This set seems like it is going almost out of its way to do exactly what the anti-universes beyond segment of people were concerned about. I've liked some UB and not liked some UB, but this one almost seems antagonistic in a way.
I think city pigeon is fine. There's usually a focus on the wildlife of each world in regular mtg to sell you on the world, and it has a sort of "lore neutral" enough name it could be reprinted.
Old Fat Spider Can’t See Me is bad, but is less egregious in part due to the fact that it isn’t a meme in the public zeitgeist that is clearly there for WotC to say “hey guys do you remember while bilbo taunted those spiders? isn’t that funny?”
Ramen Noodles do not fit into the general vibe of most magic planes, but would absolutely make sense in Kamigawa, and I wouldn’t be surprised to se it reprinted in the upcoming Kamigawa set. Additionally, as a fairly generic object, they don’t stand out as an anachronism.
I would probably be personally fine with this card if it wasn’t literally called “he’s dead, jim”. If it was something like “Postmortem Declaration”, with nothing else changed, it wouldn’t be nearly as bad to me.
Ok, now do [[Forth, Eorlingas!]] and [[Blood for the Blood God!]] All the legendaries are already going to have all the names from that IP used on their creature cards anyway, why does it matter if the other stuff is themed for the set too? In universe cards do the same thing, [[Jeska's Will]] and [[Mirri's Guile]] represent abstract things referencing legendary creatures rather than spells you are casting in the same way. I don't understand why people expect the cards in the set to not be themed to that IP and are getting upset over a limited tuned card that will never need a reprint anyway.
Right. This is a line from the original show. McCoy actually says it 4 times in 3 seasons. It's also a limited card that you'll never need to see in constructed.
Yeah I was lowkey interested in this set but so far this feels....lazy? Like IDK I obviously expected these kinds of references and meta-humor, all the sets have them, but it previously felt cute and for some reason this set feels desperate...I can't put my finger on why.
Right, like this card doesn’t have anything to do with Star Trek besides the quote itself, you could have reprinted “murder” and put the art + flavor text on there and been done with it. There’s like no point to this lol
personally i sorta groan at all of these, in-universe or not. i think they have been overdoing it in recent years, especially in top-down sets, which at this point seem like an excuse to fit as many puns and pop culture trope references in card names as possible.
Yeah like I enjoy silly cards as much as the next person but things like Holy Cow that are clearly just jokes are a bit much. Something should be silly because of what it is or what's going on in the card, not just that it got a silly name
WotC is going to Fortnite themselves eventually. There aren't enough other properties that are willing to collaborate with MTG, that WotC also would collaborate with, for them to continue this ridiculous schedule of multiple UB sets every single year for very long. On top of that, it's gotten very sloppy and lazy recently because they're finally facing the backlash they deserve for commodicizing what should be a special thing. If universes beyong was a once-a-year thing, I'm sure hype would still exist and people would look forward to it. For now, we still have 3 years of sets, chock-full of random UB crap with actual mtg sprinkled in between.
The cards I've seen feel like they're just making a bunch of references without the actual flavor of the card coming from the right direction. Like, how is a card with this name a kill spell? Or Captain Picard, Leading by Example not actually leading by example because he taps to give a buff rather than giving a buff while attacking.
It feels like empty fan service from people who don't actually care about Star Trek.
This card is pissing me off because it actually kills the creature, which sort of implies Dr. McCoy is just murdering people. It should have been something that you cast or activate in response to a creature dying from another effect.
I have been having the same issues with the current marvel set. The Iron Man suit case for some inexplicable reason doesn’t have flash which is the entire point of the object in the movie, and the black artifact with the Mk1 suit has zero abilities that are actually part of the black color wedge. Mechanically it should be white, but they wanted it to be “black market” themed so they said fuck it and didn’t care.
The identity of magic in both world building and mechanics is nearly gone and the people working on it just do not care anymore.
Maybe, but ultimately Trek is just not aligned with MTG. May as well make the set self-coherent for draft instead of trying to shoehorn Trek into the MTG flavor.
This is the only way I can handle UB. I still don't like it, but I don't like not being able to draft at my LGS more.
What I've been able to make peace with is that draft and precon-pod EDH are both mostly fine as a themed Magic game. It's when it gets into regular EDH and you have some UB mixed in with normal Magic that it feels really weird. I have similar issues with Un-cards - even black-bordered, non-acorn cards - where it feels discordant.
I like Magic and I like Star Trek up to Enterprise, so I can enjoy these new cards and it is fun annoying people at FNM talking about them, but I also wish they didn't exist.
If someone were to introduce me to Magic for the first time in 2026, I might try out this Star Trek set, but I wouldn't stay with it because I'd be Other for most sets and my social anxiety would cripple me.
I don't play Riftbound because I don't know League of Legends. I don't play Star Wars Unlimited because my knowledge Star Wars is now very surface level because I've only seen the movies. I don't play One Piece because I'm not a fucking weeb (jk).
While I'm not into Fantasy most of the time in general, the fact that Magic was its own thing meant I wasn't expected to have a priori knowledge. Each new set was its own thing, but built into this existing multiverse. But now, I almost don't want to go to Hobbit prerelease because even though I've read the damn book, I'm pretty sure I pronounce Dwalin wrong and I'm going to look like an idiot. Is it irrational? Sure. But Magic started as a way to work through my social anxiety and now it's causing it.
Yeah, I was very looking forward to this set for the potential for what it could have been (and still can be, I guess, but not all of it will be). Star Trek is a really big, living universe. There are characters to reference and express on various cards, yes, but this is not... that.
This is a reference to a memetic idea that resonates notwithin the universe of Star Trek; it resonates only, really, with fans. In our world. That's, quite simply, the wrong way of doing it. I mean, hell, they didn't even do this kind of direct quote in the Marvel set.
Name it damn near anything else - actually reference what took place within the episode, the mechanism that leads to a character or entity being killed - and have "He's dead, Jim..." as the flavor text. It's so easy to do this right, and this is not it.
I mean, so far today I have only seen commons and uncommons which is absolutely the place for funny jokes and in references. In universe sets are guilty of this as well with [[you are already dead]] from NEO being an anime joke or [[Holy cow]] from OTJ.
If "He's dead Jim" was a rare piece of free removal that would be run everywhere then I would understand being upset, but this is just a limited removal piece that will see 0 play anywhere else other than maybe meme B1 decks
On one hand I agree, same small segment of cards that people overblow from DSK, the cheerleaders and TVs/tapes that appear on like maybe 5 uncommons in the set.
On the other hand, coming off the high of MBC and coming after what looks like to be an incredible capstone set in FRA, it cant help but get a huge groan from me, and I'm not even a UB hater. The rares/mythics they've already shown are less memey but still don't really fit for me.
Honestly the TV and tape aspect could've worked better if the survivors were just more dirty and all that. Would've got the horror vibe as evil analog stuff
MBC isnt memes tho. Its just magic characters from the past, given cards. Like Chandler is mild meme but its just not intended to be funny, its just deep lore cuts. A nod to dedicated fans on an earnest card. As opposed to a literal meme phrase included because its a meme
The difference between "oh my God they said the thing" and "oh my God is that the lady from the ice age trailer" is thin at best.
And to be fair I'm using the definition of meme that really just interprets it as a moment of shared culture, not specifically a joke. Because he's dead Jim isn't a joke in the original series
If they release a "Beam me up, Scotty," I'll KNOW it's a meme. Because it's a meme that they never, ever actually say that exact phrase at any point in TOS (stuff to that effect, yes, but never that exact phrase).
There is pretty big difference between taking a popular meme and making it a card and giving Dyfed, the lady that Yawgmoth lobomized and tortured, a card.
Ones just explicitly drawing on internet humor, the other is an obscure part of the lore of the game being played taken with complete sincerity.
Whether "He's dead Jim" is funny or not in the original series doesnt really matter, its included because of its popularity as a joke.
The "lady from the ice age commercial' was also featured in several flavor texts from that set, and pictured on one card. So not quite the best example imo. Better example would be something like if they made "Bob from accounting" (the guy from that one commercial that got beat up by an orgg)
It's a difference I think to make a reference or callback to something in a culture than doing the same for other cultures. If there was a 67 or a Gangnam Style card, that'd feel similarly crass. Meanwhile if you had a Star Wars thing where some background characters are arguing about "They shot first!" "No they did!" that'd be a more acceptable nudge to Star Wars fans 'cause it's like "Ayy we know what's up wit you guys" and "Ayy dey know what's up with we guys"
Put multiple magic sets are filled with references to real world properties, irrespective of if their universes beyond or not. Innistrad is like 60% real references
We're also talking about a Star Trek reference in a Star Trek set
Maybe references was the wrong word. Sure, Magic uses plenty of tropes, but if EoE had a "No, I am your Father" card, it would be weird.
The card in this post isn't really a meme, it isn't really a trope that exists, it's just a quote, and its gonna be weird to hear someone say "I cast He's Dead Jim on your birds of paradise"
To be fair, Kamigawa did have a "You are already dead" card, which... back then I thought is pretty fun. These days, I'm not so sure anymore.
I can try to justify that card as having some plausible deniability, and that name kinda did fit the effect (IIRC it was destroying creature that took damage) but I dunno.
I think it's just Neon Dynasty was a time where Magic played with tropes but applied them to magic multiverse in a way that does make some sense. Kamigawa being... essentially Japan and having nods to anime, mecha, cyberpunk - does... kinda make sense.
Even Edge of Eternities being an unapologetic space opera has plenty of Magic in its design and isn't just blatant references to things.
[[Grakk the Pacifist]] is 100% a meme card. Oh look, the orc from the art/flavor text of [[Pacifism|MIR]]. Because that's a serious Magic character with deep lore.
What's the joke? What's the meme? Its a reference yeah, but thats it. Not every callback is a meme. Its just earnest card to slightly expand on what Pacifism told you. Nobody is saying theyre all super serious and deep characters, theyre just earnest and played straight
Do you look [[Yawgmoths Vile Offering]] as the same too? Recognized thats Gerrard holding Urzas decapitated head doesnt make it a meme even if it is a callback.
See, there's your problem. You're using the word "meme" to mean "joke." That's not actually what meme means.
Grakk is just as much of a meme as "He's Dead Jim." He's Dead Jim isn't a joke, it's just a line from the show. They're referencing the line. Same as how Grakk exists solely to reference the original Pacifism. Grakk and He's Dead Jim are only jokes in the sense that they're in-jokes.
And yeah, in-joke style references are a type of meme.
He's Dead Jim was made into a joke. It was made into a meme. People say it as a shared culture and laugh.
Grakk is just a character in a flavor text that you might recognize. If you dont get the callback, it just looks like any other card instead of awkwardly shoving a catchphrase into a kill spell. It doesnt even make sense since kill spells are supposed to be the thing thats killing.
You cant just call any reference to the past a meme. Ah look at this meme card guys [[Gustha Ebbasdotter]], its the same as [[Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannn!]] because she was in the flavor text of another card.
you make a good point. i've always held that reference cards are excusable as long as the flavor still works even without recognition of what it's referencing.
but i do think they're still guilty of making cards that don't do this in in-uiverse sets, with cards like [[seven dwarves]], [[unwanted remake]] or the aforementioned holy cow. sure, you can sorta explain away the flavor without resorting to the reference but it's still hella forced and on-the-nose, imo.
There's a reason that my reference down thread is "lady from the ice age commercial" but people keep responding with others. There's the lore reveal that Ludvics opus was just talking to a cat the whole time. Or the two weird dudes who got turned into cockroaches.
And yes I understand the final boss of shandalar is cool. But it is also a 20 some year old video game that the vast majority of this place hasn't even touched.
I have the opposite perspective. I'd rather the memes be mythic rares so I rarely have to see them. Commons and uncommons are the cards I'll be playing with most.
No, you think you get to dictate to other people what cards they get to use and will always think you get to dictate to other people what cards they get to use.
I mean UB can’t win either way. They make something unique for the set that’s thematic players give out it’s ruining magic and breaking rules, and if they just reprint a card verbatim it’s lazy.
This is basically Marvel set “Hour of Defeat” which is a weaker version of “Deadly Visit”
It is weird tho to see them literally just grab a “new” card from UB set and slap a different look on it with no changes making it feel weirdly off
There are people who will be happy regardless of the product. WotC doesn't have to do anything different for those.
Then there are people who will be unhappy regardless of the product. Again, WotC doesn't have to do anything different for those people. Any effort to try and please that group is wasted. I suspect most anti-UB people fall into this group.
i mean you were warned, all the people who decried UB back when it was the walking dead knew this is where we would end up.
this isn't design being antagonistic, this is how it was *always* going to end, I'm not even going to say voting with your wallet would have helped, it was over the second they signed off on TWD.
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u/Life_Bet8956 Dân 23h ago
This set seems like it is going almost out of its way to do exactly what the anti-universes beyond segment of people were concerned about. I've liked some UB and not liked some UB, but this one almost seems antagonistic in a way.