Board and Card Games

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11:23 AM

Here's the announcement: The Walking Dead Shambles into Secret Lair

Safe to say it's been an eventful day since

Sheldon Menery put out an invitation on twitter: “If you have thoughts about today's Secret Lair announcement, I'll be in the banned-list-discussion channel on the RC Discord server for the next hour or so. Drop on by and offer your thoughts.” Over the next few hours the server ballooned from about ~850 people to (at last count I heard) 2.5 thousand.

So, people had opinions. :P

this is very pertinent because of the announcement's marketing:

> These are mechanically unique cards that will be legal in Eternal formats. Commander players especially should look forward to bringing their favorite characters from The Walking Dead to life on the tabletop!

to which a number of commander players are responding "... no, no we shouldn't, we didn't want this?"

The EDH RC isn't making a decision just yet though. Again from Sheldon: “Folks, we know emotions are high right now, and that's not time to make a considered decision. The Commander RC is listening to what you're saying, taking notes, and weighing options. We'll have something official to say in the near future, and certainly before the SL drop date.”

Besides them being mechanically unique, there's also complaints about how walking dead doesn't fit into magic the gathering, or how modern humans from this world shouldn't be in magic the gathering.

Mark Rosewater also had a Q&A about it on blogatog:

> mdbryan84 asked:
I just want to express my opinion that this secret lair is a very very dangerous slope to go down. Have you guys not learned from Nalthni Dragon/Nexus of fate? Also these are essentially being printed directly to the reserved list since WOTC won’t own the licensing forever, which is something stated wouldn’t happen.

Mark Rosewater:
While the Secret Lair is the one chance to get the Walking Dead versions of these cards, we have the ability to print the Magic versions of these cards in future products. So, let’s say Negan becomes a popular Commander, we can print the Magic…

"it's fine because we could print more at some arbitrary date" isn't very reassuring for a lot of folks though

Also, this particular Secret Lair is $50 and foil only, so will the cards be pringles or not? Stay tuned to find out

AncientSwordRage

11:43 AM

it's fitting that MaRo recently stated he sometimes needs to defend the company even when he disagrees

I'm much more worried about the precedent this sets

isolated, I'm guessing this sells to a) whales who just like to buy MTG, b) MTG Finance, b) Walking Dead fans

the only issue with the above (again in isolation) I can see is that if someone joins MTG from WD, and is then shamed out/shunned when they join a commander pod

doppelgreener

12:21 PM

@AncientSwordRage as am I, and I agree with your breakdown about who this is for

The problem isn't external IP, it was putting it in a whales-only product

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener there are easy and better ways for them to handle this

One question I asked was, Which Plane is Negan/Michonne from? Can they meet the gate watch? If they aren't for the main multiverse they can be silver boardered

That worked for the ponies

Or they could be Godzilla bordered. That worked in Ikoria.

2 hours later…

doppelgreener

2:23 PM

yeah like a friend has summarised that it's the specific combination of things that makes it such a problem:
- actually format-legal cards
- mechanically unique
- exclusive to a whale product
- the whale product is limited time only
If they were not vintage playable, this would be fine; it'd be like the MLP cards. If it weren't mechanically unique, this'd be fine; it'd be like the other SLD treatments. If it weren't exclusive to a whale product it'd be fine; it'd be in a regular booster or something. If it weren't time limited it'd be fine; people could indefinitely see demand met. But inst…

I hope the commander RC does ban these cards.

AncientSwordRage

2:52 PM

@doppelgreener ALSO people have brought up the character Negan is involved in storylines about rape/sex slavery in the series (WTF?) or something along those lines...in a PG-13 game.

doppelgreener

oh no

oh noooo.....

AncientSwordRage

Also, it breaks from the idea that Magic Cards belong in the Magic Story

CollinB

We already ruined that idea

(insert godzilla here)

doppelgreener

well, we already have cards from MLP, transformers, Godzilla, and a handful of others

oh, and NERF

CollinB

Where's my 2 mana instant that reorders the stack

I'm still waiting

AncientSwordRage

2:54 PM

@CollinB Narset's Reversal not do that sort of?

CollinB

I legitamately want to see like one and a blue "reorder the stack"

Too janky though

;-;

Wizards fears jank

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener I did some googling and what I said does not seem true

doppelgreener

oh good

AncientSwordRage

@CollinB Gain control of target spells

@doppelgreener , Negan does not seem to be a good character though

CollinB

@AncientSwordRage :/

They're edging towards that kind of dumb janky idea

Where i think they might consider just reordering the stack

Stuff like Lithoform engine confirms for me that anything is possible

AncientSwordRage

2:59 PM

@CollinB maybe not anything

CollinB

Close enough

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1 hour later…

murgatroid99

4:12 PM

@CollinB Lithoform Engine didn't really push the envelope much. Copying permanent spells is a fairly natural extension of copying non-permanent spells.

AncientSwordRage

4:44 PM

@murgatroid99 agreed, it's not much of a stretch

CollinB

@murgatroid99 @AncientSwordRage It's not really as much of a "stretch" per se - it's just an example of Wizards getting more comfortable with using shorthand wording that breaks previously set boundaries. It seems to hint at more "natural extensions" in the future - possibly growing more and more egregious in how far they stretch what people view as natural boundaries for the game.

murgatroid99

Breaking previously set boundaries is what they do every set. And that's not really shorthand wording, it's just slightly extended functionality with newly defined behavior.

CollinB

Cards like Riku, for example, specifically word around just saying "copy a permanent spell" for the sake of avoiding that "natural extension." The fact that they are now willing to push past that is just an example of them pushing boundaries to innovate new mechanics without it taking up paragraphs and paragraphs to explain what's going on with the card.

It's totally not a bad thing, it's just interesting to watch from a card development standpoint

murgatroid99

That's still literally every set for the last 15 years

CollinB

¯_(ツ)_/¯

murgatroid99

4:52 PM

Adding new functionality with new ways of wording it is what they always do. It's not new

CollinB

I've never said that it was really a new thing - it's just growing more pronounced, at least from my perspective. This whole observation could just be me not watching set progression as carefully the last few years.

murgatroid99

5:04 PM

@CollinB I expect that Riku was less "we want to avoid copying permanent spells" and more "we don't know how we would do 'copying permanent spells'". And then in ZNR development someone probably said "what if the copy just becomes a token on resolution?"

2 hours later…

CollinB

7:06 PM

@murgatroid99 Exactly

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