ReepNeep post=18.73228.789948 said:
Alex_P post=18.73228.789542 said:
I think it peaked during Ice Age. The earlier editions and expansions were still a bit rough mechanically and artistically, while the later stuff started piling on lots of stuff (I'm not trying to imply that all of it was bad, mind you).
-- Alex
Ignoring the silly 'Snow Covered' lands, of course. I tend to agree, although I would put it at the whole Ice Age to Mirage span. After Mirage things started getting out of hand with individual card power spiraling out of control.
The final nail in my Magic coffin was the Serra Avatar from Urza's Saga(?). It used to be that one card couldn't end the game all by its self. It used to be that you had carefully craft a deck based on many factors instead of just casting one Uberspell. No more.
Well, cumulative upkeep is really the star mechanic of
Ice Age and snow-covered stuff is just a weird bit of flavor.
The stuff that came out around the same time as
Ice Age represents a general cleaning-up of the game, too.
Fourth Edition cut out a lot of the real power stuff from the game's early days, for example (no Timewalks and Moxes and dual lands and the like);
Chronicles -- the white-border reprint of a small selection of cards from
Arabian Nights,
Legends,
Antiquties, and
The Dark -- is perhaps the best example of this trend. There was a real emphasis on setting some limits that no card could really transcend. The powerful stuff around that time was more, err, stylish, in my opinion. The star cards of that era, like Necropotence and Zuran Orb, are still pretty ridiculous, but they're ridiculous in a way that's more fun than Black Lotus ridiculous or Channel-Fireball ridiculous, in my opinion.
The introduction of the "flanking" mechanic in
Mirage is kinda representative of Magic going in a direction that (bolded to prevent confusion)
wasn't necessarily bad but wasn't really something I liked. It was a mechanic that gave you an advantage over people who didn't have cards from that set. Now, the advantage from flanking was pretty much... microscopic, but it signifies the beginning of a design style that I didn't really like. (I still have, like... err, up to
Tempest, I guess?)
-- Alex
EDIT: In retrospect, years later, man was I wrong. The game improved dramatically with Ravnica and onward.
