dukepaulus asked: What do you say to the people who feel that their favorite parts of magic (for example, heavy control elements and discard) are being pushed out of the game? Is magic just not for them anymore?

We made a choice many, many years ago to power down strategies that kept the opponent from being able to play. Those elements still exist, with individual cards that see tournament play from time to time, but we’ve kept the concentrated decks from being powerful.

Note, I’m not saying that elements of those strategies are unplayable. The decks that do nothing but that thing are purposely unplayable. For example, there have been playable counterspells. We just haven’t allowed Draw, Go decks that do nothing but counter spells to be good.

If you’ve been playing long enough to remember decks that were centered solely on those strategies, that means you been playing Magic for about fifteen years without them.

I don’t understand how you can be playing for so many years if the think that makes Magic special to you, that you don’t want to play without, the thing that the game just isn’t fun if it’s missing hasn’t existed for fifteen years.