Molluscs of the Multiverse: molluscan diversity in Magic: The Gathering
4 comments
·August 24, 2025pandemic_region
pelagicAustral
I still play MTG:O and Arena sometimes... Back in the day, I started Playing in the Odyssey block and left the game by the Kamigawa block, nothing personal, just life and time to move on...
Right now it is like what happens when a product has been around for long enough, has reach popularity, and had had to reinvent itself and remain relevant by branching into way to many timelines. Something like what happened to WWE (nee WWF), in the early 90's it was just the one show, and remained stable during the Attitude era, after that they came up with crossovers, branching shows like Smackdown, repurposing wrestlers, increasingly crazier storylines, and more and more artifacts to remain relevant and squeeze as much revenue as it was possible...
MTG is just about the same, they are currently doing what started as parallel blocks with Universes Beyond but that are now merged into the traditional Standard storyline and it makes no sense, abilities are all over the place and they are now being rebranded and sprinkled with some "whatever helps the block" narrative that is just tiresome... Murders at Karlov Manor, for example, introduced some ridiculous mechanics about "suspecting" creatures... I mean, come on!
On the other hand they have caved for politics and at least 20% of the art doesn’t even make sense any more, in a card game... a fantasy card game... things don't make sense any more.
It's tiresome, and it's impossible to grasp the game any more...
belmead
Power creep. I stopped playing in 2004 or so, and the number of expansions since then has been a tad more than 20. And the number of traits and abilities has skyrocketed.
flappyeagle
2/1 for W was extremely efficient in your day. I miss those days
I used to play MtG back in the nineties. I don't know how many expansions there have been since Revised came out but it must be more than twenty. I wonder how do they keep from duplicating cards? There's only so many traits. Every trait combination that makes sense must exist on a card by now?