MTG Salvation

A type line only has so much room, and they just introduced the Noble type for nobility and royalty, so you'd better believe they were going to prioritize Noble for the King Arthur of Magic.

Now, where's our Merlin?

Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlet?

Looks like we've got an uncommon legendary Knight cycle coming.

You mean the three that exist?

I just thought you were making a joke about card art or something, so I did a quick search to see if I could "get it". Now I have a naughty joke about the old man with a small piece of wood in his hand. That sure don't look like a +2/+2 to me, more like a +1/+0, know what I mean?

Anyhoo, I made my controversial "subversive" comment of the day, so let's get back to the topic at hand.

The card itself isn't anything fancy, just a neat little tool for blue decks to use against each other.

Once Upon a Time is one of my favorite cards in the set. Oh, hey, and Mice are now officially a creature type! Redwall set when, Wizards?

Well, at least black has its own mage type now, rather than constantly sharing Cleric, Wizard, Shaman, and Druid with the other colors. I expect to see a Warlock errata for a lot of Witches:

Quote from SecretInfiltrator »

Quote from Manite »

Besides, it wouldn't be the first time Zendikar introduced a tweak on Kicker.

Which is part of the problem.

Bouncing a single land certainly is a tweak on sweep that is much more reasonable.

Your templating is incorrect, btw, because the phrase "this spell was cast for its roil cost" implies an alternative cost, while the reminder text speaks of an additional cost.

Maybe that's the solution though. You could make roil an alternative cost (e. g. Geyser Flame becomes 1R with roil cost 2RR). This has multiple benefits:

1. You no longer walk straight into kicker territory.
2. You can make commons that are french vanilla with just roil without a change to the effect just for a pure cost reduction.
3. You can make cards that have a differently colored roil cost and casting cost.
4. Even while staying in-color, you could vary color intensity e. g. a devotion friendly casting cost, but a roil cost with only a single colored mana symbol.
5. You can consider hugely decreased roil costs with fun drawbacks.
6. As with awaken before an alternative cost is actually preferable in just telling the cost they are actually going to actually pay straight - no moment to calculate that Roil Wave with roil cost needs six mana, if you straight up print the six mana cost.

The option you really lose is going the Volver/Battlemage route and putting multiple roil costs on a single card, but those are actually quite wordy and have some design issues, so I don't know you'd even want that.

Whoops, I forgot to change the templating on Geyser Flame. Corrected.

I actually started out with an alternate cost, but I felt "if this spell's roil cost was paid" was breezier than "if this spell was cast for its roil cost". Plus I thought it would be charming to have a throwback to Kicker since Kicker made its big return on Zendikar, only now it's Kicker with flavor. But I'll try the alternate cost route.

Roil Wave 2UU
Sorcery
Roil 3UUU (Rather than pay this card's mana cost, you may pay 3UUU and return a land you control to its owner's hand.)
Return all creatures with power 3 or less to their owners' hands. If this spell was cast for its roil cost, instead put all creatures with power 3 or less on top of their owners' libraries.

Lava Geyser 1R
Sorcery
Roil 2RR (Rather than pay this card's mana cost, you may pay 2RR and return a land you control to its owner's hand.)
~ deals 3 damage to any target. If this spell was cast for its roil cost, it deals 5 damage to that target instead.

Speaking of french vanilla, I like the idea of creatures with Roil benefits that are otherwise vanilla, like maybe a green bear that enters the battlefield with two additional +1/+1 counters on it if it was cast for its roil cost.

Turntimber Elemental 1G
Creature - Elemental
Roil 2GG (Rather than pay this card's mana cost, you may pay 2GG and return a land you control to its owner's hand.)
If this spell was cast for its roil cost, ~ enters the battlefield with two +1/+1 counters on it.
2/2

I'm bugged that they went with Warlock over Witch. I read that many real life male witches consider "warlock" a derogatory term. At any rate, Warlock is now black's primary mage creature type, creating a cycle of Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Shaman, and Druid.

Quote from Flamebuster »

If we're going back to these places I wonder if we'll see things like Heroic and devotion for Theros; I'd guess we'll see a landfall variant if not landfall itself for Zendikar, provided the storyline and setting call for it. I'd like to see more Heroic and devotion.

'buster

Hear, hear. Aside from the usual +1/+1 counters, there's a lot they can do with Heroic, like more wide effects in the fashion of Phalanx Leader and Anax and Cymede. Heroic is easy to build around, as most sets have combat tricks and Auras with which to target your creatures. That said, if they wanted Heroes to have an "enchanted or equipped" theme this time, I wouldn't complain either as I love Equipment, and it's an excuse to bring back Bestow or introduce a similar mechanic, not to mention encourage putting more colored artifacts in the set to help with the Devotion theme. Since it's just one set this time, they can also bring back Constellation. I expect Sagas could return at uncommon and higher. I'd also love to see a greater focus on legendary cards, now that Dominaria showed us how to do it right.

I think fans fully expect Landfall itself to return in Zendikar, along with Allies. Since the Eldrazi aren't mucking everything up this time, they can go back to the more adventuresome feel of the original Zendikar and Worldwake. I could see a new spell mechanic called Roil that has you bounce a permanent you control as part of the cost, which would play splendidly with Landfall and Allies, not to mention Constellation if it should happen to return in Theros.

I'm loving these themes, especially the little white mouse tokens.

Quote from ChaozPuttatos »

Two "free" mana on turn two seems to be strong. You can fix Your hand with OUtT, then cast another 2 mana spell.

Why turn 2 when you can slam it turn 1? I would wager that more than a few combo decks will use this to keep otherwise unusable hands.

Quote from Manite »

Should Seller of Songbirds and Oak Street Innkeeper count as Citizens, or Peasants? My instinct is Citizen since Ravnica's a city plane (seriously, three visits and they have yet to do Citizen tribal on the city plane?), but elsewhere I'm guessing Peasant will be their creature type of choice for Humanoids with no class. Although, the traditional definition of "peasant" is specifically "a poor farmer of low social status", basically those folks you see wearing dingy brown potato sacks for clothes in Medieval cartoons, so perhaps Magic will reserve Peasant for farmers specifically as well.

You heard it hear first folks... the reason that peasants fart when they enter the battlefield is they have no class.

Cerberus's have multiple heads and aren't hydras, and there are a few of those in magic lore.

Multiple heads doesn't automatically equal hydras.

Quote from Manite »

I'm bugged that they went with Warlock over Witch. I read that many real life male witches consider "warlock" a derogatory term. At any rate, Warlock is now black's primary mage creature type, creating a cycle of Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Shaman, and Druid.

DnD uses warlock so it help cross brand and as magic warlocks are gonna be there own thing and wouldn't follow what real witches own beliefs and traditions, it helps keep the two from being compared.

Another new creature type is also gonna be showing up on Monday per Maro;

baalsabo-blog asked: I think nobles and warlocks are great additions to the game. New creature types seem like a great way to explore new conceptual design space. I see the addition of new creature types as a generally additive event, rather than as a subtractive one.

A: Wait, there’s one more coming in one of the preview cards in my Monday column. : )

Quote from Manite »

Besides, it wouldn't be the first time Zendikar introduced a tweak on Kicker.

Which is part of the problem.

Bouncing a single land certainly is a tweak on sweep that is much more reasonable.

Your templating is incorrect, btw, because the phrase "this spell was cast for its roil cost" implies an alternative cost, while the reminder text speaks of an additional cost.

Maybe that's the solution though. You could make roil an alternative cost (e. g. Geyser Flame becomes 1R with roil cost 2RR). This has multiple benefits:

1. You no longer walk straight into kicker territory.
2. You can make commons that are french vanilla with just roil without a change to the effect just for a pure cost reduction.
3. You can make cards that have a differently colored roil cost and casting cost.
4. Even while staying in-color, you could vary color intensity e. g. a devotion friendly casting cost, but a roil cost with only a single colored mana symbol.
5. You can consider hugely decreased roil costs with fun drawbacks.
6. As with awaken before an alternative cost is actually preferable in just telling the cost they are actually going to actually pay straight - no moment to calculate that Roil Wave with roil cost needs six mana, if you straight up print the six mana cost.

The option you really lose is going the Volver/Battlemage route and putting multiple roil costs on a single card, but those are actually quite wordy and have some design issues, so I don't know you'd even want that.

Quote from FunkyDragon »

After the whole errata to get rid of the Lord creature type, it's dumb that they're bringing in Noble.

Why is that? Based on the official multi-layered reasoning to get rid of the "lord" creature type, of course (which you can find here, under July 17, 2007. ). Why is "noble" dumb when it follows none of the multiple reasons "lord" was removed to begin with?

Quote from Mockingbird »

One thing to note about the Eldrazi is that they’ve been marketing failures in each iteration they’ve existed. They essentially ruined Zendikar 1 drafting (which is a pretty big deal because drafting moves a lot more packs than just straight selling alone); Emrakul one also got booted from commander because the only card that format needs less is Griselbrand. Eldrazi 2 overran every format except Standard, then Emrakul managed claim Standard to by being the cherry on top of the mistake now called Kaladesh block. The end result is one point on another in the past decade(ish) there has been a problem in every format that could be tied back to Eldrazi cards.

Like, maybe we see Emrakul again one day because the story demands it, but through and through, the Eldrazi tribe as a whole has nothing but bad publicity behind them because they were a problem in of themselves or helped push an existing problem over the top. And this is coming from a guy who’s favorite tribe is the Eldrazi.

Another thing is, Eldrazi are not likely to EVER return to Zendikar. FFS, one time they visited that world they were imprisoned, and then when they escaped, two of their kind were killed and the other fled. IF they ever bring non-Emrakul eldrazi back, I'd say it's highly likely they'll avoid the plane of Zendikar like the plague. From their alien perspective, that is the one plane ever shown in Magic's lore where their kind was able to be DESTROYED. Predators, especially smarter predators, don't return to places where it's too risky to feed. They look for food elsewhere.

Quote from Mishotem »

Quote from Wraithe »

They made it sound very much like it was a kaiju world. Moreover, Mark Rosewater said on the stream that you get to "build your own monsters". So I'm guessing it's some sort of put out a kaiju that's pretty basic and hard to kill, then throw more and more things on it to make it something unique to your deck and/or this particular game.

Sure. Like Kaladesh made you feel like an inventor. Except that the only mechanic that made you feel like an inventor, Fabricate, barely appeared in Kaladesh and wasn't even in Aether Reborn.

Now, maybe if this Monster Set has Host and Augment or something very similar, then we're talking. Otherwise, you're not actually making anything.

I mean, you can by as cynical as you want, I'm just saying MaRo literally said the "new mechanic we've never done before" lets you "build your own monster". Take that as you will. But the set is focused on being a monster world, and you get to build your own monsters, so...

Some potential errata for Noble type: Faerie Noble, Sprite Noble, King Suleiman, King Macar the Gold-Cursed... Maybe Anax and Cymede?