Isn't it getting out of hand?

[Whocareswhoiam]

I would like to know if anyone else has noticed that cards are becoming too powerful.

Commons nowadays make commons "back in the day" obsolete. (eg. Nantuko Disciple makes Deepwood Dummer nearly useless). Does anyone agree with me?

Now, they have indestructible cards (eg. Darksteel Colossus). Not to mention Equipment, which I feel are undercosted and overpowered, in that they are enchant creatures that are reusable and ARTIFACTS, which make them usable by all of the colors.

Well, I just wanted to get that out of my system. I personally have boycotted the newer sets, and hope that others realize the same as me.

[Baron Sengir]

We appreciate your opinion and respect it whoever you are and wish you to become a member so we can hear more from you. But I have to disagree with your opinion. One possible reason for this is it is needed in tournaments and b/c Wizards gets most of there money from the tourney players they build cards for them.

[Volrath, the Fallen]

yes, i think they gear Magic more towards tournament play now instead of good ol' unrestricted casual play.

[Maraxus of Keld]

I think there's a lot of merit to what you say. There are exceptions, but overall cards are more powerful now. A great many old cards are obsolete, and many new ones are what I would consider overpowered.
There's no question that cards are geared more toward tournament play than casual play now. After all, Wizards makes a lot more money off tourney players, because they buy a lot more cards.

[thekadar81]

I think that nowadays there is too much of a difference between tournament play and casual play. The cards are made to fit certain slots. Viridian Zealot is a garbage rare if you like multiplayer and Darksteel Colossus is useless to a tournament player whose matches last six rounds or less. MTG needs to hold official multiplayer tounaments and it needs to stop making cards that are totally useless outside of the current tounament scene

[Baron Sengir]

Its true that a tourney player will usually beat a non-tourney player simply by the way cards are made now as opposed to then.

[Maraxus of Keld]

thekadar81 said:

I think that nowadays there is too much of a difference between tournament play and casual play. The cards are made to fit certain slots. Viridian Zealot is a garbage rare if you like multiplayer and Darksteel Colossus is useless to a tournament player whose matches last six rounds or less. MTG needs to hold official multiplayer tounaments and it needs to stop making cards that are totally useless outside of the current tounament scene

Absolutely true. I hang out on the WotC magic board a lot more than I used to, and I see differences drawn between "casual play" cards and "competitive play" cards.

[Ragnar]

Well I think we wouldn't have to worry about this if Wizards didn't pump garbage out ever cuple of months and have such stupid tournament rules. Making an artifact aset is stupid since theres a lovely little card called Shatterstorm that would stop a deck made of new cards. Probkem is I doubt its tournament legal. Anyway thanks for voicing your opinion now I don't feel liek such a loner since I am so resistant to anything after Judgment.

[Maraxus of Keld]

Nah, they didn't reprint Shatterstorm so it's not type 2 legal. You could still pull it in a type 1 tournament, but those seem to be less common.
Also, it isn't the first time they stopped printing a card because of what they are printing. One of the reasons Counterspell wasn't printed in 8th was so that it couldn't be combined with Isochron Scepter.

[Maraxus of Keld]

Thought about it some more: a lot of it comes down to perspective. Someone like me, who started playing around Fallen Empires, Homelands, and Ice Age, is of course going to consider new sets overpowered. New players, on the other hand, are of course not going to consider Onslaught or Mirrodin overpowered. Instead, they look back at Fallen Empires and say "Why would anybody play any of that garbage?"

Also, I agree that there is too much difference between casual and tournament play. Psychatog decks that were so popular a little while back have just about no chance in a multiplayer game unless they can quickly eliminate all but one player, thereby cutting it down to one-on-one. I would imagine that Ravager-Affinity decks have the same problem.
On the other hand, great casual decks, such as my Whim of Volrath deck, get outsped by competitive tourney decks and can't get much of anything into play quickly enough. I think multiplayer tournaments would help solve this problem.

[Baron Sengir]

I've always wished that Wizards would start multi-player tournaments.

[IamJacksScreenName]

Man, where do I begin...
I realy think you guys are holding onto some misconceptions about magic. First off, I don't feel the new cards are more powerfull. Consider Time walk, Ancestral Recall, Lightning bolt, and Dark Ritual to the the cards released this last year. If you compare good new cards to poor older cards your going to get a skewed outlook. Second, WotC doesn't make casual or tournament cards, they make a set of cards based on knowledge of what's out and what's comming out to give us something new and fun. It's the tournament PLAYERS that choose from what is available to make the tournament type decks. The reason Psychatog and Ravager-finity fare very well one-on-one and poorly in multiplayer is because that's how they were designed by the PLAYER who made that particular combination of 60 cards (most likely 14 different cards with multiple copies each) out of the 1,700+ cards available in most type 2 formats. You as a player have complete control over what you play, whether you win is up to your deckbuilding/playing skills vs. your opponents.

Times and types change, when new M:tG sets force a paradigm shift in the constructed/limited scene, you can either adapt and find a new deck/combo that you find fun to play, or you can complain that the game moved on and grew but you failed to do so also.

[Baron Sengir]

I have to agree with you there. Times change and Magic is no acception.

[Volrath, the Fallen]

that is one of the best arguments for new cards i have ever seen. It kind of sheds a new light on things

[Maraxus of Keld]

Fine, I'll agree that the cards you mentioned are very powerful, even in comparison to new cards. But compare the Mirrodin block to Ice Age, Homelands, Alliances, and Mirage. Will you seriously argue that these sets are more powerful, or even equally powerful, with Mirrodin, Darksteel, and Fifth Dawn?