2020 Magic in a nutshell (I mean squirrels are coming ya)

 2020 Magic will likely be remembered... for better or for worst haha.

2020 has been a very powerful year for Magic the Gathering. I like it. But loathe it at the same time.

2020 is the year WOTC/Hasbro literally took the bull by the horns(haha minotaurs.. nvm) for many standing issues with the game.

Whether they were successful is debatable... but as always debate on the Internet is pretty useless an toxic most times, so take it as you will. All I am saying is what the majority says is not always healthy or correct. And alot of times it depends on which stakeholder you are :(player/collector/speculator/shareholder/random dude/gameplayzenmaster/biased xxx format player) --> yep you get the gist, its quite a mess of demands to fulfill.

I like what happened in 2020 alot. Though I really have no time to play nowadays. But things I like:

1) There is actually a functioning Minotaurs deck (several if you count historic)! There a legacy one called toot toot. And another varient which uses a painter's servant shell. Unfortunately there goes didgeridoo's price.

2) Price crash of standard and modern (kinda) cards. Some cards I can finally get without feel bads. Of course some other cards I own also went down... but not all so it "kinda"... for instance I snagged a few nice trinispheres at a nice price. Chalice is still obscene though.

3) Companions! Yes I like companions alot. I think the nerf is stupid high, but necessary to assuage the whiners. The only companion possibly worthy of a nerf is Lurrus. The rest were just bad players in my opinion. Oh and even in the case of Lurrus. The winner of a Vintage tournament held online when Lurrus was legal? Clue: it was not a Lurrus deck that won. Yes the field was saturated by Lurrus decks, but as always, you want to get ahead in life? Think. Don't just follow. Following is good, to get the feels, to understand. But most people mostly follow blindly. True in Magic, True IRL. Anyways even with the nerf, I think Companions are a very good and powerful concept, and is still playable. Just a little different now. Oh no one is playing them? Yep this is the same old same old group think that magic players are famous for by now.  ... Exactly. No one plays so nobody plays. Cool story ppl. You do you.

4) Oko! I love Oko! Seriously, control was shit for so long. Oko gave a shot in the arm. Sure WOTC misfired a little and Oko is a little strong. And one of the plusses could have been a minus. But as is I like it and I think its okay. But given the group thing bois running around, sure I could see it banned. Enjoy your current gameplay all you okoers =D. I just love it. With Oko around ppl dun complain about brainstorm so much. Its funny. Astrolabe is another funny story. I think all the modern complainers just shifted over to Legacy. Which is funny really. (actually I did not really see Oko as a big complain in modern, more standard, historic, but modern got hit and legacy was spared). I think Oko was a case of WOTC wanting to design a strong UG and going over board a little. Yes I use the word a little.  Because if you just make tiny nerf tweaks to Oko he would be less susceptible to whiners. Oko just received one too many positive tiny tweaks from his colour cost XUG instead of UUG or GGU, or even 4cc. And his starting loyalty could have been weaker say 2 or 3 instead of 4. 4 is strong. Because you plus it and it is 5. Thats a stretch for red and any aggro to take down the planeswalker. But I think that was the plan. They wanted to keep Oko on board. And seriously Oko is only strong if he sticks around. 

Issue that WOTC addressed or ermm are guilty? of

There are a few issues:

1) Greed

OMG I am so tired of all the products. Sure sure its not for me. I get it. I truly truly get it. I will see myself out now.

2) Card Equity

Reprints! This is why I get my lovely trinitspheres and why errmm rings of brighthearth get decimated. Thats fine and really it is inevitable.

But it is something WOTC will want to be very very careful. How long will the whales keep buying reprints that devalue their current cards. Not very long. Not at the rate they are churning out stuff.

Of course maybe that is the plan? Maybe WOTC does want to print everything to the ground? Its not too clear. What is clear though is that WOTC is now very aware of card equity due to scarcity and want to take advantage of it through reprints (finally!).

Buyer beware though, especially if you my friend are a flippin' flipper. Go do stocks if money is your game, quit messin' with us mtg random dudes. 

3) Power levels

Standard has been boring for oh so long. Modern too. In fact Modern has been baaned to oblivion. So the recent surge in power levels in 2019 and 2020 cards is huge. To me it is a huge plus. For new players this is actually wonderful. Your cards are modern relevant, maybe even legacy relevant if you are willing to brew or take some losses. For the first time! In 2 decades or so.... Your cards are not toilet paper after rotation. (You can still use it as toilet paper if you so please of course). Enjoy this gift. Things are likely to rev down again with all the whining. For those who played in the 5-10 years pre 2019.... its a little not so good since power levels were lower then. 

4) Format relevance

For the first time in a long long while! Vintage is shaken! Legacy is shaken! I see this as a good thing! For the first time in a long long while there are new decks and innovation. I think the legacy crowd as a whole are taking it quite well. Oko haters are about 50%, I suspect they are from modern or something. Thing is Oko is not insumountable. Just like the Eldrazi before, they will be assimilated as part of the meta. But having so many new cards, Force of negation, force of vigor, astrolabe, Oko, once upon a time, etc etc. That is pretty awesome. I do not believe the current decks in Legacy are completely outmoded, they may need to be tweaked and luckily I know Legacy players are an imaginative lot. More importantly they play for the sake of playing. This is why you see people playing their pet decks even though it is not tier one, and usually they are good at it. Because they do not just copy and play, but they understand their deck and are optimised and are able to TWEAK and ADAPT. Something many players cannot seem to do. I do not expect this roil of new cards to persist, given the backlash... though alot depends on what WOTC cares about. Do they want new blood in Legacy (both cards and players), if so? There WILL be REPRINTS (see 2) and there will be new powerful cards (see 3). Which is very exciting for me and less so for people who do not want the meta to change. But for what its worth, I do not think Legacy decks will be easily outmoded as opposed to say modern decks.

5) Collectibility

OMG collector editions. So greedy see 1).  Whats with the collector editions? It is partly 1) partly 2). It deals with WOTC's need for GREED to grease the wheels ya. It also deals with card equity. Think about it why do masters sets sell? They sell be cause of card equity. Because cards in the set are deemed as scarce or expensive or both. Silly whales buy lots of it and if they like expensive cards they just beached themselves. For the rest of the world though they should be thankful for the existence of silly whales, blubber being useful and all. So where does collector edition sets come in. Collector edition sets are masters sets but in advance. Imagine ALL rares, ALL mythics (instead of only a select few from old sets as with current master sets) are being printed as masters sets. That is what is happening now with collectors edition. The dollar rares now get to be printed as premium cards in a "masters" set, now Kaldheim for instance may not have any chase cards! But it does not matter, as all the rares and mythics will already have its card equity milked via the collector's edition. I think its brilliant. It solves WOTC's problem of shrinking card equity as they keep reprinting. It also solves the reprint problem. Essentially WOTC is double selling the cards, so now right off the bat you have two printings of a new card. This solves the reprint problem somewhat as cards are now abundant and its hard for prices to increase. This lack of increase in price is BAD for WOTC, but it is solved buy the fact that the Collectors edition is already premium! The card's equity is already milked. Brilliant.

Where does this put use for collectors? It is actually good, since now cards are cheaper, and you have many things to collect. But it also means players need to have more self restraint and buy only what you need.More and more players/collectors will need to decide how much of a player they are and how much of a collector they are. How important is bling? Perhaps Collector edition is for you! Perhaps Collectors edition is NOT for you and you should stick to draft or singles. (the good news is singles are now cheaper!) Its terrible for speculators though. And I think thats a good thing, I think speculators are bad for the game seriously.

6) Playability/Gameplay

I see pathways! And pioneer and historic. What are all these ? These are attempts to fix gameplay. I love legacy and as modern grows in power, I love it too. But more and more people hate modern for its power and flux (cue: modern has always been in flux yo) , so in comes modern and historic. I have no feelings for pioneer. I only know Temple of Nyx is pricey because of it, so I like it. But I love historic, I lose so much in it because I refuse to throw money in, but I got some decent tribal decks, but I am digressing. I think what historic and pioneer represent is another attept to reset the power of magic gameplay. In the old online MMORG games it will be like rebooting the server so everyone restarts with new stats, except this time the game/format rules are diffeerent because the cardpool is different. Specifically... no fetch lands. Thats huge. brainstorm is good because of fetch lands. Any non-basic land with swamp, plains, mountain,island,forest are stronger than any basic land because of fetchlands. This makes pathways better (in pioneer and historic) or at least less weak. 

Another aspect of playability is similar to 4), they are printing shitloads of cards that are eternal relevant. Kudos to that, but probably not good for players who hate change (and its not even change if their decks are not completely outmoded). People like to use the term "soft-rotation", that is only true if you roll over and do not adapt your decks. I believe Legacy players and Vintage players are better than that.

7) Social Acceptability?

This year also saw WOTC banning cards like Crusade or Invoke Prejudice for being depictions of racism.... not much to say here. But this year has quite a few upheavals so i guess its natural for WOTC to do this. Here is the full list

Have a good 2021 everyone :) Happy New Year!