I am so happy I wanted a fairy tale plane form magic since I started playing and I love Will and Rowan so two my fav walkers come from what gonna be my fav world I'm so ******* happy. As an amateur folklorist I'm gonna love just driving through the flavor and art.
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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"
Oh man, now I'm imagining this kind of thing for Rowan's storyline in this set:
"Rowan Kenrith has been summoned back to her home plane by the monarch of Eldraine and asked to bring over all the booty she won at Valor's Reach. Rowan was having such a fun time de-stressing at Kylem that she is NOT looking forward to this. At. All. They didn't even have the dignity to invite her twin brother Will!"
I think it's also clever for Rowan and Will to come from this fairy tale plane of Eldraine--a plane where twins, like in the folklore, likely hold real power.
Hot damn, this is the Disney Princess set! Two of the arts are clearly Grimhilde and Lady Tremaine!
I like the art of what I assume is a princess. Based on the long hair, she could be Rapunzel. I'm kinda surprised, I didn't think delicate-looking feminine maidens were allowed in Magic anymore. I thought Magic women all had to be tough-looking warriors, mages, or assassins with either a stern scowl or a cocky grin now? It's a nice change of pace to see some women in a more relaxed and pleasant mood for once.
Also liking the mermaid girl, who's obviously our Ariel. Her merfolk form is surprisingly showy by modern Magic standards.
I can picture the Beauty and the Beast being a UR and RG legendary couple. I wonder if transforming will come back? It would work so well with the fairy tale theme! Like, have the Beast transform back into a man. Or the Frog Prince transform back into a regular prince!
Hey, maybe they're bringing Lord back as a creature type? Or Royal? Or they could have King, Queen, Prince, and Princess as separate types grouped into a royal batch mechanic. Like a Knight creature that gets +1/+1 as long as you control a royal creature.
Now if only we could get the Magic version of Aladdin...And no, I'm not counting that one. I want a whole new world for that theme!
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.
The set may end up being good, but the flavor does not resonate with me, though. But that's okay. Not everything has to be for me. I have no reservations about the cards themselves. I'm sure they'll be fine.
How does The Little Mermaid, Hansel & Gretel, King Arthur etc not resonate?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I really am glad that WoTC is willing to experiment and bounce around all over the place flavor-wise from the very dark and gritty and gruesome and adult themed to the opposite side of the spectrum and everything in between. VARIETY is a great thing. I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different flavors and vibes of all different sorts.
That being said, given that there are like 10 million+ MTG players, several million of whom are adults, and with people of course having a wide variety of different personal tastes from one another, I'm surprised that people are surprised that a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel/targeted-at-kindergarten-aged-children type of vibe/flavor wouldn't be what ALL MTG fans are personally into or really resonate with.
Just to be clear: I'm definitely NOT implying that whole tired/incorrect shtick about MTG itself being a just-for-little-kids game. Of course not. The opposite, if anything. Right from the very beginning onwards, it seemed to be targeted mostly towards teenagers-AND-OLDER (adults, included, that is) rather than extremely-young-children in the 4-year-old-to-7-year-old range which is more of what the Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel lines up with (there's always exceptions of course, but on average I mean). MTG seemed to be appealing to people a decade older than that sort of stuff, with a very PG-13/nearly-R rated vibe, with all its adult style grittiness and darkness and full blown gruesomeness and whatnot in large portions of lots of the sets. And its blatantly-not-just-for-little-kids vibe wasn't even JUST to do with the artwork of its black cards, for that matter, but even just the general tone of even the non-gruesome creatures/spells of all the other colors and artifacts as well. It just really had a relatively mature theme for a LOT of the cards, probably the majority of the cards, in most of the sets. And it was like that for a loooooooong time, only starting to shift a little bit towards being a bit tamer/younger-vibes in more recent years, and even then, still not to a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel level of shift for the most part, other than the once in a blue moon sort of thing like with Lorwyn or something maybe.
This is a big part of why so many adults didn't age out of MTG over the years/decades, even though many of us did age out of stuff like The Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel types of fairy tales/nursery rhymes as we grew out of young childhood and became teenagers/adults, by comparison.
I mean, if you just go back and look at the vibe of the card art in sets like Tempest and Stronghold for example, let alone basically all of the sets of the early 2000s, it's SERIOUSLY pretty dark and gritty, like not even just PG-13 but flirting with almost being R-rated level of dark and gritty for a lot of it. You can browse the card art from those sets on scryfall, or your collection if you collected back then if you forgot what these sets used to look like for much of MTG through the years. Even the earliest sets, which grabbed up about 5 or 6 million MTG fans (many of whom are still arouund) in those first couple years for that matter were far from being all that light and cutesy for the most part, even if it did get even a bit darker and gritter-yet in the next few years after that, on average.
But, here's the thing, though. Just like Kolbane said he's totally cool with this, even if it doesn't happen to personally resonate with him, well, I feel the same way, in that regard. That's the double-edged sword of variety. But it's a double-edged sword that is totally WORTH IT. You win some, you lose some, but at least you get tons of variety, which is fun in and of itself, let alone meaning that it doesn't get stuck on ONE thing over and over that you DON'T like (or like but then get bored of eventually), and then you're just permanently continuously stuck with that. At least with variety you'll have something to love some significant percentage of the time, and so will everyone else, some percentage of the time. So yea, that's cool, and I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different stuff like they do.
Anyway, I'm (honestly) glad that you and the others who like Fairy Tale types of flavor are going to get to enjoy the set. I know how pumped I get when a new set is coming out that DOES resonates with me, I've gotten the chance to experience that numerous times over the years, myself, so, I definitely know how fun and exciting that is. So yea, by all means, enjoy!
Well i have to admit, this set feels fresh. It is Innistrad but instead of gotic horror it is Grimms' Fairytales (french-german folklore i guess)( It is not all that new as we saw something similar in Shrek and others but in mtg it is new, and looks like it have a way darker tone than Shrek). It is nice to see old walkers introduced in suplemental products(battlebond) making a come back (tho we only see Rowan, that key art looks badass hope her card is strong). The invite art with Faes was not looking good but now i have to admit that i really want to see more from this set.
I like the art on the mono b booster, looks like a The Queen of Hearts for this plane(but probably is a random common or uncommon ) but with the Brawl decks maybe that art being used on a legendary is a possibility :D.
Oh yeah brawl decks and brawl in arena lol they finaly got it. Brawl in arena will probably make the command crowd go nuts in arena and Brawl decks will be a nice introduction to commander and also a easy product for stablished commander players (another considering the commander decks). They finaly gave the format the suport it needed (time for the revival lol)
On Eldraine i think it is strage that they only revealed Rowan with out Will and also her outfit that looks like a "Little Red Riding Hood" reference and if that is true i wonder if we will get Werewolfs in the set (they don't need to be dfc Greater WerewolfLesser WerewolfTreacherous Werewolf ) and if this is true then maybe Will is cursed to be one in his homeplane (for why he is not in the keyart, but it could also be that he was kidnaped and Rowan is on a rescue mission)
Realy want to see the story of the set like that it looks to be introducing the fairytales direct into magic with minor adaptions (from what we saw soo far)
The set may end up being good, but the flavor does not resonate with me, though. But that's okay. Not everything has to be for me. I have no reservations about the cards themselves. I'm sure they'll be fine.
How does The Little Mermaid, Hansel & Gretel, King Arthur etc not resonate?
I mean, don't get me wrong, I really am glad that WoTC is willing to experiment and bounce around all over the place flavor-wise from the very dark and gritty and gruesome and adult themed to the opposite side of the spectrum and everything in between. VARIETY is a great thing. I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different flavors and vibes of all different sorts.
That being said, given that there are like 10 million+ MTG players, several million of whom are adults, and with people of course having a wide variety of different personal tastes from one another, I'm surprised that people are surprised that a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel/targeted-at-kindergarten-aged-children type of vibe/flavor wouldn't be what ALL MTG fans are personally into or really resonate with.
Just to be clear: I'm definitely NOT implying that whole tired/incorrect shtick about MTG itself being a just-for-little-kids game. Of course not. The opposite, if anything. Right from the very beginning onwards, it seemed to be targeted mostly towards teenagers-AND-OLDER (adults, included, that is) rather than extremely-young-children in the 4-year-old-to-7-year-old range which is more of what the Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel lines up with (there's always exceptions of course, but on average I mean). MTG seemed to be appealing to people a decade older than that sort of stuff, with a very PG-13/nearly-R rated vibe, with all its adult style grittiness and darkness and full blown gruesomeness and whatnot in large portions of lots of the sets. And its blatantly-not-just-for-little-kids vibe wasn't even JUST to do with the artwork of its black cards, for that matter, but even just the general tone of even the non-gruesome creatures/spells of all the other colors and artifacts as well. It just really had a relatively mature theme for a LOT of the cards, probably the majority of the cards, in most of the sets. And it was like that for a loooooooong time, only starting to shift a little bit towards being a bit tamer/younger-vibes in more recent years, and even then, still not to a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel level of shift for the most part, other than the once in a blue moon sort of thing like with Lorwyn or something maybe.
This is a big part of why so many adults didn't age out of MTG over the years/decades, even though many of us did age out of stuff like The Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel types of fairy tales/nursery rhymes as we grew out of young childhood and became teenagers/adults, by comparison.
I mean, if you just go back and look at the vibe of the card art in sets like Tempest and Stronghold for example, let alone basically all of the sets of the early 2000s, it's SERIOUSLY pretty dark and gritty, like not even just PG-13 but flirting with almost being R-rated level of dark and gritty for a lot of it. You can browse the card art from those sets on scryfall, or your collection if you collected back then if you forgot what these sets used to look like for much of MTG through the years. Even the earliest sets, which grabbed up about 5 or 6 million MTG fans (many of whom are still arouund) in those first couple years for that matter were far from being all that light and cutesy for the most part, even if it did get even a bit darker and gritter-yet in the next few years after that, on average.
But, here's the thing, though. Just like Kolbane said he's totally cool with this, even if it doesn't happen to personally resonate with him, well, I feel the same way, in that regard. That's the double-edged sword of variety. But it's a double-edged sword that is totally WORTH IT. You win some, you lose some, but at least you get tons of variety, which is fun in and of itself, let alone meaning that it doesn't get stuck on ONE thing over and over that you DON'T like (or like but then get bored of eventually), and then you're just permanently continuously stuck with that. At least with variety you'll have something to love some significant percentage of the time, and so will everyone else, some percentage of the time. So yea, that's cool, and I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different stuff like they do.
Anyway, I'm (honestly) glad that you and the others who like Fairy Tale types of flavor are going to get to enjoy the set. I know how pumped I get when a new set is coming out that DOES resonates with me, I've gotten the chance to experience that numerous times over the years, myself, so, I definitely know how fun and exciting that is. So yea, by all means, enjoy!
I would reserve judgment for now. You might even be getting your R rated, adult themed set. The real Grimm stories are quite horrifying unlike the sanitized children's versions. Depending on where they go, it might make kaladesh the set look like the sanitized magic set by comparison.The real stories are very dark and veer toward calculated murder, suicide, sexual themes, etc. It could be one of the most R rated sets magic has done recently. We already, for example, see goldilocks slaughter the 3 bears and make them into trophies. It could even get as rapey as some of the art of innistrad first trip suggested. I wouldn't count on Disney version or even the relatively sanitized ixalan block where they glossed over things like rape and slavery. Depending on where they go and how it's received, it might even color wild west world that's on the short list. Its been pretty well spelled out that there won't be racist elements, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if we possibly see adult themes like prostitution that haven't been touched since Magic's early days. Being marketed toward an older audience than, say the new transformers card game, they might even want to try out some adult themes. Now, that doesn't mean it has to be sexist, though. Just like how Magic ramped up the hunky guy art, there's no reason we can't have guys be the damsel in distress role, prostitute themselves, be drugged and raped by women, etc. That's how you truly avoid being racist, sexist, etc.
The frog prince-like art looks like Turn to Frog art, I have to admit. Since the crown is hung up on the chair, I can easily imagine the witch on the other side of the table catching the prince while he is vulnerable.
Also, is the showcase card art that of a dwarf? Based on the proportions, that's what I was thinking, but the argument that the art is of Goldilocks killing the Three Bears is looking more and more convincing to me.
While we're on that topic, are dwarves coming back in this set? It's not just Snow White and the Seven Dwarves that has them--I remember Snow White and Rose Red has an evil dwarf, too.
The art direction looks fairly grimdark--the Lady of the Lake looks like the type to imprison Merlin, the lighting looks quite darkened to me--and I do like to think that, unlike the other planeswalkers, Rowan and Will are running away from their home plane and don't want to come back, but are being forced to.
That being said, given that there are like 10 million+ MTG players, several million of whom are adults, and with people of course having a wide variety of different personal tastes from one another, I'm surprised that people are surprised that a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel/targeted-at-kindergarten-aged-children type of vibe/flavor wouldn't be what ALL MTG fans are personally into or really resonate with.
The prince actually broke the heart of the little mermaid, leaving her alone as a human being.
Her sisters than give her an enchanted knife with which she has to kill the prince in his sleep so she can become a mermaid again.
She refuses, kills herself and becomes an air elemental.
Do you think WOTC will follow Disney or Grimm for the origin of their stories?
This isn't just fairytales, this is medieval folklore.
Cindarella killed the stepmother.
Sleeping Beauty was raped in her sleep by a prince that already married someone else and awoke because the babies were kicking.
Remember the queen from Snow White? Look up how she died. (Had to dance in heated metal shoes until she died)
Actual fairytales are more grim and dark than the entire Innistrad block.
Our folklore is more than just "kindergarten" material.
The prince actually broke the heart of the little mermaid, leaving her alone as a human being.
Her sisters than give her an enchanted knife with which she has to kill the prince in his sleep so she can become a mermaid again.
She refuses, kills herself and becomes an air elemental.
Do you think WOTC will follow Disney or Grimm for the origin of their stories?
This isn't just fairytales, this is medieval folklore.
Cindarella killed the stepmother.
Sleeping Beauty was raped in her sleep by a prince that already married someone else and awoke because the babies were kicking.
Remember the queen from Snow White? Look up how she died. (Had to dance in heated metal shoes until she died)
Actual fairytales are more grim and dark than the entire Innistrad block.
Our folklore is more than just "kindergarten" material.
A good point, but, to be fair, I think WotC is probably going to keep things majorly more toned down than the original stories even if they have a little more darkness than the Disney versions.
Hey, maybe they're bringing Lord back as a creature type? Or Royal? Or they could have King, Queen, Prince, and Princess as separate types grouped into a royal batch mechanic. Like a Knight creature that gets +1/+1 as long as you control a royal creature.
WotC is still seems to be focused on pandering to SJW’s so if they did it would be Royal to not force gender roles onto characters. Though it does make sense to use Royal since it denotes lineage of which the gender isn’t the focal point and this would definitely be the plane to introduce it with.
To bad all the SJW’s are gonna hate Rowan now. She’s annoyed the didn’t summon her brother as well. A female showing concern for a white male isn’t going over well with WotC’s preferred demographic....non white, non males.
I will never understand this mindset. WotC wants to broaden the appeal of their products and somehow it’s an attack on white males? What is it exactly that they’re doing to you?
If the recent tweet from Lee Sharpe is any indication of their attitude towards straight cisgendered white males, then WotC is actually discriminating on that demographic.
If you take that tweet and change any of the demographic descriptors in anything else the tweet would read quite (depending on what you change) racist, homophobic, transphobic or sexist.
If that is the attitude of the people behind the game, it is hard to call it "broadening the appeal of their product".
Does it seem a bit more of a Magic style direct rehash of fairytales than a Magic plane in fairy tale style?
Those arts are so specific that the"inspired by" doesnt come across as much as "this is the gingerbread man/house, sleeping beauty, etc etc, rapunzel..you know exact reference instead of inspired by.
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Been a member here for over a dozen years. Playing since '95 just got lost in the twitch shuffle.
WotC is still seems to be focused on pandering to SJW’s so if they did it would be Royal to not force gender roles onto characters. Though it does make sense to use Royal since it denotes lineage of which the gender isn’t the focal point and this would definitely be the plane to introduce it with.
To bad all the SJW’s are gonna hate Rowan now. She’s annoyed the didn’t summon her brother as well. A female showing concern for a white male isn’t going over well with WotC’s preferred demographic....non white, non males.
I will never understand this mindset. WotC wants to broaden the appeal of their products and somehow it’s an attack on white males? What is it exactly that they’re doing to you?
If the recent tweet from Lee Sharpe is any indication of their attitude towards straight cisgendered white males, then WotC is actually discriminating on that demographic.
If you take that tweet and change any of the demographic descriptors in anything else the tweet would read quite (depending on what you change) racist, homophobic, transphobic or sexist.
If that is the attitude of the people behind the game, it is hard to call it "broadening the appeal of their product".
Yes, it would seem different calling for the greater inclusion of privileged and well-represented groups versus calling for greater inclusion of marginalised and underrepresented groups. I WoNdEr WhY tHaT iS...
The set may end up being good, but the flavor does not resonate with me, though. But that's okay. Not everything has to be for me. I have no reservations about the cards themselves. I'm sure they'll be fine.
I am the opposite. I am all about this art!
And you are right, not every set is for everyone. I did not like a lot of Kaladesh when it was new (although I have grown to like it quite a bit years later).
Kaladesh's art direction was 100% my jam, but I'm also pretty hype about this set even though I was hoping for a Nordic themed set.
I would reserve judgment for now. You might even be getting your R rated, adult themed set. The real Grimm stories are quite horrifying unlike the sanitized children's versions. Depending on where they go, it might make kaladesh the set look like the sanitized magic set by comparison.
Ah, good point. Well, I hope you are right about that, and I'll try to stay open minded to it for now. Although, in my case it's not necessarily that I need something to be super dark and horrific to enjoy it in MTG in terms of the sorts of stuff you were referencing (suicide, murder, rape, prostitution, etc). Rather, I just meant more in terms of the visual vibe of the artwork itself, of like, looking more like paintings done by actual painter-artists done in a non-young-children's-book-illustration type of an art style.
Also, to clarify: in regards to more adult-looking artwork, I also did not (necessarily) mean that in regards to how revealing the clothing is or how ripped or curvy the characters look or stuff like that either. Rather, I just meant more like the inherent vibe of the art (on a brushstroke for brushstroke level), like the way even if the artist who painted the two younger Chandra planeswalker's card art in M20 was painting a painting of someone's brains getting blown out or something, it would still have that young-children's-illustration "vibe" of just *how* it looks (as opposed to *what* it is of, subject-matter-wise). That's not a diss, btw, I think she is clearly a talented illustrator, and I'm sure she'd be great at illustrating stuff where that is the visual vibe you want the illustrations to have for something. There's all sorts of different styles and categories of talent for painting or illustrating, and certainly there are lots of children's books or comic books/graphic novels for children or Y/A where her style of illustration would be great, since she does have talented relative to that category of illustration. It's just not my cup of tea when it comes to MTG cards, for the most part, especially if it was gonna be a whole set geared in a fairy tales-ey vibe and be leaning more that way in general, that would definitely not be fun for me, art-wise. Like I said on one of the previous pages, my worst nightmare would be if MTG started looking like the artwork of Hearthstone for all, or the majority of its artwork. That would be game over for me (if it stayed that way permanently, that is). Whereas conversely, if someone like Seb McKinnon, let alone some of the artists from the late 90s/early 2000s did a painting of summer picnic scene on a nice sunny day, it still wouldn't look like children's-illustration work in terms of the actual "vibe" or whatever. It would just intrinsically have a more substantial and deep and artistically intriguing and just sort of more-adult-ey vibe to it, visually speaking.
Now, that doesn't mean it has to be sexist, though. Just like how Magic ramped up the hunky guy art, there's no reason we can't have guys be the damsel in distress role, prostitute themselves, be drugged and raped by women, etc. That's how you truly avoid being racist, sexist, etc.
Yea, I mean, I get that some percentage of the player base are going to be kids that are young enough that they want to be careful about stuff like racism or sexism being portrayed at all, since they don't want young/impressionable people thinking they are glorifying that stuff and then becoming racist/sexist as a result or whatever. So, I'm okay with them being careful about avoiding having that in their flavor/art/etc, I suppose.
That being said, if it wasn't for that (being careful because kids play the game) then I definitely would not agree that it would be morally wrong to have cards that portrayed racist or sexist things occasionally, depending on the context. Like, if it isn't glorifying it, but rather, it's just incidental because of whatever the situation at hand is, to where the artwork would simply ring untrue/non-realistic relative to the situation at hand if they censored it, I mean, yea, I definitely don't agree with artwork being censored. Imagine, for example if no fiction novels (for adults, I mean) could ever have a racist or sexist character in them anymore (even though they exist in real life), even in a they-are-the-badguy or mixed-bag-person or whatever way, and not a glorifying way. That would be totally crazy and would just totally ruin the concept of art, and storytelling, in basically every medium in existence (books, paintings, music, whatever). Definitely can't stand censorship, other than the rare special-case scenarios like here where they have to be careful with younger kids who might not don't understand that something merely existing in art/fiction doesn't mean it's being portrayed as a good thing that one should strive to become.
Does it seem a bit more of a Magic style direct rehash of fairytales than a Magic plane in fairy tale style?
Those arts are so specific that the"inspired by" doesnt come across as much as "this is the gingerbread man/house, sleeping beauty, etc etc, rapunzel..you know exact reference instead of inspired by.
I don't remember the witch from snow white having multiple arms like...coming out of her chest. So...there's that, at least.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Judging by the signature and website link at the bottom, I doubt it is.
I wonder how they did it fall for bolas trap back on ravnica even though the plan failed
The new art, not the battlebond one
"Rowan Kenrith has been summoned back to her home plane by the monarch of Eldraine and asked to bring over all the booty she won at Valor's Reach. Rowan was having such a fun time de-stressing at Kylem that she is NOT looking forward to this. At. All. They didn't even have the dignity to invite her twin brother Will!"
I think it's also clever for Rowan and Will to come from this fairy tale plane of Eldraine--a plane where twins, like in the folklore, likely hold real power.
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/186437013328/you-revealed-that-the-marketing-art-character-is-a
Confirmation that Rowan Kenrith is the face of Throne of Eldraine, and that she and Will Kenrith are from Eldraine.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
MaRo has confirmed that Eldraine is not a replacement for Lorwyn-Shadowmoor and left open the possibility of a Lorwyn-Shadowmmor return. Lorwyn-Shadowmoor fans can still hold onto hope.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
I like the art of what I assume is a princess. Based on the long hair, she could be Rapunzel. I'm kinda surprised, I didn't think delicate-looking feminine maidens were allowed in Magic anymore. I thought Magic women all had to be tough-looking warriors, mages, or assassins with either a stern scowl or a cocky grin now? It's a nice change of pace to see some women in a more relaxed and pleasant mood for once.
Also liking the mermaid girl, who's obviously our Ariel. Her merfolk form is surprisingly showy by modern Magic standards.
I can picture the Beauty and the Beast being a UR and RG legendary couple. I wonder if transforming will come back? It would work so well with the fairy tale theme! Like, have the Beast transform back into a man. Or the Frog Prince transform back into a regular prince!
Hey, maybe they're bringing Lord back as a creature type? Or Royal? Or they could have King, Queen, Prince, and Princess as separate types grouped into a royal batch mechanic. Like a Knight creature that gets +1/+1 as long as you control a royal creature.
Now if only we could get the Magic version of Aladdin...And no, I'm not counting that one. I want a whole new world for that theme!
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.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I really am glad that WoTC is willing to experiment and bounce around all over the place flavor-wise from the very dark and gritty and gruesome and adult themed to the opposite side of the spectrum and everything in between. VARIETY is a great thing. I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different flavors and vibes of all different sorts.
That being said, given that there are like 10 million+ MTG players, several million of whom are adults, and with people of course having a wide variety of different personal tastes from one another, I'm surprised that people are surprised that a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel/targeted-at-kindergarten-aged-children type of vibe/flavor wouldn't be what ALL MTG fans are personally into or really resonate with.
Just to be clear: I'm definitely NOT implying that whole tired/incorrect shtick about MTG itself being a just-for-little-kids game. Of course not. The opposite, if anything. Right from the very beginning onwards, it seemed to be targeted mostly towards teenagers-AND-OLDER (adults, included, that is) rather than extremely-young-children in the 4-year-old-to-7-year-old range which is more of what the Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel lines up with (there's always exceptions of course, but on average I mean). MTG seemed to be appealing to people a decade older than that sort of stuff, with a very PG-13/nearly-R rated vibe, with all its adult style grittiness and darkness and full blown gruesomeness and whatnot in large portions of lots of the sets. And its blatantly-not-just-for-little-kids vibe wasn't even JUST to do with the artwork of its black cards, for that matter, but even just the general tone of even the non-gruesome creatures/spells of all the other colors and artifacts as well. It just really had a relatively mature theme for a LOT of the cards, probably the majority of the cards, in most of the sets. And it was like that for a loooooooong time, only starting to shift a little bit towards being a bit tamer/younger-vibes in more recent years, and even then, still not to a Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel level of shift for the most part, other than the once in a blue moon sort of thing like with Lorwyn or something maybe.
This is a big part of why so many adults didn't age out of MTG over the years/decades, even though many of us did age out of stuff like The Little Mermaid/Hansel & Gretel types of fairy tales/nursery rhymes as we grew out of young childhood and became teenagers/adults, by comparison.
I mean, if you just go back and look at the vibe of the card art in sets like Tempest and Stronghold for example, let alone basically all of the sets of the early 2000s, it's SERIOUSLY pretty dark and gritty, like not even just PG-13 but flirting with almost being R-rated level of dark and gritty for a lot of it. You can browse the card art from those sets on scryfall, or your collection if you collected back then if you forgot what these sets used to look like for much of MTG through the years. Even the earliest sets, which grabbed up about 5 or 6 million MTG fans (many of whom are still arouund) in those first couple years for that matter were far from being all that light and cutesy for the most part, even if it did get even a bit darker and gritter-yet in the next few years after that, on average.
But, here's the thing, though. Just like Kolbane said he's totally cool with this, even if it doesn't happen to personally resonate with him, well, I feel the same way, in that regard. That's the double-edged sword of variety. But it's a double-edged sword that is totally WORTH IT. You win some, you lose some, but at least you get tons of variety, which is fun in and of itself, let alone meaning that it doesn't get stuck on ONE thing over and over that you DON'T like (or like but then get bored of eventually), and then you're just permanently continuously stuck with that. At least with variety you'll have something to love some significant percentage of the time, and so will everyone else, some percentage of the time. So yea, that's cool, and I'm glad they are willing to experiment with all sorts of different stuff like they do.
Anyway, I'm (honestly) glad that you and the others who like Fairy Tale types of flavor are going to get to enjoy the set. I know how pumped I get when a new set is coming out that DOES resonates with me, I've gotten the chance to experience that numerous times over the years, myself, so, I definitely know how fun and exciting that is. So yea, by all means, enjoy!
I like the art on the mono b booster, looks like a The Queen of Hearts for this plane(but probably is a random common or uncommon ) but with the Brawl decks maybe that art being used on a legendary is a possibility :D.
Oh yeah brawl decks and brawl in arena lol they finaly got it. Brawl in arena will probably make the command crowd go nuts in arena and Brawl decks will be a nice introduction to commander and also a easy product for stablished commander players (another considering the commander decks). They finaly gave the format the suport it needed (time for the revival lol)
On Eldraine i think it is strage that they only revealed Rowan with out Will and also her outfit that looks like a "Little Red Riding Hood" reference and if that is true i wonder if we will get Werewolfs in the set (they don't need to be dfc Greater Werewolf Lesser WerewolfTreacherous Werewolf ) and if this is true then maybe Will is cursed to be one in his homeplane (for why he is not in the keyart, but it could also be that he was kidnaped and Rowan is on a rescue mission)
Realy want to see the story of the set like that it looks to be introducing the fairytales direct into magic with minor adaptions (from what we saw soo far)
Also, is the showcase card art that of a dwarf? Based on the proportions, that's what I was thinking, but the argument that the art is of Goldilocks killing the Three Bears is looking more and more convincing to me.
While we're on that topic, are dwarves coming back in this set? It's not just Snow White and the Seven Dwarves that has them--I remember Snow White and Rose Red has an evil dwarf, too.
The art direction looks fairly grimdark--the Lady of the Lake looks like the type to imprison Merlin, the lighting looks quite darkened to me--and I do like to think that, unlike the other planeswalkers, Rowan and Will are running away from their home plane and don't want to come back, but are being forced to.
The prince actually broke the heart of the little mermaid, leaving her alone as a human being.
Her sisters than give her an enchanted knife with which she has to kill the prince in his sleep so she can become a mermaid again.
She refuses, kills herself and becomes an air elemental.
Do you think WOTC will follow Disney or Grimm for the origin of their stories?
This isn't just fairytales, this is medieval folklore.
Cindarella killed the stepmother.
Sleeping Beauty was raped in her sleep by a prince that already married someone else and awoke because the babies were kicking.
Remember the queen from Snow White? Look up how she died. (Had to dance in heated metal shoes until she died)
Actual fairytales are more grim and dark than the entire Innistrad block.
Our folklore is more than just "kindergarten" material.
A good point, but, to be fair, I think WotC is probably going to keep things majorly more toned down than the original stories even if they have a little more darkness than the Disney versions.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
If you take that tweet and change any of the demographic descriptors in anything else the tweet would read quite (depending on what you change) racist, homophobic, transphobic or sexist.
If that is the attitude of the people behind the game, it is hard to call it "broadening the appeal of their product".
Those arts are so specific that the"inspired by" doesnt come across as much as "this is the gingerbread man/house, sleeping beauty, etc etc, rapunzel..you know exact reference instead of inspired by.
Yes, it would seem different calling for the greater inclusion of privileged and well-represented groups versus calling for greater inclusion of marginalised and underrepresented groups. I WoNdEr WhY tHaT iS...
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Kaladesh's art direction was 100% my jam, but I'm also pretty hype about this set even though I was hoping for a Nordic themed set.
Ah, good point. Well, I hope you are right about that, and I'll try to stay open minded to it for now. Although, in my case it's not necessarily that I need something to be super dark and horrific to enjoy it in MTG in terms of the sorts of stuff you were referencing (suicide, murder, rape, prostitution, etc). Rather, I just meant more in terms of the visual vibe of the artwork itself, of like, looking more like paintings done by actual painter-artists done in a non-young-children's-book-illustration type of an art style.
Also, to clarify: in regards to more adult-looking artwork, I also did not (necessarily) mean that in regards to how revealing the clothing is or how ripped or curvy the characters look or stuff like that either. Rather, I just meant more like the inherent vibe of the art (on a brushstroke for brushstroke level), like the way even if the artist who painted the two younger Chandra planeswalker's card art in M20 was painting a painting of someone's brains getting blown out or something, it would still have that young-children's-illustration "vibe" of just *how* it looks (as opposed to *what* it is of, subject-matter-wise). That's not a diss, btw, I think she is clearly a talented illustrator, and I'm sure she'd be great at illustrating stuff where that is the visual vibe you want the illustrations to have for something. There's all sorts of different styles and categories of talent for painting or illustrating, and certainly there are lots of children's books or comic books/graphic novels for children or Y/A where her style of illustration would be great, since she does have talented relative to that category of illustration. It's just not my cup of tea when it comes to MTG cards, for the most part, especially if it was gonna be a whole set geared in a fairy tales-ey vibe and be leaning more that way in general, that would definitely not be fun for me, art-wise. Like I said on one of the previous pages, my worst nightmare would be if MTG started looking like the artwork of Hearthstone for all, or the majority of its artwork. That would be game over for me (if it stayed that way permanently, that is). Whereas conversely, if someone like Seb McKinnon, let alone some of the artists from the late 90s/early 2000s did a painting of summer picnic scene on a nice sunny day, it still wouldn't look like children's-illustration work in terms of the actual "vibe" or whatever. It would just intrinsically have a more substantial and deep and artistically intriguing and just sort of more-adult-ey vibe to it, visually speaking.
Yea, I mean, I get that some percentage of the player base are going to be kids that are young enough that they want to be careful about stuff like racism or sexism being portrayed at all, since they don't want young/impressionable people thinking they are glorifying that stuff and then becoming racist/sexist as a result or whatever. So, I'm okay with them being careful about avoiding having that in their flavor/art/etc, I suppose.
That being said, if it wasn't for that (being careful because kids play the game) then I definitely would not agree that it would be morally wrong to have cards that portrayed racist or sexist things occasionally, depending on the context. Like, if it isn't glorifying it, but rather, it's just incidental because of whatever the situation at hand is, to where the artwork would simply ring untrue/non-realistic relative to the situation at hand if they censored it, I mean, yea, I definitely don't agree with artwork being censored. Imagine, for example if no fiction novels (for adults, I mean) could ever have a racist or sexist character in them anymore (even though they exist in real life), even in a they-are-the-badguy or mixed-bag-person or whatever way, and not a glorifying way. That would be totally crazy and would just totally ruin the concept of art, and storytelling, in basically every medium in existence (books, paintings, music, whatever). Definitely can't stand censorship, other than the rare special-case scenarios like here where they have to be careful with younger kids who might not don't understand that something merely existing in art/fiction doesn't mean it's being portrayed as a good thing that one should strive to become.
I don't remember the witch from snow white having multiple arms like...coming out of her chest. So...there's that, at least.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Lol, nice