u/Ink_Ocean

Disclaimer: This is not a post about anyone specifically, just the content meta in general.

Every video feels stale; finance, news, deck building, gameplay. I feel like I get inundated by pages of content that never have anything original to say and are constantly pushing either money, optimization, or bad news about something wizards has done.
No one feels genuinely excited anymore, just content and resigned for the future of years more powercreep, cash grabs, and disappointing anti flavor.

I don’t mind any of these subjects but like “wow did you know umizawa’s jite just jumped after being unbanned?” Wow like who cares? Who is sitting on stacks of cards waiting for the go ahead to sell from a YouTube video?? It just feels like fomo bait, like: “sucks you didn’t buy this earlier!” 😒 and it’s made into content every time individual prices even marginally increase.

Or like in optimization, it’s just constant more and more to keep track of, prepare prepare prepare, update your list with this thing, or did you know this combo can… blah blah blah ugh.
Power isn’t interesting, story is. If deck optimization is just a quest for what is most correct in each slot, then there’s no room spent to even consider flavor and each bracket pushes towards its own tier of Cedh that can’t be escaped, and I’ve been seeing this in my bracket 2 and 3 games where stuff is getting FASTER very quickly. I literally had to politic to stop a turn 5 two spell insta kill against me at an LGS random the other day, and other decks are trending towards that, not away.

This content cycle makes me feel like I’m trying to swim out of a riptide of the same 8 infuriating topics every 2 months. Nothing feels good anymore :/ maybe that’s more about the world than magic, but it’s definitely a more than a little about magic.

/rant over, sorry if this comes across as too negative, I might delete if I’m alone on this.

I’m curious how often this happens. Please chime in with your stories below.

So last week at my LGS I was playing against a Tergrid deck, and at the end of the game I noticed a signed card of mine was not back in my pile.
I knew that card had been “stolen” by the tergrid effect, but the theft player then said no less than three times: “i gave you back all your cards””before I asked them to just flip their stack of cards revealing my one VERY OBVIOUSly different colored sleeve (sky blue vs their black sleeves).

(On a different occasion I had a theft player unironically eating a bbq sandwich at the table while taking cards.)

I’ve always been a little yucked by the idea of handing over my cards, but now I’m feeling really really gross about it. That card I almost lost would have been irreplaceable (though not monetarily significant).

Does anyone have any method for feeling better about dealing with theft as a mechanic? I don’t wanna use proxies, but short of that, the only other practicable method I know is deck size count check at the end. With 10-20 or 30 of my cards getting taken a game… it’s just so easy to miss one by accident.

It never feels like I’m 100% sure I got everything back, and I just hate dealing with a mechanic that forces me to double check that my opponent didn’t accidentally or intentionally take my cards when I was polite enough to let them use them. 😒

Looking for advice and other theft deck horror stories 🙌