#sorry for busting out my rantsona voice

[mirakurutaimu]

Opinion on Ral Zarek now being an Otter in both meanings of the word?

rant time i talked about this on Twitter a bit yesterday but it's so fucking stupid. like it's kinda cute that Bloomburrow has the kingdom hearts lion king world "if you go here you're an animal while you're here" thing, but also the only thing we were really told about Bloomburrow leading up to it was "there will be no humans on the plane". so we're all like oh shit, cool, sounds like it's gonna be its own unique thing without a bunch of Dudes You Know in it since there's no humans in it, right? we can finally escape the cycle of banal, tropey sets that are mostly just "Characters From Magic's History Dress Up In Costumes" (MKM, Cowpokez, NEO, Capenna) but nope. of course not. if you planeswalk/omenpath to bloomburrow, you turn into a furry! now watch them sell secret lair packs of fur-tfed planeswalkers, because of course every set needs to be a vehicle for a bunch of stupid gimmicky Products™️ they can sell to gamers with extremely loose wallets

oh, yeah, and alongside this announcement was that they're cutting off printing of portuguese cards. it's not the Biggest deal since I've heard firsthand in non-English speaking countries that they usually just end up using the English cards anyways (gee I wonder if this has anything to do with the globalization of American culture lol no problems there). but they only decided to cut off the printing of portuguese (and simplified chinese) cards because they're facing a 2% drop in profits this year... because of all the stupid royalty fees they're paying on their dumbass Universes Beyond crossover bullshit lol

i've loved Magic since i started playing in high school, but as of late that love has been waning a good bit. the game is so bogged down by corporate product shilling bullshit. every card needs 900 alternate arts. 900 alternate borders. every set needs a hideous alternate card treatment. every set needs 56 different kinds of booster packs. no more Block-format releases, no more core sets, just products, products, products, products.

i used to be a big fan of Commander/EDH, but ever since it really caught on and Wizards/Hasbro decided "well, this is the most popular gamemode, we now need to design the entire game around it" and it kinda completely ruined commander imo. what was once a gamemode about running weird, niche interactions and building something with a unique flavor or playstyle now boils down to "well, just pick one of the 92849634796782435678 legendary creatures they've been printing for the past few years and run all these extremely pushed commander staples they keep printing" and it just ain't fun anymore. gotta sit down at the table and look at entire Doctor Who decks and Transformers cards and Tomb Raider cards and etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. Commander tables are just fucking billboards now lmao

it's very clear WOTC/Hasbro has no idea what to do now that they did the Giant Multiverse-Ending Threat of the Phyrexians in All Will Be One. much like the marvel movie franchise which MTG has been so emulating for years now (AND HAS EVEN SIGNED A FUCKING CROSSOVER DEAL WITH AS OF LAST YEAR, SEE YOU IN 2025 THANOS COMMANDER DECK), we're at the period where they're just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, twiddling their thumbs with these boring, tropey sets, all the while drowning players in a deluge of alternate arts, secret lairs, crossovers, etc. a common complaint among magic's playerbase is that nowadays they're literally selling too much shit. preview/teasers season for one set will immediately be followed by previews and teasers for another set. there's no time for anything to breathe it's just buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy buy.

anyways stop giving hasbro money, print proxies and play magic for free :)