Green and White are strong maybes, with Blue being a probably not.
They should absolutely be in U, they were seafaring people after all with their longboats. I would put the vikings in URG
But stereotypical Vikings are not really Blue from a philosophical sense. They do not care about learning, academics, books, trickery, plotting, subtly, passivity, etc.
But I totally get the idea of Blue = Water and vikings used water to do their viking stuff.
Neither are pirates and yet they were blue in Ixalan.
Green and White are strong maybes, with Blue being a probably not.
They should absolutely be in U, they were seafaring people after all with their longboats. I would put the vikings in URG
But stereotypical Vikings are not really Blue from a philosophical sense. They do not care about learning, academics, books, trickery, plotting, subtly, passivity, etc.
But I totally get the idea of Blue = Water and vikings used water to do their viking stuff.
Neither are pirates and yet they were blue in Ixalan.
It probably bears repeating, the colours mean intrinsically different things on different planes. What's deemed white, or for that matter blue/black/red/green on one plane won't necessarily be the same as those colours on another. They have different underpinning themes and rationales.
I'm not going to give examples, because every set is an example of this. But I repeatedly see players miss this core, changeable aspect of mtg and rile themselves up when new sets don't fit their personal colour-pie-o-meter or whatever.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Green and White are strong maybes, with Blue being a probably not.
They should absolutely be in U, they were seafaring people after all with their longboats. I would put the vikings in URG
But stereotypical Vikings are not really Blue from a philosophical sense. They do not care about learning, academics, books, trickery, plotting, subtly, passivity, etc.
But I totally get the idea of Blue = Water and vikings used water to do their viking stuff.
Neither are pirates and yet they were blue in Ixalan.
Fair enough.
Having said that, it was decided that Ixalan would have 4 tribes, two would have 3 colors and two would have 2 colors. Pirates were pegged for a 3-color tribe so they would have more cards. Red and Black definitely made the most sense. The inclusion of blue was most likely due to the fact that White and Green made less sense thematically for pirates (especially Ixalan pirates). Additionally, there was the added mechanical constraint of how WotC was going to break up the colors (the two small tribes had to share one color with each of the big tribes, and the two big tribes needed to share the color the small tribes did not use). So the decision to use blue for the pirates was not made wholly in a vacuum.
Once you decide on the 3/3/2/2 frame work, it really constrains a lot of your design space. Red and Black make a lot of sense for Pirates but they need a third color. You know Vampires will be Black and White, so that instantly means Pirates cannot be White (since they already share Black with the Vampires) and the other 3-color faction has to be White and cannot be black (since Black is shared between the Vampires and Pirates, and since the Vampires need to share a color with the other 3-color tribe, the second 3-color tribe has to be white). So now you are left with a decision - are Pirates more Blue or Green? Blue, is, I think an easier sell than Green. After that decision, the rest of the color chart fills itself in.
I think there is a lot of room for Blue Vikings, if you put an emphasis on artifacts (which would most certainly be a theme in a Viking set).
Green and White are strong maybes, with Blue being a probably not.
They should absolutely be in U, they were seafaring people after all with their longboats. I would put the vikings in URG
But stereotypical Vikings are not really Blue from a philosophical sense. They do not care about learning, academics, books, trickery, plotting, subtly, passivity, etc.
But I totally get the idea of Blue = Water and vikings used water to do their viking stuff.
Neither are pirates and yet they were blue in Ixalan.
I think there is a lot of room for Blue Vikings, if you put an emphasis on artifacts (which would most certainly be a theme in a Viking set).
Or if they focus a bit more on the trickery aspect. It is a significant part of the Norse culture, it just didn't filter into the stereotypical picture of a Viking. Odin himself is a master schemer...
The blue pirates on Ixalan also considered knowledge treasure and would steal books and scrolls, memorize them and then destroy the original so only they would have that knowledge (as well as having the mind controlling and flying sirens as a blue race).
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Not to mention Loki being the archetypical trickster god.
Yeah, but Loki is a villain (except when he's not, but let's keep things simple). The "good guy" Odin being a schemer tells more about the attitude towards trickery.
Also, Loki's trickery is imo more of the red variety, causing mayhem just for the heck of it.
Could see a case being made for Loki (or a Loki-like figure, of course) in Izzet, or even Grixis.
We have seen one- and two-colored gods, but three-colored ones have yet to come. Odin fits Esper pretty well, seeking knowledge at any cost (his own eye) while maintaining order. Thor could probably fit into Naya, definitely has to include red. That leaves Bant (Heimdall? Freya? Idunna?) and Jund (dunno, Fenrir? Not a god per se, but could work). Or we could get Hel in Grixis and have Loki as an oddball outside the cycle, that would also fit his character.
I think they prefer to stick to monocolor Gods, in which case I think the most likely cycle is Tyr, Odin, Hel, Thor, and Ull, but I could see Loki being part of a rare multicolor cycle of legends as he would logically have an association with the Giants as well.
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I think they prefer to stick to monocolor Gods, in which case I think the most likely cycle is Tyr, Odin, Hel, Thor, and Ull, but I could see Loki being part of a rare multicolor cycle of legends as he would logically have an association with the Giants as well.
There's no way they would miss the Loki stand-in, especially after Marvel made him so popular, and he (she?) has to have the god type. The problem is that both he and Thor, the most popular Norse gods these days, are both very red, so I don't think monocolor gods would work. Besides, we have already got two sets of those. And we probably won't get a two-color focus this close to Ravnica, so this leaves three-color pantheon (provided we get some less multicolor-heavy set in between). That is, if we get gods at all, or even a Norse set.
They can always make 5 mono, Balder W, Heimdall or Njord U, Hel B, Tyr R and Freya G and make the big 3 tri color for better balance. Loki UBR, Thor WRG and Odin WUB.
Thanks much like you I am more knowledgeable of Greco-Roman Pantheon but I have a reasonable knowledge for Norse and Egyptian as well.
Yeah the Bant slot is kinda flex Freya, Frigga...I kinda just wanted to get another lady on the list primarily.
It's not like they are keeping the genders of the original gods anyway, we might as well see a lady Odin. Although that would dash my personal hope that the Raven Man is actually "Odin" who somehow managed to extend his influence to other planes. Myojin of Night's Reach did it already.
Not to mention Loki being the archetypical trickster god.
Yeah, but Loki is a villain (except when he's not, but let's keep things simple). The "good guy" Odin being a schemer tells more about the attitude towards trickery.
Also, Loki's trickery is imo more of the red variety, causing mayhem just for the heck of it.
Yep. Killing Baldr = evil. Causing Ragnarok = evil. Giving birth to Sleipnir = not evil.
Though, yeah, it's just for the lulz. He just enjoys the chaos. Even the self-pwnage.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
We will most assuredly get Thor, Odin and Loki. The real issue is - how many more gods will we get. There is only so much space in a single set. I think a full cycle of 5 is just as likely as just 3. At 5 god cards, that is a third of all the mythic rare slots eaten up.
Based on Theros and Amonkhet, the preference is for five monocolored Gods, and coming up with five for a Norse set would not be hard.
W Tyr, god of war and justice. U Odin, god of knowledge (also war, but war gods in Norse are as common as sex gods in Egypt). B Hel, god of the underworld. R Thor, god of storms (especially thunder and lightning). G Ull god of nature and hunting.
Trouble is, just five slots seems ill suited to capture many of the significant Norse god tropes, such as Loki. But Theros was considered to have too many gods in hindsight, and Maro feels the multicolor Gods should have been rare. Hence, Amonkhet gave us the Trial Five and the Bolas Trio (barely half of what Theros had). Interestingly enough, Loki's nemesis among the gods was Heimdallr, who by my research seems to be GW, a fitting contrast with Loki. Philosophically, it could be argued that Loki is more BR than UR, as he's never looking to improve anything, just entertain himself. Shapeshifters are usually blue, but it's not inconceivable that red could do shapeshifting as well, especially on a temporary basis. However, giants were loosely sorted into frost and fire categories if I'm not mistaken, which definitely swings UR, and a Norse set with a focus on ice will definitely play up the duality of fire and ice.
Ideally we could get ten rare multicolored Gods based on the color pairs, but some of those slots would be better used to represent creatures like Fenrir (legendary RG Wolf, anyone?) and Fafnir (a Dwarf transformed into a Dragon by greed, which sounds BR to me). I could easily see Freya/Frigg adapted into an Elf Queen of sorts.
Speaking of Elves, while I think it would be cool to have black-aligned Dark Elves or Drow in a Norse set, I think greedy black-aligned Dwarves fit in better, and thus the Elves would likely be GW and the Dwarves BR, contrasting the two nicely. If Dwarves could be RWB to allow for some white Dwarves that care about Equipment, that'd be cool, but black I think is a higher priority for Dwarves in this case.
This of course begs the question of what the main Viking colors should be, and if Vikings get to be in all five colors, the main Raid colors. Red is definitely the main Raid color much as green is the main Landfall color. Black is a maybe; if BR is both the Raid pair and the Dwarf pair, that's going to tie Dwarves to Raid, and Dwarf tribal is already a vein ripe for mining. UR Raid is workable, and fitting given the Viking's use of longboats.
On top of all that, who should the planeswalkers in the set be? I imagine they'd want a Viking planeswalker to represent the set, though an Elf or Dwarf PW could work well too. Chandra might be a good candidate if they want her fire magic to play a role. This also seems like a good place for a cryomancer to appear.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
On the horned helmet thing, what I'd do - as a Dane - would be to have the viking angels (ie valkyries) have horned helmets, and the normal vikings have regular helmets. Vikings can still look efficient, warlike and Norse-ly recognizably stylish without horns:
And mind you, even the mainstream, helmetless historical understanding of the vikings is very wrong. People that suggest that vikings should be pirates aren't off. I wouldn't do it in MtG, but viking literally means pirate. They didn't identify as vikings, the word's significance was heavily crafted as an overblown form during the 19th century under Scandinavian/German nationalism. Norse warriors existed with or without the vikings, even.
Issue 1 of the new Chandra comic has a scene on Kaldheim. It’s only one frame, but it’s alongside Tarkir, Ixalan, and Alara so it seems pretty important.
We will most assuredly get Thor, Odin and Loki. The real issue is - how many more gods will we get. There is only so much space in a single set. I think a full cycle of 5 is just as likely as just 3. At 5 god cards, that is a third of all the mythic rare slots eaten up.
It’s happened in other sets. Theros ate up 5 slots in all three sets and that’s when small sets were still a thing.
Also who said the Norse plane would be just 1 set. We can get two or three sets of it (like ravinca) to spread out stories of it.
On another note, I wouldn’t be surprised if we went to theros and followed it up with the Norse plane (similar to what God of War did). I can see wizards doing this and us getting a ton of Gods for standard. I just hope they do Theros right this time around. The Gods were great (especially in commander) but all other things were kind of lackluster for me.
I think a monocolor cycle of Gods for a Norse set is a given. Loki however doesn't fit into such a cycle, as his top color, red, clearly belongs to Thor. The other two viable colors, blue and black, should be Odin and Hel, respectively. Thus, Loki will need to either be an oddball outside the cycle, or part of a different cycle. I could see a cycle of multicolor rare Gods including Loki.
Private Mod Note
():
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Neither are pirates and yet they were blue in Ixalan.
It probably bears repeating, the colours mean intrinsically different things on different planes. What's deemed white, or for that matter blue/black/red/green on one plane won't necessarily be the same as those colours on another. They have different underpinning themes and rationales.
I'm not going to give examples, because every set is an example of this. But I repeatedly see players miss this core, changeable aspect of mtg and rile themselves up when new sets don't fit their personal colour-pie-o-meter or whatever.
Fair enough.
Having said that, it was decided that Ixalan would have 4 tribes, two would have 3 colors and two would have 2 colors. Pirates were pegged for a 3-color tribe so they would have more cards. Red and Black definitely made the most sense. The inclusion of blue was most likely due to the fact that White and Green made less sense thematically for pirates (especially Ixalan pirates). Additionally, there was the added mechanical constraint of how WotC was going to break up the colors (the two small tribes had to share one color with each of the big tribes, and the two big tribes needed to share the color the small tribes did not use). So the decision to use blue for the pirates was not made wholly in a vacuum.
Once you decide on the 3/3/2/2 frame work, it really constrains a lot of your design space. Red and Black make a lot of sense for Pirates but they need a third color. You know Vampires will be Black and White, so that instantly means Pirates cannot be White (since they already share Black with the Vampires) and the other 3-color faction has to be White and cannot be black (since Black is shared between the Vampires and Pirates, and since the Vampires need to share a color with the other 3-color tribe, the second 3-color tribe has to be white). So now you are left with a decision - are Pirates more Blue or Green? Blue, is, I think an easier sell than Green. After that decision, the rest of the color chart fills itself in.
I think there is a lot of room for Blue Vikings, if you put an emphasis on artifacts (which would most certainly be a theme in a Viking set).
Or if they focus a bit more on the trickery aspect. It is a significant part of the Norse culture, it just didn't filter into the stereotypical picture of a Viking. Odin himself is a master schemer...
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Yeah, but Loki is a villain (except when he's not, but let's keep things simple). The "good guy" Odin being a schemer tells more about the attitude towards trickery.
Also, Loki's trickery is imo more of the red variety, causing mayhem just for the heck of it.
We have seen one- and two-colored gods, but three-colored ones have yet to come. Odin fits Esper pretty well, seeking knowledge at any cost (his own eye) while maintaining order. Thor could probably fit into Naya, definitely has to include red. That leaves Bant (Heimdall? Freya? Idunna?) and Jund (dunno, Fenrir? Not a god per se, but could work). Or we could get Hel in Grixis and have Loki as an oddball outside the cycle, that would also fit his character.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
There's no way they would miss the Loki stand-in, especially after Marvel made him so popular, and he (she?) has to have the god type. The problem is that both he and Thor, the most popular Norse gods these days, are both very red, so I don't think monocolor gods would work. Besides, we have already got two sets of those. And we probably won't get a two-color focus this close to Ravnica, so this leaves three-color pantheon (provided we get some less multicolor-heavy set in between). That is, if we get gods at all, or even a Norse set.
Given Alara's Position on the Rabiah Scale. I like to see wedges back.
WUB: ODIN
GWU: FREYA
RBU: LOKI
RGW: THOR
RGB: HELA
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
I would just change Freya for Frigga
Yeah the Bant slot is kinda flex Freya, Frigga...I kinda just wanted to get another lady on the list primarily.
It's not like they are keeping the genders of the original gods anyway, we might as well see a lady Odin. Although that would dash my personal hope that the Raven Man is actually "Odin" who somehow managed to extend his influence to other planes. Myojin of Night's Reach did it already.
Yep. Killing Baldr = evil. Causing Ragnarok = evil. Giving birth to Sleipnir = not evil.
Though, yeah, it's just for the lulz. He just enjoys the chaos. Even the self-pwnage.
On phasing:
W Tyr, god of war and justice.
U Odin, god of knowledge (also war, but war gods in Norse are as common as sex gods in Egypt).
B Hel, god of the underworld.
R Thor, god of storms (especially thunder and lightning).
G Ull god of nature and hunting.
Trouble is, just five slots seems ill suited to capture many of the significant Norse god tropes, such as Loki. But Theros was considered to have too many gods in hindsight, and Maro feels the multicolor Gods should have been rare. Hence, Amonkhet gave us the Trial Five and the Bolas Trio (barely half of what Theros had). Interestingly enough, Loki's nemesis among the gods was Heimdallr, who by my research seems to be GW, a fitting contrast with Loki. Philosophically, it could be argued that Loki is more BR than UR, as he's never looking to improve anything, just entertain himself. Shapeshifters are usually blue, but it's not inconceivable that red could do shapeshifting as well, especially on a temporary basis. However, giants were loosely sorted into frost and fire categories if I'm not mistaken, which definitely swings UR, and a Norse set with a focus on ice will definitely play up the duality of fire and ice.
Ideally we could get ten rare multicolored Gods based on the color pairs, but some of those slots would be better used to represent creatures like Fenrir (legendary RG Wolf, anyone?) and Fafnir (a Dwarf transformed into a Dragon by greed, which sounds BR to me). I could easily see Freya/Frigg adapted into an Elf Queen of sorts.
Speaking of Elves, while I think it would be cool to have black-aligned Dark Elves or Drow in a Norse set, I think greedy black-aligned Dwarves fit in better, and thus the Elves would likely be GW and the Dwarves BR, contrasting the two nicely. If Dwarves could be RWB to allow for some white Dwarves that care about Equipment, that'd be cool, but black I think is a higher priority for Dwarves in this case.
This of course begs the question of what the main Viking colors should be, and if Vikings get to be in all five colors, the main Raid colors. Red is definitely the main Raid color much as green is the main Landfall color. Black is a maybe; if BR is both the Raid pair and the Dwarf pair, that's going to tie Dwarves to Raid, and Dwarf tribal is already a vein ripe for mining. UR Raid is workable, and fitting given the Viking's use of longboats.
On top of all that, who should the planeswalkers in the set be? I imagine they'd want a Viking planeswalker to represent the set, though an Elf or Dwarf PW could work well too. Chandra might be a good candidate if they want her fire magic to play a role. This also seems like a good place for a cryomancer to appear.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
And mind you, even the mainstream, helmetless historical understanding of the vikings is very wrong. People that suggest that vikings should be pirates aren't off. I wouldn't do it in MtG, but viking literally means pirate. They didn't identify as vikings, the word's significance was heavily crafted as an overblown form during the 19th century under Scandinavian/German nationalism. Norse warriors existed with or without the vikings, even.
Vikings have been popular since Wagner...
It’s happened in other sets. Theros ate up 5 slots in all three sets and that’s when small sets were still a thing.
Also who said the Norse plane would be just 1 set. We can get two or three sets of it (like ravinca) to spread out stories of it.
On another note, I wouldn’t be surprised if we went to theros and followed it up with the Norse plane (similar to what God of War did). I can see wizards doing this and us getting a ton of Gods for standard. I just hope they do Theros right this time around. The Gods were great (especially in commander) but all other things were kind of lackluster for me.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.