(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.
- Jon Finkel Facts: (follow the link at left to see more Facts, or add more Facts!)
- Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice—because he was trying to count how much damage Jon Finkel deals in an average game.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
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.
I remember one post where someone speculated that one of the reasons the wedges might be focused around one of the allied colors would be to avoid clan overlap. With Abzan being centered in white, for example, that meant white-green and white-black would belong to Abzan, but green-black would belong to Sultai. This way, each two-color combination is accounted for and belongs to only one clan. When you think about how the shards were done, focused on the middle color, you see that white-green for example ended up being 'split' between Bant and Naya. Perhaps this was something they wanted to avoid this time around, especially if they're only doing wedges for one set.
The last thing I want to point out, is that each color combination doesn't need to be 'locked' into being focused on one particular color. For example in Alara each shard was centered around the middle color, but the Commander 2013 triple-color cards seemed to be based more on one of the edge colors. In fact, last time we saw wedges (Commander 2011) the decks were also based around one of the ally colors (but the other one the Khans clans are based on).
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.
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- Jon Finkel Facts: (follow the link at left to see more Facts, or add more Facts!)
- Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice—because he was trying to count how much damage Jon Finkel deals in an average game.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
I have been thinking something along these lines as well, but not sure how it would play out. I don't know what being "centered" on a color actually means yet; for example, are there just more blue cards in Jeskai? WU and UR cards, but few or no RW cards in Jeskai? More Jeskai-aligned mono-blue cards than mono-white or mono-red? (BTW, what makes Thousand Winds Jeskai-aligned?)
I would assume that there is some continuity of the clan mechanics since they have said in the past that it was a mistake to drop things like Allies or Monstrosity from subsequent sets. It wouldn't make much sense for the mechanics to jump to other clans, so would they just be refocused?
Flavorfully, one thing that jumps out is that Abzan refocusing to green might mean a shift from desert to a more vegetated environment.
Honestly... I kind of think that we might see an arc themed 3rd set, with the mid-set being... I don't know, evenly split? Well suited for both Arcs and Wedges?
Fits if we only get half of the fetch lands in set 1.
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Cyme we inne frið, fram the grip of deaþ to lif inne ðis smylte land.
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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):
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
I remember one post where someone speculated that one of the reasons the wedges might be focused around one of the allied colors would be to avoid clan overlap. With Abzan being centered in white, for example, that meant white-green and white-black would belong to Abzan, but green-black would belong to Sultai. This way, each two-color combination is accounted for and belongs to only one clan. When you think about how the shards were done, focused on the middle color, you see that white-green for example ended up being 'split' between Bant and Naya. Perhaps this was something they wanted to avoid this time around, especially if they're only doing wedges for one set.
The last thing I want to point out, is that each color combination doesn't need to be 'locked' into being focused on one particular color. For example in Alara each shard was centered around the middle color, but the Commander 2013 triple-color cards seemed to be based more on one of the edge colors. In fact, last time we saw wedges (Commander 2011) the decks were also based around one of the ally colors (but the other one the Khans clans are based on).
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.
- Jon Finkel believes in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. He gets all his fiber from eating Magic cards for breakfast, and all his protein from eating Magic players for lunch.
I would assume that there is some continuity of the clan mechanics since they have said in the past that it was a mistake to drop things like Allies or Monstrosity from subsequent sets. It wouldn't make much sense for the mechanics to jump to other clans, so would they just be refocused?
Flavorfully, one thing that jumps out is that Abzan refocusing to green might mean a shift from desert to a more vegetated environment.
Fits if we only get half of the fetch lands in set 1.