This thread caught me off guard. The beginning of the topic was very good, and well written, and I appreciated how it segued into appreciation for Shards of Alara. Alara is a very well-designed set. Almost up there with Ravnica in perfect balance, but then it slowly degraded into a rant on Llorwyn. Which is fine, I mean you want to compare and contrast the two--Llorwyn is not as balanced (Sha/Eve were a lot less powerful than Lor/Mor) and there are some definite style changes, but going from a grand concept like how the awesome of Serra Angel has diminished to a rant on ugly art is confusing, to say the least.
I'm not going to disagree--Llorwyn block and Shadowmoor blook definitely had some wild artwork. Some looked good, but most were sub-par. But that was a style choice. Not every plane needs to look like the others (see also Kamigawa and Mirrodin, and remember their style choices).
It's also a bit disjoined. Talking about how the state of the game has flowed as far as power level is concerned (Mahamoti Djinn used to be the dog's ballocks in 1994, and now you need Demigod of Revenge to make a serious dent as far as fat goes) to complaining about a set's art and how craptastic it was to you seems like you hadn't gone back and read the first half of your post.
But initially, yeah, I was horrified. Such a blatant lack of respect for fundamental laws of proportion and physiology. I'd never seen a Magic race that looked so...deformed. Inbred, even. And while boggarts had great flavor [a race so obsessed with new stimuli that they'll go to any selfish (black) or thoughtless (red) lengths to get them], the names killed any regard I had for 'em. Fun set to draft, though.
As far as the fundamental point goes-----yeah. I miss old-school Magic. I learned to play at (say it with me!) summer camp, post-Mirage. Long afternoons of Psychic Venomed Gaea's Liege (tech!) and twice-Berserked Uthden Trolls. That's not to say I'm not pleased with the direction the game has taken--I am--but it's more a game of math and less of fantasy. Calculating curves, damage ratios, memorizing print runs...it just feels so different from the days when we refused to put Unholy Strength on a Serra Angel because it felt wrong, rather than providing potential card disadvantage.
You have a fantastic way with words there, I would heartily support your writing of articles for us casual folk that really, really want to make a deck based around the stationsfrom5thDawn that doesn't suck.
(and god help me, I'll crack it one day).
Oddly, I keep thinking there's a deck in those cards, too. But I no longer hold onto the dream of a competitive all Artifacts deck... it just can't be done.
Thanks for your very kind words in re: my writing, though.
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The worst part about Kithkin, the VERY worst, which I meant to mention in the rant, and then didn't, is that not only do they pretty much suck on every emotional level -- I mean, they're HOBBITS, cripes, where's my can of Raid? -- but that they are horrifying and objectionable from every subjective standpoint, and then, with utterly sadistic cruelty, WOTC made them viciously, wickedly, undeniably, evilly effective.
You can build a Soldiers deck without Kithkin, but it's like poking both eyes out with sharpened knitting needles right before you enter the Karate semi-finals. Nowadays if you try to build any kind of white weenie deck without Kithkin you're essentially running a drill through your frontal lobes, and trying to do it in an Extended or Standard match is simply insane. If you want to have even the most remote chance of winning a game, even in a local card shop Gather, and you're playing white, you have to play Kithkin. And I hate that.
That, plus there is just no answer to them... well, not from a recent set, anyway. Pestilence will still nuke them dead (they have, praise jebus, no ProBlack), but Pestilence against a white deck is always problematic, and a Kithkin deck is soooooo much faster than nearly anything else you can array against them.
But initially, yeah, I was horrified. Such a blatant lack of respect for fundamental laws of proportion and physiology. I'd never seen a Magic race that looked so...deformed. Inbred, even. And while boggarts had great flavor [a race so obsessed with new stimuli that they'll go to any selfish (black) or thoughtless (red) lengths to get them], the names killed any regard I had for 'em. Fun set to draft, though.
As far as the fundamental point goes-----yeah. I miss old-school Magic. I learned to play at (say it with me!) summer camp, post-Mirage. Long afternoons of Psychic Venomed Gaea's Liege (tech!) and twice-Berserked Uthden Trolls. That's not to say I'm not pleased with the direction the game has taken--I am--but it's more a game of math and less of fantasy. Calculating curves, damage ratios, memorizing print runs...it just feels so different from the days when we refused to put Unholy Strength on a Serra Angel because it felt wrong, rather than providing potential card disadvantage.
I more or less enjoy where Magic has gone -- I completely disagree with whoever it was earlier in the thread that said WOTC should have left in all the fast mana and simply banned first round wins, as all that would do is shift the first round nukings to the second round, and the very arbitrary nature of it would have aggravated a lot more people than were annoyed by the removal of OOP power cards -- and as I've said repeatedly, to the utter shock of nearly everyone, I LOVED Fallen Empires and Homelands. But the problem is, MTG is not primarily a game, it is primarily a business, and you can only put out so many really well balanced, low key sets before your bottom line starts to suffer. A lot of people want high power sets with badly broken cards in them, and WOTC won't stay in business if they ignore that market demographic.
The primary reasons (IMHO, obviously) that Homelands and Fallen Empires are regarded so poorly is that not only are both very creature-centric sets, but the creatures are, for the most part, not very charismatic. No dragons, no angels, no vampires (as such; the Sengir family is probably pretty vampiric, but they weren't presented that way)... mostly humans and birds and not very powerful fairies and minotaurs. (I like minotaurs, and the minotaur tribe got a big boost from Homelands, but I can see where most players wouldn't be thrilled by them.) Along with that there are very few (if any) broken cards that really allow for brain bending or abusive smack down combinations, and it says something profoundly sick about this game that that last is regarded by many (perhaps a vast majority) as being a problem, not a feature.
But Shards of Alara is also very similar to this, it's just that Shards has a lot of really really cool creatures -- a lot of neat legends, and some very cool planeswalkers, and some angels and demons and zombies and really awesome dragons. Plus, goblins got some respect and THERE AREN'T ANY GRODOON KITHKIN. All of which is solid win, in my book.
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I agree about Serra. She was actually the first good rare that I ever got. I traded for her after I pulled a stronghold assassin from a pack and nearly got mobbed for it(still don't know why lol).
Oddly, I keep thinking there's a deck in those cards, too. But I no longer hold onto the dream of a competitive all Artifacts deck... it just can't be done.
Thanks for your very kind words in re: my writing, though.
I would like to point you to MUDStax which came 12th in the most recent Legacy tournament on these very boards. Not tier one ownage, but a pretty solid deck nonetheless.
You love Homelands, too. It's the set that gave us great cards like Feast of the Unicorn. The reason most people seem to hate it is that it is almost entirely creature-centric; there are few or no cards that do lots of damage or make someone discard or blow up someone's permanents or that interact in really interesting ways with instants, triggered effects, and upkeep costs, and there's not much card draw at all. But it has GREAT creature cards, and great creature enhancement cards.
One correction - I loved a card from Homelands - well, actually a few - but as a set it did let me down. I remember the creature centric focus and all the enchantments, and if I took a real careful look back I might have a higher opinion of the set, but the lack of interactions between other effects was one of the key reasons I remember why I disliked the set enough to basically say good bye to Magic until the Dissension/Time Spiral period.
But I can't name a single set that lacked at least a few things that I enjoyed. Homelands was just very poor design over all, though the flavor I think was good.
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Decks
Commander
Ezuri, Renegade Leader (Aggro/Combo - Favorite) Skullbriar, the Walking Grave (Sac and Grave hijinks) Azusa, Lost but Seeking (Landfall hijinks) Kaalia of the Vast (Heavily modded)
The worst part about Kithkin, the VERY worst, which I meant to mention in the rant, and then didn't, is that not only do they pretty much suck on every emotional level -- I mean, they're HOBBITS, cripes, where's my can of Raid? -- but that they are horrifying and objectionable from every subjective standpoint, and then, with utterly sadistic cruelty, WOTC made them viciously, wickedly, undeniably, evilly effective.
You can build a Soldiers deck without Kithkin, but it's like poking both eyes out with sharpened knitting needles right before you enter the Karate semi-finals. Nowadays if you try to build any kind of white weenie deck without Kithkin you're essentially running a drill through your frontal lobes, and trying to do it in an Extended or Standard match is simply insane. If you want to have even the most remote chance of winning a game, even in a local card shop Gather, and you're playing white, you have to play Kithkin. And I hate that.
That, plus there is just no answer to them... well, not from a recent set, anyway. Pestilence will still nuke them dead (they have, praise jebus, no ProBlack), but Pestilence against a white deck is always problematic, and a Kithkin deck is soooooo much faster than nearly anything else you can array against them.
uh, wrath of god seems pretty good, and last time i checked, its still in the format....
This thread, while very well written, is made of pure fail.
I LOVE Lorwyn (and kithkin). I love the welsh names, the goats, the goatnappers, the treefolk and merfolk and faeries and elves and giants. I like the British Isles mythology (loved it as a kid), the interactions were cool, the tribes were MUCH more interesting than Onslaught block (seriously, a single card like Hundroog sums up EVERYTHING wrong with Onslaught block and its tribes).
Most of all, I LOVED the change of pace and the fact that we got an entire block that was NOT full of the "badass maGe-pUnK XtRemE mountain-dew swilling Snowboarding while dual-wielding wands" garbage that has plagued Magic ever since WotC took it in that direction post-Odyssey.
As someone who appreciates old-school magic, with its superbly authentic flavor, its Shakespeare quotes and its professorial detachment, its willingness to be "uncool" and its freedom from XtreME MagE-pUnkS, how could you NOT like Lorwyn?
This thread, while very well written, is made of pure fail.
I LOVE Lorwyn (and kithkin). I love the welsh names, the goats, the goatnappers, the treefolk and merfolk and faeries and elves and giants. I like the British Isles mythology (loved it as a kid), the interactions were cool, the tribes were MUCH more interesting than Onslaught block (seriously, a single card like Hundroog sums up EVERYTHING wrong with Onslaught block and its tribes).
Most of all, I LOVED the change of pace and the fact that we got an entire block that was NOT full of the "badass maGe-pUnK XtRemE mountain-dew swilling Snowboarding while dual-wielding wands" garbage that has plagued Magic ever since WotC took it in that direction post-Odyssey.
As someone who appreciates old-school magic, with its superbly authentic flavor, its Shakespeare quotes and its professorial detachment, its willingness to be "uncool" and its freedom from XtreME MagE-pUnkS, how could you NOT like Lorwyn?
Because Welsh mythology sucks, but, if you're going to have an entire four set block based on suckie Welsh mythology, well, where's my Legendary Creature - Morrigan? Gimme a Morrigan and I will forgive much, if not all.
'Not all', however, would include seventy kabillion gordumm Hobbitses and a nearly equal number of horrible loser-Goblins.
I'm sorry, I cannot support my subjective opinion that Welsh mythology sucks in any objective or reasonable fashion, I just think it does. Now, Norse mythology would be cool, but Welsh mythology? Goat napping? Puh LEEEEZE.
I'm not looking for Xtreme Mage Punk crap. Just, you know, respectable non-Midget creatures.
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Because Welsh mythology sucks, but, if you're going to have an entire four set block based on suckie Welsh mythology, well, where's my Legendary Creature - Morrigan? Gimme a Morrigan and I will forgive much, if not all.
'Not all', however, would include seventy kabillion gordumm Hobbitses and a nearly equal number of horrible loser-Goblins.
I'm sorry, I cannot support my subjective opinion that Welsh mythology sucks in any objective or reasonable fashion, I just think it does. Now, Norse mythology would be cool, but Welsh mythology? Goat napping? Puh LEEEEZE.
I'm not looking for Xtreme Mage Punk crap. Just, you know, respectable non-Midget creatures.
You nearly had me. I well understand your love for Serra Angel. Beautiful, deadly, and voluptuous, she had it all. In my opinion very few of the new angels live up to her style. Akroma and Lightning Angel perhaps...but both of those are clear decendants of the original.
Sir, You started to lose me during your bizarre rant against Kithkin. I loved the Lorwyn Kithkin from the beginning. A Hobbit/Halfling race is a classic fantasy creature type and was always strangely absent from Magic. Additionally, white has always been lacking a tribal race (as opposed to a tribal class). White could use the variety too. It seems that 9 out of 10 creatures in white is just a human. I'll admit that the "football-head" style was disconcerting at first, but I soon warmed up to it, especially when I realized that it was a brave and unique design choice. Let's face it: it's different, and that earns points in my book. The thoughtweft concept (while slightly lifted and watered down from the sliver link) is also unique in all the humanoid races of Magic, and the snese of comunity it creates for the race is well within the flavor of white.
But sir, where you truly lost me was when you insulted my beloved Thrulls. Any schmuck necromancer can raise zombies by crudely animating the dead, but it takes a great artist to create life itself from nothing but lifeless matter! From the depths of my breeding pits I will rise a new army, an army not of the living dead, but of the dead-made-living! My fell creations shall rise up and you shall quake in fear and awe before the power and artistry of my awesome creations! They called me crazy! But I was not crazy, I WAS JUST MAD!!!!!!
You nearly had me. I well understand your love for Serra Angel. Beautiful, deadly, and voluptuous, she had it all. In my opinion very few of the new angels live up to her style. Akroma and Lightning Angel perhaps...but both of those are clear decendants of the original.
Sir, You started to lose me during your bizarre rant against Kithkin. I loved the Lorwyn Kithkin from the beginning. A Hobbit/Halfling race is a classic fantasy creature type and was always strangely absent from Magic. Additionally, white has always been lacking a tribal race (as opposed to a tribal class). White could use the variety too. It seems that 9 out of 10 creatures in white is just a human. I'll admit that the "football-head" style was disconcerting at first, but I soon warmed up to it, especially when I realized that it was a brave and unique design choice. Let's face it: it's different, and that earns points in my book. The thoughtweft concept (while slightly lifted and watered down from the sliver link) is also unique in all the humanoid races of Magic, and the snese of comunity it creates for the race is well within the flavor of white.
But sir, where you truly lost me was when you insulted my beloved Thrulls. Any schmuck necromancer can raise zombies by crudely animating the dead, but it takes a great artist to create life itself from nothing but lifeless matter! From the depths of my breeding pits I will rise a new army, an army not of the living dead, but of the dead-made-living! My fell creations shall rise up and you shall quake in fear and awe before the power and artistry of my awesome creations! They called me crazy! But I was not crazy, I WAS JUST MAD!!!!!!
Mwhuhahahahahaha!!!!!
Ahem.
Good Day Sir.
And good day to you, Victor Von Doom.
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Magic was never a flawless game, but it was much better then than it is now. There was no rampant net-decking, the card face looked more fantasy-like than techy, and the flavor was much better then, even if not all the cards were. I still love collecting stuff like Sorceress Queen, Demonic Hordes, and Chromium. They may not be "playable" by today's standards, but they are still cool and fun. Just like Magic is supposed to be.
As someone who appreciates old-school magic, with its superbly authentic flavor, its Shakespeare quotes and its professorial detachment, its willingness to be "uncool" and its freedom from XtreME MagE-pUnkS, how could you NOT like Lorwyn?
7th Edition? (That was a great, true-oldschool, Shakespeare-full set without need for boggarts or kithkin)
I think this is one of many matters that depend completely on tastes. I hated almost EVERYTHING about Lorwyn (yes, it was personal), and I felt that with it, Magic became a ridiculous mess (another reason why I loved Shadowmoor so much). I personally don't like fantasy in general, so things that imitate Tolkien's style bore me, but I take it, as it's a consequence of playing Magic that I fully accept. One of the reasons I play Magic (and have been doing so for the last 6 years) is to play something different, fresh, and original, devoid of all that repetition we see in videogames, novels, movies, and such, which is why I mostly avoid certain things. I hate Goblins, Elves, Dragonz, and all that Middle-earth crap (and I'm aware most people love that, so I'm ok with it), and I think that anything that focuses solely on those icons tends to be very limited (concerning Magic cards' mechanics, of course) and narrow. I prefer interactions of "class" types, like Warriors, Clerics (<3), Shamans, Soldiers, Rogues, Wizards... but only because I consider that more interesting and a tad less generic. I also hate the whole "1337 Wizardz Pwnage" you're talking about, but I think that Lorwyn was simply the other extreme of sad things... which is just as bad. I think a middle ground is ideal (my definition of Time Spiral, Shadowmoor--and most of Ravnica--blocks). Speaking or Ravnica, that's a block almost everyone can agree on being great. Eastern European folklore is not as trite. And we had real-life legends like the Moroii, Rusalkas, Drekavac... I think RAV was a WIN. And knights were bold back then... Lorwyn just reset the game to "meh" and "ugh" for me, but even then I knew, like in a recession, that every downturn is fortunately followed by an increasing growth.:)
Nice article all in all. Wasn't around during the Serra Angel days, but I can tell from the passion that you write about that it must have been a great period of time.
Is it really that no white deck can win without Kithkin, though? I believe there are, though yes I would agree that there wouldn't be a lot. I play my white knights (bolder and better than kithkin, I tell you...!) and they have proven to be far more effective in beating faeries, but let's not get to that as I suppose that would be digressing from the topic.
Hating kithkin, imo, is justified as you say. However, wouldn't it be fair to hate the faeries as well? I'm not a faerie hater, but wouldn't a blue deck also not be able to win if it didn't run faeries? Sure, there's Twin-Sanity but god knows how much that compares to the blue winged menaces.
Surely it's not fair to base hate solely on illustrations?
>>>I am that 10th person, and I agree 100%. Magic was never a flawless game, but it was much better then than it is now.
I'm not sure it was better then than it is now; I will say that, again, Magic is primarily a business designed to make money, which is why the game seems to oscillate back and forth between permanent-centric, broad strategy based playing and "fast fast fast kill-tactic/kill-tactic/kill-tactic until the opponent DIES from your instants and sorceries and triggered effects before round four" type set ups. If WOTC ever made Magic into just one of those things, or even tried to keep it constantly balanced between those extremes, they'd lose a lot of their market.
This means that some sets and blocks are going to be beloved of some types of players, and others will be zealously adopted by other types of players. That's one of the strengths of the game though... it's very versatile, and offers something for nearly every taste.
Magic is too complex to ever be fully functional; some part of it is always going to be broken, especially because at any given time, large parts of the target demo want the broken stuff. I more or less accept that; around my house we just have house rules to get rid of the truly obnoxious crap (discard, land destruction) and I personally stay away from tournaments.
>> There was no rampant net-decking, the card face looked more fantasy-like than techy, and the flavor was much better then, even if not all the cards were.
I agree; I still enjoy the classic 'flavor' of Magic up through, say, Antiquities, more than nearly anything since... although I do like Mirrodin and I do like the RAVNICA block, and I'm very fond of SHARDS so far.
>>I still love collecting stuff like Sorceress Queen, Demonic Hordes, and Chromium. They may not be "playable" by today's standards, but they are still cool and fun. Just like Magic is supposed to be.
I'm not sure what's up with Sorceress Queen. If I could get one I'd play her in any of our house matches. I guess she's not playable in Standard or Extended, though, and I'd sure never venture any of my shabby cheap decks in a Vintage format...
>>P.S. Kithkin suck.
They do. They do. They surely surely do. Someday soon I'll have to do an article explaining exactly why I think they suck so much, in much more detail than I've already gone into. That should be fun.
>>I hate Goblins, Elves, Dragonz, and all that Middle-earth crap (and I'm aware most people love that, so I'm ok with it), and I think that anything that focuses solely on those icons tends to be very limited (concerning Magic cards' mechanics, of course) and narrow.
I've gone through my phases of hating all Middle Earth crap, too, but over the course of my adulthood, that has honed down to what is really the only truly hateable thing about Middle Earth... the Hobbits. They're just an appalling people. Dragons, Goblins, and Elves are classic mythical archetypes; Hobbits are the only really original element in Middle Earth, and in all honesty, if I found myself trapped for two days in a Hobbit village I'd go on a murderous rampage. I like Bilbo and Frodo well enough (despite their really ridiculous and dorky sounding names), and Samwise is very cool (and even has a pretty decent name) but most Hobbits seem to be of the Sackville Bagginses variety, or like that drunken lout of a Proudfoot who proudly proclaims himself a "ProudFEET" at Bilbo's party. The whole race was meant to be Tolkien's idea of the British people, and all I can say is, God save me from the British people.
>> I prefer interactions of "class" types, like Warriors, Clerics (<3), Shamans, Soldiers, Rogues, Wizards... but only because I consider that more interesting and a tad less generic.
That's probably my favorite aspect of deckbuilding, too... seeing what sort of classes I can put together regardless of other differences. One of my favorite decks is my Wizards deck.
>>I think a middle ground is ideal (my definition of Time Spiral, Shadowmoor--and most of Ravnica--blocks).
I enjoyed Time Spiral and Planar Chaos a lot.
>>Speaking or Ravnica, that's a block almost everyone can agree on being great. Eastern European folklore is not as trite. And we had real-life legends like the Moroii, Rusalkas, Drekavac... I think RAV was a WIN. And knights were bold back then...
Ravnica gave us some fantastic cards. Privileged Position is a card I've been waiting for for twenty years (although I haven't managed to pull one; my wife and my best friend have gotten all the packs that had them in it and WON'T trade them).
>>Is it really that no white deck can win without Kithkin, though?
No. It's an exaggeration. Any given deck can beat any other given deck if one of them doesn't draw any mana, for example. However, it certainly feels that way to me.
I will say this... if you build a Standard or Extended soldiers deck and you don't include Kithkin in it these days, you might as well toss it in a pond. Or resign yourself to losing a lot.
>>Hating kithkin, imo, is justified as you say. However, wouldn't it be fair to hate the faeries as well?
I kept trying to build a fairies deck for years before Lorwyn came out, and I could never get it to work. With Lorwyn, though, suddenly fairies became respectable. Same thing for Merfolk. It's one of the cooler things about the set.
>>I'm not a faerie hater, but wouldn't a blue deck also not be able to win if it didn't run faeries? Sure, there's Twin-Sanity but god knows how much that compares to the blue winged menaces.
I think a blue deck with a lot of Wizards in it can be formidable.
>>Surely it's not fair to base hate solely on illustrations?
Visuals are an important part of Magic cards.
Thanks, all.
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I agree; I still enjoy the classic 'flavor' of Magic up through, say, Antiquities, more than nearly anything since... although I do like Mirrodin and I do like the RAVNICA block, and I'm very fond of SHARDS so far.
I think that the current style of a new plane every year is the best creative strategy Magic has ever done. Don't get me wrong. I love the old art, but I'm willing to admit that on the whole the new stuff is better.
And if you don't like a plane's flavor, there will be something completely different next year.
They do. They do. They surely surely do. Someday soon I'll have to do an article explaining exactly why I think they suck so much, in much more detail than I've already gone into. That should be fun.
I look forward to that thread, and I hope I do a decent job of defending the little guys.
>>Hating kithkin, imo, is justified as you say. However, wouldn't it be fair to hate the faeries as well?
I kept trying to build a fairies deck for years before Lorwyn came out, and I could never get it to work. With Lorwyn, though, suddenly fairies became respectable. Same thing for Merfolk. It's one of the cooler things about the set.
A thought probably best left for your upcoming kithkin thread, but is it possibly that you just don't like them because they aren't old? (With Amrou Kithkin as the exception)
I think white needed a creature type tribe, and I can't think of any better options that aren't classes or humanoid animals.
>>Surely it's not fair to base hate solely on illustrations?
Visuals are an important part of Magic cards.
Thanks, all.
In my opinion the most important part. I only play casual with my friends, and with a larger house card pool to pick from, I have the luxury of only playing cards that are both great looking and fun to play.
I think that the current style of a new plane every year is the best creative strategy Magic has ever done. Don't get me wrong. I love the old art, but I'm willing to admit that on the whole the new stuff is better.
And if you don't like a plane's flavor, there will be something completely different next year.
I thought Magic was a better game when all the cards had a coherent visual style. When I use MSE to design my own expansions, I always use the classic card template, because I just think Magic looked better back then, and I think it would still look better if all the cards had a common visual theme to them. But I still wish the Fantastic Four were wearing their original royal blue costumes with the black trim, too
A thought probably best left for your upcoming kithkin thread, but is it possibly that you just don't like them because they aren't old? (With Amrou Kithkin as the exception)
I don't think so. I like Cephalids just fine. And despite knocking them in another thread, I also like Thrulls. And Loxodon. And I think viashino are really cool. I just hate Kithkin.
I thought Magic was a better game when all the cards had a coherent visual style. When I use MSE to design my own expansions, I always use the classic card template, because I just think Magic looked better back then, and I think it would still look better if all the cards had a common visual theme to them. But I still wish the Fantastic Four were wearing their original royal blue costumes with the black trim, too
I too prefer the old frames, and since Planar Chaos showed us how the new frames could have been done better, I like the new frames even less.
I don't think so. I like Cephalids just fine. And despite knocking them in another thread, I also like Thrulls. And Loxodon. And I think viashino are really cool. I just hate Kithkin.
So we have to have a bunch of mutated midgets? Please.
Love Thrulls. I'm mostly neutral on Aven, Loxodon, Leonin, and the other "beastmen" races. Not a fan of Celaphids...but probably mostly because they showed up right after the "merfolk don't make sense" purge, and Celaphids don't make any more sense than merfolk...and obviously merfolk are my favorite.
I have some counter arguments for the kithkin, even some defenses to the anti-footballhead argument (probably not great defenses), but the main argument is that hobbits/halflings are a fantasy staple and a good fit for white.
If you could think of some better non-human fantasy race for white, I'd love to hear it.
I too did not like the look of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor's kithkin. I didn't mind Timespiral block's depiction of them, however. Amrou Scout and Amrou Seekers are nice pieces of artwork, and kithkin would not have bothered me half as much if they had looked like that throughout Lorwyn and Shadowmoor. And yeah, I hated the goblins too, but then I've always hated goblins, in a similar way to the way you despise kithkin. I personally liked elves in LW/SH, and that's what I play now. My other beef with LW/SH is Mutavault. I love it as a card, and it's a cool concept, a changeling land. But it looks like a cave of poo. I've tempted to have someone alter my extra and put Mr. Hanky from South Park in there. Mutavault is one of my favorite cards with one of my most hated artworks, how's that for a paradox?
On another note, I too really liked Shards, not so much for the cards (although Knight of the White Orchid is one of my favorite cards of all time) but for the flavor. I can't tell you how much I've longed to see a medieval setting, and a knight planeswalker (with beautiful artwork too I might add) was a pleasant surprise. And [human] knights are my favorite class, so that's why this thread caught my attention. I am a little disappointed that most of Conflux's knights are kind of subpar, but I still hold out some hope for Knight of the Reliquary.
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I agree about having a coherent visual style. The only thing I like the new frames for is that they're easier to read. The black Name/Typelines were changes that I wouldn't trade for the world. The rest of the problem is in the textures. The PC alternate frames showed exactly how textures should have been used, and aside from the white font, I would go with them 100% more than the new frame style.
The original style had great textures, but the Name font was nasty on the eyes at times, albeit stylish.
As for races, I really don't care for either the Leonin. I can accept the Loxodons in ambivalence, like Aven, but I really don't like the Leonin style for some reason. They seem to vary far too much in appearance, with the occassional standout like Nacatl War-Pride being buried under a clump of Ye Olde Generick Furrye Arte (Soul's Might, Skyhunter Cub, well, all the Mirrodin Leonin, pretty much) that ranges from mediocre to ugtastic.
Avens are hit and miss, too, but they seem to hit more often for me. And Loxodons, despite not liking them really, I've found have really managed to impress me through arts in Ravnica.
Love Thrulls. I'm mostly neutral on Aven, Loxodon, Leonin, and the other "beastmen" races.
I love the beastmen, or, as I style them, the 'animorphs'. These are very old archetypes, too, and as valid in fantasy fiction as you seem to think Hobbits/Halflings are, they simply derive from other forms of heroic fantasy. I've long had a race of catlike and birdlike animorphs in my roleplaying game (to prove that great minds think alike, my birdpeople are even called Aven, and have been since around 1988... but it's an obvious name to give to such a race; my catmen, on the other hand, are called Jeopards, rather than Leonin, although there is a lionesque subrace among the Jeopards known as yeelar, which, again, is close).
You have to be careful how silly you get with your beastmen, though, and I'm kind of on the fence about the recent incursion of rhino men. When WOTC tries to introduce squirrelmen, I'm going to have to stop collecting cards for a while.
Not a fan of Celaphids...but probably mostly because they showed up right after the "merfolk don't make sense" purge, and Celaphids don't make any more sense than merfolk...and obviously merfolk are my favorite.
There have always been people playing Magic with little or no imagination, hard though that is to believe. These are the people who disingenously demand to know how in the world a Merfolk can attack them and they can block with, say, a Suntail Hawk, when, obviously, the Merfolk must be in the depths of the ocean. Or, worse, the reverse; how can a momentarily flying Merfolk (like a Vodalian Knight) block a Suntail Hawk? I've seen people contort themselves into logical granny knots trying to explain this rationally; me, I just shrug and say "I imagine it's... hmmmm... what's that word for when things happen that don't necessarily conform to what we think we know of science, logic, and physics... errrrr... I can't remember... what is it, what is it... oh yeah... MAGIC." That usually shuts them the hell up.
I have some counter arguments for the kithkin, even some defenses to the anti-footballhead argument (probably not great defenses), but the main argument is that hobbits/halflings are a fantasy staple and a good fit for white.
That argument, as I've mentioned, works just as well for the beastmen as it does for Kithkin. I'd think Hobbits would work better in green; saying that all White has is humans, with a little contemptuous sniff like the teenage AD&D player who doesn't ever want to be forced to roll up a 'mere' human player character, simply strikes me as nonsense. White could have 'class' tribes -- Knights, Paladins, Angels, Wizards -- and, anyway, if you insist on nonhuman tribes, I like Aven, Leonin, and Loxodon much more than I like Kithkin. Aven have never been defined to be as powerful as Kithkin, but Kithkin as defined by the Lorwyn block very nearly break the game.
I too did not like the look of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor's kithkin. I didn't mind Timespiral block's depiction of them, however. Amrou Scout and Amrou Seekers are nice pieces of artwork, and kithkin would not have bothered me half as much if they had looked like that throughout Lorwyn and Shadowmoor.
That one pre-Lorwyn Kithkin with protection from anything with converted mana cost three or more is a nice card, and has an interesting, kind of alien looking visual, too. My wife was the first person in our house gaming group to get one of those and used it relentlessly against us. Unfortunately, it seems to have set the tone for Kithkin to be outrageously annoying in terms of game function. Once they went Tribal and got cards that made it cheaper for them to come into play, and cards that would allow you to go looking for a particular Kithkin, and cards that would reward having multiple Kithkin in play, and flying cards, and cards that killed anything that moved, they simply broke the game. AND, yes, once Lorwyn rolled around, they stopped looking remotely impressive and started to look like, I don't know, Babydollz With 'Tude, or some frickin thing.
And yeah, I hated the goblins too, but then I've always hated goblins, in a similar way to the way you despise kithkin.
Goblins are meant to be detested. That's their role in fantasy fiction and WOTC did a fine job reproducing that flavor in Magic. They're meant to make your skin crawl. Kithkin/Hobbits/Halflings, on the other hand, are clearly meant to be admirable and wonderful and valiant and noble, and they're just NOT. They're stupid looking and it's deeply, deeply frustrating that something that looks like a musclebound midget with Farrah hair and a big butter knife is capable of kicking the living crap out of a deck full of Giants or Angels or Vampires or pretty much ANYthing intrinsically cooler than bodybuilder leprechauns who have mastered the use of the blowdryer. We're supposed to think Kithkin are cool, and supposed to feel vaguely bad about ourselves if we hate them, and that's yet another reason I hate them. They're vermin, just, you know, vermin that are meant to be good looking in a wholesome, all American, clean cut, 50s high school jock way. Crush them all, I say. Tailor a virus.
I personally liked elves in LW/SH, and that's what I play now.
The white elves were pretty boring, but it was nice to see some. The black elves were nifty. The new green elves in the Lorwyn block were pretty spiffy. I've never been wild about elves as an archetype, but WOTC has always treated them with respect (some sets more than others, I grant you) and nowadays, an Elf deck can be nearly as overwhelming as Kithkin deck. And Elves have a great deal more gravitas than Kithkin ever will.
My other beef with LW/SH is Mutavault. I love it as a card, and it's a cool concept, a changeling land. But it looks like a cave of poo. I've tempted to have someone alter my extra and put Mr. Hanky from South Park in there. Mutavault is one of my favorite cards with one of my most hated artworks, how's that for a paradox?
I feel your pain. I badly, badly want to play with Changelings, but every time I try to put them in a deck, the truly appalling artwork stops me cold. Plus, you know, as a general rule, the WOTC idea seems to have been, make them similar to other creatures, but, you know, not quite as good. Why would you play a Skeleton Changeling when you could just have a Drudge, whose Regeneration is cheaper? That poor judgement pretty much crapped up all the common Changelings. Some of the rare ones are pretty fabulous, and work well enough that I'd play them even with the horrifying art, but unfortunately, I simply can't afford to buy enough boosters to get Rares reliably. There's a giant White changeling (I think) that is very useful and effective, but I'll never see one.
On another note, I too really liked Shards, not so much for the cards (although Knight of the White Orchid is one of my favorite cards of all time) but for the flavor. I can't tell you how much I've longed to see a medieval setting, and a knight planeswalker (with beautiful artwork too I might add) was a pleasant surprise.
A huge part of the appeal of Shards has been the frankly monstrous improvement in the art on the cards. This stuff is just beautiful, as opposed to the Lorwyn cards, which rarely inspired anything but a desire to avert the eyes. But I believe the primal Magic setting we got in Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited is fairly medieval.
And [human] knights are my favorite class, so that's why this thread caught my attention. I am a little disappointed that most of Conflux's knights are kind of subpar, but I still hold out some hope for Knight of the Reliquary.
Knights that turn into Angels rock pretty hard for me. Conflux seems to lack all the mana fixing that we got in Shards, though, and that's troubling, as in Conflux mana flexibility will be even more essential to being able to play the best effects. Still, the various Shard Obelisks and triple lands should remain extremely effective tools for this.
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MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
I agree about having a coherent visual style. The only thing I like the new frames for is that they're easier to read. The black Name/Typelines were changes that I wouldn't trade for the world.
The rest of the problem is in the textures. The PC alternate frames showed exactly how textures should have been used, and aside from the white font, I would go with them 100% more than the new frame style.
As for races, I really don't care for either the Leonin. I can accept the Loxodons in ambivalence, like Aven, but I really don't like the Leonin style for some reason. They seem to vary far too much in appearance, with the occasional standout like Nacatl War-Pride being buried under a clump of Ye Olde Generick Furrye Arte (Soul's Might, Skyhunter Cub, well, all the Mirrodin Leonin, pretty much) that ranges from mediocre to ugtastic.
As I said in another response, I have a catlike race of nonhumans in my RPG, and there are 8 separate subraces of them, so I've never had any trouble accepting differing appearances for catmen types.
Avens are hit and miss, too, but they seem to hit more often for me.
Aven haven't impressed me that much so far in Magic. WOTC's design concept on them seems to be, Well, they all fly, and that's really, really powerful, so we can't let them do much of anything else that might overtly impact the game, and we certainly can't ever make them cheap. I could understand that, but then they turn around and give us astonishingly cheap, staggeringly powerful flyers like Fairies, and just as cheap, maybe even more overtly powerful, game breaking Kithkin... and Aven get no love at all. Even in Shards, Aven are being kept very much in line as far as power/cost goes. Which wouldn't trouble me if WOTC gave every different race and class the same treatment, but, clearly, they don't.
I'm not going to disagree--Llorwyn block and Shadowmoor blook definitely had some wild artwork. Some looked good, but most were sub-par. But that was a style choice. Not every plane needs to look like the others (see also Kamigawa and Mirrodin, and remember their style choices).
It's also a bit disjoined. Talking about how the state of the game has flowed as far as power level is concerned (Mahamoti Djinn used to be the dog's ballocks in 1994, and now you need Demigod of Revenge to make a serious dent as far as fat goes) to complaining about a set's art and how craptastic it was to you seems like you hadn't gone back and read the first half of your post.
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I got used to them.
But initially, yeah, I was horrified. Such a blatant lack of respect for fundamental laws of proportion and physiology. I'd never seen a Magic race that looked so...deformed. Inbred, even. And while boggarts had great flavor [a race so obsessed with new stimuli that they'll go to any selfish (black) or thoughtless (red) lengths to get them], the names killed any regard I had for 'em. Fun set to draft, though.
As far as the fundamental point goes-----yeah. I miss old-school Magic. I learned to play at (say it with me!) summer camp, post-Mirage. Long afternoons of Psychic Venomed Gaea's Liege (tech!) and twice-Berserked Uthden Trolls. That's not to say I'm not pleased with the direction the game has taken--I am--but it's more a game of math and less of fantasy. Calculating curves, damage ratios, memorizing print runs...it just feels so different from the days when we refused to put Unholy Strength on a Serra Angel because it felt wrong, rather than providing potential card disadvantage.
Oddly, I keep thinking there's a deck in those cards, too. But I no longer hold onto the dream of a competitive all Artifacts deck... it just can't be done.
Thanks for your very kind words in re: my writing, though.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
The worst part about Kithkin, the VERY worst, which I meant to mention in the rant, and then didn't, is that not only do they pretty much suck on every emotional level -- I mean, they're HOBBITS, cripes, where's my can of Raid? -- but that they are horrifying and objectionable from every subjective standpoint, and then, with utterly sadistic cruelty, WOTC made them viciously, wickedly, undeniably, evilly effective.
You can build a Soldiers deck without Kithkin, but it's like poking both eyes out with sharpened knitting needles right before you enter the Karate semi-finals. Nowadays if you try to build any kind of white weenie deck without Kithkin you're essentially running a drill through your frontal lobes, and trying to do it in an Extended or Standard match is simply insane. If you want to have even the most remote chance of winning a game, even in a local card shop Gather, and you're playing white, you have to play Kithkin. And I hate that.
That, plus there is just no answer to them... well, not from a recent set, anyway. Pestilence will still nuke them dead (they have, praise jebus, no ProBlack), but Pestilence against a white deck is always problematic, and a Kithkin deck is soooooo much faster than nearly anything else you can array against them.
I more or less enjoy where Magic has gone -- I completely disagree with whoever it was earlier in the thread that said WOTC should have left in all the fast mana and simply banned first round wins, as all that would do is shift the first round nukings to the second round, and the very arbitrary nature of it would have aggravated a lot more people than were annoyed by the removal of OOP power cards -- and as I've said repeatedly, to the utter shock of nearly everyone, I LOVED Fallen Empires and Homelands. But the problem is, MTG is not primarily a game, it is primarily a business, and you can only put out so many really well balanced, low key sets before your bottom line starts to suffer. A lot of people want high power sets with badly broken cards in them, and WOTC won't stay in business if they ignore that market demographic.
The primary reasons (IMHO, obviously) that Homelands and Fallen Empires are regarded so poorly is that not only are both very creature-centric sets, but the creatures are, for the most part, not very charismatic. No dragons, no angels, no vampires (as such; the Sengir family is probably pretty vampiric, but they weren't presented that way)... mostly humans and birds and not very powerful fairies and minotaurs. (I like minotaurs, and the minotaur tribe got a big boost from Homelands, but I can see where most players wouldn't be thrilled by them.) Along with that there are very few (if any) broken cards that really allow for brain bending or abusive smack down combinations, and it says something profoundly sick about this game that that last is regarded by many (perhaps a vast majority) as being a problem, not a feature.
But Shards of Alara is also very similar to this, it's just that Shards has a lot of really really cool creatures -- a lot of neat legends, and some very cool planeswalkers, and some angels and demons and zombies and really awesome dragons. Plus, goblins got some respect and THERE AREN'T ANY GRODOON KITHKIN. All of which is solid win, in my book.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
I would like to point you to MUDStax which came 12th in the most recent Legacy tournament on these very boards. Not tier one ownage, but a pretty solid deck nonetheless.
One correction - I loved a card from Homelands - well, actually a few - but as a set it did let me down. I remember the creature centric focus and all the enchantments, and if I took a real careful look back I might have a higher opinion of the set, but the lack of interactions between other effects was one of the key reasons I remember why I disliked the set enough to basically say good bye to Magic until the Dissension/Time Spiral period.
But I can't name a single set that lacked at least a few things that I enjoyed. Homelands was just very poor design over all, though the flavor I think was good.
Commander
Ezuri, Renegade Leader (Aggro/Combo - Favorite)
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave (Sac and Grave hijinks)
Azusa, Lost but Seeking (Landfall hijinks)
Kaalia of the Vast (Heavily modded)
Standard
Waiting for Innistrad...
Extended
Hah!
Modern
Living End Cascade (RGB)
Legacy
Burn
Vintage
None
Casual
WB Aggro-Control
Green Stompy
Pink Floyd (UWr Wall Control)
Lunch Box (Fatty ramp)
D-Bag (White Control)
Level 13 Task Mage
uh, wrath of god seems pretty good, and last time i checked, its still in the format....
or infest.
I LOVE Lorwyn (and kithkin). I love the welsh names, the goats, the goatnappers, the treefolk and merfolk and faeries and elves and giants. I like the British Isles mythology (loved it as a kid), the interactions were cool, the tribes were MUCH more interesting than Onslaught block (seriously, a single card like Hundroog sums up EVERYTHING wrong with Onslaught block and its tribes).
Most of all, I LOVED the change of pace and the fact that we got an entire block that was NOT full of the "badass maGe-pUnK XtRemE mountain-dew swilling Snowboarding while dual-wielding wands" garbage that has plagued Magic ever since WotC took it in that direction post-Odyssey.
As someone who appreciates old-school magic, with its superbly authentic flavor, its Shakespeare quotes and its professorial detachment, its willingness to be "uncool" and its freedom from XtreME MagE-pUnkS, how could you NOT like Lorwyn?
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
Because Welsh mythology sucks, but, if you're going to have an entire four set block based on suckie Welsh mythology, well, where's my Legendary Creature - Morrigan? Gimme a Morrigan and I will forgive much, if not all.
'Not all', however, would include seventy kabillion gordumm Hobbitses and a nearly equal number of horrible loser-Goblins.
I'm sorry, I cannot support my subjective opinion that Welsh mythology sucks in any objective or reasonable fashion, I just think it does. Now, Norse mythology would be cool, but Welsh mythology? Goat napping? Puh LEEEEZE.
I'm not looking for Xtreme Mage Punk crap. Just, you know, respectable non-Midget creatures.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
You're an idiot.
Spam/Flame Infraction.
Sir,
You nearly had me. I well understand your love for Serra Angel. Beautiful, deadly, and voluptuous, she had it all. In my opinion very few of the new angels live up to her style. Akroma and Lightning Angel perhaps...but both of those are clear decendants of the original.
Sir, You started to lose me during your bizarre rant against Kithkin. I loved the Lorwyn Kithkin from the beginning. A Hobbit/Halfling race is a classic fantasy creature type and was always strangely absent from Magic. Additionally, white has always been lacking a tribal race (as opposed to a tribal class). White could use the variety too. It seems that 9 out of 10 creatures in white is just a human. I'll admit that the "football-head" style was disconcerting at first, but I soon warmed up to it, especially when I realized that it was a brave and unique design choice. Let's face it: it's different, and that earns points in my book. The thoughtweft concept (while slightly lifted and watered down from the sliver link) is also unique in all the humanoid races of Magic, and the snese of comunity it creates for the race is well within the flavor of white.
But sir, where you truly lost me was when you insulted my beloved Thrulls. Any schmuck necromancer can raise zombies by crudely animating the dead, but it takes a great artist to create life itself from nothing but lifeless matter! From the depths of my breeding pits I will rise a new army, an army not of the living dead, but of the dead-made-living! My fell creations shall rise up and you shall quake in fear and awe before the power and artistry of my awesome creations! They called me crazy! But I was not crazy, I WAS JUST MAD!!!!!!
Mwhuhahahahahaha!!!!!
Ahem.
Good Day Sir.
And good day to you, Victor Von Doom.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
Magic was never a flawless game, but it was much better then than it is now. There was no rampant net-decking, the card face looked more fantasy-like than techy, and the flavor was much better then, even if not all the cards were. I still love collecting stuff like Sorceress Queen, Demonic Hordes, and Chromium. They may not be "playable" by today's standards, but they are still cool and fun. Just like Magic is supposed to be.
P.S. Kithkin suck.
7th Edition? (That was a great, true-oldschool, Shakespeare-full set without need for boggarts or kithkin)
I think this is one of many matters that depend completely on tastes. I hated almost EVERYTHING about Lorwyn (yes, it was personal), and I felt that with it, Magic became a ridiculous mess (another reason why I loved Shadowmoor so much). I personally don't like fantasy in general, so things that imitate Tolkien's style bore me, but I take it, as it's a consequence of playing Magic that I fully accept. One of the reasons I play Magic (and have been doing so for the last 6 years) is to play something different, fresh, and original, devoid of all that repetition we see in videogames, novels, movies, and such, which is why I mostly avoid certain things. I hate Goblins, Elves, Dragonz, and all that Middle-earth crap (and I'm aware most people love that, so I'm ok with it), and I think that anything that focuses solely on those icons tends to be very limited (concerning Magic cards' mechanics, of course) and narrow. I prefer interactions of "class" types, like Warriors, Clerics (<3), Shamans, Soldiers, Rogues, Wizards... but only because I consider that more interesting and a tad less generic. I also hate the whole "1337 Wizardz Pwnage" you're talking about, but I think that Lorwyn was simply the other extreme of sad things... which is just as bad. I think a middle ground is ideal (my definition of Time Spiral, Shadowmoor--and most of Ravnica--blocks). Speaking or Ravnica, that's a block almost everyone can agree on being great. Eastern European folklore is not as trite. And we had real-life legends like the Moroii, Rusalkas, Drekavac... I think RAV was a WIN. And knights were bold back then... Lorwyn just reset the game to "meh" and "ugh" for me, but even then I knew, like in a recession, that every downturn is fortunately followed by an increasing growth.:)
I like 4/4s for 7.
Is it really that no white deck can win without Kithkin, though? I believe there are, though yes I would agree that there wouldn't be a lot. I play my white knights (bolder and better than kithkin, I tell you...!) and they have proven to be far more effective in beating faeries, but let's not get to that as I suppose that would be digressing from the topic.
Hating kithkin, imo, is justified as you say. However, wouldn't it be fair to hate the faeries as well? I'm not a faerie hater, but wouldn't a blue deck also not be able to win if it didn't run faeries? Sure, there's Twin-Sanity but god knows how much that compares to the blue winged menaces.
Surely it's not fair to base hate solely on illustrations?
>>>I am that 10th person, and I agree 100%. Magic was never a flawless game, but it was much better then than it is now.
I'm not sure it was better then than it is now; I will say that, again, Magic is primarily a business designed to make money, which is why the game seems to oscillate back and forth between permanent-centric, broad strategy based playing and "fast fast fast kill-tactic/kill-tactic/kill-tactic until the opponent DIES from your instants and sorceries and triggered effects before round four" type set ups. If WOTC ever made Magic into just one of those things, or even tried to keep it constantly balanced between those extremes, they'd lose a lot of their market.
This means that some sets and blocks are going to be beloved of some types of players, and others will be zealously adopted by other types of players. That's one of the strengths of the game though... it's very versatile, and offers something for nearly every taste.
Magic is too complex to ever be fully functional; some part of it is always going to be broken, especially because at any given time, large parts of the target demo want the broken stuff. I more or less accept that; around my house we just have house rules to get rid of the truly obnoxious crap (discard, land destruction) and I personally stay away from tournaments.
>> There was no rampant net-decking, the card face looked more fantasy-like than techy, and the flavor was much better then, even if not all the cards were.
I agree; I still enjoy the classic 'flavor' of Magic up through, say, Antiquities, more than nearly anything since... although I do like Mirrodin and I do like the RAVNICA block, and I'm very fond of SHARDS so far.
>>I still love collecting stuff like Sorceress Queen, Demonic Hordes, and Chromium. They may not be "playable" by today's standards, but they are still cool and fun. Just like Magic is supposed to be.
I'm not sure what's up with Sorceress Queen. If I could get one I'd play her in any of our house matches. I guess she's not playable in Standard or Extended, though, and I'd sure never venture any of my shabby cheap decks in a Vintage format...
>>P.S. Kithkin suck.
They do. They do. They surely surely do. Someday soon I'll have to do an article explaining exactly why I think they suck so much, in much more detail than I've already gone into. That should be fun.
>>I hate Goblins, Elves, Dragonz, and all that Middle-earth crap (and I'm aware most people love that, so I'm ok with it), and I think that anything that focuses solely on those icons tends to be very limited (concerning Magic cards' mechanics, of course) and narrow.
I've gone through my phases of hating all Middle Earth crap, too, but over the course of my adulthood, that has honed down to what is really the only truly hateable thing about Middle Earth... the Hobbits. They're just an appalling people. Dragons, Goblins, and Elves are classic mythical archetypes; Hobbits are the only really original element in Middle Earth, and in all honesty, if I found myself trapped for two days in a Hobbit village I'd go on a murderous rampage. I like Bilbo and Frodo well enough (despite their really ridiculous and dorky sounding names), and Samwise is very cool (and even has a pretty decent name) but most Hobbits seem to be of the Sackville Bagginses variety, or like that drunken lout of a Proudfoot who proudly proclaims himself a "ProudFEET" at Bilbo's party. The whole race was meant to be Tolkien's idea of the British people, and all I can say is, God save me from the British people.
>> I prefer interactions of "class" types, like Warriors, Clerics (<3), Shamans, Soldiers, Rogues, Wizards... but only because I consider that more interesting and a tad less generic.
That's probably my favorite aspect of deckbuilding, too... seeing what sort of classes I can put together regardless of other differences. One of my favorite decks is my Wizards deck.
>>I think a middle ground is ideal (my definition of Time Spiral, Shadowmoor--and most of Ravnica--blocks).
I enjoyed Time Spiral and Planar Chaos a lot.
>>Speaking or Ravnica, that's a block almost everyone can agree on being great. Eastern European folklore is not as trite. And we had real-life legends like the Moroii, Rusalkas, Drekavac... I think RAV was a WIN. And knights were bold back then...
Ravnica gave us some fantastic cards. Privileged Position is a card I've been waiting for for twenty years (although I haven't managed to pull one; my wife and my best friend have gotten all the packs that had them in it and WON'T trade them).
>>Is it really that no white deck can win without Kithkin, though?
No. It's an exaggeration. Any given deck can beat any other given deck if one of them doesn't draw any mana, for example. However, it certainly feels that way to me.
I will say this... if you build a Standard or Extended soldiers deck and you don't include Kithkin in it these days, you might as well toss it in a pond. Or resign yourself to losing a lot.
>>Hating kithkin, imo, is justified as you say. However, wouldn't it be fair to hate the faeries as well?
I kept trying to build a fairies deck for years before Lorwyn came out, and I could never get it to work. With Lorwyn, though, suddenly fairies became respectable. Same thing for Merfolk. It's one of the cooler things about the set.
>>I'm not a faerie hater, but wouldn't a blue deck also not be able to win if it didn't run faeries? Sure, there's Twin-Sanity but god knows how much that compares to the blue winged menaces.
I think a blue deck with a lot of Wizards in it can be formidable.
>>Surely it's not fair to base hate solely on illustrations?
Visuals are an important part of Magic cards.
Thanks, all.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
I think that the current style of a new plane every year is the best creative strategy Magic has ever done. Don't get me wrong. I love the old art, but I'm willing to admit that on the whole the new stuff is better.
And if you don't like a plane's flavor, there will be something completely different next year.
I look forward to that thread, and I hope I do a decent job of defending the little guys.
A thought probably best left for your upcoming kithkin thread, but is it possibly that you just don't like them because they aren't old? (With Amrou Kithkin as the exception)
I think white needed a creature type tribe, and I can't think of any better options that aren't classes or humanoid animals.
In my opinion the most important part. I only play casual with my friends, and with a larger house card pool to pick from, I have the luxury of only playing cards that are both great looking and fun to play.
Great thread!
I thought Magic was a better game when all the cards had a coherent visual style. When I use MSE to design my own expansions, I always use the classic card template, because I just think Magic looked better back then, and I think it would still look better if all the cards had a common visual theme to them. But I still wish the Fantastic Four were wearing their original royal blue costumes with the black trim, too
I don't think so. I like Cephalids just fine. And despite knocking them in another thread, I also like Thrulls. And Loxodon. And I think viashino are really cool. I just hate Kithkin.
So we have to have a bunch of mutated midgets? Please.
Thanks. Sorry I didn't see this before.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
I too prefer the old frames, and since Planar Chaos showed us how the new frames could have been done better, I like the new frames even less.
Love Thrulls. I'm mostly neutral on Aven, Loxodon, Leonin, and the other "beastmen" races. Not a fan of Celaphids...but probably mostly because they showed up right after the "merfolk don't make sense" purge, and Celaphids don't make any more sense than merfolk...and obviously merfolk are my favorite.
I have some counter arguments for the kithkin, even some defenses to the anti-footballhead argument (probably not great defenses), but the main argument is that hobbits/halflings are a fantasy staple and a good fit for white.
If you could think of some better non-human fantasy race for white, I'd love to hear it.
Bonus opinion: For Style, knights beat soldiers.
No worries.
On another note, I too really liked Shards, not so much for the cards (although Knight of the White Orchid is one of my favorite cards of all time) but for the flavor. I can't tell you how much I've longed to see a medieval setting, and a knight planeswalker (with beautiful artwork too I might add) was a pleasant surprise. And [human] knights are my favorite class, so that's why this thread caught my attention. I am a little disappointed that most of Conflux's knights are kind of subpar, but I still hold out some hope for Knight of the Reliquary.
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The original style had great textures, but the Name font was nasty on the eyes at times, albeit stylish.
As for races, I really don't care for either the Leonin. I can accept the Loxodons in ambivalence, like Aven, but I really don't like the Leonin style for some reason. They seem to vary far too much in appearance, with the occassional standout like Nacatl War-Pride being buried under a clump of Ye Olde Generick Furrye Arte (Soul's Might, Skyhunter Cub, well, all the Mirrodin Leonin, pretty much) that ranges from mediocre to ugtastic.
Avens are hit and miss, too, but they seem to hit more often for me. And Loxodons, despite not liking them really, I've found have really managed to impress me through arts in Ravnica.
I love the beastmen, or, as I style them, the 'animorphs'. These are very old archetypes, too, and as valid in fantasy fiction as you seem to think Hobbits/Halflings are, they simply derive from other forms of heroic fantasy. I've long had a race of catlike and birdlike animorphs in my roleplaying game (to prove that great minds think alike, my birdpeople are even called Aven, and have been since around 1988... but it's an obvious name to give to such a race; my catmen, on the other hand, are called Jeopards, rather than Leonin, although there is a lionesque subrace among the Jeopards known as yeelar, which, again, is close).
You have to be careful how silly you get with your beastmen, though, and I'm kind of on the fence about the recent incursion of rhino men. When WOTC tries to introduce squirrelmen, I'm going to have to stop collecting cards for a while.
There have always been people playing Magic with little or no imagination, hard though that is to believe. These are the people who disingenously demand to know how in the world a Merfolk can attack them and they can block with, say, a Suntail Hawk, when, obviously, the Merfolk must be in the depths of the ocean. Or, worse, the reverse; how can a momentarily flying Merfolk (like a Vodalian Knight) block a Suntail Hawk? I've seen people contort themselves into logical granny knots trying to explain this rationally; me, I just shrug and say "I imagine it's... hmmmm... what's that word for when things happen that don't necessarily conform to what we think we know of science, logic, and physics... errrrr... I can't remember... what is it, what is it... oh yeah... MAGIC." That usually shuts them the hell up.
That argument, as I've mentioned, works just as well for the beastmen as it does for Kithkin. I'd think Hobbits would work better in green; saying that all White has is humans, with a little contemptuous sniff like the teenage AD&D player who doesn't ever want to be forced to roll up a 'mere' human player character, simply strikes me as nonsense. White could have 'class' tribes -- Knights, Paladins, Angels, Wizards -- and, anyway, if you insist on nonhuman tribes, I like Aven, Leonin, and Loxodon much more than I like Kithkin. Aven have never been defined to be as powerful as Kithkin, but Kithkin as defined by the Lorwyn block very nearly break the game.
Better than Kithkin? A Toejam race would be better than Kithkin. You're setting the bar very low.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
That one pre-Lorwyn Kithkin with protection from anything with converted mana cost three or more is a nice card, and has an interesting, kind of alien looking visual, too. My wife was the first person in our house gaming group to get one of those and used it relentlessly against us. Unfortunately, it seems to have set the tone for Kithkin to be outrageously annoying in terms of game function. Once they went Tribal and got cards that made it cheaper for them to come into play, and cards that would allow you to go looking for a particular Kithkin, and cards that would reward having multiple Kithkin in play, and flying cards, and cards that killed anything that moved, they simply broke the game. AND, yes, once Lorwyn rolled around, they stopped looking remotely impressive and started to look like, I don't know, Babydollz With 'Tude, or some frickin thing.
Goblins are meant to be detested. That's their role in fantasy fiction and WOTC did a fine job reproducing that flavor in Magic. They're meant to make your skin crawl. Kithkin/Hobbits/Halflings, on the other hand, are clearly meant to be admirable and wonderful and valiant and noble, and they're just NOT. They're stupid looking and it's deeply, deeply frustrating that something that looks like a musclebound midget with Farrah hair and a big butter knife is capable of kicking the living crap out of a deck full of Giants or Angels or Vampires or pretty much ANYthing intrinsically cooler than bodybuilder leprechauns who have mastered the use of the blowdryer. We're supposed to think Kithkin are cool, and supposed to feel vaguely bad about ourselves if we hate them, and that's yet another reason I hate them. They're vermin, just, you know, vermin that are meant to be good looking in a wholesome, all American, clean cut, 50s high school jock way. Crush them all, I say. Tailor a virus.
The white elves were pretty boring, but it was nice to see some. The black elves were nifty. The new green elves in the Lorwyn block were pretty spiffy. I've never been wild about elves as an archetype, but WOTC has always treated them with respect (some sets more than others, I grant you) and nowadays, an Elf deck can be nearly as overwhelming as Kithkin deck. And Elves have a great deal more gravitas than Kithkin ever will.
I feel your pain. I badly, badly want to play with Changelings, but every time I try to put them in a deck, the truly appalling artwork stops me cold. Plus, you know, as a general rule, the WOTC idea seems to have been, make them similar to other creatures, but, you know, not quite as good. Why would you play a Skeleton Changeling when you could just have a Drudge, whose Regeneration is cheaper? That poor judgement pretty much crapped up all the common Changelings. Some of the rare ones are pretty fabulous, and work well enough that I'd play them even with the horrifying art, but unfortunately, I simply can't afford to buy enough boosters to get Rares reliably. There's a giant White changeling (I think) that is very useful and effective, but I'll never see one.
A huge part of the appeal of Shards has been the frankly monstrous improvement in the art on the cards. This stuff is just beautiful, as opposed to the Lorwyn cards, which rarely inspired anything but a desire to avert the eyes. But I believe the primal Magic setting we got in Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited is fairly medieval.
Knights that turn into Angels rock pretty hard for me. Conflux seems to lack all the mana fixing that we got in Shards, though, and that's troubling, as in Conflux mana flexibility will be even more essential to being able to play the best effects. Still, the various Shard Obelisks and triple lands should remain extremely effective tools for this.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here
Yeah, those are good updates.
Pretty much agree there, too.
As I said in another response, I have a catlike race of nonhumans in my RPG, and there are 8 separate subraces of them, so I've never had any trouble accepting differing appearances for catmen types.
Aven haven't impressed me that much so far in Magic. WOTC's design concept on them seems to be, Well, they all fly, and that's really, really powerful, so we can't let them do much of anything else that might overtly impact the game, and we certainly can't ever make them cheap. I could understand that, but then they turn around and give us astonishingly cheap, staggeringly powerful flyers like Fairies, and just as cheap, maybe even more overtly powerful, game breaking Kithkin... and Aven get no love at all. Even in Shards, Aven are being kept very much in line as far as power/cost goes. Which wouldn't trouble me if WOTC gave every different race and class the same treatment, but, clearly, they don't.
Loxodons are cool. They aren't cheap, but they are always worth the mana you spend to get them out.
MTG gets a little kinky in my latest original expansion, The Chained Lands
Meanwhile, my long running fantasy RPG gets the Magic card treatment here