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Jun 5, 2011 -- 10:32PM, willpell wrote:

Random.  WHY did it have to be random?  It is a huge effort to randomize creature cards in your graveyard, even if you don't have a Krovikan Horror in there to make reordering them illegal, and a much more significant one if you do.  The card should have had a player choosing - maybe you (too strong, so make her smaller), maybe the targetp layer (too weak, so make her bigger), or "choose an opponent" (best of both worlds, one opponent gets to choose what you get from another, hilarity ensues - in a duel would revert to the target choosing for lack of any other options).

It seems to me as though the Random was just thrown in to make her seem Red, when giving her Haste (and the weakest version of the ability) or a higher power or something would have served that goal much better.  The only pro I can see of the random factor is the hilarity it creates if you've got a Phage in there.

Because you're you.

I actually like how your opponents have to make sacrifices on their expectations on which creature you're going to get, but trying to either nuke the graveyard, or exile as many of the creatures as possible to prevent anything meaningful from being dumped into play.

Randomness should be featured a little more in commander/EDH, as it increases the level of player interaction with the game. I am sick and tired of seeing "Player X playing X set of spells because his/her General is Y" to the point that if you see a Blue player tapping three mana with a General on the stack, you KNOW it's Hinder , and more besides. (No, this doesn't happen to me, I can get my Generals from most zones, thank you very much.)

I like Wayne Reynolds' art in general, it's just that this work is very very busy, too much so for the scale of the figure to the frame. It's all about the wings and the axe, and maybe that's what the point it.

Jun 5, 2011 -- 11:11PM, zammm wrote:

Dice make choosing a random card  much easier--you don't have to randomize the physical cards if you can  randomize the choice.

But this requires assigning numbers  to all the creatures in your graveyard, which requires a lot of sorting  and counting.  Too much work for too little payoff when "an opponent  chooses" would have made for very interesting gameplay, and given you a  reason to play targeted graveyard exiling cards which are usually not  strong given that several one-mana artifacts can exile an entire  graveyard.  As it is, your opponent might respond to Tariel by removing  the best cards from his own graveyard, and this is mildly interesting  but also lame, whereas the proactive approach of you removing his best  choices is much more impressive IMO.

Qilong

(Hi Qilong, I have nothing in particular to say in response but it's good to see you again.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 12:45AM, ProfN wrote:

Feel free to  check your bible if you care; there's no mention of god ever making any  lady angels.

Yeah,  and there's no mention of WOTCO making any gentleman angels, apart from  Malach of the Dawn in Planar Chaos.  Everyone in Western culture  has heard of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and maybe Uriel and Samael, so  it's not hard for the "-el" suffice to get associated with angels while  completely overlooking any gender implications.  Angels are presented as  figures of virtue and purity, and our culture (however absurdly)  associates those with femininity - same reason why most nurses were  female up until Affirmative Action got involved (excluding Army nurses  in combat scenarios of course - indeed MASH may well have been a factor  in popularizing the idea of male nurses enough for men to go into the  field, but I'm speculating there and also getting off the topic).   Ultimately, I don't want Wizards to be gender-correct with angels any  more than I want them to finally remember that The Minotaur and The  Medusa were specific individuals in Greek myth, not entire races as  Magic has made them.  I like those races and I like female angels,  "-iel" or otherwise.

So, if you were really serious on   avoiding real world references, you'd not use "-iel" for angel names   just to make them seem more angelly.

They're not "really  serious".  They make a reasonable effort in that direction, but  overcoming the "Angeliel" bias would be more than it was worth in this  case, or so I would have ruled if it was my decision.

So...   is she the one who had to fire someone over the Walking  Atlas goof?  Or is she the replacement?  :P

I  doubt anyone got fired over a goof that minor.  Anyone can figure out  Walking Atlas is an artifact; if it had been printed with the wrong card  frame or with wrong rules text, THAT might have justified disciplinary  action, but a goof like this is not much worse than forgetting to type  the ^ over El-Hajjaj's name (they did something similar on some other  card but I forget which one it was so I'm going with the one I can  remember).  Heck, even "rathi Berserker" was a worse goof than this.

(Of course, I will continue to mentally  picture underpaid peons,  clanking with Shackles , groaning  under their  Stronghold Taskmaster 's brutal lash as they  crank out the  cards I enjoy so much.  ^_^)  But it's so open and  clean...  I'm almost  disappointed. 

Shackles and whips, no - but they are  mostly minimum-wage Mexican immigrants, according to an article by  Geordie Tait which pointed out how very, very white a hobby Magic is.   The guys who work to make the game could never afford to play it even  casually, because they can barely keep food on their tables and roofs  over their heads, and spending $4 to build a deck of all commons is  still probably beyond their means.  So the reality differs mostly in  scale and cosmetics from the stereotype (which is exactly why the  stereotype exists - fantasy does a lot better when it exagerrates  reality than when it departs entirely...this is why Ravnica is such a  compelling setting compared to something quaintly fantastic like Alara  or Zendikar, which have to succeed on raw cool factor because the  audience can't really relate to them).

I'm very curious  what sort  of security measures are employed there to prevent theft as  well as to  prevent leaks of product information.  Obviously WotC must  begin tooling  up and doing test runs of cards LOOOONG before they begin  spoilers.   I'm imagining some pretty serious NDA's.