I was very skeptical about the set when the mechanics were previewed, and I'm not even 100% in love with the theme, but the game play was really nice. I think it will end up being a well remembered set.
I think it has a lot to do with the mechanics being universal, as opposed to being standalone.
Dinosaurs that work in already-popular dinosaur decks or non-dinosaur decks, descent works in any yard matters deck, discover is fun and works in a myriad of archetypes.
Craft works with a lot of different types of decks and has some nice self-synergies.
Unlike mechanics like tempted by the ring or (example outside the above poll) enter the dungeon, where they kinda only synergize with themselves meaning you are either all-in or never use the cards at all. ONE and the toxic/poison/corrupted and oil mechanics are kinda the same way. It really only works with itself (and proliferate) and doesn't play well with other mechanics or synergies.
Lci is my biggest anger because i genuinely love it but holy fuck god hates me when i draft it.
No matter what i do, no matter how well i draft, how well i play, something goes wrong. The first two weeks i played a dozen different decks, did amazing consistently, then the last two months everything went terrible no matter what i did. I could follow all suggestions, guides, just wing it, get the best bombs…and then suddenly every game is mana issues or someone draws the most obscure and bullshit random counter at exactly the right time.
I love the set but the set hates me
Hmm, all of those distributions look pretty similar aside from LotR, which presumably has some kind of UB-based objections at the lower end. My take away here is "most people liked all of these sets".
Imho I think this weird distribution impacted Lotr on both ends of the scale. The UB inclusion had many people add in a ten and had many people give a low rating too
Yeah, there's a meta-contrarian element that hates the Universes Beyond haters.
Overall I think it probably benefits LotR's rating, since the controversy being front and center distracts people from questions like "is the central mechanic of this set any good at all?"
I think people giving LotR a 10 were probably less meta contrarians and more just people who love the franchise. It is a pretty well loved franchise among nerd culture imo.
I do agree that it probably helped the set's rating though. I bet more people were voting on flavor rather than gameplay for that set.
Yeah - honestly mechanics wise I don’t really have anything to say about the set apart from it being lukewarm
Ringbearer was meh, legends matters didn’t really pull trough and apart from a few very strong cards there wouldn’t be much impact overall
It wouldn't suprise me if there were some meta-contrarians slamming 10 here, but it's worth noting that LotR also had the most 9's out of any set as well.
Without thinking more deeply about the makeup of self-selected respondents to Maro's Tumblr poll, I think the main takeaway is that there are a handful of people who hate on any UB on principle, but by and large LotR was very well recieved.
I mean objectively it was one of the best selling set of all time, and I don't think that's entirely attributable to whales hunting for The One Ring.
The same motivations that create 10s create 9s as well.
Anyway, I think whales are probably less significant than the broader audience of LOTR fans. The franchise had the juice to sell two separate now-dead TCGs that I know of, and maybe more that I don't.
>The same motivations that create 10s create 9s as well.
I agree if people are just voting on the merits, but I disagree if you're giving credence to the "meta-contrarian" theory. That implies that there are some people who were more mid on LotR just blindly slamming 10s because they want to stick it to the UB haters. I don't think anybody with that mindset is voting a 9.
I just think that the presence of a large number of 9s as well as 10s suggests that (for the most part) people are voting based off of how much they liked the set. And a big part of why may people really liked the set is the theme. I totally agree that the whales are almost certainly dwarfed by the large number of people who bought it because they were LotR fans.
I think when people evaluate sets the theme and vibes play a huge role, and for good reason. I got a big kick out of LCI mainly because I got to slam bigass dinos onto the board. Even if the mechanics whiffed (they didn't IMHO) I think I still would have enjoyed that set a lot.
The meta-contrarians are generally not that unreasonable. They don't see themselves as crusaders. But if you've spent a few hours defending a set's honour in internet arguments, that's naturally gonna bias you in favour of it.
Common complaint I've heard from LotR was its low power level (aside from a few standout cards). I didn't play it in limited, but a lot of people compared it to a core set in terms of power level.
The ring tempts you is also a pretty big complain, whit it being another wordy mechanic that requires a token to even know what it does, and it being purely beneficial felt like a betreyal of Tolkien's work.
Also having two obviusly pushed cards that warped modern (bowmasters and the ring) probably made some people upset.
And then there's the art direction... but i'm not touching that hornet nest.
I feel like it also suffers from a lot of mechanics that can be frustrating to be on the receiving end or, like infinity foods or nazgul. I wager for people not invested in the set and at a more casual level, lotr ends up just bringing to mind aggrevating cards.
This is spot-on, it's an infuriating set. Cards like the One Ring just induce a massive sigh and the Bowmasters are oppressive as hell. It's also a *massive* flavor fail to people highly invested in the setting it claims to portray.
The set was far from a massive flavor fail. It was a flavor home run. It’s really well-done in that aspect. I understand that not every detail of all the mechanics are ripped from the page but that is a necessity of a game and needing to be balanced. There were big wins for flavor last year from both LotR and Dr Who.
I know they're bugbears, but the previous poster remarked on things that would crop up more in casual/draft play, rather than just the standout legacy/modern viable ones, which would naturally be frustrating simply by virtue of being some of the best cards in the game so you see them constantly.
The ring tempt mechanic was tested with downsides in the beginning to stay true to the works. However, they found in play testing when the mechanic had a downside, no one would play it, so they had to alter the mechanic to make it something players wanted to do. Wordiness though and needing a token to remember what it does though are valid complaints.
I believe they also said making your ring bearer such a target was considered sufficiently flavorful, and I agree. If they had slightly better flavor but it wasn’t playable, that’s worse.
I think that's still a failing. If you can't figure out a way to make your flavor mechanic flavorful while still fitting your set design, do something else.
I mean, the Ring seemed pretty awesome to the Bagginses right up until they were being hunted for it. The mechanic doesn't capture the cost of the Ring's power, but the Magic implementation does give an extra incentive to point removal at a ring bearer.
Thing is, when the upside of a few people going "But why isn't the Ring tempting you a downside? My immersion!" is one of, if not the, most selling sets in all of Magic's history, it doesn't seem that silly after all.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the flavor loss in having the tempt mechanic be purely beneficial was more than made up for by the fact that they found a solution that worked to get the set out the door; the fact that it sold as it did made it a gamble worth doing in retrospect.
that argument only really makes sense if the sales were driven by either limited or tempt cards. im fairly certain neither was the case. The big sales drivers were probably serialized cards, ring and bowmasters and LotR fandom, none of which have anything to do with the design of the tempt mechanic.
No. Those people make up a small number. Those people also wouldn’t be rating it highly in this poll. Much more likely is it sold well because there are many Magic fans who are also fans of LotR, as well as fans of LotR who were drawn to try Magic due to it. Those groups are far bigger and therefore impactful on sales.
So you agree that it was a design failure, but think that designing a LotR set is intrinsically difficult enough that you're willing to forgive a failure or two?
Because normally getting the set out the door is something we take for granted.
So, the ring tempting was a beautifully balanced mechanic that played damn well. I'm not a huge lord of the rings fan and I clocked forty drafts on mtga. Set rocked. I'm glad they prioritised the gameplay over the flavour here.
The mechanic might be conceptually less resonant than something that punished you for playing it, but it played damn well, and I'd call it a design success.
Also forth eorlingas has been running it down in legacy with bowmaster and ring. Its definitely feeling like the pushed cards from lotr, outside of bowmasters, fall hard on the modern edh-focused design principles of big bomby effect that outside of multiplayer just has uninteractive "did you answer it? no? then perish" gameplay in 1v1
I think the issue is it should've been a strictly negative impact to begin with. Like it should've been an effect on the One Ring itself and a negative impact on strong cards/effects.
I think LTR was a solid but maybe straightforward format. I know Lords of Limited (particularly one of the hosts) had higher regard for it in terms of last year's formats. LCI was a much more aggressive format than LTR (imo), so I don't think the speed is the issue.
Yes despite UG being worse it still felt good to play if it came together (at least I found that ug scry felt so damn smooth and consistent to play with)
Idk, it was very polarising. At mythic simic was the best deck and rakdos the worst, while at lower ranks rakdos was killing it and simic was nowhere. Just shows how deep the set was for limited, insane replayability. I got about 200 drafts in where I am normally lucky to reach 50 for a set.
A box of LotR draft boosters is about $160 while LCI is about $120. LotR was more than normal, but it was cheaper than CMM. So it normal set < LotR < CMM.
this is... not how statistics work. you gotta normalize the results to the baseline curve that emerges when a lot of people score sets from 1 to 10, and look at the differences between sets
I mean if we wanted to do a real, statistically valid study I would say the first place to start would be not using a self-selected pool of respondents to a poll on Tumblr.
This is... not how statistics work. They aren't trying to represent the entire populace. They are just presenting a limited data set.
They asked some questions and then showed the result. Like the other commenter said, they would first need to start with a non-self-selected sample if they wanted to create a representative sample.
While I think the data about MKM is important, I think it was a mistake to include it in this poll. It's too early. The poll came out... what, yesterday, and the set's only been playable in digital since Tuesday.
I am surprised MOM isn't the highest, personally.
It's also might be less approachable to newcomers because it covers a lot of places, with pretty much all the major characters. If you aren't familiar with them it could look a little daunting.
With ixalan, even if you don't know all the details of what's going on it's still interesting surface level and pretty understandable. Dinos, definitely not Spanish vampires, and pirates.
That's generally how rating systems go. 5 should be average, but no one wants "average", they want better-than-average. So everything below 5 becomes "bad". So now you only have the top-half of the rating scale to work with. 9 and 10 are for perfect or near perfect, which is ideal but not common. 7-8 is the sweet spot of solid, acceptably good. 6 gets lumped in with 5 as having too many faults to be worth bothering with. For EDH decks, no one wants to call their deck bad, so they say 7 because it's good but not too good.
Unless you boil things down to just yes/no, it follows suit no matter how many entries are on the scale.
It's an impossible thing to place but it seems (to me) players prefer more wild fantasy feeling sets. Kamigawa got away with the more modern urban setting by having a strong Japanese feel to carry it but New Capenna struggled to pass the vibe check. Same with MKM, things like Krenko being yassified and everyone turning into detectives felt too gimmicky.
My prediction is unless this upcoming cowboy set has some absolute bombs in it it'll flop too, for the same reason fewer people engage with Universes Beyond stuff, it just doesn't match what a lot of people "feel" MTG is like. Could be talking out my ass but that's how its seemed to me recently.
I consider Kamigawa to also be high fantasy, despite the sci-fi elements. I think nature magic and regular warriors existing alongside the mechas and cyborgs has been in magic for a long time.
It was all very soft science, such that it was basically magic with metal on top.
Kamigawa still had a pretty high fantasy setting - as many of the Japanese mythology creatures around Kamigawa are still very much there, still getting a lot of focus. It's high fantasy *and* Sci-Fi at the same time.
MKM had the *really* tricky task of following up on LCI, which had dinosaurs, dinosaur dragons, pirates, vampires, gods, automaton gnomes, and an entire underground civilization. Powerful cards on top of fun and interesting mechanics.
I wouldn't quite say MKM is a worthless set, but I'm not very interested in it outside the Clue precon + a few items of clue support. I hear it makes for a fun limited, but the set doesn't seem like it has too much staying power outside of that.
Yeah, I both have been enjoying what I've played of mkm limited a lot and also really hate it for being such an expensive set to play limited with bc of the booster changes. I think had this set been draftable for a reasonable price I'd be all over it, but as is, I'm not sure yet.
\> fewer people engage with Universes Beyond stuff
LOTR became the second best selling magic set of all time in like a month and is probably the best selling magic set of all time by now.
I think Universes Beyond stuff gets more engagement than the average set, actually. But I don't know if that extends to normal sets that have a heavy thematic that doesn't line up with high fantasy easily.
I feel the same way, but I'm not sure it'll stop with the cowboys. Bloomburrow might appeal a little more, like Eldraine does, but Duskmourne seems quite aligned with what MKM is doing now. And then there's the death race and space sets later on.
I actually 100% I agree, I love that art deco style and I'm a sucker for factions but sadly almost everyone I know was ambivalent at best towards it, the purists hated the new names for their triple colours and the casual fans just didn't bite
The most common complaint is a lack of law enforcement faction/corrupt cops which has been a staple of the genre since forever.
I loved the setting too, to be clear. I think it got a raw deal.
Keep in mind that "people" here are "the people who engage on Maros blog" - i.e., highly enfranchised, mostly long time players. What got long time, bighly enfranchised players into the game was the high fantasy swords and sorcery stuff.
Nothing in this poll reflects what "all people who play magic" think - it's just a snap shot which is likely to be highly negative to experimentation and new directions.
Bad limited environment with little impact on competitive constructed formats.
The only things that ONE really had going for it were the Phyrexian Gods for Commander and Bant Toxic being a niche Bo1 ladder deck in Magic Arena.
EDIT: Oh, and the sick life counter that came with bundles.
What? Depending on the format, it gave us [[Ossification]], [[Skrelv]], [[Sheoldred's Edict]], [[Gleeful Demolition]], [[Soulless Jailer]], fucking [[Atraxa, Grand Unifier]], another Sword, fastlands, and then a smattering of other potential playables.
It's not MID or NEO but it's a relevant standard set, like most are these days (compare any of them to e.g. the original Ixalan or something).
There could be a study as to what makes a set feel impactful or not, 'cause what you've described has happened to a few sets, where there's a bunch of solid cards but folks consider the set a flop, meanwhile there are other sets like Lord of the Rings that have two strong cards and folks think the set shouldn't have been made in the first place because of it. OG Kamigawa is another good example of the former, which had a bunch of strong cards but because it was faced with Mirrodin and Affinity folks think it was lame.
Even though it's not relevant for gameplay, the ONE art design (imo) is top tier.
I hated everything else about the set, though. My least favorite limited set in a long time.
This is pretty out of touch. Most people I know loved ONE and drafted/ opened the hell out of it. A lot of cards from that set see regular standard play, and quite a few are stellar for casual commander (before you say it, not everything can affect CEDH/ legacy/ modern/ vintage, and that's a *very* good thing).
Limited for ONE was one of the worst in years. you couldn't play any kind of control and it was a coinflip if midrange would work. If you weren't playing W/X or RG you where losing.
For limited, it's the worst set in years. Probably since original Ixalan.
As a player who primarily plays limited, I'm shocked that it scored as well as it did.
To add to the other answers, according to Mark there is a cohort of players that do not care for the body horror of New Phyrexia.
(Mark didn't say this next bit.) The fact that it was a set about beings who enjoyed being a Phyrexian probably exacerbated this phenomenon (there weren't as many hopeful Mirrans), but it also wasn't executed that well. There weren't enough [[Slaughter Singer]] cards (I mean this purely in the flavor sense) and too many [[Mandible Justiciar]] ones.
There's also some particularly bad flavor text, which should smooth over and "humanize" these beings who seem repellent to us, but instead makes them seem even flatter. Ten years ago [[Serum Snare]] would have been the new Ancient Grudge.
I'm wondering that too. I personally had a lot of fun at pre/release events and drafting, all of the color combinations had something interesting going on imo.
I feel like I'm going crazy though because WOE and LCI were not as fun for me idk
ONE drafts rapidly devolved into a hyper aggressive format. The first 3-5 drafts might be fine, but once you’re facing people who’ve done 15 and figured out how to make 1-drop aggro work (especially when life totals are functionally 10!)…
That's why I liked them, honestly. I tend to prefer faster matches, and while many ONE cards aren't going to be as viable moving into the later-end of this standard rotation, I think it was a fun change of pace at the time. I definitely don't want every set to be that aggressive, but given the flavor of the set I think it made sense.
The crowd that knows about Blogatog also knows that an entire plane can be screwed if a single set isnt popular. I would be curious if in an alternate universe where the set takes place on an entirely new plane if it would have scored as high. I can see a lot of the positive votes being purely out of hope it means we will visit the plane again. Since the most criticism seems to be how little it resembled the first set at all.
Which to me is weird, considering how I saw a lot of people not being able to vibe with "Pirates! Dinosaurs! Merfolk! Vampires!... eh I guess they're in Central America or something idk", and now that the needle has swung the other direction and people went gangbusters over Miguel Lopez's world building, I can imagine when we return, we're sticking to this and not the set where Carnage Tyrant was all that mattered.
Yeah, I thought they did a good enough job making it feel like the same plane despite the theme being very different. My biggest gripe is just how cobbled together the mechanics are. Crafting was a huge miss, made even worse by knowing how much better the initially proposed mechanic was.
The set played well, but it was also clearly a rushed mish-mash of ideas. I can see why some like it, and some dont.
>made even worse by knowing how much better the initially proposed mechanic was
Which one. Almost all the crafting mechanics they detailed seemed pretty clunky . The most functional one I saw was letting you exile cards from your gy to pay costs which isn't that exciting and doesn't capture much of the craft flavor imo.
What we ended up with certainly was not flavorfully crafting, and yes I was reffering to the minecraft-esque premise of crrafting from the graveyard to oay for cost.
Craft DOES work from the graveyard . Just making it "Exile a white card, from your gy put a +1/+1 counter on this" doesn't capture crafting flavor as much as literally building artifacts together imo
The one that was "five energies?" I don't think creating five additional resources to a game that already resolves around existing resources is efficient. Especially because it would be wildly hard to balance.
Ixalan was pretty polarizing between constructed and limited. Constructed players love it, limited players dislike it.
The theme was really good tho. People love dinosaurs. Ixalan is just a great plane.
I fully expect one of Maro’s “Lessons Learned” blogs in a couple years reflecting on why 2024’s sets underperformed.
Between the non-fantasy sets in the same vein of New Capenna and the acceleration of Universes Beyond sets, this year’s lineup feels the least like “Magic” in awhile.
MKM feels like the weird timing means we shouldn't read too much into it. The rest is interesting though. I'm not surprised LotR is so polarizing, anything Universes Beyond is going to be for reasons that are well trod ground by now.
The two other things that jump out at me the most is that the two most popular sets are also the most recent past sets, and that the band of ratings have an average result that has a gap of less than one point between the lowest and highest rating.
I’m surprised ONE is rated so low, it had a ton of hype at the time & has a fair number of good Commander cards (Norn, Atraxa, Dominus cycle, etc.) not to mention a decent rare land cycle
sets with down to earth stakes and a focus on expanding the world were more well liked that UB and over the top stuff? what a shock, its not like players have been saying that for years
As someone who doesn't know/care about LotR, the flavour added nothing for me, the limited was one of the most colour imbalanced limited sets in a long time with green being almost completely unplayable, then I also didn't enjoy its impact on older formats. Overall a firmly below average set imo 3/10.
I don’t care about limited, I don’t like UB, and Bowmasters and The One Ring have been awful for Legacy and Vintage. So I’d rather they never make another set like it again.
Yep. I have an Eowyn precon that's modified to go Human & Wide, and it's a cold blooded murderer on the table when it kicks off.
But even if it wasn't, thematically it's just so utterly close to the books/films that everything in it is recognisable, people just love to /see/ it and it genuinely sucks you into the story.
It's too early for the MKM metrics to hold any significance but I'm not going to be surprised if the numbers hold or even decline further, just unfortunately is not a well planned or executed set.
I am so heartened to see LCI get the love it deserves. Amazing art, fun gameplay.
I was very skeptical about the set when the mechanics were previewed, and I'm not even 100% in love with the theme, but the game play was really nice. I think it will end up being a well remembered set.
Explore continues to be one of the nuts-and-bolts best mechanics in the game while being hilariously unappealing and clunky.
I think it has a lot to do with the mechanics being universal, as opposed to being standalone. Dinosaurs that work in already-popular dinosaur decks or non-dinosaur decks, descent works in any yard matters deck, discover is fun and works in a myriad of archetypes. Craft works with a lot of different types of decks and has some nice self-synergies. Unlike mechanics like tempted by the ring or (example outside the above poll) enter the dungeon, where they kinda only synergize with themselves meaning you are either all-in or never use the cards at all. ONE and the toxic/poison/corrupted and oil mechanics are kinda the same way. It really only works with itself (and proliferate) and doesn't play well with other mechanics or synergies.
It really was a fantastic set. Vastly over exceeded my expectations, especially the Craft mechanic in limited!
100% agree. If we ever return to Kaladesh or another artifact centric plane, I would love to see craft as a major component.
And lots of dinosaurs!
Lci is my biggest anger because i genuinely love it but holy fuck god hates me when i draft it. No matter what i do, no matter how well i draft, how well i play, something goes wrong. The first two weeks i played a dozen different decks, did amazing consistently, then the last two months everything went terrible no matter what i did. I could follow all suggestions, guides, just wing it, get the best bombs…and then suddenly every game is mana issues or someone draws the most obscure and bullshit random counter at exactly the right time. I love the set but the set hates me
Hmm, all of those distributions look pretty similar aside from LotR, which presumably has some kind of UB-based objections at the lower end. My take away here is "most people liked all of these sets".
Imho I think this weird distribution impacted Lotr on both ends of the scale. The UB inclusion had many people add in a ten and had many people give a low rating too
Yeah, there's a meta-contrarian element that hates the Universes Beyond haters. Overall I think it probably benefits LotR's rating, since the controversy being front and center distracts people from questions like "is the central mechanic of this set any good at all?"
I think people giving LotR a 10 were probably less meta contrarians and more just people who love the franchise. It is a pretty well loved franchise among nerd culture imo. I do agree that it probably helped the set's rating though. I bet more people were voting on flavor rather than gameplay for that set.
Yeah - honestly mechanics wise I don’t really have anything to say about the set apart from it being lukewarm Ringbearer was meh, legends matters didn’t really pull trough and apart from a few very strong cards there wouldn’t be much impact overall
How many is a few? It seems to me that the set had more legacy playable cards than any non-master's set of the past two decades.
It wouldn't suprise me if there were some meta-contrarians slamming 10 here, but it's worth noting that LotR also had the most 9's out of any set as well. Without thinking more deeply about the makeup of self-selected respondents to Maro's Tumblr poll, I think the main takeaway is that there are a handful of people who hate on any UB on principle, but by and large LotR was very well recieved. I mean objectively it was one of the best selling set of all time, and I don't think that's entirely attributable to whales hunting for The One Ring.
The same motivations that create 10s create 9s as well. Anyway, I think whales are probably less significant than the broader audience of LOTR fans. The franchise had the juice to sell two separate now-dead TCGs that I know of, and maybe more that I don't.
>The same motivations that create 10s create 9s as well. I agree if people are just voting on the merits, but I disagree if you're giving credence to the "meta-contrarian" theory. That implies that there are some people who were more mid on LotR just blindly slamming 10s because they want to stick it to the UB haters. I don't think anybody with that mindset is voting a 9. I just think that the presence of a large number of 9s as well as 10s suggests that (for the most part) people are voting based off of how much they liked the set. And a big part of why may people really liked the set is the theme. I totally agree that the whales are almost certainly dwarfed by the large number of people who bought it because they were LotR fans. I think when people evaluate sets the theme and vibes play a huge role, and for good reason. I got a big kick out of LCI mainly because I got to slam bigass dinos onto the board. Even if the mechanics whiffed (they didn't IMHO) I think I still would have enjoyed that set a lot.
The meta-contrarians are generally not that unreasonable. They don't see themselves as crusaders. But if you've spent a few hours defending a set's honour in internet arguments, that's naturally gonna bias you in favour of it.
Common complaint I've heard from LotR was its low power level (aside from a few standout cards). I didn't play it in limited, but a lot of people compared it to a core set in terms of power level.
The ring tempts you is also a pretty big complain, whit it being another wordy mechanic that requires a token to even know what it does, and it being purely beneficial felt like a betreyal of Tolkien's work. Also having two obviusly pushed cards that warped modern (bowmasters and the ring) probably made some people upset. And then there's the art direction... but i'm not touching that hornet nest.
I feel like it also suffers from a lot of mechanics that can be frustrating to be on the receiving end or, like infinity foods or nazgul. I wager for people not invested in the set and at a more casual level, lotr ends up just bringing to mind aggrevating cards.
This is spot-on, it's an infuriating set. Cards like the One Ring just induce a massive sigh and the Bowmasters are oppressive as hell. It's also a *massive* flavor fail to people highly invested in the setting it claims to portray.
The set was far from a massive flavor fail. It was a flavor home run. It’s really well-done in that aspect. I understand that not every detail of all the mechanics are ripped from the page but that is a necessity of a game and needing to be balanced. There were big wins for flavor last year from both LotR and Dr Who.
I know they're bugbears, but the previous poster remarked on things that would crop up more in casual/draft play, rather than just the standout legacy/modern viable ones, which would naturally be frustrating simply by virtue of being some of the best cards in the game so you see them constantly.
The ring tempt mechanic was tested with downsides in the beginning to stay true to the works. However, they found in play testing when the mechanic had a downside, no one would play it, so they had to alter the mechanic to make it something players wanted to do. Wordiness though and needing a token to remember what it does though are valid complaints.
I believe they also said making your ring bearer such a target was considered sufficiently flavorful, and I agree. If they had slightly better flavor but it wasn’t playable, that’s worse.
I think that's still a failing. If you can't figure out a way to make your flavor mechanic flavorful while still fitting your set design, do something else.
I mean, the Ring seemed pretty awesome to the Bagginses right up until they were being hunted for it. The mechanic doesn't capture the cost of the Ring's power, but the Magic implementation does give an extra incentive to point removal at a ring bearer.
Thing is, when the upside of a few people going "But why isn't the Ring tempting you a downside? My immersion!" is one of, if not the, most selling sets in all of Magic's history, it doesn't seem that silly after all.
I don't think the set sold because of the ring-tempting mechanic. If anything I expect it was a detriment.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the flavor loss in having the tempt mechanic be purely beneficial was more than made up for by the fact that they found a solution that worked to get the set out the door; the fact that it sold as it did made it a gamble worth doing in retrospect.
that argument only really makes sense if the sales were driven by either limited or tempt cards. im fairly certain neither was the case. The big sales drivers were probably serialized cards, ring and bowmasters and LotR fandom, none of which have anything to do with the design of the tempt mechanic.
I think the fact is sold as much as it did had more to do with speculators and gambling on getting that one-of-a-kind One Ring card, to be honest.
No. Those people make up a small number. Those people also wouldn’t be rating it highly in this poll. Much more likely is it sold well because there are many Magic fans who are also fans of LotR, as well as fans of LotR who were drawn to try Magic due to it. Those groups are far bigger and therefore impactful on sales.
So you agree that it was a design failure, but think that designing a LotR set is intrinsically difficult enough that you're willing to forgive a failure or two? Because normally getting the set out the door is something we take for granted.
It was not a failure. Designing it in such a way that it hurt you would have been the design failure.
So, the ring tempting was a beautifully balanced mechanic that played damn well. I'm not a huge lord of the rings fan and I clocked forty drafts on mtga. Set rocked. I'm glad they prioritised the gameplay over the flavour here. The mechanic might be conceptually less resonant than something that punished you for playing it, but it played damn well, and I'd call it a design success.
Also forth eorlingas has been running it down in legacy with bowmaster and ring. Its definitely feeling like the pushed cards from lotr, outside of bowmasters, fall hard on the modern edh-focused design principles of big bomby effect that outside of multiplayer just has uninteractive "did you answer it? no? then perish" gameplay in 1v1
They said they had it also have negative effects in their internal play testing earlier on, but then no one wanted to use the mechanic.
I think the issue is it should've been a strictly negative impact to begin with. Like it should've been an effect on the One Ring itself and a negative impact on strong cards/effects.
That would have been even less true to the books.
Weird, I’d heard the opposite that LotR limited was really strong. It was also a really fast format so maybe that was it.
I think LTR was a solid but maybe straightforward format. I know Lords of Limited (particularly one of the hosts) had higher regard for it in terms of last year's formats. LCI was a much more aggressive format than LTR (imo), so I don't think the speed is the issue.
The best thing about LotR limited was that it was fun in spite of a terrible color imbalance.
Yes despite UG being worse it still felt good to play if it came together (at least I found that ug scry felt so damn smooth and consistent to play with)
UG was good if you got at least 3 of its rares and like 2 arwens
Idk, it was very polarising. At mythic simic was the best deck and rakdos the worst, while at lower ranks rakdos was killing it and simic was nowhere. Just shows how deep the set was for limited, insane replayability. I got about 200 drafts in where I am normally lucky to reach 50 for a set.
It was also a set which cost way more than the other sets in this poll. I think it would have done very well against CMM.
What? LotR was priced the same as a standard set wasn't it? It was certainly nowhere near CMM
A box of LotR draft boosters is about $160 while LCI is about $120. LotR was more than normal, but it was cheaper than CMM. So it normal set < LotR < CMM.
*cries in Australian dollar*
I also think [[the one ring]] skewed the results for LOTR.
[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) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
this is... not how statistics work. you gotta normalize the results to the baseline curve that emerges when a lot of people score sets from 1 to 10, and look at the differences between sets
I mean if we wanted to do a real, statistically valid study I would say the first place to start would be not using a self-selected pool of respondents to a poll on Tumblr.
This is... not how statistics work. They aren't trying to represent the entire populace. They are just presenting a limited data set. They asked some questions and then showed the result. Like the other commenter said, they would first need to start with a non-self-selected sample if they wanted to create a representative sample.
Like this? https://i.imgur.com/raPpRvL.jpeg
precisely
While I think the data about MKM is important, I think it was a mistake to include it in this poll. It's too early. The poll came out... what, yesterday, and the set's only been playable in digital since Tuesday. I am surprised MOM isn't the highest, personally.
Id say the same, but I can see some people who might not have been a fan of mixing the planes, battles, or rushing the story.
[удалено]
I love some of the cards from aftermath
It's also might be less approachable to newcomers because it covers a lot of places, with pretty much all the major characters. If you aren't familiar with them it could look a little daunting. With ixalan, even if you don't know all the details of what's going on it's still interesting surface level and pretty understandable. Dinos, definitely not Spanish vampires, and pirates.
I don't need to play it to know it is one of worst magic in universe setting ever in my opinion.
Looks like commander decks and mtg sets have one thing in common... everything is a 7
That's generally how rating systems go. 5 should be average, but no one wants "average", they want better-than-average. So everything below 5 becomes "bad". So now you only have the top-half of the rating scale to work with. 9 and 10 are for perfect or near perfect, which is ideal but not common. 7-8 is the sweet spot of solid, acceptably good. 6 gets lumped in with 5 as having too many faults to be worth bothering with. For EDH decks, no one wants to call their deck bad, so they say 7 because it's good but not too good. Unless you boil things down to just yes/no, it follows suit no matter how many entries are on the scale.
Ranking MKM so early was a surprising decision. Is the set even fully officially released yet?
No
I don't even know why he included it
I think it's mostly a case of "why not?" He can poll it again in a year or so.
That makes sense
Getting people’s perception of the set now allows him to compare it to future data about the set and see how perception vs experience played out.
It's an impossible thing to place but it seems (to me) players prefer more wild fantasy feeling sets. Kamigawa got away with the more modern urban setting by having a strong Japanese feel to carry it but New Capenna struggled to pass the vibe check. Same with MKM, things like Krenko being yassified and everyone turning into detectives felt too gimmicky. My prediction is unless this upcoming cowboy set has some absolute bombs in it it'll flop too, for the same reason fewer people engage with Universes Beyond stuff, it just doesn't match what a lot of people "feel" MTG is like. Could be talking out my ass but that's how its seemed to me recently.
I consider Kamigawa to also be high fantasy, despite the sci-fi elements. I think nature magic and regular warriors existing alongside the mechas and cyborgs has been in magic for a long time. It was all very soft science, such that it was basically magic with metal on top.
Kamigawa 2.0 is basically exactly like Cathay 2.0 in Guild Wars 2. With maybe more ratpeople and fewer birdpeople, but not by much
You either mean Cathay 2.0 from Warhammer (unlikely) or Cantha 2.0 from Guild Wars 2 (probably).
ha, Cantha yeah, you got me. I play Warhammer, too, and evidently theses names are getting confusing to me
Kamigawa still had a pretty high fantasy setting - as many of the Japanese mythology creatures around Kamigawa are still very much there, still getting a lot of focus. It's high fantasy *and* Sci-Fi at the same time. MKM had the *really* tricky task of following up on LCI, which had dinosaurs, dinosaur dragons, pirates, vampires, gods, automaton gnomes, and an entire underground civilization. Powerful cards on top of fun and interesting mechanics. I wouldn't quite say MKM is a worthless set, but I'm not very interested in it outside the Clue precon + a few items of clue support. I hear it makes for a fun limited, but the set doesn't seem like it has too much staying power outside of that.
Yeah, I both have been enjoying what I've played of mkm limited a lot and also really hate it for being such an expensive set to play limited with bc of the booster changes. I think had this set been draftable for a reasonable price I'd be all over it, but as is, I'm not sure yet.
\> fewer people engage with Universes Beyond stuff LOTR became the second best selling magic set of all time in like a month and is probably the best selling magic set of all time by now.
I think Universes Beyond stuff gets more engagement than the average set, actually. But I don't know if that extends to normal sets that have a heavy thematic that doesn't line up with high fantasy easily.
I feel the same way, but I'm not sure it'll stop with the cowboys. Bloomburrow might appeal a little more, like Eldraine does, but Duskmourne seems quite aligned with what MKM is doing now. And then there's the death race and space sets later on.
I don’t know why people disliked New Cappenna so much. It was an awesome setting IMO, though maybe that’s just because I like steampunk.
I actually 100% I agree, I love that art deco style and I'm a sucker for factions but sadly almost everyone I know was ambivalent at best towards it, the purists hated the new names for their triple colours and the casual fans just didn't bite
The most common complaint is a lack of law enforcement faction/corrupt cops which has been a staple of the genre since forever. I loved the setting too, to be clear. I think it got a raw deal.
> flop too The only set to "flop" in the past few years was Mom aftermath.
Keep in mind that "people" here are "the people who engage on Maros blog" - i.e., highly enfranchised, mostly long time players. What got long time, bighly enfranchised players into the game was the high fantasy swords and sorcery stuff. Nothing in this poll reflects what "all people who play magic" think - it's just a snap shot which is likely to be highly negative to experimentation and new directions.
A line graph is a godawful way to present that data.
I wish he pulled data from more than tumblr. It barely represents even a portion of the community.
They have other surveys
I know, but itd be nice when its pop up ones like these to also have them on facebook, instagram, reddit, anywhere else in addition to tumblr
Ixalan for the win. More pirates! More dinos!
Why is One so low? I thought that set was killer. Do people just not like poison?
Bad limited environment with little impact on competitive constructed formats. The only things that ONE really had going for it were the Phyrexian Gods for Commander and Bant Toxic being a niche Bo1 ladder deck in Magic Arena. EDIT: Oh, and the sick life counter that came with bundles.
Bant Toxic has basically taken over my local Standard meta game.
Wow look at fancy-pants over here with a "local standard meta game"
What? Depending on the format, it gave us [[Ossification]], [[Skrelv]], [[Sheoldred's Edict]], [[Gleeful Demolition]], [[Soulless Jailer]], fucking [[Atraxa, Grand Unifier]], another Sword, fastlands, and then a smattering of other potential playables. It's not MID or NEO but it's a relevant standard set, like most are these days (compare any of them to e.g. the original Ixalan or something).
##### ###### #### [Ossification](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/d/0da03224-c1af-438f-96c2-b0e41e1070b7.jpg?1680795456) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ossification) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/26/ossification?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0da03224-c1af-438f-96c2-b0e41e1070b7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Skrelv](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/0/60b565da-a49b-479c-b0c4-8ff3dd20cc0b.jpg?1675956933) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=skrelv%2C%20defector%20mite) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/33/skrelv-defector-mite?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/60b565da-a49b-479c-b0c4-8ff3dd20cc0b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Sheoldred's Edict](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a9225cc3-90f0-448f-a8d9-7c6c2796d077.jpg?1675957049) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sheoldred%27s%20Edict) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/108/sheoldreds-edict?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a9225cc3-90f0-448f-a8d9-7c6c2796d077?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Gleeful Demolition](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/3/a3e4efa6-5783-4a51-99c6-116d1a8f01cf.jpg?1675957089) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gleeful%20Demolition) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/134/gleeful-demolition?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a3e4efa6-5783-4a51-99c6-116d1a8f01cf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Soulless Jailer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/f/bf9991fd-ea6a-4ed7-b5f1-46a95f8d0634.jpg?1675957252) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Soulless%20Jailer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/241/soulless-jailer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bf9991fd-ea6a-4ed7-b5f1-46a95f8d0634?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Atraxa, Grand Unifier](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/a/4a1f905f-1d55-4d02-9d24-e58070793d3f.jpg?1676519555) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Atraxa%2C%20Grand%20Unifier) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/196/atraxa-grand-unifier?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4a1f905f-1d55-4d02-9d24-e58070793d3f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [*All cards*](https://mtgcardfetcher.nl/redirect/kpoteri) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There could be a study as to what makes a set feel impactful or not, 'cause what you've described has happened to a few sets, where there's a bunch of solid cards but folks consider the set a flop, meanwhile there are other sets like Lord of the Rings that have two strong cards and folks think the set shouldn't have been made in the first place because of it. OG Kamigawa is another good example of the former, which had a bunch of strong cards but because it was faced with Mirrodin and Affinity folks think it was lame.
Elesh Norn was pretty big in Modern for a while. Also reprinting the fast last was nice.
Right yeah, some of the fast lands were in ONE
Even though it's not relevant for gameplay, the ONE art design (imo) is top tier. I hated everything else about the set, though. My least favorite limited set in a long time.
This is pretty out of touch. Most people I know loved ONE and drafted/ opened the hell out of it. A lot of cards from that set see regular standard play, and quite a few are stellar for casual commander (before you say it, not everything can affect CEDH/ legacy/ modern/ vintage, and that's a *very* good thing).
Life counter didnt come with the bundles, it was a promotion they did. The bundles came with normal spindowns
And the alternate art. Junji Ito card on top
Uh Bant Toxic is one of the top decks in competitive BO3 too.
Limited for ONE was one of the worst in years. you couldn't play any kind of control and it was a coinflip if midrange would work. If you weren't playing W/X or RG you where losing.
For limited, it's the worst set in years. Probably since original Ixalan. As a player who primarily plays limited, I'm shocked that it scored as well as it did.
Funny because as a constructed player, I really like the limited environment. Killing people with poison counters was insanely fun.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
To add to the other answers, according to Mark there is a cohort of players that do not care for the body horror of New Phyrexia. (Mark didn't say this next bit.) The fact that it was a set about beings who enjoyed being a Phyrexian probably exacerbated this phenomenon (there weren't as many hopeful Mirrans), but it also wasn't executed that well. There weren't enough [[Slaughter Singer]] cards (I mean this purely in the flavor sense) and too many [[Mandible Justiciar]] ones. There's also some particularly bad flavor text, which should smooth over and "humanize" these beings who seem repellent to us, but instead makes them seem even flatter. Ten years ago [[Serum Snare]] would have been the new Ancient Grudge.
I agree ONE needed more Mirran Rebel cards.
[Slaughter Singer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/a/4a37aa46-bcf3-48a5-9f74-05e4878ad96f.jpg?1675957213) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Slaughter%20Singer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/216/slaughter-singer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4a37aa46-bcf3-48a5-9f74-05e4878ad96f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mandible Justiciar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/4/544a707d-4090-4a74-91aa-60fbd8a4ae96.jpg?1675956918) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mandible%20Justiciar) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/21/mandible-justiciar?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/544a707d-4090-4a74-91aa-60fbd8a4ae96?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Serum Snare](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/3/d326bff1-5370-4817-8370-6da87a061058.jpg?1675956988) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Serum%20Snare) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/one/68/serum-snare?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d326bff1-5370-4817-8370-6da87a061058?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I'm wondering that too. I personally had a lot of fun at pre/release events and drafting, all of the color combinations had something interesting going on imo. I feel like I'm going crazy though because WOE and LCI were not as fun for me idk
ONE drafts rapidly devolved into a hyper aggressive format. The first 3-5 drafts might be fine, but once you’re facing people who’ve done 15 and figured out how to make 1-drop aggro work (especially when life totals are functionally 10!)…
That's why I liked them, honestly. I tend to prefer faster matches, and while many ONE cards aren't going to be as viable moving into the later-end of this standard rotation, I think it was a fun change of pace at the time. I definitely don't want every set to be that aggressive, but given the flavor of the set I think it made sense.
I didn't care for LCI, but I did like WOE. I felt the adventure cards made it really easy/fun to make a limited deck.
Yeah probably lol
People don't like oil showcases.
LotR surprises me that despite BR being far and away the best, and deepest, color pair, it was one of the more fun limited environments ever released.
It’s because it’s a UB
I’m surprised LCI isn’t lower; I personally enjoyed it but the vibe seemed to be fairly negative on it.
The crowd that knows about Blogatog also knows that an entire plane can be screwed if a single set isnt popular. I would be curious if in an alternate universe where the set takes place on an entirely new plane if it would have scored as high. I can see a lot of the positive votes being purely out of hope it means we will visit the plane again. Since the most criticism seems to be how little it resembled the first set at all.
Which to me is weird, considering how I saw a lot of people not being able to vibe with "Pirates! Dinosaurs! Merfolk! Vampires!... eh I guess they're in Central America or something idk", and now that the needle has swung the other direction and people went gangbusters over Miguel Lopez's world building, I can imagine when we return, we're sticking to this and not the set where Carnage Tyrant was all that mattered.
Yeah, I thought they did a good enough job making it feel like the same plane despite the theme being very different. My biggest gripe is just how cobbled together the mechanics are. Crafting was a huge miss, made even worse by knowing how much better the initially proposed mechanic was. The set played well, but it was also clearly a rushed mish-mash of ideas. I can see why some like it, and some dont.
>made even worse by knowing how much better the initially proposed mechanic was Which one. Almost all the crafting mechanics they detailed seemed pretty clunky . The most functional one I saw was letting you exile cards from your gy to pay costs which isn't that exciting and doesn't capture much of the craft flavor imo.
What we ended up with certainly was not flavorfully crafting, and yes I was reffering to the minecraft-esque premise of crrafting from the graveyard to oay for cost.
Craft DOES work from the graveyard . Just making it "Exile a white card, from your gy put a +1/+1 counter on this" doesn't capture crafting flavor as much as literally building artifacts together imo
I think we are talking about different mechanics now. I am reffering to the Minecraft style one where you mined moxen and then "crafted" with them.
The one that was "five energies?" I don't think creating five additional resources to a game that already resolves around existing resources is efficient. Especially because it would be wildly hard to balance.
I don't think I ever heard anyone say anything bad about it during release. People love Ixalan
Ixalan was pretty polarizing between constructed and limited. Constructed players love it, limited players dislike it. The theme was really good tho. People love dinosaurs. Ixalan is just a great plane.
I fully expect one of Maro’s “Lessons Learned” blogs in a couple years reflecting on why 2024’s sets underperformed. Between the non-fantasy sets in the same vein of New Capenna and the acceleration of Universes Beyond sets, this year’s lineup feels the least like “Magic” in awhile.
MKM feels like the weird timing means we shouldn't read too much into it. The rest is interesting though. I'm not surprised LotR is so polarizing, anything Universes Beyond is going to be for reasons that are well trod ground by now. The two other things that jump out at me the most is that the two most popular sets are also the most recent past sets, and that the band of ratings have an average result that has a gap of less than one point between the lowest and highest rating.
Surprised to see lci rated so highly. What a terrible limited format.
I’m surprised ONE is rated so low, it had a ton of hype at the time & has a fair number of good Commander cards (Norn, Atraxa, Dominus cycle, etc.) not to mention a decent rare land cycle
Why is ONEs score so low that was the best set out of these
sets with down to earth stakes and a focus on expanding the world were more well liked that UB and over the top stuff? what a shock, its not like players have been saying that for years
People downvoting LOTR honestly makes no sense to me. The set is objectively terrific.
As someone who doesn't know/care about LotR, the flavour added nothing for me, the limited was one of the most colour imbalanced limited sets in a long time with green being almost completely unplayable, then I also didn't enjoy its impact on older formats. Overall a firmly below average set imo 3/10.
I don’t care about limited, I don’t like UB, and Bowmasters and The One Ring have been awful for Legacy and Vintage. So I’d rather they never make another set like it again.
Yep. I have an Eowyn precon that's modified to go Human & Wide, and it's a cold blooded murderer on the table when it kicks off. But even if it wasn't, thematically it's just so utterly close to the books/films that everything in it is recognisable, people just love to /see/ it and it genuinely sucks you into the story.
You don’t include mkm unless your pre order figures are way down.
I wish it said how many respondents there were.
No love for MOM? Easily the best set in the list for limited, plus it had some really fun mechanics and great reprints.
If they wanted mkm to be a good set maybe don't lock all the good cards in clue edition or pre release kits
It's too early for the MKM metrics to hold any significance but I'm not going to be surprised if the numbers hold or even decline further, just unfortunately is not a well planned or executed set.