The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made In Magic: The Gathering (2019) 

Thanks for everything you do prof, the channel was awesome this year.

Tolarian Community College I fell out of MTG around Nemesis reasons too numerous to mention. Only to pick it back up this year thanks to some friendly players. I hope that you continue your coursework because a rundown at TCC is exactly what I need to get back those long lost MTG chops. Thanks Prof, and Happy New Year!

You did a great job this year Professor! Happy New Year! 😀

Kool, keep up the great work. Your presentations on Magic are by far irreplaceable, I appreciate your style, information, perspective and opinion. Here's to a great 2020 for you and your family. Thanks! ;)

Prof you’re probably the single reason I’m ever going to bother reading any of the tie-in books. Unrelated to the video I guess, but thanks for a great year/decade.

he has no idea what's to come...

@@j.p.rogers6731 The eldrazi will be here in July, I can feel it...

"people have work, people have school" well this video didn't age well LOL

It just keeps getting worse chief

Still crying in 2020

its his catchphrase I imagine a doll with a string would say that if he had one.

@@gamefreak3072 Oooh I want one now :3

Garrett you should send that to the prof. I’m sure he’d love to crib your notes.

@@andrewboyko8304 And to Rudy from Alpha Investment. He might be interested as well

Seriously though. It seems like exactly the kind of thing they would enjoy. Plus it might get you onto the show for a game or two.

Passion breeds quality :)

What did you lose? Was it perhaps not lost, but just turned into an elk?

This seems like the thing DesolaterMagic would say

Samuel Parent it’s banned everywhere? Thought it was just pioneer and standard?

@@The_Murder_Party and brawl, but I don't know what the 4th one is

@@The_Murder_Party it's tearing modern apart right now, I'd be surprised if it wasn't banned soon

"Why isn't it a dragon?"

but oko is a fixable mistake that was unintentional, a complete failure of arena brawl is not easy to fix with bans

Der Redstone_Pro I’m just memeing btw 😂👌

Seto Kaiba I mean the +1 is 6 words too short.

@@heirkaiba ok

Wtf

Really?

@@ernestonapoles4556 I'm not sure that it was 100% confirmed but www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/07/judges-announce-new-judge-academy-will-organize-independent-from-wizards-of-the-coast/ You have to pay a yearly license fee to be a judge now according to this article.

Like to get certified or to work at events?

Agreed I finished it with that and then he said meme :'(

Immediately came to the comment section for this post. Smh, prof.

Guilty.

Your comment is now a 3/3 elk with no abilitys.

I get it. kudos for the wordplay. but oko is definitely no joko. my local play group thought I was crazy when he was spoiled because of the lack of spoiled food interaction. I told them there would be plenty. after all, it was a new mechanic and could be expected to be pushed hard. but, even without that interaction, it was easy to tell he was broken. picked up a playset at around 18 bucks when he dropped, even after the bans, still happy with my pickup. power creep will see him unbanned eventually. even if not, still happy for the commander staples.

He is rocking that beard though

See, I was hoping for "I feel like I just escaped Nyx"

That's the line at which I hit Like.

HARRY POTTER FOR LIFE

Thought of Dr. Kimble.

Hii Merchant I love your videos!

I don't know what but it would be awesome to see you two do some colab of some sort. ^^

Woah it’s actually you Merchanttt

Upping this, because so agreed and so happy to hear it from a noted voice like the Professor.

Yeah. This is the first i have heard about that. Pretty lame.

I hope that was on purpose!

The song of my people.

Wait, there's nothing planned for Theros? I've pretty much dropped out of Magic some months ago

No story for the upcoming set at all? Shame. I prefer going to RU-vid for each planes story. There are amazin videos out there that tell the story with decent voice actors. Sort of like an audiobook

Yeah, I was like today I'm going to go home and play some arena and then I'm like ...but I can't play brawl. Meh maybe doing something else. If I'd be able to play brawl I'd try grind a bit for rarecards I'd use in brawl... but alas :/

Yeah, all I do is rush 4 wins with UW Flyers and then log off and hope I got a good chunk of the daily "play whatever" quest. Just want to stock up for Theros which I might have a bit of fun with in the beginning before black-devotion tears up everything.

Buying packs makes sense but placing microtransactions everywhere tends to make people not want to bother nowadays.

They want to make it a mobile game, it's not for longevity otherwise they would have turned mtgo into arena. Which btw is mtgo dead now?

And i mean mobile game in the sence that it's like clash of clans and aimed to extort money from you at every turn

Yup

This is so true all the hype they had atound this huge battle and the story telling for it was just horrible

The prequel chapters I think were actually pretty good, it just sucks they came out months after the set.

They need to, hire new story people good story people. And just start all over, with new characters and do it right on a new world, make you care about the going ons and regions in that world much like all the sets that took place in dominaria. Let's get away from the jacetice league. Flash forward 500yrs Or something.

Commandersofthecoast honestly I like the way he looks a lot more now

WotC: * releases Theros * No.

youre high. wotcs just gonna keep pushing this dumpster fire further down consumers throats

My boy only makes videos now to keep the lights on.

W e l p

I feel like that's their MO. Rather than cancel a thing, they replace it with a shittier version, then let it limp around for a few years before nobody even cares when they finally nix it completely.

Not so sold it's all WotC. Remember, kids. WotC is owned by a parent company.

*Product succeeds* Wizards: "What can we change about this product in the future to ensure it fails?"

@@KingBobXVI That fits the masters series so well. Wish that I could have gotten more than just masters 25 when I got into the game, cause they sound amazing on paper

^ this actually

Booklets??

I came back a month ago from an 18yr hiatus, the lack of *any* written instruction booklet in anything was the rudest change.

It's nice for when nobody around you plays.

It's 1. More accessible, as some people don't have any local game stores near them, especially outside the US 2. Cheaper, considerably - I got into Magic with Arena. I really loved it, and looked into getting into paper - only to find that any of the decks I liked in Arena, none of which are even competitive ones, will cost me in the hundreds, only to then become useless for the main format a year later. In Arena I can play those decks for free.

There are 2 game stores in my country, that's it. I play Arena almost daily, and have not spent any money nor do I plan to. I play standart to get my daily gold, then draft once in a while. It keeps my skills in check for when I actually play in an LGS during prerelease

It's the only way to play when you want if you live in bumfuck-nowhere or your country only has LGS in bigger cities 3+ hours of driving away.

Playing arena isn't the only way to play magic. Spelltable.com (which is surprisingly absent from Google searches) let's you use a Webcam, and you could just use discord. Obviously requires knowing/finding a digital group, but I'd rather spend $150 for a commander deck and be done with it, than to pay $200 per 6 months for packs for wildcards for a format that will make those decks rotate out. Just get creative 😃

Oof.

"That play MTGA"* They need to make it easy to add people you have played against. I'm sure they are worried about BM but after accepting a request it's an easy 'Remove Friend'

baerleon but it’s 100 percent the way a lot of people get into the game most of the mtg players i know were originally yugioh players who went to game stores where mtg had a solid community and there was some level of deck variety

@200StringGuitar Dude, wtf is wrong with you? You can be pissed at something or someone, or disagree, but seriously... Don't tell people to kill themselves. You have no idea how that effects people, and it's just such unneeded venom in life

@@n0obz27 to be fair that dude kinda deserved it. you shouldnt be toxic to others if you dont want others to be toxic to you

@Peter Johnstone 16 sets that have not been implemented at some point of arena's life. Not an easy task, and probably impossible to actually play if you can only get the cards via wildcards. I kinda agree, it's borderline impossible to do well.

@Peter Johnstone Not really difficult. Just time-consuming. If their card engine is as robust as they initially advertised you could probably get a set programmed every month. Maybe quicker if they were to out-source the work to some of the plethora of developers out there with Unity experience. Every two months or so just release another set or two to the public to keep an expanding format fresh until it eventually matches up with Pioneer proper. Would probably take 2-2.5 years but almost certainly worth the investment.

Jojoforpres It's funny that your comment is equally as true if you write "... WotC is the *bad* guy only wanting the best for themselves."

@Peter Johnstone we're not expecting this to be done over night, we're asking for the historic format to be expanded over the course of years until eventually it and pioneer become one

Arena is intended to monetize your addiction like a shady mobile game. You honestly shouldn't play it. Either be whale, or a punching bag for whales. That's your only purpose on arena.

Spell slingers are not free. Welcome Decks are free.

@@vmcampos Sorry I meant welcome Decks.

Are we surprised?

It's been a hell of a year.

It really sucks. I started playing on the back end of 2018, and just went to my first FNM. I got a Lyra Dawnbringer out of the promo pack, and it felt awesome! Then, couple of FNM's later, they just had no more promos. No packs, no cards, nothing. We either got store credit or packs. That was in early February. Now with the year coming to a close, I have amassed about $70 store credit, I have no idea what to do with it. I love playing paper so much, spending a night with friends... WOTC thinks they are making people go to arena by trying to kill of FNM, but with no multiplayer brawl, no people drafts, and only (normally) standard, why would I? I would just go play WoW or Runescape with my friends. Our expectations were low, but come on.

Yautja Prime of course not. I love playing paper magic at a semi competitive level. I’m just saying that for the longest time, there have been fnm promos, why did they have to end?

Arena is intended to monetize your mtg addiction, it uses the mobile game business model and the more legit players leave. The more it doubles down on disgusting micro transaction. Don't play arena

@@blaze556922 bullshit! It's totally about showing up and having fun and playing the game with the awesome expectation to at least get something out of the ordinary. It costs them almost nothing to make a promo card available for Friday night magic. The whole reason for its existence was as an incentive for players to show up. And it was a great incentive at that!

Ignoring all the fun new play modes does seem a bit unfair, especially as the prof got upset at the start that one was made difficult to play conveniently. Personally I’m loving Historic and enjoying the break from draft (although it doe mean I’m not getting the free gems back I used to)

Those showdown packs were the only reason i played regularly at my LGS

LopsidedMoz they were excellent. Honestly don’t see a reason to play standard anymore i never cared that much about competitive play and like variety so showdown packs were legit the only reason i played standard

Seems like a brain deck mistake along with wotc decision to give complete ass fnm promos.

I think it's safe to say all Mythic Editions were opportunistic cash-grabs, executed via one of the worst customer services ever known. Greed demons are real.

After clicking this video, I kept looking to my lovely framed uncut sheet waiting at each number for him to mention it. I honestly think the scale of this blunder is one of the biggest in MtG's history, which makes me wonder how Professor skipped over it.

i don't think the concept was bad, which i think is why it got glossed over. they were high prices, but you, generally, got something of value from them, and as such they fall in behind Throne's Deluxe edition. Wars in particular got JTMS and Ugin. if you are referring to the issue with orders not being processed properly, i think that falls under scandal-esq scenarios which he pointed out he wouldn't touch on. i flag them as such because it was a problem on e-bays end if i recall. i think where they went wrong with mythic was they didn't make it a print-to-demand instead of the limited quantity. they had to expect that with two cards that were as expensive as those two, even completely ignoring the other 6 walkers in the pack. On their own Ugin and Jace at the time pretty much covered the full value of the box. even now, a normal (not mythic edition) copy of JTMS is sitting over 100$, and ugins around 50. if someone is going to spend the money for those cards and they hear about this, why not spend the extra 100$ or so and get 6 extra walkers, (two of whom are also standard-playable) and a bunch of extra booster packs to boot? because the quantities were so limited, they should have known the servers would start exploding. but someone also screwed up when the posting went up, so they had to back it out and put it back in, but that was also screwed up, so the people who were first didn't actually end up with the product. though it was pretty much a coin flip whether you got into the server on any given attempt

The more I see the more I wonder if Arena was just meant to be a short-term cash grab. Maybe they envisioned it to vacuum up a ton of money for a few years, and then be "Duels-of-the-Planeswalker'ed" away. There's not a lot I see that suggests it's a long-term investment.

The truth is at this point they're taking advantage of addicted players. They're monetizing addiction. Arena is like a disgusting mobile game, with the benefit of being based on one of the greatest IP's created. Anybody can make a clash of clans rip-off. But only wotc can make mtg. The way they continuously churn out overpriced premium product and sets in a year. They're just milking whales. I saw what they're doing and took a break.

​@@AnimationRevolution just like magic duels that sold packs and was advertised on steam quite a bit with thousands of players.

Secret lair TWD intensifies

So did my tablet

And my axe!

Don't be. Think of it as way of saving money for other important things!

I'm tired of watching spoilers and being hyped for it to end discovering that because I find the product overpriced (like ridicously annoying unjustified priced) that it appears that it is because in fact this product is not made for customers like me. So much product this year that felt in this category. Products that were desirable but that ended not for my budget. And i'm sure that it will be the same for 2020, I can already smell the Commander:Legends being sold over 10$/booster and being disapointed by it after one year of wait and expectations (hope i'm wrong). That said, I will not put things on hold, but I will for sure take a step back and being less invested in the game and choose more wisely products I buy in. I love the surprise that boosters offer but i'm drawn into buying singles over the past years. My purchase habits have changed thanks to WoTC and all their premium products (and even the regular products have increased a lot in price where I live).

Im on standby too. Im waiting for them to crash and burn, and another company to buy up the IP. Wotc is just awful. And i hope this new company makes note of how wotc failed

It really is a great game. It's anchored by the players. Making some friends playing it will help moderate what WotC does. Beware WotC decision making if you care for your money however.

hasbro exec: what's this new 'format' thing i've been hearing about arena dev: hey it's called brawl, it's pretty great, it's like commander except - exec: would people stop buying packs dev: ? exec: would people spend less money on packs if they played more brawl dev: i mean, probably, strictly speaking, but - exec: don't let them play it dev: but we programmed it and everything exec: don't let them play it!

😂

@@matahari9858 I want to hear someone give an official statement as to why it is only Wednesdays. I would be GENUINELY impressed if whatever was said wasn't downright offensive.

Find some friends and play oathbreaker. Grow those little formats that wizards hasn't tried to make money off of yet.

i had a class on wednesday, immediately followed by work. as someone who also closes tuesday nights, i pretty much slept until i had to get ready for class. usually if i got any games in at all, it was me playing a couple matches during class. im not a great student, but i passed the class with a B. i'm not OPPOSED to playing oathbreaker, but it's something i have very limited interest in, in part because the style of deck i would want to play isn't very functional within singleton formats. i can play grixis planeswalkers, which is permissible, but i really like mono-red burn. which doesn't work nearly as well in singleton formats

I thought I was the only one! The thank you really hits it close to home

So to add to my initial thoughts, I don't really care about most of the points in this video. For me the number one point of magic is to be fun, and because I don't play arena, this really just entails wotc making good choices in regards to printings and bannings. In this regard 2019 has been a real up-and-down season. The war of the spark planeswalkers are hugely problematic in terms of gameplay as they either homogenise decks (see Karn, the Great Creator) or place unreasonable and unenjoyable deck-building constraints for entire formats (baby tef and Narset). Then came modern horizons with Hogaak who essentially ruined the format for a time but once he was banned, horizons probably had a neutral impact on the format with cool or healthy cards like the forces, soulherder and FoF balancing out less-fun cards like Wrenn and Six, astrolabe, coatl and plague engineer. After that came the banning of faithless looting and the unbanning of SFM, this (for about a month) made modern by far the best magic format (in my biased opinion) and was truly a joy to play. After Eldraine's release the enjoyability of the format has been gradually declining with the main culprits being OUaT, Oko and veil of summer. It has been painful watching the careful pruning wizards has been conducting on other formats (pioneer) while modern continues to slide downhill, and it is a shame to not get at least a thought from the prof here. Baseline: overall 2019 has actually been an incredibly poor year for play-design and this is one of the greatest possible threats to magic as a game. If it's not fun people won't play it.

Oko is 70% of the meta, hope he soon gets the hammer.

@@filippodardi2180 I'm honestly yet to meet someone who doesn't want him banned :)

@@adavidavis2762 As much as he enforces the grindy, powerful gameplay people wants Modern to have, he makes the whole thing revolve around himself. That's problematic.

As someone who doesn't play modern, what decks does it see play in? How is it plaguing the format?

I can only agree with this, and im sure so many people can too. I'm not paying 2x rent for a card game

......no blizzard did create good stories now they are shit see BFA for current example

Except you are an Overwatch fan of course...

Overwatch is just like anything else by Blizzard that isn't an RTS; overhyped mediocrity

@@mindustrial Woah there pal Diablo games are good once the expansion drops.

@@mindustrial Finally someone gets it. This Blizzard is not the Blizzard we knew and loved 10+ years ago. And Overwatch was the biggest dissapointment for me in the last 5 years.

And he is still broko and currently ruining even Modern. imagine that, he is so broken that he ruins everything he touches except Vintage. WotC should fire their entire playtesting department.

@@RiseInAfterlife I don't play modern but I heard some madmen are using Oko in infect decks.

@@elviejopotter He is used in a huge amount of decks, Urza, Infect and so on. Sultai Deaths Shadow even became a thing due to Oko. ... A Deck that has no interest in keeping a high life total whose easiest way to lethal is with Temur battlerage abandoned both fo those for Oko. As a Jund Death's Shadow player it justs disgusts me. However he is used in way more decks. You can say he is played in anything that includes blue and green which adds up to almost 40% of decks running Oko.

@@RiseInAfterlife I guess the only hope to get back an nearly state of "wealthy enviroment" in to Ban Oko in a Gitaxian Probe level and make an statement of "never doing this kind of stuff never Again".

@@elviejopotter Oko is at Vintage power level, the only Format he did not ruin when touching it. As such: Oko is a Vintage card that was printed in a Standard set. Fire everyone playtesting at WotC as they are clearly incompetent. Also fire the one who greenlit Oko..... You know what? Also fire the one who designed it. Fire Mark Rosewater.

I got 3/4 at Target for $20 at the hype of the craze.

GamerBear I actually did legwork, asked in the back and told them I’d definitely buy 1 of each. They checked stock as their vendor was lazy and pulled out 3/4 lol

Will Will maybe that’s the problem with you trying to “invest”. Hope you take a loss bro

mlouden03 I live in Montreal. The targets closed down years ago and the Walmart’s don’t get products like that on the shelves. It only ever gets booster packs, those mystery cube ripoffs and planeswalker decks.

Maybe Prof is a Guild Wars fan?

it lasted just 2 days in my PC, with around a total of 2 hours of play

@@xChikyx I was playing it a fair bit in beta and from a purely technical standpoint I really liked it - they did a good job turning MtG into a digital experience that actually feels smooth to play. However, all the mobile game esque fuckery with gems as second currency, the terrible "crafting" system and lack of options besides the standard format just killed it for me and it seems WotC has just been doubling down on that sort of stuff since I left rather than making real improvements.

@@Isolanporzellator well, WotC are desperstely trying to get money where they can... i'm not surprised