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| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
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| Legacy | Legal |
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| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Leonardo da Vinci
Legendary Creature — Human Artificer
: Until end of turn, Thopters you control have base power and toughness X/X, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
, : Draw a card, then discard a card. If the discarded card was an artifact card, exile it from your graveyard. If you do, create a token that's a copy of it, except it's an 0/2 Thopter artifact creature with flying in addition to its other types.
legendofa on Is Universe Beyond good or …
8 months ago
capwner M:tG is, essentially, a luxury entertainment product. If a luxury entertainment product doesn't build broad interest, it won't get a consumer base. If it doesn't have a consumer base, it doesn't sell. If it doesn't sell, it doesn't make money. If it doesn't make money, it gets canceled. WotC has canceled or hugely reduced tons of M:tG products because they weren't selling: Duel Decks, Planeswalker Decks, Archenemy Schemes, Planechase Planes, the block structure, core sets, and that's just off the top of my head. People spoke with their wallets; the didn't want those. People are speaking with their wallets now; they do want UB.
The integrity of the game is their profit, as I see it. They can't force people to buy Magic cards. Nobody relies on Magic cards to physically survive another day. They don't provide shelter, transportation, or nutrition. If it's bad product, people won't buy it in enough numbers to be sustainable, and profit falls. If it's good product, people will buy it, and profit rises. Corporate greed is absolutely a thing, but in this case, profits are driven directly by demand. How many people are buying cards only because it has That Guy/Thing (apologies to KamSandwich) on it, with no regard to quality? I don't think Final Fantasy and LotR became the best selling sets ever on the strength of basement dwellers alone, and I don't think Assassin's Creed was forced into the hands of anyone who didn't want it.
I don't really welcome UB. I don't know enough about the franchises they tend to pick to get super excited about them, and they haven't yet hit anything I would get super excited about. But I can appreciate them as game pieces, and as representatives of a world I haven't taken the time to learn about. Further, I dislike UB when it references actual, real-world specific people and places like Leonardo da Vinci or Pompeii. So I'm far from a diehard UB freak. I'm a UB accepter.
For why they look awful, that's an art problem, not a UB problem. There's plenty of subpar, poorly made, off-putting, and controversial art in the M:tG IP. For the mechanics, there are people who want every counterspell and every discard effect banned everywhere, because they make the game impossible to play. What's the point of even starting a game when the control player's just going to say no to everything? How is that any fun?
And for one detail that I haven't been able to find anywhere, could you please provide the percentage of UB sales that greedy collectors and waifu-hunting baby players provide, compared to the number of real players? Or, more directly, could you please provide a breakdown of UB sales metrics? I've legitimately, if casually, been looking for soemthing publicly available for a while.