Svetlin Velinov's Spellskite illustration on Artstation. When he posted that it was the first time in a long time where I saw a card's art and said "I have to have that!" I'll pay a premium to pick up one of these, a set if it's not ridiculously crazy
Since one of the problems with doing functional reprints or reprints that are better than the original cards is that it would completely mess up Vintage and Legacy, what if WotC made a new "no reserved list" Vintage and printed "better than the original" versions of staple cards but cut support for the other formats? Would that get around the restrictions of the Reserved List, like, if you made a Savannah that was a plains/forest but also did Scry 1 when it ETB, so not a Savannah? They'd be printing money like crazy and they could streamline their support system by getting rid of (basically) Legacy and Vintage.
The Legacy and Vintage folks would be pretty damn mad I'd imagine, but it feels like something Hasbro might push WotC to do in order to push profits harder.
Is this card cart? Looks more like concept art thrown together.
I was thinking that, too, like it's from their art bible rather than from actual art pieces for the set. It's a bit odd to see the pieces all so vertically-formated since MtG cards are mostly landscape; unless of course the intent was to have these be full-art variants or something, then it makes a bit more sense.
You can make digital art look almost exactly like it was treated in a traditional manner, it's all on the artist, their art style/execution, and the art director's wishes. If they want it ultra-clean then they'll ask the artist to make it ultra-clean. If they want it painterly with more emphasis on allusions to form with messy strokes then that's what they'll ask for.
Don't colorless cards all have full art because their frame is colorless?
You know.... I am not a very smart man, I just never realized that I guess this puts it more in the "card art" camp than the "art bible" one.
Is this card cart? Looks more like concept art thrown together.
I was thinking that, too, like it's from their art bible rather than from actual art pieces for the set. It's a bit odd to see the pieces all so vertically-formated since MtG cards are mostly landscape; unless of course the intent was to have these be full-art variants or something, then it makes a bit more sense.
You can make digital art look almost exactly like it was treated in a traditional manner, it's all on the artist, their art style/execution, and the art director's wishes. If they want it ultra-clean then they'll ask the artist to make it ultra-clean. If they want it painterly with more emphasis on allusions to form with messy strokes then that's what they'll ask for.
I very strongly doubt that the "diamond just means must-be-colorless" theory is correct, my reasoning being that if they were going to make that change, and start templating things to add diamond for colorless, they definitely would have done it for things such as the blighted lands in BFZ. They are going out of their way to be new-player-friendly these days, and new players would be very confused if two lands in the same limited format had vastly different notations but did the same thing.
That said, it's also possible that Diamond in a cost means something like "This cost can be paid either by paying one diamond mana OR by doing foo", where foo could be:
-paying any 2 mana (as someone in this thread has suggested)
or something more exotic like
-discarding a card
-sacrificing a creature
I kind of like the sacrificing a creature idea, as it would partially explain why there's the underdeveloped sacrifice theme in BFZ... one it's played with OGW there will suddenly be a bunch of spells that can only be cast by either generating diamond mana (which will be possible, but not necessarily easy) or sacrificing a creature.
-destroying a land?
I have a feeling it's none of those, no alternate means to pay. You just will have to have 2 lands that produce <> to pay for costs. My thinking is that for newer players it might feel awkward to have an alternate form of payment while having a land that produces what you need. What I mean is, say <> could also be paid with a creature sacrifice and you're a new player... would that then mean that when you tap that new basic land (which has no reminder text at all) you have to sacrifice a creature? If you have one in play can you just sacrifice creatures to make <>? I can only think of Phyrexian mana offhand where there's a directly alternate cost:mana ratio in effect (2 life instead of 1 mana of a color), which is what I'm basing my logic on in that the Phyrexian mana symbol didn't appear on any lands at all (IIRC?)
It would feel a bit more elegant as an execution to have <> mean just <> and not as a replacement for colorless. If they were to do something so drastic it would most likely to have been done in BFZ, a larger set, at least to start establishing the visual iconography of the symbol, which is why I think this is actually a fully separate mana-base.
If there were to be any alternate cost though, my *guess* would be that it has something to do with putting 'x' exiled cards into your graveyard, something high like 3 or 4 per symbol, since that would tie in directly with BFZ's Eldrazi mechanic.
I did a quick search, didn't see anything on this... but what are the ramifications for Commander? Would a Kozilek general be restricted to basically Waste-mana/cards and Colorless cards? I wonder how much support WotC will have for this post-set (even within the set), maybe it'll be featured in a 2016 Commander deck with a bunch of new specialized <>-type cards.
Commander is about color identity. Kozilek is colorless thus you can only use cards with a colorless identity. any colored mana symbol gives a card a color identity, no matter where the symbol is (cost, textbox, etc). extort is the only exception cause there the symbol is within the reminder text, and that is the only thing where it doesnt count.
and since all for example forest have T: add G, they cant be used in a colorless deck. hence the new Waste lands finally gives those decks a kind of basic land they can use
So it's confirmed that <> is just a rebranding of colorless and not an entirely new mana symbol? If so that'd be less exciting, but certainly interesting with regards to the ramifications of the game's mana system..
I did a quick search, didn't see anything on this... but what are the ramifications for Commander? Would a Kozilek general be restricted to basically Waste-mana/cards and Colorless cards? I wonder how much support WotC will have for this post-set (even within the set), maybe it'll be featured in a 2016 Commander deck with a bunch of new specialized <>-type cards.
The Legacy and Vintage folks would be pretty damn mad I'd imagine, but it feels like something Hasbro might push WotC to do in order to push profits harder.
You know.... I am not a very smart man, I just never realized that
I was thinking that, too, like it's from their art bible rather than from actual art pieces for the set. It's a bit odd to see the pieces all so vertically-formated since MtG cards are mostly landscape; unless of course the intent was to have these be full-art variants or something, then it makes a bit more sense.
You can make digital art look almost exactly like it was treated in a traditional manner, it's all on the artist, their art style/execution, and the art director's wishes. If they want it ultra-clean then they'll ask the artist to make it ultra-clean. If they want it painterly with more emphasis on allusions to form with messy strokes then that's what they'll ask for.
I have a feeling it's none of those, no alternate means to pay. You just will have to have 2 lands that produce <> to pay for costs. My thinking is that for newer players it might feel awkward to have an alternate form of payment while having a land that produces what you need. What I mean is, say <> could also be paid with a creature sacrifice and you're a new player... would that then mean that when you tap that new basic land (which has no reminder text at all) you have to sacrifice a creature? If you have one in play can you just sacrifice creatures to make <>? I can only think of Phyrexian mana offhand where there's a directly alternate cost:mana ratio in effect (2 life instead of 1 mana of a color), which is what I'm basing my logic on in that the Phyrexian mana symbol didn't appear on any lands at all (IIRC?)
It would feel a bit more elegant as an execution to have <> mean just <> and not as a replacement for colorless. If they were to do something so drastic it would most likely to have been done in BFZ, a larger set, at least to start establishing the visual iconography of the symbol, which is why I think this is actually a fully separate mana-base.
If there were to be any alternate cost though, my *guess* would be that it has something to do with putting 'x' exiled cards into your graveyard, something high like 3 or 4 per symbol, since that would tie in directly with BFZ's Eldrazi mechanic.
So it's confirmed that <> is just a rebranding of colorless and not an entirely new mana symbol? If so that'd be less exciting, but certainly interesting with regards to the ramifications of the game's mana system..