kill reviews: scars of mirrodin block

When Scars of Mirrodin first came out, I didn’t think much of the set. It seemed to be a bunch of half-hearted callbacks to a not-very-far-gone era that I didn’t particularly want to remember. It’s only more recently that I can look back and see something different: it’s a block not of misty-eyed remembrance of an older set, but a schoolyard bully taunting you by offering you your favorite action figure, only to gleefully destroy it as you watch. This made me reconsider the merits of the block, as I aspire to nothing greater than enjoying the misery of Magic players.

kill reviews: zendikar block

When I was first conceptualizing this project, I knew a few things about how some of the reviews would turn out. There would be a spirited defense of Kamigawa, loving praise of Lorwyn, and the whole thing would center around the Time Spiral installment. I also knew that, while people would agree or disagree with different ideas, my attacks on Zendikar and Worldwake would have me most fiercely battling against popular opinion.

There’s no way around it: I think these sets are bad. Not that there were a few things that, in retrospect, could have been improved in some ways… they are outright bad Magic sets, and somehow, they’ve retained support from wide swaths of Magic players.

kill reviews addendum: planeswalkers

The best way to think about Planeswalkers is that they’re aliens. While they might be printed with the set whose icon adorns them, they are not of the set. They are from elsewhere, and everything about them, from their mechanics to their name and aesthetic highlights their other-ness.

Their debut in Lorwyn certainly stunned the playerbase like a visit from extraterrestrials: a combination of “what the fuck?” to “where do we go from here,” then a lot more thinking, then back to “what the fuck?”

kill reviews: alara block

Hope you enjoyed all the chat about Lorwyn and Shadowmoor, because this thing's about to get sad.

During Alara block’s time in Standard, many tournament players played in events using Jund, in a format where it was the only good deck, in order to grind against other Jund decks that varied by no more than two cards. This illustrated to me the great importance of having non-Magic hobbies to fall back on.

steve argyle: one of the worst artists in magic's history

Most modern Magic art is pretty good. More specifically, it varies from “eh” to “that’s kinda cool,” with very little deviation therein. The strict style guides, combined with art direction that seems to be aimed at creating a generic house style for Magic, have pushed out most of the truly unique artists from the game. There are a few holdovers, namely Terese Nielsen, whose art direction often invents ways of saying “make something that looks like Terese Nielsen art.” There are some recognizable styles, like Raymond Swanland’s “ALL SPIKE EVERYTHING,” the logical conclusion of Magic art trying to be as badass and masculine as possible.

And there’s Steve Argyle, who’s fucking awful.

kill reviews: shadowmoor mini-block

pt i: this isn’t about magic so just scroll on past if that’s what you’re here for

I’ve been procrastinating writing about Shadowmoor and Eventide for a pretty basic reason: I didn’t play with it. This is also true of every block before Urza’s (and I had a pretty sketchy grasp of everything before Onslaught, really), but that was easily solved by looking at the cards, seeing how they influenced things that came later, and introducing people to these usually-obscure objects.

The sets we didn’t play with can influence us more than the sets we did. Missing a year in Magic means not seeing what decks were around, what cards were popular, what mechanics were pushed to the point of everyone being tired of them… we’re more likely to go “ooh, neat” to a tier-one deck from a time in Magic we skipped, because it wasn’t piloted by the obnoxious smelly wheezy dude at FNM for six months straight, but we also miss out on the nostalgia of some tier-two deck that did something completely bizarre.

the ideology of modern bannings

All discussions of format banned and restriction lists are ideological debates. We have different ideas of what cards, decks, and strategies people should be allowed to play, because we have different ideas of what we want Magic to be like.

Modern brought with it a new banned list, comprising far more cards than its predecessor, the seven year Extended format, had before that format was destroyed. These bans were not targeted at making sure one specific deck wasn’t dominant, but rather, ensuring that all the good decks from old Extended wouldn’t be allowed. That metagame consisted of Thopter-Depths, Faeries, Elves, Dredge, Hypergenesis, Affinity, and Scapeshift with Punishing Fire, among other decks. Not only did all of those have crucial cards banned, but lesser decks that weren’t playable had cards banned as well, because they would have been playable in their absence.

Why were all these cards banned? The “turn four” ideology. If a deck consistently wins before turn four, it isn’t allowed in Modern. This is a new development for Magic banned and restricted lists: things are banned not for oppressing tournaments, but because if they show up at a tournament, that is A Bad Thing. Blazing Shoal Infect didn’t even have to win a single tournament before getting struck down by the DCI, because it is ideologically opposed to their idea of what Modern should be.

kill reviews addendum: coldsnap

Coldsnap was not a good idea. The execution has its ups and downs, but the core concept of reviving the themes of Ice Age for a set that “completed” that block was bad.

I reviewed the original Ice Age block as my second review. Ah, how we’ve all grown since then. Remember the good old days, when these reviews would come out on a weekly basis? I’m glad that we’ve moved beyond such trivial preoccupations. Readers from way back when will remember that it was an alternate vision of Magic that emphasized marginal value gains and horribly bad creatures over the sort of immersive flavor-based gameplay that defined Alpha. Its mechanics included snow-covered, which had as many cards that punished the player for using it as it did ones that rewarded it, and the rewards were mediocre at best. There was also cumulative upkeep, which needed no external influence to make it bad.

if you're an MRA, don't play magic

Magic players pride themselves on being an opening, welcoming community. Anyone can enter a Magic tournament at a store they’ve never been to and make a dozen new friends. This is good, until the people the community is being opening and welcoming toward are awful. Then, because Magic players are so nice and kind, they’re unwilling to ever tell people to get out.

A rare exception happened this week. Alex Hinkley wrote a review of a Duels of the Planeswalkers expansion for StarCityGames. Some people, notably Erin Campbell, found out that he happened to be a horrible misogynist who would rant at feminists on twitter and loosely use words like “faggot” in his tweets. I found her research and crossposted it as an article comment to Hinkley’s review. Half an hour later, he’d been fired from SCG.

He’d like to think that the only reason he got fired is that he called one of his friends a faggot. I hope this isn’t the only reason this happened. Personally, I’m happy he’s gone because Men’s Rights Advocates like him are horrible, hateful people that have no place in the Magic community.

There have been some thoughtful long-form pieces about this awful group of likeminded dudes. This is not one of them.

I have no interest in starting a dialogue with MRAs, debating them, or comparing our ideologies in rational discourse. I want them to get out of my community.

If you identify as a Men’s Rights Advocate, don’t play Magic.

If you support the #gamergate “movement,” don’t play Magic.

If you harass feminists over their ideologies, don’t play Magic.

If you search for MRA-related terms and try to argue with women, don’t play Magic.

If you try to argue with anti-racist minority activists about who the real racists are, don’t play Magic.

If you unironically tell people to take the “red pill” when it comes to gender issues, don’t play Magic.

If you defend your right as a straight person to call people a faggot, don’t play Magic.

If you defend your right as a white person to call someone a nigger, don’t play Magic.

If you complain on a regular basis about “Social Justice Warriors,” don’t play Magic.

If you write screeds about how “cultural Marxism” is doing whatever, don’t play Magic.

If you identify as a “pickup artist,” don’t play Magic.

If you are in any way bigoted against minorities, women, trans people, whoever, don’t play Magic.

If your response to the above is that maybe these people agitating about feminism and minority rights are the real bigots, don’t play Magic.

This is not the opening salvo in a long campaign. This is not intended to change the minds of these awful people. This is setting the boundaries of who I want in my game store, in my cube drafts, in my Twitter feed, in my group of friends who play Magic.

It is our duty, as longtime Magic players, to throw out people who don’t belong. If I go to a PTQ and my first round opponent is a known hateful piece of shit, I don’t have to grace them with my presence and treat them like a human being playing a game. I’m standing up and walking out, because they have no business playing a game with me.

There is plenty of room for political diversity in Magic. There are conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists, whatever. That’s fine. But MRAs are bigots, and bigotry has no place near a game I play.

Men’s Rights Advocates, upon reading this, might take it not as a call to leave, but as an enormous “fuck you.”

Good. MRAs: fuck you. I might catch more flies with honey, but I’m not trying to catch them. I’m trying to force them out.

Questions, comments, and concerns should be directed to @KillGoldfish

kill reviews: lorwyn mini-block

Have we all recovered from the last installment about Time Spiral? Don’t get your hopes up for this one, because regression to the mean affects both writers and Magic sets.

Fortunately for Lorwyn, though, it avoided what seemed like an inevitable drop in quality from the brilliance of Future Sight.[1] Rosewater’s 2007 State of Design described it as a “return to their roots,” and it seems that from a high-level perspective, they didn’t think of Lorwyn as attempting anything revolutionary: it was another tribal set. It would be pretty difficult for them to fuck up a tribal set. Legions broke sales records, and it sucked, so if they spent ten minutes making sure the new one was better than the weirdness of Onslaught, it would fly off the shelves.