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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-08 00:08:12)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-08 00:08:12)
I like dinosaurs, but almost exclusively in prehistoric settings and Ixalan doesn't appear prehistoric at all. As someone who really wanted a Mesoamerican world, I'm worried the pirate aspects will overpower the Mesoamerican ones.
I'm actually interested that the core sets will focus around a character's past and have diminished importance in comparison to the other sets. I understand why core sets were needed, but they were never something I ever looked forward to.
Arena was disappointing. I loved Heroscape, but Arena had none of the draw that the complex battlefield and slightly larger armies had. Didn't play enough to explore how the decks affected it.
I forgot some people don't care about dinosaurs :)
There was already an MtG arena miniatures game, that seemed to be not my kind of thing. "Arena of the Planeswalkers", that's it - a variant on Heroscape.
Explorers of Ixalan seems like it might be more like that Planechase variant where you have a 2D grid of planes? It sounds intriguing, anyway.
Oh, they're doing one of those tie-in games like they did for DnD. Those were actually reasonably well received, iirc? Never tried one though.
I was delighted to hear about Un3, fairly excited about Ixalan being pirates + cities-of-gold (don't care about dinosaurs), moderately interested to see what they do on Dominaria, and very intrigued by the board-game-style Explorers of Ixalan: as well as 4 decks it comes with "20 double-sided tokens, 50 game tiles, and 40 counter pieces" ?!
There's just too many announcements. I can't care about anything because I'm overloaded, and the ones I don't like ruin potential enjoyment of those I do.
Return to Dominaria!
Ixalan, dinosaurs and pirates and cities of gold
(Why are dinosaurs naturally south-american? Is it just "things that go in a jungle", or there was an idea that didn't quite work out in Murganda that became Ixalan, like Akhos and Theros)
Beginner focused core sets! (I like core sets, although I'm not sure why)
Third un set Unstable!
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/25th-anniversary-announcement-day-2017-06-14?/
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/metamorphosis-2-0-2017-06-12
I suspect the design team turn in designs with green common Naturalize and white uncommon Demystify, and then development go "Um, no" and move it around.
ISTR reading somewhere that in Amonkhet, originally Dissenter's Deliverance was a Naturalize; then development wanted to push it for constructed so removed "or enchantment" to make it cheaper, and that meant they twiddled Forsake the Worldly to ensure there was a full Disenchant at common somewhere. Perhaps that keeps happening and Maro hasn't noticed?
This is why I try to take Rosewater's dictates with a grain of salt. He's like President for Life of the Magic color wheel, which means that what he says has a lot of credence. But that doesn't mean his opinion of where the color wheel is is law. His opinion can be overruled.
Which isn't to say that this isn't a very useful tool. It's not every day that you get a peek at the President's agenda.
I wish he'd taken the time to state explicitly that set themes and set mechanics can and will violate the color pie. Also he discussed almost nothing of counters, even though +1/+1 counters outside a few specific cases clearly are distributed along color pie lines. (e.g. put N +1/+1 counters on target creature(s) is primarily green, secondarily white)
Some statements that struck me as odd:
"Deal N damage to a creature that's been damaged this turn" is listed as secondary in black, but it has literally never appeared on a card of that color (unless that is actually a strange way to describe the Fatal Blow/Hooded Assassin effect).
Also "White's artifact destruction is usually at uncommon." Whut? What the hell goes on in the timespan between design and release for MaRo to say something so utterly preposterous?
Along the same line "White and green usually have one enchantment destruction card in common, although green's is usually also a spell that destroy both artifacts and enchantments." which is laughable (he says the same about artifacts too!). What actually goes on is that if only one is destroyed, it's usually an enchantment for white and an artifact for green. There is a strong back/forth movement between the colors for removal that hits both types of permanents. Right now it strongly favors white.
Oh yes! So interesting to see it officially laid out. It's interesting how most of it is about what I thought, but I was often vague about what was primary/secondary for some mechanics, or other distinctions.
I feel like this will be super useful to many people: Mechanical Color Pie 2017
And for Innistrad, that's really just business as usual (cf. Avabruck's destruction and the zombie invasion of Thraben which was part the first Innistrad block's storyline)
I don't think they're literally going to pretend that never happened. I think they're going to use some kind of magic to accelerate the rebirth of life on Zendikar so they can get back to adventure world. (Which, okay, is likely to be more like A Wizard Did It than Magic A Is Magic A, but I could be wrong.)
Innistrad wasn't exactly wrecked, was it? I don't think Emrakul devastated whole continents, just a few towns.
Innistrad is barely a world though; it's "Hey, classic B-movie horron!" followed by "Hey! Classic Lovecraft horror!" followed by... I 'unno, 'the ring' maybe?
Even worse when it's "here's a lovely world, boom we wrecked it, oh look we're back and are going to pretend that never happened" as MaRo is so clear is going to happen with Zendikar and probably Innistrad. I don't expect them to go back to time spiral Dominaria again, either.
Getting really fed up with Wotc doing "Here's a lovely world. boom can't go there ever again now, we wrecked it."
I remember MaRo mentioning that Dominaria might be returned to as a post-apocalyptic plane after the events of Time spiral (I think? I don't really know the story). I personally don't feel strongly about Dominaria one way or the other. I guess since it's the original, I don't find it especially bland- Zendikar committed that crime in my book.
If Dominaria is used as a post-apocalyptic world though, I think that could still be interesting. Too many planes feel so narrow when it comes to their actual depictions. I enjoyed Tarkir since the factions had noticeably different biomes that lent well to Tarkir feeling like more of a world than Theros or Innistrad. The varying regions of Dominaria would be an excellent way to actually depict a world where its regions actually feel unique while all being tied together in the post-apocalyptic setting.
Isn't there another side (continent I'm guessing) on Innistrad that was never explored? I
I feel like that's a terrible restriction that they're self-imposing. Dominaria has always been a multi-faceted world, so why not just pick some continent and revisit it alone?
I think their problem is that revisiting Dominaria would involve approaching it in a way they simply don't do planes anymore.
Every Dominaria set focused on a small, separate portion of the plane (or in some cases on a time period so peculiar it was essentially a narrow subset of the plane). But ever since Mirrodin visiting a plane means visiting all of it, usually organized neatly into color-aligned regions. Doing that with a revisit to Dominaria is an exercise in breaking the base (not to mention the massive amount of baggage to take into account storywise).
I'd be intrigued to see how they get away with it, but honestly, as someone who never played that period of magic (and who thinks Dominaria overall is bland as can be anyway), I can't fault them for actively treating it like "some bad childhood best forgotten."
Eh, they didn't have to make Dominaria one of the ten Origins planes, but they chose to. I think we'll be back there in the next five years.
Ulgrotha is partly revisited in the form of Innistrad due to tribal theme involving werewolves, vampires, and angels.
Lorwyn is the most unique in that it's so mellow. Of course that doesn't gel well with angsty superheroes that have the calling to save the multiverse.
Dominaria is a 4. But it seems like WotC is doing their best to avoid bringing up that word again. Like it was some bad childhood best forgotten.
For anyone interested about the "you get mana" idea, I posted a thread on MTG Salvation to get more input on it.
Huh. Yeah, I forgot this was basically the wording energy used. Since energy and mana are basically mechanically the same, except mana costs have a special place on cards, I don't see why it wouldn't work.
I don't think "mana pool" makes it more obvious that it empties, so reminder text might or might not be useful, but I don't see why it's any different to the current "add to your mana pool" wording which doesn't have any reminders about emptying. (I think most beginners expect to produce mana in the process of spending it, and don't think about floating it at all.)
Well, it'd ruin my fun of "Add
to your hand". But yeah, since mana cannot go anywhere else, and you don't even need to draw it then apply it later, yeah, ditch it completely.
> "Add
to your energy pool."
."
->
> "You get
I like it.
EDIT:
Maybe now it could also have some kind of reminder text (in commons or so) for noobies.
Such as:
> "You get
. (It empties at next step or phase.)"
> ... "If unused, it dissipates at next step or phase."?
Maybe there is some way to avoid using the phrase "step or phase" and still convey the idea clearly enough?
Could "gain" or just "get" work for mana? Like life or poison counters, just something you have, without a separate mana pool to have them in?