Quote from"Saproling" seems to be a generic term for small plant/fungus creatures rather than a specific species.
Indeed what a Saproling is varies from plane to plane - sometimes even within a plane; on Ravnica in the old days Saprolings differed from guild to guild; Selesnya Saprolings are small creatures consisting of vines wrapped around crystals (as can be seen in the artwork) - the vines are based on plants which is why the Selesnyan Saprolings use seeds and pollen; Golgari Saprolings with the guilds focus on lightless subterranean rotfarms are classical fungal beings; Simic Saprolings are open to interpretation, though they are cyan/green-blue globules and seem to consist entirely of their trademark Cytoplast.
Guildless Saprolings could follow either style guide or none at all.
Remember: A Saproling doesn't need to be fungal. If anything its root tells us more about the fact that it likes death and decay. It can be (and sometimes is) a plant and apparently sometimes part gem.
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Now you don't only seem to have a problem with Saprolings being not depicted fungal enough, but with Saprolings depicted too much like a Fungus. For example the "earthstars" are not there for there own sake. Those are the Saprolings that Vitaspore Thallid tosses around. Look at the mechanic and art and tell me that "every now and then it throws a new creature onto the field" isn't what the Thallid mechanic is actually reads like.
You can see similar depictions of Saprolings on Thallid cards again and again e. g. a big "white" Thallid in front of a few smaller "green" Saprolings on Pallid Mycoderm; maybe now you also understand the boring palette of colors: When an artist gets told to paint a "green" Fungus it will end up being green more often than not.
less to play for each Dragon or Demon permanent you control." would be preferable.
The humble advisor had met a man on the market some time ago who traded only in the most wonderous things. Thought as a gift for an annual festivity the wazir bought a mirror of which the merchant told: The mirror was created by a powerful marid and it contains the whole world once again; but the only way to travel to the other side of the mirror is to stand before it and remove a little piece from it, and the only way to return to your side is to put the piece back in place.
Now the men devised a plan: When the army of the enemy approached the city, they brought forth the mirror and placed it on the city walls, so all the soldiers would be reflected on its surface. As the king had the mirror shattered into thousand pieces, the soldiers vanished. Just a thousandst part of them remained. For the mirror has broken into a thousand pieces and each part of the army was transported to the world behind the shard it was reflected in. Now that the men of the king ver superior in numbers they easily drove away the enemy on every single of the thousand shards.
Pleased to have succeeded the king wanted the worlds to reunite and tried to reassemble the mirror putting a thousand pieces next to each other. But when the puzzle was completed he noticed a thousandandfirst piece was missing - and so the mirror and the whole world of Rabiah remains disassembled.
As you could look onto the shards of the mirrors and observe the other worlds, some scholars had theorized that the missing shard is a different one on each of thousandandone versions of Rabiah - always the shard that represents exactly the version of the world it was missing from.
Others yet said the wazir was tricked by an evil entity disguised as a merchant, some being who removed a part of the mirror beforehand knowing it could never be fully reassembled that way.
The truth had never been discovered, remembered was only the Tale of How Rabiah Was Refracted Thousand-fold.
Or maybe not...
Marid
They still bear a grudge against the lesser tribes, which is why they are bannished from the open sea on Rabiah. If a lesser djinn travels onto open waters and loses sight of the coast, the Marid's curse keeps them from ever seeing land again.
Creature type: Djinn
Djinn :symg::symu: The True Djinn have been neutral in the War of Djinn, but the Marid's curse was all-encompassing (also some Djinn fought on either side of the war) so they, too, are bound to the land and have moved from the saltwater of the coast towards any place of water - each oasis or stream can be considered the realm of a True Djinn and their whim decides whether a thirsting traveller will be allowed to drink from their waters - hence they are revered by the desert nomads.
Creature type: Djinn
Djann :symg::symrw: The Djann sided with the non-djinn creatures in the War of Djinn. Compassionate with the lesser beings they wouldn't allow the efreet to purge the humans and stood by their side. To these days the Djann are the most benevolent tribe and try to populate the barren deserts left after the war with life wherever they can.
Creature type: Djinn
Efreet :symb::symr: The desert-dwelling Efreet tribe has developed into something vastly different from the other tribes - pure in their essence and embracing their fiery form they reign over the burning desert sands. When the lesser humans attempted to travel the desert, the Efreeti didn't welcome the intruders. Some would allow them passage for a tribute, but others were to proud to be bought like that and destroyed anyone coming to close. When the Djann created safe passages through Efreeti lands, the conflict that would become the War of Djinn began.
Creature type: Efreet
Ghoul
Creature type: Zombie??
Nekrataal :symb::symur:?? The Nekrataal tribe was always mischievous and parasitic - latching onto lesser beings and sometimes controlling them, always causing symptoms of great illness and plague. Themselves physically weak they were manipulators and some may wonder whether the War of Djinn wasn't secretly fabricated from among the Nekrataal despite the minor role they played compared to Djann and Efreet. Maybe that's the reason they received a special punishment when the Marid ultimately left for the open sea in the aftermath of the war: A course has bound them to the most recent creature they have been inhabiting with their powers. As the humans were the greatest ally of the Djann among the non-djinni this meant almost the whole tribe of Nekrataal was turned into what they despised most and ever since they have seperated themselves forming a cult of outcasts devoted to death.
Creature type: Human
Locations:
City of Brass - Will have a small artifact based faction. It is said that Fatima the creator of the Brass Men lives deep within the city in seclusion from the world. I consider expanding on that story and theme with maybe even a planeswalker card.
Serendib - A plentiful island kingdom where Djinni and Efreeti rule, but are unable to leave due to the Marid curse. In result they have started to trade with humans in spite of the past.
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While working on the desert theme I considered this:
Land - Desert Plains
(:symtap:: Add
Barren Flats enters the battlefield tapped.
:symw:, :symtap:, Sacrifice Barren Flats: Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a Desert card. If you do, put it on the battlefield. Shuffle your library.
as a cycle - the names will refer to shiftsand, mirages and/or simply Rabiah-specific places.
After saying this there are multiple options for netn9 (A) opening multiple new threads (checking with moderators beforehand whether they're okay with it - knowing Kraj though it should be cool); or (B) restricting the action to this thread and deciding "We start with shard 1, brainstorm for shard 1!". I could also imagine some hybrid approaches, but that's basically it.
Another option would be to appoint five people to open their respective shard-threads if netn9 doesn't want the responsibility to maintain an updated clean post #1 for each thread (which should be done).
But without someone willing to make a call, there is no chance for progress.
Oh, and ideally everything comes with a commitment message: "For the next month nobody attempts to change the keywords or themes, but is solely concentrated on making the given ideas work."
For that reason the person making the call should have a good overview over their decisions.
Have fun!
EDIT:
Having a skeleton can't hurt.
Who says Xathrid isn't a being from Dominaria (or Ulgrotha or *insert plane name here*), maybe some kind of demon king who has risen after the events of TS, maybe not a being but a place on a world we know...
I give a cookie to Brady if Xathrid turns out to be one of Lili's demons. : )
(Not because they planned it so, because it would just be two interesting things to combine just for the effect - and we know we want to know what Xathrid is one day... ^^)
"six" should just be "6".
Refering to a permanent on the battlefield as "card" is wrong; refering to a card that has been put onto the battlefield and is now a permanent as a permanent probably should be avoided to not create confusion, but is technically correct.
Probably the intervening if-clause is even necessary - the if-clause if not intervening makes it possible that the creature gets not exiled, but a new creature is searched out from the library - if that's intented that's fine, otherwise the best solution should be:
"At the beginning of the end step, if this creature has attacked this turn, exile it. If you do, search your library for a creature card with converted mana cost 6 or less, put it onto the battlefield and attach Backstabber to it, then shuffle your library."
The "if you do" or intervening if-clause may be unnecessary, but having at least one puts you on the safe side.
Note that I resolved the card-becomes-permanent-problem the same way Animate Dead's current Oracle wording does.
Note also that I merged the clauses for searching and shuffling when I added the "if you do" to make sure the condition is applied to the whole process.
epeeguy had it covered pretty much.
It's adding a color.
Seriously, if you are really interested and don't just put the question out their because you dislike the idea of purple, I suggest, ... read this thread!
I have scanned the diagramms and read the first fourth of the article. Are you sure there is any information about whether the people know the theory of evolution in this article? To me it looks like the poll only covers opinions without giving much/any information on how much the people asked undestand of the topic.
It's perfectly possible a creationist was asked, who is well read on evolution because he spends much time finding holes in the theory to support his faith.
Equally possible is that people in this poll may not understand the theory of evolution, but take the authority (on that/all matters) of science for heaving a greater value than the authority of the church.
Neither general education nor religiosity nor age not even political partisanship really tells us anything about the knowledge on that particular topic.
And here comes MaRo reminding us that there is a very good reason why white would be the better choice of a color to get pinging from a color pie point: Punishing low toughness is white's part of the pie.
I'm very happy with MaRo's stance on the topic. Not unexpected another example of a fight lost. I wonder what his opinion would be, if the card was more like Soul's Fire.
I find it interesting though how people in this very thread confirm MaRo's - and by extension also those of the
- arguments against the card's printing.
Everyone should go back and read the thread from beginning to end with the list of MaRo's comments for a healthy laugh and/or sad face and/or enraged facepalm.
Because you weren't around the last doesn't of times this idea was discussed by the same old people?
One thing to consider: The original card never was able to produce - in a two-player match, barring extra steps/turns - another color of mana than the unflipped side had.
That's a pretty blatant change of the original functionality - probably owed to the fact that people that do have been around the last dozen of times no longer care for the fine differences.
At the same time, but in another castle.
There are three points about this:
(a) If you read my first agreeing post (before noticing that you specifically suggest Baron in M11) you will notice that I agree with the idea that within two years a return to Ulgrotha/the Baron seems possible (though I personally have a larger time window in mind before I would say 'likely').
I call your post ignorant and unqualified because you do not work with a reasonable time frame.
This aspect is missing in your analogy - and if it were in there you would be rightfully berrated; after TS came out it would be unreasonable to assume they would do such a thing right away.
(b) Saying anything has a high chance getting you berrated and scoffed at. This touches not my actions since most of the time I ignore any speculation that is baseless - most of the time I even act as advocatus diaboli, when people dismiss a baseless speculation, but for the wrong reasons.
Hence I feel stupid for even posting in this thread that I normally would have ignored if I had read your post properly.
(c) As there were people that suggested power cards would be among the bonus cards in TS (yeah, I know, not "in" TS block) I can tell you I was very open to the idea even if it didn't turn out to be true - because it would be well-possible once you accepted the existence of the bonus-rarity.
And I will always be on the side of anything that undermines the reserved list even if recent events have proven me wrong on that.
That's as far as I am going to lean out of the window to answer this "blind chicken"-argument.
"Not again": Since legendaries in core sets were replaced with planeswalkers in core sets and no matter what argumentation you may bring - they fight over the same spot. It's the same reason why we won't likely get ten card dual land cycles with the current core set size.
"Not as many": This would basically translate to less than a five-card cycle IIRC; this I don't see happening because it would destroy the symmetry of the core set - and, yes, I believe an incomplete cycle of legendaries destroys the symmetry of the core set and a missing mythic rare for ret does not (or at least not that badly).
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I have no idea where your problem with "black & white" logic and so on comes from. I remember the purple thread having created a feasible compromise that put "out of the box" firmly into a box.
In this thread my opinion represents a compromise between your stance and the stance that a return of the Baron is impossible because of the Reserved List.
The point here is that you are so far on one sight of the spectrum that you have lost the connection to the other end.
I know that - but that doesn't change the fact that the OP still suggested what I said it does. I missed it myself at first, but after I pointed it out like that I would expect you to actually read the OP before denying my correct claim.
Bull Rush exists already. Yes, don't try to weasel out of this - they made your terrible card and fitted it into the color pie far better (and actually stronger even if not strictly preferable).
I didn't know there was a NGE video game... <.<"
Like they spoiled every single Lorwyn planeswalker? Seriously - they are far to busy spoiling new cards to get more than a few reprints out there.
Putting DoJ into M11 has no impact on Standard constructed - except a few more cards of them floating around (Go on, complain about it! :confused:).
Putting a core set plant in the first available core set transports an important message though. So whatever you say: DoJ returning in M11 wouldn't be surprising.
Let's compare it to something surprising to make the difference obvious: Remember the return of Lightning Bolt? That was a surprising act.