Its pages should have never seen the eyes of a reader.

At least they're somewhat self-aware.

General Notes

We're pleased to announce the newest official release: Cockatrice 3.1.0: Reality Check

Cockatrice 3.1 continues the modernization effort started in 3.0 with a wave of gameplay polish, quality-of-life improvements, and under-the-hood work that makes the client faster and more resilient. Highlights include real invites with a searchable user picker and one-click links that open the client straight into the right game, deck share links and public decks for handing a deck over in one click, playmats for a personalized table, an onboarding wizard to get new players started, custom deck zones (including a maybeboard), animated arrows and life counter changes, cards that speak your language down to names, rules text, and art (searchable in that language too, for the first time), a card search autocomplete that follows you into chat, and a reporting / moderation queue for server operators.

Also new: custom card art overrides to pin your own image to any printing, and a theme overhaul with two new built-in themes, light and dark asset variants, curated image-theme palettes, and a brand new palette editor that builds a whole color scheme from a single accent color. Underneath all of it, a major binary card database cache slashes startup from seconds to milliseconds, the Oracle importer needs a fraction of its former memory while actually showing progress as it works, and there's a CSPRNG upgrade for security alongside broad build-system modernization including precompiled headers and ccache, with the game layer split away from its graphics so the two can evolve independently.

This release contains 285 pull requests, spread across usability, performance and maintainability.

Always good to see workers unionizing !

How about a pack that guarantees zero foils?

increased odds for foils

Can we get this decreased instead?

@MysticKetchup I think the god packs are fine. I'm not a fan of Japan showcase art, and I'll miss having foil commons and uncommons. I also don't open collector boosters. For me, overall meh slightly negative. And I don't trust them not to raise the price because of it

Seeing an announcement about boosters gives me a knee jerk reaction of "what now?" but overall I think these changes are pretty minor and slightly positive. But also I really don't care for foil commons/uncommons so losing them for Japan Showcase arts and increased chances of a rare/mythic sounds good to me. Don't care about collector boosters either so them losing 3 cards doesn't really matter to me

I don't really ever buy boosters anymore, so I don't really have strong feelings about this. Can't say I'll miss foil commons.

I guess when I recieve boosters as a gift it will be fun to hope for a god pack.

I had a black sliver deck when I played.

Ended up with amazing synergy that reduced cost and let me tap any creature for mana.

Ended up with something like 20 tokens. Then replicated +2/+0 increase to get them to 8/2.

I attack my buddy who I borrowed from. He was fucked. 3rd player used a instant to deal 4 damage to all creatures in play. Wiped my entire frontline.

I was shocked. 1) I didn't know you could just do that. 2) you couldn't let me come in second place??

It was a blast.

I personally love playing precon decks bone stock. To me trying to make someone's deck work adds to the challenge of the game.

The last precon i upgraded was one of the 2018 decks (other than a league i ran where part of it was upgrading the deck, but it was returned to stock after the league).

I also own many, many precon decks, so i have a large choice so they do not get stale.

The Finally Fantasy decks were fun, i have only played Yshtola, and Cloud, possibly Titus.

As was mentioned by mirodir, commander as a new player does not teach you how to play magic. It teaches you how to play your deck.

I owned an FLGS for over 7 years, i saw countless new players learn playing commander and never understanding how the rest of the game works.

Generally I'd advise against new players jumping straight into commander. There are so many cards on the field to keep track of and, thanks to the singleton nature of the format, it'll even take a long time to get familiar with all your own cards on top. With you having some prior experience and also having had the chance to play commander with a borrowed deck (and having fun) you should be fine.

If you like FF and/or like the way some of those decks play, I don't think think that bundle would be a bad idea, definitely not a mistake. The only thing I'd mention is that a portion of the overall playerbase is quite disgruntled with all the "universes beyond" products, so if you plan on playing with strangers, you might get to experience that.

As for how long they'll last you without any upgrades, that probably depends on a few factors. If your playgroups decks are of significantly higher powerlevel, to the point where you feel like you can never do anything, you'll probably be looking to upgrade faster than if their decks are at least somewhat comparable in powerlevel. If their decks are comparable, and depending on your level of frugality, you might be able to have fun with those decks for years, especially since you'd have 4 to choose from to keep things fresh and experiment with what playpatterns you do/don't like.

As for upgrade recommendations, I personally like to think of it in two ways: There are upgrades that change what the deck can do (new/stronger combos/synergies) and upgrades that change how often the deck actually gets there. While the former feels very splashy and big impact WHEN you get there, the latter makes sure you can actually have a role in the game without everyone else being miles ahead of you. Upgrades to the land/manabase fall into that second category, and they're usually also very transferable (between decks of the same colors), so if you don't enjoy a specific deck anymore, you can just reuse the manabase it in another deck.

Lastly I'd like to bring up that usually Commander is very socially driven. People don't tend to build the best decks they can within the rules, but instead try to stay within the social norms of their playgroup. It might take you a while to get used to what is and isn't okay with your friends. Unless they also completely "cranked their decks to the max", you'll just stomp them once and then they won't want to play against that deck anymore if you do. This is also another point towards upgrading your manabase. Very very few people would complain about you running e.g. fetch and shock lands instead of tap lands. (don't worry about what those are for now).

Do you remember what you played, what you liked about it? I highly reccomend some research into that so you don't end up with something you don't vibe with.

Almost any precon is a good starting point! MtG has controversially been doing a lot of decks for other IPs, so it would be worth it to get a deck (or set) of your fave IP, if that's FF, that might be the move.

Decks last literally as long as you're interested in playing them. My first commander deck (a ship of theseus) is over a decade old, and I still love to play it!

For accessories, you'll need 100 sleeves, Dragonshield is my go-to, a deck box, and numerous D6s to represent counters. Life is usually measured by phone app in the modern day.

Adding on to 3) - multiple D6s. They're surprisingly versatile for tracking all kinds of things.

1. nearly every precon is a good launching point for anyone getting into commander

2. how long will it last you depends on how well you vibe with the deck. How long till you upgrade it? Depends on how often you play with it, but thats to be expected.

3. Everything you should have: deck, sleeves, deckbox, d6. d20s arent super necessary, you can always use a life counter app or just a calculator to track life. There are also life tracking spin counters you can purchase.

What a crock of shit.

They keep saying that ‘The Zeta Set’ is going print to demand. They have not mentioned once in that article that the zeta set is a $20, 7-card booster, with 121 cards in the set (363 with all the print variants). With perfect luck (no repeats) you would need to purchase 18 $20 booster packs to complete this set. That’s $360 for a chance at completing the set ($1040 to get all the variants). The initial run also had a purchase limit of 12 packs, so you were fucked from the start if you were an actual collector. If I am printing to demand, why can’t I demand the cards I want printed?

It’s very disheartening to see people hyping this up after the initial response to the set was anger at the format. Wizards is rubbing their grubby little paws together at the future of Magic.

I think this is a refreshing step in the right direction, just the ability to find a local store or event more easily is a big win. I’ve always hated how buried and inconsistent that stuff is on their own website. Store announcements is also kinda cool.

I haven’t regularly played Arena in years and this probably won’t get me back there, but I can at least envision it if maybe the juiced the digital rewards more or did things like 1:1 paper:digital packs. Having an Arena pack code in every paper booster would probably get me back.

If that happens, it won't be for a long time. Nearly all of the people I know who play only play paper regularly. Arena doesn't even have a multiplayer commander mode, which is the format carrying the game right now.

I think that is a better way for all of them to sell as really. Limited time sale with unlimited stock, set a maximum number of purchases to try and limit scalping and have at it

So, uh...

It's cardboard. Just do this fot every drop maybe? If you want to know what artificial scarcity does, just look at the Pokemon TCG.

It's really not that complicated. If you can do it once, there's very little reason you couldn't do it every time. In your order window (24h, 48h, whatever) you collect all the orders, then use that quantity to inform your printers so they can print off the exact quantity you need. You get the bulk discount still, you avoid printing unnecessary cards (ignoring refunds/cancellations/extra stock for misprints/whatever), and everyone who wants it gets it. After the order window? You get your scarcity too.

Not a fan of arena, never will be. It is only a matter of time before they replace paper with digital.

I think they could have simplified them a lot by just making them into MDFCs. This also lets them adjust the mana cost depending on which variant the player chooses.

Otherwise, I'm always in favor of adding depth to existing mechanics. Read ahead was a great mechanic for giving the player choice, the summons were a cool way to create powerful, temporary creatures, sagas transforming on their last chapter gave them staying power, etc.

I do have to wonder if they'll ever revisit battles though.

The turning point mechanic for sagas looks quite cool, would love to see it get to print one day

Nobody's forcing you to read it

Tired of hearing from Rosewater honestly.

When an Aura enters without being cast, if the effect that puts it onto the battlefield doesn't specify what it will enchant, you can attach it to any object or player that fits the requirements of its enchant ability. There are a few exceptions. You couldn't attach Pacifism to a creature with protection from white, for example. Attaching an Aura this way doesn't target the object you're attaching it to.

This is a trick I used in Brawl once to gain control of an opponent's Niv-Mizzet, Guildpact with some Mind Control enchantment (I forgot which). It rarely comes up, but it's one of those tools you can use to give you an edge in niche scenarios.