MTG Salvation

No, they cannot reselect targets once their spell has chosen a target and is on the stack. By using cloudshift you effectively counter any spell that is targeting the creature you cloudshifted and their spell does nothing. This is only true if the spell targets, for example if I play Plaguecrafter, you would still have to sacrifice a creature or planewalker since it doesn't target a specific one. Also if their spell has multiple targets, as long as one of those is still targeted it still resolves the valid targets. For example, if I cast cryptic command, choosing to bounce your creature and counter your spell, and you cloudshift your creature, I still get to counter your spell, but your creature will not be bounced.

Quote from Bhogal83 »

I think what upsets many of us "alt-right Nazis" is the double standards exhibited by WOTC and the MTG community. It's perfectly fine for an editor of MTG Salvation to publish an editorial implicitly calling for right-wingers to literally be burned alive in the streets, but any criticism of WOTC's heavy-handed far-leftism is labelled racism/trolling.

It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.

It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.

It's perfectly fine for Jeremy Hambly to be physically beaten and ejected from the community because he wrote some mean things about some people online, but no one questions why the MTG community harassed and doxxed Terese Nielsen online due to her not following the same childish SJWism as the rest of the community.

And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.

I don't think this is the argument though.

I am arguing that one should not get upset there is representation of one race or another. If you want to say Amonkhet had no white people that is fair, it didnt have really any apart from the planeswalkers, which i think is fine repsentation. But for every set that has few white people you can find a handful or more that are a majority white or all white. But again not really the point.

The issue started because they said the source material does not have people of color and this apparently was upsetting. I pointed out in fact the source material does have people of color in the likes of the knights of the round table. Yes the left is not without fault, yes people are hyprocrites. Regardless of any of that, no one should be upset if a set has a person of any race or identity. Period.

Quote from Humphrey »

actually id prefer to stick to the source material if you "steal" it. its not wotc world.

and there are no "people of color" in grimms. i hate that in your face sjw bull*****. maybe rewrite european history completely to be pc?

It is not just Grimms world though. There are clearly Knights of the round table references in here and that story does have non-white people. Also as much as it is influenced by grimm's fairy tales. This is not just grimm's tales stuck to cards. They are references. The world of Eldraine is wotc, they can do with it what they want. I still don't know why a female army and a Queen of color are so insulting/upsetting.

It's only political if you read it to be. I personally see no political statement from these cards. I don't see anything that takes me out of the world, from what I can tell they are still fantasy based and on theme.

Quote from Humphrey »

the famous black queen of medieval european tales and her all female knights army. yeah, sure wotc..

Yeah! And while we are at it, the cow in Jack in the beanstalk wasn't a cursed person it was just a cow. Crystal slippers don't make Cinderella faster, if anything they slowed her down until she lost one. and last I checked Zombies were not a common creature in any european tale I ever heard of, also Goldilocks wasn't a hunter and pretty sure there are no mention of planeswalkers in any european myth or folklore.

Sarcasm aside, why does it matter? It's Wotc's world, they can populate it with whatever people and armies they want. It does not take away from the fact it is still obviously based on european folklore. Plus just look at the knights of the round table, Sir Morien was not white, the green knight was not white. People of color existed in the world of European myths so why not have a queen of color?

I mean if they can design them better so they don't scuff the cards this is a really good change imo.

hmm not the biggest fan of the looting ban, a lot of fun decks used that. Cool to see stoneforge finally get set free though.

I politiely dissagree. I think one of the defining characteristics of Mtg is that you don't attack creatures. It is a big difference from many of the other card games out there and one I am very happy about, it makes it unique and honestly adds a lot more depth to the game. Being able to choose blockers gives players more decisions. As for creatures knowing to attack player and planeswalkers and not creaures. Planeswalkers are basically a new player helping you so thematically i makes sense ou can choose to attack them. And I think thematically it makes sense you can't attack creatures. If I was a general commanding an army, I am not going to put my key cards in harms way (For instance not blocking with them) unless it was life or death. Your opponent is trying to beat you. You place your troops in such a way to stop them, you decide where your armies are to stop theirs. If your opponent could directly attack your creatures in the combat step, it negates this. I mena no offense, I just think that what you are looking for is not in th espirit of the game but can be found in other games.

Now that is a two mana planeswalker done right! Only slightly sad this can't go in my Tatyova, benthic druid deck but I guess now I have to make it RUG This does seem like it has modenr applications too, loam decks have gotten several shots in the arm this set!

Sweet! I love this card and I really want to make some grindy value engine in modern with it. The new art is pretty sweet, definitely a different energy and feel but I like it a lot.

I can only imagine that this is what timespiral spoiler season felt like. I love seeing all of these call backs and mechanics and the new design space they are trying out! This card looks fun. Not broken but can provide a late game threat once you run low on gas. I am excited to see how it performs.

O.K. If we're suggesting new properties for Secret Lairs and (apparently) modern-day real world stuff is on the table, then why not the greatest, most-awesome, and epic movie of all time, ever: Big Trouble in Little China Secret Lair!

Or - The other most epic, awesome, megatastic movie ever: The Princess Bride Secret Lair!

Also

FREEZE

THOSE

LIPS

Quote from Boreez »

Quote from H3RAC71TU5 »

Quote from VariSami »

https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=type:human block:akh

There are a total of 58 results to spend 'an hour' looking at, proving that Mr. Bhogal83 has done *none* of the research on the matter. They also state that none of the examples provided show people with skin tones that befit people of European origin (who, may I remind everyone, includes people from the Mediterranean).

I submit to the jury of public opinion whose case was properly argued and who failed to address any of the points raised, as had been put in the complaint by Mr. Bhogal83 in an earlier post.

Is it so much to ask that if you start an argument, you should see it through? Has the valor of the right fallen so low that at every turn they are opposed they resort to intellectual cowardice?

Or should it not come as a surprise that those who have admitted from their own mouths that they hate justice, also hate honor?

The hilarious part is that despite his "I'll no longer be checking this thread", everyone knows he is checking the thread. Shaking, cdovered in sweat, and considering it better to have made it out alive than to lose more of his dignity.

I'd like to think so. But I'm especially disappointed that I didn't get to ding him for the error he made conflating an analogy with equating. A critical analytic difference!

Quote from H3RAC71TU5 »

Quote from VariSami »

https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=type:human block:akh

There are a total of 58 results to spend 'an hour' looking at, proving that Mr. Bhogal83 has done *none* of the research on the matter. They also state that none of the examples provided show people with skin tones that befit people of European origin (who, may I remind everyone, includes people from the Mediterranean).

I submit to the jury of public opinion whose case was properly argued and who failed to address any of the points raised, as had been put in the complaint by Mr. Bhogal83 in an earlier post.

Is it so much to ask that if you start an argument, you should see it through? Has the valor of the right fallen so low that at every turn they are opposed they resort to intellectual cowardice?

Or should it not come as a surprise that those who have admitted from their own mouths that they hate justice, also hate honor?

The hilarious part is that despite his "I'll no longer be checking this thread", everyone knows he is checking the thread. Shaking, covered in sweat, and considering it better to have made it out alive than to lose more of his dignity.

Quote from Bhogal83 »

I think what upsets many of us "alt-right Nazis" is the double standards exhibited by WOTC and the MTG community. It's perfectly fine for an editor of MTG Salvation to publish an editorial implicitly calling for right-wingers to literally be burned alive in the streets, but any criticism of WOTC's heavy-handed far-leftism is labelled racism/trolling.

It's perfectly fine for Medieval-Europe-inspired planes to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why Amonkhet or Kamigawa are devoid of Caucasian natives.

It's perfectly fine for the WOTC community to complain about a picture of Garruk threatening to punch Liliana in the face, but no one questions when we have pictures of women like Massacre Girl standing over the bloodied bodies of her victims.

It's perfectly fine for Jeremy Hambly to be physically beaten and ejected from the community because he wrote some mean things about some people online, but no one questions why the MTG community harassed and doxxed Terese Nielsen online due to her not following the same childish SJWism as the rest of the community.

And before the tendentious mods of this website label this post as hate speech/racism/flaming/trolling, bear in mind that, since you care so much about increasing the presence of brown people in the game, I am a brown-skinned Indian, and my message is this: If diversity is so important to you, then perhaps you should allow diversity of thought. And if you wish to keep politics out of MTG, then perhaps you shouldn't try to sneak it in.

The reason most people do not bother addressing the comments you called 'arguments' is that they lack that format structure, especially in this instance. But let us try and extract that together, shall we? Based on the anecdotes which have been selected in the quoted message, you seem to be attempting to lead the reader to a conclusion somewhere in the ballpark of 'WotC and the community around MtG are unjustly biased against value conservative people'. Because I am not familiar with the details of the cases to which you are alluding with regard to a MTGS editorial or Teresa Nielsen, I will refrain from commenting on those outside stating that the first one is extremely hyperbolic. Calling WotC 'far-left' - let alone ideologically motivated in said respect, as the use of 'ism' implies - based on their representation of members of disempowered groups as parts of their fictional works is the usual online conflation of 'everything I disagree with' with extremism and a label binarily opposed to whichever one oneself identifies with. This form of hyperbole signals utter lack of nuance which colours whether the take is considered worth spending the time to analyse, whether justifiedly or not.

So, firstly - the alleged disparity in representation between worlds modelled after different historical contexts. I checked every 'human' card in Amonkhet to see the variety of shades in terms of skin colour and as Bloodlust Inciter, Glory-Bound Initiate, Honored Crop-Captain, True-Heart Duelist, and Vizier of Remedies show, there is variation in various directions (including lighter tones well within the range Caucasians exhibit). I mostly focused on the lighter hues because of your argument here. Now, interestingly, that form of variation would have occurred in historical Egypt, too, because of its relatively active trade (and other forms of interactions) with other Mediterranean nations. Similarly, people of various skin tones have been a part of European culture throughout history. While he is a fictional example, the eponymous Othello in Shakespeare's play is a Moorish general of the Venetian army and traditionally gets depicted with deep dark skin. Yet people tend to act as though representations of different identities are a uniquely modern phenomenon and somehow reduce the artistic integrity of the works in question. Rome was an extremely multi-cultural empire despite the city being in Italy. The crusades and similar historical contingencies having made parts of Europe hostile to people of other ethnicities is not something which needs to be represented in fictional works because that period is the exception rather than the rule in the grand scheme of things.

As for depictions of gendered violence - the example you brought up being Triumph of Ferocity - the issue people observe mainly lies in some depictions using imagery associated with real trauma such as domestic abuse. In essence, those experiences are being turned into symbols which then become dissociated from their original contexts and the impact such events truly have. I believe WotC had intended the complementing nature of Triumph of Cruelty to balance such associations out. However, the framing of the two images is very different: one focuses on Garruk's suffering and leaves Liliana in the background; the other focuses on Garruk's anger and uses signs of domestic abuse like choking, Liliana's relatively passive pose, and punching (in the face). The two thus end up not being symmetrical since Garruk is the focus of both. We can also relatively easily imagine alternative depictions of Garruk having the upper hand over Liliana which do not apply these signifiers. Off the top of my head, he could be sending wolves after her, approach her with his axe in hand while she is struggling against vines that are depicted in a non-bondage fashion, and so on. These are still depictions of violence against a woman by a man but not of gendered violence. For the record, Massacre Girl's picture shows a woman lying there dead. However, the bigger difference there is that she is a depiction of generic violence by a woman rather than 'feminine violence'. Assuming that WotC ever made a card where a woman was participating in a form of 'feminine violence' like castrating a man in his sleep, it would likely be problematic but there would be less overall impact since instances of such violence are considerably rarer and do not constitute a systematic societal issue.

I hope you are content at having had your points be addressed to the best of my ability to try and explain the thought processes behind what you dismissed as just 'far-leftism'.

Quote from VariSami »

https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=type:human block:akh

There are a total of 58 results to spend 'an hour' looking at, proving that Mr. Bhogal83 has done *none* of the research on the matter. They also state that none of the examples provided show people with skin tones that befit people of European origin (who, may I remind everyone, includes people from the Mediterranean) without any support.

I submit to the jury of public opinion whose case was properly argued and who failed to address any of the points raised, as had been put in the complaint by Mr. Bhogal83 in an earlier post.

You're original post was fantastic. I'm sorry the work you put in to actually addressing what was brought up was so ignored...but then I suspected it would be.

I think or at least hope WOTC sees discussions like this and realizes exactly why a character and card like this are needed. You can only go forward with this. Eventually minds will expand.

https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=type:human block:akh

There are a total of 58 results to spend 'an hour' looking at, proving that Mr. Bhogal83 has done *none* of the research on the matter. They also state that none of the examples provided show people with skin tones that befit people of European origin (who, may I remind everyone, includes people from the Mediterranean) without any support.

I submit to the jury of public opinion whose case was properly argued and who failed to address any of the points raised, as had been put in the complaint by Mr. Bhogal83 in an earlier post.

Quote from Bhogal83 »

I'm sorry to see my arguments remain unaddressed. Mr_Lord_Mr gave it the best shot. Kudos to him. The worst shot is the guy who wasted an hour checking Amonkhet cards to find evidence of white people, but failed, and then somehow tried to twist it as disproof of my argument. Or maybe it's the guy who equates the card art of Triumph of Ferocity with child pornography.

In any case, the responses I received are now sufficient for me to conclude that my initial concerns do indeed have merit. I'll no longer be reading this thread as I have work to get on with. Thank you.

Bhogal's reply is brought to you by ego defense mechanisms!

Oh my gosh people - our perceptions of these historical "inaccuracies" are due specifically to...historical inaccuracies!! In the 700s AD Spain was conquered by Muslims - commonly referred to as Moors here. The same goes for Sicily and parts of Italy. Dark skinned individuals were EXTREMELY POPULOUS in Medieval Europe. In Arthurian lore Sir Palamedes was an Arab muslim converted to Christianity. Late 20th century retellings of Robin Hood often has an African Muslim in his troop of merry men - why? To accentuate the historicity of the melding and bleeding of ethnic groups in Europe at the time. If you go to the Met and look at old paintings, you will see that there were numerous individuals of color depicted in court scenes. People of color were not absent from Medieval Europe - Europeans are NOT an Aryan race. Europeans are a diverse group of ethnicities of varying skin colors whose origins stem from both the North AND the South (i.e. Africa and the Middle East).

Quote from inflatable fish »

Quote from Bhogal83 »

It's perfectly fine for [medieval Europe] to be populated with dark-skinned people, but no one questions why [ancient Egypt] or [medieval Japan] are devoid of Caucasian natives.

speaking of double standards - I've edited your "argument," applying the filter of your own wish that Wizards' fantasy worlds should stick to their source material/inspiration more. hope this helps.

who am I kidding, you're beyond help.

As you can probably see from my above comment, I am not sympathetic to the position they presented but I prefer them not being able to use this misunderstanding as ammunition, either: It appears the point they were making was about (supposed) hypocrisy rather than a demand that Caucasians get inserted into those contexts. Basically, that whichever standard gets used should be applied to all demographics in all settings instead of some demographics getting 'special treatment'. However, as pointed out above, the premise that people of colour are getting special treatment is mistaken since Europe and Africa have highly intertwined history and thus far, all examples of such supposed 'insertions' have been about dark-skinned people in settings using European history as inspiration.