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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-05-18 23:14:46)
Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2024-05-18 23:14:46)
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?
@jmgariepy, it STILL is in green as far as I can tell (Avalanche Tusker, Lurking Arynx, Culling Mark). Clearly R&D don't see the need to use it any further (much less bring back provoke as a named mechanic) with fight as part of their green toolbox.
Supertypes are pointless and needlessly take up valuable space on the type line. Turn existing super types into keywords.
The ensuing issue is how to address them since older cards reference them directly. So a companion rule is that keywords may be referred before a card type. So not only can rules still say basic land, but they can also say flying creature and indestructible creature.
Ex. Mingyun, Aerial Commander
An alternative suggestion is to put the supertypes above the type line. They sit on top, extending into the art. The type-line box will have a tab to house supertypes as necessary. Separates clearly supertypes from card type and makes sorting cards easier.
On a side note: I miss provoke. How come that isn't evergreen and based in green?
Nobody's saying green is only allowed to interact via creatures. It's just only allowed to interact with creatures using its own creatures.
Divergent transformations should have been green instead of red. Polymorphing creatures is Simic, not Izzet. Red could transform lands and artifacts as alternative to losing land destruction. Transforming spells would be even more interesting for Izzet.
Restricting green to only creature -based interaction is the entire problem. People saying green pie is too small compare to blue. The problem is designers are shutting out an entire form of interaction from green. So of course it will be limited in its share of the pie. There are 7 card types, and you're saying green is only allowed to interact via 1 card type. Yeah that makes sense, no balance issue at all.
So in the end green has narrow card designs, narrow flavor, and narrow decks.
Incorrect. In order to have the partners match the color identity of the 4 color legend, they are required to follow the pattern MN, MN, OP. Your example doesn't actually work, since the first one can't be paired with either of the other two to make a 4 color identity. The partners are prohibited from sharing colors due to the nature of the product.
Because the two color pairs share no color, but share a common enemy. By joining forces they fight a common enemy. Such union then unifies the 2-color and 4-color pies.
Also look at the way they fit the commanders into the decks. Each deck has four commanders. One is 4-color and three are 2-colors. The 2-colors have a specific pattern. One is ally color and two are enemy color. But note the ally and enemy pairs share no colors. For instance, one and two . They go together in the no-red deck. This precisely conforms with my theory that these two color pairs are anti-red.
One reason they claim was for convenience of spreading out colors evenly. However they could have different enemy colors and still achieve this goal. For instance, , , and . Such that two different decks can share an enemy color pair, and the colors will still have same representation across all decks. But it wasn't done this way. They specifically used the same pattern as proposed in this topic.
Because in the end, this pattern is intuitive, practical, flexible, and ultimately printable.
Four colors (i.e. anti-one-colors) vs. anti-enemy-pairs are very different beasts, so I really don,t see how this is supposed to inform our conversation.
I actually also did something very similar to precisely what R&D did (though I arrived at different conclusions since I was looking for factional flavors rather than individual card designs)
Let's see how near or far my philosophy matches with WotC on 4-color design.
Anti-White
Anti-Blue
Anti-Black
Anti-Red
Anti-Green
Conclusion
Only our ideas on anti-black themes diverged. All other themes seem to hit the same vein. Nevertheless, WotC still very much thinks that forming colors into factions and pitting them against one or more colors is still a great, viable way to get out of design roadblocks. Moreover, such methods are fully capable of uniting mechanical design with creative flavor and concepts.
Izzet is the pair of creativity. It seeks answers haphazardly, enjoys the experience of experiments, lives for the visceral thrill of discovery. It prefers to stumble on the solutions, go on quests to quell the quandaries.
On the other hand, black says "I have what you want. You can have it. Take it." Blue/red doesn't want these handouts. That's no fun. Moreover black will disrupt Izzet's creative process (via discard and extract effects.)
Ex. Izzet Resistor, Izzet Mythbusters
Simic strives to improve upon nature and believes in evolution. It understands that randomness is a factor of evolution and nature. Thus it tolerates chaotic red and black elements necessary to foster systems of change, including mutations and transformations.
However white believes that a divine entity created the universe, including every organism and their environments. It sees Simic as disrupting and distorting this perfect design and order that was painstakingly created by a perfect being, which is tantamount to blasphemy.
ex. Simic Abomination