The pace of power creep is what has concerned me lately. Getting both DRC and Ragavan in one set is just nuts.

Interesting video, but what felt lacking is a discussion of the game design aspects of reversing power creep, i.e. how to effectively throttle back without excessive use of bannings or creating purposefully weak sets that players don’t want to buy or remember.

How dare you talk about old school 1 drops and forget to mention Kird Ape!? (;

WotC's design philosophy ever since War of the Spark has completely turned me away from playing standard or anything else other than pauper and commander, and now even commander is getting ruined since they have been focusing on it. Now I just buy/collect oldschool cards for my nostalgia cube. However! There's a growing format called PreModern that uses all the "old-border" printed cards from 1993-2003, like a time-capsule of Magic that really has me interested. Sensible banlist, no rotation, good decks can be affordable. it seems like a place I'd be happy playing if any gamestores actually start hosting events for it.

I can't believe they printed Ragavan and haven't banned him in modern yet. You need to drop your own blocker and it needs to stay alive, or you need to remove it immediately, or it just wins the game. It gives them any color mana that they can even bank up, and it let's them exile the top card of your library and they are very likely to be able to cast it with the treasure tokens. Compare that to like Bomat Courier, which was crazy strong in it's standard. You get to really draw the cards, but you need to discard your hand and it costs extra mana. And it's only a 1/1. Ragavan would maybe be fine if they made it a 1/1 and if it didn't give you treasure tokens, or if they increased the mana cost to RR. As it is, it's essentially a red Birds of Paradise that is a 2/1 that also draws you cards from the opponents deck. You need to cast the cards in the same turn, but that's not so hard to do with treasure tokens, and often, cards from your opponents deck are also good for you. Maybe not a perfect synergy sometimes, but it's still free. There are so many 1 mana removal spells or 1 mana creatures that you can just cast with the treasure token, it's stupid. When you draw it late game, you can even just cast it for the dash cost and it gets haste. If you play against a blue player who does scry or surveil, you can totally screw him over by stealing the top card of his library he just put there, too. I feel like they have gone to far with powercreep concerning modern. Some creatures just have totally crazy stats and textboxes for their mana cost, like Questing Beast or Elder Gargaroth. They also printed some crazy strong removal spells like fatal push and now prismatic ending. They have brought back some crazy old spells like counterspell or previously banned spells like Blood Braid Elves and Jayce, which I think are fine, but I think Stoneforge Mystic might be a bit too strong still. If you just look at the numbers, there are more and more cards from standard that are relevant in modern, and the overpriced money grab direct to modern sets allow them to print even more broken cards that would totally destroy standard. There are more and more cards that need to be banned in standard, as well as in modern and even legacy. It is as bad as it has ever been since the original Mirrodin. On an unrelated topic, I feel in the last 10 to 15 years the artwork has also become more and more boring on most magic cards. The style has become very consistent and is the same across most cards, the newer lands are often very outlandish, but I liked the older ones that were often more realistic and rooted this high fantasy game in a familiar environment. They just don't know what they are doing with the new frame designs either. The frame has become thinner and thinner, so they need to rely more strongly on the artwork to quickly convey the color of the card, so the artwork becomes more and more boring. And then they make weird special cards like the black and white cards from the new new Innistrad etc. The rounding on the border and the holo sticker is just pure ugly bullshit. The cards from Amonkhet you could cast again from your graveyard with the extra sideway artwork and tiny textbox are pure design cancer, as well as sagas. Who likes tall and narrow artwork and tall and narrow textboxes? It's like if a vertical phone video was a magic card. Many of the special variations are totally ugly and don't even look like magic cards at all anymore, like the Amonkhet Invocations and their sad attempts at full arts. Especially full art lands. They got it right only once with Unhinged, so they printed the same artworks in a kinda similar frame style again in Double Masters, but they screwed up by putting the text boxes not all the way to the edge, so there is a stupid narrow sliver of the artwork above and below, which makes you feel like part of the artwork is covered up by the box, of which the bottom box is totally useless and superflous. Everyone knows that a Mountain is a "Basic Land - Mountain", and they could have just stuck the set symbol below right in the middle, or in the bottom right corner. Oh, and they of course did the thing with the rounded black border at the bottom again. What makes them think that rounding all lines looks better? In rare cases, it looks better, in certain cases it looks fine, while not necessarily better, but in many places it looks like ASS to just round everything. They left out the text boxes on the new Kamigawa ones, but there they again have that stupid large rounding on the bottom corner that makes you feel like the artwork is being covered up and that big rounding looks like ass in the first place. Streets of new capena full art lands would be fine, without the the rounding again at the bottom and at the top of the fine lines that kinda frame the card. These lines would actually be very cool, if they weren't rounded at the top. Zendikar at least had the curve at the bottom and at the top, but it would still be way better without any curve. Unfinity lands again kinda fucked up by the black round border at the bottom, but otherwise they are actually really nice and have very unusual artwork, which I love about un-sets. But they are kinda pushing too many un-sets lately, and too many products in general. They are pushing ridiculous cash grab secret lairs that also screw over the local gaming stores, the heart of the community, they are focusing more and more on their stupid online digital stuff, the list goes on. Meanwhile, they are still printing so many off center misprints or have heavy variations in colour and text thickness and clearity, especially between their Belgian and American factories, etc. They also made some stupid rule changes, like the planeswalker change, that basically caused an errata being necessary for half of all burn spells in the game, while actually buffing planeswalkers, which were already really strong and are becoming stronger, still. They are lucky they have a rather strong foundation and a genius basic design apart from a few early fuck ups like the Power Nine and Ante and set hoser cards. But after that, they did most things right for many years. I would rather prefer if standard was a bit more boring, apart from reprinting a few older modern staples like fetch or shock lands more often, so their price comes down a bit, instead of having this crazy power level all the time that causes faster and faster games and forces them to ban cards all the time.

Powercreep is unstoppable in eternal formats. The top 10 cards of 300 are not going to be as powerful as the top 10 of 3,000.

"Pull up the KoRn T Shirt? Ice Cube on the radio?" Hell Yeah!

You guys are great! Keep up the good work.

Nice Video. :) Good old times with Savannah Lions

Looking forward to more pioneer gameplay

Just commenting to help the algorithms and also because I enjoy your content

“We have the keys to where Oko is locked up and we will let him out if you don’t subscribe.” Me, who has faced down eight banned decks and won: Bring him on!

I think that wizards should make commander only sets for broken cards like Oko and ragavan, as to not break modern.

Love you guys!!

Just had a flawless run in paper modern until Turn 1 Ragavan, turn 2 hit and stole my General Ferrous Rokiric which I had no answer to in hand. That burnt and we were hitting game 2 pretty quickly.

I see Jamin. I smile. Good day.

It is the year 2025, Hail Phyrexia Set is released... and a change of rules in Magic: All Mana is Phyrexian Mana now.

OMG! You actually unleashed Oko :o What did we do to deserve this?

I like your socks. My contribution to the KZfaq algorithm.

I think there is no power creep (after Ikoria). If we look at particular format (modern): my belief WotC purposefully jump-started (pun intended) power of modern -> to achieve 2 goals: 1) sales. 2) increase the velocity of burying legacy

I sub and I liked and I also comment ps I love ur energy lmao

cool stuff

I reciently have been thinking about playing pauper/penny dreadful, because I wanna test if its true that skill counts more when cards are less powerfull, any suggestions?

You are such nice duo. Jamin is the cool German and Carl is the...? Where are you from Carl??? Northern Italy?

Imo Sera Ascendant is the best 1 drop. First turn 6/6 flying lifelink in comander

I do really miss old school Magic though. The game had a lot of charm, it doesn’t feel fun to play these days, where if you can’t infinite combo by turn 3: too bad, gfy

Didn't know you guys also made vids. The best solution against power creep is pretending nothing got printed after 94 😂 🙌. Great video btw 👍

I really wanna see ragavan gone purely because of the other niche cards that ragavan makes even more unplayable than they already are. For example a really cool card, that I want to see more of is Robber of the Rich. I think its a super fun and borderline playable card, that maybe with a bit more support would actually see play. However ragavan just makes that card laughable to think of playing. Same thing with thief of sanity, I think a deck that uses a Wish card like Mastermind's Acquisition with a slighly more control-ey deck would be cool (or maybe Thief of Sanity in a Stoneblade shell) but its similar there, except then the upside of building around thief of sanity isnt much there as ragavan is a much better card that is much easier to build around that it makes thief of sanity a much less usable card. Whereas DRC which many call better than ragavan, I dont mind since it feels a lot less directly oppresive and a lot more unique.

I think the 2012 Players Championship is the healthiest modern there was.

Say hello to the power nine for me.

Ragavan needs to get banned in modern and legacy. Threats are extremly poweful but making more powerful answers will only lead to even stronger threats. I believe there are other ways to keep people interested in magic that do not involve power creep. Skins of different IPs, especial rarities of already existing cards, reprints of expensive cards etc. Power creep should be the last resort or non existent. Magic existed and thrived with little to no power creep throughout most of its history, the pase of products and power creep in the last couple of years is impossible to sustain for any player looking to play the game for a long time. Modern should not be a rotating format. Great video though! Like

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You forget Krid Ape in one drops and no love for Goyf?

Jund player rolling their eyes not naming beloved Tarmogoyf and Bob 😂😂

Todays cards: bit.ly/3w5wc9X

counter spell was the first counter spell

i curved into omnath on turn 3

The power creep needs to stop. Stupid cards need to just not happen(ragavan)

Comment for the algorithm!

Major flow of power creep has never been making cards powerful but rather not making powerful solutions to powerful threats

Birds of Paradise erasure! Birds existed in Alpha!

I almost feel mean saying this, but as someone who *also* plays Yugioh, hearing MtG players talking about power creep is cute.

creatures are increadibly powercreeped. Better get those 6/6 flying trampler wih massive upside for 4 mana...

Who’s here after spoilers for WOE and Beseech the Mirror? Power leap

20 years... I'm glad cards have changed over the course of 20 years lol.

How is llanowar elf better than birds tho?

Talking about power creep and starting off with 1cmc 2/1 as baseline and not 1cmc 1/1 xD

They power creeped Red last year then white got power creeped and now green is getting power creeped

Please don’t let oko out :,(

Comment

I dont see a positive thing in literally tons of cards lying around being rubbish after wizards decided to not be creative finding balanced solutions on the quest of printing new and interesting cards. As a mirrodin / Ravnica player i literally see no chance to stand a competition against newer decks and you want to tell me it is not a negative thing to be forced to pay for loads of new cards every month? I dont get it. This is nothing but kapitalist frustration.

To first question: 1 mana - Rogue elephant Efficiently blocks most new power creeped power b****s you mention without a blink. Not one. At least Ragavan blocks harvest wurm... can be....

Symmetrical effects that are busted.

Mistakes don't happen in a company worth as much as WotC. They are just garbage with their quality control, or they do it intentionally for sales. How can Deathrite Shaman be banned and the money isn't? Delve was one of those bad ideas along with Phyrexian mana. Then, they decided to put delve and convoke on a card that can be cast from a graveyard in black. And, as for the last part, playing with powerful cards is fun when there is a reward at the end and 56%+ of a format isn't playing some version of the same deck.

Red got more than any other color in MH2 and it was was arguably already the best color in the Format. Red prowess decks helmed by Swiftspear (arguably the best creature in the format) were running rampant before MH2 and they decided to give red MOAR!! Ragavan, Darcy, Fury, and Unholy Heat, no other color got even close to as much love. White got Prismatic Ending and Solitude. Blue got Counterspell and Merfolk (which, admittedly, I love. But those Fish cards are nowhere near Rags and Darcy.). Black got Grief and Void Walker. Green got Endurance, I guess? The overwhelmingly bad design of Ragavan and Darcy alone should get them banned. I challenge anyone to card in the White color pie that is on par with what either Rags or Darcy is doing for one W pip. These cards should be banned before anyone else buys them. And don't even get me started on Urza's Saga... I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds!!!

The proper comparison is not Llanowar Elves to Noble Hierarch, but rather Birds of Paradise to Noble Hierarch.

I dont feel like its power creep i feel like its power shifting. Yes the creatures get more powerfull and powerfull (in general) but the spell get worse. I dont even have to go back to alpha a few years ago 2 mana ramp was normal now its seen as to powerfull and u get only 3 man green ramp spells. Reanimate spells were 2 mana now they are 5 mana. Lightning Bolt to shock. No 2 Mana counters any more.

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"mistakes" you say...

"there’s this illusion among players that balance is an inherently good thing. When you zoom out, you want there to be a dynamic balance among archetypes in Limited or Constructed format, but only at that macro level. On an individual level, you want there to be power imbalances. " Zach Barash, Design of a Card: Jeskai Elder

The two cameras on two sides or the room. No, just no

It's not even funny anymore. Played since 5th edition, stopped on 9th edition, came back in 2012 with modern, stopped playing in 2018. Power creep always existed, but it was somewhat sane. Came back recently. It's not even funny. Lose by turn 4 in basically any format. Worse... Sometimes you lose earlier, just not immediatly. Looking at those One Rings, Sheldroeds... rofl.

Probably an unpopular opinion but I like powerful and more powerful cards

Sorry Ashley you're not taking into consideration that all of your original cards are now completely obsolete so you literally have thousands of dollars worth of cards that are now useless furthermore it gets harder and harder to even play Magic eventually the cars will be so convoluted and or complicated that you will not be able to a two-player game of magic on a normal size table the entire game eventually we'll have to switch to a digital format just to calculate effects and abilities then all of your magic cards will be obsolete it is fun and exciting for now eventually it will be unplayable

These guys are annoying