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Apr 26, 2012 -- 9:14PM, 12three45 wrote:

I appreciated where you came from even if I didn't agree until this article. WOTC rewrote draft and the definition of Magic cards for werewolves and now you claim they are too boring to support 3 sets? They were boring because you crammed them into red/green when that was too narrow. If you can't make DFCs interesting for all of 3 sets, you suck at your job. This is as big a lie as glossing over you all rubber stamped Snapcaster without knowing it interacted with mana leak. You like Big/small/big because it forces people to buy more cards not because you care about us. You are a scumbag mouthpeice and nothing you say I will ever take as serious again.

Wow... yes, Wizards has a long history of lying to their customers and screwing them over for money, because their business model is based upon short term gain rather than building a large, loyal fanbase through the development of an awesome game. Oh, wait, that's not true at all.

The rest of your post is filled with strawmanning and nonsensical statements. They never said anything about werewolves being too boring for three sets - as Maro said, they felt that a horror top-down design would only be rich enough for two sets. Could they have pushed it to three? I'm sure they could have. Would it have been fun? More than likely. Would it have been as rich and amazing as Innistrad and Dark Ascension? Highly unlikely.

As for your statement that big/small/big forces people to buy more cards... um, what? Where is your logic behind this? Are you going to claim that, because there are more cards, you need to buy more singles/boosters to get what you want? There are some amazingly huge issues with that logic - so much so that I can only gape in wonder, and will touch briefly upon some of the most obvious flaws. First and foremost, because we are drafting triple big set, we get more of those cards into circulation than if it were a small set, thus increasing the availability of those cards. Yes, the middle set is negatively affected, but it would be a big stretch to say that it is forcing people to buy more cards in any way. Looking at history, is there any indication that more cards printed causes players to buy more cards? Was this the case in Time Spiral? I would love to see data to back up your claims. Additionally, Wizards has drastically reduced the number of cards printed in recent years, and, even with these increased card amounts, are still far below former thresholds, so it makes little sense to complain about the slight increases in card printing...

Finally, I know this is the internet and thus filled with a rich history of insulting people from behind an anonymous screenname, but are you seriously calling one of the developers of this game you play a lying scumbag? Why do you even play Magic if you think so little of the company and people that create it? Is it not possibly to raise your concerns without resorting to such blatant rudeness?

Apr 26, 2012 -- 10:08PM, Miksal wrote:

They never said anything about werewolves being too boring for three sets - as Maro said, they felt that a horror top-down design would only be rich enough for two sets. Could they have pushed it to three? I'm sure they could have. Would it have been fun? More than likely. Would it have been as rich and amazing as Innistrad and Dark Ascension? Highly unlikely.

I don't believe that for a minute; I have more respect for the designers and developers than that.  And I speak as someone who still doesn't like DFCs except online where they actually work.  But the concept is still brilliant.  I was actually half-expecting some Angel/Demon transformations, or perhaps some rescues/reversions (an Aberration becoming a Delver again) rather than more werewolves, but it's possible that having only one-way transforms would have felt a bit flat.

I do think they've got themselves into a bit of a bind with structures though.  The issues with their formats can clearly be traced to the decision to make the Core Set an annual event.  This removes quite a bit of space for experiments and focuses attention more on the block sets.  But the block sets can't experiment as much because the format of blocks doesn't allow that.  Personally, I think that the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor experiment was great, and I wish the Alara set had been a bit more radical, but I am aware that I am in a minority here (in that I am a game designer rather than a player at heart.) The last few sets have felt rather, well, traditional actually.