Banlist update: 7 cards banned for offensive imagery/names

[Hermes_]

The first is an open letter to WotC from Lawrence Harmon. He details the treatment that he and other black players have received from WotC.

The second is from Zaiem Beg, formerly of ChannelFireball, and seeks to address players at large. He describes WotC's discriminatory behavior as it relates to hiring and workplace culture, as well as their exploitative treatment of players and content creators, specifically Jason Chan (also known as Amaz).

so, I read both and well, Mr. Harmon's letter offers only vagueness as to HOW to be better. Maybe it's because I only see what gets posted here and only do quick searches elsewhere but I haven't seen anyone actually offer WHAT they would like it to look like: Like the content creator spotlight: some sort of rotation or a ratio?

As for hiring practices...well sounds like at the HR department a program should be involved because honestly that might be the only way to have little to no bias in hiring. "I was only haired to fill a quota" etc....as an aside everyone on the RC itself is an old white guy.....


A quote from somewhere that I think sums whole incident up goes like this "F- on timing but A+ on effort" or something like that.

(Further aside someone smack me and take away my net because I almost gave in to check r/freemagic)

[Krishnath]

Fair enough, I haven't played enough (competitive) paper Magic to know of it one way or another, mea culpa.
In any case my point is if racism is a reason for a card to be banned, wouldn't consistency dictate that other potentially offensive themes should be a consideration for a ban, too?
Like, if they decide to ban everything under the sun because these cards may contain potentially offensive themes they would be consistent about their "inclusivity", but as-is (especially considering the stuff like Crusade or Cleanse which I really can't get behind) given all the surrounding context this just seems like a fairly useless gesture.

You do know *why* Crusade got hit with the banhammer, right? Because the crusades are associated with a lot of horrendous %$#%. It was literally an excuse for the young landless nobility of Northern and Western Europe to rape and plunder their way through Eastern Europe down through to the Middle-East, all the way to Jerusalem with religion as an excuse.

Personally, I think it was about time WotC did something about their troublesome past, and I am saying this as someone of Romani descent.

[cryogen]

Fair enough, I haven't played enough (competitive) paper Magic to know of it one way or another, mea culpa.
In any case my point is if racism is a reason for a card to be banned, wouldn't consistency dictate that other potentially offensive themes should be a consideration for a ban, too?
Like, if they decide to ban everything under the sun because these cards may contain potentially offensive themes they would be consistent about their "inclusivity", but as-is (especially considering the stuff like Crusade or Cleanse which I really can't get behind) given all the surrounding context this just seems like a fairly useless gesture.

Well if they decided to do something about the sexually explicit artwork I wouldn't shed a tear, so im probably not the best person to ask. The fact that they refused to take action on Invoke Prejudice (at the bare minimum) until the PR was so horrible, and the fact that they thought it would be hilarious to make cares like City of Ass, or print art like Earthbind means I'm pretty skeptical about what changes will be made beyond what they just did. But I'm not going to dump on them for finally taking some action.

[Selaya]

Fair enough. At the very least you're consistent at it, I can respect that.

[umtiger]

Here is the part that I'm focusing on:
"There's much more work to be done as we continue to make our games, communities, and company more inclusive. Know that we work every day to be better and that we hear you. We look forward to sharing more of our plans with you as our games and organization evolve."

I'll see in a year what they actually do. If all it entails is the ban of more cards, then this is symbolic gesture is just

They look forward to actually coming up with a plan to finally share.

For transparency, I don't care about the cards they initially banned [like many other people because they banned mostly unplayed cards). I might have wanted to play the UUUU one just because it's a stax-y card, but I never have. I guess that alone makes more a terrible person to play EDH with. s/

[onering]

Fair enough, I haven't played enough (competitive) paper Magic to know of it one way or another, mea culpa.
In any case my point is if racism is a reason for a card to be banned, wouldn't consistency dictate that other potentially offensive themes should be a consideration for a ban, too?
Like, if they decide to ban everything under the sun because these cards may contain potentially offensive themes they would be consistent about their "inclusivity", but as-is (especially considering the stuff like Crusade or Cleanse which I really can't get behind) given all the surrounding context this just seems like a fairly useless gesture.

Well if they decided to do something about the sexually explicit artwork I wouldn't shed a tear, so im probably not the best person to ask. The fact that they refused to take action on Invoke Prejudice (at the bare minimum) until the PR was so horrible, and the fact that they thought it would be hilarious to make cares like City of Ass, or print art like Earthbind means I'm pretty skeptical about what changes will be made beyond what they just did. But I'm not going to dump on them for finally taking some action.

Come on, city of ass isn't sexual, it's just juvenile. The joke is it's a city decorated with butts. It's not funny, but it's definitely a joke thats geared to immaturity rather than innuendo.

[DirkGently]

I'd argue the bad decision was acquiring such a card in the first place, given the subject matter in question. Doubly so given the artist's stance. Ignorance of the card or an insistence on "playing the card for the effect" (of which I get) doesn't make up any justification for it. It's still racial propaganda and there has to be some line drawn between building the best deck you can, and remaining kosher to the play group you decide to enter. I wouldn't care if it were $1 or $1000, I'd never pick this card up. You lost money on this acquisition, and that's a shame. How much emotional scarring did any players that suffered through seeing this card across from them have to struggle to cope with? You're going to feel a sting now, but it's not near the sting those felt having to see it.

I can't remember if I looked into the artist before or after acquiring the card. I got it a pretty long time ago (2013 maybe?). Personally I tend to lean towards "death of the artist". Him illustrating a card doesn't make that piece of art racist, just because he is racist. Of course, the reason I acquired the card is because it was a powerful reserve list card that was likely to keep going up, and I get anxious about cards that I might want to play getting more expensive. Hence why I own a library of alexandria despite not being able to legally play it in any format I play.

Looking back through my catalog of decks, I think I've played it in 2 (out of a bit over a hundred): Thada Adel (which I played for one evening) and "the most expensive deck ever", which I might have played a couple times, although since it was 5c with a random assortment of whatever 40 lands were most expensive at the time, actually casting the card was pretty difficult. It's entirely possible the card has never been cast in a game of magic that I've played (not that it really matters, intent-wise).

As far as whether the card is "racial propaganda"...I'm fully prepared to be wrong on this, but I've always seen it as simply an description of what exists. Prejudice is a thing, and certainly the klan invoke it. I'm not sure the klan themselves would willingly admit to such a thing, tbh, I think they'd usually hide behind an invented term like "race realism" or some similar white supremacist dog whistle. Is putting a real-life offensive thing on a card in bad taste? Definitely, wotc shouldn't have done it, and they also probably should have looked more thoroughly into the artists background before hiring him. I personally don't see the piece as being positive towards the klan though, despite who the artist is. But that's just my interpretation.

As far as "emotional scarring"...look, I don't want to invalidate someone's feelings, and if someone actually was emotionally impacted by my playing the card then I apologize. But I think you're way overstating the impact a single card is going to have on someone's experience. I think it's more in the category of microaggression, where small things build up to create a hostile environment, with the card being one of those things. I doubt very many people would see a single card and immediately suffer emotional scarring. People aren't generally that fragile. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to have a more open and welcoming culture by doing away with such things, but I think you're infantilizing people by imagining that they're going to be driven to the brink of madness by one illustration. Especially considering that the vast majority of people playing magic in Seattle are white, and from what I can dig up, the klan has been essentially extinct in that city since the late 20s. Of course they continue to be a symbol of bigotry writ large, but I think it would be extremely hard to find a magic player there who has any personal experience or fear of them. I'm sure there are people who find the imagery offensive or troubling, and I don't think it's unreasonable to try to get rid of the card for that reason, but c'mon. People are not suffering $250 worth of emotional distress from looking at a card.

To me, this is the equivalence of giving $100,000 to charity and then spending $1,000,000 telling everyone that you did so. Nobody was really stumbling over these 20 year old cards for the most part they don't see any play and trying to tie any sort of racism to most of these cards is an extreme stretch.

Brooklyn 99 gave away (iirc) at least $100,000 to protest-related causes.

To me, this feels more like wotc gave MY money away. Except they threw it in the garbage instead of doing any good with it. The copies of the cards aren't even gone. If wotc wanted to buy out the copies so they could destroy them, then I'd be a lot less salty - I'm not a huge fan of stax cards anyway, I mostly just got it so I'd have the option to play it if I felt it was powerful in a deck. But afaik they haven't put any of their own money down in any way. They made their money on the card, legends was a huge hit at the time. But they're not giving that money back, no. Instead they're going with a hollow gesture that hurts their customers financially instead of themselves.

You mean the 7-11 card in an Indian themed set? That WotC even joked was an obvious nod to the convenience store? That players at prerelease would make Apu "thank you, come again" jokes when playing?

I don't remember anyone making that joke, or drawing the connection between it being a (fantasy) Indian-themed set.

If players are being jerks, then that's on them. Kick 'em out, ban 'em, whatever. If the designer made it a 7/11 vehicle for that reason, then consider hiring someone else. They're just numbers, numbers that exist on a popular chain of convenience stores that (afaik) nobody is asking to close their doors just for existing, and the card itself doesn't even show a human being on it to draw any racist connection. Obviously I'm not really super concerned with a 5 cent card that goes into probably 1 deck, but if we're banning anything that could even remotely be considered offensive, we're probably going to end up with a massive banlist. If they decided that dreadnought is the one card they missed, and that's the end of it, then I don't mind a bit. But I do mind the uneasy feeling that any card in my collection, cards I may have paid a lot of money for or are key cards for my favourite decks, could suddenly be removed from the game because of something I wasn't even remotely aware of.

[3drinks]

I worry however, that the decision to shun these cards with racially motivated subject-matter is being spurred by the tragedy of George Floyd rather than a strong moral compass in their company.

I agree with the rest of your post and just wanted to call this out because I am probably more so on the stance of "this is *definitely* not a decision made due to a strong moral compass". That is, there seems to be a number of things Wizards has done in the past that take away from the idea of an inclusive and diverse workplace which means this seems to fall under more of a business decision than a moral one.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. Their timing is so suspect that it's very hard to believe they're acting in good faith and instead acting toward social pressure.

edit: spelling their to they're

[onering]

Big thank you to those who posted links to the letters. Wizards needs to make serious changes to their corporate culture. First on race, but also on their authoritarian tendencies.

[darrenhabib]

Seriously though, do our fantasy characters now have to be political correct? That would ruin the whole game. This game is kinda build on racewar. They might aswell just close down WotC...

Can you elaborate on the bolded? I've never had this impression and this is the first time I've seen this take.

Goblin Race, Human Race, Elf Race. Fantasy in general is based upon different races battling it out due to fear and power of being different.

[darrenhabib]

A quote from somewhere that I think sums whole incident up goes like this "F- on timing but A+ on effort" or something like that.

The problem if you read various sentiments and articles like Zaiem Beg => https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RDh ... nJGy74Xqkg
that is that its just a straight "F- on timing and F- on effort". Marketing, marketing, marketing.

[3drinks]

I can't remember if I looked into the artist before or after acquiring the card. I got it a pretty long time ago (2013 maybe?). Personally I tend to lean towards "death of the artist". Him illustrating a card doesn't make that piece of art racist, just because he is racist. Of course, the reason I acquired the card is because it was a powerful reserve list card that was likely to keep going up, and I get anxious about cards that I might want to play getting more expensive. Hence why I own a library of alexandria despite not being able to legally play it in any format I play.

Library should be legalized to play anyway, but I digress. You can't say "perceived barrier to entry" and then also "timetwister is legal". Library is still an opportunity cost and typically out-classed by stronger draw, while adding some much needed support to colours trailing behind. And, well I just wanna play my Library in Kari Zev.

As far as whether the card is "racial propaganda"...I'm fully prepared to be wrong on this, but I've always seen it as simply an description of what exists. Prejudice is a thing, and certainly the klan invoke it. I'm not sure the klan themselves would willingly admit to such a thing, tbh, I think they'd usually hide behind an invented term like "race realism" or some similar white supremacist dog whistle. Is putting a real-life offensive thing on a card in bad taste? Definitely, wotc shouldn't have done it, and they also probably should have looked more thoroughly into the artists background before hiring him. I personally don't see the piece as being positive towards the klan though, despite who the artist is. But that's just my interpretation.

As far as "emotional scarring"...look, I don't want to invalidate someone's feelings, and if someone actually was emotionally impacted by my playing the card then I apologize. But I think you're way overstating the impact a single card is going to have on someone's experience. I think it's more in the category of microaggression, where small things build up to create a hostile environment, with the card being one of those things. I doubt very many people would see a single card and immediately suffer emotional scarring. People aren't generally that fragile. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to have a more open and welcoming culture by doing away with such things, but I think you're infantilizing people by imagining that they're going to be driven to the brink of madness by one illustration. Especially considering that the vast majority of people playing magic in Seattle are white, and from what I can dig up, the klan has been essentially extinct in that city since the late 20s. Of course they continue to be a symbol of bigotry writ large, but I think it would be extremely hard to find a magic player there who has any personal experience or fear of them. I'm sure there are people who find the imagery offensive or troubling, and I don't think it's unreasonable to try to get rid of the card for that reason, but c'mon. People are not suffering $250 worth of emotional distress from looking at a card.

Art is certainly subjective by nature and certainly what someone finds kosher is highly inappropriate to another. Almost certainly the "klan" wouldn't call their activities racist when their activities are in their own minds living life as intended. But now, we know this is not life as intended...and I'm certainly not saying you support that group by playing this card, of course not that's ludicrous. I don't really think you can minimize such objections to the card as microaggression (there's a new word I never seen before) or overstated. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost to these supremacists, crosses burned, people burned, to what can only be described as domestic terrorism...what if you lived in the Southern United States and lived in the fear of a rally outside your window on a nightly basis? What if you had to endure family being merciless beaten to the brink by these infamous white hoods? Would that not drive you to madness or severe emotional distress? Who are we to say what struggles one has or hasn't endured in life, and what imagery may or may not stifle their livlihood by having to see it in a game that's supposed to bring joy and happiness? Just because the terrorists have been extinct in the north for decades doesn't excuse it's depiction, and even if it did, the klan is still active in the country to-date.

Two hundred fifty dollars, huh? Is that person's mental health worth that to you? People recover from trauma at different rates, some never completely recovering as a whole. If all I was out was a couple hundred bucks, sure I'm upset, but not near as upset as people that have had to see these daily reminders of a cruel world in the one thing that should be a reprieve from such hideous things.

[UnfulfilledDesires]

Bizarrely, banning these cards for being racist is at least temporarily increasing value. Anyone can sell their Invoke Prejudice on Ebay right now for easily $250+ after fees. (Lowest buy-it-now is $330 for an Italian copy.) So Wizards hasn't cost people money yet.

Even cards folks think might catch the racist ban are spiking. It feels like the fittingly absurd conclusion of MTG finance: buying out cards because they're racist.

[cryogen]

I'd argue the bad decision was acquiring such a card in the first place, given the subject matter in question. Doubly so given the artist's stance. Ignorance of the card or an insistence on "playing the card for the effect" (of which I get) doesn't make up any justification for it. It's still racial propaganda and there has to be some line drawn between building the best deck you can, and remaining kosher to the play group you decide to enter. I wouldn't care if it were $1 or $1000, I'd never pick this card up. You lost money on this acquisition, and that's a shame. How much emotional scarring did any players that suffered through seeing this card across from them have to struggle to cope with? You're going to feel a sting now, but it's not near the sting those felt having to see it.

I can't remember if I looked into the artist before or after acquiring the card. I got it a pretty long time ago (2013 maybe?). Personally I tend to lean towards "death of the artist". Him illustrating a card doesn't make that piece of art racist, just because he is racist.

He is a literal neo-Nazi that illustrated a card with Klansmen on it. The art is racist.

As far as "emotional scarring"...look, I don't want to invalidate someone's feelings, and if someone actually was emotionally impacted by my playing the card then I apologize. But I think you're way overstating the impact a single card is going to have on someone's experience. I think it's more in the category of microaggression, where small things build up to create a hostile environment, with the card being one of those things. I doubt very many people would see a single card and immediately suffer emotional scarring. People aren't generally that fragile. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to have a more open and welcoming culture by doing away with such things, but I think you're infantilizing people by imagining that they're going to be driven to the brink of madness by one illustration.

Especially considering that the vast majority of people playing magic in Seattle are white, and from what I can dig up, the klan has been essentially extinct in that city since the late 20s. Of course they continue to be a symbol of bigotry writ large, but I think it would be extremely hard to find a magic player there who has any personal experience or fear of them. I'm sure there are people who find the imagery offensive or troubling, and I don't think it's unreasonable to try to get rid of the card for that reason, but c'mon. People are not suffering $250 worth of emotional distress from looking at a card.

It's not that anyone thinks seeing the card at a table across from them is going to cause someone to have a mental breakdown. It's that the card is a blatant reminder of how %$#% real life is and some people are, when the whole goal of Magic is to escape for a while and have fun. Normally I wouldn't bring real life politics into the forum, but this is relevant. We have a sitting president who was endorsed by David Duke. We have neo-Nazis counterprotesting in the streets. We have the state of Tennessee fighting a proposal to remove a bust of the founder of the KKK from a government building. The KKK is quite active right now in the year 2020 and they've been emboldened by the last 4 years of Donald Trump. Racism is a very real thing that for minorities is ingrained in their everyday life. So yes, to a privileged white person (in the overall demographic of Magic players) there is the attitude of "what's the big deal" because they have no idea what it's like to be a minority. But for a minority, seeing that card is yet another reminder of the %$#% they have to deal with on a daily basis.

You mean the 7-11 card in an Indian themed set? That WotC even joked was an obvious nod to the convenience store? That players at prerelease would make Apu "thank you, come again" jokes when playing?

I don't remember anyone making that joke, or drawing the connection between it being a (fantasy) Indian-themed set.

If players are being jerks, then that's on them. Kick 'em out, ban 'em, whatever. If the designer made it a 7/11 vehicle for that reason, then consider hiring someone else. They're just numbers, numbers that exist on a popular chain of convenience stores that (afaik) nobody is asking to close their doors just for existing, and the card itself doesn't even show a human being on it to draw any racist connection. Obviously I'm not really super concerned with a 5 cent card that goes into probably 1 deck, but if we're banning anything that could even remotely be considered offensive, we're probably going to end up with a massive banlist. If they decided that dreadnought is the one card they missed, and that's the end of it, then I don't mind a bit. But I do mind the uneasy feeling that any card in my collection, cards I may have paid a lot of money for or are key cards for my favourite decks, could suddenly be removed from the game because of something I wasn't even remotely aware of.

I don't have the exact quote, but WotC got called out for making the card and MaRo basically confirmed that it was a 7-11 joke.

This isn't about banning every card that could be slightly construed as offensive to someone. This is about drawing attention to the fact that WotC has a really %$#% history of encouraging a toxic culture of white frat bros pounding PBRs and high-fiving each other for the joke they made playing Cards Against Humanity, and getting them to actually desire to make a culture change, rather than just throw out lip-service every time someone calls them out.

[DirkGently]

I'm certainly not saying you support that group by playing this card, of course not that's ludicrous.

I find it a bit offensive that you felt the need to say this.

I don't really think you can minimize such objections to the card as microaggression (there's a new word I never seen before) or overstated. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost to these supremacists, crosses burned, people burned, to what can only be described as domestic terrorism...what if you lived in the Southern United States and lived in the fear of a rally outside your window on a nightly basis? What if you had to endure family being merciless beaten to the brink by these infamous white hoods? Would that not drive you to madness or severe emotional distress? Who are we to say what struggles one has or hasn't endured in life, and what imagery may or may not stifle their livlihood by having to see it in a game that's supposed to bring joy and happiness?

As best as I can tell, the klan hasn't been going around assaulting people in hoods for a pretty long time. I'm sure there are people alive who have lived through such things, and of course I wouldn't wish distress on those people. But I really doubt any of those people were sitting across from me at a commander table circa 2016. Especially given that basically all of my opponents were white kids in their 20s.

It's not cool to go throwing around images of racism, but this is ridiculous. I'm not sitting down to play a lot of games with civil rights leaders. While the comparison is a bit flippant, I'm sure there are people for whom the card murder brings up troubling feelings, but it would be a bit ridiculous to suggest we all stop playing the card murder. At the same time, though, it would be cruel to say "pssh, murder didn't get banned for offensiveness, so if you have a problem with it then it's your fault". People are complex things, and it's hard to know what might bring up past trauma. Trying to excise everything that might be troubling is a fool's errand. The better solution, imo, is to be a compassionate person, and to use empathy to solve these problems, rather than trying to solve it by getting rid of some petty objects.

Two hundred fifty dollars, huh? Is that person's mental health worth that to you? People recover from trauma at different rates, some never completely recovering as a whole. If all I was out was a couple hundred bucks, sure I'm upset, but not near as upset as people that have had to see these daily reminders of a cruel world in the one thing that should be a reprieve from such hideous things.

I dislike this absolutism. By this logic, every potentially troubling thing, no matter how small or unlikely, is worth the entire value of someone's mental health (which is presumably of unlimited value). Obviously if someone had significant trauma from seeing the card, that could be "worth more than $250" - and possibly that could actually happen if a certain person saw it at the wrong time. But that's true of lots of things. Forget murder, if someone's spouse was killed two days ago, murder of crows might legitimately traumatize them. Obviously the line should be drawn somewhere, and drawing the line to exclude IP is fair enough I guess. But that's not because some large percentage of magic players are suffering psychotic breaks just from glancing at the mere image, it's because a reasonable percentage of people find the image troubling, and maybe some tiny tiny percentage are significantly troubled by it. That's good enough reason to ban it, but acting like all POC are so fragile that they can't even see a depiction of something offensive - which I still think is in the context of "these dudes are bad and racist" when looking at the whole card and what it does - is pretty ridiculous.

He is a literal neo-Nazi that illustrated a card with Klansmen on it. The art is racist.

1) I am aware of who the artist is.
2) Depicting a racist thing doesn't make the art itself racist.
3) The artist being racist doesn't make the art itself racist.

Not to say that those things make it not racist. But I never got a "look how cool these guys are" vibe from the card personally. I got a "these guys are racist bad guys, but bad guys are a thing that exists in fantasy games" vibe. Even if it's a little "too real" in this case.

It's not that anyone thinks seeing the card at a table across from them is going to cause someone to have a mental breakdown. It's that the card is a blatant reminder of how %$#% real life is and some people are, when the whole goal of Magic is to escape for a while and have fun. Normally I wouldn't bring real life politics into the forum, but this is relevant. We have a sitting president who was endorsed by David Duke. We have neo-Nazis counterprotesting in the streets. We have the state of Tennessee fighting a proposal to remove a bust of the founder of the KKK from a government building. The KKK is quite active right now in the year 2020 and they've been emboldened by the last 4 years of Donald Trump. Racism is a very real thing that for minorities is ingrained in their everyday life. So yes, to a privileged white person (in the overall demographic of Magic players) there is the attitude of "what's the big deal" because they have no idea what it's like to be a minority. But for a minority, seeing that card is yet another reminder of the %$#% they have to deal with on a daily basis.

3drinks seems to think it will.

I agree that it could be a microaggression to someone, and that's not an unreasonable reason to ban it. But I also don't think it was a huge problem, the card is incredibly rarely played. I also think that makes wotc's decision to be both trivial, and it happens to be inconvenient for me personally which is why I find it annoying. I don't have any particular love for the card, as I said it wotc offered to buy up all the copies I'd be a lot less bothered by it. Especially since they'd actually be putting their money where the mouth is, instead of making a meaningless gesture.

I guess there are some edgelords at my LGS, maybe one of them will buy the damnable thing.

I don't have the exact quote, but WotC got called out for making the card and MaRo basically confirmed that it was a 7-11 joke.

This isn't about banning every card that could be slightly construed as offensive to someone. This is about drawing attention to the fact that WotC has a really %$#% history of encouraging a toxic culture of white frat bros pounding PBRs and high-fiving each other for the joke they made playing Cards Against Humanity, and getting them to actually desire to make a culture change, rather than just throw out lip-service every time someone calls them out.

I agree, but I think banning a bunch of cards nobody plays from decades ago that they've already made their money on is 100% meaningless lip service. And since it's meaningless lip service that hurts my bottom line, I find it particularly galling.

[3drinks]

I'm certainly not saying you support that group by playing this card, of course not that's ludicrous.

I find it a bit offensive that you felt the need to say this.

No offense intended, I was merely emphasizing I'm not targeting you, only the existence of the card and it's unhealthy look to the game as a whole.

[Hermes_]

A quote from somewhere that I think sums whole incident up goes like this "F- on timing but A+ on effort" or something like that.

The problem if you read various sentiments and articles like Zaiem Beg => https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RDh ... nJGy74Xqkg
that is that its just a straight "F- on timing and F- on effort". Marketing, marketing, marketing.

If you read my full post,you'd see i read both the letters that were linked,and even commented on them.

[Legend]

I was under the impression that the KKK is a distinctly American Democrat embarrassment.

*Fixed. As an American, I'll have no part of it.
Cards Against Humanity is a game.

emails
Mike: How many people play Magic?
Mark: About 736,827,937,139. Why?
Mike: There's 11 deer complaining about racism.
Mark: Hold my non-alcoholic beer.

Infraction for trolling (baiting). -Airi

[darrenhabib]

A quote from somewhere that I think sums whole incident up goes like this "F- on timing but A+ on effort" or something like that.

The problem if you read various sentiments and articles like Zaiem Beg => https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RDh ... nJGy74Xqkg
that is that its just a straight "F- on timing and F- on effort". Marketing, marketing, marketing.

If you read my full post,you'd see i read both the letters that were linked,and even commented on them.

So why do you think they are doing an A+ on effort? I mean its literally no effort at all. Ban some cards, that takes like 10 minutes worth of time.
Now fixing problems within the company takes real effort.
I'm not coming at you, I just really don't understand how anybody could think this is gets any true credit at all as its just so obviously transparent on "effort".

[DirkGently]

I was under the impression that the KKK is a distinctly American Democrat embarrassment.

*Fixed. As an American, I'll have no part of it.

It's obviously both a Democrat and American embarrassment, they aren't mutually exclusive. You can and should distance yourself from it, denounce it, etc, but it's still part of your (and my) nation's past.

For that matter, it's also a world embarrassment. Pretending that it's only "the other guy" that has done bad stuff in the past is nothing but evasion. We all need to acknowledge that such demons exist in the past, and could exist again if we're not vigilant to repel them. To do that, you have to be willing to look at yourself, at your party, at the world around you with clear eyes. Not a desire to dismiss by saying "it was those other people, they're the bad ones, I'll have no part of it". You're a person. You're part of it. We're all part of it.

[Airi]

Try to keep the discussion to the issue at hand as much as possible. Politics are going to bleed into this topic, thats a given. But baiting people into an argument on politic parties or things going down that path are going to get messy fast.

Also, please make sure you're debating, and not attacking. Many of these posts are getting personal in a way that is dangerously toeing that line.

[Hermes_]

The problem if you read various sentiments and articles like Zaiem Beg => https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RDh ... nJGy74Xqkg
that is that its just a straight "F- on timing and F- on effort". Marketing, marketing, marketing.

If you read my full post,you'd see i read both the letters that were linked,and even commented on them.

So why do you think they are doing an A+ on effort? I mean its literally no effort at all. Ban some cards, that takes like 10 minutes worth of time.
Now fixing problems within the company takes real effort.
I'm not coming at you, I just really don't understand how anybody could think this is gets any true credit at all as its just so obviously transparent on "effort".

I was mainly just thinking of the quote and i found the actual quote,it's from Red Vs Blue

Sarge:
Simmons, you get an F in efficiency, but I have to give you an A+ in dramatic timing.

Here's the context kind of :

Simmons: Whoo. That was pretty close, huh?

Sarge: Simmons, you get an F in efficiency. But I have to give you an A+ in dramatic timing.

Simmons: Thank you Sir. I've always felt that presentation is what matters most.

[TheGildedGoose]

I was under the impression that the KKK is a distinctly American Democrat embarrassment.

Funny how the party of Lincoln now glorifies Confederate monuments.

On topic: Cool, I guess? It remains to be seen if WotC will commit to actually making substantive changes in their hiring practices or affecting change outside of their offices, but it's a step in the right direction. I can't help but feel this is a shallow mea culpa from a business trying to save face, though, given their handling of the Zak S situation on the D&D side of things.

[Yawgmoth Reborn]

This is horrible. Is this my Magic community that doesn't realize that this is merely a game? Images that are evocative and provocative of thought are offensive? Words are violence? I'm tired of this. This is the thing that will kill my active participation in mtg. Real life politics have no place in this game. Thanks to Wizards for making a great game. No thanks to making decisions based on real life politics.

[rogerandover]

Why can't there be dumb, racist characters in a fantasy game, when real life already have them?

Because people who have to deal with 'dumb, racist characters' in real life shouldn't have to put up with the same in their escapism.

Saying that M:tG is built on race war as a concept is really, really, really trivializing of horrible things in real life. You're already a racist because we're all racists because we live in a racist society. That's the fact. The banning of Invoke Prejudice isn't about whether or not it will make you more racist, but how people sitting across the table from you will feel seeing artwork depicting Klansmen with axes.

We can argue about where the line is for other cards, but I think that Invoke Prejudice is absolutely warranted in banning because of its total package. Full stop.

Well, it's hard to argue anything when you say full stop after your sentiment

Say, if my 6 year old daugther by chance draw a picture of some people i pointed hoods, should I tell her she can't and destroy that drawing? Can't we depict anyone in pointed hoods anywhere? Just because some crazed Democrats chose to make such a group? If we chose to silence something to death, that sounds like "Nineteen eighty-four" to me. If we wanted to deal with everything that's racist about our whole civilization, we might aswell burn the whole thing down. Sure, Crusade was something Christians did against heretics, but nowadays you can crusade against alot of stuff. Langauge has several meanings. Else, stop easter. Stop Christmas. Racist too, right?

The only this changes for me, is that if I choose to play Invoke Prejudice again, people could now point out that it's racist, while they might not even notice before this ban. I think this is more counterintuitive, since it's putting specific cards into a certain light.

To make a hyperbole statement: who chose what to ban? What about vegans? Should we make the game more approchable to vegans? Should Tolsimir, Friend to Wolves be okay, but not Devour Flesh?

Infraction for ignoring a moderator request. - Airi