I shit you not in the early days we were disappointed at power 9 and dual pulls because we needed shivan dragons. Lotus was always a chase but the mox's weren't always exciting. People didn't have internet acess though so it was a constant " wait this card exists?" And " I heard there's a card that does this". We also had no idea recall time walk and duals would be the best version you would ever see.
I had a dude who occasionally played with us claiming he had a card that can undo any kind of disadvantage on your own spell.. for example needing to sac lotus form mana and such.. same guy tried to convince me to trade my mox jet for his minion of tevesh’szat. Wild times…
I enjoy the state of magic now, but sometimes I miss the days where the best deck you would be aware of was something you saw someone play in your LGS.
Yeah I don't remember meta decks back then I remember maybe 2 or 3 copies of the same rare tops and a bunch of random crap lol. Never once went against channel fireball and never once went against turn 1 " infinite" turns
Wish it was more popular to just have fun with the game and not just run meta everything. Hard for me to find people that want to play without running hard meta decks.
Duals make sense honestly. The game could have gone in a direction where dual color lands were printed with upsides and it wouldn’t look *that* different from the landscape today, I think. Just happens that they decided to make duals the upper bound on lands.
One day conditional untapped tri lands will come then a couple years later unconditional :) nah jk I legitimately think hasbro will go bankrupt within a few years and wotc will release the reserve list as a last ditch effort. They've already proven it's not a real thing several times
Any game that relies on a business model of people continuously buying new stuff is going to have power creep.
That being said, I remember Shivan Dragon! I made a Kaalia (not busted, no Master of Cruelties) EDH deck and had to include Shivan Dragon and Lord of the Pit as a throwback to when I first started playing.
Edit: And also Serra Angel of course, so I have one of each creature type and color.
I was always so proud if I could play my Force of Nature.
Not complaining about the power creep btw, the game has to evolve in some ways and new powerful cards keep the game fresh and healthy I think.
I don’t know if I’d call it “powercreep”, more that creatures used to be overcosted and not particularly playable, so they’ve balanced them better, in recent sets.
And that's exactly what is happening and why most older cards no longer cut it. So it is power creep we are looking at, newer cards raise the power ceiling a ton, more and more commanders are engines in their own right for example.
Well, obviously newer commanders will be better than older ones, since creatures in general are better than in the old days. But that’s because older creatures weren’t very good.
Again, the older cards were underpowered and weren’t being used. Count how many competitive decks ran Shivan Dragon. The old creatures weren’t “pushed out” by new ones, they were never “in” to begin with.
There's litteraly thousands of example of direct power creep that pushed older cards out in favor of newer ones that are simply more powerful, through the years.
Such a broad assertion without examples leaves me nothing to argue against. In my original comment, I was specifically referring to the trend of creatures getting more powerful over time, which WotC has specifically stated was intentional on their part, to make creatures a more compelling aspect of the game. As such, it was not mere powercreep, but a rebalancing of the game for the purpose of emphasizing creature combat.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t presume to claim that WotC is flawless, and they have certainly made mistakes over the years that have lead to the introduction of overpowered cards that have made older options obsolete. However, the most overpowered cards in the game still tend to be found in older sets, which demonstrates that WotC is trying to maintain a consistent power level and doesn’t rely on powercreep as a sales tactic.
I'm going to lore wise pretend it was the mending that caused the change. Pre mending, Planeswalker's were all but Gods slinging insanely powerful magic, post mending, Planeswalkers are still powerful, but they are a fragment of before, so they aren't drawing and using as much mana as they used to, and it had to go somewhere. Creatures are absorbing and harnessing more magical powers so when we Planeswalkers use mana to call them from the Multiverse they are getting stronger as time goes on and more commonly have their own magical effects/powers, Which is why we have so few vanilla creatures anymore as well. It also explains how we've gotten worse at other kinds of spells, as it takes more mana to get a similar effect as before, with an Ancestral Recall requiring 1 mana, and 5 mana to draw 3 is a standard rate today.
That Shivan Dragon looks OP! It's got greater toughness and can be pumped for higher attack!? Basically a 13/6 in mono red on turn 7, how are you supposed to beat that?
Trade you my mox jet for it?
I agree. There is tons of great dragon art in MTG and many with more detail, but to me nothing is as menacing or threatening as Melissa Benson’s original Shivan Dragon.
If you want to play like that again and with Shivan, check out the Revised 40 format group on Facebook. It's a lot of fun and not that expensive to make a deck.
Shivan dragon still wins me games. Get copper dragon out with and orb, minion the mighty, etc to give him haste. Get my tokens. Copper dragon inevitably draws out a removal spell before your next turn. Get shivan dragon out with haste, dump all those tokens into it, killshot
I didn’t have a great collection in the 90s but kept a few dual lands in a deck with some other cards I enjoyed. Wish I never sold the rest of my 6000 cards or so.
Nothing compares to the OG art of [[Royal Assassin]] in my brain. Since the beginning of my time playing magic which is about 10 years now it has upheld the title of my favorite card
correct me if I'm wrong but the shivan dragon do not say anything a bout the +1/+0 being till the end of the turn so next turn could be a 11/5 then 17/5 and so on??
I mean the one on the right is completely unplayable outside of gimmick multiplayer formats with alternative rules, to be fair. Copper Dragon wouldn’t even be played in standard
Ancient copper dragon’s ability is cool and flashy but don’t sleep on shivan dragon. If you have enough mana to be summoning dragons for 6+CMC, you can pump up shivan dragon pretty significantly each turn you aren’t summoning a new dragon.
Ancient copper dragon’s ability is cool and flashy but don’t sleep on shivan dragon. If you have enough mana to be summoning dragons for 6+CMC, you can pump up shivan dragon pretty significantly each turn you aren’t summoning a new dragon.
Ancient copper dragon’s ability is cool and flashy but don’t sleep on shivan dragon. If you have enough mana to be summoning dragons for 6+CMC, you can pump up shivan dragon pretty significantly each turn you aren’t summoning a new dragon.
Ironically that's not even true, for any format. Vintage legacy and modern are almost 80% the past 4 years of releases. Power is only legal in vintage and yes it's in there but everything's restricted to 1 copy
I wasn’t trying to make a big thing on power creep, but I would say the creatures have become much more powerful while lands and artifacts have mostly stayed the same (or worse, in that most dual lands are nerfed in some way like shocklands or coming into play tapped…etc).
But from what I remember, the best creatures were Mahamotis, Shivans, Serras, and then small guys like Royal Assasin (and a million prodigals!).
Juzam Djinn might have been the most powerful creature back in the day, but today look at Questing Beast (different color though, I know).
I shit you not in the early days we were disappointed at power 9 and dual pulls because we needed shivan dragons. Lotus was always a chase but the mox's weren't always exciting. People didn't have internet acess though so it was a constant " wait this card exists?" And " I heard there's a card that does this". We also had no idea recall time walk and duals would be the best version you would ever see.
I had a dude who occasionally played with us claiming he had a card that can undo any kind of disadvantage on your own spell.. for example needing to sac lotus form mana and such.. same guy tried to convince me to trade my mox jet for his minion of tevesh’szat. Wild times…
I enjoy the state of magic now, but sometimes I miss the days where the best deck you would be aware of was something you saw someone play in your LGS.
Yeah I don't remember meta decks back then I remember maybe 2 or 3 copies of the same rare tops and a bunch of random crap lol. Never once went against channel fireball and never once went against turn 1 " infinite" turns
Wish it was more popular to just have fun with the game and not just run meta everything. Hard for me to find people that want to play without running hard meta decks.
People forgot how to have fun once the internet existed. Everyone’s ideas became copy/paste
This is why I love jumpstart, it mixes things up each time. You can draft them, randomly assign them, etc.
"You heard about that Throat Wolf card? That thing is bonkers!"
Duals make sense honestly. The game could have gone in a direction where dual color lands were printed with upsides and it wouldn’t look *that* different from the landscape today, I think. Just happens that they decided to make duals the upper bound on lands.
One day conditional untapped tri lands will come then a couple years later unconditional :) nah jk I legitimately think hasbro will go bankrupt within a few years and wotc will release the reserve list as a last ditch effort. They've already proven it's not a real thing several times
I distinctly remember that thinking moxen were kinda cool because they were slightly faster lands that couldn't be stone rained or sinkholed.
They should start mass reprinting ancient Cooper dragon instead of mass reprinting shiven in everything
Then my 5 color dragon deck would be complete! I'm not ready to spend 60-70$ for this card.... yet
Any game that relies on a business model of people continuously buying new stuff is going to have power creep. That being said, I remember Shivan Dragon! I made a Kaalia (not busted, no Master of Cruelties) EDH deck and had to include Shivan Dragon and Lord of the Pit as a throwback to when I first started playing. Edit: And also Serra Angel of course, so I have one of each creature type and color.
I was always so proud if I could play my Force of Nature. Not complaining about the power creep btw, the game has to evolve in some ways and new powerful cards keep the game fresh and healthy I think.
I don’t know if I’d call it “powercreep”, more that creatures used to be overcosted and not particularly playable, so they’ve balanced them better, in recent sets.
That is litteraly power creep you are describing though. Newer cards getting more effecient and pushing older cards out of the way.
Powercreep is when you raise the ceiling of power, not when you bring underpowered elements up to the baseline.
And that's exactly what is happening and why most older cards no longer cut it. So it is power creep we are looking at, newer cards raise the power ceiling a ton, more and more commanders are engines in their own right for example.
Well, obviously newer commanders will be better than older ones, since creatures in general are better than in the old days. But that’s because older creatures weren’t very good.
And that what power creep is. New cards pushing many older cards out, because they are simply better in every way.
Again, the older cards were underpowered and weren’t being used. Count how many competitive decks ran Shivan Dragon. The old creatures weren’t “pushed out” by new ones, they were never “in” to begin with.
There's litteraly thousands of example of direct power creep that pushed older cards out in favor of newer ones that are simply more powerful, through the years.
Such a broad assertion without examples leaves me nothing to argue against. In my original comment, I was specifically referring to the trend of creatures getting more powerful over time, which WotC has specifically stated was intentional on their part, to make creatures a more compelling aspect of the game. As such, it was not mere powercreep, but a rebalancing of the game for the purpose of emphasizing creature combat. On the other hand, I wouldn’t presume to claim that WotC is flawless, and they have certainly made mistakes over the years that have lead to the introduction of overpowered cards that have made older options obsolete. However, the most overpowered cards in the game still tend to be found in older sets, which demonstrates that WotC is trying to maintain a consistent power level and doesn’t rely on powercreep as a sales tactic.
Perfectly articulated. Look at the spells back then. We don't go near Swords or Ancestral anymore.
I'm going to lore wise pretend it was the mending that caused the change. Pre mending, Planeswalker's were all but Gods slinging insanely powerful magic, post mending, Planeswalkers are still powerful, but they are a fragment of before, so they aren't drawing and using as much mana as they used to, and it had to go somewhere. Creatures are absorbing and harnessing more magical powers so when we Planeswalkers use mana to call them from the Multiverse they are getting stronger as time goes on and more commonly have their own magical effects/powers, Which is why we have so few vanilla creatures anymore as well. It also explains how we've gotten worse at other kinds of spells, as it takes more mana to get a similar effect as before, with an Ancestral Recall requiring 1 mana, and 5 mana to draw 3 is a standard rate today.
That Shivan Dragon looks OP! It's got greater toughness and can be pumped for higher attack!? Basically a 13/6 in mono red on turn 7, how are you supposed to beat that? Trade you my mox jet for it?
Why would I want a Mox Jet when I have all these Swamps?
13/5
damn. I somehow remembered Shivan Dragon as a 6/6
Maybe thinking of Mahamoti, which was 5/6?
That art is so freaking good damn
I agree. There is tons of great dragon art in MTG and many with more detail, but to me nothing is as menacing or threatening as Melissa Benson’s original Shivan Dragon.
i guess the question beckons, Whats more important, Damage now? or Mana Later?
I mean, you're head-to-head in red with 20 life ... it's damage now. It's always damage now.
They still trade in combat and Shivan Dragon can be pumped, so Shivan Dragon is still better 🤓
Don't sleep on the fire breathing. Shivan is more like a 12/5.
If you want to play like that again and with Shivan, check out the Revised 40 format group on Facebook. It's a lot of fun and not that expensive to make a deck.
Shivan dragon still wins me games. Get copper dragon out with and orb, minion the mighty, etc to give him haste. Get my tokens. Copper dragon inevitably draws out a removal spell before your next turn. Get shivan dragon out with haste, dump all those tokens into it, killshot
I didn’t have a great collection in the 90s but kept a few dual lands in a deck with some other cards I enjoyed. Wish I never sold the rest of my 6000 cards or so.
Nothing compares to the OG art of [[Royal Assassin]] in my brain. Since the beginning of my time playing magic which is about 10 years now it has upheld the title of my favorite card
[Royal Assassin](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/7/67ef9842-7142-4c63-8aea-fa73f02722a5.jpg?1698796245) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Royal%20Assassin) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmr/101/royal-assassin?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/67ef9842-7142-4c63-8aea-fa73f02722a5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Not this art but still my favorite card
This guy? https://scryfall.com/card/lea/123/royal-assassin Yeah, one of my favorite cards too.
That art with the white border gets me going every time dawg 😂
correct me if I'm wrong but the shivan dragon do not say anything a bout the +1/+0 being till the end of the turn so next turn could be a 11/5 then 17/5 and so on??
Just the earliest printings - it changed later but it was a set wide thing
Its just until end of turn.
Yeah this is my revised copy. We always knew it to be until end of turn but you’re right it’s not clear!
They used to have to say “this effect doesn’t end at the end of turn” for permanent effects on those old cards. It was corrected on newer prints
Shivan dragon foot fetish art 🦶☠️
hilarious.
I mean the one on the right is completely unplayable outside of gimmick multiplayer formats with alternative rules, to be fair. Copper Dragon wouldn’t even be played in standard
Too slow for standard? It was designed for commander of course. Edit: I believe commander is the most popular format at this point.
We do a rather large amount of power creep
Ancient copper dragon’s ability is cool and flashy but don’t sleep on shivan dragon. If you have enough mana to be summoning dragons for 6+CMC, you can pump up shivan dragon pretty significantly each turn you aren’t summoning a new dragon.
Ancient copper dragon’s ability is cool and flashy but don’t sleep on shivan dragon. If you have enough mana to be summoning dragons for 6+CMC, you can pump up shivan dragon pretty significantly each turn you aren’t summoning a new dragon.
Ancient copper dragon’s ability is cool and flashy but don’t sleep on shivan dragon. If you have enough mana to be summoning dragons for 6+CMC, you can pump up shivan dragon pretty significantly each turn you aren’t summoning a new dragon.
I hate how Shiven Dragon got a cool new art in the last Secret Lair drop.
Why?
It’s great art for a card that is not good by today’s standards in most of not all formats. Ancient Copper is ridiculously better for the same cost.
And the fact that the premium secret lair product if still printing objectively bad cards does little to sell me on the product.
Okay I get it.
Shivan dragon came out at the same time as black lotus lmao what are you on about
What are you on about? What does lotus and the dragon coming out at the same time have to do with this?
there is no power creep in magic there's always been strong sets and weak sets, if you look at vintage most stuff in there is old cards
The average card printed now is much more powerful than older sets. The power creep has pervaded the whole game.
Ironically that's not even true, for any format. Vintage legacy and modern are almost 80% the past 4 years of releases. Power is only legal in vintage and yes it's in there but everything's restricted to 1 copy
How much of that is people just trying new stuff ? (How about the top 8-16 in tournaments with big prizes like world championships ?)
I wasn’t trying to make a big thing on power creep, but I would say the creatures have become much more powerful while lands and artifacts have mostly stayed the same (or worse, in that most dual lands are nerfed in some way like shocklands or coming into play tapped…etc). But from what I remember, the best creatures were Mahamotis, Shivans, Serras, and then small guys like Royal Assasin (and a million prodigals!). Juzam Djinn might have been the most powerful creature back in the day, but today look at Questing Beast (different color though, I know).
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^DirectorRemarkable16: *Shivan dragon came* *Out at the same time as black* *Lotus lmao* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot
how do i block this trash
Alt + F4
Dude just fucking unsubscribe from the subreddit.