I don't know man it doesn't really matter... I was just trying to say that a significant amount of people on a plane can have direct experience with planeswalkers and that doesn't mean that the entire plane should have knowledge of planeswalkers or take anyone who claims they have encountered beings from another world seriously. Most people wouldn't even have the motivation or means to make their newfound information public knowledge.
A cosmopolitan place like Ravnica maybe it's unlikely that some planeswalker didn't just show up and do the Tony Stark at the end of Iron Man thing... But it's only been less than a century since planeswalkers could access the plane if I understand correctly and Niv Mizzet seems pretty close to nailing the target. Who knows how much Niv Mizzet even knows. For all we know he is 99.9% sure of the existence and nature of planeswalkers and even the identities of individual planeswalkers but wants iron clad scientific proof before he tells anybody about his extremely strong hunch.
There's a whole lot of people on this planet who say they have encountered spirits, extradimensional beings, aliens, angels, bigfoots, etc... And none of the people on Magic's planes even have the Internet to spread the info of their amazing encounters.
Hopefully in ten years or something the cultural landscape will have shifted so they can portray things that are right now too "weird" and there are less touchy subjects to avoid. For years they avoided printing demons in the game, now they're once again a mainstay, so things can change.
I agree with Northjayhawk on this. Wizards are trying to present it as part of some sort of philosophy, but I bet it's mostly a business decision. They just don't want any trouble with the big religions.
@Caranthir: Neat! Didn't notice the blood on Hazoret's cartouche until now.
(Also, stop quoting everything every time please)
Well duh it's mostly a business decision, every decision a business makes is a business decision. Mostly I just wanted to point out that Wizards explicitly stated there would be no Exodus material so we shouldn't expect the biblical plaques, and to explain their rationale.
Really the borders between fantasy and religion are very thin, the major difference being that one is sincerely believed in by many people and the other isn't. They both carry out largely the same purpose and the one is derived from the other. If you try to portray many worlds with a variety of cultural inspirations while at the same time trying not to seem like you're trivializing those cultures and peoples' sincere beliefs you're going to run into a ton of contradictions.
No cards based on the Bible because it would trivialize religion.
While they're making a set based entirely on an historical religion...
Perhaps they are saving the plagues for Hour of Devastation?
entirely possible. But it would be a good fit for the set imo both in terms of flavor as well as a much needed card to break the monotony in standard
In one of the articles yesterday they explicitly state that the set won't include anything inspired by the Book of Exodus as they don't want to trivialize a living religion (as opposed to a religion that almost nobody today believes in). Besides, Exodus is Hebrew myth so I don't think it should be included anyway since it's from a different culture.
Kemetism is a thing.
If they extended the policy to every form of Neopaganism I don't think there's a single fantasy element they didn't make up that they could use. I don't agree with their position myself but I think it's a fair one to take. I do however still think Bible tropes would be out of place here.
Put 4 -1/-1 counters on each creature on the battlefield.
Better than Languish but not as good as Damnation.
OR
Make it more expensive to cast but gives you a 1/1 locust token for each creature that dies and/or gets a -1/-1 counter. Maybe 4BB to cast?
No cards based on the Bible because it would trivialize religion.
While they're making a set based entirely on an historical religion...
Perhaps they are saving the plagues for Hour of Devastation?
entirely possible. But it would be a good fit for the set imo both in terms of flavor as well as a much needed card to break the monotony in standard
In one of the articles yesterday they explicitly state that the set won't include anything inspired by the Book of Exodus as they don't want to trivialize a living religion (as opposed to a religion that almost nobody today believes in). Besides, Exodus is Hebrew myth so I don't think it should be included anyway since it's from a different culture.
miresmalice asked on blogatog: You have previously said that the Amonkhet Gods' nicknames were 'white god', 'blue god', etc.
Does this mean that the gods are mono-coloured or is this just how they were nicknamed (I.E: Grixis focuses in black, Jund Focuses in red, etc)? Maro: The Amonkhet gods are monocolored.
April's fools?
I wish. Why make them monocolored and have them be too similar to the Theroes gods?
How could you possibly know they are too similar to the Theros gods if you haven't seen them yet? There are plenty of mythologies left to make top-down sets based on, I'm sure there will be tricolor gods eventually. Maybe when they do Norse world the gods there will be tricolor.
I better see the enemy versions of those in hour of devastation.
Unfortunately I have that nagging feeling that just like BFZ where people expected the enemy set to be printed in Oath and it didn't happen... yeah idk if they will. would be nice though, enemy color pairs are very lacking in duals compared to allied.
Having a non-evergreen mechanic is more indicative of all ten of them showing up this block, then again cycling is the kind of mechanic that could show up again basically whenever so it's far from a guarantee.
Were the other gods mortal besides Xenagos? I was under the impression that the others came into being as gods, or at least divine/Nyxian beings of some sort.
Maybe since Nicol Bolas is a planeswalker him showing up out of nowhere and being completely unlike anything on the plane was enough for the native gods and people to just accept him as God-pharaoh. Maybe the gods and people of Amonkhet are remarkably honest and guileless and would never expect somebody, especially someone of such majesty as Bolas, to just lie to them about somebody so important.
Besides the traumatic aspect I think one's planeswalker spark igniting also has to do with experiencing a moment of intense emotion or completely unlike anything that has ever happened before. Even good things are similar to being traumatic if they are utterly transformative events. Being killed by the god you've worshipped all your life after completing the challenge you've spent your entire life training for seems traumatic in the sense that it is an ultimate, all-changing event from which it is impossible to come back from (which seems like what your planeswalker spark igniting is, "traumatic" can just be a word used to convey the sense of what this inconvievable, all-transforming event is like).
A cosmopolitan place like Ravnica maybe it's unlikely that some planeswalker didn't just show up and do the Tony Stark at the end of Iron Man thing... But it's only been less than a century since planeswalkers could access the plane if I understand correctly and Niv Mizzet seems pretty close to nailing the target. Who knows how much Niv Mizzet even knows. For all we know he is 99.9% sure of the existence and nature of planeswalkers and even the identities of individual planeswalkers but wants iron clad scientific proof before he tells anybody about his extremely strong hunch.
Well duh it's mostly a business decision, every decision a business makes is a business decision. Mostly I just wanted to point out that Wizards explicitly stated there would be no Exodus material so we shouldn't expect the biblical plaques, and to explain their rationale.
Really the borders between fantasy and religion are very thin, the major difference being that one is sincerely believed in by many people and the other isn't. They both carry out largely the same purpose and the one is derived from the other. If you try to portray many worlds with a variety of cultural inspirations while at the same time trying not to seem like you're trivializing those cultures and peoples' sincere beliefs you're going to run into a ton of contradictions.
Having a non-evergreen mechanic is more indicative of all ten of them showing up this block, then again cycling is the kind of mechanic that could show up again basically whenever so it's far from a guarantee.