MTG was about 15 at the time of the old article. So, Xth Edition or so. I can't believe we are actually in post-20th Anniversary land.....
The timeline of the writing of the articles is MUCH easier to trace than the timeline of the actual frikkin story, so that's what I'm clarifying instead.
The odds of Bolas building a glorified statue of himself to hold his Gem are as high as Salazar Slytherin building a sculpture of himself in his Secret Chambers.
The odds of them commissioning an artist to "paint Nicol Bolas' skull, but we won't tell anyone it's Nicol Bolas' skull or talk about it all, really, but you have to make this look like a skull because we're going to use it as a hint of what's coming up...."
Umm...no. That's not how Wizards does their thing. If it were meant to be a skull, if it were meant to be interpreted as a skull, if they were going to kill off Bolas, first off, they'd do it with a card like Deicide or Vindicate, not a card like a mana rock.
So far, we've never Planeswalked away from the setting of the Block mid-Block. Like, that's been true going back at least As far back as the Weatherlight Saga? Scratch that, since ever?
We're on Tarkir. We're Staying on Tarkir. We're Time Travelling on Tarkir.
We are not going to Zendikar.
In my opinion, this DOESN'T close the discussion on Eldrazi and Zendikar Fetch Lands! But it would be a case of the Eldrazi attacking Tarkir, if anything.
We are definitely not going to Zendikar, and I don't think Nissa is in this block.
Can you make any kind of living being an MTG Judge and trading/selling away your foils? What are the recommendations for someone that probably genuinely wants to do Judging for the sake of Judging, but is concerned about means of sustaining themselves as well and would be a better Judge if they knew they wouldn't have to worry about starving in the streets-- how do other Judges live? How do you *really* become a Judge?
If Judge Promos generally are not worth enough to support the life of a Judge on their own, what Magic-related jobs are recommended? Many people must be looking for, not money for the sake of money, but a life that includes enough money. How can Magic become my life?
If the Level 3 Judge could say a bit about what else they do or how their life plan works, that would truly answer the question.
MAGIC +1
OR-- the Game the Designers Play.
OR-- Playing God.
The Idea is to take any Format in Magic, any Existing Format, any Format you Invent, and build a Deck using only "MAGIC +1". You only get to Design 1 Card. You can design an Oversized card and rules to go with it. You can design an Undersized card and rules to go with that. You can design a New Card Type. You do anything you can Imagine. But you can only Create 1 New Card for yourself. And you have to actually add it to the Game, which means you need to create the entries necessary in the Comprehensive Rulebook for it. The reason you can only make 1 New Card, but you can make as many Rules as you need to support it, is that Your Opponent gets to Make 1 Card as well. And you BOTH get to play with any Rules either of you have to invent.
You play a Match, because the first Game you play will be utterly wild, dangerous, chaotic, and mostly a pain in the butt as you work out the Rules.
Before Game 2 Starts, you have to agree on the Rules you've invented to make your old Card work. Only in Game 2, you have to sideboard in +1 New Card. You'll get the hang of it eventually. You can take out your old +1 Card, but you don't have to, and your opponent doesn't have to. It'll be fun.
The Rules you built to support your old cards will stay in your Custom Comprehensive Rulebook no matter what. And yes, expect both you and your opponent to learn to Design Card that try to Game those Rules.
The Way to Win is, when you ask your Opponent "Let's do that Again", they say "Yes".
The Way to Lose is to get more Cards you Designed Banned than your Opponent does.
The Game Ends when someone is playing a Deck made entirely of Cards Designed by their Opponent, except your required
"+1" for whatever unit your playing. (A Game, a Match, a Round, a Day, a Tournament).
A Card I would like to see is:
Emrakul Compleat W/2 W/2 U/2 U/2 B/2 B/2 R/2 R/2 G/2 G/2
Legendary Artifact Creature- Sliver Eldrazi Horror
Artifact and Creature cards you own in any zone except your library share types and subtypes.
Sliver creatures you control have Annihilator 1.
Artifact creature cards you own may be cast from your graveyard.
Eldrazi creatures you control share abilities.
Flavor Text: "Compleat."
20/20
This card is directed to Vorthos and Spike but should also please Johnny and Melvin. The Story is that the Phyrexians and the Eldrazi clashed into each other, with Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn fusing together to make The Ultimate Monster in the Multiverse. The Phyrexians and the Eldrazi are now the Same, both are Each Other. They destroy a dozen planes and kill half the Planeswalkers we've heard and some we haven't and never will. The combination of Phyrexian and Eldrazi qualities means there's not much room to improve, change, or grow. But then they stumble upon Shandalaar, the Homeworld of Slivers.....and, well.....COMPLEAT.
What Decks would you want to make with this card? After you build that Deck, try to beat it using only MAGIC +1.
Then Playtest, and see if the Deck this goes into is strong enough to fight back against your attempt to kill it.
Or is Resistance Futile?
SARKHAN VOL 3.0 will be printed.
Anyone that's been playing at any time between Conflux and Dark Ascension ought
to be able to recognize promoting a Planeswalker when they see it. Return to Ravnica
and Theros were both less about Planeswalkers than Innistrad was, but really people--
with Dack Fayden in Conspiracy, there aren't any characters in the Multiverse that are Planeswalkers that don't have cards.
They *don't* miss chances to print new versions of Lorwyn 5 or Elspeth, Tezzeret, Bolas and Sarkhan.
Questions that people will want answered:
ARE THEY GOING TO RE-INTRODUCE DRAGONS TO TARKIR SOMEHOW?
IS NICOL BOLAS' STORY GOING TO GET INVOLVED?
WILL THE COOL LANDS BE SNOW-COVERED OR ONLSAUGHT FETCHES?
WHAT IS THE MYTHIC RARE BLUE CARD DE JOUR THAT COPIES A POWER NINE ABILITY?
WHAT CARDS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN IN MODERN MASTERS WILL BE IN THIS BLOCK?
No, U/B does not get the shaft. Xenagos got the shaft, without even an article or anything, much less a pomp and circumstance affair with perhaps a YouTube video. U/B will be the most exciting God, watch, as Ashiok was the most interesting Planeswalker.
It is Spoiler Season, and in my eyes, the Best Cards should be spoiled Late-Middle, Not either Last or First, when tensions are highest and the performance of showing them off needs a good climax to really top things off with, with the last good uncommon winding down the last day before the whole set is put up. That is how I would do Spoilers anyway, and I'm very VERY disappointed that many Planeswalkers got a shaft of a spoiler Season, and that NONE of them have really been as exciting as Jace TMS or Nicol Bolas. I am referring not to their mechanics, but to the showmanship of their presentation. The Eldrazi got really nice preview treatment, which is good, but pretty much none of Phyrexia Block was remarkable for its Preview Articles, the mechanics were simply insane.
Innistrad was alright. I suppose Sorin was previewed okay as well, I almost forgot him. But things really took a nosedive from there with Return to Ravnica and Theros Block, Spoiler Season Showmanship wise. They mostly relied on the cards to just be themselves and have that be interesting enough. Lame.
Intro Pack
I want to start the discussion at the absolute worst tier of Precon Deck: The Intro Pack. Never truly worth the money unless you really want the packs In them, and you happen to not have either of the Rares in them yet, but hardly consistent value. The ones with half-decent uncommon lands in them are good, but recently the Intro Pack has fallen to the same lack-of-MSRP-value that the Starter decks did. Well, the ones without freaking Umezawa's Jittes in them anyway, lol.
MSRP: $17 dollars for a deck and 2 packs. Actual value: $10 for a foil rare and two packs is something I would jump on.
Duel Decks
These have always been crazy good for value without spiking too horribly in recent years. They might not ever be as awesome as Demonic Tutor ever again, but for Modern and Legacy, I'd still probably buy any one of these products at the prices you can find them at.
MSRP: $20 Avg Price of 1st releases: $50-80 Avg Price of later releases: $35-40. Actual Value: I'd put them at $25-$35 for anything but the Divine vs. Demonic Deck. That one I'd pay $100 for but no more (2 $20 cards in it AND 2 decks is hard to put a reasonable price on, given that Demonic Tutor and Akroma have good chances of falling *or* rising, and over time they are likely to rise back after whatever falls). All Around Good Buys.
Standard Event Deck
The Event Decks for Standard are usually findable roughly for MSRP, though they rest at a little bit more than that given enough age, in favor of the deck in more demand. Given even more age, I expect all Event Deck pairs to reach an equilibrium of the 'expensive' deck going down and the 'cheap' one going up. But then, Modern Event Decks are more Special than Standard ones anyway. Tentatively lets at -least- say that the $75 price will *hold* if it has any good lands in it.
MSRP: $35 for two decks it used to be, now I think it's $30 for one deck. They're getting better. Actual Value: I'd usually be happy paying $20-25 for the contents of previous Event Decks, but that's because I think with Multiple Formats in mind, and the Standard Event Decks are clearly honed for one specific format: Standard FNM. Hard to decide what I think of Event Decks, even after years of having them available, except to comment that I haven't bought many of them, and they haven't really skyrocketed in any sense of the term. Also they always have Playsets and at least 1 good land each. That can somewhat be counted on even moreso for the Modern Event Decks.
Premium Deck Series:
MSRP: are they usually $24.99, or $29.99? They tend to be awesome sweet opportunities like Duel Decks, where maybe you pay a *little more* than you would on a singles website, but hey, you get to directly profit Wizards when you buy their boxed releases, and when the release is good, offering Wizards a few more dollars is not a bad thing. The Slivers one, again like Old Duel Decks, is now highly collectible, but even for the crazy, jam-packed quality of Fire/Lightning and the insanity of Graveborn, these don't seem to have taken off as "now worth twice/three times MSRP"
Commander products: Ironically, even at $40 MSRP, they do not have good lands in them.
They are purely singleton decks, otherwise they would probably be worth a lot more. These DO go up, CONSIDERABLY, but then they are good buys for any Format at all, even the difference between Legacy and Vintage. They *often* have allstars like Demonic Tutor breaking $10. They tend to gain about $15-$25 value on secondary market, and the 1st release ones have gained about Double That, so Commander Decks can pretty much be reliably thought of as 100-Card From the Vault Sets, with the extra "Neo Core Set mentality" strangeness of never-before-printed cards. Never ever pass up a Vault or a Commander Deck if you can help it.
Alright, that's an overview of different boxed products besides Booster Packs.
I am thinking that a lot of people will be scared into viewing this as "Another Commander's Arsenal" because it's the almost the exact same MSRP. Because this is going to be a *Functional Deck* though, I don't think that will be the case at all.
I think it's safe to say that the Event Decks for Modern will be very much like the Event Decks for Standard, with Modern Legal Cards.
So, imagine Premium Deck Series (value) crossed with Duel Decks (functionality) crossed with Modern Masters (Tier)
Playsets of Commons should be expected.
Playsets of Rare lands should be desired, especially for the price. Depending on the cycle chosen, this could either sink or skyrocket the secondary market price. Lands MATTER in a deck meant to be functional. Or at least, the lands determine how much weight 'being the best Rare in the deck' carries.
Playsets of Non-land Rares are not guaranteed.
2-ofs and 3-ofs of surprisingly good cards (such as Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, Mana Leak, Path to Exile) can be relied upon, and maybe even such cards, being 'staple removal' could be relied upon at the 4-of slot. Premium Decks Series and Standard Events Decks make the 4-of possibility seem stronger.
Commons and Uncommons will be about as good as Modern Masters. Which is to say 'interesting' but not 'every card is money is interesting'. An even greater number of Commons and Uncommon may see their price fall dramatically because of this product. Commons and Uncommons falling and Rares and Mythics rising are both good things, in my opinion, for the health of the game.
CONCLUSION: We will have a MUCH better idea of this product when we hear:
1. How many rares in it. (gives us an idea how many lands are possible/likely by comparing to Standard Event deck proportions)
2. How many foil rares in it. (Seems unlikely)
BIG QUESTION:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. How many mythics in it. (Can we bet on as many as a Commander deck? 3 or 4?)
4. How many foil mythics in it. (Betting 1 max)
If Q. 3 and 4 have non-zero answers, then Mythics will start in general being much more widely available after the 3rd Modern Masters Event Deck, given how many ways they already have to be reprinted, and it's POSSIBLE that this will deflate even Standard just enough to be interesting. (Preorders may drop to an average of $30 for Amazing Cards instead of $40-50.)
The odds of this deck retailing at $200 are about the same as the odds of Modern Masters Boxes selling for $500. However, $89.99 isn't too high to hope for, and is certainly impressive!
Actually, because it is so difficult for me to pick up games, at all really, because I'm moving so often between my hometown and college and don't have my own transportation to game stores, the only games of Magic I can play tend to be either Multiplayer 60-card, or 1v1 Commander.
I find that this is much more fun that whatever the hell the internet has to cope with when people get "settled" into the game.
I'm not talking about *budget*-- I own lots of $30+ cards, mostly From the Vault but a couple other ones too--
I mean more like ....um....well, BAD strategy basically. Non-min-maxing. Gamers who play for Fun instead of profit, without point systems.
None of my friends HAVE Combos to race to. I've played one or two games with people in stores that have built such decks. The people were great and their decks were dumb.
Combo-enabling cards existing does not mean Combo decks are inevitable, and I find that playing to have fun, for example to create a specific creature because you think it's cool and pretty, or badass and mean-looking, but not necessarily because it's ACTUALLY effective and efficiently designed as a win-condition, is what makes Good Magic.
Powerful cards used by Rubes who don't know what they're doing or how to do it better really. I'm being dead-honest here, because without Powerful cards of certain types, (PARTICULARLY mana fixing) your deck is going nowhere, doing nothing, but with the kind of attitude where you are proactively trying to win, like, people will always find ways to be accidentally-un-fun.
Basically I'm against being competitive, but I'm not against giving prizes to winners-- I wish Non-Competitive Tournaments were somehow Possible, but the fact is they are not.
I know this isn't very useful to conversation, but for the sake of realism, I'm throwing out there that such metagames exist with all the banned cards, and nobody even gets the combos to work because, well, to be honest they're Bad at Winning Magic but great at Having Fun Spellslinging.
I almost wish games would say "Must be 13 or YOUNGER" to play instead of 13 or Older.
OK, philosophy rant done, back to talking about the Metagames that adults make? :/
Is it possible for Adults to have nice things too? :/ Would the EDH variant be better with non-Eternalness?
For example, there should be at least two divisions, but maybe more:
Antiquities Commander, which would mean old-face card frames,
and Modern Commander, which would be, not "Legacy/Vintage Commander", but Modern card frames forward--
I don't know how such format divisions would best be set, but among other concerns:
A good Commander Format definitely needs 5 Fetch Lands available for all possible deck types to build from, but I think access to all 10, while obviously desirable for the individual decks and seemingly innocuous because Fetchlands are "Fun" cards, having all 10 slows how fast a turn is taken *just a little*, and also puts some *net-decking* pressure to be conformist and play the Obviously Outstanding Fetchlands in your decks-- which makes it harder to make land bases.
Having only 5 Fetchlands legal in a format, would make picking which ones to use a lot easier.
Also cleaving the cardpool down to size would help to eliminate "Unfun" decks more because the decks would just have more trouble Comboing off as consistently-- any Huge Cardpool is going to be a Broken Format, due to the whole being WAY more degenerate than the sum of the parts--- this would also free up specific kinds of cards to be a little more socially acceptable, like Tutors and LD, because there wouldn't be enough of them around to make Decks Over-broken.
Maybe more than 2 Format Divisions are needed.
Also, it would give a chance for "Old Favorite" Commanders to have a Format where they can shine again when they've now been power-creeped to death-- PARTICULARLY such fan-favorites as NICOL BOLAS from Legends!
Has anyone else seen discussions of making Commander a Non-Eternal Format like this?
I think Commander, Legacy, and Vintage are good evidences that people like to play with their cards, they like playing with old cards, and they don't like degenerate formats. The best way to solve that is to divide the formats *en masse* so that the Old Cards have a less degenerate home.
Questions are: Can it be done?
1. The OP's suggestion is a possible explanation; a scenario which could have been what happened.
2. However, the minimalist approach of 'does it matter how or why? they clearly cut the prizes, that's bad enough, no need clouding people's minds even more with dark aspersions'
AND
3. Occam's Razor: Simple Explanations make more sense than Complex Ones
both appeal to my sense of reason.
Frankly, starting out by saying you're a 9/11 Conspiracist, (I will not dignify their claims with 'Truther') shoots your plausibility all to hell--
on the one hand, the government certainly reacted quite badly and wrongly, and pretty much lost its conscience the same way the people lost their confidence in their invulnerability just before the Patriotism high kicked all kinds of dust up making few people on any side able to see reason. The government doesn't need to be behind something conspiratorially to make bad decisions that are against its supposed founding principles and are a detriment to its people. In fact, since any government that makes too many mistakes on the path of tyranny will leave an opening for insurrection, and any government which succeeds at tyranny too well will incite declarations of war, well, to suggest that the 9/11 business was an Inside Job would be to suggest that the US government is
Deliberately trying to blow itself from the inside and start riots in the street. No motivation for doing things like that, since the amount of chaos necessary for some shadowy party to takeover, would be sufficient chaos for that shadowy party to lose it's gamble and have some third party steamroll a House Divided. Best to simply control the Mainstream Government and institute Party Politics whenever you control Congress or the Presidency if you want to Take Over, but keep everything LOOKING as squeaky possibly clean as can be, so you're never suspected to be a villain at all because you do so many things right and people actually miss you when you're gone from office.
Likewise, WoTC, since they are an Organization of People, and Organizations can always evolve into more complex and powerful ones if you REALLY wish to entertain these uncalled for conspiracies, let's SAY WoTC has the capability to behave more or less in the same way as a Government-- less power/less reach, they only control the 'nation' of MTG players, hardly anywhere as much influence as controlling America, but still, one could compare them on that level.....they are the Cardmakers, and the Cards make the Rules of the Game, so they are like the Lawmakers. Kinda. It's a very, VERY weak analogy but whatever.
Wizards has ZERO interest in doing something like 'crash an MTGO event deliberately', BECAUSE it's such a destructive event, and people will be looking to blame and point fingers, and honestly I'm not surprised and neither would Wizards be to hear that Conspiracy Theories abound.
But the kind of people that Conspiracy Theorists want to 'catch red-handed', want these kinds of catastrophes to happen EVEN less than the normal affected populace does, because if you ARE a Bad Guy......
why,
why,
why in the world would you ever allow any but the most minimal of all suspiciousness to be allowed to appear?
If there are any Conspiracies at WOTC HQ in Renton, it's that MARO is trying to KILL MAGIC, because he doesn't look like he's doing a very good job of it, he's not a highly suspicious character, he has too many fans on top of his detractors. He's got the longevity of his dominion that reminds one of FDR, which means he has REAL power (AND the weight of responsibility) for the Life and Death of MAGIC. In fact, he HAS 'killed Magic'--
by neatly Defining His Job as being the Killer and REBIRTHER of MAGIC every year. He's a Futurist, and anytime we ever get our heads wrapped around what we think MAGIC is, he'll kill that, by doing something new and contrasting, and he'll explain he's just ''Growing the Game'', reaching more new players, expanding the borders of Design, doing things with cardboard Richard Garfield never in a million years dreamed could be done.
You want an MTG conspiracy, LET'S talk about MARO. I really want to talk about MARO because both the extreme end of crazy and the more reasonable likely explanations will all be much more entertaining and plausible
Conspiracy: MARO is bad at Magic, is a Johnny-Timmy not a Johnny-Spike, and pretty much hates every strategy that involves Good (Effective for Winning) Magic Play, resulting in, if we translated Magic Games to real world warfare, the Slugfest/Armsrace/Trenchwarfare of Midrange-Aggro, where the Technology is no longer conducive to ending the Wars, but rather just conducive for Drafting (Summoning) a lot of creatures who get into a lot of combat and die a lot and come back from the Grave a lot......and nobody ever wins and nobody feels like they're accomplishing anything anymore because the game is willfully refusing to end, while ending too fast-- the individual soldiers die quick, but the war seems so grindy it's not worth signing up.
Compared to how if you can break through the fortress wall of a True Control deck, the Castle quickly turns into a House of Cards, and you feel like you actually really defeated your opponent in a precise or lucky way, and DID something, and the game feels decisively over because one person either withheld the Siege or Overran the other.
Old School Magic plays like Lord of the Rings and Classic Arcade Games- it seems crueler to outsiders but it's actually More Fun.
New School Magic plays like Machine Guns and Mustard Gas and nobody actually likes it. The Mythic Rare Tech seems like such an awesome Toy to play with in RnD Testing, but on the Battlefield it creates True Hell.
I know that might seem 'redundant', but I find it no more repetitive than a Lord creature for other Lords, or whatever. It's the kind of thing that, because it's useful and potentially powerful, could still get printed because it's weird and cool.
Dryad's Sword:
Enchantment Artifact- Aura
Enchanted creature gets +2/+0
When this aura falls off, it becomes an Equipment that has:
Equip 2: Equipped creature gets +2/+0
2. It's safe to assume that "Bestow" is intended by R&D to be more the 'notable THEROS mechanic' than Devotion.
2a. Bestow is the one they will evolve and develop over the Block, make it do different things.
2b. In Innistrad Block, Transform was this. It is by far the mechanic we remember the Block by, and it is the one that Dark Ascension 'did the most things' with.
3. Yes, this kind of means that it's not guaranteed to be the Home-Run Tournament Mechanic, what it IS Guaranteed is to be the Vorthos, Johnny, Timmy, AND Melvin Mechanic, because
3a. On the one hand, "Journey Into Nyx" may flip the board over with something broken like "Miracles" or "Eldrazi" (see previous blocks), completely invalidating "Landfall vs. Multikicker vs. Allies?" and "Transform vs. Flashback vs. Morbid vs. Tribal?"
3b. On the other hand, we should ABSOLUTELY expect--
i. That the Devotion, Heroic, and Monstrous mechanics do not do much evolving and do not get any better than Polukranos, Thassa, or Agent of Fates (my picks).
ii. AND that if any Bestow deck was ever going to be somewhat interesting and playable, its Best Time to appear, as soon as it was announced and showed off, was going to be "Born of the Gods", neither "Theros" nor "Journey Into Nyx", because we have seen how R&D does these sorts of things.
4. The Most Likely Thing I got wrong? Either Monstrous or Heroic will actually get some Goodies in Born of the Gods, further pushing the Awesomest Bestow cards to the sidelines.
Bestow is the "New Card Face" though, and is definitely in a lot of ways the "Transform" mechanic of the set-- the one with the most flavor, the New Card frames as soon as Set 1, and the Mechanic R&D CLEARLY has their eyes on evolving. It's warping the entire block, including their entire treatment of the whole card type ''Enchantment''. I fully expect our information about Bestow to be about 50% as of the Complete Theros Spoiler, and about 95% as of the Complete Born of the Gods Spoiler, since the 10 New God Cards, plus Planeswalkers, plus any New Mechanic they throw at us, will likely invalidate most conceived notions of the Standard Format.
Eldrazi
P-mana
Miracle
these kinds of things immediately and deliberately obviously destroyed the decks that were built before them, or absorbed/adopted those decks as their home. Expect a Mechanic in 'Journey Into Nyx' to invade Standard like those ones did, working with the Standard Format in general more than the previous mechanics specifically, and doing Generally Powerful Things to do in a game of Magic.
That's why any attempts to evolve the Mechanic NOT only have to happen big time in "Born of the Gods", but ALSO are going to be somewhat limited in their effects to be mostly "Born of the Gods" cards, but the Bestow Deck may or may not be enabled to have a niche in Standard by whatever ACT III does to the format.
Wizards has gotten extremely predictable, with the pattern pretty much starting in Lorwyn/Shadowmoor as far "Flip Standard On its Head mechanically" goes, switching from Vivids, to Filter Duals + Hybrids going from multicolored, to.....even more multicolored, but fewer basic land types. xP
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Two other blocks that eventually contributed to where we are today are Odyssey-Torment-Judgment with its Color Imbalance (Mirari's Wake overthrowing Black's Torment dominance), (although Blue was more important than Black, Green, or White in that block);; and Fifth Dawn, where they had to pretty much Mechanically throw out everything in Mirrodin and Darksteel because it was broken.....except that the attempt to change to the mechanics of Standard pretty much didn't get seen til the Broken Sets in question rotated.
Neither Ravnica Block nor Time Spiral Block involved the same kind of Sudden Destroyal of previous Block themes, they just kind of expanded what was being done into a few more playable color combinations, plus the oddity of the Guild Mechanics. Pretty similar to Shards, really, except Shards had Cascade, which made Jund a thing.
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Still, despite the trip down memory lane threatening to get off-topic,
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, Zendikar Block, Scars of Mirrodin Block and Innistrad Block follow a really clear type of patterning in the way the Block Themes are introduced, expounded upon, and then shattered with a Surprise Twist.
Theros Block is looking a lot like that, and the question isn't "What's playable in Standard?" after Set 1 releases-- the question is "Which mechanic will get the most love in Set 2?"
My bets are Monstrous and Bestow,
with Bestow and Heroic as my second vote,
and I expect Devotion to pretty much lose in the 'Can it get any better?' dept. Very obviously, development-wise, no it can NOT get any better. These 5 Gods are what we have to work with for the rest of the Block, Constructed-play wise. Each Devotion deck at most picks up 1 Gold Minor God. But the Minor Gods are going to be enormously simple in how similar they are to the Major Gods.
BESTOW has pretty much as much or more room that Transform to grow off and do crazy things. Like being able to be Bestow an Aura onto an Artifact--- has anyone thought they might do that? or a Land? Yeah, Bestow can DEFINITELY still hit Standard Tables come February. . .
There is almost guaranteed a Powerful Mythic Rare Bestow card in Born of the Gods...one of Bestow's current problems is that it doesn't appear at Mythic at all. It only needs one interesting Mythic card, even if it's a bit like Elbrus, the Binding Blade (Win-More).
It Flies.
It has Super Strength. (+1/+0)
It has Super Invulnerability. (Toughness out of Bolt Range)
It has Eye Beams/Super Breath. (Firebreathing)
It has a RED CAPE. (wings)
Friend to Children. (Timmies)
The fatties available in Alpha were:
Craw Wurm (Shivan Dragon is strictly better than and outshadows. This is the Shivan Dragon that leaps tall buildings in a single bound instead of, you know, just flying)
Mahamotti Djinn (an interesting contender if we stuck with Alpha, as It's a Big Blue Flyboy-- continue the History of the Game, and Shivan Dragon wins the "Iconic Magic Card"/Creature Type/Design SO freaking Hard)
Lord of the Pit (the idea of a Fattie that hurts yourself has almost been completely taken out of the game by now-- every 'cost' is actually a benefit in disguise. Scores lower than Djinn in the Alpha Ranks)
Serra Angel (the only competitor to Shivan Dragon. She attacks, She blocks, She wins you the Game, She's a White Noble Hero, She's worth her weight in mana, which Shivan is not.)
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Serra Angel VS Shivan Dragon:
Relevant Qualities that DISTINGUISH them from each other:
Serra Angel: Featured in a Duel Decks.
The only Victory Card in the Weissman Deck, much like many incarnations of the Justice League are built around 'the plan is to summon Superman and let him do everything'
Is still seen in Core Sets today and will be a mainstay forever.
Shivan Dragon: Featured in a FROM THE VAULT.
Single-handedly responsible for Red having Flying cards in the game.
Alpha Print is worth much more than Serra Angel.
Alpha Art looks like F-ing SMAUG THE GOLDEN
Ate your rare slot that should have been a Mox.
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When building Tribal Angel and Tribal Dragon Decks, which choice are you quicker to make?
Slam Serra Angel into an Angel Deck, or Slam Shivan Dragon into a Dragon Deck? Assume you do in fact have the blinged-out art From the Vault for Shiv, and an Alpha one to choose from, vs. Any Serra Angel art you have lying around (many good ones to choose from).
=====================================================
For "Flying Bricks" nothing gets as "Golden Age Superman" as Shivan Dragon and Serra Angel.
I think I'm going to have to read Scourge out of order as my VERY next MTG novel though
As for Love in MTG: it's kind of acknowledged to exist in the worlds, sort of yeah,
but, basically, even having any kind of presence at all is strictly limited to the Block Novels and Extra-Cartal sources.
"You're not my Hanna!" and this new quote about Purphoros and Karametra on Opal Unicorn are actually the only two sources I can think of in the cards themselves that refer to love.
Love....really isn't going to be a major focus of card games about destroying the world with magic and monsters.
YES, Kaiba's great-great-Egyptian-grand-daddy fell in love with Kisara, Lady-of-the-Blue-Eyes-White-Dragon, BUT!!, that was like at the end of the 7th Season after virtually no references to love before then. Unless you count Tristan and Serenity, which you should not. XP
Even though the opportunity is ALWAYS there to tell a great, touching Love Story in a world of High Fantasy Warfare, for whatever reason, the topic is generally not given a lot of interest in nerd gamer culture.
Possibly this is why a lot of people in the world are jerks. The difference between sources of Mythology and Classics, and XBOX and popular media games that draw on practically ever other symbol and cliché from them: Gods, Monsters, Heroes, Magic, Cataclysms, Artifacts, Powers, Kingdoms, etc. ad infinitum,
I think for whatever reason people just don't think Kids age 8-12, or Youths age 13-20, are all that interested in Love. It seems to me that Nerd Media mostly appeals to the Human desire to Hit things more than the Human desire to Hug things.
I'm not saying that we need an explicit overt mechanic, because Lords, "Ally" creature type and "Soulbond" are pretty much as far as you can go in mechanical game terms that do service for flavor AND actually contribute to game play well enough, but we COULD see more emphasis on Love in the Block Novels, the Flavor Texts, the Plot of the Story, and really like it might seem like such a small thing, but to me it's the difference between a thing having meaning or not.
THEROS is the first time in a long time that reference to romance has appeared on card text. I think I might want to write a long letter about it to the Creative Team. It's clearly Creative's Job, not Design's, to figure out where to put Love in though, and that's why so far we haven't seen much reference to a Love Goddess.
Design's work on the "Devotion" mechanic has taken up MUCH more use of article space than even any references at all to the Minor Gods in the Pantheon. If there is a Love Goddess, it's in the minor gods.
And, although Red is the CLOSEST color to representing Love, it represents ALL PASSIONS really, and tends to come out WAY more Mars than Venus.
The Truth is that Love has a tiny sliver of each color's ''flavor pie'', and it doesn't get any mechanical design space because you can't really mechanically design for it very well.
Green Loves Nature: Lands and non-sentient Creatures
White Loves Society Things: Government and Religion mostly.
Blue Loves Knowledge: Cards and Libraries
Black Loves Itself: Winning
Red Loves Action: Fire
where in any of that is room for personal, tender, relationship love?
the closest you get is White for Family, not really Red, and the problem is the White is opposite/enemy of Red.
The design of the color wheel means that Love of the kind we'd like to see more of is CLOSEST to being almost-there when they are making a lot of Red-White cards.
Right now, Boros is being especially Spartanized. Mars. Ares.
Not directly opposite of Love, but that's just the way the game comes out:
It's basically about War, which is basically not Love.
If you took the sheer ENERGY of Red, and put it together with the Humanity of White, you'd get Love. They COULD choose to make a card every so often that tries to tap into this flavor, but there isn't enough room in their files usually.
I think part of Kaalia of the Vast's popularity stems from her awesome flavor as a Burned Heart: she's the Perfect card to represent a Scorned Lover, and honestly if Kaalia of the Vast is the most Romance I've seen since Kayla bin-Kroog, well....
it's not just that she's kind of like an Ex-Girlfriend....she's not even very good of an ex-girlfriend.....but her notability stems from her being one of a vast, huge dearth of characters and stories that have anything at all to do with Love. It's the most noteworthily Absent thing in Magic. A positive, Happy Love, not a broken, vengeful heart, would be W/G/R aligned maybe. The only W/G/R female character we have on hand is Mayael the Anima, and she's like just an oracle or something.
that kind of just means Magic will Never have very much of this stuff, like ever.
I think it's mainly because, since White, Red, and Green, are the colors THE most about love, that would call major attention to Blue's.....severe lacking in this area.
But the Modern World is so Science and Reason focused, and Blue is the most Popular and Powerful color among people who play and win, that Magic probably doesn't want to offend people who love Blue by pointing out that their color is the worst for Romance. Which was Urza's Problem.
The way do things now, they can pretend that All Colors have Equal amounts of Love, because they all have Allies, Devotion to Gods, Soulbond, etc.
Blue is literally worse at love than Black though. I mean Black has some pretty dysfunctional relationships but at least it HAS relationships.
For a Blue Love Story, look at Urza and Kayla. That's what you get. Twilight's actually better than Urza and Kayla. :/
Magic deftly tries to avoid focusing on this in a negative way as much as possible, first by mentioning the loves in White, Green, and Red in self-aggrandizing pats on the back kind of ways, then as trying to evoke emotional response from Blue mentioning what it Loves....it's all very sensitive and politically correct and holistic.
But sometimes holism is incorrect if you're trying to equate things that are not equivalent.
Magic shows the Color Wheel as having equal amounts of Love in all 5 colors, because that's the image it wants to present.
This image is a lie, and Blue has the Least Love.
Blue is enemy with Red and Green, but the way they present even the contrasts there is skewered to make Blue look a little better than it really is and also emphasize the failings of Red and Green, so that, after adding up all the pluses and minuses, it looks like the Colors are Equal.
But, really, not every Color is equal, not by a million miles. Blue has the Most Power, I daresay, BECAUSE it has the Least Love.
Opaline Unicorn's reference to Purphoros is easily the closest to the wonderful G/W/R Love I have EVER seen on a Magic card. I have hope that this is the first, tiniest, sparks of Magic moving in a direction where the Lore and Flavor remember to make room for some good, honest Love Stories. They can be background and minor notes as SMALL as the rest of you like, as long as they're THERE!
Opaline Unicorn is One Card in One Set.
if we had One Card per One BLOCK that really, REALLY hinted at this kind of Epic Romance Love, it would be more focus than Love has got in, well, ever?
sometime, I kind of hope they give Sorin Markov a R/B Vampire or Demon Girlfriend XP
Or he could have something more demure, like a W/U/B Ice Queen.
But, like, Sorin Markov needs to be the Planeswalker they want to give a Girlfriend, if they do it at all. He's the one with the most potential to tell a story that, Good Ending or Bad One, is really enjoyable to read.
Gideon and Garruk both have it in them too, I think. Ajani x Elspeth is something I would be scratching my head if I heard rumors of, but I suppose it could work.
Really most of their characters they just haven't even developed as being very good at having the potential to love anything. Koth was the closest we had to that, and everything he loved is dead.
Jace, the one they've ACTUALLY explicitly-ish stated has a romance with Emmara Tandris, is...the worst one they could have picked for it, and it shows in his Blueness.
He is about as awesome at Relationships at Urza. Which is Not.
Tezzeret was better at Love than Jace, because his Black Ambitions at least gave him enough Passion to have some genuinely interesting, darker Angst, compared to the type of Angst Jace has, which is strictly limited to being Annoying because he's Stupid.
How they made the Bluest Planeswalker the Dumbest, I'll never know, but they accomplished it -_-
This is why I've been hoping since Lorwyn that Jace would go Blue-Black, and I'm kind of annoyed he's gone Blue-White. :/ Black is close enough to Red that it can actually compensate for how bad Blue is at Caring about People. Blue-Black can be a Mysterious Manipulator with conflicted agendas.
You could write an awesome tragedy with that!
Blue-White is about as dead-hearted as it gets though >:(
Black-White is the best alignment for a character you want to be in a Romance, because you could take that story literally any direction wanted, you have the most room for giving your character Highs and Lows. I could see Sorin Markov in Green-White, Green-Blue-Black, Red-Black, Blue-Black-Red, and Red-White hats. He's got the most Complex and Conflicted sets of ambitions and drives. He could REALLY be a Villain of near- or surpassing- Bolas Level Threat if they wanted. (His advantage would be that while Bolas can plan more intricately, Sorin can plan more practically and is less likely to be self-indulged in hubris) He could also be a Hero as noble as Gideon or Ajani. He knows how violent things can get like Garruk, Sarkhan and Koth, and he's not unwilling to take part in that violence. Like the Umezawas, he's willing to Fight for Good AND seek his own Advantage at the same time. And he knows at least as many, or many more, Multiversal Secrets as Tezzeret.
And I could even see him be moved to sympathy for Green Growing Things.
A Block Novel that included a love interest of Sorins, or many over the span of lifetimes, would be just a really really Epic Read.
Anyway, that was about a thousand divergent topics, and we were talking about the THEROS minor Gods. But, well, then we started on Love, which I think is probably a bigger, and vaguer, subject than a Forum can really easily cover.
Does anyone honestly think they REALLY know anything solid about Phenax? Because as far as I can tell he's got a reference on Just One Card, and I don't even see any references that help me figure out his physical shape?
(Sorry For Editing a Modded Post. I was in the Middle of Deleting and Copying/Pasting them together when it interrupted my process.)
(They are now a Single Post xP )