I was reminded of this by Crim and The Professor: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/card-preview/fire-it-2019-06-21
TL;DR: Last year they told us that they had decided to make Magic better by introducing a new design philosophy of F.I.R.E. I’m not feeling it.
Yes. Spoilers. I am going to discuss the ending, so I can’t really not spoil it. So, while it’s more about the experience of the weird world, you probably should play it first. Some spoilers for the main game as well, as I can’t discuss some things without mentioning one key plot point.
There has been some discussion on this within the community, so I though I’d make my own list. Why? Because – from what I’ve seen – my approach is going to be somewhat different.
One of the greatest things about being a movie fan is discovery. There are various estimates, but I guess the figure of around half a million features in existence already tells you quite a bit about how deep you can go and never find the bottom. It’s like the oceans. They are less mapped than the moon.
But every once in a while, you come across something that’s upsetting. Not like a snuff film or anything like that (that’s a whole different issue), but just something about the history of movies that just feels wrong. In this case the omission of Alice Guy.
Are sweepers fun? No.
It just feels like there’s no one at the wheel of Historic. They just print cards and add them with no consideration for the environment.
Recently I returned to the actual world of Commander after a hiatus of couple of years. After such a long time, what do you play? It’s sort of a special occasion and I also knew I wouldn’t be playing any more actively in the near future, so I knew I had to do something I would find especially enjoyable.
So, I went top-down. Well, most Commander decks are very much top-down with either the Commander itself or a tribal theme or something to similar to work down from. However, I decided to use a theme very specific to me: The art on my walls.
I live in a town of about 100.000 people, which hasn’t seen a new case during the whole summer (actually the total number of cases is -1, but I’m not sure why one was removed, but probably just some sort of duplication), so I’ve felt pretty safe about going to movies.
I’m not exactly rich, but I do have plenty of disposable income, as I don’t have dependents, my mortgage has been paid off and I’m paid pretty well. I used to spend a lot of money on MtG, but as of late, not so much.
In my current campaign (or chronicle, or whatever), the players are part of a cult and that’s the thing that binds them together. The thing is, they don’t actually know much about their god.
There’s a MtG-related Discord server, which happens to also have a channel for tabletop RPGs. It isn’t very active, but someone noted that Blades in the Dark was available in a bundle of some sort, so that sparked a little bit of discussion, as I claimed that because of how the game approaches the role of players, it’s actually easier to run than D&D, because there is not a lot of planning needed. Someone disagreed, so, as Ryan Hollinger would say, let’s talk about it. (Have I already used this somewhere? Not sure.)