Everything about this game points to us planeswalkers running around for hours during combat searching for mana sources while playing the most dangerous game.
I guess it's possible (and more acceptable for me), to think of Ranger's Path as knowledge, as locations of nearby Forests-- pre-exploring and familiarizing an areas' forests allows you to craft it into a spell, a mental mapping of the sources of mana. So when you tap into it, you instantly get access to an area's mana because somebody did the background work of identifying where it is in clumps.
I think the canon for lands is that they're memories. So, for example, Ranger's Path is you recalling the time you ran through the treetops, remembering every detail vividly, and deriving power from those memories.
Of course, things get really weird with land destruction, as that is typically flavored as destroying the physical location, which shouldn't be present in the duel.
Yeah, you have to draw power from land, if it's not there, it can't happen. Of course, you draw power sometimes from lands that aren't even on the plane you're on...
Today's daily deck looks cool. Thought I'd mention that we have actually seen Palladium Myr in Standard tournaments before, in an old Primeval Titan deck.
Framed art is beautiful, but you know what they could add to make it incredible? A black-bordered playset of the card with that art.* 1996 World Champion, eat your heart out--this'd be a prize you could use.
Besides, if there's no actual copies of the card that use the art, can you really call it that card's art?
*Though only for Brainstorm; they can't do incredible things with Timetwister because Wizards believes correcting a mistake is untrustworthy.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
For linking a card to Gatherer without writting the name of said card for readers, use the autocard brackets together with and equal sign and right the name of the real card. Then put the message you want inside the tags, like you would do with autocarding. Like this:
I like storm crow because I really like crows in real life, as an animal, and the card isn't terribly stupid, but packs a good deal of nostalgia and also a chunck of the game's history. So it's perhaps one of the cards I have most affection to, but not because "lol storm crow is bad hurr hurr durr".
Although I do assume you deliberately refer to them (DCI) as The Grand Imperial Convocation of Evil just for the purposes of making them sound like an ancient and terrible conspiracy.
Now, now. 1994 doesn't quite qualify as "ancient".
Oh, it's a brilliant plan. You see, Bolas was travelling through shadowmoor, causing trouble, when he saw a Wickerbough Elder with its stylin' dead scarecrow hat. Now, Bolas being Bolas took the awesome hat and he put it on his head, but even with all his titanic powers of magic he couldn't make it fit. He grabbed some more scarecrows, but then a little kithkin girl asked if he was trying to build a toupee. "BY ALL THE POWERS IN THE MULTIVERSE!" he roared, "I WILL HAVE A HAT WORTHY OF MY GLORY." and so he went through his Dark Lore of Doom (tm) looking for something he could make into a hat that would look as stylish on him as a scarecrow does on a treefolk. He thought about the Phyrexians, but they were covered in goopy oil that would make his nonexistant hair greasy. He Tried out angels for a while but they didn't sit quite right. Then, he looked under "e" (because in the Elder Draconic alphabet, "e" for Eldrazi is right next to "h" for Hat) in his Dark Lore of Doom and saw depictions of the Eldrazi, and all their forms. "THIS SHALL BE MY HAT!" he declared, poking a picture of Emrakul, "AND WITH IT I WILL USHER IN A NEW AGE OF DARKNESS -- ER, I MEAN A NEW AGE OF FASHION!"
And so Nicol Bolas masterminded the release of the Eldrazi.
The last couple days have been roughly every perverse fetish imaginable, but it only got "creepy" when speculation on Mother of Runes's mob affiliation came up?
I like to think up what I consider clever names for my decks, only later to be laughed at by my wife. It kills me a little on the inside, but thats what marriage is about.
Of course, the best use [of tolaria west ] is transmuting for the real Tolaria.
Absolutely. I used to loose to my buddy's Banding deck for ages, it was then that I found out about Tolaria , and I was finally able win my first game.
Browbeat is a card that is an appropriate deck choice when there's no better idea available. "No better idea available" was pretty much the running theme of Odyssey era.
Modern is like playing a new tournament every time : you build a deck, you win with it, don't bother keeping it. Just build another, its key pieces will get banned.
I always find it helpful when im angry to dress up in an owl costume and rub pennies all over my body in front of a full body mirror next to the window.
Dymecoar:
Playing Magic without Blue is like sleeping without any sheets or blankets. You can do it...but why?
Omega137:
Me: "I love the moment when a control deck stabilizes. It feels so... right." Omega137: "I like the life drop part until you get there, it's the MtG variant of bungee jumping"
Zigeif777:
Just do it like Yu-Gi-Oh or monkeys: throw all the crap you got at them and hope it works or else the by-standers (or opponents) just get dirty and pissed.
Normally it's difficult to pick up on your jokes/sarcasm. But this one's pretty much out there. Good progress. You have moved up to Humanoid. You'll be Human in no time.
Wow, the Brainstorm art is gorgeous! Pleasepleaseplease reprint it so I can have it in foil? Pretty please?
This would go against the whole point of using it as an exclusive prize, wouldn't it?
The art has no meaning without context, save that it is yet another piece of blue-palette, "brain as motif" art. Of which are are dozens. Scale suggests this could even apply to Overwhelming Intellect , given how large it looms, and how "brain equals intelligence" it implies.
(It is ridiculous how much the brain is used as an "aesthetic" in Magic art, as if Magic's art directors and brand literally cannot conceive of any other potential concept to elucidate intellect, searching, or memory unless it has some sort of brain in it.
To further this rant, it is no wonder that Magic used Romero's negatively stupid Dawn of the Dead series to go with "zombies eat brains" motif for Innistrad, a concept that Romero is almost personally and exclusively responsible for, but which doesn't exist in any other fantasy, or even science fiction field from which Magic might take the "zombie" concept from. It's brains, brains, brains, no matter what. Ewww)
"Possibilities abound, too numerous to count."
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion Backs)
First of, Kos himself proves that being dead doesn't prevent you from being a factor in the storyline; Razia is the only one of these characters who I would count on being gone for good, and that's only because we have Feather to replace her. Momir Vig might have cloned himself, Szadek can linger as a ghost, the Sisters might self-zombify or be reconstituted out of sentient grave-moss, Kos might bargain with the Orzhov to have a new body carved out of marble and transmuted with soul-stuff, etc. As for Rakdos, my memory of the Dissension book is vague but I don't think he actually died or anything; Eksperiment Kraj ate him, but he's a demon, he might not especially mind being eaten. Also I have a pet theory, which might or might not have been based in an early piece of fluff, saying that the Rakdos all drink the demon's blood as a ritual of admittance, and conceivably the essence of his corruption could be carried in that blood, enabling him to resurrect himself as long as at least one of his worshippers survives.
I have no clue why the Conclave dissolved, it was alive and well at the end of Dissension, just that there was disconformity along its perimeter
Disconformity is exactly the main thing that would dissolve the Selesnya Conclave, since their entire deal is being a monolithic flock where there's no individuality or dissent. I believe something took out the Chorus dryads at the end of one of the novels, but I don't recall; certainly, a disruption to the unity of the guild would be a massive setback in their case. I just hope that this set will finally give us a card representing the brainwashed hive-mind vessels that were described in the book; they were way too creepy and cool not to use (and had antimagic powers that can be better represented by modern "you can't do X" design technology).
1. Planeswalkers felt that blue-aligned and water-affliliated Vedalken were not good enough, so peppered the place with talking fish; or 2. the Simic decided that they needed another blue-aligned, water-affiliated race and abandoned work on perfecting Vedalken for life in the big city and invented merfolk, and felt fish-fins and gills worked much better on dry land than Vedalken; or 3. there's just one, either coming from another plane or being engineered, and is trying to create more of its race (last of a house, long bereft of existence, much like Momir Vig himself) by ascending through the ranks of the Combine's arcane and convoluted academic system, years and years of study and beaurocratic red-tape--cutting to finally make it to Professor, then Professor Emeritus, then lastly the leader of the Combine (whew! that only takes DECADES!).
As I've said before, the likeliest explanation for there now being merfolk on Ravnica is that there were always merfolk on Ravnica, we just never saw them before because Ravnica is freaking gigantic and we've only seen the tiniest fraction of it.
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
As I've said before, the likeliest explanation for there now being merfolk on Ravnica is that there were always merfolk on Ravnica, we just never saw them before because Ravnica is freaking gigantic and we've only seen the tiniest fraction of it.
We've seen most of it. It is not needful that Ravnica, as a plane, be a sphere much larger than that concerned by the perspective given in the books, or a sphere at all. That is, the plane may well be an undefined geometric shape in the form of a city divided (roughly) into nine sectors localized around the guildhalls (well, seven aboveground, two below what with Rix Maadi and Duskmantle beind subterranean, where the Golgari guildhall is actually just the aboveground primary entrance to the rot farms, which persist in the uppermost layer of the subterra; Skargg is not a "real" guildhall), while the Gruul dwell along the perimeter of Ravnica. Not just a section of it: They live in ALL of the abandoned, ruined regions. We are also told that long ago, Ravnica drained its oceans, however vast that may be. The city lies there, instead. So however large the city is, it is occupied or in the hands/paws/claws/stumps of the Gruul (for whom I have the most pity).
We are told, then, that the Simic Combine have combed the realm for biologicals, or that the Selesnya have sought out elements to "protect" or incorporate, or that the Gruul have adopted as outcast, or that the Izzet have discovered through any other means. As the city spans the plane, it should be understood that there shouldn't be undiscovered regions, or places where these things dwell we do not know. Rather, the realm is in decline because of the expanse of the plane, and it is required for nature to reclaim it to develop a more original ecology rather than the urbanized version "created" by the Guildpact's defense of the depredations of the Izzet, Simic and Orzhov on the populace. No, seriously ... there should be no Merfolk on the plane: There were and are none on Mirrodin, and Memmy stole species from other planes to populate Argentum in the first place; there was plenty of chances to try their hand at that then.
Merfolk are THE blue tribe now, THAT is why they are on Ravnica, and I think there is going to be a half-assed handwave to make it happen. The likes of "You didn't know everything; they were there ... shrug." This isn't intelligent story- and world-building. If Creative and R&D look two years ahead of the release, there are vast amounts of time they have to work at full world-building, concepts for planar design and scope, and catalogues of species that can set limits on the asspulls future writers can create, not this comic-style retcon garbage.
"Possibilities abound, too numerous to count."
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion Backs)
No, I'm quite certain it was explicitly stated somewhere that Ravnica is a full-sized planet and has a population of hundreds of billions. The entirety of the planet is covered by city, but Ravnica is also the name of the original largest city, which is now essentially a high-end district of the global megalopolis. The only part of the rest of the plane we've seen is the Utvara district, where the Guildpact and parts of the Dissension novel take place. The number of these districts is not indicated, but clearly Ravnica and Utvara aren't the only ones.
"You didn't know everything; they were there ... shrug."
Which is exactly what I am proposing. I can think of no better way to give the setting the sense of scale that it richly deserves than to simply make it clear we haven't seen the whole thing.
This isn't intelligent story- and world-building. If Creative and R&D look two years ahead of the release, there are vast amounts of time they have to work at full world-building, concepts for planar design and scope, and catalogues of species that can set limits on the asspulls future writers can create, not this comic-style retcon garbage.
Two years is not very long when they're as busy as they are, and let's not forget that the amount of staff in Wotco is not large. They absolutely do not want to "set limits on future asspulls", as that would make their job difficult. Already they clearly are not able to keep track of the existing continuity (though they could make use of the community's willingness to do so, if not for legal issues). They do not want to close any doors for their future selves; otherwise they'll blurt out something like "there are no seven-headed okapi-men on Ravnica", and five years from now Brand will tell them "The new movie about seven-headed okapi-men is making a mint, so we need there to be seven-headed okapi-men on this fall's "Ravnica III: Planeswalk Hard With a Vengeance" set; make it happen." These are the people who tell the company how to make money, so they WILL get their way, no matter how stupid it is; avoiding doing extremely thorough, inflexible worldbuilding now is a form of damage control for the creative types, as it leaves them more flexibility to obey the orders of their corporate overlords later.
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
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