Green could have flying and defender, mechanically that wotks almost like reach.
Not quite the place for this talk, but why would you want it if it's basically the same as Reach barring aesthetics? Green is fine with what it has.
Aesthetic and flavor is exactly the reason. Historically creatures that fly and won't attack are given flying and defender instead of reach (just look up there are dozens). Reach are for spiders or other ground creature who can somehow grab a flying creature.
Silver border, sure, but when I see a gingerbread man in black border Magic, that confectionary colossus is the first thing that comes to mind.
My general impression of Golems and Constructs vs. Elementals is that the former are composed primarily of metal or stone while the latter are composed of basically everything else. Earth Elementals confuse matters, but where Stone Golems seem to be artifically cut and shaped, Earth Elementals seem to be conjured and shaped from the earth purely by magic.
Which, that being said, I guess I could see the Gingerbread Man being considered a Construct or Golem rather than an Elemental, but to me the materials are too organic to qualify as an artifact creature. Most every artifact involves metal or stone in its composition, even artifacts made chiefly from wood or leather.
I'm not saying it is impossible but all the elementals in black border magic are composed of naturally occurring things, this is why placing a gingerbread creature in the same group would be weird. It's not impossible and R&D could end up doing it, but for me it definitely feels out of place.
And snow man looks like a elemental to me as well because snow is naturally occurring. If it was a golem it wouldn't be called snow man, it would be more specific like Snow Golem and it would bulky and mindless like most golem.
I think if common walkers were suppose to exist they would be done in WAR which will be the most walker centered set we will ever get for the foreseeable future.
Gingerbread man being an elemental is weird imo. Elemental are suppose to be composed of naturally occurring things. Gingerbread is too artificial.
But I could see they using elemental by prioritizing looks over logic (it's not like they have defined the difference between golem, constructs and elemental anyway). The gingerbread man also have too much personality unlike most golem and construct who are very robot-minded. Maybe this is the reason why it indeed feels weird to make him a colorless artifact creature. Maybe a red artifact creature...
That combat system would be very likely be terrible.
If creatures could attack each other, the players with the biggest creature can attack and convert the board advantage into a bigget board advantage. This would lead into the typical snow ball gameplay of CGs.
Magic combat is designed so that board advantage only lets you attack the opponent life total which is most of the time is inconsequential to combat. This allow the player who is behind to catch up. The scenario of beign far behind on board, getting attacked until you are one turn away from losing and eventually turning the game around is far more common in mtg then in any other CG for this reason.
PWs are exceptional high risk, high reward cards. By allowing creatures to be attacked like pws you would actually remove options from the game by forcing all cards to behave like this.
I understand that allowing you to block for your creatures would limit this snow ballness. But the scenario where you block for your creature is exactly like choosing to not block a attack, this is inconsequential.
This change would only impact the game when one player is so ahead he decides to attack with two creatures - and all this change would do is give a advantage to the player who is ahead.
I think a game like this, where you can target creatures and act as blocker could be very interesting but the whole combat mechanics would be redesigned to accomodate this. It would be a totally different game.
Damn, one set feels really small. The clue I get from that is that Throne's story does not involve the world going through major changes as that is the only plot element that absolutely requires multiple sets.
I stand behind my speculation, however: Rowan goes on a journey to find the High King, Will stays behind to secure the throne, Will is betrayed or led to betrayal, the throne falls into the villain hands, Rowan returns to restore the status quo but the High King dies or is already dead. The set itself will portray Rowan's journey and return, the usurper in power and the restoration.
logical-strix asked: You revealed that the marketing art character is a planeswalker we've seen before whose home plane is Eldraine. Is that Kasmina in the red hood? Did she change her hair color?
A: It’s Rowan. She and Will are from Eldraine.
achillesandtortoise asked: were Will & Rowan originally created for Battlebond or Eldraine?
A: They were first created for Throne of Eldraine. Then Battlebond was looking for planeswalkers with partner and we were like, “we have twin planeswalkers”.
thoalmighty asked: It’s great that we get to see the Kenrith’s home plane, but it admittedly feels odd seeing Rowan but not Will. Are you able to tell us whether Will is in the set or where he is if he is not?
A: Will’s in the set.
mirronx asked: Hey, is Will a Planeswalker in the set? Lots of people seem to think he is going to be a Creature instead, conformation would be nice.
A: Will is still a planeswalker. He hasn’t gotten demoted or anything. : )
gabecampos89 asked: Is the third planeswalker from Throne of Eldraine (which looks amazing btw), someone we know or a new character?
A:There is a planeswalker in Throne of Eldraine that is a brand new character:
trevorstrnad asked: will eldrain have 3 sets (like the recent guilds of ravnica "block")? would be kinda sad if a new plane will only be featured in one set
A: Eldraine is just featured in one set. Baseball (the codename of the next set) will be on a different plane.
So the planeswalkers will be Rowan, Will and someone new.
Another fun fact for Eldraine;
hoardeofcats asked: Birthday trivia! I've missed the last few years of these but finally remembered this time. I love faeries, and am excited for Throne of Eldraine; can you say yet what's one distinct thing about Eldraine faeries that differs from those of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor/Dominaria/Ravnica/etc.?
The color mix is a little different than previous Faerie-centric sets.
Happy Birthday!
My thinking (from my own thoughts when making a fan set with the same flavor): W- Fairy Godmother types who bless the good and punish the bad. Might replace angles as well as be "big" fairies that are human sized. U- mix of trickster sprits and wise fairy tropes (maybe a tinker bell that gives everything flying). As the Faerie type is based in blue I think this where we will still see most of them. B/R- I think we'd maybe see a few as emotion driven and/or dark fairy godmother. Maybe a few G ones for nature fairies BUT mtg faeries are very tied to having flying would be hard to fit a lot mono-green flyers. Similar to spirits on Innistrad, I could see them in all five colors but centers in WU for this world (and play with the flying theme in M20). Whats everyone else thoughts?
Agree, I too expect UW faeries and probably some R ones. I don't expect fairy tribal, I think they will be a tribe attached to certain mechanical theme such as enchantments or blinking.
I think we may see black and green fairies but those will be more of an exception. Green flying fairies can be done by giving then defender, which is also justified in flavor (generally nature faeries are portrayed as avoiding crowded places and only found by children in deep forests and such).
I think Eldraine will be two sets, otherwise I think Will would be printed in thrones. I like @5colors theory that Will is staying behind to hold the throne while Rowan looks for the High King. Set 1 will be heavier on the fairy tale theme as it depicts Rowan's journey through fantastical lands.
Set 2 I think something bad will happen. Either a close ally betrays Will or Will himself is manipulated to take the throne by being led to believe the High King is dead. In any case, there is a betrayal because we need some Mordred figure. Rowan returns with the High King to reestablish the status quo but him end up dying in the final conflict.
About Rowan and Will, I think either one of then will end up dying or the story ends with both parting ways. Reason is that I think both will be beloved characters and WotC will want to keep then around. However printing both whenever one shows up could be too restrictive. Hopefully both stays as they are both very refreshing take on planeswalkers, specially Will who is a mono-blue matial type.
About the colors, I think they will be broken in the two main themes. Eldraine Kingdom (Arthurian) is WUR colored and centered in white, reflecting the High King W, Rowan R and Will U.
The wilds (Grimm) are BG colored because "dark woods" is such a prevalent trope there and as @5colors brought up, from the released art we can already see 'woods witch' theme going on. I'm saying we will not get WUR Grimm characters or BG Arthurian as I believe the color separation will be soft (like most sets), not hard (like Alara, Ixalan or Ravnica).
Another argument for that is that how good and evil is usually portrayed in fairy tales. The most common virtues such as honesty, humbleness, ingenuity, independence and laboriousness are closer to WUR. On the other hand villains are dominated by their basic instincts of hunger, lust and vanity which fits BG more.
The other color combos will probably portray the border/overlap between those two main themes, such as WG, RG and UG outskirts villagers or WB/UB court villains.
Even if stick to the old pie phylosophy that certain colors cant deal with certain permanents, it never made sense that 3 colors dealt with artifacts but only two dealt with enchantments. Or that black was the only color who had two "critical" weakness (cant deal with Artifacts AND enchantments).
Flavor-wise, it can be imagined as a variation of black's curse magic. It makes sense that the mage who can inflict curses can also take charms away.
A-B mechanics only work when the enabler is something desirable without the outled, otherwise things get too linear and in this case parasitic.
Madness work because discarding cards to fuel abilities or as part of looting are cool anyway. Same goes for lifegain themes.
Revealing cards from top of your library is not something you want to do (as a designer), thus a bad candidate for an A-B. Even milling which is marginally good still was too circustantial and thus digest ended up failing horribly.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong).
Olivia Voldaren's design name was literally Dracula, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born is a pretty close approximation of Frankenstien's monster and Geralf his Frankenstien.
Her design name was Dracula but the character is very different. Her looks, personality, role in the setting and sex are different. I think the only strong connection between the characters (aside from both being vampires) is that her signature abilities in her original card is to turn others in vampire and control then which alludes to Stoker's romance.
Grimgrin is no more Frankenstein monster then any other skaab, who are reanimated armies and working industry rather then a singular oddity. The setting makes no allusion to Frankenstein story other then the idea of reanimated corpses stitched together. This part of Innistrad setting is more about stitchers vs. ghoulcallers, a dispute between the newer blue form of necromancy and the traditional black necromancy. That's a completely different story or background.
I think one of the reasons why Innistrad does not feel like a parody is because they didn't make mtg equivalents of well known characters. For example, Invisible Stalker is not a legendary creature, implying there are many other invisible rogues running around Nephalia. Also a invisible man does not feel so out of place in mtg anyway, so it ends being not too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong). Theros blocks however have stuff like King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and Triad of Fates.
This may sound rude and misguided but from what you're saying here and others have said before it really sounds like your saying "The more stuff I recognize the less I like it." Which due to years of scientific studies we know is the opposite of what people actually feel meaning this is probably more accurately "The less I understand the cooler I think it makes me to like it." I'm not going to look that deeply into Theros and Innistrad and count the number of "direct" translations vs "indirect" but I assume its a lot closer than anyone here realizes.
I will just ignore your pretension you can re-frame someone's arguments based on what scientific studies show about the average person. Non-referenced scientific studies, nonetheless. Arguing that would derail the thread too much and honestly it's not point I feel like I even need to argue against, it should be obvious for everyone the level of bull***** in this.
Just to make it clear, what I'm saying is, being too loyal to the original source is not a good thing, for a few reasons.
What mtg player base have in common is that they like mtg. What they don't have in common ? Love for settings other then mtg. Heavily investing in external settings is a serious risk to alienate part of the player base that don't care about that setting or strongly reject it. As means to not alienate part of the player base they have to hedge the risk and keep things within the realm of familiarity and thus use mtg's own tropes rather then going full strength in "external" tropes. This is probably among the reasons why they chose the slightly odd mix of Arthurian myth with fairy tales.
Too much fidelity to external material makes the setting too self-aware. When they construct those trope heavy planes the reason why things are there are players expectations, instead of canonical or creative reasons. It makes the setting as authentic and organic as theme parks. It's quite unbelievable how certain planes are so narrow artistically and aesthetically and the situation gets sillier the more they follow real world references by the book.
The more fidelity to external material more it will feel out of place within mtg whole narrative. I get it adaptive works like Disney is very popular but I think mtg is not the place for that. The idea of adapted characters sharing the same universe as Urza, the Gatewatch, the Eldrazi and Phyrexia is just crazy and looks like a fanfic.
Just to be clear I think WotC so far haven't "crossed" the line for me, not even in Theros which is the most theme-heavy plane so far. I think Theros in some moments were dangerously close and for me the plane is worse for that but not enough for me to dislike it.
I think its simply Inninstrad just lesser know with the source material as a story and the themes where more known as it being a genre instead of a mythology. And a number of thing you talking about horror tropes being broad and not having a single source are also true for many fairy tales tropes I listed above. As I said above a number of stuff we have seen has gone with way with Eldraine.
I think one of the reasons why Innistrad does not feel like a parody is because they didn't make mtg equivalents of well known characters. For example, Invisible Stalker is not a legendary creature, implying there are many other invisible rogues running around Nephalia. Also a invisible man does not feel so out of place in mtg anyway, so it ends being not too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong). Theros blocks however have stuff like King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and Triad of Fates.
There are also the case of the many cards that should be legendary by their uniqueness and design like Colossus of Akros and Underworld Cerberus but simply didn't got the subtype because Theros already had too many legendary cards. Those also feel too much on the nose.
i. I second @SecretInfiltrator critique. Tutoring the twelve labors is bad, it robs you the satisfaction of finally playing both.
ii. The card is a bit too wordy to what it accomplish mostly due the tutoring ability.
iii. I think I understand your intentions behind the first ability (heros are meant to fight great things, not puny 1/1 soldiers). Still I would prefer trample for the word economy and because straight evasion feels wrong.
iv. 3/3 feels small, both for flavor and playability. You could probably make him 5/5 and still be safe. Those colors are suppose to dominate in combat.
On the positive side, I like the altwin idea with the twelve +1/+1 counters and the fight on heroic. The colors also seem fitting.
Aesthetic and flavor is exactly the reason. Historically creatures that fly and won't attack are given flying and defender instead of reach (just look up there are dozens). Reach are for spiders or other ground creature who can somehow grab a flying creature.
Ridiculous Elementals such as Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental or Question Elemental? is a recurring joke in silver border. Fruitcake Elemental is just another example.
I'm not saying it is impossible but all the elementals in black border magic are composed of naturally occurring things, this is why placing a gingerbread creature in the same group would be weird. It's not impossible and R&D could end up doing it, but for me it definitely feels out of place.
And snow man looks like a elemental to me as well because snow is naturally occurring. If it was a golem it wouldn't be called snow man, it would be more specific like Snow Golem and it would bulky and mindless like most golem.
I dont really care about backwards compatibility with tribal spells.
But I could see they using elemental by prioritizing looks over logic (it's not like they have defined the difference between golem, constructs and elemental anyway). The gingerbread man also have too much personality unlike most golem and construct who are very robot-minded. Maybe this is the reason why it indeed feels weird to make him a colorless artifact creature. Maybe a red artifact creature...
Blockers can be removed by blink of an eye or blast zone.
If creatures could attack each other, the players with the biggest creature can attack and convert the board advantage into a bigget board advantage. This would lead into the typical snow ball gameplay of CGs.
Magic combat is designed so that board advantage only lets you attack the opponent life total which is most of the time is inconsequential to combat. This allow the player who is behind to catch up. The scenario of beign far behind on board, getting attacked until you are one turn away from losing and eventually turning the game around is far more common in mtg then in any other CG for this reason.
PWs are exceptional high risk, high reward cards. By allowing creatures to be attacked like pws you would actually remove options from the game by forcing all cards to behave like this.
I understand that allowing you to block for your creatures would limit this snow ballness. But the scenario where you block for your creature is exactly like choosing to not block a attack, this is inconsequential.
This change would only impact the game when one player is so ahead he decides to attack with two creatures - and all this change would do is give a advantage to the player who is ahead.
I think a game like this, where you can target creatures and act as blocker could be very interesting but the whole combat mechanics would be redesigned to accomodate this. It would be a totally different game.
I stand behind my speculation, however: Rowan goes on a journey to find the High King, Will stays behind to secure the throne, Will is betrayed or led to betrayal, the throne falls into the villain hands, Rowan returns to restore the status quo but the High King dies or is already dead. The set itself will portray Rowan's journey and return, the usurper in power and the restoration.
Agree, I too expect UW faeries and probably some R ones. I don't expect fairy tribal, I think they will be a tribe attached to certain mechanical theme such as enchantments or blinking.
I think we may see black and green fairies but those will be more of an exception. Green flying fairies can be done by giving then defender, which is also justified in flavor (generally nature faeries are portrayed as avoiding crowded places and only found by children in deep forests and such).
Set 2 I think something bad will happen. Either a close ally betrays Will or Will himself is manipulated to take the throne by being led to believe the High King is dead. In any case, there is a betrayal because we need some Mordred figure. Rowan returns with the High King to reestablish the status quo but him end up dying in the final conflict.
About Rowan and Will, I think either one of then will end up dying or the story ends with both parting ways. Reason is that I think both will be beloved characters and WotC will want to keep then around. However printing both whenever one shows up could be too restrictive. Hopefully both stays as they are both very refreshing take on planeswalkers, specially Will who is a mono-blue matial type.
About the colors, I think they will be broken in the two main themes. Eldraine Kingdom (Arthurian) is WUR colored and centered in white, reflecting the High King W, Rowan R and Will U.
The wilds (Grimm) are BG colored because "dark woods" is such a prevalent trope there and as @5colors brought up, from the released art we can already see 'woods witch' theme going on. I'm saying we will not get WUR Grimm characters or BG Arthurian as I believe the color separation will be soft (like most sets), not hard (like Alara, Ixalan or Ravnica).
Another argument for that is that how good and evil is usually portrayed in fairy tales. The most common virtues such as honesty, humbleness, ingenuity, independence and laboriousness are closer to WUR. On the other hand villains are dominated by their basic instincts of hunger, lust and vanity which fits BG more.
The other color combos will probably portray the border/overlap between those two main themes, such as WG, RG and UG outskirts villagers or WB/UB court villains.
Flavor-wise, it can be imagined as a variation of black's curse magic. It makes sense that the mage who can inflict curses can also take charms away.
A-B mechanics only work when the enabler is something desirable without the outled, otherwise things get too linear and in this case parasitic.
Madness work because discarding cards to fuel abilities or as part of looting are cool anyway. Same goes for lifegain themes.
Revealing cards from top of your library is not something you want to do (as a designer), thus a bad candidate for an A-B. Even milling which is marginally good still was too circustantial and thus digest ended up failing horribly.
Her design name was Dracula but the character is very different. Her looks, personality, role in the setting and sex are different. I think the only strong connection between the characters (aside from both being vampires) is that her signature abilities in her original card is to turn others in vampire and control then which alludes to Stoker's romance.
Grimgrin is no more Frankenstein monster then any other skaab, who are reanimated armies and working industry rather then a singular oddity. The setting makes no allusion to Frankenstein story other then the idea of reanimated corpses stitched together. This part of Innistrad setting is more about stitchers vs. ghoulcallers, a dispute between the newer blue form of necromancy and the traditional black necromancy. That's a completely different story or background.
I will just ignore your pretension you can re-frame someone's arguments based on what scientific studies show about the average person. Non-referenced scientific studies, nonetheless. Arguing that would derail the thread too much and honestly it's not point I feel like I even need to argue against, it should be obvious for everyone the level of bull***** in this.
Just to make it clear, what I'm saying is, being too loyal to the original source is not a good thing, for a few reasons.
Just to be clear I think WotC so far haven't "crossed" the line for me, not even in Theros which is the most theme-heavy plane so far. I think Theros in some moments were dangerously close and for me the plane is worse for that but not enough for me to dislike it.
I think one of the reasons why Innistrad does not feel like a parody is because they didn't make mtg equivalents of well known characters. For example, Invisible Stalker is not a legendary creature, implying there are many other invisible rogues running around Nephalia. Also a invisible man does not feel so out of place in mtg anyway, so it ends being not too much on the nose.
If we look at the cast of legendary characters of both Innistrad blocks I think not a single one is meant to be the equivalent of anything (I could be wrong). Theros blocks however have stuff like King Macar, the Gold-Cursed and Triad of Fates.
There are also the case of the many cards that should be legendary by their uniqueness and design like Colossus of Akros and Underworld Cerberus but simply didn't got the subtype because Theros already had too many legendary cards. Those also feel too much on the nose.
i. I second @SecretInfiltrator critique. Tutoring the twelve labors is bad, it robs you the satisfaction of finally playing both.
ii. The card is a bit too wordy to what it accomplish mostly due the tutoring ability.
iii. I think I understand your intentions behind the first ability (heros are meant to fight great things, not puny 1/1 soldiers). Still I would prefer trample for the word economy and because straight evasion feels wrong.
iv. 3/3 feels small, both for flavor and playability. You could probably make him 5/5 and still be safe. Those colors are suppose to dominate in combat.
On the positive side, I like the altwin idea with the twelve +1/+1 counters and the fight on heroic. The colors also seem fitting.