MTG Salvation

Quote from Cadito77 »

**Sarkhan
Sarkhan is one of my favorite characters, and a powerful one, at that. He has survived Bolas, survived Jace, survived Chandra, survived madness, survived Yasova, survived a bloody TIME PARADOX, and has mana colors of all but white. A planeswalker with access to four colors of mana is unheard of. Nicol Bolas has three, and he's extraordinarily powerful. I think Sarkhan will likely talk over as some sort of anti-Bolas power, removed from central fighting, but coincidentally there when Bolas is. He'll be there if Bolas is.

Many planeswalker can/able to use all the color most though just prefer to their own specialties.

I think transformation/growth is the way to go, it will help us curve our mutants as well play with the higher power theme.

Well one thing I'd like to look over is our legendary cycles characters and go over to make sure we still like them, as well as most everything else we have so far.

Quote from OrzhovPlaneswalker »

Do we know for sure that with the new creative shifts taking place that the retcons won't desist? That's the feeling I got from last weeks article- that they're gonna try to tel more cohesive stories from now on, but I guess I'm an optimist. I do wonder if we're gonna get a second round of origins stories after the first initial batch is done. We did not see much of Regatha.

I think we are gonna see differnt time periods for each walkers story. For Chandra the story has a nice ending with her finding Regatha and I'm thinking Jaces will be the same, ending with him wipping away his memories in Ravnica. But others (like I'm thinking for Liliana) might have then ascending in the middle of the story and end after they been planeswalking around for a little bit.

They said the set will show cards from the home planes as well as the first plane each walker goes to first, which includes Lorwyn and Zendikar for Nissa.

For Ajani

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/296

I'll go more in-deth in the proper forum but there are a few creative things I'd like to go over. However maybe we can find a top down mechanic/theme for mutants by looking at it from creative stand point.

So far we have;

WU - Traps
UB - Scheme
BR - Steal & Sac
RG - Super
GW - Counters

WB - Tokens
UR - "Storm"
BG - Undying
RW - Suit Up
GU - Mutant Tribal

Do we wanna play around anything else?

Also sorry if this is too soon but do we wanna go over the creative parts since we have a chuck of the mechanics ironed out?

Theros mechanic where also (mostly) focused in two colors and Khans was three color based mechanics, also being a fraction based set so its "easier" to pick up, with morph in all colors which IMO help simplfy things. My worry is that too many themes and mechanic might lead to Lorwyn type set where a lot is going on at once.

For mutants maybe play around with ebt stuff or some sort of thresholds to trigger thier mutations?

I'm on board with WB tokens as a "gimmick" deck.

I'm on board with UR spells as well, I'd would like to point out prowess (which I did call for evergreen ^U^) could also be used to support an artifact deck and might be useful with Suit-Up.

IMO six mechanics seems a little over stuffed and complicated since half will appeare in three colors and the other half in two colors. I think we should either make traps a sub-theme rather then a major theme or refrain from giving mutants a mutant only mechanic and put each mechainc in two colors*.

*-For mostly common

Some ideas for the archetypes;
WU - Traps/artifacts matter/flying
UB - Scheme/mill
BR - Steal & Sac
RG - Super
GW - Counters

WB - Undying/Counters (I'm a huge fan of tokens but I don't know if going wide is a good idea in set based on big creatures)
UR - Artifacts matter/Suit Up/Scheme
BG - Undying
RW - Suit Up
GU - Mutant Tribal

They also designed Sarkhan to be RGB but changed to RGU because devolpment didn't think Jund would be possible in standard.

Kinda the same thing with Ajanin being WG in Theroes, they already had one mono-white walker with Elspeth they didn't want two.

Quote from Killax »

True, but it still can come. Elspeth is likely to be the next BW walker and that would make sence.

I also expect we will see a Naya Ajani and Esper Tezzeret eventually.

Nothing about Tezzeret is white.

Keep in mind some character are more one color then they are their other color(s). We have seen Ajani as mono-white but I doute unless something huge happens Ajani will never be green and/or red and no white, just like I don't think we will see a mono-white Sorin or a non-red Sarkhan.

Traps and Scheme
After mulling it over I'd rather have Schemes then trap since I think it makes better gameplay. You are able how plan out somewhat how your scheme will play out better then traps, schemes could be used on both spells and permeants, while traps can only be on instants (or as .Ral designed sorceries with trap flash) and by making a new mechanic frees up room for another returning mechanic if we want one. Only issue I have is that we have to becareful letting this type of ability bleed into white.

Suit-Up
As a huge fan of this mechanic I'm happy to keep it. One way to help the deck "grow" would be give the creatures ways to build while equpt such as;

Cop Caller Archer 2WW
Creature-Human
Suit Up
At the being of your end step if ~ is equpt put a 1/1 white soilder creature token into play.
2/2

or

Fire Crazed RR
Creature-Elemental
Suit Up
When ~ enters the battfeild ~ deals 1 damage for each equptment (or artifact?) you control to target oppenet.
1/1

(not really card ideas just brainstorming)

Or maybe using some of the forms I had for Valor as one off ablilites.

Undying
I also like undying for this set since it helps build them up to that nice 8< threshold and the two ideas you came up Legend with don't work since the guys would end up shrinking rather than growing. I really like revive but for the over all theme of this set that +1/+1 counter is very important.

Mutants
So do we want to keep monstrosity and just ignore the slight flavor issues (Khans did with morph with no issues), tweek it ,or something new? On one hand I love how monstrosity plays and the flavor (person one day gets super powers in a "burst"), other hand monstrosity seems weird on "non monsters".

Quote from Duke Daemon »

Quote from TrueFFIke »

WHY NO GARRUK!?

We already know Garruk's storyline which is funny cause we know about the same for Jace or Nissa but that is beside the point. Basically Garruk is now GB and I guess they wanted their last set to have a mono green character (yes I know early Garruk is G). To be fair Garruk got his own story last Core Set. I would have prefered if they used the first 5 walkers from Lorwyn. Ajani is just underloved these days, poor guy lost his brother, many of his people to bolas and his friend to a God.

Shards of Alara block was Ajanis origin story and we wasn't mono white at that point either.