So, I looked over the options and I chose. Dragons of Tarkir was going to have an enemy-color theme. We had never made a cycle of enemy-colored legendary Dragons and the only enemy-color themed set we had ever done was Apocalypse from fifteen years ago. I also liked the idea that when the dragons took over, there was a lot of conflict, which the enemy colors helped portray....
I then got a visit from Erik Lauer...Erik explained that he felt enemy color pairs was a mistake...Drafting enemy two-color pairs was just going to be too similar. Erik suggested I change it to ally-color...I really liked thematically that the dragon set was enemy-colored, but as I thought over what Erik was saying I realized he was right. Our central goal was to make a unique draft structure work and to do that we needed the two to be very different.
A perfectly valid explanation.
That said, having seen the whole block, I think DTK and KTK block as a whole would have been better served evolving from wedge into enemy colored than wedge into allied color.
1 - The enemy colors arguably better fit the mechanics
Abzan: WBG evolving into WB, which is a better fit for "survival magic"/bleeder strategy
Jeskai: URW evolving into UR, which has been the classic home of the instant/sorcery matters theme
Sultai: BGU evolving into BG, which has been the classic home of "graveyard as a resource" (see: dredge, scavenge) as well as a good home for sacrificing your own creatures/expendable creatures
Mardu: RWB evolving into RW, which is a great aggro rush color pair
Temur: GUR evolving into GU, which between green fatties and blue "serpents" is an equally valid home for large ground guys
2 - Enemy pairs fit the clan locations (flavor)
The Abzan live in the desert. The desert is an ideal location for a WB clan, but makes less sense with G. Aside from oases (which would be just as blue as green), where are you going to find green mana in a desert?
The Sultai live in a jungle. Jungles are a great mix of black, green, and blue, but if I had to drop one, I'd drop blue. I certainly wouldn't drop green! Some forests in the past have been portrayed as jungles (Mirage), or look at Jungle Basin. Or, going back to the beginning, look at Bayou. We're supposed to accept blue/black as the "jungle" on this plane?
The Jeskai live on mountains. On mountains! How do you drop the red out of the clan that lives on mountains?
The Mardu live on the steppes, which resemble plains a lot more than any other land type (see: Secluded Steppe).
Temur is less clear, since Karplusan Forest sets a precedent for red-green as the "frozen highlands" color. But Temur is essentially living in a Tundra, white-blue, so green-blue would have been a reasonable fit for this setting too. After all, blue is the "ice" color.
3 - Would justify the weird mana order in KTK
I know we're all used to it now, but KTK had some confusing mana symbols at start. Why did they change, for example, the RWU cost of something like Numot to URW? Why reorder how colors had traditionally appeared? Explanations were given (easier to draft if they are sorted into two enemy color pairs), but the explanations seem questionable now that we've seen the ultimate conclusion into allied pairs, which reverts the order to their traditional places.
We get the hard-to-grok Abzan WBG into GW
Instead of the intuitive "drop the last color" of WBG into WB
Also, the explanation for the new order (URW) is that it "puts the dominant color first." But now Ojutai is WU, with blue being dominant, yet the color white comes first.
4 - Comparing to Shards of Alara
The only previous precedent, Shards of Alara, had tons of gold cards. Each shard had:
- Some mono color designs (heaviest in the center color)
- Lots of allied color pair cards
- Quite a few tri-color cards
- Very few enemy colors pair cards*
Since Shards block was so allied-heavy, it makes sense that Khans block could be enemy-heavy. SOA certainly didn't feel the need to "balance out" all the allied with an enemy-heavy set at the end.
I know this is a philosophy of design issue, but the overall Magic balance is much higher towards allied colors. Maybe that's the way they want it, maybe not. Even if Khans block had been mostly enemy colors, the overall balance would still favor allied color pairs.
5 - Sarkhan's transformation would have made more sense
Sarkhan "fixed" the world and himself. But now he's an oddity in the world. I know this was explained as part of his flavor, ("he is an oddity of time, someone who was not even born in this timeline!") but that explanation is poorly executed, considering how many other characters appear in both timelines.
If Zurgo and Narset are born in both timelines, why not Sarkhan? I mean, having any of them be born again a thousand years after the timeline was severely shifted is absurd, really soft time-travel writing, but I'm just saying, that logic could/should have been applied to Sarkhan, who always felt that he belonged to a different world when Dragons were alive anyway. Now you're saying he doesn't belong in that world? What gives?
Now he's an enemy/wedge oddity in the new world, instead of representing it. Having him be three-color would have been weird enough if DTK was otherwise 2-color enemy pairs. But at least it would explain his mental distress--it wasn’t until he accepted his enemy-colored nature that he became whole.
On the flipside, Narset could have:
A) Stayed WU (she was initially introduced as a "heretic" anyway, so she could be the only allied card in the set)
B) Just been UR (giving instants and sorceries rebound FEELS a lot more Izzet than Azorius anyway)
6 - Placement of the allied-pair fetch lands
The set has two large blocks. One has an allied-color theme, the other has a wedge and enemy color theme. Guess where the allied fetches are?
It's not that I don't like the set as it came out. I just think it could have been better. KTK was a home-run in my book. DTK feels much less memorable.
1 - The enemy colors arguably better fit the mechanics
Abzan: WBG evolving into WB, which is a better fit for "survival magic"/bleeder strategy
Jeskai: URW evolving into UR, which has been the classic home of the instant/sorcery matters theme
Sultai: BGU evolving into BG, which has been the classic home of "graveyard as a resource" (see: dredge, scavenge) as well as a good home for sacrificing your own creatures/expendable creatures
Mardu: RWB evolving into RW, which is a great aggro rush color pair
Temur: GUR evolving into GU, which between green fatties and blue "serpents" is an equally valid home for large ground guys
From the article, a few paragraphs below where you stopped:
"Making dragon clans that were not Ravnica guilds was actually quite refreshing."
Your description of what you think the clans should have become are exactly Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros and Simic. That's why they're not the way you wanted. Plus, the clans were allied colors with one shared enemy. That's why there were no black bolster cards in FRF, no red prowess cards, no white dash cards, no green delve cards, and no blue ferocious cards. Thematically, it makes no sense for the allied stuff in FRF to go to enemy colored pairs. It makes perfect sense for allied colors in FRF to add one color in Khans, or stay that color in DTK.
Plus, the clans were allied colors with one shared enemy. That's why there were no black bolster cards in FRF, no red prowess cards, no white dash cards, no green delve cards, and no blue ferocious cards. Thematically, it makes no sense for the allied stuff in FRF to go to enemy colored pairs. It makes perfect sense for allied colors in FRF to add one color in Khans, or stay that color in DTK.
Yeah I'm talking about a step further back than that. If our eventual destination was enemy pairs, they would have had to use different keywords. Fate Reforged would have looked a lot different to set up a different DTK. Bolster is not as good a match for WB, Dash is not as good a match for RW, etc.
That said, I'm not convinced that, playwise, Kolaghan doesn't feel like Rakdos (offense at the cost of defense) or that Atarka doesn't feel like Gruul (big beaters) anyway.
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On 7/14/10, broke 1900 mark! <3 ROE.
I don't get the lack of love for enemy pairs.Can someone explain why they decided to change to ally pairs instead of enemy saying that it was a mistake
I don't get the lack of love for enemy pairs.Can someone explain why they decided to change to ally pairs instead of enemy saying that it was a mistake
It has to do with the draft format.
In Khans, when you're drafting, it makes sense to start with an enemy pair then move into a 3rd color as a splash. If you start for WB, for example, depending on signals, you can move into either Mardu (R) or Abzan (G). If you start the draft with an ally pair you end up forced into a single clan. For example, if you start WU the only clan you can play is Jeskai. Since gold cards tend to be the most powerful, leaving yourself open is hugely important.
If Dragons had been enemy color pairs, it would make the draft format feel too similar, which didn't mesh with the alternate timeline motif. In Khans you want to start with enemy colors, in dragons you want to start with ally colors. In either case, you're free to draft the opposite way (it's entirely possible to draft WB warriors in Dragons, for instance), but you close yourself off from the gold cards if you do that.
So because of Draft that the flavor,story and enemy color pairing support gets the shaft and gets ruined...
I know Limited is important but this is rather disapointing.Like the OP showed that the art really made the focus would indeed be on enemy pairing so because they missed a detail about Draft that they changed everything.I thought the alternate timeline mortif was just to drop a color to make duel color,specially enemies but aparently not.
So because of Draft that the flavor,story and enemy color pairing support gets the shaft and gets ruined...
Tarkir was a block designed around the draft. The basis, the fundamental concept, was to have a three-set block where you drafted A+B and then B+C in such a way that the two draft experiences were different. So strong enemy pairs on the first set, strong allied pairs on the third set, and a second set that worked well with both was the solution.
Everything else, including flavor, was made to fit the draft environment they wanted to create. Other blocks are created around other parts as the basis, this one was built around the Limited play.
I'll not discuss if they succeeded or not, and I don't want to even touch the "ruined" drama. Just pointing out the dragons and clans and time travel and etc came later and won't exist without the desire to have the two different draft environments.
A perfectly valid explanation.
That said, having seen the whole block, I think DTK and KTK block as a whole would have been better served evolving from wedge into enemy colored than wedge into allied color.
1 - The enemy colors arguably better fit the mechanics
Abzan: WBG evolving into WB, which is a better fit for "survival magic"/bleeder strategy
Jeskai: URW evolving into UR, which has been the classic home of the instant/sorcery matters theme
Sultai: BGU evolving into BG, which has been the classic home of "graveyard as a resource" (see: dredge, scavenge) as well as a good home for sacrificing your own creatures/expendable creatures
Mardu: RWB evolving into RW, which is a great aggro rush color pair
Temur: GUR evolving into GU, which between green fatties and blue "serpents" is an equally valid home for large ground guys
2 - Enemy pairs fit the clan locations (flavor)
The Abzan live in the desert. The desert is an ideal location for a WB clan, but makes less sense with G. Aside from oases (which would be just as blue as green), where are you going to find green mana in a desert?
The Sultai live in a jungle. Jungles are a great mix of black, green, and blue, but if I had to drop one, I'd drop blue. I certainly wouldn't drop green! Some forests in the past have been portrayed as jungles (Mirage), or look at Jungle Basin. Or, going back to the beginning, look at Bayou. We're supposed to accept blue/black as the "jungle" on this plane?
The Jeskai live on mountains. On mountains! How do you drop the red out of the clan that lives on mountains?
The Mardu live on the steppes, which resemble plains a lot more than any other land type (see: Secluded Steppe).
Temur is less clear, since Karplusan Forest sets a precedent for red-green as the "frozen highlands" color. But Temur is essentially living in a Tundra, white-blue, so green-blue would have been a reasonable fit for this setting too. After all, blue is the "ice" color.
3 - Would justify the weird mana order in KTK
I know we're all used to it now, but KTK had some confusing mana symbols at start. Why did they change, for example, the RWU cost of something like Numot to URW? Why reorder how colors had traditionally appeared? Explanations were given (easier to draft if they are sorted into two enemy color pairs), but the explanations seem questionable now that we've seen the ultimate conclusion into allied pairs, which reverts the order to their traditional places.
We get the hard-to-grok Abzan WBG into GW
Instead of the intuitive "drop the last color" of WBG into WB
Also, the explanation for the new order (URW) is that it "puts the dominant color first." But now Ojutai is WU, with blue being dominant, yet the color white comes first.
4 - Comparing to Shards of Alara
The only previous precedent, Shards of Alara, had tons of gold cards. Each shard had:
- Some mono color designs (heaviest in the center color)
- Lots of allied color pair cards
- Quite a few tri-color cards
- Very few enemy colors pair cards*
*One enemy-color card per Shard in SOA (Bull Cerodon, Jhessian Infiltrator), none in Conflux, and weird "mix of two worlds" designs in ARB (Vedalken Heretic is Esper/Naya, Spellbound Dragon is Jund/Esper)
Since Shards block was so allied-heavy, it makes sense that Khans block could be enemy-heavy. SOA certainly didn't feel the need to "balance out" all the allied with an enemy-heavy set at the end.
I know this is a philosophy of design issue, but the overall Magic balance is much higher towards allied colors. Maybe that's the way they want it, maybe not. Even if Khans block had been mostly enemy colors, the overall balance would still favor allied color pairs.
5 - Sarkhan's transformation would have made more sense
Sarkhan "fixed" the world and himself. But now he's an oddity in the world. I know this was explained as part of his flavor, ("he is an oddity of time, someone who was not even born in this timeline!") but that explanation is poorly executed, considering how many other characters appear in both timelines.
If Zurgo and Narset are born in both timelines, why not Sarkhan? I mean, having any of them be born again a thousand years after the timeline was severely shifted is absurd, really soft time-travel writing, but I'm just saying, that logic could/should have been applied to Sarkhan, who always felt that he belonged to a different world when Dragons were alive anyway. Now you're saying he doesn't belong in that world? What gives?
Now he's an enemy/wedge oddity in the new world, instead of representing it. Having him be three-color would have been weird enough if DTK was otherwise 2-color enemy pairs. But at least it would explain his mental distress--it wasn’t until he accepted his enemy-colored nature that he became whole.
On the flipside, Narset could have:
A) Stayed WU (she was initially introduced as a "heretic" anyway, so she could be the only allied card in the set)
B) Just been UR (giving instants and sorceries rebound FEELS a lot more Izzet than Azorius anyway)
6 - Placement of the allied-pair fetch lands
The set has two large blocks. One has an allied-color theme, the other has a wedge and enemy color theme. Guess where the allied fetches are?
It's not that I don't like the set as it came out. I just think it could have been better. KTK was a home-run in my book. DTK feels much less memorable.
On 7/14/10, broke 1900 mark! <3 ROE.
From the article, a few paragraphs below where you stopped:
"Making dragon clans that were not Ravnica guilds was actually quite refreshing."
Your description of what you think the clans should have become are exactly Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, Boros and Simic. That's why they're not the way you wanted. Plus, the clans were allied colors with one shared enemy. That's why there were no black bolster cards in FRF, no red prowess cards, no white dash cards, no green delve cards, and no blue ferocious cards. Thematically, it makes no sense for the allied stuff in FRF to go to enemy colored pairs. It makes perfect sense for allied colors in FRF to add one color in Khans, or stay that color in DTK.
Yeah I'm talking about a step further back than that. If our eventual destination was enemy pairs, they would have had to use different keywords. Fate Reforged would have looked a lot different to set up a different DTK. Bolster is not as good a match for WB, Dash is not as good a match for RW, etc.
That said, I'm not convinced that, playwise, Kolaghan doesn't feel like Rakdos (offense at the cost of defense) or that Atarka doesn't feel like Gruul (big beaters) anyway.
On 7/14/10, broke 1900 mark! <3 ROE.
In Khans, when you're drafting, it makes sense to start with an enemy pair then move into a 3rd color as a splash. If you start for WB, for example, depending on signals, you can move into either Mardu (R) or Abzan (G). If you start the draft with an ally pair you end up forced into a single clan. For example, if you start WU the only clan you can play is Jeskai. Since gold cards tend to be the most powerful, leaving yourself open is hugely important.
If Dragons had been enemy color pairs, it would make the draft format feel too similar, which didn't mesh with the alternate timeline motif. In Khans you want to start with enemy colors, in dragons you want to start with ally colors. In either case, you're free to draft the opposite way (it's entirely possible to draft WB warriors in Dragons, for instance), but you close yourself off from the gold cards if you do that.
I know Limited is important but this is rather disapointing.Like the OP showed that the art really made the focus would indeed be on enemy pairing so because they missed a detail about Draft that they changed everything.I thought the alternate timeline mortif was just to drop a color to make duel color,specially enemies but aparently not.
Tarkir was a block designed around the draft. The basis, the fundamental concept, was to have a three-set block where you drafted A+B and then B+C in such a way that the two draft experiences were different. So strong enemy pairs on the first set, strong allied pairs on the third set, and a second set that worked well with both was the solution.
Everything else, including flavor, was made to fit the draft environment they wanted to create. Other blocks are created around other parts as the basis, this one was built around the Limited play.
I'll not discuss if they succeeded or not, and I don't want to even touch the "ruined" drama. Just pointing out the dragons and clans and time travel and etc came later and won't exist without the desire to have the two different draft environments.
7 - Continues drafts archetypes from KTK instead of half-dropping them
I mean WB as the Warriors-matter color pair, BG as the "toughness matters" color pair, and arguably as UG as the "morph build around" pair.
These still PARTIALLY exist in DTK, but now that they're not in supported color combos.
What I mean is, it's hard to unite Blood-Chin Fanatic and Blood-Chin Rager with Arashin Foremost. It's hard for Wandering Tombshell and Assault Formation to meet alongside Grim Contest. Obscuring AEther and Salt Road Ambushers don't get to meet up with Qarsi Deceiver to continue in the spirit of Secret Plans. Etc.
On 7/14/10, broke 1900 mark! <3 ROE.