Protection wasn't removed because it was complained about it was removed because it's complicated. Lots of people don't actually know what Protection prevents and what it doesn't. This isn't going to cause them to make more abusive hexproof creatures. In fact Dragonlord Ojutai is the perfect example of how they're restricting Hexproof. He's not hexproof when he's attacking and if he's not attacking he's not really doing anything. They clearly understand that straight up hexproof is powerful so they're making it conditional on many creatures.
Landwalk was very clearly explained by MaRo. It matters or it doesn't. It's not about how it screwed people over. They wanted something that matters all the time. If you think Landwalk is fun that's fine but I think most people don't care and would rather just run something that can't be blocked at all rather than hope they sit down against a particular deck.
The reason land destruction has been made more expensive is because it's not fun. Also: Green destroys non-creature permanents. Desert Twister is no longer in pie and Beast Within is a known break as well. Land destruction as a + anything on a walker is definitely a no-go. Green's not dying. It's very powerful. It just took down the TCGPlayer Invitational yesterday.
Quit complaining and adapt. These changes are very good for the health of the game.
So you're point is that they are again making magic less complicated. Dumbing the game down. Rather then printing reminder text or having people actually learn the game because it is a very large game with a lot of cards. The side lining of protection one of the basic game features that is easy to understand is not a good thing. It encourages the game to be further dumbed down. I'm sure a lot of combo players would agree with me that the basic standard environment of the game could use more deck types. Maybe at some point mill could be a viable deck plan as well. Resource denial is a basic tenet of the game. Thankfully discard still exists. thoughtseize I thought that dragon's maze deck where you could win by playing a deck full of fogs and searching for all 10 gates to win the game was great. There is no reason Land destruction can't be brought back as an archetype.
Not everybody who wants to play Magic and pay for it wants to strive for an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, and they shouldn't have to. Magic is a game, a commecial game, and like any game should strive to be as accessible as possible, especially when it's commercial. Making the game more accessible means making more money, and making more money means being able to continue supporting the game. The "learn the rules" attitude is elitist and damaging to the game; the simplification isn't just for people who want to learn the game themselves but also who want to be able to teach the game to friends and family. The "smarter" players who have this inflated opinion of complexity can take solace in the fact they'll be really good at such a "dumbed down" game.
what makes me sad is how much more difficult it is to transform her than Liliana....
I mean, you can Drop a Carrion Feeder or any other sac outlet before playing her.
Then just sacrifice anything to flip Liliana at instant speed, that essentially protects her against spot removal.
Chandra in the other hand, just NEEDS to survive an entire turn....
if she only had haste. you could, for example, drop her, attack, kill blocker with a random burn spell to untap her, deal 2 damage by attacking and tap her to ping and transform right away, would still be worse than Liliana, but at least would be feasible in the same turn she enters the battlefield.
Swing with Chandra for 2, cast Spark Jolt, tap Chandra to deal 1 damage. That's about as easy as setting up a sac outlet with Liliana, though you're better off using a creature that can sac itself like Corpse Hauler. In the meantime, both can be thwarted with a removal spell, which is okay since removal was designed for the very purpose of stopping threats. However, Chandra's enabler, casting a red spell, isn't as vulnerable to permission as Liliana who will require that your spells actually resolve so you have a sac outlet plus a creature to sac. Chandra only needs you to cast a red spell and she's good to go.
I'm definitely seeing regeneration getting replaced in time with either damage prevention, especially for Trolls, or return from graveyard effects, whether going back to the battlefield, to your hand, or into or on top of your library.
this article only shows the inconsitency at R&D and that Maro is one of magics biggest problems. By removing fear in the first place and landwalk now they removed 2 flavorful keywords, just to streamline the game. As if magic players wouldnt play the old cards at one point anyway.
Its way more confusing to add 2-3 new keywords every set and then not use it ever again.
And oh the arguments, its uninteractive. So lets do more hexproof and cannot be blocked.
Menace is a keyword I expect to be removed in a few years.
There's a little phenomenon we call change. It allows us to improve things by adding and subtracting stuff as needed. Fear, landwalk, and for that matter intimidate were not good mechanics. New players who play old cards with those mechanics might well be glad that they made those changes; I know I'm certainly glad banding didn't stick around.
Menace has already been around for at least four years, so I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Unlike fear, intimidate, and landwalk, menace can always be dealt with simply by having at least two creatures, making it similar to flying in the sense that each color has some way to deal with it while also being mechanically different enough and flavorful for the colors it will most likely appear in, black and red. And being an evergreen keyword means it will start showing up a lot more often, possibly in other colors since it's replacing intimidate and all.
And if they were going to print a temple in Origins, it should be Temple of Triumph since Gideon comes from Akros and all.
If we see a cycle of duals in Origins, it will likely have a unified template. The Future Sight style concept sounds exciting but I just don't see it happening in a Standard set anytime soon, and I even put up a topic about it myself a while back. The focus is on monocolored PWs, so if anything we'll probably see rare monocolored lands akin to the Kamigawa and Zendikar cycles, perhaps in tandem with a cycle of utility lands.
Much like Chandra's associatedcreatures, Flame of Kaladesh requires playing it in a burn deck to be good. It's not like she was going to fit into the same kind of red aggro deck as Monastery Swiftspear and Zurgo Bellstriker. In fact, my impression is that Chandra's meant to give burn decks a little more reach than they otherwise would have; she's there for when the steam starts running out.
I'm pretty sure we'll see some kind of enemy land representation in BfZ, since it's adjacent to KTK and all. I would personally shoot for Fetches in BfZ and Manlands in "Sweat" as in the event the Zendikari actually pull off a victory against the Eldrazi, the Manlands can represent Zendikar's side getting stronger. (Would be delicious irony if Zendikar started "eating" the Eldrazi, taking back the mana they took from it.) Otherwise, the Manlands can at least represent the battle growing more intense.
We might see Refuge reprints, complete with enemy pair representation this time. Refuges would make sense flavorwise. At the very least, we'll need some form of ally fixing once KTK rotates.
Maro in particular does not like white getting card draw as has happened with Mesa Enchantress, Kor Spiritdancer, Puresteel Paladin, and Mentor of the Meek. He feels such cards undercut one of white's primary weaknesses, that it's the worst at card draw to make up for having the most versatile answers. That said, I don't think Mesa Enchantress and Kor Spiritdancer should be counted in that list of successful colorshifts.
Why would they bother with 2-3 decks with the exact same colors (or lack thereof) in the same product cycle? Even considering the different themes those decks might have, marketing would have a heck of a time trying to distinguish them to customers who will probably be looking at mana symbols on the box.
For that matter, I feel that Karn and Kozilek would be packaged with Reaper King and Child of Alara, respectively, though that particular Karn is on the reserved list and thus can't be reprinted except as a giant card anyway.
I think the abiltiy to swing with Chandra, cast a red spell to untap her, then tap to ping and flip is pretty clever. That said, it would feel better if one of Roaring Flame's abilities interacted with red spells or at least instants and sorceries somehow, like "-2: You may cast one instant or sorcery card from your graveyard this turn. If you cast an instant or sorcery this way, it gains 'exile this spell as it resolves'", or "-X: Exile an instant or sorcery card with converted mana cost X or less from your graveyard and copy it three times. You may cast the copies without paying their mana costs."
The name Kaladesh sounds kinda middle eastern to me. Compare to Bangladesh, though Bangladesh is actually farther east, on the eastern side of India in fact. If you look closely on the left side of the picture, there's one of those onion-shaped tower tops that appear commonly in Middle Eastern, Indian, and Russian architecture. Indeed, the whole picture actually has an Indian feel to me. Perhaps Kaladesh will be the setting for our India block?
Well, that's certainly more impressive than a 2/3 or even a 2/5. Let's consider of course that he's the guy who trained this guy. As a white creature, Gideon is pretty jacked; he had to get it from somewhere. "Now listen here, son. Just 'cause we're part of the color best known for big armies of small fries don't mean we can't be buff sunuvvaguns capable of wrestlin' Ogres and Giants one-on-one." Of course, Bant might have had part to do with that as well.
Theory time: The set not only includes ten monocolor legends, one for each plane, but each color's two legends are also the intro pack rares, with the intro packs representing each Planeswalker's journey from their home plane to the new plane. So we have Hixus from Theros and a white legend from Bant in the white deck for example.
This is why I would like to see evasion mechanics like swimming and tunneling added to Magic. Tunneling would make a lot of sense as a red ability and would also make a great deal of sense in white, black, and green. Swimming would be another blue evasion ability but one that black and green could also easily get. The main reason we don't see such evasion mechanics is that they'd probably be too similar to Flying, just as Horsemanship was. Hexproof covers part of swimming's flavor, but not the evasion aspect, while tunneling has been interpreted as the Goblin Tunneler ability.
Not everybody who wants to play Magic and pay for it wants to strive for an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, and they shouldn't have to. Magic is a game, a commecial game, and like any game should strive to be as accessible as possible, especially when it's commercial. Making the game more accessible means making more money, and making more money means being able to continue supporting the game. The "learn the rules" attitude is elitist and damaging to the game; the simplification isn't just for people who want to learn the game themselves but also who want to be able to teach the game to friends and family. The "smarter" players who have this inflated opinion of complexity can take solace in the fact they'll be really good at such a "dumbed down" game.
Swing with Chandra for 2, cast Spark Jolt, tap Chandra to deal 1 damage. That's about as easy as setting up a sac outlet with Liliana, though you're better off using a creature that can sac itself like Corpse Hauler. In the meantime, both can be thwarted with a removal spell, which is okay since removal was designed for the very purpose of stopping threats. However, Chandra's enabler, casting a red spell, isn't as vulnerable to permission as Liliana who will require that your spells actually resolve so you have a sac outlet plus a creature to sac. Chandra only needs you to cast a red spell and she's good to go.
There's a little phenomenon we call change. It allows us to improve things by adding and subtracting stuff as needed. Fear, landwalk, and for that matter intimidate were not good mechanics. New players who play old cards with those mechanics might well be glad that they made those changes; I know I'm certainly glad banding didn't stick around.
Hexproof and "can't be blocked" are not being combined often; Wizards learned their lesson from Invisible Stalker. When they do combine hexproof with any sort of evasion, both are conditional (Prognostic Sphinx, Tromokratis, Mistfire Weaver, Dragonlord Ojutai) with Belltoll Dragon and Silumgar, the Drifting Death being the two recent exceptions.
Menace has already been around for at least four years, so I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon. Unlike fear, intimidate, and landwalk, menace can always be dealt with simply by having at least two creatures, making it similar to flying in the sense that each color has some way to deal with it while also being mechanically different enough and flavorful for the colors it will most likely appear in, black and red. And being an evergreen keyword means it will start showing up a lot more often, possibly in other colors since it's replacing intimidate and all.
If we see a cycle of duals in Origins, it will likely have a unified template. The Future Sight style concept sounds exciting but I just don't see it happening in a Standard set anytime soon, and I even put up a topic about it myself a while back. The focus is on monocolored PWs, so if anything we'll probably see rare monocolored lands akin to the Kamigawa and Zendikar cycles, perhaps in tandem with a cycle of utility lands.
We might see Refuge reprints, complete with enemy pair representation this time. Refuges would make sense flavorwise. At the very least, we'll need some form of ally fixing once KTK rotates.
Why would they bother with 2-3 decks with the exact same colors (or lack thereof) in the same product cycle? Even considering the different themes those decks might have, marketing would have a heck of a time trying to distinguish them to customers who will probably be looking at mana symbols on the box.
For that matter, I feel that Karn and Kozilek would be packaged with Reaper King and Child of Alara, respectively, though that particular Karn is on the reserved list and thus can't be reprinted except as a giant card anyway.
Wait 'til the Australia block.
The name Kaladesh sounds kinda middle eastern to me. Compare to Bangladesh, though Bangladesh is actually farther east, on the eastern side of India in fact. If you look closely on the left side of the picture, there's one of those onion-shaped tower tops that appear commonly in Middle Eastern, Indian, and Russian architecture. Indeed, the whole picture actually has an Indian feel to me. Perhaps Kaladesh will be the setting for our India block?
Theory time: The set not only includes ten monocolor legends, one for each plane, but each color's two legends are also the intro pack rares, with the intro packs representing each Planeswalker's journey from their home plane to the new plane. So we have Hixus from Theros and a white legend from Bant in the white deck for example.
Looks like we can add Enthralling Victor to FTV: Memetic.
FTV: Memetic