> For some reason, enfranchised MtG players think they have to buy everything WotC makes, and I think this leads to product fatigue. Players blame WotC, but the

> For some reason, enfranchised MtG players think they have to buy everything WotC makes, and I think this leads to product fatigue. Players blame WotC, but they are just trying to offer something for everyone. For many enfranchised players, that’s because they keep printing chase rares that power creep their way into staple status in older formats. Meaning, if you play competitively or semi-competitive eternal formats like legacy or edh, what used to be a very slow trickle of relevant cards from every other standard set is now 2-3 additional major releases a year, with dozens of cards at or above your format’s power level. In addition to printing more products that you must interface with to play it competitively, they also decide that more products should be allowed into those formats that previously would not be. As an example, the joke sets now are split between cards that are legal in legacy and commander and cards that aren’t, when before joke sets were entirely self contained and would never need to be considered by competitive players. Beyond power creep, the pressure to continually design new things that aren’t obviously just better versions of old things has driven them to use more and more text with more and more new rules per year, to the point where they don’t fit on the cards anymore and they must make reference to other cards outside the game. Take the recent initiative ability that brings up a card of more abilities, the rules of how to travel through them aren’t explained on either the original card or the dungeon card! It was created for fans of D&D, but it was strong enough to have a card banned from the legacy format. Established players in that format could not ignore it and still play competitively.