Planar Chaos Cards: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Planar Chaos Cards: (Generated at 2025-05-03 13:07:24)
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Page 1 - Older activity
Mass LD discussion isn't that related here IMO.
At blogatog, MaRo sites Blasphemous Act specifically on numerous time as the bend, and it's mass hitting spell unlike Shivan Meteor.
> http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/search/+Blasphemous+Act
Good points though. I've to mull on this.
It's a red board wipe that doesn't destroy lands. That's it. It's a cheaper boardnuke that doesn't destroy lands or enchantments. This is something that is already in red's colour pie. Worldfire, Decree of Annihilation, Bearer of the Heavens, Obliterate, Apocalypse and most on target Jokalhaups
Red is already tertiary in board wipes provide they also destroy all lands. The the limitation that stops red getting these effect regularly is that destroying all lands are unfun. And even in the modern colour pie occasionally red gets these effects and this is less of bend that Star of Extinction is since it also hits artifacts.
Red destruction spells are only bends if they target a single creature. Shivan Meteor is bend while Decree of Annihilation isn't. The bend here is not also destroying any land.
Note that in Mark Rosewater's two part colour redistribution in Planar Chaos article he explained he was taking board wipes out white and shifting them into both Black and Red. This is just taking an effect that's tertiary in one colour (red) and primary in another colour (white) and reversing them. Red get's destroy everything nukes (Planar Cleansing) while black instead gets Damnation that only effects creatures (or planeswalkers). It would be bend for red to get a 4/5 cmc nondamage board wipe but at six and up red gets board wipe provide that hit everything.
In the original planar chaos this was shown by moving Armageddon into red as Bust. However since mass land destruction is unfun your giving red nukes that hit everything nonland (while not hurting enchantments since that's one of red's major weaknesses.).
Dealing damage is seen as
's way to remove creatures. The extent of keeping between damage and straight-up destruction different is such that even spells that deal insurmountable amounts of damage (ie. 13 or so) are seen as bends. This also blends with the idea of trying to make 
and 
distinguishable from each other since the two colors already share so many features.
Giving red creature destruction / wraths of this nature would go against these principles.
I would like to hear some reasonings for what role this theoretical shift is supposed play in this alternative color pie. From Reduce to Bones I know that white isn't no longer getting these, but that would be just a part of the suggested change here since IMO at least some part of the issue here lies with the role of burn in general and how this would conflict with that.
Red variant of Akroma's Vengeance
Given Cycling 3. Implied to be Red Aroma's Vengeance.
Back to Previous Versions.
Was
Sorcery "destroy all artifacts, creature and planeswalker." It now destroys all nonbasic nonenchantment permanents since it implies basic goes on more things than just basic lands.
Changed rarity to uncommon and "If that land leaves the battlefield this way" to "If that land is destroyed this way".
> "If it was destroyed this way, search ..."
> "If you do, search your..." ?
Still not a fan of
ramp. With this flavor I would just turn the land into a swamp, like in Contaminated Ground. If it really needed to ramp, then I would rather have it be an aura that turns the land into a swamp and takes control of it (Annex / Conquer).
This is card advantage btw, so it would be red flagged as a common.
Planeshifted Mwonvuli Acid-Moss (with slightly altered wording) to make a ramp spell that feels more black that my previous attempt.
Yeah. It's in the current black colour. The main goal overall goal is to give black creature board wipes and not give them to white (which a change in the planar chaos colour pie). Except showing an absence is hard until you get a complete set.
The notartifact clause is supposed to be topdown to the card as artifacts don't have flesh to stripped away. This and the skeleton tribal are supposed to be planar chaosy. (black removal kept it's weakness to artifact creatures and skeletons are now the default black race instead of zombies. These are two roads that magic could have taken but didn't.).
The major dilemma of this set is to risk either sticking to closely to the colour pie and being overly conservative or making to many bends/breaks.
This is not Planar Chaos-ly, not anymore at least.
Black now frequently gets cards like Zombie Apocalypse, Crux of Fate, and Bontu's Last Reckoning.
The nonartifact clause is a bit Time Spiral-y (as in the set, not the block).
For what it's worth, I've thought two mana land ramp was too good for a while now. It lets control decks skip to later stages of the game, instead of forcing them to play out round three with three mana. Makes control decks repetitive, and reduces the variety of cards control needs to play. That said, players expect mana acceleration as a strategy, and would be miffed if they couldn't skip parts of the game. I wonder if MaRo has my same beef.
I've been thinking about this for couple of days now and I have to say that I just don't "see it."
If anything I would rather have rituals see a small return to black since they at least kind of play into it flavorfully. Black can do burst of mana certainly it tries to evoke some kind of ritual, but creating stability isn't it (Midnight Oil).
Ramping for lands to me describes abundance and overflowing life. It's certainly something black wants (flavorfully and mechanically, more on that later). Black grasps at life with utter greed, but isn't able to produce it per se - it mostly stoops into stealing it parasitically. Green excels in this passive activity since it's "without ego" and "serene" and all that. Black pretty much IS the ego.
Personally, mono-black control is close to my heart, and one thing I can tell you that one of the dangers of that deck is not hitting your lands. Not being able to remove artifacts or enchantments is a minor nuisance compared to that. Especially in EDH, I fear that black ramp spells would push the color too far. Like, if I'm constructing a black control deck, and I would consider adding green to it, to me, the most reasonable reason to do so would be to ramp (obviously individual cards play into this, but here I'm just referring colors to as abstract collections of mechanics).
As for tutoring the color's own basic lands to hand, I would expand the tithe effects of white to do that since it has that "slow and steady" feeling of building a community. Also, a phrase like "Endless Plains" keeps popping up in my mind.
Some of those blogatog links are quite funny at times - you're referencing to them as though they were out of some scientific research with statistics and stuff.
For example:
> * mcpowless-chang asked: Is a two mana land ramp spell (rampant growth) too good for standard?
> * MaRo: Not a developer but maybe.
And what you take out of that is that "We live in a world where Rampant Growth is too strong for standard". That's hilarious!
But yes, it seems that MaRo at least doesn't consider Liliana irksome though I had hoped I could have agreed on that with him.
Also, I think having ramp spells in all colors would just be dumb. This is one of the multitude of reasons why I think many of the artifacts push the color pie waaayyy too much.
As a disclaimer, it might be worth of note that I also would not have drawbackless tutors in black either, so perhaps I'm not really the person you want to convince?
For whatever reason I have always found black to be the easiest color to design cards for.
Anyway, maybe other people have something more sensible to say. I'm not honestly very good at expressing myself verbally, that is, trying to explain what I'm "understanding" (too much of the procession is happening at intuitive levels).
Hopefully it isn't too irritating that I'm pairing color pie with flavor, but from to me, the flavor is why the color pie and the game itself exists. Obviously you can "justify everything" with flavor, but not all those "flavor justifications" are created equal - or those same cards could still be expressed with the current color pie and so on.
Like here, with a name like "Fester the Blight" I would expect some kind of constant life loss, or buff from creatures dying or something. Swamps themselves don't feel that nasty to me. They're functional quite identical to the other basic lands.
It plays into the flavour of black tempts you into playing more black, the same the Tainted Lands do. Black is allowed to tutor swamps and while you can get ramp/dual lands, you need to have a heavily black manabase. Black is colour most tied to basic land type (besides green), with its swamp mattering counting as a subtheme of "black tempts you into playing more black". Black can access more mana from swamps (2015).
Getting an enchantment that doubles swamps was still fine in 2015, and is very likely to still be in black's colour pie unless somethinghas changed.
It was making "Lilliana" that planeswalker who got Swamps that was a mistake. However a Planeswalker that get swamps makes sense for black, not Lilians character (2015). The card's actual mechanics (2015) are fine, it's only making the character Liliana that was considered a mistake.
Which in turn means that Lilianans Shade wasn't a mistake...
Black is tertiary in permanent mana production in the mechanical colour pie, which is actually significant since it and green are the only colours with access to permanent mana production. (Blue doesn't get access to mana production).
And while it was 2013, (a black arbor elf was 'close'. So yes, permanent mana acceleration was in black colour pie then.
My argument is that is card is mechanically black, if tertiary. There was no 2013 colour pie change. And that rather than black losing ramp, green got nerfed causing black to be nerfed in turn. We live in a world where Rampant Growth is to strong for standard. And mechanically, if 2 cmc 'tapped' mana rocks are still okay, Hedron Crawler, then yes, every colour could get access to Nature's Lore provide it etbs tapped and fetches their respective basic land type, which you needed to cast the spell in the first place. (Would work best in black/green/red as they most heavily reward you for playing their land type, less well in blue/white but acceptable due to colourless ramp (blue) and white's plainfetching.)
> Every colour gets two mana mana rocks. This does not undercut black weakness.
IMO these are pretty bad arguments since 1) Can every color now get a Nature's Lore? and 2) Does this mean that black can use all evergreen keywords since none of them undercut its weaknesses?
... but okay, so. It really comes down the flavor IMO. Black has very clear paradigms through which it views reality.
individualism -> self-preservation -> parasitism (entropy) -> paranoia -> betrayal (drain effects like lifelink, sac costs, disemtomb, gain indestructible UEOT, etc)
power plays / amorality -> increasing potency / maximizing resource usage -> defilement / greed (reanimation, saccing again, trading life for resources, etc)
Both of those play well into destruction/withering and discard effects as well.
This increasing potency and maximizing resource usage is where the "Your Swamps now produce more" comes from I think. I still doubt it heavily that black would ever get an enchantment with that effect.
So anyway, given those I just don't see how spending your turn to ramp for a land fits in there.
From MTG Salvation:
> Black and Green: In Green, Black sees a color that is naive to the basics of life; that the world is an ugly place and that letting life happen unhindered only leads to more and more problems. The main debate between Black and Green is Parasitism (Death) vs. Interdependency (Life). Black believes that the weak masses exist only to be exploited by the strong (and will use death as a tool to cull the weak). Green's belief in the masses being essential to maintaining synergy through nature makes no sense to Black.
To me, this describes well the scenario of "Green grows lands and then Black destroys those lands". Also, I would say that ramping passively just isn't in black's style - all that describes green perfectly: "nature finds a way" and such.
As for MaRo, four year old replies stating "I guess I'd choose black" and "It's a distant second but if asked" aren't exactly convincing.
I'm glad it was acknowledged that Liliana of the Dark Realms was a mistake. That +1 doesn't feel back at all. So it's likely that Liliana's Shade also falls under that.
Also, notice that the statement of saying that Liliana was a mistake came in 2015, while in 2013 he just said:
> Black can and has been allowed to get extra black mana out of swamps for a long time. Liliana just did it back in Magic 2013.
So I would say that's a shift in philosophy that has happened between those years. Probably similar to those "Deals 13 damage to creature" cards in red that prompted "Destroy target creature" designs in red since "isn't 13 damage pretty much just removal" and caused MaRo to realize the mistake done there.
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade is the only instance in which black has ramped for Swamps and it's quite a curious one. It certainly seems that for a time MaRo had planned or decided that black can tutor/ramp for Swamps. Perhaps Liliana of the Dark Realms was that idea realized, but it also seems to have made him realize that "it just doesn't fit" (into play style or flavor).
So, to summarize: Not cool, man. Not cool.
I'm not making an argument for or against black Nature's Lore. I just thought it was worth pointing out that "every color gets a two mana rock" is an arguable sentiment. Certainly they did in the past. I don't know if Wizards would print Charcoal Diamond right now, though. Maybe they would, but I don't think it's a given.
Can you please elaborate on why isn't card is "Not Cool"?
Every colour gets two mana mana rocks. This does not undercut black weakness.
If a secondary colour get ramp, it would be black according to Maro. Which it would do via swamps to make you commit further to black.
And according to Mark Rosewater, black is the secondary colour he'd put rampant growth in if green is unavailable. Which would be swamps and not basics lands. And Wizards has considered giving black something far more powerful. And black is already allowed to search for swamps, put them into play, and make them produce mana.
I view this as a great Planar Chaos card, since it does something that's in black colour pie but isn't used because of current design reason, all without undercutting blacks weakness.
And yes, the spell you've proposed is a great flavourful card. But it belongs in a regular set, not a Planar Chaos set.
The flavour is that most large animals make more flavour sense in white than in green: Elephants and Rhino live
The meta-textual point is the originally white had Pearled Unicorn to green's Grizzly Bears. If Savannah Lions was never printed, green would be the weenie colour, not white. And Planar chaos green got Gaea's Anthem instead of white, making green the weenie colour.
The mechanical idea is changing how white functions as a defensive colour: Normally white defensive reward comes down to flyers, with white have no other way in limited to leverage its defensiveness into a long game strategy. By removing white weenies and giving it small defensive toughness creatures you change how it plays in limited. This simultaneously blurs it towards green (fatties) and blue (bad small creatures, sometimes gets fatties.)
I should probably making a document with a coherent vision. I've currently been using this set as dumbing bin for basic cards without a coherent alternative colour pie.
The point of shift was give White a card that changed it's limited colour pie without changing their constructed colour pie. White Angels and Blue Sphinx at rare/mythic rare have power toughness to mana cost values that would normally be unacceptable at common, discounting their abilities. (e.g. Argent Sphinx, Guardian Seraph, Indomitable Archangel, Restoration Ange, Sublime Archangel, Curator of Mysteries, Condunrum Sphinx, Aegis Angel, Angel of Finality, ect.)
There are two ways to go about making a Planar Chaos set. What seems like an obvious choice is to go bottom up. Think of how a color philosophy could be represented and design around it. Discover what that means. Adapt accordingly.
The other way, which seems just as valid to me, is to create top down. Just say that something is different. Ignore all precedent, and don't be lead by flavor. Then find the justification for how that happened. Discover what that means and adapt accordingly.
That's what I mean by saying 'color shift because of a need for color shift'. If the intent is to make a color-shifted set, I don't see a problem with 'just changing things for the heck of it'. I am assuming that the designer will eventually find a reason why the change is different as they move forward, or eventually toss the card as not working/inappropriate.
I mean, if the end result of top down and bottom up look the same, who are we to say one method is more right than the other? As long as a reason for the color philosophy break eventually comes forward, and it seems reasonable enough, then I don't see a real problem with placeholders like this. Eventually, though, I'd like an explanation to emerge.
Keeping in mind, of course, that this is KeresAcheron's set, and it's his choice to do what he wants with it. I'm only speaking about what I would like to see. But what do I know?
While I like the idea here, I think Pariah (Simulacrum) is the card/effect you want to colorshift instead (unfortunately the name Scapegoat has already been used).
How is that not a color shift for a sake of color shift? It's still very cynical to just do a color shift because that's something you "need to" do fill a slot. IMO all the colorshifts in Planar Chaos had something to say about either the past or the possible future. Or specifically about the (alternative) present - with past and future being the themes of Time Spiral and Future Sight.
Obviously making a
fattie is telling us something but it already emphasizes the issue of white and green being too similar (like black and red). The "weenies for white" idea is comparable to how white and green pump spells differ from each other with white only doing small amounts (+2/+2 or so).
Though, if we think it as an "alternative present" then certainly the main question is "so how did green end up"?
Also you can justify everything with flavor so that's somewhat pointless. Though we have to remember that the game is structured entirely around the concept of flavor: without it the mechanics don't make any sense and are rather pointless; it's something that was realized with the more flavorful tone in the "newer" MXX coresets - they looked back to alpha in how to create evocative cards.
...
I think I just rambled with no real point. Eh, whatever.
This is a set based on Planar Chaos. So, at the very least, this isn't a color shift for the sake of color shift. It's a color shift because of the need for color shift.
I'm sure, given a flavorful answer, we could explain why White can have top-heavy creatures on par with Green. I'd also like to hear what that answer is. I'd also like to see how the other colors get shuffled because of this. Does Green become the defense? If that's the case, how does that change Green's overall strategy?
Changed to colorshifted Hollowhenge Beast I assume.
Why would like to undercut a color's weakness? Isn't like the half the color pie about determining a color's weaknesses? "No big creatures" isn't exactly that for
IMO but still.
Not that long ago I encountered a similar card (5/5 vanilla for
). Here was my response it:
> White doesn't currently do (and never has done) large creatures at common. With large being creatures with 4+ power. There seems to be exactly four exceptions to this out of ALL the mono-white common creatures ever printed: Yoked Plowbeast (alara power shenanigans), Lairwatch Giant (giant tribal), Loxodon Convert (a subtler new phyrexia black to white color shift ie. Nether Horror?), and Thraben Sentry (conditional and also features trample for some reason?). Do you have an explanation as to why you think should have access to large creatures at common?
Since there are so many modern exceptions I think a card such as this is acceptable as long as there's reasonable explanation for it. Doing a colorshift for the sake of colorshift seems hardly like one though.