I'd like to see that second ability keyworded as an alternative to bestow. Theros this time around doesn't have nearly as strong of an enchantment theme as I was wanting.
Should have been an increase of two per ability not one.this guy has one job and he fails at it unless you have a bunch in play. At least give him two toughness so Chandra can't ping him easily.
Not liking white in this set
They tend to be a little conservative when they print hate drops with new design space. If this one doesn't make a splash they'll probably feel more confident in printing a one drop version or a two drop with a larger tax as you propose.
Fun effect but I wish this was blue instead. IMO blue has the harder time getting rid of walkers since white has effective creatures and exile spells.
Keep yo grubby blue hands off mah white taxing!
I would be in favor of a blue version with a more in-color approach to hosing planeswalkers though. Like a 1/1 flying Bird token for each activation.
Oh I hate blue the most, just saying out easy to get rid of walkers blue has counter spells and creatures in which its the worst creature color where white has exile effects and is the second best creature color. A more in color effect for blue would also be welcome.
Yep, I definitely agree you're right about blue needing more options against planeswalkers and planeswalker hate in general.
Should have been an increase of two per ability not one.this guy has one job and he fails at it unless you have a bunch in play. At least give him two toughness so Chandra can't ping him easily.
Not liking white in this set
They tend to be a little conservative when they print hate drops with new design space. If this one doesn't make a splash they'll probably feel more confident in printing a one drop version or a two drop with a larger tax as you propose.
I feel like making this card both a snake and a lamia is a good compromise between "all cards must have tribal synergies" and "if a hippocamp is a horse fish, is a griffin a cat bird?"
In general, I would prefer that they give unique creature types to unique mythological concepts. When certain creatures are given a mishmash of types based on their components but other creatures get their own type, its the latter which feel more evocative.
Is this the first male dryad? I can't recall any previous ones specifically being male they've all been either obviously female or unclear. Also, this dude is giving me Jolly Green Giant vibes...not sure that's a good thing yet.
Naiad of Hidden Coves also appears to be male. I guess we're getting male nymphs now.
They continue to make Green the color of draw, eh? I understand that there's a rarity difference between Setessan Champion and Shoal Kraken but given the CMC difference and that the champion gets a +1/+1 counter, does the Kraken really need to loot rather than draw? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that fueling the yard can be very helpful but having played The Royal Scions throughout most of Eldraine standard along side Gadwick, The Wizened there are plenty of times when I'm not looting because I've got exactly 1 card in hand.
They seem to have a quota of putting a ton of looting effects in every set now. The benefit of this is how it helps with consistency, but a 5 drop uncommon is going to have minimal impact to increase consistency, probably triggering only once per game. It's also a pretty weak reward for playing enchantments. Of course some cards are bound to be weaker than others, but I think they would benefit by diversifying their effects a bit more.
I mean, mystery solved though. Tiro does not understand why people would take issue with the views that Terese Nielsen has implicitly supported mainly because he apparently largely shares those views.
Initially, I thought it was just pure frivolousness in making art on Magic cards more of a priority than real life consequences of political views. But it's considerably easier to separate the art from the artist when you don't actually disagree with the artist whatsoever anyway.
Guys. Guys. GUYS.
******* stop bringing diversity politics into ******* card reveal threads that have absolutely nothing to do with it. Do the mods really have to intervene on every third thread before you just let it go and talk about it somewhere else? What am I saying? Of course they do.
Card seems pretty decent. Compare to Obzedat's Aid. Gets less permanent types, but can get multiple cards at once.
Moderators have clarified that it is acceptable for people to discuss politics in a thread if they can do so respectfully. You don't have to automatically complain about a discussion occurring just because it has political content.
This is a thread about aj MtG card. You're talking about freedom of speech and legal rights and protections. It's off-topic, and it's obstructive to anyone who just wants to talk about the card to get buried in a whole other discussion. Plus, what are the chances this stays civil? It's flamebait, and it usually doesn't go anywhere very productive.
Start a new thread and talk about it there if you want.
You're right that it's off topic in this particular thread, though even in other threads where the direction of the conversation was related in some way to the card posted in the thread, you have made similar remarks. To be frank, I would say that this card is pretty formulaic and on topic discussion of it has already been practically exhausted, so no one is really being obstructed. It seems to me that the average amount of discussion on individual cards has fallen over the years. Perhaps the game is just getting older and there's less to say about slight variations upon standard designs everyone is familiar with. I anticipate discussion continuing to decline, unless we tolerate more informal conversations.
There used to be other subforums where these kinds of discussions could take place and tangential posts here could be split off, but those subforums were removed (apparently because they required too much moderating). The consequence of that is that there isn't really an appropriate outlet for members to express themselves and it spills into these threads and will inevitably continue to do so. And since such threads are typically closed shortly afterwards, forum members aren't really given a chance to learn how to behave properly during those discussions. Instead people just end up flaming each other since they know their discussion will be cut off anyway. I believe this has contributed to the fragmentation of the community. Given that Rumor Mill is the main forum, it's probably more feasible to manage moderating discussion here even if its scope is expanded.
Finally, while you might not personally find these digressions to be very productive, they might be for other people reading. For example, we have this thread where, in response to various peoples' remarks, Tiro slightly changed his position. I believe this implies he learned something or gained greater clarity in his thinking. For an internet argument, that's actually quite an extraordinary turn of events, even if there's still issues to address.
Guys. Guys. GUYS.
******* stop bringing diversity politics into ******* card reveal threads that have absolutely nothing to do with it. Do the mods really have to intervene on every third thread before you just let it go and talk about it somewhere else? What am I saying? Of course they do.
Card seems pretty decent. Compare to Obzedat's Aid. Gets less permanent types, but can get multiple cards at once.
Moderators have clarified that it is acceptable for people to discuss politics in a thread if they can do so respectfully. You don't have to automatically complain about a discussion occurring just because it has political content.
Now as to the discussion...
WotC as a company has the freedom to make business decisions about who they employ based on how that impacts their profits. If consumers of your product don't like an artist for whatever reason, the company is free to not employ that artist.
So what it comes down to is that if an artist expresses problematic political views, consumers are also free to exercise their free speech to criticize that person. Companies will naturally take note of this response when evaluating the profitability of their business decisions. And other consumers are also free to criticize this criticism, although they would be factually incorrect if they attempted to assert that criticizing people's views is anti-free speech. It is extremely clear that criticizing views is not just pro-free speech, it is exercising free speech in practice.
Now, if the critics of the critics want to insist on using arguments with demonstrably false premises, they are free to do that as well. It just comes at the cost of the argument's reasonableness. And if the critics of critics want to argue that criticizing someone's political views suppresses free speech, they can type those words regardless of the fact that they are being hypocritical. The quality of discourse which occurs in free speech depends of course entirely on higher values such as rationality, honesty, and sincerity. If not all participants in a discourse share those values, it becomes extremely difficult to shed light upon how free speech is best upheld in that context.
I think making this card an enchantment accomplishes a few things, design wise.
First, it's a cheap red reanimation card. Red is a color that can recur instants and sorceries. If it were a sorcery, at this cost in this color, it would almost certainly self-exile for balance reasons. That's about equally inelegant so it's more or less a wash.
But in return for the loss of elegance, you get to frame the archetypes for this card, most likely RWx to gain access to enchantment recurrence. Any of the other three colors could provide self-mill which is the other critical element. Because of that, I think this card would not be balanced if printed in pretty much any other color.
It gives red a needed boost in power and diversity, helps with the limitations of RW builds.
I believe Mirrodin established it's a design no-no to give affinity for card type on a card that has that type. Which is too bad because we'll always crave enchantments which get the same treatment as our overpowered artifacts but will never get them. Why must we desire that which is bad for us? *eats ice cream for breakfast*
To be honest, I love tribal the most when it's for more obscure creature types. I'm more excited to see how they build the archetype for a new tribe than to have to choke down yet more elves, goblins and zombies. Especially when you can play an immoderate amount of Magic on Arena and get sick to death of the same Ixalan vampire tribal deck that half of all players run.
Although Satyrs are pretty strictly just a Theros tribe, so there's not likely much support they'll ever have.
Maybe in the sense of a seed pod for cotton as the origin of the threads of fate?
Yep, I definitely agree you're right about blue needing more options against planeswalkers and planeswalker hate in general.
They tend to be a little conservative when they print hate drops with new design space. If this one doesn't make a splash they'll probably feel more confident in printing a one drop version or a two drop with a larger tax as you propose.
Keep yo grubby blue hands off mah white taxing!
I would be in favor of a blue version with a more in-color approach to hosing planeswalkers though. Like a 1/1 flying Bird token for each activation.
In general, I would prefer that they give unique creature types to unique mythological concepts. When certain creatures are given a mishmash of types based on their components but other creatures get their own type, its the latter which feel more evocative.
Naiad of Hidden Coves also appears to be male. I guess we're getting male nymphs now.
They seem to have a quota of putting a ton of looting effects in every set now. The benefit of this is how it helps with consistency, but a 5 drop uncommon is going to have minimal impact to increase consistency, probably triggering only once per game. It's also a pretty weak reward for playing enchantments. Of course some cards are bound to be weaker than others, but I think they would benefit by diversifying their effects a bit more.
Initially, I thought it was just pure frivolousness in making art on Magic cards more of a priority than real life consequences of political views. But it's considerably easier to separate the art from the artist when you don't actually disagree with the artist whatsoever anyway.
You're right that it's off topic in this particular thread, though even in other threads where the direction of the conversation was related in some way to the card posted in the thread, you have made similar remarks. To be frank, I would say that this card is pretty formulaic and on topic discussion of it has already been practically exhausted, so no one is really being obstructed. It seems to me that the average amount of discussion on individual cards has fallen over the years. Perhaps the game is just getting older and there's less to say about slight variations upon standard designs everyone is familiar with. I anticipate discussion continuing to decline, unless we tolerate more informal conversations.
There used to be other subforums where these kinds of discussions could take place and tangential posts here could be split off, but those subforums were removed (apparently because they required too much moderating). The consequence of that is that there isn't really an appropriate outlet for members to express themselves and it spills into these threads and will inevitably continue to do so. And since such threads are typically closed shortly afterwards, forum members aren't really given a chance to learn how to behave properly during those discussions. Instead people just end up flaming each other since they know their discussion will be cut off anyway. I believe this has contributed to the fragmentation of the community. Given that Rumor Mill is the main forum, it's probably more feasible to manage moderating discussion here even if its scope is expanded.
Finally, while you might not personally find these digressions to be very productive, they might be for other people reading. For example, we have this thread where, in response to various peoples' remarks, Tiro slightly changed his position. I believe this implies he learned something or gained greater clarity in his thinking. For an internet argument, that's actually quite an extraordinary turn of events, even if there's still issues to address.
Moderators have clarified that it is acceptable for people to discuss politics in a thread if they can do so respectfully. You don't have to automatically complain about a discussion occurring just because it has political content.
Now as to the discussion...
WotC as a company has the freedom to make business decisions about who they employ based on how that impacts their profits. If consumers of your product don't like an artist for whatever reason, the company is free to not employ that artist.
So what it comes down to is that if an artist expresses problematic political views, consumers are also free to exercise their free speech to criticize that person. Companies will naturally take note of this response when evaluating the profitability of their business decisions. And other consumers are also free to criticize this criticism, although they would be factually incorrect if they attempted to assert that criticizing people's views is anti-free speech. It is extremely clear that criticizing views is not just pro-free speech, it is exercising free speech in practice.
Now, if the critics of the critics want to insist on using arguments with demonstrably false premises, they are free to do that as well. It just comes at the cost of the argument's reasonableness. And if the critics of critics want to argue that criticizing someone's political views suppresses free speech, they can type those words regardless of the fact that they are being hypocritical. The quality of discourse which occurs in free speech depends of course entirely on higher values such as rationality, honesty, and sincerity. If not all participants in a discourse share those values, it becomes extremely difficult to shed light upon how free speech is best upheld in that context.
First, it's a cheap red reanimation card. Red is a color that can recur instants and sorceries. If it were a sorcery, at this cost in this color, it would almost certainly self-exile for balance reasons. That's about equally inelegant so it's more or less a wash.
But in return for the loss of elegance, you get to frame the archetypes for this card, most likely RWx to gain access to enchantment recurrence. Any of the other three colors could provide self-mill which is the other critical element. Because of that, I think this card would not be balanced if printed in pretty much any other color.
It gives red a needed boost in power and diversity, helps with the limitations of RW builds.
Renal failure imminent.
I believe Mirrodin established it's a design no-no to give affinity for card type on a card that has that type. Which is too bad because we'll always crave enchantments which get the same treatment as our overpowered artifacts but will never get them. Why must we desire that which is bad for us? *eats ice cream for breakfast*
Although Satyrs are pretty strictly just a Theros tribe, so there's not likely much support they'll ever have.