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May 20, 2012 -- 11:34PM, mabhatter wrote:

May 20, 2012 -- 9:56PM, CFL wrote:

Since Planes are so cool, I wonder if there would be a way to bring them back to non-planechase magic. Enchant worlds didn't do well, but most of them were underpowered, and they weren't anything more special than enchantments.

A plane on the other hand, could be qualitatively different. My first cut would be to make them do something that equally affected both players, were permanents but not in control of either player, destroyed all other planes when they came into play, had a non-mana casting cost related to the planes theme, and a CITP benefit.

I think this does muchbetter for te casual players. The rotation sets are just to competitive (and full of prima donnas) to change the STRUCTURE of play. 

I do think they seem to be going the wrong way with this "mod" for the game.  The original rules don't FEEL like Plane Chasing. The rules for Eternity Map make a LOT more sense by adding "motion" rather than shoehorning  an old "Enchant World" style of play into a normal game.  

The whole article feels like a giant "miss" of how people like to use the set.  this is getting to be more common for me to notice. They seem to be missing how the regular guy players would take many of these game mechanics lately. Maro mentions "land matters" but that was also kind of a "miss" that seems to have started a lot of them in the last few years. It's like they are stuck in trying to "make" these alternate formats like able to weekly tournament players...

They are really missing the chance to shift these types of products into a "tabletop" genre for people that USED to play a lot of Magic:tG. I don't think they are really looking at how Planechase, Archenemy, and Commander all fit in a overall play date.  These sets need to be looking to get the older players that are now playing Talisman, Descent, Arckahm Horror, or Munchkin. The people that are "worn out" on the constant upgrade and tournament cycle.

I can see why Planechase would work better for some casual players. I just think it would be neat to find a way to make planes show up for non-Planechase games too (i.e. to supplement, rather than to replace planechase). I'm sure some flavorful explanation could be devised for the difference between the two (maybe being forcibly wrenched from one plane to the next in a dual gives planeswalkers "motion sickness" which changes the effects invovled, whereas in planechase the planeswalkers were expecting it and took their dramamine).

I agree a tabletop product would be nice. I've shifted 95% of my magic play from magic to Dominion for the simple reason that Dominion is cheaper. Maybe a paper version of a Cube with modifications to the cube based on number of players could fill the same niche? Or something like a Limited Infinity/Type 4 set?

May 21, 2012 -- 6:57AM, coffeeking13 wrote:

Dear Mr. Rosewater,
     I don't see how it gets x-squared. It only has devour x. I understand when it is influenced by doubling season(still it would never even just get 1 counter would it). The card is confusing, but went back to the devour mechanic and realized there is a "times" that was missing on Thromok. It makes more since but took a while to figure out the multiplication. Guess thats why it would be considered the expert level. Can't wait for June 1! Love planechase!!

Its a little wordy but it says:
"This creature gets X +1/+1 counters for each of those creatures"

This means that if you sac 4 creatures it gets 4 +1/+1 counters 4 times.

PS: EDH deck based around him seems awesome fun  

May 21, 2012 -- 4:34AM, cybishop wrote:

May 21, 2012 -- 12:53AM, adeyke wrote:

Thromok's ability intrigues me.  It's the first case where we had a keyword ability that defined a variable.  Previous cards ( Fumiko the Lowblood , Kodama of the Center Tree , and Volcano Hellion ) instead had a static ability that granted the creature a constant keyword ability.  This wouldn't have worked for Thromok, since those static abilities only work from the battlefield and by then it would be too late for devour to do anything.  I'm curious about the rules support to get Thromok's ability to work, and whether that will then be used for new cards instead of the static ability.

Petrified Wood-Kin is formatted the same way as Thromok, although there's no "where X is..." phrase except in the reminder text.

I think that the best parallel would be Arcbound Wanderer from Fifth Dawn. There we had the variable value of one ability being set by the output of another ability. They did add rules support indicating that Sunburst could actually do that, but it technically wasn't necessary: if they had worded the card "Sunburst, Modular 0", it would have been functionally identical. Linking up the abilities just made it look cleaner. This contrasted with Bloodthirst X which is actually vacuous without the rules support--or X being defined by the card itself, which is what they did in this case. So I don't think any additional rules support is needed for this to work. It's certainly a great advance in templating technology.