Yep, pretty much exclusively. I can't think of anything that I've built for myself would qualify as less than that.


By technicality, I cannot say exclusively, as I do have several decks built to commander specs, though that was born primarily of costs analysis or a way key cards pushed me towards that.
I do not like Commander. It is an invasive species that has strangled out basically every other mode of the game, made worse by Wizards catering to it to push the power level up to more easily monetize it. (As evidenced by recent bans and the bottoming out of the market)

funny thing about it too, if they released a UB for something I've already built in without it, even though it would give me new tech for the deck, I would despise it. If I've put together a deck that flavorfully works while in the constraints of not using cards made for that purpose, I'd view it as too easy to use the new options.


The unfortunate fact of the matter is that I don't count very nearly anything* with the post 8th edition frames as being true to Magic as an IP. It was at the zenith with the Urza-Weatherlight saga and more than anything, it is that aesthetic that I hold as being the crystalization of the game. When Magic had a unique defined identity visually.

I was a card collector during those periods, getting a glimpse into a mystery world, but it wasn't until well after that I started playing the game, ironically when I started reading the books, so it isn't even a lore connection.

*I make a huge exception for Alara. Something about Alara scratches that itch just right.


See, I do understand your perspective, but in a fashion, I'm even more stringent in it's application. Take my goblin deck, for example: it's a Krenko deck. It isn't just the best goblin cards in a stack though, it's a Krenko's Gang deck. Either cards explicitly associated, Ravnican, or Flavor Neutral with appropriate art. Krenko can't associate with a goblin from Skirk Ridge, or bump into Squee, they don't belong in the deck.
So, by rights, then, Universe Beyond should drive me insane. And it does. Unless I like the property (honestly more excited for Final Fantasy than anything first party Magic is coughing up in the next year)
In those situations, Magic becomes a mechanical framework only and any card mixing is going to be flavor neutral. Lara Croft isn't meeting Gandalf on Ravnica to fight Astarion and Ezio over the Phyrexians. Not in my decks.

It's honestly probably because of my layer of immersion that I can segment the outside influences enough to continue to build even with them. Hell, I can't even mix time periods from the same place in a deck of they aren't lore accurate. If someone across from me is mixing Lorwyn and Argoth elves, it's not really any different to me than them mixing Tarkir and Mordor Orcs in my brain in the first place.

The absolute only exceptions I make are really in my 3rd party IP decks where a legendary creature can be used as a proxy for an in world character. Sar'kuar as a stand in for Guldan in my Horde deck, for example.

I by and large agree about the Urza/Weatherlight era being the essence of the visual identity (I remember us having a pretty cool discussion about that very subject a year or so ago in this thread), and I love the throughline (including some little side branches here and there) that most of the post-revisionist (and even some of the pre-rev) material created for the story, with its culmination in Invasion block. Then again, to me personally at least, it wasn't all doom and gloom beyond that point (although I absolutely hated that they changed the frame with 8th Edition back in the day, but that's neither here nor there). If we're talking post-8th Edition specifically, I was super on board with the OG Mirrodin*-Kamigawa-Ravnica era plus Coldsnap, and Time Spiral is probably still my favourite Magic set to this day. The rest of the block was a lot harder to get into beause I didn't really "get" everything they were doing so to speak, and the Mending really alienated me from Magic for quite a while. I still found my fair share of stuff to like after that, especially OG Innistrad, but I agree it felt less and less like Magic and I was really starting to long for the good old days when Dominaria was at the centre of the IP and we still got proper blocks with a paperback novel for every set, not to mention pre-Mending planeswalkers. Luckily, I still had a lot of old story material to track down, read and geek out about, so even most of my post-Mending years were spent strengthening my connection to Magic's "original" IP so to speak.

*I know Mirrodin still has a pretty mixed reception when it comes to its "narrow style guide" (among other things), but I'd honestly argue that OG Mirrodin block still preserved a lot of the elements from the pre-8th Edition era that were so original and so "Magic" about Magic. If some jaded 20-year-old of today looked back at that original planehopping era and compared Mirrodin to Ravnica and Kamigawa, I can easily see Mirrodin being the one that would stick out to them as the one with the most original concept and look. It's rowdy and alien and Pulp and Metal and even kinda "risqué" (at least by today's standards, for whatever that's still worth). And people can rag on the "narrow style guide" for only having one region per colour all they want, but much of the block's visual creativity is really in the artefact cards. And sure, a lot of the visual designs in each colour look kinda samey after a while, but that doesn't mean a lot of what's actually there isn't pretty original in itself. I've been looking through a ton of bulk cards from OG Mirrodin block this year while building another Cube (basically a Peasant Cube with cards from the OG Mirrodin-Kamigawa-Ravnica blocks), and it really struck me how fresh the art in that block looked compared to current Magic.

Since we've already been talking about immersion in the game itself, I think one problem with the Mending that wasn't really talked about nearly enough IMO was that, by changing Oldwalkers to Neowalkers, Magic's gameplay suddenly made a lot less sense. Everything that had been established in pre-Mending lore about how planeswalkers and magic work was tailored specifically to align with the way the game was played. Yeah, players were still supposed to be planeswalkers post-Mending, but it just didn't feel right that it would still take three hits by a Thorn Elemental (a creature the size of a mountain covered with thorns the size of trees) to off a player (aka the life total still being 20 with regards to the P/T of creatures) the way it might have for someone like Urza or Lord Windgrace. That's not even talking about the fact that a Neowalker should have a much harder time summoning powerful creatures to begin with. I know WotC tried to come up with all sorts of flimsy BS excuses to handwave stuff like that, but I didn't find any of that particularly satisfying or convincing. Or take Oldwalkers' ability to automatically take in knowledge about their surroundings (e.g. being able to instantly comprehend how a spell or an artefact works, plus being able to think and react in the fraction of a second). Your average Neowalker (who isn't Dack Fayden) probably would have a hard time figuring out what an Oblivion Stone actually does until it's too late, but I can absolutely buy that an Oldwalker would see their opponent trying to summon the artefact, analyse the underlying magic, understand what it does, and still have enough time to react with a Counterspell, all in the blink of an eye (aka picking up their opponent's card, reading it, and putting another card on the stack to counter it). And at the end of the day, it was simply lame that the Mending took a huge part of the power fantasy of being a planeswalker away from players.

Looping back around to posting my theme decks, providing I don't include any forbidden cards, I'm kind of curious if the themes can be seen strongly enough that participants could guess what they are. Not the specific thing, per se, since that might be obscure, but rather the overall genre of the theme.

I suppose it depends on what kind of themes you use. If the themes are, for instance, "The War of Llanowar," then I have a chance. It the theme is more like "The general malaise of the solitary and destitute fisherman trolling the shoreline in a light rain" then I'm probably not going to get it...

Nah, too Hemingway for my taste.

Let us say the game will work like this:
I will provide a deck list. Your task will be to look over the the cards and determine what kind of setting they belong to, and I'll see how accurate the guess is. You can be as elaborate as you choose to be about describing the vision you have of the place.

Oh wow, you look away for a couple months and suddenly everybody's getting married.
Congratulations Raven!

As for that deck list? I want to say Venetian underworld?

I've quit my job! :

And I'm on a grand jury for the rest of the year

And I've managed to make my computer somewhat-useable by downgrading from the big 1080Ti graphics card I was gifted back to the original graphics card I built it with still no sound out but at least it's not 320p anymore

Hell, I'm just happy to see you!
It was getting to the point I was considering sending you a care package and just praying you hadn't changed addresses.
To your news, considering how miserable your job was making you, huzzah on the grand escape.

Congratulations, Luna! I'm happy for you. I really hope you can find something that makes you consistently and thoroughly happy. You're one of the good ones, and don't let anybody tell you differently.





Thank you!

Congratulations Luna! Have fun being a juror? And presumably some other thing after that which is more fun.

I've been kinda trying to unpack what exactly the Venetian part is to denote, but I haven't forgotten the guess either.

Yeah, this was harder than I anticipated. It definitely has a cityscape/criminal underworld component, and also scavenging a waste sort of component, so I guess it could be Jakkard in a weird way, but if it is meant to denote a particular setting, I might just not be savvy enough to pick it out.

Well, it is a specific setting, but I wasn't expecting you to get it that narrow. Despite being specific, the elevator pitch is sufficient for me.
I'm going to think that the venetian mention was more specifically about the waterways and flooding in Venice, so collectively everybody is on the right track.

So far there are two prominent elements I'm a bit surprised haven't stuck out to anybody, but otherwise, you're getting the vibe right.

Happy Successful Rotation Around Our Sun, Barinellos!

   

I hope your day is at least 5/4s as good as a regular good day, and memorable for all the right reasons!

Thank you guys

I guess I missed the announcement (no surprise when I've been almost completely offline for 6 months) so congrats, Raven! And Murray Burthmas Barinellos!

Yesterday was really my first actual day off, since my last day (technically) at my job was this past Friday, but grand jury duty is every Mon, Wed, Fri, so I still actually have to get up early and go do things half the week

Oh, and they've just started with the traumatization, we had our first visit from the department that specializes in shootings involving police and deaths while in custody; it wasn't too graphic yet, but I expect we'll see some gruesome scenes down the road.

Happy birthday Barinellos

And a merry job quitting to you, Luna? I assume from the smilies attached that this was a happy thing, and it's good to see you around.

Happy birthday Barinellos!

Yeah, I've needed to get out of there almost since I started

I haven't recovered enough yet to know just what to do with myself on these empty days, though it is so good to finally have time to myself again

I've been reminding myself to visit here and try socializing again after retreating for so long, but truth be told I've been deep-diving into RWBY for the last six months by my best estimation which is frankly insane given my tendencies, so I'm not sure how much I'll be dropping in here specifically. For the first time in a long time, I've been hearing the Muses, but I'm pretty sure they're utterly inapplicable here

Thanks, Luna! I appreciate it. And I'm glad you're taking care of yourself.

Seemingly, if given enough time, all my dreams eventually turn into shopping malls.
Not sure what to take from that or how to unpack it.