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I liked that GTC was a 'twin set' to RtR: for the most part, everything the five guilds of RtR got in RtR, the five GTC guilds got in GTC.  Shocklands, guildgates, charms, guildmages, legendary guildleaders, keyrunes...

But what bugged me in GTC was one prominent cycle from RtR went unmatched in GTC: the uncommon hybrid 1-drop creatures.


Judge's Familiar
Dryad Militant
Blistercoil Weird
Rakdos Cackler
Slitherhead

That the RtR five got a cycle but the GTC five did not bugged me, from a symmetry point of view.  Then I started to wonder - will those five get their hybrids in DGM?  Or was there some design reason why the five RtR guilds were granted a cycle that the 5 guilds of GTC did not and never will get?

They repeated the obvious (shocklands, guildgates, charms, guildmages, leaders and keyrunes), because everyone was expecting them.

The more subtle ones are just each set's own thing. If both sets matched the other exactly in loose cycles, number of artifacts at common and other things that aren't key to the set, you would have had a predictable set, and they'd have had unnecessary constraints.

I will point out that we have non-hybrid one-drops that still otherwise match this theme.  They just aren't a full cycle.

Boros Elite
Experiment One  
Thrull Parasite

Feb 6, 2013 -- 10:36AM, thatmarkguy wrote:

Feb 6, 2013 -- 10:24AM, Doaj wrote:

I will point out that we have non-hybrid one-drops that still otherwise match this theme.  They just aren't a full cycle.

Boros Elite
Experiment One  
Thrull Parasite

True.   Wasteland Viper for Gruul, too.  I wonder if those four were originally designed as hybrids and converted to monocolored late in development.  And what became of the Dimir one?  Shuffled and redefined and reraritied into Shadow Alley Denizen ?  Toughened up and made into Incursion Specialist ?
 

They weren't. Experiment One, Thrull Parasite and Wasteland Viper don't make any sense in the other color. Boros Elite was most likely always a monowhite card. So this was never a thing, and there was no Dimir one.

Feb 6, 2013 -- 10:57AM, thatmarkguy wrote:

Feb 6, 2013 -- 10:46AM, Shiny_Umbreon wrote:

They weren't. Experiment One, Thrull Parasite and Wasteland Viper don't make any sense in the other color.

You could just as easily say Judge's Familiar doesn't make sense in White... in fact even moreso than any of those four, which all have a guild mechanic common to other creatures of the guild of both colors.  White only got the Force Spike effect in Planar Chaos.

It isn't like Flying is a predominantly white ability either.  I'm pretty sure it's tertiary in white, with blue being primary and red having secondary.  But flying is common enough overall that it's hardly noticable, and entirely negligable.  Thrull Parasite definitely could have worked in white, and Experiment One could have been five colors and it would hace made sense.  Do you see that thing?