MTG Salvation

. Now them putting the Phyrexian creature type on Wurmcoil Engine given the existing Kaladesh reprint looks like the real mess-up.

Yes, it is a real mess up. That's why WoTC have literally no excuse. This is just wrong, in one way or another, no matter how you see it.

Since it looks like any plane with sphinxes and god-tier entities can consecrate their sphinxes,

Sure, but use that flavor for another new damn made up Sphinx , like, I don't know, Dedicated Sphinx, Hallow Sphinx, Sphinx of Consecration or whatever equivalent synonimous you can come up with. Not with a god-tier level Sphinx like this one. It's almost like True-Name Nemesis wouldn't be a merfolk anymore. Would be still a great card, but not being merfolk would give a severe damage to any legacy merfolk deck (of course it's not exactly the same, just to give the idea of how much the Sphinx would be such a great boon for phyrexian tribal - and we will have our phyrexian tribal commander, it's just a matteer of time.)

Both Consecrated Sphinx and Wurmcoil Engine can be Phyrexian Brand, Trademark And Watermark And Flavour Text Included. Neither of them must have the Phyrexian creature type.

Having the phyrexian watermark was exactly one of the main criterias they used to recognize what should be phyrexian in the game and what not. The most simple, intuitive and elegant one also. And the Sphinx was still a phyrexian on MTGO when they revealed us for the first time the phyrexian update. I really don't understand how they could mess up this one this badly.

not giving the phyrexian creature type allows for it to be reprint much more easily.

That isn't true at all at least for supplemental sets. Even with "phyrexian" word, Sphinx can be still printed in literally any commander / battlebond / conspiracy type product and would be plenty available for anyone. Also, Sphinx was never reprinnted for over a decade in a standard legal set even before the phyrexian update and when was simply a "sphinx", so what you are saying doesn't hold water with how facts are at all. (and even there, you could simply reprint the sphinx in any core set with or without the phyrexian creature type, literally nothing prevents that since core sets have reprints from any world and lore).

boohoo your tribe doesn't get it, not everything needs to be phyrexianized just because one version of the art has it depicted that way.

Dude, first of all, is not "one version", but the original printing of the card, with her original flavor, that even f**king has in flavor text "Blessed from the hands of Jin-Gitaxias", which means that the Consecrated Sphinx is canonically phyrexian in the lore and was compleated indeed from Gitaxias hands in New Phyrexia, unlike the stupid secret lair and amonkhet printings wich were made anyway before phyrexian type was a thing yet.

honestly i think the biggest ****up was even adding the phyrexian type line

No, the biggest **** up is that the Sphinx is currently the only creature card in existence with a phyrexian watermark that isn't a phyrexian, try to explain that to players that own the card and wants to make phyrexian tribal deck that some niche and obscure exclusve reprints have more relevance than that. And please don't do mirror climbing quoting other reprinting because the kaladesh reprint of Wurmcoil Engine just show WotC the incompetent inconsistency and can't be excused.

Oh, so it only took them 27 years to reprint for the first time ever a common from ice age that is a staple used everywhere in EDH and that they could've printed in literally any commander product in all these years but instead they choose to do it only for a expensive and time-limited product such as a secret lair?

I'm impressed.

Except even as far as 2016 when Maro was still saying no to crossovers

What? In 2016 he didn't say (at least according to your own link you provided) "no to crossovers." He simply said that the existence of a D&D version of Zendikar "not necessarily" equates that a Magic version of D&D should automatically happen just because of that. But that's far to say "no to crossovers". Its just his typical answer to "run with the hare and hunt with the hounds", when he doesn't want to give any definitive statements about something, but to be vague enough to be correct in both cases later. You truly have text comprehension issues.

I said he made claims against crossovers for years, and then changed his mind

He said in 2013 that if R&D would ever do a D&D crossover, would be just silver-border, not that would or should be forbidden in the whole Magic existence forever as it is a color pie break. Once again, try to understand what people actually says and not what you think they say in your mind.

Difference being Planechase, Commander, Archenemy, and even Conspiracy are actual different ways to play the game with not only their own game pieces relating to those formats specifically, but additional game pieces you can play normally. UB does not introduce a new way to play the game, they are just additional game pieces.

But Commander and Planechase having, exactly as UB, new unique cards that are simply additional game pieces that works (most of them) just fine in all eternal formats like Vintage and Legacy, was at the time a pretty big deal. When Commander rise officially in the 2011 it was the first time for a very long time WoTC would print "new cards", outside the standard format and many players get very angry and upset because they see this as the nightmare to chase cards outside the boosters packs (like Mana Crypt or Nalathni Dragon) all over again. And didn't help at all the fact that some of the commander or planechase cards turned out to be super strong and warping the competitive play (like Scavengin Ooze, True-Name Nemesis, Flusterstorm, Shardless Agentetc), forcing legacy and vintage players to chase the commander exclusive cards even if they were not interested in commander format at all. Commander decks were seen as just a predatory marketing move to make more money and force players to buy more products, exactly as people see now UB (and how they see basically everything WotC made since the dawn of times)

Refining game mechanics is not the same as bringing in other IP. They are not comparable.

This is just your subjective arbitrary statements that holds no water with the whole Magic history, no more no less. It's not repeating your dogmas you made in your head that will make them more true or change what has been done in past or present.

No, it's not. The very first one was The Baseball Card Game made in 1904.

Yes, my bad I should had simply added "the first TCG that still exist till today", since all others TCG that currently exist all are more or less in debt with Magic system. It's not a very relevant objection that nullify what I am trying to say.

Those insults don't help your arguments and in fact makes them look even worse than they already are.

Well, at least I have arguments, yours just sounds most of time a long rambling of nonsense, because you fail to even understand what we're talking about.

There's the crux of it. In your mind it's others that have the problem.

I am just repeating the same exact concepts that MaRo and whole R&D, the owners of the Magic brand and the only guys that have the ultimate word of what their brand is or is not about. So, if you feel that you're accused to misunderstanding what Magic was all about these years, it's not me that you have to talk with, but with all responsibles of the game itself. And if you don't like what they do with their own game, well lets just say nobody force you to play it if it makes you so unhappy. As I said earlier maybe you won't survive Magic changes, but Magic may continue to be one of the most successful TCG ever even without you.

Oh look at that, it did happen, and in fact quite a few times. I look forward to the "well things change" or "that was X years ago, it's different now" argument from you.

Very well. Now, a few things:
1) 2013 was a very different period for Magic. They were still experimenting with supplemental sets, and Standard was still the dominant format (today is commander, at least paper-magic). Which means they had much less options than today. It didn't exist the godzilla-treatment technology. They probably didn't think about that they could do both a non-IP and an IP version (exactly as happened in New Capenna with the Stranger Things crossover). They didn't know if they would put D&D universe inside Magic lore like they did with Rabiah or be able to put it outside without confusing players. But even then, even in the 2013 MaRo didn't even say that a D&D set would never belong to Magic, but that would be silver-border, exactly to avoid all the issues above. And as I proved in the other post, for MaRo "silver border" doesnt mean "it's not Magic" or "they are inferior Magic cards". They would be just part of the game in their own way, just like Commander, Planechase or Archenemy are also Magic in their own way.

2) People can change minds, and doesn't mean that the first opinion it's the right one to follow. About the color pie for example MaRo in his early years of Magic tought that black having fast mana with dark rituals or that blue doing direct damage with psychic flavor was ok (since he even did un-set version of those cards), simply because that was the current vision of the color pie in early Magic. In today Magic, black can only have rituals as a side effect of other spells and blue can never do direct damage at all. He is wrong now? No, the color pie, while still existing, changed, and thats healthy for the game future and evolution. At the same time, in the past the R&D tought that non-IP crossover couldn't be tournaments legal to not confuse players about Magic identity. But guess what. They matured, they changed, because Magic it's always about breaking his own rules outside of the Golden Trifecta. Magic is the first trading card game of history. It is already unique for many things and every other TCG that came later are just imitations of the real deal. It is not expanding his flavor to other IP that will stop to be Magic, because the most deepest and intimate things that makes Magic what it is, will always been the same, even if they assume forms that you, subjectively as a player don't like.

Sounds like you're trying to gatekeep me, and I thought you didn't like that?

Sounds like that as usual, you need a dictionary and try to make a sentence that make sense instead of using words at random, because as a functional illiterate, you fail to understand what you are reading. Greetings.

To conclude, I would argue that the only real basic hard core of game identity and integrity it's ultimately what Richard Garfield called Magic as the result and convergence of the Golden Trifecta : The mana system, the color pie, and collectible nature of the card game. This will not change. This is foundation of the success and survival itself of the game. Everything else (rules, mechanics, lore, flavor, etc.) can and very often should change, because thats the very nature for the game survival : evolution and adaption, trials and errors from times to times, until the end of the brand (I hope as late as possible).

While I might not like it as a Vorthos, I can see how gameplay trump's flavor in MtG.

But you see, I'm also a Vorthos (and a very passionate one) exactly like you, and I'm not bothered at all of UB exactly because they don't hurt or touch in any way the real story and identity of Magic lore (being outside of the mtg multiverse and canon) but are nothing more than fan-services to people that sincerely enjoy to see their own heroes to have a Magic version and to be "part of game" at least gameplay wise if not lorewise.
It is not so uncommon that you see, even in tournaments, altered cards that depict whatever media players enjoy right? (like I don't know, batman painted over the art of a Vampire Nighthawk or something). Sure, you might not like it, it might partially ruin your personal immersion to the game but you can't control what other players enjoy to see and express themselves through Magic within their own decks.
And thats exactly why WotC will make Magic versions of the Secret Lairs UB cards or the use of the Godzilla-treatment : to let people enjoy the same game each with his own favorite immersion. It's sounds a good and reasonable compromise to me.

As for the whole argument "just don't play with it". Well, I literally can't avoid it, unfortunately.

That's a problem that exist since the inception of the game. Maybe some players are so "Lore purist" that deep in they heart hate that Arabian Night and Portal 3 Kingdoms are a thing but they have to deal in tournaments against Bazaar of Bagdad or Imperial Seal even if they have nothing to do with Magic lore. Doesn't matter if they are old cards or even if it was only one card. They are part of the game forever and you have to deal with. So this is nothing new. Magic can use other IP, did that since the very first expansion of the game and you have to deal with it, whetever you like or not.

And I haven't gotten into the whole argument that these crossovers actually erode Magic as a brand

Don't worry time will tell us who was in the right side in the end. But something tells me that maybe is more likely that you wont survive Magic (perhaps because you wont like whatever direction WotC takes or whatever reason and abandon the game) but Magic may survive and prosper without you.

Quote from Jh216 »

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Quote from soramaro »

I hate that people will gobble up all these garbage DND, 40K and LotR sets.

Nom,nom,nom.

Also, why do you care what other people like?

Because they're being big mad children and if they can't like it, neither can we!

You (and many others) completely fail to see why people dislike this. Magic has always been a fantasy game. Boltguns, tanks, spaceships and the likes have no place getting mixed into a fantasy game. UB is an escalation of crossing a very undesirable line that started with SL. Since it’s a Commander product you could potentially be forced to deal with these themed cards whether you wist to or not because an opponent could plop them on the table at any given moment.

So this is not a matter of you not being allowed to like something. It is a matter of everybody being forced to like it or having to deal with it. If this was a stand-alone product not mixed into the rest of the game nobody would mind.

I'm sorry but nowhere Magic has ever promised to be a game limited exclusively on traditional fantasy setting. Never. Since the very early inception of Magic lore, sci-fi stuff was always a core element in both story and cards (all the Urza and Thran Empire and Skyships with laser beams etc.). Sure, Magic core it's also a traditional fantasy setting but it was never meant to be to be exclusively limited to be a only traditional fantasy setting. The whole concept of a multiverse and planeswalkers able to travel between planes it's exactly of "there are infinite worlds to discover with boundless possibilities" with time travels of both past and future, rise and falls of any kind of technology, parallel and alternative universe of known realities as shown in Planar Chaos etc., it's not a closed system in time and space like a Lord of the Ring or Harry Potter world is, where there is basically only one world and one setting and only one timeline to adhere with. You think boltguns, tanks, spaceships and such has no place in a traditional fantasy setting? If we should use your parameter, half of all Magic cards and worlds of 30 years of this game should be directly put in the thrash bin. We should put in the thrash bin Mirrodin, Kaladesh, the modern Kamigaway, New Capenna, all the thran and old phyrexian technology. We should put in the thrash bin most of the artifacts cards, because to follow your standards all the trains (like Capenna Express), cars (like Getaway Cars), giant modern robots (like Futurist Sentinel), laser-beam skyships (like Predator, Flagship ), computers (like Tamiyo Notebook), guns (like Alaborn Zealot ) should go in the thrash bin and I really could be going for hours doing "modernists" examples even if UB never existed in the first place.


So you see, it's not about UB, UB has nothing to do with your "lore purist" complaint. It's just about that apparently you deeply misunderstood what Magic had always, is and will always be and in all this time you simply ignored the stuff you didn't liked of this game and pick just the things you like as the "only canon setting" of this game. Sure, you have all the rights to have your personal preferences to play only with the stuff you like, but please don't say what should objectively belong and what not in this game as a whole, because as we see, that's simply a biased statement that doesn't hold water with the real and effective history and identity of this game, nothing more, nothing less.

P.S: and to to be really fair, even the whole "use other IP" stuff had always been part of the game, like the very first expansion of the game made by the creator of this card game itself, Arabian Nights and also Portal Three Kingdoms (which is setted in our real world with no magic of supernatural elements at all). So, yeah, WotC is simply doing what has just already did in the past multiple times and are already part of the game forever, whetever you like it or not.

I'm really glad that someone brought up the fact that P3k and Arabian Nights are sets that ALSO fit this break of UB. I'm a fierce advocate of Rule 0 and while I can kinda see someone getting upset about silver-bordered cards at the table, it irks me that people will actively bar people from using these cards. Yeah, I don't give a flip about your semantics of "I'm not saying that they can't play with them I'm just saying that I'm not going to play with someone that plays them." It's still gatekeeping.

But gatekeeping discussion aside, for those naysayers that say that "noone plays cards from Arabian Nights or P3k" I have for you the following list:

Loyal Retainers
Capture of Jingzhou
Strategic Planning
Sun Quan, Lord of Wu
Ambition's Cost
Cao Cao, Lord of Wei
Imperial Seal
Overwhelming Forces
Xiahou Dun, the One-eyed
Burning of Xinye
Imperial Recruiter
Rolling Earthquake
Warrior's Oath
Hua Tuo, Honored Physician
Riding the Dilu Horse
Spoils of Victory
Three Visits

Guardian Beast
Ouellette
Bazaar of Baghdad
City of Brass
Library of Alexandria


If I come across anyone so ignorant as to refuse to play with UB cards, or "ban them" I'll be more than happy to exclude any card originally printed in either Arabian Nights or P3k from being played. Then we can all be unhappy.

Quote from JqlGirl »

A question for everyone complaining about Rule 13 re: Wishes, etc.:
Nothing functionally changed in the rule with this update, so why is everyone getting all argumentative about it now?

This is not new. This "argument" has been going on for years. But since you brought it up...

Rule 13 is the last piece of format-level errata left in Commander. Rules affecting specific cards have all been removed from the format (Karakas didn't affect generals, Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant flipped at 60 life, Riftsweeper didn't affect generals pre-Command zone, etc.). What happened is that the cards were either banned (in the case of Karakas and Riftsweeper) or deemed a non-issue (as was the case with Rune-Tail). For Wishes, they at least used to get you cards that had been "removed from the game" in a game of EDH, but with the advent of the Exile zone they can't even do that anymore. So now we have a whole class of cards that are effectively blanked by Rule 13 without actually being banned. Many people have an issue with that.

It would not be that hard to rewrite Rule 13 and establish reasonable guidelines for how Wishes work in a game of Commander, but I also understand that in itself would lead to format-level errata. I am of the mind that errata that enabled a card to work as close to its initial functionality as possible is preferable to errata that effectively blanks the text box (or a portion depending on the card). With that in mind, I have advocated that Rule 13 be changed to this:
If we don't like the term "wishboard" (as Sheldon has stated his dislike for the idea of sideboards and wishboards due to their connection to competitive Magic), then we can call it something different. The semantics shouldn't matter. The idea is just that we don't want people to be binder flipping or shoebox rummaging and wasting people's time.

I get it that some people don't like wishes because they fear the kinds of cards that people will Wish for. My only response to that is that if the Social Contract is good enough to discourage "anti-social" play, then why wouldn't it be good enough to discourage people from using a Wish in an "anti-social" way? Just like the RC doesn't ban cards based on the worst possible ways that cards can be used, there is no reason to think that Wishes wouldn't fall under the same stigma. If there is a "fair use", then that is what we should be evaluating the card on. If that "fair use" goes too far, then just ban the card.

I also get it that there is a minority that don't like the idea that a Wish somehow breaks the 100-card deck limit, and that after Wishing for a card your deck is now greater than 100 cards and is no longer legal at that point. This is total rubbish. The card does what the card does, and when the card does something outside of the rules the card wins. Relentless Rats violates Rule 5 (the Highlander rule), Partner commanders violate Rule 2, Planeswalkers that can be used as your commander a la Teferi, Temporal Archmage violate Rule 2, Transguild Courier violates Rule 3 (the Color Identity rule), but we allow these cards to all function as-printed and we acknowledge (and celebrate) how they bend/break the rules. I don't understand how Wishes get singled out, but if this is indeed the actual issue here (which I highly doubt) then just ban the card.

I also somewhat get the concern of how one can verify that the player isn't violating the Highlander rule, but honestly how do you verify that now? Nobody is registering decks and doing deck checks, so why is it a non-issue now but a deal breaker when the topic of Wishes come up?

I think that in the end, all of this is a moot point. If the ruling of the RC is that "we don't want them because of the competitive stigma associated with them" (or something along those lines), then talking about how they could work within the rules and worrying about what people might Wish for is a conversation that has zero value. These things don't matter if the RC doesn't want them to be part of the default Commander game. At that point, is banning really any better than the current rule? I don't know. You could easily say that they fall under the "interacts poorly with the structure of the format" and call it a day. My preference however would be to just let the card do what it is supposed to do as close to its printed intent but within the confines of what is reasonable with the format.

I'm sure glad these planeswalkers who made wrong decisions for their entire life could simply change their mind at the absolute last second and stop the evil mastermind who made the right decisions for his entire plan. Thank God that family was standing under that rock that fell so Liliana could see how bad she was.

The story for this set is absolute garbage.

Whelp, about 50% of the people interested in the lore are gonna be disappointed. Most people have already theorized that Bolas is gonna be trapped in the Meditation Realm by Ugin. Me personally, I'm not upset. Bolas isn't as "mustache twirling" a villain some fans try to make him out to be. For me, he represents an evil that will never truly die. He is the embodiment of evil in the multi-verse, and killing him would be anti-climatic. As for the cards, they're pretty dope! I like the artwork Tyrant's Scorn. There's something about seeing Magic's "Superman" getting smacked down and around by evil again (Amonkhet anyone?). Prison Realm is a little "meh" but the scry 1 could come in handy.

Give us her name, and make her a planeswalker already.

She knows all the arcane texts from the Ismeri Library by the time she was sixteen and now she quizzes Sphinxes in her spare time!

What sort of power will she weld when she is an Archmage!?!

Remember when Stoneforge Mystic was an icon without a name? I feel like we need to know more about this character overtime.

Quote from Demonologo Uriel »

When are on-going, everyday spoilers starts actually? There is an official date?

Spoiler season starts on Monday, 10th.

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Quote from Demonologo Uriel »

Anyway, what I'm surprised, from a lore perspective, is that this is the first time that we ever see someone so young becoming already a Planeswalker. I believe this is the first child PW in all magic history. Wonder what was the event that made her spark so early.

From Gavin's article yesterday:

The white-blue-black (Esper) deck is helmed by one of the most unique Planeswalkers we've had yet: Aminatou. She looks like a kid . . . but don't let that fool you. Seemingly timeless, she is a fateshifter, a watcher who has the power to rewrite history—from small tweaks to radically changing entire worlds with the wave of her hand.

Link

I'm mostly just sad that they didn't take this opportunity to actually put Chromium Rhuell's last name on a card for once.