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Most MtG news.... 1-4 comments.  MtG announces it's banning cards with problematic art or names:  Deluge of complaints.  Ok, these are mostly 30 year old cards that no one plays.  This is like when Disney went back and said, "Song of the South... not really something anyone is itching to watch but we should acknowledge there are problems here."  

None of these are popular cards or ones that I've seen played.  Crusade was a good beginner card when I started for people learning the ropes.  So what's wrong with taking this moment of social movement to acknowledge mistakes of the past?  For the people that own the cards... congrats this actually increased their value.  You weren't playing them anyway and now the odd social context makes them relevant to collectors.

WotC have been dealing with a diversity problem.  This is something they acknowledged.  So while working on that they have found some immediate items they can address.  If these bans are the only action they take then it's an empty piece of lip service.  If they continue to pursue the issues our times have brought up they'll be a better company for it and perhaps find a new and more diverse player base.

To those defending the cards... what are you defending?  A tortured black slave?  KKK imagery?  Real life racial slurs?  How many of these cards do you own, do you play with?  What sort of fragility are you operating on that banning things you never heard of in a game you don't play creates anger toward a company you don't support?

That's a bit odd to read. I tried out Hooktusk and had a hard time with her, since her hero power felt so useless. It was good with token minions and buff minions, but rather bland beyond that. Patches, on the other hand, was grand. I don't think I've placed outside the top 3 with him yet. You get a free minion on turn 4 or 5 if things go well, and in the later turns a free minion almost every turn - not to mention, with a much better chance of getting a high tier Pirate than there is while relying on the regular Refresh. Since many Pirates (Salty Looter, Goldgrubber) rely on having a lot of Pirates, Patches ends up being much better than Ysera. 

Pirates on the whole just feel great to play with and against. They're very powerful, but there's no divine shield or poisonous mucky muck.

As an idle thought, it would be neat if we could buy alternate Tavernkeepers. I wish I could mute Bob. (Blasphemy, I know.) Maybe that would reduce the price of the Tavern Pass.

I've reached Master yesterday after about 1 month of play and I've started around rank 2000, which means there should be 2500-4000 (really vague estimate) people in master rank right now, if it works like hs legend. Don't know if that can help you putting numbers in perspective.

Edit: also, I found that winning or losing in plat and diamond gives/takes 20 LP every time (at least for me). Which means the LP system in those ranks is equivalent to the old HS star system in ranks 5 to 1 (or the new one in diamond 5 to 1 (and on lower ranks for non-legend players)). Except in LoR this system goes on for what would be the equivalent of 40 HS stars, which makes it a bigger grind to get back to the top technically-while if you are not already a HS Legend/LoR Master player, then the grind is probably easier in LoR.

This means LoR might have a higher percentage of Master, Diamond and maybe Plat players compared to HS.

Edit: Fixed!

A small correction is needed: Eudora can give you minions from your current tavern tier as well, not just the ones below it, as the article formerly stated. See this Savjz clip. 

Yeah, that too... I played just a couple of games after not touching battleground for months and after a game Bob showed up suggesting to get the "extra" to "improve your strategy" or something like that

When your card game depicts the KKK...

Damn, what you say regarding Harold McNeill looks really legit. His site is FREAKY, contains a gallery depicting several pieces of clearly Nazi art, with swastikas, eagles and all other common imagery associated with it. Besides some spooky lovecraftian/demonic/erotic stuff. So sad that such things still linger...

Fair enough, but if 'Black' cards in Magic have NO bearing on 'Black' people (in the real world), then the name Cleanse shouldn't matter. 

I do agree with your assertion regarding "...the idea of ethnic cleansing," but if the card was still named Cleanse and it destroyed all red creatures, for example, I don't think it would be addressed by WotC.  Once again, 'Black' cards are NOT 'Black' people, just like 'White' cards are NOT 'White' People.

I guess we can agree to disagree however.  I can also understand that if any card offends (or may offend) people, then maybe WotC should err on the side of caution.  I just wonder where we, as a society, stop with banning and suppression.

I played a similar off-meta warlock deck for a while.  I wanted really badly to be able to have it be competitive, but I kept encountering control... and well, control destroys aggro

Or maybe just give them one extra choice and everyone else gets 3.. even that is better than a measly 2

I gotta say the pay for play has me not wanting to do any of it...

Or they could make it not so ridiculously overpriced.

Even off meta decks are boring. Any one else really sick of this meta? I can't find a single deck that I actually enjoy playing anymore, and it's still a long two months until the next xpac.

As an addition, 'Stone-Throwing Devils' is from the Arabian Nights expansion, which is probably what pushes it over the edge into being racially insensitive.

Have fun!

I'm all for sensible, fair and reasonable changes to things which are unnecessarily unfair or offensive - racially or otherwise. Of course this is a tricky thing to get right on a case by case basis with the context being very relevant.

I don't play this particular game (saw the article linked on twitter) but it got my attention. 

I would hope though that calm cool measured heads prevail with any protesting, changes to policies, laws, card games and anything else.  Knee jerk reactions amid hysteria won't help anything and likely make things worse in the long run.  They don't tend to be changes for the best.

I am not implying any specific example here including these MTG changes.  But let's not ban chess because it's white vs black for example.

Treat everyone respectfully and fairly would be my default position and I'd encourage everyone to do the same.

Quote From KANSAS

I really don't like the idea of him hexing himself. Make it two other random minions and it would be great!

Wouldn't that make him too OP then? Or would he be situational enough since he's a legendary and you shouldn't have minions on your side of the board...

but that's not what this is doing. The ban is targeting specific instances of cards that have, either intentionally or unintentionally, incorporated real-life prejudices into them, which is a shitty thing to do to a playerbase that has people who might be subjected to those same prejudices.

Cleanse is singled out because a combination of the name and the effect makes the language on the card dangerously close to the idea of "ethnic cleansing", which is actual terminology commonly used by white supremacists. This sets the card apart from something like, say, Mass Calcify

Same thing applies to Crusade, which as a word can absolutely be a neutral term, but when the card it's used on features a bunch of Knights Hospitaller front and center in its art well, that neutrality is lost because it's now a specific reference to the historical event.