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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 19:53:40)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-09-05 19:53:40)
Interesting.
Ah, well spotted. Yes, I'm glad to get an update.
Here are the updated creature percentages:
62% - White
50% - Blue
56% - Black
53% - Red
59% - Green
And here’s how many creatures per color (assuming ten cards per color):
White - 6
Blue - 5
Black - 6
Red - 5
Green - 6
And if there are five artifacts, I’d make two creatures. That gets us to thirty creatures.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/158140162218/any-chance-of-you-doing-an-updated-design-skeleton
That's true.
Black would likely do Swamps Matter instead.
: return or play land from graveyard.
: clone land.
, 
: search land.
, 
: polymorph land.
, 
: Lands make extra mana.
: Lands untap.
: Artifact lands?
: Land animation.
I think land produces colourless mana is more
than 
, though I admit it'll be hard to find things for 
to do in this space.
As MaRo says, the Phyrexian shtick is that they invade other planes.
The only thing that surprised me here was seeing New Phyrexia so far down the list.
Wasn't the whole point of original Lorwyn block that it and Shadowmoor fused? So if we went back, it would be some sort of Conflux deal.
I think on MaRo's blog there was a comment about Regatha and Vrynn, and Vrynn is only higher due to Jace's fans.
Theros is the plane I see being harder to make an interesting revisit, returned Elspeth aside. Maybe that's just my lack of interest in Greek mythology though.
In the case of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, MaRo has stated in the past that if there was a return to the plane, the setting would likely be exclusively the Shadowmoor phase. Several posts on Blogatog came from people who also didn't realize that British folklore is the block's flavor, and that probably doesn't help.
And yeah, the MaRo said that Kamigawa's successes were ninjas and samurai. He's said a Japanese-inspired world isn't off the table though, just that it would be a new plane. I'm relieved by that, since I'd hate to see a world of yokai turned into a anime-world or whatever they'd end up making.
On Mercadia: Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I just have a different attitude about keeping old planes that have a central good idea buried inside them. I think it's worthwhile to throw away everything except what worked, then refocus and make something out of that.
With Mercadia, I'd probably take a look at the spellshapers and see if I could branch out from there. Probably by saying that while most Mercadians believe their's is the only city in the plane, that the populace is fed that line from their government which is keen to exert monopolizing control on the vast trade network that extends into the far reaches of the plane (underground? can only get there by skyship? They did have a hanger for skyships for some unfathomable reason...) Maybe even spin some elements of 1984, or use it as a launching point for an invasion that paradigm shifts the entire city.
But I got to admit, I don't know if my plan would be wise. I'm not sure if the plot purists would pick up pitchforks, or if the people who think Mercadia is lame wouldn't change their opinions. I think it would be cool to flip a failed plane into something unexpected and exciting. But it certainly isn't safe, and there's pretty much no downside of the safe option which of "just make a new world, berk."
Land (and mana) related ideas.
: land creatures. land fight.
: can't play lands. lands don't untap.
: steal land. change land type. land loses abilities.
: land controller takes damage. land produce colorless mana.
Almost all of jmg's comments sound good to me, but I assume wizards have good reason for their choice.
I loved Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, but I think a lot of the mechanics were mediocrely received, so I guess that's why it's a poor choice? Rosewater has said several times that he'd LIKE to return a to plane with cool flavour that was poorly received, but he'd RATHER create a new plane on an equally interesting idea that doesn't already have negative baggage (since there's plenty if interesting ideas).
It's funny. I started playing just after mirrodin, which at the time made me feel like a newbie, but now feels quite a long time ago. So I don't really know the planes that weren't commonly used after that. And in fact, dominaria, which was SO central for so long, has now slipped down the planes I think of as newfangled, the ones I'm most familiar with.
First off, Kamigawa doesn't suffer from that problem. Market research has shown than even accounting for power level, the flavor of the world is one of the least popular they've done. Most of the audience didn't get it, since they focused too much on making it accurate Japanese.
In MaRo's view at least, Mercadia is defined as their first attempt at a city world, one that's strictly worse than Ravnica.
Shandalar also had the Onnake, which are plot relevant on and off.
Most of these make sense to me. A few... I would have made slightly different choices.
1-4: All make sense. Though, I'm not sure what you do with Zendikar 'Adventurer's World' now that everything's all adventured out and the Eldrazi have moved away. But I presume the pressure to return has more to do with the 'lands matters' theme than any actual story-telling purposes.
5: Sounds right. I'm sure they'll both be revisited at some point, but it's not pressing. It's unlikely that Fiora will ever get fully fleshed out, with an interesting story and whatnot. [Edit: Oh, it looks like Fiora was featured in the IDW Magic: the Gathering comic books. I guess that counts for something?]
6: I get why they'd want to explore Vryn and aren't as interested as exploring Regatha. But splitting the difference between the two seems unnecessary. Probably has something to do with internal conversations inside the pit. Though, I got to admit, I never read the books, so maybe there's things I'm missing in there.
7: Really? Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is rated down with the plane that's only really known for being a bland world for a couple video games, and a place that hosts a failed experiment on slivers? Untap was a questionable mechanic in Shadowmoor, but that's a minor piece of what was going on. And while the problems of complexity in L/S lead to NWO design, that doesn't seem like it's a fault of the plane. I would have thought the flavor of the world would have tested high enough to warrant a return. Especially considering that people never stop liking tribal. They only non-trivial problem I can see with this world is that going back there would mean at least some tribal in the same 9 tribes, and maybe that's boring? Or Wizards doesn't want to support Goblins yet again? I just don't get this one.
8: I like Kamigawa, but I'm sure it suffers from "The power level is bad, so the plane must be bad" philosophy among some players. So maybe this is fair. I do know, however, that the more tribal spirits and arcane you print, the more you support the other sets with spirits and arcane. So I personally would have bumped this up, but maybe only to 7. Segovia is just a gimmick. It belongs in 8's "It would be nice, but not expected."
9: Poor Ulgrotha--but it deserves to be here. Serra's Realm and Rath too, since those worlds were destroyed. If you wanted to revisit those planes, you'd either have to tell a story that happened far in the past, or you'd need to resurrect a plane for... what purpose? Just nostalgia? Better to just make a new world at that rate. Furthermore, since both these worlds featured stories tied to old Planeswalker archetypes, Wizards won't be too keen to resurrect the old stories. I'd appreciate it, but I got to admit it's a poor choice.
The only exception, in my mind, is Mercadia. It never felt fully explored, only really being touched on in one large set. And I think you could get away with saying that Mercadia is bigger than just the city and the surrounding region, and put it in the middle of something much larger. But if Wizards isn't interested, than I guess nothing is lost either.
10: This is shame. Rosewater's right; they can't return to this world, since too much of it ties to the real world. But I love the idea of plane that's made up of 1,001 mirror dimensions. If I was in charge of Wizards R&D, I'd probably bump Rabiah to 8, start asking people if we could keep Rabiah, but completely re-write everything (1,001 planes is a lot of ground to work with.) Then I'd rename this chart the Rath Scale.
Oh cool, that is interesting.
The same formulas WotC uses for every block is to
1
a. determine on which plane the next block occurs
b. make mechanics and plot for that block
or
2
a. determine a mechanical theme
b. find or create a plane that matches the theme
An alternative method is to let the story drive the direction of the planes for the next block. This is perhaps the most organic, immersive, and powerful storytelling. This has happened in the past, especially Weatherlight saga and, to some extent, Mirrodin Besieged / New Phyrexia.
Such a block may take place on one or more planes as dictated by the story's needs. For instance, Mercadian Masques block takes place on three different planes simultaneously. However, a common event on all three planes is a rebellion on each plane. Hence all three sets in that block has Rebels, even though each set takes place on different planes.
Rabiah Scale per Mark Rosewater.
1 – Ravnica, Innistrad
2 – Zendikar
3 – Kaladesh, Theros
4 – Alara, Dominaria, Tarkir, Vryn
5 – Fiora, New Phyrexia (Mirrodin)
6 – Regatha
7 – Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Shandalar
8 – Kamigawa, Segovia
9 – Mercadia, Rath, Serra’s Realm, Ulgrotha
10 – Rabiah
Each one triggers and resolves separately though, so doesn't count. Only one actually makes you win
I actually used to have a deck centered around winning during my upkeep with Test of Endurance, Battle of Wits, and Epic Struggle at once. Sorry for the lack of card tags it's been a very long time since I've been on site and have forgotten them. So I guess If someone has that in place and can cast Caress of Phyrexia as an instant in theory that would be six loses I think.
I'll play the C16 decks out of the box, and see whether it feels like
and 
are "paired" against green, but I rather doubt it will. That deck has rather more focus on the alliance of 
and 
and 
, IIRC.
And while technically Wizards could have gone MN-OP for some of the decks and MO-NP for others, that would be frustrating asymmetry. Bear in mind they wanted to print 15 partner creatures not just 10, and wanted to print twice as many enemy-colour-pairs as ally-colour-pairs because enemy-colour legends are underrepresented in Magic's history. I really think the allocation of partner creatures is all combinatorical fallout from their requirements and absolutely doesn't indicate any opinion that
hates green, not even a "subconscious" one.
Just because they paired the colors that way doesn't give any basis for your argument for "antagonism." I fail to see how you're arriving at that conclusion.
So you agree that this combination of allied/enemy is the best solution for the given constraints. They could have different decks with various combinations. 2 have allied partners only, 2 have enemy colors only, and 1 with mixed ally/enemy. This would work just as well if not taking flavor into account.
Antagonism may not be their priority. Nevertheless that is the result, one which they totally and even subconsciously agree with. In short, they have officially paired
in a deck without green. That is enough foundation to support my theory. When you play these commander decks straight out of the box, will you not see the same pairing as I've describe?
Yeah, you can split MNOP into pairs in three ways: MN and OP (both allied pairs), MO and NP (both enemy pairs), MP and NO (one allied one enemy). Since this is the first and quite possibly only printing of the partner ability, they wanted at least one partner in every colour pair both enemy and allied, so MP and NO was the only option. No implication that
and 
are "allied against green" or any such nonsense; it's purely combinatorics.
dude1818 - thing is, that's not true of most basic lands either. There are 11 basic lands, of which five are inherent to Magic; the other six (Wastes and the Snow-Covered lands) are exactly the same as Relentless Rats and friends. You don't get to go to the land station and pick up Wastes or Snow-Covered Islands, so nor would you get to pick up six Shadowborn Apostles.
I'm in agreement with Link here. Space in the rules text is at a much higher premium than text in the type-line, and if the legend doesn't have any keywords then being legendary adds an additional line of text. Given that legends already tend to be more complex than non-legendary cards, I feel like having the first line of text always having to be set aside for keywords closes up more design space than the extra room for creature types can open.
Really, you hate legendary that much? Because I doubt basic, snow, or world have any relevance to this discussion.
As for Alex's "basic" comment, the rules specifically say you get any number of "basic land cards," so a) putting basic on nonlands wouldn't do anything, and b) Wizards doesn't like the connotations basic would have on those creatures. There's nothing inherent to Magic about them, unlike the basic lands.
Changing supertypes into keywords comes with annoying rules baggage and errata, and I don't see any real benefit. You're just moving the space they take up from the type line into the rules text, where space is generally more important to conserve anyway.
Keywords before card types is a very sensible thing to allow. People write "flying creature" all the time, and it's even more grammatical in non-MtG-English than "creature with flying". So I definitely support allowing that.
"Supertypes are pointless" - heh.
It's not just that older cards reference supertypes. Most supertypes mean something. In other words, supertypes mostly have rules baggage, in a way that WotC sensibly decided to remove from creature types (Wall, Legend). Indeed, legendary and basic even have rules baggage that applies at deck construction time. It's a bit of a conceptual shift to move that to keywords. Not entirely without precedent, though; Relentless Rats and Shadowborn Apostle would presumably receive the keyword basic under your scheme?