gonna be. Why not, instead of that, print something like 80% of the projection ahead of time, then if and only if sales go above that pre-sale print run you do print-to-demand for any excess? The vast majority of buyers receive their product lightning fast, the rest will still get theirs faster than before because late buyers aren't gonna be waiting for theirs to print behind everyone else. AND you can make some marketing hay out of it by making a big deal of "buy early, and it'll ship sooner than if you waited." It also insulates against flops a little bit because if something underperforms way below market projection, hey at least you only made 80% of the projected amount instead of all of it?

And I suspect the reason this idea isn't the one they're going with is because some asshole in a board room countered this idea with a sentence containing the word "streamlined," and I will grudgingly admit this idea isn't streamlined. The logistics of making my suggestion work are, indeed, a fair bit harder than the alternative since my idea is two print runs and their idea is one bigger one. Economy of scale is also an issue. They would probably get a slightly better bulk price per card printed if they ordered everything at once. I do, in fact, understand that my alternative is by no means flawless and there's obvious appeal on the corporate side of things to doing it the way they chose to do it. I also sincerely think that, unless that bulk rate is so massively different for doing an 80-"20" split printing that it's just plain not an option, my solution is better.

[dotshaft]

Coming from MTG pretty much every YGO deck these days would be called a combo/control deck, but also YGO players actually can't understand how toxic combo/control single player solitaire gameplay can get with unlimited field size.

[thekesslerun]

Mtg Summit:

Good:

-Best creator inclusion/support event of all time?

-Premium badge was just unlimited events (and creators also could do this)

-GP vibe is nice

Bad:

-No mask nor vaccine mandate.

-Event organization hiccups.

-Who and what you were suppose to do/talk to was confusing

The creator affiliate program was a good thing with hiccups:

There was a level of “free advertising for a thing you still have to pay to do” which is weird vibes? But the perks once there were 100% worth it? And it allowed a tier of creators to be included that wouldn’t be? Which is for sure one of the big successes of this event. The way this event felt like a real confirmation of “The Gathering” part of magic was both astounding and in stark contrast to Magic 30. And I have to imagine there is a combination of both that’s possible.

The Charity Playmatt with everyone’s face on it was a very very cool thing that gave players an almost scavenger hunt activity trying to collect every possible signature they could at the event.(the creators on the matt that had to cancel expect to be signing these in the future)

The vip buy in badge and the invited creator badge both getting “unlimited events” is one of the coolest perks I’ve seen. Someone mentioned that these events functioning like Disneyland (not charging for rides once you are in) is a possible future and It’s a phenomenal idea.

Finally this was in many ways “A return of Magic Fest” like events. Similar to CFBs “MagicTheGathering:Las Vegas” last year.

And I think players really want this type of event to exist.

[farsight-the-char]

Want to do more writing for my “Super Hero Magical Girl” series, where a team of Magical Girls exists in a Universe with a larger International Hero Organization (think the DCAU’s Justice League Unlimited, but LARGER).

....

One of the character’s is David, who is the older brother to the “Black Mana”* girl, Luna.

A hero who takes time off to help take care of his physically disabled sister, he is just the nicest dude, becoming basically the surrogate older Brother to the entire team (he is 30 while Luna is 17 when introduced).

Small town hero, beloved by community. (Also hides a lot of trauma, and is gay).

...........

Luna was born albino (with sunlight sensitivity) and her powers were unstable, leaving her housebound most of the time growing up.

During her introduction story, she bonds to the Cysym (Cybernetic Symiote) Nyx, which stabilizes her powers “Void Flame” and allows her to walk around in daylight with less issue.

She views her hero “duties” as a job, and is the one that helps the other girls establish their union/team contract with the larger TDA.

.....

*Girls are themed after MtG colours, with the lead Mio being “Gold/Multi-colour”,