The thing about this theory is that it's been announced that while the Khans of Tarkir set would be wedge-themed, the rest of the block is not.
Not quite; it was announced that the third set (presumably named Dragons of Tarkir), the one that's a separate miniblock, wouldn't be wedge-themed, not that the second set (Fate Reforged), wouldn't be.
And even then, it doesn't matter in the sense that the wedges are still going to be in Dragons even if the set isn’t themed on them. There is prior precedent for this in miniblocks of a larger block, namely Lorwyn-Shadowmoor: Lorwyn/Morningtide was themed on tribes. Shadowmoor/Eventide was instead themed on hybrid colors, but despite not being themed on tribes, it still had the tribes in the set. Similarly, Dragons of Tarkir may not be themed on the wedges, but it still has the wedges in the set.
(Though the name of the third set hasn’t been officially announced yet, throughout this post, I’m just going to go ahead and assume that the rumors are correct and that the third set will be named Dragons of Tarkir.)
Ever since we learned the first details about the wedges of Khans of Tarkir, something has greatly bothered me about them: WotC announced that each wedge is focused on a specific one of its allied colors. For example, Abzan is WBG: it has two allied colors (W and G) and one enemy color (B), but it is not focused on the singular enemy color, but on white, one of the two allied colors. This results in a disturbing asymmetry: why white instead of green? Why is the wedge WBG, which should be balanced between the two allied sides, focused on white? It should be focused on black, the singular enemy color, as focusing on either allied color biases against the other allied color. While it is true that that all 5 wedges together gives equal weight to all 5 colors, each individual wedge by itself gives unequal treatment to its own allied colors, favoring one over the other.
Even stranger, Mark Rosewater is the head designer, and this asymmetry is at odds with the “elegance” and the importance of color balance that he often speaks about as valuing in design. I wasn’t the only one bothered by this asymmetry; others questioned Rosewater on his blog:
Quote from wereoctopus »
When you talk about why you're doing multicolor again so soon, can you also address why the wedges are named after one of the two ally colors rather than the enemy color? Both have me really scratching my head as to why. But then, surprise is good
...to which Rosewater responded:
Quote from Mark Rosewater »
The names (and clans) are based on all three colors being together. Things work better mechanically though when the clan was centered on a color so that’s what we did. When I can, I’ll explain why it wasn’t centered on the enemy color.
I was thus looking forward to seeing his design articles to learn the reasons, and in today’s article, Rosewater partially addresses the issue. First, he takes much of the article to explain that the choice of which colors to make each of the clans, and their single-color focus, was chosen for reasons of flavor, not mechanics. Finally, he addresses the issue of the asymmetry directly:
Quote from Mark Rosewater »
There was one last problem. The shards were centered around the color that had both allies. It seemed only fitting, then, that the wedges would be built around the color that had the two enemies, but as we had built the clans to match the flavor of the dragon attributes and the creative take on the clans we found that they centered not on the enemy color but one of the ally colors. Everything worked so naturally, though, we felt it was best to leave it be and not force it another way. As you will see later in the block, this decision also became important for other reasons.
It is that last sentence, which I have boldfaced, which I found interesting and got me to thinking. Rosewater is obviously holding something back and hinting at something here. Now, why would the decision to focus on one specific allied color be important later in the block?
My theory: What if the focused color of each wedge shifts throughout the block?
In Khans of Tarkir, we already know the focus (the capitalized color) of each wedge is as follows (one "major"/allied color for a large set):
-Wbg
-Urw
-Bgu
-Rwb
-Gur
If my theory is correct, then in the (small) second set, Fate Reforged, the wedges will retain the same three colors, but each wedge will now be focused on the enemy color (one "minor"/enemy color for the small set):
-wBg
-uRw
-bGu
-rWb
-gUr
Finally, in the (large) third set, Dragons of Tarkir, the wedges will shift to the other allied color (another "major"/allied color for the other large set):
-wbG
-urW
-bgU
-rwB
-guR
By having the other allied color focused on in the other large set, this corrects the initial asymmetry and ends up equalizing everything by giving each allied color of each wedge one large set in which it is the focus!
This fits with WotC talking about the second set acting as a “bridge” between the two large sets in multiple ways:
-WotC talking about how the second set was designed to play well but differently with the first set and the third set. That is, Khans/Fate-Reforged and Dragons/Fate-Reforged would both play well, but would also play quite differently from each other.
The three sets in this block are connected through a complex web of mechanics. It's early, so I can't explain exactly what I mean, but as the block evolves you all will get a chance to see for yourselves. Never before have all the mechanical pieces been so interconnected.
The three sets are connected by each using the wedges. The evolution is that the color focus within each wedge shifts throughout the block, from allied color to enemy color and then back to the other allied color: allied -> enemy -> allied.
-There is prior precedent for similar shifts. This is reminiscent of other “shifts within the same category” in the structure of blocks of the past, such as the shift in Lorwyn to Morningtide from race creature types to class creature types, or the shift in Shadowmoor to Eventide from hybrid allied colors to hybrid enemy colors, or the shift from Torment to Judgment from a focus on B to a focus on G/W.
-This fits with the announced time traveling storyline: when we travel to the past in Fate Reforged, we find that the factions started out, in the past, with a different mentality/mindset that more favored the opposing color. Whatever changes occur in the past during the storyline of Fate Reforged leads to a new timeline in Dragons of Tarkir in which the dragons were not driven to extinction and in which there are instead transformed factions with the same overall wedge colors but a third mentality/mindset that more favors the remaining allied color that wasn’t the focus of the original Khans of Tarkir.
Will you be explaining why the clans are off-centered wedges (and why you picked each particular allied color for the center) soon or do we need to wait until further into the block?
I talk about it some in my preview articles but the major reason has to do with things you don’t know about yet.
This! Please, please reduce the JavaScript! There is WAY excessive amounts of it that is causing the site to perform extremely slowly in a way it never did on the old forums. Even just scrolling/reading drags and is slow.
The base method of the way the Google PageRank algorithm works (it's more complicated than this, but this is the most basic idea) is that it ranks pages based on incoming links to that page.
as part of his prediction of what the god card name was going to be. The Google robot crawler then automatically indexes that link for the phrase "Iroas, God of Triumph".
You (the original poster of this thread) searched for that same phrase.
Since this is not yet a common phrase (since the card has not yet been released), just a handful of users making links inside comments on Gatherer is enough to bump pages up PageRank, and Google thus points a search for "Iroas, God of Triumph" to the (nonexistent) Gatherer page http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[Iroas,%20God%20of%20Triumph]. A similar process (not necessarily just within Gatherer comments, but potentially also based on incoming links from guesses on other websites) is causing similar search results for the other gods.
Exactly, because these links are just the result of random users creating links based on their guesses about what the names are going to be.
In other words, this information is NOT evidence the cards are going to be named any such thing, since these searches are the results of links created by random users, not by any actual "hidden information" from Gatherer.
Very interesting. I can't think of a compelling reason that those would show up like that as gatherer searches apart from "those are the actual names of the cards that are already in the back end somehow".
They show up as Gatherer searches because people were speculating them as names and creating links to them. They are NOT from card names somehow leaking from the backend.
Set Name Journey into Nyx Block Set 3 of 3 in the Theros block Number of Cards 165 Prerelease Events April 26-27, 2014 Release Date May 2, 2014 Launch Weekend May 2-4, 2014 Game Day May 24-25, 2014
Magic Online Prerelease Events May 9-12, 2014 Magic Online Release Date May 12, 2014 Magic Online Release Events May 12-28, 2014
Pro Tour Journey into Nyx May 16-18, 2014 Pro Tour Journey into Nyx Location Atlanta, Georgia, USA Pro Tour Journey into Nyx Formats
Swiss: Theros Block Constructed / Journey into Nyx-Born of the Gods-Theros Draft
Top 8: Theros Block Constructed
Official Three-Letter Code JOU Twitter Hashtag#MTGJOU
Initial Concept and Game Design
Ethan Fleischer (lead)
Dan Emmons
Erik Lauer
Mark Rosewater
Matt Tabak
Final Game Design and Development
Dave Humpherys (lead)
Ian Duke
Tom Jenkot
Erik Lauer
Ken Nagle
Languages English, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish Available in Booster Packs, Intro Packs*, Event Deck*, Fat Pack* (* - Not available in all languages) (Magic Online only available in English.)
(For reference, the links to the threads for the official announcements of Theros and Born of the Gods are, respectively, here and here.)
Before you start dreaming of your Commander decks of tomorrow, we do have to note that Marath will be receiving errata upon release. The text "X can't be 0" was inadvertantly [sic] left off the card.
Marath, Will of the Wild
RGW
Legendary Creature - Elemental Beast
Marath, Will of the Wild enters the battlefield with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the amount of mana spent to cast it.
X, Remove X +1/+1 counters from Marath: Choose one -- Put X +1/+1 counters on target creature; or Marath deals X damage to target creature or player; or put an X/X green Elemental creature token onto the battlefield. [X can't be 0.]
0/0
The idea seems like a combination of college (American) football's Top 25 rankings, professional tennis's (ATP/WTA) rolling weekly rankings, and/or chess's FIDE monthly Elo rating rankings so that Magic: The Gathering can have a player be a "World No. 1". Continuing the analogy, the current MTG #1, Josh Utter-Leyton, would therefore be comparable to the Alabama Crimson Tide as the current #1-ranked college football team, Serbia's Novak Djokovic as the current world no. 1 tennis player, and Norway's Magnus Carlsen as the current world no. 1 chess player).
Waste Not: 6101 votes, 23.1% of the vote
Submitted by: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
Necroharvest: 5243 votes, 19.8% of the vote
Submitted by: Gus Carson and Enrique Islas Miranda
Spoils of Misery: 4888 votes, 18.5% of the vote
Submitted by: William Viau
Carpe Noctem: 3630 votes,13.7% of the vote
Submitted by: Mario Castillo
Vile Plunder: 2786 votes, 10.5% of the vote
Submitted by: Reggie Sauls
Riches from Rags: 1730 votes, 6.5% of the vote
Submitted by: Wil Blanks and Steve-O
Skullduggery: 1587 votes, 6.0% of the vote
Submitted by: Michael Bahr, Noah Barron, David Felton, Travis Froggatt, Jon Gillespie, Stephen Hagen, Nik Porter, Joseph Sedita, Alex Van Sickler, and Art Wolff
Drudge Rummage: 463 votes, 1.8% of the vote
Submitted by: Reuxben
Jennifer Clarke Wilkes
Jennifer came to Wizards of the Coast in 1995 as the editor for Ars Magica. She later moved to editing Magic: The Gathering until 1999, when she became an RPG editor. She has been involved with many games in the company, from writing world documents and flavor text, to playtesting various TCGs and board games, to occasionally trying her hand at RPG design. In January 2013, she returned to Magic, joining the creative team. A Classics major, she is very excited about Theros!
uhm, i think akros is more similar to sparta. setessa is the amazon city
still, good and hilarious work. the rootwalla against leonida, the showdown of the century!
Thanks! I actually did know Akros is more similar (in culture) to Sparta, but I went with Setessa because of its similarity (in pronounciation) to Sparta. "This is AKROOOOOOOS!!!" unfortunately just doesn't have the same sound that "This is SETESSAAAAAAA!!!" and "This is SPARTAAAAAAA!!!" do.
But I went ahead and made an Akros card. Anax and Cymede become Leonidas and Gorgo...or Leonax and Gorgomede?
No. Flavor articles are usually on Wednesdays. For example, see the Planeswalker's Guide to Theros or the Planeswalker's Guide to Journey into Nyx.
Not quite; it was announced that the third set (presumably named Dragons of Tarkir), the one that's a separate miniblock, wouldn't be wedge-themed, not that the second set (Fate Reforged), wouldn't be.
And even then, it doesn't matter in the sense that the wedges are still going to be in Dragons even if the set isn’t themed on them. There is prior precedent for this in miniblocks of a larger block, namely Lorwyn-Shadowmoor: Lorwyn/Morningtide was themed on tribes. Shadowmoor/Eventide was instead themed on hybrid colors, but despite not being themed on tribes, it still had the tribes in the set. Similarly, Dragons of Tarkir may not be themed on the wedges, but it still has the wedges in the set.
Ever since we learned the first details about the wedges of Khans of Tarkir, something has greatly bothered me about them: WotC announced that each wedge is focused on a specific one of its allied colors. For example, Abzan is WBG: it has two allied colors (W and G) and one enemy color (B), but it is not focused on the singular enemy color, but on white, one of the two allied colors. This results in a disturbing asymmetry: why white instead of green? Why is the wedge WBG, which should be balanced between the two allied sides, focused on white? It should be focused on black, the singular enemy color, as focusing on either allied color biases against the other allied color. While it is true that that all 5 wedges together gives equal weight to all 5 colors, each individual wedge by itself gives unequal treatment to its own allied colors, favoring one over the other.
Even stranger, Mark Rosewater is the head designer, and this asymmetry is at odds with the “elegance” and the importance of color balance that he often speaks about as valuing in design. I wasn’t the only one bothered by this asymmetry; others questioned Rosewater on his blog:
...to which Rosewater responded:
I was thus looking forward to seeing his design articles to learn the reasons, and in today’s article, Rosewater partially addresses the issue. First, he takes much of the article to explain that the choice of which colors to make each of the clans, and their single-color focus, was chosen for reasons of flavor, not mechanics. Finally, he addresses the issue of the asymmetry directly:
It is that last sentence, which I have boldfaced, which I found interesting and got me to thinking. Rosewater is obviously holding something back and hinting at something here. Now, why would the decision to focus on one specific allied color be important later in the block?
My theory: What if the focused color of each wedge shifts throughout the block?
In Khans of Tarkir, we already know the focus (the capitalized color) of each wedge is as follows (one "major"/allied color for a large set):
-Wbg
-Urw
-Bgu
-Rwb
-Gur
If my theory is correct, then in the (small) second set, Fate Reforged, the wedges will retain the same three colors, but each wedge will now be focused on the enemy color (one "minor"/enemy color for the small set):
-wBg
-uRw
-bGu
-rWb
-gUr
Finally, in the (large) third set, Dragons of Tarkir, the wedges will shift to the other allied color (another "major"/allied color for the other large set):
-wbG
-urW
-bgU
-rwB
-guR
By having the other allied color focused on in the other large set, this corrects the initial asymmetry and ends up equalizing everything by giving each allied color of each wedge one large set in which it is the focus!
This fits with WotC talking about the second set acting as a “bridge” between the two large sets in multiple ways:
-WotC talking about how the second set was designed to play well but differently with the first set and the third set. That is, Khans/Fate-Reforged and Dragons/Fate-Reforged would both play well, but would also play quite differently from each other.
-Consider this quote from Mark Rosewater:
The three sets are connected by each using the wedges. The evolution is that the color focus within each wedge shifts throughout the block, from allied color to enemy color and then back to the other allied color: allied -> enemy -> allied.
-There is prior precedent for similar shifts. This is reminiscent of other “shifts within the same category” in the structure of blocks of the past, such as the shift in Lorwyn to Morningtide from race creature types to class creature types, or the shift in Shadowmoor to Eventide from hybrid allied colors to hybrid enemy colors, or the shift from Torment to Judgment from a focus on B to a focus on G/W.
-This fits with the announced time traveling storyline: when we travel to the past in Fate Reforged, we find that the factions started out, in the past, with a different mentality/mindset that more favored the opposing color. Whatever changes occur in the past during the storyline of Fate Reforged leads to a new timeline in Dragons of Tarkir in which the dragons were not driven to extinction and in which there are instead transformed factions with the same overall wedge colors but a third mentality/mindset that more favors the remaining allied color that wasn’t the focus of the original Khans of Tarkir.
-I just found this gem from Mark Rosewater’s blog (note the part I've boldfaced):
The base method of the way the Google PageRank algorithm works (it's more complicated than this, but this is the most basic idea) is that it ranks pages based on incoming links to that page.
On the page http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=373560, a user named DarthParallax, in his comment on the Gatherer card Temple of Triumph, created a (red) (meaning it links to no existing card) link to
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Iroas,%20God%20of%20Triumph
as part of his prediction of what the god card name was going to be. The Google robot crawler then automatically indexes that link for the phrase "Iroas, God of Triumph".
You (the original poster of this thread) searched for that same phrase.
Since this is not yet a common phrase (since the card has not yet been released), just a handful of users making links inside comments on Gatherer is enough to bump pages up PageRank, and Google thus points a search for "Iroas, God of Triumph" to the (nonexistent) Gatherer page http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+[Iroas,%20God%20of%20Triumph]. A similar process (not necessarily just within Gatherer comments, but potentially also based on incoming links from guesses on other websites) is causing similar search results for the other gods.
Exactly, because these links are just the result of random users creating links based on their guesses about what the names are going to be.
In other words, this information is NOT evidence the cards are going to be named any such thing, since these searches are the results of links created by random users, not by any actual "hidden information" from Gatherer.
They show up as Gatherer searches because people were speculating them as names and creating links to them. They are NOT from card names somehow leaking from the backend.
(For reference, the links to the threads for the official announcements of Theros and Born of the Gods are, respectively, here and here.)
Marath, Will of the Wild
RGW
Legendary Creature - Elemental Beast
Marath, Will of the Wild enters the battlefield with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the amount of mana spent to cast it.
X, Remove X +1/+1 counters from Marath: Choose one -- Put X +1/+1 counters on target creature; or Marath deals X damage to target creature or player; or put an X/X green Elemental creature token onto the battlefield. [X can't be 0.]
0/0
The rankings will be constantly updated for viewing at http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=protour/rankings/top25.
The idea seems like a combination of college (American) football's Top 25 rankings, professional tennis's (ATP/WTA) rolling weekly rankings, and/or chess's FIDE monthly Elo rating rankings so that Magic: The Gathering can have a player be a "World No. 1". Continuing the analogy, the current MTG #1, Josh Utter-Leyton, would therefore be comparable to the Alabama Crimson Tide as the current #1-ranked college football team, Serbia's Novak Djokovic as the current world no. 1 tennis player, and Norway's Magnus Carlsen as the current world no. 1 chess player).
Waste Not, at 1B!
More detailed results:
Of course, to be fair, Mystic Warlords of Ka'a was a ripoff of Magic: The Gathering in the first place...
OMG, it's Ka'aception!
Seriously, look at how much the names have in common:
_____ Warlords of Khanar
Mystic Warlords of Ka'a
Does this card back remind you of anything?
Hey, guys, let's play Magic Online (MTGO), the clone:
And we'll use these cards:
Dawnguard Executioner
9R
Creature - Human Knight
Burst 3 (When Dawnguard Executioner enters the battlefield, Dawnguard Executioner deals 3 damage to all opponents.)
3/4
Rotting Zombie
3B
Creature - Zombie
1/4
And, finally, "NOOOOOOO, not Enchanted Bunny!!!!!!!"
Enchanted Bunny
1G
Creature - Rabbit
0/1
Not strange at all:
Champions of Kamigawa.
Here is a link to the complete spoiler for reference.
Thanks!
But I went ahead and made an Akros card. Anax and Cymede become Leonidas and Gorgo...or Leonax and Gorgomede?
- Heliod, God of the Sun
- Thassa, God of the Sea
- Erebos, God of the Dead
- Purphoros, God of the Forge
- Nylea, God of the Hunt
Vote in the poll, and make your argument in the thread!