I can't wait for the Comic-Con vid to be posted on youtube. (I'm honestly shocked it hasn't been put up yet).
Edit: Aha! it is up, I just couldn't find it before. *grumble mumble* For others who may be unable to find it and are interested it's HERE
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** From Mark Rosewater's Tumblr:
the0uroboros asked: How in the same set can we have a hexproof, unsacrificable(not a word) creature AND a land that makes it uncounterable. How does this lead to interactive play?
I believe I’m able to play my creature and you have to deal with it is much more interactive than you counter my creature. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Post #777
Interesting that set 2 will be drafted by itself. How will set 3 fit in? My prediction: set 3 will be drafted with both the 1st or the 2nd set separately, e.g. 113 and 223 drafting.
Interesting that set 2 will be drafted by itself. How will set 3 fit in? My prediction: set 3 will be drafted with both the 1st or the 2nd set separately, e.g. 113 and 223 drafting.
Check the vid link I posted.
RTR is a large set and will be drafted by itself. GTC is a large set and will be drafted by itself. Sinker is a small set and will be drafted as Sinker, GTC, RTR.
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** From Mark Rosewater's Tumblr:
the0uroboros asked: How in the same set can we have a hexproof, unsacrificable(not a word) creature AND a land that makes it uncounterable. How does this lead to interactive play?
I believe I’m able to play my creature and you have to deal with it is much more interactive than you counter my creature. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Post #777
Also, it seems to not have been mentioned, but that art actually has a much deeper meaning. If you look with attention in the lower part between the woman and the man, there is a snake. Being it that the card is named "primal clay", it seems very obvious this a reference to Adam and Eve. What makes the glowing, golden hands holding it all actually God's hands.
Yeah, I was going to say. "The clay is actually very small"? The hands are just big. They're glowy golden hands sculpting humanity out of primal clay, seems fairly obvious they belong to God. I don't see the snake though, there's just the lower half of Adam's leg and a couple of swirly lines coming off Eve where she's still forming.
It doesn't really take a snake to make the imagery an Abrahamaic "adam-eve" thing. This is basic stuff, though: many religions have a "first man, first woman" crafted from [dust, mud, clay, aether, blood of some giant cow or dragon]. The legends far pre-date records of myths of a garden of Eden or whatever.
I see there a semi-coiled snake with its head faced towards the female figure in the clay, which also has a strong relation with the whole Adam and Eve thing.
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.
That would make even more sense, then, with Adam and Eve.
Anyway...guilds! Whee! :D I, too, am curious as to how the storyline will be played out, but perhaps there will be more loose affiliations to certain color pairs than the same set of organization that existed before? /shrug
Oh, yay, new guild logos! Love the Izzet, Azorius, Gruul, and Dimir ones.
Some of the guild symbols were redesigned, others the same: Gruul is almost completely different, with the "cross" below the flame added rather than what was essentially a burning tree with an eye in it (supposedly often made of poo); Rakdos became a horizontally-divided skull-and-flames; Golgari lost the "Recycle" motif and instead just gets the insect in the middle (but now looks like Dimir a little more); Azorious is partially redesigned, losing the maze= in the middle for concentric rings of "runes"; Boros got less of a radiant splay around the fist ; Izzet redesigned their dragon (this happens frequently ); The Orzhov, Dimir, Simic and Selesnya symbols are the same. These often differ only in the hue changes made to indicate the "two colors" that make the guild identity up.
"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)
Are we just incinerating the old story then? I seem to distinctly remember the guilds dissolving in, well, Dissension due to the machinations of multiple guilds. Plus there were a lot of important characters (Razia, Boros Archangel , Sisters of Stone Death , Szadek, Lord of Secrets , Momir Vig, Simic Visionary , Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran , Rakdos the Defiler and then some) dead by the end of it all. So how did the guilds suddenly get better? I was reasonably certain the guild collapse was confirmed as recently as Agents of Artifice, the first Planeswalker novel. Did I miss something or have they finally decided that story doesn't matter at all beyond the very basics?
Eh. Whatever. Izzet's back, and my Counter Fire deck shall rise once more. (Although obviously with less power)
Ok, if you actually read the novels, the survival of the guilds was explained at the end of Dissension. Presumably, the world tryed to get by without the guilds for a time, during which the events of Agents of Artifice took place. After two years, in the epilogue of the Dissension novel, a new Guildpact was formed that relied more on legal power rather than magical energy to enforce itself. With powerful arcane force no longer being the power behind the Guildpact, it would be harder to break using it's own laws. The Dimir were removed as an "official" guild and were not a part of the new Guildpact, but of course, they stuck around in reality to be the malevolant force they've always been.
I'm both orderly and rational. I value control, information, and order. I love structure and hierarchy, and will actively use whatever power or knowledge I have to maintain it. At best, I am lawful and insightful; at worst, I am bureaucratic and tyrannical.
