MTG Salvation

Is Ral zapping Kefnet?

The wiki states that the slain gods of Amonkhet were zombified and appear in War as God-Eternals, so yeah, looks like we might get some terrible undead gods. Awesome!

Man, the fiction for Amonkhet was definitely a downer. Rhonas, especially, it's hard not to feel bad for him. He gives the Scorpion God everything he's got—and then some, literally fighting even after he was dead.

Between the art on this, and the flavor text of Samut's Sprint it seems like we might!

Are we going to get eternal versions of the gods?

Yeah, that was my question. And if not, is it an Eternal? Did he switch sides?

Just a reminder, this can be used to counter a counterspell if you change the counterspell's target to Bolt Bend.

Ricochet Trap

So, this has Ferocious. I hate you people for not using keywords. Don't make them if you're not going to use them. ARGH!!!!

Ferocious is not a keyword. It's an ability word.

A keyword is a standalone piece of game mechanic that has an actual function within the rules. They have an implied effect. Conversely, ability words don't have any mechanical function. They're just fancy names to show that certain abilities are similar.

Regardless, most set-specific words don't move from set to set. It keeps them distinct. Rarely, set-specific keywords become evergreen keywords, like Scry, but ability words never do, since they don't serve any purpose other than flavor.

Quote from Aejann »

Ferocious is not a keyword. It's an ability word.

OK, fine. It's an ability word, not a keyword. There's little actual difference.

Fine, it's an implied effect, not a mechanical function. Technical difference, not functionally different.

First Strike is a keyword. Ferocious is an ability word. Both First Strike and Ferocious mean the same thing each time they're used. First Strike uses [(reminder text)] while Ferocious uses [- reminder text]. Functionally, they mean the same thing.

The only difference is that the rules team decided to officially categorize one as a keyword because they intend to use it frequently and the other they left as an ability word because they don't plan to use it again. It's an arbitrary difference. If they decide they want Ferocious to be an evergreen keyword, all they have to do is declare it has changed and put the reminder text in (italics). And what has changed functionally about Ferocious? Nothing.

But, I'll accept your criticism and slightly change my statement while maintaining my point:

Cards (and their text) should maintain consistency from one set to the next.

If a card is first printed in Khans and given the ability word Ferocious, it should still have the ability word Ferocious when reprinted a few sets later (unless there's a functional reason to change that).

I'm pretty sure the given reason is that there are simply too many ability words to make them all into keywords and still expect to be able to attract new users into the game. There are a limited number of special rules you can expect anyone, much less a new player, to remember. With 2 or 3 keywords per set and 4 standard legal sets per year, that would quickly snowball into a completely unreasonable number of rules that you are expecting players to always remember, especially considering that precise wording is very important for actually playing the effects properly.

You could mitigate that by printing reminder text in most of the more complex, or less often used, ability words, but then you've used up even more real estate on the card than if you used no ability word at all, for no real benefit except to call back to that one set that used the mechanic 6 years ago or whatever.

I think they have the right idea on how they handle keywords vs ability words, personally.

Jeez. Strictly better Deflection and moved from rare to uncommon.