Molluscs of the Multiverse: molluscan diversity in Magic: The Gathering | Hacker News Reader

Molluscs of the Multiverse: molluscan diversity in Magic: The Gathering

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42 pointszdw23 comments

I used to play MtG back in the nineties. I don't know how many expansions there have been since Revised came out but it must be more than twenty. I wonder how do they keep from duplicating cards? There's only so many traits. Every trait combination that makes sense must exist on a card by now?

Power creep. I stopped playing in 2004 or so, and the number of expansions since then has been a tad more than 20. And the number of traits and abilities has skyrocketed.

> Power creep.

You say that, but back in the day I played red, and the quintessential red card—Lightning Bolt—is now considered too powerful to keep in print.

Ackchyually, they just reprinted Lightning Bolt for one of the most recent sets: Final Fantasy (just came out in ~June 2025).

https://gatherer.wizards.com/FCA/en-us/40/lightning-bolt

This is only in the through the ages set and is not standard legal.

These through the ages cards are only reprints for formats like commander where it was already legal.

They do reprint it periodically—seems like it gets a bunch of specialty versions. But it hasn't been printed in a standard set in almost 15 years, as far as I know.

I mean, there's a dozen or so cards from the first set that have never been reprinted.

Lightning Bolt got reprinted for a number of years, before they rebalanced the game. It’s not one of the Power Nine :-)

I still play MTG:O and Arena sometimes... Back in the day, I started Playing in the Odyssey block and left the game by the Kamigawa block, nothing personal, just life and time to move on...

Right now it is like what happens when a product has been around for long enough, has reach popularity, and had had to reinvent itself and remain relevant by branching into way to many timelines. Something like what happened to WWE (nee WWF), in the early 90's it was just the one show, and remained stable during the Attitude era, after that they came up with crossovers, branching shows like Smackdown, repurposing wrestlers, increasingly crazier storylines, and more and more artifacts to remain relevant and squeeze as much revenue as it was possible...

MTG is just about the same, they are currently doing what started as parallel blocks with Universes Beyond but that are now merged into the traditional Standard storyline and it makes no sense, abilities are all over the place and they are now being rebranded and sprinkled with some "whatever helps the block" narrative that is just tiresome... Murders at Karlov Manor, for example, introduced some ridiculous mechanics about "suspecting" creatures... I mean, come on!

On the other hand they have caved for politics and at least 20% of the art doesn’t even make sense any more, in a card game... a fantasy card game... things don't make sense any more.

It's tiresome, and it's impossible to grasp the game any more...

Being mad about a game that you haven't played for 21 years is a wild choice.

I'm not mad at all, in the end, it's just entropy at play, that's all. Besides, I still play MTG. I just don't play physical cards any more because of practicality... but most people that play the game knows what I'm trying to say.

We absolutely do not know what you think you meant by bringing up politics.

Aragorn was black in the art for the lotr set. That's the only case of "politics" in art that I can think of in recent history. Maybe it is something different but given the particular tenor of people complaining about "politics" in mtg, I'm not confident.

Magic is one of those hobbies that defines many folks’ personalities from their youth. We identify with it long after we stop living the lifestyle.

2/1 for W was extremely efficient in your day. I miss those days

Foundations just reprinted Savannah Lions (the 2/1 for W). It's still a good card in Limited (one of two actual good, popular formats in MtG). The interaction soup people of thousands of cards? Actually good in commander (the other actually liked format, a causal game for four people).

MtG's primary problems are: Wizards trying to make formats happen, often making them worse in the process, and price creep on their printed cardboard from: UB price hikes and MH price hikes, rarelands, chase mythics, questionable rotation changes, Secret Lair fails, pro-scalper behavior, etc...

I run the famous Kird Ape/Taiga combo in my Kibo, Uktabi Prince commander deck. It's a turn one 2/3 with the right opening hand (easier now because there are a lot more mountain forests).

The game is definitely going through a metamorphosis right now with the focus on Universes Beyond (licensed IP crossovers) and "collectors", in some ways Hasbro is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Whatever form it takes going forward it's managed to repeatably re-engage my interest for the last thirty years which is more than can be said about any other game.

Wait what Kird Ape is still allowed in regular play? Back then it was one of the most OP common card out there.

Commander is a super casual format (that was not even controlled by Wizards of the Coast until relatively recently). Almost all cards from Magic's history are allowed with the caveat of no more than one of each named card per deck.

the definitely reprint cards; or release cards with slight differences in rules text but you'd be surprised how much creativity has come out of rules/play design since that time.

Every set will introduce two or three new mechanics. Some of the cards from that set will be entirely based around those mechanics (for example, Vehicles as artifacts that become creatures when "crewed" by other creatures). Many cards will be staples needed in every set with a new mechanic attached (e.g., "Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains X until end of turn"). Also, sometimes mechanics are tweaks and improvements to old ones that didn't pan out well.

I listen to the lead designer's (Mark Rosewater) Drive to Work podcast. He's worked for MTG as a contractor or employee since the mid 90s. He's mentioned this problem a couple times. His solutions: (1) See MTG as a basic rules system for playing different kinds of games. Makes sense, considering it has multiple win conditions and methods of achieving them. (2) With each set, focus on a theme and dive as deep as you can. There's been a "World's Fair steampunk" set, a titanic Lovecraftian monsters set, a Greek mythology set.

Did he ever mentioned the impact of AI on the game? Part of the fun back then was to craft a deck, tweak it, play test it etc etc. Nowadays kids would just ask chatgpt to do this instead?

People have been 'netdecking' (constructing powerful decks by assembling a list from off the internet) since long before this recent AI kick.

My favorite way to play is in a draft or other limited event where decks are constructed on the spot from freshly opened product and all players are on a pretty equal footing.

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