Magic: The Gathering is in a flux with a number of recently-announced and experienced changes to the game. EDHREC's Dana Roach joins us to and chats about some of them.
Commander is by far the most popularly played format for the collectible card game over the past number of years, so it stands to reason that a major shakeup with the format is bound to get players' attention.
A big part of that change came after the surprise banning of a few powerful cards in the format. The whirlwind of feedback and criticism from these card bans, which included the cards Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged Wisdon, culimated in the fan-run all-volunteer Rules Committee and Commander Advisory Group stepping down and being replaced by a WotC-appointed board.
It's a series of events that has Roach, who hosts the EDHRECast and CMDR Central podcasts as well as an author for the EDHREC and Commanders Herald websites, says he's torn about.
"I do think in the grand scheme of things the cards that got banned -- not having them in the format is probably better for the majority of people," he shares. "I also understand the why some folks didn't necessarily love how suddenly the bans came."
He continues, saying "I don't know if there's a better way to have done it, but it feels like the way it happened definately caused problems."
And some of those problems led to a handful of players and collectors lashing out at the Commander Rules Committee, leading to them to step down and hand control over to WotC. The company says the main role of the new board is to oversee the overall health and status of the format as well as provide feedback to WotC as to how things seem to be going.
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This involvement by WotC, which is owned by Hasbro, is something that Roach is concerned about.
"I don't love the idea of Wizards of the Coast controlling the format because I think they are incentivised to do things for profit in was the Rules Committee wasn't," he says. "On the other hand, having people like [MTG Senior Designer] Gavin Verhey in charge who genuinely loves Commander and genuinely gets the format...that alleviates a lot of my concerns."
As for the future of Commander as a format as far as these recent changes go, Roach says he's optimistic.
"I am hopeful that this works out good in the long term, but it wasn't ideal," he says.
Beyond the Commander format, there have been a number of other announcements in and around the game of Magic, as well as a new release in Magic: The Gathering Foundations. Foundations, which just released Nov. 15, is a set that has certainly caught the eye of many, Roach included.
"I remember when Magic Origins came out... that felt like they finally figured out how to do core sets right, and then they got rid of core sets," recalls Roach. "It seems like they've figured it out for Foundations and they're building off of what they've learned problems like things that weren't successful and things that were successful."
And while there are many more Magic in-universe sets in the pipeline such as Aetherdrift, Innistrad Remastered, Tarkir Dragonstorm, and Edge of Eternities, it's the non-Magic I.P. Universes Beyond releases that has Roach's attention one way or another. And for Magic players who don't like them, he says the ship has sailed as far as convincing WotC to move away from the sub-brand.
"I'm not the biggest fan of Universes Beyond, necessarily, but it's here and they're clearly printing more and more of them," he says. "So you can either get on board and accept that this is what Magic looks like now or you can get mad and that's not gonna change anything."
That said, not every Universes Beyond release is a winner in Roach's eyes. Such is the case with the Spongebob Squarepants Secret Lair that is expected to come out next year.
"I initially thought it was a joke... I didn't think that was serious," he says. "At this point, though, it isn't surprising -- everything seems to be fair game."
Roach confesses, though, that what Magic is today is a far cry from what the game used to be like.
"I'm a Magic boomer," he jests. "I want to see a very specific kind of world that feels a certain way."
That said, looking ahead at the next six-to-twelve months for the game, Roach sees some growing pains as Universes Beyond brings new players into the game who might have picked it up specifically because they wanted to play with non-Magic I.P. cards such as Wolverine and Captain America in the upcoming Marvel Comics sets.
"We'll bring in a brand new fan base and there's always gonna be growing pains as those people become part of the Magic world and everyone gets used to everyone who wasn't here all along," he predicts.
Still, the key thing Roach sees is new audience growth largely fueled through Universes Beyond whether more established players like it or not.
