I feel like the 2:1 trade of life for damage is an important ratio to stick with, regardless of CMC or activation cost. Both black and red, in my mind, share the reckless and self-destructive nature that re-enforces the idea that in order to get what you want out, you have to pay extra in. If anything goes unchanged I would vote it would be the 2:1 ratio.

Back when I did some college radio I was part of an industrial show that got me a lot of exposure to that genre (16-volt/chemlab/etc). Manson was a big part of that, but seemed to fall prey to success… like what happened to Pearl Jam and Nirvana and all the rest of those 90’s bands. I was never a fan of the pagentry of his shows (or any live music, I guess) but definitely appreciate some of those killer tracks.

I also really love this movie. The sound track is dynamite, and really boosts the movie up and beyond just being a really good movie. This was also a rare portrayal of a “if everyone is special then no one is special” theme. Not something I expected even in the slightest. The style and layout of the scenes is phenomenal. The color schemes are amazing. And the radio chatter in one of the scenes is so intense and well-acted that it still cuts me right to the quick every time I watch it. I can’t recommend it strongly enough, if you’ve never watched it.

I grew up watching all the reruns of the original series, so I’ve been a fan all my life. I saw this movie in the theater and thought it was just okay. As many of you have heard me say before; restrictions make the game. The availability of great cgi seemed to outshine the availability of an enjoyable story, leaving me with a ‘meh’ position on the whole thing. Star Trek movies always struck me as a little off-balance anyways, though, because I was so attached to the episodic monster-of-the-week dynamic. I chalked it up as another movie that wasn’t really made for me and skipped the subsequent ones. Strange New Worlds seemed like a great swerve back towards the Star Trek that I appreciate.

I felt like they already had (effectively) total control back when they started “Commander.” The EDH committee always struck me as a stand-in for local (probably less-organized) friend groups who would police un-fun play. The presence or absence of the committee has had zero direct effect on me, as I don’t generally play with cEDH’ers and don’t build decks that upset people. I think there is a parallel that can be drawn between this and D&D, in that the official fixes put in a new edition are generally already solved and moved on from in functional playgroups. Making it “official” gives players an emergency escape hatch; someone ELSE to point to when they encounter problems. I’ve been lucky enough to avoid needing anything like that. So, in short, I think that yes, it was inevitable… but only because they’ve always been the ones making the cards.

seshiro_of_the_orochi somehow I missed that, and I’m embarrassed and disappointed!! Thank you! Every time I dive down the Banding rabbit hole, though, I do so with zero memory of all the things I learned the last time, regarding all the new stuff that’s been added to magic and how it’s (somehow) not as straightforward as it used to be. I do like the depth it adds to creature combat, and the whole friendship/teamwork vibe that’s so popular nowadays seems ripe for picking. Sort of surprised we haven’t already seen courageous teams of bunnies charging together into combat.

Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if they used art that wasn’t originally intended to be part of that subset. “Er… do we have a blue one..?” [silence] “Uh… of course! Here!”

I can relate to what you’re saying, DemonDragonJ, and I think that some of it (for me, at least) is my age. I miss the times where there wasn’t really any more story than the bare-bones “you’re a wizard shooting Magic(tm) at other wizards, plucking (i.e. conscripting) terrifying and magestic beasts from the æther, and sometimes lucking out and stumbling across a bunch of discarded/lost weaponry left in the terrifying wake of some CRAZY war between wizard brothers. The core sets gave me that feeling, because I wasn’t locked into someone else’s story. Those first commander decks, which I never got around to buying, gave that same feel. I didn’t know Nekusar, the Mindrazer’s back story. I didn’t know that he used to be a benevolent king who tragically lost his beautiful and loving queen Asmerelda who kept his quick-to-anger temperament in check so he turned to dark magic to bring her back but it twisted him into an evil litch who even ended up killing his favorite cook, Johnathon, who always made food that looked like forest creatures, which made him even crazier because Johnathon was secretly a wizard who worked with Asmerelda to keep him calm etc etc run-on sentence intended. It was wide open. The good news is that many of us are being given the opportunity to experience the pre-internet joy of coming across a card that you literally have never even heard of. On balance I’m still very much enjoying Magic: the Gathering, it’s just (as with all things in life) taken a fair amount of personal readjustment.

I guess I’d be hung up on the color restrictions of the non-stuffy dolls, if I absolutely had to pick just one. Being able to turn any color deck into a stuffy doll deck is pretty huge…

Bookrook there’s so much available (Brash Taunter, enrage, etc) that I still feel like it’s only a matter of time before they justify to themselves that it’s totally reasonable to bring it back. The track record is there. Universes Beyond no longer having to have matching in-world counterparts, and now just flat out being legal. Storm, just as a general topic… nothing ever dies in magic lol

Good point,Gidgetimer. I think that means that the problem here is really that I’ve been playing magic wrong this whole time, picking damage and allowing for responses, and now I’ll be back in the good graces.

I probably should have included this portion of my thinking in my original post: I can’t figure out why this change would be made. So far, at least, this banding-related answer is the only explanation I’ve been able to come up with that justifies such a weird modification to such a fundamental aspect of the game. Has anyone come up with other reasoning?

My understanding of the new blocking rule seems to boil blocking down to: I attack, you declare blockers, and then I choose and assign damage. Assuming that is correct (might not be)… am I crazy for thinking that this lays out a format that is primed for banding coming back? Like, creating a scenario where a player would be saying something like “normally the attacker chooses where damage goes, but because I have banding creatures I choose damage instead.” Is this unreasonable of me?

I love it!!

It’s pretty broad. This would be another asymmetrical damage vector for The Council of Four, even. Even my favorite burn spell Sign in Blood!

I think it’s important to point out: everyone else will be taking damage on your turn, as opposed to on each of their turns like with Nekusar. This is important for cards like Theater of Horrors. This is also relevant for cards like Rakdos, Lord of Riots. I like the card a lot.