For all the "lmao pizza is a theme", its 5-6 cards. Shrine in ATLA had more of a slice of the set, and it was barely a thing.

TMNT set is actually a lot better and more coherent than everyone is saying, its just double whammied because it lives in the shadow of the 2 worst sets of the decade (Spiderman structurally and Un-in-Space tonally)

Some idle questions to unpack this

1. I assume the FF card Triple Triad isnt the same?
2. I assume (insert an Un-card with a Magic card on it) isnt the same?
3. Are sticker / attraction cards from Un-4 the same style of offense?

TMNT is just the 5th Un-set, released within the constraints of needing to make the cards Commander and Standard legal, and in that realm it is a clear winner even if the worldbuilding for Un-3 was top notch

The less secret thing being WotC/Valve/Blizzard self-legitimizing game design as a stable career path, direct routing past the old CMU students looking for an out to postdocs pipeline

The best I can offer is a post about how the 2010s broad tech boom was the secret thing that changed game design offices. Even pre-FAANG peak your disgruntled future biologists had 3 layers of fallback jobs that werent dicking around with cardboard.

Great direct example of microstuff that the TMNT set is doing better than Spiderman.

1. Hot Dog Cart is not Spiderman, its NYC. This is NYC, but also explicitly TMNT

2. It tells a specific story, isn't just jarring name on generic object. Caught in the Brights legacy lives on.

Debated Mutavault for the block, but the OG is too good

This lets the set win at both reproducibility (Timmy sees Elves, drafts Elves easy) and replayability (different Elementals sub-decks depending if you get Travelers vs Shinestrikers). Add in the matched scales across types so theres no default bad matchups and the format gets its charm.

Figured out the joke here. The set opts out of prior Kindred set models where there was heavy common typal support and leans into Guild set setups where you get 1 good rate "gold" common then load up on power uncommons and rares.

Kanye opening for Usher in 2004 is my immediate guess

Really impressed with how Lorwyn Eclipsed limited takes two F-tier sets of draft mechanics, basically just runs it all back, and produces a C+ outcome. Rivals Aetherdrift in biggest Limited format overperformers from their fundamentals.

Right before Gavin Verhey went to WotC, he wrote an article about topics he had started to write about but never finished. One of those stuck with me.

Anyways, here it is 15 years later.

My lone match vs Kai was Round 8 of PT Theros. I was on a hyper aggro Rakdos deck. Cackler, Spike Jester, Mogis Marauders, Dreadbore, Lightning Strike, etc.

Anyways that was my first match vs Mono Blue Devotion with my gets soloed by Frostburn Weird, cant kill Master of Waves deck.

Yea the irony here is that everyone arguing is wrong, Richmond has great food and an exceptional art museum and only fails as an event city if you have to fly into DC, drive 2 hours, and never leave the hall.

Ive listened to Rumors at least 200 times in the last year, due to an executive parenting decision that full good albums were the way to go for kid music.

I guess the point is: album still great, you can't repeat your way into it not going too hard.

The big pitfall dodged is you get here via Neon Dynasty, but quickly run into two issues:

1. The core Lorwyn theme mechanics suck, where it was the filler ones on Kamigawa that did
2. You are 10 lore years out, not 10000, so you don't get a free hard reset on many things.

FWIW, I'm nitpicking Lorwyn in the context of it being a good return despite a lot of weird pitfalls. Lots of clear lessons learned from not just Lorwyn 1 and Ixalan, but recent adjacent failures like Zendikar Rising. Delivers what it advertises, minus maybe 2 Giant and Treefolk fan service hits.

What do you think it does?

Yes the primary play pattern of choose your biggest thing, then sac something completely unrelated, your opponent immediately dies is a head scratcher

Minor nitpick 2:

I would bet at least 80% of people who cast Soul Immolation so far dont actually know what the card does.

Also unsure if that number is over 50% within R&D for the card as printed. Easier to believe it was an Oko -1 error than the actual play was intentional, even if its fair.

My extremely nitpick complaint about Lorwyn Eclipsed: the Goblins needed to be 15% uglier, bc the art direction leaning into clean goat horns makes parsing Black common creature types worse.

Thinking about how WorC can basically put whatever stat line they want on the Kithkin one of these, bc in the era of standalone sets and half being UB with Halflings or w/e this basically has Companion: Play our exact FFL decklist

Also related: the Jeskai control decks being largely Jeskai Revelation backed by hoping 1.5 of your removal spells line up at the right tempo parity to get to 7 mana. Cruel Ultimatum era at least had plausible deniability that your other 56 cards won games.

Definitely sucks for all 5 people allocated preview slots

Weirdly adjacent to Shadows over Innistrad Standard, but instead of an Avacyn on top of the heap theres 7 variants of Brood Monitor loops or Zulaport Cutthroat kills.

Finally playing Standard and its just the deck builder experience in Magic form. All about engine output size and timing, little about baseline game resources

Not sure this is bad at these rates, does directly stem from being 3 Red bans deep. Cant be faster, arent forced to play Cut Down variants

This was also my first read, especially since my experiences with Appa have largely been "this is a strong rate flier with some upside" and not "this is a game warping bomb"

Its the American way of generational telephone Some woman married into a Scandinavian family, half learned 5 recipes from their mother-in-law who half spoke English and did 0 measurements, then that gets passed down 1-2 generations as Norwegian pot pie or whatever