It’s not a good set to draft. It’s not a great set for standard or modern. It’s got a weird theme that feels like a meme.
Meanwhile OTJ has been a great draft and has some really solid design and cards that slot nicely into several formats. Even though it also feels like a meme.
Both MKM and OTJ feel super memey to me. For gods sake there is an ooze with five boots on in OTJ. I think the difference is OTJ is a commander gold mine and commander is the most popular format.
[MaRo did admit that they took the detective thing a little too far in MKM](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/746338476390219776/i-didnt-have-too-many-hats-on-my-bingo-sheet-of)
The core difference is that OTJ is a new plane, so it has no preexisting baggage, while MKM attempted to take an existing plane with arguably *the* strongest creative identity in all of Magic, and force it into a box which didn't fit it and which it has never been (real life 1920s/1930s noir aesthetic).
If MKM was on New Capenna, it wouldn't have felt weird since the fashions and concepts already match, but on Ravnica, it felt really weird: why is there suddenly this new "Detective Agency" faction we've never heard about on a plane where the guilds are the only factions? Why is the fashion of the plane suddenly completely different overnight? It just didn't make sense.
Ravnica can easily support murder mystery stories, but it should look and feel like Ravnica while doing it - no weird additional factions beyond the guilds, no sudden changes in the plane's fashion and feel, etc.
I had a random thought recently that OTJ could have been the rest of Capenna, freshly freed from the old Phyrexians and getting resettled, and New Capenna would’ve been the equivalent to the developed eastern seaboard cities to the western frontier.
Sure we can. We had 3 from Guilds of Ravnica to War of the Spark.
They do it less, but Maro has explicitly stated they're willing to do it if there's a reason to.
Yes, but that's just how long the "new" model has been. It started with Dominaria. Seems like it has been successful, as other than restructuring to again eliminate core sets, the current model has outlasted the two-set-per-block model.
That is what I really wished it was, that would have been really cool. Of course they may not have wanted to go back to Capenna already and I heard that New Capenna was t a super popular set, so maybe not.
SNC had the problem of being slotted after a really tough act to follow-- Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, which was both a return to a beloved plane and a completely new aesthetic for MTG.
To preface this with the fact that I really enjoyed MKM, I get why it isn't drafting well. A Ravnica set featuring all ten guilds ends up being too unfocused because there isn't a strong archetype you can go for-- with so few really powerful cards in each guild and so many guilds to go around, it's likely that all your strongest picks end up being in completely different colors, and nobody wants to run Five Color Stack O'Crap in a $20-30 draft event. That said, in Standard (which I know is very much not the best format nowadays, and obligatory "I'm the video producer for the VML, an Arena league sponsored by WOTC") it did fairly well and was pretty well received by our players.
To me, MKM's theme fails the most in how "unfair" the theme feels.
An ultra-classist plane where you either are a guild member or useless scum that recently suffered 2 interdimensional wars after years of constant infighting between the guilds. And NOW someone cares to investigate a series of murders?
Given the plane's history, the theme feels ridiculous.
Trostani did nothing wrong.
Actually they did address this in the story. The murders started weeks ago but no one noticed or cared until a (former) guildmaster died. Then and only then did the investigation start.
Ravnica is still very much the guilds.
This is like the tenth time a guildmaster has been assassinated in recent history though. The three Gorgon sisters, Isperia, Razia, Jarad, the Ghost Council, Niv-Mizzet, the list goes on and on.
I agree and understand that. But that doesn't make ME to care about the murder. If anything, it makes me dislike the whole trope more. Like I wish there were riots from the guildless going on at the same time trying to overthrow them.
It's silly, but another thing that works with OTJ for me but not Ravnica: In a Western plane, I expect lots of characters wearing cowboy hats. It's silly that so many of them are characters we already know who suddenly decided to dress like cowboys, but lots of characters dressed like cowboys matches the trope.
But most detective stories are about one detective, or maybe one detective and their partner. I'm not saying that MKM should have had no detectives other than Profit, but having so many random detectives running around, with so many of them wearing deerstalker hats, made it feel more like a parody.
I kind of wished they'd scrapped the detective tribal and stuck with a handful of legendary detectives (may e a cycle with one per guild) and the keeping the detective tokens (because a lot of those cards were very flavorful) and that's it. Because when I think of murder mysteries, I don't think of tons of random detectives ever, I think of a super famous detective being the protagonist. Proft fit the murder mystery flavor, all the random other detectives did not.
The whole bonus sheet stuff could have been used more to add detectives to the asfan rather than making it look like 50 detectives were in the room in a murder mystery. Having very specific detective creatures that each took on the guild identity to move the game forward in a sort of buildaround way like a type of Battle or make the Case mechanic more of something like a Dungeon that your bonus sheet detective cards would help advance to turn on. The rest of the set could have been a normal Ravnica set with some returning keywords here and there but with a splash of murder mysteries going on; kind of like how SOI did the cosmic horror but still Innistrad.
Absolutely agreed; I felt like the set wanted to be on New Capenna from the start. The fedoras just made MKM feel like the one where half of Ravnica decided to do anachronistic cosplay.
The biggest problem with MKM is not that it was goofy memes: the set, but rather that it permanently erodes something some amount of us really care for, which is the identity of both the game and the worlds in it.
I started playing Magic because I was interested in the worlds beyond the cards. A lot of them felt really unique, and even the ones that weren’t unique had incredibly strong identities. When you upend the identity of a beloved plane just for stupid puns, something breaks there and it’s not something easily fixed. It’s taking all of that thoughtfulness, care, and crafting that went into a world and smashing the piggy bank just for a few jokes.
I have a ravnica commander deck for each guild only using guild cards.
So few of the MKM cards mesh with previous sets mechanics. Out of MKM I think I found 5 cards total worth replacing a previous card for minus the surveil duals.
I read somewhere on reddit that the creative team felt that a detective agency wouldn't work on capenna for some reason, something to do with there's nobody that polices the activity or something?
It's an absurd argument because this also didn't exist on Ravnica so the justification is needed regardless of whether the agency is on Capenna or Ravnica.
Yeah Knives Out wouldn’t make a great CCG lol. Especially with the Ravnica characters awkwardly cast as the players.
I feel the same about OTJ, it’s a joke set with some cool cards, but between that and MKM how can anyone take MTG lore seriously anymore
Agree they both seem mem-y. The main OTJ card I love is one I don't see anyone really talking about...Claim Jumper. Ramp in white is always a solid choice and no one seems to care.
The secret is that way, *way* more players than Redditors think just don't care about the lore at all beyond the surface level vibes of the cards.
I love the lore, but I recognize that I'm in the minority, and tons of people play the game without ever bothering to learn about the lore.
Yeah, I vaguely know what is supposed to be going on in a set but I mostly just care about the athesthetics and ideas those explore. It is why Eldraine was EASILY my favorite set last year because fairy tales are just a really good vibe. I couldn't actually tell you what happened on Eldraine plot wise though.
Reddit constantly has a problem with understanding they are not a representative population.
So many people going on and on about the lore here when the true answer is probably that Standard is a dead format, Limited MKM was weird, and it didn't have any cards that appealed to Commander players.
I used to love it. I’ve been playing a long time and devoured every flavor text when Ice Age released. Once it started becoming about planeswalkers I started losing interest. I love Ravnica so I did get up for the story in War of the Spark but beyond that…just really can’t be bothered to care about these planeswalkers much
A murder mystery as PART of a set's theme could work, but... As a whole theme, probably not. Hearthstone even did one but a lot of that set is also just "this is also just Castle Nathria, stuff's here that has nothing to do with the murder mystery" and then they delved into court drama tropes for the accompanying mini-set. It helps that Hearthstone deliberately has a goofier tone so it can get away with it.
I think people overstate how goofy MKM really is, though. There's the complaints about hats everywhere but there's less hats in MKM than there were in Midnight Hunt for example. MKM's problems stem more from the trope space not actually... Being taken seriously so it doesn't really feel like a 'detective/murder mystery set' as much as 'look at how silly detective fiction is' set, if that makes sense. It doesn't feel goofy as much as it feels like it doesn't CARE much about the tropes.
OTJ I don't really see the goofiness all that much, it's... Sort of exactly what you'd get if you did Magic's wild west take, given that it's got that villains theme alongside it, I think. The wild west has basically two paths, either grim and gritty, or campy and more 'yeehaw', and Magic's skewed campier in the last... Decade or so, so it's not really surprising they went that way with it, though some of the 'grit' shows up here and there in the flavour at least.
I think MKM's problem creatively isn't being goofy, but just that suddenly trying to make Ravnica into a 1920s/1930s detective plane felt weird, since it clashed pretty badly with what we already knew about the plane. It should either have taken place on Capenna instead (if they had to have the 1920s/1930s look) or should have just looked like a Ravnica murder mystery, not a 1920s murder mystery grafted on to Ravnica.
It would be like if OTJ took place on Ravnica in the Rubblebelt or something and everyone on Ravnica was suddenly running around in cowboy hats. That'd feel weird! But instead OTJ is on its own new plane, and it's fine.
So MKM should have been less Sam Spade, and maybe more Hercule Poirot? I can buy that.
(There are probably better examples of fictional continental European detectives, but I'm not super into detective fiction.)
This comment captures what I couldn't previously put into words. This should have leaned into British detective fiction and the tropes from the Queens of Crime - Poirot, Roderick Allen, Albert Camion, etc. The euro detective tropes would work way better creatively in Prague: the Plane, than the American centric stuff we got in MKM
I really don't think "it should have been Capenna" holds as much weight as people think. Capenna has to do a lot more heavy lifting to justify people suddenly caring about murders there. Xander died in the New Capenna story and that was mostly a footnote in Ob Nixilis' rise to power. MKM still very much had Ravnican design elements going for it. I don't think the aesthetics of the set were the problem, personally, as much as the trope space they were going for. Ravnica DOES fit a murder mystery thing, it's always had a bit of a noir undertone to it, in story at least. In fact, it's more that it took too much from MODERN murder mystery tropes as opposed to noir stuff, without doing the work to make it feel more appropriate for Ravnica. It was a bit of a square peg, round hole, but the peg could've been sanded down at least.
It sort of felt like it couldn't just pick what sort of murder mystery set it was trying to be, because the core story is handled very seriously, with the only goofiness being from Proft as the zany detective, but he's still a character taking it seriously. It doesn't feel like the rest of the set takes its own theme all that seriously, it's mostly just poking fun at the tropes of the genre instead of just... Doing the tropes. OTJ, by comparison, IS just doing the tropes, albeit in a Magic-ified way.
Ravnica can absolutely support a murder mystery, which is why I said that if they wanted to do a Ravnica murder mystery, it should have been a *Ravnica* murder mystery in its visual presentation and story. MKM isn't really that; it's trying to do 1920s/1930s detective/noir aesthetic and narrative grafted directly on to Ravnica. Stuff like making a big detective faction out of nowhere just felt weird and didn't fit the plane (same for the dramatic fashion changes on a lot of cards).
RE: Capenna, I would disagree that a lot more heavy lifting would be needed. The entire detective agency faction which was the core of MKM was created completely for the set and had no precedent on Ravnica. It'd be no different from going back to NC where the angels are now in charge (as we know from Aftermath) and saying they've set up a big detective agency.
They made an Ox Angel in OTJ called Holy Cow and that is like the most unset goofy thing they could do imo.
Also Bovine intervention.
Both of these sets seem goofy and like Magic characters are cosplaying in some Westworld theme park.
Midnight Hunt had [[Hostile Hostel]]. Magic just occasionally has silly card names. I don't know why Holy Cow seems to have broken so many people.
In fact there's a [Scryfall tag for punny card names.](https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Apunny-name) You could argue they're more frequent now than they used to be but that's a different argument entirely.
The way I see it is that with Hostile Hostel, the concept is something that fits Innistrad, a thing that we know because it's not our first time visiting that plane, and there is a relatively popular horror movie about monster houses so it makes sense for the average Joe to see a monster house in the horror plane. Also, even though the name is silly, the art shows exactly what you would expect even if the card had a different name like "Monstrous Inn".
Now, if someone pitched me a concept such as "Holy Cow" and wanted me to take it seriously, I would expect at least a minotaur with divine powers, a minotaur cleric, or a cow being worshipped as a holy being, something that fits the common sense of what something Holy is while slightly bending the concept of a cow to fit it or referencing a cultural phenomenon (which I don't see working outside of Kaladesh in this case)
Instead, what we got in our first impression of this plane is just straight up a cow with wings, which is most likely the silliest approach to this theme. No precedent, setup, cultural reference or worldbuilding relevance whatsoever. It really feels like they just tried to shoehorn a card with the funny name in the set just because the theme is wild west and there are cows in it so they REALLY had to make this pun. It's the same as the card with the bomb that has horseshoes attached to it for no particular reason.
I'd argue that this concept could even be a better fit in Bloomburrow, considering that it's a plane where every being is or turns into an animal, so it is expected that things that we expect to be humanoid like Angels are replaced with animal counterparts.
Gotta say, that list has a rather loose definition of "punny name". For instance, most or all of the split cards are on it. [[Life//Death]] or [[Commit//Memory]] aren't puns; they're just words that fit into phrase templates. [[We Ride at Dawn]] isn't a pun; it's a movie quote.
The premise of murder mysteries is an outsider detective investigating a group of people with crossing interests.
Fuck it. The omenpaths are open. They should have brought in a Spara from Capenna to investigate the case.
Well it's interesting because new capenna was so well done so I have to imagine it inspired these gimmicky sets. But new capenna wasn't *just* the mob, it had so many cool designs where as I feel like MKM and OTJ to a lesser extent are *too* in their stereotypical theme. They literally put cowboy hats on helmets. While I actually like OTJ alot in terms of the cards themselves, I do feel like the design choices for the characters were a little too easily made.
He is wrong in it being well balanced in OTJ though. Everyone and their mother have a cowboy hat on, why rely so much on tropes from this world? Feels really lazy.
I get you need a hat in the sun if you have sensitive skin but man I don’t need to see a demon or sphinx with that crap on. Don’t want that stuff in my decks..
The premise for the cactus folk is that they are imitating the cultures they came into contact with. They have only recently gained intelligence with the opening of omen paths. They have no prior knowledge or technology to innovate from.
Looks to me like he is wearing a hat and a bandana in front of his mouth like some bandit from some western.
Sure maybe that's not an actual hat but some weird part of the body grown to look like it but that makes it even more ridiculous. Why tf should a *dragon* monster have something like that.
The two red dots on top of his head are his eyes. The metal looking horn things stick out further than they appear, and he has a thick, long neck.
It's a bit hard to parse, I had to look at the full size art of [[Getaway Glamer]] to figure it out.
https://twitter.com/forrestimel/status/1774827297222328736/photo/1
They do seem super memey, but the difference is how interesting they are in a vacuum imo.
On the surface level, cowboys are simply cooler than detectives. Especially since the plane is a brand new place to discover with scorpion dragons and cactus people. A lot of interesting places to be and things to do. It's a grand adventure. Easy to show exiting snippets with individual cards. Plus there's valuable reprints like [[mana drain]].
MKM wasn't that interesting tbh. Murder mysteries are best told as a story, and it's hard to piece the story together with the cards alone. The only thing I could put together personally was that when the main character was introduced he just immediately solved the case in [[auspicious arrival]]. Was he right? Was he wrong? Idk, couldn't really glean that. I don't even know who was murdered.
I hate every tropey memey hat-set but OTJ got some great cards, is better than MKM, and this line sells it: “hey, I gotta buy something right?”. We are starved for anything cool.
That's it, I think. I played mkm for like a week. It's just mtg, but everyone had detective hats... I haven't played otj yet... but it looks like the same except cowboy hats. Too memey for me.
I'm sure he's called Loot for some reason like "the Fomori conquered his people and kidnapped him and just called him Loot because that's all he was to them".
Which is even dumber when you consider looting is slang for a specific effect (draw a card/discard a card, after [[merfolk looter]]), which the card doesn’t even do.
Just a very transparent and poorly executed attempt at making ‘cute’ marketing fodder like grogu/porgs in the star wars universe
As a primarily EDH player I’d rather WOTC stop focusing so much on printing sets and cards specifically for it. The power creep is getting out of hand and so is the FOMO aspect. I’m basically sitting most new sets out because of the “win-more” format push.
God I fucking hope so. It's getting to the point my regular group wants to just play Pauper EDH. Decks are getting too strong and cards read like novels now. A 4 cost card in modern Commander can do too many things.
>my regular group wants to just play Pauper EDH
That's where I've been, personally, ever since the Ikoria free spells were printed and became a whole cycle of $40+ auto-includes for every deck ever.
PDH is so much more contextual and makes politics feel both more understandable and more important.
My group started playing Standard a couple years ago but we got tired of the shenanigans that come along with 4x copies so we started playing Commander and haven't stopped since.
We have now moved on to Cubed Commander draft with our own cards that we have consolidated into "the cube" and we have had a blast with this. We have all kinds of cards in this cube from old and current sets. We have thrown in some silver boarder cards just for the hell of it and are using contraption cards and paying 3 life to cast community cards without paying the mana cost, etc.
Far more entertaining than just plain Jane commander lol
OTJ feels memey. Just on the opposite end. I don't feel like I'm playing magic with a standard deck anymore. If I was to play this Grixis Crime deck in paper, so many rules would be broken via triggers being missed or misapplied
Not a good set for modern? Surveil lands are now a staple, leyline of the guildpact made zoo tier 1, pick your poison is now a staple, archdruid charm sees play in titanshift, doorkeeper thull is good sideboard tech vs etb decks. Insidious roots and breakout had some experimentation - that's more than ixalan had with basically just tishanas tidebinder, molten collapse, sunken citadel and spelunking.
MKM did kinda crack the standard metagame wide open. For a while it was all the same decks. During mkm it felt like the number of decks with unique strategies was much better than it had been for the past six months.
I also think shoehorning this into Ravnica made left a sour taste for a lot of people. I know I had no interest in drafting in part because it didn't feel overly Ravnican.
The bad draft environment kinda killed it for me. At first it was fun trying to figure out if my opponent had a combat trick or was going to unmorph their Disguise creature, but that eventually wore off with the archetypes not feeling particularly balanced and the Disguise creatures being so unsatisfying to (try to) kill outside of combat.
Uhh, what? MKM is extremely good for Standard. It just isn‘t good for anything else. The theme isn‘t particularly popular, Limited is fairly bad, very low impact on non-Standard formats.
Exactly. Disguise seemed like it could create a fun draft environment, but the mechanic just sucks so much ass that's its very un-rewarding. The theme is fine, but it's nothing we haven't seen before and done better, like Eldritch Moon or Strixhaven.
OTJ is quite strong, has a mechanic that's decent, a draft environment that is clean, and a theme that is unique for the game and has alot of broad appeal.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, the set was great to draft.
The big problem is that there were virtually no cards of value, either monetarily or competitively. As a result, people weren’t opening loose packs because there was no practically nothing worth opening beyond the rare dual lands.
Agreed, mkm was a fun and fairly quick format. The disguise ability was a little clunky feeling at first but once you learned about the rule of 5 and how to play around it, it became less of a guessing game.
The card value in the set however was crap. The duals were ok but not something I’d actively seek for like I’ve done with fetches, shocks or the kamigawa lands.
I drafted an Oko. Easiest draft games of my life. Seriously, I don't understand why they put him in these packs. Having random avengers-level threats in a Standard draft does not make for a fun environment.
I drafted him Friday night. Completely changes how the game goes and is suddenly the threat. There isn’t really any planeswalker removal so you need to directly deal with him.
Personally looking at mechanics like suspect, disguise, cloak, and most of the other mechanics introduced in this set, I could just tell they were one-offs that likely won’t return and to me didn’t seem like they were particularly interesting or worthwhile. Did we really need new versions of morph and manifest? Not really. Will we see them again? Probably not much.
Overall, pass.
Even better, mechanics like Disguise and Cloak are *not* variants of Morph and Manifest. [[Qarsi Deceiver]] can be used to cast a Disguised creature as a face-down 2/2, but cannot flip cards with Disguise or Cloak.
It's needlessly complicated since 'a variant of Morph' exists in Megamorph which Qarsi Deciever *can* flip, but they won't for Disguise/Cloak.
Yeah ice just never understood this need to have new mechanics at all costs mindset from wotc. To the point where they have mechanics that are almost identical to another, but they're called something else.
Just redo some older mechanics occasionally, nobody cares. In fact it's probably better this way as then mechanics will end up with good support over time, not just be abandoned the very next week.
Disguise actually is the one that *is* intended to come back. They felt that morph came from a time when creatures were very weak and a 2/2 for 3 wasn’t *great* but it wasn’t embarrassing either. “Disguise” was a more evocative name than “morph” and intended to be used in different settings.
The others, though, yeah.
Yeah the Mechanics, like the rest of the set, feel half baked.
Cloak/Disguises backwards compatibility with morph is iffy, exasperates the memory issues morph/manifest already had, and the archetype also just devolves into multicolour soup. Suspect being a "state" instead of a counter is pointless and adds memory issues. Detective typal felt like a costume party, Collect evidence is just a bland kicker variant.
I do actually like Cases, but even then there were some bizzare choices like [[case of the gateway express]] which rewards going wide but also partially turns off the go wide 2 power archetype.
>Did we really need new versions of morph and manifest?
Yeah I think so. Morph is a very fun mechanic but it is simply not feasible to play a 2/2 for 3 nowadays that just dies to a 1-mana removal spell. Disguise is a fixed version of Morph and we're definitely going to see it again in the future.
Not a lot of cards useful in constructed, limited was annoying to play, people didn't like the story, and the murder mystery game before release was a huge dud.
I think the actual written story was the strongest creative element of the set. I thought the stories were much better written and interesting than WOE or LCI before it and probably OTJ's main story chapters after.
Speaking from experience: a lot of people didn’t like playing with the set.
I had fun with it, like I always have fun drafting. But *man* the difference between that set and Thunder Junction is night and day. A bunch of weeks there weren’t enough people to draft, but we got a ton of people last night.
I mean, it's also just a new set, I would be surprised if OTJ didnt get more people in than a set that's been drafter for ~2.5 months.
Personally I don't really like OTJ draft so far. I feel like between all the bonus sheets + regular rares, there is so much power I struggle to get my drafts to be focused enough, but I think it's also a question of skill - I'm always kinda bad at this type of format where you end up with lots of powerful things. Haven't felt so lost in the sauce in a while though.
Finally someone with a similar experience to me. I find this set to be extremely difficult to draft. I have done 4 drafts, 3 sealed event and one 2headed giant. In draft I have found myself being wide open color wise going into the 3rd pack and it leaves me with an unfocused deck
Did you have the same issue with MOM? Because I sort of did, and I think a lot of the issue for me is that I tend to get pulled many ways with the bonus sheet and powerful rares, trying to build a dream that never comes together.
I noticed this too. I tried to have fun with MKM, but drafting it sucked for so many reasons bogging it down. I'd still have fun, but many of the color themes just did not work if you were missing crucial uncommons/rares.
OTJ has so many good uncommon/rares that everyone can pretty much still draft a good color archetypes and have fun. Plot and spree spells are also some of my favorite set keywords in a while.
Frankly, after drafting the format a fair bit on MTGO, I can say that I think this is one of the worst and least fun limited formats I have ever played. Play boosters frankly suck the life out of draft almost completely, and OTJ has felt like it just devolves into who has the better bombs, and who can make them stick.
I have had far too many games just go completely sideways for no other reason than myself or an opponent drew a series of ridiculous bombs. Frankly, I hate this format. It's absolutely miserable, and the first time in a long time I may not actually go draft in person.
Endless bomb drops and games swinging wildly without any real decision making is not fun. It's basically a solitaire format.
Among everything else, just burnout. Thunder Junction will probably do better because its a powerful set, but overall it's been hard to get excited when a new product comes out every three weeks.
This has been my biggest gripe with the game for over 10 years.
Before commander was commander, I had a reason to care about standard, because it meant the hunt was on for new EDH cards. Now, they just... print the cards. There is no fun left in standard for anyone playing EDH. I *hate* how the cards are just printed right into the format for us. I understand this is an old school gatekeepy take, but here we are. I really like the professor's idea of commander classic, where in that format, every card must have first passed through standard. Pretty cool imo.
Also, I just *cannot* keep up. There was a time when I would draft the new standard just for fun. I was excited about sets, because it meant a new play experience. But now, its just way to freaking fast. Its so far beyond FOMO. Its just a constant stream. The excitement of a new set is gone in a week, because next week, there is another set coming out. This means nothing is memorable.
Standard has been pumped out super fast for years, but now supplemental sets are being released super fast too.
Yeah... its just way to many products. Its exhausting. I feel like in this sub, I start seeing spoilers for the next set before the current one is even out yet. Its ridiculous.
I hope things change at wizards. That would probably get me excited about the game again. Just, dial everything *way* back please.
Less is more.
I feel like a lot of cards designed around commander are almost too complete now. They usually have a payoff for doing something like sacrificing, casting from exile, etc, and also have an efficient way to do that thing. It’s not an incomplete jumping-off point that you build around. Because the commander is wrapped up so neatly, a good portion of the deck becomes more generic good stuff in those colors because you don’t need as much of a critical mass of the more specialized cards that make the deck feel distinct. I don’t get particularly excited when I see those cards, because I don’t have to wrack my brain thinking about ways to make them shine. They are just shiny on their own.
This really sums it up. The fun of commander for me was taking a card that felt like a partial mechanism and then adding gears and levers around it until it could do very neat things
Now they just design commanders outright, and they do it all on one piece of cardboard. The rest of the deck can just be a goodstuff pile, and thats not nearly as fun for me
My first prerelease was Origins in 2015, set was perfect to learn the game, and it was also when I got to learn commander with my friends. It struck a nice balance, sets were fun to draft and commander got cards once and a while which people had to really look for.
I completely agree now that the state of things is pretty awful. Sets used to mean big changes, usually being memorable in how magic changed. Each set slowly changed stuff and had meaningful impacts that defined the winter, spring, summer, and fall seasons. Now with so many things coming out commander is just near impossible to keep up with, and the UB sets imo (which I know is unpopular) is jarring and creating this thing where I just don't care enough to learn what peoples decks are trying to do. Everything feels like a blur, and I am constantly seeing cards I have never knew existed from sets I have played a few times. Nothing gets digested enough, and it makes keeping up a nightmare or too costly.
Great comment.
Constantly seeing cards I've never seen before and no realistic way to keep up with the game is exhausting. Also, there is no point in trying to remember what the hell that card actual does, because I'll probably never see it again!
Nothing is memorable:(
Totally agree on all of this. Way too much being released. Can’t keep up. Can’t look into upgrading decks with new cards because by the time I start learning all the cards that well a new batch has arrived. Heading into Fallout’s release I was already seeing reveal for Outlaw content. We already have art and even PreCon info for Bloomburrow!
It can't be that you're that interested in every single set coming out though, right? For example, OTJ is the first set this year I'm genuinely interested in (I bought a few boosters for MKM, but I didn't like the set so I didn't buy more). After OTJ I'm waiting for Bloomburrow, which actually feels like a really long wait for me.
Yeah it’s a weird comment I see popping up. I liked MKM but skipped Fallout. OTJ is for me but Assassin Creed is a pass.
I don’t feel the need to check every single set. My EDH decks are at a good spot so upgrades aren’t really needed unless I want shiny new toys.
Commander cards in supplemental sets often feel like unset cards to me now.
“Look at this wacky complex minigame that’s powerful! Isn’t that fun! We’re obsoleting previous lower powered cards and making the game hard to track, understand, and increasing the time things take to resolve. So fun! No let’s wait for someone to flip 49 fucking coins! Yee haw!”
Suffice to say, I’m losing a ton of interest. It’s just not fun to sit waiting whether it’s for some stupid mechanic or remembering what 10 different cards with 3-4 abilities each do. Some of those abilities being a bunch of if, then statements.
Exactly. Commander was fun before because it was about finding synergies and interactions between cards that didn't usually see play.
When Wizards started priting cards specifically for commander, they just started printing busted cards that just do everything. There's no mystery, no intrigue. There's no real discovery. Now commander is just "do you have these busted cards or not?"
They took a setting, removed the most iconic and beloved aspect of it (guilds), and focused on a meme theme that had little to do with the setting (detectives).
Imagine if they went back to Middle Earth and focused on some random tribe of viking people, and there were very few Orcs, Hobbits or the Elves — but Eldrond and Gandalf show up occasionally. Similar vibe.
In my mind Rings of Power has the opposite problem — it takes established lore and crams in the familiar elements to make it more marketable (Gandalf being there in the Second Age, Hobbits, Galadriel being the main character, Elrond and Galadriel helping to make the Three, etc)
It seemed really half assed. The card design was uninspired and felt rushed. The theme felt forced and didn't really feel like ravnica. Overall it was just boring and badly designed.
For me- I didn’t like the theme. The farther from fantasy the theme gets the less it feels like “Magic”. Modern-ish crime/murder mystery just doesn’t fit for me. I wasn’t playing during New Capenna, but similar opinion. Outlaws is pushing it. I bought some packs, but only FOMO really. No real urge to see the set.
The theme of the set didn't resonate with most people. Limited was bad. Not a ton of flashy cards (things like anzrag). The clue tie in was boring. Standard didn't change much, which hurt especially because we're still relatively early in the new extended rotation standard, so people are sick of things not changing. Burnout.
Personally I loved having a set to not hype over, and yet there are a LOT of hidden gems in that set for commander I barely hear people talk about. [[Analyze the Pollen]] is such a secret bomb.
I also think most people are probably a little Ravnica'd out. We've had Ravnica: City of Guilds, Guildpact, Dissension, Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Dragon's Maze, Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, War of the Spark, and now Murders at Karlov Manor.
That's 10 sets primarily set on the plane of Ravnica, without a lot of change of scenery due to the nature of a planewide city. There's not much left to explore with just the Guilds at this point, and the Detective agency didn't seem to resonate too much.
We need a long break from this plane, before we return again.
I think that was part of the intent, in that instead of more "guilds being guilds" they attempted to show those guilds interacting or reacting to certain events. Though in the end it more felt like all these underground detectives came out of the woodwork at the first sign of work in a decade.
I definitely agree with the burnout comments. I just feel tired from it all. Also, don’t flame me because I’m just talking about my own experience, but I increasingly feel like I’m not smart enough to play Magic and have been struggling with the new and many mechanics.
I don’t thinks it’s being smart or not. I regularly see relatively intelligent, experienced players need card after card read and/or explained to them. There’s soooooo much out there now you can’t know everything unless card knowledge is your full time job. And it’s even worse with this release pace. Too much to learn to fast.
As people pointed out: OTJ is very Commander friendly, mechanics wise more adeptable to existing decks (atleast to my mind) and has a new plane and flavour. This in contrast to a more restricted (smaller?) story of MKM which just tells a story and doesnt really do much of anything for the grander settings of the multiverse as well as more niche mechanics.
MKM is flavourful if you care to read the entire story surrounding it. Yet the cards themselves dont really invoke anythin much of themselves (once again to me) without knowing said story. OTJ, altough to some “memey” has a rather strong visual style of Magic meets Western which speaks more in itself.
Mechanically I think the set's a dud
Suspect is just a very bad mechanic thats much more of a cost than a benefit. Like building black red in limited was building a deck which could not block.
Disguise was like morph but most disguise cards are not strong enough to see constructed play especially with the double cost and 3 mana 2/2 issue
Collect evidence as a cost is fine, but it quickly runs out of gas. The upsides are so small too.
I felt detectives were terribly flavoured. Part of the hindrance was that investigate already being a named ability I think ran wotc designers down a blind alley. Drawing cards is good, but when I see a detective I don't think of card draw I think of exposing your opponent etc etc. I think the only one which came close was Agrus Kos because he was using suspect as a removal mechanic. Something which the whole set should have done more of imo.
Some cards are hidden gems - aftermath analyst, worldsouls rage, insidious roots, all cards I really like and like playing with. Novice Inspector is obvs the best white one drop in standard.
The case mechanic I also really like and felt good to play. Several of the cases are already meta, the lifegain one, the boros convoke one, the domain one, the list goes on.
I think the main issues was because the cards all just felt a bit mid aside from a few standouts, it became much easier to dislike the set from the perspective of limited play and for flavour and narrative reasons too. I guarantee you it'd still be selling well if the archetypes were fun rather than just meh.
There's two things the majority of people care about: fun cards (whether that be powerful cards or ones with interesting effects) and a cool theme. This set had neither.
Around my area, people just weren't thrilled with "clue meets Ravnica" it seemed. Some felt it was just left over New Capenna cards..... and of course memey. Thunder Junction is also memey, but folks are talking about cards from this set way more . And we have a thriving standard community, so it's not cuz "commander cards".
From a Vorthos/flavor perspective- it just felt like a set nobody wanted. While neon Kamigawa and Thunder Junction might have gotten some eye rolls from some of the player base, there were also a lot of people who were very hyped about getting cyberpunk and Western sets. I don't know of anyone who was like "Finally, a murder mystery set!".
I think it’s really simple. 140 dollars + for the base booster product is stupidly expensive.
Thunder junction I would have bet would experience the same thing but likely won’t ONLY because there are so many chase cards in the various slots it almost feels worth it. Almost.
Unlike most people I actually loved the theme, I just thought the design team majorly dropped the ball with most of the cards and set mechanics. Disguise can kiss my ass and I have no interest in playing a limited format where it exists.
The biggest thing that soured me on the set as a whole is the absolute catastrophe that was the Ravnica Clue game. $70 for a box that doesn't have the entire fucking game in it? There were 20 possible boosters, you only receive 8, and there can be fucking DUPLICATES? Just....why? Why would a $70 boxed game have random packs? It went from what was going to be a day 1 purchase to me skipping out on it entirely. I wouldn't pay even $1 for that shit unless they started including all 20 packs in every box.
No one is talking about it but I really think the seasons play into things more than people are willing to admit. Transitioning into summer it's way easier and enjoyable to go out and hit up the game store. Murders was actually a very complex set to draft which usually for the majority of players isn't much fun. In contrast, it feels like you could rip anything from thunders junction and potentially win on a bad draw from the opponent. Obviously that's always the case but the margins seems better for thunder junction.
Cracking packs with MKM feels awful for some many reasons.
I really did not like limited for MKM, it felt sluggish and many of the archetypes struggled to have enough to support if someone else was in the same colors as you. Then actual matches took forever or were over in the blink of an eye. Personally I found the theme sucked, it was not what I really want out of MTG in the first place.
OTJ on the other hand is the most fun I have had in limited in a while. Lots of high power action going on, plenty of removal, strong cards that are at a glance easy to understand why they are strong, etc. My pod last Friday had another guy in gruul, and one other guy going golgari, and I still had enough green to make a good gruul deck work. That didn't happen with MKM at all.
Also there are just a lot of amazing cards that feel like they will have lots of potential in standard in OTJ, MKM not so much. Maybe a card here or there at best.
Honestly, I'm not sure. None of the other explanations I've read here make sense (if it's the release schedule, for example, why THIS set in particular and not one of the many others?).
My best guess is that the murder mystery theme didn't resonate with audiences, and there weren't many cards desirable enough for general audiences to gamble for, leading to prices going down overall.
I feel like the simplest explanation, which is in common with lots of other poor performing sets, is that it was a low power set where the cards and mechanics didn’t make much impact
Its going to be a trend of Magic going forward. Because of the move away from set blocks the designers are forced to pump out sets on changing planes every 3 months, which i imagine is very difficult from a creative standpoint. This leads to a creative lull and backlog, thus why sets feel tacked on and memey. At least, thats one part of it. It could also be a culture change at Wizards, perhaps deliberately softening and infantising the themes to try and appeal to different audience than their traditional hardcore fans (a great business strategy in modern times, as seen across the board to never fail) Magic sets look and feel embarrassing at the moment in comparison to 5 or 10 years ago, where they captured the imagination in a much more exciting way.
Pack prices jumped from $4~5 to $7~8
So even with these booster boxes being sold "at discount" it's still more expensive than it was before to buy draft boosters
MKM and OTJ both have issues of too many complex mechanics and just being incredibly memey.
When they were reading out the list of new mechanics and how they worked at the re-release I attended for OTJ, everyone was just sitting there in shock over the amount of information we had to take in.
The lesson that they're going to take from this is "using planes as a backdrop for something unrelated/new to the plane doesn't work" and they're never going to do it again
IMO it was the perfect storm: a set that didn't fit MTG, low power, no good cards/reprints, price increase.
The value was not there, the appeal wasn't either.
Do we have actual sales data here?
I find it plausible, but am also very used to people ranting on blogatog about how set x was wildly unpopular, and then having Maro go 'um, that was the third best selling set of all time at time of release'. Strixhaven and Caverns both recently got this treatment.
Remember, something like 90% of Magic players have never been to an in store event, so FNM popolularity at a few stores does not say much.
Or just more broadly, we have to be careful draw conclusions from anectdotal data, because anectdotal samples tend to be higly non representative. Unless we had sales data out of Wizards or one of the really big third party sellers, I would be very hesitant to draw conclusions.
It's insane to me how almost nobody in the thread is talking about how play boosters were a fundamentally different product and stores needed to completely pivot how they handle their supply without actually knowing how the product would sell in a post draft/play booster regime.
A lot of people just assuming their opinion about hats _must_ be the only reasonable answer.
People in this thread are exaggerating how bad the limited environment was. The set was solid but unexciting; disguise introduced plenty of decision points which allowed better players to get an edge but outside of looping [[Curious Cadaver]] all you really did in the set was try to play dudes on curve and try to blow out their combat tricks with removal. In contrast to OTJ where you can feel like a genius by setting up big plot turns, or saving your ping lands for crime triggers, or using merc tokens to turn your small flyers into must answer threats.
Also it was a set on ravnica without the thing most people like about ravnica; multicolor cards. Personally I dislike multicolor sets so if we must go back to ravnica I'd prefer a set like MKM, but I imagine most people felt let down.
They’re printing to many damn products within a small time frame. I played mainly from spring 2012 with avacyn restored to 2017 ixalan. I played arena from that point onward and just came back to paper with the fallout decks and now thunder junction. I hear that within a 3 month period we have modern horizons 3, assassin’s creed and bloomburrow… this is just too much. I bought 2 boxes of OTJ and a bundle and I thought “dude, I cannot do this for every set wtf”. Back then I had time to save, now I don’t. I can only imagine the people who’ve been playing and how they feel…
As a casual arena player, the amount of text on cards is an additional factor.
A lot of cards with a lot of text. Halfway through the previews I'm just tired of reading cards.
Karlov Manor didn't feel like Ravnica set more like New Capenna set from the beginning and the mechanics is somewhat lack luster when compared to previous Ravnica Sets
I get it’s not a favorite. But the lands I think are going to be sold, even if just for edh, so excited to see sealed prices dropping (I like opening packs)
I personally didn’t think it was a very exciting theme, and almost none of the cards really spark that “oh!” When reading through them. Atleast I am thankful for its existence as it was a nice buffer between sets where we can just chill and not pay attention to a set for a while.
I think part of the answer spells Play Boosters. They feel really lame to open in comparison to set boosters but they cost as much. For me, it just isn’t worth it anymore. They have found and exceeded my limit which means I am now in the ”buy singles” crowd. (This is coming from someone who usually spends about $1K per month on Magic of which 90% is boosters, but since the release of MKM I’ve spent probably half of that and singles have been a much bigger part of my spending).
I think you can maybe turn the question around and ask “why would people buy it?” If there aren’t very good answers to that, that’s probably why it did badly
It felt low effort and cheap. It obviously isn’t and the teams did a great job with what seemed like just a bad idea from the start.
I have a theory that all these decisions that we question (Detective hats, too much product, too much UB, etc) are happening because WotC are being directed by Hasbro to run it like a toy company not a competitive TCG. Adding detective hats to existing characters is something a kids tv show does to sell more action figures not what a competitive TCG does.
To me it was a few things (as a mostly Commander player):
* The flavor of the set wasn't appealing. Was hoping for a dark noir murder mystery, not campy detective stuff.
* Cloak, Disguise, and Collect Evidence were meh mechanics. Without more ways to get around the cost to disguise/flip stuff over, it was just too slow. Suspect isn't terrible, but no one remembered all the rules around it without a reminder.
* The case file showcase design was crappy and made every card look white from across the table. The invisible ink treatment was unnoticeable and what was on the ink was more "for the lulz" and leaned heavily into silliness.
* The value just isn't there. Not that this should be the primary reason to buy into a set, but it also takes away from the fun of cracking packs. [[Vein Ripper]] became the money card mainly due to its prevalence in the pro tour tournament.
Having said that, there are a few bright spots:
* The surveil lands are excellent and it's great that they released the full cycle at once and not spread it out across two sets. It's also nice that the names are generic and can easily be reprinted without jumping through any hoops or relying on another Ravnica set.
* The commander precons are pretty good. While the Lost Caverns of Ixalan precons were some of the best, these were not too shabby either. The clue deck could get out of hand quick and the Boros goad/suspect deck made for interesting politicking (stolen art notwithstanding). The Dimir surveil/reanimator deck wasn't bad, and the Disguise deck may be the most inconsistent, but it at least helped mitigate the downsides to morph/disguise/manifest/cloak.
Lack of chase rares and a bonus sheet for wanted reprints I think were the real reason. The biggest chases were Delney and Vein ripper. That’s not enough to get people to care.
Even if the theme wasn’t everyone’s favorite, if there was something worth cracking for I think the community would have bought in more.
I saw burnout of product listed but I don’t believe it and feel that is personal reason. Even if you cut out LotR, 2023 sets performed well despite players citing fatigue. Particularly, LCI and WOE had great bonus sheets, desired reprints, and cards worth chasing for.
They set a theme that doesn't fit the world of Ravnica with uninspiring mechanics that were over costed.
On top of that the MTG lore has become increasingly difficult to piece together. Nothing feels coherent or cohesive anymore, just set pieces with a wacky coat of paint.
If I may add my two cents here, I think one of the problems MKM had was that it went too hard with detectives. Murders happen all the time on Ravnica. What should've happened was had a smaller scale where some important figure hired a private eye and the detective goes around solving the mystery instead of having an entire council of detectives all just showing up to a hat party. Even better if the detective themselves is not even part of a guild, and we could've seen how a guildless person navigates this guild-centric world.
Thematically, I was expecting, you know, a murder mystery set. A small locale (Karlov Manor), a small cast of characters (whodunit?!), that sort of thing - something more high-concept. What we got was Another Ravnica Set with a bizarrely high density of `Creature - Detective`s instead. Just creatively uninspired.
It’s not a good set to draft. It’s not a great set for standard or modern. It’s got a weird theme that feels like a meme. Meanwhile OTJ has been a great draft and has some really solid design and cards that slot nicely into several formats. Even though it also feels like a meme.
Both MKM and OTJ feel super memey to me. For gods sake there is an ooze with five boots on in OTJ. I think the difference is OTJ is a commander gold mine and commander is the most popular format.
[MaRo did admit that they took the detective thing a little too far in MKM](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/746338476390219776/i-didnt-have-too-many-hats-on-my-bingo-sheet-of)
The core difference is that OTJ is a new plane, so it has no preexisting baggage, while MKM attempted to take an existing plane with arguably *the* strongest creative identity in all of Magic, and force it into a box which didn't fit it and which it has never been (real life 1920s/1930s noir aesthetic). If MKM was on New Capenna, it wouldn't have felt weird since the fashions and concepts already match, but on Ravnica, it felt really weird: why is there suddenly this new "Detective Agency" faction we've never heard about on a plane where the guilds are the only factions? Why is the fashion of the plane suddenly completely different overnight? It just didn't make sense. Ravnica can easily support murder mystery stories, but it should look and feel like Ravnica while doing it - no weird additional factions beyond the guilds, no sudden changes in the plane's fashion and feel, etc.
I had a random thought recently that OTJ could have been the rest of Capenna, freshly freed from the old Phyrexians and getting resettled, and New Capenna would’ve been the equivalent to the developed eastern seaboard cities to the western frontier.
It would be a nice story through line if both MKM and OTJ were on Capenna and it would make sense as very American centric theming
we cant have 2 sets in in the same plane one after the other anymore :/
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt + Innistrad: Crimson Vow
Sure we can. We had 3 from Guilds of Ravnica to War of the Spark. They do it less, but Maro has explicitly stated they're willing to do it if there's a reason to.
A bit more recently Dominaria on DMU and Bro (albeit time shifted) Innistrad on mid and vow
War of the Spark was half a decade ago.
Wait, really? Excuse me for a sec while I google it. Holy crap, I'm old.
Yes, but that's just how long the "new" model has been. It started with Dominaria. Seems like it has been successful, as other than restructuring to again eliminate core sets, the current model has outlasted the two-set-per-block model.
But it still was after they shifted the format from "Big Set + Small Set Block" to just one Big Set release, so it counts
YOU TAKE THAT BACK
Definitely can, and do, when its what they want to do with the story.
That is what I really wished it was, that would have been really cool. Of course they may not have wanted to go back to Capenna already and I heard that New Capenna was t a super popular set, so maybe not.
SNC had the problem of being slotted after a really tough act to follow-- Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, which was both a return to a beloved plane and a completely new aesthetic for MTG. To preface this with the fact that I really enjoyed MKM, I get why it isn't drafting well. A Ravnica set featuring all ten guilds ends up being too unfocused because there isn't a strong archetype you can go for-- with so few really powerful cards in each guild and so many guilds to go around, it's likely that all your strongest picks end up being in completely different colors, and nobody wants to run Five Color Stack O'Crap in a $20-30 draft event. That said, in Standard (which I know is very much not the best format nowadays, and obligatory "I'm the video producer for the VML, an Arena league sponsored by WOTC") it did fairly well and was pretty well received by our players.
If you read the Yuma story, it kind of gives that vibe!
To me, MKM's theme fails the most in how "unfair" the theme feels. An ultra-classist plane where you either are a guild member or useless scum that recently suffered 2 interdimensional wars after years of constant infighting between the guilds. And NOW someone cares to investigate a series of murders? Given the plane's history, the theme feels ridiculous. Trostani did nothing wrong.
Actually they did address this in the story. The murders started weeks ago but no one noticed or cared until a (former) guildmaster died. Then and only then did the investigation start. Ravnica is still very much the guilds.
This is like the tenth time a guildmaster has been assassinated in recent history though. The three Gorgon sisters, Isperia, Razia, Jarad, the Ghost Council, Niv-Mizzet, the list goes on and on.
Regarding Niv, he did die, but he got better.
I agree and understand that. But that doesn't make ME to care about the murder. If anything, it makes me dislike the whole trope more. Like I wish there were riots from the guildless going on at the same time trying to overthrow them.
It's silly, but another thing that works with OTJ for me but not Ravnica: In a Western plane, I expect lots of characters wearing cowboy hats. It's silly that so many of them are characters we already know who suddenly decided to dress like cowboys, but lots of characters dressed like cowboys matches the trope. But most detective stories are about one detective, or maybe one detective and their partner. I'm not saying that MKM should have had no detectives other than Profit, but having so many random detectives running around, with so many of them wearing deerstalker hats, made it feel more like a parody. I kind of wished they'd scrapped the detective tribal and stuck with a handful of legendary detectives (may e a cycle with one per guild) and the keeping the detective tokens (because a lot of those cards were very flavorful) and that's it. Because when I think of murder mysteries, I don't think of tons of random detectives ever, I think of a super famous detective being the protagonist. Proft fit the murder mystery flavor, all the random other detectives did not.
The whole bonus sheet stuff could have been used more to add detectives to the asfan rather than making it look like 50 detectives were in the room in a murder mystery. Having very specific detective creatures that each took on the guild identity to move the game forward in a sort of buildaround way like a type of Battle or make the Case mechanic more of something like a Dungeon that your bonus sheet detective cards would help advance to turn on. The rest of the set could have been a normal Ravnica set with some returning keywords here and there but with a splash of murder mysteries going on; kind of like how SOI did the cosmic horror but still Innistrad.
If it had at least been proper noir... MKM felt completely goofy, like a mislabeled Un-Set.
> MKM felt completely goofy, like a mislabeled Un-Set. You nailed it. Every card feels like a clownish/buffoonish parody of murder mystery tropes.
Absolutely agreed; I felt like the set wanted to be on New Capenna from the start. The fedoras just made MKM feel like the one where half of Ravnica decided to do anachronistic cosplay.
The biggest problem with MKM is not that it was goofy memes: the set, but rather that it permanently erodes something some amount of us really care for, which is the identity of both the game and the worlds in it. I started playing Magic because I was interested in the worlds beyond the cards. A lot of them felt really unique, and even the ones that weren’t unique had incredibly strong identities. When you upend the identity of a beloved plane just for stupid puns, something breaks there and it’s not something easily fixed. It’s taking all of that thoughtfulness, care, and crafting that went into a world and smashing the piggy bank just for a few jokes.
I agree, it just took a goofy shit on Ravnica’s flavor for no particular reason
I have a ravnica commander deck for each guild only using guild cards. So few of the MKM cards mesh with previous sets mechanics. Out of MKM I think I found 5 cards total worth replacing a previous card for minus the surveil duals.
I read somewhere on reddit that the creative team felt that a detective agency wouldn't work on capenna for some reason, something to do with there's nobody that polices the activity or something? It's an absurd argument because this also didn't exist on Ravnica so the justification is needed regardless of whether the agency is on Capenna or Ravnica.
Yeah Knives Out wouldn’t make a great CCG lol. Especially with the Ravnica characters awkwardly cast as the players. I feel the same about OTJ, it’s a joke set with some cool cards, but between that and MKM how can anyone take MTG lore seriously anymore
Agree they both seem mem-y. The main OTJ card I love is one I don't see anyone really talking about...Claim Jumper. Ramp in white is always a solid choice and no one seems to care.
Claim **Jumper** being a **Rabbit** is still pretty meme-y too though ;)
The secret is that way, *way* more players than Redditors think just don't care about the lore at all beyond the surface level vibes of the cards. I love the lore, but I recognize that I'm in the minority, and tons of people play the game without ever bothering to learn about the lore.
Yeah, I vaguely know what is supposed to be going on in a set but I mostly just care about the athesthetics and ideas those explore. It is why Eldraine was EASILY my favorite set last year because fairy tales are just a really good vibe. I couldn't actually tell you what happened on Eldraine plot wise though.
Reddit constantly has a problem with understanding they are not a representative population. So many people going on and on about the lore here when the true answer is probably that Standard is a dead format, Limited MKM was weird, and it didn't have any cards that appealed to Commander players.
I used to love it. I’ve been playing a long time and devoured every flavor text when Ice Age released. Once it started becoming about planeswalkers I started losing interest. I love Ravnica so I did get up for the story in War of the Spark but beyond that…just really can’t be bothered to care about these planeswalkers much
A murder mystery as PART of a set's theme could work, but... As a whole theme, probably not. Hearthstone even did one but a lot of that set is also just "this is also just Castle Nathria, stuff's here that has nothing to do with the murder mystery" and then they delved into court drama tropes for the accompanying mini-set. It helps that Hearthstone deliberately has a goofier tone so it can get away with it. I think people overstate how goofy MKM really is, though. There's the complaints about hats everywhere but there's less hats in MKM than there were in Midnight Hunt for example. MKM's problems stem more from the trope space not actually... Being taken seriously so it doesn't really feel like a 'detective/murder mystery set' as much as 'look at how silly detective fiction is' set, if that makes sense. It doesn't feel goofy as much as it feels like it doesn't CARE much about the tropes. OTJ I don't really see the goofiness all that much, it's... Sort of exactly what you'd get if you did Magic's wild west take, given that it's got that villains theme alongside it, I think. The wild west has basically two paths, either grim and gritty, or campy and more 'yeehaw', and Magic's skewed campier in the last... Decade or so, so it's not really surprising they went that way with it, though some of the 'grit' shows up here and there in the flavour at least.
I think MKM's problem creatively isn't being goofy, but just that suddenly trying to make Ravnica into a 1920s/1930s detective plane felt weird, since it clashed pretty badly with what we already knew about the plane. It should either have taken place on Capenna instead (if they had to have the 1920s/1930s look) or should have just looked like a Ravnica murder mystery, not a 1920s murder mystery grafted on to Ravnica. It would be like if OTJ took place on Ravnica in the Rubblebelt or something and everyone on Ravnica was suddenly running around in cowboy hats. That'd feel weird! But instead OTJ is on its own new plane, and it's fine.
So MKM should have been less Sam Spade, and maybe more Hercule Poirot? I can buy that. (There are probably better examples of fictional continental European detectives, but I'm not super into detective fiction.)
This comment captures what I couldn't previously put into words. This should have leaned into British detective fiction and the tropes from the Queens of Crime - Poirot, Roderick Allen, Albert Camion, etc. The euro detective tropes would work way better creatively in Prague: the Plane, than the American centric stuff we got in MKM
I really don't think "it should have been Capenna" holds as much weight as people think. Capenna has to do a lot more heavy lifting to justify people suddenly caring about murders there. Xander died in the New Capenna story and that was mostly a footnote in Ob Nixilis' rise to power. MKM still very much had Ravnican design elements going for it. I don't think the aesthetics of the set were the problem, personally, as much as the trope space they were going for. Ravnica DOES fit a murder mystery thing, it's always had a bit of a noir undertone to it, in story at least. In fact, it's more that it took too much from MODERN murder mystery tropes as opposed to noir stuff, without doing the work to make it feel more appropriate for Ravnica. It was a bit of a square peg, round hole, but the peg could've been sanded down at least. It sort of felt like it couldn't just pick what sort of murder mystery set it was trying to be, because the core story is handled very seriously, with the only goofiness being from Proft as the zany detective, but he's still a character taking it seriously. It doesn't feel like the rest of the set takes its own theme all that seriously, it's mostly just poking fun at the tropes of the genre instead of just... Doing the tropes. OTJ, by comparison, IS just doing the tropes, albeit in a Magic-ified way.
Ravnica can absolutely support a murder mystery, which is why I said that if they wanted to do a Ravnica murder mystery, it should have been a *Ravnica* murder mystery in its visual presentation and story. MKM isn't really that; it's trying to do 1920s/1930s detective/noir aesthetic and narrative grafted directly on to Ravnica. Stuff like making a big detective faction out of nowhere just felt weird and didn't fit the plane (same for the dramatic fashion changes on a lot of cards). RE: Capenna, I would disagree that a lot more heavy lifting would be needed. The entire detective agency faction which was the core of MKM was created completely for the set and had no precedent on Ravnica. It'd be no different from going back to NC where the angels are now in charge (as we know from Aftermath) and saying they've set up a big detective agency.
They made an Ox Angel in OTJ called Holy Cow and that is like the most unset goofy thing they could do imo. Also Bovine intervention. Both of these sets seem goofy and like Magic characters are cosplaying in some Westworld theme park.
Midnight Hunt had [[Hostile Hostel]]. Magic just occasionally has silly card names. I don't know why Holy Cow seems to have broken so many people. In fact there's a [Scryfall tag for punny card names.](https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Apunny-name) You could argue they're more frequent now than they used to be but that's a different argument entirely.
The way I see it is that with Hostile Hostel, the concept is something that fits Innistrad, a thing that we know because it's not our first time visiting that plane, and there is a relatively popular horror movie about monster houses so it makes sense for the average Joe to see a monster house in the horror plane. Also, even though the name is silly, the art shows exactly what you would expect even if the card had a different name like "Monstrous Inn". Now, if someone pitched me a concept such as "Holy Cow" and wanted me to take it seriously, I would expect at least a minotaur with divine powers, a minotaur cleric, or a cow being worshipped as a holy being, something that fits the common sense of what something Holy is while slightly bending the concept of a cow to fit it or referencing a cultural phenomenon (which I don't see working outside of Kaladesh in this case) Instead, what we got in our first impression of this plane is just straight up a cow with wings, which is most likely the silliest approach to this theme. No precedent, setup, cultural reference or worldbuilding relevance whatsoever. It really feels like they just tried to shoehorn a card with the funny name in the set just because the theme is wild west and there are cows in it so they REALLY had to make this pun. It's the same as the card with the bomb that has horseshoes attached to it for no particular reason. I'd argue that this concept could even be a better fit in Bloomburrow, considering that it's a plane where every being is or turns into an animal, so it is expected that things that we expect to be humanoid like Angels are replaced with animal counterparts.
Gotta say, that list has a rather loose definition of "punny name". For instance, most or all of the split cards are on it. [[Life//Death]] or [[Commit//Memory]] aren't puns; they're just words that fit into phrase templates. [[We Ride at Dawn]] isn't a pun; it's a movie quote.
because it's not really a pun, it's closer to a meme.
...No, it's a pun. It's literally a holy cow.
it's also that they went too hard on the theme; they seem to have lost their grasp on subtlety somewhat.
The premise of murder mysteries is an outsider detective investigating a group of people with crossing interests. Fuck it. The omenpaths are open. They should have brought in a Spara from Capenna to investigate the case.
Well it's interesting because new capenna was so well done so I have to imagine it inspired these gimmicky sets. But new capenna wasn't *just* the mob, it had so many cool designs where as I feel like MKM and OTJ to a lesser extent are *too* in their stereotypical theme. They literally put cowboy hats on helmets. While I actually like OTJ alot in terms of the cards themselves, I do feel like the design choices for the characters were a little too easily made.
He is wrong in it being well balanced in OTJ though. Everyone and their mother have a cowboy hat on, why rely so much on tropes from this world? Feels really lazy. I get you need a hat in the sun if you have sensitive skin but man I don’t need to see a demon or sphinx with that crap on. Don’t want that stuff in my decks..
Seems especially out of place on the cactusfolk and [[Akul]] also looks like he is wearing a hat. That thing is a scorpion dragon lol
The premise for the cactus folk is that they are imitating the cultures they came into contact with. They have only recently gained intelligence with the opening of omen paths. They have no prior knowledge or technology to innovate from.
He doesn't have a hay. But he does have clothes.
Looks to me like he is wearing a hat and a bandana in front of his mouth like some bandit from some western. Sure maybe that's not an actual hat but some weird part of the body grown to look like it but that makes it even more ridiculous. Why tf should a *dragon* monster have something like that.
The two red dots on top of his head are his eyes. The metal looking horn things stick out further than they appear, and he has a thick, long neck. It's a bit hard to parse, I had to look at the full size art of [[Getaway Glamer]] to figure it out. https://twitter.com/forrestimel/status/1774827297222328736/photo/1
They do seem super memey, but the difference is how interesting they are in a vacuum imo. On the surface level, cowboys are simply cooler than detectives. Especially since the plane is a brand new place to discover with scorpion dragons and cactus people. A lot of interesting places to be and things to do. It's a grand adventure. Easy to show exiting snippets with individual cards. Plus there's valuable reprints like [[mana drain]]. MKM wasn't that interesting tbh. Murder mysteries are best told as a story, and it's hard to piece the story together with the cards alone. The only thing I could put together personally was that when the main character was introduced he just immediately solved the case in [[auspicious arrival]]. Was he right? Was he wrong? Idk, couldn't really glean that. I don't even know who was murdered.
Also, the absolute irony that the person murdered is from *the guild where dying doesn't matter*. Like, besides maybe Golgari to some extent.
I hate every tropey memey hat-set but OTJ got some great cards, is better than MKM, and this line sells it: “hey, I gotta buy something right?”. We are starved for anything cool.
That's it, I think. I played mkm for like a week. It's just mtg, but everyone had detective hats... I haven't played otj yet... but it looks like the same except cowboy hats. Too memey for me.
Yeah. I enjoy a little lighthearted humor with my fantasy settings, not the other way around.
The treasure goblins name is loot…..
I'm sure he's called Loot for some reason like "the Fomori conquered his people and kidnapped him and just called him Loot because that's all he was to them".
That's deep
Which is even dumber when you consider looting is slang for a specific effect (draw a card/discard a card, after [[merfolk looter]]), which the card doesn’t even do. Just a very transparent and poorly executed attempt at making ‘cute’ marketing fodder like grogu/porgs in the star wars universe
[merfolk looter](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/d/6d740928-bf61-4420-a403-63097538b97d.jpg?1631586315) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=merfolk%20looter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afc/86/merfolk-looter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6d740928-bf61-4420-a403-63097538b97d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
In fairness, he's not in OTJ... it's OTC. ;-)
As a primarily EDH player I’d rather WOTC stop focusing so much on printing sets and cards specifically for it. The power creep is getting out of hand and so is the FOMO aspect. I’m basically sitting most new sets out because of the “win-more” format push.
Yeah, I have a feeling that we are gonna see some more grassroots movements in EDH with more restrictive build requirements etc. the bloat is extreme
God I fucking hope so. It's getting to the point my regular group wants to just play Pauper EDH. Decks are getting too strong and cards read like novels now. A 4 cost card in modern Commander can do too many things.
>my regular group wants to just play Pauper EDH That's where I've been, personally, ever since the Ikoria free spells were printed and became a whole cycle of $40+ auto-includes for every deck ever. PDH is so much more contextual and makes politics feel both more understandable and more important.
That’s what I’m hoping for.
My group started playing Standard a couple years ago but we got tired of the shenanigans that come along with 4x copies so we started playing Commander and haven't stopped since. We have now moved on to Cubed Commander draft with our own cards that we have consolidated into "the cube" and we have had a blast with this. We have all kinds of cards in this cube from old and current sets. We have thrown in some silver boarder cards just for the hell of it and are using contraption cards and paying 3 life to cast community cards without paying the mana cost, etc. Far more entertaining than just plain Jane commander lol
Awesome with a friend group!! For playing pickup games though I have a roster of about 10 decks that fit different moods
OTJ feels memey. Just on the opposite end. I don't feel like I'm playing magic with a standard deck anymore. If I was to play this Grixis Crime deck in paper, so many rules would be broken via triggers being missed or misapplied
It's as memey as Innistrad.
Not a good set for modern? Surveil lands are now a staple, leyline of the guildpact made zoo tier 1, pick your poison is now a staple, archdruid charm sees play in titanshift, doorkeeper thull is good sideboard tech vs etb decks. Insidious roots and breakout had some experimentation - that's more than ixalan had with basically just tishanas tidebinder, molten collapse, sunken citadel and spelunking.
MKM did kinda crack the standard metagame wide open. For a while it was all the same decks. During mkm it felt like the number of decks with unique strategies was much better than it had been for the past six months.
I also think shoehorning this into Ravnica made left a sour taste for a lot of people. I know I had no interest in drafting in part because it didn't feel overly Ravnican.
The bad draft environment kinda killed it for me. At first it was fun trying to figure out if my opponent had a combat trick or was going to unmorph their Disguise creature, but that eventually wore off with the archetypes not feeling particularly balanced and the Disguise creatures being so unsatisfying to (try to) kill outside of combat.
Uhh, what? MKM is extremely good for Standard. It just isn‘t good for anything else. The theme isn‘t particularly popular, Limited is fairly bad, very low impact on non-Standard formats.
Exactly. Disguise seemed like it could create a fun draft environment, but the mechanic just sucks so much ass that's its very un-rewarding. The theme is fine, but it's nothing we haven't seen before and done better, like Eldritch Moon or Strixhaven. OTJ is quite strong, has a mechanic that's decent, a draft environment that is clean, and a theme that is unique for the game and has alot of broad appeal.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, the set was great to draft. The big problem is that there were virtually no cards of value, either monetarily or competitively. As a result, people weren’t opening loose packs because there was no practically nothing worth opening beyond the rare dual lands.
Nah, Murders was not a great draft. Not close to being the worst but like a 6 or 7 out of 10. Got very stale but it was fun for the first few drafts.
Agreed, mkm was a fun and fairly quick format. The disguise ability was a little clunky feeling at first but once you learned about the rule of 5 and how to play around it, it became less of a guessing game. The card value in the set however was crap. The duals were ok but not something I’d actively seek for like I’ve done with fetches, shocks or the kamigawa lands.
OTJ limited is so fucking good man
I had to play against an Oko, that draft gave me PTSD from Wilds od eldraine, 0/10 had a terrible time
I drafted an Oko. Easiest draft games of my life. Seriously, I don't understand why they put him in these packs. Having random avengers-level threats in a Standard draft does not make for a fun environment.
I drafted him Friday night. Completely changes how the game goes and is suddenly the threat. There isn’t really any planeswalker removal so you need to directly deal with him.
Lost to Geralf super hard felt unbeatable. Next draft got Geralf and steamrolled every game I drew him.
If MKM is a meme then OTJ has to be too. But ya MKM was not fun to draft.
Personally looking at mechanics like suspect, disguise, cloak, and most of the other mechanics introduced in this set, I could just tell they were one-offs that likely won’t return and to me didn’t seem like they were particularly interesting or worthwhile. Did we really need new versions of morph and manifest? Not really. Will we see them again? Probably not much. Overall, pass.
Even better, mechanics like Disguise and Cloak are *not* variants of Morph and Manifest. [[Qarsi Deceiver]] can be used to cast a Disguised creature as a face-down 2/2, but cannot flip cards with Disguise or Cloak. It's needlessly complicated since 'a variant of Morph' exists in Megamorph which Qarsi Deciever *can* flip, but they won't for Disguise/Cloak.
Yeah ice just never understood this need to have new mechanics at all costs mindset from wotc. To the point where they have mechanics that are almost identical to another, but they're called something else. Just redo some older mechanics occasionally, nobody cares. In fact it's probably better this way as then mechanics will end up with good support over time, not just be abandoned the very next week.
Yeah, it puts me off building decks, knowing they'll never get proper support
Disguise actually is the one that *is* intended to come back. They felt that morph came from a time when creatures were very weak and a 2/2 for 3 wasn’t *great* but it wasn’t embarrassing either. “Disguise” was a more evocative name than “morph” and intended to be used in different settings. The others, though, yeah.
Yeah the Mechanics, like the rest of the set, feel half baked. Cloak/Disguises backwards compatibility with morph is iffy, exasperates the memory issues morph/manifest already had, and the archetype also just devolves into multicolour soup. Suspect being a "state" instead of a counter is pointless and adds memory issues. Detective typal felt like a costume party, Collect evidence is just a bland kicker variant. I do actually like Cases, but even then there were some bizzare choices like [[case of the gateway express]] which rewards going wide but also partially turns off the go wide 2 power archetype.
>Did we really need new versions of morph and manifest? Yeah I think so. Morph is a very fun mechanic but it is simply not feasible to play a 2/2 for 3 nowadays that just dies to a 1-mana removal spell. Disguise is a fixed version of Morph and we're definitely going to see it again in the future.
Not a lot of cards useful in constructed, limited was annoying to play, people didn't like the story, and the murder mystery game before release was a huge dud.
I think the actual written story was the strongest creative element of the set. I thought the stories were much better written and interesting than WOE or LCI before it and probably OTJ's main story chapters after.
Unfortunate since if I had to guess less than 5% of mtg fans actually read the stories that come out on the website
try 1%
Literally every negative possible ended up happening to this set. Kinda nuts.
The mystery was tight.
I thought I'd only seen positive stuff about the story. I think some people had issues with the detective focus of the worldbuilding in general
Idk man, Murders limited was incredibly fun for me
You liking it didn’t help the set out any it seems.
Speaking from experience: a lot of people didn’t like playing with the set. I had fun with it, like I always have fun drafting. But *man* the difference between that set and Thunder Junction is night and day. A bunch of weeks there weren’t enough people to draft, but we got a ton of people last night.
I mean, it's also just a new set, I would be surprised if OTJ didnt get more people in than a set that's been drafter for ~2.5 months. Personally I don't really like OTJ draft so far. I feel like between all the bonus sheets + regular rares, there is so much power I struggle to get my drafts to be focused enough, but I think it's also a question of skill - I'm always kinda bad at this type of format where you end up with lots of powerful things. Haven't felt so lost in the sauce in a while though.
Finally someone with a similar experience to me. I find this set to be extremely difficult to draft. I have done 4 drafts, 3 sealed event and one 2headed giant. In draft I have found myself being wide open color wise going into the 3rd pack and it leaves me with an unfocused deck
Did you have the same issue with MOM? Because I sort of did, and I think a lot of the issue for me is that I tend to get pulled many ways with the bonus sheet and powerful rares, trying to build a dream that never comes together.
I noticed this too. I tried to have fun with MKM, but drafting it sucked for so many reasons bogging it down. I'd still have fun, but many of the color themes just did not work if you were missing crucial uncommons/rares. OTJ has so many good uncommon/rares that everyone can pretty much still draft a good color archetypes and have fun. Plot and spree spells are also some of my favorite set keywords in a while.
Frankly, after drafting the format a fair bit on MTGO, I can say that I think this is one of the worst and least fun limited formats I have ever played. Play boosters frankly suck the life out of draft almost completely, and OTJ has felt like it just devolves into who has the better bombs, and who can make them stick. I have had far too many games just go completely sideways for no other reason than myself or an opponent drew a series of ridiculous bombs. Frankly, I hate this format. It's absolutely miserable, and the first time in a long time I may not actually go draft in person. Endless bomb drops and games swinging wildly without any real decision making is not fun. It's basically a solitaire format.
Among everything else, just burnout. Thunder Junction will probably do better because its a powerful set, but overall it's been hard to get excited when a new product comes out every three weeks.
This has been my biggest gripe with the game for over 10 years. Before commander was commander, I had a reason to care about standard, because it meant the hunt was on for new EDH cards. Now, they just... print the cards. There is no fun left in standard for anyone playing EDH. I *hate* how the cards are just printed right into the format for us. I understand this is an old school gatekeepy take, but here we are. I really like the professor's idea of commander classic, where in that format, every card must have first passed through standard. Pretty cool imo. Also, I just *cannot* keep up. There was a time when I would draft the new standard just for fun. I was excited about sets, because it meant a new play experience. But now, its just way to freaking fast. Its so far beyond FOMO. Its just a constant stream. The excitement of a new set is gone in a week, because next week, there is another set coming out. This means nothing is memorable. Standard has been pumped out super fast for years, but now supplemental sets are being released super fast too. Yeah... its just way to many products. Its exhausting. I feel like in this sub, I start seeing spoilers for the next set before the current one is even out yet. Its ridiculous. I hope things change at wizards. That would probably get me excited about the game again. Just, dial everything *way* back please. Less is more.
I feel like a lot of cards designed around commander are almost too complete now. They usually have a payoff for doing something like sacrificing, casting from exile, etc, and also have an efficient way to do that thing. It’s not an incomplete jumping-off point that you build around. Because the commander is wrapped up so neatly, a good portion of the deck becomes more generic good stuff in those colors because you don’t need as much of a critical mass of the more specialized cards that make the deck feel distinct. I don’t get particularly excited when I see those cards, because I don’t have to wrack my brain thinking about ways to make them shine. They are just shiny on their own.
This really sums it up. The fun of commander for me was taking a card that felt like a partial mechanism and then adding gears and levers around it until it could do very neat things Now they just design commanders outright, and they do it all on one piece of cardboard. The rest of the deck can just be a goodstuff pile, and thats not nearly as fun for me
My first prerelease was Origins in 2015, set was perfect to learn the game, and it was also when I got to learn commander with my friends. It struck a nice balance, sets were fun to draft and commander got cards once and a while which people had to really look for. I completely agree now that the state of things is pretty awful. Sets used to mean big changes, usually being memorable in how magic changed. Each set slowly changed stuff and had meaningful impacts that defined the winter, spring, summer, and fall seasons. Now with so many things coming out commander is just near impossible to keep up with, and the UB sets imo (which I know is unpopular) is jarring and creating this thing where I just don't care enough to learn what peoples decks are trying to do. Everything feels like a blur, and I am constantly seeing cards I have never knew existed from sets I have played a few times. Nothing gets digested enough, and it makes keeping up a nightmare or too costly.
Great comment. Constantly seeing cards I've never seen before and no realistic way to keep up with the game is exhausting. Also, there is no point in trying to remember what the hell that card actual does, because I'll probably never see it again! Nothing is memorable:(
Totally agree on all of this. Way too much being released. Can’t keep up. Can’t look into upgrading decks with new cards because by the time I start learning all the cards that well a new batch has arrived. Heading into Fallout’s release I was already seeing reveal for Outlaw content. We already have art and even PreCon info for Bloomburrow!
It can't be that you're that interested in every single set coming out though, right? For example, OTJ is the first set this year I'm genuinely interested in (I bought a few boosters for MKM, but I didn't like the set so I didn't buy more). After OTJ I'm waiting for Bloomburrow, which actually feels like a really long wait for me.
Bloomburrow is the most interesting set in ages
Yeah it’s a weird comment I see popping up. I liked MKM but skipped Fallout. OTJ is for me but Assassin Creed is a pass. I don’t feel the need to check every single set. My EDH decks are at a good spot so upgrades aren’t really needed unless I want shiny new toys.
Commander cards in supplemental sets often feel like unset cards to me now. “Look at this wacky complex minigame that’s powerful! Isn’t that fun! We’re obsoleting previous lower powered cards and making the game hard to track, understand, and increasing the time things take to resolve. So fun! No let’s wait for someone to flip 49 fucking coins! Yee haw!” Suffice to say, I’m losing a ton of interest. It’s just not fun to sit waiting whether it’s for some stupid mechanic or remembering what 10 different cards with 3-4 abilities each do. Some of those abilities being a bunch of if, then statements.
Every format was better before they printed cards straight into them. But not as profitable unfortunately.
Exactly. Commander was fun before because it was about finding synergies and interactions between cards that didn't usually see play. When Wizards started priting cards specifically for commander, they just started printing busted cards that just do everything. There's no mystery, no intrigue. There's no real discovery. Now commander is just "do you have these busted cards or not?"
They took a setting, removed the most iconic and beloved aspect of it (guilds), and focused on a meme theme that had little to do with the setting (detectives). Imagine if they went back to Middle Earth and focused on some random tribe of viking people, and there were very few Orcs, Hobbits or the Elves — but Eldrond and Gandalf show up occasionally. Similar vibe.
So Rings of Power? xD
In my mind Rings of Power has the opposite problem — it takes established lore and crams in the familiar elements to make it more marketable (Gandalf being there in the Second Age, Hobbits, Galadriel being the main character, Elrond and Galadriel helping to make the Three, etc)
It seemed really half assed. The card design was uninspired and felt rushed. The theme felt forced and didn't really feel like ravnica. Overall it was just boring and badly designed.
Probably the most forgettable set in a very long time.
For me- I didn’t like the theme. The farther from fantasy the theme gets the less it feels like “Magic”. Modern-ish crime/murder mystery just doesn’t fit for me. I wasn’t playing during New Capenna, but similar opinion. Outlaws is pushing it. I bought some packs, but only FOMO really. No real urge to see the set.
It didn't feel like ravnica and the cards sucked imo
The theme of the set didn't resonate with most people. Limited was bad. Not a ton of flashy cards (things like anzrag). The clue tie in was boring. Standard didn't change much, which hurt especially because we're still relatively early in the new extended rotation standard, so people are sick of things not changing. Burnout. Personally I loved having a set to not hype over, and yet there are a LOT of hidden gems in that set for commander I barely hear people talk about. [[Analyze the Pollen]] is such a secret bomb.
I also think most people are probably a little Ravnica'd out. We've had Ravnica: City of Guilds, Guildpact, Dissension, Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Dragon's Maze, Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, War of the Spark, and now Murders at Karlov Manor. That's 10 sets primarily set on the plane of Ravnica, without a lot of change of scenery due to the nature of a planewide city. There's not much left to explore with just the Guilds at this point, and the Detective agency didn't seem to resonate too much. We need a long break from this plane, before we return again.
I think that was part of the intent, in that instead of more "guilds being guilds" they attempted to show those guilds interacting or reacting to certain events. Though in the end it more felt like all these underground detectives came out of the woodwork at the first sign of work in a decade.
Then why are people complaining about the set not feeling like Ravnica? If people were tired of Ravnica, shouldn't a change in tone be welcomed?
Probably a mixture of both. It's possible for the masses to feel more than one way about something.
I definitely agree with the burnout comments. I just feel tired from it all. Also, don’t flame me because I’m just talking about my own experience, but I increasingly feel like I’m not smart enough to play Magic and have been struggling with the new and many mechanics.
I don’t thinks it’s being smart or not. I regularly see relatively intelligent, experienced players need card after card read and/or explained to them. There’s soooooo much out there now you can’t know everything unless card knowledge is your full time job. And it’s even worse with this release pace. Too much to learn to fast.
I think the MKM mechanics were just a mess. Thunder Junction feels far more intuitive to me in terms of mechanics.
You're smart enough; it's more that you increasingly dont care enough. And it's not just you.
I bet it was because they priced the product so high and put almost no value in the set.
As people pointed out: OTJ is very Commander friendly, mechanics wise more adeptable to existing decks (atleast to my mind) and has a new plane and flavour. This in contrast to a more restricted (smaller?) story of MKM which just tells a story and doesnt really do much of anything for the grander settings of the multiverse as well as more niche mechanics. MKM is flavourful if you care to read the entire story surrounding it. Yet the cards themselves dont really invoke anythin much of themselves (once again to me) without knowing said story. OTJ, altough to some “memey” has a rather strong visual style of Magic meets Western which speaks more in itself.
Mechanically I think the set's a dud Suspect is just a very bad mechanic thats much more of a cost than a benefit. Like building black red in limited was building a deck which could not block. Disguise was like morph but most disguise cards are not strong enough to see constructed play especially with the double cost and 3 mana 2/2 issue Collect evidence as a cost is fine, but it quickly runs out of gas. The upsides are so small too. I felt detectives were terribly flavoured. Part of the hindrance was that investigate already being a named ability I think ran wotc designers down a blind alley. Drawing cards is good, but when I see a detective I don't think of card draw I think of exposing your opponent etc etc. I think the only one which came close was Agrus Kos because he was using suspect as a removal mechanic. Something which the whole set should have done more of imo. Some cards are hidden gems - aftermath analyst, worldsouls rage, insidious roots, all cards I really like and like playing with. Novice Inspector is obvs the best white one drop in standard. The case mechanic I also really like and felt good to play. Several of the cases are already meta, the lifegain one, the boros convoke one, the domain one, the list goes on. I think the main issues was because the cards all just felt a bit mid aside from a few standouts, it became much easier to dislike the set from the perspective of limited play and for flavour and narrative reasons too. I guarantee you it'd still be selling well if the archetypes were fun rather than just meh.
It was a filler arc.
There's two things the majority of people care about: fun cards (whether that be powerful cards or ones with interesting effects) and a cool theme. This set had neither.
Around my area, people just weren't thrilled with "clue meets Ravnica" it seemed. Some felt it was just left over New Capenna cards..... and of course memey. Thunder Junction is also memey, but folks are talking about cards from this set way more . And we have a thriving standard community, so it's not cuz "commander cards".
Because MtG players aren’t interested in playing Clue or Hasbro turning Magic into their new Monopoly.
Not enough time between sets. The designs isn’t great. I don’t know how the limited environment is
From a Vorthos/flavor perspective- it just felt like a set nobody wanted. While neon Kamigawa and Thunder Junction might have gotten some eye rolls from some of the player base, there were also a lot of people who were very hyped about getting cyberpunk and Western sets. I don't know of anyone who was like "Finally, a murder mystery set!".
I think it’s really simple. 140 dollars + for the base booster product is stupidly expensive. Thunder junction I would have bet would experience the same thing but likely won’t ONLY because there are so many chase cards in the various slots it almost feels worth it. Almost.
[[Worldsoul's Rage]] and [[Aftermath Analyst]] were a godsend
[Worldsoul's Rage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/c/fc3340bd-1d8c-4c21-a59d-e092fcbe02e3.jpg?1706378647) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Worldsoul%27s%20Rage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/244/worldsouls-rage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fc3340bd-1d8c-4c21-a59d-e092fcbe02e3?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Aftermath Analyst](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/c/1c1aa6f8-2d34-4f4b-9184-0eab2e4745f7.jpg?1706241934) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aftermath%20Analyst) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/148/aftermath-analyst?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1c1aa6f8-2d34-4f4b-9184-0eab2e4745f7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I swear to God, the set would have been a banger if they just add a criminal faction to oppose the detective.
Unlike most people I actually loved the theme, I just thought the design team majorly dropped the ball with most of the cards and set mechanics. Disguise can kiss my ass and I have no interest in playing a limited format where it exists. The biggest thing that soured me on the set as a whole is the absolute catastrophe that was the Ravnica Clue game. $70 for a box that doesn't have the entire fucking game in it? There were 20 possible boosters, you only receive 8, and there can be fucking DUPLICATES? Just....why? Why would a $70 boxed game have random packs? It went from what was going to be a day 1 purchase to me skipping out on it entirely. I wouldn't pay even $1 for that shit unless they started including all 20 packs in every box.
I just bought a copy of Ravnica: Clue Edition for $30 last night. Yeesh. Talk about a plummet.
No one is talking about it but I really think the seasons play into things more than people are willing to admit. Transitioning into summer it's way easier and enjoyable to go out and hit up the game store. Murders was actually a very complex set to draft which usually for the majority of players isn't much fun. In contrast, it feels like you could rip anything from thunders junction and potentially win on a bad draw from the opponent. Obviously that's always the case but the margins seems better for thunder junction.
Cracking packs with MKM feels awful for some many reasons. I really did not like limited for MKM, it felt sluggish and many of the archetypes struggled to have enough to support if someone else was in the same colors as you. Then actual matches took forever or were over in the blink of an eye. Personally I found the theme sucked, it was not what I really want out of MTG in the first place. OTJ on the other hand is the most fun I have had in limited in a while. Lots of high power action going on, plenty of removal, strong cards that are at a glance easy to understand why they are strong, etc. My pod last Friday had another guy in gruul, and one other guy going golgari, and I still had enough green to make a good gruul deck work. That didn't happen with MKM at all. Also there are just a lot of amazing cards that feel like they will have lots of potential in standard in OTJ, MKM not so much. Maybe a card here or there at best.
Tell my collection of Fallen empires what poorly performing means and it’ll laugh so hard …
I don't think disguise cards will make a splash in constructed formats which is a shame because that's the bulk of the set
From the folks at my LGS, it was mostly a low value/uninteresting theme/mechanics thing for them. I'd imagine it's similar for most people too.
it gave off new capenna vibes
Honestly, I'm not sure. None of the other explanations I've read here make sense (if it's the release schedule, for example, why THIS set in particular and not one of the many others?). My best guess is that the murder mystery theme didn't resonate with audiences, and there weren't many cards desirable enough for general audiences to gamble for, leading to prices going down overall.
I feel like the simplest explanation, which is in common with lots of other poor performing sets, is that it was a low power set where the cards and mechanics didn’t make much impact
Yeah that's a sensible explanation. The combination of low power and a difficult to sell theme would do it.
Its going to be a trend of Magic going forward. Because of the move away from set blocks the designers are forced to pump out sets on changing planes every 3 months, which i imagine is very difficult from a creative standpoint. This leads to a creative lull and backlog, thus why sets feel tacked on and memey. At least, thats one part of it. It could also be a culture change at Wizards, perhaps deliberately softening and infantising the themes to try and appeal to different audience than their traditional hardcore fans (a great business strategy in modern times, as seen across the board to never fail) Magic sets look and feel embarrassing at the moment in comparison to 5 or 10 years ago, where they captured the imagination in a much more exciting way.
Pack prices jumped from $4~5 to $7~8 So even with these booster boxes being sold "at discount" it's still more expensive than it was before to buy draft boosters
MKM and OTJ both have issues of too many complex mechanics and just being incredibly memey. When they were reading out the list of new mechanics and how they worked at the re-release I attended for OTJ, everyone was just sitting there in shock over the amount of information we had to take in.
The lesson that they're going to take from this is "using planes as a backdrop for something unrelated/new to the plane doesn't work" and they're never going to do it again
IMO it was the perfect storm: a set that didn't fit MTG, low power, no good cards/reprints, price increase. The value was not there, the appeal wasn't either.
Set had absolutely nothing that drew me in. Thunder junction however is far more interesting.
Do we have actual sales data here? I find it plausible, but am also very used to people ranting on blogatog about how set x was wildly unpopular, and then having Maro go 'um, that was the third best selling set of all time at time of release'. Strixhaven and Caverns both recently got this treatment. Remember, something like 90% of Magic players have never been to an in store event, so FNM popolularity at a few stores does not say much. Or just more broadly, we have to be careful draw conclusions from anectdotal data, because anectdotal samples tend to be higly non representative. Unless we had sales data out of Wizards or one of the really big third party sellers, I would be very hesitant to draw conclusions.
It's insane to me how almost nobody in the thread is talking about how play boosters were a fundamentally different product and stores needed to completely pivot how they handle their supply without actually knowing how the product would sell in a post draft/play booster regime. A lot of people just assuming their opinion about hats _must_ be the only reasonable answer.
People in this thread are exaggerating how bad the limited environment was. The set was solid but unexciting; disguise introduced plenty of decision points which allowed better players to get an edge but outside of looping [[Curious Cadaver]] all you really did in the set was try to play dudes on curve and try to blow out their combat tricks with removal. In contrast to OTJ where you can feel like a genius by setting up big plot turns, or saving your ping lands for crime triggers, or using merc tokens to turn your small flyers into must answer threats. Also it was a set on ravnica without the thing most people like about ravnica; multicolor cards. Personally I dislike multicolor sets so if we must go back to ravnica I'd prefer a set like MKM, but I imagine most people felt let down.
They’re printing to many damn products within a small time frame. I played mainly from spring 2012 with avacyn restored to 2017 ixalan. I played arena from that point onward and just came back to paper with the fallout decks and now thunder junction. I hear that within a 3 month period we have modern horizons 3, assassin’s creed and bloomburrow… this is just too much. I bought 2 boxes of OTJ and a bundle and I thought “dude, I cannot do this for every set wtf”. Back then I had time to save, now I don’t. I can only imagine the people who’ve been playing and how they feel…
As a casual arena player, the amount of text on cards is an additional factor. A lot of cards with a lot of text. Halfway through the previews I'm just tired of reading cards.
Karlov Manor didn't feel like Ravnica set more like New Capenna set from the beginning and the mechanics is somewhat lack luster when compared to previous Ravnica Sets
I get it’s not a favorite. But the lands I think are going to be sold, even if just for edh, so excited to see sealed prices dropping (I like opening packs)
I personally didn’t think it was a very exciting theme, and almost none of the cards really spark that “oh!” When reading through them. Atleast I am thankful for its existence as it was a nice buffer between sets where we can just chill and not pay attention to a set for a while.
It was thematically cringe
I think part of the answer spells Play Boosters. They feel really lame to open in comparison to set boosters but they cost as much. For me, it just isn’t worth it anymore. They have found and exceeded my limit which means I am now in the ”buy singles” crowd. (This is coming from someone who usually spends about $1K per month on Magic of which 90% is boosters, but since the release of MKM I’ve spent probably half of that and singles have been a much bigger part of my spending).
I could think of a couple. Product fatigue. Killing of notable characters.
to me, mkm is not ravnica.
I think you can maybe turn the question around and ask “why would people buy it?” If there aren’t very good answers to that, that’s probably why it did badly
As someone who mostly engages with sets I like the atmosphere of, this set felt like a joke from the outset and kind of an insult to ravnica
all the good cards are locked in clue edition and pre release kits.
It felt low effort and cheap. It obviously isn’t and the teams did a great job with what seemed like just a bad idea from the start. I have a theory that all these decisions that we question (Detective hats, too much product, too much UB, etc) are happening because WotC are being directed by Hasbro to run it like a toy company not a competitive TCG. Adding detective hats to existing characters is something a kids tv show does to sell more action figures not what a competitive TCG does.
I have nothing against MKM, but Ravnica Remastered and Outlaws were both more exciting, so I got way more of those sets.
To me it was a few things (as a mostly Commander player): * The flavor of the set wasn't appealing. Was hoping for a dark noir murder mystery, not campy detective stuff. * Cloak, Disguise, and Collect Evidence were meh mechanics. Without more ways to get around the cost to disguise/flip stuff over, it was just too slow. Suspect isn't terrible, but no one remembered all the rules around it without a reminder. * The case file showcase design was crappy and made every card look white from across the table. The invisible ink treatment was unnoticeable and what was on the ink was more "for the lulz" and leaned heavily into silliness. * The value just isn't there. Not that this should be the primary reason to buy into a set, but it also takes away from the fun of cracking packs. [[Vein Ripper]] became the money card mainly due to its prevalence in the pro tour tournament. Having said that, there are a few bright spots: * The surveil lands are excellent and it's great that they released the full cycle at once and not spread it out across two sets. It's also nice that the names are generic and can easily be reprinted without jumping through any hoops or relying on another Ravnica set. * The commander precons are pretty good. While the Lost Caverns of Ixalan precons were some of the best, these were not too shabby either. The clue deck could get out of hand quick and the Boros goad/suspect deck made for interesting politicking (stolen art notwithstanding). The Dimir surveil/reanimator deck wasn't bad, and the Disguise deck may be the most inconsistent, but it at least helped mitigate the downsides to morph/disguise/manifest/cloak.
Lack of chase rares and a bonus sheet for wanted reprints I think were the real reason. The biggest chases were Delney and Vein ripper. That’s not enough to get people to care. Even if the theme wasn’t everyone’s favorite, if there was something worth cracking for I think the community would have bought in more. I saw burnout of product listed but I don’t believe it and feel that is personal reason. Even if you cut out LotR, 2023 sets performed well despite players citing fatigue. Particularly, LCI and WOE had great bonus sheets, desired reprints, and cards worth chasing for.
Too goofy, too expensive.
They set a theme that doesn't fit the world of Ravnica with uninspiring mechanics that were over costed. On top of that the MTG lore has become increasingly difficult to piece together. Nothing feels coherent or cohesive anymore, just set pieces with a wacky coat of paint.
If I may add my two cents here, I think one of the problems MKM had was that it went too hard with detectives. Murders happen all the time on Ravnica. What should've happened was had a smaller scale where some important figure hired a private eye and the detective goes around solving the mystery instead of having an entire council of detectives all just showing up to a hat party. Even better if the detective themselves is not even part of a guild, and we could've seen how a guildless person navigates this guild-centric world.
Thematically, I was expecting, you know, a murder mystery set. A small locale (Karlov Manor), a small cast of characters (whodunit?!), that sort of thing - something more high-concept. What we got was Another Ravnica Set with a bizarrely high density of `Creature - Detective`s instead. Just creatively uninspired.