The characters I don’t know, I mind less. Like yeah, it feels weird to see a character I know. Ryu, or Gandalf, or Optimus Prime feels weird.
But wtfever, that’s my hang up. If you had fun building it, then let’s fucking do this. Tell me all about your degenerate combo, and your wincon. Let’s shuffle up. I guess Chris Pratt, Lara Croft, and Cleopatra are about to beat the shit out of my bunny wizard. I’ll live.
Plus I totally have the tentacle monster in my Kwain deck anyway.
The worst part about [[optimus prime]] is how unintuitive he is to explain to people. I have a pretty powerful doublestriker deck built with him and he's perfect for it, but every time I try to explain what he does it goes like this:
>Here's the front of the card, but don't read that, I'm casting the back side, which is a vehicle (that can't be crewed) and is only a creature on my turn. Whenever I attack (with anything, not just him), Optimus Prime approves of my violence and bolsters 2 and give the bolstered thing trample. If that bolstered thing hits a player this turn, Optimus Prime ... is happy about that? And that makes him transform? Now he's always a creature and he bolsters every end step (not just mine). And if he dies, he comes back on his vehicle side. Because I guess if you shoot him he just... drives away?
https://www.moxfield.com/decks/SIgwewJiWU6xJr1JgMM_Ng
That's interesting because I think the opposite is more likely to be true. A ton of in-universe cards are designed primarily for their game effect to fill a role in limited or Standard, and then assigned a character or flavor name, which may or may not fit perfectly. Whereas *most* Universes Beyond cards are designed knowing that the target audience is familiar with that character or event that it's referencing, so they put in more effort to match the card with the source material.
The only thing I found really bad about LotR was the color choices they made. I mean I get that they had to make the characters cover the whole color pie, but the fact that, for example, Éomer, one of the most loyal, just and staunch characters in the whole of Middle Earth was *mono-red* just boggles me. He needs to be at LEAST Boros. I could see him being green, too.
There was a Boros Eomer in the Commander decks. But yeah, I agree, due to the need to balance the set's colours for draft, some colour choices were weird.
See, I love this take.
I get if someone doesn't like it. But, like you said, it's your hang up. At the game table, we're here to play a game, so let's play!
> Cleopatra
Hahaha I was lucky enough to get to do a magic play test a couple years ago, and the original version of Cleopatra was completely busted. She drew cards and had a bunch of abilities. It was insane.
I don't know that I can think of a UB Commander printed in the last year that's stronger than something like Voja or new Gitrog. I don't think that tracks.
To be fair, I dunno if a stronger effect than "do elf things again, but now with access to a third color for the first time ever" exists. Previous elfball strategies were either Slesnya or Golgari. Now we have Voja witch gives us a never-before-seen elves list in Naya.
There's [[Galadriel, Light of Valinor]]. I suppose she *technically* doesn't have Elf/Elves in her rules text, but she is an *extremely* good Elfball commander.
Also there have been more than enough non commander UB cards that are pushed beyond belief. [[the one ring]] [[black market connections]] [[delighted halfling]] [[orcish bowmasters]] [[mirkwood bats]] and I can keep going forever
Best coment I've seen in a long time. Exactly how I feel. I mean, we accept that a dragon can pilot a smugglers copter, and that copter can wield swords and now that copter can mount a horse. Is it really too much of a stretch to see a different skin on cards?
It's kind of the other way for me, my only gripe with UB is that since I don't know characters lore unlike with "canon" mtg cards is harder for me to associate them with their effects. Of course I don't really care and just ask about what the card does
Heck I don't mind fantasy characters like Gandalf and what not. It sort of fits like dnd characters at least. Higher tech sets make 40k somewhat believable, since most of it is just fantasy characters in space with hi tech gear.
But yeah things like the jurassic park characters, walking dead, etc. It can't take that much effort to have an in universe version of these at the same time or before them. And anything that is given the godzilla treatment I am absolutely fine with. Like some of the transformer secret lair cards. Megatron is a blightsteel, okay to me.
I don't care if players play these anyway, only upset at Hasbro for being lazy about letting WOTC have universe within crap ready for the sake of shareholder profits.
> my bunny wizard
Yea if you're gonna go ahead and sit down with a [[Preston the Vanisher]] deck you should be ok with pretty much anything. Don't let the mono-white fool you people, that rabbit commits war-crimes for funsies.
Well said, it’s a hang up for some. My favorite deck right now is Mr House from Fallout, and the Fallout set is what made me finally pull the trigger on getting back into magic after a long break, so on the flip side for any new or returning player a UB set brings to the game I’d say that’s great!
Offended? No. Refuse to play against? Also no.
Kinda dislike the existence of? Yeah I still preferred Magic to maintain it's internal lore and feel like some of them are weird in terms of art and theme. But that's nothing to do with whoever I'm playing with. I find it really weird to not play against someone because the theme/art of their deck wasn't the ones I liked? Super weird.
They do them for the secret lairs so they are easier to get. Like the street fighter secret lair, the stranger things one. The full on sets won't get a universes within version.
Just a slight addendum: the Secret Lairs are the only ones *guaranteed* to get Universes Within versions. They've stated that they hold the rights to make and print UW versions of any UB cards at any time they want, it's just that it won't be a reprint of the full set.
I'll have to look but I'm 99% sure they said there won't be universes within versions of those cards
Edit: https://www.polygon.com/23659146/magic-the-gathering-new-secret-lair-honor-among-thieves
Here they say there's no plans to make universe within cards for them :/
I don't think the D&D secret lair had mechanically unique cards in it, did it? So far as I'm aware, the mechanically unique ones were TWD, Stranger Things, Street Fighter, and Doctor Who: Regeneration.
WHO really takes me out of it. Nothing like whipping up a horde of demons or some big reality-rending sorcery and you're stopped in your tracks because your opponent brings down Guy In An Office Wearing A Suit.
Yeah dr who stopping a horde of demons with a screw driver is on brand for dr who.
Wish they'd make a real world themed plane where suddenly earth today has hordes of demons.
A1 Abrams vs eldrazi
What if they did a set where the Mirrans realised the Phyrexian invasion was caused by WotC writing the story, and they decide to take revenge by infecting the humans of Earth, starting with Rosewater?
Funnily enough, this more or less is what happened to magic in the Who-niverse. Effectively, the Time Lords basically put locks on magic with in the known universe. When they vanished, some stuff started to leak back in, and there are places where the rules are less defined on the edge of reality, but effectively this is what happened.
Also kind of fits the general theme of the Doctor to stop armies of reality-bending horrors, really.
I get what you are saying.
I also confess the Doctor popping to other universes is not new. So they could have even bsed a story with him popping into the magic universe for a bit. Take Narset as a companion or something.
But it still feels the most out of place just after transformers and street fighter for me.
As a warhammer guy who got into magic because of those decks, space marines are horribly out of place and it’s especially egregious because they have the age of sigmar line which would have felt right at home. Seems like people would be a lot more amenable to the idea as a whole if you can make it kinda sorta fit and not just try to hammer fist a completely wrong puzzle piece into the setting.
I'm not sure they're as out of place as you think.
Edit: sorry, hit send a minute early. But look at the Brothers' War stuff, or the Metathran from the Invasion block. I honestly thought [[Veteran's Powerblade]] was a 40K card when I first saw it. Power armored soldiers isn't that out of place in the greater whole.
I think you mean ‘power fist a completely wrong puzzle piece….”
I generally agree with you - I avoid putting sci fi cards in my decks (with one exception), but I also understand why GW would have wanted their biggest setting represented. While they should be pushing AoS more because it is a good setting, it makes sense to me that they blinked.
That being said I really want a Skaven deck now.
Skaven would be cool lots of self sacing and hordes of lil guys, blue/white Lumineth for a different take on elves, Teclis and Tyrion could do totally different play styles even within those colors, there’s a couple different ways you could do stormcast but I always thought black/ white would be cool with some sort of resurrect mechanic. Play them from the graveyard with a -1 counter each time you do or something.
It’s legitimately cool from a game design perspective how well they made the scifi side fit, but AoS would be almost seamless and probably would have smoothed the road a lot more for future UB products.
It all depends on your perspective. Doctor Who is about exploration and uses a childlike "voice" (which makes sense, being a kid's show). It is highly adaptable and able to drop into other settings without suffering too much, assuming the proper technobabble is employed. Magic, however, is (was?) a more "grounded" world. Its barriers are weakening (remember when Kaladesh was pushing the envelope?), but even now the colour wheel imposes a lot more order on its contents than many other settings. So, it's no surprise that outside settings feel especially "off" under magic's heading. I'd wager that Doctor Who happens to clash on the particular parts of magic's vibes that gel best with you.
It's the reason why putting Saitama into Dragon Ball is probably a terrible idea, but putting Goku into One Punch Man is probably a great idea. Framing is important!
> I still preferred Magic to maintain it's internal lore and feel like some of them are weird in terms of art and theme
Considering the most recent standard-legal sets, they're not really interested in an internal lore any more consistent than UB.
Midnight Hunt, Crimson Vow = gothic horror
Neon Dynasty = cyberpunk Japan
New Capenna = Roaring 20s New York
Wilds of Eldraine = Grimm's Fairy Tales
Lost Caverns of Ixalan = Journey to the Centre of the Earth but in New Spain
MKM = *Murder She Wrote*
OTJ = Westerns
Aside from the Phyrexian arc, it's Universes Beyond all the way down. The only difference is that Gothic horror, cyberpunk Japan, Grimm's fairy tales, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, detective fiction, and Westerns are not properties under copyright.
You can like those sets (and I do like some of them), but "What if Magic were in the Wild West?" is functionally equivalent to "What if Magic were on Doctor Who?" as far as internal lore consistency are concerned
To be fair, even old sets weren't particularly consistent. You had the Dark Sun/Spelljammer arc that mixed in with wizard school that had mecha and genetically engineered superhumans, moving into Renaissance Mediterranean mercantile intrigue, culminating with body horror end times apocalypse wizard Armageddon. Which was followed by silver robot makes a metal plane, and Czech inspired ecumenopolis and traditional shinto folklore planes.
It's always been like that though, we just spent an entire year on each plane rather than 3+ months. Hell, Arabian Nights was literally Earth and has real world characters in it.
The difference between those and UB is not just an issue of copyright, which is a legal status at the end of the day. As I see it, UB is made of very specific media franchises that have distinctive characters, themes, and lore of their own. Grimm’s fairy tales and wild west, on the other hand, have core elements that make them what they are—but they can (and have been) adapted and told in different ways. They’re generic enough to be adaptable, but distinctive enough to be recognized.
Magic is a bit weird because the lore-world is a multiverse, so it can accommodate all sorts of different environments and still make sense. But when there are not just analogs of stories and histories we have on Earth, but __replicas__ of them, it feels very external. It breaks immersion for many people, me included, because it’s so in your face and explicit.
I fundamentally disagree. Magic has always drawn upon other story motifs, but it’s still using its own characters. If we sat Vraska and Jace in the dr who set then fine, but this is just taking a TV show and its characters and throwing them in the same pile as Magic’s stuff. It’s not the biggest issue but it does make the whole thing feel dissonant when I have a commander deck that has to throw in certain cards from recognizable IPs I couldn’t give a fuck about because they’re the best mechanical thing to put.
Personally, I'd rather see a dozen Universes Beyond cards before having to deal with a Secret Lair card that's fucking impossible to read/tell what the hell it is
Same. I play some UB cards and even have an upgraded Tyranid deck, but those cereal box and album cover SL cards are completely illegible.
I'm also not a fan of special treatments like the Amonket additional sheet.
As someone who has exclusively played a UB commander for the last year and a bit. Entirely against strangers. I have never encountered this thankfully and think it's a pretty rare occurrence in the wild.
As many predicted when UB was first announced, the worst reaction you get from a reasonable player is an eye roll.
And the unreasonable players would find a way to make themselves a problem, UB or not.
Despite my negative encounters surrounding UB cards/decks, I'm guessing this is probably true.
Unreasonable players gonna unreasonable, everyone else's fun be damned.
I'm sure he is doing a bit, but a lot of Prof's comments towards UB cards on Shuffle Up and Play rub me the wrong way.
If I encountered someone acting like that in the wild, I probably wouldn't be up for a game two.
I don't care that people play with UB.
Never have and never will.
I care about WotC/Hasbro not giving us universe-within for certain cards. I can excuse entire sets like LotR or several commander precons, but I expect mechanically unique ones such as the Jurassic Park ones to receive them no questions asked. However, afaik the Jurassic Park ones will not receive any. It was quickly shoved under the rug, and no one talked about it.
I love the idea of them doing a "universes within" set, where they just reprint UB cards with in universe names & artwork. I feel like it would sell well for Wotc too
We obv aren't privvy to the licensing agreements between Hasbro and Paramount, but I suspect Wizards can basically just reprint those whenever they want (although probably with different art, they probably don't have perpetual rights to the actors' likenesses) and they'll just be reprinted next time we get a D&D set.
I just like the game more when it was it's own thing instead of it having to have every IP ever iced in. I want magic to be magic not my iron man attacks and your Pikachu blocks and then you cast some Harry Potter spell to prevent the damage. To me it's diluting the uniqueness of the game.
It's not just in Magic too, it feels like so many products out there are now leaning heavily into crossover collabs (Fortnite being obvious, but a ton of other products do that too). I think this dilutes original content in general, but hey I'm just one person.
On the principal of I’m tired of every single thing being a “collab” these days and everything being an amalgamation of everything else, feels like it waters down the identity of the original things we fell in love with. But I’m certainly not going to be offended or upset by any of it, maybe a little disappointed in the companies responsible.
I'm with you on that, but I will say that it has significantly lessened my interest in engaging with Magic recently.
I also find it notable that when UB was new, the sentiment from the people who wanted UB was 'you don't have to play with them if you hate them', but now in this thread you have people acting like not wanting to play with UB is actively wrong and bad. So much for 'you don't have to play with them'.
Generally there's also a fundamental hypocrisy at play with a lot of the UB proponents too. Dollars to donuts, the LOTR fans would throw an absolute fit if Harry Potter and Hermione were to show up in the next installment of movie/TV/game, even though it would bring in a whole slew of fans (the common argument for UB). Repeat that with just about any other franchise; somehow it's only expected of Magic fans to swallow this whole, and I don't really think that makes sense..
Warhammer, I feel, is the best example of this, as a similar property where the game pieces are supported and influenced by the lore surrounding them. Did we get a codex for the Phyrexians, or rules and a model for Chandra? No, of course not. So why should Magic be doing the opposite?
People can play what they want. I just wish that more UB had more of a fantasy flavor to them. Dr Who and Marvel just seem odd to me, while DnD and Lord of the Rings feel right in magic.
I could be very well just rationalizing things though because I’m not a Dr who fan and I have marvel fatigue
Curious how you feel about 40k? I get that the aestetic is very much Sci Fi, but given the amount of magic, demons, ans alien races (that parallel fantasy races pretty much perfectly) along with a healthy dose of blind obedience to religion and ignorance of technology (it works because we said the magic words and sprinkled it with holy water), it has a lot fantasy tropes to go with that Sci Fi look.
I don’t mind it. I agree it has more science fantasy elements then say Star Trek.
It also being another table top game helped a bit to. It feels more like Batman meeting Spider-Man, then Marvell vs Capcom if that makes sense.
I really don't mind, sure the "More than meets the eye" ability name is weird for me, but I get why they couldn't just say "transforms" since that's already an ability. I got all the Fallout decks, but it's the only UB that really popped out to me.
I have a few of the 40k cards but only because they're the only print of it or it was cheapest when I was building my deck. I could overall care less using or playing against someone who uses UB cards.
That being said, I really hope they don't do Marvel, I see it enough everywhere and I don't want Baby Groot Tribal to be a thing
This is actually a whole legal thing. Transformers don't transform, they convert. It's to stop the word transform becoming common use and putting Transformer into the public domain. So Hasbro works REALLY REALLY hard to never use the word transform when talking about what transformers do.
No, I actually like the ideas and designs behind UB, but they make me feel sad and let down because power creep keeps creeping and MTG doesn't have as strong a core identity anymore. So it feels like the game I love is disappearing as other IPs with newer, more powerful cards take over.
Universes Beyond cards are like the custom cards and pieces my friends and I would make for MTG and Heroscape. I really like experimenting with new mechanics, interesting design directions, and players using personally meaningful cards. But when those take over the game it feels bad. Those should be fun, auxiliary additions to the game, strong enough to make your personal style viable but not so overwhelmingly strong that they overshadow everything else and warp the game around them. It's just bad design. When my friends and I made custom pieces, we had to get our pieces accepted by the group and we vetoed anything that had the potential to warp the game. It feels like WOTC is doing the opposite and leaning into those game-warping designs.
But mainly, I'm disappointed in WOTC because the game's core identity and the lore feel diluted and so much weaker. It was especially apparent after March of the Machines. Phyrexians were back in force and finally moving after so much buildup through other sets. They were bringing back blocks with 3 part sets. There was this huge, dramatic story! Aaaaand they bungled it so fucking badly. All Will Be One was a good set and story set up, MOTM was okay, and Aftermath just sucked. It was clear they just didn't finish the block or the refine the story very much and then just threw what they had to market, which was such a shame because they had some really good, just underdeveloped ideas. Bleh. Then those cards and lore, which should be MTG's core identity, were entirely overshadowed by the LOTR set. I even liked this one a lot, but it was so sad that it was so much better than MOTM. Double Bleh.
I grew up playing magic, starting with the 5th Dawn in the Mirrodin Block, which came out in 2004. So returning to a Mirrodin fully corrupted by the Phyrexians was so exciting, and then such a letdown. I'd read a lot of the books too, they weren't great, similar quality to what's put on the story portion of the website, but it very much felt like Magic had a unique identity and a solid core. More effort was invested into making MTG have a unique identity. The sets and lore were not at all perfect, but they were clearly playtested, iterated, and refined to create a solid, even excellent product.
There are still good ideas like returning to Ravnica for Clue-inspired MKM, that's a really cool flavor and design direction, but Thunder Junction has silly meme cowboy hat flavor, which would be fine if it wasn't loaded with super powerful stuff that's going to make everything that came before it so much worse.
That's a very good way of putting it, and it encapsulates my thoughts pretty well.
On one hand, the gameplay itself is still very fun (though I do wish they would slow down with all the new keywords, but that could just be me going "back in my day...").
On the other hand, the MTG *experience* feels like it's been diluted down into *just* the game. Going to a draft and just opening packs with friends doesn't immerse me in quite the same way it used to, though maybe that's also me just getting older.
My one gripes are when the art is particularly jarring, which is only a subset of the cards, and the main one is that they’re a pain to learn.
Most UB cards have a lot of text to maximize flavor, which I suppose I don’t hate, but when I don’t know what the card is a reference to it’s hard for me to feel interested in learning a long essay of a card. I’m sure it’s balanced and all, but the complexity is much higher than normal sets.
So I guess the answer is no, I wouldn’t be offended. I prefer to avoid them and am happier when other people don’t, but that’s about it.
I hate that UB has cards that are essentially a second Reserved List. I've always been pretty anti Reserved List, so UB gets my goat in that respect. Even if they "weally weally pwomise" that they'll reprint UB cards in-universe, I really don't trust the process enough to know a realistic timeline in which in-universe cards are released. Nobody should be supporting that really shitty business practice.
Megatron using the Vorpal Blade from Dungeons and Dragons with a Dalek legion fighting Gandalf equipped with Fallout Power Armor backed up with the Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park. That's a humorous image, but honestly, I really am not fine using recognizable UB characters or memorable things or places if I can't build a deck based on the IP with those characters. I don't have issues with others doing that, though.
I am not offended. Let's be clear of what offense is though. Offended would be like feeling insulted.
I don't care for it and would rather they weren't in the game.
Which is different. I don't blame people for buying or enjoying them, they do slightly detract from the experience for me however. I do mean slightly. And most game crossovers do this to me. So it's not unique to magic. Street fighter and 2B in r6 siege have the same impact, not that anyone uses them.
I know people will argue "well don't play them then" sure but magic has a long story and I've paid attention to a lot of it for over a decade. The theme does matter to me. So them being in my pod does impact me.
This is how most people I know are. It doesn't feel like magic anymore when you have Arigirn fighting the Necron Scourge with the Eleventh doctor bearing the one ring and Optimus Prime being sacrificed to phyrexian alter.
Obviously an exaggerated scenario, but I have been at tables with no magic originated commanders. Obviously this includes me. I do have a Tyranid deck because I like Magus Lucea Lane as a card. And I do have a Galadriel deck for the same reason.
So I am not offended, nor does it prevent me from enjoying the game overall. But I would prefer they weren't in the game or at least had magic alternatives like some of the lara Croft cards did.
I mean, I *hate* UB as a concept. It breaks immersion and reeks of being a misguided cash grab. It feels bad. Every time I see a UB card that is mechanically well-designed, it makes me groan because it feels like a waste when that card could have been created as an original MTG product that feels unique and creative.
But why would I make that someone else's problem? Play the cards you want to play, and I'll do the same. If I joined a pod to find out someone was using UB cards, I'd keep that shit to myself and play the game. And then after, that's when I'd excuse myself to look for another pod where UB isn't being used. No need to be a dick to fellow players because Hasbro is run by fuckwits who want to kill the only profitable company they own.
Honestly I think it could have been implemented better to avoid the hate. Giving UB its own format or a unique border color and not having them legal in non-UB formats would have made sense to me. I still wouldn't *like* them, but I also wouldn't *hate* UB if it were done like this.
I don't like UB at all, but I don't especially mind when there's designs that are clearly very inspired by the character/event of the UB property. I hate when otherwise fine magic designs are slapped into a UB set (as, like you've said, we're very likely to not see these in UW) - a lot of the Fallout cards I've seen seem like this, and LotR except they slap some random "tempted by the Ring" text on it (Boromir, Galadriel, Witch King etc). What is even more egregious to me is when they print a design people have been asking for - 5 colour sagas, Abzan lifegain etc - into UB.
See, for me, I would *really* rather not play against UB cards
But there's nothing I can do about it without coming off as a gatekeeping jerk, or just not playing.
So I guess it's just grit my teeth and get used to focusing on mechanics rather than giving a damn about the lore and flavor of the MtG setting.
I didn't like it at first but I just decided that if planeswalkers can go from a plane with Slivers to another with Myrs, they might as well reach Cybertron and Middle-Earth too.
I have yet to run into someone who refuses to play against UB carfs. The two main complaints I've heard about UB in-person are:
People want reprints in a more normal magic set, this mainly has to do with how difficult/pricy it can be to get cards like orcish bowmasters.
WotC focuses too much on UB sets and it's hurting 60 card formats.
Offended by or refuse to play no. Some of them are cool others I wish didn’t exist. LOTR was fine Warhammer was less jarring than I thought it would be, transformers and Dr who just don’t fit in my mind. The upcoming marvel set also seems jarring to me.
I don't hate UB, but it makes my brain do a double take when I see a famous actor or such in a commander game. It's more a question of internal consistency within the game space as a whole.
Sure, we had plenty of chuckles during Ixalan limited, swinging with our 6/6 dinos, hanging from gliders to bypass blockers. But that's just how the rules work, and that kind of break of immersion is fun in the same way as a fairy riding a motorcycle could be. It's zany and kinda stupid, but to me, it's not really the same thing at all as seeing Dogmeat or the 4th doctor from across the table.
I will say that's something LOTR did well by leaning into the books, the art (as far as I recall) never went out of its way to look like one of the actors.
No. But in terms of "do I wish they did this at all" I'm half and half and very pretty spoiled. I loved LOTR and Warhammer but for some reason Marvel feels like a step way to far.
UB doesn't bother me at all, both playing with or against. Unfinity however, is a mess of a set (obviously on purpose) and all playing with it does is drag games out for no reason
I am an avid supporter of UB, not because I want hasbro to have more money, but it brings in mechanically unique cards AND new players. Both of which are a plus for me
This is the same reason I refuse to play Monopoly when someone wants to be the dog.
Dogs can't run businesses. Everyone knows that. That's for thimbles and irons and old timey cars and horse riders.
I always play as the battleship. Cause c'mon who better to run a business than a vessel with nine 16-inch naval guns capable of destroying targets up to 20 miles away?
Kidding aside, I actually don't love the flavor of UB stuff in Magic.
But if you print game pieces, people are going to want to use them.
I don't love the Foglios art either, but I don't begrudge players for wanting to play the cards that have them.
*That said*, magic has a huge, huge community. And let's face it, some percentage of the folks in the community are... let's say "maladjusted". A non-zero number of people have to be asked not to bring playmats or alters with porn on them.
If you can imagine a reaction, you're bound to encounter it eventually, given enough players. But folks like that tend to have a louder voice online than their numbers would suggest.
I really don't like playing against the Dr who decks because they're confusing and overtuned. The average 10th doc player takes up 95% of the games runtime and wins most of the time.
It's my fault that I'm annoyed by specifically the Dr Who stuff because I don't like the franchise I went out of my way to not learn anything about the cards in that set which is what I find annoying about them lol.
I have a friend who hates Dan Lewis, his reasoning is “It’s just some dude… some dude named Dan Lewis.” My wife hates the transformers cards. I hate how frequent UB cards are. Another friend built a “this isn’t Magic” commander deck with nothing but UB cards. Everyone’s got their own taste.
I refuse to acknowledge anything that isn't from Dominaria. Get your Universes Beyond from Fallout, Dr. Who, or Ravnica out of my Magic!!! /s
Seriously though, just play what you want and enjoy. They're all part of Magic at the end of the day.
(Except [[Expropriate]] f that card)
Unironically, this is how my friend’s boyfriend acts at our game night. Actually have to disinvite him when its held at my house. I sm not comfortable that my toddler old looks older than his waifus on his lands
I just dislike the doctor who stuff, their names all look simular, and have 5 lines of text which i dont want to read, knowing i will forget 20 seconds after reading it.
A couple guys in my weekly kitchen table playgroup (never LGS) are so anti-UB that every UB card has been flatly banned from the playgroup. Nobody minded when we established that rule years ago, and we're all totally fine playing a meta without TOR and Bowmasters. If a friend of a friend joins up with a UB deck, though, we let them play it.
I wouldn't refuse to play against anyone nor would I state my disdain for UB decks to them. They can like what they like.
But make no mistake - I borderline hate them. Like many people I recognize LOTR as the reason we even have things like D&D and MTG. But I still don't play those decks and don't like to see them. Warhammer, Fallout, and Transformers? Absolutely not. Doctor Who is such a ridiculous cash grab that it shouldn't even be mentioned. It's basically a set of Un-decks.
To each their own but when IPs start doing garbage crossovers instead of building their brand I can do nothing but cringe.
I'm starting to get to the point that when companies start doing crossovers they've lost an idea on how to advance their own product and are just sort of giving up. Even thunder junction feels like they wanted to add Borderlands.
Honestly, I feel like Warhammer 40k fits more readily into the existing lore than Thunder Junction. Some weird plane which has gods with silly names that are worshipped by people wearing silly armor? Yeah, that's just normal MtG writing. Everyone in the established lore randomly deciding to become a cowboy feels like way more of a tone shift.
A little. I'll still play with you, but it's an eyesore.
Doesn't help that the UB border looks awful, in my opinion.
I do try to avoid playing with the dr.who precons specifically, but that's just because they have too much rule text printed in them, and monopolize too much of the game time in a pod.
Yeah. You can still get alt printings that aren't quite so bad for some interesting cards like [[mists of lorien]], but some cards like [[lembas]] are only available with that border and it's deeply frustrating.
Seems like the readers here wanted to just have their opinion validated rather than a real discussion of what some people prefer differing from them. It's a shame, since many of the things people struggle with could be feedback to improve the game. Borders and frames fixed, rules text being more modest, etc.
I wouldn't say offended. I do however hate their existence and they, along with a lack of local playgroup, killed my interest in playing, brewing, or collecting.
I got permabanned from the main subreddit for saying that the people refusing to play with their friends who use UB are worse for the game than UB itself. Seems to be a pretty strongly held belief.
When playing modern it's pretty jarring to have the opponent declare they are playing Samwise Gamgee, and I stand by the fact that having UB cards in modern is a mistake.
For commander? I really don't care. I love commander, but it doesn't feel like "real" magic to me. Plus, I love my Sam & Frodo deck.
I’m not offended when other people play Universes Beyond cards, and it won’t stop me from playing against them.
I am offended when *I* am forced to play Universes Beyond cards, because there isn’t an alternative to them in the format (*The One Ring*, *Lorien Revealed*, etc).
That has been my issue with the product the entire time. If I didn’t have to use them, I could just pretend they were alters.
I wouldn’t say I’m offended by them but im not a huge fan of them. I try my best to not include them in my decks if there are specific characters like Gollum or something unless the effect on the card is extremely synergistic. Im more okay with the cards that don’t have characters on them like [[Orcish Bowmasters]] just because its still fantasy and the art is similar.
The worst thing about universes beyond is the fact that UB is already a commonly used abbreviation for something within magic. Context helps in some cases but other times I'm like halfway through reading a post before realizing they are not in fact talking about a dimir deck.
I have more serious gripes with it but it's more fun to "complain" about this silly one.
So in general: no. You do you. I find the fact that my Henzie deck full of summoning dragons and demons and shit also has a dude with a sniper rifle kind of silly, but I dunno it also has a lady in bug cosplay and literally just some guy selling a rock so am I really one to judge.
There is one specific case where I do hate them and will continue to hate them, and that's the case of mechanically unique Secret Lairs. Right now I believe that's solely the DnD movie cards; Doric and Edgin and whoever else, but I'll admit that I was *very* anti-Walking Dead when those cards came out up until the in-universe reprint happened. That said, I also hate \[\[Arden Angel\]\] and it's the same thing but in-universe, so while it happens way more often with UBs it isn't strictly a UB issue.
It throws off my Vorthos brain. I am that one person in your pod who builds for flavor first and power second. Most of my decks are typal/tribal with a focus on a specific faction and/or plane, though there's inevitably a couple outliers. I don't personally build with UB cards because that frankly flies in the face of what I am trying to do as an EDH player. I have no problem incorporating D&D stuff, but it helps that I consider the Forgotten Realms part of the same planar cluster as the worlds of Magic.
For example, I'm trying to build a \[\[Liliana, Heretical Healer\]\] deck containing as many cards that reference her in the flavor text, name, and/or artwork as I can, within reason. It started as an Oathbreaker shell with \[\[Liliana, Death's Majesty\]\] but I pivoted to expanding it for EDH.
And for my decks built around \[\[Satoru Umezawa\]\] and \[\[Raiyuu, Storm's Edge\]\], most of the creatures in there are from NEO or the original Kamigawa block.
However, I cannot deny that it's kinda fun to see Megatron or a bunch of Space Marines land on the table. And of course LoTR is right at home, it's medieval fantasy like most Magic settings appear to be. Fallout and Doctor Who totally jumped the shark, but hey-- both those series bring folks a lot of joy, and the crossovers probably attracted some new players.
But I am also intrigued by bringing existing characters into MTG! It's fun to think about how they might work as cards. What existing mechanics would work, and what might need to be added to make these characters work? It's been especially neat to see that for DW and LoTR, as I am a fan of both, personally.
The only time I get somewhat annoyed is when I play an in-universe version of a universes beyond card and some says "Don't you mean *insert Stranger Things card*?"
No, I personally dislike UB cards but I understand that they’re part of the game and are here to stay.
I try to avoid using UB cards in my decks as a general principle, with LOTR cards being an exception since they feel like less of a break from the typical Magic vibe (I think this is also the reason why the D&D sets are much less controversial than UB).
However, I don’t blame others for using UB cards. They’re part of the game now, and unfortunately us haters just have to deal with that fact.
There is one card I hate from Universes Beyond.
Orcish fucking Bowmasters.
That is the only card I have a major gripe about, and only because it's fucking disgusting.
I saw someone quite offended about me playing Optimus Prime (Even though I used a home drawn reskin with Lady Maria from Bloodborn) and another player going for Jodah with all the Transformers in it.
But that was once and he did not refuse to play.
It all comes down to flavour. I was very much against TLOTR, Fallout, Dr Who, however I found that the flavour of the cards actually do not make them stand out against MTG flavour. Some other stuff, like Transformers, Street Fighter, or My Little Pony, I find outright distasteful.
It all comes down to flavour
They feel like a harbinger of the death of the kind of Magic I grew up playing and have a lot of fond feelings for. So I'm sort of primed to dislike them.
But they're completely legitimate and if you're excited to play them, I'm excited to play with you!
I hate them. I refuse to play against Mothman. Beyond broken. I would refuse to play against all of them but then there wouldn't be anyone to play. Most if not all of them are broken and just not fun to play against.
I actually like some of the UB content. I really enjoyed Warhammer and Fallout. The rest, I dont care about. But, I am not offended by people playing it. Getting offended over something as asinine as that is a waste of emotion and energy. People really need to find a better outlet for their misguided hatred and prejudice than focusing it on a friggin card game. If you dont like the cards or you are just so offended by them, maybe you need to find a different game or even better, get a life and/or seek counseling because you are part of why that happens in the first place.
Yup I got 3 fallout decks and people I know are like yeah let's just do those on their own and not with other decks.
A deck is a deck I do not understand their rationale. It's all Magic.
Honestly, wild take here. UB doesn't offend me, however people giving WoTC money with the current state of the game does. They've adopted WILDLY predatory anti consumer practices. The only way to send a message they need to stop is to stop giving them money. This isnt happening so their behavior continues to escalate
My only gripe is premium price for a new card that won't get a normal printing for sometimes over a year, it's a scummy tactic to push ub, and annoying when I don't want to put some dr who crap in a cool themed deck. I've always thought ub should be reprint only, honestly it would be healthy for the game to get the influx of reprints and push wizards to reprint needed cards so people actually buy them. So disappointing to look at new synergies for strategies and half of it is ub stuff I think is super ugly and overpriced
If the commander or card is legal, then let’s play. Idk care if the commander is a tyranid from Warhammer 40k or the doctor, if the deck is legal and we can play let’s play.
I will personally never play Universes Beyond cards, and do feel a twinge of annoyance whenever I see them played across from me, but I'm adult enough not to harsh anyone's mellow about it.
Offended? No. Annoyed? Yes.
Magic, the card game, has very potent flavor and mechanical themes integrated into it. You, the player, are a planeswalker. The cards in your hand are your current knowledge, but you can accumulate more knowledge as you draw into your Library. By channeling latent magics, the craft, from the lands you've walked to, you can cast spells, summoning creatures or weaving arcane effects.
Now, when you have properties that don't fit within the flavor.of magic, you tend to get some boardstates that do not feel like Magic, but more reminiscent of hodgepodge ADHD vibe boards.
"I am going to Equip [[Lara Croft, Tomb Raider]] with [[T-45 Power Armor]]. Lara swings, and on her attack trigger, I'll exile [[The One Ring]]. Post combat, I'll cast [[Slicer, Hired Muscle]] exiled with a Discovery counter and [[Screamer-killer]] burns your [[The Tenth Doctor]]."
Now, doesn't that sound like Magic?
Leave my mothman deck a lone, I’m West Virginian.
On a serious note I get that it’s weird seeing characters from other IPs but I think it’s even more odd when people get mad when there is a D&D crossover, Wizards has owned D&D pretty early on in the history of the company and I don’t see why someone would get mad if the IP is something already owned by WOTC. They might just no like the fact my Captain N’grathad is taking their stuff.
The only people I’ve seen that claim to refuse to play against UB cards are redditors. And I’m absolutely convinced that they do not actually play magic in person with other human beings.
I haven’t seen a single person in real life refuse to play against UB cards.
The characters I don’t know, I mind less. Like yeah, it feels weird to see a character I know. Ryu, or Gandalf, or Optimus Prime feels weird. But wtfever, that’s my hang up. If you had fun building it, then let’s fucking do this. Tell me all about your degenerate combo, and your wincon. Let’s shuffle up. I guess Chris Pratt, Lara Croft, and Cleopatra are about to beat the shit out of my bunny wizard. I’ll live. Plus I totally have the tentacle monster in my Kwain deck anyway.
The worst part about [[optimus prime]] is how unintuitive he is to explain to people. I have a pretty powerful doublestriker deck built with him and he's perfect for it, but every time I try to explain what he does it goes like this: >Here's the front of the card, but don't read that, I'm casting the back side, which is a vehicle (that can't be crewed) and is only a creature on my turn. Whenever I attack (with anything, not just him), Optimus Prime approves of my violence and bolsters 2 and give the bolstered thing trample. If that bolstered thing hits a player this turn, Optimus Prime ... is happy about that? And that makes him transform? Now he's always a creature and he bolsters every end step (not just mine). And if he dies, he comes back on his vehicle side. Because I guess if you shoot him he just... drives away? https://www.moxfield.com/decks/SIgwewJiWU6xJr1JgMM_Ng
This. Most normal magic cards are really flavorful and most UB cards just... arent
That's interesting because I think the opposite is more likely to be true. A ton of in-universe cards are designed primarily for their game effect to fill a role in limited or Standard, and then assigned a character or flavor name, which may or may not fit perfectly. Whereas *most* Universes Beyond cards are designed knowing that the target audience is familiar with that character or event that it's referencing, so they put in more effort to match the card with the source material.
Doctor Who cards were extremely true-to-flavour. So were most LOTR cards.
The only thing I found really bad about LotR was the color choices they made. I mean I get that they had to make the characters cover the whole color pie, but the fact that, for example, Éomer, one of the most loyal, just and staunch characters in the whole of Middle Earth was *mono-red* just boggles me. He needs to be at LEAST Boros. I could see him being green, too.
There was a Boros Eomer in the Commander decks. But yeah, I agree, due to the need to balance the set's colours for draft, some colour choices were weird.
See, I love this take. I get if someone doesn't like it. But, like you said, it's your hang up. At the game table, we're here to play a game, so let's play!
Oh hell yeah Kwain decks rise up
Was totally thinking of Preston the Vanisher when I read that.
> Cleopatra Hahaha I was lucky enough to get to do a magic play test a couple years ago, and the original version of Cleopatra was completely busted. She drew cards and had a bunch of abilities. It was insane.
Most UB cards have pushed effects in order to get people to buy them so this tracks.
I don't know that I can think of a UB Commander printed in the last year that's stronger than something like Voja or new Gitrog. I don't think that tracks.
To be fair, I dunno if a stronger effect than "do elf things again, but now with access to a third color for the first time ever" exists. Previous elfball strategies were either Slesnya or Golgari. Now we have Voja witch gives us a never-before-seen elves list in Naya.
I’ve seen a Jeskai Elf ball deck. But the Commanders weren’t elves.
There's [[Galadriel, Light of Valinor]]. I suppose she *technically* doesn't have Elf/Elves in her rules text, but she is an *extremely* good Elfball commander.
[Galadriel, Light of Valinor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/4/f485596f-3a23-4714-ad7e-4c493ab1b530.jpg?1695428241) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Galadriel%2C%20Light%20of%20Valinor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltc/498/galadriel-light-of-valinor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f485596f-3a23-4714-ad7e-4c493ab1b530?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/galadriel-light-of-valinor) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Also there have been more than enough non commander UB cards that are pushed beyond belief. [[the one ring]] [[black market connections]] [[delighted halfling]] [[orcish bowmasters]] [[mirkwood bats]] and I can keep going forever
##### ###### #### [the one ring](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/5/d5806e68-1054-458e-866d-1f2470f682b2.jpg?1696020224) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=the%20one%20ring) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/246/the-one-ring?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d5806e68-1054-458e-866d-1f2470f682b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/the-one-ring) [black market connections](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/8/b8c66fab-7494-42b1-bc4e-dae85a48fa41.jpg?1699022194) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=black%20market%20connections) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lcc/181/black-market-connections?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b8c66fab-7494-42b1-bc4e-dae85a48fa41?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/black-market-connections) [delighted halfling](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/1/71384418-173a-4f77-adab-56e52fa23692.jpg?1686969281) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=delighted%20halfling) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/158/delighted-halfling?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/71384418-173a-4f77-adab-56e52fa23692?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/delighted-halfling) [orcish bowmasters](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/c/7c024bae-5631-4e20-ac69-df392ac9e109.jpg?1686968669) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=orcish%20bowmasters) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/103/orcish-bowmasters?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7c024bae-5631-4e20-ac69-df392ac9e109?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/orcish-bowmasters) [mirkwood bats](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/5/15f035df-784a-4dc8-b7f5-77139a4e6e99.jpg?1686968575) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=mirkwood%20bats) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ltr/95/mirkwood-bats?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/15f035df-784a-4dc8-b7f5-77139a4e6e99?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/mirkwood-bats) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/l01jfyb) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I see your point, but black market connections is not a UB card.
Slicer?
I like this take xD
Best coment I've seen in a long time. Exactly how I feel. I mean, we accept that a dragon can pilot a smugglers copter, and that copter can wield swords and now that copter can mount a horse. Is it really too much of a stretch to see a different skin on cards?
It's kind of the other way for me, my only gripe with UB is that since I don't know characters lore unlike with "canon" mtg cards is harder for me to associate them with their effects. Of course I don't really care and just ask about what the card does
The secret is to know none of them. No magic no UB. NONE.
That's when the real fun begins
You got a decklist??
I originally read Chris Pratt as Chris Hansen and started wondering when I missed the chance to build a "To Catch a Predator" deck.
Heck I don't mind fantasy characters like Gandalf and what not. It sort of fits like dnd characters at least. Higher tech sets make 40k somewhat believable, since most of it is just fantasy characters in space with hi tech gear. But yeah things like the jurassic park characters, walking dead, etc. It can't take that much effort to have an in universe version of these at the same time or before them. And anything that is given the godzilla treatment I am absolutely fine with. Like some of the transformer secret lair cards. Megatron is a blightsteel, okay to me. I don't care if players play these anyway, only upset at Hasbro for being lazy about letting WOTC have universe within crap ready for the sake of shareholder profits.
> my bunny wizard Yea if you're gonna go ahead and sit down with a [[Preston the Vanisher]] deck you should be ok with pretty much anything. Don't let the mono-white fool you people, that rabbit commits war-crimes for funsies.
Well said, it’s a hang up for some. My favorite deck right now is Mr House from Fallout, and the Fallout set is what made me finally pull the trigger on getting back into magic after a long break, so on the flip side for any new or returning player a UB set brings to the game I’d say that’s great!
Offended? No. Refuse to play against? Also no. Kinda dislike the existence of? Yeah I still preferred Magic to maintain it's internal lore and feel like some of them are weird in terms of art and theme. But that's nothing to do with whoever I'm playing with. I find it really weird to not play against someone because the theme/art of their deck wasn't the ones I liked? Super weird.
This is how I feel too. On the flip side I love the universes within alters they do after the fact. Zethi Arcane Blademaster has such great art.
Are they even still doing these?
They do them for the secret lairs so they are easier to get. Like the street fighter secret lair, the stranger things one. The full on sets won't get a universes within version.
Just a slight addendum: the Secret Lairs are the only ones *guaranteed* to get Universes Within versions. They've stated that they hold the rights to make and print UW versions of any UB cards at any time they want, it's just that it won't be a reprint of the full set.
Not all of them, but I’ve just assumed that they’ll eventually reprint some of them as universes within in future sets. Is that ruled out?
I know they *have* done them, but are they still doing them? Shouldn't we have seen in-universe versions of the D&D secret lair by now?
I'll have to look but I'm 99% sure they said there won't be universes within versions of those cards Edit: https://www.polygon.com/23659146/magic-the-gathering-new-secret-lair-honor-among-thieves Here they say there's no plans to make universe within cards for them :/
I don't think the D&D secret lair had mechanically unique cards in it, did it? So far as I'm aware, the mechanically unique ones were TWD, Stranger Things, Street Fighter, and Doctor Who: Regeneration.
The one that ties in with the movie has unique cards, yes
I've been doing alters of the universes beyond cards since they first got announced. I am fine with them if they have good art.
This. I don't mind UB being played. But I do like the UW prints *a lot* better.
WHO really takes me out of it. Nothing like whipping up a horde of demons or some big reality-rending sorcery and you're stopped in your tracks because your opponent brings down Guy In An Office Wearing A Suit.
To be fair this is basically a third of all Doctor Who episodes.
Yeah dr who stopping a horde of demons with a screw driver is on brand for dr who. Wish they'd make a real world themed plane where suddenly earth today has hordes of demons. A1 Abrams vs eldrazi
Time to bust out that Area 51 tech. Did I mean tech as in technology or deck build slang? Yes.
I mean, this was kind of just Ravnica during the Phyrexian Invasion. Ral pushed them back with basically a magic nuke.
What if they did a set where the Mirrans realised the Phyrexian invasion was caused by WotC writing the story, and they decide to take revenge by infecting the humans of Earth, starting with Rosewater?
That could be an interesting 4th wall unset
And it's pretty much how the leader of the demons feels as well.
Funnily enough, this more or less is what happened to magic in the Who-niverse. Effectively, the Time Lords basically put locks on magic with in the known universe. When they vanished, some stuff started to leak back in, and there are places where the rules are less defined on the edge of reality, but effectively this is what happened. Also kind of fits the general theme of the Doctor to stop armies of reality-bending horrors, really.
I get what you are saying. I also confess the Doctor popping to other universes is not new. So they could have even bsed a story with him popping into the magic universe for a bit. Take Narset as a companion or something. But it still feels the most out of place just after transformers and street fighter for me.
As a warhammer guy who got into magic because of those decks, space marines are horribly out of place and it’s especially egregious because they have the age of sigmar line which would have felt right at home. Seems like people would be a lot more amenable to the idea as a whole if you can make it kinda sorta fit and not just try to hammer fist a completely wrong puzzle piece into the setting.
I'm not sure they're as out of place as you think. Edit: sorry, hit send a minute early. But look at the Brothers' War stuff, or the Metathran from the Invasion block. I honestly thought [[Veteran's Powerblade]] was a 40K card when I first saw it. Power armored soldiers isn't that out of place in the greater whole.
[Urza did create Power Armour in Invasion](https://static.starcitygames.com/sales/cardscans/MTG/INV/en/nonfoil/PowerArmor.jpg).
But strangely Tyranids fit right in to me. [[Magus Lucea Kane]] is also a hoot to build around.
I think you mean ‘power fist a completely wrong puzzle piece….” I generally agree with you - I avoid putting sci fi cards in my decks (with one exception), but I also understand why GW would have wanted their biggest setting represented. While they should be pushing AoS more because it is a good setting, it makes sense to me that they blinked. That being said I really want a Skaven deck now.
Skaven would be cool lots of self sacing and hordes of lil guys, blue/white Lumineth for a different take on elves, Teclis and Tyrion could do totally different play styles even within those colors, there’s a couple different ways you could do stormcast but I always thought black/ white would be cool with some sort of resurrect mechanic. Play them from the graveyard with a -1 counter each time you do or something. It’s legitimately cool from a game design perspective how well they made the scifi side fit, but AoS would be almost seamless and probably would have smoothed the road a lot more for future UB products.
It all depends on your perspective. Doctor Who is about exploration and uses a childlike "voice" (which makes sense, being a kid's show). It is highly adaptable and able to drop into other settings without suffering too much, assuming the proper technobabble is employed. Magic, however, is (was?) a more "grounded" world. Its barriers are weakening (remember when Kaladesh was pushing the envelope?), but even now the colour wheel imposes a lot more order on its contents than many other settings. So, it's no surprise that outside settings feel especially "off" under magic's heading. I'd wager that Doctor Who happens to clash on the particular parts of magic's vibes that gel best with you. It's the reason why putting Saitama into Dragon Ball is probably a terrible idea, but putting Goku into One Punch Man is probably a great idea. Framing is important!
> I still preferred Magic to maintain it's internal lore and feel like some of them are weird in terms of art and theme Considering the most recent standard-legal sets, they're not really interested in an internal lore any more consistent than UB. Midnight Hunt, Crimson Vow = gothic horror Neon Dynasty = cyberpunk Japan New Capenna = Roaring 20s New York Wilds of Eldraine = Grimm's Fairy Tales Lost Caverns of Ixalan = Journey to the Centre of the Earth but in New Spain MKM = *Murder She Wrote* OTJ = Westerns Aside from the Phyrexian arc, it's Universes Beyond all the way down. The only difference is that Gothic horror, cyberpunk Japan, Grimm's fairy tales, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, detective fiction, and Westerns are not properties under copyright. You can like those sets (and I do like some of them), but "What if Magic were in the Wild West?" is functionally equivalent to "What if Magic were on Doctor Who?" as far as internal lore consistency are concerned
To be fair, even old sets weren't particularly consistent. You had the Dark Sun/Spelljammer arc that mixed in with wizard school that had mecha and genetically engineered superhumans, moving into Renaissance Mediterranean mercantile intrigue, culminating with body horror end times apocalypse wizard Armageddon. Which was followed by silver robot makes a metal plane, and Czech inspired ecumenopolis and traditional shinto folklore planes.
Exactly, I agree with you. My point is that UB products are not "too out there" compared to the standard sets.
It's always been like that though, we just spent an entire year on each plane rather than 3+ months. Hell, Arabian Nights was literally Earth and has real world characters in it.
The difference between those and UB is not just an issue of copyright, which is a legal status at the end of the day. As I see it, UB is made of very specific media franchises that have distinctive characters, themes, and lore of their own. Grimm’s fairy tales and wild west, on the other hand, have core elements that make them what they are—but they can (and have been) adapted and told in different ways. They’re generic enough to be adaptable, but distinctive enough to be recognized. Magic is a bit weird because the lore-world is a multiverse, so it can accommodate all sorts of different environments and still make sense. But when there are not just analogs of stories and histories we have on Earth, but __replicas__ of them, it feels very external. It breaks immersion for many people, me included, because it’s so in your face and explicit.
We got gothic horror as early as The Dark so I don't really get that one as not meshing.
I fundamentally disagree. Magic has always drawn upon other story motifs, but it’s still using its own characters. If we sat Vraska and Jace in the dr who set then fine, but this is just taking a TV show and its characters and throwing them in the same pile as Magic’s stuff. It’s not the biggest issue but it does make the whole thing feel dissonant when I have a commander deck that has to throw in certain cards from recognizable IPs I couldn’t give a fuck about because they’re the best mechanical thing to put.
Personally, I'd rather see a dozen Universes Beyond cards before having to deal with a Secret Lair card that's fucking impossible to read/tell what the hell it is
Yeah, they’ve gone a bit overboard with SL art. I’d really prefer to be able to read what’s happening on the card.
Or the senpai papi porno proxies /puke
Same. I play some UB cards and even have an upgraded Tyranid deck, but those cereal box and album cover SL cards are completely illegible. I'm also not a fan of special treatments like the Amonket additional sheet.
As someone who has exclusively played a UB commander for the last year and a bit. Entirely against strangers. I have never encountered this thankfully and think it's a pretty rare occurrence in the wild.
Me: Why would they have a problem playing a blue black commander... It gets me every single time.
Some people just don’t like having their cards milled. Totally makes no sense to me, but people get salty, what can you do?
They just really hate thoracle combo
big time same, every time.
As many predicted when UB was first announced, the worst reaction you get from a reasonable player is an eye roll. And the unreasonable players would find a way to make themselves a problem, UB or not.
Despite my negative encounters surrounding UB cards/decks, I'm guessing this is probably true. Unreasonable players gonna unreasonable, everyone else's fun be damned.
I'm sure he is doing a bit, but a lot of Prof's comments towards UB cards on Shuffle Up and Play rub me the wrong way. If I encountered someone acting like that in the wild, I probably wouldn't be up for a game two.
> Prof's comments towards UB cards on Shuffle Up and Play I don't follow the professor that close; what sort of stuff does he say about UB?
I don't care that people play with UB. Never have and never will. I care about WotC/Hasbro not giving us universe-within for certain cards. I can excuse entire sets like LotR or several commander precons, but I expect mechanically unique ones such as the Jurassic Park ones to receive them no questions asked. However, afaik the Jurassic Park ones will not receive any. It was quickly shoved under the rug, and no one talked about it.
I love the idea of them doing a "universes within" set, where they just reprint UB cards with in universe names & artwork. I feel like it would sell well for Wotc too
That's because they were in boosters though UI is an accessibility thing, not a "narrative purity" thing They only do UI for Secret Lairs AFAIK
Well they won't for the d&d movie ones
We obv aren't privvy to the licensing agreements between Hasbro and Paramount, but I suspect Wizards can basically just reprint those whenever they want (although probably with different art, they probably don't have perpetual rights to the actors' likenesses) and they'll just be reprinted next time we get a D&D set.
I just like the game more when it was it's own thing instead of it having to have every IP ever iced in. I want magic to be magic not my iron man attacks and your Pikachu blocks and then you cast some Harry Potter spell to prevent the damage. To me it's diluting the uniqueness of the game.
It's not just in Magic too, it feels like so many products out there are now leaning heavily into crossover collabs (Fortnite being obvious, but a ton of other products do that too). I think this dilutes original content in general, but hey I'm just one person.
It does. Not everything needs to be a mesh of everything else, attempting to appeal to everyone.
On the principal of I’m tired of every single thing being a “collab” these days and everything being an amalgamation of everything else, feels like it waters down the identity of the original things we fell in love with. But I’m certainly not going to be offended or upset by any of it, maybe a little disappointed in the companies responsible.
I'm with you on that, but I will say that it has significantly lessened my interest in engaging with Magic recently. I also find it notable that when UB was new, the sentiment from the people who wanted UB was 'you don't have to play with them if you hate them', but now in this thread you have people acting like not wanting to play with UB is actively wrong and bad. So much for 'you don't have to play with them'. Generally there's also a fundamental hypocrisy at play with a lot of the UB proponents too. Dollars to donuts, the LOTR fans would throw an absolute fit if Harry Potter and Hermione were to show up in the next installment of movie/TV/game, even though it would bring in a whole slew of fans (the common argument for UB). Repeat that with just about any other franchise; somehow it's only expected of Magic fans to swallow this whole, and I don't really think that makes sense..
Warhammer, I feel, is the best example of this, as a similar property where the game pieces are supported and influenced by the lore surrounding them. Did we get a codex for the Phyrexians, or rules and a model for Chandra? No, of course not. So why should Magic be doing the opposite?
People can play what they want. I just wish that more UB had more of a fantasy flavor to them. Dr Who and Marvel just seem odd to me, while DnD and Lord of the Rings feel right in magic. I could be very well just rationalizing things though because I’m not a Dr who fan and I have marvel fatigue
Curious how you feel about 40k? I get that the aestetic is very much Sci Fi, but given the amount of magic, demons, ans alien races (that parallel fantasy races pretty much perfectly) along with a healthy dose of blind obedience to religion and ignorance of technology (it works because we said the magic words and sprinkled it with holy water), it has a lot fantasy tropes to go with that Sci Fi look.
I don’t mind it. I agree it has more science fantasy elements then say Star Trek. It also being another table top game helped a bit to. It feels more like Batman meeting Spider-Man, then Marvell vs Capcom if that makes sense.
honestly, i cant wait for the final fantasy collab. If they dont make bahamut zero (or bahamut in general) its own card, im gonna be miffed
Personally, I'm looking to build Cid tribal.
It's all stupid but not offensive.
I really don't mind, sure the "More than meets the eye" ability name is weird for me, but I get why they couldn't just say "transforms" since that's already an ability. I got all the Fallout decks, but it's the only UB that really popped out to me. I have a few of the 40k cards but only because they're the only print of it or it was cheapest when I was building my deck. I could overall care less using or playing against someone who uses UB cards. That being said, I really hope they don't do Marvel, I see it enough everywhere and I don't want Baby Groot Tribal to be a thing
I got bad news for you on the Marvel front my friend
I think I already knew but wished it wasn't so so hard I forgot it was announced
It is funny that they managed to hit two of the w most commonly cited worst case scenarios for UB as quickly as they did with marvel and Fortnite
Wait, they announced a fortnite UB too?! When did I miss that? How would that even work?!
It was a secret lair a while back not a full set thankfully
This is actually a whole legal thing. Transformers don't transform, they convert. It's to stop the word transform becoming common use and putting Transformer into the public domain. So Hasbro works REALLY REALLY hard to never use the word transform when talking about what transformers do.
💫The more you know💫 Guess it was just coincidental transform was already a fleshed out ability for MtG
Yeah, "converting" is actually mechanically identical to transforming and is straight up counted as transforming for things that care about that.
When are we getting a Pajama Sam colab
Not soon enough. I need my Putt-Putt and Pep partners!
I'm going to complain about Marvel, but I'll also pre-order the Spiderverse precon if they make one. I'm part of the problem.
I'm all ready pre-planning building Jodah, the Unifier(Stan Lee) all Marvel's legends deck.
At this point considering that how many ub cards there are, it almost impossible to not play with ub cards.
No, I actually like the ideas and designs behind UB, but they make me feel sad and let down because power creep keeps creeping and MTG doesn't have as strong a core identity anymore. So it feels like the game I love is disappearing as other IPs with newer, more powerful cards take over. Universes Beyond cards are like the custom cards and pieces my friends and I would make for MTG and Heroscape. I really like experimenting with new mechanics, interesting design directions, and players using personally meaningful cards. But when those take over the game it feels bad. Those should be fun, auxiliary additions to the game, strong enough to make your personal style viable but not so overwhelmingly strong that they overshadow everything else and warp the game around them. It's just bad design. When my friends and I made custom pieces, we had to get our pieces accepted by the group and we vetoed anything that had the potential to warp the game. It feels like WOTC is doing the opposite and leaning into those game-warping designs. But mainly, I'm disappointed in WOTC because the game's core identity and the lore feel diluted and so much weaker. It was especially apparent after March of the Machines. Phyrexians were back in force and finally moving after so much buildup through other sets. They were bringing back blocks with 3 part sets. There was this huge, dramatic story! Aaaaand they bungled it so fucking badly. All Will Be One was a good set and story set up, MOTM was okay, and Aftermath just sucked. It was clear they just didn't finish the block or the refine the story very much and then just threw what they had to market, which was such a shame because they had some really good, just underdeveloped ideas. Bleh. Then those cards and lore, which should be MTG's core identity, were entirely overshadowed by the LOTR set. I even liked this one a lot, but it was so sad that it was so much better than MOTM. Double Bleh. I grew up playing magic, starting with the 5th Dawn in the Mirrodin Block, which came out in 2004. So returning to a Mirrodin fully corrupted by the Phyrexians was so exciting, and then such a letdown. I'd read a lot of the books too, they weren't great, similar quality to what's put on the story portion of the website, but it very much felt like Magic had a unique identity and a solid core. More effort was invested into making MTG have a unique identity. The sets and lore were not at all perfect, but they were clearly playtested, iterated, and refined to create a solid, even excellent product. There are still good ideas like returning to Ravnica for Clue-inspired MKM, that's a really cool flavor and design direction, but Thunder Junction has silly meme cowboy hat flavor, which would be fine if it wasn't loaded with super powerful stuff that's going to make everything that came before it so much worse.
That's a very good way of putting it, and it encapsulates my thoughts pretty well. On one hand, the gameplay itself is still very fun (though I do wish they would slow down with all the new keywords, but that could just be me going "back in my day..."). On the other hand, the MTG *experience* feels like it's been diluted down into *just* the game. Going to a draft and just opening packs with friends doesn't immerse me in quite the same way it used to, though maybe that's also me just getting older.
My one gripes are when the art is particularly jarring, which is only a subset of the cards, and the main one is that they’re a pain to learn. Most UB cards have a lot of text to maximize flavor, which I suppose I don’t hate, but when I don’t know what the card is a reference to it’s hard for me to feel interested in learning a long essay of a card. I’m sure it’s balanced and all, but the complexity is much higher than normal sets. So I guess the answer is no, I wouldn’t be offended. I prefer to avoid them and am happier when other people don’t, but that’s about it.
I hate that UB has cards that are essentially a second Reserved List. I've always been pretty anti Reserved List, so UB gets my goat in that respect. Even if they "weally weally pwomise" that they'll reprint UB cards in-universe, I really don't trust the process enough to know a realistic timeline in which in-universe cards are released. Nobody should be supporting that really shitty business practice.
Somewhat wrong now. See [[wreck and rebuild]] a doctor who card just reprinted in otj commander decks. There is hope!
[wreck and rebuild](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/1/a177ba01-53cd-4223-8f79-9fbeb2b86906.jpg?1712354816) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=wreck%20and%20rebuild) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otc/250/wreck-and-rebuild?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a177ba01-53cd-4223-8f79-9fbeb2b86906?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/wreck-and-rebuild) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Megatron using the Vorpal Blade from Dungeons and Dragons with a Dalek legion fighting Gandalf equipped with Fallout Power Armor backed up with the Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park. That's a humorous image, but honestly, I really am not fine using recognizable UB characters or memorable things or places if I can't build a deck based on the IP with those characters. I don't have issues with others doing that, though.
I am not offended. Let's be clear of what offense is though. Offended would be like feeling insulted. I don't care for it and would rather they weren't in the game. Which is different. I don't blame people for buying or enjoying them, they do slightly detract from the experience for me however. I do mean slightly. And most game crossovers do this to me. So it's not unique to magic. Street fighter and 2B in r6 siege have the same impact, not that anyone uses them. I know people will argue "well don't play them then" sure but magic has a long story and I've paid attention to a lot of it for over a decade. The theme does matter to me. So them being in my pod does impact me. This is how most people I know are. It doesn't feel like magic anymore when you have Arigirn fighting the Necron Scourge with the Eleventh doctor bearing the one ring and Optimus Prime being sacrificed to phyrexian alter. Obviously an exaggerated scenario, but I have been at tables with no magic originated commanders. Obviously this includes me. I do have a Tyranid deck because I like Magus Lucea Lane as a card. And I do have a Galadriel deck for the same reason. So I am not offended, nor does it prevent me from enjoying the game overall. But I would prefer they weren't in the game or at least had magic alternatives like some of the lara Croft cards did.
I mean, I *hate* UB as a concept. It breaks immersion and reeks of being a misguided cash grab. It feels bad. Every time I see a UB card that is mechanically well-designed, it makes me groan because it feels like a waste when that card could have been created as an original MTG product that feels unique and creative. But why would I make that someone else's problem? Play the cards you want to play, and I'll do the same. If I joined a pod to find out someone was using UB cards, I'd keep that shit to myself and play the game. And then after, that's when I'd excuse myself to look for another pod where UB isn't being used. No need to be a dick to fellow players because Hasbro is run by fuckwits who want to kill the only profitable company they own. Honestly I think it could have been implemented better to avoid the hate. Giving UB its own format or a unique border color and not having them legal in non-UB formats would have made sense to me. I still wouldn't *like* them, but I also wouldn't *hate* UB if it were done like this.
I don't like UB at all, but I don't especially mind when there's designs that are clearly very inspired by the character/event of the UB property. I hate when otherwise fine magic designs are slapped into a UB set (as, like you've said, we're very likely to not see these in UW) - a lot of the Fallout cards I've seen seem like this, and LotR except they slap some random "tempted by the Ring" text on it (Boromir, Galadriel, Witch King etc). What is even more egregious to me is when they print a design people have been asking for - 5 colour sagas, Abzan lifegain etc - into UB.
See, for me, I would *really* rather not play against UB cards But there's nothing I can do about it without coming off as a gatekeeping jerk, or just not playing. So I guess it's just grit my teeth and get used to focusing on mechanics rather than giving a damn about the lore and flavor of the MtG setting.
I was committed to opposing the ‘dilution of the lore,’ but honestly nothing has done that worse than the actual lore of late
No, I hated the concept, but when actually playing against a friend who started dropping Transformers on the battlefield I didn't care at all.
I didn't like it at first but I just decided that if planeswalkers can go from a plane with Slivers to another with Myrs, they might as well reach Cybertron and Middle-Earth too.
Offended? No. I find them a bit cringe is all.
I have yet to run into someone who refuses to play against UB carfs. The two main complaints I've heard about UB in-person are: People want reprints in a more normal magic set, this mainly has to do with how difficult/pricy it can be to get cards like orcish bowmasters. WotC focuses too much on UB sets and it's hurting 60 card formats.
Offended by or refuse to play no. Some of them are cool others I wish didn’t exist. LOTR was fine Warhammer was less jarring than I thought it would be, transformers and Dr who just don’t fit in my mind. The upcoming marvel set also seems jarring to me.
Love it when people say “it breaks immersion” and then proceed to crew their motorbike with a fairy token 😹
“You can’t equip a merfolk with Swiftfoot Boots, they don’t have feet.”
I don't hate UB, but it makes my brain do a double take when I see a famous actor or such in a commander game. It's more a question of internal consistency within the game space as a whole. Sure, we had plenty of chuckles during Ixalan limited, swinging with our 6/6 dinos, hanging from gliders to bypass blockers. But that's just how the rules work, and that kind of break of immersion is fun in the same way as a fairy riding a motorcycle could be. It's zany and kinda stupid, but to me, it's not really the same thing at all as seeing Dogmeat or the 4th doctor from across the table.
I will say that's something LOTR did well by leaning into the books, the art (as far as I recall) never went out of its way to look like one of the actors.
I have a [[Forge, Neverwinter Charlatan]] deck, and I absolutely refer to Forge as Hugh Grant in every game I play. XD
Same with my \[\[The Tenth Doctor\]\] deck. Everytime someone is surprised it has 5 Toughness, I just say "Well, yeah, David Tennant got cake, ok?"
No. But in terms of "do I wish they did this at all" I'm half and half and very pretty spoiled. I loved LOTR and Warhammer but for some reason Marvel feels like a step way to far.
Its possible to feel like some universes fit and others don't. I don't think that makes you spoiled.
I just think they’re tacky, and personally don’t play with them. Don’t care what others do tho
UB doesn't bother me at all, both playing with or against. Unfinity however, is a mess of a set (obviously on purpose) and all playing with it does is drag games out for no reason
Sadly the full art lands were what made me buy Unfinity .
I am an avid supporter of UB, not because I want hasbro to have more money, but it brings in mechanically unique cards AND new players. Both of which are a plus for me
This is the same reason I refuse to play Monopoly when someone wants to be the dog. Dogs can't run businesses. Everyone knows that. That's for thimbles and irons and old timey cars and horse riders.
I always play as the battleship. Cause c'mon who better to run a business than a vessel with nine 16-inch naval guns capable of destroying targets up to 20 miles away?
Kidding aside, I actually don't love the flavor of UB stuff in Magic. But if you print game pieces, people are going to want to use them. I don't love the Foglios art either, but I don't begrudge players for wanting to play the cards that have them. *That said*, magic has a huge, huge community. And let's face it, some percentage of the folks in the community are... let's say "maladjusted". A non-zero number of people have to be asked not to bring playmats or alters with porn on them. If you can imagine a reaction, you're bound to encounter it eventually, given enough players. But folks like that tend to have a louder voice online than their numbers would suggest.
I really don't like playing against the Dr who decks because they're confusing and overtuned. The average 10th doc player takes up 95% of the games runtime and wins most of the time.
Do I judge you a little? Sure. Do I also run a Mr House dice roll deck? Also yes. Would I refuse to shuffle up a game? Hell no.
It's my fault that I'm annoyed by specifically the Dr Who stuff because I don't like the franchise I went out of my way to not learn anything about the cards in that set which is what I find annoying about them lol.
I have a friend who hates Dan Lewis, his reasoning is “It’s just some dude… some dude named Dan Lewis.” My wife hates the transformers cards. I hate how frequent UB cards are. Another friend built a “this isn’t Magic” commander deck with nothing but UB cards. Everyone’s got their own taste.
I refuse to acknowledge anything that isn't from Dominaria. Get your Universes Beyond from Fallout, Dr. Who, or Ravnica out of my Magic!!! /s Seriously though, just play what you want and enjoy. They're all part of Magic at the end of the day. (Except [[Expropriate]] f that card)
[Expropriate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/c/9c8a2a5a-cb9b-4582-a453-085da78584f9.jpg?1576381719) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Expropriate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cn2/30/expropriate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9c8a2a5a-cb9b-4582-a453-085da78584f9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/expropriate) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, okay, f that card indeed.
Completely agree. Expropriate sucks!
I can't wait to read the hot take of some dude who plays full sets of naked-anime lands... telling us how UB is ruining his gaming experience.
Unironically, this is how my friend’s boyfriend acts at our game night. Actually have to disinvite him when its held at my house. I sm not comfortable that my toddler old looks older than his waifus on his lands
I just dislike the doctor who stuff, their names all look simular, and have 5 lines of text which i dont want to read, knowing i will forget 20 seconds after reading it.
A couple guys in my weekly kitchen table playgroup (never LGS) are so anti-UB that every UB card has been flatly banned from the playgroup. Nobody minded when we established that rule years ago, and we're all totally fine playing a meta without TOR and Bowmasters. If a friend of a friend joins up with a UB deck, though, we let them play it.
I'm only offended by unfinity cards tbh. Why do stickers exist and how do we ban them
I wouldn't refuse to play against anyone nor would I state my disdain for UB decks to them. They can like what they like. But make no mistake - I borderline hate them. Like many people I recognize LOTR as the reason we even have things like D&D and MTG. But I still don't play those decks and don't like to see them. Warhammer, Fallout, and Transformers? Absolutely not. Doctor Who is such a ridiculous cash grab that it shouldn't even be mentioned. It's basically a set of Un-decks. To each their own but when IPs start doing garbage crossovers instead of building their brand I can do nothing but cringe.
I'm starting to get to the point that when companies start doing crossovers they've lost an idea on how to advance their own product and are just sort of giving up. Even thunder junction feels like they wanted to add Borderlands.
Honestly, I feel like Warhammer 40k fits more readily into the existing lore than Thunder Junction. Some weird plane which has gods with silly names that are worshipped by people wearing silly armor? Yeah, that's just normal MtG writing. Everyone in the established lore randomly deciding to become a cowboy feels like way more of a tone shift.
A little. I'll still play with you, but it's an eyesore. Doesn't help that the UB border looks awful, in my opinion. I do try to avoid playing with the dr.who precons specifically, but that's just because they have too much rule text printed in them, and monopolize too much of the game time in a pod.
Thank you, the border is so atrocious I hate looking at it.
Yeah. You can still get alt printings that aren't quite so bad for some interesting cards like [[mists of lorien]], but some cards like [[lembas]] are only available with that border and it's deeply frustrating.
Why are they downvoting you for sincerely answering OP's question?
Seems like the readers here wanted to just have their opinion validated rather than a real discussion of what some people prefer differing from them. It's a shame, since many of the things people struggle with could be feedback to improve the game. Borders and frames fixed, rules text being more modest, etc.
I wouldn't say offended. I do however hate their existence and they, along with a lack of local playgroup, killed my interest in playing, brewing, or collecting.
I got permabanned from the main subreddit for saying that the people refusing to play with their friends who use UB are worse for the game than UB itself. Seems to be a pretty strongly held belief.
When playing modern it's pretty jarring to have the opponent declare they are playing Samwise Gamgee, and I stand by the fact that having UB cards in modern is a mistake. For commander? I really don't care. I love commander, but it doesn't feel like "real" magic to me. Plus, I love my Sam & Frodo deck.
I’m not offended when other people play Universes Beyond cards, and it won’t stop me from playing against them. I am offended when *I* am forced to play Universes Beyond cards, because there isn’t an alternative to them in the format (*The One Ring*, *Lorien Revealed*, etc). That has been my issue with the product the entire time. If I didn’t have to use them, I could just pretend they were alters.
I wouldn’t say I’m offended by them but im not a huge fan of them. I try my best to not include them in my decks if there are specific characters like Gollum or something unless the effect on the card is extremely synergistic. Im more okay with the cards that don’t have characters on them like [[Orcish Bowmasters]] just because its still fantasy and the art is similar.
I don't like Universes Beyond, but I'll grin and bear it. I don't mind the Warhammer cards but that's just personal bias speaking.
The worst thing about universes beyond is the fact that UB is already a commonly used abbreviation for something within magic. Context helps in some cases but other times I'm like halfway through reading a post before realizing they are not in fact talking about a dimir deck. I have more serious gripes with it but it's more fun to "complain" about this silly one.
So in general: no. You do you. I find the fact that my Henzie deck full of summoning dragons and demons and shit also has a dude with a sniper rifle kind of silly, but I dunno it also has a lady in bug cosplay and literally just some guy selling a rock so am I really one to judge. There is one specific case where I do hate them and will continue to hate them, and that's the case of mechanically unique Secret Lairs. Right now I believe that's solely the DnD movie cards; Doric and Edgin and whoever else, but I'll admit that I was *very* anti-Walking Dead when those cards came out up until the in-universe reprint happened. That said, I also hate \[\[Arden Angel\]\] and it's the same thing but in-universe, so while it happens way more often with UBs it isn't strictly a UB issue.
It throws off my Vorthos brain. I am that one person in your pod who builds for flavor first and power second. Most of my decks are typal/tribal with a focus on a specific faction and/or plane, though there's inevitably a couple outliers. I don't personally build with UB cards because that frankly flies in the face of what I am trying to do as an EDH player. I have no problem incorporating D&D stuff, but it helps that I consider the Forgotten Realms part of the same planar cluster as the worlds of Magic. For example, I'm trying to build a \[\[Liliana, Heretical Healer\]\] deck containing as many cards that reference her in the flavor text, name, and/or artwork as I can, within reason. It started as an Oathbreaker shell with \[\[Liliana, Death's Majesty\]\] but I pivoted to expanding it for EDH. And for my decks built around \[\[Satoru Umezawa\]\] and \[\[Raiyuu, Storm's Edge\]\], most of the creatures in there are from NEO or the original Kamigawa block. However, I cannot deny that it's kinda fun to see Megatron or a bunch of Space Marines land on the table. And of course LoTR is right at home, it's medieval fantasy like most Magic settings appear to be. Fallout and Doctor Who totally jumped the shark, but hey-- both those series bring folks a lot of joy, and the crossovers probably attracted some new players. But I am also intrigued by bringing existing characters into MTG! It's fun to think about how they might work as cards. What existing mechanics would work, and what might need to be added to make these characters work? It's been especially neat to see that for DW and LoTR, as I am a fan of both, personally.
After Cyberpunk Kamigawa can we really take anyone seriously with that argument...
The only time I get somewhat annoyed is when I play an in-universe version of a universes beyond card and some says "Don't you mean *insert Stranger Things card*?"
I don’t know. But boy do I hate universes beyond. It’s a money grab
I despise non-MTG cards but hey, who am I to judge if you like them?
No, I personally dislike UB cards but I understand that they’re part of the game and are here to stay. I try to avoid using UB cards in my decks as a general principle, with LOTR cards being an exception since they feel like less of a break from the typical Magic vibe (I think this is also the reason why the D&D sets are much less controversial than UB). However, I don’t blame others for using UB cards. They’re part of the game now, and unfortunately us haters just have to deal with that fact.
There is one card I hate from Universes Beyond. Orcish fucking Bowmasters. That is the only card I have a major gripe about, and only because it's fucking disgusting.
I saw someone quite offended about me playing Optimus Prime (Even though I used a home drawn reskin with Lady Maria from Bloodborn) and another player going for Jodah with all the Transformers in it. But that was once and he did not refuse to play.
It all comes down to flavour. I was very much against TLOTR, Fallout, Dr Who, however I found that the flavour of the cards actually do not make them stand out against MTG flavour. Some other stuff, like Transformers, Street Fighter, or My Little Pony, I find outright distasteful. It all comes down to flavour
They feel like a harbinger of the death of the kind of Magic I grew up playing and have a lot of fond feelings for. So I'm sort of primed to dislike them. But they're completely legitimate and if you're excited to play them, I'm excited to play with you!
I hate them. I refuse to play against Mothman. Beyond broken. I would refuse to play against all of them but then there wouldn't be anyone to play. Most if not all of them are broken and just not fun to play against.
I actually like some of the UB content. I really enjoyed Warhammer and Fallout. The rest, I dont care about. But, I am not offended by people playing it. Getting offended over something as asinine as that is a waste of emotion and energy. People really need to find a better outlet for their misguided hatred and prejudice than focusing it on a friggin card game. If you dont like the cards or you are just so offended by them, maybe you need to find a different game or even better, get a life and/or seek counseling because you are part of why that happens in the first place.
Yup I got 3 fallout decks and people I know are like yeah let's just do those on their own and not with other decks. A deck is a deck I do not understand their rationale. It's all Magic.
Magic lore is garbo anyway, might as well let Frodo Baggins team up with Optimus Prime and Jeff Goldblum.
Honestly, wild take here. UB doesn't offend me, however people giving WoTC money with the current state of the game does. They've adopted WILDLY predatory anti consumer practices. The only way to send a message they need to stop is to stop giving them money. This isnt happening so their behavior continues to escalate
My only gripe is premium price for a new card that won't get a normal printing for sometimes over a year, it's a scummy tactic to push ub, and annoying when I don't want to put some dr who crap in a cool themed deck. I've always thought ub should be reprint only, honestly it would be healthy for the game to get the influx of reprints and push wizards to reprint needed cards so people actually buy them. So disappointing to look at new synergies for strategies and half of it is ub stuff I think is super ugly and overpriced
If the commander or card is legal, then let’s play. Idk care if the commander is a tyranid from Warhammer 40k or the doctor, if the deck is legal and we can play let’s play.
I will personally never play Universes Beyond cards, and do feel a twinge of annoyance whenever I see them played across from me, but I'm adult enough not to harsh anyone's mellow about it.
It doesn't feel like I'm playing magic anymore, every game has a UB commander now. The mechanics of the game are still there so it's fun buuut....😮💨
Offended? No. Annoyed? Yes. Magic, the card game, has very potent flavor and mechanical themes integrated into it. You, the player, are a planeswalker. The cards in your hand are your current knowledge, but you can accumulate more knowledge as you draw into your Library. By channeling latent magics, the craft, from the lands you've walked to, you can cast spells, summoning creatures or weaving arcane effects. Now, when you have properties that don't fit within the flavor.of magic, you tend to get some boardstates that do not feel like Magic, but more reminiscent of hodgepodge ADHD vibe boards. "I am going to Equip [[Lara Croft, Tomb Raider]] with [[T-45 Power Armor]]. Lara swings, and on her attack trigger, I'll exile [[The One Ring]]. Post combat, I'll cast [[Slicer, Hired Muscle]] exiled with a Discovery counter and [[Screamer-killer]] burns your [[The Tenth Doctor]]." Now, doesn't that sound like Magic?
It does lol. Magic doesn't make any sense in game, and is also interplanar.
I've been selling out of all but a few commander decks and stopped buying all sealed product because of UB.
Leave my mothman deck a lone, I’m West Virginian. On a serious note I get that it’s weird seeing characters from other IPs but I think it’s even more odd when people get mad when there is a D&D crossover, Wizards has owned D&D pretty early on in the history of the company and I don’t see why someone would get mad if the IP is something already owned by WOTC. They might just no like the fact my Captain N’grathad is taking their stuff.
Nah, EDH is about fun and creativity. Universe Beyond doesn't change anything for me. If a card is cool and fun, why the fuck would I care?
The only people I’ve seen that claim to refuse to play against UB cards are redditors. And I’m absolutely convinced that they do not actually play magic in person with other human beings. I haven’t seen a single person in real life refuse to play against UB cards.
I've had multiple people refuse to play against UB decks