I went in skeptical, knowing you were carefully curating to make a point, but you convinced me. I wasn't familiar with Drew Tucker at all and I *love* his art, and I'd never seen any of the *good* Quinton Hoover art from before Wahtzee tried to force him to be something he wasn't. (I never understood why he had such ardent fans, tbh.)
I started playing just before Innistrad, and the really scary thing is that the poster image of Liliana of the Invisible Veil somehow became so mundane that I didn't notice how her clothing is completely unaligned with her body. It took the shocking comparison you set up between her and the less tampered-with depictions of women in order to make me see the strangeness. Yikes. *cringing at my former self*
This post illustrates exactly why I'm often in two minds about Magic.
See, I have a dirty little secret (at least by the standards of people who've been playing since Fourth Edition): I actually like a lot of aspects of the midrange push in design. I've always liked creatures, especially the ones like dragons and hydras and wurms, before I even knew what the term midrange meant. I've always despised the "lol I counter or kill everything for 40 turns" decks, despite the fact that I've played them myself on occasion - I was winning but I hated the way I was winning. And apart from some recent vomit-inducing monstrosities like the Ravnica-Theros Esper Control deck that actually seriously tried to deck people with Psychic Spiral or anything with Elspeth, Sun's Champion, I've seen a lot to be encouraged by recently. Hell, I did a little dance when I saw that Hero's Downfall costs three - you're not in my playgroup, so you don't know how angry I was that Doom Blade was one of M10's headline cards, and how hard it was for me to convince people that it has fewer drawbacks than Terror.
And yet . . .
One of the things that attracted me to Magic in the first place was the aesthetics; the way that each card was a little window through which one could see something fanciful and remarkable and beautiful. I can remember a time when card art was more unique, when it didn't have to use massive amounts of the color corresponding to its mana cost, when not every person had to be waving their arms around in front of an enormous explosion.
I want to play, in the mechanical sense, with (most of) the sorts of creatures and spells they've been designing recently. But I want to play, in the flavor and aesthetics sense, with (most of) the sorts of creatures and spells that we haven't seen for quite a while now. I want these two strands of history to converge in Magic, but I doubt that they ever will.
RIP Magic Art - You were what drew me to the game, not the monsters, not the simplistic mechanics, not tapping two drops. The art. Now, it's graphics modified to fit one man's boring comic book vision of blahland.
And I will always hate you, one sided, ally pretending, rasta "slivers". You don't effect both sides of the board, you make the mirror match boring and stupid, everything about you is wrong. If you've evolved, why are your abilities more linear and boring than eve before? Why does everything in NWO have to feel like an advanced game of War solitaire?
Worth 1,000 words. Always nice to have criticism and commentary detached from Wizards corporate spin.
ReplyDeleteas an aside relating to your other posts, you are funny.
I went in skeptical, knowing you were carefully curating to make a point, but you convinced me. I wasn't familiar with Drew Tucker at all and I *love* his art, and I'd never seen any of the *good* Quinton Hoover art from before Wahtzee tried to force him to be something he wasn't. (I never understood why he had such ardent fans, tbh.)
ReplyDeleteI started playing just before Innistrad, and the really scary thing is that the poster image of Liliana of the Invisible Veil somehow became so mundane that I didn't notice how her clothing is completely unaligned with her body. It took the shocking comparison you set up between her and the less tampered-with depictions of women in order to make me see the strangeness. Yikes. *cringing at my former self*
This post illustrates exactly why I'm often in two minds about Magic.
ReplyDeleteSee, I have a dirty little secret (at least by the standards of people who've been playing since Fourth Edition): I actually like a lot of aspects of the midrange push in design. I've always liked creatures, especially the ones like dragons and hydras and wurms, before I even knew what the term midrange meant. I've always despised the "lol I counter or kill everything for 40 turns" decks, despite the fact that I've played them myself on occasion - I was winning but I hated the way I was winning. And apart from some recent vomit-inducing monstrosities like the Ravnica-Theros Esper Control deck that actually seriously tried to deck people with Psychic Spiral or anything with Elspeth, Sun's Champion, I've seen a lot to be encouraged by recently. Hell, I did a little dance when I saw that Hero's Downfall costs three - you're not in my playgroup, so you don't know how angry I was that Doom Blade was one of M10's headline cards, and how hard it was for me to convince people that it has fewer drawbacks than Terror.
And yet . . .
One of the things that attracted me to Magic in the first place was the aesthetics; the way that each card was a little window through which one could see something fanciful and remarkable and beautiful. I can remember a time when card art was more unique, when it didn't have to use massive amounts of the color corresponding to its mana cost, when not every person had to be waving their arms around in front of an enormous explosion.
I want to play, in the mechanical sense, with (most of) the sorts of creatures and spells they've been designing recently. But I want to play, in the flavor and aesthetics sense, with (most of) the sorts of creatures and spells that we haven't seen for quite a while now. I want these two strands of history to converge in Magic, but I doubt that they ever will.
If someone would know about mannierism, they would not criticize lilianas pose
ReplyDeleteJust because an art style existed that didn't care about realism or perspective doesn't mean that awkward, contorted poses are a good thing.
ReplyDeleteRIP Magic Art - You were what drew me to the game, not the monsters, not the simplistic mechanics, not tapping two drops. The art. Now, it's graphics modified to fit one man's boring comic book vision of blahland.
ReplyDeleteAnd I will always hate you, one sided, ally pretending, rasta "slivers". You don't effect both sides of the board, you make the mirror match boring and stupid, everything about you is wrong. If you've evolved, why are your abilities more linear and boring than eve before? Why does everything in NWO have to feel like an advanced game of War solitaire?
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