It would be like saying a minotaur is a bull or saying a human is an ape or that a drake is a dragon. They have similar physical qualities but they are not the animals they look like. According to your arguments, you would be ok with them making angels birds humans simply because they got wings.
Angels (just like Minotaurs) have been there right from the beginning of the game. Nagas were introduced relatively late and I'd argue that there was no real demand for the creature type in the first place. Angels are also far enough removed from birds (no bird head/beak) that they can be seen as their own thing, flavor-wise (plus the whole "made out of pure white mana" thing). Making angels "bird humans" would be a big retroactive change. But in case of snakes there was a preexisting snake-people tribe with lords, synergies etc. and they just decided to cut them off from future support for whatever reason. Honestly, I wouldn't care about this at all if "snake" had just been a random creature type before Nagas came along. But it just feels wrong to me that they're ignoring the Orochi altogether. There could be so much more interaction between the two tribes if it wasn't for this arbitrary distinction.
Edit: I just checked Blogatog and even Maro seems to see the establishment of the Naga creature type as a mistake. Sure, he's not the one who decides everything, but that makes it even more frustrating.
Why are the snake people Naga again? I was *just* entertaining the idea of building a Seshiro the Anointed deck.
They knew they messed up making the Naga in Tarkir not-snakes. However, I think this was a case of "switching back now will just piss more people off than sticking with naga." Especially if they continue to have naga creatures going forward.
Put another way, having Kamigawa, Tarkir, and Amonkhet snake-people ALL be compatible would be nice. But they'd rather Tarkir + Amonkhet are backwards compatible than Kamigawa + Amonkhet be backwards compatible, just because Tarkir is 10 years more recent than Kamigawa and has way more cards in current players collections.
You are free to disagree with this (I have no opinion either way) but I imagine that was their thinking.
I also feel like I'll be hated but I'm happy that the sneeple of Amonkhet are Naga and not snakes. I'm on the "give sentient and non-sentient creatures different types" train.
I don't like the Naga type because it is a term from indian mythology. It is like giving all rat-people the type "Nezumi" or all fox-people the type "Kitsune".
Fair point, but I would argue that Naga is MUCH closer to Minotaur in terms of recognizability than to Kitsune, much less Nezumi.
It's always been tertiary in green tied in someway to creatures.
Yeah you're like 10ish years late to the party on this one haha. MaRo has even said that while Harmonize is a REALLY strong bend, it's not a color pie break because green is third in card draw.
I'd disagree, Kitsune are plenty recognizable, at least in the rough area of mythological recognition. There is a line of well-known computer accessories named after the Naga which might boost recognition, but looking at Google trends they tend to be fairly close when I try and filter out the computer part. Granted there's another aspect that's kind of throwing off the numbers, but they both are crazily dwarfed by the Minotaur.
I don't mind Nagas being a general "Snake People" going forward. I wish that we'd either go with "X Animal + Human" or "Combo name" moving forward (I'd love to see them do that with Kitsune but we haven't even seen fox people outside of Kamigawa), since the inconsistency is bothersome. I know that they said they do that because some names carry more weight like "Werewolf" instead of "Wolf Human", but it kind of is annoying.
Wow, it seems like stronger-than-normal creatures are getting pushed a lot for this set. 1R 2/2 with a fairly useful mass looting ability? I think blue did have a 4/4 flyer with an advantage for 4 before, though, can't remember. I guess we also have an artifact 2/2 for 2 with no downside, too.
Liliana is worse than Tibalt and her tutor is ridiculously bad, it could have been 2 -1/-1 counters and still barely worth it in the casualests of casual tables.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Edit: I just checked Blogatog and even Maro seems to see the establishment of the Naga creature type as a mistake. Sure, he's not the one who decides everything, but that makes it even more frustrating.
I'd disagree, Kitsune are plenty recognizable, at least in the rough area of mythological recognition. There is a line of well-known computer accessories named after the Naga which might boost recognition, but looking at Google trends they tend to be fairly close when I try and filter out the computer part. Granted there's another aspect that's kind of throwing off the numbers, but they both are crazily dwarfed by the Minotaur.
I don't mind Nagas being a general "Snake People" going forward. I wish that we'd either go with "X Animal + Human" or "Combo name" moving forward (I'd love to see them do that with Kitsune but we haven't even seen fox people outside of Kamigawa), since the inconsistency is bothersome. I know that they said they do that because some names carry more weight like "Werewolf" instead of "Wolf Human", but it kind of is annoying.
Last 4/4 for 4 blue flyer we got like this was Conundrum Sphinx, and the closest one after that is Argent Sphinx.