"" With this Commander thing, yes, I think you are. But as far as including new cards in core sets goes, I think you are doing a horrible mistake. Core sets are really boring products frankly. I don't want to play limited with them, I don't want to open them. Including new cards in core sets forces me to choose to either: a) buying product that I really don't want to buy b) stop playing competitive tournament Magic
I chose b) Simple as that.
I worked much better when the purpose of core sets was to keep some cards from the past legal for standard and extended, without having to reprint those cards in the new expansions. Ok, so this is coming from someone who has a pretty extensive Magic collection, who has a copy (often a playset) of a majority of the cards printed in the history of Magic, who could in the past simply dig out the "new" inclusions of a new core sets from a dusty drawer. Otherwise, I hate core sets. They are utterly, utterly boring. Being forced to purchase them or the cards in them is a big deal for me - in fact, its a deal braker, culling my interest in Magic overall, which has cut my spending on Magic cards to about 5% of what it used to be. ""
But the reason for the move in the core was to make less "filler". That meant that Core was meaningless... And why waste time with, art, design, marketing, sales when half the community isn't going to buy it? M10 & M11 are some of the best selling core sets in a very long time... Even with new cards in core or other sets, they are still printing fewer new cards by about 25% making the game more affordable. People that have "everything" can go play vintage. (and if you can't hack vintage, you're just posing)
I like the idea of more non-random items. The GAME is collectible... That doesn't mean they can't do releases of important stuff.. Not everything needs to be in boosters. Just because every new card is not a vintage bomb, doesn't really matter to themajority of people that buy cards every week at FNM or go to releases.
All you really need is one of those lands. You can just keep a slot empty in your EDH decks and move the land to whichever deck you use at the time.
I think it is a good idea to develop a land usable in a specific format. Also, since it only works with EDH they can make it as good for that format as they want without fear of what it will do for Vintage or Legacy.
"" With this Commander thing, yes, I think you are. But as far as including new cards in core sets goes, I think you are doing a horrible mistake. Core sets are really boring products frankly. I don't want to play limited with them, I don't want to open them. Including new cards in core sets forces me to choose to either: a) buying product that I really don't want to buy b) stop playing competitive tournament Magic I chose b) Simple as that. I worked much better when the purpose of core sets was to keep some cards from the past legal for standard and extended, without having to reprint those cards in the new expansions. Ok, so this is coming from someone who has a pretty extensive Magic collection, who has a copy (often a playset) of a majority of the cards printed in the history of Magic, who could in the past simply dig out the "new" inclusions of a new core sets from a dusty drawer. Otherwise, I hate core sets. They are utterly, utterly boring. Being forced to purchase them or the cards in them is a big deal for me - in fact, its a deal braker, culling my interest in Magic overall, which has cut my spending on Magic cards to about 5% of what it used to be. "" But the reason for the move in the core was to make less "filler". That meant that Core was meaningless... And why waste time with, art, design, marketing, sales when half the community isn't going to buy it? M10 & M11 are some of the best selling core sets in a very long time... Even with new cards in core or other sets, they are still printing fewer new cards by about 25% making the game more affordable. People that have "everything" can go play vintage. (and if you can't hack vintage, you're just posing) I like the idea of more non-random items. The GAME is collectible... That doesn't mean they can't do releases of important stuff.. Not everything needs to be in boosters. Just because every new card is not a vintage bomb, doesn't really matter to themajority of people that buy cards every week at FNM or go to releases.
I like the new Core Sets but wish the percentage of new cards was slightly lower. I personally kind of miss the whole "cool reprints" idea which I really liked about the earlier core sets. There are very few really cool reprints in the newer sets.
All you really need is one of those lands. You can just keep a slot empty in your EDH decks and move the land to whichever deck you use at the time.
I think it is a good idea to develop a land usable in a specific format. Also, since it only works with EDH they can make it as good for that format as they want without fear of what it will do for Vintage or Legacy.
A lot of people don't take apart their decks willy-nilly. A lot of people take multiple decks to a night of Magic and don't want to keep moving it around every game. A lot of people lend decks to others so that they have multiple decks in use at the same time.
I don't want to move my dual lands around decks either. It's a difficult thing to do.
It can also help to look at what the 2 left out colors represent, that would define what the wedge lacks.
Wow, this is amazing! Your flavor justifications are spot on, especially for how the wedge would be affected by the two absent colors. I think I went wrong by trying to represent the wedge's allied colors mechanically instead of flavorfully like you did.
GUB: growth through decay This is a good flavor justification for focusing on pump and drain effects, but as I mentioned earlier, I don't like how it pulls the focus towards Golgari effects and away from blue.
Green likes creature combat; blue and black are the colors of deception. Maybe this should just be the ninjutsu shard? =D Blue and black are the colors that rely the most on evasion, so it makes sense that GUB would incorporate that into its fighting style. Or maybe green would have a version of ninjutsu that allows it to return blocked attackers to its hand?
WBR: peace through war I think I'm a much newer player than you, so my command of Magic history isn't as strong--I wouldn't have thought to look to Apocalypse for inspiration. What I don't like about this, though, is that it doesn't really seem any different from just plain WR. (I mean, compare Fervent Charge to Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran .) I guess the black emphasizes their cruelty or the scope of their domination?
I still think the wedges should be considered as an allied pair with a shared enemy. Otherwise, what reason do you have for thinking "black Boros" over "red Orzhov?" Looking at WBR as "white Rakdos," I think the overlap might be in sacrifice effects. White sacrifices for the sake of the community, while Rakdos seems to enjoy self-destruction just for its own sake. Perhaps a WBR shard might be a world where people feel compelled to sacrifice their lives, even when that sacrifice is meaningless? This idea reminds me of that short story, "The Lottery."
URG: grasping all through letting all go This is perfect! It reminds me of something David Sirlin mentions a lot: that it's impossible to access many of our own skills--particularly ones we've mastered--with conscious thought.
I think playing cards from the top of the library is a good fit for this wedge. As for "instants and a lot of other tricks," how about super haste, ala Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug? It's like a combination of combat and time manipulation that plays into red's Final Fortune ability.
BWG: dominance through community When I was brainstorming, I'd considered the phrase "death through community," which reminded me of a certain episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Lwaxana Troi falls in love with a scientist from a planet whose inhabitants commit ritual suicide upon reaching the age of sixty. It's called "the resolution" and its purpose is to ensure that the elderly don't become a burden on the young. The practictioners of this tradition view it as a celebration of life; a dignified end that takes the uncertainty out of death and allows a person to be buried with his or her family.
Of course, this idea would be difficult to express on individual cards, but I suppose it could make good Creative fodder. RWU: freedom through unification It seemed odd to me that any one color would get to be "the planeswalker color," but after I thought about it, red does seem to have the most planeswalker cards. (Gatherer confirms this--red has the most right now at 7, while green has the fewest at 3.) Again, I think it'd be more symmetrical to represent the shard as "red Azorius" instead of "blue Boros" or "white Izzet," but the flavor you've come up with is just too juicy to pass up. And if I'm not mistaken, the Izzet were the only guild that had a planeswalker as their leader, right?
As far as the individual mechanics you propose, white seems to currently have only one Storm card, Izzet already had a "spellfall" theme without needing white, and red tutoring effects like Wild Research seem off-color to me. I agree that for some reason this wedge seems to be difficult to design for. According to my Gatherer search, there are only two cards in this wedge so far. I can't figure out what the concept behind Numot, the Devastator is, and the other one is Chinese Menu Design Angel .
WU likes blink effects, and those work well with Pandemonium , right? Maybe RWU should emphasize enters-the-battlefield and leaves-the-battlefield effects, like in the Endless March preconstructed deck.
I still think the wedges should be considered as an allied pair with a shared enemy. Otherwise, what reason do you have for thinking "black Boros" over "red Orzhov?"
That's true, I made some mistakes there. But the WBR Commander deck seems to be focused in the same direction, attacking.
It seemed odd to me that any one color would get to be "the planeswalker color," but after I thought about it, red does seem to have the most planeswalker cards. (Gatherer confirms this--red has the most right now at 7, while green has the fewest at 3.) Again, I think it'd be more symmetrical to represent the shard as "red Azorius" instead of "blue Boros" or "white Izzet," but the flavor you've come up with is just too juicy to pass up.
Yeah it might be too specific rather than a general ideology as the others. This one was the hardest for me both for flavor and mechanics.
WU likes blink effects, and those work well with Pandemonium , right? Maybe RWU should emphasize enters-the-battlefield and leaves-the-battlefield effects, like in the Endless March preconstructed deck.
Yes! You're absolutely right, I completely forgot about blinking.
regarding the question about the move to create new cards for the product:
overall I think it's a great move, but Command Tower that has just been spoiled on mtgcommander.net crosses the line for me. That card feels fake, I don't like it one bit. Imperial Mask pushes the boundaries, but I can take any deck and play a multiplayer game with it. Command Tower only makes any sense in a specifically constructed deck for a variant format. I'd like to keep such things to Schemes and Planes, not on actual cards.
Not liking it one bit.
What the hell Wizards? Seriously, what the hell? I love non-basic lands. I'd run a deck of 60 of them if I could (61 if I'd been drinking), but this is beyond parasitic, this is fan-wankery at it's worst.
All the other preview cards may have been designed for Commander play, but still could have been shoe-horned into other formats. Simply continuing the tri-land cycle with the wedge colors would have been much easier and much more flexible outside of Commander.
Is there no way it could have had two abilities, one for Commander and one for everything else? (Even tacking City of Brass onto it as it's second ability would have been good. )
Jiminy Christmas people, think before you leap! *
*Forgive me, I'm reading the Man-Kzin wars for the first time.
Edit to add: In case my post wasn't clear on the subject, I am no longer okay with printing new cards like this outside of booster product. Not if it's going to lead to insular, parastic designs like this.
Proud member of C.A.R.D. - Campaign Against Rare Duals
"...but the time has come when lands just need to be better. Creatures have gotten stronger, spells have always been insane, and lands just sat in this awkward place of necessity." Jacob Van Lunen on the refuge duals, 16 Sep 2009.
regarding the question about the move to create new cards for the product:
overall I think it's a great move, but Command Tower that has just been spoiled on mtgcommander.net crosses the line for me. That card feels fake, I don't like it one bit. Imperial Mask pushes the boundaries, but I can take any deck and play a multiplayer game with it. Command Tower only makes any sense in a specifically constructed deck for a variant format. I'd like to keep such things to Schemes and Planes, not on actual cards.
Not liking it one bit.
What the hell Wizards? Seriously, what the hell? I love non-basic lands. I'd run a deck of 60 of them if I could (61 if I'd been drinking), but this is beyond parasitic, this is fan-wankery at it's worst.
All the other preview cards may have been designed for Commander play, but still could have been shoe-horned into other formats. Simply continuing the tri-land cycle with the wedge colors would have been much easier and much more flexible outside of Commander.
Is there no way it could have had two abilities, one for Commander and one for everything else? (Even tacking City of Brass onto it as it's second ability would have been good. )
Jiminy Christmas people, think before you leap! *
*Forgive me, I'm reading the Man-Kzin wars for the first time.
Edit to add: In case my post wasn't clear on the subject, I am no longer okay with printing new cards like this outside of booster product. Not if it's going to lead to insular, parastic designs like this.
First let me say that I respect your opinions and insights, Milo. You always bring something worthy to the discussion and I enjoy reading your posts. (pause while we wait for the other shoe to drop)
That being said... Good gosh, it's like the new cards were, I don't know, designed specifically for commander or something! /snark
Seriously though. This product is referred to as Commander. For over six months, wizards of the coast has made it abundantly and explicitly clear that there will be new cards printed, and those cards would be designed for the commander format, not regular play. And now when presented with evidence of this fact, people are suddenly up in arms about it? Idongeddit.
You'll forget you ever read this the minute you look away.
there is nothing "epic" about a turn one victory. ever.
or really any magic game, for that matter.
So this one time, I wanted to play a game of Magic with my friend, but he was in another country and neither of us had Magic Online. I hitchhiked my way to the coast, barely fending off hungry wildlife when I couldn't get a ride, nearly dying of thirst crossing deserts, and posoning myself half to death foraging for food. At one point, I was taken hostage by a group of kidnappers, only managing to escape after a week of careful planning thanks to careful application of a rusty spoon.
Once I reached the coast, I had no money to buy a ticket across the ocean, so I built a boat using my own two hands, and spent months sailing across the waves, nearly losing my deck as I swam to the shore of a desert island in a storm after being capsized by an enormous wave. Nearly delusional after so long with no human contact (the notches I cut in the single tree to tell time had long since felled the thing) I was eventually rescued by a passing ship, where I was taken aboard as a crew member.
We sailed around the world, seeing many exotic places and having great adventures, before we finally arrived at my friend's country. Once more I stumbled across a desolate landscape, riding on train or car when I could, and going on foot when I could not. Eventually, weary to the bone, seven years after I started my journey, I arrived at my friend's house, clutching my well-worn and weathered deck to my chest. We shuffled up our decks, I won the roll. Gleefully, I laid down my cards.
Black Lotus . My friend looked quizzically at me, wondering what I was about to do. After so long, he no longer knew what deck I had brought with me to this game.
Flash . A knowing smile appears on my friend's face as the knowledge slowly returns to him.
So no one else is upset with the stunt Wizards just pulled to drive sales?
Drive sales of what? Non-Jace, non-Mystic cards? I'm pretty sure people already own more than eight Magic cards. If you don't, I feel for you. Maybe you can trade those Stoneforge Mystics, which are still quite valuable, for some.
willpell knows the rules pretty well (as do I). He was correct to avoid static abilities, because they could overlap in very brain-bending ways. But the way he did it would have worked from a rules perspective. Admittedly it would be very confusing to get triggered abilities but not static abilities.
I was on the fence about whether to include triggers, and the Bushido example makes me lean toward "no" now that I think about it. Someone suggesting including keywords, but that's a no-go since the rules as currently configured don't distinguish between "real" keywords like Flying and ones such as Echo which shouldn't be copyable. One of the changes I've been planning for my "ultimate edition" is to categorize keywords to avoid this issue; in the absence of a fully developed version of that rule, I would rather just skip the keywords.
As far as the benefit of the rest of Magic is concerned, gold cards in Legends were executed perfectly. They got all the excitement a designer could hope out of a splashy new mechanic without using up any of the valuable design space. Truly amazing. --Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment on Kei Takahashi
regarding the question about the move to create new cards for the product:
overall I think it's a great move, but Command Tower that has just been spoiled on mtgcommander.net crosses the line for me. That card feels fake, I don't like it one bit. Imperial Mask pushes the boundaries, but I can take any deck and play a multiplayer game with it. Command Tower only makes any sense in a specifically constructed deck for a variant format. I'd like to keep such things to Schemes and Planes, not on actual cards.
Not liking it one bit.
What the hell Wizards? Seriously, what the hell? I love non-basic lands. I'd run a deck of 60 of them if I could (61 if I'd been drinking), but this is beyond parasitic, this is fan-wankery at it's worst.
All the other preview cards may have been designed for Commander play, but still could have been shoe-horned into other formats. Simply continuing the tri-land cycle with the wedge colors would have been much easier and much more flexible outside of Commander.
Is there no way it could have had two abilities, one for Commander and one for everything else? (Even tacking City of Brass onto it as it's second ability would have been good. )
Jiminy Christmas people, think before you leap! *
*Forgive me, I'm reading the Man-Kzin wars for the first time.
Edit to add: In case my post wasn't clear on the subject, I am no longer okay with printing new cards like this outside of booster product. Not if it's going to lead to insular, parastic designs like this.
First let me say that I respect your opinions and insights, Milo. You always bring something worthy to the discussion and I enjoy reading your posts. (pause while we wait for the other shoe to drop)
That being said... Good gosh, it's like the new cards were, I don't know, designed specifically for commander or something! /snark
Seriously though. This product is referred to as Commander. For over six months, wizards of the coast has made it abundantly and explicitly clear that there will be new cards printed, and those cards would be designed for the commander format, not regular play. And now when presented with evidence of this fact, people are suddenly up in arms about it? Idongeddit.
First of all, thank you for the comment about my other posts, sometimes it feels like I'm spitting into the wind around here.
But I still stand by my stance.
The difference is that all the other cards I've seen revealed may be designed for Commander, but could still be used in every other format. Maybe not very well and maybe you'll be laughed at for even playing it, but it would work within the rules of the game. This new land is essentially a null card outside of Commander, only usable with cards that feature land shenanigans already. This could have easily had a second ability (like City of Brass, as I pointed out above, or even Terramorphic expanse). Or it could have been worded like "add one color that shares a color with a legendary creature you control, or they could have reprinted cards like Pillar of the Paruns . There's just so many different ways this could have been done, without making it so insular to this one particular format.
Proud member of C.A.R.D. - Campaign Against Rare Duals
"...but the time has come when lands just need to be better. Creatures have gotten stronger, spells have always been insane, and lands just sat in this awkward place of necessity." Jacob Van Lunen on the refuge duals, 16 Sep 2009.
All you really need is one of those lands. You can just keep a slot empty in your EDH decks and move the land to whichever deck you use at the time.
I think it is a good idea to develop a land usable in a specific format. Also, since it only works with EDH they can make it as good for that format as they want without fear of what it will do for Vintage or Legacy.
A lot of people don't take apart their decks willy-nilly. A lot of people take multiple decks to a night of Magic and don't want to keep moving it around every game. A lot of people lend decks to others so that they have multiple decks in use at the same time.
I don't want to move my dual lands around decks either. It's a difficult thing to do.
what is "willy nilly" about needing to share cards between decks if you don't have enough copies? I only have one copy of some strong cards (such as Demonic Tutor, Lightning Greaves, Sol Ring, etc...) and they are shared between three or four different decks. I would rather have the decks I build contain strong cards that I only have a few copies of than try to build a deck without the strong cards simply because I don't have enough copies of them.
In fact, the only way I am able to build an EDH deck is to cannibalize several decks for strong cards for my EDH deck. If I didn't my EDH decks would be much worse, or I would have to weaken/ dismantle my regular decks that I needed to take cards from.
