Welcome to the Gamer Dad podcast where we talk about all things
Magic the Gathering and gaming. We strive to make things fun,
fit into our busy lives, families, keep things casual,
and show you how you can too. I'm Gamer dad Bob, a 30 year
Magic the Gathering veteran who's played four match from
legacy to standard 2 Commander. And right now I'm living in a
perpetual state of sickness in our house already.
My kid has been in his first year of kindergarten and I think
he's been sick since school started like 6 weeks in a row
now. Tell me it gets better, Jesse.
It it doesn't. I knew you were going to say
that. It gets worse.
It gets so much worse, and I'm Jesse Hoagie.
I'm also a 30 year Magic Gathering vet.
I'm a proud dad of 22 Future Plans Walkers, a guitar player
who still can't quite nail Stairway to Heaven, and the guy
who somehow manages to top deck the worst possible cards at
exactly the wrong time. Is that like a magical power, a
superpower? Yeah.
Whether it be arena or on paper or.
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I've started it a little bit differently.
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Check it out and don't forget to stick around for flavor text or
songs lyrics at our midway point.
And will Jesse try to trick me with something fancy here, or
will he hit me with some real obscure flavor?
I have one left so thankfully I didn't have to scramble to find
one. I have 3 left and I feel like
they're all the easiest ones I've had.
Oh. God, I'm doomed.
I am doomed. All right, so let's talk a
little bit about one year ago, I was up at your house sitting
around my deck on your deck with a jacket on.
And we were talking about the commander bands and and the big
changes and and everything that was going on, right?
Bands, people buying out jeweled lotuses, commander advisory
group resignations, the Rules Committee resignations, threats
to people's lives. It was unbelievable what was
going on and not to down don't play it, but the sky was was
falling for all commander players out there.
They were pretty freaked out. One year later, here we are
again. What actually changed?
So that episode was called Everybody panic this episode,
and everybody calmed down. Calmed like everybody calmed in
the past tense. Nope, no.
Yeah, the Commander players have no chill.
No, no. And what changed?
That changed us about as much as my ability to win a game at
Friday Night Magic. Absolutely none.
It really doesn't feel like a whole lot changed over our year
of playing commander and and sub formats for that matter.
And and that's kind of a a nice little spin that I have at least
is I've been enjoying sub formats of commander as well.
Kind of moves away from, you know, the hyper competitive
stuff of like I have to have Joel Lotus dockside extortionist
and you know, I again, I don't have my finger on the pulse for
CDH, but I'm pretty sure it's thriving and healthy right now.
So. I think so too because maybe
it's just people got used to it but he don't hear anything about
it anymore. Jesse, I don't think I heard
anything about these bands outside of the first two weeks,
right? I mean, and it was all financial
fallout. Everybody was pissy that their
cards lost value. That was it.
And that was that was it. Like there was there was nothing
else about it. Down to 31 dollars.
OK. So that definitely affected it
quite a bit. Yeah.
What was $100 card? According to that Who shall not
be named the top in October 2070, Bucks.
OK, so it lost more than half its value.
And now, yeah, now it's down to like the last market sold was
2993. OK.
Do you ever think that card's coming back or any of those
others? Command.
Not without something printed that can combat it, I don't
think. Like, I think we'll see prime
time before we see that. Yeah, I'd love to see Prime Time
back. So how did this affect our
Commander Pod? Well, it only hit one deck.
That's right. None of us build like that.
None of us did. And it hit my Averna Chaos Bloom
and I had manicrypt in it and it was just to have what Christ
Manicrypt was a zero drop or am I?
I can't even remember anymore House.
Pathetic. How much would play with these
cards? I, I just wanted something for
my cascades to hit and guess what?
I took that deck apart It it's, it doesn't even exist anymore.
So the gameplay impact for us was 0 at the at right out the
gate. And then how did it affect how
we build decks over the year, Jesse, did that change what
decks you chose and and tweaked and everything in your card
selections? One bit like I don't even look
at game changers, like I don't even pay attention to those.
It affects nothing. I hit none of my decks at all
because I never built with those cards and it I never even give
it a thought when I build a deck.
And did it, did it really change the way our games played out?
Not one bit. So that's that's the interesting
thing and and obviously small sample size are our little pod
that that, you know, plays when we can.
It didn't do much of anything. And then and then to boot, we
also proxy cards. We're a proxy friendly group.
So like the value proposition, it wasn't a thing for us.
It wasn't. We were proxying cards then,
right Jesse? Yeah, Oh yeah.
So I wasn't making them myself, but.
We were right, right. So that it didn't really do
anything. And then the drama just died
fast. Wattsy took over.
Ha ha. This is our stuff now and then
like OK, the this this went out with a bang and or in with a
bang and out with a complete whimper.
In the span of two weeks, two weeks, it was gone.
So like anytime. That they had, I think in here
anytime they had like a ban restricted announcement, they'll
see like you'll see rumblings of like, hey, are they gonna unban
anything the commander, but nothing has happened.
No, no. And I again, we expect some
unbanned. We got some unbanned if you
recall Coalition victory we saw coming back.
What's that? That weird 7 cost blue card that
nobody raised? Is this Sway the Stars or
something like that? On a braids kabal minion.
Kabal minions back, Yeah. We all we all went out and
bought some because like, oh, they're going to skyrocket in
price, No. No, no, we are clearly bad bad
collectors as far as like value and everything.
Goes and I still got it for $0.32, so I still got it for
cheaper than it is now. Yeah, yeah.
So the bands looked really big and well, I don't think they
really mattered a year later, I think.
I think they needed the bans and standard and are going to matter
more than commander at this point.
Standard's another animal completely just the the whole
scape of landscape of Magic the Gathering is a whole another
animal right now let's talk a little bit about what the new
Rules Committee under Gavin Verhay has been doing.
So they brought in a lot of different people from different
walks of life to the Rules Committee, some former card
advisory group commander advisory group members, some
former Rules Committee members they brought in and they formed
a new rules Rules Committee, right I mean that's basically
what it is and they introduced bracket systems and they
highlighted that these were drafts, these were works in
progress and I'll start with this for myself here.
The thing that tweaks me the most about the bracket system is
we're a year into this now almost, and it's still a work in
progress. They have not said, hey, these
are finalized. We're comfortable with these.
We like the, the way that these are.
So our, our play group tried them.
We, we, we tried them. We tried to talk about them.
And man, a year later, that's what we're still talking about
and debating and talking about whether they made sense, whether
they didn't make sense, what brackets in particular felt the
worst as far as how they were defined and everything.
And, and the big disconnect that I have with the bracket system
and, and everybody keeps hammering on this, oh, it's a
Rule 0 conversation, right, Jesse?
It's a Rule 0 conversation. But how many people are super
duper introspective to the point where they're like, well, my
deck punches up or down even though it's by definition this
bracket? Like, I don't play, I don't say
I don't pay publicly, but I don't play unless I'm playing
with people I really know. And it's I don't say it's
impossible, but it's very difficult to expect somebody
that you just met to be that open and honest to you, right?
Or something because A they probably don't have the time and
B they just want to play a game. Yeah, that's that's actually a
really good point. I was just I was thinking about
that when I sat down with some people in Magic Conn Atlanta,
like nobody had a rule 0 conversation.
Like I I started the conversation about my Pendragon
deck. So I was like, hey, this is what
the deck does. This is what to look out for.
Like my my mono white Voltron deck.
I was like weapons vendors. My Arthur Wrecking Ball arm is
is the Excalibur weapons vendor does stupid things with this
equipment and it's a Voltron deck and you really need to pay
attention when both of those two things are out.
And and that was the extent of my conversation.
Or like my Jundeck. I was like, yeah, my intention
is to draw a bunch of cards with mask of Grizzle brand and bring
back this persistent Arthur and then bring it back again out of
the command. So, so I mean, I tried to have
those conversations, but most most of the people at casual
tables, even at a con kind of shrug and be like, cool, could
can we play now? Yeah, like, I don't care.
I mean that that was literally my experience and and nobody got
salty over plays or anything like that.
I think with Pendragon in particular that they kind of
know what they're getting into anyway.
I got blown out by a tainted strike which really tweaked me
because. In fact, itself just tweaks.
Yeah, there, there was no real Rule 0 conversation there.
And that was a funny one because I know Draco listens to this
podcast. I'm not.
I'm going to call you out here, Draco.
It's one of your pet cards for your Pendragon decks.
And you built a deck and handed it to someone else who had no
idea it was in there, right. So there was no no plan for a
rule 0 conversation. You didn't have it because you
were so excited to watch the deck, you know, play the way it
was supposed to. And then I got blown out by a
tainted strike at 32 life and Pendragon.
I mean, that's a. Feels I was trying to think for
the last time I actually played in public or played with people
outside our pod and it was probably I went to Mother's Day
thing in May and it was with a relative of my wife and her
husband and one of his friends and I literally knew where I
knew where I was going to play Magic.
So I bought like four or five decks.
We brought four or five decks. I literally showed him what I
had. He picked one, I picked one of
his decks and we played. We didn't even like right
discuss what the thing was. They're like they picked Prosch
and I'm like just, you know, I'm like, it's going.
It's like a machine gun. They're like, we wanna see that
go off. So that's all it was.
I wanna see the deck do the thing.
Yeah, that's pretty cool too. Yeah, that's also half the fun.
Sometimes I don't mind losing if someone else's deck goes off and
does the thing. It's the weird plays or the
salty plays or the min Max plays that kind of tweak me from time
to time. I guess the take away from the
bracket system for me is that rule 0 is still important to
have. And I really, really, you think
guys, we need to start having rule 0 conversations with
strangers and encouraging them. See, I'm going to learn from
this from my Magic con experience, encouraging them to
talk about their decks, you know, because I didn't go what's
your deck like? Because I just, I expected
reciprocity. I talked about mine and I
expected other people to talk about theirs and I didn't get
it. They just shuffled up and wanted
to play. So I think some one of my
learning things from that is I need to just encourage people to
talk about their decks. Did you even?
Did anybody say what bracket are you in?
Well, not so. Here's the thing.
I only played Pendragon games. Yeah, not really a Pendragon
bracket I guess. We were in Pendragon, That was
the bracket, right? But nonetheless, people didn't
talk about their decks so still a rule 0 conversation was
missing there after I talked about mine.
What I think the brackets might be good for?
Or like brewing frameworks and everything.
As you brew a deck you might be adding or thinking about cards
you select and and thinking does this card make my deck abusive?
Is this deck punching up? Is this deck?
Does it say it's bracket 3, but it's really a janky bracket 2
because of the way I built it like my mind Skinner deck.
I'm calling it like bracket 1.5 because it's not an all in mill
deck. That's not the whole goal,
right? It's to play off of the stupid
ability keywords on the mind Skinner that when an opponent
takes damage, they instead mill that many cards.
And I put as many cards in that deck that deals stupid pinger
damage as I could instead of forcing just mill strategies,
you know, So that's that's not a high tier deck.
It's bracket 2 by definition, but it's probably more bracket 1
theme jank. And that's the conversation you
need to have and, and, and people need to encourage as I'm
building that though, I'm looking at it, I'm going that's
not a bracket 2 deck. I'm sorry, by definition it is,
but it ain't a bracket 2 deck. So it does help in my opinion on
brewing frameworks, but it doesn't help with matchmaking
because God. Our play group has discussed
hours worth. Literal hours worth on bracket
three. We had a podcast on fixing
bracket three. Bracket 3 is gigantic.
Bracket 4 is gigantic. You can't say that you're a high
3 or a low 3 or whatever and then expect to roll sometimes
with the same bracket and and either not pub stop or get blown
out because of the way that that's designed.
Right. So it's easy to say, you know,
doing your own evaluation of something when you're building
it, but that's not going to help when you're playing somebody
else. You don't know, like when you
have a pod like we do, like, you know, like whenever I make a
change, I literally put it in the discord and say, hey, I'm
considering this and this. What do you, yeah, we all do
that. It's for two reasons, right?
We're letting each other know that we've, we've updated our
deck. And then two, hey, what do you
think of this change? Yeah, like, am I missing
something? Is this too too oppressive?
Or is this even good? Like I swapped out this for this
and then sometimes you even get the I'm not sure you should take
that card out conversation. Right, but you can't do that in
a public setting. No.
So that's where, like you said, the Rule 0 conversation.
You sit down, you get with people and you say, hey, this is
my deck, this is the theme, this is how I play it.
Yeah, I still love the Steel City elevator pitch thing for
how you present your deck. That's the easiest way to
present things and talk about what your deck does, kind of
what a turn loop looks like and how you win in addition to, you
know, any gotchas. Where I I differ from them a
little bit is I'm not super comfortable sharing out my
entire deck list. If someone wants to see it.
There's got to be some fun, some surprise and not knowing things.
It's 100 card Singleton format for a reason.
Like if people knew my deck had one single fog in it versus 3 or
4 fogs, they're probably going to play against me differently,
right? Yeah, the way I look at it is
like when I play like, not that I play Brawl anymore, but you
don't know what they're playing. Sure don't.
So and that's like you look at the person you go to untapped
and they happen to have untapped and they happen to be playing
the same deck. So I don't know how I feel about
that. Like, telling them what the deck
can do is one thing, but yeah. I'm not here to disclose.
Like I don't even know if I want to disclose all of my game
changers. Right.
No, I don't think you should. So that's my own thought on
that. A lot of people are want to be
more open about that and everything else.
What you can do is ask are there any cards that you really don't
like actually physically bother you being seeing played, You
know, like a tainted strike or something?
In fact, do you get a visceral reaction from a card that I
might play? And then if it's in my deck,
yeah, I'm going to talk about it.
If you name one of the cards in my deck, I'm going to be like,
yeah, it's it's in there. And this is how it gets played.
Do you still want to sit down and play?
But rule 0 is is is King still in my mind?
Yeah, it always will be. Jesse, you've talked about the
bracket system in your own way and how you felt that it was
just never great to start with from from the gate, right?
Jesse was like, I even I I didn't like the old system, but
this is the meet the new boss, same as the old boss sort of
situation. Do you want you want to expand
on that a little bit? Yeah, I felt like I wasn't a big
fan of the old bracket system, but the new one I feel like
makes it worse. So have like I've been saying,
you know, I have a bracket three deck.
No, I really have a bracket 6 or I have a bracket 7.
It should be at least 10 in my opinion, because you get like
you said, you have the the narrowing of it and you have 90,
probably 80 to 90% of the decks are going to be bracket 3,
right? And then when everything is
there, then why have four or five?
Like what? Have you heard of anybody say
the deck was a bracket 5? I'd never have.
I'm not playing CDH, so I'm not sitting down at those tables.
I haven't played any bracket four games outside of our our
own decks that we we call out and classify as bracket 4
because we have to. Right.
And it it's, it's the way it's laid out now is an issue because
they have no mana, no lands in there.
So like yeah, you've mentioned this before, like fetch lands
and those type of things need to be mentioned if the bracket
system is going to work. Smooth mana bases where all of
your lands are perfect untapped lands.
You're, you're not going to, you're not going to suffer a
turn because a land comes in tapped and and it's very easy to
build a mana base like that with, with what's available
right now. Well, you take it's an easy way
to do is literally you take a precon deck with that precon
mana base. You take the exact same deck but
with a mana great mana base upgraded said upgrade 1 is going
to win every single time. Yeah, that that deck is going to
run so much smoother because it, if you're hitting land drops,
you're going to you're going to curve out easier, faster.
And that's, that's what makes the current thing, the current
bracket system. In my opinion, one of the
biggest flaws is it does not account for manabase.
It just doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't account for
intent. Like.
What is the intent of the deck? That's.
Just because I have, I could have 10 game changers in the
deck, but the intent won't be what the bracket system calls it
to be. And it's really not a bracket 4
deck, it's a bracket 2 deck because of my intent.
Yeah. In the flip side, I could have
no game changers and by their definition it'd be a bracket 2
deck. Yep, but my intent is completely
different and I blow everybody out of the water every time.
Yep, and, and they do talk about that.
They're like, well, the, the bracket system really is a
framework to talk about the intent of your deck because
that's really the overarching theme.
So that always trips me up because it's like, So what,
what's the bracket system for? And that's why, you know, that's
why I said earlier, it's almost like the bracket system is more
from a, a building standpoint and and not for a gameplay
standpoint. It's.
Two things that are kind of different.
It's it's a little bit weird to me so.
Yeah. And if it's if they their intent
of it was to make it for a building thing, then why have it
at all? Because when when you're going
to play somebody, you're not going to tell them how you built
the deck. No, you're not going to tell
them your thought process of well, I was thinking about this,
I put this in and then I thought that you're not going to do
that. You just want to play.
Yeah. It's not quick enough to be
talked about in the middle of a game, and it's not expansive
enough to cover everything that's out there.
Right. Right.
Is it a good start? Maybe.
Yeah. Again, the problem I have is
that we're still in like second draft mode on this and it's been
a whole year almost. There's been no changes in the
last year either. There's been no changes since
July. Yeah, they added some, added
some to the the Game Changers and they unbanned stuff.
That was it. Right.
They they didn't really branch out into thinking about what the
brackets actually mean. At 3:00 and 4:00.
There was no even I don't recall here.
So I might be wrong and I'm OK with that, but I don't even
recall them saying, yeah, we recognize that Bracket 3 is
gigantic and it's a challenge for everybody.
I don't think they did. I really don't think they said
that because I think we would have had that aha moment and
gone good. They they recognize this and
they're going to work. On it, I don't think they did.
So yeah, that that's frustrating.
Brackets do not replace human honesty.
That's the bottom line. Have that rule 0 conversation.
Ask other people to have that rule 0 conversation.
I talked about my deck and it's fine.
If you want to talk about your deck first, you start the
conversation yourself. Hey, how about yours, Jesse?
What's your Pross deck do? It does a lot of really broken
things. I.
Mean the main thing is like I would tell people the main thing
is the machine gun you down. I think I have a bunch of things
that proc when I sacrifice stuff and it amplifies damage the more
I get and there's times where I could literally deal 60 damage
to everybody else. Yeah, Jesse had a city on fire
out on time with his stuff set up.
It was brutal. It was brutal.
Too, like you mentioned about having an open house
conversation, I think that the competitive side of people stops
them from being honest, and that's just human nature, I
think. That's that's still hard to shut
off, even for casual. It is because you're.
Like I want to win the game and if I tell them this trick, I
have a less chance of winning. So I'm not going to do, I'm
going to be as vague as I possibly can to cover what I, I
think I need to cover. And then that's it.
That's, I mean, it's, it's, it's all fine to say, you know, you
need to be honest, you need to open, but in actuality, most
people you're going to come across are not that way.
It's just how humans are, and it's kind of foolish to expect
people to do that. And when then you get into the
situations where you're doing it and nobody else is and then you
feel bad. So then you stop doing it and
then nobody else is going to do it because everybody stop,
right? So I don't I don't know what the
solution would be on that. Because yeah, I'd love to say
that Jesse and I have a fix for all this.
And we tried. We tried to have that
conversation in one of our episodes.
And the more we talk about it, the less we feel comfortable
about where the bracket system is at.
It's funny too cuz like how many times have we joked that Andy
wins? Every single time.
And it doesn't matter what bracket deck he's playing
sometimes. And his like he could be a
bracket 2 deck and we could have all be bracket fordex and we
still could Bravo stump by ante. Yeah, they're they're really
solid builds. They yeah, they refill his hand,
they carry momentum. They they synergize very well
and sometimes a deck punches up like I said.
And if he's a min maxer he and wants to pub stomp, he could go
into you know, bracket two games and say this is a bracket 2 and
then pub stomp people. Because if he's using the
literal definition of the bracket system, it's A2.
But then you look at the intent and that the skill of the deck
builder, he's a great deck builder.
That's it's not going to matter. Yep, Yep.
And and and you can't stop bad actors there right now, Andy
tells us about his decks. You can't stop someone from min
maxing a bracket to deck and being like, well, I'm sorry,
it's a bracket to deck. I don't know it, it needs a lot
of work and I'm not, I'm not loving where we're at right now.
I I just, I would love to see gosh darn it.
I just changed the sensor temperature sensor for my office
because my office is 75° right now and I'm.
Sweating 62 down here. Yeah, that's give me that.
All right, I think we beat brackets to death here.
So let's talk a little bit about the state of commander.
How do we feel about Commander? And we touched on it.
Commander to me feels the same as it was a year ago.
It really does for me. Nothing changed.
Not a damn thing changed. It's what you make of it.
And we, we've still created new decks over the last year.
We've tweaked our decks, we've done everything.
We've paid attention to the bracket system.
It still doesn't feel much different for us the way that
we're doing things. But outside of the table, it's
been Magic the Gathering has been exhausting.
And yeah, like you all know, I was super hyped for Final
Fantasy and I bought a lot of product and I have three Final
Fantasy commander decks, right? So I I went all in on it.
But the constant saturation of products the we're always in
spoiler season is really starting to wear on me.
Like didn't like the first week of spider man get kind of
trumped by Avatar spoiler. Like it was like spider man
spoilers before the set came out.
And then like a week after that it was Avatar because it was
like. Before Edge of Eternity even got
released. That's right, Edge of Eternities
exists, the last in universe magic set that we had.
Yeah, that wasn't even out yet and they were already spoiling
Spider Man. They were already spoiling last
Avatar or last Avatar, Last Airbender.
It's insane, absolutely insane. It.
Is and the universe is beyond burnout.
Is is palpable in the community. Like professors talked about it.
Kibler released a 30 minute video today about it.
I watched Kibler's video. He had some really good points
and it was nice. Is there anything that that that
dude can't talk about? It's nice to see that Kibler
looks at it from a standard perspective from a Magic player
who has been playing for 30 years.
And that's not the other stuff that we saw.
Where did that originate? Twitter, Reddit, the the slop
nonsense. That was Reddit at 1st and
Pleasant Kenobi actually released something about that
too. So like that, that's Kibler's
thing was, was irrespective of that, it didn't even it didn't
even not acknowledge that existed.
But you could hear the exhaustion in him from like he
touched on alchemy and he yeah, I know, just flat out called
alchemy garbage. He was like this, this is a set
of cards that they did to put in between releases to sell more
cards. But now we're having seven sets
a year, you know, and if we we look at the the standard release
schedule for next year, it is 7 sets.
Still 7. Seven sets.
That's just the the sets that are getting into standard.
That's not including any of the circuit layers.
Yep. That's not including any of the
commander only cards. That's not including.
I don't know if they're going to have like direct to modern, like
modern Horizons. Maybe that wasn't included in
there. Yeah, that would be.
Included in any Alchemy sets in Arena.
Yep, Yep. And mind you, these universes
beyond sets are going to be standard legal.
That's the other weird. Except if you're in Arena and if
it's Marvel, then it's not going to be that.
It's going to be something different.
Don't bury our lead here. We we already talked about that
later. It is, it is exhausting.
And and the thing that that I think tweaks me the most that
Kibler reminded me of today. Do you remember we were supposed
to get Lorwin this year? Yes, we were.
It was delayed. And they never said why and
they're not going to Nope. They're they're not gonna.
It's it's probably licensing or something that spider man
avatar, someone needed to get that license out and used for
2025. My guess is Avatar right?
Because I did. Read somewhere that they're, I
think that they're gonna go in 2027.
They're going back to six sets. Yeah, I believe that's.
Also it's 4 universes beyond and two in universe 1 I bet.
It wouldn't surprise me if they flip the sword.
Maybe 5 universes beyond and one in universe.
It's it's exhausting. I like a lot of the universes
beyond stuff but at some point it breaks the why I play magic
to begin with kind of universe thing.
Like Spider Man's real world. Like he's he's running around
New York City. How does?
You have a freaking bagel and schmear card.
Like come on. Really.
How does New York City interact with Dominaria or the Edge of
Eternities? Like what?
So I don't know, to me, it breaks the immersion.
And we talked about that as well.
So I'm not going to continue to beat a dead horse.
But let's talk about this Spider Man set that completely
underwhelmed me. And and it completely
underwhelmed a lot of people. And this is a set that was
designed to be a small set originally, like the Assassin's
Creed stuff, like an epilogue booster, right?
And after Aftermath absolutely fell flat on its face, they
pivoted to larger sets and they had to scramble and, and jam in
a bunch of cards for Spider Man, right?
And I shared this with you and I'm going to share this with the
audience. And, and you guys probably
already know this, people who are listening.
But let's let's reiterate this. The Spider Man set is 188 cards.
Jesse, tell me, how many are legendary cards in that set?
Thankfully I have a script in front of me so I don't have to
guess. That's right. 80 of them. 80 /
1/3 close to 1/2 of that set are legendary cards, but Wizards of
the Coast is out here saying we're not catering directly to
Commander. Excuse.
Excuse me. That's utter bull crap. 80
legendary cards and I think only one of them is non creature so I
think it's like 79 legendary creatures cold.
Stone is only non creature one right?
Is that it? I think you're right.
So and then we have Avatar next
and that's that can't be any different.
I mean, if you think about the characters in Avatar, they have
to be legendary. They have.
To be I wonder you mentioned like the aftermath.
I wonder if they stuck with that smaller set if spider man would
feel better. I think it would.
I think it would feel tighter. I think it would feel more
cohesive. I think it would because every
effing card is named spider man in this set.
Like how many varieties of Spider man are?
Coming from the Marvel Snap world, there are a ton of Spider
Man. Yes, there are.
I recognize that. But you didn't have to put them
all in one set. Does it translate to the Magic
the Gathering game in the same way it would for Marvel Snap?
You know what I mean? If he spaced it out, they had so
much more content to put in little tiny ones.
Yeah. Like aftermath size ones, yeah.
So Avatar is going to slam us in the face with a bunch of
legendaries also come this winter.
And this is another set where like Spider Man, I at least can
say I know that card. I know that villain, I know that
card. Me Final Fantasy.
I'm like who? Avatar I'm.
Going to be. I'm sorry about that because I
have you to. Tell me who it is though.
I have you to tell me stuff. That's true.
For Avatar Joe, I think Joe may know Avatar.
I got nothing and I even tried watching it and everybody I
talked to at Magic Con, when I said that they're like, yeah,
Avatar Last Airbender, like the first season is all lore dump.
And it's not like super interesting.
It's dry lore dump. And I'm like, Oh no, you heard
me say it. Dry lore dump.
So how is that going to translate to magic?
It's just characters, Wattsy doesn't care and they have the
Lord to rely on. At least the cards feel
mechanically accurate to the characters.
You know right like now the spider man set felt kind of
bland in design seeing as it was a mini set.
I think they tried to dumb it down a little bit to to have
better reach for new players and everything.
But when like every Spider man card says, when Spider Man
enters the battlefield, what does that mean if you have three
other different Spider Man's? Kibler brought this up today.
I was like, Oh no, that's a really good point.
Like newer players aren't going to understand what that means.
It's funny because Snap has a similar issue.
They have 3 Captain America type cards.
They have Captain America, they have Captain America.
Sam Wilson. OK.
Who has a shield that does stuff in buffs Captain America?
It just says Captain America and then you have.
Captain Carter, OK. So the whole when Captain
America, Sam Wilson came out, they're like, OK, does that buff
the other Captain America? And then when Captain Carter
came out, we're like, does the shield also buff this captain?
Because the shield just says all the shield says it's captain.
It doesn't say Captain America or Captain Carver.
And come to find out, it's only Captain America.
Oh man. So it has a similar issue.
So do you did people build decks kind of hoping that that
mechanically that was going to buff them?
And they definitely. Tested it when it first came out
to make sure and luckily there's like a bunch of streamers that
you know will do that as soon as it comes out.
Like I watch multiple streamers like it's like it comes out 3:00
on a Tuesday is when the cards are released and they have decks
built already before that. Yesterday I was with it's guest
gaming. I was on with him and on on.
Today we were building decks for next week's release and as soon
as it comes out they do it and they meatless say it doesn't
work, don't bother There you go it's great.
The thing I'm wondering if Marvel Snap had an effect on how
the magic set was built like because like spider man in
Marvel snap there's multiple versions of them but there's one
the main one where he comes into play, he moves to a different
lane and moves a card with it. So it's like.
And then? Yeah, and Uncle Ben is in there.
And when Uncle Ben is destroyed, Spider Man comes out.
And then there's Spider Man 2099 where when he moves somewhere,
he destroys a card in that lane. So I'm wondering if there was
some clause or something in their licensing where it says
you can't encroach on Marvel Snap and what?
Marvel Snap does that'd be something I.
Mean that's that's obviously why it wasn't in Arena.
And and and oh, by the way, fitting all these cards in the
bracket solution is just another exercise in pain.
What? Spider Man's the stronger.
Cards like yeah my God when there was like 5 legendaries in
a bring back the. Planeswalker Rule 2.
By the way, I want my baby Jace to kill Jace the Mind Sculptor
again. I know that still throws me for
a. Loop.
Every time I see it I'll still think in my head, I can't play
this, No I can't. I sure can't.
I can play the exact. Same one that even that doesn't
matter. Yeah, I remember the.
I remember the day is not used to.
Be removal like you wanted to get rid of the thing you packed
baby you packed baby Jason the. Sideboard against mine sculptors
I guilty as charged. I did that and it worked really
well. Or sometimes it was who plays
the first chase wins, wins that war.
So yeah, Commander's fine. It's fine.
Keeping up with all the product and everything is is the problem
and it's not getting better. I mean, I was sending you guys
pictures from the preview panel live and.
I mean when that star. Trek popped up.
I was like, oh God, we called that like it's actually.
Happening, yeah. Like we all called it as soon.
As we saw spacecraft, I said Star Trek or Star Wars.
It's going to be one of those. Like I could probably dig up my
my post on Discord about that, but I knew it was going to be
Star Trek. I had a feeling it was going to
be Star Wars first or Star Trek first, because Star Wars already
has. Yeah, and Disney.
Disney is going to be a really hard IP to double dip on because
they own Marvel too right now, right?
They do. They do.
So it's like, oh, man. Like, is Princess Leia a Disney
Princess now? Right.
But. And like, how was I going to go
into Loracana? Yeah, like the licensing.
War over that is got to be so costly.
Yeah, so let's. Talk a little bit now.
About the community and the culture over the last year, and
I will say at least what I've observed is the Rules Committee
has been deliberate, professional, and open to
feedback. I've seen several Discord
servers that I'm on. I see plenty of blue sky post
from actual committee members asking for feedback.
Now, what are they doing with that feedback?
Is it all posturing? Is it all just a show?
I don't know. I don't know what to believe.
I, I know Jesse, you're more skeptical than I am about this.
That's a way to put it. But I will say like nobody's.
Absolutely demolishing the Rules Committee at this point.
I think Gavin's done a very good job, at least with who he put in
the committee, who he has aligned.
What I don't think they've done a good job on is a communication
cadence. Like the last time we heard from
them was July. And I think for the largest
Magic the Gathering format currently today, probably even
larger today than standard ever was if you want to think about
it that way. We're owed a better.
Communication cadence. What have the Rules Committee
done with our feedback? The fact that they haven't said
anything officially since July, I don't think that's cool.
We should be getting at least quarterly communications from
the Rules Committee. Here's what we're working on.
Nothing's in stone, but something hey, we're talking
about unbanned. We're talking about more bands.
You know, that's always a slippery slope too, because
speculative trading and all kinds of other nonsense starts
happening and the scalpers get in on it and all the people who
who invest in this game, which is stupid in my opinion.
Cardboard is so volatile, you know, unless you're dealing in
reserve list and and you know, highly low investments unless
you're Rudy. Right.
Like you're not going to make. Millions on Magic the Gathering.
Sorry to burst your bubble. The creator ecosystem.
I don't think that any of the changes to the Rules Committee,
commander bands, I don't think it's changed the creator
ecosystem at all. Big voices still big small
voices still grinding. Like we're still doing our
thing. We're we still have this
podcast. We talked about Magic the
gathering, all things Magic the gathering and gaming.
There's our catch line, catch phrase, you know, so like, we're
still doing this. We're we're still talking about
it. We're trying to get our voices
out there as as a voice in the community for Magic the
Gathering. The big contention for me still,
it's the brackets. I'm not going to continue to
beat it up. Jesse and I have talked about
this in conversations in Discord DMS, in Discord.
What the hell are the brackets? We don't even know anymore.
And again, that guy that goes back to, can the Rules Committee
please communicate more with us please.
Like even the original Rules Committee had the web page and
everything and they had blog posts and, and other stuff on
that. We're not even getting that as
often out of on the official wizard site.
So if any of you guys listen to this or know anybody who
listens, who's on the Rules Committee passes on, please
communicate more with us from, from an IT manager whose main
role is customer service. It's not good customer service
right now. I don't feel like the community
feels like it's being listened to it all.
And I'm not talking about the mouth breathers who have stupid
complaints. I'm not talking about that.
But the people who genuinely care have genuinely good
feedback. We don't know if we're being
hurt and that's where I have a problem.
How do you feel about the community and culture right now?
Jesse and I? Will say kind of a tangent.
The communication stuff is not isolated and magic because I
have a in the air on the Marvel Snap side.
A lot of people, a lot of streamers I talk to are
actually, they have a creator program that has a Direct Line
to the developers and they talk to.
Them all the time. And their communication isn't
heard. They say it's heard, but it's
not. Nothing just happens.
OK, so it's not. Just magic.
But I think it is all Magic Snap, all of these other big
games that are controlled by big corporations.
It's all goes back to shareholders.
I think it's in mine and I apologize now for being so
negative, but I think it is all just a front.
I think if they're all saying how we hear you, blah, blah,
blah, but in reality, nothing we say is going to change anything
because it is all about the dollar.
I think as soon as Wizards took over, that was the nail in the
coffin for Commander because now all that matters is money and
all that matters is how much they can make.
You know, they had, they put all the right people on the Rules
Committee because those are the people that community trusts.
But then they cut it off of the knees and stop the communication
that it seems like that. Could be the driving force
behind it. That's what I think it is,
because Marvel snaps the. Same way all they care about is
making money now in the Marvel Snap side they were.
They had a developer that was a publisher, I should say that was
the same publisher at that owned TikTok.
And when TikTok went down earlier in the year in the US,
so did Marvel Snap. Yep, I remember that.
Now they they're self. Publishing now.
Second dinner is self-publishing.
And we all thought, oh, this is going to be great.
You know, they're going to self publish.
Things are going to be better. Things are worse.
Like now prices go up. You know the greed is going up,
just like magic for now. The prices are going up, the
greed is going up just like everything else in the world is
not just related to games. No groceries, everything is
more. Really good point, Really good
point. It's everything.
And then you have and I'm going on.
Tangent, but then you have like kind of light at the end of the
tunnel. We have games like Hades too
that came out. Critical freaking.
Acclaim Game of the Year talk 20 bucks.
You have clear Obscure Expedition 33 clear Game of the
year has to be 40 bucks. Sandfall Studios.
Came out of or Sandfall Interactive.
Came out of yeah nowhere. You have Hollow Night Silk song.
Game of the year candidate independence 20 bucks.
Yep, so that. Shows that.
You can definitely have quality over quantity, but people will
spend money. But when you.
Have giant corporations like that that are in the billions.
You can't have quality because they don't get the quantity
because shareholders demand more.
Did you catch? I don't know if how.
Much your finger is on the pulse with the Magic community these
days. Did you catch Seth from MTG
Goldfish's deep dive into the financials of Hasbro?
What percentage of revenue do you think Magic the Gathering
brings into Hasbro? I think it's like 80%, right?
Higher. It's higher.
Oh my God. It's it's about I.
Think he said it was like 9091% of their income of their revenue
is generated by Magic the Gathering.
I mean, you go where I think Hasbro.
Bought him in 2001. I want to say it was a long time
ago. Yeah, right around when Pokémon
left. Right.
Was it Wizards of the Coast? Wizards.
Yeah, like the first Pokémon. Set was was the coast like a
little like it's it's like hilarious that it was was the
ghost like it's a lot of people forget about that, but so it's
hard to say like magic died when the Hasbro bought them because
back when we we were standard grinder grinders, it was great.
It was thriving, but it. Seems like I think.
When like you have Hasbro here and you have Magic when Hasbro,
the rest of Hasbro is doing this and Magic, yeah, I think.
That's when it changed. Like I'm like I'm try to be
optimistic, but I'm not stupid, right?
I know how money. Works.
I know how the world works. Right, Don't just piss on.
My leg and tell me it's raining just like with like streaming.
Like I was thinking about this today, like remember when
streaming first came out, I was like, oh, it's the death of
cable. It's going to be so much.
How much are you paying for streaming now compared to how
much you pay for the same thing? Probably the same as cable at
this point and many. People are paying more, you're
paying double. We used to paying cable.
If you put everything together, so it's like the greed is just
astronomical with so many things.
And that's what's driving magic, unfortunately.
It's feel like that's it, that's it.
So. How do you feel about the Rules
Committee today? Do you, do you?
Do you feel like it's lip service because of the greed?
Do you think it's like forced lip service?
I think it is forced lip service.
I. Think the people that are on
there are genuine, like Olivia is great.
You know, all the other people that are on that committee.
I think Shivam was or used to be and then decided not to be.
He's he's not on the on the current.
He was on the On the Card advisory group.
That's what it was. But I think the people.
Commander, Advisor, Gavin himself, I think.
Gavin incredible person means well, but I think they are
control. I think they are I think them
themselves are fighting a battle like I'm I don't want to speak
for them because I have not talked to any of them.
I mean, anybody who's worked in corporate America.
Though knows that you can't fight the board of directors.
No, that's that's yeah. It's like, I think they're.
Trying to do what they can. I think they're trying to
influence what they can, but when it comes down to it, their
voice is miniscule compared to the almighty dollar in the show.
That's that's the problem, right even.
My small, not-for-profit that I work for, our board of directors
still makes a lot of the decisions for us and everything,
even even with data handed to them that says one thing.
It's like, no, yeah. And unfortunately.
Until you realize it and even me, I still struggle with it
today is like we've we've been in corporate for how long and I
still struggle with it. Like you're not going to succeed
unless you try to play the game. And I think, I mean, I don't
know if they had to sign an NDA or something, but I feel like
they're trying to play the game and not, yeah, any game company
is going to. Force you to sign some kind of
an NDA? Yeah, regardless, I guarantee
like I take I think. If we take somebody who was on
the committee in a couple years and they leave and the NDA
expires, expires, excuse me, I guarantee they'll have some
stories to tell. Like I guarantee the board like
I don't know who as original leadership of Wizards are still
there like. I'd I'd be curious what?
Richard thinks, honestly, he doesn't care.
He probably. Doesn't care because he got all
his money. Well, I think Richard Garfield
has, truly. Just moved on from Magic the
Gathering as he as he created it and he just doesn't care because
it's not his game anymore. It's it's like a full
bastardization of his game at this point.
It really is what does Mark Rosewater, actually.
Think like if he wasn't corporate hat on, if he was
actually what he actually did. You think that air foresight is
his? Boss now.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't. Realize.
I wonder what? Aaron thinks, like, are they?
Full on corporate now. Or they actually have and this
is love. I loved Aaron.
'S just real, take articles about R&D and everything when he
was writing and I loved how just transparent he was, how
realistic they were about their testing, about future, future
leads, stuff like that. And I wonder what the R&D looks.
Like there because so many of these new cars just feel like
reskins of everything else. Yep.
And so many things like how did the VV Vivi or whatever gets
through seven sets? A year, that's how.
Jesse, there there's not adequate time to test things.
It just seems, seems, seems so. Less cohesive than they used to
be. It's just like, do they even
have an R&D anymore? They do even QA anything and.
It and it's very staffed from what I understand.
That's that's the scary part yeah.
I mean if if arena. And the client itself is any
indication they don't QA anything Arena.
I'm glad I uninstalled. It yeah and and snap is.
The same way the bugs we get in snap, we still have bugs now
that I had two years ago. Jeez.
Like it's like. The game crashes.
Constantly like the I don't know how like I had a crash twice on
me today, I think, and you watch any popular streamer, it's going
to crash and then multiple times during the stream and it works
the same way yeah, universe is beyond.
Saturation we touched on a little bit, but let's talk a
little bit about Fleem and through the Omen pass I, I, I.
I've paid 0 attention. I don't know what the hell fleem
is. So fleem is the reskin.
Of Green Goblin. I need to, that's how much
attention I'm paying to arena. Like I don't even.
Know what Fleem is. Gobin, Jean.
Splice Savant Yeah, it's Norman Osborne and then Green Goblin.
So Fleem is this lovable little character here.
It's a Goblin human villain cuz Gobin's in the picture, I don't
know. And it's just a little goblin.
And everybody seemed to attach themselves to this thing as a
mascot for Through the Omen Pass.
In fact, to the point where Through the Omen Pass feels like
more Magic the Gathering than Spider Man.
And people loved it like the legendaries felt not special
because everything is Spider Man, you know?
And what they did with Through the Omen Pass was kind of change
that up, right? Not everything is spider man
now. Apparently there's an influx of
spiders in the multiverse because I mean, everything is
spider typed for this friggin set.
So I do find that amusing as well.
Like spider tribal got a major, major boost.
I wonder if like job is? More viable commander now from
one of the ranks it probably is for.
Arena, yeah, for Brawl, the licensing mess, they didn't ever
say what the deal with that was outside of it was a licensing
problem. And it's Marvel Snap, I
guarantee you. Yeah, you know.
And the big irony here is? Flame has had more hype than
spider man. I'm not even kidding.
Like people are begging for physical versions of through the
Omen paths proxy. And that's what they're doing.
A bunch of my cards like I printed probably.
I think 9 or 10 just to have them and I almost printed the to
the home and path version just because I wanted to be that way
they people are. Begging for them.
So like do universe's Beyond sets create real magic players
or just novelty buyers at this point?
Are they just for collectors? And I realize there's some
crossover right? Because you love Fallout, you
also love Magic the Gathering. You are in the Venn diagram for
both and I think that's probably more the exception than the rule
though, you know? Yeah, because like, like I.
Got Wolverine for example. I got that.
I proxied that but I still want to get a real version just to
have as a collector. Yep, should have gone to magic
like anytime. I see pack openings.
On like Instagram Reels or whatever, it's always people for
money. Yeah, it's, it's all finance.
Nerds. It has nothing to do with.
Actual games like I want to play this game.
Yep, I want the card to pulls the most amount of views because
it's worth the most amount of money.
Yep, Yep. So but like.
Collection wise like. I absolutely love Lord of the
Rings, so the Hobbit's going to be fun, but.
The Lord of the Rings Universal. Is beyond set was tight.
It was great. It was.
Amazing everything. Felt so perfect and I also loved
how the cards looked. There's a lot of care point to
the design. Of that set.
So if The Hobbit is anything like that.
And that's going to be great. Yeah, I will say as a final.
Fantasy nerd. There was a lot of care put into
the design in that set as well. Like I don't even know Final
Fantasy. And I could see the care that
was put into it and, and so. Why are in universe sets kind of
a little bit worse now too? You know, because like because
of the the. Ether drift in all the secret.
Layers. Ether drift is like.
Now one of the worst sets of all time considered.
I think it where's the care there?
Worse than Homeland and worse than?
Fallen empires I mean gone in. 60 seconds and then what's right
behind what's right? Underneath the Outlaws of
Thunder Junction. It's just, it's such a bummer.
Because they, they, they show that they can put care into sets
and then we get that nonsense and it's like, oh gosh, why are
we doing this? And then you're like, well, wait
a minute, if the in universe sets suck, I have to play these
universes beyond sets that I don't vibe with now?
Also, what is going on? Yeah, like before when universes
beyond. Wasn't standard legal.
I think they were more like accepting.
I was more accepting of them personally because I didn't have
to play them right. I didn't have to play with them.
Now thinking back like. Can you imagine if one of the
rings was standard legal? Like getting the one ring, the
one ring, that's OK. We got we got suplex in Final
Fantasy a year later, Yeah. But it's I don't know.
Man, it's, I feel like there's so many things that are coming
out. It's diluting everything from
top to bottom. It is, and it really it does
feel like. They're.
Focusing more on universes beyond and in universe stuff is
more of a like an afterthought. Although I will say Edge of
Eternities I thought was great. I thought it was pretty cool.
I it wasn't. My favorite Dragonstorm I
thought was great. Dragonstorm was awesome, I
thought that. Was a really well done set and
the story was good too. I didn't read edge of eternity
story. I should probably do that.
But the whole space C Star Trek E thing isn't my thing.
Like I'm a Star Wars guy, I'm not like a Star Trek E guy.
So that didn't that didn't vibe with me.
Star Trek I. Can't tell you how.
Loud the crowd got for the Lorewin stuff.
Oh yeah. At the preview panel.
How loud the crowd got for The Hobbit.
Like Lorwin and Hob are the only two.
Sets I'm looking forward to and the crowd got very loud for.
Star Trek. They were very I've not watched
Star Trek in my when my. Youth, it was always Star Trek
or Star Wars. You can like both and I always.
Liked Star Trek or? Star Wars.
Yeah, me too close. Me too.
Like Star? Trek, to me, was for the old.
Fogies like the old people that you know that were boring.
Oh, that's so funny. It's just Gen.
Xers, dude, that's all. Yeah, they're not all.
I remember my grandmother. 'S husband, because it wasn't.
My grandfather was a terrible, terrible person and he likes
Star Trek, so that might be like subconsciously why I don't like
it. Yeah, that's true.
But your brain. Connected that and said bad
people like Star Trek so universe is.
Beyond was supposed. To grow Magic the Gathering.
But what it's really doing right now is burning out in trench
players. The characters people actually
love the most aren't licensed at all.
Flame Gobin's creation. Flame.
Flame is a avatar or a pet or some are both on friggin arena
right now. Everybody loves flame.
Not to be confused, I think. Flan, what's happening?
Is you have the entrenched players are leaving is still
lower than the amount of new players that are coming.
So it's just like a cycle. Yeah, they're just, it's just
going to be. Cycling.
And as long as the new players keeps outpacing the people that
are leaving, it's not going to matter.
I think Wizards might have. The the floor drop out from
under them when the collectors who were in it just to start
playing and learn it determine that well the next universe is
set isn't for me and I'm not a huge fan of the in universe's
stuff so I'm just done playing now.
Like the people that that Final Fantasy brought in, if they are
not into Magic the Gathering, they're probably not sticking
around essentially the way the prices are going.
They continue to go up. Up up.
Yeah, people love the non licensed characters right now.
Please Watsy stick with it. Help us out.
So listeners, let's let's do a recap.
We haven't done song. Lyrics or flavor?
Texts yet? Oh my God, I got so into.
Yelling at things. Let's, let's get into that.
Let's get into that. What do I have for you now?
This is a fun one. Do you have yours?
I have 3. In front of me and whenever it's
my turn to go, I'll make a decision.
All right, pick one. And and and you hit me.
With it first, this time I'll give you the easy one.
Well, I mean, they're all three easy, but I'll give you the
Super easy 10. God, OK, I'm so sure.
His verdict is always guilty. His.
Sentence is always death. That's Judge Dredd right now.
1st it's. Always guilty his.
Sentence is always death. That's a Magic card.
It's got to be. It is a Magic card.
His I. Want to say it's one of the
praters? Or something, but that's not
right. Is it a Frexian?
No Ravniken? No, I think his first printing
was. In Astrod really.
Maybe world way? I don't remember the first
printing, I think it was in Astrod.
It is a vampire and it's a card that always.
You guys always hate seeing Butcher of Malik here.
Yep. I think it was World Wake, I
think. His first printing was World
Wake. It was, yeah, World Wake.
It may have got reprinted in Dark Ascension or something like
that. Yeah, that that tracks.
Butcher of Malik here. It's it's God, that card is so
good, but it's priced appropriately.
Like 7 mana is yeah, 7:00 it's 7.
Mana, guys. And it's nowadays I'm a fragile
creature. Two or three, all right?
My lyric or flavor text is a mind in agony as a Sparrow
without wings. That's a Magic card.
It is a Magic card I'll give you.
That right away you're not going to guess what it is because this
is my deepest cut. I think it's blue.
Let me find out. It is not.
It's from Ice Age. Is it an artifact?
No. Then I have no idea.
Yeah. Jesse, I didn't even know this.
Card existed. I was scrolling through Ice Age
cards when I pulled this. This is a card called Mind Whip.
Mind Whip I. Guarantee you, you.
I mean you. And I played Ice Age.
I guarantee you you've never seen this card.
I have seen that card. Oh, you.
Have I know that art? I know.
That art, yeah, that was. New limb.
Duel Limb. Duel.
Yeah, that's a limb duel quote. That one goes hard.
This is. A cool card, actually.
I didn't even remember that card existed.
I mean, it's not legal in alchemy.
He. Or she pays 3.
Or mind whip deals 2 damage to them.
If it deals damage tap the creature like during that during
that target creatures controllers upkeep every.
Upkeep. Pay for a plating commander?
Just slap it on someone's commander.
Yeah, I feel like it's a great card.
To be in commander? I don't know man, it's an
annoying card. That's for.
Sure, it's a Bob. Card.
I think that's probably. The other reason why I I picked
like you can have some wacky stuff.
Where like if you could put it on your own creature and then if
you it deals damage to you, you have effects that happen.
Put it on. Put it on anti venom.
Yeah, stuffy doll, although it works.
Reckoner because it would. It would tap the creature, so
that's kind of bad. Hi dog, dog is here.
Dog go sitting on the couch she never lays on like the.
Couch, couch. She's always on the top of the
back cushion and she's ruining the back of the cushion.
That's so funny. All right, thank you for the
reminder, Jesse. I got so into the podcast I
didn't even think to pause for this.
Plus I didn't put it in the damn notes.
That's my fault. So, listeners, do you like the
brackets? Tell us.
Tell us you like the brackets. I promise we won't think worse
of you if you like the brackets. I I like the brackets.
Not out loud anyway. Jesse.
Won't out loud. Or do you still prefer that rule
0 conversation over everything is Rule 0 king?
How about this? Are universes beyond sets
keeping you engaged with Magic the Gathering?
Newer players, If you're listening, are they bringing you
in? Are they keeping you in or are
you just collecting the cards and then kind of learning the
game and deciding it's not for you or Entrench players?
Are universes beyond also burning you guys out?
It is for me, and I loved Final Fantasy.
I'm excited for The Hobbit. Hobbit Laurwin, That's all I'm.
Excited for Spider Man versus through the Omen.
Paths For those of you who have spent money on both of these
products, whether it's Arena or the physical cards, which has
you more excited? Do you really want to see
through the Omen Pratt Omen Omen Pratt's Omen Paths printed?
Do you want to see that? And finally, would you build
Fleem, Not Green Goblin, not Norman Osborne?
Would you build Fleem if it hit paper?
I guarantee some people would. I guarantee some people.
Have it's their green goblin deck, but it's Fleem.
They just proxied fleem in Let us know in the comments, DM me
or Jesse let us know in blue sky.
You know where to find us, All right?
One year later, Commander didn't collapse.
It adapted. The bands faded.
Rules Committee held steady. Rule 0 still rules.
And the only real exhaustion came from too much product.
And like parenting, you set boundaries, focus on what
matters, and find joy in the parts that you actually want to
play. That's a little dose of gamer
Dad Bob Zen for you guys tonight, Jesse.
Final words if Commander has taught me anything.
It's that nothing really changes.
The Rules Committee tweaks things.
We nod, we complain, and then we still lose the same to the same
busted green spells or the same blue bounce spells.
Maybe that's the secret lesson here.
Don't fear change, just fear cyclonic rift.
I do not play cyclonic. Rift.
I think I'm the only one that does.
In our butt now, actually, because I'm not running it's,
it's in my. Zombies deck?
No, it's not in. Zombies.
It's in Miram Miram Miram. Your favorite deck?
I did. I'm like the.
You ever see the TikTok of the dogs getting out of the pond and
they're going yeah, it's the. Oregano in the pond.
Cilantro. Cilantro.
I hate cilantro.
Yeah, that's how I feel about Cyclonic Rift.
It was awesome and standard. I played the hell out of it, but
Commander just feels so bad. Anyway, that's it for us
tonight. If you guys liked what you
heard, give us like give, subscribe, follow us wherever
you can find us. We should be on Apple Music
podcast soon too. I just hooked that up today
because I forgot it existed. It's only the top.
There's the second most streamed platform for podcasts and I
didn't have us on there, so better late than never.
All right, that's all we got for you guys tonight.
Be awesome out there. We'll see you next time.