First thoughts on the big spoilers starting this week:

Why tf did they start on a Thursday? I know I'm not keeping as close an eye on things because I'm on a significant break off paper magic, but that still feels WRONG to have a Making Magic article released on Thursday...)

Creature becoming attached and not being creatures while attached. Oh, how I am reminded of my own Operate mechanic...

Huh... looks like ability counters are just gonna be a general thing now if Biting-Palm Ninja is any indication?

I really, really wanted to design a transforming Saga, but the lack of Saga-frame on the site discouraged me.

Well, two people did.

I'm a big fan of enchantment creatures taking strides towards their rightful position as deciduous/evergreen. I also am very happy they kept the concept of the starry frame (since there was the suggestion that enchantment creatures on other planes would get their own treatment not evoking Nyx). All left to wonder is why they don't expand it to all enchantments the same way artifacts get a shared frame treatment.

I haven't read the story, but am really happy about how the unveiling of the Tamiyo story worked out, though I'm not emotionally prepared.

Good call on merging Ninja/Rogue tribal and Samurai/Warrior tribal respectively?

Compleated mana is hybrid Phyrexian mana. Paid with either color or 2 life.

The samurais are still just Samurai. But you could make a case of subclasses on top of major classes, if you want more interaction with major class. e.g. Human Warrior Samurai. Rat Rogue Ninja.

Phyrexian script reappears -- on Phyrexian cards in alternative frames.

Reconfigure is just turning Licid ability into keyword. Probably only appears on Equipments (not Auras) in this set? The Reality Chip is cheaper Future Sight. Could be a card to look out for.

They chose the complementary path and made the Ninja/Samurai tribal cards care about Rogue/Warrior as well. Keeps the type line clean.

Talking about clean/cramped type lines: Legendary Enchantment Creature – Shrine caught me off-guard. Congrats to Yusai, Bound at the Edge.

Equipment Jellyfish is cool, too.

Compleated does not appear in the Mechanics article for the set, so I don't know whether the name is used for phyrexian hybrid mana. But I'm going to plug my view on how Phyrexian mana always should have been hybrid to begin with.

"Ninja/Samurai tribal cards care about Rogue/Warrior as well. Keeps the type line clean."

I'd rather have the reverse. Allow Warrior tribal cards also affect Samurais.

I suppose Compleated appears only on a single Planeswalker (for now.) Hence may not be a expansion-wide mechanic?

I agree that Phyrexian mana being drawn like a hybrid symbol to begin with would be better, since it is like a hybrid mana. However, now there is another one, so that is another consideration, I suppose.

But, for double colour Phyrexian mana symbols, we might have to wait for the rule changes to be released to see the ASCII representation of them; my idea is something like {M/N/P} (with the appropriate letters in place of M and N), but we will have to wait to see what they do.

Also, you can design a transforming Saga even without the appropriate frame, for now, I suppose. (You can just mention the chapter abilities in the text, and mention "Enchantment - Saga" in the type line.)

According to Maro, the format for the mana symbol on Tamiyo is "(g/u/p)." Hybrid mana uses lower case letters

Maybe it does, but the rules are using uppercase, though.

Hybrid mana using lower-case letters wuld be new to me. It's probably just case-insensitive or laziness since 107.4 clearly uses upper case for other examples that have been written in lower case in the cited post.

We don't have a Saga frame at all, so I just post a lot fewer Sagas than I come up with.

I'm quite happy how Kamigawa 2 is turning out.

• It's a return to Kamigawa.
• It brings enchantment creatures closer to deciduous, maybe even evergreen status (and solidifies the starry frame as enchantment frame).
• It brings Kamigawan history into Sagas and iterates nicely on them.
• Modified is neat.
• All old races are back and we even get Kappas and new Insect-folk.

They use the set boosters to hand out some eternal bonus cards, like Myojin with indestructible counters and a Shrine commander, that don't fit into the premium set proper.

Those cards seem like they should be in Commader decks, but just sit around separately instead. I know the feelingof pulling a cycle out of a set for space, and this is a wild solution to see from WotC proper.

They've been doing that for a couple sets. With only two commander decks, they can't fit full cycles in them, so they put them in the set boosters but with the commander set symbol

I've never seen them put out a whole cycle of cards that are neither in draft boosters nor in the preconstructed decks though.

Perhaps I'm just becoming grumpy and old but I'm not a particularly fan of Kamigawa 2. It feels like there's a mish-mash of a bit of everything with no clean themes. The cards are also really word, even at common level you have sagas with like 10 lines of text (albeit with half horizontal space so more like 5, but still) that also then transform into something else. This feels not too dissimilar to the sort of mess that I had made some odd ten years ago with scifi themes.

Like Tales of Master Seshiro - what is this? C'mon, common Sagas as a concept is already something one should approach trepidatiously, not slam it into full of text and then have it transform as well - that's the opposite approach of almost seeming like you want to make it as complex as you can. The idea of common sagas did come up recently and there I made one with two chapters and 4 lines of text. Come to think of, the original Saga concept I scratched together from ideas of multiple designers (way before WotC sagas) where commons themselves: Road to Ruin and Tale of Thereafter.

At this point I'm now fully convinced that WotC has just lost their top-tier design sensibilities a long time ago. I mean, it's not like Kamigawa 2 is some exception anywhere (like Dungeons, wtf was that? In standard?) - this is just the norm where things seem rather messed up both in design and development. I would go as far as say that this sort of work is subpar and shoddy.

I have no idea what is going on NWO principles anymore - last I head them it was MaRo saying that they had been repeatedly failing at them - now it looks like they are just willfully doing so. Development also has been terrible - something I would attribute to getting into that sort of Hearthstone mindset where everything is card advantage itself so you enter this infinite grind (so development trouble sort of caused inversely by design choices) - though commander focus prolly plays into this. The number of banned cards in these few years, not only in standard but by extension even in legacy, has been greater than in the past ten years prior to that or something like that. It's absurd.

The people at the WotC should get a grip of themselves lol. I mean, on a personal level I don't care that much since I haven't actively played the game for years (I still follow it actively since you ought to do that if you are into custom design), but what troubles me is that custom designers is going to look up at these messes of sets as if they were some sort of an exemplar precedent to follow. I don't think these are yet disgraceful, or maybe they are but I'm in denial, but they certainly aren't graceful. It's the type of thing that really makes me question how a supposedly professional design teams of multimillion dollar companies can have this sort of output.

I can confirm from a recent post on blogatog that Commander has something (unspecified) to do with their deliberate increase in complexity in premium sets.

It has always been the case that repeated text and keywords get to count for less text - and the transform text is something every single Saga has this set.

If you consider the third chapter on that card equivalent to a keyword ability, I think this reasonably fits NWO standards for DFCs; only The Shattered States Era really is an issue.

I can't believe you complain specifically about a Saga that also has just two effects (despite one occuring twice), while your example shifts suspended Zombify to a two-mana common.

I think "enchantments & artifacts" is a loud and clear theme. 302 cards, 282 w/o basic lands... take away all artifacts, enchantments or cards that say "artifact" or "enchantment" and you've got 93 cards left. And that's not counting mention of "Aura", "Equipment", "Vehicle" etc.

Samurai also got re-designed into a tribe that would play well with Aura/Equipment; counters tie into that; channel has a clear purpose in the set enabling more cards of those permanent types while also getting some neat use outside of that.

I'm not trying to be an apologist, but the set is still in a good place. Comparing it with our first trip to Kamigawa I don't see myself despising any part of it as much as sweep and epic.

Dungeons though and companions... well, Rob Balder would remind us: We try things. Sometimes they even work.

No defense on the banned card numbers though. They knew what they were doing, but did it anyway.

Counting only the front side of DFCs, NEO was apparently the wordiest expansion ever. Obviously the crazy MDFCS from last year drive that up even higher. Otoh, the sagas all seemed super simply to me. They mostly had a single chapter ability that triggered twice, and then turned into a french vanilla creature.

Flipping a card over is not a simple keyword! Especially when none of the cards these flip into aren't vanillas! That transforming is tied into keeping track of a Saga chapters also convolutes things. You need to fiddle with DFC helper cards to even begin with these.

> "I can't believe you complain specifically about a Saga that also has just two effects (despite one occuring twice), while your example shifts suspended Zombify to a two-mana common."

As far as comprehension complexity goes, I don't see my example card being any more complex than Late to Dinner.

A) Commons can and should be mana effective. This is pretty much what brought for the whole FIRE principle as far as I can see, but it seems it either always was or transitioned to just ignoring NWO which is a wholly wrong path.

B) What the card does have is tactical complexity, where it's easy to play out but to play with it to the maximum potential requires some thought. This is the exact type of complexity that is allowed and even desired. (a link to my common article that links WotC sources)

I get the enchantments & artifacts theme in the set but does it need to fire on every single cylinder possible they can think of? Colorful artifacts, licids jumping around (yes, licids casually among twenty other themes), Vehicles, Sagas, Shrines, enchantment creatures, enchanting lands...

Like is it a good idea to mix in Vehicles and reconfigure in the same set? Oh, and there are just regular Equipment cards with Equip in the set. Chances for confusion much? You can have an animated enchanted land with a few counters on it as well as a regular equipment and reconfigure creature equipped on it that in itself is "modified" with bunch of +1/+1 counters on it, that you then tap into crew a vehicle - all of this with cards at common rarity.

AND then, you have modified trying to tangle almost all of those things together. It's a nice idea but when you have everything else listed above relating to this theme floating around, it's an issue to slam it in there.

A random "compleated" keyword is also just kinda indicative of the mood of throwing stuff at the wall.

Now, ok, so there is that theme that has some 10 different mechanical themes going on, they then decided it was time to add everything else. There is ninjutsu, channel, double-faced cards that I didn't even mention above there that will require helper cards, some mana dork creature tokens, +1/+1 counters plus keyword counters and phasing (?!) being used again with this sort of "whatever goes" attitude. Like, sure, maybe they are deciduous or whatever now, but maybe easy-off on them for a second even at higher rarities when you have like six things than can latch onto and activate each other even without counting all the other themes. When you have this much stuff going on, even simple stuff like Samurai tribal support start to seem iffy to me - the complexity burden is just too high.

Looking at how enchantment type is utilized on creatures, it does look like it has been relegated to a moniker you could technically slap onto any unit without any sort of mechanical justification. A plain out blue ninja is an enchantment creature now - notably some of the blue ninjas are some of them are not (inconsistency which is indirectly causing a complexity increase due to potential confusion). A french vanilla 1/1 Snake with deathtouch is an enchantment creature. Sure! Lore justifies it or whatever - everything can be everything they want, just jam the enchantment type in there so it can interact just a bit more with other cards and add to the total complexity.

I absolutely can't believe something like The Shattered States Era is anywhere near common rarity. Base mode is a threaten, then it has rallying cry that affects other permanents again (a basic red flag) and it transforms on the third chapter into a trample haste. For fs sake.

I think mentioning DFCs as separate from Sagas is disingenuous since the fact that every single Saga is a DFC and vice versa - and they all transform the same way - is a huge part of that contains the complexity.

I agree that the five Equipments with equip might not have been worth the inconsistency towards those with reconfigure. But please recognize the consistency conversely used on Sagas.

You seem to have no problem with colored vanilla artifact creatures. I wonder whether they are justified with anything but "lore or whatever".

I think one thing that makes sets more complex is the loss of blocks to spread ideas out over.

I'm intrigued. Maybe a true direct comparison between sets is in order. But I wouldn't even know which sets would be "good".

­The Shattered States Era is an example for a common DFC Safa that I wouldn't have allowed, you seem to misunderstand the "affects other permanents" red flag since this is triggered at a predetermined time in a turn. This is more about on-board tricks at instant speed or triggering during the highly interactive combat phase.

DFC are an issue in of themselves regardless what card type they might or might be tied to as far as I'm concerned - they need to be reserved the proper amount of the "complexity quota". None of my gripes with them are alleviated with being restricted to a single card type. That they are tied to such an already complex card type in Sagas is really more than less of a problem - you're stacking up complexity there. Time to make Planeswalker Sagas because why not?

The reason why I didn't mention colored vanilla artifact creatures is merely because I didn't notice them among all the other stuff going on. It's that bad. There might be a lot of other things I missed as well. EDIT: I don't know if you're even talking about this set as it's hard to grasp whether this might have those or not. I do see there being a similar scenario to blue ninjas where some black rat ninjas are artifact creatures and other are not. Bonkers.

With Shattered that buff is still something you have to keep in your working memory. If it were on an instant it would be whatever but as a Second chapter on a permanent that's a different story. While it's true that the redflag is more about stuff that can tap to give a bonus to a dude at instant speed, the very bare essence of it is "there is too many things going on in the board state it becomes to hard and you end up making mistakes".

The moment you have that chapter triggering with some other buffs, and whatever auras and counters on creatures, there's already several things to keep track of - not in terms of on-board combat tricks but just in general stats. Just having Shattered with Befriending the Moths I can already see getting annoying fast. "Okay, all of these gets +1/+0 ueot, I give this 3/4 dude +1/+1 ueot, it has a +1/+1 counter on it and +2/+1 bonus from the thing reconfigured to it and I have 2/1 and a 1/1 as my other attackers - how much I can attack for?" Just basic math without any on-board instant speed combat tricks can be made hard - and this works from the other side as well if you are to attack into that sort of board and next turn those two chapters are gonna trigger so you have start calculating with how much damage they can retaliate with depending on what you leave to block.

I have to repeat myself: Shattered is an issue, but the other common Sagas are basically rebound sorceries with a third return that is a token - and not making it a token, but a DFC is less taxing in other aspects that you mention.

> "colored vanilla artifact creatures"

I think you misunderstand. That's something you yourself literally designed, so I assume, you are fine with them existing - justified by lore only.

If anything vanilla and french vanilla artifact and enchantment creatures should be preferable to forcing them to be reconfigure Equipments, Vehicles, Sagas or even just enchantments with static abilities.

I want toreally make an exercise in comparing this set with a set you'd consider well done, even just for myself to check my position, so which set was the last one before the rise in complexity become an issue.

Since I find it hard to believe Ikoria wasn't already part of the complexity creep, the question would be: Theros Beyond Death or which earlier set? I'm absolutely positive Dominaria was still a clean design, so where between those would you put your personal cut-off point for "sets that are still not cramming in too much"?

> "That's something you yourself literally designed, so I assume, you are fine with them existing - justified by lore only."

It's very well possible I might have made that sort of card but I have no recollection of it. I mean, I have made tens of thousands designs with a lot of experimentation and I don't honestly think all of them are that great. Like I have that one test set where I literally state I detest it deeply or something that effect xD

Was that design of relatively recent years or like ten years back? I have a hard time remember any vanilla designs I have made now that I think about it. I would actually be interested at looking back to it.

> "If anything vanilla and french vanilla artifact and enchantment creatures should be preferable to forcing them to be reconfigure Equipments, Vehicles, Sagas or even just enchantments with static abilities."

Slapping artifact and enchantment types on creatures without any sort of justification that can be found on the card itself seems nonsensical. For one, it devalues the whole meaning of having that card type to the point of becoming completely meaningless.

It isn't impossible to design simple creature cards that makes them having the artifact or enchantment a relevant factor. If you have literally nothing as in the case of vanilla creatures, it's really ugh. Having those types shouldn't be an arbitrary moniker - you are actively devaluing them by using them that way. There's a lot of themes and historical mechanical package to them that isn't done any justice if you just use them the same way you would use some fringe or overly generic creature type.

The complexity I feel has been an issue for a shorter period of time. It seems to me that the current sets have had various, many times differing, problems. Like the case of cramming too much stuff is one that I see particularly in Kamigawa 2 - and if my understood what dude1818 said there earlier, it's completely correct just purely by going by word count.

From what I recall, most of my gripes with sets of past years is how they have failed to live to their full potential in many ways - Kaldheim, Strixhaven, and War of the Spark especially come to mind as they played with settings very similar to those that I have experimented myself with from anywhere between preliminary design discovery phase to actual set design. So the failings of potential in them are especially stark to me. Even with them, they weren't that bad as sets, not just quite there I would say. I hoped a lot more out of them and they ended up being more like "above average".

While complexity has been a general factor of sets these past years, I don't remember it being anywhere near as blatant as it's in Kamigawa 2. Also I don't think it has necessary been a linear creep in complexity though I haven't kept track of it. Possibly the furthest memory I have where I went "Hold on, the complexity at common seems amiss here" was with Fertile Thicket in Battle for Zendikar, which makes it seven years ago. I did a red flag count of the commons and noted that it was clearly elevated but nothing too serious.

I recall that at roughly the same time I noted MaRo blogatoging about how they were well aware that they had been steadily overstepping in this manner. I think it also came up in one of those "yearly reports" or whatever they are called that are done on dailymtg. With a set like Kamigawa 2 I don't even dare to do a red flag count given how bursting out of it seams it is at just face value.

Regarding the quality of sets overall, my extremely cynical response would be that the original Innistrad was the last "truly great" set. I would be unfair of me to not note that Dominaria always looked pretty darn good to me. I think it had the right mix of doing new, relatively innovative stuff mixed in with older stuff all the while managing the whole responsibly with afforded levels of complexity. So Dominaria to me is clearly an exceptional blip between these long years. Very clean design overall though legendary nonpermanent spells are a big misstep but let's give credit where it's due.

Solid stuff with Dominaria we can agree on that but to me most of the stuff before and after that is "muddled". It certainly doesn't help that there has been return to return to return to ravnica or whatever and also is it the second return to innistrad now? It all starts to blur at some point and I think it's becoming quite apparent that the quality isn't going stay up when you're having your third or fourth return to the same plane.

Sets like modern horizons have had certainly some interesting isolated designs but that isn't what makes a great set, plus those are supplemental sets anyway with different "rules" to them so "eh".

woah this post ended up being a lot longer than I thought lol

Thank you for the insight. I'm going to come back to this as I set up something. Reminding me of the annual articles is great as well. They ought to be a good indicator of these issues that don't require slogging through blogatog.

Let me state that there is definitely something amiss, I just really think that some specific things you mention are actually less of an issue, but with an issue of accumulated complexity it is clear that the pinpointing of troubles is not possible.

Let's reformulate my position:

• Common DFC Sagas as all of them are implemented but one are a lower-level complexity than DFCs or Sagas as we usually see them despite combining two elements that seem on the surface complex.
• They are fine at common as an increased-complexity card that doesn't necessarily cause a red flag, though at least one of them does, which we 100% can agree on.
• The surrounding environment of increased-complexity cards used to be toned down in complexity. This set and others failed to do so.
• Vanilla and french vanilla (colored) artifact creatures and enchantment creatures are preferable to an increase in complexity at lower rarities to "justify" them. If anything the set would have benefited from a few more over Bearer of Memory and Akki Ember-Keeper.
• The theme of the set makes these aspects core, and for that I defend them.
• I cannot say the same about the proliferation of token types at common which should have been solved by DFC Sagas, or some other aspects that creep complexity you list, so despite the above positions, I overall agree with many issues. I just think the issues do lie with the list of things added to the pot, not the core pillars of the set structure.

I have a hard time with agreeing on the Sagas. It certainly isn't how I would have approached the concept of common Sagas as I expressed earlier. One troubling thing is that the differences between the common Sagas and those at higher rarities in the set aren't blatantly clear to me from a glance. Obviously there are things like impact of the card that might of higher in these uncommon/rare Sagas but the comprehension complexity is almost at equal levels in many as far as I can tell.

Why do you see them as being of lower complexity than Sagas of the past? There are plenty of Sagas which I could see arguments for being simpler than these, despite all of them being of uncommon or higher rarity: The Birth of Meletis, Song of Freyalise, Triumph of Gerrard, Forging the Tyrite Sword, History of Benalia, Battle for Bretagard, Time of Ice, Chainer's Torment, ... There are obvious reasons why some of these can't appear at common rarity, but I'm strictly talking about their complexity in comparison to the common Sagas presented in here. I'm not convinced on the DFC side side of the argument either - even Werewolves (say in dark ascension) with the quirkiness of their triggers, did at common only exactly what they had to with very little fluff besides that.

Maybe I didn't make my position exactly clear regarding the themes of the set, but I'm the guy who made planeswalkers at common so I basically see anything possible at lower rarities as long as you devout enough of your total complexity to that particular concept. The point I tried to get across with all of those listings, and their nuances and complexity issues, is indeed that having all of them in the set is what dilutes the focus totally and the set easily starts giving these vibes of being incoherent when they pile on top of each other. The insidious thing with complexity is that it doesn't scale linearly but rather kinda multiplies with each other theme you are trying to get focus of the players on.

If the set for example solely honed down on the themes of artifacts and enchantments and how interplayed of each other (ok, maybe not just 100% into them, I think I would drop few of the subthemes from these as there's too much overlap anyway and then add very loosely complimentary ones around that didn't touch them directly but yeah), it could have been made an absolutely brilliant set as far as I know, with DFC Sagas in as well despite my gripes with them. The thing that makes the set messy is that it has "on one side" all of these intermingling ideas that could constitute a clear vision (though they seem to be also at least partially getting in the way of each other), but it then also this thing, and then those two, and then that also, and some random little one-offs of that and so on. Currently the set looks extremely "noisy" design wise and that the cards have a clearly higher average word count as well doesn't help one bit. As I asked previously, "does it [the set] need to fire on every single cylinder possible they can think of?"

another bit of evolving design tech in this set: "as you cast this spell" is becoming standard wording (as opposed to showing in oddball cases such as Enthralling hold or the reveal a dragon cards from DTK: Flame Discharge, Lethal Exploit...). Basically it creates scaling or bonus effects that cannot be turned off or reduced by changing what's on the battlefield by the time it resolves.

The comprehensive rules changes are available now.

I would prefer to change the rules that creatures cannot be attached to anything in a different way than how they did it. I would have that creatures can be attached to other stuff (if they have other types that allow it), and to reconfigure makes it stop being a creature but doesn't become unattached if it somehow still is a creature. (The fact that they put in a rule that creatures cannot be attached to anything can make things klugy like this. There are a few other cards that expect the existing rules but they can be made with errata if necessary.)

Changing the crew ability so that it cannot crew itself, is OK but I think unnecessary. I think that it isn't unintuitive. (It is still OK though, and might perhaps affect puzzles, strategies, designs, etc.)

Compleated seems to be what I expected it to be.

I am not sure why only creatures are allowed to be "modified", since Auras and counters can apply to any object or player.

The change to the rule about players looking at exiled cards is good, but should be unnecessary. If you already would be allowed to know what it is, then you should be allowed to look at it.

They are right that the rules about wording on older cards are unnecessary; the Oracle texts and glossary already help, so these additional rules saying such thiings, do not belong.)

I don't know what exactly change is made to rule 903.3a, but I would think that simply deleting the word "planeswalker" would be suitable.

When the new rules are released, then they can be examined more. (I keep copies of old versions so that diff is possible.)

The change announcement is available, but the changed rules are not yet.

https://vensersjournal.com/ keeps diffs for all rules changes, and it has the NEO comp rule update already

Yepp, by now Wizards has released them. It would be impressive and suspicious for any site to have them before wizards.com.

The difference seven hours make. :)

The rules change to 406.3 might be the most interesting to me right now, because it helps immensely with keeping the word count on a problematic mechanic I've been struggling with for a while down.

406.3 is apparently a functional change for Clone Shell :)

Tanuki are more closely related to foxes than dogs, so I'm disappointed they gave Tanuki the Dog type.

Interesting fact I didn't notice before: The final ability of DFC Sagas actually refers to the Saga as "this Saga" rather than by name; it's almost as if there is a special emphasis on the the homogeneity of these abilities. Normally you would find this quirk in reminder text.

It's not just a general approach to abilities on Sagas either. Kumano Faces Kakkazan refers to itself by name to deal damage.

I wonder whether they considered a keyword action there since they had to use the same tech on Origins-DFC-creature/'walkers before.

From the name "racoon dog" I assume.

Hmm, the point about referring to "this Saga" in rules text is a good one. I hope that it's inspired to try to simplify these Sagas as they are going way past the complexity of commons if you ask me as I've noted previously. It also does look like that for example in the case of The Shattered States Era, if it actually referred to its name, it would have to crunch that already small rules text even smaller.

So I hope that the reason for that convention is "we need to try to simplify these conceptually" rather than "we need even more space on cards for rules text". Not that being more concise with rules text terminology /syntax is bad but I'm questioning the motivation behind this particular approach here.