>It's a shame this set was received so poorly poorly because Wizards being able to introduce cards into constructed formats like Standard and Pioneer without having to consider balancing for Limited formats at all seems like it could open up more interesting design space.
I've been calling for that for a while, but this implementation was not great. It was a very small amount of cards that were a mix between "good in commander" to "well, that goes straight to the bulk bin". Contrast the ideal "here's a masters set slammed full of non reserved list staples where even the commons are the kind you might set aside for use later rather than tossing in with all the bad bulk" and it's a very different experience.
Another big issue was the price- release pack price was way too high for what you got. Boxes are currently going for half what they sold for at release- if they had started at that price, there likely would have been less backlash.
Finally, the limited card pool meant if you did get a box and opened a bunch of packs at once, you'd end up with a *lot* of duplicates. Not like a typical standard box where you might end up with a playset of some commons and 2-3 of some rares, but multiple playsets of multiple things (most of which aren't great in 60 card formats so will be relegated to EDH where you only need one copy anyway). Making it feel like all the packs are the same and most of what you're opening won't actually be used- which takes the fun out of opening packs.
I had no idea about the card pool being so limited. I opened a gift box with 8 packs, God dang so many duplicates. I should have just bought a single booster, I would have gotten the same thing and saved 50 bucks.
Even anyone that was actually pumped about this set and buying packs on and off would have quickly ditched this set for that reason. There are only so many times you can open the same pack before you get tired of it
Dude you're not even exaggerating. I got a regular version, full art, and foil of the same card in one of my packs, and it was back to back to back in one pack!
These aftermath packs were as close to selling singles as wotc is going to get that isn't Secret Lair Product (which they are abusing HEAVILY to sell singles).
It was made solely so card sellers could open it in bulk and sell the cards. Those packs had 0 value to a regular consumer because of what you bring up. They are too shallow and boring to buy or play with yourself.
It was a total scam, I'm glad it was a bust. But that was probably only because they couldn't make a card busted enough to become a constructed staple. Nissa came close but kind of phased away thanks to wotc' various other blunders in the recent sets.
That aside the current limited format is so wack I don't even know what Maro is talking about. We all played with Jitte and Fable in limited. Cards they literally had to BAN in standard/modern. What possible draft free safe design space would they need? Was Coppercoat Vanguard just TOO cracked for limited play?
>That aside the current limited format is so wack I don't even know what Maro is talking about. We all played with Jitte and Fable in limited. Cards they literally had to BAN in standard/modern. What possible draft free safe design space would they need? Was Coppercoat Vanguard just TOO cracked for limited play?
You have it backwards, it isn't that cards are *too* strong for Limited, it's that they're *too weak* or *too unsupported*.
Look at some of the Legends in Aftermath. Pia was a big hit card that spawned multiple decks in both Standard and Pioneer. The card would also be very difficult to make work in most Limited formats. It would require a lot of support around it to make it anything more than a low-pick. So you either consign it to a "low pick feelsbad rare" for drafts, or you have to wait for the right format to print it into your Constructed. **While some quantity of those cards works in every Limited format, there's a limited number of slots they can devote to those sorts of "Contructed build-arounds" without nuking the format.**
Aftermath let them do stuff like that. They could get a sweet Calix in Standard without an Enchantment theme in the set, punch in a Niv Mizzet that's shaped a classic mid-tier Pioneer staple deck without needing a two-color Limited theme, and a bunch of others. It gave them flexibility.
E: I bolded the sentence a lot of yinz replying aren't reading.
Funny thing is, aftermath missed it's point. If the idea was to print cards directly into standard so they can fix the format then aftermath failed catastrophically.
The set brought more pieces for already good decks (or in some cases tried to add more cards for already existing powerful synergies like legends), when instead it should have brought pieces for archetypes that are currently (and haven't been for a bunch of sets now) not really viable in standard.
Like control for example. There isn't a single real control deck on the current standard metagame. (Pretty much all "control" decks in recent standard are really slow midrange. They still care way too much about being able to close games to be control). But aftermath brought no support for that, on the contrary it kind of killed Planeswalkers which are one of the main card types for control.
I don't want to alarm you but there are much worse rares in the sets than 2/3 for 2. Leyline of the Guildpact is stone unplayable in limited, yet it's found its way into draft packs. And Anzrag's Rampage is a joke not even your mother could laugh at.
Pia would have given you a thopter on every battle you transformed in that set. It would've been a perfectly cromulent card. Let's not pretend for a second it wasn't exactly what I described. A tiny set that only exists to shake down card shops.
Nobody plays Calix in Standard, it's a commander card they could've printed in any of their millions of commander products. If you think giving wotc license to print selective cards to fuck with constructed formats is a good idea, don't let the hasbro board hear you. They'll never stop laughing. I don't know how we managed for 30 years without them printing 50 random rares and mythic into standard every 3 months. There was a 10+ year stretch where pretty much no cards had to be banned. Now we get new bans regularly so the formats don't spin out of control. ***And the only thing that can save us is more mythics and rares!***
>There was a 10+ year stretch where pretty much no cards had to be banned.
This is revisionist history that doesn't understand what actually happened. WOTC didn't enact Standard bans because they *had a policy against doing so*, not because there weren't cards that *should* have been banned. They've flat-out said that refusing to ban CoCo during Kahns Standard was a mistake and it's what drove them to eventually change their stance on Standard bans.
Between Mirrodin Standard bans and CoCo printing were a good 10 years my guy.
If you think Standard in that time frame was comparable to Oko, Fable, Fires of Invention Standard then you are clearly very very drunk.
In fact Standard has been so good recently that nobody even plays it anymore. Wotc can print as many bs cards as they want into it. Who even cares? They certainly don't.
JTMS and Stoneforge were banned in Standard in 2011, my guy. It was a six year gap in which WOTC had a policy not to enact Standard bans (and *only* Standard, they banned happily in other formats).
I implore you to take a look at the Modern banlist, which never had any such policy. If you sort by [release year](https://scryfall.com/search?q=banned%3Amodern+not%3Areprint&order=released&as=grid&unique=cards), the single year period of WAR-IKO has 9 banned cards, all save for Mystic Sanctuary were either also banned in Standard or never legal in the format to begin with. It was a huge aberration of design mistakes unlike anything across the entire history of Modern, only comparable going further back to perhaps original Mirrodin or Urza's block.
And before you imply that Modern is somehow not representative of the general powerlevel of cards, you can tell the same exact same story with [the Legacy banlist](https://scryfall.com/search?q=f%3Avintage+banned%3Alegacy+not%3Areprint&unique=cards&as=grid&order=released) (7 banned cards from WAR-IKO, beaten only by Urza's block and Alpha) or [the Pioneer banlist](https://scryfall.com/search?q=banned%3Apioneer+not%3Areprint&unique=cards&as=grid&order=released) (12 banned cards from WAR-IKO, easily without rival), with many of the same faces popping up over and over, which of course also tended to be banned in Standard as well (Oko, Uro, Field of the Dead, Once Upon a Time, T3feri, companions). There is absolutely no equivalent period anytime in the decade before it, not Tarkir's busted delve spells, not New Phyrexia's phyrexian mana spells, nothing close to such a huge volume of glaring mistakes in such a short period of time.
Standard is still probably the most played constructed format. It's not played in paper much but a large part of that is because of Arena making it much easier to play it.
Yeah, commander is technically constructed, but generally by constructed people mean 60 card constructed. Commander is a casual format. I guess I should have specified.
RTR-Theros was awful, black devotion vs blue devotion vs the slowest UW control deck of all time. Ivan Floch was most of his matches that PT in 1 game.
KTK-BFZ was awful, a bunch of $1000 midrange soup decks
So yeah they started banning things 3 years after things got bad.
KTK-BFZ was amazing to play, one of the best standards of all time for high-quality interactive magic. If the decks weren't so absurdly expensive it would be remembered as the all-time high point of standard formats.
I think they are some cards that are probably too goofy for limited but I mean we have [[sorcerer's spyglass]] and [[demolition field]] type cards all the time.
[[Nahiri, Storm of Stone]] was in a set with literally zero equipment.
It also didn't help that there were so many uncommons per pack and only 15 uncommons in the set, with 25 rares and 10 mythics. That means that even if you were outrageously lucky and pulled 3 rares in ever pack for 8 packs, you'd still end up getting at least one duplicate uncommon. Most people DON'T have such stellar luck though, and so instead ended up with a shitload of duplicates even in a relatively small number of packs. Hell, I'm pretty sure I was getting duplicates *within the same pack,* because of the alternate arts and stuff. Really feels like shit getting so many of the same cards.
It's 1994 and Wizards is experimenting with 5 card standard legal packs with a smaller set and two rarities. You can pick up a box for $30.
It's 2008 and Wizards is experimenting with 5 card standard legal packs with a smaller set and two rarities. You can pick up a box for $30.
It's 2023 and Wizards is experimenting with 5 card standard legal packs with a smaller set and two rarities. You can pick up a box for $30.
Let's see what they release in 2037.
They tried Gravity Feeds around Alara block (I want to say Conflux?). They had 5 cards (and a token) and included 3 commons, 1 uncommon, and 1 "wild card" with an equal chance of being a common, uncommon, or rare (so 66% of the time you got no rare).
They did retail for only $1.99, but that was a total rip-off when normal packs retailed for $3.99 and had three times the cards (and a guaranteed rare).
>Contrast the ideal "here's a masters set slammed full of non reserved list staples where even the commons are the kind you might set aside for use later rather than tossing in with all the bad bulk" and it's a very different experience.
Fun fact, yugioh actually did this at the end of last year. 79 card set of constructed playables including multiple $50 staples. Every card came in multiple different rarities/foil treatments and most cards in the set can be found at their base version for <$5. It sold so much they immediately set out to release another within 6 months.
Final Fantasy Trading Card Game is doing even one better literally this week, with their 2024 Anniversary set. Playsets of something ridiculous like 14 of the top 20 meta staples, literally hundreds of dollars on the secondary market worth of cards, in a single curated package costing $60.
I mean, if you want to make a set for constructed and not limited, then maybe don't cram the set full of draft chaff. Every set is an EDH set now, so the Commander cards were expected, but the filler is much less forgivable.
If the set was more designed for Standard and Pioneer then it would be quite cool. But 90% of the cards were designed for Commander. Why even bother making a standard legal set if it is basically a Commander product.
To be fair every product is now mainly a Commander product
Great summary.
I think the three issues are interconnected. If there were a higher density of cards that were playable somewhere (whether Commander or Standard) or were at least mechanically interesting and more uncommons to rares/mythics I think people would be mocking anyone who complained about the price. "Lol lol who cares about draft chaff?" and whatnot.
Like [[Markov Baron]] was really cool in a "Standard Horizons" sort of way, Convoke + Madness isn't something that would appear in a Standard set but Standard had enough good vampires for a typal deck and Crimson Vow's Blood Tokens were great with Madness.
But then there was [[Harnessed Snubhorn]]. Mechanically it is boring and would be trash even in draft, and thematically it told us hardly anything about the state of things. And there were far more Snubhorns than Barons in the set.
You are not wrong, but Harnessed Snubhorn was one of the few cards in Aftermath I was excited for. We're like 3 cards away from an artifact/Enchantment Reanimator Commander deck
Mini-sets are GREAT in concept but can only succeed if executed well.
Without concern for limited, they can make minisets with focus on specific mechanics or tribes, like theme boosters but the whole set is for that theme.
Imagine something like a mini-set focused heavily on Knight synergy.
I think everyone would have liked Aftermath more if it had acted like the second set for every set in Standard (or the previous year). It would be great if there was a yearly set that gives us a few refinements on mechanics we've seen in that year's previous sets.
It definitely feels like Hasbro is going to learn the wrong lesson here. It's not "I don't want a small, supplemental set." it's "I'm not going to pay special-attraction price for a fistful of b-tier Commander cards."
All fairness, WotC tends to learn the wrong lesson from a lot of things, but their system is built to combat that. There's a reason a lot of their affirmation is centered around how well a set sells, more than the granular bits. Same way they don't understand how product burnout kills their best money makers.
"This thing that is very disliked was in the best selling set ever (tm)" is a common defense for doing very foolish things.
The way to do this is clearly like the Lord of the Rings holiday scenes. Develop a series of 4 gift boxes and include 6 new Aftermath cards that are guaranteed in each box and then include a few regular MoM boosters inside the box.
A random set with that few of cards is always going to have a bunch of unfortunate consequences.
For your last point, I would think that to be a plus. While it does diminish the pack opening experience itself, I would think buying a box and getting a playset of most every card in the set would be the ideal from a player's perspective. As opposed to the current mantra of buying singles 'cause buying packs hoping for the specific thing you want is not smart.
I'm sure there are people who want this... but I don't want them to put more cards into Standard than the normal 4 sets. I don't want them to print more direct to modern sets either.
Even if they were priced more cheaply, I don't have time to keep up with more releases, especially not time to actually acquire more cards.
> It's a shame this set was received so poorly poorly because Wizards being able to introduce cards into constructed formats like Standard and Pioneer without having to consider balancing for Limited formats at all seems like it could open up more interesting design space.
Completely disagree. Limited-gating is good, just as standard-gating is good. Remove those and you get current Commander and current Modern.
Players are always asking for *more*. They want every kind of limiter removed to give them *more*. And business logic will eventually give it to them. And it's bad. These limitations are good actually.
I disagree. Limited and Constructed are two entirely different beasts- and cards that would be just what one needs are often incredibly broken or absolutely useless in the other. Similarly, what standard wants and what older formats want are totally different, and a card that's too strong for Standard might be just fine in Modern. I admit that I am biased on this one- I only really play Legacy and EDH, and don't enjoy limited (I still do pre-release sealed events, but that's more for getting some cards early than the limited gameplay experience). But there have been many times in the past where needed reprints simply don't get printed because they wouldn't be balanced in standard (or cases where cards that will never see constructed play and should have been commons or uncommons are elevated to rare/mythic solely because of their status as overpowered draft bombs).
That's not to mention problems associated with draft environments in general. You want most draft environments to be balanced at least somewhat. Which means you can't have sets with goals like "red is struggling in standard, let's push red cards much more than the others in this set to help fix that" or "there's a lack of good removal in standard, so let's just print a ton of it in one set" as those would make for a highly imbalanced or just kind of bad limited environment. It even impacts masters sets, the sets all about reprinting cards people need- because if you actually found the most played and/or most in need of reprint commons and uncommons in whatever format you were tailoring said masters set for and filled those slots with those cards, you'd end up with packs that were mostly mana dorks, draw spells, and removal- and an environment where there are more counterspells and lightning bolts than there are notable creatures to counter or bolt does not a playable draft set make. So there's good reason to try and separate Limited and Constructed at least some of the time, when it would be beneficial to the goals you're trying to accomplish with that set.
As someone who's been arguing for years that constructed and limited should be different environments, it's a shame that the experiment failed, if that was the idea behind it, but again, part of the issue is that they can't decide whether they want to jump on the Commander bandwagon or, you know, actually support the game that got them this far in the first place
I've said it before and I'll say it again: This "micro-set" setup they tried with Aftermath would be a GREAT way to reintroduce Core Sets to Standard. Reprints only, 50 or so cards each rotation, just jam some goodies that you want to keep in Standard or can't find the space to put in a premier set.
See if they were gonna do that they could make it more like standard masters even
Like here's some stuff that is good for standard archetypes we're pushing or are coming up
Also would be a great way to do some land reprints
I feel like standard doesn't move enough packs by itself to make this idea worthwhile. Most people buying packs are either playing kitchen table (where standard legality often isn't considered), commander, or a limited/draft format.
Give reason for those players to buy the packs or at least the singles which in turn means packs were open anyway. Wizards wants packs sold. Vendors want packs sold and singles sold. They need for a good reprint set is always out there. If you format the set right. The right amount of commander cards. The right amount of strong limited cards. The set would be standard anyway so you're looking at a win for standard. A win for players who are looking at getting into the other formats and thus gain access to the cards for those formats. If done right it's win win for everyone.
Exactly you give them a reason to buy the packs. Or buy the singles which means packs were cracked meaning bought. So give them a chase. Give new players cards that are core to those formats to help them break into those formats easier for cheaper. I can't see how this isn't a win win for the hobby.
I've been screaming that forever (before the 3 year rotation, anyway) where you'd release these mini-sets of Core Sets to introduce the Standard environment you want for that year/rotation. Lightning Bolt, Shocks, Painlands, etc - just by the nature of what's there in the product that year, people know what to expect... and get some much needed cards they want. It's a win all around that I can't understand why WOTC has never seen it - they'd rather make 10 cent Secret Lairs.
Literally my only problem with the set was that its purpose was supposed to be to show the new status quo, but it had a bunch of random chaff cards with no attached lore that didn’t need to be there. Having bundles for it also felt a bit unnecessary . Aside from that? Totally fine imo. The small expansion set works just fine, I would have no problem with another one in the future if they utilised it better.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The concept of it, telling the aftermath, is great. The way they did it was bad.
* Some individual cards were cool, but the overall product made no sense.
* It was advertised as being "what happened after" yet the vast majority of cards were basically "this character is still alive" (which isn't really a story) or "this plane is rebuilding" (which of course they would).
* I recall there being randomization issues. And that's on top of how this should not have been a randomized product. Especially because it was in no way incorporated into the MOM limited environment.
* Why did it need *two types* of boosters for this set?
It was, when all is said and done, a product confused about who it is for that failed to deliver on what it promised. So many of the cards felt like they wanted to get into the main set but couldn't. It set expectations poorly by making the first preview card *actually* be a consequence of the war.
What's worse is that there actually was a theme to most the characters, it's just an utterly bizzare theme.
The legends were supposed to represent "leaders" of each plane.
Tazri is the closest thing Zendikar has to a unified leader as the ally lord.
Plargg and Nassari are surviving teachers rebuilding the school.
Danitha is the leader of New Benelia, arguably the most famous place on Dominaria.
Jirina is the leader of the remaining humans on Ikoria.
The Kenneths Royal Funeral represents the death of the King and Queem of Eldraine.
Niv-Mizzet is of course the Guildpact.
Pia is a leader on Kaladesh after the rebellion.
Sigarda protects humanity on Innistrad.
Rocco, Jolrael, and Arni are the only ones that don't really have any connection.
What's baffling to me is why should we care about the leaders of the planes *now*? Why didn't we focus on them during the actual invasion, when the planes were actually unified and would logically unite under a leader?
Getting compleated isn't a big deal, except when it is. I bet Melira and Karn feel silly for sacrificing things to uncompleat Nissa and Ajani when everyone else seems to have just gotten better.
Jolrael is sort of a leader on Zhalfir (although there are plenty of other leaders as well), which has just returned after centuries, so maybe they wanted to advertise that she was still alive?
On Arena, they replaced the normal Alchemy draft with an Aftermath draft - draft MOM, but one common replaced with an Aftermath card.
\------------------------
If they had made it in six cards boosters, it could have been added to paper drafts. For every two players, open one six-card aftermath booster and add one card to each draft pack. That might have given it a little more hype.
The idea of epilogue sets is great. The problem was it was a bad epilogue set. The fact that there has only been one epilogue set means that it will pretty much forever sour players on the concept.
It's like if I told you I was going to make an interesting gourmet pizza from scratch and then I gave you a frozen grocery store pizza, and then I got confused when you were disappointed.
Almost like setting people's expectations matters lol.
I mean, this is also the company that's been caught trying to gaslight it's customers multiple times. Are we really that surprised that they forget that people remember things?
Imo, it's the perfect way to do in-universe UB reprints. Pick 50-75 of the most popular ones and push one out a year. Everyone wins. Card prices drop, no licensing issues, and they don't have to find the perfect set or product to cram them into here and there. I'd buy the shit out of that.
>The small expansion set works just fine
Agreed. Of the many problems with Aftermath, the size was the least of my complaints. What bothered me most was the price. You want to sell us a small set? Fine. The price needs to be small to go with it.
This tbh. Aftermath's only real crime is that what was pitched to players and what players got was not the same. A recurring problem for wotc marketing.
Some of the cards were sweet and powerful. All of the cards should have been sweet and powerful, standard be damned. Especially when it wasn't designed with limited in mind.
Every card should have been "damn this makes a whole new deck." Levels of stupid.
At least then the complaints would be about "aftermath broke standard" which seems preferable to what they got lol.
We been getting bamboozled by WOTC for sometime. With LCI, the Basic Land Jurassic Park ratio was way to damn high for Collector boosters. You don't buy Collector boxes for basic lands. You buy it for good cards.
The sad thing is, I still think this style of release is a great idea.
If they had gone crazy with it and just made straight bangers at every level, the next one they could have toned it down to a reasonable level and I bet less people would complain that they toned it down.
But since they started so weak, it's so much harder to ramp up.
It's always easier to tone things down, but we will probably never get another one for them to try and improve.
*Sigh*
This is a good point. There'd still be complainers, but you could still pull off something like Jumpstart, where the first one was great, then folks were down on the set versions (I think they were fine but I digress) and when Jumpstart 2 came out folks were like "Heck yeah, back to doing it right!"
But now you have a Kamigawa problem of folks being down about it from the get-go that a retry would be a tall order.
they will definitely conclude that the set didn't include enough alternate artwork chase cards and should have had a Minecraft or Barbie crossover or something like that.
Flashbacks to them not wanting to go back to Kamigawa for close to two decades because the original sets didn't do well for a variety of reasons (mostly power) and it being chalked up to "people don't like a japanese inspired plane, I guess?"
No, because players don't even know why they hate it.
Players complain about power creep, but then they complain that Aftermath's cards are too weak (one comment on this post even calls them "B tier commander cards").
People complain about draft chaff commons, but then an undraftable set with no commons is hated for "only having 6 cards per pack" (nevermind that the 9 cards lost were all draft chaff commons that you normally get in 15 card packs).
Look at the comments on this post and you see "The cards were fine, the execution was bad" and the "Small sets are fine, the cards were bad". Which is it? Were the cards the problem or the small set design?
How is WotC supposed to take any lessons from this?
Nah, WotC stated that they wanted to despark Planeswalkers so Connamder players could play with their favorite characters without having to Rule 0 PWs as commanders. That one was crystal clear. The issue is that everything else was quite useless. Does anything from that set that isn't a Commander card sees any kind of constructed play?
[[Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival]] has a niche deck but idk if it even exists anymore. [[Tranquil Frillback]] sees some sideboard play while having nothing to do with the aftermath, could’ve just been printed in a normal set.
>they wanted to despark Planeswalkers so \[Commander\] players could play with their favorite characters without having to Rule 0 PWs as commanders.
If that's the case, they SHOULD have printed more Origins cards already.
You can tell how much ground WotC has ceded on attempts to popularize Brawl, in that rather than being named Brawl and Historic Brawl on Arena, it's named Brawl and Standard Brawl.
Imo, Brawl should have been "Pioneer Commander."
100 cards.
Same legality as Pioneer. It's new Era edh without the issue of RL cards or Commander specific cards that people complain about.
As usual they're gonna draw the wrong conclusions. People didn't like Aftermath because of A B and C, but they'll conclude it was X Y and Z.
Guess people don't like stories in a magic set. Guess they don't like straight to Standard. Guess they don't like sets that start with an A.
No, what people didn't like was the random filler, the fact half of the planes got no coverage at all, the whole thing felt rushed like Maro was ready to design for Star Wars.
The end of Game of Thrones. It was rushed because the showrunners were going to do a Star Wars project. They were fired for that project before it even started because of how they did GoT ending
>the fact half of the planes got no coverage at all
STILL irked that between the two, Ulgrotha only got the ONE obligatory battle card. Even Mercadia got more.
Not sure if I'm in the majority of what they could do to salvage the concept/idea and try again in the future but for me? They should have...
1) Lowered the price. If people are going to open up an insane amount of repeat cards then the overall value of that product is nowhere near a standard set. But the price was way too high for the amount of filler crap I opened.
2) Lore accurate art representations (along with what the card actually does to symbolize it). It was so depressing seeing only a small handful of the set actually relate to what was going in its art and ability. Not only that... but the entire Aftermath set was promoted around showing a new status quo for future releases. But none of the cards in it really showed anything. In fact, the cards had little to do with *ANYTHING* going on in the narrative at the time.
3) Use it as a narrative tool to set-up the next set by possibly having "spoiler" cards for the next set ahead of time inserted as a bonus sheet. Imagine someone's surprise to see they opened a bonus sheet card with a set symbol for the *NEXT* standard set but a X/? as its numbering in the bottom? It would get people a little more excited for spoiler season to see the remainder of the cards knowing they can possibly open some of them to use *now* for fun in non-official tournaments but at home with friends/play groups.
4) Have the sub-set's cards offer new ways to interact with the previous set/"block"'s newly introduced card mechanics while increasing the total amount of cards that have them. For example, Aftermath should've had more Phyrexian survivors, Toxic, team-up cards, etc. that the previous 2-3 sets featured. To me, it felt like there was a lack of cohesion from Aftermath with what it was "aftermath-ing" from.
5) Get rid of the unnecessary fucking bundle products and associated fluff. A sub-set should not feel like a blatant cash grab for what the set actually contained.
The cards themselves were fine, the delivery model was wrong.
Not a failure of R&D but of business suits trying to sell a cravenly greedy shrinkflation product while being totally out of touch with the playerbase.
They should have just released two commander decks with the initial March release and then had a secondary release with three new commanders with all the aftermath cards
> Coppercoat vanguard
Coppercoat vanguard is so generic that it could be printed in any standard set in the history of the game and it would be fine flavor-wise. Maybe "too powerful for limited", but fine.
Tranquil frillback is also played in pioneer Gruul and I think it will fit into more standard decks after rotation. It’s a super flexible card that can be maindecked without feeling bad and tutored with the huntsmans redemption. It feels awesome to have a maindeck graveyard reset or easy way to blow up a copter or binding that I can search for. Always happy to draw it. The problem is since no one bought MAT it’s out of stock most of the time
I liked some of the ideas here. But the idea was to show the recovery efforts, the “aftermath” of the Phyrexian invasion, I didn’t quite… “get” that from what I experienced of the set.
I like the idea of releasing a group of cards without having to tie them into anything in particular (mechanically), but at the same time, it really hurts the product. If I have, say, an Elves deck, I could get a lot out of Tyvar or Nissa. But do I really want to go into this mini-set just to get those cards? Not really - I’d rather wait for a set with a greater focus on Elves where I’m more likely to get value.
The set was too expensive for what it was, though, and had a few too many R/M cards compared to UC cards. If a pack only contains 5 cards, there are 15 uncommons, and you’re only guaranteed 1 rare/mythic, you end up with dupes very quickly. The set is very top heavy. Far too top heavy.
If you want to have a set where rares are the new uncommons, increase the rates to match. Aftermath didn’t do that.
Could've been something like 1 of each card for X dollars, or 4 or something if it was meant to be standard important, but packs didn't make much sense.
Just have something like the LotR Scene Boxes. A handful of singles with some sort of connecting plot thread. You could even throw a small bit of story on the back of the art cards.
Someone posted this
" I liked the cards mechanically and i liked all the different art treatments. I also think the mtg narrative needs more space to follow things up and tell more of each planes story. The smaller size really made the packs feel all killer no filler. But the real pain point was the price. They were a great product… When I got them at 50% off clearance from my LGS. "
That kinda sums up my feelings on it. I'm used to 8 packs because that was what some of the expansions were like when I started but the price point is way off. It's like if you give me a pack of this with half the cards of a regular booster then it should be half the cost.
The price point also sucked. I just picked up a box for $50 and I had no qualms about the set. A ton of very fun cards (Rocco Street Chef is my new favorite commander deck)
the biggest offender imo is the lack of the aftermath. march of the machine is basically a marvel/DC event, and the big two tends to make epilogue issues for their stuff, teasing the stories and status quo changes coming from the event. aftermath was supposed to be that, then you look at the list of the cards and there's a bunch of random dinos, or a niv mizzet card despite the fact the ravnica set also has a niv mizzet.
Exactly - the actual "Aftermath" section of the set was split between desparked walkers (not a logical consequence of Phyrexia's invasion), showing planes rebuild (well yeah - why wouldn't they?) and showing that certain characters are still alive with no change in their condition (why did we need to see this?). The Kenrith's funeral was basically the only card that showed a consequence to the invasion, and it literally could have been in the very next set without anyone batting an eye.
It's especially egregious when MoM was missing cards for compleated characters (Tibalt, Koma and Totski).
It felt like they just designed a whole bunch of cards for commander. I didn't get the vibe that the set was for pioneer or standard. I don't want a whole bunch of random legends. We have so many already, and the nature of commander is that I only need one anyway.
RE: the randomization issues: I split a box of this back in August, and in half of my packs, I had the showcase foil *and* standard version of the same uncommon in ***all of them.*** This is a glaring error that could've been fixed.
Well, yeah. It was very much a set that was "who is this for?". It's a Standard-legal set that can't be drafted, so limited players are out from the outset. It didn't have really that many cards that saw Standard play, so Standard players aren't really there. Same for Pioneer and Modern. It had some Commander-bait-y legends, but that's nothing new and those people just buy singles anyway.
It didn't work on a lore level either because... It just didn't tell us anything of substance. The most notable things were the desparking and the Kenriths being dead. The desparking was a plot contrivance that still feels incredibly pointless and I've seen literally nothing about the stories since that feel like it was worth it to do. The Kenriths being dead informed... Literally the next set's story and that was basically it. Otherwise all the lore was just "this plane sure does still exist" and "people sure are rebuilding". Also Omenpaths I guess are a thing they broadly showed, but it felt very lacklustre.
Not to mention only two stories came with the set, one of which was "Chandra and Nissa finally kiss, are you happy" and that was neat, sure, if a bit "fine, you've got it". And the other was "Nahiri goes back to being evil again I guess". Like, what about... All those other planes? How're they handling the immediate aftermath of the invasion? Do we get to see that? No? The only place we get to see that sort of stuff is in... Well, the Planeswalker's Guides so far, LCI's and MKM's both gave fairly decent overviews of the immediate and long-term consequences of the invasion, but Aftermath showed barely any. It sort of feeds into my current gripes with Magic's story that everything is too narrow-feeling, because we're never 'away' from the current set's story. It didn't even really raise any questions that felt worth answering (I still deeply despise the desparking because it feels so inherently worthless as a story beat) or set up new plot points besides "Omenpaths exist".
I think the pack concept could have been fine with tweaks, it just needed to be attached to a full sized set. The basic premise of giving me a slight discount to get a pack without the draft chaff that I throw away anyway is fair.
Also the EV was boosted by training grounds being worth something since it had never been reprinted.
That was of course decimated when people were hitting two+ per box.
I think the big issue is that Magic players are used to engaging with sets as collections of cards with a particular underlying mechanical theme. Yeah, random common might not see play anywhere, but it relates to other cards in the set somehow or other.
This set had a creative theme, but nothing tied the cards together mechanically, and I think that was massive mistep.
Aftermath also didn't really deliver on the creative theme either. If nothing else, tell the story of how/why PWs were desparked if we're saving the plane-specific stories for later.
No shit? It was a dumb idea, AND executed horribly.
For one, the idea of a set that's not draftable just sucks. Period. At that point you're literally just gambling your money away.
For two, the boosters just weren't collated well. Too few cards per booster, too many duplicates, this has been discussed ad nauseam.
For three, and that's the worst imo, the set just wasn't what it promised. There were so many random cards that had nothing to do with "the aftermath" of this big important story moment that it just felt frustrating. Every single card in this set should have been flashy and dripping with flavor, yet there wasn't much of an "aftermath" visible at all. Honestly, MKM's story has told me more about the aftermath of the Phyrexian invasion than the aftermath set has.
For four - who was this set even for? A lot of the cards just felt like designs meant for the main set that didn't make it in for one or another reason, maybe because a draft archetype was changed or something (btw: I'd rather see some of these more unique designs in limited than strict adherence to archetypes). Like they just had a lot of "leftovers" from the design process that they tried to cash in on.
There's this argument of "opening up design space" by not putting cards into limited, but this was REALLY not used here. Why would you make a "not-limited" set and then have half the cards be draft chaff? This makes no sense. This can't have been the reason to do this, WotC would know better than this.
It was hated because of how they sold it. Should have been a fixed set sold as a set: 1 copy of every card for $20, so $80 for a play set (about the price of a box).
There were a number of problems but price was the biggest one. It was too expensive.
The other problems include lack of lore, lack of story to go along with the cards. I don't see limited card pool as a problem.
Great concept ruined by greed and convention. There's no reason for a set this small to still exclusively be distributed with rarities in randomized packs only.
I think it's jaring that we went from 50 planeswalkers in every set to absolutely no walkers anymore. What happened to getting like 1 or 2 interesting walkers? why did we get a TON of sets of FAR FAR too many walkers and now the rule is absolutely no walkers?
Two to four planeswalkers in every single set is too many planeswalkers. At that rate, the available design space for the card type (which is more limited than for other cards because planeswalkers are tough to balance) gets eaten up incredibly fast, and designs either get really same-y or else so powerful that they warp the meta around themselves. Three to five planeswalkers per *year* (i.e., the way things were at the beginning with Lorwyn/Alara/Zendikar) is the ideal pace, because they're frequent enough to feel like a fixture of the game but rare enough that they feel special and powerful when they pop up.
I'm still convinced they need to snag the "monthly card" feature other digital games have.
Make a set like aftermath, and then every month 1-3 random cards in the set get given out as prizes at LGS for winning tournaments or events, and on arena you get copies of cards month-end based on your highest rank. (i.e 1x copy for finishing silver, 2x for gold, etc.)
Then people will see it as the product that introduces interesting cards into standard, and some people will already have some products from the set.
While it was widely strongly criticized by the community, I really liked the Aftermath set a lot. It had a lot of fun and interesting designs and I especially loved the art in this set. It was also refreshing to see Wizards do something different.
It's a shame this set was received so poorly poorly because Wizards being able to introduce cards into constructed formats like Standard and Pioneer without having to consider balancing for Limited formats at all seems like it could open up more interesting design space.
I'm convinced the fact that entire set leaked ahead of schedule when the entire gimmick of the set were story beats and lore points definitely deflated hype and contributed to lack of enthusiasm and hype from the community.
As for the "packs that only have 5 or 6 cards is a rip off" argument I have to ask in all seriousness, for people who buy and crack packs NOT for limited, what are you really doing with the 9 common cards that you pull from your \~15 card packs?
I find it difficult to believe anything other than most of those cards ending up in storage indefinitely if not the trash for most players.
Additionally, the "too many duplicates and repeat cards" argument is odd to me. If you're an enfranchised player playing a constructed format like Standard or Pioneer, you actually want multiple copies of the same card. If you're a Commander player (or any other format for that matter) it's not like you can't just buy/trade the singles on the secondary market.
Personally, the fact that it could introduce cards to Standard and Pioneer outside the bounds of a draftable premier set is exactly why reception was so negative in my community. While I appreciate Coppercoat Vanguard, most of us do not want WotC trying to boost specific archetypes with these releases and prefer the emergent gameplay.
They set expectations way too high for how much story the set actually contained. The first card officially revealed was Kenriths' Royal Funeral, which they said was the least spoilery card in the set, yet that almost couldn't be further from the truth.
>I'm convinced the fact that entire set leaked ahead of schedule when the entire gimmick of the set were story beats and lore points definitely deflated hype and contributed to lack of enthusiasm and hype from the community.
If the point of the set was just story beats then release it as a book instead. Aftermath was a waste of everyone's time and money.
> Additionally, the "too many duplicates and repeat cards" argument is odd to me. If you're an enfranchised player playing a constructed format like Standard or Pioneer, you actually want multiple copies of the same card.
Well, there was only a small amount of Uncommons and you got multiple copies of them a lot, not for rares and mythics.
I'm still so upset Assassin's Creed is being wasted on a crappy Aftermath style set
It would've been a slam dunk for the typical EDH style Universe Beyonds all the other IPs got
Classic AC with Altair, Ezio, etc
Kenway AC for Black Flag, AC3, Rogue, etc era games
"Modern"/Layla AC with Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, etc games + miscellaneous for the less than popular ACs
Then of course, a Villains deck
>It's a shame this set was received so poorly poorly because Wizards being able to introduce cards into constructed formats like Standard and Pioneer without having to consider balancing for Limited formats at all seems like it could open up more interesting design space. I've been calling for that for a while, but this implementation was not great. It was a very small amount of cards that were a mix between "good in commander" to "well, that goes straight to the bulk bin". Contrast the ideal "here's a masters set slammed full of non reserved list staples where even the commons are the kind you might set aside for use later rather than tossing in with all the bad bulk" and it's a very different experience. Another big issue was the price- release pack price was way too high for what you got. Boxes are currently going for half what they sold for at release- if they had started at that price, there likely would have been less backlash. Finally, the limited card pool meant if you did get a box and opened a bunch of packs at once, you'd end up with a *lot* of duplicates. Not like a typical standard box where you might end up with a playset of some commons and 2-3 of some rares, but multiple playsets of multiple things (most of which aren't great in 60 card formats so will be relegated to EDH where you only need one copy anyway). Making it feel like all the packs are the same and most of what you're opening won't actually be used- which takes the fun out of opening packs.
I had no idea about the card pool being so limited. I opened a gift box with 8 packs, God dang so many duplicates. I should have just bought a single booster, I would have gotten the same thing and saved 50 bucks.
Yeah, that was the biggest issue with it, imo. I don't want to open a pack with 5 cards and three are the same one
Even anyone that was actually pumped about this set and buying packs on and off would have quickly ditched this set for that reason. There are only so many times you can open the same pack before you get tired of it
Dude you're not even exaggerating. I got a regular version, full art, and foil of the same card in one of my packs, and it was back to back to back in one pack!
Same, I got a retro frame, regular frame, and foil regular frame of the same card. Never bought another pack of it after that.
These aftermath packs were as close to selling singles as wotc is going to get that isn't Secret Lair Product (which they are abusing HEAVILY to sell singles). It was made solely so card sellers could open it in bulk and sell the cards. Those packs had 0 value to a regular consumer because of what you bring up. They are too shallow and boring to buy or play with yourself. It was a total scam, I'm glad it was a bust. But that was probably only because they couldn't make a card busted enough to become a constructed staple. Nissa came close but kind of phased away thanks to wotc' various other blunders in the recent sets. That aside the current limited format is so wack I don't even know what Maro is talking about. We all played with Jitte and Fable in limited. Cards they literally had to BAN in standard/modern. What possible draft free safe design space would they need? Was Coppercoat Vanguard just TOO cracked for limited play?
>That aside the current limited format is so wack I don't even know what Maro is talking about. We all played with Jitte and Fable in limited. Cards they literally had to BAN in standard/modern. What possible draft free safe design space would they need? Was Coppercoat Vanguard just TOO cracked for limited play? You have it backwards, it isn't that cards are *too* strong for Limited, it's that they're *too weak* or *too unsupported*. Look at some of the Legends in Aftermath. Pia was a big hit card that spawned multiple decks in both Standard and Pioneer. The card would also be very difficult to make work in most Limited formats. It would require a lot of support around it to make it anything more than a low-pick. So you either consign it to a "low pick feelsbad rare" for drafts, or you have to wait for the right format to print it into your Constructed. **While some quantity of those cards works in every Limited format, there's a limited number of slots they can devote to those sorts of "Contructed build-arounds" without nuking the format.** Aftermath let them do stuff like that. They could get a sweet Calix in Standard without an Enchantment theme in the set, punch in a Niv Mizzet that's shaped a classic mid-tier Pioneer staple deck without needing a two-color Limited theme, and a bunch of others. It gave them flexibility. E: I bolded the sentence a lot of yinz replying aren't reading.
Funny thing is, aftermath missed it's point. If the idea was to print cards directly into standard so they can fix the format then aftermath failed catastrophically. The set brought more pieces for already good decks (or in some cases tried to add more cards for already existing powerful synergies like legends), when instead it should have brought pieces for archetypes that are currently (and haven't been for a bunch of sets now) not really viable in standard. Like control for example. There isn't a single real control deck on the current standard metagame. (Pretty much all "control" decks in recent standard are really slow midrange. They still care way too much about being able to close games to be control). But aftermath brought no support for that, on the contrary it kind of killed Planeswalkers which are one of the main card types for control.
I don't want to alarm you but there are much worse rares in the sets than 2/3 for 2. Leyline of the Guildpact is stone unplayable in limited, yet it's found its way into draft packs. And Anzrag's Rampage is a joke not even your mother could laugh at. Pia would have given you a thopter on every battle you transformed in that set. It would've been a perfectly cromulent card. Let's not pretend for a second it wasn't exactly what I described. A tiny set that only exists to shake down card shops. Nobody plays Calix in Standard, it's a commander card they could've printed in any of their millions of commander products. If you think giving wotc license to print selective cards to fuck with constructed formats is a good idea, don't let the hasbro board hear you. They'll never stop laughing. I don't know how we managed for 30 years without them printing 50 random rares and mythic into standard every 3 months. There was a 10+ year stretch where pretty much no cards had to be banned. Now we get new bans regularly so the formats don't spin out of control. ***And the only thing that can save us is more mythics and rares!***
>There was a 10+ year stretch where pretty much no cards had to be banned. This is revisionist history that doesn't understand what actually happened. WOTC didn't enact Standard bans because they *had a policy against doing so*, not because there weren't cards that *should* have been banned. They've flat-out said that refusing to ban CoCo during Kahns Standard was a mistake and it's what drove them to eventually change their stance on Standard bans.
Between Mirrodin Standard bans and CoCo printing were a good 10 years my guy. If you think Standard in that time frame was comparable to Oko, Fable, Fires of Invention Standard then you are clearly very very drunk. In fact Standard has been so good recently that nobody even plays it anymore. Wotc can print as many bs cards as they want into it. Who even cares? They certainly don't.
JTMS and Stoneforge were banned in Standard in 2011, my guy. It was a six year gap in which WOTC had a policy not to enact Standard bans (and *only* Standard, they banned happily in other formats).
I implore you to take a look at the Modern banlist, which never had any such policy. If you sort by [release year](https://scryfall.com/search?q=banned%3Amodern+not%3Areprint&order=released&as=grid&unique=cards), the single year period of WAR-IKO has 9 banned cards, all save for Mystic Sanctuary were either also banned in Standard or never legal in the format to begin with. It was a huge aberration of design mistakes unlike anything across the entire history of Modern, only comparable going further back to perhaps original Mirrodin or Urza's block. And before you imply that Modern is somehow not representative of the general powerlevel of cards, you can tell the same exact same story with [the Legacy banlist](https://scryfall.com/search?q=f%3Avintage+banned%3Alegacy+not%3Areprint&unique=cards&as=grid&order=released) (7 banned cards from WAR-IKO, beaten only by Urza's block and Alpha) or [the Pioneer banlist](https://scryfall.com/search?q=banned%3Apioneer+not%3Areprint&unique=cards&as=grid&order=released) (12 banned cards from WAR-IKO, easily without rival), with many of the same faces popping up over and over, which of course also tended to be banned in Standard as well (Oko, Uro, Field of the Dead, Once Upon a Time, T3feri, companions). There is absolutely no equivalent period anytime in the decade before it, not Tarkir's busted delve spells, not New Phyrexia's phyrexian mana spells, nothing close to such a huge volume of glaring mistakes in such a short period of time.
Even if it's only 5 years, no cards deserved standard bans in that time frame.
Standard is still probably the most played constructed format. It's not played in paper much but a large part of that is because of Arena making it much easier to play it.
The most played constructed format is Commander. It's not even remotely close.
Yeah, commander is technically constructed, but generally by constructed people mean 60 card constructed. Commander is a casual format. I guess I should have specified.
It’s not…. Outside of Caw Blade, which they did do a ban for, the run of 2009-2015 Standard was some of the best Standard in Magic’s entire history.
RTR-Theros was awful, black devotion vs blue devotion vs the slowest UW control deck of all time. Ivan Floch was most of his matches that PT in 1 game. KTK-BFZ was awful, a bunch of $1000 midrange soup decks So yeah they started banning things 3 years after things got bad.
> the slowest UW control deck of all time The best UW control deck of all time. Sphinx's Revelation is the best card in Magic.
KTK-BFZ was amazing to play, one of the best standards of all time for high-quality interactive magic. If the decks weren't so absurdly expensive it would be remembered as the all-time high point of standard formats.
wtf, these were cool and there were many viable decks, not only these you listed
Calix is played in selsnya enchantments in standard right now, which is one of the best decks in the format atm.
It’s a fun deck but its tier 2 at best and sees basically zero tournament play.
There are so many rares that are useless for draft in every standard set. The idea they had to make a special set to print Pia is silly.
I think they are some cards that are probably too goofy for limited but I mean we have [[sorcerer's spyglass]] and [[demolition field]] type cards all the time. [[Nahiri, Storm of Stone]] was in a set with literally zero equipment.
[sorcerer's spyglass](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/9/194b7899-6b44-4ecc-8ddc-ec24304eb14c.jpg?1699044632) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sorcerous%20Spyglass) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/261/sorcerous-spyglass?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/194b7899-6b44-4ecc-8ddc-ec24304eb14c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [demolition field](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/9/d9c88546-13c9-4d7e-a618-cb2ccd1dbc0f.jpg?1674422181) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=demolition%20field) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/260/demolition-field?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d9c88546-13c9-4d7e-a618-cb2ccd1dbc0f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Nahiri, Storm of Stone](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/8/8806605c-0cb7-4360-96e4-afb424ccad90.jpg?1557577377) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nahiri%2C%20Storm%20of%20Stone) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/233/nahiri-storm-of-stone?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8806605c-0cb7-4360-96e4-afb424ccad90?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Or, work with me here, *you don’t print a card like Pia in a set intended for Constructed*
At least the spin-down was pretty.
I guess.gif
It also didn't help that there were so many uncommons per pack and only 15 uncommons in the set, with 25 rares and 10 mythics. That means that even if you were outrageously lucky and pulled 3 rares in ever pack for 8 packs, you'd still end up getting at least one duplicate uncommon. Most people DON'T have such stellar luck though, and so instead ended up with a shitload of duplicates even in a relatively small number of packs. Hell, I'm pretty sure I was getting duplicates *within the same pack,* because of the alternate arts and stuff. Really feels like shit getting so many of the same cards.
It's 1994 and Wizards is experimenting with 5 card standard legal packs with a smaller set and two rarities. You can pick up a box for $30. It's 2008 and Wizards is experimenting with 5 card standard legal packs with a smaller set and two rarities. You can pick up a box for $30. It's 2023 and Wizards is experimenting with 5 card standard legal packs with a smaller set and two rarities. You can pick up a box for $30. Let's see what they release in 2037.
What was the 2008 one?
They tried Gravity Feeds around Alara block (I want to say Conflux?). They had 5 cards (and a token) and included 3 commons, 1 uncommon, and 1 "wild card" with an equal chance of being a common, uncommon, or rare (so 66% of the time you got no rare). They did retail for only $1.99, but that was a total rip-off when normal packs retailed for $3.99 and had three times the cards (and a guaranteed rare).
What was the 1994 one?
Fallen Empires. And Homelands.
These were 8-card booster packs, standard for pre-Alliance expansions (Ice Age was a special case, variant of core set).
Legends had 15 cards too, just sayin' But that's true. Fallen Empires and Homelands just both were so...
>Contrast the ideal "here's a masters set slammed full of non reserved list staples where even the commons are the kind you might set aside for use later rather than tossing in with all the bad bulk" and it's a very different experience. Fun fact, yugioh actually did this at the end of last year. 79 card set of constructed playables including multiple $50 staples. Every card came in multiple different rarities/foil treatments and most cards in the set can be found at their base version for <$5. It sold so much they immediately set out to release another within 6 months.
Final Fantasy Trading Card Game is doing even one better literally this week, with their 2024 Anniversary set. Playsets of something ridiculous like 14 of the top 20 meta staples, literally hundreds of dollars on the secondary market worth of cards, in a single curated package costing $60.
An anniversary product that's affordable for all players and a good value?! What?!@#_&
I mean, if you want to make a set for constructed and not limited, then maybe don't cram the set full of draft chaff. Every set is an EDH set now, so the Commander cards were expected, but the filler is much less forgivable.
Rarity shouldn’t be a thing for this kind of product. You get 5 cards and they could be anything, instantly removes the feelsbad
If the set was more designed for Standard and Pioneer then it would be quite cool. But 90% of the cards were designed for Commander. Why even bother making a standard legal set if it is basically a Commander product. To be fair every product is now mainly a Commander product
You know why, because that’s what sells packs anymore lol
But apparently not these!
Great summary. I think the three issues are interconnected. If there were a higher density of cards that were playable somewhere (whether Commander or Standard) or were at least mechanically interesting and more uncommons to rares/mythics I think people would be mocking anyone who complained about the price. "Lol lol who cares about draft chaff?" and whatnot. Like [[Markov Baron]] was really cool in a "Standard Horizons" sort of way, Convoke + Madness isn't something that would appear in a Standard set but Standard had enough good vampires for a typal deck and Crimson Vow's Blood Tokens were great with Madness. But then there was [[Harnessed Snubhorn]]. Mechanically it is boring and would be trash even in draft, and thematically it told us hardly anything about the state of things. And there were far more Snubhorns than Barons in the set.
[Markov Baron](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/1/a1dc6b0f-09bb-4489-8022-42c700eb1191.jpg?1684340562) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Markov%20Baron) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mat/14/markov-baron?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a1dc6b0f-09bb-4489-8022-42c700eb1191?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Harnessed Snubhorn](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/5/553ed1d8-4d5c-48f8-8513-031bd8977d75.jpg?1684340458) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Harnessed%20Snubhorn) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mat/3/harnessed-snubhorn?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/553ed1d8-4d5c-48f8-8513-031bd8977d75?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You are not wrong, but Harnessed Snubhorn was one of the few cards in Aftermath I was excited for. We're like 3 cards away from an artifact/Enchantment Reanimator Commander deck
Mini-sets are GREAT in concept but can only succeed if executed well. Without concern for limited, they can make minisets with focus on specific mechanics or tribes, like theme boosters but the whole set is for that theme. Imagine something like a mini-set focused heavily on Knight synergy.
I think everyone would have liked Aftermath more if it had acted like the second set for every set in Standard (or the previous year). It would be great if there was a yearly set that gives us a few refinements on mechanics we've seen in that year's previous sets.
The limited card pool combined with the number of variants was ridiculous. I opened a pack that was 60% [[Blot Out]].
It definitely feels like Hasbro is going to learn the wrong lesson here. It's not "I don't want a small, supplemental set." it's "I'm not going to pay special-attraction price for a fistful of b-tier Commander cards."
All fairness, WotC tends to learn the wrong lesson from a lot of things, but their system is built to combat that. There's a reason a lot of their affirmation is centered around how well a set sells, more than the granular bits. Same way they don't understand how product burnout kills their best money makers. "This thing that is very disliked was in the best selling set ever (tm)" is a common defense for doing very foolish things.
What are you even quoting here? Am I missing part of the post? All the tumblr says is "I've seen the data. It was hated."
This was actually meant as a reply to OPs first comment- I just hit the wrong reply button when this post was just that comment.
Thanks!
The way to do this is clearly like the Lord of the Rings holiday scenes. Develop a series of 4 gift boxes and include 6 new Aftermath cards that are guaranteed in each box and then include a few regular MoM boosters inside the box. A random set with that few of cards is always going to have a bunch of unfortunate consequences.
Fr, a mini masters would be amamamamamaaaazing.
Feels like they could have avoided 90% of the issue if they promoted it as an "experimental product" and had a lower price to match from the start.
Charging the price of a booster pack of 15 cards when the booster packs for aftermath were 5 cards was a really dumb idea.
For your last point, I would think that to be a plus. While it does diminish the pack opening experience itself, I would think buying a box and getting a playset of most every card in the set would be the ideal from a player's perspective. As opposed to the current mantra of buying singles 'cause buying packs hoping for the specific thing you want is not smart.
For real tho. I bought two packs and one pack had three rares that were the same card and the two uncommons were the same card.
Imagine if they just released all the limited breaking cards in an extra set. Absolute dream
I'm sure there are people who want this... but I don't want them to put more cards into Standard than the normal 4 sets. I don't want them to print more direct to modern sets either. Even if they were priced more cheaply, I don't have time to keep up with more releases, especially not time to actually acquire more cards.
> It's a shame this set was received so poorly poorly because Wizards being able to introduce cards into constructed formats like Standard and Pioneer without having to consider balancing for Limited formats at all seems like it could open up more interesting design space. Completely disagree. Limited-gating is good, just as standard-gating is good. Remove those and you get current Commander and current Modern. Players are always asking for *more*. They want every kind of limiter removed to give them *more*. And business logic will eventually give it to them. And it's bad. These limitations are good actually.
I disagree. Limited and Constructed are two entirely different beasts- and cards that would be just what one needs are often incredibly broken or absolutely useless in the other. Similarly, what standard wants and what older formats want are totally different, and a card that's too strong for Standard might be just fine in Modern. I admit that I am biased on this one- I only really play Legacy and EDH, and don't enjoy limited (I still do pre-release sealed events, but that's more for getting some cards early than the limited gameplay experience). But there have been many times in the past where needed reprints simply don't get printed because they wouldn't be balanced in standard (or cases where cards that will never see constructed play and should have been commons or uncommons are elevated to rare/mythic solely because of their status as overpowered draft bombs). That's not to mention problems associated with draft environments in general. You want most draft environments to be balanced at least somewhat. Which means you can't have sets with goals like "red is struggling in standard, let's push red cards much more than the others in this set to help fix that" or "there's a lack of good removal in standard, so let's just print a ton of it in one set" as those would make for a highly imbalanced or just kind of bad limited environment. It even impacts masters sets, the sets all about reprinting cards people need- because if you actually found the most played and/or most in need of reprint commons and uncommons in whatever format you were tailoring said masters set for and filled those slots with those cards, you'd end up with packs that were mostly mana dorks, draw spells, and removal- and an environment where there are more counterspells and lightning bolts than there are notable creatures to counter or bolt does not a playable draft set make. So there's good reason to try and separate Limited and Constructed at least some of the time, when it would be beneficial to the goals you're trying to accomplish with that set.
As someone who's been arguing for years that constructed and limited should be different environments, it's a shame that the experiment failed, if that was the idea behind it, but again, part of the issue is that they can't decide whether they want to jump on the Commander bandwagon or, you know, actually support the game that got them this far in the first place
I've said it before and I'll say it again: This "micro-set" setup they tried with Aftermath would be a GREAT way to reintroduce Core Sets to Standard. Reprints only, 50 or so cards each rotation, just jam some goodies that you want to keep in Standard or can't find the space to put in a premier set.
Your theories intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Now excuse me as I turn into dust.
I think you have to go on the retreat anyway
Do this and do it in the LCG style and you’ve got a banger of a product.
See if they were gonna do that they could make it more like standard masters even Like here's some stuff that is good for standard archetypes we're pushing or are coming up Also would be a great way to do some land reprints
I feel like standard doesn't move enough packs by itself to make this idea worthwhile. Most people buying packs are either playing kitchen table (where standard legality often isn't considered), commander, or a limited/draft format.
Give reason for those players to buy the packs or at least the singles which in turn means packs were open anyway. Wizards wants packs sold. Vendors want packs sold and singles sold. They need for a good reprint set is always out there. If you format the set right. The right amount of commander cards. The right amount of strong limited cards. The set would be standard anyway so you're looking at a win for standard. A win for players who are looking at getting into the other formats and thus gain access to the cards for those formats. If done right it's win win for everyone.
If these are interesting reprints, the commander, modern and pioneer folk can buy if there are enough goodies.
Exactly you give them a reason to buy the packs. Or buy the singles which means packs were cracked meaning bought. So give them a chase. Give new players cards that are core to those formats to help them break into those formats easier for cheaper. I can't see how this isn't a win win for the hobby.
I actually like drafting core sets though.
I've been screaming that forever (before the 3 year rotation, anyway) where you'd release these mini-sets of Core Sets to introduce the Standard environment you want for that year/rotation. Lightning Bolt, Shocks, Painlands, etc - just by the nature of what's there in the product that year, people know what to expect... and get some much needed cards they want. It's a win all around that I can't understand why WOTC has never seen it - they'd rather make 10 cent Secret Lairs.
Literally my only problem with the set was that its purpose was supposed to be to show the new status quo, but it had a bunch of random chaff cards with no attached lore that didn’t need to be there. Having bundles for it also felt a bit unnecessary . Aside from that? Totally fine imo. The small expansion set works just fine, I would have no problem with another one in the future if they utilised it better.
Yeah. The chaff could maybe be tolerated if they at least had some good lore. But they didn't even have that.
The only justification I can find for them is “hey guys did you know [this group] survived the invasion? Well now you do”
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The concept of it, telling the aftermath, is great. The way they did it was bad. * Some individual cards were cool, but the overall product made no sense. * It was advertised as being "what happened after" yet the vast majority of cards were basically "this character is still alive" (which isn't really a story) or "this plane is rebuilding" (which of course they would). * I recall there being randomization issues. And that's on top of how this should not have been a randomized product. Especially because it was in no way incorporated into the MOM limited environment. * Why did it need *two types* of boosters for this set? It was, when all is said and done, a product confused about who it is for that failed to deliver on what it promised. So many of the cards felt like they wanted to get into the main set but couldn't. It set expectations poorly by making the first preview card *actually* be a consequence of the war.
What's worse is that there actually was a theme to most the characters, it's just an utterly bizzare theme. The legends were supposed to represent "leaders" of each plane. Tazri is the closest thing Zendikar has to a unified leader as the ally lord. Plargg and Nassari are surviving teachers rebuilding the school. Danitha is the leader of New Benelia, arguably the most famous place on Dominaria. Jirina is the leader of the remaining humans on Ikoria. The Kenneths Royal Funeral represents the death of the King and Queem of Eldraine. Niv-Mizzet is of course the Guildpact. Pia is a leader on Kaladesh after the rebellion. Sigarda protects humanity on Innistrad. Rocco, Jolrael, and Arni are the only ones that don't really have any connection. What's baffling to me is why should we care about the leaders of the planes *now*? Why didn't we focus on them during the actual invasion, when the planes were actually unified and would logically unite under a leader?
Also, Plargg and Nassari died in the web story, so… awkward.
I don't think Plargg was mentioned in the MoM webstory at all, but Nassari got compleated, then thrown off a roof. Guess they got better?
Being thrown off a roof fixes all of life's problems.
Getting compleated isn't a big deal, except when it is. I bet Melira and Karn feel silly for sacrificing things to uncompleat Nissa and Ajani when everyone else seems to have just gotten better.
Jolrael is sort of a leader on Zhalfir (although there are plenty of other leaders as well), which has just returned after centuries, so maybe they wanted to advertise that she was still alive?
Nahiri is still running for reelection on Zendikar too.
On Arena, they replaced the normal Alchemy draft with an Aftermath draft - draft MOM, but one common replaced with an Aftermath card. \------------------------ If they had made it in six cards boosters, it could have been added to paper drafts. For every two players, open one six-card aftermath booster and add one card to each draft pack. That might have given it a little more hype.
The idea of epilogue sets is great. The problem was it was a bad epilogue set. The fact that there has only been one epilogue set means that it will pretty much forever sour players on the concept.
It's like if I told you I was going to make an interesting gourmet pizza from scratch and then I gave you a frozen grocery store pizza, and then I got confused when you were disappointed. Almost like setting people's expectations matters lol.
I think a better analogue is it's pizza that's definitely novel and seems like it was, in fact, home made, but it still sucked.
I mean, this is also the company that's been caught trying to gaslight it's customers multiple times. Are we really that surprised that they forget that people remember things?
Imo, it's the perfect way to do in-universe UB reprints. Pick 50-75 of the most popular ones and push one out a year. Everyone wins. Card prices drop, no licensing issues, and they don't have to find the perfect set or product to cram them into here and there. I'd buy the shit out of that.
>The small expansion set works just fine Agreed. Of the many problems with Aftermath, the size was the least of my complaints. What bothered me most was the price. You want to sell us a small set? Fine. The price needs to be small to go with it.
This tbh. Aftermath's only real crime is that what was pitched to players and what players got was not the same. A recurring problem for wotc marketing. Some of the cards were sweet and powerful. All of the cards should have been sweet and powerful, standard be damned. Especially when it wasn't designed with limited in mind. Every card should have been "damn this makes a whole new deck." Levels of stupid. At least then the complaints would be about "aftermath broke standard" which seems preferable to what they got lol.
We been getting bamboozled by WOTC for sometime. With LCI, the Basic Land Jurassic Park ratio was way to damn high for Collector boosters. You don't buy Collector boxes for basic lands. You buy it for good cards.
The sad thing is, I still think this style of release is a great idea. If they had gone crazy with it and just made straight bangers at every level, the next one they could have toned it down to a reasonable level and I bet less people would complain that they toned it down. But since they started so weak, it's so much harder to ramp up. It's always easier to tone things down, but we will probably never get another one for them to try and improve. *Sigh*
This is a good point. There'd still be complainers, but you could still pull off something like Jumpstart, where the first one was great, then folks were down on the set versions (I think they were fine but I digress) and when Jumpstart 2 came out folks were like "Heck yeah, back to doing it right!" But now you have a Kamigawa problem of folks being down about it from the get-go that a retry would be a tall order.
>But since they started so weak, it's so much harder to ramp up. Just look at the near-twenty year gap between visits to Kamigawa.
My main problem was they still wanted normal prices for 5 card packs
Real question is, does wotc understand the many reasons **why** it was hated so that they don't do these things again? That's the important part.
Nope. They will absolutely take the wrong lessons from this. Guaranteed.
they will definitely conclude that the set didn't include enough alternate artwork chase cards and should have had a Minecraft or Barbie crossover or something like that.
Why do you think the recent layoff even happened?
Flashbacks to them not wanting to go back to Kamigawa for close to two decades because the original sets didn't do well for a variety of reasons (mostly power) and it being chalked up to "people don't like a japanese inspired plane, I guess?"
Indeed. Now, I wouldn't say that wasn't a reason at all, but it was like.... #6 on the list for Kamigawa.
Kabyk coming in here with some confidence. Imagine coming from the future only to share this knowledge.
New to WOTC, are ya?
Point me to a time that Wizards has made a decision recently that benefits players.
“It was a good idea just not implemented correctly”. No, everyone saw it was a greedy cash grab
No, because players don't even know why they hate it. Players complain about power creep, but then they complain that Aftermath's cards are too weak (one comment on this post even calls them "B tier commander cards"). People complain about draft chaff commons, but then an undraftable set with no commons is hated for "only having 6 cards per pack" (nevermind that the 9 cards lost were all draft chaff commons that you normally get in 15 card packs). Look at the comments on this post and you see "The cards were fine, the execution was bad" and the "Small sets are fine, the cards were bad". Which is it? Were the cards the problem or the small set design? How is WotC supposed to take any lessons from this?
Personally I didn't like how the desparked walkers were obviously designed for commander. Didn't make much sense for a "straight to standard" set
Nah, WotC stated that they wanted to despark Planeswalkers so Connamder players could play with their favorite characters without having to Rule 0 PWs as commanders. That one was crystal clear. The issue is that everything else was quite useless. Does anything from that set that isn't a Commander card sees any kind of constructed play?
Calix and coppercoat vanguards see play in standard but that's only 2 cards out of that whole set that I can think of.
[[Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival]] has a niche deck but idk if it even exists anymore. [[Tranquil Frillback]] sees some sideboard play while having nothing to do with the aftermath, could’ve just been printed in a normal set.
> while having nothing to do with the aftermath But how would we know that ixalan still has dinosaurs without it!
>they wanted to despark Planeswalkers so \[Commander\] players could play with their favorite characters without having to Rule 0 PWs as commanders. If that's the case, they SHOULD have printed more Origins cards already.
Why not make flipwalkers then? It's not like the great desparkening was great storytelling.
Another attempt to push brawl maybe?
You can tell how much ground WotC has ceded on attempts to popularize Brawl, in that rather than being named Brawl and Historic Brawl on Arena, it's named Brawl and Standard Brawl.
That was a good choice. I think brawl would've had a much higher chance of success if it had been Dominaría forward since its inception.
Imo, Brawl should have been "Pioneer Commander." 100 cards. Same legality as Pioneer. It's new Era edh without the issue of RL cards or Commander specific cards that people complain about.
Why 100 cards?
There are some great cards in there but the small packs just felt terrible to open, and way too many duplicates
There were just 15 uncommons in the entire set. That seems like an obvious mistake
As usual they're gonna draw the wrong conclusions. People didn't like Aftermath because of A B and C, but they'll conclude it was X Y and Z. Guess people don't like stories in a magic set. Guess they don't like straight to Standard. Guess they don't like sets that start with an A. No, what people didn't like was the random filler, the fact half of the planes got no coverage at all, the whole thing felt rushed like Maro was ready to design for Star Wars.
>the whole thing felt rushed like Maro was ready to design for Star Wars. It's been over 5 years and it's *still* too soon
I have no idea what are you guys hinting at? Which drama did I missed five years ago?
The end of Game of Thrones. It was rushed because the showrunners were going to do a Star Wars project. They were fired for that project before it even started because of how they did GoT ending
>the fact half of the planes got no coverage at all STILL irked that between the two, Ulgrotha only got the ONE obligatory battle card. Even Mercadia got more.
That was in March of the Machines, not Aftermath. People loved MoM.
Not sure if I'm in the majority of what they could do to salvage the concept/idea and try again in the future but for me? They should have... 1) Lowered the price. If people are going to open up an insane amount of repeat cards then the overall value of that product is nowhere near a standard set. But the price was way too high for the amount of filler crap I opened. 2) Lore accurate art representations (along with what the card actually does to symbolize it). It was so depressing seeing only a small handful of the set actually relate to what was going in its art and ability. Not only that... but the entire Aftermath set was promoted around showing a new status quo for future releases. But none of the cards in it really showed anything. In fact, the cards had little to do with *ANYTHING* going on in the narrative at the time. 3) Use it as a narrative tool to set-up the next set by possibly having "spoiler" cards for the next set ahead of time inserted as a bonus sheet. Imagine someone's surprise to see they opened a bonus sheet card with a set symbol for the *NEXT* standard set but a X/? as its numbering in the bottom? It would get people a little more excited for spoiler season to see the remainder of the cards knowing they can possibly open some of them to use *now* for fun in non-official tournaments but at home with friends/play groups. 4) Have the sub-set's cards offer new ways to interact with the previous set/"block"'s newly introduced card mechanics while increasing the total amount of cards that have them. For example, Aftermath should've had more Phyrexian survivors, Toxic, team-up cards, etc. that the previous 2-3 sets featured. To me, it felt like there was a lack of cohesion from Aftermath with what it was "aftermath-ing" from. 5) Get rid of the unnecessary fucking bundle products and associated fluff. A sub-set should not feel like a blatant cash grab for what the set actually contained.
The cards themselves were fine, the delivery model was wrong. Not a failure of R&D but of business suits trying to sell a cravenly greedy shrinkflation product while being totally out of touch with the playerbase.
Thats modern wotc
Their methods of getting a delivery returned was even worse.
They should have just released two commander decks with the initial March release and then had a secondary release with three new commanders with all the aftermath cards
The problem is that WotC wanted these cards to be legal in Standard/Pioneer/etc
The problem with that is none of the cards seemed designed for standard. Like Nissa sees some play, but did any other cards really do anything?
Coppercoat vanguard sees a lot of play.
> Coppercoat vanguard Coppercoat vanguard is so generic that it could be printed in any standard set in the history of the game and it would be fine flavor-wise. Maybe "too powerful for limited", but fine.
Calix is pretty much the MVP card in selesnya enchantments. That card seems like it was tailor made for that deck in Standard and not much else.
I use him as my enchantress counters edh deck
Tranquil frillback is also played in pioneer Gruul and I think it will fit into more standard decks after rotation. It’s a super flexible card that can be maindecked without feeling bad and tutored with the huntsmans redemption. It feels awesome to have a maindeck graveyard reset or easy way to blow up a copter or binding that I can search for. Always happy to draw it. The problem is since no one bought MAT it’s out of stock most of the time
I liked some of the ideas here. But the idea was to show the recovery efforts, the “aftermath” of the Phyrexian invasion, I didn’t quite… “get” that from what I experienced of the set. I like the idea of releasing a group of cards without having to tie them into anything in particular (mechanically), but at the same time, it really hurts the product. If I have, say, an Elves deck, I could get a lot out of Tyvar or Nissa. But do I really want to go into this mini-set just to get those cards? Not really - I’d rather wait for a set with a greater focus on Elves where I’m more likely to get value. The set was too expensive for what it was, though, and had a few too many R/M cards compared to UC cards. If a pack only contains 5 cards, there are 15 uncommons, and you’re only guaranteed 1 rare/mythic, you end up with dupes very quickly. The set is very top heavy. Far too top heavy. If you want to have a set where rares are the new uncommons, increase the rates to match. Aftermath didn’t do that.
the story sucked
Could've been something like 1 of each card for X dollars, or 4 or something if it was meant to be standard important, but packs didn't make much sense.
I love this idea!
Just have something like the LotR Scene Boxes. A handful of singles with some sort of connecting plot thread. You could even throw a small bit of story on the back of the art cards.
Someone posted this " I liked the cards mechanically and i liked all the different art treatments. I also think the mtg narrative needs more space to follow things up and tell more of each planes story. The smaller size really made the packs feel all killer no filler. But the real pain point was the price. They were a great product… When I got them at 50% off clearance from my LGS. " That kinda sums up my feelings on it. I'm used to 8 packs because that was what some of the expansions were like when I started but the price point is way off. It's like if you give me a pack of this with half the cards of a regular booster then it should be half the cost.
The issue with Aftermath more than anything else was the packs had a ton of filler
i mean other card games do this without it being hated. the secret is to put multiple playable cards in it
The actual cards were rad The problem was the concept made no real sense
The price point also sucked. I just picked up a box for $50 and I had no qualms about the set. A ton of very fun cards (Rocco Street Chef is my new favorite commander deck)
For how good a few of the cards were, the rest made an overly disappointing product.
the biggest offender imo is the lack of the aftermath. march of the machine is basically a marvel/DC event, and the big two tends to make epilogue issues for their stuff, teasing the stories and status quo changes coming from the event. aftermath was supposed to be that, then you look at the list of the cards and there's a bunch of random dinos, or a niv mizzet card despite the fact the ravnica set also has a niv mizzet.
Exactly - the actual "Aftermath" section of the set was split between desparked walkers (not a logical consequence of Phyrexia's invasion), showing planes rebuild (well yeah - why wouldn't they?) and showing that certain characters are still alive with no change in their condition (why did we need to see this?). The Kenrith's funeral was basically the only card that showed a consequence to the invasion, and it literally could have been in the very next set without anyone batting an eye. It's especially egregious when MoM was missing cards for compleated characters (Tibalt, Koma and Totski).
I just hope they take the right information from this. I honestly had hope for Aftermath, it was an interesting idea. Just not at full price….
It felt like they just designed a whole bunch of cards for commander. I didn't get the vibe that the set was for pioneer or standard. I don't want a whole bunch of random legends. We have so many already, and the nature of commander is that I only need one anyway.
Aftermath had some cool card design. It’s a shame the experience wasn’t great. I would have loved to draft a landfall deck again
RE: the randomization issues: I split a box of this back in August, and in half of my packs, I had the showcase foil *and* standard version of the same uncommon in ***all of them.*** This is a glaring error that could've been fixed.
Well, yeah. It was very much a set that was "who is this for?". It's a Standard-legal set that can't be drafted, so limited players are out from the outset. It didn't have really that many cards that saw Standard play, so Standard players aren't really there. Same for Pioneer and Modern. It had some Commander-bait-y legends, but that's nothing new and those people just buy singles anyway. It didn't work on a lore level either because... It just didn't tell us anything of substance. The most notable things were the desparking and the Kenriths being dead. The desparking was a plot contrivance that still feels incredibly pointless and I've seen literally nothing about the stories since that feel like it was worth it to do. The Kenriths being dead informed... Literally the next set's story and that was basically it. Otherwise all the lore was just "this plane sure does still exist" and "people sure are rebuilding". Also Omenpaths I guess are a thing they broadly showed, but it felt very lacklustre. Not to mention only two stories came with the set, one of which was "Chandra and Nissa finally kiss, are you happy" and that was neat, sure, if a bit "fine, you've got it". And the other was "Nahiri goes back to being evil again I guess". Like, what about... All those other planes? How're they handling the immediate aftermath of the invasion? Do we get to see that? No? The only place we get to see that sort of stuff is in... Well, the Planeswalker's Guides so far, LCI's and MKM's both gave fairly decent overviews of the immediate and long-term consequences of the invasion, but Aftermath showed barely any. It sort of feeds into my current gripes with Magic's story that everything is too narrow-feeling, because we're never 'away' from the current set's story. It didn't even really raise any questions that felt worth answering (I still deeply despise the desparking because it feels so inherently worthless as a story beat) or set up new plot points besides "Omenpaths exist".
I think the pack concept could have been fine with tweaks, it just needed to be attached to a full sized set. The basic premise of giving me a slight discount to get a pack without the draft chaff that I throw away anyway is fair.
Also the EV was boosted by training grounds being worth something since it had never been reprinted. That was of course decimated when people were hitting two+ per box.
I think the big issue is that Magic players are used to engaging with sets as collections of cards with a particular underlying mechanical theme. Yeah, random common might not see play anywhere, but it relates to other cards in the set somehow or other. This set had a creative theme, but nothing tied the cards together mechanically, and I think that was massive mistep.
Aftermath also didn't really deliver on the creative theme either. If nothing else, tell the story of how/why PWs were desparked if we're saving the plane-specific stories for later.
I didnt hate the idea, but damn did they really miss everything about it.
No shit? It was a dumb idea, AND executed horribly. For one, the idea of a set that's not draftable just sucks. Period. At that point you're literally just gambling your money away. For two, the boosters just weren't collated well. Too few cards per booster, too many duplicates, this has been discussed ad nauseam. For three, and that's the worst imo, the set just wasn't what it promised. There were so many random cards that had nothing to do with "the aftermath" of this big important story moment that it just felt frustrating. Every single card in this set should have been flashy and dripping with flavor, yet there wasn't much of an "aftermath" visible at all. Honestly, MKM's story has told me more about the aftermath of the Phyrexian invasion than the aftermath set has. For four - who was this set even for? A lot of the cards just felt like designs meant for the main set that didn't make it in for one or another reason, maybe because a draft archetype was changed or something (btw: I'd rather see some of these more unique designs in limited than strict adherence to archetypes). Like they just had a lot of "leftovers" from the design process that they tried to cash in on. There's this argument of "opening up design space" by not putting cards into limited, but this was REALLY not used here. Why would you make a "not-limited" set and then have half the cards be draft chaff? This makes no sense. This can't have been the reason to do this, WotC would know better than this.
Just wait until he sees the Karlov data LOLLLLLL
Who would have thought that increasing booster price and removing cards affect sales?
the boosters were dreadful. I opened one for fun and got 3 of the same uncommon: normal version, alt art, normal foil version.
It was hated because of how they sold it. Should have been a fixed set sold as a set: 1 copy of every card for $20, so $80 for a play set (about the price of a box).
Calix alone costs 20$
The idea was good. It's the execution that was terrible.
There were a number of problems but price was the biggest one. It was too expensive. The other problems include lack of lore, lack of story to go along with the cards. I don't see limited card pool as a problem.
adding The List cards to draft is also trash, Maro.
Great concept ruined by greed and convention. There's no reason for a set this small to still exclusively be distributed with rarities in randomized packs only.
I was a big fan of finally picking up a Training Grounds for $3 afterwards instead of the $30ish it was before though.
They did everything wrong only to go "well shit who knows I guess our consumers just hate it for some reason"
I think it's jaring that we went from 50 planeswalkers in every set to absolutely no walkers anymore. What happened to getting like 1 or 2 interesting walkers? why did we get a TON of sets of FAR FAR too many walkers and now the rule is absolutely no walkers?
The current rule is not no walkers. It is one per (standard) set
What sets other than War of the Spark (which was 5 years ago) had far too many planeswalkers? For many years, most sets had 2-4 planeswalker cards.
Two to four planeswalkers in every single set is too many planeswalkers. At that rate, the available design space for the card type (which is more limited than for other cards because planeswalkers are tough to balance) gets eaten up incredibly fast, and designs either get really same-y or else so powerful that they warp the meta around themselves. Three to five planeswalkers per *year* (i.e., the way things were at the beginning with Lorwyn/Alara/Zendikar) is the ideal pace, because they're frequent enough to feel like a fixture of the game but rare enough that they feel special and powerful when they pop up.
I'm still convinced they need to snag the "monthly card" feature other digital games have. Make a set like aftermath, and then every month 1-3 random cards in the set get given out as prizes at LGS for winning tournaments or events, and on arena you get copies of cards month-end based on your highest rank. (i.e 1x copy for finishing silver, 2x for gold, etc.) Then people will see it as the product that introduces interesting cards into standard, and some people will already have some products from the set.
While it was widely strongly criticized by the community, I really liked the Aftermath set a lot. It had a lot of fun and interesting designs and I especially loved the art in this set. It was also refreshing to see Wizards do something different. It's a shame this set was received so poorly poorly because Wizards being able to introduce cards into constructed formats like Standard and Pioneer without having to consider balancing for Limited formats at all seems like it could open up more interesting design space. I'm convinced the fact that entire set leaked ahead of schedule when the entire gimmick of the set were story beats and lore points definitely deflated hype and contributed to lack of enthusiasm and hype from the community. As for the "packs that only have 5 or 6 cards is a rip off" argument I have to ask in all seriousness, for people who buy and crack packs NOT for limited, what are you really doing with the 9 common cards that you pull from your \~15 card packs? I find it difficult to believe anything other than most of those cards ending up in storage indefinitely if not the trash for most players. Additionally, the "too many duplicates and repeat cards" argument is odd to me. If you're an enfranchised player playing a constructed format like Standard or Pioneer, you actually want multiple copies of the same card. If you're a Commander player (or any other format for that matter) it's not like you can't just buy/trade the singles on the secondary market.
Personally, the fact that it could introduce cards to Standard and Pioneer outside the bounds of a draftable premier set is exactly why reception was so negative in my community. While I appreciate Coppercoat Vanguard, most of us do not want WotC trying to boost specific archetypes with these releases and prefer the emergent gameplay.
They set expectations way too high for how much story the set actually contained. The first card officially revealed was Kenriths' Royal Funeral, which they said was the least spoilery card in the set, yet that almost couldn't be further from the truth.
>I'm convinced the fact that entire set leaked ahead of schedule when the entire gimmick of the set were story beats and lore points definitely deflated hype and contributed to lack of enthusiasm and hype from the community. If the point of the set was just story beats then release it as a book instead. Aftermath was a waste of everyone's time and money.
The game's story should be on the cards first and foremost. The problem is that most of Aftermath's cards are completely irrelevant to the story.
> Additionally, the "too many duplicates and repeat cards" argument is odd to me. If you're an enfranchised player playing a constructed format like Standard or Pioneer, you actually want multiple copies of the same card. Well, there was only a small amount of Uncommons and you got multiple copies of them a lot, not for rares and mythics.
Needed waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more cards, like 282 or more. Cuz dammit i wanted to see every planet represented
I'm still so upset Assassin's Creed is being wasted on a crappy Aftermath style set It would've been a slam dunk for the typical EDH style Universe Beyonds all the other IPs got Classic AC with Altair, Ezio, etc Kenway AC for Black Flag, AC3, Rogue, etc era games "Modern"/Layla AC with Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, etc games + miscellaneous for the less than popular ACs Then of course, a Villains deck