Lastly: Could we see this set as early as next year in Q3 as "Lacrosse" or Q4 as "Offroading"?
I don't think so for Lacrosse. Lacrose is a part of the Phyrexia 4 set story narrative. I could be wrong but I think it's more likely that the two sets following Brother's War are going to be on New Phyrexia. The part that kinda confuses me is that Marathon is getting an epilogue set. I have a theory that the epilogue will be called Mirrodin Pure. I don't know if they are going to introduce a new plane amongst this storyline I think it'd make it worse for people who want the wild west set to be in the middle of a big storyline. Imagine them introducing Eldraine in between Ravnica Alliance and War of the Spark it would have taken steam out of both the hype of Eldraine and War of the Spark. So TLDR I don't think they'd introduce this plane until after the Phyrexia war.
This ambitious set thing got me thinking even more. If they conclude this Phyrexian arc over the next four sets or so, what will they do for a new one? The Phyrexians are Magic's longest and mist reliable villain by far, way more than the Eldrazi. Will they revive the Eldrazi again?
The War of the Spark arc, the Eldrazi...were all miniscule compared to the Phyrexians.
I'm not sure what else they could do outside of their planar bread and butter. I mean the story for Throne of Eldraine was the start of a super planeswalker arc supposedly, but what else could be done...Ideas?
From MTG.Fandom: "Throne of Eldraine is the beginning of a new Planeswalker story arc.[19]"
'buster
I'm hoping the unnamed planeswalker who made the Ozolith go all wacky is going to be the next big bad. I know I might be an outlier but I want something new. Since the beginning of their bigger story push they have focused mostly on tightening loose ends. I just want to see something new.
This would feel exactly like that time where Buffalo Sabres fans sent Zemgus Girgensons to the NHL All Star game. Or even that time where it was John Scott. They both didn't belong there, just as MtG doesn't need to become The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
I know some players will like it, just like some players liked to get a plane where Pirates and Dinosaurs roamed the "land", but I will definitely stay away from any of these products if they ever see the light of day.
i hate to tell you this
similar reaction to the cyber punk setting on kamigawa revisit from lots of people and yet…third best selling set of all time (the other two is modern masters 2 and D&D forgotten realms)
so similar thing can happen here with cowboy theme plus don’t forget new capenna was mafia with most gun like weapons and cars in modern times
and it is already heavy requested by fans we get a western setting. I know this from blogatog
The road was dusty and broad, peppered here and there with stores that had been in business longer than he had been alive. It was a sleepy sort of place, and Angrath was happy very little had changed.
A little plume of smoke was rising from his foundry. A hand-painted window on the outside read "OPEN" in blocky lettering. The building was little more than a shack on the far end of town, but it had been his shack on the far end of town. Piles of iron and metal were stacked outside, and a number of items and weapons were hung on a rack, each tagged to mark which order was which.
Angrath's ear flicked as he heard the clang of metal and sizzle of water inside.
He approached, and his chains clanked with each step he took.
Angrath ducked slightly to avoid hitting his head on the doorway (he could still make out the bumps in the wood from every time he had forgotten) and paused as he looked for the blacksmith at work.
Two minotaurs glanced up from their anvils. They were tall like their mother had been. They wore bulky leather aprons, and their horns were adorned with the jewelry worn by unmarried women of their age.
Their eyes went wide. The one on the right snorted in shock. The other's ears stood up in surprise.
The one on the right sniffed the air and trembled with emotion. "Father?"
Steam softly hissed where Angrath's tears met his skin. He smiled.
"Rumi. Jamira. I'm home."
Thanks for those points. People can rail against a Wild West set but its going to happen. There are only so few more genres out there for them to explore it will happen sooner than later. And they have already crossed the line in the sand some have drawn and it doesn't phase them. If they are going to have this "some products may not be for you" attitude then there isn't much else to do but skip it and wait until they come up with something you do like. And yes and Western set is going to run for 3 months for cripes sake and then there will be another set coming out. Wild West is PAST due!!!
Oh and don't be shocked when Space Set comes out down the line as well. It will happen. For those who aren't that old go search "SpellJammer" by TSR for an idea.
Spelljammer is actually being rolled out in DND 5th edition right now. There is a lot of free stuff for it on DND beyond for those who are interested. As for the wild west discussion I'm not against it but a part of me thinks that it's not legit. The card that has the Kekai Kotaki art kind of brings up some red flags just because it seems like that's an artists personal piece and I don't see a company lifting artwork even for markups because they don't own the image. I'll be ok if I'm wrong because the card frames are really nice.
I think it's only fitting that I start this discussion, as I had speculated months ago that we could get classic Legends legendary creatures with a new look.
So I'll start with what we do have:
1) Jasmine Boreal of the Seven
2) Ramirez DePietro, Pillager
3) Tor Wauki the Younger
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
11)
12)
13)
14)
15)
16)
17)
18)
19)
20) Planeswalker
So that's an additional 15 creatures. I bet some will be presented as rares that were once uncommon. Might even see some rarity shifts from uncommon to mythic or from rare to uncommon. Remember, this is reimagining, so the Reserved List should have no bearing on what was chosen. The one I'm really willing to bet on Hazeron Tamar, as many have been wanting Sand Warrior Tokens.
My reasoning for my choices are either the vanilla uncommons, as well as some that have not aged well, aka weak abilities that can be magnified and made exiting, such as Ayesha, Kai Ragnar and Lord Magnus.
My last guess for who will become the planeswalker will be one of the other four Elder Dragons (Nicol-Bolas has been the baddy for 20+ years; time for him to pass the villain crown to another dragon.
I think the planeswalker is most likely going to be a Bolas or a Dakkon and I'm leaning on Dakkon because it would pair well with the Dihada we are getting in the commander decks I'm guessing it will also have the tag line of can be your commander. I'm hoping Gabriel Angelfire gets an update myself.
I’m most interested in the Jared and Dihada commander decks. I’m curious what Jared will be like as five color planeswalker. I’m also slightly irked that Dihada is going to be mardu it bugs me when we have planeswalkers who can be your commander and can’t have every version of the planeswalker in the 99.
See this is where I think going to a two-set block format again would be beneficial. There are a lot of mechanics in singleton sets that can easily be expanded on in another subsequent set. Like Learn/Lessons for instance.
The bad part is that those mechanics usually tend to be redone in sets that are not standard legal. Only need to look at the latest Commander product featuring Foretell cards in it.
But on your point, I guess it depends on how well received the D&D flavour is amongst players. I've heard people say, particularly from Timmy's Emporium (Rudy), that AFR was a financial flop. It did have some good cards in it that see regular play, but nothing to the likes of Strixhaven or Kaldheim. *shrug*
'buster
I don't follow Rudy but a part of me thinks that a lot of people call AFR a flop because they're wanting the IP to remain "pure". He might be correct because I don't follow finance that much but there were a bunch of cards that see play; Lolth, deadly dispute, the creature lands, prosperous innkeeper, portable hole, werewolf pack leader which I now reread what you said and you mentioned a few cards but I think there's a good amount. I might be biased because I loved both DND sets and I have no problem with universe beyond cards. And I am not sure about the timing, but couldn't they have just rebranded Baldur's gate if AFR didn't sell well. I mean they could have postponed it and rebranded it to a Zendikar Legends set and need only a little bit of flavor fixing. It took them 17 years to return to Kamigawa because of poor sales I think if the sells were that bad for AFR Wizards wouldn't release another product while the dead product is still on the shelves. Sorry for the wall of text but I just feel some in the community want it to fail because it's not within the magic universe.
That being said I do think they could use backgrounds in a variety of ways. While I like that they make new versions of some legends when they revisit a plane I think backgrounds could be used to bring new life to older legends. They could say something like if so and so is your commander you may have this as your second commander. I play Fire Emblem Heroes and they do something called weapon refines for older units to make them a little more competitive due to power creep. I think Backgrounds could be a way of breathing new life into old legends in the same way especially for legends who are dead in cannon. Dominaria could use this as a slew could be commander cards in the set boosters along with reprints for the legends.
Bane: nice thats probably long awaited esper/obscura colors for aristocrat themed legend its gonna be really hard for opponents to know if they should let you draw or not
hierophants: does every creature including tokens (by the way creatures is a vast majority of tokens)
while with jaheira she lets you tap clue/food/token copys of non creature permanets/toggos rocks for green mana (gold is really good since you get 2 mana from the tap ability and sacrificing it)
I love the general token theme of this set. Jaheira with academy manufacture and each time you make one of them you’re getting three rocks.
I don't know if anyone has pointed this out but, Halsin, Emerald Archdruid can get you infinite colorless mana with Pitiless Plunderer and Ashnod's Altar. Halsin's ability turns the treasures into creatures and then you sacrifice your bear treasures to the altar which will get you a treasure and two colorless mana. Overall you gain one colorless with each transformation and sacrifice. It might be a bit much magic Christmas land but if you throw in a blood artiste effect you get infinite drain as well.
But it still doesn't make sense that Braids would be compleated in modern Dominaria/Dominaria United, which is way after Odyssey block, right?. That does look a lot like her, but I don't know how she could survive this long to get compleated by new Phyrexia, and we didn't see any of her in Dominaria despite lots of other Odyssey block remnants or descendants making an appearance. (I also wouldn't draw too much from the collector booster box art, these tend to be far afield of how the cards look in their regular canonical art.)
Braids is compleated because Wrenn compleated her .
This makes even less sense.
I’m wondering if there’s been a colony on Dominaria that’s been festering for a while. Aren’t parts of Urborg supposed to be tainted by the glistening oil? My guess is they’ve corrupted some of the cabal in the area and completed braids some time around her apparent death. I’m not especially vorthos so this is just stuff I’ve picked off the wiki. Maybe the doninarian phyrexians were mostly leaderless and Sheoldred will unit them and lead an offensive against dominaria?
Yeah, I was just trying to point out the various factors needed for it. A 7-9 is "Not impossible, but needs the perfect environment" which is what I was trying to get at.
It could be interesting for them to have an ability like Scavenge or Graft, or ability wording Star Pupil's text. Imagine each Phyrexian being like a miniature Ozolith. That's certainly scary enough for them. Fits with proliferate, if that comes back.
I like it being like scavenge too. I wonder if they could somehow have creature type counters too like whatever gets the counters becomes a phyrexian. It would be useful in the future for tribal and things like party. I think at the climax of the phyrexian story we are going to have another planeswalker heavy theme like War of the Spark so I think proliferate would be good buffer mechanic like it was in War of the Spark where it benefited both the Army strategy and the Planeswalker strategy.
I don't think it's been directly said, it's just that Infect is pretty high on the Storm Scale, and requires some weird warping of the format, due to the construction of Infect cards. They can't get too big, because there are so many fewer ways to recover from a hit. Combat tricks become massively more powerful, effectively double what they say on the stat line. Because they have to stay small, even "weak" damage spells become way more useful. It is the most aggro of aggro decks. So you have to keep that in mind, and give enough answers that there can be other strategies, and yet not so many that it becomes useless. Plus, you have to consider extended formats in some capacity too.
Fynn is a Virulent Sliver with Poisonous 2 instead of 1 (and giving it to Deathtouch creatures rather than Slivers). Poisonous, while still powerful, isn't quite as effective as infect. No matter how big any one creature gets, it'll only drop off 2 counters. Plus, even if you build your entire deck around Fynn, you can't utilize the Poison plan without him, making it much easier to stop the plan. In an infect deck, every creature has it, so every creature has to be removed.
Honestly, I could see Poisonous being brought in, rather than Infect. It's not quite as fun, but it has better ways to balance I think.
I do see where you are coming from. It does need to be balanced in order for it to work. I wouldn't entirely call it our though according to an April blogatog entry it is a 7 (https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/681819863683055616/follow-up-on-the-1-1-thing-wheres-infect-on-the) which is high but madness has been fluctuating from a 7-9 and it appeared in Shadows over Innistrad. Infect I think has gone down in the modern meta lately it seems so it'd be cool for it to raise a bit.
After I posted last night I did think a little bit more on other mechanics. Don't phyrexians like to repurpose body parts for the splicers? They could use ability counters and either have an effect like graft or the dies trigger of Star Pupil.
I think we’re gonna start seeing phyrexian tribal very soon with dominaria United and brothers war coming up. And probably some upcoming sets in 2023 (standard, supplement, and commander decks)
And now to ponder what could phyrexia. Tribal be themed around?
For a few examples of other tribes that have something in common with most tribal support cards.
zombies with tokens and aristocrats,
elves with huge mana production and go wide.
rouges or ninja with unblockable.
and the new Phoenix tribal legend with graveyard regrow/recursion.
And phyrexians it’s 5-color tribe due to mirrodin/new phyrexia granting them RGWU from the suns of mirrodin (red splashed) and phyrexians could be lots of things of what they done in thr lore.
edit: forgot two things to mention
1. the reason red is splashed is elesh norn dominated the red realm, but however in new capenna Urabrask claimed he’s the he’s still not pledging to his realm to her and is still locked away the mirans are still just fine
2. It won’t be infect matters
any thoughts?
Do we have anything saying that there will not be infect coming up? We already have Fynn, the Fangbearer pretty much has super poisonous on him. I know infect has -1/-1 counters built into it but being stapled on to death touch is just as harsh for your opponents to block. I bet there will be some derivative of it similar to how compleated is a riff on phyrexian mana.
I don't think so for Lacrosse. Lacrose is a part of the Phyrexia 4 set story narrative. I could be wrong but I think it's more likely that the two sets following Brother's War are going to be on New Phyrexia. The part that kinda confuses me is that Marathon is getting an epilogue set. I have a theory that the epilogue will be called Mirrodin Pure. I don't know if they are going to introduce a new plane amongst this storyline I think it'd make it worse for people who want the wild west set to be in the middle of a big storyline. Imagine them introducing Eldraine in between Ravnica Alliance and War of the Spark it would have taken steam out of both the hype of Eldraine and War of the Spark. So TLDR I don't think they'd introduce this plane until after the Phyrexia war.
I'm hoping the unnamed planeswalker who made the Ozolith go all wacky is going to be the next big bad. I know I might be an outlier but I want something new. Since the beginning of their bigger story push they have focused mostly on tightening loose ends. I just want to see something new.
Spelljammer is actually being rolled out in DND 5th edition right now. There is a lot of free stuff for it on DND beyond for those who are interested. As for the wild west discussion I'm not against it but a part of me thinks that it's not legit. The card that has the Kekai Kotaki art kind of brings up some red flags just because it seems like that's an artists personal piece and I don't see a company lifting artwork even for markups because they don't own the image. I'll be ok if I'm wrong because the card frames are really nice.
I think the planeswalker is most likely going to be a Bolas or a Dakkon and I'm leaning on Dakkon because it would pair well with the Dihada we are getting in the commander decks I'm guessing it will also have the tag line of can be your commander. I'm hoping Gabriel Angelfire gets an update myself.
I don't follow Rudy but a part of me thinks that a lot of people call AFR a flop because they're wanting the IP to remain "pure". He might be correct because I don't follow finance that much but there were a bunch of cards that see play; Lolth, deadly dispute, the creature lands, prosperous innkeeper, portable hole, werewolf pack leader which I now reread what you said and you mentioned a few cards but I think there's a good amount. I might be biased because I loved both DND sets and I have no problem with universe beyond cards. And I am not sure about the timing, but couldn't they have just rebranded Baldur's gate if AFR didn't sell well. I mean they could have postponed it and rebranded it to a Zendikar Legends set and need only a little bit of flavor fixing. It took them 17 years to return to Kamigawa because of poor sales I think if the sells were that bad for AFR Wizards wouldn't release another product while the dead product is still on the shelves. Sorry for the wall of text but I just feel some in the community want it to fail because it's not within the magic universe.
That being said I do think they could use backgrounds in a variety of ways. While I like that they make new versions of some legends when they revisit a plane I think backgrounds could be used to bring new life to older legends. They could say something like if so and so is your commander you may have this as your second commander. I play Fire Emblem Heroes and they do something called weapon refines for older units to make them a little more competitive due to power creep. I think Backgrounds could be a way of breathing new life into old legends in the same way especially for legends who are dead in cannon. Dominaria could use this as a slew could be commander cards in the set boosters along with reprints for the legends.
I love the general token theme of this set. Jaheira with academy manufacture and each time you make one of them you’re getting three rocks.
I’m wondering if there’s been a colony on Dominaria that’s been festering for a while. Aren’t parts of Urborg supposed to be tainted by the glistening oil? My guess is they’ve corrupted some of the cabal in the area and completed braids some time around her apparent death. I’m not especially vorthos so this is just stuff I’ve picked off the wiki. Maybe the doninarian phyrexians were mostly leaderless and Sheoldred will unit them and lead an offensive against dominaria?
I like it being like scavenge too. I wonder if they could somehow have creature type counters too like whatever gets the counters becomes a phyrexian. It would be useful in the future for tribal and things like party. I think at the climax of the phyrexian story we are going to have another planeswalker heavy theme like War of the Spark so I think proliferate would be good buffer mechanic like it was in War of the Spark where it benefited both the Army strategy and the Planeswalker strategy.
I do see where you are coming from. It does need to be balanced in order for it to work. I wouldn't entirely call it our though according to an April blogatog entry it is a 7 (https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/681819863683055616/follow-up-on-the-1-1-thing-wheres-infect-on-the) which is high but madness has been fluctuating from a 7-9 and it appeared in Shadows over Innistrad. Infect I think has gone down in the modern meta lately it seems so it'd be cool for it to raise a bit.
After I posted last night I did think a little bit more on other mechanics. Don't phyrexians like to repurpose body parts for the splicers? They could use ability counters and either have an effect like graft or the dies trigger of Star Pupil.
Do we have anything saying that there will not be infect coming up? We already have Fynn, the Fangbearer pretty much has super poisonous on him. I know infect has -1/-1 counters built into it but being stapled on to death touch is just as harsh for your opponents to block. I bet there will be some derivative of it similar to how compleated is a riff on phyrexian mana.