Not “somone”, a whole team of five or so people work on this as their job, though they also do a shit-ton of worldbuilding for multiple worlds a year. Going by product release year (worldbuilding of course happens like 2 to 5 years in advance for each set), for 2017 they did two whole, fully fleshed out new planes in Amokhet and Ixalan, as well as a comedy-inspired world called Bablovia for the non-canon joke set Unstable. While this year is focused on returning to old favorite planes with Dominaria and Ravnica later this year (though they’ve also done revisions on for example the outfits of the guilds of Ravnica), a multi-player focused set for another non-canon product which releases in two weeks is also set on a before unseen plane called Kylem.
I love the MtG lore even if I am a bit rusty on its specifics (Like why do I remember Ravnica as biopunk-ish? Was it just the one guild that was like that?) I love how the game works and how people build and play with mechanical combinations to create interesting strategies. I just hate. Hate. HATE. How it is pay to win. I know there are things like pauper but it seems a much less popular form IRL than standard or other formats. Like none of the game shops near me run pauper. I do however quite enjoy draft. I feel like its a really pure form of the game, having to make your strategies and build on the fly and everyone is on a completely even footing.
I totally get that, I’m just completely against the random pack economic model. The play to win thing bugs me as well. That’s why I vastly prefer Fantasy Flight Games Living Card Game model.
I remember quite a few times when I was in my old boardgame store playing a game with friends and overhearing some of the Magic players talking. The way they talked about the packs they bought… how they had made their money back by pulling a good card, like it was a financial investment or something, or how it was common practice to “drop” in a tournament after they were eliminated from winning anything, completely turned me off.
The goal shouldn’t be to get lucky and “make your money back” by pulling a rare card. And don’t just quit a tournament just because you can’t win a prize anymore. It’s a game… have fun.
The LCG model not only solves the “play to win” problem, but it seems to attract a different type of player than Magic or Pokemon or Yugi-oh. At the Netrunner, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones tournaments I’ve participated in and watched, the players just seem more interested in having fun than just winning for the prizes.
All that stuff about making your money back and dropping out of tournaments and all that turns me off too, and a large portion of the playerbase are a turn off too. The way my wife was treated at a local shop by many of the patrons turned her completely off a game she had just started playing and enjoying. Its honestly why I have fallen off too.
The other problem, is that for me the conceit of MtG is so much more appealing as a game than the games you mentioned. This is why I am not all that interested in most board games, if I am honest. If I find the conceit unappealing I’m completely uninterested even if it is interesting mechanically.
Same. It’s why I preferred EDH/Commander over the tournament formats back when I still played, and why my only regret when I sold off my collection was that I didn’t keep my EDH decks.
Magic is much, much more pay to compete than pay to win. You need good cards to win a tournament but you won’t get anywhere without honed skills. There’s a reason that the same names pop up in the top eights of both constructed and limited Grand Prixs. A strong player will honestly crush you way more often in limited where they have more decisions to make better in the drafting portion and more time in game to leverage their skills against you. I once broke in a friend playing weekly two player Peasant Cube Grid Draft and he didn’t win a match for the first four months.
With Kadokawa and other publishers entering the western market directly instead of licensing titles I think that there’s a good chance that may be the case these days.
Even if it doesn’t, it helps the licensing publishers make the decision to keep licensing it. For example, Over Rev!'s official english translation only goes up to about chapter 20 or so, because the publisher just decided it was too expensive to license for the sales they were getting, even though the Manga was quite popular in Japan, had a complete run, that ended right when the author wanted it to.
Can someone explain to me how a band playing Israel is approving of their occupation of Gaza but playing the US isn’t approving of the occupation of Afghanistan (or other things)?
Think of it like this. If Bill Joel performs at MSG. Again. For the zillionth time. That’s just another night on the town. The show’s existence in and of itself sends absolutely no message whatsoever other than that middle age people are still willing to pay to see it, Billy’s still got it, MSG likes making money, and their relationship is still good.
Now imagine Billy Joel performs that same show at a high school auditorium in… Flint Michigan. That sends a message. Even if he doesn’t explicitly say anything about lead in the water or any of the other issues plaguing the area, a big fish intentionally going out of their way to visit a small pond makes a big splash and kicks out all the water.
The US is big. Israel is tiny. If you are a big fish and you go out of your way to perform in the tiny pond of Israel, that sends a message in the same way.
Now, despite being an anti-zionist atheist jew, I don’t think absolutely nobody should ever perform in Israel, even if they are big enough that it sends a message. I just think you have to do it in a classy way that sends the right message. See also: Beatles perform in USSR.
Also it depends a lot on who you are going to perform for. An example that comes to mind was me publishing a juggling video from the Israeli Juggling Convention, and one of the first comments was anti-Zionist and calling me out for promoting Israel or similar. I replied with something like “Let’s not make juggling events political, as the people who go to juggling conventions probably aren’t the type of people who you think would be shooting Palestinians.” And they commented again with “Good point”.
As it happened, the first time I visited the Israeli Juggling Convention, I got a lift there from Tel Aviv with a guy who had been pepper sprayed for standing in front of Israeli tanks just the week before.
It really does depend on who you are, what you do, and who you are doing it for.
Going to a juggling convention to hang out with friends? I’d say that’s cool. Appearing in a national football match? I’m with Messi.
Edit: looked up the Messi quote and the whole situation, and that might not have been the best example.
I totally get that for one off shows, but you’re touring Eastern Europe and conclude with a show in Tel Aviv I don’t think that’s sponsoring Israel’s policies anymore than opening the tour in Moscow is sponsoring Russia’s. Israel is a country of 8.5 million people so I don’t think it’s so small a pond that one show is sending more of a message than the Rolling Stones playing five tours of the US during Vietnam.