Why is Negan salty?

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Post by Legend » 1 year ago

Ii was checking out the salt list (due to recent threads here about hated cards) and noticed that Negan, the Cold-Blooded is tied for 26th / 100. But when I read the rules text, it seems completely innocuous. So what gives?
Is it on the list because:
1. It's actually powerful, and I just don't realize it?
2. It's a Secret Lair exclusive?
3. It's a Universes Beyond IP crossover?
4. Everyone hates the character, Negan?
5. "Secretly" choosing is annoying?

EDIT: As I scrolled to the bottom of the list, I saw the rest of the WD gang there as well, which points to #2.
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Post by materpillar » 1 year ago

It isn't a rules thing, it's mostly #4 with a sprinkle of hating secret lairs/UB.

I haven't seen the show but my understanding is that later in The Walking Dead show Negan committed multiple acts of sexual violence. People aren't thrilled to have a character like that in a magic card.

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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

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Post by Hermes_ » 1 year ago

materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
It isn't a rules thing, it's mostly #4 with a sprinkle of hating secret lairs/UB.

I haven't seen the show but my understanding is that later in The Walking Dead show Negan committed multiple acts of sexual violence. People aren't thrilled to have a character like that in a magic card.
In the comics yes, the show didn't really do more than allude
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Post by Ulka » 1 year ago

Hermes_ wrote:
1 year ago
materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
It isn't a rules thing, it's mostly #4 with a sprinkle of hating secret lairs/UB.

I haven't seen the show but my understanding is that later in The Walking Dead show Negan committed multiple acts of sexual violence. People aren't thrilled to have a character like that in a magic card.
In the comics yes, the show didn't really do more than allude
Which still isn't great for magic.
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Post by Legend » 1 year ago

materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
Negan committed multiple acts of sexual violence.
I didn't realize he's such a sick character. Are there any characters in the MTG IP like him? I mean, sex offenders?
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

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Post by Legend » 1 year ago

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 1 year ago

materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
It isn't a rules thing, it's mostly #4 with a sprinkle of hating secret lairs/UB.

I haven't seen the show but my understanding is that later in The Walking Dead show Negan committed multiple acts of sexual violence. People aren't thrilled to have a character like that in a magic card.
Yea mostly a mix of Secret Lair combined with his character being a little inappropriate across the board. I think there is also something to be said about people not liking when a very exclusive release high price point setup is released with playable cards too. There was a brief point where Rick, Steadfast Leader looked like he could possibly make some waves in Legacy and people were SUPER pissed off.

Its not too bad to have exclusive sets but people don't want them to become staples of formats if and when it happens. I still remember when True-Name Nemesis came out and people were trying to get 4x copies for their legacy decks it was not a good thing. People care less when they make their special collectors cards when the cards suck. When they push them though and force more people to try to buy them though it tends to be met with more negativity.
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Post by Sinis » 1 year ago

I would say 2-3-4, but I think people softened their view on 3. As more Universes Beyond things have come in and people have gotten representations of IPs they're into, I think people have been less mad about Universes Beyond in general.

I will say that paywalled time-blocked exclusives are a hugely bad idea. That's very much like printing reserved list stuff. And, not competitive now is not the same as not competitive later; Death's Shadow|WWK was bulk for a very long time before it became a darling in competitive. So, number 2 is still a problem.

Number 4 I don't relate to, but I definitely understand. The comic (as I've heard it, I've never read it myself) has Negan as a SV perpetrator, and it's... offbrand? Magic has positioned itself as family-friendly by making everything fairly PG-13, from art direction to storyline (where people die offscreen), etc. Basically it's weird for them to ban cards because they're Culturally Offensive, and then portray a sex offender on a card.

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Post by duducrash » 1 year ago

I would be less salty if it was released now. Back then secret lair cards did not ship worldwide. If I were to get one I had to get to random dude that bought a bunch and sells over here each card more expensive than the entire lair. It's pretty absurd imho to have game pieces only avaliable in expecific parts of the world.

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Post by Treamayne » 1 year ago

duducrash wrote:
1 year ago
I would be less salty if it was released now. Back then secret lair cards did not ship worldwide. If I were to get one I had to get to random dude that bought a bunch and sells over here each card more expensive than the entire lair. It's pretty absurd imho to have game pieces only avaliable in expecific parts of the world.
Part of the reason this all bothered me so much was WotC promised never to do this again after the Nalathni Dragon incident at DragonCon (when they added it to Scry and Duelist magazines as an apology for a regionally released card). Yet another broken promise when they won't repeal the Reserved List (because we keep promises to collectors, not players), even though it has long since outlived its usefulness. . .
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Post by NZB2323 » 1 year ago

The other cards from that secret lair are on the salt list, and I believe that none of those characters committed sexual violence.
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Post by Dunharrow » 1 year ago

Triumph of Ferocity is a card that got a lot of flack. Negan was a really bad call by WOTC.

Conquistadors were also a bad call though

For a company as forward-thinking as WOTC I am really surprised sometimes that these things get through.
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Post by Igzex » 1 year ago

Negan is salty because he got it handed to him by Leroy in Tekken 7

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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

Dunharrow wrote:
1 year ago
Conquistadors were also a bad call though
I thought they handled Ixalan about as well as they could. Conquistadors made good villains because of the historical parallels, and at least in the magic lore they get repelled instead of brutalizing everything. Also representing them as literal vampires seems like a pretty strong condemnation of colonialism/conquest in general imo.

I think our protagonists are only as interesting as the antagonists they overcome. Scary villains make for a good story. It's half the reason Hollywood can't go 2 years without cranking out another WW2 movie. By the same token, who doesn't want to see a conquistador get eaten by a dinosaur? It's %$#% righteous.
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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

I don't like the argument that portraying any real-world villains is a bad idea. Especially when we're talking about historical, long-dead ones. As long as they're portrayed as villains, I don't see the problem.

Portraying terrible boring badly-managed television shows, on the other hand, is unforgivable.
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Post by Gamazson » 1 year ago

DirkGently wrote:
1 year ago
I don't like the argument that portraying any real-world villains is a bad idea. Especially when we're talking about historical, long-dead ones. As long as they're portrayed as villains, I don't see the problem.
I agree, but with a caveat that there are historical villains that are impossible to portray with nuance on cardstock. For example any variety of 20th (or 21st 😩) century Fascism. I wouldn't normally bring this up since Magic is primarily fantasy, but New Capenna is a thing. A set with a Dieselpunk aesthetic isn't impossible.

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Post by DirkGently » 1 year ago

@Gamazson Doing Trump: the card (or Bolsonaro or whoever else might be considered fascist in the 21st century) would be pretty cringe imo. I don't think it's magic's place to comment on current events, and usually whenever a corporation has a take on modern politics it's not very insightful or nuanced.

So could Hitler be done as a card? I think that's an interesting question tbh. The difficulty with putting Hitler to cardstock is that...well...people are going to play him. God forbid magic-flavored Hitler is the hot standard staple. And even worse for commander, where people could make Hitler decks. You could make Hitler the next Squire or Wood Elemental or whatever, but he'd still be a talked-about card which would push people to find a use for him. And especially in commander, where winning isn't the sole objective, people are going to build Hitler decks just to be edgy (or worse).

I think it'd be possible to have some generic fascist-y villain (I'm sure you could argue some already-existing villains as fascist), but they'd probably have to be far enough away from any real-world examples that it's no longer recognizable.
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Post by Dunharrow » 1 year ago

I think there is a difference between having a TV show or a movie where the bad guys are Nazis and having a game where you can pilot the Nazis.
As much as I hated the episodes with Nazis in Supernatural, they were the bad guys and the heroes won.

But if I had to sit through a game where someone could have Nazis in play, I would be really upset. Deckbuilding is form of self-expression and being able to pilot war criminals should not be okay.
And I think WOTC agrees, right? I mean, Invoke Prejudice and a dozen other cards are banned in all formats.

So why do conquistadors get a pass? Why is the KKK bad but genocidal colonials okay?
They should have avoided the flavour of colonizers seeking to convert people modelled after native americans. Like really, this is an ongoing source of pain for so many indigenous people in North America.

And I am not saying that a fantasy story cannot use these concepts and themes to tell a story. Avatar (blue aliens) did this and I think it worked (even though the story was Dances With Wolves in space).
But it is different when a person opens a pack of cards and their mythic is a colonizer who hunts indigenous-looking people. As a Jew, I would be pissed off if I opened a pack in a draft and I am looking at fascists modelled after the Nazis.
And I imagine many native americans would have felt the same way opening a Vona, Butcher of Magan.

I get that this is not something everyone will agree about. Magic draws on real-world things all the time. We have all rolled our eyes at how magic stopped making Demons for 7 years because of Christians who were upset.
But I think it is clear there is a line somewhere that should not be crossed. As Dirk mentioned, Hitler on a magic card would not be okay. Fascist villains could be okay, but not if they are in the same color scheme. Not if the art is reminiscent of anything from the real world.

I am not sure where conquistadors lie - are they closer to demons or or nazis? I personally think they went over the line. I think it was close enough that if they had changed a few things to make it less evocative of Europeans forcibly converting native americans, it would have been fine.
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Post by darrenhabib » 1 year ago

Wow, people have a short memory. It was #3, people hated the fact that it was such a jarring out-of-place universe brought into Magic. Nobody cared about exclusivity or anything like that. It was purely the fact that Rick Grimes and company were going to be "official canon" into the Magic Universe.
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Post by duducrash » 1 year ago

I'm not again borrowing from real life, not at all. a bunch of great stories are comentaries on real life situations. But to a point, comment on the idea, Absolutely, no matter what you do, don't do a hitler card. It's not only lazy and bad worldbuilding and storytelling because you should assume your audience is capable of filling in the blanks, but also......... it's a remarkably bad idea.

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Post by Dunadain » 1 year ago

duducrash wrote:
1 year ago
I'm not again borrowing from real life, not at all. a bunch of great stories are comentaries on real life situations. But to a point, comment on the idea, Absolutely, no matter what you do, don't do a hitler card. It's not only lazy and bad worldbuilding and storytelling because you should assume your audience is capable of filling in the blanks, but also......... it's a remarkably bad idea.
Incredibly bad

Also wizards already took a stance by banning a number of potentially offensive cards and Hitler would be worse than all of them.

But no I don't think it was only number three, there's a reason why all of The walking Dead legendaries are on the salt list but negan is the highest.
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Post by NZB2323 » 1 year ago

Dunharrow wrote:
1 year ago
I think there is a difference between having a TV show or a movie where the bad guys are Nazis and having a game where you can pilot the Nazis.
As much as I hated the episodes with Nazis in Supernatural, they were the bad guys and the heroes won.

But if I had to sit through a game where someone could have Nazis in play, I would be really upset. Deckbuilding is form of self-expression and being able to pilot war criminals should not be okay.
And I think WOTC agrees, right? I mean, Invoke Prejudice and a dozen other cards are banned in all formats.

So why do conquistadors get a pass? Why is the KKK bad but genocidal colonials okay?
They should have avoided the flavour of colonizers seeking to convert people modelled after native americans. Like really, this is an ongoing source of pain for so many indigenous people in North America.

And I am not saying that a fantasy story cannot use these concepts and themes to tell a story. Avatar (blue aliens) did this and I think it worked (even though the story was Dances With Wolves in space).
But it is different when a person opens a pack of cards and their mythic is a colonizer who hunts indigenous-looking people. As a Jew, I would be pissed off if I opened a pack in a draft and I am looking at fascists modelled after the Nazis.
And I imagine many native americans would have felt the same way opening a Vona, Butcher of Magan.

I get that this is not something everyone will agree about. Magic draws on real-world things all the time. We have all rolled our eyes at how magic stopped making Demons for 7 years because of Christians who were upset.
But I think it is clear there is a line somewhere that should not be crossed. As Dirk mentioned, Hitler on a magic card would not be okay. Fascist villains could be okay, but not if they are in the same color scheme. Not if the art is reminiscent of anything from the real world.

I am not sure where conquistadors lie - are they closer to demons or or nazis? I personally think they went over the line. I think it was close enough that if they had changed a few things to make it less evocative of Europeans forcibly converting native americans, it would have been fine.
Vona, Butcher of Magan isn't about genocide. She won a war on Torrezon by killing officers in the middle of the night. Then she came to Ixalan in search of the golden sun and Elenda. She fails to capture the immortal sun, she finds Elenda, who tells her she needs humility, and then a dinosaur eats her.

Sure, she's about conquest and power, but I don't see any genocide/KKK/Nazi parallels there.

I mean, I know she's a conquistador, but where do you draw the line? The Romans conquered Israel and for a time being Jewish was illegal in Ancient Rome. Are Rome themed sets off the table? During Medieval times being Jewish was illegal in a lot of countries, are medieval sets offensive?

Look at how many paladins there are in Magic, when historically paladins were Christian warriors fighting against Muslims.

I just don't get how paladins are good, medieval characters are good, Romans are good, but a conquistador who isn't about genocide, fails to get the immortal sun, is told by her hero that she needs humility, and gets eaten by a dinosaur is bad.

Like there were 4 endings for Ixalan, one for each tribe "winning" and the one for the vampires winning had her in a dinosaur's mouth.
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Post by 5colorsrainbow » 1 year ago

I think creative did an okay job with the Legion of Dusk and did take steps to avoid some of the more problematic stuff, I just personally would like to see a fantasy world based on Latin American setting and/or culture without having a conflict that touches on colonization.
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"

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