I didn't follow the lore of the previous ravnica blocks, so would someone be kind enough to tell me what's going on with Rakdos, Lyzolda, Borborygmos, Momir, Zegana, Vorel, Teysa, the Obzedat and any other characters i might have missed? Which ones we might see in this set?
Based on Guilds of Ravnica, we'll see the Bolas aligned Planeswalkers, and then one Guild leader/Guild champion, and the Guilds without a Planeswalker will have two Legendaries, one representing the Guild Leader and the other representing a number two. I think other than Isperia, all previous Guild leaders could show up again. Niv-Mizzet showed up as a card and doesn't seem to have been killed, while Vraska does appear to have gotten rid of Jarad (although not clear since the cards aren't fleshing out the storyline, yet). Reading between the lines, it does seem like Izoni is probably a leader of the anti-Vraska faction, like Niv-Mizzet still resisting Ral in some way or another.
So it's possible some of the Bolas Planeswalkers, like Domri Rade, will still see their Guild leaders, like Borborygmos, show up, or a "resistance" like figure.
For storyline purposes though I'd highly suspect that if Kaya shows up, we'll see a Teysa card instead of the Obzedat.
Lyzolda is dead, Exava was the Rakdos maze runner, and I don't see a strong narrative pushing to have Exava return versus a new character.
Momir Vig is dead, Zegana is the last Simic Guild leader, but I don't know if the narrative is strong enough to keep Zegana versus a new Simic guild leader.
Having just finished listening to Maro's DTW on the development of Guilds of Ravnica, I felt like it's worth throwing out a thread for speculation regarding Ravnica Allegiance.
Planeswalkers: Three Planeswalkers taking over three of the Guilds with some connection/loyal to Bolas. With information on Vraska's murder of Isperia, it's almost certain that Azorius is one of the Bolas Guilds, and almost certain to feature Dovin Baan. We've seen Domri Rade on flavor text, and Kaya on artwork from the novels, so those are also more plausible guesses.
The focus of Maro's DTW were the mechanics, which in Guilds of Ravnica were developed to play well with the adjacent Guilds. So we should expect the following three-color archetypes in draft to have some synergy:
In the last two visits to Ravnica, Simic has received mechanics that use +1/+1 counters. It seems safe to bet that we'll see +1/+1 counters in Simic again, and that gives us a starting point for analyzing the other Guilds.
Temur: Simic -> Gruul. In looking back at the Ravnica mechanics, Rosewater gives Bloodthirst a 3 on the Storm Scale. It's likely to make a comeback eventually and it involves +1/+1 counters. We already saw Convoke, also a 3 on the Storm Scale, come back with Guilds of Ravnica. I'm thinking a return of Bloodthirst or something similar is very likely for Ravnica Allegiance.
Jund: Gruul -> Rakdos. So if Gruul has something like Bloodthirst, Rakdos may have something that encourages attacking. Maybe something like Raid, but it was brought back in Ixalan and that's too recent. Maybe something like Dash? Unleash could also work in making creatures bigger and pushing you into attacking since they can't do anything else.
Mardu: Rakdos -> Orzhov. Haunt was bad, but Extort is on the list of mechanics that could see a return. However it doesn't synergize well with a more aggressive archetype with Rakdos, yet Orzhov needs to be able to also link up with a more controlling archetype with Azorius. Something like Morbid could strike a balance, where Rakdos is attacking and getting into combat, and Orzhov with Azorius may lean towards a Morbid midrange value approach. Alternatively if something like Dash makes an appearance, Orzhov could care about creatures entering the battlefield. This sounds too much like the "creaturefall" that Rosewater discussed with Selesnya on his podcast. So what about a Morbid that cares about creatures leaving the battlefield, regardless of if they are just blinking, going into exile, or into the graveyard?
Esper: Orzhov -> Azorius. This is another hard one, because I suspect Azorius needs to work with the Simic's +1/+1 counters. We should expect some sort of control archetype for Azorius, but it might be worth considering the other aspect of White-Blue in draft: flyers. If we have Kaladesh's Dovin Baan taking over, might we see a subtheme of thopters? Detain could make a come back, but it's hard to see how that fits with +1/+1 counters. If Orzhov cares about creatures leaving the battlefield, with a subtheme of self-sacrifice for value, what about an artifact tokens focus with Azorius, either thopters or servos (like Fabricate)? That could create fodder for a sacrifice outlet, or overlap with Simic's +1/+1. While this doesn't scream "control" like typical White-Blue mechanics, we've seen some deviation before, like when Awaken was the White-Blue mechanic in Battle for Zendikar.
We'll start to see spoilers soon enough, but for now it's just speculation.
First time Bogles player, first time Modern player. Picked Bogles as a basic way to get into playing Modern and familiarize myself with my local meta. Played at my LGS last night and I'm still getting the hang of mulling down aggressively, it seems like it's the most counterintuitive part of the deck. I normally play Limited so I just have a hang up over mulling. Went 1-3, but all the lost matches were 2-1 and at least went to Game 3.
The meta was a lot of Soul Sisters, Burn, and Goblins, no Tron at all. So with that in mind.
What's the thought on maindecking Leyline of Sanctity if the local meta justifies it, and if so I assume it would make sense to run all 4 copies.
Same on Torpor Orb, with the question of how many is too many.
Vivien was born on the plane of Skalla. Her homeworld was deeply divided between the forest dwellers and the Nura, an advanced civilization that encircled the dwindling woodlands. Vivien belonged to the Smaragdi, rangers and druids sworn to protect the multitude of forest creatures. But civilization was constantly encroaching, and the Smaragdi were fighting a losing battle against the soldiers of progress.
WOTC has developed planes that showcase a lot of different color conflict, but not necessarily Green. Yes, we've seen Green facing off against an urban civilization that already dominates the world (Ravnica) as well as an optimistic steampunk world (Kaladesh), but not one where we see the fight between Green and its civilized foes in the midst of a fight. Original Innistrad had a conflict between White and Black that had White isolated and the theme of Monsters spread from Black to the other colors. They can't do something as bad as Torment and Judgment, but they can at least play up the central conflict in a storyline being along one color and its enemies ...
But since Skalla has already been destroyed, I can't imagine it's set up for a future set unless it's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic world.
Yeah, overall I think the theme of Creatures Matter from Vivien makes her an heir to Garruk, thematically, even if chronologically we're having her replace Nissa in the Core set right after Nissa left the Gatewatch. The Planeswalker Deck Vivien of the Arkbow looks even more thematically tied to creatures, with +1/+1 counters, fight, and Overrun.
I am curious if the decision to go with an all Creatures Matter Green planeswalker in M19 is reflective of both the need to replace the Green slot left open by Nissa, and the desire to have an easier introduction to Green's abilities. They could have kept the Planeswalker Deck Vivien more simplistic and done something non-Creatures Matter for the main Core set, but they didn't.
I mentioned this elsewhere on Vivien's design, but if you look at Maro's list of Green color pie abilities from the old head to head, they've used almost every single one on a planeswalker so far except for three: Fog ability (hah), Destroy Fliers (now on Vivien) and Must Be Blocked. They are going to have to recycle some space from previous Green planewalkers. It would be nice to see a non-Elf Tribal, as well as a token creation Green planeswalker. Also by replacing Garruk thematically and not Nissa it keeps the door open to seeing Nissa in the next few years (before another Return to Zendikar).
They pretty much locked Garruk in as green/black since Innistrad (the coreset story basically has him no longer wanting to be mono-green anymore). One reason they went with Nissa for the gatewatch she was literally the only mono green aligned walker they had at the time.
Yeah, doesn't the article tell us about 85% of what we need to now, and we can easily fill in the rest to why we ended up with Vivien this way?
“In 2017, there was a small team of art directors, concept artists, and writers who were tasked with creating a new green Planeswalker who mechanically cared about creatures,” says Helland. “Beyond green-aligned and creature-centric, our goal was to hit an archetype that we were missing in green. So Vivien became our bow-carrying, animal-loving ranger. Because she first debuted in M19, we wanted a character who could have a connection to Nicol Bolas, and that’s why we created the backstory about the destruction of Skalla.”
WOTC: "We needed a green-aligned and creature-centric planeswalker" is pretty repetitive, isn't it?
Garruk was the original Green planeswalker and logically took up the creature-centric role, because what else does Green do? As his storyline developed and he took on a Black-Green persona, Nissa filled in with the one major slot left for Green, lands matter (except for the original theme of Elf tribal) with some creature-centric abilities.
It's 2017 and Core 2019 is in the works, it's got to have a cycle of mono-color planeswalkers and Green's slot is empty because Nissa's back on Zendikar for a future return set and Garruk is crazy.
Because of Green's creature-centric color pie abilities I feel like it's going to have a harder time coming up with new planeswalkers with exciting abilities. All colors get planeswalkers that can create tokens, it would be interesting if WOTC would push the envelope and give Green bigger/better/cheaper creature tokens off their planeswalkers. If you look at Maro's list of Green color pie abilities from the old head to head, they've used almost every single one on a planeswalker so far except for three: Fog ability (hah), Destroy Fliers (now on Vivien) and Must Be Blocked.
some decks rely heavily on synergies, while others dont. when ban mania was at its highest point it got to where a common recommendation was to choose/play a deck that didnt lean exclusively on one card or interaction; because if the deck ever brought attention to itself the namesake card would be banned and the deck would vanish from existence whereas a deck that was more generic could weather such a blow.
Yeah, and there's some sort of range to how that relates between the deck and new sets. Because the decks that lean heavily on one namesake card or interaction are less likely to be impacted by new sets, while the Jund decks are always looking at what the best powerful interactive spell would be out of new sets.
This is a meta-post, but I'm trying to sort through categorization of Modern decks through multiple different measurements.
For example, the forum transition from listing Modern decks from Tiers to Archetype was one way of categorizing decks.
Some decks are very up front about the fact that they revolve around one key card, like Hollow One. WOTC doesn't print that, and the deck doesn't exist. In contrast, there are some decks that are more about the interactions between a color's fundamental portion of the color pie. Green's Stompy is on this end of the spectrum, it's about its curving out and not one key card, but it's open to new cards as they are printed (Rhonas the Indomitable and Steel Leaf Champion as recent additions). Across the parrallel universes, something like Stompy exists and isn't dependent on one single card.
Stompy is also a good example of a deck that isn't dependent around one concept or card that WOTC has decided not to make again. WOTC isn't going to make anything like the Urzatron again, and until they had Karn Liberated or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn the threat of a bunch of colorless mana a few turns in wasn't that big of a threat. It's clear today WOTC wants to avoid colorless bombs in new sets, although isn't always successful, a number of the Eldrazi decks are making use of BFZ and Oath cards, as well as Emrakul, the Promised End.
Does thinking about decks like this make any sense to anyone else?
So we're not going to get a Battlebond story, just an article on some point discussion the world. But it looks like we have:
Regna and Krav: Lovers, one angel, one demon. The good vs. evil romance is very cliche, Buffy-Angel/Spike.
Pir & Toothy: A kid and his giant friendly monstrous imaginary friend.
Khorvath and Sylvia: A knight and a dragon seems like a pretty standard combination, reminding me of a number of fictional combos like How to Train Your Dragon and Anne McCaffrey's world.
Will and Rowan Kenrith: Sibling planeswalkers, statistics aside on the odds of siblings both having a spark, it seems like it was only a matter of time before Magic had this.
But I can't figure out the other two legendary pairs.
Zndrsplt and Okaun: Is this just the standard "brains and brawn" combo of friends? One is a former official, but it's not clear what Okaun's former profession would be.
Virtus and Gorm: I've got nothing, just a big lure guy and a sneaky and skillful assassin.
I hope Battlebond does well, but I can't see this being a regular supplemental set like Conspiracy has become. So this seems like our only look at Kylem.
So I just wrote up a long, long post about limited archetypes over time, and then the site ate it because the site was in read only mode!
WTF.
Well, I wasted a lot of time and energy into it, and I really just wanted to spark a conversation about limited archetypes over time. So take two. I was inspired by the Green-Blue Defenders Archetype in the new Iconic Masters set. And in its throwback to the Defenders deck from original Zendikar, I was reminded how much I loved the Red-White Defenders Archetype in original Conspiracy. Absolutely love Flamewright and wish for a Boros Defender-Theme Legend for EDH ...
Anyway, some color pairs are almost always doing the same thing in Limited (Red-White Aggro, which is why the deviation into Defender was so fun) and other decks move around a lot (White-Black is usually a midrange deck with recursion and lifegain, but it's had a few aggro tribal archetypes like Amonkhet or the Warriors theme in Tarkir).
Trying to identify and rank the pairs, this is what I see:
White/Blue: Usually Fliers. Even when it has some mechanic outside of flying (like ETB) it's often stapled on fliers or a mechanic that helps hold the ground so you win with fliers. It's usually more on the Control side though.
Blue/Black: Control. Simple. Mechanics can have some artifact synergies, or throw in some efficient card drawing.
Black/Red: Aggro. Fast. Removal/Burn. Has had some good tribal themes too (Innistrad Vampires, Theros Minotaurs, Iconic Masters Dragons).
Red/Green: Aggro beatdown and ramp. Doesn't mess around a lot.
Green/White: Of the allied color pairs, I think this pair can move around the most in what it's trying to do. Sometimes it's a go wide strategy with tokens (Populate) and sometimes it's a go tall strategy with counters (Iconic Masters) or both (Kaladesh) or just a midrange with not much of a mechanical focus. IIRC, Maro has said this is the hardest allied color pair to work out because it's overlap is so creature focused and similar. But it's usually a Midrange deck.
White/Black: Shifting to enemy color pairs, this one can be a midrange deck with recursion and lifegain to last for the long game (and the removal to boot), or a more aggro deck. I've liked how this can shift back and forth, curious if there's anything that stands out as an exception to either track.
Blue/Red: Almost always spells, but I don't think it always gets it to work. It's an archetype that is more consistent in what it's trying to do, but not consistent in the outcome. Because it's not creature focused, this deck can fall to formats where aggro is just too fast. Kinda interested in how Ixalan's Pirate Raid archetype works out.
Black/Green: Usually just a basic goodstuff Midrange deck, sometimes with a graveyard theme, or just a theme of resource management (sacrifice creatures/tokens, manage your allocation of +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters). Explore fits in well here.
Red/White: Aggro. Almost never changes. Any good examples of when it's different?
Green/Blue: I think with White/Black the enemy color pair that can change the most, but you could also argue that it's always trying to do the same thing, just like with Blue/Red sometimes it comes together and sometimes it doesn't. It wants to use Green to ramp into an effective big creature to win the game, and it wants to use Blue to draw cards, keep the opponent off balance, and get the damage through. But this can lead to a very durdle style of play, and if the spells you want aren't as efficient in the set, or aggro is too good too fast, it doesn't come together. I'm a little curious how Ixalan comes together, having it as a tribal color where the focus is creatures, counters, and evasion is unusual for this pair.
So what changes the most?
White-Green is usually focused on creatures and is usually midrange, but can shift between go wide or go tall. That's probably the most variance of an allied color pair.
Red-Blue is usually focused on spells, but can be hit and miss on if the card combinations are there. Usually tempo/combo.
White-Black can range between midrange and aggro.
Green-Blue usually wants to be tempo ramp, but like Red-Blue can be hit and miss on if the card combinations are there.
And given that how good aggro in the format sets the pace for everyone else, I'm grouping the pairs as roughly:
Aggro: Black/Red, Red/Green, Red/White, sometimes White/Black
Midrange: White/Green, Black/Green, sometimes White/Black
Control: Blue/Black, White/Blue
Combo/Tempo? Blue/Red, Green/Blue. Harder to categorize these two on the spectrum, so going with Combo/Tempo.
But there are exceptions, any other thoughts on some of the past Archetypes in recent years (say post-Return to Ravnica) that break these rules the most?
UB Pirates
We've seen Pirates in blue, black and red, so it only stands to reason that UB will have a Pirate-heavy theme.
Looks like the Uncommon has been spoiled (http://www.journaldugeek.com/2017/08/29/magic-ixalan-carte-exclu/) and it gives it a synergy with the Treasury tokens, so some sort of Artifacts matter theme is being put into Dimir. Also synergistic with the Black alternate win condition from Revel in Riches.
That may mess up your theory on Pirate Treasure for UR. Although you also have Red Pirates with Treasure matters themes.
Why all the hate on the frame? It isn't what we are used to, but ti makes mechanical and practical sense. I think it is a very elegant way to solve the problem by fixing 2 problems with 1 idea. Problem A being formatting the card in general so you can cast 2 different spells, only 1 being out of the grave without having a wall of text; Problem B being ease of seeing it in your graveyard for both you and your opponent.
The only problem i foresee is how currently some players (myself included) put a card sideways under their graveyard to indicate the exile pile. This is a minor thing, but some people actively resist change and worse, some may use it as an avenue to cheat.
Thing is they could have achieved the same thing by using a regular split card and having no mana cost in the half they wanted gravecast only and put the cost and cast restriction in the keyword.
Putting a casting cost in the gravecast only part is just going to annoy experienced play since we are trained to know you can cast either side of a split card so their fighting our normal understanding of split cards. And new players and anyone who hasn't used split cards before are going to get feel bad moments when they see the casting cost on the gravecast only side and go to cast it from their hand only to find out that they can't.
I don't understand any of this. Why would a new player look at a card, see a different orientation to a second spell, and assume they can cast it from their hand when it's gravecast only. The whole fact that the orientation is different is a huge siren saying "I AM DIFFERENT."
Same for more experienced players. Normal split cards don't have the two different orientations. So why assume this card is the same?
I sort my binders into two, one for Standard, one for everything else, but I'm trying to figure out if Frontier is becoming popular enough that I may want to do a Frontier binder, and then another for everything else, perhaps with Standard in the front of the Frontier binder? I also feel like Modern has been growing more in popularity, or maybe it's just how things are at my local game shop. Has anyone else reconsidered the Standard/Not-Standard division?
I was actually thinking of another post on un-finished land cycles, like those or the ones from Future Sight, but was taking the time to track down all the possibilities out there.
Just posting for speculation on which land cycle you'd rather see finished with the enemy-pairs, the Tango/Battle lands or the Shadow/Reveal lands?
The fact that both cycles have been introduced relatively recently makes me suspect there would be plans on the horizon to finish them. I could easily see the Tango lands being put in the set's Expeditions/Masterpieces/etc.
Based on Guilds of Ravnica, we'll see the Bolas aligned Planeswalkers, and then one Guild leader/Guild champion, and the Guilds without a Planeswalker will have two Legendaries, one representing the Guild Leader and the other representing a number two. I think other than Isperia, all previous Guild leaders could show up again. Niv-Mizzet showed up as a card and doesn't seem to have been killed, while Vraska does appear to have gotten rid of Jarad (although not clear since the cards aren't fleshing out the storyline, yet). Reading between the lines, it does seem like Izoni is probably a leader of the anti-Vraska faction, like Niv-Mizzet still resisting Ral in some way or another.
So it's possible some of the Bolas Planeswalkers, like Domri Rade, will still see their Guild leaders, like Borborygmos, show up, or a "resistance" like figure.
For storyline purposes though I'd highly suspect that if Kaya shows up, we'll see a Teysa card instead of the Obzedat.
Lyzolda is dead, Exava was the Rakdos maze runner, and I don't see a strong narrative pushing to have Exava return versus a new character.
Momir Vig is dead, Zegana is the last Simic Guild leader, but I don't know if the narrative is strong enough to keep Zegana versus a new Simic guild leader.
What we know:
Guilds: Simic (UG), Gruul (GR), Rakdos (RB), Orzhov (BW), Azorius (WB)
Planeswalkers: Three Planeswalkers taking over three of the Guilds with some connection/loyal to Bolas. With information on Vraska's murder of Isperia, it's almost certain that Azorius is one of the Bolas Guilds, and almost certain to feature Dovin Baan. We've seen Domri Rade on flavor text, and Kaya on artwork from the novels, so those are also more plausible guesses.
The focus of Maro's DTW were the mechanics, which in Guilds of Ravnica were developed to play well with the adjacent Guilds. So we should expect the following three-color archetypes in draft to have some synergy:
Temur (Simic, Gruul)
Jund (Gruul, Rakdos)
Mardu (Rakdos, Orzhov)
Esper (Ozhov, Azorius)
Bant (Azorius, Simic)
But what of the mechanics?
In the last two visits to Ravnica, Simic has received mechanics that use +1/+1 counters. It seems safe to bet that we'll see +1/+1 counters in Simic again, and that gives us a starting point for analyzing the other Guilds.
Temur: Simic -> Gruul. In looking back at the Ravnica mechanics, Rosewater gives Bloodthirst a 3 on the Storm Scale. It's likely to make a comeback eventually and it involves +1/+1 counters. We already saw Convoke, also a 3 on the Storm Scale, come back with Guilds of Ravnica. I'm thinking a return of Bloodthirst or something similar is very likely for Ravnica Allegiance.
Jund: Gruul -> Rakdos. So if Gruul has something like Bloodthirst, Rakdos may have something that encourages attacking. Maybe something like Raid, but it was brought back in Ixalan and that's too recent. Maybe something like Dash? Unleash could also work in making creatures bigger and pushing you into attacking since they can't do anything else.
Mardu: Rakdos -> Orzhov. Haunt was bad, but Extort is on the list of mechanics that could see a return. However it doesn't synergize well with a more aggressive archetype with Rakdos, yet Orzhov needs to be able to also link up with a more controlling archetype with Azorius. Something like Morbid could strike a balance, where Rakdos is attacking and getting into combat, and Orzhov with Azorius may lean towards a Morbid midrange value approach. Alternatively if something like Dash makes an appearance, Orzhov could care about creatures entering the battlefield. This sounds too much like the "creaturefall" that Rosewater discussed with Selesnya on his podcast. So what about a Morbid that cares about creatures leaving the battlefield, regardless of if they are just blinking, going into exile, or into the graveyard?
Esper: Orzhov -> Azorius. This is another hard one, because I suspect Azorius needs to work with the Simic's +1/+1 counters. We should expect some sort of control archetype for Azorius, but it might be worth considering the other aspect of White-Blue in draft: flyers. If we have Kaladesh's Dovin Baan taking over, might we see a subtheme of thopters? Detain could make a come back, but it's hard to see how that fits with +1/+1 counters. If Orzhov cares about creatures leaving the battlefield, with a subtheme of self-sacrifice for value, what about an artifact tokens focus with Azorius, either thopters or servos (like Fabricate)? That could create fodder for a sacrifice outlet, or overlap with Simic's +1/+1. While this doesn't scream "control" like typical White-Blue mechanics, we've seen some deviation before, like when Awaken was the White-Blue mechanic in Battle for Zendikar.
We'll start to see spoilers soon enough, but for now it's just speculation.
The meta was a lot of Soul Sisters, Burn, and Goblins, no Tron at all. So with that in mind.
What's the thought on maindecking Leyline of Sanctity if the local meta justifies it, and if so I assume it would make sense to run all 4 copies.
Same on Torpor Orb, with the question of how many is too many.
WOTC has developed planes that showcase a lot of different color conflict, but not necessarily Green. Yes, we've seen Green facing off against an urban civilization that already dominates the world (Ravnica) as well as an optimistic steampunk world (Kaladesh), but not one where we see the fight between Green and its civilized foes in the midst of a fight. Original Innistrad had a conflict between White and Black that had White isolated and the theme of Monsters spread from Black to the other colors. They can't do something as bad as Torment and Judgment, but they can at least play up the central conflict in a storyline being along one color and its enemies ...
But since Skalla has already been destroyed, I can't imagine it's set up for a future set unless it's supposed to be a post-apocalyptic world.
I am curious if the decision to go with an all Creatures Matter Green planeswalker in M19 is reflective of both the need to replace the Green slot left open by Nissa, and the desire to have an easier introduction to Green's abilities. They could have kept the Planeswalker Deck Vivien more simplistic and done something non-Creatures Matter for the main Core set, but they didn't.
I mentioned this elsewhere on Vivien's design, but if you look at Maro's list of Green color pie abilities from the old head to head, they've used almost every single one on a planeswalker so far except for three: Fog ability (hah), Destroy Fliers (now on Vivien) and Must Be Blocked. They are going to have to recycle some space from previous Green planewalkers. It would be nice to see a non-Elf Tribal, as well as a token creation Green planeswalker. Also by replacing Garruk thematically and not Nissa it keeps the door open to seeing Nissa in the next few years (before another Return to Zendikar).
Yeah, doesn't the article tell us about 85% of what we need to now, and we can easily fill in the rest to why we ended up with Vivien this way?
WOTC: "We needed a green-aligned and creature-centric planeswalker" is pretty repetitive, isn't it?
Garruk was the original Green planeswalker and logically took up the creature-centric role, because what else does Green do? As his storyline developed and he took on a Black-Green persona, Nissa filled in with the one major slot left for Green, lands matter (except for the original theme of Elf tribal) with some creature-centric abilities.
It's 2017 and Core 2019 is in the works, it's got to have a cycle of mono-color planeswalkers and Green's slot is empty because Nissa's back on Zendikar for a future return set and Garruk is crazy.
Because of Green's creature-centric color pie abilities I feel like it's going to have a harder time coming up with new planeswalkers with exciting abilities. All colors get planeswalkers that can create tokens, it would be interesting if WOTC would push the envelope and give Green bigger/better/cheaper creature tokens off their planeswalkers. If you look at Maro's list of Green color pie abilities from the old head to head, they've used almost every single one on a planeswalker so far except for three: Fog ability (hah), Destroy Fliers (now on Vivien) and Must Be Blocked.
Yeah, and there's some sort of range to how that relates between the deck and new sets. Because the decks that lean heavily on one namesake card or interaction are less likely to be impacted by new sets, while the Jund decks are always looking at what the best powerful interactive spell would be out of new sets.
For example, the forum transition from listing Modern decks from Tiers to Archetype was one way of categorizing decks.
Some decks are very up front about the fact that they revolve around one key card, like Hollow One. WOTC doesn't print that, and the deck doesn't exist. In contrast, there are some decks that are more about the interactions between a color's fundamental portion of the color pie. Green's Stompy is on this end of the spectrum, it's about its curving out and not one key card, but it's open to new cards as they are printed (Rhonas the Indomitable and Steel Leaf Champion as recent additions). Across the parrallel universes, something like Stompy exists and isn't dependent on one single card.
Stompy is also a good example of a deck that isn't dependent around one concept or card that WOTC has decided not to make again. WOTC isn't going to make anything like the Urzatron again, and until they had Karn Liberated or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn the threat of a bunch of colorless mana a few turns in wasn't that big of a threat. It's clear today WOTC wants to avoid colorless bombs in new sets, although isn't always successful, a number of the Eldrazi decks are making use of BFZ and Oath cards, as well as Emrakul, the Promised End.
Does thinking about decks like this make any sense to anyone else?
Regna and Krav: Lovers, one angel, one demon. The good vs. evil romance is very cliche, Buffy-Angel/Spike.
Pir & Toothy: A kid and his giant friendly monstrous imaginary friend.
Khorvath and Sylvia: A knight and a dragon seems like a pretty standard combination, reminding me of a number of fictional combos like How to Train Your Dragon and Anne McCaffrey's world.
Will and Rowan Kenrith: Sibling planeswalkers, statistics aside on the odds of siblings both having a spark, it seems like it was only a matter of time before Magic had this.
But I can't figure out the other two legendary pairs.
Zndrsplt and Okaun: Is this just the standard "brains and brawn" combo of friends? One is a former official, but it's not clear what Okaun's former profession would be.
Virtus and Gorm: I've got nothing, just a big lure guy and a sneaky and skillful assassin.
I hope Battlebond does well, but I can't see this being a regular supplemental set like Conspiracy has become. So this seems like our only look at Kylem.
WTF.
Well, I wasted a lot of time and energy into it, and I really just wanted to spark a conversation about limited archetypes over time. So take two. I was inspired by the Green-Blue Defenders Archetype in the new Iconic Masters set. And in its throwback to the Defenders deck from original Zendikar, I was reminded how much I loved the Red-White Defenders Archetype in original Conspiracy. Absolutely love Flamewright and wish for a Boros Defender-Theme Legend for EDH ...
Anyway, some color pairs are almost always doing the same thing in Limited (Red-White Aggro, which is why the deviation into Defender was so fun) and other decks move around a lot (White-Black is usually a midrange deck with recursion and lifegain, but it's had a few aggro tribal archetypes like Amonkhet or the Warriors theme in Tarkir).
Trying to identify and rank the pairs, this is what I see:
White/Blue: Usually Fliers. Even when it has some mechanic outside of flying (like ETB) it's often stapled on fliers or a mechanic that helps hold the ground so you win with fliers. It's usually more on the Control side though.
Blue/Black: Control. Simple. Mechanics can have some artifact synergies, or throw in some efficient card drawing.
Black/Red: Aggro. Fast. Removal/Burn. Has had some good tribal themes too (Innistrad Vampires, Theros Minotaurs, Iconic Masters Dragons).
Red/Green: Aggro beatdown and ramp. Doesn't mess around a lot.
Green/White: Of the allied color pairs, I think this pair can move around the most in what it's trying to do. Sometimes it's a go wide strategy with tokens (Populate) and sometimes it's a go tall strategy with counters (Iconic Masters) or both (Kaladesh) or just a midrange with not much of a mechanical focus. IIRC, Maro has said this is the hardest allied color pair to work out because it's overlap is so creature focused and similar. But it's usually a Midrange deck.
White/Black: Shifting to enemy color pairs, this one can be a midrange deck with recursion and lifegain to last for the long game (and the removal to boot), or a more aggro deck. I've liked how this can shift back and forth, curious if there's anything that stands out as an exception to either track.
Blue/Red: Almost always spells, but I don't think it always gets it to work. It's an archetype that is more consistent in what it's trying to do, but not consistent in the outcome. Because it's not creature focused, this deck can fall to formats where aggro is just too fast. Kinda interested in how Ixalan's Pirate Raid archetype works out.
Black/Green: Usually just a basic goodstuff Midrange deck, sometimes with a graveyard theme, or just a theme of resource management (sacrifice creatures/tokens, manage your allocation of +1/+1 or -1/-1 counters). Explore fits in well here.
Red/White: Aggro. Almost never changes. Any good examples of when it's different?
Green/Blue: I think with White/Black the enemy color pair that can change the most, but you could also argue that it's always trying to do the same thing, just like with Blue/Red sometimes it comes together and sometimes it doesn't. It wants to use Green to ramp into an effective big creature to win the game, and it wants to use Blue to draw cards, keep the opponent off balance, and get the damage through. But this can lead to a very durdle style of play, and if the spells you want aren't as efficient in the set, or aggro is too good too fast, it doesn't come together. I'm a little curious how Ixalan comes together, having it as a tribal color where the focus is creatures, counters, and evasion is unusual for this pair.
So what changes the most?
White-Green is usually focused on creatures and is usually midrange, but can shift between go wide or go tall. That's probably the most variance of an allied color pair.
Red-Blue is usually focused on spells, but can be hit and miss on if the card combinations are there. Usually tempo/combo.
White-Black can range between midrange and aggro.
Green-Blue usually wants to be tempo ramp, but like Red-Blue can be hit and miss on if the card combinations are there.
And given that how good aggro in the format sets the pace for everyone else, I'm grouping the pairs as roughly:
Aggro: Black/Red, Red/Green, Red/White, sometimes White/Black
Midrange: White/Green, Black/Green, sometimes White/Black
Control: Blue/Black, White/Blue
Combo/Tempo? Blue/Red, Green/Blue. Harder to categorize these two on the spectrum, so going with Combo/Tempo.
But there are exceptions, any other thoughts on some of the past Archetypes in recent years (say post-Return to Ravnica) that break these rules the most?
Looks like the Uncommon has been spoiled (http://www.journaldugeek.com/2017/08/29/magic-ixalan-carte-exclu/) and it gives it a synergy with the Treasury tokens, so some sort of Artifacts matter theme is being put into Dimir. Also synergistic with the Black alternate win condition from Revel in Riches.
That may mess up your theory on Pirate Treasure for UR. Although you also have Red Pirates with Treasure matters themes.
GW Dinosaurs Uncommone has also been spoiled and it looks like toughness matters (http://sarpadianempiresvol-viii.tumblr.com/post/164755279934/sauropods-stomping-on-raptors-damn-straight-this) We've seen Black-Green do that in the past, interesting to see in White-Green.
I don't understand any of this. Why would a new player look at a card, see a different orientation to a second spell, and assume they can cast it from their hand when it's gravecast only. The whole fact that the orientation is different is a huge siren saying "I AM DIFFERENT."
Same for more experienced players. Normal split cards don't have the two different orientations. So why assume this card is the same?
I was actually thinking of another post on un-finished land cycles, like those or the ones from Future Sight, but was taking the time to track down all the possibilities out there.
The fact that both cycles have been introduced relatively recently makes me suspect there would be plans on the horizon to finish them. I could easily see the Tango lands being put in the set's Expeditions/Masterpieces/etc.
Tango is my vote.