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This thread is for discussion of this week's Feature Article, which goes live Monday morning on magicthegathering.com.

Hooray for Big Pete's! I'm a little surprised that he stumbled across the most northern game shop in the Vancouver area, when there are two game stores within 10 minutes of the American border.

This is seriously one of the most interesting articles on creating a Magic set I've ever read. Really. This touches on things that Mark's and the R&D columns never talk about. 

(Now the inevitable criticism)

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Once the printer has the files, they print a test sheet of the card file and send it to Wizards of the Coast for proofing and approval. A team of proofers gets to work quickly making sure that the card files are correct and the card colors look good. These folks are amazing—they look over every card to make sure that it looks exactly how we want it to. 

Exactly how you want it to look except for the occasional thing like Walking Atlas not being an artifact. (I'm just kidding. I know accidents happen.  

I've never seen pictures and a description of the printing process before. I think I know why. I don't think they want us to know anything about the collation process of "randomizing" the packs (which we all know isn't really random). With Commander, there is no randomizing, just printing of the cards and packing them. 

Seeing the behind the scenes stuff like translations, proofreading, and QA/AI on the factory floor is really interesting. Thanks for the article.  

One of the greatest things about Wizards of the Coast is the efforts they make to recognize, in a public way, excellence among their staff.  It must make their team members feel great.  No job is perfect, and I'm sure it's not always sweetness and light; but the practice deserves kudos all the same.

But about the card, I don't know if it's because of the tiny viewing size (iPod) but that is some of the most hideous looking artwork that I've ever seen.

This was one of the coolest articles I've ever read. Occasionally we get to see R&D, or the insides of the Wizards HQ, but never have we been able to take such an intricate look at many of the "nuts and bolts" of how Magic cards are physically made. Thank you very much, this was a great pleasure.

The article was awesome and I thank you for it.

The card, however, is clearly an upgrade over Oros...but only because Oros is pretty bad.

Here's hoping for the last RBW Wedge card...

Very interesting to actually see the full path a card takes as it goes from thought in ones head to product I'm holing.

Awesome article. I've always been curious about the printing process.

I'm not such a big fan of Tariel's art though. Her outfit is really cheesy, her position is weird, and the whole thing looks more like a bad metal album cover than a medieval fantasy angel. But that's just me.

Bad metal album = , mirite?

That was a great article.  Nicely done, Mark!

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.

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

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.

In response to "Building Tariel".

A few thoughts.  First off,  though I love me some Wayne Reynolds art (old school WH40K fan here), I have to say the distant focus and extremely "busy" art does not work well at all.  Tariel is easily my least favorite piece of art from Commander thus far spoiled.  You want to know how bad it is?  It's so hard for my eye to pick out the lines of Tariel's body through the various scraggly, slashy lines of her armor that I scanned the article, saw the large-size image, and still didn't realize Tariel was supposed to be female.  :P

This isn't helped by the fact that any angel name, even a made-up one like this, which uses the "-iel" suffix, is by definition male.  Feel free to check your bible if you care; there's no mention of god ever making any lady angels.  And if you're trying to avoid stepping on real-world religion's toes by not using "Sariel", a la Day of Judgment vs. Wrath of God , well, you still didn't get it right - because the "-iel" suffix means "of/pertaining to 'him'", him being god, in Hebrew (because Jews are commanded not to speak the name of god, so euphemisms must be employed).  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.

After all - Wrath of God was certainly more, well, Wrathy, than DoJ.  Can we have some consistency here, as long as you're taking away the greatest card name of all time?  Don't become hypocrites for the sake of some soon-to-be-two-dollar quasi-unplayable angel legend in a specialty product.  :P

OK, ending Vorthos rage, moving right along.

A team of proofers gets to work quickly making sure that the card files are correct and the card colors look good. These folks are amazing—they look over every card to make sure that it looks exactly how we want it to.

...

Project Manager Jane Flohrschutz is one of the folks who inspects proofing sheets for errors.

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

The Carta Mundi pics are very welcome!  I've been curious for a glimpse inside their doors for years.  (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.  

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. 

 Why does the photo of Mr. Stevens make me think of wine tasters?  ^_^  I'm wondering what sort of CV you submit to get a job like "Magic Card Inspector-in-Chief".

Cool stuff.  I'm none too impressed with Tariel but it was an interesting read regardless!   

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.

Oh,  definitely.  This is why I haven't said what I wanted to say about a  lot of New Phyrexia cards - there are some amazing stories about the  transitions they went through before seeing print, but not so amazing  that I can risk getting sued for telling them.  (They probably wouldn't sue me over a minor detail like some creature's previous P/T and CMC, but I can't afford to risk it.

I'm also unimpressed with the red spiky armour, but happy & interested at the behind-the-scenes look at a part of WOTC's operations that we don't normally see.

I don't mind either way on the random choice. We have D12s and D20s on hand when playing Magic, so it's no more effort than just listing what the options are. It'll probably make for some fun EDH moments.

Really don't like the art, though. 

Love the artist, but this art is not for the small format of a card. At card size, art looks like a glitch of a Nintendo console, hugely helped by axe's edges being parallel to art's frame and making the axe resemble a square tile.

Jun 5, 2011 -- 9:10PM, Alter_Boy wrote:

Hooray for Big Pete's! I'm a little surprised that he stumbled across the most northern game shop in the Vancouver area, when there are two game stores within 10 minutes of the American border.

Well, Big Pete's has the advantage of being a bit closer to a tourist traveled area, being pretty close to the Seabus.  From the sounds of it, he was checking out the farmer's market at the Quay and wandered a bit up Lonsdale.  Wasn't out looking for gaming stores, just happened to find one.

Definitely going to harrass Pete about having a hip little store though, hehe.

Just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the article!  Well written and a really interesting peek at some rarely-discussed topics.

Kudos!

(By the way, the "Respond by Email" thingy isn't working.  "Unknown Author" when you click the Send button )

I used to work in the printing industry (on a MUCH smaller scale), and I have always wanted a tour through the MTG printing process, so this article was a complete delight.  Thanks!

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

This isn't helped by the fact that any angel name, even a made-up one like this, which uses the "-iel" suffix, is by definition male.  Feel free to check your bible if you care; there's no mention of god ever making any lady angels.  And if you're trying to avoid stepping on real-world religion's toes by not using "Sariel", a la Day of Judgment vs. Wrath of God , well, you still didn't get it right - because the "-iel" suffix means "of/pertaining to 'him'", him being god, in Hebrew (because Jews are commanded not to speak the name of god, so euphemisms must be employed).  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.

After all - Wrath of God was certainly more, well, Wrathy, than DoJ.  Can we have some consistency here, as long as you're taking away the greatest card name of all time?  Don't become hypocrites for the sake of some soon-to-be-two-dollar quasi-unplayable angel legend in a specialty product.  :P

Grow up. Um, I mean, don't worry, the connection between the -el or -iel suffix and divine beings has long since entered the secular vocabulary in day-to-day use. With the possible exception of Michael, I'm pretty sure the best-known fictional, angel-like character with a name like that is Kal-El. (And that character was created by Jewish writers itself, of course.) Now that you mention it, I'm kind of surprised this hasn't come up before, since almost all Angels in Magic: the Gathering seem to be female.

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).

I hope developers keep this kind of thing in mind just in case, but I doubt this card would cause this problem 99 times out of a hundred. How often does anyone play with Krovikan Horror these days? Besides that, physically shuffling cards is obviously not the only way to randomize. If I ever see this card played, I assume a dice will be used. If there six or less creatures in the graveyard, roll a d6, and if there are seven or more creatures in the graveyard, roll a d10 or d20, and reroll if you get something higher than the number of creatures (or take the modulo, depending on how anal the people I'm playing with are about randomizing or how important the result is to the game). If there more than 20 creatures in the graveyard, then things might get complicated, but that probably means either that the target is losing badly and won't care about it getting even worse, or that they've got some kind of recursion strategy going on and could respond to the angel's ability somehow anyway.

Wow, looks like I'm the only one here that actually loves the art. Yes, it's cheesy, yes, it's busy, but it's absolutely bad-ass in every imaginable fashion. The raven feathers of the wings, the red blindfold, the spiked armour, the skulls dangling on chains and the axe... Fantastic design.

As for the article - I really appreciate the inside look at the physical process of cardmaking. It's just great to know how the whole thing looks in reality and how much work is done by how many people to bring us the cards. I'll be forever linking to this article to all the ignorants that say that printing a Magic card costs 2 cents, so WotC is basically printing money.

i feel bad for the people who work there.  i bet the whole factory smells like a freshly opened pack of cards and they are now thoroughly used to (and possibly sick of!) it by now.  i can think of no sadder fate than to lose the olfactory delight in opening packs.

Whoever does the German translations needs a serious whacking. Epic fail again.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 1:14AM, willpell wrote:

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.

Uh, no. I thought Walking Atlas wasn't an artifact. I always trust text over card frame, and text said it wasn't an artifact, so I played it as if it wasn't.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:09AM, Uhhsam wrote:

i feel bad for the people who work there.  i bet the whole factory smells like a freshly opened pack of cards and they are now thoroughly used to (and possibly sick of!) it by now.  i can think of no sadder fate than to lose the olfactory delight in opening packs.

They probably just don't smell it anymore. My mom didn't notice the smell of chocolate for months after she stopped working at a chocolate factory. She alway smelled good when she got home though

Jun 5, 2011 -- 9:24PM, Sidar_Jabari_02 wrote:

This is seriously one of the most interesting articles on creating a Magic set I've ever read. Really. This touches on things that Mark's and the R&D columns never talk about. 

(Now the inevitable criticism)
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Once the printer has the files, they print a test sheet of the card file and send it to Wizards of the Coast for proofing and approval. A team of proofers gets to work quickly making sure that the card files are correct and the card colors look good. These folks are amazing—they look over every card to make sure that it looks exactly how we want it to. 

Exactly how you want it to look except for the occasional thing like Walking Atlas not being an artifact. (I'm just kidding. I know accidents happen.  

I've never seen pictures and a description of the printing process before. I think I know why. I don't think they want us to know anything about the collation process of "randomizing" the packs (which we all know isn't really random). With Commander, there is no randomizing, just printing of the cards and packing them. 

Seeing the behind the scenes stuff like translations, proofreading, and QA/AI on the factory floor is really interesting. Thanks for the article.  

Agreed, excellent article, but that does make a lot of sense that they're showing it for a non-randomized product. 

I've wanted to see this kind of look at the nuts and bolts of the game for a long time, and I imagine this is as detailed as we're ever going to get.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 6:41AM, omniszron wrote:

Wow, looks like I'm the only one here that actually loves the art. Yes, it's cheesy, yes, it's busy, but it's absolutely bad-ass in every imaginable fashion. The raven feathers of the wings, the red blindfold, the spiked armour, the skulls dangling on chains and the axe... Fantastic design.

I do agree with the others that it really doesn't work on the card scale, but it works well enough at larger sizes that I immediately made it my desktop theme on my big widescreen monitor at work.  

Jun 6, 2011 -- 6:41AM, omniszron wrote:

As for the article - I really appreciate the inside look at the physical process of cardmaking. It's just great to know how the whole thing looks in reality and how much work is done by how many people to bring us the cards. I'll be forever linking to this article to all the ignorants that say that printing a Magic card costs 2 cents, so WotC is basically printing money.

 
I imagine the physical cost is dirt cheap, but that's only a fraction of the whole cost. Most people pulling that argument out are going on about how the "rarities" are artificially created. Of course we see all those people along the process chain that also have to be paid, so that's why 30c worth of cards has a $4 MSRP. 


And Walking Atlas wasn't the card that came to my mind when I saw the proofreader, but further back to when they changed the card frame and all the artifacts came out looking white. I can see missing something small on a type line, but a big color shift like that? 
 

Jun 6, 2011 -- 1:14AM, willpell wrote:

But this requires assigning numbers  to all the creatures in your graveyard, which requires a lot of sorting  and counting.

Sorting? No. Just roll a die larger than the number of creatures in the graveyard, count that many creatures from the top (or bottom), and roll again if you go over. No sorting required.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:09AM, Uhhsam wrote:

i feel bad for the people who work there.  i bet the whole factory smells like a freshly opened pack of cards and they are now thoroughly used to (and possibly sick of!) it by now.  i can think of no sadder fate than to lose the olfactory delight in opening packs.

I used to go to high school across the street from a bakery and let me tell you...you never get used to the incredible smell of baking bread.  It was especially torturous the period before lunch.

Not sure how to abuse Tariel yet. I guess exiling a player's graveyard and then destroying their Titan/Wurmcoil/other-nasty works as well for some thievary. Woo!

Jun 6, 2011 -- 6:34AM, cybishop wrote:

Grow up. Um, I mean, don't worry, the connection between the -el or -iel suffix and divine beings has long since entered the secular vocabulary in day-to-day use.

All well and good.  Except:  so has "wrath of god".  So your, and WotC's, arguments remain full of holes.  (And btw, I *did* point out I was being a very ranty Vorthos right then.  You've no need to get catty when I've already stolen your thunder.  :P)

If WotC wanted to justify cutting WoG by saying "we feel our customers would be happier with DoJ" or "we got sick of printing it" or even "we rolled a d10 and had to cut a card with ten letters in its name", those would all have been reasons, too.  But they didn't choose those reasons.  They chose to state the reason that "Wrath of God" tied the game too closely to the real world, and especially to real world religions.

Well, gander:  meet sauce.

With the possible exception of Michael, I'm pretty sure the best-known fictional, angel-like character with a name like that is Kal-El. (And that character was created by Jewish writers itself, of course.) Now that you mention it, I'm kind of surprised this hasn't come up before, since almost all Angels in Magic: the Gathering seem to be female.

I think more people are familiar with fictional angels Gabriel, Raphael, and Lucifer than with Kal-El as well.  (Talking world population now...  I could be wrong when it comes to MtG's target audience!  ^_^)  As for the female angel thing, I think it's partially in homage to Serra Angel and partially in homage to the average MtG player's sexual preferences.  If MtG was as thoroughly female dominated as it is (in real life) male dominated a game, I bet most of our angels would look like this.  :P

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

I hope developers keep this kind of thing in mind just in case, but I doubt this card would cause this problem 99 times out of a hundred. How often does anyone play with Krovikan Horror these days?

LOL.  Well, apropos to this discussion, my Karador deck will be running Krovikan Horror AND Nether Shadow .  ^_^

Jun 6, 2011 -- 6:41AM, omniszron wrote:

Wow, looks like I'm the only one here that actually loves the art. Yes, it's cheesy, yes, it's busy, but it's absolutely bad-ass in every imaginable fashion. The raven feathers of the wings, the red blindfold, the spiked armour, the skulls dangling on chains and the axe... Fantastic design.

As for the article - I really appreciate the inside look at the physical process of cardmaking. It's just great to know how the whole thing looks in reality and how much work is done by how many people to bring us the cards. I'll be forever linking to this article to all the ignorants that say that printing a Magic card costs 2 cents, so WotC is basically printing money.

Glad for you that you enjoy it - I'm not saying it's bad art!  I *love* Wayne Reynolds.  I just feel it's bad art at 1.5x2 inches.  >_<;

And it's the first copy of a card that costs them thousands in labor hours to develop.  All the other copies of that card, those are the 2 cent ones.  :P

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:09AM, Uhhsam wrote:

i feel bad for the people who work there.  i bet the whole factory smells like a freshly opened pack of cards and they are now thoroughly used to (and possibly sick of!) it by now.  i can think of no sadder fate than to lose the olfactory delight in opening packs.

It's the second best smell in the world.    The very best smell, of course, is the ink of a brand new book.

(Fresh-baking cookies beat new-car by miles and miles for #3.  :P)

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:22AM, Jakusotsu wrote:

Whoever does the German translations needs a serious whacking. Epic fail again.

Really?  how so?  *curious*  

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:58AM, keiyakins wrote:

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.

Well, then, what standards ARE there?  We're not talking about the Ernham Djinn where one of them every 500 sheets had a blue border or some such.  Every single Walking Atlas ever printed was printed wrong!  IIRC WotC had to post an Arcana update just to explain the gaffe and publicize the oracle errata.  That sort of mistake is embarrassing and makes the company look incompetent.  The only thing I can think of that would be *worse* than this would be if they screwed up the card *backs* somehow, because that would destroy one of the fundamental underpinnings of the game from a gameplay perspective.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:44PM, ProfN wrote:

Jun 6, 2011 -- 6:34AM, cybishop wrote:

Grow up. Um, I mean, don't worry, the connection between the -el or -iel suffix and divine beings has long since entered the secular vocabulary in day-to-day use.

All well and good.  Except:  so has "wrath of god".  So your, and WotC's, arguments remain full of holes.  (And btw, I *did* point out I was being a very ranty Vorthos right then.  You've no need to get catty when I've already stolen your thunder.  :P)

If WotC wanted to justify cutting WoG by saying "we feel our customers would be happier with DoJ" or "we got sick of printing it" or even "we rolled a d10 and had to cut a card with ten letters in its name", those would all have been reasons, too.  But they didn't choose those reasons.  They chose to state the reason that "Wrath of God" tied the game too closely to the real world, and especially to real world religions.
 

Did they actually state this anywhere?  I though DoJ replaced Wrath because they didn't want to keep the no regen clause (much like Doom Blade blade replacing Terror), because they wanted to back off from regeneration a bit (too complex for new players) and since regen would be less common, it could be made more powerful by not having the main removal cards automatically beat it.

Favorite spoiled general yet. She has the greastest art ever, and the flavor text is for the win. I think her ability isnt as good as sheoldred. Tariel also has dem titties.

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:44PM, ProfN wrote:

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:22AM, Jakusotsu wrote:

Whoever does the German translations needs a serious whacking. Epic fail again.

Really?  how so?  *curious*

In this case they used a word ("Abwäger") that does neither really exist nor reflect the flavor of the original. If you translate it back to English you would get something like "weigher of souls". (Yes, it's that awful.)

German product translations have always been a pet peeve of mine. They are the main reason I would never go to a paper prerelease, and rather play online exclusively.

Am I the only one taken by the art? Generally I'm not a fan of Wayne Reynold's blocky style, but this card is a beauty in color and form. Very abstract.

Pity her card is so terrible. 

ProfN, here I was thinking all angels are asexual, but looked it up after reading your post and found that while they are considered asexual all their names are masculine. I learned something today.
Also, Mana Enema would be the best selling Magic set of all time. I imagine it would have to be the story of how Nicol Bolas finally gets his comeuppance. Assuming dragons are biologically equipped as such. Do I smell a Savor the Flavor column in that?

Did you know that the leader of the Decepticons was actually an angel?  Yep, he changed one letter of his name in order to lead a group of living machines against mankind, and ended up fooling an entire population of barely sentient primates.

Great article.  We see articles about the design part, or the development part.  Rarely about editorial requirements and balance.  The story of a card from Idea to Printed Product is great.  I just wish there were dates shown (or at least dates on the pictures) to show a sense of temporal scale.  The card is available Jun 17 2011 for people to play.  When was that card blank scribbled on?  When was that Dev "Shariel" version printed and editied with a pen?   Dates would give us an idea of the length of the process as a whole and a sense of scale for how long each part of the process takes. 

As for the card. Tariel seems to be a fun, casual card.  The randomness might make her non-tournament worthy but I don't think that's the point of the format or these pre-cons.  It is to have fun, and this card looks like she will be fun to play without being as annoying as, say a legendary version of Puppeteer Clique , would have been.  Targeting the opponent means you will see less Withered Wretch type silliness where they just remove the target of the reanimation, they won't know what creature is coming back until the ability resolves and once it resolves, it's too late.  Although, if you fear Tariel being used against you, Elixir of Immortality just got alot better.       


I mostly like the art, the blockiness doesn't bother me - but at card print sizes, all the armor becomes one large red chunk, so the best features of the art are lost at size, IMO.

V/R

HK

Jun 9, 2011 -- 2:30PM, Treamayne wrote:

Great article.  We see articles about the design part, or the development part.  Rarely about editorial requirements and balance.  The story of a card from Idea to Printed Product is great.  I just wish there were dates shown (or at least dates on the pictures) to show a sense of temporal scale.  The card is available Jun 17 2011 for people to play.  When was that card blank scribbled on?  When was that Dev "Shariel" version printed and editied with a pen?   Dates would give us an idea of the length of the process as a whole and a sense of scale for how long each part of the process takes. 



V/R

HK

Agreed, would love to see a "diary of a set" article one day. Though I'm sure they'd come up with some part of the process deemed too "top secret" to be let known, and that would sink the whole point of the article to have it left out. 

Jun 7, 2011 -- 11:46AM, Veslfen wrote:

Am I the only one taken by the art? Generally I'm not a fan of Wayne Reynold's blocky style, but this card is a beauty in color and form. Very abstract.

Pity her card is so terrible. 

Jun 9, 2011 -- 2:30PM, Treamayne wrote:

I mostly like the art, the blockiness doesn't bother me - but at card print sizes, all the armor becomes one large red chunk, so the best features of the art are lost at size, IMO. 

V/R

HK

Agreed, I have it as my computer desktop wallpaper and it looks much better, though the body position is still a little odd (her head looks like it was added as an afterthought after the artist was done drawing her breasts). 

Jun 7, 2011 -- 9:07PM, DrWorm wrote:

Did you know that the leader of the Decepticons was actually an angel?  Yep, he changed one letter of his name in order to lead a group of living machines against mankind, and ended up fooling an entire population of barely sentient primates.

My religious instruction is such that I wouldn't know that if I hadn't watched Dogma. 

Jun 7, 2011 -- 8:32PM, chronokilla wrote:

ProfN, here I was thinking all angels are asexual, but looked it up after reading your post and found that while they are considered asexual all their names are masculine. I learned something today.

Tariel has a giant "V" over her crotch. I think that's self-explanatory. 

Jun 7, 2011 -- 8:32PM, chronokilla wrote:

Also, Mana Enema would be the best selling Magic set of all time. I imagine it would have to be the story of how Nicol Bolas finally gets his comeuppance. Assuming dragons are biologically equipped as such. Do I smell a Savor the Flavor column in that?

I don't want to smell nor Savor that particular Flavor whatsoever, no thank you. 

Jun 7, 2011 -- 1:04AM, Jakusotsu wrote:

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:44PM, ProfN wrote:

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:22AM, Jakusotsu wrote:

Whoever does the German translations needs a serious whacking. Epic fail again.

Really?  how so?  *curious*

 
In this case they used a word ("Abwäger") that does neither really exist nor reflect the flavor of the original. If you translate it back to English you would get something like "weigher of souls". (Yes, it's that awful.)

German product translations have always been a pet peeve of mine. They are the main reason I would never go to a paper prerelease, and rather play online exclusively.

Again, not having much theological training, I may be missing something, but isn't there some old religious thing about the weight of one's soul determing your salvation status or something? Maybe it's not as bad of a translation as you think.

I don't have much to add, just agree that the art is great, but it loses something when reduced to card size.

I'd love to see all the original art when sets come out, but I realize there are probably reasons why that's not feasable for Wizards.

Are you all seriously forgetting or unaware of the oversized copies that come with these decks?

(The inset quote is actually from me, not Keiyakins.)

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:44PM, ProfN wrote:

Jun 6, 2011 -- 7:58AM, keiyakins wrote:

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.

Well, then, what standards ARE there?  We're not talking about  the  Ernham Djinn where one of them every 500 sheets had a blue border or   some such.  Every single Walking Atlas ever printed was printed wrong!    IIRC WotC had to post an Arcana update just to explain the gaffe and   publicize the oracle errata.  That sort of mistake is embarrassing and   makes the company look incompetent.  The only thing I can think of that   would be *worse* than this would be if they screwed up the card *backs*   somehow, because that would destroy one of the fundamental  underpinnings  of the game from a gameplay perspective.

A goof worth firing someone over would be something akin to Alpha's   Elvish Archers as a 1/2 or Orcish Oriflamme costing - there   was NO way to tell those were errors.  Walking Atlas's artifact frame   creates an obvious hint something is amiss, as is true of the Serendib   Efreets in Revised which were printed on green card frames - they  still  had a blue mana symbol, so there was a tipoff that there was an  error  somewhere on the card.  Atlas is a bit more subtle than that, but  since  the most obvious part of the card (the frame) is correct and only  the  technical info (the typeline) is wrong, it's hard to instinctively  err  during play by assuming the Atlas will survive a Shatterstorm.  If  it  was printed on a green (nonartifact) cardframe but said it was an   artifact, the card would have been technically correct, but everyone   would have played it wrong.

Intuitive first impressions are a MUCH  bigger deal than well-concealed  facts.  So on the goof-up scale, Alpha Oriflamme rates a 4 because you  have no possible way to tell it's wrong, Revised Serendib is a 3 because  there's an obvious error concealing subtle correct info, and Walking  Atlas is only a 2 because there's a well-concealed error that will only  screw you up if you deliberately go looking for it.  (A 1 would be a  purely cosmetic error like leaving a diacritical mark out of a card's  name or having the wrong artist credit, something that never affects  gameplay in the slightest; errors which rated a 5 might include having  the wrong card back or being completely unreadable.)

Jun 10, 2011 -- 9:39AM, milo_bloom wrote:

Agreed, I have it as my  computer desktop wallpaper and it looks much better, though the body  position is still a little odd (her head looks like it was added as an  afterthought after the artist was done drawing her breasts).

I suspect you have hit the nail on the breasts.

Jun 7, 2011 -- 8:32PM, chronokilla wrote:

ProfN,  here I was thinking all angels are asexual, but looked it up after  reading your post and found that while they are considered asexual all  their names are masculine. I learned something today.

Keep in mind that there is at least one reference in the Bible to Angels  (the "sons of God") knocking up the "daughters of Adam".  This doesn't  necessarily prove that they had genitals - it could be a spiritual  immaculate conception kind of deal - but it does kind of shoot down the  "asexual" label as being accurate in anything but a strict anatomical  sense.

Again, not having much theological training, I may be missing  something, but isn't there some old religious thing about the weight of  one's soul determing your salvation status or something? Maybe it's not  as bad of a translation as you think.

I dunno if that was a factor in Judeochristian religion, but it  definitely was in the Egyptian tradition.  So yeah, it sounds like the  idea of the German translation was in the right place - but not being a  Deutschophone I can't judge whether it was actually handled correctly.

Jun 11, 2011 -- 10:39PM, willpell wrote:

Atlas is a bit more subtle than that, but since the most obvious part of the card (the frame) is correct and only the technical info (the typeline) is wrong, it's hard to instinctively err during play by assuming the Atlas will survive a Shatterstorm.

It did come just before a set rumored to have nonartifact colorless cards (and Eye of Ugin was another foreshadower) so that certainly left room for ambiguity =) 

Quick question, the article states that "These five decks are available in Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and English".

But the art just below shows, top row German, middle row left to right, Spanish then French, botttom row left to right, Japanese and Italian.

So I assume that it's also available in Italian as well? 

The other referenced card flavor is Soul Snare


Anyway, the art is kickass. My experience with Tarial is that she's good in Commander, and a boss in Kaalia.


Another topic is how many believe feminism is destroyed here. First off, well, you're probably right a little. The game is more appealing to its demographic if the art features an appealing image to the demographic. 'Nuff said. Fighting games and MMOs are much more guilty of this.

Now then, more reasons than that. We're talking about artists of cool stuff for a trading card game; the majority is gonna be male. So the female drawings are going to almost always be from the perspective of a guy. What's a guy to do?

Finally, what about the guys? We don't sort of shun sexy men per se. We still draw badasses, well-built, or cool guys. When you're talking about a game with human characters, the basis is visually appealing. The only time you don't stick with that concept is if there's a reason for a character to be malformed or twisted. The default for our human art is conceptual perfection, not the norm for what our society's people look like. MtG has ugly people only when there's a good reason for them to be ugly.