I haven't seen anyone really mention something that I think is worth bringing up in the speculation thread. This is the first time I've seen the land art as a single piece of art as opposed to a mural of four arts together. The one piece of artwork for both is placed onto the card in its entirety.
Which might explain why 9th Edition is the first core set in a long time to not change the art for the lands. If that means there is going to be one of each land, which I now kinda hope for for the sake of change, then that will open up 3 x 5 = 15 spots to put actual cards into the set. They've been trying to get away from multiple arts since Alliances, and similar to the "no longer turning a blind eye to exceptions" trend they've undergone regarding Tims and Auras, this would be another step in unifying and removing exceptions, while opening spaces for more true content rather than alternate art.
Like I said before, that might also be a reason to not make new lands for 9th. By the time the art commissioning came up, they'd already been working on a set that was a certain size, and they didn't want to pay to have a mural painted up, but they also didn't want to change the size of the set to produce single arts of the cards.
If all of this is the case, I'm both happy and sad.
Happy - This allows fifteen more cards per set. That means fewer cards get consistently cut from each set for space reasons and pushed to later sets. That also helps on the "You return a land to your hand. Ok, you now play a land. Wait, that one has different art, so you must be holding a land back in your hand and didn't notice this." situation.
Sad - Kinda removes some of the grand scale imagery about the "world of ____" that it puts into your head. Loses some of the overall flavor feel.
EDIT: I'll further follow this in that we've seen exactly one piece of art for each color land. I also like the fact that we've stepped away from trying to force landscapes into planes they don't belong in. They tried to hard to make a believable "plains" and "Forest" in Mirrodin. They were so determined to draw from a metal landscaped plains shaped like hills that they didn't realize that it was a bit hard to imagine people doing this.
From what I see, they are now looking at the color pie to attribute what each mage is drawing power from. The green mages are drawing their mana from the green lifeforce itself. Not from forests, per se, but more from the moss growing in the buildings around them, the essence of life. This allows for more creativity from this angle. Red from the great stoned structures that tower over the city, created from deep within the earth's core. Black from the pits of the Undercity. Blue from the dams of the city, and the actual water itself. Really, should they focus on floating land masses, or the water itself for their power? White from the marble and great structures of beauty, belaying the magnificance and "official"ness of their power.
New Rules come out for 1999 6th Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO PORTAL! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for 2010 Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO YU-GI-OH! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for *Reserved for something in 2020* "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO *currently "simple" game by the more "skilled" players*! THE GAME IS..." etc.
Well, I gues that plains is a plains, but is is still a bit of a stretch. But I do notice the patches of feild, I believe...
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Click here to visit my userpage at Wikipedia, where I am currently an administrator.:cool2:
"Your attack has been rendered quite harmless, it is however, quite pretty." -Saprazzan vizier
"It was probably a lowsy spell in the first place." -Ertai, wizer adept
"The duel was going badly for me and Zur thought I was finished. He boasted that he would eat my soul--but all he ate were his words." -Gustha Ebbasdotter
Well, I think that's a great idea... even if some of the best land arts in the past mural style. But opening 15 spots for actual spells is well worth the price of losing that bit of flavor...
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"You know that a conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all." - Sherlock Holmes
just because they dont show us all of the land arts before hand, doesn't mean that there aren't three more.
I haven't seen anyone really mention something that I think is worth bringing up in the speculation thread. This is the first time I've seen the land art as a single piece of art as opposed to a mural of four arts together. The one piece of artwork for both is placed onto the card in its entirety.
see: onslaught, mirrodin, odessy, invasion, and more. none of those use the mural pieces like kamiagawa, in fact, the mural type style is the minority.
also, if you look very closely in a photo program, you can see that the island is #291, where if what you were saying is true, it would be 302, considering how the lands have been numbered since i can remember.
I'm not saying that this is guaranteed, just saying that it is possible. I'm really undecided on it due to card number.
Mirrodin did have mural lands. I'm unsure on Onslaught. Ody and down, probably not.
EDIT: I'm wrong on Mirrodin lands. I'm thinking of something else where someone did a mural art for lands that I remember. Something involving islands, though the main details escape me.
New Rules come out for 1999 6th Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO PORTAL! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for 2010 Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO YU-GI-OH! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for *Reserved for something in 2020* "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO *currently "simple" game by the more "skilled" players*! THE GAME IS..." etc.
I like to think that one day there will be alternate art for the basic lands, but they will all fill the same spot in the card list. Plains are plains, 4 art is nice but 4 spots on the set list takes away from thing that could have made it in the set. Why not just print 3 or 4 different arts but use the "basic land-plains" spot on the list for all of them?
I'm not saying that this is guaranteed, just saying that it is possible. I'm really undecided on it due to card number.
Mirrodin did have mural lands. I'm unsure on Onslaught. Ody and down, probably not.
mirrodin did not have mural lands, murals go in order of of number, left be the lowest, right being the highest, they most definately do not match up.
for example: take swamp 296 and 297.
296 is done by rob alexander, 297 by martina pilcerova. while it is possible that artitst colaborate in murals (mainly, and only, the stations from fifth dawn), it rarely happens. strike one.
the two lands have ENTIRELY different color schemes. strike two.
the two lands are being viewed from vantage points, 296 is much further away than 297. strike three.
If they wanted to put more cards in the set, they could simply increase the set size. There's no reason why though would have to fiddle with the numberings on the lands.
No no, they learned from 5th edition. They will not increase the set size just to pack more stuff into it. It becomes bulky, disjointed and undraftable.
They could do this, but like Joyd said, why not simply increase the set size?
WotC actually reduced the size of large sets not that long ago (a year? two years?), and had very good reasons for doing so. (I'll find a link later)
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"You know that a conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all." - Sherlock Holmes
They reduced the size of the large sets while increasing the size of the smaller sets. My original post was in response to those who seem to feel as if there's some stringent restriction on the exact number of cards they have to print and they have no power to change it, and it's a shame that 20 of the slots go to lands. If they did for some reason mush the lands into one 'slot', they would not print 19 more spells. If they did for some bizzaire reason want to print more spells, there's no reason to me with the numbering on the lands. Sorry for the confusion.
I wasn't saying have one "land" slot. I was thinking one land per type. Which only opens 15 slots up. One Mountain, one Forest, one Plains, one Island, one Swamp.
I'm still unsure on if they'd ever do this. We'll find out for sure if any other arts show up for the basic lands though I still think it would be a good idea though, but like I said, it may just be coincidence on what we've seen so far.
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New Rules come out for 1999 6th Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO PORTAL! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for 2010 Edition... "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO YU-GI-OH! THE GAME IS RUINED! EVERYONE PETITION AND GET THEM TO CHANGE IT BACK!"
New Rules come out for *Reserved for something in 2020* "THEY'RE TURNING MAGIC INTO *currently "simple" game by the more "skilled" players*! THE GAME IS..." etc.
I wasn't saying have one "land" slot. I was thinking one land per type. Which only opens 15 slots up. One Mountain, one Forest, one Plains, one Island, one Swamp.
I'm still unsure on if they'd ever do this. We'll find out for sure if any other arts show up for the basic lands though I still think it would be a good idea though, but like I said, it may just be coincidence on what we've seen so far.
it is, Christopher moeller said that he did a cycle of basic lands in ravnica, and none of the leaked images we know of are done by him.
first of all they don't need to get rid of the land slots because lands are hardly(if ever i can't think straight at the moment as im tired and sad that summers almost over) in booster packs so they really don't need to count lands... wait wut am i saying? umm...
they don't need to remove the land sets because the 15 extra slots aren't necessary.
there i got it out.
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I'll bet you wish you had a non-unglued/unhinged card that shared your first name.
Which might explain why 9th Edition is the first core set in a long time to not change the art for the lands. If that means there is going to be one of each land, which I now kinda hope for for the sake of change, then that will open up 3 x 5 = 15 spots to put actual cards into the set. They've been trying to get away from multiple arts since Alliances, and similar to the "no longer turning a blind eye to exceptions" trend they've undergone regarding Tims and Auras, this would be another step in unifying and removing exceptions, while opening spaces for more true content rather than alternate art.
Like I said before, that might also be a reason to not make new lands for 9th. By the time the art commissioning came up, they'd already been working on a set that was a certain size, and they didn't want to pay to have a mural painted up, but they also didn't want to change the size of the set to produce single arts of the cards.
If all of this is the case, I'm both happy and sad.
Happy - This allows fifteen more cards per set. That means fewer cards get consistently cut from each set for space reasons and pushed to later sets. That also helps on the "You return a land to your hand. Ok, you now play a land. Wait, that one has different art, so you must be holding a land back in your hand and didn't notice this." situation.
Sad - Kinda removes some of the grand scale imagery about the "world of ____" that it puts into your head. Loses some of the overall flavor feel.
EDIT: I'll further follow this in that we've seen exactly one piece of art for each color land. I also like the fact that we've stepped away from trying to force landscapes into planes they don't belong in. They tried to hard to make a believable "plains" and "Forest" in Mirrodin. They were so determined to draw from a metal landscaped plains shaped like hills that they didn't realize that it was a bit hard to imagine people doing this.
From what I see, they are now looking at the color pie to attribute what each mage is drawing power from. The green mages are drawing their mana from the green lifeforce itself. Not from forests, per se, but more from the moss growing in the buildings around them, the essence of life. This allows for more creativity from this angle. Red from the great stoned structures that tower over the city, created from deep within the earth's core. Black from the pits of the Undercity. Blue from the dams of the city, and the actual water itself. Really, should they focus on floating land masses, or the water itself for their power? White from the marble and great structures of beauty, belaying the magnificance and "official"ness of their power.
Red =
Black =
Green =
Blue =
This art seems like a darker version and more cropped version of this one:http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana300/Ravnica_Island_9944242.jpg
Plains = http://www.wizards.com/magic/images/mtgcom/arcana300/Ravnica_Plains_2604044.jpg
You can see the actual fields in the distance, showing the great towers and pillars of stone and marble and the fields between the various buildings as well.
This is the image on the card itself:
"Your attack has been rendered quite harmless, it is however, quite pretty." -Saprazzan vizier
"It was probably a lowsy spell in the first place." -Ertai, wizer adept
"The duel was going badly for me and Zur thought I was finished. He boasted that he would eat my soul--but all he ate were his words." -Gustha Ebbasdotter
see: onslaught, mirrodin, odessy, invasion, and more. none of those use the mural pieces like kamiagawa, in fact, the mural type style is the minority.
also, if you look very closely in a photo program, you can see that the island is #291, where if what you were saying is true, it would be 302, considering how the lands have been numbered since i can remember.
Mirrodin did have mural lands. I'm unsure on Onslaught. Ody and down, probably not.
EDIT: I'm wrong on Mirrodin lands. I'm thinking of something else where someone did a mural art for lands that I remember. Something involving islands, though the main details escape me.
mirrodin did not have mural lands, murals go in order of of number, left be the lowest, right being the highest, they most definately do not match up.
for example: take swamp 296 and 297.
296 is done by rob alexander, 297 by martina pilcerova. while it is possible that artitst colaborate in murals (mainly, and only, the stations from fifth dawn), it rarely happens. strike one.
the two lands have ENTIRELY different color schemes. strike two.
the two lands are being viewed from vantage points, 296 is much further away than 297. strike three.
Because of what S!lat just said.
WotC actually reduced the size of large sets not that long ago (a year? two years?), and had very good reasons for doing so. (I'll find a link later)
I'm still unsure on if they'd ever do this. We'll find out for sure if any other arts show up for the basic lands though I still think it would be a good idea though, but like I said, it may just be coincidence on what we've seen so far.
it is, Christopher moeller said that he did a cycle of basic lands in ravnica, and none of the leaked images we know of are done by him.
they don't need to remove the land sets because the 15 extra slots aren't necessary.
there i got it out.
Add that the numbers on the cards don't match with the theory at all---some speculation on something that won't happen.
I know this is speculation, but
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