Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Your inability to accept that a dark-skinned person and a light-skinned person can produce a light-skinned child is a little weird.
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Magic: the Gathering |OT9| Kaladesh - Cruisin' Down the Street in my 6/4
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Your inability to accept that a dark-skinned person and a light-skinned person can produce a light-skinned child is a little weird.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Subsequent conversation revealed they were being sarcastic
Like I said above, I'm going with "distraction". The flavor text on the red card makes it sound like like a big spectacle. Everyone is going to show up to watch the head judge vs the head rebel, and while everything is in disarray the seizure begins.
I've been telling you guys this since like Khans of Tarkir.
Joe Molotov
Member
Kaladezzzzzzzzh
divisionbyzorro
Member
These cards are really cool:
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I mean, he's brought it up several times, so it started to get weird.
I guarantee you In a few years time we'll be seeing articles on MTG from Maro talking about how the focus on the gatewatch all the time was a mistake, that it hindered their creativity and resulted in too many cards just showing the same characters talking. It is *exactly* the same problem they had last time they tried to do this, with Tempest cycle having endless cards with Gerrard and co on them with some supposedly witter banter.
It doesn't work as a creative method for a CCG, and they clearly just need to relearn the lesson they learnt last Time they tried it. Oh, and the Marvel movie cards we keep getting in each set are insultingly bad art wise. Who the hell is commissioning and signing off on this garbage?
It doesn't work as a creative method for a CCG, and they clearly just need to relearn the lesson they learnt last Time they tried it. Oh, and the Marvel movie cards we keep getting in each set are insultingly bad art wise. Who the hell is commissioning and signing off on this garbage?
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I mean, the easy way to get around that is to not have the entirety of the Gatewatch in every block. SOI only had Jace, so it wasn't quite as oppressive.
divisionbyzorro
Member
How bad is this? Or is it not bad? In limited it seems okay, right? I'm having a really hard time evaluating how good this is.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Like...the idea that there's a core cast who experience different stories? Sure, okay, that can work. But they need to stop all being in every story. BFZ and SoI I sort of get it, you need to establish this group, but this should have been Chandra and Liliana's story. I barely know why Nissa is here and there's honestly no good goddamn reason for Jace and Gideon to show up. Let Ajani have his moment. We don't need to see every character in every set
Little Old Man
Member
I can't believe it's taken this long for people to clock onto how half hearted, cringe worthy, and devoid of any anything that should interest people beyond the age of 13 the magic storylines are.
All of the main characters simply serve the purpose of identifying with kids to encourage them to pick up the game.
It's like people get excited about the wrapping paper around a birthday gift when it's just ultimately some paper and tape covering the actual present.
All of the main characters simply serve the purpose of identifying with kids to encourage them to pick up the game.
It's like people get excited about the wrapping paper around a birthday gift when it's just ultimately some paper and tape covering the actual present.
How bad is this? Or is it not bad? In limited it seems okay, right? I'm having a really hard time evaluating how good this is.
It's a strictly better Ostracise, a card that didn't see wild amounts of play (it was part of a double act with Duress, which obviously did). The addition of scry might give it some value but I suspect it still won't be played much.
Simply Sarah
Member
Eh, I strongly disagree with this comparison. This isn't even remotely close to how things were during the Weatherlight Saga. Those sets pretty much told the entire story on the cards so a huge percentage of the cards contained at least a minor story beat. Here we have a handful of story/Gatewatch related cards taking up a very small part of a large set. Even without going back to count, I can say with almost complete certainty that the Predator attack on the Weatherlight in Tempest had more story tie-in cards than the entirety of Kaladesh by a good margin.
It kind of feels like people don't want to have any story/Gatewatch cards at all.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
The storylines in the abstract are often pretty cool, and the lack of detail previously allowed us to sort of project whatever level of quality we wanted onto them. With the surfacing of more and more of it onto the cards directly with specific character quotes its no longer possible to imagine that the Kaladesh storyline playing out "behind the cards" is some awesome fantasy novel
How bad is this? Or is it not bad? In limited it seems okay, right? I'm having a really hard time evaluating how good this is.
Might be good considering all the value creatures running around in standard.You also get to see their hand and scry for an upcoming answer. Depends on how good Planeswalkers end up becoming in the near future since you'd rather have Despise or Duress instead.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Despise barely saw play with Siege Rhino in Standard.
The story is fine. I mean, I don't particularly enjoy it, and it's definitely falling into the YA-ish realm I was afraid of, and I hate how they're shoehorning in every Gatewatcher into every block so far, but it's passable at setting up worlds and situations for cards.
I mean that's why we're really all here, right? For the cards?
I mean that's why we're really all here, right? For the cards?
There's a pre-prerelease going on here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djR6Dj89gDE
(It's not the Loading Ready Run one, which I think will be tomorrow).
(It's not the Loading Ready Run one, which I think will be tomorrow).
Agreed. It's a really dry, boring set. Maybe it'll draft well, but there isn't a whole ton of stuff here that excites me the way Innistrad did (which was the bar he set for this set's greatness).
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I'm super excited for energy, and really super excited for the set in general. I was in "this looks okay" mode with the first previews, but with the full set spoiler the picture looks really promising.
Exactly. Chandra reconnects with her mother/home after years away, with a conflict between law and rebellion playing out in the background, which she gets dragged into by virtue of her mother being a rebel... like, that's not novel or exciting, but it's fine as far as a Magic story goes.
You don't need Lili and Nissa playing shoulder devil/angel, you don't need Jace out of nowhere in the third act to save the day.
I mean, like, Saheeli Rai is the face character for the set. Shouldn't she be showing up more often? I don't think Dovin Baan has an appearance outside of his Planeswalker card... not sure why they bother making these new characters if they don't show up in the major story beats/cards. Same with Arlinn last block.
Well red is awful so what else is there?
I might be wrong but they seem to be printing a lot more potent ETB effects on creatures now compared to Siege Rhino standard. Scry 1 is relevant text too
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
If they tone down the 'all 5 need to show up' aspect, it'd be better, but as-is, the stories are getting overcrowded, quickly.
And worse, until the 'central threat' (or whatever big bad is the primary focus shows up), crowding every member into every plane makes things feel even more cramped/disjointed.
And worse, until the 'central threat' (or whatever big bad is the primary focus shows up), crowding every member into every plane makes things feel even more cramped/disjointed.
DashReindeer
Lead Community Manager, Outpost Games
It almost feels to me like this set changed direction in Development or something. Fabricate just seems tacked on to a lot of cards where it doesn't seem to fit. Almost like Development shoved that in there to replace an equipment theme that was overpowered or clashing with vehicles.
My biggest issue though is that they brought back Dwarves and didn't make a single mono-red Dwarf. I don't really get why you have Dwarves, introduce a w/r legendary Dwarf and then proceed to only have mono-white Dwarves. I dunno, maybe it's just my initial reaction to seeing the whole set, but it seems pretty messy to me without any clear design direction. I tend to knee-jerk blame these sorts of things on Development though, so that could be wrong.
My biggest issue though is that they brought back Dwarves and didn't make a single mono-red Dwarf. I don't really get why you have Dwarves, introduce a w/r legendary Dwarf and then proceed to only have mono-white Dwarves. I dunno, maybe it's just my initial reaction to seeing the whole set, but it seems pretty messy to me without any clear design direction. I tend to knee-jerk blame these sorts of things on Development though, so that could be wrong.
charlequin
Banned
Based on what they've said, she was originally supposed to actually look somewhat Indian (in her original card you can't determine anything about her skin/hair color 'cuz of all the fire) but like so many of the other PWs they didn't explicitly send a big THIS PERSON IS BROWN memo around to the artists so a bunch of the early stuff (webcomics, duels art, etc.) from before they were controlling this as tightly came back with her looking basically Irish. Making her mixed-race is pretty much the walk back to square the circle on those two things. This is basically their story for Chandra, Gideon and Liliana and while it's super embarrassing it's also true that 98% of artists will never draw a character of ambiguous ethnicity as anything but white so it's also pretty believable.
(Also, I mean, Jaya is a swarthy brunette so it's not really like Chandra looks much like her either.)
Also gives you a nice visual indicator of which planeswalker you targeted.
Sending Nissa makes sense to make this the Girls' Night Out story and also to provide a good influence to counterbalance Lili. Bringing the boys in is just weird and pointless especially when there's Ajani too.
I want to take a poll here: how many people who think energy is boring are Dominion players? Because multiple people messaged me right after reveal to be like "OMG this is a Dominion mechanic" and anyone who's played way too much Dominion like I have is gonna know exactly how huge a change an accumulating resource on top of your normal tempo resource can be.
Because they're making Dwarves the white characteristic race, because they never had anything to do with red's themes besides living in mountains and white has never had a race that stuck.
Here's hoping they're a bit more proactive and locked in with that stuff in the future. It makes them look pretty unprepared now.
They have gremlins. You don't like gremlins breh?
charlequin
Banned
I think it's a little weird to say the problem with this set is it isn't coherent when we're coming off the year of BFZ. Like every mechanic in this set supports the set theme and they all play together which is already way ahead of a few recent blocks.
Agreed on both counts. I think it's worth noting that it was pretty much a decade ago that they first introduced the current planeswalker cast and they've turned over the creative team almost entirely (and more than doubled it in size) since then; they seem to be on top of this stuff earlier for the most part now.
Agreed on both counts. I think it's worth noting that it was pretty much a decade ago that they first introduced the current planeswalker cast and they've turned over the creative team almost entirely (and more than doubled it in size) since then; they seem to be on top of this stuff earlier for the most part now.
They did the same thing to Arlinn in SoI. They arent a part of the Gatewatch so they are superflous.
That's dumb though. That's like having a white merfolk or a blue elf or a green zombie.
White keeps going through these dumb gimmicky races like the kithkin, the kor, etc. Toss dwarves on top of it now.
DashReindeer
Lead Community Manager, Outpost Games
That's interesting. Maybe it's because I have played Magic since ABUR so my perspective is biased, but Dwarves always struck me as the quintessential non-Goblin red race. They are usually characterized as mountain dwelling, fiery tempered, battle-hungry creatures, who hoard treasure and forge powerful weaponry. Everything about them has always seemed red to me.
We have white merfolk.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I'm more excited for this Limited format then I have been in....years, probably. But I have absolutely no idea what Constructed looks like with this in rotation
Simply Sarah
Member
Why? Dwarves are not Red. Like, they aren't even remotely mono-Red under its modern notion. Conversely, White is pretty perfect for them, especially if some Red is splashed in.
They're far too organized and patient for mono-Red. Or, rather, they should be if we want them to be different than Goblins and/or generic barbarians.
A handful of those in Lorwyn only, right? Don't think they existed in any other set.
I don't agree with this. Under that notion, mono-red creatures should only be goblins and orcs?
charlequin
Banned
I mean literally everything about dwarves -- they live in a well-ordered society, they like to make equipment, they're super tough, they're warriors who fight well in groups, etc. -- is white in MTG terms except living in mountains. Once we got past the Alpha era Magic tried to justify the pre-existing color by playing up the wild-and-crazy aspect of dwarves, which mostly just led to embarrassments like this:
So giving up on the tryhard dwarves and actually colorshifting them now seems like a big improvement to me.
White's really not supposed to be primarily the "good" color and every other color gets to have a humanoid species that's shorthand for what the color is about, not having one in white just means a lot of weird choices and/or a lot of boring white humans.
Simply Sarah
Member
No, but the "classic" Magic Dwarf cards are things like like Dwarven Weaponsmith or Warriors or Armorer or Demolition Team that feel like a more structured society that organizes and plans things. This feels more at home in White now. Now, later you have the Odyssey block Dwarves that are quite different in that they basically feel like Goblins but I feel that was just an overall mistake.
Edit: Basically what charlequin is saying.
I mean literally everything about dwarves -- they live in a well-ordered society, they like to make equipment, they're super tough, they're warriors who fight well in groups, etc. -- is white in MTG terms except living in mountains. Once we got past the Alpha era Magic tried to justify the pre-existing color by playing up the wild-and-crazy aspect of dwarves, which mostly just led to embarrassments like this:
So giving up on the tryhard dwarves and actually colorshifting them now seems like a big improvement to me
I see your points but still feel like white getting them is just redundant. Like the description you gave fits the leonin of Mirrodin or the kor of Zendikar almost exactly. Do they really need a third non-human race of super tough warriors that like to wear/make equipment that live in an ordered-society? I'm still of the notion that red gets the shit end of the stick of the color pie in terms of mechanics and creatures and that this could've been an opportunity for them to have gotten something different and help change things for the color moving forward.
I think it's more that they needed to color balance the walkers, so they added Nissa. Kaladesh is a very UR world. In Aether revolt, we're likely to get another UB Tezzeret and a GW Ajani, putting the balance at 2W, 3U, 1B, 2R and 2G. Amonkhet will likely lean more toward black to balance things out.
Yeah. Coin tokens in Guilds added a lot of depth with a fairly simple mechanic. Baker especially made things very interesting, since it changed what you can do with your starting hands. Though, i will point out that coin tokens are still the same resource as normal coins; you just get to bank them. Energy is a little different in that regard.
Actually, now that I think of it, debt tokens from Empires are mechanically similar to the pacts from Magic.
I've never played Dominion, but just think Energy looks like it was stapled on draft cards to make it "work", and that constructed wise you have to go out of your way to find a card that fits in into any deck.
What deck want's to play Architect of the untamed over Tireless tracker ? The fact I'm looking for specifically energy cards that could be constructed playable and only coming up with 2 or maybe 3 tops tells you all you need to know about energy, its a limited only mechanic, Vehicles have a better chance of making a dent in other formats over energy.
What deck want's to play Architect of the untamed over Tireless tracker ? The fact I'm looking for specifically energy cards that could be constructed playable and only coming up with 2 or maybe 3 tops tells you all you need to know about energy, its a limited only mechanic, Vehicles have a better chance of making a dent in other formats over energy.
Thats a good way to make your stories seem contrived.
"God's Beard!"
Member
I love this set. I love energy. I love vehicles. I love fabricate. Everything is dynamic.
Like, just think about tap effects. Your opponent goes to the beginning of combat phase with a creature and a vehicle. If you tap the creature they get to start their engines, but if you pass back they get a free attack and your tapper sucks.
Like, just think about tap effects. Your opponent goes to the beginning of combat phase with a creature and a vehicle. If you tap the creature they get to start their engines, but if you pass back they get a free attack and your tapper sucks.
Simply Sarah
Member
I think the answer to "yet another non-human White race" is that dwarves aren't really tied to any one plane.
And I don't disagree that they've struggled to find Red's place in the colour pie world. They even openly admit this. It's basically the reverse of the old "Blue is defined so broadly it gets all the best mechanics (except sometimes Black does OK too)".
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