this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Cecilily discusses the financialisation of Pokemon cards as an investment vehicle.

It's one thing that makes me pause in teaching my niece how to play, I don't want her to get caught up in the abstraction of the cards as anything other than pieces of cardboard with funny pictures of animals

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[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have such a hard time with this because on the one hand a lot more of my friends are suddenly playing magic the gathering, on the other hand I'm playing commander against Aang and the 12th doctor.
And before that Hasbro was also fucking shit up by having them spit out ever more gimmicky blocks. Mark Rosewater talked in his Drive To Work series about keywords and complexity - how a game has a sort of ceiling for how complex it can be, before it becomes incomprehensible. Playing now I constantly need to look at cards and I have no fucking idea what's going on with dungeons and sagas (though I do love sagas, they're kind of straightforward, but still, there's too much going on) and 17 bajillion keywords everywhere. 10.000 needles isn't a fucking keyword, fuck offff

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I quit playing edh/commander as soon as it started to smell like fortnite and I'm glad i switched to the children's monster game

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

Commander turned to shit shortly after they started making precons for commander. The first few decks were decent value for money and then they turned on the moneymaker. It sucks so much. It used to be a fun little thing where you found a legendary and decided to have some fun with it, see what you could squeeze out and now it's just slop and every single legendary is made with commander in mind and it has a bahillion effects and ugh.
Take me back to the days of kitchen-table "canadian highlander" with Krenko and Talrand

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

wotc ruins formats by designing cards for them. they should go back to focusing on what used to be a normal standard powerlevel, and let everything else be an accident handled by the community/an organized play body that isn't beholden to the beancounters.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 1 points 1 hour ago

It's not even that they ruin them out of maliciousness or anything - now it's greed, but it used to just be a sort of accident.

The whole concept of formats like EDH or pauper was basically a jailbreak or a refitting. "Hey what if we used this machine for something it wasn't supposed? It will be janky, but it could be fun!" It's like when people refit TTRPGs or mod video games to be in other settings. As soon as it is embraced by the machine it changes the purpose.

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

For real. Back when you would read one line of text on a card and it would turn into the entire floor covered in cards because you had an idea for a deck.

Back when "you got that deck off the internet! " was an accusation, not an assumption

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Back when you would read one line of text on a card and it would turn into the entire floor covered in cards because you had an idea for a deck.

Original Innistraad block sicko-wistful
And now it's all just content. Feel like shit, just want him back - "Him" is the collective reaction to Garruk's Companion - A 3/2 for 2???

[–] Acute_Engles@hexbear.net 2 points 20 hours ago

It's just a better bear has power creep gone too far

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Mark Rosewater talked in his Drive To Work series about keywords and complexity - how a game has a sort of ceiling for how complex it can be, before it becomes incomprehensible

Oh that sounds like some fun game theory I'll check that podcast out

1208 episodes

scared

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 2 points 20 hours ago

So I couldn't find the episode, but this is an article where he touches on the same subject, from around the time that episode would have been out I think. https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/lenticular-design-2014-03-31
12 years ago... Christ.

[–] BanMeFromPosting@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

I haven't listened for years and don't think I could get back into it. If I were to I would go some years back - to when he didn't have to defend dogshit game design and then I'd pick an episode with a title that interested me. He used to be a pretty good yapper that would say interesting stuff.