I'm Gavin Verhey from Wizards of the Coast, and I'm a principal designer on Magic: The Gathering - meaning I create what those wild cardboard rectangles do! Just a few projects I've led include Battlebond, Mystery Booster, and Commander Legends.
How does our game get made? Come watch and find out!
I think this is reasonable personally. The idea of a format restricted entirely by rarity has always been pretty janky because it relies on rarity always meaning the same thing. But some sets need to use rarity differently, especially sets like Modern Horizons which are specifically designed to be higher power level, and so banning a few cards out of pauper is absolutely fine. This shouldn't be seen as "FIRE BAD" or "WOTC BAD", just as "sometimes the best way to design around having multiple formats is to ignore some formats".
With the point about life being paid for Ward instead, why not just make every Ward into the "Pay 1 Mana OR Pay 2 life". Ward 2 could be Pay 2 generic mana or 4 life (2 life per mana)?
You went on a 14 minutes TED talk about the history and philosophy of MTG and past erratas but then your conclusion is that since some things in the past have been dealt very poorly and resulted in big impacts to the meta, now you can't change something that makes perfect sense and wouldn't create any major problem? It's not all or nothing man...some things are reasonable and have low impact and others are just gross oversights and design mistakes, like the companion mechanic. Also, the only reason why it would matter to make them Legendary is to have them as commanders and EDH is already a very casual format and most people coudn't care less about the "impact in the greater world of MTG"...heck, most people I know have so many house rules, personal ban lists, they proxy half their decks and while they're at it, they could even proxy these cards with the word Legendary....what yall need to undertsand is that if you guys won't do your job properly, the community will. Being over pedantic over such minor things like these while on the other hand releasing broken cards like Dockside Extortionist is just a disservice to the community and then guess what? The community will refute your claim of authority...of course they will, why wouldn't they? Incompetence and negligence.
Love how he casually opens up a collector's box...while they are being sold up of 200$ being the same f@king cardboard as in normal boosters...wait I almost forgot they raised the price of those too
please, the problem is the ARTIFACT INDESTRUCTIBLE LANDS! ban those lands... you can't keep them cause of ramp boros, ramp jeskai... it's a crime! those colors don't ramp! unban atog! unban disciple!
How to build a MH3 prerelease deck: STEP [1] Grow a money tree STEP [2] Harvest the money from the money tree STEP [3] Come to terms that money trees aren’t actually real STEP [4] Skip the MH3 prerelease altogether
Great guide, but at 70$ per prerelease I am glad I watched this video and the financially mediocre pulls (props to Gavin for not being given a stacked batch on purpose). This was the last nail in the coffin for me - even though I love prereleases the price is not justified in the slightest.
You should be banned from making "creative" decisions that affect the game. It's actually quite impressive the extent this game has taken a complete nosedive thanks to your "creative team"
I mean it is obvious that Gavin has never opened up packs for any store to sort them out to piles as quickly as possible in order to stock up singles quickly :)
Im currently homeless and living out of my car, but this set makes me want to Modern so much! I prostituted myself all week and now I get to go to prerelease and get shit-stomped by the cheaters that pre-ordered and slide their best rares into their decks, this is gonna be so much fun 😊
Since the original Eldraine, I haven't opened a single collector booster I've been happy with. I think after I open my MH3 collector, I'm not getting anymore. I like the concept of the packs tho.
hope you are happy how you destroyed standard with prolonged rotation ... and keep cattering to the mono red noobs, the state of the game is just disgusting right now
I think the sensible thing would be recognizing this prolblem fast enough ( i know hindsight is 20/20), but it shoudl've just been made into uncommon, it wouldn't really impact the limited gameplay, which isn't the reason why modern horizons product exist and get purchased in the first place.
I feel like this was a panic decision, and not giving Ram any chance to see play and prove it deserves to be banned, while being an atypical moment, is a huge feel bad and does set up for even more of this in the future. A Permanent, non Temporary ban is excessive and disappointing.
One of my biggest issues with MH3 is how much it pushes the base power of Magic. I know it’s a tired thing to say, but 10-15 years ago some of these commons would be rares. While old cards certainly had really high highs, the power of the average card is almost astronomically high these days.
MH3 didn't do that though, neither did MH2 or MH1. Powercreep is a steady process, because you need a slight power incline to make people interested in buying new cards. If this hadn't happened, MTG would be a much smaller game now because the only reason to be interested in new cards would be hoping for a retheme of an existing idea. New cards need to be strong enough that they're worth using, and as long as the process there is gradual, as it has been with MTG, it's fine.
I don't think this is bad, at all. In fact I think it's necessary. Issues with the top end aside - not a new problem, as you point out - it's absurd to continue with the idea that 90% of the cards in a set should be junk, just for the sake of one format. It's frustrating to be stuck between picking a rare you want for another format while knowing another uncommon or common is better in the draft environment and useless otherwise (OTJ is reaaaaally bad for that). I'm newish to playing Magic consistently. I have some stacks of cards from Mercadian Masques block and some other trades, but otherwise I just have some precon decks from the last year. I went to MH3 pre-release last night - first one I've ever gone to - and nah, I didn't do too well. But I came out with a whole stack of cards, well beyond just the rares and mythics, that will fit in commander decks I have, or want to brew, or just seem like interesting cards that I'd like to play with in some way. It's vastly more inspiring to collect cards like that, to want to get more and play more.
Completely unnecessary ban as Affinity is perfectly fine & fair where it is at & actually could've used the help. Ban ACTUAL problematic cards like Tolarian Terror.
$70 worth of packs being sold for $100? You’re doing great work Gavin (power creep could be discussed some more) but your shareholder bosses are killing the game.
